Pt 1 Sweet Bakings--Cookies, Mostly

I've been blogging since September 2009. I'd started out with text content, later adding images. Over the last few years, I've accompanied articles with slide shows and videos that I've posted to YouTube.

Sweets seem to have piqued me, particularly from early to mid 2010s. This year has re-piqued me. In inventorying my recipe blogs, i came up with 28 cooky recipes and 19 cake and cake-ish recipes. In the cooky-centric video, I list my blog catalog number with the article title and finished-item image (newest at top).

In musing about sweets, I'd noticed similarities and differences in topic choice and execution over the years. (For cookies, I varied baking cake mix cookies but also baked scratch cookies.)

Dough Mixing

In the beginning, I used pastry blenders for mixing. More recently, I've used a tilt-head mixer for mixing to save on elbow grease. Never going back to pastry blender. BTW, oatmeal cooky dough is the hardest to manually mix, imho.

Dough Dolloping

In the distant past, I used a cooky press or measuring spoon and spatula. More recently, I used a 1 1/3 T cooky scoop, which is a bit more convenient than spoon/spatula. Downside of either method is one-at-a-time dispensing, which also requires travel time and effort between dough bowl and pan.

Even more recently, I've tried making some disks and funnel shapes to use my cooky press. I still have more experiments. Using a cooky press saves on dough travel between dough bowl and pan.

In one of my recipes, I shaped the dough into a rough rectangle, then used a metal spatula to cut it into squarish shapes. It was easier than one-at-a-time dolloping.

Problem Dough

I've wrestled with dough that's stiff, sticky, or both. Dolloping wasn't much fun. My mind's been percolating with thoughts of spray oil and my "slice solutions brownie pan".

The pan and compartments remind me of an ice tray. I considered buying one, but they seem pricey.

OK, Not Baked Cookies

I included some fudge recipes. Although not oven-baked goods, they're sweet items anyway. I felt they were more cooky than cake because of handling handiness. Yum!

---

Related:
Pt 2 Sweet Bakings--Cakes, Cupcakes, and Mini-muffins
Sweet Bakings--A Few Re-peerings

Krusteaz Choco Caramel Squares

These sweet-tooth munchies have a fudge-brownie cooky base, topped with non-nut nougat and chopped nuts. Nougat etymology includes nuts; the sweet confection on the cooky is not nutty—only the final topper. For expediency in this article, "nougat" refers to that middle layer, a combination of melted chocolate chips and squeeze-packet caramel.

About a year ago, I bought a box of Krusteaz Molten Deep Dish Chocolate Cookie with Caramel Center. I periodically would read the instructions, wondering if I really wanted to use up all the ingredients for 12 cookies that had "molten" centers. The yield seems pretty paltry, especially considering extra hassle beyond other munchies I make.

I looked at suggested recipe alternatives on the box. I wasn't warm to requirements for additional ingredients.

• Seattle Bars: graham cracker crumbs, pudding (prepared!), toasted coconut, and nuts
• Creamy Salted Caramel Centros: whipping cream—all of 2 tablespoons!

So, I took inspiration from the Seattle Bars and tried something else, skipping all the additional ingredients except for nuts, and adding melted chocolate chips. Was the process less hassle? No. But the results won rave reviews, and gave me ideas for a future similar but different munchie.

This recipe differs somewhat from other recipes I've posted because I needed to improvise as I went along. I've added several parenthetical thoughts during the process. My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Ingredients and utensils (Pics do not include additional implements I needed to use later.)
1. Utensils and ingredients. The dashed line indicates the mix kit is part of two preparation stages. (The left side shows the dough ingredients, the right side shows the topping ingredients.)
2. Oblong pan and spray oil
2. Doh!
1. Bowl of the cooky dough—mixed eggs, soft butter, and Krusteaz powder
2. Pan with the raw, pressed cooky dough, spread out to edges
3. Pan with the baked cooky slab (Note: During the baking, I needed to press some of the dough down to flatten for height consistency.)
3. Squares!
1. Cooky squares in larger, wax paper-lined pan (Note: First, I flipped the cooky slab onto a cooling rack, cut it into 24 squares, then placed the squares right side up onto the larger, wax-lined pan.)
2. Cooky squares, topped with with choco-caramel and nuts.
3. Finished squares in cupcake liners and tote tin

Implements

• 9" x 13" pan
• Pastry blender
• Mixing bowl for blending to-be-baked ingredients together
• Mixing bowl for melting chocolate chips, then blending in the envelope of Krusteaz caramel "sauce"
• Spoon(s) for later distributing the choco-caramel topping onto the baked cooky squares
• Additional helpful items during process
  • latex or vinyl glove(s) for spreading out the cooky dough, then later for pressing down inconsistent-height dough during baking
  • Cooling rack
  • Wax paper
  • Additional pan or cooky sheet
  • Plastic knife for separating the baked cooky slab from the pan
  • Knife fur cutting squares
  • Plate for nuts
  • Cupcake papers

Ingredients

• For the cooky slab
• 1 egg
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
• The bag of the Krusteaz mix powder
• For the topping
• 4 oz chocolate chips
• The 4-oz package of the Krusteaz caramel topping
• 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (Suggestion: Place on a plate or other flat area.)

