Over the years, I’ve written about bacon a lot. If you want some serious bacon action, just check out the bacon section of the Macheesmo!

I’ve mentioned in passing how I like to cook bacon, but I thought it would be worth it to spend a post walking you through how I make my bacon.

Not only does this method result in what I believe to be the best bacon possible, but it lends itself well to a bunch of fun variations on bacon which are also included in this post.

So… vegetarians… look away!

Bacon lovers… proceed!

The Perfect Bacon

Yield: 8 strips of bacon

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

Basic Recipe:
8 strips of bacon
Coarse ground black pepper

Chocolate Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
2 ounces milk chocolate
2 tablespoons cream, or butter

Maple Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
4 tablespoons real maple syrup

Candied Bacon:
8 strips cooked bacon
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Helpful Equipment:
Sheet Pan
Wire rack (oven safe)

Directions:

1) Add oven safe wire rack to a sheet pan so it is slightly elevated off the pan. Lay out 8 strips of bacon on the wire rack. It's okay if the strips overlap slightly. Season with ground pepper.

2) Baked in a cold 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

3) Remove bacon and flip the strips.

4) Bake for another 10 minutes or until very crispy. Let cool briefly before serving.

Chocolate Version:
1) I like the pepper/chocolate combo, but you might want to leave the pepper off if you're doing a chocolate version. Otherwise, cook bacon as directed above.

2) Meanwhile, in a small microwave safe bowl, add cream or butter and chocolate and microwave in 15 second bursts until the chocolate is melted and smooth.

3) When bacon is cooked and cooled to room temperature, drizzle chocolate over bacon. Cool in the fridge for 10-15 minutes so chocolate hardens.

Maple Version:
1) Cook bacon as directed, but when you flip the bacon halfway through, drizzle maple syrup on each strip of bacon. Return bacon to oven to finish cooking.

2) Let cool slightly before serving.

Candied Bacon:
1) Cook bacon as directed. Meanwhile, mix together brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. When you take bacon out halfway through to flip it, sprinkle each strip with brown sugar mixture.

2) Return bacon to oven to finish cooking.

3) Let cool briefly before serving.

The Basic Technique

The title of this post is the BEST way to make bacon, but I probably should’ve added an asterix to that. There are, of course, dozens of ways to make bacon and some are better than other depending on what you want to do with the bacon.

This is not how you should make bacon if you’re adding it to a sauce (like pasta carbonara) or something like that.

This is how you should make bacon if you want to eat big strips of perfectly crispy, salty bacon that aren’t soaked in grease. In my mind, that makes for the perfect piece of bacon and this technique delivers every single time.

You really only need two pieces of equipment to pull this off. First you need some sort of rimmed sheet pan or baking sheet. Most people probably have that.

The piece of equipment that some people may not have unless you bake regularly is a wire rack. And not just any rack… it needs to be oven safe. Like this one. These are cheap and if you make bacon even once a month, it’s worth it to pick one up just for bacon.

Then just set your wire rack on your sheet pan and lay out your bacon in long strips on the wire rack.

The rack is key!

I like to season my bacon really well with coarsely ground fresh pepper, but that’s an optional step.

Once you have your bacon laying on the wire rack, just stick the whole thing in a NOT pre-heated 400 degree oven for about 12-15 minutes. Bacon should start off cooking slowly, so don’t pre-heat your oven for it.

PS. If you’re ever cooking bacon in a skillet or pan, it’s always best to start it off cold.

The reason that this method works so well is because as the bacon cooks, the fat falls away from it and collects on the sheet pan, so the bacon gets very crispy. Because the wire rack is supporting the bacon, it also stays in beautiful strips.

While you don’t have to flip the bacon, I recommend it after about 12-15 minutes just to make sure your bacon is cooking evenly.

Halfway home.

There can be a pretty huge range in bacon thickness. Obviously, depending on the thickness of your bacon, you might have to adjust the cooking time. If you’re using very thick, slab bacon, you’ll probably have to add on 5-10 minutes to the total cooking time.

After you flip the bacon, just stick it back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

When you pull your bacon out, let it cool briefly and you’ll end up with these beautiful strips.

Very crispy!

The best part about this bacon is how absolutely crispy it is.

If you don’t like your bacon crispy, you can still cook it this way… just pull it out a few minutes early.

But for me, crispy is where it’s at.

Bomb bacon.

Now that you have the method down, there’s three really fun variations that are very easy to do, but taste amazing.

Let’s go through them!

Choco-Bacon

This looks and tastes very decadent, but is super-easy to do. Basically, cook the bacon as directed above, but leave off the ground pepper. Actually, I like the pepper-chocolate combo, but it’s not for everyone so maybe just leave it off to be safe.

Then, in a microwave safe bowl, add the cream or butter and chocolate and zap it in 15 second bursts until the chocolate is melted.

Once your bacon is cooked, let it cool down to room temperature and then just drizzle on the chocolate. You could also completely dip the pieces of bacon in the chocolate if you want!

Drizzle drizzle

I like the chocolate to be solid for this recipe so after you drizzle or dip it on, just stick the plate in your fridge for 10-15 minutes and the chocolate will harden.

The salty chocolate combo is pretty amazing.

Maple Bacon

Bacon and maple were made to be together. Just a few notes on this variation to make sure it goes smoothly for you.

1) Use real maple syrup. If in doubt, look at the ingredients. It should only have one: maple syrup. If it has corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup, then try again. The problem with these is that they will cook differently on the bacon and it’ll be very sugary. Not ideal.

2) Don’t add the maple syrup at the beginning. It’ll burn by the time the bacon is done. Instead, half cook the bacon and then when you take the bacon out to flip, add a small drizzle of syrup to each strip.

It doesn’t take much to get the job done.

Nature's sugar.

After baking for 10 more minutes, the syrup will mostly evaporate leaving just a light maple flavor on the bacon.

It’s super delicious and really very easy once you master the basic technique.

Candied Bacon

I saved my favorite variation for last.

Basically, you just mix some brown sugar and cinnamon together like so…

The mix.

After the half-way cooking point for the bacon, sprinkle on a bit of the brown sugar on each strip.

While the bacon finishs cooking, the sugar will melt around it and form this delicious sweet crust.

When the bacon cools, the sugar hardens and makes the bacon even more crispy (which I like) and the salty sweet combo is perfect.

You must try this.

So there you have it. The definitive way to make really good bacon with a few fun alternatives!

Give it a shot if you’re in the mood for crispy and delicious bacon.

Millions of cinnamon rolls!

You know you’re a food blogger when…

1) You are used to eating meals at room temperature because you had to spend 10 minutes photographing the darn thing.

2) You have the grocery store aisles memorized.

3) You bring baked goods to bars during happy hour just so you can get them out of the house.

Number three is exactly what happened with this delicious thing. I made it, photographed it, ate more of it than I should have and then rushed out the door to catch a beer with some friends.

