April Daring Baker’s Challenge: The longest cake to make, ever!

Hello hello!  It’s been some crazy busy few months, but I’m back, baby!  No more half-assed, thrown together, just to say I made it, baking challenges.  If you don’t know already, I love the Daring Baker’s Challenges at the Daring Kitchen.  I’ve learned so many great recipes (and some that I have no desire to make again, honestly) of desserts I had never even heard of.  This month’s challenge was no different.

Savarin.  Say what?  Yeah, well it’s a rich yeast cake that’s soaked in a liquid and served with lightened pastry cream and fruit.

So I’ve been traveling a lot lately.  I had to carefully plan out the day I would make this cake.  However, days off where I am home and not jet-setting are becoming few and far between so by the time I finished all my needed errands, it was 4 pm.  FYI . . . it is impossible to start making a yeasted cake at 4 pm unless you intend to stay up until 4 am.

The cake really isn’t hard to make, thanks to the good ol’ Kitchen Aid.  But with all the rising time involved, I only had time to bake the cake itself.  Then it went into the freezer while I went off to New York for the weekend.

Picked it back up the next week, making the pastry cream and the syrup to soak it in.  Now the syrup . . . I probably should have looked up a different recipe.  But I went with the one provided in the challenge.  It tastes a lot like tea.  I think a spiced rum would have been better.  But nonetheless, that cake was thirsty.  Crazy how much liquid it soaked up.  And I don’t think I had enough time to let the excess drip off because the piece I tried tasted more like a sweet tea sponge.  But maybe a day in the fridge will help.

I think all this cake really needed was a cup of simple syrup.  It kind of reminded me of a spongy angel food cake with the cream and berries, but the peach syrup was just too much liquid.  If I make it again (which is a big “if” since the cake takes so long to make), I will make a different syrup and use much less of it.

March Daring Baker’s Challenge: Vegetable Desserts?

This will be a quick post because I left this month’s challenge at the Daring Kitchen up until the very last minute.  I haven’t been able to make the last 2 or 3 challenges so I really wanted to jump back in.  I’ve been extremely busy as of late, especially this month.  I spent 5 days in Ireland, 7 days on a cruise, and turned 30 years old (ugh!).

My head has been on vacation as well.  We found out that my parent’s dog Luke (who I pretty much consider my dog too) has cancer and it’s been a rough week.  My dad noticed a red spot inside his nose which despite various medications was not getting better.  After several tests, they found it was cancerous.  We took him to a surgeon today for a nosectomy.  It’s like it sounds, they had to remove his nose for his best chance of beating the cancer.  Still haven’t seen him yet because he’s staying overnight, but it’s really all I can think about today so I’m sorry my post is more about him than my challenge.  But the staff at the clinic inform us that he’s doing well, awake and alert but on morphine to manage the pain.  He’s the best dog in the world, I really could go on and on about him, but I’ll refrain.  Please keep him in your thoughts.

So this month’s challenge was to incorporate vegetables into baked goodies.  The obvious dish would be to make carrot cake.  But I’ve been wanting some zucchini bread for awhile so picked up zucchini on my way home from work tonight.

While looking up recipes on AllRecipes.com, I decided to make zucchini brownies instead.  Got out my mini food processor to basically puree the zucchini and whipped up some brownies, quick and easy.  Only modifications I made to the recipe were to use 6 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil instead of the vegetable oil, reduce the sugar to 1 cup, add an egg, and add 3/4 a cup of chocolate chips to the batter.  I also only made just over half the amount of frosting.

Final result?  Cake.  I tend to think of brownies as fudgey dense deliciousness.  This recipe yielded a light and fluffy chocolate cake.  Really couldn’t tell that zucchini was in it.  It was actually pretty good . . . just not brownies.

I hope to get back to business next month and dive into a good baking challenge.  I think things are calming down a bit so I should be able to find the time.  Until then, I will try to blog again with all the other creations that have come out of my kitchen since January.

New Year, New Adventures

Well folks, 2013 has arrived; the year that has me saying goodbye to my 20′s.  I don’t feel old, and I certainly don’t look old, so all that’s left to do is get my lie straight.  I am 27 years old.  Yeah, not too old, not too young.  27 is good.

