Category: Recipes

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Chocolate Soufflé

by Literary and LovelyLeave a Comment on Chocolate Soufflé

Good morning all!!!

It has been WAY too long since I published a post on this blog, so to begin, a little life update:

First off, I am enrolled in two summer classes. The first, neuroanatomy, is online and is wickedly difficult, spanning the entire four months of summer. I just did my second online midterm last Wednesday and my self-esteem still has not fully recovered. The second class is cultural psychology, which is condensed into one month with lectures three times each week. I love the content and the professor is such a lovely person. I had the first midterm for that class last Friday and I feel pretty good about it.

I am also working full-time at the same job I have had for the last four summers. While it varies across countries, full-time employment is defined in Canada as working 30 hours or more per week at one's main or only job. Well, from July 1-15, I worked just over 97 hours.

Balancing school and work has been a real challenge for me, and while it means I will only have one more university term to go before I graduate and I can start saving up for graduate school, I have not had much time for anything else.

That being said, a few weeks back, my friend Travis and I got together to celebrate his 29th birthday and tried our hand at making chocolate soufflés. I think they actually turned out pretty well.

Ingredients

  • Unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 3 large egg yolks, 4 large egg whites
  • 1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Step One
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter a 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Lightly coat with sugar, tapping out excess. Set dish on a rimmed baking sheet.

Step Two
In a large heatproof bowl set over a pot of boiling water, combine chocolate, vanilla, and water. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Takes about 10 minutes. Then remove from heat and let cool to room temperature, about 20 minutes.

Step Three
Separate egg whites from egg yolks. Then stir egg yolks into cooled chocolate mixture until well combined. This is your soufflé base. Set aside.

Step Four
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and cream of tartar on high until soft peaks form, about two minutes. Then gradually add sugar and beat until stiff, white peaks form, about five minutes. Do not overbeat.

Step Five
In two halves, fold egg-white mixture into soufflé base. To do this, use a silicone spatula to gently cut through the centre of the base and lift up some from the bottom of the bowl. Turning bowl, continue to cut down and lift up base until just combined.

Step Six
Transfer mixture to baking dish, ensuring none gets on the top edge of the dish. Smooth top.

Step Seven
Bake soufflé until puffed and set, around 30-35 minutes. DO NOT OPEN OVEN during first 25 minutes of baking. Then SERVE IMMEDIATELY.

Baking Notes

  • Travis and I actually made two smaller soufflés in baking dishes I gave him as part of his birthday present, thinking they would be about the right size for individual soufflés. They were bigger than I thought, but any size or number of baking dish(es) would work for this recipe as long as the mixture reaches just below the top edge.
  • Do not be fooled by all the talk about how difficult they are to make. It was actually really easy and we had so much fun.
  • We only ended up eating one soufflé right away, and by the time we finished, the second soufflé was a perfect example of why recipes say to serve them immediately: they really do collapse.

Have you ever made soufflé before??? Let me know in the comments below!!!

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Chocolate Chip Cookies 

by Literary and Lovely1 Comment on Chocolate Chip Cookies 

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Good morning!!!

If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you might remember that I did a post about chocolate chip cookie baking for one of the days of Blogmas. However, my friend Travis with whom I do most of the baking that appears on this blog, turned 28 on Thursday and we wanted to bake something classic. 

After whisking the batter for cupcakes and cheesecake with a manual whisk since we didn’t have an electric mixer, I got him a mixer for his birthday and we tested it out on this cookie recipe. I have to say, it worked pretty darn well and sped up the prep time by a good 15 minutes. 

Ingredients

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  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup packed sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Steps

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 
  2. In a large bowl, mix the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar.
  3. Add in egg and vanilla extract. Mix well.
  4. Add flour and chocolate chips. Mix until fully combined.
  5. Dollop cookie dough onto ungreased cookie sheets.
  6. Bake for 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. 

