Whoopie Pies

 

About a month or so ago Lillie and Lola had their first whoopie pie. I will eat one if it's offered to me but I am not an enormous fan of them so I was surprised at how much they LOVED them! The ones they first had were from Fresh Market so I thought it would be fun to make some homemade ones with them later that week. Over the last few weeks we have tried a few different recipes and here is what they've liked best (it's a mix of two different recipes with some minor alterations to each).

For the cookie part we used a recipe from Cookies and Cups and very slightly altered it. She has a recipe for cake batter filling and cookie dough filling both of which I cannot wait to try!

• 1 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 5 Tbsp butter – room temp
• 3 Tbsp vegetable shortening
• 1 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup buttermilk

For directions on mixing them up and baking them up you can click here. 

And now for the filling:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened but still cool
• 1½ cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 7 oz jar of marshmallow creme (we used a tiny bit less than a full jar)

Beat together the butter and confectioners' sugar on medium speed and then add in the vanilla, salt and marshmallow creme. After that it helps to put it in the fridge for about half an hour or so and then you just dallop a nice sized scoop onto each cookie and then place another one on top!

 I scooped my filling into a large ziplock bag and cut a little hole in one of the corners and squirted it out into nice neat little dallops...or at least that was my plan - haha! Lillie and Lola helped me so I didn't end up with a single one that was as "pretty" looking as I had hoped for photographing, but oh well, they had fun!

the bottle and straw are from The TomKat Studio

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend! I will hopefully be back later this weekend with our first of two Easter chalkboards and then after that will show you my Easter tablescape as part of a Spring Thing I'm joining along with some other wonderful bloggers!

Raspberry & Chocolate Ganache Tartlets

In preparation for Valentines Day (coming up!) here is a wonderful, delicious tartlet recipe. (If I do say so myself.) I am not a huge fan of Valentines Day, but I do love the excuse to make fun desserts.

I used a crust recipe from Epicurious and it will work for either a full 9" tart pan or about 4-6 mini tart pans, which is what I used. This crust recipe is great to make ahead of time and then freeze until you need it. If you make it ahead of time, form the dough into a disc (or discs if you are using smaller pans), wrap, and freeze/refrigerate it that way.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 3 tablespoons (or more) ice water
• 2 tablespoons chilled whipping cream

Preparation:

Blend flour and salt. Add butter; using a pastry cutter, cut in until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add 3 tablespoons ice water and cream. Process just until moist clumps form, adding more ice water by teaspoonfuls if dough is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic; chill 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 375°F and spray or butter the tartlet pans. Roll dough into a small circle and then push the tart dough into the pans, poke holes in the bottom with a fork, and place in freezer for 10-20 minutes. Remove from freezer and bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

For the Ganache:

• 6 ounces dark or bittersweet chocolate (finely chopped)
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 4 tablespoons raspberry jam
• 3-5 cups fresh raspberries

In a small sauce pan allow the cream to boil. Once boiling, remove from heat and stir in 1 tablespoon of raspberry jam. Then stir in chocolate. Continue to stir until all of the chocolate has melted. Let the ganache cool for about 10-15 minutes, then pour into baked tartlet crusts. Arrange whole raspberries on top of the tarts. Over medium heat stir remaining 3 tablespoons of raspberry jam and 1 teaspoons of water until melted. Pour this glaze over the raspberries on the tartlets.

A Chocolate Shop Review - Chocolatier Blue

It is wonderful to live in a city again! All things new and exciting, and an endless supply of restaurants and boutique shops to check out. Andy and I were in Berkeley last weekend and we happened upon a chocolate shop. Now, for one- who doesn't love chocolate, and for two- since owning my own chocolate business (Zest Chocolat), I feel the need to check out all other chocolate offerings in the world.

Upon entering the shop we realized what we saw was what we got. A tiny little shop that does everything right there behind the counter. Now if they had only been making the chocolate at the time we came in. I'm sure it is quite the site when they are making it.

The lady behind the counter greeted us when we entered the shop and offered us each a free Sage Honey Truffle. Um wow, free chocolate, yes please! It was delightful! The ganache was very runny though, which I thought might be a characteristic of only that flavor. (Unfortunately not.)

