homemade gift idea: dark chocolate truffles

I cannot believe I have shelled out several dollars for specialty truffles after seeing how simple they are to make. Those of you who were following our homemade gift extravaganza this past weekend saw that we whipped up a spice rub, a curried lentil soup mix and a lemon-sugar scrub in between birthday parties, chess, paddle tennis and normal weekend revelry. What I didn't mention, was that at the 11th hour (or 4:00pm, if you go to bed at 7:00pm...) my older son and I also made a batch of homemade truffles. My husband rolled his eyes, since the kitchen had just been put back in order, and really did we need to make another homemade gift?! Yes, we did. Because my younger son wanted to give one of his teachers something chocolate, and the kids are giving each adult something homemade this year, and (trust me) I knew my husband and father-in-law would love these, assuming they turned out.

The recipe looked too simple. Really, just 4 ingredients? Yup. And whatever you plan to roll them in.

Homemade Dark Chocolate Truffles

(makes about 60 truffles, depending upon what size you roll them)

1 stick of butter (8T)
2 cups of heavy cream
2 lbs chocolate* (in chunks, chips or chopped)
1 Tablespoon vanilla*
topping of your choice (crushed nuts, cocoa powder, candy cane dust, etc...)

In a double boiler, bring the butter and cream to a fast simmer. Add chocolate and vanilla and stir until chocolate is melted and smooth. Chill until firm. Once chilled, scoop and roll into balls, then roll into coating of your choice. (Our truffles were about 3/4 inch in diameter. We rolled half of them in cocoa powder and half of them in candy canes we had pulverized in the Cuisinart, until they were simply pink powder.) Store truffles in fridge until ready to enjoy.

* If you can, splurge on high quality chocolate and vanilla for this project. It really will make a difference in the end product. My favorite brands are Dagoba and Guittard (which can sometimes be a little bit harder to find) or Ghiradelli 60% which is readily available in most supermarkets.

Note: this is not for the faint, or those who like things neat and tidy. Handling the chilled chocolate in this project is really messy! I did not argue when my younger son opted out after rolling one truffle, his hands then covered in chocolate... full disclosure: I was sort of thankful because I wasn't that excited to see chocolate hand prints in any other part of the house... 

We packaged this little balls of homemade decadence in mini muffin cups inside these small window boxes, lined with parchment paper.

orange-cardamom cookies

I am one of those people who tears recipes out of magazines and let's this enormous pile amass on my desk. Then, a few times a year I go through the pile and I neatly file the recipes into these (totally type-A) binders in my home office...and then I usually forget to go look at the binders, until the next time I am busy filing a stack of recipes. This recipe, however, stuck in my mind and I did go dig it out of the office last night. With cooking I just wing it, and come up with my own recipes. Those of you who bake know you can't wing it. This probably explains why I don't call myself a baker any other time except Christmas...Anyway, I made these last night and they are amazing. Think dense shortbread-like cookie with the flowery, Indian taste of cardamom alongside the zest of orange. Not too sweet. Perfect with a cup of tea. An adult cookie.

Here are the caveats:

• This recipe is a lot more work than I usually like to spend on a recipe (unless it's my go-to gingerbread or a batch of traditional sugar cookie cut-outs around Christmas). If you're looking for a quick cookie, skip this one.
• I love the taste of cardamom, but give the spice a sniff before you make a double batch to make sure you like it too!
• These cookies aren't going to elicit a lot of oohs and ahhs on a cookie exchange table...they're simple: round and white, flecked with a bit of orange zest and a drizzle of royal icing if you add that. That said, they pack a lot of interesting flavor into their demure appearance.

Assuming you are undeterred by my caveats, let's go! I'm reprinting the Gourmet recipe here + giving you a few pictures of the recipe in action, so you have everything in one place:

Orange-Cardamom Cookies

(makes 2 dozen cookies)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

zest of 2 large oranges

1 1/2 teaspoons cardamom (ground)

1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar (I used Turbinado)

1 egg yolk

2 Tablespoons heavy cream

parchment paper

Royal Icing (optional):

1 cup powdered sugar

1 Tablespoon powdered egg whites

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4-1/2 cup warm water

To make the dough:

Mix flour, orange zest, cardamom and salt. Beat butter, sugar, yolk and cream with a hand-mixer until well blended and fluffy. At low-speed, mix in the flour until dough forms. It will be very granular. Split the dough into four portions and wrap them in parchment or plastic wrap and store in fridge until firm (about 2 hours).

To bake the cookies:

Preheat oven to 350. Roll out 1 piece of dough, in between 2 pieces of parchment paper until it's about 1/8 inch thick. (You must do it this way. I tried to simply roll the dough on a floured surface and it did not work!! The dough broke apart in a crumbly mess.) Cut dough into circles, using a cookie cutter, and transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet, 1 inch apart. The original recipe says you can only re-roll the scraps once...but I am not much of a baker (or spatial planner apparently), so I definitely did it several more times until all of the dough was cut... Bake for 9-12 minutes, until edges are golden. Cool on baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

If you choose to drizzle with royal icing:

Combine the powdered sugar, egg white powder, vanilla and warm water until desired consistency (should be like thick glue, malleable to drizzle with a spoon or spatula but not runny). Drizzle across cooled cookies. Let icing harden before storing cookies in an airtight container, or freezing a batch.

I did not read that the dough was supposed to be pressed into a disk shape before chilling it in the fridge. I made these balls of dough and wrapped each one in parchment paper...but rolling it out would have certainly been easier if I'd made them disks instead! (P.S. That's a double batch of dough you're seeing here.)

So, when it came time to roll, I had to press down on each one to get it into that disk shape before grabbing the rolling pin...

Rolling each ball of dough out first time was tough...

but eventually each ball of dough became a nice, even disk ready to be cut.

While the cookies tasted amazing: not too sweet, full of flavor...they looked a little too plain for a Christmas cookie...

so I did drizzle each one with a bit of royal icing. And that little additional bit of sweetness made them perfect.

eggnog bread pudding

I saw this eggnog bread pudding recipe last week and knew I had to give it a try. I happened to have a ginormous panettone on my kitchen counter. One of those impulse purchases, where I knew I wanted a panettone...but somehow I neglected to notice the size of the thing. So anyway, I come across this recipe that promises to turn half of my (huge) sweet bread into an equally decadent dessert-- or in our case, brunch-- and I knew it was fate. OK, fine, I don't need to get all dramatic about it. But seriously, you must try this recipe. Not only because it is so, so easy, but because it's Christmas-y and special and soooo good.

Eggnog Bread Pudding

based on this recipe from Cooking with Trader Joe's

(makes a 9x13" dish of decadence)

750g loaf of panettone*

6 eggs

1 quart of eggnog (4 cups)

1-2 Tablespoons of vanilla

zest of an orange, optional

cooking spray or butter

Preheat your oven to 350. Butter your baking dish, or lightly coat with cooking spray. Cut the panettone into roughly 1" cubes and place the bread in the baking dish. In a mixing bowl, combine the eggs, eggnog, vanilla and orange zest (if you are adding it) and mix until well blended. Pour evenly over bread. Let this sit and continue to soak while the oven is warming up. The original recipe has you making a water bath and baking the bread pudding for about 1 hour. You can go that route, or you can skip the water bath (as I did) and bake it (normally) on the middle oven rack, uncovered for the first 45 minutes. Then, I covered mine with foil because the top was starting to brown quite a bit, and I continued to cook it for another 45 minutes. You'll know it's done when a butter knife inserted in the center comes out clean. As you all know, my ovens are dying a slow death, so you can assume that the whole cook time is somewhere around 1 hour...but it could be as long as 1.5 hours, depending upon how pesky your oven is. (Plan ahead if you're having guests!!)

Speaking of planning ahead, this dish can be made in advance either fully baked (and then warmed in the oven, covered loosely with foil) or you can pour the egg mixture over the top and pop it into the fridge, and bake it the next day if you want to wow your family/friends/house guests with an absolutely amazing smelling kitchen. That said, if it's going straight from the fridge into the oven, count on it taking more like 1.5 hours to bake.

Here are action photos for those who like to see the step by step:







*A little side note: panettone is studded with dried fruit and has quite a distinctive taste. I thought that was what made this bread pudding special...I loved the plump raisins and bits of orange rind in the finished product. But, if you think your family would prefer it with plain bread, you can make the recipe I posted above with about 5 cups of French bread, also cut into 1" chunks.

another homemade gift idea: pumpkin bread

Yesterday's post about the Pumpkin Cannelloni with Sage Cream Sauce inspired a bunch of emails from friends who said they liked the idea of making something for their teachers/friends/neighbors, but wanted a less time-consuming idea. Here's another good one: Jane's Pumpkin Bread. Depending upon when you want to deliver it, it freezes well. So, maybe it would be a perfect recipe to make together this weekend, before launching into your Thanksgiving recipes!

homemade apple pies

With the bounty of apples from our picking adventure, we made 4 apple pies. I'd never made an apple pie before. Crisps? Plenty. But we winged it on the apple pie front and they came out fabulous. Here is our recipe:

Homemade Apple Pies
(makes four 8" pies)

store bought pie crusts (yes, you read that right)
1 dozen large apples (or more if your apples are smaller), cut into chunks
apple cider
raw honey
agave
maple syrup
cinnamon
nutmeg
allspice

This was not a perfect science, so I've listed the ingredients that went into our pies, but you should tinker with the amounts to get to a taste you like...

Preheat the oven to 425. In a large pot, combine the apples and cider. You want enough liquid so that the apples are simmering in it...but not so much that the filling will be soupy. For a dozen large apples, I eventually added about 2 cups of fresh cider. Start with 1 cup and add more as the liquid boils off. You want to start the apples and cider at a boil, then lower heat so it is at a fast simmer. Add your favorite sweetener (we added a combination of raw honey, agave and maple syrup) and a few hearty shakes of each spice, to get to the taste of your ideal apple pie filling. Stir the apples a few time, just to combine everything and make sure they are cooking evenly, during the 10-12 minutes it takes for the apples to soften some. Ideally, you'll end up with about 1/2 cup of liquid remaining in the filling.

Line pie plates with crust. Fill with warm pie filling. Top with crust (lattice or a full top crust with a small hole cut in the center to let steam escape). Bake for about 30 minutes, or until crust is golden.

banana-chocolate chip-chia seed muffins

I woke up early last week to bake mini banana-chocolate chip-chia seed muffins for a class coffee at my children's school. Seeing a sign-up sheet for paper goods, flowers, set-up or baked goods, I'm a sucker for the most laborious of the bunch. This is a little problem I've got. And so, that morning I found myself baking. It's not that I particularly like baking, in fact I'm not much of a baker. But there's this (achem, self-perpetuated) assumption that since I can cook, I should. And so, I arrived with a tray of tender little muffins. And they were good, well worth the early morning baking session. But, I give myself a little pat on the back for quickly nabbing a beer offering on the sign-up for the next parent gathering...

Banana-Chocolate Chip-Chia Seed Muffins (or loaves) From Scratch
(makes 12 muffins, 24 mini muffins or one 8" loaf)

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
5 1/2 T unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup Turbinado sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chia seeds

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan or line a muffin tin with paper cups. Whisk flour, baking soda and baking powder together in a small bowl. In a second bowl, beat the sugar and butter together with a hand mixer until creamy. Add the flour mixture until blended then beat in eggs, banana, chocolate chips and chia seeds. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake: 45-55 minutes for a loaf; about 18 minutes for regular-sized muffins; or about 12 minutes for mini muffins. Check to make the muffins or bread are done by inserting a wooden toothpick in the center, making sure it comes out clean.

Now you've got my go-to recipe for banana bread and/or muffins. But then I realized I hadn't gotten a photo of the muffins before bringing them to school. So, I baked a second batch this weekend (the loaves pictured above), this time using my tried and true TJ's banana bread mix + a fresh banana in each loaf. Just as good (I think) and a tad bit easier to throw together:

Banana-Chocolate Chip-Chia Seed Muffins (or loaves) With the Help of a Mix
(makes 12 muffins, 24 mini muffins or one 8" loaf)

1 package of Trader Joe's Banana Bread Mix (nut-free)
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water
1 banana, mashed (optional)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chia seeds

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan or line a muffin tin with paper cups. Combine mix, eggs, oil, water, mashed banana (if adding), chocolate chips and chia seeds in a large mixing bowl and beat with hand mixer until blended. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake: 45-55 minutes for a loaf; about 18 minutes for regular-sized muffins; or about 12 minutes for mini muffins. Check to make the muffins or bread are done by inserting a wooden toothpick in the center, making sure it comes out clean.

Chia seeds are one of the "hip" ingredients you hear about a lot these days. I experimented with them this summer, whipping up a raw chia pudding which 3 out of the 4 of us liked. It wasn't pretty to look at (unless you like grey, gloppy things), but it tasted good and almost had the texture of tapioca. When chia seeds are soaked they become gelatinous in texture, hence the reason you can make "pudding" from them simply by adding nut or soy milk, some sweetener and a splash of vanilla and letting it sit for a few hours. Pretty neat. I'm happy to post that recipe too, if your package of chia seeds doesn't already have it there for the asking. As for the chia seeds, I find mine at our local Whole Foods. They are gluten free, if that is important to you, and according to the Foods Alive package, "chia seeds were used as a staple food alongside corn and beans by the ancient Aztec , Incans and Mayans. Known as the running food, they would eat this high energy endurance food mixed with water...chia seeds have a mildly nutty flavor...omega-3 essential fatty acids, calcium, protein, anti-oxidants and dietary fiber are just a few of the vitamins and minerals this little seed packs for a nutritional punch...." Of course adding them to banana-chocolate chip muffins doesn't transform the muffin from treat to superfood...it just makes the treat have a little more texture and interesting nutritional boost!

homemade granola bars

This has been a whirlwind summer. It's been social and fun, but between too many snack bar lunches and end of the day drinks with friends, my hard-earned journey to health has taken a nose dive. And so, before we embark on the second half of our summer adventures, I am making a concerted effort to at least keep healthful, delicious foods around the house. My kids will (thankfully) eat most anything I put on the plate, so really it's up to me to make healthful choices. In addition to reminding myself of my own little prep ahead mantra, I made a batch of these granola bars to have on hand as a quick afternoon snack before running out to play. They are energy packed, so easy, and satiate our cravings for a sweet treat.

Ruth's Granola Bars

(recipe by Ruth Fehr of The Palette Fund - from the Food Solutions event at Urban Zen in May) makes 14-16 large bars*

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup sliced raw almonds

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1 cup dried raisins, cranberries or cherries

3/4 cup agave

1/4 cup neutral oil (expeller pressed canola or safflower)

3/4 cup almond butter or peanut butter

1 cup brown rice puff cereal

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Combine oats, almonds and coconut. Pour onto rimmed baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes. As soon as this comes out of the oven, add your dried fruit and mix well, placing the mixture into a large bowl. Place the agave, oil and nut butter into a small pot, stir to mix and bring just to a boil. Pour warm mixture over the granola. Mix well. Add the puffed rice and mix well, until the granola is coated. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with parchment and press the granola mixture onto it. Press firmly until an even layer covers the baking sheet. Cover with another piece of parchment paper and place in fridge until cool. Cut into 2x4 rectangles or 2x2 squares and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

* I cut the bars much smaller (2"x2"), as they're really sweet, and yielded about 40 bars. Here's the recipe in photos for those who like a visual the first time they're whipping something up!

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Combine oats, almonds and coconut.

Pour onto rimmed baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes.

While the oat mixture was baking I placed the agave, oil and nut butter into a small pot, stirring to mix and brought it just to a boil.

As soon as this comes out of the oven, add your dried fruit and mix well, placing the mixture into a large bowl.

Once the nut butter mixture was combined and just about to boil, I poured the warm mixture over the granola.

Mix well.

Then, add the puffed rice cereal, and mix well once again, until the granola is coated.

Cover a rimmed baking sheet with parchment and press the granola mixture onto it.

Press firmly until an even layer covers the baking sheet.

Cover with another piece of parchment paper and place in fridge until cool.

Cut into 2x4 rectangles or 2x2 squares and store in an airtight container in the fridge.