First-time jelly roll-er

I have been fascinated by jelly rolls for a long time. For their vintage appeal. For the word jelly in the name. For the confusion they create because the pan in which you bake them looks exactly like a cookie sheet.

 In my ongoing quest to test all of the magazine recipe rip-outs that are bulging from my "baking folder," I pulled this beauty back in October. It is a pumpkin jelly roll recipe from Libby, makers of the famous pumpkin puree. After reading the recipe, I realized a jelly roll is just a twist on a basic cake recipe. Same ingredients, just a few different techniques to make it look fancy.

After mixing the batter, you spread it into a jelly roll pan, fitted with parchment (I used my trusty Silpat instead). After baking for a short amount of time, you prep a kitchen towel by sprinkling it with powered sugar (read: make a mess). Then you masterfully flip it out of the pan, onto the kitchen towel, and roll it up tightly and evenly (more difficult than you might think, especially if you are the type of person who has trouble cutting in a straight line) and let it cool.

After you make the filling (basically just cream cheese frosting), unroll the cake.


 

 Then you spread out the filling evenly, leaving an inch border. The tricky, hold-your-breath part comes next.

Roll it up tight and evenly, and quickly wrap it in plastic wrap and throw it in the fridge to let it set. It will firm up and be easier to cut.

In the end, it tasted nice, but wasn't anything special. I fear I'm becoming a bit of a snob because I wouldn't make this recipe again. I could just as easily make pumpkin muffins, cake, or cookies with this flavor profile.  I think I can safely file this with my completed challenges.

Cinnamon delight

I think cinnamon might be my new favorite spice. I know its not that special, but I've recently been experimenting with it a bit, and have found that it is so versitle--both for sweet and savory recipes.

I've been dying to try making sticky buns/cinnamon buns. Joanne Chang's cookbook Flour has a sticky bun recipe made with brioche bread, but this has tons of butter. Did I mention I'm visiting my sister in South Beach next week?

I took a bit of shortcut this time, and found an easy no-knead recipe from good old King Arthur Flour, with much less butter. I wanted the taste, without all the work of brioche!

Reasoning: I made these as our sole "Valentines Day" celebration, since we don't buy into the rest of the commercial hype surrounding the holiday.

The recipe calls for a yeasty-dough, which you let rise. Then you have to make the buns, and let those rise, and then bake. Poof! Magic.

Raw buns, pre-bake, fully risen

Baked buns. The side you see actually become the bottom
when you flip them out of the pan.

Fully decked out sticky cinnamon buns. Sticky caramel and
pecan topping covered with a thick gooey icing.

Pumpkin Pie in a Cupcake

Almost two years ago, N found this recipe on Foodbeast, and asked me if I would try replicating. You know how I love a good challenge!

I finally carved out a whole day to tackle this, and that day was Sunday.

I assembled the pumpkin pie filling, rolled out the pre-made pie crust,
and used a small drinking glass to cut out round discs.

The round pie discs fit perfectly into my mini muffin tin.
Then, I started filling them with pie filling.

I baked the mini pies for around 17 minutes,
and while they were baking I prepared the vanilla cupcake batter.

In a regular size muffin tin, I layered cupcake batter and gently nested the cooled mini pies. Then I dropped another scoop of batter on top.

These don't look that special, just a regular vanilla cupcake. But oh, the surprise inside!

I whipped up some cinnamon cream cheese buttercream frosting, and made it a bit more stiff so that the twirl would be camera-ready. Purdy!

The recipe made about 30 cupcakes, so I was able to evenly split them into two batches so N and I could spoil our respective coworkers with them!

Have you tried any creative or risky baking recipes lately?

Cookbooks

I have a beef with cookbooks that try to be fancy schmancy. Now, I like to make food look and taste good,--don't get me wrong. But it's really disheartening when cookbooks try and intimidate you. Take Miette, for instance.

My first encounter with the store came in San Francisco. Nate and I walked past this adorable bakery shop at the Ferry Building in February. The minute I walked by it my heart melted. There were pastels, and french words, and cake stands, ribbons, glass domed covers and candy jars!



I recently realized that I could satiate my thirst for food porn by lending cookbooks from the library without having to shell out 30 or 40 dollars each time a new one is published. This is what happened with Miette, and I'm really glad that I lent it.