I’m sorry it has once again been awhile since my last update.  I can say I was busy, which is true, but I’ll stop making excuses now.  Here’s what I’ve been up to:

November . . .

Thanksgiving!  I took the reigns and co-cooked the meal alongside my mother.  I usually bake a couple pies and maybe bring a side or two along, but I decided that 2013′s Thanksgiving Dinner is going to be made by me and me alone.  So 2012 was the dress rehearsal.

It went very well.  I made corn muffins, rolls, cranberry sauce, and a chocolate pecan pie (using Alton Brown’s recipe with normal pecans, and adding chocolate chips) the day before.  Then I went to my parents house and prepared the stuffing and sweet potato casserole with my mom.  Woke up bright and early Thanksgiving Day to make a derby pie and Thanksgiving brunch, cranberry/orange nut bread.  Back over to my parents house to get everything else cooking.

I kept a list of when everything needed to go in the oven so that I wouldn’t get flustered with the timing of it all.  The only thing I didn’t end up having a hand in cooking was the actual turkey.  My dad smoked it.  Then he carved it up using his new ceramic knives from Costco.  Big mistake.  The knife broke and we ended up spending half an hour looking for sharp white knife shards.

Throughout 2013, I’ll need to remake all of our standard (and experiment with new) dishes, and cook a whole turkey, so I’m ready to go for my big day.  My mom always does a great job and I hope I can live up to it!

      

December . . .

Started out the month with a quick hop to Las Vegas to see the Script.  Fourth show in 6 weeks, not bad!  They were playing a gig with Train and Better Than Ezra.  My friend Jessica and I almost didn’t get into the show because we had trouble with our tickets, but with determination, we managed to find tickets for $10 each.  Got in the venue just as the Script took the stage, timing couldn’t have been better.  And of course I brought them some goodies: chocolate cake balls and pecan pie bars.

Then started the crazy holiday baking frenzy.  In the course of a week, I make 8 different varieties of cookies/bars, totaling 315 pieces.  They were then boxed up and shipped to a lucky list of friends around the country, and the rest were bagged for local friends and coworkers.  I’m not a fan of freezing cookies which is why I ended up doing everything in one week, but next year I’m going to spread it out and use my freezer more.  I was insanely tired after all that baking.

      

The night before Christmas, I made homemade cinnamon rolls.  Woke up early the next day to frost them before heading over to my parents for the festivities.  They were delicious, mainly because I didn’t skimp on the cream cheese frosting.  I was rewarded for being such a good little baker with more cooking/baking items from Santa.

    

Last bit of baking in 2012 was a mini chocolate chip cake for a friend.  His birthday is New Year’s Eve Eve and it had been a long time since he had had a birthday cake.  I was a day late in giving it to him, but we celebrated on New Year’s Eve in Vegas.  Still can’t tell you how it was because we haven’t eaten it yet.  Unfortunately he got food poisoning and was unable to eat for the next couple of days.  It went in my freezer and we haven’t found the time to enjoy it yet.  Hopefully it still tastes good!

January . . .

I haven’t worked up the energy to bake, except for a half batch of brownies.  My Christmas tree is still up (being pitched tomorrow) and I feel like the holidays blew by.  The baking will resume again once I’ve caught my breath.

October Daring Baker’s Challenge: Just een zee nick of time

Pardon my french.  Phew!  It’s 1:45am on October 27, the day all Daring Bakers posts go up.  I was really looking forward to this month’s challenge, but I was doing a bit of traveling this month and with a focus on exercise, I couldn’t bring myself to make my favorite pastry in the world and not indulge.  That being said, it’s almost Halloween, so screw the diet!  Mmm . . . millefeuilles.

That’s right, the challenge this month was to make puff pastry dough (which I’ve done before), pastry cream (which I’ve done before), and layer the two in perfect harmony with each other (which I’ve never done).  I’ve wanted to make millefeuilles for quite some time so I’m glad I was able to pull it together so last minute.

For the puff pastry, I used the recipe from two years ago when us Daring Bakers were challenged to make vols-au-vent.  Just a quick YouTube refresher on turning the dough, that part of the process was done.

I also used an old standard for pastry cream that I highly enjoy, doubling the recipe because you can never really have too much pastry cream.  Check.

Two days later and back from a short trip to Austin to see Bob Schneider, it was time to put it all together. There wasn’t too much instruction on rolling out the pastry dough except that it should be about the thickness of cardboard.  Not wanting to waste all my dough, I baked one of the three layers on the first cookie sheet, rather than baking all the layers at the same time.  As noted, I put another cookie sheet on top of the dough to weigh it down and stuck it in the oven to bake at 200F.

Uh oh.  The dough was not doing anything after 15 minutes.  Looking at the instructions again, it said to bake at 200C /400F.  Whoops!  I upped the temp and thought I’d try to keep baking the first layer anyways.  It worked fine, but I found that I needed to use two cookie sheets to weigh the dough down.  Puff pastry just wants to rise and rise and rise.

After baking the next two layers, I started getting all the other components ready to go.  The recipe provided by our host used a royal icing to top off the millefeuilles.  First of all, I’ve been to France about ten times.  And each time, going to a Boulangerie/Patisserie to get a millefeuille tops my list of things to do.  Never have I had one with royal icing on top.  It always has a smooth, shiny glaze that sets up just enough but never hardens completely.  That’s what I wanted to top mine off with.

After some internet searching, I found what I was looking for is poured white fondant.  Only fondant I’m familiar with is that gross dough like mass that you roll out to cover cakes.  Yes, I know fondant is so mainstream now, but it’s really not tasty.  However, there exists a pourable fondant that is made by boiling sugar and water, then adding a little cream of tarter and corn syrup.

Running out of time, I really hoped I would get this white fondant down on the first try.  The boiling process went well, paying close attention to getting it to the right temperature and then back down to about 120F before working with it again.  From my research, I found that you can finish it in a stand mixer rather than hand pull/knead it.  It will change from clear and runny to white and thick.  I think I may have read the instructions wrong because after 7 minutes of mixing, it hadn’t changed color or texture much.  After a reread, I changed my beater to the dough hook and voila!  White and thick.

Now wait a minute!  This fondant is not pourable!

After yet some more research and stumbling upon this very helpful blog, I whipped up a simple syrup and incorporated it into the fondant and all was right in the world.

Assembly went well except that my pastry cream of choice is maybe a little too thin for millefeuilles.  And even though I doubled the recipe, they didn’t bulk up to the height I wanted.  Don’t get me started on cutting them!  I cut them in a few chunks but need to finish cutting them in single servings when I wake up, which hopefully will give the pastry cream a little bit more time to set up.  Plus, I don’t have any super sharp knives which makes cutting them even harder.

Now, today is my grandma’s 80th birthday and we’re going to the Arboretum to celebrate.  Normally, I would make a cake for the occasion.  And for an 80th birthday, I wanted to go big.  But walking around an Arboretum really doesn’t fit as a place to bring a large cake to.  So birthday millefeuilles it is!  And hopefully my grandma will enjoy these pastries as much as I do.

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

Good Craic with Paddy and the Script

So it’s been kind of an Irish month.  Okay, not really.  But I went to Globe, AZ in September and came across a bunch of cookbooks in an antique store.  I could have browsed for hours, but unfortunately didn’t have the time.  I did manage to find a sourdough book with a whole bunch of recipes using sourdough starter, which strangely enough is difficult to find online.  So I took my “friend” Paddy out of the refrigerator, freshened him up a bit, and made some sourdough bagels.

I’ve never made bagels before.  Using my starter had me worried as well since Paddy doesn’t seem to produce consistent results.  But at least this recipe didn’t require a 12+ hour rise, so if the end product wasn’t perfect, I wouldn’t be too disappointed.

So you boil and then bake bagels, eh?  Nifty process and it all went quite well.  I let my Kitchenaid mixer do the kneading, then left the dough to rise for about 3 hours.  Shaping the bagels was a cinch, then they rose for another 30 minutes before taking a boiling water bath.  I think the heat activated the yeast because they seemed to swell up well during the boil.  Then popped in the oven to finish before eating.  Texture wasn’t quite like I thought it would be for bagels, but they certainly made amazing ham, cheese, and avocado sandwiches.

