The Cupcake Life

Celebratory Cream Puff Tower

2010-06-12T06:41:00.009-04:00

(insert message here about my suckage, you can make up your own! interactive blog experience!)

I was excited about last month's Daring Bakers challenge as it was something I actually wanted to make and my family and Joe's family were coming up for graduation so I actually had people to consume it.

And the challenge was... croquembouche! Which is French for... something, I'm sure. It goes like this: make a bunch of cream puffs. Painstakingly assemble cream puffs into pyramid shape with exceedingly hot caramel glue. Decorate with spun sugar, chocolate or the hearts of kittens.

Just checking to see if you were reading.

Blurb-o-the-month:
The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Cream puffs have been something that I've been itching to make for awhile, just to say, "Ah yes, Margarette, I do make a delightful cream puff. Quite! Shall we do the jitter bug whilst wearing our monocles? What? Of course I will not wear a dress that shows my knees, I'm not a harlot like the hussy next door."

I found that making all the components was pretty easy. I'm not sure what I did to the pastry cream recipe we were given but mine didn't thicken at all and I ended up thickening it quite a bit after I put it in a pastry bag and found that my 'cream' was dribbling all over the floor. Probably my fault though and easily fixed.

Two things were harder than I imagined: filling the cream puffs and assembling the tower. I used the special little pipping tip my sister got me that is long and pointy, like an elephant shrew's nose.

Or like something else long and pointy. But I like elephant shrews. So I used the elephant shrew tip to stab the cream puff and fill it with the pastry cream, but I had trouble 1) simultaneously holding the cream puff while pipping the filling 2) telling when the cream puffs were full and 3) not piercing the entire cream puff or exploding the cream puff by trying to fit a cup of filling into the tablespoon sized puffs. It ended up being a lot easier when my dad helped by holding the cream puffs and telling me when the cream puffs felt full by when they expanded in his hand.

Assembling the tower was easy enough but assembling it to look like an actual pyramid and not a blob of cream puffs I put together with my eyes closed was harder. I think it would have looked better if I had made tons of teensy cream puffs but I'm lazy, what can I say. I decided to distract from my pyramid-blob by drizzling chocolate over it and decorating it with the hearts of kittens. I mean, flowers.

It tasted lovely though it still didn't get entirely consumed as we were busy and moving. Not sure I would have a reason to make the whole shebang again but I would definitely make cream puffs again.

I won't post the recipes for the entire process but I will post the choux paste recipe used to make the cream puffs because I liked it and it was quite easy.

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)

Ingredients

¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.

Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.

As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes.

It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.

Piping:
Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.

Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.

Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.

Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

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BUT WAIT, BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! Joe and I will be traveling through Europe for the next two months and Joe will be blogging about our adventures here: http://adventuretimesintheoldworld.blogspot.com/

So I expect you all to take note and follow like the good minions that you are.

I plan on taking pictures of delicious things and blogging about them here as well. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! I also already completed the Daring Bakers Challenge for this month so watch for that the end of this month. Ta ta!

Communist free baked goods

2010-05-02T18:36:00.009-04:00

I'm still alive! I suck, but I'm alive! Unfortunately I will continue my streak as World's Worst Blogger a little longer-- Joe and I just finished moving out of our apartment and are now driving across the country back to Alaska. So there won't be any blogging while Joe and I drive through Canada, unless you're interested in some delicious lichen pie.

Side note: I find lichen jokes hilarious. (For the lichen naive-- poor souls-- think teeny bits of moss that grows in the tundra.) I have fond memories of working at the candy store during Christmas eve where I wore festive reindeer antlers attached to a headband. I was high on Christmas spirit and gummi bears and expressed this by pretending the antlers were transforming me into a reindeer. I would casually mention to my coworkers that I had a hankering for some lichen and pranced about in a way I imagined reindeer would.

So to answer the question: how do you survive serving crazy customers all day? BE CRAZIER THAN THEY ARE.

So anyway. Approximately nine million years ago I made some gluten free baked goods for my nurse preceptor. Basically she taught me how to do her job recovering kids from anesthesia after surgery and then made sure I didn't kill anybody, to which I was very grateful.

I always wanted to bring in baked goods for my coworkers but it felt cruel to bring in cookies or cake that my mentor couldn't eat. Thanks for all your help, here are some delicious baked goods that you are incapable of digesting! So for my last day I decided to bring in gluten-free treats.

Sprinkles: fighting communism since... 19...whatsit.

My first plan was to buy some gluten-free flour and attempt to use a gluten-free recipe. Then I caught Joe's Flu of Death and the thought of moving from the apartment made me want to die. So I had to improvise and make 'accidentally gluten-free' baked goods with ingredients I had on hand. The first thing that came to mind were meringues. Egg whites and sugar. Bake. Viola. Except you should probably whip them first, okay? I did two batches: vanilla and chocolate.

I used a pipping bag for the first time for shaping the meringues and they turned out very pretty. The chocolate ones didn't hold their shape and instead turned into marbled discs but it sort of appeared that I did that on purpose so... win!

Meringue Cookies Recipe:

3 large egg whites (3 ounces or 90 grams)

1/4

tsp cream of tartar

3/4 cup (150 grams) superfine or caster sugar (if you don't have superfine sugar simply take granulated white sugar and process it for about 30 seconds in a food processor) --- I used "regular" sugar

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F (105 degrees C) and place the rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. You can form the cookies with a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) plain tip, or I often just use two spoons to make the cookies.

In the bowl of your mixer

, with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites on low-medium speed until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat the whites until they hold soft peaks. Add the sugar, a little at a time, and continue to beat until the meringue holds very stiff peaks. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Note: The meringue is done when it holds stiff peaks and when you rub a little between your thumb and index finger it does not feel gritty. If it feels gritty the sugar has not fully dissolved so keep beating until it feels smooth between your fingers.

Before placing the cookies on the cookie sheet, place a little of the meringue on the underside of each corner of the parchment paper. This will prevent the paper from sliding. Transfer the meringue to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) tip. Pipe 2 1/2 inch (6 cm) rounds of meringue in rows on the prepared baking sheet. Alternatively, spoon mounds of meringue, using two spoons, onto the prepared sheets. Sprinkle the tops of the cookies with a few shaved almonds, if desired.

Bake the meringues for approximately 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours, rotating the baking sheet from front to back (about half way through) to ensure even baking. The meringues are done when they are pale in color and fairly crisp. Turn off the oven, open the door a crack, and leave the meringues in the oven to finish drying overnight.

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I loved the way these tasted, I used homemade vanilla extract in the vanilla meringues and it made a huge difference. The cocoa ones were not as delicious perhaps but regardless I kept finding myself munching on them. I could not put my finger on what they tasted like until it dawned on me that they taste like Cocoa Puffs. Which is not a bad thing at all, who doesn't secretly like Cocoa Puffs? Communists, that's who.

Maybe its the eight hours of driving a day but I'm finding communist jokes HILARIOUS right now.

Since meringues are so easy, I felt obligated to make something else. I remembered making a peanut butter cookie recipe a few years ago that consisted only of peanut butter, eggs and sugar. That's it. They're a bit weird but they work-- they're a bit more like a crisp peanut butter candy but again, does that not sound delicious? I modified the recipe a bit and though they came out a little ugly and I was ashamed of their ugliness, my mentor LOVED them. These would not be my go to peanut butter cookie recipe but it's a good one to have in your baking arsenal: tasty, freakishly easy, and intensely peanut buttery. Who wouldn't like that? COMMUNISTS.

1-2-3 PB cookies

1 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup plain sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Mix peanut butter, sugars, and egg together in a large bowl. Add the vanilla and salt and stir until combined. After all the ingredients have been combined, roll the peanut butter mixture into 1 inch balls.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press down with a fork. Once the oven has pre-heated, put the cookies in the oven for 15 minutes. Let cool completely.

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In the end, my mentor loved everything. Or she is a very good liar. She also ended up bringing me home baked peanut butter cookies on the same day, which I thought was very cute. They were tasty, which is saying something since I still had the Flu of Death and anything other than Gatorade made me dry heave in a corner.

In an awkward conclusion, love you Nancy!

Still navigating through the Canadian arctic/cities/highways, back soon with some lichen pie!

Homemade-reo's.

2010-04-25T16:32:00.010-04:00

The other day Katie said, "Hey, remember when you had a blog?" to which I said, "Hey, remember when you shut your face?" Just kidding. But although my camera has mysteriously disappeared, probably to the same place where all my bobby pins go to, I do have some pictures loaded of past baked goods so I really have no good excuse not to update now that I'm finished with class. I guess I can break my Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon with some pics.

I've been pining to make homemade oreos for awhile now, for no good reason other than my brain latches onto strange things. Which is probably how I ended up with two certifiably insane chinchillas.

One reason I put off making oreos until now was because I didn't think I could achieve the black color oreo cookies have that make them seriously off putting to those with braces. And because I am crazy, I did not want to make them if they were not the appropriate color. But then I did some shopping at the baking store King Arthur with a gift certificate I had (thanks Elrita!) and picked up some of this:

... black cocoa! The stuff is intense, you supplement regular cocoa with this stuff and it makes baked goods extra dark and extra chocolately. Let the oreo party commence.

I used this recipe for the cookies and it worked fine. Because I'm lazy and hate to roll out cookie dough, I rolled the cookie dough into a log, chilled it, and cut off rounds instead. Way easier. For the centers, I used my favorite buttercream recipe and flavored part with vanilla and part with raspberry jam. The only downside of this frosting is that it melts really easily, since it is essentially 99% butter (and 100% delicious because of it). So I kept the cookies refrigerated and would probably consider making a different filling if I were to do it again. But they did taste delicious! The consensus of deliciousness went to the cookies with vanilla filling -- people like tradition.

See? Melty. Whatever, people liked them. I brought them to a bar to share with friends, though it took me about 10 minutes to find them in my purse. My purse is a black hole and recently I lost my phone for an entire week in the depths of it. I wish I was kidding.

White chocolate raspberry cupcakes of divine greatness

2010-03-01T20:12:00.004-05:00

Near Christmas I was at my aunt's house and stumbled upon this book on her coffee table:

Naturally, I started flipping through it and I was immediately taken back with all the delicious recipes and gorgeous photos. Apricot upside down cake. Hazelnut gooey brownies. Chocolate strawberry cake. I had been denied all these delicious calories without knowing!

I immediately inquired about the book and was told it was from a cake shop in South Africa, where my aunt and uncle used to live. Crushing news. I figured it was for the best since the recipes used the metric system and I can't follow regular recipes without occasionally forgetting key steps like, oh say adding sugar to pumpkin pie. In case you were wondering, unsweetened pumpkin does taste exactly like soil. And soil pie wasn't exactly what I was going for.

I put the cookbook out of my mind until Christmas, when I received it as a present from my grandparents, who also live in South Africa. I encourage you all to acquire some South African grandparents so you too can receive cool South African cake books. You may also be so lucky as to befriend your tech savvy grandpa on facebook and read his status updates about how grandma was stalked by a baboon that day.

I don't know if it was more shocking that my grandma. Was stalked. BY A BABOON!! IN AFRICA!! Or is it more horrifying that my grandpa. IS ON FACEBOOK!!! AND WE ARE FRIENDS!!

Anyway. My first logical excuse to make some shmancy baked goods was Valentine's Day, when white chocolate cupcakes with smashed berry frosting was most appropriate.

And they went over resoundingly well. I manged not to run into any problems converting the metric recipe, although according to my calculations my oven was supposed to be at something like 353.27 degrees Fahrenheit. Joe declared them the best cupcakes ever in the histories of all things cupcake, so let it be known, amen.

I think the kicker here was the frosting, which was basically mascarpone cheese (a bit like cream cheese) mashed raspberries and a touch of powdered sugar. I tend to prefer cream cheese-like frosting over American buttercream so I loved this.

I decided not to participate in the Daring Baker's February challenge of homemade tiramisu because I wasn't really feeling it-- I'm not a huge tiramisu person and I couldn't justify going through the laborious process when I couldn't think of anybody who would eat. I did decide to do one aspect of the challenge, however, which was to make your own mascarpone-like cheese at home. It's really easy, actually. And the stuff tends to be expensive at the store so why not? Here it is:

(Source: Vera’s Recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese)
This recipe makes 12oz/ 340gm of mascarpone cheese

Ingredients:
474ml (approx. 500ml)/ 2 cups whipping (36 %) pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), preferably organic cream (between 25% to 36% cream will do)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Method:

Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a wide skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium heat-resistant bowl, then place the bowl into the skillet. Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 F. If you do not have a thermometer, wait until small bubbles keep trying to push up to the surface.
It will take about 15 minutes of delicate heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream curdles. Do not expect the same action as you see during ricotta cheese making. All that the whipping cream will do is become thicker, like a well-done crème anglaise. It will cover a back of your wooden spoon thickly. You will see just a few clear whey streaks when you stir. Remove the bowl from the water and let cool for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of dampened cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Transfer the mixture into the lined sieve. Do not squeeze the cheese in the cheesecloth or press on its surface (be patient, it will firm up after refrigeration time). Once cooled completely, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (in the sieve) overnight or up to 24 hours.
Vera’s notes: The first time I made mascarpone I had all doubts if it’d been cooked enough, because of its custard-like texture. Have no fear, it will firm up beautifully in the fridge, and will yet remain lusciously creamy.
Keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 4 days.

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It really was a breeze, the only thing is you need to start it the day before you need it, which I'm rarely good about. But makes an excellent frosting: I added about a cup of raspberries and powdered sugar to taste and it was glorious. Too thin to be pipped but a messy chic cupcake has its place too.

Divine!

Coconut Christmas

2010-02-17T20:00:00.004-05:00

Are you guys ready to read more about things I baked 9 million years ago? Excellent!

In December I was agonizing over what to get Joe's family for Christmas/Hanukkah/Christmaskah. At the same time I was mulling over what to make for my mom's nontraditional Christmas dinner. I was considering making a coconut cream pie for the dinner and randomly asked Joe if his dad happened to like coconut cream pie. "Oh, coconut cream pie? That's one of his favorites!" A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. OR HANUKKAH MIRACLE. INTER-RELIGIOUS MIRACLE.

So I revised my plans and decided to make two coconut cream pies. I eventually decided upon a coconut cream pie recipe by Emeril that used coconut milk in addition to shredded coconut to make the coconuty pie filling. Extra coconuty goodness? Yes please.

I was hesitant to make my own pie crusts, as my making pie crusts highly correlates with an emotional breakdown. But I did it anyway! Because what is better is more appropriate during the holidays than a nice, long nervous breakdown?

Best Ever Coconut Cream Pie from foodtv.com

Ingredients

3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup cornstarch
5 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup flaked, unsweetened coconut
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon butter
1 (9-inch) baked pie shell, recipe follows
1/3 cup toasted coconut
Whipped cream, for garnish

Directions

In a nonstick 1-quart saucepan, combine 3/4 cup sugar, coconut milk, and 1 cup milk. Scald mixture.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk the remaining 1/2 cup milk and cornstarch together to make a slurry. Whisk egg yolks with salt in medium bowl. Temper yolks by adding 1/2 cup scaled milk mixture to yolks and whisk well. Add yolk mixture and slurry back into milk mixture and whisk vigorously over medium heat until thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add coconut, vanilla, and butter. Whisk until uniformly incorporated.

Pour the filling into the prepared pie shell. Cover the pie with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. Chill the pie completely, about 2 hours.

To serve, top with toasted coconut and a dollop of whipped cream.

Pie shell:

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for surface

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup solid vegetable shortening

6 to 7 tablespoons ice cold water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Mix well. Add the shortening and mix until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the water and let sit 1 minute. Either using a fork or your hands, carefully press the mixture together to form a soft ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and place it on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a circle about 12 inches in diameter and 1/4-inch thick. Gently fold the circle of dough in half and then in half again so that you can lift it without tearing it, and unfold into a 9-inch by 2-inch deep-dish pie pan. Crimp the edges and chill again for 30 minutes before baking.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Bake pie shell until golden, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely before using.

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But I actually had the easiest time with this pie crust. I think a large part of this was because my mom doesn't own a large food processor, which I normally use to make pie crusts, and I was forced to do it by hand. Maybe this prevented me from over mixing the dough or something? Whatever it was, I did not want to kill somebody when I was finished. The crust was in no way attractive but everybody in the immediate family survived so I considered that a success.

Another bonus to making pie on Christmas was that the oven was on for hours and hours, which is quite useful when your mom's heaters decide to fail in the depths of the Alaskan winter. I came home from school and thought, "We have no heat and our vicious dog is attempting to eat the neighbors? What is this, a Charles Dickens novel?"

Because everything I touch magically doubles, I somehow came out with way too much of the coconut filling, I probably had enough to fill like three pies. Huh. I had no choice but to leave the remainder in mom's fridge where it would taunt her silently. Haha. Mu haha. MWA HAHAHA.

Anyway. I was pleased with how this turned out, I think the coconut milk made it especially good. Even though my pie crust skillz are quite as good as I would like them to be, the crust still tasted good. But really, in pies like these its all about the filling, baby. And it was quite good.

Next up: something that I actually made THIS MONTH. I know, crazy right?! Its almost like I try to keep a blog about baking!

Sticky toffee pudding. I mean cake. I mean pudding.

2010-02-10T17:17:00.009-05:00

So umm, wanna talk about Christmas? Good. Because that is when I last took pictures of baked goods. I am the world's greatest blogger! Good thing I'm not a parent, the kids would be all, "Hey mom, can I have breakfast?" and I'd be like yeah sure! ... and then I would get distracted and forget about it for two months.

My family had its big ol' Christmas dinner on Christmas eve and I was recruited to make dessert. I wanted to make something new but couldn't decide what to make. Joe suggested sticky toffee pudding which sounded perfect and sorta festive.

I've been to England a couple time now and was pretty familiar with sticky toffee pudding. My dad took my brother and I on a trip to England and Germany when I was 14 and I quickly learned that British cooking is... how do you say... atrocious. After several meals I settled on living on baked potatoes as that was the one thing even the English couldn't manipulate to taste like shoes.

British desserts fared a lot better, though maybe only because I was blinded by sugar. But British desserts were puzzling. I was very confused the first time I ordered a sticky toffee pudding and was served a gooey cake, not pudding. Were the English so deranged that they did not know that pudding was supposed to be, well, pudding? They had obviously ruined this pudding as it was quite solid. And so I learned that pudding basically indicates a dessert, not necessarily an actual pudding of the jelloid variety.

Apparently other Americans are not familiar with this phenomenon either, as I encountered while looking for a recipe for sticky toffee pudding. One confused American wrote, "Should this be refrigerated since its a pudding?" If it looks like a cake, tastes like a cake and walks like a cake (in that it does not walk at all) its a cake, lady. No refrigeration necessary.

Another popular British pudding I tried was spotted dick, a dessert I delighted in ordering because it mortified my little brother. Piers was around 10 at the time and the uttering of 'spotted dick' sent him into a blind panic. He would wail, "Stop SAYING that!" and my dad and I would say, "What, Piers? You don't want us to say SPOTTED DICK? Whats wrong with SPOTTED DICK, eh? Don't you want to eat some SPOTTED DICK?" And then we would laugh and laugh and Piers would say something about wanting to go home. I'm not sure, I wasn't really listening.

Sticky Toffee Pudding from foodnetwork.com

Ingredients

12 ounces dates, pitted and roughly chopped
2 1/2 cups water
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) softened, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Butterscotch sauce, recipe follows:

2 1/4 cups light brown sugar
7 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup half-and-half
1 teaspoon brandy
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup cold heavy cream, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13 by 9-inch baking pan with parchment or waxed paper.

Combine the dates and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and gradually stir in the baking soda (it will foam up), and set aside.

In a bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. In the bowl of a mixer, cream the butter until fluffy. Add the sugar to the butter, and cream until fluffy. Without stopping the mixer, add 2 of the eggs and mix until combined. Add the remaining 2 eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture and 1/3 of the dates and mix until combined. Repeat until all the flour mixture and the dates are incorporated into the batter. Pour into the baking pan and bake about 40 minutes, until firm and set in the center. Let cool in the pan. When cool, turn out of the pan onto a baking sheet and peel off the parchment paper. The recipe can be made through this step up to 2 days in advance.

