Very delicious.

I’ve had this recipe in my back pocket for a while now and I finally got around to whipping it together.  The first time I had this dish was when Betsy and I hosted a brunch a while ago for some of her law school friends. One of them brought this deliciously wonderful thing that I’d never had before (Hi Westra!) and I made a mental note to get the recipe from her.

Fast forward five months and I finally got around to A) getting the recipe and B) making it for you all.

There’s a few things I love about this dish beyond the amazing flavor.  First, it’s dumb simple to make.  Second, it keeps and reheats fantastically which means you can make it on a Sunday and eat it all week long for breakfast… assuming it lasts that long of course.

Baked Oatmeal
Makes a 9×9 (or 1 1/2 quart) dish.

- 1/3 Cup butter, melted
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 Cups brown sugar
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons vanilla
- 1 Teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 Teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 Cup + 2 Tablespoons milk
- 3 Cups rolled oats
- Pinch of salt

Planning is Important. This recipe is really easy, but it does require you to let the dish set in the fridge OVERNIGHT.  This is non-negotiable people.  Just plan accordingly.  The good news is that it means you do all the work the night before so you don’t have to dirty any dishes the next morning.

The star of the show!

Most of the ingredients are pretty straightforward and you should have most of them if you have even a halfway stocked pantry.  If you can, be sure to get fresh nutmeg and grate it yourself.  It makes all the difference in the world.

Backup players.

Prepping the Oatmeal.  Grease or butter your pan really well and then add your eggs and brown sugar to the pan.  Whisk them together until the brown sugar is evenly distributed and there aren’t a lot of lumps.

Healthy!

Melt your butter in the microwave on LOW so it doesn’t get too hot and then add it to the egg mixture along with all of your other ingredients except the oats.

Mix this all together in the same dish!

A whisk is your tool of choice here.

Finally, add your oats to the party.  Make sure to stir everything together.  It should have an nice and even consistency.

This is not rocket science.

This needs to chill overnight! Plan accordingly.

Cool it down.  Cover this and let it chill out in your fridge overnight.  This will give the oats plenty of time to start absorbing some of the moisture and flavor.  Plus it lets you do the work the night before!  If you have guests over the next morning, it’ll make you look like a magician!

Baking the Oatmeal.  When you wake-up the next morning all you have to do is bake this dish at 350 degrees for about 40-45 minutes or until the center is set.  I baked mine for 40 minutes on the dot and it turned out perfectly.

Yum.

Let it cool for a minute or two and then serve it up in a bowl.  If you want to go crazy you could of course add all kinds of toppings to it like dried fruit, nuts, or even some more brown sugar (like me).  The key part though is to warm some milk while your oatmeal is cooking and then pour the milk over your baked oatmeal.

It’s pretty heavenly.

The warm milk is really key.

Really delicious and simple recipe.  Even though it’s an overnight recipe, the actual work involved is minutes.  It re-heats great as well. It’ll store in the fridge for at least a week without a problem.

Or you could just slice off a cube of it cold and have yourself a dessert granola bar!

Normally, when I make oatmeal I add in lots of butter, brown sugar, and other healthy stuff.  It’s delicious but also kind of weighty if you know what I mean.  Of course, it’s possible to make oatmeal in an extremely healthy way also, I just tend toward the other end of the spectrum when I do it.

I love this version of oatmeal because it tastes much more decadent than it actually is.  It’s healthy. It’s really flavorful and, as with any oatmeal, you can pile on toppings and customize it to your liking!

Such a great breakfast!

I learned this recipe from, hands down, the expert on everything oatmeal-related, Kath from Kath Eats.  She’s been writing her site for years and it’s really an awesome resource if you need some great ideas for meals.  I especially go to it first when I’m looking for a delicious oatmeal situation.  I mean… just check out her Tribute to Oatmeal!

Ok.  Let’s make it.

Banana Whipped Oatmeal (Adapted from Kath)
Serves 2.

- 1 Cup rolled oats
- 1 Cup lowfat or skim milk
- 1 Cup water
- 1 large very ripe banana.  You could use two if you want it super banana-y
- Pinch of kosher salt
- Dash of vanilla (like 1/4-1/2 Teaspoon)
Toppings: Any dried fruits, any nuts, brown sugar, any nut butter at all, go crazy.

The basics for this dish are pretty standard.

Basics plus a banana.

Before you start cooking, think about your add-ins and toppings also.  Just because you want to serve the oatmeal as soon as possible and you don’t want to be fiddling with this stuff.

For this version, I went with some dried cherries, pumpkins seeds, brown sugar, and almond butter.  I literally just used stuff I had left over in my pantry.  This recipe is a great use of leftover nuts and stuff that you have.

Go crazy here people.

They only thing I would say is don’t use instant oats.  You want something with some weight to them to absorb some of the banana mush.  I use normal rolled oats and they work fantastically.

Heaping cup will do the trick.

As far as the banana goes, the riper the better in my book.  I like mine to be right on the borderline between getting mushy.  It should smell really ripe!

Chop it up into pretty thin slices which will help with the whipping part.

A bit over ripe is fine.

Add your milk and water to a medium saucepan and and get it going over medium-high heat.  When it’s just starting to simmer, add your oats and also the banana slices.

Don't worry. This will work.

Then get out your favorite whisk (What?  You don’t have more than one whisk?)  Just start whisking like crazy.  As the oatmeal cooks, the banana will whip up into almost a creamy consistency and basically disappear.  It’ll start smelling really good.

