Celebrate with Eggless Coffee Cake.

So, around my office, I’m kinda known as the dessert queen – and I’m ok with that. I’m always testing out new creations on my very-willing-to-be-taste-testing coworkers, and they always give me honest feedback, so it’s a win-win. I’m also always making the goodies when someone’s birthday rolls around. Well last week, someone in my office conveniently “forgot” to tell anyone that it was his birthday, until we found out accidentally later that afternoon (when the HR rep delivered his birthday card in front of all of us – ha ha). But no one gets off that easy. I decided that I would whip up a quick better-late-than-never birthday cake that night, and surprise him the next morning.

I flipped through my recipe binder, and decided a small coffee cake would be perfect. I had all the ingredients (so I thought) and I even had some leftover cinnamon chips that would be an excellent addition to the batter. I started going to work. Three ingredients in and I suddenly realized – I was all out of eggs. Yikes. I really didn’t feel like running out and getting them – I already started the whole cake making process!

running on empty.

But then, I had an idea. I’ve made vegan cakes in the past, and they sometimes use white vinegar in place of eggs. I did have white vinegar, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a tray. I guesstimated that two tablespoons of vinegar per egg would be sufficient. I definitely didn’t want to go too heavy on the vinegar and wind up with an overpoweringly gross vinegar cake.

my hero.

Well, once again, those two years of pastry school paid off – the cake was delicious – I dare say even better with the vinegar!

eggless and proud of it.

I guess it’s true what they say – never settle for the same old cake.  (Ok so no one really ever said that. But it does seem to be true.) Change really can be a good thing, my friends. Even good ol’ eggs can be replaced by something better, if you look around a bit.

 

The Brussels Chocolate Shop Tour, Stop #8: Zaabär.

Looking at my map upon exiting Stop #7 (Wittamer), I realized I had a bit of a walk ahead of me. Zaabär was the farthest of all the shops. It was on the other side of the business district. But I’m a walker by nature (not cause I hate ya), so I sucked it up, and strode onward. The walk was really quite nice. I got to glimpse another side of the city – the city center – full of old buildings and new towers, peacefully coexisting side by side, with hundreds of working folks and tourists passing by in a continuous stream. I walked with eyes wide open, taking it all in, including this random tree, in the middle of a city block.

an Ent, maybe?

I have no idea really what kind of tree it even was – but it definitely struck my fancy. After a few more turns, I finally arrived at…

Stop #8: Zaabär.

Upon entering Zaabär, I was brought face to face with an area where the chocolate was being made, on display, behind a glass wall for tourists to see.  To the right, was a long corridor, with fun images of chocolate making on the wall.

diy chocolate.

At the end of the hall, was the shop itself. Zaabär was clean, and modern, and classy. It reminded me of IKEA. The only thing missing were Swedish meatballs.

affordable solutions for better living?

There were people milling around, seriously discussing their pending purchases. This shop was no joke. I wondered around for a bit, poking my nose into all the displays.  They had a giant section devoted entirely to flavored chocolate, some on the rather exotic side. I spied a lavender chocolate, and I was sold. I purchased a cinnamon as well, along with a rose.  It was a very tough decision – they had an amazing selection of some pretty intense flavors. But I was able to eventually narrow it down.

craft chocolates.

I also couldn’t resist the truffles…so I picked up a two pack of them, too.

Well, needless to say, this was some good stuff.  It was different  – I’ve never really had chocolate quite like it.  It was like the craft beer of chocolate. Once you try it, you really can’t imagine drinking Coors again (not that I ever did…).

Next up, Stop #9, Laurent Gerbaud: The happiest chocolate shop on earth.

 

Ch-ch-ch-churros! (recipe included!)

Recently, I was invited to a Mexican food-themed dinner party. Everyone was bringing their favorite Mexican dish, and I, as always, volunteered to provide dessert. I really wasn’t sure what to do though. I started thinking about my favorite Mexican restaurants, and what delicious meal-ending sweets I’ve enjoyed there…

My first thought was fried ice cream. I haven’t had it in years, and it has always been near and dear to my sweet heart. But I don’t own a deep fryer, and I foresaw the giant ice creamy mess that would certainly ensue. So that was out. Then I remembered Churros. Again, the first recipe I came across called for a deep fryer, but thinking back to the only other time I made them, which was in pastry school, no deep fryer was needed. We just heated up the oil to the proper temperature (which is key in this case) in a large pan, and dipped them in. I consulted my text book to be sure, and so it was written.

churros in a pan of oil.

I wound up combining two recipes into one, and added my own cinnamon sugar topping. The results? Perfecto!

delicioso postre.