Butterscotch Sauce: Combine the brown sugar, butter, half-and-half, and brandy in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil 3 minutes, until combined. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

When ready to serve pudding, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour the sauce evenly over the top of the cake. Bake until the sauce is bubbly and cake is heated through, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, whip the heavy cream into soft peaks with the mixer. Cut the cake into squares and serve with whipped cream.

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So. About the cake. Or pudding. Or whatever. I was disappointed with how it turned out but I think that's mostly my fault. I overcooked the cake and the toffee sauce and it would've been a lot better if I hadn't screwed it up, oops. Never the less, it was still pretty good, especially with whipped cream. And my little cousin ate enough of it to satiate him for days so at least its elementary school approved.

And note: the last time I went to England a couple years ago, the food had vastly improved and my diet consisted of more than potatoes. In fact, when we were stranded in the farmland in the middle of nowhere, I spent the majority of my time eating and trying not to die of allergies. But that's another story!

Nuts for Maple Pecan Biscotti

2010-01-16T13:12:00.007-05:00

Howdy, cupcake-ettes. I am alive and back to daily life. I made some goodies over Christmas break that I need to share so lets get started. I'm feeling lazy so this will be short.

Biscotti are a great holiday gift because they're easy and last forever-- they're already stale after all. Biscotti are also really easy to customize so I decided to make a maple pecan version for some gifts. I love maple flavored things, especially those maple leaf candies that are basically a solidified version of maple syrup. It's a quick and convenient way to acquire cavities.

Unfortunately maple is a pretty delicate flavor and these weren't as maple-y as I would have liked. I was going for more of a maple flavor explosion and I got more of a touch of maple. Regardless I was happy of the outcome. They were lightly sweet and nutty. I did try to add a maple glaze to up the maple explosion factor but whenever I added maple syrup to powdered sugar it tasted weirdly metallic. As if I had intended to make a maple flavored robot. Which was not what I was going for. So I skipped that and brushed the biscottis with maple syrup after they baked instead.

I didn't toast the pecans I added, mostly because I burned the first batch and was too lazy to toast another so I just added raw pecans. I'm sure they would be good with toasted pecans but the untoasted pecans were better than expected and added some chew. I love when my laziness pays off.

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
¼ teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon maple flavoring
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
¾ cup maple syrup

DIRECTIONS:

1. Sift first dry ingredients together in a small bowl.
2. Whisk sugar and eggs in a large bowl to a light lemon color; stir in vanilla extract, maple flavoring and maple syrup. Sift dry ingredients over egg mixture, then fold in until dough is just combined.
3. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Using floured hands, quickly stretch dough into a rough 13-by-2-inch log, placing them on the cookie sheet. Pat dough shape to smooth it. Bake, turning pan once, until loaf is golden and just beginning to crack on top, about 35 minutes.
4. Cool the loaf for 10 minutes; lower oven temperature to 325 degrees. Cut each loaf diagonally into 3/8-inch slices with a serrated knife. Lay the slices about 1/2-inch apart on the cookie sheet, cut side up, and return them to the oven. Bake, turning over each cookie halfway through baking, until crisp and golden brown on both sides, about 15 minutes. Transfer biscotti to wire rack and cool completely. Brush tops with maple syrup and let dry. Biscotti can be stored in an airtight container for at least 1 month.

Laziness at peak level so that's all. Coming up: coconut cream pie, sticky toffee pudding.

December Daring Bakers Challenge: Inedible Houses of Joy

2009-12-23T00:00:00.003-05:00

I was happy to see that the December Daring Bakers challenge was something I wanted to do. Last month’s challenge was to make cannolis and I am so not into cannolis. Plus, you have to deep-fry the cannoli cookies, which sounded like an excellent way to give myself more third degree burns. The month before that the challenge was French macaroons, which I did want to make but in October my immune system decided to go on vacation and my energy was spent trying not to die. Last minute I tried to make them but I completely messed up the recipe and ended up with almond hockey pucks. Mmm! Let’s blame it on my fever. So I gave up on those and went to sleep instead.

December's challenge appealed to my inner three year old. Make a gingerbread house! The only gingerbread house I can remember making is the kind in which a first grade teacher helps you glue graham crackers to a milk carton. Making a real gingerbread house is more difficult in that um, you use gingerbread instead of graham crackers and can't use empty pints of milk as a support system. Tricksy!

Blurb-o-ze-month: The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

I decided to go with a gingerbread log cabin in tribute to my home state of Alaskan. Gingerbread Sarah Palin and gingerbread Russia not included.

I used the Good Housekeeping gingerbread recipe which worked really well -- all I had to do was add a little more water than called for because that sucker would not roll out. I'd recommend halving the recipe unless you're making some sort of gingerbread fortress because it makes a ton. I halved the recipe and had more than enough for one house.

The 'glue' in gingerbread houses is usually royal icing or hot caramel and I went the royal icing route. Trying to glue the house together with boiling sugar water sounded like a Fear Factor challenge and I'd like to keep the use of my hands. Make massive amounts of royal icing, you'll need it. And try not swear as much as I did while trying to glue on the roof. See why caramel would've been a bad idea?

BJ came over while I was finishing up the house and he thought I had been driven to insanity by finals. I was making a cabin? Out of gingerbread? On purpose? And then I made a snowman out of icing as a finishing touch and BJ suggested I be institutionalized. But BJ works in a restaurant in which the 'shrimp nest' in a popular item so let's save our judgment, shall we? If BJ had his way I would've made a gingerbread army base filled with gingerbread soldiers and candy cyborg zombies.

Yeah, this took forever and the gingerbread house tastes like ginger scented stale cardboard. And royal icing tastes like sweetened rocks. But I like baking and holiday decorating so why not? It was worth covering the kitchen and living room with powdered sugar and hardened icing. The cabin is currently sitting in my apartment back at school, where BJ is watering our plants while we're on vacation. I predict if he gets drunk enough he'll eat it. Or smash it. Or smash it and then eat it, it's a toss up really.

Magic Mint Brownies

2009-12-15T13:35:00.002-05:00

I’m back in Alaska for the holidays and I would like to thank my neighbor for letting me ‘borrow’ their wireless internet. Now if you could refrain from stealing my identity, dear neighbor, that would be great. I spent most of this Saturday traveling to be here which means I became very friendly with xanax and its friend ativan and don’t remember anything. Though I do remember having a dream in which Dr.Oz was actually a woman and pregnant and I was trying to convince him to come clean to the world about it. Just TRY to interpret that.

Before traveling, Joe preformed in his senior recital and I was excited because I got to bake treats for the reception. Invite me to any major life event and I’ll be like CAN I BAKE SOMETHING?? DO THEY NORMALLY HAVE BUFFETS AT FUNERALS??

Joe requested I make the chocolate chip cookies from The Sweet Life. They’re not your typical choco chip cookie: they’re super thin and taste like toffee. They’re best right out oven when they have that magical ability to be both crunchy and chewy and chocolate-y and toffee-y. But they’re also good cold, just not as magical.

I wanted to make something besides cookies as well so I browsed through my baking books and settled on chocolate mint brownies. I’d developed an intense passion for peppermint hot chocolate and living above a Starbucks was not helping the recovery process. So naturally I was attracted to the chocolate mint combination.

I grabbed this recipe from my Fine Cooking cookie magazine I bought last year and this may be the first recipe in the collection I actually really liked. Plus I got to do the swirly icing thing that I had never tried before and I'm all about pretty swirly icing. Both treats went over well at the reception, though I think some were put off by the appearance of the cookies. “I think you forgot to put love in these ones” said BJ. Of course this did not stop him from making multiple trips to the cookie tray.

The brownies went over well too, though the recipe called for ground dried mint and next time I think I’ll just use mint extract as there was a trace of leaves in some of the brownies and I don’t want anybody to think I’m sneaking them ‘special’ brownies. Besides, if I were to do that I would feed them BEFORE Joe’s recitals. Then everybody would really love German song cycles.

I'm still hesitant to post the chocolate chip cookie recipe since it can't be found online. The brownies are on the Fine Cooking website though so check those out. I would post the recipe but the website has some good pictures demonstrating the swirly icing thing.

Tofurky day!

2009-11-27T12:17:00.012-05:00

Joe and I had a low key Thanksgiving with minimal mental melt downs. I decided I did not want to have a brain aneurysm so I decided not to make pie crust. Joe decided he did want to have a brain aneurysm and made Peking duck.

This is not duck. This is cornbread.

Joe warned me that the duck carcass would be hanging out in the kitchen the day before to do it's Peking duck thing. So when I came home on Wednesday and Joe told me not to freak out about what was in the kitchen, I didn't think anything of it and expected for the duck carcass to be out on the counter. And it was. The duck was laying on the counter. With our giant fan placed in front of it. If the duck had hair, its hair would be flying in the breeze. I asked Joe why exactly was the duck placed strategically in a wind tunnel? and he told me that Peking ducks are supposed to be 'hung upside down in a windy area'. And because our landlord may not appreciate us dangling a duck carcass out the window on a string, a fan seemed like the best option. Sure.

Roasted garlic. Calorie free, obviously. For the:

... mashed potatoes!

I thought about making the pumpkin pie the night before but then I took some Xanax and went to sleep instead. Such is life. I discovered a pumpkin pie recipe that featured a shortbread crust while I was perusing the Martha Stewart website and I decided to go with that. I hate making pie crust and I don't particularly like it so this seemed perfect.

Brussel sprouts: pre-roast
And post-roast. Yum.

This pie was kind of ridiculously easy but I'm not complaining. The hardest part I had was figuring out when to take it out, since I haven't made many pumpkin pies and the filling is supposed to be jiggly when you take them out. But not too jiggly. And of course not jiggle-less. A gray area of jiggly. And I am not a Jiggle Master. A Jiggle Pro. Head Mistress of Jiggle. I am a Jiggle Apprentice and after checking the pie a few times I took it out at what I decided was an appropriate level of jiggleosity.

Clearly any silly words should not be included in any recipe I make, I just cannot stop.

Cornbread, up close and personal.

I really liked the way it came out, the shortbread crust was super easy and paired well with the filling. The shortbread crust was crunchy and not too sweet and did I mention about nine million times easier than making pie crust? Win win. Joe says he prefers regular ol' pie crust which is fine as long as he's willing to pay the mental health bills.

I was out of the kitchen pretty quickly since making pumpkin pie consists of lots of waiting. In the mean time, Joe made everything else: mashed potatoes, cornbread, brussel sprouts and gravy. I wandered in and out of the kitchen now and then to watch Joe battle the duck. The dimple-y skin from where the feathers were plucked out freaked me out the most. Perhaps because while getting something from the fridge and coming face to face with the duck I realized that is what my legs look like in winter.

I thought everything turned out really well, Joe did a lovely job. He did almost lose it while trying to carve the duck into pieces that did not look like a bear had shredded it. Minor detail though, he doesn't disassemble poultry all year round. He is now convinced he must go through some sort of poultry boot camp and make one every day for a week. I am so looking forward to it.

Here's the two recipes we used, everything else was just hodge podged together.
- Easy Pumpkin Pie with Shortbread Crust
- Skillet Cornbread

Pumpkin Pie Remix

2009-11-17T23:36:00.010-05:00

A common question asked during the holiday season is, "I just can't seem to gain enough weight during the holidays! What can I do to pack the lbs on?" Don't worry, friends. I have the answer. And the answer is: pumpkin cheesecake.

Pumpkin flavored desserts are all winners in my book, I'm all about the spicy pumpkin baked goods. In October I began to think about what new pumpkin creation I could make. Pumpkin muffins? Check. Pumpkin cookies? Check. Pumpkin pie? Check. The unfortunate pumpkin pie that completely lacked sugar? Check. Pumpkin cheesecake? Oh hello, lover.

Cheesecake was also a good option because although Joe is not usually a sweets person, he cannot resist anything cold, sweet and creamy. I'm not sure he is physically capable of removing himself from a milkshake. Joe is similarly enamored with cheesecake and since his birthday is on Halloween, it seemed like a good thing to make.

I decided to spruce up the cheesecake a bit by making a gingersnap crust instead of the normal graham cracker crust that's in most cheesecakes. Originally I was going to make my own gingersnaps to grind for the crust and then I realized I was a crazy person and bought a bag of cookies from Whole Foods instead.

Gingersnap Pumpkin Cheesecake

Ingredients:

1 bag gingersnap cookies (I used a 12 oz bag) -- you'll want around 2 cups of cookie crumbs
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
3 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 14 ounce can pumpkin pulp
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat oven 375 degrees F. Grind the gingersnaps in a food processor until they reach a fine crumb. Add melted butter and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Press the crust mixture into the bottom and springform pan. Now, make the filling. In a mixer bowl combine cream cheese, sugar, cornstarch, and vanilla. Beat until fluffy. Add eggs and yolks all at once, beating on low speed just until combined. Add spices and mix until incorporated. Fold in the cream and the pumpkin pulp.Pour into the crust lined pan. Place in a shallow baking pan in oven and fill baking pan with hot water to reach about half way up the spring form pan. Bake for about 55 minutes or until the center appears nearly set when shaken. Turn heat off and leave cheesecake in the cooler oven for 30 mins. Cool out of oven for an additional 30 minutes. Chill for 4 hours before serving.
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I thought this came out really well and it even won me a little fall baking contest. Loved the gingersnap crust though the butter in the crust could be decreased a bit. Sacrilege, I know. Joe plowed through most of it in no time by using hunks of cheesecake essentially as a meal replacement. If only such a diet existed. The all cheesecake diet? Count me in.

So this would be a nice twist on your Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. It would also make a good addition to your thighs. Or we can pretend its healthy because it is full of such nutritious things like vegetables (pumpkin), dairy (um, heavy cream and cream cheese) and protein (eggs). A well rounded meal!

Joe and I are having a small Thanksgiving of just the two of us so we'll just have a little feast of fall veggies, mashed potatoes and meat/meat-like products. I think Joe is going to attempt to roast a duck and I'm having my petite faux turkey roast. I've been vegetarian for nearly six years and one of the only times I encounter problems are at large Thanksgiving dinners where inevitably someone offers me turkey and I decline, telling them I'm a vegetarian. To which they say, "Oh, okay. I'll just give you a small piece then." What? I'm a vegetarian, not a oh-as-long-as-its-a-small-piece-tarian.

It does remind me of another fond memory of my German exchange trip. Before leaving, all the students wrote letters to our future host families in our broken toddler-level German and I threw in 'Ich bin Vegetarisch!' as a heads up. We arrived in Germany after traveling nine million hours on an airplane, which was somewhat like attending a flying drunken German party. Sleep deprived and smelling of stale German cigarettes, we were touted to a welcoming barbecue. I met my dear German host parents who immediately wanted to feed me and offered me a variety of meats. I explained to them I was vegetarian and the following conversation ensued, "Ah yes, I see, I see... But you eat chickens, yes? No? Of course, of course... But surely you eat sausage. Bratwurst, ja? Nein? Of course not. What about...." and I eventually told them I would eat fish, which seemed to calm them a bit. I don't normally eat fish or seafood at all but I was jet lagged and wanted to placate my host parents. Of course the local newspaper took picture of the BBQ and I appeared on the front page of the news, appearing slightly ill and holding a large platter of steaming meat products that I was bullied into holding. That's one down side of being 5'0: you're always stuck dead center in photographs, displaying something weird if needed. Like a tray of bratwurst while surrounded by smiling Germans.

Another time I saw a German restaurant had a vegetarian sandwich option so I tried to order it. And the German workers were like WHAT! SURELY YOU ARE MISTAKEN AND WANT IT WAS MEAT, JA?? NO MEAT? CAN... NOT... COMPUTE. BRAIN... EXPLODING.

I'm not sure how my German impression turned into a version of Terminator. Let's just go with it.

I'm sure I'll post something from Thanksgiving later this week, I'm just planning on doing a pumpkin pie. I may not survive though, every time I try to make pie crust I almost murder somebody. But I'm determined to conquer pie crust so I keep making it and come close to having a stroke each time. Every time I attempt it Joe is like, "Can I help you with anything, baby?" and I'm like, "WHY ARE YOU IN HERE?? GET OUT!! EVERYTHING IS FINE!! NO, I AM NOT - sob - CRYING!!"

I'm sure it will be a calm and relaxing Thanksgiving. Enjoy your holiday.

Muffin Party Memories

2009-11-12T20:49:00.011-05:00

So I've continued my muffin obsession with several new batches of different muffins. The most recent ones are by far my favorite because they have the elusive ability to be moist, delicious and healthy. Pinch me!

I think I've mentioned that I'm also somewhat addicted to apples. I eat one just about every day. And for the record: an apple a day DOES NOT keep the doctor away, as I keep getting sick. Is someone poisoning my apples? Quit it. Anyway, apples are not my most favorite fruit but they are pretty reliableon the delicious scale. My very favorite, pears, hate me and go from rock hard to rotting when I turn my head. Oranges are a close second and besides the fact that they make my tummy die with their acidity, picking oranges is kind of dicey and a dry orange is the worst thing ever. Apples are pretty much delicious all the time. And since going without fruit is not an option for me, apples are usually around.

Recently Joe and I bought our standard big batch of local apples that would last me about 30 minutes or possibly week if I had self control. Unfortunately this was a rare batch of bad apples. Occasionally local apples can be a bit mealy and these guys had no delicious apple friends to forgive the presence of their mealy neighbors. So I decided to make apple muffins to put the apples out of their misery. Or out of my misery. That does not make sense but let us pretend it does, shall we?

And have I mentioned I LOVE THESE like a loving bear, as Joe and I would say in our horribly cheesy love language. Joe and I should really should be socialized like puppies because we don't function well outside of the safety of our apartment. I remember one time we were at the BMW dealership waiting for Joe's car to be fixed and I was holding a bunch of stuff and dropped one of them. Instead of responding like a normal human being, I pointed at it and squeaked, "Aaaaaiiiiee!" at Joe until he picked it up for me. I really did not think this was abnormal until Joe told me I can't do that sort of thing in public. Oh.

Healthy Apple Cinnamon Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 heaping tablespoons apple sauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
2 apples - peeled, cored and chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease six muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
Stir together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and cinnamon. In a separate bowl mix together egg, oil, applesauce and vanilla. All apples to dry ingredients and mix until apples are coated. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling to the top of the cup.
Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

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Easy peasy and delicious... smishious?

In other news I've recently begun pulling my old journal entries off the web and into a word document. I kept online journals throughout middle school and high school and I've been meaning to get a hard copy of my entries to have around in future. My middle school entries are just tragic and do not deserve to see the light of day but there are some good parts and tons of memories that I would have otherwise forgotten. The Muffin Story I thought was suitable for this entry.

Background: In high school I went on a student exchange trip to Germany and hilarity ensued. Here is one journal entry from the trip:

"On our last day in Korchenbroich, all the German students and American exchange students had a muffin baking party. I have no idea why, perhaps it's some strange parting tradition in Germany. Anyways, it was good times. The German students had to write down ten actions in English they didn't already know, like "to whisk" or "to pour". Andrew and Alex convinced some Germans that one action was "to secretly taste". They also convinced a few others that along with preheating overs, there was also "post heating and the recovery phase".

Then Andrew forgot the word "batter" and was really troubled by the notion of "muffin dough". "This isn't muffin DOUGH... this is muffin... okay, what the hell is it?"

Finally, hot Michael was practicing his English and when he bit into a muffin, he yelled, "This is SENSATIONAL!" and I laughed and said, "Dude, nobody actually says 'sensational' in the US. Unless you're a interior decorator or something."

How could I not save these heartwarming memories?

Birthday Blogging and Family Stories

2009-11-05T10:47:00.011-05:00

It's birthday blog time! Happy birthday, mom!

My present will be late so here's a sneak preview of part of your gift and a blog entry to tide you over.

First off: the baked goods. I love fall flavored baked goods a lot. As in cinnamon and spice flavored, not leaf flavored. When trying to decide what to send my mom, I decided to bake some ginger spice cookies. I didn't have the required amount of ginger so I added some more spices to make up for it. See how clever I am? I just add 'spice' to the name to disguise the fact that I can't plan ahead.

They were yummy though and the first ginger cookie I've made that has the proper ginger cookie crackles on top. Which I failed to capture in my photos. Fail.

So expect a package of these guys in the mail soon, mama. Along with some other surprises that I hope you'll like as well.

And now. I think its only appropriate to share family stories on my mom's birthday. Which is unfortunate to the pride of the rest of my family. But it must be done.

When my older sister Mia was born, apparently she won Most Perfect Baby in the Universe award (typical older sister move) and my parents thought, "Geez, babies are great. Let's have some more!" And then with my birth things went terribly wrong and when that was over and done with my personality was somewhat akin to, "Woman who birthed me, what is this terrible place? You will be punished for bringing me to this cruel world. And who is that bearded man? I don't like the looks of him. And also: wah."

The next few years I clung to my mom like a spider monkey and had an emotional breakdown each time she tried to pry me off to indulge in such selfish things as feeding herself. There are few pictures of me as baby and in the ones that exist I am on verge of tears, reaching out to the camera because my mom had dared to be six inches away from me. I was the infant Queen and mother was my servant. My dad likes to tell a story in which Mia and I were going out to go somewhere and the family was in a hurry so my dad tied my shoes. I burst into tears because MOM DIDN'T DO IT.

I eventually became somewhat more emotionally stable. I think. At least I don't have a panic attack when my mom doesn't tie my shoes. But this may only because I now only wear slip on shoes. I also warmed up to The Goofy Bearded One, aka my father.

Since the holidays are approaching, I thought I would also describe the infamous Blankensop sister Christmas video, which scarily portrays the differences between me and my sister. Since Mia is extroversion personified and I am the emotionally repressed introvert, watching any old home video of us interacting is bound to be hilarious.To give you an idea of the differences between my sister and I, here's a scene from a random family video: Toddler Sophie is curled up in a rocking chair, quietly flipping through a picture book. My mom is filming me and I'm bashfully answering her questions. Mia enters the room, looks at my mom filming me. She then storms up to the rocking chair, shoves me out of the chair and says to the camera, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MOMMY? HEY, LOOK AT THIS BOOK!! DO YOU WANT ME TO TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK?!"

The Christmas video is a similar experience. Cue video from the early 90's. Mia and I are sitting in the kitchen on Christmas morning. She's maybe eight and I'm about four. I am on the left, smiling shyly at the camera with my giant brown Romanian Orphan eyes. Mia is on the right, sitting on the edge of her seat and appears to have just consumed copious amounts of cocaine. Throughout the entire video she is grinning like a mad loon, talking nonstop and gesturing violently. I'm surprised her hands didn't 'accidentally' go out of control and hit me in the face.

It is also imperative to know that Mia had a speech impediment when she was younger. She sounded like a tiny pixie-like version like Elmer Fudd throughout most of elementary school. She could not manage R's so, like her cartoon cousin, rabbit became wabbit, rascally became wascally etc. With speech therapy she eventually was able to overcome this but it was a particularly hilarious era in Mia's life. Or should I say... hiwawious? In the video I also can't pronounce R's because I'm a baby, cut me a break.

The entire video goes something like this:
Mom: So girls, are you excited for Christmas?
Mia: I LOVE CHWISTMAS BECAUSE SANTA COMES AND BRINGS PWESENTS AND SANTA ATE THE COOKIES AND MILK LAST NIGHT AND I LOVE CWRISTMAS BECAUSE IT IS NICE, WIGHT SOPHIE?!
Me: Wight.
Mom: Sophie, what's that present behind you?
Me: It's-
Mia: IT'S A BEAWR (note: 'bear') AND IT IS A PINK BEAWR AND SHE CALLS IT PINKY. SANTA LEFT IT FOR HER AND I GOT LOTS OF OTHER PWESENTS TOO, WIGHT SOPHIE?!
Me: Wight.

This continues for about ten more minutes. I'm pretty sure the only time I say something other than 'wight' is when Mia attempts to snatch my blankie out of my hands and I say, "Don't touch my bwankie, it's vewy special..." Meanwhile, Mia continues to talk at light speed and at one point spontaneously bursts into song. Luckily she now does improv so she has an outlet for her crazy. The crazy still seeps through some but it is mostly contained.

And yet Mia still insists that I am the weird one because I may or may not have had an onion peel collection as a child. For the record, this is also a lie.

Aren't you proud of your children? What's that you say? What about Piers? What little brother? Just kidding, I have hilarious stories about my brother Piers as well. All in good time, all in good time.

Happy birthday again!

Adventures in Nowhereland

2009-11-03T19:51:00.011-05:00

Alright, alright,I suck. I was in a baking and blogging rut and that was even before I got the Virus of Death and couldn't move for a week. I've only recently gotten back into it so forgive me.

First off, I found some long lost photos of stuff I baked about nine million years ago so I thought I would post that stuff first.

This is stuff from when Joe and I visited my dad last summer. My dad lives in Nowheresville, Alaska. On top of a hill. Half an hour from anything. Of course, the closest establishments are a couple bars because Alaskans cannot physically be 50 feet away from alcohol at any time without having a stroke. Whenever I visit we end up cooking, baking and watching ancient B-list horror movies and occasionally we slink into town to replenish supplies.

In between movies, I made thumbprint cookies filled with apricot jam and pecan caramel clusters. Joy of Baking succeeds again, these were lovely.

We usually stay in a cabin my grandparents used to live in, which is quaint and mildly creepy. My dad's old room give me major heebie jeebies, which I discovered when I was younger and my dad kindly let me sleep in his old room while he slept on the couch upstairs. The room is the basement, below ground, and is completely devoid of heat and light. I had vivid, horrible nightmares for two nights straight when normally I can't remember my dreams at all. After the second night I told my dad, "That room is creepy, I couldn't sleep and had nightmares all night." to which he casually replied, "Yeah, that room is kind of haunted." THANKS DAD.

The room still freaks me out but luckily I ensnared a man to share the room with me and I figure the monsters will eat Joe first as he's bigger. Though I do have more meat on my bones. SHUT UP BRAIN.

You try to sleep in a room that in plastered in this wallpaper:

(shrill violins) REEEE!

REEE! REEE!

REE! REEE! REE! THE BEARS! THE BEARS!

Last time we went to visit my dad, I went to go take a bath when I spied an enormous spider hanging out in the tub. I promptly turned around and told Joe to dispose of it before I cried and like obedient monster bait, he flushed it down the drain. After I took my bath and was drying off, I told my dad that a mutant enormo-spider had been living in his bathroom and he said, "Oh, that little guy? Yeah, I let him chill out in there and just move him when I need to take a shower." And I was like um yes, that's totally normal and then I found Joe and whispered in a panic, "Joe, I think we just killed my dad's pet spider!" But because mutant enormo-spider is apparently also a indestructible spider robot, it crawled out of the drain unscathed and I didn't have to break it to my dad that I had killed his roommate to take a bubble bath.

Anyway. I also made spice pecan brittle. It was supposed to turn out as candied pecans but it um, didn't. Even though, I wanted to marry it, I love sweet pecan candy.

I didn't love the recipe I based this on, I actually had to remelt the batch to get it to the right consistency. But it worked out alright in the end.

So that's what I did while trying to survive the haunted basement. I think there's a reason all these horror films are coming out based in Alaska. No daylight in winter? Everlasting daylight in summer? Cabin in the middle of nowhere? Small room with wallpaper that was designed under the influence of acid? I should just write the screenplay now and make millions.

Apricot pits: delicious?

2009-10-14T20:34:00.007-04:00

I think I've professed my love for anything almond flavored before. Except almonds. I don't really like plain almonds. But any almond flavored dessert is automatically a shoo-in with me. WHAT?

Also what is up with the phrase a shoo-in? What does that even mean? Does it have to do with shoes? Who knows.

But there is a semi-reasonable explanation for this. Amaretto and almond extract gets that almond-y flavor from apricot pits. Yes, APRICOT PITS. So it's not really that I like almonds or even apricots but the shriveled up, cyanide-packed apricot pit. I don't like to think about it too much though, it kind of gives me the heebie jeebies.

So naturally one of my favorite cookies is amaretti, which is traditionally made with- TAKE A WILD GUESS- apricot pits. For those of us who don't live on an apricot grove or don't know how to use apricot pits with accidentally poisoning friends and family, amaretti is made with actual almonds.

Joe requested I make another batch of amaretti for his opera party. Joe is majoring in music, which means he sings a lot of opera and tricked me when I met him at a rock concert. He likes to watch operas a lot and I um, don't so he's been inviting other music majors over to watch operas with him. Or maybe they don't know they're going to watch an opera but we lure them in with food and they're trapped for three hours watching The Magic Flute. SUCKERS.

These pictures are actually old from another time I made amaretti with a slightly different recipe. I liked that recipe a little more than this one but of course I don't have it, I used a recipe out of my dad's cookbook. But this recipe is pretty similar from I could remember and they tasted delicious. And if you have ground almonds laying around (who doesn't?! Oh, you don't? I see...) this takes just a couple minutes to whip up. As Brian used to say: easy peasy lemon squeasy.

Alright, now I must get my beauty sleep so I can be nice and refreshed tomorrow morning to give a million more flu shots. Ta!

The Muffin Life

2009-10-05T14:21:00.009-04:00

Alright, here's some less impressive goodies that I've baked up recently. Lately I've been muffin crazed so I may have to rename my blog The Muffin Life, which sounds a whole lot less glamorous and sounds a little bit like a strange double entendre. I think I'll stick with The Cupcake Life.

My recent strategy has been to make a big batch of muffins, freeze them, and thaw and eat them throughout the week. Usually I just pop one out of the freezer, put in a ziplock and tote it in my purse until I need a snack a few hours later. By that time the muffin is thawed and soft, perfecto! So if you ever see me in a grocery store, digging in my bag for my ziplock muffin, you will know I am not totally insane.

My first batch was bran muffins. I actually really like bran muffins, is that weird? Brian called them poo muffins, probably because his diet of beer and candy had no fiber. But they are good! I especially like that they go well with raisins, one of my favorite things. My chinchilla also loves raisins so we were obviously meant for each other. Because we both like raisins, I'm constantly suggesting other things Ellie would like because her mom likes them, like popcorn or cereal. And then Joe tells me that I cannot feed a chinchilla a bowl of raisin bran crunch and I get sad.

Anyways, what? Muffins? I made these weeks ago and now I can't remember what recipe I used but I think I used this one. I am so useful.

Bran Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups wheat bran
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
Mix together wheat bran and buttermilk; let stand for 10 minutes.
Beat together oil, egg, sugar and vanilla and add to buttermilk/bran mixture. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir flour mixture into buttermilk mixture, until just blended. Fold in raisins and spoon batter into prepared muffin tins.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool and enjoy!

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I made a few alterations to them to make them extra mega healthy but I think they would've been fine as is as well. I think Ellie would like them, don't tell Joe.

These added fire to my muffin craze and I made pumpkin muffins next so stay tuned for those. I'm also hoping to get to work on this month's Daring Bakers challenge which I'm really excited for this time around!

Birthday Butterflies

2009-09-29T14:49:00.014-04:00

I'm not a big birthday party person, I'm usually content with a small family dinner or something similar. On the other hand, I was excited to bake something awesome for myself. A few people asked if Joe was going to make me cake and that honestly hadn't occurred to me, perhaps because one time Joe me pancakes that were curdled, undercooked and filled with kiwi slices.

He's gotten much better at baking since but I just enjoy doing it. I also found out around the same time that my pilates teacher was putting on a benefit for her dance company the day of my birthday. I decided to make something for her benefit that I could also use as my birthday dessert.

Joe gave me Hello, Cupcake! for Christmas last year and while I've flipped through it many times, I never had an occasion to make any of the cupcakes. A benefit and my birthday seemed like it warranted some special cupcakes so I looked through it again and decided on butterfly cupcakes. Basically, you pipe chocolate into the shape of a butterfly onto parchment paper and let them harden. Except its really hard and takes 900 hours.

I knew the butterflies would take forever so I started making them about a week before I baked the cupcakes. I traced butterfly outlines onto parchment paper, filled pipping bags with chocolate and then traced my outlines. Then I used colored chocolate to fill in the outline and used a chopstick to pull the outline into the wing for a swirly design.

I actually found this quite enjoyable and relaxing but I am odd that way. I spent quite a few nights happily pipping butterflies on the living room table. And I may or may not have been half nude and watching Project Runway at the time. Completely normal behavior.

Two days before my birthday, I made vanilla bean buttercream, which is pretty much the best thing you will ever put in your mouth. Joe came up with the ingenious idea of buying vanilla beans off of amazon.com and now we have loads of vanilla beans that I put in everything.

The day before I baked chocolate cupcakes. I've been searching for a good go to chocolate cake recipe and this one was pretty close. I thought it could be a tad more moist but baking them a little less might solve that. They would also be better with fancy cocoa powder, I just used Hershey's. AKA cocoa powder for college students.

My birthday cupcake with 22 on the wings. I'm very clever that way.

The morning of my birthday, I whipped up the buttercream and frosted and decorated the cupcakes. Then I loaded them onto a cookie sheet and prayed that I wouldn't drop them. I may have murdered somebody if that had happened. Transporting was also difficult because it was still hot at that time so my poor chocolate butterflies began to wilt a bit in the car. I eventually settled on blasting the air conditioner and sacrificing bodily heat for the butterflies.

Everybody loved them but thought I was nuts for making chocolate butterflies. Can't win them all!

And because I am that crazy, I would make them again but maybe out of something more stable than chocolate. Like steel.

Puff pastry? FML.

2009-09-27T00:00:00.009-04:00

When September's Daring Baker's challenge was revealed, my heart stopped. I starred at it for awhile. Then I texted Joe:
Me: Aaarrrgh! This month's challenge: puff pastry.
Joe: That blows.

Puff pastry is one thing I've always said is not worth making and it truly never occurred to me to attempt it. I had looked at the process and laughed. I work with puff pastry, oh I don't know, NEVER. I don't really like it. I'm not a big fan of crispy, buttery things. Potato chips? No. Pie crust? No. Puff pastry? You get the idea. I almost decided not to do the challenge... but I then I did. I'm a strange creature.

Blurb'o the month:

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' Challenge has been chosen by Steph of a whisk and a spoon. Steph chose Vols-au-Vent, which we are pretty sure in French means, “After one bite we could die and go to heaven!”

The process was not as bad as I thought. Hard? Not really. Time consuming? Um yeah. Then again, I made the recipe in one day and it could be easily split up throughout a couple days.

I think my croissant making class also helped, since at least somewhere in the back of my reptile mind the phrase 'butter package' made sense to me.

I saw this picture three weeks after I took it said, "Wow, there's so much butter in puff pastry that it looks like a slab of butter!" and then I realized: this IS a slab of butter. I beat this out with a rolling pin before folding it into the dough.

Like so.

Apparently I got tired of coating my camera in butter and flour because the next picture I took is this one, hours after the last photo.

Flaky!

I filled my little puff pastry baskets with vanilla bean pastry cream and blueberries and served them at my weekly Top Chef party. Which isn't really a party at all, it mostly consists of my boyfriend, my best friend and me watching Top Chef and eating. I wasn't a fan of the recipe I used for the pastry cream and had to alter it a lot to make the texture smooth and not starchy. However, Katie declared her undying love for it and was about ready to bathe in it so I guess it was a success.

I thought about captioning this photo with: Desserts are like wounds. The best kinds are the ones the ooze. And that's what happens to your mind after working in a hospital for four years.

I made half the recipe of puff pastry and baked about 1/4 of the dough I prepared. I had a few baskets left over after Top Chef night but neither Joe or I ate them and I ended up throwing them away. The rest of the pastry sits in my freezer and I'm sure Joe will do something with it someday. But I just don't care enough about puff pastry to make it again. I'm glad I made it though, it made me feel like a baking superstar! Which I am, obviously.

Excuse me, somebody hasn't had their slice of humble pie today. Humble puff pastry? Har. I won't post the recipes used because this post is already about nine years long.

As usual, I look forward to next month's challenge, though I hope it's something I like a little more!

I've gone crackers for crackers!

2009-09-10T12:22:00.011-04:00

Thanks for the baking suggestions, I will definitely take some of your guys suggestions in the next couple months! In the meantime, before I got any suggestions, I asked Joe what I should make. And he wanted (wait for it, wait for it!) crackers. Again.

So I did a little digging to find a yummy cracker recipe and eventually came upon Ina Garten's recipe for Parmesan black pepper crackers. We usually have a big ol' hunk of Parmesan in our fridge and the idea was Joe approved so I settled on those.

These, like other cracker recipes I've tried, were pretty easy. Except for the part when I was half way done mixing when I asked Joe were the flour was and he says, "Oh, we're out of flour." Are you kidding me? Just a minor detail, we just don't have the most essential ingredient. Not worth mentioning. I go a little nuts when I'm baking, you see, don't upset me in the middle of baking or I will be forced to take out your eyes.

Parmesan Black Pepper Crackers by Ina Garten

Ingredients:

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
3 ounces grated Parmesan
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix until creamy. Add the Parmesan, flour, salt, thyme and pepper and combine.

Dump the dough on a lightly floured board and roll into a 13-inch long log. Wrap the log in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for 30 minutes to harden.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the log crosswise into 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick slices. Place the slices on a sheet pan and bake for 22 minutes.

------------

But then we went shopping and all was better and Joe got to keep his eyes. What was I saying? Oh yes, the recipe was easy. The only thing was the mixture was super crumbly, even after I added a little more water to the dough. The log was next to impossible to cut without falling apart everywhere. However, once I let it warm up it was much easier to handle.

Yes, I made a few heart shaped one because I am just that corny.

These were more like savory shortbread than crackers but they were still quite tasty. They would be really good for party snacks/appetizers whatever. I think Joe likes less buttery crackers but he still gobbled them up in no time.

Next time: birthday goodies!!

Real food time: roasted veggies!

2009-09-05T23:34:00.007-04:00

So I do cook real food on occasion. And the ingredients don't even consist of only flour, sugar and butter! I saw on the news today that a bear broke into a house and ate a container of brown sugar, a box of Cocopuffs and a quart of ice cream before crawling out a window. And I was all, "Me and that bear would get along just fine." I'll capture him, feed him baked goods and we'll live in harmony. I'll name him Norman.

Anyway, I rarely post my savory dishes since what I cook is pretty slap dash and made up. However, I was bored the other day and this is a pretty standard dish of mine so here you go. Roasted veggies.

Before roasting

I've become pretty obsessed with roasting things. It's A) Super easy. You slice things up, crank up the oven and leave it in the oven until it looks done or you get impatient and B) nine times out of ten, its super delicious. I do this most often with vegetable but fruits can also be tasty. Baked apples, anyone? I eat those a lot. I was making one over the summer and my brother asked, "What's that? Can I have one?" and I replied, "A baked apple, of course. We are obviously not related. I'll make you one if you take a shower." The joys of living with a teenage boy.

I usually just pull out whatever we happen to have around and this time it was onion, squash, mushrooms and carrots. The biggest thing I've learned about roasting veggies is to cut them into similar sized chunks so that they all cook at the same pace. Otherwise you'll have burnt mushrooms and raw squash and we are aiming for edible here.

After roasting

So 1) cut veggies into roughly the same sizes. 2) Transfer veggies to a baking sheet lined with parchment or foil, mostly for easy clean up factor because I'm lazy. 4) season the veggies. I spray the veggies with cooking spray to get a nice even coating that way. Then I sprinkle on salt, pepper and cayenne. 5) Pop into a hot oven (I usually go 400 for most veggie mixes) and bake until the veggies are soft and nicely browned. Again, this varies for different veggie mixes but at least 20 minutes for most batches.

Ta da! You can finish them off with a little fresh herbs (I used parsley here) or grated cheese, whatever you like.

Okay, baking suggestion time. What should I make next? All Joe wants is crackers.

Tiramisu trifle... sorta

2009-09-04T00:09:00.001-04:00

My latest means of choosing recipe includes turning to Joe and asking, "What should I bake next?" This time he answered tiramisu.

