An Ode to Athan's

Athan’s Bakery was originally a curiosity to be observed from the windows of the C line while traveling downtown from college. Since then, I have realized its utility as a perfect way to complement meals eaten (or beverages purchased) in Brookline’s Washington Square. Regardless of what type of dessert you want, and what quantity, Athan’s has something that will make you happy. Cakes, mousses, butter cookies, gelato, chocolates, candies, Greek pastries, and cream desserts are all there, along with café beverages to wash them down. I can’t help but rave about the sweet treats I have had there.

Let's start with the Cookie Crème confection (above left). Light, airy barely-chocolate cake alternates with smooth, deeply-flavored, and well-whipped chocolate mousse to create a pleasing dessert of various chocolate textures. The dessert is shot through with miniature chocolate chips and small chunks of chewy cookie dough; both of these exist in a higher density at the center. Dark chocolate ganache frosting drizzled with a thinner chocolate sauce enrobes the cake and mousse layers, and the whole thing is topped with a dollop of vanilla cream and a chocolate wafer. With so many chocolates, how can this dessert not deliver? I was very pleased with its rich flavors and deceptive lightness. The cheesecake, to the right of the Cookie Crème, is another example of a heavy cake made light and bearable. The packed graham cracker crust is covered in a layer of strawberry cream, which in turn is topped with sweet, whipped meringue cheesecake. This airy, creamy confection was a true delight, especially after the filling cheeses I had eaten with my dinner before! I cannot advocate enough for a bakery that creates lighter yet equally flavorful versions of traditionally-filling desserts.

Athan’s chocolates, on the other hand, are black holes that fit in your hand – but one would expect that from fine truffles. The chocolates’ best advantages are their size and truffle fillings. These confections are larger than the average piece of chocolate, but smaller than a candy bar, brownie or cookie. In other words, if you want something sweet after a filling meal, and don’t want to burst but still feel like you had a legitimate dessert, these are the way to go. Also, the flavors! I have seen Nutella, fig, mint, amaretto, marzipan, caramel, and ganache fillings in these truffles. The Nutella filling was delightful, and I have a mint truffle awaiting me at home. I’m sure it will be delicious…just like I’m sure I will be back for more. I may not be in college anymore, but the C line is still worth traveling for these treasures!

California Dessertin': Baked Beauties

This baked-good entry is entirely devoted to Kara's Cupcakes...6 particular cupcakes, to be exact. If you recall the multitude of cupcake entries written thus far in this blog, you can easily imagine my glee at stumbling upon a cupcakery in Ghirardelli Square that rivals my favorite East Coast cupcake haunts! We snacked on Kara's excellent baked treats twice in San Francisco:

• Fleur de Sel- a moist chocolate cupcake was filled with soft, sweet caramel and topped in thick, dark, creamy chocolate ganache. The ganache, in turn, was dusted with crystals of fleur de sel. I really enjoyed the bits of salt in an otherwise smooth and silkily sweet cupcake. One of the best cupcakes I have ever had!
  
• Vanilla Chocolate - a vanilla cupcake was topped with sugary chocolate buttercream frosting. This simple treat was tasty, but could have used some additional moisture.
• Meyer Lemony Lemon - a dense, somewhat dry vanilla cupcake was injected with tart lemon filling. The frosting was a smooth, barely-lemon vanilla buttercream whose potential citrusy tartness was negated by its creaminess. Fortunately the tart filling more than made up for the lack of lemon flavor elsewhere in the dessert.
  
• Passion Fruit - the same vanilla cupcake had intensely sweet...yet tart...passion fruit filling within, and vanilla buttercream frosting on top. The filling provided the moisture necessary for the cake, and the passion fruit flavor's strength stood out against the cake and frosting's comparatively mild vanilla.

Four cupcakes, however, apparently were not enough! We were surprised to see a second Kara's outpost a few days later in downtown Napa.

• Raspberry Dazzle - the same moist chocolate cake used in the Fleur de Sel cupcake was filled with sweet raspberry preserves and topped with smooth raspberry buttercream frosting. Here, the frosting's creaminess worked well with its fruit flavor, as berries are more easily made sweet than citrus fruits. This cupcake dazzled me, for sure.
  
