Pretty Girl Bakery

The holiday baking season is here, along with some November birthdays.  J went to LA for the weekend to take care of some business and my best friend is turning 25 on Saturday so I whipped up a batch of the Chocolate Chunkers.  I’ve been dying to make them since it was one of the first recipes I witnessed in the making when I was deciding if I should participate in the group or not.  I don’t have too much to say about making these.  I didn’t use nuts or fruit, just bittersweet chunks and white chocolate.  I think next time I’ll pull back on the white chocolate, or use peanut butter or butterscotch chips.  I ate one warm and it was delicious.  They’re also damn good straight from the freezer:-)

This week’s TWD is hosted by Grace over at Piggy’s Cooking Journal. She picked rugelach and wow, this was just entirely delightful to make. After a little wikipedia search I found that this is a Jewish dessert usually made with pareve to make it kosher, instead of cream cheese and butter.  I certainly don’t have any pareve and I can attest that the rested raw dough was really yummy, especially if you accidentally dropped some of it in the cinnamon sugar repeatedly while putting the cookies together.  I have the tiniest food processor ever and it was a cheap-o purchase so I was a little concerned about the dough.  I don’t think I overworked it.  It rolled out smooth and tasty.  Much to my dismay Target did not have any apricot preserves and I’d already done my shopping at Publix so raspberry it was.  I spread the jam, chopped up some bittersweet chips and sprinkled chop pecans all over it. My pizza wheel was a real jem although a few times it got caught on a nut or a chip and ripped the dough slightly while I was trying to cut through it.  Then I rolled them up, put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and placed them in the freezer.  My apartment gets unbelievably warm when I turn my gas oven on.  And it was already 10pm last night and I was exhausted so they are in the freezer and I will bake up a few tonight, and save the rest for those nights when I’ve popped dinner in the oven and can add a little snack to go with.  I’m still timid about the pecans because I don’t really like nuts but the bits of ingredients I was getting on my fingers were delightful… and yes, I licked the pizza wheel.  I will definitely make these again.  These seem like such a good holiday cookie.  For Christmas I’m thinking about a nutella spread with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips. There are so many things you could do with this dough including using it as a base for meat or vegetable hors d’oeuvres.

ready for their close up!

About three weeks ago J’s mom was in town and J was making pad thai for dinner.  I wanted to make a nice dessert to go along with it and I had all of the ingredients since my caramel peanut brownie disaster, and thought that this would be nice after a spicy peanutty dish. I adored the picture of the tart of page 356 and I had just bought a 9 inch tart pan at IKEA a few weeks back so when I got home early that day I broke out my bake box and got started.  Dorie recommends using the Sweet Tart Dough of page 444 and it was buttery and delicious. If you make this you need to make sure to definitely bake it until it’s done. I think mine took about 40-45 to bake and get the edges slightly crisp.  In her recipe for the caramel she says to add the butter after the caramel comes to a deep amber color but I found that by the time mine got to that point it already tasted a little bitter and I still needed to cook it longer to add the butter and the cream. I should have added the butter and cream when the caramel reached a warm amber color.  I found the caramel tasted like those Werther’s candies at that stage.  My other suggestion for making this is to not add the peanuts to the caramel but rather spread the caramel and then sprinkle the peanuts on top before pouring the ganache.  It makes it very easy to spread instead of getting the spatula hung up on clumps of peanuts.  The next time I make this I’d use semi-sweet instead of bittersweet chocolate, and add macadamia nuts instead of the peanuts.

I change my mind a lot.  I try not to but when I find a better idea I change. So even though I just started The Bake Box I decided to change my website to Pretty Girl Bakery.  I was having a hard time creating a feel for The Bake Box.  It sounded like such a good name, but it wasn’t really me and that what I’m paying for this space to be about.  I hope to have some time this weekend to put a new look on it although I think my IT guy might kill me

TWD:  This week was Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes picked by Clara over at iheartfood4thought. Anyway, I have not had time to find my usb cord for my camera.  J’s mom was in town and then his friends were in town (and we had way too much fun!) so I’ve been busy and barely home.  I walked into my apartment last night for the first time in about a week.  So I made the cupcakes before hand and at the moment they are being stored because I think we’re probably doing some sort of Halloween thing this weekend and I want to wait to fill and decorate them so they aren’t bad by the time we arrive.  And if plans don’t materialize well, I guess the guys where J works will be getting some yummy treats. Put I do promise pictures at some point in the next… year:-)