Add your dash of vanilla and pinch of salt now!

Get whiskin'!

After about 7-8 minutes, all the liquid should be absorbed.  I also added in my dried cherries about a minute before the oatmeal was done so they would plump up a bit and get hot.  I also added a pinch of brown sugar because I’m crazy like that.

The final product was really creamy and delicious.

7 or 8 minutes later.

Divide the oatmeal evenly between two bowls, top with your desired toppings, and serve.  I’m telling you that if you make this for someone and don’t mention that you did the banana thing, they’ll be blown away by the taste and while it’s really creamy and a bit sweet, it’s actually hard to identify the exact flavor.

It’s a really awesome breakfast.

A great way to start the day.

There are literally thousands of variations you could make on this dish and trust me… once you make it, you’ll want to try all of them.

Start to finish this probably takes 15 minutes to cook and it’ll kick your day off right!

If, somehow, you don’t know what a blondie is, it’s basically a brownie but instead of chocolate, it has a brown sugar base.  Blondies have these light caramel flavor that is heaven to me.  The other good thing about blondies is you can mix in all kinds of extras into the batter.

Dense!

You could go crazy with add-ins for blondies (I almost did).  One add-in that I think would be a good one would be some sort of nut, like walnuts maybe.  I didn’t add them because I was planning on selling these guys and adding nuts to things sometimes makes them harder to sell because of nut allergies, etc.

Blondies (Adapted from How to Cook Everything)
Makes a 9×13 pan or about 12 large blondies.  You could half this recipe and make an 8×8 pan also.

-1 Cup unsalted butter, plus a tiny bit to grease the pan
- 2 Cups dark brown sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt

My Add-ins:
- 2 bananas, mushed
- 1 Cup dried cranberries
- 1 Cup chocolate chips

Starting the Blondies.  This is one of the easier batters to make honestly.  It’s just got a few simple ingredients.  Since it’s really so few ingredients, I decided to upgrade the butter from my normal butter to a European brand that has a bit more flavor.  It added a richness to the bars that was awesome.  You could use any unsalted butter though.

Basics for blondies

Over a double-boiler (also known for me as a pot with some water simmering in it and a metal bowl sitting on the pot), add your butter and brown sugar and whisk it all together for a few minutes until the butter is completely melted and the sugar is dissolved.

At this point, it will look really dark and be basically a simple caramel sauce.

A caramel sauce basically...

The Add-ins.  As I said, just like brownies, you can add all kinds of fun things to these guys.  I decided to do chocolate (because everyone loves chocolate), dried cranberries (for flavor and texture), and bananas.  The bananas were interesting.  I liked them mixed in.  Betsy was on the fence about it I think.

The banana was interesting.

I gave my cranberries a very rough chop and mushed up my bananas.

Chopped and whipped

Back to the batter. Let your batter cool for a minute until it’s warm to the touch.  Then whisk in your eggs, vanilla, salt, and finally your flour.  Don’t over-mix the batter.  It should be pretty moist.

Then fold in all your mix-ins.  I added my chocolate last, but I don’t think it really matters what order  you add them.

A pinch of chocolate.

Cooking the Blondies. Lightly butter a 9×13 inch baking dish and add all your blondie batter.  Gently smooth out the top so they bake evenly.

Bake these at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes depending on how done you want your blondies.

After 30 minutes

Cooling The Blondies. Maybe the most important step in cooking these blondies is cooling these guys.  If you’re like me, a slightly undercooked blondie/brownie is really the only way to go.  There are still some crispy edges, but the interior parts will be a little gooey.

The only downside to under-cooking them slightly, is you can’t eat them right away unless you prefer to eat them with a spoon!  So just cool them on a rack for 30 minutes or so and if you really under-cook them, you might want to even put them in the fridge for 30 minutes to set-up even more.

These were really tasty and laced with all kinds of good stuff.

These are stackable!

Wrapping the Bars.  Of course, for a bake sale these all had to be individually wrapped.  The last time I had to individually wrap something for a different bake sale, I maybe went a bit overboard, so I decided to go more minimalist this time around.  Just parchment paper and butcher’s twine!

Wrapped and Ready!

I’m actually not sure if my blondies sold out… I don’t think they did just because there was SO MANY baked things there.  But trust me, these are worth your time.  They’re great for an office get together or anytime you just want some variety from the standard brownie (is that even possible?).

So rather than making something with Guinness which was my first thought, I decided to make something a bit more old school: Soda Bread.  There’s a lot to love about soda bread.  It’s about as simple as baking gets, it produces a fantastic loaf, and it goes well with beer.

This was my final loaf!

Dense and delicious

I used a recipe from an old issue of Bon Appetit that I’ve had bookmarked for awhile.  They apparently traveled all over Ireland hunting out the best soda bread recipe and this was the result of their search.  I honestly haven’t had soda bread enough to know how this one stacks up, but I will say that I thought it was pretty darn good!

I like it when recipes are named (Mrs. O’Callaghan’s).  I also wish it included a phone number, that way if it sucks I can call up the Mrs. and tell her what’s what.

Mrs. O’Callaghan’s Soda Bread

-3 Cups all-purpose flour
- 3 Cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 Cup packed brown sugar
- 1 Teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 Cup chilled butter, cubed
- 2 Cups buttermilk
- Nonstick spray for pan or a little bit of oil

The buttermilk is really the key to this recipe.  It gives the bread a great tangy flavor and also helps produce the bubbles that give it its lift since there is no yeast in the thing.