Joe had invited Brian over for dinner so I had a good excuse to make the tiramisu that day, since I knew BJ cannot resist my baked goods. Sam and Monica, who went with us to the Medieval fair, also ended up coming over later so I got to force feed numerous people. I love feeding people. I think I may have been a Jewish grandmother in a past life.

So I hadn't made tiramisu before because it's not my favorite thing in the world. Sponge cake soaked in coffee and liqueur layered with pudding-like marscrapone also spiked with coffee and booze. Maybe it's the coffee (after my brief obsession with skinny caramel lattes, I'm back to feeling fairly 'meh' about coffee) or the booze (I'll spare you the truly epic history of alcoholism in the family) but it's never something I reach for. But hey, better to have baked goods laying around that I don't want to eat, right?

Because I was bored that day, I decided to make the sponge cake from scratch. I also forgot that you can buy lady fingers like a normal person who doesn't want to spend two hours in the kitchen. I also decided that I would use a glass bowl for presentation and make a kind of tiramisu trifle instead of assembling it in a pan. This was a good idea in theory but looked really crappy when I tried to take pictures of it. Shoot. So ignore that this looks like something a cat might throw up because it was really pretty delicious.

I used Giada's recipe for tiramisu because I trust her. She's just so good looking, how can anything she say be lies? If you want to make your own sponge cake, I used this recipe.

Ingredients

*6 egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar
1 pound mascarpone cheese
1 1/2 cups strong espresso, cooled
2 teaspoons dark rum
24 packaged ladyfingers
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate shavings, for garnish

Directions

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer with whisk attachment, beat egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale, about 5 minutes. Add mascarpone cheese and beat until smooth. Add 1 tablespoon of espresso and mix until thoroughly combined.

In a small shallow dish, add remaining espresso and rum. Dip each ladyfinger into espresso for only 5 seconds. Letting the ladyfingers soak too long will cause them to fall apart. Place the soaked ladyfinger on the bottom of a 13 by 9 inch baking dish, breaking them in half if necessary in order to fit the bottom.

Spread evenly 1/2 of the mascarpone mixture over the ladyfingers. Arrange another layer of soaked ladyfingers and top with remaining mascarpone mixture.

Cover tiramisu with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, up to 8 hours.

Before serving, sprinkle with chocolate shavings.

--------------

Brian ate about five portions and then had trouble moving so I considered the tiramisu a success.

Then Monica had to leave and the boys realized they have never subjected me to the horrors that is playing Worms with a bunch of boys. In Worms, each player has a team of worms that tries to kill the other teams of worms with a variety of bizarre weapons that are impossible to operate. In my modest opinion, anyway. I don't play video games like, ever so it was a sight to see.

It went a little like this:

Joe: GO LEFT! NO, LEFT!
Sam: DON'T KILL ME! KILL BRIAN!
Joe: LEEEEEEEEFT!
Me: AUUUUUGH! AUUUUUGH!
Brian: YOU HAVE TO GO NOW! YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS!
Me: AUUUUUGH!!

And then I collapse into the couch face down and stab random buttons without looking. And I have so much natural skill at video games that I still won.

Beginners luck apparently, Joe forced me to play later and it was a catastrophe.

Rye crackers!

2009-08-30T21:49:00.002-04:00

So blah blah I've been really busy and blah blah blah haven't baked blah blah I suck etc.

But it's true! I've had classes from 9-5 for two weeks (I'd like to thank sudoku and electronic scrabble from keeping me from killing myself) and when I wasn't in class I was either doing homework, napping or watching trashy reality television. Very important things, obviously. But things have settled down a lot recently and I finally had time to ask Joe what he would like me to bake. And he had very specific ideas: Crackers. Rye crackers.

Rye crackers? Sure. Google is my friend and I found a recipe pretty quickly. Seriously, what did people do before the internet? I already don't remember my life before my iPhone, a dark age in which I couldn't access celebrity gossip at every moment of every day. How did I live?

Rye Crackers

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup (3 3/4 ounces) whole rye (pumpernickel) flour
• 1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) butter
• 3 tablespoons (7/8 ounce) caraway seeds
• 1/2 cup (4 ounces) water
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• Additional salt for sprinkling (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lightly grease baking sheets or line with parchment paper.

TO MAKE THE DOUGH: Combine the flours, cocoa and salt in a large bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly, using your fingers, a pastry blender or fork or a mixer. Add the caraway seeds and toss to mix.

Combine the water and molasses in a measuring cup and stir to mix. Gradually add the liquid to the dry ingredients, mixing till you can gather the dough into a cohesive ball.

TO SHAPE AND BAKE THE CRACKERS: Divide the dough into 3 pieces; roll it out, one piece at a time, till it's 1/16, inch thick, being sure to flour underneath when necessary so the dough doesn't stick to the work surface.

Use a baker's bench knife, a sharp knife, a pizza wheel or a square cookie cutter to cut the dough into 2-inch squares. Transfer the squares to prepared baking sheets.

Bake the crackers until they begin to brown and smell toasty, 18 to 23 minutes. Remove the crackers from the oven, transfer to a rack and cool completely before serving. Store in airtight containers.
------------------------------

If you like rye and caraway then you'll like these. The only issue I had with them was that since the dough was pretty dark, it was hard to tell when they were done and I ended up under baking a bunch of them. In my oven, these needed at least 25 minutes.

I would tell you that I'll have another post up soon about the apple crisp I made the other day but Joe ate all of it before I could take a picture of it. However, Brian came over for dinner and I am currently quietly moving the bowl of tiramisu I made today closer and closer to his chair in hopes he'll eat thirds. He lost 13 lbs since he moved out, I can't imagine why.

In other news, let's talk about what else has been consuming my life and that is BABIES. I've always known vaguely that I wanted to have kids some day but that changed last year I was doing my pediatric rotation. It confirmed my desire to have kids someday until one day I took care of an infant whose parents were at a class learning how to take care of one of his medical devices. So I was with him a lot to give him his feedings. And while I was coaxing him to finish one of his bottles, his big blue eyes looked into mine and a small bomb went off in my uterus and said, "OH HELLO. LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF. MY NAME IS BIOLOGICAL CLOCK, MAY I SUGGEST YOU HAVE BABIES IMMEDIATELY?" and I was all, "Shut up, ovaries, I cannot have babies anytime soon!" Hormones reply with, "No problem, maybe you can just take this little guy home? I'm sure nobody will notice."

Obviously I didn't steal the baby but now whenever I saw children my ovaries go, "HELLO WE CAN'T HELP BUT NOTICE YOU ARE NOT YET PREGNANT. PLEASE REMEDY THIS SITUATION ASAP."

It's very distracting, I wasn't aware that you turn 21 and then have sudden urges to have litters of babies. Joe tolerates it now but I'm sure he'll get weary of it when he finds the darling bassinet I bought.

Just kidding.

Daring Baker's August Challenge: Cake! Cake! Cake!

2009-08-27T10:51:00.006-04:00

Look at me, I actually did the Daring Baker's Challenge on time this month!

Blurb-o-the-month: The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonfulof Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

What is a dobos torte? It's a fancy chocolate cake, basically. It has a trillion layers of cake stacked and smothered in buttercream and covered with crushed nuts. Caramel is also worked in but I chose not to do that, as you'll see.

So because Brian doesn't live with us anymore and I can no longer trick him into eating 90% of my baked goods, I decided I would halve the recipe. And then I invited my bestie over to watch Top Chef and force fed her cake.

Still figuring out the lighting in my new apartment!

Except the halving the recipe thing didn't go as plan because I am physically unable to read a recipe all the way through. This is what happened: recipe said to mix egg yolks and sugar together. No problem. La la la, sugar and egg yolks beat together. Next step says: add the rest of the sugar... and I go, "What do you mean the REST of the sugar?! I just added all of the sugar to the egg yolks!" and so to even things out I had to make the full recipe. Thank god I tried to halve the recipe otherwise I would've had to make nine dozen cakes to even things out.

Rebel that I am, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. This torta things calls for you to make caramel and drench wedges cake in caramel for decoration. But this thing already looked so rich that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Oh, plus I'm lazy. I also didn't make the buttercream recipe because I saw a lot of Daring Bakers were having trouble with it. Plus, I have a long standing love affair with French buttercream, which just beats the pants off of all other frostings. So obviously I had to make French buttercream (I based my chocolate version off of this version). I also threw in some raspberries in between the layers of cake for extra deliciousness. You can see from the photos that I ran out of raspberries about half way through but its the thought that counts. Or something.

This recipe is about 800 pages long so I won't post it. I'm really sleepy.

This cake wasn't too hard, just time consuming. It probably wouldn't has taken so long if I had common sense. I decided to decorate the top of the cake with melted chocolate. The chocolate didn't temper right so it wasn't drizzling very well. So I thought I would be clever and just pour the chocolate over the top of the cake. And I did. And then all my beautiful chilled frosting immediatly melted under the chocolate. Commence panicked noises while my brain shut down and Joe frantically told me to put it in the freezer and I was able to salvage it after the frosting and chocolate set up again.

Anyways, this isn't something I would make too often because it takes awhile and as a college student, I don't have many reasons to bake a 900 layer cake. It would be good as a special occasion cake though, I liked it quite a bit more than I thought I would so I'm glad I tried it.

Stay tuned for a few more recipes I've yet to post!

July's Daring Baking Challenge + I'm Back!

2009-08-10T15:19:00.008-04:00

So I’m WAY late for this Daring Bakers Challenge but I have all sorts of good excuses. I was planning on making these towards the end of July and had all of the supplies ready. And then I got the killer flu from hell.

I haven’t had the flu in years and this one hit me like a ton of bricks. I almost said a ton of steel bricks but those don’t exist, do they? I obviously have suffered from permanent brain damage from my fever. I was basically incapacitated for a week, slumped in one of Joe’s armchairs, possibly drooling a tad. I spent most of my time watching awful television because shows like Bridezillas require no brain activity and with my 102 degree fever, I couldn’t spare any strength. I know y’all are just waiting for your own excuse to watch such glorious monstrosities without judgment.

I finished the challenge when I was done dying but by that time I was already late to post. Then I had to move back to school. Then I had to move in to a new apartment that didn’t have internet yet. I almost died of withdrawal but my sanity was saved by my iPhone.
So at this point are you like, “JESUS WOMAN, JUST TELL US WHAT YOU MADE”? Because I’m sort of sick of myself at this point. So here’s the blurb-o-the-month:The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

We had the option of making milanos, the marshmallow cookies or both. I had originally planned on making both but since I ran out of time, I decided on the milanos only. I’ve made marshmallows before so I didn’t feel a burning urge to make them again.

Recipe:

Milan Cookies

Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

INGREDIENTS:

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.
7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

------------------------------

These were easier to make than I had thought: I was mostly worried about the cookie dough. To shape the cookies, you have to pipe the dough (batter?) onto the cookie sheet. I don’t have much piping experience and my piping set was back at school. Snipping the tip off a ziplock bag ended up working just fine though.

I liked these alright, they looked a lot like milanos and tasted good to boot. The only issue I had with them is that the texture of the cookies was different from the Pepperidge Farm milanos, which have two crunchy cookies sandwiched between a dark chocolate ganache filling. This recipe yielded much softer cookies, more like a crisper madeleine. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but not exactly Milano-like. My teenage brother ate most of them, which is always a plus.
So now I’m back in Cleveland, braving the ungodly heat wave and thunderstorms. School started and when I stop dying of heat stroke I’ll start baking again.

Brian has graduated and moved on from living with Joe and I but we’ll still see him around. We spent the past weekend with Brian and his childhood friend, Sam, at Sam’s cottage. I met Sam’s pugs for the first time, one of which is the saddest example of a dog I’ve ever seen. The thing must be approximately 200 years old in dog years because she can barely walk from arthritis, can barely see from cataracts and can barely breath from… being an ancient pug. The poor thing sounds like a broken lawnmower, she is constantly like GRUNTGRUNTGRUNT-WHEEZE-GRUNTYGRUNTGRUNT-WHEEEEEEZE. I eventually decided that she was trying to navigate through echolocation.

The cottage is on Lake Eerie, which apparently is a giant tourist destination because there is a giant touristy boardwalk full of weird stores, arcades and bars. At one arcade I won a stuffed triceratops. And by ‘won’ I mean the stoned teenager at the prize desk thought I was cute and gave me a 600-ticket prize for my 12 tickets. Being cute has its advantages, like collecting all the sweatshop made stuffed animals your heart could ever desire.

At one creepy store they sold a variety of things ranging from leather goods, plastic mythical creatures to illegal weapons. Which of course means that Brian bought a switchblade he promptly christened Knifey. I spent most of the rest of the weekend pleading with Brian not to play with Knifey, which of course didn’t stop him from dueling a rose bush late at night on Saturday after a few beers.

Sunday we all headed to a local medieval fair, which was fun in an awkward sort of way. Some of the people working at the medieval fair are genuinely SO INTO the experience that it makes us semi-sane vaguely uncomfortable. Also, it seems that many people are convinced that in medieval times, fairies and dragons lived aside people and ate such delicacies as deep-fried pickles and cheesecake on sticks. It was fun though, except for the part where it was nine million degrees outside.

Another fun challenge, milanos are something I probably wouldn’t have thought to make these cookies on my own. This month’s challenge will be even more difficult so check back to see how I fare!

Blueberry muffins of mehness

2009-07-10T17:47:00.010-04:00

So I HAVE been baking this summer, I swear. However, all my photos are on my new laptop, which I can’t hook up to my family’s internet for some reason. Thus, the pictures have been trapped inside my laptop for some time now, sad and crying baked goods tears.

That’s the reason why I made these muffins in the beginning of time (read: last month) and am just getting around to posting about them now. I was hankering to make something and, like many Alaskans, my mom almost always has frozen Alaskan blueberries on hand. Wild Alaskan blueberries are almost nothing like those giant on-steroids blueberries normal people buy in grocery stores. Alaskan blueberries are much smaller and actually taste like something.

I could be lying right now, how would you know? You’ll just have to come to Alaska and see for yourself.

Anyways, my mom goes out late in summer to pick blueberries with our ferocious dog, Truman. He’s not really ferocious but he is an Australian Shephard, a herding dog. And a lack of a flock of sheep has just about pushed him to the brink of insanity, I think. He regards our family as his sheep and because of this Joe can’t be within three feet of me without Truman frantically nipping at his heels in an attempt to herd Joe away from his precious sheep. And you must remember that Truman has known Joe for FIVE YEARS and this behavior is actually quite tame for a psycho herding beast. I feel totally safe walking Truman because I know if a stranger so much as looked at me wrong, Truman would lovingly tear off their face.

Where was I? Blueberries. We had a bunch of ‘em. I had heard good things about the Barefoot Contessa recipe for blueberry muffins. One girl told me that they were more like cupcakes than muffins and that’s all I needed to hear because all I heard was CUPCAKES.

Blueberry Coffee Cake Muffins by Barefoot Contessa

INGREDIENTS:

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
8 ounces (about 1 cup) sour cream
1/4 cup milk
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 half-pints fresh blueberries, picked through for stems

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place 16 paper liners in muffin pans.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, then add the vanilla, sour cream, and milk. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer on low speed add the flour mixture to the batter and beat until just mixed. Fold in the blueberries with a spatula and be sure the batter is completely mixed.
Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin pans, filling each cup just over the top, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the muffins are lightly browned on top and a cake tester comes out clean.
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These were good but not phenomenal, I thought. This could be totally my fault since I subbed plain yogurt for sour cream but with the 900 tablespoons of butter, it’s not like these were exactly lacking fat. I would probably add more blueberries next time (remember, Alaskan blueberries are smaller) and maybe a bit of orange zest or something. They would also be improved with a streusel topping. Then again, just about everything is improved with a streusel topping. Muffins? Better! Cake? Better! Vegetables? Better!

What?

Oh, and ferocious Pup? He's very handsome. Exhibit A:

Ferocious pup is also not a pup, he's now around eleven. He hasn't slowed down at all and may actually be more convinced that he shall one day kill the evil man who brings our mail. My mom recently discovered that he likes to eat fish oil pills so I've been feeding them to him every day and then telling my mom he will never die and his brain will remain sharp until the sun implodes. And then my mom cries a little.

Alright. Next up are some goodies I made while visiting my dad, who lives in a more secluded part of Alaska so there was even more time to bake goodies. I reeeeeeeeally liked a few of the things I made so stay tuned.

June's Daring Baker Challenge: Cake Tart?

2009-06-27T00:00:00.010-04:00

Blurb-o'-the-month: The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

So a bakewell tart is basically frangipane in a crust. Frangipane, at least in this version, is like a very light, delicate almond cake. I've seen more jelloid, custurd frangipane fillings but mine didn't turn out that way. Fruity jam is added to the mix and the challenge's hosts say the bakewell tart lets you show off 'your area's seasonal fruit'. Except I'm in Alaska at the moment and Alaska's 'seasonal fruit' in June is grown in Mexico. Since I didn't want to use $10 strawberries or a jar of fruit cocktail (those raised in Alaska knows this totally counts as a fruit serving in order to avoid scurvy) I just used jam.

I was pretty excited about this month’s Daring Bakers challenge because it featured ALMONDS. I’m not a big fan of plain almonds but pretty much any almond flavored dessert makes my heart flutter. And this month’s challenge was to make a frangipane based tart, that almond cake-like substance. Why we were essentially putting cake in a tart shell was beyond me but I wasn’t complaining.

Since I no longer have a Brian to eat all of my baked goods in one drunken sitting, I decided to take the tart to my aunt’s birthday party, were I was confident they would be eaten up quickly by tipsy lawyers. I was originally going to make one large tart but decided that it would be cute and festive to make mini tarts.

I found mini tart pans at Bed Bath and Beyond (which I always want to call Bath and Body Works, even though beauty product stores generally don’t also stock kitchen supplies) for super cheap and they worked like a charm. Instead of rolling out one giant crust, I rolled (or rather, I had my boyfriend slave roll out) out the dough and then used a drinking glass to cut out smaller pastry circles that ended up fitting the mini pans just about perfectly. Then I spooned in the required fillings and popped them in the oven.

I guess I should post the recipe now, eh? Here it is:

Bakewell Tart…er…pudding

INGREDIENTS:

One quantity sweet shortcrust pastry (recipe follows)
Bench flour
250ml (1cup (8 US fl. oz)) jam or curd, warmed for spreadability
One quantity frangipane (recipe follows)
One handful blanched, flaked almonds

Assembling the tart
Place the chilled dough disc on a lightly floured surface. If it's overly cold, you will need to let it become acclimatised for about 15 minutes before you roll it out. Flour the rolling pin and roll the pastry to 5mm (1/4”) thickness, by rolling in one direction only (start from the centre and roll away from you), and turning the disc a quarter turn after each roll. When the pastry is to the desired size and thickness, transfer it to the tart pan, press in and trim the excess dough. Patch any holes, fissures or tears with trimmed bits. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Remove shell from freezer, spread as even a layer as you can of jam onto the pastry base. Top with frangipane, spreading to cover the entire surface of the tart. Smooth the top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Five minutes before the tart is done, the top will be poofy and brownish. Remove from oven and strew flaked almonds on top and return to the heat for the last five minutes of baking.

The finished tart will have a golden crust and the frangipane will be tanned, poofy and a bit spongy-looking. Remove from the oven and cool on the counter. Serve warm, with crème fraîche, whipped cream or custard sauce if you wish.

When you slice into the tart, the almond paste will be firm, but slightly squidgy and the crust should be crisp but not tough.

Sweet shortcrust pastry

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough.

Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Frangipane

125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in colour and very fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. In the words of Douglas Adams: Don’t panic. Really. It’ll be fine. After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow colour.

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These were adorable and a hit at the party but I thought they could be better. Surprisingly, I didn’t think the frangipane filling was almond-y enough and the crust and frangipane I found kind of bland. I ended up adding more almond extract and sugar to the frangipane after tasting the first batch which helped a bit but it still needed a flavor boost. I also wasn’t a fan of the whole cake filled tart thing. Give me a tart or a cake but don’t freak me out by trying to combine the two. I saw one Daring Baker that experimented with using almond paste to make a gooier almond layer and I think I would’ve liked that a lot better.

