Chocolate-filled shortbread

Last Friday I had an insatiable cookie craving, but I didn't feel like going out to the grocery store or slaving away in the kitchen. I decided to make these chocolate-filled shortbread cookies because they're relatively simple and don't require any special ingredients -- I had everything in my pantry already, including four different kinds of chocolates to stuff inside the cookies.


I can't remember exactly, but I think I came across this recipe via the Kitchn blog, which is a fairly recent addition to my Google Reader. I've been an Apartment Therapy reader ever since I moved to LA and needed ideas to decorate and furnish my apartment, but their AT sister blog focused on cooking and kitchens is truly exceptional. Tons of great recipe ideas and clever kitchen design/appliance ideas. 


The actual recipe comes from Cooking Weekends, and I was intrigued by this recipe for two reasons: first, of course, I love all things chocolate, and second, it calls for corn starch, which I've never included in shortbread before. I adore the way shortbread cookies simultaneously crumble and melt in your mouth, and corn starch is supposed to enhance that characteristic -- winning on all fronts!


Now, back to those four different kinds of chocolates... I decided to play a taste test game (with myself, eek!), using different chocolate bars to figure out which ones work best in the shortbread. The four bars I used were a Trader Joe's 73% organic cacao, an 85% dark from Divine, at 70% dark chocolate orange from Theo, and 70% Madagascar dark from Rogue Chocolates called Sambirano. 

My favorite for eating is the Theo, but it turns out that the best one for these cookies was the $2 TJ's bar! I think the cocoa butter content in that bar is a little higher than the others, so it melted to a wonderful creamy consistency.

Go figure! Sometimes cost isn't everything, even when it comes to chocolate. Without further adieu, here is the recipe, courtesy of Cooking Weekends:


INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
3/4 cup unbleached flour
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2sticks), cut up
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz baking chocolate bar, broken into 16 pieces



DIRECTIONS
Place the cornstarch, icing sugar, salt and flour into the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to combine.  Add the butter and sprinkle the vanilla extract evenly over the top. Run the motor until a soft dough begins to form.


Preheat oven to 300°F.


Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces. Encase a piece of chocolate inside each piece of dough.


Place the cookies about an inch (or more) apart of an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 25-35  minutes or until the edges begin to brown.


Remove from oven and cool on baking sheet for a minute or two, then remove shortbread onto a wire rack.

Underwood Family Farms Tour

Remember my last post when I claimed to have a double-header post coming over the weekend? That did not happen. Sorry, but sometimes these things cannot be helped. I have a backlog of posts building up again, and I will try to work through those in the next few weeks, but Finals are coming up, so no guarantees.

Today's post is not actually about baking, but rather an excuse for me to post some fun, colorful pictures from my tour of the Underwood Family Farm in Moorpark, CA. I spent a day on the farm two Fridays ago through a trip organized by my school's Sustainability Club. Perks of this trip included a chance to get out of the city, learning about the farm, and picking my own veggies straight from the field.

After college, I started having much more control over what I ate on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, I loved the fried delights of Thursday Pub Night and eating my way through Sunday brunch spreads, but those meals weren't doing much for my overall health.  When I came back to California and started working at Google, I started to eat much more healthfully, and also became very interested in the food supply chain. I've found that food tastes better and makes me feel happier when it is fresh, flavorful, and nutritious. 


Enough preaching. Here are some of my favorite pictures from my excursion:

This particular pig is a cool 750 lbs. Can you imagine?!


Finally, here are some pictures of the kale chips and roasted beets that I made from my farm bounty. I actually planned to make/roast these over the weekend and eat them during the week, but they tasted so good I ate everything in one day. At least I don't  have to feel guilty about eating delicious, nutritious vegetables!

Chocolate glazed chocolate donuts

I have another double-header post coming up this weekend (assuming I don't get bored, distracted or just plain lazy about blogging), so I'll try to keep this one short. (By the way, I have been playing around with the layout of this blog, and made it just a tad wider to accommodate larger pictures. I hope they make you drool just a little bit more!)


One of the reasons I haven't baked (and consequently, blogged) as much this quarter is that my learning team hasn't been meeting as frequently as we did during Fall Quarter. I try not to bake for myself, because then I end up eating the whole batch myself, which isn't very good for me. However, last weekend, my section had a BBQ on Saturday, so I decided it was time to make some donuts... Baked ones, of course.


I found a recipe by searching on Pinterest for the most delicious looking baked chocolate donuts I could find, and eventually settled on a recipe from a blog called The Milkman's Wife. 


As an aside, have I mentioned that Pinterest is my new favorite way to both discover new recipes and keep track of things I want to try making? I've tried various recipe organization tools over the years, from old-fashioned paper print outs, to Google Docs to Springpad, but none of them really stuck. These other options were either too time consuming, too difficult to organize, or too far outside my daily routine to be efficient or effective. By contrast, I'm really loving Pinterest, because I can browse the Food & Drink section to get new ideas, but I can also pin recipes from across the web (using my handy dandy Google Chrome extension!), all to one board.


Okay, enough geeking out. Let's get baking already!


I'm going to be honest -- these baked donuts are not as dense as real cake donuts (which I love). They're closer to a cupcake in the shape of a donut. But they're still tasty, and they look delectable with a coat of shiny, smooth chocolate glaze. At first, I was disappointed that I didn't have time to get colored sprinkles to make these a bit more festive, but after I started glazing them, I decided that they looked pretty just with the glaze. What do you think?

By the way, this recipe is SUPER fast and easy -- another plus in my book! Here's the recipe, which I found on The Milkman's Wife.


INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup flour 
1/4 cup dutch-process cocoa 
1/2 cup sugar 
1 tablespoon baking powder 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
1 egg 
1/2 cup milk 
1 teaspoon vanilla 
4 tablespoons canola oil 
Colored or chocolate sprinkles (optional) 



1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips 
2 tablespoons butter 
1 tablespoon corn syrup 
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract 



DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and coat a donut pan liberally with cooking spray. 
Stir together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Add the egg, vanilla, and milk and stir together for 1 minute. Add the oil and continue to whisk until just combined. 


Transfer the batter to a large measuring cup (or a bowl with a spout) for easy pouring. Fill each cavity in the pan 2/3 of the way full with batter. 


Bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until the donuts spring back when lightly touched. Cool completely before icing. 


While the donuts are baking, prepare the chocolate glaze. Combine the chocolate chips, butter, corn syrup and vanilla extract in a double boiler (or in a stainless steel or glass bowl over some simmering water). Stir until the chocolate is melted and everything is incorporated. Use immediately.