Instructions (for the cooky slab)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine the oil and egg.
3. Stir the Krusteaz powder into the wet ingredients.
4. Spray the oil generously onto the pan. (Spray REALLY generously at the edges and corners!)
5. Distribute the cooky dough evenly onto the pan. (Gloves help for less-mess pressing.)
6. Bake for about 13 minutes, and check progress. (The dough rose unevenly, so I pressed the high part to flatten it even with the rest of the slab.)
7. Finish baking for about another 3 minutes, verifying doneness with toothpick or lightly pressing the cooky slab for springiness.
8. Remove the pan from the oven and let it rest for a couple of minutes or so.
9. Use a plastic knife to carefully separate the cooky slab edges and corners from the pan, then flip the pan upside down onto a cooling rack.
10. Cut the cooky slab into 24 squares, placing them right side up. (I initially subdivided the slab into 4 quarters, placed them right side up onto a larger, wax-lined pan, and finished cutting them into squares.)

Instructions (for the topping and completion)

1. Melt the chocolate chips.
2. Snip the envelope of caramel and squeeze it into the bowl.
3. Alternately stir and heat the chocolate and caramel together.
4. Use spoons or similar implements to distribute the nougatty mixture onto the cooky squares. (Using two spoons, I made use of the thick mixture's inertia for transports and gravity for the drops.)
5. For each square, turn it upside down and lightly flatten it onto the plate of nuts, then place it right side up elsewhere. (The nougat acts as a glue.)

The batch made 24 squares, ~142 calories (gasp!) each. The box recipe itself would have made 12 molten-filling cookies at 220 calories each. Adding nuts and chocolate chips increased calories, but dividing the batch into 24 portions reduced the per-unit calories.

Post-recipe thoughts
If making similar squares and using cake mix, for the "molten" caramel, I'd try a spoonable caramel ice cream topping like they use for sundaes. "Smucker's" prominently comes up in Google for ice cream toppings, even without using Smucker's for a search term. These Smucker images are making my mouth water!

Fudge Offload: Silicone Vs. Aluminum Pans

In December, I spotted a post about fudge in The Blog Promoter LinkedIn group called Mama's Fudge Recipe, by Emily Powell. Fudge! Had to visit the site, as I myself make EZ minimal-ingredients fudge, such as "A Convenient Fudge" and "4-ingredient Raspberry Chocolate Fudge". Minimal ingredients are meltable candy, marshmallows, and frosting.

Emily's recipe contrasted with my recipes for list of ingredients and process. One of her pan preparation instructions that caught my eye was her use of Pam and flour, typically for a dessert to be baked. I asked her about it. She confirmed that the flour was raw. I am adverse to eating or serving raw flour, and wondered about dusting with powdered sugar instead of flour.for something that didn't need baking.

For my latest batch of EZ fudge, I tried spray oil and powdered sugar for two kinds of pans—a silicon rubber pan (24 square cavities) and aluminum pan (12 round cavities). Each square holds 5 teaspoons of filling; Each round (cup shape) holds 4 teaspoons. Natch, if you use these pans for cakes or muffins, pour only about a rounded tablespoon of batter to allow for expansion during the baking process. Some baking pans info:

• 24 (square) cavities silicone pan
• 12 (round) cavities aluminum pan (stamped single-piece)
• 24 (round) cavities aluminum pan (constructed w/cups attached to pan)

The pixstrip shows ingredients and pans, fudge mixture squeegeed into pans, ejected fudge pieces, and fudge pieces in paper liners in a box.

After I poured the fudge mixture into the prepared pans and cooling it in the refrigerator, I didn't get around to ejecting them until about four hours later. (Cooling time should have been about an hour or so.) The 3rd-panel pixstrip shows easy-out results with using the silicone pan, not so much with the aluminum pan. The plateful also shows nice shapes from the squares, but lots of misshapes and broken pieces from the rounds. Extraction from the silicone pan was not bad. I turned the pan upside down and pressed from the back. As for the aluminum pan, using the butter knife blade sometimes popped the shapes out ok, but most, not.

