Archive for February, 2010
I’m always up for making a new bar cookie recipe. As much as I like regular drop cookies, bar cookies usually take even less time to make because everything goes into one dish. I suppose that you have to wait longer for them to cool (unless you don’t mind the first piece or two crumbling apart) than with individual cookies, but when I’m pressed for time, it’s the prep that I want to cut down on and not the cooling. That said, these Lime and Coconut Crumble Bars are well worth making whether you want to bake something in a hurry or have a whole afternoon to spend in the kitchen.
These are very delicious, and even more so if you are a fan of key lime pie, since they really remind me of the flavors of that dessert. The bars have a crumbly, shortbread-like bottom layer and a crispy streusel topping. Both start with the same crumbly dough mixture that contains butter, brown sugar, oats and shredded coconut. The middle layer of these bars is made with sweetened condensed milk and fresh lime juice. It has the same tangy flavor and creamy texture as a key lime pie does! The oats and coconut toast up beautifully as these bars bake, so the finished dish is a great combination of flavors and textures.
These are good at room temperature, but if you’re making these during the spring or summer when it’s hot, they can actually be quite refreshing if you chill them before serving. Plus, they store a little better in the refrigerator when it’s very hot outside, although they do just fine when stored at a normal or cool room temperature.
+Continue Reading
There is nothing better than a batch of homemade cupcakes, but a dozen or so from a favorite bakery can come in at a close second – and can actually take the first place spot for those who don’t bake. Cupcake shops are still more popular than ever (especially here in LA), but that doesn’t mean that you can find one as easily as you might find a Starbucks. The Wall Street Journal’s Cranky Consumer column, which rates mail-order products, took on the oh-so-difficult task of taste-testing a variety of mail order cupcakes that promise to deliver a gourmet bakery-quality cupcake to your door.
They compared cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcake, Dean & Deluca and Godiva, all of which came via overnight shopping with cupcakes frozen for freshness, as well as cupcakes from Crumbs, a bakery which had a nearby NYC location and was able to deliver locally(although they ship overnight, as well). They compared these cakes to a batch of cupcakes made with a cake mix and looked for both flavor and freshness in the finished cake.
+Continue Reading
I have had my trusty KitchenAid hand mixer for more than a few years. In fact, I actually don’t remember when I first got it, only that it has help up very well and works well. This is a good testament to the longevity of my model, but hand mixers can actually vary a lot in size, power and their ability to get the job done in the kitchen, whether you’re beating egg whites or mixing cookie dough. In their most recent issue (March 2010), Consumer Reports put nine different hand mixers to the test to see which were the best.
The compared the mixers on several features: whipping time (heavy cream), mixing ability (cookie dough), convenience and noise.The top finished was a KitchenAid Architect Series model, with lots of speed, great turning power and a quiet motor, it was easy to use and whipped up cream in less than half the time of some of the low-finishing models. It is also the most expensive mixer tested, so it is worth noting that the second place finisher – a KitchenAid UltraPower 5 – was $30 less and performed just about as well, although it was a touch less powerful.
They also noted that most of these models are available with additional attachments, including whisks and dough hooks, which are well worth looking for if you don’t have a stand mixer and want to get a lot more versatility from your hand mixer! Ratings for all models tested are listed below:
+Continue Reading
Some cake pans and baking dishes have handles that make them easy to slide out of the oven when the baking time for your cake, casserole or other dish is up. Other pans have virtually no edge beyond a thin roll of metal at the top of the pan. It can be very difficult to get a good grip on these pans when pulling them out of the oven, especially when you’re wearing thick, chunky potholders that don’t give you a lot of flexibility of movement. I know that there have been many times when I’ve touched the top of a high-rising cake – deflating a small portion of it in the process – much too firmly with a mitt-clad hand in my attempts to get the pan out of the oven.
Occasionally, I’ve used tongs or a knife to slide the pan to a flat surface, such as a wire rack, that I can more easily lift it from. There is a gadget out there that is specially purposed for solving this problem, however. It’s called a Cake Pan Gripper (scroll down on the linked page to see it). The spring-loaded gripper is made of a heat resistant material and has what looks like a small lobster claw on the end. It fits over the vast majority of rolled-edge pans and gives you a very strong grip, enabling you to lift the cake out of the oven.
I still wouldn’t rely on this entirely with a very heavy cake, but you could still easily use it to grip the pan and pull it safely to a spot where you can take a better hold of it. No burns from the oven and no deflating the cake with a misplaced finger or edge of a potholder.
A Sock-it-to-me-Cake is a type of coffee cake that has a pecan, cinnamon and brown sugar filling that is baked in a bundt or ring pan. It is moist and almost always made with a generous amount of sour cream. It is also almost always made with a yellow cake mix, preferably a Duncan Hines brand mix. With the cake mix, the recipe is very easy and fast to put together. As easy as it may be, I still like to have a from-scratch version of the recipe available to me, so I put one together that bakes a very similar Sock-it-to-Me cake without the mix.
Cake mix cakes are designed to be very tender and moist, and this cake is, too. I used cake flour, rather than all purpose, to give it an even lighter and more cake-mix-like texture than it might otherwise have. I also used a combination of butter and vegetable oil in the cake. The vegetable oil, along with a good portion of sour cream, gives it some extra moisture and helps to keep the cake tasting fresh even a few days after baking. The butter helps the tenderness of the cake, but more importantly, it lends a really nice flavor to everything. This cake has a good, light texture and a soft crumb. I baked it in a tube pan because it’s so easy to get a cake out of a pan with removable sides. That said, you could easily bake this in a bundt pan instead.
The filling for this coffee cake is not a streusel, which many coffee cakes have. Instead it is a mixture of cinnamon, toasted pecans and brown sugar. It is a bit dry on its own and may seem to be too strongly cinnamon flavored before you put it into the cake. Don’t worry too much about this because the cake is relatively plain and all of that cinnamon in the filling really balances out well with the rest of the cake when you’re eating it. Speaking of cinnamon, I also added some cinnamon to the glaze on top of this cake, which adds a little extra sugar and spice to each bite.
This cake is great in the morning with coffee and is equally good served with dessert. As coffee cakes go, it is very easy to throw together because you don’t need to fuss with streusel or any special fillings, just a simple and flavorful mix that comes together in a few seconds before going into the cake.
+Continue Reading
