Devil’s Food Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting
Happy first heavenly birthday to my mom. She would have been 83 today. I wish I could talk to her one more time. I’ve been thinking a lot about her lately. Mom was the one behind our family traditions and she always made holidays and birthdays special. I’ve said before that many of my kitchen memories and favorite foods come from my childhood. My mom stopped baking years ago … maybe that’s why I took it over. I grew up with a cake on the table after dinner more nights than not. Today in memory of my mom, I made a simple two-layer Devil’s Food cake with her recipe for fluffy 7-minute frosting.
World Peace Cookies
I may have just made the world’s best tasting cookie. It’s part chocolate sable and part chocolate shortbread. World Peace Cookies have been on my list to bake for a very long time. I woke up a couple days ago and suddenly remembered them. The horrific loss of life and atrocities currently going on in the Middle East may have subconsciously been telling me that today was the day I would finally make World Peace Cookies.
Homemade Marshmallows in Salted Toasted Rocky Road Ice Cream
My journey to rocky road ice cream began on a (yes another) rainy and dreary spring weekend when I was trying to come up with a new cookie to send to my marshmallow-loving sister for her birthday. I’d recently fell in love with making meringue (and wielding my kitchen torch), plus s’mores cookies seem to be having a moment. In the past I’ve made a copycat version of a local bakery’s s’mores cookie that has a whole graham cracker baked along the bottom of a chocolate chip cookie and topped with a marshmallow, but I wanted something different. I turned to my copy of 100 Cookies (#90 to be exact), to see what Sarah Kieffer would do. Turns out that she rolls balls of chocolate chip cookie dough in crushed graham crackers mixed with sugar and melted butter. Then she suggests turning to page 284 and making homemade marshmallows for the tops – and toasting them. Decision made. I was making these cookies. And left with too many marshmallows, I naturally had to make rocky road ice cream. It’s a bit of a “when you give a mouse a cookie” conundrum. Anyhow, all good paths lead to ice cream. While the jury may be out on the s’mores cookies, the marshmallows were definitely superior to mass-manufactured, and the case is closed when it comes to Salted Toasted Rocky Road Ice Cream.
Peanut-Butter Brownie Cookies from 100 Cookies
Move over pumpkin, the neighborhood kids want peanut butter and chocolate for Halloween. A recent article in USA Today shares data from CandyStore.com that says America’s favorite overall Halloween candy is Reese’s Peanut Buter Cups. What’s not clear is if all the Reese’s variations are included in this count. In case you haven’t noticed, Hershey’s couldn’t stop at peanut butter cups (available in mini, regular and king size). Anyone who’s ever seen the E.T. movie has a soft spot for Reese’s Pieces. Today, you can lure E.T. with peanut butter cups stuffed with Reese’s Pieces, pretzels, potato chips, and even crunchy cookie bits. I was always partial to the Nutrageous bar, which is hard to find in stores. All this to say that I’ve been craving some peanut butter and chocolate and so turned to my 100 Cookies book. There it was on page 45, Sarah Kieffer’s #9 cookie called Brownie-Cookie with the option of dolloping a spoonful of peanut butter on top before baking. I was hooked. All I needed now was some more peanut butter in my chocolate. I added Reese’s Pieces, M&M’s Peanut Butter candies and some googly eyes. And a fine Halloween cookie was born.
Fall baking: Cue the apples and pumpkin
I have slowly and a bit reluctantly let go of summer, inched into the fall season, and started dreaming of fall baking complete with warm spices, apples, pumpkin, pears and maple-flavored everything. I mean, isn’t that what fall is all about? (Okay, maybe some football too.) In my divine order of fall baking, apples come first. After all, apples are equated with teachers and back to school. I also happen to live in the beautiful state of Washington, where apples are aplenty; the state produces over half the Nation's domestically grown apples. Or maybe apples reign first for me because I refuse to give into the societal pressure related to pumpkin spice lattes re-joining the Starbucks menu in late August. Hold on pumpkin, wait your turn. My first little fall baking task was the Zoë François Apple Almond Galette. However, I’m proud to say that I waited until the calendar officially declared it was fall and then the very next day, I baked a pumpkin chocolate snack cake.
