Chocolate chip cookies

Oh my...my. It has been a big while since my last post. Not that I was travelling or busy with my work. I was busy baking, photographing and reserching (of course, food-related). There are long long long list of items that I wanted to blog about. I wrote down on paper and post-its that I sticked around my kitchen walls. Okay, one by one. phew..w..w.

Chocolate chip cookies is a sinful snacks. Or you can consider it a meal if you have them from Levain. Here is my version with less fussiness. I just melt the butter in micorwave rather than cream it for 15 minutes as usual recipe calls for. I also opt to use bread flour, which tend to absorb more liquid than normal all-purpose flour. The reason i use bread flour is that , in shanghai, it is a lot easier to source bread flour (as you know, steamed buns are popular here.). Also, if you need the chewiness, bread flour would not hurt the texture. However, if you have all-purpose flour, you can simply use it , with same portion.

I like this recipe, especially with a touch of salt. It is just good that way. I normally reduce sugar to 90% (see recipe below). Storinng: they are good 'outside' the fridge for a couple days. Best is to munch right away from the oven. So far I failed to keep them moist beyond day 3 even if I put them on Ziploc back. On day 4, they just turned into crisp and hard cookies no matter how they were stored, i.e. in Ziploc bag, in air-tight container, in the fridge or on kitchen counter. I found a tip on a web site that recommend putting a piece of fresh apple in the cookie jar. It claims this would help maintain the moist for a few days. But I wonder if those pieces of apple would turn rotten after 1 day (???). Would the cookies moist and molded? I don't know. If anyone try this, let me know.

This recipe makes 750 g of dough. So , if you make 30-g dough (for 3-inch diameter cookies), this batch yields 25 cookies.

No fuss Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies -

2 C of bread flour (255 g or 9 oz) or alternatively, all purpose flour
1 tsp of baking soda
½ C of brown sugar
1 C of granulated sugar
1 tsp of table salt
1+1/2 sticks or ¾ C of butter (170 g or 6 oz)
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 tsp of vanilla extract
52% (dark) chocolate chuck, chopped.
Salt (sprinkle on unbaked cookies)

Sift dry ingredients together in a bowl, set aside. Make sure the brown does not clump up.

Micarowave butter in medium heat until completely melt (should not bubbling), mix in sugars. Stir with fork until they are completely incorporated and that you cannot see streaks of butter. Before mix in eggs, ensure butter mixture is not too hot. You can just simply poke a clean finger in the mixture and feel if it is too hot for your finger tip. If it is okay, pour in the eggs. Stir vigorously for half a minute until well-blended. Add vanilla extract, stir to combine


Add wet ingredients to the dries (or do it the other way around if you do not want to dirty too many bowl). Stir with fork until well blend. The good thing about making chewy cookies is that, it is a study animal, you don’t have to be kind. Just stir, smash, flip or do whatever to mix the dough.

Cover the cookie dough with plastic wrap. Push down the plastic so that it touches dough surface. And rest in the fridge until firm to make a ball, around 2 hours. For best color and taste, NYtimes recommend 24-36 hours rest in the fridges.

Talkign aboug fridge, mine is not working well lately. I guess it is one of the very old models when anti-frost has not yet invented. So, whenever it was frosted, it stopped working. It just died. Then one day I found out my congee turned into “Gee” (as in "Gee! What is that smell!").

When you are ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 325 F. If you want giant cookies, say 4-inch diameter, make 40-45 g of dough and then add dark chocolate chunks. I normally make 25-30 g dough, which yields 3-inch diameter, the right size to cure my crave.

Put the dough on the tray, lined with un-greased parchment paper, 2-inch apart. Flatten them down a bit. ***This is important*** Sprinkle salt very lightly on surface before you put the tray in the oven.

****this is also important (yes, notice 4 asterisks here!)**** bread flour differs in each location. Their ability to absorb liquid differs and this results in wet or dry dough that later reflect on the shape of cookies. The dough may not flatten at all. So, I suggest you try baking one cookies first and see if it flats out properly.If not, in the next batch, you can just flatten them down with your finger tips to the desired shape before baking.

