Something Spicy--Mexican Chocolate Cookies

This weekend I went a little south of the boarder, and in honor of this, I decided to make a sweet treat to go with the meal. I found this recipe in a book I'd checked out of the library, Everyday Baking, by CookingLight I did make it a little lighter by using some sugar substitute and egg substitute. These are small cookies, but have a really good chocolate flavor, with just a little kick of spice. They give you that happy yummy feel.

Ingredients:
5 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chopped
3.3 oz all purpose flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
dash of freshly ground pepper
dash of ground red pepper
1/2 c sugar
1/3 c stevia baking substitute
1/4 c egg substitute
1/4 c butter softened
1 tsp vanilla extract

First get the oven heated to 350, and then melt the chocolate in the microwave. I ended up using half unsweetened chocolate and half semi-sweet, of a really high quality chocolate. Since this is so chocolate centered I wanted to highlight the chocolate flavor.

The dry ingredients are sifted into a bowl. The trick with this recipe is that a dash of the black pepper and hot pepper could be different each time--this time it was just right, a pretty generous sprinkle of both.

In a second bowl, the butter and sugars are creamed. I'm getting better at this and creamed it together for the 5 minutes the recipe suggested, until it was good and fluffy. Then the egg substitute and vanilla are beat in until smooth. At that point the chocolate should be room temperature--if not the butter will melt and the egg will cook, so don't put warm chocolate in! Fold it into the batter, and then gently fold the dry ingredients until just mixed.

This made a really thick batter--almost like a fudge, so it would be good to use a small scoop to portion out of about one tablespoon. They didn't spread much, so I was able to fit them all on two pans. They bake for about 10-11 minutes, and then set on the pan for another two minutes to set. I found them to be pretty soft, so you could possible cook a bit longer.

The Verdict: YUM! Just a hint of spice, just a hint of heat, the dark luscious chocolate is satisfying in just a small amount. I'm looking forward to enjoying these as part of my south of the boarder feast!

Diet Books--Peanut Butter Dream Bars

So I have a whole bunch of cookbooks in my collection that promise to help you cook yourself skinny, and since I'm always looking for healthy recipes so I can keep my girlish figure I wanted to give some a try. This dessert sounded delicious and easy, and perfect to pack for work to have as an afternoon snack. I love the combo of peanut butter and chocolate, so I thought this would be perfect. What I didn't scrutinize was the amounts of each ingredient the recipe called for to reach the enviable amount of 150 some odd calories per bar. Let's say to create something like what was pictured took a few more ingredients than was listed.

Ingredients:
1/2 c 100 calorie Oreo Thins
1/2 c Old-fashioned Rolled Oats
1/3 c confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbs whipped light butter melted then chilled
1/4 c creamy natural reduced sodium peanut butter
1 1/2 oz greek yogurt cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbs semi sweet chocolate chips (this is doubled from the original)

I actually bought a loaf pan--for this and for the bread I've started to make, and for this dish it is lined with wax paper.

So the recipe says low calorie thin chocolate wafers--not sure what they were thinking of, and the only low calorie option I saw were these 100 calorie packs. So I used 3 packages--ground them fine in the blender. Then combined the resulting powder with the oats, the powdered sugar, and 1/4 tsp salt. Once that was mixed, I added the melted butter and stirred it to make sure all of the dry ingredients were moistened, then mixed in a tablespoon of peanut butter.

That went into the wax paper prepared pan, and is spread thin across the bottom to make a crust. It is a pretty thin layer in the loaf pan I had, and was a struggle to get it across the whole pan. Once that was down, the pan went into the fridge to chill for about 10 minutes.

While that chilled, the cream cheese was supposed to be beat with an electric mixer. That is the approximately two tablespoons of cream cheese are supposed to be whipped with a beater--only it is such a small amount that it mostly just spread it around a lot. Not really helpful or useful. It is supposed to get smooth and fluffy--only there is so little I abandoned the beater and mixed it with my spoon. Once it was smooth, I added the rest of the peanut butter, vanilla, and salt and tried to get it smooth and fluffy with the beater--but it still wasn't much for the beater to work with, so I used the spoon. It was supposed to double in size, but didn't really work so well. By the time I'd finished this, the first layer was chilled enough to spread the peanut butter on top. It actually was the layer that covered the best--the only one that there was actually enough to cover the whole pan bottom. That went into the freezer for 10 minutes to get firm

Once that was out, I went to spread the melted chocolate chips on top. Unfortunately it didn't cover even half of the pan, and I ended up melting more to cover the whole thing. Partially this was because the frozen layer made the chocolate freeze up, but mostly it was because there just wasn't enough chocolate. This is a re-occurring theme in this recipe. In order to get the calorie count down low they didn't add enough of each ingredients to cover the whole pan. This is sort of ironic because the portion size is really big--I'd rather have more of each item in each bite, then a ton of sad bites.

Once the chocolate was spread, it went in the fridge until it was all set. Then I cut it into 8 slices--as the recipe suggested. The chocolate shattered, and didn't stick well to the layer below it. Once I saw how big the slices were I cut them in half again, to make 16 portions. With the peanut butter and butter, it is plenty rich in the half sized bite.



The Verdict: The flavor combination is great, but the texture was off. I think if I were to make this again, I'd not grind the wafers as small and not freeze it in between the peanut butter layer and the chocolate layer. As it is the top is crunchy chocolate and the bottom is chewy and soft--where it should be more crunchy. Still it is a peanut buttery dream flavor--like a little candy treat!

Death by Chocolate Cupcakes

So this weekend I piled all the cookbooks on the ground that I have yet to bake from and picked one off the top. I couldn't believe I've yet to make one from the Hungry Girl cookbook. I love her recipes--though I must admit that lately I've been moving away from using as many pre-packaged foods and mixes. I figure when you are trying to learn to cook you need to practice the long ways and not the shortcuts. That said, this was a pretty awesome shortcut to delicious and low calorie yumminess!

I have been craving chocolate since I finished off the last of my chewy chocolate cookies--I loved the carrot cake, but it had no chocolate in it! So this recipe hit the spot. I even had half a cake mix sitting on the shelf waiting to be used!

Ingredients:
2 cups moist style chocolate cake mix
2 diet chocolate hot chocolate mix packets
1/2 cup egg substitute
2 tbs semi-sweet mini chocolate chips
1 tbs stevia baking mix
1/8 tsp salt

So this is a pretty simple cake--but I swear I was all butterfingers the whole time, so it didn't turn out perfect. Step one is to boil about a cup and a half of water (12 oz) and pour that over the chocolate chips and cocoa mix. That is stirred until the chocolate is melted and dissolved, then that is put in the freezer. Sadly at that point I tripped and spilled part of it all over the wall and fridge. Yeah, so I didn't pour all of it everywhere, just about a half cup. So I added some more drink mix, more chocolate, and more boiling water and added it to the mix. The proportions might have been a little off--and the calorie count went up because I added more chocolate. Still yum!

Anyways, chocolate in the freezer. I headed over to play with my sister's dog I'm dogsitting. I borrowed a handful of hazelnuts from her (she told me to make myself at home!), and after my pups and her dog were tired of the rain, I headed back. The cake mix, salt, and sugar substitute were whisked together. I toasted the hazelnuts and chopped them finely and tossed them in the dry ingredients.

By this time the cocoa had cooled and could be added with the egg substitute to the dry ingredients. This was whisked with my beater for at least 2 minutes. The recipe warns this is a very thin batter, and they were not lying. It was VERY thin---probably because I messed up the proportions after I spilled the cocoa. I poured it into a cupcake tin with cupcake liners. It was supposed to make 12, but I had enough batter for 14.






They go into a 350 degree oven for 15-18 minutes. The directions warn they will be glossy on top when done--and they will--but they are so runny you have to watch to make sure they are set. I saw them deflate a little when I opened the oven to check on them at 15 minutes. They came out puffy and do deflate a little bit as they cool.




The Verdict: This is an incredible moist drenched cake--with a sodden texture and a deep chocolate taste. I think the hazelnuts are really good because they offer a much needed contrast to the intense chocolately moistness. I really enjoyed this nice and warm out of the oven, and I suspect it would be incredible topped with some vanilla ice cream or even some caramel or peanut butter. This is definitely one for chocolate lovers and those looking for a quick and relatively healthy treat.

Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Last week it was all cornbread all week long--someone else even made some and brought it into work! So this week, to counterbalance all that savory baked goods, I thought I'd make some thing really decadent and delicious. But healthy, of course, still healthy. When I saw this recipe in the Weight Watcher's 2005 cookbook, I knew I had to make them. There aren't a lot of ingredients, and most of them I have, and there is a HUGE amount of chocolate to everything else.

Ingredients: 

1/2 c light butter
1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup regular oats
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
dash salt




Chop the unsweetened chocolate into fine pieces and melt with the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds until the chocolate starts to melt. The butter melted quickly, and I had to stir a while to get the chocolate to melt. There seemed to be a lot of butter--next time I plan on reducing the amount of butter to see if that would work. There aren't a lot of ingredients, and there is as much butter as flour here! Anyways, into that I added the sugar and cocoa and stirred until smooth. I let it cool a little and then added the two eggs after lightly beating them.

