Brownie mix cookies

I needed chocolate cookies.  I had brownie mix.  Here's to #covidbaking  Onward ho.

For one dozen cookies, here's what I used:

1/4 cup butter, melted
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 of an approximately 18-ounce box of brownie mix (Duncan Hines, as it was)
1/4 cup (more or less) cocoa powder
1/4 cup (more or less) pea protein powder
1/8 teaspoon (more or less) salt (optional)
1 teaspoon molasses
1/4 cup milk (more or less), added 1 tablespoon at a time
several handfuls (maybe 1/2 cup) chopped walnuts

In a medium bowl, stir together the melted butter, egg, and vanilla extract with a fork.  Separately, sift together the dry ingredients.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, along with the molasses and stir until completely incorporated, adding enough milk to get a wet cookie batter consistency.  Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add the walnuts and stir to distribute evenly.  Drop by double tablespoons onto greased cookie sheet and bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes.  Leave to cool for a few minutes on the sheet, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

My stupid oven...  I checked the cookies at 10 minutes and they were still mounds of melting dough.  The oven was at 300.  I turned it up to 350, and checked again at 7 minutes.  They still looked suspicious, so I left them in another 3 minutes.  Then they were quite firm.  I probably should have taken them out after 7.

I liked the added salt at first, but once I'd gone through about half of them it started to seem like too much.  An option would be to leave it out of the batter, but sprinkle the tops before baking.

Conclusion:   Delicious.  Cakey.  A little dry right out of the oven, but better the next day.  They didn't flatten at all, and in fact sort of puffed up a little.  Using 1/2 an egg would make them less cakey (or 1 egg for the whole box of mix.)   Now I'm thinking of a lot of fun ways you could change these up, with peanut butter, mint, coffee, rum...

Peanut butter oatmeal cookies

I made these to address a craving.  Part of #quarantinebaking  They hit the spot, although they could have used a little more chocolate.

Here's what I used to make 15 cookies:

1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/4-1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 - 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cream together the butter and peanut butter, then add the sugars and cream together until light and fluffy.  Add the egg and the vanilla extract and beat until well blended.  In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; add to butter mixture and beat until well blended.  Add the oatmeal, walnuts, and chocolate chips and stir to incorporate evenly.  Scoop by heavily-heaping tablespoons onto a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350F for about 10-12 minutes until lightly golden brown.  Allow to cool a few minutes on the pan, then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

I used 1/4 cup chocolate chips, which wasn't enough, even for me.  One half cup might be too much, although it was the perfect amount of walnuts.  There was also the perfect amount of salt.  I didn't measure the peanut butter--- I put in two big tablespoons, which didn't look like it was quite 1/4 cup, but seemed like plenty.  They have a mild peanut butter flavor, so for more intense flavor, use more peanut butter.  (I'm just not sure if that's a full 1/4 cup or more than that. I set the recipe as up to 1/2 cup.)

Conclusion:  These were delicious, and just what I needed.  For breakfast cookies, I'd add some whole wheat or wheat bran, reduce the sugar, and increase the chocolate.  (I'd rather the sweetness come from chocolate or fruit.)  Dried cranberries or tart cherries would be good too.

Original recipes:  Chris' Kicked up Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies and Twisted Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, both via Emeril Lagasse

Chocolate Whoopie Pies: a COVID birthday

Everyone should get a little whoopie on his or her birthday.  But while a little whoopie is a good thing, being quarantined in the house while #covidbaking with a full batch of little cakes is asking for trouble, so I quartered the recipe to make 4.  (Original recipe makes 15.)  I cut the sugar of the cookie part in half, and threw in a little protein powder so I'd feel less guilty, but at a 2:1 ratio since it sucks up so much moisture.

There are a lot of whoopie pie recipes out there.  I don't know where I got this one, but I chose it because there's no vegetable shortening and it uses a cooked flour filling, which helps cut the sweetness.

For 4, 3¼ " cakes, here's what I used:

1/2 cup minus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 tablespoon pea protein powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 pinch spoon of salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup 2 tablespoons packed light-brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 egg
4 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons milk

Cream Filling:
3/4 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar

Heat oven to 375°. Line baking sheets with aluminum foil; coat with cooking spray.  Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl and set aside. Beat butter and sugar in mixing bowl until creamy, 1 minute. Beat in vanilla and eggs for 30 seconds. On low speed, beat in cocoa. Alternately beat in flour mixture and milk in 3 additions.  Drop 2 tablespoons mixture per cookie onto prepared sheets, spacing 3 inches apart. Shape each into 2¼” rounds (keep size equal since they will be sandwiched.) Bake in 375° oven for 12-14 minutes or until cookies spring back when lightly touched in center. Cool on sheets 5 minutes. Remove cookies to rack to cool completely.

