That’s what the boyfriend said about these dark chocolate oatmeal cookies. He had put some in a container to take to work the next day and decided that he wanted his cookies to be soft…so he added some chunks of bread to the container. The chicken part occurred because the chunks of bread he used were pulled directly off of the chicken sandwich he’d also packed for his lunch. The next day we were discussing the cookies and how good they were. I thought they were crisp yet chewy and he described his particular cookies as “soft with a hint of chicken”. I did warn him that this phrase was being written down and would be blog fodder.

These cookies were the results of my efforts to find a cookie to make one night that didn’t require me to chill the dough for an hour…I also wanted to bake a new-to-me cookie. I flipped through numerous cookbooks and everything that appealed to me on that particular night required refrigeration and rolling of the dough. I went to the internet and looked at various sites for a while before I found this gem of a recipe at Epicurious. At that point, I was so tired of looking for a new cookie recipe that I was on the verge of giving up. I think I honestly just entered “cookie” into the Epicurious search bar. Thankfully the recipe for these cookies was only a few pages into the search results.

These may be my favorite of the new-to-me cookies I’ve baked this year. I added espresso powder to the dough and it really bumped up the flavor of the chocolate. As I previously stated, these were crisp yet chewy and in my baking experience that’s a difficult cookie combination to achieve. If you’re looking for a soft cookie, add some bread to the container…just make sure your bread isn’t chicken flavored. Unless you like chicken flavored cookies…

Also, the raw cookie dough was out of this world. We probably ate a quarter of the dough unbaked. Because these cookies contain no eggs, it was decided that all the raw dough wouldn’t hurt us. It was also decided that the dough would make a great filling layer in a really rich chocolate cake.

The original recipe was in Bon Appetit magazine in May 2004.

Here’s my slight adaptation of the recipe, currently found on Epicurious. The recipe printed below only makes a dozen or so cookies. I doubled the recipe as twelve cookies could never be enough.

Dark Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon espresso powder
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/8 cup white chocolate chips

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease large cookie sheet. Whisk first flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and espresso powder together in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla; beat until blended. Add flour mixture and beat until moist clumps form. Mix in oats with spatula until evenly distributed (dough will be very firm). Add chocolate chips and white chocolate chips and knead gently to blend.

Using moistened palms (or a cookie scoop like I used), shape 1 generous tablespoon dough into ball. Place on prepared sheet; flatten to 2-inch round. Repeat with remaining dough, spacing rounds about 2 inches apart.

Bake cookies until center is slightly firm and top is cracked, about 14 minutes. Cool on sheet.

Tweet This Post 

When the waffles are actually chocolate cookies with a white chocolate glaze, you probably shouldn’t eat them for breakfast…but you can if you really, really want to do so.

The recipe for these cookies was found in Martha Stewart’s Cookies.

I’ve gotten into a habit of checking cookbooks out from my local library to try them out before I buy them…this way I don’t end up buying a total dud of a book. I’m glad that I checked out before I bought it because I honestly wasn’t that impressed by it. I was immediately drawn to these waffle cookies but that was honestly about the only cookie recipe in the book that I felt compelled to bake.  I love, love, love Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook (I love it so much that I baked 3 things from it on Sunday!) so I assumed that I would like the cookie book just as much. But I didn’t.

Anyway, the waffle cookies are good. Very good. Soft and cake-like. They’re a little reminiscent of gingerbread because of both their texture and the cinnamon in them. It was also kind of cool to bake cookies in the waffle iron…it was quicker (yet more labor-intensive) than baking cookies the regular way.

I did make a few changes to the original recipe…the biggest change is that I altered the glaze. It was supposed to be a chocolate glaze. I made it white chocolate instead for a little contrasting color and flavor. The boyfriend agreed that this was a good change.

Here’s the recipe for anyone that’s interested in making these. The only special thing you need to bake them is a waffle iron. If you’ve got that, you’re good to go.

1. Melt 1 cup butter in microwave. Stir in chocolate chips. If they don’t melt into the butter, microwave butter/chocolate mixture for a few more seconds and stir until melted. Let cool slightly.
2. Put eggs, vanilla, and granulated sugar in bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale, 4 to 5 minutes. Mix in chocolate mixture, salt, cinnamon, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, and the flour.
3. Heat a waffle iron until hot. Lightly coat grids with cooking spray. Spoon about 1 tablespoon batter onto center of each waffle-iron square to make 1 1/2-inch rounds. Close cover; cook until set, about 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, bottom sides up. Let cool completely. Repeat with remaining batter, coating grids with cooking spray after each batch.
4. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in microwave. Add white chocolate chips and stir until melted. If they don’t melt, very quickly microwave for a few more seconds (but be careful because white chocolate is finicky and can scorch or seize). Add confectioners’ sugar and stir until smooth. Stir in milk.
   
5. Gently dip 1 surface of each cookie in icing so that just the waffle lines (not gaps) are coated. Repeat with remaining cookies and icing. Transfer to wire racks; let stand until set. Store in airtight container.