My homemade Churros were a huge hit at the dinner party, and will definitely be called upon again for future dessert needs, whether it be a Mexican-themed party, or any event where a sweet treat is required (which is pretty much any event, in my book).

three cheers for churros!

.

Cinnamon Sugar Churros.

What you’ll need:

1 cup water

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

additional vegetable oil (for frying)

1 cup sugar + 1 tblsp cinnamon (combined)

What you’ll do:

Depending on how big you want your churros, fill a saucepan or deep frying pan with oil, at least two inches high (enough to completely cover the churros). In a separate saucepan, combine water, oil, salt and sugar, and bring to a boil. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder. Once the water mixture boils, remove from heat and pour into the flour/baking powder, stirring vigorously until it pulls away from the sides of the bowl and forms a solid ball – it should form a thick dough. At this time, begin heating the oil until it is between 350 and 375. Fit a pastry bag with a large star tip, and pipe logs of dough directly into the oil. You can make them as long or as short as you like. Fry them until they are golden brown. Remove them from the oil, and place on a paper towel. While still warm, coat in cinnamon sugar. Churros are best when served right away – they start to get “chewy” if kept for any longer than a day.

 

Recipe Tuesday Afternoon: Pumpkin Rosemary Pie.

Serendipity has always been one of my favorite words – even before the movie with John Cusack (which is also one of my favorite movies). I love the idea of a fortunate accident - that every event happens for a reason and contributes to the making of something truly great. In this case, it’s a pumpkin pie – with rosemary.

Two simultaneous events lead to the serendipitous creation of this particular pie :

1. I was given a container of fresh rosemary yesterday morning. It smelled wonderful. I had no idea what to do with it, but i knew I  had to do something – it was much too good to just go untouched and its freshness wouldn’t last forever. I had to strike while the iron was hot.

the scent of the gods.

2. I got sick. Sometimes bad things happen for a good reason. In fact, they usually do. I was going to have my friend over on Monday night and I was originally going to make a pumpkin pie on Sunday night for it. I got sick, and did not make the pie on Sunday night. I told my friend yesterday morning that I should be ok by Tuesday night (tonight) so we could reschedule. Then I was given the rosemary. Then I wound up feeling worse, and stayed home from work today. However, this gave me plenty of time to focus on the pie, and as I began getting the ingredients together, I saw the rosemary on the counter. So I did what any adventurous baker would do – I added it in.

pumpkin, fate, rosemary and time.

The resulting pie was truly meant to be: I’ve never made a better pie in my life, and that’s the truth. And now you can make it too – because good things are always meant to be shared. And life’s too short to let your rosemary go bad – you never know when it might come your way again.

pie love.

Pumpkin Rosemary Pie.

The Crust:

What you’ll need:

10 whole cinnamon graham cracker sheets

¼ cup confectioners’ sugar

6 tablespoons butter (melted)

What you’ll do:

Preheat the oven to 475. Combine the graham crackers, sugar, and melted butter in a food processor. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a 9” pie pan. Bake for 7-8 minutes, until slightly brown and set.

The Filling:

What you’ll need:

1 cup fat-free milk

15 oz pumpkin puree

2 eggs

¾ cup sugar

2 tablespoons corn starch

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon fresh minced rosemary

What you’ll do:

Preheat the oven to 350. In a large bowl, combine the milk, pumpkin, and eggs.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, corn starch, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and rosemary until well combined, then fold it into pumpkin mixture. Pour mixture into pre-baked crust, until it almost reaches the top (you will most likely have some extra filling – enough for a personal-sized pie!).  Bake for 50 – 55 minutes, or when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

The Topping:

What you’ll need:

1 lb heavy cream

2.5 oz confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and cinnamon. Add the sugar and cinnamon mixture and the vanilla to the cream, and continue whipping until is forms stiff peaks. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.

a little piece of heaven.

 

Recipe Sunday: Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies.

Today it rained – a lot. I’m not complaining. It gave me the chance to stay in, relax, and do my favorite thing: bake. Truthfully, I would have baked anyway, but there’s something extra comforting about baking on a cold, rainy day – maybe it’s the warmth of the oven…who knows. But it is, what is, and I bake, therefore I am.

Anyway, this Sunday’s dessert of choice was Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies. My recipe is based on  this one, but I modified and tweaked it over the years, and I feel it’s finally reached cookie enlightenment. The reason I chose these for this Recipe Sunday was two-fold: I was planning on sending a long-distance friend one of my creations, and it had to be something both that he liked, and could be shipped. He loves cookies, and cookies are easily shippable. And so it was written. Hopefully he likes them, and you do, too!!

delivered to your doorstep!!

Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies

What you’ll need:

1 cup minus 1 tbsp butter

1 cup dark brown sugar

1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 cups oats

1 1/2 cups Hershey’s Cinnamon Chips

What you’ll do:

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter, brown sugar, and sugar together until fluffy and well-mixed. In a small separate bowl, whisk together the eggs and vanilla, and add to the butter/sugar, mixing well. In another bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda, and add, mixing until everything is just combined – do not over mix! Fold in the oats, then fold in the cinnamon chips. Spoon into heaping spoonfuls (or use something like this – it really makes it so much easier and they turn out looking much cleaner) onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. I fit about 15 on a sheet. Bake for 8-9 minutes, until the edges are golden-brown. Makes about 4 dozen.

 

The Return of Recipe Sunday: Banana Caramel Cake.

I was starting to feel guilty for abandoning Recipe Sunday for the past two weeks, so I decided that I would make up a recipe tonight on the fly and hope that it turned out good enough to post! Well tonight I give thanks to the baking gods, because it sure did. It’s a pretty simple cake, too, with a simple cinnamon glaze on top. I found this funky cake pan with raised dots on top mixed in with all the old pans my Aunt passed down to me, and I’ve been dying to use it, so I figured, what the heck – lets use it tonight, just for the pure joy of trying something new.

Dr. Seuss would totally bake a cake in this.

Ok, I admit it – I used caramel flavoring and not “real” caramel. Don’t tell my pastry school teachers. ;P

And away we go….

glaze of glory.

Banana Caramel Cake (In a funky pan):

What you’ll need:

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp oil

1/2 tsp caramel flavor

1 tbsp baking powder

1 cup AP flour

1/2 cup fat-free or skim milk

1/2 of a medium-sized banana (mashed)

What you’ll do:

Preheat oven to 350° F.  Mix sugar, egg, oil, and caramel flavor. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder. Add to egg mixture alternately with milk. Fold in the mashed banana. Baking time will vary depending on what pan you use, but it took 25 minutes in the funky pan.

Cinnamon Butter Glaze.

Combine 1/4 cup butter (melted), 1 tsp cinnamon, and add confectioner’s sugar until desired consistency is reached (I used 1/2 a cup).

 

Recipe Tuesday Afternoon (Delight): Cinnamon Chip Carrot Cake.

Full disclosure: I’m really proud of my carrot cake. It’s a recipe I created myself, and is pretty close to perfection, if I do say so myself. More than one person has gone as far as dubbing it “the best carrot cake they’ve ever had in their life.” That’s no small feat, as there are probably hundreds of different carrot cakes out there. What makes mine so special, you might ask? Well, it uses real carrots for starters. It also doesn’t have nuts in it. Instead of nuts, I use Hershey’s Cinnamon Chips. I believe these chips were a gift to us from the gods – I can’t resist eating them right out of the bag. I think I may have even eaten a whole bag once. But that’s all in the past. The chips provide the crunch factor like a nut would, without the allergies, and with the addition of melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon-y goodness. Top with cream cheese icing (recipe posted here), and add a border of more chips around the base.  This cake is guaranteed to make you the most popular kid in school (or in the office – it worked for me). By the way, this cake is small – it’s a 6 incher – the perfect Small Indulgence.

Cinnamon Chip Carrot Cake.

What you’ll need:

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 cups canola oil

2 oz carrots (peeled and finely chopped)

1/4 cups Cinnamon Chips (plus extra for decorating)

What you’ll do:

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until well combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour sugar, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Pour them into the eggs and continue mixing on low speed. Add the oil and carrots and mix well. Fold in the cinnamon chips.  Grease two 6″ rounds, and divide the batter equally between them. Bake for 22 – 25 minutes.  Cool  completely on a wire rack before frosting. Share and enjoy with friends.

 

Cranberry, Gingerbread, Pumpkin, oh my!

Thanksgiving may be gone, but the leftovers remain…and will probably for at least a week or so. This is by no means a bad thing, in my book, especially where dessert is concerned. I was particularly busy this Thanksgiving, as I had not one, but three Thanksgiving celebrations to make desserts for! And I couldn’t have been more thankful for the opportunity to do so. Not only did it give me a chance to try out some recipes, but as I mentioned in the past, the flavors of fall are by far my favorite and really do make the best desserts. So this year, I spread my little baking wings, and tried three distinct dessert varieties:

1. Pumpkin.

I wound up making two pumpkin desserts, both from one cake recipe. A pumpkin cake with pumpkin buttercream:

pumpkin inside and outside.

 And out of  the leftover cake and icing, came pumpkin cake balls:

great balls of pumpkin.

 2. Cranberry.

Last year, I made a cranberry fudge pie for the first time. It turned out pretty good, but after a year of schooling, I thought I’d try again, and see if I’ve improved at all in a year.

a year's worth of pastry school was worth it.

 3. Gingerbread.

I’ve been on a gingerbread kick since I made it in class two weeks ago, so I decided to make a gingerbread cake to take over to my parents. Well, in a true act of serendipity, the cake went from good to heavenly by the mere mistake of melting too much butter. I realized it immediately after I had melted it, and didn’t add any extra butter to the recipe, but had this bowl of melted butter just sitting there, with nothing to do. “Hmmm…I bet I could make some sort of glaze with that,” I thought. So I grabbed some cinnamon and confectioners’ sugar, and next thing I knew, I had created an easy, yet amazing buttery glaze which fit the cake like a glove.

MFEO.

 I also added something else to this gingerbread cake which was entirely intentional – mashed pears. I had all these leftover little pears that were starting to turn brown and I really wanted to use them. So, I cut them up, mashed them in a bowl, added some cinnamon and brown sugar, and threw it into the batter. The result? An even moister and flavorful cake!

Now, I should be happy that I wound up with no leftover desserts – it means that everyone really liked them and that’s the goal, right?  Next year, I’ll just have to make them bigger.

 

Recipe Sunday: Chocolate Cupcakes

Finding the perfect cupcake recipe can be tricky. When I first started really getting into scratch baking, I soon realized that many of the cupcake recipes I attempted did not turn out as light, round, and “poofy” as the old box cakes. At one point, I even baked a batch that completely caved in on itself.

That was the last straw. It was time to take matters into my own hands. Utilizing the knowledge I was amassing in pastry school, particularly regarding how ingredients worked and what purpose each served (I always loved Chemistry, even as a kid), I decided to go out on a limb, and write my own chocolate cupcake recipe.

I will admit, it was not an immediate success. The first batch, although it did not cave in on itself entirely, did not “poof” – the cupcakes remained virtually flat, and some even sagged a little bit in the middle. I tweaked, and tried again. The second batch was better – no sagging at all, but still no real “poofing” either. I threw the recipe in the trash and went to bed. I gave up.

I really wish I could say that it came to me in a dream, because that would make for a really cool story, and they’d be like, magical cupcakes, however it didn’t. I woke up the next morning, and I was laying in bed quietly, savoring it up until the last possible second, when it hit me – I knew what I had to do to fix the cupcakes. I ran downstairs, and dug the recipe out of the trash (THAT was fun). I made my notes before I forgot, and when I got home from work that night, I tried the recipe, one more time.

Success. I’ve been using it ever since. And now you can too!

Dreamy Chocolate Cupcakes

What you’ll need:

1 3/4 Cups Sugar

2 Cups AP Flour

3/4 Cups Cocoa Powder

1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Salt

3 Eggs

1/2 Cup Heavy Cream

1/2 Cup Water

1/2 Cup Canola Oil

2 tsp Vanilla

What you’ll do:

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add the eggs, then the milk. Add the oil and vanilla. Pour into cupcake cups (fill 1/2 to 3/4 – depending on how big you want them). Bake for 15-18 minutes. Yields 20-24 moist and chocolatey cupcakes.

Ice them however you like:

With chocolate icing…

I triple chocolate dare you.

With cinnamon vanilla buttercream…

a little bit of cinnamon in my life.

Or, serve them completely naked.

i was talking about the cupcakes, obviously.

 

everything’s coming up streusel.

Yum, Everything’s better with streusel. I think it’s been confined to topping only coffee cakes and muffins for too long. What wouldn’t be made better by having a crumb topping of butter, flour, and white sugar? These cinnamon cupcakes I made recently sure were:

streusel my cupcake.

But these are still on the traditional side, as far as streusel goes. You could have streusel on your pudding, streusel on your cereal, even streusel on your chicken (I’d totally eat that). Or how about streusel-covered fruit! Once, I even made stand-alone streusel. I was going to use it for cupcakes, but I had planned on putting it on top of the icing, as opposed to baking it right on top of the cake, like so:

top that.

This particular cupcake was my very own creation – coffee cake cupcake, with cream cheese icing, topped with streusel. And yes, they were the tops. What I discovered while making these guys, was that streusel was super yummy even by itself. I couldn’t stop eating it. It was TOO good. Maybe that’s why you don’t see streusel for sale as a snack food. Although, I’d love to sprinkle some streusel on my ice cream…hmmm…snack-sized streusel..I think I might be on to something. ;)