Repost: Molten Chocolate Cakes

I feel bad. I promised things that didn't happen. So here is a repost of one of the best things I've ever done. It doesn't matter that the girlfriend I'm referring to is no longer someone whose tastes are relevant, nor does it matter that Valentines Day was some time ago. The cake speaks for itself. Chocolate usually does. Enjoy.

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So I got an email a while ago from Kate of Serendipity. She wanted to know if I wanted to take part in a Valentines Day roundup where she would send me some chocolate, I would do something with it and post about it.

At first I was kind of dubious, seeing as how I'm really not a big V-Day person. I get my girlfriend flowers (which I do periodically anyway), a card, I cook her a dinner she enjoys (which I do all the time regardless), probably some champagne in there and yeah, that's it really. I didn't even do a post about it last year.

But then I remembered where Kate lives.

She lives in Belgium.

So, to recap, she offered to send me Belgian chocolate and all I had to do was make something with it? Yeah, I'm down. Completely. Always happy to take part in activities with my fellow bloggers. Heh.When the package came it was like Christmas. I opened up the envelope and let out a most undignified (not to mention unmanly) squeal of delight. Four bars of chocolate, two in foil and two in plastic with a sticker declaring they were artisan. Or that's what I'm guessing "artisanale" means. Because I'm clever like that. I don't have pictures of all of them, some of it mysteriously (and rapidly) disappeared. Mostly the big bar from that artisan place. Yeah, no idea what happened that. Heh. The question was, what to do with it? What to do with it, indeed.

But the answer, really, was simple. When you have awesome chocolate you have to make an awesome chocolate cake. That's it. So, molten chocolate cakes it was. Because really, is there a more awesome chocolate cake? I'm not convinced that there is. Plus it's so ridiculously easy. I didn't use the same recipe from last time I posted about them, I used this one from Tasty Kitchen. It used all bar chocolate, instead of some cocoa powder, so the cakes weren't so dark. Which means my girlfriend likes them more, too. Which is good, for Valentines Day.

So thanks Kate! This was a lot of fun. Now, have you kids all been to her blog? If not you should, she takes wicked good pictures. And I'm not just saying that because she sends me chocolate. Heh.

Oh and since it is Sunday, here's Noodles. Wanting what she can't have.
Check out what the other folks did with their chocolate, here is a link to the roundup.

Chocolate Chip Dulce de Leche Banana Bread Bundt Cake

Or something like that. It's banana bread, but I baked it in a bundt pan since I have no idea where my bread pan is. I know, once again I know I've promised beans and am posting something else. But when I mentioned I made this to my sister she threatened me with stern retribution if it wasn't the next thing I posted about. So in the interest of family togetherness, here it is.

The recipe is simple, it's the same one I've always used and I didn't even make my own dulce de leche, so I'm afraid my sister is going to be a bit disappointed that it's nothing new. Oh and the next person who tells me to open a can of ddl and "pour it" is going to get a dope slap. I glooped it with a spoon and then tried to swirl. Mostly I got pockets, but really it's not something to complain about.

But! I now have a table, which means prep space which means not just cooking, but also more pictures since the table is right in front of a window. Nice. Of course this is all assuming I can convince a certain someone that the table is mine, not his. I think just keeping him off it while food is on will be the goal. Heh.

Repost: Rolo Cookies

Well, the holidays are almost done, but I bet some of you still need to make cookies and since these are wicked good I thought I'd share the recipe again. Plus it's quicker than writing a whole new post so I can go right back to playing Civilization V. Heh.

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1 cup butter
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¾ cup cocoa
2 ¼ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 packages Rolos (40)

In a large bowl mix butter, 1 cup of sugar, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla. In medium bowl mix flour, coco, and baking soda. Add to butter mixture. Roll 1 tablespoon cookie dough into a ball; flatten into palm of your hand. Place 1 Rolo in the center; bring sides together and roll into ball. Roll ball in the remaining ¼ white sugar. Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes.

