In celebration of Meagan’s birthday…
Vanilla Caramel Fudge Cupcakes from Sugar Bliss. Yum. It’s their flavor of the week, get there before this Sunday to enjoy! Next week’s flavor? Mint Chocolate Chip. Now you know!
Happy Birthday Meagan! All the best this year. You’re the most wunderest True Blood/sometimes-gym buddy a girl can ask for.
XOXO
The past week’s activities… a lazy combo of eating Girl Scout cookies and watching all the Olympic coverage one can without having cable. No, I don’t have cable. I live without the Food Network, Discovery Channel & Lifetime. It’s a sad existence.
Less sad with the Olympics and Girl Scout cookies. I figure if Olympians can eat McDonalds and drink Coca Cola (I’ve seen the commercials), I can have a few dozen thin mints. It almost makes up for the fact that I cannot watch Golden Girls reruns.
Almost. Now it’s time to put down the thin mints/samoas/dulce de leche cookies. I want you to make these delicious Rolo Cookies instead. They take a bit of time to roll, but it’s way worth it. Your friends will love them. And you for baking them. Baking love. That’s way better than cable…
the Rolo Cookies
Adapted from allrecipes.com. Makes 2-3 dozen cookies.
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup white sugar, plus more for rolling
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
36 Rolo candies, frozen
Cream butter and both white and brown sugars. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, and baking powder. Gradually add to butter mixture.
Cover and chill in fridge for 30 minutes. Watch some downhill skiing. Preheat your oven to 375° F.
Remove from fridge, let sit for a couple minutes while you prepare your baking sheets with parchment paper. Now here comes the fun part…
Take 1-2 tablespoons of dough and flatten in the palm of your hand. Press one frozen Rolo into your palm, and roll the dough around the candy, covering it completely. Add a bit more dough if needed. This will be messy. Your hands will look gross but taste delicious. Venture on. Roll cookies in white sugar (this gives them a great texture) and place on your baking sheet. Keep the cookies a couple inches apart.
Bake for 8 minutes. Let cool on the sheets for 5-10 minutes–if you can wait that long. The cookies will break if you try to remove when the centers are still soft, but of course they taste AWESOME still melty out of the oven. Just be careful, the caramel centers will be hot, hot, hot.
A few notes: You can use other candies for the centers… Reisens, Reeses… whatever you prefer. Freezing the Rolos seems to prevent the cookies from “leaking” through the cookie while baking. Play around with the chilling time, I have had the best luck with the dough temperature being just a bit cooler than room temp. You can also “powder” your hands with cocoa when rolling, this helps with sticky dough.
The problem with wanting to start this little food blog is having to write a first entry. I couldn’t decide what deliciousness it would be about. And I worried what people reading it would think. Then I realized that “people” = my mom, roomie & boyfriend…
Hi Guys! Kisses!
So with first time blogging anxiety cured I started dreaming about Salted Caramels. Which has been happening a LOT lately. Especially since I found out about these…
… the Salted Caramel Cupcakes from Phoebe’s in Lakeview. Seriously yum. The caramel cake was super moist with the perfect amount of sweetness and the buttercream frosting, also caramel, was delicious. Balanced with an occasional crunch of sea salt and I was in bakery heaven. So go to Phoebe’s Cupcakes. And if you don’t live in Chicago, don’t worry! City Tart‘s Quest for the Perfect Salted Caramel Cupcake Recipe is definitely on. Sounds epic, doesn’t it? I’ll keep you posted on all my adventures and ultimate triumph(?) with cake and caramel and fleur de sel, but until then, let’s try candy making…
Fleur de Sel Caramels
adapted from Gourmet
A few things about this recipe. The actual making of the caramels is quite simple, but the cutting and wrapping can be a bit time consuming. If you’re making them in warm or humid weather, you may need to refrigerate them as cooling to firm them up a bit. But it’s all worth it! These caramels are buttery and very rich in taste.
1 cup heavy cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons fleur de sel
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
Line an 8” x 8” pan with wax paper and lightly grease or oil.
In a saucepan, combine the heavy cream, butter, and fleur de sel. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, and then remove from heat.
In a 3-4 quart saucepan (no smaller!) bring the sugar, corn syrup, and water to boil. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. At this point, stop stirring, but swirl the pan every once in awhile to decrease crystallization on the sides of the pan.
When the sugar becomes a light caramel color, CAREFULLY pour in the cream mixture. Do it slowly, as the the mixture will bubble up. Stir frequently as the mixture simmers. Monitor the temperature with a candy thermometer, and when the mixture reaches 248° F remove from heat. This took close to 15 minutes for me.
Pour caramel into prepared pan. Cool for two hours or overnight. Sprinkle with a bit more fleur de sel. Remove from pan, and cut into desired sized pieces. Wrap individually in wax paper.
Enjoy!
Now I have to go de-caramelize my dining room table…
