Cookies and... Beer?

Let's try some word association:

Peanut Butter?

(Jelly.)

Peaches?

(Cream.)

Captain?

(Tennille.)

Cookies?

(Beer.)

All good things must come to an end, my friends, and it is with that that I bring to you our final

BEER WEEK

recipe.

~•Recipe #5•~

♥STOUT COOKIES♥ 
Adapted from Carolyn Smagalski's recipe on BellaOnline 

Makes about 40 cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. butter

2/3 c. granulated sugar

2/3 c. brown sugar 

1 egg 

1 T. molasses

3 T. stout

1 t. vanilla extract

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. ground cloves

2 c. oats

3/4 c. dried cranberries

Directions:

1. HEAT oven to 375°F and lightly grease cookie sheets.
2. SIFT together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.  Set aside. 
3. CREAM butter until light and fluffy.  ADD sugars and beat until light and fluffy again.
4. BLEND in egg, molasses, stout, and vanilla.  
5. ALTERNATELY ADD flour mixture and oats, blending in between additions.
6. FOLD in dried cranberries.
7. DROP by rounded spoonfuls onto baking sheets and bake for 9-11 minutes or until done (mine took 8 minutes)

The site notes some health benefits at the bottom which I will relay to make myself feel better help you track your daily vitamin intake:

Health Benefit: Rich in fiber, calcium, vitamin B-complex vitamins, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, zinc, copper

There.  Feel better?

These cookies were pretty good.  I tried adding chocolate chips to the last couple sheets of cookies and I wasn't too into it.  They're definitely good and chewy but I'll admit, if I hadn't seen stout in the ingredients list, I wouldn't have known there was stout in them at all.  If you're looking for a recipe that really showcases stout, this is not it.  However, if you're looking for some good, spicy cookies and want to brag to your friends that there's beer in them, these are your best bet.

Then again, you may want to ask yourself why you're bragging to your friends that you have beer in your cookies.  

Weirdo.

*shakes head*

I'm a Changed Woman

I must admit -- I used to be an unbeliever.

I used to think that I couldn't bake brownies.

I used to think that it was...too difficult.

I would overbake them; I would underbake them; they would stick to my apparently unnecessarily-greased pan.

Bottom line:  

I LOATHED [making] BROWNIES.

That is, until I met these little beauties.

Yep, you guessed it...

{STOUT BROWNIES}

These little brownies behaved so well.

They baked for the amount of time they promised they'd bake.

They didn't stick to the pan.

They even had a toothpick test and guess what?  

THEY PASSED.

I'm so pleased with these brownies.

They're everything a good brownie should be:

Moist, decadent, and fudgy.

Plus,

there are chocolate chips on top.

MmmMMMmmmmmMMMMMMMmmmm.

If you like dark chocolate, 

(or are a fan of chocolate that isn't too sweet), 

these are definitely for you.

This recipe combines three different kinds of chocolate to create a rich, dark chocolate flavor that only serves to enhance the bold stout.

May I introduce you to:

~•Recipe #4•~

♥STOUT BROWNIES♥

Adapted from Cookie Madness

Makes 15 Miss Dot-sized-brownies or 36 normal-person-brownies.  

Who knew?

Ingredients:

1 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 t. salt

6 T. unsalted room temperature butter, cut into cubes

6 oz. dark bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 c. white chocolate chips

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 c. granulated sugar

10 oz. (1 1/4 c.) stout (she used Guinness Extra Stout) -- room temperature

3/4 t. vanilla

1 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1/8 cup confectioners sugar for dusting (optional)

Directions:

1. HEAT oven to 375°F.  Line a 9"x13" baking pan with a nonstick foil like Reynolds Release *TIP: I didn't have nonstick foil so I just lined the pan with regular foil and then sprayed it with cooking spray.
2. WHISK together flour, salt, and cocoa powder until combined.  Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, MELT butter, bittersweet chocolate, and white chocolate chips in a double boiler over very low heat, stirring constantly until melted.  Remove from heat.  Alternatively, you may do this in the microwave by microwaving on high and stirring every 30 seconds.
4. In a separate bowl, BEAT eggs and sugar together on high until fluffy (about 3 minutes).
5. ADD melted chocolate mixture to sugar-egg mixture; beat until combined.
6. BEAT flour mixture into chocolate mixture.
7. WHISK in stout.
8. POUR into prepared pan and drop semisweet chocolate chips on top of batter.  Some will sink in; this is fine.
9. BAKE for 25-30 minutes on center rack in oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean.
10. COOL; Dust with confectioners sugar before serving. 

This recipe has been Swedish Chef-approved!

Beer Bread Remix!

Sooooo this one time, I made some beer bread.  It was from a mix, it was from a Partylite party, and it was delicious.

Since then, I've done  

three [3] things:

[1] I researched beer bread recipes.

[2] After looking at a bunch of recipes and learning how easy beer bread is to make, I vowed to never buy beer bread mix again because it would be like oh, I don't know...buying a paper airplane kit (contents: 1 piece of paper).

[3] I chose a beer bread recipe and tried it.

I **know** I've posted about it before

(duh, I just put a link to it up there)

so, in order to avoid any unnecessary name-calling,
(i.e., cheater, lazy baker, un-original nincompoop)

I'm doing a little

RE-MIX.

Same recipe,

DIFFERENT BEER.

Let's try this recipe ONE MORE TIME, but this time, let's do it with {stout} 

[♥]

~•Recipe #3•~

♥BEER BREAD♥

From Farmgirl Fare


Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
1 T. baking powder

1 1/2 c. (12 oz.) stout beer

Directions:

1. HEAT oven to 375°F and grease 1 loaf pan.
   
2. COMBINE flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.
3. STIR in beer slowly (dough will be thick and sticky) and spoon into loaf pan.
4. BAKE for about 45 minutes or until toothpick stuck in center comes out clean
   **NOTE** Mine only took 35 minutes
   
5. COOL in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes.
6. REMOVE FROM PAN and cool 10 more minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   THIS is how beer bread, round two, came out.
   
   
   
   The cracks are kinda scary huh?  Like a monster?
   
   
   
   
   Let me help you out with that:
   
   
   
   See what I mean??
   
   
   
   Crazy.
   
   
   
   
   Aside from its resemblance to something kids imagine comes from their closets, this was pretty darn good!
   
   
   
   I mean, look at this crust!
   
   
   
   Mmmmm craggly scraggly goodness...
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Aww... poor widdle bread.  Look at you.  You want some butter, don't you?  You're all warm and happy and you just want some butter.  Butty wutty wutter.  Wubby buddy wubber.  Bubbe--
   
   OK, I'm done.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Butter.
   
   
   Done.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Pancakes??? More like MANcakes!!!

So the wife asked me do a guest post on this little blog thing she's got going...bear with me as I'm not what you'd call an avid blogger. In fact, I don't know that I've ever blogged. The closest I've been is updating my facebook status more than once a month. So here goes something...

For those of you out there on the interwebs who don't know anything about me (which I'm pretty sure is like 98.4% of everyone reading this), I'm what most people would consider a man. And by that I mean I am a male of my species and have reached an age that allows me to do everything from buying lottery tickets to renting a car. So for quite a while, I also assumed I was a man. That was until I came across what is quite possibly the coolest website ever (besides this one of course). The Art of Manliness is like a guide to becoming the man that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were. With articles covering everything from manly skills to how to get a manly shave, it is a treasure chest of thoughts and tips on how to be a Man.

While there are numerous articles that I could get into to show you how cool it is to be a Man, that's not why I'm here (plus I'm pretty sure that most of you reading this are of the female persuasion). My purpose today is to tell you about the delicious pancakes that I made. "What do pancakes have to do with a website about shaving and plumbing?" you may ask. Well let me enlighten you to the wonder that is the FREE Art of Manliness Man Cookbook. AoM put this together back in October 2008, but I just recently discovered it. It is a compilation of recipes by AoM readers (which is sometimes evident in the way the recipes are written) for Men and their female counterparts. And boy was I excited to try some of the recipes.

Note: You did have to subscribe to AoM via RSS feed or email to get the FREE cookbook, but it's well worth it.

I decided to give the Beer Batter Pancakes found on page 18 a try. The recipe is simple, but the pancakes are amazing. I attribute part of this to the fact that I had recently acquired a six pack of a friend of mine's home-brewed stout (that Miss Dot has been and will continue utilizing all week). While the recipe didn't call for such a flavorful brew, I really think that these flapjacks tasted just a little more manly with such a tasty base. For those of you without access to my secret stash, I think a dark beer like Guinness or a darker micro-brew would be great here as well.

Well I'm sure you're wondering when I'm going to actually get to the recipe and all that fun stuff. Well you're in luck, because here it comes.

~•Recipe #2•~

Beer Batter Pancakes

By Steve from MKE (with some additions by me)

from The Art of Manliness Man Cookbook

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

1 cup beer

2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions

Mix all ingredients together in a medium sized bowl

Pour 1/4 cup of batter on whatever surface you normally make pancakes on

 

Wait until bubbles appear

Flip

Cover in warm maple syrup

Enjoy!!!

So there you have it. Not only did I make delicious pancakes, but I also successfully wrote a delicious blog post for the wife. I'm sure you have lots of great comments to leave me now, so go ahead and get to it. Thanks for letting me stop by for a few minutes.

Until next time...

It's like college all over again!

Remember that one night?

The one where I was feeling persnickety?

Well, the only thing I was missing that night was that one special

[[KEY]]

secret ingredient that I needed from a friend.

The one for that new cupcake recipe.

Remember?

Yeah, I thought you did.

Well, I GOT THE INGREDIENT:

{STOUT}

Strong, dark, robust, home-brewed 

stout.

Now, if you'll recall, I actually don't drink, so for me to really enjoy this beer and its bold, roasted malt flavor, I had to come up with some recipes that would showcase just that.

Thankfully, my husband joined in on the fun, too, and we've come up with a glorious week of  
[[stout-tastic]] bliss.

Let's start the fun then, shall we?

~•Recipe #1•~

♥STOUT CUPCAKES♥

From "Martha Stewart's Cupcakes"

Makes 24-30 cupcakes

Ingredients:

3 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 t. plus 1/8 t. baking soda

1 3/4 t. baking powder

1 1/4 t. salt

1 T. ground cinnamon

1 1/4 t. freshly grated nutmeg

1 1/4 c. vegetable oil

1 1/4 c. unsulfured molasses

1/2 c. plus 1 T. packed light-brown sugar

2 large whole eggs plus 1 egg yolk

1 T. plus 1 t. finely grated orange zest

1 1/4 c. (10 oz.) stout beer, such as Guinness, poured and settled

Stout Glaze (recipe follows)

Directions:

1. HEAT oven to 350°F and line standard muffin tins with paper liners.
2. WHISK together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
3. BEAT together oil, molasses, brown sugar, whole eggs, yolk, zest, and stout on medium-low speed until combined.
4. ADD flour mixture; beat until just combined.
5. DIVIDE batter among cups, filling each three-quarters full.  
6. BAKE, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean (about 20 minutes).
7. COOL on wire racks. 
   
   *TIP: Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature or frozen up to 2 months in airtight containers.
   
   
8.  To finish, place cupcakes on a wire rack set over a baking sheet; spoon glaze over cupcakes and let set.  Cupcakes are best eaten the day they are glazed; keep at room temperature until ready to serve.

STOUT GLAZE: Whisk together 2 c. confectioner's sugar, sifted, and 1/4 c. stout beer, such as Guinness, poured and settled.  Use immediately.  **NOTE** I found that this was barely enough to drizzle over my cupcakes.  Maybe it's because I'm such a frosting nut anyway that glaze doesn't really do it for me, but I could barely get a full tablespoon on each cupcake, and I only made 24 cupcakes!  

Since I only had enough room for two cupcake tins in my oven, I filled those both and used the remaining batter to make a little double layer 6-inch round cake.  I iced it with a lemon buttercream on top and cream cheese frosting in the middle.  That way, I still got my frosting fix.  Silly glazes -- who uses those, anyway??  Pfft... glaze is like frosting for wimps.  If you can't stand the sugar, get out of the kitchen!*

This recipe is just great.  Those little cupcakes are packed with such a rich, spicy flavor that I had a hard time keeping Mr. Dot's grubby little mitts off 'em.  They taste like a spice cake -- a moist, dark, spice cake with a little zing of orange.  I definitely recommend you give this one a try!

*Just as a side note before I start getting hate mail, I am fully aware of the dangers associated with mass sugar consumption.  As the daughter of a diabetic father, niece of three diabetic uncles, and reformed overweight child myself, I genuinely appreciate the idea of sugar in moderation.  However, I also genuinely appreciate frosting.  It's a vicious life I lead.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Poundcake

It's been raining here lately.

A lot.

What better time than now to try some new recipes?

No better time, I say.

So what are we waiting for?

~♥~

I did that thing again.  You know, the non-cupcake thing.  Is that OK?

♥CINNAMON CREAM CHEESE POUNDCAKE♥

This new recipe comes from Ingrid of 3 B's .... Baseball, Baking, & Books who found it on the blog One Ordinary Day

Makes one 12-cup bundt cake

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. unsalted butter (3 sticks) room temperature 

8 oz. Philadelphia Brown Sugar & Cinnamon Spice Swirl cream cheese, room temperature  

*TIP: Both Ingrid and I chose to make our own brown sugar and cinnamon cream cheese.  Here's how I made mine: mix 1 T. brown sugar + 1 t. cinnamon into 8 oz. room temperature cream cheese.  Sample it and add brown sugar/cinnamon to your taste.  Try not to eat it all before you add it to the batter.)

3 c. granulated sugar

6 large eggs

2 t. pure vanilla extract

2 t. ground cinnamon

3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
Cinnamon glaze (recipe follows)

Directions:

1. HEAT oven to 325°F and lightly spray a 12-cup bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray.
2. CREAM butter and cream cheese.
   
3. ADD granulated sugar and beat for 5 minutes on HIGH (until mixture is light and airy)
4. ADD eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.
5. ADD vanilla and cinnamon.
6. In a separate bowl, COMBINE flour and salt.
7. ADD flour mixture to wet mixture and mix until just combined.
8. POUR batter into pan and even out the top.  
9. BAKE for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until cake is golden brown and cake tester comes out clean.
10. COOL in pan on a cooling rack for 20 minutes.  REMOVE from pan and allow to cool completely.
11. GLAZE with cinnamon glaze (recipe follows)

Now comes the time for the glaze. I bet you're pretty excited, right?  I mean, twice now I've mentioned it and said "recipe follows," so I'm sure you've been dying to scroll down and check it out.  Well, here's the situation: There are three (3) recipes. 

-There's the first recipe, the original recipe, which is the one I used initially but thought it was missing some oomph.
-There's the second recipe, a thicker recipe, that Ingrid came up with and, if I'd had some heavy cream, I totally would have tried.
-Then there's a third recipe, a thick, more cinnamon-y glaze, that I came up with after I felt the first was lacking.

Here they are in the same order:

[ORIGINAL] CINNAMON GLAZE: Whisk together 1 c. powdered sugar, 2 T. milk, and 1/2 t. ground cinnamon until smooth.  Pour onto cake. (This is the one in the pictures above)

INGRID'S CINNAMON GLAZE: Whisk together 3/4 c. powdered sugar and 2 T. heavy cream.  Pour onto cake.  Grate cinnamon on top (optional).  (This is the one pictured in Ingrid's post)

MISS DOT'S CINNAMON GLAZE: Whisk together 1 c. powdered sugar, 1/4 c. Coffee-mate French Vanilla, and 1 T. cinnamon.  Add more Coffee-mate as necessary to get preferred consistency.  Pour onto cake.  (I didn't get a chance to take a picture of this because, well, let's just say it didn't last long...)

I cannot express how incredibly moist this cake is.  I feel it could stand alone without the glaze -- perhaps just some jam?  Preserves?  Powdered sugar?  Whatever sprinkles your cupcake.  As for how much we liked this recipe, well, let's just say Mr. Dot has announced that it has made it to the Top Ten List of Things to Bake for my Husband [AKA: him].

enjoy

♥

Apple Tar-- er, Cobbler...

Tonight, I was feeling a little persnickety.

