Homemade Soft Pretzel Bites

Have I told you that I like pretzels? I know I’ve mentioned potato chips before. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, which is home to lots of potato chip and pretzel companies. So I’m a little bit of a connoisseur of snack foods, if there is such a thing.

While I don’t eat them as often, I am also a big fan of soft pretzels. With the doughy inside and the crunchy outside, what’s not to love, right? How much do I like soft pretzels? On a trip to Germany twenty years ago, I managed to score a real German pretzel. And by real, I mean gigantic. And by gigantic, I mean bigger than my head. That’s not an exaggeration. I have the photo. I don’t remember what tasted it like or how long it took me to eat it, but I’m sure the answers are “delicious” and “not that long considering the size”.

Mixing the dough.

In all of my baking adventures, baking pretzels is one that I had been wanting to do, but hadn’t gotten to yet. My wife even got me a pretzel making kit a while back which included a recipe and some ingredients. One of those ingredients is lye, which is why the kit also includes plastic gloves. I won’t lie, the lye scares me a little bit which is why I haven’t used it yet.

Ready to rise.

While I was wanting to make pretzels, I wasn’t intending to at this point. I actually found the recipe by accident as I was looking through my to do list. I was looking at a particular cookie recipe, and on the side of the page there was a picture for this other recipe which caught my eye. It looked awesome. Pretzel-y goodness, check. Adorable mini size, check. Easy looking recipe, check.

It has risen!

So I decided to make this recipe. And in particular, I decided to make it for my gaming group. One of my other hobbies, besides baking, is role-playing games. You know, games like Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a lot of fun. It involves imagination, creativity, teamwork, math, laughter, dice-rolling, and ridiculousness. And usually lots of snack foods. This particular group has been playing together for many years, but hasn’t met in a while. So this was a reunion of sorts, and I wanted to make something for it.

Splitting the dough.

It turns out making pretzels isn’t difficult, but there is a bit of labor involved. There are many steps. Briefly summarized, it’s making the dough, letting it rise, separating and rolling it out, boiling it, salting it, and baking it. Each step was pretty easy, but it does take an investment of time.

Rolling out the dough.

My good friend KitchenAid helped me make the dough. (We’re not Facebook friends or anything, but we are friends IRL.) This was actually my first time using the dough hook. Fun! (Whirl, whirl, whoosh, whoosh!) As you may know, I’m a big fan of the KitchenAid, and I use it a lot. I just hadn’t had the need for the dough hook yet. I’m glad I did though, as I’ve used the other attachments, and I didn’t want this one to get too lonely.

Cutting the dough into bite-sized pieces.

After making the dough, you let it rise. After an hour, it didn’t look like it had doubled as it should have. So I moved it to a warmer area and let it sit for another 20 minutes or so. While it didn’t look it, in the end it was enough.

Close-up!

I split the dough into 8 chunks (weighing them out to be sure they were even), rolled them all out, and cut them. It was fun! I rolled them out to the suggested 22 inches, but they contracted. The first few I cut, I measured them carefully by using the measurements on the pastry mat, but after that I just eyeballed them.

After being boiled, getting the butter wash, and being salted, they’re ready to bake.

I didn’t have a good roasting pan to use, so I used a pot to boil them. Adding the baking soda to the water is fun! It’s like a little chemistry set in the kitchen. 🙂 As I was boiling all the pretzels, the water started to turn brown. Pretzel color in fact. I started referring to it as pretzel water, and eventually pretzel juice. I jokingly asked my wife if she wanted to drink any. She humored me, but politely declined. (I think that was the smart choice.)

Pretzels!

After boiling the pretzels, the recipe calls using for an egg wash, and then sprinkling salt on them. Instead of an egg wash, I used my soon-to-be-world-famous butter wash. I’ve used it in the past, and it’s done the trick quite nicely. I just melted a tablespoon of butter and mixed with some water.

They looked and smelled delicious while they were baking. I baked them for 15 minutes and they were perfect. The smell in particular reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. And then my wife nailed it: Auntie Anne’s pretzels. It’s a chain of pretzel shops, and I used to eat their pretzels a bunch back in the day. I’m not sure what it was about these pretzels that reminded me of those pretzels in particular, but it was a strong connection.

In any case, these pretzels were absolutely delicious. The look, smell, taste, and texture are exactly what you want from a soft pretzel. Crunchy, chewy, yummy goodness. I had one fresh from the oven, and I had some later with some deli mustard. Yum all around.

Since the gaming festivities were the next day, I had to figure out how to store them overnight. After some research, I settled on wrapping them in parchment paper, and storing them in a paper bag. I stapled the bag shut overnight. I had to wait till the next day to see how they survived, to see how they reheated, and how people liked them.

It turned out that the paper bag worked relatively well for storing them. After much research, I had settled on reheating them by microwaving them with a damp paper towel on top. However, when I actually took them out to reheat, they seemed to have retained much of the moisture, so I microwaved them without a paper towel.

People were impressed that I had made them, but I don’t think they were as good as they were fresh. Later on, I figured out that I hadn’t microwaved them enough. One minute in the microwave, uncovered, on a plate seemed to be the magic formula. They came out close to fresh at that point.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my wife here for all of her help. Thanks for oiling the bowl while my hands were knee-deep in yeasty dough. And thanks for all of your help with the cleaning, there was a lot.

The recipe ended up making about 7 dozen pretzel bites. They were a little bit of work, but they were totally worth it. They were fun to make, very yummy, and IMHO, they were very impressive. They looked fancy, cute, and professional. Like real pretzel bites. I kinda can’t believe I just made pretzels.

