mocha chip meringues

It's always a tough day when there's no flour in the kitchen. Do you ever get in that mood where it seems silly to go all the way to the store to only buy one thing? You can't think of anything else you urgently need, but if you go you'll end up with a third jar of peanut butter cause it's on sale and a very large bag of tortilla chips and maybe some new nail polish. I'm a grocery store impulse buyer, so I try to avoid it until I actually need groceries. Try is the key word, though. I usually end up there all the time, buying squares of fancy cheese or bags of shredded coconut.

I do have grocery store impulse control sometimes, which is when I end up making meringue cookies. They are so easy to make and require such little effort, things I often forget when egg whites are involved. Egg whites are fun to work with and meringues are such adaptable little cookies. They are always sure to impress too, because everyone thinks they are difficult to make. I went with an espresso+cocoa mixture and studded them with chocolate chunks. They taste like little clouds that melt with each bite.

Mocha Chip Meringues
Adapted from an Everyday Food recipe

3 egg whites, room temperature
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
pinch of salt
3/4 c. sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp instant coffee
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c. semi-sweet chocolate, chopped into chunks

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper (easy, easy cleanup!). Stir together coffee and vanilla until coffee is dissolved. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg whites and and cream of tartar using electric beaters or the whisk attachment of your stand mixer, beating until frothy. Add the sugar 1 tbsp at a time and continue beating until the mixture holds stiff glossy peaks. To test this, turn the mixer off and turn the whisk over. If the whites stay firm and tall (they should look like snowy mountaintops) then you've reached the right consistency. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add in the cocoa, coffee mixture and chocolate chips. Mix until just combined.

Drop the batter by spoonful onto the baking sheets. You can also pipe them, using a plastic bag with the corner cut off, to achieve more uniform shapes. Bake until dried out and crisp, about 30-40 minutes. Cool on baking sheets, then transfer to a sealed container to store. Meringues will keep for days and days, if you can keep from eating them.

whole lemon tart+french tart dough

I love the warm, lazy days of summer but sometimes I find myself having trouble filling them. The days, that is. I'm currently in full-on running mode, training for the Marine Corps Marathon in October. It's a commitment and it's given me
a great summer goal. But it's just too darn hot to run during the day. So I either wake up early and beat the heat, or wait til the sun goes down. But what to do in between? I've charged myself with a second summer goal: break out of the baking rut. Try new recipes. Feed my marathon-training hunger.

A few weeks ago, a Costco-sized bag of lemons and 2 dozen eggs lurking in the fridge at home caught my eye. A cake seemed too heavy, a cookie was nothing exciting. I began to research tarts and a few recipes caught my eye. The first was this tart au citron from Dave Leibovitz, which used a charmingly old-French lady, inprecisly measured, melted butter tart dough. It's the kind of casual baking I love, so that was the dough I was going to use. But I didn't want a tart filled with lemon curd, I wanted to the dough and filling to bake up together. Wonderfully enough, I stumbled on another interesting recipe--a whole lemon tart at Smitten Kitchen. The afternoon just got exciting! Two new baking strategies to try!

The tart dough was a blast to make. Read the post here about how to make it. I can't say anything else about it other than work quickly once it's out of the oven to press it into the tart pan.  Once again, it's the casual style of baking that I love. I think the skill of the baker and the elegance of the ingredients really shines when the recipes and techniques are simple and informal. I par-baked the crust before pouring in the filling and continuing to bake. This helped keep the dough from getting too moist and retain a lovely, flaky texture.

Just like the tart dough, I wanted a simple recipe and ended up cobbling a few recipes together. The whole lemon tart uses, as the name suggests, the ENTIRE lemon. Zest, rind, flesh, everything. All thrown into a food processor, then into a tart dough, then into the oven. So easy, so simple; the perfect dessert to me. As I researched whole lemon tarts, I learned that they are typically made with Meyer lemons, which are sweeter and tend to have less of the bitter white pith (that white layer between the zest and the flesh) than the standard lemon. Since I was using a regular lemon, I chose to complicate the process a little a remove most of the pith. It was one more step, but it ended up making the tart the perfect balance of sweet and tart. The filling will look a little curdled and unappealing, but forge on! Pour it into the par-baked shell and trust it. It turns out super yummy, like the best lemon bar you've ever had.

