French Fridays With Dorie - Hot Pink Cocoa Sablés

I've never felt like I was in the cookie business. I've always been in a feel good feeling business. My job is to sell joy. My job is to sell happiness. My job is to sell an experience.

~ Debbi Fields (of Mrs. Fields Bakeries)

You can't see the words 'Mrs. Fields' without images of buttery, crumbly/chewy cookies entering your mind immediately afterwards. Well, Mrs. Fields' words above somehow resonated strongly as I baked this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Cocoa Sables. I wanted to bake cookies that would invoke a similar feel good feeling to anyone who sets their eyes on them, and if they're lucky enough, who gets to eat them too.

But first, what in culinary heavens is a sable? It's simply a classic French cookie originating in Normandy. Sable is French for "sand", and refers to the sandy texture of this delicate and crumbly shortbread-like cookie. Butter is what gives these cookies their wonderful, rich flavor. A typical sable would have a coating of raw or granulated sugar around the edges but I decided to forego the sugar and make something that's more visually appealing. And what could possibly be more appealing than a layer of sweet, sweet sugar on a chocolate cookie? How about an eye-catching color, like hot pink, for example? Yes, hot pink dough enveloping dark chocolate is all the rage nowadays. At least in my kitchen it is, I'm not sure about anywhere else :).

My original idea was to pair a more innocent shade of baby pink with the dark brown. However, because I  very rarely play with food coloring, I underestimated the strength of my little blob of pink gel. It proved too much for the amount of plain batter I was using that the 'baby' part of the pink tuned into a very adult 'hot' in 60 seconds... Oh well, we're all grown-ups here, and eating a sexy cookie is really not the worse thing that could happen to you on a Friday!

Dorie's recipe also suggested the incorporation of finely chopped bittersweet chocolate in the cocoa batter, but I decided to keep things simple and omitted that option too. This resulted in a smoother finish to the cut surface of the sables, which I preferred. What I didn't like was the uneven thickness of the cookies when I sliced through the dough using a knife. Somehow it didn't occur to me to use a thread to do a much cleaner job of it. Next time I bake these, I'm going to use pastry flour instead of the all-purpose because I read that it results in more tender cookies.

Not only do these sables invoke a heart-tugging sensation of love-at-first-sight (who can resist that hot pink squiggle?), they may also cause you to fall in love-at-first-bite, too. These shortbreads are crumbly, sweet, slightly salty and very chocolatey. An all-round experience of joy and happiness right there :).

The recipe for these cocoa sables can be found in Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, Around My French Table. The rest of the FFWD cooking group members will have their own take on these cookies, it's totally worth checking them out here.

German Chocolate Streusel Cake Rabbits - Schokostreusel Kuchen

I first took up cycling as a sport about 5 years ago and during the first few outings on my brand new bicycle, I remember feeling out of sync with both the bike and the cycling group I was training with. Many a time, I felt uncomfortable and unsure (read: unsafe) on my seat and struggled to keep up with the intensity of the group's pace. In fact, on the very first road outing I had a slight accident that ended up in me somersaulting over my handlebars and launching the bike into the air, only to have it land back on well, me. Thank goodness it was a very light bike! So even while I nursed my bruises and attempted to conceal the tear on my shirt the size of Australia, I was secretly grateful that my bike suffered only a tiny scratch from the incident :).

Then one day, one of the 'pros' who had taken it upon himself to be my cycling buddy said something I would remember to this day. What he said was, "To be able to cycle well and efficiently, you have to be  one with your bicycle. You have to think of it as an extension of your body". Now does that make sense to you? Because it didn't to me back then, as I had no clue how to start being one with my bike at all. 

Now that I'm no longer such a novice, I'm comfortable going off on solo rides. And this very morning, something rather special happened. You've seen how Lance Armstrong throws his arms up in the air at the finishing line in the 'look-ma-no-hands' style? Well, I managed to do the same and found that I could keep the bike perfectly balanced by shifting my body ever so slightly. I must've been comfortable enough, one enough with my machine to have been able to do that! Those of you who work in the circus must be thinking, yawn...big deal... but for someone who's tried to achieve this for the best part of several decades, it's a small miracle that it's finally happened.

With baking, it was the same thing. My first year of baking was full of hits and misses, probably more of the latter, to be truthful. I wasn't comfortable with my skills and had very little experience to speak of when it came to combining flavors, or textures. For a while, I had to endure witnessing my poor colleagues politely spit bits of cakes, breads and cookies into their napkins because they tasted so awful! I had to endure? Imagine what they had to endure...lol.

Well, now that I'm one with my baking skills, I'm more able to play around with ingredients in the kitchen. And the results don't turn out too badly (most of the time). I can also afford to focus on making the food look more fun and attractive. Like today for example, where I decided to bake this easy German Chocolate Streusel Cake inside parchment paper rabbits.

Fatter rabbits after baking!

I first came across this recipe in Germany, on the back of a box of Dr. Oetker Baking Powder. It's been a while since I last baked this delicious cake but I was recently prompted by my cousin Aimi's tweets saying that she wanted to see some German recipes on this blog. 

The cake itself is dense and buttery while the chocolate topping is crunchy, a beautiful mix of textures. If you were to use a springform pan, it would take about an hour altogether to prep and bake it. But if you want to bake it inside these muffin-sized paper rabbits, the baking time gets cut down to 20 minutes. The origami part, depending on your paper-folding skills, will probably take more than an hour :). I struggled with the first rabbit, but after that it gets easier and if you're not careful, these little rabbits tend to proliferate! Now I don't celebrate Easter but it's nice to go along with the seasonal theme and these cake rabbits fit the bill.

Here's a YouTube video with clear folding instructions for the paper rabbits. Good luck! :)

Easy German Chocolate Streusel Cake - Schokostreusal Kuchen
Makes one 10 or 11-inch springform pan cake, or 10 muffin-sized rabbits
Ingredients:
Cake
1/3 cup sugar (75 grams)
5 tablespoons butter (75 grams)
1/8 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoons lemon extract (optional)
1 1/8 cups flour (150 grams)
1/4 cup potato starch or corn starch (50 grams)
2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
4 tablespoons milk

Filling
1/4 cup apricot or raspberry jam

Chocolate Streusel
1/3 cup cocoa (30 grams)
1/3 cup sugar (80 grams)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
11 tablespoons butter (100 grams)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/8 cup flour (150 grams)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F.

2. Cream sugar, butter and salt. Add egg and flavor extracts and mix well.

3. Sift flour, starch and baking powder together and add to batter, mixing well.

4. Add enough milk to form a medium thick batter (like brownie batter). Spread into a 11-inch springform pan which has been buttered and floured lightly.

5. Heat the jam for 30 seconds on high in the microwave until it becomes runny. Stir and then carefully spread over cake batter.

6. Make the streusel by rubbing all the ingredients together with your fingers. You may also use a pie dough cutter or two forks. Continue until large crumbs form. Sprinkle evenly over cake batter.

7. Bake at 350°F for about 40 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean and cake springs bake when touched lightly. (About 20 minutes for the rabbit muffins)

8. Remove from oven and cool. Remove outer ring after 5-10 minutes so the edges don't become soggy.

Red Velvet Ice Cream

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.  

~ Kahlil Gibran

My sister loves red velvet cupcakes, and every time there has been a children's birthday party at any of our homes, these distinctive, red-colored treats invariably make their way onto the party menu and into the kiddies' bloodstream. Me, I'm not a big fan of red velvet anything. The combination of strong artificial coloring, buttermilk, vinegar and cocoa somehow manages to put me off. Moreover, the amount of red food coloring often used in these recipes (sometimes up to 3 tablespoons) scares the hell out of me.

Undeniably, there are many red velvet (RV) treat lovers out there, and I've seen anything from RV cakes, RV cookies, RV cream pies, to RV macarons and even scones! And then there's RV ice cream, the most famous of which is Momofuku Milk Bar's Red Velvet Soft Serve Ice Cream. The last straw was when I spotted this frozen beauty on Pinterest. That drooly snapshot made me decide almost instantaneously to overcome my disdain at the vast array of RV goodies out there and make something red velvety-ish in my kitchen.

Dragonfruit-Basil Mascarpone Ice Cream and Mochi Ice Cream

Have you noticed how there've been way too many recipes using dragonfruit on this blog lately? It's not that I can't help myself, but I really can't! Red-fleshed dragonfruit is seasonal, just like strawberries, and rhubarb and God knows what else. It lasts a mere few months and then I have to wait nearly a whole year to do this again. A whole year of resisting using artificial pink food coloring. Yes, my name is Maya and I'm a PINK addict. Do you think I need to join a support group as a form of therapy? :-)

Pull-Apart Chocolate Matcha Swirl Bread with Kit Kat Filling

This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.

~Frances E. Willard

Yes, I know it's Friday. And I know this is not the scheduled French Friday with Dorie's recipe post. I'm sorry, but I'm slightly distracted. Due to my recent fascination with various forms of pull-apart bread, I've embarked on yet another breadmaking adventure this week, this time involving pull-apart buns. Filled buns...spiral-patterned buns filled with Kit Kat bits.

We Should Cocoa: Apricot-Mocha Brownie Marzipan Bars

Chocolate flows in deep dark, sweet waves, a river to ignite my mind and alert my senses.

~Anonymous~

Isn't it funny how there are days when you surf the net to check out your blogger friends' offerings and you click on links upon links and finally end up on a page you that makes you pause and think, hmm...I'd really like to be a part of that? For a number of uber-surfers, that's a frequent occurrence but not so for me. Maybe I don't click on that many links, I tend to always gravitate and return to sites that drew me to them in the first place, either for their prose or their photos but most of all, for their owner's personality and friendship. On this one particular day, I stumbled upon the "We Should Cocoa" event hosted by the lovely Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog and Chele of Chocolate Teapot. It's a monthly cooking event involving that most scared of ingredient, chocolate, and one other compulsory ingredient chosen by the hosts, and guess what? Here I am, contributing a chocolicious recipe to the said event.

This  month's extra ingredient is marzipan. I was rubbing my hands in sinisterful glee because I happen to love marzipan! I had never made it myself, of course, nor ever baked with it. But I recall its dense, rich, creamy taste inside Christmas stollens I had eaten in Germany, and in tiny fruit forms (made completely out of marzipan) whenever I've travelled to Thailand. That's really about it, my marzipan experience is sadly very limited.

So why the glee? It's my chance to try and make my very own marzipan(!) and pair it with an original recipe out of my chocolate-drenched mind. After a bit of research, I found out that marzipan was such a breeze to make. I made just a small block for starters and when it didn't crack after overnight chilling and rolling out....I was more than thrilled! (I'm so easy to please, can you tell?)

                Top: Dried apricots and apricot paste                      

Bottom L: My homemade marzipan                                                              R: Mocha brownie on almond crust

For several years now, I've had this rather sinful recipe for chocolate brownie that's laced with strong coffee. It's soft and oh-so-squealy-gooey inside but crisp on top... as I said, it's a brownie headed for Hell. I wanted to wrap that brownie in my homemade marzipan and fashion it into bars but after a bit of thought, that just seemed too dense overall. My pantry held some beautifully soft, dried apricots so after blitzing them in the food processor with some honey, milk and more marzipan, I got this lovely apricot paste. Spread that on top of the brownie, cover it with a sheet of marzipan and we have the rather mouthful Apricot-Mocha Brownie Marzipan Bar. Oh yes, I also baked the brownies on top of an almond crust to give the sweet a bit of crunch and make it look, you know, a bit more bar-like. You can never have too much almonds anyway, can you? 

 Bottom: Faux coffee beans made out of marzipan and rolled in cocoa powder

For decoration, I rolled some marzipan into coffee-bean shapes, dusted them in cocoa powder and placed one on top of each marzipan bar.  

Let me tell you, there are recipes I like and there are recipes I really like. This is one of them. Every layer turned out perfectly and the flavors (refreshing apricots on top of gooey chocolate and underneath marzipan) melded really well together. That's not normal, especially when it's the first time I make something. So you see, if I had never landed on the 'We Should Cocoa' page, I never would have come up with this bliss!

Apricot-Mocha Brownie Marzipan Bars

1st/bottom layer: Almond crust

60g butter

100g all-purpose flour

60g ground almonds

60g sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 8x8-inch deep baking tin with parchment paper, or use a loose-bottomed tin for easy release of cake.

2. Rub butter into flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add almonds and sugar and rub further with your fingertips until well incorporated and forms a loose dough. You can also place the ingredients in a food processor in the above order to expedite the process.

3. Tip the mixture into the baking pan and press down with your fingers to flatten it. This is the almond crust. Bake for 10 minutes and set aside.

2nd layer: Gooey Chocolate Brownie

150g chocolate, chopped

60g butter

1 teaspoon instant coffee powder

2 eggs

50g sugar

50g all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, remove from heat and stir in the instant coffee powder until dissolved. Leave to cool.

2. In another bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and creamy. Stir in the cooled chocolate mixture. Add the flour and fold gently to incorporate. Stir in the vanilla extract.

3. Pour mixture over the top of the semi-baked almond crust and bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes. Leave to cool completely. Preferably, leave the cooled cake in the refrigerator overnight.

3rd layer: Apricot and Honey Filling

1 cup dried apricots, chopped

1 tablespoon honey

4 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons marzipan (see recipe below)

1. In a food processor, blitz the apricots with the honey, milk and marzipan until you get a homogeneous creamy yellow mixture.

2. Spread the apricot mixture on top of the cooled brownie, flattening with the back of a spoon to create an even layer.

3. Top with a thin sheet of rolled out marzipan. Press down gently until the marzipan sticks to the apricot layer.

4th layer (top): Marzipan

250 grams of peeled almonds

1 cup icing/confectioners sugar

1 small egg white

1. In a food processor, pulse the almonds until you obtain a very fine almond flour.

2. Add the sugar a quarter cup at a time and pulse until very well combined.

3. Finally add the egg white and pulse until the mixture starts to resemble marzipan. Pinch a bit of the dough and press in between your fingers, it should feel soft and pliable.

4. Roll the dough in a plastic film and refrigerate it for at least one hour. After that take it out and place on a clean surface dusted lightly with confectioners sugar. Roll out the dough and fold it two or three times. Flatten it again and return it to refrigerator. The dough is ready to be used when it is no longer sticky. (I left mine overnight)

5. Roll the marzipan flat in between two sheets of plastic film to about ½ cm thick. Cut into an approximate 8x8 inch square and carefully transfer this layer on top of the apricot layer. Press down gently until the marzipan sticks to the apricot layer.

6. Using a sharp knife, cut the marzipan bar into little squares about 2x2 inches each. Wipe the knife every time you cut so the layers of the bar will not run into each other. Serve immediately or store bars in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Russian Chip Cake and Blog Despair Therapy

I think I need to undergo some Blog Despair Therapy. Every day last week, I had looked at this blog, started to type up something, looked at it again and felt.... utter despair. Couldn't write another word, didn't want to, more like it. Oh, there were no lack of recipes because there's something cooking in this house everyday (well, the kids had to eat, even though I could quite happily go on a diet when I'm in that 'urrrgh' state of mind). I just didn't feel like posting anything. Seeing the prolificness and discipline of other bloggers didn't help any. In my heavy heart I thought, am I the only one suffering from this?

Until one day I came across this post by Sara of Caffe Ina, who was also having a bad day (but still managed to write something!). She was suffering from her so-called blog depression and the symptoms she described were exactly what I was feeling! All of a sudden, I didn't feel so bad knowing that someone else (many other bloggers, in fact) would come to this stage at some point. Call it Blogger's Block, that was precisely what I had.

Oh yes, amongst the comments to Sara's post was one by the very talented Cristina of From Buenos Aires To Paris. I feel this deserved mentioning because as amazing a food blogger as Cristina is, she too apparently has her down days when it comes to blogging. Welllllll.... at least I was in good company! Funnily, she also coined the term "Group Blog Despair Therapy" (GBDT) and reckoned somebody should go ahead and start this group. Forget about Food Bloggers Anonymous, the GBDT sounds much better and so support-groupish - and we all need each other to continually feed this fire inside, don't we?

So here I am. Totally undespairing and wanting to share with you one of my all-time favorite recipes - Russian Chip Cake. Ironically, I learnt this recipe not in Russia (where I'd frequently travelled to for work) but in Germany. It's a favorite because it was the first cake I had baked that drew compliments, I mean, genuine ones. It's ridiculously easy, too, adding more points to its already high score on my nepotism scale. And Germany was also the place where I'd learnt to really bake so naturally, many of the desserts I'd put my hand to while there became my favorites. You could say my Baking A-ha Moment! was peppered in Deutsch, as were most of my recipe books from those days. Being back home for good now, my spoken German is not so much rusty as it is extinct - but I swear, I can still decipher those Deutsch culinary instructions to a T.

Presumably, the origin of this dessert is from Russia although Google couldn't come up with anything conclusive on this point (so let's just keep assuming until someone reading this can point out otherwise). Why Chip Cake, though? Well, the same dough for the base is torn by hand or chopped roughly to make flat 'chips' which are then arranged on top of the cream cheese-custard filling. Not only is the overall look of the cake pretty striking, the rich flavors and textural combinations of cocoa, butter and creamy custard make this a sensational winner each time. Give it a try it if you don't believe me.

Russian Chip Cake

Ingredients:

Dough

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

2t baking powder

1/2 cup sugar

1t vanilla extract

125g (1 stick) butter. softened

1 egg

Filling

250g (1 packet) Philadelphia cream cheese

3/4 cup sugar

1t vanilla extract

2 eggs

4T custard powder

125g (1 stick) butter, melted and cooled

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Line the base of an 8-inch round baking tin with non-stick baking paper and grease the sides with butter.

2. Make the dough for base and chips first: Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Add sugar, vanilla, egg and butter. Use the kneading hook on the food mixer at low speed, and then increase to high speed as the dough firms up.

3. Dust the work surface with flour and knead the dough to a smooth texture.

4. Divide the dough into two portions. Take one and roll the dough to cover the base of the baking tin. Press up the sides and cut off the excess with a knife.

5. For the filling: Blend the softened cheese, sugar, vanilla, eggs, custard powder and melted cooled butter until a smooth mixture is formed. Spoon filling into the tin and level off the surface with a spatula.

6. Tear out 1-inch pieces of the remaining dough, or chop into think chunks with a knife. These are the 'chips' to be arranged carefully on top of the filling until it is almost completely covered.

7. Bake for 60 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool completely in the tin before turning out and serving.