Toffee Nut Cookies

This cookie is kind of like Panera’s Toffee Nut Cookie, but homemade.  I made these cookies the first week of the new year and I have had absolutely no time to post about them (and this post will be short, for me).

To create the cookie, I looked at the ingredients listed on the package of the Panera cookie.  I then decided to modify my basic chocolate chip cookie recipe based on the ingredient list from the Panera cookie.  Lastly, to make my cookie more special I added more nuts and toffee than in the Panera Cookie.  I believe the add-ins in the Panera cookie are minimal to keep costs down.  I, however, am only concerned with my bottom, not my bottom line :-)

So, if you like the Toffee Nut Cookies made by Panera, try making them at home.  Not saying they will replace a large, delicious Panera cookie, (I mean hello... It is Panera!) but they will more than satisfy.

Toffee Nut Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) Butter

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

3/4 cup Granulated Sugar

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

2 Eggs (or Egg Replacer)

2 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 bag Heath Toffee Bits (the kind without chocolate)

1 cup Brazil Nuts (ground with about 1/4 cup of the flour above so it does not form a butter in the food processor; also, if you like larger chunks of nuts, do not grind the nuts as fine)

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

2. Cream together butter and sugars.

3. Add in vanilla and eggs (or egg replacer).

4. In a separate bowl mix the flour, ground brazil nuts, salt, and baking soda.

5. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until combined.

6. Add in the toffee bits and mix in completely.

7. Scope cookies onto parchment lined cookie sheet, leaving space because they will spread.

8. Bake for about 15 minutes.

9. Cool (hot bubbling sugar right out the oven, not a good idea) and enjoy!

Flyby Post: Lemon, Lemon, Lemon (in a Jar)

My friend has a Birthday coming up this week and we celebrated over this past weekend.  In June or July she saw the lemon cake I made for mom’s Birthday in 2010 on my blog.  She asked for that cake then, and I told her I would make it for her Birthday in December, figuring (a) she would forget or (b) by December she would not want a lemon cake, which reads summer to me.

So, I thought the cake idea had sufficiently died until 1.5 weeks ago when we were making Birthday plans and she mentioned the lemon cake.  She wanted to share the lemon cake with friends at a Birthday dinner at out favorite vegetarian restaurant.  A full cake would not travel well for this setting, so I decided that cake in a jar would be perfect.

After finishing the meal out came the cake in a jar.  My friend, being the sweet-lover that she is, loved her cake and side stepped the small spoon that was more decorative then useful, and picked up her dinner fork to eat the cake.  Her husband, however, decided to use the little spoon and dropped a fourth of the cake on his pants.  All in all, it came out well and tasted yummy… even if it was a summer cake made in winter.

Flyby Post: Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp

This is just a quick post to show a treat I whipped up for work today.

These cookies are really easy and quick to accomplish. I used my favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe and thinned the batter with a little skim milk to get a flatter, crisper cookie. I then chopped (into pretty small pieces) toasted hazelnuts and folded in mini chocolate chips.

These cookies remind me of Nutella, of course, without the overwhelming taste of cocoa. Between the flavor notes of hazelnut and chocolate, you get the luscious taste of vanilla and brown sugar in the cookie batter. YUM!

Fly By Post: Cinnamon Popcorn Marshmallow Treats

I have really been wanting to make some caramel corn again.  Last time I had too much popcorn and there was not a consistent and even coating of caramel on the popcorn.  Don’t get me wrong, it was good, great even, but not perfect.

Unfortunately, with my schedule this week, I have not had the time.  Caramel corn, though easy to make, requires me to babysit the oven for an hour.  I did not have that kind of time.  So, I thought up this cinnamon caramel corn inspired treat instead.

Think rice krispies treats, but with popcorn instead of cereal.  The marshmallows are cinnamon bun flavored and I added in some toasted pecans for crunch.

These are sticky and sweet.  They did not completely hit the spot for caramel corn.  Yet, in a week were I have not had the time to bake anything, these at least satisfied my baking anemia.  Seven days without baking makes one weak!  (Pun intended)

Cinnamon Bun (flavored) Popcorn Marshmallow Treats

1/2 cup un-popped popcorn kernels, pop plain with no butter or salt

1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
Cinnamon to taste
Healthy dose of salt
8oz bag Jet Puff Cinnamon Bun Marshmallows
2-4oz plain marshmallows (to your taste)
1 cup chopped toasted pecans

1. Pop popcorn, remove all un-popped kernels, and set aside in large bowl.
2. Melt stick of butter. Once melted stir in sugar, cinnamon, and salt.
3. Let cook together for a few minutes before stirring in all marshmallows.
4. Let all marshmallows melt before removing the mixture from the heat.
5. Pour marshmallow mixture over popcorn. Throw in pecans.
6. Stir until all pieces are evenly coated. Dump the popcorn mixture into a prepared pan. I used an 8x8in for thicker bars, but 9x13in would be okay as well. (greased, parchment, or otherwise).
7. Let cool completely before removing and cutting.

