Key Lime Pie for Debbie's Birthday

I saw the photo of Key Lime Pie on Never Bashful with Butter (3/5/07) and it looked sooo good and so easy. Then, Kyle brought in Key Lime pie to the office and Debbie said "this is my favorite!" So, I made a mental note to try out Andrea's recipe for Debbie's birthday. I was going to bring it to the office for a little party there, but it looks likes it is going to be weeks until everyone is in the office for us to do the party. So, I figured I'd just make the pie for Debbie's birthday party tonight at her apt. I'm not sure what the etiquette is here. What if she already made a key lime pie using her favorite recipe and she hates this one? What if everyone else brings a key lime pie? What if the recipe's not actually good and then everyone thinks I'm an impostor and not really from Florida. Can there really be too much pie, though? I'm sure it will be fine. Anyway, here's Andrea's recipe--obviously I didn't use key limes, I'm sure you can find them in NYC, but really, regular limes are fine.

Key Lime Pie

4 large egg yolks (reserve your whites)
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup lime juice
2 teaspoons lime zest

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes

Since Andrea didn't say: beat the egg yolks first, then add in the milk and the lime juice, blah blah, I did this in reverse. I zested the limes, then squeezed them and put both juice and zest in a bowl, then I whisked in the sweetened condensed milk and then whisked in an egg yolk at a time. I read a few other recipes that ordered the additions, but I think this was fine, I honestly was trying to dirty as few bowls as possible as I spent the morning doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

*Real* key lime pie doesn't have a meringue top. I'm just sayin'. So, rather than topping the pie with meringue (to use up the egg whites), I topped it with some whipped cream (heavy cream and a bit of powdered sugar, whipped till stiff, baby!) at my mom's suggestion. I wasn't sure if you could put whipped cream on before hand but it looks fine. I have some easy disposable piping bags I rarely use, so piping it on was fun (please, wait until the pie is cool, otherwise the cream will melt). Then I topped it with a slice of lime "so you know what kind of pie it is," more of my mom's sage advice. I felt moderately bad that I didn't make the graham cracker crust, but honestly, buying the crust is so easy and then you even have a top to cover it for the ride over. Sorry, I can't cut a slice and try it, I'll have to wait until tonight.

So, rather than throwing out the egg whites, I went ahead and made Jennifer's Snow cookies (see my 3/14/07 post for the recipe). This is the first time ever that I've been able to make meringue without it burning. Yay! I think the key is that you turn off the oven. Of course, this leaves me mildly worried about salmonella from the mushy part in the middle... nah, it's fine. And soo good! Warm, the chocolate chips are a little gooey! And look how beautiful!

Colleen's No-Knead Bread via Mark Bittman and the NY Times

I have not tried this bread recipe yet (or any bread for that matter except for so-so Irish soda bread) but I did watch a youtube video about it, and as we all know, that's close enough! Colleen swears by it, so here it is.

No-Knead Bread

from the NY Times/Mark Bittman

3 c. all purpose flour (can substitute 2 c. white and 1 c. wheat)
1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 tbsp. salt
cornmeal as needed
1 5/8 cups tepid water

In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and stir until mixture is blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest (I put in my oven if it's not on b/c there are no drafts.). Let rest for at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours.

Dough is ready when surface is dotted with bubbles. Add some more flour (couple tbsp?) to bowl and stir. (This is also the time to add cheese or olives or whatever you desire.) Stir into a ball, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let sit for 15 minutes.

Stir in more flour to keep dough from sticking. Gather into a ball, put seam side down on cotton towel dusted with cornmeal or flour. Fold towel over, top and bottom and both sides, leaving room for rising. (I put whole towel on a cookie sheet.) Let rise for 2 or 3 hours, until it is about double in size and readily springs bacck when you poke it.

One half hour before you think it is doubled, turn on oven to 450 and put a covered pot in the oven. (As long as it has a tight fitting lid, use any pot that can go in the oven. I use a 10 quart soup pot or 8 quart sauce pan but the original recipe says use a dutch oven. I also used a pasta pot, but my bread didn't rise very high.)

When dough is ready, carefully remove hot pot from oven. Slide your hand under the towel and turn dough into pot, seam side up. It should look like a mess! Shake pan once or twice so the dough is evenly distributed, it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid (use a potholder so you don't get burned!) and put in oven. Bake 30 minutes, remove lid and bake for another 15-30 minutes until loaf is browned.

Chocolatey Birthday Goodness!

