I haven’t been doing a whole lot of baking lately, actually. In July, I went to Ecuador on vacation and in August I moved from New Jersey to Queens with my new roommate. I’ve baked since I got here, but it’s been stuff I’ve posted before – chocolate spice loaf – made the right way this time, cinnamon chip bread, blue cheese scallion biscuits, toffee blondies – so there hasn’t been a reason to post. And also, I’ve just gotten out of the habit. It happens.

But there is one thing I baked that isn’t on this blog, which is a shame, because it’s a classic, classic recipe from my childhood: snickerdoodles. A lot of people have some kind of variation on this cookie, but as my mother says in her completely unbiased way, a lot of them are pretty bad. This one is not – it’s basically the perfect cinnamon-sugar cookie.

They make about six dozen, which is why we just finished them after having them for a full month – I have excellent tupperware – so this is a great cookie to share. If the guys I work with weren’t on perpetual diets, I would have taken a few dozen to them. Alas.

Snickerdoodles

1 C butter
1 ½ C sugar, more for rolling
2 eggs, beaten
2 ¾ C flour
2 t cream of tartar
1 t baking soda
½ t salt

Cinnamon

Cream butter, sugar and eggs. Set aside. Meanwhile, sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Mix with cream mixture until thoroughly combined, and cool in the refrigerator overnight.

When ready to bake, mix sugar and cinnamon to taste in a bowl. Roll dough into balls the size of walnuts, and then dredge in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place on greased cookie sheets, leaving plenty of room – if the kitchen is warm, the dough will spread out more. Place in a moderate oven – 375° and bake for 9-10 minutes, shifting the cookies from the bottom to the top shelves approximately halfway through.

Let cool completely on wax paper, and then store in an airtight container.

Anyway, this is the second buttermilk recipe. The original fruit used in this cake was raspberries, which is actually my favorite fruit to bake with, but the grocery store, being lame, had nothing but blueberries. No matter, it worked just as well, though I’m definitely going to try raspberries.

Blueberry Buttermilk Cake

Via Smitten Kitchen

1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon (2 grams) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (2 grams) baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 stick (56 grams) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup (146 grams) plus 1 1/2 tablespoons (22 grams) sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional)
1 large (57 grams) egg
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
1 cup fresh blueberries (about 5 oz)

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 2/3 cup (146 grams) sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about two minutes, then beat in vanilla and zest, if using. Add egg and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined.Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter blueberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons (22 grams) sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more.

*Cue the groans*

Right then. I’m not actually usually a from scratch biscuit person because it tends to be ever so slightly messy in my already chaotic kitchen. I don’t eat biscuits much at all, actually, and I’m not sure why, since a fluffy biscuit drenched in honey is easily one of the best things in the world. But I digress.

This was a way to get rid of some buttermilk I bought for something or other, and actually I had to find another buttermilk recipe to help get more of it done. And as it happens, both recipes come from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. It’s not so surprising, when it comes down to it; I don’t remember when she’s ever posted anything that wasn’t incredibly awesome.

This recipe is almost exactly the way Deb has it at her site, but I used a shallot instead of scallions. Because I had a shallot, and no scallions.

Blue Cheese and Shallot Biscuits

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick or 3 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups crumbled blue cheese
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 450F and whisk/sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Blend in butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Stir in blue cheese and shallot, then add buttermilk and stir until just combined.

Drop dough in 12 equal mounds about 2 inches apart onto a buttered large baking sheet, or one lined with parchment paper. Bake in middle of oven until golden, 16 to 20 minutes.

I actually burned the soup these were meant to go with, but the biscuits were more than awesome on their own.

(Rule of Baking #1: Everything is always fancier in French. Gateau aux noix? Walnut cake.)

Cut half the sugar out, scooped them into muffin tins and stuffed them with ricotta cheese, and Saturday brunch is taken care of, basically. This recipe would be great with eggs and bacon for a weekend brunch, just impressive enough to…well. Impress. But not at all complicated.

Walnut-Ricotta Muffins

3 eggs

1/2 C granulated sugar

1/3 C walnut oil

1/3 C white wine

1 1/2 C flour

2 t baking powder

1/4 t sea salt

3/4 C (or more) walnuts, chopped

Ricotta cheese

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 12 cup muffin tin. Set aside.

Whisk together eggs and sugar until creamy and yellow. Add oil and wine, whisk to combine. Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in walnuts.

Fill the muffin cups a little less than half-way. Top with a teaspoon of ricotta cheese, and then the remainder of the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until slightly golden. Let cool a few minutes in the pan, and then remove to a rack.