In the past, I've poured the fudge mixture into a spray-oiled 8 x 8 glass pan. After a couple of hours, I'd used a paring knife to cut it into 64 pieces. That task took some patience, as the mixture became dense. I'm not great at cutting consistent cubes, either.

I've concluded that using silicone pans for fudge—after prepping with spray oil and powdered sugar—provides good results. BTW, the fudge batch makes about 1 1/2 silicon pans worth (36 squares). The shapes fit very nicely into mini-cupcake paper liners for neatness, as the pixstrip shows in the last pixstrip panel.

Because the fudge squares fit so well in mini-cupcake papers, a future experiment will be baking mini-cupcakes in silicon pans that I prep with only spray oil instead of lining with papers, then seeing how well they fit each other after baking. I might need to underfill the squares with batter so the baked shapes don't bulge and fit the papers badly. (Typical mini-cupcake recipe calls for a rounded teaspoonful of batter.)

Related articles:

• Waits N Measures, Baking Pans N Papers (#87)
• Square Mini and Whoopie Muffin Experiment (#88)
• Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes (#70)
• Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Mini-muffins (#79)

4-ingredient Raspberry Chocolate Fudge

This recipe is a variation of the Convenient Fudge recipe that I published nearly a year ago. Caramel, peanuts, and chocolate were in the fudge, although I omitted brand IDs. This time, I'm calling out brand names and products—Duncan Hines' Frosting Creations mix of raspberry powder {"Flavor MIx") and the base frosting ("Frosting Starter"), Kraft marshmallows, and Wilton meltable candies (chocolate this time).

I'd run across various complaints about the Duncan Hines (DH) base frosting. Bakers loved the powder, but complained about frosting sliding off cakes and not having the characteristics of normal frostings. Well, because I had two of the base frosting and two of the flavor packets, I thought making fudge might be a good way to avoid cake disasters. The results were very nice for taste and mouthfeel.

From past experience with chocolate chips and Wilton candies, it seems the Wilton candies have a lower melting temperature or density than chips. The results seem less hard than when using chips. Using both DH AND Wilton resulted in fudge that was quite soft. The Other prefers more fudge firmness, which is doable by refrigerating the fudge instead of keeping it out at room temperature.
My pixstrip shows images for utensils, ingredients, mixing, and post-mixing. (The images inside the dashed section show preliminary preparation before the microwaving.)
Utensils (spray oil being a bridge from utensils to processing)

• Large mixing bowl
• Large cooking spoon
• 2-cup measuring cup or jar
• Butter knife (for mixing flavor powder into base frosting)
• 8" x 8" pan, prepared with spray oil
• Cooky spatula (for cutting fudge into pieces)

Ingredients

• 16 oz. Duncan Hines Frosting Creations base frosting
• Duncan Hines Frosting Creations raspberry flavor packet
• 12 oz. Wilton chocolate meltable candies
• 1 1/2 cups Kraft marshmallows or 15 large marshmallows (one of my few instances of brand loyalty)

Instructions

1. Using a butter knife, make a deep hole into the frosting and stir the powder into it.
2. Melt chips or other meltable candy the large mixing bowl in the microwave oven, using reduced power. Check about a minute or so for about two rounds of heating.
3. Add the mixed frosting to the bowl. If necessary, microwave another minute or so until you can easily blend the ingredients with the spoon.
4. Add marshmallows to the bowl. If necessary, microwave another minute or so until you can easily blend the ingredients with the spoon.
5. Blend the ingredients with the spoon.
6. Pour ingredients into the spray-oil prepared pan.
7. Refrigerate for no more than two hours. (If longer, the fudge could be difficult to cut.)
8. Cut into 64 pieces (8 x 8) or fewer. (FYI, the paper cups are available at craft stores and baking supply outlets.)

Note: Instead of waiting 2 hours and cutting the fudge block with a knife, you can wait 1 1/2 hours for cooling, then use a cooky spatula edge, pressing down. The pic shows the 8 x 8 fudge grid and spatula. If edges of middle fudge pieces look a little warped, lightly shape them.

October 29—Fudge variation: Made a mint fudge, using the mint white chocolate powder instead of respberry, and Wilton green meltables instead of chcolate meltables. Raves all around!