Stir flour and milk in saucepan until smooth. Bring to simmering over medium heat, whisking, until thickened and bubbly; cook 1 minute.  Remove from heat. Whisk in 1/2 tablespoon butter until smooth. Press waxed paper directly on surface. Let stand until cool to touch, about 45 minutes.  Beat remaining 1½ tablespoons butter, the vanilla, and confectioners’ sugar in small bowl until smooth, about 1 minute, scraping bottom and side of bowl as needed. Add milk mixture; beat 1 minute or until smooth and fluffy. Sandwich together pairs of cookies with 2 tablespoons filling, pressing lightly until filling begins to show around edges. Store between sheets of waxed paper in airtight containers in refrigerator.

I baked them for 12 minutes and they were overdone, even starting to burn a little. I didn't measure my rounds, but I tried to estimate a 2¼" diameter.  I made only 1/2 of an extra cookie--Right?  Fifteen sandwich cakes need 30 cookies, divided by 4 is 7.5 cookies.  I made 8.--so I wouldn't think it would affect them that much.  Maybe my oven was too hot.  (One thermometer read 400 and the other 350.  I split the difference.)  I was hoping for something softer and thicker.

I'm wondering why the cocoa is mixed in separately.  It would be a lot easier to sift it with the other dry ingredients.  I would try that next time.

The dough was quite thick, which makes me wonder if it would lend itself to piping.  These would make sweet little heart cakes if that worked.  My filling ended up runny and slightly separated, which was disappointing.  I filled the
cakes and put them in the refrigerator, hoping the filling would soften the cakes a little.  Otherwise, it's going to squirt out with the first bite.

Conclusion:  They weren't quite what I was wanting, but they were tasty.  It's nice having just that single little cake that's just enough.  Perhaps could have been a little more chocolatey.

Biscotti di Prato with anise

 

I was craving a dunking cookie for my coffee that wasn't complicated, and also craving anise, so I added anise seed to my favorite biscotti recipe.  This makes a very hard, crunchy cookie that holds up well to a hot beverage.  I got a somewhat different result this time, but perhaps I wandered too far from the recipe.  To add a little more nutrition, I substituted some pea protein powder, which probably would have been okay if my liquid ratio had been correct.  But pea powder sucks up a lot of moisture, and there isn't a lot to spare in this recipe--- just the eggs--- so I figured it couldn't be a 1:1 ratio.  I started with 1:1 with just 1/3 cup, but then took out a couple spoonfuls of wheat flour and added another spoonful of pea protein.  When I mix the lot together, it was exceedingly dry, so I added a little water and then it was too wet, so I added another spoonful of pea protein.  It was still a sticky, wet mess, but I didn't want to fool with it any longer.  I just scooped it onto the baking sheet, where it oozed into flat oblongs, and hoped for the best.

I don't know what acid the baking soda is working with, but it worked.  The loaves rose nicely and the cookies turned out well, albeit a little flatter than usual.  The anise wasn't very detectable---just a faint essence every now and then.

Here's what I used to make about 3½ dozen cookies.  Changes are in italics and strikeout:

3/4 cup whole almonds
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 1⅔ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup pea protein powder
7/8 3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon anise seed
dash 1/4 teaspoon of salt

Place nuts in a shallow pan and bake in a preheated 350F oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool. In a small bowl beat eggs, vanilla and almond extract with a wire whisk. In mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, baking soda, anise seed, and salt. Add egg mixture and mix until blended--about 1 minute. Cut nuts into halves or thirds and mix in. Divide dough in half. On a greased and floured baking sheet, pat out dough into two logs about 1/2 inch thick, 1½ inches wide, and 12 inches long, spacing them at least 2 inches apart. Bake in the middle of a preheated 300F oven for 50 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer from the baking sheet to a rack. Let cool 5 minutes. Place on a cutting board. With a serrated knife slice diagonally at a 45-degree angle about 1/2 inch thick. Lay the slices flat on the baking sheet (they all fit if you place them bottom to bottom) and return to a 275F oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until toasted, turning them over once to dry the other side. Store in a tightly covered container.

