Tag Archives: baking

Belvedere cookies

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belvedere cookies 2007

Belvedere cookies

My mom and I perpetrated Belvedere cookies, an action representing the first baking session of the 2007 Christmas season.  One of the chef-instructors I had in cooking school gave me this odd recipe, which I translated from German.  The recipe is missing quite a few steps, which we filled in as best we could.  This is a bar cookie, but I had no idea how thick the batter should be spread, nor what oven temperature to use.  We wound up with something like small cakes with a thick layer of rum-laced glaze, and all who tried them said they were excellent.  I was not able to find anything about these cookies on the Web, so if you come across this entry and have information about these Austrian goodies, please let me know.  I suggest making them if you want something different.  They are not too sweet, but be sure to use a good quality chocolate that’s on the bitter side.  Do not store them with other cookies because then all your cookies will taste and smell like rum.

Belvedere Cookies

200 g  butter
100 g  powdered sugar
6 egg yolks
200 g  baker’s chocolate, softened
6 egg whites
100 g  granulated sugar
1 pinch salt
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
140 g  ground walnuts
160 g  strong or AP flour

Icing:

 Whip 300 g  powdered sugar & 1 dl rum

Soften the butter and mix with powdered sugar.  Add the egg yolks and chocolate.  Beat the egg whites, granulated sugar, salt and vanilla sugar until stiff.  Fold egg white mixture into dough.  Mix nuts and flour and carefully fold into dough.  Spread dough in a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake in preheated oven until done.  When still hot, apply the icing.  As soon as the icing begins to turn cloudy, cut into small squares.

 

The $3 cupcake

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Cupake with milk chocolate icing

I baked my version of the $3.00 cupcake today using the sour cream cake recipe from The Ebony Cookbook (1978), by Freda DeKnight, and a basic milk chocolate buttercream recipe from school.  Just to be interesting I used pans with odd shapes, like a ghost mini cake pan that springs into action every Halloween.  The cake was a bit rubbery so next time I’ll try a pound cake batter; most cupcake batters are just too soft for my taste.  Incidentally, this is one great cookbook.  No pictures, but a treasure of recipes, especially if you want to make things like coffee cakes and biscuits.  Plenty of good ideas for chicken, too.

7up cake

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The the food news of the day is limited, though I did perpetrate a 7up cake using a recipe from the Discovery Health Network show, Just Cook This.  I was channel surfing last week and caught the 9/20 episode, noticing that it involved three grandmothers coming on the air with a recipe apiece.  This cake is easy, easy, easy, and tastes great.  It’s basically a take on pound cake.  Several of my African American friends make this cake, though I never tried myself.  Now I see why it’s popular and I plan on making this for the holidays.  If you give it a shot, note that I used a silicone bundt pan and it took a good hour and a half to cook through.  Also, in my experience, pound cakes stick to ungreased silicon pans, so you’ll want to use some of that pan spray with flour.  If, for some reason, Discovery Health pulls the recipe, just contact me.

Buttercup Bakes at Home

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peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

I broke down and baked cookies today.  Steve had gotten me a slew of cookbooks for Christmas last year, including Buttercup Bakes at Home (2006), by Jennifer Appel, which has some enticing recipes, so I chose the peanut butter and chocolate chunk cookies.  This is an example of how important photos are in a cookbook.  I made this particular recipe because of how delectable the cookies look on the cover.  In fact, that photo made me ask Steve for this book in the first place.  Pathetic.  The only thing that went wrong was that the chocolate I had ready for piping seized up a bit while I tended to some drama involving Berry and the mail carrier, so rather than nuke really good chocolate twice, I just piped it on as it was, which resulted in big globs instead of attractive stripes.  The cookies tasted great and had the perfect texture – not too soft, not too hard and a bit chewy.  I like to put cookies in the fridge, and these worked very well toward that end, coming out kind of blondie-like.  Buttercup is a popular Manhattan bakery, and they seem to have made their recipes approachable.

Bad bread in Albany

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We have a roast chicken for dinner today, so Steve went to get some bread and came back with a large Semifreddi’s sourdough batard.  We toasted slices of it and served it with heirloom tomatoes.  Speaking of bread, I meant to write a bit about a new place at 841 San Pablo Avenue in Albany called House of Bread that Matt and I hit up a few days before we went to New York.  First off, it takes nerve to open a bread shop so close to Acme Bread Company.  Maybe it’s not nerve, maybe it’s something else, but Acme has nothing to worry about.  All the bread was in plastic when we arrived, which did not bode well.  I wanted a loaf of Italian and requested one not in plastic, but the nice lady behind the counter said that all the bread goes into plastic bags at about 9:00 a.m.  We bought one anyhoo – one with cheddar cheese, since they had a vast array of flavored breads.  The taste wasn’t bad, but the texture was poppin’ fresh, if you get my drift.  We also tried some of the quick breads and sweet dough items, which were perfectly fine.  Since House of Bread also carries a full selection of sandwiches (made with Boar’s Head cold cuts) I am hoping they are able to stay afloat via the lunch and sweet treat trade.  I so wanted to support a local business, but I just can’t see going to a bake shop where all the bread is executed at 9:00 a.m.