Instant coffee is a great ingredient to have in the kitchen pantry if you like to bake. Many recipes, especially recipes involving chocolate, call for either a small amount of brewed coffee or simply for a bit of instant coffee to be added to highlight the darker chocolate notes in the recipe. It’s very convenient to be able to whip up a strong cup of coffee with instant coffee, rather than brewing a whole pot to put just half a cup into a cake. Even stronger than instant coffee is instant espresso. Instant espressos have a more intense, and usually much more complex, flavor than regular instant coffee. They can be a better choice for baking because they add a lot more to a recipe than just a vague hint of coffee flavor.

In their most recent issue (March 2010), Cook’s Illustrated included a taste-test of three different instant espresso brands in a batch of brownies (tasters still thought the real thing was best for drinking). Their favorite was Caffe D’Vita Imported Premium Instant Espresso, which had “dark, deep, fruity, toast-y” notes to it. They also liked Cafe Bustelo Espresso Instant Coffee for it’s “rich fruitiness. The brand of instant espresso that I like to bake with, Medaglia D’Oro, was one that they liked although it was not their favorite. Tasters said that it added a “good complexity.” They won’t sell these in all markets (although I have seen them in Target before), but you’ll definitely find some of these brands at stores like Williams-Sonoma and specialty grocery stores.

Perhaps next time they’ll throw some Starbucks Via into the taste test. It’s not instant espresso, but it’s very easy to work with and does have a lot of complexity to it - especially when you compare it to other instant coffee products.

• I am not someone who usually grinds her own flour, but reading about the Crunch Hippy Fresh Ground Whole Wheat Chocolate Cranberry Cookies at Nikas Culinaria makes the idea seem very appealing. Grinding your own flour gives your recipe a nice nutty, whole wheat flavor and a coarser texture than it is going to get from regular whole wheat flour - and definitely a big change from all purpose. You will need a wheat grinder, but using a coarse stone ground flour that can usually be found at a natural foods market will give you a similar approximation.
• I am a big fan of the rich and slightly tangy flavor of buttermilk pie, but often make them quite plain to get the most buttermilk flavor out of them. The Maple Buttermilk Meringue Pie from Dinner with Julie looks even better than the classic version. The filling uses a lot of maple syrup for sweetness and many egg yolks to enrich the custard. The whites don’t go to waste, however, because six of them are used to make the towering meringue that finished off the pie.
• If you have a couple of oranges in the kitchen, a great use for them is in an Orange Infused Cake with Candied Oranges, like the one that Our Chocolate Shavings made recently. The cake is similar to a pound cake, with egg whites beaten and folded into the batter for lightness. Juice and zest from one orange go into the cake, and juice and zest from another go into the glaze. The finishing touch for this cake really is the candied orange slices that top it. They take the cake from looking plain and simple, to remarkably elegant. They’re not as difficult to make as you might think, taste lovely and are worth the little bit if effort to turn this cake into a star.
• You don’t have to be a vegan to appreciate a good vegan cookie, or eat only gluten free to appreciate a gf recipe that really works. Manifest Vegan has been working on a version of a favorite cookie from before she started eating gluten free. These Almondy Chocolate Chip Cookies are the result. The cookies use a blend of buckwheat and almond flour for a nutty, buttery (using butter-flavored Earth Balance in the recipe) finished product. When making these, you can use “vegan” chocolate chips, but keep in mind that lots of semisweet and dark chocolate is already nondairy, so you can also chop up a favorite (probably much higher quality) bar to use.
• A chocolate muffin is not the same as a chocolate cupcake, as Once Upon A Chef points out with some Chocoholic Muffins. These muffins aren’t too sweet and have a nice open crumb, but are still packed with cocoa flavor and a lot of chocolate chips. They’re a good way to start the day off with a little chocolate fix, especially if you can get your hands on one while the chocolate chips are still just a bit warm and melty.

Bundt pans are cake pans that bake up a cake that isn’t quite like anything you can get from another pan. They are usually 10 or 12-inches in diameter and are up to 5 inches deep, with a hole in the center that ensures that the deep cake bakes evenly while it is in the oven. The sides of a bundt pan are almost vertical and the pans, which are typically made of cast aluminum, have fluted or ridged designs that make the finished cake look very impressive. Over the years, the pan style became so popular that manufacturers started to branch out into more creative designs, not limiting themselves to the traditional ridged round cakes. You can also now find bundt pans in silicone and other materials.

Bundt pans were derived from ceramic German Kugelhopf pans, which bake tall, round and (usually) yeasted sweet breads or cakes. The cast aluminum version was trademarked in 1950 by the founder of NordicWare, the largest and certainly most well known maker of bundt-shaped pans. The pans were not popular with bakers at first, but after the Tunnel of Fudge cake - which was baked in a bundt pan -won 2nd in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off, sales of the pan took off and it is now one of the best selling pans in North America, with over 60 million sold. It is easy to see why, because the cakes are very stylish and, unlike layered cakes, look impressive without needing a drop of frosting. There are tens of thousands of recipes out there calling for bundt pans, and you won’t find another pan that can do the job as well.

Laminated dough is a baking term that can show up from time to time that is often not fully described. Lamination is term for the process of alternating layers of dough and butter when making pastry. The dough is wrapped around butter (so that the butter is completely enclosed in dough and cannot slip out), the “package” is rolled out, folded over to double the number of layers, and then the whole thing is repeated. Each time the dough is folded, it is called a “turn.” The more turns your laminated dough has, the more flaky your finished pastry will be. Laminated doughs include puff pastry, croissant dough and danish dough.

Technically the fat used to make a laminated dough could be something other than butter and the name would be the same, but the best tasting and best looking laminated doughs use butter. Butter is essentially made of milk fat/solids and water. When heated, the water in butter turns to steam. The thin layers of butter in laminated dough cause the dough to puff up and rise during baking, giving croissants and puff pastry their layered and crispy look, and the milk solids in the butter cause the pastry to brown - and, of course, taste delicious.

• It’s hard to go wrong with a contest-winning recipe, so when Cookie Madness came across the winner of the grand prize (and $10,000) in the 1977 Pineapple Growers recipe competition in an old cookbook, she had to try them. Trade Wind Muffins are made from a cream cheese and sour cream-enriched batter and are packed with pineapple. The sides of the muffins are coated with sliced almonds, adding an unexpected crunch to each bite. Anna said they taste like a cross “between pineapple cake and a dense Twinkie,” which is a good thing.
• Brown butter can enhance just about any recipe that you can squeeze it into, and it is a major player in Yumsilicious Bakes s‘ Cherry Brown Butter Bars. These bars have a shortbread crust topped with a clafoutis-like filling. There is a generous amount of browned butter incorporated into that filling, along with lots of fresh cherries. Although it looks very gourmet, these bars are actually quite easy to mix up, and you can experiment with using other berries in the same recipe for variety.
• Since I was just doing a little baking with Coca-Cola myself, I couldn’t help by notice the Chocolate Cola Cake at Amanda’s Cookin’. This cake is a classic two-layer chocolate cake topped with chocolate frosting. There is Coke in the cake batter, adding that slightly spicy flavor of Coke and making the cake very moist. There is also a bit of cola in the frosting. This is definitely a great way to use up a spare can of Coke, or to finish off a 2-liter bottle that has been sitting in the fridge.
• The only drawback to cinnamon buns is that they take a little bit of patience and planning to make - making them a less-than-perfect breakfast option if you don’t want to spend some time baking when you first wake up! Ice Cream for Dinner’s Less-Than-An-Hour Cinnamon Buns offer a solution, because these little buns use no yeast and can be ready to eat in less than an hour. They’re not as light or flaky as big, yeasty rolls, but they are still buttery, gooey with frosting and make a very satisfying morning treat.
• I really enjoy gummy bears, but they’re not a food that I’ve thought about incorporating much into recipes. That is, until I spotted the Gummy Bear Martini at Grin and Bake It. While it’s not a baked good, it is very hard to resist the appeal of this fruity, multi-colored cocktail. There is even a set of bonus instructions along with the recipe for making vodka-soaked gummi bears, which make a great garnish.

Some people like to wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, or a plate of hot bacon. You could count me in for both of those things, but freshly baked cookies would make the list, too. That said, I would be very suspicious if I woke up in the middle of the night and suspected - by smell or by the sounds of pots and pans moving around - that someone unknown was in my house baking them for me. This is exactly what happened to a man in Michigan this week. He heard some suspicious noises coming from his kitchen and called the police to report an intruder. The police arrived and found a woman in the kitchen baking cookies. It turns out that the man’s wife had stuffed some clothing under the covers in bed so it looked like she was there, then went down to the kitchen to bake a surprise batch of cookies!

Who knew that a simple batch of cookies could turn into such a big deal? I hope that there were enough to share with the police who responded to the call as well as with her husband.