Chocolate Chess Pie Canapés

This week's recipe is another adaptation from Nothing in the House. In the original post, Emily Hilliard talks about the origin and nomenclature of this traditional pioneer dish, which was designed to be a feasible option, even if the baker's cupboards were rather bare. There are different versions of chess pie, but the chocolate one is my favorite because, well, chocolate anything is my favorite.

There are literally a handful of ingredients that go into this recipe, and all of them (perhaps minus the chocolate) would have been readily available to the average early American.

I was able to get exactly two dozen 2-inch canapés from Emily's recipe when I prepared them in a normal sized cupcake tin. However, I had to prepare twice the crust (enough for what would be a top AND bottom of a normal 9'' pie) to hold all the filling. I didn't have a biscuit cutter, so I substituted the rim of a tumbler to create even-sized bottom crusts. These fit properly in my baking tins with about half an inch coming up the sides.

The first step in making chocolate chess pie filling is to melt together butter and chocolate. Now, seeing as my go-to solutions when a recipe isn't tasting good are to either add butter or add chocolate, I was pretty stoked to kick things off this afternoon by adding the butter and chocolate (TO EACH OTHER!) right away.

Once the butter and chocolate are melted together, I took them off the stove to add sugar and cornmeal. This is the step where I felt most like a pioneer. As an avid Laura Ingalls Wilder fan in my youth, I got a little chill at this point in the recipe (just a little one, but still).

After the egg, vanilla, and salt are added to the mixture, the batter is ready to go into the waiting crust. I recently picked up a handy squeeze bottle that makes this filling step significantly neater and faster. I believe the bottle was originally meant for pancake batter, but it worked perfectly well for filling mini-pie crusts, too.

Literally less than two minutes later, these guys are ready to go into the oven. One suggestion I would make if you try this recipe yourself would be to reduce the cooking time by a good 15-20 minutes, and watch them closely as soon as the aroma of chocolate begins to emanate from your oven. I baked mine for about 40 minutes (where the original recipe called for 50-60), and they still came out a little over-done, in my opinion.

Here are the finished products, on the cooling rack and ready to party. I tried one for critical review and reporting purposes and I have a few notes. First of all, like I mentioned before, these would have benefited from coming out of the oven 5-10 minutes earlier. Also, it almost seems like there is too much crust in each bite, and the gooey, rich chocolate flavor has to fight to get through.

This recipe might (gulp) actually be better as a full-sized pie, or at least be improved if prepared in mini-tart pans which offer a smaller crust:filling ratio. I will test them out on my co-workers tomorrow and see what they think. A little dollop of cool whip might be just thing thing to bring everything together and compensate for the lack of balance going on here. (Cool whip is the pastry-equivalent to ketchup, right? Right.)

From the Archives: Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pies

Now that spring is hesitantly asserting its presence in Michigan, we can start thinking about warm weather, which, here in the 4oz Kitchen, is synonymous with no-bake pie season. This is a recipe I originally made a couple of summers ago. These peanut butter banana cream pies fit perfectly in jam jars with their lids sealed tight, making them ideal for picnic supplies or road trip sustenance -- just make sure you keep them cool until you're ready to eat.

Step One of this crowd-pleasing recipe (members of said crowd with peanut allergies notwithstanding) was to prepare the vanilla bean pastry cream. Don't be fooled by the name, though; by the time it's done cooling, you'll have a light, sweet custard perfect for offsetting the heavier banana and rich peanut butter components of the pies. This vanilla custard is a great, versatile base that I've used in berry tarts as well as cream pies like this one. Whole vanilla beans are more expensive than a bottle of extract for sure, but the intensity and quality of flavor steeped out of the real deal can't be matched. (Sidebar: please excuse my dirty stove top. Those splatters are from the previous night's baingan bharta adventures). 

All the components of PBBCP ready to be assembled: vanilla bean pastry cream, Nilla wafer crumb crust, peanut butter filling, and, of course, the bananas. I think the most stressful part of this recipe was getting all of the banana slices safely tucked into their layers before they started to go brown and ugly. #freshfruitproblems





After a foundation of crust, the layers alternate between peanut butter, banana, and custard (I found that order worked best for spreading and tamping purposes). It was as easy as one, two, om nom nom.

