I’m a little light on photo and blog content lately. This is because I’m in the midst of a self-imposed baking hiatus. Summer is approaching and I must admit that I indulged in a few too many treats during the long, cold and miserable months of winter. So I’m attempting to undo a little of the damage from all of the cakes, cookies and rolls. Don’t worry too much. The baking hiatus is temporary. It won’t turn into a long sabbatical. I won’t retire. I like baking too much.

On to the cake…

I’m not a big fan of spice cake. Or at least I wasn’t until I was introduced to this cake last fall. The boyfriend’s boss made it for his birthday. Whenever there’s a birthday in his office, someone is in charge of bringing cake (or dessert). Quite often the baking job has fallen on me….despite the fact that I don’t work there.

When the boyfriend’s birthday rolled around last year, his boss was responsible for the cake. Apparently she felt that it had to be great since he gets my desserts at home all the time and she knows how tasty some of them have been. Needless to say she did a great job choosing the cake and baking it!

He brought the leftovers home and I pretty much gorged myself on it for the next couple of days. I even ate this cake for breakfast. Not that there’s anything wrong with eating cake for breakfast. Especially when the cake has nutritious ingredients like apples and walnuts.

The recipe for the cake can be found on the Food Network website. It’s a Gale Gand recipe called Stella’s Stellar Apple Spice Cake. Stellar isn’t nearly a generous enough word for this cake.

It’s an apple spice cake with lots of walnuts and golden raisins. I don’t really like most spice cakes but this one I love. I also don’t adore raisins…but the golden raisins more than okay in this cake. The apple pieces are relatively large and give the cake a nice texture.

The cake itself is kind of like a spice cake brownie. It has a crunchy top and a soft interior like a good brownie should. But no chocolate. That would be weird.

The recipe calls for a glaze over the cake. The boyfriend’s boss didn’t make the glaze and neither did I . The cake doesn’t need it. Other than skipping the glaze, I didn’t make any changes to the recipe.

Just in case you didn’t click one of the other links, the recipe is here.

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Chocolate is good by itself. So is peanut butter. But they’re both better together.

I hoard Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. For this recipe and this recipe alone. After Halloween, I bought at least 10 bags of them on sale. Hopefully they’ll last for most of the year.

These peanut butter cup brownies have been begging to be posted for about a year now and I’ve never gotten around to it…in large part because I never got around to writing down the exact recipe. One of the pictures here was posted on Slashfood’s Feast Your Eyes blog yesterday so I now feel the need to follow up that mention with a proper recipe.

I brought baked goodies to people at my old job pretty frequently and these were one of the most requested items. Even the guys that worked in the kitchen begged for them on occasion. As a last treat before I left that job, I baked a batch for them.

The base recipe for these is from Baking Illustrated’s Chewy, Fudgy Triple-Chocolate Brownie recipe. I’ve made a few alterations.

Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

Ingredients

• 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
• 4 tablespoons cocoa powder (I use a mixture of Hershey’s regular & Penzey’s Dutch Process)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour (I only use unbleached)
• 8 or 9 regular size Reese’s peanut butter cups, coarsely chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8″ square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Microwave chocolate chips and butter in microwave for about 45 seconds. If not mostly melted, microwave for 20 more seconds. Stir until smooth. Whisk in the cocoa powder and espresso powder. Set aside.
3. Whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, peanut butter and salt until combined.
4. Whisk the warm chocolate mixture into the egg mixture.
5. Stir in the flour until just combined.
6. Fold chopped Reese’s peanut butter cups into batter.
7. Pour mixture into prepared pan, spread evenly and level the surface with a rubber spatula.
8. Bake approximately 35-40 minutes. Brownies will be slightly puffed and a toothpick inserted into the center should come out mostly clean.
9. Cool to room temperature for about 2 hours. Cut into 1″ squares. Store in a tightly sealed container, preferably in the refrigerator.

A couple of side notes that you don’t necessarily have to listen to:

• I freeze the Reese’s cups. Freezing them works well as they’re easy to chop when frozen..especially if it’s summer and your kitchen is blazing.
• You really shouldn’t cut these into squares larger than 1″. They’re really rich and decadent and one small square is more than ample.
• You could use fancy chocolate in these but I don’t. Nestle chocolate chips work just fine.
• Don’t overbake them…or any other brownies. Brownies should be moist and sort of chewy. Not dry and hard.

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White Chocolate & Raspberry “Brownies”, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

I really shouldn’t call these “brownies” at all since there’s pretty much nothing brown about them. But they’re adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s “White Chocolate Brownies” recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours.

When I got this book last month, this was one of the recipes I immediately wanted to bake. However, her version was thinner & denser and called for a soft meringue top. I knew I didn’t want that as I prefer my meringue a bit crunchier. I also didn’t really see the need for meringue at all because the batter has ground almonds, white chocolate & raspberries…there’s enough going on there without the meringue.

I set out to bake these early one afternoon before heading off to work…but I didn’t have enough eggs in the house to bake them. I didn’t particularly feel like running out to the grocery store…so I edited the recipe. This could have been a complete failure. Luckily it was not. These did take a while to bake and seem almost underbaked despite a nice crunchy top. I like the underbaked thing…if you don’t, bake them a little longer. I stored them in the refrigerator as they were pretty fragile at room temperature. I’ll definitely make these again in the future as they were a nice change from normal brownies…still just as good but far less decadent tasting.

Here’s my slight adaptation of the recipe (once again, the original is in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours):

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup finely ground almonds
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
• 3 ounces white chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line baking pan with two sheets of aluminum foil arranged perpendicular to each other. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk together flour, ground almonds, salt and baking powder.

Melt butter in microwave.  Add the 6 ounces white chocolate to the melted butter and whisk until smooth. If butter is not quite warm enough to melt the white chocolate, microwave for just 10-15 seconds more (since white chocolate is finicky! It scorches easily!). Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle or whisk attachment, beat the sugar and eggs together on medium-high speed for about 3 minutes (they should be pale and foamy).  Beat in the lemon and vanilla extracts and sour cream. Reduce the speed to low and blend in the melted butter and white chocolate mixture. With mixer still on low, mix in the dry ingredients, stirring only until they are just mixed. Fold in the 3 ounces white chocolate chips. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle the raspberries evenly over the batter.

Bake until the top is light brown and the brownies start to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 40-45 minutes (a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan should come out mostly clean). Cool completely on a wire rack. Remove from pan and cut into bars of desired size. Store in refrigerator as they’re very soft at room temperature.

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The boyfriend made these for me because I’m sick and requested them. In order to make them, he had to obtain the recipe. He lost his copy months ago while hiding it from me.
He claims that it’s a top secret family recipe as his mom made these when he was small and he won’t share the recipe with anyone not related. So…I’ve only vaguely seen the actual recipe and whenever he’s made them in the past, he’s kept the recipe shielded from my prying eyes. And then he lost the recipe when he stuck it someplace random so that I wouldn’t find it.
The other night he called both his aunt and his sister for the recipe. His aunt came up with it first. I was in the next room with my MacBook as she read it to him over the phone and it was very tempting to eavesdrop and type as he repeated the recipe back to her. Somehow I resisted the urge.
They’re super yummy with creamy peanut butter and chocolate chips. I told him that I was going to do some internet research and come up with the recipe on my own. I think I came pretty close with a recipe here but I’ll have to bake them to be sure.

Anyway…other than some Starbucks Frappuccinos, they’re the only sweet thing I’ve wanted since getting the flu. The poor lemon blueberry cupcakes are still in the fridge. The boyfriend ate his share and now they sit. Eating has been weird with the flu. I’m not particularly hungry but when I am, it’s for odd things. Mostly meat. Last night I ate some baked pork chops. That was it. On Saturday, I wanted a fast food burger but since fast food is out, the boyfriend went to Ruby Tuesday’s and picked up some of their mini burgers for me. They did the trick. The smell of the beef stew I made just prior to getting ill makes me nauseous…this is such a shame.

I’m much better today but not perfect. I went to work and came home early because of the sick thing and it was really really slow. I’m supposed to work tonight as well…we’ll see how that goes.

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These pictures were taken with the boyfriend’s Canon camera again. I’m thoroughly enjoying playing with it and I used it with the tripod when I took these pictures. If I do say so myself, I did a nice job.

While I was playing with the camera, I decided to see what it could do with a knitting project. It did pretty damned well. I’ll have to keep playing with the Canon. The boyfriend said I could do so whenever I want. I’ll have to apologize to my little Sony Cybershot. It’s a nice camera but the Canon is better.

Anyway…this is the Chevron Scarf in Socks That Rock yarn that I’ve been working on for a very long time. I might finish it before winter is officially over. And I might not. I should knit more. Then I could take more yarn pictures with the boyfriend’s camera. But he might take my camera rights away if that happened.

These brownies were photographed with my Sony camera. Still a decent picture. But not a great one. These are Peanut Butter Cup Brownies…made with a Baking Illustrated basic triple chocolate brownie recipe and beefed up with 8 chopped Reese’s Cups. My dear God, these were delicious. I’ll get around to posting recipes for these things one of these days.

A new program for my Mac arrived today. I haven’t taken it out of the box yet but it’s called Bento (yes, it’s named after Bento Boxes) and it’s a database software. The plan is to use it for baking/bakery type things. Such as recipes. My paper binder of recipes and what was good and bad about them will be a thing of the past once we get the database going. Pretty sweet, huh?

Pictures of a made from scratch carrot cake with caramel buttercream frosting will come soon. As soon as I’m home during daylight hours to take pictures of it. For the record, it’s good. And I think it’s the first cake I’ve ever made from scratch.

It’s occurred to me that I’m not even sure who reads this. To the best of my knowledge, about 5 people might read this blog with any sort of regularity (and that number includes myself). Am I wrong? Post a comment if you’re reading this. I’m just curious. And I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to read this blog…it’s pretty boring.

I should go…I’m meeting a friend for drinks and appetizers at Bonefish Grill shortly. Then I’m coming home to read more of “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”…if food (especially locally grown or produced, homegrown, or homemade food) appeals to you at all, you should read it. The few chapters I’ve read are really making me want a garden…but that won’t happen this year. Other than maybe an herb garden…at least that’s something.

That’s it for today.

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