131. Key Lime Pie

Date Cooked: March 25, 2010
Page: 909
Rating: B+

There is one Whole Foods Market in Toronto and it happens to be close to my sister-in-law’s place. During a quick delivery trip to drop some stuff off for her we decided to peek our heads in and see what the fuss was all about. It was quite an interesting place. I wasn’t entirely blown away by most of the store, but I was enthralled by the produce section. It wasn’t just the variety that was there but the quality of the produce was amazing! As we wandered around I picked up some spices that I couldn’t find in the regular chain and I also grabbed a small bag of Key Limes, I had a plan for these.

A few weeks back I baked a key lime pie (from a box mix) and the kids liked it. But I wanted to know what real key lime pie was like. That is the new curse I live with. I am always trying to figure out a way to make everything from scratch… I have even started looking into the possibility of cheese making! But that will be another time. This time I was simply tackling a pie and since I found key limes I figured this was perfect.

So as I started to flip through the recipe in the book, I’m reading the blurb about the limes and it turns out the book actually recommends regular limes, both because they are easier to find and juice easier, and there is little difference between the flavor of key limes and regular. I was a little disappointed, because I could have done this pie sooner and I could have spent less for the limes. But I soldiered on anyway.

First I need three tablespoons of zest from the key limes. Well, score one for the book. Zesting tiny key limes sucks. Thank god I purchased a microplane zester awhile back, it made a tedious job slightly quicker, although that sharp zester can wreck havoc on your fingers if you slip. Once I had acquired the requisite amount of zest I then needed to juice this little orb. It took nine key limes to extract enough juice. I will say these particular limes really gave up a good amount of juice each. So with the lime processing complete it was time to get busy.

The zest was beaten in with some eggs yolks and then condensed milk and lime juice was added and the mixture was set aside to thicken. I’m not sure what size condensed milk cans are supposed to come in but the size they use in the book (14oz) was not the size they sell at the grocery store (10oz). I was lucky I purchased 2 cans because I didn’t realize this until I was at home. So I ended up using almost a can and a half. Any suggestions on what I can use 5ozs of sweetened condensed milk for? With the filling thickening I moved onto the graham cracker crust.

Graham crackers were processed with some sugar and melted butter and then spread out onto a pie plate. This was baked for about ten minutes and then allowed to cool. Once cooled the filling was added and the pie was baked for an additional 15 minutes. This entire pie then needed to cool for 3 hours… Since it was already 10pm I figured we would have this for dessert the next night.

When it was finally time to enjoy this pie I whipped up some cream and confectioner’s sugar with the KitchenAid. I probably should have sifted the confectioner’s sugar. When tasting the whipped cream for “quality” I found a small lump of sugar. I won’t lie…. I actually liked that. The pie was garnished with some thinly sliced limes (I need a good quality mandoline) and sliced to be served.

Rating: B+. I liked the pie and it definitely tasted more real than the pie mix I had used previously. It was definitely tart but not overpowering. I only had one real complaint. The three tablespoons of zest needed to be very finely chopped to ensure it better blended into the pie. I also wouldn’t even bother with the lime garnish… not unless I get more creative with them. My oldest son liked the pie (which is no surprise since he likes anything sweet), his brother wasn’t as big a fan.

121. Classic Apple Pie

Date Cooked: January 1, 2010
Page: 887
Rating: A+

My last recipe from the book that advanced my project was cooked at the end of November which means I didn’t work toward my project at all in December! I won’t lie, I was a bit disappointed with myself but December is a very busy month for my family so I didn’t beat myself up over it. But come January 1st I was itching to get back into it and I have been obsessing over baking a pie. It is a chapter that I have not tried anything from since I started this project and this was my first attempt at baking a pie from scratch… ever. You can look at the photo to see how it turned out.

Now executing this recipe was not easy and since I had never baked a pie before I was treading on some uncertain territory. Until the beginning of December I didn’t even own pie plates. So I now had the basic equipment required and the ingredients assembled… well not quite. The primary ingredient was a bit of a scavenger hunt. Trying to find apples New Year’s Day is not exactly simple. You see I had bought a bunch of apples for this recipe a few days earlier and my kids like apples. So when it was time to bake I realized that I was short 3 of 8 apples. I was determined to start the new year with this apple pie! So out into the snowy streets I go trying to find a convenience store that sells produce. It is interesting that produce is so hard to find in our society of simple and convenient. I ended up at a gas station across town with three apples in my hands, expensive ones I might add. I know people buy weird things all the time but who buys three apples from a gas station on New Year’s Day. Anyway back home I drove with my prize.

