Steel City Flan

Chestnut Chocolate Cake

2010-11-28T14:38:00.000-08:00

Today is my dad's birthday! Ever since I started baking, he's been asking for a chestnut and chocolate cake. He's an excellent, excellent chef and really knows his flavors. This year, I knew that a simple chocolate or vanilla layer cake would definitely not be enough; I wanted something interesting, multi-dimensional, and delicious. My mind turned back to that chestnut and chocolate cake he's been craving, and I decided to surprise him with it.

My whole family loves chestnuts. We usually just roast them and eat them hot, but this year my mom and I made sure to buy pounds and pounds of them, so we could use them on Thanksgiving, roast a few after dinner on weeknights, and still have enough for the cake. We actually ended up hiding a pound in the basement so that my dad wouldn't get to them before I could use them in the cake!

This cake has quite a few things going in its favor: all the different, complimentary flavors (chocolate, chestnuts, and brandy), its big showy look, and the fact that it is so much fun to make. There's a lot of different components to it - the chestnut cake base, the brandy syrup, the chestnut pastry cream, the ganache, and the chocolate-brandy glaze - but I think that makes it a real work of art.

P, from last week's post, came over to help me roast the chestnuts for the puree. It's simply chestnuts boiled in milk until soft, passed through a sieve, and ground into a fine paste. The cooking liquid, plus some extra milk, is added back in to lighten the puree. It's used in the cake itself and in the chestnut pastry cream.

This cake is a big one. It's lightened with beaten egg whites, so it's not too dense, but it still has a lovely, rich crumb. It's split into three layers which are sandwiched together with the pastry cream.

The pastry cream smells amazing. It's got the rich, warm scent of chestnuts, which always makes me think of the holidays. But it's sweetened and made more delicate by the addition of egg yolks, sugar, and milk. It's also a very thick pastry cream, so it really is perfect for spreading between the layers of the cake - no oozing, no mess, just lovely, neat cake layers.

Then there's two types of ganache on top of the cake. The first is a beaten one, so it's fluffy and spread on like frosting. I almost stopped after this one, because the cake already looked so decadent and beautiful. But always the intrepid explorer, I decided, heck, a little more chocolate can't hurt.

The second ganache is a chocolate glaze. It's incredibly smooth and glossy, and it's poured onto the cake while still warm. I actually had trouble getting a good image of the finished cake because the glaze reflected so much light that my camera couldn't process it! But all that shine makes the cake look magnificent, and so tempting. I can't wait for tonight when we tear it apart!

¡Felicidades, Papá! ¡Te quiero mucho mucho mucho mucho!

Your Baking Soundtrack for Chestnut Chocolate Cake:

The Lady Killer, Cee Lo Green.

Seriously, I can't get enough of this album. It's so catchy and bouncy and kind of hilarious that you won't even think about Gnarls Barkley while dancing around to it.

Chestnut Chocolate Cake

Adapted from Martha Stewart

Chesnut Puree

For use in the chestnut cake and chestnut pastry cream.

Ingredients

14.8 ounces chestnuts, roasted and peeled

2 1/4 cups whole milk, plus more for mixing in

Pinch of salt

Combine the chestnuts, milk, and salt in a large saucepan.

Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered, until the chestnuts are quite soft and the liquid has reduced to about a 1/2 cup.

Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl.

Reserve the cooking liquid separately.

In a food processor, process the chestnuts until very smooth and no chunks remain.

Add the cooking liquid a tablespoon at a time, adding extra milk if necessary, until the puree has the consistency of a thick spread.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.

Chestnut Cake

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour, plus more for dusting the pan

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

4 large eggs, separated

1 large egg white

1 cup chestnut puree

1/4 cup whole milk

Spray a deep 9-inch round cake pan with cooking spray. Line with parchment and spray again. Dust with flour, tapping excess out.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Cream together the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.

Beat in the egg yolks.

Add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the chestnut puree after the first addition and the milk after the second. Mix just until incorporated after each addition.

In a separate, clean bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff, glossy peaks.

Whisk a third of the whites into the chestnut batter until just combined.

Fold in the remaining whites.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and level the top with an offset spatula.

Bake at 350˚F until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about one hour.

Brandy Simple Syrup

Ingredients

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons brandy

Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a saucepan.

Remove from heat and stir in brandy.

Allow to cool to room temperature.

Chestnut Pastry Cream

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

Pinch of salt

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 1/2 cups chestnut puree

2 1/4 cups whole milk

Fill a large bowl halfway with ice water and place a slightly smaller bowl within it.

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup of the sugar, the egg yolks, and salt.

Whisk in the cornstarch 1 tablespoon at a time.

Whisk in chestnut puree.

Bring the milk and remaining 1/4 cup sugar to a simmer in a large saucepan.

Temper the yolks by drizzling in about half of the hot milk, whisking the yolks constantly.

Pour them back into the pan with the rest of the milk, stirring constantly.

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Boil for two minutes.

Pour through a fine mesh strainer into the bowl over the ice water.

Stir occasionally until the mixture has cooled.

Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream and refrigerate until needed.

Whipped Ganache Frosting

Ingredients

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Place the chocolate in a medium owl.

In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer.

Pour over the chocolate. Let stand one minute, and then stir until smooth.

Let cool completely.

Beat until fluffy.

Chocolate Brandy Glaze

Ingredients

3/4 cup heavy cream

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

4 tablespoons butter, room temperature

1 tablespoon brandy

Place the chocolate in a medium owl.

In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer.

Pour over the chocolate. Let stand one minute, and then stir until smooth.

Add the butter and brandy and stir until smooth.

Use immediately.

To Assemble

Trim the domed top of the cake.

Cut the cake into three equal layers.

Place one layer on a cake board or serving platter. Brush with brandy syrup.

Spread half the pastry cream on the layer.

Top with another layer of cake. Brush with brandy syrup.

Spread the remaining half of pastry cream on the layer.

Top with the remaining layer of cake.

Refrigerate for half an hour.

Spread ganache frosting over top and sides of cake.

Refrigerate ten minutes.

Pour chocolate brandy glaze over top of cake. Smooth over top and sides with offset spatula (do not pour it all at once, as it may be a bit too much).

Allow glaze to set before serving.

Caramel Apple Génoise

2010-11-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

It's funny how things work out sometimes. Like the fact that my friend P's mom's birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, and that we happened to be having the holiday meal with their family. P and I made this surprise birthday cake for her and served it as a Thanksgiving dessert. It felt great to make my first fondant cake, but it felt even better presenting it after dinner and seeing her mom's look of surprise and happiness.

P's family moved to our neighborhood a couple months ago. They are Columbian, so my parents are overjoyed at having another Spanish-speaking family in the area. It really couldn't have worked out more perfectly, since P is my age, we both speak Spanish, and she is a sweetheart. Since our families get along so well, we all decided to have Thanksgiving together. My parents made the bird and P's parents cooked all kinds of rice, veggies, and other side dishes. P and I provided the surprise end to the meal.

Originally, the cake was a disaster. A delicious disaster (we snuck tastes of the Bavarian creams while assembling it), but a disaster nonetheless. While it tasted great, it looked hideous; we had transfered it to a too-small plate after assembling it and that had forced the cake in on itself, so that the layers looked crooked. The top also wasn't too pretty, as the layer of cream on top just looked messy. At the last minute, I decided to roll out some fondant and cover the whole thing. It's not the most gorgeous fondant cake, but it was enough to make P's mom smile, and it was so much fun covering a cake for the first time! I also wrote, "Felicidades, Ana Lucía" on some parchment paper in chocolate and then, when the chocolate had hardened, applied the lettering to the cake.

I know it's after the fact now, but I'd like to say that I'm thankful for our wonderful new Columbian neighbors, for the wonderful P, and for her help in making this cake. Moreover, I'm thankful for the few of you who read this blog and comment faithfully; you remind me that I'm not just writing into thin air and that someone is listening. Thank you so much, and I hope to share the upcoming holiday season with you!

Your Baking Soundtrack for Caramel Apple Génoise

I'm Alive, I'm Dreaming, The Ready Set

DON'T JUDGE ME, he's really cute. And catchy. But mostly really cute.

Caramel Apple Génoise

All components adapted from Tartelette via Whisk Kid

I suggest making the components in the order in which I've presented them here, so that the caramel sauce and simple syrup have time to come to room temperature.

Caramel

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons butter

1/8 cup heavy cream

Cook the sugar and water in a small saucepan with the lid on until the sugar has dissolved.

Remove the lid and cook without stirring until the caramel is a dark amber. Be careful not to burn.

Remove from the heat.

Add the butter and stir.

Pour in the cream (the caramel will bubble and spit at this point, so be careful).

Stir until smooth.

Allow to cool.

Cinnamon and Nutmeg Génoise

Ingredients

4 eggs

4 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup flour

1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons cornstarch

Grease and line an 8x8-inch square pan.

Weigh the bowl in which you will make the genoise and write down this number.

In a large bowl over a pan of simmering water, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, salt, and sugar until warm to the touch.

Pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat on medium-high until the bowl is cool. The mixture should triple in volume and will fall from the whisk in a slowly dissolving ribbon.

Sift the flour, cornstarch, cinnamon, and nutmeg into a medium bowl.

Add a third of the flour mixture to the egg mixture. Gently fold it in, making sure to reach the bottom of the bowl with the spatula. Repeat with another third and then fold in the final third.

Weigh the bowl with the batter and subtract the weight of the bowl. Divide by four to get the weight of one fourth of the batter. Measure out one fourth into the prepared pan.

Smooth the top with an offset spatula until the batter is even throughout the pan, being careful not to lose the air in the batter.

Bake at 400˚F for 12-12 minutes, until the top of the cake springs back when lightly touched.

Repeat three more times to end up with four layers.

Simple Syrup

Ingredients

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup sugar

In a small saucepan, bring the water and sugar to a boil.

Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature.

Caramel Bavarian Cream

Ingredients

1 tablespoon powdered gelatin

3 tablespoons water

4 egg yolks

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1/2 cup caramel (see above)

1 cup heavy cream, cold

Bloom the gelatin in the water and set aside.

Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar in a large bowl until pale and lightened.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk to a simmer.

Temper the eggs by slowly about a half cup of the hot milk into the yolks, whisking constantly.

Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan with the milk, whisking constantly.

Cook, stirring constantly, until the cream coats the back of a spoon.

Add the gelatin and stir until completely combined.

Add the caramel and stir until completely combined.

Allow to cool to room temperature.

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream to stiff peaks.

Add a small portion to the cooled cream base and fold in to lighten it.

Add the rest of the cream and fold in gently until just incorporated.

Apple Bavarian Cream

Ingredients

1 tablespoon powdered gelatin

3 tablespoons water

4 egg yolks

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1/2 cup apple butter

1 cup heavy cream, cold

Bloom the gelatin in the water and set aside.

Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar in a large bowl until pale and lightened.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk to a simmer.

Temper the eggs by slowly about a half cup of the hot milk into the yolks, whisking constantly.

Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan with the milk, whisking constantly.

Cook, stirring constantly, until the cream coats the back of a spoon.

Add the gelatin and stir until completely combined.

Add the apple butter and stir until completely combined.

Allow to cool to room temperature.

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream to stiff peaks.

Add a small portion to the cooled cream base and fold in to lighten it.

Add the rest of the cream and fold in gently until just incorporated.

Assembly

Place one layer of génoise on a (large enough) serving platter.

Using a pastry brush, brush with simple syrup.

Top with about a fourth of the caramel bavarian cream.

Add a layer of about a fourth of the apple bavarian cream.

Place another layer of génoise on top and repeat the simple syrup-bavarian creams in order.

Repeat with the remaining layers, ending with the apple bavarian cream as the very last thing on top.

Refrigerate until set.

Marhsmallow Fondant Tutorial

2010-11-16T15:20:00.000-08:00

Hooray! I said I would do it and here it is. Let's get right down to it, then.

Here I'm cutting out the name "Sonya" in Cyrillic, plus a Russian Orthodox cross.

You will need:

8 ounces marshmallows

1 pound powdered sugar, plus a good deal more for dusting

2 tablespoons water

Food coloring (optional)

From About.com

Measure your marshmallows into a large microwave-safe bowl.

Measure out your powdered sugar.

Add the water to the marshmallows and microwave on high for one minute. Stir out all those clumps. If those pesky clumps won't go away, microwave again for 30 seconds and stir. Now is the proper time to add food coloring if you're coloring the entire batch.

Sift the powdered sugar over the melted marshmallow.

Stir.

Keep stirring. This is why you need a bigger bowl than the one I used. Powdered sugar everywhere. Mix the marshmallows and sugar until it is impossible to stir.

Now, heavily dust a work surface with powdered sugar. Dust your hands. Dust a rolling pin. Heck, dust your face for good measure. Turn the mixture out onto the table and knead it, coating your hands with more sugar as necessary.

Keep kneading until the fondant is smooth and elastic. You'll need to add sugar as you go, but it's important not to add too much, since it will make the fondant stiff and hard to work with.

If you wish to color a portion now, break off a piece and flatten it, more or less. Put a little food coloring in the center - start small, since you can always add more as you go along, and it's a pain to have to start adding more white fondant to lighten up a color. Now knead again, until the color is evenly dispersed.

This blue isn't quite as dark as I'd like it. Just keep adding little by little until you hit the right color.

Dust a rolling pin and the work surface with more powdered sugar. Roll out the fondant to the thickness you need, rotating it as you go to prevent it sticking to the table. The thickness will depend on what you're using it for. I'm cutting out letters, so I'll go pretty thin.

Using a small, sharp, non-serrated knife, cut out shapes. It's a good idea to score them on lightly with the knife before cutting them out. It's an even better idea to have cookie cutters in the shapes you want.

And there you have it! Marshmallow fondant. Super easy to make at home, easy to roll out and cut, and it tastes like really sweet marshmallows. Plus plus plus.

Sonya's Cake: Angel Food Cake with "Lobster Tail" Cream and Sautéed Apples

2010-11-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

So, this is not the prettiest cake I've ever made. Admitted. But it does have a story behind it, and it is one of the tastiest cakes I've ever turned out. And that alone makes it worth posting about.

So, to explain. For English class we were asked to make a 3D collage project to represent a character from Crime and Punishment. The project had to appeal to all five senses, so many kids made collages or shoe box diagrams, sprayed them with perfume, played music, etcetera. Two girls in our class wrote and performed their own songs. Being me, I asked if I could make a cake to represent Sonya. Everybody loves cake, so my English teacher, who has been waiting to let me make a cake for a project since my The Metamorphosis cockroach cake failed, said yes.

The plan was to make two layers of angel food cake to represent how light, apparently weak, and unable to stand on her own Sonya is. Taken straight from my accompanying "artist's statement":

"I feel like Sonya, since she is portrayed as a martyr and tells Raskolnikov the story of Lazarus, has an angelic, religious motif about her. In keeping with this, I wanted to make the cake as cloud-like and angelic as possible - hence the angel food cake - and chose a cannoli cream filling. The cream filling is light, white, and soft, representing both Sonya's personality and the motif of heaven. I cut Sonya's name in Cyrillic out of blue homemade fondant, since I felt like blue went along with the heavenly theme. I also cut out a Russian Orthodox cross, since religion is such a large part of Sonya's life, and is truly all she has left. Finally, I wanted to include a few more flavors, and felt that the best way to do this was to research traditional Russian desserts. I found that desserts typical to the country have lots of apples, and so I filled the layers with sliced and sautéed apples for some more flavor and a representation of Russian culture along with Sonya's character."

Eloquent, no?!

Anyways. I kind of expected the lobster tail cream (I called it cannoli cream because I didn't feel like explaining what lobster tails are in my paper) to be more frosting-like, but it was pretty runny. Delicious, but runny. If you don't know, lobster tails are Italian pastries made out of strudel-like dough, filled with sweet goodness. In Italy they are traditionally filled with orange-flavored ricotta, but here, specifically in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the Cake Boss Kitchen (*drool*) they are filled with a custard cream.

So I didn't know exactly how the cream would turn out, and the cake was a little saggy, and the fondant letters moved around. But it's all good, because the combination of angel food cake plus lobster tail cream plus sautéed apples was heavenly (sorry, cheesy) good. A few people went for seconds in class and one girl licked the cake carrier clean. Lesson learned? Cake=new friends.

Also, I'm sorry about the rather crappy photography in this post. It's been really dark and rainy here, so the natural light is no good.

On a happier note, though, I have the marshmallow fondant tutorial all photographed and ready to go, and now I just need to caption it. Be on the lookout!

Your Baking Soundtrack for Sonya's Cake:

Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II, Anya Marina

This album is packaged as a cheesy romance/mystery novel, which makes me giggle. I played "Move You" while serving my cake as the audio portion of my presentation.

Angel Food Cake

From Good Housekeeping

Ingredients

2/3 cup cake flour

2/3 cup confectioner's sugar

8 egg whites

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup granulated sugar

Grease a 16 x 10 jelly roll pan. Line with waxed paper and grease waxed paper.

Sift flour and confectioner's sugar into a small bowl.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites and salt to soft peaks.

Sprinkle in granulated sugar 2 tablespoons at a time.

Beat to stiff, glossy peaks.

Add in vanilla.

Sift flour mixture over egg whites.

Fold in just until combined.

Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.

Bake at 350˚ for 25-30 minutes.

Allow to cool in pan.

Sfogliatella Cream

Adapted from Cake Boss: Stories and Recipes from Mia Famiglia, by Buddy Valastro

Ingredients

For the custard:

2 1/2 cups whole milk

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup cake flour, sifted

6 egg yolks

2 teaspoons butter

Pinch of salt

For the cream:

2 cups heavy cream

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon brandy (such as Calvados apple)

Combine the milk and vanilla in a large saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar, flour, and egg yolks using a hand mixer.

Temper the yolks by slowly pouring a cupful of the hot milk mixture into the yolk mixture, beating continuously with the hand mixer.

Immediately add the milk-yolk mixture back to the pan.

Over medium heat, beat the mixture with the hand mixer for 1 minute, until thick and creamy.

Remove from the heat, add the butter and salt, and beat for 2 minutes to thicken.

Place a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard to prevent a skin forming and allow to cool.

Refrigerate for at least six hours.

When the custard has been refrigerated, whip the cream, sugar, and brandy to stiff peaks.

Fold the cream into the custard until just combined.

Apple Filling

Ingredients

2 medium, firm apples

2 tablespoons orange juice

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons brown sugar

Sauté all ingredients in a large frying pan until the apples are tender and translucent.

To Assemble

Invert the cake onto a cutting board. Cut in half.

Top one half with half the sfogliatella cream and the sautéed apples.

Place the remaining half on top.

Cover with sfogliatella cream.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese Filling

2010-11-07T06:48:00.001-08:00

The whoopie pie trend has been calling my name for a while now, and I've caved. I made this pumpkin version of the cookies for a party at a friend's house last night, and if I hadn't been counting on bringing them along, I'd have eaten the whole batch. They're that good.

I attempted whoopie pies in spring of last year. I tried a classic chocolate recipe which looked scrumptious, but in my haste to make them, I added way too much liquid to the batter. The cookies flattened out in the oven and looked like sad little chocolate UFOs. After that I was scared of what is truly a very, very simple type of cookie, and was even afraid that I'd need one of those ridiculous whoopie pie pans they sell at Williams-Sonoma (I'll go into how that company scams people out of their money by selling superfluous kitchen tools in another post). But this weekend I had a ton of pumpkin left over and needed something to make with it, and my mind turned to these cute little cookies.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried. The batter was super simple and no more of a hassle than chocolate chip cookie dough. And the cookies themselves were absolutely delicious. The true magic, however, is the combination of the cookies and the filling; mellow, earthy pumpkin and spices meet sweet, tangy cream cheese and it is tear-jerkingly good. Based on the cookies, one man at the party told me he would leave his wife for me.

The recipe I used said it makes fourteen completed pies, but that's a lie - it makes about forty. Not a problem, though, because I used some of them as a birthday gift at another party, and will take some in to school on Tuesday for a celebration we're having there. And so begins the holiday season! If you choose to make them, you can always halve the recipe...but I wouldn't fret. Forty whoopie pies disappear faster than you'd imagine when they're this good.

One more thing. I am really, really excited to say that I've been hired by a local bakery! I started work on Thursday and I LOVE IT. I love the place and the people are fantastic. The best part, of course, is making all the treats: so far I've made/assisted in making focaccia, Jewish pizza (a biscotti-like treat with almond paste, almond slivers, and dried fruit), fruit tart, Napoleons, marjolaine, almond cookies, and chocolate tulips (handmade chocolate shells filled with chocolate cake, ganache, two mousses, whipped cream, and berries). I'm so very, very happy and grateful to be working there.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese Filling:

The Warrior's Code, Dropkick Murphys

I'm the kind of girl that likes the Dropkick Murphys to the point of bothering other people. A few summers ago I went on a kick where I would play "Tessie" nearly every waking hour of the day. How my mother never strangled me I have yet to figure out. It might have something to do with me filling the house with cookies.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Adapted from Joy of Baking

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

15 ounces pumpkin puree

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper (have more parchment paper on hand, as you will be reusing the baking sheets).

