Homemade Oreos

A chocolate cookie is like a warm hug. It can say "I love you" like nothing else. And so I left the house last night with a big box of I love you's in my suitcase and a song in my heart. I'm seeing my best friends after more than two years and going back home after well over one year. . . Not even a 3.5 hour flight day and the ensuing 6 hours spent at the airport have dampened my spirit. I'm beyond excited to see them and elated at the prospect of getting a brief break from expatriate life.

In the years that we haven't met each other new babies have been born, older ones have grown and lives have really evolved. I still have a hard time imagining them in their new mommy roles because we've spent such pitifully little time together since we all had children and, in my case, went to live on a different continent altogether. There is so much to catch up on despite daily chats on whatsapp and frequent photo exchanges. "Friends for twenty-five years" sounds awesome and truly is. .. More sisters than friends, these two are my best critics, strongest supporters and confidantes. There's nothing I can't talk to them about and can always expect them to give me the best advice, soothe my aching soul. I love them more than words can describe.

I could catch a nap on the plane but am looking at the clock instead, and writing this post, too excited to sleep. An hour away. Tick, tock. And our brief interlude will begin.

One sleepy evening this past week I was browsing through my Instagram newsfeed and came across a photo of TKOs (Thomas Keller Oreo Cookies). Intrigued, I looked up the recipe online and was completely sold when I saw that these homemade 'oreos' consist of a white chocolate ganache sandwiched between two sablé cookies. There could not be a better homemade treat to take along for my friends. So I got started on a batch right away. As soon as the dough was ready I knew I finally nailed it - several frustrating attempts at making World Peace Cookies (my dough is invariably always crumbly and the logs fall apart when I slice them) had made me lose faith in myself when it came to sablés. Not any more! These cookies had the perfect, formerly elusive, sandy texture and the intense chocolate flavor I was looking for. Unfortunately I cannot eat dairy at present so dared only a small bite of the sablé with a hint of ganache so I cannot tell you how perfectly paired they are. But from the aromas in my kitchen and the stamp of approval from my little (almost) 5-yr old gourmande-in-training tells me these cookies are pretty awesome. And I can tell you, based on the tiny bite I took, that they are better than Oreos. Now if these aren't the embodiment of love, what is? You can find the recipe here.

Split Level Pudding: Baking with Dorie

This week's Baking With Dorie challenge was selected by Susi of Susi's Kochen und Backen. She chose Split Level Pudding which is a vanilla pudding that has been layered over ganache.  

I have never made pudding from scratch before, and I honestly expected something to go horribly wrong. Amongst many other doom-filled scenarios; I envisioned myself whisking away at a lumpy, stubborn mess that would refuse to relent. Or a slippery, slimy one that wouldn't set up after hours of refrigeration.

But my pudding was almost perfect. I am saying 'almost' only because, for the Ganache layer, I used Lindt's dark chocolate with 70% cocoa and somehow, the bitterness from the chocolate really stood out and didn't blend well with the flavor of the pudding itself.  

But that being said, this pudding does taste dreamy. Had I used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead; the pudding might have tasted even better.  

It is a little labor intensive because you first make the pudding in a saucepan and then blend it in a food-processor, returning to the saucepan yet again to cook the pudding till it thickens. Dorie recommends processing it one last time to ensure a uniformly smooth texture.

And the texture is smooth, though it firms up a little after refrigeration. The ganache layer didn't harden at all while the pudding was cooling in the fridge (I had assumed that it would), but you do have to work at digging it out. 

I still can't believe I made this wonderful pudding and am secretly very impressed with myself! I would make this again & again with other variations suggested by Dorie Greenspan and a twist that I've thought of myself. 

The recipe can be found on Pages 384-385 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours. Or on Susi's blog. If you would like to join the challenge, please email me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us.

Cake Balls/Pops - Tips & Tricks

The tutorial by Pioneer Woman doesn't leave any gaps and is an excellent guide for making cake balls/cake pops. 

However, here are some things that I learned along the way which helped me: 

- If you use a recipe for a very moist cake, you don't need the equivalent of a can of frosting like Bakerella suggests. She uses a cake mix + 1 can of frosting. I didn't use either a mix or ready made frosting so all I needed was a couple of tablespoons of frosting per 9"x13" cake. 

Start by adding 2 tbsp of frosting at a time. Stop when it feels right: the cake should just come together in a moist (but not wet) dough-like ball. There shouldn't be any loose crumbs and it shouldn't fall apart. It should hold well together. 

- Use a melon-baller to get bite-sized cake pops. (I thought of this after I was done hand-rolling all of my not-quite-identically-sized 400 cake balls :P )

- It helps to refrigerate the cake balls overnight.Or at least a couple of hours.

- If you can't get candy melts or, quite simply, don't like the taste - use either ganache or melted chocolate for dipping. Both will work fine. Candy melts might give a smoother look, though.

- I am not as patient as Bakerella and so, even though she recommends dipping one cake ball at a time into a small bowl of melted, warm candy melts, I had to make 400 and needed to work faster. So I dipped 4-5 at a time in a large metal bowl. 

- I kept boiling up some water in a saucepan, taking it off the heat and placing my metal bowl on top of it while I worked. The steam from the hot water ensured that the chocolate wouldn't cool or thicken quickly while I worked. Therefore decreasing the number of times I had to heat it up between uses.

- Bakerella's technique of tapping the spoon against the side of the bowl is excellent - you get rid of any extra chocolate; ensuring a smoother cake ball. I started out doing it her way but then what I found easier was to use a tablespoon to take the cake ball out after dipping using my left hand, swirling it back and forth in the tablespoon (drips all the extra chocolate off) and then dropping it into a teaspoon (held in my right hand). I would then tap the teaspoon on the back of the tablespoon several times and plop the ball onto waxed paper. 

Does that sound confusing? I wish I could have taken photos to do a tutorial but seeing that both my hands were occupied, it wasn't really possible. 

I hope that helped. 

Now go ahead, give it a try and indulge yourself! 

Drowning in Cake Balls

Once in a while I get orders for cupcakes (for small parties). Last week, someone called me up and said she wanted 200 cake balls for her party.

Then she called back late on Monday night and said she wanted 400. 

400? By Thursday evening? No sweat. 

The last time I made these cake balls for her, it was a year ago for a Valentines Day party so I went all Bakerella in a rare burst of creativity and presented them in a heart-shaped, fondant-covered cake 'gift box' exactly like Bakerella. Ok, it wasn't as perfect as Bakerella's, but that is beside the point: who can compete with The Bakerella? 

Anyway, the woman who placed the order said she wanted the same thing this year. 

Are you kidding me? How many heart-shaped cakes and mind-boggling amounts of red Fondant would I have to make to accommodate those 400 cake balls! I had to say no to the presentation part. Because the other alternative meant I would turn into Monster-Mom and bite off everyone's heads for the rest of the week while I worked day and night preparing for this order and give everyone around me a hard time while I worked on this order.