Wow, Green and Black's... Maybe it's worth it to buy their chocolate cookbook. Those chocolate hussies make one hell of a cake. See the previous post for the recipe for the Green and Black's chocolate mousse cake. The only substitution I made was using a bar of Maya Gold along with their 70% baking chocolate. Thankfully, I was on the phone with E when I was doing the math (the 70% chocolate bar was 5.3oz and the Maya Gold was 3.5oz, and I was trying to get a total of 10.8ozs. There were 30 squares in the 5.3oz bar, so I had to figure out how many squares of the second bar of 70% to use--see, baking is complicated) so she was able to talk me through the math portion of the test. Anyhow, here's what the cake looked like after I took off the spring form sides (what a great invention!).

Mmm warm chocolate cake.

Now, doesn't this look like Green and Black's photo (in the previous post)? The yellow ridge is the ground almonds used to dust the pan.

I will say one thing about the recipe, it says to fold in the eggs and then mix the eggs and chocolate until it's thick, then smooth the batter in the pan. I was a little worried because it was not brownie-mix consistency, it was much more liquid than this, so I didn't have to do any smoothing. I baked it for 45 minutes and did not even test to see if a knife came out clean since the recipe said it was done when the top had nice cracks in it, which, as you see, it does.

Also, I was worried that it would be very dense, like a brownie, but it was surprisingly fluffy in the middle, very rich, but not super dense. Maybe fluffy is the wrong word, but more airy than a brownie would be. I s'pose that's why they call it a mousse cake.

I decided to dust the cake with powdered sugar rather than put whipping cream on it and Kyle suggested I use a doily to get a cool pattern. Well, I don't have doilies, so I made this paper snowflake pattern instead.




And dusted it with powdered sugar.

And voila!

Yummy!

Prior to the eating of the cake, I took D to Craft Bar, Tom Colicchio's "informal" restaurant. We had a lovely tapas style meal and a bottle of vino. Then we took a cab home and I made him wait in the living room for the unveiling of the cake. I served it slightly warm with some coffee ice cream (though it doesn't really need this as it's so rich, just milk is great) on the side, and I did manage a candle and the Happy Birthday chorus. I got D a CycleOps bike trainer (to make his bike stationary in the house) and a meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment for the Kitchen Aid (this was actually from my grandma, Matata, who loves him and asked me to buy something for him from her, thanks Matata!). He was very pleased with all. Yay! Happy Birthday to D!

Chocolate Mousse Cake For D

This is turning out to be more of a baking blog than a travel blog, but I'm sure once the summer gets under way I'll be doing more of the latter. I guess the end of winter, early spring is just a time to bake, long enough after the holidays to not be paralyzed by guilt but before the summer fruit really gets ripe. Anyhow, D and I are planning our "spring break" for the first week in April. So far we are trying to find cheap tickets to Miami or Puerto Rico so that we can either camp out in the Everglades or in El Yunque (which Elana and Mike did a little while ago and had a really good time). Both will be an adventure, I'm sure! We probably spend as much money on food when we camp as we would on shelter normally, but somehow it seems like a cheap vacation if we can find somewhere warm to do it. I'll keep you posted.

Green and Black's Chocolate Mousse Cake with edible gold dust.

In the meanwhile, it's D's birthday tomorrow. When prodding D for his favorite cake (which you'd think I'd know by now, after 3 years of birthdays) he admitted to liking chocolate mousse cake the best. So I'll be baking him a chocolate mousse cake. I searched high and low (though I haven't looked in Southern Living yet) and it seems that chocolate mousse cake has gone the way of the dodo. None of my baking co-workers know a recipe and a search on the net went from one extreme to the other. Either it's two layers with mousse filling and ganache on top or it's basically a flourless chocolate cake. I found one other recipe that looked good but with no reviews it's hard to tell. Maybe I'll try this one some other time. So, I'm going to try out Green and Black's dark chocolate mousse cake, which I found along with this funny story by J.M. Hirsch. Here's the recipe:



Chocolate Mousse Cake


(Start to finish 1 hour)


1 tablespoon ground almonds, plus additional to dust pan
10½ ounces dark chocolate (70 percent cocoa)
1½ cups sugar
1¼ sticks unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
5 large eggs
Confectioners’ sugar (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly spray an 8- or 9-inch spring form pan with cooking spray, then dust it with ground almonds, shaking off any excess. Set aside. In a double boiler set at a low simmer, melt the chocolate, butter and sugar, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat.
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and ground almonds. Fold the egg mixture into the chocolate and stir until thickened, several minutes. Pour the cake into the pan, smooth the top and bake 45 minutes, or until the top is set and begins to crack. Remove the side of the pan and let the cake cool completely. Dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired. Makes 10 servings.
(Recipe from Green & Black’s chocolate)

I chose this one because it's all over the internet and lots of people really like it. And it seems easy. Those Green and Black marketers are just big chocolate hussies swaying their chocolatey hips at every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Count me in!

