Monthly Archives: November 2015

Homemade Twix

  

Followed this Serious Eats recipe. It was amazing. I never want to eat a “real” Twix bar again. Now just to figure out how to make Butterfingers…

The base shortbread was fantastic — no need for caramel or chocolate.

Adapted from the Serious Eats page above:

2.5 ounces (1/2 cup) steel-cut oats
7.5 ounces (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour (I subbed for a half cup of whole wheat, just because I want to use it up)
1.5 ounces (1/4 cup) cornstarch
3 ounces (2/3 cup) confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
14 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into halfinch-ish chunks

Dump all the dry ingredients into a food processor, then add the butter. Process until a dough forms. Then roll it out into cookies! Bake at 450F for ten minutes, then 300F for another 15 minutes, rotating halfway.

I made both cookies as detailed in the link above, and a tray of Twix. Half a recipe of the dough filled an 8×8 pan. I had a hard time getting an evenly thin layer of chocolate in the tray though.

Would (will) make again! Maybe just the cookies.

Cookbook Club: The Cuban Table

Inspired by Serious Eats, I hosted our first cookbook club, tackling The Cuban Table.

Overall, everything turned out delicious, but the book seemed to be written assuming that its readers had a decent amount of cooking experience and could guess at some of the steps. For example, the guava cheese pastries (pictured above) mentioned making a glaze, but never when to apply the glaze to the pastries.

I made croquetas de jamon — which were pretty straight forward and easier than I expected them to be. Will probably make again. Will also cook the filling longer so they’re easier to shape. Or perhaps add some cornstarch to thicken the batter.

Overall, I’ll probably cook out of this cookbook again. But I likely won’t follow the recipes to the letter.