I tossed the oats, flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl, before folding them into the chocolate mixture just until blended. Then they are dropped onto a greased cooking sheet by heaping teaspoonfuls. These are pretty small cookies, but they are SO chocolatey that you wouldn't want more. They do expand, so don't place them too close together.

They go into a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes until just done in the middle. One pan was underdone at 8 minutes, the other was just on. They need to stay on the pan for at least 5 minutes so they don't fall apart when you move them--though if you eat them from the pan it probably doesn't matter if it is in pieces.

The Verdict: 

This was a win for me, though my family members liked them quite a bit less (They wont say to my face that they don't like them, but one of them only ate half--I wish people would tell me what they really think, I'm not offended, I'm learning!). I love the chewy, chocolatey, dreamy quality. They are soft and cakey, not crispy, and so rich I don't worry about eating too many at once. They almost taste a little like brownies! I think the quality of the chocolate really matters here, so I may invest in some higher quality chocolate when I make them again.

Snowball Surprise: a recipe from the web

Baby its cold outside! And also inside--at least at my work lately. Temperatures outside have dipped to single digits overnight, with a balmy high of 20 degrees. So, naturally, our heater turned off. Apparently it shuts off when it is too cold so the freezer coils don't freeze. It still doesn't make sense to me, and I'll believe it isn't going to happen again when I walk in a heated building and don't have to spend the morning on the phone freezing demanding to know where the HVAC crew is. People are starting to assume every time I call it is about the heat--are you warm is going to replace hello soon! Anyway, it has been a cold and stressful week, where the short staffing and freezing temperatures just are no fun for anyone. So since I seem powerless over the heat, I thought I'd make cookies. And while I know I have a shelf full of cookbooks, with many, many recipes to try, hundreds of them for cookies, I saw this recipe on a blog and just had to make them!

Midcentury Menu, home of all things vintage and one of my favorite cooking blogs, posted a list of their top ten holiday cookies, and the Chocolate Filled Snowballs seemed perfect for how cold and snowy we all are at work. Interestingly, these are perhaps the most unhealthy cookies I could have made. I made a brave attempt to make them somewhat healthier, but even light butter is mostly fat. And funny story, I just realized in typing this up that I used much more butter than I was supposed to, which when you use light butter kind of defeats the purpose. Well, it probably didn't kill anyone.

• ½ lb soft butter (I put in a pound, I don't know how I misread that, or how it even came together with so much butter in it.)
• ½ cup sugar (1/4 cup stevia baking blend)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
  
  
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
• 1 5 ounce pkg chocolate kisses (I used some caramel filled and some dark chocolate)
• Confectioner’s sugar

So I'm looking at these pictures and feeling like an idiot for not realizing that I had too much butter. Well, I never claimed to be a good cook--learning to cook is sort of my plan, and clearly following directions is a major problem I have! They were pretty good with all the butter, so I'd definitely make them again with the right amount of butter. So loads of butter, sugar, vanilla mixed together, then I got the walnuts out to chop. I bought them pre chopped, but they came in big chunks, and the recipe said finely chopped. Since I don't have a food processor and my knife skills are lacking I used the grinding blade on my blender.

I should have put them in the cup in small amounts, because it chopped some into more of a paste and others were still in chunks. But not bad, and faster than me cutting off my finger trying to chop them all by hand.

I added the nuts and the sifted flour to the very buttery mix of wet ingredients, and chilled it all for 45 minutes or so while I made dinner. The funny thing was that I wasn't sure I added the right amount of flour, but because the dough looked like cookie dough I figured I had--so maybe I added too much flour too!

After baking

Before cooking

After the dough chilled, I wrapped it around various types of Hershey's kisses and baked them at 375 for about 13 minutes. They still looked uncooked, but getting browned on the bottoms so I took them out. After cooling a little I tossed them in powdered sugar.

The Verdict: Even though I'm an idiot and made these wrong, they still tasted buttery and delicious. Just even more like an artery was closing off because of the richness. The caramel kisses didn't work the way I wanted, because the caramel leaked out and kind of made a mess. But I think other types of kisses would work, this time of year there are tons of different flavors. I am going to have to make these again so I can get it right next time. My apologies to the fine folks at Midcentury Menu for slaughtering their recipe, and to my coworkers for hardening their arteries. I wanted to post this still so I can look back and see how I've grown. My blog is about learning after all!