• Banana Caramel - a banana cupcake, whose texture walked the line between banana bread and cake proper, was filled with sweet caramel and topped with cream cheese frosting. The frosting was reminiscent of carrot cake topping, but silkier; the caramel was smooth against the comparative roughness of the cake. These three flavors went unexpectly well together, and made this cupcake the most (pleasantly) surprising.

Overall, Kara's cakes were better than the average Boston cup cake, with frosting to rival Sweet's. If you travel to the San Francisco area and need a delightful dessert to go, make a stop - or two - or even three! - at Kara's.

California Dessertin': Feeling Fruity

Peach Cobbler at The Monk's Kettle

This dessert ended my favorite meal of the vacation, and one of my favorite meals of the year. The Monk's Kettle features Belgian-style beers and fresh, quality interpretations of comfort classics. Bostonians, imagine a smaller, Californified Publick House. I wasn't sure if their desserts could reach the same degree of excellence as my pot pie of the day, but our dessert choice definitely did. The cobbler was served in a small crock fresh out of the oven; the juices dribbling out of the crock may have been bubbling! The peach slices within the cobbler were a variety of thicknesses and the perfect degree of ripeness. Some sugar was mixed in, clearly, but not enough to mask that fresh peach tartness or make the dessert overly syrupy. The crumble topping was thick and oaty with a hint of cinnamon. It may have walked the line between savory and sweet, which I historically consider perfect for peaches. The crumbly dough was then topped with vanilla bean ice cream and garnished with mint. The ice cream melted rather quickly given the oven freshness of the dessert - so, each bite was a delightful combination of tart peaches, buttery cinnamon crumble, and cool vanilla. Does it get better than this?

California Dessertin': Chocolate, (Not So) Plain and Simple

I will not waste your time with excuses for why I haven’t updated since…July? Consider this notification that I am alive and well, and have been consuming desserts at just as alarming a rate as when I posted more regularly.

A week-long October vacation to San Francisco and Napa Valley yielded plenty of dessert-sampling opportunities, organized into Chocolate, Fruit, and Baked Item posts for your reading pleasure!

• Ghirardelli Peanut Butter Squares – Ghirardelli chocolate is made in San Francisco, and while their factory is not open to the public, they still provide a treat for visitors in the form of an extensive gift shop and chocolate restaurant at Ghirardelli Square. Shoppers receive a complimentary chocolate square upon entering the store, so we were able to sample their recently-released peanut butter squares. The milk chocolate was smooth and creamy, as always. The peanut butter was thicker than the average creamy peanut butter, without much salt or buttery flavor. I would have preferred a tad more salt, as few desserts are as joyous as those that combine salty and sweet tastes. Some buttery smoothness would have been welcome as well, rather than bland solidity enrobed in tastier chocolate. I’m sure Ghirardelli will refine their recipe over time – after all, I can find no fault with their long-tenured mint and caramel squares.


• Ghirardelli World Famous Hot Fudge Sundae – The chocolate restaurant had oh so many ice cream delights to choose from, but in the interest of being as objective as possible we ordered the classic Ghirardelli sundae. The dessert was a massive quantity of French vanilla ice cream drizzled in chocolate sauce made from ground and melted Ghirardelli candies. The chocolate-to-ice-cream ratio was among the best I’ve seen, which you would expect from a chocolatier! The milk chocolate sauce had a creamy taste and was mostly smooth, with a hint of cocoa-y graininess that may be a result of its freshness. Whipped cream and a maraschino cherry topped off the sundae.


• Tcho Chocolate – In wandering the Embarcadero area, full of old piers and warehouses converted to trendier ends, we stumbled upon Tcho’s chocolate factory and shop. Instead of marketing their chocolates by percent cacao, or bean origin, or added flavor, Tcho makes chocolate from beans with unique flavor profiles. So, a bar of Citrus chocolate didn’t have lemon extract added to the melt – instead, the source beans are just naturally tart and tangy, and those properties are drawn out in the chocolate-making process. The Citrus was my favorite, though Fruity was an effective complement to nuts and dried fruit (ha). I returned to Boston with a Citrus bar, some Fruity-covered cashews, and Chocolatey organic baking chocolate! A side note: coffee drinks featuring Tchocolate are extraordinary…and pack a lot of caffeine. We enjoyed the Tcho Shot (equal parts espresso and chocolate) and Tchocha (replace “Tch” with “M”).



• Milat Chocolate Port Sauce – The Milat winery in Napa Valley is a small, family-operated business that partners with a Napa chocolatier to make this dessert. A basic chocolate sauce is fortified with Milat’s port-style wine. The excellence of this sauce owes more to the sweet port than the barely-dark chocolate; the black cherry, assorted berry, and brandy flavors really assert themselves. This would be a good sauce for drizzling over vanilla ice cream, berries, or flaky pastries. I wonder which we’ll do!

Mulligan's Farms

It is finally time for Mulligan’s, the storied ice cream stand of my New Hampshire days, to get the blog mention it deserves. Well, I must clarify a few things first: while I might live in the Boston area currently, I still frequent Mulligan’s whenever I head back to Londonderry to visit my family. So, the NH days still exist, in a manner of speaking. Secondly, this purveyor of desserts is not even in NH – it’s in Tyngsboro, MA, a town bordering NH, which is about 25 minutes from where I grew up. Lastly, my family and I are the only ones who know this place as Mulligan’s. Any other person would call the stand Sullivan Farms Homemade Ice Cream. Why do we call it Mulligan’s, you ask? Well, that doesn’t have any impact on the quality of the ice cream made there…and believe me, it is delicious.

The actual ice cream used at Mulligan’s is thick and creamy, but not creamy to the point of tasting fatty. The flavors are enjoyable – chocolate is light and milky, almost like Swiss chocolate; French vanilla is creamy with the palest yellow color; strawberry strikes the perfect balance between fruit and milk tastes; mint is strong yet sweet, and of course a lovely light green. With these ice creams as bases, Mulligan’s uses the typical ice cream mix-ins to put the best possible spin on the usual flavor combinations. Any chip variety is packed full of chips of varying sizes and textures. Candy ice creams are filled with candy pieces. Cookie flavors contain ground-up cookie powder as well as huge cookie chunks. Swirl ice creams contain enough of the swirled item – fudge, caramel, etc – to be considered a frozen sundae. Two of my favorite inspired flavors are:

• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup –Swiss chocolate ice cream swirled with peanut butter, and peanut butter cup chunks as well as full cups mixed in
• Mopman’s Grasshopper Pie – a Julie flavor if there ever was one, this ice cream has pretty much all I would want in a dessert, in one scoop: mint ice cream with chocolate chips, Oreo cookies (both crumbs and pieces / entire cookies), and thick, luxurious fudge swirls

Essentially, I can’t think of a better place to fulfill one’s need for traditional, homestyle ice cream. If you’re in the mood for something other than a scoop or two, their sundaes are also delicious, with plenty of rich homemade fudge drizzled over mounds of ice cream. The deal is made even sweeter when you consider the value for your money – a “kiddie” at Mulligan’s is the equivalent of a generous medium, or skimpy large, at any Boston-area creamery; and yes, that’s the smallest size they offer.

So, if you’re in southern New Hampshire for any reason, or taking Route 3 north to a vacation in the Lakes Region or White Mountains, or are simply in the mood for a dessert-themed escape from urban Massachusetts, you owe it to yourself to stop at Mulligan’s. Bring me back a tub of Mopman’s – yes, they will pack mass quantities to go!

Baking at the Brewery

This most recent summer weekend came to a delicious close in Portsmouth, NH. After spending the day sunning ourselves at local beaches, we decided that few things could be better than eating pub food and drinking local beer - so, I recommended the Portsmouth Brewery's restaurant, long a family favorite for its hearty sandwiches and relaxed, airy dining space. Even I was pleasantly surprised with the excellence of the establishment's appetizers and dinners - the menu has grown more varied, and the food's quality has increased, over the years - as well as the desserts! The following desserts found their way to our table.

