Nervous Chef

I’ve been craving chocolate like crazy for the last while. I’ve been anxious lately and the anxiousness has been channeled into making chocolatey baked goods. I first made a self-saucing chocolate pudding which didn’t have the chocolate punch I was going for, so I turned to the book on chocolate, Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet.

The book goes into great detail about chocolate including the cocoa percentages, this site gives a good explanation. I believe cocoa percentages should be mandatory for all recipes now as there are so many different kinds of chocolate floating around. We’re not just dealing with Baker’s chocolate anymore. Using the same amount of butter and sugar for a chocolate that is 80% cocoa will yield much different results from one that is 50-60%. What I really like about this book is that she gives substitutions if you don’t have a certain percentage available. So if you have a 70% chocolate when you only need a 50%, she’ll give directions on how to work with it.

The level of difficulty varies. I would say it could be used by a beginner as this was the book that really got me into baking. This book is also suitable for the more advanced and I’ve grown with this book. The first recipe I made were bittersweet decadence cookies — powerful cookies that will make your knees weak. When my sister requested a chocolate cake for her baby shower, I turned to this book. It was my first complicated multiple layer cake complete with a ganache glaze. While it didn’t look quite as elegant as the picture in the book, it got rave reviews. I did like the extra ego boost when I overheard someone say “This is the best cake I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.”

With my chocolate craving, I was looking for something deep and chocolately, something that could satisfy with a few bites. Enter classic cocoa brownies.

I’ve never been able to get a smooth consistency when mixing the batter. It’s supposed to smooth, but mine always ends up looking like this:

Grainy and gross.

But they always end up turning out like the picture up at the top. These brownies actually lasted for awhile in our household because a little goes a long way.

This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn more about chocolate. If you’re a fan of the cocoa bean, I suggest you pick this up.

Recipe for brownies here

I only recently became a Cook’s Illustrated fan. It just looked too intimidating for me. After buying one of their magazines I’ve been a fan of them. They let you know exactly what they’re trying to achieve and if something is too fussy, they’ll find a workaround for it. So while recipes might not taste as mind blowing as possible, the trade off is less effort and time. Great for when you don’t want to be chained to the stove all day long. And the taste is still really good.

More Best Recipes is a follow up to The New Best Recipe. The original has many more recipes and this is meant to compliment it. There are also two sections that are new: make ahead cooking and cooking for two.

I really like the recipes in this book and many are already being in regular rotation. The only recipe that I wouldn’t make again is the stir-fried portabello mushrooms. I have a pretty low sodium tolerance and with all the salt heavy products in it, we just couldn’t finish the dish and had to throw it out. This book also converted me into liking no knead bread. The added beer and easier handling techniques really improved the original recipe. The olive and parmesan no knead bread? Fantastic.

I also tried out the ciabatta bread. It’s formulated so that it doesn’t end up being so flat so you can split it in half for a sandwich.

The flavour was good and the dough was easy to handle where most ciabatta dough is a sticky mess. The only problem with this bread is that it disappears so fast!

This is my second time making quiche. The first time I made it, I used Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and made Quiche au Fromage de Gruyere. I used all cream instead of using all milk (the richer, the better, right?) and it was just way over the top too much. I thought I was done making quiche, but I had to try another recipe before I could completely call off quiche again.

Quiche Lorraine from the The Pie and Pastry Bible has made me love quiche. It didn’t turn out super heavy (half cream and half milk is definitely the way to go here) and you can’t go wrong with bacon. I also didn’t bother with the 1/2 large egg white.

I’ll be making this again, next time using turkey bacon so I can share it with R.

Recipe here.

Up for review is Martha Stewart’s Cookies. I like Martha Stewart and use her Baking Handbook frequently so I picked this one up. I love the way the way the book is laid out. Every recipe has a photo and the table of contents is broken into textures such as light and delicate, chunky and nutty, cakey and tender, etc. So whatever you’re in the mood for you can find a cookie (and photo) to match. Each recipe takes up a single page so there’s no need to flip pages with batter all over your hands.

I used this book to make some of my Christmas cookies. The sesame cookies are definitely repeat worthy.

The pecan bars that I thought tasted too much like honey and was going to write off forever ended up being a huge hit with my family. It goes to show what one person doesn’t like, another may love.

With 175 recipes, I’ll be looking to this book again for next Christmas.

I like desserts that are for two so then I don’t have an excess of sweets lying around the place. I made these chocolate fondant puddings from Donna Hay’s No Time to Cook. The ingredients list is short and really highlights the chocolate so it’s good to use a chocolate you prefer eating.

You mix the ingredients in a food processor and then spoon it into ramekins because the batter is very thick. Don’t try and use a blender like I did!

Bake until slightly set. It won’t be as runny as a lava cake. I always end up over baking mine so mine turned out more fudgey than gooey:

It’s a very rich cake! You could probably serve 4 with this, so I’ll be re-working this recipe and post the results next time.

A day late, but here is my next review: Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours.