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First off, these cookies rule. The cookie part tastes almost like brownies and has a great chewy/fudgy texture. And then there's a Rolo in the middle, so how can you lose? I saw this recipe on Bakespace some time ago and was intrigued. So I copied it down for making in the future. I had forgotten that Spryte has a Rolo cookie recipe too and it looks like it's easier to work with. The recipe I made has very sticky dough that was very hard (as in, impossible) to roll into a ball. But I found that it was less sticky after it sat for a bit. So next time I make these I'm going to let the dough rest for 15-20 minutes before I bake them. Still, next time I make them I'll be using Sprytes recipe, they have a little more flour so shouldn't be quite so bad. She recommends using cooking spray on your hands, but I didn't. I should have.

The recipe I used says to mix together the sugars, butter, eggs and vanilla as the first step. I just couldn't do that, I had to mix the sugars and the butter together first. Is that a bad sign? Am I getting snooty? Anyway, that's what I did. I took the sugars and butter and mixed them together. I didn't really cream them, but I mixed them together pretty well. Then I added the egg and vanilla and mixed it all up. Them came the dry mixture. The recipe didn't call for any salt, which always tweaks me out. So I added a little bit. Forgot to get a picture of the dough. Sorry. Then I took big tablespoons, rolled them into a ball and squished them flat in my palm, like the recipe said. Put a Rolo in the middle and brought the sides up. Well, I tried to. It didn't really work like that, the dough was way too sticky. So I wound up just taking big chunks of dough, stuffing a Rolo in the middle and squishing it around till the candy was covered. Then I rolled them in sugar and plopped them onto a parchment lined sheet. Baked them at 350 and there you go. They looked lovely, nice and dark and chocolaty. And tasted even better. These are my new second favorite cookies. First being chocolate chip, of course. Here are a couple more pictures of the middle. I liked this one because it's a good gooey caramel shot. And this is after sitting for an hour, so the caramel is totally set. So I highly recommend these, they are wicked good. They've got me thinking of what other kinds of candy I can fill cookies with. This is a dangerous path folks. Heh.

Lemon Chocolate Chip Muffins

I figured I should post something other than pizza before people started wondering if that's all I eat. Heh.I eat other things! Like muffins. This is actually just a gentle adaptation of this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, all I did was swap out the blueberries for chocolate chips and double the lemon zest. Next time I'm going to triple it though, get some more lemon flavor up in here. And since I'm feeling lazy I'm not even going to rewrite the recipe. My girlfriend asked for this flavor combo specifically, she loves lemon and chocolate. Well, I do too, it's a good time. And these muffins came out awesome, they get a wicked good texture and dome nicely. I should have filled the tins a bit more, but that's not the recipes fault. Heh. The only change I would make, like I said, is to add more lemon.Maybe a chocolate drizzle on top.

Lemon and chocolate is a bit of a divisive issue with some people, what do you kids think?

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok, I'm a bad blogger. I had a post all ready, albeit in my head, for these cookies. It was moderately witty, had an anecdote involving children and/or animals, the whole nine yards. But I forgot it. All of it. I don't even remember the anecdote and I was there when it happened!

But, I'm still going to post the cookie pictures. They were delicious after all, but they're just my go to recipe that I tossed some hazelnuts in.
That's why I had had the story and all the interesting stuff, because I don't have much to say about the cookies other than they're good.
Hm. Well, I should do something to entertain you all. I could dance, but you would ever know. Also me + dance = disaster. Same with singing, you guys don't want that, I assure you.

And since I'm going to go help a buddy move some furniture and tear up his carpet so he can install new flooring I don't have any time to think of something new and amusing. So that's it, I guess. Apparently the bullet point of my little speech here is hazelnut chocolate chip cookies are good and not writing things down is bad. Thank you for your time.

Toasted Pound Cake

My girlfriend has today off which means I'm thoroughly booked, but here's a quickie for you guys. Looks good, huh? Couldn't be easier either, here's what you do.

