Gramercy Tavern’s Gingerbread

This gingerbread recipe via Smitten Kitchen is dense, dark, and delicious. I've made it years ago and keep thinking of it fondly (I believe I ate most of that batch myself). This year for a Christmas party I made it again, and guests who were initially hesitant about ginger in their baked goods raved about it.

A few changes:

• I reduced the sugar by 20%, so 88g brown sugar and 80g white sugar. 
• I used blackstrap molasses
• Obviously, this resulted in minor sticking in the pan. Perhaps next time I will butter and sugar the pan, to prevent sticking.

For future batches, I would consider:

• reducing the sugar even more, even though the sweetness was fine.
• Perhaps reducing the oil and baking soda as per the comments on SK.

Cake Paper Party’s Buttermilk Chocolate Cake with Brave Tart's Cream Cheese Frosting

Miss R's 9th birthday cake

Yesterday, for Miss R's birthday, I made Cake Paper Party's buttermilk chocolate cake with Brave Tart's cream cheese frosting. She asked for a Tsum Tsum theme, so I bought iced sugar cookies from lan sugar cookie 嵐的甜甜手作 (which were beautiful and arrived well-packaged) and used those to decorate the cake.

Keeping in mind the advice on reducing sugar in cake recipes from King Arthur Flour, I reduced the sugar by 20% which was perfect for our tastebuds. The cake still had a fine crumb and moist texture, and paired nicely with Brave Tart's frosting, which isn't as sweet as powdered sugar based recipes.

Fine crumb, moist texture, lovely chocolate flavor.

here are the weights of the ingredients I used:
57 grams Dutch processed cocoa powder
113 grams bittersweet chocolate, broken (about 60% cocoa)
180 milliliters hot water
315 grams granulated sugar
1 cup (240 milliliters) buttermilk, cold
1 tablespoon (15 milliliters) vanilla extract
227 grams unsalted butter softened-1 cup
4 large eggs
284 grams all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (5 milliliters) salt
1 teaspoon (5 milliliters) baking soda
¾ teaspoon (3 milliliters) baking powder

Baking time took me over 40 minutes rather than the 25-30 minutes suggested. Perhaps my oven was off; and I think one layer was slightly underbaked as it fell apart after I turned it out from the pan to cool. For future reference, I'd bake this a day in advance and refrigerate it before leveling the cake and icing it; I never got the icing down to 60º F even after chilling it for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

This combo is on the repeat list!

BraveTart's Pumpkin Muffins

I first became aware of Stella Park, aka Bravetart, via Kenji Lopez-Alt on Serious Eats, and after trying her Mini Egg Chocolate Cookies and other recipes, I've been turning to her takes on baked goods first. Yes, it's April not Trader-Joe's-Pumpkin-season, but I had a can of pumpkin that I've been meaning to use up and a craving, so I used her Spiced "Pumpkin" Loaves recipe as a starting point. I didn't have any walnut oil, so I used all butter. As usual, I reduced the sugar by about 10%. I wasn't sure if the measurement for nuts was correct, so I used 12 ounces instead of 16 ounces. There's plenty of walnuts, as shown, but if you really like nuts, the recipe can certainly support the full 16 ounces. The recipe yielded 24 muffins. The recipe as I made it is written in metric, because currently the buttons on my scale are a bit sticky and not easily switching between metric and Imperial.



Line muffin tins with paper liners, and spray with oil.

149 g unsalted butter
130 g sugar
130 g brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
2 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
397 g canned pumpkin
71 g cream
170 g all purpose flour
85 g whole wheat flour
340-454 g walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350°

Combine the butter, oil, sugars, baking powder, soda, salt and spices in a large mixing bowl. Beat them all together for about eight minutes. Stop the mixer to scrape the sides down occasionally.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until each is thoroughly incorporated. Turn the mixing speed to low and add in the flours all at once, followed by the squash puree and then the milk or cream. Quickly add in the nuts and shut off the mixer as soon as everything appears mixed together.

Portion into lightly greased muffin pans and bake for about 20 minutes.

BraveTart’s Glossy Fudge Brownies Quick Take

Just pulled brownies made following Stella Park's (aka BraveTart on Serious Eats) recipe. She warned of this on her video, and so I reduced the time by 5 minutes, but an initial assessment looks like the edges are a bit over cooked and dry. But it smells lovely, and Miss Nomad Food happily licked the beater clean.