When the layers reached the edge of the jars, I stopped filling to make sure the tops could screw on snugly. After capping my jars, I put them in the refrigerator so the pies could set until I was ready to pack them up for my picnic. When I brought them out to serve the next day, I also had some home-made whipped cream on hand to add as a topping once the jars were opened, and I packed the extra Nilla wafer crust crumbles to sprinkle on the very top for extra texture. 

A Friendly PSA: Remember that potassium is an important part of a balanced diet, plus we should all try to eat more fruits while they're in season. The fat in peanut butter is the good kind, and peanuts are a source of protein. Plus custard has calcium, and the cookie crust has grains...so these treats cover ALL four of the food groups in a fashion that is both portion-conscious and tasty. In short: Eat up! Your body will thank you.

Popovers: the savory, the sweet, the delicious

I've been on something of a popover bender recently. For the longest time, every time I tried to make these "simple" (most only have 4-5 ingredients) rolls, I was foiled; they never popped. I was left with dense, depressing results, and I was very discouraged. But this recipe I found on Epicurious for Gruyere popovers finally worked for me. The difference was all in the directions. The baking instructions detail how the milk must be heated and the pans pre-warmed in the oven before the rest of the ingredients are combined, portioned, and baked. I suspect this careful preheating is Rule One for proper popover preparation, and I've just been out of the loop. But now I'm in, and I'm loving these little guys. They're versatile crowd pleasers, and I've tried my hand at both a savory and a sweet variety to show you. The first project I made was the eye-opening Gruyere recipe, and then just this evening I tried a cinnamon and sugar version which also turned out well.

Here are are the main components of the Gruyere popovers. My OCD tendencies come in very handy when I'm baking: by reading the whole recipe first, I could prepare the dry mixture, whisk the eggs, and have the grated Gruyere ready to go, so that once the milk was heated, everything could go together quickly and smoothly without giving the batter time to cool.

All the ingredients in the mix. This is one of those batters that suffer if over-mixed, so the stellar instructions even made a point of assuring me that a few remaining lumps were okay.

I had enough batter for about 18 rolls, and I went ahead and grated about 50% more cheese than the recipe called for, so every portion got a generous topping. Okay, so this is your "before" picture, and here....

...is the after! Perfectly-popped popovers FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE. And the wait was totally worth it. These were amazingly good.

They were a little resistant to come out of the muffin tin, but I think that was mostly because of the cheese. In the future I'll make sure to be extra-liberal when I apply the non-stick spray to the pans beforehand. And the ones that stuck to the pans were natural volunteers for early tasting -- I immediately ate one (...or two) of them as they came out of the pan warm and in pieces. These are 12 of the survivors.

And these savory rolls are natural companions for fruit spreads like this rhubarb-hibiscus conserve I happened to have in my fridge. These would be a great contribution to a potluck or any kind of occasion where classy finger foods were required (I think there should be more of said occasions, for the record). 

So that was Successful Attempt #1, and the Gruyere popover experience propelled me into this next experiment with the sweet variety. 

Here are the ingredients for the cinnamon popovers I made tonight. I did quite a bit of baking for our family's Easter Dinner today, and that tupperware container happens to be filled with left-over streusel that didn't make it onto my chocolate bobka. I was actually going to wait to make these popovers until next week, but that extra streusel was calling to me, and these rolls are seriously so easy to make that I didn't balk at the idea of taking on one more recipe, even though I'd spent six hours in the kitchen the previous day. 

Not quite as organized with the ingredient preparation this time around (I think Saturday burned me out a little bit, so I was feeling less Type-A than usual), and do you see that red ramekin? That's what happens when I realize I'm one egg short for my recipe and I need to find a quick substitute. Thank God for the internet, right? Apparently baking two pies and a sweet bread used up 11 of the dozen eggs I'd fortified myself with on Saturday morning, so I only had one left when my popovers called for two. I subbed a flour/baking powder/oil/water mixture that seemed to be okay.

Like their savory brothers before, these sweet rolls turned out acceptably popped, though maybe not quite as much as the others. I blame the last-minute egg substitution. The recipe called for dusting them with confectioners sugar, but the streusel was a nice replacement. I also may have forgotten the vanilla (#honestyinthekitchen), but I didn't miss it when I did the habitual warm-out-of-the-oven taste test. 

I wish you could smell my kitchen right now. These would be the perfect easy (yet impressive) breakfast for overnight company, and I hope my co-workers are pleased when I bring them in tomorrow to share. Monday morning is always better with cinnamon and streusel, right? Right.