I cheated and used dry roasted almonds instead of toasting my own....  Don't.  You could tell they soaked up a little of the batter moisture and weren't fully crisp. Otherwise, they were just what I needed.

Conclusion:  A great staple, but I'd like to figure out something to make them a little more hearty, perhaps with buckwheat flour, or rye.

Recipe:  Biscotti di Prato from Biscotti by Lou Seibert Pappas

Alehouse hamburger buns

During this COVID-19 madness, I've had to shop in stores I don't usually go to.  So when I found packages of those new plant-based burgers, I decided I might as well give them a try.  Hamburger was all sold out most places.  Later, though, I thought about buns, and was trying to figure out which was less of a hassle:  try to find hamburger buns (how many stores would I have to go to?) or just make them myself.  I opted for the latter and started looking through my recipe collection.  These sounded like a good pairing.

The normal recipe makes 5 "huge" sandwich rolls, but it didn't say what size; I decided to halve the recipe hoping for at least 3 suitably-sized buns.  I generally don't like to detect salt in bread, so I reduced the salt just to be on the safe side (although the full amount would have been fine for dinner rolls.)  I increased the amount of wholemeal flour, and had to use regular AP flour.  I replaced the butter with olive oil strictly for ease of use.

Here's what I used to make four, 4½" hamburger buns:

38g (1/5 cup) rolled oats
220ml (7.5 ounces) Guinness
5 teaspoons unsalted butter olive oil (see note)
1/2 tablespoon honey (or malt syrup)
225 175g (1 cup + 2 tablespoons) strong white flour
50 100g (¾ cup) whole wheat flour, plus extra for shaping and dusting
1 teaspoon fast action active dry yeast
1 3/4 teaspoon fine salt
Oil for kneading and oat bran (or pulsed oats) for finishing

Heat the oven to 390°F. Place the oats on a tray in the oven for a bit over 25 minutes or until they turn a rich golden brown. (They were getting pretty dark at about 20 minutes, so I took them out then.)  Pour the ale into a saucepan and add the oats, then bring to the boil over a medium heat. Remove the pan from the heat, add the butter or oil and honey, cover, and leave it about 30 minutes till it's barely warm.  Add the yeast and leave to proof.
 
Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl.  Pour in the warm oat and ale mixture and stir everything together with your fingers, adding a little cold water if necessary to make a soft dough, then cover the bowl and leave for 10 minutes. Lightly oil the work surface and your hands, scoop the dough out of the bowl and gently knead it for 10 seconds. Scoop the dough back into the bowl, cover, then repeat the light knead twice more at 10-minute intervals. Leave the dough for 30 minutes, ideally somewhere it won't get chilled, then divide it into pieces.  Shape each piece of dough into a ball.  To protect the bottoms from burning, I used an air-bake baking sheet, spacing the rolls 2 inches apart. Flatten each roll to about the diameter of a hamburger bun, then dampen the surface and sprinkle with oat bran.  Cover the tray loosely and leave for about an hour until risen in height by a half.  Heat the oven to 410°F. Bake the rolls for 20 minutes. then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake until a good golden brown (if necessary), possibly just another 5 minutes.  Leave to cool on a wire rack covered loosely with a tea towel.

Note:  I forgot I was making half the recipe and used the full amount of olive oil.  Oops.

My dough was VERY sticky, but I'm not very exact with measurements.  I'd erred on the side of a wetter dough because I knew there wasn't much gluten development and I'd used the extra whole wheat flour.  I don't think even bread flour would have produced a window pane after such minimal time and handling.  Leaving the dough a little wetter gave it a little help with the rise.  However, weighing out the pieces would have been a nightmare, so I just divided it into quarters as best I could.  I floured my finger tips and lightly floured the dough ball, then shaped smooth balls by pulling the dough to the bottom and tucking it in before placing on the baking sheet. 

Conclusion:  I accidentally overbaked these, so they were dry.  They looked done at 20 minutes, but I was uncertain because of the directions, and I wanted to make sure they weren't too soft.  I intended to bake them just another 5 minutes at the lower temperature, but I got distracted and they were in there for about 10.  Nonetheless, they were very tasty, with a good wheaty flavor.  These were still quite large; I could have gotten 5 "slim" hamburger buns, or made 4 normal sized and one dinner roll.

