Oops...

Dear Readers,
I know it has been quite a while since the last update, and for that, I do apologize. At some point, other things got higher priority, and life ­– as it tends to do – went on. 
However, baking never went away. Because of that, no fear! There are plenty of recipes we’ve tried and tinkered with over the past few years (eep, it’s really been that long!). Some of the most-requested ones, along with some personal favorites, I’ll be putting up shortly. I'll also pester Chef G, and hopefully we'll get back into good posting habits.

Sweetly Yours,
Chef A

Back in Business!

We're back! Nothing much more to say, except that you should be on the lookout for future posts. We don't have as much time to bake together, tragically, but we look forward to sharing our new creations. I hope to work out a Girl Scout Samoa copycat by GS cookie season; get excited! They're my favorite of the cookies, and with an overabundance of shaved coconut, it seems as if I'll make them sometime in the next week.

~ Chefs G and A

On Haitus

Hello lovelies!

The blog is on haitus until about January, as both of us are off exploring new and exciting places, several thousand miles from our home kitchen. There will potentially be updates, as I know we each have myriad recipes from this summer yet to be posted. Whoops!

Also, one can take the baker out of the kitchen, but one can never take the kitchen out of the baker. Or something like that. What I mean to say is, there is every possibility that we will be making tasty things in our exotic locales, and will update you all if/when we get the chance.

Sweetly Yours,

The Diabetic Duo

Updates Galore!

Hello dear readers!

We're busy updating the blog with all sorts of goodies that we've made, but just not had time to post! We'll backdate all our posts, so anything dated as July or August was actually just now added. Between the two of us, we have around fifteen posts to add. Are you appropriately terrified? We sure are.

Additionally the blog is undergoing some design changes. Be on the lookout for a new, chic design, courtesy of Chef G.

Sweetly yours,

The Diabetic Duo

Peanut Butter and Jelly for a Picnic!

When I was in third, fourth, and fifth grades, every day, for lunch, I would have a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. My parents would pack me one, in my lunch, every day, for over three years. So it goes to show that I love PB+J.

On a completely different note, some friends were putting together a picnic. Obviously, I opted to make dessert. (Chef A made pretzels!) I needed a fun, simple, summery dessert. Cookies seemed ideal and easy to transport, but I wanted something fun and original. I originally thought of jam thumbprints, which has a nice, fruity sound to them, but wanted something a little more... unusual. That's when I remembered PB+J. And then quickly set about finding a recipe.

I was halfway through figuring out how to combine a thumbprint sugar-cookie recipe and a peanut-butter-cookie recipe, when I found this. It was perfect. I threw it together, modified a little tiny bit, and went off to my picnic. I have a recipe for you:

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
vanilla
sugar for rolling

3/4 cup jam, jelly, or preserves
2 tsp sugar (optional)

Directions:

I didn't have any shortening on hand when I made the recipe, so I was substituting butter. It also didn't have enough peanut-butter flavor, so I tweaked the amounts a little bit to just give it a little bit more edge. Okay, cookies are nice and simple:

Preheat that oven to 375F. Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda and set aside. Cream together the sugars, butter, and peanut butter until smooth and fluffy, add the eggs, milk, and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mixture, mixing thoroughly after each addition, until you have a nice cookie batter.

Form into small balls (I usually go for about 3/4" diameter), roll in sugar, and drop onto an ungreased cookie sheet (actually, I used SilPats, but the recipe says ungreased is fine). This recipe makes a decent number of cookies. Be aware. You may want to cut this in half to avoid having to cart around a giant tray full of over 50 cookies. You have been warned.

Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes. While they're baking, I recommend the following step: toss the jelly/jam/preserves into a small saucepan and heat it up to thin it out, then dissolve the sugar in it. I personally think it adds just a nice contrast to the more savory peanut butter flavor of the cookies later on.

Take the cookies out of the oven when they're just starting to brown around the edges. They should be decently soft and chewy-looking, but solid enough to hold a shape. Give them a second to cool and then make a mad dash (with your thumb) through the line of cookie, indenting the centers. Warning: Hot! So hot! It's best to do this while the cookies are still hot and pliable, but be careful for your thumb!

Once both the cookies and the jam have cooled down a little, spoon a little bit of the jam into each cookie indent. These can be eaten warm or not, and are super-tasty no matter when you have them. I recommend with milk.

~Chef G

Cookie-dough Cheesecake

Dear everybody. I love cookie dough. I don't care about salmonella, I love cookie dough. That is all.

