Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars

Oh wow.

Oh so good.

Oh wow.

That basically sums up all that I feel about these little bars of easily baked, yummy sweet goodness. Now if you do not mind I need a few moments alone with another piece of this.

Caramelized Rice Krispies....nom nom nom

Caramelized Rice Krispies and chocolate....words fail me! 

Small print: Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars, Baking Chez Moi pg. 324

My Lovely Little Humps

"Get you love drunk off my hump. My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump. My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps (check it out)."

 - Black  Eyed Peas (2005). 

Seriously people...you need to check out my lovely little humps, the humps on my lemon madeleines that is. But first check out my ingredients:

When we baked the weekend cake I saved the scrapped out vanilla bean and made vanilla salt with it which I used to bake the little love humps (aka the madeleines). I also took the lemon that I scrapped the zest off of and squeezed the juice out of and tossed it in a pot with water, with a little vanilla and some rosemary that I clipped from the garden and simmered it on the stove. I then proceeded to cut out and assemble nomenclature cards of the human skeleton for my son to use. I then realized that I had been way too productive and if anyone in my family caught wind of this they would expect this level of achievement on a daily basis so I immediately laid down on the couch and took a nap just to help keep expectations low (like I like them). 

This morning (after dropping my little shorty off at kindergarten) I came home and baked the little love humps. And just like with pizza I can not resist eating one right away....memories of having a burnt mouth and sizzled fingers does nothing to stop this. Also I felt I had to eat one right away so that I could scientifically compare the unglazed to the glazed cookie. I did it for science! 

unglazed

 And let me just say...glazed wins! Sorry unglazed love humps you are delicious but your cousin (the glazed love humps) are outstanding! Lemony glazie, lovey humpy deliciousness.

And luckily the recipe says they are best eaten they day they are made so I now need to work eating 10 more little lemon love humps in my schedule for today. 

The details:

Baking Chez Moi: Lemon Madeleines pg. 212 

Marquise au Chocolat

The movie Fifty Shades of Grey came out recently and everyone is all a buzz about it. Not me. That does not do it for me. Nothing in the book made my heart race, my tummy flutter, or do anything to get me hot and bothered.

However when I opened Baking Chez Moi to this week's recipe and read that I was to place one entire stick of butter into a bain-marie and cover it with 13oz of bittersweet chocolate...well let's just say that the book and I may have needed a private moment together because what Fifty Shades of Grey does not do for me....being told to melt chocolate into butter does.

Cut 1 stick of butter into 18 pieces and cover with 13oz of roughly chopped bittersweet chocolate...now that is my kind of dirty talk.

What you end up with a rich chocolate mousse that you freeze. And once frozen you eat. It is both light and rich. So decadent.

 I tried to restrain myself from licking my plate clean. I may have lost that battle.

I wonder if anyone else views cook books as I do......

On to the small print:
Marquise au Chocolat p. 357 of Baking Chez Moi

Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake

Do you ever find yourself running and spinning with a "to-do" list that is a few feet long and a feeling that you are constantly letting people down? I was just in the place, in the space in my head. It was Sunday morning and I had a million things to do...
plan a menu for the week, make a grocery list, and get to the store first thing in the morning
make a dish to share for at the club meeting later that day
print out sign up sheets and prepare for my part of the meeting
pick up, put away and in general restore order to the house
start planning decorations for the fundraiser
email a million people about a million things that I am suppose to be in charge of
pick up bird seed so the birds will stop sitting on the empty bird feeder while giving me the stink eye
figure out a way to clone myself so that I can do the things I need to do and be home every night at my son's bedtime
and the list stretched on a few more feet before finally petering out

I was swirling and whirling...spinning like a child's toy. And so I baked.

After opening my cookbook and laying it open I went to the fridge and pulled out 4 eggs out and some butter and placed them on the counter. I then went out on to my back deck, turned my face to the sun and breathed. I breathed in and out....in and out....filling my lungs with sunshine drenched air. I stood there, with my face turned up, my arms pulled back and my palms turned out until the ingredients were ready. And then I baked.

I scraped the seeds out of a vanilla bean and used my fingers to mix them into sugar. Pure white sugar becoming dotted with little specks of black sticky seeds. I browned butter, swirling and swirling as it went from solid to foamy until finally it became a golden toasty brown. I wished I could bottle the smell in the kitchen, full of burnt sugar and sticky vanilla, and wear it as a perfume.

