A Slice of Concentrated Love

Cakes I've Decorated Lately

2011-09-18T21:04:00.000-04:00

A couple of cake that I've done lately. Just thought I'd group them all together.

Peach Sorbet

2011-09-11T16:37:00.001-04:00

I've already gotten quite a bit of feedback about this on my facebook profile. And, I must say, this peach sorbet was quite good and very easy to make. So break out your ice cream makers and get cracking. Click on the link or scroll down a little.

2 pounds fresh peaches

1 1/2 cups simple syrup (recipe follows)

Juice of 1 lemon

- cut, pit and peel peaches

- blend peaches, simple syrup and lemon juice in blender or food processor until smooth, do in batches if necessary

- at this point follow the instructions on your ice cream maker and process until thickened (it will not be super thick like sorbet, of course, until it is frozen)

- scoop out into a plastic container that can go into the freezer

- enjoy with some whipped cream, a sweetened biscuit (a la cobbler), or a fruit syrup

Simple Syrup

2 cups water

2 cups sugar

- heat in a saucepan until sugar is dissolved, bring to a quick boil, then cool before using

- store leftover syrup in fridge, can be used in sweet tea, coffee, etc.

Brown Sugar Peach Scones

2011-08-08T18:26:00.019-04:00

I’ll be keeping posts short and to the point for the next couple posts. I have quite a few things lined up so I’ll just be posting pics and recipes. Today it is the peach scones I made this weekend. We went to a local community event last week and saw these beautiful peaches that a local farmer was selling. He unfortunately only took cash or check and we only had a card on us. He was so sweet and bagged three peaches and just gave them to us. So, if you are in Virginia Beach and are looking for local produce, please go check out the Flip Flop Farmer. Right now he’s set up every Wednesday at our Y-not Wednesday Free Concert Series & Farmer’s Market. But that doesn’t last much longer, so they do have a stand on their farm, just so you know. Just follow the link to find out more.

OK, I know I wasn’t going to talk much but that’s the back story and now here are the pics and recipe.

Brown Sugar Peach Scones**

Adapted from Cream Scones in Art & Soul of Baking

10 ounces AP flour

2 ounces brown sugar

2 ½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

2 peaches cut in small dice

4 ounces unsalted butter cut in small cubes

1 cup cold heavy whipping cream

1 egg lightly beaten

2 T turbinado or raw sugar (I used straight brown sugar, but only because that’s what I had)

- preheat oven to 425*
- Mix flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.
- Cut in cold butter with a pastry cutter or fork. I work the butter in with my hands at first then use a fork. Cut in until butter is cut to medium or pea sized.

- Mix in cold heavy whipping cream and peaches. Mix until just incorporated, DO NOT OVER MIX.

- Grease an 8” round cake pan and pat scone mixture in then let freeze for about 30 minutes or over night. (Side note: perfect recipe to make up to this point then bake off first thing in the morning for breakfast)

- Pull out of freezer and tap out onto cutting board. (You may need to run a knife around the edges to ease it out) Cut round into 8 equal wedges and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

- Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown around edges. (It took me about 30 minutes to bake but I have an ooooooold oven)

**Just to let you know these aren’t typical scones. They aren’t, as my mom put it, dry. I know scones aren’t dry, they are flakey, but you get the point. These are very nice and moist and tasty.

Vanilla Ice Cream & Loaded Banana Bread

2011-07-18T19:45:00.000-04:00

I haven’t been up to much in the kitchen lately. And I guess it took so long getting back to my blog this time because I was hoping to have more to say. But not really.

What I have done is a very yummy vanilla ice cream with strawberries and a banana pecan chocolate chip bread. Both are quite good if-I-do-say-so-myself.

So the first one, the ice cream, is a recipe that I borrowed from a friend and tweaked soooooo, I guess it’s kinda my recipe. But I like it so much I’ll share it with you. Now it’s not strawberry ice cream it’s vanilla with strawberries in it. And very good. I was going for strawberry ice cream but I didn’t get to macerate the strawberries long enough. I didn’t really have a time limit I just really wanted ice cream really bad so I guess I should say I didn’t let them macerate long enough :) Now if you do what I did here and just fold the strawberries into the ice cream at least cut the strawberries smaller then I did. I don’t know what I was thinking but smaller next time, Stacey, smaller.

The banana pecan chocolate chip bread is a hit so far. This I made just because I needed a stress outlet at the time and I had all the ingredients. I followed the Joy of Baking recipe and added 1 cup of chocolate chips, which maybe next time I would do a half cup. And I also added one extra banana but just sliced up, not mashed. And, oh yeah, I added some freshly grated nutmeg too. Maybe a pinch. So it is a loaded loaf of banana bread. And I think that is what I shall name it: Loaded Banana Bread. Sounds like it needs to be soaked in some kinda liquor though. Another lightbulb! I might have to work on that…..

Vanilla Ice Cream

1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
¾ c egg yolks ( I ended up using 6 but I had extra large eggs on hand)
½ sugar
1 T vanilla paste

- Mix together egg yolks and sugar in a metal bowl and set aside.

- Mix together heavy cream and milk in a pot and put on stove to scald. Don’t bring to a boil, once you see bubbles around the edge you are good to go.

- Temper the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture by slow adding the hot milk as you are whisking the egg yolks.

- (This is my extra little step) Put the metal bowl filled with the ice cream base and set over a pot of boiling water. Constantly stir with spatula, scraping sides of bowl to ensure eggs won’t scramble. Do this just until you notice it to thicken. This is just like making an anglais but I’m not looking for that kind of thickness. Remove from heat and add vanilla paste.

- Allow to cool completely. Pour mixture into another metal bowl that is in an ice water bath. Don’t stick the metal bowl that you just used on the double boiler. It will just melt all the ice immediately.

- At this point follow the instructions for your ice cream machine. Once the ice cream comes together and looks like ice cream scrape the ice cream into a freezer container and now is the time to fold in the strawberries if you so want to. But this ice cream is very good just as vanilla ice cream.

- If you want to enjoy it now as soft ice cream I wouldn’t blame you. At least help yourself to some now then freeze the rest for dinner later. Then a mid morning snack then a pre dinner snack… You get the idea :)

Cruel Summer

2011-06-29T16:27:00.001-04:00

Hey there. You thought I disappeared again didn’t you? Not quite. I haven’t been super busy but I’ve been keeping busy with a couple projects: both kitchen and non-kitchen related. My main project right now is painting my room. It used to be this yucky brown and hopefully, soon, it will be a nice bright green. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. My other project is keeping my daughter and I entertained while we’re on summer break. That’s probably the most daunting task.

Kitchen related! I made a cute Elmo cake for another of my mom’s co-workers. It came out so cute. I love doing those cakes. The lady I did loved the cake design but not so much the cake. She said it tasted “wheaty”. I am always willing to take criticism and I usually know what’s wrong before I get any criticism. I am my own worst critic after all. But I know you can’t please all the people all the time and I guess that’s what happened this time. If anyone has any ideas of why it would taste “wheaty” I would love to know. I tasted it myself and it tasted like cake, I didn’t think it tasted off in any way. But I will post a picture of it soon.

My daughter had an end of school pool party over at a friend’s house and I supplied the cupcakes. I made a banana cupcake with chocolate swiss meringue butter cream, a chocolate cupcake with a vanilla swiss meringue butter cream and a white cupcake with a cotton candy flavored swiss meringue butter cream. That cotton candy butter cream is my new all time favorite and I ended up eating the rest of it like it was ice cream. I want to make some right now just because! Anyways, all the cupcakes were a hit but they’re cupcakes and my audience was kids. So, I would have had to make really nasty cupcakes for them to not be a hit.

Also kitchen related and keeping-my-daughter-entertained related: we made a couple things out of some of her cookbooks. She has these three cookbooks all from the same publishing company: Pink Princess Cookbook, Fairies Cookbook and Mermaid Cookbook. They are all super cute and for the most part they have recipes that any little girl would love to dig into. But there are some recipes that I’m not sure what kid would like it. But most of them are little girl friendly and little girl approved.

The first one we tried was Rainbow Milks out of the Pink Princess Cookbook. This one didn’t turn out so great but it my fault. The recipe gives you the choice to use pretty much any fresh or frozen fruit. We chose blueberry. That wasn’t the mistake though. I made the big mistake of pouring the vanilla into the measuring spoon while it was over the bowl. And, well…… I ended up pouring too much in… Oops! It ended up tasting, well, yucky. My bad!

Another one we tried was the Bitsy Banana Bread Bites also out of the Pink Princess Cookbook. I love! love! love! banana bread. This one is very kid friendly. I basically just measured everything out for my daughter and she threw it all in the bowl and mixed it herself. We only changed one thing. I had some old bananas in the freezer and when they defrosted they produced that yummy liqueur and instead of using vanilla we used that. Let’s just say that I ate about half of the banana bread.

The last one we tried was the Fruit Salsa out of the Mermaid Cookbook. This was kinda kid friendly. While I was cutting up kiwis, apples and strawberries I had her measuring and dumping blueberries and raspberries. But her job didn’t take very long and she ended up standing there waiting on me to finish. The only thing I have to say about this is that the end product doesn’t quite look like the picture in the cookbook but I thought it was very good. My little girl only eats the strawberries and kiwis and I eat the rest so it’s a group effort but it gets high marks from us.

Bitsy Banana Bread Bites (makes 24 mini muffins)

word for word from the Pink Princess Cookbook (except for my changes, of course)

3 bananas

1 egg

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup oil

1 teaspoon vanilla (we used the liqueur from the frozen bananas)

1/2 cup pecans, mini chocolate chips, or dried cranberries (optional) (we used pecans)

powdered sugar for dustng (we didn't even bother with this)

small, fresh, edible flowers (optional) (again, we didn't bother with this)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees (I think we upped it to 350).

Mash bananas in a mixing bowl.

Add remaining ingredients (except optional ingredients), stirring until just blended. Fold in pecans, mini chocolate chips, or dried cranberries if using.

Line a mini muffin tin with 24 paper liners or spray with nonstick cooking spray. Divide batter evenly between mini muffin cups.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Dust with powdered sugar and garnish with a small, edible flower if desired.

It's a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.

Walter Winchell (1897 - 1972)

An Orange Dreamsicle and an Irish Car Bomb

2011-06-06T23:48:00.002-04:00

I’M BACK! AND IT DIDN’T TAKE MONTHS! WOOHOO!

OK Enough all caps. First of all, thanks for the well wishes. It’s much appreciated. I started my first infusion of Remicade and so far so good. I have to go again in two weeks for another one and after that it should be all clear from there and only go every eight weeks.

On the culinary front I’ve kept a little busy. I made two cakes for a small banquet at my mom’s work. They were celebrating a few birthdays and one guy really liked the Irish Car Bomb cupcakes I made once before so I made it a cake this time. And my mom wanted something kind of on the lighter side for the other cake. It being summer and one of my favorite ways to keep cool is with an Orange Dreamsicle I decided to do an Orange Dreamsicle Cake.

Before I go any further, I apologize now. I don’t have many pictures. I did these cakes really late at night and that was really the last thing on my mind.

Back to the cakes. The Irish Car Bomb Cake is a Guinness Stout Chocolate cake that I grabbed off of epicurious.com. The only thing I changed was whole milk for sour cream. Probably made it a slacker batter than they intended but the end result was amazing. I picked it because it was very easily cut in half and I didn’t need much. And even cut in half it still made THREE POUNDS of batter. THREE POUNDS!!! Sorry about the caps again. On to the Guinness Stout Chocolate Cake I put a Jameson’s sugar wash: one cup water, one cup sugar and one sampler bottle of Jameson's. Then, I ice it with Bailey’s Irish Cream Butter Cream. As a finishing touch, a sprinkle of cocoa powder on top.

For the Orange Dreamsicle Cake I took a basic yellow cake recipe that I found on Smitten Kitchen and replaced the buttermilk with orange juice. I also took the zest of one orange and added that in as I was creaming the butter and sugar. It came out moist and flavorful and perfect. I halved that recipe too but came out with two pounds which was just perfect. Just a heads up if you try this recipe, when you add the orange juice the mixture separates. I just used the whip attachment and let ‘er go. But once the flour is added it is just as smooth as any other recipe. And like I said, it came out wonderfully. On top of that cake I did an orange juice sugar wash, just equal parts sugar and orange juice. I filled it with vanilla butter cream and iced it with orange butter cream. I got a chance to try this one and it was so good.

Again, sorry for the lack of pictures. I’ll work on that next time. Next thing I’m making are some muffins for my daughter’s Daisy Scout Troop. They sold enough cookies that they earned a trip to a local water park and we get to stay overnight so I offered to help with breakfast. Then, I get to make an Elmo cake for one of my mom’s co-workers. Those are so fun to do and I will definitely take pictures of that.

So, until next time, love ya!

Butter Cream Base
from the Art & Soul of Baking
4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 pound butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix the egg whites and sugar in a bowl of a double boiler. Place bowl over pot of boiling water and constantly stir, scraping sides constantly. Heat until sugar is dissolved. To test, occasionally take off heat and swipe finger over spatula (warning: it will be hot) and if you still feel sugar put back on heat and keep stirring and scraping. When ready, whip in a stand mixer until doubled in volume and light and fluffy looking. Kind of marhmallowy. At this point I take butter that isn't room temp but isn't straight out of the fridge either. Depending on the time of year and how hot or cold it is in the house, I take the butter out as I'm starting this whole process. Making sure that the egg whites are cool enough (if you can touch the mixing bowl that you are whipping the egg whites in without burning your hand off then it's cooled enough) I cut the butter thinly as I drop it into the egg whites as it is still whipping. Sometimes the butter cream will not come together until the very last bit of butter goes in. Give it a chance make sure you scrape the bowl so all the butter gets whipped in. Then add the vanilla extract.

Variations:
- add Bailey's starting with 4 teaspoons and then adding 2 teaspoons at a time to taste.
- add zest of one orange

Starting Over

2011-05-31T16:08:00.000-04:00

I’m going to try to start this all over again. I haven’t been very good at keeping up with this blog and I haven’t even tried to keep up with it at all. But I’ve had quite a lot going on personally. So this blog post is to reintroduce myself to blogging and to tell you what’s been going on. This is by no means a short explanation and I think I am posting this more for me than anyone else’s use. If it somehow helps someone or lets someone know that there’s someone else out there with these problems then that’s just an added bonus.

When I was 15 I was diagnosed with chronic ulcerative colitis. Basically, if you don’t know about it, during a flare I have ulcers all over my large intestine and almost all foods are off limits. And the majority of my life is spent in the bathroom. It sucks majorly.

I had my initial flare when I was diagnosed at 15 and that was somewhat easily and quickly controlled. I stayed in remission for a good long time. It was almost like I never had a problem. My second flare was a couple months after I had my daughter. That was also quickly controlled. Not as quickly but knowing what I could have gone through, it was swift. But that flare was a lot more severe and wreaked havoc on my body. It was to the point that they were thinking of throwing me in the hospital. But having a four month old baby dependant on me made them hesitate. There was also talk of surgery but they put it off with a lot of medications, some that didn’t agree with me. But it somehow all worked out.

Then came this last flare. Last summer I was having a lot of swelling and pain in my feet. At first there was swelling in my arches. So, doctors thought that I was suffering from fallen arches so they told me to stay off my feet for a couple days. Kinda hard when you work on your feet for a living! But I did it and that swelling went down but the swelling migrated to the rest of my feet. It was excruciating to be on my feet at this point and ended up having to take more time off of work and seeing more doctors. I went through a bazillion tests and x-rays. I was put on steroids to get the swelling down but it took a couple rounds of that to finally get it under control and for somebody to realize that I have arthritis brought on by my colitis.

This whole time my colitis wasn’t cooperating. It wasn’t a problem at first but one of the first meds they gave me was Ibuprofen even though I made it clear that I had colitis and Ibuprofen is a big no-no. I don’t know if I was going to get sick anyways or if the Ibuprofen set it off but I was definitely getting sick again.

Fast forward to the start of this spring. I started getting these red bumps on my left leg that, at first, looked like they were pimples or ingrown hairs. Gross, I know, but that’s what it looked like. They got bigger and more popped up. It once again began to be very painful to walk. It hurt to even get out of bed. It hurt to walk up and down stairs. It hurt to just stand. My doctor gave me yet another round of steroids to calm the inflammation down. They almost went away then popped up worse than ever after I was done with that round of steroids. I returned to the doctor and he put me on antibiotics not sure of what the problem was and when that didn’t do anything he sent me to a dermatologist that knew exactly what it was the second she looked at my legs: erythema nodosum. Another condition due to my colitis.

I seem to have it under control right now but only cause I am now on my seventh round of steroids in less than a year. Long term use of steroids does not agree with the body and apparently my colitis has gotten too out of control for the meds that I’ve been on. My doctor now has me starting Remicade soon. I haven’t taken it lightly since Remicade is really expensive and one of those medications that you hear has side effects that include cancer and death. I’m hoping that this works because this is really my last option.

Assuming that the Remicade will work and make me all better I am going to take this summer and work on some things that I’ve been meaning to experiment with or perfect or just play with. And if I’m a good little girl I will post my results, good or bad, here.

Cupcakes and Cookies and Gettin' My Groove Back

2010-09-04T17:54:00.000-04:00

Man! I hit a slump there for awhile. We all hit them but man, did-i-hit-this-one-hard. I told you about the wedding cake that melted on me. Then I had this birthday cake to do for a customer's birthday. It was so beautiful in my head. It was to be peacock colors and stacked and just great. But when it got down to it and I was putting it together it just wasn't cooperating. The fondant wasn't cooperating. The cake wasn't cooperating. The cake topper I made for it wasn't cooperating. It was making me question myself in a big way. Not to make excuses for myself, but one problem is how hot and humid it's been here and it can throw everything off. PLUS (and I mean a BIG PLUS) my newly diagnosed arthritis has screwed with me a lot too.

But I think I got my groove back. I had a recipe that I wanted to play with and my mom just so happened to need something to take into work with her. A coworker of hers was celebrating five years of remission from breast cancer. YOU GO GIRL! And all the ladies in the office threw her a party and it was requested to make something with chocolate. So I tried these chocolate merlot cupcakes. I noticed that the batter was really slack and I worried about that a little bit. I continued with the cupcake plan though. I didn't have time to bake a cake, wait for it to cool and then frost it. While they were baking I made some Merlot Swiss Butercream. It took quite a bit of merlot to taste the merlot. I actually lost count of how much I put in :) oops. But once you could taste it, it was quite good. It would have been better with chocolate buttercream, but I was low on any kind of chocolate. So, anyways, back to what I was talking about. So after frosting all the cupcakes I tried one. I took the wrapper off and the cupcake fell apart. Just what I was afraid of. It would have been good as a cake, still crumbly, but better than for a cupcake (in my opinion). But it was tasty none the less. But needs work.

TA-DA!!

Then this past week I did cookies for another customer. She just needed some tropical fish and surfboards but I did a couple extra to play with. They were so cute. And I glittered them all up. Whatcha think?

Six Impossible Things (if you don't get it now, you'll get it later)

2010-06-27T17:52:00.000-04:00

I hardly ever get to sit down and add to my blog posts. I've been keeping busy and doing things to tell you about. But other things seem to always pop up. I am a living poster child for "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." The main thing that's making life a tad "impossible" (see posting title) is that I apparently have some issues with tendons in both feet. Yes. Both feet. Kinda makes my baking job "impossible" and makes life in general a little more difficult. I don't know exactly what's going on with these tendons but I find out July 6. Or at least the doctor will let me know by then if he's figured out my MRI.

So, ANYWAYS, impossible things 1 & 2. I did a very cute little cake for a little girl's second birthday. And another cake for an office birthday party. It was my take on Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes. I've been hearing a lot about them here and there but really got inspired by Cupcake Rehab's post. I didn't do her exact recipe and method. Especially since I did it in cake form. But I saw her cupcakes and just had to do it.

#3 I tried to do some sugar cookies for my daughter's dance class. They're dancing to "Red Red Robin" and they all look like cute little flapper girls. IT'S SO DANG CUTE!!!!!! So I made sugar cookies that look like their costume and some that are ballerina cut outs.Only problem is is that I ran out of time before the recital, but I did do some anyways. I was determined to at least get my idea out of my head and onto the cookie!!! When it comes to doing things for myself I always come last.

#4 This Sunday I did a wedding cake that I thought would be stunning. Not tooting my own horn here but the colors are amazing and the mock-up I did lookied very promising. There was a little bit of back and forth about the original design but in the end he trusts me and my taste. It was a very beautiful cae but because of the heat the top stack started drooping!!! As you can probably see in the pic. I was not a happy camper. There was a huge blob on one side that all I could do was turn it away from the front and cover any other "melt-downs" with roses.

#5 I also did a birthday cake for a very good customer. She requested stargazer lilies on top and she got them, I just wish I had had time to practice them so I could've make them myself. She gave me more than enough notice for the cake but I don't think I could have mastered stargazer lilies for this cake. And I won't give someone something I did in practice or training. Personal memo: start working on sugar flowers!!!! On top of that she asked for a strawberry cake which I still haven't mastered. It tastes great but not very strawberry-ish. So I just tried to bring the flavors out as much as I could with a strawberry liqueur sugar wash and strawberry buttercream filling.

#6 I've also been working on sketches of potential sugar cookies inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Don't think I'm going the easy route here. I'm not just doing little cookies that say eat me, although they will be included, I'm actually planning on some pretty artsy stuff here. And they will definitely be posted here when I make them.

If you are wondering: why Alice in Wonderland cookies??? I will tell you. I'm a tad bit into Alice stuff. My mom married into a Cheshire family and therefore we have Cheshire cats here there and everywhere. And I kind of got attached to the story and characters because of it. I was super excited when the recent movie was released and owned a copy the day it was released on DVD. And this also explains my "six impossible things", if you've read the book or seen the recent movie you already knew.

movie quote: I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can disappear. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I can slay the Jabberwocky.--Alice

novel quote: "Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

2010-05-08T18:13:00.000-04:00

I've done quite a bit again since last I blogged. Still some baby shower things but I did some cookies for a little girl's first birthday and I'm working on a fifth birthday cake today (pictures will come ASAP I promise).

Everybody's Having Babies

2010-04-05T08:11:00.000-04:00

These are the second set of baby cookies I've done recently and I have at least one more set to do in the near future. This week in fact. These are for my boss. My gift to him and his wife They had a baby boy March 27.

The Real Deal Baby!

2010-04-05T00:53:00.003-04:00

I had every intention of putting my little girl to bed Saturday night then getting up to start my hot cross buns so that we could have them for Easter brunch. No such luck. I passed out and didn't get up until 7 am just to say to myself "oh well" and roll back over. At least my mom's coworkers will get to enjoy them for breakfast.

