Valentine’s Macaroons & Cake Pops!

Happy Valentines Day everyone. As promised on Friday I had a busy weekend in the kitchen baking up a hodge-podge of goodies. The first up to bat was Valentine Macaroons!

Oh Martha! How your “Holiday Cookie” magazine suckered me in! Back in December I was super excited to purchase Martha’s 2010 Holiday cookie edition magazine as it is filled with all kinds of goodies! Goodies such as the above Macaroons!

As always I slightly tweaked the recipe to make it my own, but the overall ratios are within the same guidelines as I didn’t want to screw up the consistency. My rendition of the recipe is at the bottom! Martha’s is in her magazine!

It all starts off with eggs whites, food coloring, fine ground sugar, and a dash of Cream of Tartar!

Starting with the egg whites alone whisk on high until soft peaks form and the add your fine sugar. Work them up into stiff peaks (8-10 minutes).

Then go ahead and fold in your flour and confectioner’s sugar (and the cocoa powder if you’re making the chocolate ones!)

Now for the fun part! Piping out the batter!… Now listen closely, I have several tips that Martha forgot to mention!

1. When squeezing the batter out, keep the tip of the piping bag still & at the same height (do not pull up while squeezing) the height (believe me) will take care of itself in the oven!
2. Do not try to circle around with the tip, instead keep a continuous pressure on the bag while allowing the circle grow to the desired width.
3. Let off on the pressure/squeeze once at desired size and then swipe tip gently across and down the side of the macaroon.

The Right Way

The Wrong Way

 

The Swipe…

 

 

Then we bake!

 

 

…“Holy CRAP they’re huge!”

 

Yeah, these puppies are going to more than double their size in height! They do not seem to spread however, and this is a good thing, otherwise we would have been looking at a giant pink mess!

 

Round 2! The Chocolate Macaroons!

 

Much better! I made this batch about the same size as a quarter; same height and width! Now I fill, decorate, and plate!

 

The Chocolate Macaroons:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup almond flour or finely ground almonds
4tbsp Milk Chocolate coco powder
2 large egg whites, room temperature
Pinch of cream of tartar
1/4 cup superfine sugar
3 to 4 drops gel-paste food coloring, in Teddy Bear Brown
1/2 Homemade simple white icing (You can easily use canned icing)

 

The Pink Macaroons:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup almond flour or finely ground almonds
2 large egg whites, room temperature
Pinch of cream of tartar
1/4 cup superfine sugar
3 to 4 drops gel-paste food coloring, in Rose Pink

 

The Macaroon Madness all happened on Saturday, Sunday was a day for Cake Pops! I’m not sure if you’ve been following this current craze, but “Cake Pops” have really become the “New Cupcake”! (Yes, this does make me a little sad. But I’ve been making cupcakes since my 1st birthday and that’s not gonna change.)

However, I am well aware that these little bites of goodness are indeed very charming and catchy, and therefore it would be in my best interest to “get familiar” with them! So, I bought the book, “Cake Pops”.

 

After many frustrating moments, I finally had some success! As much as I LOVE this book, I truly love the book for the ideas and guidelines, not so much the user friendliness of it all. I understand there are only so many hints and tips a writer can include, and I also understand that it really takes practice to get “good” at these little pops, but reeeeeally? If I wasn’t so determined to make these and make many of them efficiently, I would have quit hours beforehand!

So what I’m going to do is post the pictures of along my weekend’s Cake Pop journey, and then in maybe a month or so after I have re-visited them and experimented with different products, I’m going to do a more in depth post on the “how to”. I would like to think a mom or babysitter should be able to set up a sort “station” and have a blast making these with kids, or spend the afternoon creating an army of Cake Pops as a “take home treat” for their child’s upcoming birthday party, etc. But that sure ain’t happening right now. So for now, I’m just posting pictures.

Here goes:

 

And there you have it. Sorry to leave you hanging on my thoughts on how to make these in a much easier process, but I’m still ironing out some kinks!

