When Life Gives You Lemons, Take a Shot of Tequila and then Make Lemon Bars.

So for my first blog back from my somewhat long hiatus, I decided to go for something citrusy and awesome...hints why I landed on Lemon Bars.  I feel like Lemon Bars are those treats that are really delicious, but everyone forgets about them in lieu of fancier desserts (similar to Pizza Rolls).  So let's get to it, shall we?

Crust Recipe:
2 sticks salted butter (at room temperature)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour

Filling Recipe:
6 large eggs at room temperature
3 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice; about 12 lemons (save yourself the trouble...just buy the juice)
1 cup flour
Confectioners' sugar

Before you start the crust, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Now take the 2 sticks of room temperature butter and cream it with the sugar until it is smooth and creamy using an electric blender.  Add in the flour a little bit at a time to the butter/sugar mixture until it is fully incorporated.  It will look a little bit on the mealy side, but that is exactly how it should look.  Take your dough and press it down into a 13"x9" pan, with the dough coming up the sides about 1/2".  It will need to cool before you put it in the oven, so stick it in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes or the time it takes you to juice all of those lemons if you are dumb like me and want to do it by hand.  Once the dough has cooled, put it in the oven until it turns a light brown, which is about 15-20 minutes depending on your oven (I have a gas oven and mine took about 18 minutes).  Once it has finished, take it out and let it cool while you put together the filling.

For the filling, you will need to whisk together the eggs, lemon juice, lemon zest, white sugar, and flour.  You will beat this up until there aren't any lumps and it is all smooth.  Pour this on top of your baked crust and put it in the oven for 30-35 minutes (again, my oven is gas, so I put it in for 33 minutes).  Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool to room temperature.

Once you have let the pan cool (seriously...don't touch them until they are cool or else you will try to cut them and ruin them and waste all of your hard work), you can cut the bars into any shape you want.  Some cut them into triangles, but I am not that fancy, so I cut them into squares.  Next, take the confectioner's sugar, and dust the crap out of them with it until they look like the picture above. 

Lemon bars are pretty hard to mess up.  With that said, you will be totally bummed out if you over cook them.  If you only bake it for the minimum, that is fine and they will be fully cooked (so all of those who are worried about eating undercooked egg can relax), just a little softer.  This is a pretty common recipe and you will find most recipes on the internet follow this same basic formula.

So, what's the verdict?  AWESOME.  Treat your friends (and yourself) today with this classic treat that is certain to go over well at any function.  So go my friends....go get baked!

6 Months later....SHE'S BACK!

Hey everyone!  I am officially going to start blogging again after taking the last 6 months off.  Don't get me wrong....I was baking throughout, but I just didn't put the recipes online.  Baking is definitely a coping mechanism of mine, and after my dad passed away in July 2010, I baked my way through the hard times.  But, now I feel it is time to get back to business as usual! (FYI: the picture is of a Pumpkin Scone with Caramel Sauce Drizzle that I made for my coworkers.  YUM.)

Since we live in a democracy, I am putting out a call for suggestions.  What is your favorite cookie?  What cake is your go-to for parties?  I want to know what your signature baked good is that you would like me to try.  So, if you want to get down on this, email me at getbakednyc@gmail.com or you can leave your comment below.  It is that simple.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

The macadamia nut.....this has been closely tied to the island of Hawaii for good reason:  95% of the world's crop comes from this Pacific paradise.  With the cold weather outside, I would do just about anything to imagine an island getaway at this moment.  This buttery-flavored nut is great to bake with, so this is a perfect cookie to make while watching the snow fall outside.  Let's see if this cookie will convert me to white chocolate...





White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted & cooled
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips
1 cup chopped macadamia nuts

Adjust an oven rack to lower-middle position and heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper so that they don't burn and stick. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

In a large bowl, beat the melted butter and sugars together with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Beat in the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla until fully combined.  Next, reduce the speed to low and slowly add the flour mixture until combined. With a large spoon, mix in the white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts until incorporated.

Working with 1 tablespoon of dough at a time, roll the dough into even balls and lay them on the baking sheets, spaced about 2 inches apart.  Bake until the edges become light brown, about 13-15 minutes depending on the oven.

There aren't many WCMN recipes to choose from, but I really think this one is the best.  The saltiness of the macadamia nut combined with the sweetness of the white chocolate makes this recipe amazing.  Be careful not to over bake the cookies though....the middle should be soft and chewy!  Although I will never be able to say white chocolate is my favorite, I will say that this is one of my top 5 favorite cookies.  Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Pie...with Chocolate Sauce. YUM.

I know what you are thinking....again with the Chocolate and Peanut Butter combination?  Here's the thing: it is a scientific fact that one person can never consume too much of the chocolate and peanut butter combo.  That fact may or may not be true, but seriously....Peanut Butter Pie is one of my favorite pies.  After you try this recipe (that is really easy too!), this will become one of your favorites too.

PEANUT BUTTER PIE WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE

Hot Fudge Sauce:

•    1/3 cup heavy cream

•    1/4 cup light brown sugar

•    1/4 cup light corn syrup
    •    2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
    •    1/8 teaspoon table salt
    •    2 teaspoons vanilla extract
    •    4 ounces semisweet chocolate chips   
Peanut Butter Pie:
    •    8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
    •    3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, plus 2 tablespoons, divided
    •    3/4 cup creamy peanut butter, at room temperature
    •    1 cup heavy whipping cream
    •    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    •    2 ounces shaved milk chocolate
    •    Chopped peanuts, optional
    •    1 (9-inch) baked chocolate cookie pie crust

For the sauce: Add the cream, brown sugar, corn syrup, cocoa powder, salt, and vanilla extract to a heavy-bottomed saucepan and turn it up to medium heat (if the saucepan isn't heavy-bottomed, then turn it slightly cooler than medium heat so the chocolate doesn't burn). Reduce the heat to a simmer and add the chopped chocolate.  After that, stir the sauce continuously until the chocolate is melted and it has thickened, roughly 3 to 4 minutes. Take the pan off the burner, and let the sauce cool for 10 minutes before serving.

For the pie: In a large bowl, combine the cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and the peanut butter, and beat with an electric mixer until the mixture is light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes).
In a separate bowl, whip the heavy cream with an electric mixer on high until thick and light. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of confectioners' sugar and vanilla extract. Once you have added those two ingredients, continue to whip the cream until stiff peaks form.  Next, take the whipped cream and pour into the peanut butter mixture, and using the electric mixer, combine the two together for about 1-2 minutes. Pour the batter into the pie shell, sprinkle with the shaved milk chocolate and freeze for 4 hours.

If desired, serve with the hot fudge sauce, but you can also add whipped cream, and chopped peanuts if you want to make it even more decedent!

Overall, this pie is great.  It is rich and light all at the same time, and each bite is very smooth.  This pie is great any time of year and is super easy to make.  Because there is no baking, I whipped up two pies and threw them in the freezer in less than 30 minutes (clean up included!).   Am I obsessed with the Chocolate and Peanut Butter combo?  Absolutely.  But, maybe next time I will make something that doesn't include those two ingredients.  Maybe.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter....ASSEMBLE!

I have said it before, and I will say it again:  there is no better combination than chocolate and peanut butter.  I think it is safe to say that I would eat just about anything that involves this combination (no, that wasn't an invitation to see what I'll eat, so don't ask).  I recently found this recipe on a blog and have been dying to try it, but I haven't just because I knew exactly how rich these bad boys must be.  I was right.  