They were easy enough to bake. Easier if my five year old didn't have to fight for my attention while I was making them. And then I ended up proofing them around the same time the ham went in the oven so I had to put them in the fridge to slow the proofing down until the oven was ready for me. But most of them came out beautifully and they are as delicious as they look.

Now I say these are the real deal because my mom doesn't remember hot cross buns coming with all this frosting that grocery stores put on theirs. And she remembers different fruit being in it. And a lot of times I hear people say that there shouldn't be any frosting on them at all. All the sweetness should come from the bun. AND. I got this recipe from one of the new books I purchased recently: Irish Traditional Cooking by Darina Allen.

Hot Cross Buns

from the book Irish Traditional Cooking by Darina Allen

1 oz fresh yeast

1/2 cup superfine sugar (I used regular sugar only because that's what I had on hand, it's not too hard to find though)

1 to 1 1/4 cup tepid milk (I ended up only using one cup)

3 1/4 cups bread flour

6 T butter

1/4 t cinnamon

1/4 t nutmeg

1 to 2 t mixed spice (I had to look this up and the mix varies but I used a mix of 6t corriander, 5t cinnamon, 3t nutmeg, 2t ginger, 1t cloves and I only ended up using 1 teaspoon in this recipe)

pinch of salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup currants

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/4 cup chopped peel (double checked with my mom, orange peel)

2oz shortcrust pastry (recipe to follow)

egg wash (milk, sugar and egg yolk according to recipe, I just used one egg beaten smoothe)

shortcrust pastry

8T butter

2 T superfine granulated sugar (again, I just used what I had)

1 egg

1 1/3 cups flour

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat for several minutes. Reduce speed and mix in flour. Chill for at least an hour before use.

Dissolve the yeast with 1 T of the sugar in a little tepid milk. (I used 1 cup of milk here)

Put the flour into a bowl. Rub in the butter; add the cinnamon, nutmeg, mixed spice, a pinch of salt and the remainder of the sugar. Mix well.

Beat the eggs and add to the milk. Make a well in the center of the flour. Add the yeast and most of the liquid and mix to a soft dough, (add more milk of necessary). (Here, since I added the yeast to 1 cup of milk I added the beaten egg to the yeast/milk mixture and that's all I needed for the recipe, I didn't need anymore milk)

Leave for 2 to 3 minutes, then knead until smooth. Add the currants, sultanas and chopped peel and continue to knead until the dough is shiny. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise in a warm place until it doubles in size. Punch down the dough, by kneading it for 3 to 4 minutes. (I just punched it down) Rest it for a few minutes, then shape it into 1 1/2 inch balls. ( I got 16 out of this) Put them onto a baking sheet and brush the tops with egg wash. Mark the top of each bun with a cross. Carefully put a cross made of thin strips of shortcrust pastry onto each bun. Leave the buns to rise again to double their size, and brush again carefully with egg wash.

Bake in a preheated oven at 425* for 5 minutes, then reduce the heat to 400* for a further 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. (The commercial baker in me that's used to not having the luxury of changing oven temps for everything I put in the oven just stuck with 425* for 15 minutes and they came out fine.)

**Side note: This is my first time working with fresh yeast. Boy was I surprised by the smell.

P.S. Check out my Easter Egg pics here. They were so pretty.

New Stuff!

2010-03-29T23:27:00.000-04:00

Today I got some extra money for the extra jobs I've been doing and I quickly went to invest my money properly. I went cookbook shopping. I went a wee bit overboard. But, like I said, it's an investment. The Silver Spoon is somethng I've wanted for awhile. It's the Italian's cookbook bible. Mastering the Art of French Cooking is something my mom wanted me to have after watching Julie & Julia. And Irish Traditional Cooking is something I picked up because: 1. I needed a good soda bread recipe, 2. I needed a good hot cross buns recipe and 3. my mom and I are curious about our Irish heritage. She grew up a little closer to our heritage than I got a chance to but she says her memory is foggy. So, I picked that up too.

Yeah a little overboard but I can't wait to attack them!

90th Birthday Cake

2010-03-29T15:39:00.002-04:00

This is the 90th birthday cake I referred to in my last post. I was told it was a big hit and people were asking for my number. I love doing cakes but they take up so much time and energy. But they also get the biggest reactions. So, basically, you get back exactly what you put into it. I never went to bed the night before I delivered it so I crashed HARD Saturday night. Crashed so hard that my daughter got up in the middle of the night and I didn't even know it.

Baby Shower Cookies

2010-03-26T22:56:00.005-04:00

I've been lucky enough lately that my "side business" (it's not totally official yet) is picking up. My latest project was for a friend that found my on facebook through another friend that I did those purse cookies for. I love these cookies so much. They were so much fun to do and I was given some creative license with them.

Next project that I'm working on now is a birthday cake for a 90th birthday party. Can't wait because the party is also a close friend's first big catering gig. I know she's gonna rock it. Actually it's three people I went to school with that are starting this new catering company. I'll let you guys know more when I know more. I don't want to give you guys the wrong info.

Pancake Day

2010-02-16T17:45:00.003-05:00

Well, apperently it's Pancake Day. Guess what that means! Breakfast for dinner and I'm makin' pancakes. My basic go to pancake recipe from The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cook Book:

1 1/4 c AP flour
2 T sugar
2 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
1 egg
1 1/3 c milk
3 T oil

mix dry ingredients in one bowl
mix wet ingredients in another bowl
add wet ingredients to dry ingredients
spoon desired amount of batter onto hot buttered griddle
when batter bubbles and edges look dry flip and cook until golden (2 minutes max)
remove from griddle and serve immediately

Add whatever fillings you wish right after you pour onto griddle and before you flip. Blueberries, chocolate chips, bananas....

HAPPY PANCAKE DAY!!!!

P.S. I had some yummy banana pancakes while my daughter had a chocolate chip pancake. Yummmmmmm........

2010-02-08T16:13:00.006-05:00

I was pretty busy this week. At work, my work load has practically doubled and I only get about 2 more hours a day to get it all done. I like the pace, keeping busy and all, but a little help on the little jobs would help out a lot. But that's for me to tell my boss, not you. Then, I had two cakes to do. One was originally scheduled for last Saturday but we got snowed in. We never get snowed in. Normally, flurries and a dusting shuts everything down. But this was at least 6 inches and that's unheard of here. So that cake was rescheduled for Thursday. Then the other cake was for this past Saturday. But I also had 40 purse cookies to decorate.

I didn't sleep much last week.

So here are the labors of my love:

I still need to get a picture of the snow day cake from my mom. If I don't post it here it will definitely be on flickr.

Coffee Profiteroles

2010-01-04T13:29:00.005-05:00

So, I was being mopey yesterday. A don't get outta my pjs all day and I don't wanna do anything kinda day. But to try to get out of my blah blues I wanted to do something and that something is almost always baking related. So I pulled out my old friend, The Art and Soul of Baking. For some reason I've been wanting to play around with pate a choux so that right there narrowed it down. And it had to be sweet. But profiteroles or eclairs. Hmmmm. I decided profiteroles. (And you would know this if you read the previous post).

I didn't want to make just plain old profiteroles though. Not a big fan. Well, I have a lot of coffee and coffee related products lying around so POOF! coffee profiteroles. I made a basic pastry cream and instead of vanilla I added 3 T kahlua. It tasted like heaven! If you like coffee.

Then for the ganache topping I added 1 t kahlua to the milk right after it came to a boil. But it threw off the ratio of milk to chocolate so I ended up adding a lot more chocolate than I thought I needed. Thank goodness I had that lying around too. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of how much I threw in because I just started adding whatever I had. Let's just say I did a lot of finger crossing and praying for it to turn out.

Then for the last touch I sprinkled it with gold sanding sugar. Again, cause it was lying around. I was gonna sprinkle it with cocoa powder but I was trying to get rid of the sugar. Anyways, it all makes for one very good profiterole.

Sometimes the blahs are good :)

Pate a Choux (this recipe is Art & Soul's but the method of prep is in my words)

1 cup water

1 stick butter or 1/4 cup butter

1 cup flour

4 eggs

Preheat oven to 400*. Cube the butter and put in saucepan. Add water and bring to a boil. As soon as it starts to boil add flour all at once and beat the flour until it is well incorporated. Put into bowl of stand mixer and beat with paddle attachment till bowl is warm to touch. Add eggs one at a time until it reaches the right consistency (this part is about the hardest part since it's hard to describe, but the batter shouldn't be really thick but it shouldn't be slack at all either). You may not need all the eggs called for in the recipe. Use your best judgement. Continue beating until the gluten is developed. To check for this pinch some batter off with your forefinger and thumb and try to stretch the dough. If it breaks it isn't ready. If it stretches without breaking as you pull your fingers apart, it's ready. Another thing to look for is the "wagon wheel", a chef instructor told me that as the paddle is going around it will leave a wagon wheel pattern in the dough. You may say "Huh?" now but if you try this and look for it then you'll say "OH! Wagon wheel! I get it!". On cookie sheets lined with parchment, pipe desired shapes out: rectangle for eclairs and rosette for profiteroles. I might actually try to demonstrate this one day but until then, I apologize. Bake for 20 minutes at 400*, drop temp down to 350* and bake for 20 minutes, drop temp again to 300* and bake for 20 minutes. Let cool before filling. Can be frozen and stored for later use.

I'm doing these again soon since apparently they were rather popular. And the guy that fixed my computer is taking payment in eclairs. So I will fill you in with the recipe for the pastry cream when I make then again. I'm playing with flavors so tune in!

Fun With Pate a Choux

2010-01-03T16:29:00.002-05:00

Right now I'm working on profiteroles. In fact they are in the oven as I type. I'll post again when they are all done but I thought I would share a funny story about these first. I once had a boss that thought these were soooo difficult to make. In fact she kinda made it a test to see how good you were. I never got to try them out with her because I was just a cake decorator there. But, and this is the funny part, these are soooo easy to make. She was just one of those people that thought too highly of herself and made it seem like anything she did was to much for anyone else to do. And something else that was funny about her: she called her profiteroles eclairs. Eclairs and profiteroles are basically the same. But if they are long they are eclairs. If they are a ball they are profiteroles.

Anyways, didn't say this was going to be an enlightening post. Just wanted to share something amusing before I shared my work.

Do You Remember Me?

2009-12-15T14:10:00.009-05:00

Yeah. So ummm. It's been awhile. How've you been? Whatcha been up to? Oh really? Wow. Very interesting. Oh. Me? Well, not much. Just school, work, kid. Same ole same ole.

I've been keeping busy in the dessert and pastry world. Not so much in bread. Which is a shame. I meant to make challah for Thanksgiving but I ended up pretty much doing everything for that dinner that there was no time for that. Instead of going through a whole essay of work I've done I'll just share the pics:

My turkey. Isn't he pretty?

Orange tartlets.

Bunny groom's cake. Not my work but my friend helped out for this wedding.

Wedding Cake. This ended up being pretty tall. Or taller than I'm used to dealing with. It was a nightmare getting it set up.

P.S. Cassie, you happy now? :)

WOW!

2009-10-20T18:06:00.003-04:00

Just realized I haven't been here since August. But in my defense my computer's been sick and I haven't been able to upload pics. I could use my mom's mac but we don't like each other (the computer and me that is). I have been busy. I've finished almost all my culinary classes, I'm finishing up my gen ed right now, and I have a wedding cake this weekend and another possible job later. I've been taking pictures, so when I finally get around to uploading them somewhere I'll post all of them.