No seriously, it's one of those things that I simply can't live without -- eating cookie dough out of the bowl when you make cookies, eating batter out of the bowl when your make cakes or brownies -- there's something in it that's quintessential to the baking experience. It makes me think of this:

Anyway, I had the opportunity and the encouragement to make something delicious and unexpected for forty people, and this time, no one else was making cheesecake. I had known what I would be making for months. I don't normally like to make cheesecake because it takes too long (in my mind, I don't know why) and when I bake it's usually because I want to eat something now. But if it's for a special occasion and for others, it's a wonderful and delicious option. I'm weird, I know.

So I had decided months ago that I wanted to make cookie dough cheesecake, in honor of one of my favorite cheesecakes from a certain restaurant. (Because I love cookie dough and I love cheesecake and I can't think of any better way to combine two of my favorite things) The problem was, all of the recipes wanted me to use eggless cookie dough. Now, if you've ever tasted eggless cookie dough and regular, egg-y cookie dough side by side (sorry vegans, you're out), you'll know that the eggs make the flavor. So I was having none of that. Yes, there's all these warnings out there about salmonella in raw eggs, but you know what? I didn't care. I was making this thing with eggs and if the internal temperature of the cheesecake didn't get high enough (which it still might have, who knows?) then so be it, I was willing to take that chance.

As such, I used my own personal in-head recipe for cookies and found a basic cheesecake recipe to go along with it. Pulling from here, with tons of modifications.

Ingredients~

Cookie Dough:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
vanilla
1 cup (semisweet) chocolate chips

Cheescake:
1/4 cup melted butter

1 cup white sugar
16 oz cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
vanilla

Topping:
1 cup sour cream
2 tsp white sugar
vanilla

Directions~

There are a few parts to this, so I'll try to break it down as much as possible. First, we're going to make the cookie dough. Preheat your oven to 375F. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda) together and set aside. In a different bowl, cream together the sugars and the butter (I always recommend a stand mixer for this kind of thing, but believe me, it can be done, and done well, by hand. Hand mixers are fine as well). When it's nice and light and fluffy, add the egg and the yolk, as well as the vanilla, and mix. Add the flour mixture a little at a time, stirring each time. You should end up with a nice, thick cookie dough. Add the chocolate chips and stir until they're evenly distributed.

Now we're going to do something interesting. Divide the cookie dough in half. Set one half aside. With the other half, drop rounded teaspoons onto a greased cookie sheet until you've used all the dough. Toss them in the oven for 10-14 minutes until they're nicely golden brown and done. I know some of you out there may enjoy your cookies soft (I know I do) but this is not the aim here. You want them to be crispy. When they're done, take them out to cool. At this point, I would recommend putting them in the freezer for a bit. It'll help if they're cold in a sec.

Take a break while the cookies chill.

You should have a good supply of cold, crispy (yummy) chocolate chip cookies. Now chop 'em up! Or rather, put them in a food processor (blender works too!) until they reduce to crumb size. That's right, we're making a crust for the cheesecake out of these cookies. Meanwhile, bring your oven temperature down to 350F. When you have about 1 1/2 cups of cookie dust, you can stop and save the rest of the cookies for eating and garnishing. Combine the cookie powder with the melted butter (we've moved on to the cheesecake part of the ingredients now) and form a crust on the bottom and lower 1/2 inch or so of the sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Put it in the oven for a few minutes, until it looks like it's willing to stay in place, probably anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes.
Note: Swelling and butter runoff may occur. Do not panic. If the bottom of the crust swells up, tamp it down with a fork once you've taken it out of the oven. If it looks like there is a river of molten butter ready to be released at any given moment, it is perfectly acceptable to unclasp the springform a little bit (and briefly) to let it drain off. If done properly, your crust should stay in place until you clasp the springform back into shape.

Okay. Now that we have a crust, we just need some cheesecake. Combine the sugar and cream chese. Hopefully, you can use the mixer you used for the cookie dough. (If you don't have a mixer, don't despair: this, too, can be done by hand. What a labor of love.) When it reaches frosting consistency, add the sour cream, the eggs, and the vanilla. Mix well, trying to avoid chunks as much as possible. Pour that into your cookie-crust.

Before we throw this in the oven, there's just one last (but vitally important) step: put in the cookie dough. Grab the cookie dough you set aside earlier and form balls of varying sizes, dropping them essentially at random throughout the cheesecake. You may have to press them in a little bit. Fill to your liking. It should be noted that it feels like you are putting a lot more dough in than you actually are-- this cheesecake is going to get sliced, and in order to get a decent amount of dough-per-slice, it's going to feel like you are overloading the cake with dough. Try to remember where you've put lumps of dough before and spread them over the whole cheesecake so no one gets left out. You may or may not use all of the dough (I did). When you're ready, pop that baby into the oven (it's still at 350, right?) for 40 minutes to an hour. Be sure to watch it, cheesecakes can be temperamental in their cooking times. It should be solid, with only a slight jiggle in the middle. The edges will be getting golden brown.