Now let me step back in time for a moment and talk about making the Basic Pie Dough. I made this in the morning in anticipation of baking the pie. I mixed flour, salt and sugar in my food processor and then cut in chilled shortening. I then cut in chilled butter and mixed everything with ice water until a nice dough was formed. I separated into two balls, wrapped and refrigerated. This was surprisingly easy but I was uncertain about the dough consistency. I added water until the dough came together but it took a little additional water to get to that point and even then I was not certain I had achieved my goals. I was concerned that the dough was going to break apart when I tried to roll it later. Anyway since I didn’t really know what I was doing I followed the recipe and moved on.

Let’s jump forward again to the point after my apple hunting excursion. I rolled out the first ball of dough with a little difficulty (I need a proper rolling pin). At this point I noticed that the shortening and butter had not been sufficiently cut into the dry ingredients because I had large pieces of fat scattered throughout my nicely rolled pie dough. I transferred this to the pie plate and placed it in the fridge to chill. Now I started the tedious task of peeling and coring apples. The apple pieces were then tossed with lemon zest and juice, a generous amount of sugar, some flour and cinnamon. This was transferred to the pie plate and then I rolled out the second piece to cover.

My wife and I were laughing at the volume of apples in the pie. I didn’t even think the pie dough would cover the apples but it did. After pinching the two pieces of dough together around the edge and sealing it with a fork I brushed the pie with an egg white and sprinkled with sugar. I was impressed with the way it looked and I hadn’t even added it to the oven. The cooking temperature interested me as the oven starts out at 500 and once the pie goes in gets turned down to 425. Halfway through baking it gets turned down again to 375. The house smelled great while it was cooking and the finished result looked beautiful! But I had to wait overnight for the pie to cool to room temperature! Actually only four hours but I didn’t want to stay up to eat pie, my son played hockey at 6:30am the next morning.

Rating: A+. Wow! I like to think I am a modest person but I absolutely delivered on this one. The pie looked amazing with it’s huge pie dome and nicely browned crust. I carefully cut into it to find that the apples were soft but not mushy. The smell was amazing and the taste was everything I love about a good apple pie. It tasted like apples and cinnamon, not apple flavored sugar syrup. My only complaints were that there was a little too much liquid in the pie and the large pieces of shortening and butter in the crust left small holes in a few places once the fat melted. All in all a great success to start off 2010!

108. Glazed Cinnamon Rolls

Date Cooked: October 3rd, 2009
Page: 759
Rating: B+

Where is the time going these days. I actually have several recipes from Thanksgiving to post and I am falling behind. Not that I am known for my rapid posting schedule but usually it’s because I am too busy to cook… not because I am too busy to post.

There are two recipes in the Book for cinnamon buns (or rolls in this case). One is a quick bread style cinnamon bun and the other was this yeasted version. I had the ingredients for both but decided to try the slightly more difficult version… and to try my luck with yeast.

Since this was going to involve rising dough I figured it made sense to start on it so I would not waste precious time that would most likely be consumed by disorganized kitchen panic. The first step was to melt some butter in the microwave. I then whisked in some milk and set it aside to cool. Warm water, yeast, sugar, eggs and yolks were mixed in my KitchenAid until well blended. Then I added some flour, salt and the milk-butter mixture and let this mix. At this point I switched from the paddle attachment on my mixer to the dough hook, fired it back up and added the remaining flour. The book gives a time of about 10 minutes for kneading (until the dough freely clears the sides of the bowl), but that only took about five minutes. I was uncertain at this time whether I should continue kneading or not. From everything I have learned so far, if I over knead the dough it could be too dense from gluten formation, but if I don’t knead enough, the dough will be crumbly from lack of gluten. Or something like that, I am still trying to figure it all out. I figured the bread I had made previously always seemed dense, so I was going to stop kneading at let the dough rise. I formed the dough into a ball and placed it in an oiled bowl to rise in a warm spot.

Okay, so once that was complete I figured I should prepare the filling and the icing. The filling is straightforward and hard to screw up (I’m sure I could but I didn’t). Light brown sugar, salt and cinnamon in a bowl. Easy. The icing glaze was simple also, except I had to clean my KitchenAid mixing bowl. I hate doing dishes while cooking. Softened cream cheese, corn syrup, heavy cream, icing sugar and vanilla extract where mixed until smooth and lump free. I love the taste of cream cheese frosting. I mean I love it! And this was no exception. This was transfer to a bowl and refrigerated. Now I just had to wait for the dough to finish rising.

