Day 13 - Coffee Cake Muffins

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Today is part 2 of Muffin baking! We decided to make coffee cake muffins. The recipe was super easy and super delicious! The batter consisted of flour, unsalted butter, salt, vanilla, baking powder, sugar and eggs. We also made a streusel mixture which consisted of brown sugar, unsalted butter and flour [we forgot to add the cinnamon… even though it was out on the counter! Too much talking and not enough paying attention!].

In the muffin tins you put a small scoop of the muffin batter, top it with the streusel mixture and repeat so you have two layers of batter and two layers of streusel.

The muffins puffed up and became huge in the oven [perhaps we put a bit too much batter in each cup?!] When the muffins came out we had to work to get them out of the tins and onto the cooling rack. We used a baking spray to be sure the muffins didn't stick to the pan but it didn't work very well. In the future we would suggest butter and flour for the pan- it always does the trick!

In any case, the muffins were buttery and delicious [even if they were slightly deformed since they didn't exactly come out of the muffin tins in one piece!]. The streusel was crunchy and gave the muffin a nice sweetness and the muffin itself was really moist.

Stay tuned for next week!!

Day 12 - Classic Blueberry Muffins

Sunday, January 23, 2011

This Sunday I decided to try out a muffin recipe. I started with the classic, blueberry muffin [who doesn't like that?!]. The batter was a basic muffin batter with all of the expected ingredients [flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking powder, salt and of course blueberries] and each muffin was topped with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. The recipe was actually called "Double Blueberry Muffins" because you smash 3/4 of the blueberries with a fork and mix them into the batter and then fold in the rest of the blueberries at the end so they stay whole - this makes for an exceptional blueberry muffin with a variety of textures.

Blueberry Muffin Batter

 Before going in the oven with the cinnamon sugar topping

Just out of the oven

Finished product!

The muffins came out delicious. They weren't too sweet and the cinnamon sugar made for a nice crunchy topping. The blueberry flavor pops in your mouth as you take a bite making for the perfect, breakfast or snack [especially with a glass of cold milk!].

Part 2 of Muffins is coming next week with a Coffee Cake muffin. Stay tuned…

Day 11 - Mini Cheesecakes

Sunday, January 16, 2010

Cheesecake Experience - Part 2

Today we turned our love of cheesecake into bite size treats! We made a simple filling of cream cheese, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice. We decided that two types of crusts would be better than one, so half of our tray was filled with chocolate and the other with regular graham cracker crumbs. We used a cookie scooper to press down the crumbs which made the process so much faster considering the tray had 24 cups!!

After we poured the filling in to the tray, we put them in the oven and set the timer for 6 minutes. After the time was up, we dropped chocolate chips in some of the mini cheesecakes and swirled them around with a toothpick. We sent them back to the oven for about 10 more minutes. After they were cooled, some mini's received a caramel topping and off to the refrigerator they went!

Today's baking was a short and simple way to whip up a dessert a day ahead of time for any occasion. You will end up with a variety of mini treats that you didn't spend all day long making! What a lovely way to end our cheesecake experience!

Stay tuned for next week...

Day 10 - Triple Chocolate Cheesecake

Sunday, January 9, 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

While we are not enjoying all of this snow, we are hard at work in the kitchen!! This is Part 1 of a Cheesecake experience. We tried out Martha Stewart'sTriple Chocolate Cheesecake recipe this week. One word of advice is if you ever try this recipe out you will need the biggest food processor  you can find! Thankfully, Lele has a 14 cup processor. This was a pretty much traditional process, however, for the chocolate portion we used melted semi-sweet chocolate instead of cocoa powder. We felt this would add the right amount of chocolate to calm our sweet tooth!

To start, we ground up chocolate wafer cookies and mixed them with a little melted butter. We pressed the crumbs down into the spring form and baked it for 10 minutes. While it was cooling we combined softened cream cheese, sugar, and salt. After this mixture was smooth and glossy, we added 3 eggs, sour cream, and finally the melted chocolate. This cooked for one hour then stayed in the oven (with the heat off) for one additional hour to cool. We are letting this refrigerate over night and will add a chocolate ganache layer tomorrow.

We will keep you posted on how it came out and next week we will make a variety of mini cupcakes- plain, chocolate swirl and caramel swirl. Stay tuned!

Ok so its Monday and I was ready to make the ganache for the chocolate cheesecake. I made the ganache using heavy cream and semi sweet chocolate chips. I heated the milk and off the heat swirled in the chocolate chips until I had a smooth, shiny chocolate mixture. I spread the ganache over the cheesecake which had been chilled over night (you can see it in the photo below).

I put the cake back into the refrigerator to let the ganache set to a firm chocolate layer. It only took a few minutes for the ganache to set and it was ready for us to taste. It was delicious! It was decadent and and creamy. The chocolate surprisingly wasn't too overwhelming - it was perfect. You could still really taste a traditional cheesecake flavor with a hint of chocolate. This is a perfect, easy dessert to make for any special occasion (I'm thinking Valentine's Day) or just any day for a chocolate lover in your life!