Recipe: Nanaimo Bars

Since several people asked about it, I thought I would share the recipe for the Nanaimo bars.  They, um, aren't very, er, dietetic so make and eat at your own risk :).

NANAIMO BARS

Crust:

1 cup butter, cubed

1/2 cup sguar

2 oz. unsweeted chocolate, chopped

2 eggs, beaten

2 tsp. vanilla extract

4 cups graham cracker crumbs

2 cups flaked coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

In a large saucepan, combine the butter, sugar and chocolate.  Cook and stir over medium-low heat until melted.  Whisk a small amount of the hot mixture into the eggs (this is to temper them - if you tried to add them all at once, there is a very good chance they would scramble due to the heat of the saucepan).  Return all to the pan, whisking constantly.  Cook and stir over medium low heat until mixture appears combined.  Remove from the heat; stir in the vanilla.

In a large bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, flaked coconut and walnuts. Stir in chocolate mixture until blended. Press into greased pan (I used 13x9 Pyrex casserole pan) and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or until set.

Filling*:

(*I usually make a double batch of this to make sure it will spread over the entire crust.)

1/2 cup butter, softened

3 Tbsp. 2% milk

2 Tbsp. instant vanilla pudding mix

2 cups confectioners sugar

For filling, in a large bowl, beat the butter, milk and pudding mix until blended.  Gradually beat in the confectioner's sugar until smooth; spread over crust. 

Topping:

I usually take some kind of pre-made sauce (chocolate, caramel, cajeta...) and slowly drizzle it over the filling.  You can also make a ganache and spread it over the filling as well.  Just make sure to let the ganache cool a little before you pour it over the filling.

If you're not serving this immediately, make sure to put it back into the fridge.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am normally not a fan of chocolate chip cookies since they tend to be overly sweet for my taste.  I suppose if I had to pick a cookie, I would be a total philistine and choose Mother's chocolate chip cookies (if you grew up in California, you know the cookies whereof I speak).  They had that slight chemical taste that screamed "I'm from an assembly line" and texture that had them trash-talking Twinkies about beating them in the longevity sweepstakes, but they were in my lunch everyday - thanks, Mom! - and therefore, inevitably I suppose, what I compared any homemade chocolate chip cookie against.  Although I'm pretty sure purists would weep, the Mother's brand always came out on top.


I tried various chocolate chip cookie recipes over the years but could never find one that didn't make my teeth ache or the roof of my mouth tingle like some dental Bat-signal my teeth were going to begin rotting in 3...2...1.  My cookie baking experiences over the last couple decades were therefore spent making oatmeal raisin, shortbread, and various other kinds of cookies.  I'd occasionally dip a toe back into the chocolate chip side of the pool but never found a recipe that I liked.


Then I saw a post on another blog about a chocolate cookie recipe from the New York Times.  Instead of regular flour, it uses a combination of bread flour and cake flour, and then adds in chocolate that is at least 60% bittersweet and sea salt.  The combination of bread and cake flour makes a much better base, IMO, to house the chocolate pieces.  Somehow it manages to neutralize the overly sugary taste I find in other chocolate chip cookie doughs and allows the bittersweet chocolate to take center stage.  The sea salt sprinkled on top of the cookies before baking creates a lovely contrast between the slight sugar sweetness still evident in the dough and the chocolate pieces themselves.  The cookie itself is crispy on the outside and softer/chewier towards the center with almost a carmel-like taste in the background.


The recipe is as follows:


Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from Jacques Torres)


2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note**)
Sea salt.

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

The one instruction that you need to make sure you follow is to let the dough rest.  This allows the flavors to blend together better and the flour to absorb some of the moist aspect of the dough. I usually take the dough out of the fridge and let it sit for one to two hours so it starts coming back up to room temp.  It makes it a little easier to scoop out when I start baking.

**I've only made one recipe change and that is I tend to use a mix of bagged, store-bought semi/bittersweet pieces with the "better" bittersweet chocolate.  While I love the flavor of really good chocolate, it's unfortunately a lot more expensive than semisweet or bittersweet pieces.  So, when I make this recipe, I split the difference.  And I know the sea salt may sound strange but give it a try!  

I also don't make the cookies as big as the recipe calls for.  If I'm spending that much time on cookies, I do want a bit of bang for my buck, y'know?  I tend to make them around the size of a very large tablespoon or two.  That way, I get around four dozen cookies versus the one-and-one-half dozen in the original recipe.

Moral of the story?  For me, I think I have a winner in the chocolate chip cookie sweepstakes.  It isn't overly sweet, has great texture and is very satisfying.  The next time I want to make chocolate chip cookies, this will probably be the recipe I reach for.

Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting

I used to bake a lot when I was younger but I'd moved out of the realm of desserts and much more heavily into dinner-type foods and more savory dishes (e.g. appetizers) before my last break from cooking. However, I still like to bake and when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to give it a try. Chocolate and beer! What's not to like?

(recipe from Closet Cooking)



Ingredients:


1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 cup stout (such as Guinness)

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all purpose flour



2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2/3 cup sour cream









Directions:

1. Melt the butter in a sauce pan, remove from heat and let cool a bit.

2. Mix in the stout and cocoa powder.

3. Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

4. Mix the eggs and sour cream in another large bowl.

5. Mix the stout mixture into the egg mixture.

6. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet.

7. Pour the batter into one or two greased and parchment lined circular cake pan(s).

8. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean. If you bake it in a single pan then it should take about 40-50 minutes. If you bake it in two cake pans then it should take about 20-30 minutes.

**The batter itself is fairly loose. It's not a particularly thick batter like you might think considering the quantity of dry ingredients. I found it worked better if I popped open the Guinness, poured approximately half a cup into the measuring cup and then waited for the head to subside a bit before pouring the rest.


Since I had made cakes before in these particular pans and had not used parchment paper when it was called for (since the cakes had turned out fine), I didn't this time, either. When I make this cake again, however, I will definitely use the parchment. The cake itself is moist. Very moist. And it sticks to the bottom of even a non-stick, greased cake pan. I lost a little bit of the first cake to the pan and the other layer, even after cooling, was still somewhat firmly attached to the bottom of its pan and I had to coax it out. Heeeere, cakey-cakey. Good cakey-cakey. Who's a good cake now?

Yeah, okay. So I didn't just put Guinness in the cake!



Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:

4 ounces cream cheese (room temperature)
1 cup confectioners sugar
3 tablespoons of Bailey’s Irish cream


Directions:

1. Mix everything.

**On Closet Cooking, the picture is of a single layer cake. I, being me, which means not wont to entirely follow directions sometimes, decided I would make this a two-layer cake and doubled the icing recipe. Still not enough. There was about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the cake in back that was not iced on the outside (there was icing in between the layers, though). That, combined with an almost overly moist cake that added crumbs to my icing was a bit...annoying, shall we say? Still, I managed to get most of it iced and put it in the fridge to set up a bit.



Finished product? Duuuuuuuuude. Even with setting up in the fridge (which can sometimes dry cakes out), this cake was still soft and spongy. You could definitely taste the Guinness. Combined with the unsweetened cocoa, it made for a more earthy taste than I might have thought, but it was leavened by the sweetness of the icing. The confectioner's sugar and Bailey's cut the slight bitterness of the Guinness and the cocoa and stout helped make not the icing not so sweet, which it might have been with a lighter cake both texturally and taste-wise. I will definitely be making this again.