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This months Cookie Carnival recipe is Chocolate Citrus Biscotti (flavored with orange and lemon zest) from Giada De Laurentiis via the Food Network.

I love anything citrus. I can eat all the navel oranges you can put in front of me. In my opinion, Florida grows the best oranges. Of course, I may be a bit biased as I grew up in the middle of a county that is home to approximately 95,050 acres of commercial orange groves. In case you were wondering, that’s a ton of oranges!

Back to the biscotti… This is a recipe I plan on baking again and again. It was absolutely wonderful. I loved the cornmeal texture. It’s something I hadn’t tried before with biscotti. It got even better when dipped in hot coffee. Y-u-m-m-y.

I had my doubts that it would be citrus-y enough for my liking, but I was pleasantly surprised with the flavor. It was just right and they smelled absolutely wonderful as they baked!

A couple of notes:

I found the dough to be really soft when trying to form it into logs. It kept wanting to spread outward. In the end, I had more of a large rectangle rather than a well formed log. It still worked though, they were just a little wider than originally intended.

The recipe says it makes 3 dozen. Somehow, I only came out with about 1 dozen. Probably due to the aforementioned widening of the logs.

On the last round of baking I cut the baking time to 20 minutes instead of 25.

Also, there are a few reviews on Food Network’s site saying the biscotti was extremely hard. I didn’t find it to be that hard. Yes, it was a bit harder than some biscotti I have baked but it wasn’t break-your-teeth hard.

For an extra touch, I chopped some walnuts and sprinkled them on the chocolate before it set.

They are even delicious for breakfast. Not that I had any for breakfast. This is just hypothetically speaking of course….sort of….

Get the recipe: Chocolate Citrus Biscotti

Also, if you haven’t already, check out the Cookie Carnival!

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Bonfires always mean one thing to me… S’mores. Yeah, spending quality time with great friends is nice and all… but we’re talking about s’mores here people. Chocolate, graham crackers and toasty marshmallows.

I’m not sure what I enjoy most, toasting the marshmallows (and almost burning them), squishing them between the chocolate and graham cracker or enjoying the ooey-gooey goodness of the whole experience.

Thing is, bonfires don’t work so well indoors. So this is the next best option – S’mores Cupcakes. Toasted marshmallow and a Hershey’s bar section sandwiched between two layers of a graham cracker cupcake.

To make S’mores Cupcakes you’ll need:

Graham Cracker Cupcakes (see recipe link below)
2 huge Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars
16 oz bag of Marshmallows

The graham cracker cupcake recipe is really quite simple to make and the end result tastes so delicious. The recipe comes from Garrett at VanillaGarlic.

Instead of using cupcake liners, I buttered and lightly floured the cupcake pan to get nice even sides.

To assemble the s’mores, first slice the cupcake in half.

Wow, that was hard. Next….

Get your chocolate pieces ready to go by breaking the big Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars in to 8, 2-piece sections per bar. For some reason, I didn’t look at the wrapper to see how many ounces these bars were, but I found them in the candy aisle at the grocery store. They are a lot bigger and thicker than the normal ones that are 1.55 oz. The king size bars are the same thickness as the ones I used, so if you can’t find the big bars, those should work. Also, the cupcake recipe makes 12-14 cupcakes, so you might have a few chocolate squares left over.

To toast the marshmallow, I tried two different ways. For the first try, I cut a few marshmallows in half horizontally and placed them cut side down on a sheet of parchment and set the oven to broil. They took literately seconds to brown on top. A few problems with this method; They browned on the top only and there wasn’t enough marshmallow-to-chocolate ratio on the cupcake. The second try I placed a whole marshmallow on its side. This worked much better as it browned more evenly. You could also use a kitchen torch if you have one. If you toast them in the oven on broil, please be extremely careful. It doesn’t take long (30 seconds, max) for them to go from slightly brown to “OMG! The oven is on fire!!”. Trust me on this one.

Place the chocolate squares on the bottom half of the cupcakes before toasting the marshmallows. That way, the marshmallows are still warm and slightly melt the top of the chocolate. Squish the top half of the cupcake down on the marshmallow just until it starts oozing past the edge of the chocolate square.

Voilà!

Here’s the link to the cupcake recipe in case you missed it: Graham Cracker Cupcakes

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This is my first Cookie Carnival recipe! Yummy Black-Bottom Coconut Bars.

I stumbled upon the Cookie Carnival recently and I had to join immediately because as we all know, I love a good cookie. Well, any cookie really. Plus, I figured it would give me a good chance to broaden my cookie horizons and try recipes from different cookbooks/sources.

Lately I’ve kinda been stuck in a Martha Stewart rut. I have both her cookie and cupcake books, which are both completely fabulous, but I find myself turning to them over and over again. So, when I learned the recipe for this months Cookie Carnival, wouldn’t it just figure it’s a Martha recipe. That’s okay though. I’m not complaining one little bit. I think Martha is just super. I’m just not sure how she feels about me though. Or if she knows I exist… which I’m 99% sure she doesn’t. Okay, okay, moving on.

Out of my entire family, only one other person (besides myself) likes coconut. Isn’t that sad? So for this recipe, they’re just out of luck! Which means I get half of the yummy bars to myself. Yay for me, not so much for my waistline.

The bars were great!. They were really great! They made me realize that I don’t bake with coconut enough. I will have to fix that. Soon.

The recipe is relatively simple. No mixers or fancy gadgets, just bowls and a whisk.

Get the recipe here.

If you haven’t already, check out the Cookie Carnival.

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My dear mom’s birthday was earlier this month. I asked her if she wanted me to pick her up a cake at our favorite local bakery or if she wanted something different this year. She gave me very specific instructions…

Cupcakes. Chocolate.

Since the bakery doesn’t have cupcakes (I know, weird isn’t it? They have every dessert, except cupcakes.) I offered to make her some. After some recipe hunting I decided on Devil’s Food Cupcakes. The recipe made somewhere around 32. Thats a lot of cupcakes for a small party so I decided rather than having a ton of cupcakes of the same flavor I would spice things up a bit. Two of her favorite things are coffee and raspberries, so I filled half of the cupcakes with raspberry jam and the other half with an espresso buttercream filling.

I first baked the cupcakes then let them cool completely. While they were cooling I made the espresso filling. The recipe I found was a bit too sweet for me but everyone seemed to love it. I found the recipe here. I had tried different methods of filling cupcakes before so this time I wanted to try to just pipe the filling in. For both fillings, I used a wilton #12 tip, just poked it in and squeezed gently as I pulled upward. I clearly overfilled the first one. It was oozing filling out the sides. That’s okay though, it still tasted good.

For the top of the mocha cupcakes, I made Chocolate Ganache Frosting and topped them with a Starbucks Mocha Truffle. Man those things are good! It was all I could do to put them on the cupcakes, not in my mouth. They can be a bit pricey if you have a lot of cupcakes but I found some on sale for about $3 dollars off. They have other yummy flavors also like espresso, vanilla bean and milk chocolate chai truffles. Update: I just heard that Hershey is no longer producing the Starbucks chocolates. This is very sad news indeed..

Mmmmm… the cupcakes were perfectly moist and the espresso filling with the ganache was to die for. Chocolate paradise!

I frosted the raspberry filled cupcakes with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I had a minor change of plans with this frosting. I really wanted to use fresh raspberries to flavor it. I bought a container at the grocery store, got home only to realize the middle of the package was completely moldy. So plan B, I took the left over jam and added it by tablespoons until I had the right amount of raspberry flavor. I also dropped in a bit of red food coloring to make it pink because the jam wasn’t really adding much color; it was more of a murky reddish-grayish color.

I’m not sure which was my favorite. I really love mocha, but the raspberry tasted so fresh and summery. I think I will just call it a tie. But the most important part… Mom loved them! As did everyone else.

Recipe Links:

Devil’s Food Cupcakes
Espresso Buttercream Filling
Chocolate Ganache Frosting
Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream

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Slowly but surely I have been baking my way through Martha Stewart’s Cookies book. When I have a cookie craving, this is the book I turn to. So the other night when I was in the baking mood I flipped through and waited for something to jump out at me. Figuratively speaking, of course.

I’ve made plain biscotti before, so this time around, I wanted to try something new. This might just become a favorite from now on. It has several things going for it. Firstly, it’s chocolate. Enough said. But also, the slightly salty taste of the pistachios pairs perfectly with just the right amount of sweetness. In other words, this biscotti rocks!

Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt, set aside. Beat sugar and butter; add eggs. Lightly beat in flour mixture.

Mmmmm… Look at the chocolaty goodness. Can it get any better?!?!

Oh yeah, it can! Just throw in some semi-sweet chocolate chips and pistachios!

Form the stiff dough into a flattened log and bake for about 25 minutes. Cool a bit then cut diagonally across to form 1-inch-thick slices; place them cut sides down on the cookie sheet. Then, just pop ‘em back in the oven for 8 min. Voilà!

Also, try dipping them in your favorite beverage. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, you name it!

Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti
adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cookies (pg 246)

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Wow.

These are beyond good… There are hardly any words…. mind-blowing… magnificent!

It’s like eating a chocolate chip cookie on top of a slice of warm banana bread, but all in one bite! Mmmmm! The walnuts and oats give it a nice texture and thickness compared to just a normal cookie. Promise me you will try these. Pretty please.

I used a 2 teaspoon cookie scoop to drop the dough onto the sheets. I have always used two spoons to scoop the dough but this made it so much easier. And fun! Plus they all came out to a consistent size.

Yummy. That’s all I have to say about that.

Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies
adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cookies

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