Other than that, I made Blueberry Muffins for breakfast in bed for the Boss.  That post is for another day as it is so good it needs a post of it’s own!  Also, I had to train.. you know the thing that allows me to keep sampling these bakery treats on a daily basis? Big news coming on that front as well!

Happy Valentines Day, I hope you got what you came for… a little sweetness!

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Valentines Weekend!

I’m going to keep this post pretty short as I have a VERY busy weekend ahead of me! I have quite a roster of treats lined up for my friends on Monday, so you’ll have to come on back for a little eye candy of you own!

I hope everyone has a great weekend; date or no date… go do something a little nice for yourself! Well, at least just eat a little too much chocolate  :)

See you on Monday!

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Mile High Apple Pie

For my Birthday this year The Boss got creative and gave me cooking classes to Sur la Table! Now some Women might get mad if their man was to give them a gift of this sort. You know, self improvement gifts like gym memberships, vacuums, or cooking classes. But things are a little different in our household. Not that this wasn’t a little bit of selfish gift… I know he just wants the leftovers from the class…I very gladly accepted!

Now that I’m home from my world travels, I set off to embrace more knowledge from the pastry masters!

As I am driving to the cooking class I’m really not too sure what to expect from the course. How “beginner” is this going to be, and will this be worth 3 hours of my time and $69?

Immediately as I enter the classroom I am greeted by two ladies in Chef jackets along with a very friendly atmosphere. This is a big positive to my day, especially since I was going it alone. I can already see that we have our own cooking stations set up for us and individual platters are prepared with all of the day’s ingredients. We are ready to roll.

First Lesson: Pie Crust! ErrrrRRrrrrr my pastry nemesis…

As much as I was NOT looking forward to embarrassing myself with my pie dough sticking to the table and then tearing when I pull it up, and then crumbling because I countered the “stickiness” with too much flower, I definitely walked away with several KEY points that really made making, rolling, and deploying the pie crust way easier than all of the times I’ve wrestled with crust on my kitchen counter! So here goes, I hope to eliminate any future hate from your life as you may embark on making your own pie crust!

1. First, don’t over work the dough. Just add your dry ingredients to the food processor with your cold “fats”. Some people use Butter, Margarine, and/or cream cheese. (The full recipe for this crust is at the bottom).

The mixture should still have some larger lumps to it. Stop here, no more mixing!

***NOTE*** I have said nothing about adding water to the mixture to create a specific conglomerate consistency to your dough. Please… Please do not add water, sprinkle water, or even think about water through out this process. Just say NO, and trust in the dough!

 

2) Be sure to use “COLD” fats in your dough. None of the “room temperature” stuff here. You want to have the fat in a solid state so it does not completely mix with the dry ingredients. When the crust is cooking the little pieces of butter will melt, leave small spaces within the dough, and this is what creates the flakiness we all so desire. I guess the butter melting into the rest of dough and turning a golden brown is also a plus!

3) Dump out your food processor and lightly mold the dough together so that all of the pieces are in one lump. Lightly flatten it out to 1 - 1.5 inches thick, wrap in plastic wrap, Refrigerate! No more mixing, kneading, or fiddling with the stuff'; just walk away!

4) Refrigeration allows the dough to set up better. If you have the time (who has time anymore?) make your dough the day before and refrigerate. Otherwise, for the rest of us mortals who do not have the planning capabilities to pre-make the dough 24 hours prior, just make the dough and if you need it right away (within 30minutes) FREEZE it, otherwise just start praying to your rolling pin and put it in the fridge!

5) After you have let the dough set up, take it from your fridge and pop it out of the plastic wrap! Grab your club rolling pin and let the fun begin!

If you can’t tell, the above picture is me whacking the dough with a large French rolling pin. Here you really want to go for it. Give it a number of good hits to flatten it out, turning the dough several times. Next you’re going to flatten out your hands and let the pin roll all of the way back and fourth in JUST the forward and backward direction.

 

 

None of those arching motions where you push the pin away from you and to the right and then to the left. Front to back and repeat; this insures a more even thickness to your dough. After a few good rolls of the pin STOP. Pull up the dough, re-flour the table, and rotate the dough 180 degrees. Roll on! Keep doing this until your dough is at it’s desired thickness.

6) When you are happy with your rolling around, it’s time to measure and fit your work of art into the ramekin or pan. Pretty straight forward; just measure the circle to account for the depth of your pan.

 

Pie Crust Lesson Complete! I hope this has helped you over come any fears you might have with going for it with your own made from scratch dough. No more frozen premade crusts! This one is much better.

 

Lesson #2: Pie Filling! Mmmm much shorter lesson.

I’m going to assume that you all know how to chop apples! Chop your apples however you want to! Some people like big chunks, some like more “sliver like” apples, just try to stay away from chopping so fine that you're making apple sauce!

The only real tip here is to sauté your filling. This draws a lot of the initial moisture from the apples, which keeps you from ending up with a swimming pool for a pie at the end of the day!

Sauté

 

Pile a Mile High

 

Cover, Crimp, and Polish

Spread a light layer of egg wash in between the two layers of crust to help “glue” them together. Then crimp the two crusts together and lightly brush the top of the pie with a small amount of milk. Be sure to slit a few hole in the top of your crust. Personally I then also add a sprinkle of white sugar to the top of the crust and milk wash.

** You may be thinking “wow that is a pretty thick top layer of crust. Yes, yes it is. But we had partners for the class, and the really sweet lady that I was working with wanted it that thick and she was in charge of rolling the top while I did the bottom! I went with it!

The Result

This was so yummy! The only thing that could have made it better was vanilla ice cream! I think it tasted just a little bit better because of the added bonus of being easy to make!

For you entertainment, below was the last apple pie that I made. While it tasted very gooooood, the crust was really misbehaving that day so I expressed my feelings about it via the pie slits!

 

Sur la Table’s Mile High Apple Pie

Crust

* 2 Cups unbleached all-purpose flour

* 1/4 Tsp Salt

* 10 Tbsp COLD, unsalted butter cut into tablespoon sizes

* 6oz Cream Cheese (not the low-fat stuff!) room temp, cut into Tbsp sizes

***Follow the directions above.

 

Apple Filling

* 4lbs Golden Delicious Apples

* 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

* 4 Tbsp unsalted butter

* 1/2 cup sugar, divided, plus 1tsp

* 3 Tbsp unbleached all purpose-flour

* 3/4 Tsp ground cinnamon

* 1 Tbsp heavy cream or whole milk

Peel and chop the apples and toss them in the lemon juice as you are working so they do not turn brown. Melt the butter in a large skillet and add the apples and sugar. Once the apples are fork tender (when you can poke an apple pience with a fork/ knife and pull the utensil straight up and the apple piece falls off) then remove from heat and scrape into large mixing bowl. Allow the filling to cool for around 5-10 minutes before adding and tossing in the cinnamon and flour. Allow filling to rest until room temp. Fill crust a “Mile High” and bake at 375 for 40 minutes!

***Please note that in our class we only made half the batch. If you only have a smaller skillet try sautéing the apples in 2-3 batches.

 

In our cooking class we also covered several other recipes (maybe to come in future post?)… the therefore “no” the apple pie does not take 3 hours! I would highly recommend heading up one of these cooking classes if that sort of thing interests you! It was a very seamless operation, quality food and more importantly quality cooking instructions!!

Bon Appetit! 

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Gourmet Cheese Steak Sammies!

My immediate apologizes to any readers who are offended by my statement “I’m not a huge football fan”. In fact I’m not a football fan at all; not even a little. So when a good friend of mine asked if I wanted to hang out for the Super Bowl, I enthusiastically replied with “Of course!!” (As if to say “who wouldn’t want to hang out for a football game?”). Our plan was to spend the day cooking up a meal that represented both teams and then watch the game! Well when the question came my way of “what are you thinking in terms of representative foods”… I quickly responded with “I don’t want to rush this decision, let me think about it. I’ll get back to you”.

What does this really translate to?… 

“I have no idea who is playing, and therefore I have no idea what foods would be appropriate!”  Like I said, Sorry.

