White Peach Pie

We scored a lot of white peaches for very little money at the farmers' market today.  This called for a baking project!

J. turned to one of our favorite blogger for recipe inspiration: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/07/peach-pie/

It turned out pretty well, but we realized that more peaches could have been packed inside it.  Ah, well, next time.

Remade on:

2016-07-17 with necktarines obtained from the same vendor in a similar manner

Banana Oatmeal Cups

I was inspired to make these, from one of my favorite instagram bloggers:

http://kaleandchocolate.com/recipe/baked-oatmeal-cups/

They turned out delicious:

I added walnuts and dried cherries to the recipe.  Froze a few, will see how that turns out.

Chocolate Lace Cookies

I had my eye on this cookie recipe ever since the Christmas issue of Sunset came out.

These were time consuming, but kinda fun to make:

Recipe: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-lace-sandwich-cookies.

Here they are sandwiched w/chocolate:

They stick to your teeth when you eat them.

Banana Bread

N. came across some mildly overripe bananas in the office kitchen.  We were inspired to save them by way of banana bread baking.

J. found this recipe as a starting point:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/banana-bread-recipe.html

We added a bit of walnuts and chocolate chunks towards the end, to make it more exciting!

Here we are folding the ground cinnamon (gift from M. & C.) into the mushed banana mixture:

And, here's the final product:

It turned out amazingly well and was surprisingly easy.  Now there's no excuse for letting bananas go to waste.

Remade on:

2016-03-13

N&J Shortbread Cookies

One of our awesome wedding gift was a 3D printed custom cookie cutter in the shape of our wedding logo.  The gifter, our bridesmaid B., is refusing to tell us where she got it made.  Nonetheless, we quickly put it to use on the only cutter-required cookie style in our repertoire -- shortbread!

This is the recipe we used: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/shortbread-cookies-recipe.html.

Here they are in the oven (on the silicone mats, also from B.):

And here they are decorated with chocolate with the help of our bridesman D.:

They were amazingly delicious and fun to eat!

Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies à la The Science of Good Cooking

After the wedding, things didn't turn out like in this movie. Rather, we came home and fell back to the old standby of chocolate chip cookies. M. and C. had given us some quality chocolate to make use of, so it seemed like the right choice. I pulled out The Science of Good Cooking to see what it had to say on the subject. Never lacking in swagger, the book promised a recipe for the "ultimate" chocolate chip cookies. A perfunctory Google reveals that they also are known as "perfect" in other America's Test Kitchen publications.

The signature twist of this recipe is probably the use of browned butter. Just as the name suggests, such butter is created by heating non-brown butter on the stove until it changes to the target color. The recipe promised that this would produce a nutty, toffelike flavor in the ultimate cookie.

While the resulting cookies were consumed with pleasure, they probably fell short of expectations. I found them a little too flat, and not quite chewy enough. The internet suggests that flatness can be a consequence of butter that melts too soon. Yet, melting the butter right away was the whole point of this recipe!

I suppose that recipes that bill themselves as producing an "ultimate" or "perfect" product will never live up to my expectations -- that's some serious hype.

Says N., "They were still quite tasty".

Blueberry Crumb Cake

We're terrible newlyweds-to-be, since we've been opening up our wedding presents as we get them.  We're even starting to use some of the goodies before the wedding takes place.

For example, our friends AH^2 got us the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, and we couldn't wait to dig into it.  Since it's blueberry season, we decided to make this blueberry cake, instead of the usual brownie type object.

Full recipe is here: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2014/07/blueberry-crumb-cake/

It was yummy.

Apricot Cobbler

We volunteered with Village Harvest again this weekend, yielding a shoe box full of slightly imperfect apricots:

We've decided that a cobbler is the most effective method to use them up.  Here's a step in the prep process:

This is the recipe we stuck to: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Apricot-Cobbler-105131

The results were delicious!

Spiced Brownies

When J. is feeling stressed, he likes to bake brownies.  Today, after figuring out the wording on our wedding invites, he tried out a new recipe:

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/09/the-baked-brownie-spiced-up/

N. insisted he add some walnuts on top to make them 'healthier'.

They were delicious!