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt in a large bowl.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and brown sugar.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Add in the pumpkin puree.

Add the four mixture in two parts and mix just until incorporated.

Refrigerate the batter for ten minutes.

Using a small ice cream scoop or tablespoon, drop the batter onto the baking sheets, spacing the cookies 2 inches apart.

Bake at 350˚F for 10-12 minutes or until the tops of the cookies spring back when lightly pressed.

Let the cookies cool and then remove them from the parchment paper.

Repeat this process with the remaining batter, refrigerating it again for the 10 minutes while the next batch bakes, and so on.

Cream Cheese Frosting/Filling

Ingredients

16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar

Beat all the ingredients with an electric mixer until no clumps remain and the frosting is smooth and fluffy.

THE CAKE IS A LIE!

2010-11-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

My friend, cool guy to end all cool guys, recently had a birthday party. After seeing the Pokémon cupcakes I made for another friend's birthday, he requested that I make his birthday cake. The order was very specific: it had to be chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, and it had to be the cake from a video game called Portal. Long story short? My friends are dorks.

Let me explain a little bit, for those of you who have lives. Portal is a video game which I have played all of three times. It's actually a pretty cool game, and this is coming from someone who couldn't hold her own in Super Smash Bros. if her life depended on it. Anyways, in the game, there is a promise of cake if you complete the "experiment" in which you are participating. But guess what? THE CAKE IS A LIE!

Ahem. What I mean is that, as I have it from my gamer friends, the cake is impossible to reach. It certainly does look appetizing, though:

So this friend of mine requested the Portal cake for his birthday. I made it with my favorite chocolate cake recipe and my own chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. I didn't feel like buying a whole tin of maraschino cherries for the top to only use a few, so I made the balls with marshmallow fondant (I swear I will get around to doing a marshmallow fondant post one of these days). The result? Well, I think it looked good! And though I didn't taste it myself, I heard it was delicious from the friends who dug in.

Even though it's a little after the fact now, a very happy birthday to "Wolf," whose band is mentioned at the bottom of this post. The cake is not a lie!

Your Baking Soundtrack for Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

Mr. A-Z, Jason Mraz.

I used to hate Jason Mraz. He seemed a bit whiny for me. But last winter I gave him a chance and bought this album, and I'm quite happy I did. He's good kitchen music, I think - intricate, layered melodies that let you lose yourself in thought as you bake.

Chocolate Cake

From Baking Bites

Ingredients

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 cup boiling water

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/4 cups baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1 1/4 cups sugar

2 eggs

Grease and line two 8-inch baking pans with parchment paper rounds. Dust the sides with cocoa powder.

Whisk together the cocoa powder and boiling water.

Add the brown sugar, buttermilk, and vanilla.

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix until fully incorporated.

Starting with the flour, alternate adding the flour mixture and the cocoa mixture in three additions.

Mix until fully incorporated.

Evenly distribute the batter between the prepared pans.

Bake at 350˚F for 30-35 minutes.

Let the cake cool before assembling.

Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

4 egg whites
5 oz sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2 sticks soft unsalted butter

4 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Combine the egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar in the top of a double boiler over simmering water.
Whisk to combine and continue to do so every so often as the syrup cooks.
Cook to 160F.
Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
Turn on high and whip to stiff peaks.
Switch to the paddle attachment.
Add the butter piece by piece, with the mixer on medium high.
The mixture will most likely turn goopy and you may think that you've overbeaten the whites. Do not panic, and do not turn the mixer off. Keep beating, even if it seems a lost cause. The meringue will poof right back up after a few (or more) minutes' time.
Beat until thick and of frosting consistency.
Alternately, if your butter is a little cold, the buttercream may "curdle." Again, just keep beating it until it becomes smooth.

Now, set aside a small amount of the buttercream for the white rosettes on top of the cake.

Add the melted and cooled chocolate to the remaining buttercream and beat just until fully incorporated.

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

2010-10-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

Picture this: a quiet fall morning, fresh pumpkin gently simmering away on the stove, jugs of milk and cream on the counter, the smell of nutmeg, cinnamon, and home-ground cloves filling the kitchen. Farm-fresh eggs resting on the table and the scent of brown sugar warming the air.

Halloween may be over, but fall is in full swing here. I've never really experimented with pumpkin in my baking before, but this year I really got into the spirit, and now I want to put it in everything I make! I'm taking comfort in the fact that there's still a ways to go before Thanksgiving, and plenty of fall-themed parties between then and now that could use a pumpkin dessert.

I don't really like pumpkin pie, but I do adore pumpkin. Its sweetness, its soft fleshy fruit, the way it tastes so seasonal and classic combined with pumpkin pie spices...and the fact that it is equally suited to savory dishes as it is to baking. Here, it lends a hint of sweetness and a rich, luxurious texture to an ice cream which is truly in a class of its own.

As I said, I don't actually like pumpkin pie all that much. But I have the fondest memories of my parents taking me out for ice cream at a café in the neighborhood where they work. In the fall, pumpkin ice cream would appear in the glass displays, and my dad would always take more than his fair share of my cone. I remember it being subtly sweet, definitely tasting more like pumpkin than sugar. I loved it.

So when I saw this recipe on Baking Bites, I was immediately drawn to it. It looked just like the ice cream I remember having at that café, albeit not in a sugar cone with a napkin wrapped around it to keep my hands from getting all sticky. I added in some broken up graham crackers, since I remember that from the long-ago ice cream, and because I feel like it takes a pumpkin ice cream and truly makes it pumpkin pie ice cream. Such a good idea, if I may say so myself. The crunch of the biscuits contrasts wonderfully with the creamy, custard-based ice cream, and the tastes of graham crackers and pumpkin go together classically.

Definitely look forward to more recipes on the blog soon (and lots of them pumpkin recipes...you've been warned!). That's right, I'm back and I have lots of goodies and posts lined up. For now, though, enjoy this delicious pumpkin pie ice cream and have a warm week!

Your Baking Soundtrack for Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream:

Aim and Ignite, fun.

I cannot believe how much I love this band. They're so happy! About everything! And their songs are so ridiculously catchy, it makes my head spin. They're perfect for some good booty-shaking at the stove while stirring ice cream custard.

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

Adapted from Baking Bites

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup pumpkin puree*

3 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup broken up graham crackers, frozen

In a large saucepan, combine the cream, milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring intermittently.

Meanwhile, whisk together the pumpkin and egg yolks in a large bowl.

When the cream mixture is simmering, ladle about one cup of it into the pumpkin-egg mixture, whisking immediately and constantly to temper the eggs.

Immediately add this mixture back to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the custard coats the back of a spoon.

Add the vanilla and remove from the heat.

Stir for a minute or so more, off the heat, to prevent coagulation.

Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a large bowl.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for six hours or overnight.

Freeze in an ice cream machine according to manufacturer's instructions.

As soon as the ice cream is ready, fold in the frozen graham crackers.

Store in an airtight container and freeze for an hour or so before serving.

Chocolate Skellies

2010-10-30T05:54:00.000-07:00

I know. I know I know I know. I haven't posted in over a month. But I finally have the time and the baked goods to share! I made these adorable chocolate skeletons for a Halloween celebration at my school on Friday. They were a big hit, as they really are very cute and taste fabulous. Plus, they went with my costume...

I was a zombie chef for school (and I'll do it again when I got trick or treating on Sunday, because there is no way I'm too old for that). I was so proud of my costume - I had a chef's coat, a chef's toque, and a folded apron tied around my waste. But as I was a dead chef, my whole face was covered in black and blue bruises and smearings of fake blood. And I carried around a bloody spatula.

It was disturbing and I loved it.

Anyways, about these cookies. They're simple chocolate sugar cookies, and even on their own, they're delicious. I made a few rounds with the bits of leftover dough, and my family and I could not stop picking at them! I saw this idea done quite a few times with gingerbread dough, but as I'm not a huge fan, and neither are most high schoolers I know, I decided to use the same concept on chocolate sugar cookies. The dough is great: it holds its shape wonderfully, it hardly sticks, and it tastes great. The only slightly tricky part is the piping. Even that, though, I wouldn't worry about. These cookies don't have to look perfect - they actually look better if their lines are a little crooked and creepy! I think it gives them a whimsical feel, a la Corpse Bride. In fact, I actually started trying to pipe their eyes a bit asymmetrical once I'd gotten the hang of it, and they look really cute that way.

I just love Halloween. The fun spookiness makes it one of my favorite holidays. I'm definitely making these chocolate skellies a Halloween tradition from now on - and even if I am a bit too old to keep going trick or treating, I'll keep dressing up! Whatever you choose to be (let me know what you're going as!), I hope you have a wonderful Halloween filled with creepy fun and yummy chocolate skeletons.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Chocolate Skellies:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Original Soundtrack

It's tradition!

Chocolate Skellies

From Joy of Baking

Ingredients

355 grams all-purpose flour

75 grams cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

227 grams butter, room temperature

350 grams sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Combine the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the vanilla.

Slowly add in the flour mixture and beat until the dough is smooth and uniform.

Divide the dough in half and flatten each half into a rough disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour, or until firm enough to roll.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove one disk of dough and roll out to 1/4-inch thick on a lightly floured surface.

Using a gingerbread man cutter 5" in length, cut out cookies and place them on the prepared pan.

Re-refrigerate the scraps while you work with the other disk of dough so that they will be cold when you re-roll them.

Repeat with the other half of dough.

Refrigerate the baking sheets 10-15 minutes before baking to ensure the cookies keep their shape in the oven.

Bake at 350˚F for 15-18 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are firm (it may take less time if you cut smaller cookies. Check them regularly).

Let the cookies cool for a few minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Simple Piping Glaze

Ingredients

1 cup sifted powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons milk

Stir together the powdered sugar and milk. Correct the consistency of the icing, if necessary, with more powdered sugar or more milk, until it is firm enough to pipe lines without spreading.

Fit a piping bag with a small, round tip and fill it with the icing.

Pipe skeletons onto the cookies.

Note: Only make the icing when the cookies are cool and ready to be iced. If you leave it standing for a while, it will harden. Likewise, try to work quickly with the icing so that it does not stiffen in the piping bag.

Allow the icing to harden completely on the cookies before storing them.

Baked & Glazed Donuts

2010-09-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

*Yawn*

Good morning.

*Holds out a tray of delicious glazed donuts and a pot of coffee*

Life is good, isn't it?

So yesterday I volunteered for a recruitment open house at my school. We had a ton of people come in for our department, including teachers and students, that were instructed to talk to prospective students and their parents about the program. Our department coordinator had asked me to bake something for the volunteers, as a reward for coming in to school at quarter to nine on a Saturday. She told me that there would be about 30 students and 20 teachers, so there had to be lots and lots of treats. I offered to make the above donuts (which turned out 3 dozen), a dozen cream cheese muffins, a dozen chocolate, and 18 banana chocolate chip.

I'll be doing separate posts for each type of muffin, since I really want to focus on the donuts today. They. Were. So. Good. One teacher had four. Another girl had five. They absolutely disappeared. I was so happy that people kept telling me how much they liked them, and of course, there's no better compliment than people gobbling up the things you bake.

These donuts were perfect for the recruitment. Everybody was sleepy and worn out, especially the juniors and seniors. Our class was assigned four English essays, all due at the same time last Friday, so I for one hadn't slept more than four hours a night all week. Plus, I'd had an order for ninety mini cupcakes for Friday afternoon, and then I'd stayed up till past midnight on Friday night baking all the goodies for the next morning. I was replacing sleep with coffee and it was not good. So these soft, sweet, comforting donuts were welcome by me, and pretty much everyone else. Especially alongside the pot of coffee left in the break room.

In case you were wondering, I finally did get to catch up on my sleep. Thirteen hours straight last night. I feel like the stereotypical lethargic teenager. Or I would, if I hadn't gotten all those essays, calc homework, environmental science, psychology, fiction, cupcakes, and breakfast goodies done on time. So I think I deserve a donut.

P.S. Like my new layout? My friend Greg did the doodle for me and I just loved it! Hopefully I'll have time to tweak it and make the layout a little prettier in the next week or so.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Baked & Glazed Donuts:

Bring it On!, Horrorpops

Crazy, manic, upbeat, Gothy rockabilly with an upright bass and dancers dressed in straightjackets. They are definitely on more caffeine than me.

Baked Donuts

From 101cookbooks.com, via Paris Pastry

Ingredients

1 1/3 cups warm milk (95-105F)

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 tablespoons butter, diced

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

5 cups all purpose flour

Pinch of nutmeg

Pinch of cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

Line four cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, stir together 1/3 cup of the warm milk and the yeast. Allow to stand for five minutes.

Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining warm milk.

Add to the yeast mixture.

Stir the eggs, flour, nutmeg and salt into the milk and yeast mixture with a fork until the flour is all moistened.

Beat the dough for two minutes on medium speed, until soft and smooth, not sticky.

Add more flour or milk bit by bit if needed.

Transfer the dough to a greased bowl, cover with a towel, and allow to rise in a warm place for an hour.

Lightly degas the dough and roll it out on a floured surface to a 1/2-inch thick.

Use a 3-inch cookie cutter (these will be small donuts) to cut out rounds.

Transfer these rounds to the prepared sheets.

When they are on the sheets, use a very small round cutter (I actually used a water bottle cap) to cut out the center hole of each donut.

Cover each sheet and allow the donuts to rise for 45 minutes.

Bake at 375F for 8-10 minutes, until the bottoms are light golden brown. Begin checking the donuts at 8 minutes.

Krispy Kreme Donut Glaze

From Wiki How, via Paris Pastry

Ingredients

1/3 cup butter

2 cups sifted powdered sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4-6 tablespoons hot water

Melt the butter.

Stir in the powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth.

Add the water, one tablespoon at a time, until the glaze is a good consistency (liquid, but not too thin).

Dip the top of each donut, allow the excess to drip off, and let the glaze harden.

"Bizcocho Borracho": Fresh Plum Cake with Orange-Brandy Syrup

2010-09-18T08:24:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty hectic around this household lately. The first semester of senior year is, I'm learning, a killer: I'm swimming in college applications right now, and even though I got started decently early, I'm still afraid I'm barely keeping my head above water. This week has seen a lot of apps, a lot of homework, and a lot of very long schooldays. Last night I decided to ignore my phone, my friends, and Facebook, and come straight home. Sometimes a girl just needs some baking therapy.

My parents have been talking about this one dream cake for about a year now. Apparently, one of my dad's students brought a really marvelous coffee cake to work, and they both got to try it. They've been asking for a replica ever since. The original was a plum cake with brandy and an orange syrup on top. You can imagine that I wasn't exactly opposed to the idea.

They described this cake as being plum-flavored, but not with whole pieces of plum in it. I started looking for plum cake recipes last night, but all I could find was tarts that have plum halves baked into the bottom. I didn't want to just use my All-Purpose Vegetable Cake with plum puree, since I've posted that recipe various times on this blog. Instead, I decided on a recipe that incorporates small pieces of plum into a spongy batter. The orange brandy syrup was my own addition.

When I sliced off a little square for my mom this morning, she said that a) it was very good, and b) "Está totalmente borracho, ¿no? "Bizcocho borracho" literally means "drunk cake" in Spanish, which is an excellent description for this cake. It's fruity and boozy, but since the brandy syrup is cooked, you can totally get away with serving it at breakfast.

Despite its array of flavors, this cake is wonderfully unpretentious. It is, as its great ancestor "The Mysterious Cake From Work," a simple coffee cake at heart. No fluffy icings or fillings or fruit coverings here; like a true lady, it has lots of flavor, but it doesn't make a scene.

I can't believe I just said that.

Anyways. College applications, transcripts, essays, and recommendations = good in the long term. Cake = good right now. Booze on top = even better.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Fresh Plum Cake with Orange-Brandy Syrup:

Life Won't Wait, Rancid

I am a tiny, tiny white-looking Hispanic girl who wants to bake for a living and listens to ska punk. I feel like Rancid would be totally cool with that.

Fresh Plum Cake

Adapted slightly from RecipeSecrets

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups flour

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil (canola or mild olive)

1 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup diced, fresh plums (about 1/4-inch pieces)

Grease an 8x8 inch square baking pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda, and flour.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs until pale yellow and frothy, then add the oil and buttermilk.

Slowly add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and mix until thoroughly combined.

Fold in the plums.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake at 300F for 1 hour.

Orange-Brandy Syrup

Ingredients

1/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice

1/2 cup sugar

3 tablespoons brandy

Combine the sugar, orange juice, and brandy in a small saucepan.

Cook uncovered, stirring constantly, for three minutes.

While the cake is still warm, poke holes in the top with a fork.

Apply the syrup to the top of the cake with a clean pastry brush.

The Best Chocolate Ice Cream You've Ever Tasted

2010-09-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

...According to my mum and dad.

The weather's been acting like fall here, which I love. School's started again (senior year! So close!) and there's that wonderful September sun and crispness in the air. It's the perfect temperature, too, not hot like the 90+ days we had in August and not yet quite cold. In other words, excellent ice cream making weather: not so cold that no one wants to eat it, but not so hot that it melts while it's churning (which happened to me last time I made ice cream. Phooey).

I made this ice cream last night because I needed to use up some ganache, egg yolks, and cream we had in the fridge. A great use of leftovers, apparently, because my parents not only ate their little bowls of ice cream when it was ready, but also took it upon themselves to lick the ice cream machine and spatulas clean.

There are my parents "cleaning up"...and Riley in the middle, ever hopeful.

My friend helped me make the crème anglaise base for this, and we spent our time in the kitchen stirring, boiling, and dancing (very attractively, I assure you) to Lady Gaga. It was probably the most fun I've ever had making ice cream.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Chocolate Ice Cream:

The Fame Monster, Lady Gaga

True story, this is what we listened to while making the ice cream, and I think a little of that wonderful crazy ended up in the dessert. It's fitting, also, because she was in town last night, though I'm broke and tickets were ridiculously expensive. So no Gaga for me, but plenty of chocolate ice cream.

Chocolate Ice Cream

Slightly adapted from The Secrets of Baking, by Sherry Yard

Ingredients
3 cups cream
1 cup whole milk
8 egg yolks, chilled
1 cup sugar
A tiny pinch of salt
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 tablespoon clear apricot or citrus jam
1/2 cup cream

Combine the cream and jam in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil.
Pour over the chocolate, using a heatproof bowl.
Allow to stand for a minute, then gently mix with a spatula until the ganache is uniform in color. Set aside.
Prepare an ice bath. Fill a large bowl about 1/3 of the way up with ice.
Combine the milk and cream in a medium saucepan and scrape in the contents of the vanilla bean, adding the pod as well.
Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
Remove from the heat and cover with plastic wrap for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk together the yolks, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl.
Remove the plastic wrap from the saucepan and return the mixture to a simmer over medium heat.
Remove from the heat and spoon 1/2 cup of the hot cream mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking the yolks all the while to temper them.
Pour this mixture into the hot cream, whisking constantly and using a spatula to get all of the yolks into the saucepan.
Over low heat, cook the cream-yolk mixture until it reaches 170F or until you can run a finger down the back of the spatula and leave a clear trail through the sauce.
Set the medium bowl in the ice bath.
Using a fine-mesh strainer, strain the mixture into the medium bowl.
While the ice cream base is still warm, stir in the ganache.
Refrigerate the mixture for at least two hours, until thoroughly chilled (you may also chill it overnight).
Freeze in an ice cream machine according to manufacturers' directions.
It will be very soft right after churning. Quickly fold in the chocolate chips and cherries.
Freeze for about four hours, until firm enough to scoop.

Peaches 'n Cream Cupcakes

2010-08-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

Last night, my friend had a bunch of people over for wings. Taking any excuse to bake, I decided that what the party really needed was cupcakes, and lots of them. Having a bunch of peaches lying around the fruit drawer of our refrigerator, I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate those into the cupcakes in some way. And so I came up with these nummy little guys: cream cheese cake, peach mousse filling, peach glaze, and peach cream cheese frosting. Peaches (and more peaches) 'n cream. Delicious.

I'm a peach kind of girl. To me, the smell of ripe peaches is not only an indicator of that wonderful late summer-early fall time of year, but also one of the sweetest scents I can imagine. I'll eat peaches in any form: fresh, cake, cobbler, crumble, ice cream, you name it. Funny, then, that I don't think I've ever encountered peach cupcakes before. There's a first time for everything, though. Just consider me a pioneer.

Being the maverick (I just thought that in a Sarah Palin accent. Heh.) that I am, these were such a good idea. The cream cheese cake is rich and toothsome. The peach mousse is soft and delicate. The glaze adds the perfect amount of sweetness, and the frosting...oh, the frosting. There just aren't words.

I have a definite soft spot for cream cheese frosting, perhaps more so than is really normal, or healthy. This one is crazy good, with a little peach flavoring added to kick it up. It's obscenely smooth, creamy, and has that great tang from the cream cheese.. It's not too sweet but is one of those frostings you can serve to anyone, not just snobby foodies who eat 95% cacao or whatever. I've also made the recipe pretty generous, so you can really pile it onto these cupcakes (because in all honesty, it's the best part).