Heat up a nonstick skillet to medium-high. Melt a little butter in it and plop down a nice thick piece of pound cake. Let it sit for a minute or two and then flip it, with a little more butter if you need some, and let it toast on the other side. Now put it on a plate with some ice cream and eat it. The outside gets crispy like a grilled cheese and the inside is warm, super soft and almost gooey. Yeah, that's the stuff. Elegant and fancy? Not really. Wicked fricking awesome? Hell yeah. In fact, it's my new favorite way to eat pound cake, it's even better than just eating a slice out of hand. I wish I had gotten an interior shot for you guys, but once the fork goes in there's no stopping until it's gone.

Chocolate Chip Muffins and A Light Review

Ok, the muffins are really secondary to this post. It's really about the early birthday present my girlfriend got me. See, she had noticed that I was a little upset about the lighting in our new apartment. I'm not sure what tipped her off, but it was probably the big holes in the walls I put there with my head. Or possibly the palpable miasma of fury that filled the apartment whenever I would try to take pictures of anything less photogenic than a cookie. Or maybe we discussed it like rational adults and decided that seeing as how we were good and did our taxes early this year we should each get something nice. It was probably at least one of those. Heh.

I got her a laptop for her birthday (not particularly early) and she got me a Lowel Ego light for mine (very early). So to test it out I made muffins. I figured I would start slow, with something nice and easy. It's a good light, I like it. It works well, although the pics still do need a little adjustment with some software. But not as much as before and the pictures come out much sharper. Which is nice seeing how "dull/unsharp" is second only to the cop-out "composition" in reasons that certain food photo websites reject so much of my stuff. Heh.

So, if you're looking for a light, it's pretty good and not too expensive. You do have to assemble it yourself which was kind of a pain and that says something since I love putting stuff together.

I'm afraid I don't have a recipe for the muffins, I kind of cobbled them together from several different recipes, to use what I had on hand. They were all right, but not so good that I'm going to try to recreate them. I just wanted something easy to take pictures of.

So all you food photographers out there, what kind of light do you use? Natural? Artificial? If so, what kind?

Hazelnut Chocolate Brownie Cookies

I love chocolate and hazelnuts together, it's one of my all time favorite combos. But for some reason up until just the other day I had never thought to actually go out and buy a bag of hazelnuts. Can you believe that?

I'm not sure why, but I had hazelnuts stored in the part of my brain labeled "want/cannot have/weak". Until one day I had an epiphany. Now, I remember this clearly because all of the things I was doing were so out of character.

I was sitting in front of the computer (this is where you gasp). Eating a hazelnut/chocolate bar (now you should clutch your pearls and emit a more startled gasp). And reading food blogs (you may now place the back of your hand on your forehead and faint from shock). When someone mentioned a bag of hazelnuts they had in their pantry.

And I said, "You can buy bags of hazelnuts!? $@#%!".

I'm not sure why I was surprised, but there it is. Heh. So I went out and got some. Then I needed something to make.

I remembered reading this post over at Yes, We Cook! and thought some hazelnut chocolate cookies were in order. Then I remembered some brownie cookies my mom made once when I was a kid. They were wicked good, a perfect combination of chewy/gooey/awesome. They were spectacular. I loved them. I wanted to make them, with hazelnuts. The only problem is that after that first time my mom made them she lost the recipe and we never found it again. It's like some kind of Greek tragedy. Sort of. But fortunately the internet was there for me. I punched "brownie cookie" in and got a metric web-load of recipes.

The one I finally decided on was from Brown Eyed Baker and the only change I made was to add the chopped hazelnuts (I know you can't see them, but I assure you they're in there). The dough was quite thin when I first finished mixing it, but letting it rest for fifteen minutes or so made it thicker and easier to work with. I did make a batch with it right away (I only have one functional sheet pan right now) and it came out fine. But I liked it better after it had rested a bit. The cookies came out a bit taller too.
The bottom line, though, is this: the recipe is awesome, it's now my default chocolate cookie. It's also the closest to recreating those cookies my mom made that I've gotten so far. And frankly, I have a feeling those cookies have been flavored by nostalgia at this point and nothing will ever live up to them. Heh.