Hostest with the.... well, something...

This past weekend, Biscuit and I decided to entertain his parents for dinner. They took us on a trip to Telluride, Colorado and we wanted to do our part to thank them. That means Biscuit hit the floors to gather up the dust bunnies, and it means I made a mess in the kitchen. Baking could not commence until I had properly organized my baking cabinet.

In order to spruce things up, Biscuit and I bought some new place mats and napkins to make the house look a little more spring. Speaking of spring, I also found a great deal on some new springform pans, so of course I had to indulge in purchasing those. Saturday night required us to develop our menu and then shop for all the things we needed to make the night a success. Once the shopping was all over, I needed to settle into an evening of baking. Biscuit watched several episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and had a brew or two, while I slipped into something a little more comfortable and began to preheat the oven.

My first indulgence was a recipe from a book called Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey from my sister. This book is designed for the chocoholic in all of us! I settled on a blondie brownie recipe. Never having been a big fan of baking brownies from scratch, this recipe did nothing to sway me in a new direction. These things were tasty and loaded to the gills with toffee, white and semi-sweet chocolate, coconut flakes, and butterscotch, but they still required more than 30 minutes in length than the recommended baking time. That, of course, leaves the edges slightly scorched and crunchy, while part of the brownie itself remains just barely cooked. When they were still warm, they were less than impressive... however, once they cooled, boy, were they ever tasty. The interesting thing that Biscuit and I both discovered was that, despite the amount of nutty, morsely goodness that I packed into these brownies, they never felt heavy or dense. The batter kept them moist and light. They were quite delicious. They looked even better once they were cooled, cut up, and stacked onto a plate.

I did not sleep very well Saturday night in anticipation of Sunday so I got up pretty early, despite Daylight Saving Times, and began cleaning and baking. The night before I had peeled and grated over a pound of carrots to make my first ever carrot cake. Charlie loves carrot cake, and I had recently saw it on a dessert menu somewhere but did not order it. I decided to give it a whirl. This was a modification of Martha Stewart's Carrot Ginger cupcakes which can be found here. The carrots were very moist and yielded a similarly moist batter that divided perfectly into two 9" pans. Just like the blondie brownies, it seemed to take much longer than the recommended time to bake, causing me to ponder whether purchasing an internal oven thermometer might be a good idea. The good news is that the cake turned out springy to the touch. For the first time ever, I actually let my cake cool to real coolness before trying to work with it. I removed the cakes from the cake pans and let the cakes sit on a cooling rack for almost 4 hours. When I finally went to cut the cake with a serrated blade and was able to taste the scraps, I was pretty impressed with my own handiwork. The cake was beyond moist and very flavorful. I whipped up a simple cream cheese frosting (realizing that in order to do this correctly, it must be FULL FAT cream cheese, none of this 1/3 less fat baloney!). Having read the Baking Handbook, I found out that one step to a flawless cake is to apply a crumb coating of frosting to the cake, then allowing it to chill for at least thirty minutes. This locks in any of the crumbly bits that might taint an otherwise beautiful frosting job.

I left this bad boy to chill in the fridge and lock in those crumbs, and realized that I needed to feed my Biscuit some breakfast. He was quietly snoozing away as I was running a few last minute errands, but the love of my life deserved something sweet for breakfast. He noticed a recipe in one of my books for sticky buns. These differed from the yeast-based dough I used when I made sticky buns over the summer. The recipe this weekend actually called for buttermilk biscuits, which I made from scratch. These came out really well, and though the recipe states that they are best served warm and fresh the day they are made, these actually tasted even better the second day - ask Mom and Charlie, and Biscuit's parents who each got to indulge in some of these!

After a sugar-powered breakfast it was back to baking for me. Biscuit continued to spruce up the house - helping to make the dining room look this good. The weather certainly helped, too. I opened all the windows to let some fresh air in. We got some plants and flowers to put around the house, too, trying to ignore the fact we knew that snow was coming. We wanted to make the day as perfect as possible, even right down to the little finishing touches. These picutres of the plants were all taken before Elaine decided to nibble on them.