When the dough had sufficiently doubled in volume I began to roll it out into a rectangle approximately 16x12. The filling was sprinkled over the entire surface and then I tightly rolled it up. Then I was instructed to cut it. This was a definite learning experience. There is a suggestion to use dental floss to cut the dough. I thought this was a great idea but I am not always thinking correctly and my interpretation of the method was not really working out well. I was attempting to slice the floss straight down through the dough. This was not cutting much at all but it was squishing and deforming the dough. So I just used a really sharp knife. If I had thought about it though I should have wrapped the floss around the dough and pulled it tight, cutting through and keeping the dough in a cylindrical shape. Once the dough was cut into 12 rounds It was placed in a greased baking dish and allowed to rise a second time. I will admit once this had risen the second time they were starting to look good. Once risen, I baked them for 30 minutes.

These looked great and smelled amazing. I let them cool for a short while before coating them in the glaze/frosting/icing… not really sure what it should be called. I always think of glazes as thin but this ‘glaze’ is actually rather thick. After covering them I realized that they would really look like cinnamon rolls in a picture… probably should have been a little lighter on the glaze.

Rating: B+. Fresh cinnamon buns are a great thing. These turned out well. They were a bit dry around the outer edge of the pan but other than that they were delicious. Now as good as they were the first day they were exceptional the next day after a quick spin in the microwave. I love Cinnabon cinnamon rolls reheated and these were almost identical… probably better for me though.

101. Fresh Peach Cobbler

Date Cooked: September 13, 2009
Page: 946
Rating: B+

When I was at the store buying a basil plant I saw some delicious looking peaches on sale. I figured I could make something good out of those and so grabbed them. When I got home I figured it was going to be either a peach crisp or a peach cobbler. I went with the cobbler since I had already done an apple crisp and wanted to do something different. Now this is a bit of a deviation from the way I normally cook. My wife can attest that I need to know the plan before I commit to something. I go to the grocery store because I know what I want to cook, not to find something to cook. So buying something spur of the moment to use later is not the norm.

The first step in creating this peach cobbler was to prep the peaches. My wife very helpfully peeled all of the peaches for me while I was attending other things (probably walking our dog). I arrived back and was all happy she did the hard part… until I realized removing the peach stone was actually the hard part. Most of the peaches came out of this process resembling something like peach slices. Alas some didn’t. I would just have to make sure they got buried under the dough. With the peaches mangled I left them in a bowl covered with sugar for thirty minutes. During this time I began preheating the oven and assembling the biscuit dough for the top.

I hate my food processor. I mixed flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar together. My food processor cannot handle dry ingredients. Every pulse of the button sends clouds of flour and other ingredients jetting out every seam in the lid (which is far too many). I will buy a Cuisinart Food Processor soon… well some day, they aren’t exactly cheap. Once the dust settled I added some cold butter and pulsed a few more times. Once done, I turned the mixture out into a bowl and added some plain yogurt and with a rubber spatula began to fold. When I started folding the yogurt into the ingredients I had my doubts that this could possibly form a dough, but slowly it took shape. I discarded the rubber spatula for the last few moments and brought the dough to completion with my hands and then separated it into 6 balls. I set it aside so I could tend to the peaches.

After resting, I drained the peaches and reserved ¼ cup of juice. The recipe says to discard any additional liquid but the truth is that I barely had ¼ cup. I whisked in lemon juice and cornstarch and then added this liquid along with the peaches to an 8-inch square glass baking dish. No wait. I didn’t. I don’t have one. So I used a square cake pan. Not sure what effect other than aesthetics it had on the peaches. The peaches were baked for 10 minutes before being removed from the oven so the topping could be added.

Once the topping was placed nicely on the peaches it went back into the oven for another 16 minutes. Oh I also sprinkled the biscuit topping with some sugar. When it was done it sure smelled nice!

Rating: B+. I really enjoyed this dessert. I only have two complaints with it. The topping to peach ratio seems wrong. I used seven medium sized peaches as the book recommends but when everything was cooked it felt more like the biscuit dough was the star. I guess that may be the point but I really would have liked more peaches. Second, I need to work on my biscuit making ability. I thought they turned out well but I am sure I can do better. I will need to carefully watch the way I handle the butter and make certain I don’t over handle the dough.

Calories/serving: 283

85. Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Date Cooked: July 13, 2009
Page: 835
Rating: A

I feel lately that my stress level has been abating and I am getting excited about cooking from the book again. I haven’t done a lot of baking from the book mostly because it intimidates me so I figured why not try to bake a cake. Carrot cake seemed as good a choice as any since I had some carrots that needed to be used. When I first started gathering the ingredients for this I was expecting it to be difficult but after reading through the recipe this seemed like it would be relatively pain free… I wasn’t really paying attention though.

Starting off I measured out most of the dry ingredients and whisked them together. I then took the bag of carrots I had and ran them through my food processor’s shredding disk. For those that have read my blog from before, I don’t care much for my food processor. It did a poor job of shredding the carrots and I ended up having to pulse them a few times extra to cut up the larger chunks. Once the carrots were processed I tossed them with the dry ingredients. This is where I began to realize what I was getting into. I needed to wash the food processor so I could combine the sugar, eggs and oil. The food processor is a pain in the ass to clean so I tend to avoid it, this was the first of several washings it would need to complete the recipe.

Once the food processor was cleaned I combined the sugar and eggs and then slowly added the oil with the processor on. A nice emulsion formed and once done I folded it into the dry ingredients. Within a few minutes I had a nice batter ready to pour into my prepped baking pan. Into the oven for 40 minutes until a toothpick came out clean. Then it had to cool for 2 hours.

While the cake cooled I set to work cleaning the food processor again to make the icing. The cream cheese icing was as simple as processing all the ingredients in the food processor for less than a minute. I transferred the icing to a bowl and let it chill a little in the fridge until the cake was cool enough for frosting. While waiting I had the opportunity to once again clean the food processor. Really is time for a newer, easier to clean model.

When the cake had finally cooled I spread the icing on (something I am not very talented at). Apparently the cake was not cool enough though and the icing began to get a touch runny so I put it all back in the fridge to chill a little longer before cutting into it to eat!

Rating: A. The cake was very moist and the carrots were very subtle but still noticeable. The cake was lightly spiced and not overly sweet which made the icing all that much better. I definitely enjoyed my piece and had to resist the temptation to help myself to a second, much larger slice.

69. Simple Stovetop Rice Pudding

Date Cooked: February 7, 2009
Page: 956
Rating: B

I’m not a huge fan of rice pudding. It might have something to do with the association of raisins in rice pudding from my childhood. My wife however loves rice pudding (without raisins of course) and had requested I make this recipe, as long as I left out the raisins. Imagine my surprise when the recipe didn’t call for them!

This is a rather simple recipe to put together as long as you have lots of time to stand around and stir. The first step was to cook the medium grain rice. Originally I went to the grocery store and was going to purchase a bag of medium grain rice when I noticed that they had a bag of rice advertised for use in sushi. The same bag I had at home at the back of my pantry for the past 3 years (or longer). I checked the ingredient list and sure enough it was just regular medium grain rice. So I figured I would take a chance and hope that rice doesn’t go bad. The rice cooked for 15 minutes and seemed perfectly fine so onto the next step.

To the pot of cooked rice I added 2 cups of half-and-half and 3 cups of whole milk. The recipe calls for 2 ½ cups of each but I didn’t feel like buying an additional 2 cups of half-and-half when I needed only a ½ cup more. The rest would probably have spoiled in my fridge. So to avoid waste I just added more milk. This did impact the recipe’s cooking time. Along with all this liquid was added sugar. This entire mixture cooked for an additional 30 minutes until it began to thicken. Once it started to thicken the heat was turned to low and cooked for what the book called 15 more minutes, until the spoon could almost stand up. In real life this meant 30 minutes. Does 75 minutes of cooking in liquid seem long for rice? I really expected the rice to be a complete mushy mash, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Once cooked, vanilla extract was stirred in and the pudding was allowed to cool.

Rating: B. I enjoyed the pudding, but it was almost too rich? I can’t quite put my finger on it but something held it back from being a real knock out. The flavor was great, the consistency was perfect but something just didn’t make me crave going back for more. My wife loved it though and it didn’t last too long in the house.

55. Sour Cream Coffeecake

Date Cooked: January 16, 2009
Page: 838
Rating: A-

I’m woefully behind on posting what I have been cooking so I had better start catching up with some blog posts. The decision for the Sour Cream Coffeecake was simple. I pretty much had all the ingredients and had yet to cook from the Cakes chapter of the Book. So this looked really simple… and I love coffeecake. I originally had intentions of making this a chocolate chip sour cream coffeecake but due to some confusion during the layering of the cake I had completely forgotten that I intended to do that. More on that ridiculous moment shortly.

Since I am not a strong baker I started by getting all of my ingredients out and measured. Then I began to put together the streusel. A base streusel gets made of sugar, flour and cinnamon and then to some of that gets added butter and chopped nuts. The streusel on the cake used the butter and nuts. Once this was done and set aside I began on the batter.

The batter was a straight-forward affair with the usual assortment of cake ingredients with the exception of using the sour cream. Mixing this went smoothly and once done it was time to layer in my greased tube pan.

First in is 2 cups of batter (this works out to about a third but I didn’t notice at first), then a layer of the base streusel, then this is where everything went down the crapper. Had I remember to use the measured out chocolate chips they should have gone just before the streusel, but I was struggling to understand the directions. For some reason I completely missed the portion that told me to put a second layer of batter topped with more streusel before using the rest of the batter. I just skipped to using the rest of the batter. You can see in the picture that there is only one sweet line of sugary goodness and it is close to the bottom. Sure would have been nice to have seen a second line of tasty sweet sugar in there. This of course left me confused as to why I had so much streusel left over until I noticed the error. I probably should not have sampled so much of the streusel while working on this cake. I was probably suffering through a sugar high.

Nevertheless I sent it to bask in the heat of the oven. It took a little longer to bake than the book suggested but my pan is dark and a little on the thick side so it probably slowed the baking process. Once removed and cooled came the most harrowing moment of the ordeal. Flipping it out of the pan. I envisioned the cake sticking while the streusel topping broke and scattered everywhere. Didn’t happen that way. The first flip out of the pan went perfect. The second flip right-side up left bits of streusel topping all over my kitchen, but the majority of the topping remained intact.

Rating: A-. Putting the layering issue aside and the topping being a bit crumblier than I would have liked the flavor and texture of the cake was amazing! It was moist and not overly sweet until you hit the streusel layer. The extra layer of streusel would have been nice but wasn’t really missed. I will be making this again… next time hopefully with chocolate chips.

42. Blondie

Date Cooked: November 23, 2008
Page: 813
Rating: B-

I was craving sweets and figured I haven’t really made enough desserts from the book. I’m not sure why I chose blondies but I might have thought the recipe was easy, key word ‘thought’. So the recipe started out innocently enough.

I started by toasting chopped pecans in the oven for about 10 minutes. I am beginning to find that for many recipes my oven runs on the shorter end of recommended cooking times. Once the nuts were done I set them aside to cool. Then I started to get the rest of the ingredients measured and set aside.

I am embarrassed to say that the constant consumption of store-bought cookies and treats has left me blissfully unaware of the grotesque quantities of sugar and fat that actually go into them. The recipe makes 36 two inch squares which contained 1 ½ cups of sugar and 12 tablespoons of butter. That doesn’t count all the chocolate chips. I think if people made their own desserts more we would probably all be a little healthier since we would truly see what it is that we eat. But I digress and I am certainly not the person to be talking about healthy eating habits… seriously. On a side note I went to the One-of-a-Kind Craft Show this weekend and tried some ‘Better than Biscotti’ cookies that contain no butter. Ummm lack of butter doesn’t make anything better. If you like tasteless powdery treats then these are for you. For me, I’ll stick with the butter.

If you are like me then that last paragraph probably confuses you on my stance to healthy eating. But the best advice I was ever given about eating is this. Moderation, common sense and exercise.

Back to the blondies. Once the ingredients were folded together I spread the batter into a 9x9 baking pan and baked for 22 minutes. Then I baked for 5 minutes more… then a few minutes longer. Finally I took them out thinking they would be done since I had already baked several minutes longer than recommended. Does anyone remember my chocolate chip cookie experience? This felt eerily similar. The blondies turned out extremely soft and gooey. It took along time to cool them sufficiently to remove them from the pan and I ended up having to firm them up in the fridge for awhile so I could actually cut them. I reviewed the ingredient list and I didn’t make any mistakes there so I am baffled as to why these turned out so runny.

Rating: B-. These were good but they were extremely sweet. Sweet to the point of making my teeth ache. In addition the overall fluid nature of the finished product was a bit of a disappointment. But I will make these again, maybe scaling back the butter and sugar content and upping the flour.

39. Apple Crisp

Date Cooked: November 9, 2008
Page: 931
Rating: B

I love apple crisp. It was one of my favorite desserts growing up. That being said this was the first time I attempted to make it myself. Not sure why since I was not afraid of it and I didn’t think it would be overly complex. It wasn’t but that didn’t stop me from “learning” something in the process.

I’ll start by saying that peeling apples is low on the list of things I enjoy doing. It is right up there with milking corn (I hate that term), peeling hot potatoes and husking chick peas… and deveining shrimp. It is time consuming and I always feel that I am wasting good apple flesh. I also discovered that my excellent Henkel’s paring knife is not the best knife for the job. The 99 cent flimsy knife which I purposely bent the blade on worked far superior… although it was not as sharp, it was infinitely more flexible. Once the apples were peeled and cored (the cheap, flexible knife also made coring easier), I chopped them into chunks and set them aside in a bowl with a “little” lemon juice, zest and sugar. I covered the apples and placed them in the fridge while I prepped the rest.

The topping was really simple. Sugar, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Walnuts and Flour were mixed and then butter was chopped in via the food processor. This topping was then set in the fridge to rest until the oven was freed up.

When I was ready to bake the crisp I placed the apples in a 9x9 pan, covered with the topping and baked. I forgot how much I love the smell of baking apples. I could hardly wait to try some.

Rating: B. It was good but I definitely know where I need to improve, quantity. I needed more apples and topping or a slightly smaller pan. In addition the first bite was delightfully tart but after half a bowl the lemon juice was really beginning to overpower. I will make sure I watch carefully how much lemon juice gets added. It was a great flavor but definitely reminds me of the saying “everything in moderation”.

18. Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Date Cooked: September 14th, 2008
Page: 777
Rating: A-

Baking is not something I do much of but I was really craving some cookies and I figured why not try some from the ‘Best’ book. I love warm chocolate chip cookies and the chewier the better so these were pretty much the top of the list. Making these was a learning experience as always and while fraught with challenges I would definitely say I am on the road to confidence when baking. So let’s begin shall we.

I had almost all of the ingredients for this in the house except for one particular minor ingredient for chocolate chip cookies, the chocolate chips. Without hesitation I zip over to the closest grocery store and grab a few bags (I figure you can never stock too much sweet baking supplies) of chocolate chips. With the goods in hand I make my way home… I’m sure you are wondering why I am bothering to tell you about my uneventful trip to the store? No reason. Just typing to pad this into a longer than needed post. At home with all the ingredients gathered I set to work.

I carefully measured out all the ingredients being sure to double check the quantities in the book. First the flour and other dry ingredients. Then I begin measuring out the ungodly amount of sugar. I love cookies but I never really realized how much sugar they actually contain. My past cookies would either come in a bag already baked or from a doughy little man called Pillsbury. Anyway as I was measuring out the sugar I realized I was not using a 1 cup dry measuring cup but a ½ cup. I just grabbed the largest assuming they were all there. These cookies may not have been sweet enough if I hadn’t caught that mistake.

I pulled out the KitchenAid and set about incorporating all the ingredients together. After adding the chocolate chips I gave the dough a few more folds manually and then got the baking sheet prepared, sheet as in the singular, I have one baking sheet so these cookies were cooking in batches. I did recently buy a Silpat though and I must say it is a very nice addition to the kitchen. At this point my son began to thoroughly clean the cookie dough from the mixer.

While potential problem number one was averted (incorrect measuring utensil), problem number 2 was lurking in the bowl. As I tried to form balls from the dough the stuff just wouldn’t stop clinging to my hands, it was impossible to work with! I reviewed the recipe but it says nothing about handling the dough. Just that I need to roll it into a ball, rip the ball in half and rejoin to give it a nice bumpy top. Hard to explain but the folks at Cook’s Illustrated do a decent job of explaining it on page 776. I added a bit more flour hoping that will help but that barely does anything. So I give up and just plop down little piles of the dough on the Silpat. The first batch goes into the oven. I figure I’ll chill the dough in the fridge while the first batch cooks.

I suppose if I had paid attention to the recipe better I would have realized the flaw in my baking process. The cookies need to cool on the baking sheet and as I was about to find out I couldn’t skip this step. Once the first batch came out I was a little puzzled. The recipe was called thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies. But these had spread out into thin and almost dinner plate sized cookies. I had six cookies taking up the entire baking sheet. I let them cool and then removed them to a wire cooling rack. Of the six cookies only four made it to the rack. My wife, oldest son and I had to do a little QA work on the cookies. They may not have been thick and chewy but they certainly were delicious and chewy.

I took the dough out of the fridge and after a short chill it was perfect for handling. I was able to roll it out into balls and perform the required ‘Best’ technique. Back in the fridge the remainder of the dough went and the baking sheet went back into the oven. 15 minutes later I had another batch of deflated cookies just as large as the last ones. I finished up the rest of the dough and set about figuring what I may have done wrong.

I’m no expert baker (pretty obvious isn’t it) but I did know that something was wrong with the ratio of fat and gluten (butter, eggs and flour). At first I figured I must have bad flour, it has been around for awhile and maybe it has absorbed too much moisture in its long storage. But then it hit me, and shame welled up inside me and I shook my head in embarrassment. I debated whether or not I should confess to what I did wrong but in the interest of full disclosure I thought I should fess up. Remember my glorious save when I realized I was measuring the sugar with the wrong measuring cup? Yeah… probably should have realized I used the same cup for the flour. Now in my defense my son was in the kitchen trying to steal chocolate chips and I was a little distracted. Aren’t I a great father, blaming my failures on my children?

Regardless of the amount of flour used though the cookies were absolutely delicious! Once cooled, they remained nice and chewy and are definitely better than anything bought at a store or premixed. But I guess anything that is predominantly butter and sugar would be good.

Rating: These deserve an A-. They were the right consistency even if they were not the requisite dimensions. Thin and chewy is a working combination for me so I can’t even classify this as a failure. Which is good for me because I was tired of failing, although I’m sure my failures are probably more entertaining?

The Next Day

They maintained the same wonderful, chewy consistency. Considering this was the day after my van got crushed by a tree these helped me through. Because nothing helps an imminent insurance headache like chewy chocolate chip cookies!

17. Lemon Bars

Date Cooked: September 9th, 2008
Page: 817
Rating: A

My first attempt at baking from the book didn’t turn out to well. So I was a little nervous going into this recipe. But I was also excited after seeing a few recipes around for Lemon Bars on other blogs. They didn’t sound that hard but any time I see a recipe for any type of dough I freeze up with anxiety, so few ingredients yet so many ways to make it fail. As other people have pointed out, baking is more about science than cooking is. The manner in which the ingredients work together is very important. When making Biscotti I had no real understanding of this. Going into the lemon bars I was acutely aware of the possibility for failure. So with a little fear I began.

The first step was to make the crust. Carefully I measured out the dry ingredients and double checked the quantities and pulsed them together into the food processor. At this point I decided I may invest in a new food processor. The first time I pressed pulse a small cloud of flour puffed out from the lid. The processor I have is designed so that when you are slicing vegetables with it you can jettison (I love that word) them out the side into a bowl instead of keeping them in the processor bowl. Great for large quantities but I’ll admit a feature I have never used. So anyway, every time I hit pulse I would get a little of the flour mix everywhere. I struggled to get the lid gate to form a better seal but this just wasn’t working to well. I finally gave up and resigned myself to spending more time cleaning up.

Once the dry ingredients were mixed I added the butter. I cut the stick up into smaller pieces and distributed them throughout the dry ingredients before a couple more pulses to mix. This is where I am sure experience in baking comes in handy. Every baking recipe uses the descriptor, coarse meal, to describe when to stop mixing. I couldn’t tell if I had reached that point. So I did what anyone should do. I stuck my hands into the mix. I had turned off and unplugged the processor before doing this of course. You can learn from a lot of mistakes but I try to limit learning from personal safety mistakes. I don’t know how to describe the dough other than it felt right. It was smooth and fluffy and felt pretty much like the dry ingredients but would compress easily into form due to the butter. I work it just a little since I had read many stories about overworked dough. I dumped the mixture into the pan and compressed it to form a firm crust, then into the fridge for 30 minutes to chill before 20 minutes in the oven to turn it a golden brown. It never reached golden brown and this concerned me. I figured I would leave it just a little longer and then take it out regardless.

While the crust was chilling and baking I was getting the filling made. This was pretty simple other than the time it took to juice and zest the lemons. The zester I have is pretty basic and definitely not very sharp. It took a fair bit of work to obtain a ¼ cup of zest and for all the effort I was rewarded with some zested knuckles (don’t worry, I wasn’t adding that to the recipe). Juicing was much easier. We have an electric citrus juicer that was given as a wedding gift six years ago and we used it a fair bit in the early days. It made very quick work of the lemons. I ended up putting the pulpy juice through a fine mesh strainer but next time I don’t think I will since you strain it later in the process. Plus the added pulp could only provide more flavor.

The ingredients were all mixed together and then put on the stovetop to cook until thickened. It says to stir constantly until it begins to thicken and reaches a suitable internal temperature. The ‘Best’ book says about 5 minutes after almost 10 minutes of constant stirring it wasn’t really thickening. I turned away from the stove for 10 seconds, just 10 seconds, and it immediately clumped. I aggressively stirred it to smooth it out and removed it from the heat. At this point you strain it before pouring it over the hot crust. Then it goes into the oven for about 10-15 minutes. Oh wait… I forgot to add the cream to the lemon filling. I was pissed while my wife calmly informs me to just take it out, scrape the filling off and mix the cream and re-pour. Can you do that? I figured why not, my wife is usually right as she often reminds me. So I carefully remove the filling, add the cream and give it a quick fold into the mixture and spread it back over the crust. Back in the oven and I cross my fingers.

