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Austin Bakes for West {Recipe: Peanut Butter Cookies}

on May 1, 2013

Just days after the country was still reeling from the events in Boston, a small town 90 minutes north of Austin experienced first a fire, then a devastating explosion that took the lives of at least 15 people (the majority first responders who were battling the initial blaze) and demolished many homes and buildings.

West (comma) Texas is a small town of less than 3,000 people, but everyone in Texas is familiar with it because it’s the home of the Czech Stop, a 24-hour kolache bakery that is the perfect halfway point pit stop for a trip between Austin and Dallas. It has a place in the hearts of many Texans, and they need our help.

Austin Bakes got its start after the Japan tsunami, and was brought back after the wildfires ravaged much of Central Texas. While we wish Austin Bakes wasn’t necessary, we’re proud that our community came together to raise $12,000 for Japan aid and $13,000 for the Central Texas Wildfire Fund.

Are you going to be in the Austin area on Saturday? Pop by one of these locations from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and grab some baked goods while making a contribution to AmeriCares‘ fund to help the community of West. (I will be at the Stiles Switch location along with my muffins and cookies.) You can also donate online here.

Bee Cave: Whole Foods Market Bee Cave
12601 Hill Country Blvd, Bee Cave, TX 78738

Central Austin: Foreign & Domestic
306 E. 53rd Street, 78751

Central Austin: Stiles Switch BBQ & Brew
6610 N Lamar Blvd, 78757

Downtown Austin: Whole Foods Market Lamar
525 North Lamar Boulevard, 78703

East Austin: Springdale Farm
755 Springdale Road, 78702

Northwest Austin: Whole Foods Market Gateway
9607 Research Boulevard, #300, 78759

Round Rock: Round Rock Market Days
221 E. Main St., Round Rock, TX 78664

South Austin: Crema Bakery & Cafe
9001 Brodie Lane, Suite B, 78748

Sign up to volunteer or bake for West
Download a printable flyer

While there is a tendency for food bloggers to get ultra-creative when it comes to bake sales and food swaps, I’ve come to realize that simple, classic items sell the best. I’m baking up a big batch of my blueberry muffins and these peanut butter cookies. While they are fairly classic, I’ve added a bit of orange zest, which I think helps enhance the peanut buttery goodness.

Peanut Butter Cookies

makes about 4 dozen cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 creamy peanut butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

In a large bowl, cream together butter, peanut butter, and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and stir in vanilla.
In another bowl, mix together remaining ingredients.
Stir dry ingredients into butter mixture until well-incorporated. Refrigerate cookie dough for at least an hour, or until ready to bake.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Form dough into 1-inch balls and put on cookie sheets, flattening with a fork or the bottom of a cup.
Bake for approximately 10 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet 2 minutes before moving to a rack to finish cooling.

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Loquat & Strawberry Yogurt Popsicles

on April 22, 2013

In spring, other place have ramps. Austin has loquats.

Personally, I’d rather have the loquats, as I’m perfectly fine with spring onions or young garlic subbing in for ramps. Loquats are not like another fruit, although I’ve often seen them compared to apricots.

My friend Nelly gifted me with a giant bag of loquats this week, and I am scurrying to find uses for them before they go bad. With temperatures in Austin already hitting 85+ (alternated with days that feature lows in the 40s, just for funsies) and my pregnancy-induced increased body temperature, I’ve been hitting the warm-weather treats.

A few weeks ago the people at Chobani sent me a giant box of yogurt – hello, protein! – and I thought making popsicles would be a great way to use some of that stash.

If you don’t have popsicle molds, you can use paper cups, but I really like our molds – they’re BPA free and make that classic popsicle shape. I got ours at Home Goods, but they are available practically everywhere. I recommend using wooden popsicle sticks instead of the provided ones if you want to make a lot of popsicles in a short time. Frozen popsicles can be released from their molds and wrapped in waxed paper for freezer storage.

If you don’t have loquats in your area, just swap in your favorite fruit in equal quantity. Almost everything goes with strawberry!