Weekend cakes are easy to make. Nothing fussy or complicated should ever be made on a weekend. No mixers to pull out, no food processors to assemble and dissemble. Just a bowl and whisk.

Flour and sugar, and burnt butter and cream, and more all get gently mixed together. Slowly and uncomplicated. Like the sunshine air that filled up my lungs. Like the warmth on my face slowing me down. Like a weekend should be.

Baking can do a lot of things. It bring families together to sit around the table. It can open doors of friendship when "welcome to the 'hood" cookies are exchanged. And if you let it then baking can untwirl your mind and still your soul one cracked egg, one scoop of flour, one dash of salt at a time.

Toasted with butter for breakfast. 

The small print:

Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake, pg 6 of Baking Chez Moi

Granola Energy Bars

We are lucky enough to have a fantastic person who helps me keep our cottage clean and organized. It is a true luxury and I adore having it. She comes twice a month on Tuesday...so in general I do not bake anything on Tuesday (and I only cook dinner out of a sense of duty) because I do not want to get the kitchen dirty. For 24 hours I just want a clean kitchen. However this week when my son asked if we could hang out at home on Tuesday afternoon so he could build Legos I said sure and since my son looks like this for entire time he has a set of Legos in front of him:

I decided to take advantage of the powerful hold Legos has over him and to make granola bars.

Oats, little slivers of almonds, pretty green pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds all get toasted.

Then plump dried cranberries, raisins and snipped pieces of apricots get added to the mix.

Brown rice syrup and butter that have been melted together are used to bind the other yumminess together. A sprinkle of salt, a splash of vanilla and then into a pan it all goes so it can bake.

When the bars come out I smash them down into the pan like I mean business. It is a take no prisoner smash-fest.

Then onto the counter to cool. While cooling I break off a tiny piece of the corner in order to taste it. And then another corner. Soon I am back for the third corner. And then I am left with cornerless granola bars cooling on my counter until they are ready to be cut in to.

I have used brown rice syrup in the past to make marshmellow style rice krispie treats (minus the actual marshmallow) so the granola bars remind me marshmellows...but that is not necessarily bad.

The Rugelach That Won France Over

I have a 5 year old son and while we have never had the food battles that some of my friends have had with their children he definitely has his food preference. He would rather eat a bowl of egg noodles with butter than chow on a plate of calamari. He would eat grill cheese almost any night of the week but will pass on anything that dares to have spinach near it. He has a handful of vegetables that he likes to eat, with celery not being on that list. But I do not worry because I know that when he grows up that will all change. After my Mom tells me that when she was younger she lived on a steady supply of grilled cheese and applesauce but today she happy to eat Indian curry or something from a Thai restaurant (although there is a place deep within her heart that is reserved for loving grilled cheese).

I am the same way. I grew up and so did the list of "favorite foods" but while I do not remember the first time tikka masala, green curry or calamari I do remember the first time I tried rugelach. I wish I could say that it was on a trip through Eastern Europe but it was not...in fact the first time I tried rugelach was at Starbucks in Northern Virginia (which is NOTHING like Eastern Europe).

I was 19 years old and working as a barista at our local Starbucks. This was about 25 years ago and Starbucks were still a novelty and being a barista there gave me instant cool status (or at least I thought it did). It seemed that to be a barista you had to be worldly, aloof, and writing a screen play...or at least critiquing movies as were writing a screenwriter. We really did think that we were badass. We spent our day making tiny cups of coffee (this was when grande was as big as it got and there was actually a size coffee smaller than a tall) and discussing novels. We were living our own version of the movie Reality Bites.

And it was in this world that I met rugelach for the first time. It was the perfect cookie for a pretentious barista. It was not a mere sugar cookie, it was not your childhood chocolate chip. It was exotic...unique...European! It was also love at first bite so I was excited that we were baking it this month.

I liked the fact that the dough was made it the food processor...because every time I it I feel as if I am justifying buying it! And it was also super easy to pulse it up.

Once it the dough is at the "curd" stage you smoosh it into a ball and put it in the fridge. 

The filling called for chocolate, dried cherries, pecans and coconut but I omitted the coconut since it ranks up there celery on the list of things my little guy does not like to eat.

