Amidst the Holidays

These days between Christmas and New Years is one of my favorite times of the year. The Christmas stress is over, I have no pressing matters to attend to, and it's cold enough outside that I can excuse myself from the public sphere and wallow in all my new stuff (such as this from my brother George and this from my brother Beau, not to mention the amazing photo studio from my parents! Are you guys ready for consistently decent photos? I sure am). Of course, the entire week before Christmas was spent making candy and baking for family and friends, but I'll save those details for the next few entries. In the meantime, I bring you something I made before the holiday insanity ensued: Pecan Tassies. They're like tiny little pecan pies (but even more delicious, in my opinion), and my mom and I used to make them all the time when I was little. In the past few years, however, they seem to have fallen to the back burner and I felt it was time to bring them up again.


Pecan Tassies
Recipe from this deliciously odd blog.

Crust:
1 3oz package cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour

Blend cream cheese, butter and flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Bring together with hands until just combined, and sticks together. Divide dough into two equal portions and roll into 12 inch logs. Refrigerate wrapped in plastic wrap. While the dough is chilling, make the filling (rhyme brought to you by the original poster).

Filling:
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
dash of salt
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup chopped pecans

Grease and flour a 24 cup mini-muffin pan. Unwrap logs of dough and cut each log into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and put into a muffin cup. Using the "pusher" tool from a meat grinder or a pestle (or something that is shaped like one of those things), press the dough into each muffin cup until it comes up the sides to the top of the cup. (The original recipe poster has really good pictures of this process in case my extremely clear instructions are confusing.) Make sure you dip the end of the pusher/pestle in flour before pressing each ball of dough- otherwise, the dough will stick to the tool and it is annoyingly persistent and difficult to remove. Once all the balls of dough are pushed into the shapes of tiny pie crusts, set aside.

Preheat oven to 325.
Beat butter and brown sugar together until well combined. Add eggs, vanilla and salt and beat until creamy. Place half the nuts on the bottom of each tassie cup, then top each with 1 teaspoon filling, followed by remaining nuts. Bake at 325F for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.


Cool in pan until tassies are cool enough to remove, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. These things are seriously delicious.


Aaaaand the money shot:

Oh yeah. Check out those gooey innards! Delicious. And one more thing before I go:

My parents got me a Kitchenaid - complete with flame decals like Alton Brown's! - as a graduation present! (Did I mention I graduated?)

Making Up For Lost Time

I love cold weather. My favorite thing about it, though, is avoiding it by cuddling up on the couch with a book or some good old tv. And hot chocolate, of course. What is winter without hot chocolate? After 20 years of life, I think I've finally created my favorite hot chocolate recipe. It's easy to make and has a super secret ingredient! Alright, it's not a super secret, it's ice cream (because I really like ice cream).

Hot chocolate
1 scoop chocolate ice cream (I used Blue Bell)
1 ounce milk chocolate chips
3/4 cup milk (whole milk will make it super creamy, but there's nothing wrong with lower fat milk if that's the way you want to go)
small pinch of salt
tiny dash of vanilla extract

Put everything into a mug and microwave it for one minute (keep an eye on it so that the milk doesn't boil over). Let it stand for about 5 minutes so that the chocolate chips melt, then stir it until the chocolate is mixed into the milk. If you have a milk frother (looks like this), use it to blend the hot chocolate; this incorporates the chocolate into the milk completely so that the consistency isn't grainy. If you don't have a milk frother, pour your hot chocolate into a blender and pulse it a few times, then pour it back into the mug. Reheat for 30 seconds if it has cooled off too much, then enjoy!

This recipe is fun because you can use different flavors of ice cream, such as strawberry or mint! That will keep life interesting, I'm sure. Before I duck out, check out this cute mug I got from the Good Will for 99 cents:

I Should Be Fired

Has it really been one month and seven days? Seriously, it's a good thing blogging isn't my profession or I would definitely be fired. But I have excuses, Boss: finals. Isn't that reason enough to abandon my duties? No? No, not really. But still, finals are time consuming little buggers and even though I could still find the time to bake, taking pictures and blogging are another thing. So for this post, I'm pulling from my reserves but I promise to be back in action, especially considering that I have some serious baking coming up in the next week.

This recipe comes from the same bakeress as the stoner cookies, with some of my own alterations.



Chocolate Overload Mud Pie*

Chocolate Cookie Crust:
16 ounces Oreo Cookies (about 40 cookies or one package)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Flourless Chocolate Cake
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon espresso powder
1/4 cup strong coffee, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 cup sugar

Chocolate Pudding
2 slighly heaping tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons whiskey (optional but recommended!)

crushed toffee pieces and chocolate whipped cream for topping (optional)

To make the crust:
Preheat oven to 300F.
Lightly spray a 9-inch springform pan with baking spray. Line with parchment, spray that and the sides of the pan. In a food processor, grind the cookies into a fine crumb. Add the butter and pulse until well combined.
Place all of the crumb mixture into the springform pan and press along the bottom and up the sides.
Place in freezer for 10 minutes, then remove and bake for 10 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

To make the flourless cake:
Increase oven temperature to 350F
Using a double boiler, melt the butter and chocolate together. Set aside to cool.
In a small bowl, whisk together the espresso powder, coffee, salt and vanilla. Set aside.
In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (or in a large bowl with beaters), beat the egg yolks with 1/2 cup of the sugar until the mixture is light and has almost doubled in volume, about 5 minutes. Add the chocolate mixture and beat until just combined, scraping down the sides once. Add the coffee mixture and beat until just combined, scraping the sides again.
In a clean bowl fitted with the whisk attachment (or with beaters), beat the egg whites until foamy. Gradually increase the speed to high and add the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, beating until soft peaks form.
Scoop 1 cup of egg whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten the batter. Using a rubber spatula mix the egg whites into the chocolate batter. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites.
Pour the batter onto the cooled cookie crust and bake for about 40 minutes, so the cake is set but still slightly jiggly. Transfer it to a wire rack and cool completely. The cake will sink in the middle; don't worry, you will fill it with pudding. Once cool, cover in plastic wrap and chill for 3 hours while you make the pudding.

For the pudding:
Whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, cocoa powder, and a pinch of salt in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, then gradually whisk in the milk and cream. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, then boil for 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Remove from heat. Whisk in the chocolate, vanilla and whiskey until smooth.
Cover the pudding with wax paper to prevent a skin from forming and chill until cold, at least 2 hours.

To assemble:
Stir the pudding to loosen it, then pour it on top of the cake, making sure to stay inside the cookie crust boarder.
Return cake to refrigerator until ready to serve.
When ready to serve, top with chocolate whipped cream (whip cream with sugar to taste and 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder) and crushed toffee pieces.


The pudding in the original recipe is milk chocolate, but I thought that would be too sweet so I used semisweet chocolate instead. The whiskey isn't in the original recipe, either, but my brother (Beau) and I went through a let's-add-whiskey-to-everything phase and decided last minute that chocolate whiskey pudding would probably be pretty good. And it was. So that about wraps things up, sorry for the (third in my blogging career) hiatus, I'll try to keep those to a minimum. Look forward to tasty things in the future like hot chocolate and pecan tassies!


*These pictures aren't actually of Overload Mud Pie, but they're the same cookie crust and pudding recipes so they're pretty close. The actual pictures are from my phone and they are crappy.