Loquat & Strawberry Yogurt Popsicles

makes 6 popsicles

6 ounces hulled strawberries
6 ounces halved and pitted loquats
1 1/2 cups Greek yogurt, divided
Honey, to taste (optional)

Puree strawberries and half the yogurt, then repeat with loquats and remaining yogurt in a separate container. (This works best if you have an immersion blender.)

Add honey to taste, then pour purees into popsicle molds in alternating layers. Run a chopstick or skewer through the molds to create a somewhat marbled effect, if you like.

Freeze at least four hours. Hold molds under running water to help loosen the popsicle, if you have trouble removing it.

 

Disclaimer: Chobani sent me yogurt after I attended a yogurt-themed dinner during SXSW. I was monetarily compensated for this post, and as always my opinions are my own.

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Reese’s Peanut Butter Cake {and a King Arthur Flour giveaway}

on October 15, 2012

This.

It’s hard for me to look at this photo and not tear up. As any parent knows, time becomes a whirling vortex. This was so long ago, and also yesterday. But today, for real, he is five.

Five is one of those special numbers. Even though he won’t start kindergarten until next fall thanks to Texas rules, he is in all other ways a kindergartner. He is a Boy, not a baby. Running and shouting and making guns out of anything, but also tending to his stuffed animals and making sure to share anything he thinks I or his father need. Every other day a huge new word pops out and more often than not he is using it correctly. He eats more than I do.

Luckily, thankfully, I can still wrap my arms around him. I still get sneak-attack kisses. I still can teach him all that I can, before he forsakes me and gardening and the kitchen for cafeteria food and whatever teenagers will be doing in 2022.

Right now that means baking.

I began cooking by learning how to bake, so I have been working on getting Reese acquainted with it as well. It seemed only fitting that he should help make his birthday cake.

Now, I am one of those people who must keep everything neat and tidy while cooking. I put things away as I use them, and wipe up spills immediately.

This doesn’t quite work when you invite a kid into the kitchen. Things get spilled. Actually, lots of things get spilled. But eventually you’ll have a great partner and possible sous chef. We just start slow, with mixing and measuring. For us what works best is using a kitchen scale for the measuring – kids don’t exactly have the hang of “proper” cup measure. We have done a few batches of cookies and muffins together before, so our next step was egg cracking. I guided his hands on the first egg, but he was doing it by himself completely by the third egg.

I think he’s already better at it than I am. Not even one tiny bit of shell in the whole batch!

(You might be wondering where the stand mixer is, and to that I say, feh! I mean, I do love my stand mixer, but I also enjoy mixing a cake by hand. When it comes to teaching, you can’t quite replicate the same experience with “dump ingredient in and turn on”.)

Cupcakes are great for kids’ parties of course, so we made both a small layer cake and cupcakes. Scooping out the batter is a good job for kids, although if you are using the spring-loaded cookie scoops, you might need to help. We watched the cakes rise while we ate lunch, and it’s hard to beat the pride that came every time he excitedly exclaimed that we needed to look again because now they were taller.

Of course, being a kid with lots of things on his mind, he lost interest when it came time to decorate. Which made for the perfect opportunity to carry out the plan.

Did you know perfection is one of those words that works in different ways? I’m hardly a cake-decorating expert, but when I see this picture, all I think about is the love that went into it. Not how long it took to cut out the fondant circles for the bricks, but how my son’s eyes lit up when he saw the finished cake. Can we bottle that emotion? Because that is perfection.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cake

Makes 1 6-inch cake and 12 cupcakes (or 1 9-inch cake or 24 cupcakes)

For the cake:
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
3 cups (12 ounces) King Arthur Self-Rising Flour
6 tablespoons King Arthur Flour Cake Enhancer
1 1/2 cups milk

