Recipe Wowza: Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

Ever had Mexican hot chocolate? It's hot chocolate with a dash of chili powder to give it a bit of a kick. I first tried Mexican hot chocolate last November at the Capital City Public Market in downtown Boise, Idaho (hey, y'all!). The chili powder wasn't so much spicy as it was warm and smoky - perfect on a cold, blustery day.

So when I saw this recipe for Mexican Hot-Chocolate Cookies in an issue of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine, I just had to make them for my husband's potluck get together at work. Whenever there's an occasion, I always volunteer to bake some sort of dessert. I don't get to make sweet treats too often - I love to bake, but I need a reason to do it because the last thing I need hanging around my house is a delicious cake looking all sad and uneaten.

These Mexican Hot-Chocolate Cookies are chocolate cookies with a bit of cinnamon and a dash of chili powder. Sounds weird, but, trust me, it's not. Even the kids at the potluck loved these cookies and there were none left at the end of the shindig.

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RECIPE

Ingredients:
* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 1 3/4 cups sugar
* 2 large eggs
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon chili powder


DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees with racks in upper and lower thirds of the oven.

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt together.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the butter and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes). Scrape the side of the bowl, add the eggs, and continue beating to combine.

With mixer on low, gradually add flour mixture and beat until just combined.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1/4 cup sugar, cinnamon, and chili powder.

Using heaping tablespoons or a small ice cream scoop, form balls of dough and roll them in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place dough balls about 3 inches apart on two parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake until cookies are set in the center and begin to crack on top, about 10 minutes (I baked mine for 9 minutes), rotating sheets halfway through.

After baking, allow cookies to cool on sheets on wire racks for 5 minutes and then transfer the cookies to the racks to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to one week.

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This is a simple recipe, but I do have a few tips for you:

First of all, this makes a thick batter. Don't be afraid to show it who's boss.

Second, things may get a little messy, especially when you go to roll your dough into balls. It's best to just accept this fact.

Speaking of rolling your dough into balls, here's a little tip from me to you because I love you and don't want you to go insane: Get yourself a little bowl and put some flour in it. Before you roll a dough ball, rub some flour all over your hands and then make your ball. The flour will help prevent your dough balls from becoming an impossibly sticky mess. It will also help prevent you from screaming and throwing your batter out of your highest window.

Finally, if you can have two pans in the oven at once, that's fantastic and I love that for you. I cannot seem to have two pans in the oven at once - the cookies on the bottom pan always scorch, even if I rotate the cookies and change racks halfway through. So, I end up doing one pan in the middle of the oven at a time. It takes longer, but I throw away fewer cookies this way. I just keep two pans in rotation and prep the next pan while the other one is baking. (Just make sure your pans have time to cool down between batches!)

This recipe says it makes 32 cookies, but I got 26 cookies. They are beautiful, perfectly round cookies. The edges are crunchy and the insides are tender. I couldn't really taste the chili powder - it just adds a bit of depth to the chocolate-y chocolateness.

Next time, I may add some chocolate chips to the batter just to bump up the chocolate factor a bit more.

If you make these Mexican Hot-Chocolate Cookies, I hope that you and yours enjoy them! Let me know what you think of them, if you do give this recipe a go.

What sorts of yummy goodness are you all baking up out there? Do share - Wally the Wonder Turtle and I love to swap cooking and baking stories almost as much as we like swapping soaping stories!

Lemon Cake Recipe Wowza!

All of you wonderful Wonder Turtle Soaps fans and followers know that I love to soap, but you may not know that I also love to bake.

It struck me the other day how soaping and baking are sorta similar. There are measuring cups and measuring spoons involved in both, and there's a lot of mixing and stirring. And there's a bit of anxiety when it comes time to turn out, or "unmold," the creation that you've slaved over. In soaping and baking, you take a bunch of ingredients that aren't too terribly useful on their own and combine them to make a practical yet lovely thing.

Anytime a potlock or family gathering comes along, I volunteer to make dessert. I pull dessert duty on Easter, too, for our family get-together, and it seems that I make a lemon-something every year. This year, I made a lemon cake with a lemon cream cheese frosting and a lemon curd filling. Definitely not low-calorie, but every dang calorie is worth it.

I got this Lemon Cake recipe from the About.com: Southern Food website. I followed the recipe exactly except for one small tweak -- I added a tablespoon of fresh lemon zest to the flour mixture.

RECIPE

Ingredients for cake:
* 3 cups cake flour
* 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 tsp ground ginger
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 Tbsp fresh lemon zest
* 3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened
* 2 cups sugar
* 4 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
* 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 1/3 cups buttermilk
* 1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Ingredients for frosting:
* 8 ounces of cream cheese, softened
* 3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened
* 2 cups confectioners sugar (sift before measuring)
* 1/4 cup heavy cream
* 1/3 cup lemon curd

Ingredients for filling:
* 1 cup lemon curd

(Note: You can make your own lemon curd if you want to, but I ain't gonna. Store-bought lemon curd is just fine, and you can usually find it wherever you find the jams and jellies in your grocery store.)

                                                     Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter or grease two 9"x2" round cake pans and dust generously with flour. Tap out the excess flour.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger and salt. Sift into another large bowl. Stir in the tablespoon of lemon zest.

In another large bowl, beat the butter and sugar at medium speed for 2 minutes until fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the lemon juice and vanilla. At low speed, beat in flour and buttermilk, alternating between the two and beginning and ending with the flour mixture (about four flour additions and three buttermilk additions). Beat until just blended.

In a small bowl, beat (with clean beaters) egg whites with the cream of tartar until stiff peaks form (this may take a few minutes). With a rubber spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the batter, folding one-third of the egg whites in at a time.

Spread the batter in prepared pans. Bake 35-40 minutes until cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their pans on cooling racks for 10 minutes, and then invert the cakes onto the racks. Allow cakes to completely cool before frosting.

To make the frosting:
In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter for 2 minutes until fluffy. At low speed, beat in the confectioners sugar, heavy cream, and 1/3 cup lemon curd until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 20 minutes or until the frosting is of a spreadable consistency.

Using a serrated knife, level the tops of your cooled cakes if necessary. Place the first layer on a serving plate and spread 1 cup of lemon curd on top. Refrigerate for 15 minutes to set the curd. Top with the second cake layer. Frost the cake.

Store cake in the refrigerator and bring to room temperature for serving. Garnish with fresh berries or lemon slices, if desired.

Tips:
* To grease my cake pans, I just smeared the bottoms and sides of my pans with a hunk of butter and then put about a 1/4 cup flour in the pans. Then I picked up the pans and swirled the flour across the bottom and sides of the pan. Dump out the excess. This helps your cake to not stick when you turn it out.

* If you're like me, you never remember to leave your butter out to soften. You can microwave the butter in short 15- to 20-second bursts to soften it up in a hurry.

* I love my Microplane zester for zesting lemons, but you can use the finest grate on a grater instead.

* You should be able to find cream of tartar wherever spices and dried herbs are sold in your grocery store. If it's not there, check the baking aisle. Cream of tartar is a white powder that looks like baking soda.

* Don't forget to scrape the sides of your mixing bowls often while beating to make sure everything get mixed in!

This makes a very nice lemon-y, moist cake. The lemon zest in the batter really helps bump up the lemon flavor.

I hope you enjoy this cake, if you decide to make it. And if you do, please let me and Wally the Wonder Turtle know how it turned out! Heck, even if you don't make the cake, feel free to tell us what you think about it!



Happy baking (and soaping)! ☺