The photography is amazing, and scalloped pages practically beg you to leaf through. But where the book goes wrong is by positioning baking as a difficult, tricky, and exacting science. The truth is, if you can read directions, and follow your instinct, you'll be a pretty darn good baker. This book reads more as an ego-stroke than a "how-to" primer on how to replicate her baked goods.

A few of my "get ova ya-self" moments:
"baking a perfect cake requires using perfect techniques..."
"using the right equipment is crucial..."
"cakes require special care..."
"pating attention to proper temperature is one of the most imporant factors..."
"the mixing steps in each recipe call for a specific attachment"
"add the eggs to your batters slowly and carefully"

Overall Grade: C

If you're looking for a better option, from an equally famous bakery, check out Joanne Chang's Flour cookbook. You won't be disappointed.

Kitchenaid Mixer review

I was recently asked my opinion of my Kitchenaid mixer. As I wrote the email and pushed "send" I realized it was quite well written. And hey, who doesn't love to recycle content (she says as if she were at work)?

So, if you're in the market for a stand mixer, read on!

I own the 325 watt, 5 Qt model, (KSM150) Kitchenaid mixer in basic white. It works great and does just what I need; I've never had a dough that it couldn't handle. I do love it, and there really aren't any drawbacks that I've experienced. I've had it for 2 or 3 years now, and probably use it 1-2x/month without any problems.

I know Kitchenaid has some other "professional" models, but I'm rarely one to buy the "top of the line" for my hobbies just to say I have "top of the line" when their basic models are perfect for what I need. There's other brands of course, like Cuisinart and maybe even Breville--but I think that is sacrilegious. KitchenAid is the one and only way to go in my book.

Accessories: my model came with: regular beater, whisk beater, and dough hook; the stainless steel 5qt bowl. The other accessories that are handy for me: the plastic pouring shield (a luxury, not a necessity), and a smaller stainless bowl (again, a luxury, and nice for making frosting and not having to wash the batter bowl immediately!). I also have a fabric cover so that it doesn't get dusty/dirty when not in use (I love its practicality, but it seems like such a grandmotherly thing to have!)

Attachments: I don't have any now, but I've been stalking their pasta-maker attachment. I think they also have a meat grinder, ice cream maker and fruit juicer attachments.

I hope you at least get a chuckle and find this mildly useful.

Baking class x2

The weekend directly after Chicago, I went with Miss Bibliophile to two places well known to foodies: Stonewall Kitchen in Maine, and King Arthur Flour in Vermont. We planned it as a weekend extravaganza.

On Saturday at Stonewall, we participated in a demo class with Joanne Chang of Flour fame in Boston.
I received her cookbook for my birthday and was eager to learn how to make her homemade pop-tarts and oreo cookies!

After that we had a short drive over to Vermont to King Arthur Flour.

On Sunday we took a hands-on class called Bread 101. Neither Miss Bibliophile nor I had ever attempted bread, so this was our inauguration into the world of yeast.

Besides having hot flashes and almost passing out, and staring at my bench-neighbors disgustingly flaky and cracked man-toenails, it was a successful class.

And the best part of it meant that we were able to take home our goodies--scones and bread!
Our resident squirrels also enjoyed the baked treats, and requested that I try making a pumpernickel loaf next time.

Strawberry Rhubarb Turnovers

I'm getting kinda good at this. I wanted to feast on the strawberry and rhubarb frozen in my freezer, and decided to take a bit of a shortcut. I bought some Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry, and set off to McGuyver the sweet seasonal fruits into an appropriate consistency for the turnover filling. No one likes a dry turnover!

I decided to heat down the fruit with some sugar and lemon juice in my handy crockpot (perfect for summertime baking because it doesn't throw off heat like a stovetop does!). Once that heated down, I added double the amount of cornstarch and let it cook for another 30-50 minutes. The result was an awesomely gooey filling...perfect for a turnover. This recipe was also my inaugural use of the Silpat sheet that my sister gave me for my birthday. It acts like parchment paper without the fuss of cutting it to the proper pan size, and without the waste! Love it, and super easy to clean off!

Take a peek at how they came out. Not bad, but they fell a bit after they'd been taken out of the oven and were cooling off. This is a keeper! Do you like my fancy sanding sugar?