Fly-by Post: Birthday Baking

I am making a sincere effort to blog more about what I bake.  I bake A LOT more than what I post here.  I bake for my office at least once a week, but usually twice.  Not all of those treats make it here, however.  That would require me to take pictures AND write witty stories about everything I make.

I recently got a new camera, well not so recently.  But, I did recently up load the software to get the pictures from my camera to my computer.  This camera takes amazing pictures.  Not that they are all artistic and I do not have the time for photo styling, but I get much more awesome quality pictures than with my previous camera (which the view finder showed static due to it being dropped and I still used it for over a year).

So, I will be posting more pictures here of what I bake.  I cannot promise the writing will be phenomenal; heck, the writing is not phenomenal now.  So, here is my first fly-by post.

Another cross-continental friend, Sef, is having a birthday soon.  I wanted to send her some treats, just a few sweet and not so sweet options.  One of Sef’s favorite things I have ever made weas cheddar and dill scones—go figure, something savory.  I do not do savory often and out of all the sweet things I make, she had to love this one savory thing.

So, for her birthday I decided to whip these up.  I adapted the Barefoot Contessa’s Cheddar Dill Scone recipe, available on Food Network.com.

I couldn’t only do something savory, so I made something sweet as well.  I wanted to do something different.  I came up with the idea of Cinnamon Chip Snickerdoodle Cookies.  After doing some internet searching, I found the name Cinnadoodle Cookies and adapted a recipe from Two Peas & Their Pods.

Lastly, a gift is not a gift without chocolate.  So, I made Mint Brownie Chip Cookies.  I folded in fully baked frozen brownie pieces and mint morsels into chocolate chip cookie batter.  I am really feeling brownies in cookies right now.

I hope Sef likes her treats and has a wonderful birthday.  (Please access the above site/blog to find the recipes.  Because this is a fly by post, I did not have time write up the recipes.)

My Month in Baking: June 2011

June was a busy month for me. I tried to memorialize my month in baking, but then I just realized these are only pictures of about half the treats that left my kitchen. None the less:

Cookies

My friend’s soon-to-be Mother-In-Law is part of an annual charity bake sale.  She asked me if I would make some treats for the bake sale.  Each table is assigned a color.  The color assigned to her table was purple (and yellow for her partner’s table).  I made purple traditional French macarons filled with Lemon Curd Butter Cream (not pictured), yellow and purple layered rice krispies treats (not pictured), and decorated earl grey short bread/sugar cookies.

The bake sale had an overarching tea party theme, hence these cookies.  The frosting is a regular royal icing flavored with orange extract.  That was the special touch to these cookies.

Giant Cupcake Cakes

The kids my mom used to babysit were having a birthday party and I brought the cake.  The pink one is my homemade confetti cake recipe in a giant cupcake size (10 cup capacity) with Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  The blue one is an experimental snickers bar cake, in a slightly smaller large cupcake size (6 cup capacity), with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream as well.

Both of these pans were gifts, and I never used them before.  The fact the pans are so deep made it impossible to completely bake the larger cupcake thoroughly without the outside of the cake turning nearly rock hard.  If I had more time, I would have applied simple syrup to remoisten the cake.  The snicker cake looks a mess, a delicious mess, due to the inherent liquid quality of caramel.  As this cake was sliced, it became the leaning tower of cupcake.

Birthday Cake

There was another office birthday at the end of June, so another cake was in order.  I used the same confetti cake recipe I created in a previous post, except I exchanged the buttermilk for sour cream to ensure the cake was moist (and tried not to over bake it this time).

This cake came out perfect this time.  I put a little strawberry filling between the layers and frosted it with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  I added a little shortening to the SMBC, for better decorating consistency, and added the piped dot flowers.

I loved the way this cake came out.  It looked wonderful with all the different positions and sizes of flowers, not to mention the stems and leaves.

So far, July has not been a busy baking month, but I do have an apple tart in the oven as I type :-)