Toffee Candy, Butterscotch, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Trust me, you have to try these toffee candy, butterscotch, and chocolate chip cookies.They only take about 10 minutes to mix and then another few hours in the refrigerator to get ready to be sliced and baked.

Chocolate Truffle Cookies with a Crackle Crust

These chocolate truffle cookies are packed with chocolate.

Three dozen cookies comprised of over a pound of bittersweet chocolate, two cups of bittersweet chocolate chips, and three tablespoons of cocoa powder. I was inspired to make these cookies after coming home from a visit to Seattle.

Outside of cities in California, Seattle is the is probably the city I have visited the most. Behind Seattle? Chicago, Portland, and Dublin. So much world, so little time. You know you love a city when you can't quite remember how many times you've been there.

This trip was all about good friends and good food. I spent the weekend with a sweet friend and colleague who relocated to a suburb north of the city. Being a southern California native, I love to visit such a "foresty" place.

Next up, Mr. Kitchen joined me for a few days in the city. The highlight was having dinner with a dear, dear friend. You know those friends that you don't see for 30 years and then it's like you haven't missed a beat? That's him. What a treat. I can't begin to tell you how special it was... the sweetest thing.

The last time I was in Seattle was 2008, and I will say that the city proper seems a little more hardened. There are parts of the city that are a little more seedy than I remember, and the fish doesn't seem to be flying in the Market.

What is the same? The food, the walkability of the city, and just the gorgeousness of the place.

In Seattle, the iconic chef is, of course, Tom Douglas, and on this trip we visited Lola's and the Dahlia Lounge (where I had the best grilled cheese and tomato soup ever!). Next to the Dahlia Lounge is the Dahlia Bakery. It's really a very small shop but filled with some amazing baked goods. And of course, because I can't help myself, I have the cookbook. 

What to make in honor of this trip? These Tom Douglas Chocolate Truffle Cookies. They seemed like the perfect way to celebrate our trip.

For another fabulous truffle cookie, be sure to try my smaller version with different coatings. 

Chocolate Truffle Cookies With a Crackle Crust

Makes about 36 to 40 3 1/2 inch diameter cookies

Ingredients

205 grams all-purpose flour
20 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
567 grams bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1⁄2 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 1⁄4 cups sugar
6 large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
Generous 2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa, and baking powder together. Stir in the salt and set aside. 
3. Melt the chopped chocolate in a double boiler until melted. Allow to cool for 5 to 10 minutes. 
4. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment and cream on medium speed until well combined. 
5. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing on medium speed until the eggs are incorporated. 
6. Increase the speed to high and beat for a few minutes until the mixture is very light and pale.
7. Add the melted chocolate and the vanilla extract and mix just until combined. 
8. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the dry ingredients using a rubber spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips.
9. Set up several baking sheets with parchment paper and start scooping the cookies as soon as you finish making the batter. Use an ice cream scoop but pack the scoop only about three- quarters full. 
10. Scoop the batter onto the baking sheets, placing the cookies about 2 inches apart. Flatten each mound of dough slightly with your hand or an off-set spatula.
11. Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time in the center of the oven, until they are evenly cracked all over the tops and are softly set, about 14 minutes, rotating the pan about halfway through the baking time. 
12. Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Allow the cookies to cool completely before removing them from the baking sheets with a metal spatula. 

Potato Onion Dill Bread

This Potato Onion Dill Bread smells amazing when it is baking, a lot like a twice baked potato.

This bread is incredibly moist and makes the best garlic cheese toast ever. Imagine a twice baked potato... except it's bread. See the chunks of potato in there?

This dough was really wet...  94% hydration. Add in potato flour, potatoes, and onions, and you have a pretty touchy dough when it comes to holding its shape. So far, 80% hydration has been my limit before I can no longer get surface tension and slash the dough. I've been really spoiled with the breads I've been making lately, so I was a little too confident in my approach to this one.

Don't get me wrong. This bread is absolutely wonderful. The crumb is perfect. It's just that the shape of the bread isn't quite what I wanted. I'd actually like to try baking this in a the long clay baker I have... or maybe I should just keep working on getting the loaves to be more round.