Of course, I didn't have a spring form pan so I bought (for only $13.99) from Whole Foods where I also bought $12 worth of Green and Black's chocolate. Yes, folks, it's $6 per bar of the baking chocolate. I'm sure I could have used other, cheaper chocolate, but this is for D and he loves dark chocolate. I'm thinking I will substitute in some Maya Gold that we still have at home as this is also his favorite, a Mexican spicy chocolate I'm sure will go good in cake. I am hoping that this is not going to be too thick, though it seems like it will be more flourless chocolate cake heavy than light and airy mousse but it does seem foolproof enough that I won't screw it up too terribly. I'm baking it tonight and then taking D out to dinner tomorrow (I want to take him to Itzocan Bistro in our neighborhood but we'll see what he's in the mood for). Then we'll come home and have cake. Maybe candles. I also have a present for him, but shhh, can't write about that yet.

Since baking with the computer in front of me has become normal, I'm putting this recipe from my co-worker Jennifer here for safekeeping. If you like merengue, you'll love this and it seems so easy. Cari had a party on Saturday with an assortment of cookies and alcohol, so I ended up drunkenly eating a handful of storebought merengues. Still yummy, but these are better.

Snow Cookies


2 egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
6 oz. Nestles semi-sweet chocolate chips


1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until stiff; soft peaks should form when you lift the beaters out of the bowl (make sure no water comes in contact with the egg whites, or else they will not beat well). Do not over beat.

3. Begin mixing again, gradually add in sugar, and again beat until stiff.

4. Fold in chips

5. Place by the teaspoon-full onto an ungreased cookie sheet (the cookies do not expand, so you can put them close together)

6. Place in oven, and turn oven off. Cookies will be done in 1 hour.

Happy baking!

Chocolate Meltdown Cookies

I don't do math so good. When I decided that the dinner D and I went to tonight at Pete's Tavern was not up to par and that I ought to make chocolate chip cookies to make up for it, I thought to myself: "I can half a recipe just as easily as I can double it." Yep, that's about right. Instead of half of the chocolate, I used 3/4, 8 oz instead of 6 oz. In my defense, the semi sweet baking bars only come in 8 oz boxes, so I just figured, OK, I don't want to cut up 2 boxes worth and I don't have chocolate chips, I'll just do one box, that's half, right? Hmm...That's why these were super chocolatey. A happy accident. I took this recipe from Bon Appetit, though Martha Stewart's (which Jess and Josh made for dessert on Sat night) is also pretty darn good. Martha's ends up being a bit crunchier in the end, this recipe is more crunch on the outside, chewy in the middle. Definitely worth trying!

"My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies"

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

2 sticks unsalted butter (8 ozs)

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

2 tsps vanilla

2 large eggs

12 ozs bittersweet chocolate chopped into chips, or 2 cups chocolate chips

1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, line baking sheets with parchment (or if you're like me, with aluminum foil and a little butter). Mix together the flour, salt, baking soda, set aside. Cream butter with a paddle attachment on your mixer (not the whisk), add sugars and continue to beat for about 2 mins until well blended. Beat in the vanilla and eggs one at a time. Add the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated. Mix in the chocolate and nuts with a spatula. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, rotating midway, until the cookies are brown at the edges and golden in the center. Let them rest for 1 min. before removing from the baking sheet.

I omitted the nuts, and halfed the recipe (minus my screw up with the chocolate). I cut up chocolate baking squares (which is a pain as my food processor couldn't handle it so I had to do this by hand) and this gave the cookies a more chocolate all-over taste (because some of the chocolate gets flakey) and some nice huge melty chocolate goodness. If I were to do it again, I would put less chocolate in because the cookie part actually tastes pretty amazing. D and I had some with milk and I think I might be keeping the rest for myself (I only made half, remember!).

The Votes are In

And the winner is....(drum roll please)
CHOCOLATE BUTTERCREAM!

