Cocoa Powder Taste Test

I hope you were waiting on the edges of your seats after the last post. Will she follow through with the cocoa powder taste test? Who will win? Fret not, friends! The answers you seek are here!

I settled on brownies as the best vehicle for the taste test. After all, what are they but little squares of chewy chocolate? At least, that’s the kind I made– chewy brownies, using the easiest one-bowl recipe in my collection. It’s no nonsense, gives you delicious results, and is ideal when you have three batches of brownies to make.

The contenders in this competition were Penzey’s natural cocoa powder, Trader Joe’s cocoa powder, and the supermarket standby, Hershey’s cocoa powder.

Blueberry Pie

This past weekend, I got to thinking about cocoa powder. Why do I buy the best eggs but then resort to using Hershey’s? Is a more expensive cocoa powder a better cocoa powder? So I did some research and discovered that the main difference is the fat content, and a higher fat content means a richer cocoa. So I ordered some Penzey’s 24% butterfat natural cocoa powder. Then I continued to read and found that some people swear by the $1.99 canister of cocoa powder sold at Trader Joe’s.

Ahem. Okay, I realize this post is titled “blueberry pie,” and no, I didn’t put cocoa powder in my pie. But I did, because I am a crazy person, immediately drive to Trader Joe’s to buy the aforementioned cocoa powder, where they were selling humongous 2 pound boxes of blueberries that just had to be made into pie.

Strawberry Muffins

We recently took a very long road trip from Chicago, IL to Portland, OR. That’s about 2,200 miles one way. That’s a lot of time to get to know your driving buddy (if you think you know everything about someone, take a road trip together. You don’t really know someone until you know what they’re like trying to sleep in the backseat of a Hyundai Accent at a rest stop at 3:46 a.m. in Lincoln, Nebraska).

Anyway, once we finally made it to Oregon, I saw something I wasn’t expecting– an abundance of orchards. Apples and pears and cherries and peaches! Cute little roadside stands selling the freshest fruit. But did we stop? Did I eat any of these fresh apples, pears, cherries, peaches? Nope. We were on our way to hike in the dang mountains! No time to spare! Mount Hood, there we were!

I regretted not stopping (the only regret apart from the Hyundai Accent, in fact), so I spent a lot of time lingering in the produce section of the grocery store once we got back to Chicago. And somehow ended up with strawberries. A lot of strawberries.

Lemon Cupcakes with Blueberry Frosting

I’m a big fan of chocolate, but I think more often than not, I end up eating it as a conduit for whatever’s in the chocolate– caramel, or toffee, or nuts, or fruit. I’d eat a plain Hershey’s bar if it was in front of me, no questions asked, but it would never be my first choice.

The same goes for baked goods. While I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a chocolate cake (never in a thousand years!), I much prefer fruity or nutty baked goods. Banana bread? Yes, please. Blueberry muffins? I could eat a dozen in one sitting. Cranberry pumpkin bread, orange muffins, lemon bars, cherry tarts and apple pie! That’s the stuff my dreams are (sometimes quite literally) made of. So, after a making a few chocolatey baked goods in the past couple weeks, something fruity was on the docket. Something to the tune of lemony blueberry goodness.

Double Chocolate Whoopie Pies

Yesterday, we celebrated my boss’s tenth anniversary with the company. As I do for all occasions, I knew I had to bake something (I love when my coworkers have birthdays… great excuse to break out the flour!). For this particular occasion, chocolate had to be the main ingredient. Not only do all of my colleagues approve, it’s also my boss’s favorite. Well, that, and frosting. And while we’ve joked in the past about me just bringing in a tub of frosting, I’m not sure it would go over well in the workplace (I can see us all now, buttercream all over our faces. It’s not pretty). I’ve brought in a lot of cupcakes and cake in the past, so I wanted to try something new. Why not whoopie pies?

If you’re not familiar with whoopie pies, as I wasn’t until a few months ago, they’re like those new Oreos they sell now, the “cakesters.” Behold, a finished whoopie pie:

Glazed Cinnamon Rolls

I love cinnamon rolls. The way they smell, how they look, and how to eat them (start on the outside, work your way to the gooey center– don’t tell me there’s more than one way to eat a cinnamon roll!).  But when you live as close as I do to Ann Sather, there’s hardly ever any reason to make them yourself. But what if it’s, say, 5:30 on a Wednesday afternoon? And Ann Sather closes at 4? I had no choice, people!
But having never made cinnamon rolls before, I needed to rely pretty heavily on the recipe. After reading some reviews, I decided to try Paula Deen’s cinnamon rolls, which you can see in its original form here: Paula Deen’s Cinnamon Rolls. I thought some of the measurements seemed a little big, and I’d be proven correct, but what the heck.

So, I dissolved my yeast:

Baked Chocolate Donuts with Chocolate Glaze

I bought myself a new toy yesterday. Behold!

This is my nifty new donut baking pan. I know, I know, Alton Brown would shake his head at an item of such limited use, but I couldn’t help myself. It was so shiny and new and it called to me from the Sur la Table shelves (or maybe I went to Sur la Table with this purchase in mind– details!).