Thin Mint© Whoopie Pies

Last Sunday you did not get a post because I was on Spring Break in Nashville. But just because I didn't post doesn't mean I didn't bake. Sunday afternoon I was actually elbow-deep in chocolate and marshmallow fluff and mint extract, busy taking this recipe from epicurious for whoopie pies, this recipe for dark chocolate ganache, and Martha Stewart's fool-proof cream filling recipe, and adapting them all to satisfy the craving I've been having lately for Girl Scout Cookies - thin mints, to be more specific.

The chocolate cake sandwich pieces came straight from the epicurious recipe, and then I added 1/4 tsp of both peppermint and spearmint extract to the ganache and the cream filling to create that signature thin mintiness we all know and love. When we assembled the whoopie pies, we put the chocolate-mint ganache on one side of the chocolate cake pieces, mint cream on the other, and then sandwiched them together. The most difficult part of the process came down to deciding whether to use the "peppermint" or plain "mint" extract (which smelled more like spearmint). In the end, the choice was made to split the difference, and I think this worked out well.

I did a poor job of documenting again this time. I would blame my sous chef, who concocted some delicious mint juleps to sip while we were baking (the consumption of which may have distracted me from taking pictures of the baking process), but said sous chef was also responsible for solving my mint flavoring conundrum, so I should probably bite my tongue.

Anyway, here is the finished product. I highly recommend you try to make these some day soon.

Special Full-Sized Feature: Ebinger's Blackout Cake

This week's post betrays the letter of this blog, but not the spirit; the chocolate cake I made last night is much larger than 4oz. But on Friday I came across this story on NPR's website about the noted Brooklyn dessert, Ebinger's Blackout Cake, the preparation of which the article claimed to be both "arduous" and "a big, fat pain in the butt." So I felt compelled to take up the challenge.

I was also drawn to this recipe because of its historical nature - recreating this cake (and then devouring it) would be like stepping back in time and going through the same process my grandmother might have taken to make a special dessert for her family. I was also encouraged when I skimmed the ingredient list and realized that the components to the recipe, though numerous, were fairly basic. In fact, the only item I didn't already have in my pantry was bittersweet chocolate, and that was only missing because it's been a particularly trying week at work and I've eaten my way through even the reserves of my chocolate-therapy supplies.

There are no pictures of the process to show you this time around, because when I started baking, I didn't plan on posting about this project since it didn't meet my self-declared size requirement. But after I finished, it was so pretty and I was so proud of myself, I couldn't resist sharing. It did turn out to feel like a more complicated recipe than many of the ones I've made recently. Like the article said, lots of pouring and whisking and waiting were called for. And twice, even though I followed the instructions exactly as they were printed, the ingredients did not behave the way they were supposed to, which led to some consternation (read: swearing) on my part. Specifically, it took 4 tablespoons of boiling water to bring the cocoa powder to a paste-like consistency instead of 2 for the first step, and the filling was runnier than I think it was supposed to be, which made it squish out the sides of the cake when I put the layers together. Besides those minor wrinkles, everything came together nicely. And this might be ruining the vintage feel of the recipe, but I think sprinkling a little bit of sea salt over the top after the cake crumbles are added would be a stellar addition.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of cake-in-the-making photos. Just glance over the recipe and mentally picture me sweating and grinning while I bounce around the kitchen doing all of those things. Also picture chocolate smears all over everything, because they were. When you're done imagining, look below to see how my final product turned out.

Ta-da! The result of 4 hours and 3/4 bottle of chardonnay. Not a bad Saturday night in my book.

I let the finished cake chill in the fridge overnight before taking these pictures the next morning (that's right - the good people of the world go to church on Sunday, while I stay home and take pictures of cake...oh, complacencies of the peignoir). After photographing, I commenced to totally throw off my metabolism for the rest of the day by eating a piece for breakfast.

Warning - do not eat this cake without a tall glass of milk by your side. It's the "melt-your-face" kind of rich.

Mocha Rum Brownies

On a recent trip to Nashville to reunite with some dear college friends, my old roommate and I were aimlessly browsing the aisles and shelves of a little shop in her adorable neighborhood near Vanderbilt University when she spotted a recipe book called Booze Cakes by Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone. Needless to say, we were immediately intrigued, and the book ended up coming home with us. Today's recipe is the first of what will certainly be many successful, tasty, and tipsy adaptations of recipes from Booze Cakes.

These Mocha Rum Brownies combine the depth of good espresso with spicy rum, and the next time I make them I might even add a pinch of cayenne pepper and/or cinnamon to the batter to introduce another element of warmth to the flavor combination. The frosting (which also called for rum...because when they say 'booze cakes', they really mean it) was probably my favorite part of the whole recipe. I've had rather inconsistent results with butter cream frostings in past projects, but the proportions here were perfect. I also added an extra tablespoon of rum to the frosting because I was feeling daring. The results weren't disappointing. 

Besides upping the alcohol content in the frosting, the only other adjustment this recipe got for my 4oz jars pertained to baking time. The original instructions called for 40-45 minutes in the oven, but 35 min. was plenty of time for my portions to be done (perhaps even too much?). Then again, I am a staunch proponent of the "gooier is better" camp when it comes to brownies, so my opinions here may be biased. 

Pre-baking ingredient assembly. Your eyes aren't deceiving you -- that is, indeed, a box of brownie mix. One of the perks of this recipe is that its execution is pretty fail-proof. The directions essentially say to "dump all ingredients into a bowl and stir", which is great for beginning chefs, young children (who should omit the rum component, obviously) and those in a hurry. 

I'm glad to have an excuse to use my Italian espresso maker. The recipe called for 1/4 c. of coffee, and this made almost the perfect amount. I happily finished off the left overs, and the caffeine boost propelled me through the rest of the afternoon.

My cookie sheet is pretty ugly. Please ignore that part of this picture. The jar-filling process took twice as long as the batter-mixing process for this recipe, which is a rare phenomenon. Also, if I really wanted these to be pretty, I would have wiped the edges of the jars more carefully after they were filled, but I knew the frosting was going to cover up my shameful drips, so I let 'em ride.

Mocha Rum Brownies all baked and cooling on their wire rack. My kitchen smelled pretty awesome at this point. While the brownies sat, I started on the frosting.

Frosting ingredient assembly. No cheating this time - we're making cocoa butter cream from scratch. Buckle up (or help yourself to some rum...)

Like I said, this frosting was very easy to work with. And delicious.

Mocha Rum Brownie with his topping applied and nicely swirled. There's just one thing missing...

Ah, the raspberry garnish makes all the difference. I think if I served these again I would add more than just one berry to each brownie. A nice trio might look appealing and deliver more flavor (but these matched the picture in the cookbook, so I stuck with just one this time around).

One last look at Mocha Rum Brownies cooling on the window sill. I hardly every have cut, fresh flowers in the house, so I felt the need to document my tulips in this photo too. And the succulent terrarium is another souvenir from my trip to Nashville, which seemed fitting. 

Pi(e) Day Treat: Sage-Infused Blueberry Pie (From the Archives)

I promise to break away from the herb+dessert posts soon, but this is one of the tastiest pie recipes I've come across, and today is Pi(e) Day, so I felt compelled to share. I originally piloted this sage-infused blueberry pie in February 2012. The one mistake I made that time around was opting for store-bought crust and canned blueberries. In my defense, I was inspired to make this recipe on a whim and in a tight time-frame, so that excuses the pre-made pie crust...partly...right? And at least my error reinforced the obvious fact that fresh is always better. All of this apologizing is not to say that the finished product wasn't delicious...it just could have been so much more so.

I'd recently received a mezzaluna as a gift, and this might have been the first time I put it to use. Those sage leaves didn't stand a chance.

My shameful, store-bought blueberries were much improved upon the addition of herbs. In hindsight, a squeeze of lemon wouldn't have hurt either. Next time I'll know better.

The lining and filling stages. I am perennially challenged by the crust-lining process when I make 4oz pies. Keeping the depth of the crust uniform is important for even baking, and I always seem to end up with thin spots. These two seem to be pretty okay. 

My crust tops, all cut out and ready to be set in place. Thank goodness Hobby Lobby exists to satisfy all of my tiny cookie cutting needs.

ProTip: Use the ring part of the jar lids to cut out a properly-sized top crust.

Fancy little blueberry sage guys ready to go in the oven. Except...

ProTip: Don't be like me and forget to give the crust an eggwash and generous sprinkling of coarse sugar before putting your pies in to bake.

This is the best-looking of my final 4oz pies. The rest seem to have been slightly overfilled, and the stars were deformed into decidedly un-cute, mostly unrecognizable blobs. Still tasty though!