Panna Cotta and Florentine Cookies

February’s Daring Baker’s Challenge was Panna Cotta, paired with Florentine cookies. The challenge was hosted by Mallory of A Sofa in the Kitchen, with full recipes and info over at her site! I had never made either of these items, although I am not terribly fond of Florentine cookies.

I was surprised how quick I was able to make the Panna Cotta. For a dessert I thought was complicated, it really wasn’t. The gelatin was added to cold milk to soften. Then I heated the milk mixture, added the cream, honey, sugar and salt. After the mixture heated thoroughly, and the honey and sugar dissolved, I took it off the heat to cool a little.

While I was making the Panna Cotta, I also decided to make a strawberry gelee. I used the fruit gelee recipe from the challenge, which was to heat pureed strawberries with sugar, then whisk in softened gelatin. I am still a little weirded out by gelatin and it’s texture,especially with the gelee.

Once the panna cotta and gelee cooled, I spooned both into dishes and refrigerated overnight.

Later, I made the Florentine cookie dough and baked off the cookies. Another surprisingly simple recipe. The butter is melted, then the dry ingredients, such as flour, sugar and oats, are added to the butter. I spooned the cookie dough onto a cookie sheet.

The cookies baked quickly, in about 6 minutes. I think I could have baked the cookies longer, but they looked like they were about to burn, so I took them out a little early.

Valentine’s Day Treats

Here are some Valentine’s Day treats I’ve been working on.

Vegan heart-shaped Oreos. I am so pleased with how these turned out!

Swirly colored mini cupcakes for Valentine’s Day, with classic buttercream.

And look at this awesome vintage cake carrier! I have a small booth at an antique mall, and found this in another booth. I am so loving it, with the bits of color left, but mostly rusty, I wonder what kind of stories it has.

Easier French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup, that didn’t take a million hours, and is vegetarian too! Awesome!

I have been wanting to make a vegetarian French Onion Soup for a while, I even bookmarked a couple recipes, but just never got around to it. Looking through my Google Reader feed reminded me, so I started looking for recipes again. Since Cook’s Illustrated does great soups, I found a recipe, but it took 4-5 hours, and that seemed like a large time commitment. I went with their easier, quicker version, which still took 2-3 hours.

The recipe called for a combination of beef and chicken broth. Instead, I used the best quality organic vegetable broth our supermarket had.

The time-saving method of this recipe was to microwave the chopped onion for about 25 minutes, until the onions are wilted.

The onions are then sautéed in a dutch oven with butter until browned. Then we deglazed the pot and repeated the deglazing another 5 times,until the onions were very brown.

While the onions were deglazing, the husband had the good idea of making an onion paste/roux in a side pan, to add to the soup to add extra flavor, since we were subbing the meat broths.

Once the onions were browned, the recipe called to add sherry and cook until evaporated. We didn’t have sherry, and winging it, decided to substitute a 50/50 mix of dry vermouth and port, which ended up working excellently.

Then it was time to add the vegetable broth, bay leaf, and thyme. I didn’t have kitchen twine, so I added the thyme to a loose tea pod. The soup then simmered for another 30 minutes. While that was on the stove, I prepared the croutons and slices the cheese.

Once the soup was ready, I ladled some into soup bowls, added the croutons and cheese, and put the soup bowls until the broiler for several minutes.

The husband and I agreed that the adjustments we made worked out great, the end result was a great, flavorful soup!

Quicker French Onion Soup
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

4 lb yellow onions, cut in quarter-inch thick slices
3 tbsp butter
2 cups water, plus extra
1/4 cup dry vermouth
1/4 cup port
6 cups vegetable broth, preferably premium organic
6 sprigs thyme leaves, trimmed and placed in a loose leaf tea pod
1 bay leaf

1 French bread baguette, sliced and toasted
Swiss Cheese, sliced

1. Place the sliced onions in a microwave safe bowl and toss with a teaspoon of table salt. Place a plate on top of the bowl, and microwave for 25 minutes, stirring halfway through. Once the onions are wilted, drain the onions of any excess water. I squeezed the onion to make sure they didn’t retain too much water.
2. Melt the butter in a dutch oven, then add onions. Cook onions for about 25 minutes on medium high heat, until the butter and other liquids have evaporated. Towards the end of the cooking time, the bottom of the pot will begin to brown and you need to make sure to stir often. Once the onions have begun to brown, add 1/4 cup water (I found 1/3 cup of water worked better) and deglaze the pan, scraping the brown bits off the bottom of the pot.
3. Brown the onions for 6 minutes, and deglaze with water. Repeat the browning and deglazing process 3 mores times, until the onions are dark brown.
4. Add the port and vermouth, and cook, stirring frequently, until the alcohol is evaporated.
5. Now add the vegetable broth, thyme, and bay leaf. Stir, increase to high heat until soup simmers. Then reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook for 30 minutes.
6. While soup is simmering, toast baguette slices in oven, then switch oven to broiler setting.
7. Once soup is done, fish out bay leaf and parsley pod. Ladle soup into oven-safe soup bowls, place croutons and sliced cheese on top of soup.
8. Place soup bowls in oven, under broiler for 3-5 minutes, until cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown around the edges.

Christmas Stollen

December’s Daring Baker’s challenge was Stollen. I had never made Stollen, and it turned out to be an interesting challenge!

I made candied orange peel, which was a disaster the first time around. The second time, with a little help from the hubby, it was a success.

The dough was made the night before, rested in the fridge over night, where is quickly doubled in size.

When I was ready to use the dough, I pinched it down, kneaded, and rolled the dough out into a rectangle. Then I rolled the dough, and forgot to divide, so it ended up being a huge loaf of stollen. Shaped the rolled dough into a ‘wreath’, cut the edges of the dough, and allowed to rise before baking. I was surprised how much the dough continued to rise before baking.

I was then ready to bake, which took about 40 minutes. I let the loaf cool slightly before putting the first of several coats of powdered sugar on the crust.

Great Challenge, thanks!

Daring Baker’s Doughnuts

This month’s challenge, hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up, was doughnuts. I think it was about this time last year we were frying cannoli in oil, and since that didn’t end well, I was a little apprehensive when I read about the doughnuts. As this month became unexpectedly hectic, I wasn’t sure if this challenge would even happen. As a weekend freed up, I decided to tackle the doughnuts!

I chose the yeast doughnuts, since I have never been a fan of cake doughnuts. I think now that I’ve tried yeast doughnuts, I would try cake doughnuts, worth a shot next time!

The recipe called to heat milk, pour over butter to melt.

As that was happening, the yeast activated in warm water. I then split the amounts of milk mixture and yeast, setting aside half to add chocolate to, which ended up an interesting experiment.

Added the milk mixture together with the yeast, then added flour and remaining ingredients. I let the dough rise in an oiled bowl and repeated the process with my chocolate dough experiment.

I was surprised by how much the dough rose, but as I got a late start on the project, I decided to refrigerate both dough's and make the doughnuts the next morning.

The next morning I pulled the dough out of the fridge and let sit for about 2 hours. Then I rolled the dough, cut doughnut shapes with cookie cutter, and let rise while my ‘oil supervisor’ helped get ready to fry these doughnuts.

When we started frying, everything went successfully, no accidents! After tasting some hot doughnuts, we decided they needed a glaze, and used the powdered sugar & cream glaze that was suggested with another recipe.

I enjoyed making the doughnuts, especially since it is a project I wouldn’t have done without the challenge. The doughnuts were of course best hot, and a couple hours after frying, the doughnuts had a distinct oily-fried flavor.

The ‘chocolate’ doughnuts did not taste chocolaty at all, which was disappointing but not surprising. I had added two tablespoons cocoa powder to the milk mixture, which did not give a significant flavor enhancement. All in all, great challenge!

September means Football & Cookies

The September challenge for Daring Baker's was Decorated Sugar Cookies, and how perfect! The cookies had to be in the theme of September, whatever that meant to you personally.

To me, September is the start of College Football. In our house, the only football that matters is Florida State football.

I started with the sugar cookie recipe, provided by September's host, Mandy of What the Fruitcake? I wasn't initially thrilled with the sugar cookie recipe, the dough seemed dry and had an average flavor. After I made the dough, I chilled it before rolling. I then rolled the dough, a handful at a time, to a thickness slightly less than ¼ inch.

I wanted my cookies to be a very specific spearhead shape, and since that isn't a cookie cutter you can get, I made a stencil. First, I printed the image, carefully cut it out, and then traced it onto a thick cardstock-type of paper. I carefully cut the shape out, and had my own cookie stencil. With a paring knife, I carefully cut around the stencil on the cookie dough. Once I cut as many cookies into the dough, I tore excess cookie dough from the cookies, and then transferred the cookies to a cookie sheet to chill in the freezer until firm.

Once the cookies were firm, I took them out of the freezer, arranged on cookie sheets, and baked. I was very pleased with how the cookies cake out of the oven, in the same shape, this changed my mind on the cookie recipe. My usually sugar cookie recipe wouldn't have kept the shape and sharp edges as well.

Cookies were baked, cooled, taken off the cookie sheets and transferred to baking rack. As the cookies were cooling completely, I made royal icing. Using thicker royal icing for outlining, I outlined the cookies in black. Let the outline dry overnight, then I thinned the icing and filled the cookies, in garnet, gold and white. While the large white and garnet sections were still wet, I dipped a toothpick in the alternating color to make streaks of color on the spearhead.

Once all the icing was done, I let the cookies dry overnight before boxing them.

New Favorite: Homemade Oreo's

Everyone loves Oreos. And what is more fantastic than vegan homemade Oreos?

From Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

If you want to impress friends, these vegan oreo’s are the way to do it. They were first sent to Hubby’s work for a coworker’s going away, and then they appeared at the first football tailgate of the season.

Vegan Oreos, or Ooh La Las

Makes at least 2 dozen sandwich cookies

Cookies:

¾ cup Crisco, room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup soymilk

1 ½ cups AP flour

¾ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder

2 tsp cornstarch

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp baking powder

Black food coloring gel

Filling:

¼ cup Crisco, room temperature

¼ cup vegan butter (or substitute a scant ¼ cup vegetable oil)**

2 ½ - 3 cups powdered sugar, sifted

1 - 3 tsp vanilla extract

1. With a handheld mixer*, cream the Crisco and sugar together in a medium bowl. When it is well mixed and fluffy, add vanilla extract and soymilk and mix. The mixture will now look a little curdled, but that’s fine.

2. Add the flour, cocoa powder, cornstarch, salt, and baking powder and mix. Add a couple drops of black food coloring gel to enhance the black color.

3. Place dough in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

4. When thoroughly chilled, grab a handful of the dough and roll dough onto a parchment paper covered surface. Roll to a 1/8 inch thickness. With a round cookie cutter, place cookie cutters as close as possible. Slide parchment paper onto a small cookie sheet that will fit in a freezer. Repeat with remaining dough.

5. While the dough is chilling, preheat oven to 325 F. Take the dough out of the freezer, and pull the excess dough from the round cookie cutter pieces. Place the round cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, about an inch apart from each other.

6. Bake cookies for 12 minutes, one cookie sheet at a time. Take the sheet out of the oven and cool on baking rack for several minutes before transferring the cookies off of the sheet and onto the cooling rack.

7. While the cookies are fully cooling, prepare the cookie filling by creaming Crisco and vegetable oil together in a medium bowl. Add powdered sugar to bowl in 4 additions, mixing thoroughly after each addition. The texture will get very stiff and clumpy, but keep mixing. Once sugar is mixed, add vanilla extract.

8. When you are ready to assemble the cookies, pair cookies by similar sizes. With a gloved hand (or not), pinch off a small amount of filling spread onto cookie. Place other cookie on top, pressing firmly and smooshing around a bit.

Voila! Oreos!

*A Note: I initially made the cookie dough and filling with a stand mixer, but later found that a hand mixer really works best with this recipe. First time I have used a hand mixer in years!

**An Updated Note: After making these oreo's several times, I have found making the filling with vegan butter, not the substituted vegetable oil. The vegan butter makes the consistency of the filling much smoother than the vegetable oil. It's worth the extra purchase!