My vote is that there were not enough eggs and using egg-beaters probably compounded that problem.

I don't think the flour to oats ratio is the problem. I only use 1 cup of flour per 3 cups of oats in the banana/oat bar cookies I've been making lately, plus I throw in a cup each of coconut, chocolate chips and walnuts and they still come out a bit too cakey. In the KAF Cookie Companion, there is a recipe for "Flourless Oatmeal Drops" (page 81) -- I've made them and, while tender, they hold together (and are delicious).

If you want to try that particular Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe again, I'd try using another egg and omitting the water.

As far as sifting, I don't think it matters much for a recipe such as this. For most recipes, I put the dry ingredients together in a bowl and stir well with a whisk to distribute the salt/baking powder/soda/spices in the flour. I usually only bother with sifting when a recipe calls for cake flour.

I got the recipe from The Silver Palate cookbook. And yes I used instant oats, which to me are the same as quick-drying. Thanks.

Thanks barbara , perrik, and mktye... I knew I could count on don rockwell to help. I will try your suggesstions and let you know how it turns out. For now, the boyfriend gets to eat all the Oatmeal Raisin crumble so I can try the recipe again!

Today's handy tip: When it's warm and humid but you've turned off the air conditioning for the day because darn it, you really wanted some fresh air in the house after all this rotten weather... well, that's not a good time to pipe buttercream. In fact, it's a lousy time to even make buttercream. Sigh. I should have made a glazed pound cake instead.

Even with the air conditioning on, the humidity is inescapable. My rolled out butter cookies with royal icing seem to be softer and more breakable than they normally are.
To use up some buttermilk and fresh peaches, I also made peach crumb cake (chopped up peach bits scattered on the cake batter before putting on the crumb topping).

Baked some brownies using Alice Medrich's cocoa brownies recipe. I added some cinnamon and chile. They'll be served with ice cream on Tuesday night at a dinner with my senior managers. I needed something that would transport well. Of course, I had to trim the ends for a nice presentation and qa/qc.

The arrival of last week's Epicurious Recipe Flash featuring a recipe for Raspberry Crumble Tart just happened to coincide with finding some gorgeous berries at reasonable prices, so I had to try out that recipe. Instead of using all raspberries as called for, I used ~12 oz. of blueberries, 6 oz. of raspberries and 6 oz. of blackberries. I also used blanched almonds instead of whole almonds. Super easy and quick to throw together (I threw caution to the wind and did not chill the dough for an hour before rolling it out -- not a recommended plan of action for the faint of heart).

The tart came out very tasty and the only thing I woud do differently would be to cook it at a bit higher temperature (at least initially). The crust was a little underdone for my tastes, even after an hour. (I would have left it in the oven longer, but I needed the oven for some nearly-over-proofed bread that just could not wait any longer. ) It is definitely a recipe I'll use again.

I made some oatmeal, ginger, apricot cookies for an off-site meeting of various managers. Which of course means I needed to do a little QA/QC. I was tempted to put white chocolate chips in them but since they will need to stay out in this 100 degree weather I figured that wasn't such a great idea. Next time.

When Azami and I were in Japan, I developed a mad obsession with McVitie's Banana Black Digestive Biscuits -- little bittersweet chocolate cookies sandwiched with a banana cream. So inspired, I've been trying to create a dessert reminiscent of them. This is the result of Round Two of the Banana Black Project.

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Crust is the bittersweet chocolate cookie crust from The Pie and Pastry Bible, coated with Scharffen Berger 62% for moistureproofing. The filling is alternating layers of pastry cream mixed with ~3/4 cup unsweetened whipped cream and bananas, topped with SB 62% shavings. It's quite tasty -- the dark chocolate crust and banana filling play off each other well. I like this construct, but would like to find a way to get more banana flavor into the cream, which is just vanilla pastry cream. I'm leaning toward adding some creme de banane to the filling in the next experiment, but would appreciate other thoughts.

Wow, Xochitl10, that sounds amazing (and I share a love for McVittie's products, though have never enjoyed that specific one). Maybe roasting the banana's? Sorry, I think I'm responding to this more because I love chocolate and banana together, not because I have any good ideas.

Blackberry Pithivier with vanilla Cognac creme fraiche.




Next up:
* Blackberry almond crisp (Extra filling)
* Almond brittle (extra ground almonds)

The pithivier looks beautiful. Did you make the puff pastry? If not, where did you get it?