Hello... Again

2009-08-26T17:47:00.004-04:00

To my few followers, I've missed you. I've been busy busy busy. I started one job and then ended up taking another job somewhere else. A steadier job with a possible future. Say it ain't so! It can't be true.

So anyways, I haven't had much time for anything. In my free time I sleep. I'm one of those now lol. But I just started my pastry class (and my last lab class for school, YIPPEE!) so whatever cute things I make there I'll try to take pictures and show it off. I am also entering a cake competition so there will be pictures from that. And I've been comissioned to do a couple cakes coming up so there will be pictures from that too.

And lastly, very certainly not least, my last chef instructor suggested I try getting into this pastry school down in Orlando. He says with a letter from him I'm as good as in so I just need to find the money to do it. Anyone willing to make a contribution? :) But that probably won't happen til next summer at the earliest.

I hope to get back on here again real soon with something worth talking about and showing off. Later.

Blueberry Buckle From Cook's Illustrated

2009-08-06T11:49:00.003-04:00

Wow! Long time no see. This will be super short because I'm coming from one appointment and getting ready to go to my job and really I should be spending this time with my little girl. But I made blueberry buckle the other day and I just had to share this pretty picture of it.

Buckle is a kind of coffee cake, so Cook's says, and it is, but as they also say it is mostly fruit. Like 2 parts fruit to 1 part batter. Hopefully tonight I'll sit down and add the recipe to this post. Be patient to the few of you that actually read this and haven't given up on me. :-P

Blueberry Muffins

2009-07-08T16:21:00.006-04:00

I have about five different blogs I follow that have done blueberry muffins or cupcakes and I've been craving them since the first blueberry post I saw. We had breakfast last night for dinner (my fave!) and I had my mom pick up some blueberries for my pancakes. Well, pancakes don't really need that many blueberries (especially since I'm really the only one that eats them that way) so I made Banana Blueberry Muffins. I found a recipe on epicurious.com, my go-to site for recipes, and found a banana chocolate chip muffin (check the recipe out) and switched out the chocolate for blueberries. The only thing I did really was increase the amount of blueberries. I think I put in a cup but I say add as many as you like. These are very very yummy and moist. I should have put crumble on top but I wasn't thinking. It was late and I was tired.

Fourth of July

2009-07-05T18:58:00.003-04:00

Happy Fourth everyone! I know I'm late but I was a little busy. This is going to be very short today. This is another decorated cookie entry. So recipes are still the same. Same sugar cookies. Same royal icing. But anyways, I made these cookies with my little girl. I'm hoping to make this something we do every holiday: I make the fancy cookies while she paints them. Eventually she'll get into decorating them too and we'll be a pair of decorating cookie fools! So here she is showing off her cookies and may I just say, she did a spectacular job, just look at the pride in her eyes.

And here's my take on the Fourth of July cookies.

Hope you had fun and enjoyed fireworks somewhere, if not here's a pic of what I saw.

Southern Sweet Tea Cake

2009-06-27T00:17:00.011-04:00

My mom recently discovered this sweet tea flavored vodka and she brought some home the other day. We tasted it and it tastes like someone added a lot of vodka to their sweet tea. Which I have no clue why anyone would want to do that. I'm not a fan of vodka so this isn't something I'd drink straight and I can't think of what to mix it with. But my brain got to churning and thought about Sweet Tea cupcakes and cakes. I took my basic yellow cake recipe and substituted this sweet tea vodka for the dairy (milk, sour cream, yogurt). The outcome was OK but the vodka taste was a little strong, which I thought was weird. But I stayed with my idea. This time I made a batch of the same yellow cake but I brewed myself some really strong tea and used that instead of milk, yogurt or sour cream. That outcome was better, not a strong tea flavor but still good. Next time I might brew even stronger tea.

So, I wanted the buttercream to match of course. Right? So, in this case I just used a simple buttercream: 1 part butter, 2 parts powdered sugar. I brewed some more really strong tea and used that in place of vanilla. I added just enough til it started to change in color, I think 3 T. Then tasted it. Still not very tea-ish but a good start. I frosted a cupcake and tasted. Still not very tea-ish. So I added a teaspoon of lemon extract (I would have used real lemon but I didn't have any), adjusted the powdered sugar cause it was getting too loose and tasted again (too much of this tasting could start to show at the beach, if you know what I mean). It tastes just like sweet tea with lemon. So cool. I frosted another cupcake and tasted again (oh dear lord, again) and it was so good. I still think I need to make really really strong tea. But I'm working on it.

So, if you have any ideas about what to do with that sweet tea vodka, let me know. I don't drink vodka straight so if you have ideas of what to mix it with let me know.

2009-06-15T16:24:00.005-04:00

Since the last time I was here I've gotten a tattoo. Actually, I started it awhile back and finished since last time I blogged. It's dogwood flowers. The white one represents my grandaddy and the three pink dogwoods are my mom, my daughter and me. And each one is a generation of Virginians.I did a cake for a friend’s sister who is back in the states after living in Japan for awhile. Her husband got new orders for Virginia Beach, so everyone’s really excited to have them back.

And I've been to a concert.I took my term finals for school, started my Food Manager’s Certificate classes and now I’m working on more cookies. A friend’s birthday is coming up this week and I was wondering what to get him. Finally, I figured I’d make him something and so I’m making him “edible panties”. Heehee. I took my bikini bottom cookie cutters and made them look like panties. Here’s hoping he likes them.

P.S. He loved them!

Cupcake Project

2009-06-02T13:51:00.015-04:00

I was given a project recently to research and come up with recipes for gluten free and organic cupcakes. Organic was easy. Just replace all your ingredients with certified organic ingredients. Certified being the key word. Or it will say USDA certified. But I've never made anything 100% organic and never tasted a cake or cupcake that was made with all organic ingredients. Let me just say that when you taste it organic does make a difference. There's nothing overwhelmingly different about it, but it definitely doesn't taste chemically at all. And the color is very earthy and beautiful. I loved it!

When I started this project though I started with the gluten free recipes. In the research I did I found a lot of people saying that you just have to play around with different gluten free products. I bought almond flour, white rice flour and quinoa flour. The quinoa flour was a total mistake. I've had quinoa before and didn't notice anything strong about it. So, I thought I'd give it a try. Oh-my-God! Quinoa stinks to high heaven! I gave the raw batter a taste despite the smell but didn't really taste anything weird or off. But as they were baking the smell got worse and I couldn't bring myself to taste the final product. I don't know what quinoa flour would be good for because if it smells like that for anything, even bread, I wouldn't be able to eat it. If you have any suggestions I'm willing to take them. I have a practically full bag of the stuff and nothing to do with it.

The very very first batch I did was with just rice flour. I took my basic yellow cake recipe and converted it for rice flour (I'll give you the links I found for this research at the end of this entry). The final cupcake came out fine but not great, kinda dry.

The raw rice cupcake.

The next batch I did was with just almond flour. That didn't work out too well. The batter seemed to be doing fine halfway through its baking. But then ten minutes after I checked it the first time it appeared to have bunt but was still liquidy-ish. So then I split it and my next batch was half almond, half rice. Those came out great. The only thing I would do differently is add more buttermilk since they came out slightly dry.

Then I started in on my chocolate cupcakes. I kept with the same idea half rice flour and half nut flour. I happened to have hazelnuts in the house doing nothing so I ground those up into a flour and used that in a batch of chocolate. They are so good. The hazelnut adds a very distinct flavor. Those cupcakes would be great with orange meringue buttercream. Yummmmm...

The other chocolate batch I did was with almond flour and rice flour and they were also very good. They taste just like a chocolate cupcake and they got the little girl approval and the mom approval.

The thing about cooking gluten free is that you have to make up for the elasticity you give up when you take out the gluten. So, sources suggested to use xanthan gum to replace it safely for a gluten free diet. All the recipes I used were half recipes so I used only half a teaspoon since the package suggests to add 1 teasppon. The other thing I noticed, and I've heard about this before, was that potato starch helps create a "tender, moist crumb" (per Bob's Red Mill). So, I added a 1/2 teaspoon of that to each recipe too.

Now, it's time to plug a couple things. When making the organic cupcakes I used Simply Organic vanilla extract. I usually use it anyways because it is my preferred vanilla extract. And it's amazinly cheap for being organic. But when you open the bottle it smells like vanilla. It doesn't smell like alcohol. And you can actually put some of this stuff on the tip of your finger and taste it and not get a buzz. So, I figure if it smells good and tastes good before you even use it in a recipe then it's good enough to go into the recipe. The next thing isn't really a plug so much as I want to show you what sugar looks like when it hasn't been manhandled and mutilated. It kinda looks like the sugar you know but it's not super white. It's a nice off white color. Ever since taking a couple classes at school where some of the chefs get really heated up about the subject of organic food I always give my unorganic food a second thought. I can't afford to eat all organic right now but I prefer it over manhandled and processed any day.

See? Isn't it so pretty?

So, I've learned that gluten free can be yummy. Very yummy indeed. And organic cupcakes are soooooo yummy. (Yes yes, I know I use yummy a lot) Now go out there and play around in your kitchen!

Wheat-Free Gluten-Free Baking Flour Conversions and Binding Agents Simplify Recipes

Gluten-Free Diet

Gluten free diet: How to go gluten free

Summer Cookies Part I

2009-05-28T20:16:00.009-04:00

"She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellowpolka dot bikini." Oh sorry, I got the song stuck in my head while I was decorating these cookies today. It makes me think of one of life's greatest questions: is it yellow polka dots or a yellow bikini with polka dots? You decide.

Or maybe we can just scrap that altogether and go for the red polka dot bikini.

And as you see I also worked on some school houses. It is my daughter's last day of school Friday and I made cookies for the teachers as a little (very little) thank you.

Lemon Meringue Tartlets

2009-05-23T15:17:00.006-04:00

So, ummmm, yeah, I quit my job yesterday. I know it may sound like a stupid move now a days but I do have another job lined up starting around Fathers Day. My boss yanked my last straw and I was not going to put up with it anymore. So, maybe now I'll have more time to play around the kitchen until my new job starts. This week I had played around a little bit. I had a cake to make for my step-dad's aunt who turned 91. I made a white cake for her and had leftover egg yolks because of it so I found a recipe for lemon curd. I just had to figure out what to do with it. And here's what I did:

After I found that recipe for lemon curd online I decided to look through a few cookbooks I have. I didn't have to look too much because I picked up The Art & Soul of Baking first and found Lemon Meringue Tartlets. I tried their lemon curd instead of what I found online. And their recipe asks for shredded phyllo but I was trying to use what I had so I used their other suggestion of Vanilla Shortcrust Dough. I do this all really late at night so I don't have many pictures except the final product.

This is the Lemon Meringue Tartlet. I was going for a more rustic look in the beginning but it wasn't working out so I smoothed all the meringues down before toasting them and then with the left over lemon rinds from the lemon curd I made candied lemon zest to sprinkle over each tartlet. For candied lemon zest see my candied orange peel entry. It didn't take nearly as long to candy lemon zest as it does to candy peels though.

And this is the birthday cake I made that made the lemon curd possible. It looks like a cute little mini wedding cake. It's 4", 6", and 8" white cakes filled with strawberry preserves (I used Polander's strawberry spread) and frosted with good ole' buttercream. I use 1 pound of unsalted butter, 1/4 cup veg shortening and beat those until smooth then add four cups of powdered sugar and beat that until smooth then keep adding 1 cup of powdered sugar until it reaches the right stiffness, usually a total of 8 cups of powdered sugar. Then I use about 1 T of clear vanilla extract and whatever colored dye I may need if I need it.

