Chocolate-Hazelnut Track Bread - Blue Monday

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...This easy to make quick bread is a perfect accompaniment to coffee and it makes a lovely addition to a breakfast or brunch table. It's a perfect example of what James Beard called a "track" bread. In his parlance, any bread that had a traceable filling was called a track bread. While his cookbooks have numerous example of them, all delicious I might add, today's recipe comes from Taste of Home magazine. This bread is filled with hazelnuts and chocolate and it really is quite lovely. I chose it because of its hazelnut track. Hazelnuts are also called filberts but the extension services here in the Willamette Valley prefer to call them hazelnuts. While Oregon produces 98 percent of the hazelnuts grown in the United States, that amounts to only 3 percent of the world's supply. That means that Turkey, Spain and Italy are actually the world's major suppliers. Hazelnuts are not widely popular in the United State. They are more expensive then other nuts and they have a reputation for being difficult to skin. Actually, it's not all that difficult to rid them of their pesky covering. The traditional method involves roasting the hazelnuts for about 10 minutes in a moderately hot oven. The nuts are then wrapped in a clean towel and rubbed until most of the skin comes off. A newer, easier method suggests boiling the nuts for 4 minutes in a quart of water to which 1/4 cup baking soda has been added. The nuts are them rinsed in cold water which will cause the skins to pop off. Once the skins are removed, the hazelnuts are roasted until they are lightly brown. Then there is my way. I pay a premium and buy my hazelnuts already skinned. Truth be told, I've been known to buy them already chopped as well. I really like this bread and I think you will too. Here's the recipe.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Track Bread...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite, courtesy of Taste of Home magazine

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
Topping:
1/3 cup finely chopped hazelnuts
1/3 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Set aside.
2) In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in extracts. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream. Batter will be thick.
3) Spoon half of batter into prepared loaf pan. Combine topping ingredients; sprinkle two-thirds of topping over batter. Top with remaining batter. Sprinkle with remaining topping; press down lightly.
4) Bake for 60-70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Yield: 1 loaf (12 slices).

You might also enjoy these recipes:
Chocolate and Hazelnut Pie with Vanilla Cream - One Perfect Bite
Bavarian Hazelnut Cake - One Perfect Bite
Chocolate Babka - One Perfect Bite

This post is being linked to:
Smiling Sally - Blue Monday

Margarita Cheesecake

Photo courtesy of B.J. LaCasse, Fine Texas Cuisine

The Lure


The Finished Product

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite... They say third times a charm. There must be some truth to that, because it took me that long to get this cake right. I've made lots of cheesecakes over the years, but always keep coming back to my old favorite develop by Craig Claiborne for the New York Times. I thought for sure I'd found one to best it when I came across a recipe for a Margarita Cheesecake in Jon Bonnell's, Fine Texas Cuisine. While the directions were imprecise, I thought I could work my way through the omissions and still come up with a gorgeous cake. It didn't work that way. No pan size was given and I learned, to my chagrin, that a standard 9-inch springform pan wasn't large enough for the volume of batter the recipe produced. When the three hours it should have taken to bake the cake turned to four, I realized that that a convection oven was probably used to test the recipe. The biggest disappointment was the appearance of the cake. It bore no resemblance to the gorgeous photograph that lured me to the recipe in the first place. I realize that recipes used in restaurants don't always transpose to the home kitchen. This may have been one of those cases, but it is clear to me that the recipe was never tested in a home kitchen or these omissions would have been caught. The thing is, I didn't pay for the cookbook or three pounds of cream cheese to learn that this way. I groused a bit, actually I cussed a lot, but I was determined to make a Margarita Cheesecake. I did that by going back to ground zero. I added orange liqueur, tequila, lime juice and zest to Craig Claiborne's recipe and ended up with a fabulous cheesecake that's worthy of the fifth of May or Mother's Day. Here's the recipe that worked.

Margarita Cheesecake...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite, inspired by Craig Claiborne

Ingredients:
1⁄2 tbsp. butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon finely grated lime zest
2-1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2-1/2 tablespoons orange liqueur
2-1/2 tablespoons tequila
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-3⁄4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs

Directions:
1) Move oven rack to lowest position in oven and preheat oven to 350°. Grease a 3-inch deep 8" round one-piece cake pan all the way up to and including its rim with butter.
2) Combine lime zest, lime juice, orange liqueur and tequilla in a small bowl. Set aside.
3) Place cream cheese into bowl of a standing mixer and beat on medium high, scraping sides and bottom of bowl with a rubber spatula often, until completely smooth. Beat in vanilla and sugar well. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, but do not overbeat. Stir in juice and liqueur mixture lemon zest and juice with a spatula or spoon.
4) Generously spray buttered cake pan with nonstick spray, then pour in batter. Place cake pan inside a larger 3-inch deep pan. Place it in oven and pour hot water into larger pan, about 1-1/2-inches deep. Bake until top of cake is rich golden brown and feels dry when touched, about 1-1/2 to 1-1/2 hours (cake will be soft inside and become firm when cooled and refrigerated).
5) Lift cake pan out of water and place it on a cake rack. Let cake cool in pan for 3 hours. Cover pan with plastic wrap. Place a flat plate on top, invert, and remove pan. Sprinkle bottom of cake with graham cracker crumbs. Gently place another flat plate on top of crumbs. Very carefully invert again (without squashing cake), leave plastic wrap in place, and refrigerate cake overnight. Very carefully remove plastic wrap. Yield: 8 to 10 servings.

Cook's Note: This is a soft cheesecake and can be difficult to cleanly slice. I actually put the cake in the freezer for an hour before cutting to assure clean looking slices.

You might also enjoy these recipes:

Mini Black-Bottom Cheesecakes with Jam - The Food Addicts
Mocha Cheesecake - Evil Shenanigins
Mini Red Velvet Cheesescakes - Slashfoods