Win-the-Day Ice Cream Sandwiches
One evening not too long ago my adult daughter was home for a weekend visit. We were watching TV when she suddenly exclaimed (with great enthusiasm I might add): “I forgot! At this house you get dessert every night!” While that may not be exactly true (what? Dessert at my house? Nah) … I’ll admit that it’s a rare day when there’s no ice cream in my freezer. I inherited my love of ice cream from my dad. Growing up, the regular for our family of seven was rectangular cartons of store-brand ice cream. In later years, my dad stocked his freezer with a minimum of four half-gallon cartons of Dreyer’s or Umpqua, or whatever was on sale, ice cream in the latest crazy mixtures. I’m more of a purist when it comes to my ice cream. I don’t want more than two things going on inside that tub. My top three: Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond, Haagen Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and Tillamook Coffee Almond Fudge. I’m also always up for visiting (even standing in the rain) the local ice cream shop. In college it was Prince Puckler's. When in Portland it’s Salt and Straw and here in Seattle it’s Molly Moon’s. After 30-plus years of living with me, my husband has perfected being my ice cream partner-in-crime. This year his birthday fell on college football Saturday. (Did I mention that the Oregon Ducks won the day beating Ohio State for the first time in history?) Extra points for my homemade ice cream sandwiches. Think super rich and scoopable dark chocolate ice cream (inspired by Molly Moon Melted Chocolate) layered with old fashioned vanilla ice cream sandwiched inside made-from-scratch chocolate cookies with just the right texture.
French Silk Pie Bars
I’ve seen many mentions of and recipes for “French Silk Pie” in cookbooks and online over the years and never really gave it much thought. After all, I have a chocolate cream pie made of melted candy bars in my recipe vault handed down from a family member that’s a crowd pleaser and super easy to make. So, what led me to make French Silk Pie Bars? It all started a few months back when I posted my Brown Sugar Cookies followed by Neapolitan cookies, both from Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies book. With so many cookies in the cookiesphere, I proposed the idea of making a new cookie each month and asked for requests. In response, my friend Nancy suggested Cookie #63 - French Silk Pie Bars. (What?! A cookie that involves pie crust?) Being easily distracted, sadly I did not follow through on making a new cookie in June or developing a list. (Please send me your requests now!) But I’m happy to report that I’m back on track (barely). Thanks to Nancy’s visit on July 29, I snuck in the French Silk Pie Bars as the July cookie.
Frosted Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies
If you lived in Eugene, Oregon or went to college in Eugene during the 80s and into the 90s, I’m betting you remember The Cookie Cottage in Valley River Center (VRC) shopping mall. And if you were not in the vicinity of Eugene during this time, you’ll wish you were once you see the cookies I’m about to tell you about. The Cookie Cottage featured a black pot-bellied stove and they sold several warm cookie varieties — but their specialty (or the most original) was a large chocolate cookie covered in chocolate frosting with a marshmallow filling. They were on the south end of the mall outside of Meier & Frank (where I happened to work during college). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information on the internet to confirm which years they were at the mall. I do know that when I was in college, and not naming names, we would make a special trip to Valley River for one of these cookies. Several of my sorority sisters (and my own three sisters) still talk about the renowned chocolate marshmallow cookies. In the words of one of my favorite sisters in the bond, they were “a fine product.”
One yolk. One white. The perfect baker’s dozen.
Just another exciting night sitting at home during the pandemic mindlessly scrolling through all the food on my Instagram feed, and a post from @buttermilkbysam jumped out at me. What’s that, you can make a “small batch” of cookies? Who knew? Somehow making a “small batch” lessened my guilt factor or at least there would be a finite amount to devour in one sitting. (This same idea must have been on the mind of whoever it was that decided it would be a good thing to sell a block of pre-scored cookie dough squares. I mean, who hasn’t bought these in a weak moment?) But sitting at home on this particular evening all cozy with no intent of venturing out, the idea of One Yolk, Six Perfect Chocolate Chunk Cookies hooked me. I was in. Time to whip up a small batch. But wait. As I read further, I discovered I could also make One Egg White, Seven Salted Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies. It was brilliant. The perfect baker’s dozen. So perfect, I need to share it with you.