Alfajores

I know, I suck. Things got too busy pre-holiday season with work and shopping and whatnot, so I slacked on the blog. It happens.

And now that I have more time on my hands, its time to present to you: alfajores!

I had alfajores at a friend's holiday party last year, but never found out what they were until recently. I had completely forgotten about those delicious, delicate cookies until I was browsing a shop on Etsy that I frequent, savor.etsy.com. Lovely Savor has a soap designed after alfajores and it was only then, reading the soap description, that I recognized that sweet, dulce du leche filled shortbread cookie that I had eaten almost a year ago.

Upon this realization, my quest began to find a recipe for alfajores that seemed to represent what I had consumed in the past.

Several google searches later, I came across this recipe:

http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/recipes.recipeListing/filter/dianas/recipeID/2579/Recipe.cfm

For the Dulce de Leche Filling: 2 cups milk 1/4 cup granulated sugar 2 teaspoons brown sugar Pinch of salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 stick (1 oz/28g) unsalted butter For the Cookie Dough: 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 stick (2 oz/56g) butter 1/4 cup granulated sugar 1 egg 1 egg yolk 1 tablespoon honey 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon vanilla extract *I actually went ahead and used 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1/8 teaspoon almond extract Few drops of rum (optional) *omitted Pinch of grated lemon peel (optional) *omitted For Garnish: (optional) Confectioners' sugar *I lightly dusted them with powdered sugar and omitted the chocolate Dark chocolate, melted Milk chocolate, melted

Instructions: Prepare the Filling: Boil the milk with the sugars, salt and baking soda Let it cook for about 1 1/2 hours on a very low flame (if cooking on an electric stovetop, cook on low heat), stirring regularly. *I'm not sure what they want for stirring regularly, but 90 minutes is a long time to linger by the stove. I stirred every 15-20 minutes pretty thoroughly and it was just fine. The milk mixture will turn brown by the end of this first step and will be runny. Cover the pot with plastic wrap and place pot inside a larger pot with boiling water *Plastic wrap is going to melt and stick to your pot. I used a very tight-fitting lid and parafilm to wrap the lid which won't melt. Parafilm is pretty expensive, so if you don't mind peeling off melted plastic wrap, just use that instead if that is what you have. A double boiler will also probably work here. Cook for another 1 1/2 hours. The mixture should get sticky and become caramelized. *If the mixture isn't as thick as you would like, you can add in powdered sugar and it will help to thicken up the filling a little more Remove from heat, add butter and vanilla extract, stir and allow to cool. Prepare the Cookie Dough: Mix all the ingredients together to make a thick dough. *Thick is an understatement. This dough, made by the recipe's outline, is like cement. If it is too dry, add some water *HIGHLY recommend this Refrigerate the dough for 2 hours. Remove and let stand to soften. *The dough can be softened by rolling in your hands as well, just don't flour your hands too much or the dough will dry out Roll out dough to 1/8 of an inch thick and use a floured 2 to 2 1/2-inch cookie cutter to cut cookie dough into circles. *It is important to get the right dough thickness here, otherwise the cookies will be too thick and won't be as crispy Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Bake the cookies for about 8 to 10 minutes, until the tops are a very pale golden brown. Cool completely on wire racks. When ready to eat, spread dulce de leche cream between 2 cookie rounds. *The dulce de leche cream thickens significantly once refrigerated. If your mixture is runny at first, see how it is after an hour or two in the fridge. If desired, cover with melted chocolate or confectioner's sugar. Cook's Tips: If you opt to cover the cookies with chocolate, melt the dark chocolate and milk chocolate together on top of the stove (over very low heat) or in a microwave oven. You may prepare the dulce de leche ahead of time and store, covered, in the refrigerator. In place of the rum, try using rum extract or add an extra 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract to the cookie dough. Recipe makes enough cookies to serve 4 people. These cookies are fantastic. I want to bake them all the time now! The shortbread cookies (sans dulce de leche) are also wonderful when dipped in tea or coffee. Enjoy! Edit: As requested by Kiwi, I will post a pic of these yummy cookies. I will try and post a good picture with each recipe from now on :)

Thick Mint Brownies

This recipe can be found here:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/RecipeDisplay?RID=1146493248892

Once again, this recipe is from King Arthur Flour's recipe archive. Although the recipe says that these will taste like a girl scout 'thin mint', I feel that the taste of the mint filling more closely resembles that of a Peppermint Patty.

Now, onto the brownies!

Mint Filling
4 cups (16 ounces) confectioners' sugar
*If these seems to you like it's a LOT of powdered sugar...you are correct! I mixed all of the other ingredients together first and added the powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time to reduce the amount of painful hand-mixing
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter
*If you want to soften the butter quickly, 10 seconds in the microwave will give you easily blendable butter
6 tablespoons (2 5/8 ounces) vegetable shortening
*I used Crisco
1/4 teaspoon peppermint oil, or 1 to 2 teaspoons peppermint extract (to taste)
*I couldn't find peppermint oil at any of my local grocery stores, and so I bought peppermint extract. I'm not really sure if it makes a difference at all. I used two teaspoons and it was a delightfully minty taste
1/4 cup (1 ounce) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour or Signature Secrets Culinary Thickener (3/4 ounce)
*This is 1.5 tablespoons. Why the recipe didn't state it like that is beyond me.
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) heavy cream
*Do NOT substitute any lighter milk product for this. Your filling will melt more willingly if you don't use heavy cream.

To make the mint filling:

Beat the filling ingredients together till they're cohesive-the mixture will be the consistency of stiff cookie dough.
*By cohesive, they really mean to say that you will never believe all of that powdered sugar will at some point stick together. It will. Just keep beating.

Spread the filling, on a piece of lightly greased plastic wrap, into a rectangle just slightly smaller than a 9" x 13" pan-this is most easily done on the outside bottom of a 9" x 13" pan that you've covered with plastic wrap.

Cover the filling with wrap, and refrigerate overnight, or till thoroughly chilled.
*I recommend the full overnight chill. It will help to fully thicken the mint filling.

Brownie Batter
1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter
*Again, soften in the microwave.
1 pound (about 2 generous cups) brown sugar
*The domino 1lb boxes of brown sugar hold more or less 2 cups, so you can use one of those if you want. This is a ridiculous amount of brown sugar, in my opinion. It could probably be cut back to 1.5 cups easily. More on this later.
1 cup (4 ounces) Dutch-process cocoa
*It is very important to note here that the recipe specifies Dutch-process cocoa. This means that the acidity has been neutralized in the cocoa. It won't, therefore, react with baking soda (which is why baking powder is used instead). The other note is that the taste of these two cocoas is very different. The brownies will be much richer using regular unsweetened cocoa. If you do not have Dutch process cocoa on hand:

Substituting Unsweetened Cocoa for Dutch-Process Cocoa - 3 tablespoons (18 grams) Unsweetened Cocoa Powder plus a pinch (1/8 teaspoon) baking soda. There are roughly 16 tablespoons in a cup. I believe you can leave out the baking powder if using this conversion.

1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups (6 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
2 cups (12 ounces) chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" pan.

To make the brownie batter:

In a medium-sized microwave-safe bowl, or in a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine.
*I am not sure how you would do this in a microwave...I recommend stove top. This is a LOT of brown sugar and requires a lot of stirring.

Return the mixture to the heat (or microwave) briefly, till it's very hot, but not bubbling; it'll become smooth and shiny looking.

The sugar and butter will separate; that's OK, just stir till some of the butter has been reabsorbed.
*I didn't have any problems here with the butter/sugar ratio.

Heating this mixture a second time will dissolve more of the sugar, which will yield a shiny top crust on your brownies; very attractive, should you choose not to cover the brownies with ganache.

Stir in the cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla.

Whisk in the eggs, stirring till smooth; then add the flour and chips, again stirring till smooth.
*So this whole, "stirring until smooth" thing doesn't exactly work when you're putting 1.5 cups of flour and 2 cups of chocolate chips into an already thickening mixture of 1lb brown sugar, butter, etc. This becomes extraordinarily difficult to stir. It's kind of like stirring cement, or possibly taffy. Especially once you add the chocolate chips in, it gets really tough to mix by hand. Also, it does not tell you in the recipe, but "stir until smooth" after adding the chocolate chips just means to mix them in thoroughly. They are not going to melt into the batter. It will be lumpy.

Spoon half the batter (about 28 ounces) into the prepared pan.
*Make sure you do not use more than half of the batter here. It's important to be able to cover all of the mint filling with the rest of the batter.

Using the plastic wrap as a sling to move the filling, slide it atop the batter.

Top with the remaining batter.

Bake the brownies for about 40 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, or with just a tiny amount of crumb clinging to it.
*40 minutes is perfect here

Remove the brownies from the oven, and cool them completely before icing with ganache.
*Cool completely really means COOL COMPLETELY. Do NOT cut into these brownies when they are still warm, or your mint filling will spill out to the side and run along the bottom of you pan, making the bottom half of your brownies mushy and soggy. Eww!

I did not ice these with ganache. The brownies are more than adequate without additional chocolate icing put onto them.

Allow the icing to set before cutting and serving the brownies.

Yield: 2 dozen brownies.

Chocolate Ganache Icing
2 cups (12 ounces) chocolate chips or chopped semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
1 cup (8 ounces) heavy cream or whipping cream

In a microwave-safe bowl, or in a small saucepan set over medium heat, heat the cream till it's very hot.

You should see wisps of steam beginning to rise from it, and some very tiny bubbles around the edge.

Add the chocolate to the cream, and stir till smooth.

Don't panic—at first, the mixture will look disarmingly soupy, but just keep stirring.

Very shortly it'll become a rich brown, thick, shiny spreadable icing.

Yield: 2 cups icing.

These brownies were very tasty, although they were little too sweet for me personally, which is why I think the whole 1lb brown sugar idea is way too much. The brownies seemed more sweet than rich...I would almost recommend using your own brownie recipe for this and just adding in the mint-filling step. These definitely should be served with a glass of milk on the side.

Also, make sure to cover these tightly when storing. They will dry out very quickly otherwise.

Coming soon: Alfajores! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfajor

Ranger Cookies

This recipe can be found here:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/RecipeDisplay?RID=R725

King Arthur Flour has an amazing blog and an even more amazing selection of recipes. I have found many, MANY awesome recipes there and a lot of the ones posted on this blog will come from their archives.

As the recipe says, these cookies are very sweet. I changed some of the ingredients around, but the dough itself is a very sweet dough for a cookie.

Recipe is as follows:

1 cup (6 1/4 ounces) vegetable shortening or butter
*i used 2 sticks of unsalted butter here
1 cup (7 1/2 ounces) brown sugar, firmly packed, light or dark
1 cup (7 ounces) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) King Arthur unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (3 1/2 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup (2 1/2 ounces) shredded coconut
*I am not a big coconut fan, and so I omitted this ingredient
1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips
3 cups (2 3/8 ounces) crispy rice cereal or cornflakes
*I wanted these to be a little more chocolatey but felt like 3cups was way too much for the amount of dough I was stirring this into, so I used 1.5cups Cocoa Krispies


Beat together the shortening and sugars, vanilla and salt until fluffy; add the eggs and beat until smooth.
*Make sure your shortening (or butter) is at room temperature so that it's soft enough to mix. I usually cut the sticks of butter into smaller pieces as well to make blending easier.
*I also bring eggs up to room temperature before beating into the dough

In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and baking soda; add the flour mixture to the shortening mixture and beat until well blended. Stir in the oats, coconut, chips and cereal, mixing just until blended.
*This dough is going to be difficult to stir. I added a teaspoon of water to help moisten the dough a little more, however be warned that this will make the cookies spread out even more than they already do

Drop the dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto lightly greased or parchment-lined cookie sheets.
*Be sure to leave at least 2 inches of space between each cookie...these spread out a TON!

Bake the cookies in a preheated 350°F oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they're golden brown.
*I had to bake these about 15 minutes to achieve golden brown color

Yield: 60 (2- to 2 1/2- inch) cookies.


Result?

These cookies are FANTASTIC. They would be great for bake sales or just to have around the house to snack on. They are very sweet, so I wouldn't recommend eating too many at once. The cookies also have a lovely color and texture to them. Because of the dough's spreadability, they are on the thin side and don't bubble up like a lot of cookies do. I am a big tea drinker, and so I found them to be delightful when dipped into a strong, black tea.

Welcome

This blog will be dedicated to my adventures in the kitchen. Most of the blogs will be posted about recipes I have found online and have prepared at home. I will include things that I changed, as well as pictures on occasion. Some of the recipes will be ones that were passed down from my mother and grandmother.

Tomorrow's blog will bring: Ranger Cookies.