Our Bella Cucina » Baking

Granny’s Chocolate Cobbler

sarah — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:00:58 +0000

What can I say? What is there to say about heaven in a bowl? If you never make another thing from my blog, make this.

Seriously.

Go, now. Get up out of your chair and head for the kitchen. Ok, maybe not right this second because you need to read the recipe first, but do it.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons cocoa powder, divided
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 cup hot tap water

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
First stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, 3 tablespoons of the cocoa, and 3/4 cup of the white sugar. Reserve the remaining cocoa and sugar.

Add the milk, melted butter, and vanilla to the flour mixture and mix until smooth.

Pour the mixture into an ungreased 8-inch baking dish.

In a separate small bowl, mix the remaining white sugar (it should be 1/2 cup), the brown sugar, and remaining 4 tablespoons of cocoa. Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the batter.

Gently pour the hot tap water over it all. DO NOT STIR!

Bake for about 40 minutes or until the center is set.

Let it stand for a few minutes and serve with vanilla ice cream using the gooey sauce to spoon over it all.

You’re lucky I got through this post without drooling over my keyboard. It was definitely a close call!

Time to get your butt to the kitchen.

Ready?

Set.

GO!

♥

Monkey Bread

sarah — Thu, 20 May 2010 08:00:26 +0000

This creation comes from Pastor Ryan and is is yummy. So yummy. So very very yummy. You may have a butter induced heart blockage from eating this, but what a way to die!

INGREDIENTS
3 cans buttermilk biscuits (the non-flaky ones)
1 cup sugar
2-3 teaspoons cinnamon
2 sticks butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Open up all three cans of biscuits and cut each biscuit into quarters.

Next, combine the white sugar with 2-3 teaspoons of cinnamon (depending on how much you like connamon) in a 1 gallon Ziploc bag and shake to mix evenly.

Drop all of the biscuit quarters into the cinnamon-sugar mix. Once they’re all in the bag, seal it and give it a vigorous shake. This will get all those pieces unstuck from one another and nicely coated with cinnamon-sugar.

Spread the nuggets evenly in a bundt pan.

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, melt the two sticks of butter together with ½ cup of brown sugar. Cook the butter/sugar mixture, stirring for a few minutes until the brown sugar has melted and is mixed thoroughly with the butter.

Pour the butter/sugar mixture over the nuggets in the bundt pan.

Bake for about 30-40 minutes until the crust is a deep dark brown on top.

When it’s finished cooking, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool for about 15-30 minutes before turning it over onto a plate.

I found that the inner section of mine was still doughy when I went to taste it and could have used longer in the oven. My bundt pan is different from Ryan’s though, so that may have something to do with it. Even so, the outer bits that cooked properly were so delicious. Eat it while it is fresh though, because it doesn’t taste as good the next day, reheated.

♥

P-Dub Wednesday – Cinnamon Rolls

sarah — Wed, 12 May 2010 08:00:39 +0000

There are a few things that instantly come to mind when you think of Ree’s recipes – one of them is butter and another is her cinnamon rolls. I had always put off making them because there was coffee in the frosting and I’m not a fan of coffee, but recently someone who had made them assured me that the end result tastes like maple more than anything so I decided to give it a go!

INGREDIENTS

Rolls:
1 quart whole milk
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
2 packages active dry yeast
8 cups (plus 1 cup extra, separated) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (heaping) baking powder
1 teaspoon (scant) baking soda
1 tablespoon (heaping) salt
Plenty of melted butter
2 cups sugar
Generous sprinkling Of cinnamon

Maple Frosting:
1 lb powdered sugar
2 teaspoons maple flavoring
½ cups milk
¼ cups melted Butter
¼ cups brewed coffee
⅛ teaspoons salt

DIRECTIONS
Mix the milk, vegetable oil and sugar in a pan.

“Scald” the mixture (heat until just before the boiling point), then turn off the heat and leave the mixture to cool for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

When the mixture is lukewarm to warm, but NOT hot, sprinkle in both packages of Active Dry Yeast. Let this sit for a minute.

Add 8 cups of all-purpose flour and stir the mixture together.

Cover and let it rise for at least an hour.

Add 1 more cup of flour, the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir the mixture together.

At this point, you could cover the dough and put it in the fridge until you need it – overnight or even a day or two, if necessary. Just keep your eye on it and if it starts to overflow out of the pan, just punch it down.

When ready to prepare the rolls, sprinkle the rolling surface generously with flour. Take half the dough and form a rough rectangle. Then roll the dough thin, maintaining a general rectangular shape.

It was at this point that I realized 2 things:

1. I had forgotten to add the salt to the dough and started praying that the recipe would still work out.

and

2. The jug that I was about to pour the melted butter from was not in fact removed from a clean dishwasher. It seemed to have a sprinkling of red powder through it and it was then that it dawned on me I was about to pour taco seasoning flavoured butter onto my cinnamon rolls.

I’ll just let you ponder for a moment what that would have tasted like.

Ready to move on? Great.

Drizzle 1/2 to 1 cup melted butter over the dough (I used 1/3 cup and it was plenty – if I had added any more it would have been flowing off the dough onto the counter top).

Now sprinkle 1 cup of sugar over the butter followed by a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. Or in reverse if you’re like me and don’t read the directions closely enough. Either way is fine.

Now, starting at the opposite end, begin rolling the dough in a neat line toward you. Keep the roll relatively tight as you go. Next, pinch the seam of the roll to seal it.

Spread 1 tablespoon of melted butter into 6-7 seven inch round foil cake or pie pans (I used the remainder of the half cup I melted previously for the dough but had only used 1/3 cup).

Then begin cutting the rolls approximately ¾ to 1 inch thick and laying them in the buttered pans.

You can then repeat this process with the other half of the dough, but I only made a half batch so I didn’t do this step

Let the rolls rise for 20 to 30 minutes and during that time preheat your oven to 375 degrees,

Bake until light golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes.

While the rolls are baking, prepare the frosting – mix together all ingredients listed and stir well until smooth. It should be thick but pourable. Taste and adjust as needed.

Generously drizzle over the warm rolls.

Now, Ree says that she used to bake her cinnamon rolls at 400 degrees but now cooks them at 375, as specified in the recipe above. I actually found that mine were still doughy towards the center of the pan, even after cooking for the full 18 minutes at 375. I think next time I will use the old temperature of 400 degrees and see if that works any better. This might vary for your oven since everyone’s oven is different and some run hot or cold.

As for the frosting, both my husband and I agree that my initial preference was right – we would prefer to leave the coffee out and just substitute in an extra 1/4 cup of milk to make up for the lost liquid.

All in all, the parts that were cooked thoroughly were definitely delicious. If you’re a fan of cinnamon rolls, these are worth the effort!

♥

Giant Vanilla Sugar Cookies

sarah — Thu, 06 May 2010 08:00:49 +0000

These cookies will definitely going in my permanent recipe box. They taste slightly like shortbread but still maintain their sugar cookie goodness. I got the recipe from one of my favourite baking sites, Joy The Baker, whose site you should check out if you’re at all into baking. My 4 year old even asked me to make them for him to take to preschool!

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature (microwave it for 10 seconds if you’re like me and forget to get the butter out of the fridge!)
1/2 cup vegetable oil, canola oil, or sunflower oil. (I used vegetable oil.)
1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus additional for sugaring tops
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract, or the seeds of 1 vanilla bean
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, foil, or grease generously with butter or cooking spray.

Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter in a large bowl on medium speed for about 1 minute.

Add the vegetable oil. It may not fully incorporate with the butter, but that’s ok.

Beating on medium speed until each ingredient is completely incorporated, add:

Granulated sugar.

Powdered sugar.

An egg .

Vanilla.

Stir in the flour, baking soda and salt all at once using a wooden spoon or the mixer set on low.

The dough will be quite soft, so refrigerate it for 1 hour or pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes, to make it easier to handle.

Yes I’m aware of the irony of the bowl of cookie dough sitting next to my Weight Waters fudgsicles.

For large cookies, dollop 2 tablespoons of cookie dough onto the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart or for smaller cookies use 1 tablespoon. Press the dough evenly with your fingers or palm to 1/4-inch thickness.

Generously sprinkle sugar on top of the cookie dough.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes for larger cookies or 8 to 10 minutes for smaller cookies.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for at least 10 minutes before transferring a rack to cool completely. They will keep for up to 3 days if stored in an airtight container and this recipe yields 1 dozen 4-inch cookies or 2 dozen 2-inch cookies.

Go ahead, make these for yourself, your kids, or your partner – you’ll be glad you did!

Tune in next week for a quick and easy kids dessert using these cookies.

Ok, it might be for adults too but we’ll just keep that between the two of us.

♥

Grandmother’s Cornbread

sarah — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:00:30 +0000

No, not my grandmother. I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com and all I know is someone’s grandmother makes really good cornbread!

I’ve made a few different cornbreads in the past but this one is my favourite. It partly had to do with the cornmeal I used – I found one that was more finely ground than any other I’ve used before – but mostly because I liked the flavour. It’s not too sweet or too savory and has that slight cake-like taste while still maintaining its classic cornbread flavour. It also nicely straddles the line of not too moist and not too dry.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cooking Spray

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Grease an 8 inch square pan with the cooking spray.

Over a medium heat melt the butter in a large skillet.

Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the sugar.

Quickly add the eggs and beat until well blended.

Combine the buttermilk with the baking soda and stir it into the mixture in the pan.

Add the cornmeal.

Add the flour.

And finally the salt.

Stir until well blended and few lumps remain.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes (mine was ready in 30), or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Everyone in my family ate this and I will definitely be making it again!

♥

Coconut Cream Cake

Steph — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:00:07 +0000

First of all, I would like to apologize for my absence around here lately. For those of you who are unaware my husband is currently deployed. I also have a 2 year old and 4 year old that usually refuse to eat what I cook anyways so I haven’t spent much time in the kitchen lately. As if those two things weren’t enough to keep me about an inch away from losing my mind, last week I decided to buy a house. I close in April. I will be back on the east coast visiting family until 2 days before I close, I still have to clean and paint over the walls in my military quarters, pack, etc. So anyways, sorry, but my life has been ridiculously hectic lately. Normally it’s so boring while my husband is home but the minute he leaves things go berserk.

Speaking of my husband he hates coconut. Maybe hate doesn’t appropriately describe the way he feels about coconut. He loathes it. I am forbidden from cooking anything with coconut in it while he is home so I took this opportunity while I could because I LOOOOOOVE coconut.

1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix

(14 ounce) can cream of coconut

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1 (16 ounce) package frozen whipped topping, thawed

1 (8 ounce) package sweetened coconut, toasted

Prepare and bake white cake mix according to package directions. Remove cake from oven. While still hot, using a utility fork, poke holes all over the top of the cake.
Mix cream of coconut and sweetened condensed milk together. Pour over the top of the still hot cake. Let cake cool completely then frost with the whipped topping and top with the toasted coconut. Keep cake refrigerated.

Handy, dandy tip: You can toast coconut in the microwave. Place it in a shallow baking dish and microwave on high 3 minutes, stopping to stir every minute.

xoxo, Steph

Puffy Cheesy Crackers

sarah — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:00:36 +0000

INGREDIENTS
1 cup of all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
8 ounces of grated extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
3/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper
4 tablespoons of water

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350F.
If you didn’t buy shredded cheese, go ahead and grate it now.

Add the cheese to the food processor.

Then the butter.

Followed by the salt and pepper.

Then the flour last.

If you don’t have a food processor you can attempt to put everything into a blender to mix. You have to put the ingredients in with the cheese first and the flour last though, because if you put the flour in first it will spin around and the cheese will hang out at the top with the butter.

Pulse the ingredients in the food processor together until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

Once everything is mixed, add in the water, one tablespoon at a time. The dough will begin to stick and pull from the sides.

Remove the dough from the food processor and form into a ball, then wrap it in plastic to chill for at least 20 minutes in the fridge. The dough will be fine for up to 24 hours if you want to make it ahead of time.

After the dough is chilled, sprinkle a little flour down and unwrap the ball.

Roll out the dough to roughly 1/8″ thickness, then break out your desired shape cookie cutter and go to town. Mini size cutters are best.

Keep cutting and re-rolling out the dough till it is all used up and place your cut-outs on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. They will puff up but won’t spread in width too much, so you can put them fairly close together, about an inch should be plenty.

Bake until the crackers are golden brown, about 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of your cutouts. If they are bigger than mine then bake them longer but keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.

They’ll keep for up to a week in an airtight container and my yield was 91 crackers.

I ended up having to use 3 cookie sheets of varying sizes, and while the second and third sheets were in the oven together (the first was the biggest and would only fit alone), this is what happened to the first sheet:

Nom nom nom…

With my last scrap of dough I made a special cracker for my husband since it was Valentine’s Day and all…

Love is puffy cheesy crackers!

♥

Banana Nut Muffins

sarah — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:35 +0000

It seems we have the baking bug around here this week! I made these yesterday because I had an abundance of overripe bananas and I wanted to give the guys outside installing our new organic veggie garden a treat! This recipe was originally intended to be banana bread, but I adapted it and find it is really useful to make muffins with when you need individual portions.

INGREDIENTS
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas (approximately 6-7 bananas)
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

The cast of characters…minus the chopped nuts which I forgot to put in the shot!

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.

In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.

Stir in eggs.

Stir in mashed bananas until well blended.

Combine the flour mixture into the banana mixture until just combined, but do not overly mix it.

If you are going to include the nuts then this is the time to gently mix them in.

Put cupcake liners into the muffin tray.

Fill each liner about 3/4 full.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a testing skewer comes out clean.

Allow them to cool, but it is really an experience to eat one while it’s still a bit warm!

Excuse me while I go outside to burn off all the baked goods I’ve consumed in the past week.

♥

Shortbread Jam Thumbprints

Steph — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:38:07 +0000

These are one of my favorite cookies. The older I get the less I seem to be drawn to super sweet desserts or chocolate. I much prefer tart or fruity desserts nowadays. I fill my cookies with the homemade jam that I make and can every summer and feel free to replace the almond extract with vanilla extract if you’re not a fan of almond. The ones pictured here were filled with raspberry and blueberry-lime jam.

1 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup jam (any flavor(s) you’d like)

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

3/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

In a medium bowl, cream together butter and white sugar until smooth. Mix in 1/2 teaspoon almond extract. Mix in flour until dough comes together. Roll dough into 1 1/2 inch balls, and place on ungreased cookie sheets. Make a small hole in the center of each ball, using your thumb and finger, and fill the hole with preserves.

Bake for 14 to 18 minutes in preheated oven, or until lightly browned. Let cool 1 minute on the cookie sheet. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

In a medium bowl, mix together the confectioners’ sugar, 3/4 teaspoon almond extract, and milk until smooth. Drizzle lightly over cool cookies.

xoxo, Steph

PW’s Pound Cake

sarah — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:00:31 +0000

Yep, it’s P-Dub Wednesday again! Sorry we missed last week but things got kinda busy and not a whole lot of cooking was done!

Who doesn’t love pound cake? Seriously, you don’t? Ok, I don’t want you reading our blog anymore. Just kidding! This cake is really yummy. Crispy on the outside with a dense, moist inside that has a hint of lemon.

Is your mouth watering yet?

INGREDIENTS
3 sticks of butter
3 cups of sugar
5 whole eggs
1 teaspoon butter extract
2 teaspoons lemon extract
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup Sprite, 7-UP, or some other lemon-lime soda
Cooking spray

The cast of characters…

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Cream butter.

Measure out your sugar and add 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition.

Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing after each addition.

Add the butter extract.

The the lemon extract and mix well.

Measure your flour, then add it 1 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Don’t do what I did and add too much too fast or your kitchen will look like a flour bomb has hit it!

Add the lemon-lime soda of your choice, then mix together until combined.

Yes the previous flour bomb really did happen. Survey the devastation!

Grab your cooking spray and spray your bundt pan really well.

Pour the batter into your well greased bundt pan.

So, the recipe says to bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes, but I found that mine took 1 hour and 30 minutes. Now that I’m going through all these photos I realise that I actually added too much Sprite, so that probably contributed to my extra long baking time. My advice is to cook it for an hour, then start checking it every 5 minutes until a skewer comes out clean and the cake is no longer jiggly.

Remove the cake from the oven and invert the pan until the cake drops out. You may want to let it sit inverted for a bit to let it cool down some and make it easier to release.

Now we all hold our breath and pray that the cake is not stuck in the pan!

Well, it got a little stuck and I lost a bit of the top layer, but I got it out!

No I absolutely did not scrape those moist stuck bits out of the pan with my finger and eat them. What kind of a cook do you take me for?

Don’t answer that.

Enjoy!

♥