Eat while still warm.

I’ve had three so far.

Coconut macaroons shouldn’t be confused with French ones – you know, those fussy as all fuck sandwich cookies that are the trend du jour in the baking blogosphere. The most complex part of this cookie is separating the eggs. The only problem I found with this recipe was that the two hours prescribed wasn’t long enough, and I had some pretty runny pools under my coconut clusters. I’ve amended it to overnight, which should get the batter nice and stiff.

Macaroons are pretty popular for Passover because most versions don’t use flour, but this particular one is not kosher, as it’s got half a cup of cake flour in the mix. It is a very easy cookie, though, and I might dip some of mine in chocolate later today.

Coconut Macaroons

4 egg whites

1 C sugar

1/4 t salt

1/2 C cake flour

1 t vanilla extract

3 C coconut flakes

Whisk egg whites, sugar, and salt in a metal bowl placed over a saucepan of gently simmering water until the mix is warm to the touch and creamy. Remove from the heat and stir in flour, vanilla, and coconut. Cover with plastic wrap and chill overnight.

When batter is chilled, preheat the oven to 325F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Drop batter by the heaping tablespoon full onto the cookie sheets and bake for 15-20 minutes. Let cool on the pan for 10 minutes, and then remove to a rack to cool completely.

My mom has promised to send me her recipe, which skips the double boiler and thus doesn’t require chilling, so there may be a redux of this recipe in the future.

Which is probably not really all that great for my thighs.

This recipe is from Bakerella, and is incredibly, incredibly moist with an almost runny batter that made my stovetop look like the site of a massacre.  They bake up deep red and soft, and look perfect with a huge dollop of cream cheese frosting on top. If this was actually for Valentine’s Day – when I started thinking about these – I might have tinted the frosting pink, but as February ends tomorrow, it stayed white. Regardless, the cupcakes look so good that I’ve already had two.

I halved the recipe, but the whole thing is posted here. I made a dozen cupcakes, a full batch would make twenty-four.

Red Velvet Cupcakes
Courtesy of Bakerella

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 oz. red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350F and line muffin tins with paper liners. Set aside.

Mix together flour, salt, baking soda and cocoa with a wire whisk and set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla, and food coloring until completely combined. Add wet ingredients to dry, and beat until blended and smooth.

Pour into prepared muffin tins and bake for twenty minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool, and prepare cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 C butter, at room temperature
8 oz of cream cheese, at room temperature
1 t almond extract
2-3 C confectioner’s sugar

Beat butter and cream cheese together until thoroughly blended. Add extract and blend again. Add sugar until you reach your desired consistency and sweetness.

Spread or pipe onto cupcakes.

Perfect for a special occasion. Also perfect for a Saturday night when you’re not in the mood to do anything productive. Which is most Saturday nights at my place.

This is not to say that I have anything against chocolate – it’s actually mostly to say that I don’t have enough Ghirardelli to pull off devil’s food today.

This is one of my more frequently repeated desserts, honestly; sometimes I make the whole thing in a 9×13, sometimes I make cupcakes, theoretically I could do the layer cake thing at some point, but today I’ll be halving the recipe and doing one 9″, single layer cake. The recipe posted is the whole thing, though.

The cake is from Allen at Eating Out Loud, and the frosting is from…the 1976 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook, and is the only buttercream recipe I will ever, ever use. Ever. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, people, and this buttercream is perfect.

Orange Sour Cream Cake

Via Eating Out Loud

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. orange extract
8 oz. butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup fresh orange juice

Preheat oven to 350F and grease and flour pan(s) (or line muffin tins with papers if going the cupcake route).

Cream together butter and sugar, and then stir in sour cream, vanilla, orange extract, and eggs until thoroughly combined. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda and salt, and then slowly add to wet ingredients, mixing until smooth. Pour in orange juice and again mix until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan(s) and bake. If you’re doing this in a 9×13, bake for an hour. Make it 30-35 minutes for 8″-9″ pans, and 20-25 minutes for cupcakes. Set aside and let cool.

Orange Butter Frosting

Via Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, 1976 edition

1/3 C butter, softened
3 C confectioner’s sugar
1 1/2 t orange extract
2 T orange juice

Blend butter and sugar. Stir in extract and orange juice, beat until frosting is smooth and of spreading consistency.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

This isn’t really a traditional yeast bread – it’s somewhere between yeast and quickbread, and takes instant yeast and baking powder. I’ve had the recipe since before Christmas, and have been wanting to make it since then, but as is often the case, my grocery store? Had no cinnamon chips. (Other things not findable in East Coast supermarkets: orange cinnamon rolls, German Chocolate cakemix and Heath Bar Crunch Bits. I’m confused too.) So it didn’t get made until this month, when my mother mailed me three pounds of cinnamon chips.

My mother is awesome.

This recipe comes from King Arthur Flour, producers of my go-to brownie recipe and purveyors of what is apparently really excellent flour that I’m too cheap to buy. Maybe someday, when I’m feeling flush. In the meantime, it’s Gold Medal, and I’ll continue trawling the KAF website for great recipes.

This recipe is apparently great for toasting; I wouldn’t know, since I just cut thick slices and ate the hell out of it. I also didn’t quite get the cinnamon chips mixed in properly, and it’s probably even better if they’re evenly distributed instead of…crowding the edge.

I’ll just consider it my own little twist on the recipe.

Easy Cinnamon Chip Bread

3 C AP flour

1/2 C sugar

2 t instant yeast

1 t salt

1 t cinnamon

1 C warm milk

1/4 C unsalted butter, melted

1 egg

1 t baking powder

1 C cinnamon chips

Cinnamon-sugar, for topping

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, butter, and egg. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, beating till smooth. Let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hour, covered, then stir in the baking powder and cinnamon chips.

Spoon the batter into a greased 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan. Sprinkle the top with the cinnamon-sugar.

Bake the bread in a preheated 350°F oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until it tests done. Remove the bread from the oven, let it rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer it from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Seriously good, perfect for breakfast or dessert. Or breakfast, dessert, and a mid-afternoon snack.

I’m primarily a baker, but given that I’m technically not supposed to eat cake for dinner – yeah, I don’t get it either – I cook other foods too, and this time of year, its often soup, because nothing’s better than soup when it’s so cold and windy out that the snow is falling sideways. I only wish I was joking, people. It was bad yesterday. It was definitively a Soup Day

I still had most of a 5 lb bag of russets, so I made it a Potato Soup day.

This is the kind of recipe that supports a lot of experimentation. The basics are very basic – potatoes, onion, garlic, and stock – and a lot of changes can be made to change up the taste. Mine is seasoned with mustard powder, nutmeg, salt and seasoned pepper, and gets a lot of its flavor from the bacon fat I sauteed the vegetables in. You can just as easily use butter or olive oil, and season with Italian herbs or with dill or celery seed for a different flavor entirely.

Personally, I’m not going to change this one up much more; I nearly moaned when I ate my first bite last night.

The Best Motherfucking Baked Potato Soup Ever

6 medium russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 Spanish onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
5 slices of thick-cut bacon, chopped
4 C chicken stock
4 oz soft goat cheese or goat cream cheese
1/4 C half and half
1/4 C AP flour
1/2 t dried mustard
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t sea salt
1/4 t California Seasoned Pepper

Chop bacon into half-inch pieces using kitchen scissors and render in a large pot. Remove bacon when crisp, draining on a towel, and saute onion until tender but not brown in the bacon fat. Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant.

Add flour and whisk until the flour is completely combined and the mixture is thick and bubbly. Add mustard and nutmeg and stir to combine.

Add diced potatoes and stir to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in chicken stock and cook, covered, until very tender. It took around twenty minutes for mine, with a fairly small dice, but may take longer with larger pieces of potato.

Mash potatoes with a potato masher until the soup is thick and there are no large pieces remaining. Add goat cheese/goat cream cheese and whisk until melted. Add half-and-half, and stir to combine.

Add reserved bacon and stir to combine. Serve hot.

It’s an easy recipe, but unbelievably delicious, and perfect for an easy supper on a cold night; given that it’s just as cold today, I suspect I’ll be eating it again.

In other words, this is not Nick’s chocolate spice bread, but it is one of the most decadent chocolate desserts I’ve made, and that includes the afternoon I spent getting drunk on chocolate bourbon cake.

Chocolate Spice Cake Loaf

1 1/2 C AP flour
1/3 C dutch process cocoa powder
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
1 t ground ginger
3 eggs
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
5 T melted butter
4 oz goat cheese, softened
1 t almond extract

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, spices and salt. Set aside.

Whisk eggs with sugar. Add melted butter, goat cheese, and almond extract and beat until smooth. Add dry ingredients and beat until combined.

Spread in a greased loaf pan and bake in a 350F oven for 40-50 minutes or until a clean knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for five minutes, then remove and cool completely before serving.

I figured that yet another recipe full of substitutions and minor errors was the right way to end the year. It is, after all, the way I bake 90% of my recipes.