peach, nectarine & mixed berry cobbler, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

That’s what the boyfriend thought of these cobblers…despite his potpourri claims, I thought they were delicious.

Individual fruit cobblers with an oatmeal walnut crumb topping have become my “Ooh, we need a dessert…what’s easy?” thing. I always seem to have fruit (whether it’s fresh or frozen) on hand and they end up a little different each time.

The oatmeal walnut topping recipe is adapted from a Sara Moulton recipe…but I don’t ever use the recipe these days…I just throw a bunch of stuff together and it works. That might be because I’ve literally made this crumb topping 10 or 12 times in the last year.

Yes, we love the cobblers around here.

This particular version is made with peaches, nectarines, raspberries, blackberries & thimbleberries. I had a little bit of a lot of different fruit so this was a good way to use them all before they started to go bad.

I also don’t like ripe peaches and nectarines and the ones I had were definitely leaning towards very ripe. I like my stone fruit unripe and hard. Weird, eh?

In case anyone’s wondering, most of the pottery used in my pictures was made by my sister, Tasha McKelvey. She makes handmade pottery and ceramic jewelry and is uber-talented. You can buy some of her pieces here.

The bulk of the pottery pieces I have are a pattern she made mostly just for me. She even named the pattern “Melissa” after making me a zillion pieces in it. The bowl pictured in this post is from a custom set she made for me for creme brulees.

While I’m giving credit where it’s due, the batik napkins and table coverings seen in a lot of my pictures are made by Margot Bianca. She does beautiful work (obviously) and is wonderful about custom orders. Her etsy shop is quite popular and I shall be ordering more things from her soon.

I guess that’s it for today. I should be doing work for my job. Or packing boxes for next month’s move. I need to pack a lot of my apartment in the next week and a half because I’ll be sharing my apartment with the boyfriend for at least a couple of weeks before the house is complete. We plan to put a lot of stuff in storage as there’s no way both of our possessions can fit into just my tiny apartment. I really should go through the clothes in my closet to make space for his clothes…for now I’ll pretend I’m Scarlett O’Hara and I’ll think about them tomorrow.

teeny tiny cake with peanut buttercream frosting, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

When I made the chocolate and peanut butter cake for a coworker a few weeks ago, I purposely baked an extra layer to make into mini cakes for the boyfriend and I to eat. Where’s the fun in baking a fantastic cake if I can’t try a piece of it?

Amazingly, we made the two tiny cakes last for days…pretty impressive given that some restaurants (like the one I work in) serve slices of cake as large as one of these mini cakes.

I like making the itty bitty little cakes as they’re great for practicing my cake assembly and frosting techniques.

If you didn’t read the previous post about the larger version of these cakes or are too lazy to follow the link, I made a Devil’s Food Cake (from Baking Illustrated) and added a little bit of peanut butter to the batter. Then I made a whipped chocolate ganache to use as filling between the cake layers. I also crushed a bunch of Reese’s Cups for one of the filling layers. It’s topped with peanut buttercream frosting (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World).

White Chocolate & Raspberry “Brownies”, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

I really shouldn’t call these “brownies” at all since there’s pretty much nothing brown about them. But they’re adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s “White Chocolate Brownies” recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours.

When I got this book last month, this was one of the recipes I immediately wanted to bake. However, her version was thinner & denser and called for a soft meringue top. I knew I didn’t want that as I prefer my meringue a bit crunchier. I also didn’t really see the need for meringue at all because the batter has ground almonds, white chocolate & raspberries…there’s enough going on there without the meringue.

I set out to bake these early one afternoon before heading off to work…but I didn’t have enough eggs in the house to bake them. I didn’t particularly feel like running out to the grocery store…so I edited the recipe. This could have been a complete failure. Luckily it was not. These did take a while to bake and seem almost underbaked despite a nice crunchy top. I like the underbaked thing…if you don’t, bake them a little longer. I stored them in the refrigerator as they were pretty fragile at room temperature. I’ll definitely make these again in the future as they were a nice change from normal brownies…still just as good but far less decadent tasting.

Here’s my slight adaptation of the recipe (once again, the original is in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours):

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup finely ground almonds
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
• 3 ounces white chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line baking pan with two sheets of aluminum foil arranged perpendicular to each other. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk together flour, ground almonds, salt and baking powder.

Melt butter in microwave.  Add the 6 ounces white chocolate to the melted butter and whisk until smooth. If butter is not quite warm enough to melt the white chocolate, microwave for just 10-15 seconds more (since white chocolate is finicky! It scorches easily!). Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle or whisk attachment, beat the sugar and eggs together on medium-high speed for about 3 minutes (they should be pale and foamy).  Beat in the lemon and vanilla extracts and sour cream. Reduce the speed to low and blend in the melted butter and white chocolate mixture. With mixer still on low, mix in the dry ingredients, stirring only until they are just mixed. Fold in the 3 ounces white chocolate chips. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle the raspberries evenly over the batter.

Bake until the top is light brown and the brownies start to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 40-45 minutes (a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan should come out mostly clean). Cool completely on a wire rack. Remove from pan and cut into bars of desired size. Store in refrigerator as they’re very soft at room temperature.

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cake, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

One of the girls at work asked me to bake something for her boyfriend’s birthday. She gave me plenty of notice and her only request was that I made something with chocolate and peanut butter.

I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut buttercream frosting earlier this year and LOVED the frosting…so it was an obvious choice for this cake.

I made the Devil’s Food cake from Baking Illustrated…the recipe makes three cake layers. I used two layers for this cake (each of these were divided in two to make a four layer cake) and made the third layer into two mini cakes for us to keep and enjoy ourselves.

I didn’t make too many changes to the original cake recipe. I used a touch of espresso powder in it and added about a 1/4 cup of peanut butter.

The peanut buttercream frosting is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. But it wasn’t vegan as I used regular margarine rather than the more costly vegan margarine. This frosting is awesome. It tastes like peanut butter mousse. Totally unhealthy peanut butter mousse.

To make the cake even better, I made a whipped chocolate ganache to use as filling between two of the layers. I wasn’t positive it was going to work in the cake because it was a little runny…but it set perfectly fine.

For another layer of filling I crushed Reese’s peanut butter cups and nestled them into the cake with a little bit of the peanut buttercream frosting.

Then I frosted the cake and topped it with more crushed Reese’s cups.

Several of my coworkers ate pieces of the cake…all of them came to work the next day singing it’s praises. One of them couldn’t stop talking about how dank (see definition #3 here) it was. I really do wish “dank” were a better sounding word…

Sadly I didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the cake…