Ahem.

Dear Karen DeMasco,

We've got beef. Not the kind you cook and devour, but the metaphoric kind.

See, a while back I bought your cookbook The Craft of Baking on a lark. I rarely do things on a lark and, while I know this isn't your fault, it makes my desire for my larks to work out all the greater. It's my issue, I know, but with the delicious looking cover and the frivolity of a cookbook dedicated to just desserts ... well, your cookbook called out to me from the throngs of cookbooks as delectably indulgent.

And it is! It is. It has beautiful pictures, you write in an accessible fashion and the morsels you offer up run a fabulous gamut of the sugar-infused spectrum.

There's a problem, though. Only one of the recipes I've made has ever worked out just the way you describe it.

Your graham crackers are perfection. It's just, you know, every other recipe (and I've made several at this point!) that disappoints.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I pulled out your book this weekend to make John's birthday cake. Your recipe for burnt orange cheesecake seemed appropriately festive and so I began the long process of making it. Over the course of two days, I made graham crackers (fabulous as always!), macerated oranges over night, chilled and baked crust, drained cheese...the list goes on. Following your recipe to a "t", I ended up with far too many graham crackers, made a crust that's sticky and soft instead of crisp, generated (laboriously!) too much burnt orange sauce that fell into the cake instead of resting on top of it as you describe, and baked my cheesecake for 2 1/2 hours instead of the 50 minutes you told me it would roughly take. While, in the end, the cheesecake part of the cake was delicious, I felt so misguided by your recipe that I checked the back of your book. I figured there was no way there would be any positive reviews. Not only are there, though, but they're from famous chefs! Interestingly, however, they all seem to suggest they're excited to try your book, not that they've tried it. After so many foiled baking expeditions (and they really do feel like expeditions under your tutelage...John and I started calling your recipes "princess recipes" yesterday, so preciously and precisely rendered are they), I'm beginning to think you made some delicious food and then tried to remember how when it came down to writing your book. For recipes that are intensely precise, the accuracy of the end product is horribly remiss ... admittedly delicious (even when ugly, sugary stuff tastes good), but only ever right when it comes to graham crackers.

I've come back time and again to your book, hoping I was having an off-day during my last encounter. No more, though, Karen. We're through. I'm making your graham crackers forever and often, but the rest of the pages are going to be un-smudged by buttery fingers. I tried, Karen, I really did, and I don't like writing an unfavorable review. But I'm off to different cookbooks ... you know, the kind where the recipes reliably work.

-Rachel

HoMeMade Honey Ginger GrahaM Crackers

Hey Ma,

Ok, so that soup you posted yesterday looks seriously delicious. I'm going to have to make it very soon, particularly if this cold weather we've had for the last couple of days sticks around any longer (you never know what October will bring here in the Bay Area). Thanks for giving me the recipe. I like having your recipes to cook from (and from other people I love). It's such a nice way to feel connected to someone.

Anyway, this weekend something really exciting happened: I baked for the first time since M was born. I love baking, like love love love love it. I find it incredibly relaxing and gratifying. Following a recipe requires just enough attention to keep my brain from spiraling away from me, but not so much attention that I can't get some really good thinking done while my hands work. I've been wanting to bake--longing, really--but what with the general chaos of our lives these days a window simply hadn't presented itself.

John and M went out to run errands for a few hours the other morning and G was still asleep. I decided doing something I really wanted with this time was more important than doing homework, which is what I--no joke--do with every second I have to myself these days (ok, I shower, too). I needed to fuel myself a bit and so I poured a cup of coffee, put on Loretta Lynn and busted out my cookbooks.

Aaaahhhh...


I decided I would try to make something I'd never made before--never even had a homemade version of before, in fact. As I perused my copy of "The Craft of Baking" by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox I stumbled across a recipe for homemade graham crackers. I checked the fridge and pantry and, having the ingredients (ok, having the ingredients needed if I halved the recipe...close enough), immediately set about baking.

I'm going to share the recipe as I slightly modified it with you. The only warning I'll give is that you definitely want to roll your dough for these as thinly as you dare. I think Dad would really enjoy these (they're not super sweet at all) and, based on the fact that they disappeared from the counter within a day, I'm guessing just about anybody else would, too. I can't wait to make them for M when she's a little older (you'll notice I punched mine with Ms in her honor). I have high hopes of making my own marshmallows and chocolate sometime, too, and preparing entirely homemade s'mores. If you're lucky, we'll be living close enough for you to stop by when I finally get around to this project.

Anyway, I love you. Back to the books for me.

xxoo
R


ingredients
you can double this recipe
1 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (plus more for rolling)
1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
1/4+1/8 tspn. kosher salt (I'm sure there's a better way to articulate that measurement, but it's evading me right now)
1/4 tspn. baking soda
1/4 tspn. cinnamon
4 oz. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, at room temperature
1/8 c. packed light brown sugar (dark brown probably would've been better, but we didn't have it)
1/8 c. granulated ginger sugar (this was sugar I had leftover from making Dad candied ginger)
1/8 c. orange flower honey

method
In a bowl, mix well the all-prupose flour, whole-wheat flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. In your electric mixer (oh wait--you don't have one) fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar and honey. Mix until well combined. In two additions, add the dry ingredients, letting the first addition fully incorporate before adding the second.

Flatten the dough into a rectangular shape, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and place in the fridge until chilled, at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days (supposedly you can freeze the dough, too, for up to a month).

When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet (I have a silpat, but parchment paper would work I'm sure). On a lightly floured surface, unwrap your dough and roll it into a rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. Cut the dough into rectangles the size that you desire (mine are roughly 2"x4") and use a spatula to transfer them to your baking sheet. You can reroll your dough scraps once to cut out more cookies. Using a fork, pierce each rectangle (I did two Ms and a line across the middle so the grahams would break in half nicely).

Bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating halfway through.

Yum!

Muffin Ma'ams

Janet here: The first muffins I remember making were bran muffins when I was a newlywed. New to cooking fulltime for someone besides myself, I embraced cooking and the planning of meals as if it was my job. (It wasn't, or more accurately, it was only one of my jobs.) I read women's magazines voraciously, ripping out recipes and thinking about the next perfect meal.

That marriage ended up being a starter marriage, doomed to flop like a failed souffle. But I brought away from the relationship many invaluable lessons, including a realization of how much I love cooking and in particular cooking for someone else. I never knew how much that meant to me until I lived it daily in that relationship. It was just one of the many lessons I could only have learned in that moment and in that way, so I remain grateful.

My interest in healthy cooking began at this time — becoming a vegetarian was one of the many personal changes I made as a result of that relationship collapse — and so bran muffins became one of my first forays into fiber. I found this recipe in Ellie Krieger's new cookbook, So Easy, a book you'll be hearing more about because it's amazing. I had to adapt it a bit; I used dates instead of figs because I live in a place where figs, apparently, are considered too weird to actually stock in the local grocery store. Pathetic really, but I think the result is still mighty tasty. What's your favorite kind of muffin?

Fig (or Date) Bran Muffins
makes about 12 muffins

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups bran cereal, (I used All-Bran)
1 cup low-fat milk
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I used all-purpose flour)
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 cup natural applesauce
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons unsulfured molasses
1 large egg, beaten to blend
1 cup chopped dried figs, plus 3 whole dried figs thinly sliced

Method
Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a large bowl, combine the cereal and milk. Let sit until softened, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl.

Add the applesauce, honey, oil, molasses and egg to the cereal mixture and stir until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Gently stir in the chopped figs (dates). Spoon the batter into the pan and top each muffin with a fig slice. Tap the pan on the counter a few times to remove air bubbles. (Who knew?)

Bake for about 20 mnutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Let cool.


Rachel here: Ok, so I find bran muffins oddly satisfying and delicious (I say oddly because ummm...really?...bran and muffin sound like opposites on the yumminess scale, but so it goes) and am currently feeling a little jealous that my mom thought to make them. This is not, however, because I am not gaga for the muffins I made for this post. The other thing about my mom's bran muffins is that they led to her writing a bit about her first marriage, a marriage I have been intrigued by since I first found out about it (I was in 4th grade and I remember making my mom do a mathematical breakdown of the time between her first marriage and her marriage to my dad to prove to me that he was my real dad). I think it's the idea of my mom being a different person, really, that grabs my attention and curiosity. I have so many tangible ideas about her as partnered with my dad that picturing her partnered with this man who I have barely seen a picture of (and who has a VERY unique name, particularly to my 4th grade mind) sort of invites me to conjure my mother as a person in a set of parameters that I can only imagine, a person with different ideas about herself and what she wants. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, other than to say that I got really excited when I started reading about this first marriage and, in the process, realized that I should really explore that more with my mom because it's obviously something that remains sort of fascinating to me 15 or so years after first finding out about it. Like, who was that woman? But anyway, back to my muffins.

