The Art of Two Tarts » Coconut

Chewy Coconut Chocolate Chunk Blondies

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:50:41 +0000

Do you ever have those days where nothing goes right?

You’re just a little clumbsy?? Or a LOT….

Well, Lisa had one of those days on Saturday. We can say that she almost set Maria’s kitchen on fire not once, but TWICE!

Both incidents involved parchement paper. Lisa was baking a few desserts and had two baking dishes lined with parchement paper.

The first incident occured because she placed one of the baking pans on top of the stove to cool. What she didn’t know was that when she had previously used the stove she didn’t turn it completely off. This was our conversaton:

Lisa: Maria, do you smell something burning?

Maria: Yah, what is that?

Lisa: (Turns and looks at the oven) Everything looks ok.

Maria: Hmm, thats weird.

Lisa: (Turns again to look at the stove) S**T, I forgot the stove on!

Maria: Lisaaaaaaa

Lisa: =) oops..

The second incident occured because Lisa placed the second pan to close to the broiler in the oven and it caught on fire. Luckily Lisa was smart this time, and realized the mistake she made. Just as she went to pull the pan out of the oven, it had just started to smoke and flame up!

These bars are what she almost caught on fire first.

We came across this recipe over at Annie’s Eats. As soon as we saw them we knew that we HAD to make them. We love anything with coconut in them! Coconut combined with chocolate is insanely good! These bars were very simple to make and they were fantastic. We highly reccommend these. If you’re a coconut lover then theses are a MUST!

Chewy Coconut Chocolate Chunk Blondies
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. coconut extract
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

For drizzle and garnish: (optional)
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks
1 tsp. butter or shortening
Sweetened shredded coconut

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour an 8- by 8-inch square baking dish. In a small bowl, sift together the flour and salt; set aside. In another mixing bowl combine the melted butter and brown sugar and beat until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg, and mix until incorporated. Mix in the vanilla and coconut extracts until well blended. Add in the dry ingredients and mix just until they have been incorporated.

Add the shredded coconut and chocolate chunks to the bowl, and fold in with a rubber spatula until evenly distributed. Transfer the batter to the prepared baking dish and spread evenly with a spatula.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until set in the center but still soft. Do not over bake. Let the bars cool slightly before drizzling.

To make the drizzle, combine the chocolate chunks and butter or shortening in a small, heatproof bowl. Microwave in 15-second intervals, stirring in between, until completely melted and smooth. Transfer the melted chocolate to a plastic bag with a very tiny piece of the corner cut off and drizzle over the bars. Sprinkle with additional shredded coconut before the chocolate sets, if desired. Allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.

TWD: Perfect Party Cake

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:47:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Carol of mix, mix… stir, stir: Perfect Party Cake. This cake consists of a light and fluffy lemon cake filled with a lemon buttercream and raspberry preserve. Dorie gives you the option of personalizing it to your own taste. If you aren’t crazy about buttercream you can just use sweetened whipped cream instead. If you don’t like raspberries you can use any other type of berry preserve you’d prefer or even add fresh fruit.

We’re not fans of buttercream, but we decided just to follow Dorie’s recipe to the T! This cake was pretty simple to make. The cake turned out wonderful! Fluffy, moist and had just the perfect hint of lemon to it. The buttercream was pretty simple to make. Overall, we were happy with this cake and thought it was really good, but next time we would just use sweetened whipped cream. Even though the buttercream was good, it wasn’t great and we just don’t think it’s worth the 3 sticks of butter! Yes 3 sticks!!

You can find the recipe here!

Enjoy!

Ciambella al cocco

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:53:00 +0000

We’ve been wanting to post this recipe for a long time now. We have made this cake several times, but we never got around to taking pictures of it. This is one of our favorite cakes. Lisa found the recipe on an italian website. We both love coconut and searched long and hard for a cake that would satisfy us. We have changed things here and there every time we made this cake and now, we have a recipe down that we are happy with. This cake is very moist because it has yogurt in it. It asks for coconut yogurt but in America, it’s very hard to find plain coconut yogurt in the grocery stores. The coconut yogurt is AMAZING in Italy and that is really why we fell so in love with coconut in the first place. We used pina colada yogurt and found that it works well also. This cake is so simple to make and requires very little clean up too! You have to try it! The recipe is below.

Coconut bundt cake

1 container of coconut yogurt (or pina colada)

3 eggs

1 container of sugar

1 container of dehydrated coconut

1 container of corn oil

1 tsp coconut extract

3 containers of flour

1 Tbs Baking Powder

Pinch of salt

Zest of 1\2 a lemon

1 cup of mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix the eggs and yogurt in a large bowl. Then, one by one, mix in all the ingredients in the order they are listed. Once everything is mixed together, pour into a buttered bundt cake pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean!

Once the cake is cooled we usually just sift some powdered sugar over the cake and it’s done!

Our Birthday Coconut Cupcakes!!

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:04:00 +0000

It’s our birthday! We’re 24! =) We’ve been wanting to make these for so long, but nobody else is really a coconut fan.. We love love love coconut. We found this recipe on Elise’s blog Simply Recipes. She has so many amazing recipes and her photos are great! Take a look at them!

They are topped with a cream cheese frosting that has coconut mixed in. We think you could put cream cheese frosting on anything and it would taste good!

Look at the flakes of coconut mixed in! Yum! =)

TWD:Coconut Butter Thins

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:45:00 +0000

When I first saw that this recipe was chosen I was SO happy. I LOVE anything with coconut!! I actually haven’t baked too many goods with coconut, so I was excited to try these! Overall, I thought these cookies were pretty good. The coconut flavor was subtle, so I think that I expected these to be very coconut-y and my expectations were too high! I loved the technique of rolling out the dough in the ziploc bag! Will definitely keep that in mind for other recipes! You can find the recipe here!

Can’t wait till next week….
Stay Tuned =)