0 Anniversary Celebration

A year ago today I signed up with Blogger and posted a photograph of a meyer lemon bar I made with lemons from our garden. I named my blog Alpineberry because my original intention was to blog about food with a bit of gardening thrown in. Fast forward 365 days later and I'm still blogging, but mostly about the food I bake.

To celebrate my blog's first anniversary I wanted to create a lemony treat. In my head I envisioned a simple moist cake bursting with lemon zest. I didn't want a pound cake or a filled and frosted layer cake. Maybe a cupcake infused with lemon, but not soaked in lemon syrup. I found a recipe for buttermilk cupcakes and gave it my own meyer lemon twist. The lemon combined perfectly with the buttermilk which made the cupcake doubly tangy. The resulting cupcake had a nice crumb and was tender and moist too.

As good as the cupcake was unadorned, the simple lemon icing elevated it to a whole other lemony level. My husband usually isn't overly excited by anything I bake, but he told me the cupcake was really, really, really good. He's my number one taste tester (well, he's my number one, period). This is now our favorite cupcake.



Iced Meyer Lemon Cupcakes
(yields 24 cupcakes)

Cupcakes:
3 cups cake flour (or 2 1/4 cup cake flour + 3/4 cup AP flour)
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
12 ounces (3 sticks / 1.5 cups) unsalted butter, softened at room temp
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tbsp finely grated meyer lemon zest
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (12 fl. oz.) buttermilk
2 tbsp freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice

Icing:
2 cups powdered sugar (you may not need all 2 cups)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice

To make cupcakes:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line 24 (4 fluid ounce capacity) cupcake wells with paper cupcake liners.

Sift together both flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside dry ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add lemon zest and beat for 1 minute. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally. Mix in vanilla.

Stir lemon juice into your measured buttermilk. Alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk to your batter, beginning and ending with the flour.

Fill each well approximately 3/4 full. Bake until a skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes then gently transfer cupcakes to a cooling rack. Cool completely before icing.

To make icing:
Combine 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and lemon juice. Whisk until smooth. Add some or all of the remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar for a stiffer icing.

PS: It's also our wedding anniversary. We've been officially married for 4 years but been together for almost 16 years. Happy Anniversary dear husband!

0 Red Velvet Cake

I think red was in the air when our monthly baking group, now officially named the Daring Bakers, voted to make to red velvet cake for our March recipe. As a departure from our usual modus operandi of everyone using the exact same recipe, we decided to use a recipe of our choice. The New York Times printed a recipe recently and our very own Peabody shared a traditional recipe from Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, Georgia. But in the end, after browsing through a dozen recipes, I chose a cake recipe from the Martha Stewart website that was very similar to Peabody's recipe.

I've never made or tasted red velvet cake before. (But I do remember the groom's cake from the movie Steel Magnolias which was shaped like an armadillo and was blood red on the inside. I've been told that it was a red velvet cake.) Now, as far as I can tell from the recipe, red velvet cake is basically a yellow cake with a bit of cocoa powder for flavor. And the red part comes mostly from adding food coloring. I say mostly because the chemical reaction between the cocoa powder, buttermilk and vinegar creates a slightly reddish cake.

I originally decided that I would skip the red food coloring because that just seemed too unnatural. I read that beet root juice could color the cake red but I was worried how it would affect the delicate flavor of the cake. So I made a "tester" cake without the coloring or beets just to see how red, or how un-red, it would be. The cake was reddish brown but it was definitely brown and nowhere near velvety. It was then that I decided a bit of food coloring was not a bad thing. After all, this cake is supposed to be red.

When the time came to make the real thing, I proceeded with the recipe and added the entire one ounce bottle (30ml) of red food coloring to batter. It was at that very moment that I felt I had a made a huge mistake. The batter was scary red! But after adding the flour and buttermilk to the mix, the batter became less red and I calmed down. Who knew adding food coloring to a cake could cause such an emotional response? After the cakes were baked, they were a nice mahogany color.

I wasn't sure what kind of frosting was traditionally used for red velvet cakes. There were boiled frostings, seven minute frostings, and cream cheese frostings. There were frostings with and without nuts, using pecans or walnuts. Egg white, milk, heavy cream, or butter based. After tasting my tester cake, I thought a straightforward cream cheese frosting without nuts would pair nicely with the fluffy cocoa cake.

My overall impression of my red velvet cake was mixed. Although the frosting was nice, I actually preferred the cake plain. I really liked the subtle cocoa taste that was not quite chocolate nor was it vanilla. The texture of the cake was similar to a chiffon cake but fluffier and less elastic. As far as aesthetics, the deep velvety mahogany cake layers and the creamy frosting resulted in a visually striking cake.



Our Daring Bakers group is growing! I've added the DB blogroll to my sidebar, so check out all the red velvet cakes that you can handle. And see that cool James Bond-esque silhouette and the snazzy meringue mountain above? Thanks to the wonderfully talented Ximena, we now have our very own logo! If you don't know her work, please visit her at Lobstersquad, where she combines food blogging with her illustrations.



Red Velvet Cake
(from marthastewart.com)
(one 2 layer 9-inch round cake)

2 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups flavorless oil (I used grape seed oil)
2 large eggs
2 tbsp red food coloring (one 1-ounce bottle)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp vinegar (white or apple cider)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Generously butter two 9-by-2-inch round cake pans. Sprinkle with flour, and tap out the excess. Set your pans aside.

In a medium bowl, sift together cake flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Set aside your dry ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the sugar and oil on medium speed until well combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add food coloring and vanilla, and beat until well combined.

Add flour mixture, alternating with buttermilk, scraping the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add vinegar to batter, and beat for 10 seconds.

Evenly divide the batter between your prepared pans. Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool in the pans for 10 minutes. Remove cakes from the pans, and return to the rack to cool completely.



Cream Cheese Frosting
(enough to fill and frost a 2 layer 9-inch round cake)

4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened at room temp.
12 ounces (1.5 bars) cream cheese, softened at room temp.
1 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium speed. Add sugar and vanilla and beat until combined, about 2 minutes.

Note: One of my cake layers was more domed than the other. So I shaved off the dome to level my cake layer. Then I crumbled the shavings and lightly coated the sides of my frosted cake.

0 Weekend Dog Blogging

My name is Percy and I'm a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I'm excited that I can participate in this round of Weekend Dog Blogging (WDB). See my tail wagging?


I spent some time with Mary before heading north to my forever home. I wasn't sure if I would like this pet bed but it was quite comfortable!

Make sure to visit Eli and Cate at Sweetnicks for the WDB roundup (usually posted on Sunday).

0 Hay Hay I Almost Missed Donna Day

Hay Hay It's Donna Day was started by Barbara back in November 2005 and has become a highly anticipated event. First there's the announcement of the theme, followed by the round up and then the voting. Yes, voting means that there is a winner. And winning means there is a fabulous Donna related prize and the honor of hosting the next round. Peabody was bestowed that honor for her souffle last month and deemed this HHDD #10 to be all about cheesecake.

For some strange reason I had it in my head that the deadline was on Monday March 19 so I planned to make my cheesecake on Sunday morning. But thankfully I double-checked and found out the deadline is today! I still had time but I had to work fast since the deadline was quickly approaching. My fridge was a bit barren and I only had one 8-ounce package of Philly cream cheese which was definitely not enough to make a 9-inch cheesecake. Since I was whipping this up at the very last minute I didn't want to make a trip to the store. After a quick survey of what I had on hand, I had no choice but to go miniature.

First, I needed the flavor inspiration. I've had a canister of Brown & Haley's Mocha Roca toffee candy in my pantry since Christmas and have always intended to use it for baking. Mocha Roca, a variation of the popular Almond Roca, contains coffee beans, cashews, chocolate and, of course, toffee. I blitzed a few of the candies in my food processor to make something akin to a ground praline.



Now I needed a crust but I had no graham crackers, wafers, or cookies but I had nuts. So I modified a hazelnut crust recipe from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book by substituting cashews to complement the Mocha Roca and prepared only one-third of the crust recipe. The filling part was easy. I made a one-third recipe of my tried and true basic cheesecake filling recipe. I originally planned to just mix the ground candy into the batter so that it would be scattered throughout. But I decided to do layers instead.



My last minute mini Mocha Roca cheesecakes turned out great. The ground toffee candy melted and created a sweet, nutty, coffee bean layer sandwiched between 2 layers of creamy cheesecake. Sprinkling some ground toffee candy on top of the baked cheesecake added some texture and it looks pretty too.



Mini Mocha Roca Cheesecakes
(makes 9 mini cheesecakes)

Crust:
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup cashew nuts
1/8 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 tbsp butter, softened

Filling:
1 8-ounce package of cream cheese, softened at room temp.
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 extra large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp melted butter, cooled
about 1/2 cup ground Mocha Roca toffee candies (unwrap 6 or 7 candies, grind in a food processor)

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 9 four-ounce capacity wells of a standard muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Place the flour, sugar, cashews, baking soda, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and process until the cashews are finely ground. Add the butter and process until the dough just comes together. It's okay if it's crumbly.