Sealed up in a paper bag overnight. BTW, Russ & Daughters is an awesome shop. If you’re ever in NYC, definitely check it out.

Have you made pretzel bites? Have you made pretzels? What’s your recipe look like? How do you keep them fresh? How do you reheat them? Why are soft pretzels such magical foods and why do they not last so long? These questions and more will soon be answered, with your help!

Recipe courtesy of Two Peas & Their Pod.

Chocolate Pie Sticks

Who likes pie? I’ll just assume all your hands went up. Who thinks tiny versions of bigger things are fun and adorable? I’ll just assume the same thing again. One more question: who likes chocolate? I know, three for three, right? Well, have I got a treat for you. This week’s post is about an adorable recipe called chocolate pie sticks. In case you’re wondering what it is, it’s probably exactly what you think it is.

I wish I could take credit for coming up with such an incredibly simple and awesome idea, but alas, I cannot. I will take credit for being inspired to make them, however. The impetus for making these was a visit from a co-worker. I work in the NYC office of a company, and the company’s other big office is in Los Angeles. My boss and his counterpart in the LA office came up with the idea of an exchange program so that everyone could learn how the other office works. This visit was part of that plan.

Since he was coming all that way, I thought it would be nice to make something in his honor. You know, welcome him to the other side of the country. Also, we have these weekly conference calls with both offices, and the NYC team is always boasting about my baked goods. So I thought it would be nice to let him share in that.

The recipe was originally designed to use up scraps of dough leftover from making a pie. However, I didn’t have any pie scraps sitting around, so I made a batch of pie dough from scratch. This recipe came with its own pie dough recipe, in case you needed it, but I decided to go with my standby pie dough recipe from smitten kitchen.

The dough was quick and easy to make, as usual. I followed the recipe as is, except I used half butter and half shortening in order to use up some shortening I had left. Also, I only let it sit in the fridge for about 15 minutes to chill, instead of the hour recommended. (I was making these at night, and I didn’t want it to be too late of a night.)

With the cream wash and sprinkled with sugar.

I rolled out the dough. I kinda measured it. (In retrospect, I could’ve just used the ruler on the pastry mat as a guide.) I cut the dough and lined up the resulting dough strips. It was fun to put together. To make assembly easier, I got little ramekins to hold the different ingredients in: water, chocolate chips, sugar, cream. Once I had the chocolate chips all lined up in a row, the adorable factor was off the charts.

The first batch, fresh from the oven.

I had a little problem with sealing the chocolate inside the two layers of dough to make the pie sticks. I’m not sure what the issue was. Possible reasons I could think of were: not chilling the dough long enough, the composition of the dough (that is, using shortening), and not working quickly enough. The second round was easier than the first, because I went back and re-applied water to the top layer in order to stick the layers together better.

The second batch, fresh from the oven.

Then I pierced them with a fork. I applied a wash on top, but I used a cream wash instead of the egg wash called for in the original recipe. (The car wash was not available.) Then I sprinkled sugar on top. (A spoonful of sugar helps the chocolate go down?) The pie sticks were hard to move. So after the first couple were a little bit of a mess, I waited to move the rest until after sealing them.

Again, I’m not sure which reason (see above, or maybe that they were too big), but it took forever to bake them. The original recipe called for 12-15 minutes. I kept doing it in 2 minute increments after that, so as not to overcook them. I lost track on the first batch, but I think it was 23 minutes. The second batch I baked a little longer, maybe 25 minutes. The second batch seemed like it was cooked better.

I got 18 individual strips which made 9 pie sticks from the first batch, and 18 strips from the second batch, so 9 more. Plus 2 extra not well-formed pieces which made one more, for a total of 19 pie sticks.

They looked nice. They weren’t as pretty as the pictures from the original recipe, but they were pretty good. The second batch was better looking than the first, I think from having let them bake longer to get that nice golden brown color. I let them cool. I tried one, the “extra” one from the second batch. It was very good. It was like a portable chocolate pie you could eat with your hands. They were simple to make, but tasty.

I brought them into work. Everyone loved them. The coworker I specifically made them for really enjoyed them. So much so, that he came back for seconds. A couple of people asked for the recipe. One person even commented that they were like something you would get in a bakery. I work with such nice people. 🙂

So if you’re looking for a way to use up leftover pie dough, this is a great recipe to have in your toolkit. And even if you’re not, it’s worth making some pie dough just for the occasion. But what about you? Do you have any great recipes for using up pie dough? Any creative ideas for miniaturized versions of bigger desserts? The world wants to know!

Recipe courtesy of Domestic Fits.

Pie dough recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen.

Mini Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich Cookies – Contest Finale!

So if you’ve been following along with the story of the cookie contest, this is the last installment. The stunning conclusion. The end of the saga. As you’ll recall, I had tried out a few different recipes. Then I made a whole huge heap of cookies. Now, it was the contest itself.

We pick up our story on the morning of the contest. The cookies were all made and packed up, the accoutrements were all ready to go. It was a lot less to carry than last time. I’m glad the cookies were small. The venue was nearby, so with items in hand, we walked over.

The contest was the 2015 Brooklyn Cookie Takedown. It was held at Royal Palms, a relatively new shuffleboard place in Brooklyn. Yes, shuffleboard. It’s hip now. The place is nice and bright. It never felt crowded, even with lots of people. The event was from 12-2pm. We got there to setup at 11:30. I decided to setup at a table off to the side, because I didn’t want to be right at the beginning. We made small cookies, and I wanted people to realize that the small cookies were a good idea, so I wanted them to have a bunch before they got to mine.