Honestly, nobody actually told me which they liked better, despite me asking them to. D's opinion, which I highly value in all things food related, was that the chocolate buttercream and peanut butter chocolate chip cupcakes were a little more subtle and nuanced, more what you would find at a fine dining establishment (if fancy restaurants sold cupcakes). The peanut butter chunk frosting was more bakery-style, and tasted like a big Reese's peanut butter cup, where the frosting was pretty indistinguishable from the cake. Just as I had suspected. Basically, if you really like peanut butter, go with the peanut butter frosting, but if you're so so about the nutty flavor, go with the chocolate. Tasting my overly buttery little buttercream on the cake was heavenly, so much better that way and not just spooned out of the bowl. It was very lickable too, didn't form too much of a hard crust (maybe because I blended it again last night--it had gotten too hard to spread from its night in the fridge). As far as the little cakes are concerned, they were moist and a little muffiny, not too sweet. If I were craving peanut butter muffins, I'd make the same recipe but add more chocolate chips (there were only about 4 in each cake) and flour them because they all sank to the bottom. Then, while they were still hot, I'd "frost" them with creamy peanut butter. Yum!

Praise for the cupcakes:

"I loved them both." --D
"bakery worthy"--Colleen
"[The buttercream frosting] has a nice mouth feel"--Emily (she voted for the peanut butter frosting for taste but buttercream won out in the ever important mouth feel category)

They like me, they really like me.

"No not the gum drops!"

I should really be doing more productive things with my time, but instead, I've been indulging in food porn on A Muffin Story again. Also, I've given up on "eating healthy" and "working out" for the rest of the winter. Good thing it's already March 1st and starting to get warm out.

So, I endeavored to make a basic chocolate frosting recipe last night to go on cupcakes to be made at a later time. Basically, I wanted frosting. I looked up a relatively simple recipe online (which I can't find now) that went something like this:

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup cocoa powder
3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

Combine butter and cocoa until smooth, add sugar, milk, and vanilla. Mix until creamy. I understand the basics of frosting and yet silly me thought I should double the recipe so I stupidly creamed 1 cup of butter (2 sticks) then added the cocoa powder but realized too late that I only had 1 cup left of cocoa powder, not enough to double. So then everything went out the window and I threw in the whole box of powdered sugar (which I think is only 3 cups) but couldn't stomach adding a whole other box to “double it.” I realized, of course, that some recipes just can’t be doubled, er shouldn’t be and that 3 cups is how much you need to make it sweet but beyond that you’re looking at diabetes. D came home to me happily mixing away before I flubbed the recipe and said "It smells like butter in here!" Yes, yes it does. I just eyeballed the milk too, adding it in after the powdered sugar and then remembered the vanilla at the last minute. Anyway, the whole thing came out tasting pretty good if a little buttery and that's what D and I had for dessert after his yummy chicken with lemon and capers last night.

Tonight, the cupcake. While I love my Southern Living recipe for yellow cake and feel like you can't beat the yellow cake/chocolate frosting combo, D is partial to chocolate cake or anything that's more interesting than yellow cake. Since I just made pink yellow cake cupcakes for V day I figured I'd try something new.

So, I'll be trying out this recipe:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder (no idea what double acting means)
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup chunky peanut butter
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips


In a bowl whisk together the flour, the baking powder and a pinch of salt. In another bowl with an electric mixer cream together the brown sugar, the peanut butter, and the butter and beat in the egg and the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, beating well after each addition, and stir in the chocolate chips. Divide the batter among 12 paper-lined 1/2-cup muffin tins and bake the cupcakes in the middle of a preheated 350 F oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Turn the cupcakes out onto a rack and let them cool completely.

I'll let you know how these come out. I think I'm also going to try to make a sour cream chocolate frosting as well. You can never have enough frosting.

Fudgy Sour Cream Frosting
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1-1/2 cups sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla

In a double boiler, or in a saucepan set over a pan of hot (not boiling) water, melt the chocolate chips, stirring until smooth. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the sour cream and the vanilla and beat, with an electric mixer on medium speed, until smooth and creamy. Let cool just slightly - until the frosting begins to thicken. But don’t wait too long because it will quickly thicken beyond spreadability. Spread frosting evenly over cake or brownies, then chill until set.
Makes enough to fill and frost one 9-inch two-layer cake, or a couple of pans of brownies.

Let's see if I don't screw it up!

If at first you don't succeed...

Blame the idiots who thought sour cream would be a good ingredient in frosting. Yuck. That is what I have to say about the fudgy sour cream frosting.

It's late. I'm tired. But the cupcakes are done and I think they're pretty good. The peanut butter chocolate chip cake recipe was great, very easy to follow, and worked well when doubled (I never learn my lesson--though to be fair I had to double it because I needed to give D some to bring to his co-workers Colleen and Chris and there are hungry people at my office too, 12 just wasn't going to cut it). It made 24 very cute cupcakes (they didn't rise that much though, so I'd fill up 3/4 of the way not 1/2) and I think the cake is pretty moist with a nice "crumb" whatever that means. I don't think they are that peanut-buttery though. I'll have to try them again tomorrow when I have a fresher palate. Also, I'm not sure I did the right thing by following D's suggestion that I use the Ghirardelli semi-sweet morsels in the cupcakes instead of the Baker's semi-sweet chocolate chunks (mmm, chocolate chunks). I think the Ghirardelli chips burned a little (which is ridiculous at 350 degrees) so there's a kind of scorched chocolate flavor to the cake. This could be my over-tired imagination, we'll see tomorrow.

