Page 45: Chocolate Shortbread Scones with Caramelized Bananas

As you may remember, my dear friend Jess introduced me to the BabyCakes cookbook (inaugural post found here) and, therefore, is responsible for my BabyCakes enlightenment.  She's done it again: for my birthday she gave me the second book written by Erin McKenna: BabyCakes Covers the Classics.

It was like Christmas morning for me.  The book contains gems like Thin Mints (I literally gasped), S'mores with homemade graham crackers, Whoopie Pies, and an entire chapter of gluten-free vegan donuts. Not to mention a recipe in honor of my very favorite holiday: "Valentine's Day Overboard Cookie Craziness". I love this woman.

Being the committed and orderly person that I am, I have a new found motivation to complete the remaining 27 recipes from the first book so I can move on to this sequel of BabyCakes bliss. So... it's quite likely you will see more frequent posts from me henceforth.

Now, on to today's adventure: Chocolate Shortbread Scones with Caramelized Bananas.

I have been scared of this recipe for awhile, because it's one of those lovely items that involves pre-baking -  specifically baking chocolate cupcakes for a crumb base. However, I happened to have a few cupcakes in my freezer from past adventures so I got to skip a step. Bonus!

The recipe is actually a scone that you cut in half and sandwich with 1) vanilla frosting and 2) caramelized bananas.  The first step is the baking the bananas, and they filled my house with a fragrance that was nothing short of divine.

As the bananas caramelized, I whipped up the scones. You know the drill... spelt flour, coconut oil, and other vegan magic. The chocolate crumb base and chocolate chips are folded in and become marbled through the slightly milder chocolate scone batter.

As the scones baked I confronted a new challenge: trying very hard not to eat all the then-cooling caramelized bananas.

Once the scones had baked and cooled I cut them, slathered them with vanilla frosting, and added a layer of caramelized bananas as directed.  The end result:

In a word: DELISH.  The scones are a tiny bit salty and just mellow enough to serve as a perfect backdrop for the sweet frosting and velvety rich bananas, without making the combination overly sweet.

I know, it looks like bacon. But I promise it's just caramelized bananas! You can also ignore the half eaten scone on the lower right - I couldn't help myself.

Another BabyCakes winner for sure. After setting aside a couple for us, I'm off to divvy out these treats among friends so hubby and I do not end up eating all twelve of them over the weekend. After all, I have to save room for the next adventure. Just 26 to go!

The Quest Continues

If you've followed my BabyCakes quest at all, you'll recall I have a love-hate relationship with the chocolate chip cookie sandwiches. I adore them (and they are in high demand by those lucky enough to have sampled them), but virtually every batch turns out differently.  Thus, they make for an unpredictable and sometimes frustrating baking experience. Lately I'm three for four in successful attempts. Given how delicious they are, I suppose I'll take those odds.

Two of those perfectly successful attempts at the infamous treats were completed during girls' night at my place. Not only do Brooke and Kim apparently serve as good luck charms... but baking with friends makes it even more fun. Plus, I feel slightly less gluttonous keeping only a third of the booty.

Also... frosting making recently became MUCH easier thanks to my new VITAMIX! I love it and we are having fun making lots of new blended treats. And, of course, perfecting the classics like my beloved frosting! After a couple of attempts at frosting with the new gadget, I am slightly sad to report it doesn't always work miracles (at least one soupy post-Vitamix attempt logged to date), but I have discovered that a half batch in the Vitamix seems to perform consistently well.

YAY for the Vitamix!

A couple other items I've repeated lately but neglected to blog about:

1. Chocolate Chip Cookies (several times)... lately with walnuts thanks to an addition by Brooke that the hubby decided he really liked.
2. Banana Bread with Walnuts... overcooked it this time! Sigh. I cannot win. But the 24 mini muffins I made from the extra batter turned out great. A small consolation.
3. Brownies... warm with ice cream - will never get old!
4. Blondies... still a few tucked away in my freezer!
5. Apple Crisp... okay, this is actually kind of new and I suppose I should have photographed it. My apologies! I didn't have the stuff for apple pie crust and the store had neither blackberries nor peaches, so I combined the apple pie filling with the blackberry & peach cobbler topping. Topped with ice cream and it turned out almost caramel-like. Very good.

So there's the rundown. Only new recipes for awhile... I promise!

Page 87: Chocolate Cupcakes and Page 93: Chocolate Frosting

Oh, cupcake... why do you torment me so?

I gave the cupcake another chance, and it once again got the best of me.

I incorporated all my lessons learned this time.  I didn't fill the cups too full and baked them for a significantly shorter time. When they were still warm out of the oven I sampled and was so excited because they seemed much lighter and fluffier than all prior versions. "I MADE CUPCAKES!" I declared! "Not muffins, not tea cake, CUPCAKES"! Even hubby thought they were more cupcake-like and commented how much lighter they felt just by weight.

