It is pretty easy to sneak whole wheat flour into a batch of cookies – especially if you’re already dealing with a batch of flavorful oatmeal cookies that will get a little extra boost of nuttiness from the whole grain. These Whole Wheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies are a great example because you would never know that there is whole grain flour in there with all of those chocolate chunks.
Of course, it’s not really necessary to “sneak” whole wheat flour into foods and hide the fact that you’re adding some extra whole grains into cookies or a cake. You need to be sneaky about it because you don’t want to compromise the texture of the baked good when using whole wheat flour, however. Whole wheat flour can make things like cookies a little bit drier and a little bit more crumbly, and if the cookie dough you’re working with isn’t flavorful to begin with, the whole wheat flavor can actually take over the cookie. This dough is very flavorful, not just because it has a generous amount of butter in it, but because it uses brown sugar, vanilla and oatmeal and all three of those elements give the cookies a lot of body. White whole wheat flour can also be substituted for whole wheat flour in this recipe.
I used semisweet chocolate chunks in these cookies, along with some chopped pecans for texture. Chopped walnuts will work just as well if you have those on hand. I found that semisweet chocolate worked better than dark chocolate did for these cookies because the whole wheat flour adds an earthy note (by which I mean that it tones down the sweetness of the sugar), and the little bit of extra sweetness in the chocolate was just perfect. The finished cookies are crisp around the edges and have a nice chew to them. The recipe makes a fairly big batch, but the cookies keep well in an airtight container and are great for sharing.
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Paper muffin cups are a standard tool that just about every baker will keep on hand in their kitchen. Perfect for muffins or cupcakes, the eliminate the need to grease a pan and ensure that your baked goods won’t have anything to stick to when it comes time to take them out of the pan. Muffin cups also make baked goods much more portable and easy to handle (without getting crumbs all over your fingers!). In kitchen stores, you’ll often see a selection of paper baking molds in a wide variety of shapes and sizes in addition to the standard muffin cups. Loaf pans, bundt pans and round cake pans are just a few of the shapes that these paper pans come in. These pans are designed to do the exact same thing that paper muffin cups are: eliminate the need to grease a large pan and make the baked goods easier to transport.
Paper baking pans are great for baking gifts for friends and family, the holidays or simply as hostess gifts for dinner parties. You can use them just like metal baking pans, and as long as you pick out the same size as a standard pan, you won’t need to alter the recipe to use them. You will, however, need to place the paper pans on a baking sheet to give them some support when they’re full of batter. The baking molds are similar to parchment paper and will not burn in the oven unless exposed to very high temperatures (most are perfectly safe up to about 400F), so there good for just about any baking application.
I was inspired by a recent trip to an olive oil farm to do a little baking with olive oil. Vegetable oil, canola oil and other flavorless oils are the standard when it comes to baking. Olive oil isn’t often used because it has a distinct, and sometimes strong, flavor that just isn’t going to enhance all recipes. That said, olive oil can be a great addition to a recipe when that fruity, olive flavor is allowed to stand out and these Orange Olive Oil Muffins are a great example of that.
The muffins use olive oil as their primary fat, where other similar recipes might use butter, and get most of their flavor from the oil itself and from the orange juice in the batter. Since there aren’t too many competing flavors here, the flavors of the olives do stand out. They don’t make the muffin savory (there is plenty of sugar to keep them sweet), but they do make the muffin richer and more complex than a plain oil would. Fresh orange juice gives these muffins a bright citrus flavor without overwhelming the olive oil. Sprinkling the tops of the muffins with sugar before baking makes the tops crispy and adds a nice contrast to the fluffy interior of the muffins.
The key to baking with olive oil is to choose an extra virgin olive oil that you really like the flavor of. You’re not going to like the flavor any more once it’s in a muffin or cake, so choose something good to start out with. These muffins are great with plain oils, but I also tried them with the incredibly good Mandarin Olive Oil from Ojai Olive Oil that really brightened up the orange flavor even more. That particular oil has an amazing mandarin orange flavor and is as good for dressing salads as it is for baking up muffins like these.
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The best kind of cake out there is undoubtedly the birthday cake. Kids look forward to them with barely contained excitement and, even if you don’t have cake the rest of the year, the odds are good that you’ll encounter a cake – or at least a slice – on your birthday. The Birthday Cake Book: 75 Recipes for Candle-Worthy Creations offers readers recipes for birthday cakes for both kids and adults, all of which would make a birthday celebrating even more special.
Birthday cakes are typically signified by candles and with fanciful or personalized decorations that you might not put onto an everyday cake. The cakes can be any flavor or type of cake, from angel food to white chocolate, and this cookbook covers a wide range where everyone should find something to appeal to them. The book starts out with some basic cake recipes and some basic buttercream and frosting recipes. These recipes are the building blocks for any number of cakes, and it is easy to mix and match to come up with your own cake combinations. The rest of the book is dedicated to the full birthday cakes. These cakes are the heart of the book: fully decorated and use a specific combination of cakes and fillings almost guaranteed to wow a birthday boy or girl. This setup works well because it gives you the freedom to pick and choose from the basic recipes when you are looking for a specific cake flavor, but it also gives you a lot of options for completed cakes that have a definite “wow” factor to them. The recipes are clearly written and easy to follow along with, which makes even the more complex cakes seem accessible.
The book starts out with an introduction to baking cakes and covers the equipment and ingredients that you’ll be using. It also spends some time discussing what you’ll need to know about making layer cakes that you intend to decorate, giving you tips on timing (whether you can bake the layers a day ahead), decorating (how to move layers from one place to another) and on serving and storage. There are more baking tips throughout the book to help you along and there are many beautiful photos of the completed cakes to inspire you. There is a list of suppliers given towards the end of the book, which will help you track down some supplies in case there isn’t a good cake supply store in your area.
