Cream Cheese and Chocolate Danish

Matt Davis - via Bagley Home, Guthrie, OK

How many sticks of butter can you eat? Now smother those sticks of butter in sugar and add some cocoa - how many can you eat now?

For a whole week Matt dreamed of danishes! So Saturday morning he bounded out of bed and went briskly to work in the kitchen, with Evan photographing the adventure.

Step 1: Mix lots of butter with flour, roll out in a sheet between two layers of wax paper. 

You think these four sticks of butter are a big deal? They are nothing!

Step 2: Dry ingredient time: flour, salt, sugar.

Step 3: Wet ingredients: water, yeast, sugar. Gotta love the yeasties!

 

Step 4: Mix all together: milk, heavy cream, yeast mix, dry mix, and flour.

Step 5: Kneed and refrigerate. After you refrigerate the dough, roll it out and lay the sheet of butter from step one on to it. LAY THE SHEET OF BUTTER! Who gets to say that :)

Step 6: Fold the edges of the dough to the center, roll it out, fold into 1/3s, refrigerate, and repeat.

Pastry pros out there know that this layering is going to make the end result dough flaky and delightful. For non-pastry pros out there, just imagine your body melting into a million pieces with every bite. Everyone together now? Excellent - let's move forward.

Step 7: Roll the dough out flat and cut dough like so (see below pic), add chocolate/ cream cheese filling, freak out because it's so awesome, and braid the loaf.

 

Step 8: Place the loaves (because we couldn't just make one!) onto baking sheets. Let them rise in a warm place (like the oven). After they've risen, brush the outside with egg.

 

Step 9: Bake

 I (Lacey) was out of the house when all this happened, trusting that my house would still be standing after leaving the fellas cooking in the kitchen all day. They texted me this picture (above) around 6pm - so I quickly said my goodbyes and sped home!

This is what I came home to:

 

Step 10: Admire. It was so beautiful! The smell was intoxicating and the dough was perfect. The egg made it shiny and it was flaky and there was chocolate... 

Step 11: Be jealous. 

Total sticks of butter used - what's your guess?

PS. This was one of the greatest things that has ever been made in the Bagley house! That was until Matt leaned over to Evan in church today and said:

"What if we combined the danish recipe and the cinnamon roll recipe?"

His jaw dropped.

Post pending :)

Enchilada Date Night

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

We planned a Mexican dinner/ date night last week for some friends. I made enchiladas, guacamole, and cake balls - because they are número uno on the list of favorite Mexican foods!

Evan and I already showed off our mad guacamole skills, but you guys need to know the results of the competition: which is better - corn tortillas with beef (right) or flour tortillas with my mom's traditional creamy chicken recipe (left)?




The recipe for the corn tortilla filling is simple: beef, taco seasoning, salsa, and red enchilada sauce. My mom's flour tortilla filling is, well... a picture is easiest:




Pretty different, but give my Minnesotan, Norwegian mom a break - eh? Let's just say this, if I were on death row, this would be my last meal. It's that good.

So I'm out of the judging. The other four people voted:

Corn/ beef: 2
Flour/ chicken: 2

Well, that's not okay! So I had to use my vote to break the tie... so mom's recipe wins!

I guess I can say that this week: my mom really WAS in the kitchen!

Happy eating!

Truffle Adventure

       Sometimes I think I watch the food network too much :) I had some heavy cream left over from making ice-cream and have been wondering what to use it for. Truffles randomly came to mind so I went to my computer to search the web for an easy recipe. The one I found had only three ingredients; chocolate chips, cream, and vanilla. Easy enough right? I went to work and melted the chocolate chips with the cream. When it was all melted and smooth I turned off the heat and added the vanilla. I then put the concoction in a bowl and popped it in freezer to cool and harden it. After impatiently waiting I pulled the semi hard truffle out of the freezer and scooped out balls to be dipped in either cocoa powder or chopped walnuts. I even sprinkled some salt onto a few plain ones. Here's how they look!

  The top two on the right have kosher salt on top while the other seemingly plain ones have an alder wood smoked salt sprinkled on top. The others either have cocoa powder or walnuts. 

                  Here's the link to the recipe that I used: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/basic-truffles/  

  

   I'll let you in on the tweaks that I made to the recipe. I just used regular semi sweet chocolate chips instead of the bittersweet. It called for 1/3 cup of cream but I had a little extra so I think in the end I added about 1/2 cup of cream. I also added 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla instead of the 1 tsp. 

   The things that Ill do differently next time is divide the cream/chocolate mixture and try adding different extracts like orange or mint or raspberry or maybe even almond. Im also going to make the balls smaller. More bite sized. These are a little hard to hold cause they melt in your fingers as you're eating them. I might even try using milk chocolate chips. I wonder how that would turn out.

    Tips to consider:

* Use a rubber spatula when mixing the chips and cream. 

* Be patient and make sure the mixture is nice and creamy. The chocolate chips like to leave little bits that take longer to melt.

* Lightly toast the nuts. I had frozen walnuts so I just chopped them up and put them in a pan over low heat stirring frequently to get them crunchy instead of mushy

* Experiment with different toppings

    So there you have it. A really simple way to make decadent chocolate truffles! Enjoy!

~KayLynn

Holy Guacamole - we've got chips!

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

Here's a quick post.

I have never made guacamole successfully. I have made brown nasty crap that was a waste of space... and a waste of two perfectly good avacadoes. We had a Mexican date night coming up, so I needed some help - stat!

I asked a good friend what his secret was: lime juice, pico de gallo/ salsa, and lots of salt.




Here we go! Evan helped me cut up, mash, and season the avacadoes.










We kept it simple and added each item a little at a time. I was so excited when Evan, my guinea pig, handed me a chip with a smile - "try it."




