Madhu Knits and Cooks

Chocolate Orange Tart - Wonderful Year-Round Treat

It's not often that I make pies or cakes that can truly be served year-round.  Most have a distinctly summer (think berry or light cream) set of ingredients, or distinctly winter flavors (gingerbread or other spice cakes).  

Enter the Milk Street Chocolate-Orange Tart.  While the orange-chocolate flavor combination does seem to create more of a winter, holiday-time feeling, the base for this tart is actually ricotta, which makes it a creamy and lighter treat.  

The partial almond flour crust also adds a lightness of flavor to the tart, with the orange and chocolate also coming through as accents rather than the primary feature of this delicate dessert.

The best part of this tart?  It's relatively simple to prepare, at least compared to most pies that require far more chilling and prep time for the dough.

To construct this crumbly tart, you simply combine the ingredients in the food processor, press into the tart pan, and then chill once before blind baking (no multiple chills needed to prevent the butter from getting too warm).

After the blind baking is complete (approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes for me), mix together the tart ingredients in the same food processor, pour into the warm crust, and then bake.  I think I overbaked the tart at 33 minutes, but it was still very good with a smooth consistency.

I look forward to making this simple tart again and again!

Egg Yolk Chocolate Chip Cookies - A Salty, Buttery Treat

I continue to bake my way through Claire Ptak's Violet Bakery Cookbook with the Egg Yolk Chocolate Chip Cookies being another delicious stand-out that I will be baking again and again.

These cookies are crisp on the outside, slightly softer in the middle, full of a delicious salt flavor, and super, super buttery.  I really loved these cookies, and so did the others who sampled them.

You start with your standard cookie approach - creaming together the wet ingredients, and then adding in the sifted dry ingredients.  For my chocolate chips, I used a hodgepodge of leftover chocolate bits in my pantry - mini-chips, chunks of bittersweet bars, and some regular, semi-sweet chips as well.

The recipe then calls for scooping the dough with an ice cream scoop, which I did, but I think my scoop was not quite the size of Ptak's, so I ended up with approx. double the number of cookie doughs than the recipe intended.

Then you freeze the cookies for a bit before baking them.  I ended up baking my first tray of cookies the day I made the dough, and the second batch later in the week.

These cookies were super simple to bake, and turned out wonderfully even though I think I over-baked them.  I look forward to making these again and again!

King Arthur Flour's No Knead Bread - Another Great Bread Recipe

Could there be an even better version of my favorite bread recipe?  Thanks to King Arthur Flour, the answer is yes!  The KAF No-Knead White Crusty Bread recipe draws from my recent favorite Simple Crusty Bread approach, and provides more detailed guidance to result in a perfectly baked loaf.

The more detailed KAF guidance provides both weight measurement guidance that I followed as well as details on how to substitute a dutch oven for the baking itself.  I also followed related guidance to keep my standard inclusion of rye flour to only 20% of the overall flour weight as to not depress the bread rise too much.

(hello scale, I love you!)

By following the weight guidance instead of the volume measurements, I ended up with a much thicker and dense dough than my usual no knead doughs, which are quite loose and shaggy.

Like my preparation of the original recipe, I did half the amount of dough I made to ultimately produce two loaves instead of four.

I baked the loaf in a 7 1/4 quart dutch oven, pre-heated in a 450 degree oven (480 in our new, not-quite-calibrated oven).  I baked the bread for 28 minutes in the covered dutch oven, and then an additional 8 minutes with the cover off.

The result, when cooled, was great - full of decent holes, great crust, and a much better rise than when you bake on a pizza stone.  I'll be making this again!

Boterkoek - Dutch Butter Cake or Cookie? Regardless of Category, a Great Year-Round Treat!

Milk Street, Milk Street, how did I cook before you?  Chris Kimball's global recipe guide continues to outperform with my most recent Milk Street attempt, the Boterkoek, a Dutch shortbread cookie-like butter cake.  

This beautiful cake / cookie is baked in a springform pan and uses just 7 ingredients - with eggs being the main distinguishing ingredient from traditional shortbread.  The cake is very lightly flavored by a bit of lemon zest, making it a simple treat that can be enjoyed at virtually any time of the day and at any time of the year.  The thickness and crumbliness of the cake makes it feel like a more winter-y, tea-time snack, but the lemon flavor gives it a summer-like refreshing flavor.  In short, bake it all day, every day!

