Celebratory Cream Puff Tower

(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

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.

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.

Magic Mint Brownies

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.

Birthday Butterflies

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.

Tiramisu trifle... sorta

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.

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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.

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

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!

Flourless Chocolate Cake and Coconut Sorbet

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!

Sick Whinning + Chocolate Chewies

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.

Lazy Cookies

Coming from vacation in Hawaii to school in Cleveland blew my brains and I haven't been able to focus since school started. Or I have been able to focus but my focus has been on getting really good at having panic attacks. I don't know if my insurance covers therapy but it does cover Xanax!

So I haven't been baking much at all the last few weeks. But I've been having insane cravings for those no-bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies, which is weird since I think I've had them once in my life. Today I was feeling a bit less like pulling out all my hair while hyperventilating in a corner so I decided to make some of those no-bake cookies.


They're good but not as good as the ones I had before. These guys were a bit crumbly, probably because I cut the sugar in the recipe since I knew the full amount would be too sweet for me (I know, scary right?). The problem is, they're still a bit on the sweet side and I don't know how to bind them better and give them a better texture without using the full amount of sugar. Oh well. They certainly fulfilled my chocolate-peanut butter-oat craving and I'm hoping BJ's friends will eat the rest of them tonight while drunk. (Update: Brian just announced that he's eaten half of them. Excellent.)

No Bake Cookies

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
• 3 cups quick cooking oats

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar, cocoa, milk and margarine. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil for 1 minute, then remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, salt, peanut butter and oats.
2. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto waxed paper. Allow cookies to cool for at least 1 hour. Store in an airtight container.

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I used butter instead of margarine, smooth peanut butter instead of chunky, halved the sugar and used half quick cooking oats and half regular rolled oats. I only had quick cooking by accident, quick cooking oats freak me out. They do that thing that instant oatmeal does when it turns into oatmeal glue instead of oatmeal. I didn't realize until a few years ago that oatmeal doesn't have to be scary and gelatinous, you just need to cook real oats! And then I proceeded to eat oatmeal every day for two years before burning out and never wanting to eat it again. I'm slowly getting back into it though, I just mix it up with cornmeal and cream of wheat.

And now you know more about my breakfast habits than you ever wanted to know. Good.

In other news, the other day I was having a bad mental health day, I think that was the same day I sent Joe a text message that read in part, "kill me, kill me, kill me". I was in my room while Brian and Joe were playing video games. I yawned a monstrous, terrifying high-pitched yawn and I heard Brian whisper to Joe, "Did you hear that? I think we have a wolf loose in the apartment." and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry because I was so pumped full of feelings.

3 Down, 98 to Go: Mediocre Chocolate Cookies

My last rotation in the acute care setting I was working in was on Monday so I decided to bring some baked goods for the staff to thank them for tolerating me. The same day the hospital was going to throw my group a dinner and bribe us to work for them so I figured I could bring the rest of the baked goods to the meeting for everybody.

I decided on cookies, since they're relatively fast, unfussy and yields tons of goodies, unlike brownies or something where I would have to make multiple batches in order to feed everybody. So I flipped through the cookie magazine I'm baking my way through and settled on double chocolate cookies. Who doesn't like chocolate cookies? Untrustworthy fiends, that's who.


I had to modify the recipe a bit because when everything was all mixed together, I had cookie dough soup. The dough was supposed to chill but I was not convinced that the liquid I had would firm up enough to make anything resembling cookies. I had to add a bunch more flour to make the dough come together but I didn't think to add more chocolate so I thought in the end the cookies were a bit lacking. They needed more chocolate flavor or something, I don't know. Plus, they were a bit on the cake-y side, which I was not going for. But I can't really blame the recipe, I guess, since I did alter it and maybe it would've been magically perfect without my additions.

However, the two dozen cookies I delivered to the staff were consumed alarmingly fast so I guess they weren't too bad, people seemed to like them. I'm just a cookie snob.

Double Chocolate Cookies

5 oz of unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup butter
4 eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Melt the unsweetened chocolate, 1/4 cup of the chocolate chips and the butter over low heat in a saucepan. Set aside. Whip the eggs and sugar on medium-high speed until thick and light. On low speed, and the chocolate mixture and vanilla and mix until blended. Fold in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in the remaining chocolate chips and the white chocolate chips. Chill until firm, at least 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350. Drop tablespoons of dough onto a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes.