Needless to say, I found a reason to make them when recently one of my coworkers found out the gender of her baby (a baby boy....congrats!), and I thought these cupcakes were perfect with which to celebrate.  I give to you....Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cupcakes, or as I like to call them, Heaven.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup hot water
1 Tbsp White Vinegar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 - 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup Natural Creamy Peanut Butter
1/3 cup White Sugar
1/3 cup Confectioner's Sugar
3/4 cup Chocolate and Peanut butter chips, divided



First, start off by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.  Take a muffin tin, line them with muffin liners, and set it aside.  In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, brown sugar, baking soda and salt.  Add oil, water, vinegar and vanilla to the dry mixture, stirring it just until smooth.  After that, take your chocolate and peanut butter chips, and stir them into the batter.

Next, in another large bowl, beat together the egg, cream cheese, peanut butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed (I did this for about 2 minutes).  Add in the confectioner's sugar next and beat this until creamy.
Now comes the fun part:  spoon 1 level tablespoon of chocolate batter into the bottom of each cup.  Next, take the peanut butter mixture and evenly spread 1 level tablespoon on top of that.  To top it off, take another tablespoon of the chocolate batter and fill it up to the top.  With the remaining chocolate and peanut butter chips, sprinkle over the tops of each of the cupcakes. 

You will want to bake the cupcakes about 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (Do not over bake!  You want the cupcake to still be soft and squishy-ish or else they will become dry and harder than rocks).  Let the cupcakes cool in pan for about 15 minutes.  Lastly, remove the cupcakes from the pan to cool on a wire rack for another 15 minutes.  These can be served warm or cool, but seriously....the warm ones were so good (you will just need a glass of milk).

I think the best part about this cupcake is the inside: it quite literally is a simple peanut butter cheese cake, so it gives it a delicious, smooth taste to it while complimenting the entire dense cupcake.  No matter what you do, these cupcakes really do look like something you would see in a professional bakery, even though it doesn't take that long to whip up.

Seriously....is there a better combination out there?  I really think not.

Think Rich, Look Poor.....The "Hipster" Cookie

As a resident of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there is a hot fashion genre here that I still haven't quite grasped the concept of....it's called "The Hipster."  Robert Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook, defines a hipster as "one who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool.  The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat."  While I find this definition hilarious, it reminded me of a cookie recipe that I found and have always wanted to try.  Martha Stewart has this "Cookie a Day" email that I receive and one day it was the "Toasted Pecan Butter Cookie."  The picture of the cookies and the ingredients needed had me thinking these sounded an awful lot like a Hipster.

Why do I think this cookie reminds me of a Hipster?  No, it's not the that this cookie wears plaid, has ironic eyeglass frames, wears skinny jeans, and looks as though it hasn't showered in a few months.  It reminds me of a hipster in a lot of ways: this cookie looks bland, colorless, and as though it has no flavor at all, which is similar to hipsters' drab clothing they wear.  However, it calls for pecans, which tend to be expensive (like shopping at Urban Outfitters), uses confectioner's sugar instead of normal sugar which makes it kind of an obscure recipe (obscure similar to all of the music Hipsters listen to and books they read), and smell awesome while they are baking (most hipsters actually do smell good because of their designer perfume/cologne....they just look homeless).  My coworker, Tiffani, jokingly said that this cookie was like a Hipster too because you had to "think rich" because the ingredients looked simple but were expensive, but "looked poor" in how simple it is, which is a perfect way to describe it.

With that, let's see if I can truly call this the "Hipster Cookie."

The Hipster Cookie
3.5 oz pecan halves, toasted (1 cup)
2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tbsp. Vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 C. Flour, sifted
 
To toast the pecans, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Pour pecans on a cookie sheet or into a shallow pan, and cook in the oven for 8-10 minutes, stirring them once.  FYI: the longer the nuts bake, the stronger the nutty flavor becomes, but be careful not to burn them.
 
Turn the oven down to 325 degrees.  Once the pecans have cooled, break each nut into 2 to 3 pieces.  Next, using a mixer, cream the softened butter and sugar until pale (about 2 minutes).  While still mixing, add the vanilla and salt, then reduce speed to low.  Gradually add the flour, beating until the flour is just incorporated.  Stir in the toasted pecans until distributed evenly.  Next, cover dough, and refrigerate until firm for at least 15 minutes (or overnight if you want; just let the dough come to room temperature before using).

