Tuesday, February 24

TWD - Caramel Crunch Bars

This week's recipe was chosen by Whitney of What's Left on the Table (haha in my house, not much). Great call...these bars are sweet enough to satisfy any sweet tooth but have enough saltiness from the toffee as well as the instant coffee that it's not overly sweet.

I chose to make a half recipe in an 8x8 pan...honestly the 2 sticks of butter in the recipe made my eyes bulge just a little bit. Everything was going swimmingly until I reached for the tin foil and realized we were out, so I used wax paper instead. Cut to 10 minutes later and the wax paper is smoking and two of the smoke alarms are going off. Awesomeeee. I almost dropped the whole mess on the floor trying to get it out of the oven. Fortunately after I cut off most of the excess wax paper and put it back in the oven everything went OK, though I was paying careful attention to any suspicious smells.

One of the things I like about this recipe a lot is that you can whip it up in under an hour, and it's great warmish or cooled. I will probably have to hide these from myself so I don't eat all the rest of them.

Tuesday, February 17

Tuesdays with Dorie: The Cover Cake!

This week, Stephanie of Confessions of a City eater chose the cover cake of "Baking From My Home to Yours," also known as the Devil's Food White Out Cake.

Part of me wanted to make a mini-cake this week (I guess that's latent holdiay/Valentine's eating guilt setting in) but a. I have no mini pans and b. I feel like everyone's been waiting to make this cake for ages, so why not go big?

I didn't read the P's and Q's this week, but my cake layers ended up being way more thin than I expected and they also didn't settle as well. I guess I will take Dorie more literally when she says to smooth out the top of the batter. I was glad to be able to put my cake lifter to good use - it's nice to not have to worry about cracking my layers in half like I have done in the past.



I am a big fan of the marshmallowy frosting that goes with this cake - it's not overly sweet and it complements the cake very well. I don't make cooked frostings that often but aside from taking longer than I thought it should have, it turned out very tasty and holds its shape very well for how light it is.




So, thanks Stephanie for choosing the cover cake! Check out the blogroll for everyone else's cakes.

A late Valentine's entry...


I just wanted to share what I took to work on Sunday. Those who had been married/divorced got a kick out of the "sign a prenup" one especially.




Tuesday, February 3

TWD - Dorie's World Peace Cookies

Jessica of CookBookHabit chose Dorie's renowned World Peace Cookies for this week. Reading the P's and Q's had me kind of nervous; everyone seemed to have issues with super crumbly cookies that didn't slice well. I've never made sables before so I didn't really know what to expect nor do I know if my cookies do or don't fit the sable description.

I didn't have any fleur de sel on hand and used some finely ground kosher salt instead. When making mine, I possibly over mixed just a tad, but I didn't have issues with the dough not coming together as I made the logs. (well except for all the chocolate pieces falling out). I did notice that when I was trying to roll the logs out it felt like they were hollow and would start to kind of separate and so I'd have to smoosh everything together again.


I froze my dough for about 2 hours and had no problems slicing the cookies. Suprisingly I got 30 out of this recipe. Usually I get much less than the amount Dorie projects.



Taste test: very good, but super rich. My brother ate 3 in a row and I don't know how he did it. This may be partially because I ran out of bittersweet chocolate and used semisweet instead. Le sigh...I really need to start reading the recipes more than a day ahead of time so I have a chance to make sure I have all the ingredients. Check the blogroll for everyone else's results!