Or... I could just say I meant it to be this shape! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Potato Onion Dill Bread Recipe

Ingredients

57 grams (by weight) warm water (105 to 115 degrees F) 

1 tsp active dry yeast

450 grams unbleached bread flour

40 grams potato flour or potato flakes (not potato starch)

12 grams Kosher salt

1 tsp dill seed

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

369 grams room temperature water

100 grams red potato, simmered, diced into 1/4 inch pieces, and cooled

70 grams sweet onion, cut into 1/4 inch pieces

Instructions

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Let stand for 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Whisk all of the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer together. 
3. Add the yeast/water mixture, the rest of the water, and then stir the ingredients with a large spoon or a dough whisk.
4. Knead on low with the dough hook for about 5 minutes. 
5. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it sit for 20 minutes. 
6. Add the potatoes and onions, and fold the dough over them a few times to incorporate. 
7. Knead for one minute. 
8. Scrape the dough into an oiled bowl or bucket, cover, and allow to rise until doubled, about 90 minutes. 
9. Lightly flour a work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Divide the dough in half and lightly flour the top of each piece. 
10. Flour two small bannetons or towel lined bowls with brown rice flour. 
11. Form each piece into a ball, without deflating the dough, and place each into a bowl, seam side up. Cover with oil sprayed plastic wrap.
12. Allow to rise for about 45 minutes, until just less than doubled.
13. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with two covered Dutch ovens heating in the oven. 
14. When the dough is ready, remove the Dutch ovens from the oven.
15. Place parchment over the dough, and turn the dough over so that the parchment is on the bottom.  Remove the bowl/towel, from the top of the dough. Lift the dough round, parchment and all, and place it gently into the Dutch oven. Cover, and place it in the oven. (At this point, you can slash the dough, carefully). 
16. Repeat with the second loaf.
17. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the tops from the Dutch ovens, lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees F and bake another 15 minutes, until the dough reaches an internal temperature of about 210 degrees F.
18. Cool the loaves completely on a wire rack. 

Adapted from Amy's Bread.

Basic Country Loaf with Spelt

This Basic Country Loaf with spelt was a big hit in our house.

In fact, Mr. Kitchen announced that it was his favorite bread so far. Ever. This from Mr. White Bread? Go spelt!

About three years ago, when I first caught the bread baking bug, I picked up a copy of Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson at a Williams Sonoma outlet. I read it, adapted some of the methods, but never actually tried any of breads in the book. I'll admit that I was a little intimidated. The first recipe, including the starter, is 88 pages.

This is one of the reasons I am so happy to have been assigned Sally's blog, Bewitching Kitchen, for this month's Secret Recipe Club.  How did they know????? It was meant to be!

Let's start with the reasons why:

1. We both baked our way through Peter Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice. That means we made every single recipe. 
2. She wrote this really cool post about how to revive a sourdough starter. She mentioned "shed a tear" in the same sentence with sourdough starter. This is a girl after my own heart. 
3. We both work at a university. 
4. We both believe in "everything in moderation, including moderation."
5. She broke the Basic Country loaf down to one page and made it with spelt flour. 

I'm in! 

Sally is not just about bread either. She has an amazing array of recipes on her index. It's worth a visit.

Basic Country Loaf

Adapted from Bewitching Kitchen, adapted from Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson

Starter

50 g whole spelt flour

50 g white flour

100 g room temperature water

1 T active sourdough starter

Dough

375 g room temperature water, divided into 350 g plus 25 g

100 g starter

450 g all purpose flour

50 g whole spelt flour

10 g salt 

Instructions

1. The night before you plan to bake the bread, stir the starter ingredients in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it sit for 12 to 14 hours. 
2. The next morning, in a large bowl or Cambro 8-Quart Food Containermix 350 g of the water and 100 g of starter until the starter has dissolved. 
3. Add the flours, and mix with a large spoon or dough whisk until the flour and water are incorporated. 
4. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap and let sit for about 40 minutes.
5. Add the salt and the rest of the water and mix with your hands by pinching the salt into the dough. Then fold the dough until it comes together and forms a cohesive mass. Cover and let it sit for 30 minutes. 
6. For the next 2 hours, fold the dough by pulling the underside of the dough and folding it over the top from all four "sides" every thirty minutes for a total of four "stretch and fold" sessions. 
7. Let the dough rise in a warm (80 degree) environment for another hour. If your kitchen is cooler, allow more time. The dough should be bubbly, but not necessarily doubled in size. 
8. Remove the dough from the bucket/bowl, and lightly flour the top of the dough. Using dough scrapers, flip the dough over, and fold it over from all four "sides" to form a ball. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.
9. Heavily dust a banneton or towel lined bowl (about 9 inches wide) with a 50/50 mixture of brown rice flour and wheat flour. 
10. Fold the dough over itself from all four sides to create a ball, and lift it into the banneton with two dough scrapers or bench scrapers. Place it seam side up. Spray the top with spray oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. 
11. Allow the dough to rise for 3 to 4 hours. My dough was ready at 2 1/2 hours. 
12. About 45 minutes before you are ready to bake, place a cast iron Dutch oven in the oven and preheat it to 450 degrees F.
13. When the dough is ready, remove the Dutch oven from your oven and remove the top. (Be careful, it is hot!)
14. Place a piece of parchment paper over the dough, and place a plate on top of the parchment. Flip the dough over and lift off the banneton. Lift the dough with the parchment and place it into the Dutch oven. Score the dough, and cover. Place the Dutch oven back into the oven. 
15. Bake covered for 20 minutes. Remove the cover and bake for another 25 minutes, until the dough reaches 210 degrees internally. 
16. Cool on a wire rack. Or just break into it. 

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Spicy Long Beans with Sausage and Mushrooms | Wok Wednesdays

Gathering the ingredients for these spicy long beans was a fun adventure. Some of the things I discovered by making this amazing dish:

1. Chinese long beans are crunchy and delicious... and they are definitely long. They are also curly! Their taste is similar to green beans, but they seem to hold their crunch after cooking, and leftovers stay bright green. They came bundled with bands at the top and bottom of the beans and the bundles were the perfect weight for this recipe. 
2. Chinese sausage may look like skinny salami, but it must be cooked before you eat it. The Asian market where I purchased it had rows and rows of various varieties, so you have to look at the ingredient list and make sure you are buying pork sausage. 
3. Sichuan preserved vegetable... what? I spent a lot of time figuring out what this is both on the interwebs and in the store. It comes in cans or vacuum sealed refrigerated packets. The people I asked at the Asian market didn't seem to know what I wanted so I kept hunting. I finally found a 39 cent packet of something that seemed to come close... pickled mustard stem in a red chili paste. The packet was 2 ounces and the recipe called for 2 ounces so I went with it. 
4. Buying dried shiitake mushrooms at an Asian market makes a huge difference in the amount of time it take for them to soften. If you need dried shiitake mushrooms, get them at an Asian market. Clearly they don't sit around as long. 

So why all of the drama? It's time for Wok Wednesdays. Twice a month, we make a different recipe from Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge by Grace Young. This week, we are making Spicy Long Beans with Sausage and Mushrooms. 

This is my new favorite vegetable recipe. Seriously. Delicious. 

Chinese long beans, ground pork, Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, Sichuan preserved vegetables, scallions, cilantro, soy, a bit of sugar, and salt and pepper. These ingredients, when stir-fried together, are amazing. This is not hyperbole. 

The Chinese sausage is a pretty amazing ingredient. You can try it in fried rice too. 

Get Grace's book. Make these beans. You will love them. So far I have loved every recipe. 

You can also get the recipe and check out Grace Young, our Wok Wednesdays guardian angel and wok demystifier, demonstrating wok cooking >here<. 

Chocolate-Hazelnut Madeleines

Madeleines with cocoa, chocolate chips, Nutella, and Frangelico. Little chocolaty cakes with the wonderful flavor of hazelnuts. I had to bake these.

Crunchy Seeded Crackers

These crispy and crunchy seeded crackers forced me to skip dinner the other night (not dessert though). Why? Because I kept eating them.

First, while they were in the oven to make sure they were crispy.

Second, while they were cooling to make sure they were crispy.

Third, once they were out of the oven, because I was already addicted and couldn't stop.

This is my second time attempting these crackers. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the King Arthur Flour test group that tried this recipe and provided feedback. They had provided the testers with the cracker recipe as well as some golden and regular flax seeds.

If I remember correctly, I had a really hard time getting them thin enough because the dough kept springing back. While I liked the golden flax seeds, I wasn't that thrilled with the crackers the first time I made them. While the seeds were tasty, the crackers were thick and tough. Now I wish I had saved the original recipe to compare because this time these crackers were simply amazing!