Christmas Lessons in Chocolate

Happy New Year, anyone who might potentially still be around to read this! I hope everyone had a safe and eventful (or uneventful, if you prefer) holidays. I know mine certainly were, and mostly, it was my own fault.

A few days before Christmas, I took a look at the board I have on Pinterest specifically for candies. Truffles, barks, caramels, fudges, chocolates, gummies, anything that's small in size and large in batch, it's on there. Last year, I made three 3-ingredient candies for the family and neighbors: oreo truffles (oreos, cream cheese, chocolate), peppermint bark (white chocolate, regular chocolate, peppermints), and these things I don't have a name for, but it's a melted hershey kiss on top of a pretzel with an M&M squished on top and it's delicious. This year, I got a brilliant idea.

"I'm gonna make FIVE things for Christmas!"

What the HECK is wrong with me?

This year's menu included oreo truffles and peppermint bark. I've made the peppermint bark for the last...four, five years? The oreo truffles have been made annuaully for at least two years. The other three were all brand new and from Pinterest.


Andes Mint Fudge by Sally's Baking Addiction (pin)


Peanut Butter Buckeye Pretzel Bites by Sweet Pea's Kitchen (pin)

And, for the puppies in my family:

Peanut Butter Bacon Dog Treats by The Comfort of Cooking (pin)

So, anyone wanna take a guess which one I messed up?

If you guessed the peppermint bark I've been making for the last half a decade, you'd be right! I wish I had taken pictures.

So here's what happened. The dog treats got slightly burnt in the first batch, and I had to roll out dough and use cookie cutters for the first time, but the dogs did not complain. After the dog treats, I mixed up the fudge in a double boiler. First layer went fine, although a little thick. The white chocolate layer didn't melt down quite as well, but after a few seconds in the microwave, it was fine. Chocolate layer was no problem. Into the fridge it went. The buckeyes and oreo truffles got made at the same time so I could use the same chocolate for dipping. When all was said and done, I was left with the perfect amount of white and milk chocolate chips for the peppermint bark. Melted the milk chocolate in the microwave (because it's just melt and pour, doesn't need to stay melted, so why use a double boiler?), poured it out, popped it in the fridge to set and got started on the white chocolate.

Let me tell you something about white chocolate. I usually use Hersheys white chocolate chips melted down, but when Hubby went to the grocery store, they were all sold out. He came home with Ghirardelli white chocolate chips. Awesome, it's good quality stuff, this is gonna be great! Into the bowl, into the microwave, and go. The chips start to melt. Take out, stir, 15 seconds, just like I've always done. Rinse, repeat until smooth. But this stuff, it never got smooth. How odd, there was still some in the center that was not melting. Okay, let's just nuke this mother. 30 seconds. And sti-

No stir. The white chocolate was nuclear and looked like butter. Or maybe ice cream. Whatever it was, it was NOT stirring, and it was not, to my knowledge, salvagable. What I thought was the stuff not melting was actually it getting thicker the hotter it got. The HECK did I do? Apparently, and I did not know this, but white chocolate has different melting directions depending on manufacturer. Hersheys melts great at 15 second intervals anywhere between 70% heat and full. Ghirardelli, according to the directions on the bag that I did not know were ever there, melts at 50% heat with time in between for the bowl to cool down. So I was left with a bowl of white chocolate that was firm enough to use as playdoh if it had been touchable. I think it was still molten after an hour, the kind of hot that you touch and it feels cold for a millisecond before your brain can realize "oh wait, that's not right". Luckily, I have an awesome hubby who made a "8PM on Dec 23rd" grocery store run for more white chocolate, and in the end, I had my usual awesome peppermint bark... and two bags worth of a lesson learned. Whoops. Merry Christmas.

For the record, aside from the fudge absolutely refusing to come out of its dish (and yes, I used PAM on it. The stuff was so thick it formed to the baking dish! It came out after having some time to warm up.), everything turned out amazing.

The Rogue Noodle

I learned about cooked spaghetti sticking to walls and ceilings when I was a young girl and they showed a character on a TV show doing it to try and find the winning lotto numbers in the shape the spaghetti made. Later, when I moved into my first apartment, I noticed two pieces of spaghetti dried on the ceiling where my roommate had tossed them to test their doneness and they hadn't decided to come down. I know now that you can just take a bite of a piece to find out if pasta's done cooking, but where's the fun in that when you can sacrifice a noodle to the ceiling?

A few weeks ago, I was making dinner, most likely the shrimp scampi pasta and the timer went off on the pasta. Scoop out a piece carefully, try not to burn myself picking up a piece, aaaand toss!

Now, fresh cooked pasta is a little sticky, which is why it sticks to the ceiling. It also sticks to you. So although I threw the noodle upwards like I'd done a hundred time before, for the first time, it stuck to my fingers and, in a move that Einstein would be proud of, altered its trajectory accordingly when it finally detatched. At first, I didn't see where that trajectory landed it. I assumed it was somewhere on top of the cabinets.

Aaaand I was right.



That, ladies and gents, is my rogue noodle, positioned for perfect visability upon entry to the kitchen and most difficult removal. It has been there for several weeks now. And because Hubby and I are getting a house soon, it's going to HAVE to come down. I have no clue how to best go about doing this, but hopefully I won't have to put on a hospital report "busted skull open removing a noodle from the wall."

Cookie Catastrophe

We got new neighbors a few months ago, a very nice young couple with a little boy. I met them while going to work and we bonded right away over similar interests. I decided I was going to make them some cookies to welcome them to the neighborhood! I'd made cookies before and they were great, so I wanted to try a new recipe. While scanning my selection of cooking blogs, I found a recipe for some called "World Peace Cookies". Chocolate cookies with chocolate chips. Awesome, perfect, let's roll. Printed the recipe, bought the ingredients and that weekend, prepared to bake.

(recipe from Becky Bakes)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
11 tablespoons (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
5 ounces extra-bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used milk chocolate chips)

Sift flour, cocoa, and baking soda into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until smooth but not fluffy. Add both sugars, vanilla, and sea salt; beat until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add flour mixture; beat just until blended (mixture may be crumbly). Add chopped chocolate; mix just to distribute (if dough doesn’t come together, knead lightly in bowl to form ball). Divide dough in half. Place each half on sheet of plastic wrap. Form each into 1 1/2-inch-diameter log. Wrap each in plastic; chill until firm, about 3 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Keep chilled.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a thin, sharp knife, cut logs crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rounds. Space 1 inch apart on prepared sheets. Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies appear dry (cookies will not be firm or golden at edges), 11 to 12 minutes. Transfer to rack; cool.

I mixed the dry ingredients, beat the butter and sugar until smooth and ready for the flour. How much flour did the recipe call for? A cup and a quarter.

Now, before I go further, let me explain that I have several measuring cups. One of them is a two-cup measuring cup with different measures on the side for liquid, sugar, and flour, because an ounce, being a unit of weight, varies between substances. The cup measure is only on the liquid.

So I have this cup ready to measure out flour for these cookies and think "hold on a minute. 8 oz is a cup, but according to this thing, 8oz of flour is much larger than 8 oz of liquid. So I need 10 oz of flour to make a cup and a quarter."

Logic, at this point, has obviously led me very far astray. I measured out 10 oz of flour, put in the cocoa and baking powder, and slowly dumped it into the butter mixture. Mix. Mix. Mix... well geez, I think, this isn't coming together at all. It was still completely powder. Not even kneading it was making it come together. So I threw in some more butter and it finally became a dough-like substance. Make into balls, squish 'em down, pop 'em in the oven, and 12 minutes later, we have...

Hockey pucks. Little brown hockey pucks that tasted like flour. Oh my god they were so inedible. Hubby, being the sweetheart he is, said they were fine dunked in milk, but they were still pretty horrible to me. It was like eating flour that vaguely tasted of chocolate. Needless to say, those ended up in the trash can and I got to work on batch two, which ended up much, much better.

Red Lobster Copycat Biscuits

Last week, I decided I was going to make my darling husband a wonderful dinner. His favorite is meatloaf and mac & cheese. I make the meatloaf myself, and I've attempted the mac & cheese, but so far, Kraft does it better (two different recipes, either just bad or bland. Third time's the charm?) Well, I figured I'd kick the dinner up a notch with some imitation Red Lobster Biscuits from a recipe I had. I used the recipe from The Girl Who Ate Everything (found on Pinterest)

Biscuits:
2 1/2 cups Bisquick
4 Tbsp cold butter
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
3/4 cup milk
1/4 tsp garlic powder

Butter Glaze:
3 Tbsp butter
1/2 tsp garlic powder
3/4 tsp dried parsley flakes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease or line one cookie sheet with parchment; set aside.

Combine Bisquick with cold butter in a medium bowl with a pastry cutter or, if you don't have one, two forks. Don't worry about mixing the butter in completely; there should be small pea-sized chunks of butter in the mix. Add cheddar cheese, milk, and garlic powder. Mix by hand until combined into a dough, but don't over mix, there will still be small chunks of butter. Warning: it will be sticky!

Drop 1/4 cup portions of the dough onto the lightly greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 13-15 minutes until the tops of the biscuits begin to turn light brown.

While they're baking, make the glaze by melting the butter is a small bowl in the microwave. Stir in garlic powder and dried parsley flakes. When the biscuits are done and out of the oven, use a brush to spread the garlic butter over the tops of all the biscuits. optionally, sprinkle a little kosher salt on the freshly coated biscuits (I didn't do this and it didn't taste necessary). Makes about one dozen.

Pretty simple, right? I set the oven to preheat, laid out some wax paper on the baking sheets, mixed up the batter and laid out 11 biscuits.
Do you notice the problem in that previous statement? Read it again if you need to, I'll wait.

Got it yet?

If you said "Wait a second Maxwell, wax paper's not supposed to go in the oven!", then ding ding ding, you're right! And you see, I had that same thought. But I checked the box of wax paper and saw that you could put it under a cake mix for easy cake removal. So it's okay to go in the oven! Pop those babies in and let's get started on the loaf!

A few minutes later, while I'm wrist-deep in a mixture of ground beef, egg, ketchup, breadcrumbs and milk, I notice the stove's back burner is smoking. That's weird. The burner's not on. It feels really hot hovering over it. Must be something wrong with the stove. I'll let Hubby know to contact the office tomorrow. It's still smoking. Okay, let's get the vent on high. Oh crap, the apartment's getting hazy! Open the windows, start flapping towels! No fire alarm, no fire alarm, no fire alarm... no fire alarm. Phew. All right. Oh, there's the timer. Biscuits are done. Let's take 'em out and see how they...

WHOOMP

So that's where the smoke was coming from. Hubby got home while I was attempting to detatch the biscuits' utterly burnt bottoms from the crispy sheet of wax paper. Luckily he had the common sense to turn on the living room fan (DURP! I still don't know why I was running around flapping a dishtowel like an idiot when I could have just done that...) No alarms were set off, and after a bit of research, we figured out that
1) Wax paper only gets baked when there's something COMPLETELY covering it, like cake mix
and 2) You will not die eating something cooked with burnt wax paper. When topped with the garlic butter, the biscuits were actually quite good (more than could be said for the homemade mac & cheese that meal. Way too much sauce and there was something bitter about it.) Next time, I'm gonna listen to my gut instinct and put down aluminum foil instead. And there will be a next time because if they were as good as they are baked with wax paper smoke and partially burnt, they'll be divine done up right.