Scoop 1 tablespoon of dough into each of the 9 wells and press the dough evenly into the bottom using the back of the tablespoon.

Bake crusts at 350F for about 8-9 minutes or until the edges of the crust start to take on a light golden color. Allow crusts to cool while you make the filling.

Beat the cream cheese with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add sugar and mix until blended. Mix in egg and vanilla until blended. Mix in melted butter.

Scoop one tablespoon of batter over each crust. Top with 1-2 teaspoons of ground Mocha Roca. (Any leftover ground candy can be used later for decoration.) Top the ground Mocha Roca with one tablespoon of batter. If there's any remaining batter, divide evenly among the 9 cups. (It's okay if the cup is almost filled to the top of the muffin well. They will puff up a bit while baking and then sink down creating a nice little "cup" to hold a dollop of cream or more ground Mocha Roca.)

Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes until the tops begin to crack and the centers are set. Cool completely. (The cheesecakes will sink a bit in the center.)

To serve, peel off the cupcake liner. Top with whipped cream or sprinkle with any leftover ground Mocha Roca.

0 Poppy Pumpkin Seed Poppers

I didn't quite know what to call these cookies. I started with a recipe for Russian tea cakes / Mexican wedding cookies, but filled them with a combination of toasted pumpkin seeds (aka pepitas) and poppy seeds. The name for these little treats came to me when the head honcho at work admitted that he couldn't stop popping them into his mouth. And voila, the poppy pumpkin seed popper was born.

Poppy Pumpkin Seed Poppers
(makes 36 cookies)

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened at room temp.
1/2 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup pepitas (raw pumpkin seeds), toasted lightly and chopped
2 tbsp poppy seeds

3/4 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350F.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until creamy and well combined, about 1-2 minutes at medium speed. Add vanilla extract and beat for about 30 seconds. Add flour and mix on low speed until flour is just incorporated. Mix in pumpkin seeds and poppy seeds.

Shape dough into balls about 1-inch in diameter. Place onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 13-15 minutes until dough no longer appears wet and the bottoms are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, and then transfer cookies to cooling rack. When the cookies are completely cool dust liberally with confectioner's sugar.



PS: Apologies for the really short post today. In addition to losing an hour because of daylight savings, I also had a tough weekend. A sad and exhausted Mary cannot think straight. At least we're experiencing some absolutely gorgeous weather around here. I think we reached 80 degrees in San Francisco today. The "sunshine therapy" is definitely helping to lift my spirits.

0 Almond Apple Bars

I have an old, weathered folder filled with hundreds of recipes. Pages torn from magazines, photocopies from the local newspaper food section and borrowed cookbooks, and printouts from various websites collected over the years are all crammed into this one folder. It's my recipe to-do list and it grows longer and longer every day. And that doesn't even include all the recipes I've flagged in my cookbooks and magazines or the recipes I copied and pasted from other food blogs and recipe sites.

I know I should just scan all the contents of this folder and store them electronically, but I like holding on to these sheets of paper. I have notes handwritten in the margins and some have pictures scotch-taped to them so I can see what the finished product is supposed to look. Sure, these things can be preserved in electronic form, but what about the smudge I left when I picked up the recipe with cake batter on my fingers? Or the crease from when I folded the recipe so it could fit in my purse? Each sheet is like a tiny sensory cue which dots the landscape that is my past. It's quite amazing that something so simple can remind me of people, places, and feelings.

To keep my folder manageable, I go through and purge every once in awhile. After all, this folder can only hold a finite amount. I throw out recipes I've tried but don't want to make again. I've found that most of the ones I keep are from my college years. I have fond memories from that time in my life. I was carefree and the world seemed full of opportunities, choices, and possibilities. A woman I worked with on campus brought these almond apple bars to the office one day and told me it won a blue ribbon at the county fair. She was gracious enough to share her award winning recipe with me. I've been holding on to this recipe for years, but I finally got around to making it. The bars were as good as I remembered.



Almond Apple Bars
(makes one 9x9 inch square pan)

Crust ingredients:
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt (or 1/4 tsp table salt)
3 ounces cream cheese, softened at room temp.
2 ounces (4 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened at room temp.
1/4 tsp pure almond extract
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup almonds, finely chopped

Topping ingredients:
2 tbsp all purpose flour
2 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp light brown sugar
1/4 cup almonds, coarsely chopped

Filling ingredients:
5 ounces cream cheese, softened at room temp.
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
pinch of salt
2-3 medium (~ 1 lb) Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored & cut into thin slices

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 9x9 inch square baking pan with parchment. Butter the parchment.

To make the crust:
Sift flour and salt. Set aside dry ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter on medium speed until smooth, about 1-2 minutes. Add the almond and vanilla extracts and beat on medium until smooth, about 1 minute. Add the granulated and brown sugars and beat on medium speed until blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice.

On low speed, mix in the flour-salt mixture and the 1/3 cup of finely chopped almonds just until the dough comes together. It should be crumbly.

Reserve about 2/3 cup of the crust mixture (for the topping). Press the remaining dough evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork. Bake until light golden, about 16-18 minutes. Remove crust from the oven.

To make the topping:
While the crust bakes, make the topping by adding the flour, granulated and brown sugars to the reserved dough. Mix until well combined. It should be crumbly. Set aside topping and 1/4 cup coarsely chopped almonds while you make the filling.

To make the filling:
In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg, lemon juice and salt until well mixed.

To assemble:
Arrange the apple slices over your baked crust. Pour the cream cheese filling over the apples and gently spread the filling to cover. Crumble the topping over the filling. Sprinkle with the almonds.

Bake until light golden brown, about 45-50 minutes. Let the bars cool in the pan for about 30 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on a cooling rack before cutting.

0 Sablés Korova

I must be the last food blogger to make Pierre Herme's sablés Korova (aka Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies). I don't know why I waited so long. These cookies are freaking amazing! So easy to mix up the dough, not so easy to wait while the dough is taking its necessary rest in the refrigerator, and definitely too easy to woof down a whole tray when they're fresh from the oven. I ended up using Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder and Ghirardelli 60% chocolate. The cocoa is so dark that it's black, but I don't know if it was all that special. And because the cocoa was so dark, the finely chopped bits of Ghirardelli 60% looked really light. I think they would've been better looking if my cocoa and chocolate were the same color. It almost seemed blasphemous to use anything other than Valrhona cocoa and chocolate in these very French cookies but they still rocked! That just means the cookies would've been rockin' to the millionth degree if I had some Valrhona in the pantry that night. And Dorie, you totally rock too!

Korova Cookies (Sablés Korova)
From "Paris Sweets" by Dorie Greenspan
(makes about 36 cookies)

1 1/4 cups (175g) all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (30g) unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
11 tbsp (5.5oz/ 150g/ 1stick plus 3 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened at room temp
2/3 cup (120g) packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
1/2 tsp fleur de sel or 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 ounces (150g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped into tiny bits

Make the dough:
Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda. Set aside dry ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, salt and vanilla and mix for 1 minute. You don't want to beat too much air into this batter.

On low speed, add in the dry ingredients and mix just until the dry ingredients are incorporated. (Drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and your kitchen from the "dust"). Beat the dough as little as possible (it's okay if it's a bit crumbly). Add the chocolate bits and mix just to incorporate. (I like to mix in the chocolate by hand to avoid over working the dough.)

Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it into one mass and divide it in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 1.5 inches in diameter. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 1 hour and up to 3 days.

Baking:
Preheat the oven to 325F. Line your sheet pan with parchment paper or silicone mats.

Remove the chilled logs of dough from refrigerator. Using a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds that are about 1/2 inch thick. Place slices on your prepared sheet pan, about 1 inch apart.

Bake for 12 minutes. The cookies won't look done, nor will they be firm, but that's just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack.

* Some tips *
Make sure your chocolate is finely chopped. Otherwise it'll be difficult to cut your cookies into neat slices. But if your chocolate bits "tear" your dough while you're slicing, just smush it back together on the cookie sheet. No one will know when they're baked.

Don't worry if your cookie logs end up less than round. After slicing, you can "reshape" it into a circle on the cookie sheet.

The chill in the refrigerator is not something I would skip. It'll help keep your cookies tender by allowing the gluten to relax a bit. The chill will also help the cookies keep their shape while baking.

The cookies are dangerously addictive. If you lack will power like me, don't bake more cookies than necessary. The dough keeps well in the refrigerator or freezer. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you've frozen the dough, you don't need to defrost it before baking. You can just slice the logs into cookies and bake the cookies 1 minute longer.)