Crispy Dark Chocolate Cookie Bars

Do I really need to declare my love for chocolate here?  I’m a lady, after all, which means that my free thoughts are consumed with nothing but chocolate and shopping (and sometimes Cosmos, amirite, ladeez?).  But here’s the really shocking thing: the man in my house also loves chocolate.  And he bakes.    *gasp!*

But seriously, chocolate is delicious, and I think this is something we can all* agree on, regardless of gender presentation.  So, when Josh decided to make these amazing little cookies last Sunday afternoon, I was more than delighted.  Since this is a baking project, and since (as I have mentioned previously) I am not equipped with baking skills, I’ll just relate the recipe to you as it comes out of our Cookie Book.

Preheat the oven to 325.

Combine the following together in a bowl to form a dough:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup fine sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 4 tsp. corn syrup (preferably light)

Roll the dough out between 2 sheets of parchment paper until it forms a rectangle about 7″ x 9.5″.  Remove the top sheet of parchment and use a knife to cut the dough in half once lengthwise, and then into bars about 3/4″ wide.  Place the bars onto parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake for 15 minutes, but don’t allow the bars to brown (more, since they’re already brown in color).  Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

In a double boiler over simmering water, melt 5 oz. dark/bittersweet chocolate.  Dip the cooled bars into the melted chocolate (and, if you have them, chocolate flakes–we skipped this step), and leave on counter to set for a couple of hours.

Then, eat them, because they’re delicious.

*I am told that there are a few outliers here who claim to like vanilla or something, but I am ignoring data that do not support my argument.  Because I can.

Ring Around the Rolls

Josh made these tasty little guys last week, and they were too pretty not to show off a bit.  Yes yes, I know: I’m a very lucky girl indeed.

Vegetable Pot Pie

There are moments during the fall and winter months when I want comfort food, but all of my stand-by items like macaroni or soup sound either too heavy or too boring.  I was in just such a mood this week (having just returned from Louisiana, the fattening delicious food capital of the world), so it was with great excitement that I read this new recipe in Vegetarian Times.  It wasn’t quick, but it wasn’t particularly difficult either, which turned out to be fine for a cozy night at home.

I got started by boiling chopped potatoes and carrots in a pot of salty water, and sauteing cubed tofu in canola oil, soy sauce and Tony’s.  After these were done, I set them aside and sauteed the mushrooms, onion and garlic that Josh cut up, and then added some chopped broccoli as well.

When these started to get soft, I pushed them to the side of the giant pot and made a roux in the bottom with oil and flour.  After this came together, I stirred in the vegetables that were already in the pot, plus some veggie stock, soy and hoisin sauces, Worcestershire sauce, sage, thyme, and more Tony’s.  To that I added the tofu, potatoes and carrots I’d previously set aside, and let the whole thing simmer and thicken up a bit.

Meanwhile, Josh was making the crust, which involved cutting butter into flour, adding water, salt, thyme and rosemary (can you tell I don’t bake?).  There was likely something else that happened before he rolled it out, but I leave all bread-like items to him.*

We then put the cooked veggies and their gravy-like sauce into a big baking dish and topped it with the crust, cutting holes to vent it.  After 45 minutes in the oven at 375, it was amazingly tasty–as good as any Chicken Pot Pie I had in my former meat-eating life, I’d venture to say–and certainly worth all the effort.  And as an added bonus, it was definitely cheap to make (when tofu is the priciest single ingredient, I feel that I’m doing pretty well).  So, to sum up: cheap, satisfying, and full of veggies = an unmitigated success.

*If you want more details on this, feel free to pick up this month’s edition of Vegetarian Times; it’s a good one and includes an entire vegan Soul Food meal!

“Granola,” or, We Become Caricatures of Ourselves

It was only a matter of time, really.  One day you’re baking your own bread and trading organic gardening tips, and the next you’re bringing home compost-able materials from parties and making home-made granola.  The uppity grad student ship has sailed, friends, and we’re right there at the helm.  But seriously, let’s face it: this is a ship with some effing good food, and I’m willing to brave even the most cliched of rides for that.

After our last trip to With the Grain, we decided that life would no longer be complete without regular access to good granola at home.  Granola is something of a staple in our house, as we regularly eat it with yogurt for breakfast, and sometimes again in the evenings for dessert.  The problem is that granola is typically either really expensive or really not-very-good, so making it ourselves was the logical next step.  Josh found a great recipe (and, since baking is his thing and not mine, he put it all together), and it turned out really wonderfully.  Since I wasn’t involved in the baking process, I can’t tell you in great detail what went into it, but I can say that it involved the following: rolled oats, slivered almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, maple syrup, vanilla, sugar and salt.  Because he’s so smart, Josh actually cut the sugar content in half, which (I think) made the whole thing really perfect.  So much of the granola we get commercially is cloyingly sweet, and letting the saltiness and sweetness harmonize (instead of making the sugar primary) has the effect of bringing out the intense nut flavors, which I love.

After eating handfuls of the fresh-baked granola straight out of the oven, we managed to save enough to attempt a yogurt and raspberry parfait this morning.  Because it was early and I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous, I just used a tiny bit of raspberry jam between the yogurt and granola layers, but I believe it would have been better (and more closely approximating the parfait from With the Grain) if I’d cooked some berries down in lemon juice and simple syrup and used that instead.  This was still pretty tasty, though, and definitely not a bad way to wake up.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last night Josh and I enjoyed a nice, quiet Saturday evening at home.  After putting together a quick dinner and settling in for a catch-up marathon of True Blood (seriously, if you haven’t seen it, order it from Netflix right now!), we decided that some dessert and red wine were in order.  Between episodes, Josh made a delicious batch of chocolate chip cookies, which were oh-so-satisfying when paired with wine and southern gothic vampire shows.

