BAKING FOR 2

I just got a book on Small-Batch Baking. By Debby Maugans Nakos. A super book. In the book Debby talks about Desserts for 2.  I made a yellow cake for tonights dinner and It came out fantastic.  I was very impressed.  She hit right on with the recipe. Time, Temp Measurements were right on.  It looks like most of the cakes are made in a 14.5 oz cans.  The cans that beans etc come in. I used very small cake pans for the cake below.  She goes into how to prep the cans to use for you baking molds. I made the yellow cake in just a few minutes, with 1 small bowl,  and one 3 qt bowl. and a wire whip.  The baking took right at 25 minutes. Ovens my vary on temp and time.

Photography by Michael Long

Here is what the Publisher had to say about the book.

Even the most enthusiastic home bakers may admit there are times when they really only need a few muffins for breakfast or a couple of cream puffs for a dinner party—not a dozen or more of each. When standard recipes won't reduce neatly (how do you halve an egg, for example?), frustration ensues. Nakos, a Shape, Southern Living and Cooking Light contributor, takes more than 250 classic cakes, pies, cookies, cobblers, puddings and breads and downsizes their proportions to yield just the right number of goodies for small families, singles, newlyweds, empty-nesters or the leftovers-averse (do such people exist?). Nakos certainly is creative: she uses tin cans to bake two-layer coconut cakes and chocolate cakes, jumbo muffin tins for Peach Pie and Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, and small loaf pans for Moist Fudgy Brownies. Meanwhile, a full-size loaf pan turns out Mississippi Mud Cake or Gingerbread Roulade, and one regular baking sheet does the job for Cinnamon Hazelnut Biscotti. Small-batch baking as formulated by Nakos is liberating: with quick mixing, baking and clean-up times, the whole process of producing, say, eight Pecan Snowball Cookies for tea time, or two Honey Apple Oatmeal Crisps for a sweet breakfast, is less overwhelming.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I give this book a 4.5 star rating.  There are no pictures in the book. or at least none in the paper back edition.  I will be posting recipes from this book very shortly.

THE WONDERFUL CHOCOLATE WAFER

Always being a big fan of the Vanilla Wafer,  I have never found a good chocolate wafer.  But now I have one.. And it's way way over the top.  This thing is so good,  It makes your eyes tear up.  The only true way to enjoy these is with Brain Freeze COLD MILK or with Ice cream... However, these little guys can be eaten straight up also... But the Brain Freeze is so much better... 

    Alice Medrich wrote this recipe and it's from her book Cookies and Brownies, A Warner Books, Inc.  New York: 1999  Which I've adapted this recipe from.







Ingredients:

• 1 cup (130g)  AP Flour


• 1/2 cup (50)  unsweetened DUTCH-Processed cocoa powder


• 1/4 tsp           salt (kosher)


• 1/4 tsp           baking soda


• 3 TBS (45g)    unsalted butter, room temp.


• 3 TBS (45g)    margarine (NOTE!!!) 


• 2/3cup(140g) packed light brown sugar


• 1/2cup(100g) granulated white sugar


• 1 tsp               pure vanilla extract.  or 3 vanilla beans split and scrapped out I changed out the extract to vanilla bean.  Made big difference!


• 1 large            egg

Note the addition of the margarine!!!!

 Directions:

1. In a bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.


2. In your mixer bowl cream the butter and margarine until well blended.  Add the sugars (both the white and brown).  And the vanilla to the mix.  Beat on high speed for (1 minute).  Stop the mixer and scrap down the sides And beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then add the flour mixture. and beat until (JUST INCORPORATED)


3. Take the dough out of the bowl, and onto parchment paper form the dough into a log.  About 1-11/2 in dia.  And warp the dough you just logged with parchment paper.   Try NOT to Flatten the log too much.  And place the log in the frig. for at least 1 hour, but better if longer.  Like overnight.


4. Preheat the oven to 350F. and place your racks in the center of the oven.  Your only going to be able to do 1 half sheet pan at a time.   


5. Using a very sharp knife cut the log into quarter inch slices and space them about one inch apart on your cookie sheets.  OH FORGOT USE SLIPATS OR PARCHMENT PAPER TO LINE YOUR SHEETS WITH. 


6. Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are puffy and tops have small crackles or ripples.  


7. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool  on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes or so.  Then you can move those little guys over to a cooling rack. 


8. You can store this little guys in an airtight bag or container for about 10days or so.

This will yield about 36 cookies.   

The local testers for this recipe have been at least 4 stars, all the way up to a 5 star.

So you know these little guys are good...