Bake for 10-15 minutes for smaller cookies (25-30 g ball) , or 25 minute for giant cookies. Rotate the tray half way through to get them evenly browned.

They should be just a little dry out on the edge/surface but soft in the center. If you have themometer, it should register 85C in the center. Do not over-bake or they will be just dry and hard. If the oven is too hot, the cookies will get burnt before they are done.

Remove from hot tray and cool on the rack.

Enjoy while they are warm. Got milk?

Sticky bun

After watching a clip on YouTube, Throw down with Bobby Flay- Sticky bun, I marked down my calendar on the upcoming weekend, "occupied all day". I needed to make this.

The recipe comes from a successful Flour Bakery-Boston. Joanne Chang, who runs the place and if you watched the clip, she won the challenge, of course. Since then, I started to google the famous Flour's sticky bun. People raved about it. The reviews/comments on Flour's pastries are something like this: to die for, extraordinary, worth all the time and effort, sticky buns on steroids, and much much more. The only complaint is about the place being too crowded that people described it as a madhouse, which, I find this rather be a compliment than a disappointment. No one can blame the place of its popularity. (!?)

Joanne uses Brioche dough. I had my first brioche years back. It was not impressive, a greasy type that left some kind of waxy feelings in my mouth. I doubt if this this recipe would throwdown my past brioche disappointment. Before I started , I read the recipe and I sighed. Butter butter butter, this was it. Brioche is born rich (of butter and egg) compare to other kinds of breads. Flour to butter ratio ranges between 50:100 and 100:100. Joanne's falls in the first category known as poor-man brioche. I am glad to start with the leaner version. The result was very satisfying and I do not think I would alter for richer dough. In other words, I do not want to spend my week end on the thread mill, if not necessary.

Brioche Dough:

2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-ounce cake yeast = 0.4 oz of active dry yeast, = 0.30 oz of instant dry yeast
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt (or half the portion if table salt is used)
1/2 cup ice water
5 eggs
11 ounces butter, softened

Filling:
2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

Goo:
1/2 pound butter
15 ounces brown sugar
5 ounces honey
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup water

First thing first. It's summer time. The weather is hot and humid. Kitchen temp is around 31 C and humidity is above 60% as it had been raining all week long. I was thinking that I might not need all the wet ingredients so I cut back half of the water in recipe.

Also, since I was skeptical of the result, I halved the recipe and used only 2 eggs (supposed to be 2.5 eggs as called for in the recipe) which weighed 95 g. So, in order to replace missing half egg, I added 25 g of water instead (well, egg white contains water, right), apologies for my love of convenience. I use the combination of bread and all-purpose flour as instructed. The cake yeast seems to be the problem for home baker like me. I used SAF instant yeast, reduced it to one-third of cake yeast which was around 0.15 oz. Be reminded that I halved the recipe. The tiny amount of yeast was almost beyond my scale capability to measure. I guess the scale accuracy is 0.05 oz so it blinked back and forth between 0.10 and 0.15.

As mentioned before, I cut back the water by half knowing that adding butter would make the dough soggy later on, especially in a warm/humid kitchen. The dough was really dry at first. But when added butter (it was half liquid-solid state and I think it was over melted. The instruction calls for soft stage), it became very wet and sticky.

I attached the hook to my stand mixer but finally changed to paddle. I continued to beat at medium speed for 15 minutes. The dough, or should I call it batter (?) was wet and it did not pass window pane test. And yes, even that I reduced the water by half the dough was wet. So I added 2 tablespoons of flour, beat further for 5 minutes. Well, ya I know....I was mumbling to myself that this was a disaster. I should have figured it out sooner that more flour was needed. Professional bakers who are reading this are so ready to whip me to death. zzchez...z..

The dough finally came off the bowl , which was a good sign. It almost passed the window pane test. I decided to stop the machine, feared that beating it further would mess up the leavening. The dough looked oily, soft and pliable. I rested the dough over night in the fridge. Note that the recipe requires to rest the dough for 5 hours.