So if I were to make them again, which I probably won't since there's better looking chocolate cookie recipes in the magazine, I'd add more unsweetened chocolate, more vanilla and maybe some cocoa powder? Dunno, I just think they need a flavor boost.

I am nearing the ends of final exam hell and it hasn't been too bad so far actually. I need to cram my brains out for one more final for Thursday and then I'm pretty much in the clear. After I restock on baking supplies, I am free to relax for awhile and fatten BJ up with baked goods before heading back to Alaska for Christmas, where I can fatten others up as well. Life is good.

Halloween Glutony

Prepare yourself, for in this entry I actually prepare real food! As in, not dessert! Well, there's dessert as well but also savory food! I do actually cook dinner quite a lot. Really. Don't look at me like that.

Before we get to that, however... I had a semi-traumatic, Halloween appropriate experience at the doctor's office the other day, Halloween actually, that I need to vent about.

The appointment itself was fine, I really like my doctor and she's always really helpful and nice. She ordered a bunch of blood work to be done for my weird medical problems (my hands have been going numb, basically). No prob. I'm an easy stick and have no issues with needles or blood, I actually like both of them. I seriously considered a profession in piercing before I realized I could go into nursing and stab people for much better pay and get praised for my kind spirit, etc. I love giving shots, doing IVs and I want to be in anesthesia eventually so I can hang out in surgery all day. So to be clear: I'm not freaked out by blood and needles.

The nurse comes in to draw my blood, has me sit up on the examination table in case I pass out and what not. Stabs me, no biggie. And then blood starts gushing out of my arm all over everything, which, you know, is generally not supposed to happen. The nurse was kind of freaking out, as I would be too if my patient started bleeding copiously, and I'm trying to be helpful and hand her the tubes she needs so she can finish up before I lose all my blood supply. I don't know if it was something wrong with me, the tools or her technique but I certainly didn't want her to try again so I figured the best plan of action was to get it over as quickly as possible.

After taking out the needle and putting pressure on my wound, I stopped bleeding and washed off my bloody arm so everything was honky dory, although the table I was on looked like somebody had just been murdered. Appropriately decorated for Halloween, I guess.

But seriously, what if I did have issues with blood? The nurse was lucky it was me and not, say, Joe’s brother who would’ve passed out even if he had taken sedating drugs before hand and there was no extra blood. I rewarded myself afterward with an overpriced caramel latte. I actually 'reward' myself with those quite a lot lately with different justifications. Calcium! Right? I need to keep my bones strong, etc etc.

After fulfilling my blood and gore requirements for Halloween, I fulfilled the costume requirement by dressing up as Alice in Wonderland and going to work. Then it was home to prep for Joe's Halloween Birthday Extravaganza Dinner, which included:
- pepitas, two ways
- pumpkin soup served in mini roasted pumpkin
- pomegranate pear salad in balsamic vinaigrette
- rosemary bread
- trifle (layered mix of whipped brown butter vanilla birthday cake, chocolate raspberry pudding and berries)

I did some of the prep last night, defrosting the berries (no fresh to be found, unfortunately), making the birthday cake for the trifle and washing preparing the pumpkins. I decided to make pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds) for snacking and topping the soup with so I wrestled with the stringy guts of the pumpkins and then boiled the pepitas in salted water. That way, the salt penetrates the seeds evenly and you don’t need to oil and salt them to death. The next day I tossed the pepitas in an egg white and seasoned them: half with garlic powder and the rest with garam masala. Then I baked them at 350 for about 20 minutes. Since I soaked them in salt before, they didn't need any extra salt at all, really. Neat trick.


Next I worked on the pudding for the trifle, which was basically chocolate pudding that I added left over berry juice and chambord, raspberry liquor, to make a chocolate-berry pudding. It has a LOT of cornstarch in it, so it's very thick. I wanted this for the trifle but if you're just making it for everyday, you may way to cut back on the cornstarch some.

INGREDIENTS:

* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 3 heaping tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1/4 cup cornstarch
* 1/8 teaspoon salt
* 2 3/4 cups milk (I used soy milk)
* 1/4 cup berry juice
* 1 or 2 Tbsp Chambord
* 1 tablespoon butter
* 1 egg yolk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a saucepan, stir together sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Place over medium heat, and stir in milk, chambord and berry juice, if using. Bring to a boil, and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in butter and vanilla. Add some of the warm pudding to the egg yolk and and the pudding-yolk mixture to the pudding and stir for 1 minute. Let cool briefly, and serve warm, or chill in refrigerator until serving.

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The whipped brown butter birthday cake recipe I got from The Sweet Life, my favorite dessert cookbook ever. I can't find the recipe online and since I'm too lazy too type it at the moment, you'll have to wait on that. Delicious though, I love brown butter in desserts, it makes anything taste like english toffee, which is totally okay in my book. I think may have over done my cake a bit, as it was a bit dry, but it was fine in the trifle, I just drizzled some more chambord and berry juice over it.

After I had most of the trifle stuff done, I worked on the bread. The bread recipe threw me off, I had to add at least a cup and a half more flour than it called for to make the dough the right texture. I haven't made much bread myself but I've seen my dad make about a billion loaves and I know that after beating the flour and liquids together, the dough shouldn't be the consistency of soup. After I added more flour it came out fine but I only had enough rosemary for the original recipe, it could've used more rosemary flavor. But oh well! Considering I've only a few loaves of bread, I was pretty happy with how this came out.



Recipe from Martha Stewart

Makes 2 loaves

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
* 1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees)
* 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for bowl
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary, plus 1 tablespoon whole leaves
* 1 1/2 cups plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
* 1 cup whole wheat flour

DIRECTIONS:

1. Stir together yeast and the warm water in the bowl of an electric mixer. Let stand until foamy, about 7 minutes.
2. Add 3/4 cup water, the olive oil, sugar, salt, chopped rosemary, 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, and the whole-wheat flour to bowl. Fit mixer with the dough hook; mix on low speed until dough comes together, about 1 minute. Raise speed to medium-high; mix until dough is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes.
3. Lightly oil a large bowl. Shape dough into a ball, and transfer to oiled bowl. Loosely cover with plastic wrap. Let dough rise in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
4. Punch down the dough; let rest, covered, 15 minutes. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface, and divide in half.
5. Roll one piece into an 11-inch-long loaf. Gently twist dough to create contours, then tuck ends underneath. Transfer to a baking sheet. Press half the rosemary leaves into loaf. Repeat with remaining piece of dough.
6. Loosely cover baking sheet with plastic wrap, and let loaves rise slightly in a warm, draft-free spot 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees.
7. Dust loaves with remaining teaspoon all-purpose flour. Bake until golden, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

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While the bread was doing its thing, I worked on the salad. I planned on a spinach pomegranate salad but the spinach at the store looked pretty pitiful and possibly full of exotic diseases. So I just used a bag of mixed lettuce. Dark greens would've worked much better but c'est la vie. I added some thinly sliced red onion and some pears I saw at the store and couldn't resist because of my love affair with pears. They weren't quite ripe so I roasted them in the oven, which I'm totally doing to every pear I buy from now on. Roasting them hides any imperfections they have and made my slightly unripe pears soft and sweet. Drool.

Salad isn't very photogenic

I used a balsamic vinaigrette based on this recipe from the food network:

INGREDIENTS:

* 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
* 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar, optional
* 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 3/4 cup olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Beat the vinegar in a bowl with the optional sugar, garlic, salt and pepper until sugar and salt dissolves. Then beat in the oil by droplets, whisking constantly. (Or place all the ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake to combine.) Taste and adjust the seasonings.

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I did cut back a lot on the olive oil and used only about 1/4 cup but that's my preference, really.

Is that it? Oh, the soup! I roasted a few mini pumpkins, which I had gutted the night before, for about an hour and while they roasted I made the soup. No recipe, since soup is one thing I feel comfortable improvising. Here's what I know I did: tossed tons of garlic, onion, leek, a little red pepper in some olive oil til everything was nice and soft. Threw some rosemary, thyme and sage at the end. Added a few cups water and two small cans of pureed pumpkin. Added a bunch of vegetable bouillon. Chopped up one huge sweet potato and two small potatoes and added to soup to soften. Finished with some balsamic vinegar, garam masala, brown sugar, a touch of cream and butter. Salt and pepper and more herbs to taste. Something like that.



I originally planned on using the pumpkins as individual serving dishes but the small suckers fit tons of soup in them. Still looked cool though, which was the main function of the pumpkin vessel. I washed them out after dinner was done and may puree them. Or something.


