I love scones.  I love the crunchy tops, the soft fluffy middles, and the fact that they taste good in practically any flavor, from savory to sweet.  The one thing I don’t particularly like, however, is the fat and calorie content of most commercially available scones (Now that I’m 30 I find I need to pay more attention to these things, or else buy a new wardrobe when my clothes won’t fit anymore!)  So rather than give into my recent scone craving by munching on a premium pastry from my local coffee shop, in the interests of my wallet and waistline, I decided to set off making my own. 

Given that we’re in prime blueberry season around here, I decided my healthy scone would contain some tasty ripe blueberries.  From past healthy scone baking attempts, I’ve found that if you decrease scone fat very much you also decrease the moisture, and need to drink an extra cup of coffee or 3 to wash it down.  I based my scones around this recipe I found during my search, which incorporated low-fat ingredients like yogurt; from past experiences, I find this tends to keep baked goods moist without the fat.  These scones truly came out GREAT – toasty brown and crisp on the top, moist and fluffy on the inside.  The tart lemon glaze was a fantastic complement to the sweet blueberries: they taste like summer, even now as the sun starts setting earlier and the nights are getting cooler…

Low-Fat Blueberry Scones with Lemon Glaze – adapted from Anneliese, via What Matters Most

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, and coat a cookie sheet with cooking spray.  Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and lemon zest in a large bowl.  Cut butter into small pieces.  Using a pastry cutter (or a fork) cut the butter into the dry ingredients until mixture appears uniformly crumbly.  In a stand mixer, beat together the yogurt, egg, and vanilla until well combined.  Slowly mix in the dry ingredients, mixing until incorporated.  Gently fold in the blueberries to the mixture.  Form 2 inch balls of dough and flatten each to about 1 inch thickness on the cookie sheet.  Bake for 18 minutes, or until tops appear golden brown.  Cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack.  To make the glaze, mix the juice of your lemon with the confectioners’ sugar – you may need to add more sugar depending on exactly how much juice your lemon yields, and how thick you want your glaze.  When scones are completely cooled, drizzle with glaze.  Enjoy!

For my husband’s birthday, I decided to go off the beaten path a little bit – rather than making cake, I baked whoopie pies!  I’ve been meaning to give them a try for a while now…and as my husband loves all things peanut butter and chocolate related, I figured this recipe would be a winner!  I’ve got to give Martha props here – I didn’t change much about the cookie recipe, except that I did not have shortening on hand and substituted all butter.  The chocolate cookie part of the pie was absolutely perfect - moist, cake-y and rich, yet held up well to the sandwich-forming process critical to the whoopie pie construction.  I did make several modifications to the filling – I simply love the marshmallow-y taste of a classic whoopie pie – so rather than use a straight peanut butter frosting as Martha did, I substituted some peanut butter into a recipe for the classic marshmallow frosting.  It came out fantastic – reminded us of the inside of a Reese’s peanut butter cup.  I highly recommend using parchment as directed with this recipe.  Warning – this is most definitely NOT a health food…but good for the soul!  (As an aside – if you prefer plain whoopie pies – just increase the butter to 1/2 cup and leave out the peanut butter.)

Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies – Adapted from Martha Stewart, marshmallowfluff.com

Ingredients – for the Cookies:

Preheat oven to 375.  Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.  In a separate bowl (or a stand mixer if you have one) combine the butter and sugars.  Beat until smooth and fluffy – which for me was about 2-3 minutes.  Make sure to scrape down the bowl intermittently to ensure good mixing!  Then add the egg, mixing for an additional 2 minutes until well combined and light.  Next add about half of the dry ingredients, stirring to incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Add the milk and vanilla, mixing to combine ingredients evenly.  Finally mix in the remaining half of the dry ingredients.  Drop the batter by rounded tablespoons onto a cookie sheet, covered in parchment, and bake in a preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the center springs back when lightly pressed.  Cool completely on a wire rack before proceeding to filling.