For the frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons Nielson-Massey Chocolate Extract
4 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare cake pans: grease pans, lay a circle of parchment on the bottom, grease the parchment, and then flour pans. If making cupcakes just line tin with cupcake papers.
In a large bowl cream together peanut butter, butter, and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs. In a small bowl mix flour and cake enhancer.
Alternate stirring in flour and milk into butter mixture, starting and ending with flour, until batter is smooth.
Pour into prepared pans and bake for 25-35 minutes, depending on size of pan, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for five minutes, then remove from pans and finish cooling. (If you’re in a hurry, tightly wrap the cakes in plastic wrap, then place in the freezer. The resulting steam will help keep them moist, and the freezer jaunt will make frosting easier.)
To make the frosting, beat together butter, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder until well-mixed and fluffy. Beat in chocolate extract, and the milk a little bit at a time, until you get desired consistency. (You might not use all the milk, or you might need more.) Frost cakes, and store any extra in an airtight container in the fridge.

In case you were wondering: No, we did not bring a peanut butter-laden cake to his party. We made two cakes.

The nice folks over at King Arthur Flour and I want to help you get ready for the holiday (or birthday!) baking season, so we’ve put together a fun prize pack to get you started! I have become obsessed with self-rising flour lately, so I’m really happy to be able to spread the love to you. I’ve used it for everything, from biscuits to pancakes to quick bread to cake. Anything that requires less work on my part is great! If you’ve never used cake enhancer, it makes cakes extra soft and moist, and the chocolate extract adds another kick of chocolate to cake and frosting without adding more cocoa powder or melted chocolate. Just use it in place of vanilla! And of course, what baker would be without decorating supplies? We’ve collected a few key items to fuel your creativity.

Giveaway Details

The prize consists of: 1 bag King Arthur Self-Rising Flour, 1 box Cake Enhancer, 1 bottle Nielson-Massey Chocolate Extract, 1 small offset spatula, 1 pack Swirl Baking Cups, and 1 Decorating Pen kit.

Giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Amanda from Oklahoma!

To enter:

  • Leave a comment on this post with your favorite cake flavor.
  • For additional entries (but not required):

  • “Like” Stetted on Facebook here
  • “Like” King Arthur Flour on Facebook here
  • Follow King Arthur Flour on Twitter @kingarthurflour
  • Tweet about this post
  • For each of the above, make sure to leave another comment so I know!

 

Disclaimer: I was provided with the same products as the giveaway for the purpose of review. I was not otherwise compensated for this post.

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Dark Chocolate Fudge with Sea Salt

on September 17, 2012

Sometimes blog posts are brought on by the season, or an inspiring vacation, or someone special. Sometimes you think of things in the bathroom.

…Get your mind out of the gutter.

The other day, I was putting things away in the bathroom, thinking about the long list of blog posts I have in draft form. Not just recipe posts, but posts about recent trips, recent restaurant meals, and more, including a weekend in Houston that landed a friend and I in some very delicious places. At one of those places I came away with some local sea salt – sourced from Galveston, to be exact, so I suppose it’s Gulf salt, but that doesn’t quite sound as nice. I hadn’t yet cracked open the jar of salt yet, and in approximately five seconds I decided I needed to make fudge immediately.

I hadn’t made fudge in about 20 years. For Christmas a few years in a row, with a couple additional forays thrown in among them for good measure, I’d make a batch of fudge to give to my aunt (foodie gifts already cemented in my brain, apparently). The recipe was that standard version with marshmallows – you probably know the one – and for some reason was rather finicky. Sometimes it would be perfect, sometimes it would be grainy, and sometimes it wouldn’t even set. At the time I didn’t know about humidity variations, stovetop differences, or that learning to cook and bake with margarine would really screw me up in later years. All I knew was that when you’re 13, you don’t want to spend a bunch of money buying ingredients for a recipe that doesn’t work.

That still holds true today, which might be why I try to stick with few ingredients when it comes to the things I make. (Which, sadly, means I don’t make King Ranch Casserole nearly as often as I’d like, but probably just about as often as my waistline allows for.)

Enter this fudge. It’s two ingredients. OK, three once you count the salt. Four if you want to go crazy and add the almond extract.

Now, I admit that when you mix this up, it might look kind of weird. Gloppy even. It will seem like it isn’t going to work. But go with it. Even if you don’t get fudge, you’ll have a big ‘ole pan of chocolate, and that’s not something to complain about.

