Baking Experiment, Well Sort Of

Last week I was watching tv, it was a night I had time while I was waiting for a show or movie to start.  So I looked on on demand, for something to watch.  I mostly watch cooking shows and home improvement shows (when I'm not watching my regular shows that is).  So I was happy to find the Deen Brother's Thanksgiving special on Cooking Channel.  My mom and I enjoyed the show but one thing they made grabbed us, the sweet potato souffle.  Not only was it super easy to make but it sounded really good.  So we decided to make it.  In talking to my sister another day, we mentioned that we're going to make it, as a test this weekend and possibly make it for Thanksgiving. She said she made it before but it's not as sweet as the ones I make.

With that in mind, I decided to give the recipe a try.  I made a mental note of the ingredients but of course forgot something.  I happened to get the Paula Deen's Aunt Peggy's sweet potato souffle recipe in her newsletter last week.  I pinned both recipes when I first saw them and pulled them both up yesterday when I was getting ready to make the souffle.  I found there were slight differences between the two recipes, and I decided to split the difference between the two and give it a try.  Next time I make this, I'm going to add a 1/2 cup brown sugar in the souffle and maybe cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg.

Sweet Potato Souffle

2 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, baked and still warm
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
1/4 light brown sugar
3 large eggs
pinch of salt

 TOPPING:
 3/4 cup light brown sugar
 1/2 cup chopped pecans
 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
sprinkling of cinnamon and allspice on top

Directions Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Peel the sweet potatoes and add the flesh to a bowl. Beat in the butter using a hand mixer or a stand mixer with the whisk attachment until well combined. Beat in the milk, brown sugar and eggs, adding one at a time. Taste and add salt as necessary. For the topping: Mix together the brown sugar, pecans, flour and  butter  in a separate bowl until it looks crumbly. Add the mixture to a deep-dish pie plate and bake until puffed and golden, 30 minutes. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving (the souffle will fall slightly).

Petite Nutella Pochettes

One day while on youtube I ran across this video and I just sat there, drooling at the thought of what those little pockets tasted like.  How could you go wrong with butter and nutella?  You can't!  So I thought about making them but needed to find a reason for it.  That way I wouldn't eat them in one sitting while watching tv, or at my desk at work.  Last weekend I served at church, running lights and camera for the team that's short handed.  So I decided to make then then.  They were so easy to make but I found one slight problem with the recipe as it was written, my hand mixer wasn't strong enough to mix the dough once all the flour was in it.  Then again I did make the mistake of missing one important bit of information in the recipe... Do not over-mix!  WOOPS!  Oh well I just left the dough in the fridge for a couple hours and all was fine. 

However before I even made the final decision to make them, I read the reviews knowing that some times food network recipes aren't correct on their website, as they were given in the shows.  Of course there is the problem where the recipe was the same but the end results were vastly different than what was said to be on the show.  This happened with a Giada recipe for granola bar type things.  So in reading the reviews I saw people said the dough was bland as given so they jazzed it up a bit, some added a little powder sugar, while others went so far as to add vanilla extract and some, orange zest in addition to the powder sugar.  Hate me if you want, but that's taking an excellent recipe for a French pastry to an American extreme.  Of course I did make a minor change to the recipe and it was the addition of a little powder sugar to tone down the cream cheese taste.  Never having had these before I didn't know if the end results were supposed to have a strong cream cheese taste (for the dough) so I added a little powder sugar just to tone it down.  I don't feel like that addition changed the taste as drastically as the other additions that people were making to the recipe.  But next time I make these I will be omitting the powder sugar and see how the dough tastes then.

I didn't have the same biscuit cutter so I just used a regular coffee cup and gave it a little decoration with the tines of a fork after I sealed the pochettes.  I tasted one when it was still a little warm and nearly died, it was so good!  Cold was good to but much better warm.  Next time I make these I'm going to just use my stand mixer, it will save me from having to take the hand mixer apart again to clean it out.  Also I'm going to split the dough in half before putting it in the fridge to chill.  One of the reviewers suggested only working with half the dough at a time because it will get too soft from the butter melting and make it harder to roll out and cut.  Yep that happened to me.

Petite Nutella Pochettes

Ingredients
    * 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
    * 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
    * 2 cups flour
    * 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons chocolate-hazelnut spread (recommended: Nutella)
    * Water, as needed
    * 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
    * Special equipment: 3-inch fluted biscuit cutter
Directions
In a medium bowl, using a hand mixer, cream the butter and cream cheese together until light and creamy. Add the flour slowly until the dough forms. Do not over-mix! Shape the dough into a ball and cover. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
On a lightly-floured surface, using a lightly-floured rolling pin, roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch fluted biscuit cutter, cut out as many circles as you can. Form the scraps into a ball and reroll to make more circles.
Fill each dough circle with a small spoonful of the chocolate-hazelnut spread. Dip your finger in tap water and spread on the edge of half the circle to help create a seal. Fold the dough over to create a crescent. Bake until golden, about 15 minutes. Cool, then sift the confectioners' sugar on top and serve.

I think I've been watching too much A-Team...

Friday afternoon I was prepping for something I was going to bake later that night, Chocolate Filled Filo Triangles.  The recipe is from the Classic Stars Desserts book that I picked up some time last year from Borders.  This is my third recipe from the book and I was hopeful that it would be as good as the French Silk (pictured on the cover) and lemon squares that I made last year for my brother's block party.  The downside to the recipe is that it only makes eight servings (or four like I did because I forgot one crucial part of the recipe), so I just planned on doubling it and bought enough ingredients to make three batches but wasn't sure I was going to make the third as I was shopping.

Getting back to Friday afternoon, while prepping for the recipe, I had to measure out 1/2 ounces of bitter sweet chocolate and decided to go with the three batches.  But I didn't have nearly enough prep bowls to keep all the chocolate separate so I looked around, trying to rack my brain for ideas.  My initial thought was egg carton, but as I fond out, we didn't have a near empty egg carton like I thought.  So then I thought ice cube trays, but I couldn't find the extra ones so I was back to square one.  I looked around the house wondering what in the world I could use to keep all the measured chocolate separated and ready to go for that night.  Spotting my glass 8x8 pan in the dinning room I thought that would work, if I lined it with aluminum foil and used foil to section it off.  But then I remembered that some of the chocolate was cut down into little pieces and shavings so that wouldn't work.  It would be near impossible to try to get the chocolate out of that later. 

Then it hit me, cut pieces of aluminum foil into squares and shape them into cups.

So I grabbed the aluminum foil out of the pantry and cut strips about four to five inches wide, then folded them over to crease and cut (by hand) in half.  Once I had that done, I took the first square of aluminum foil and placed it in the palm of my hand, forming it into a cup.  I put the chocolate in that and set it on a cookie sheet.  After the initial one I used the small prep bowl to form the aluminum foil bowls and filled them with the chocolate pieces already cut.  And went on to finish cutting all the chocolate into 1/2 ounce pieces. 

Worked great!  I just set it aside until later that night when I made the triangles and tossed them when I finished.