These muffins are seriously good. I modified the recipe slightly from the original (in The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox) and suspect that both versions are equally awesome. The only warning that I'll give is that these muffins should probably be made in a setting with more than two mouths to feed, because the number of mouths around will consume these muffins quickly (and two mouths means six muffins a piece and that's just a sort of obscene amount of breakfast sugar, although there is a really good flavor balance between the cake and toppings components). Anyway, these are certainly polar opposites to my mom's bran muffins, but I (we) hope you enjoy them both.

Clementine Coffee Cake Muffins with Almond Streusel
makes 12

Ingredients
1 c. almonds, chopped
1/2 c. packed dark brown sugar
1 T. ground cinnamon
1/4 tspn. kosher salt
3 T. unsalted butter, melted
8 T. unsalted butter, very soft (plus extra for greasing the muffin tins if you're not using liners)
Finely grated zest of 3 clementines
1 c. granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 c. plus 2 T. sour cream
1/2 tspn. pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tspn. baking powder
1/2 tspn. kosher salt

Method
First, make the streusel. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Chop your almonds and then spread them on a baking sheet to toast, about five minutes. In a medium bowl, combine the nuts, brown sugar, cinnamon and 1/4 tspn. kosher salt, mixing well (so that sugar is completely broken up). Stir in the butter. Set aside.

Next, make the muffin batter. Butter or line your muffin tin. Combine the 8 T. butter, clementine zest and granulated sugar, beating until fluffy (about 5 minutes on medium speed with the paddle attachment of your electric mixer). While mixing, add the egg, then the sour cream and the vanilla. In a small bowl, sift and whisk together the flour, baking powder and 1/2 tspn. of kosher salt. Beating the wet mixture at a low speed, add in the flour mixture until just combined.

Pour the muffin batter into the muffin tin and then top each with a generous amount of the streusel. I pushed mine down a little to really maximize the streusel opportunity. Bake, rotating halfway through, for about 25 minutes (muffins will spring back to your touch). Remove and let stand for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack (this might be the hardest part of the entire recipe because everything smells and looks soooo good at this point). Dig in.

The Cupcake Wars

Rachel here: I only made these cupcakes because my mother upped the cupcake ante by purchasing mini cupcake tins. Yup, that's the kind of daughter I am: You got a cute accessory for this post? I will make the most complicated recipe I can find. Not really sure what I'm proving (or to whom, since my ma's not eating these from Connecticut!), but after they were done I proved that I can eat an insane amount of sugar. But anyway...

For this post, I re-approached the cookbook I used for my two failed scone attempts. Remember how I protected the name of the cookbook to preserve the innocent? Well, I have to say, I am actually not that impressed by this cupcake recipe, either (though, of course, I will eat the cupcakes dutifully). The cupcake itself is pretty anticlimactic and once drenched in chocolate and coconut it's just sort of, well, too much. If you are a nut for chocolate and coconut (and, speaking of nuts, I'm thinking these would be good with nuts in/on them), though, then this just might be the recipe for you (although maybe only dip the tops in chocolate to provide a little balance). And yes, I will continue to try recipes from this book because, well, I just really want one of them to be wonderful and because I am a glutton for sugary punishment.

Lamington Cupcakes
from "The Craft of Baking" by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox

Ingredients
2 c. unsweetened shredded coconut
1 1/2 c. cake flour, plus more for the muffin tin
1 tspn. baking powder
1/2 tspn. kosher salt
8 oz. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and very soft, plus extra for greasing muffin tin
1 c. granulated sugar
1 T. pure vanilla extract
1/4 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out, bean and seeds reserved
1/2 c. whole milk
4 large egg whites
1/4 c. plus 3 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 c. confectioners' sugar
1/4 tspn. kosher salt
1/2 tspn. pure vanilla extract

Method
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Spread coconut on a baking sheet and bake until it is lightly toasted, about 5 minutes. Remove, cool and transfer to a bowl (large enough to dipping cupcakes into later).

Increase oven temperature to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a standard muffin tin (ok, so she says not to use paper liners...I greased and floured and whatnot, but my cupcakes still stuck and so, in the future, I'm using the paper liners because you end up coating everything in chocolate anyway).

In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

In your electric mixer (with the paddle attachment) beat the butter, granulated sugar, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean and seeds on medium high until light and fluffy. If you are operating sans mixer (soooo sorry), umm...good luck beating the butter and whatnot into fluffy submission. Scrape down the sides of your bowl.

With the mixer on medium speed (or with your left hand if you are your mixer), add the milk and flour alternately in three additions. Scrape the batter into a large bowl and remove the vanilla bean. If using an electric mixer, you now to have to clean and completely dry your mixer bowl. If you are mixing by hand, bust out a clean bowl and relish in this moment of not having to stop to clean a dish mid-baking process (it's maybe the only advantage to doing things the old fashioned way for this recipe...don't get too pleased, though, since you are about to work your whisking arm into an exhausted frenzy).

Whisk your egg whites until they are in soft peaks. In your mixer this takes about 4 minutes at medium speed with the whisk attachment. Without a mixer I have no idea, but I am pretty sure it will take longer than 4 minutes (I only got a mixer recently and I'm also pretty sure I always called John into the kitchen for steps like this in recipes...he's so big and strong and useful). In three turns, fold egg whites into batter.

Divide batter amongst muffin cups and bake approximately 20 minutes, rotating halfway through. Remove from tins and cool on wire rack. Let cool completely before glazing.

Place a sheet of foil, parchment paper or whatever underneath wire rack for this next part (or, forget this step and get chocolate all over your counter like I did...there are worse things). In a medium bowl, sift together the cocoa powder, confectioners' sugar and salt. Add 1/4 c. plus 2 T. water and the vanilla and whisk until smooth.

Dip each cupcake into the glaze, covering completely and then immediately rolling through the bowl filled with coconut before placing on wire rack to dry. Wait for the glaze to set before trying to eat (or don't, it's just messier).



Janet here: Yes, I annoyingly texted Rachel and told her I had purchased mini cupcake tins AND cute little cupcake paper holders all because I wanted to one-up her. (Not that we're competitive or anything.) Anyway, I had heard about this cookbook on NPR and was immediately intrigued. Called Salty Sweets, it's by Christie Matheson and is all about the wonderful combo of salt and sweet. I can remember loving hot fudge sundaes as a kid precisely for the the mix of salty peanuts and hot fudge sweetness. Seriously, is there anything better?

I've only made one recipe from this book but I'm here to report, it's pretty damn tasty and while I kind of freaked out about paying a lot of money for a tiny jar of fleur de sel, it was totally worth it. I served this to friends Friday night and the oohing and ahhing was music to this baker's ears. It's 48 hours later and there are only two left. Now that's a success!

Dark Chocolate Fleur de Sel Cupcakes
with snappy butterscotch icing
makes 12-14 regular size cupcakes

Cupcake Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup water
1 large egg
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
fleur de sel

Cupcake Method
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cute cupcake liners
Sift the flour, cocoa powder, sugars, baking soda and fine sea salt together in a bowl (I don't sift so I didn't do this and it came out fine, but that's the official recipe line so I'm giving it to you.)

In a small saucepan, heat the butter, oil and water over medium low heat, stirring until the butter is completely melted and incorporated.

Whisk the butter mixture into the dry ingredients on low speed until combined. (I did this by hand; I don't have an official mixer; it was fine). Whisk in eggs, then whisk in buttermilk and vanilla.

Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full with batter and sprinkle with a tiny bit of fleur de sel over the top of each. Bake for 22-24 minutes until the tops of the cupcakes are set and spring back when you touch. (For mini cupcakes I cooked for 15 minutes.)

Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then transfer to a wire rack for cooling (or to another spot if you're like me and don't have a wire rack). Ice with snappy butterscotch icing.

Snappy Butterscotch Icing

Ingredients
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon water
1/4 fine sea salt

Method
Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir until the butter is melted and the sugar is completely dissolved, 3-5 minutes.

Turn the heat down to low and let simmer 8 minutes without stirring until the icing has thickened. Remove from the heat and let cool completely so the icing will thicken enough to spread. Refrigerate or freeze for 30 minutes to spped up the thickening process. Icing can be stored airtight in the fridge for up to 3 days.

I will tell you my icing didn't really get as thick as it was supposed to, probably because I didn't really pay total attention to the timing etc. I will also tell you it still was mighty fine on the cupcakes ... and off the spoon I licked repeatedly.