Kauai Coconut Chewy Bars

Aloha!

The only trouble with living in the great state of Colorado is the lack of beaches and palm trees. I rarely have a moment where I wish I lived anywhere else, but once in a while I need some beach vibes. Unfortunately you need money to jet off to the beach whenever it calls (or sends a text) and I, like most college students or people in general, have barely enough money to buy grocery store sushi (don’t judge). So I enjoy bring the beach to me in my land locked mountain state. Hawaii being my main dreamy beach location, I brought in the typical Hawaiian ingredients coconut and macadamia nuts.

            Now the other factor to my weekly decision of what to make, was a shopping trip to TJ Maxx (where too many hours and dollars get spent). I went into the cooking section and found some really nice baking pans (if you’re a baking nerd you understand) I chose the brownie 8x8 pan as my prize. I took it home set it on the counter and stared longingly until I made the decision to make cookie bars. Nom nom!

            I kind of combined a couple of recipes from my Test Kitchen Baking cookbook. The ones I chose were the brown butter sugar cookies (which are a big hit with the McDuffee Clan) and the coconut chewy bars. Mostly by combined I mean I changed the regular butter to brown butter.

            Browning butter is the single most amazing small difference you can make in a recipe. It does however have a fine line between the perfect nuttiness and burnt (ouch). Browning the butter it the first step to this recipe. Take a good size saucepan and melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk is constantly until it comes to a boil. Then turn the heat up to med-high and whisk it occasionally to keep the bottom from burning. The butter will turn into a beautiful amber color and have a rich nutty smell. Take it off the heat and transfer it to a heat safe bowl. To that same bowl add the brown sugar, flour, and salt. Now it will be pretty wet since the butter has been melted. So I popped it into the fridge for 15 min. Once it has cooled grab your pan and line it with aluminum foil and give it a good spray then add the crust into the pan and flatten it out. Put it into the 325-degree oven for about 15 min.

            While that is baking measure out a cup of chocolate chips and set them aside. Once the crust comes out sprinkle the chocolate on top and let it sit for a minute while it melts. Then take a spatula and spread the chocolate evenly so you have a thin delectable chocolate layer. Next measure out your coconut and macadamia nuts, chop the nuts to your size preference and put them on a sheet tray in a 350-degree oven for about 10 min. Make sure to stir them around every couple of minutes to prevent burning (terrible smell). Now your kitchen should smell of the beach (or how I imagine it to smell).

            Now it is time for the best part of the bars, the toffee filling. Get a medium size bowl and whisk together the eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Next add in flour, baking powder, and salt it will begin to bubble a little bit (don’t freak!). Now take you delicious coconut and macadamia nuts (the ones you haven’t munched on) and stir them in. Take that whole mixture and pour it on top of the chocolate crust. And put it in a 325 degree oven for about 20-25 min. Once they are done let them cool for about 2 hours so they don’t fall apart.

            You can also add a little toasted coconut to the top if you are trying to impress people (which I am). These bars were a big hit with my family, they were gone within a day (which is not an unusual thing), but I did hear many yumms coming from the kitchen. They are the perfect dreaming of palm trees dessert.

Aloha!

Cassidy

Crust 

Browned Butter 8 Tbsp 

Brown Sugar 1/2 Cup 

salt 1/2 tsp 

All purpose Flour 1 cup

Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips 1 cup 

Filling

Eggs 2

Brown Sugar 1 cup 

Vanilla Extract 2 tsp 

All-Purpose Flour 2 Tbsp 

Baking Powder 1/2 tsp 

Salt 1/2 tsp 

Toasted Coconut 1 1/2 cups( + extra for munching and topping)

Chopped Macadamia Nuts 1 cup 

Summer Very Berry Galette

A hoy hoy!

Summer time has arrived (or arrived a while ago I guess), and along with the heat comes bunches and bunches of delicious fruits especially BERRIES! Straw ones blue ones, raspy ones and goosey ones, every type imaginable. Now what do you guys think about pie in the summer? Is pie a thanksgiving/fall dessert? Sure if you fill it with pumpkin, apple, or pecans. However, there is a whole other world of pies out there filled with delicious berries waiting to be recognized above the fall pies. I personally feel these pies deserve more recognition (even though I love a good pumpkin pie) there is something about a berry pie that makes a long summer day worth the heat stroke.

            So my imaginary blog readers I have created this week a berry galette! Now what is a galette you ask (or don’t)? I suppose you could go look it up on Google and get a better answer than the one I am about to give you, but then you would have to change pages (please don’t). A galette I believe is a rustic type of pie, a pie without a pan basically. Created, like a good amount of baked goods, by the French. Who really cares who creates it though as long as it is delicious? This recipe was found in the daily paper I believe, in one of those little booklets. I actually find some of the best recipes in those booklets, so people do not toss them out the window.

            Now if you are like my mom and have had a life long battle with pie crusts, then I would go the safe road and just buy a Pillsbury pie crust (nobody will know I promise just be sure to shred the box). Homemade piecrust is not a hard thing, but everybody has his or her battles. This one in particular is easy, and delicious the only equipment you need is a food processor. A good trick to making crust is to keep all of your ingredients cold, to keep the butter flakes from melting straight into the dough and making it mealy. So measure all your ingredients, cut up your butter into cubes, and zest and juice your lemon. Add the lemon juice to ¼ cups of water and add some ice cubes while your waiting. Put the flour, salt, and lemon zest in the food processor and pulse it a couple times. When it is all mixed together, add in the cold butter and blend it until it looks like little peas. Then take your water and drizzle it into the mixture while the food processor is on. Let it go until it forms a ball, then turn it off and plop it on to a flours surface. Form it into a disc and wrap it in plastic wrap, keep it in the fridge for 30-60 min.

            While that is cooling, grab the berries that you haven’t already eaten. I used strawberries and blueberries, but if you don’t care too much for those then use any berries you like(I’ll never know). However, do make sure to cut strawberries into quarters. Mix together in good size bowl 2 Tbsp. flour, 2 Tbsp. sugar, and a little salt. Then take your choice of berries, and toss them in the mixture until they are all coated. Set those guys aside, and grab that dough from the fridge along with a rolling pin, and some flour.

            Now this is the worst part for my mom, and you may feel the same. Lightly flour the surface and plop that homemade dough on there (if you bought some just unroll it and your good to go). Roll out your dough into a circle about 12 inches diameter. Place it on the sheet tray with parchment or a mat. Grab your berry mixture and mound them in the center of the crust leaving about an inch or so on the edge. Then take the edge and start folding them up around the berries pleating it all the way around. If you want a little sparkle and pizazz you’re going to need a egg white, water, and some raw sugar. Whisk together a splash of water and egg white. Take a pastry brush and lightly brush the egg white all along the edges following a sprinkle of the sugar.

            Your oven should be preheated to 425 degrees. Place the galette in the oven for about 20-22 min until the crust is golden brown. As a finishing touch and to add to the pizazz factor along with the sugar we are going to need a glaze for the top of the fruit. Glazes are easy and usually for a fruit tart/pie/galette an apricot jam mixed with water and boiled is the best. Unfortunately I did not have apricot jam at this time, nor did I feel like driving to the store. So as a substitute I took some lemon juice and powdered sugar and boiled it. Then take a pastry brush and brush it over the fruit to keep the air from ruining the gorgeous fruit galette you have.

            The final touch to this is one of my favorite toppings to just about anything, a lemon curd whipped cream. It is easy and so amazing! You can buy lemon curd at just about any grocery store. Making it homemade is a little bit harder, but that it for another blog post (if you keep following). Just whip up some cream ad mix in some lemon curd and you have a little piece of heaven. I put this on almost everything my favorite is just a bowl of raspberries with this on top (OH MY GODDESS!) Throw that on top and eat up that galette!! Give everybody a piece of heaven. 

Love and kindness to all of you 

Cassidy :)

Crust

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

All purpose flour 1 1/3 cup 

Kosher Salt 1/2 tsp 

Unsalted butter 1 stick + 1 Tbsp

Filling 

All purpose flour 2 Tbsp

Granulated Sugar 2 Tbsp 

Strawberries 1 lb

Blueberries 1 cup

Whipped Cream 

Lemon Curd 1 jar 

Heavy Whipping Cream 1 1/2 cups 

Nutella Banana Parisian Macarons

Hola Blog Personas,

A frequent gift I get from most people is cookbooks, I can’t even remember where I keep all of them. I have old ones, new ones, some dedicated to just cookies, pies, or cakes. At some point you would think that I would stop buying them or receiving them as gifts, but no I love them. I love looking at their pictures reading the different techniques or even just how the different people write the instructions. I feel as if I could smell the delicious treats through the books. One book in particular I love to read over and over again. My mom bought it for my birthday, and gave it to me days afterwards because she forgot about it. It is the Thomas Keller Bouchon Bakery book written by Sebastien Rouxel. This book is based on the Bouchon bakerys in New York, California, and Las Vegas. I’m not sure what it is about this book that I enjoy so much more than others, but I could look at it everyday and never get bored. So I encourage everybody (if anybody) to buy this book if you love baking.

            This is where I got the recipe for my Parisian Macarons. I first made macarons in my Cookies & Petit Fours class at school, and immediately new I would master these delectable cookies. I had lost the recipe that I received in class, and felt forever lost without it, until I received this book and found they had an equally as amazing recipe.

            Macarons are one of the well-known “difficult” cookies to make. Which is most likely the reason I like to make them, because I love the challenge. If you can make an Italian Meringue though you can make macarons. An Italian Meringue being whipped egg whites with a unbearably syrup drizzled in. It is beautiful and ridiculously delicious. The meringue cookie does not have very many ingredients in it. It has almond meal, powdered sugar, egg whites, granulated sugar, and water. The ingredients are the easiest part.

            To start off you must take the almond meal and pulse it in the food processor until it is as fine as possible. After that mix the powdered sugar and sift them together making sure to get the big pieces of almond meal left. That should be nice and powdery, next add in part of the egg whites and some banana extract mix everything together until it’s nicely combined (a spatula is the best way to go). Set that aside and grab a small pot and add together water and granulated sugar do not mix them together just let them sit and turn on the stove to a high temperature. Grab some type of thermometer (I like the candy glass ones to best) bring the water up to about 203 degrees. When it reaches that temperature, letting it continue to cook, put the rest of the egg white is a mixer and add a pinch of sugar. Start whipping it into soft peaks while the water is cooking. The water should reach to about 248 degrees. When the syrup is at the temperature and the whites are at soft peaks slowly pour the syrup into the whites with the whisk on low speed. Make sure the syrup is drizzling very slowly at first (otherwise it will turn into soup). Once all of the syrup has been added turn the speed up to medium high and whip it until the bowl feels cool to the tough and the egg whites are fluffy and shiny. This is also the point where you add a coloring. I did pink for these, but you can do any color you would like. Usually powdered coloring works best, and I like to add a good amount to make the color vibrant. After the bowl is cool and you have a nice color take a scoop of the meringue and mix it into the almond mixture to soften it up a little. Slowly add a third of the meringue at a time folding it gently into the almond. By the time all the meringue is mixed in it should be fluid enough to stream off a spatula and leave a ribbon in the batter for a little bit, but eventually fall back into the batter.

            Piping the macarons might be the trickiest part. You need a pastry bag and a round tip medium size. You can buy macaron mats online to make piping a little easier I have a couple but I also do some free hand. You need to pipe them as consistently as possible seeing as you will sandwich them together they need to match (unless you don’t care then go crazy). After you have piped a sheet tray give it a couple good BANGS on the counter to get out the bubbles and make them smooth on top. Now an important part of macarons is after they have been piped to let them sit out until they have a skin the top (about an hour maybe shorter depending on the air). It will be crucial to the look of the macarons.

            Baking them in convection ovens is the best way to go but it’s not crucial. They only need to be baked a short amount of time. Convection ovens need to be preheated to 325 degrees standard 400. If using a standard place the cookies in the oven and lower the heat to 325. They need to bake about 8-12 minutes depending on size. Do not open the oven in between they will deflate.

Once they are done they let them cool and let think about a filling! I decided to compliment my banana macarons with a delicious nutella filling (cause lets be real you can’t go wrong with banana and nutella). Now most macarons has a buttercream in the center, but you can be creative and fill them with basically anything. I did not do anything fancy with my nutella, just put it in a pastry bag and piped it into the center. Smoosh two together that may or may not be the same size (depending on how OCD you are). There you have a Parisian Macaron. That may or may not sound simple (or I may just not be a very good instructor, but how detailed can you get in a blog).

I find making macarons for gifts are the best, it really impresses people and it makes a good amount, so you can surprise many people with gifts(if you like that many people).

Adios Amigos,

Cassidy J

Parisian Macarons 

Almond Flour 1 3/4 cups + 2 1/2 Tbsp 

Powdered Sugar 1 3/4 + 1Tbsp + 2 tsp 

Egg Whites 1/4 cup 1 1/2 Tbsp 

Banana Extract 1/2 tsp

Egg Whites 1/4 cup 2 Tbsp 

Granulated Sugar 1 cup + 3 Tbsp 

Water 2/3 cup 

Filling 

Nutella 1 jar