Well it feels really good to be back posting here! It’s been FOREVER (or so it seems) but we’re back in the game. And with a great book! As I mentioned before, A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg is our current pick, chosen by Jeanine. I got the book in mid-January and finished it by the beginning of February. It was very good, but bittersweet, so I thought it appropriate I start things off with a bittersweet chocolate cupcake recipe.

Molly is a great writer because she writes in such a way that through her descriptions you really feel as though you’re there with her, eating cheese & drinking wine in Paris during happy days, or eating “Italian grotto eggs” with her and her ailing father in sadder days, which also were his last. But yet she did it without overly flowery language, it was all very accessible, which was what I liked about our past three books. I hate overly wordy foodies. Describing something is one thing, making it sound as good as it tastes is one thing. But really… when you use language people can’t relate to or talk about things people can’t relate to, it doesn’t make for a good read. Molly also has a blog, Orangette, which is an excellent read.

At any rate, I think everyone can relate to Molly’s book, whether you’ve lost someone close to you or not; and especially the highlighted parallels of food and love. So, without further ado… chocolate cupcakes with bittersweet glaze!

As you can see, I made some of mine look like Hostess cupcakes, just because that’s what they reminded me of. They aren’t filled, though. I just thought that was a cute way of topping them, especially since I had a tube of this stuff just laying around!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Bittersweet Glaze

Ingredients:

1 ounce semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
½ cup hot brewed coffee
1 cup sugar
¾ plus 1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
¼ cup canola oil
½ cup well stirred WHOLE MILK yogurt (not non-fat or low-fat)
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300° F. Line the wells of a standard-size muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Put one ounce of the semisweet chocolate in a medium bowl with the hot coffee. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is opaque and smooth.
3. Meanwhile in another medium bowl, mix together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the egg until pale yellow, about 1 minute. Add the oil, yogurt, and vanilla, beating well. Gradually pour in the melted chocolate/coffee mixture, and beat thoroughly to combine. Add the dry ingredients all at once, and beat on low speed until the batter is just combined. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl and briefly stir to make sure all the dry ingredients are absorbed.
5. Spoon the batter into the wells of the muffin tin, making sure that it is evenly distributed. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester/toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center of a cupcake. Transfer to a wire rack, and cool for 20 minutes, then -carefully: they’re tender! – removing the cupcakes. Allow them to cool completely before glazing.
6. To make the glaze, melt the bittersweet chocolate in a metal or glass bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. Stir frequently to prevent scorching. When the chocolate is completely smooth, it’s ready. Working with one cupcake at a time, spoon a teaspoonful of melted chocolate on top. Tilt and rotate the cupcake to coax the chocolate out to the edge. Alternatively, use a knife or icing spatula to spread the chocolate. The top of the cupcake should be covered.
7. Set the cupcakes aside at room temperature until ready to serve. The chocolate glaze will firm up a bit and become matte.

Molly says she likes to eat them when cooled (and I do too), but you can totally eat them as soon as you glaze them. Although be warned- they’ll be messy!

I used Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder in the cupcakes, which makes them really dark, almost black. I should’ve bought a dark chocolate for the topping too, but I always underestimate the darkness of it and assume they’ll match. They never do.

Anyway I loved this book. I have to say, as much as I have a dislike for Sandra Bullock as an actress, her sister seems much more like someone I could hang out with. Anyone who quits a 9 to 5 bullshit executive job in L.A. to open up a bakery gets a A in my book. I can totally relate to that dream. I get so bored in an office setting, office politics are usually no better than high school crap. But it’s not a reality for everyone, unfortunately. So I do envy her. Plus, she’s got a much cooler name: Gesine. They lived in Germany for a while as children, which also intrigued me. I’m part German, a large part, and I’ve always been curious as to what living there would be like. The idea of 3′ o clock tea and cake is totally up my alley. Sign me up! I also agree with her view on people who are anti-sweets, etc. One cupcake a week doesn’t make you fat, neither does a slice of cake every day. It’s the 7,000 other things you cram in your mouth that do the trick.

So anyway I do not like pie. Or berries. But I ended up going to the fruit market the other day and bought tons of fresh berries- raspberries & blackberries. My mother loves them, and she loves them in pie even more. And Mother’s Day is coming… so I had Gesine’s pie filling recipe in my head and decided to make it.

Raspberry & blackberry pie filling

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 cups raspberries (I used half raspberries, half blackberries)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
butter (optional)

Directions:

1. Whisk sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium bowl to blend.
2. Stir in the raspberries and lemon juice. Add filling to crust.

Quick puff pastry

Ingredients:

4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 pounds butter (5 sticks)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice stirred into 3/4 cup cold water

Directions:

1. Place the flour in a large bowl. Cut the butter into 1-inch pieces. Add to the flour and incorporate with your hands, pinching and massaging the butter into the flour, making sure to leave discernable chunks of butter intact. You don’t want to incorporate the butter so well that it starts to look like cornmeal.
2. Dissolve the salt gently into the water. Add the flour and butter mixture and gently mix with your hands until the dough starts to come together slightly.
3. Shape the dough into a rough square and let it rest for 10 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a 1/2-inch-thick rectangle. Give the dough three single turns, followed by one double turn. If the dough feels rubbery after you have completed a few turns, let it rest a few minutes before you continue.
4. Cover and refrigerate. Your dough block should be approx. 12 x 6 inches.
5. Once your pastry is nice and cool, take a sharp knife and cut it in half, take a look at where you’ve sliced through. You should see chunks of butter, this is a wonderful thing. when you roll, you want to press down on these layers. You don’t want to lay the cut side down, you want to make sure the layers are parallel to each other and to the table, and that you are rolling the layers onto one another, maintaining the layer structure and ensuring maximum puff and flakiness.

And now we get to the assembly. First I preheated my oven to 350 F. Then I rolled the dough into circles, and then pressed one into my pie pan. I froze it for a half hour, removed them and poked holes in the bottom of them with a fork. Then I lined it with parchment (foil and can be used as well) and fill that with dry beans or rice to weigh it down. I baked them for 15 minutes, until they were no longer raw. According to Gesine, this is a “blind bake”, ensuring that the bottom pastry won’t turn out soggy.

This is probably where I should say I’m not very good with crusts. Cheesecake crust and pie crusts are my waterloo. It probably also added to that that I decided to make this on the hottest day of our spring so far, about 80 degrees and rising. But it turned out okay for my first pie. I’m planning on trying this again, for sure. Was it perfect? No. But tasted amazing, well at least according to the people I served it to. Okay carrying on with the recipe…

Then I beat one egg with 1 tablespoon water to make an egg wash.  I removed the parchment and rice from the shells and brushed the crusts with the egg wash. Then I filled them with raspberry/blackberry filling, topping it with some little pats of butter. I baked them for an additional 45 minutes, until the crust was golden and the filling was bubbling. If you’d like, you could use the second circle of dough as a cover for your pie. I opted to not do this, I wanted to see those little berries squirming in sugary goodness.

The filling was obviously easy. The dough… eh. Not difficult, just time consuming, and since it was warm it was mushy and the butter was melty. And my filling was a bit runny. But hey, whatever. A pie is a pie. Stuff it in your face and move along.

Some comments I got on it:

“Out of this world.. the berries, the crust, everything!”

“Two thumbs up. Fantastic.”

“Can I have another slice?”

As Gina mentioned, Ruth dresses up in various disguises to eat at the restaurants so she isn’t recognized. In each of her disguises, she finds out something about herself. I like that. I think that’s why I like changing my appearance so much (hair colors/cuts/styles, etc). Every time you change your looks drastically like that, you find something out you didn’t realize before. For example, if you think you’re a wallflower, and then dye your hair bright red… you might be surprised at how you really aren’t a wallflower. Or maybe it’s the hair that changes you? In Ruth’s case, it was wigs and makeup, in addition to a few smartly chosen wardrobe choices.

There are tons of wonderful food/meal recipes in this book, and I want to make many of them, but I haven’t had the opportunity to make them yet, I was planning on the risotto but Brianne did it. So I figured I’d go with a dessert. I had originally planned on making her New York cheesecake, but Jeanine beat me to it, and Gina took Nicky’s vanilla cake. *shakes fist* That’s what happens when you wait too long I guess. So what’s a baker to do?

I picked the Last-Minute chocolate cake. It sounded amazing, and I decided to make it for Valentine’s Day. I made some strawberry-vanilla cupcakes too, but I wanted to make something chocolate. This was the perfect recipe. I made it into cupcakes (of course) and frosted it with vanilla buttercream and topped it with chocolate hearts & Red Hot candies.

Last-Minute Chocolate Cake

• 4 ounces fine quality unsweetened chocolate
• ¾ stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
• ¾ cup brewed strong black coffee
• 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 300° F.

Butter and flour a 9-inch-by-5-inch loaf pan (I used a muffin tin, duhhh).

Combine the chocolate, butter and coffee in the top of a double boiler or in a very heavy pot. Stir constantly over low heat until melted. Let the mixture cool for 15 minutes. Then add the Grand Marnier, sugar, egg and vanilla. Stir well.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt together, and add this to the chocolate mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan (fill muffin tins anywhere from ½-¾ full) and bake for 30- 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (I ended up getting 18 cupcakes, and they baked at 350° F for about 25-30 minutes).

Serves 6.

I omitted the Grand Marnier, only because I didn’t have it. So I added an extra tablespoon of coffee and 1 teaspoon orange extract. It came out awesome, and surprisingly went very well with the Red Hots! I used Baker’s brand unsweetened 1 oz. chocolate squares for the chocolate in the recipe. This is a really great dark, rich, chocolate-y cake with a great “extra” flavor. Some people who tasted it couldn’t quite put their finger on what it was exactly… but they all agreed it is super yum. All in all it was a really good chocolate cake recipe. I’ll definitely make it again. Maybe next time I’ll make it as a cake, and top it with vanilla ice cream as Ruth suggests in the book. Mmm. But also this would make an awesome layer cake if you double it.

I know, chocolate cake around Valentine’s Day is a kind of cliched thing to do, and boring, but have some pity on me. I promise I’ll be back soon with another recipe, less boring too. I won’t let you down, Cooking the Books… I won’t let you down!

Psst.. the cupcakes in the background? They’re made of cloth, handmade and hand-painted, and were a gift from my mother. If you’d like to know where to buy similar creations, shoot me an e·mail or ask me on Twitter!

New York Cheesecake
1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs (about 6 ounces)
1 cup sugar
½ cup melted unsalted butter
1 ½ pounds cream cheese, preferable without gum, at room temperature
4 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla
Grated zest of one lemon
2 cups sour cream
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the graham crackers with ¼ cup of sugar and, melted butter and press into bottom and sides of a 9-inch ungreased spring-form pan. Chill while preparing filling.
Beat the cream cheese, ½ cup sugar, eggs, 2 teaspoons of the vanilla, and lemon zest until smooth. Pour into chilled crust and bake 50 minutes to an hour, or until the cheese is set and starting to turn golden in spots. Remove the oven (leave oven on) and cool for about 15 minutes until glossy and set.
Cool completely, cover, and chill at least 8 hours.
Serves 8

Now, it sounds a little funny to think I baked these bourbon-iced, funnily-named cupcakes with my almost-2 year old, but we had a blast. All she knew was we were making cupcakes. I keep a jar of vanilla frosting in the house just in case, and I iced her one with that. She had a great time helping me mix the ingredients and stir the batter in my not-so-great yard-sale-bought stand mixer… (my birthday is December 15…cough cough KitchenAid cough cough..) and I put the icing together after she went to bed.

My icing didn’t turn out quite as it should though – maybe it’s my crappy mixer, maybe because I used whiskey because it’s all I had in the house, or I added a touch too much milk. The icing was a little too thin, but they were yummy. I love a good cupcake and a good drink… and this combined both. After a whirlwind weekend, I found myself at home with a sleeping child (Brett is headed to Delaware to buy a 1973 Nova..his latest “toy”) and a delicious cupcake and a glass of wine.

For those of you who are new bakers, this recipe is quite easy to make. They’re delicious, and you don’t need a breakup to have a reason to make them. Try it out, and if you’re too afraid, grab Giulia’s book and remember, (from one chocolate lover to another) frozen Yodels are always a great failsafe if the cupcakes don’t quite turn out right!

Fuck You Cakes

Cupcakes:
Cupcake liners
2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 whole milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Insert liners into muffin tins. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Cream butter and sugar with a hand mixer (or a standing mixer fitted with a paddle) at medium speed until fluffy; add eggs one at a time, then the vanilla, and beat until smooth. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture a little at a time, alternating with the milk until fully incorporated. Do not overmix, as this will make for tough cupcakes, and you’ve suffered enough.
Spoon batter into muffin tins, filing each one a third of the way. Bake until tops are golden and springy, 20-25 minutes. Yield: about 12 cupcakes.

Chocolate Bourbon Frosting
(because you need a drink)

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2-3 tablespoons bourbon (depending on how bad it was)
4 tablespoons milk
1 stick butter, unsalted, very soft
1 box confectioner’s sugar
1-2 tablespoons milk

In a small bowl, whisk the cocoa, bourbon, and 2 tablespoons milk. Cream the butter with a hand mixer or standup mixer on medium speed until smooth, then add the sugar 1 cup at a time until fully incorporated. Add the bourbon mixture and continue beating a little at a time until the frosting is fluffy and spreadable.

Giulia’s note:Don’t be so upset with yourself that you eat more than one or two cupcakes.  Be angry with him! Bring whatever is left to work.  Your colleagues will eat these and you’ll feel lighter for having shed him and not OD’ing on cupcakes.

Of all people, I love a good chocolate cake. I am all about healthy, fulfilling, delicious food – but I have my vice, and it’s chocolate. Chocolate bars, cupcakes, cake, ice cream, brownies, you name it – I’ll eat it. Like her, I too am quite opposed to eating a Valentine’s Day dinner in a restaurant. I’d much rather cook a nice quiet meal for the both of us, that we can enjoy with our own wine that isn’t costing an arm and a leg (and not paying for a babysitter) and we can throw on pj’s and relax on the couch with the rest of the bottle afterwards.

This cake was so delicious. It was definitely a hit. After a long day and heavy foods, this cake was just what everyone needed. I’d never used parchment paper before, and I now understand why it called for it. The batter ends up so thin that I needed that support of the paper to get it out to cool it on the racks. It was very full-flavored, but it had a light, airy texture to it that melted in my mouth. It didn’t make its way onto the table until after 9, but we all ate it. I did avoid the food coloring, and Giulia was right – it never looked like a “pretty” cake, I don’t know if the icing was a little too thin and didn’t quite look how I wanted, but hell, it was so good no one cared!

~Hot Pink Cake~
Cake:
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs, left out of fridge for about 30 minutes
1 stick butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup whole milk
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter and flour two 8″ baking pans and line with parchment paper.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Add eggs, butter, milk, and vanilla and beat at a medium speed for 2-3 minutes, until all ingredients are combined and the cocoa bits are smoothed out. Stir in the boiling water. Pour batter into pans and bake at 350 degrees until a cake tester comes out with moist crumbs, about 30-35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in pans, then transfer to cooling racks. Wait until they have cooled completely before frosting.

For the frosting:
1 stick very soft butter
1 pound confectioner’s sugar
3-4 tablespoons milk
1 tsp vanilla
a little too much red food dye (optional!)

Mix all ingredients with an electric mixer at low speed until creamy. Add more milk if necessary. The trick is for the icing to be not too thin and not too goopy.

Yield: enough for 1 8-inch cake or 24 cupcakes