Goo – Put butter and sugar in a non stick pan, medium heat. Reduce until very thick. Let warm. In a separate bowl, stir together honey, cream and water. Stir cream mixture into butter+sugar mixture, stir until well blended. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for next day, it will become more solid after resting in the fridge.

Baking day – Turn on the oven to 350 F. spread goo on roasting pan, at least 2.5 inch tall, set aside. I have an 8" x8"x2” pan which was not tall enough. I later found out the goo boiled and overflew, a bit messy there .

On a flour surface, roll out the dough into approximately 1/4-inch thick. I would recommend 8"x8” rectangular perhaps? Combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans and sprinkle evenly on the brioche. Or alternately, I sprinkled cinnamon generously until it covered up the dough then sprinkled brown sugar. I think I used around half cup. Keep in mind that the bun will be topped with Goo, so make it skimpy on sugar at this point, just enough to make nice brownish layer. Roll the dough up as tightly as possible as it will unwind during rest period. I wonder if it is possible to seal the edge? Some suggested to brush edges lightly with egg to seal. Well, I did not try that.

Warnings for those who work in warm kitchen. The dough tends to be sticky as you roll. So you'd better work quickly. I did so, tried my best to roll the dough into a nice rectangle but ended up rolling the dough unevenly into Oklahoma-state shape, approximately 8"x12", yielded 8 large rolls, 1 mid-size roll and 3 tiny rolls. Yes, I know I'm such a novice.

Each roll was around 1-1.5 inch thick. I placed 9 buns, evenly 1/2-inch spaced in the pan. For the 3 small rolls, I put them into individual muffin cups which are 1.5 time as large in volume. Cover with well-greased plastic wrap and allow rising until they expanded 1.5-2 times of original size. It took around 1.5 hr in my kitchen.

See, the bun hugged each other nicely in roasting pan. Zzch ! one photo shot for nicely proofed buns.

Place the pan in the oven and bake until light golden brown, about 30-40 minutes. I smelled the burnt caramel (as well as trouble) when the goo was sizzling and dripping out of my 2 inch tall pan. Oh no, I was hoping that my neighbor who are pensioners would not knock my door with walking stick and ask what was burning. If you have taller pan, do use it.

I rotated the pan at 25 minutes to get it cooked evenly. After 40 minutes, the top turned light golden brown. I took them off the oven, let cool for 20 minutes and then invert onto a large plates.

For the 3 tiny pieces that I placed in muffin cups. I baked with the rest of proper-sized buns. They turn out to be nicely shaped, wrapped up tightly in muffin cup. When inverted, the goo did not make them soggy. This was because I poured goo just enough to coat, around them. The ugly ducks finally turned out to be swans.!

The buns that I baked in 8'x8' pan, top bits were a bit soggy. The dough texture however was very impressive. I would say ‘extraordinary’ soft , light and fluffy. It is worth all the effort and the messy (goo) that I need to clean up . I took a bite and I thought it made my day. So I took the second one....(on and on). Before I munched them all up, I decided to put it down and finally finish some photo shoots.

Then, I was thinking about the last 2 tablespoon of flour that I added in later stage of kneading. Um...may be it was just small amount and didn't ruin the rest of the texture. Maybe?

The goo is just lovely, it gives milky aroma. I added a pinch of salt by the way. My Chinese colleagues said it’s totally too sweet. They had it cold the next morning i.e. took right out of the fridge, and told me the texture was good. It is so wrong that they had it cold, don't you think?

Some notes on the goo :
- It makes the bun soggy. Not sure what have gone wrong. Next time I will spread just enough to brown the bun. Think we can always put some more on top of finished product.
- It is too sweet for Asian taste, perhaps. But I think I am totally fine with it as is.
- I may experiment replacing butter with cream. But probably need to reduce further until it becomes very thick.

