Ginger snaps

So until recently, I've never eaten a ginger snap.  Nor do I know what one is supposed to taste like.  But as you can see by my blogroll, I do a lot food picture browsing on foodgawker, tastespotting and seriouseats.  And so I get to see a lot of pretty cookie pictures.  Lately, I've been seeing a lot of gingersnap cookies. 

I decided to try to make them, so that I can find out exactly what one is supposed to taste like.  I found multiple different recipes, but ended up going with a recipe submitted by Elaine on allrecipes.com, called Mom's Ginger Snaps.

The recipe was easy to follow and I followed it exactly.  It was a super simple recipe that required very little prep time.  Probably one of the fastest cookie recipes I've ever done from scratch.  (I was going to make a pun here with the name, but I won't).  Here is the recipe from Elaine on allrecipes.com:

Yields: 36 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/3 cup white sugar for decoration

Directions

1. 
   Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
   
2. 
   In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, oil, molasses, and egg.
   Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger;
   stir into the molasses mixture. Roll dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Roll
   each ball in white sugar before placing 2 inches apart on ungreased
   cookie sheets.



3. 
   Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven, or until center is firm. Cool on wire racks.
   

I was super excited to see the results.  The cookies came out so pretty and round and I love how they were all crackled on top!  I've tried to get the crackling effect on my snickerdoodles and have failed to do so.  But these ginger snaps crackled perfectly.

The reviews said that the cookies were chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside.  While they were initially chewy for me straight of the oven, once they cooled, they weren't anymore.  They were just crispy cookies.  They taste great, but next time I might look to find a chewy recipe.  I do love chewy cookies. 

I also now have a lot of molasses leftover…I'm going to try to make my first ever molasses cookies, something else I've never tasted before.

Opera Cafe & Patisserie Part 2- Desserts

As I indicated in my previous Opera Cafe & Patisserie post, I would cover the desserts I ordered to go in another post. 

Opera Cafe & Patisserie
9254 Scranton Rd
San Diego, CA 92121
(858) 458-9050

www.operapatisserie.com

One of the desserts I chose was a pear tea cake.  I've been wanting to eat tea cakes lately after seeing some beautiful tea cake images.

The tea cake was light, not too sweet, with a nice layer of pear inside.  It tasted pretty good, but also did not really stand out for me.

Chocolate Bomb:

This is a chocolate mousse.  Boyfriend loved this one. I thought he would since he loves chocolate mousse so much.  I liked that it had a crispy bottom.  The crispy texture counterbalanced the mousse very well.

Coconut passion mango mousse:

This beautiful dessert was my favorite dessert I sampled from Opera.  Layers of mousse and cake.  The mousse had wonderful mango and coconut flavors and the cake was light and moist.  On top, it was decorated with a piece of chocolate and these two foil dots.  The dots ended up being crunchy balls, kind of like the rice crunchies you find in Crunch bars.  A yummy surprise!

Chocolate mini sampler:

I love how pretty and cute this sampler is!  Prior to visiting Opera, I had browsed their website where I learned they were now selling all kinds of "mini" desserts.  When I got to Opera, I didn't see any minis are display.  When I inquired into it, I was told that they had chocolate minis and also their seasonal minis in the back and I could order some.  These are small bite sized versions of the desserts they offer.  A set of minis was $4.95.  I thought this was a good deal.  It lets you try smaller versions of their dessert, and the minis are not too small.  Each one took me a few bites to finish.

The mini set included a Flourless Cake, Hazelnut Chocolate Tartlet, Opera Cake, Brownie, and Coffee Chocolate Ganache Dome

Unfortunately, I didn't particularly care for the taste of most of the minis.  I thought the tastes were missing the complexity you usually find in French desserts. The only one I really enjoyed was the opera cake (far right), which was very light and moist.

Opera Cafe & Patisserie

Opera Cafe & Patisserie
9254 Scranton Rd
San Diego, CA 92121
(858) 458-9050

www.operapatisserie.com

Opera Cafe & Patisserie has been on my radar for a while now.  I was never able to visit because they were only open until 2:30 Monday-Friday and closed on weekends. Somehow I stumbled upon their website a few days ago, and learned that they have extended their hours! They are now open on Friday for dinner and open on Saturday until 2. 

So Boyfriend and I stopped in for a quick lunch this past Saturday and also got a bunch of their beautiful desserts to go.

I wasn't that hungry.  All I really wanted to try were their truffle fries, which I heard are really good.  While I was at the cash register, I also spotted a scone, and I couldn't resist, so I got that as well.

Here is the raspberry walnut scone.

The scone was pretty big. Unfortunately, I didn't like how it tasted.  I like my scones to be soft and moist.  This scone as crispy and hard.  More like a cookie or a biscotti. 

My truffle fries soon arrived. 

For only $3.50, they gave a lot of fries.  The box was overflowing and the box was pretty big.  The fries come conveniently in a take-out box.  The fries smelled great.  I could smell the truffle oil.  There was also some cheese sprinkled on top.  The fries were nice and crispy.  While not the best truffle fries I've had, they were pretty good.  I asked Boyfriend what he thought. He said they were just "okay" but he kept eating them while I was trying to snap a picture!

Boyfriend got a steak and brie sandwich. 

I was surprised that it was an open faced sandwich with no piece of bread to go on top.  We had to eat it like a pizza.  The steak was tender and cooked just right, with the meat still pink inside.  However, below the layer of steak were caramelized onions.  Both Boyfriend and I found the onions to be too sweet and didn't really care for the sweet taste in the sandwich.  Other than that, the sandwich was pretty good.

The Opera Cafe is located in a strip mall next to a lot of office buildings in Mira Mesa, and apparently is a very popular lunch destination on workdays.  In addtion to serving breakfast and lunch, they also have a display of gorgeous French pastries.  I got a bunch of them to go. 

I got a box of french macaroons.  A box contains 10, with 2 of each flavor. The flavors are raspberry, cappuccino, chocolate, pistachio and vanilla.

The macaroons were a bit too crispy and flaky and not chewy enough for me.  But they are a lot cheaper than other bakeries I've been to selling french macaroons.  And I like that there are so many flavors.

I also got an assorted seasonal mini platter.

I really enjoyed this because it allowed me to try bite-sized versions of a lot of their fruit-type desserts.  They were all pretty tasty.

I'll save the other desserts I tried for another post.