Notes

  • Because these were birthday cupcakes, I wanted to make a few that were special, so some of the cookies were slightly bigger. One had 28 spelled out in chocolate chips, another had a K on it for my name, a C for Travis’s brother’s name, a heart-shaped cookie, and a cookie with a smiley face. Had we not made these cookies slightly bigger, this recipe would have made around 4 dozen cookies.
  • I never realized how efficient an electric mixer was until we had made cupcakes using a whisk and then made these cookies with the mixer. The prep time is essentially cut in half, which was nice because it gave us more time to catch up. 
  • 20160617-094405.jpgAt the time, I found this hilariously funny: the oven, with the towels on either side, resembles a puppet show theatre. And at one point, some of the cookies were baking into each other so I accused them of kissing and pulled the towel curtains closed to give them some privacy. Gosh I am strange sometimes. 

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Peanut Butter Cookies

by Literary and Lovely2 Comments on Peanut Butter Cookies

 

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Good morning!!! 

My goodness, June is almost half over and I have not published a single post yet. This isn’t from a lack of interest–I have lots of posts in my drafts– but I seem to have an issue with finishing posts and hitting the ‘publish’ button.

On Friday, I visited my grandparents and we baked peanut butter cookies. Typically, we do enough baking to last the rest of the year, but these cookies are so delicious that we got to snacking and polished off our stash of them. So, of course, rather than cut down our cookie consumption, we just waited for a cloudy day to bake more. 

Ingredients

  • ½ cup butter or margarine
  • ½ cup white sugar
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup smooth or crunchy peanut butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 ½ cups flour
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • ¼ tsp vanilla
  • ¼ tsp salt

Steps

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 
  2. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together with electric mixer until fluffy. 
  3. Drop cookie dough onto baking sheets (non-stick or lined with aluminum foil).
  4. Bake for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. 

Notes

  • My grandmother and I doubled the recipe so we would have plenty of cookies, and we ended up with around 8 dozen or so (no exact count because, of course, we had to test a few . . . )
  • Though not included in the recipe, we also put in some baking powder.
  • It might be best to mix the sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt together in one bowl, and the butter, peanut butter, egg, and vanilla in another bowl, and then add them together gradually while mixing. We did it all at once and I think we worked the mixer harder than we probably should have. 
  • We used smooth peanut butter, but I am sure that crunchy peanut butter would work just as well. 
  • We didn’t put in any salt, partly because we don’t like to bake with it if it can be avoided, and partly because we didn’t have any. 

What have you been baking these days??? 

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Double Chocolate Cheesecake 

by Literary and Lovely4 Comments on Double Chocolate Cheesecake 

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I am debating starting a Baking With Travis series on this blog because my friend Travis and I got together once again last Wednesday for some baking. We endeavoured to make a chocolate cheesecake. My grandmother recommended Martha Stewart’s triple chocolate cheesecake recipe, but we made a few modifications. 

Ingredients

  • 1 package (9 ounces) chocolate wafer cookies
  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
  • 4 bars (8 ounces each) cream cheese, room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted

Steps

  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Assemble a 9-inch springform pan.
  2. In a food processor, pulse cookies until finely ground. Then add butter and pulse to moisten. Press crumbs firmly and evenly into the bottom of the pan. Place pan on a rimmed baking sheet, bake 10 minutes, and then set aside. 
  3. Clean food processor. Add cream cheese, sugar, and salt, and blend until smooth. Then, with motor running, add eggs, then sour cream, and finally chocolate. Blend all together until smooth. Pour filling on top of crumbs in pan.
  4. Place pan in a roasting pan, and place roasting pan in oven. Then pour in boiling water to come halfway up the side of the pan. Bake for 1 hour, just until set. Then turn oven off and let cheesecake sit 1 hour in oven without having opening door (to help prevent cracking).  
  5. Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan (to help prevent cracking). Leave the cake in the pan, and cool it completely on a wire rack. Cover loosely and refrigerate for at least 6 hours or overnight.
  6. Unmold cheesecake. Let it set before serving.
  7. Optional: prepare chocolate ganache topping. 

