Checkerboard Chocolate Chip Cookies

So I was browsing the web the other day, learning about making checkerboard cakes, and in the process came across a video on how to make checkerboard cookies. The recipe was a pretty simple sugar/butter type cookie dough. While this recipe may have worked well for molding/building the checkerboard, it didn't seem particularly appealing. This got me thinking... how about chocolate chip cookies? More specifically, chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cookies with white chips. Two delicious recipes that would contrast well. The checkerboard procedure I saw made a cookie with a 4 by 3 grid, which I didn't care much for... I wanted something more symmetrical, so I decided to work out a way to get a 3 by 3 grid. Here's how it all worked out...

I started out by making a batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies, and a batch of Chocolate Cookies with White Chips. The dough was then placed between sheets of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and pressed into a 1/2" thick rectangular slab. They should be the same size or at least close to the same size. At this point the dough is too soft for holding its shape, so these slabs were refrigerated overnight. You could probably get by with an hour or two. The important thing is that the dough stiffens up so it can maintain its shape and thickness.

Once the dough has been chilled, slice the smallest rectangle into three strips of equal width. Then slice 3 strips from the other slab of the same width. Any extra dough can be set aside to make some non-checkerboard cookies.

Next, stack up the strips so you have one stack of light-dark-light, and another stack of dark-light-dark. Press them together so each layer sticks together. These will provide your alternating checkerboard pattern.

Now we start slicing off strips from the long edge of each "dough sandwich". Each strip should be as wide as the thickness of your original slabs. In my case this was about 1/2 inch. With all of the cold, hard chocolate chips in the dough, it was difficult to cut with a regular knife. I found that an electric knife worked well to cut through all the chips and give a consistent straight cut. For each "cookie log" you'll need a slice of one "sandwich" and two slices of the other.

Press your three strips together to form a checkerboard cookie "log". Note: your next "log" should be opposite of this one, so you don't use up one color pattern faster than the other. In the end I had one extra strip that ended up becoming "striped" cookies.

You can now start slicing off your checkerboard cookies from the cookie dough "log" at about 1/2 inch thickness. A regular knife seemed to work best at this stage. Whenever you're not slicing off cookies, place the checkerboard dough back in the refrigerator so it doesn't get too warm and soft.

Place on your ungreased cookie sheet, and bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes, until the edges start to brown. Once removed from the oven, leave them on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes or so to finish baking while the next batch is in the oven.

Enjoy your cookies!

Wheel Cake!

Growing up in a family of artists has instilled a creative drive in me that cannot be ignored. I enjoy opportunities to be creative and make things, and baking is no exception. Growing up it was always fun to have my mom's creative cakes at our birthday parties, and now that I'm a parent I want to do the same for our children. Besides, it gives me a chance to be creative and have more fun than I would have going to buy a cake at the store.

For our son's first birthday party we had to feed 12 adults and 9 kids, so we would need a big cake, or maybe two, and one small cake for the birthday boy would be fun. At one year old, there's not necessarily much that a baby is "in to," but I can say for sure he likes spinning things. Mostly the wheels on his toys. So why not cake(s) shaped like wheels? Seems simple enough. Not quite as complex as his Baptism Cake, but that's OK by me. I'll save more complex designs for the future.

I made two boxes of cake mix, but divided up the batter evenly by weight so I could make three round cakes. Our only round pan had angled sides, so I used a springform pan instead, which worked very well. Bake-Even strips made a big difference too, keeping the cakes fairly level, and not too rounded on top. The cakes are much easier to work with, cut & sculpt, and frost when they've been frozen. So I made my three cakes ahead of time, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and froze them overnight.

Why three cakes? Two would be the base of each wheel. The third would have the center removed, which would become the birthday boy's personal cake. The remaining "donut" shape would be cut in half, and placed on the first two cakes as the raised shape of the tire. The picture at the right shows this in better detail.

Decorating was fairly straightforward. I used white frosting from the store and used black coloring to make different shades of gray. The base cake got a coating of light gray which would separate the layers and give color to the "hubcap" area. The outside of the cake got a dark gray frosting, and at my wife's suggestion I added some blue to the hubcap for a splash of color. A Monochromatic gray cake wouldn't be as fun, right?



With the help of a ziploc bag and cake decorating tip I put lettering on the cakes and we were done! I would have enjoyed adding more details, but my time and energy were limited, as being a parent can sometimes do to you. Still, it was fun and I think it turned out well.

Everyone thought the cake was wheelie good.

Ciabatta Bread

Once in awhile I come across something that catches my interest, particularly because it's something new I can try & learn. Lately it's homemade bread.

In my blog reading, I came across this "one minute Bread" posting over at Lifehack.org. The recipe seemed simple enough, so I took it a step further and looked into some more authentic recipes at allrecipes.com to see if they were any different. While true ciabatta bread seems to be a very lengthy process, I found one of the most popular recipes on the site was also quite simple. You can see the Allrecipes.com Ciabatta Bread recipe here.

Since this recipe calls for a bread machine, I took what I had learned elsewhere online and in the AllRecipes comments, and did without the machine. I also invested $1.25 in a water spray bottle which helps (more on that later). After a few loaves, here is what I ended up with:

1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon rosemary
3 1/4 cups bread flour (I used all-purpose flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast
Seasoning for topping the bread (rosemary/basil/oregano)

- Mix all ingredients in a bowl except the flour and mix well
- Add the flour and mix with a spoon until it turns into a stiff, sticky ball of dough
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 2-3 hours at room temperature or higher until it doubles in size (see photo at right)
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F
- Transfer the dough to a baking stone or heavily floured pan. The dough is very sticky, so using a spoon or spatula will do you more good than your hands. Shape the dough to the desired shape, usually a longer wide loaf
- Let the dough rise at least 45 minutes after putting it on the stone/pan. I didn't have a good way to cover it, so I misted it with water to prevent it from drying out while on the stone.
- Top the bread with any seasoning you like. I usually sprinkled on some more rosemary and some basil.
- Place into a 425 degree oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown. For the first 15 minutes, spray the bread with water every few minutes. This keeps the outside soft enough to allow it to expand more in the oven, and supposedly gives you a better crispier crust.
- Allow bread to cool, and you'll have a delicious soft bread... that was relatively simple to make!

I personally like it warm with butter.

Kitchen Creative: My First Fondant Cake

This past Sunday was our son's baptism, and we needed a cake. Being that I enjoy opportunities to be creative, and enjoy making fancy deserts, I wanted to make & decorate the cake. Years ago, I worked for a joint franchise of Subway and TCBY. When we added the TCBY counter, I wanted to learn a bit about cake decorating since we would be selling custom cakes. He paid for me to take classes at Michael's, which was fun. So... this was a chance to try it again.

As I researched and thought of ideas, I started to read up on Fondant, and found lots of how-to videos online with tips on technique. Fondant is basically a cake frosting with a dough-like consistency. It's typically rolled out flat, and then draped over a cake to give it a smooth texture, and is often used on high-end "3D" sculpted cakes. I found a recipe on AllRecipes.com that seemed simple, so I decided I would give it a try.

I decided to make a two-layer 9 by 13 cake (although in hindsight one layer would have sufficed). I cut some cake off of the top layer and used it to sculpt a small turtle, like the ones his nursery is decorated with. I then used canned frosting to stick everything together, and frosted the outside so the fondant would stick.

I made up a batch of about 3 lbs of fondant. This particular recipe seemed a bit greasy to me due to the use of shortening and corn syrup, so if I try this again I might try another recipe. I did add more powdered sugar to try to compensate though. The hardest part was doing the base of the cake, but perhaps if I had the proper supplies it would have been easier. Rolling out a sheet of fondant big enough to cover a 2-layer 9x13 cake and then transferring it to the cake was tough. A smaller round cake would have been easier to manage, but I was able to do it without too many tears or cracks.

I took the fondant that wasn't used on the cake and colored it with some food coloring gel to make blue and brown for the turtle. This worked rather well. I rolled out small sheets and draped them over the turtle and trimmed off the excess. I like how it turned out.

The final piece was lettering. I had plenty of blue fondant left over, so I rolled out a sheet and used a pizza cutter and knife to cut out lettering for the cake. It was very time consuming but it turned out well. To make sure they stayed in place I used some fondant thinned out with water as a kind of glue. The final result was put out on Sunday and everyone was impressed. Best of all it tasted good. I enjoyed a piece of turtle shell myself :-)