White Bread

Our friend B. posted a picture of her bread dough rising on fb.  This inspired J. to try to make bread...from scratch.  We were short on time, so opted so the shortest and simpliest recipe we could find.  It came from our Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook (so 50s housewife!):

Here's how the result looked:

It was edible, but not amazing.  Conclusion: let's leave bread making to the professionals.

Bittersweet Decadence Cookies

We somehow ended up with a copy of The Wall Street Journal.  In their lifestyle section, they had a piece on fancy chocolate.  J. was inspired to make these cookies:

We used two different varieties of Scharfenberger baking chocolate bars.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304431104579551731399758384

The result was pretty amazing.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

The year we were invited to a potluck Passover seder, which calls for flourless desserts.  Since J. loves to cook w/chocolate, we went for this:

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2007/01/shf-27-chocolat-1/

The seder was lovely and had too much food, as potlucks often do.  The density of this cake led to very little of it actually being consumed.  We were sent home with the remainder.  Luckily, we were invited to another casual potluck Passover seder the following weekend.  Guess what we brought?

This cake is rich, intense, and can cover your social obligations at two potlucks!

Chocolate Chip Macadamia Cookies

Recipe from The Science of Good Cooking Book.

The results were not as chewy as we were hoping for, but tasty nonetheless.

Persimmon Bread

N. occasionally likes to volunteer with an awesome organization, Village Harvest, that picks excess fruit from backyards in Silicon Valley and donates it to the hungry.  However, only perfectly intact fruit is accepted by the food banks.  Anything damaged is kept by the volunteers.  This is how we ended up with lots of mildly imperfect hachiya persimmons:

Due to the quantity of this loot, we immediately started looking for ways to use persimmons in baking.  This is how we came across James Beard's persimmon bread recipe, as adopted by David Leibovitz:

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2005/11/persimmon-bread/

In the process making this, we learned that the hazelnuts we have in our fridge are actually super delicious when roasted :)

The final result is extremely rich, moist dessert bread that has strong hints of whisky:

Deep Chocolate Brownies

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Deep-Chocolate-Brownies-242608

Apple Oven Cake

We hosted a party this fall.  As decor, we bought large red apples.  They looked shiny & cute, but their taste left a lot to be desired.

Soon after the party, N. came across this recipe in an old issue of Sunset, and a use case for the sad apples was found:

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/apple-oven-cake-10000001924665/

The apples were sliced:

Sauteed in cinnamon butter:

And turned into a delish frittata-like entity.  The lemon juice was key to good taste.  A bit less sugar would have been ok.

Cornbread

In anticipation for tomorrow's pig fest, we decided to make cornbread.  We chose a fancy 'Science of Good Cooking' recipe that involves putting fresh corn kernels into the batter.

Here's the recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/the-perfect-cornbread-203776

It was so delish, we could hardly hold off on eating it.

Remade on:

2013-11-28 for Thanksgiving at the S. household

2014-11-26 for Thanksgiving at the S. household (made the formal version as above, and a casual version with chopped fuyu persimmons in place of corn kernels)

Carrot Raisin Muffins

One of our cooking goals is to make at least one recipe from every cookbook-like entity we own.  Issues of 'Sunset' magazine count as cookbook-like entities for the purpose of this goal.

When the April 2013 issue of Sunset arrived, I was disappointed to see its heavy focus on gardening, with reduced food sections.  Who cares about gardening?  Thankfully, it also had this muffin recipe, so we're able to meet our goal and use some of that whole wheat flour that's been taking up fridge space!

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/miracle-carrot-muffins-50400000127223/

They turned out quite well, although a couple more min of baking would not have hurt.

Remade on:
2013-5-17
2014-5-18

Simple Brownies

Brownies made from 100% cocoa chocolate:
http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/08/my-favorite-brownies/

We still like the cocoa brownies recipe best.

Orange mini muffins

From the O'Leary family cookbook:

 

Result: