Triple Layer Guiness Cake (Chocolate Stout Cake) with Bailey's Frosting and Whiskey Ganache

Every St. Patrick's Day, I break out a Guinness recipe. Mostly this is because I'm a dark chocolate person, and Guinness, much like coffee, makes good chocolate take on a darker, slightly more bitter and complex taste. Add to that a sense of satisfaction at boozy cakes, and car bomb cake is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. In the past I've made Car Bomb Cupcakes, but this year I went for the full-on cake, decorated to look like the top of an iconic pint glass. I also did not use Guinness this year, but opted instead for Duck Rabbit Milk Stout. The world of fantastic stouts is too great too always use Guinness, especially with the crazy St. Patrick's day mark up.

I have to admit that I had grand plans to take detailed photos of the stacking and icing of the cake, which I immediately forgot in the moment of icing. These pictures are from day three of this cake's life, after it had been hidden under foil overnight, and thus does not do the cake justice. This is a bummer. But trust me, the icing is not so hard as it seems, as you only need to rough ice this cake. You are making both the chocolate ganache and the Bailey's buttercream, but they use different methods. You don't have to cream the butter for the ganache, and the amounts come out perfectly to ice the center layers and sides in the chocolate ganache and use all of the buttercream for the top of the cake. 

This recipe makes three layers in 8" cake pans, or 2 layers in 9" cake pans. If you are like me and get very anxious about evenly weighing your cake pans/ do not have three cake pans so need to make them in waves, I have found that 2 lbs. for each layer should be about right (1 lbs 15 3/4 oz if you are using large instead of extra large eggs) for an 8" cake. Make sure, if you are making the 9" pan, that your cake pan is at least 2" deep. If you only want to use a single can of Guinness (weighing in a 14.9 oz), you can top off the cake with water or cold coffee (as a substitute for the espresso powder). Or you can enjoy the rest of that smooth 2nd Duck Rabbit milk stout during the cooking of the cake.

Chocolate Milk Stout Cake (Guinness Cake)

Ingredients

Stout Cake
2 cups stout or dark beer, such as Guinness
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups Dutch-process cocoa
4 cups All purpose flour
4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon espresso powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 extra large eggs
8 oz sour cream


Chocolate Whiskey Ganache
1 pound bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 -4 tablespoons whiskey (to taste)
1 teaspoon espresso powder

Bailey's Irish Cream Buttercream Frosting
 3 to 4 cups confections sugar

1 stick (1/2 cup or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperatue 

1/4 cup Baileys - 1 airplane bottle's worth, plus more to taste

Additional milk or cream for blending if necessary.

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. 
2. Cut three round parchment paper circles that fit neatly in the bottom of 3 8" cake pans or 2 9" cake pans.
3. Grease and flour three 8" or two 9" cake pans, and line them with the parchment paper circles.
4. For the cake: Place the stout, espresso powder and butter in a large, heavy saucepan, and heat until the butter melts.
5. Remove the pan from the heat, and add the cocoa powder.
6. Whisk until the mixture is smooth and shiny. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
7. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl; set aside.
8. In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a standing mixer, beat together the eggs, vanilla and sour cream on medium for about a minute.
9. Add the stout-cocoa mixture, mixing to combine.Use a batter guard if you have one.
10. Add the flour mixture a little bit at a time and mix together at slow speed. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, and mix again for 1 minute. 
11.  Divide the batter equally among the prepared pans. (See above for weighing hints.) Drop the pan a couple times against the top of the counter to even out batter and let any air bubbles escape prior to baking.
12. Bake the layers for 35-38 minutes for 8" pans, or 45 to 50 minutes for 9" pans, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. 
13. Remove the cakes from the oven and cool on a rack for 10 minutes before turning the cakes out of their pans and returning to the rack to finish cooling completely before frosting. If you are reusing a cake pan, wait an additional 10 minutes for the empty pan to cool before rinsing and re-greasing. 
14. For the whiskey ganache: Place the chopped chocolate in a large heatproof bowl along with the espresso powder if using.
15. Bring the cream to a simmer in a heavy, medium-sized saucepan, stirring frequently and watching to make sure not to scald the cream.
16. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until the mixture is completely smooth and melted. The mixture will start out looking almost a little separated before chocolate melts and blends. 
17. Stir in the whiskey and vanilla. Refrigerate until the icing is spreadable, stirring occasionally, about an hour and a half. If you do not stir the edges will get overly stiff and have to be reincorporated during assembly.
18.  For the Bailey's Irish Buttercream: Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.
19. When the frosting looks thick enough to spread or thicker, drizzle in the Baileys (or cream if you are doing the non-alcoholic option) and whip it until combined and frosting is correct texture. 
20. If this has made the frosting too thin (it shouldn’t, but just in case) beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar. Adjust for taste and desired degree of alcohol.
21. To assemble: If all of your cakes are rather domed, trim one cake layer to have a flat top, if necessary.
22. Place the layer upside down on a serving plate or cake stand. Spread 1/3 of the chocolate whiskey icing over just the top of the layer, starting with a large mound of icing in the middle of the cake, and moving your spreader around in a circular motion to spread icing all the way to the edges of the layer. Don't worry if it spills over the edges of the cake a little, you'll get to fix that later.
23. Top with another cake layer, top side down, and repeat the process. If you baked three layers, add that one also.
24. Use the remaining frosting to cover the sides of the cake. You can gently press the layers closer together if the stacking feels a little iffy, but be very careful to keep the cake straight. To clean up your mess on the edge of the serving plate, using a paper towel dipped in water to carefully remove any chocolate.
25. Top the top layer of the cake with a generous layer of the Bailey's buttercream frosting, making sure that the edge of the Bailey's covers the top of the edge of whiskey ganache. 
26. Store in fridge until ready to serve. Remember that the top layer of buttercream will not stiffen as much as the ganache will.
    

Wasabi Deviled Eggs with Sriracha

Deviled eggs are a timeless tradition of delectable snacking that lends itself well to pretty much any party or potluck in any season. These deviled eggs are no exception, and were added to our Holiday Party line up. They are salty, spicy, and have a subtle hint of star anise that makes for a more Eastern take of a Southern classic. I love deviled eggs in pretty much every available format, but the only thing better than one kind of deviled egg is SEVERAL kinds of deviled eggs.

The original recipe (available at the Food and Wine website), uses scallions in the marinade, but we were fresh out of scallions when we first made these and substituted a combination of onions and garlic in its place, as this is essentially a marinade so presentation really isn't an issue. It worked wonderfully. The main flavors from the marinade are fresh ginger, soy, sake, and star anise and the onion is more of a background note. And given we are more likely to have an onion on hand than to have a bunch of scallions, it's been a useful substitute.

The star of this show is the wasabi and sriracha filling, which takes this from just being salty to packing a kick at the end of each bite that makes people eat them before I am able to take the "finished" photo of what they look like, which gives you a sense of their popularity. If you want a quick and dirty version that doesn't involve a bunch of star anise and hours of marinating, you can just make the filling and skip the marinade. Your eggs won't get a cool tint and will not have quite the complexity, but the filling is pretty delicious on its own. Even with the marinade, this still qualifies as a pretty easy recipe. If you want to throw some extra eggs in there, go ahead. We've squeezed in 15 eggs into the marinade without increasing the amounts of the marinade (this might require more stirring for even coating). Above that I would recommend making some extra marinade.
 

Wasabi Deviled Eggs with Sriracha

Makes 24 eggs

Ingredients

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup coarsely grated peeled fresh ginger
1/2 cup sake
1 cup water
2 cups soy sauce
10 star anise pods

1 medium yellow onion, chopped (or 1/2 cup of chopped scallions)
6 cloves garlic, peeled
1 dozen large eggs 
1 tablespoon Sriracha  
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1/4 cup snipped chives
2 1/2 teaspoons wasabi paste 
Chinese five-spice powder 