With very little research I figured out who the two teams were and the first foods that came to mind were: Cheese, Mushrooms, and Philly Cheesesteaks (yeah, I know, it was Pittsburg… but it is in the same state!)

Once the idea of a more refined cheesesteak was brought into the picture, our brainstorming was complete. Homemade flatbread, pan seared thin cut sirloin, grilled fresh pepper, onions, and mushrooms topped with a new favorite…le gruyere cheese.

First we washed and sliced all of the fresh peppers, onions, and mushrooms. Then dropped them in the frying pans to sauté.

Once the veggies were doing their thing we got the flatbread dough cooking! I made several changes to recipe found here at the Smitten Kitchen. Her recipe calls for rosemary but we voted on oregano instead (better choice for what we were cooking), as well the recipe called for rolling the dough very thin. I knew this would result in a fairly crispy bread/ cracker and that was not our goal. So instead I left the dough about a 1/4 inch thick and only cooked for 8 minutes.

We absolutely loved LOVED this flat bread. With the added bonus of not waiting around for the bread to rise! Honestly the prep time for this was less than 7 minutes and then it immediately cooked for 8 minutes on 450. I will definitely be using this recipe again, and you can easily switch up what seasoning you want to use. We used oregano instead of rosemary, but you also could easily add a a sprinkle of cheese, olives, spinach or even just leave it with a light salted topping. The quick version of instructions and ingredients are below, but if you want the original description and pictures of the process in its entirety check out the Smitten Kitchen page for more info.

With the bread out of the oven, the peppers, onions, and mushrooms ready, the beef seared, the cheese sliced, it was time to turn on the broiler!

 

A wildly successful meal leaving both cooks with a smile and rubbing their belly. This will definitely be one recipe that I will make again!

To be honest, in the end we didn’t really end up watching the game. I came to find out that she too was not a football fan and was mostly only interested in the commercials and half time show! All the same, we had a really great Super Bowl Sunday, and the TV was on in the back round!

 

Bertie’s rendition of the Smitten Kitchen’s Flatbread:

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
*1/2 Tablespoon of oregano flakes
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil

* Again, experiment with different spices/ ingredients with this bread. As long as the ingredients do not add any significant liquid to the dough, you should be fine.

Mix all of your dry ingredients in medium sized mixing bowl. Create a well into the flour mixture and then add the water and oil. Working the flour from the outsides, fold it into the wet ingredients. Do no over work the dough.

Roll the dough to your desired thickness and then bake at 450 for 8-10 minutes.

Enjoy!

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Happy (Chinese) New Year! And Welcome Back!

Welcome back to the Bakery! Hopefully you may have noticed that I have updated the look of the blog, and tried my best to “clean it up”. I have readers that come for many different reasons. Some of you enjoy The Bakery, The Cakes & Cupcakes, The Triathlon Tales, and some of you simply enjoy The stories of how I make The Boss’s life miserable… So if you glance up to the top menu bar I have made it easier to find just what you are looking for!

So I’ve been gone a while! Where did I go? I’m not sure. I lost some (life) motivation back in November and December, and before I knew it… it was January! Okay, so it was February? “WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING?” Where do I possibly start?

December:

* I celebrated the big birthday (God that picture has been up way too long!) No need to re-cap there!

* I went home (home sweet home) for Christmas ANNNNND my very awesome Mom hosted a Bridal Shower for me while I was there! Did I mention on the blog that I got engaged? Well the wedding isn’t until the summer, but I probably won’t make it back to the Rock before then.

The Bridal Shower

* I lead my Favorite event… trimming the tree!

 

 

 

* Then I took a little trip to South Africa, Botswana, and then to the beaches in the Seychelles.

 

South Africa

Botswana

 

 

The Seychelles

 

 

Now… now I’m back to reality!

Starting today I’m making my (Chinese) New Years Resolution… better blogging. No more sporadic posting… believe me, I have a lot going on these days in the world of baking, and I think you’ll be interested to see what’s happening next! Here’s the upcoming calendar: 

Wait, did you really think I was going to tell you what’s coming up on Monday? You’ll have to stop by and see! Have a great Super Bowl Weekend!

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