I was about to leave when I decided… what the heck… let’s bring it to the bar! This was a good idea. People loved it because the tiny little rolls are bite-sized. Even our server snuck a few pieces!

While I was going to write that this recipe is really great for brunches, it also happens to be perfect for bars.

Chocolate Chip Monkey Bread

Yield: Serves 10.

Prep Time: 30 minutes + rise time

Total Time: 4 hours

Ingredients:

Dough:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup milk, warm
1/3 cup water, warm
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
3.25 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
2 teaspoons salt
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (opt.)

1-2 tablespoons butter, soft for bundt pan.
1 teaspoon vegetable oil, for rising

Brown Sugar Coating:
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
8 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Helpful Equipment:
Bundt Pan

Directions:

1) Butter pan with 2 tablespoons softened butter and set aside for later.

2) In a large bowl, mix together milk, water, melted butter, sugar and yeast. Meanwhile, mix flour and salt in standing mixer fitted with dough hook. Turn machine to low and slowly add milk mixture. After dough comes together, increase speed to medium and mix until dough is shiny and smooth, 6 to 7 minutes. If at any point dough is very sticky, add more flour by the tablespoon.

If you don't have a mixer, just mix the ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a rough ball. Then turn out onto a floured surface and knead the dough until it forms a smooth ball, about 5-6 minutes.

3)Turn dough onto lightly floured counter and knead briefly to form smooth, round ball. Coat large bowl with vegetable oil or nonstick spray. Place dough in bowl and coat surface of dough. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until dough doubles in size, about an hour.

4) For the sugar mixture, mix brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Place melted butter in second bowl.

5) To finish bread, remove the dough from the bowl, and pat into a rough 10-inch square. Sprinkle chocolate chips on half of the dough and fold it over. Then roll out again to a square. Using a bench scraper or knife, cut dough into tiny 1/4-1/2 inch pieces.

6) Roll each piece into a rough ball and dip into the melted butter, allowing excess butter to drip back into the bowl. Roll in the brown sugar mixture, then layer balls in the Bundt pan. Try to stagger the balls so they form a single thing.

7) Cover the Bundt pan tightly with plastic wrap and let rise for another hour until the balls are about 2 inches from the top of the pan.

8) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Unwrap the pan and bake until the top is deep brown, about 35-40 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a late and allow to cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

9) While the bread cools, whisk the confectioners’ sugar and milk in a small bowl until the lumps are gone. Using a spoon, drizzle the glaze over the monkey bread. Serve warm.

Adapted from a Brown Eyed Baker recipe.

The Dough

This dough is basically a cinnamon roll dough. It’s pretty much the easiest kind of dough to work with in my opinion. It’s really easy to mix and knead. It’s very soft and stretchy. It’s really easy to roll out and shape!

Start it by mixing all the dough ingredients except the salt and flour in a small bowl. Stir them together and let them sit for a minute or two to make sure the yeast is dissolved and active. It should start foaming a bit.

In a mixing bowl, combine your salt and flour and add in the liquid stuff. If you have a stand mixer, just mix this all together with the dough hook on low-medium speed until it comes together in a soft ball, about 5 minutes.

This is a really easy dough to make without a mixer though. Just stir the ingredients together with a wooden spoon and once they are all together, knead the dough on a floured surface until it’s a nice smooth and soft ball.

Mixer or no mixer, if the dough ever gets sticky, add more flour.

Pretty straightforward

Once your dough ball is formed, add it to a bowl that’s been lightly oiled. I just used some vegetable oil and coated the inside of the bowl. Turn the dough ball over in the bowl so it gets nice and coated and then cover the dough and let it rise for about an hour. It should double in size.

This was my finished dough ball.

After a short rise.

Making the Balls

Now for the fun part. Scoop the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out into a large square. Then sprinkle your chocolate chips on half of the square.

The chocolate is optional, but I thought it worked perfectly in the recipe. You can use almost any chocolate chip. I just used some semi-sweet chips that I had in my pantry.

You only need a few ounces to get some nice chocolate flavor.

No need to go crazy with chocolate.

Fold the dough over and pack it down so the chocolate chips are more or less enclosed in dough.

Folded and lightly rolled.

Then use a knife or a dough scraper to chop up the dough into bite-sized pieces. You should shoot for 60-70 little pieces. About 1/2 inch squares is a good goal.

It’s actually good to have different sizes though so don’t worry about them all being totally even.

Approximately a million.

Filling the Pan

In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon. Also use a separate small bowl and gently melt some butter in the microwave.

Working with a few pieces of dough at a time, roll them into rough balls and dunk them in the melted butter.

No substitutions here...

Then toss them in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and roll them around. A light coating is all you need.

Like an inside out cinnamon roll

Then toss the finished balls in a bundt pan that has been pretty heavily buttered.

Keep going until you use all your dough. If you have a normal sized pan you’ll probably about half fill the pan which is perfect.

About half full is good.

If you don’t have a bundt pan, I don’t see why you couldn’t make this in a normal baking dish. It might not be quite as attractive, but it would still be delicious.

Regardless of the pan you choose, after you finish stacking all the balls of dough, cover the pan and let them rise a second time. About another hour should give you a great puffy dough.

While it might not look like these have risen much, keep in mind that they are also expanding to fill a bunch of little cracks that are in between all the dough balls. This second rise is really important.

A longer second rise.

Baking and Glazing

Once your dough has risen a second time, bake them at 350 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. They should be a nice golden brown and you might also notice some brown sugar bubbling up around the edges. That means it’s done!

This was my finished bread and it not only looked great, it smelled amazing!

Hello beautiful.

Let this cool in the pan for a few minutes and then invert it on a plate or platter.

Meanwhile, just stir together the powdered sugar and milk to make a very simple glaze.

Once the bread has cooled for 10 minutes or so, go ahead and drizzle the glaze all over it.

A simple glaze.

You could slice this, but I actually preferred serving it with toothpicks so people can just pick off the bread piece that they want.

Some people prefer the outer ones that get kind of crispy. Some like the inside ones that are soft.

So good!

For the delicious and show-stopping dessert that is produced, this thing really isn’t that hard to make. The dough is really easy to bring together and then it’s just a matter of rolling it, dunking it in butter and sugar and baking it.

In other words, you make do this. Anyone can make this.

And everyone should.

Unassuming, but delicious.

This year I decided to participate in my first ever Cookie Swap!

This means that I sent out three boxes of cookies to three food bloggers and three other food bloggers will be hopefully sending me three boxes of goodies.

While I was mailing my boxes of cookies I did have this moment of thinking that this might be some very elaborate pyramid scheme to get millions of free holiday cookies for a few lucky people!

I had this vision of the creators (Lindsay and Julie) sitting around hundreds of boxes of collected cookies… laughing all the way to the dentist’s office.