Andy and I bought a box of six flavors: Passion Fruit Caramel, Cranberry Jalapeno, Sweet Potato Casserole, Whiskey Spice, Root Beer Float, and Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam. Our favorites were Sweet Potato Casserole and the Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam. Talk about flavor! The rest were disappointingly bland tasting for their names though.

It was a nice experience, but we probably won't be frequenting this chocolate shop too often. The truffles were quite small for the price ($2/each!) and rather than being a rich soft chocolate they were runny and messy. The only part of the truffle that actually tasted like chocolate was the outer chocolate coating. I give huge kudos for the artistic decorating on the outsides of the truffles though.

If you find yourself in the area and want to check them out for yourselves here's the info:
Chocolatier Blue
1964 University Avenue  Berkeley, CA 94704

Peanut Butter Bark

First of all, Happy Christmas Eve! Andy and I are in Goshen, Indiana (right outside Chicago) spending a few days with family before we move on. I'm glad we are getting to see some family on this cross-country trip, especially since we are traveling right over Christmas.

This is the third and final recipe for chocolate bark. The other two can be found here and here. If you have chocolate and peanut butter on hand this could be a fun thing to make with your family today. Or...maybe you are busy with other things. Either way, this could also be a good Easter bark!

Peanut Butter Bark
16 oz. (or 2 cups) of white chocolate (chips or candy melts)
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
8 oz. (or 1 cup) dark or milk chocolate (chips or candy melts)

Start by laying some wax paper over a cookie sheet. Next, melt the peanut butter and white chocolate either in a double boiler or in the microwave. Separately melt the dark chocolate in the microwave. Pour the melted white chocolate and peanut butter mixture into the cookie sheet and spread it out with a spatula. Take the melted dark chocolate and drizzle it in lines over the peanut butter mixture. Then, take a knife and drag it through the chocolate the opposite way of the chocolate lines to marbleize it.


That is it. It is an elegant and easy way to make bark. You can also use the marbleizing affect with icing to decorate cakes or cookies. It is much simpler to do than it looks.

Enjoy...and Merry Christmas tomorrow!

Salted Dark Chocolate Toffee Bark

A while ago I posted about making Christmas packages of chocolate for friends. I have a lot of chocolate on hand since I just closed down my chocolate business. Bark is super easy to make. It is pretty much just melting and spreading chocolate while adding things to it.
(Here's also a recipe for peppermint bark.)

This bark recipe is a little different than most. It is a toffee bark recipe, which means it is just chocolate and toffee layered on top of each other. With chunky salt sprinkled on top too!

This was actually my first time making toffee. I always thought toffee was just a hard-candy version of caramel, but it's not! I have made caramel many a time and it is much more complicated with more ingredients than toffee. Anyone could make toffee! All it is is butter and sugar...healthy right?

Salted Dark Chocolate Toffee Bark
For the Toffee:
-2 cups butter
-2 cups sugar
-a pinch of salt
Combine butter, sugar, and salt in a pot. Stir it over medium heat until the butter and sugar are completely melted. Then turn the heat down to low. Stir it occasionally, but not too much. Put a thermometer in the pot and let it simmer until the toffee is amber color and slightly over 300 degrees F. Remove it from the heat and pour it out onto a waxed paper lined cookie sheet. Spread it out to the size of the pan.

For the chocolate:
Take about 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips (or any kind of chopped chocolate) and sprinkle them over the hot toffee on the cookie sheet. Give the chocolate a few minutes to melt and then spread it evenly over the toffee. Take large granulated salt and sprinkle it over the top generously. (I could have added more to my bark.) Put the pan in the refrigerator and let it cool.

If you want a layer of chocolate on the other side of the toffee flip the toffee/chocolate over after it has cooled and hardened. Take another 2 cups of chocolate and melt it in the microwave. Once it is thoroughly melted add it to the toffee and spread it out. Let it cool. When the whole toffee/chocolate sheet has cooled break it into pieces.

That's it! So easy, yet so classy.

Peppermint Bark

Last week I wrote about making chocolate bark with the leftovers of chocolate that I have from my business. I made three different kinds and boxed them up for friends. It was easy and fun, and I've never made bark before. I'm telling you, it is probably the easiest kind of chocolate candy to make out there. You really can't screw it up.

One of the main joys of bark (other than it being chocolate) is that you break it into pieces. Of course, you can cut it or mold it, but the broken rough edges are what makes it fun and kind of artsy/rustic.

