Chocolate chunk muffins (and a blueberry version, too)

I know that none of us who like to bake need a reason to try a muffin recipe.  Muffins and cookies are just fun to make, and too easy to eat!  So this is the latest muffin recipe I tried: chocolate chunk muffins from the Huckleberry cookbook.

I've never been to Huckleberry Bakery in Santa Monica but I sure would love to.  I was captivated by the beauty of their cookbook, and the food described in the pages. As expected, I gravitate towards simple recipes and chocolate chunk muffins...well, I can make and eat that any day, any time.  

Here's the thing: my chocolate chunk muffins looked nothing like the ones in the cookbook.  They didn't puff, dome, or crack open like I expected from looking at the photo in the book.  I know there are many possibilities for this - from differences in oven types to technique - but while I was disappointed at first, the taste more than made up for it.

These muffins/cupcakes have a wonderfully moist and tender texture - the kind that stays that way for days.  I'll give credit to yogurt and a bit of ground almonds for that. Baked goods made with yogurt don't ever seem to disappoint; it makes for a hefty muffin in the best way.  Because they are so moist and tender, you need to be a little careful to gently lift them out of the muffin tins after baking, especially since, in my case, the muffins spread and turn out with wide, flat tops (which make for very nice crusty, browned edges).

A hefty dose of chocolate chunks certainly doesn't hurt either.  But if chocolate muffins aren't your thing (I suppose that's a possibility), this muffin recipe is a good basis for other types of mix-in's - fruit instead of chocolate [see blueberry version near the end of the post].  But of course, chocolate is totally my thing so I happily went with it during my first go-round, mixing in a combination of 60 to 70% dark chocolate for a little bit of nuance. I added a touch of almond extract to my batch of muffins because of the ground almonds in the batter and because I was thinking about chocolate yogurt snack cakes, which I typically make for my little guy whenever I have extra whole milk yogurt around.

Eating a chocolate chunk muffin with a side of strawberries makes for a balanced breakfast, right?

Once you start, it's hard to stop eating these.  I found myself trying to get at every bite of chocolate encased within the bouncy moist cake.  Looks like I found another way to put my whole milk yogurt to good use!

Intense orange-chocolate-almond cookies

I had the idea to make these cookies a few weeks ago.  I call them intense orange-chocolate-almond cookies.  That's quite a mouthful for a title but it sums them up.  They look like ordinary chocolate chunk cookies but they're filled with a strong burst of orange flavor and embedded with bits of almonds, surrounding by that dark chocolate.  Some special chocolate bars provide a shortcut to achieving those flavors but to boost it further, I added fresh orange zest and almond extract to the cookie dough.

I snuck in a little bit of whole wheat pastry flour and you really can't tell one bit.  For half of my batch, I also added additional chunks of toasted almonds.

I got the idea to make these cookies after seeing a cookie recipe using chopped Toblerone chocolate bars.  Now, Toblerones and I go way back and they have a very special place in my heart.  I think they're pretty perfect on their own  and while I'd be thrilled to taste them in a cookie, I got to thinking about what other chocolate bars would work and hold up well baked in cookie form.  Right away, I thought of these...

I'll restrain myself from calling the Lindt Intense Orange chocolate bars one of my favorites because, while I do love them, anyone who knows me well knows I am a chocoholic and, thus, my list of favorites is rather long.  That said, they are really delicious both in flavor and texture.  The thin dark chocolate bar has bits of orange peel in it that really makes it deserving of that "intense-orange" description.  Plus, there are slivered almonds embedded within them.  I mean, what better combination is there than chocolate and orange, and with nuts as a bonus (well, okay...I could think of others like, say, chocolate and mint)!

I was confident these chocolate bars would be great in a cookie, and they really were!  The flavors stay intact and you get texture with the pieces of chewy orange and almond slivers already provided by the chocolate bar.  To heighten the flavors, I added orange zest and some almond extract.  I divided my cookie dough in half and added toasted, chopped almonds to one portion of the dough.  We actually preferred the ones without the additional almonds more since it really allowed the orange and dark chocolate flavor to shine.  