Anyways, I never got around to taking a picture of the tarts split open, oops. But some had jam on the bottom, like the recipe called for. But then I got bored and it was late at night so I also did some without jam: some sprinkled with powdered sugar, some topped with almonds, some dipped in chocolate and some with jam on top. Then I put them on a big ol' platter with some chocolate covered strawberries because I am a domestic goddess.

Oh, check out this cute little tuxedo strawberry I made. My chocolate was getting wonky because I was using chocolate chips and not dipping chocolate but I still find it rather adorable. I was feeling rather proud and jolly, though perhaps that was just the vodka punch I was drinking?

Squirrel* cookies! *No squirrels were hurt in the production of these cookies. Sorry to disapoint you.

2009-06-06T00:02:00.006-04:00

For my sister's birthday, just about my entire family bought my sister cooking and baking related supplies. Like me, my sister loves to bake and even runs a little cupcake business on the side. Among other things, my mom got Mia a cupcake cookbook, my dad got her a food processor and I got her some various cupcake liners, sprinkles, flavoring and cookie cutters from Bake it Pretty. I stumbled upon Bake it Pretty a couple days before Mia's birthday and just about hyperventilated because I wanted everything on the site. I knew Mia would too (love it, not hyperventilate) so I picked out a bunch of stuff for her.

Speaking of Mia's birthday, I totally screwed up this year and thought her birthday was two days earlier than it actually was. I blame part of this on the fact that Joe and I drove to DC that day so I had just spent all my brain cells on watching the road and feeding Joe fruit for eight hours. We got into DC late and right before we went to bed I was like, "SHIT TODAY WAS MIA'S BIRTHDAY, RIGHT?" and I called Mia and left a cheery message on her voicemail wishing her happy birthday.

It was not her birthday. But at least I was two days EARLY, right? At least that's what I tell myself.

Anyways, my mom wanted Mia and I to use some of her birthday goodies to bake together and blog about. I said sure before seeing Mia's kitchen, which is about the size of a large cardboard box. One person can barely fit in it, let alone two. So when I say 'we made these' I mean we took turns being in the kitchen.

Cupcakes are cute but Mia and I wanted to make something that I could home to mom and cupcakes do not travel well. Cookies travel well though and would give us a chance to use the cute cookie cutters I got Mia, which included a squirrel and a cupcake. We decided to make shortbread cookie sandwiches filled with fig jam, since my mom loves fig jam and I like the shortbread recipe from the cookie book.

Here's the squirrel. Isn't he cute? Apparently I didn't take any pictures of the cupcake cookies because I took these pictures literally on my way out of Mia's apartment on the way to the airport. Joe and I had called a cab for three o'clock and when he didn't show at three, Joe called him to ask where our cab was. The basic answer was the hell if he knew, there were no cabs in the area. So we were like GREAT, THANKS and walked to subway instead. With 50 lb bags. I cried a little and nearly stabbed Joe's eyes out because he was nearest to me. Then I took some xanax and things were a lot better.

And thus concludes things I baked and took pictures of in California.

These were good, I think? I can't really remember but considering I like that shortbread recipe and the fig jam, I think it's safe to say these were good. Recipe previously shown here.

I've made a few things in Alaska (including this month's Daring Baker challenge, in which I became a BAKING GODDESS OF AWESOMENESS) but you'll just have to wait for those.

Almost vegan strawberry bread pudding

2009-06-05T17:36:00.011-04:00

Hello from pretty but overcast Alaska! California was fabulous and I ate approximately 9 tons of fresh organic fruit and vegetables, including one apricot that was home to a worm.

While Joe and I took over my sister's teeny tiny apartment, Joe made six loaves of bread, most of which went stale because A) um, we had six loaves of bread and B) most were sitting out on the counter and C) did I mention there were six loaves? So I decided to spend one morning relaxing and baking bread pudding with one of the loaves of bread, which was now so stale it could serve as a weapon. As a bonus, I had the apartment to myself so I decided to bake without pants. I hate pants. My sister Mia mentioned that one of her favorites stories about me was when I came home from school one day and promptly changed into a robe so I could lounge around without pants. My dad observed me sprawled out on the couch in my robe and told me to put on some clothes, to which I said with extreme exasperation, "But dad, I've been wearing pants ALL DAY."

I baked a fair amount in my robe last year but because I didn't want to scar Brian for life, I couldn't wander around without pants. So my morning of baking pantless was a real treat. This is also why I don't have friends.

I decided to try to make a vegan bread pudding because I was planning on taking it to Mia's birthday dinner, hosted by her vegan friend Miriam. I also wanted to incorporate fruit into the bread pudding because Joe and I bought an excessive amount of fruit at a farmer's market. To keep it vegan, I subbed rice milk for milk and left out the eggs. Of course, I realized Mia only had salted margarine when I was almost done with the bread pudding. So I ended up using butter instead because did I mention I wasn't wearing any pants and was determined to keep it that way? Going to the store was out the question, clearly. So the bread pudding ended up not being vegan after all because I suck.

Here's the recipe I modified:

Jam and Bread Pudding, courtesy of Bobby Flay/Food Network

INGREDIENTS:

1 loaf brioche, sliced 1/2-inch thick
3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons strawberry preserves
4 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
Fresh strawberries, for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 9 by 13-inch glass baking dish. Arrange half of the brioche along the bottom of the dish, and cut or tear the slices to fit. Spread 3/4 cup of the jam on top and cover with the remaining bread.

Whisk the eggs, sugar, 2 1/2 cups of the milk, and the vanilla together; pour over the bread. Press to soak and brush the top with 4 tablespoons of the melted butter. Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking for 15 minutes longer or until the pudding is set. Remove from the oven.

Preheat the broiler. In a bowl, whisk the remaining 1 tablespoon of milk with the confectioners' sugar. Stir in the remaining melted butter and jam until the mixture is smooth. Spread the mixture over the top of the pudding, place under the broiler, and broil until the glaze is golden. Serve hot or warm, garnished with fresh strawberries.

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Though I didn't completly veganize this, it worked fine without eggs and with rice milk instead of regular and it would be very yummy vegan. I also used one loaf of french bread, raspberry jam instead of strawberry and I added about a cup of sliced strawberries on top of the jam layer. I didn't do the glaze either. The recipe is pretty adaptable.

But it was really quite good. I think it would've been better if it was all the vegan or all the way 'regular' because it was kind of in a weird inbetween stage. It was all quickly eaten at Mia's birthday party though. I preferred this to a lot of other bread puddings I've tried, maybe because I've had so much of the whole cinnamon raisen bread pudding and this was a nice switch up. A lot of bread puddings also do a whiskey or rum sauce, which, since I dislike alcohol, I am totally not into. This would be great for breakfast.

Check back, I'm still one post behind on California goodies and I'm beginning to make Alaska treats as well.

May Daring Baker's Challenge: Apple Strudel

2009-05-27T00:00:00.004-04:00

Greetings from California, where I am staying with my sister and her amazing bug hunting kitty. This entry is brought to you by sunshine and good produce, which are handy little things not found in Ohio. Next Monday I will be back in Alaska and I can write and bake more regularly. Until then: Daring Bakers!

This month's challenge for the Daring Bakers was something I probably would never make on my own: apple strudel. When I visited Joe in Austria last summer, we went to a bakery where we saw a young German woman flip out a six-foot-long paper thin sheet of strudel in about 90 seconds while looking slightly bored. It was amazing and something that did not look capable of mortals. Young Austrian bakers are not mortals, clearly. How else could their hair be so naturally blonde?

So when I first saw this challenge, I immediately thought TIME and LACK OF COUNTER SPACE. Each challenge is announced at the end of the previous month, and at this time last month I was finishing finals and we were beginning to move out of apartment. In the midst of moving and cramming for finals, I had neither time or counter space. Not like we even HAD counter space to begin with-- what college student does?

But I decided to do it anyway as best as I could and it worked better than I imagined. We were allowed to make any strudel filling we wanted but since I already had no idea what I was doing with the dough, I just did an apple strudel. I had Joe help me to stretch and roll the dough to Austrian approved thinness and efficiency and I'm really glad I had help, this would be a lot harder without a partner. With it though, it wasn't too bad.

Would I make this again? No, probably not. It was easier than I thought but was still way more trouble than it's worth, I think. Then again, I don't really like crust and strudel is all about that flaky, crusty strudel thing, eh? I did LOVE the apple filling I made up but that does not require strudel. Also, peeling and cutting 900 lbs of apples gets tiring quickly. Unless I wanted to charm my German ancestors, I wouldn't make this again. But your great aunt Nannerl would be duly impressed.

I think the best part of this challenge was that I got to abuse my sub-par, high school level German all day. "Ja, ich habe eine apfelstrudel?!? Meine apfelstrudel ist lecker, nein?!? Erm... super! Fantastisch? JA!!" Luckily, most Germans speak English better than I do and I had no problem getting across what I wanted in Germany and Austria. Bless Europeans.

So let's make some apple strudel, nein?

Blurb-o-the-month: The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

First I made the dough. Do not be afraid, prettys. Just grab a partner and when in doubt, leave the dough to rest if it's not doing what you want it to do. Here's the strudel recipe:

Apple strudel

Strudel dough
from “Kaffeehaus – Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague” by Rick Rodgers

1 1/3 cups (200 g) unbleached flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons (105 ml) water, plus more if needed
2 tablespoons (30 ml) vegetable oil, plus additional for coating the dough
1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar

1. Combine the flour and salt in a stand-mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix the water, oil and vinegar in a measuring cup. Add the water/oil mixture to the flour with the mixer on low speed. You will get a soft dough. Make sure it is not too dry, add a little more water if necessary.
Take the dough out of the mixer. Change to the dough hook. Put the dough ball back in the mixer. Let the dough knead on medium until you get a soft dough ball with a somewhat rough surface.

2. Take the dough out of the mixer and continue kneading by hand on an unfloured work surface. Knead for about 2 minutes. Pick up the dough and throw it down hard onto your working surface occasionally.
Shape the dough into a ball and transfer it to a plate. Oil the top of the dough ball lightly. Cover the ball tightly with plastic wrap. Allow to stand for 30-90 minutes (longer is better).

3. It would be best if you have a work area that you can walk around on all sides like a 36 inch (90 cm) round table or a work surface of 23 x 38 inches (60 x 100 cm). Cover your working area with table cloth, dust it with flour and rub it into the fabric. Put your dough ball in the middle and roll it out as much as you can.
Pick the dough up by holding it by an edge. This way the weight of the dough and gravity can help stretching it as it hangs. Using the back of your hands to gently stretch and pull the dough. You can use your forearms to support it.

4. The dough will become too large to hold. Put it on your work surface. Leave the thicker edge of the dough to hang over the edge of the table. Place your hands underneath the dough and stretch and pull the dough thinner using the backs of your hands. Stretch and pull the dough until it's about 2 feet (60 cm) wide and 3 feet (90 cm) long, it will be tissue-thin by this time. Cut away the thick dough around the edges with scissors. The dough is now ready to be filled.

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Here is your efficient, paper thin strudel dough with a creepy hand lurking underneath. Fantastisch!

All right, while it was resting I made the filling. Use whatever filling you want, really, sweet or savory. I kind of came up with my own thing, subbing matzo meal for bread crumbs and cooking the apples before baking. Here's the filling recipe we were given:

Apple Strudel Filling

from “Kaffeehaus – Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague” by Rick Rodgers

2 tablespoons (30 ml) golden rum
3 tablespoons (45 ml) raisins
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon (80 g) sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick / 115 g) unsalted butter, melted, divided
1 1/2 cups (350 ml) fresh bread crumbs
strudel dough (recipe below)
1/2 cup (120 ml, about 60 g) coarsely chopped walnuts
2 pounds (900 g) tart cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut into ¼ inch-thick slices (use apples that hold their shape during baking)

1. Mix the rum and raisins in a bowl. Mix the cinnamon and sugar in another bowl.

2. Heat 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high. Add the breadcrumbs and cook whilst stirring until golden and toasted. This will take about 3 minutes. Let it cool completely.

3. Put the rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a large baking sheet with baking paper (parchment paper). Make the strudel dough as described below. Spread about 3 tablespoons of the remaining melted butter over the dough using your hands (a bristle brush could tear the dough, you could use a special feather pastry brush instead of your hands). Sprinkle the buttered dough with the bread crumbs. Spread the walnuts about 3 inches (8 cm) from the short edge of the dough in a 6-inch-(15cm)-wide strip. Mix the apples with the raisins (including the rum), and the cinnamon sugar. Spread the mixture over the walnuts.

4. Fold the short end of the dough onto the filling. Lift the tablecloth at the short end of the dough so that the strudel rolls onto itself. Transfer the strudel to the prepared baking sheet by lifting it. Curve it into a horseshoe to fit. Tuck the ends under the strudel. Brush the top with the remaining melted butter.

5. Bake the strudel for about 30 minutes or until it is deep golden brown. Cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing. Use a serrated knife and serve either warm or at room temperature. It is best on the day it is baked.

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Here is my naked, unbaked strudel. I think I rolled this a bit too tight, my filling exploded a little bit. But you cut it up anyways so that will be our little secret, ja? THE GERMANS MUST NEVER KNOW.

And here is the finished product, all crisp-like and hot. And cleverly photographed as to not show the shameful burst bits. I think I could've let it bake a little longer, even though I left it in longer than it said to. It could be a bit more golden brown, I think.

In spite of everything, it was tasty and I enjoyed this challenge. I mostly picked at the filling throughout the days but at this point we didn't have much food left in our dwindling kitchen and I think there were a few days in which Brian survived solely on strudel. There are worse things for a poor college student to eat.

Ich bin ein Auslander und spreche nicht gut deutsch. Bitte langsam, bitte langsam, bitte spreche sie doch langsam. What? Fun challenge, can't wait until next month when I actually have a kitchen again!

Is it caramel? Is it toffee? It is... delicious.

2009-05-09T22:15:00.007-04:00

First off, Happy Mother's Day this Sunday! Cheers to my mommy and grandmamas. My mom was bugging me for a blog update so this can be part one of her present. The rest will arrive later.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. My finals were last week so I was either studying, feeling bad about not studying or trying to not have a panic attack prior to the finals. Which doesn't allow much time for baking. Not many more updates the rest of this month either: after today I'll be traveling, moving and will be on vacay until June! I already did the Daring Bakers challenge which I'll post on the 27th so check back for that.

Joe and I are taking a mini trip to Washington, D.C this week. I've never been and Joe has a family friend there and hence: mini trip. We decided to bring hostess gifts to Joe's friends so Joe made bread and I was assigned to make something sweet. My options were kind of limited, we've packed most of my baking supplies except for cookie sheets. Cookies seemed kind of boring though so I pulled out The Sweet Life for unique ideas.

The Sweet Life has tons of unique (and delicious) dessert recipes, including a few candy recipes that I had yet to try. After narrowing down the list of things that can be made in a baking sheet, Joe convinced me to try the almond honey caramel chews. Despite the fact that we had neither honey or almonds. But dreams cannot be deterred! As long as you have $15 to spend on the extra supplies.

These were fairly easy to make, especially if you've made caramels before. These were a little different than anything I've made though because you make the caramel in pot over the oven (traditional), pour it into a pan (yawn) and then BAKE it. Odd. It worked though. Well, I'm not sure what worked because I'm not sure what putting them in the oven accomplishes. But um, they turned out.

These were good but need tweaking, I think. If I were to make them again, I would cook the caramel a little longer but I like a chewier caramel. I would also add more salt (maybe even on top, a la sea salt caramels), add vanilla and not add the two full sticks of butter. My candies came out greasy so I would definitley scale back on the butter, maybe even only one. Yes, ONLY ONE STICK and several cups of heavy cream. Practically diet food.

This would make a great holiday gift though because it's fairly simple, yummy and makes a TON. You could switch up the nuts too, I would do with pecans because I luuuuurve pecans. Pecans are really the only nut I like, actually. Other nuts I find kind of 'meh' with peanuts (though this technically not a nut, eh? Why not call it the 'pealegume' if its actually a legume, scientists?) and brazil nuts at the bottom of the list. Brazil nuts are just wrong, they are what I imagine bits of hardwood floor taste like. The most disturbing part is that despite that they taste like stale wood chips, I occasionally still crave them. Welcome to my brain. It is a strange place.

For the first time, I actually found the recipe online so I don't feel bad about posting it and you can all enjoy the deliciousness that is The Sweet Life. Check out the recipe here.

I will leave you with this Brian quote before I leave to tide you over.
BJ: Food-- the number one import into Brian's mouth.
Me: .... what's the number two import?
BJ: You don't want to know. *long awkward silence* Dirt. The number two import to Brian's mouth is dirt.

I crave wood chips, Brian apparently eats dirt... we're a household of people suffering from pica.

April's Daring Bakers Challenge: Cheesecake!

2009-04-27T00:00:00.004-04:00

The challenge for this months Daring Bakers challenge was pretty straight forward: make a cheesecake. Be creative. We were given a basic cheesecake recipe to go off of but there were no real restrictions as to what we could do to it.

Standard blurb-o'-da-month: The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

At first, I wasn't too excited. I'm not a huge cheesecake person. I like it alright, but its rarely something I'll choose when I'm at a restaurant. Cheesecake has always been the one dessert dish Joe has liked to make so I've never felt compelled to make it.

But I was quickly excited by the creativity allowed in this challenge. My biggest complaint about the Daring Bakers is that we are all supposed to make the exact same recipe. No modifications. No tweaking. No creativity. And really, that's a huge part of the fun in baking, in my opinion. I can see why they do it but sometimes its a bit of a drag, especially when I sense the recipe needs a little something extra.

So wheels began to turn as I began to consider what kind of cheesecake I would like to make. My initial thought was to make an amaretto cheesecake, since amaretto and I have a long standing love affair. I thought about making an amaretti crust, though I wasn't sure how that would work out. However, I few other Daring Bakers immediately posted their own amaretto/almond cheesecakes and I wanted to be a unique snowflake, damnit. Also, we were out of amaretto.

I tossed around a few more ideas but wasn't inspired until I went to the market a few weeks back and spied blood oranges. I wasn't sure how I wanted to incorporate blood orange into the cheesecake but I was determined. And running out of time. So I bought a bunch and went home.

I eventually decided on a lightly flavored orange cheesecake topped with a blood orange curd for color and deliciousness. I didn't want to use graham crackers for the crust so I eventually settled on Nilla waffers instead. Mostly because I really like Nilla waffers.

The result was pretty fabulous. This is probably one of the creamiest cheesecakes I've ever had. I had a really hard time taking pictures of this for some reason but the white cheesecake against the blood orange curd was very pretty.

Orange cheesecake (based of Abbey's Infamous cheesecake recipe):

INGREDIENTS:

crust:
2 cups / 180 g Nilla cookie crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
Dash salt

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream

Juice and zest of one orange

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese, salt and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla and orange juice/zest and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, you may cover with blood orange curd.

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Blood orange curd

INGREDIENTS:

3 egg yolks

About 1 Tbsp blood orange zest

Juice of 6 blood oranges (some of mine were kind of dry- this yielded close to 1 cup)

1/2 cup sugar

Dash salt

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp butter

Over a double boiler, whisk the egg yolks, zest, juice (orange and lemon), salt and sugar. Cook, whisking constantly, until mixture thickens to coat the back of a spoon. Add the butter and whisk until combined.

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I made my curd the night before and then warmed it back up to make it easier to spread on top the cheesecake. Then I let the whole thing chill again so it slice nicely.

All in all, I think this was my favorite challenge yet, I loved seeing how creative other people got. And of course it tasted good to boot.

I would say more but my Xanax is kicking in and I should go to sleep before I say things I regret. Ta!

Technicolor Unicorn Poops: Rainbow Cupcakes

2009-04-24T12:46:00.008-04:00

Last Wednesday was my last day on my pediatric rotation so our group decided to make baked goods for the staff to thank them for putting up with us. Rainbows are theme of the pediatric hospital so I was suddenly inspired to make rainbow cupcakes.

Rainbow cupcakes were all over the food blogging scene for awhile and though I thought they were cute, I never had the occasion to make them. If you've never seen them before, you basically make white or yellow cake batter and then divide the batter into six bowls and dye each section a different color of the rainbow. Then you layer the colors in cupcake liners and bake. Ta da! Rainbow cupcakes.

I don't have a go to white cake recipe so I just used a Martha Stewart recipe that another blogger used for her cupcakes. I thought they turned out a little weird, they some how reminded me a bit of cornbread? Joe liked that they weren't too sweet though and they were better with frosting. Of course I can't find the recipe now to share with you but I'm not too sad unless you're dying to have a cornbread style white cake. If you'd like to make rainbow cupcakes yourself, I recommend this website.

For the frosting, I just used left over cream cheese frosting I had left over from the monster carrot cake. Brian ate one of the leftover tubs with a box of crackers but luckily one tub was still left over and was more than enough to frost all the cupcakes. I also dyed the frosting to top the cupcakes and did of a few in each color.

Brian thought these cupcakes were hilarious and dubbed them unicorn poops, which didn't stop him from eating the leftover ugly ones that I didn't take to the hospital. Other women will probably think you're really cute and creative when you make these and boys will think you are clinically insane. Such is life.

I've read a lot of criticisms of rainbow cake because it has- GASP SHOCK HORROR- FOOD COLORING in it. I think the food coloring here is the least of your worries, you should probably more concerned about how many sticks of butter are in this, not the two drops of blue food coloring you added. Cupcakes are never health food, people. Have people never heard of red velvet cake, which uses an ENTIRE BOTTLE of red food coloring? Chill out, people.

In any case, these are cute cute cute little suckers and pretty tasty to boot. Also they required my monthly cupcake requirement for the blog. I think these would be adorable for a kids birthday party, baby shower or gay pride event. They cover a lot of bases, really.

Next up: Daring Bakers challenge! And I am SO excited about this one, I plan on eating it tonight. Nyum nyum nyum.

Tapioca Pudding: When You Want Frogs Eyes in Your Pudding

2009-04-19T21:13:00.006-04:00

So whenever I ask the boys what I should bake next, Joe always suggests something weird and elaborate and BJ inevitably asks for pudding, specifically pistachio or tapioca. I've never had pistachio pudding in my life, it's usually a frightening shade of neon green that I don't trust. I do like tapioca pudding but then the question was raised: just exactly where do you buy tapioca pearls?

The last time I was grocery shopping, I was perusing the baking aisle and stumbled upon a bag of tapioca pearls, just like that. I was expected I would have to look for them at a speciality store or Whole Foods or something but no, this was just in some random grocery store next to instant Jell-O pudding.

So I did some research and whipped some up last weekend when bored. I'm glad I read about it because it turns out you first have to soak the tapioca pearls and then cook them in the pudding to make them edible. The package said to soak them overnight but I soaked them for about an hour with no problems. Delayed gratification is not my strong point.

I was really happy with how this turned out, considering I've never played with tapioca before. I did use non-dairy milk and homemade vanilla extract and I think it would be loads better with vanilla bean or regular vanilla extract. You see, our 'homemade' vanilla is rum soaked with a vanilla bean but it really just tastes overwhelmingly like rum. Especially since Joe has been refilling it with Bacardi 151, which I think may not actually be alcohol but paint thinner. Usually it works okay in baked goods but in something where the vanilla flavor is so pronounced, this didn't cut it. It ended up being more of a rum flavored pudding than a vanilla pudding. And the non-dairy milk worked fine but Joe thought it could be more creamy.

In any case, BJ and I ate it all fairly quickly and I would make it again. I probably will have to, what else do you do with a bag of tapioca pearls?

Recipe can be found here. I followed pretty much to a T, except I added 1/2 cup tapioca pearls instead 1/3 cup (when in Rome...) and use So Delicious brand coconut milk instead of milk.

Busy baking week this week! I promised to make goodies for people on Wednesday and I have to finish the month's Daring Baker challenge by next Sunday. Plus I should really start studying for finals, which means baking procrastination starts to look really attractive.

Easter disaster cake

2009-04-15T14:58:00.003-04:00

I had a lot of trouble deciding what dessert to bring to Easter dinner. On Saturday I still hadn't decided and I went to the local market to see if anything looked particularly inspiring. I wasn't inspired (though I did pick up some supplies for the next Daring Bakers challenge, which will be DELICIOUS) so I just went to my fall back plan: carrot cake. I've made carrot cake before. It's good, easy, and carrots = rabbits = spring = Easter. Or something.

And then things started to go horribly wrong. I didn't get the required vegetable oil until 10 pm so I had a late start. I looked at the recipe, one I had never used before, and thought it looked weird but decided to go with it. The recipe calls to mix the shredded carrots in with the dry ingredients, and then add the wet ingredient just until mix in. Okay, fine. But my batter appeared very thin and I had way more than would fill one cake pan. And while pouring it into the pans, I realized that the carrot/flour mixture had clumped, leaving delightful carrot/flour clumps throughout the batter. Excellent. I tried to smoosh them out but it still looked suspect. But it was nearing midnight and I was panicked so I put them into the oven.

These baked SO strangely, they were like the pod people of the cake world. They baked, but had a strangle bubbly layer on top that refused to much except for becoming weirdly gelatinous. I had no idea when to take this out because while my sticks were coming out clean, the very top remained slightly underbaked. Which doesn't make any sense, what cake bakes from the bottom up without ever solidifying completely on top? But after the cake had been in the oven much longer than called for, I pulled it out.

I ended up with about one and a half cakes: a full cake pan and a spring form pan that was like 1/2 inch thick since I didn't want to throw out the rest of the batter. I let them cool and unmolded them. Baby cake unmolded okay. Big cake was stubborn coming out of the pan. Eventually half came out while half stayed stubbornly in my generously greased pan. I was horrified. And tired, seeing as though it was now close to 1 am. I freaked out for awhile and eventually scraped the rest of the cake out the pan, kind of puzzle piecing the bits together. Than I topped the deformed mess with the baby cake, so it now bared some sort of resemblance to a cake and not the hideous beast I had created.

I used the orange-ginger cream cheese frosting that I made for my carrot cake cupcakes (which turned out lovely, of course) and it turned out fine, which is probably why I didn't have a nervous breakdown. I smothered the monster cake with frosting and than haphazardly decorated it with pastel sprinkles and Easter colored M&Ms. And then I fretted to Joe about how much my carrot cake sucked and he reassured me until I felt okay about it.

The next day I had the traditional Easter of church, Easter lunch and then played a festive game of Life. I should've took pictures of lunch because it was all very delicious and fattening: veggie pot pie for the vegetarians, ham for the omnis and cheesy potatoes and spinach squares for everybody. The carrot cake tasted fine-- I think cream cheese frosting fixes everything-- so I was satisfied with it, though I'll shun the recipe for the rest of my days. I have no idea what I did wrong or if it was the recipe, the recipe did have good reviews but I followed the directions exactly and measured all the ingredients on a scale so I have no idea what happened. I blame you, Alton Brown!

Anyways. Now I have tons of left over cream cheese frosting left over that I'm not sure what to do with, any ideas? Brian has been eating it in the middle of the night with a spoon but there's still plenty left. No Easter M&Ms were spared though, Brian swiftly ate them all. And almost died in the process. He threw one up in the air to catch in his mouth but it landed in his throat instead and he immediately doubled over and started hacking. Joe and I were totally prepared to do the Heimlich maneuver. If we had managed to stop laughing. He was fine though, he just ended up swallowing a whole M&M. Which is good, because Brian would've been really pissed off if a pastel colored M&M caused his death and not something more bad ass, such as a brain hemorrhage while playing Call of Duty 4.

Obviously I'm not going to post the recipe I used, but if you're morbidly curious, here it is. I did like the rest of Easter dessert ideas people threw out there and I plan to make them eventually. Next up: tapioca pudding.

Passover Rugelach

2009-04-13T15:14:00.008-04:00

I don't often make Jewish treats since when Joe and I celebrate Jewish holidays, we usually go to one of his family member's house who keep Kosher. Joe doesn't keep Kosher, quite the opposite in fact: one of his favorite things is bacon. So I've made challah and such but pout because I can't impress Joe's kosher family with my gentile baking skillz.

Since passover rolled around, I decided I wanted to make something from the Jewish tradition, even if I couldn't take it to a Seder. I decided to make rugelach. I don't know if rugelach can be eaten on Passover but um, I don't care because I can eat rugelach whenever I want. I used a recipe from The Sweet Life that I've been eyeing for awhile but looking at other rugelach recipes, it's not too different from standard rugelach recipes.

I stuck with what the recipe said and filled the cookies with cinnamon, walnuts and currants but I think I would have liked them better filled with some sort of jam-y filling. But that's just me, I tend to prefer fruit fillings over nutty fillings.

I haven't eaten much rugelach so I can't say how traditional these are but I was happy how these turned out. Joe said the rugelach he's had in the past is often dry but these were nice and soft. Not exactly moist but you don't really want a moist cookie, do you? I'd rather not feel like I'm eating a small, disc-shaped sponge.

Like I said, the recipe seems pretty spot on to ones that I've seen on the internet so I won't post it: it's just a cream cheese based dough filled with a fruit and nut mix. I also am a proud owner of the Joe 3000 pasta maker model so it was fine to roll it. It was a bit delicate but more forgiving than pie crust.

By the way, I was totally unprepared for an Orthodox Seder. I've only ever been to reform Seders, where we kind of haphazardly dipped some bitter herbs in some salt water and called it a night. So when I got to Joe's families house and they cheerfully asked me if I had taken a nap I was like huh? And then I found out that it is not uncommon for their family to hold 8 or 9 hour Seders. We some how whizzed through it in a mere 4 hours though! A passover miracle. We went the second night as well but only for a little over an hour, Joe was so exhausted that he would've passed out in a bowl of matzoh ball soup.

Next up: Easter dessert. Because I don't shun any holiday in which it acceptable to bake.

Uggo oatmeal cookies

2009-04-07T14:11:00.011-04:00

I have another cold. What happened to my immune system of steel? I think it's probably because the last two years I've been working in the hospital with adults and the last few months I've been working with kiddos instead. New germies. Delightful! Not to mention that Brian is constantly wary of any hospital germs I could be carrying. He asks me all sorts of medical questions but the minute I clear my throat or sneeze, he stares daggers at me and won't be within 5 feet of me. Which is probably smart since Joe cannot escape me and inevitably ends up with whatever I have, bwa haha.

Anyways. I made cookies recently. I got a bit cookied out for a few months, probably from the Great Christmas Cookie Extravaganza, Part 1 and Part 2. Joe suggested I make chocolate chip cookies recently when I couldn't decide what to make and I broke out of my cookie slump. I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from The Sweet Life, my favorite dessert book. I had never tried this recipe before and they were WONDERFUL. So much so that I didn't even get a chance to take a picture of them.

The recipe was kind of that mythical chocolate chip cookie recipe that is crisp and caramelized on the edges with a chewy, soft center. It yielded something like four dozen cookies but since the proportions of the recipe would've been weird if I halved it (half an egg, anybody?) Joe told me to make the whole thing, telling me I could bring some to work tomorrow. I ended up not bringing any to work, however, because I remembered that one of my co-workers can't have gluten. But they were still all eaten within 24 hours. I ate two cookies. That means that Joe and BJ both ate about two dozen cookies within a day. I hate boys.

So a few days later I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from the same cookbook. It's actually pretty remarkable that I had chocolate chips left over, Brian has the tendency to wake up from hungover hibernations and immediately consume large amounts of candy, sometimes a pound of chocolate chips. This time though I think he ate two dozen cookies instead so I was in the clear.

The oatmeal cookies were really good but man, they are ugly. They were really thin but lumpy because of the oats. On my first batch my oven was a bit too hot and the cookies were paper thin and on the edge of burnt. I took them out of the oven with a look like, "What the eff cookies! You do not look so delicious!" But they got a bit prettier after I sorted out the oven temperature. It helps that we FINALLY got an oven thermometer, where we learned that our oven runs about 50 degrees hotter than it says. No wonder I was having to pull my baked goods early.

I dubbed these Uggo cookies, after the sphynx cat Brian decided he should get solely to name Uggo. Sphynx cats are those delightful hairless kitties. Like this:
I especially like that one because he's a bit cross eyed. Poor guy. In case you were wondering, the only TV show BJ and I can agree upon is Cats 101 and Dogs 101. The other 99% of the time, I'm mocking the horrible dialogue on Burn Notice and he's making fun of the multiple horrible reality TV shows I so adore.

I can't find the recipe online so I won't post it, sorry! I'm a little terrified of copy infringement. I'll try to find the chocolate chip cookie recipe or just suck it up and post it because you deserve to make them, they are DELICIOUS.

p.s I am spending Passover with Joe and Easter with Katie, my bestie. My gentile, non-Kosher hands are not allowed to make anything for Passover but Katie suggested I bring dessert to Easterfest. What should I make? So far I have thought of: carrot cake, some sort of cheesecake or pie. Let the voting commence.

I Suck, Here are Some Crackers

2009-03-31T11:48:00.006-04:00

I realized the other day that this month I've only posted four entries, one of which was not of food but of my chinchilla posing as an 18th century warlord. I'm not sure why I've been lagging in the baking department but perhaps it has to do with the fact that my two new favorite activities are napping and watching 900 consecutive episodes of The Office. So I decided to whip up something last night to cram into the March section while I still had time. I chose a past recipe that the Daring Bakers did a few months back before I joined: lavash. Though I've read that some lavash recipes yield a soft flat bread, this recipe made crunchy, rustic crackers.

The original recipe also gives directions to make gluten free crackers but I think it's confusing to read those directions within the same recipe so I deleted those instructions. If you want to make gluten free lavash, see the full recipe here.
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Lavash

Makes 1 sheet pan of crackers

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 1/2 cups (6.75 oz) unbleached bread flour or gluten free flour blend
* 1/2 tsp (.13 oz) salt
* 1/2 tsp (.055 oz) instant yeast
* 1 Tb (.75 oz) agave syrup or sugar
* 1 Tb (.5 oz) vegetable oil
* 1/3 to 1/2 cup + 2 Tb (3 to 4 oz) water, at room temperature
* Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, or kosher salt for toppings

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt yeast, agave, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup + 2 Tb of water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.

2. Sprinkle some flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should pass the windowpane test (see http://www.wikihow.com/Determine-if-Bre … ong-Enough for a description of this) and register 77 degrees to 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough should be firmer than French bread dough, but not quite as firm as bagel dough (what I call medium-firm dough), satiny to the touch, not tacky, and supple enough to stretch when pulled. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

3. Ferment at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size. (You can also retard the dough overnight in the refrigerator immediately after kneading or mixing).

4. Mist the counter lightly with spray oil and transfer the dough to the counter. Press the dough into a square with your hand and dust the top of the dough lightly with flour. Roll it out with a rolling pin into a paper thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. You may have to stop from time to time so that the gluten can relax. At these times, lift the dough from the counter and wave it a little, and then lay it back down. Cover it with a towel or plastic wrap while it relaxes. When it is the desired thinness, let the dough relax for 5 minutes. Line a sheet pan with baking parchment. Carefully lift the sheet of dough and lay it on the parchment. If it overlaps the edge of the pan, snip off the excess with scissors.

5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Mist the top of the dough with water and sprinkle a covering of seeds or spices on the dough (such as alternating rows of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, kosher or pretzel salt, etc.) Be careful with spices and salt - a little goes a long way. If you want to pre-cut the cracker, use a pizza cutter (rolling blade) and cut diamonds or rectangles in the dough. You do not need to separate the pieces, as they will snap apart after baking. If you want to make shards, bake the sheet of dough without cutting it first.

5. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crackers begin to brown evenly across the top (the time will depend on how thinly and evenly you rolled the dough).

6. When the crackers are baked, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. You can then snap them apart or snap off shards and serve.

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The recipe was really pretty simple. The hardest part was rolling out the dough but compared the the lasagna dough, this stuff was a breeze to work with. After rolling out my first pan, I had some dough left over which we rolled out again (enter the use of my Joe 3000 pasta machine) but it didn't roll out as well. I think it needed to relax more but I was impatient. Regardless of the second batch being on the thick side, they were still good, more like pita chips.

I went pretty simple on the toppings: kosher salt on the first batch and garlic powder and salt on the second. I'm not a huge fan of seedy crackers. I also made an impromptu dip to go along with the crackers, which consisted of sour cream, plain yogurt, garlic, salt, pepper, cayenne and chopped dill. It reminded me a lot of tzatziki sauce, actually. I think in the actual Daring Bakers challenge, they had to make a vegan dip to go along with the crackers, which are also vegan. But I forgot about that part, otherwise I would've thrown together some hummus or something. Regardless, these would be great to make to impress your vegan buddies and they're simple to boot.

One word of warning: don't let your overzealous boyfriend score the crackers. I let Joe score the second batch and he traced bizarre patterns in the dough that made a sort of cracker puzzle. We ate them all though, fortunately hideousness doesn't negatively influence taste.

March Daring Baker's Challenge: Attack of the Hand Rolled Pasta

2009-03-27T20:24:00.014-04:00

March was a big month for the Daring Bakers. Our new, extremely awesome, website was launched, complete with cute new logos. Check it out here: http://thedaringkitchen.com

Standard blurb-o'-da-month: The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

The challenge for March was to make lasagna. Including the pasta. By hand. DUN DUN DUN. The other components required were a ragu and a bechamel sauce. But I didn't care about those aspects much. Because I was going to have make pasta. WITH MY HANDS.

So I recruited Joe to help me because as I've mentioned before, I have the upper body strength of a stick insect. And I am without a pasta maker. Without his help I would've been pounding the dough hysterically with a rolling pin for hours whilst crying. The end results probably would've been a kind of lasagna sandwich with one inch pasta slices with 9 lbs of ragu sandwiched in between.

Luckily, this was not the case. To make the challenge easier, we broke the recipe into parts and made the ragu a few days ahead of the pasta. This shaved off a few hours off the pasta making day, which probably save my sanity. Joe played a big role in the ragu too, since I've never made ragu because um, I don't meat. I wasn't sure how to go about making a vegetarian ragu and Joe, I'm told, makes an excellent meat ragu. He's used to veggifying dishes for me so he guided my efforts and the end result was excellent. Here's what we did:

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Joe's Vegetable Ragu

INGREDIENTS:

2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 small eggplant
1 large carrot
3 small onions
3 ribs celery
5 garlic cloves
1 can (7 oz) tomato paste
1 cup TVP
1 cup vermouth
1 Tbsp Vegetable bouillon paste (such as Better than Bouillon)
2 Parmesan cheese rinds
1 Tbsp Vinegar
Nutmeg to taste
Parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

Pour the TVP in a bowl and cover with water to rehydrate. Finely dice the mushrooms. Melt butter to a medium stock pot and melt over high heat. Add olive oil. Add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are brown and water has cooked out. Finely dice eggplant and add to mushrooms, cooking until soft and brown. Dice the carrot, onions, celery and garlic and add to pot, cooking until soft. Add tomato paste and TVP. Add water to fill pot, and then add cheese rinds and bouillon. Let cook over medium low heat until most of the water has cooked out and mixture is very thick, about 2 hours. Remove cheese rinds. Add vinegar and nutmeg. Add salt and pepper to taste. Turn off heat. Chop parsley and add to finished mixture.
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Mushrooms in the pot!
Mushrooms + carrots + onions + celery, etc.
After adding the water
After cooking out, the ragu should look something like this. Nice and thick.

Okay, it's hard to take an appetizing picture of ragu. Ragu is delicious but not pretty. BJ saw it and said, "Wow. Um. That looks like something you would find in the woods. And not the good kind of finding stuff in the woods." I'd like to pose the question to the internet: what is the "good kind of finding stuff in woods"? Is there some sort of male secret society that treasure hunts in the woods? Living with boys boggles my minds.

So, the pasta. The pasta wasn't so bad to make, though I'm glad I did have Joe to help out with the rolling. I am familiar with handmade pasta since I was spoiled by having a foodie father who made pasta and bread by hand pretty regularly when I was growing up. Granted, my dad has a pasta machine. But I guess I did have a pasta maker. His name is Joe.

