Double Chocolate Oatmeal Balls

One day, when I was learning to temper chocolate, I started to do a Google search for items covered in chocolate. Google thinks it knows what you wanted, and started to suggest "Chocolate Covered Katie?" Hoping it wasn't porn, I clicked on the link, and discovered her healthy dessert blog. I scanned through the entries with sheer and utter skepticism, but the comments were consistently positive.

The recipe I kept looking at was for fudge babies (please click on her link for that recipe as well as her own variations), which she described as a homemade Larabar. I was looking for new things to eat for snack or breakfast that I could make ahead of time and wouldn't be bad for me, so I thought it couldn't hurt to give them a try.

I used walnuts, dates, a little handful of oats, a little vanilla, a pinch of salt, cocoa powder, and ended up adding a little agave since I was using drier dates than the brand she recommended. Then I formed the mixture into balls and stuck them in the fridge. I was surprised too. They don't taste overtly fruity like so many vegan things do, the lack of flour isn't a problem because you can taste the nuts in a good way. My addition of oats made every bite remind me of the double chocolate oatmeal cookies my Mom used to make, only these are much better for you, not to mention that I can only eat one at a time.

Gluten-free, vegan, and these could also easily be made raw with the omission (or different choosing) of 1-2 ingredients. But I just call them tasty.

Daring Bakers August 2011 - Dark Chocolate Truffles filled with Chili-Chocolate Ganache

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I was most excited because the challenge involved tempering chocolate, something I had never done by hand before. During my brief stint working at DeBrand Fine Chocolates in Indianapolis in 2001, we would make some garnishes out of tempered chocolate, but had fancy tempering machines that we just had to turn on. I went with the double boiler method, and after my candy thermometer decided my bowl shape/size wasn't conducive to candy making in the batch of sponge candy I torched (NOT PICTURED, haha, it was terrible), I decided to try to do it by feel. I know, this might sound crazy. Tempering chocolate is Very Serious Business. But I thought maybe it is more like baking bread, where the measurements are precise except for when they aren't, and it is more important to develop a feel for how the dough should feel, and make slight adjustments.


My bonbons or truffles (I think I'll call them truffles since they are chocolate inside chocolate) ended up with that perfect shiny snap, so I feel like I am not completely wrong in thinking you might be able to temper chocolate by sense. I heated up about 2/3 of the chocolate until it was melted, smooth, and had started to heat up (definitely not even close to boiling). I removed it from the heat and stirred chocolate drops in until they stopped melting easily, then put it back on the heat for a minute or so until it got glossy again. I had a plastic mold, and through trial and error discovered that the easiest way not to make a mess of things was to drop some of the chocolate into each divet, swirl it around with a brush until it had coated the sides, and then chill it. The first batch, I tried doing it where you ladle chocolate over the whole mold and pour the extra back into the pot, and all I really made was a huge mess!


For the insides, I made two kinds of ganache. One was a dark chocolate mixed with ancho chili powder, a sprinkle of cayenne, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The other was a milk chocolate ganache with a little Irish cream. The milk chocolate took a lot longer to get to the appropriate consistency, so we ate most of it as a snack later that week.


The truffles were tasty. Shiny and a good snap as you bit in, very soft and smooth in the middle, with a little bite due to the spices. Now that I have more of a hang of it, I think it would be simple to do again.... simple but not cheap. Making chocolates is an expensive venture! I think I may use this method the next time I make such things as peanut butter balls, just to have a better finish on the outside. I usually just melt down bags of chocolate chips, but using a tempered chocolate will really class things up a bit. Next time I will also plan ahead better and order bulk couverture chocolate online. I couldn't find any in local stores, and did buy some off of a chocolate shop in Asheville, but I couldn't rely on them as a source (it isn't like they have that chocolate on their menu or anything!).

David Lebovitz's Gluten-Free Brownies

Yesterday I was reading through the blogs in my foodie folder in Google Reader, and as soon as I saw David Lebovitz's recipe for Gluten-Free Brownies, I knew I had to make it. I had made the original recipe from Ready for Dessert, and liked what he said he did in replacing the flour. It involves cornstarch, and several of the comments to his post asked about replacing that. Apparently you can replace it directly with potato starch if necessary. I used cornstarch.

