Chocolate Truffle Tart

I seem to be posting less and less these days - but PLEASE bear with me. I am breastfeeding my nearly-three-month-old daughter and chasing around my two-year-old son and when I'm not doing either of those things I'm popping Tylenols and wishing I was in Maui.

I can no longer blame my cravings on being pregnant, but dammit, I wanted something chocolate. This brings us to today's recipe, the rich and decadent Chocolate Truffle Tart. The only thing I did differently from the recipe was I used a store-bought chocolate crust. So sue me. I used Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips, made with 60 percent cacao.

It took exactly twenty minutes to bake.

It turned out perfect! Dusted with cocoa powder, it looks lovely, in addition to tasting absolutely divine. The texture of this tart is silky smooth, like a real truffle, and the taste...oh, the taste. I absolutely recommend this recipe to ANYONE who loves chocolate. You won't regret it one bit! Unless you're on a diet, and even then you may not mind.

There's something else I wanted to write about today. When I first started this blog, I knew I wanted to be an inspiration to others who, like me, were afraid to try new things for fear of failing. I have gotten to the point where most of what I bake turns out well, but not always! This truffle tart is not the only thing I've baked this month. I also made a coconut crème pie from a recipe found on the back of a box of nonfat dry milk. Let's just say it was a failure. I have no idea what went wrong, but when I sliced into it, it had not set and was WAY too liquidy to eat. It still tasted divine, but the texture was horrible. I did not take a picture, unfortunately. I guess I forgot because I was so pre-occupied with being disappointed and trying to figure out where I messed up.

My point is, even though my coconut crème pie was a disaster, I'm not letting that deter me from pursuing my dreams of a career in baking. In the beginning, such an event would have depressed me and given me second thoughts about baking. It feels good to know that even though I'm still VERY capable of making mistakes, my confidence has grown strong enough to withstand those mistakes.

Moral of the story:  If at first you don't succeed, try - try again!

Mini Apple Pies

My mom makes this awesome pastry braid thing for New Year's Day dinner. It's corned beef, cabbage, and Swiss cheese all wrapped up and it's DELICIOUS. This year, she decided to experiment with Pillsbury Crescent Roll Seamless Dough Sheets. She bought two and only used one, so we had one left over.

The point of telling you this is, this leftover pastry dough was the reason I made these mini pies. I was looking for something to make with it and these are what I decided on.

For my filling, I used Pillsbury's Perfect Apple Pie recipe. I changed it up a little bit to suit my tastes - I only used one tablespoon of flour, half a teaspoon of lemon juice, and about one sixteenth of nutmeg (I'm not a huge nutmeg fan). Also, my apples were a little smaller than medium-sized, and they were Granny Smith.

For my baking directions, I followed Dollhouse Bake Shoppe's cues. I baked them at 375 degrees and planned on following her advice to bake for 25 to 30 minutes, but they only took ten. Granted, I only made six mini pies. This is because after six I didn't feel like making anymore. I had loads of filling left over, as you might imagine. With it I plan to make applesauce. If it works out, maybe I'll post that on here too. Who knows.

I'd intended to drop a bit of butter on top of the filling in each pie before adding the lattice, but I forgot. I also forgot to add the egg wash which gives pies such a pretty sheen. At any rate, they turned out lovely enough.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie (and Minis)

For a coworker's birthday, my husband asked me to make a baked dessert. I asked what kind - cake, brownies, cookies, what does she like? Answer:  "Something sweet." Alrighty then.

Armed with this vague information that eliminated virtually nothing from the spectrum, I took to the pages bookmarked on my internet browser. Finally I saw something that I'd been eyeballing for a while but hadn't had an excuse to make - Cookie Pie.

She calls it a pie because she made it in her pie pan, so I'll call it that too, though it has much more of a cake-like consistency than pie, or cookies, for that matter.

Since I was using self-rising flour instead of all purpose, I omitted the baking soda completely. I had read in the comments that some people had found the pie to be too floury, so I also omitted the extra tablespoon of flour called for. I used dark brown sugar, though I'm not sure which kind she used - the recipe only says "brown sugar", but I figured it was worth making a note. Lastly, I used semi-sweet chocolate chips in lieu of M&Ms.

I baked my pie in a 9-inch pie pan, slightly smaller than what she used. Also, I took some of the batter and put it into four mini brioche tins. Since my pie was going away and I wouldn't be able to sample it, I wanted to have a mini-pie for myself to taste. The other three minis were for my husband and two brothers who also happened to be hanging around.

The batter tasted pretty salty, so I was a little worried putting it into the oven, wondering how it would turn out. Everything baked for twenty minutes and was done.

I ended up worrying for basically nothing. In addition to looking perfect, it tasted great, too. The cookie part was a little less sweet than I'd have preferred, but with so much chocolate, it hardly mattered. Next time I make this recipe I think I'll add more sugar. I didn't find it too floury or buttery, as some people commented on the recipe's page. Also, next time I think I'll just make a bunch of minis and forgo the big pie altogether. I love how cute the little scalloped edges are.

Key Lime Pie Bars

The last few posts have been horribly out of order chronologically, but this marks the point at which things start running the right way along the timeline again. Sorry for any confusion!

So this post's recipe, Key Lime Pie Bars, was made for a Fourth of July party, that was in fact held on the third. The recipe comes from a blog called My Baking Addiction, another blog I recently discovered and fell in love with.

Let me begin by telling you this recipe turned out BEAUTIFULLY. My favorite part of it was the crust, which was awesomely simple but some of the best I've ever had. Only four ingredients in the crust:  graham crackers, sugar, butter, and - surprise - coconut. I usually hate coconut, but this crust made me realize I'd better rethink that.

Now, the recipe calls for key lime juice, three fourths of a cup. It recommends using pre-squeezed juice, but I couldn't find any, so I bought a bag of key limes instead. I asked my mother how many I would need. She said probably three or four. So when I bought the bag of key limes, and it contained about twenty, I thought, "Damn - what the hell am I going to do with all these limes?!" Ha.

It took every last lime to reach that three-fourths line on my measuring cup. I had also used a few of them for the key lime zest, and this is when I realized that I had forgotten to buy a new grater since I loathe the one we have.

The recipe says the bars should be in the oven only 5 to 8 minutes, but mine were in there quite a bit longer and turned out fine. I was waiting for the pinhole bubbles and it took much longer than 8  minutes for them to appear.

The key lime zest did not throw off the smoothness of the bars at all, as I suspected it might. The tart key lime bar perfectly balanced out the sweet graham cracker and coconut crust. Instead of garnishing mine with coconut, I topped some with strawberry halves, others with blueberries, and each one got a dollop of Cool Whip.

I made a pretty little sign for the party.

I can't stop drooling over that crust.

Festive, aren't they? They were a hit. :)