Lemon Curd

3 large eggs

3 large egg yolks

1 cup minus 1 T sugar

3/4 cup strained freshly squeezed lemon juice

6 T cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2" pieces

Fill large bowlhalfway with ice water and set aside. Fill bottom of double boiler with 2" of water and bring to a boil
Place eggs, egg yolks, and sugar into top portion of double boiler off the heat and whisk til blended. Add the lemon juice and mix. Place egg mixture over double boiler and whisk constantly but not vigorously scraping the sides to make sure the mixture doesn't scramble. Do this for about 7 minutes. A finished curd should register 180* and hold its shape when picked up and dropped back in. (When I did this it didn't necessarily retain its shape but you could see where it had dropped when I picked it up and dropped it back in, like a ghosting of lemon curd. Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesn't.)
Remove from heat from heat and strain through a mine mesh strainer set over another bowl. Add the cold butter peices and let them set for a little bit to let them melt then whisk them in until smooth and there is no more chunks of butter. Press plastic wrap over surface of curd and set bowl in the bowl of ice water. Use immediately or refrigerate for up to 3 days. Can also be made with lime juice or passionfruit juice.

Vanilla Shortcrust Dough

1 3/4 cups unbleached AP Flour

1/4 sugar

1/4 t salt

1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" pieces

2 large egg yolks

2 t pure vanilla extract

1 to 3 teaspoons water

This can be done by and or in a food processor. I didn't feel like pulling out my food processor so I did it by hand and therefore that is the way I'll tell you how to do it. First mix togther the egg yolks, vanilla and 1 t water together and set aside. Whisk the flour, sugar, and salt together and add the cold butter pieces. Toss the butter in to coat in flour then either with your hands or a cutter work the butter in until it resembles bread crumbs or crushed crackers. If the butter starts to soften stick it back in the frige for a little bit. Add the wet mix into the dry mix and mix with a fork until evenly distributed. It should look crumbly but hold together when pressed together. If too dry add water 1 teaspoon at a time until it looks like that.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead two or three times to bring it all together. Wrap in plastic wrap and refirgerate for about 30 minutes.
When ready to make shells roll dough out to 1/4" thickness and cut circles out that will be big enough to fit into a muffin tin, I think I cut mine out to about 5" circles. Spray muffin tins with oil and fit dough circles into each muffin cup. (I didn't have pie weights or beans so I poked the bottom of each tart with a fork to try to prevent risig and it worked pretty well. You may have to do it again halfway through the baking process). Freeze the shells for about ten minutes or until just chilled then bake them in a 375* oven for about 15 minutes or untill golden brown. When completely baked let cool on a cooling rack then turn out and let them completely cool before filling.

Meringue

4 large egg whites

10 T sugar

Bring the double boiler back out. Fill bottom of double boiler with two inches of water and bring to a boil. In the top of the double boiler whisk together the egg whites and sugar until blended. Place over double boiler and continually whisk while over heat. Keep an eye on the temperature of the egg whites. It needs to reach 160* and can happen pretty quickly. When checking the temperature take the egg whites off the heat. Just keep whisking while on the heat or you end up with scrambled eggs.
When it reaches 160* place in bowl of stand mixer and whip until cooled, increased in volume and look like marshmallow.

Assembly

Spoon curd into tart shells. There should be left over curd. Spoon meringue over each tart. Art & Soul says to spoon meringue into pastry bag and pipe it onto tarts but I just spooned it on and smoothed it out. Toast under broiler making sure to keep rotating as to not burn the meringue.
Enjoy!

THE GETTING TO KNOW YOU QUIZ

2009-05-18T18:14:00.002-04:00

OK. I have a few before class starts and I forgot the book I'm supposed to be reading at home. They blocked facebook and myspace so here I am bored and my good friend Cassie at HTEAC thankfully provided me with distraction. Here it goes:

THE GETTING TO KNOW YOU QUIZ
Metal or non-stick? Depends on what I'm cooking. If it's sturdy enough - metal.

Cast iron or stainless? Cast iron.

Cutting board: silicone or wood? Wood

Knife: carbon steel or stainless? whatever I can get my hands on. My knife kits is stainless I believe

Kitchenaid or hand mixer? I have the Kitchenaid stand mixer and hand mixer

Cooktop: gas, electric, induction? electric :( and not loving it

Side-by-side, freezer on top, fridge on top? freezer on top. I don't really have a professional opinion but I love the freezer on the bottom.

Apron or whoops? At school and work aprons are a must but at home I usually just let it fly. But my mom's making me an apron or two.

Mashed potatoes: by hand, ricer, or mixer? Depends on what I'm in the mood for.

Sandwich or wrap? SANDWICH!

PB & _________ ? raspberry preserves

Pancakes: syrup or applesauce? maple

Cake: scratch or mix?once again, depends on what I have time for. I always prefer to do it myself but if time it tight then mix

Chili: beans or no? NO!

Napkin: cloth or paper? cloth if I'm eatting out but hell if I need something else to wash.

BBQ: takes the whole weekend to make or take out? I would love to do it myself but there's nothing like NC BBQ.

Chicken: white or dark?dark, I love the thigh meat

Ice cream: cone or dish? dish, I like lots of ooey gooey sauce on my ice cream.

Fun With Fondant

2009-05-17T16:31:00.004-04:00

I got another mold the other day from firstimpressionsmolds.com for a cake I'm doing for a friend. I got to playing with it yesterday and thought I'd show you the fun I had. One I went to town with and actually painted with luster dust and petal dust to make it look like the Marine Corp seal. The other one I dusted all gold which is what my friend asked for for her cake I'm doing in June. Voila!

Bridal Shower Cake

2009-05-15T02:41:00.008-04:00

I just finished doing a cake for a bridal shower. I was given free reign again and was only told that the bridesmaids are wearing navy blue. I already knew I wanted to work on my lace so I just went with the navy blue base and white lace on top. As I decorated it I added to it, like the roses and the fleur de lis. And here's my final product. I hope you like it. More importanly, I hope the customer likes the cake.

Here are some detail shots:

Baby Shower Sugar Cookies

2009-05-07T02:00:00.008-04:00

So, those sugar cookies I told you about. Yeah, I got a job to do 3 dozen cookies for a baby shower for a baby girl. And thank God cause I do way better with cute girrly things than boy stuff. I've done these onesie cookies before for another baby shower as an experiment I threw in with a cake I did for hire. So sometimes do things for free pays off. At least I'll keep telling myself that :)

Not much to say about these. I mentioned previously that I did these same cookies for Valentine's Day and you can find the recipe at that blog entry. The same person that put this order in is also ordering a bridal shower cake and if she approves I want to do sugar cookies in the shape of lingerie. I'm already going to the store tomorrow to buy the cookie cutters anyways. If anything they can be swimsuits for the summer.

So anyways, here are a few of my favorite things.... Oooops, sorry. Got musicals on the head a little bit:

"That would be... harsher punishment for parole violators, Stan. And world peace!" --Gracie Hart

Who wants to be a doctor when they grow up?!? I wanna be a rock star!

Give peace a chance.

Tiny baby shout out to HTEAC.

Hey girl! Wassup?

Second star to the right, and straight on til morning.

Muffins, Mussels, and Decorated Sugar Cookies

2009-05-02T18:49:00.019-04:00

This weekend I tried another recipe from The Art & Soul of Baking, this time from the quick breads section. The Feta, Roasted Red Pepper and Basil Muffins. I saw the picture of them in the book and the melty feta looked so yummy. My little girl ended up wanting to help me and it was perfect for her. I let her whisk the flour mixture, crumble the feta and mix the feta mixture, and mix the feta mixture into the batter. So, there was plenty for her to do. She was expecting more of a sweet muffin than a savory muffin so she didn't get to enjoy all her hard work. And because a four year old helped me that should tell you how easy this was to make. Whisk all the dry ingredients together, whisk all the wet ingredients together, mix the flavoring agents, pour the wet into the dry, then add the flavor. I've done easier but not much easier.

All these for me?!? Aww, you shouldn't have.

Mmmmmmmmmm....

And for dinner Saturday night we had seafood. My step dad had shrimp and I had Mussels a la Mariniere. And my mom nibbled on both. My daughter tried to be brave and try the mussels all during dinner. Finally, she tried one after she had already walked away from the table. And she liked it. But anyways, back to the actual dinner. It was so good. I like mussels on their own but the sauce was a nice compliment. It's white wine, shallots, parsley and butter. It calls for bread crumbs but I used buerre manie instead. I found the recipe online after I found the mussels at the store.

I got three requests for this upcoming week: one for my sticky buns from last week, decorated sugar cookies for a baby shower, and a birthday cake for my aunt Dianne. I really wanted to do the sticky buns but I was way too busy and the cookies are getting me money and the cake is way more important than the sticky buns. So, I'll do them again next weekend.

For the cookies I'm doing the same cookies I did for Valentine's Day. But this time they're cute little baby onesies with sayings like "It's Hard Being A Princess" and "Cutie Pie". I'll have pictures next week to show next week since I'm working on them all this week.

And as for my aunt Dianne's birthday cake I'm doing the Red Velvet Cake that my good friend at How To Eat a Cupcake did before back in February. I love red velvet and use a different recipe each time just to play around. I'm even trying the boiled frosting but can't get it straight. I'm thinking it's a combination of the pot I'm using and the awful electric stove I have. One day I will own a gas stove, I swear. And once again there will be pictures of the finished product next week.

Well, I'm busy busy busy and I'll probably disappear for awhile. For five weeks (maybe more) the only people that will see me will be my co-workers and classmates.

P.S. I'll post the recipe later when I get a breather.

Maple-Pecan Sticky Buns

2009-04-26T19:38:00.013-04:00

I got The Art & Soul of Baking a few weeks ago and I've been dying to try it out. I even picked out a recipe to try before I even left the book store. So today I finally got to try it out. I tried out the Maple-Pecan Sticky Buns and boy are they yummy. Better than any sticky bun I ever got in a store. And this book is very informative. I learned a very specific way to make bread in class and after that I've graded every recipe book according to that method. And this book gets an A++.

This recipe is a two step recipe. Actually, kinda three step. But, it requires a recipe for Rich Breakfast Dough (recipe to follow) which they say can be used not only for these sticky buns but also coffee cake (which I can't wait to try). And this book has so many side notes and tips it's crazy. But good crazy.

Maple - Pecan Sticky Buns

The Art & Soul of Baking

by Sur la Table & Cindy Mushet

Ingredients:

1 recipe Rich Breakfast Dough

topping:

3/4 (3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened (65* - 68*F)

1/3 cup (2 1/2 ounces) firmly packed light brown sugar

1/3 cup ( 3 3/4 ounces) maple syrup (preferably Grade B) book offers explanation on another page

1 cup (4 ounces) chopped pecans

filling:

1/2 stick (2 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

1/3 cup (2 1/2 ounces) firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Rich Breakfast Dough

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (4 ounces) warm whole milk (110* - 115*F)

1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast or 1 1/8 teaspoons instant yeast

1 large egg plus egg yolk, at room temperature

2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, very soft (not melted)

1 MIX AND KNEAD THE DOUGH: Combine the warm milk and sugar in the bowl of the stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast over the top. Whisk by hand to blend well. Let the mixture sit for 5 to 10 minutes, until the yeast is activated and foamy or bubbling.

Add the egg and yolk and whisk by hand until well blended. Stir in the flour and saltwith a silicone or rubber spatula. Attach the dough hook and knead on low speed for 2 minutes. The dough may look ragged at this point, but don't worry - the addition of butter will smooth it out. Increase the speed to medium and knead for 1 minute. With the mixer running, add the soft butter, 1 tablesppon at a time, allowing each addition to blend in before adding the next. Once all the butter has been added, decrease the speedto medium-low and continue to knead for 5 to 6 minuteslonger, until the dough looks soft and silky.

2 RISE THE DOUGH (FIRST RISE): Lightly butter or oil the tub or bowl, scrape the dough into the tub, and brush the surface of the dough with a little butter or oil. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp lint-free cotton towel and let the doughrise until doubled, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If you are using a tub, be sure to mark the starting level of the dough with a pencil or piece of tape so it's easy to tell when the dough has doubled. at this point, the dough is ready to be punched down and used in your recipe of choice (in this case Maple-Pecan Sticky Buns).

1 MAKING THE TOPPING: Place the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of the stand mixer and blend on medium speed until the mixture is smoothand slightly lightened, 2 to 3 minutes. You can also use a hand mixer and a medium bowl, though you may need to beat the mixture a little longer to achieve the same results. Scrape down the bowl. With the mixer running on medium, pour the maple syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl and blend until smooth and homogenous. Scrape the topping into the cake pan (10" cake pan) and spread evenly. Scatter the chopped pecans over the top. Set aside while you make the buns.

2 ROLL THE DOUGH: Dust your work surfacewith flour. Turn the risen dough out of the tub and onto the flour. Press down firmly with your hands to expel as much of the gas as possible, but don't knead the dough or the gluten will be too developed for the dough to roll easily. Dust the top of the dough with flour. Roll the dough into a 10- by 16-inch rectangle. Position the dough so that one of the long sides in parallel to the edge of your work surface. Brush any remaining flour from the surface and underside of the dough.

3 MAKE THE FILLING: Place the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in the bowl of the stand mixer and blend on medium speed until the mixture is smooth and slightly lightened, 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl. Use a silicone or rubber spatula (I used my hands) to spread the filling over the dough, leaving a 1-inch border along the long side opposite you (I did it the opposite way because I work the opposite way)

4 SHAPE THE BUNS: Beginning with the long edge closest to you, roll the dough into a cylinder, gently tucking and tightening as you roll (this is how I worked opposite, I started with the side opposite me and rolled toward me. It feels easier to me). Wet your fingers and rub a thin film of water along the empty border. Finish rolling the dough onto the border. Roll the dough backwards so that the seam is facing upward and pinch all along it to seal the dough. Turn the seam side down and use a chef's knife to cut the roll into 10 equal pieces. Set each bun with a cut side upon your work surface and gently flatten it slightly with the palm of your hand. Place the buns into the prepared cake pan, spacing them evenly.

5 PROOF THE DOUGH (SECOND RISE): Cover the pan loosely with plastic wrap or a damp lint-free cotton towel and set asideto rise until the rolls have almost doubled in size, 45 to 60 minutes (longer if the room is cold).

6 BAKE THE STICKY BUNS: Preheat the oven to 350*F and position an oven rack in te center. Bake the buns for 30 - 35 minutes (took me 45 minutes), until the buns are deep golden brown and the centers register 185*F on an instant read thermometer.

Transfer to a cooling rack for 5 minutes, then turn the buns out of the pan. To do this, run a knife or small spatula around the edge of the pan to loosen the buns. Place a large plate or rimmed baking sheet upside down on top of the cake pan. Wearing oven mitts, hold the cake pan against the plate and invert it. The sticky buns will fall out of the pan onto the plate, along with their syrup and nuts. Serve the sticky buns warn or at room temperature.

P.S. Thank you for all the kind words about my wedding cake. The bride and groom loved it.

Wedding Cake

2009-04-18T07:01:00.012-04:00

This whole week I've been working on a wedding cake. My first wedding cake that I did all on my own. It was the most nerve wracking thing I've ever done and quite a learning experience. So far I've gotten good reviews but I haven't heard anything from the bride or her family yet and they are who matter most. I am dropping off their anniversary cake later today so I'm crossing my fingers that they liked it as much as everyone else has.

The groom's cake was fun to do and came out cute. I was originally going to put this little novelty fisherman on the cake but it didn't fit in with everything else so I left it off. But there are some cute personal touches on the cake: the lake is in the actual shape of the lake that the groom grew up on, there's little wooden sign saying "Swan Lake" and there's a tree on the cake with the bride and groom's initials.

Some personal touches

Fondant Forest

White chocolate starfish for the cake topper.

P.S. I dropped the anniversary cake off with the bride and groom and they loved it. And the consultation that I had about a week ago? The parents were at this wedding and they were impressed. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Update

2009-04-08T20:37:00.006-04:00

So, since last we met I have been a little busy but productive. Last week I made some yummy Irish Stew with a slight twist. Normally it's lamb made with a mirepoix of carrots, onions and green peppers. But I found an orange bell pepper and had to use that as my orange in the Irish flag. So my green was celery and white was the onion as usual.

Then, I had a cake consultation that I was too busy to capture on camera and the mini cupcake leftover from it were too good that they were gone before I knew it. But I made lemon cake, strawberry cake, carrot cake and my very own cream cheese cake. All were made from scratch and no artificial flavors were used. I took my basic yellow cake recipe that I use all the time and for the strawberry cake I pureed some frozen and thawed strawberries and added it til it tasted strawberry-y. And for the lemon cake I took the same yellow cake recipe and added lemon curd til it tasted lemon-y. They were both soooooo yummy and moist but not overly powerful in flavor like some lemon cakes can be but flavorful enough to notice unlike some strawberry cakes.

Today, I found an Irish Soda Bread recipe I want to try. I just need to figure out when I can fit it in. And I have a wedding cake to do this upcoming week so maybe while I'm at that I'll frost my strawberry banana cake. (I know it's been awhile since I baked it but I wrapped it up good and froze it, it's not a terrible sin) The hot cross buns are gonna happen Sunday so I can do it with my daughter.

I think that's it for now. I'll try to capture the moment as I'm working on all this.

What to do? What to do?

2009-03-29T22:47:00.002-04:00

So, I've baked a banana cake with strawberry swirl. It tastes great but now I'm wondering what to frost it with. I'm thinking strawberry italian butter cream. Mainly cause the strawberry in the cake isn't terribly strong and I would like to bring it out more. Hmmmm.... What to do? What to do?

Floating Islands

2009-03-23T01:16:00.007-04:00

Not much to say today except that I got a major bug and got busy in the kitchen. I saw this on a whisk and a spoon awhile back and have been meaning to try it out. And I was working with egg white anyways the other day and decided to use the yolks to make the creme anglaise. Today I made the poached meringues that you see below. I didn't make the caramel that went on it but only cause I didn't feel like dirtying another pot. Like I said, I was busy in the kitchen today and that means dirty dishes too.

It was very yummy and my mom enjoyed two bowls of it. But then again, caramel was involved.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
--John Donne

Irish Soda Bread

2009-03-22T12:15:00.013-04:00

A couple of weeks ago my mom handed me a sheet of paper with a recipe for Irish Soda Bread and in response I asked "Is this a hint?" and all she had to say was "Yes". I had all intentions to make it for St. Patrick's Day since every year we go all out and have corn beef and cabbage and drink Guiness (even if some of us don't like it). But we didn't have flour (HOW DOES A BAKER NOT HAVE FLOUR?!?!?!). And I was too tired to run out and get some flour so I put it off until today.

I asked my mom if the recipe sounded like what she remembered, with the raisins and caraway seeds. She said that's how she rememebered it and so I stuck with the recipe, word for word.

My daughter helped me out again this time. I'm training her for when I open my own bakery. There's not too much to this recipe. It's a two step recipe. Pour all the dry ingredients into a bowl then pour all the wet ingredients into the dry mix and stir until just combined. I've made Irish Soda Bread only once before and it wasn't as sticky and wet as this mix was but this recipe came out very soft and moist. And even though this wasn't a flavor I like, my mom loved it and that's all that counted. I'm just not a big fan of caraway. I'd try it without caraway next time but then it would just be raisin bread. So, I'm on the hunt for a recipe I like.

If you want to give this recipe a try, and I recommend it if you like caraway, you can find here at allrecipes.com.The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad.
--George Orwell

Garde Manger Project

2009-02-24T22:31:00.006-05:00

I've been keeping pretty busy lately. New job, school, kid, and trying to fit in a personal life. But this mock cake that we had to do for a class project was one of the things that took up my time lately and something that I can sit back and look at and see a finished product that I take pride in. A fellow classmate / friend and I went in on the project together making tons of salt dough roses and fighting with the red salt dough to make it go on and stay on. And now it's done and it will be going on display at our school because we're just that kick ass. The following picture is the final cake with the salt dough roses, and fresh bouquet that was shown at our Grand Banquet at CIV. I will hopefully get better pictures of it soon and add them in at that time.

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-13T10:38:00.016-05:00

This week I had to make a sweet treat for my daughter's class. I already knew I wanted to make cookies and decorate them. And I've been dying to use a book I got for Christmas. Well, actually I got a gift card and this is what I got with it. It has great ideas for cakes and cookie and recipes in the back. I used her Basic Sugar Cookie and Royal Icing recipes. Her sugar cookies are simple to make and taste great. Same goes for the royal icing. Very simple and still comes out tasting great.

I played around with designs a little bit but since I was making these for a class of 3 and 4 year olds I kinda felt obligated to stick with one design to be fair to everyone. I made hearts withing hearts for the class. There's a couple of examples in the picture to the left. Other than that I did polka dots and squiggles and stripes. Kerah even got to decorate two. Check out the Nana and Papa cookies.

These are some of my favorite designs. I wish I had made a bigger batch so I could have played with it more.

Basic Sugar Cookies from Beautiful Cake by Peggy Porschen

Makes about 25 medium-size or 12 large cookies (I got 28 hearts)

Baking temerature: 350*F; baking time: 6 to 10 minutes, depending on size ( it took about 15 minutes on 350* but my oven's old)

1 3/4 sticks unslated soft butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

Optional Flavors

For vanilla cookies, add seeds from 1 vanilla bean ( I used 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
For lemon cookies, add finely grated zest of 1 lemon
For orange cookies, add finely grated zest of 1 orange
For chocolate cookies, replace 1/3 cup of the flour with 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder.

In the electric mixer with paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar, and any flavoring until well mixed and just becoming creamy in texture. Don't overwork, or the cookies will spread during baking (very very true).
Beat in the egg until well combined. Sift in the flour and mix on low speed untill a dough forms. Gather it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and chill it for at least 1 hour. (I roll it up into a tube like the tube of cookie dough you get at the grocery store. Makes it easier to roll out later.)
Place the dough on a floured surface and knead it briefly. Using 2 1/4 inch marzipan spacers, roll it out to an even thicknes. (I used a rolling pin with spacers on it. And I rolled my cookies out to 1/8" thickness and they came out fine.)
Use cookie cutters to cut out the desired shapes and, using a spatula, lay these on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper (I prefer parchament. I end up having to peel the cookies off of wax paper.) Chill again for about 30 minutes and heat the oven to 350*.
Bake for 6 to 10 minutes, depending on size, until golden brown at the edges. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Wrapped in foil or plastic wrap, these cookies will keep well in a cool, dry place for up to a month.

Tip: Always bake equal-size cookies together to make sure they bake in the same time. If you mix different sizes, the smaller ones will be baked when the larger ones are still raw in the middle.

Royal Icing from Beautiful Cakes by Peggy Porschen

Makes about 2 1/4 lb

about 1 oz. dried egg white powder, or whites of 4 medium eggs (I ended up using 5 whites of large eggs just to keep from killing my mixer)
8 1/3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
squeeze of lemon juice ( I used 1 tsp clear vanilla)

If using the dried egg white, mix with 2/3 cup water and strain to get rid of any lumps. Ideally let this rest overnight in the refrigerator.
Place the sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer, add three-quarters of the egg-white mix or the lightlybeaten egg whites and the lemon juice, and start mixing on low speed.
Once these are well combined, check the consistency. If the sides of the bowl still look dry and crumbly, add some more of the mixture or egg white until the icing looks almost smooth but not wet.
Keep mixing for 4 to 5 minutes, until it reaches stiff-peak consistency.
Spoon into a sealable, plastic container and cover with a clean, damp cloth and the lid. Store at room temperature for up to 7 days; if using fresh egg, store in the refrigerator. The egg white can seperate from the sugar after a couple of days, which will turn the icing into a dry, dense mixture. In such a case, remix at low speed until smooth and at stiff-peak consistency again. Make sure no dried icing bits sticking to the sides of your storage container get into the mixing bowl.

When I made this I got it to soft peak consistency with the recipe above using my edits. Using the soft-peak consistency I outlined my hearts. Then I thinned it out with water to make it runny so I could fill in the outlines. I added a teaspoon of water at a time until it was runny or until I could scoop up the icing with my spatula and it would run off like a ribbon.

"Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art."

--Frank Lloyd Wright

I Created a Little Baking Monster

2009-02-06T13:08:00.010-05:00

There's a new rule in my house, and quite frankly it should have never been a rule but just a way of life, but there is one hour of the day everyday dedicated to no TV. I started in yesterday after I picked my daughter up from school. I sat with her and explained it over lunch and asked her what she wanted to do with her one hour with no TV. And I very clearly said it could be anything: Barbies, dolls, drawing, painting. What does this little girl want to do? Make challah bread. Yes, I have brought my daughter to the dark side. Or maybe I've shown her the light. However you want to see it.

So, I guess I could take this opportunity to take the mystery and magic out of bread. Before I took my baking class in school I was petrified of yeast. I didn't know how to take care of it or that I even needed to take care of it. Then Chef Jay enlightened me and now I know. Yeast feeds off sugars to produce Carbon dioxide and alcohol. The starch in the flour feeds the yeast making it expand and make all those wonderful little bubbles. In the case of challah, sugar provides more food for the yeast.

Another thing about making yeast bread is there are steps in the process that if you remember them or keep them close by while baking makes everything else easy peasy:

SCALE ingredients
MIX ingredients
REST
PUNCH
PORTION
ROUND
REST
MAKE UP
PROOF
BAKE until internal temp reaches 180*
COOL
STORE only after completely cooled.

Those last two steps aren't actual steps that worry anyone but still a part of the process.

After I scale out my ingredients, I start out by pouring my water for the recipe into my mixing bowl and adding the yeast. Since I made challah yesterday I'll be using that recipe for my examples. Then, I add the brown sugar (food for the yeast), the oil and the eggs. Right on top of that I add my bread flour and the salt on top of that. Adding the salt last is very important so that you don't kill the yeast. When they mingle bad things happen. Then, I get to mixing. MIX only until everything comes together, about 2 minutes on a low setting, then take a look. Is it too moist? Is it too dry? Or does it look just right? Fix it now if there is fixing to be had. Then start mixing again and step up the speed. But don't kill your mixer. My mixer can handle bread dough only but so much so I set it on second speed. Mix for about 6 - 8 minutes then check your dough. You should be able to stretch out a small piece and not have it break. And if you can take that small piece and stretch it out really thin without tearing it then you have done everything right up to this point. The gluten in the flour has been worked and kneaded to the point where it has become elastic and stretchy and that's exactly what you want.

Now it's time to let your dough take a nap. Let it REST for about 15 minutes, maybe 30, depending. You can either let it rest in the bowl of your electric mixer or oil up a bowl to let it rest in. I set my timer for 15 minutes then check it out. If it's not ready then I come back in another 15. It should be doubled in volume when ready and when you can poke it with your finger and the dent stays then it's ready. Like so:

Now, it's time to get physical! It's time for PUNCHING! Not as fun as it sounds but I guess if your pissed or frustrated this could help. I take the side of the dough furthest from me pick it up stretching it out and then punch it into the middle. Then I turn the bowl a quarter turn and do it again until each side has been punched. Or you can take the east and west side of the dough stretch it out and punch them in and then do it to the north and south sides of the dough. Whatever. This just gets rid of the bubbles that have formed to this point, redistributes the yeast so they can feed more, redistributes the temperature and relaxes the gluten.

Now, get that scale out. It's time to PORTION and ROUND your dough. My recipe made about 17 4oz. rolls and 1 1lb loaf. But I'll be giving you a scaled down version. If you just want loaves of bread I see no harm in just cutting down your dough into equal portions. Just as long as they are equal. It makes for easier baking. When you've portioned it all out then round them by stretching the dough on one side and pinching it on the other. Set it down pinched side down on some parchment paper or plastic wrap. Leave plenty of time for it to expand, if not they'll grown into each other. Protect them by loosely covering with plastic wrap.

4oz rolls

Once again, let them REST for 15 minutes. This resting makes it easier to work with when you MAKE UP the loaves. Which leads us to make up. In my case I rolled out my pieces into one long snakey looking piece then coiled them around and tucked the end piece under. Or you can take your portions and cut them into threes, roll them out and do a simple braid.

Coiled 1 lb loaf

Now it's time to PROOF. I don't have a proofer but I have my ways. I boil some water on the stove and pour it into loaf pans and stick those in the very bottom of my oven and it turns my oven into a proofer. You can let it proof without even doing that, but the steam helps it rise. And depending on what bread you are baking it determines the length of the proof. Here we don't want to proof too much or you'll end up with huge holes in the bread. That's for another kind of bread.

proofing

Next, it's time for baking. But you need to egg wash challah bread to give that pretty shiny brown crust. So take one egg (that's all I needed) and beat it to death basically. You don't want to run the risk of having chunks of egg white baked into the crust. Take a pastry brush and carefully brush on the egg and BAKE in a 350* oven. It only took 15 minutes for each tray. But they should be golden brown and shiny. If you want to sacrifice one, check the internal temperature. If they are truly done it should read 180*.

Et voila! Challah bread. I know it was wordy so thank you for hanging in there if you made it this far. Ever since it was lceared up for me I haven't been able to stop baing and now I've turned my daughter into a baking monster. And as a little side story, they were taught Rub a Dub Dub in class today and three kids got to sit in a "tub" and be either a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. Guess what my daughter was. Yeah, the baker. I thought it was sooo cute.

“The hunger for LOVE is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for BREAD.”

-Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Challah Bread courtesy CIV Bakeshop

1/2 c water
1/4 oz instant yeast or 1/3 oz active dry yeast
1 oz brown sugar
3/4 oz oil
1 1/4 oz eggs
1/2 oz egg yolk
3/4 lb bread flour
1/8 oz salt

Chocolate Balsamic Cake and Cranberry Swirl Cheesecake with White Chocolate Ganache

2009-02-01T22:18:00.006-05:00

Today I decided to take Sunday and get busy. First, I made a Cranberry Swirl Cheesecake with White Chocolate Ganache. I used an epicurious.com recipe as a guide. And I finally got around to making a chocolate cake and frosting it with my balsamic buttercream. And Cassie, you were right, the Hershey's chocolate cake is very moist.

The ingredients for the crust: 1 stick melted butter, 2 T sugar and 2 3/4 cups finely crushed gingersnap cookies
The finished gingersnap cookie crust.The ingredients for the cheesecake (not including the cranberry sauce or the ganache): 1 cup sugar, 4 - 8 ounce packs of cream cheese, 1/2 cup whipping cream, 7 ounces greek yogurt, 1 T vanilla and 4 eggs.

As I was mixing the batter for the cheesecake I was heating the cranberry sauce (preferably with whole cranberries) over medium low heat and made the ganache. The ganache was 1/2 cup whipping cream and 9 ounces white chocolate. Although, I must say the ganache was a little too runny even after setting up in the fridge for a couple hours. Next time I'll make it with some more chocolate. When the batter was made I poured it all in the springform pan and then took an ice cream scoop and dolloped four spots of cranberry sauce into the batter then swirled it with a knife. Next, I wrapped the bottom with foil stuck it in a much bigger cake pan and filled it with some hot water and threw it in the oven.Now some people bake the crust before they pour the cheesecake batter in, but my grandma made the best cheesecakes ever and never ever ever baked the crust seperately. Therefore, I shall never do that either. (Stepping off soap box now)The finished product. It looks ooey gooey. In fact it's stands up quite well and the ooey gooeyness is the white chocolate. But it is sooooooooo good. It is the creamiest cheesecake I've ever had.

The very next thing I did was start on my chocolate cake. I had baked the cake a couple days ago and like I mentioned I used the recipe on the side of the Hershey's cocoa powder box, or it's on their website. I had to whip the buttercream back up until it smoothed out again, which took awhile, but I had to clean up while that was going anyways. And here's my helper:

If she likes it, it must be good.

I eventually got to frosting and here it is:

And it is very good. There is a hint of bitterness in the frosting but it all goes away with the chocolate cake. And next time I'm topping it with blueberries, raspberries and strawberries and it will be so yummy.

You knew this was coming:

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." / "Let them eat brioche" attributed to Marie Antoinette but never said it and got stuck with it anyways.

OK Hear Me Out

2009-01-23T23:17:00.003-05:00

I swear I must be half Italian or that year or so Sicily really rubbed off on me. I've always loved vinegar: malt, cider, red wine, balsamic.Especially balsamic. You can do anything with it. And this is where the Italian part comes in (and I am getting somewhere with this): not only can you put it in salads or marinate with it but if you add a little sugar and reduce it, it goes great on berries. Anyways, it got me thinking of how to work it into a cake. And I came up with balsamic buttercream. And on the first try it worked. It's got some kinks to work out and when it's worked out I'll share my recipe. I have to admit that if I had a bakery and tried to sell this it probably wouldn't fly off the shelves. It would take quite a bit of convincing and free samples. But it's good. I'm thinking chocolate cake??? Hmmm... I guess that means I have some baking to do.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. --Kahlil Gibran

Candied Orange Peels Again

2009-01-21T12:18:00.007-05:00

OK. You are probably thinking that I'm starting to get obsessed. Not really. At least not yet. We just had a lot of oranges lying around that I was almost certain were going to go bad if we didn't use them. And I was right. But anyways. I broke down the recipe a little and decided to take a new approach this time. Nothing drastic.

I picked a nearly flawless orange. Took my zester / peeler and went at it. I peeled all the way around the orange this time. Last time I peeled from top to bottom and as soon as I started it I realized I wasn't going to get nearly as many peels as I would if I just spiraled down the orange. Then I cut them down to 1" long strips.

Then I dropped them in a small saucepan, just covered them with water then stuck them on the stove to bring to a boil. As soon as they started boiling I took them off and drained them and rinsed with cold water. Basically I blanched them. This time I only did it once. Before, I did it twice. The recipe I followed says you can do it as often as you like. I then took the same small saucepan and put in my sugar water. The recipe is basically 1 part water 3 parts sugar. So that's what I put in: 1 cup water, 3 cups sugar. I stuck that on the stove and brought it up to temp: 130*.

