Crepes for two (or maybe three)

I think I've realized something: crepes are actually really forgiving to make.  When you start to think about it, you tend to worry about everything from getting the batter right to how you have to twirl the pan just so, and, most importantly, how you'll flip these delicate, thin pancakes without breaking them.  All fair considerations but from my experience, it's never as hard as you feared.  So don't think too much about it and just go ahead and make some crepes!

You don't need special equipment.  If you have a blender, great!  You can whiz the batter up in seconds.  But if you don't have one, a large bowl and whisk will do just fine. There's also no need for a crepe pan; a trusty non-stick skillet works perfectly well.  And even when it comes to recipes, there may be some variations - some calling for a bit more liquid ingredients than others - but they tend to work.  I may not be an expert but I've made crepes with low-fat milk and water, chocolate ones, and now this fairly classic small-batch recipe, all with ease.

There are tips for higher crepe-making success that I've read and followed, including...

• Straining the batter through a fine mesh sieve
• Letting the batter rest overnight (or at least a few hours) before cooking

...but even if you don't have time to do those things, many people will attest that you don't need to and your crepes will turn out just fine.

And the neat thing is that crepes are also a good make-ahead.  For example, I made my small batch of crepes on Friday afternoon.  I stacked them on a plate (I didn't even put wax paper in between; they don't stick together) and refrigerated them. Next morning, I simply warmed each briefly in a hot, dry skillet, then filled them and served them up for breakfast on Saturday.  Making and enjoying crepes at home seems "fancy" but it's really quite easy. 

And if you're looking for a recipe that makes a few crepes - 5, to be precise - this is what we have here.  It can feed two people nicely or three if you need to stretch it.  

I made sweet crepes, filling a couple with chestnut cream and with Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread.  Somehow, having crepes for breakfast made a foggy, dark morning a little more cheerful.

Brown butter chocolate chip (hazelnut) cookies

I took a break from making ice cream and brownies, and decided to make...cookies! What can I say...I'm a creature of habit.

When it comes to comfort-baking and eating, you can't beat chocolate chip cookies. Even with temps in the 90's like it was here last week, I can't stop myself from turning on the oven to bake and cook (luckily, these cookies are done in 11 minutes). And I still crave a gooey chocolate chip cookie in the summer as much as I do in the winter.

I have a few recipes I make often but it's always fun to find something new to try. This time, I made brown butter chocolate chip cookies - a recipe I adapted slightly from Displaced Housewife.  Since I associate brown butter with hazelnuts, and because I personally like nuts in most baked goods, I added toasted chopped hazelnuts to about half my batch of cookies (my fellas usually prefer their cookies without nuts). 

If you remember, I made Displaced Housewife's olive oil chocolate chip cookie recipe not long ago and they were sensational.  I had high hopes for these cookies - which is made with a combination of brown butter and a flavorless oil (I used canola), and a mix of bread and all-purpose flour.  They didn't turn out as chewy as the olive oil cookies but these were solid cookies - sturdy and moist, happily devoured by all.  I think it's hard to make a "bad" batch of chocolate chip cookies if you make sure to stuff it with enough good chocolate.  You pretty much can't go wrong!

Coffee chocolate chip ice cream

Summer is all about ice cream!  Even if you're not making it yourself at home, you're thinking about it, buying it, going to your favorite ice cream parlor for some, and seeing plenty of reminders to eat more ice cream just about everywhere!  It was National Ice Cream Day a few days ago and while I'm not sure how these national food "holidays" get conjured up and though I'm pretty sure none of us needs an excuse to eat more ice cream in the summer, I'm totally game for the fun of it all.

For our part, I feel like we've been swimming in ice cream in the past month! I must buy more cream in the 3 summer months than I do the rest of the year combined. Each batch seems to disappear faster than the last, and I'm still buying and taking the kiddo out for ice cream on top of it.  Honestly, I might need to give my ice cream maker a break and take a short ice cream-making hiatus.  But before I do that, I made this batch of coffee chocolate chip ice cream.  I had to try something new and this is what I picked.

The coffee ice cream base is from David Lebovitz (so you know it's good).  Unlike his Vietnamese coffee ice cream, which uses brewed coffee and condensed milk, this coffee ice cream gets its flavor from whole coffee beans, as milk and cream are steeped in it for about an hour.  It yields a clear, strong coffee flavor that's bound to satisfy the coffee lover.  And with an equal ratio of cream to milk, and a good 5 egg yolks in the custard, the texture is nice and creamy.

Of course, I added chocolate chips because to me, coffee chocolate chip ice cream is better than plain coffee ice cream in most circumstances.  If you feel the same, add 4 ounces of warm melted chocolate right at the last minute of churning like I did.  Pour the chocolate in a thin steady stream into the ice cream at the last moment of churning and it will turn into little lacy wisps of chocolate flakes (though I sure don't mind when I end up with a few chunks here and there) running throughout the ice cream.  

Some people love their ice cream plain and smooth while I'm all for texture and extra add-ins, particularly when it involves chocolate and/or nuts!  Whatever you prefer, hope you are cooling down with a sweet scoop every now and then this summer!  

Cinnamon rolls, 2.0

I've been in a yeast-dough making mood lately and one of the most rewarding yeast-doughs to make has to be cinnamon rolls!  It's hard to believe but we hardly ever ate them until I made my first batch about 3 years ago.  Since then, it's become a family favorite. My husband requests it all the time and I'm happy to oblige when I have the time.  A fresh batch of cinnamon rolls straight from the oven on a weekend morning is one of the ultimate treats, and we should treat ourselves!

For the last 3 years, I've been making the small-batch recipe I originally adapted from Oh Ladycake's vegan version.  They produce the softest, most squishy, delicate little cinnamon rolls!  I've taken that base dough recipe and made versions from peanut butter to Nutella, chestnut cream to almond paste (mainly with chocolate thrown in). They're all heavenly but there's just been one problem...the recipe makes 4 small rolls and each time we have them, they seem to vanish more and more quickly, and we sit there wishing I'd doubled the recipe somehow.  Sometimes, you're just not in the mood for portion control!

So I toyed with the idea of making a larger batch - finding a recipe that would make slightly bigger, heartier rolls but would still be soft and pillowy like the small-batch version.  I've been reluctant to mess with a great thing but I finally tried it.  So now we have my cinnamon rolls, version 2.0!  It makes 9, more-substantially sized, cinnamon rolls that are soft and tender.

I think the key is nailing down the dough itself.  Once you have that, you can customize the filling beyond the basic cinnamon-sugar combination.  So I went back to Oh Ladycakes and found her coconut oil cinnamon rolls, which appeared to be the larger batch version I was looking for.  Again, I "de-veganized" it.  With no disrespect to coconut oil lovers, I swapped over to butter as well as regular milk over the coconut oil and almond milk in the original recipe.  

And the dough...well, it has a far heftier amount of yeast and the proportions make for taller, sturdier individual rolls.  Not over doing it with the flour, the rolls are soft and tender, with a nice chew.  They are slightly less fragile and squishy than the small-batch version but quite comparable.  I was very happy with the process of making them and the result.  It was so good to see all these gloriously puffed up cinnamon rolls come out of the oven and stand tall on their plates!

Playing around with this inaugural batch of my cinnamon rolls, 2.0, I realized I was a little too stingy with the filling.  More on that later...but I filled them with a mix of granulated and brown sugar, finely chopped chocolate, and cinnamon.  My family and I love a little chocolate in our cinnamon roll filling!  It was delicious and would be even better with just a bit more of the good stuff inside.  We made up for it with a generous coating of vanilla glaze.  Next time, I'll correct the filling situation and have fun with our other favorite fillings.  There's always an excuse to make another batch of cinnamon rolls!  

Chocolate and almond paste babka

Is it odd to try to make something that you've never actually eaten before?  I know I find myself doing that sometimes, as in the case of this babka.

I'd say I barely knew what a babka was (my husband is the Seinfeld fan in the family so I didn't even have that reference) until a year or so ago when it seemed to pop up everywhere.  Serious Eats called it a "babka renaissance" and rightly so because you started seeing these loaves of twisted bread, often swirled generously with chocolate, seemingly everywhere.  

That was all well and good but I can't say I was much drawn to making or eating babka until very recently when I saw a recipe for a marzipan & chocolate babka from Sweet Paul.  Right away, I thought about my almond buns - a spin off of another recipe from Sweet Paul where I add grated almond paste and chocolate as a filling to the small-batch cinnamon roll dough I use (it's delicious!).  So my brain immediately went to a babka filled with grated almond paste and chocolate.  I prefer swapping almond paste for the sweeter marzipan.  There is just something about a recipe using almond paste that gets me running into the kitchen!  Even in July, approaching a busy holiday weekend...

So I experimented and thought I'd give this babka idea a try.  I started by learning a bit more about what a babka was and how it was supposed to taste and be.  Babka translates into "little grandmother" and is an Eastern European yeast bread-cake that's similar to brioche.  The bread is somewhat dense, itself slightly dry, that's often paired with a moist chocolate spread filling (though there are ones with other fillings like cinnamon, nuts, and fruit...plus now we have almond paste!).  The mix of sweet eggy bread with a chocolate filling is its very appeal.

My imprecise/untraditional loaf is a blend and adaptation of two recipes: Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe for making babka dough via Smitten Kitchen and the filling inspiration from Sweet Paul. The Sweet Paul recipe was almost too simple and I felt I needed to follow more precise instructions. What resulted was a sweet bread that was dense yet light, slightly dry yet moist. The almond paste adds extra chew and a great almond flavor and fragrance, which I love; my only regret was maybe not using a bit more of it!  

I think 3 oz. of dark chocolate is a fairly modest amount for the filling, and you could use more if you want to be more indulgent.  You often see far more intense chocolate swirls in a babka loaf.  They are also often brushed with a sugar syrup or topped with streusel.  I like that, at home, I can practice some relative restraint, and this was flavorful and moist enough for us.  When it comes to the chocolate, using a deep, flavorful one you enjoy (Scharffen Berger 62% in my case) will give you more mileage. 

It was fun making this babka!  Aside from needing to plan ahead and set time aside for an overnight rest, the yeast dough was surprisingly easy to handle and the steps were not difficult to tackle at all.  My family and I enjoyed having "babka for breakfast" and I still have a few slices tucked away in the freezer to enjoy another day.  All in all, it was a very rewarding baking experience.