Dark Chocolate Fudge with Sea Salt

makes 49 pieces

15 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
Flaky sea salt

Prepare an 8 x 8-inch square pan by laying two sheets of parchment paper across it (forming a plus sign). This will make it easy to remove and cut the fudge later.

Melt the chocolate and milk together in a saucepan over low heat. Stir in almond extract, if using.

Spread into pan, using a spatula to even it out. Sprinkle on sea salt. Chill in refrigerator for at least two hours, until set.

Once set, remove from pan and cut into pieces. Stores well in a sealed container in the fridge, with waxed paper between layers.

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Peach Raspberry Pie

on June 20, 2012

It would seem that despite going to a baking immersion for three days I still have trouble with pie crust. Lesson noted for self, that when presented the chance to do empanadas or pie, you do pie, despite living in Texas and having empanadas being applicable to your diet.

I had trouble with my crust because I’m still paranoid about adding too much water, so I don’t add enough, and then my crust falls to bits as I’m trying to roll it out. I know it just comes down to making more pie, right?

The pie I made was almost exactly the one from Eating Well, so I’m not going to post the recipe. Raspberries for me are a no-brainer, and the peaches this year are just lovely. I’m sharing this pie with my co-workers tomorrow, as one of our team is moving away to be closer to her family. Luckily for us she’ll still be working with us, but she really brightens up the office. Kind of like how peaches and raspberries brighten up your day of eating.

 

A few pie tips I learned at Blog and Bake:

  • Cut in your butter in two steps. First blend half the butter into the flour until it is a cornmeal consistency. Then with the second half, just press it into large disks about the size of a dime. This will help with making a flaky yet tender crust.
  • Don’t roll your pin back and forth over the dough. Go in one direction and turn to make sure your dough is rolling evenly.
  • Stop rolling before you get to the edge to prevent cracking.

Also a tip I didn’t learn there, but something I always need to keep in mind: it’s just pie crust. (Even if you are trying to get it done before the light goes and you have to use iPhone photos in order to get a post up before the Pie Party is over, since your first attempt was nixed by a power outage.)

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Grilled Peaches and Salami

on June 18, 2012

A couple months ago I was fortunate to be invited to a dinner at the Carillon, the restaurant in the AT&T Conference Center at the University of Texas. If you’ve never been there, you probably don’t understand that despite its location, this is one of the best restaurants in town, with a very talented (and I have to say it, adorable) head chef and an equally creative pastry chef. These two would be the ones preparing our dinner, of course, but the twist? Every course featured a variety of salumi, starting with a watermelon and mâche salad and ending with almond cake. Y’all, this cake featured a beast called hot sopressata caramel. I know, right?

Ever since that meal I’ve been thinking about new ways to use salumi aside from just eating it with cheese and crackers, and I was easily tempted by the gorgeous peaches we have here. At first thought peaches and cured meat does not sound like something that would be good, but I knew I had to try it out. The worst that could happen? It might taste bad, and then I’d be out a few peaches and some meat. Oh well. (I guess technically the worst that could happen is that we would all get violently ill from eating it, but take one for the team, family!)

Simply grilled peaches with salame and honey over the top. You can make it more fussy by slicing the peaches into eighths, or cubing the salame and mounding it right into the crevasse created by the peach pit. It can go for either a starter or a dessert, depending on which way your taste buds are swinging.

My son called this “almost pizza,” so go ahead and stack this on top of some focaccia before chowing down.

Grilled Peaches with Salame

4 peaches
Spray oil
4 ounces salame, such as hot sopressata, sliced thinly
1-2 tablespoons honey

 

Get grill ready to use at medium-high heat.

Halve peaches and remove pits. Lightly spray cut side, and place cut-side down directly onto grill or on grill pan.

Grill peaches 5 minutes, then flip over and grill another 2-3 minutes. Remove to a serving plate.

Scatter salame over the peaches. Lightly drizzle honey over the top – use more honey if your peaches are more tart.

Serves 8

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