The basics.

Start by preheating your oven to 425 and then mixing all your dry ingredients in a large bowl.  The brown sugar gives the bread a tiny bit of sweetness and the whole wheat flour is essential in my opinion.  It means a great color and flavor for the soda bread.

The brown sugar is key.

Once your dry ingredients are well whisked, cube up the butter and mix it into the dry ingredients.  This is similar to making a pie crust, but with much less butter and a lot more flour.  I just use my fingers to mix in the butter until it’s in pea-sized globs throughout the flour.

Just the right amount.

Next add your cold buttermilk and give it all a stir.  If it looks particularly dry, add another few tablespoons of buttermilk.  I had a hard time getting my dough to come together probably because I have a heavy hand when it comes to cups of flour.   I just added a few more tablespoons of buttermilk and it worked out great.

A very strange dough.

Stir the mixture together until it forms what BA calls a “saggy dough.”  I’m not really sure if mine was saggy so much as it was just kind of lumpy.

Here’s my “saggy” dough.

saggy and sloppy

You don’t want to work this too much and you want to get it in the oven as soon as possible.  So just knead it a few times to even out the dough and then form a rough ball with the dough.  Literally, it should be like 30 seconds from bowl to baking sheet.

The baking sheet by the way, you should spray with some non-stick spray or coat it lightly in a neutral oil.

Don't overwork the dough here!

Don’t forget to give the bread it’s signature cross on the top!  Try to use a serrated knife if you have one.  It’ll work best that way.  It’s possible that I went a bit too deep on my cross cuts.

It’s hard to control such things when you’re as strong as I am. (Sarcasm people.)

I got a bit carried away here...

Bake this for about 40 50-60 minutes.  It should sound kind of hollow when you thump it.  It’ll be pretty dense.  After it comes out of the oven, move it to rack and let it cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing into it.

With some butter, this stuff really hits the spot.

Yum!

Soda bread is best to eat right away, but it makes for pretty excellent toast on day two or three also.  I  think it would also make great bread crumbs or croutons because it has a great firm texture and nice nutty flavor.

One of the easier loafs of bread I’ve ever made and definitely delicious.

Give it a shot and Happy St. Patty’s everybody!

Second, and possibly more important for this post, I believe that the best fry is a fried fry.  Baked potatoes are good and baked potato skins and wedges are indeed tasty, but for french fries… give me a vat of hot oil please.

I put both of these truths aside though when I got this message from a good friend:

I ask that Macheesmo figure out how to make CRISPY fries and sweet potato fries in the OVEN.

And so over the next three weeks, I embarked on a scientific (sort of) endeavor to determine how to make good baked fries.

Where it all begins...

This turned out to be incredibly hard.  I did my best to standardize the things that I could standardize.  First, I tried to cut all my potatoes into 1/2 inch sticks.  Second, I baked every batch regardless of normal potato or sweet potato at 400.  That said, I’m fairly certain that my oven is probably off by 10-15 degrees in either direction and I’ve never taken the time to calibrate it.  Remember what I said about me sucking at the scientific method?

Baking time for each batch was around 30-35 minutes for normal fries and 20-25 minutes for sweet potatoes, turning a few times throughout.

Just as a control (is that the right word?), I baked a small batch of potatoes with absolutely nothing on them.  Cut them up and threw them in the oven.

This was the result:

BLAH

Success! They were crispy!  Unfortunately, they tasted like old shoes.  Nobody in their right mind would call this a fry.

The Variations. Before I go through all the various kinds of fries I made over the last three weeks, I wanted to quickly lay out the different variations I found in my research that can either be applied before and/or after the baking process to result in deliciousness.  (Am I sounding science-y?)

Naked – Nothing on them and nothing done to them.  Potatoes au natural.  Also known as gross.

Blanched – After slicing the fries, cook them for a minute or two in boiling salted water to remove some starch from them.  This double cooking should make them crispier when baked.  Be sure to pat them dry before baking.

Ice Bath – Similar to the blanching idea.  By letting them sit in ice water for 30 minutes, they will supposedly be crispier when baked.

Olive oil – My oil of choice.  Every fry variation gets 1 Tablespoon of olive oil per 1/2 of a potato.  It’s possible that this was too much olive oil, but it’s what I started with so I just kept it up throughout.

Kosher Salt – Most essential.  This doesn’t really help with crispiness as far as I could tell, but who wants a fry without salt?

Cornstarch Mix -  A light mixture of cornstarch and various spices.  Applied to the potato after blanching, it gives the potato a crusty exoskeleton of sorts.

Brown Sugar Mix – Only good with the sweet potato variety, but same idea as the cornstarch mixture.

Normal Potatoes.  The Russet potato was my first subject.  I tried basically ever reasonable combination of the above things and most actually worked pretty well.

Even if you do potatoes naked with some olive oil and kosher salt, I was able to get a pretty crispy result.

Bam!

But the real trick, I think, is in the blanching.  Just a few minutes dipped in boiling salted water.  Then let them dry on a paper towel.