For this recipe I used dark chocolate on the bottom and white chocolate on top. You can do that, or just keep it all white chocolate. The all white chocolate route would definitely be quicker and much simpler. I personally like dark chocolate better though, so I wanted to include it. I also like the contrasting look of the dark brown, white, and bits of red. So pretty!

Peppermint Bark
-2 cups white chocolate chips or candy melts
-2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips or candy melts
-about 1 cup of crushed candycanes

Cover a cookie sheet with with a layer of wax paper. Melt the semi-sweet (dark) chocolate chips either in the microwave or in a double boiler. (Be careful not to burn the chocolate in the microwave. Heat for 20 seconds then stir. Keep doing that until it is all melted.) Spread melted chocolate evenly onto the cookie sheet. Let it cool and harden. Melt the white chocolate and pour it onto the dark chocolate sheet. Spread it evenly. Sprinkle the crushed candy canes over the white chocolate.

Voila! You're done. Now wrap em up, make em pretty and give them as gifts.

Christmas Packages

I've been busy! I closed down the chocolate business about a month ago, but my chocolate making hasn't ceased. When I closed the business I still had about 40 pounds of chocolate left...what to do with 40 pounds of chocolate?! Make candy and give it to your friends of course!

I decided on making bark to send to people. Chocolate bark is easy, tasty, pretty, and uses a LOT of chocolate. Which is the theme of my Christmas chocolate making, to use lots of chocolate! I don't want to be moving 40 pounds of chocolate across the country in one months time.

Most people would be thrilled to have 40 pounds of chocolate, but not me. I love chocolate, sometimes I even dream about it, but not 40 pounds of it. 40 pounds is overwhelming, it's heavy, it makes me feel sick thinking about eating it all. (Which I will do if I don't get rid of it. If you see me 40 pounds heavier in 6 months you'll know why.)

Bark was so much fun to make. And boxing it all pretty with one of our Christmas cards just made me plain old happy. In the following weeks I'll post some easy bark recipes that you can make for yourself. You'll have to buy the chocolate from the store though...because I'm sure you don't have FORTY pounds of it laying around. Really, I wish I could give you some of this chocolate!

How to "Fake" A Fancy Dessert

I don't know about you, but I love dessert and I like for it to look pretty (if possible), but I really don't like to spend hours and hours in the kitchen. Well, last week Jamie and I were craving another dessert but didn't have time to make it. It requires several steps and we were looking for something quick and here is what we came up with:

I had seen several links on Pinterest for making chocolate bowls using balloons that were dipped in melted chocolate. After reading quite a few stories on how some of the balloons burst and chocolate went everywhere I got a little nervous to try them. If I were back in VA I would have given it a try but seeing how we are still at my parents house, I was pretty sure my dad would die if he walked in to find balloons bursting with melted chocolate spraying all over his kitchen! I had seen somewhere where a person had made a chocolate bowl with cupcake liners so I figured I would play around with that and give that a try. Well, they were a lot of fun and super easy!

First we got one of those bags of chocolate candy that you can find pretty much anywhere. We got ours at Michael's. I am pretty sure you could just melt chocolate chips too, though if you wanted. We just put ours in a bowl and popped it in the microwave for about 25 seconds then stirred it, then 25 more seconds, then stirred, and so on until it was nicely melted.

 (Yes, that is a paint brush next to the spoon - I will explain that in a minute.)

   

Now plop a nice big spoonful into the cupcake liner.

Now use the brush and kind of tilt the cupcake liner to the side and "paint" the sides. You want it to be pretty thick. And don't worry - this isn't a yucky old paintbrush! =) I bought this little brush in the baking aisle at Michael's.

Now set them in a muffin/cupcake tin and pop them in the freezer.

After about 30 minutes or so you can pull them out and just peel off the paper.

Now for the mousse! I just used a mix - I told you this was easy!

I followed the directions on the box and mixed it up.

Now you could just spoon it like that into the chocolate bowls but I wanted to have a little fun with mine. Seeing how I had purchased this little set for the chocolate rosette cake I made I figured I might as well use it for this as well!

I added the mousse to the bag and then just piped it into the chocolate bowl (with some help from Lillie so it's not perfect!) =) and then added a few chocolate shavings and that was it!

We made a few with whipped cream on top too! Not exactly the most nutritious treat, but it was easy and sure was yummy!

I hope you all are having a great week so far!