I live in the Saint Louis area, and Gooey Butter Cake runs through our veins. It's a right of passage, and I tried to make this like oh, ten years ago, and fucked it up, and never went back. Well, obviously that needed to change, so here we are again. She just keeps pulling me back in, but this time, it's just right.
This recipe is a little different than a traditional gooey butter cake because it has a shortbread crust instead of the cake mix layer, but honestly, I may prefer this. It makes a 9x13 of bars.
For the Shortbread:
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
1/2 c granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or if you don't have this you can use vanilla extract)
3/4 tsp salt
2 c all purpose flour
1. Preheat oven to 350F and prepare 9x13 with parchment paper (with some overhang to make it easier to pull out) and cooking spray.
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Add in vanilla bean paste and salt.
3. Slowly incorporate flour. This mixture will be sandy, but when you squeeze it together in your hand, it will clump.
4. Pour into prepared pan and press down with hands or the back of a flat measuring cup.
5. Bake for 15 minutes, and while it's baking, prepare filling.
For the Gooey Butter:
8 oz cream cheese, room temp
1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
Zest of 1 lemon
4 cups powdered sugar
1. In a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream together cream cheese and butter.
2. Slowly incorporate the two eggs, vanilla, salt, and lemon zest.
3. Slowly incorporate the powdered sugar.
4. Whip together until fluffy.
4. After 15 minutes of baking the crust, pull it out and top with the gooey butter mixture.
5. Return to oven to bake for another 40 minutes or until the edges are browning but the inside still feels a little jiggly. It will be puffy, but once it is out, it will deflate some.
6. Allow to cool completely (for several hours) before dusting with powdered sugar and slicing into bars.
I am doing a dessert pairing with my local liquor and wine store this weekend, and one week out from St. Patty's day, obviously they are doing a whiskey tasting. I should also say that we went back into office this week, and my boss gave us all tiny bottles of Screwball Whiskey, so those two things have led to the creation of peanut butter whiskey brownies. The whiskey is obviously optional, but why would you want it to be?
This recipe makes an 8x8 pan of brownies (12 chunky pieces).
I used my regular brownie recipe and just added on/tweaked a bit:
For the Batter:
1 stick unsalted butter
8 oz chocolate chips (you're really going to use the whole 12 oz bag, but 2/3 of it for now)
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c granulated sugar
3 eggs
1/2 c flour
1/4 c cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 oz peanut butter whiskey (you'll use a whole shot total or a travel size bottle)
4 oz chocolate chips for mixins (see, I told you)
For the Peanut Butter Swirl
1/3 c peanut butter (I used creamy, but I can't imagine chunky would be bad)
1 tbsp powdered sugar
1/2 oz peanut butter whiskey
1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream *to thin out- you may need a little more or less
1. Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare pan with some non-stick spray and parchment paper.
2. Combine peanut butter swirl mixture into a small bowl and set aside.
3. Put 8 oz chocolate chips and butter in a heat-safe bowl and microwave in 30 second intervals until chocolate and butter are just melted. Don't over-heat. If there's still a few lumps, just stir, and the residual heat will melt everything.
4. Add sugars to the melted chocolate mixture and combine. This will help cool the chocolate off a little before you add the eggs.
5. Add eggs one at a time and mix well before adding the next. Add 1 oz whiskey.
6. Add flour, cocoa powder, and salt to the bowl and mix well to combine. Don't worry about over-mixing here.
7. Add in the remaining chocolate chips and pour batter into pan.
8. Put dollops of the PB mixture onto the brownies or put in a piping bag and draw lines onto the batter; swirl with a butter knife (this is what I did).
9. Bake for 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out kind of clean. This is such a personal preference. I err on the side of less done, but you know what you like.
10. Allow to cool before removing from the pan and slicing.
This week on another episode of choose your macaron adventure, we have gone down the rabbit hole and landed on cinnamon rolls. This macaron has the signature shell smattered with cinnamon and, obviously, a cream cheese frosting in the middle. I mean, should I eat these for breakfast? Absolutely.
This recipe makes about 18-24 macarons. Just a reminder that a food scale is essential here. And since you're weighing things out, you can always double or triple this batch.
For the Shells:
2 egg whites *this is your base weight; this time it was 69 g for the two egg whites
103.5 g almond flour (1.5 x egg white weight)
103. 5 g powdered sugar (same as above)
55.2 g brown sugar (0.8 x egg weight)
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
A bit of brown food coloring *optional
1. Prepare two sheet pans with parchment and/or silpats. If you're using parchment, draw circles as a guide for your piping. I use a silpat with the macaron circles and just put a parchment paper over it- the parchment tends to release the shells better, but I can still see the circles for a guide.
2. In a bowl, sift together almond flour, powdered sugar, and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, begin to beat the egg whites. Don't go above a 6 speed on a Kitchenaid. Once they start to get frothy, add in the cream of tartar.
4. While that's whisking, sift your brown sugar. I don't know if this is essential, but you're trying to make meringue, and brown sugar is heavy, so I did it and I'll do it again.
5. Start to gently add the brown sugar to the egg whites while they're whipping up. You want to get to a stiff peak here. It may take a bit longer than you're used to because of the molasses in the brown sugar, but it does whip up quite nicely.
6. Once at stiff peaks, put in half of the dry mixture. Gently fold in.
7. Add in the rest of the dry ingredients and beat the shit out of it. You're looking for the batter to be able to fall back into itself and reincorporate within about 10 seconds.
8. If you'd like, at this point, take about 1/3 of the batter into a second bowl and mix a little brown food coloring.
9. Put the batter into two piping bags. Cut a smaller hole into the brown one and a slightly larger hole into the un-colored batter. Put both bags into a larger piping bag with a large hole cut into it. When you pipe, you will get a little brown swirl like a cinnamon roll.
10. Pipe onto prepared sheet pans and then drop or beat the sheet pans on the counter a few times to get the air bubbles out of the shells. These may be dainty, but they like it a little rough.
11. Allow to cure for at least 30 minutes until they become matte and when you touch lightly with a finger, they don't stick. While that's happening, preheat oven to 350F.
12. Right before baking, drop the oven to 325F and bake for 10-13 minutes. To test if they're done, you can gently touch and it shouldn't move too much on its base. *Bake one tray at a time! If you do more, the air doesn't circulate enough, and it can mess up your shells.
13. Allow to cool before filling.
For the filling:
2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
2 oz cream cheese room temp
1 1/2 c (ish) powdered sugar
Splash of vanilla
Pinch of salt
More cinnamon if you like
1. First of all, you don't really need this much filling, but you try mixing up just 1 tbsp butter and 1 oz cream cheese. It's nigh impossible, so here we are. In a small bowl, cream together butter and cream cheese with a hand mixer.
2. Begin to slowly add in cream cheese. Add in vanilla and salt (and cinnamon if you'd like).
3. If the mixture is too thick, you can add a splash of milk or heavy cream.
4. Beat until fluffy and put into a piping bag. Cut off tip and gently squeeze some filling onto a shell. Top with a second shell to make the sandwich cookies. You don't need as much filling as you'd think you do, so make one or two before filling the rest to be sure you have a good ratio.
5. Keep in an air-tight container in the fridge. They really are better the next day.
I have, what I believe to be, the perfect brownie recipe, but blondies have eluded me for a while. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.. until I did find it. I did. This recipe is decadent. I mean nutty-butter forward chewy blondies. They're not the prettiest, but they sure know how to party. This recipe makes fatty blondies in an 8x8 or if you want to make them thinner, you could do a larger pan for less time.
For the Blondies:
3/4 c butter, unsalted
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 c flour
1 tbsp malted milk powder *optional, but maybe it shouldn't be
4 oz Heath toffee bits *honestly though, anything could be good in this- butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, caramel bits. Pick your poison
1. Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare a pan with cooking spray and parchment paper. I like a little overhang of parchment so it's easier to lift them out of the pan later.
2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and continue cooking, stirring intermittently until butter starts to brown. You'll notice that the bubbles will start to dissipate a bit and the butter will start to smell a bit nutty. You'll see the brown flecks start to form.
3. Pour butter into bowl with the sugars. Mix until combined and butter mixture is slightly cooled.
4. Incorporate the eggs one at a time until combined.
5. Add vanilla and salt.
6. Incorporate flour and malted milk powder.
7. Add in toffee bits.
8. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for about 45 - 55 minutes.
9. Allow to cool before removing from pan and slicing.
