A Baker that Doesn't Bake

My no-bake cookies are pretty awesome. I owe this mostly to the use of peanut butter and old-fashioned oats, as opposed to just cocoa and quick-cooking oats. The PB adds some depth and variety to the flavor and the old-fashioned oats help with thickening the mixture up.



I made these for my cookie boxes for Christmas, and they were well-received. This is a good throwdown cookie recipe, as they only take a few minutes to make and a couple of hours to harden.



Chocolate Peanut Butter No-Bake Cookies
Makes 3 dozen cookies

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 2/3 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 teaspoon vanilla exttract

In a medium sauce pan, combine sugar, milk, butter, and cocoa powder. Bright to a boil and cook for about 2 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter, oats, and vanilla until completely combined. Add more oats if cookies seem runny.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto wax paper and let cool until hardened.

Melts in Your Mouth and Your Hand

Eating my grandmother's homemade fudge until I got a stomachache was practically a holiday tradition for me when I was a child. I can still vividly remember sneaking the little chocolate pieces out of their cookie tins, where they were neatly stacked between layers of wax paper. Although I'm older, I could probably still take on an entire tin of fudge and have a hard time stopping until my stomach cries "Uncle".



My grandma doesn't really make fudge anymore, but last year she gave me the recipe that she got off of a can of Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk decades ago. It's exceedingly simple and the results are amazing; the fudge is creamy, chewy, and succulent. Variations are endless, and you can even adjust how milk chocolate-y you want it to taste; for more, use more milk chocolate chips and for less, use more semisweet chocolate chips.



Foolproof Chocolate Fudge
Makes 81 one-inch cubes

1 3/4 cups milk chocolate chips
1 3/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
Dash of salt
1 cup chopped walnuts (or other nuts, toffee bits, miniature M&M's, etc.)

In a heavy saucepan over low heat, melt chips with sweetened condensed milk and salt. Stir often; remove from heat and stir in walnuts and vanilla. Spread evenly into wax-paper-lined 9-inch square pan. Chill 2 hours or until firm.

Turn fudge onto cutting board; peel off paper and cut into squares. Store loosely covered at room temperature.

Baby, Ginger, Sporty, Scary, and Posh

I found a recipe for a Starbucks-inspired Chocolate Cinnamon Bread a long time ago and saved it to my computer. Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of the original website, so I can't properly give credit; however, I did find a number of sites with the exact same recipe as the one I received, and I think this one is the most likely candidate for being the source.



I tend to add at least a little bit of cinnamon to just about everything I bake, so the idea of chocolate and cinnamon combined into a dense, moist quickbread with a crispy sugar-spice topping is pretty exciting to me.



As I said before, I've had this recipe for almost a year and have hesitated to use it; possibly because it takes so much butter and butter is getting more expensive each week. The point is, my finals today were postponed until Thursday and I baked all day long, eventually getting around to this recipe.



I am so happy we had frigid weather; otherwise, it might've taken me another year to taste the thick, warm, chocolate deliciousness that is involved with eating this bread. The bread is soft and moist while the crust is sweet and crunchy; the loaves don't rise as much as my other quick breads, but the actual texture is dense and compact, and you definitely get as much bang for your buck as you would with, say, banana bread. I cannot honestly recommend any quick bread more than this one. Bake this!


Chocolate Cinnamon Bread
Makes 2 nine-inch loaves

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9-inch loaf pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

Make the chocolate batter: in the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar with the paddle attachment on medium speed, until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each egg is completely incorporated before adding the next and scraping down the sides of the bowl several times.

Meanwhile in a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, water and vanilla. With mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture to butter, beginning and ending with the flour and beating just until blended. Divide the batter between the two pans; shake the pans to even the tops and set aside.

Make the cocoa-spice sugar crust: In another bowl, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, ginger, and cloves. Sprinkle the surfaces of both batters with the cocoa sugar mixture, dividing evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool complete, run a thin knife around the sides to release the breads, and remove the loaves from the pans. This is the hardest part: half of your crispy sugar topping will fall off. I don't yet know how to remedy this.

Whip It!

While attempting to do away with the procrastination that has enveloped most of my life, I decided to begin building my repertoire of Christmas cookies early. This means some experimentation is necessary.



Shortbread cookies are holiday favorites, but I'm not really into putting so much time into just one cookie, especially something this simple. I perused some of my cookie books and found a recipe for Whipped Shortbread that claimed to have the same melt-in-your-mouth results with half the work.



I actually really enjoyed these cookies. With all of the sweets to enjoy during the holidays, these mild, buttery cookies give your palette a well-deserved break. They're perfect for tea time, if you happen to have tea time on a regular basis.


Whipped Shortbread
Makes 3 dozen cookies

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup superfine granulated sugar (I just used regular sugar; the book recommends that you put it in a food processor to make it superfine)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Combine flour and cornstarch in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla until light an creamy, about three minutes (very important!). On low speed, gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended.

Drop dough by tablespoonsfuls about 1 inch apart on cookie sheet. If desired, decorate top with cherry half or pecan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until light golden around edges. Cool and enjoy.

I Went Bananas When I Spoke to You on the Telephone

Last summer, my really good friend Kara moved wayyyy up north to Michigan and lived in an ice cube for a year. She came back to visit in early June and remembered that she liked the south. Two months later, she moved back and is enrolled to go to school this fall and everything.



In other news, I have been on a banana kick lately - eating them with different meals and as snacks, slathered in peanut butter. Keeping this in mind, I went to the store and bought a bag of Ready-to-use bananas for cheap and set to making some banana nut bread. This was good timing for me as Kara was due back in town that very night and bread is always a good gift.



To tie everything together, I made two loaves of Banana-Walnut bread and now I have to find a way to use up the other eight, extremely ripe bananas sitting on my kitchen counter. Most likely, I will just be making more bread and muffins later on in the week.



I used my standby banana bread recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook that I've been baking out of since I was a kid. In the middle of making this, I realized that cinnamon wasn't listed as an ingredient, which I found quite odd. It's my favorite spice, so I just added it in and the bread tastes delicious as usual.



Banana Nut Bread
Makes 2 loaves

1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 large eggs
3 to 4 mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup milk and 1 teaspoon vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup nuts, chopped and toasted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and move oven rack so that tops of pans will be in the center of the oven. Grease 2 loaf pans, 8-inch for taller loaves and 9-inch for shorter ones or grease one 9-inch loaf pan and six muffin cups. Toast nuts if using.

Mix sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat in eggs until well blended. Add the bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla and mix until completely combined.

Then, stir in flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt, just until moistened. Fold in nuts, and pour into pans.

Bake for about 45 minutes (for 9-inch pans); I'm not sure how long 8-inch pans would take, so make sure to check at 30 minutes, and be ready to allow for more time.

Cool completely before slicing. To store, wrap tightly and store at room temperature for up to 4 days or refrigerate for up to 10 days.