Hazelnut macaroons

• 2 3/4 cups hazelnuts, shelled and skinned (see below)
• 2 plus 1 egg whites, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups sugar (I used 1/2 cup less, and it was still very sweet, so use your discretion)

To skin hazelnuts, place on a foiled baking sheet in an even layer and roast in the oven at 375˚F for about 8-10 minutes. Pour the toasty nuts out onto a kitchen towel, then fold the towel over the nuts and rub the towel against your nuts (??) vigorously to remove as much of the outer skin as possible. The skin is not really bad or anything, and it won’t all come off anyway, so this is really kind of optional. Also optional: toasting the nuts anyway… the taste of toasted hazelnuts is better than raw, in my opinion, but it’s up to you!

Preheat the oven to 300˚F and line a cookie sheet with butter-greased parchment paper. Grind the nuts fine in a food processor and place in a large mixing bowl. Whisk two of the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the nuts in smallish batches. Fold the remaining egg white in, and then add the sugar and mix until fairly homogeneous. Roll into 1-1 1/2 inch diameter balls and place on the cookie sheet slightly flattened. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned. [I had to do it in two batches because our bakeware sucks, and each batch was around 20 cookies.]

Whatever you do, don’t let any water or milk touch the chocolate as that causes it to “seize” and do weird things to the texture. Use chocolate and nothing else (maybe sugar is okay, but there’s already two cups in the cookies for god’s sake).

After receiving the CakeLove book, I thought to myself, “okay, now you HAVE to give baking a real chance”.  Unfortunately, my first attempt at making meringue buttercream frosting was miserable!  The butter wasn’t well-enough incorporated, and the meringue component wasn’t stiff enough to give the frosting any structure. Added to the fact that I had never used a whole pound of butter in anything before, it became a traumatic experience. It took me a while before I cared to try again.  Finally, I gave it another try this past Friday, with much better results.

Ta-da! Unfortunately we were pressed for time (see the small kitten trying to bury his face in the frosting), so I didn’t get any better pictures of the cake.

Chocolate Butter Cake (from the CakeLove book) – yields 2 9-in. diameter round cakes

Dry ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups + 2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Liquid ingredients

• 1 cup half-and-half
• 2 tbsp brandy (I subbed this with dark rum)
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Creaming ingredients

• 6 ounces (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temp.
• 1 3/4 cup extra-fine granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs

** full-fat, unsweetened, Dutch-processed cocoa powder with 22% to 24% cocoa butter is recommended in the book

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift the flour into a big mixing bowl. Measure out the other dry ingredients and add to the bowl. Whisk them together.

Combine the liquid ingredients in a separate bowl and set aside.

Measure the butter and sugar into separate bowls and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together (note that the butter must be room temp). Use an electric mixer at low speed. After it looks well incorporated, start adding the eggs one at a time, keeping the mixer at the same speed.  Remember to scrape the sides down to mix everything evenly.

Alternate between adding the dry and liquid mixtures, starting and ending with the dry mixture. Keep the mixer going, and don’t wait for the added ingredients to get fully incorporated before adding more.

Stop and scrape the sides down, making sure that you get any possible pockets of unmixed batter.  Turn the mixer back on medium speed and mix for another 15 to 20 seconds.

Prepare the pans – for 9-in. round pans, line the bottom with parchment paper (I cut it roughly into circles and folded the edges under so it fit exactly along the bottom).  You don’t need to spray the sides of the pan.

Pour the batter into the pan, using a rubber spatula to smooth it out evenly in the pan. Fill the pan about 3/4 deep.

Bake for about 28 minutes.

When the cakes are done, let cool to room temperature and then remove from the pans by loosening the edges with a spatula or knife and then inverting onto a flat surface.  You can wrap the cakes in plastic wrap andore in the fridge up to 5 days before frosting.

Italian Meringue Buttercream

• 5 egg whites
• 1 1/4 cups extra-fine granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup cold water
• 1 lb (4 sticks) unsalted butter
• candy thermometer

Separate the egg whites into a bowl.

Measure 1 cup of sugar and the water into a heavy-bottomed, 1 qt saucepan. Gently stir to combine before you put it on the heat.

Measure the remaining 1/4 cup sugar into a small bowl and set aside.

Cut the butter into tablespoon-sized pieces and set aside.

Put the thermometer in the saucepan. Place the saucepan on the stove and heat on medium-high heat. Partially cover the saucepan with a lid to capture the evaporating water – this helps prevent sugar crystals from forming. Heat until the mixture reaches 245 degrees F. This will give you enough time to continue with the steps below.

As this is going, whip the egg whites with a whisk attachment on high speed. Whip until stiff peaks form – that is when you have a meringue.

Keep the mixer going while pouring the 1/4 cup of sugar into the meringue.

Set aside the meringue and check the sugar. If it is not yet at 245 degrees, turn up the heat to get it there. Once it reaches 245, promptly remove it from the heat and slowly pour into the meringue. ** Note: It is VERY important to make sure the syrup is at 245 degrees. Baking is hard that way

Continue mixing the meringue at high speed for a minute or so. Reduce the speed to medium for another 3 to 4 minutes, or until the meringue is mostly cooled. Start adding the butter 1 tbsp at a time. This is the time to add any flavorings – I added about 1/2 cup of raspberry puree.  Below are some more flavoring ideas.