While it's baking, make the sauce: Combine the sour cream, sugar and vanilla, and mix until it's smooth. Put it in the fridge until the cake comes out of the oven, at which point you should spread it liberally over the hot cheesecake. Garnish the cake with leftover cookies (if you haven't eaten all of them yet) and serve hot, or put in the fridge for a bit and serve it cold. Either is absolutely delicious.

I have pictures of cookies and the cheesecake. I'll get them up here at some point. Until then, you'll have to make it to see it!

~Chef G

Blondies are Delicious!

Why are brownies so delicious? I know, this post isn't about brownies, but it's worth considering the question first. Personal opinion: Brownies are delicious because they satisfy certain needs: when done right, they're chocolatey, moist, and just the right kind of chewy. (Maybe some of you prefer your brownies cake-y. That's okay too, I guess) I don't even know. They have this texture that is just absolutely mind-blowing.

I think what I'm trying to say is that sometimes, you want the texture but not so much the taste. Maybe you're not in a chocolate mood. Maybe you're not the biggest fan of chocolate (*cough* *cough*) Either way, a blondie is an excellent alternative. It's like a brownie, but instead of chocolate, you have a nice caramel/butterscotch/brown-sugar flavor. They're deep without being too deep. And you can always add more or fewer chocolate chips to suit your chocolate tastes.

That being said, I decided one day to make blondies. The problem is, I'm a bit crazy, and the house didn't have butterscotch chips. 1 + 1 equals I make my own butterscotch. Let's get to the recipe.

Ingredients!


4 tbsp butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup heavy cream

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 egg
vanilla
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips


Yes, there is a space there in between some of the ingredients. Yes, vanilla is listed twice. This has to do with the whole making-butterscotch-thing. I used the recipe found here, but I'll describe my own experience with the whole process. All the butterscotch recipes I found seemed a little over-dramatic, with their dire warnings of having everything nearby and measured because otherwise you'll burn it all and everything will be ruined forever! As long as you know where the ingredients are, or have already brought them out on the counter, you have time to measure things as you go. Baking is not the LHC. Small errors can and do get lost in the noise. You're fine.

Directions!

Anyway, here we go with the instructions. (Step 0: Preheat your oven to about 350F.) First you're going to want to melt the butter in a medium-size saucepan. (Low to medium heat is fine -- you don't want to be a scorching temperatures) Keep in mind the fact that you will a) be adding a cup of sugar and b) these things like to bubble up well beyond the capacity for bubbling you assumed they had. When your butter is basically melted, toss in the brown sugar and stir it all together. At this point, it resembles something delicious. Resist temptation to eat. It gets better.

Wait for a bit, stirring to make sure you don't scorch the poor thing. It may not look like much, but after a while, the sugar will start to melt and the whole thing will start coming together into one giant mass. When it starts looking more like liquid than, well, sugar soaking in butter (this is a judgement call), you can add the cream. The recipe advises using a whisk at this point and that's a pretty good idea. It'll help incorporate the cream better, but it's not super-essential. Now cook this baby, but not too much. At the maximum, you should be hitting soft-ball stage, but thinner than that is fine. (If you're testing for hardness, feel free to take this moment to sample some of the butterscotch. It's really quite tasty.) Once you're satisfied with the butterscotch, take it off the heat and set it aside to cool for a bit. (I'm a fan of the refrigerator. Anyone else?) We'll need it in a second.

Now, while that's on its way to room temperature, mix together your dry ingredients here: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.You can sift if you're feeling nervous about your flour, otherwise, it's not really worth it. Set that aside.

Is your butterscotch cool yet? Is it? Well, okay, is it hot enough to cook the egg if you put the egg in? Ah, then we have a problem. When you feel the butterscotch has cooled down enough, you're going to want to whisk in the egg and a decent amount of vanilla. (That may be personal preference talking) If the temperature is really a source of worry, and your butterscotch is liquid enough to permit it, I'd say start with mixing the butterscotch into the egg. It's easier to bring the egg up to temperature of the butterscotch because the butterscotch currently has a majority vote. Eitherway, get that egg and vanilla in there.

Then start adding the flour mixture, a little at a time. You should end up with a delicious, medium-light-brown batter Try and keep it as smooth as possible. This recipe advocates sprinkling your chocolate chips on top, but I just mixed them in. They're all really going to end up on the bottom anyway. Do as you see fit. Pour that mixture into a buttered 9x9 pan. (There's really enough butter already in the butterscotch, but just in case) Slide that pan into the oven for 20-30 minutes (keep an eye on it, of course) and voila! blondies made from your own butterscotch. And it wasn't even that hard!