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Pasta Verdi

Preparation: 45 minutes

Makes enough for 6 to 8 first course servings or 4 to 6 main course servings, equivalent to 1 pound (450g) dried boxed pasta.

INGREDIENTS:

2 jumbo eggs (2 ounces/60g or more)
10 ounces (300g) fresh spinach, rinsed dry, and finely chopped; or 6 ounces (170g) frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
3&1/2 cups (14 ounces/400g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour (organic stone ground preferred)

DIRECTIONS:

Working by Hand:

Equipment

A roomy work surface, 24 to 30 inches deep by 30 to 36 inches (60cm to 77cm deep by 60cm to 92cm). Any smooth surface will do, but marble cools dough slightly, making it less flexible than desired.

A pastry scraper and a small wooden spoon for blending the dough.

A wooden dowel-style rolling pin. In Italy, pasta makers use one about 35 inches long and 2 inches thick (89cm long and 5cm thick). The shorter American-style pin with handles at either end can be used, but the longer it is, the easier it is to roll the pasta.
Note: although it is not traditional, Enza has successfully made pasta with a marble rolling pin, and this can be substituted for the wooden pin, if you have one.

Plastic wrap to wrap the resting dough and to cover rolled-out pasta waiting to be filled. It protects the pasta from drying out too quickly.

A sharp chef’s knife for cutting pasta sheets.

Cloth-covered chair backs, broom handles, or specially designed pasta racks found in cookware shops for draping the pasta.

Mixing the dough:
Mound the flour in the center of your work surface and make a well in the middle. Add the eggs and spinach. Use a wooden spoon to beat together the eggs and spinach. Then gradually start incorporating shallow scrapings of flour from the sides of the well into the liquid. As you work more and more flour into the liquid, the well’s sides may collapse. Use a pastry scraper to keep the liquids from running off and to incorporate the last bits of flour into the dough. Don’t worry if it looks like a hopelessly rough and messy lump.

Kneading:
With the aid of the scraper to scoop up unruly pieces, start kneading the dough. Once it becomes a cohesive mass, use the scraper to remove any bits of hard flour on the work surface – these will make the dough lumpy. Knead the dough for about 3 minutes. Its consistency should be elastic and a little sticky. If it is too sticky to move easily, knead in a few more tablespoons of flour. Continue kneading about 10 minutes, or until the dough has become satiny, smooth, and very elastic. It will feel alive under your hands. Do not shortcut this step. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and let it relax at room temperature 30 minutes to 3 hours.

Stretching and Thinning:
If using an extra-long rolling pin work with half the dough at a time. With a regular-length rolling pin, roll out a quarter of the dough at a time and keep the rest of the dough wrapped. Lightly sprinkle a large work surface with flour. The idea is to stretch the dough rather than press down and push it. Shape it into a ball and begin rolling out to form a circle, frequently turning the disc of dough a quarter turn. As it thins outs, start rolling the disc back on the pin a quarter of the way toward the center and stretching it gently sideways by running the palms of your hands over the rolled-up dough from the center of the pin outward. Unroll, turn the disc a quarter turn, and repeat. Do twice more.

Stretch and even out the center of the disc by rolling the dough a quarter of the way back on the pin. Then gently push the rolling pin away from you with one hand while holding the sheet in place on the work surface with the other hand. Repeat three more times, turning the dough a quarter turn each time.

Repeat the two processes as the disc becomes larger and thinner. The goal is a sheet of even thickness. For lasagna, the sheet should be so thin that you can clearly see your hand through it and see colours. Cut into rectangles about 4 by 8 inches (10 x 20 cm). Note: Enza says that transparency is a crucial element of lasagna pasta and the dough should be rolled as thinly as possible. She says this is why her housekeeper has such strong arms!

Dry the pasta at room temperature and store in a sealed container or bag.

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Pile o' fresh basil.

Dough mixed up and ready to rest.
The Joe 3000 Model pasta maker.

I did have to modify the pasta recipe a bit for it to come together, I added an egg and 3 Tbsp of water because my dough was still dry, dry, dry. You could probably just add 2 extra eggs if you had the same problem. I also used basil instead of spinach for my greens since our AeroGrow was overflowing with basil. In the end product you can't really taste it so use what you have around.

The bechamel was probably the easiest aspect of the dish, it came together pretty quickly with no problem. I was hesitant to make it because I generally don't like rich white sauces. But Joe convinced me that it would be good and it was, I really liked it and it worked really well in the overall product. This lasagna didn't call for a gooey cheese of any kind and the bechamel added a similar creamy richness without being overwhelming. YUM.
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Bechamel

INGREDIENTS:

4 tablespoons (2 ounces/60g) unsalted butter
4 tablespoons (2 ounces/60g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour, organic stone ground preferred
2&2/3 cups (approx 570ml) milk
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste

Using a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter over low to medium heat. Sift over the flour, whisk until smooth, and then stir (without stopping) for about 3 minutes. Whisk in the milk a little at a time and keep the mixture smooth. Bring to a slow simmer, and stir 3 to 4 minutes, or until the sauce thickens. Cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Season with salt, pepper, and a hint of nutmeg.

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No pictures of the bechamel, it's not that pretty. And I forgot.

WHEW. Did you get all that? So, to assemble: preheat oven to 350. Grease baking dish. Spread a layer of bechamel over the bottom of the pan. Layer cooked pasta noodles over bechamel. Spread a layer of ragu, bechamel and grated parmesan over the pasta. Repeat layers, ending the last pasta layer with a generous helping of bechamel and more cheese. Place in the oven, cover with foil, and bake for about 40 minutes. Remove foil and brown cheese for about 10 more minutes.

I can how good a dish is fairly well by how fast the three of us go through it and this was gone in 24 hours. So two thumbs up indeed. Not sure if I would make it again because it is very labor intensive and I normally don't have all of the ingredients on hand. But it was worth the effort at least this one time. I'm glad I made pasta by hand finally though if I did it again, I'd want a pasta machine to let my boyfriend off the hook.

I'm actually craving this right now so maybe I will make it again, though probably with store bought noodles. Because I'm lazy, okay? Alright, good.

Looking forward to April's challenge!

Luck of the Irish: Soda Bread

2009-03-20T19:44:00.011-04:00

Ah, St.Patrick's Day. I'm not Irish, I don't eat meat, so corned beef is out of the picture, and I don't like to drink so I don't have much use for St.Patrick's Day. Somebody once tricked me into trying an Irish car bomb by telling me that it tastes like chocolate milk. I want you to know that is a dirty, dirty lie and I almost died. This is also the time I learned that I cannot chug a drink to save my life. And the time everybody else learned that I am no fun to have at a college party.

The only reason St.Patrick's Day is different from any other day is that I get harassed for not wearing green when I inevitably forget and Brian somehow manages to get drunk twice in one day.

What is it about St.Patrick's Day that compels random people to pinch me? "Oh, weren't you aware it's St.Patrick's day?? PINCH, HAHA!" to which I say, "Oh yes, but I was not aware that we were transported back in time to kindergarten when it was still acceptable to pinch strangers because they weren't wearing the color of shirt you so desired them to wear. PUNCH IN THE FACE, HAHA!"

I do, however, like Irish soda bread. In the past, I've used a recipe that was more of a quick bread, baked in the loaf pan. It's not traditional in any sense but it was good and easy. This year however, I could not find the recipe I normally use. Otherwise known as STORY OF MY LIFE.

I am not organized, to say the least.

So this St.Patrick's Day I found a recipe with good ratings on All Recipes and based my bread off of that one. I really liked this recipe too, probably more than my old one. The old one had a tendency to be doughy and dense but this one was really light and tender.

I like this picture because you can see Joe in the background, doing what he does best: neurotically cleaning the kitchen.

Irish Soda Bread

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup dried currants
2 Tbsps caraway seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/4 cup buttermilk for basting

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease a large baking sheet.
In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add currants and caraway seeds. Cut in the butter until the consistency of small peas is reached. Combine 1 cup of buttermilk and egg and add to flour-butter mixture just until combined. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead slightly. Form dough into a round and place on prepared baking sheet. In a small bowl, combine melted butter with 1/4 cup buttermilk; brush loaf with this mixture. Use a sharp knife to cut an 'X' into the top of the loaf.
Bake in preheated oven for about 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Continue to brush the loaf with the buttermilk while it bakes to form a shiny crust.

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I modified the directions to make more scone like, since the recipe looked like a scone recipe to me. It worked out, it had a texture like a giant scone. Still not traditional in any way but I liked it and it had the essential components I associate with soda bread: currants and caraway seeds.

Stay tuned for the next Daring Baker's challenge!

A Warning

2009-03-19T21:25:00.002-04:00

I must take a time out from baking and leave the interweb with a very important warning.

My chinchilla is clearly planning world domination. Prepare yourselves.

Brown Sugar Glazed Banana Cupcakes

2009-03-16T16:16:00.006-04:00

Happy St.Patrick's Day! I'll have a more festive post later, for now here's what I made the other night.

I've been a bad blogger lately. I've made two desserts that I didn't photograph, gaspity gasp. The first one was chocolate banana bread pudding which turned out well (especially considering I made it up as I went along) but was ugly as sin and I didn't want to make a post about my own personal Rosemary's baby. The next was key lime pie for my baby brother (who is somehow not three years old anymore but seventeen, when did that happen?) and I just plum forgot my camera. Oh wells. Here, imagine them.

This is where you think about chocolate banana bread pudding.

Here is where you think about key lime pie.

I did finally get around to getting pictures of my most recent baked goods. I made these as thank you gifts for some nurses and I was soooo indecisive when trying to decide what to make. I finally settled on banana cupcakes because I'm always freezing overripe bananas and always have an extra eight million frozen brown bananas in case there's a sudden world shortage on disgustingly overripe frozen bananas. I decided on a glaze instead of frosting since I was going to have to cart these to the hospital with me and any frosting would just get destroyed on the journey.

This is actually the first banana cake recipe that I've tried that is actually cake-like in texture. I've tried others that were basically banana bread in a cup, which is nice but I've been looking for something with a lighter crumb. This is definitely more cake-like, less quick-bread. I cut down the sugar since I knew I was going to glaze them and I know Joe likes less sweet desserts. I know, he's not from this planet.

Here's the recipe I used:

Banana Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (this was three bananas for me)
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening, butter and sugar. Add the eggs, vanilla, bananas and buttermilk. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to banana mixture. Fill 18 paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. In a small mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar and enough milk to achieve desired spreading consistency.

For the glaze, I just combined 1/2 cup of brown sugar with a splash of vanilla and 2 Tbsp water. I dipped the tops of the cooled cupcakes a few times to form a nice glaze over the top. You could also just drizzle it.

The glaze makes a nice crunchy, sugary shell and since the cupcakes weren't too sweet, it wasn't overwhelming. I approve.

Joe and Sophie make croissants and then gain 9 lbs

2009-02-28T17:49:00.014-05:00

For our five year anniversary, I arranged for Joe and I to take a cooking class at a local culinary school making croissants. I thought it would be a good way to maximize our butter intake. I mean... love intake?

No recipe because um, these take three days (or one really crappy day) to make and I'm not up to typing all that up. This looks pretty similar to the recipe and method we used though.

Here's the dough we started with. Obviously we couldn't make it all from scratch, this wasn't croissant making summer camp. Our teacher showed us how to make croissants from scratch using dough in various stages and provided us with dough to work with. So we started with dough in the final stages: this is what you would have on the third day. Look at all those layers already! You get those from doing three "3-folds" on the prior days.

At this stage we could roll out our dough, letting it relax for a bit between rollings. This is my sheet. I assure you it was the best in the class.

Actually, the teacher did compliment my very impressive dough rectangle and I was proud, though I saw him compliment some severely ugly rolls later that day. But I'll take what I can get.

Next we cut our rectangles into thirds: the bottom 2 thirds were cut smaller than the upper 1/3. We used the small sections to fill and roll up and the big section to form traditional crescent croissants.
Here are my cheese rolls. They were supposed to have ham and cheese but I don't eat meat so cheese it was. These ones were just rolled up from the bottom, pretty easy peasy.

Here are some of my finished rolls. Some of these are filled with cheese and the rest are filled with chocolate chips. A few of my chocolate chips didn't make it into the croissants because they mysteriously migrated into my mouth.

This is our baking sheet filled with our respective rolls, Joe's are the ones filled with ham and mine are the pretty ones, obviously.

I'm kidding. Joe's were very pretty too.

Hey, did you know that rolling crescents that are pretty is HARD? Here are some of mine in various stages of hideousness.

But it didn't matter how ugly they were because they were baked and all hideousness was canceled out by sweet, buttery innards. Here are some of the regular rolls, baked. Mmm. Is there cheese or chocolate inside? IT'S A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE.

This one is chocolate filled. Sweet, sweet chocolate.

Look at that flaky, buttery goodness. This one is ham and cheese. Obviously.

I've never been a huge fan of croissants but I'd only ever had the ones from grocery stores. And really, anything is delicious when it contains six sticks of butter and is fresh out of the oven. These ones were amazing and I ate about five that morning. And then my stomach exploded. Luckily the healing properties of butter are amazing.

The class was really fun and we got to take home about nine million croissants. Definitely worth the money, although my hips may disagree.

Flourless Chocolate Cake and Coconut Sorbet

2009-02-28T00:00:00.002-05:00

When you think Valentine's day, you think chocolate. So it is only appropriate that for February's Daring Bakers Challenge, a chocolate cake and ice cream was in order. The challenge was pretty straight forward: to make a flourless chocolate cake and homemade ice cream.

Blurb'o-the-month: The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

I'm not going to lie, I was not too excited about this challenge. I'm not wild about flourless chocolate cake in most forms, I usually find it too intense but kind of boring. And ice cream? I've never liked ice cream. Which didn't stop me from considering buying an ice cream machine for the challenge. I nearly rationalized by hey sometimes, like every five years or so, I like a couple bites of sorbet. Or gelato. Which would make it TOTALLY WORTH $50, right?

I managed to talk myself out of it and will probably spend the money on an absurdly expensive strightening iron instead.

I'll admit, I used a different recipe for the flourless chocolate cake. There was a chocolate bête noire recipe in The Sweet Life that I've been eying for awhile and it appealed to me more than the one given. And I'm glad I did because it was AWESOME. I loved it. It's a bit like a chocolate pudding cake. You can see the recipe I used here. I apologize to your thighs in advance. But it had to be done.

Most of the Daring Bakers did like the posted recipe though and I feel guilty not posting the recipe I was supposed to use so here it is:

Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

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I like sorbets far more than ice creams so that's what I decided to go with. I settled on either espresso or coconut and ultimately decided on coconut so my dish wouldn't be all brown. Plus, I just made espresso shortbread.

I'm usually too lazy to type up recipes I get from cookbooks but this one is so easy that I remember everything. Here's the basic recipe I used:

Coconut Sorbet, Adapted from the Millennium cookbook

1 can light coconut milk
6 tablespoons fructose
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
Dash vanilla
Dash salt

Combine the above ingredients. I used a hand blender so that the coconut flakes would be better incorporated. If you don't have one, I would either blend it in a food processor or finely chop the coconut before hand. To make by hand, pour the liquid into a large glass pan and freeze. Take out of the freezer every 30 minutes or so and blend with a whisk or large wooden spoon before returning to the freezer. Repeat until desired consistency is reached.

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Can you use regular sugar instead of fructose? Dunno. Joe happened to get me some fructose from the local health food store, otherwise I would've used regular sugar. But it was soooo easy, the recipe doesn't make a whole lot so it freezes really fast. Tasted lovely, though I prefered the unfrozen coconut liquid. Because I am a heathen and I DON'T LIKE ICE CREAM. It balanced really well with the cake though, especially when it was piping hot. The cake, not the ice cream.

Glad I did this month's challenge, I'm not sure I would've tried making ice cream by hand otherwise. I'm not sure I would make it again for myself but I would serve it to company.

Hahahhaa. Like I have fancy dinner parties and don't spend my Friday nights baking and watching Pokemon with Joe. Hahahahah. Company. More like force feed it to Brian immediately after he comes back from working out.

Looking forward to March's challenge!

Espresso Shortbread for the Week of Doom

2009-02-26T21:27:00.008-05:00

I don't even know what to say about this week except that forks were looking like mighty fine objects to slowly advance into my skull. I took these pictures last Sunday but The Week of Doom prevented me from posting until today.

On Sunday I finished a giant 20 page project and decided to celebrate and bake. Except that nobody bothered to tell me that the due date of the project was changed while I was out of the room and wouldn't be due for another week. Fork to brain incident #1. Anyways, I eventually decided on making a chocolate-dipped espresso shortbread recipe from my cookie magazine that I'm baking my way through.

This (and the other shortbread recipe from the magazine) is one of the better recipes I've tried, I'm a big fan of shortbread. I thought the coffee flavor of these guys could be stronger but I still liked them a lot. Next time I wouldn't roll them as thin but I've only made shortbread once before and I don't really know what I'm doing. It could've been a lot worse, like the time I made pumpkin pie and forgot to add sugar. DELICIOUS.

Chocolate-Dipped Espresso Shortbread, from Fine Cooking
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INGREDIENTS:

8 oz. (1 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. table salt
10 oz. (2-1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
2 Tbs. finely ground espresso coffee beans

For the dipping chocolate
9 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 Tbs. vegetable shortening:

Line two baking sheets with parchment. Combine the butter, sugar, and salt in a stand mixer bowl (use the paddle attachment) or a large mixing bowl. Mix on low speed until the butter combines with the sugar but isn't perfectly smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the flour and ground espresso and mix on low speed, scraping the bowl frequently, until the dough has just about pulled together, about 3 minutes; don't overmix.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Aim for a uniform thickness to ensure even baking. Using a heart or other shape cookie cutter, cut out shapes as close to one another as possible. Press the scraps together, roll them out, and cut out more cookies. If the dough becomes sticky, refrigerate it briefly. Arrange the cookies on two parchment-lined baking sheets and refrigerate until chilled, at least 20 minutes.

Position oven racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and heat the oven to 300° F. Bake the cookies until golden on the bottom and edges and pale to golden on top, 30 minutes to 1 hour. (After 15 minutes, swap the position of the baking sheets and rotate them 180 degrees for even baking.) If the cookies are done before 30 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 275° F for the remaining batches; if they take longer than 1 hour, increase the temperature to 325° F.

Dip the baked, cooled cookies:

Set a sheet of parchment or waxed paper on a work surface. Put the chocolate and shortening in a small heatproof bowl and set the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Melt the chocolate, stirring, until it's smooth and warm; don't let it get hot. Dip half of each cookie into the chocolate. Set the cookies on the parchment and let the chocolate set up at room temperature, about 2 hours.

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I don't get these baking instructions. Bake somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour? Uh, that's a big range, especially when a minute or two extra could ruin these. I ended up baking them about 25 minutes but I did make mine a bit thin. Also, I had to chill the dough some, it was reeeeeally soft and hard to work with. But other than that, it was a-okay. Oh: I melted the chocolate and shortening in the microwave. Worked fine.

I made these while wearing my robe, which is not at all surprising if you know me and my disdain for clothing, especially pants and socks. Brian happened to come in as I noticed that one of my sleeves was covered in flour. I mused out loud, "Hm, I should probably stop baking in my robe..." to which Brian said, "Um, yeah. About that. It is acceptable to wear a robe an hour before bed and up to an hour after waking up. Not, you know, NINETY PERCENT OF YOUR WAKING DAY." But this is coming from somebody who A) survived for a good year on white rice and ranch dressing to save money and B) once became so drunk that he forgot how to read. He cannot be trusted.

Joe has been making tons of bread lately. Joe decided it looked like fun after I made a few loaves of bread at the beginning of the year. And then he quickly became obsessed with it and I have been literally unable to make more bread because Joe is undoubtedly already making five different loaves that day. He's been hinting that I should post some of his bread on the blog, which I've been hesitant to do because I like to post recipes and Joe's recipes are 20 pages long from a scary looking bread encyclopedia. But here's one anyways, sans recipe: cheese bread!