These were a hit, and one of my favorites to date. They're also an excellent way to use up extra fruit; just substitute for the peaches in the mousse, the marmalade in the glaze and frosting, and use a liquor that corresponds to the new fruit you're using. Strawberries 'n cream. Raspberries 'n cream. Whateveryouhaveonhand 'n cream. Mmmm.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Peaches 'n Cream Cupcakes:
Louder Now, Taking Back Sunday
I was in love with Taking Back Sunday in middle school (have I mentioned my emo-bangs-and-black-nail-polish phase?), along with a bunch of other "alternative" bands. The bangs are gone, but this album continues to be awesome.

Vanilla Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Slightly adapted from Schweet 'N Savory

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 egg whites

1/4 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Line 16 muffin cups with paper liners.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.

With an electric mixer, cream together the cream cheese, butter, and sugar.

Add the egg whites and vanilla and beat to combine.

Add the dry ingredients in two batches, alternating with the milk.

Distribute evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake 25-30 minutes at 350F, or until golden on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Peach Mousse

From My Recipes

Ingredients

3 grams unflavored gelatin

1 1/2 tablespoons cold water

1 cup chopped, skinned peaches

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a small bowl, dissolve the gelatin in the cold water.

Cook the peaches and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring, for five minutes.

Mash the peach mixture to break down any chunks of fruit that remain.

While the peach mixture is still hot, add the gelatin and stir until completely dissolved.

Set aside to cool completely.

In a large bowl, whip the cream and vanilla until stiff peaks form.

Gently fold in the peach mixture.

Allow to set in the refrigerator before using.

There will be quite a bit leftover. Serve in individual bowls as a dessert or use to fill a cake, etc.

Peach Glaze

Ingredients

About six tablespoons peach marmalade

Dash of peach or apricot brandy

Heat the marmalade and brandy in the microwave or in a small saucepan, until melted.

Peach Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons peach marmalade

Dash of apricot or peach brandy

Beat all the ingredients with an electric mixer until smooth and very fluffy. Make sure there are no bits of butter left before piping.

Pokémon Cupcakes

2010-08-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

My friend had a birthday party yesterday, and rather than a gift, he asked for cupcakes (seeing as a. everyone knows I'll take any excuse to bake and b. he thinks "Kitchen" is a hilarious nickname for me). We'd been at another friend's house the night before, where the boys were playing Pokémon video games, which, you may be interested to know, I suck at. I thought it would be cute if the cupcakes I made for his birthday were Pokémon themed, so I baked a batch of devil's food cake cupcakes, iced them with cream cheese chocolate frosting, and set to work making teensy fondant Pokeballs for each one.

When I originally asked the birthday boy what flavors he liked, he said "Oreo." This is going to sound unbelievably snooty, but I have a strict aversion to using premade ingredients in my baking, no matter what. I don't know why, I just do. And since I had about a day to get these cupcakes done, I knew I wasn't about to whip up a batch of homemade sandwich cookies just to crush them and use them in frosting or something. Besides, a girl can only be called "Kitchen" so many times before deciding to take matters into her own hands. So I decided it would be simple chocolate through and through - because really, how many of the hungry, excited teenagers at the birthday party (most of them boys) are going to say no to chocolate cupcakes? Yeeeeeeeeeeah not many.

Besides, I was mostly worried about making the Pokeball decorations. They weren't difficult, but they did take some time and patience, more so than the cake and frosting did (both super easy, by the way). I used homemade marshmallow fondant (the marshmallows I used in it were homemade too, BOOYAH!) to cut out tiny white circles, then painted on the red and black details. I was so happy that they all turned out pretty similar, and they certainly looked cute when sitting on little mounds of chocolate frosting. Driving over, my friend, in what was clearly exorbitant praise, said they all "look pretty much the same."

Men.

Anyways. About that marshmallow fondant. I think I'm going to go ahead and break my "no premade ingredients" rule and buy packaged marshmallows next time around. The recipes I followed were prepared with store-bought marhsmallows, and for whatever reason, whether a difference in moisture or the preservatives used or whatnot, my fondant turned out grainy and wouldn't hold a shape. I ended up pouring in, like, half a bottle of corn syrup (not really) to get the fondant to stick together. I eventually got it to hold a shape, and then I just rolled it out and used a bottle cap to cut out circles. I warned everyone not to eat the Pokeballs, since I'm not sure how fondant/corn syrup/massive amounts of food coloring tastes, but they did. The birthday boy said it was like "eating a pill made out of sprinkles."

And I'm going to take that as a good thing.

I think I'll be using these cake and frosting recipes again in the future. They were both so easy to make and turned out pretty perfect cupcakes, no stand mixer required. And I'll continue to play with marshmallow fondant; at the party, another friend already requested a birthday cake for November, and I'm excited to see what decorations will come to me for that one.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Pokémon Cupcakes:

Every Picture Tells a Story, Rod Stewart

This is *the* definitive Rod Stewart album, isn't it? Whenever I listen to it, "Maggie May" gets stuck in my head for days at a time - and that's a wonderful, wonderful thing. The bluesy rock feel of the album matches perfectly with autumn's return and our return to school; sweet, sad, and not too serious.

Devil's Food Cake Cupcakes

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Ingredients

1/4 cup natural cocoa powder

1 ounce semisweet chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup boiling water

1/4 cup buttermilk

2/3 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Line one 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.

Stir together cocoa powder and chopped chocolate in a medium bowl.

Add boiling water and whisk until smooth.

Mix in buttermilk. Set aside.

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.

With an electric mixer in a large bowl, beat the melted butter, both sugars, egg, and vanilla until smooth.

Add the cocoa mixture and beat just until blended.

Add the flour mixture and beat just until blended.

Divide the batter evenly in the muffin pan.

Bake 10-15 minutes at 350F, until a tester inserted in the middle comes out with a few crumbs.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

3.7 ounces good-quality semisweet chocolate

8 ounces cream cheese

4 tablespoons confectioner's sugar

1/2 tablespoon clear apricot or citrus jam

Melt together the chocolate and jam, either over a double boiler or in the microwave.

Allow to cool until no longer warm, but still liquid.

Using an electric mixer, beat together the chocolate mixture, cream cheese, and confectioner's sugar until well blended and uniform in color.

Quadruple Chocolate Cookies

2010-08-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

Some boys are very, very spoiled.

I've been working at a food pantry/soup kitchen/men's shelter all this summer with a group of other teens. It's been one of the best experiences of my life, and I've had a wonderful time working in the kitchen, bagging produce, and getting to know everyone there. I'm definitely going back next summer (before leaving for college...*gulp*) because I feel like I've done some genuinely good work, and I've met a lot of great people, both from the shelter itself and from the volunteer program. Now, some of those fellow volunteers demanded cookies this year after figuring out that I'm a little bit nuts about baking. Because I'm a horrible pushover, I agreed to make them some. And because I'm an even more horrible pushover, I agreed to make what they requested: quadruple chocolate cookies.

How does one make quadruple chocolate cookies? I was stumped at first, too. They were requested (though "requested" is a gentle term) because they're a step up from the classic triple chocolate cookie: chocolate butter cookie with both bittersweet and white chocolate chunks. I thought of just adding in milk chocolate chunks, but then it seemed like there would be more chunks than cookie. And besides, this was a project just begging for me to be creative and decadent. So what did I do? I made each cookie as intensely chocolaty as I could, with two chocolate cookies (double) with chocolate chips (triple) sandwiching a thick center of chocolate buttercream (quadruple!).

The cookies themselves were a treat. They're dark, chocolaty, and beg for a tall glass of milk. If a glass of milk isn't necessary when eating cookies, they're not chocolaty enough. I made sure to start with nice, cold butter for the creaming step of the recipe, and when the dough had come together I rolled it into a log and froze it for 24 hours. This ensured wonderfully thick, cakey cookies, just the way I like them.

It's amazing how many different cookies you can produce with one recipe, just by altering how you treat the dough. My mom teaches an intro to biology class at the university level and one of the first experiments she has her kids do is the Chocolate Chip Cookie Lab. She gives everyone the same recipe for cookies (the Nestle Toll House one, by the way) and sends them home to make a batch. Everyone brings in their cookies and the class explores why the batches all turned out so differently, from chewy to cakey, thin to thick, powdery to rich, downright disgusting to surprisingly good. It is, apparently, a very popular experiment.

The thing is that there are reasons why a certain batch of cookies may turn out one way, while the next one you bake looks and tastes completely different. This applies to all of baking, and when you know those reasons, you can control them and get consistently good results (well, mostly consistent) out of your baking. Chocolate chip cookies just happen to be an excellent example of this. It's a little bit of science and a little bit of common sense. I'll try to keep it mostly to common sense, since a) science isn't really my thing and b) there are so many wonderful sites like Joe Pastry that go into detail about the "whys" of the matter.

So I'll just talk about the practical side of it. My credentials, you ask? I'm no scientist, but I've baked a heck of a lot of cookies, and I've turned out a heck of a lot of bad batches. So. If you like thick, cakey cookies like me, here's what to do: start with cold butter. This will prevent your batter from becoming liquidy, which in turn will keep your cookies from spreading out on the baking sheet. Secondly, be very careful not to overbeat your batter. Overbeating will, again, create a runny batter, and your cookies will be more likely to spread. Third, it's a good idea to refrigerate or even freeze the cookie dough before using it. Depending on the recipe you use, you may be instructed to either hold the dough in the fridge as it is, in the bowl or wrapped in cling wrap, or you may be told to roll it into a log so that you can slice off discs later. Either way, if you'd like thicker cookies, this is an important step. Keeping the dough cold as it rests will both relax the gluten (just like pie crusts! Magic!) for a softer-textured cookie and ensure that none of that lovely butter melts out and makes the dough runny. Also, if the cookies are cold going into the oven, they will rise upwards rather than out to the sides resulting in a cakier cookie (again, Joe Pastry puts this much more eloquently than I can.

If you're into thinner, chewier cookies, guess what? It's as simple as doing pretty much the opposite of what I listed above. Start with warm or room temperature butter for a more relaxed, free-flowing batter. Really go to town when mixing that batter (though just at the creaming state and when adding the eggs; you don't want to develop too much gluten by mixing a lot after adding the flour). Scoop the batter onto the trays right when it's finished so that the cookies are room temperature going into the oven. You can even bang each tray of cookies on a counter before baking them to keep them from rising very high and make them spread more.

One last thing. If you've been looking for tips on controlling the textures of your cookies, you may have seen sites advising you to change the flour content of your recipe. I really advise against this. Unless your recipe is crummy (and if it is, the obvious choice would be to change recipes), the author of the cookbook or blog or what have you knows what they're talking about. If you're having trouble with a certain recipe, look for another one, don't start changing the ratios of ingredients. The reason? Cookies are different from bread. Most bread recipes actually encourage you to add water or flour at the kneading stage to make the dough manageable. That's because bread making requires gluten, and therefore adding more flour can't really hurt, especially for the home baker who can only add so much. But cookies are a type of pastry, and, unlike bread, are expected to be delicate, with a fine crumb. Definitely not touch and chewy, which is what gluten causes. So adding extra flour to a recipe will more likely produce a grainy, tough cookie and ruin the flavor, rather than making it rise better. Just something to watch out for.

Okay, okay. Now for the fun part. Buttercream. I haven't made a Swiss meringue buttercream since April, and I'll admit I was a little bit nervous. SMB has a reputation for turning gloopy once you add the butter, and even though I knew this, I was honestly scared that I'd ruined it somehow, that I'd overbeat the meringue. But it turned out that I hadn't, as the buttercream poofed right up again after a few minutes under the mixer. It was smooth, rich, fluffy, and delicious with the addition of chocolate.

These quadruple chocolate cookies are probably one of my favorite things I've made. They...were...so...good. I only had one, dipped in some coffee at work (Heaven!), and I'll admit that it was hard to stop there. One of the volunteers ate four. The combination of soft, toothsome cookie and smooth buttercream was amazing. And though I felt I was running the risk of chocolate overload making these, they turned out to be just perfect flavor-wise. They'll definitely be making a reappearance soon.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Quadruple Chocolate Cookies:

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Joe Cocker

Mr. Cocker is one of the most amazing singers, musicians, and composers I can think of. His bluesy rock (or rocky blues?) is full of emotion, whether melancholy or dance-inducing, and I can't even begin to tell you about his voice. I can't really do its raspy, howling, completely charming qualities justice on a blog. His cover of "Bird on a Wire" outdoes any other version of the song and makes me cry every time I hear it.

Double Chocolate Fudge Cookies

Slightly adapted from The Secrets of Baking, by Sherry Yard

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup butter, cold

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons tightly packed brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Sift together the flour, cocoa, and baking soda.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed.

Add the sugar, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla and mix on medium speed until smooth. Do not overmix.

Add the egg and beat on low until just incorporated.

With the mixer on low speed, slowly add in the flour mixture, beating just until incorporated.

Add the chocolate chips and mix on low only until evenly distributed throughout the dough.

If baking right away, line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop generous teaspoonfuls of the dough, placing each cookie 2 inches apart. Bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes, or longer, until the cookies look dry and are no longer wet to the touch.

If not using immediately, use a piece of parchment paper or cling wrap to roll the dough into a log and wrap it tightly. Chill for one hour. This may be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week, or in the freezer for up to a month before baking.

When ready to bake, cut 1/3-inch discs off the log and place them 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Follow the baking instructions above.

Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Adapted from Joe Pastry (scroll down for SMB)

2 egg whites
2.5 oz sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 stick soft unsalted butter

2 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Combine the egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar in the top of a double boiler over simmering water.
Whisk to combine and continue to do so every so often as the syrup cooks.
Cook to 160F.
Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
Turn on high and whip to stiff peaks.
Switch to the paddle attachment.
Add the butter piece by piece, with the mixer on medium high.
The mixture will most likely turn goopy and you may think that you've overbeaten the whites. Do not panic, and do not turn the mixer off. Keep beating, even if it seems a lost cause. The meringue will poof right back up after a few (or more) minutes' time.
Beat until thick and of frosting consistency.
Alternately, if your butter is a little cold, the buttercream may "curdle." Again, just keep beating it until it becomes smooth.

Add in the melted and cooled chocolate and beat just until fully incorporated.

Baroque Birthday Cake - I'm Seventeen!

2010-08-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

It was my birthday recently, and besides going out to a wonderful restaurant with my family and a friend to celebrate (peach-mascarpone cannoli for dessert...I must attempt this at home), I made my own birthday cake. My mindset while planning and baking this was "It's my birthday. Now is the time to put everything that I love and shouldn't be eating in a cake." That's why this cake is now known in our family as the Baroque Cake - it's rich, complicated, over-the-top, and combines more flavors than are really necessary in a dessert. The only way a birthday cake should be done.

This cake, being designed solely to spoil and pamper me, is my "food porn" fantasy come true. Let me break it down: four layers of my favorite chocolate cake spread with fluffy chocolate mousse and candied almonds, all encased within rum whipped cream. The cake layers are the chocolate cake I always turn to. It never fails, it's delicious, and the recipe makes two perfectly-sized layers. I split each layer in two here to make a quadruple-decker cake. It was my first time cutting cake layers, and I thought it would be a crumbly, messy disaster. But it worked really well, actually, and I was so proud when I ended up with four neat, even layers. The things I get excited about, really.

The mousse is the same chocolate mousse I blogged about before, and the same description still applies here: rich, fluffy, addicting. Spread between layers of rich chocolate cake, it's a cross between fine dining and comfort food; as in, do I eat this with a silver fork and linen napkin, or go at it with a spoon?

I think the almonds, however, are what really make this cake. I decided to include them because while I was planning, I knew I wanted some sort of crunchy contrast to all the soft cake and filling. I thought of just layering in finely sliced almonds, but then I remembered it was my birthday, and now was the time to be baaaaad. So I made candied almonds, the ones my mom always made and the ones she in turn taught me to prepare. They're completely addicting on their own (I seem to be using that to describe a lot of these components...), so you can imagine what they're like paired with chocolate, rum, and cream. I crushed them up when stacking the cake layers, but I think the contrast would have been better if I'd just left them thinly sliced. I can't lie, though, they were still amazing.

And then there was rum. (Sorry. I couldn't help myself.) The luscious rum-flavored whipped cream on the cake was one I'd made for a brazo gitano last year, and one I'd never forgotten. Holy cow it's good. It's the most simple frosting you could think of - cream, sugar, and rum - but that's part of why I love it. While it is indulgent, it's not as rich as a buttercream and not as intense as a boiled icing. I feel like using one of those to cover the cake would simply have been too much, even for the Baroque Cake, but this light, fluffy whipped cream was just right.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Baroque Birthday Cake:

Live in Italy, Zucchero

My dad made me listen to this guy. At first I put up a fight: "What's so great about him? He's an old Italian man wearing a huge hat and pretending to be a cowboy." And then I realized that Zucchero's music more than makes up for any bad decisions in headwear. His mixture of blues, rock, bluegrass, pop, and gospel is excellent, and his Italian covers of English songs - and medleys of English songs - are great as well.

Chocolate Cake
From Baking Bites

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Line two 8-inch round cake pans with parchment paper and grease lightly.
Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
Make a well in the center and pour in the liquid ingredients.
Stir until just combined.
Distribute evenly between the pans.
Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F.

Chocolate Mousse

Adapted from The Secrets of Baking, by Sherry Yard

Ingredients
1/2 cup ganache (see below for recipe)
2 eggs
Tiny pinch of cream of tartar
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream

Melt the ganache over a double boiler. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, whip the egg whites on medium speed.
When frothy, add the cream of tartar.
When they reach the soft peak stage, add the sugar slowly and continue beating to stiff peaks.
Transfer to a bowl and set aside.
In the same bowl of the electric mixer, whip the cream to stiff peaks. Place in the refrigerator.
Whisk the yolks in a small bowl. Add them to the ganache and quickly stir to combine.
Add a third of the egg whites to the ganache and yolk mixture and combine quickly with a wire whisk.
Fold in half of the remaining whites with a rubber spatula.
Fold in the remaining whites.
Repeat this process of adding by thirds with the whipped cream.
Pour the mousse into serving glasses and refrigerate.
If you wish to pipe the mousse, refrigerate it until set before filling the piping bag.
Chill for at least one hour before serving.

Ganache

Ingredients
1/2 cup cream
4 oz semisweet chocolate
1/2 tablespoon clear fruit jam

Place the broken up chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
Bring the cream and fruit jam to a boil over medium heat.
Pour the hot cream mixture over the chocolate and allow to sit for one minute.
Stir gently until the ganache is smooth and uniform.

Rum Whipped Cream
From Rican Recipes

Ingredients
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons rum

Whip the cream to soft peaks. Add the sugar and rum and continue beating until the cream forms stiff peaks. Refrigerate if not using immediately.

Double Whammy: Rainbow Cupcakes and Macarons

2010-08-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

You read it right. The blogosphere's two favorite food trends in one shamelessly cutesy and (squee!) rainbow post. I made these for an art show a wonderful classmate of mine put on to showcase student talent in our city. I blogged about it when it was canceled in January due to snowstorms, but this time everything went according to plan. I made cupcakes and macarons in rainbow colors, as that was the show's theme, and because they're two baked goods that always seem to be a hit.

Unfortunately, I was not able to actually be at the art show, because I already had plans for that night when the organizer asked me to bake something. However, I dropped off the goodies earlier in the day, and someone at the show ran the table selling them. I was really happy with how they came out, especially the macarons; they looked so cute all lined up in rainbow order.

I'll admit that making them was a bit of an adventure. First of all, I had to pipe five different colors of buttercream, and since I wanted the cupcakes to be as fresh as possible, I had to do it all on the morning of the show. I didn't think it would be that bad until I was elbow deep in dish water, scrubbing out my only piping bag between colors. Secondly, it has been hot up here, and humid. You know what's not fun to do in intense heat? Pipe buttercream. I couldn't get five cupcakes done without the buttercream starting to melt. It was a constant dash between my kitchen table and the refrigerator, putting each one in the fridge (as well as the white chocolate ganache-filled macarons) before anything could melt. On top of that, I didn't mix the frosting quite enough when adding the butter, so there were a few tiny specks of butter visible even through all that food coloring.

But no fear! They still turned out pretty well, I think, and they certainly looked sweet when all grouped together in a rainbow (though they were noticeably uglier when you were just looking at one cupcake).

On the macarons, however, I really don't have too many complaints. For once they were pretty well-behaved, and except for some puffy ones with cracked tops, they all came out very well. I used the cracked ones for the bottoms of the sandwiches and no one was the wiser.

I kept wondering, initially, how I was going to make the macarons fit the rainbow scheme of the event. I considered doing five tiny batches and dying each set of shells a different color, but then I realized that that sounded more like cruel and unusual punishment than a fun baking project. So I baked them all at once without adding any dye, planning to sort of paint the tops with color one way or another. Then I got the idea to splatter each shell with color, rather than painstakingly paint on a design (I'm not lazy, I was just running out of time). So I grabbed five old toothbrushes and five little bowls of food coloring. All I did was dip a toothbrush in a color and flick it over the macaron shell, and it gave a cute speckled effect. The only downside was that my nails were dyed orange, green, and blue for the next few days. Lovely.