For the record, I doubled (tripled? I don't really remember) the recipe, because I had a bunch of people to feed. Compliments from all quarters. Really tasty with ice cream and even tasty when frozen solid (it was liquid nitrogen ice cream and we had extra LN2).

If you would like a picture, I only have this one of the batter in the pan. The blondies got eaten too quickly to snap any shots in between oven and stomach, so you'll have to deal with the raw goods.


Have fun making and baking!

~Chef G

Christmas in July: Peppermint Bark

Peppermint Bark is simple in idea and presentation, but is rather difficult to make properly. Essentially, it is a layer of white chocolate, one of dark/semi-sweet chocolate, covered with crushed starlight mints. I don’t have exact measurements, because I just improvised, but here’s roughly what you should do.

Ingredients:

White chocolate chips

Dark or semi-sweet chips

Butter/shortening

Cream

Starlight mints

----

Grease jelly-roll pan (cookie sheet with edges). Unwrap mints, and crush into chunks. If you have a meat tenderizer or hammer, place the mints in a large Ziploc bag, and hit each one individually. Alternatively, a rolling pin could be used over the bag. If you’re really desperate, put the mints in that bag, which can be slung into a counter repeatedly. That is what I had to do, because I couldn’t find any useful implements in the kitchen. Be careful when crushing the mints, because you don’t want a fine powder; chunks about 1/8” are actually preferable.

Heat cream in a double-boiler with a small amount of butter, warming until butter melts. Add in white chocolate chips, stirring until melted. The consistency should be thin enough to spread thinly, but thick enough that it’ll harden. Pour onto cookie sheet, and with offset spatula, smooth out the chocolate to the edges. Ideally, the layer should be about 1/8th of an inch thick. Let chocolate harden.

Repeat chocolate-melting process, but with dark chocolate chips instead of white. Once spread onto pan, sprinkle mint chunks, and press in lightly.

Refrigerate until serving time. If the bark is thin enough, it can simply be broken, but if the chocolate didn’t harden properly or is too thick, simply cut into bars and serve.

Apologies, but since I was making these for an all-campus party, and drunk people are hungry vultures, I unfortunately do not have pictures of these. Oh well, that simply makes an excuse to make them again, right?

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Lemony Bars

This kind of feels like I’m cheating, in that this recipe is almost identical to the one provided on the back of many condensed-milk cans, but I do so adore citrus desserts. You’ll just have to bear with me.

Also, apologies for the horrid photo quality.

Ingredients:

2 cups AP flour

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons finely grated lemon peel, divided

1 can (14 oz.) condensed milk.

4 large eggs

2/3 cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon AP flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 drops yellow food coloring (optional)

Sifted powdered sugar (optional)

----

Preheat oven to 350*, and for ease in serving and cleanup, line a 13x9 inch pan with aluminum foil, or grease it.

For crust:

Combine flour and powdered sugar in medium bowl. Cut in butter, and add vanilla plus one tablespoon of lemon peel; mix until well incorporated. Press into pan, and bake for 20 minutes, or until slightly golden.

For filling:

Cream condensed milk and eggs until fluffy. Add in all remaining ingredients, aside from lemon peel. Stir until uniform; fold in lemon peel. Pour over crust, and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until filling solidifies.

Cool until room temperature, then refrigerate for 2 hours. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and cut into bars.

~ The Baker’s Apprentice/Chef A

Applesauce Cookies and Muffins

I found this recipe in an old cookie recipe pamphlet from the late ‘50s, and of course, have wanted to make it for a while. Additionally, Chef G recently acquired a contraption called the “Supershooter,” which oozes shapes, and is great for frosting and liquidy cookie batter. This batter ended up being too gooey, though, and didn’t hold its shape so well after extrusion. I added very few bran flakes, ‘cause I didn’t want them to clog the Supershooter, and so the cookies turned out to be very soft, but if you favor crunchier cookies, err on the higher amount of bran.

Supershooter in use

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups sifted cake flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon powdered cloves

1 cup canned applesauce

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup Crisco

1 cup sugar

1 egg

0-1 1/2 cups crushed bran flakes

----

Preheat oven to 375* and grease several cookie sheets.

Sift together flour, salt, and spices. In a small bowl, combine applesauce and soda. In a large bowl, cream shortening, egg and sugar until light. Add in dry mixture and applesauce alternatively, stirring until combined. Fold in bran flakes until texture suits you.

Drop by teaspoonfuls about 2” apart. Bake about 20 minutes, or until the edges darken slightly.

I got bored with the Supershooter, and it was late, and we had fresh blueberries. These factors aligned, and I decided to add blueberries (and a bit more applesauce) to the remaining batter and made muffins with them. They were quite delicious! I baked them for about 20 minutes as well, if I recall correctly. They should brown slightly around the side, and a toothpick inserted should come out clean.

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A