A quick dip

As I mentioned above, I mixed up a corn starch mixture to apply to one version of these fries.  This was the basic ratio:

Corn Starch Mix

- 1 Tablespoon corn starch
- 1/2 Teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 Teaspoon garlic salt
- 1/2 Teaspoon hot paprika

The seasonings are completely adjustable depending on your tastes.  Go crazy! I tried to keep mine the same throughout… you know… for SCIENCE.

Interesting...

Fries, when blanched and then lightly dusted with a teaspoon or so of this mixture do get a crunch exterior that’s very tasty!

Lotsa flavor.

Normal Potato Results.  I got the best results from the blanched potatoes.  I think they were as crispy as baked fries can be.  Personally, I’m a minimalist when it comes to fries so I preferred the ones with just olive oil and salt, but I can see how the corn starch variety would be very well received.

My Sweet Potato Nemesis. Normal Russet potatoes worked out okay, but I knew that the real battle was going to be with these suckers:

Tricky business

Before I get too far into it, I know that there are a few different varieties of sweet potato.  There’s a variety that is white on the inside like a normal potato, but is just, well, sweeter.  I tried a few batches of that variety and found that they cooked very similar to normal Russet potatoes.

I knew my friend was referring to the yam potato though – the orange kind – when he said sweet potato, so that’s what I focused on.

These were a completely different beast than the normal fries.  Just to give you an idea naked sweet potatoes baked in any fashion, I found, produced completely soggy results.  Limp. Soggy. Fries.  Actually, they tasted okay because sweet potatoes are good, but not what I was going for here.

The Ice Bath. I found that soaking the sweet potatoes in ice water had an effect.  It definitely changed them somehow to produce a slightly crispier fry.  The key is to make sure you let them soak for at least 30 minutes and dry them well before baking.

New methodologies...

Sweet potatoes were very hard to get crispy at all.  Things that did not work:

1) Naked.  No matter what I tried, baking sweet potatoes naked just ends in sogginess.   They work well in casseroles or baked whole, but they don’t work for fries like this.

2) Blanching.  Shockingly, it was tough to get them to crisp up after a blanch.  I actually thought this would work well, but it completely flopped.  The one exception to this was with the cornstarch topping.  They were somewhat crispy like that, but not great.  I actually think that the fries somehow absorbed water in this process which made them less likely to become crispy.

Again, The Ice Bath. I must say that for sweet potatoes, the ice bath worked.  It’s important to make sure you pat them really dry after a 30 minute soak, but even with just some olive oil and salt they crisped up decently.

Doing okay!

I’ll be honest though (my job as a scientist here).  The kind of crisp achieved with the ice bath and the oil and salt is not ideal.  It’s very tasty, but not ideal.

That said, I had much better results with the sweet potatoes, ice bath, and cornstarch.

I also tried a brown sugar mixture:  2 Tablespoons brown sugar, 1/2 Teaspoon kosher salt, 1/2 Teaspoon pepper, 1/4 Teaspoon cayenne.  If you toss the fries in some oil and then this mixture after they are dried from the ice bath, the sugar produced an almost caramel crust around the fries.  They’re crispy and flavorful.  The only downside is that it’s almost unavoidable that due to uneven oven heat, some of the fries will get some burned sugar on them.

If you do the brown sugar topping, it helps to bake them on parchment paper.

The flavor was generally good though.

Crispy... or crunchy?

To be completely honest, I don’t know how scientists do it.  After weeks baking fries, at the end of it, not only were my methods slipping, but I completely lost track of what result I was looking for.  I forgot what a crispy fry even looked like!

Conclusion. If you must bake:

Normal Potatoes: Blanch and the either go with the olive oil, kosher salt traditional topping or try a cornstarch mixture.

Sweet Potatoes: Ice bath is key for 30 minutes (and yes I tried one for 10 minutes and it failed).  Then go for either the olive oil and kosher salt, cornstarch topping, or brown sugar mixture. You’ll get the best crisp from the cornstarch or brown sugar mixtures.

After all that though, I have to say I’m defaulting to my standard.  Give me a pot of hot oil and I can make crispy sweet potatoes or normal potatoes and season them perfectly after they get out of the oil.

And so ends The Great Baked Fry Experiment…  Unless people have comments on what I did wrong, which I’m sure people do!  So where did I go wrong?  What did I miss?

Ok.  I’ll stop.  But seriously, the thing about babka, especially a chocolate variety, is that it hits all the major pastry chords.  It’s got kind of a crunch on the outside, but is light and fluffy on the inside.  It’s an enriched dough, but laced with melted chocolate and cinnamon.  In short, babka is freakin’ delicious.

It's all of my favorite pastries in one!

I don’t know why, but babka actually isn’t very common in the states.  At least I haven’t seen it around very much. In fact, my spell-check doesn’t even recognize it as a word!  Damn you spell check!  Recognize my new favorite pastry!

Sorry… I got carried away.  We have some work to do to make this lovely loaf so let’s get to it.

Chocolate Babka (From Gourmet Today)
Makes two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 loafs

For Dough:
- 3/4 Cup warm milk (105-115 degrees F.)
- 1/2 Cup plus 2 Teaspoons sugar
- 1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
- 3 1/4 Cups all-purpose flour
- 2 large eggs
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 Teaspoon salt
- 10 Tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temp

For Filling:
- 5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (no more than 60% cacao), finely chopped
- 1/2 Cup sugar
- 1 Teaspoon cinnamon (my addition)

Egg Wash:
- 1 large egg
- 1 Tablespoon cream

Simple Brown Sugar Crumb Topping:
- 1/2 Cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 4 Tablespoons butter, room temp

Helpful Equipment:
- Loaf Pans
- Stand Mixer (This recipe would be a bit hard without one, but I think you could do it.  There was babka before there was stand mixers.)

Making the Dough. I’ll be the first to admit this recipe isn’t for the faint of heart.  It has a fair amount of butter in it and other seemingly unhealthy things and takes… oh… about 5-6 hours to make start to finish.  Although most of that time is just watching dough rise.

Anyway, to start, you’ll need this stuff.

Basics for Babka

Start out by adding your warm milk, 2 Teaspoons of sugar, and yeast in a bowl (use the bowl of your mixer if you have a stand mixer).  Wait 5 minutes until it’s foamy then add 1/2 Cup flour and mix until it’s combined (use the paddle attachment or a wooden spoon).  Then add your eggs, yolk, vanilla, salt, and remaining sugar.  Then mix in the remaining flour about 1/2 Cup at a time.

Once all the flour is combined, beat in your butter.  This would be pretty hard to do with out a stand mixer, but I would say that you would just have to knead in the butter with your hands or a wooden spoon.  It would take awhile by hand (and about 4 minutes with a mixer), but eventually you’ll have a very soft and sticky dough.  If you have a stand mixer it’ll be looking something like this!

I love my mixer so much.

Next place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover it with a towel.  Let it rise for about 2 hours in a warm place.  It should more than double in size.  This was my bowl after two hours.

After 2 hours...

Because of the eggs, milk, sugar, and butter, this dough is really interesting.  It reminded me of a challah bread or of this celebration bread I made… except richer.  Heck.  It reminded me of a beignet dough… except richer.

Anyway, once it has at least doubled in size, you’re ready for the fun part.

Rolling with your dough. If you’ve made cinnamon rolls before, this will seem very familiar.  Split your large ball of dough into two equal sizes (remember this recipe is for two loafs of babka).  Then on a lightly floured surface, roll out your dough until it is about 10 inches by 18 inches.  Ideally, it would be a perfect rectangle, but don’t freak out about it.

Then take about 3 Tablespoons of butter and lightly spread it over the surface of the dough leaving about 1/2 inch border around the edges.  Then pile on your filling ingredients over the buttered portion of the dough!

Should look something like this:

Kind of like a cinnamon roll!

Now, let’s talk chocolate for a second.  There are some recipes that have literally pounds of chocolate in their babka.  This is  fine if you are a chocoholic.  I’m actually not.  I like a more subtle chocolate flavor.  If you desire more chocolate, feel free to PACK IT IN.  Just make sure it’s in an even layer.

Next, mix your egg wash ingredients together with a fork and then lightly brush the bottom side of the dough with the egg wash.  This will be the side closest to you.  Then, working slowly, roll the dough up toward you and seal off the edge.  The egg wash will make the dough stick together nicely on that end, sealing up the roll.

Don’t throw away your egg wash mixture!  Stick it in the fridge… you’ll need it later.

Try to get it as even as possible.

Still... like a cinnamon roll.

Another rising.  Get your pan ready by cutting out a rectangle of parchment paper and placing it in the bottom of your loaf pan.  This will make it a lot easier to get the babka out after it’s done baking.  Spray the pan lightly with non-stick spray.

To make the traditional babka knot effect, take your rope of dough and form a circle by pulling the two ends together.  Then hold one side of the circle down and twist the other side a few times to form kind of a rope effect.  Be gentle with it so it doesn’t rip!  Then lay this into your prepared pan.

The twisting is somewhat optional

Cover this with a moist towel and let it rise in a warm spot for two more hours.  This second rise creates lots of air in the dough.  It gives the final product a laminated feel – almost like a croissant.  After two hours it will be puffed and beautiful.  It should just reach the edge of the top of your loaf pan.

Hello pretty thing!

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare your crumb topping.  Brush the top of your loaf with some of your egg wash from earlier and then sprinkle on your topping right before sticking it in the oven.

Eggwash + Crumb.

Bake this for about 40 minutes until the top is nice and browned.  Then transfer the loaf to a rack to cool.  Keep the loaf in the pan!  After 10 or 15 minutes you can carefully remove it from the pan and then let it cool to room temperature.

Then slice it up!

Surprisingly light.

If you don’t want to make two loafs at the same time, you can freeze the dough and then just let the dough thaw in the fridge and then let it rise again at room temperature.  Then roll it out and continue with the recipe.

I kept my baked loaf in the fridge for a week and it was very tasty reheated slightly in the microwave (just 10 seconds) or in the toaster.

So in my opinion, this is one of the most interesting pastries out there.  I just wish I knew a good Jewish bakery around DC that I could fine some!  Until then I guess I’ll just have to make them myself!

So for the last cookie of the week, I wanted to do something simple.  And these browned butter cookies are definitely simple to make.  They also happen to be delicious.

I wish you could smell these.

Browned butter cookies are kind of the Holy Grail of holiday cookies.  They may not look as colorful or shiny as some of the others, but it would be a horrible mistake to pass them up.

(For those Indiana Jones fans, please do not carry the analogy further than this.  You will not turn to dust if you choose a different cookie.)

Brown Butter Cookies (Adapted from a Gourmet 2008 recipe *RIP*)
Makes about 16. Again, I have no idea how they get 32 out of it.