The sticky bun is addictive especially when it was warm. I could not put it down after the photo shoot. Best is to walk away. Well, there is nothing wrong with occasionally enjoying some indulgence as long as you don't go overboard. Moderation is what you need to repeatedly whisper to yourself.

To do after munching the second bun, sign up for half marathon in December. Yes! run baby run, baby run...n.

Mini Tart - Fresh Blueberries

I have to say big thanks to Mr.Art who showed me the techniques and a step-by-step of how proper tart shells are made. The method he demonstrated was an original way using pastry blender. But those who has problem with cutting ice cold / hard butter into flour, food processor could be a really big help.

I did a little research on tart recipe with the same smearing technique. Some use whole eggs which I found out that the dough turn out to be too wet. Others use normal white sugar which does not provide neat final product as sugar does not dissolve and thus crystals appear on the tart shells.

Along my web-browsing, I came across a very nice and beautiful blog, Chocolate Shavings, who posted pretty photos of individual blueberry tarts. Thanks Chocolate Shavings for inspiration. I tried his pastries crème and it indeed is very mild and smooth. However, it did not set in the fridge and a bit too runny. So I did not use it finally.

Thanks Mr.Art again for tart shell recipes

Tart shells
400 g of all purpose flour
200 g of butter, cubed and chilled (or frozen)
60 g of icing sugar (Normal sugar is okay but you will see sugar bits in the final product)
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp of salt
1-2 tablespoon of very cold water (optional)

Be forewarned, this must be made in a cold cold and cold room. If your kitchen is warmer than 24 C, turn on the air-conditioner. If you don't have one installed, eh...I don't want to say this, but you can alter butter with other kinds of fat with higher melting point, like magarine. But of course, it doesn't taste as nice as butter.

Sift the flour, sugar and salt on in a chilled bowl, make a well. Put in the very cold butter. Incorporate butter into flour using pastry blades or pastry scraper until the dough clumps with the size of yellow splits peas, or even better, fine sand. You have to work quickly and ensure the butter does not melt. If it does, put the bowl in the freezer for 15 minutes and continue.

I prefer to use my tiny food processor that holds upto 2.5 cups of flour. It helps a lot especially if you are not ready to go physical with this task. I put 1/3 of flour mixture and 1/3 of butter and pulse for few seconds. Repeat for the rest.

Once the dough resembles small peas/sand, pour the flour on work surface, make a well in the center. Add eggs in the center; lightly fork around until dough comes together loosely. Then use both of your hand to form a pile of dough. If it seems to be too dry such that a portion of the ball falls apart, sprinkle 1 table spoon of very cold water, one at a time, until they come together. I would add probably up to, say, 2 tablespoons, not more than that. Or one might perfer, spray on the dough to distribute it evenly. But I wouldn't bother.

Smear the dough - From the top of the pile, use the heel of your hand, smear it out completely onto the counter surface. It should take a spoonful at a time. This process makes sure the butter is well incorporated into the flour and makes the dough easy to work with. Once done, put the dough together into ball, it should be smoother and more pliable. If you see butter chunks in the dough repeat the process. This can be done up to three times. For those who have warm hands, work quickly as we do not want butter to melt.

Form it into 2 balls and press down to form discs. Wrap with plastic wrap rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Pastry crème
4 eggs
100g icing sugar
4 tbsp (40 g) all purpose flour
4 tbsp (32 g) corn flour
600 ml milk
a few drops of vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Cream the eggs and sugar together until really thick and pale in color. Sift and beat in the flour and corn flour and a little cold milk to make a smooth paste. Heat the rest of the milk and salt in a sauce pan until almost boil and pour on egg mixture, whisk well all the time. Through sieve, return mixture to the sauce pan, discard the curd left on sieve. Stir over low heat until mixture starts to boil. If you are not quick enough, makes sure the heat is low or the curd will form up at the bottom/corner. I normally switch between whisk and spatula, to ensure I reach around the corner. Add vanilla extract to taste and cook further for a few minutes. The consistency should be a little thick just like that of pancake batter. Before putting off from heat, be sure to taste if the flour is cooked through. If it tastes a little grainy on your tongue, cook further and stir constantly for a few minutes.