Of course, that won’t really happen. Food bloggers are generally the nicest people ever and I have full faith that I’ll receive my delicious boxes of cookies.

This year I think something crazy like 700 food bloggers signed up for the cookie swap. I have no earthly idea how long it took Lindsay and Julie to organize and match that many people, but I do honestly hope they sent themselves a few free boxes of cookies just for the trouble!

If you want to sign up for next year’s cookie swap, there’s already a signup form for it.

These brown butter guys are the cookies I sent out to my matches!

Brown Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Yield: 36 cookies

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, browned
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2/3 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oat flour
3 1/2 cups rolled oats (not instant kind)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 Cup dried cherries, chopped
1 Cup chocolate chips

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer

Directions:

1) Add butter to a small saucepan over medium heat. Melt butter, stirring slowly. After butter melts, continue to cook for a few minutes until the butter solids start to brown. It easy to tell this if you use a non-dark colored pan as you'll be able to actually see the brown bits on the bottom. You can also tell when the butter is browned by the smell. It will start to smell very nutty which means it's done!

2) Pour off browned butter carefully. Try to leave most of the browned solids in the pan, but it's okay if some go with the butter. Let this cool.

3) Cream together sugars with brown butter until they are smooth using a hand mixer or stand mixer.

4) Beat in eggs one at a time and vanilla extract.

5) In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients except chocolate chips and cherries.

6) Slowly mix in dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Mix until just combined.

7) Stir in add-ins (chocolate and cherries).

8) Spoon large tablespoons of cookie dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

9) Bake cookies at 375 for 10-12 minutes until they are lightly browned around the edges.

10) Let cookies cool on a wire rack.

Butter, Browned

What I like about these cookies is that they are surprising. They look just like normal old oatmeal cookies, but they are jam-packed with flavor.

Step one to creating that flavor is to brown some butter. That gives the cookies a great nutty flavor that goes really well with the brown sugar.

If you’ve never browned butter before, it’s not all that hard. Just add your butter to a small saucepan and melt the butter over medium heat. Stir it frequently and after a few minutes the butter solids will separate out and sink to the bottom of the pan.

If you have a light colored saucepan, you’ll be able to actually start to see them brown a bit. You’ll also be able to smell the butter. When it’s done, it will have an intense nutty smell.

Start to finish, the butter browning process maybe takes 5-6 minutes.

Then you can pour off your browned butter. Try to leave behind most of the butter solids, but its okay if some get mixed in. It won’t affect the recipe at all.

Flavor town.

The Cookie Dough

Start this dough by mixing together all the dry ingredients in a bowl. If you can’t find oat flour, you can definitely use just all-purpose flour.

All the dry business.

Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, beat together the browned butter and sugars until they are smooth and light. This should take a few minutes.

Then slowly mix in your eggs and your vanilla.

Once that is all mixed together, slowly mix in your dry ingredients, working in batches.

Try not to overmix this dough. When the flour is incorporated, it’s done!

Pretty simple.

The Add-ins

I figured these cookies would have lots of flavor and great texture as-is, but this is a cookie swap so I wanted to amp up the flavor even more.

So I mixed in some chocolate and dried cherries. I figured it’s hard to go wrong with these flavors.

Don't skimp on these!

Once those are mixed in your dough is done and you’re ready to make some cookies!

This makes a lot of cookies.

Baking the Cookies

Scoop large tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. You should get about 36 cookies out of this recipe.

Twelve cookies per baking sheet should be about right.

Ready to go!

Bake these guys at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

The should be lightly browned around the edges and still a bit soft in the center.

Let them cool on a wire rack if you have one.

If you’re photographing your cookies, here’s a TIP! Don’t photograph them on a counter that is almost exactly the same color as the cookies.

Talk about camouflage!

My counter is like camo for these...

The Packaging

I stressed out a lot about how to ship these cookies. I ended up letting the cookies cool completely and then sealing them well in a large freezer plastic bag.

Next I lined a large box with plastic wrap and filled the bottom with spicy kettle corn! I figured that would cushion the cookies a bit and also give the recipients a little extra treat.

The finished package!

Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

Now I need to make another batch of these for myself!

Ice cream in winter? Sure.

All this week on Macheesmo I’m making cookies! Be sure to check out the full list of cookie recipes on Macheesmo for even more cookie ideas.

As you’ll learn if you stick around for this full week, my definition of “cookie” is pretty broad. I should’ve probably called it “Dessert-that-you-can-eat-with-your-hands week”, but that doesn’t have the same flair.

Some might be shocked to see an ice cream based recipe in December, but I’m just not one of those guys that only likes to eat ice cream when it’s warm outside.

In fact, I’m up for eating ice cream pretty much any time. I could have hypothermia and be lost in the Canadian wilderness and probably still be up for a double scoop.

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches

Yield: 24 sandwiches

Prep Time: 1 hour + ice cream resting

Total Time: 2 hours + plus freezing time

Ingredients:

Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Makes 48 small cookies.
8.5 ounces cake flour (2 cups minus 2 Tbsp.)
8.5 ounces bread flour (1 2/3 cups)
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
12 ounces chocolate chips

Vanilla Ice Cream:
Makes about 1 quart.
1 cup milk
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
3/4 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
2 cups heavy cream
6 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Helpful Equipment:
Stand mixer or hand mixer
Ice Cream maker (I used the kitchenaid attachment which works okay.)
Mesh Strainer (for straining ice cream custard)

Directions:

1) For ice cream, slip vanilla bean in half and scrape out seeds into a medium saucepan with milk, sugar, and salt. Bring to a simmer, then remove from heat immediately, cover, and let sit for one hour.

2) Whisk together yolks in a bowl. Bring milk mixture back up to heat (not simmering, just hot). Once hot, whisk in about 1/2 cup of the milk mixture slowly into the yolks to temper them. THen whisk yolks back into milk mixture.

3) Cook over low heat, scraping regularly and stirring with a heat-resistant spatula. Cook until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula, about 5-6 minutes.

4) In a separate bowl, add cream and set bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice (ice bath). Once custard is thick, strain into cream. Stir well to combine and cool, then stir in vanilla extract.

5) Chill custard overnight or until thoroughly chilled. Then add to ice cream maker and churn according to instructions for your machine. Freeze ice cream until it's solid. I like to stir mine a few times while it is freezing solid to remove ice crystals.

For cookies:
1) Mix together dry ingredients (flours, salt, baking powder, baking soda). Set aside.

2) Cream together butter and sugars. Then mix in one egg at a time, slowly. Once all the eggs are incorporated, stir in vanilla.

3) Slowly stir in dry ingredients. Once dry ingredients are mixed in add chocolate chips and stir just until they are evenly distributed. Try not to overmix.

4) At this point you can chill the dough for up to 2 days if you want.

5) To bake, scoop tablespoon sized balls onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. You should get about 48 cookies out of the batch. Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes until they are lightly browned, but still somewhat soft.

6) Let cookies cool completely (preferably on a wire rack).

Making the sandwiches:
1) Once your cookies are made, transfer them to a large container and freeze them for about an hour.

2) Scoop a few tablespoon of ice cream and sandwich it between two cookies. Eat immediately or transfer to a freezer safe dish and freeze for up to 2 months.

Cookie recipe adapted from NY Times. Ice Cream adapted from a David Lebovitz recipe.

The Ice Cream

The most obvious shortcut that you could take for this recipe is just to buy ice cream from the store. You could sandwich almost any ice cream between these cookies and be in good shape. Since I figured I’d be snacking on these for a long time, I thought it would be worth it to make a really rich and delicious vanilla ice cream.

Any good vanilla ice cream recipe has to start with real vanilla beans. They are expensive, but the flavor is hard to beat.

Anytime you’re working with vanilla remember to split the bean and scrape out all those tiny vanilla seeds. Lots of flavor there!

Caviar? Nope. But still expensive.

If you’ve never made homemade ice cream before, it isn’t really that hard. You basically just make a custard and then chill it.

So start by combining your vanilla, sugar, salt, and milk in a saucepan. Bring this to a simmer and then let it sit, covered, for about an hour. This will infuse the milk with all that vanilla flavor (top left).

In a separate bowl, whisk together your egg yolks. Then heat up your milk mixture again (not simmering but hot). Then slowly whisk in about 1/2 cup of the milk mixture into the whisked yolks. This will bring them up to temperature and then you can whisk the warm yolks back into the hot milk mixture without worry that they will cook.

Cook this mixture over low heat until it thickens enough to coat a spatula. Be sure to stir this constantly and scrape the bottom of the pan to make sure it isn’t sticking. After 5-6 minutes, it should start to get very thick (bottom left).

Then strain this mixture and whisk it into your heavy cream. Add the vanilla and cool this as quickly as possible. I like to do this by putting the bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice (bottom right).

This might seem like a drawn out process, but minus the hour that you have to wait for the milk to infuse, it’s really only about 10 minutes of work.

Let this custard mixture chill thoroughly before making the ice cream. I recommend chilling it in the fridge for at least a few hours.

The Leftovers

A good vanilla bean will probably cost you $3-4. So don’t throw it away after you’re done with it in the custard mixture. There’s still tons of flavor in that bean actually. I like to cut my bean into a few pieces and add it to a dish with a few cups of sugar. Seal this and shake it up and after a week or so you’ll have some delicious vanilla sugar that you can use for a ton of things.

Still lots of flavor in those beans.

Making the Ice Cream

Depending on your ice cream maker, there will be different instructions for actually churning the ice cream.

I used my KitchenAid attachment which works pretty well. If I were buying an ice cream maker today though, I think I’d get a stand alone model.

Churn it!

Once your ice cream is churned to a nice soft serve consistency, you can scoop it into a dish and let it freeze solid in your freezer.

I actually like to take my ice cream out and stir it every hour or so just to make sure large ice crystals aren’t forming in the ice cream.

Soft serve.

The Cookies

I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail on the chocolate chip cookies that I made for this. I used the same recipe that I used for my pretzel chocolate chip cookies. You can also check out the printed version of this recipe for thorough instructions.

Instead of making 18 huge cookies though, I made about 48 smaller cookies.

The cookies are pretty straightforward. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Cream together butter and sugars. Stir in eggs and extracts. Then slowly mix in flour followed by chocolate chips.

At this point you can chill the dough for a few days, but I just baked them immediately on this day. For the cookies you want to shoot for large tablespoon-sized cookies and should get 12 per baking sheet.

I recommend using parchment paper to make sure they don’t stick to the baking sheets.

Pretty straightforward.

Bake these cookies for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. They should be lightly browned around the edges and still a bit soft in the middle.

Let them cool completely.

Building the Sandwiches

The only trick to making these sandwiches is that I would recommend freezing the cookies quickly before actually making them. I just stacked all of my cookies in a large casserole dish and then froze them for about an hour. That will make them more firm and easier to work with.

Chill these guys first.

A few tablespoons of ice cream smashed between two cookies is all you need for a really delicious dessert.

These are a bit of work, I won’t lie, but they make a bunch and keep perfectly so your work will pay dividends. You could also take some shortcuts if you want like using store-bought ice cream.

So good.

There’s a couple of things that I love about this treat. First, it combines my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and my favorite vanilla ice cream recipe. So yea. These are good.

Second, I love that since you freeze these, they keep for a really long time! This recipe makes about two dozen ice cream sandwiches and eating more than one at a time is a feat. So they keep for a while and you’ll have easy access to a quick frozen dessert should the urge strike you.

Even though I made these about a month ago, I’m still snacking on them and they are basically as good as they were on day one!

Checkmate!

I had never even heard of chess pie until about two years ago. Betsy and I were picking out a caterer for our wedding and when we finally selected one, we told him that we were going to make our own desserts.

He was totally cool with this, but he did recommend that we at least try his chess pie. Considering I had never even heard of chess pie, I was pretty skeptical.

After taking one bite, we ordered a bunch of them. I had no idea what was in it, but it was good. Some sort of deep rich custard mixture in a pie shell. I had to immediately apologize for eating half of the poor man’s pie before he even knew what happened.

While traditionally chess pie has a lemon base, I decided to change it up a bit and try one with a chocolate and orange flavor. It kind of turned out like one of those chocolate oranges you can get over the holidays, except in pie form.

In other words, freakin’ good.

It’s a really rich pie and one could easily serve 10-12 people. It would be a great and unique pie for the holidays!

Chocolate Orange Chess Pie

Yield: Serves 12.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Crust:
3 cups graham crackers, crushed
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar
1 pinch of salt

Filling:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 ounces semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornmeal
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 orange, zest only
1/4 cup orange juice
4 large eggs
1 pinch of salt

Helpful Equipment:
Zester
Tart pan with removable bottom

Directions:

1) For crust, crush graham crackers until they are finely ground. The easiest way to do this is to pulse them in a food processor, but you can break them up by putting them in a plastic bag and rolling them with a rolling pin also.

2) Mix melted butter in with graham crackers and add sugar and salt. Mix well.

3) Press crust mixture into a 10 inch tart pan with a removable bottom. You can also use a normal pie pan if you don't have one of these.

4) Bake the crust at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Then let it cool.

5) For filling, melt butter and chocolate in a pan over low heat.

6) Stir in sugar, cornmeal, vanilla, salt and orange ingredients. Make sure mixture is roughly room temperature and then beat in the eggs.

7) Pour filling into prepared crust and bake the pie for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees.

8) Let pie cool on a wire rack for 15-20 minutes before serving.

Making the Crust

I used my standard graham cracker crust for this recipe. When you’re crushing up your graham crackers, you can use a food processor or take it as an opportunity to get some aggression out!