Homemade Hamburger Buns & Breakfast Sandwich

The problem with shopping at Costco is that one ends up with a quantity of foodstuffs (e.g. cheddar cheese slices) that one is then compelled to create as many dishes as possible utilizing said items. This is how I found myself making burger buns. The buns did not come out as soft as I was hoping for, but that may be to my own baker error.

Easiest buttermilk biscuits

I had a craving for biscuits, ones that would be rich but also light, that would be a perfect foil to melted butter or also sweetened strawberries. This recipe, recommended by Lainey Gossip, does indeed live up to its name. The only problem is, I cannot find buttermilk in Taiwan, and instead must use soured milk. I'm sure this must affect the flavor of the final product.

King Arthur's Butter-enriched Bread Recipe

Master Nomad Foodie complained that the bread I bake is too hearty in flavor and texture, and that he prefers sweet, milky breads. So I decided to give this recipe a try.

My shaping needs work.

It was a good recipe, and was certainly delicious. However, I felt it was a lot of work to make just 16 rolls that disappeared rather quickly.

Definitely buttery.

Neapolitan-swirl Bundt Cake

Miss Nomad Foodie asked for a cheetah-print inside the cake, with vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry-flavored cakes, so I made an attempt using my go-to yellow birthday cake recipe, Smitten Kitchen's Best Birthday Cake. I find this cake consistently turns out as described: moist, plush, with a fine, dense crumb, and buttery flavor. I did reduce the sugar by 10%, to 360 grams. For the strawberry portion, I took about a third of the batter and added 1 teaspoon of strawberry flavor and about 15 grams of ground freeze-dried strawberries (I ground Trader Joe's freeze-dried strawberries in a coffee bean grinder). For the chocolate portion, I added about 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder to the battery.

I thought the easiest way to create the print inside would be to use a bundt cake pan. Miss Nomad Foodie insisted on "strawberry, strawberry is my favorite" frosting, so I started with Celebrating Sweet's Cream Cheese Frosting recipe, since I wanted something more liquid than my usual cream cheese frosting but more substantial than a glaze. The proportions of ingredients were:

113g cream cheese at room temperature
200g powdered sugar sifted with
30g ground freeze-dried strawberries
2 Tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon strawberry flavor
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

I supposed I could've added more milk to make the frosting flow and drip more attractively over the cake, but it was fine for our purposes, and it had an intensely strawberry flavor.

The kids decorated the cake with Trader Joe's Candy Coated Chocolate Drops, which are like a slightly more natural version of M&Ms.

How did the cake turn out? Well the flavor and texture was great, but alas, the pattern inside was more of a marbled-swirl than a cheetah-print. Nonetheless, we had a happy little girl!

BraveTart’s Mini Egg Chocolate Cookies

The cookies were quite tender and broke apart easily, but I loved the flavor.

Rummaging around the refrigerator to make room for the products of this last weekend's cooking binge reminded me that I have bags of butterscotch chips stashed in the back of the refrigerator. I've been impressed by BraveTart's creations on Instagram, so I decided to check her site and modify her recipe for chocolate cookies with Cadbury Mini Eggs to use up the half bags of butterscotch and peanut butter chips I had on hand. Other substitutions: I substituted coconut sugar for the brown sugar, and used 2 ounces of white sugar instead of the 2.5 ounces called for (the sweetness was fine). I can't imagine using the full amount of sugar.

I had the kids add five mini M&Ms to the top of each cookie, after pressing the scooped dough with the pusher (from my food processor) dipped in cocoa powder - since the dough was very sticky

Homemade Pizza, Revisited

I've made pizza often in the past, making dough from the recipe in Wildly Affordable Organic or King Arthur Flour's basic recipe. On a Smitten Kitchen kick, I decided to try her recipe. The kids rolled out the dough, so it was a bit thicker than I'd like, but the sauce was a revelation. In the past, I've just used jarred pasta sauce, but I tried her recipe which is simple - just drained canned whole tomatoes, whizzed in the food processor with a little salt and fresh garlic - and it made a huge difference.

Hawaiian Pizza, from the side

Since it has been awhile since we made homemade pizza, I forgot that I usually have the kids roll it between two sheets of parchment paper, so there was a big floury mess on the dining table when they had finished. Cornmeal also makes a superior substance to dust baking pans with, to prevent sticking.

I had leftover sauce, shredded cheese, canned pineapple, and Canadian bacon, so I made the pizza again today. The first time I followed her 22-hour recipe (starting it at night before I went to bed, for a lunch of pizza) and today I had only time for a 6-hour rise. I definitely recommend the flavor with a longer rise...although since I rolled out the dough today, it was much thinner. Also, I substituted whole wheat flour, for a proportion of 175g whole wheat flour and 200g bread flour.

kid-created pizza

Red Dragon Fruit Bread

Master Nomad Foodie mentioned a classmate had brought bread made with dragon fruit. Dragon fruit is in season in the fall in Taiwan, and I love eating it because it's refreshingly, not cloyingly, sweet, and great for digestion (ahem). Anyways, at his request, I experimented with making dragon fruit bread following this recipe. (I looked to King Arthur Flour for guidance on the specifics of making baguette).

Lovely magenta color prior to baking.

The bread was fine - there wasn't a particular dragon fruit taste, which is unsurprising given that it's such a subtly flavored fruit, but there was the most lovely pink color. Unfortunately, the color dulled over time in the oven - I might have slightly overbooked the bread.

Duller pink color after baking.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

I think I tried this recipe, mostly to use up some leftover cream cheese. Alas, I wasn't impressed.

Blueberry-Peach Crisp

We had picked a lot of blueberries on trip to Michigan that were unfortunately not that sweet for eating out of hand, so I combined them with home-grown peaches to make a crumble-crisp.

The recipe I followed was a mashup of this for the fruit and this for the topping. Blueberries and diced peaches were tossed with about 3 Tablespoons of sugar and 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch for roughly 4 cups of blueberries and 1 cup of diced peaches. I also squeezed half a lemon and added about 1 teaspoon of lemon zest. The topping was comprised of rolled oats, almond flour, coconut oil, honey, 2 dashes of cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. When I ran out of almond flour, I substituted wheat germ. Overall, family members liked the crumble, as it wasn't too sweet.

Coconut Quinoa Banana Muffins

I tried this recipe from Coffee & Quinoa as I've been looking for ways to use up quinoa in baked goods, and I had some overripe bananas. While the flavor was good, unfortunately the muffins (I baked muffins instead of a loaf to save time) were very dense. I think this is so because the recipe calls for baking soda, and I don't see an acid amongst the ingredients to activate the baking soda. I think I'll work on modifying Smitten Kitchen's Crackly Banana Bread instead, which I've baked before and is quite good.

Baking misadventures with The Food Lab's Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've long wanted to make J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies, and after Miss Nomad Foodie put in a request for Mommy to bake some cookies, I decided to pull out the ingredients. I browned butter. I weighed flour. I chopped chocolate. Then, when I returned to the kitchen after a brief absence, I found Miss Nomad Foodie standing by the sink, with the bowl of dry ingredients in hand, "look Mommy! I making cookies!" She had added water to the flour.

"I sorry Mommy, I helping you."

In the end, I added a cup of ground oats to soak up some of the excess moisture. The flavor was good, but the cookies came out with a fluffy, cakey texture - as if I had used margarine. Oh well.

I'm sure I'll try again soon enough. Perhaps Buzzfeed's version or Seven Spoon's version. One thing that I forgot to mention was that, inspired by Dorie Greenspan's newest chocolate chip cookie variation, I added a 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg.

Honey Oat Pain de Mie, batches 3-5

Each subsequent batch of honey oat pain de mie is more successful than the last. I have experimented with: 1) raising the percentage of whole wheat flour up to 45%, substituted maple syrup for honey (I prefer honey); adding spices (cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg), and adding raisins. I am getting better with timing the rises with my schedule. I am currently using 140-150g of water for each loaf, adding boiling water to the butter and honey. This melts the butter and lowers the temperature of the water.

The shorter loaf is batch #3 , next to batch #4.

Batch #5 is slightly higher than batch #4.

Tahini Blondies, Halloween style

Mr. Nomad Foodie brought back a big jar of tahini from Israel. What was I going to do with 950g of tahini? There was only so much hummus I could make, so I started searching for recipes. Alas, the carrot tahini muffins were a rare miss from Smitten Kitchen.

I had two potlucks to go to on Halloween. My SIL had given me a big bag of Reese's Pieces that she had bought on clearance. I couldn't bring myself to allow the children to just snack on candy. How to use up the tahini and Reese's Pieces, plus bring something appropriately festive to two parties? Enter this Tahini Blondies recipe from Food52.

I doubled the recipe, but reduced the sugar by 20%, then sprinkled Reese's Pieces and black sesame seeds on top of the batter. It looked perfect as I put the pan into the oven. As I turned to clean up, I realized I'd forgotten to add the flour - no wonder the batter had looked particularly thin! I quickly pulled the pan from the oven, dumped the batter back into a bowl, added the flour, and repeated the decorative process. So the final product was sweeter than expected, with the incorporation of additional Reese's Pieces into the batter. Still, the end result was delicious. 

Here are the measurements that I used for a doubled recipe, which fit perfectly in a 9" x 13" pan:

• 200g APF and 175g whole wheat flour
• 2t salt
• 227g butter
• 300g sugar
• 200g brown sugar
• 6 eggs
• 2t vanilla bean paste
• 2c tahini

Honey-Oat Pain de Mie (Pullman bread)

I've made this King Arthur's Honey-Pat Pain de Mie twice now, using my brand-new pain de mie pan. The bread on the left is from my first attempt, while the bread on the right is from my second attempt.



The first time I followed the recipe exactly as written. The bread didn't fully rise to the top of the pan, but I think that was due more to my elementary shaping skills and that I could've let the dough have a longer second rise.

The second time I made the bread, I substituted 160g (about 44%) of the APF with whole wheat flour, some of the honey with maple syrup (as I'd run out of honey), 10g (about 15%) of the butter with vegetable oil, and added a few dashes of cinnamon. I also used 230g of water. The bread rose in the refrigerator, because I didn't have enough continuous time at home for it to rise at room temperature.

For next time, I would increase the water - the dough seemed like it could've used more water, and I might have killed off some of the yeast by using boiling water. I thought the oats would protect the yeast in the bowl, but perhaps not, given the lower rise. The second batch still had a fine crumb, and is still quite soft and very tasty. The kids love it.

I might have to buy another pan, because it's so yummy, the loaf disappears quickly!

KAF Easy Cheesecake with Thermapen

Mr. Nomad Foodie gave me a Thermapen recently. Tonight I made King Arthur's Easy Cheesecake - it's been awhile since I've made it, and I wasn't paying close attention as I was cleaning up the kitchen. The cheesecake is clearly too brown, and the thermometer bears witness: the pie registered at 190°F when I took it out, 20°F higher than it should be. Tomorrow I'll know for sure how it's affected the texture.

Cake-y Goodness

I recently made cupcakes for the Parent Pages Rummage Sale's lemonade stand: Martha Stewart's Best One-Bowl Chocolate Cake recipe with paired with her cream cheese frosting, and Smitten Kitchen's Best Birthday Cake (a yellow cake) frosted with Martha Stewart's chocolate frosting. Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake was awesome. I had saved a few for our home and by Tuesday night they were gone. So that meant Wednesday night I was bemoaning the fact that there were no more sweets in the house. So I made cupcakes again - this time trying the Easy-Mix Yellow Cupcake recipe from Elinor Klivan's Cupcakes! book. Unfortunately, that cake didn't have the buttery richness nor the fine crumb of the the Smitten Kitchen yellow cake.

So here are the ingredients I used for Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake, converted to weights:
340g apf
60g cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
400g sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup "buttermilk" made with 1T vinegar and milk to make 1 cup + 1 cup sour cream, well-shaken

Ingredients that I used for Martha Stewart's chocolate frosting:
259g powdered sugar
1/4c cocoa powder
6oz cream cheese
6oz butter
9oz bittersweet chocolate
3/4c sour cream

Yes, I know my weights go back and forth between metric and Imperial, but that's because my scale can do both and so I don't bother to convert to metric if the weights in Imperial are already provided.

Incidentally, the chocolate frosting recipe is from the April 2010 "Best" issue. The same recipe appears again in her September 2010 issue with every ingredient doubled except the butter. A typo, perhaps? Stick with the April 2010 version.