I almost felt like jumping up and down, I was so excited! We did it! So folks - keep it simple and happy eating.

Matt Makes Lasagna

Matt Davis - visiting the Bagley's Guthrie, OK

Lacey: Growing up in my family, we got to choose what our birthday dinner was going to be. I always chose lasagna, bread sticks, and caesar salad. It's nowhere near my birthday, but I still got my meal. Birthday in JULY!

Matt made the red sauce and the cheese layer from scratch and assembled:

In your 9x13 pan, place a little of the red sauce; then add the first layer of noodles.

Then add a heaping amount of red sauce; then place another layer of noodles; then the cheese layer.

Repeat this step with noodle, red sauce, noodle, cheese layer, noodle, red sauce. Whoa. You'll end up with your last layer (exposed) being red sauce. Cover that in whatever cheese you want. And bake!

On the side we had "To Die For" bread sticks. Slice a baguette into 4 equal parts, slather with butter, rosemary, slices of garlic, garlic powder, and whatever else you want. Bake and then melt into a million pieces as you devour it!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Quick Stir-Fry Tip

Evan Bagley - Guthrie, OK

Inspired by Isaac Johnson.

Just a quick suggestion for the next time you make stir-fry. Use this sauce:

He also uses a dash or two... or twelve of Greek Seasoning. And it's out of this world amazing!

Happy Eating!

Let Me See that Tootsie Roll!

Chocolate Sweet Rolls

Matt Davis - visiting the Bagley's in Guthrie, OK

This is the third time he's made cinnamon rolls in 2 weeks. So, he upped the ante - chocolate - EVERYTHING!

You start by making the dough. Mix the wet (or moist) ingredients together, then add the dry ingredients. Stop a million times for ridiculous photos.

Mix the ingredients until you are able to knead them together.

Then cover with plastic wrap and let rise. NOTE: He used wax paper since we were out of plastic wrap.

MATT NOTE: Warm the oven to 150 degrees. Turn oven off and let the dough rise in the warmed oven.

Huzzah - thanks yeasties!

Then you take it out and roll it onto a pre-powedered-with-flour-flat-surface. Phew.

Then you spread the delicious chocolate (usually cinnamon) inside all over the dough and roll it up!

He added a little bit of cinnamon to the last third of the sweet rolls to see if it would make the chocolate pop!

Use a piece of thread to cut the rolls by sliding it under the roll, bringing the two ends up together, and crossing the strands. Repeat the process until you've cut the whole loaf into wonderful little morsels of goodness. You can make them as thick or thin as you prefer.

Oopsie! They're not ready yet Evan!

Place the rolls on a pre-greased-with-vegtable-oil-9x13-pan. Phew again! We fit 19 rolls onto the pan with 3 rows of 5 and 1 row of 4 - hopefully it works - fingers crossed.

After you set those aside to let them rise some more, you'll make the icing. Matt whipped up two different icings for this batch. One was a buttery, cream cheese and powdered sugar delight.

And the other was a Dunkin' Donuts inspired chocolate cream splendor. Yes, like the chocolate cream icing they put in the middle of a chocolate cream donut! And he left it sitting on our counter - taunting us... How VERY DARE he!

Bake them for 20 minutes at 375 degrees. Take them out and cover them with tin foil for another 5 minutes (so the edges don't get to crunchy brown - duh!).

Ice them while they're still warm. Let the icing flow freely over the sweet rolls and drool and drool and drool...

...and drool and drool and drool...

And here's a close up on those melting chocolate chips...

...and DEVOUR!!

"Will you sign my moob?"

S'more Please!

Lacey Bagley - Guthrie, OK

To start off our new blog adventure, I'm going to pull from my S'mores Cookies pinterest find. Yes you heard that right - S'mores and Cookies! Together at last! Here's what you need:

Of course the pinterest lady made her own cookie dough and graham crackers... You can do that too. I will judge you a little for being a cooking snob.

But secretly I'm jealous.

It's really about the assembly after you get everything gathered. You'll start by rolling a cookie dough ball in your hand and putting it directly in your mouth (that's what she said).

Then you can roll another ball and smash it onto the pan. Then layer in your s'more: bottom graham cracker, chocolate, marshmallow, and top graham cracker. Yes, a full sized s'more! I did cut the jumbo marshmallows in half because my mind couldn't handle the idea of a whole freaking jumbo marshmallow in this already incredible invention.

Top it all off with another cookie!

Then you'll cover the sides of this behemoth cookie with MORE COOKIE! I found it easiest to make little cookie balls and smash them into circles in my hand, like mini cookies. Then fit them around the outside - ahahaha! This may be the craziest/ most amazing cookie ever!

LACEY TIP - after it was all put together I smashed the top of it and broke the top graham. I left one cookie un-smashed and it didn't turn out as great. I'll show you the difference a couple photos down.

Put it in the oven to cook. 325 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until the edge is browned to your liking.

Yes! Three cookies fit on a 9x13! These cookies are just unfathomably great! Mine turned out way bigger than the tutorial's example. But isn't bigger better? (You're mom thought so!)

Brain-gasm as you smell the waft out of the oven and you can't even believe what's going on in there!

So, they are delicious. Also, as the marshmallow grew it spread the broken graham pieces out. I loved the way this worked. Especially compared with the runt of the litter:

The s'more just stayed in a mass and the cookie spread out around it... lame sauce.

Oh, and for scale (says the resident geologist) - here's how it measures up to Evan's face!

LACEY TIP - I also cut the cookies into fourths, for manageability. And then I unabashedly devoured them!

If you have any questions or suggestions - please let me know.

Happy eating!

Here's the link to the original blogger's post: http://smells-like-home.com/2012/05/giant-smores-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookies/