Odette's Secrets - Cookie Dough Truffles

Odette's Secrets, written by Maryann Macdonald, is one of the several books I read while I had some free time over winter break. It ended up being my favorite of the bunch. Odette is a young girl living in Paris, France when World War II begins. Her mother and father are Jewish, but they are not very involved with their religion. Her father signs up to fight for France as soon as the war begins and is captured by the Nazis pretty quickly. As Odette is adjusting to the change in her home life without her father, the Nazis start invading Paris. Although Odette does not fully understand what it means to be Jewish, she starts being treated differently because of it.

Food and everyday supplies become scarce for Odette and her mother in Paris. Everyday life also becomes more dangerous for them. Odette's mother comes up with a plan to keep Odette safe. She will be sent off to the French countryside to hide with families she has never met. Once in the small villages, Odette must learn to blend in. She must hide her city mannerisms and most importantly her religion. On the outside, she is a Christian country girl. While she waits for her mother to bring her home, she becomes more and more confused about who she really is.

For this book, I decided to make a cookie dough truffle. I know that when I am biting into a truffle, the last thing I would expect to find is cookie dough. This treat hides its true interior behind its chocolate shell. Odette was able to learn that even though she projected the life of a Christian country girl for so long, she was still the same girl that she was before the war on the inside.

I found this recipe from The Nonpareil Baker's blog last Christmas. I added it to my unruly list of Christmas cookies, and it was a hit. This year we made 10 different varieties.

Since the cookie dough is never baked, there are no eggs in the recipe to keep it safe. Greek yogurt is used in place of eggs. You could use sour cream as well.

Cookie Dough Truffles

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda (for flavor)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups chocolate chips
Chocolate almond bark or dipping chocolate

Place the butter in a bowl and beat it for about one minute. Add the sugars and beat until blended. Add the yogurt and vanilla and mix until combined.

Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add to the butter and sugar and mix at a low speed until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Place one inch dollops of cookie dough onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. I do this using spoons, but you could also use a cookie scoop. I find it too messy and difficult to form the cookies into balls before they have firmed up a bit. Place the cookie sheets in the freezer for about an hour. At this point, you can round out the dollops into balls by rolling them in your hands. Freeze the balls of dough for about another hour.

When you're ready to coat the dough, melt the chocolate according to the package directions. Dip each ball of dough into the melted chocolate and coat it completely. Return the balls to the wax paper to set. You can decorate the truffles with sprinkles before the chocolate dries.

After the chocolate has set, the truffles can be stored in a container. They should be kept in the refrigerator.

A Tangle of Knots - S'more Cake

This summer I was told multiple times by multiple people that I needed to read A Tangle of Knots, written by Lisa Graff. This book weaves together several different story lines. At first, it is hard to see the connections. There is an owner of a lost luggage emporium known only as "The Owner", Cady who lives at a nearly empty orphanage and watches all the girls around her get adopted shortly after they arrive, a family with two mischievous children and a middle child trying to find her strengths, a woman known only as "V" when she loses the ability to communicate after a stroke, and a mysterious man in a gray suit. My favorite part of this book was getting to know all the characters piece by piece and slowly discovering how fate had fit them all together.

The main reason that this book was recommended to me was because of Cady. While she has a difficult time finding her perfect family, she has no trouble with baking. She can come up with the perfect cake to bake any person just moments after meeting them. As such, Cady does a lot of baking throughout the story. The recipes for the cakes she bakes for each character are even included in the book. I decided to try Will's S'more Cake: a cake that disappears quickly.

There are nine cakes in the book that all sound delicious, so it was a hard choice. However I do have a soft spot for s'mores. I've made s'more cookies before, so I was curious to try a s'more cake.

What I found most interesting about the recipe is that there is no flour used for the cake. Graham cracker powder was used instead. This makes the cake lightly sweet. It would be easy for this cake to become overloaded with sugar with the marshmallow fluff and chocolate frosting, but the cake balances everything out nicely. It is also a very moist cake, since 5 eggs and a cup of milk are used.

One thing I had trouble with when assembling the cake was the marshmallow fluff. The recipe calls for 1 cup of fluff to be placed between the layers. This was way too much fluff for me. When I put the top layer on, the fluff starting oozing out the sides, and the layers kept sliding. Fluff was still oozing when I was frosting the sides of the cake, so I had to scrape it off and frost again. I have changed the amount of fluff called for in the recipe posted below.

My one other tip for frosting cakes is to slide pieces of wax paper under the edges of the cake so that your plate stays clean. Once you are done frosting, you can easily pull them out and have neat edges to present. It will make you look really skilled at using an icing spatula.

Will's S'more Cake - adapted from the recipe found in A Tangle of Knots

For the Cake:

small spoonful of flour for preparing the cake pan
3 cups (about 1 box) graham cracker crumbs (or about 26 graham crackers)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
5 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup milk

For the Frosting:

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup sour cream
pinch of salt

For the Filling:

1/2 cup marshmallow fluff

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease the bottom of two 8-inch round pans. Using the cake pans as a template, trace two circles onto wax paper and cut them out. Place one wax circle in the bottom of each pan. Grease both pans again, covering the wax paper as well as the sides. Sprinkle the inside of the pan with flour, and tap the pans to distribute evenly.

2. Measure out the 3 cups of graham cracker crumbs in a medium bowl and mix with baking powder. (If you don't want to buy the crumbs, you can place the 26 graham crackers in a food processor, blender, or crush them with a rolling pin in a ziplock bag.)

3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Blend in the vanilla.

4. Add about a third of the graham cracker mixture to the batter, combining well. Add about half the milk and combine. Alternate adding the graham crackers and milk until everything is mixed well.

5. Pour the batter into the two pans and smooth the surface. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cakes cool completely before frosting.

6. When the cakes are cooling, make the frosting. Melt the chocolate chips. I used the microwave. You can also use a double boiler. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

7. In a large bowl, cream the butter until fluffy. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Add the cooled chocolate, sour cream, and pinch of salt. Beat to combine.

8. When the cakes are completely cooled, place one cake layer on a plate and spread marshmallow fluff on top. (If fluff is difficult to spread, microwave it for about 10 seconds and stir.) Place the second cake layer on top and frost the whole cake with chocolate frosting. Decorate as desired.

Heartbeat - Apple Bread

In Heartbeat, written by Sharon Creech, we meet Annie. Annie is a high school student who loves running and drawing. At the moment, these are the only things that seem to be going right for her. She is worried about her pregnant mother and her grandfather, who appears to be growing older every day. Her best friend and running partner Max seems to be upset with her all the time as well.

Amidst all the chaos in her personal life, Annie is given an unusual assignment for her art class. She is to draw one apple for 100 days. Watching the apple change as she studies it on a daily basis helps her to come to terms with the other changes in her life. Because the apple was such an important tool for Annie, I decided to bake something containing apples.

To find this recipe, I searched my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. My family has been baking out of this book for years. Both my mother and my grandmother have one, and I now have one of my own.

I love making quick breads. They are easy to put together and are so moist you don't even need a mixer. I have made zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, and banana bread, but one quick bread I had not tried was apple bread.

I was excited to give this one a try, and I'm glad I did. It's very moist and bursting with apple flavor. I also decided to add a streusel topping which gives the bread a sweet crunch. I will definitely be making this again in the fall.

Apple Bread

Bread
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 egg, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups peeled, finely shredded apple (about 2 large apples)
1/4 cup cooking oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of an 8x4x2 loaf pan and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. Mix well and make a well in the center of the mixture.

In another medium bowl, combine egg, sugar, shredded apple, and oil. Add apple mixture all at once to the flour mixture. Stir until just moistened. Batter should be lumpy. Spoon into prepared pan.

Streusel Topping
3 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter

Stir together flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle on top of bread batter.

Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Wrap and store overnight before slicing.

Mockingbird - Oreo Pudding Poke Cake

I recently finished reading Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. The main character in this book is Caitlyn. She's an eleven year old with Asperger's Syndrome. As if this wouldn't make her day-to-day life challenging enough, Caitlyn's brother was recently killed in a shooting at his middle school. Devon was the only one who really understood Caitlyn. He helped her navigate all the social issues she couldn't understand. Caitlyn is left to figure out tricky social scenes and search for closure on her own, as her father and school counselor can never quite seem to communicate with her. I was really engrossed in this book because it gives a very unique perspective of someone on the Autism spectrum. You are able to see why Caitlyn is not able to pick up on what we consider to be normal social cues and colloquialisms. It also gives insights on why she exhibits what we might consider to be odd behavior.

Caitlyn is an extremely talented artist. When she draws, she only uses pencil. She prefers black and white to color because colors can mix together and make things messy. It becomes difficult to tell where one color begins and another ends. This aspect of black and white stuck out to me throughout the book, so it also came to mind when I was deciding what I wanted to bake. When I think of black and white food, I immediately think of Oreos. So I took to Pinterest and found this recipe for Oreo Puddin' Poke Cake from The Country Cook.

I love the concept of a poke cake. It just makes any cake moist and gooey all the way to the middle. The recipe from The Country Cook called for a box mix, but that is something I could not do. My Grandma would consider that cheating. So I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe and then followed the directions for the pudding topping.

My chocolate cake recipe comes from Althea Markworth. She was a friend of my Grandma's since they were both kids and my mother's godmother. This cake comes together really quickly and can be thrown in the oven in no time. It's a very wet batter, so the cake comes out very moist. My father is not a huge cake fan, but he will eat this until it is gone.

Oreo Pudding Poke Cake

Cake
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup margarine
1/4 cup cocoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup buttermilk (1/2 cup regular milk plus 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put flour and sugar in a large bowl. Put margarine, cocoa, and water in a saucepan and cook to boiling. This could easily be done in the microwave as well. Just cook until the butter is melted. Pour cocoa mixture over the flour and sugar and mix well. Add in buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla, mixing after each addition. Pour batter into a greased 9 by 13 pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Pudding
2, 4 ounce packages Jello Oreo cookies n' creme pudding mix
4 cups of milk
Crushed oreos

When the cake is almost finished baking, begin mixing the pudding according to the directions on the package. Mix the powder with the milk for about 2 minutes. Let the pudding set for about 2 minutes. You do not want it to set for the whole 5 minutes so that you are still able to pour it easily.

While the cake is still warm, poke holes in it at about 1 inch intervals using a wooden spoon handle or a straw. Pour the pudding over the cake and smooth it out evenly. Put the cake in the refrigerator until it is completely cooled.

Crush about one row of Oreos from the package. I do not have a food processor, so I put them in a bag and crushed them with a rolling pin. Spread the crushed cookies over the top of the cake.

Keep finished cake refrigerated.

The House of the Scorpion - Poppy Seed Cookies

I love to bake. One of the best gifts I have ever gotten was a hot pink KitchenAid stand mixer. For my most recent birthday, I received a Wilton tip set. No one understood why I was so excited. I once bounced around a store in excitement when I found an apron on sale. If you were to look at my Instragram account, you would find it full of pictures of my dog and baked goods. I also love reading, and I'll be doing a lot of it this summer for my master's program. I figured that it would be an excellent idea to combine two of my favorite hobbies. So as I'm burning through books, I'll also be putting together a baked good that is inspired by what I've read.

The first book I read as soon as school was out was The House of the Scorpion, written by Nancy Farmer. Matt starts off his life locked in a shack in a poppy field. The only person he interacts with is Celia. She works as a cook at the big house on the farm, and she is like a mother to Matt. He soon discovers that he is a clone of the owner of the farm, El Patrón. However Matt does not know that El Patrón is a drug lord, and that he will eventually use Matt for parts to extend his already lengthy life. Even with the help of Celia and Tam Lin, a body guard determined to help Matt escape, it becomes doubtful that Matt will live past his fourteenth birthday.

As the majority of the story is set on a poppy farm, I decided I wanted to bake something containing poppy seeds. When I mentioned this to my grandma, she immediately exclaimed that she had a recipe for poppy seed cookies. My grandma is an incredible cook, so I implicitly trust any recipe she puts in my hands. She also told me that she received the recipe from Shirley Edelman, who is a gourmet cook. So I had no reservations about these cookies. 

As I was putting in 3 1/2 cups of flour, a lot more than I've used for any other cookie recipe, and a whole 2 ounces of poppy seeds, I just kept reminding myself that this was the work of a gourmet chef. I'm glad I trusted the recipe because they turned out wonderfully fluffy with just a slight taste of lemon. 

Poppy Seed Cookies

3 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 ounces poppy seeds

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon lemon extract

2 tablespoons milk 

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and beat.

Stir in flavorings, vanilla and lemon extract, and milk.

Sift together the dry ingredients, including the poppy seeds. Blend the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

Chill the dough until it can be handled easily, about 2 hours in the refrigerator. Form into 4 rolls about  1 1/4 inches in diameter. I estimated the diameter by making the rolls as wide as two of my fingers. I roughly formed the rolls with my hands and then evened them out by rolling them on the counter in waxed paper. Wrap individually. Keep the rolls chilled until you are ready to cut them. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice each roll into 1/4 inch rounds. Each roll will yield about a dozen rounds. Place the rounds on a greased or non-stick cookie sheet. Bake for about 10- 12 minutes until the bottoms are just browning. 

The individual rolls of dough can be frozen and thawed if you would like to bake only a dozen or two at a time.