Just stick all the crackers in a large plastic bag and whack them with a rolling pin until they are finely ground.

Then mix them with your other crust ingredients. Be sure to measure out your 3 cups of graham crackers after you crush them into bits.

Making the crust.

I used a cool tart pan with a removable bottom for this pie, but you could use any pie dish that you have.

Just add your graham cracker mixture to the pie dish and pack it evenly around the bottom and up the edges of the dish. I use a combination of my hands and a measuring cup to make sure the crust is really packed in evenly. Take your time with this step. You want a nice even crust.

Take your time here...

Once you’re happy with your crust, bake it at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes and then let it cool.

Meanwhile, you can…

Make the Filling

This filling is really close to fudge. It doesn’t have flour in it though so it’s more custard-like I guess. Whatever you want to call it, it’s very rich and perfect for a pie.

Start by melting your chocolate and butter together in a pan over low heat. I actually use a metal bowl over some boiling water (double boiler) just to make sure my stuff doesn’t burn.

Hard to go wrong here...

Once it’s melted, there’s a few key ingredients that need to get whisked in to the filling. You can take it off the heat after everything is melted.

Sugar, vanilla, and salt are all pretty standard ingredients, but one that really makes this filling is orange zest.

You’ll need a zester for this obviously.

Balance!

When you’re zesting, try to just get the orange part of the zest. If you get a lot of the white part of the peel, then it starts to get a bit bitter.

You will only be able to get a teaspoon or so of zest off of one orange, but the zest is really flavorful. It will be plenty to flavor the filling.

Aggressive zesting.

I also stirred in a small amount of orange juice just to round out the orange flavors.

The other secret ingredient that you might not think about is cornmeal. One tablespoon will do the trick, but it just gives the filling some body.

It’s the ingredient that will give the filling a texture that people won’t expect. You could leave it out and the filling would still work, but it’s a nice touch.

Secret ingredient alert!

Finally, make sure that your filling has cooled down to around room temperature and then mix in your eggs.

Stir this all together and your filling is done!

A filling... a soup... whatever.

Baking the Pie

Pour your filling into your prepared pie crust. Keep in mind the filling will puff up as it cooks so make sure you have 1/2 inch of space at the top. Don’t fill the pie all the way up even if you have enough filling to do so.

Looking good.

Bake this bad boy for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees.

It’ll come out of the oven puffed and beautiful.

Looking better!

Chess pie is really just fudge pie in my opinion. The top of the pie gets a bit crunchy, but the filling is just like a delicious fudge.

This should go without saying but the chocolate and orange flavors are awesome together. That was just a no brainer!

This is a dense slice!

If you’re sick of the classic pumpkin pie every year, try out chess pie. It’s rich just like a pumpkin pie and can be served with whipped cream.

I was really happy with how this turned out.

Any chess pie fans out there? Leave a comment!

Sometimes I have good ideas.

One of the things that I really like to do when I’m coming up with a recipe is turn stuff inside out. Put what’s normally on the inside on the outside.

If you have a good flavor combo, it keeps that combo but can give you really interesting, new textures.

Now that you’re kind of inside my brain, you can probably see how it’s not a huge leap to take a chocolate covered pretzel and flip it all around.

This cookie is the result and I think that it might be the best cookie I’ve ever made. I’m not going to go so far as to call it The Best Cookie EVER like so many people do, but I’ll just say that I would put it up against any other cookie in a taste test and leave it at that.

Pretzel Chip Cookies

Yield: 18 cookies

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

8.5 ounces (a scant two cups) cake flour
8.5 ounces (1 2/3 cups) bread flour
1 1/4 Teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 Teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/4 Cups unsalted butter
1 Cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 Cups sugar
2 eggs
2 Teaspoons vanilla extract
1 pound chocolate chips, at least 60% cocoa
Hard pretzels, crushed

Helpful Equipment:
Kitchen Scale
Stand mixer or hand mixer

Directions:

1) Sift together flours with other dry ingredients except sugar.

2) Cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in eggs one at a time and vanilla.

3) Mix in dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Then fold in chocolate chips.

4) Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rest for 24 hours in the fridge.

5) When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

6) Make 3.5 ounce balls of dough (a large golf ball). Press dough ball into crushed pretzels on top. Press on a lot of pretzels.

7) Add cookie to baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Six cookies should fit on each baking sheet.

8) Bake cookies for 18-20 minutes until lightly browned but still chewy on the inside.

9) Let cookies cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack to finish cooling.

Adapted from an NY Times Recipe.

The Flours

I’ve been eyeing the recipe that I adapted for these guys for a while. One of the things that intrigued me about it was how it ditches all-purpose flour for a mixture of cake flour and bread flour. I could see how that would give the cookies a soft texture but still be somewhat chewy which sounds like a winning cookie to me.

Interesting flour combo.

I usually don’t worry about weighing cookie ingredients, although I know I should, but for this recipe it seemed to call for a very exact ratio of cake flour and bread flour so I pulled out my digital scale.

Gotta weigh it!

As far as the chocolate goes, the article in the NY Times goes on and on about how to get the absolute perfect ratio of chocolate to dough and exactly what kinds of chips result in the best cookie.

I’m sure they are right, but I’m not really going to order chocolate off the internet just to make chocolate chips cookies. So I just picked up a few different kinds of chips that looked good to me and tossed them in.

Use a few different chips.

Making the Dough

This is a pretty standard cookie dough to make.

Start by sifting together the flours and other dry ingredients except the sugar. It is somewhat important to sift the flours here because cake flour can sometimes clump up pretty badly.

Then, using a mixer (hand or stand) beat together the sugar and butter until it’s a light, fluffy texture. Then mix in the eggs one at a time on low. Then add the vanilla.

Next, add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture and mix until the flour is incorporated. Mix on low and don’t over mix it or your cookies will get too chewy.

It should take under a minute to get your flour mixed in, then gently mix in your chocolate chips until they are evenly incorporated.

Don't over-mix it!

The Waiting

There was one part of the article that I was a bit skeptical about. They said that it’s very important to let your cookie dough rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours before baking your cookies.

This is a serious test of willpower. You have these delicious cookies just sitting there, but you have to wait.

The idea behind it is to give the dough plenty of time to absorb all the liquid. If you bake them right away, the flour won’t get a chance to even absorb the eggs.

I didn’t actually bake a cookie right away to compare, but I must say that the dough had a much different texture after sitting overnight.

So I think it’s worth it if you can stand the wait.

Once the dough is mixed, just cover it with plastic wrap and store it in the fridge overnight.

Patience people.

Forming the Cookies

When you’re finally ready to make the cookies, just scoop out about 3.5 ounces of cookie dough. I actually weighed mine to make sure it was right, but basically it should be the size of a large golfball.

This amount of dough makes a pretty enormous cookie. You can only fit six of them on a baking sheet at a time.

When each cookie is rolled into a ball, press it into some crushed pretzels on one side. Make sure a good amount of pretzels are stuck to the cookie.

Then add each cookie to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Seriously large cookies

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. The cookies should be nicely browned on top, but still soft in the center.

These guys turned out so perfect.

Done deal.

Once they come out of the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet for five minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Serving them a bit warm is a really good idea.

I do not mess around.

Biting into one of these is a pretty intense experience. The salt from the pretzels is the perfect topping for the cookies. It really brings out the chocolate flavor in the cookies.

At the same time there’s this fantastic texture thing happening between the soft cookie and the crunchy pretzels.

This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but maybe it’ll give you an idea!

Chomp!

There’s a few tricky parts with this recipe and you could ignore them if you dare. You could not weigh or sift your flours. You could not let your dough sit for 24 hours. You could make wimpy little cookies. They would still be good.

But if you do take the time to follow some of the more annoying steps, you’ll be well-rewarded.

Pretzels. Chocolate. Cookies.

Is it the best chocolate chip cookie IN THE WORLD? I don’t know, but I definitely wouldn’t turn one down.

Chocolate and Coffee? Yes Please.

Ok. So there’s a very fine line between a muffin and a cupcake. And that line is the following:

Cupcakes are frosted.

No matter what goes into it, I’m pretty sure you can label it a muffin as long as you don’t frost it. And muffins sound healthier than cupcakes so you can eat them for breakfast.

See what I did there?

Other reasons why you should eat this “muffin” for breakfast rather than dessert? 1) It has flax seed meal in it. Lots of fiber! 2) It has coffee in it for a little pick-me-up.

So I think we can all agree that these are a breakfast food and not a dessert. Right?

Mocha Muffins

Yield: 12-14 muffins

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1 Cup milk
1/2 Cup ground coffee
1/2 Cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 Cups flour
1/4 Cup Flax meal (optional, but up flour to 2 cups if you omit this)
1/2 Cup sugar
1/2 Cup brown sugar
3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Cup bittersweet chocolate, melted with a few tablespoons of milk

Helpful Equipment:
Muffin Tins

Directions:

1) Grind coffee finely and add to milk which should be steaming hot. Let steep for 15 minutes. Strain milk through a coffee filter.

2) To milk, add other liquid ingredients (oil, eggs, vanilla) and stir well to combine.

3) Combine all dry ingredients.

4) Melt chocolate with a few tablespoons of milk.

5) Add wet ingredients to dry and then fold in melted chocolate.

6) Butter muffin tins well so they don't stick and pour in batter so each tin is 3/4 full.

7) Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.

8) Let cool for a few minutes before eating.

Adapted from an old Bon Appétit recipe.

The Coffee Business

There’s a lot of mocha or coffee recipes out there and most of them use instant espresso for the coffee flavor. I’m not a huge instant coffee fan, so I decided to try something different to get a lot of coffee flavor going. First, I ground up about 1/2 Cup of really strong coffee.

No instant stuff for me.

Then I added this to a little over one cup of milk which I heated in the microwave until it was steaming. I let the coffee steep in the milk for 15 minutes and stirred it a few times to really let the coffee flavor get in there.

Milky coffee mixture!

Of course, the down-side of this approach is getting the coffee grinds out of the milk. There’s no fast way to do it. The only way to do it is to set up a colander with a coffee filter in it and slowly pour the milk mixture through it. Eventually all the milk will drain through and you’ll be left with some awesome coffee milk!

Once the milk is drained, mix in the other liquid ingredients (eggs, oil, vanilla).

Finishing the Batter

For a baked good, there’s a good mix of dry ingredients in this recipe. You could simplify it I guess by leaving out the flax and only using one kind of sugar, but I think this recipe will leave you with a great texture and flavor.

OK... a few ingredients in this one.

Besides cocoa powder, it’s always a good idea to melt some chocolate and add it right into the batter. You could actually just throw in some chocolate chips if you wanted more whole pieces of chocolate in the muffins.

I went with the melted version though so the chocolate flavor was evenly incorporated. You can either melt the chocolate in a metal bowl over some boiling water or in a microwave safe dish in the microwave. Either way, I’ve found that chocolate melts easier if you add a few tablespoons of milk to it.

Add some milk to this...

When you’re ready to finish the batter, stir all the wet ingredients into the dry stuff and then gently fold in the melted chocolate.

Kind of like cake batter...

I’ll be completely honest. I tasted this as-is and it tasted like cake batter.

But it’s a muffin! I promise!

The thing I noticed about these muffins (after two attempts) was that they are pretty sticky. So make sure you lube up your muffin tins really well with butter (or a nonstick spray I guess).

I rubbed butter all over mine (even the top surfaces) to make sure they wouldn’t stick at all.

Butter these guys really well.

Cooking the Muffins

Bake these beauties for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees. They should puff up and be lightly browned around the edges. Let them cool for a few minutes before trying to take them out of the pans.

Pretty things.

These are best served right away while they are still slightly warm. The coffee flavor is there, but subtle. I was surprised that I was able to taste it at all given how much other stuff is going on in these guys – especially with the cocoa powder and chocolate.

I really loved the texture of these. Almost, well, cake-like…

CHOMP.

Muffin or cupcake? Who knows.

All I know is they were delicious and a good excuse to have chocolate for breakfast.

It's a banana people.

I’m assuming that I have at least a few Arrested Development fans reading.

The whole time I was making these guys, I was replaying this scene (Hulu w/ sound) in my mind:

George: You what?
Michael: Burned it right down to the ground.
George: Are you crazy? There was money in that banana stand.
Michael: Well, it’s all gone now dad, and it was my decision. So next time you want to have a little power struggle, remember that you’re playing with fire.
George: There was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars lining the walls of the banana stand.
Michael: What?
George: Cash, Michael.
Michael: Why didn’t you tell me that?
George: How much clearer can I say, there’s always MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND!

Seriously though, after having one of these for dessert one night, I can see how there is definitely money in a frozen banana stand. These were completely delicious.

The Frozen Elvis

Yield: Makes 4.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 bananas, cut in half
2 strips bacon, crispy
1/3 Cup peanuts, chopped
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted
1/4 Cup milk, cream, or half and half
4 Popsicle sticks

Directions:

1) Peel and cut bananas in half and insert popsicle sticks.

2) Lay bananas on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze for an hour.

3) Cook bacon until crispy and drain. Chop with peanuts. Set aside.

4) Melt chocolate and cream together in a double boiler or in the microwave if you're careful.

5) Make a bed of toppings on the baking sheet where you'll place the bananas.

6) Dip frozen bananas in chocolate and lay on topping bed.

7) Sprinkle with more toppings and freeze for another 30 minutes.

8) Serve whenever the mood strikes you!

From On A Stick.