The next time I decide to make large quantities of cupcakes, at least in this heat, I think I'll use a seven-minute frosting. In my experience, it's always held up better in hot weather and humidity than fat-based frosting. Buttercream, though always popular because it's so rich and creamy, just doesn't seem worth it if it's going to be sliding off my cupcakes as soon as I pipe it. Which is what this batch was doing. My kitchen table was a mess of rainbow food color puddles for a while there.

No matter how much I complain about melting buttercream or ganache, though, I'm very proud of both the cupcakes and the macarons. And more than anything, I'm glad that I was able to help out with this wonderful art show in some small way.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Rainbow Cupcakes and Macarons:

Put Up or Shut Up, All Time Low

Don't judge me. I'm a teenage girl and I'm allowed to like poppy, angsty music as much as obscure Galician bagpipes. AlsoIhaveacrushonthisband.

Vanilla Cupcakes

From Penzeys

Ingredients
2/3 cup butter
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cups milk

Line two muffin tins with paper liners.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer, on medium speed. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix until combined. Set aside.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk to the butter mixture, mixing on low speed after each addition just until combined.
Fill each tin 1/2 way with batter - these rise like crazy.
Bake on separate racks for 20-25 minutes at 375F, until golden.
Immediately remove from muffin tins.

Rainbow "Crazy Good" Buttercream

As named by Mom.

Ingredients

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup butter at room temperature, cut into four 1-ounce pieces
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue food coloring.

Combine the sugar, heavy cream, cream of tartar, and 1 1-ounce piece of butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.
Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.
Continue stirring constantly and keep it at a boil for 2 minutes.
Remove from the heat.
Allow to cool to room temperature, and then place in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Pour the mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer.
Using the paddle attachment, beat on slow for thirty seconds.
Increase to medium and beat for two minutes, while adding the remaining pieces of butter until fully incorporated.
Beat on high for two minutes.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on high for another minute, until very light and fluffy.
Divide the buttercream evenly between five bowls a
nd place back in the fridge to firm slightly.
Add one color to each bowl of buttercream, mixing to combine. Avoid overmixing to keep the cream fluffy, and only keep the other bowls of buttercream in the fridge while you are working on one color.
Allow to firm slightly in the fridge again before piping.

Macarons
Adapted from Not So Humble Pie

Ingredients
75 grams blanched almonds
75 grams powdered sugar
60 grams egg whites, room temperature and preferably aged
92 grams granulated sugar
25 grams water

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Fit a large pastry bag with a plain, round tip.
In a food processor, grind the almonds and the powdered sugar and until very fine. Pass this mixture through a sieve until no chunks remain.
Place 30 grams of the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.
Measure out 18 grams of granulated sugar and place this near the mixer.
Place the remaining 74 grams of the granulated sugar in a small sauce pan. Add the water, swirl to moisten all of the sugar, and attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan.
Over medium heat, cook the sugar without stirring.
When the sugar reaches 190F, begin beating the egg whites in the electric mixer on medium low speed.
When the whites are foamy, add the 18 grams of sugar and beat to soft peaks on medium speed.
When the sugar reaches 230F, turn the stand mixer up to medium high and trickle in the hot syrup, being careful not to splatter the sides of the bowl.
Beat the meringue for 5-8 minutes, until cool.
Combine the remaining 30 grams of egg whites with the almond and powdered sugar mixture, mixing until well combined.
When the meringue is cool, quickly and gently fold (do not mix!) it into the almond mixture. Use as few strokes as possible and fold only until the mixture is just uniform. The batter should flow in a thick, fat ribbon off your spatula when you hold it up, with a thick covering of the mixture remaining on the spatula.
Fill the piping bag with the batter.
Pipe circles about one inch in diameter onto the baking sheets, leaving a bit of room for them to spread slightly.
Leave the macarons to stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.
Bake at 325F for 14 minutes.
Allow to cool COMPLETELY before attempting to remove them from the parchment paper

Chocolate Mousse

2010-07-25T06:25:00.001-07:00

Hello all! I'm back from my ten-day trip to Madrid (with one day dedicated to Toledo). It was so much fun and we had a great time, but now it's back to business: the making and eating of delicious desserts. And blogging about them. This is actually something I made a little while ago, before going to Spain, that I never got around to sharing. That's a shame, though, because it's pretty fantastic. This chocolate mousse is smooth, fluffy, and has the perfect chocolaty flavor.

If you're really worried about uncooked eggs in your desserts, this may not be the mousse for you. It's got both yolks and whites, and neither of them ever see the inside of a saucepan or a candy thermometer. I think using whole eggs in mousses gives them a much richer flavor (otherwise they're just flavored whipped cream, aren't they?), and this one is an excellent example of that theory: velvety smooth but airy, the kind of mousse that goes in fluffy and then melts into a chocolaty puddle of goodness on your tongue. *Shivers*

I could be a food porn writer, no?

No, maybe not.

But anyways! About dem egg whites. You can always buy the pasteurized egg whites that come in those weird little cartons...though unless you're running a restaurant and need your whites in bulk, I don't see why you would. Let's move on to the chocolate before I go on any fresh food rants, mmtay?

Ganache seems to me to be a pastry chef's best friend. All on its own, it can be turned into a glossy glaze or a fluffy spread, just by mixing it in different ways. Thin it out with more cream, it becomes chocolate sauce. Whip that, it becomes chocolate whipped cream. Add milk, it's hot chocolate. Add more chocolate, you've got a hell of a frosting. Toss in a whole bunch of egg whites and some starch, poof, soufflé. And more cream plus whites and yolks? A very seductive chocolate mousse.

The best part about this mousse and its ganache base? *Glances around* You don't even have to use very good chocolate. I used Nestle semisweet chips in the ganache. I'm sure foodies everywhere would raise their eyebrows and say, well, Billie, why on Earth didn't you use Obscura Chocolata's 97% Supahh Dark Chocolate Luxury Bar With Cocoa Nibs? Because those bars are a) ridiculously expensive, b) ridiculously overhyped, and c) they taste kinda bad. I know, I'm a horrible person for not drooling all over Valor's 82% or whatever (consequently, Valor has some kickass semisweet chocolates), but I don't think that eating chocolate should make your face pucker up like you're eating a lemon. Eating chocolate should make you want to cram your face with it and have that same I-don't-care-if-there's-melted-chocolate-all-over-my-chin mentality as you did when you were eight. That's why I'm content to use pretty low cocoa percentage baking chocolate (um, cocoa tastes nasty on its own. Think about that!) and even (gasp!) milk chocolate in my baking.

Ahem. As I was saying, you don't have to use a super dark or super pricey for the ganache here, and you actually shouldn't; it would be a waste of money and good eating chocolate. Just make sure that the brand you're using is a good, reliable one. I like Nestle and Lindt for baking purposes, and despise Hershey's. But whatever floats your boat.

You can kick up the flavor of ordinary chocolate in your ganache with one of my very favorite baking tricks; add a tablespoon of clear fruit jam for every cup of cream. It seems like something really little, but it really adds something; you can't even tell there's fruit in the finished ganache, but the chocolate flavor is much more complex and vibrant. It will take this mousse from good to downright heavenly. My dad said this was the best mousse he's ever had, and I trust him: especially when it comes to food, my father does not just toss out compliments like that.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Chocolate Mousse:

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, My Chemical Romance

Say what you want, I've been a little nuts about MCR since seventh grade, and it doesn't look like I'll be getting over the phase any time soon. I'm just glad I'm done with the black nail polish and emo bangs. Phew.

Chocolate Mousse

Adapted from The Secrets of Baking, by Sherry Yard

Ingredients

1/2 cup ganache (see below for recipe)

2 eggs

Tiny pinch of cream of tartar

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup heavy cream

Melt the ganache over a double boiler. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, whip the egg whites on medium speed.

When frothy, add the cream of tartar.

When they reach the soft peak stage, add the sugar slowly and continue beating to stiff peaks.

Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

In the same bowl of the electric mixer, whip the cream to stiff peaks. Place in the refrigerator.

Whisk the yolks in a small bowl. Add them to the ganache and quickly stir to combine.

Add a third of the egg whites to the ganache and yolk mixture and combine quickly with a wire whisk.

Fold in half of the remaining whites with a rubber spatula.

Fold in the remaining whites.

Repeat this process of adding by thirds with the whipped cream.

Pour the mousse into serving glasses and refrigerate.

If you wish to pipe the mousse, refrigerate it until set before filling the piping bag.

Chill for at least one hour before serving.

Ganache

Ingredients

1/2 cup cream

4 oz semisweet chocolate

1/2 tablespoon clear fruit jam

Place the broken up chocolate in a heatproof bowl.

Bring the cream and fruit jam to a boil over medium heat.

Pour the hot cream mixture over the chocolate and allow to sit for one minute.

Stir gently until the ganache is smooth and uniform.

Cherry Apple and Nutella Macarons

2010-07-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

Let me begin this post by saying:

¡HEMOS GANADO, HEMOS GANADO, EL EQUIPO COLORADO!

Ahem. Now that we've gone over how SPAIN WON THE WORLD CUP, I can start this post. It's a short one, because I'm leaving on vacation on Tuesday and am not packed yet at all. So! Macarons? Yes. Cherries and apples? Yes. Nutella? Yes. More detailed posts and recipes on macarons when I get back? I promise. But for now, please enjoy these delicious (and I mean seriously delicious) cherry and apple macarons.

See you in two weeks!

Your Baking Soundtrack for Cherry Apple and Nutella Macarons:

Waka Waka (Single), Shakira

Do I even have to talk about this one? I have a massive girl crush on Shakira. Oh, AND SPAIN WON THE WORLD CUP. ALA, HOMBRE.

Cherry Apple and Nutella Macarons

Adapted from Not So Humble Pie

Ingredients

65 grams blanched almonds

5 grams dried apples

5 grams dried cherries

75 grams powdered sugar

60 grams egg whites, room temperature and preferably aged

92 grams granulated sugar

25 grams water

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Fit a large pastry bag with a plain, round tip.

In a food processor, whirl together the apples and cherries.

Add the almonds and the powdered sugar and grind until very fine. Pass this mixture through a sieve until no chunks remain.

Place 30 grams of the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.

Measure out 18 grams of granulated sugar and place this near the mixer.

Place the remaining 74 grams of the granulated sugar in a small sauce pan. Add the water, swirl to moisten all of the sugar, and attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan.

Over medium heat, cook the sugar without stirring.

When the sugar reaches 190F, begin beating the egg whites in the electric mixer on medium low speed.

When the whites are foamy, add the 18 grams of sugar and beat to soft peaks on medium speed.

When the sugar reaches 230F, turn the stand mixer up to medium high and trickle in the hot syrup, being careful not to splatter the sides of the bowl.

Beat the meringue for 5-8 minutes, until cool.

Combine the remaining 30 grams of egg whites with the almond and powdered sugar mixture, mixing until well combined.

When the meringue is cool, quickly and gently fold (do not mix!) it into the almond mixture. Use as few strokes as possible and fold only until the mixture is just uniform. The batter should flow in a thick, fat ribbon off your spatula when you hold it up, with a thick covering of the mixture remaining on the spatula.

Fill the piping bag with the batter.

Pipe circles about one inch in diameter onto the baking sheets, leaving a bit of room for them to spread slightly.

Leave the macarons to stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.

Bake at 325F for 14 minutes.

Allow to cool COMPLETELY before attempting to remove them from the parchment paper

Marcona Almond and Nutella Macarons

2010-07-03T06:10:00.000-07:00

First off, I owe some serious apologies. I haven't posted since...June 12th! My God. On a blog, that's like a year, isn't it? Well I'm going to ask your forgiveness, because it's been sort of impossible to get on here in the past month. With school ending, there have been graduation parties, a summer job to start, and lots of catching up to do with friends. We also had friends come in from Spain and stay with us for a few days, so that was hectic (though wonderful). On top of it all, my computer is broken, and anytime I have it on for more than a few minutes, it looks like the screen is throwing up. So it's been a little hectic around here. But! I come bearing gifts to make up for my laziness/business/computer brokenness, in the form of marcona almond and nutella macarons.

Today's post is a bittersweet one. It's sweet, because I'm quite proud of these little macarons, and because they're a gift for Anna. If you don't remember Anna, she's a good friend of mine, a very talented baker, and is bound for Johnson and Wales University. This post is a little bit sad because these are a present for her graduation party. I'm a senior now, and Anna's a college girl.

But let's talk about macarons! I've had (relative) luck with them in the past. My first attempt was a complete failure, but from then on they'd been getting consistently better. When Anna and I turned out our first batch, I thought we'd mastered them. When I made another successful batch after that, I was convinced that I was the queen of macarons and that those food bloggers who complained about never getting them right were just wimps.

How very wrong I was.

These macs actually took four tries to get right. The first was with Anna. We attempted to make pistachio macarons, and they fell completely flat. No feet, no rise. Hmm. I shrugged it off as a careless mistake we'd made, probably because we were busy giggling in the kitchen and had overmixed or undermixed or something. Then I came home and tried macarons again, hoping to fill them with yummy raspberry mousse. Pardon my lolspeak, but FAIL. The cookies were puffy, lumpy, lopsided, and had big old chunks of almond meal throughout. Ever the stubborn mule, I tried macs again, this time sifting my ground almonds vigorously. No lumps this time, but sticky, cracked, teeny-footed cookies that stuck to the parchment. Argh.

Around this time, I came upon Not So Humble Pie's Italian macaron tutorial. Her macarons are gorgeous, with the kind of pictures that drive wannabe bakers to mac madness. I'd heard of the Italian method before, which seemed more complicated than the French method of whip-dump-fold. I had avoided it before because it involves making a sugar syrup, and I didn't see the point of making Italian meringue if I was just going to bake the cookies again afterwards. But by now I was desperate to figure out what I was doing wrong with my cookies, so I thought, what the hell, I'll make the stupid sugar syrup and see how it goes.

Well much better, that's how it went. These macarons had cute little feet, smooth tops, fluffy centers, and (most) were perfectly round. Certainly no one is accusing them of being perfect; I'm still working on piping and working out kinks with the batter, but for my first Italian attempt, I'm pretty darn pleased. I don't want to jinx it (cross your fingers!), but I did find that during the crucial folding stage, where the almonds and meringue are combined, it was easier to tell when the batter was just right with the Italian than with the French method. And, as I am a silly stubborn teenager, I'll be attempting it again and again to see if it really is an easier method to work with. Just as soon as I get some more almonds.

Now that all the technical sciencey bakey stuff is out of the way (which is awesome, and you should check out Not So Humble Pie's amazing scientific explanations of how macs work), we can talk about what is arguably the most fun thing about macarons: flavor combinations! We have a big old jar of Nutella sitting in our cupboard from when our friends from Spain came (they have two younger kids, don'tlookitme), so when I decided I wanted to make Anna macarons for her present, I thought that everybody's favorite spreadable obsession would be perfect for the filling. As for the shells, well, I have a huge fat crush on marcona almonds. If you've never had them, they're an incredibly tasty kind of almond grown all through the south and east of Spain. They're short and wider than the almonds we see here, sweeter, and a little bit softer. They're used in turrón, and since I've been in love with turrón since I've had teeth, that's probably why I love munching on them so much now. One of the great things about macarons is that you can incorporate other kinds of nuts into the batter. Marcona almonds aren't such a stretch from the "regular" kind, but they do lend a delicate, extra-special flavor to the finished cookie. And the combination of light almond meringue with with the rich, chocolatey taste of Nutella is downright heavenly.

To close: congratulations, Anananana! I know you'll be amazing at J&W and afterwards. Keep baking, keep making macarons and mousse and dobos torte, and especially, keep being a great friend and a great girl.

Oh, and enjoy those macarons.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Marcona Almond and Nutella Macarons:

Caraluna, Bacilos

I can't believe I haven't featured this album in a post yet (please see the above list of pathetic excuses for lack of posts). It's the perfect balance of upbeat, Latin pop and poignant slow songs. The album is fun, danceable, bittersweet, and satisfying, all at once.

Marcona Almond Macarons (Italian Method)

Adapted from Not So Humble Pie

Ingredients

38 grams blanched almonds

38 grams marcona almonds (if you buy them salted, let them soak in water and dry before using)

75 grams powdered sugar

60 grams egg whites, room temperature and preferably aged

92 grams granulated sugar

25 grams water

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Fit a large pastry bag with a plain, round tip.

In a food processor, grind the two kinds of almond and the powdered sugar until very fine. Pass this mixture through a sieve until no chunks of almond or clumps of sugar remain.

Place 30 grams of the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.

Measure out 18 grams of granulated sugar and place this near the mixer.

Place the remaining 74 grams of the granulated sugar in a small sauce pan. Add the water, swirl to moisten all of the sugar, and attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan.

Over medium heat, cook the sugar without stirring.

When the sugar reaches 190F, begin beating the egg whites in the electric mixer on medium low speed.

When the whites are foamy, add the 18 grams of sugar and beat to soft peaks on medium speed.

When the sugar reaches 230F, turn the stand mixer up to medium high and trickle in the hot syrup, being careful not to splatter the sides of the bowl.

Beat the meringue for 5-8 minutes, until cool.

Combine the remaining 30 grams of egg whites with the almond and powdered sugar mixture, mixing until well combined.

Fill the piping bag with the batter.

Pipe circles about one inch in diameter onto the baking sheets, leaving a bit of room for them to spread slightly.

Leave the macarons to stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.

Bake at 325F for 14 minutes.

Allow to cool COMPLETELY before attempting to remove them from the parchment paper

Vanilla Bean Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream

2010-06-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

Finals week. My head head hurts, my desk looks like my locker threw up on it, and r=sin3theta, my chronological list of presidents of the United States, and the equations for determining potential and kinetic energy are all starting to run together. It's been a horrid week for everyone in my year, and I can't tell you how many times my cramming has led to nervous breakdowns over the past few days. On Friday, though I was supposed to go to a friend's birthday party, I came home and did my best to calm down by working on this fruity, chocolaty, delicious ice cream. It tastes so much like summer that I think it made me forget about school and finals and De Moivre's nth powers theorem. At least for a little bit.

I have four days of school left. Four. All I want to do is curl up and sleep for a good 12-13 hours, wake up and go running, and come home to bake all the awesome projects I've been putting off. But there are still five finals to go, and this post is actually being written on borrowed time that should probably go into my trigonometry homework.

So let's get to it, shall we?

We have a ton of cherries in our freezer right now from our tree outside, which this year is absolutely covered in fruit. Here are just some of the ones I've pitted and frozen for later use, as well as our lovely tree:

Now, I'm not really a big ice cream person in general. I'll eat it happily if put in front of me, but it's not something I crave, like, say, rich chocolate cake or butter cookies. But lately I've been coming home from school to find myself really, really wanting ice cream. Maybe it's the fact that it's June and finally warm here, but I've been itching to make something sweet and frosty for a while now.

I decided to make a vanilla ice cream and to throw in some of the cherries I have stashed for special occasions. And I thought I'd throw in some chocolate chips to sweeten the deal, and because my dad's favorite ice cream happens to be Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia.

It turned out delicious. The vanilla ice cream base is the best I've tasted; it's the epitome of what homemade ice cream should taste like, nostalgic and so rich and smooth. It's even got that gorgeous, off-white, creamy color flecked with tiny black vanilla seeds. It looks good, but it tastes even better.

So for now, it's back to studying. I can't wait for summer, when I'll be able to bake on a not-so-sporadic basis and actually get posts up when I'd like to. For the moment, I'll offer you the recipe for this wonderful early June treat and wish everyone a very happy start to summer.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Vanilla Bean Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream:
Les Miserables, 1987 Original Broadway Cast
Most people that know me know that I have a thing for this musical. Our school's symphony played the score for an (incredibly good) student production of it, and after seeing that, I was hooked. The music is downright gorgeous, albeit dramatic, sweeping, and beautifully performed on this recording. Plus, when I hear Eponine dying for her one true love on "A Little Fall of Rain," I realize that maybe finals aren't so bad after all. Maybe.

Vanilla Bean Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream
Vanilla base adapted from The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard

Ingredients
2 cups cream
2/3 cup whole milk
1 vanilla bean
5 egg yolks, chilled
2/3 cup sugar
A tiny pinch of salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips (or better yet, small chunks of semisweet/bittersweet chocolate)
5 ounces fresh or frozen cherries

Prepare an ice bath. Fill a large bowl about 1/3 of the way up with ice.
Combine the milk and cream in a medium saucepan and scrape in the contents of the vanilla bean, adding the pod as well.
Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
Remove from the heat and cover with plastic wrap for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk together the yolks, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl.
Remove the plastic wrap from the saucepan and return the mixture to a simmer over medium heat.
Remove from the heat and spoon 1/2 cup of the hot cream mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking the yolks all the while to temper them.
Pour this mixture into the hot cream, whisking constantly and using a spatula to get all of the yolks into the saucepan.
Over low heat, cook the cream-yolk mixture until it reaches 170F or until you can run a finger down the back of the spatula and leave a clear trail through the sauce.
Set the medium bowl in the ice bath.
Using a fine-mesh strainer, strain the mixture into the medium bowl and stir occasionally until it reaches room temperature.
Refrigerate the mixture for at least two hours, until thoroughly chilled (you may also chill it overnight).
Freeze in an ice cream machine according to manufacturers' directions.
It will be very soft right after churning. Quickly fold in the chocolate chips and cherries.
Freeze for about four hours, until firm enough to scoop.

Caramel Cherry Mini Tartlets

2010-06-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Let me begin this post by saying that I hate living in the North. Not a very positive way to start a post, but hear me out. I can't stand the cold (the temperature drops below sixty degrees and I automatically catch a cold), the short days and long nights, or the fact that winter up here last for five months at the least. However, some of the few wonderful things about the North that I grudgingly admit to appreciating are the berries. Blackberries, mulberries, raspberries (my favorite!), and cherries all grow if not in our neighborhood, then close to us throughout the city and its outskirts. We're actually lucky enough to have a massive cherry tree in our backyard, which this year is absolutely loaded down with fruit. You'll often see me picking around the yard for ripe cherries that the birds haven't gotten to yet. With the abundance of fruit this year, I made some wonderful caramel and cherry mini tartlets.

You'll notice that the title of this post says "caramel." Eh? Eh? See how clever I am? Because the caramel layer under the cherry filling is actually leftover dulce de leche from the last post. Lately I've been thinking a lot about how presentation affects how much we enjoy food - everything from how chefs decorate and arrange their foods to how they choose to name them. Those enormous, teetering, baroque-looking wedding cakes probably don't taste too good, but everybody loves them because a) hey, they're fat + sugar, and b) they're so much fun to look at! This is not to say that these little tartlets aren't tasty - because they certainly are - but I think it's so interesting that just by changing the name of a food (that is, its presentation), you can completely change how someone expects it to taste, and therefore how they actually taste it. Also, you can get away with reusing leftovers from your last blog post. Maha.

I find our garden cherries so charming because they're not perfect and they're not stanardized. They taste really good but they're not as sweet as supermarket cherries, and they're certainly not as uniform in flavor or appearance. As you can see, they're not all the same deep red, some of them are bruised or scratched up, and they've got a few brown spots. But none of these things matter because they're delicious, honest-to-goodness cherries, and they don't cost a fortune at the grocery. In fact, I've taken to collecting them (I've already made two batches of these tartlets) and freezing them for future use. Hopefully they'll be just the thing to brighten up a cold winter day when I'm wishing fervently for summer.

I was so pleased with how the tart crusts on these came out. I'll let you in on a horrifying little secret: I'm not a fan of American pie dough (gasp!). I know that everyone says, Oh, well you've just never had properly made, flaky pie dough. Sush. Yes, I have, and I still don't like it. Plus, it's a hassle to make as you have to keep the butter ridiculously cold and barely touch the dough at all, you can't add in too much liquid, the dough gets all dry and crumby, and it won't roll out...you get the picture. That's why I'm so very much in love with pâte sucrée, the traditional dough of those gorgeous French fruit tarts, usually filled with a layer of pastry cream and topped with rings of fresh, sparkling berries, slices of apples or pears, or slivers of plums and peaches. It's not "flaky" (what is it with this flaky obsession, anyways?), but it's very light, crisp, and, most importantly, tender. It's sweeter than most American pie doughs, but never cloyingly so.

Now, for the cherry filling. I wanted something that reminded me of those store-bought, canned cherry fillings (which I'll guiltily admit that I love), but without all the high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, added flavors, etc, etc. I think I found it in this one. It's thickened with cornstarch and ridiculously simple. Just cook the cherries in water, whisk in some sugar and thickener, and boom, cherry pie filling. If you'd like to use this filling for a standard pie shell, just double the quantities.

So there you have it. Small, sweet cherry tartlets with a surprise of soft caramel under the fruit layer. Perfect for summer, especially afternoon tea (imagine serving these at an Alice in Wonderland-themed tea! Too cute). Of course, you can always make these little pies as a full-sized version...but I think they're so much cuter, and therefore so much better, this way.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Caramel Cherry Mini Tartlets
Fearless, Sleepless, Fenix Down
This is my friend's solo project. He's an amazing musician (not to mention a genuinely cool person), and when he started selling his CDs I jumped at the chance to snap one up. The vocals are charmingly raspy and he's downright awesome on guitar. He also composes all his own songs and lyrics and is a terrific writer, so I can't praise him enough. His music reminds me a bit of Against Me!, so if you like them, give his stuff a listen.

Pâte Sucrée
Adapted from The Secrets of Baking, by Sherry Yard

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk, room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 tablespoon heavy cream

Grease a 12-cup muffin tin with melted butter.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on low speed for 2 minutes until creamed.
Add the sugar and beat for 30 seconds.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the salt and the egg yolk, mixing just until incorporated.
Add the flour and mix on medium speed just until the dough begins to come together.
Add the cream and mix on low speed for 30 seconds.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or freeze for 2. The dough may be kept refrigerated for 3 days or frozen for a month.
Unwrap the dough and break it into four parts. It will be hard at this point.
Working on a floured surface, gently hit each piece with a rolling pin until it becomes somewhat pliable, and then very briefly kneed each one until they are manageable.
Gather the pieces together into a ball and roll the dough out, adding flour to your workspace as needed, to about 1/8 of an inch thick.
Using a round cookie cutter 3 1/2 inches in diameter, cut out circles of dough. Gather the scraps when no more circles fit and continue to roll out and cut to get as many circles as possible.
Gently lower each circle into one of the muffin tin's cups, folding in the edges to make the circle fit and get a fluted look.
Weight each tartlet with pie weights.
Bake at 350F for 10 minutes. Remove the pie weights.
Bake for another 10 minutes, until the bottoms are slightly puffy and the crusts no longer look pale.
Allow to cool in the muffin tin before removing.

Cherry Pie Filling
Adapted from Diana's Kitchen

Ingredients
1 cup pitted cherries
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup sugar (you may choose to reduce this to 1/4 cup if using store-bought cherries)
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Cook the cherries and water over medium heat in a small saucepan for 10 minutes.
Mix together the sugar and cornstarch.
Add to the cherry mixture and cook, whisking constantly, until thickened.

Dulce de Leche

Ingredients
16 ounces whole milk
162.5 grams sugar
100 grams corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Combine all the ingredients in a heavy saucepan over high heat and stir until combined.
Cook without stirring until the mixture begins to brown.
Turn the heat down slightly and continue to keep an eye on the heat as the caramel turns darker.
Once the dulce is a rich caramel color, remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
Store in the refrigerator.

Sour Cream Cupcakes with Dulce de Leche Buttercream

2010-06-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

Sour cream cake + dulce de leche + buttercream = yeah, I'm proud of this one.

Short post today, because this week is a little crazy. Hope everyone enjoys these! Definitely give them a try. They are so worth it.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Sour Cream Cupcakes with Dulce de Leche Buttercream:
Even in the Quietest Moments..., Supertramp
Supertramp is classic. "Give a Little Bit" is classic. This album is classic. And I absolutely love blasting it in the kitchen with the windows open. I figure that the delicious scents of sour cream cupcakes wafting from our house makes up for it.

Sour Cream Cupcakes
From Seriously Simple Holidays by Diane Rossen Worthington, via Epicurean.com

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature (and I do mean room temperature.)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream

Line one 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or with an electric mixer, bea tthe eggs and sugar until light and creamy, about two minutes.
Add the butter and vanilla and beat on low until well blended.
Beat in the dry ingredients until combined.
Add the sour cream and beat until blended.
Evenly distribute the batter in the muffin tin.
Bake at 350F for around 23 minutes.
Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes.
Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

Dulce de Leche Buttercream

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar, minus 3 tablespoons
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup butter at room temperature, cut into four 1-ounce pieces
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 tablespoons dulce de leche, room temperature (see below)

In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer.
Remove from the heat and cover to keep warm.
In a separate saucepan over medium-high heat, cook the sugar without stirring until liquid and caramelized.
When the caramel has reached your desired darkness, add the warm cream.
Allow the mixture to bubble for a few seconds and add the cream of tartar and one of the 1-ounce pieces of butter.
Scrape the mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer.
Allow to cool and place in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, until well chilled.

Using the paddle attachment, beat on slow for thirty seconds.
Increase to medium and beat for two minutes, while adding the remaining pieces of butter until fully incorporated.

Add the dulce de leche and beat on high for two minutes.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on high for another minute, until very light and fluffy.

Dulce de Leche

Ingredients
16 ounces whole milk
162.5 grams sugar
100 grams corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Combine all the ingredients in a heavy saucepan over high heat and stir until combined.
Cook without stirring until the mixture begins to brown.
Turn the heat down slightly and continue to keep an eye on the heat as the caramel turns darker.
Once the dulce is a rich caramel color, remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
Store in the refrigerator.

2010 Patanegra Tapas Competition Winner: "Magdalenas de la Mancha": Honey Cupcakes with Almond Buttercream and Marzipan Bulls

2010-05-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

Here it is! I'm just a few weeks late, but I promised a post on the tapas competition for which I won best dessert and best presentation (though they could only give me the prize for best presentation, since I won in two categories...harumph), and I'm finally getting it up. My entry consisted of "Magdalenas de la Mancha": honey cupcakes with almond buttercream and handmade marzipan bulls.

So these cupcakes were great. I was so happy with how the cakes themselves turned out, and, of course, the adorable little bulls (if you don't get the "de la Mancha" thing, know that there are a lot of cows in that area, and, with the whole bullfighting and giant toro billboards, bulls are sort of a symbol of Spain). The only thing that messed me up was the buttercream. It tasted absolutely wonderful and went so incredibly well with the honey cake, but I didn't realize that grinding up the almonds before adding them into the cream would make them oily and cause the cream to break up. So I've instructed you to just chop the almonds finely in the recipe included so that the buttercream will pipe nicely and not give you trouble (as it gave me).

I'm honored and overjoyed to have won at the tapas competition, especially since people came up to me throughout the night to tell me how cute the bulls were. People I had never met in my life right away assured me that I had their vote. I hope you enjoy these little cupcakes as much as I enjoyed putting them together.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Magdalenas de la Mancha:
Borrasca, Ottmar Liebert + Luna Negra
What could be more fitted to preparations for a tapas competition than this upbeat, addictive blend of flamenco, South American beats, and jazz? The whole album will keep you dancing and swinging in the kitchen with Spanish style, even through long projects like this one.

Honey Cupcakes

From Allrecipes.com

Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Line 3 12-cup muffin pans (or you may bake one tray at a time, holding the remaining batter in the fridge each time).
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Mix in the honey, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.
Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just combined.
Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.
Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes.

Almond Buttercream

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup heavy cream

2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 8 1-ounce (two tablespoon) pieces

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 cup almonds, blanched, peeled, toasted, and finely chopped
1/4 tablespoon Amaretto or other almond liqueur.

Combine the sugar, heavy cream, cream of tartar, and 2 1-ounce pieces of butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.

Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.

Continue stirring constantly and keep it at a boil for 2 minutes.

Remove from the heat.

Allow to cool to room temperature, and then place in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Pour the mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer.

Using the paddle attachment, beat on slow for thirty seconds.
Increase to medium and beat for two minutes, while adding the remaining pieces of butter until fully incorporated.

Beat on high for two minutes, adding the chopped almonds and Amaretto.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on high for another minutes, until very light and fluffy.

Place back in the fridge to firm slightly before piping.

Prom Pancakes

2010-05-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that last night was my junior prom. It seems like yesterday that I was in middle school vowing that I would never be silly enough to wear an evening gown and let a boy tie a corsage around my wrist. But my mind has certainly changed since then, and this year, being a junior, I attended our school's prom. Afterwards, a bunch of friends slept over. I woke everyone with a delicious chocolate chip pancake breakfast after our approximated four hours of sleep.

I can't imagine prom going more perfectly. A big group of people came to my house to get ready and take pictures. It was beautiful outside yesterday evening, and of course all our parents made us go out in our backyard and take tons and tons of pictures, including the super typical, super cheesy shot with the line of couples. All the girls wore evening gowns, and the boys looked hilariously formal in their tuxes. When I was in middle school I said that if I ever did go to prom, I would wear a poofy dress with fishnets and Converse sneakers (I thought I was such a rebel in middle school and didn't realize that "goth" was no longer original by the time I discovered it). However, I worked that dress and I wore that corsage like nobody's business.

Prom itself was great (lots of dancing, lots of pictures, lots of girls squealing "Ohmygah you look so prettyyyyyyyyyy"), but the best part was coming home. We started a fire in my backyard and made s'mores (see my previous marshmallow-making adventures here), and then we all trooped down to the basement to watch a movie. People started passing out around three, and I suddenly found myself waking up at four in the morning and having to wake the girls up to tell them to go sleep upstairs, away from the boys.

My friend woke me up at eight in the morning. She and her boyfriend had to leave at ten, and I had promised everyone breakfast. "Paaaaaancaaaaaakes," came a voice from underneath a mass of blankets to my left. So I sleepily tied on my hostess apron and set to work.

I thought it would be a good idea to make these chocolate chip pancakes, since hey, what sleepy, hungry teenager says no to chocolate and carbs? And I was right. I originally just made one batch of pancakes, which turned out eight or so medium pancakes, but I quickly realized that no way was that enough to feed everyone. So I worked double-time, popping between the kitchen and the dining room as I flipped pancakes, chattered away with everyone, and made sure that no one had run out of milk or needed extra napkins.

The pancakes are delicious. They're the simplest kind, which, I think when it comes to homestyle cooking, are the best. They're light and fluffy but still have a rich taste to the batter, which isn't too sweet itself (only using 3 tablespoons of sugar). We served them with butter, maple syrup, and chocolate sauce. And of course, glasses of cold milk. Because even when you're sixteen, milk moustaches are a necessity.

The chocolate sauce is another thing to swoon over. I improvised a thin ganache, mixing hot cream and chocolate by eye and adding a few teaspoons of citrus jelly. That's my new trick for ganache, and I love it. Adding a little bit of orange, apricot, or similar jam (even pineapple!) really adds an extra oomph to ganache, but you can't detect that citrus flavor in the final product. It's a lot like adding a little bit of coffee to chocolate cakes; the finished product doesn't taste like the addition, but it does make the dominant flavors in it deeper and more pronounced.

I don't have any pictures of the breakfast table since by that point I felt like the mother of a bunch of kids trying to settle everyone down, keep everybody in their seat, and get us all fed. But I can say that it was a perfect morning, with stacks of hot pancakes coming off the stove, a bowl of chocolate sauce, sunny yellow butter, a jug of maple syrup, and a crowd of smiling faces that really mean the world to me.

It was a beautiful night and a beautiful morning.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Prom Pancakes:
Forever Young (Single), Alphaville
The remake of this with Jay-Z was our prom song. What more do I need to say? Just that the original is much, much better.

Chocolate Chip Pancakes
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 cup milk
1 generous cup of chocolate chips

Combine the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder in a large bowl.
Whisk the eggs slightly.
Add to the eggs the butter and milk.
Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Cook the pancakes by dropping the batter onto a hot, greased griddle (for multiple pancakes at a time) or hot, greased frying pan (for just one pancake at a time). Check the underside of each pancake when bubbles first start to appear on the top. When you see that the bottom is sufficiently browned, flip the pancake with a metal spatula and cook until golden brown to brown on the bottom.

"Where the Wild Things Are" Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

2010-05-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

My really close friend's birthday was on Friday. Now, this boy loves Reese's cups, to the point where one of our friends just gave him a bag of king-sized packs of the candy for his present and he was overjoyed about it. Another thing he loves is the children's book Where the Wild Things Are, and I knew that putting the character Max, wearing his pajamas and jumping about in his "wild rumpus," on a chocolate and peanut butter cake would make him smile.

So first, I should explain some things. I know that in the last - very brief - post, I said that I won the annual Patanegra Tapas Competition for best dessert and best presentation (even though they could only officially give me the prize for best presentation, seeing as I won in two categories...scowl.), and I said that I would have pictures and a decent post on it all as soon as I got all the photos off of other peoples' cameras. Well, we Spaniards move at the pace of sloths, apparently (unless we're confronted with a buffet table of tapas competition entries, and then we move right quick), and no one has actually gotten to sending the pictures around. So I apologize for that, and hopefully will, at some point, have a post for the event.

Also, I was admitted to the hospital on Monday night after going to the ER and had to stay all of Tuesday, so by the time I finally, blessedly got the cupcake order ready for Thursday afternoon when it was scheduled to be picked up, I was frazzled, exhausted, cranky, and hadn't taken any pictures. Which is a shame, because they were gorgeous cupcakes. So no pictures of that, because of my silly immune system, but I do hope to include the recipes for each of the four flavors of cupcakes, as they were delicious and adorable.

Now! Moving right along to what you're really here for: peanut butter and chocolate cake. Would you like to know a secret? I don't like peanut butter. I'm a teenager and I don't like peanut butter. I'm an American teenager and I don't like peanut butter. I get funny looks at the lunch table for this, as well as for hating bacon and for bringing little cans of tomato juice to school and mixing in salt and pepper. I'm a weird eater. The point of all that, however, was that I'm not a fan of peanut butter, and even I like the PB filling in this cake. I used it for one of the cupcakes from the Thursday order, and it blew me away. It's got a nice peanut flavor and isn't too sweet; it's like the best of peanut butter and good frosting met and had a baby and then that baby tucked itself between two layers of rich, chocolate cake, pulled up the blanket of ganache, and then dreamt of deliciousness.

I don't really know how that metaphor got so bad. I apologize.

Regardless of that last little rant, the cake is so good. And the fact that the layers are whipped up in one bowl with no need for a mixer is such a bonus. I topped the cake with the most amazing ganache I've ever tasted. Mine was leftover from some cupcakes and I only had enough to pour over the very top, but I'll include the full recipe so that you can be a bit more generous with it. I have a feeling that this cake would only get better with ganache running seductively down its sides.

As for little Max on top. My friend and I went to see the movie of Where the Wild Things Are when it came out, and by the end we couldn't stop roaring and howling at anyone and everything we saw. He always describes having the book read to him as a little kid and how he and his siblings would growl along convincingly with the line "...they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth." So I knew that Max would have to be in that iconic pose of his, foot raised and claws bared in his wild rumpus. I have to say I'm pretty happy with how he came out. I'd like to get better at modeling figures out of marzipan, but for my first attempt at a character, I think I did pretty well. My friend loved him, so it was definitely worth it.

"I'll eat you up, I love you so."

Your Baking Soundtrack For "Where the Wild Things Are" Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake:
A Irmandade Das Estrelas, Carlos Núñez
This is honestly one of my favorite albums, and it's so perfect for losing yourself in the kitchen. The beautiful classical guitars, the Galician bagpipes, the haunting melodies, the rendition of Rosalía de Castro's Negra Sombra by Luz Casal...everything about the music is gorgeous.

Chocolate Cake
From Baking Bites

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Line two 8-inch round cake pans with parchment paper and grease lightly.
Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
Make a well in the center and pour in the liquid ingredients.
Stir until just combined.
Distribute evenly between the pans.
Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F.

Peanut Butter Filling
From Baking Bites

Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/3 cup crunchy peanut butter
2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tbsp milk

Beat together all the ingredients with an electric mixer until smooth.

Chocolate Ganache Glaze
From The Secrets of Baking, by Sherry Yard

Ingredients
8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
4 tablespoons clear apricot or citrus jelly (I used a wonderful apricot-pineapple-orange combination one)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Place the chocolate in a large heat-proof bowl.
Warm the apricot jelly in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until melted.
Whisk in cream, milk, and corn syrup.
Increase heat to medium and bring to a boil.
Pour the mixture over the chocolate.
Allow to sit for 1 minutes.
Stir gently until smooth and combined.
Pour over cake while the ganache is still hot.
If you have leftovers, store them in the refrigerator and gently remelt them when ready to use by placing the ganache in the top of a double boiler and stirring just until melted.

2010 Concurso Tapas Patanegra WINNER: Best Dessert and Best Presentation

2010-05-16T04:47:00.000-07:00

Last night I won for "Best Presentation" and "Best Dessert" at the annual Patanegra Tapas Competition! The full story, recipes, and lots of pictures as soon as I get them off of everybody else's cameras!

Orange Sherbet

2010-05-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Orange sherbet has become a tradition in our house on Mother's Day. We all have our own fond memories of eating it from hollowed-out orange peels in Spain, where these treats (and their lemon counterparts) are sold in nearly every restaurant, café, and bar. They're a sweet and sophisticated dessert that we all love, one that's nostalgic but that makes new memories every year.

I can't believe it's May. It seems like just yesterday that I was churning sherbet for these last year. This year has gone by so incredibly fast; with the amount of work our teachers have laid on us, it seems like it's just slipped out from underneath my feet. I can't believe I've survived junior year, with the SATs and the Advanced Placement tests. Speaking of which, I just took my U.S. History AP exam, and I feel like I've been run over by a truck.

Lemme explain AP. It's a bit like medieval torture, but instead of a rack, there's subject tests. You take an AP course all year, and then they sit you down for a two or three hour exam on that subject in May and tell you to prove what you've learned. Guess how many most people take?

None.

Guess how many I'm taking?

Three.

I'm done with the Spanish Language and U.S. History tests, and now all I have is English (hah...all I have is English. I'll remember that on testing day and kick myself for saying it). My really funny friends like to joke that the Spanish one didn't really count for me, since I'm, you know, fluent. To them, I like to say that not only did I test for three hours on the course, but I had to complete multiple choice questions on short narratives, multiple choice questions on long narratives, interpersonal writing, a synthesis essay, taped interpersonal speaking, and a taped, formal, oral presentation (prepared on the spot in two minutes!) in that time. So yeah. I'm fluent, but I came out of there feeling as I imagine oranges feel after being squeezed for their juice.

Which reminds me! This post isn't about me, it's about orange sherbet. I'ma break this stuff down for ya. Do you like fluffy, smooth, soft frozen desserts? Do you like things that can be scooped but don't have the cream, egg yolks, and girth-enlarging properties of ice cream (but hey, who's counting calories?! Oh, right, me.)? Do you like sweets that actually taste like the fruit they're made from? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, this is the sherbet for you. I'm actually not usually a sherbet kind of girl; I like my desserts pretty rich, and sherbet always makes me think of the icky, frozen simple syrup stuff that tastes and feels a whole lot like cold sugar water. Which it basically is.

This stuff, however, is the exception. The addition of stiffly beaten egg whites and gelatin makes it delightfully creamy, fluffy, and smooth without overpowering the orange flavor. And it never crosses that line into ice cream territory, as there's not a yolk or a drop of cream in sight.

The sherbet is very soft when it comes out of the ice cream maker, but it firms right up once you fill the orange peels and freeze them. Another great thing about these filled treats is that, as long as you can keep them cold, they're very easy to transport. Just wrap them tightly in aluminum foil before taking them anywhere.

And just because this is my blog and I can, I'm going to tell you that my senioritis has kicked in already. Actually, it kicked in back in April, but now, with testing happening so frequently (SATs! APs! PSSAs! Foresights! Can you tell I'm a little bit jaded!), it's especially pronounced. I feel so entitled now...I walk into class and look at the teacher like, "I just took an AP. I'm done for the day." And then, because I'm a good little girl, I sit down and do whatever assignment we've been given.

What can I say. My mother raised me right.

Happy Mother's Day!

Your Baking Soundtrack For Orange Sherbet:
Glee: The Music, Season 1
I'll say it. I'm a Gleek. This show makes me so ridiculously happy, and the music, besides being a ton of fun, is really well done. The cover of "Proud Mary" done in wheelchairs and the mashup of "Don't Stand So Close To Me/Young Girl" are perfect for dancing around the kitchen, using the spatula as a microphone. Not that I do that.

Orange Sherbet in Orange Peels
When you are juicing the oranges, cut them not at the middle, but near the top, to create a little lid. Don't ring them out; instead, use a small spoon to reach inside the orange, scoop out the flesh, and strain that to get your juice. Gently empty out what remains inside the oranges with a serrated knife and the spoon (as you would with a jack-o-lantern), trying your best not to deform the peels too much. Freeze them until ready to fill.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon orange zest
2 teaspoons gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
2 egg whites, room temperature

Dissolve the gelatin in the cold water.
Stir together the water and sugar over low heat, just until the sugar dissolves.
Increase the heat and allow to come to a boil without stirring.
Cover and boil for five minutes.
Add the gelatin and stir to combine.
Allow the mixture to cool and add the orange juice, lemon juice, and orange zest.
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the orange mixture. Make sure that the mixture is cool before adding the whites. Don't worry about getting everything incorporated too much; there will be a layer of juice underneath the whites no matter how much you mix.. The ice cream machine will take care of the rest of the mixing for you.
Freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturers' instructions.
When the sherbet is ready, generously fill the frozen peels so that there is some coming out of the top, and top each one with its lid.
Freeze immediately.
If not serving within a day or so, wrap each orange in aluminum foil to store.

Chocolate and Salted Butter Caramel Macarons

2010-05-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

Guess who just got through the SATs? That's right. Yours truly just endured 3 hours and 45 minutes of testing to prove that she can write a cohesive sentence and identify the unknown angles of a triangle. The whole test is so hyped up and our teachers tell us so much that we should be terrified of it that by the time I actually had to sit it, I was quaking. Last night, to keep myself from thinking about it (and giving myself a little panic attack), I made some lovely chocolate macarons filled with salted butter caramel sauce. I can say that I hardly worried about the test last night; they're certainly distracting. Deliciously so.

So any plans for Friday night were shot because I had to get plenty of rest for this morning. I did sneak out for a game of soccer with some friends, but I was home at a reasonable hour, with plenty of time to kill before I could make myself go to bed. When I'm nervous I bake, and I could already feel that test anxiety creeping up on me. The fact that it was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon wasn't making me any less restless. So I flung open the kitchen windows and did what any teenager faced with college entrance exams would do; I busted out some egg whites.

I'd been playing with the idea of filling macarons with caramel sauce for a while, and I decided that the perfect shells for this would be chocolate. The result, of course, is that you really can't get much more decadent than these cookies. Chocolate macarons are a treat in themselves, but spread them with rich, buttery caramel and they're downright indulgent. I absolutely love the contrast you get with these when the crisp, airy shell gives way and mingles with the thick, chewy, satiny caramel. So good. And so delightfully gooey.

I've been making a lot of cupcakes lately, so these were a nice change. Don't get me wrong; I love cupcakes and everything they entail. They're so cute and a lot of fun to prepare, since you have endless possibilites of cake, filling, frosting, and decoration combinations. But these macarons are a little more sophisticated and the chocolate, caramel, and sea salt trio makes for a flavor that isn't just a pretty face. I'm always afraid to hear that my food is "interesting," since that just sounds like the person describing it can't think of anything nice to say, but that really is the word for these. They taste great, and they also make you stop and think and enjoy the combination.

Speaking of cupcakes. The minis I took into school were such a success that I ended up with two more cake orders within one eighty-minute period. The first is for a birthday cake, and the second for four dozen petit fours for a cocktail party. I'm so excited for these. May is going to be hectic and wonderful; I have five (count 'em!) orders to get done and a special birthday I'll be making something for. That, and I have to work around the three AP tests I'll be taking. It's going to be intense, but I'm raring to go. As long as I'm baking, I'm happy.

So anyways. Making these macarons definitely calmed me down. I was able to relax and drift as I whipped and folded and piped. I went to bed feeling pretty confident. That's not to say that this morning wasn't chaos. It went a little something like this for me:

7:00 I'm fine. This is going to be fine.

7:15 Pshh. I've got this.

7:30 It's fine. I'm not panicking.

7:45 WHERE IS MY CALCULATOR OH MY GOD HAVE YOU SEEN MY TEST TICKET I'M NOT GOING TO GET IN TO COLLEGE.

Hoping not to jinx it here, but I think the test went alright. I did come home dog tired, though, and all I wanted to do was collapse and never think about right triangles or verb tenses again. However, there were tiny chocolate and caramel macarons waiting for me in the downstairs fridge, so life didn't seem all that bad.

A few bites later, and I knew it really wasn't.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Chocolate and Salted Butter Caramel Macarons:
Rumors, Fleetwood Mac
This is, for me, the ultimate spring/summer soundtrack. Every time I listen to it, I discover something new to love about the music. The songs are bright, folksy, and yes, perfect for sing-along-time in the kitchen.

Note: For tips on making macarons, please visit the Macarons with Guest Baker Anna post.

Chocolate Macarons
Adapted from Joe Pastry

Ingredients
2 ounces almonds
3.5 ounces powdered sugar, minus one tablespoon
1.75 ounces egg whites (aged overnight at room temperature, or brought to room temperature and then zapped in the microwave for no more than ten seconds)
.9 ounces granulated sugar
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Place the almonds, chocolate, and powdered sugar in a food processor and grind until very fine. You should see no almond pieces. (You may have to work in batches if the machine is small. Just divide up your almonds, chocolate, and powdered sugar evenly each time.)
Pass this through a sieve or sifter and set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk, beat the egg whites until they are at the soft-peak stage.
Add the granulated sugar and beat until very stiff.
Add the ground almonds all at once and stir - don't fold - until the batter starts to come together. Slow down as it starts to look consistent.
Test a little bit on a small plate. If it holds a peak, give it a few more turns. If it settles into a nice, peakless (but still full) round, it's just right. If it flattens out completely, you've overmixed, or your egg whites weren't stiff enough.
Fit a piping bag with just the coupler, no tip, and stand it up in a glass for easy filling. Spoon in the batter.
Pipe small circles, about 1.5 inches in diameter, on the parchment paper.
Let these stand at room temperature for an hour.
Bake at 300F for 12-15 minutes.
Let cool and then peel the parchment paper off.

Salted Butter Caramel Sauce

Ingredients
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/8 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 ounce salted butter (you may use cultured salted as well, as I did)

Heat the heavy cream in a saucepan until boiling. Remove from the heat and cover to keep warm.
Combine the water, sugar, and corn syrup in a heavy saucepan over medium heat.
Stir just until the sugar has dissolved.
Cook without stirring until the caramel is a deep golden (you may play around with the darkness of your caramel, but be careful, as sugar cooks very quickly at this point and will easily blacken if you don't stop the cooking by setting the saucepan in a pan of ice water. If you see dark spots appearing during the cooking, give the sugar a brief stir to prevent it from burning).
When the caramel has reached this color, immediately pour in the warm cream.
The sauce will bubble up. Allow it to become smooth before proceeding.
Add the butter and whisk in until smooth.
Use warm or at room temperature. It should be stored in an airtight container in the fridge, where it will become quite stiff. Allow it to come to room temperature after storing. At room temperature, it is still very thick, so give it a hearty whisk to get it to spreading consistency, or warm it (very briefly) over low heat, stirring all the while.

Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with Clementine Cream Filling and Honey Whipped Cream

2010-04-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

So I ended up in the emergency room last week with bronchitis. I didn't have a chance to bake until this Saturday, mostly because my mother would have had my head if she had caught me sick and anywhere near the kitchen. I'd been feeling baking-starved all week, so when I was finally able to find the time and permission to go near the oven, I wanted to go all-out. These little cupcakes are the result of that pent-up creative energy, a surplus of clementines, and the need to practice for a very special cake order that's come up.

Also, in an attempt to spread my love of good music, I'm going to start including what albums I've been listening to in the kitchen on each post. Look at the end of this one for your baking soundtrack for making these cupcakes!

I started the whole thing with curd. I'd never made lemon (or any type of citrus) curd before, but I was desperate to try it, as I kept hearing about how delicious and ethereal it is. We had a ton of clementines lying around the house that technically hadn't spoiled but were just no good for eating, so I decided to make a clementine curd instead. The technique used to blend in the butter - whipping it into the curd with a food processor, rather than cooking it with the custard - was inspired by Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, but the recipe is mine. And my God, is it good. It's incredibly light, smooth, and creamy, and is bursting with bright citrus taste. We've taken to spreading it on anything we can find in the refrigerator; toast, cake, strawberries, right off the spoon...I tried it spread on a piece of Pear Cake, and the combination was to die for.

I also made the cream because of something I'm planning for an upcoming cake order. I've had seventy five cupcakes ordered for a wedding shower, and the bride-to-be loves complicated, boutique-style flavors. So I've put together a "menu" of four different elaborate cake, filling, and frosting combinations (more on that as we move into May). One of the flavors I have planned is called August Wedding, which will be a lavender cake base with a lemon curd filling and honey-sweetened whipped cream on top. I wanted to try making curd (though really it's a cream here, since the resulting product is lighter) before I start baking for the actual order, and with this little project - and a surplus of clementines - I had the perfect opportunity.

Each tiny cupcake holds an even tinier dollop of clementine cream. They're wonderful just like this. For instructions on filling cupcakes, see the Spring Cupcakes post.

I really wanted to top these with a frosting, though; after all, it's not a cupcake without icing. So in keeping with the practice for the August Wedding cupcakes, I topped them with honey whipped cream rather than a buttercream. I personally love whipped cream as a frosting; it's so much lighter and tastier than the often greasy, sugary messes you find at even boutique bakeries. The only reason I can imagine as to why bakeries don't use it as a frosting as much as I wish they would is that it's a bit less sturdy than buttercreams, and so if the cupcakes have to be kept for a while, it may not hold up as well. But I've never had any real problems with it wilting or such, and anyways, bakeries shouldn't be keeping their cupcakes out that long.

Sorry. I'm done.

Anways. The lightly sweetened whipped cream is perfect. The flavors of fresh cream and honey pair beautifully with the bright clementine center and this topping avoids becoming too heavy or too sweet. I personally love it. Plus, cream pipes very well when whipped to stiff peaks, so it's perfect for fancy little cupcakes.

The final touch on these was adding some teeny tiny marzipan roses that I'd made. Marzipan and almond paste are both great for sculpting, and taste endlessly better than fondant or gum paste. I just use store-bought marzipan (Odense), which can be of surprisingly good quality and very convenient. If you want to make your own, I suggest using The Cookie Shop's recipe. I used only two tiny drops of red food coloring to about .8 ounces of marzipan to get the right pink.

And there! They're done. I've had a few (or more than a few) and they're delicious. I especially like them as minis, since you can pop just one in your mouth and still get a good dose of flavor, with the citrus, vanilla, honey, and cream.

The little marzipan roses on top are just gilding the lily. Which I do quite well.

I'm not including the recipe for the vanilla cake, since it didn't quite convince me. Use your favorite vanilla, citrus, or maybe even spice cake as the base for these, and I promise they'll be fantastic. Though really, you could use cardboard for the cake and the cream would make up for it.

Your Baking Soundtrack for Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with Clementine Cream Filling and Honey Whipped Cream:
Moondance, Van Morrison
This album is deliciously mellow and upbeat at the same time. It's perfect for relaxed spring days in the kitchen and will keep you smiling and tapping your foot even while rolling and cutting endless marzipan roses.

Clementine Cream
You may substitute fresh-squeezed orange juice and zest for the clementine.

Ingredients
4 egg yolks
3 ounces sugar
3.2 ounces clementine juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tsp clementine zest
1/2 cup butter, room temperature

In a heatproof bowl, rub the zest into the sugar until moist.
Whisk in the yolks and clementine and lemon juice.
Set the bowl over a double boiler of simmering water.
Cook on low-medium heat, stirring constantly, until the cream thickens. It will be rich but not extremely dense. Do not overcook it.
Remove from the heat and pour into the bowl of a food processor or blender.
Allow to cool to room temperature, and place in the refrigerator until well-chilled.
Add in the butter a piece at a time, pulsing with the food processor or blender after each addition until combined.
The cream may be quite runny. It's fine.
Once all the butter has been incorporated, refrigerate the cream for at least five hours (or use it sooner if you don't need it as firm). Store it with a piece of plastic wrap pressed directly onto the top of the cream to avoid developing a skin.

Honey Whipped Cream

Ingredients
1 cup heavy cream, very cold
2 tablespoons honey

Whip the cream to soft peaks.
Add in the honey and continue to beat until very thick and fluffy.
If piping, spoon into the pastry bag and then refrigerate the bag for a few minutes before using to keep the cream firm.

Vanilla Bean Marshmallows

2010-04-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

Now that it's looking like spring (more or less), I'm spending as much time outside as possible. I've realized how lucky I am that we have a nice, big backyard, fire pit included. Last week I thought that we should start putting that fire pit to good use again, and made up a big batch of marshmallows for roasting.

I don't remember exactly how I became so set on having a big campfire and making s'mores. It was probably as I was (yet again) flipping through Baking: From My Home To Yours. I noticed a very promising recipe for marshmallows and was instantly enamored, partly because marshmallows are such a novelty. We never think of them as a traditional baked good made at home, like cookies or cakes; they always come pre-packaged and, quite frankly, taste like plastic.

But I was curious and sure that these would taste better. So last weekend I set to making them, the only change being that I tossed in a vanilla bean to dress them up a little bit.

Marhsmallows are actually ridiculously easy to make. They are pretty much a seven minute frosting with gelatin beat in to make the mixture set up, which is then spread, dried, and cut into fluffy little pieces. They do require a bit more coordination than other home baking projects, so you should make sure that your work space is uncluttered so that you can move swiftly from one step to the next, and read through the entire recipe before starting to organize yourself (but you already knew to do that with all recipes, right?).

It's fascinating to watch a simple syrup, some egg whites, and gelatin transform into the huge, delightfully fluffy meringue used in marshmallows. Work quickly to avoid letting the mixture set up before you spread it out, as it will tend to do.

That, and use a lot of cornstarch. Resign yourself right from the start to the fact that you, your kitchen, and anything within a ten-foot radius of your counter will be covered in cornstarch (and yes, it will be worth it).

Spread the mixture out and use a few glasses to create a barrier with the parchment paper on the side that does not meet the edge of the baking pan, as shown above. This will keep your marshmallow-y mass from spreading all over the pan.

These marshmallows turned out great. We did have them as s'mores around a camp fire, and it was wonderful. They taste like a much better version of the store-bought marshmallows that everyone remembers so fondly from childhood, with none of that lingering plastic taste. Even my mom, who hates marshmallows, really loved these.

Though we ate quite a few around the campfire, I knew that having them lying around the house was dangerous to everybody's health (and, particularly, my waistline). So I took the leftovers in to school and shared them with classmates. Everyone that tried them loved them, and it was so funny to see the looks on peoples' faces when they asked, "You can make marshmallows at home?"

The answer is yes, and they are endlessly better than the store-bought kind, as well as surprisingly easy. Made into s'mores or eaten as-is, they're a laid-back, unpretentious, and simply tasty treat.

Vanilla Bean Marshmallows
From Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan

Ingredients
1 cup cornstarch or potato starch
3/4 cup cold water
1 1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 1/4-ounce packets unflavored gelatin
3 large egg whites, room temperature
1 vanilla bean

Trim a piece of parchment paper to line a baking sheet with a one-inch high rim. Dust generously with some of the cornstarch.
Combine 1/3 cup of the water, 1 1/4 cups of the sugar, and the corn syrup in a medium saucepan fitted with a candy thermometer.
Cut and scrape the contents of the vanilla bean into the mixture.
Over medium heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
Once the sugar has dissolved, cook the syrup without stirring to 265F.
As the syrup cooks, sprinkle the gelatin over the remaining water and let sit 5 minutes, until spongy.
Heat the gelatin in a microwave for 20 to 30 seconds, until it is liquefied.
Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
Beat on medium-high speed until firm and glossy. Do not overbeat.
When the syrup reaches 265, pour it into the egg whites with the mixer running on medium speed.
Add the gelatin and beat for another three minutes, until fully incorporated. It will be very fluffy but will not hold stiff peaks.
Scrape the mixture onto the baking sheet, close to one of the short ends.
With a spatula, spread it out to the corners and as far as it will go towards the center while still remaining at an inch in height (It won't fill the whole pan).
Lift the uncovered, excess parchment paper up so that it meets the edge of the mixture, and place a few glasses against its edge to keep it in place.
Dust the top of the mixture with some more of the cornstarch and place in a cool, dry place.
Let dry for 3-12 hours.
Once set, cut the marshmallows into shapes with a sharp knife or a pair of scissors. Rinse and dry your instrument frequently to avoid sticking.
Place the remaining cornstarch in a large bowl.
Drop the marshmallows in. When there are five or so in the bowl, turn them to coat, and then toss each one from one hand to the other to remove any excess cornstarch.
Store in a cool, dry place, loosely covered.

Spring Cupcakes

2010-04-04T11:42:00.001-07:00

I've been meaning to get this post up for a while, but with grades closing and that beautiful spring weather beckoning to me, I've been a little distracted. I made these cupcakes for a bake sale at school, and they turned out wonderfully. I wanted desperately to do something springy, cute, and somehow involving adorable little chicks, and I finally had the nerve to go for really elaborate cupcakes. They taste delicious and I'm so happy with how they came out, so now I'm sharing them and hope that you enjoy them as much as I did (and as much as the kids at the bake sale did).

The cupcakes are a combination of sour cream cake, chocolate pastry cream filling, Swiss meringue buttercream, and marzipan decorations. The combination is fantastic; even I was surprised by how well all the flavors went together. My friend absolutely raved about the buttercream and was shocked when I told her it only used one stick of butter (I'll get to that in just a second!).

Let's start with the cake itself. It's a great sour cream cake I found online on Epicurean.com, though it's originally from Seriously Simple Holidays by Diane Rossen Worthington. Usually I won't use recipes online unless they're from a blogger or website that I know and trust, but I took a chance on these and was happily surprised. They have such a wonderful, classic taste, and they're very moist. I really decided to go all-out, and I filled the center with a little surprise:

Leftover chocolate pastry cream! And yes, it is so good. Filling cupcakes is actually ridiculously easy, but creates such impressive results. To do it, just take a sharp knife (or use an apple corer, though you won't be able to control the size of the hole) and cut a circle in the top of your cupcake, making sure that you cut straight down, about 3/4 of the way. Remove the cylinder of cupcake you've just cut out and fill the cavity.

Cut the bottom of the cylinder off so that you have a relatively thin disk, with just the part that was once the very top of the cupcake. Stick it back on top of the cavity and you're done.

Frost it, and no one will suspect a thing.

Make sure you use a good, thick filling and refrigerate the cupcakes after you put it in; you don't want a runny filling making them soggy.

Oh, yeah. That's some serious pastry cream.

As if these weren't getting decadent enough already, I topped them with a heavenly Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I'd been itching to make a SMB after hearing so many good things about it and after having success with my last buttercreams (here, here, and here). However, my new rule with making frosting, since I find that most are disgustingly buttery and way too sugary for my taste, is to significantly down the sugar and, right off the bat, cut the butter in half. I was a little nervous to try it with a SMB, since it's famous for getting goopy once you add the butter to the meringues and I thought it might not puff up, but it worked. Oh, it definitely worked. It's light and smooth but still definitely a buttercream. I used Joe Pastry's recipe but cut the butter in half, as well as scaled it down to frost twelve cupcakes. This buttercream is surprisingly good, you can still taste the butter, and it avoids that gross, greasy mouthfeel and butter overload that you get so many times with frosting.

Piping it, on the other hand, was an adventure. I'd seen photos on Flickr of that gorgeous piping trick where the baker will streak a color through the frosting or meringue so that it looks prettily swirled in the final product (a perfect example is here). To do this, you paint four lines on the inside of your pastry bag, on the top, bottom, left and right, like so:

Then you simply fill it and pipe. The technique works well, but I used yellow gel food coloring and the coloring straight out of the package is orange, so I didn't get the color I wanted right away. Only after I had piped a few cupcakes did the coloring start blending into the icing and the stripes start turning the yellowish color I'd wanted. So a few of them are more orange than the others - I don't think anyone really cared (or noticed, actually...ever seen teenagers eat?). I didn't let myself get too worried, either, as when topped with the marzipan chicks and flowers I'd made, the cupcakes were downright adorable.

Even I couldn't help but squeal a little bit when I had finished these. They were so ridiculously tiny and cute, and everyone was shocked that I'd actually made them by hand. I was asked several times where I had bought my cupcakes, and I was always happy to explain that nope, they were homemade.

They were a huge success, and the first thing to sell out. When I got to the bake sale after classes, there were literally people pushing and shoving to get to the side of the table they were on. My friend was in a panic because three were sold in the time it took her to find her change purse, and another friend got the bragging rights of snatching up the last one. I'm glad that they came out so cute, but I'm also very happy that, besides looking good, they tasted really good as well.

Sour Cream Cupcakes
From Seriously Simple Holidays by Diane Rossen Worthington, via Epicurean.com

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature (and I do mean room temperature.)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream

Line one 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or with an electric mixer, bea tthe eggs and sugar until light and creamy, about two minutes.
Add the butter and vanilla and beat on low until well blended.
Beat in the dry ingredients until combined.
Add the sour cream and beat until blended.
Evenly distribute the batter in the muffin tin.
Bake at 350F for around 23 minutes.
Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes.
Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate Pastry Cream
Slightly adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 egg yolks

Scald the milk with the chocolate and vanilla.
Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl.
Mix in a double boiler the sugar, flour, and egg yolks. Beat until light.
Very gradually add the scalded milk by adding a small amount to temper the yolks and then whisk in the rest.
Cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly, until the custard begins to thicken.
Remove from the heat and continue stirring for a minute.
Cool and place in the refrigerator until ready to use.
If the cream curdles slightly, just a) pass it through a sieve or b) use a blender, food processor, or immersion blender to smooth it out. Works wonders.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Adapted from Joe Pastry (scroll down for SMB)

2 egg whites
2.5 oz sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 stick soft unsalted butter

Combine the egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar in the top of a double boiler over simmering water.
Whisk to combine and continue to do so every so often as the syrup cooks.
Cook to 160F.
Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
Turn on high and whip to stiff peaks.
Switch to the paddle attachment.
Add the butter piece by piece, with the mixer on medium high.
The mixture will most likely turn goopy and you may think that you've overbeaten the whites. Do not panic, and do not turn the mixer off. Keep beating, even if it seems a lost cause. The meringue will poof right back up after a few (or more) minutes' time.
Beat until thick and of frosting consistency.
Alternately, if your butter is a little cold, the buttercream may "curdle." Again, just keep beating it until it becomes smooth.

For the colored piping technique used on these cupcakes, please see above in the post.

Sablés

2010-04-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this post should be titled "Why Dorie Greenspan is a Genius," because these little, unassuming cookies floored me. Quite simply, they're shortbread; tender, sandy, wonderfully buttery and painted around the edges with egg yolk and sugar for a sweet, crunchy contrast to the center. The perfect thing to bring to an egg-dyeing party, and capable of being completely devoured before the night was over.

I got Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours out of the library a few days ago, and started itching to try one of its gorgeous recipes the minute I opened it. The cakes, the cookies, the drool-worthy French Lemon Cream Tart on page 331...all of them, calling to me. I've taken to leafing through it whenever I sit down to eat, daydreaming about the beautiful layer cakes, cookie baskets, and creamy puddings I'm going to make before the book is due back at the library.

On Friday, I was invited to an egg-dyeing celebration at a friend's grandparent's house (I know. A party? On Black Friday? I was confused, too). I didn't want to show up empty-handed, and I wanted to make a good impression, so I decided to make cookies. Nothing too fancy; I didn't want to feel ridiculous walking through the door with a layer cake or a dozen frosted cupcakes, but I wanted something homemade, with a little thought put into it.

Also, I really, really wanted to use the book.

I'd noticed a recipe for sablés in Baking and thought that they would be perfect. The picture showed them as adorable little round cookies with slightly puffed edges, rolled in coarse decorating sugar and presented in cute gift boxes. What could be better? Simple, quick, portable, mess-free, and they looked delicious.

So I made them. Or, rather, Anna and I (find our baking adventures in the last post) made the dough and refrigerated it, and when she went home I sliced and baked the cookies. These are simple refrigerator cookies (though very sophisticated refrigerator cookies, at that), and the dough needs to be rolled into a log and refrigerated before baking. Anna rolled it, and obviously just eyeballed it. That's why we were so excited when it turned out to be the exact nine inches called for in the recipe.

Also, you like my pink Disney ruler. We both know it.

When I took the log out of the fridge later that night and started to slice the cookies, I was actually kind of disappointed. I had tried to keep the log as nicely rounded as I could, but the sliced cookies just weren't as cute as the book's photo, and namely, they didn't have the puffed edges I had been after. They looked pretty pale, plain, and almost like I had bought premade cookie dough and sliced it. Definitely not what I was going for.

And so I baked them, hoping to at least have something to take to the party, even if it wasn't my greatest work. Five minutes into the baking time, they started to smell good. Halfway through, they started to smell really good. At fifteen minutes in, I had promised myself any ugly cookies that came out. Then the timer went off and I pulled them out, and my plain little refrigerator cookies had been transformed into sablés. Their sides had puffed up and were a golden color; their bottoms were light brown; and they smelled like heaven. The five mintues I had to wait for them to cool down so I could snatch up one of the end pieces were torturous.

When I tried one, I knew that I had been wrong for doubting these cookies. They're so good. I've made butter cookies before, with a Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts recipe, and they were alright; they had a good butter flavor but were crunchy, almost hard, and looked just as they had going into the oven. I had thought that shortbread would be the same thing, but it's not. These are tender and crumbly and have an even better flavor.

The only downside was that I didn't know how many people would be at the celebration, so I made half the original recipe, which makes a whopping fifty cookies. It turns out that fifty cookies would have been about right; these absolutely flew off the table. I received compliments on them from various family members and was told to come back, with or without my friend, with more cookies.

Sablés (makes 50 cookies)
From Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan

Ingredients

2 sticks butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large egg yolks (2 for the batter and one for the glaze)
2 cups all-purpose flour
Coarse decorating sugar

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium until smooth and creamy.
Add sugars and salt and beat until well-blended and smooth and velvety (not light and fluffy).
On low speed, beat in the egg yolks until smooth.
With the mixer off, add in the flour. Cover the mixer with a kitchen towel.
Turn the mixer on low for a few seconds, then turn it off.
Repeat four more times.
Check the dough. If there is still a lot of flour on top, repeat a few times. If not, remove the towel.
Continue at low speed for 30 seconds, until the dough is uniformly moist.
If flour is left on the bottom of the bowl, mix it in by hand with a spatula.
The dough should be clumpy rather than smooth. Do not overwork it.
Transfer the dough to your work surface. Divide it in half.
Working on plastic wrap, shape each half into a 9-inch log.
Wrap each log and refrigerate for three hours or more, up to 3 days (freeze up to 2 months).
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk the egg yolk and brush some all over the sides of one of the logs.
Sprinkle the log with the decorating sugar.
Slice the log into cookies from 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch-thick.
Place on the baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between them.
Bake at 350F, one sheet at a time, for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheet at the halfway point.
Cool the cookies on the sheet for a few minutes and then lift them onto cooling racks with a metal spatula.
Repat with the remaining log of dough, making sure that the sheet is cool before using.

Macarons With Guest Baker Anna

2010-04-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Today my very talented friend Anna came over. Anna will be going off to Johnson and Wales next year, so the girl is serious about baking. It was so great to bake with a friend that is genuinely as nuts about food as I am, and we tried a recipe that requires patience, dedication, and a honest-to-God love of baking: macarons. I've had success with macarons before in my Macarons For Beginners post, but Anna had never gotten them to work. I'm glad to say that our macarons were beautiful, and surprisingly delicious.

The macarons we made are for the baby shower of my mom's friend, and it's going to be a boy. I thought that pastel blue and yellow shells would be perfect for the occasion, "boy" colors, but still light and springy and perfect for the beautiful weather we're starting April with.

I made sure to fold the batter enough this time. Last time I whipped the egg whites to the bird's beak stage, as you're supposed to, but babied the batter when adding in the ground almonds, and when I piped the shells, they had visible peaks and didn't spread, and were therefore a little thick for sandwiching. With these batches, we really gave the batter a good stir (without overdoing it, mind you!) and the macarons spread just enough when piped to be thin and delicate but also hold their shape. The first ones we piped, the blue ones, weren't all so pretty:

But it didn't matter much to us. When we pulled them out of the oven, a few were oblong or cracked, but we both screamed for joy at the beautiful little feet our cookies had.

Besides, we did get quite a few good ones out of the batch, and they had all risen properly.

The yellow ones were better, as we'd gotten a better grasp on the piping and just how much they would spread. We let each batch sit for an hour before baking it to let the skin dry out and, therefore, to get the coveted little feet on the bottom. This trick is absolutely indespensible in making macarons, and really shows that these little guys are much more about technique than anything else. As far as I can see, the keys are whipping the egg whites enough, folding the batter properly, piping, and letting the piped shells rest before baking.

When we pulled the second batch out of the oven, there were more squeals. They were absolutely perfect; not a single ugly one in sight. As soon as we could, we started peeling them off the parchment paper and filling them.

I made a chocolate pastry cream for these, as with my macarons for beginners. This time I was careful to cook the cream very gently to avoid curdling the eggs, but for a longer time so that it was deliciously thick and spreadable. When I pulled it from the fridge and started mixing it, it was paste-like and we started saying that it looked like Nutella. Which got us to thinking that really, macarons could only be bettered by a teaspoon of hazelnut oil in the filling...

Unfortunately, we didn't have any hazelnut oil, so we mixed a teaspoon of almond extract into the cream. And I'm so glad we did. These macarons are ridiculously tasty, moreso than my first attempt. This is partly because the pastry cream is better, and partly because the shells are the proper thickness, and you get the perfect ratio of cookie to cream in every bite.

Anna was great in the kitchen. She's very talented and dedicated and we both want to learn everything we can about baking, even if it means admitting that we don't know everything. We had a lot of fun baking, filling, and posing our perfect macarons (and freaking out at the fact that they were perfect).

A for Anna!

The finished macarons are such cuties. Almost all of them are perfectly round and the shells were all pretty much the same size. With a thick layer of chocolate pastry cream in the middle, they're ready for the party. (By the way, the one on the left is me, and the one on the right is Anna. Yes, we're adorable little macarons.)

So that's my offering to you and to the mother-to-be. Sweet, tasty, spring macarons. The coveted cookie that's really not so hard to make...but definitely better when made with friends.

Macarons
Adapted from Joe Pastry

Note: To color the macarons, we made half of the recipe all the way through, adding blue, and then made the other half of the recipe using yellow.

Ingredients
3.8 ounces almonds
7 ounces powdered sugar
3.5 ounces egg whites (aged overnight at room temperature, or brought to room temperature and then zapped in the microwave for no more than ten seconds)
1.75 ounces granulated sugar

Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Place the almonds and powdered sugar in a food processor and grind until very fine. You should see no almond pieces. (You may have to work in batches if the machine is small. Just divide up your almonds and powdered sugar evenly each time.)
Pass this through a sieve or sifter and set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk, beat the egg whites until they are at the soft-peak stage. Add any food coloring at this point.
Add the granulated sugar and beat until very stiff.
Add the ground almonds all at once and stir - don't fold - until the batter starts to come together. Slow down as it starts to look consistent.
Test a little bit on a small plate. If it holds a peak, give it a few more turns. If it settles into a nice, peakless (but still full) round, it's just right. If it flattens out completely, you've overmixed, or your egg whites weren't stiff enough.
Fit a piping bag with just the coupler, no tip, and stand it up in a glass for easy filling. Spoon in the batter.
Pipe small circles, about 1.5 inches in diameter, on the parchment paper.
Let these stand at room temperature for an hour.
Bake at 300F for 12-15 minutes.
Let cool and then peel the parchment paper off.
Fill with a thick pastry cream, buttercream, ganache, jam, preserves, etc.

Chocolate Pastry Cream
Slightly adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 egg yolks

Scald the milk with the chocolate and vanilla.
Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl.
Mix in a double boiler the sugar, flour, and egg yolks. Beat until light.
Very gradually add the scalded milk by adding a small amount to temper the yolks and then whisk in the rest.
Cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly, until the custard begins to thicken.
Remove from the heat and continue stirring for a minute.
Cool and place in the refrigerator until ready to use.
If the cream curdles slightly, just a) pass it through a sieve or b) use a blender, food processor, or immersion blender to smooth it out. Works wonders.

Pear Cake

2010-03-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

This is the cake I wrote about in my Mexican Brunch post, the one that's listed there as All-Purpose Vegetable Cake. There, I made it with mashed up corn, and this time around, I used some sweet, juicy pears for a uniquely flavored, wonderfully satisfying cake.

This is how it goes with my family and pears: Every year at the beginning of spring we're all starved for fruit, and we'll see them stacked up so prettily in the grocery. We'll buy a whole bunch and enjoy a few when they're still deliciously firm and crisp. Then they'll start to ripen, and we'll be stuck with a ton of pears that are still technically good but that no one is going to eat.

I don't know why I'm so picky about pears, but I am. As soon as they start to soften in the least, I won't eat them. The thing is that I do love the taste of pear; just not that ripened texture. So this year I realized that the perfect solution was to put that flavor into something else. What is the "something else" I usually come up with? Why, cake, of course.

This cake, as I've said before, is really all-purpose. It works as banana, zucchini, cherry, corn, and pear bread, and I'm sure that if you wanted to experiment with the pulp used, you'd get even more great results. This was my first time using the pear variation, and it worked great. The pear flavor is subtle but detectable; if you don't know it's in there, you'll be wondering what the mystery flavor is (and reaching for another slice).

My mom had her friends over for tea the afternoon I made this and she set out a plate with slices for them. Its flavor is so perfect for this time of year, when we finally get to go outside and enjoy the sun and spring air again. It's satisfying, yet light and fruity, and wonderful for springtime tea or coffee.

If you plan to make this, absolutely use the walnuts called for in the recipe. They caramelize in the batter while baking and are so, so good. Feel free to substitute any kind of vegetable or fruit pulp for the pears. If you're using something juicy (pears, bananas, most kinds of fruit) mash them well with a mortar and pestle or very briefly put them through a food processor; it's better if it's a mash, not a puree. If you're using something dry (zucchini, carrots) just grate them. Either way, go by weight and use 11.5 ounces of mashed whatever.

And use those walnuts. I'm not kidding.

All-Purpose Vegetable Cake (or Pear Cake)

Ingredients

1 pound flour

14.5 oz sugar

7 oz oil
3 eggs

11.5 oz mashed corn (or banana, or zucchini, or carrots, or beets...)

3.5 oz walnuts

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Whisk the sugar into the oil.
Add the fruit/vegetable, eggs, and the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
Add to the liquid ingredients and mix until just combined.
Mix in the walnuts.
Bake in a greased and floured Bundt pan at 350F for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Inverted Black Bottom Cupcakes

2010-03-27T18:28:00.001-07:00

This week my friend, who's just been through surgery and won't be back at school for a week or two, suggested (though "suggested" implies some subtlety...) that I make her cupcakes when she comes back. She wanted chocolate cake with a mint frosting, and I started thinking of icings I could use. Not seven-minute frosting, as peppermint extract will prevent egg whites from whipping up, and not buttercream, as frankly, I wanted to branch out a little bit. Then I thought of cream cheese frosting, which I've never tried making before and seemed like a perfect experiment. Then I remembered some delicious black bottom cupcakes I made last year, with a chocolate cake base and a cream cheese filling. I got to thinking, why not use the great cake from that recipe but dress the cupcakes up with a cream cheese frosting rather than a filling?

Also, I'll admit that I'm a little addicted to piping.

These little guys, however, are not for my friend, since she won't be back for a while. These were a little test run...and a result of the fact that I hadn't been in my kitchen for a week, and I was going to go nuts if I didn't make something, quick. I'm deciding whether to take them on a picnic I have planned with my friends tomorrow (hello, spring!) or let my mom take them into work. Though it almost seems a shame to send them off to an office break room, when they're so prettied up.

The cake is from the original black bottom cupcakes from BakingBites. I could have chosen a different cake recipe, but I loved this one the last time I made it. I don't know who thought to put sour cream in a cake batter, but I'm grateful that they did. These little cakes have a wonderful texture all their own and a very satisfying, chocolatey taste. They're also fuss-free, as they bake up neatly and evenly (granted you rotate the pans halfway through baking).

The frosting recipe is one that I seriously adapted from Two Fat Als. I noticed, as I was searching for cream cheese frosting recipes, that almost all of them call for absolutely ridiculous amounts of sugar. Maybe it's just me, but I find that most frostings with more than a cup of sugar (for a dozen cupcakes) are way too sweet, so the recipes with 2 or 3 cups of sugar were terrifying. The version I've included calls for 1 cup of sugar to 16 ounces of cream cheese, and if you're a super sweet frosting fan, that may seem really low. But I strongly suggest you try it. The frosting is delicious, and it is sweet. If you truly find that it's not sweet enough for you, you can, of course, up the sugar. But promise me you'll give this a try first.

I'm a little in love with these cupcakes. I'm definitely going to use the two recipes again for my friend's welcome-back treats, and probably throw a little mint extract into the frosting to fill the order. Speaking of which. These look a little innocent, don't they?

Let's corrupt them.

That's better. The half a thin mint on top was partly to see if the mint flavor goes with the cupcakes, and partly because I have a big problem with gilding the proverbial lily. A big, tasty problem.

A final note about the frosting. I tried creaming the butter and cream cheese together in my stand mixer, but the butter refused to smooth out and I kept finding nasty lumps of it in the frosting. I eventually just switched to my hand mixer and that worked fine, but it might just be because the butter had warmped up at that point. So! Be sure to start out with room temperature butter (it's not pie dough, don't freak out at the thought like I do), and no matter what kind of appliance you use, check to make sure that the frosting is smooth and clump-free before using it.

Black Bottom Cupcakes
From Baking Bites

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup sour cream
1 1/3 cups water
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Line two 12-cup muffin tins with liners.
Melt the butter and allow it to cool slightly while preparing the rest of the batter.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt, and baking soda.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add in the cooled butter, water, sour cream, and vanilla.
Stir until just combined and there are no flour streaks left.
Distribute evenly among the 24 cupcake liners.
Bake 20-25 minutes at 350F.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from Two Fat Als

Ingredients
16 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
1 cup powdered sugar

Cream together the cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar until thoroughly combined, smooth, and no clumps remain.

Top it all with a thin mint, if you so choose.

Project Cupcake Part Deux

2010-03-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

It's safe to say that the birthday party cupcakes were a success. Everything (well, almost everything) went smoothly, the cupcakes looked great, the frosting was delicious, and by the end of it all we had 270 prettily iced little cakes for the party (we lost a couple to taste checks along the way).

I made a seven-minute frosting and a buttercream for these, and the birthday girl chose the colors and helped me dye the icings. At the last minute she decided against the all-pink theme and chose a few lovely pastel colors. I have to say I'm quite glad she did; the color scheme matched the gorgeous spring day and looked so pretty when we set the cupcakes on their stands at the party.