Shot Salad Shooter Slicing Cone

My Salad Shooter, by Presto, is a small appliance that I use nearly every week, sometimes a couple of times a week. I've had it for maybe 20 years. Mainly, I use it for slicing carrots and olives. Occasionally, I use it for slicing veggies, especially for my veggie pasta recipe. I use it for chopping nuts and peanuts for making cookies and fudge. I used it for grating cheese in the past, but have since discovered the pre-shredded kind, so I don't salad-shoot-shred cheese no mo'.
My slicing cone is worn out, with some "fractures" that threaten to totally break it, as shown in the outlined areas of the pixstrip. I've done some searches for part availability and bottom-line cost. I've gotten the impression that comparison shopping is more difficult than in the past. Companies might now be less willing to let a viewer see total cost before requiring form filling. I think it might be a psychological nudge so that the visitor invests time and energy into filling information, and might be more committed to purchasing the item. In my online travels for finding a reasonable-cost cone replacement, I stopped at Mending Shed, eBay, and Presto.
Mending Shed
Mendingshed.com has an appealing price $4.95, but the shipping is $11.26, bringing the total to $16.21. Decided to pass on it. Furthermore, their form gave me four different options, but when I chose the post office, the tally screen told me they use only UPS. Hmmm. They could have disclosed that info on the first screen.
eBay
I was amused at the number of listings for a USED slicing cone on eBay. Something I'm going to use on MY food. Really! Not!
Presto
The starting Presto page for buying the part looked simple enough. I even inferred that estimating the cost would be simple. Nooooooo! After I reached the contact info screen, I saw that I needed a user ID and password as part of the form fill-in. Well, I decided I'd just send an email and request the shipping cost info, using the Contact link. Even that effort required more than meets the eye.
The contact page showed that I could use the form to email, or call an 800 number, or send snail mail. As the customer service hours availability didn't coincide with my own availability, I chose to fill the form. What a surprise that the Name field displayed "optional." The reality was that clicking the submit button triggered a you-gotta-give-us-a-name message. OK, so I went ahead and put in something. (Bleah. I dislike places that use contact forms for collecting data.)
The autoreply message that I received stated that they "will be in contact with you within 3 business days." Sure seemed like a long time for waiting for a reply to an inquiry. I think some other companies might have fancier inquiry forms where a consumer can pick a certain topic so the company's system can funnel messages to more specific topic buckets.
Mercifully, Presto got back to me that afternoon. The shipping cost would be $2 for the cone for anywhere in US and Canada. Woohoo! I placed my order. Wouldn't you know, the shipping cost is $3. OK, so I'll write the customer rep after I get my cone. Seems they could improve the customer experience by enabling the customer to more easily find out shipping info, especially a good shipping rate. A couple of more incidentals: ETA is about two weeks, and sales tax goes on top of the part AND shipping.
If anything unusual or unexpected occurs between now and the time my cone arrives, I'll put an addendum to this article. (I want to publish NOW.)

A Convenient Fudge

This fudge recipe requires only three ingredients and spray oil. You can add nuts, peanuts, coconut, or anything else that comes to mind. The main flavor is chocolate. You can change one or more of the ingredients to different flavor(s) for variations.
Ingredients, in the order of processing and adding

• 12 oz. chocolate chips or other meltable candy
• 16 oz. frosting
• 15 large marshmallows (or 1 1/2 cups minis)
• 1/2 cup or more nuts
• spray oil for the pan

My recent ingredients that I have used most recently are peanut butter disks, chocolate frosting, caramel-flavor marshmallows, and chopped peanuts.
Utensils

• 1 large mixing bowl
• 1 cooking spoon
• 1 or more knives for chopping nuts (I use Salad Shooter), cutting the finished fudge
• 1 8" x 8" pan, prepared with spray oil

Instructions

1. Melt chips or other meltable candy in the large mixing bowl in the microwave oven, using reduced power. Check about a minute or so for about two rounds of heating.
2. Add frosting to the bowl. Microwave another minute or so until you can easily blend the ingredients with the spoon.
3. Add marshmallows to the bowl. Microwave another minute or so until you can easily blend the ingredients with the spoon.
4. Add nuts to the bowl. Blend the ingredients with the spoon.
5. Pour ingredients into the spray-oil prepared pan.
6. Refrigerate for no more than two hours. (If longer, the fudge could be difficult to cut.)
7. Cut into 64 pieces (8 x 8) or fewer. (FYI, the paper cups are available at craft stores and baking supply outlets.)

Note: Instead of waiting 2 hours and cutting the fudge block with a knife, you can wait 1 1/2 hours for cooling, then use a cooky spatula edge, pressing down. If edges of middle fudge pieces look a little warped, lightly shape them.

For other recipes, mostly that I tag as convenient, download my blog catalog file and look for the yellow-highlighted rows.