See how they even look more cupcake-like? It was wonderful. And I strutted around the house the rest of the day thinking I finally mastered the gluten free/dairy free BabyCakes masterpiece.  But by the time they all cooled and I frosted them, not so fluffy anymore. And... once frosted I keep them in the fridge because the frosting is so fragile and by the next day they were pretty much as dry and dense as all previous attempts. Maybe not refrigerating them would help, but then my frosting would just be a disaster. Perhaps the trick is to make and frost them immediately before serving (oh sure, that's not inconvenient at all...).

Sigh. There are two more cupcake recipes in the book, so I'll keep trying with Red Velvet and Meyer Lemon and Bing Cherry versions eventually. But if I fail there too it may all be over. There are just too many better things going on in that book to keep making disappointing cupcakes!

In related news, I continue to learn and master the intricacies of frosting making. I had to make a couple adjustments to this batch.... I had almond milk instead of soy milk, which won't hold up as well in the frosting, so I substituted canned coconut milk - which made it very creamy. I also ran out of agave nectar (I have been burning through that stuff like crazy... thank goodness they sell it at Costco) about 1/8 of a cup shy of what was required, so I substituted maple syrup for the remaining amount which seemed to work out just fine.

The texture was pretty good after chilled, but I wanted it a bit thicker so tried the food processor trick and added a little coconut oil to the chilled frosting. DISASTROUS! It all clumped up like curdled milk and I nearly cried. But I let it warm up to room temperature again and put it through the blender a second time in small batches.  This seemed to do the trick and got it back to the original texture, and after it chilled all was right with the world again.

Looks better than it tasted. Oh well.

So here is what I think: I love BabyCakes, but either I do not care for, or cannot adequately replicate her cupcakes. So, I'll continue to adore and remake many other BabyCakes recipes, but perhaps research a way to make a better gluten free/dairy free cupcake. I heard the woman who started Sticky Fingers Bakery in D.C. uses soda water to make them lighter, so maybe I'll start to experiment with other tricks like that. But for now, onward with other BabyCakes recipes!

Page 85: Vanilla Cupcakes

As you may have noticed, I've slowed down on the posting a bit. This is partly because nightly baking is just not sustainable in any person's schedule, but also because my friend Kim and I started a bootcamp. In more ways than one, baking is not so compatible with bootcamp. First, because getting up a 4am requires going to bed at 9pm, and second, because an hour of burning calories with drill-sargent-like workouts every morning makes me more selective about the calories I consume.

However, before this week's "absolutely zero sugar" diet mandated by my bootcamp instructor (not kidding... sniff), I whipped up some BabyCakes vanilla cupcakes last weekend (just in the nick of time - there are severe penalties for cheating this week which include sprints, planks, and some tortuous move called burpees I don't even want to know about).

As I stood at my kitchen counter flipping through the BabyCakes book on Saturday, I looked longingly at the pictures of the Chocolate Cupcakes. However, according to Erin McKenna, Vanilla Cupcakes is "the recipe that started it all." How could I argue with that? I figured if it was the recipe that started it all, it should at least be the recipe that started my trek through the cupcakes chapter.

In keeping with the spirit of BabyCakes, these cupcakes are gluten free... and baking them was the first time I got to use the garbanzo-fava bean flour and potato starch I had stocked in my pantry. After one batch of dry ingredients wherein I mistakenly added 1/2 cup of xanthan gum instead of arrowroot (gotta get around to labeling those containers soon), I started over and got busy filling muffin tins.

Let's just jump to the finished product, shall we? Because that, after all, is really the point.

Notice how they do not look like cupcakes? Yeah, me too.

At this point I really just wanted to call up Ms. McKenna and say "ummm... was this the plan?" Now, they were still delicious. But more in a pound cake or muffin kind of way rather than a cupcake kind of way. You kind of expect cupcakes to be more spongy and light and smooth on top. Because I didn't try the cupcakes at the BabyCakes store (I know... what was I thinking?), I do not know if this is is the way they were supposed to be. I did a bit of googling and noticed several people commented on the "dense" texture of BabyCakes cupcakes so maybe I did do it right. I mean the things are delicious, dairy free, and gluten free - perhaps we can give a little leniency to the texture?

Moving on...

Frosting! The frosting for the cupcakes was the same frosting as the filling for the reigning champion chocolate chip cookie sandwiches. But this being batch two I discovered that my blender was just not cutting it and switched to mixing it up in the food processor. Much better! I struggled with the texture before - it was so soft if not frozen. This time, when chilled, it was a perfectly frostable spread.

Not so light, but the perfect amount of sweet and just a bit lemony. I enjoyed them and so did the co-workers and my girls at girls' night!

I think this is another recipe which needs another go around in an effort to improve and become worthy of the BabyCakes name. Unfortunately, I have a whole book ahead of me but we'll see what I can do! This weekend I'll be baking for our Memorial Day get-together so look forward to a review of brownie bites and *da da dum* more chocolate chip cookie sandwiches! It's official - they are every one's favorite so far and we can't get enough of them. Particularly when I ate almost all of them on my own and saved too few for my friends...

Page 68: Chocolate Chip Cookies/Cookie Sandwiches

Okay, this one is going to be a doozie. Trust me... I laughed... I cried... I shrieked. It was an experience. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in for the ride.

If you recall, I made frosting last week with the intention of using it for the better-than-creamy filling between some yet-unbaked chocolate chip cookies. The chocolate chip cookie sandwich was one of the goodies I tried (and LOVED) from the BabyCakes shop in NYC, so these darlings have been topping my "to bake" list for weeks.

Step One: Make frosting
Check. See below.

Step Two: Make cookies

It just so happens that it was a cloudy, rainy weekend in paradise so it was a perfect weekend for baking. After the Saturday morning muffins with still no sign of sunshine, I started mixing up the dough. It definitely passed the cookie dough test. YUM.

Next up was baking the cookies. As previously discussed in the double chocolate chip cookie post, I like chubby cookies. But I knew I needed flatter cookies for these sandwiches... and so started the drama.

I loaded up the cookie sheet, put the first batch in the oven, and obediently went to turn the sheet 180 degrees at the nine minute mark. But as I opened the oven - and this is where the shriek came in - THIS is what I saw:

Yep, not pretty. Visions of sheet after sheet of unicookies (which are completely useless for sandwich making) flashed through my brain. I feared all hope of recreating these magical sandwiches might be lost.

So I took the next sheet - already neatly lined with perfect little dough balls - and started over. I dumped all the little dough balls back into the bowl and started lining the cookie sheet with slightly smaller little dough balls.

The result... a bit better... but still... not there yet. So this time I tried even a bit smaller, and also didn't flatten them down quite as much before baking.

Better. We were getting there. And this process is how I ended up with at least three different sizes of cookies. Not ideal when attempting to pair up cookies for sandwiches.

I have not perfected the cookies yet, but you have my word that I will diligently practice until perfection is achieved. Sometimes these things take time.

Step Three: Pair up cookies
I was like the eHarmony of chocolate chip cookies. Taking the various sizes of cookies - small, medium, and large - and finding each cookie's perfect mate.

Step Four: Assemble sandwiches
Here comes the fun part. Despite my less than perfect cookies, they made DELICIOUS sandwiches!

With the chilled frosting I was pleased - pleased enough to eat more than I should have during the assembly process. But then I stuck them in the freezer to set and when we went back for dessert on Sunday... OH MY WORD. The frosting resembled my favorite coconut milk ice cream and the cookies - even straight out of the freezer - were perfectly chewy! And now they are tucked safely in the back of my freezer. That's right - you have to know the secret code word to gain access. They are that good.

Although I fell far short of the prefect BabyCakes chocolate chip cookie sandwich here, these are definitely my favorite BabyCakes treat to date and I will be making them again. Maybe not anytime soon - I mean I still have a whole book minus four recipes to go - but definitely again.

*** Also - big props to my sister, Amy, for the new look.  Isn't it cute?!  Thanks, Amy! ***

Page 91: Vanilla Frosting

Yep. Just the frosting. Granted, the intention here is to make the frosting now, chill it, and slap it between two yet-unbaked chocolate chip cookies later this weekend. But now that I have a bowl of BabyCakes vanilla frosting in my fridge, I know why they sell frosting shots in the store. It's that good.

The whole batch only contains 1/4 cup of agave nectar, so the frosting is not overly sweet. My mother can attest to the fact I'm not a fan of sweet frosting... I was the weirdo who used to ask her for a piece of the cake before she frosted it. But this stuff is really mellow and between the coconut flour and the lemon juice, you would swear that a little bit of cream cheese snuck its way in there somehow.

My frosting factory, including the infamous powdered soy milk...

And the vat of frosting that resulted. Chilled it's stiff like frosting, but at room temperature is spreads like soft, sweet butter.

After sampling (I definitely licked the spoon), I also realized that THIS concoction must be what they put on the biscuit I purchased in the BabyCakes shop. It was a biscuit with what I assumed was some sort of vegan clotted cream (refer to the scones post - this was a day of vegan euphoria for me) and jam. So, I threw some on one of my blackberry scones from earlier in the week, just to make sure my memory wasn't fooling me. Since I was storing them in the freezer and do not own a microwave, I had an excruciatingly long wait while it thawed.

So delish! This scrumptious stuff is definitely going to be a staple in my house. Perhaps I'll just keep a bucket of frosting in the fridge at all times now. I can only imagine how yummy this is going to be between two chocolate chip cookies! Stand by...