Summer Solstice: strawberries for dinner

June signals "pick-your-own" strawberry season. This year, we went back to Connors Farm in Danvers for their strawberry festival. We picked a whole pallet of strawberries for $25, and it only took an hour. Nate took some pretty awesome pics, which he should post here. Hint. Hint. Once home, it weighed in at a whopping 12 pounds; and now I have a full freezer!

Once of the first things I made with these hand-picked jems, was strawberry shortcake. Growing up, my best friend Katie's mom had a tradition: on the first day of summer, she'd serve strawberries for dinner to her four daughters! Since I practically lived there, I absorbed that tradition and continue to carry it on.

Biscuits, macerated strawberries, and homemade Chantilly whipped cream. Like whoa.

Whoopie Pies

Honestly, as much as I love cupcakes, I think they've reached their pinnacle. Whoopie pies are the next up-and-coming baked treat. Pennsylvania and Maine both take credit for inventing these pillowed sugary treats.

I've tried baking two different types over the past few months: pumpkin and red velvet. I tested out a homemade recipe to bring to a pumpkin beer tasting event that my friends host each fall.

These babies tasted amazing, but do not represent a real whoopie pie! The cake pillows were not nearly as fluffy as they should've been, and the filling was a bit too thin and runny. They tasted closer to a Little Debbie creme sandwich.

Then for Christmas, N's mom got us a Stonewall Kitchen red velvet whoopie pie mix with the Wilton mold pan. I decided to make them for Valentines day since they are red!
Verdict: the molded pan really helped with forming the doughy, fluffy cakes. The mix for the cream filling was again too sweet and runny. They were moist enough, and the mild sweetness of the red velvet balanced the filling nicely.

Overall, I'm still searching for "the perfect whoopie pie" recipe. I'll have to tackle one from this book that we got for Christmas. What do you think is the next big baked-good craze?

I meant what I said, and I said what I meant....

...an elephant's faithful, one hundred percent. - Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who.

I just came across these amazing Dr. Seuss cakes, from the CakeWrecks blog. I don't usually like whimsical cakes, but these are amazingly well done. One of the advantages of using fondant is that you can achieve really vibrant color, and a stunning level of detail. My favorite is the cupcake tribute to several Seuss books.

The rest of CakeWrecks is a humorous look at tragically decorated, misspelled, or otherwise completely embarrassing cakes. I hope I never find one of my cakes on here!

Craft Crawl

Back in November, I went down to NYC to see my good friend, Miss Bibliophile. She and I were roommates for 3 of our 4 years at BC together. She recently bought her own place, so I went down to check it out, and to kick-off our Craft Crawl. Think of a pub crawl, but with craft stores-everything from fabric, trimmings, notions, baking crafts....and a few cupcakeries thrown in for good measure. New York City is the perfect place, and between the two of us we had compiled such a list that we had to pare down our agenda (I generally don't like shopping, and now that I sit in a cube all day, my years of city living are a distant memory for my feet.)Our first stop was the New York Cake & Baking Shop. If you like baking, I highly recommend checking this place out. I found some interesting flavoring so I can try making homemade junior mints/peppermint patties. They are my favorite candy, and I found a recipe in this book. True to New York, they also had some silly x-rated candy molds.


Our next stop was MOOD, the fabric store of Project Runway fame. I was hoping to find some fabric for a tablecloth (yes, that's what I said) but didn't. After that we hit up M&J Trimming which was a trimming and notions store that was impressive. I bought some grosgrain ribbon to make a preppy belt for myself, some maroon velvet for upcoming Christmas decorations, and a fabric flower hair clip. By this time, we needed a sugar fix, and found a cute cupcake place that was also a children's bookstore.

The final stop on our agenda was PurlSoho, who recently moves locations to a larger space. So cute, but still small!
After we left PurlSoho, we were talking back to the PATH, and we saw Brooke Shield with some friends and her kids. She looked great, even in everyday clothes and no makeup!

I also want to mention that I got to meet Miss Bibliophile's cute-as-a-pin beagle, Millie. She is sooo friendly and such a peanut!
The weekend did not disappoint, and we still have a list of places we didn't have time to visit. We recently started compiling a "cupcake crawl" list for Boston...hopefully for sometime very soon.

A summer in pictures

Everyone knows that Labor Day marks the end of summer. And since this year it flew by, I thought I'd post a few of the highlights of ours. Taking a look back....

We got married over Memorial Day weekend, so most of May and June flew by without our realizing it. We went to beautiful St. Lucia for 8 days of water biking, sweating, eating, reading, and drinking! By the time we got back to the states, it was already mid-June.