(See my Williams Sonoma bowls in the background there?  

Yep, my kid sister gave those to me for Christmas.  Such a smart little shopper!)

My original plan was to try out a new cupcake recipe tonight but I was missing a

KEY

ingredient that I need to get from a friend.

I know that sounds shady,

but that's how I roll.

So what was I to do??

I was all itching for some baketitude and needed SOMETHING to stick in the oven or else I feared I might

**implode**

Thankfully, one of my favorite baking bloggers came to my rescue.

Whisk Kid, the crazy-talented baking teenager with so much skill in the kitchen it just isn't fair, posted a recipe for Apple Tarts.

So what if it's not cupcakes??  I can bake whatever I want!

(OK, OK, I take that back!! I'm sorry little cupcakes, I love you.  I only want to bake you.  I promise.)

(But sometimes cookies too, OK?)

I went through the recipe but when it came time to roll out the dough, I found it way too sticky to manage.  I wasn't sure how adding more flour would affect the recipe [I hesitate to add flour for rolling out dough if the recipe doesn't explicitly say it's OK] but I still tried to make one Apple Tart.  It was pretty pitiful and I began to throw the dough away when I realized it would be a  
total shame to waste it.

Therefore, undaunted (as my mom would say -- haha!), I charged onward and came up with this recipe:

♥APPLE COBBLER♥

Adapted from Whisk Kid's Apple Tart

Makes two 9-inch apple cobblers

[1]

Look over the recipe.

[2]

Grumble because the ingredients are measured in grams.  Ugh.

[3]

Convince myself that I can totally work in grams.  Who needs cups anyway?  

(I do, that's who.)

[4]

Note that my scale measures in kilograms.

Quickly Google kilograms→grams to make sure I remember correctly from 5th grade.

Assure myself plenty of people need to do this sort of thing all the time.

[5a]

Cream together:

125 g confectionery sugar

250 g butter

1 vanilla bean (seeded)

[5b]

In case you've never seeded a vanilla bean before, here's a quick tutorial on how to do it:

Start with as fresh a vanilla bean as you can;
ones that are dried out get kinda fibrous when you cut into them.
(I got mine at Costco of all places!)

Split the bean in half lengthwise.

Use your fingers to pry apart the sides of the halves.

Use the dull side of your knife to scrape out the mushy meat from inside the bean halves.

Ta-da!  

This little pile of vanilla mush is exactly what you want!
This is what will give you those coveted vanilla specks that scream:
EAT MY VANILLA GOODNESS!

[6]

Add in 3 eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.

[7]

Sift in 500 g cake flour and 1/2 t. baking powder.  Mix until just combined.

•[Here is where my changes start to come in]•

[8]

Form a ball with the dough and wrap it in plastic.  Refrigerate for at least half an hour.

[9]

While the dough is in the fridge, start peeling and dicing up 6 granny smith apples.  Separate them into the two pie dishes.

[10]

Dice up 6 T. butter and divide evenly over the apples.

Over each pie dish, sprinkle:

•1/4 c. brown sugar

•1/8 c. granulated sugar

•1 t. cinnamon
•2 T. lemon juice

[11]

Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it in two.  Begin pulling off chunks of dough and plopping them on top of the apples.  Dust with sugar.

(There's WAY too much dough on top of this one, but I didn't find out that my apple-to-dough ratio was off until after I baked it.  Definitely make sure that you leave space between the dough lumps for the apple gooey-ness to bubble through)

[12]

Bake at 350° F for 30-35 minutes until you achieve a good, golden-brown exterior and the apples are bubbly:

Oh so GOOD!

Yep, definitely worth saving the dough.

I was really surprised by how cakey the dough was.  If the dough had been plain I think I would've scrapped the cobbler; however, the strong vanilla flavor combined really well with the apples and they went together perfectly.  It was less a biscuit and more a cake.  Yum :)

In case you're wondering,  

this is how my tart came out:

Not TOO bad visually, but taste-wise it was awful.  As you can see, the cake is incredibly puffed up due to my lack of ability to roll out the dough properly and the apples totally dried out and became tasteless, too.

I completely blame this on user-error, by the way.  If you're more tart-savvy, I know this recipe's for you!