If you like the combination of dark chocolate and orange, I think you would enjoy these very flavorful cookies.  My family and I really did!

My 7-year old called this my "fractured recipe".  You see, his second grade class just finished a fairy tale unit at school.  They've been reading fairy tales and writing their own versions, basically creating "fractured fairy tales" with their own spins on the classics.  When we sat down to eat these cookies and I told him how I started off with a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I really liked but changed ingredients and added different components to alter the flavor, he said "Cool!  It's like a fractured recipe!"  It gave me a good laugh, and I think he's absolutely right in his description.  I don't often "fracture" recipes, if you will, but I'm so glad I tried this idea.  It took me just a little outside my box and led to a rewarding result!

Last minute cake

I'm calling this "Last Minute Cake" because it is, seriously, so easy to put together that you can make it at the last minute, on a whim, or whenever the need arises.  It's actually a lemony almond cake - a simple, casual, everyday cake you might just pick up and snack on or have with a cup of tea.

Making this cake really requires very little to no advance planning.  It helps to have a lemon and some sliced almonds on hand (and I very often do, luckily) but I think the recipe is adaptable and you could play around with what you have on hand.  As far as the batter goes, it gets mixed by hand within a matter of minutes.   I decided to make this one Saturday night recently when we decided to stay in for dinner.  It was already about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I started getting some tomatoes ready to roast for pasta and dessert was on my mind.

This was one of the easiest recipes I could think of and comes from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.  It's actually called Swedish Visiting Cake in the book, referring to the source of the recipe, a friend of Dorie's whose mom would whip this cake up when she saw guests arriving.  That made me consider calling this "Unexpected Company Cake" too.  But what really attracted me to this cake was the description of it as "soft, chewy, moist and reminiscent of cakes made with almond paste."  I love almond paste so I knew I had to try this recipe one day.

With just the 3 of us for dinner and plenty of dessert-making in my future, I divided the recipe in half and made a teeny 6-inch cake.  The cake is meant to be baked in a 9-inch cast iron skillet (that you can serve the cake directly in), which I don't have (need to work on that).  But you can also make this in a buttered cake or pie pan so again, it's quite versatile.  Without any chemical leaveners (i.e., baking powder/soda) in the recipe, the cake is fairly thin.  The texture is moist in the center, contrasted with a crisp top and edge thanks in part to a scattering of almond slices and some granulated sugar on the surface.  Lemon zest adds freshness to the buttery flavor and almond extract together with the almonds contribute the almond flavor.  It's not quite as moist and robust in flavor as a true almond paste cake but it is similar! 

You just can't beat how easy this cake is to make.  I had it done that Saturday night in well under an hour from beginning to end.  After we enjoyed our pasta with roasted tomatoes for dinner (I couldn't resist including a picture of it here), a small wedge of this cake was a nice way to end the dinner on a sweet note.

Another bonus point for this cake is it keeps well so you can wrap it tightly and enjoy it over the course of about 5 days.  I love cakes like that!

Chocolate crackles

This Christmas cookie comes to you by special request.  Our resident six-year old wanted me to make some and here they are.  I think these chocolate crackles (sometimes called "crinkles" too) are fairly popular around this time - we've certainly seen them in the various holiday-themed food magazines that have arrived in our mailbox.  The six-year old in question saw these in one of the magazines and said "mommy, can you make that?!"  I'm not sure he remembers I made these last Christmas and I'd plan to whip up a batch anyway.

Just to change things up ever so slightly, I added a touch of almond extract.  I loved this little addition (since I love all things almond) and I'll be sticking with it from now on.  These cookies are soft and moist, reminiscent of a brownie (though not quite as rich), and with the almond extract, similar in flavor to the mini chocolate yogurt cakes.  The snowy look simply justifies eating these chocolate bites during the holidays.

So many cookies, so little time...