You know what? Katt was right. It turned out fine. And these were also the best lemon bars I have ever tasted. The filling was tart and full of lemon flavor but still sweet and it set beautifully. The crust was firm and had a texture almost like a cookie. It wasn’t rock hard like my last baking experiment and it held together beautifully. It didn’t crumble when being bitten, it snapped gently. Okay I was proud of myself. I will be making these again.

Rating: These tasted awesome and turned out beautifully. They deserve nothing less than an A.

11. Lemon-Anise Biscotti - Sweet Rocks

Date Cooked: September 4th, 2008
Recipe: 11
Page: 804

Up until this point I thought I had been making progress. This time though I barely earned my moniker of the Mediocre Cook. I was probably closer to the Unfathomably Bad Baker. I had seen several biscotti recipes recently on food blogs, most recently by Cecil at FoodCraze. I was really craving them and wanted to try and make some. There are three recipes for them in the ‘Best’ book and I figured the Lemon-Anise ones sounded tasty and reasonably simple. After re-reading the recipe they still are reasonably simple but yet I managed to f--- this one up pretty good. This is my story.

I made the trip home from work and was in a reasonably good mood and as usual for the past few weeks I was thinking about what recipe to try tonight. I was also thinking I need to start planning out the meals and recipes better so I can make more efficient use of my time and ingredients which would cut down on travelling to the grocery stores every day which is becoming a habit. Ok, so I get home and decide that regardless of what I eat for dinner I was going to make biscotti. Dinner was a simple one dish casserole that was quick to throw together allowing me ample time to play with this biscotti recipe.

The first hurdle to this impending disaster that I had to overcome was that I did not have a zester. I considered using a cheese grater but considering the size of the lemons I had, which were small, a single pass on the grater would have cut through to the pulp. In other words I would have had all mess and no zest. So in a moment of desperation I grabbed the peeler and my chef’s knife. Have I mentioned my knives yet? With peeler in hand I undressed the lemon and minced the crap out of the peelings. Turned out not too bad and the lemon aroma was nice. This was the hardest part of making the biscotti if you can believe. So how could I have gone so wrong? Let’s continue.

I added all the dry ingredients to one bowl and whisked eggs, sugar, anise seed and the lemon zest in another. Slowly mixing in the dry ingredients I combined the two and folded until I had a batter. But something was terribly wrong. This batter was pretty dry and wouldn’t hold together very well. The directions say to stretch it out into long rolls about 13 x 2 and place them on the baking sheet. How can I put this… stretching the batter was like trying to shape playdough… that was left uncovered… for a week. I struggled to mold this mess into some kind of log shape and press it down to give it that biscotti look. I gave up and threw it in the oven while doing a mental calculation of how much money I wasted on this dish. I figure less than three dollars.

I went back to the recipe to figure out where I went wrong. It was very obvious. Two biscotti recipes are found on page 804 of the ‘Best’ book. One calls for more flour, and it wasn’t the one I was making. But apparently that didn’t stop me from using the greater amount in my recipe.

The aroma wafting out from the kitchen was pleasant and I started thinking there was some hope for salvaging the biscotti. So, when the first bake time was up, I took it out to cool before slicing it up for round two in the oven. When cooled these things were rigid and the crust on them was hard. I wasn’t sure my knives were up for the task of slicing this. I had to bear down on these pretty hard to get the first knife stroke to score the surface and begin cutting through. I felt like a lumberjack as I sawed through these mini logs. I was supposed to cut the biscotti loaf on more of a diagonal but for some reason they didn’t turn out that way. I think the loaf was too narrow and didn’t spread out any during baking.

I placed the mini bricks on the baking sheet for their last tour of duty in the oven. I was a little hesitant about this step since these things were already close to rock solid but I went with what I was told. And those pieces of biscotti went from almost rock solid to industrial strength building material.

When I went to take my first bite of the finished product I had to maneuver it to the side of my mouth so I could actually use my molars to break a piece off. When the biscotti cracked my heart skipped as I believed my tooth had given way to the unyielding biscotti brick. Of course for all the textural problems they had, the flavor was really nice.

Most people who have tried them politely tell me biscotti are supposed to be hard and that they taste great. I usually only watch them struggle through one piece. At least my five year old son was honest. He asked me if I was playing a trick on him and was trying to get him to eat a rock. I was laughing when I told him ‘no’ so I don’t know if he believed me. He didn’t finish it.

So I have a handful of these things left and I’m either going to use them to repair some of the brickwork on my house or eat them myself. Will I make these again? Probably not, but only because I have two more biscotti recipes to try from the ‘Best’ book. I’ll be very careful about ingredient measurements for the next time though.