Sweet, sweet victory!

In my last blog, I neglected to mention how the weekend of extravagance began! Biscuit decided to surprise me with an early Valentine's dinner to our favorite restaurant, La Campania in Waltham. We dined on roasted oysters, diver scallops over parsnip puree with cranberry-port reduction, veal saltimbocca, prosciutto di parma stuffed chicken, and two exquisite desserts - chocolate torta and pear crostata! Oh my goodness, was it delicious. The attention to detail, right down to the basil-infused olive oil and the warm, crisp bread, was exquisite.

And then, to my surprise, Biscuit presented me with a gift - a new digital camera! This, in fact, was the catalyst for the rash of baking I did on Sunday. You can see my new equipment above. Now that I had a new camera to document my creations, I had to get into the kitchen immediately. Before I could bake, Elaine was willing to pose for an early Sunday morning snapshot. She hasn't had her coffee yet.

This is where the last blog picks up the action - as I mentioned, the first baking activity was the upside-down cake. I then ventured into the realm of bars. I have always been successful with my magic bars, but these required little skill in the way of constructing the crust. The crust is simply graham crackers smooshed with butter and pressed into the pan. The crust for caramel crumb bars and citrus squares required something a little more intensive. I was able to use my use my trusty food processor to grind down some blanched almonds into a nice light texture. This combined with some butter and flour to make the base for my caramel crumb bars, as well as the crumb topping the would be used later. Here in began my problems.

First and foremost, my trusty pastry cutter broke on me. Now, I was raised on the notion that this job can be done simply by using two butter knives. This was always my least favorite task whenever I helped Mom in the kitchen. I liked wet ingredients much better, and of course the wet ingredients always tasted better (that is where the sugar resides!). As I grew older and my baking skills matured, I came to regard the dry ingredients as highly as the wet, and thus invested in a small pastry cutter, only to have it break on me after hundreds of crusts and crisps. You will be missed, pastry cutter. RIP - In Memoriam

My next trip up was a baking mistake I promised myself I would never commit. Thinking I could use the oven for more than one tray at a time, I popped both trays of bar crusts into the oven at the same time. The upper crust was for the citrus squares, the lower for the caramel bars. I could smell the burning before I could help the situation. The crusts both looked OK, but the damage had been done to the caramel crust.

The next issue I confronted was the caramel itself. Every other caramel I have ever made included butter or sweetened condensed milk. This was just sugar, water, corn syrup, and some salt. I was suspect, but I did it. The pot to the right is the beginning stages of boil. It had not become amber at all. It took a little longer than Martha indicated in her book for the caramel to achieve any color at all, but when it did come to, it seemed to be the right texture. The taste was less than impressive. Perhaps I am used to a more butterscotchy/dulce de leche type of caramel. This was not what I have come to think of as ribbony-smooth delight.

Alas, I finished the caramel bars by pouring the caramel over the burnt crust and added formed balls of crust to the top of the bars. They baked and came out ok. The problem was, the next day, the burning taste of the crust, when combined with the brittle, hardness of the caramel, did not make for a delicious treat. I ate several, but then they were summarily disposed of.

But this post is not meant to be a baking bummer! In fact, the very title of this post is VICTORY! And victory sure is sweet. The best thing to come of this day was the citrus bars. These bad boys, which require 8, count them E-I-G-H-T, eggs, were the fluffy stuff dreams are made of. I took about a thousand pictures of these, hoping to somehow capture how well they came out. Visually, I did my best, but to really capture the essence of these yummy bars, one would have to eat them! Here are a couple shots of the process and the final product (dusted generously with powdered sugar).

Straight out of the oven...





Scrumptious slices of heaven!









Valentine's Day citrus square for Biscuit ..









This concluded the Sunday night baking. I had to get up eventually for school the next day, so I had to clean up the kitchen and get ready for the week ahead. The highlight was knowing that I would be back in the kitchen to bake again on Monday night in preparation for a birthday cake. More on that in my next post!