Caramel Apple Cookies

Nothing says "fall" like a caramel apple. But those aren't very fun to eat, nor do they store well in your cabinet. These cookies fix both of those problems. Using some diced granny smith apple and caramel bits from the baking aisle, these cookies taste just like a caramel apple. They also bake very well, soft in the middle, a little crisp on the edges. I think the recipe called for far too much apple and caramel for the amount of dough, and could have used a little more moisture (I added about a tablespoon of water and a couple teaspoons of spiced rum), but they were great otherwise.

The Pumpkin Chronicles

I went a little crazy with the pumpkin the past couple of weeks. This is what you get when Walmart insists on selling only the giant sized cans of pumpkin...

Baking Interregnum / Lemon Buttermilk Pound Cake

Sorry, I got busy/lazy these past couple of weeks. Not with the baking so much, mostly with the posting. Work made me nocturnal and I also had to deal with an unscheduled apartment hunt. But fear not, I bring order back to my kitchen. I missed photographing a couple baking episodes, like the balsamic cherry chocolate cookies and the whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, but I'm going to start getting through the backlog now before I completely freak out over holiday baking. Get ready for holiday cookies people. They are coming...

Honey Pecan Cookies

I like these cookies because they don't require softened butter, but that also means they are very dense. Luckily, I like dense cookies. I also didn't have honey (I know, it's in the title) but I did have agave nectar and some real maple syrup. I used about a 80/20 proportion of those two to replace the honey. I think it was pretty much the same as honey, right...? In any event, the maple syrup smelled fantastic when the cookies were baking. I also used some course ground sea salt instead of regular table salt to give it a bit of texture. 

Chocolate Apricot Sandwich Cookies

These cookies were for another overnight at work. The cookie dough has a very deep chocolate flavor but isn't too sweet. The apricot preserves filling adds the extra little bit of sugar to make these delicious. I also splurged on some quality melting chocolate (68% cocoa, thanks Central Market). The dipping chocolate was so good I scooped the rest of it out of the bowl with a piece of bread...

Pumpkin Sage Bundt Cake

Mmm, more pumpkin. My fellow chino folders were getting punchy about more baked goods, so here was something easily transported with a descent shelf life. This cake is a pretty basic bundt cake with the addition of sage. The sage is steeped with the butter for a few minutes to infuse the flavor...

Avocado Pound Cake

I don't know why avocado hasn't made it's way into pastry more. It's fatty, it's colorful, it has a creamy and delicate flavor. I think avocado is the next pumpkin. Expect an avocado latte from Starbucks in the next couple of years. It's happening...

Watermelon Pie

Even though I've already delved into autumn flavors with all the pumpkin lately, it still feels like summer here in Texas, so here's a recipe from The Runaway Spoon appropriate for the temperatures outside. I meant to make this a couple weeks ago, but was being lazy about juicing the watermelon. So in the intervening time between me buying the watermelon and actually cutting into it, it's been terrorizing Bailey (my dog) while it sat in the corner of my kitchen. Why do I get the "special" dogs? Maybe it's appropriate that on her first birthday I vanquished the evil melon with my chef's knife...

Muffin explosion!

I have to work an overnight shift at work, so I thought muffins would make the hard labor less agonizing. That and lots of coffee. Lootss of coffee. I decided to make a couple recipes I found at Baking Bites: Espresso Spice Pumpkin Muffins and Browned Butter Brown Sugar Muffins.

Pumpkin Spice Scones

I told you I was going to make more scones. Also, this brief sting of sub triple digit heat has made it seem like fall is here, and thus pumpkin is going to start making its way into everything I bake. Mmmm pumpkin. When organizing my recipes yesterday I almost made a tab just for pumpkin.

Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know what you're thinking: "You already created the perfect chocolate chip cookie Tanner, why would you bother with a new recipe." Well, you see, curious blog reader, I've been intrigued with salt lately, as it is all the rage with the foodie types...

Basic Brownies

Basic brownies? How boring. But, after the anything-but-boring bacon brownies, I wanted to get a better understanding of some brownie basics, so here they are...

Orange Poppy Seed Scones

I've always enjoyed me some scones, but felt they were more effort than they were worth to make myself. And thus I suffered through years of sugar saturated coffee shop scones. Damn you Starbucks, damn you. But lo, behold these awesome scones made with these two hands of mine. Messy? yes. Hard? no...

Lemon Olive Oil Cookies

This is a quick post. These cookies weren't very complicated and came together pretty easily. I wanted to see how olive oil played in cookies. From what my brief research session showed, olive oil leaves the cookies a little crusty and cakey. These cookies supported that bit of info to a T. They tasted much like the olive oil bundt cakes I baked a few weeks ago and were the cakiest cookies I've ever made. They might be for some people, but not for me...

Salted Caramel Squares

Warning: Do not attempt at home. This recipe should only be attempted by those with professional grade kitchens.

So, yeah, these were probably my biggest failure to date. Having been burned by hot sugar before, I was pretty gunshy about this one, which is why I think this failure was due to undercooking...

Key Lime Cookies

I love lime. (Do you really love lime, or are you just saying it because you saw it? (yep, that's an Anchorman spoof, live with it)).

Petit Fours: Round One

My kitchen looks like a tornado ripped through Candyland and I think I just gave myself diabetes. Round one will be chalked up as a "learning experience." Mes petits gâteaux are actually little packages from Satan. Ok, maybe they weren't that much trouble, but I just spent an entire hour mixing icing. The icing was really the only terrible part. Icing *shudder*...

Let them eat Petit Four

I've taken it upon myself, with some gentle urging from an expecting friend, to learn how to make petit fours. Don't know what petit fours are? Don't worry, only the Cox twins would have that knowledge and craving. Petit fours are cakes or other pastries small enough to eat in one bite. Usually they are sponge cakes with a cream or jam filling and iced to look like a tiny present or with a tiny flower. So, Stephanie and Katherine, I'm making petit fours for the next couple of weeks, I hope you're hungry. I'll be going through several genoise and Bicuit De Savoie recipes from The Cake Bible and playing around with soaking syrups and creams until I've satisfied myself with the results. Good thing the ingredients are cheap. Any suggestions on flavors? I'm trying out a classic almond and maybe a lavender cream to begin with. Chocolate might make an appearance. I'm open to ideas.

Chocolate Bourbon Bundt Cake

I'm back! I know, it's been a while since I baked something. While my body is probably thanking me for a respite from sugar deluge, I've gotten back to it. I started a new (hopefully temporary) job, and I haven't had the motivation to jump into a hot kitchen, but I had today off, so here we are...

Almond Tart

Not may pictures for this because both of my hands were usually busy and I couldn't leave the eggs alone for very long when making the custard. This turned out a lot better than I predicted though. This tart was my first attempt at a custard, as well as my first attempt at the pastry dough, so I figured failure was eminent...

Zucchini Bread

Sorry, I've been lazy about posting this week. Here's one from a few days ago. This is a recipe courtesy of mom. I had some leftover zucchini after making some zucchini-ricotta fritters, and bread is always a good way to use it up...

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

As I mentioned with the Garam Masala cookies, I have never been able to master the classic Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie. They always come out thick and cakey. That might sound great to you, but for me, I want a thin, chewy, gooey chocolate chip cookie. So while I avoided yelling at my TV over the deficit negotiations, I took up the banner of creating the perfect chocolate chip cookie. I think I've succeeded. I started with the basic Toll House recipe and threw every trick I know at it to make it better. I increased the white sugar to brown sugar ratio; I added some water to the recipe; I not only melted the butter, I browned it; I mixed the dough using only a wooden spoon; and finally I shortened the baking time by two minutes. And voila! Perfection. The browned butter really adds a nutty-buttery flavor and the cinnamon gives the cookie a little more depth in flavor than just sugar and chocolate. I suggest you mix up a batch for yourself to store in your disaster shelter you're going to have to live in once we go into default. They'll sooth your nerves when the roving motorcycle gangs start taking control in the post-default distopia we'll soon be living in...

Olive Oil Bundt Cake

Doesn't "bundt" seem like it should always be followed by an exclamation point? Bundt! cake. It's cake; you should be excited. Anyway, here's another experiment with olive oil as the lipid. It's a pretty basic recipe I found at Food & Wine. A little too basic in my opinion. The flavor was a little flat with just the orange zest. It needed some spice or herb flavoring to it...

Garam Masala Cookies

Whoa....that's a spicy cookie (add generic Italian accent if you wish). I love masala, I even add it to my meatloaf, but I was intrigued when I saw it in cookies. Cumin and coriander aren't exactly baking spices, so I wanted to see how these would taste. I thought they might be similar to spicy Christmas cookies (not chili spicy, like ginger spicy)...

Elderflower-Lime Travel Cakes

I've made these before. They're delicious and incredibly easy. I don't make them more because I don't have a food processor, so I only make them when I go to my parents. And for those avoiding wheat, these are gluten free as they are made with almond paste rather than flour. My icing never turns out as nice as the ones in the professional picture, but they taste incredible.

Ginger Peach Bread

I've been trying to use up the things in my cabinet that have been sitting there for too long, and I discovered a can of peach halves. I don't like canned peaches, and I can't remember why I bought them...maybe another attempt to recreate a strawberry-peach pie? I don't know. I also have this giant jar of apple sauce that I was suppose to use as a vegetable oil substitute, but not having made anything which required vegetable oil lately, I still have a giant jar of apple sauce hogging a large section of my refrigerator. I figured the best thing to use the peaches and sauce was a quick bread. I started with this recipe for a basic peach bread and then added my own twist to it...