Whole Lemon Tart with a French Tart Dough
from David Leibovitz via Paule Caillat


French Tart Dough
6 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I used canola)
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 410º F (210º C).

In a ovenproof glass bowl, combine the butter, oil, water, sugar and salt. Place it in the oven for about 15 minutes, until the butter is bubbling and starts to brown around the edges.

Remove from the oven and stir in the flour quickly until it comes together and forms a ball. Place the dough into a 9 inch tart pan and press it into the bottom and edges to form the crust. Reserve a small bit of dough to patch up any cracks or missing spots.

Prick the dough with a fork on the bottom before baking for about 7 minutes. You don't want to bake it completely, but it should begin to dry out slightly. Let the shell cool before filling.

Whole Lemon Tart
adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Food52

1 large meyer lemon cut into 8 pieces (if using a regular lemon, see note above about removing the pith)
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter 
1 tsp vanilla 
1 tbsp honey
4 eggs 


Put all ingredients (except tart shell) into a food processor or blender and mix mix mix until combined.
Pour into par-baked tart shell.
Bake 35 minutes, watching that the top does not burn. If the crust is looking too dark, make a ring of foil to cover the crust (I luckily have a pie shield--it's great.
Allow to cool completely before serving. This would be fantastic topped with fresh berries or a slightly sweetened homemade whipped cream.

cinnamon yumyums

Yes, I did find these in the "cooking with kids" section of a cookbook this morning. But from what I've found those are the best sections of a cookbook. The recipes are quick, simple and always delicious. After all, if you proclaim its good for cooking with kids, it has to please a kid. And they are tough to please (if spending all day with 6 year olds has taught me anything).

These are not quite traditional cinnamon buns, as they are made like a biscuit or scone rather than like a bun, which is made using yeast and left to rise. Basically they are simple and super quick to make. I love cinnamon buns, but I've only made them once before and that was mostly just to try it out. I can rarely predict my cravings for cinnamon buns, so the whole "rising overnight" thing isn't really practical (or even a recipe that calls for rising 2 hours before I want them, gosh forbid, is far too long). My patience for dough is thin and my forethought in making it is rare. If I wake up in the morning craving cinnamon buns, then this is just the recipe.

Because of the lack of yeast, it's not quite fair to call them cinnamon "buns". The texture really is different, but I was actually quite the fan of the cinnamon scented biscuit like rollup thing.* Therefore, cinnamon "yumyums"* they shall be called. So go ahead and try them, they are indeed quite yumyummy with a cup of tea and super fun to eat by unwinding each buttery, cinnamony layer.

Cinnamon YumYums
adapted from Buttercup Bakes at Home

Dough:
1 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup butter, cut into small pieces
1 egg
1/4 cup milk

Filling:
2-3 tbps brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces

Icing:
Mix together ~1/2 cup confectioners sugar with a few drops of milk. Stir and add slightly more milk for a thinner icing.

For the dough, mix together the flour, baking powder and sugar. Mix in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture is crumbly and resembles a coarse oatmeal. It's okay if there are some larger chunks and some smaller bits of butter. Mix the egg into the milk and then add to the flour mixture until just combined.
Turn the mixture out onto a floured surface and gently knead it together until it forms a dough. Pat or roll it out into a 10 inch square. Spread the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon onto the surface of the dough, leaving some space at the top and bottom edges. Roll the dough into a log and cut in half. Cut each half in half again until you have 8 even pieces.
Arrange the dough on a baking sheet or in a pie pan (I like using a pie pan, it reminds me of making the PIllsbury rolls), allowing the sides to touch. Bake at 375 for 15-18 minutes until golden brown. Drizzle the icing over the buns before serving.

