the quest for perfection...

over the years, i have made countless versions of chocolate chip cookies. one added pudding mix to the dough (and this one was my favorite for years) while others played around with the ratio of brown sugar to white sugar. and yet none satisfied what i was looking for...warm, gooey centers studded with pockets of melted chocolate that ended in crisp edges.

and then it was like the ny times heard my plea and asked the god of chocolate for the answer in the quest for perfection. the article outlined a couple of really interesting suggestions for improving the homemade chocolate chip cookie and even ended with a recipe by jacques torres!! does it get any better than this??

sadly...i didn't love the recipe. a year later, i couldn't even tell you why i didn't like it (guess i'll have to make them again). but it wasn't love at first bite...so i pressed on in my search until i came across...the doubletree hotel chocolate chip cookies.

i made a few changes based on the ny times article and for now? the quest is over...

there are no prep pictures of this dough because i cheated...i almost always have a batch of chocolate chip cookies pre-made sitting in the freezer ready to be slipped into the oven. because yes, i love chocolate chip cookies that much and yes, chocolate chip cookies were meant to be eaten warm straight off the cookie sheet right out of the oven. try them...i trust you'll forgive me.

doubletree hotel chocolate chip cookies
makes 20

1/2 cup rolled oats
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon lemon
2 eggs
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1. Grind oats in a food processor until fine. Combine the ground oats with the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Toast the walnuts and set aside.
   
2. Cream together the butter, both sugars, vanilla and lemon using an electic mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
3. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture and mix well. Add the chocolate chips and walnuts to the dough and mix by hand until well blended.
4. Refrigerate the dough for 3 days.
   
5. Before baking, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with silpat or parchment paper.
6. Scoop out 1/4 cup portions and place 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.
7. Bake for 16-18 minutes until edges are lightly brown and the center is still soft (rotating the sheets halfway through baking time).

sorry, digiorno...

a couple of years ago, the hubby and i took an italian cooking class at the ICE. we spent six weeks chopping garlic, boiling pasta and gorging on all the goodness we made in class. in one of the lessons, we learned to make pizza...and that's when we learned that the hubby is quite good at making pizza!

so i prepped some dough and let it rise overnight. the hubby stretched and tossed the dough and we topped it with whatever we had in the kitchen - hot italian sausage, ricotta, garlic, fresh basil, tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, grated parmesan cheese...making pizza at home doesn't require a lot of fancy tools. you don't need a pizza stone - a baking sheet turned upside down works just as well. you don't need a pizza peel - a cutting board is a perfectly fine substitute. sprinkling a little semolina underneath the dough (after it's been stretched before the toppings are added) prevents the dough from sticking and makes it much easier to move.
neopolitan-style pizza dough
makes enough for four 9- to 10-inch pizzas

1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water (105-115 F)
1 cup cake flour
2 1/2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
olive oil for bowl

1. Sprinkle the yeast over the water. Let stand 1 minute, or until the yeast is creamy. Stir until the yeast dissolves.
   
2. In a large bowl, combine the cake flour, 2 1/2 cups of the all-purpose flour and the salt. Add the yeast mixture and stir until a soft dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding more flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
   
3. Lightly coat a large bowl with oil. Place the dough in the bowl, turning it to oil the top. Cover with plastic wrap. Place in a warm, draft-free place and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.
   
4. Flatten the dough with your fist. Cut the dough into 2 to 4 pieces and shape the pieces into balls. Dust the tops with flour.
   
5. Place the balls on a floured surface and cover each with plastic wrap, allowing room for the dough to expand. Let rise 60 to 90 minutes, or until doubled.*
   
6. Thirty to sixty minutes before baking the pizzas, place a baking stone or unglazed quarry tiles on a rack in the lowest level of the oven. Turn on the oven to the maximum temperature, 500 to 550 F.
   
7. Shape and bake the pizzas until the edges are slightly brown.

*For the second rise, I placed the dough in the fridge overnight for a longer, slower rise.

redefining healthy eating...

resolution: eat more fruit.

which meant that i bought more fruit with good intentions! and promptly forgot about half of it. so i had these lovely fair-trade-organic-something-or-other bananas (of which i had eaten exactly two) slowly rotting on my countertop.

they kept staring at me, guilt-tripping me...how do i get rid of them??

hmm...i could make banana bread but it's just so dense and heavy and oily and sticky. what i wanted was more of a cake-like muffin. so i googled and read and googled some more and came up with the following adaptation.

the dough still felt a little heavy going into the oven but by replacing the oil with butter, it took away a lot of the "oily-heaviness." (real smart i know...omit oil = no oily taste...DUH.) oh well, i liked them well enough to have eaten more than my fair share...

solution: add butter and chocolate chips to eat more fruit.

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

adapted from allrecipes.com

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2)

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips*

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease muffin tin.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until whitened. Add egg, vanilla extract and bananas and mix until combined.
4. Add flour mixture and milk to creamed butter mixture (flour, milk, flour, milk, flour). Mix the flour just until moistened. (Do not overstir.)
5. Add chocolate chips and stir to combine.
6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

*i used regular chocolate chips but most of them fell to the bottom of the muffin and they seemed to overpower the delicate banana flavor.

the BEST bread

confession: it didn't come out of my oven. but once i tell you of its buttery goodness, you'll forgive me. (ok, maybe your hips won't but who gave them a vote in this anyways??)

one of my most favorite places has to be mitsuwa. imho, the best ramen in the NYC region is inside these doors. mmm...just thinking about it makes me salivate!!

inside mitsuwa, there is a small bakery stand that has a sign that says "limit 2 boloniya per person." and every time i've gone, there is another sign right next to the first that says "sold out," which only meant i had to try this boloniya thing. well this past saturday, i lucked out when two of my friends managed to snag the last two loaves in the bakery...SCORE!! (shout out to C&D...you guys rock!)

o m g...i undid the twistie tie and almost collapsed when the smell hit me. gawd, butter, egg, butter, a touch of carmelized sugar, butter...the smell was just incredible.
and the taste? let's just say there's a reason why the "sold out" sign is semi-permanently on display. (fyi, boloniya is only made on the weekends.)

rain, rain, go away...

it feels like it's been raining non-stop in NYC and really, it has been for a little over a week now. last weekend, i had offered to volunteer at the APAH festival and bring baked goods to sell. but apparently the rain had dramatically increased the humidity in the air...so much so that it took a tooth-aching amount of powdered sugar to get my frosting to thicken just so i could pipe it!

that was literally the icing on the cake. i had been struggling through what felt like failure after failure in the kitchen. so i took a break...

and after the break, i remembered that one of the girls at the APAH festival had brought yummy lemon raspberry cupcakes. the last time i had attempted lemon cupcakes, the batter curdled so badly that they were inedible! (add that to the growing list of disappointments in the kitchen!) but i had had pretty good success with a key lime cupcake recipe from bon appetit and went about adapting that to match the image in my head.

sadly, my icing was far too soft again (no, it hadn't stopped raining!). after adding more confectioner's sugar, my frosting had the consistency of a thick soup. how lovely...

hurray for the world wide web! i had never thought to add corn starch but it definitely helped to absorb the extra moisture, didn't noticeably affect the flavor and might have saved me yet another trip to the dentist.
all is well that ends well!

Lemon Cupcakes
adapted from Buttersweet Bakery via bon appetit

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon peel
3/4 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tin with 12 paper liners.
2. Whisk both flours in a medium bowl.
3. Beat butter in a large bowl until smooth. Add sugar; beat to blend.
4. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Then add the lemon juice and lemon peel (batter may look curdled).
5. Beat in flour in 3 additions, alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions (flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour).
6. Spoon batter into each liner.
7. Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes.
8. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack before frosting.
   

Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting
* this makes quite a lot of frosting.

3/4 cup frozen raspberries, thawed
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons lemon peel
1 - 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon raspberry extract
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
4-6 cups powdered sugar

1. In a small saucepan, add the raspberries, sugar, lemon juice and lemon peel. While stirring, bring to a boil. Take off heat and allow to cool. Strain out the seeds and pulp, reserving the liquid.
2. In the bowl of a mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.
3. Add 1 cup of powdered sugar and cream until smooth.
4. Add 1/4 cup of raspberry syrup and extracts.
5. Add powdered sugar to taste and icing preference.