And if we already hadn't indulged enough, we
decided that we would initiate our quarterly food creation. Our concept is that maybe 4 times a year we will create a sometimes gross, indulgent, crazy food combination idea and test it out. Who knows, maybe we'll come up with the next best food idea! So...enough of the suspense. Sometime after the honeymoon, we decided to "make" Chinese Pizza. We love General Gau's chicken and rarely even eat it. Couple that with our favorite local pizza, and voila! Chinese pizza.

Turns out, its not that good. Total fail. The pizza really overpowered the General Gau flavor. Miraculously, neither of us got sick from so much fat, sodium, and MSG. whew. Food Creation #1 complete.

We got the travel bug again just a few short weeks later for the July 4th holiday weekend. I asked N to surprise me with a short weekend away-- I love surprises. We decided to go to New Hampshire to get away from the busy highways and crowdfest of Boston--but everything else was a surprise. First stop: Canterbury Shaker Village. Very cool, and beautiful weather made for a nice quick stop in our travels. Before leaving, we sampled some unique craft soda: rhubarb and wild blueberry. Delicious. I think rhubarb may be quickly becoming one of my favorite kinds of produce.

Second stop: Flume Gorge in the White Mountain National Park. N had visited as a young boy and knew I would love this kind of thing. There was a short 2 mile walk/hike through and around the gorge. It was much cooler up here in the mountains, but the walking kept us warm.

Third stop: After that we ate at an underwhelming meal at the Common Man. Then N found a cute B&B. There was an oddly creepy teenager working at the welcome desk....we figured out it was probably the innkeepers daughter. We gladly took our room keys from her and hoped she didn't have an extra set herself. One thing N didn't realize when he booked, was no TV in the room! So we spent the rest of the night borrowing books from the inn library and reading until we fell asleep.

The next morning, Yelp-master N found an infamous Pancake House called Polly's Pancake Parlor on his iPhone. Delicious pancakes after waiting around 45 minutes--buckwheat, cornmeal, and regular. We also tried a homemade english muffin. Wowzers. If you are up in NH, make some time to stop here! We drove back to Boston after breakfast, happy with our adventures.



In between all of the traveling and post-wedding organization, I decided I needed to fulfill my creativity void with another Wilton Class. I'd already taken Course 1&2, and Course 3 was on my to-do list, the Fondant Class. I enrolled at the Michaels Burlington in July for the 4 classes that comprise the course. I was pleased that there were only 4 students in the class. Over the years I've found that large classes mean less time with the instructor, and there's more variance in skill level, which means quick learners and slow learners. We had a great bunch of women, and I've found some great resources online including cakecentral.com and globalsugarart.com. My instructor runs her own cake decorating business in the area:CakeSplash.

Our final assignment was the cover an entire cake in fondant and decorate it with our flowers we'd been working on the previous 3 classes. I'm happy with my first effort. Not perfect by any means, but decent enough to get me excited about trying new ideas in the future.





As July marched along, my blueberry radar went off. My friend, C, and I went to our favorite blueberry patch to pick. We each got about 4 quarts, and started scheming what baked creations we could concoct. Of course, I knew blueberry muffins were in my plan. And boy were they delicious! I decided to make Texas-size jumbo muffins, especially since I'd rather enjoy one large muffin instead of feeling the guilt of eating an inevitable second regular size muffin. This pic illustrates my attempt at food styling (note: I bought large sugar granules online-they make it look so pro, don't you think?!)

And finally, my first kitchen-related accident. On August 16, I sliced open my finger by trying to rip off a half-opened can top. Luckily it was only a can of pineapple, but I did a really good job--10 stitches. Siiiiiiick. It's still healing 3 weeks later, but I wanted to share the gross-ness! Thank you macro camera lens, and newly-awesome left handedness.



And finally, a few weeks ago my parents came to visit us for 4 days, so they could go to the ocean. We also made time to visit the breath-taking Crane Mansion with them. The pinnacle of the visit was the view from the mansion out to the sea. It is called Allee, and as you can see on their website, it is a rolling lawn that draws the eye out to the sea, flanked by lush trees. Can I live there?



That pretty much sums up our summer. I won't normally be posting this long of an entry, but we did so much stuff that I couldn't pass up the chance to share!