Ingredients – for the Frosting

Beat together butter, peanut butter, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla until the mixture is smooth.  Spread frosting onto the flat side of a cookie, and press another cookie on top to form the completed pie.  Enjoy!

Regular readers of this blog will probably recognize the recipe below – it’s the chocolate cake that I’ve used as the base for all of my chocolate cupcakes.   It deserves its own post – it’s just that amazing.

First of all, it’s really easy to make.  There’s no melted butter or chopped chocolate, just vegetable oil and cocoa.  It’s a breeze to throw all the ingredients together.    The resulting cake has a rich, warm chocolate flavor with a soft, but not overly spongy crumb.

My husband made and decorated this cake for my birthday.  It was so pretty and absolutely delicious!  The cookies and cream frosting (simply halve the recipe from Oreo Cupcakes) added a nice touch.  I have to admit, it was difficult to get a good picture of the cake because it was after dark and we didn’t want to interrupt the celebration.

If you’re looking for a delicious, easy chocolate cake recipe, give the Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake a try… you won’t regret it!

Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

1. Heat oven to 350. Grease 2 9-inch cake pans.
2. Stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.
3. In a large bowl, combine sugar, eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Stir until well blended.
4. Add flour mixture to large bowl and beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes.
5. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.
7. Cool for 10 minutes before removing to wire racks. Allow cakes to cool completely before frosting.

I love cherry season!  Every summer I buy enough cherries to feed a small army – this summer perhaps more than most as I’m currently between jobs and spending lots of time at home relaxing and trying to keep the snacks as healthy as possible!  Though I can certainly munch fresh cherries all day long, there are few pastries I enjoy more than cherry pie.  This weekend, we were going to visit friends and I decided to whip one up for dessert. 

Most people advocate using sour cherries for a pie, hence most recipes are directed towards sour cherries and have a large amount of sugar to compensate for the tart cherry taste.  I personally happened to have bing cherries on hand, so I went searching and turned up a fairly straight-forward Martha Stewart recipe that I modified slightly.  I cut back on the sugar content by another 50%, and instead of plain sugar I used vanilla sugar to round out the flavors in this recipe nicely.  (If you don’t have vanilla sugar, you can always add a tsp of vanilla to the filling and I’m sure it would come out great.) I also didn’t have quite the 2 lbs of cherries called for, but figured I would just give it a try and see how it went.  Turns out, it’s much easier to make than I ever thought it would be – the gooey, perfectly sweet, crimson filling came out just right.  As the great philosopher/80’s band Poison once said, “She’s my cherry pie, tastes so good, makes a grown man cry.”

Vanilla Bing Cherry Pie Filling

• 1.5 lbs fresh bing cherries, pitted and halved
• 1/4 cup vanilla sugar ** may substitute 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1/4 cup plain sugar
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• Your favorite pie crust recipe – enough to make 2 crusts(or in a pinch, just use frozen/refrigerated pre-prepared pie crusts!)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Roll out pie crust to 1/4 inch thickness and press into pie plate of your choice, reserving top crust for later. Place cherries in a large bowl and sprinkle with the vanilla sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice.  Mix ingredients well.  Place pie filling into prepared crust.  If you wish to make a decorative lattice with your top crust (as I did) – roll your top crust to 1/4 inch thickness, then cut your pie crust into 3/4 inch strips.  Taking alternating strips from the top crust, lay them all parallel to each other on top of your pie – do not press into the bottom crust yet!.  Then, fold back every other strip on top of the pie.  Take the longest remaining pie crust strip, and place across the middle of your pie over the strips that did not get folded back.  Unfold the strips over the newly laid pie crust strip.  Then, fold back the alternating strips, laying another new pie crust strip on top.  Continue folding alternating strips, laying new pie crust strips, and unfolding until you have covered the top of the pie.  (As you started in the middle, when you have finished one side of the pie - fold back the other side of the pie crust strips and repeat the process going towards the opposite side!)  When lattice is formed, trim the stips to fit the curve of your pie plate, and crimp down the lattice strips to the bottom crust.  Place pie in oven on center rack.  Bake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for 45-50 minutes longer, or until crust is golden brown.  Enjoy!

