wendy's brownies

Generally, I am a homemade, start from scratch, baked goods person. Especially when it comes to pies and cookies, nothing comes close. Brownies were a different story. I never could find a good recipe and preferred pre-made mixes that seemed richer and more moist. But last year, my sister-in-law Mallory challenged my boxed brownies with her favorite recipe. It is perfect, convenient ingredients and yummy. Again, I was hooked on homemade.

So back in November, I went to my friend's baby shower where I tried a ridiculous, basically melt-in-your-mouth, velvety brownie. Once you look at this recipe, it's easy to see why. It's basically chocolate mixed with chocolate. I still love Mallory's recipe, but if I have the ingredients, I will definitely bust out this recipe.

truffle love

When my brother Curt married my sister-in-law Julie, they bought loads of Trader Joe's french truffles for their favors. My family fell in love with the chocolate goodness. Every year at Christmas, my mom buys those truffles for us. There is nothing like the sweet taste of a truffle melting in your mouth.

Well, my coworker made homemade truffles on Valentine's Day. I'm scared to say this because of my family's love for those Trader Joe's french truffles, but her truffles might maybe be a little slightly better and awesome. Mouth melting overwhelming your taste buds and mind with sweetness and happiness, scenes of chocolate fountains from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory flickering through your brain, insanely good truffles.

I made her write down the recipe before leaving and made a batch as soon as I came home. I packaged the sweet things as Valentine's present to my neighbors. They made me feel pretty good. You must try them. I used a double broiler, but my coworker did everything in the microwave. Easy to make, but requires patience (a lot of refrigeration). Completely and absolutely worth it.

Chocolate Truffles
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 stick unsalted butter
10 ounces Baker's semisweet chocolate, grated or chopped (I used semisweet chocolate chips)
3 tablespoons Cognac (borrowed can't remember the brand of brandy from my neighbor since we didn't have any)

Mix heavy cream, sugar, and butter until melted (via double broiler on stove or glass bowl in microwave). Add chocolate and stir until melted and smooth mixture. Add Cognac (or whatever brandy you have) and stir until smooth. Transfer to metal bowl and refrigerate for one hour.

Lightly butter 8x8 pan and place parchment paper in bottom. Pour chocolate mixture into prepared pan until even. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours or until firm enough to cut (I suggest refrigerating knife to make it easier to cut). Cut into 3/4-1 inch squares. Makes approximately 49 pieces.

Optional: Mix 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon confectionery sugar until well blended. Drop squares into powder mixture and place in small cupcake style papers. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Happy truffles, friend.

chili cheese étouffée

Yats is this Cajun restaurant around Indianapolis. Gosh, I love it. Good memories at Yats: Court and Ashley during May term, dinner before Coldplay, old staffs and hanging out in Broad Ripple, rewarding myself after twelve hour clinicals.

Last night, we asked our neighbors/friends over dinner, and I really wanted to make them something special, something new, something comfort. I found the recipe for my favorite Yats dish: chili cheese étouffée with crawfish.

First, I really don't know how to pronounce étouffée or any other French/Creole words. Clearly, I needed to research this recipe. Then questions started, worse than the pronunciation, not really. How do I cook the chicken and crawfish? Is it better marinated? What the heck is a roux? What color of roux do I need? Don't worry that it looks like a lot of ingredients - it's mostly spices. Hopefully, my additions are helpful:

Chili Cheese Etouffée with Crawfish, Shrimp and/or Chicken
1 stick of butter
½ cup flour
1 cup chopped green onions
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced bell peppers
1 cup diced onions
2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup Rotel Original diced tomatoes
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried basil
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon white pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cups chicken stock
3 cups shredded aged cheddar
8 ounces half and half (or heavy cream)
1 teaspoon chili powder
pinch ground coriander
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground cloves
dash worcestershire sauce
dash hot sauce sauce (optional)
1 pound cooked crawfish, shrimp and/or chicken
Cooked white rice

Honestly, I looked up how to make fajita style chicken and substituted cajun spices. Cut chicken into small strips. Marinate the chicken with a couple spoons of Cajun seasoning. We didn't have any so I made my seasoning from scratch using this recipe. Cook in skillet with oil. Set aside. (If you want a quick Cajun fix and don't have time to make this recipe, you can just do the chicken with the Cajun seasoning and serve it over rice. Boom.)

Make a roux by heating the butter in a heavy skillet over medium heat then blending in the flour, consistently stirring and scraping the bottom of the skillet. Do not walk away. It takes about 10-15 minutes on a gas stove. Cook until the roux is golden color. For different roux colors, look here. We did the color after the "blonde" roux.

Add the green onions, celery, bell peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes. Cook until the onions have browned. At this point, Logan thought it looked really weird. Continue to stir to avoid burning.

Add the thyme, tomato paste, basil and peppers (black, white, and cayenne).

Add the stock, bring to a boil and simmer until the mixture becomes thick (7-12 minutes).

Add the cheese, half and half, chili powder, coriander, cumin, cloves, worcestershire sauce and hot sauce (or wait and let others add in hot sauce). Stir until the cheese and half and half are blended in well.

Gently stir in the chicken (or shrimp or crawfish). Serve over white rice (we used Jasmine -- it's what we had).

Buy a loaf of french bread, spread melted butter, season with garlic salt and cayenne pepper. Bake for 5-10 minutes on 425 F. This bread is your other fork, pushing it around the plate, scooping it up. Chili cheese étouffée rice crunchy bread, everybody loves it.

Serves 6-8 

Tips: I cut and prepped everything before so that it was easy to add as I cooked. Separated the different spices into small bowls. It helps because you are stirring a lot to prevent it burning. No time to prep other things unless you find someone to stir for you. Oh hey Logan, thanks.
 
(source: The Burb Blog & Indianapolis Dine Magazine)

Do I love this recipe? Yes. Will I keep making it despite the stick of butter, three cups of cheddar cheese, and cup of half and half? Absolutely. Do I love people more than food? Yes. Am I glad food is a good way to spend time with people we love? Oh reader, please.

engagement & lemon bars

Made this lemon bar recipe for our recently engaged friends. Its intense, literally you use the entire lemon, peel and all. And note, why didn't I register for a 8x8 glass pan? Hello, cake pan, lemon bar cake, wait no bars, lemon cake.

Really excited for Jonathan and Mariesa. Congrats, friends.

the little chef

Last Friday, my neighbors and I attempted to get these supposedly irresistible, most incredible, unbelievable croissants from The Little Chef, a tiny bakery hidden in downtown Princeton. Epic fail because he wasn't open (still not sure why). The next day, my neighbor tried again. While entering the store, Kristine passed a lady, went to the counter, and the owner informed her that he sold the last three croissants to the woman who just left. And then Kristine mobbed the girl, took her croissants, and we ate them (just kidding).

Determined, we tried again today. Up and ready at 8:15 with a cute eighth month old baby. Even though Kristine and I had to wait for an hour, we had the most incredible, fresh, delicious almond croissants we've ever encountered. Who am I kidding? I've never had a freshly made croissant.

Plain, chocolate, peach, almond, didn't really realize croissants had different flavors and fillings. The croissant above is raspberry filled. I brought it home for Logan. Ten wife points. Nice way to start the weekend.

doily

Doily cookies & diy doily bowl. Genius, right?

(doily cookies via wide open spaces via tara sloggett, doily bowl via creative comforts)

apple pie

This pretty much sums up my weekend. It's a little piece of home I can make wherever I am. Takes me back to that same good feeling over and over again. Really, baking pies makes our apartment continue to grow into our first home.

spiced pumpkin doughnuts

Fall baking, you keep me from taking naps. That's probably a good thing.

Today, I tried to make doughnuts... again. When I was home a month ago, Mallory, my sister-in-law, and I attempted since she had a deep fryer. It didn't go very well. The oil was too hot, we didn't have enough oil, and the doughnut recipe wasn't very good.

At least, this attempt redeemed homemade doughnuts. I've been craving them ever since we went to the orchard last weekend and bought apple cider doughnuts. I improvised on many levels: no buttermilk, no doughnut cutter or any cookie cutters (whoops, forgot that on my registry), and no chilling. And, I also let my oil get too hot.

As a result, these were my problems. The first few, during the too hot oil phase, were not cooked in the center. While the whole chilling the dough for three hours does not solve immediate cravings, I'm assuming it prevents the outside from overcooking making an overall fluffier doughnut. Mine were crunchy on the outside like elephants ears. I'm not complaining. I really like elephant ears.

In the end, they were awesome. It was like biting into deep-fried fall.

Next on the baking list: pumpkin pancakes and apple butter. Look for it this next week. Oh, and do you see that cute little pumpkin? 69 cents at Trader Joe's. I love it. For the spiced pumpkin doughnut recipe...

oh, cake!

Logan and I celebrated our second summer wedding this past weekend. Jordan and Alli began dating the following winter after Logan and I did in the fall. We spent a lot of Sundays eating at Pizza Hut and hanging out at the Shepherds. Seriously, these two people love life and have so so much energy. It's a beautiful thing.

I helped by making their wedding cake, which was such a great experience! Alli was super laid back, and let me have fun with it. As you can see, it was a pretty simple two-tier cake. The base was three-eight inch layers, and the top was two-six inch layers. I made a vanilla-almond cake with a peanut butter cream cheese filling. For the frosting, I subtracted the peanut butter to make it white. It was pretty rich, but I think it tasted pretty good (I'm probably biased). Plus, Alli found that super cute cake topper at the flea market, which completed the whole look.

I'm so thankful for Sandra's help on cake tricks (she was my RD and boss this past year). She let me borrow her cake pans -- she advised me to use all the same brand of pans which made it easier to stack the layers. She gave me an awesome recipe for "Cake Release" so each layer would come out smooth and whole. I never posted a photo of the second cake I made last week for Lauren's party. It was Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake (which tastes amazing)... however, the cake did not come out as pretty as her layers. It was more of a mound hill than a cake. Needless to say, this cake release became my best friend. I'm pretty sure I could also use it for pies. Here's the recipe:

Cake Release
1/2 cup of shortening
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 cup of oil

Directions:
Mix all three ingredients until smooth. Store in refrigerator for up to a year.

Surprisingly, my first wedding cake thing was easier than I expected. The only problem was the 92 degree weather on Saturday. The cream cheese frosting definitely didn't like it so we let the photographers take their photos of the dessert tables, and I put the cake back in the refrigerator until thirty minutes before Jordan and Alli needed to cut it. It all worked out.

The wedding was beautiful, pretty details, good-looking couple, deep-fried biscuits, and lots of dancing. Congrats Jordan and Alli, love you!