My next job was to start the planned dessert for the evening. I was going to try my hand at a chocolate souffe cake. As my dedicated blog readers know, I do not have much experience in working with egg whites. I always get nervous. And this was a big one. This souffle require a pound of chocolate and 8, count them, e-i-g-h-t, eggs. Yikes. I barely had a bowl big enough to whip these things together. I was even nervous about what stiff peaks really look like. I didn't want to overbeat anything. The success of this evening hung in the balance of my ability to make a really great dessert - well, not really... but sort of! Stiff peaks formed, as you can see. The next challenge was melting the chocolate with the butter until it was just right. That came out looking something like this. I used bittersweet chocolate for the cake. Since the recipe called for a little bourbon, I feared using semi-sweet chocolate, in order to not make it overwhelmingly sweet. I think it was the right decision.

I had a lot of fun trying to get the airy 8 egg whites mixed with the yolks and pounds of butter and chocolate. As I was incorporating them, it did start to look quite beautiful. It baked FOREVER, partially because I used a 9" springform pan instead of the recommended 10". Yeah, remember how I said that I bought new springform pans? I bought an 8", a 9", and an 11". They had every size but the 10". In retrospect, I realize I should have probably baked the cake in the 11" and had the batter spread around a bit more, but it all worked out in the end. The sides did cave in a little, but it was nothing that some ice cream and strawberries couldn't help!

And as for the carrot cake you ask? Well, it looked as great as it tasted! Before Biscuit's parents rolled in, I was doing my final finishing touches on the carrot cake. I frosted it with absolutely the most dreamiest of all dreamy cream cheese frostings. I also took Martha Stewart's advice and made some lovely marzipan carrots. I colored a piece of maripan with orange gel food coloring, using just the tipity tip of a tooth pick. I rolled the marzipan into the shape of a carrot and scored the carrot with the toothpick, making the impressions and indents typical of a farm-grown carrot. Then I rolled the candy carrot in some crushed Oreo crumbs to resemble dirt. The cake ended up looking awesome. I used fresh dill to replicate the carrot greens. I have since read that you can also use candied lime peel, which would probably compliment the sweet taste of the cake better than the dill would, especially if you ended up with an accidental mouthful of the green stuff!

Biscuit's mom, after a rousing round of Guitar Hero, inquired as to whether there was a bake sale going on in the dining room that she didn't know about. Here is the spread of offerings. To the left is the finished souffle, the center is obviously the carrot cake, and to the right are the blondie brownies. Most of the food remained untouched, including the carrot cake. Knowing that a beautiful carrot cake would not go to waste, I packaged it up and planned on bringing it over to Charlie on Monday. To me that was the crown jewel of the evening and the baking accomplishment that to date I am most proud of.

Now to a less than marvelous baking accomplishment. I am a frequent reader of the Rachael Ray magazine. I think it is quirky and cute, and really love the dessert ideas that editor Silvana Nardone comes up with (because we all know Rachael does not bake!). This month it was PB&B Cloud Cookies. Holy yum! These were inspired by "The Elvis," the sandwich Elvis used to eat that was peanut butter and bananas on bread, then deep-fried. This was actually a peanut butter meringue cookie recipe that was iced with a light, fluffy banana frosting.

No one I talked to seemed to mind the idea of the peanut butter meringues, though no one seemed to like the notion of banana frosting. The cookie recipe was uber simple - 4 egg whites beaten to stiff peaks with 1/4 tsp of salt. Once stiff, add 1.5 cups of confectioner's sugar that has been sifted. Continue to beat until glossy, thick, and well-mixed. After that, fold in a cup of peanut butter. Bake these kittens at 350 degrees for twenty minutes, rotating halfway through baking. I must admit the best tasting cookies were the ones that baked slightly less than twenty minutes. They had the texture that most closely resembled the traditional meringue cookie. I frosted the cookies with a very light coating of the banana frosting - a mere 2 tbs. of softened butter, 1.5 cups of confectioner's sugar, 1/2 tsp. of lemon juice, and 3 tbs. of mashed banana (which is the equivalent of one whole large banana squished with a potato masher). As always, I added just a teensy drop of vanilla extract.
I smeared this stuff on the cookies after they cooled and topped them with chopped salted peanuts. Personally, I ate these cookies until I nearly made myself ill. I loved them that much. The combination of salty and sweet was just enough to do it for me. Biscuit, on the other hand, could not finish an entire cookie. Knowing his texture issues and all, I wasn't too surprised. However, I did not want to impose my bizarre taste experience on anyone who was not willing. I kept these to myself instead of bringing them to work or sharing them with people who may not like them. Phooey to those who think peanut butter cookies would not be enhanced by banana frosting!

There will be more to post later on this weekend. I have to come up with something creative to bake for a St. Patrick's Day dinner on Saturday, and I have cake decorating class again on Monday. Mom and I will each have to prepare a cake and frost it to bring into class on Monday. We will then be adding decorations to the cake in class Monday night. I simply cannot wait! Any night when I am surrounded by pounds of cake and frosting cannot be a bad thing!

Ace of Cupcakes

Last Friday, Mike and I wanted to sit down to a quiet romantic dinner. I even volunteered to cook! I tried to my own variation on a meal that we love to have at our favorite restaurant - the Staetler Chicken at Bootlegger's in Lunenburg. I have to admit - my execution of the maple-glazed chicken and the maple cream sauce with sage and walnuts was beyond perfection. The butternut squash raviolis I made left much to be desired. I used a fancy shortcut known as "wonton wrappers" to imitate the pasta aspect of the ravioli. My recommendation for the future - don't do this. Use your effort to look for pre-made, pre-packaged butternut squash ravs, or do it the real way. Wonton wrappers were no fun. The ravioli filling was good, but once boiled, the wrappers just became a pile of wet mush. The ones I made that skipped the boiling stage - the ones I simply pan-seared in the cream sauce - maintained a pasta-like texture and tasted good, but the boiled ones were a travesty at best.

My next attempt was a failure, too! I tried to make a shortcut version of tiramisu. I got store-bought ladyfingers, soaked them in instant espresso, and made a ricotta (leftover from the raviolis) and whipped cream mixture to replace the traditional marscapone. This, much like my ravs, left much to be desired. I was in a cooking slump, and needed something to help return me to my baketress status! Just for honesty-sake - neither of these pictures above, not the ravs or the tiramisu - were my own work. They were found on Google images - the only place I could come across good quality tiramisu or ravs - seeing that I couldn't get the job done myself!

Sunday it was time to bring out all the stops. I was going to bake something and I was going to be successful. What is the easiest thing to bake and NOT screw up? Yup, cupcakes! Now, I am the proud owner of two books on cupcakes, as well as the Martha Stewart baking handbook. There are literally hundreds (as you read in my last blog, at least 500!) variations on traditional cupcakes. So narrowing it down to what I wanted to try on Sunday was hard. However, being true to my sweet tooth I followed my instincts - I wanted something maple-y and walnut-y. I am guessing I was on some kind of maple-walnut kick last weekend - not sure where that came from! But alas, I found a great caramel-penuche frosting recipe online. Here it goes:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, or margarine for dairy-free frosting
  
• 1 cup brown sugar
  
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup milk, or warm water for dairy-free frosting
  
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla
  
• 4 cups confectioners' or icing sugar

I modified it a smidgen - using fat-free half n'half instead of the water or milk option. I also cut the recipe in half, thinking that I didn't want to have too many cupcakes lying around the house - especially since Biscuit and I were anticipating a snow day on Monday. I also added just a touch of maple syrup to the frosting in addition to the vanilla to kick up the flavor.

I made these delicious moist walnut cupcakes. Interestingly enough, they used very little flour. In place of the mass quantities of flour that usually go into cake or cupcake recipes, the recipe called for ground walnuts. Now, working with ground walnuts is quite interesting. If you put them in the food processor and go at them for too long, they will turn into an oily mess, and then into walnut butter. This is NOT what you want to happen. You want to pulse them long enough until the a fine and still dry. You want to keep all that walnut oil goodness in the ground nuts so it will keep the cupcake itself moist and delicious. The results were so good that I do not have any pictures! I only made 6 and they were gone nearly instanteously.

Having finally achieved baking success, I was very excited to go with Mom to our very first Wilton cake decorating class on Monday night. The world was my oyster! I was thrilled beyond words - until we go to Michael's - closed due to snow. What retail store closes because of snow in Massachusetts? Sure, they cancel school and stuff, but to close a store WHEN I WANT TO GO TO CAKE CLASS? Bah humbug! Mom and I made the best of it, though. As mentioned in my last blog, I had a friend's birthday coming up and was anxious to try out a couple different cupcake recipes for that occasion.

I had seen a book at Bed Bath and Beyond that had caught my interest. It was all about specialty cupcakes and since then I had it in my mind that I would do some sort of Caribbean theme for Jeff's birthday cupcakes. The two problems that arose were as such - 1) I did not buy the fun cupcake book when I first saw it, and subsequently was unable to look up any cool cupcake decorating ideas, and 2) It is March. Most cupcake decor items are all about St. Patrick's Day or Easter right now, not anything related to beaches. Since Michael's was closed, I went to I-Party.

At a loss for ideas after a paltry showing in the "luau" section, I got creative. I bought blue fondant to represent water; I got paper umbrellas; I bought plastic palm trees; I bought gummy sharks. I planned to use brown sugar as sand and just do my best to create beach scenes on pineapple cupcakes topped with butter rum frosting. Here were the results: Some had sharks, some had the umbrellas; I just tried to make a tropically-themed island of cupcake fun. In the future, I hope to do more wildly creative things like shape the trunk of a palm tree from rice krispie treats and craft the fronds from fondant - however, for now, I was quite happy.


Wanting to try a second recipe, and having had a craving for oreos after seeing the recipe, I also made some cookies and cream cupcakes. The batter of the cupcake, as well as the frosting, called for pieces of oreo cookies. My bad habit, as I have come to realize, is over-processing in the food processor. I ended up with oreo crumbs instead of pieces. It made the frosting look more like some kind of roofing cement than the tasty treat it was, but looks aren't everything.


These cupcakes were a fan favorite. I also got a little creative and played with the fondant to make a D loves M variation on the cupcakes. Fondant is quite fun, and I am hoping this is a tool that I will learn about more as I progress through my cake decoration education.

As I mentioned, since cake class was canceled, Mom and I were left with nothing to do. After shopping at I-Party, we decided to retreat back to my house and bake all of the above goodies. Mom's favorite thing lately has been madeleines. These are a spongy, French cake-like treat that you need a special pan to make. On the shopping day with Mom and Gram, I bought one of these pans to help curb Mom's cravings. She kept seeing madeleines at work and wanting to try them. She even fantasized about cutting them open, slathering them with seedless raspberry jam, and dipping them in chocolate the long way. Well, her wish was my command. I made my first batch of these a few weeks ago. I wasn't terribly impressed, but Mom was overjoyed by the treat. Monday night, while she perused my baking library, I committed myself to making the batter.

Upon reading the recipe, I had forgotten that you are best served by allowing the batter to chill overnight. I had neglected this step the first time around out of sheer excitement to try out my new creation. This time, I was much more patient and allowed the batter to do what it needed to. I baked the cakes on Tuesday, allowed them to cook, cut them and filled with a triple berry jam. The final step was the chocolate application. This is the part I am worst at. But I was able to deliver to Mom on Tuesday night a batch of her new favorite snack - madeleine sandwich cookies. I have a very bad habit of over-filling the pan with batter, and occasionally I overbake them. Madeleines are something I can only improve upon cooking the more I make them.

Yesterday, I was the leftover gourmet. I looked around at what I had in the cupboard in order to satisfy my sweet tooth craving. I noticed I had some ricotta from the other night, but not a great deal. I made the mistake of preparing parts of the ricotta walnut cheesecake cupcake recipe before reading through the whole thing. Silly me - the recipe called for 2.5 cups of ricotta and I had nary 10 oz. I had to scale back on the wet ingredients and try my best to stretch it to make 12 cupcakes. The recipe had no flour in it, so I couldn't stretch the batter that way. Instead, I used extra walnuts and baked for nearly ten minutes longer than the recipe called for. Coming out of the over the cupcakes did not seem to hold up very well, however after some chilling, and the application of a very delicious caramel icing, the cupcakes proved a success.