This post is dedicated to one of the easiest recipes I’ve ever made – not sure it even should count as cooking – but yet adds a fabulous extra vanilla dimension to my baking.  I love it for many reasons – first, it cuts down on waste.  When you use a vanilla bean, most recipes (such as my recent vanilla bean cupcake recipe) direct you to slice the pod in half and remove the seeds – often times, the pod itself isn’t needed, and you may be tempted to just discard it…but don’t!  With next to no effort, you can turn that would-be discarded pod into something delicious.  Use as you would use plain sugar in your favorite baked goods…and it’s also great in coffee. 

Vanilla Sugar – Alton Brown

• 1 vanilla pod, halved with seeds removed
• 2 cups sugar
• Airtight container

Place vanilla pod into container and pour sugar over top, burying the vanilla bean.  Seal container and let sit for 1-2 weeks.  Enjoy in coffee or give your favorite recipes a little something extra.

Since I made my Vanilla Bean Ice Cream a few weeks ago, I had one lonely vanilla bean lying around in my kitchen, just waiting for a worthy recipe to come along – when I saw this cupcake recipe on Annie’s Eats that sounded fantastic and decided to give it a whirl!  Happily, I had a big end-of-year picnic coming up for work which was about the perfect occasion to make a bunch of cupcakes without my husband and I having to eat them all.  There are not words for how fantastic this recipe came out – the batter was thick and creamy and the cake is light and moist.  I frosted them with a plain vanilla buttercream frosting – usually I shy away from buttercreams, as I find them a bit too rich for most of my recipes – but it accented the vanilla cake really well.  This was also my first adventure with gel food coloring in my frosting – a bit of advice, a little goes a LONG way!  I used about 1/4 tsp to color this entire batch of frosting!  (I used Teal, btw.)  Also, a plug for my favorite decorating device – The Pampered Chef makes an amazing decorating gun – looks a little like you should be using it to caulk a window frame or something, but it is incredibly easy to use and makes my baked goods like professional in no time flat.

Vanilla Bean Cupcakes – from Annie’s Eats

3 cups cake flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 vanilla bean, sliced lengthwise
16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
1¼ cups buttermilk, at room temperature
1 tbsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350° F.  Prepare cupcake pans with paper liners.  Set aside.  In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Take your vanilla bean halves and scrape the pods to remove the beans – save the pod to make vanilla sugar later – but that’s for a different post.)  Add the butter and the vanilla beans to the bowl of your trusty stand mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment – or, if you have one a bowl-scraping paddle attachment which is the best kitchen investment I’ve made this year), and beat on meadium speed until the mixture starts to appear light and fluffy; about 2-3 minutes.  If you don’t have a paddle attachment that scrapes for you, scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for about another minute to ensure adequate mixing.  Add the sugar gradually, 1/4 cup at a time, beating for about a minute after each addition.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until the egg is incorporated.  (Scrape down the bowl between additions here too!)  In a large measuring cup, mix the buttermilk and vanilla together.  As your mixer continues to run on low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients and the liquid ingredients to the butter mixture - alternating between each, and beginning and ending on the dry.  Scrape down the sides again to make sure everything is well incorporated and mix for about 15 seconds longer – be careful not to overmix!  Place the batter into the prepared cupcake pans, filling each liner about 2/3 of the way – this batter is quite thick, so try to get all the bubbles out of the bottom of the cups when you fill them!  Bake for 18-20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Cool completely and frost as desired – enjoy!!

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting – also, from Annie’s Eats

20 tbsp. (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. milk

Add the softened butter to your stand mixer bowl and beat on medium high for about 30 seconds or until smooth.  Add the sugar and salt and mix to incorporate – start slow or else your entire kitchen will be covered in powdered sugar!  When the sugar has been completely incorporated (you will probably have to scrape down the sides to get this accomplished), add the vanilla and milk – mix on low for 10-15 seconds.  If you’re planning to use food coloring, this is when to add it!  Increase the speed to high and beat for 4-5 minutes, or until light and fluffy appearing.  Frost away!

I should probably rename them “Death By Cookie Dough” cupcakes.  Seriously.  A chocolate chip cookie inspired cupcake filled with eggless cookie dough and topped with brown sugar cookie dough buttercream, these are a cookie dough lovers dream!  Faces lit up at the description of the cupcakes and they were quickly devoured.  A friend who always insists that I bring leftover baked goods home specifically asked to keep the remaining cupcakes.  They are just that amazing!

If you’re a fan of cookie dough, get out your brown sugar, chocolate chips and butter (lots of butter) and get going on this unique, decadent cupcake!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
from Annie’s Eats
Yields 24 cupcakes

For the cupcakes:
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed
4 large eggs
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips (semisweet or bittersweet)

For the filling:
4 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 tbsp. light brown sugar, packed
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
7 oz. sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips

For the frosting:
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. milk
2 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Cupcakes
1.  Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Line two cupcake pans with paper liners.
2. Combine butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
3. Mix in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
4. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir together to blend.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl on low speed, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix each addition just until incorporated.
6. Blend in the vanilla and fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.
7. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cupcake liners. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
8. Allow to cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
9. To fill the cupcakes, cut a cone-shaped portion out of the center of each cupcake. Fill each hole with a chunk of the chilled cookie dough mixture.
10. Top with Cookie Dough Buttercream and sprinkle with mini chocolate chips.

Cookie Dough Filling
1. Combine the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
2. Beat in the flour, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla until incorporated and smooth.
3. Stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the mixture has firmed up a bit, about an hour.

Frosting
1. Beat together the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until creamy.
2. Mix in the confectioners’ sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in the flour and salt. Mix in the milk and vanilla extract until smooth and well blended.

My husband and I just returned from a recent trip to the Waterworks restaurant in Philadelphia (which was fabulous, and I highly recommend.  Great views of the Schuylkill – both river and expressway) for our anniversary.  One of the most outstanding parts of the meal was the olive bread the restaurant served with dinner – now, I am normally not an olive-lover, but I gave it a try and it was fantastic!  When making bread this weekend to pair with some soup, I decided to go out on a limb and give baking my own olive bread a shot.  The rosemary balances very nicely with the olive flavor; it would be a great accompaniment to a special meal for company, but easy enough to make just for a night in with the family.  I based the recipe off of a bread recipe found in the Mark Bittman cookbook that we’re so fond of on Domestic Pursuits, making a few adjustments. 

Ingredients:

3 and 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp salt

1 tsp yeast

2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary

1/4 cup diced olives

1 and 1/2 scant cups of water

1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions:

Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl.  Add the rosemary and olives to the mixture.  Mix in the water and olive oil to form a dough.  If the dough is too dry (unlikely!) then add water 1 tablespoon at a time.  Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1-2 hrs, covered in a non-airtight container.  Knead the dough several times on a flour-dusted surface, folding so that the top is smooth.  Place the dough on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel and let rise for an additional hour.   In the meantime, place a pizza stone and a broiler pan in the oven.  About 20 minutes before the dough has finished rising, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Set aside a cup of warm water.   Just before baking, dust the dough with flour and slash the top of the dough with a very sharp knife.  Pour the water into the heated broiler pan, and quickly slide the dough onto the pizza peel.  Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until the crust is browned and the bread sounds hollow when tapped.  Enjoy!

My local grocery store’s bakery makes the most amazing Anisette Cookies – soft pillows of anisette goodness coated with a delicate sugar glaze.  They are especially tasty when consumed with a cup of piping hot Lady Grey tea.

On Sunday, I found myself planning a last-minute dinner with my parents and realized that I didn’t have anything to serve with tea after our meal.  With at 90 minutes to spare before our company arrived, I could have run to the store to pick up a pack of cookies, but I decided to bake my own.  A quick search on allrecipes.com yielded this fantastic recipe for Italian Anisette Cookies.