I like that Dorie Greenspan wasn’t a perfect baker at first and was pretty clueless. While I’m still not a perfect baker, I was just as clueless. I always managed to set off the smoke detector with whatever I made.

There are enough pictures in this book to inspire anyone if they flip through it. This book is filled with her favourite recipes and this gives you extra assurance that anything you make will turn out. I like her “playing around” suggestions where she gives you variations on the recipes. I always like knowing the best way an item should be stored and for all the recipes she gives this info.

This book was on my wishlist for a few years before it was gifted to me. Most of the recipes have turned out (I did have an unfortunate outcome with the maple tuilles) and almost all of them being repeat worthy. The flaky apple turnovers beat out the much more complicated turnovers I made from the Pie and Pastry Bible.

My overall favourite recipe? The caramel-peanut topped brownie cake. It’s one of those recipes I need to make when I’m taking it to a gathering, otherwise I will eat it all.

The recipes for the most part aren’t finicky, but still turn out great. I have many recipes bookmarked to try.

To get more of a feel for the book, be sure to check out the Tuesdays with Dorie group.

I had some spelt flour on hand and for some inexplicable reason wanted to make muffins specifically using this flour. I’ve never baked anything with spelt except for some dog treats so I really don’t know why I had the sudden urge to make muffins with this.

I used a banana chocolate chip muffin recipe from Jae Steele’s book Get It Ripe. It’s a great recipe and it’s vegan to boot. No dairy means I can serve these up to my niece who is among the growing population of kidlets that seem to be allergic to something. There’s also no granulated sugar that’s used, just some maple syrup to sweeten the batter up. I used 70% Lindt chocolate chopped up and gave the muffin lovely big chunks of chocolate. If you really want something to stand out, ditch the chocolate chips and chop the chocolate yourself. It’s much much better.

This muffin is definitely a winner and gives me a reason to keep spelt flour in stock.

Recipe here.

If there was one cookbook where I’d want to try all the recipes out of, this is the cookbook I would choose. Donna Hay’s No Time to Cook is such a great book that it’s a shame it’s not being sold on amazon.com.

I’ve made about a dozen things out of this book and I like how all the recipes have pictures so you know what to expect. The recipes are no fuss and many of them can be done quickly. Those that have longer cooking times have minimal hands on time.

Some favourites have been the balsamic chicken stack, the curry-crusted chicken is in regular rotation, and her marinades and sauces are a breeze to make and so versatile.

I find that I have to do a bit of adjustments with her recipes because she’ll call for too much of something that completely overwhelms the dish. An example is the squashed tomatoes and spaghetti that called for way too many tomatoes. It was easy to see that it was too much and it’s hardly an issue to not make that dish again. The final dish was excellent.

I made the Crunchy Parmesan-Crumbed Chicken with good results. The ingredient list is 6 items (including pepper) and was really easy to throw together. In the recipe, you make a large batch of breadcrumbs that you can portion off and freeze for future use.

I thought maybe if I started making tarts, they wouldn’t look as ugly as my pies. The pre-formed tart shape keeps everything looking the way it’s supposed to and look less like a kitchen accident.

It seems that I can’t show up to a family event empty handed anymore as my relatives anticipate what I’m bringing. It’s my aunt’s 60th birthday so I tried to make something sophisticated. I also wanted something easy with few ingredients involved. This recipe claims sophistication and all I had to buy was some heavy cream and I was all set. Done.

The crust is a sweet tart dough and you can just press it into the pan. This saves me from trying to roll out mis-shapened circles. You pat it into the tart, put foil on it (no weights needed) and bake. Once that’s cool it’s time for the filling.

Do you have chocolate, heavy cream, and butter? That’s the entire list of ingredients for the filling. So make sure that chocolate you’re using is something you’d eat plain. I used 70% Lindt chocolate and I have a feeling this may be too bitter for the kiddies at the party.

To complete the tart, all you have to do is pour the ganache:

Refrigerate for 30 minutes and you’re done. Simple.

The ganache makes it a very rich tart so all you need is a thin slice of it, otherwise it’s too overwhelming. This would also work well as mini tarts. This tart is more adult than kid friendly with the bittersweet, but you can make this with a lower percentage. I think 60% cocoa content would appeal to a wider audience. In the book Dorie says the ganache will taste the same as the chocolate. This was confirmed when my brother in law asked if I had just melted chocolate and poured it right into the tart shell. So use a chocolate you like!

Recipe here.

With a sudden urge to make muffins I flipped through my books to find something appealing. I eventually ended up at the Allspice Crumb muffins recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Even though I have made several recipes from her book, I feel that I’m not using the book enough. It’s a huge book and I’ve mentally bookmarked many recipes, I just haven’t gotten around to making them yet.

These muffins come out of the oven perfectly moist (is it all that melted butter in them?), but I don’t think there was a strong enough all spice flavour so the muffins turned out pretty bland. My spice is pretty old so that’s probably a factor, but I would double the amount next time. I think this is a good base recipe and I’ll be using this recipe substituting cinnamon for all spice. Or maybe add in some chopped apples and some cardamom in it.

Recipe can be found here.