Chocolate Ganache Topping

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Ingredients

  • 8 ounces semisweet chocolate
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt 

Steps

  1. Break up chocolate into pre-defined sections and place in a medium-sized bowl. 
  2. Bring cream to a boil, and pour over chocolate. Add in salt.
  3. Let it stand for 10 minutes without stirring (Stirring will result in ganache cooling too quickly and becoming grainy). 
  4. Stir until smooth and shiny to break up any remaining pieces of chocolate. 

Cooking notes:

  1. Immediately after arriving at his apartment with all of the ingredients, we realized we did not have a 9-inch springform pan, or any pan really, so Travis was lovely and went out got get a few different pan options. Meanwhile, I worked on crumbling graham crackers for the crust . . . 
  2. We also did not have a food processor so I crumbled the graham crackers by hand. This took way longer than expected and, by the time Travis got back with the cake pans, I had only done about half of the crackers needed. He came up with the ingenious idea of putting them all in a bag and then just whacking them with the sour cream container, and this worked much better. 
  3. The lack of food processor once again became an issue when making the body of the cheesecake because we couldn’t get the cream cheese to mix. I don’t know what microwaving actually does to cream cheese, if anything, but we microwaved it to soften it up. We also had to microwave the chocolate pieces before adding them to this for the same reason, but it worked perfectly fine. 
  4. We also realized too late that we didn’t have a roasting pan. Luckily Travis had make baked macaroni and cheese the night before in a giant pan, so we were able to wash this out and use it. And we had baked macaroni and cheese for dinner . . . yum. 
  5. The pan remedy was brilliant until Travis noticed a hole in the bottom. I found it hilarious at the time, but he had some Canadian Flag packing tape so we put that over the hole, hoping it would stick and hold in the boiling water. 
  6. The tape kind of worked to seal up the hole, but we took the baking tray out halfway through the hour-long cooking in the oven, dumped the water off, put more boiled water in, and stuck it back in the oven. I don’t think the cheesecake suffered from this, and without doing this, the water would have spilled over the edges of the baking sheet and caused a real mess in the oven. 
  7. This part was all on me: I forgot just how long it takes for a cheesecake to set in the refrigerator. To be fair though, the recipe says total time is 2 1/2 hours . . . I think not. We started making the cheesecake at about 6:30, and I left his apartment somewhere around 12am, with the cheesecake in the refrigerator for about 3 hours at that point. 
  8. Finally, the cheesecake kind of fell apart when Travis and his brother tested it the followingimg_0890 night, but it received a 10/10 rating for taste. Overall I think this cheesecake turned out pretty darn good given the ordeals that we encountered while making it. He and I joked at the end of making this that we could film our baking escapades and call them something like Gorilla Baking, because we keep trying out these elaborate recipes with no proper baking tools. What do you think??? Should we do it???

What is your favourite kind of cheesecake??? 

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Easter Baking

by Literary and Lovely3 Comments on Easter Baking

Hello there 🙂 🙂 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter yesterday with family and friends. I celebrated the holiday with my mother and grandparents and, while my grandparents insisted that they prepare dinner, I got to bring the dessert: a giant cupcake cake!!! Here are a few pictures of the baking process 🙂 🙂 img_0694 img_0697 img_0708 img_0705 img_0713 img_0711 img_0726 This is the niftiest cake pan I have ever come across. Made by Wilton, this cast aluminum pan has a non-stick surface and a lifetime warranty, making it the perfect addition to any baking arsenal. You can get it here if you are interested 🙂 🙂 

What did you get up to for Easter yesterday??? Picture 19

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Vanilla Cupcakes

by Literary and Lovely1 Comment on Vanilla Cupcakes

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Hello there 🙂 🙂

 A few weeks ago, I learned that my friend Travis had never baked cupcakes before in his life. I was completely shocked that he had made it almost 28 years on this planet without ever making them, so we got together last Wednesday to bake. I loved this recipe I got from my grandmother so much that I wanted to share it here. I have no idea where she got it from, but credit to whoever came up with this perfect cupcake recipe. 

