Category Archives: Baked

By Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Hazelnut Cinnamon Chip Biscotti

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cin_hazle_biscottiCurrently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

I have to confess, I’ve never made biscotti. I don’t like crunchy cookies, and I abhor soggy things, so a crunchy cookie that you dip in coffee . . . well, ugh. But I needed one more recipe out of Baked, and I wanted something that was simple to make and wouldn’t require a trip to the grocery store. I had everything needed for these biscotti, so biscotti it was.

Another confession. I really liked these. Yes, they are very crunchy, and no, I didn’t dunk them in anything (ugh). Even Bryan, who doesn’t normally like hazelnuts, really liked these. It might have had something to do with the chocolate chips.

The cinnamon flavor is very pronounced, with the hazelnuts and chocolate chips adding their own background notes. I liked biting into the biscotti and getting different combinations of flavors each time.

The dough for these cookies is really simple. Eggs are beaten with sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon until thick. Then vanilla, flour, toasted hazelnuts and chocolate chips are added. The dough is spread out on a baking sheet and baked until firm, but not brown. Once the initial baking is done, the cookie log is cooled slightly and then sliced into the familiar biscotti shape. The cookies are then baked again until dry and toasty.

This is the last recipe out of Baked. My overall impression of the book is favorable. I didn’t run into any real flops, although a couple of the cakes worked better after I tweaked the ingredients (leavenings, mostly). I’m still thinking about the lemon drop cake and what a wonderfully bright flavor it had. That peanut butter pie was one of the quickest and easiest desserts I’ve made in quite a while, but looks (and tastes) fit for company. I think this book has definitely earned a spot on my bookshelf.

Up next, I’m going to get close and personal with my slow cooker.

Lemon Drop Cake

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lemon_drop_cakeCurrently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

For me, lemon cakes are either great or gross. There doesn’t seem to be much in between. Fortunately, this cake lands firmly on the great side. In fact, this might just be my favorite recipe out of Baked.

lemon_drop_sliceThe cake part of this creation is a white cake flavored with lemon zest. I cut the recipe by 1/3 (because I only have two cake pans and the original recipe calls for three 8-inch pans) and toned down the leavening. I had no problems with the cake rising and then falling or being underbaked. My only concern was the tunneling that occurred in the cake (if you look closely at the slice of cake, you can see the holes in the cake). I might have over beaten the batter, but even then, the cake was light and moist with a really nice lemon flavor.

As the cakes were baking and cooling, I made the lemon curd part of the recipe. This is a standard lemon curd, lots of egg yolks, lemon juice and butter. Some lemon curds can taste really eggy, but not this one. It was the perfect balance between tart and sweet.

The last component of the cake was the frosting. Instead of calling for a standard buttercream, you cook a mixture of flour, sugar, milk and cream on the stovetop until it boils and thickens. This mixture is then whipped until cool at which point alot of butter is added. After more whipping, you end up with a light, satiny smooth buttercream. To make it lemony, some of the curd is stirred into the frosting. I’ve never made frosting like this, but I liked it. Alot.

To assemble the cake, you spread lemon curd between the cake layers and then frost the whole shebang. I had some concerns that the weight of the cake layers would force the curd out from the cake, but the curd was thick enough to stay put.

I’m already planning on making this cake again soon. I only ate a couple of pieces before I sent the rest to Bryan’s office. Now I’m thinking that was a mistake; I should have eaten the whole thing myself.

Milk Chocolate Malt Ball Cake

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whopper_cakeCurrently 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.

Butterscotch Pudding Tarts

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butterscotch_puddingCurrently 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.

Peanut Butter Pie with Cookie Crust

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pb_pieCurrently 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.

Baked Bars

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baked_barsCurrently 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.

Root Beer Bundt Cake

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rootbeer_bundtCurrently baking out of Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

This was the first recipe I made from Baked, back when. At the time, I had a bunch of generic root beer taking up refrigerator space, so root beer bundt cake it was. Except, it really wasn’t. Root beery, that is. That cake tasted flat and thin. This time around, I made sure to use the good stuff, and it made all the difference.
This is a pretty standard cake recipe, with the liquid being supplied by two cups of root beer. Don’t make the same mistake I did, when thinking about this cake. This isn’t a root beer cake. Rather, it’s a very chocolatey cake with a hint of root beer flavor. And trust me, that isn’t a bad thing at all. Besides being oh so very chocolatey, this cake is also moist and tender.
The cake is finished off with a root beer fudge frosting, which is made up of dark chocolate, butter, root beer, cocoa powder and confectioners’ sugar. Normally, I don’t like frosting made with confectioners’ sugar, but this one was really good. It was thick and fudgy and just a little bit salty. The Baked authors recommend eating this cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but it tastes just fine on its own.

The Baked Brownie

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baked_brownieCurrently 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.

Chipotle Cheddar Biscuits

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cheddar_biscuitsCurrently 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.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Loaf

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pumpkin_loafCurrently 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.