Sour Cream Frosting of Doom

Holy hell, the sour cream frosting was cursed. First of all, D convinced me that I didn't need to improvise a double-boiler to melt the chocolate--he always melts it for fondue on a low flame and adds some milk and it's fine. Well, silly me, I thought I could do this too, but no the gods are against me. So I put a cup of the scorchy Ghirardelli morsels and a cup of the Baker's chunks (didn't have enough of the first left) and added a little milk and it melted great for about five seconds and then became this weird chocolate paste thing. I'm sure Alton Brown has some chemistry experiment explanation for this, but I got freaked out and D took over. Even after he added what was probably a half cup of milk and had it on medium heat, it was still a little chunky (not the good kind anymore). I decided to just push forward and opened up the sour cream D fetched for me today at the super. It was literally the consistency of cottage cheese. Suffice it to say we threw that out and luckily had some low-fat sour cream left from latkas we made the other day (yum!). So, I added that to the chocolate and tasted it. D and I agreed it tasted like the sum of it's parts, some sour-ass chocolate. Or chocolaty sour cream. Either way it was bad. I double checked the recipe then looked for others on the web and they confirmed that that was all there was to it. No sugar? It can't be. When I remembered to add the vanilla it got a tiny bit better. Finally, I decided to add some powdered sugar and see if I could get that horridly sour aftertaste gone. It didn't help, not to mention I don't think it would have ever sat up. In the end, I dumped the entire thing in a grocery bag and it looked for all the world like a doggy poop bag. Double ick. So much for sour cream frosting. There's no accounting for personal chocolate taste, but why would you want your frosting to be sour? Maybe it would be better with really fancy chocolate and whole fat sour cream? I wouldn't risk it though.

Despite that fact that I was pretty pleased with the chocolate buttercream frosting I'd made the night before (and D even talked it up to Colleen and Chris over dinner), I thought I'd try my luck with web recipes once more and found this:

Opal's Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting
6 ounces Package chocolate chips
1/2 cup Butter or margarine
1/2 cup To 3/4 cup sifted -- confectioners sugar
1 1/4 cups Peanut butter

FOR FROSTING:Melt chocolate chips and butter in a double boiler. Add confectioners sugar and peanut butter and beat until smooth. Chill for about 15 minutes or until frosting is of spreading consistency.

The Chocolate Peanut Butter ones are on the right (see, peanut chunks)!

Peanut buttery goodness!

Oh my, it's true. This time I actually improvised the double boiler (D had finished the dishes and was in the living room reading by this time) plus it was easier to not burn the chocolate with the stick of butter happily melting into it. And I actually tossed the sugar through a sieve, though I don't think this really matters. The only sticking point here is that I only had chunky peanut butter from the cake recipe. I figured what the hell, people like sprinkles, why nut chunks of peanuts. I used the whole 3/4 cups of powdered sugar and it was just right, super peanuty, sweet but not cloying (though I might not be the best judge), and with a nice crunch. I tried this on the cupcake and think the whole thing worked very seamlessly together, a very one-flavor approach, which is why I'm not certain how the actual cake tastes. I didn't try it with the buttercream yet, but I think this will be the more subtle cake, a hint of peanut butter, a few surprise chocolate pieces, and some nice licking frosting on top. Did I mention frosting ought to be licked? This is my main reason for disliking The Cupcake Cafe's frosting. I think they use more butter than they do sugar and the whole thing is not very lickable, or if you do try to lick it, it just tastes like butter. I'm sure lots of folks disagree and it's hard to argue with the beauty of their frosted flowers.

I'm a more down-home cupcake eater. I like Billy's Bakery the best, though I haven't made a tour of NYC cupcake purveyors.

Despite my waking D up singing the theme music to Deliverance and annoucing the Dueling Frostings: Chocolate Peanut Butter Chunk vs. Chocolate Buttercream he passed on trying the cupcakes tonight. I'll have to take a poll at work tomorrow and see which one wins out. I'm guessing it will be the peanut butter one, but you never know.

Here are the cupcakes frosted and ready for their field trip.

Silly cupcake, get down from there!