- 3/4 Cups (1 1/2 Sticks) salted butter
- 1/2 Cup dark brown sugar (I used light and I wish I could have a do over.)
- 1 Teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/3 Cups all-purpose flour
- Demerara sugar, for coating cookies (or any other large grained sugar)

NOTE: If you use unsalted butter, add 1/4 Teaspoon of salt to the dough.

Making Brown Butter.  There’s really no trick to making brown butter.  It’s a lot easier than you might think considering how freakin’ delicious it is.  Basically, just add your butter to a small saucepan.

Salted butter is good for this.

Then place the pan over medium-low heat until it melts.  Stir the butter and after a few minutes it will start to foam and then the milk solids will sink to the bottom.  Keep stirring or swirling your pan and eventually the butter will start to turn a light brown and give off a very delicious, nutty aroma.

That means it’s done.

Really the only way you can mess this up is to overcook it and turn your brown butter black.  I actually think I overcooked mine a bit for this recipe because I was watching football and not watching my butter.  Go figure.

This was my result which was just a tiny shade too dark I would say.

Maybe a tad too browned...

Cool the butter. Once you have your brown butter, pour it into a dish (above) and store it in the fridge for about an hour.  You want it to be chilled and almost solid before continuing with the recipe.

It’s okay if it’s a little liquid still, but it should be cold before you make the cookie dough.

Annoying, but important step!

Making the Dough.  Once your butter is cool, add it to a bowl along with your brown sugar.  Don’t worry about the tiny particles of milk solids.  You can add those also.  They won’t hurt a soul.

I used light brown sugar because I had it on hand, but I think dark brown sugar would be a lot better.  It would just hold up better to the brown butter flavor.  It’d be worth a trip to the store in my opinion.

Anyway, mix the butter and sugar together with a mixer (hand or stand) on medium until they light and airy.  That shouldn’t take more than 3 or 4 minutes.

Shoulda used dark brown sugar.

Then add your vanilla and slowly incorporate your flour.  This isn’t a very wet dough, but that’s okay.

I think you could just scoop these on a baking sheet and bake them without a problem but if you want to take it to the next level, lay out all your dough on some wax paper and wrap the wax paper around the dough and press down to form a cylinder.

I use my hands to kind of press on the one edge of the dough – sandwiching the cylinder of dough between the two sides of paper.  As you press down, the cylinder gets longer (and narrower)!  Get it?

Kind of like compound butter...

You can make your cylinder whatever size you want.  The smaller you want your cookies, the narrower your cylinder should be.  Mine was probably about 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter.

Next, sprinkle down a good amount of demerara sugar (or any very grainy sugar like sugar in the raw).  Roll your dough log around in the sugar until it’s well coated.

Easy!

At this point you can wrap your dough up in the wax paper and stick it in the fridge for a few days without a problem or freeze it for a few weeks!

When you are ready to bake, just take it out and slice off as many cookies as you need.

Baking the cookies.  Before baking, I like to sprinkle a bit more of the sugar on top of the cookies which just gives them a little more texture and sweetness.

Bake them on an ungreased baking sheet in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are slightly dark.

Really flaky and flavorful!

I made two mild errors with these cookies (not using dark brown sugar and slightly overcooking my brown butter) and they still turned out very good.  The final cookie is light and flaky and melts in your mouth.

Simple and very tasty!

Oh, and if anyone is paying attention, the thing I borrowed from yesterday’s cookie recipe is rolling in sugar!

That’s how much I love you guys.

Of course, you don’t have to make the filling on peppermint whoppie pies pink, but then they would just kind of look like a ginormous Oreo cookie.  Not that that would be bad, but it’s just not what I was going for here.

Anyway, these turned out perfect!

Looks good in pink.

I have a coworker (Hi Sam!) that is actually a master of the whoopie pie.  It’s a tricky balance with these guys so I decided to consult her as an expert.  She sent me a few recipes and I went to work.  I think they turned out pretty fantastic.

Pink Peppermint Whoopie Pies (Pie recipe from a Gourmet 2003 recipe.  Filling recipe from A Bon Appétit Dec. 2005 recipe.)
Makes about 18-20 pies depending on how big you make them.  You could half this recipe of course.

For cakes:
- 4 Cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Cup Dutch-process cocoa powder (high quality)
- 2.5 Teaspoons baking soda
- 2 Teaspoons salt
- 2 Cups well-shaken buttermilk
- 2 Teaspoons vanilla
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
- 2 Cups packed brown sugar
- 2 large eggs

For filling:
- 1.5 Cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
- 3 Cups powdered sugar
- 1.5 Teaspoons peppermint extract
- a few drops of red food coloring

Making the cakes.  To me, what makes a delicious whoopie pie is a light, airy cake (and it actually is closer to a cake than a cookie or pie).  It’s not always easy to get right though, but when you do, you will definitely exclaim, “WHOOPIE!”

To start, sift all your dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt) into a large bowl.  It’s important to sift here or whisk furiously to make sure your dry ingredients are nice and light.

Whisked or sifted please.

Meanwhile, add your butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream them together.  I let mine mix for about 3 or 4 minutes until it was very light.  If you are using a hand mixer you might need to go even longer.

Look ma... No hands!

Next, mix in your vanilla and eggs.  Then slowly add in your flour and buttermilk in alternating stages to your creamed butter.  As always with cake recipes like this, start with dry ingredients and end with dry ingredients.  So it goes 1/3 of your flour, 1/2 of your buttermilk, 1/3 of your flour, 1/2 of your buttermilk, and finally the last 1/3 of your flour.

Then just mix it together on low until it all is combined.  The last thing you want to do is over-mix this.  If you do that you’ll have tough, very non-whoopie worthy pies.

Very chocolatey.

Once it’s mixed well, spoon dollops of it onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  You could make these as big or small as you want, but just try to get them as uniform as possible.

I went for about 2 Tablespoon-sized cakes.  Keep in mind they will grow quite a bit while baking so leave an inch at least between each pie.

Kind of haphazard.

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for 11-13 minutes.  Rotate your pans once to make sure they cook evenly.  They should be slightly springy when they are done.

Let them cool on the sheet for a minute or two and then move them to a wire rack to cool.

Light and fluffy!

For some reason it didn’t dawn on me that making 20 whoopie pies is actually baking 40 individual mini-cakes.  I was able to do 8 per baking sheet so it took me 3 rounds of baking to finish them all using two baking sheets at a time.  I went ahead and reused my parchment paper even though that’s apparently a no-no.  I didn’t notice any difference in the later rounds of baking.

Cool it down. It’s very important to make sure that your cakes are absolutely cool before icing them.  Otherwise your frosting will just melt and you’ll have sad little pink pools of butter.

Anyway, while they are cooling (or baking), you need to make this bad-ass pink frosting.

Some whoopie filling recipes call for marshmallows, but I skipped that and just made a really thick butter cream frosting.  It worked great!

4 simple ingredients.

Start by adding your room temperature butter to your mixer and mixing it on medium until it is, well, creamy.  Then add in your tiny amount of peppermint.  Be careful with this stuff.  It’s very potent and too much of it will turn your whoopie pie into an Altoid (not a good thing for a huge cookie).

Once your flavoring is added, slowly add in your sifted confectioners sugar.  It’s a lot of sugar.  Go slowly or you’ll end up with a layer of the stuff all over your kitchen.

That might happen anyway, but you can at least try to avoid it by going slowly.

Once you get all your sugar incorporated, add just drops of food coloring.  Just remember.  It’s easy to add more.  It’s impossible to remove it.

And after all that, you’ll end up with this lovely product, which might win the award for most colorful Macheesmo photo of the year.

FAB-U-LOUS!

I think you can probably imagine the next step, but it involves slathering on as much of this stuff as you want between two of your baked cookie-cake things.

Heavy on the frosting.

Repeat.

From the top.

You can of course go crazy with the frosting, but a little restraint is good I think.  The frosting can be overpowering if you slather it on too thickly.

I like to go for a pretty even layer – like this:

Cross-section shot is crucial.

I brought these to a work lunch and they seemed to be popular.  I even got approval from the queen of whoopie pies, so you know they are good.

But, I couldn’t resist putting bacon in these cookies.  The package was just sitting there in my fridge, practically screaming, “Nick!  Put me in a cookie with dried fruit and oatmeal and maple syrup and eat me for breakfast!”

And so I did.

Yes. There is bacon in there.

These guys are packed with flavor.  The bacon adds a level obviously (a smokey, salty level), but the dried cherries and maple syrup really kick it up a notch.  Pair this with the texture of an oatmeal cookie and I do believe that I’m onto something.

Breakfast Cookies
Makes about 12 cookies

- 1/2 Cup light brown sugar
- 1/2 Cup butter, room temp
- 1 egg
- 3 Tablespoons real maple syrup
- 3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 Teaspoon salt
- 2 Cups rolled oats
- 1/2 Cup dried cherries (or dried fruit of your choice), roughly chopped
- 1/3 – 1/2 Cup crumbled bacon, very crispy (I used 1/2 Cup and mine were very bacony.)

Makin’ the Bacon. For this recipe, or in general, crispy bacon is essential.  Also, it’s really important to pull away as much grease as possible from the strips because the grease will really mess with your cookie consistency.

I almost always bake my bacon these days on a rack in a 350 degree oven.  Put a sheet under it to catch all the grease unless you want your oven to catch fire.

The best way to cook crispy bacon.

Bake the strips for about 20-25 minutes and you might want to flip them half way through just to make sure they are cooking evenly.  I had some thick bacon so you might need less time if you are using the thin stuff.

After they are done you should have these beautifully crispy strips which you can stack for visual appeal.

Awesome.

Or crumble it if you want to, say, put it in a cookie.

Also good on salads!

It’s very important to make sure that your bacon cools completely before you add it to your cookie recipe.

Making the dough. To actually make these cookies, you’ll need some other ingredients.  You can use any dried fruit really.  I went with dried cherries and they were awesome, but pricey.  Feel free to substitute whatever you have on hand.

Other ingredients!

As with most cookie doughs, start by creaming your butter and sugar together.  I like to cut my butter into chunks which makes it a bit easier to get started.

Healthy breakfast...

Once your butter and sugar are combined well, add the egg, and maple syrup (very breakfast!).

In a separate bowl combine your dry ingredients except the oats: Flour, baking soda, and salt.  Then slowly add those to your wet ingredients.

Continue to mix that until you have a dough that will resemble very soft peanut butter.

Looks like peanut butter.

Fold in your oats, bacon, and dried fruit (roughly chopped).

Now just drop the cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  I kind of just eyeball my cookie size, but about 2 Tablespoons of dough per cookie is a good goal.  Be sure to leave a few inches between cookies also.