*sometimes my eloquence in descriptive language astounds me too 
* there's the eloquence thing again. But that is actually what they were named, I can't take credit for it even though I would love to

blueberry scones

I think it's safe to say I eat too many scones. If there is anyone out there looking to sweep me off my feet, just take me someplace nice and get me a scone. We will be in love forever.

That's how love works, right?

If you've read my (often forgotten about, sporadically updated) blog long enough, you'll probably know that I talk about scones quite a bit. And if you've ever had a conversation with me, I've probably mentioned them a lot. And if this were that episode of The Office where they take bets, they would probably be betting on how long I could talk about them just like how they time how long Kelly can talk about Netflix.

I've neglected my blog so much because sometimes I think that all I make are scones and nobody needs to hear about them that much. I've fallen in and out of baking love with many things, but I still fall hard for a scone. I think we're in it for the long haul. So it only seems fair that my grand effort to blog again would be with a scone post. But I made an effort to make a different kind...get ready, I made....

BLUEBERRY SCONES!

In the time since I stopped and started blogging again, I decided I liked berries. Crazy right? Naturally that means they would find their way into a scone somehow. And they were delicious. I stuck with my tried and true, committed to memory scone recipe, but I added an egg to make it more tender and less flaky. Somehow the berries begged for a cake-like home, rather than the flaky biscuit type scones I enjoy.

So here goes, and I promise to be back. It's summer break, I'm baking too much anyway.

Blueberry Scones
Adapted from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

4 tbsp cold butter

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

~1/2 cup fresh blueberries (frozen are fine too, but I find the fresh berries much easier to work with in doughs)

Mix the dry ingredients, then add in the butter and sugar. Mix it in using your fingers (like making pie crust) until it looks like coarse oatmeal.

Beat the egg into the milk. Add this mixture to the flour+butter mixture until a dough starts to form. Then gently mix in the blueberries (or any other berry, really)  If its looking too dry to hold together, add in a splash of milk. You want it to be a little crumbly, it shouldnt be a wet dough.

Turn it out onto the counter and pat it into a circle or square. Cut into 6 pieces and bake at 425 for about 10-12 minutes.

a possible cookie overdose

I didn't think it was possible, but December may have done me in on cookies.

I am perhaps the definition of "creature of habit." I eat the same things day in, day out and rarely get sick of them. The only reason I'm okay with pulling myself out of bed at 6:30 to get to work? My morning bowl of warm yummy oatmeal, drenched in cinnamon and cold almond milk (and also not shamelessly, the Today Show). I'm excited about it every morning. I'm excited about going home and making tea. I'm excited about whatever freezer veggies will be roasting for dinner. Not tired of it one bit.

But the cookies this month! I've finally been done in. There were so many more cookies around all the time, and they were all so good. I didn't even make that many because every day I was inundated with tons from everyone around me, which were mostly of the varieties I don't normally make (see: the topped with a Hershey Kiss type. I never make 'em, but yum.)

Even though I was stuffed to the brim before winter break even arrived, I had to get in on the game. I ended up making only one batch, a super simple butter cookie. I topped a dozen with raspberry jam (another homemade Christmas gift, yum again) post bake and the rest with a pecan or walnut half pre bake. I love a simple cookie and these were the perfect compliment to all the minty, peanut-buttery, super chocolate-coconut-nutty-crazy concoctions that were all around. Sometimes a holiday calls for the simplest, easiest things as they're so often overlooked.

Basic Butter Cookies
I love a simple, do-what-you-will-with-me recipe like Mark Bittman's basics. I snagged the app for his How To Cook Everything book from a free download card at Starbucks and it was the best find I've ever made. I would totally pay the 5 bucks for it.

For jam cookies: Scoop dough onto baking sheets. Flatten the scoops, then press a finger into the center of each cookie to create a well (the dough is quite sticky; it can be a little difficult, but the well doesn't have to be too deep). Bake as directed. Once cool, fill the well with a bit of jam, until it just oozes over.
For nutty cookies: Scoop dough onto baking sheets. Press a walnut or pecan half onto the center of each cookie. Dust the top of each cookie with cinnamon and sugar then bake as directed.