recipe: blondies

You know the final scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when the Ugly yells, "Hey, Blooondieeeeee!!!!" as Clint Eastwood rides off on his horse? For the two days that these blondies were in my house, every time I looked at one, my internal dialogue yelled, "Blooondieeeeee!!!!"

This is another recipe from the good folks at the America's Test Kitchen empire. Last weekend I renewed the Cook's Illustrated cookbook that I had checked out from the library, and I tried another dessert recipe from the book.

I made blondies -- they're shaped like brownies, but the brown sugar gives them the flavor of a chocolate chip cookie. I picked this recipe because I didn't have a lot of motivation for baking Saturday, and this was a straight-forward recipe. (That can't be said for all ATK recipes ... sometimes they get complicated.)

I served some of these guys Saturday night for dessert when Camille and Matt came over for dinner, and I brought the rest to Ben and Mandy's house for the Super Bowl. And if I may be cliche, these guys scored a touchdown! At least the cookies won, even if the 49ers didn't.

Blondies

Via Cook's Illustrated Cookbook

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
• 12 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup walnuts (or pecans), toasted and chopped coarse
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a medium owl.

In a large bowl, whisk brown sugar and butter. Whisk in eggs and vanilla.

Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just combined. Be careful not to overmix.

Fold in nuts and chocolate chips.

Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch pan. (Original recipe wants you to make a "foil sling," but that's never worked out for me.)

Scrape batter into prepared pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Top will be shiny and starting to firm up when it's done. Let cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.

recipe: blueberry muffins

Of all my recipes, I have a select few that I don't think I ever need to improve upon. Strawberry pie, for example. Whenever I see a recipe for strawberry pie in a cookbook or online, I skip right over it -- my grandma's recipe is perfect already. Same goes with chocolate cake. If I already have the recipe for the best chocolate cake ever, why would I need to try any other recipe for chocolate cake? 

Now I can add blueberry muffins to that list. Whenever I make blueberry muffins -- from now until I'm a little old lady -- I think I'll be using this recipe. I tried out this recipe, adapted from America's Test Kitchen, a few weeks ago. I brought them to my in-laws' house in Ohio a few weeks ago to offer for breakfast during the weekend of my brother-in-law's wedding. My father-in-law, who's not an easy man to impress when it comes to desserts, ate two. I take that as a compliment.  

This isn't the simplest recipe out there, but all the steps definitely are worth it.

Blueberry Muffins

Streusel topping

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar 
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 
• pinch of salt
• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Muffins

• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest 
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice plus 1/2 cup regular milk and let sit 5 minutes) 
• 2 cups flour 
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries 

Preheat oven to 375. Grease and flour a 12-cup muffin tin. 

Combine flour, brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Drizzle butter and toss with fork to mix. 

Whisk egg, then add vanilla, sugar, and lemon zest. Whisk 30 seconds. Whisk in butter and buttermilk. 

Set aside 1 tablespoon flour. Mix remaining flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold egg mixture into flour mixture. 

Toss blueberries with 1 tablespoon reserved flour. Fold blueberries into batter. (ATK recommends using frozen blueberries in this recipe and keeping them in the freezer until the last minute to prevent blue bleeding into the batter. I used fresh blueberries, and they worked perfectly.) 

Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Pat the streusel bits onto the top of each muffin. To keep things neat, use your free hand to form a wall around each cup as you pat the streusel in. 

Bake on the center rack, 22 minutes (or up to 28 minutes) until only few crumbs remain on toothpick. Cool muffins in pan for 10 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely. Makes 12 muffins. 

Happy National Blueberry Month!

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From the archives: 

recipe: pancakes

recipe: brigadeiros

recipe: brigadeiros

I impressed myself with these little chocolate candies. They definitely taste amazing, but they also look so darn good. It's not very often that what I make looks just as good as the picture in the cookbook.

Brigadeiros are a Brazilian chocolate candy, named after a World War II brigadier who popularized the bite-sized treats, and now they're served at birthday parties.  

It was too hot to turn on the oven in our house last week, and the recipe, which I adapted from America's Test Kitchen, cooks on the stovetop, so I gave it a try. 

Brigadeiros

• 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• sprinkles (about 2 ounces) 

In a saucepan, mix the three ingredients. Cook on low heat, stirring frequently with a spatula, for 20-25 minutes. 

Cool chocolate in a greased 8-by-8 dish in the refrigerator for at least a half hour. 

Roll the chocolate into balls, using about 1 tablespoon of chocolate per ball. 

Pour sprinkles into a small bowl. Roll each ball into the sprinkles to coat completely. Makes 32 candies. Store in the refrigerator.

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This batch of brigadeiros turned out to be a threefer. I put out part of the batch when Ben and Mandy came over for cocktails Friday. I put some more out for brunch Sunday for Camille and Matt. And the rest I packaged up to bring to Scott and Michele when we met their new baby, who is absolutely adorable. Don't you agree? Introducing ... Baby O!  

recipe: pancakes

My husband ate homemade pancakes for breakfast this morning. Am I an awesome wife or what?

No, I didn't wake up at 6 a.m. and get out the mixing bowls. I actually made the pancakes Sunday morning and froze the leftovers, so Tony will be eating well all week.

These are America's Test Kitchen pancakes. This is the first blog post in which I will extol the virtues of an ATK recipe, but it surely will not be the last. This cooking empire will take a recipe, deconstruct it, experiment with ingredients and cooking methods, conduct taste tests, and put together a whole new recipe. I consistently have success with ATK recipes. The downside is that some recipes are complicated, time-consuming, and call for ingredients you may not have in your pantry. Afterall, the recipes generally are written to produce perfect results, not easy ones.

ATK, which also produces Cook's Country, has TV shows on PBS, a monthly magazine, several cookbooks, and a comprehensive website. The pancakes recipe came out of this cookbook, an Easter present from my ma (who has become a huge ATK fan herself after I turned her on to it):

Pancakes

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups unbleached flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• oil for the pan

Whisk lemon juice and milk together.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Whisk egg and butter into the milk.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Don't overmix. A few lumps will remain.

Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat for 3 minutes. Coat the pan with oil. Use 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Cook for a couple of minutes, flip, and cook for another couple of minutes. Re-coat the pan with oil for the next batch.

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What could possibly make these pancakes any better? Pure maple syrup. In a jar in the shape of a maple leaf. Yum.

The batch made 16 pancakes. After we ate breakfast Sunday morning, I let the extra pancakes cool completely before I put them in the freezer. Tony reheated them in the microwave, and he reports that to reheat two pancakes, microwave on high for 60 seconds, flipping once during heating.