It's a cold day... let's make some cookies

Chilly outside, but warm and smelling like baking inside.  Fall is here isn't it?  It sure felt like it today.  Shivering all day at work, but came home to a nice warm fire and a bag of chocolate chips.

Chocolate Chip Walnut and Butterscotch Coffee Cookies
Recipe adapted from A Zesty Bite

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks salted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 lg eggs
• 2 Tbsp plus 1 tsp brewed coffee
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp instant ground espresso
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup butterscotch chips 
• 1 cup crushed walnuts

Method:

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix b soda, flour, salt, espresso, and cinnamon in a small bowl.  Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy in electric mixer.  Add eggs and vanilla.  Add coffee.  Add dry mixture.  Add chips and walnuts.  Divide cookies between 4 baking sheets and bake for about 14 minutes, until golden brown.  

Illustration credit:  favim.com

Phil's birthday cake

It's Phil's birthday!!  Happy birthday to one of the greatest dads I know.  For this special occasion I made one of the Keitel-Sosnov family's favorite cakes, the chocolate mocha cake.  It's a simple classic chocolate cake with a coffee kick and one of the greatest chocolate icings ever.

Chocolate Mocha Cake with Mocha Icing
Recipe from the Chestnut Hill Spice Shop

Ingredients:

(cake)

• 3 1/2 cups ap flour
• 1 1/2 cups cocoa
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp b powder
• 4 tsp b soda

• 2 cups milk + 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 4 eggs
• 4 cups sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup canola oil
• 2 cups hot coffee

(icing)

• 1 stick butter
• 1 stick margarine
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp coffee
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 c powdered sugar
• splash of milk

Method:

(cake)
Preheat oven to 350 and grease and parchment 2- 9" cake pans plus at least one 12 cup muffin pan.  Sift together dry ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.  In the stand mixer mix oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.  Add dry ingredients alternating with the buttermilk in a few additions.  Add hot coffee all at once and mix til combined.  Pour batter 3/4 full into the cake pans and muffin tins, don't over-fill.  Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until cakes bounce back to the touch and a knife comes out clean.  Try to let the cakes cool completely before removing them from the pan.  Loosen the sides with a knife because this cake tends to stick- hence the parchment paper.

(icing) 
Once the cakes have cooled beat the butter and the margarine in the stand mixer until light and creamy. Add vanilla, cinnamon, coffee, and then one at a time add the sugar and cocoa.  Beat to combine in between additions.  Last add the milk just to loosen up the texture.

I drew a fish on top of my cake with some melted semisweet chocolate chips mixed with butter in my piping bag.  Phil caught us a lot of delicious blue fish when we were at the shore last week and cooked us an amazing meal of baked blue fish with garlic and fingerling potatoes.  Thanks for the fish Phil, I hope you liked your cake!!

Mocha Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes it is so hot outside that Philly public schools are getting out early and what am I doing besides online job-hunting? Heating my oven to a cool 350 degrees. That's just how I roll- sweaty and smelling like cinnamon.

This recipe comes from Annie's Eats.

Ingredients:

3½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sea salt
2 tbsp. instant coffee

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup shredded coconut



Method:

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix all dry ingredients in bowl and set aside.
Cream room temp butter and sugars in mixer until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time and mix in between.
Add vanilla and mix.
Add flour to mixer in a few additions and beat just til combined.
Add chocolate chips and coconut and mix just til combined.
Spread tablespoon-sized balls of batter onto 4 cookie sheets and bake for 14 to 16 minutes until brown on the edges.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Fresh Whipped Cream and Chocolate Ganache

That's a mouthful. This recipe comes from Plump Me Up. A perfect cake for a BBQ to share with friend and neighbors.

Cake Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon

4 eggs
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup apple sauce

3 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chocolate chips

Whipped Cream Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Chocolate Ganache Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream
4 tsp instant coffee
16 oz (2 1/2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips



Method:

Let's start with the cake shall we? No mixer required here! Preheat oven to 350. Combine all dry ingredients into one bowl and eggs, oil, and apple sauce in another bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until almost combined. Add the zucchini and the chocolate chips to the batter and mix to combine. Pour into two greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans and bake for 50 minutes or until a knife comes out almost completely clean from the cake. It's ok if there are still some moist crumbs on the knife because zucchini is a little wet any way. You want this cake to stay nice and moist, right Molly? (We like a moist cake around here) Let the cakes cool for a bit in the pan and then run a knife around the edges to remove them from the pan. Once they are room temp you can cut them each into two layers giving you a total of four layers.

While the cake is in the oven you can make the ganache by heating the cream until little bubbles form, but don't let it boil, then stir in the coffee until it is combined and then add in the chocolate chips and remove from the heat. Stir in the chocolate chips until you have a smooth ganache. Yum.

Right before you are ready to assemble the cake (once the cake layers are cool so the whip doesn't melt) make your whipped cream. With the whisk attachment of your electric mixer whip cream, sugar, and vanilla until it looks like whipped cream, duh.

Assemble the cake by layering cake then whipped cream, using all four pieces of cake with whip between layers. On the top pour ganache and spread it with an off-set knife until it drips over the sides. Put a strawberry on top and you're done!

White Chocolate Chip Mocha Cookies

Doesn't that sound good? Coffee and white chocolate in one cookie! White Chocolate is a funny thing isn't it? Not really chocolate, just oil and sugar right? But they are on sale at Acme right now so I got an opportunity to play with them.

This recipe comes from Bake Girl. I made a few changes: I subbed in a little whole wheat flour, bumped up the instant coffee, used all white sugar and a little molasses instead of brown sugar, aaaaaaaand for the first time ever I used chocolate extract that I bought a million years ago from Whole Foods.

I also finally stopped using my phone to take pictures of my food. It broke. So now I am using a real life digital camera and I think it is quite an improvement.



Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 tablespoons instant coffee granules
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar plus 2 tbsp molasses
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon chocolate extract extract

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat oven to 375.
Mix all dry ingredients in bowl and set aside (1st paragraph of ingredients)
Cream butter, sugar, and molasses in stand mixer until light and fluffy.
Add eggs and beat in between.
Add choc extract and beat.
Add dry ingredients in a couple of additions, it will fly everywhere because of the cocoa so add it when the mixer is off and pot a towel over it when you turn it on.
Add choc and white choc chips and combine.
Divide between 3 baking sheets and bake for about 15 mins, I like mine more well done so if you like them soft take them out sooner.

Mocha Banana Muffins

This recipe comes from The Happy Housewife. My aunt Nan left some chocolate milk in the fridge so I needed a muffin that would go well with it. I didn't add any sugar to this muffin because I added the milk (Wawa brand), which has sugar in it. I beefed up on the bananas and put in some instant coffee to give it an extra mocha kick.

Ingredients:

2 eggs
3/4 cup chocolate milk
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/4 cup strong black coffee
2 mashed ripe bananas
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tsp instant coffee (add to wet so it dissolves)

1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Method:

Preheat oven to 425. Mash the bananas in a large bowl and then add all of the other wet ingredients plus the instant coffee. In a separate bowl mix all of the dry ingredients and then add them to the wet ingredients. Stir just til combined. Then add your chocolate and coconut, again, mix just until combined. Pour batter into muffin tins, sprinkle with a little coconut for fun, and bake for 3 minutes at 425. Then turn down the temp to 400 and bake for about 12 more minutes or until muffins bounce back to the touch and a knife comes out clean.

Stressed Out Baking: Compost Cookies

Oh my god I am so stressed ouuuuuuuuuut!! So much stuff to do for school and so little time and patience. I wanted to make these cookies- I sort of got the recipe from The Yum Yum Factory but changed a lot of the ingredients in the end.

I've been downloading compost cookie recipes and "kitchen sink cookie" recipes for a while now so the ideas have been piling up in my head. The idea behind this cookie is sweet and salty combined in a pretty basic cookie dough. The Yum Yum Factory recipe calls for pretzels, some people used salted peanuts, potato chips, you name it. I used blue corn chips because that's what I had and I've seen them used before with good results. For the sweet you can use your typical chocolate chips, other chocolate candy like heath bar pieces, butterscotch or toffee bits, coconut, raisins, whatever you want. You can't really go wrong with this recipe. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

1 stick Butter
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup tbsp Brown sugar
1/2 tbsp Corn syrup
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1 large Egg
3/4 & 2 tbsp cups All purpose flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 cup Dark chocolate (some easter eggs and the head of a dark chocolate bunny coarsely chopped)
1/4 cup Old fashioned oats
several handfuls of crumbled Blue corn chips
1/2 cup Sweetened coconut
1/2 cup Raisins
1 1/2 tbsp Coffee grounds (yes- freshly ground coffee beans)

Method:

First cream the butter, sugars, and the corn syrup in your stand mixer on medium high for 2 or 3 minutes, until it's nice and fluffy.

Next, throw in the egg and vanilla and mix for another 10 minutes.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add the flour mix to the butter mixture with the mixer on low speed. Mix just until combined.

Now you add in the sweet and salty ingredients that you chose.

Use a big spoon to form your cookies - it should be about 3 tbls in each cookie. Put them on a tin foil lined cookie sheet, making sure that there is at least 3" between each cookie so they can spread. Put the sheets in the fridge for at least one hour.

Preheat to 375F

Bake for 14-18 minutes depending on the size of the cookies and your oven. They are done when they start to brown around the edges but we left ours in longer because they're good when they're extra brown.

Yellow Cake with Queen 'Mo Icing

This is a recipe that my mom has been making forever- she would like me to specify that she made this cake and I just took the pictures. Whatever Marie. Anyway, there's nothing like a simple yellow cake to make queen mo icing (queen mother icing- but we call it mo) have all the glory. Here's how we did it:

Yellow cake (from the Silver Palate cookbook)

Ingredients:

2 C Sugar
4 Eggs
1 C Veg Oil
1 C OJ (original recipe calls for dry white wine)
2 1/2 C AP Flour
1/2 Tsp Salt
2 1/4 Tsp B Powder
1 Tsp Vanilla

Method:

1. Preheat 350, grease 2 9" round cake pans
2. Sift all dry ingredients- flour, salt, b powder, set aside.
3. Combine OJ, oil, and vanilla in bowl and set aside.
3. Beat sugar and eggs until combined with mixer. Then to the mixer add 1/2 dry and beat, 1/2 wet and beat, then last of dry and last of wet, mixing in between.
4. Pour batter into pans and bake for 30 mins or until the center bounces and a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Let cakes cool for 5 mins and then turn them out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Queen Mo (from the queen herself, Maida Heatter)- we make this while the cake is in the oven

Ingredients:

1 C Heavy Cream
4 Tsp Instant Coffee
16 Oz Semisweet Chocolate Chips

Method:

1. Heat the cream over medium heat until little bubbles form around the edge of the pot.
2. Add the coffee and whisk until it dissolves.
3. Add the chocolate chips and whisk for 30 secs, then remove from the heat and whisk until smooth.
4. Leave in the pot until the cake is totally cool so that you can gently reheat it if you have to.

So when your cake is done just pour on the queen mo and smooth it gently with an off-set spatula. Leftover icing can be stored forever in a tupperware in the fridge- not that it will last that long. Marie eats it with her ice cream every night.

We did 2x 9" rounds and a 4" wedding cake top to make a tiered cake. Then just poured the icing over each layer and let it fall over the sides for a nice dribbled look.