Cover and allow to cool completely before filling in the tart shells.

Bake the tart shells

Take the dough from the fridge. If it appears to be too hard to roll out, leave it out for a few minutes. Or massage it on the board with rolling pin. I read on a Recipezaar that someone actually shaves pie dough on the tart pan and press it on. Quite an interesting technique but I have never tried that as yet. Roll out the dough on a lightly-floured parchment paper. Press the rolling pin on the dough, start from the center. The idea is to spread out from the center, then extend to the edges

Do not worry if edges are thick and ugly, we will get there later. For me, the dough was really difficult to roll when it was cold; I pressed the center down, just to ensure I did not have to squeeze it out in later rolling. Then turn the dough less than a quarter, repeat rolling from the center. Again do not bother if you don't yet reach the edge. If needed, lightly flour the work surface on the dough if the it seems to stick to parchment paper or to rolling pin. Once roll for about 4-5 turns, roll from center to the edge. Turn the dough while you roll. Repeat until it the dough is about 1/8 inch thick.

Consistency check – cut through the edge with pizza cutter and check if there are any spots thicker than others. If there are, roll to spread out dough evenly.

Use cookie cutter to cut to desire size that fits individual molds/tart pans. Place the dough on molds loosely. With unused dough tapped with flour, press the dough against the mold. Use knife, slash out unwanted dough on the edge. Prick bottom of the dough with a fork a couple times. Place a small parchment paper (a little bigger than the mold) in the center of the dough and weight down with beans. Bake blind for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. When the shells are firm to touch, and turn golden pale yellow, remove parchment paper and beans. Continue baking around 2-3 minutes more to let inner shell dry out. Allow to cool completely before put in fillings.

Topping
Fresh blueberries
Jam of your choice.

Microwave jam in medium heat until just melt, press it through sieve. Letcool until warm to touch. Toss 1 tablespoon of jam with 1 cup of blueberry to coat. Set aside or wrap with plastic in the fridge.

Final assembly
Fill in 2/3 of tart shell with paster creme. Chill for a few hours. Do not place the blueberries right away or they may sink to the bottom. When ready to serve, put blueberry on top.

Ideas for decoration – garnish with little mint leaves or curls of orange zest on top.

enjoy !

Caramel Custard Cake

If custard cake to be displayed among other moussy creamy chocolaty cakes, it may not have our attention. Little had we known that one little fine jewel is sitting…. shining right there. The caramel cake, whether or not it glows out of display, it deserves our bites. As I recall, I never bought home a piece of caramel cake. But once I tried, I was hooked. Believe me, it make you sing in the shower.

I lost the recipes a while back. So, this time I looked up custard recipe from the Internet, scaled down sugar and paired it with my favorite chiffon cake recipe. Here is how.

Caramelized sugar

½ C of sugar

Pour sugar in 9” cake pan set over medium-low heat. Sugar crystals should start to dissolve slowly. Keep close eyes on, as it tends to burn easily. Remove from heat, when it turns yellow. Tilt the pan back and forth to ensure it was browned evenly. The goal is to get dark mahogany color. I personally like it dark brown because it will be paler when baked. Stir occasionally if you see any spots darker than others. Remove from heat immediately if it starts to bubbling and turn light brown. Swirl the pan to level out caramel. Set aside.

Do: Pyrex glass pan is a good use, make the type you use is direct-heat resistant. The pan should be at least 2-inch high.
Don’t: use bottom removable pan as it leaks in the oven. Non stick or Teflon is not a good idea, as you won’t be able to see the color of caramel.

Turn on the oven 330 F. Position the rack at the lower third. Put in a 12x12x1.5 inch tray filled with half water.

Custard

2 cups unsweetened condense milk (or fresh milk)
1 tsp vanilla
2 yolks
2 eggs
1/3 cups of sugar
1/8 tsp of salt or a pinch

Beat yolks and eggs in the bowl, set aside. In a medium sauce pan , put milk sugar and salt over low heat, stir until sugar dissolves. Through sieve, pour milk ingredient over eggs mixture, whisk constantly for a few minutes. Stir in vanilla. Set aside.

Chiffon cake
(A) – sift together these ingredients.
1 cups (scoop out 1 tbsp) of all-purpose flour
½ tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

(B) –In a big bowl, beat yolks and sugar until pale and creamy. Most chiffon recipe allows you to beat flour, yolks, oil and milk together, I never tried that. It gives me peace of mind if I cream the yolk first so that I ensure that sugar crystal dissolves and yolks are airy.

4 yolks
¼ cups of sugar

(C) – mix together the following liquid ingredient. Gently stir liquid in yolk ingredients, mix well. Set aside.
½ tsp vanilla
¼ cups of vegetable oil
½ cups of milk

(D) Beat egg whites until foamy. Gradually add sugar , 1 tbsp at a time, beat well each addition. Add crème of tartar. Whisk well unit it reaches soft peaks. Oh again, I forgot to take photo of my soft peaked whities..! And while you are whisking the whites you will hear cracking noise from the pan as caramel hardens.

4 egg whites
¼ cups of sugar
¼ tsp of lemon juice or vinegar (I used 1/8 tsp crème of tartar)

Add flour into egg-milk mixture into 4-5 batches, alternate with whipped whites. I used whisked to stir the flour around first, ensure all the lumps break up and well-mixed into runny liquid ingredients. When the batter gets thicker (thick enough to fold), switched to spatula and added 1/3 whites. “Fold in” remaining flour and whites gently while rotating the bowl. It’s a good idea to fold from bottom to make sure no lump ingredients left unmixed. Set aside.

Through sieve, pour custard ingredients on hardened caramel. Then, pour batter over custard gently and evenly. Don’t worry if it seems to sink into milk mixture. It will spring back up in the oven. Now the 9" cake pan is filled with all the liquid and batter. Be very careful when place it on tray with half water. The water in tray should be hot and steamy.

Bake for 45-60 minute. This cake is better slightly over-baked than under-baked. Be warned, if custard layer is not fully cooked …… everything goes to the bin.

Check point: at 45 minutes, jiggle the top of cake with you hand. if it seems to be wobbly inside, continue to bake for 10 minutes. Cover the top with foil or baking paper if it is browning on the top. Repeat the test after ten minutes.

Once done, remove from oven and wait until it completely cools. Do not flip when it is hot as custard needs to be set in its container.

Tips: Once remove from oven, don’t cut across the edge otherwise melted caramel will leak to the side which will discolor custard and over-soak chiffon layer.


I rest the pan in the fridge for 2-3 hours until it completely set before I invert to serve. Before invert, dip the pan in a bowl of very hot water for 30 seconds. If you notice the cake does not shrink from the side, run the knife around to loosen it from the pan. Keep in mind you just want to free up the cake, don't run it all the way through custard layer or it won' t have a nice clean cut.

Left over melted caramel that dripping off is good as sauce, dont' wasted it. This cake is best eaten cold.

Variation of Flourless Chocolate Cake

This is one of variations you can play around with Flourless Chocolate Cake. The cake actually looks handsome when naked, without topping, with cracky crusty look. However, this would give more creamy texture. And , if you happen to misshape the cake during the process, cover it up with whipped creme would be a quick fix.

See how gooey it is inside?

The one is my all time favorite, you can find cake recipe over here. For the whipping cream, you can use Cool Whip or the following.

1 teaspoon gelatin bloomed in 2 tbsp cold whipping creme for 10 minutes

2 cups of whipping creme

1 tbsp icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Once gelatin is bloomed, melt over low heat, until completely dissolved, don't bring to a boil. Let cool at room temperature. Set aside.

Pour cream into the chilled bowl and whip it vigorously until it just begins to hold its shape. Add about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon icing sugar, and continue to whip until it holds very soft, peaks. Drizzle cooled gelatin all at once to cream during whipping. Stop whipping when it forms soft peaks. Use immediately.