Continue to mix at the highest speed possible until the buttercream looks very uniform and smooth. It will have to pass through a weird, curdled-looking stage first.  The one mistake I made in my first attempt was my choice of electric mixer – mine simply wasn’t strong enough at its highest speed to incorporate the butter appropriately.

Flavor Variations

Vanilla: 1 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate: 1/2 cup melted bittersweet chocolate

Rum: 2-4 tbsp dark rum

Amaretto: 2-4 tbsp amaretto

Lemon: 2 tbsp limoncello

Orange: 1 tsp orange oil

Lime: 1 tsp lime oil

Chocolate chip-banana-oatmeal cookies

• 1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
• 1 c sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon (or 1/2 tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg, if you’re “into nutmeg”… I’m not)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 c softened butter (that’s a stick and half… yikes. canola oil or vegetable shortening probably also work?)
• 2 1/2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 large egg (of the chicken variety)
• 2 c oatmeal (the recipe calls for quick-cooking, which is what I had on hand* …the regular kind probably also works though?)
• 2 c semisweet chocolate chips or 1 1/2 c semisweet chocolate chips and 1/2 c chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 375˚F**. Grease or parchment paper a cookie sheet. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the first four ingredients. Add the butter and mix until crumbly. Add the bananas, egg, and oatmeal, and mix well. Finally, add the chocolate (and nuts, if ya got ‘em), and mix well. Drop about a dinner spoon sized glop for each cookie onto the sheet and bake for 13-15 minutes**. Cool on a cookie rack and serve warm with cold milk!

* We had “Coach’s” brand oats… I do not know who “coach” is, or why we have his oats.

** I had my doubts about the time and temperature, but they have since vanished. I tried 350˚F for shorter (which is what I am used to for other cookies) but the 375˚F for longer batch was markedly better (still soft on the inside, but nice and crispy on the outside). I daresay 385˚F or even 400˚F might work! Baking: it’s like science, only not at all.

See the dyed red icing? That's just normal icing with red food coloring!

Full disclosure: I got this recipe from a Nigella Lawson book. She’s prettier than Giada de Laurentiis and uses more butter than Paula Dean. Caveat eator: this cupcake is not for the clogged of heart.

Cupcakes:
1/2 cup soft unsalted butter
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (Ghirardelli’s baking chocolate)
1 1/4 cups black cherry preserves (I used a kind with no cane sugar added)
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup self-rising cake flour*
12 maraschino cherries

Icing:
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (see above)
1 cup heavy cream
Splash of kirsch or kirschwasser, whatever your alcohol controller lets you have

* Don’t be a dbag and buy self-rising cake flour. Sift together 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder (See the word powder? It’s not baking soda.) and 1/2 tsp salt for every one cup of flour. Hey, that’s how much flour this recipe calls for!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put your butter in the pan at medium low. Once it’s almost all melty, melt the chocolate in that. I used a nonstick pan, by the way. Okay, is all your shit mostly melted? Take it off the burner, and stir it around gentle-like until it’s a smooth, happy butter chocolate mixture. For maximum visceral pleasure, use a silicone spoon in your nonstick pan. It’s really like calling out to God, and having him pat you on the cheek and telling you you have nice skin. Now toss in your cherry preserve, sugar, salt, and eggs. Stir until it LOVES you.

When everything is looking pretty mixed together, pour it over the flour and mix it all together. Depending on your preserves, the stuff is pretty chunky, so be really diligent in making sure you don’t have massive clumps of flour in your stuff.

You should have a sticky, chunky batter. It glops. Put that into cupcake cups, then pop it in the oven. Because the batter is so sticky, I used a #20 ice cream disher, just like Alton Brown tells me to, and it worked like a charm.

Bake for 25 minutes, and you should have exquisitely perfect looking cupcakes. You can stop here if you like, but only if you suck.

You can do this pretty much as soon as your fingers can take the heat. Take a pastry round. I used a 1″ round. Cut a hole in your cupcake, not straight to the bottom! You can dig out the hole, but I found that if I twisted the round a couple times, the whole cupcake center would pop right out. Pop a maraschino cherry into the hole, pull a little bit of cupcake off the bottom of your cupcake hole, then pop the cap back on. If you’re willing to substitute cleanliness for deliciousness, pour a splash of the kirschvasser into the hole with your cherry.

Now the icing! You can get it thicker by using less whipping cream. The original recipe asks for 1/3 + 1 tsp cups of cream. But I wanted the tops of my cupcakes to look like chocolate candy, so I made my icing watery, poured it on, then waited for it to set. It’s a tough icing to make, though. Here we go. Put your stove on medium low. Use a heavy-bottomed pot that you can whisk in. Put the chocolate in the the pot. Put the heavy cream in the pot. Put a splash of kirschvasser into the pot. Bring it all to a boil. Once it’s bubbly, take the pot off of the heat, then whisk the shit out of it. It should be smooth and pretty when you’re done.

While it’s liquidy, smooth the concoction over your cupcakes, which surely have totally cooled by now. Seriously. You didn’t just ice a warm cupcake, did you?

For the cool red marks, drip some red food coloring into your icing. Mix. Then drip it down in awesome patterns onto your cupcake.

Conclusions: Everyone likes the cupcake. According to Frazier, it is delicious but messy. According to Gloria, you cannot drink a very hopsy beer after eating it. If I had one wish, I would wish that Whole Foods carried morello cherries, which are cherries essentially pickled in liquor. Alas, the Clarendon Whole Foods has failed me. Good thing I have all of this hopsy beer to console me in these dark days.