You start by buttering and flouring a springform pan, before making two separate egg mixtures (one white, the other white + yolk).

Then cream together the butter / sugar / lemon zest, followed by adding in the egg yolk mixture and the flour to make a thick, cookie-like dough.

Spread the dough in the prepared pan, and then coat lightly with the egg white wash before making the scored, checkered pattern with a fork.

I baked the cake for 28 minutes, and ended up with a cake that cut like a thick cookie, was crumbly like a cookie, but still held itself largely together.  The cake was a hit with both adults and children alike, so I will definitely be making it again!

Fudgy, Fudgy Rye Flour Chocolate Brownies, Courtesy of Claire Ptak

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Violet, home of innovative American-baker-in-London Claire Ptak.   While Claire may be best known for making the wedding cake for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, she is also well-known in baking circles for her seasonal baking.  Having tried her delicious molasses cake - scented with citrus - in the flesh a few weeks ago, I can agree that Ptak's baked goods are really something!

I have to admit though that I wasn't that hard to win over because I had already tried one of Claire Ptak treats - albeit of the homemade variety.  My re-creation of her Chocolate Rye Brownies were a fudgy, fudgy treat - dense, gooey and slightly salty from my first use of Maldon sea salt flakes.  

The thick batter whipped up pretty quickly, particularly because I melted the butter and chocolate together in the microwave, instead of on the stovetop.  Somewhat annoyingly though, the batter prep process required three separate bowls so wasn't the shortest baking-to-clean-kitchen brownie recipe I've made.  

I then baked the brownies for 20 minutes, the lower end of the recipe baking time.  I took the brownies out of the oven at that point, fearful of overbaking, because the middle no longer seemed wobbly, which the recipe stated was the desired bake end.  When the brownies cooled though, they did seem a bit under-baked so I think closer to 25 minutes may be the best next way to approach these.

I do think these are great "adult" brownies - caramel-y and bold.  They will be made for an office potluck or party in the future!

Delicious and Simple Berry Cake

One of the saddest things about being 6 months behind in my blog posts is that I now regularly torture myself when I edit pictures of beautiful summer fruits and vegetables.  This post is probably the worst to date because it involves perfectly ripe and seasonal Maine blueberries.  These blueberries were the centerpiece of a lovely Late Berry Summer Torte recipe I made from King Arthur Flour.

This torte is definitely one of those prepare-while-the-oven-is-heating recipes, which makes it perfect for a weeknight or impromptu summer gathering.  

You simply cream together the sugar, butter, and eggs before adding in the flour.

Then spread the batter in the pan, top with the berries, sprinkle with a cinnamon-sugar mix, and into the oven the torte goes for 35 - 40 minutes.  I may have slightly overbaked the cake because the center was a bit hard for me to tell if it was cooked, but it was still a great result.  This will be an annual staple in my home!

Blueberry Cobbler - A Chez Panisse Almost Homemade Hit!

I have an Alice Waters cookbook on my bookshelf, but somehow I still end up using the Internet to learn about her recipes!  The latest example is my homemade recreation of the NYTimes.com published Chez Panisse Blueberry Cobbler.  

This cobbler is a wonderful summer treat, but because you are baking the fruit with sugar, it really can be a year-round treat with out-of-season fruit.  The recipe is also simple enough that I think you can easily sub in the fruit fillings for whatever you are in the mood for. 

I made the cobbler by eyeballing the ingredients, except for the flour, heavy cream and butter used in the biscuits themselves.  This probably caused the slightly too-grainy biscuits, so I will probably next "experiment" with actually following the recipe or increasing the amount of fats (heavy cream, butter) to produce a more smooth biscuit.  

The other edit I will probably make is to slightly increase the sugar tossed with the fresh fruit because my initial attempt was a little too tart for my taste.  That being said, the tart berries were perfectly offset by vanilla ice cream so I think more sugar is only needed if the dish will be served on its own, without ice cream or sweetened whipped cream.

To construct this while-the-oven-heats dessert, start by tossing the fruit with sugar and placing the mixture at the bottom of a small baking dish.

Then assemble the dough, which takes just only slightly longer than the blueberry prep.  

Then form six equal patties of the dough to place on top of the blueberries in the baking dish.

Bake in the pre-heated oven and serve while still slightly warm - yum!

Peppermint Chocolate Shortbread - An Almost Complete Disaster

Two years ago, I discovered a fantastic chocolate shortbread recipe from King Arthur Flour.   The cookies - named Chocolate Dreams - lived up to their designation as they were rich, chocolatey, and had a great flaky texture.  

As the cookies were in the oven those years ago, I browsed the KAF comments to see what others thought of the recipe.  A few intriguing comments mentioned adding peppermint extract to the dough, which apparently provided the cookies a Thin Mint-like flavor.  

Those comments have stayed in my head over the past few years, and I recently decided to make this recipe modification myself.  I purchased what I thought was peppermint extract and then made this simple dough.  I didn't notice anything was awry with this alteration until the cookies were baking in the oven and overwhelmed our kitchen with a consuming peppermint smell.

I checked my tiny bottle of peppermint extract and discovered that in fact it was peppermint oil.  Two very different things my frantic internet search immediately told me.  With of course, the latter being far more powerful than the former.

As the cookies cooled, my husband and I still decided to give them a try.  My husband said they tasted like Altoids, which seemed pretty spot on as I hesitantly ate a small cookie myself. 

This recipe attempt wasn't a complete disaster though in the sense that when I took them to work the next day, a lot of people seemed to actually like them!  Even said they tasted just like Thin Mints.  Well, to each her own!

The Queso Book Has Arrived - Southern New Mexico Chile Con Queso

I love chile con queso, the amazing Tex-Mex melted cheese concoction.  While I also like a good queso fundido, nothing beats the more dip-like chile con queso.  

I'll be honest - I'll eat any kind of queso, from the Velveeta / Rotel combination to a fancier roux-based queso.  That's why I couldn't wait to buy Lisa Fain's new Queso! book, which features a variety of queso recipes from around the Southwest as well as a few new globally-inspired queso recipes. 

Unlike most cookbooks I purchase, I didn't feel the need to pre-test this book by checking it out of the library first.  This book was destined to be a MadhuKnitsandCooks go-to, especially because Lisa Fain's natural queso recipe on her blog has already been a favorite.

My first queso recipe from the book didn't disappoint, the Southern New Mexico Chile Con Queso.  I've made this recipe approx. 4 times over the past few months because it requires incredibly little prep and uses ingredients that I generally have at home.

Unlike most queso recipes, this recipe just involves melting the cheese on top of the chile mixture on the stove-top - no milk or sour cream needed at all.

My secret ingredient for this queso is some defrosted, home-roasted Hatch chile, which I still have in ample supply in my freezer.

While this queso doesn't have the super smooth texture of a more sauce-based queso, it is delicious - spicy, bold and cheesy.  Will report back as I make more quesos from this book!

Zahav's Dense Hummus - A Restaurant Sensation that Wasn't to My Liking

Although I have a go-to hummus recipe that I will go to battle for, my wandering eye was intrigued by the version published by the Zahav owner.  Zahav is the Philadelphia Israeli hot spot, which I have yet to get into (granted, I tried only once, and on a summer Saturday night at that).  

The recipe was not only intriguing because of its creator, but also because it was more stripped down that most hummus recipes I have tried. No chickpea cooking water or olive oil included, just chickpeas, tahini and lemon. And with my Instant Pot revolutionizing my bean cooking at home, I had no hesitation in trying out this new approach.

As the pre-soaked chickpeas cooked in the Instant Pot (12 minutes on high pressure), I quickly put together the seasoning ingredients.  I quartered the recipe, but probably include a bit more lemon juice.

The resulting hummus was thick, and had a very strong and rich tahini flavor.  I think it would be a good side to either a bland or perhaps tart main course, but on its own, I found the flavor too overwhelming with my standard dip accompaniments. 

I will probably catalogue this recipe in the "at least I tried it category" and stick to my standard recipe moving forward.