The Awful Truths

Here are some of the awful truths that I learned while baking this past  weekend:

• Dough is still my nemesis no matter how many biscuits I will bake
• It takes longer to clean up the mess from baking than it is to bake the damn thing
• The inventors of cling wrap were sick, sadistic fu*ks
• Martha Stewart needs to be more specific about her directions ie. does "cover with plastic" mean, cover wth cling wrap right there on the cooling racks or put in a plastic container overnight which then makes the cookies kind of soggy?  Please Martha, are we peons expected to read your mind? When you write a handbook do you really expect that the purchasers of said handbook are experienced bakers?  We need visual aids!
• Flour and especially icing sugar have an unnatural attraction to all surfaces in your home.
• It is difficult to read a handbook if your eye glasses are covered in flour and/or icing sugar
• It is helpful to have some (any) artistic ability when decorating sugar cookies
• If sugar cookies are baked too long, they could break a tooth
• Sprinkles and coloured sugars will not go where you want them to on the cookie plus you are lucky if they land on any part of the cookie
• I have no interest in baking sugar cookies again.

I think you could guess what I made this past weekend.  Besides the sugar cookies - I made what Martha calls black and white cookies; which she claims are a NYC specialty. If it good enough for the big apple, then its good enough for me!  They are a basic cookie (more on that part later) that once cooled are flipped over to the flat bottom and iced with half vanilla icing and half chocolate.  They have to set and then you get this lovely looking glossy finished cookie.  Mine came out quite good both in look (you will have to take my word for it), but especially in taste.  Lilyan claims that they are the best cookies she has ever eaten! 

I thought they were a little sweet, but that is because I tasted one before they were iced.  To my delight, when I bit into it, it took me back to my childhood when my mother used to make "Ma's Cookies".  This was a recipe passed down from my grandmother (who my mother used to call Ma).They are a simple but delicious cookie that is sprinked with a sugar/cinnamon mixture and pressed flat with a fork before baking.  The one thing I could remember that is different from Martha's recipe, was that Ma's cookies uses vegetable oil rather than a pound of butter!  I was telling Lily all about them and have promised to make them for her.

I looks like my photographer was on vacation this weekend or taking pics of the sugar cookies broke his iphone....either way this is all I got.  Coming up this weekend, it looks like some savory cookies....Lily probably won't be so excited, so maybe I will bake her (and teach her) to make a batch of Ma's cookies.....the tradition continues.

Gone Fishing...

I am currently on hiatus so no new adventures from the past weekend.  I will be back to cookie making this coming weekend (I hope).

It's The Thought That Counts...Right?

I hate to say it, but I guess I have gotten just a little too sure of myself in the baking world.  What is that saying? "Pride goeth before the fall".  Well I fell spectacularly.  I am of course talking about the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cake which I made for Jim's birthday yesterday.  Being such a good sport, he did eat the piece I cut for him, but the truth is, it was pretty bad.  Let me count the ways:

1. The cake layers.  They were supposed to be made from a rich luscious chocolate cake.  Instead they came out dry, cracked and sunken in the middle. the recipe called for the optional addition of 4 oz of melted bittersweet chocolate to be added into the cake batter.  I did so and it looked gorgeous - as a batter.  Not so much as a cake.  It also lacked the tiniest hint of sweetness, but perhaps being so dry it scraped off a few taste buds, which made the sugar undetectable.
2. The frosting:  This was delicious.  It was touted as a variation on an Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) recipe, which I can believe given that it was made out of icing sugar, butter, peanut butter and cream.  Full fat all of these.  Perhaps she should be renamed the Cardiac Contessa...but I digress.  As delicious as it was, the recipe did not yield enough to fully frost the whole cake - and no it was not because I licked off 1/2 of it from the spatula! 
3. The finished cake:  Just see for yourself how uninspired this cake is.  You can see from the photo that the filling of smashed PB cups had fallen into the endless crevasse of the bottom layer.  The circle of PB cups on the top, could not have been more boring.  Add to that the PB cups that looked as if they were nibbled on....again - not me - and all in all a huge failure. 

The birthday boy and Lily holding the Elvis "Have a hunk a hunk a birthday cake" card she gave him

But its the thought that counts....and to think that we gave up dessert at Mildred's Temple Kitchen to come home to this....

I will be happy to go back to baking cookies for a while! 

Real "Homemade" Cookies

When my daughter Lilyan was little, she used to say "let's bake cookies Mommy".  "What a great idea" I'd exclaim, "we'll get the ingredients at the grocery store".    Well I confess, she had no idea that cookies were made from things like butter and flour and sugar.  She thought they magically baked up from a log of chocolate chip cookie dough, or my favourite the pre-sliced sugar cookies with seasonal decorations.  You didn't even have to get a knife dirty with those!
I had friends who baked real cookies with their kids, but I had no shame or guilt and proudly sent her off to school with my "shortcut" cookies. 

Martha however, sternly disapproves.  Ms. Stewart can whip up a batch of cookies with one arm handcuffed behind her back. So if she can do it, so can I.  (I can knit woolen ponchos too).

I chose two of the first three recipes in the chapter.  Both are similar in technique but with different flavour profiles (flavour profiles...how's that for chefspeak).  The first is your everyday chocolate chip cookie.  They were supposed to be chocolate chunks, but I could only find chocolate chips at the grocery store and Martha be damned I was not going to cut up baking chocolate into 1/4" chunks! Those came out a little crispy but still delicious.   The second is a butterscotch white chocolate chip with Macadamia nuts which any Starbucks would proudly display and charge a lot of money for.  These are a lot chewier and no less delicious! 

And where was Lily....upstairs in her room and came down only when they were ready to eat.  I guess that ship has sailed....

Tonight is Jim's birthday.  He would not want me to say how o(46)ld - oops typo, he is so I will keep that to myself.  I am baking him a chocolate Reese's peanut butter cup cake.  I made the cake portion last night so I just have to frost and finish it tonight.  The cake layers definitely show signs of inexperience (sunken in the middle), but I know once I get through the cake chapter in Martha's Handbook of Baking, that will not happen again.  I am sure that it will taste delicious and Jim is really very appreciative of everything I cook or bake for him. I am a lucky girl.

Look for photos tomorrow....

There's No Place Like Home!

Even after living in Toronto for 16 years I still call Montreal "home".  I hadn't seen my sister Gail, her husband Albert and their kids, Leana, Henry and Buddy (okay Buddy is a dog) for what seemed like ages and I was really looking forward to going there on Labour Day weekend.  Well, I was not looking forward to the six hour drive, but it passed relatively painlessly.  I managed to even drive a couple of hours (broken up of course) before my chin hit my chest and I started to drool.  I don't snore.  Jim does.  Anyways, he did most of the driving and got us there and back safe and sound. 

Gail had made a special request for some corn muffins, so Friday night I whipped up a batch.  You must be thinking..."wow she must be an accomplished baker, she can whip up a batch".  The truth is I still have much to learn but I can talk the talk.  It's kind of like my French.  If I don't know or can't remember the French word for something, I just say it in English with a French accent.  That's an old trick for those of us who didn't pay attention in French class.  The point is...at this point if I have to contribute to a pot luck or make a dessert to bring to a dinner, I know have a couple of go-to recipes that I feel comfortable with.  Just as long as they don't involve biscuit dough.

Since I had previously bought the ingredients for the last quick bread in the first section, I decided to make it and bring it with me.  It was a yummy marble cake with a white chocolate glaze.  That glaze is so incredibly good that I will have to use it on many baked goods in the years to come. 

My sister made a fabulous dinner Saturday night and the cake was part of the "sweet table".  I say that because in my sister's house, guests never get just a bowl of jello (with or without miniature marshmallows) or a slice of pie, instead there must be a myriad of goodies with which to tempt you. But there is always fruit - the domain of my bro-in-law Albert who knows how to pick 'em. 

As usual, I asked Jim to take a photo of my accomplishment but this time I insisted that all the folks at the dinner table that night gather round in the kitchen to be in the picture.  Here are all people I love (except for the guy with the glasses on the end sitting beside my sister Gail, who is a really nice guy named Alex but I had just met him for the first time as he is a friend of my nephew Henry's).



Alex, Gail, Lilyan, Albert, Leana, Henry, Jim

I made it through chapter one with only the smallest modicum of stress.  Next I set out to conquer the world of COOKIES!