Josh was insistent that these cookies were “not representative of [his] best work,” but I definitely enjoyed them.  He could tell you a bit more about what he did and why the batter wasn’t completely satisfying (I think there may have been more salt than he intended), but since I’m the one writing this, I’ll mention one thing that stands out to me as making these cookies great.  Almost all of the cookies and pastries Josh makes call for vanilla extract, and we’ve been fortunate enough to inherit a really fantastic one.  When our good friend Lexie moved away from Nashville, she left behind some of her favorite spices that would be too much trouble to pack up, including this amazing vanilla extract.  It’s made by a company called Reyna, and the subtitle on the bottle reads “For those who know the difference.”  Elitist, yes.  But also true.  As a person who cares deeply about food–but doesn’t know much about baking–I’ll say that a great vanilla always makes a huge difference to me in the taste of a cookie, cake or pie, and is thus worth the shocking price tag that comes with it.  I say this now, of course, having gotten hooked on Lexie’s uber-vanilla before having to pay for it on my own.  It’s an investment piece, for sure, but when it turns out cookies like these, it’s an investment I’m glad to make.

Peanut Butter Doggie Treats

Dewey is a peanut butter fiend.  It’s the one type of people-food we let her have (besides the crumbs I drop when cooking, which are snapped up pretty quickly), and she gets so excited about it that she visibly drools.  Since this is fairly disgusting, even for a set of parents who find most everything she does adorable, we decided to make Dewey her own peanut butter treats–they’re much simpler to deal with, and don’t involve the risk of stray drool winding up in our own peanut butter supply.

Josh made these out of peanut butter, oats, and wheat flour–which means that technically, we could eat them too…but I’m not sure that the texture would be particularly appetizing to our palates.  Anyway, after the mixture came together, he rolled it out to about 3/4 an inch thick, cut out little bone shapes with cookie cutters we got especially for this purpose, and then baked them till they were firm.  Unlike most of the things we make, I can’t tell you for certain that they were delicious–but Dewey definitely seems to think so.

“Sausage” ‘n Biscuits

Do you ever have one of those mornings when you wake up hungry, only to realize that there’s nothing to eat in the house?  I hate when this happens, primarily because I am not particularly fond of waiting to eat (grouchiness ensues!) and the prospect of going to the store pre-coffee is enough to send me over the edge.  Well, today was one of those mornings–but surprisingly, it ended up much, much better than I could have hoped, because we managed to turn “nothing to eat” into something fantastic.

We had no milk, yogurt, fruit (except a banana that is, to put it mildly, past its prime) or bread, so all the usual breakfast items were out.  However, Josh managed some quick thinking–a feat, as far as I’m concerned, given our pre-coffee status–and he whipped up some quick buttermilk biscuits, while I constructed some veggie sausage out of TVP, an egg, and flour.

Now, I know the meat-eaters amongst you may think this sounds a bit odd, but believe me when I tell you that it was really, really good.  TVP behaves a lot like ground beef after it’s been browned, so making sausage patties out of it makes perfect sense.  After re-hydrating the TVP with boiling water (it comes in a dry form), I seasoned it pretty aggressively with garlic salt, fennel, sage, cayenne and black pepper, and then combined it with the egg and flour to form a mixture that held together.  I then formed it into patties, which I browned on each side in a little bit of olive oil–et voila!  “Sausage”!  It was savory, spicy and satisfying, just like a good Southern breakfast should be.

(Those of you who are still skeptical are hereby warned that I may just substitute your pork sausage with TVP without your knowledge.)

Flatbread Pizza and Happy Accidents

Do you remember learning in elementary school that Silly Putty was invented by accident?  Or that Ben Franklin or some other guy discovered something because he just happened to be outside in a lightning storm (ahem, drunk!) when he should have been indoors like a reasonable person?  So, I’m hazy on the details.  The important thing here is the set-up to what is by now a completely banal observation: good things sometimes happen when you eff things up.  Demonstrating this truth yet again: the Flatbread Pizza.

Josh and I “discovered” the Flatbread Pizza (whose name, by the way, bears witness to the fact of its accidental hybrid status, midway between two delicious creations, and yet never fully either) when attempting to learn the ropes of our new oven.  If you bake at all, you know that temperature gauges on ovens are in fact dirty, dirty liars, since every oven’s heat range is like a unique little snowflake with the potential to burn the crap out of whatever you’re making.  Learning the whims of an oven takes time, and since we’ve only been with ours for a few weeks now, our attempts don’t always turn out as we anticipate.  A week or so ago, when Josh was making the crust for some pizza, a too-hot oven resulted in a crunchy rustic flatbread that definitely wasn’t pizza crust.  In my ongoing quest to save money, I insisted that we find a way to salvage it (“I’ll eat it!  It’s only a little burned!” were my exact words, I think)…and the Flatbread Pizza was born.  Interestingly, making the crust this way–directly on a pizza stone that’s heated to around 500 degrees–results in something that’s much closer to the pizzas we had in central Italy than anything I’ve seen here.  Anyway, after we bake the crust (which tends to puff up and get a bit ugly, even when docked), we top it with sauce and mozzarella, plus whatever combination of items we like.  We’ve found that simpler is usually better, however, so last night we did one with tomatoes (from Ontario!) and basil, and one with sauteed Cremini mushrooms and red bell pepper.  Crunchy, flavorful and–even better–cheap.