Ingredients: 

  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 ½ tsp baking powder
  • 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
  • ¾ cup butter
  • 1 ¾ cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tsp vanilla
  • 1 ¼ cups milk

Steps: 

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Bring eggs and butter to room temperature. Insert cupcake liners into two pans. 
  2. Mix together the salt, flour, and baking powder in a bowl (dry mixture).
  3. In a separate bowl, beat butter. Then add sugar and beat until combined. Continue to beat, and add eggs and vanilla (wet mixture). 
  4. Add part of the dry mixture to the wet mixture and beat. Then add some milk, and beat. Continue this alternation until all of the dry mixture and the milk have been added. Mix well. Then pour into cupcake pans (about half-full).  
  5. Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the cupcakes are a golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean from the centre. 
  6. Cool for at least 15 minutes before removing from pans. 

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And now for the frosting!!!

Ingredients: 

  • ¾ cups butter, softened
  • 4 cups icing sugar
  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  1. Beat softened butter together with some icing sugar. Add the vanilla and some milk. Then alternate between adding sugar and milk until happy with frosting consistency. Note: If frosting is too thin –> add sugar    If frosting is too thick –> add milk

Cooking notes:

  1. Well, first off, my friend did not own an electric mixer so we picked up two whisks for $3.50, one large and one small, and beat everything together by hand. My arm definitely got a good workout, and by the end of it, only one whisk was left standing; the other was in pieces in the sink. Good to know though that hand beating can do just as good of a job; it just takes a bit longer. 
  2. We found that the cupcakes were not fully baked after 15 minutes, so we left them in for the full 18 minutes.
  3. We also didn’t have a toothpick, so the cupcakes were tested using a sanitized paper clip. Talk about high quality bakeware. 
  4. Finally, I wrote out the recipe wrong, with 8 cups of icing sugar needed for the icing, not 4. We got 4 in, but had enough icing to do probably another 24 cupcakes. Oh well, I can always make a cake and use it up. 

Let me know how you find this recipe if you try it out 🙂 🙂 What have you been baking these days??? 

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Blogmas Day 9: Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Literary and LovelyLeave a Comment on Blogmas Day 9: Chocolate Chip Cookies

blogmasbannerHello there all!!!

The last few days have been kind of crazy with Christmasy goings-on and I haven’t been keeping up with my daily Blogmas posts about them. So today, December 13th, will mark the most posts published on Literary and Lovely in one day to date. I’ll do my best to stagger them a little bit so you aren’t bombarded with the last five days of Christmas action, but be prepared: there are more posts to come today, so keep an eye out for them!!!

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Back on December 9th, I met up with a friend and, spur-of-the-moment, we decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies. His kitchen is incredible, decked out with all the bells and whistles, and I had been dying to give baking in it a whirl, so this was so much fun. His aunt uses Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking recipe for her chocolate chip cookies, and they always get eaten before midnight on the day they are baked, so it seemed like a fool-proof way to go. We did, however, make a few alterations to the recipe, which will be shown between *. . .*

Ingredients: 

  • ½ cup butter, softened
  • ½ cup sugar
  • ½ cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1 cup plus 2 tbs all-purpose flour
  • ‘½ tsp baking soda
  • 1 large egg
  • ¼ tsp salt
  •  ½ tsp vanilla
  • ½ cup chocolate chips

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 375 °F, and grease or line two cookie sheets. *We did not grease the sheets because my friend’s family typically uses PAM, and I can’t eat it. It was definitely a mistake to bake on an unlined baking sheet, but who doesn’t love less-than-perfect cookies that become testers???*

Step 2: In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until well-mixed.

Step 3: Whisk together the flour and baking soda.

Step 4: Add egg, salt, and vanilla to flour mixture, and stir until well-combined and smooth. *We actually added 1 ½ tsps of vanilla because my friend’s family really likes it, but next time I would stick with just the ½ tsp.*

Step 5: Stir in chocolate chips. *We put in the suggested ½ cup but I would definitely put in at least a full cup next time*

Step 6: Dollop the dough in teaspoons onto the cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. *Pretty sure our drops of dough were larger than a teaspoon . . . *

Step 7: Bake for 11 minutes, then let stand briefly before moving them to a rack to cool.