Since I didn’t want to have too many extra cookies lying around after dinner (if I bake them, I will eat them!), I halved the recipe and ended up with about 30 smaller cookies.  They were so easy to make – only 60 minutes elapsed from the time I started measuring my ingredients to when I dipped the last cookie.  I even had time to work on other food preparation while the cookies baked.

I followed the recipe exactly as written.  I did find that the icing required more water than noted in the recipe, so I just  kept adding a little at a time until I was able to achieve the desired consistency.    Some of the reviewer comments provided helpful information concerning how to tell that the cookies are done – it’s important to not let the cookies brown or even turn golden on the top.  I baked them for 8 minutes as directed and the resulting cookies were soft and fluffy, yet stable.

As expected, these cookies were delicious – the perfect complement to a relaxing cup of tea.  Some reviewers altered the recipe to use either almond extract or lemon extract in place of the anise… now I can’t wait to make tasty little lemon drops!

Anisette Cookies
Yields about 60 cookies

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp anise extract

1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 tbsp hot water (at least)
1 tsp anise extract

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and white sugar.
3. Make a well in the center and add oil, milk, 1 tablespoon anise extract, and eggs. Mix together until dough is sticky.
4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet, 1 inch apart. Flatten top slightly.
5. Bake for 8 minutes.
6. Dip cookies in icing while warm.

To Make Icing: Blend in 1 teaspoon anise extract and enough hot water to 1 cup confectioner’s sugar to form a smooth icing.

I spent most of last week trying to figure out what to bring to my in-laws’ for Easter dinner – and after days of deliberation concluded what better dessert than a lemony, buttery pastry topped with fresh berries to welcome spring!  Baking a tart always seemed very intimidating, but was always something I kept wanting to try!  Enter David Lebowitz, whose collection of pastry recipes look fabulous and yet quite possible – I figured this was the perfect scenario for giving his Tarte au Citron a try!  The prospect of making homemade lemon curd seemed like a tall order, but these days I’ve been up to the challenge!  Frankly making pastry crust was really much more intimidating - but the method Lebowitz uses was wonderful!  So much easier than working cold bits of butter into flour, and the crust came out light and flaky, just as it should!   I happened to have strawberries and blackberries on hand, so I used those as a garnish. 

For the crust:

6 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 410 degrees F.  Combine the butter, oil, water, sugar and salt in a Pyrex (or other ovenproof) bowl.  Place the bowl into the oven for 15 minutes – when the butter starts to brown at the edges.  Remove the bowl from the oven and carefully add the flour (it may splatter a bit!) to the bowl, mixing quickly until the dough forms a bowl and pulls away from the side.  Place the warm dough into the tart pan of your choice, and spread it slightly.  When the dough is cool enough to touch, press it into the pan and slightly up the sides.  Keep one small ball aside – about 1cm in diameter – for patching cracks.  I made a rectangular tart, 7 x 11 inches, and had just enough dough.  Pierce the tart with a fork, and then put the tart shell back in the oven for 15 minutes when it will be golden brown.  Remove from the oven.  To patch the cracks, take the reserved ball of dough and break it into small pieces; roll between your fingers to make a thin strip, and then press this into the cracks in the dough.  No need to bake further.  Cool completely before filling.

 For the lemon curd:

1/2 cup (125 ml) freshly-squeezed lemon juice
grated zest of one lemon, preferably unsprayed
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
6 tablespoons (85 g) butter, salted or unsalted, cut into bits
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
Prebaked tart shell

Heat the lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar and butter in a sauce pan.  In a small bowl, beat together the eggs and yolks.  Take a small amount of the hot lemon juice mixture, and add to the egg yolks stirring constantly to warm them (but not scramble them!).  Add the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan, stirring constantly over low heat until the mixture thickens and becomes slightly opaque.  Remove from heat, and force the liquid through a seive directly into the tart shell.  (This will remove all of the lemon zest and make it smooth.)  Place back in the oven for 5 minutes to set.  Let cool completely.  Garnish with fresh berries.