Instructions 

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the water, soy sauce with the sake, star anise, onion (or scallions if using), garlic, sugar and grated ginger.
2. Bring soy mixture to a boil. Transfer the mixture to a heatproof medium bowl and let cool completely. 
3. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, cover the eggs with cold water and bring to a boil. Boil for one minute, then cover the saucepan, remove from heat, and let stand 10 minutes until hard boiled.
4. Drain the water from the large saucepan. Cool the eggs slightly under cold running water to stop the cooking process, then peel them under cold running water. 
5. Add the eggs to the completely cooled soy mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate the eggs for at least 4 hours, stirring once in awhile to ensure that all the eggs are fully immersed in the soy mixture and will color evenly.
6. Drain the eggs and rinse lightly to remove any bits of scallion or ginger; pat dry. The outside of the eggs will become a tannish brown color.
7. Using a slightly moistened thin, sharp knife (non-serrated), cut the eggs in half lengthwise. Yolks should be bright yellow, cooked all the way through, and the knife should cut cleanly through the yolk.
8. Gently pry the egg yolks into a medium bowl without breaking the cooked white. Leave the whites aside and mash yolks with a fork or potato masher until the mixture is as free of lumps as possible. If some remain, they will be taken care of during the piping process.
9. Stir the mayonnaise, Sriracha, wasabi and 3 tablespoons of the snipped chives into the mashed yolks until fully combined.
10. Transfer the mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a star or plain tip. Set the egg whites on a serving platter and pipe in the filling. If you don't have a pastry bag, cut off the corner of a plastic Ziploc bag, or just use a spoon for a slightly more rustic but equally delicious look. At this point, if you are making these ahead of time, you can stop here and store the eggs in a fridge overnight until ready to serve.
11. Right before serving, sprinkle a pinch of Chinese five-spice powder on each of the deviled eggs then top with the remaining chive snips or thinly sliced scallions if wanted. 

Cranberry Cheddar Gougeres

A gougere is a French pastry that is light, airy, and deliciously cheesy. Essentially, it is a cheese puff the way a cheese puff should be. If you have never experienced the delight of biting into a piping hot gougere and have the steam from the oven explode in your mouth or had an entire room consumed by the smell of cheesy goodness cooking in the oven, I insist you stop whatever you are doing and find yourself a gougere to eat, unless what you are doing is making gougeres, in which case, you are on the right track.  

There are many variations on a gougere (which is classically made with gruyere cheese or sometimes other French cheeses), but all of them are based on the idea of a light, airy cheese pastry made with a pot au choux dough, which is a cooked dough that uses moisture instead of a rising agent (like yeast) to rise. All of which makes it sound very fancy and much more difficult than it is.

Usually, you see gougeres in small bite size balls (each 1-2 bites), but when we were in Burgundy recently, TK and I were frequently served much larger almost biscuit sized gougeres that were equally light and delicious.We will get to those later, but for now, here are some of the regular bite sized gougeres in a fun recipe from the New York Times website that adds a little holiday cheer to this classic (and thus made it a perfect addition to our Holiday Party line-up), while speeding it up along the edges for a quick and easy treat. Obviously, cheddar is not particularly French, nor are cranberries, but delicious is delicious. The dough looks marvelously festive before baking with little red cranberry flecks, the cheese kinda takes over the show during baking and the cranberry taste is a relatively subtle sweet note in the dough. Because these are tiny, they don't necessarily require the piping that larger gougeres may need to get that distinctly spiral. Obviously, piping doesn't HURT the recipe, but it can be a mess when all you need is a teaspoon scoop.

This is a food processor recipe, which is both awesome, convenient, and makes it difficult to make more than one batch at a time, unless you are willing to rock multiple food processors which frankly I am not. For the record, you can make this recipe by hand. You have to finely chop the cranberries by hand in the beginning and then stir until your arm can't stir anymore and then stir some more to incorporate the eggs, cranberry, and cheese later, but it can be done. But why would you take a recipe that has given you the gift of a food processor and then not use it? In addition, this is a freezer-friendly recipe. You can make these a week before your party and just heat them up right before you are ready to serve. You won't get the same intense cheese smell filling your house at reheating (only a moderate cheese smell filling your house), but they will still taste delicious and you'll still be able to serve them piping hot with a simple ten minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Cranberry Cheddar Gougeres

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 3 ounces unsalted butter (6 tablespoons)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sifted flour
• 5 large eggs
• 1 cup grated sharp Cheddar