Recipe:  Dan Lepard's Alehouse Rolls via The Caterer

Sweet Potato Pecan Pudding Cake

They're lying.  All the people who posted photos of this cake are lying.  You can't dump 2 cups of sweet potato into a regular cake recipe and have it turn out light and fluffy like their photos show.  What you get is what's in that photo above:  a cross between cake and bread pudding.  Kitchen Nostalgia even acknowledged, "The cake was very moist, actually more like pudding than regular cake. I happen to like that, but I know some of my readers would certainly comment on this."  Yet her picture is of a turmeric-colored cake with a little topping.  Not the same recipe.

It's not a bad recipe, necessarily, but it's not "cake" as we're used to having, and as all those people presented.  Especially when they're touting it as "cinnamon roll" cake, further indicating it should be airy.

This turned out fine--- people snarfed it down--- but it certainly didn't come out as desired.  And after comparing the original recipe for plain cinnamon roll cake and this one, I feel confident it wasn't because of my changes.  I had wanted to use half whole wheat flour but didn't have any, so I substituted some coffee flour and some wheat bran, and I changed up the directions a little to be more conventional.  I also halved the recipe, but baked it in a pan that was appropriately sized.

My additions are in strikeout and italics.  Here's what I used:

1 ½ ¼ cups flour 

2 tablespoons coffee flour

2 tablespoons wheat bran

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup cooked sweet potatoes

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup milk

Topping:

1/2 cup butter, softened (see note)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon flour

1½ teaspoons cinnamon 

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

2½ tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 10x7.5-inch baking pan.  Sift together the flours, bran, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.  In a medium mixing bowl, beat sweet potatoes with the sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined, then add the melted butter and mix until thoroughly blended and smooth. Add the flour mixture in thirds, alternating with the milk and mixing between additions. Pour batter into prepared pan. Mix all the topping ingredients together until well combined.  Drop evenly over the batter and swirl with a knife. Sprinkle with pecans. Bake cake for 30 - 40 minutes.

I checked it at 25 minutes-- still raw.  At 32 minutes, it had started to swell in the middle.  Removed at 38 minutes.  Skewer came out clean and it had puffed fairly evenly and had started to pull away from the sides, but there was a lot of melted butter and syrup running around the pan.  The syrup firmed up and the butter was absorbed as the cake cooled.

Note:  I'd be inclined to halve the amount of butter in the topping.  It seemed excessive, literally being more like a seasoned butter than a topping.

Conclusion:  The taste was good on this, despite everything.  I had been inclined to reduce the sugar, but my batter had a slight bitter taste (probably my additions) so I used the full amount and it was fine.  I skipped the glaze, though.  If I were to make this again, which I doubt, I would be inclined to cut it up into two-bite pieces and serve them in a bowl with whipped cream.

Recipes:  Sweet Potato Cinnamon Roll Cake via Bunny's Warm Oven (with reference to Kitchen Nostalgia's version and their original Cinnamon Roll Breakfast Cake.)

Coconut flour banana bread

The grain-free banana bread I've been making uses mostly almond flour.  This one uses strictly coconut flour.  I modified it to suit my taste and cut the recipe way down.  (I have to question any recipe that uses huge quantities of expensive items--- 8 eggs, 8 bananas, 1 cup coconut oil--- only to find it's for TWO loaves.  This recipe in particular is very easy to reduce.  And don't even get me started on the random capitalization.)  I made one quarter of the recipe as a test, but what I've posted here is for one full loaf.

Here's what I used:

4 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup coconut oil
4 organic eggs
1 tablespoon molasses
1 teaspoon butter flavoring
1 tsp vanilla
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup coconut flour
2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Mix together the bananas, oil, eggs, molasses, and flavoring.  Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, and salt, then stir into the wet mixture along with the chocolate chips.  Pour into a greased pan* (9x5") and bake for 45-50 minutes until golden brown.

Okay, I've already realized I made a huge mistake in that I used the full cup of coconut flour called for in the original recipe, which, remember, was for TWO loaves, and I made half a loaf.  So I've got four times the amount of coconut flour in there baking at the moment.  (I wondered why the mixture was so pliable, but these "alternative" recipes are usually strangely textured anyway.)  Well, I'll certainly be getting my fiber, anyway.

The original recipe doesn't state what size pans to use.  Frequently, wheatless recipes don't rise very much because they don't have the structure.  This recipe has all those eggs, plus baking soda, so it probably would rise some.

Conclusion:  Well, this is going to have to wait until I make the bread again, properly.  I won't mark it as a "fail" yet.  The flavor was good, but the texture sort of powdery, no doubt from the excess of coconut flour.  It was very filling too.

Recipe:  Paleo Banana Bread via Healthy Holistic Living