Nuts Archives - Baking With Unicorns

But of course she was PHENOMENAL!

May 11, 2014 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

I have been waiting for last night to occur, probably since I was born. Perhaps even before that. I would not but surprised if I have been waiting since the big bang, just waiting for all the right lil molecules to come together.

Regardless, Cher’s performance was outstanding. That woman can still belt it out with the best of them, and she can do it in her Turn Back Time Outfit! Also, she was hilarious! Ugh…. I cannot wait until her 4th farewell tour. I don’t know how she can top this one, but I have no doubts that she’ll find a way. And if Cher wasn’t enough, Cyndi Lauper opened for her!!! And Cyndi brought Liza Minnelli and Rosie O’Donnell onstage with her. And the three of them sang “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Mind blowing.
Sigh.
THANK YOU, MAMA!!! Last night was all I have ever dreamed of and more!!!
Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAMA!!!!!
and because I won’t be posting tomorrow, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MAMA! And to all other mom’s, including Cher!!!!

This song was not performed last night, but I am a huge fan, even if Lady Gaga decided it wasn’t worth releasing. It seems like an appropriate Mother’s Day/Birthday song, and clearly appropriate for Cher:

Now for the baking.
I know I haven’t actually posted in a while, but I have been baking. This particular treat was made 2 weeks ago, but I’m only now getting to it (I blame finals!!!!). Interestingly, when my friend tasted this, she was convinced that there was coconut in it (she loves coconut) and was shocked when she learned that it’s actually hazelnuts that give it the taste and texture that it has (she doesn’t like hazelnuts). What that says about my baking and the treat as a whole is unclear, but… I’m amused.
The hazelnuts give it an interesting texture which I was a bit put off by. I was a little lazy (and pressed for time) when I made this, so did not grind the nuts quite as much as I would have liked. But everyone seemed to like the texture. GREAT!
The recipe called for Calvados-Poached Figs as well, but it was April when I made this. How many fresh figs do you think there are?
On a final note, I TRIED to blanch the hazelnuts (removing the skin and all) and got about 1/3 of the way through the nuts and gave up. It’s not fun, nor easy, to remove skins, despite having blanched them. Almonds are much easier in my opinion.

Chocolate Hazelnut Torte
From BonAppetit, December 2013 Issue

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
8 oz bittersweet chocolate
12 oz blanched hazelnuts (worst!)
1/4 cup flour
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
6 large eggs, separated
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tst cream of tartar

1. If you are going to blanch your hazelnuts, do that first. Here’s how one does that: Blanching!

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease (butter) a 9″ springform pan. Line with parchment and set aside.

3. In a double boiler, melt chocolate until smooth. Set aside to cool a bit.

4. While chocolate is cooling, place (blanched) hazelnuts in food processor with flour, cocoa powder, salt and 1/4 of the sugar. Pulse until well ground (but not till it becomes hazelnut butter!!!). The original recipe says the mixture should be able to pass through a medium-mesh sieve, but in my world, there’s only one sieve size, and that’s the one that I have. Needless to say, I did not pulse to quite that mesh size. Mine was a bit bigger and I said” F*** it! I’m lazy!” and went with what I had.

5. In a medium bowl, beat butter and remaining sugar until fluffy. Then add in the egg yolks one at a time, beating batter after each yolk gets added. Next, stir in the cooled (but still melted) chocolate and vanilla extract. Finally, add in the dry ingredients bit by bit until all is incorporated into the batter.

6. In a small mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff white peaks form! Then, take ~1/3 of the whites and mix into the batter to “loosen” it up (whatever that means). Then, once sufficiently loose, fold in the remaining egg whites, GENTLY, using a spatula. Once all is incorporated, transfer batter to prepared springform pan and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for anther 30-40 minutes (I think I took the full 40 minutes). Test with toothpick! There may be some crumbs that come with toothpick when pricked, but it should not be gooey inside.

7. Remove from oven and allow to cool on wire rack for ~30 minutes before releasing springform pan. Then allow to cool completely!!!

8. Serve to unsuspecting people who think hazelnuts taste like coconut. You’ll blow their minds!

Vegan Girl Scout?

March 24, 2014 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Sigh.
Spring break 2014 is done. It always amazes how quickly this one week in the year goes while all other weeks of the year seem to drag one. Amazing! Somehow time just moves differently for this one week. Tricky Tricky.
But even though the week sped by, it was a great one. Lots of amazing friends, food, wine, whiskey, and yoga! I also checked back in with the music scene for a moment, and found “Headlights” by Eminem featuring Nate Ruess. I’ve always been a fan of Eminem, and I’m a HUGE sucker for any song with a featured artist. Gets me every time!

The song is rather intense and sad, but it’s been on repeat all day. It reminds me how lucky I am to have my amazing mom and family. Thank you, family, for being amazing! I’ll never be able to identify with this song because of you guys 🙂

Also this Spring break has found me obsessed with “Gaycation” by DWV

Detox, Willam, and Vicky are (almost too) fabulous. They’re clever, sassy, and unapologetic drag queens. What’s not to love?!

And with that, I’ll conclude my music run down and move onto the baking.
This recipe was originally inspired by a smoothie I had at Juice Generation called the Joyful Almond. I was honestly skeptical that it would be good, but I tried it (mostly because I was tired of the other option) and fell in love with it. So I set out to make a cookie version of the smoothie. And it’s vegan, so it must be healthy, right? yeah….

Anyway, these turned out to be pretty good. They also turned out to be a vegan version of the Samoa Cookie that girl scouts like to get you with (I have a box in my freezer from last year still…. I should probably use that up). There’s sadly no caramel in my cookies (I have no clue how to do a vegan caramel… butter is key to delicious caramel), but the coconut and chocolate are there!

Vegan Almond-Coconut Cookies (a girl scout knockoff)
yield: ~4 dozen

after 30 seconds

Ingredients:
16 oz (1lb) roasted, unsalted Almonds
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
1 tablespoon baking soda
3/4 cup flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup applesauce
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
~1 cup shredded, unsweetened Coconut
3.5 oz dark chocolate (I used Green and Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate, 70%)
1 tablespoon agave nectar

after 90 seconds

1. Preheat oven to 35o degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment or Silpat.

2. Place almonds in food processor and add olive oil on top. Blend on high (if you have different speed settings) for ~30 seconds. Scrape down the sides. Repeat blending and scraping 2-3 more times, until almonds and oil have become almond butter. (you can also skip this step by buying a jar of almond butter….)

3. Place almond butter, baking soda, flour, sugars, apple sauce, vanilla and 1/4 cup shredded coconut into a large mixing bowl and mix it all up together into a dough. The dough should be slightly crumbly but can be formed into a ball.

4. Make ping-pong sized balls of the dough and roll them in the extra coconut. Place on prepared baking pan ~ 1 1/2 inches apart. They spread out a bit (especially if you drop them on the counter to make them chewy rather than crispy). Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until they start to crack at the top. Remove from oven, allow to cool for 5 minutes, and then transfer to cooling rack.

5. While cookies are cooling, place chocolate and agave nectar in double boiler and melt completely, stirring constantly. Allow to cool for 5 minutes while you get the cookies ready. Place the cooling racks on a piece of foil or another pan. Make sure the cookies are touching one another but not overlapping. This will reduce chocolate waste.

6. Once cookies are ready, drizzle the chocolate over the cookies using a spatula or a spoon. Allow chocolate to cool completely. Because of the added agave nectar, the chocolate will not become hard when cooled. Instead, it will be more fudge like.

7. eat! or sell them as girl scout cookies and make a killing.

How a Pie Became a Scone…

December 14, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

I’m a bit slow at posting this one. Sorry! I swear the pumpkin was not sitting in my fridge for nearly a week before getting tossed into a recipe. It was only 24 hours. I’m just slow and lazy when it comes to snagging the pictures from my phone and uploading them…. BLARGH!

Anyway, here we are, closer and closer to the holiday season. Snow is FINALLY falling here in NYC. Columbia’s campus is covered in lights (I love it when they wind the lights around the branches) and I have NO pictures for you of these things. It’s cold out, and my hands say “NO” when I think about taking them out of their pockets to snap a nice pic. But I’m still hopeful, and you should be too. One of these days, my mind will overcome the will of my hands and SNAP! picture! Perhaps I can get my friend Tina to participate in this photo game. She and I have a margarita date on Tuesday, after my FINAL FINAL!!!! WOOOT!!!

Ugh, just 2 finals this semester. Unfortunately they are on the same day. But hopefully neither one will be too brutal. Hopefully. And hopefully I’ll actually study for them. Then again, maybe I’ll just bake and hope for the best with the finals… My TA’s like cookies, right? (Also, how many times can I hope to use a form of “hope” in a paragraph?)

This recipe went through several permutations before being made. At first I wanted to make a pumpkin pie with a curried corn crust (I saw a recipe for this somewhere) , but then I got lazy and couldn’t decided on how exactly to execute it to my liking. Next I was thinking that it would be nice to make this into a cheesecake kind of deal, again with the curried corn crust. And again, I’m just lazy! Then I was thinking “corn pumpkin scones” that sounds easy. And it probably would have been just as easy as this recipe turned out to be, however I decided I was forcing the corn and pumpkin together at this point and that I would simply make pumpkin scones with candid pecans outside. The idea came from a pumpkin pecan recipe that I made for Turkey day: Pumpkin Praline Pie!

Also, please note that as I type this up and as I was baking these scones, I was listening to this song, nonstop!

Sigh. What can I say. I love her.

Pumpkin Praline Scones!
Inspired by This and by This
Yields: ~12 scones

Ingredients:
For Scones:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup, 6 ounces) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small cubes
1 cup half and half, cold
1 cup pumpkin puree (from scratch if you wish)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

For Pecan Covering:
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon dark Molasses

If you’re going to make the pumpkin puree from scratch, see instructions at end of this post.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with either a Silpat or parchment paper.

2. Place all dry ingredients and butter into food processor. Pulse for ~20 seconds until resembling a course meal. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and set aside. I found that after this, there were a few chunks of butter that resisted chopping. They got thrown back into food processor with a couple handfulls of the course mixture and pulsed some more until they yielded to becoming course meal themselves.

3. in a smaller bowl, combine 1 cup pumpkin puree, 1 cup half and half, and vanilla. Mix this up with a fork and set aside. Then, in food processor, chop up pecans until finely chopped. Place in a medium bowl and add remaining pecan covering ingredients. Toss with a fork until combined.

4. Combine the pumpkin ingredients with the dry ingredients and mix with a fork. You’ll notice that the mixture is very fluffy! Odd, I know and NOT at all what I expected for a scone, but who am I to judge? I suspect its the large amount of baking soda that reacts with the milk to get fluffy texture. Anyway, go with and go with it relatively quickly. Grab your prepared pan and prepare to get a bit messy. Spoon a large amount of batter (~1/4 cup) out and plot it into your bowl of pecan covering. Don’t be dainty here. Just use your hand and roll the lump of batter a round then plop is (unceremoniously) onto the prepared baking sheet and repeat!

5. Bake the scones for ~20 minutes and then remove from oven. Allow to cool on pan for ~10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack. I recommend serving with a lit butter (Cuz there’s not enough in them already, but hey, that’s just me!)

For making your own Pumpkin Puree:

1. Find a suitable pumpkin. When I weighted my pumpkin, it was about 2 lbs. I probably got about 10 ounces of puree out of it, so make sure your pumpkin will be large enough for whatever you’re planning on doing with it.

2. Completely wash your pumpkin and then chop the sucker in half! Watch your fingers!

3. Removed the seeds and the stringy bits. Then rub with oil and, since I was making this into a sweet baked good, I threw on some cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves so that those flavors would bake in a bit.

4. Then roast the halves face down at 400 degrees for 45-50 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when it’s easily pierced with a toothpick. I generally don’t worry about overcooking here, just under-cooking as no one wants tough pumpkin baked goods. Gross.

5. Remove your pumpkin from the oven and let cool for at least a half hour. It helps if you flip them so they’re face up. Another way that you’ll know they’re done is if the skin is very very easy to peel off the “meat”. Remove all the skin and place in a food processor. Puree the heck out of it! Store in an airtight container until ready to bake with it. WOOT!