Desserts Recipes

Chocolate Pie

August 12th, 2009  |  by Zahra  |  in Pies  |  No Comments

Yes, I’ve had a chocolate itch for about a week. It goes well with my “Wicked” itch.

I watched Giada make this on one of her episodes, this cross between fudge and a brownie. With some ice cream, it is simply divine.

mmmmm

Here’s how I do it:

Chocolate Pie

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2-3 tbsp confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup hot water
4 eggs
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter
2 tsp vanilla
Optional: 1 cup pecans or walnuts

So much chocolate!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare your chocolate by combining the powdered cocoa with the confectioner’s sugar.

Flour

2. Add the flour and regular granulated sugar and mix.

Oh the drizzle

3. Melt butter and add. Then add the hot water and roughly combine.

Eggs galore

4. Add in the eggs and vanilla and beat until mixed thoroughly.

Throw in the nuts

If you take the nutty option, fold them into the batter at the very end.

Bakin'

5. Place in hot oven for 35 minutes.

Shiny top

Remove and enjoy with several scoops of ice cream!

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

August 9th, 2009  |  by Zahra  |  in Cookies  |  1 Comment

I couldn’t make cookies for the longest time. And it upset me beyond anything. I wanted to, just once, make chewy on the inside, crispy on the outside, wonderful chocolate chip cookies and I just couldn’t! It was quite a predicament.

And then, I discovered some wonderful secrets.

Secret #1: Parchment paper.
Secret #2: Cold, unsalted butter.

The Secret

Here now I will show you how to make the most wonderful crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies. Enjoy.

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
8 tbsps cold unsalted butter, diced
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup peanut butter chips

All kinds of sugar

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Then, combine both sugars.

Cold, diced butter

2. Add in the cold, diced and unsalted butter.

Cream

3. Cream the butter with the sugars. And, of course, I do not own any sort of electric mixer device, so I spent around 10 minutes beating and beating the poor butter and sugars with a wooden spoon. One of these days though…

Break an egg

4. Add in your egg.

Add flour

5. Mix in the vanilla, baking soda, flour, and salt. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Add in the delicious

6. Add in the delicious parts. I like my cookies full and chunky. Feel free to add fewer chips or add in some walnuts or pecans or M&Ms or anything else your heart desires.

In the oven

7. Spoon onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet about 2″ apart. Bake for 18 minutes or until golden brown. The cookies will be super squishy when you remove them from the oven, don’t worry though, they will harden as they cool.

Now, I don’t have any “after baking” pictures of these because they got devoured before I had the chance to photograph them. They were a hit!

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Microwave Brownies

August 4th, 2009  |  by Zahra  |  in Desserts, Microwave Meals  |  3 Comments

Oh me, who woulda thought that a quick microwave brownie would come out so great? I sure didn’t. But am I ever so glad that it did.

This is the dessert installment in the microwave meals project. This brownie is nice and dense, but moist at the same time! Incredible, no? The best part: you only need a single bowl to mix all your ingredients in. Wooo baby!

Scrumptious

Here’s how you do it:

Microwave brownies

2 tbsp butter, melted
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder (I use trusty Hershey’s, but any brand will do)
2 level tbsp flour
1 tsp vanilla

beaten egg

1. Beat egg until light. It’ll look like this.

add sugar

2. Add the sugar to the mixture and mix it all up.

oh so much chocolate

3. Add your cocoa powder, and again, mix.

add vanilla

4. Add your vanilla and, you guessed it, mix it all up real good.

Melt butter and add

5. Melt the butter and add that to your mixture. Make sure you don’t overheat your butter, you don’t want to cook the egg in the batter!

Pour into custard cups

6. Pour into little custard cups or any kind of microwave safe dish. I got these little Pyrex cups (they came with lids!) just last week and I absolutely love them. They’re incredibly useful in the microwave too.

Add ice cubes and place in microwave

7. Place in the microwave with a few ice cubes. When you do individual cups like this, always make sure you have a larger pan underneath it. Just in case.

Flip out onto a dish

8. Microwave for 6 minutes. If you don’t have a rotating tray like me, turn the trays 180 degrees halfway through the cooktime to ensure even cooking.

Take out of the microwave and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then, flip out onto a dish and enjoy with whipped cream or ice cream! This recipe will make two cakes of this size so tweak the recipe to fit your needs!

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Cherry Upside-Down Cake

July 29th, 2009  |  by Zahra  |  in Cakes  |  1 Comment

Let me start by saying that there was a bit of a disaster associated with this cake. And yes, it was all my fault. I got a little carried away with the baking powder and things ended with the smoke detectors going off.

Final result with whipped cream

Regardless, the cake came out delicious.

This is what you’re going to need:

Cherry Upside-down Cake
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

2 cups cherries
juice of half of a lemon
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour (or if you’re like me and only have all-purpose, use that plus 1 tsp baking powder)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup milk
2 tbsp regular salted butter, melted
1 super mashed banana
1 tsp vanilla

Optional: One cup heavy whipping cream

PItted and Halved cherries

1. Start by pitting and halving the cherries. Don’t know how to pit a cherry because you don’t have a swanky cherry pitter? Have no fear! I don’t either! You can find a how-to for that here. Add the juice from half a lemon over the cherries and set aside. Then, preheat the oven to 350 degrees!

Dry ingredients

2. Next, combine the flour and sugar and mix well. Word of caution: if you’re like me and are using the all purpose flour/baking powder thing, don’t go all crazy with the baking powder. I did and my cake exploded into a mushroom over the pie dish and onto my stove element. Don’t make my mistakes!

Butter

3. Measure out your butter. And zap it till it’s melted in the microwave

DSCN3566

Like so. 15-30 seconds should be plenty. You don’t need it all hot and bubbly.

Super mashed banana

4. Next, super mash a banana. My mother-in-law said she always used pureed fruits and vegetables as a replacement for butter in her recipes. The original recipe called for 3/4 cup of butter. Use only 2 tablespoons and put in one mashed banana and you’ve got the same thing plus a super cool banana taste.

Spraying pie dish

5. Butter and flour your dish (I used my 9″ pie dish), or just give it a little Baker’s Joy.

Straining cherries.

6. Strain the cherries from their yummy juices and pour into the bottom of your dish.

Cherries

Like this!

Cup of milk

7. Measure out a cup of milk.

All ingredients

8. And add in all the wet ingredients into the flour and sugar mixture! (Not pictured: vanilla!)

Mix

9. Mix until just combined. Make sure you stack all your plates and bowl on the side to prove you’ve used the contents of that dish.

Pour over cherries

10. Pour batter over cherries and place into the oven for 45 minutes.

Final Result

Ok. I had some issues with my cake. Since it overflowed inside the oven, the overflow batter became quite crusted onto the dish and the only way to get the cake out was to run a knife around the edge before I inverted it onto a dish.

Regardless of how you get your cake onto the plate, whip up a little whipped cream and serve it on the side. Just to be fancy.

And I am fancy.

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Welcome to Zahra Cooks!

July 20th, 2009  |  by Zahra  |  in Cakes  |  1 Comment

Americake!

First post! And how sad that it be just the recipe. However, I was super proud of this cake, the one my lovely husband named the AmeriCake, and my anything-too-sweet-averse father ate it without complaint. I musta done something right.

So here you go, internet, the first ZahraCooks recipe. The AmeriCake.

4th of July AmeriCake
adapted from Pioneer Woman

Cake:
1 stick salted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1. Cream the sugar with the butter and add eggs. Mix well.
2. Fold in sour cream to the mixture and mix until well incorporated. Add the vanilla extract.
3. In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt).
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until thick batter forms. Don’t worry! The cake batter will be more dense than the lovely batter than forms from the boxed cake mixes. Just scrape it all into the buttered and floured pan (I used my trusty 9″ by 13″) and even it out with a knife or spatula. I’m not fancy at all, I used a spoon.

Frosting and topping:
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar (more if you need more sugary-ness!)
One 1/2 pint package of blueberries
Two 1/2 pint packages of rasberries

*In all actuality, you could make and use any type of frosting/fruit combination.

1. Beat together cream cheese and butter with the vanilla extract until smooth and creamy.
2. Slowly add in the powdered sugar. I was taking this cake over to my parent’s house that day so I opted for a less-sugary frosting. Feel free to add more than the 1 cup of sugar.
3. Start frosting and decorating!

Note: If you frost the cake with a thin layer of frosting before creating your stars and stripes masterpiece, you will have an easier time keeping the fruit in place. I learned this after most of my stubborn blueberries and raspberries rolled off the cake and brought me so close to tears.

Enjoy!

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