My wife and I setup and took some pictures. Fun detail: when we got to the table to setup, besides the table number, a tray for holding the cookies, and some plastic gloves to keep it sanitary, there was also some swag. We got a cookie scoop and a spatula. Cookie competition swag! (They had sponsors for the event.) I manned the table while my wife checked out the competition and picked up some of their cookies. I made friends with the other contestants sitting near us. And then I went and looked at the competition. The competition looked good. There were some serious contenders.

Swag!

Then the people came in. We went through about 225 of the 275 cookies. Some of those were for the other competitors, some were people having more than one (they really liked them), some were the host making plates for the staff who worked there (they were all very happy), and some were for the judges. But I’ll guess there were close to 200 people.

Table Number.

People came in waves. They were very happy to see and get the cookies. They were appreciative that mine were small. They were excited by the mint. A few people took more than one at once, and some people who were sharing a plate of cookies with a friend ended up taking one for each of them instead of one total.

The judges were very nice. There were three. Two came around at the beginning, and one came around later. They asked lots of interesting questions about what they were, how they were made, etc. They really liked them. Lots of the public and the other bakers really liked them, too. There were really positive comments from everyone.

It was a positive vibe in general. All the other bakers were really cool and nice and friendly. All the public were really nice too. It was a really great atmosphere. And the host, well, he was just ridiculous and funny and great.

It went by really fast. Since people came in waves and the place was big and airy, it never felt like a lot of people. But there were a lot. We went through a lot of cookies. I walked around to the other competitors towards the end, after things had quieted down. I brought cookies around and traded more with all the other bakers. It was fun, and it was nice to meet everyone.

So how it worked was as follows: all the people who came (around 200 or so) voted for their favorite cookie. And based on that, there were three winners, the people’s choice. The judges also judged (that’s what they do), and there were three other winners based on that. There were a couple of honorable mentions for the judges, and there was a tie on the third place people’s choice. The prizes were lots of different kitcheny things donated by sponsors.

The competitors lined up, introduced ourselves, and then waited for the announcement of the winners.

I didn’t get to taste all of the competition’s cookies while I was there. I don’t really have a sweet tooth, and my stomach is only so big, so there was only so much I could get to. But I tasted a few and they were generally really good. I brought the rest home.

Some of the competition.

So how did I do? After all that preparation and work, and this long saga I brought you along on? Unfortunately, I didn’t win anything. 😦 In the back of my mind I was hoping I might, but I didn’t necessarily expect to. There was a lot of tough competition. I got very good feedback from the public, from the other bakers, and from the judges. I’m happy with what I did, what we did. (I couldn’t have done it without my dear wife. So thank you again, hon!)

There was a big range in the size of the cookies. Compare mine to one of the competitors.

It was a good experience, and I would happily do it again. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s totally worth it. Some of it is subjective, so I don’t take it too personally that I didn’t win. I do think that I made good cookies, but so did some other people. And I think I have room to improve. So if I enter again next year, I’ll really have to work at it.

After giving out lots of cookies, this was all we had left at the end.

Oh, and as far as the name: I ended up going with chocolate peppermint sandwich cookies. It’s not fancy or cute, but it’s descriptive. Since I was going to have to explain what they were anyway, it was just easier not to give them another name. An interesting side note: one of the possible names that came out of our brainstorming session was “Marcie”. It was my wife’s idea. Marcie is Peppermint Patty’s friend in the Peanuts comic strip. It’s a cute name. She jokingly mentioned it to someone, and somehow that name stuck. So if you look on the list of the competitors, it’s called “Marcy Mint Sandwich”.

Thanks for following along. Next time we’ll be back to our regular recipes. (You know, as regular as they get.) In the meantime, I’d love to hear: have you ever entered a baking competition? How did it go? Share your glory in the comments below!

Mini Peppermint Oreos – Contest Edition

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s hoping that you and yours had a fun time celebrating. Here at Needs Baked headquarters, we kept it pretty low-key. I did do some baking which I’ll share when I catch up to it.

In the meantime, let’s pick up where we left off. As you may recall, I had entered a cookie contest and decided to make mini peppermint Oreos. That last post was the test batch where I decided to make them and did the final experimentation to make sure they would work.

The next step was to make the mountain of cookies I needed for the contest. They said I needed about 200 cookies. Yup, 200. I was making cookie sandwiches, so that meant twice as many. The test batch had made just under 100 cookie sandwiches (200 cookies), so I figured I needed three batches. Two would almost be enough, but three would definitely be enough and would allow room in case some broke or didn’t look right or whatever.

I went through the ingredient list and figured out how much I needed of everything, subtracting what I already had on hand. I went to get the ingredients on the Friday night before. (The contest was on a Sunday). I had to get soft mint candies at the drug store. This store only had a big tub of them. It was more than I needed, but ended up being cheaper than the individual packages, and I figured I could always find a use for the rest of them later. I figured I would get the rest of the ingredients at Trader Joe’s, but they were out of unsalted butter and cocoa powder. I got everything else there, but went to my favorite little neighborhood shop for the rest.

I decided I would do one batch of cookies Friday night and the other two Saturday afternoon. This would then be followed by making the filling and then filling them all. I made one batch pretty quickly and easily. It’s an easy recipe, and I’ve done it a few times at this point, so it was very quick. (There are not a lot of pictures of this because I wanted to do it quickly, plus it wouldn’t have looked any different than the last post.)

I used a rounded 1/4 teaspoon for the cookies, baked 3 minutes, then rotated and baked 3 more minutes. I fit 30 cookies on the bigger trays and 25 on the smaller one. I made the cookies, put them on the tray, and flattened them. My wife helped by doing much of the rest (putting them in the oven, taking them out, etc.). She was a tremendous help again, and it made things go so much quicker. (Thanks hon!) We were all done with this batch in about 2 hours.

I figured we would get about 200 cookies (100 cookie sandwiches) out of this first batch. We got 266 cookies! That’s 133 sandwiches, which meant if we could do that again, we would only need 2 batches.

I tasted a couple to see how they were. They were excellent. There were just a handful that looked a little small/overcooked or otherwise unacceptable. Mostly they looked amazing. Some were bigger and some were smaller due to the vagaries of sizing. I was doing my best to keep them the same size, but I was also trying to do them quickly so that once one sheet was done, the next one could go in. (We had three trays working in rotation.) They looked like a lot all lined up, but they didn’t take up much space once we put them in containers (to store them overnight).

We made the second batch the next day, and it was 284 cookies for 142 sandwiches. Add that to the 133 from the first batch and we ended up with 275. The target number was 200, so that was plenty. It took a little over 2 hours for the first batch and a little under 2 hours for the second. We got better at it. We also added a fourth tray to the rotation, which helped.

Since we didn’t need to do a third batch, we didn’t end up needing all of the ingredients I got. I guess that just leaves more for next time. 🙂 While cleaning up, my wife also ground up the soft mint candies. I figured we only needed 25 per batch, as 30 was too much the previous time.

I made the filling. It was a better consistency because of using fewer candies, and it still had a great peppermint taste. We made the cookie sandwiches like last time. Again, I had to go back afterwards and put more filling into the ones we had done first because they didn’t get enough filling. There was some filling leftover like the test round. (I think because adding in all the candies added some volume.)

I took a few pictures then finished packing them up. My wife got the decorations together. Because it worked well, we used the same table wrap she had put together last year. She also had the idea to use a Lazy Susan to serve the cookies on, so we grabbed that as well. (It turns out Susan’s not lazy at all. I don’t know where she got that reputation.) I grabbed my mini business cards (which I had printed up for last year’s competition). After they were packed up, the cookies took up much less space than the cookies did last year.

I didn’t print out any signs for the cookies this time because I didn’t think we needed them. (Everyone asks you what they are anyway.) Plus, we were still trying to decide what the name should be: minties, peppermint crisps, mint buttons, etc.

All the cookies packed up and ready to go. (Picture courtesy of my lovely wife.)

So with all the cookies made and packed up, and all the other accoutrements collected, we were all done. We were all ready for the next day’s competition. Thank you again to my wife. (You were a huge help, and I couldn’t have done it without you!)

This adventure now nears its completion. Tune in next week for the stunning conclusion! And in the meantime, feel free to comment below and guess how I did. (No cheating if you already know!)

Original Oreo recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen.

Peppermint flavoring courtesy of The Kitchn.

Mini Peppermint Oreos

If you’ve been following along, you know that I was trying to figure out a recipe for a cookie competition that I entered. I made the peppermint cream squares. And then the homemade Oreos. I decided to make the Oreos and then take the peppermint from the squares and mix it into the Oreo filling. And I needed to test it out to make sure it would work.

Besides combining the two recipes, I also needed to try shrinking the cookies down. Why, you might ask? Smaller is better for the competition because people eat so many cookies they can’t really eat anything that big. Also making them smaller means it’s easier to make more of them.

1/2 tsp size.

1/2 tsp size smooshed. (You’re supposed to smoosh them before baking.)

I made a full batch of the cookie batter. I could have made less to test, but I needed to use one egg for the batter anyway, so I decided to just make the whole batch. I did the full amount of sugar for the cookies.

1/4 tsp size.

The original ones were made with a rounded teaspoon of dough. I tried doing a rounded 1/2 teaspoon. I baked them for 6 minutes (3 before rotating). Those were nice but still too big. I then did a rounded 1/4 teaspoon, also for a total of 6 minutes. Those turned out to be the right size. I tasted one and they seemed to be cooked the right amount. I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but they were the most adorable little cookies you’ve ever seen.

1/2 tsp size baked.

1/2 tsp size close-up.

I decided to use Silpats (silicone baking sheets) when baking these. We had gotten some as wedding gifts but hadn’t managed to use them yet. (Long term readers may sense a pattern here.) We only had so much parchment paper and didn’t want to go through it all. The only problem was we only have two cookie sheets that our Silpats really fit on, so we ended up using parchment paper on a third one just so we could have more going at the same time.

1/4 tsp size baked.

I say we because my wife helped tremendously with this recipe. She helped with spooning out the cookies, taking some pictures, unwrapping and processing the soft peppermint candies, and all kinds of other things. I might still be working on them if she hadn’t helped. Thank you, thank you, thank you dear!

Here you can see the difference in size between the two. I went with the smaller size in the end.

I made the Oreo filling as per the recipe. I compared the fat and sugar content of the cream/filling of the two recipes and it looked equal. So I figured I could just drop the soft mint candies into the regular Oreo filling. I used the same amount as in the peppermint cream squares recipe (30).

Filling!

Since my wife had already unwrapped and ground up the mints, after I made the filling, I mixed the resultant peppermint candy powder into the filling. I also added a teaspoon of peppermint extract, as I had done with the squares. It was a little dry and crumbly so I mixed it more until the consistency got back to where it should have been (or at least close).

Peppermint candy powder!

The cookies had cooled pretty quickly. So once the filling was ready, we started filling them. I filled and my wife sandwiched. In the face of so much adorable mini cookie-ness, I came up with a little game. I said that each of the cookies had a friend and that we needed to find each cookie’s friend to make the other part of the sandwich. At first I wasn’t sure how much filling to use, so I was a little spartan. I ended up going back at the end to add more to those, but there was still a bunch of filling left over. (My guess is adding in all the candy powder added a lot of volume.)

Peppermint filling!

The consistency of the filling was not quite as good as it was with the original Oreo recipe. The  candy powder made it not as creamy. Maybe I shouldn’t have used as much of the candy powder. Maybe I needed to make sure the candies were more ground up. Maybe I needed to mix it in a little bit more. Or maybe there’s no way to do it without altering the consistency and that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

So many cookies to fill!

We made close to 100 mini sandwich cookies. (A few less because we ate some cookies while testing, some were bigger than the size we ultimately went with, etc.) But it makes sense. The original recipe makes 25, and we used 1/4 of the dough for each. For the competition, I’ll need 200 or so. I will need to make at least a double recipe, maybe triple, just in case.

We tried some that night. Not only were they were the cutest little sandwich cookies you’ve ever seen, they were also delicious! They had a nice minty chocolate mix. The mint was good but not overpowering. The candy powder gave the filling a nice pink color. Yum, yum, yum!

Because “mini peppermint Oreos” isn’t the greatest name, I wanted to come up with a better name for them. My wife and I brainstormed that a bit. Some names we came up with: minties, mini minties, mini chocolate oblivion, Santa sandwiches. Nothing really stuck, so more work to do there.

My wife and I each brought some in to work the next day, and people really liked them. People said things such as, “Oh yeah, I’ll need to grab two of these.” Also, I had been talking to someone about all the recipes I was trying out for the contest, and I said I was thinking of making these, and she said, “Oh yeah, definitely make these.” Our company holiday party was that night, and apparently word had spread about the cookies because I was asked about them at the party. So that’s a good sign. My wife had similarly good reactions at work.

Sandwich cookie sitting on a teaspoon for size comparison.

So, I would call this a successful test. I finally had my recipe for the competition. The next step was to gather the amount of ingredients I would need and make the actual cookies. Stay tuned, as this saga nears its completion! But in the meantime, let me know: do you have any favorite recipes that are combinations of other recipes? Drop a line below!

Original Oreo recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen.

Peppermint flavoring courtesy of The Kitchn.

Cinnamon Sugar Mini Donut Muffins

This is part four and, sadly, the end of this cycle of The Buttermilk Chronicles. If you’ve been following along, there have been 3 different biscuit recipes so far. There was the first one (blue cheese and scallion), the second one (gluten-free feta and scallion), and the third one which was straight up buttermilky goodness. I promised you it wouldn’t be all biscuits, though, and today I am keeping my promise. These are silly and delicious little desserts, and they’re very easy to make. They look like a muffin and taste kinda like a donut. The cinnamon and sugar also give them a nice little crunchy texture.

A few things you should know (about this recipe at least, I can’t speak for your life in general): I used applesauce instead of an egg. I didn’t have any eggs, and I didn’t want to get them just for this recipe, as that might have started a cycle of The Egg Chronicles. (The silver lining would be that it would answer the age old question: which came first the buttermilk or the egg.) I finished up the last of the buttermilk. Kudos to me! Seriously, it took a lot of dedication. I’m not saying I’m ready for a marathon, but I was able to see this through. And I used 1 1/2 tsps cinnamon in the topping. (I almost ran out.)

This was my first time using my new mini muffin tray. (It’s actually called “petite”, which is slightly bigger than mini. Who knew?) I didn’t have floured cooking spray, so I used regular cooking spray and threw some flour on top. It was a little messy. Shocking, I know.

I used my trusty KitchenAid with the paddle attachment. I can’t remember if I’ve used the paddle attachment before. I use the whisk attachment by default generally. In retrospect, I think some recipes might have asked for the paddle attachment, but I haven’t been paying attention. Oops. Generally applesauce is a good egg substitute. But I could tell after beating it that it wasn’t light and fluffy like it would have been with an egg.

I filled up the muffin tray. They came up mostly to the top for all 24 in the pan. I tried baking them for 9 minutes, but they didn’t seem ready. I tried the other 2 minutes, but they still didn’t seem ready. I did an extra 2 and they were ready. They smelled nice and cinnamony. (That’s a word, right?) They didn’t rise as much as I thought they should have. I think that was partially because the applesauce didn’t do the same job as the egg. Plus, the tins are a little bigger than mini tins, so they had more space to fill.

I then made the coating which was easy enough.

I flipped the tray over to release the muffins. A few fell out, but not all. I tapped it a few times and many more came out. (Mostly right side up! I guess they’re like cats in that way.) The last few didn’t come out on their own. I had to cut around the edges (with a plastic knife of course) to loosen them and remove them. I could see on the bottom of a few of them that the flour residue had baked. So there was probably too much flour in those.

Butter, the first part of the topping.

Cinnamon sugar, the second part of the topping.

Dipping them in butter and cinnamon sugar was easy enough, although they seemed kinda small to handle. I almost ran out of topping. The last couple didn’t get quite as much.

I made them late at night. And so I had to do cleanup late at night. I might bake more if I didn’t have to do any cleanup. Often I don’t have to, as my wife is awesome and does cleanup much of the time. But she was already asleep, and having to do it tonight reminded me that I don’t like doing it so much.

And for the $64,000 question: how did they taste? I thought they were good, but not amazing. I can think of four things I did different than the recipe: the tin was a different size (petite vs mini), the cooking spray was different (regular plus flour instead of floured spray), I used applesauce instead of an egg, and I baked them a little longer. Of all those, I think it was the applesauce substituting for the egg that caused the problem. They were still good, they were just not light and fluffy and muffiny. (That’s a word, too, right?) They reminded me a little of the apple snickerdoodle blondies. They had a similar flavor, and I had made the same substitution there. And in both cases they were a little bit more spongy than fluffy.

As I said, I thought they were decent, but not awesome. In the interest of full disclosure, my wife disagreed with me. She thought they were great. And when she took them into work, her coworkers agreed with her. I’m very glad people enjoyed them. I think my only hesitation with them is that I believe that they can be so much more. Perhaps next time I will try them without any substitutions and see how they turn out.

So thank you for following along with this cycle of The Buttermilk Chronicles. There may be more in the future, for wherever there is Buttermilk, The Chronicles are not far behind. But next week we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming. (As much as any programming on here is regular. 🙂 ) But in the meantime, I’m curious to know: do you have a good egg substitute? Is it applesauce? Is it something else? I always love having more tools in my toolbox, so I appreciate any help you can give.

Recipe courtesy of Averie Cooks.

Mini Mint Chocolate Pies

This recipe is a case of “What do I do with an extra pie crust?” Let me let you in on my thought process. You see, I had a pie crust leftover from making the crust for the last pie. I wanted to make something with it, and I wanted to make something fun. I also remembered that I had all that peppermint extract left from making these, so why don’t I do something with that?

So then I was thinking. What does mint go with? Chocolate. Mint chocolate sounded good. And while pies are always fun, smaller is probably more fun. The hand pies I made were great. So I thought I would try something like that again.

So with that in mind, I tried to figure out how to make this thing I had just imagined. I had to find a chocolate pie recipe that involved baking the chocolate filling, as opposed to just baking the crust and letting the filling chill, because I was aiming to do hand pies, and the filling would have to bake inside. I figured that I would find a pie recipe, and then modify it to do hand pies.

Ingredients for the mint chocolate filling.

I found one, and put it together. I measured out the ingredients before hand. I used semi sweet chocolate chunks instead of chips or a bar, as they had called for. I didn’t do a double boiler, I just melted them on very low heat, watching and stirring constantly. I took that off the heat. I put together the eggs and such and mixed for 5 minutes. Then I poured the chocolate in and stirred by hand (instead of the other way around like they mentioned, because the bowl that the eggs and such were in was bigger).

I added a teaspoon of peppermint extract. I came up with that amount through careful research: comparing recipes with similar volumes of ingredients, reading comments of people talking about using peppermint extract, etc. A teaspoon seemed reasonable. I tasted before and after adding, and it seemed right. It was not super peppermint-y, but I wanted to err on the side of caution.

Filling!

Then I had to take care of the dough. I took the dough out of the fridge, cleaned off a space on the counter, and floured the heck out of it. I rolled out the dough, flouring, turning, flipping, flouring all the way. After learning from smitten kitchen, I basically knew how to do it.

So you might realize from the title of the post that I didn’t end up doing hand pies. I was originally going to, but the filling wasn’t super solid, and I was worried about it not holding together right. I decided at the last-minute to do mini pies in muffin tins instead. Now I had to find out how big to make them. The research I did pointed me to 4 inch circles.

My makeshift dough cutter.

I didn’t (and still don’t) have the proper tools to cut a 4 inch circle. So I did some digging around in the kitchen, and after some trial and error, I found something suitable to substitute. The top of a jar used for storing dry goods was a little over 3 1/2 inches so I figured it was close enough. It worked well enough to cut out circles, and I cut out a bunch. I got 22 circles out of the dough. Since they were supposed to be a little bigger, I re-rolled them a bit to stretch them.

Circles of dough, soon to become mini pie crusts.

I roughly followed some instructions I found for making mini pies. I put muffin cups into the muffin tins and sprayed them with cooking spray. I pressed the circles of dough into them, trying to have a little bit sticking over the top as suggested. They were a little uneven, because I didn’t really roll them evenly. It was a little hard to stick them in and press them in, but I did.

Mini pie crusts, the first batch.

Then I grabbed the filling and started filling them. I wasn’t sure how much to fill them. I figured 2/3 of the way or so, 1 or 2 tablespoons, depending on how heaping they were, and how big the piece of dough was. I had to tilt the muffin tin, scoop up the filling, wait for a bunch to drip off and then quickly pour it in. Until I figured that out, I had a lot of filling that was dripping over the side.

The first batch at the beginning. (Apologies for the blurry picture.)

I wasn’t sure of the timing, so I split the difference between the two recipes (the one for the pie and the one for the mini pies) and put them in the oven for 20 minutes at 325°F. A few minutes later I realized that I missed getting a picture of them filled, so I pulled them out, took a quick pic, and then put them back in. After 20 minutes, they didn’t seem quite done. They were supposed to be cracked, and they weren’t, but they had really poofed up. I realized at that point that I could have filled them much less.

The first batch, fresh from the oven!

I cooked them for another 5 minutes and they seemed like they had started to crack. I took them out and set them to cool on a wire rack. When trying to get them out of the muffin tins, having the “dough handles” helped on those that had them and a little fork helped with the rest. I waited a few minutes before putting the next batch in so that the muffin tins could cool a little. I let the pies cool in the dining room, because I had run out of space in the kitchen, as I hadn’t cleaned up yet.

The humble beginnings of the second batch. Note the amount of filling.

Before I put together the second batch, I also cleaned out the tins of the flour, dough, chocolate, and grease left from the first batch. I didn’t have quite enough filling, so I really scraped as much out of the bowl as I could. (My mom would be proud.) So the second batch was a little skimpy on the filling, but not too bad. I ended up cooking them 22 minutes for this batch. They puffed up nicely, so while they ended up a little less filled, in the end the filling was not much lower than the top of the crust. (The filling in the first batch went way over.)

The second batch, fresh from the oven!

My wife cleaned up all the mess I had made before I got to. (Thanks, hon!) I set the second batch out to cool with the first. Because I ran out of filling, I ended up only using 18 of the 22. (Of course I saved the other 4 for something else. Again, my mom would be proud.)

I left them out to cool for a while. Then I totally forgot about them and the next step which was to put them in the fridge. By that point the poofiness had subsided a little bit. I put them in the fridge for a little while until they chilled.

And now the important question: how did they taste? I was kinda impressed with myself. They were not the best things I ever created, but they were pretty darn good. I’m happy that I was able to mush a few ideas together and come up with something new.

The mint was just about right. I definitely tasted it, but it wasn’t too much. It went well with the chocolate. And the crust? It was complementary. (Not complimentary, although that would have been awesome, too.) Nice and flaky, but not too rich or overpowering so it let the filling shine. (I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, it’s a good solid recipe.) All in all it was a good package. Good, good, good.

This one had a little air bubble in the crust. It was still yummy.

I also have some comments from others on how it was. Those comments included: “delicious”, “amazing”, “crust nice and flaky, not too buttery”, “nice hint of mint”, and “best mint chocolate pie I’ve had”.

So there you have it. That’s the story of the mini mint chocolate pies. Since it’s a bit of a frankenstein recipe, I’ll spell out the details below. But I’d love to hear from you. Do you have any favorite recipes that you’ve made from bits and pieces of other recipes? How did they turn out for you? Do you have a favorite pairing with mint that isn’t chocolate? I’d love to hear any other fun ideas you have.

The final recipe is something I put together, but it was built from pieces of other recipes. Crust recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen. Chocolate filling lightly adapted from scoochmaroo’s recipe on Instructables. Mini pie info and inspiration courtesy of Gimme Some Oven on Tablespoon.

Ingredients:

1 pie crust (any crust will do, but I use this one because it’s easy, amazing, and never fails)

6 ounces semisweet chocolate chunks (any other shape of chocolate will also work)

1/2 cup butter

3 eggs

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp peppermint extract (or more)

Instructions:

Make/prepare the crust.

If you don’t have a pie crust already made, now is the time to make it. Follow the instructions here for a great crust, or make your favorite. Roll out the dough and cut it into 4 inch circles. (If you cut them a little smaller, just roll them out a little bit.)

Make the filling.

Melt the chocolate and the butter together. I carefully melted them in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. The chocolate can burn easily, so if you want to be more careful (or less adventurous) you can also use a double-boiler.

In a medium or large-sized bowl, combine eggs, salt, and sugar. (In my experience, your bowl can almost never be too big.) Mix with a mixer for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is nice and fluffy.

Pour the chocolate mixture into the bowl with the egg mixture and stir until combined.

Add the peppermint extract and stir it in. The recipe as is makes it slightly minty. If you want it to be mintier, you can add more. (Peppermint extract is strong, so I would caution against throwing caution to the wind.)

Preheat the oven to 325 °F. Line muffin tins with muffin cups and spray them with cooking spray. Put one circle of dough into each muffin cup. Arrange them so that a little bit of dough hangs over the edge, and press them in.

Fill each mini pie with filling about halfway.

Bake at 325°F until the filling starts to crack, about 20-25 minutes. Remove from tins (using dough handles if necessary) and cool on wire rack. Once cool, chill in fridge. Once chilled, remove and enjoy!

Mini Sweet Potato Cheesecakes

I know you’ve been waiting on the edge of your keyboard to find out what happened with all of the leftover filling from the sweet potato cheesecake I made.

As you may remember, the recipe made a lot of filling. I had two 16 ounce yogurt containers worth left over. That was the difference between a 9 inch cake pan which I used, and a 10 inch springform pan which the recipe called for. I have since gotten a springform pan and I realize the difference. It’s huge. The springform pan is about twice as tall, and in this case a little wider.

The “crust”.

With so much leftover, I had to figure out what to do with it all. I looked around for ideas and I settled on this one. It’s actually remarkably simple. Put liners in a muffin tin, put a vanilla wafer on the bottom for the crust, fill it with filling and bake. Voilà! Instant mini sweet potato cheesecakes. I’d love to take the credit for coming up with such an awesome idea, but I can’t. I got the idea from here. I used baking instructions from here.

Filled up and ready to bake.

I used Trader Joe’s Ultimate Vanilla Wafers. I put a couple of spoonfuls of filling for each cheesecake. At that size, each container had enough filling for a dozen mini cheesecakes. So that made 2 dozen total. I baked them for 20 minutes at 325°. I let them cool on a cooling rack then chilled them in the fridge.

Fresh from the oven.

Even though I made 24 total, keen-eyed readers will notice there are only 22 in the picture. (Bonus points for you!) My wife and I taste tested them before I got to take the picture, and they went into the fridge. They were yummy, they just needed to chill.

How many cheesecakes can you spot?

I feel a little bit like I cheated in making these. I could have gotten more graham crackers, crushed them, and made more crust, but it was late. I had worked all day, and then picked up supplies for the cookie competition. I wanted to use up the filling before it went bad, so I didn’t want to wait any longer to make them. And as my wife mentioned, I did make the filling. And I did assemble them. It just seemed too easy, which I guess it was after I put in all the work of making the filling in the first place.

Check out that texture. You can also see the “crust” peeking out at the bottom.

They were just as delicious the second time around, and they made everyone (including a bunch of people at work) very happy. I thought it was a pretty easy way to use up the extra filling. But I’d also love to hear your ideas. What would you make in this situation? What kinds of “day after” recipes have you come up with? Let me know!

Original cheesecake recipe courtesy of Chef Keith Snow, Harvest Eating, via Mambo Sprouts. Mini cheesecake recipe idea from this discussion on Chow. Baking instructions courtesy of this recipe at AllRecipes.

Salted Caramel Apple Hand Pie

As you may remember from last week’s post, I made a delicious Salted Caramel Apple Pie. There were a lot of leftover ingredients. Not leftover pie, rather leftover ingredients. I just couldn’t fit any more into the pie dish. Whenever you make a pie, there’s normally leftover dough, but this time there was leftover apple filling and caramel, too. Rather than let all the leftover ingredients go to waste, I was determined to do something with them.

I think it was my wife who mentioned the idea of hand pies. So I did some research. I found some hand pie recipes, and I read through them so I could get a general idea of how to make them, how long to bake them, etc.

Seven hand pies waiting to be made.

Eventually I found one that I could use. I followed the instructions for the dough, even though that dough was different than the dough I had leftover. I used a cup to cut out circles. I rolled out the dough over and over, reusing scraps. I ended up with enough to make 14 circles, which meant 7 hand pies.

I followed the instructions for the hand pies. I put my apple filling in the middle, but where they used caramel candies and salt, I used my salted caramel sauce. Some of the early ones had too much liquid, so I tried to be careful when doing later ones. Also, my apples were long and thin, so they were a little harder to fit inside.

Filling!

(Baker’s Note: After using up the rest of the apple mixture for this recipe, I still had some caramel sauce leftover, so I feel I might have shortchanged the original pie. (Sorry birthday girl!) There just wasn’t any more room for it in the pie. I also still had a tiny bit of dough left, but not enough to do anything with.)

I continued following their instructions. I put the second piece on top and used a fork to crimp. Some dough circles were different than others, due to how I rolled them, floured them, etc. Some were thinner or thicker, some stiffer or more pliable. Some ended up kinda being in layers from not being rolled well enough. Plus, between the big apple pieces and liquid, and lots of caramel, some of them didn’t close up properly. Which means some had liquid/caramel oozing out, some had apples poking at the edge, some had stiff dough that didn’t crimp well. It wasn’t perfect, but I did my best. (And it’s not entirely unexpected when you frankenstein a couple of recipes together.)

Topped!

Then I transferred them to a plate. I removed the original wax paper and put down new wax paper, because by this point, the first sheet of wax paper was a mess. (What with all the oozing and such.) They still oozed a bit at the end, but I think this helped some. I used an egg wash. I used a fork to spread it on top, and I wiped down any excess egg or filling that oozed out.

I started with baking them on the shorter side (about 12 minutes), just in case the original recipe worked differently than my version did. I checked them at that point, and it seemed like they should go the whole 15 minutes, so I did that. They came out looking great, smelling great, and oozing a lot. (Yes, there was lots of oozing the whole time through.) It was like a yummy looking, delicious smelling, big ol’ heapin’ mess. I let them cool. The recipe said to wait 10 minutes before eating. These would have to wait a bit longer, until after dinner.

Crimped, with egg wash.

They were very simple and easy to make. It took maybe a little over an hour from start to finish including baking time. (Well I guess they were simple and easy at that point, after all the work I had already put in on making the original pie.)

Some of the filling oozed out (yes, more oozing), and as it cooled, it turned into this caramel-y, slightly apple-y, slightly mushy stuff. So, kinda like a caramel halo or tail coming off the hand pies.

Fresh out of the oven. Note the halos.

And lest you think I forgot the most important part: they were delicious. They tasted a lot like the apple pie did. (I know, shocking.) But they were more compact, and had a higher dough to filling ratio. It’s possible I liked them better. Maybe because I like dough a lot? Maybe because they were ones I had more recently? Don’t worry, I wouldn’t turn either of them away.

So go ahead and try these yourselves. I would never suggest making the original pie recipe and then using the leftovers to make these. Or maybe I would? Or maybe you want to try out the recipe as is, and let me know? Or maybe you want to tell me about other interesting recipe mash-ups you’ve done? I’d love to know!

Extreme hand pie close-up.

Recipe adapted from Just A Taste.*

*When I say adapted, I mean used for inspiration and some of the instructions. Details on original pie recipe which provided the leftovers, can be found here and here. Also, I used this recipe for research.