I served the trifles in random glassware we have acquired, layering chunks of cake with pudding and berries. They looked neat.



Oh, what was that? You want a closer look because they look so delicious? If you insist.



Mmm. Overall, I made way too much food but was pleased with how everything turned out. So much so that I ate approximately 12 tons of everything and have ordered Brian to eat the remaining cake. My blood sugar, it cries. But it's Halloween so... okay, there is no excuse really, the treadmill beckons me. But it was worth it.

Nothing for a few days until I successfully beg people to eat all this food. But my mom's birthday is coming up and I promised her I would do a blog entry for her since I can't be there to bake for her in person. It's a surprise though, you'll have to check back!

Three cookies to everybody who read all that.

1 down, 100 to go!

For the first time since this semester started, I don't have a million things to do and I'm kind of at a loss of what to do. I mean, I COULD be doing things but nothing is critical. So I did about a billion loads of laundry today, made vegetarian shepard's pie and then decided to make a cookie recipe from my new cookie magazine. If you recall, it has 101 cookie recipes and I'm determined to make them all.

I chose chocolate souffle cookies fire because they looked easy and since they are basically a modified meringue cookie, they're moderately healthy. Okay, not healthy but not generally artery clogging either.


And um, make these immediately! I loved these. Besides being almost stupidly easy, they're delicious. They have a crunchy, meringue-like shell with a chewy, airy middle. Major yum.

So I'm glad the first recipe I made out of the magazine was a success since I have 100 more recipes to make.

INGREDIENTS:

6 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 large egg whites, at room temp
1/8 tsp. cream of tartar
½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup finely chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS:

Position oven racks in the upper and lower third of the oven and heat the oven to 350. Lightly grease two baking sheets or line them with parchment.

Melt the chocolate and set aside. Using a hand or stand mixer, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until soft peaks form. With the beaters running, gradually add the vanilla and sugar until the egg whites hold stiff peaks but don’t look dry. Pour the nuts and melted chocolate over the whipped whites. Gently fold the mixture with a large rubber spatula, trying not to deflate the egg whites, until the color is just uniform. Immediately drop level measuring tsp. of the batter onto the baking sheets, leaving at least 1 inch between the cookies. Bake until the cookies are shiny and cracked, 10-12 minutes; they should be firm on the outside but still gooey inside when you press them. Slide the parchment liners onto racks or use a metal spatula to transfer the cookies to racks and let cool completely.

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I didn't have any walnuts and decided not to add any other nuts, though I think these would be really good with almond extract and some chopped almonds. But they are delish as is. Also, I dusted mine with powdered sugar because mine were a bit ugly and powdered sugar is a great camouflage. Sophie's amateur decorating tip #1. The next time I make these guys (because I certainly will make them again) I'll try pipping them onto the cookie sheets because they really keep they're shape when they're baked so the ones I kind of sloped on the pan (which was most of them) stayed their ugly selves. But oh well.

Since I don't have much else to say about this recipe, besides that it is fab fab fab and Brian and Joe need to eat them immediately so I don't eat all of them, let's talk about how my brain doesn't work sometimes.

My brain sometimes has trouble sorting out what I'm trying to say and what I'm doing. I have two exceedingly embarrassing examples:
1. Joe and I were at a bookstore once and Joe told me something (I don't remember what because I was so horrified at what happened next) while I was focused on looking through books. So I replied to whatever he said with, "Good job, Book." That's right, I didn't call my boyfriend of 4 years by his name, which you would think would be thoroughly ingrained in my brain by now, but by the object I was looking at. As soon as it dawned on me that I had just called my boyfriend Book, I looked up from the book, exclaimed, "Oh my god, I just called you Book!" and then I dashed away. It must have been an alarming sight for bystanders.
2. This one makes even less sense. Joe and I were watching Lilo and Stitch a couple months ago because we are thoroughly lame when I wanted Joe to pass me the glass of water. At that time, the scene of the movie showed Lilo on the beach. I turned to Joe with every intention of saying, "Can you pass me the water, please?" but instead I said, "Sand?"

How my brain confused 'Please pass the water' with 'Sand' I cannot explain. Early alzheimers, perhaps.

Also, I chopped off a bunch of hair yesterday and dyed it a bit lighter, yay.



Oh so many more baking adventures this week!