Chewy Sticky Yummy

Posted by Kathryn @ 10:02 AM

The month of April has officially become comfort eating April. I felt like things just didn't want to go my way, except in the kitchen. So I have baked and baked and baked. One weekend I made my mom's sticky bun recipe. Actually the dough is a really nice all purpose sweet dough good for cinnamon rolls, nut rolls, sticky buns you name it. I like the texture because they are soft on the inside with a nice tang from the buttermilk, but the outer edges toast up nicely to add some crunch. This particular weekend though I wanted to caramel flavor. My husband cannot resist anything that has a caramel or butterscotch component. This is best made on a day when your kitchen is slightly warm to help aid in the rising times. No one wants to wait until noon for the buns to come out of the oven.

2 t yeast or about 1 packet
1/4 c warm water
5/8 c buttermilk
1 egg
3 c flour
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
1/4 c soft butter
1/4 c sugar

If you desire lightly sticky buns-
1 stick butter
1 c brown sugar
1T. water
additional raisins, nuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon optional

Dissolve yeast in warm water with 1 T. sugar, let sit for 10 minutes. Add buttermilk, egg, 1/2 flour, butter, rest of sugar, and baking powder. Mix well. Stir in remaining flour. Dough should be soft and slightly stick. Knead 5 minutes. Roll out dough. Spread with softened butter. Sprinkle on cinnamon, raisins, nuts, and brown sugar as desired. Roll up and cut into 12 rolls.

Meanwhile heat 1 stick butter and 1 cup brown sugar on stove with a tablespoon of water. Bring to a boil. Pour into 8x13 Pyrex baking pan. If you want extra caramel on your rolls, then just make a slightly larger batch of this mixture. Add rolls on top of sugar in rows.

Let rolls rise for an hour. Bake 25-30 minutes at 375. You may want to put another baking pan underneath to catch any spills. I cannot begin to tell you how burnt sugar can end up ruining this or another baking experience to come.

I like to add lots of raisins or dried fruit in the filling step. Just remember when you cut the dough into rolls, some of the raisins will poke out. Try to hide these back within the dough or you can end up with slightly burnt raisins... less than yummy.

Lazy Sunday Sweets

Posted by Kathryn @ 8:00 PM

When I was about 8 or 9, my neighbors in Dhahran, the Jesson's would sometimes bring over cherry coffeecake. I adored this coffeecake, basically because I loved anything that had cherry pie filling. At the same time I was enamored with plum sauce and sweet and sour sauce at Chinese restaurants. Clearly there was something about sweet red cornstarch thickened mixtures that tantalized me.

In a moment of nostaglia, I decided to make the aforementioned cherry coffeecake. With a couple of tweaks.

Cherry Coffee Cake
* 4 eggs
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 1/2 tsp. almond extract
* 2 cups flour
* 1 tsp. baking powder
* 1/8 tsp. salt
* 1 tsp. cinnamon
* 1 (15 oz.-20oz) can cherry pie filling if you do not make your own buy Comstock's Light

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In large bowl, beat eggs with sugar, vegetable oil, and almond extract until well blended. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon and mix just until batter is combined.

Grease a 9x13" baking pan with unsalted butter and dust with flour. Spread half of the batter in prepared pan. Spoon small dollops of the pie filling over the batter, then spoon remaining batter on top of pie filling (the batter won't cover all of the pie filling; that's okay!).

Bake at 350 degrees F for 35-45 minutes or until coffee cake is deep golden brown. Place on wire rack to cool while making frosting.

Powdered Sugar Frosting
* 1/4 cup butter (NOT margarine)
* 2 cups powdered sugar
* 2-3 Tbsp. milk
* 1/2 tsp. vanilla
* 3 tbsp. cream cheese
* 1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted

In small saucepan over medium low heat, melt butter. Cook butter over low heat, watching carefully, for 4-7 minutes until butter just begins to brown. Remove pan from heat and stir in powdered sugar, 2 Tbsp. milk, and cream cheese along with vanilla; beat well. You may need to add more powdered sugar or milk to reach desired consistency. Drizzle frosting over warm cake and sprinkle with almonds.

These days pre-made cherry pie filling does not draw me in quite the same way, I prefer the fresher tastes of homemade pie fillings. I also find plain powdered sugar frostings, just too sweet. So I added the cream cheese to the frosting and a handful of dried cherries to the pie filling to give it a sour oomph. Next time I am going to make my cherry raspberry pie filling for this coffee cake instead to really update it, but it was the perfect dish to perk me up after a pretty crummy month. I would love any suggestions you cooks out there may have to update this dish even more!

Memories of Katz's

Posted by Kathryn @ 2:59 PM

As a Texan, I have been to Katz's Deli in Austin. It is most famous for the fact that it is open 24 hours. This is an important thing in a college town like Austin. I cannot claim Austin as my college town, but I can claim that I love the cheesecake milkshake at Katz's. So when the cheesecake fiasco occurred, I did what every resourceful cook would do... reuse the ingredients in a new way. Many thoughts passed through my head including a cheesecake sauce for fresh berries, but what stuck was the cheesecake shake. Now milkshakes don't have precise recipes, but the jist is this:

1 part cheesecake (no crust)
1 part vanilla icecream
1/2 part milk (add slowly)
splash of vanilla.

Blend the heck out of this ( If you make a lot, it can make your blender complain)

Serve in shake glasses with whipped cream and crushed graham cracker topping. Sorry no pics available... they were devoured in seconds.

Cheesecake Fiasco begins

Posted by Kathryn @ 2:18 PM

Admittedly, I approached this month's Daring Baker's Challenge with "Oh that will be easy." This month’s challenge was from Deborah of Taste and Tell and Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms .They chose a fun party recipe for chocolate coated cheesecake pops from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor. Now that the challenge is over I can safely say that I have no intention of making cheese cake pops again! I am a cheesecake devotee, unfortunately my dear husband does not share my sentiments, so I don't make cheesecake very often. This challenge gave me the perfect excuse. This very weekend I had a dinner party planned and I thought these would make a crowning last touch.

So on Thursday night I baked the cheesecake. I decided to use amaretto for flavoring rather than the vanilla because I thought it would go well with toasted almond topping. My current oven is less than accurate or reliable, making each baking episode an adventure. This time... the cheesecake just didn't want to bake. It looked relatively done at 60 minutes so I took it out and put it in the freezer. I don't know why I just seemed to remember that the directions said to freeze the cheesecake ( but that was actually a much later step) So on Saturday, the day of my dinner I pull it out to start cutting the cheesecake pop shapes. The first two, beautiful! The next a blob of goo. Realization washed over me that it wasn't done... Oh no! and I only had a few hours until the guests were coming. So I pop it back in the oven and started to check it spastically. Needless to say I took it out a couple more times just to find that it still wasn't quite perfect because of course now the cheesecake was warm and not chilled and set. So shaping was out of the question. Before you know it , the cheesecake was back in the freezer for another round of chilling.

30 minutes before the party was to start I tried dipping a few of my creations. They looked sad and pathetic. The cheesecake wanted to fall off the popsicle sticks leaving bits in my melted chocolate... what a waste of gorgeous chocolate. So I decided to quit making them and wait until Sunday morning to make some presentable cheesecake pops.

Sunday was a whole new day and the cheesecake pops came together nicely. Instead of dipping the pops I went with a drizzling method. I topped each pop with either almonds or crushed graham cracker. The final result was delicious, but I think I will stick with more traditional cheesecake forms in the future! The amaretto was more subtle than I hoped, next time I try flavoring cheesecake with it I will probably add some almond extract. All in all I have learned a lot about trying to shape cheesecake and knowing when cheesecakes are done in an unreliable oven! Thanks Daring Bakers for bringing me in to the fold. I look forward to the next challenge!

Cheesecake Pops

Makes 30 – 40 Pops

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature

2 cups sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

5 large eggs

2 egg yolks

2 teaspoons amaretto

¼ cup heavy cream

Boiling water as needed

Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks

1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate – candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.)

2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

Assorted decorations - crushed graham crackers give a nice crunch, toasted almonds play well with the amaretto

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.