And yes that is a measuring tape. What can I say my OCD heart likes to make sure that if a recipe calls for a 12x12 square that then I make a 12x12 square...and I cut exactly 1 inch slices. I try not to fight my OCD ways...it makes the voices in my head that much louder.

 These little bites of flaky, chocolatey, buttery goodness are delicious. I want to take one of these and go back in time...walk into that Starbucks....go behind the counter and stick it in my younger-self's mouth. She would love it.

The small print:

The Rugelach That Won Over France on p. 301

Cranberry Crackle

4pm Saturday: "Mike, help...get the bandaids and Neosporin! I have hurt myself".

DUN DUN <~~~~ Law and Order type music

Flashback to earlier in the day

11:00am: Meagan is in her kitchen getting ready to make the cranberry crackle tart. She has all her ingredients gathered around her including a canister of all purpose flour (having learned from the last recipe that white whole wheat flour is not the same).

exhibit A: all purpose flour 

11:10am: Meagan starts making the crust. She pulls out her fancy new food processor (thank you William Sonoma for having discounts on top of discounts) and blends up the dough. She says out loud, even though there is no one else in the room, that "adding 1 lightly mixed egg yolk to a food processor a small amount at a time seems like the most ridiculous thing I have ever been asked to do and I have been asked to do a lot of ridiculous things". 

DUN DUN

11:30am: Meagan finishes the dough by hand as the recipe suggests. She then rolls it out and fits it to the pie pan before sliding it into the oven to bake.

exhibit B: dough in pie pan waiting to be trimmed and baked.

Noon (because it always confuses the writer if noon is 12am or 12pm): crust is finished baking and is sitting on a rack to cool. Meagan is a little worried because the crust is already really "golden" and it still has to bake for another hour but she decides to put it aside to cool and start on dinner. She says out loud, again to herself because no one is around, that it "seems like the perfect day to make a beef stew". She starts chopping the vegetables but her mind is still on the pie. Is the crust overcooked? How can you add 1 egg yolk a little bit at time when there is only a little bit to start with? Will she be able to stop herself from eating the entire thing in one sitting? Should she have just made brownies instead?

DUN DUN

2:00pm: The stew is on the stove stewing away (and moody stews often do) and the crust is cool so Meagan starts on the filing. She spoons some chunky cherry jam into the bottom of the crust.

exhibit C: jam

She pulls out Betty her trusty hand mixer and starts to whip up a meringue. She feels pretty proud of herself because for once the recipe is coming together as it should. If only she knew how the day would end in disaster.  But unaware of what is to come she happily folds the cranberries into the meringue and then tries to resist the temptation to lick the meringue bowl. 

exhibit D: cranberry meringue goodness

The meringue cranberry goodness goes on top of the jam and the entire thing goes in the oven to bake for an hour. 

DUN DUN

3:30pm: Meagan pulls the pan out of the oven and the Cranberry Crackle looks amazeballs (even though she is too old to keep using the term amazeballs). She looks around and since no one else is in the kitchen she decides to forgo letting it cool and instead risks a burnt mouth by quickly cutting and gobbling up a piece. So tart, so sweet, so amazing. 

exhibit E: the yumminess

DUN DUN

3:55pm: A feeling of utter happiness falls over Meagan's body. There is stew (still stewing) on the stove, there are cranberries and sugar floating in her tummy, there is the rest of the cranberry crackle still waiting to be eaten. Life is good. With her head filled with dreamy cranberry dreams Meagan reaches for the plastic wrap to cover the the pan with.

DUN DUN 

4:00pm: "Mike, help...get the bandaids and Neosporin! I have hurt myself". Mike rushes into the kitchen. He has prepared himself for a gory sight and he is ready to dial 911 to get immediate help. He finds Meagan, with her finger wrapped in a towel. She is panicked. Mike convinces her to remove the towel so he can take a look and there he sees....a little cut on her finger that she got while tearing off a piece of plastic wrap.

DUN DUN 

4:03pm: Mike sits the bandaids down on the counter and heads back to do whatever it was that he was doing, leaving behind Meagan to tend to her own baking wounds and mutter out loud (to herself since one again no one is in the kitchen with her) that "it really does hurt, it is much bigger than it looks, I did it on the sharp metal teeth...it is not just a paper cut.....". 

exhibit F: the ugly side of baking

Cranberry Crackle Tart pp 135-137