Preparation

1. Turn on food processor and finely chop cranberries by dropping them in through feed tube. Remove cranberries, but don’t bother cleaning bits clinging to the bowl, as they'll end up back in bowl eventually. 
2. Place 1 cup water in a 2-quart saucepan. Add butter and salt, bring to a simmer and cook just until butter melts. 
3. Remove from heat and add flour all at once, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon.
4. Return saucepan to medium to medium high heat and cook dough, stirring constantly, about a minute or two until the dough forms a ball and does not stick to the sides of the saucepan.
5. Transfer dough to food processor.
6. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
7. Turn on food processor and add 1 egg to the dough. As soon as it’s completely incorporated, add another, and continue adding eggs 1 at a time until you have used 4.
8. Add chopped cranberries and Cheddar and pulse to blend.
9. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment or silpat if available. Drop heaping teaspoons of batter, in mounds about 1 inch across, on baking sheets, leaving 2 inches between them.
10. Dipping your fingertips in cold water, gently press down any peaks or tips to the mounds of dough so that the dough is flat and will form a clean circular puff.
11. Beat remaining egg. Brush tops of mounds with egg, taking care not to let any drip down the sides.If after your first batch you find the coloring to be overly dark or slightly burned, you can wait to brush the egg until 7 minutes in to the first fifteen minutes of cooking (or whenever the first time you rotate baking sheets is).
12. Bake 15 minutes, until puffed and lightly browned, rotating baking sheets halfway between cooking.
13. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake another 10 to 15 minutes, until well browned and again rotating baking sheets halfway.
14. Shut off oven, open oven door a few inches and leave gougères another 15 minutes before removing them. If you are serving them immediately, serve right away, they do not need any time to cool and are best hot.
15. Before making your next round, wait ten minutes for baking sheets to cool, replace parchment paper, and repeat process.If you are making these ahead of time, move gougeres to cooling racks. When completely cooled, the gougères can be transferred to a heavy plastic bag and frozen. Reheat them for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

The Perfectly Nutty Brigsten's Pecan Pie with Bourbon Whipped Cream

I am not a fan of Pecan Pie. I think it is too sweet, and weirdly also bitter. I'm also not a huge fan of the almost jell-o like consistency the filling can reach. It's just not my thing, and not my choice of holiday pies. Pumpkin pie really is the reigning monarch of Thanksgiving pies. So it's a little strange that one of the pies I make the most frequently and is most coveted by TK is my pecan pie. It's my exception pecan pie. I like to say I dislike all pecan pies, except for this one which is delicious and perfect in every way. It focuses on the delicious nutty flavor and nothing else. No mouthful of sweet. No orange. Just deep roasted nut flavor.

This recipe comes from my favorite restaurant in New Orleans, Brigsten's. Obviously. Where but New Orleans could convince me not only to re-examine the pecan pie, but to embrace it? And where else would finding out that a restaurant published a couple of recipes online cause me to get so excited I had to make them all immediately? Turns out, the first secret to a great pecan pie is the same one I have long applied to most of my pinenut recipes- always toast your nuts, and the deeper and darker you toast them, the richer and rounder your flavors. This recipe dark roasts its pecans, then grinds them up into a paste of roasted pecan that is added to the curd to soften the corn syrup, add texture, and generally take this pie to another level. The second secret is a flaky crust.

Pie crusts and I have a troubled history. How to make a good pie crust is so deceptively simple from the offset, but so fraught with danger and errors in the implementation. The trick to getting a crust nice and flaky is to only mix the dough enough that you can still see swirls and spots of raw butter. Those little butter spots will become little air pockets that flake out the crust and give it its rich buttery goodness. The trick is getting your dough to where it needs to be without having to overwork your dough and lose the flaky texture. And the way to make that happen is to keep everything as cold as possible throughout the pie making process. Anything I can do to keep my ingredients cold, I do without hesitation, including Brigsten's trick which is to freeze the butter, then grate the frozen stick through a box grater. I take it further and put the flour and butter mixture back in the freezer to refreeze prior to working together, but either way, the grating goes a long way towards minimizing the amount of time you need to handle the dough. Likewise, if at ANY point you feel like your dough is getting too warm, stop what you are doing, return the dough and/or tools to the freezer, give it a twenty minute rest, then come back to it.

I bought a pastry scraper for the sole purpose of assisting with the creation of pie crusts, but you don't need one, particularly if you are rolling out your dough between two sheets of parchment paper. If when you try and pull the flattened dough it starts to stick, return the parchment paper sandwiched dough to the fridge to chill for fifteen minutes, then try again. If using a pastry scraper, keep scraper in the freezer when not immediately using. Slide under the dough to cut it away, being very careful not to stretch the crust. Do not stretch the dough to fit the pan or as you are lifting the pan. Any stretching done to the dough will shrink back down as the pie bakes. You can use leftover dough to fill any cracks or holes in the crust, again being careful not to stretch out the dough.


Brigsten's Pecan Pie

For the dough:

1 cup all-purpose white flour
½ teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
 ¼ cup ice water

For the filling:

½ cup darkly roasted pecans, ground
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
 1 cup medium pecan pieces
 
Bourbon Brown Sugar Whipped Cream

1 cup heavy cream 
1/2 cup sour cream 
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar 
1/8 teaspoon table salt 
2 teaspoons bourbon

 

Instructions

 

For the Dough-

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree.
2. Place butter, rolling pin, pastry scraper, pastry cutter (if using) in freezer until moments before you are ready to use.
3. Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. 
4. Once butter is ice cold and hard but not quite frozen, use the large holes of a hand grater, grate the butter into the mixing bowl with the flour mixture. If your fingers warm the butter, place bowl in freezer for fifteen minutes before continuing.
5. Lightly blend the butter and flour mixture with your fingertips until the texture is like coarse cornmeal. Be careful not to overwork the dough.
6. Add the ice water and blend until incorporated, moving as fast as possible. Swirls or spots of butter are not a problem and will resolve themselves during cooking and will result in a flaky crust.
7. Form the dough into a ball and blend until thoroughly incorporated. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for forty five minutes.
8. Place dough between two sheets of parchment paper or on a well floured countertop. Roll out the dough, adding flour as necessary and working as quickly as possible, to 1/8-inch thick. If dough starts to get too warm, stop, move disc of dough in parchment paper to fridge for fifteen minutes, then remove and continue rolling.
9. Remove top layer of parchment paper if using. Place an 8 ½ inch pie pan face down on the dough and cut the dough to fit the pan, leaving a border of about 1 1/2 inch.
10. Line the pan with the dough while removing second layer of parchment paper with a pastry scraper if necessary, being sure not to stretch the dough. trim the edges, and fill in any gaps with leftover dough and refrigerate or freeze until ready to use (at least one hour).

For the Filling-

1.  Toast pecans in dry skillet or roast on baking sheet until darkly colored and fragrant.
2. Grind pecans using either a morter and pestle, a coffee grinder, or a small food processor.
3. In an electric mixer with the wire whisk attachment, add the eggs and beat on high speed until frothy, about 1 minute. 
4. Add the sugar, corn syrup, butter, vanilla, salt, and ground roasted pecans.
5.  Beat on medium speed until well blended. 
6. Stir in the pecan pieces with a rubber spatula.
7. Pour the filling into the pie shell. 
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. 
9. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake until the filling is browned on top and the crust is light golden brown.  20 - 30 minutes.
10. Remove from oven and cool at room temperature for 1 hour before serving. Serves 6-8.

 

For the Whipped Cream-

1. In bowl of standing mixer or with hand mixer, whisk heavy cream, sour cream, brown sugar, and salt until combined. 
2. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve, at least 4 hours or up to 24, stirring once or twice during chilling to ensure that sugar dissolves.
3. When ready to serve, add bourbon and beat mixture with whisk attachment at medium speed until small bubbles form around edges, about 40 seconds. 
4. Increase speed to high and continue to beat until fluffy or starts to form soft peaks and doubled in volume, about 1 minute longer. 
5. Serve.

Peppermint Mocha Cookies

These cookies are almost like a tiny little brownie topped with peppermint butter cream. I make them every year for Christmas as my official "festive" cookie. They're a bit more unusual than your standard sugar cookie or gingerbread cookie, but feel right at home among their more traditional holiday brethren, and round out any good cookie exchange with a rich chocolate option. And if you want them outside the month of December, just omit the food coloring, or go with red or blue instead of the admittedly Christmas driven green. They're not that hard to make. They look adorable, and you get to play around with a mallet. Who doesn't want to play with a mallet?

Speaking of which, when crushing your candy canes, try and really crush them down into a fine crumb of candy cane. You want the cookies to have a bit of texture and crunch, but not have such large pieces that they get caught in your teeth while eating. The color of the candy cane will still be evident against the butter cream backdrop. Make sure to ice then top immediately, instead of icing a large number then going back to top with candies. The frosting will start to harden very quickly, and once that happens, the peppermint won't stick. It is easiest to just got frost, top, plate. Frost. Top. Plate. If pressed for time, the cookies can be made the day before you frost. Store in an air-tight plastic container along with a slice of torn up sandwich bread. The sandwich bread prevents the cookies from drying out and keeps the chew. They may stick together very slightly when stacked. This is fine. Remember, you are frosting the cookies, so small blemishes on the top will be washed a way in a delicious layer of mint frosting. Frosting covers all. Be generous with the frosting. It's meant to be a thick, almost cake-like layer of frosting.

The cookies will not spread very much in the oven. They are meant to be about the size of a silver dollar.

Cooking Time: 30 minutes active, 30 minutes inactive Makes 24-30 small cookies

Ingredients

Cookies
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2   cup cocoa powder
1/2   teaspoon baking soda
1/2   teaspoon table salt
8      tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), softened but still cool
3/4   cup granulated sugar
1/2   cup brewed espresso or strong coffee, cooled

1/2   teaspoon espresso powder (optional)
1      teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting
6     tablespoons unsalted butter , softened
2     cups confectioners' sugar
2     tablespoons milk
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (or to taste)
3 to 4 drops green or red food coloring 
4      peppermint candy canes (or about 10-12 peppermint wheels), crushed into crumbs

Instructions

1. For the cookies: Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large (18 by 12-inch) baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together into medium bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula.
4. Dissolve espresso powder into cold coffee. (If coffee is warm, dissolve espresso powder, then place measuring cup of coffee in a larger measuring cup serving as an ice water bath to cool quickly.
5. Add cooled espresso and vanilla and beat at medium-low speed until combined. Don't worry if it looks curdled, that will fix itself when you add the dry ingredients. Scrape down bowl.



Don't worry, it'll work itself out.



It may curdle when coffee is added

6. With mixer on low speed, gradually add dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
7. Roll dough into thirty 1-inch balls. Place 15 balls on each prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. 
8. Bake until just set, rotating sheets from front to back and top to bottom halfway through baking, 8 to 11 minutes. 

9. Cool cookies on sheets for 2 minutes; transfer with metal spatula to wire rack to cool completely, at least 30 minutes. (Cookies can be stored in airtight container with a torn piece of sandwich bread or a couple of sugar cubes for up to 4 days.)
10. For the frosting: Take the candy canes, and place inside a gallon ziploc bag. Seal the bag tightly, then place on a cutting board and strike with the smooth, wide side of a mallet until the candy canes become a fine powder. Set aside while you make the frosting.
11. With an electric mixer, beat butter at medium-high speed until smooth, about 1 minute. 
12. With mixer running, add confectioners' sugar a 1/4 cup at a time and beat at medium-low speed until most of the sugar is moistened, about 45 seconds. 
13. Scrape down bowl and beat at medium speed until mixture is fully combined and starting to cream, about 3 minutes. Scrape down bowl.
14. Add milk, peppermint extract, and food coloring and beat at medium speed until incorporated, about 10 seconds, then increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down bowl once or twice. 
15. Frost a cooled cookie with a rubber spatula or angled spatula and immediately sprinkle with crushed mints. Place on a plate for the frosting to harden, and continue frosting the rest of the cookies. (Once frosted, cookies are best served within 3 days.)

Brown Sugar and Citrus Cured Salmon

This salmon has become a staple at our holiday party and is always one of the first things to get eaten. It makes an elegant and impressive hors d'oeuvre, but it's simple to make and can be prepared days ahead of time and sliced just before the party.

The salmon can cure for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours. I prefer lightly-cured salmon, which is melt-in-your-mouth tender and still has prominent salmon flavor, so I only cure my salmon for 24 hours. If you prefer your cured salmon to have firmer flesh and saltier flavor, leave your fish in the cure for the full 48 hours. If you're squeamish about serving raw-ish fish to your guests, I would recommend curing your fish for longer than 24 hours.

This recipe will work well with any variety of salmon, but it has to be very fresh. Ask your fishmonger which salmon is the freshest, and choose that one. Try to begin curing the salmon on the same day you purchase your fish. This recipe will make enough fish to serve 6 as an appetizer. For larger parties, simply use a larger filet and increase the amount of curing mixture to maintain the correct ratio of fish to cure.

Ingredients 

1 pound very fresh salmon filet, skin on

1 cup Kosher salt

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1/4 cup citrus zest from any combination of lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruits

several sprigs dill

creme fraiche

Instructions Combine the salt, sugar, peppercorns and zest in a medium bowl. Line the bottom of a glass baking dish with the dill. Pour a third of the curing mixture over the dill and smooth. Place the salmon, skin down, into the dish and pour the rest of the curing mixture over the fish. Smooth the curing mixture to form an even layer. The salmon should be completely encased in the curing mixture. Place a layer of plastic wrap directly onto the curing mixture, and place another glass baking dish on top of that. Weight with cans and place in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours. Remove the salmon from the curing mixture and rinse thoroughly under running water. Dry the salmon with paper towels and remove the skin using a filet knife. Slice as thinly as possible and serve with creme fraiche.

Pignoli Cookies (Pinenut Cookies)

Recently, TK and I got to go on the trip of a lifetime to Tuscany. This was my first time in Italy, and now, NOW, I get why everyone talks about Italian cookies and why they are the best things in the world. Now I understand why they are not the same as the powdered sugar balls you get every Christmas, and that deceptively simple looking cookies pack a ton of surprising and wonderful flavor. The answer, boys and girls, is almond paste.

I dislike Marzipan. I think it is overly sweet and somehow texturally off. So perhaps it is not surprising that I have shied away from almond paste. Maybe I just needed to grow into it. You can't always expect a nine-year old to get a subtle thing like almond paste. But now, I have figured out that almond paste is both what makes my favorite coffee cake from Germany delicious AND the secret behind pine nut cookies. You don't necessarily look at the pine nut, flavor enhancer to pestos everywhere, as a sweet thing. But it really works in combination with the sweet almond paste and meringue of the egg whites.

You would be amazed at how difficult it is to find good Italian recipes. There is a glut on the market for all things Italian, but so many of them are based off of what Americans consider Italian food to be, or even worse, as easy food for people who don't know how to cook. Every corner than can be cut is cut. This is not to say that my quest for a good Italian cookbook can't be met. I'm just really really intimidated by what happens when you search for "Italian cookbook" on Amazon, and the reviews are no help because so many of the people looking are not really looking what I'm looking for. I don't want easy Italian food. I'm not really interested in the best marinara. I want to learn how to make that delicious pear and ricotta cake that blew my mind.

So here is my first attempt at pignoli cookies. There are both crispy and chewy varieties of pignoli cookies. I fell in love with the chewy, straight up almond paste ones that were a ball of pine nuts. It seems much easier to find recipes for the crispy and more meringue ones. This are the other, more chewy cookie. I am pushing it away from the original recipe and towards my goal by adding more almond paste and cooking for less time (the main difference between a chewy pignoli cookie and a crispy one). So just trust me on this one, and try this recipe. 

Make sure you get pure almond paste, not marzipan, and NOT almond filling. Also lean towards the almond paste that comes in a can or tub rather than the tube, which tends to be dryer. This is surprisingly easy to make, as it is a food processor recipe. The dough will be extremely sticky. it'll stick to your fingers, everything. The pine nuts will give it its shape and cookie-ness. Don't worry if it sticks to your hand. These cookies mean business, and are a messy affair.

Pignoli (Pine Nut) Cookies

After blending with sugar/flour

Chunky from the can

Ingredients

12 oz of pure Almond paste (NOT Almond filling and NOT Marzipan)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup of powdered sugar

1/4 cup of flour

3 egg whites, lightly beaten

10-12 oz Pignoli (Pine Nuts)

Cooking Time: 30 minutes active, 40 minutes inactive Makes 24-30 cookies


Instructions

1. Add almond paste to food processor. Paste will break up in chunks. Pulse processor several times then grind until chunks are completely broken up. 
2. Pulse the powdered sugar and the flour into the almond paste. Blend until mixture looks like very rough sand. 
3. Beat egg whites lightly for 1-2 minutes in small bowl with whisk.
4. Add egg whites and process until dough comes together.
5. Scoop out a small piece of dough (about a small spoon). It will be very sticky. Slide off of spoon and roll in pine nuts till completely covered, and place 2" apart on cookie sheet lines with parchment paper. 
6. Bake 300 degrees about 25 min. Remove to wire racks to cool, then keep covered. 
7. Freeze cookies if you're not going to use them right away, then take out as needed.

Happy Baking!!!