My picture doesn't look as dark or fudgey as his in the original recipe post, but I blame the bright noon sunlight. These might compete in my brownie files as our favorite brownie recipe. The best thing I can say about them is that you have NO IDEA they are gluten-free. No weird taste. No weird texture. It is a brownie through and through, down to the crackly tops that you need! It was the perfect recipe to use the rest of the chocolate I got from Mast Brothers, plus some chocolate chips. Instead of nuts, I stirred in additional chocolate chips, which I'm not sure I can recommend if you intend to eat an entire piece! Completely over the top.

Green Tomato Bundt Cake

Every once in a while I will make something that I'm not sure I'll like, and still can't decide after it is over if it was "good." This Green Tomato Bundct Cake, from Paula Deen on the Food Network, is one of those cakes. A friend of mine made this recipe a bunch last summer and swore by it (although she recommended skipping the glaze). I loved the concept; it seemed so southern to use green tomatoes in a cake! I kept thinking of it in the off-season but finally remembered to pull it out once I started seeing green tomatoes at the farmers markets again.

A lot of reviews claimed that nobody could tell these were green tomatoes! That it was so amazing and delicious and mysterious! My problem was that they were too obviously green tomatoes. They were so firm, even in a small dice, they hadn't developed enough sugar to absorb into the cake, and their tartness really stood out. The cake itself was delicious, the spices and nuts (and currants that I used) were heartwarming and would be perfect for fall.. without the green tomatoes.

It seems I have a verdict after all!

Breakfast in Sicily

Ever since I read Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa by Matthew Fort, my imagination has been running wild. Breakfast of fresh, warm brioche buns, torn apart and dipped into chilly coffee granita, topped with lightly sweetened whipped cream?

In fact, this so captured me that for a while I was thinking about starting a new international breakfast blog, featuring the amazing meals you can only find other places. It turns out that several people are doing that already, so I will leave them to it, as long as they leave the Sicilian breakfast of champions to me.


The coffee granita recipe I used came from the aforementioned travel book, but any recipe that makes granita the slow way would do. The slow way being pouring liquid into a shallow container and scraping it with a fork every fifteen minutes until you have ice crystals that are almost in a mush texture, finely separated and not liquid at all, but delicate. This is what separates Sicilian granita from other mass-produced flavored-shaved ice varieties. Also from what I've read, you can find many varieties of granita at breakfast in Sicily - fruit flavors for instance - but I can't imagine anything better on a sunny morning than coffee granita!

Daring Bakers July 2011 - Fresh Fraisiers (Mûrier?)

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

Fraisiers are named after strawberries, and if a blackberry is la mûre in French, it is possible that I've actually made a mûrier here, but I can't be certain.

One of my co-workers and fellow foodies brought me some lavender from some organic fields in Utah, the kind intended for baking and cooking with. I adapted the recipe to infuse lavender into the pastry cream, and it was quite fragrant. My final product is a bit messy, but only because a fraisier depends on gelatin for that firmness and I keep trying to use agar agar in place of it. The last time I used it I let it set up too much, resulting in a slightly clumpy end product, and this time I think I erred on the opposite side, and my cream didn't entirely ever set up.

I made the coconut version of the cake, a lavender cream, and fresh blackberries. That combination also makes up a perfume combination I wear a lot in the summer, so it was a bit surreal creating a dessert with the same flavor/scent combination.

At the end of the day, this was absolutely delicious. I am not a person who is bothered by the flavor/smell of flowers in my food - I have embraced rose in baked goods and candy for years. I'm not sure it would be for everyone!! But it seemed perfect for summer.

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Well, I can't really believe it, but this is the 5th anniversary of JennyBakes!

I'm on a brief break from work, with some vacation days to burn through before August 1 when it all rolls over, and today had a lazy day full of finishing season 4 of Brothers & Sister on Netflix and baking a pie. Now, most of the time, when celebrating such an event as a blogiversary, I of course would make something that I could serve to a lot of people. But I'm not going to be around a lot of people until next week, and ever since seeing this recipe for French silk chocolate pie on Serious Eats, I just haven't been able to get it out of my head. So today was the day, add sprinkles, and celebrate.

French Broad Chocolates - Asheville, NC

Imagine a serene chocolate lounge where you can sip chocolate drinks (or beer and wine, if you'd prefer), consume chocolate desserts, and munch on handcrafted chocolates. Imagine it has generous seating, vegan options, and is open as late (or later) than your favorite coffee shop.

It exists! I've been! The French Broad Chocolate Lounge in Asheville, NC, is it. Their extensive menu is amazing if not a bit overwhelming, since everything is chocolate. I was there on a very hot day and had the cold sipping chocolate, which blended dark chocolate, coconut milk, and an infusion of my choosing - I went with the chai one, and it was delicious.

In addition to their own chocolate creations, French Broad Chocolates sells artisan chocolates from a handful of small-batch producers. It is a place to go to more than once, in order to sample a wide variety of chocolatey treats.

Cookbook Review - Sweet & Skinny

When I first received a copy of Sweet & Skinny by Marisa Churchill, I will admit to being a bit skeptical. I have seen too many low-fat or low-calorie dessert cookbooks that take abundant advantage of tasteless items like Cool Whip Free and artificial sweeteners.

Instead, Marisa Churchill plays with texture and flavor and freshness and creates elegant, tasty desserts that you wouldn't even have to excuse to your guests.

I had my eye on several recipes in the cookbook that I plan to make at a later date, and was largely constrained by a feeling of seasonality, but damn if that pear and chocolate gingerbread upside down cake from the holiday section not call my name! The recipe I have dogeared to try in the not too distant future are the strawberry-black pepper meringues.


I couldn't resist making two very summery, fresh tasting recipes from Sweet and Skinny. First I made the Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Berries. I used local blackberries I bought at a market in Brevard, NC, that were just dying to be treated with respect. I also finally accomplished my goal of substituting agar agar powder for gelatin with a good result. Gelatin is a pretty frequent ingredient recipe throughout the book to help with mouth feel without adding fat, but as a vegetarian I don't eat it. Luckily there are sea-vegetable substitutes.

The second recipe I made was the Deconstructed Key Lime Pie. I tweaked a few things there too, since I had a whole bottle of key lime juice, I went straight (and it was tart!). I don't miss the crust. Would anyone? I also just left the gelatin out of the egg whites for the topping, since I was going to be serving it right away.

I'm looking forward to making more out of this book, and adopting some of the tricks in some of my usual recipes.

Deepest Darkest Chocolate Cheesecake

After I saw Anne Thornton make this cheesecake on her new Food Network show Dessert First, I couldn't get it out of my head. As I was narrowing recipes down for my birthday, it kept rising to the top of my list, so I decided not to make "regular" cake this year, but to have cheesecake instead!

If you are looking to feature a particular chocolate, this is the dessert for you. I zipped up to Black Mountain Chocolate for another pound of dark chocolate to bake with, and used all of it in this recipe. It was completely worth it! After a few days in the fridge, we ended up leaving it out at room temperature to allow it to be as creamy and silky as it could be. The recipe doesn't instruct you to bake the cheesecake in a water bath, but the next time I make it, I definitely will. It would have been a little creamier and not suffered from cracks. I knew that, but decided to just do it as written first.

This was very chocolatey, very dark, and the glaze on top just makes it spectacular!

Another note about the recipe - I substituted graham crackers for the chocolate wafer cookies. I think chocolate wafer cookies must be a regional thing, because I see them in recipes all the time but have never actually encountered any myself. Once I tried substituting Oreos but they were far too greasy. Until I find these elusive cookies, I will just keep making graham crusts!

No need to wish me happy birthday; it was several weeks ago at this point, I'm just behind on blogging lately!

Happy Red, White, and Blue Day

Strawberry shortcake seems so patriotic. Only because strawberries are ripe around what we call independence day. For these cute shortcakes, I used Anne Thornton's recipe, with a few changes - I added chopped up mint and thyme from my garden into the dough itself, not just with the berries. I didn't have an orange, so I skipped it. And I didn't add nearly as much sugar as was called for to the fruit.

All the fruit and herbs in this recipe come from our garden! Earlier today, the blueberries looked like this:

From Gardening

How can you resist? As far as patriotism goes, one of my English friends pointed out that strawberries and cream is a rather English dish. Hehe.

Lemon Poppyseed Scones

Lemon Poppyseed Scones
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

In my alternate life, I opened up my own tea room instead of becoming a librarian. A quirky place, where people would come for special events as well as for everyday, popping in for tea and a scone and leaving blissfully happy and relaxed.

I recently got the cookbook for Alice's Tea Cup and found the place that has always lived in my imagination. I wanted to make every recipe in the book, and started with these lemon poppyseed scones.

Sometimes, it is nice that people have similar dreams, to make sure they actually come true!

Daring Bakers June 2011 - Baklava and Homemade Phyllo

Overhead view of baklava
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

In true JennyBakes fashion, I waited until the day before I needed to post the challenge to try the recipe. I hemmed and hawed for a while, because I had enough hazelnuts, but also had some chocolate chips sitting around, so I ended up making what another Daring Baker's five year old has deemed "choklava," using a generous helping of chocolate chips in with the nut mixture.

I have made Danish pastry before, puff pastry (once, never again), croissants, and even strudel, but never had I attempted making phyllo dough before. I mean... the store makes it so easy, I can just buy a box and whip up practically anything! But I faced this challenge head on. I'm not afraid of tearing delicate dough. I don't mind spending two hours rolling out golf-ball-sized balls into paper thin dough sheets. No really, I don't. And really, that was time consuming but not terrible.


Several other Daring Bakers had said the recipe had too much syrup, and I wish I'd listened, because my end result was a bit too gooey and syrup for my tastes, and oh so sweet! I partly blame the chocolate, maybe it hampers moisture absorption a bit. It is still satisfying to pour the syrup over the pastries right out of the oven and listen to the sizzle and bubble. Twelve hours later, though, they were still wading in the goo. I still gave them to people. If there is a lesson over and over, it is to trust my instincts!

A few changes I made in the recipe, which you can see on Erica's blog once she posts, was to fiddle a bit with the spices - I added cardamom and used more orange than was called for, and the entire house smelled like the holidays! I think if I made phyllo again, I would use my old lowfat use nonstick cooking spray between the sheets trick, and make something savory with it.

Bakery Review - Cakehead Bakeshop - Spartanburg, SC

The Cakehead Bakeshop is a newer bakery in the Upstate, located inside the same building as the Little River Coffee Bar, right next to my favorite new bookshop, Hub City Bookshop. So you might as well plan to spend the morning or afternoon in these three places!

The baked goods at Cakehead Bakeshop are described on their website as "rustic," but don't let that word scare you. They sell old-fashioned cakes that you can order whole or buy by the slice, pies, cookies, scones, and biscuits; there was even a tomato pie on the counter the day I stopped in. But the cupcakes are far from rustic - each type is unique and topped with something fun, but more than that - they are delicious. So many places that make cupcakes focus on look and give you something dry, crumbly, or greasy, but these were perfect - moist, flavorful, and perfectly (but not too) sweet.

If you want their breakfast fare, which is sold out in the coffee shop, come early! I was there at 10 am and all the scones were gone for the day. This seems like a relatively small operation with great potential, and I hope they find success in Spartanburg!

Fresh Peach Soup

Fruit that is ripening too quickly or just on the brink can be turned into fruit soup! This is just four peaches whizzed together with a bit of fresh ginger, orange juice, lemon juice, and a splash of cream.

I'd rather just eat the fresh peaches, after all the work it takes to blanch and peel them! But fruit soup is a lovely dessert in hot weather for a light meal.

Georgia-Style Peach Cobbler

Last weekend we bought peaches from Strawberry Hill USA, an early clingstone variety called Junegold. I would like to go back later on in the season for freestone peaches which are much easier to deal with!

I knew I wanted to make peach cobbler but hadn't been 100% happy with the recipes I'd tried in the past. I started to see a funny trend of "Georgia style" cobblers, something I'd never heard of. It started with a Paula Deen recipe, but was a technique I saw repeated. I gave in and used the recipe at Vintage Victuals. The basic technique is melting butter in a pan, pouring the batter in, topping it with the fruit, and as it bakes the batter bakes up around the fruit. (This reminds me of clafouti, actually, but the ingredients are different).

I made a happy mistake of leaving the butter melting in the oven too long, and it was all brown and nutty when I poured the batter in, but decided to keep it, and was a delicious contrast to the sun-ripened peaches!

Roasted Cauliflower Hand Pies

As a baker, I'm often feeling like I never spend enough time making food for actual meals, just tasty treats for breakfast and dessert! The fiftieth time I flipped through Martha Stewart's Pies & Tarts, I really honed in on this recipe for roasted cauliflower hand pies. For one thing, it was vegetarian, which is a must in our household. For another, it called for manchego, my favorite cheese, and sounded somewhat Spanish in flavor.


The crust has manchego in it, and it is also used inside the pies, which also have a hazelnut paste (roasted nuts, garlic, lemon, rosemary, olive oil), roasted cauliflower, and manchego. These are RICH but delicious, and so vibrant in flavor. They would be really nice offered with something more acidic, maybe as part of a tapas meal.

Bluebarb Pie

I knew I froze batches of rhubarb for a reason. I've had Martha Stewart's New Pies & Tarts: 150 Recipes for Old-Fashioned and Modern Favorites sitting around for a bit, but it was for a funny reason. Every time I picked it up and looked through it, every single thing sounded good, and I couldn't decide what to make. That is so rare for me in a cookbook! But the pictures are vibrant, including a great how-to section in the back (which I utilized for my lattice work you see above, and it almost belongs more on the coffee table than in the kitchen.

Almost. I didn't want to make the rhubarb crumb pie, because I wanted to make something bluebarb, not knowing what that flavor combination would be like. So when I lacked the 7 cups of blueberries, but had 3, I took it as a sign to pull the rhubarb out of the freezer. What you see above is basically the exact recipe for the blueberry pie with half rhubarb. After tasting it, I should have compensated for the tartness of the rhubarb by adding a bit more sugar, but the colors in the pie are so beautiful, and it just tastes like summer and spring, all in one pie.

Wonder Buns and BabyCakes

I've had the cookbook BabyCakes Covers the Classics on my kitchen table, begging to be experimented with, for over a month now. I did half-heartedly make a modified version of gingerbread pancakes, which were delicious, but it took a while to commit to buying all the required ingredients.

Because vegan and gluten-free baking is expensive, y'all! No joke. I planned to make two recipes that use the same basic dough, and I had to buy gluten-free baking flour, arrowroot, xantham gum, brown rice flour, and agave nectar. Some of these ingredients I will use anyway, but unless I do more gluten-free experimenting, I'm not sure where the rest will go. The other part of gluten-free baking that I'm torn on is that I feel a little witchy stirring ingredients together that are so foreign to me. (I never saw eye of newt, though).


Okay, okay, I'll do some more experimenting. This cookbook is vibrant and has some creative groupings that make you want to bake despite the ingredient limitations you might have. The other recipe I picked to try was Hamentaschen from the "From the Old Country" section. It told me to use the basic pastry dough recipe from page 32, but as that had cinnamon in it, my dough was a lot darker than what was shown in the picture. In the end, my cookies unfolded while baking, but I am very willing to blame that on my inexperience with working with gluten-free dough!

So, how did everything taste? I've done vegan experiments with pretty good success, but gluten-free baking is another animal entirely. I'd say that you should expect everything to be denser, more hearty because of the mixed sources for the flours, and to be somewhat temperamental. But if you are required to eat a gluten-free diet, this book and the other BabyCakes cookbook are probably a good place to start. They seem to have done a great job at covering the things you would really crave - including an entire chapter on donuts! Gluten-free donuts, is that even possible? Try it and see.

Cocoa Brownies

I was pretty sure I had already blogged these Cocoa Brownies from Smitten Kitchen, but apparently not. I don't know, maybe I was thinking I am always posting about my experiments with her recipes and felt silly doing another one. I'm not sure! Then I went on vacation, blah blah blah.

Seriously, everyone knows that I'm a huge Dorie Greenspan fan (made her blueberry crumb cake again this weekend, so delicious), but I seriously think Deb from Smitten Kitchen could easily influence all of us as much. Her blog just makes you want to cook and bake and eat!

My local grocery store, which I prefer first because it is closest to my home but second because everyone who works there is friendly and efficient, seems to only be stocking Special Dark cocoa powder these days. I really must speak to them about this, because while it would be nice as an option, it is not "normal" cocoa powder! I had a little deja vu while making this recipe, since the last time I made a cocoa brownie recipe was when I was experimenting with black cocoa powder. That time, I was using Alton Brown's cocoa brownie recipe. Both are great, but they are really different. Alton's is cakey, and depends on a long beating of eggs at the beginning of the recipe. Deb's only uses two eggs, and very little flour, and I'm not sure they even fully set up until I'd put them in the fridge for a few hours. We just kept them there, because they were so delicious cold, besides being fudgy chewy deliciousness.

Stay tuned for more posts - I'm trying out some recipes from some new cookbooks in the next few days, and have pâte brisée chilling in the fridge....