Chocolate Pie

This one's for you Em.  This recipe seemed so simple that I figured it had to be delicious, especially since it was touted as coming from a true Southern cook. Not so. It tastes like chocolate eggs and is by no means "fudgy" as the recipe intro describes it. I'm thinking my oven, which I suspect is on a slow, but accelerating, decline, overcooked this one. I pulled it out 10 min earlier than the recipe called for and it looked a little overdone already. I also replaced the sugar with Splenda, so maybe this Southern pie refused to be made healthier...

Bacon-Bourbon-Pecan Brownies

Because butter and chocolate apparently aren't enough in brownies, why not add bacon grease? I had to give these brownies a go as soon as I read the recipe in Food&Wine. I think this is about as manly as dessert is going to get, and it includes three of my favorite things. 

This has to be the messiest thing I've made in a while. I think half my kitchen is now spattered with bacon grease and brownie batter. I had to fry the bacon, melt the chocolate, and then mix it all together in several steps. It's a good thing they turned out alright...

My Perfect Manhattan

Some of you may know that my drink of choice is a Manhattan. I doubt any of you know that there once was actually a Manhattan glass, which looked like a narrow martini glass. After about a year of looking, I finally found something approximating a true Manhattan, and all for $14 for a set of 5. Hooray ebay! (and ignorant estate sale urchins!) (Tip: look for...

Key Lime Cheesecake

Happy birthday 'merica.  I had a great time on the 4th with some old friends from Abilene. We grilled out at Katherine (Cox) and Taylor Ansley's (of Dinner with Taylor and Katherine fame) and ate very well with grilled flank steak, brats, sliders, delicious potato salad and broccoli slaw, and watermelon, and then Katherine's homemade cookies and cream ice cream and my mini key lime cheesecakes for dessert...

Lemon-Thyme Olive Oil Cake with Balsamic Whipped Cream Frosting

About a month ago I ran into Kathleen at Target when we both happened to be visiting our families in Abilene. Having not seen each other in years and realizing we were both now in Dallas we planned to hang out. She's a busy lady though, so I promised her cake as a means of tempting her to venture downtown to see me. I ended up making several mini-cake (no, not cupcake) versions of this recipe for lemon-thyme cupcakes. After my defeat with the cornmeal and rosemary...

New Pans

Sur La Table has a sale going on, so, it being a favorite store of mine, I swung by. Turns out they finally had the cheesecake pan I've been trying to find (and it was on sale!) as well as an inexpensive tube pan. After ogling their giant Le Cruset section, I managed to get out of there for under $50, which I considered impressive. Look forward to cakes in the near future.

Elderflower Mint Julep

No, this isn't baked. It's a drink. I'll include a few drink recipes from time to time as well, as I think mixology is as interesting as baking (and far less time consuming). Here is a basic mint julep with the addition of St. Germain elderflower liqueur. I also made a mint-infused syrup to heighten the mint flavor and remove the need to muddle the mint leaves.

To make the mint simple syrup...

Cardamom & Clove Meringues

After the rosemary cornmeal cake I made last night, I had some leftover egg whites. Not wanting to waste them, I decided to try my hand at meringue cookies. A quick search surprised me with more than one recipe that contained cardamom, one of my new favorite spices. Reading through the comments of these recipes lead me to believe that the cardamom wasn't exactly a perfect match, so I decided to round out the flavoring with some ground cloves. All the recipes seemed essentially the same: whip the crap out of the egg whites and gradually add the sugar and spices when soft peaks begin to form, then continue whipping until hard peaks form. It was about after 5 minutes of standing there holding my hand mixer that I began to long for that Kitchenaid of my dreams. I didn't have high expectations since this was my first time attempting meringues and am intimidated by egg whites to begin with, so I'm pretty sure I didn't use proper technique at all. In any event, I could never get true stiff peaks to form, so I waited as long as my patience allowed, then just stuffed the batter into a pastry bag and piped as many cookies as would fit on my pans.

I clearly need more than two pans. I ended up throwing about a third of the batter out...

Rosemary cornmeal cake with rosemary balsamic syrup

As some may know, I'll put rosemary in just about anything. When I found this recipe I thought it would be right up my alley. Nope. Cornmeal does not a perfect cake make. The flavor is akin to sweetened cornbread (which is essentially all it is). The texture was pretty good. Nice and dense and spongy. The balsamic syrup just made it taste like an appetizer from Macaroni Grill.

Here is the cake in the pan after I cut out a couple slices. The balsamic syrup is in the carafe to the left.

Here is the plated version dusted with powdered sugar.

While I enjoyed the rosemary, which was very prominent, the rest of the cake was a mismatch of flavors that I wouldn't want to serve at the end of a meal. Dusted with enough powdered sugar it's not terrible, but I won't be making this again. I should have known better than to trust Giada de Laurentis.

preheating the oven

For over a decade now I've been teaching myself how to bake. As my quest for pastry excellence continues, I thought I'd share my adventures and mishaps visually and maybe entice some of you to share them with me in a more corporeal sense. I'll do my best to take pictures and describe tastes and smells (at least until they develop internet smell-o-vision.)