A few weeks ago was my grandpa’s birthday.  His favorite cake is either chocolate with white frosting, or white with chocolate frosting.  I get kind of bored always doing the same kind of cakes, so I decided to experiment and make it a cookies and cream cake.  Chocolate cake and vanilla frosting would still be involved, but mixed in the frosting would be Oreos for a bit of a crunch.

Note to anyone wanting to try this: mix the Oreos in the frosting to help it all stick together.  I spread the frosting between the layers and then sprinkled cookie crumbs over it.  When cut, the layers didn’t hold together very well.  Overall, not my favorite cake.  I think the cookies just made me overly thirsty, so have a glass of milk nearby.  But a cookie crumb around the sides is a good solution when running out of frosting.

Just this past weekend, I went to see my good friends the Script (okay, they probably consider me more of a crazy fan) in San Diego and LA with my concert partner in crime, Jessica.  As always, I couldn’t show up empty handed.  But what kind of cookies should I make this time?  The list was long, but I settled on french macarons (now that I seem to have the hang of them), white chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies, and sugar cookies (to get creative with).

The macarons turned out well, except the vanilla ones had to bake quite a bit longer because the bottoms kept sticking to the parchment.  I’m not done learning about these delicate and frustrating cookies yet, but they were definitely more than presentable.  I realized for the chocolate macarons, I didn’t have any heavy cream to make chocolate ganache.  I took a chance (because I didn’t want to go to the store) and tried a heavy cream substitute comprised of milk and butter and by George, it worked!  I think I actually liked the ganache better with the heavy cream substitute because… duh!  Butter makes everything better.

The chocolate chip cookies were delish!  I still go with the good ol’ Toll House recipe on the chocolate chip bag.  I’ve found that as long as you take them out of the oven when they’re just slightly browned and let them finish baking on the cookie sheet, they’re perfect.  If you let them bake too long, they seem to be a bit dry.

Now for the sugar cookie fun.  I’ve done the band’s instruments before, meticulously hand painted with food coloring, so I didn’t want to do that again.  Seeing as how their new record #3 just came out (you can buy it here or on iTunes), I went with a #3 song theme.  Millionaires translated into round cookies with a gold Euro and writing underneath.  Six Degrees of Separation was done by making cookies in the shape of thermometers that measured six degrees.  Hall of Fame was done with Hollywood Star cookies with the band members names on them.  A hand cookie cutter folding the outside fingers down created the 3 fingers up cookies.  And Broken Arrow were also round cookies with a sky background and painted broken arrows flying across.  I wanted to do Kaleidoscope cookies but figured each one would take about 30 minutes to hand paint.

The cookie drop didn’t go as well as hoped.  Jessica and I went to the venue early to try to catch one of the guys.  We saw the tour manager so should have just given them to him, but he seemed busy.  After soundcheck, a guy who works at the venue said they were sitting down for dinner so probably wouldn’t be out for awhile.  I almost gave them to him to see if he’d take them back, but doubted they’d be delivered.  When I told Jessica this, she said “You don’t give your cookies to just any one.”  And my response was “no, just musicians.”  Ladies and gentlemen, my new slogan was born.  Ha!

Fortunately a few minutes later, one of the band’s crew members walked out to the buses and took the cookies.  I’m still not sure if the band ever saw them though since they went on the crew bus.  Oh well.

Was a great couple of shows and so good to see those guys back at it.  Now my count is 10 Script shows and I’m eagerly awaiting the next one, which will most likely be Atlanta in a couple weeks or Vegas in a month and a half.  No, I don’t have a live music problem . . .

 

 

Sourdough Bagels:

• 1 cup sourdough starter
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons cooking oil
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 gallon water plus 2 tablespoons sugar

In a large mixing bowl combine sourdough starter with eggs and oil.  Mix together flour, salt, and sugar. Add to starter mixture.  Add enough additional flour for the dough to leave the sides of the bowl.  Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes or until smooth and elastic, adding more flour if necessary.  Cover with a cloth.  Set in warm place free from drafts until doubled in size, about 3 hours.

Turn out onto floured surface and divide into 8-10 pieces; shape into balls.  Punch a hole in center with a floured finger.  Form a doughnut shape by gently enlarging hole, working each bagel into uniform shape.  Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.

Add sugar to water and bring to a boil.  Drop each bagel into the boiling water one at a time.  Boil only 4-5 bagels at a time.  Cook for 7 minutes, turning once.  Drain; place on greased cookie sheets.  Bake at 375F for 25-35 minutes.  Bagels should be golden brown and crusty.

Sugar Cookie Fun and Sticky Buns!

The last couple of months have been busy.  First, my sister and nephew came for a visit.  Then, I went back to France with them for a little holiday.  After that was back to life; back to reality.  But I still found occasions to bake.

It was all quite hush hush, but I flew to Dallas in July for the Voice auditions.  I was keeping it relatively quiet because if I didn’t get a call back, I wouldn’t have to tell any one about my failure.  I’ve auditioned for American Idol several times and never made it past the first round.  Unfortunately, the Voice was no different, but I don’t feel bad about it.  Actually, I nailed my audition.  I sang a slowed down version of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” and where I saw a lot of participants succumb to nerves, I didn’t at all.  There were so many people auditioning so I brought decorated sugar cookies with me in order to stand out (and bribe, if necessary).  The cookies never fail for concerts, but I guess they don’t work at auditions.

A few weeks ago, I had a craving for sticky buns.  I rarely eat them, but they’re so unbelievably good, I decided to indulge.  Not exactly an easy recipe to halve, I gave away some to my parents and froze the rest for when I have another craving.  The recipe I used was pretty good, except I think it had too much orange zest in it.  And letting it rise in the fridge overnight didn’t really work, so it had to rise out of the fridge in the morning.  Nonetheless, they hit the spot.

And then last week, I went to a birthday party and decided to take some sugar cookies.  The birthday boy, Jim, loves (drinking) games, so I made him drunken jenga cookies.  I have to say, one of my favorite baking tools is an edible food color pen.  If I had to write in icing, they would not have turned out nearly as nice.

While baking those cookies, I remembered that some Script fans were putting together a little something for the band when their new album #3 released.  All I had to do was take a picture with three fingers up.  I’m Cookie Kelly, what better way was there to do that than draw three fingers up on a cookie?  It was good fun, though I probably could have made it a bit more detailed.  I’m not an artist, but I’m a perfectionist.

The rest of September should be pretty slow in the kitchen, but I’ve got to decide what kind of cookies to make the Script for when I see them in California next month.  It’s been 10 months . . . I’m having withdrawals.

August Daring Baker’s Challenge – sh sh sh SHARK!

Oh August, what fun you brought; vacation time, a trip to France, and Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.  Doesn’t get much better than that.  And this months Daring Bakers Challenge was pate a choux (cream puff) swans.

We’ve made pate a choux before, if you recall the croquembouche.  But apparently it was so long ago, I forgot the technique.  Fortunately for YouTube, I only had to throw away the first attempt, which was completely runny.  That’s not unexpected when the liquid in the dough is about the same amount as the dry.  But attempt number two yielded a stiff dough like a pro.  I attribute that success due to adding the flour to the water/butter mixture after bringing it to a boil and still over heat.

I halved the recipe so I didn’t have a lot of dough to play with, but I tried to make sharks in addition to swans.  Try is the key word.  They seemed to look more like airplanes with a fin.  Therefore I just used the fin to create an impending shark attack scene with leftover pastry cream.

Pate a choux is pretty versatile, so I’m sure I will use the recipe yet again.  But I’m not so sure that I’ll repeat using it for swans.

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

Pate a choux

(cannot be doubled)

Ingredients
½ cup (120 ml) (115 gm) (4 oz) butter
1 cup (240 ml) water
¼ teaspoon (1½ gm) salt
1 cup (240 ml) (140 gm) (5 oz) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

Directions:

1. Line at least two baking sheets with silicone mats or parchment paper, or grease pans well.
2. Preheat oven to 415°F.
3. In a small saucepot, combine butter, water, and salt. Bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and add flour all at once.  Mixture should come together in a stiff ball.  Remove from heat and continue mixing until room temperature.
5. Add one egg, and beat until well combined. Add remaining eggs individually, beating vigorously after each addition. Resulting mixture should be somewhat glossy, very smooth, and somewhat thick.
6. Spoon or pipe out classic rounds or other desired shapes.
7. Bake in oven about 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 375°F and bake until lightly browned, about another 10 minutes.
8. Allow to completely cool before filling with pastry cream.