The Elvis, Frozen

There’s a pretty classic sandwich that I guess Elvis always ate which was banana, peanut butter, and bacon on toast. This genius take on it is from Matt Armendariz’s new book, On a Stick! I met Matt at SXSW this year. We were on a panel together.

He’s written a totally fun appetizer book. There’s around 80 awesome recipes in it, all of them involving things on sticks!

This frozen version of the classic sandwich makes it much easier to, well, put on a stick.

Start by cutting all your bananas in half and sticking a few popsicle sticks in them. Lay them on a baking sheet with parchment paper and let them freeze for about an hour.

Always money in bananas!

The Toppings

Incorporating the peanuts and bacon as a topping is pretty genius.

The key is to make sure your bacon is cooked very crispy. I do this by cooking it on a medium-low heat for about 15-20 minutes. This way the bacon won’t burn, but the fat will slowly melt out leaving the bacon very crispy.

Can't go wrong with bacon!

Let the bacon drain for a few minutes with some paper towels to absorb the oil and then chop it up roughly with some peanuts.

As an aside, this would be an amazing topping for an ice cream sundae.

Awesome topping alert!

The Chocolate

So obviously bacon and peanuts won’t just magically stick to a frozen banana, so we’ll need some help.

Nothing like chocolate to do the trick. Just add your chocolate and cream (or milk) to a mixing bowl over some boiling water. Stir it until it’s melted.

You can also melt the chocolate in the microwave if you’re careful. Just be sure to not over-zap it or you’ll scorch it.

Yum.

Making the Desserts

It should be pretty obvious what you do at this point. Just take your frozen bananas out of the freezer (they might not be entirely frozen which is fine) and give them a dip in the chocolate. Use a spoon to make sure they are covered completely.

This is easy people.

THE TRICK that I learned only after failing at one is that you need to lay down a bed of toppings to set the choco-banana on after it comes out of the bowl.

If you lay the banana right back on your cold baking sheet, the chocolate will freeze to the baking sheet and when you pull it off later you’ll leave a layer of chocolate on the sheet and only have a half-coated banana. NO GOOD.

But if you do a bed of toppings, like this, then you can set the banana on that and it’ll stay slightly raised off the sheet.

Important step!

Don’t forget to sprinkle toppings all around the bananas so they are evenly coated.

Freeze these a second time for at least 30 minutes and then you can chomp into them!

Not only are these super-fun to make and eat, they also happen to be very good.

CHOMP.

You know what’s shocking about these is that they aren’t actually that bad for you. Half a banana, a relatively small amount of chocolate, plus a tiny amount of bacon and peanuts?

I’d guess this is better for you than an ice cream sundae and I found it to be just as satisfying. The banana kind of melts as you eat it and is nice and creamy.

And the salty sweet thing is right up my alley.

How good do these look? Leave a comment if you’re an Elvis fan (sandwich or singer).

The cheese is hiding you see.

For some reason I always think brownies are the perfect thing to add stuff to. It worked great when I tried brownies with beets. But when I try putting cheeses in brownies, it’s very touch and go.

Cream cheese is the standard add-in, but I had one massive brownie fail a while ago that involved some unwieldy mascarpone cheese. And on this go, I had a very near-fail with goat cheese!

I was using goat cheese because you guys voted for a goat cheese dish last week. I thought that it might work really nicely in a chocolate brownie with some raspberries folded in. I had dreams of these luscious dark brownies with streaks of goat cheese running through them.

It didn’t really work out like that obviously. The good news is that even though my plan completely backfired and failed, the brownies tasted really good.

I guess cooking is like poker. I’d rather be lucky than good!

Goat Cheese Brownies

Yield: 8x8 pan

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate (get the good stuff)
1 Cup sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Cup fresh or frozen raspberries (if frozen, thaw in a paper towel to absorb moisture)
Pinch of salt

Goat Cheese Filling:
6 ounces goat cheese (chevre)
1/2 Cup sugar
1 egg

Directions:

1) Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan over low heat. Be careful not to burn the chocolate. When melted, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

2) For the goat cheese mixture, beat everything together until smooth.

3) Once slightly cool, stir in sugar until dissolved and then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Finally, add a pinch of salt and mix in the flour.

4) Stir in the raspberries and goat cheese mixture. The goat cheese mixture is optional honestly.

5) Add batter to a buttered 8-inch baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes (20-25 minutes if you aren't using the goat cheese mixture).

6) Let cool for 30 minutes before cutting and serving. They should be pretty gooey. If you want them firmer, you might want to add another 5 minutes onto the baking time.

The Goat Cheese

My grand vision for this dish started with the goat cheese. I thought I’d blend together some goat cheese with some sugar and an egg to give it some body and then be able to streak that into the batter.

Farm fresh eggs are orange.

The problem, as you’ll see, is that this ended up being too liquidy to work. But it does taste good. So feel free to go with it. Just use a hand mixer or fork to really mix the goat cheese up well until it’s a nice smooth consistency.

The Brownie Batter

This part of the recipe I wasn’t worried about. Good chocolate brownies are pretty straightforward to make as long as you don’t overcook them!

I don’t trust brownie recipes that start with something other than chocolate and butter.

The start of something beautiful

Melt these two ingredients together over low heat. Once they are melted and combined, let them cool for a minute and then stir in the sugar.

Pretty standard here.

The Raspberries

Ideally, you would use fresh raspberries for this, but I couldn’t find any on this particular day so I thought I’d try out frozen. The problem with frozen raspberries is that there’s a lot of liquid that will come out when you defrost them.

I solved this problem to the best of my ability by thawing them out in the microwave on low power over some paper towels. That way the towels soak up all the liquid as they thaw.

If it looks like a murder scene, you’ve done it right!

If you must use frozen...

Back to the batter

To finish off the brownie batter, beat in one egg at a time and add a pinch of salt. Then stir in the flour and your batter is ready to go!

After that, gently fold in the raspberries. Try not to over-mix it at this point or all the raspberries will just break apart.

Try to be gentle with the berries.

Then pour the batter into a buttered 8-inch baking dish and you’re ready to go. Please note that you could just bake them at this point and skip all the goat cheese business.

Butter the pan!

THE FAIL

Ok. So this is where I went wrong. I thought I’d be able to pour my goat cheese mixture onto the batter and then pull a knife through the batter to form some cool streaks.

The problem of course is that this technique only works if both batters are the same consistency. Otherwise they won’t really play nice.

In my case you’ll get something like this.

Oh dear....

If I were to toss this in the oven, I’m not sure what would happen, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. So I decided to go out on a limb and just stir the goat cheese mixture into the chocolate batter.

I grabbed an emergency fork (just a normal fork, but for emergencies) and just started whipping the two together in the baking dish. After a minute of mixing, I had something that looked pretty okay!

Here's to hopin!

Baking the dish

I added a lot of moisture into my batter (which turns out to be awesome). I knew though that I would have to therefore bake this for much longer than a normal batter.

So I baked mine at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. You could go for 35-40 if you like a firmer brownie.

My came out looking surprisingly good.

Looks good actually!

I let these guys cool almost completely before chopping them up. The consistency I had was exactly what I like in brownies: gooey.

Gooey and pretty darn good!

The official Macheesmo taste-tester (wife) had a bite of one of these and declared:

“Weird.”

But I must say, I thought they tasted pretty darn good. They’re definitely unique. The goat cheese has kind of a tangy flavor to it and the raspberries are really good folded in.

So, I was pretty happy with how these turned out given the near fail. Of course, if you want to try these, you can just fold the goat cheese mixture directly into the batter when you fold in the raspberries near the end or just leave out the goat cheese mixture and keep the raspberries.

If anyone has any ideas on how to accomplish what I was trying to do, leave a comment!

I think my tallest cake ever.

So you guys all voted in a landslide victory last week for a beer-related cake of some sort and I would hate to disappoint you.

But let me just warn you. This recipe is evil. It’s easy to make given it’s crazy tallness and is, hands down, one of the richest things I’ve ever made. Trust me. That’s quite a statement. But seriously, packed into this delicious dark thing is a pound of butter, a pound of chocolate, a pint of cream, some sour cream, and almost two bottles of delicious oatmeal stout.

This cake, you see, is for professional chocolate lovers only.

Chocolate Stout Cake

Yield: Serves 10-12

Prep Time: 30 minutes + Frosting time

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 Cups rich stout beer. I used an oatmeal stout.
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 Cups cocoa powder
4 Cups all-purpose flour
4 Cups sugar
1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 Teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 1/3 Cups sour cream
1 3 ounce bar chocolate (for optional garnish)

Frosting:
2 Cups heavy cream
1 pound bittersweet chocolate

Helpful Equipment:
- Digital Scale
- Wire Racks
- Round Cake Tins

Directions:

1) For frosting, combine scream and chocolate in a saucepan over low-medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until cream and chocolate is smoothly combined. Don't boil the mixture, but it should be steaming hot.

2) Remove from heat and let cool in the fridge, stirring occasionally to keep it smooth, for 90-120 minutes.

3) For cakes, combine stout and butter in a sauce pan and put over low-medium heat until butter is melted.

4) Then whisk in cocoa powder. It's a lot of cocoa powder, so work slowly and make sure the mixture is nice and smooth. Remove from heat and let cool.

5) Whisk dry ingredients (sugar, flour, salt, baking soda) together.

6) Whisk eggs and sour cream in a large bowl. Once smooth, whisk in butter/stout/cocoa powder mixture. Again, whisk until smooth.

7) Whisk in dry ingredients in a few batches. Try not to overmix the batter, but make sure all the flour is incorporated.

8) Pour batter into three round cake tins that have been buttered and floured.

9) Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees.

10) Cool on a wire rack when the cakes are done. After a few minutes, remove cakes from tins and let cool completely.

11) Use a large knife to slice off the tops of the cakes, making them level.

12) Stake cakes with 1/4 of frosting in between each layer, using the last 1/2 to frost the top and around the sides of the cake.

13) Shave on some fresh chocolate if you want or just serve it up!

Adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe.

Making the Frosting

I was a bit skeptical of this frosting recipe. Only two ingredients? No powdered sugar? What’s the deal?

Well, the deal is that it’s really easy to make and very rich. The end frosting is super-thick and is about as choco-packed as a frosting can be.

To make it, just add the cream and chocolate to a medium saucepan and put it over fairly low heat.

A really simple frosting.

Cook this, stirring continuously, until the liquid is steaming (but definitely not boiling) and the cream and chocolate are completely incorporated in a nice smooth mix.

Nice and creamy.

Pour this into a bowl and move it to the fridge to chill out and harden slightly. It probably needs to chill for 90 minutes or so. Give it a stir every once in awhile just to keep it nice and smooth.

Easy breezy frosting though.

Making the cake

If you’ve never made a layered cake before, have no fear. I’ve only made like two in my life and I was able to get it right (with one small mess-up).

There’s only a few ingredients, but there are a lot of all of them!

A stout cake.

To start the batter, combine the stout and butter in a sauce pan over low heat. I realize this is a strange way to start a batter, but it works like a charm. So go with it.

Butter beer!

When the butter is melted whisk in all the cocoa powder until the mixture is smooth. It’ll be pretty thick because it’s a lot of cocoa powder. Once the cocoa powder is combined, turn off the heat to let it cool for a bit.

Meanwhile, whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl (flour, sugar, salt, baking soda) and the eggs and sour cream in a very large bowl.

Once the sour cream and eggs are combined, slowly whisk in the warm chocolate stout mixture.

Once that and the egg mixture is thoroughly combined, whisk in the flour in a few batches. Try not to over-mix the batter but make sure there’s no flour showing.

This will be a thick and very rich batter.

If you’re me, have a spoonful of it before you proceed.

Pretty easy batter actually.

Baking the Cakes

You need three round cake tins to make these cakes. I only have two so I had to re-use one which is fine.

The key things to remember about baking these guys are:

1) Butter and flour the pans really well before you pour in the batter so the cakes don’t stick.

2) Weigh your batter with a scale if you can to make sure it’s evenly distributed.

3) Bake them at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

If you don’t have a scale, you can eyeball the cakes, but weighing the batter will ensure that each cake is the same. You’ll want to fill up the tins about 3/4 full.

If you care about even cakes...

When the cakes come out of the oven, cool them on a wire rack if you have some and once the pan is cool enough to touch (5 minutes maybe), carefully remove the cake out of the tin. I did this by flipping the tin onto a plate.

If you mess this up, it’s not a bit deal. Just do your best to get the cakes out cleanly. Using a butter knife to go around the edges really helps.

I kind of mutilated my first one…

OOPS!

Frosting the Cake

The important thing about frosting layered cakes is to slice off the top of each cake to get them as level as possible. I use a serrated bread knife for this which works like a charm.

The only other thing to remember about frosting the cakes is to make sure they are completely cool before frosting them.

Once the cakes are level and cool, slap on about 1/4 of the frosting per layer and go to town. That leaves 1/2 of the frosting for the edges and top.

Thick and heavy...

The layers should stack pretty evenly and the frosting holds everything together.

This is a pretty serious cake people.

Not shabby!

Finish the frosting by getting all the sides and top really well covered.

As an added touch, I shaved some fresh chocolate and sprinkled it on top. I figured that would distract from my sub-par frosting job.

BAM.

This was by far the most decadent thing I’ve ever made. It was rich and moist and completely out of this world chocolatey. I don’t even like chocolate, but I couldn’t stop eating it.

And seriously. It’s not that hard to make. It’s a way easier cake recipe than some I’ve seen.

If you want to seriously impress some people or just sabotage a few diets, this is the thing for you.