De Baking Psychopath

This past weekend, I joined a friend of mine in traveling back to her hometown for a grand endeavor: to make delicious jam!  She decided to make blueberry jam from frozen blueberries, which means we can recreate her masterpiece any time of the year. I had my heart set on marmalade, but since citrus is out of season and not found frozen in large chunks, I decided to make them a supporting role and to instead find a seasonal fruit to be the star so we can remember the summer as it begins to slip away. I settled on Peach-Orange Marmalade. We went to a local orchard to pick up 5 pounds of peaches from the end of the season bounty. Before leaving Pittsburgh, I picked up a few organic citrus from Whole Foods for the recipe. Armed with fresh produce, we embarked on a marathon jam-making session on Saturday. To say the results of both jams were delicious would be a gross understatement.  Her blueberry jam was "the best berry jam" we've ever had. It is ...

I love ricotta! Ricotta pancakes have been all the rage on the Interwebs lately, so I decided to give them a shot one recent weekend. These lemon ricotta pancakes were moist, fluffy, springy, and fragrant. I used the recipe found on this fellow blogger's site verbatim. The cake flour in the recipe gives the pancake a fine, tender crumb, and the ricotta keeps it very moist. Instead of a blueberry sauce, though, we made a quick Nutella ganache by combining hot cream and Nutella in a roughly 2:1 ratio and whisking until smooth. An easy way to elevate your routine weekend brunch to new elegant heights. Yum!

These also doubled as Happy Birthday muffins for a colleague at work. The name comes from a LOT of coffee added to the batter by both brewed coffee and espresso powder. They had a wonderful coffeehouse fragrance and tasted like a latte that reincarnated into a moist, tasty muffin. Coffee-Break Muffins (adapted from Baking: from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan) Ingredients : 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup sugar 1 tablespoon instant espresso (or regular coffee) powder 1 tablespoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (feel free to use more, maybe 1 teaspoon) 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips (optional) 1 cup strong coffee, cooled 1 stick (8 tbsps) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1 large egg 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract Instructions : Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a standard muffin tin with 12 paper cups, set aside. In a bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, espresso powder,...

One lonely package of cream cheese in the fridge. We all know what that means: breakfast buns from the Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook! Why, of course. These were previously featured on this blog , and also the blog of a dear friend . The recipe can be found here . Today's flavors are nutella and black raspberry preserves. Six of each. Last time I spooned the batter into 18 normal muffin cups, but this time I squished everything into 12. Also I layered the preserves/Nutella in the center of the batter and swirled with a wooden skewer. Twenty minutes at 350 degrees later, here are the results: beautiful, tall crowns, and importantly, no jammy overflow! Café DeBakingPsycho is open for business!