Lastly, my final venture was an attempt to use the extra graham cracker crumbs that were prepared for the ricotta cupcakes. I put it into an 8x8 metal baking dish, pressing it well into the bottom, and made a variation on magic bars. I did not have coconut, but I had some sweetened condensed milk. I poured half a can over the crumbs, then allowed to chill for ten minutes. The milk stiffened slightly, and allowed me to spread a layer of raspberry jam over the top of it. The jam and the sweetened condensed milk combined a bit, but tasted very nice. For the topping, I took walnut halves and coarsely cut them and covered the top. This baked in the oven for thirty minutes and I allowed it to cool for over an hour. I chilled them a bit before cutting, and these bars turned out to be quite good. They were a little sweet, as they contained the milk and the jam, but the texture was quite nice. Even Biscuit didn't mind them. He did make the comment, however, that if I am going to make any kind of magic bars, I should just stick to the original. I agreed, but noted that I had no chocolate, coconut, or butterscotch in the house. I worked with what I had.

The recommendation with these bars (other than to not make them in the future) was that they should stay chilled. Giving these little bars too much exposure to room temperature will cause the sweetened condensed milk layer to soften and become a little soupy. Sticky fingers are no fun.

But speaking of sticky fingers, I'm off to see what I can create this weekend. Hopefully I will have something new to blog about tomorrow!

Bake (and blog) Therapy, part 2

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." ~Luciano Pavarotti

I couldn't agree with the big guy more! Some of the most memorable times of my life have not only revolved around the great people I was spending time with, but also around the food I was eating. Food, especially baked goods, can evoke memories and emotions, as well as nourish our bodies and our souls. I think back to some of the very first dates I went on with Biscuit and can remember exactly what we ate, what we were talking about, and how we were feeling. I love that food can transport us back in time.

Anyways, that is enough rambling for today. This blog is not known (well, it is not known at all) for it's wisdom or philosophical musings and rants. It is known for my pictures of whatever silly creations I have made at a given time. Today, I have the addendum to the first bake therapy post, including the pictures of the candy I crafted. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the ice cream kolaches, as Charlie ate them all! Worry not; Mom and I had made so much dough that we have some in reserve safely stowed away in her freezer. I will be making more soon.

These pictures of the cinnamon cookies do not do them justice. They are a little too dark and do not show all of the joy and bliss these cookies yield in the eater. The other star of the day were the espresso chip meringues that I displayed in the last post. So light and yummy. The other day's activities included my foray into confectionary creation. I showed you the cross-section of the chocolate covered cherries I made. However, there was another step - adding the decorations to adorn them.

These were going to be a gift for the Great Gramoo, as Mom and I were traveling to see her and wanted to purvey our goodies to her. Chocolate covered cherries have always been her favorite so I wanted these to be a fitting tribute to her. Learning what I learned from my brief visit to Michael's Crafts, I bought some tools that might make my candies a bit more snazzy. I tried my best to make these look like something you might find in that candy shop tucked away in an intimate block during an excursion to a quaint vacation spot. I think they came out pretty well. I was really quite pleased!

The rest of the day was spent making pretty simplistic candy mold creations. I couldn't forgo the adorable kitty candy mold at the craft store. I was drawn to it, so I made a wide variety of little chocolates on which you could nibble. Here they are:


The ones that came out the best were definitely the fish and the yellow kitty. The yellow kitty was actually a last minute decision to try out melted peanut butter chips instead of chocolate. If you notice, too, I have two little dark mice amidst the kitties, the food bowl, and the fish. I like to think of them as Marzi and Maus (my blog mascots) taking a dip in some chocolate to get in the spirit of things!










I found I really liked the peanut butter kitty because she bore a striking resemblance to another little precocious butterscotch tabby that I know ... a certain Ms. Elaine! It is not an exact 1:1, but they sure are close. Wouldn't you agree?

That's all for now. I guess my next post will pay tribute to my Valentine's gift from Biscuit's parents - they gave us a really great cupcake tree, like the one Kerri has in her Oktoberfest post, and a book called 500 Cupcakes! 500 Cupcakes? Who has that kind of time? Well, believe you me I am working on trying out all of them. Luckily, too, I have a co-worker's birthday coming up - an event that certainly occasioned a visit to 500 Cupcakes. See you next time!