Lest you think we are only about sugar and cream and flour around here, take a look at that picture. Black. Bean. Soup. Served over chewy brown rice with a dollop of sour cream, this stuff is heaven.

I got the original recipe here. When I first saw it, I was smitten. I immediately ran out and bought a slow cooker (I know, I know. I’m the last person in the food blogging universe to get one). The first time I made the soup, it was a little thin and watery. Despite the onions, peppers and copious amounts of cumin, there didn’t seem to be much flavor in the soup. After the first bowl, Bryan politely declined any more.

(That was okay by me. I ate the rest of the soup for lunch for more than a week straight. And I don’t do that. Usually.)

The second time I made this soup, I made some small changes that made all the difference. I used yellow onions instead of red onions. I used yellow and red bell peppers and several stalks of celery. And, most importantly, I used two cans of chicken stock instead of water and cut down the liquid by two cups. This version was wonderful. It was full of flavor and not too thin. I have a feeling that I’m going to have to share this soup with Bryan for lunch.

Recipe after the jump.

» Continue reading Black Bean Soup

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

I’ve made this recipe four times with four different results. While the cakes tasted okay, none of them were exactly what I was looking for. The first time I made this recipe, the cakes spilled out over the pans and then collapsed, like little volcanoes. When I tried to get the cakes out of the pans, they completely collapsed into a mound of crumbs. The cake was so tender, there was no structure to it.

The flavor? Wonderful. Nutty and toasty and warm. The texture was light and airy, and we couldn’t stop picking at it.

The next day, I toyed with the recipe. The first thing I did was rework it to fit two cake pans (the original recipe uses three). Then I increased the ratio of all-purpose flour to cake flour to help the structure and decreased the leavening. This version didn’t overflow the pans and didn’t collapse. I was able to get the cakes out of the pan with only minimum crumbling.

The last element of this recipe is a milk chocolate frosting. The frosting starts with a ganache (chocolate and cream) that is whipped with butter. Lots of butter. You end up with a silky smooth, very decadent frosting. This frosting plus that cake equals something very tasty. Talk about an upscale whopper!

So with a working recipe under my belt, why two more times? I wanted cupcakes. The first batch, using my modified recipe, never rose and never browned. The middles were gummy. This batch went into the trash (except for the edges that I nibbled on).

My last attempt at milk chocolate malt ball cupcakes involved taking a white cake recipe from a cookbook by Dorie Greenspan and merging it with my modified recipe. These cupcakes were much better, but still didn’t rise as much as I wanted them to. They also collapsed slightly as they cooled.

I really like the flavor combinations in this recipe, and I think there’s a really great cake/cupcake in there. Guess I’ve got some work ahead of me.

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

I was feeling pretty lazy on the day I made these, so instead of making the tart part of this recipe, I stopped after the butterscotch pudding part. And I don’t think I missed much (except maybe lots of extra work and dishes).

I don’t eat much butterscotch stuff, but every time I do, I’m reminded of how much I like it. This pudding is no exception. It combines a dark caramel sauce with a pudding made of brown sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and milk. The end result is a thick, extremely rich pudding full of caramelly, buttery, brown sugary flavor.

My only problem with the recipe was that I ended up having to strain the pudding to get rid of lumps.

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Every time I consider making something with peanut butter in it, I think of my step-daughter who loves the stuff. And you really can’t get much simpler than this no-bake frozen concoction. In fact, you could leave off the crust and just eat the filling as a frozen mousse.

So Cho, this one is for you.

You start off by making an easy chocolate cookie crust held together by a bit of butter. This crumb mixture gets pressed into a pie pan and left to solidify in the fridge while you make the filling.

The filling is simply cream cheese, smooth peanut butter, vanilla, brown sugar and cream. The cream cheese, peanut butter and sugar are mixed together until smooth. Then you whip the cream to soft peaks and fold it into the peanut butter mixture. Then the whole thing is dumped into the crust and frozen.

There are a couple of things I’d recommend changing. First, the authors have you put a layer of melted chocolate between the crust and the filling. The only purpose I found for this chocolate layer was to make it impossible to get the pie slices out of the pan. It didn’t add anything to the flavor, so I’d just leave it out. And the second change I’d make was to use either a springform pan or a square pan lined with tinfoil instead of a pie pan. The first couple of slices came out of the pan sans bottom crust. That crust was too hard to cut through. By pulling the pie out of the pan, you’ll get a better angle with the knife and can get a spatula or something underneath that bottom crust much easier.

The recipe also calls for an easy hot fudge sauce. The sauce was good and it went really nicely with the peanut butter filling.

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

You might have heard of these bars under a different titles, such as Seven Layer Bars or Magic Bars. The big thing about this type of bar is that it is made up of seven different layers.

1. A graham cracker crust
2.  Nuts
3. Chocolate chips
4. White chocolate chips
5. Butterscotch chips
6. Sweetened condensed milk
7. Toasted, shredded coconut.

The only change the boys at Baked made was to use the coconut in the crust, along with the graham crackers. This makes for a mighty tasty, albeit crumbly, crust. These are some of the sweetest things to have come out of my kitchen in a very long time, and to even try to eat them without a glass of milk is pure folly.

The crust is a standard graham cracker crust (with toasted coconut added) held together with butter. The buttery crumb mixture is pressed into a pan, refrigerated briefly and then baked until toasty. I liked this crust, but I thought it had too much butter in it. Next time, I’ll reduce the butter slightly.

Once the crust is cooled, it’s topped with a layer of walnuts (sliced almonds, in my case), semisweet chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and butterscotch chips. And if that isn’t enough sweetness, two cans of sweetened, condensed milk are poured over the entire thing. This sugar bomb gets baked until the condensed milk is brown and bubbling.

We could only eat these bars in small, small squares, but they were pretty good. Besides reducing the butter in the crust, if I make these again, I’ll increase the amount of semisweet chocolate and reduce the white chocolate chips and the butterscotch chips.

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

I think these brownies are the thing that started all the buzz surrounding this bakery, and by extension, this book. Oprah made them one of her “favorite things,” and America’s Test Kitchen and the Today Show awarded these brownies top honors (brownie tester – now there’s a job I could get behind). How could I not make this recipe?

Was I wowed? Blown out of the water? Made to feel insignificant and puny? No. In fact, I really hated these brownies. Hated them. Not the recipe (easy to follow). Not the flavor (deep and chocolatey). Not the texture (moist and fudgy). No, I hated these brownies because I couldn’t get them to cut cleanly. If you look closely at the picture, you’ll see all the ragged edges and the chunks gouged out of the sides.

Stupid brownies.

Nitpicking aside, these brownies are pretty good, and I liked them better as they aged. The recipe is straightforward, calling for flour, cocoa powder, dark chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs. Instant espresso powder and vanilla give the chocolate some depth. Everything is mixed by hand, and the only tricky part is not overbaking these brownies. Next time I make these, I’ll line the pan with parchment and refrigerate the brownies before cutting them.

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

The biscuit curse struck again! Not familiar with the biscuit curse? See this and this. One day, I may come to the realization that I was not put together in such a way as to produce a lovely biscuit (or scone, for that matter).

Back to these biscuits. I had to make a couple of substitutions. First, I couldn’t find chipotle powder anywhere, so I used chili powder. Secondly, the only cheese I had in the house was colby jack cheese, so that’s what I used. I also cut the recipe in half, because I didn’t want to end up with leftovers.

These days, leftovers seem to be going straight to my thighs.

This is a standard buttermilk biscuit recipe, with chipotle powder and grated cheese added. I don’t know if my changes are to blame, but I found these biscuits to be boring, and oddly enough, chewy. As is standard for me, they spread out, instead of up. To be fair, I should probably make these again, without all my changes.

What do you do when the holidays leave you with bits of nuts and fruits? Dump all those odds and ends in a bowl, stir in some melted chocolate and call them clusters. These won’t win any beauty awards, but they are great to have on hand when a craving for salty chocolate hits.

There aren’t any precise measurements with this sort of thing, and just about anything will work. I ended up with about 3 cups of dried cranberries, sliced almonds, salted cashews and hazelnuts which were covered with about 6 ounces of melted bittersweet chocolate. Once the fruit and nuts were thoroughly coated, I made tablespoon-size mounds of the mixture on parchment paper. To help the chocolate set faster, I put them in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

See? Piece of cake.

Currently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Can one have too many pumpkin-chocolate recipes? I don’t think so, especially when there is a half of a can of pumpkin puree sitting the fridge begging to be used.

There’s nothing surprising about this recipe. You mix pumpkin puree, chocolate chips, vegetable oil, eggs and sugar with spices (cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg), flour and leavening. After baking for just over an hour, you end up with a fragrant cake, earthily sweet and moist, studded with chocolate chips.

This is an easy, simple, tea-time cake. It won’t knock your socks off, but it is a good recipe to have.