Lots of fruit in there also.

Chewiness.  The key to a chewy cookie here is to refrigerate them before you bake them.  Just stick the baking sheets in the fridge for about 20 minutes and then transfer them straight to a 350 degree oven.

They’ll need to cook for 10-12 minutes.  Remember that they’ll firm up a bit as they cool also.

When you take them out of the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes and then transfer them to a rack to cool completely.

I actually thing these were best cold.

You can definitely eat these right away, but I actually thought they were best cold – out of the fridge.  And yes, because of the bacon action, I’d recommend storing them in the fridge.

Interesting texture. Chewy yet crunchy.

These are pretty intense cookies.  I used a lot of bacon in mine so feel free to tone it down if you try it.  Also, I’ll be completely honest — the bacon wasn’t even my favorite part.  I think the maple syrup and the dried fruit made the cookie.

But maybe bacon did make it better.  Maybe there’s more to this bacon myth after all…

Don’t get me wrong, I can do healthy, but if I’m going to make a pie or a tart or something, I generally want it to be delicious and not half-assed.  So I’m very skeptical about light recipes, but it did look really good so I gave it a shot and tried to restrain myself from making too many adjustments to the recipe.

Not quite as light as the original recipe...

There were a few changes that I couldn’t help but make though.  First, they call it a tart.  To me, it’s a cheesecake.  Semantics I guess.  Second, I’m sorry but their crust recipe was just not going to work for me.  I tried it and I couldn’t get it to stick together.

Also, I don’t believe in low fat cream cheese.  Sorry, but that’s just the way I feel!

Pumpkin Bourbon Cheesecake (Adapted from Cooking Light. You can check out the original recipe here.)

Crust: (From How to Cook Everything)
- 1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs (about two sheets crumbled)
- 4 Tablespoons butter, melted
- 1/4 Cup sugar

Filling:
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 Cup sugar
- 1/4 Cup brown sugar
- 1 (15-ounce) can unsweetened pumpkin
- 2 large eggs
- 2 Tablespoons bourbon (plus some for drinkin’!)
- 2 Teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/2 Teaspoon salt
- 1/2 Teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 Teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/8 Teaspoon ground allspice

Whipped Cream:
- 1/3 Cup cold heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla

Helpful Equipment:
- Springform Pan

Making the Crust.  I really did try to make the crust from the original recipe and I couldn’t get it to work out.  I didn’t want to risk it falling apart so I just used a recipe that I’ve used before.  It’s pretty surefire.

A simple, normal graham cracker crust.

Crush up your graham crackers (or you can buy crumbs if you want) and then add your sugar and drizzle in your melted butter.  Mix everything together with a fork.  It should be loose, but if you press on it, it should clump together.

Clumping is good.

Start loading it into your springform pan (or you can use a normal pie pan I guess).  One trick I learned, I think from Alton Brown, is to use a measuring cup to press down the crumbs.  Work around the edge with the measuring cup until all the edges are about the same thickness and pressed firmly together.

Work slowly and make sure it is all really packed down well.  It’s very important to have a good sturdy crust.

Get it?

Bake this crust in a 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes.  Then let it cool completely on a wire rack.  It should harden up nicely as it cools.

Making the filling.  I used nice bourbon for the recipe not because I think it’s necessarily important for the pie, but because I intend to drink the leftovers and so I bought the good stuff.

You’ll need a variety of other ingredients as well.  The only other change, besides the crust, that I made to this recipe was to sub in real cream cheese.  I don’t trust low fat cream cheese!  Give me the real stuff please.

Filling ingredients.

Start by beating together your cream cheese and sugars.  Once they are well incorporated and light, add the eggs and pumpkin (be sure to buy 100% pumpkin and not the pumpkin pie filling).  Mix that all together and then add all your other ingredients.

It’s a pretty quick filling to pull together actually.  I used whole spices and ground them up myself, but feel free to just use ground stuff if that’s what you have available.

Yum.

Once your pie crust has cooled down, you can pour your filling into your crust!

Don't worry. The filling is pretty runny at this point.

Baking the cheesecake. You need to bake this in a water bath to ensure that your filling sets and stays moist.  I did this by setting my pie pan on a large baking sheet and then pouring 1 Cup of boiling water around the pan right before sticking it in the oven.

The water will form steam and help the pie set up nicely.

Water bath!

Bake this creation at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until the center barely wiggles when you tap the side.  Again cool the pie to room temperature on a wire rack and then refrigerate it for at least 4 hours.

Eating the Cheesecake! Ok.  There aren’t really any instructions on how to eat it.  You know how to do that.  What’s nice about the springform pan is that you can take out the entire cheesecake which makes it really easy to cut and serve.

Some tiny pieces of my crust fell off in the process, but in general it held together fine.

Spring form pans are pretty sweet.

If you are making your own whipped cream, just whisk all the above ingredients together and then dollop it on top!  Honestly, the cheesecake is pretty good without the whipped cream also so if you’re looking to really save some calories that might be the place to do it.

How pretty is that?!

Ok… so I stayed pretty true to the recipe.  I think my changes definitely improve the final product (especially the crust).  Granted I didn’t taste them side by side, but I just have a feeling that my version is worth the few extra calories.

I can say this because, well, my version turned out delicious.

I think this would be a pretty great alternative to the classic pumpkin pie for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast.