Strawberry & White Chocolate Scones

So um...

These guys are really tasty. Like extremely suprisingly delicious.

I have never been one for strawberry-flavored things. I LOVE the berry. Fresh sweet strawberries are absolutely amazing!

But I can't deal with strawberry ice cream, or pie (unless it has rhubarb to sour it up a bit), or strawberry jam.

My mom used to give us cut up strawberries for dessert growing up, and she'd sprinkle a little sugar on them so they'd get a little syrup going...my siblings were obsessed! I always asked for them sans sugar. I just never liked overly sweet things in one bite.

These guys however...they've changed my mind about baking with strawberries. And white chocolate. That's one of the best things about the Chocolate Blog Party. I try new things I never would've known I'd like. And it's so fun!

The recipe comes from one of my favorite bloggers, Smitten Kitchen. She made them as biscuits, and I found that my batter came out more scone-like as I made a few adjustments.

They were the perfect way for me to unwind this afternoon after knocking my first final exam and a presentation out of the way. The semester is winding down, and I'm getting nervous, excited and sad all in the same time!

I hate to say goodbye to my wonderful San Sebastián (literally in looove with this city) and all of the fantastic friends I've made, but I'm also unbelievably excited for my summer travels! Definitely full of mixed emotions as it finally sets in...I have a little over a week left before I pack up and start travels. Eep. Just have to survive 2 more final exams and a paper!

These scones most definitely have aided in the emotional roller-coaster that are these realizations of leaving! Baking always makes me feel better! :D

So here we go:

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
85 grams COLD unsalted butter (cubed)
1 cup chopped strawberries (the riper the better)

3/4 cup chopped white chocolate
(plus a few tablespoons chocolate to melt and drizzle on top when baked)

3/4 cup heavy cream (plus 2 tsp to use to melt white chocolate)

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment or foil.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Then cut the butter in with a pastry cutter, or 2 knives until only pea-sized lumps remain.

Then fold in the strawberries and chocolate with a rubber spatula until the berries are coated in the flour. Then pour in the heavy cream, and gently stir to distribute.

Once the cream has mostly absorbed, use your hands to knead the dough in the bowl GENTLY, to get all of it in a ball. Be sure to not overwork the dough, not everything needs to be mixed entirely! Pour out onto a well floured surface, and sprinkle top with flour. Gently press the dough until its down to 3/4 inch thickness, and in the shape of a circle.

 Using a large, floured chef's knife, cut the circle into 8 even wedges.

Place on the baking sheet giving each scone a couple inches to grow, and bake for 12-15 minutes. Once they have cooled, microwave the extra white chocolate and a little bit of cream until melted. Using a ziploc or a pastry cone decorate with zig zags or stripes of chocolate.

And there ya go! If you've made scones before, definitely a super easy recipe! If this is your first time, still a fairly manageable dough to work with. :) And ohhh so yummy when they come out. Now to look towards surviving my 3rd to last finals week. EVER. How crazy is that??!

Here's the rules of the game for the Chocolate Blog Party:

There's a special ingredient each month to be paired with chocolate!

You can submit up to 3 recipes each month.

You include a link back to the monthly round-up or the Chocolate party page

You just have to be sure that the recipe is published for the current month!

THE One and Only Brownie

Now let me just start of saying...the reason I call these guys THE brownies would be that in my family, these are the only acceptable ones. This is probably the first recipe I learned to make growing up baking with my mom (it might be tied with our Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe--also flawless haha). I can remember mixing the batter and waiting to see who my mom would let lick the beater and the spoon!

Amy, Caroline and I (the littlest) eating brownie batter. Hehe.

I didn't even really know OTHER brownies until I hit middle school (with bake-sales etc). Boxed brownies were blasphemy in my house.

As I started to bake more, and work in bakeries as an intern I began making their recipes...and still found that I preferred our tried and true version (with the exception of these Bouchon brownies that we made at my last bakery job with Valrhona cocoa powder...nom, those were delicious. Too dark-chocolatey for my mom though!).

These aren't cakey or fluffy. And they aren't fudgey. Anytime I try to explain them, I find it kind of difficult to get it right. So I will just tell you to give them a go, and then you'll understand.

One disclaimer about my momma and I. I'm always wanting to try new things, so here and there I'll try to tweak recipes to spruce them up a bit or change something. My mom ALWAYS tells me to leave the recipe alone. It's a funny little dance we do: mother telling daughter what to do, and daughter obviously not listening. Sometimes the changes work, other times it turns into an "I told you so".

Jeff, Caroline and I with our mom!

Either way, I would not be where I am right now without my mom, and I would definitely not have the love I do for baking without growing up doing so with her and my siblings.

That being said...I added something to our brownies. Shh...she'll never know (except when she reads this of course haha)!

My mom sent me a care-package to Spain right before we left for Spring Break, so when I got back from my travels I had a wonderful box full of snacks you can't get in Spain, Easter candy and necessities that I had left at home (a functioning iPhone cable etc). Well, I was determined NOT to eat the Easter candy because I have trying to be a little bit more healthy (after travelling, eating out every meal...and oh so much bread).

So I was waiting to give most of it to my sister, but then it occurred to me to bake with some of it! My mom sent me Reese's eggs (among many others), so I decided to chop some up and stick them in the brownies! YUMMO.

Don't be mad at me momma! Caroline puts walnuts in hers!

So here we go! THE Brownie that truly began my love for baking:

2 one ounce squares Baker's unsweetened chocolate
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup flour
half a bag of Reese's mini eggs, chopped into quarters (or minis)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prepare your pan. I used a silicon muffin tin because I don't have a proper baking dish in my Spanish apartment, but this recipe uses an 8 by 8 or 9 by 9 brownie pan. Whatever you use, be sure to grease it.

In a small microwave-safe bowl, microwave the chocolate and shortening in 30 second intervals (stopping to mix with a spoon or spatula) until the chocolate is melted.

After letting cool for a minute or two, combine the chocolate/shortening with the sugar and eggs in a medium bowl, and mix with a spatula or whisk until combined. Then add the vanilla, salt and baking powder and mix until distributed. Add the flour, and mix until it just comes together (don't overmix or you'll have stiff brownies).

Then fold in the Reese's.

Fill your pan, and bake for about 25 minutes (with the muffin tin a couple minutes less) and check with a toothpick to make sure (if it comes out clean, or with a few crumbs, it's done).

And there ya go. I can literally be having the worst day of my life, and making these brownies will make me feel infinitely better. Just the smell of them in the oven is a comfort that takes me right back to my childhood home. I hope you enjoy them just as much as my family does! :)

Buttermilk Orange Zest Cupcakes with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Well... I'm back home (Spain-home) from my 2 week Spring Break! I had quite the adventurous time full of lessons learned about travelling. I missed a flight from Lisbon, Portugal to Madrid, Spain when I was trying to meet my sister so we could fly to Dublin due to stupidity (completely forgot about military time)...and when on my way back to San Sebastián, had my wallet stolen on the Madrid metro. BUT other than those fiascos, I had pretty wonderful trips! Ireland was definitely my favorite of the two (versus Portugal). To hear about both trips, take a look at my travel blog tomorrow when I've posted about them!

Anyways. Back to the cupcakes! The entire two weeks I was gone I was ITCHING to bake. I fear it's become an obsession slash my favorite form of procrastination. Oh, Sophie you have two papers to write....buuut cupcakes!!

These little guys came out of my love for chocolate and orange. This month's Chocolate Blog party ingredient was buttermilk. To be honest, I don't have a lot of experience using buttermilk. Here and there I've experimented with using it in chocolate cakes etc. but nothing really beyond that. I've never even bought it before. I always have done the make it yourself trick (putting one tablespoon of lemon juice in a 1 cup measuring cup, and then filling the rest of the way with milk, waiting like 10 minutes, and voilá!).

I had originally wanted to make buttermilk scones, but by the time I got back from my trip somebody else had already taken that route! So I decided to go with cupcakes. Instead of making the cupcake chocolate (which is usually my preferred cupcake),  I found a simple recipe for orange zested buttermilk cake, and made the frosting chocolate cream cheese! Pretty tasty combination! I had an interesting time zesting the orange (no zester in my Spanish apartment). Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, but it was a pretty funny process. I peeled the zest with a vegetable peeler, and then minced it as fine as I could.

So here we go:

Cupcakes- (Slightly adapted recipe from The Daring Gourmet)

2 eggs, room temp
1 cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk (I did the lemon juice/milk combo explained above)
1 tsp vanilla
Zest of an orange
1/4 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin pan with cupcake papers.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until combined. Then add the buttermilk, vanilla and zest and mix until distributed. Whisk in the melted butter. Then add the baking powder and salt. Add the flour and mix just until it all comes together (do not overmix!).

Fill your pan with batter 3/4 of the way full, and bake for about 20 minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick. Let cool out of the pan for at least half an hour before frosting.

While the cupcakes are cooling, make the frosting:

200 grams cream cheese
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup powdered sugar

In a medium bowl, whisk all ingredients together until combined. Be sure to sift the powdered sugar beforehand to avoid lumps!

Once the cupcakes have cooled, using whatever tip you want (or doing the easy knife spread) frost your cupcakes! :)

And that's that! I love these chocolate parties because I get to experiment with new ideas! :)

Here are the rules of the game:

There's a special ingredient each month to be paired with chocolate!

You can submit up to 3 recipes each month.

You include a link back to the monthly round-up or the Chocolate party page

You just have to be sure that the recipe is published for the current month!

Super fun and challenging way to get to know other bloggers and try new things!

Bailey's Chocolate Milkshakes for St. Paddy's

Well, I'm one week away from an amazing two week Spring Break that will be full of crazy fun travelling to Portugal (for one week with friends from my program) and then Ireland (for the other with my sister Caroline). We get a week for the typical university Spring Break, and then Semana Santa as well. This weekend has been full of studying for midterms that are coming up this week as a lovely parting gift before vacation. I wanted to make something related to St. Patrick's Day for the blog because it didn't feel right when I'll be in Ireland so soon! When brainstorming ideas, I decided that after being here for two months...I could really use a milkshake. And why not make it a slightly spiked one with a definite favorite of mine, deeeelicious Bailey's Irish Cream. :) So here's an uber simple but scrumptious tip of the hat to the silly fun holiday of leprechauns and lots of drunkards!

What you'll need:

 1 1/2 cups Chocolate Ice Cream (really you could use any flavor that'd go with Irish Cream)
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup Bailey's Irish Cream (or to taste)
Whipped Cream

I don't have a blender here in Spain, so I just used a stick blender that was in my apartment and a bowl. If you are fortunate to have a real blender, just throw everything in and blend until smooth! Serve in tall glasses, and top with whipped cream and preferably a straw (what milkshake doesn't taste better with a straw? I mean c'mon). I drizzled mine with some caramel I still had left over from cookies too! :D

So there ya go. So easy. So perfect. So yum! Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody! 

Now, back to studying. ugh.

Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies with Salted Caramel and Peanuts (Snickers?!)

Okay, I've had a major sweet tooth the past couple weeks. It's so hard not to be when you live in a city (or country I guess...it's like this all over Spain) where there are bakeries basically every other store! I have been also on a huuuge chocolate kick. I cannot explain my sudden obsession (it's really getting terrible), but it happened when I got here definitely! Everything I've baked here so far I have wanted to drown it in chocolate-y goodness. Weird, because back in the states, it's not usually my first thought. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love chocolate. But here, it's been on like over-drive. 

These cookies are pretty scrumptious. I was trying to think about things that are notoriously American...I guess I'm kind of getting to the home-sick missing food stage of study abroad. I've been here in Spain for over 2 months now! CRAZY.

But I wanted to play with flavors to make it like a typical American candy, so I thought hmm chocolate and caramel and nuts... Snickers! They totally have them here, but I don't know, it made me feel home-y. Turtles, snickers whatever ya wanna call it.

I had originally made Butterscotch Brownie muffins with hazelnuts for the Chocolate Blog Party, but I wasn't really happy with how they turned out so I wanted to do something better!

These are quite tasty! And it's not difficult to conjure up. I even made the cookie dough and caramel the night before I actually assembled the cookies, so they can totally be prepped in advance if you're short on time!

Here we go:

For the Caramel Sauce: I got the recipe from here but I reduced it/tweaked it a bit:

1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp water
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tbsp butter
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a small saucepan, heat the sugar and water (after whisking together slightly) over high heat until it turns an amber color (about 8 minutes on the stove), swirling the pan occasionally to get the sugar moving a bit. 

Keep an eye on the sugar because it seriously is a FINE line to being perfect or being burnt. I didn't use a candy thermometer for this batch, but if you want to the recipe I used said you want the sugar to get to 350 degrees.

Once you've reached the color, remove from heat and whisk in the butter. Then slowly pour the cream in a small stream, whisking as you go. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the pan with your whisk so the sugar doesn't clump. Once everything is combined, whisk in the salt and vanilla. Pour into a container, and store in the fridge. (Can be kept for about a month!)

For the cookies: Somewhat adapted from Martha Stewart

1 cup flour
1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened to room temp
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

For topping (optional/can be changed to your liking):
1 ounce dark chocolate (melted in microwave) for decorating
1/4 cup chopped peanuts

In a medium bowl cream together the sugar and butter. Add the egg, milk and vanilla, and mix until combined. 

Then add the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Mix until just integrated. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours (I did mine overnight, and it made the scooping a lot easier!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare baking sheet with foil or parchment. Scoop one tablespoon of cookie dough per cookie and roll into a ball. Then using the end of a wooden spoon (dipped in cocoa powder to avoid sticking), or your thumb make an indent for the filling. Bake for 8-10 minutes rotating half way through.

Once the cookies have cooled, add your fillings. I did probably a heavy 1/4 tsp of caramel per cookie. 

Then using a small spoon, drizzle the melted chocolate over, and top with the peanuts!

Thumbprints are super fun because you can change them up super easily, and make fun delicious combinations! These, I definitely loved. Though, maybe next time I'd try to play around with the Snickers nougat...hmm.

So, as part of the Chocolate Blog Party, here are the rules of the game:

Pairing seasonal/fun ingredients with chocolate by the month!

1.) Blog about your chocolate treat. Your recipe must include the two ingredients we choose. It can be a simple no bake treat or a sophisticated layer cake, the complexity level of the recipe is totally up to you.

2.) Include a link back to this post or the Chocolate party page. Optional, add the Chocolate Party logo in your blog post or on your sidebar.

3.) Your recipe must be published during the current month. Please do not link old recipes, they will be deleted.

It's a fun way to come up with new recipes and try new ideas! And the group of bloggers involved are all full of amazingly delicious looking recipes! Give it a go, and join us!