I loved this bread, which is unsurprising since it combined simple carbs with cheese which made my bones turn to jelly. Then I had a feeding tube installed so that no time would be wasted in that time consuming chewing stuff. Luckily, it's gone now and I can stop gorging on it.

In other news, today is Joe's and my five year anniversary. I won't get too mushy, I'll just say that Joe's presence is probably the sole reason why the forks were not actually forcibly inserted into my brain this week. The Tiffany's ring he got me didn't hurt either. I love you.

Our anniversary gift from Brian was him cleaning the shower curtain. Which actually was a great gift, since we had a few mold colonies the size of several small continents growing on it. I was starting to fear for my life whenever I took a shower.

Stay tuned for February's Daring Bakers challenge!

Too Lazy to Bakes, Here's Some Pictures

2009-02-19T22:07:00.011-05:00

I don't know if I'm still recovering from The Mysterious Flu Strain (let's call it TMFS) or if TMFS is actually mono but I have been EXHAUSTED the last week. Even if I sleep eight hours, I am exhausted all day and my brain is so nonfunctional that I have the attention span of a drugged flea. All I can seem to be able to focus on is marathon episodes of The Girls Next Door. It's an excellent show to rest your brain cells but not what I need to be doing when I have midterms next week. I've started taking naps during the day but that doesn't seem to recharge me either.

So in the mean time, here are some pictures of a sunrise from the top of Haleakala in Hawaii that I've been meaning to share. I'm not sure how Joe managed to convince me to wake up at 3 am for the drive, especially after the Hike of Horror and Doom. I was probably in the middle of eating some decadent dessert when I would agree to anything as long as nobody tried to take away my spoon.

I'm not going to pretend I took any of these pictures, I was definitely a huddled mass in the observation deck, trying to conserve body heat. It turns out, hey, it's not warm at 10,000 feet at 5 am, even in Hawaii. So because Joe was more properly dressed (and had also consumed an alarming amount of caffeine on the drive and was a perky, bouncy ball of Joe) he took all the pictures.

I was also trying to stand very still because I became nauseous, which I thought was my stomach punishing me for not getting an acceptable 14 hours of sleep. But it turns out I had altitude sickness, which I didn't realize until we were about to leave. We walked back to the car and when I sat down I started and yelled, "OW!!" because it felt like I had just sat in a vat of needles. And then I put my arms back and screamed again because my arms felt the same way. All of my skin felt like it was being simultaneously stabbed by millions of tiny needles. Apparently this pin and needles feeling is uncommon with altitude sickness, I'm was just one of the lucky ones.

It got better gradually as we got further down the mountain so it was over fairly quickly, thankfully. Still, it was worth it. It was really gorgeous, obviously. My favorite view was actually before the sun rose. The stars were out and it was pitch black so it was like being suspended in space. It was breathtaking, though it also freaked me out a lot. One of my top three irrational fears is falling endlessly through space, which was kind of like this felt like. In case you were wondering, my other two irrational fears are probably airplanes and atomic bombs. Disturbing fact? Every single time a camera flash goes off around me, I have a small heart attack because I immediately think ATOMIC BOMB. And yes, I'm aware that therapy is probably a good idea if I want to live past 25 without having a stroke.

While we're on the topic, top rational fears are probably 1) death and 2) having to face the wrath of my mom if I were to get pregnant or elope before I graduate. And of course since I'm mysteriously nauseous all the time, 400 people are always asking me if perhaps I'm pregnant. To which I say, "Shh! Don't suggest something so awful, my mom might hear you!" and they say, "Um, isn't she in Alaska?" to which I reply, "Have you met my mom? IF I GET PREGNANT SHE WILL STOP MY HEART WITH LASER EYES."

Suggest something for me to bake, I'm uninspired at the moment. Decide for me, I need to conserve my energy for walking to and from the kitchen.

Humungo Cupcake Takes Over Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T21:21:00.006-05:00

Happy Valentine's day, interwebs. Joe and I had a pretty low key Valentine's, our anniversary is a little over a week after Valentine's so we don't make a big deal out of it. Plus, I'm still getting over my mysterious stomach virus, which I also gave to Joe. Well maybe, his infection is all in his lungs so maybe I just weakened his immune system, allowing him to get some sort of other flu strain. Very romantic.

We decided to just cook dinner at home and ended up eating with Brian and his girlfriend. Joe made some balsamic braised portabellas and roasted red onions, I made some millet. We didn't have a heart cookie cutter so Joe used a star cookie cutter to cut out mushroom steaks and star toasts. Brian thought we may be insane. But he later used various Christmas themed cookie cutters to make some festive french toast so apparently the crazy is contagious.

It was good though. I love portabellas in balsamic sauce. One of my favorite sandwiches that Joe makes me is a grilled portabello marinated in balsamic vinegar, put on toasted bread with a nice layer of goat cheese. Ljgfoigfufdi, it is soooo good.

For dessert I made a giant cupcake with my giant cupcake pan. After agonizing over what cake to make in it, I decided to make pound cake from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey which my sister bought me for Christmas. I poured chocolate ganache over the "frosting" cake and threw some sprinkles on for good measure.

The cake turned out well but it's definitely not pound cake, which was a little disappointing. It's just regular yellow cake, which was tasty but not what I was going for. I thought it was a bit eggy too, which isn't surprising since it has SIX eggs in it. Still, making a giant cupcake was immensely satisfying and fulfilled some sort of deeply rooted desire. And I'm still looking forward to making other recipes from the book, they all look amazing and are all ridiculously decadent. There's a Cheesecake Milkshake recipe in the book which basically blends a pint of ice cream with two slices of cheesecake, which would fulfill your fat requirement for about 10 years. But at the same time I think, Why haven't I thought of that and fed it to Brian?

In other news, I had a really weird day recently, just a series of strange events that made me feel like I was going a little bit insane. One of them was going into the guest room to open the blinds, which are sorta broken and won't stay up. So I kept tugging the blinds up to the top and yanking on them to make them stay put. After one good tug, the blinds broke completely and fell on me. I stood there stunned for a minute because it was just so ridiculous. You have to understand that I have zero upper body strength, I make Joe open jars for me because my stick-like wrists collapse under the effort. And yet I had just ripped the blinds out of the wall.

I didn't know what to do with them so I scooped them up and cradled them while I took them to Joe. I was laughing like a mad loon at this point, carrying the shards of blinds like it was my first born child. I explained what happened to Joe and Brian and had this conversation with Brian:
Me: Look, Brian. I ripped the blinds down with my super human strength.
Brian: Sophie, what have I told you about using your super powers in the house? You know how they say to use your inside voice? Well, use your inside strength.

I need to go use my inside strength to figure out who to force feed my 90 lb cupcake to.

Sick Whinning + Chocolate Chewies

2009-02-08T19:39:00.009-05:00

Internet, I am sick. This is weird for me because since I started working in hospitals a few years ago, I never get sick. Well, first I was sick ALL THE TIME for the first year and then I developed crazy antibodies and my white blood cells are now made of steel. Until now.

Friday night I was unable to sleep because I was so nauseous, but I figured it was just my stomach hating me as per usual, I'm nauseous all the time. But then I started throwing up and getting chills and I knew I was in trouble. My fever finally broke today, which means I can do more than a) sleep or b) stare blankly at the TV for ten hours. But my stomach is still rioting and won't let me consume more than a bottle of vitamin water a day. Thanks, mysterious stomach virus.

So no baking until I can look at a glass of water without gagging. Lucky for you, here are some cookies I made earlier this month. On the Super Bowl, actually.

I've never been a big sports person. Nobody in my family played or watched sports and I don't have a competitive bone in my body. I tried a bunch of sports in middle school, but was tragically bad at all of them. Being five feet tall didn't help. I did become track manager in 8th grade when I promised to make the coaches batches of cookies. And so began my obsession with baking.

Anyways, so I'm not sure I've watched a Super Bowl in my life, except for bits and pieces when I was waiting to watch commercials. I watched more this year than I ever have in my life, and that was only after watching the Puppy Bowl.

The Puppy Bowl is put on by Animal Planet is exactly what it sounds like: for two hours, they put various puppies in a room decorated to look like a football stadium and then film the adorable puppies playing. There is also a delightful kitty half time show, in which a dozen kittens play with various spinning, shinning, and moving objects. It kind of looks like an acid flashback, actually.

Joe, BJ and I had a Puppy Bowl party and recorded the Super Bowl to browse through later. Joe made a caloric-ly dense onion dip and I made chocolate cookies. There's these low-fat chocolate cookies at Whole Foods which I really like, not because they're low fat but because they have a crunchy meringue-like shell with chewy cake like interior. I hadn't been able to replicate them very well but recently stumbled on this site which looked pretty close to the Whole Foods version.

And they were! I really liked this guys. The only thing that I would like to change is how thick these were and looking at her page, it looks like that could be changed by using a muffin top or english muffin pan.

Here's her recipe at Cafe Luna,you'll have to read it ALL BY YOURSELF.

I'll admit I used Hershey's cocoa, it's all I had and the choices at my local grocery store were either Hershey's cocoa or "Food Club" brand cocoa, which is probably saw dust and food coloring. I added a few melted squares of a good quality 100% chocolate bar, which improved the flavor but my cookies still looked a bit anemic compared to hers. I also left out the walnuts since we didn't have them and I don't like them much.

Overall, I really like this recipe and will probably experiment with it again in the future with better ingredients when my body stops hating me.

Things I made a while ago: Butterscotch bars and panna cotta

2009-02-05T22:17:00.010-05:00

I made both of these awhile ago, I'm a slacker and am just getting around to posting these guys.

The first one is honey-yogurt panna cotta. Panna cotta is a very delicate molded custard, it is basically the closest you can come to eating heavy whipping cream without feeling like you're eating heaving whipping cream. But shh, don't tell my thighs.

I'd made panna cotta once before, last year when I was stranded in Joe's apartment and lived in the common area in a bathrobe while making Joe's roommate's vaguely uncomfortable for two days. It's a long story. But Joe wouldn't be back for another day and since all of my belongings were locked in his room until he returned, the only thing I could think of doing was to commander their kitchen and bake all day. I think I made various custards and cookies and only stopped when I had used all their sugar and eggs.

I was interested in a particular recipe from The Sweet Life because it lightened panna cotta with strained plain yogurt and sweetened it with honey. The idea was that it was supposed to taste like a Greek version of panna cotta. Sign me up!

This was the week that I failed coddling eggs so I wasted a ton of eggs trying to make the "egg white custard" which I think may be an invention of the author because it would just NOT. WORK. On my third try I used a hand blender which either worked or hid the curdled egg whites, I couldn't tell. But it was good enough for me!

I was a bit disappointed in how they turned out, I didn't think they tasted yogurt-y enough. I ended up adding a lot more honey as well, since I didn't think it tasted strongly enough of honey. However, I made the grapefruit curd shortly after this and the panna cotta were greatly improved when smothered in grapefruit curd. Then again, just about anything is good smoothered in creamy grapefruity goodness.

I'm too lazy to steal the recipe from The Sweet Life but here's a recipe from Martha Stewart that is very similar to what I used, except it doesn't use egg whites. Which is brilliant, since you can't curdle the stupid eggs.

Honey Yogurt Panna Cotta, from Martha Stewart

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INGREDIENTS:

Serves 8

2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean (or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1 envelope (1/4 ounce) unflavored gelatin
1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1/2 cup honey, plus more for serving
1/8 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

Place cream and sugar in a medium saucepan. With a paring knife, split vanilla bean lengthwise; scrape out seeds, and add to cream along with empty pod (if using vanilla extract, add to yogurt mixture in step 4).
Bring cream to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Cover pan, remove from heat, and set aside to steep, at least 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, place 1/2 cup cold water in a small bowl, and sprinkle gelatin over water; set aside to soften, at least 5 minutes. In a large bowl, whisk yogurt, honey, and salt until combined; set aside.
Return cream to a boil. Remove from heat, and immediately stir in softened gelatin until dissolved. Pour mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into yogurt-honey mixture; mix until combined.
Divide mixture among eight 4- to 6-ounce ramekins. Chill until firm, at least 4 hours and up to 2 days.
To serve, unmold each panna cotta from its ramekin: Run a paring knife around the top inner edge of ramekin, then dip bottom of ramekin in a bowl of boiling water for 10 seconds. Invert ramekin onto serving plate. Holding ramekin tightly to plate, shake firmly to release panna cotta. Drizzle with honey before serving.

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I also got a e-mail recently calling for volunteers for a bake sale and I jumped on the opportunity. I decided on Nutty Butterscotch and Chocolate Bars from my cookie book. And I just found the recipe online, so I don't even need to steal it from my magazine! Excellent.

Nutty Butterscotch and Chocolate Bars from Fine Cooking magazine
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INGREDIENTS:

11-1/4 oz. (2-1/2 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. table salt
1/2 lb. (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature; more for the pan
1-3/4 cup very firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1-1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
7-1/2 oz. (1-1/4 cups) semisweet chocolate chips
1-1/4 oz. (1/2 cup) sweetened coconut flakes
4-1/2 oz. (1 cup) medium-finely chopped pecans or walnuts

DIRECTIONS:

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to 325°F. Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9x13-inch baking pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt to blend. In a large bowl, combine the butter and brown sugar. With a hand-held mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and brown sugar on medium until very well blended and fluffy, about 2 min. Add the eggs and vanilla and continue to beat on medium until well blended, about another 1 min. Add the flour mixture and mix on low until just blended, about 1 minute. Pour in the chocolate chips and coconut; mix on low until combined.

Scrape the dough into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Scatter the nuts evenly over the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean with a few moist crumbs clinging to it, about 40 min. Transfer the pan to a rack and let cool completely. Cut into bars, squares, or triangles. Cover with plastic and store at room temperature for up to two days or freeze for up to one month.

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Mine were actually chocolate-less since I discovered last minute that BJ had used all the chocolate chips by stirring them into his coffee. I had about three white chocolate chips that I scrounged up and added in. But honestly, I don't think the bars needed them. They were plenty sweet and I think the chocolate would be overwhelming. I DO think the walnuts are needed and I'm not usually a nut person. They added some depth to the bars, which are pretty sweet and one dimensional otherwise.

Anyways, I kept a few for us and packaged the rest for the bake sale. The secretary of the organization it was for, who is the sweetest girl ever, thanked me profusely for bringing stuff. I thought, "Pfft, are you kidding? Can you have a bake sale like three times a week so I can bake stuff and give it away every 48 hours?" but I like to hide my crazy so instead I said, "No problem!"

Still one more to play catch up: Chocolate chewies from the Super Bowl

Vanilla Tuile Cones with Lemon Curd or Sophie Can't Coddle Eggs

2009-01-29T21:20:00.006-05:00

I was excited to participate in this month's Daring Bakers Challenge, especially since I wasn't able to participate last month. Last month the challenge was to make this crazy eight layer, frozen-mousse-plus-a-billion-other-pieces French cake. Between finals and the holidays/vacation, it just could not happen.

Here's the standard Daring Bakers blurb o' the month:
This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

This challenge was to make tuiles (Is that the plural of tuile? Let's pretend.) and pair them with something light of our own choosing. Originally I wanted to make sorbet but I don't have an ice cream machine and making your own sorbet looked kind of dicey. We had some grapefruits that had been hanging around for weeks so I decided to make grapefruit curd. Curd is kind of like a thin citrus pudding-y jam you can spread on just about anything. It's kinda sweet but kinda tart and kinda thick but kinda thin. I'm not very good at describing things, clearly. It's a good thing I decided not to major in English. "The book was kinda good and was about things and stuff. The end."

To make the grapefruit curd I heat up the juice of one ruby red grapefruit and the juice of a half a lemon over a make shift double boiler. While the citrus was warming, I beat three eggs with 1/4 cup a sugar. Then I tempered the egg-sugar mixture with some of the citrus juice to warm the eggs up without curdling. Added the egg mixture to the citrus and beat until thick and coated the back of the spoon. Took the mixture off heat, beat in 2 Tbsp butter and the most of the zest of the grapefruit. Viola! Grapefruit curd!

Except I only got it to work on the third time and wasted six eggs before I got it right. Our new stove is incredibly hot and no matter how carefully I tempered the eggs, they curdled. This drove me bonkers as I've made pudding/lemon curd/panna cotta etc only three trillion times successfully and suddenly the eggs would not bend to my will as per usual. Joe suggested the double boiler which helped a lot. He also beat the hell out the mixture and was probably more successful than me with my puny, stick like arms.

The tuiles were more successful, the most tricky thing about the tuiles is getting them the right thickness. Too thick and they'll be chewy, too thin and they'll burn up. You also have to shape them pretty much immediately after baking, which singed off the pads of my fingers.

I exaggerate, I still have fingerprints.

I used a slightly different recipe than the one given but lots of people had success with this recipe and it is pretty close to what I did:

Vanilla Tuiles

INGREDIENTS:

¼ cup ounces softened butter (not melted but soft)
½ cup ounces sifted confectioner’s sugar
dash of vanilla extract
2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)
1/2 cup sifted all purpose flour

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat over to 350F

Using a hand whisk or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle (low speed) and cream butter, sugar and vanilla to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week, take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it).

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as the butterfly. If using a stencil, press the stencil on the bakingsheet and use an off sided spatula to spread batter (I used the back of a spoon to make circles). Leave some room in between your shapes.

Bake cookies in a preheated oven (180C/350F) for about 5-10 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. Immediately release from bakingsheet and proceed to shape/bend the cookies in the desired shape. These cookies have to be shaped when still warm, you might want to bake a small amount at a time or maybe put them in the oven to warm them up again. (Haven’t tried that). Or: place a bakingsheet toward the front of the warm oven, leaving the door half open. The warmth will keep the cookies malleable.
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Anyways, once I singed my fingers off rolling the burning hot cookies into cones, I stuffed a bunch of grapefruit curd into a ziplock bagged, cut off the tip and pipped the curd into the cooled cones. Cooled cones. Sounds like a crappy reggae band. Maybe only because it sounds slightly similar to the fabulous movie Cool Runnings.

Joe told me to make just half a batch of cookies and then I fed him one and he shouted, "I WANT A THOUSAND." He later said they're the best thing I've ever made so I must file this away in the 'makes the boyfriend happy' file. Other things that make Joe happy include beating things in a mortar and pestle, Pokemon and opera. He has a wide range of interest.

Next up: yogurt panna cotta and coconut walnut butterscotch bars.

Valentine's Soup

2009-01-28T19:46:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I make real food. Real food is defined by having less than 1/4 cup of sugar in the recipe. I actually cook quite a lot but because I don't find it that interesting and usually just throw stuff in a pot until it tastes good, so I don't post my lunches or dinners here. Except this one, 'cause it was pretty: beet soup!

I'm not really picky at all but up until recently I didn't like beets. I tried some of my dad's pickled beets ages ago and thought he was crazy. Then I sat next to a kid in high school who was obsessed with beets and would eat them for lunch. He called them Nature's Candy. I thought he was weird. Well, he was weird, but beets were the least of his problems. Hi, Chris!

I don't really know what changed my mind, I don't have a defining beet moment. But I do live with two boys, one who is a gourmet foodie and one who is a human garbage disposal. So I end up trying a lot of new foods. And now I'm kind of obsessed with beets, which is unfortunate for all of my bodily secretions.

For this soup, I roasted six small beets until tender and then whizzed them up with vegetable broth, balsamic vinegar, lemon and plain yogurt. I chilled it, then I topped it with a swirl of plain yogurt, chopped raw onion and parsley, which I think you really need to balance the sweetness of the beets. It was really good and light, though it was a bit scary to eat since I knew it could stain anything within a five mile radius. On the other hand, maybe I'll make again for Valentine's day because it's pink. I'm pretty excited for Valentine's day because I'm going to make a GIANT cupcake with my new GIANT cupcake pan.

I have heart palpitations just thinking about it, it's sooo awesome. Joe got it for me for Christmas-Hanukkah. I don't actually know what I'm doing for Joe for Valentine's day, my brain is too full of ideas for GIANT CUPCAKES.

Tomorrow I unveil January's Daring Bakers Challenge!