Cinnamon chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake, oh my!

Somehow I managed to miss that yesterday's post was my 100th post in this blog! Hurrah to me!

To celebrate this momentous event, I bring you a most delicious recipe for cinnamon chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake from Smitten Kitchen!

I'm actually going to include the recipe here along with my commentary, because I feel like there is a bit of a trick to preparing this. It's not horrendously difficult or anything, but I did find that this bears some notes. Also my own photos, because as Deb of SK admits buried in her list of many comments, her mum put together the cake she photographed for the post somewhat differently from the recipe instructions, hence the lack of chocolatey goodness on top. So without further ado, read this recipe, get yourself into the kitchen, and make this cake!


Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake

For the cake:
1 stick unsalted butter (4 ounces or 8 tablespoons) at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs, separated (remember: separate them when they're cold, then let them come to room temp!)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
16 ounces sour cream (I use the low-fat kind and it's just as nice!)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

For filling and topping:
12 ounces chocolate chips
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9"x13" cake pan.

In a bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and baking powder together. I use a large fine-mesh sieve for sifting. After you sift everything into the bowl, use a whisk to get all your dry ingredients blended together.

In a small bowl, mix together the 1/2 cup of sugar and teaspoon of cinnamon. Use a fork to blend them together well, then set this aside.


In a large bowl, use a mixer to cream together the softened butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar until light and fluffy (2 to 3 minutes), then mix in the egg yolks and vanilla.

Use the whisk attachment of your mixer to beat the egg whites until they're stiff and hold firm peaks. 

Alternately add sour cream and then flour mixture into butter mixture. This will require near-superhuman strength, because this mixture will become incredibly thick and hard to stir. I had to use a wooden spoon and then stop every couple of stirs to scrape it off with a spatula. Really. It is that thick. You will oof and grunt your way through this one, but it's okay! It will look almost like a bread dough rather than a batter. Carry on!

Now the recipe calls for you to fold the egg whites into the batter. Laugh, because there's no way anyone will be able to properly fold the egg whites into the black-hole-dense mass of dough in the bowl in front of you. Do the best you can to incorporate them in a technique that is as close to proper egg white folding as possible. The mixture will become softer as you incorporate the egg whites, but don't get discouraged if you can't do the folding properly. I adore artfully folding egg whites into batters, but this is not one of the times that calls for art. It calls for sheer determination and the use of your biceps.

Mop the sweat from your brow and get that cake pan handy. Plop about half the batter into the pan and spread it around. Again, it's so thick that this isn't going to be easy. I found that it was easiest to blob in gobs of dough all around the pan and use a small spatula to spread it around to completely cover the bottom of the pan. Once you've got the first layer of batter in the pan, use a spoon to sprinkle on about half the cinnamon-sugar mixture you prepared earlier, and then add about half the chocolate chips.

Then gob on the second half of the batter and spread it round again with the spatula. This can get a bit messy because of the chip layer, but I find that if you drop the batter in the pan in small amounts before spreading, it keeps things neater. (See photo!)

Once you've got all the batter in the pan, sprinkle on the rest of the cinnamon-sugar mixture and the rest of the chips. Grumble to yourself about what a pain in the ass it was to put this together, then put it in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes until a tester comes out clean. Put the pan on a rack and let it cool. Wonder if all the effort was worth it.

It is! It IS worth the effort! The cake is moist and spongy and not overly sweet, and the cinnamon-sugar mix on top gets slightly melty and crisp, and the chocolate chips don't melt all the way and it's just awesome. The first time I made this, Jeremy took some to work and it was extremely popular--so much so that one of his coworker's wives heard tell of it and felt left out so I packed up some for him to take home to her.

So yes... Jeremy and his coworkers are lucky gents, and you and your loved ones will be lucky too if you make one of these coffee cakes! Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm pretty sure this is one of the reasons Jeremy is so excited to marry me: a lifetime guaranteed supplier of cinnamon chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake.

Lemon Blueberry Bread + Mexican hot chocolate

What can I say? It was a weekend of indulgence!

Saturday we slept late and then I decided to make a breakfasty treat using some of the pint of blueberries I bought last week at the Harvard farmers' market. I found this recipe for lemon blueberry bread with lemon glaze and it was amazing! (The recipe, according to the blogger, is from a 1991 issue of Bon Appetit magazine. An oldie but a goodie.) I love the combination of lemon and blueberry---I generally tend to love anything with citrus flavors---so I was particularly happy to find a blueberry bread recipe with lemon in it.

Granted, my bread ended up being like lemon AND blueberry bread because all my blueberries sank to the bottom of the loaf. I think next time I'll perhaps reserve some of the berries and add them to my batter at the end, after pouring it into the pan. Doesn't really affect the deliciousness of the end product though. And don't skimp on doing the glaze. It MAKES this bread! The glaze cooks pretty quickly, at least it did for me, so I'd suggest waiting until right before you take the bread out of the oven to make this.

To complement our bread, I also made some Mexican-style hot chocolate, using a Taza chocolate disc. Taza is a local company in Somerville that makes stone-ground chocolate. It's good stuff---not the sweet, soft stuff a lot of people are used to, but intense, dark, gritty chocolate. I got one disc of the vanilla Taza chocolate (there are two thin discs inside the package).

To prepare it the Mexican way (for two), heat 2 cups of milk (I used 2%) over medium low heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Once the milk is warm, add about 3 ounces of coarsely chopped chocolate (1 of the Taza packages  of 2 thin discs equals 3 ounces). Whisk it into the milk for a few minutes until it's completely melted and the milk is frothy, and immediately divide the drink into 2 mugs and sip. OMG. It is SO indulgent and scrumptious! Creamy, rich, and intense. The perfect sipping chocolate.

We did some more cooking over the weekend (deceptively delicious bran muffins, homemade hummus, a spaghetti skillet casserole, and zucchini fritters), but I'll add those recipes in separate posts.

Olive oil pancakes and brown sugar bacon

I love pancakes, and nothing says "It's the weekend, sleep till 11 and stay in your jammies all day" more than a stack of pancakes with a cup of coffee. The fabulous Jose Andres has a recipe for olive oil pancakes in his book Made in Spain that are positively delicious.

I will admit that this Sunday was the second time I'd made them but the first time I'd made them properly. The first time I got halfway through the recipe before realizing that he calls for buttermilk, not milk, so I fudged and used soy milk. They were all right but nothing fabulous. But the buttermilk really makes a difference! Don't skimp: do it right!

These pancakes are soft, fluffy, and almost creamy-textured. The olive oil taste is light but lovely. Definitely give them a try. (Seriously, it's not that hard to put together a good basic pancake batter, so kick that box of pancake mix to the curb and DIY. SO tasty!) Jose recommends serving these pancakes with honey, which I did, and which was a great accompaniment.

Olive Oil Pancakes by Jose Andres

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 4 tablespoons best-quality olive oil, preferably Spanish, plus more for frying
• 1/3 cup chopped dark chocolate, preferably Spanish

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk in the egg, buttermilk and 2 tablespoons olive oil until the batter is smooth, then stir in the chocolate pieces.

2. Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a medium sauté pan over medium-low heat. Ladle one-fourth cup of the pancake batter into the pan and cook until golden brown, about 2 minutes. Flip the pancake with a spatula and cook until golden brown on the second side, 1 to 2 more minutes. Place the pancakes in a warm oven until all are cooked and ready to serve. Repeat with the remaining batter, adding more olive oil to the pan as needed.

Here is a video of Jose making the pancakes!

TIP: I know pancakes can be tricky--my first attempt at them resulted in a lot of burnt pancakes, some completely blackened, and a lot of smoke, and maybe 2 edible pancakes in the whole lot. The trick is to keep the heat very low, and to remember that the first pancakes you make will take longer to cook than the pancakes after them. This is because the pan or griddle will get progressively hotter, so always count on the first pancakes to take longer than subsequent pancakes, and don't use the cooking time of the first ones to gauge the cooking time of the rest of them. You may need to regrease your cooking surface at some point during your cooking process.

Flipping pancakes can also be a messy and agonizing process. An easy way to tell if they're ready to flip is to observe the edges of the pancake. If there are a few tiny bubbles forming along the edges and the edges seem to have taken on almost a filmy-looking quality (like it looks a little more solid than the liquidy center of the pancake), you are ready. I'm not describing this very well but you'll know it when you see it. Slide the spatula under the pancake (I wiggle it gently to get as much of the pancake on the spatula as possible) and flip quickly. The trick to not making a battery mess is to keep the pancake as close to the pan's surface as possible. Keeping your finished pancakes inside of a casserole dish with a cover will keep them warm until you serve them. Some people recommend keeping them stacked on a cooking sheet inside a low-heat oven, but I find my casserole dish improvisation works just as well. Pancakes cook quickly, so the time between cooking and serving them isn't huge.


PAIR YOUR PANCAKES WITH BACON!

I haven't tried this recipe personally yet, but a friend of mine just served this bacon recently at a bridal shower brunch and it was so good all of us had seconds. The baking method for the bacon is better than just frying it in a pan, or so I've heard. I'd line the baking sheet with foil before adding the wire rack, to make clean up that much easier. (Just lift out the greasy foil, voila!)


Gina's Brown Sugar Bacon 

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound thick-cut bacon, 8 slices

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Mix brown sugar, cayenne, and black pepper together in a medium bowl. Add bacon and toss.

Line a baking sheet with a wire rack and lay bacon on the rack. Pat any remanding spice mixture on the bacon. Put the baking sheet on the top rack of the oven and bake until crisp, about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven to a serving dish and let cool slightly before serving.

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS! :)

The Friendly Toast

So... The Friendly Toast! At last I can sit and write about it for a few minutes. Apparently this place is legend in New Hampshire, where its original restaurant is, and they opened a few months ago near Kendall here in Cambridge (a handy 10 minute walk from my apartment). I've been meaning to go and finally just went this past Sunday to celebrate a friend's new job in Baltimore.

There were 6 of us waiting for a table on a Sunday at noon... which was a problem. We had to wait over an hour and a half to be seated, because not only was there a 20-top in the restaurant that just wouldn't leave, but the emo-hipster doofus host sort of forgot we were on the list and had to put us back on. I was feeling wary about the place, having read mixed reviews on Yelp (most of the bad ones indicating that the service was terrible), and also having to wait so long, so I had low expectations.

The service actually wasn't that bad once we got in there, just a touch slow because there were quite a few people still in there eating at 1:45 pm. I got an herb omelette that had roasted peppers and brie in it. It was big for an omelette, and pretty good... not too greasy, still a bit moist inside, and just a tad browned along one edge (I'm an egg slut and I tend to judge a place on its capacity, or lack thereof, to make good eggs). The home fries are sliced red potatoes with seasoning, not really super fried, which was nice because that keeps them from sinking like a rock in your gut. The coffee is expensive. $2.15 for a cup of non-fancy, regular old coffee is ridiculous, but at least you get refills. My friend got the black tea, which comes in a cute individual teapot and is brewed loose in a metal filter. It was filled with almonds and smelled delicious, so I might actually get that next time I go.

Most of us got an order of toast included with our meals, but of course my toast (cinnamon raisin) didn't come out with my meal because the waitress said that "the machine" (did she mean toaster, maybe?) was acting up. Or some such thing. And by this point I was nearly done my meal and said it really didn't matter, but she assured me it would be out soon, and it was.

And oh my, am I glad that I didn't forgo the toast, because it was easily the best part of my meal. A huge slice, thick as a pillow, swirled with cinnamon and covered in sweet, melty butter. It was like eating a lighter, fluffier cinnamon roll. Oh, so delicious. So delicious! Really, that toast saved the place for me. The interior has all this diner-y, kitschy design, but so much so that you feel like the place is trying too hard. And everyone who works there seems too cool for school, though our waitress was very nice.

But the toast! I will go back for more of the toast. I would literally just order toast at that place. Not even French toast. Just toast. Just bring me two slices of delicious toast and some tea and I'm set. MMMM.

So in closing: it's not a bad place to go, and the food is decent, if a tad expensive, but the toast is amazing! Don't go if you're in a rush to get seated; better luck might come later on a weekend (like after 1 pm, when the brunch rush seems to be dissipating) or even on a weekday or an evening. But at some point do go, if only for the toast.