Tweet This Post 

Quote from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

We might become blueberries around here if I keep picking them. Thirteen pounds last week. Ten pounds this week. Maybe I’ll pick more next week?

After my single strawberry picking trip in May, I was determined not to miss blueberry season this summer. Clearly I haven’t if I’ve picked twenty-three pounds of blueberries in the last ten days.

The drive out to the local farm to pick the blueberries is a little long but it’s totally worth it in the end. They only charge $1.95 per pound for pick-your-own blueberries…think about how cheap this is compared to grocery store prices for a pint or quart of them.

I rather enjoyed the actual blueberry picking. I went by myself both times, armed with my iPod full of favorite songs. It was relaxing and a little therapeutic to be outside alone for an afternoon filling up my bucket with berries. On the first trip last week, I came to the (very wonderful) realization that I like the person I am now way, way, way more than the person I was five years ago. The me of five years ago sucked. I’m glad I’ve made all the changes I have and am happy with who I’ve become. Need some thinking time? Go pick some blueberries.

If you do go out for blueberries, make sure to slather on the sunscreen. And the insect repellent…I forgot the bug spray the first time and ended up with chiggers up and down my legs.

A lot of the berries were eaten by the handful out of the fridge. Some were given to a coworker so that she could bake a cake for her family. Five and a half quarts were put in the freezer for future baking purposes. Some of them were made into blueberry preserves.

I’m already dreaming up a cake with the preserves as a filling layer. I’m thinking about a lemon cake but I haven’t come up with a frosting flavor yet. Give me some time.

I also baked a pie. I lifted the star motif straight from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook.

Today I made a bunch of blueberry peach crisps. If the boyfriend hasn’t eaten all of the fresh blueberries by Sunday, I’ll probably make muffins or something of that sort. And maybe I’ll go back out for more of them next week…it’s hard to resist at $1.95 a pound…the work to pick them is irrelevant.

Tweet This Post 

peach, nectarine & mixed berry cobbler, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

That’s what the boyfriend thought of these cobblers…despite his potpourri claims, I thought they were delicious.

Individual fruit cobblers with an oatmeal walnut crumb topping have become my “Ooh, we need a dessert…what’s easy?” thing. I always seem to have fruit (whether it’s fresh or frozen) on hand and they end up a little different each time.

The oatmeal walnut topping recipe is adapted from a Sara Moulton recipe…but I don’t ever use the recipe these days…I just throw a bunch of stuff together and it works. That might be because I’ve literally made this crumb topping 10 or 12 times in the last year.

Yes, we love the cobblers around here.

This particular version is made with peaches, nectarines, raspberries, blackberries & thimbleberries. I had a little bit of a lot of different fruit so this was a good way to use them all before they started to go bad.

I also don’t like ripe peaches and nectarines and the ones I had were definitely leaning towards very ripe. I like my stone fruit unripe and hard. Weird, eh?

In case anyone’s wondering, most of the pottery used in my pictures was made by my sister, Tasha McKelvey. She makes handmade pottery and ceramic jewelry and is uber-talented. You can buy some of her pieces here.

The bulk of the pottery pieces I have are a pattern she made mostly just for me. She even named the pattern “Melissa” after making me a zillion pieces in it. The bowl pictured in this post is from a custom set she made for me for creme brulees.

While I’m giving credit where it’s due, the batik napkins and table coverings seen in a lot of my pictures are made by Margot Bianca. She does beautiful work (obviously) and is wonderful about custom orders. Her etsy shop is quite popular and I shall be ordering more things from her soon.

I guess that’s it for today. I should be doing work for my job. Or packing boxes for next month’s move. I need to pack a lot of my apartment in the next week and a half because I’ll be sharing my apartment with the boyfriend for at least a couple of weeks before the house is complete. We plan to put a lot of stuff in storage as there’s no way both of our possessions can fit into just my tiny apartment. I really should go through the clothes in my closet to make space for his clothes…for now I’ll pretend I’m Scarlett O’Hara and I’ll think about them tomorrow.

Tweet This Post 

Rice, Corn & Black Bean Salad Wrap, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

Tweet This Post 

teeny tiny cake with peanut buttercream frosting, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

When I made the chocolate and peanut butter cake for a coworker a few weeks ago, I purposely baked an extra layer to make into mini cakes for the boyfriend and I to eat. Where’s the fun in baking a fantastic cake if I can’t try a piece of it?

Amazingly, we made the two tiny cakes last for days…pretty impressive given that some restaurants (like the one I work in) serve slices of cake as large as one of these mini cakes.

I like making the itty bitty little cakes as they’re great for practicing my cake assembly and frosting techniques.

If you didn’t read the previous post about the larger version of these cakes or are too lazy to follow the link, I made a Devil’s Food Cake (from Baking Illustrated) and added a little bit of peanut butter to the batter. Then I made a whipped chocolate ganache to use as filling between the cake layers. I also crushed a bunch of Reese’s Cups for one of the filling layers. It’s topped with peanut buttercream frosting (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World).

Tweet This Post 

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.

Tweet This Post 

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cake, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

One of the girls at work asked me to bake something for her boyfriend’s birthday. She gave me plenty of notice and her only request was that I made something with chocolate and peanut butter.

I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut buttercream frosting earlier this year and LOVED the frosting…so it was an obvious choice for this cake.

I made the Devil’s Food cake from Baking Illustrated…the recipe makes three cake layers. I used two layers for this cake (each of these were divided in two to make a four layer cake) and made the third layer into two mini cakes for us to keep and enjoy ourselves.

I didn’t make too many changes to the original cake recipe. I used a touch of espresso powder in it and added about a 1/4 cup of peanut butter.

The peanut buttercream frosting is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. But it wasn’t vegan as I used regular margarine rather than the more costly vegan margarine. This frosting is awesome. It tastes like peanut butter mousse. Totally unhealthy peanut butter mousse.

To make the cake even better, I made a whipped chocolate ganache to use as filling between two of the layers. I wasn’t positive it was going to work in the cake because it was a little runny…but it set perfectly fine.

For another layer of filling I crushed Reese’s peanut butter cups and nestled them into the cake with a little bit of the peanut buttercream frosting.

Then I frosted the cake and topped it with more crushed Reese’s cups.

Several of my coworkers ate pieces of the cake…all of them came to work the next day singing it’s praises. One of them couldn’t stop talking about how dank (see definition #3 here) it was. I really do wish “dank” were a better sounding word…

Sadly I didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the cake…

Tweet This Post 

Rice, Corn & Black Bean Salad, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

I lifted this recipe straight from the pages of the July 2008 Martha Stewart Living magazine. I even served it as a side dish to some turkey burgers made to Martha’s specifications. Sorry to any Martha Stewart haters…the food looked so good and almost nutritious. I couldn’t resist.

The recipe is here.

I only made 2 slight changes. First, I substituted Lundberg Black & Mahogany Rice for the wild rice. I chose this substition because I could buy twice as much of it for a dollar less than the wild rice. Second, I used bottled key lime juice instead of fresh lime juice…mostly because I had plenty of it in the refrigerator and was too cheap to buy limes.

We really liked this salad…it was light and sort of healthy and a nice change from the side dishes I normally make. I made an altered version of it last week to use as the “meat” for sandwich wraps…but I’ll mention that in a future post.

Tweet This Post 

Wheat, Blueberry & Walnut Pancakes, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

Pancakes are one of those foods that I used to never like to make because I didn’t like the way I made them. Steak used to be one of those foods…but over time I learned how to get a good sear and I actually like my steaks better than most restaurant steaks these days. It’s late and I’m kind of blanking about other foods I don’t like to cook for myself. I guess I still kind of feel that way about fish…I’ll cook it but I definitely prefer it at a restaurant or when someone else prepares it. Does anyone out there have any foods they feel this way about?

So…this particular kind of pancake was made for us by a friend several months ago at her house. I kind of loved them and we obtained the recipe…it sat in my email inbox for quite a while…but I finally remembered to make them.

I made them exactly as she made them for us with the fantastic additions of blueberries AND walnuts. Double yum. I ate mine with butter and Grade B maple syrup from my dad’s large syrup stash.

These are so good that I thought I’d share the recipe. They’re so good that I may never make regular pancakes again.

I’m not sure where she obtained the recipe…the email says “Pepperidge Farm” but that’s the only information I’ve got. (Krista, if you read this and know the source, please leave a comment!)

Whole Wheat Pancakes

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cups milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Thoroughly combine the dry ingredients. Combine the egg, milk and shortening, and add the dry ingredients gradually, stirring until smooth.
Fold in walnuts. Lightly fold in blueberries.

Cook these the way you normally cook pancakes.

I used a ladle as a scoop and this recipe yielded 8 5-inch pancakes.

You could use more or less blueberries and walnuts based on your personal preferences. Or you could leave them out entirely. Or you could add other things. It’s your choice.

I used a mixture of whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour (just for the sake of experimentation) but the original recipe used just the wheat flour. They tasted equally good either way.

In other news, I’ve updated my website…we (once again, by “we”, I mean the boyfriend) changed the site design a bit. I’m going to play with it more in the next few days…but it’s good for now. I also recently bought the boastfulbaker.com and theboastfulbaker.com domains…they both redirect to melissamckelvey.com as of last night.

We also looked at site stats for melissamckelvey.com. Since I moved my blog to this site this winter, I’ve had 75,000 hits and about 7000 unique visitors. WOW! I had no idea. I figured that there *might* have been 1000 unique visitors. Not 7000! I really am shocked by those figures. Thanks for visiting!!!

Oh, the house has siding. Siding! Clearly I ‘m very excited about the siding. It looks nice and more important than that, it means the house is inching closer to completion.

Tweet This Post