This recipe makes about 45 cookies. *We didn’t make nearly this many cookies with this recipe, mind you, we had a few people snacking on the cookie dough . . . *

What is your favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe???

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Blogmas Day 8: Homemade Nanaimo Bars

by Literary and Lovely3 Comments on Blogmas Day 8: Homemade Nanaimo Bars

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Good morning all!!!

For anyone who might not know, Nanaimo bars are a three layer dessert featuring a crumb-based layer, a butter icing layer, and to top it off, a melted chocolate layer. A super cool fact is that these delicious no-baking-required treats are named after a west coast city very close to my own home: Nanaimo, British Columbia!

Way back in 1986, the Mayor of Nanaimo, Graeme Roberts, started up a contest to find the best Nanaimo Bar recipe. The contest lasted a month, and almost 100 different recipes were submitted, but the winner was Joyce Hardcastle.

Now I don’t know if my family Nanaimo Bar recipe is the same as Joyce Hardcastle’s, and it hasn’t been recognized by any mayor, but it is the most delicious recipe I have come across, and as a Canadian, I have tried lots!!!

Ingredients: 

  1. Bottom Layer
  • ½ cup butter or ¼ cup margarine
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • I egg beaten
  • ½ cup chocolate chips semi-sweet or 5 tbsp cocoa
  • 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
  • 1 cup coconut (finely ground)
  • ½ chopped nuts (optional)

2. Middle Layer

  • ¼ cup butter or margarine
  • 2tbsp vanilla custard powder
  • 2 tbsp milk (or cream)
  • 2 cups sifted icing sugar

3. Third Layer

  • 1 cup chocolate chips
  • 1 tbsp butter or margarine
  • ¼ cup icing sugar

Steps: 

Step 1: To make the bottom layer, mix butter, sugar, egg, and chipits in a heavy saucepan, and stir until mixed. Then add in crumbs, coconut, and nuts, and press into 9” square pan

Step 2: Cream butter, custard, milk, and icing sugar until smooth and spread evenly over crumb layer. Then chill these two layers in the fridge until set.

Step 3: To make the top later, melt butter and chipits over low heat, then allow to cool. Once cooled but still in liquid state, pour over first two chilled layers..

Step 4: Chill the pan in the refrigerator.

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Another special family recipe, handwritten by my grandmother

And voilà: a super-easy no-baking-required dessert!!! I love adding these to dessert platters, especially at family gatherings because they are the perfect size for snacking, and they always get eaten. The pictures above are of the last few that were left at the end of the day I made them. They went that fast!!! I had set aside a few for photos but somehow the “Do not touch-blog material” sign was misread as “Help yourself to these delicious treats.”

If you haven’t made Nanaimo bars before, give this recipe a try and let me know what you think!!!

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Blogmas Day 2: Christmas Baking

by Literary and Lovely3 Comments on Blogmas Day 2: Christmas Baking

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Good afternoon all!!!

One of my favourite festive things to do is Christmas baking with my grandmother. Every year, we test out new recipes and make old favourites, and for this round of baking we wanted to make one of our traditional recipes: shortbread cookies. They are super easy to make, and so delicious to eat.

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My grandmother’s handwritten recipe

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups of butter
  • 1 cup of icing sugar
  • 4 cups of flour

Step 1: Mix these ingredients in a bowl until they are smooth.

Step 2: Roll the dough into small balls and press with a fork to create a ribbed design, or cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Depending on how wide your cookie tray is, limit the number of cookies per row to about 4, as they will spread out in the oven and you don’t want them melding together. Although, that would make for one massive cookie . . .

Step 3: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and then pop them in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

Step 4: Enjoy your delicious, warm, home-made shortbread cookies with a cup of hot chocolate or tea.

I love giving these as presents to people, having them out when company comes over, and snacking on them while studying for final exams.

What are you baking this Christmas season???

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