Peppermint Bark

I apologize for what I'm sure will be a series of late "Christmas-Goodies" posts; life got so hectic pre-holidays with end-of-semester grading and Dan's job application process, packing for several trips over the break and trying to finish up last minute activities--I was just never able to post some of my new favorite treats. I even forgot to take pictures of a few, so I guess I'll just have to make them again!

This peppermint bark was inspired by--what else?--a Williams-Sonoma catalog. Dan was leafing through it one day and brought it to my desk, page folded back to reveal a photo of their signature bark, and said to me, "I want you to try to make this." Anything for the stressed but proud newly-minted Ph.D. in our house; I set to work finding a recipe. It was not hard--plenty of similar recipes exist online. I found a few, but the one that caught my eye used peppermint extract in the white chocolate layer, which not only adds to the overall freshening effect, but also cuts the sweetness of the white chocolate. I prefer a mixture of semi-sweet and milk chocolate for the bottom layer, but do what you like best. And as for chopping the peppermint candies, well, you can crush candy canes in a plastic bag with a rolling pin, but since I happened to have individually wrapped peppermints, I just chopped them with a knife, realizing too late that I had not one but two (!) perfectly good food processors that could have done the job. 

This certainly looks like the holidays, but it would be a wonderful after-dinner treat or hostess gift at any dinner party, any time of year. And the possible variations are endless. You could use this same concept and instead of peppermint extract and peppermint candies, sprinkle dried fruits and nuts over the top and mix orange extract in the white chocolate layer. Dried cherries or cranberries and pistachios would be wonderful, or perhaps even dried pineapple and toasted coconut with macadamia nuts. You don't have to layer them either--white or dark chocolate alone would still be delicious. Have fun, and use your imagination! This could be your new signature: The Girl With the Chocolate Bark. (Any Confessions of a Shopaholic fans out there?)

Peppermint Bark (like Williams-Sonoma's)

12 oz. chocolate chips (I used 10 oz. semi-sweet and 2 oz. milk chocolate)

14 oz. white chocolate chips

1/2 tsp. peppermint extract

1/2 cup chopped peppermint candies (use a sharp knife or a food processor)

1. Line a 13 x 9-inch pan with foil, leaving some hanging over the sides. Smooth it out on sides and bottom. Spray with cooking spray.

2. Melt semi-sweet chocolate chips in a double boiler or microwave until almost melted. Pour into prepared pan and smooth with a spatula. Chill for 30 minutes or until set.

3. Melt white chocolate chips in a double boiler; whisk and scrape bottom of bowl periodically. When the chips are mostly melted, stir in the peppermint extract. Take off the double boiler and allow to cool for several minutes, stirring a bit, before pouring onto the chilled chocolate layer. 

4. Working quickly, pour onto the chilled chocolate layer, smoothing with a spatula. Pour the chopped peppermint candies evenly over the top and chill a few hours until set.

5. To cut, either allow to come closer to room temperature and slice with a knife, or, to make it look more rustic, cut it straight out of the refrigerator using a knife tip as a chisel and just sort of break it apart into uneven pieces. I prefer this effect.

Something Incredible

One of my favorite lines from The Incredibles occurs when Mr. Incredible, exhausted from another long day of being asked to trick people out of their well-deserved money at an insurance company, returns home to see a neighbor child sitting on his Big Wheel at the end of the driveway. In a tired voice, Mr. Incredible asks him, "What are you waiting for?" The child replies, candidly, innocently, "I don't know, something amazing I guess." Aren't we all? I love that he asks not what the child is looking at, the obvious question, almost a cliche in our somewhat cynical and paranoid society: "What're you looking at?" No, he asks him what he is waiting for. Why sit and wait for events out of your control to amaze you? Why have faith that you will be amazed? I don't have an answer for that. But I know that child wanted to be amazed and knew that something out there could make it happen. So he waited, hoping, as we all do, that it might happen today. 

Another day, sitting at the end of the driveway, waiting for something to amaze him. And in the end, it did: The fake superhero's cape becomes trapped in the plane as the mutating super-baby changes form, causes the plane to explode, and the family drops slowly to safety thanks to stretchy Elasti-Girl. Not my dream, but perhaps it is yours. It was that step that allowed superheroes to once again be a part of society, to promote optimism and humanity instead of cynicism and greed. That's more like it. What recipe inspired this musing? None in particular. I was thinking about doughnuts and this is what I came up with. You can make the connections. I'll go make some doughnuts.

Simple Orange Rolls

I love a good cinnamon roll in the morning, but they tend to make me want to curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee, a good book, and a blanket, rather than waking me up and preparing me for a long busy day. These orange rolls are an excellent middle ground: still warm, gooey, and sweet, but not so reminiscent of the weekend that they are inappropriate (and even somewhat depressing) on a Monday. What makes these rolls even more weekday-appropriate is their simplicity: a tube of french bread dough, a block of cream cheese, an orange, some sugar, and you're done. Start them before you get in the shower and they'll be ready when you're done--and your house will smell bright and amazing, the best way to start your day.

Here's the recipe, adapted from the December 2008 issue of Southern Living:

Simple Orange Rolls

You'll need 1 orange, a roll of Pillsbury Crusty French Loaf (in a tube next to the biscuits on the refrigerated aisle), a package of block-style cream cheese, butter, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, and powdered sugar.

Set a 4-oz. block of cream cheese (half of a regular 8-0z. package) in a bowl on the counter to soften. You can absolutely use a low-fat cream cheese--I did and the rolls were great. Preheat the oven to 375 F. (You can set the cream cheese on top of the stove to speed up the softening process.) Spray an 8 or 9-inch cake pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. When the cream cheese is done softening, add 1 1/2 teaspoons of orange zest (about one medium to large orange) and 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar, and beat with a hand mixer until smooth and uniform in color. Unroll the tube of bread dough on a floured surface and spread with the cream cheese mixture, leaving a 1/4-inch border around the edges. Sprinkle this with 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Roll the dough, beginning with the long edge. Try to make the roll tight, but not so tight the filling squeezes out. Also, try to keep the width of the roll even. Once you have finished rolling, place the roll seam side down and cut it in half. Cut each of those halves in half, and each of those into three pieces, to make a total of twelve. To cut, saw the sharp knife back and forth; don't just push straight down. Don't worry if the dough smashes down as you cut it--work quickly and reshape the rolls if necessary once they're in the pan. Keep in mind that they will rise and expand as they cook. Place the rolls in the pan, brush the tops with one tablespoon of melted butter, and bake for 30 minutes or until lightly browned on top. When the rolls are done, whisk together 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon of orange juice (from the orange you zested earlier). Drizzle this over the hot rolls and serve immediately.

This recipe is so simple, but it uses several techniques that are very important to baking. Here are a few.

Zesting: When you zest the orange, be sure to take off only the zest, none of the bitter white pith. What remains should still be a pale orange, not white. Think about those orange wedges or citrus rings your mother used to put on your plate with breakfast (or at least my mother did). Only the thinnest outer layer is really orange--that's what you want. Remember when you accidentally bit into the tougher white part of the wedge when you were trying to get that last bit of sweet orange flesh? That's what you don't want. (Check out the orange ring in the photo at the top of this post--that orange has been zested already. See how it's still a pale orange? You shouldn't see white when you zest.) You can use a Microplane (my favorite tool), a hand grater (just use the finest holes; you don't want wide strips of orange), or even that strange-looking little zester that came with your bar tools set--you know, the one with the four tiny little holes at the end? That's meant to take off thin strips of citrus zest; just be sure to chop them before you put them in the cream cheese mixture. Though you may love citrus, remember that you only need 1 1/2 teaspoons of orange zest (about one medium orange). As Sabrina tells Linus in the remake of the Hepburn classic, "More isn't always better Linus; sometimes it's just more." In this case, more orange zest just makes the rolls too bright, almost bitter, even if you were careful not to grate into the white pith. And finally, if a recipe calls for both the zest and juice of a fruit, zest it first--the grater needs the firmness of the uncut fruit to zest easily. You can save the fruit if the recipe calls only for zest--just wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge. The skin may turn kind of dingy, but the fruit will be fine for awhile.

Softening: Temperature is very important when baking. Cakes and cupcakes usually call for softened butter. This means that the butter (or cream cheese, in this case) should give gentle resistance when you press a fingertip into it--it should yield to the pressure, but your finger should not slip right through the stick. The time it takes for butter or cream cheese to soften depends on the temperature of your room. Or you can try my method: Place the butter on a plate and stick it in an oven that is turned off for about an hour. Or, in a pinch, place the plate in the microwave for about 10 seconds. Remember, you do not want the butter to melt--it should still hold its shape. Properly softened butter will take in plenty of air when you cream it with sugar, and this intake of air is part of what helps cakes to rise and be light and fluffy. The softening in this orange roll recipe is only to help the cream cheese mixture be more spreadable, but it is the same technique you will need when making plenty of other desserts. (Keep in mind also that butter in pastry--pie crusts, for example--must be cold in order to create air pockets when it melts in the oven; this is how pastry becomes flaky. Softened butter in this application would make the pastry chewy, not flaky.)

Measuring dry ingredients: Brown sugar measurements are almost always "packed," meaning you pack the sugar in as you go and it will probably hold its shape when you dump it into the bowl, like making towers of a sand castle in buckets. Granulated sugar is measured by scooping and shaking or leveling off the excess with a knife. Flour is not meant to be packed or scooped. It is best to weigh it using a kitchen scale, but if you don't have a scale or the recipe you're using doesn't give weight measurements, then either spoon the flour lightly into the cup and level it with a knife or scoop the flour out and drop it back into the container several times to lighten it, then scoop and level. You want the flour to be fluffy, not packed. Too much flour will make a recipe dry and dense.