Thanks! It turned out pretty well (Slight burning and uneven glazing aside), considering this isn't something I do very often. Making my own puff pastry is a little out of my league, so this was just major-brand grocery store stuff.

This looks FABULOUS! So, what "major" brand of puff pastry did you use? Pepperidge Farm perchance?

I'm in Norwalk. What else is there??

Cinnamon Squares from Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Bought as a little present to myself to compensate for the totally horrific public meeting on Thursday that I may not return from in one piece. I'll need to bake during my convalescence.

I haven't tasted it yet (bringing it to staff meeting tomorrow) but the house smells heavenly.

But how can you guarantee adequate QC/QA? You gotta taste it!

I give a lot of disclaimers -- new recipe, crappy oven, blah, blah, blah. They accept they are the QA/QC agents.

I did taste it at the staff meeting and it is definitely a keeper. Kind of like a very light cinnamon quick bread with a nice dose of chocolate. Super quick and easy.

To serve to my houseguests last Sunday, I made the Olive Oil Couscous Cake w/Creme Fraiche and Date Syrup from the October '06 Bon Appetit. Overall the cake was very good, with the exception of the texture. The couscous remained pretty darn crunchy and I found that to be a bit distracting.

I made a number of changes to the recipe... for the cake, it called for 1/4 cup sweet Muscat wine and I used Marsala (I don't think it really mattered in the end since the olive oil was a much more predominant flavor). I also subbed a glug of vanilla for the 1 tablespoon orange zest. Why? I don't really care for the flavor of orange. Also, I didn't have the time to track down the date syrup so I made pomegranate syrup* instead and figured it had enough high notes of flavor/tartness so the orange was not necessary.

My guests initally balked at the unsweetened creme fraiche/whipped cream mixture, but eaten with the cake and the sweet pomegranate syrup, it really worked well. I liked the combination of flavors and will definitely make this dessert again, but next time use a recipe for an olive oil cake made with semolina instead of couscous.

*Pomegranate Syrup -- one bottle POM pomegranate juice + 1.5 cups sugar, boiled until the volume was reduced by half. Served warm.

Wow, that sounds good (and the pomegranate syrup sounds much better than date syrup to me, but I'm not much of a date person). Sounds like it would also work with a polenta cake. Mmmm, cake.

So after all of my perseverating about pistachio buttercream and finding just the right chocolate cake recipe for the cake, I ended up totally scrapping this idea for my birthday. During the would-have-been-necessary recipe testing phase leading up to my birthday, I felt pretty sick and not up to baking. Plus, I felt like the cake was going to be too rich for me (more of feeling sick).

My parents came for a visit over my birthday and my mom offered to bake a cake for me. I knew that the chocolate/pistachio cake would be beyond my mom's skills (the heated simple syrup for the buttercream and any kind of cake where all the leavening comes from egg whites are just a shade beyond her, although she is a fairly decent cook/baker). And, the richness of it all continued to turn me off. So, she made this for me instead (at my request)

http://food.cookinglight.com/cooking/recip...ecipe_id=222502

I don't believe in 'light' baking, so I used quark instead of FF cream cheese (ick) and butter instead of margarine (that's not really a fat vs. FF sub, just preference). Added the zest of one lemon and some walnuts (I love walnut and apple together). Although it was good, I didn't love it and don't think I would necessarily run back to it.

I'm now trying to decide whose birthday merits the adventure of the chocolate cake with pistachio buttercream that I had been planning! Thanks for all of your feedback on it, MK.

I had been wondering what had happened with the chocolate/pistachio cake, smokey. Sorry to hear you've been under the weather.

With my husband's channeling of his inner squirrel, I was thinking of trying out a maple/acorn cake with acorn buttercream for thanksgiving. I figure if chestnut buttercream works, hazelnut buttercream works and pistachio buttercream works, then acorn buttercream should also work. I plan to leach the heck out of the acorn meal to remove the tannins, but a bit of bitterness might be nice to offset the richness of the dessert. We'll see...

Oh good, I'm not the only one who does this. Hope you're feeling better!
Over the weekend, I made this for a friend's birthday:
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Cake is White Chocolate Whisper Cake iced with Lemon Curd Mousseline, both recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Cake Bible." The flowers are miniature Gerbera daisies, alstroemeria, and something feathery whose name I can't remember. We had to leave before the birthday girl cut it, so I have no idea how it tasted.

Beautiful cake Xochitl10!

We had some friends over for dinner last night and I made Pistachio Popover Cremes Brulees loosely based on this recipe.

On a whim, I decided to make the creme part also pistachio flavored instead of plain vanilla (as was called for in the recipe) by heating the cream and 1 cup ground pistachios to a boil, letting it steep for an hour, straining it, then proceeding with the recipe as written. That turned out to be a good thing because the pistachio-flavored popovers refused to "pop" and I ended up cooking up a plain batch of popovers from a favorite (and trusted) popover recipe. (I suspect, with the added ground nuts in the recipe as written, there was just not enough gluten to hold in the steam.) So the dessert ended up flipped from the original recipe -- pistachio creme brulee in popovers instead of creme brulee in pistachio popovers.

Another change I made was to omit the Grand Marnier from the orange syrup because it always tastes somewhat artificial to me. And I served them with some pomegranate syrup in addition to the orange syrup because it is a new favorite of mine and it looks pretty on the plate. (I also forgot to sprinkle on the garnish of chopped pistachios even though I strategically put them in a place in my kitchen where I was sure not to overlook them. Yeah, right. )

While the presentation was novel, it really was not worth the effort and I probably will not make this recipe (or my version of it) again. The pistachio creme brulee had a good pistachio flavor, but it was a bit too thick (I should have omitted one of the egg yolks) and avocado in color (which rwtye finds quite disturbing ). Also, they were not the easiest thing to eat daintily and I'm not big on desserts that require a spoon, fork and a knife!

I think a better way to go would be to make a slightly looser pistachio cream, pipe it into bite-sized choux puffs and dip the tops of the puffs in caramel. That would take care of the texture, appearance and the eating logistics.

Oh, that is a beautiful cake, Xochitl10. I'm always impressed by presentation on desserts. I think it's largely due to the fact that presentation is my absolute weakest point. I can make great-tasting desserts, but they always look distinctly home made. I know, there's nothing WRONG with that, but sometimes I wish I could get the sort of polish that you put on that cake. Practice, practice, practice...

It's funny, MK, I was thinking as you were describing the process and what went wrong that a possible correction would be a pistachio cream piped into choux puffs. You one-upped me by thinking of the caramel topping!

I made caramel apples this weekend (no pics, sorry). I used a recipe that somebody on chowhound pionted me towards. It was from a book called Oh, Fudge! A truly terrible name, but otherwise a generally good book for things like fudge, marshamallow, caramel recipes. I checked it out of the library and copied some recipes of interest.

This will sound ridiculous (it was caramel after all), but I think the caramel was too sweet (the +1 complains that I never add enough sugar to desserts). I would have rather had something richer (and I used evaporated whole milk as opposed to the FF evaporated milk called for) and less sweet, with better counter-notes (e.g. a bit more salt &/or some lemon juice added). The result is also a bit looser than I think it should be (although I took it to roughly 245). There also something about the texture. It's not grainy, yet not as smooth as I would like. To be honest, I'm generally pleased. I'm just a huge critic of my own baking (it's honestly part of the fun to me)

The results were certainly better than melting Kraft caramels, but not as good as I would like. Of course, it helps to use good, juicy tart apples.

Smokey, I am a huge fan of the Fleur de Sel caramel recipe on Epicurious. It uses heavy cream and butter so there is certainly no shortage of richness and I think the sea salt adds great contrast.

I'm a fan of that recipe too. Too me it is more rich then sweet.

I made honey nut brownies out of Dorie Greenspan's new book tonight. Tastes far more like a honey cake then a brownie. A nice blend of flavors but I need to toast the almonds a little more so they don't get soft.

I looked at that recipe this evening and also the comments. Have any of you had problems with the timing? I would like to make fairly soft caramels and enrobe them in chocolate. Yes, this is about Christmas goodies.

To allow you to make softer caramels for candies buy some hollow chocolate spheres to fill with a piping bag. Once they are set you can coat rather easily.

I haven't had issues with timing. I tend to go lower heat and take more time since I'm still getting to know this crappy stove of mine. They come out soft and chewy. No threat to anyone's fillings. I either wrap them in twisty paper (that is what I call the little pre-cut stretchy wax paper that holds shape when you twist the end) or put them in candy cups and sprinkle with salt. When I put them in the cups, after a couple of hours they spread to the shape of the cup. Haven't worked up the nerve to try dipping in chocolate. Tempering still baffles me.

I haven't had problems with the timing on this recipe. It does take quite a while for the mixture to come up to the right temperature. I've made the recipe four different times and have ended up with chewy caramels each time. I did try to enrobe them last winter for holiday gifts but I found that my chocolate tended to melt the caramels just a bit. As a result, the nice little rectangular pieces I cut (pizza cutter works great) ended up spreading just a bit and looked more like turtles with the chocolate coating. People absolutely raved about both versions, coated and not. I wrapped the uncoated caramels in squares of wax paper cut from the roll but will have to look for those precut squares this year.


Is there a local place to get these?

Beryl's may have them. I have ordered them online, but forgot the source. Google should help you out.

You might try cutting them in squares and then freezing them before enrobing. I do this with chocolate truffles, since the filling gets soft at room temperature. I don't suppose freezing would harm the caramels.

But if the chocolates are too cold it can cause problems with the tempered chocolate.

I bought mine here. They also have the waxy candy cups that the caramels don't stick to.

I made cupcakes for Halloween.

More cupcakes! These are raspberry-chocolate cupcakes from Alice Medrich's "Bittersweet." Glaze is Scharffen Berger 70% chocolate, marbling chocolates are some unidentified milk chocolate from the pantry and El Rey Icoa white chocolate.
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I made chocolate chip cookies yesterday with a sick toddler using this recipe...

http://www.nielsenmassey.com/recipe23.htm

I liked them, the +1 prefers the tollhouse recipe. I think my fave is the Cooks Illustrated, but I'm nonethless driven to continue experimenting with recipes I haven't tried yet. It drives the +1 batty (maybe that's the engine behind my drive?!). No pics of the cookies. They're currently being devoured in our lunch room (the usual recipient of my baking largesse).

Paula has received several marriage proposals whenever she makes these.

The Chewy

Those are our favorites. Scott and the kids made a batch last night, using Guittard chocolate chips.

Those are my chip of choice. Funny you should mention them, somebody actually complimented me specifically on the chocolate chips in this most recent batch of cookies. While I certainly think the Guittard are superior, I've rarely had a work-colleague-recipient-of-baking-largesse be able to pick out something so specific about my food that they liked. I'm generally considered a good baker here, but there is a certain measure of pearls before swine to the whole thing

As for the Alton Brown recipe, I'm not sure I've tried that one. I know he's quite popular, but Alton Brown somehow kinda bugs me. Enough that I'm not inclined to try his recipes when there are so many others to try. <shrug>

Mine too. Also like to use Guittard which I've resorted to buying in bulk because of limited local options. I really like how these turn out when I freeze individual portions before baking.

Who knew that we had a secret Guittard fan club here?

Where can you still get these in bulk locally? I seem to recall Sam's Club carrying them once upon a time.

I don't know who has them in bulk, but I found these at the Safeway in downtown Silver Spring.

All you evil people... I had never made these cookies before tonight and they are both easy and delicious. What a great recipe!

You're welcome. And we're not evil, merely unable to resist temptation.

Seriously, it is a great recipe. I love chewy cookies , and the regular Tollhouse version always comes out too crisp. Plus, the Good Eats episode it comes from is one of my very favorites. Even if Alton Brown bugs you, this is one to look up and print out.

On tap for this week: orange almond oatmeal cookies from The Best Recipe.

So I finally made these, after years of noodling around with cc cookie recipes, and you know what? They are good cookies. But Alton Brown really needs to get over this goodammed kosher salt thing. Seriously. Saltiest damn cookies I ever baked. Kosher salt does not dissolve properly in cookie dough. It's too f*cking coarse for the application. feh.

Ok, I'm hoping for some help from fellow pastry-making hounds. My mom has always made her pie crust exclusively with Crisco as the shortening. I learned how she did it, and can make a good pie crust the same way she does (cutting in the shortening with two knives). However, in the past 5 years or so I've been playing with various mixtures of shortening--generally either all butter or butter/shortening blends.

What I have seen is that anytime I do a butter or butter/shortening blend, when the pie/crostada/what have you is in the oven, there is a lot of liquid (I think it's clarified butter, but haven't done the chemical analysis!) that 'bleeds' out of it. This never happens with the rassin' frassin' Crisco only pie crust. I took a pastry class at L'academie, and I have a vague recollection of the instructor explaining why sometimes the croissants at a pastry shop were sitting in a bit of a 'lip' of something having to do with the butter bleeding out because... Yeah, that's where memory fails me. Because the butter wasn't cool enough when it hit the oven? Because the oven wasn't hot enough? I don't remember, and, regardless, I'm not even sure this is the same thing I'm experiencing.

These crusts almost always taste good, so this isn't really about taste. It's more the sense that I've done something wrong and I want to correct it. Am I wrong that this 'leaking' butter is aberrant? Does this happen to everybody? If not, any suggestions for where the error is? I'm well aware that I'm not giving a specific recipe to correct. Part of the reason for that is that this problem is so pervasive, I'm thinking it's not recipe-based. So, to the obvious questions involving my technique. I make the crusts a variety of ways (either using two knives or food processor, generally). Everything is cold. I typically make the crust 24 hours before making the pie and let it sit in the refrigerator, relaxing, for the interim. Yesterday, specifically, I rolled out the crust (probably a smidge too thick, sigh), folded it into quarters in wax paper and put it back in the fridge for the roughly 30 minutes it took me to peel, core, slice 3 apples, zest lemon, mix this with sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, salt, flour. Brought crust back out, laid it out flat on cookie sheet, arranged apple mix just so, folded sides over in rustic, crostada type fashion, placed cookie sheet in oven that had been preheated for roughly 30 min to 425 (not while rolling out crust, in an effort to keep kitchen cool) on top of pizza stone in lower third of oven. Within 10 minutes, noticed this 'leaking' phenomenon.

Thanks to anybody who has made it this far in my pitiful tale, and advice gratefully accepted. If you, gentle reader, feel you need a recipe to really decide the cause of this troubling issue, I'm happy to provide it (bottom line, it's the goes-with-everything-pie-dough recipe from Dorie Greenspan's newest book, but I'm happy to paraphrase here).

You don't need to copy out the whole thing (or the technique), but what are the amounts of flour/fat/liquid in the recipe?

OK--all you folks who made the best ever "chewy" chocolate chip cookies...I need some feedback. First, let me say that I do not bake often or very well, and am trying to do so to learn. So, I made these cookies, and have some questions and issues, and want to know what your cookies were like when you made them.

First, mine did not come out too salty...I did notice when I sifted the flour, salt, soda mixture that some of the larger pieces of kosher salt remained in the sifter. Due to the comment from Porcupine, I did not try to get "every last drop" out.

When measuring brown sugar, if it does not say "packed," do you loosely spoon to fill the measuring cup, or do you always push it in to the cup and pack it in to fill it completely?

What type of pans do people use? What works best for you?
I started with what I thought were the ones my husband uses, but found out later that he actually hates. These are the gold colored insulated cookie sheets, covered with parchment. Definitely kept them more even, but I actually overcooked the cookies due to using convection, and not knowing that I should have reduced the heat by 25 degrees.

Second batch, I used the standard half sheet pans, with silpat. The bottoms definitely cooked faster and darker than the first batch, but due to the fact that I reduced the heat by 25 degrees, these did come out better. They were still on the dark side, though.

What size scoop is a #20?
I used one that is approx 1 1/4" diameter, until it broke. Then I followed up with one that was about 3/4" diameter. Definitely produced a different looking, and tasting cookie which spurred me to wrrte this post.

All my cookies are basically flat looking. The larger scoop, produced cookies that, while still being flat, definitely had more substance to them. I do like the taste better. I would appreciate any more unwritten specifics that someone who bakes more often than I, may be able to pass along...

(even though I did not entertain at my house, we did supply some goodies and treats for the Tday meal, and am now one of the many who is awaiting help---anyone know a good plumber?

A few answers opinions:
Always pack brown sugar to measure it, even if the recipe does not say so.

There are two things in life that I'm a stick-in-the-mud about: tires and baking pans. [rant on] Regular old plain heavy aluminum pans are the best. Dark ones brown too much. Insulated ones are not necessary. I've been baking cookies for, um, let's see, about 30 years now, and I've always used heavy aluminum sheets, and never had any browning issues (unless I got busy with something else and forgot to set the timer, but that's a different problem). I also find silpats an annoyance - just one more thing to clean, with no advantages. [rant off]

A convection oven is a thing of beauty if you're stewing or braising or roasting. But I ruined too many cookies, cakes, pies, and custards in a convection oven, so now I stick with conventional. My hypothesis is that all that hot dry air blowing about dries out the tops of the baked goods. It just isn't worth the perceived savings in time.

I also find no advantage to using an ice cream scoop over, say, two old soup spoons. My cookies come out round and uniform enough. That's the real issue: you aim for uniformity so that everything on one sheet bakes in the same amount of time; that way, nothing over- or under-bakes.

Sometimes the simple old fashioned way of doing things works just fine.