Stop 1. Maine Whoopie Pies

Ladies and Gentlemen, the road trip has begun.  Thanks to my parents, I have the perfect shirt to wear on this adventure (one that I have chopped up and re-sewn, but nonetheless), and there is a department meeting tomorrow, so what better way to kick off this road trip than feeding whoopie pies to a bunch of disgruntled librarians?


And so, we begin our trip in the far northeastern state of Maine where they are known for blueberries, snow and whoopie pies.

Now, in the book, Warren Brown acknowledges that it is true that the whoopie pie most likely originated in Pennsylvania Dutch country, so all you Pennsylvanians, don't get in a huff.  He states though, that regardless of this fact, at this point they are ubiquitously MAINE.

I followed the recipe to a T, and these babies came out perfectly.  They're all even almost the same size, thanks to my "trigger-release food scooper" (his words, not mine.  He also referred to a toothpick as a wooden skewer, but we'll let that go).  The cakes are fluffy and moist and the icing is incredible.  Like fresh, warm, homemade marshmallow fluff.  And now that I know how to make it, I fear for my waist line.

From this first stop on my road trip, I did learn a number of things.  1. Superfine sugar really is SUPERFINE, which means it's even more difficult to clean up when you dump it all over yourself.  2. Shower AFTER baking next time.  3. Cream of Tartar isn't really all that necessary (OK, I lied earlier when I said I followed the recipe to a T.  I didn't have cream of tartar, so I left it out and I left out the amaretto cause I think it's gross) if you're willing to put in the extra arm work.  4. Following the baker's notes really pays off.  In this case, Warren Brown pointed out that this frosting recipe, which involves whipping egg whites and sugar over a pot of simmering water, needs to be done with a handheld mixer and that if you don't have one, you should be prepared to whisk straight for five minutes.  My arm muscles not being what they used to be (?), I borrowed a handheld mixer from our home ec teacher at school.  What a difference it made!  They're great little gadgets, I might just have to get myself one.

Ingredients ready to go for the cakes.

cakes ready to go into the oven

batch one out of the oven

Ingredients for the frosting.  Note here how I used my double boiler.  Most of America seems to think it's as good to float a bowl precariously on top of a pot of simmering water, but I say, if you've got a handle, you might as well use it!

I didn't realize how well this picture would come out. 

Marshmallow-y goodness!

Cakes waiting to be frosted and sandwiched

frosted

Sandwiched!

And all packed up and ready for school!

So far, the road trip is off to a great start.  I'm glad you all are coming along and happy for those of you who get to taste these gems tomorrow.  

Next stop: New Hampshire Pumpkin Pancakes and Rhode Island Johnnycakes

*I am happy to say that the whoopie pies were a grand success.  They participated at a librarians meeting, social studies department meeting and afternoon snack at my parents'.  I think the greatest compliment I received was when my 2 1/2 year old niece turned to me (after going in for her second piece) and said, "I LIKE this!"  Grammy spent a good few minutes wiping marshmallow off her face that afternoon... (I wish I had a picture - I'll have to make them again!)

The Road Trip

Miss Chessman's Cakes is embarking on a new adventure.  A metaphorical road trip.  This inspired the blog makeover, and is inspiring me to explore baked treats from across the country.

Here's what happened.  I was sitting in a bookstore on Valentine's Day waiting for a friend and picked up some cookbooks to browse through.  Most of them baking ones were pretty mundane, but one caught my interest: United Cakes of America: recipes celebrating every state by Warren Brown, the author of Cakelove.  I didn't know anything about Warren Brown at the time, but have since learned that he is a pretty well-known baker, with a bunch of Cakelove bakery locations in the Washington, DC area and was host of the Food Network show Sugar-Rush.  UC of A is his new book, having been published in May of 2010.

In his introduction, he said that listening to people talk about their favorite home-town treats made him start thinking about what we bake and how we bake it.  What connects a cake with a state, is it history, heritage, crop production-based?  Warren embarked on a mission to find out what cakes (or really baked goods) places are known for and why.

I am piggy-backing off of his work and have decided to bake the United Cakes of America.  (I let him do the hard work and jumped then jumped on the bandwagon).  A la "Julie and Julia," I have purchased the cookbook and am determined to make every recipe in it.  Seems straightforward enough, right?  Fifty states, fifty cakes, one year, even giving me two extras to call in sick or lazy.  That would have worked if Mr. Brown hadn't decided to write about more than one cake from certain states, bringing his total number of recipes up to 71.

So here's the plan: I will bake every recipe in this cookbook over the period of a year and a half.  I'm going to aim to do one recipe every weekend (though I do reserve the right to be sick or lazy once in a while).  I will stick to the recipes as closely as I can (i.e. I'll cook the one with bananas even though I hate bananas), but I might make slight changes if I don't think it will change the integrity of the cake for reasons of personal taste or expense (i.e. I might change peaches to plumbs since I don't like peaches, but do like plumbs).  In the end, I will have baked 71 recipes, expanded my kitchen resources and made for some very happy co-workers, family and friends.  There are recipes in here that seem as simple as pie (ha!) and some that I can't even begin to understand the recipe.  But, like every road trip - it's an adventure!