The seven-minute frosting is always a lot of fun to work with since it's so fluffy and builds up beautifully when piped. We dyed it pink, lavender, and an apricot color. I was skeptical when my helper said she wanted to try the color combinations on the back of the food color box, but she turned out to be right. The colors were perfect, and I especially loved that creamy-looking apricot.

I don't have a 1M decorating tip at home, but my teacher had one (as well as those blessings known as heavy-duty pastry bags) and I went crazy for it. I've never been able to do the big old traditional cupcake swirl, but I found that I absolutely love it. The cupcakes looked so professional and so cute.

I made one very special cupcake for the birthday girl. She was delighted and said it looked "like an ice cream cone." The cupcake may have arrived at the party in better condition had she not been snatching off the icing the whole car ride there, but hey, it was her party. And I think she enjoyed it immensely.

Now about that buttercream. This. Stuff. Is. Amazing. Really. It's incredibly smooth and rich, yet somehow it's not greasy and has this wonderfully light taste and mouthfeel. You can taste the butter but it's not too buttery, as I usually find icings to be. It's also not cloyingly sweet, which, to me, is so important in desserts.

In the first batch of buttercream I made for the cupcakes, I didn't beat the butter enough, and when I iced the cupcakes it seperated and looked pretty gross, even though it tasted fine. So I scraped it off of those and iced those again with the remains of my last batch of seven-minute frosting. You can kind of see the remains of the pink buttercream on those, but I didn't let myself worry too much, because, as my teacher said, these were for a middle school birthday party. And they really weren't going to be that offended if their aprictot-colored cupcakes had some pink on them.

But back to that buttercream. The second time I got it right, and man, is it good. The birthday girl wanted to dye it lime green, and the color turned out gorgeous. It was so springy and perfect for a warm-weather party. I took great care to beat the butter correctly this time, and it came out thick and smooth and just generally amazing. Look at it. Look at it and try not to drool.

I was so grateful that everything went well and that the cupcakes all looked good. I had a ton of fun, and the whole family was great and, as last time, very welcoming. Everyone wanted to help however they could, and I won't even mention the mess they let me make in their kitchen. I got some help from my young kitchen assisstant with these little cuties:

And don't they just look smashing?

After about four hours of boiling, whisking, beating, and piping, it was time to pack the cupcakes up and get them (and us) to the party. A few went in a garment box, like these guys:

And we all got to carry cupcakes on our laps on the drive over. I think they took up more space than we did.

The cupcakes were a hit at the party. The girls all thought they were so cute, and I was approached by various adults who told me that they were delicious. The best part of the night was when the guests were finally allowed to take a cupcake (after the star had blown out her thirteen candles) and everyones' faces lit up as they each ate it in their own way; licking all the frosting off first, shoving the whole thing in their mouth, or carefully biting to get just enough cake and just enough frosting each time. And then there were the kids who kept coming back for more. They were my favorites.

I'm very grateful to the family for letting me use their kitchen and for giving me a chance to do what I love professionally, even at such a young age. I think the funniest part was that as I was driving home, I was already thinking, "When can I do it again?!"

"Crazy Good" Buttercream

As named by Mom.

Adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup heavy cream

2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 8 1-ounce (two tablespoon) pieces

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Food coloring

Combine the sugar, heavy cream, cream of tartar, and 2 1-ounce pieces of butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.

Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.

Continue stirring constantly and keep it at a boil for 2 minutes.

Remove from the heat.

Allow to cool to room temperature, and then place in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Pour the mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer.

Using the paddle attachment, beat on slow for thirty seconds.
Increase to medium and beat for two minutes, while adding the remaining pieces of butter until fully incorporated.

Beat on high for two minutes.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on high for another minutes, until very light and fluffy.

Add the food coloring, if using, and beat until combined.

Place back in the fridge to firm slightly before piping.

Seven-Minute Frosting
Adapted from Baking Bites

Ingredients
4 egg whites, room temperature
5 ounces sugar
3/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 cup water

Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
Combine the water, sugar, and cream of tartar in a saucepan and cook to 242F.
As the syrup is reaching 242F, begin whipping the egg white to soft peaks.
When the syrup is the right temperature, slowly stream it into the whites with the machine running.
Beat until the frosting is very light and fluffy and the sides of the mixer bowl are no longer warm.
Add the food coloring, if using, and beat until combined.

Place back in the fridge to firm slightly before piping.

Chococolate Cake Truffles

2010-03-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

This week, I had a cake order for an office going-away party. The only specifications were that the cake should have layers and include chocolate; lots and lots of chocolate. Of course, being me, I decided to use a chocolate cake recipe I'd never tried before. Not surprisingly, the cake didn't work out as I had hoped. While delicious and rich and chocolatey, it was too moist to cut well and stack. So what do you do when life gives you a whole chocolate sheet cake? You make it into cake balls.

I'd heard wonderful things about Ree Drummond's (The Pioneer Woman) chocolate sheet cake, and so I thought I'd bake the sheet cake, cut it in half, spread whipped cream between the layers, and frost the whole thing with ganache. A perfect layer cake, right?

Wrong. Because this is what happened when I cut the cake in half:

The crumb was so soft and moist that there was no way I could cut it neatly, much less stack it. It stuck to that knife like nobody's business.

I'll admit I had a little fit when this happened. I'd just used up two sticks of butter and four tablespoons of my precious cocoa powder and didn't even have a cake for the party to show for it. Plus, I now had a rather large sheet cake sitting in my downstairs fridge that I knew my family, much as we like sweet, wasn't going to be able to finish off.

So I sulked and grumbled and swore at the cake all evening until after dinner, when I sliced it up for dessert. Feeling rather bitter towards it and hoping to spruce it up a little bit, I brushed it with some lemon simple syrup we had in the fridge and served it in small squares.

And then I realized that this cake kicks butt.

Honestly. The whole time I had been griping about how I couldn't cut it neatly or use it for the layer cake, I had completely missed the fact that it's actually a gorgeous cake. Moist, rich, and so tender. It even has that beautiful reddish color that some chocolate cakes with baking soda develop.

I was grateful that the cake had actually turned out very well, but I was still annoyed that I had used up ingredients. But then while I was preparing to make the ganache for the actual party cake (more on that soon!), I had an idea. Why not take a page out of the ridiculously talented Bakerella's book and make cake balls?

I needed a dessert for a school function on Tuesday anyways, so I figured this was the perfect solution to my lack of a dessert (and ingredients) for the function and my cake surplus. Cake balls, or, as I decided to bill them as, cake truffles, are bite-sized, simple, definitely not messy, and miraculously portable. The cake gods had smiled upon me again.

So I made that life-saving wonder they call ganache...

...Whipped it up (sorry, no picture of that part) and crumbled up my cake...

...Mixed the two together, and rolled the mixture into little balls. Ta-da! Sweet, cute, simple little cake truffles. And rich, too. But I wasn't done yet.

These ones got rolled in grated chocolate-rum turrón. I loved it because it wasn't overkill, but it did make them look quite polished.

Those on the left, as well as in the first picture of the post, got dressed up in melted semisweet chocolate. Such classy little truffles. They were adorable.

I took these to the school function and not one was left over. My mum has asked me to make them again for a dinner she's having for her friends. My mom never asks for desserts with butter and/or cream.

So yeah. These are good.

Also, I'm frosting the 272 cupcakes from the previous post tomorrow, so expect a big one on that!

Chocolate Sheet Cake
From The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup (2 sticks) buter
1 cup water
1/2 cup buttermilk (I like to use 1/2 cup milk + 1/2 tablespoon white vinegar)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Grease a baking sheet and line with parchment paper. Grease the paper.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, and salt.
Melt the butter in a saucepan.
At the same time, bring the water to a boil.
When the butter is melted, add the cocoa powder.
Add in the boiling water and allow the mixture to boil for 30 seconds.
Pour over the flour mixture and stir gently.
Beat the eggs.
Combine the buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla.
Add to the chocolate mixture.
Pour into the sheet pan.
Bake 20 minutes at 350F.

Whipped Ganache
2 cups heavy cream
1 pound semisweet chocolate

In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil.
Pour over the chocolate mixture and let sit one minute.
Gently stir until the chocolate is completely dissolved.
Allow to come to room temperature and then put in the fridge for at least one hour.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment or with a hand mixer, beat the cold ganache until very light and fluffy.

For instructions on making cake balls, please visit Bakerella's lovely site.

Project Cupcake

2010-03-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

272 cupcakes. 3 hours. 1 very happy baker.

Well. That was amazing.

The cake-making part of the baking (now I have the frosting left to do) went wonderfully. My teacher's family was really wonderful; her very sweet daughter helped me out in the kitchen, and they were all so welcoming and grateful that I was making the cupcakes (even though I was grateful they were letting me invade their kitchen). The cakes themselves went very smoothly. I was terrified that in my nervousness I would burn something or forget to add the sugar or what have you, but everything went well, and the cupcakes looked gorgeous. It's always scary baking in a kitchen that isn't yours, where you can't reach automatically for a spatula when you need it and where you have to ask for the flour. Ovens, especially, are so moody and vary so much from one to another that it's hard to immediately adapt to one you're not familiar with. I was a little shaky at first, but by the end we were consistently turning out pretty perfect cupcakes.

As I said, I got 272 cupcakes done, not including the ugly ones that had to be eaten. There were so many, in fact, that I couldn't get a picture with all of them in it. But by the time we were done, the cupcakes had completely taken over their kitchen and dining room.

So the baking part was a real workout, but it was absolutely worth it, and I can't wait to repeat the process with the icing. My teacher's adorable youngest son left his Legos on the kitchen counter, and we had a little fun with them...

Cute, no?

About the cupcakes. They are the same ones I made for my very first buttercream post, and they are my go-to vanilla cupcakes. I chose them for this project because they have a wonderful taste, go well with frostings, and have a pleasant, soft crumb but are still quite sturdy and will stand up to handling and icing and transfer.

They also freeze very well, which is what we had to do with them to keep them fresh until next Saturday (again, I couldn't get a frame with all of the freezer bags of cupcakes in it).

The baking was so much fun, and I feel like I learned a lot about dealing with larger batches than I'm used to, as well as how to deal with clients and business. I hope to keep doing catering projects like this (I have a chocolate cake order right now, so check back for that one!) and to keep learning from them. I had a great time and it only reaffirmed the fact that while I'm still learning and will always be learning, baking is my passion.

Vanilla Cupcakes

From Penzeys

Ingredients

2/3 cup butter

1 3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 1/4 cups milk

Line two muffin tins with paper liners.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer, on medium speed. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix until combined. Set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk to the butter mixture, mixing on low speed after each addition just until combined.

Fill each tin 1/2 way with batter - these rise like crazy.

Bake on separate racks for 20-25 minutes at 375F, until golden.

Immediately remove from muffin tins.

Pink Seven Minute Frosting: Trial Run

2010-03-12T17:40:00.000-08:00

So, remember how in the recent chocolate buttercream post I said that my teacher asked me to make the 250 cupcakes for her daughter's birthday party? Well, of course I said yes! Since the theme of the party is gold and pink (in varying shades), I think it will be perfect to make gold cake cupcakes with two different types of frosting, tinted all different shades of pink. I already know that I want to make the successful "Crazy Good" buttercream that I love so much, but I had to decide on a new one. I set my little heart on seven-minute frosting after experimenting with soft-centered meringues (something about whipping up egg whites is just magic to me). The thing is, the last time I tried this kind of icing it was far, far too sweet, and I did something wrong with the syrup and the whites and it just didn't fluff up. So I decided to plan ahead a bit and give it a test run at home before preparing the actual party cupcakes.

This time, I tinkered with the recipe I got from Baking Bites and which I used last time. Also, this time around I was equipped with a properly functioning candy thermometer and my lovely wonderful fantastic stand mixer. The frosting worked out wonderfully this time - not too sweet, wonderfully fluffy and soft, and lovely for piping.

Of course, there was also the pretty pink tint to it. I'm not sure if you can see it in these photos (sorry about the lighting) but the frosting is a light, girly pink which I think will be perfect for the birthday party. I wanted to experiment with powder colors for these cupcakes, but I haven't had time to go to an actual cake supply store in a good long time. So I tracked down every last bottle of food coloring in the local supermarket looking for one that pink. Not just red, no; I wanted real, girly, ohmigod pink. I eventually found a product called NEON! Food Colors from McCormick, and I have to say that it works really well. The tint is the true pink I wanted and I really can't see the downside everyone claims of liquid dyes, at least not in simple cupcake frosting like this.

The cupcakes were leftovers from my eight-yolk cake/chocolate buttercream post, but that cake is so darn good that it goes with pretty much anything you put on it, and this frosting was no exception. Even one of the little guys was left over and got the princess treatment.

Poor little guy never made out of the photo shoot. Chomp.

I will definitely be using this frosting for the party cupcakes. With the success I've been having with icings, I'm ridiculously tempted to experiment with other kinds of buttercream (swiss meringue, anyone?) but I know that I already have one and having two buttery icings would just be overkill. Besides, this seven-minute one is indulgent but light, and I think it will be a nice contrast to the richer buttercream.

I'll be making the party cupcakes this Sunday, freezing them, and frosting them all the day of the party. I hope to take as many pictures as I can while working, so expect some sizable updates as I go. I'm so excited for this.

One more thing. (I know, I know, I'm going!) The recipe below is for the smallest quantity I could make, using only one egg white, because I didn't want a ton of frosting I'd never use sitting in my fridge. This quantity will generously frost about seven or eight cupcakes, but you can double it easily if you'd like more.

Seven-Minute Frosting (Smallest Quantity Possible)
Adapted from Baking Bites

Ingredients
1 egg white, at room temperature
1.25 ounces sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 ounce water
Food coloring, if desired

Place the egg white in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
Combine the water, sugar, and cream of tartar in a small saucepan and cook to 242F.
As the syrup is reaching 242F, begin whipping the egg white to soft peaks.
When the syrup is the right temperature, slowly stream it into the whites with the machine running.
Beat until the frosting is very light and fluffy and the sides of the mixer bowl are no longer warm.
Add the food coloring, if using, and beat until combined.

Cultured Salted Butter Caramels

2010-03-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

Junior year. My weekends have become a mad dash to see my friends, finish all my homework, and do all the baking I've been deprived of during the week. With so little time to do everything I want, I'm starting to enjoy my time in the kitchen even more. When I have a day off, I start it at the breakfast table with a cup of tea and a patient excitement for the day ahead that can only mean one thing.

I'm spending the entire day in the kitchen.

So. This Sunday, I found that I was quickly running out of time to bake (even though I'd already made baguettes on Saturday). Instead of behaving as a normal, sane honors student would, I brushed my mounting pile of homework aside, valiantly marched past the stack of college letters on my dining room table, and started pulling things out of the fridge.

Such as this monster block of butter. We got it from an Amish farmer who delivers produce to city dwellers like us (I didn't know the Amish can drive vans into town, but hey). It's deliciously rich, brilliantly yellow, honest-to-goodness butter, and yeah, it tastes heavenly on warm bread or biscuits. The only problem? It's cultured and salted, making it a bit funky-smelling for baking. It's got this great fermented smell to it, almost like cheese, and a tangy taste, so you can imagine that for cakes and cookies, it's a no-go. And besides my baking endeavors, we don't really use a lot of butter in my house. So it's been sitting around in my fridge for a good while, just waiting for me to come up with something to make with it.

And then, while looking through David Lebovitz's recipe archive, I found them. The salted butter caramels with which I would soon fall in love, sacrifice my waistline, and elope with.

Or something like that.

My Spanish teacher has a candy dish that she brings out for us when we're good (or when we raid her cupboards), and I thought these would be perfect as a treat for my class. When individually wrapped, they're easy to move around, and they keep well, so I could leave them at school and wouldn't have to worry about taking home any leftovers.

Well, it turns out that I needn't have worried. By the end of the period, the fifty or so candies the recipe yielded were all gone. What can I say? Teenagers and their appetites. Though to be fair, I think I may have eaten more than my fair share of those.

Definitely use cultured butter if you can get your hands on it. I thought it might not work well when I started these, since the butter does have a bit of a cheesy smell to it, but I was so pleased with the result. The caramels reserve that great tang but don't have any of the unpleasant taste I was expecting. And, of course, the saltiness of the butter goes wonderfully with the sweet, creamy candy.

The caramels are soft and chewy, but hold their shape very well. They were surprisingly easy to cut into neat little squares, which looked great when I was taking them in to school. The only thing I hated was cutting out rectangles of cling wrap to package them in. It was frustrating (cling wrap is true to its name and clings to everything, and I am not a patient person at all), but in the end I think it was very much worth it.

Well, I'm done extolling praise for these little guys. I suggest you get off the computer and make a batch of these yourself. You can thank me later.

But if you can't stop at one (or ten), I had nothing to do with it.

Salted Butter Caramels

From David Lebovitz

Ingredients

3/4 cup heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, paste, or powder (I just used an empty pod that I had lying around and heated it with the cream)

1/2 teaspoon and 1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt

160 g light corn syrup

200 g sugar

60 g cultured, salted butter or salted butter, room temperature

Line a 9-inch loaf pan with foil. Grease the inside.

Heat the cream, vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 30 g of the butter in a small saucepan.

Bring just to a boil and then remove from heat. If using the vanilla bean, remove it now. Cover to keep warm.

Heat the corn syrup and sugar in a medium saucepan with a candy thermometer.

Stir gently until the sugar has distributed evenly.

Bring to 310F, stirring only when necessary to avoid any scorching.

Remove from the heat and stir in the warm cream mixture.

Return to the heat and bring to 260F.

Remove from the heat and stir in the remaining butter until smooth.

Pour into the pan.

Wait ten minutes, then sprinkle the 1/4 teaspoon salt over the top.

Allow to cool completely, then lift out the caramel, remove the foil, and slice into cubes.

Wrap individually in cling wrap or waxed paper.

Store in an airtight container for up to a month.

French Bread

2010-03-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

Mmm, bread. Nourishing, wholesome, comforting. The staff of life and all that good stuff. If I could, I might make whole meals just out of really good bread. Or spread it with some hummus. Or tapenade. Or a slice of cheese. Or make it into a chorizo sandwich. Whatever you like, this bread is perfect. It's delightfully soft, has a good flavor on its own, and works beautifully with spreads or as a sandwich bread. The lovely golden color just screams "homemade goodness," and I (really really) suggest taking it to work or school with you for lunch so that you can casually pull out a crusty, golden brown sandwich and casually mention that you made it yourself.

Generally I try to use machines as little as possible when baking. I love my KitchenAid to death, but whenever possible I just mix by hand. However, with bread it's a different story. Because bread requires gluten development, and gluten development requires muscles. Which, much as I work out and pound that bread dough, I simply do not have enough of to pass the windowpane test. So I quit my grumbling about machines taking over our kitchens when it comes to bread and keep mum.

And truth be told, the stand mixer is really indispensable to the home bread baker (at least small girls like me who insist on homemade bread). Without it, I doubt that this bread would have risen so beautifully and yielded such a pleasant, soft crumb. I've made bread by hand-kneading before and it has, without fail, been a disaster every time. So I'm immensely grateful to my mixer and to this wonderful recipe from Patricia Wells which make genuinely good French bread just within my grasp.

Let's talk about shaping the baguettes, shall we? Ohhh tay!

After the first rising period, your dough should look like this.

Ahh, so soft and nice. And so much fun to play with!

Split your dough into two oblongs and make an indent in one, as shown.

Use the side of your hand to deepen it.

Now pinch the edges together as shown, being careful not to flatten the pocket of air you've just created...

...Until you get something like this.

Very gently roll and shape the loaf to your desired length. I suggest making them long and skinny, since this dough rises very well (though chubby baguettes are fine by me, too).

Repeat with the other baguette and score the tops three times with a pair of very sharp kitchen scissors.

After the second rising period, your loaves should look puffy and ready for the oven:

Amazing stuff, bread. And so very, very tasty.

French Bread

Adapted from Simply French, by Patricia Wells

Ingredients

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

3 3/4 cups bread flour

Fill a spray bottle with water.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the yeast, sugar, and 1 cup of the lukewarm water. Mix with a fork and cover with a damp cloth. Set aside for 15 minutes.

Combine 1/4 cup lukewarm water and salt. Stir and set aside.

Return the yeast mixture to the mixer and mix on low speed. Slowly pour in the salt water.

When combined, gradually add in the flour (you may need a little more or a little less).

Continue kneading on low speed for 7 minutes, until the dough is firm and smooth but not dry.

Knead the dough gently by hand for 1 minute.

Cover with a damp cloth and let rise 40 minutes in a warm place.

Divide the dough in half and form each into a baguette, as shown above.

Place the loaves on a baking sheet and cover with a damp cloth. Let rise 1 hour.

Place a baking stone in the oven and heat to 475F.

As you are placing the sheet with the baguettes in the oven, generously spray the baking stone with water from the spray bottle (alternately, you can squirt water on the stone with a large water bottle, but be careful not to get any hot water on the oven door).

Quickly close the oven door.

Bake 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.

Watch the bread carefully. If one side is browning more than the other, rotate the pan.

Cool the loaves on a wire rack to ensure a crispy crust.