• Chocolate Stout Cake - this monstrous two-layer cake was made with the brewery's own "Black Cat" stout, frosted with milk chocolate icing, and drizzled in chocolate sauce. A hearty dollop of freshly-whipped cream accompanied the dessert, and its purpose became apparent after the first bite. The cake was extremely dense thanks to the stout, and any cool attempt (in cream form) at lightening it was welcomed. Even glasses of beer and water couldn't help the entire cake down. The beer taste was noticeable, but not too distracting. Overall, I found the cake to be too dense, and slightly too dry and bitter - probably nothing that a little extra oil in the recipe couldn't fix!
• Fruit Cobbler - imagine a large ramekin filled with mixed fruit (strawberries, blueberries and raspberries), topped with an inch-thick layer of hearty crumble topping and a finishing dollop of vanilla cream. Such was the glory that I ordered and enjoyed. The berries were fresh, and the crumble topping was well-spiced, with plenty of oaty chunks to crunch. My only objection was to the walnuts strewn throughout the topping. Otherwise, consider this repeat-order-worthy and an inspiration to my own kitchen.
• Vanilla Saffron Pound Cake - this unusual offering was from the "Brewer's Table No. 22" menu, a rotating list of specials with custom beer pairings. The pound cake had a pleasant vanilla flavor with only a hint (fortunately) of saffron, and the clear vanilla glaze drizzled over the confection had the faintest hint of lemon. A cassis-moscado sorbet accompanied the cake, and I thoroughly enjoyed this unconventional medium for black currant flavor.

Impressive for a local pub, eh? We were all stuffed after dining so heartily, so we had no room for Annabelle's Ice Cream, another Portsmouth food favorite. Maybe next time?

Cookies, Cupcakes, or Muffins?

My latest baking adventure proved to be one of the most surprising, and most delicious, adventures yet! I departed from my custom of only baking pumpkin items in fall and winter, and tried a recipe from this book for pumpkin butterscotch cookies. I substituted milk chocolate chips for butterscotch ones (apparently butterscotch chips are too processed for Whole Foods) and was blown away by the results. Here is the recipe:

• 2 C unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 t ground cinnamon (per family baking tradition, I slightly-more-than-doubled this)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 C sugar
• 1/2 C canola or corn oil
• 1 C canned pumpkin
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1 C butterscotch chips (or milk chocolate chips...I definitely put in more than 1 cup)

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and butter the paper.
2. Stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the eggs and sugar until smooth and lightened in color, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl as needed during mixing. On low speed, mix in the oil, pumpkin, and vanilla until blended. Mix in the flour mixture to incorporate it. Mix in the chips.
4. Using a 1/4 C measuring cup, scoop out mounds of dough onto the buttered parchment paper, and smooth them over. This method makes approximately 16 cookies.
5. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry, about 15 minutes. Cool them on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Dust the cooled cookies lightly with powdered sugar. The cookies can be stored in a tightly covered container at room temperature for up to 4 days.

The dough was so easy to make, and as you may recall from previous entries I always appreciate the use of oil in place of more fattening / less flavor-friendly dairy ingredients! I was initially apprehensive of the 1/4 C of batter per cookie, but the end result allayed all concerns. These baked items are less like cookies, and more like the plump tops of large cupcakes or muffins. They are unusually moist and pumpkin-y, and the extra cinnamon really complemented the rich pumpkin flavor. The edges of the chocolate chips got slightly crispy as they baked in the oily batter environment, but the chips' interiors stayed rich, creamy, and melted *just* enough. Plus, the crispy crunch isn't a bad thing in the context of the extremely soft, smooth cookie. They taste delicious right out of the oven but also keep extremely well, retaining all moisture several days after baking. While they taste phenomenal as is, one particularly fun way to enjoy them is to frost them in warm chocolate icing - it really is like having a pumpkin-chocolate cupcake! I have never experienced a pumpkin-chocolate combination that worked as well as these, or any baked good that stayed so moist over time.

With the success of my chocolate improvisation in mind, I hope to repeat this recipe as it was originally intended, with butterscotch chips. White chocolate chips, cranberries, or apple chunks may also be worthwhile...