Drop tablespoon sized scoops of dough onto a baking sheet about 2 inches apart (the cookies flatten out when they are baking).  Bake the cookies until edges are golden, which depending on the oven and cookie size is about 15-20 minutes.  Let them cool for about 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to completely cool.


So, is the name I have given the cookie appropriate?  Absolutely.  When they come out of the oven, they do look pretty drab like I thought they would (not like the baked goods I normally like to make which tend to be flashy), however, they really do smell awesome while they are baking.  The toasted pecans taste amazing mixed in with the sugary, buttery cookie.  I would say this cookie is probably something that could be found in one of those organic bakeries Hipsters love to go to so that they can discuss art, music, and obscure things that you and I wouldn't know anything about.

Apples to Apples!

Over this past holiday break, my family played the game Apples to Apples, which is one of the best games ever in my book.  My brother and sister-in-law got me this new cookbook called "What's New, Cupcake?" and I was dying to try something in there.  This book specializes in, shocker I know, cupcakes and teaches you how to decorate all of these amazing looking cupcakes from rubber duckies to walruses.  In honor of the game Apples to Apples, I decided to try to make the cupcakes that look like this great fruit.

Apple Cupcakes

Cupcake Recipe

1 Box White Cake Mix

1 Cup Buttermilk

1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil

4 Eggs

Red Cupcake Liners

This is one of the simplest recipes ever.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  In a box combine all of the ingredients and mix on medium speed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes.  Place the red cupcake liners in the cupcake tin, and fill each cupcake up 2/3 full.   Bake the cupcakes for 15-20 minutes.  Let cool in tin for 5 minutes before transfering the cupcakes onto a wire rake.


Apple Decorating Tools

Chocolate covered Mini Doughnuts
1 Can of Vanilla Frosting
Red Food Coloring (the gel is better than the liquid!)
Red Decorating Sugar (at least a cup)
Tootsie Rolls
Green Taffy (you can use anything that you can shape into leaves)

First, you need to add the food coloring to the Vanilla frosting until it is to your desired color of red.  Set this aside, and take the doughnuts and cut the bottom part of the doughnut off so that it is even.  Next, take the cooled cupcakes (these must be cooled completely through!!!) and cut off the top most rounded part of the cupcake so that it is leveled out as well (don't level the cupcake with the liner though).  Take a dollop of the red frosting, and put it on the cupcake and smooth over the top of each cupcake.  Take the doughnuts and place them on top.  Next, frost the cupcakes completely until each one is fully covered by the frosting and smoothed out (use a frosting spatula to make it easier!).

Once you have frosted the cupcakes, pour your red decorating sugar into a bowl, and you can either roll the cupcakes into the frosting to cover them all or you can sprinkle the sugar on top.  I like the rolling technique because it gives you a very even distribution of the sugar as well as helping to smooth out the frosting.  Set the cupcakes aside.

Now it is time to get the leaves and stems ready.  For the stems, take the Tootsie Rolls and cut them in half.  Take each half and roll out until they are smooth and form them into a stem shape.  For the leaves, roll out the green taffy into flat pieces, cut out leaf shapes, and bend them until you have the shape you want (I didn't have many options for green taffy candy where I was at, so I bough the multi-colored sugared fruit slices, and used the green ones by cuting out small shapes). 

Take the stems and place them directly into the center of the cupcakes.  Take the leaves and place them as you like using two on some cupcakes and one on others.

Overall, this recipe is super easy and it makes for an awesome looking gift.  I brought these over to my Grandparent's house as well as to my aunt, uncle and cousins, and they were amazed by how pretty they were.  Want to boost the presentation?  Get a picnic basket and put down a checkered cloth in it and place the apples inside.  I really wish this "apple" was what the doctor was talking about with that old saying.....