Up first: Maine Whoopie Pies

In preparation for a tea party a friend and I have in the works, I decided to test some recipes.  The one I did today was for tea cakes.  The recipe I used was from Williams Sonoma and called Lime Tea Cakelets.  It called for the mini cakes to be baked in a mini swirl pan, but they don't make a mini swirl pan, and neither does anyone else as far as I could tell, so I made it in my mother's bundt pan instead. 

Adjustments (of course): Besides the bigger pan, I also only had one lime, so I used the lime and then about half an orange.  The cake was VERY limey as it was, so I don't think I missed much on that one.  I also steeped to Earl Grey tea bags in the milk, assuming they were about a tablespoon filled each.  The thought of steeping tea in hot milk was absolute decadence to me, which made me wonder about my view of indulgence.  The cake had pretty much no tea flavor, but I don't know if it was just supposed to be subtle, or because of the bags vs. loose tea.  Come to think of it, we actually have loose Earl Grey here (at my mother's).  I made a pot of it last week and my 2 1/2 year old niece picked up a dried leaf and said, "I can eat this?"  We decided on no.  Or yes, but it might not taste good.  She eats basil off the plant though, so there's no telling what will work. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The cake baked up quite nicely (in 40 minutes for the full-sized), and came out of it's pan nicely as well. Because it's Superbowl Sunday, we indulged and had dessert at around 4pm (which we later decided was tea), and will eat dinner during the game. The whit stuff is whipped cream because, well, why not have whipped cream when you can?  We pretended it was clotted cream.  We also looked up the recipe for clotted cream in the 1964 Joy of Cooking, but the first direction in the recipe was pretty much literally, "get a cow," so we stuck with whipped.  Recipe below the pictures. 

Lime Tea Cakelets

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. Earl Grey tea leaves, steeped in 3/4 cup hot milk for 10-15 minutes
8 Tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten with 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract and grated zest of 2 limes
Confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Directions:

• Have all ingredients at room temperature.
• Position rack in lower thrid of oven and preheat to 325F.
• Butter and flour wells of a swirl cake pan; tap out excess flour.
• Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt onto a sheet of waxed paper; set aside.
• Pour milk through a fine-mesh sieve into a small bowl. Press liquid from tea leaves; discard leaves.
• In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter on medium speed until creamy, about 30 seconds.
• Add sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes; stop mixer and scrap bowl occasionally.
• Add eggs, a little at a time, beating well after each addition. 
• On very low speed, add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with milk and ending with flour; blend each addition until just incorporated. Scrape sides of bowl occasionally.
• Fill wells in pan a little more than halfway.
• Bake until cakes spring back when touched and pull away from sides of pan, 10-12 minutse.
• Transfer to a cooling rack, cool to the touch and remove cakes from pan.
• Repeat with remaining batter.
• Dust with confectioners' sugar.

Serves 12

Adapted from Sweet Miniatures, by Flo Braker (Chronicle Books, 2000).

The "Healthier" Nachos

I invented healthier nachos.  Kind of.

I was making wonton crackers to dip in whatever amazing creations I was going to create in the Magic Bullet and I realized that there was no reason I could make nachos out of them.  And it worked!

To make the wonton crackers you buy pre-made wonton wrappers in the produce section of the grocery store (I like the round ones, though the square ones make a more traditional triangle chip).  Cut them in half and put them in a single layer onto a baking sheet that's been sprayed with cooking spray.  Then spray them again and sprinkle them with salt.  Bake them at 375 for between 5 and 10 minutes.  I haven't really mastered how long they have to cook for, so I check them after 5 minutes and then check every two minutes or so.  There is a very fine line between done and overdone, so when they begin to look brown all over, pull them out.

To make the nachos I overlapped a layer of chips on a baking sheet that I'd lined with parchment (so as not to have to scrape melted cheese off the pan later), sprinkled it with leftover 4-cheese Mexican blend I had leftover, put another overlapping layer on top and sprinkled that with cheese.  I baked the whole thing at 400 for about 4 minutes, though again, check that often so the cheese doesn't burn.

I had made a salsa-guacamole mix with the magic blender with tomato, avocado, cilantro, onion, scallion, jalapeno and green pepper, so I used that as a dip.

The chips were really good with the cheese and it's a much lower-fat alternative to corn chips, and better tasting alternative to baked corn chips, which I don't like.  And they're all flour, which is good for people who can't eat corn (like my dad).

I didn't take any pictures, but there will definitely be more in my future!  I've been toying with the idea of putting the wonton rounds into mini muffin pans and using them as mini bowls or scoops.  I'll let you know what happens.

3/7/11 - update
Here are some pics:

The Magic Bullet

It was my birthday the other day and was given a Magic Bullet as a gift.  For those of you who don't know what the Magic Bullet is, you obviously don't watch as many infomercials as I do.

The Magic Bullet is a blender that does it all!

Actually, sarcasm aside, it kind of does do it all, and pretty well, at least as of day three of use.

So far, I've used it to make a sauce for the pulled chicken I made the other night, a peanut sauce for peanut noodles, salsa-mole (that's like salsa with avocados in it), and an edamame dip kind of thing.

It's an interesting little contraption.  My main concern at the moment is that it doesn't have a snow-removal attachment (we've gotten a little bit of snow recently.)  (That WAS sarcasm.)

Check back for more Magi'bullicious (I just made that word up) recipes.

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

There is a chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cooks Illustrated that I've wanted to make for ages.  Since today was a snow day, I decided to indulge myself.  So, after shoveling for an hour or so and then cleaning the kitchen, it was cookie time.

The reason I hadn't ever made this specific recipe before is because you have to brown the butter and I am afraid of browning butter.  I've done it a few times, for the caramel ice cream cake and brown sugar cookies  and every time I feel like I am doing something wrong.  For the ice cream cake, I am pretty sure I burnt the butter, the cookies, I think I didn't brown it enough. It was enough to keep me away from anything involving browning and butter, but I put my fear aside today and went for it.

To be honest, I have no idea if I did it right, the butter didn't really seem brown, but the cookies came out incredibly.  They are big and gooey and filled with chocolate and have that toffee-ish flavor, just like the recipe said they would.  I did a few things differently (because it wouldn't be me if I hadn't).  I didn't have dark brown sugar, so I used light brown and molasses (ratio 1 cup light brown sugar:1 tablespoon molasses - thank you to my wonderful brother and sister-in-law for the substitutions bible).    I always like the flavor a little better when I use molasses instead of brown sugar because it tastes a little more smokey.  And adding the chocolate chips worked out very well.  I also added another half cup of chocolate chips because I wasn't adding nuts.  I ended up with 18 cookies instead of 16 because my cookie sheets were smaller, so I did three batches.

In conclusion, these cookies were intimidating to make, but if the rest of them are anything like the one I ate 12 seconds after it came out of the oven, they were totally worth the trouble.  Now I need to get them out of the house so I can continue to be able to button my pants.

Recipe below the pictures.

PERFECT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Makes 16 cookies.   Published May 1, 2009.   From Cook's Illustrated.

Avoid using a nonstick skillet to brown the butter; the dark color of the nonstick coating makes it difficult to gauge when the butter is browned. Use fresh, moist brown sugar instead of hardened brown sugar, which will make the cookies dry. This recipe works with light brown sugar, but the cookies will be less full-flavored. For our winning brand of chocolate chips, see related tasting.

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4	cups unbleached all-purpose flour (8 3/4 ounces)
1/2	teaspoon baking soda
14	tablespoons unsalted butter (1 3/4 sticks)
1/2	cup granulated sugar (3 1/2 ounces)
3/4	cups packed dark brown sugar (5 1/4 ounces) (see note)
1	teaspoon table salt
2	teaspoons vanilla extract
1	large egg
1	large egg yolk
1 1/4	cups semisweet chocolate chips or chunks (see note)
3/4	cup chopped pecans or walnuts, toasted (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. 1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 large (18- by 12-inch) baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.
2. 2. Heat 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl. Stir remaining 4 tablespoons butter into hot butter until completely melted.
3. 3. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated. Add egg and yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny. Using rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if using), giving dough final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
4. 4. Divide dough into 16 portions, each about 3 tablespoons (or use #24 cookie scoop). Arrange 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets, 8 dough balls per sheet. (Smaller baking sheets can be used, but will require 3 batches.)
5. 5. Bake cookies 1 tray at a time until cookies are golden brown and still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cool cookies completely before serving.

The Coconut Chicken Skewers

It's been a little bit since I last posted, and it's not that I haven't been cooking, it's just that I having been documenting as well as I should have.   For example, I made chocolate mint brownies and peanut butter M&M cookies for New Year's Eve, but I didn't take any pictures of them.  And I made Vanilla Cupcakes with Chai Frosting for a coworker's birthday, but I didn't take any pictures of those either.  I also recently made Pumpkin Gnocchi from scratch, with Arugula Pistachio Pesto, and didn't take any pictures of that.  There's some of that left in the freezer though, so there's still a potential for pictures there.

Something I did take pictures of recently though, were the Coconut Chicken Skewers.  I had these at a restaurant a few weekends ago while watching the Pats beat the Dolphins.  They were called Tropical Skewers and described as, "chicken tenders coated with shredded coconut and panko breadcrumbs, fried to a golden brown and served with a pineapple curry sauce and fruit salsa."  They were incredible.  Being that they were incredible, I, of course, had to attempt to recreate them on my own.  And of course, since I was making them at home, I had to make the healthy version.  Because I have issues.  We've discussed this.

I  breaded the chicken tenders in panko and coconut and baked them in the oven for a while.  I also made a salsa from red pepper, pineapple, jalapeno, mandarin oranges and coconut, as well as a hot sauce from rooster sauce and something else, maybe orange juice (my birthday's in a few weeks, obviously the mind's going).

It all was very tasty, and the colors were pretty for this time of year.  But they weren't anywhere nearly as good as the ones at the restaurant.  I am not really all that surprised; it's hard to recreated dried goodness with oven baked-ness, but it was worth a shot.  I would definitely make them again.