Once it was up to temp I dropped in the blanched orange peels and walked away. Literally. I got too distracted and ignored them too much. The sugar dried up and I had to add more water. If I had paid attention it wouldn't have happened. But really you should drop them in and "walk away" for about 45 minutes but also keep an eye on them. Just don't stir them around.During this distracted time I took my orange and peeled it the rest of the way and enjoyed it and played online with my daughter (I swear, I think she knows more about the computer than me. Maybe she can help me with this blog). And like I said, when the timer went off, I saw that my sugar was all dried up. But no worries, I added one more cup of water and it was just fine. I heated it up just enough to dissolve the sugar crystals and then removed the orange peels, laying them out on parchment paper. I let them dry completely for 24 hours then bagged them up. I've been snacking on them ever since. I'm going to get some good tea and steep these orange peels in with my next cup of hot tea.

Speaking of tea. I took my sugar water and added one more cup of water to make a simple syrup of equal parts sugar and water and added it to my sun tea. There is nothing wasted when you make this.

“Affluence separates people. Poverty knits 'em together. You got some sugar and I don't; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour; well, I'll give you some of mine.” --Ray Charles

What Do Candied Orange Peel, Bread Pudding and Pancakes Have in Common?

2009-01-11T20:30:00.008-05:00

Candied Orange Peels

Boy did I have a busy day. I started out by making bread pudding. I had a stale loaf of challah lying around and I wanted to play with an idea. I think I mentioned before that a friend from school gave me an idea to make bread pudding with grand marnier. So, I did. But I also wanted to see how candied orange peels would look, or fit in, with it. So, I found the recipe, or just method in this case, and got down to it. You can find the method here.

You can see they turned out beautifully, or at least I think so. They do kinda look like over salted french fries but when you actually look at them the color orange is beautiful.

But, I did my bread pudding which I use a Paula Deen recipe as my base and modify it to fit what I want. Here it is. I used half Grand Marnier and orange juice in place of vanilla extract and the brady. It didn't come out as orangy as I wished it to be. There's only a slight hint of it, but still very yummy. Next time I'm using straight Grand Marnier in place of the brandy and orange extract in place of vanilla. I would have used extract this time but I forgot to pick it up. Ditzy me.

Then, me and the girls (AKA my mom and daughter) went to the local Children's Museum and stayed way longer than I thought we would or should. And I had breakfast for dinner (a family tradition) to look forward to. And I was making pancakes. Well, my mom brought up that she saw Paula Deen make pancakes that morning and they looked good. So, of course I had to try them. Only thing: she calls for seperated eggs and to fold in the whipped egg whites. Folding in egg whites is the bane of my existence. As an aspiring pastry chef I know I should suck it up and get over it but I severely dislike it. And when it comes to pancakes I think it should be like this: throw it in the bowl, throw it on the skillet, throw it on the plate. I'm all for pancakes from scratch but it shouldn't be a production. The best pancakes I've had are just simple muffin method pancakes.

I do have to say they came out just fine but nothing spectacular or amazing. If you want to try it you can find it here. I didn't try the cinnamon cream that you find with the recipe and I only put the chocolate chips in some of them but I'm definitely trying the cinnamon cream next time.

So, I had a Food Network kind of day and I'm exhausted. So, until next time:
“A person can be as sweet as honey or as heavy as steel.” Greek Proverb

2009-01-09T15:47:00.005-05:00

This is my cupcake.

And this is me trying to make dinner with my cupcake.

Now back to business. I made a chocolate cake for that consultation on Tuesday and later that day my mom tried some of what I had left over and commented on how dry it was. I always have this issue with basic chocolate cake recipes. You know, the ones on the sides of flour boxes or in the most basic of recipe books. Well, I took the same recipe and finally tried greek yogurt in place of the milk and I also cut the flour by a quarter cup and it was perfect. I've always heard about greek yogurt to help a dry cake but never had it around. But lately I've been snacking on it so it's in the house. I've tried sour cream in place of milk (and it works) but I like the flavor and texture of greek yogurt better.

So anyways, I didn't do anything on the edge or crazy but I got to play around and have fun. But now I have to get a hold of the couple to see if they want to give it another try.

“Your good friend has just taken a piece of cake out of the garbage and eaten it. You will probably need this information when you check me into the Betty Crocker Clinic.” -Cynthia Nixon (as Miranda)

Cake Consultations

2009-01-06T09:41:00.002-05:00

Getting ready for a cake consultation: my trusty notebook, color/fondant swatches and cake.

So, I'm getting ready for my cake consultation right now. It's cold and nasty and rainy outside and my car's stuck in the mud! Yippee! Great way to start a day! Thankfully I have great parents that are helping me out and lending me their car today.

So, anyways, like I said, I'm getting ready for my cake consult. I've done this before on my own but I still get a little anxious. But I feel good about this one. This could be a fun cake to do if I get the job (I'll post if and when I get the job). They're looking to have a sea theme and they are the reason I was constructing a tugboat out of cardboard. So, I've got my folder of ideas, my notebook, my color swatches, and of course, the cakes. I'M READY! Thank GOD I love doing what I do cause staying up til 2:30 am when you have to get up at 7:30 am wouldn't hack it for anything else.

And to help put a smile on my face today I'm going to quote the great British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard:

"TEA AND CAKE OR DEATH!"

"I am an evil giraffe, and I shall eat more leaves from this tree then prehaps I should, so that other giraffes may die." (I threw this in cause my mom, my daughter and I all call each other giraffes. We're all legs and look kinda gawky, but in a good way.)

"Never put a sock in a toaster."

“'ello, Sue. I've got legs. Do you like bread? I've got a French loaf. Bye! I love you”

"I long for a grapefruit."

OK, I got carried away but I love Eddie Izzard and I needed a big smile. And for the most part it's all food related.

Coconut Cake (work in progress) with Pineapple Cream

2009-01-02T23:52:00.005-05:00

First of all let me show you my massacred coconut:

It was fun though.

Today I made a cake with the milk. The cake came out OK but I'm still working on it. I'll find a better recipe and do it again. But I made Pineapple Cream Filling for it and it made it work, it was a good balance. The recipe I used is generally what I use to fill my cakes but I also use it on my cupcakes as a taste tester. And I make it so often that I think I can repeat the recipe without cracking the recipe book. It's from a Sylvia Weinstock cake book and it is quite good. The base is her recipe and I wanted to use pineapple:

from Sweet Celebrations: The Art of Decorating Beautiful Cakes

by Sylvia Weinstock

Basic Buttercream Filling

1 large egg

5 egg yolks

2 cups sugar with 1/3 cup water

6 sticks unsalted butter cut into 1/4 sticks

1/4 cup pineapple juice (you could also use pineapple or coconut rum)

20 oz can crushed pineapple, drained and juice reserved

In bowl of electric mixer whip eggs with whisk attachment at medium speed until it turns pale yellow and continue while proceeding to next step.
In medium saucepan mix sugar and water until the sugar soaks up all the water and is mostly dissolved. Use a clean wet pastry brush and clean the edges of the saucepan to keep it from burning. Then over medium heat, boil the sugar until it reaches 240 degrees. Make sure to keep an eye on it.
With mixer still at medium speed slowly add sugar in a stream running down the side of the bowl. Beat for 15 minutes or until the outside of bowl is warm to touch.

Add butter one piece at a time. Let whip until it becomes smooth. Add pineapple juice. Then add crushed pineapple.

And here are my coconut cupcakes with pineapple cream. So far they're a hit. Tomorrow I finish the cake I started today. And now I go to bed! Good night.

“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.” --George Harrison (my favorite Beatle)

A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts... or Actually Just One

2009-01-01T22:24:00.007-05:00

I haven't done a cake related quote in my last two posts and I kinda like them so here's one that reminds me of one person in particular and I have a friend who knows exactly who I'm talking about.

"She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake."

Margot Asquith

In cake related news my lovely mom got me a coconut today so I could experiment and tomorrow I make a cake with it! I wish I could show you how I massacred it but I was too into prying it open to document it. Maybe next time. But I got the coconut water (a whole two cups) out of it successfully (meaning I didn't get it all over the kitchen counter and floor).

In bread related news... I just took challah out of the oven and my house smells heavenly. Silly me let it overproof but it was going to be bread pudding or French Bread anyways. I've got a guy at school that likes my bread pudding and gave me an idea for a new recipe.

Until next time...

I'm an Architect Now!

2008-12-31T13:18:00.005-05:00

Well, not really. Someone was asking if I could put a tugboat on top of their wedding cake and I admitted that I didn't think I could. But that doesn't stop me from trying. So I'm working on it. I'm starting out with cardboard and then I'll try it with clay. But so far not so bad. It doesn't look like the real deal but I can see potential.

Experimenting with Cream Cheese

2008-12-30T21:47:00.009-05:00

I have this potential customer that wants to see if she can get her wedding cake to be made of her favorite muffin: the cream cheese muffin. Well, I love cream cheese and was up for the challenge. I looked for a cream cheese cake recipe but since it wasn't the "proper" or traditional method for making cakes I questioned its validity. I did find a cream cheese muffin recipe and worked with that. It used all the basic ingredients for a yellow cake plus cream cheese. I just had to rearrange the way they were processed and instead of melted butter use softened butter. OK. Cool. So I tried one recipe with equal parts butter and cream cheese.

That came out good but it was dense, tasted a little eggy and just fell short of what I wanted. Then I just cut out the butter all together and just creamed the sugar and salt with cream cheese and used half the eggs. This came out wonderful. It was fluffy and you can taste the cream cheese but it's not overpowering. If you want you can beat some cream cheese and thin it out just a bit with milk and swirl it into the cake to give it more cream cheesiness goodness. And the cake looks so pretty that you could go without frosting it. Although I don't see why anyone would ever want to do that. *-)

Stacey's Cream Cheese Cake

8 ounces cream cheese

8.7 ounces sugar

.06 ounces salt

2 eggs

.14 ounces vanilla

10 ounces flour

.4 ounces baking powder

10 ounces milk

Weigh all ingredients and let them sit til it reaches room temperature.
Cream the cream cheese until smooth then add sugar and salt and cream til fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time beating til just incorporated each time then add vanilla. Beat til just incorporated.
Whisk together flour and baking powder. Add half the flour mixture to batter. Beat til just incorporated.
Add milk and beat til, you guessed it, incorporated.
Add the rest of the flour mixture and beat til incorporated.
Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in center comes out clean.
Makes enough to fill one 8" x 3" round pan

Pictures! Finally!

2008-12-28T16:35:00.004-05:00

It's been a busy season and after building a Barbie Dream House and a castle and downloading stuff for kids' toys I can finally take a breather. And as I did I organized my pictures on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sliceofconcentratedlove/ ) (or at least some of them) and added them here. Next time I get a chance I'll actually pick a cake and explain it a little more. But for now this feels like a HUGE step.

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.
Ludwig Erhard (1897 - 1977)

You Can Blame "How to Eat a Cupcake" For This

2008-12-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

A friend suggested a blog and it got me thinking and here I am. My forte is cakes. But if you can mix it up in the Kithenaid and throw it in the oven, then I'm all for it baby! As I have time (when my daughter's taking a nap or down for the night) I'll post pictures and give more info on what I've done. I've got a lot to share and even more to learn. This is my little journey.

There is nothing better than birthday cake. It's like A SLICE OF CONCENTRATED LOVE with buttercream frosting.
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata