Petsi Treats

Petsi Pies, as their name may suggest, is known for their excellent pies and tarts. This Somerville bakery also offers a variety of other treats, which a few us sampled after lunch today. I may have found the best cupcake in Boston, as well as other inspiring cakes and cookies.

• Whoopie Pie Cupcake - this cupcake was better than any whoopie pie I have ever had, and could be better than the products of most cookie-cutter cupcakeries in the area. (Yes, the excellence of this item makes me question my earlier devotion to Sweet!) The cake part proper is dense and fudgy, with moist crumbs. I could see the rich semisweet chocolate used in the batter being equally at home in fudge, or a dense chocolate sauce. The cake eclipses average cupcake content and could be served as a torte in the finest restaurants. The center of the cupcake is injected with a refreshingly light, whipped vanilla cream. This cream comes as a surprise, though, since the cupcake's top is covered in a thick layer of smooth dark chocolate ganache. The union of these three flavors and textures is just perfect, and I found myself sad after taking the last bite.
  
• Carrot Cake Cupcake - this confection pushes the boundary of what a cupcake can be. Most carrot cakes are sweetened, or deprived of certain savory ingredients, to better pass as a traditionally sugary and dainty cupcake; Petsi Pies does not take that step. A hearty helping of carroty, nutty, raisiny cake is frosted in a dome of barely-sweet cream cheese icing. The requisite carrot accent of orange and green icing is the only concession to cuteness this cupcake makes. I respect them for not compromising the integrity of their standard recipe; though, as someone who doesn't go for nuts or raisins in baked goods, I won't order this one myself.
  
• Ginger Molasses Cookie - This large, thick cookie is crunchy at the edges, but becomes chewier towards the center. The taste of light molasses, reminiscent of a generous helping of brown sugar, is the dominant flavor, while ginger serves as an accent. Each bite includes a bit of sugary crunch and sweetness, thanks to the cookie's sparkly coating of turbinado sugar. In other words, this cookie is a great interpretation of a winter classic.
  
• Sweet Potato Crumb Cake - I thank this bakery for introducing me to my first sweet potato cake. A moist sour-cream-based crumble coffee cake conceals a center of mashed sweet potato mixed with hearty brown sugar crumbles. What an unexpected treat! You may see an attempt at recreating such a treat chronicled in this blog come fall.

I had visited Petsi once prior, and thoroughly enjoyed a lemon scone that was pertly flavored with zest and topped in a strong, tart glaze. I will also be enjoying one of their blueberry muffins, purchased to go during today's visit, for breakfast tomorrow. After that, I might have to go back for a fruit or chocolate pie!

A New Use for Goat Cheese

I added a springform pan to my bakeware arsenal this past weekend. What better way to inaugurate it than to make a cheesecake, and an unconventional one at that? A love of goat cheese and cranberries inspired the latest dessert to emerge from my kitchen. The recipe was begging to be tried for several reasons:

• The from-scratch crust requires a food processor. Is there a new food processor currently sitting in my kitchen? Yes!
• You get to candy your own orange peel. I am now slightly more experienced in making garnishes; also, why not apply this skill toward making orange chocolate in the future?
• The cranberries become an enticing drizzle when coated in warm honey. I’ve wanted to use some Napa Valley honey, obtained in October 2009’s California trip, for a few months, and here was my chance. My cranberry love goes without saying.
• Goat cheese in a dessert – need I say more?

Here's the finished cake, along with the orange and cranberry garnishes. Highlights of the production process include making the sugared and spiced graham cracker crust, something I have always enjoyed eating yet have not made until now; mixing turbinado sugar in the cake over granulated sugar, with the goal of giving the cake a grainier sweetness; peeling oranges with a vegetable peeler and sauteeing the julienned peel in melted sugar; and removing the pan's side after refrigerating the cake overnight – yes, it actually worked!

Most of the resulting tastes and textures were unexpected. The cheesecake itself looked runny, but it held its shape. It then melted instantly on my tongue. This strange state did not last – the cake has dried out since its weekend baking, and its texture and firmness have come to approximate "regular" cheesecake. The goat cheese flavor was not very distinct, with the finished product resembling ricotta cheese and cannoli filling more than the cheese I used. The turbinado sugar initially added graininess to the cake, but that roughness disappeared as the granules dissolved in the days post-mixing. Both versions of raw-sugar sweetness were enjoyable. The candied orange peel looked great on the cake, and it was pleasantly tangy for the first few chews – however, after that, the innate bitterness of the peel revealed itself. I don't know if we should have peeled thinner swaths of zest, or if the julienned strips should have been boiled longer. Either way, I was disappointed in this garnish and would like to improve or refine the process going forward. The honeyed cranberries were a delight, and were the one outcome of this recipe that tasted as I had expected. The extreme sweetness and tartness was perfect with the cheesecake, whose flavor profile sat squarely between those extremes.

This dessert gets a high score for creativity, though I plan on exploring traditional cheesecakes with my newly-initiated springform before I return to the goats' pen.

Flour Bakery vs The Snack Aisle

In eating lunch at Flour Bakery's Fort Point location this weekend, we decided to break away from our usual cupcake-and-muffin baked-good order and try their take on two snacks known to grocery shoppers everywhere: the Pop Tart and Oreo cookie! Needless to say, both were infinitely tastier than their processed-food counterparts.

Flour's pop tart is a thick shell of puff pastry dough folded around a pile of thick, seedy, flavorful raspberry jam. The baked tart is then covered in a thin confectioner's sugar glaze with a barely-perceptible taste of lemon. It sounds so simple - and it is! - but I had never had a filled fruit pastry that was so successful in fruit, pastry, and overall taste. The flaky, buttery, vanilla-flavored pastry was a delight on its own or with the glaze, but the best bites included the robust jam. You won't find this kind of flavor in the breakfast aisle! I only wish that the jam had been spread more evenly throughout the tart.

Flour's oreo is a sandwich of two thick, dry, yet chewy cocoa-powder cookies and vanilla filling that tasted equally of buttercream and cream cheese frosting. As for the cookies, the traditional oreo taste was kicked up a notch due to more cocoa powder than the mass-produced inspiration, as well as a good amount of butter to hold it together. The slight chewiness was also appreciated. Why? (1) 'Tis a sign of freshness! (2) The buttery cocoa flavor could be more thoroughly enjoyed. (3) The moist filling would have slipped out upon biting two harder, cardboard-style cookies. The filling was a delight - while I initially thought it was the whipped buttercream frosting used in Flour's cupcakes, I detected a taste of cream cheese in later bites that served the filling well. Cream cheese would have thickened the frosting and therefore made it more stable for inclusion in a cookie, and it also added a slight tang to the overall flavor that blended marvelously with the bitter cocoa in the cookie. I'll definitely order some oreos again - if not for immediate eating in the bakery, then to go as a snack for later!

Yule Love This Log

...trust me!

The centerpiece of my family’s Christmas (dessert) table was a Buche de Noel, or French yule log cake, courtesy of Napa Valley’s Perfect Endings bakery. The cake’s description in Williams Sonoma’s holiday catalog was just too mouth-watering to ignore, so we summoned the delicacy in its dry-ice-cooled and bubble-wrap-protected glory from the Left Coast. It lived in the freezer after its arrival, and then thawed in the fridge starting Christmas Eve so it would be ready for eating on Christmas Day. We brought it out in the open at dinnertime so it could warm further while we ate. Here she is!

The dessert was a thick roll of cake and ganache, which was then covered in frosting sculpted to look like bark. Sprigs of evergreen and white meringue mushrooms dusted with cocoa powder were also arranged around the log to enhance its woodsy design. And oh, the smell! A variety of chocolate aromas with a hint of pine floated up from the uncovered cake, inspiring the best thoughts of winter and tasted decadence.

The cake came with very detailed handling instructions (temperature of knife to cut cake, best way to cut, etc), so we attended to it with reverence. The reverence deepened into nearly-religious devotion upon eating the dessert. The cake itself was spongy semisweet chocolate genoise, which felt light and airy despite its tiny pores and obvious sturdiness. Rolled along with the genoise was a thick layer of sweet ganache. This dense milk chocolate filling complemented the semisweet cake well. The softened surfaces of the cake that touched the ganache – or, the ganache that was barely integrated with the cake! – was my favorite part of the Buche. Lastly, the surface frosting was a rich, bitter chocolate buttercream. The chocolate had a pungent bite, which was largely subdued by the frosting’s butter and cream and transformed into a smooth, lingering meditation on the depth of dark chocolate. I did not eat many of the meringue mushrooms, but the few I did enjoy melted instantly in my mouth, leaving behind the crunchy residue of sugared cocoa powder.

Since the cake was so rich, we cut ½”-thick slices; as a result, we enjoyed 5 days’ worth of Buche after Christmas dinner and subsequent leftovers. I am fairly confident in saying we will reorder this dessert for Christmases future, unless I make my own version!

In other Christmas dessert news, I must mention 2009’s version of our holiday dessert traditions first mentioned in this Christmas 2008 post. We reverted to vanilla sugar cookies this year, which I thoroughly enjoyed. They, plus the chocolate-butterscotch peanut candy and some peppermint bark, are the best holiday nibbles! And, I shall leave you with an image of the happily glazed and sugared cranberry coffee cake. Some things just taste like Christmas, and this is surely one of them.
Happy New Year; may only the best desserts come your way!

Peppermint Bark Cookies - Or, An E for Effort

I've been searching for an innovative Christmas cookie recipe that I can bake and bring home for the holidays. Bon Appetit's peppermint bark cookie recipe immediately grabbed my attention, since it combines two favorite treats - shortbread and peppermint bark - in one bite! So, I tested the recipe this weekend. My eagerness for the recipe's end result caused me to overlook the unusual amount of effort required to get there, which was hinted at in the recipe but proved to be even greater in execution. The recipe is below, along with my commentary in italics.

• Nonstick vegetable oil spray
• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 C (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 C sugar
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1 large egg yolk
• 6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (This is about 3/4 C, but I put 1 C in and still could have used more.)
• 1/2 C finely chopped red-and-white-striped hard peppermint candies or candy canes
• 2 ounces high-quality white chocolate

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 13x9x2-inch metal baking pan with nonstick spray. Line bottom of pan with long strip of 9-inch-wide parchment paper, leaving overhang on both short sides of pan.
2. Whisk flour and salt in medium bowl.
3. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until creamy, about 2 minutes. Gradually beat in sugar. Continue beating until mixture is light and fluffy, stopping occasionally to scrape down sides of bowl, about 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla, then egg yolk. Gradually add flour mixture, beating on low speed just to blend. I beat well beyond a "just blended" state in an effort to achieve a dough-like consistency - no such luck.
4. Drop dough by tablespoonfuls into prepared baking pan, spacing evenly. Using moistened fingertips, press dough to form even layer over bottom of pan. Pierce dough all over with fork. The dough was so crumbly, I didn't think it would form into a continuous layer. The moistened fingers, plus a few minutes of pressing, made all the difference. I've made shortbreads before, but none have been this resistant to forming proper dough or easily spreading throughout a pan.
5. Bake cookie base until light golden brown and slightly puffed and edges begin to come away from sides of pan, about 30 minutes. Place pan on rack when done.
6. Immediately sprinkle bittersweet chocolate over cookie base. Let stand until chocolate softens, about 3 minutes. Using small offset spatula, spread bittersweet chocolate over top of cookie in thin even layer. Immediately sprinkle chopped peppermint candies over. My semisweet chocolate chips took over 3 minutes to cool enough for spreading. The melted chocolate was easy enough to spread, but of course I did not immediately reach an even chocolate distribution. I hammered candy canes to get peppermint shards, but the canes resisted the force well and left me with peppermint powder and larger-than desired candy chunks. I ended up taking a sharp knife to the bag of candy, which was slightly more effective at creating small pieces than the hammer. Still, I wish the pieces were consistently smaller.
7. Stir white chocolate in medium metal bowl set over saucepan of simmering water until melted and smooth. Remove from over water. Using fork, drizzle white chocolate all over cookies. Chill until white chocolate is set, about 30 minutes. I enjoyed using the double-boiler method to melt the white chocolate, and I even added some candy cane powder to the chocolate for additional color and flavor, However, the chocolate did not drizzle particularly well. Also, it took the melted chocolates more than the recipe's suggested half hour to cool. The cookies were ready for removal from the pan approximately 2 hours after I applied the white chocolate.
8. Using paper overhang as aid, lift cookie from pan and transfer to work surface. Using large knife, cut cookie into pieces. The parchment paper was a great idea - cookie removal was a breeze. I cut 28 total cookies.
   
   

I had never put so much time and effort into making cookies! Fortunately, the results were pleasing. The shortbread was buttery and surprisingly chewy for such a thin cookie - the immediate application of chocolate on top must have kept a lot of moisture in! The semisweet chocolate layer was smooth and tasty, though it did not consistently stick to the shortbread. The candy pieces were also surprisingly chewy, so what initially concerned me about their size was a non-issue upon eating. Of course, the mint-and-chocolate combination was a winner. Lastly, the white chocolate drizzle with hints of peppermint powder was delicious! Ghirardelli chocolate is so sweet and smooth, and the hint of peppermint taste and cool crunch was the perfect finishing touch on this multifaceted delight.
I would make these cookies again, but I hope an easier yet equally delicious recipe will come my way!

Not Your Average Thanksgiving Dessert

My family challenged me to make a “lighter” Thanksgiving dessert. This was a reasonable request – Thanksgiving dinner is a huge affair, and even I have trouble coaxing the “dessert stomach” open after heaps of delicious turkey and plentiful, delectable sides. So, it was out with the pumpkin pie, and in with a flavorful, holiday-appropriate, and deceptively light treat from Martha Stewart’s Great Food Fast cookbook. Here’s how to make the Cranberry Upside Down Cake:

• 8 T unsalted butter
• 1 C sugar
• 1/2 t ground cinnamon
• 1/4 t ground allspice
• 1 3/4 C cranberries
• 1 large egg
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 C all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/4 t salt
• 1/2 C milk
• Sweetened whipped cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Rub the bottom and sides of an 8" round cake pan with 2 T of the butter. (Note: this degree of buttering is not necessary, but give the pan a better-than-normal coat.)
2. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 C of the sugar with the cinnamon and allspice. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the bottom of the pan, and arrange the cranberries in a single layer on top.

3. Cream the remaining 6 T butter and 1/2 C sugar until they are light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla; beat until well combined.
4. In another bowl, whick the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
5. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk, until well combined.
6. Spoon the batter over the cranberries in the pan, and smooth the top. Place the pan on a baking sheet, and bake it until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (30-35 minutes). Then, let it cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes. When it is time to remove the cake from the pan, run a knife around the edge of the cake and invert it onto the platter.

There was not enough bursting of cranberries to significantly soak the cake with juice – so, this is more of a tea cake with a well-secured cranberry-sugar topping than an upside down cake proper. You can see from the post’s first image that the recipe’s recommended amount of berries did not completely cover the pan. I wonder if adding additional cranberry coverage would improve the juiciness - I'll test that out when I bake this next. The topping is a refreshing combination of sweet and tart, with the allspice providing a hint of bite that initially catches you off guard. The caramelized sugar is somewhat crunchy, and that plus the warm, soft berries is a textural treat. The cake below has a pleasant buttery vanilla flavor, and its texture is somehow creamy and light. Whipped cream is not necessary, but it doesn't hurt to add another light, sweet flavor (and texture!) to the dessert.

It goes without saying that I was able to make room for this after the holiday meal!

How About Them Apples!

Oh, the fun of baking with apples! I must share two treats made with this fall’s Londonderry Cortland harvest.

My classic apple dessert is apple crisp. It’s hard to find a dessert that’s easier to make than this. Cut four peeled, cored apples into thin slices; array the slices within a greased 9x9 square baking dish; cover in a crumble topping made of ½ cup (each) oats, flour, and brown sugar, with cinnamon to taste (oh, a tablespoon?) and enough butter to make coarse crumbs when blended with the other crumble ingredients (usually 1 stick). Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, let cool, and enjoy! Doesn’t it look tasty?

Once the obligatory crisp was baked and consumed, it was time to branch into new dessert territory. I made my first apple pie this fall, and the results were promising enough that I look forward to making more. I wanted something slightly different than the standard apple pie, so I turned to Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa for inspiration. This citrusy apple pie recipe yielded an unusual dessert that grew on me with each bite. The lemon and orange zest and juice added so much citrus that the filling resembled an apple chutney more than simple spiced apples. Fortunately, scoops of vanilla ice cream tamed the tang when needed. Apart from the citrus, the pie filling was conventional - flour, sugar, and warm, cozy spices. You can see the pie in its various stages of progress below. To start, note the heap of fruit! This was only 5 apples; though the recipe called for 8, I didn't want to deal with an even taller mountain. Then, it was difficult to secure the top crust over the mound, but we succeeded and even brushed it with the recipe's sugary egg wash for extra cripsness and sweetness. Next, the steaming finished product is removed from the oven, juices dribbling. Lastly, we have a slice of pie with ice cream at the ready.




And, I must share a postscript. I revisited this cake for 2009's Thanksgiving breakfast, but added one recipe component I had previously ignored: a brown sugar sauce for drizzling and dipping. The result was like a thin caramel, which I poured over the warm cake as soon as the cake came out of the oven. This added delicious, sweet, chewy moisture to the cake, and the caramel taste went really well with the spiced apples. The glaze recipe made a lot of extra sauce, which I saved and poured over individual slices at breakfast time. I also dipped the occasional piece of chocolate in the pseudo-caramel, which was a most welcome treat! I might make the glaze again, cool it, and roll balls of it in melted chocolate in an attempt at caramel truffles.