I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll make puff pastry

The reason why  most recipes that call for puff pastry list store bought pastry in the ingredients is that most people do not spend their ENTIRE DAY fussing around with pastry dough. This thing is more delicate and time consuming than having a baby.  Martha - being a purist (and who also has a staff dedicated to dough) of course calls for home made puff in her baked goods.  The last cookie in the chapter was a classic palmier.  Those are the crispy sweet treats that you often see in patisserie shops.  They look like this:  

I really love these and thought they would be a perfect end to my cookie adventure.  The recipe looks quite easy once the puff pastry is made.   So I made the pastry all day Saturday and the cookies almost all day on Sunday.  My cookies did not look like the beauties above.  Although I did not take a picture mine looked more like this:

Although less evenly browned and many were unrolled a lot more than these.  


The good news is that of the 3 lbs of puff pastry I made, this recipe only requires 12.5 oz so I have a frozen the rest and will continue to perfect them.  I know I can!  I know I can!  In the meantime I move on to cakes this weekend.  I have not been too successful baking cakes   - except for an occasional bundt or coffee cake, so I am taking a deep breath and plunging right in!    


We'll talk on Monday..... 

Must Catch Up and Hitting the Bars

I confess, that I have fallen behind lately - not on my baking but on my blogging! It was about two weeks ago that I made these really fabulous bars (once again you thought I had been drinking...)
I did the three in one weekend because I was determined to finish the cookie section and move on.  Last weekend I saved for something special; more on that later.


I LOVE citrus, I am repeating myself I know, but I am over 50 so I get to do that.  So then my first choice was citrus squares.  These are Martha's version of lemon squares, just a little jacked up.  She uses lemon and lime and also adds some wheat germ to her shortbread crust.  It's practically a health food!  They were quite delicious except that I had a little bit of trouble with the dough sticking to the pan.  I had to leave about 1/2" around the sides of the pan that I could not get out without blasting dynamite.  The middle was lovely, tasty, pucker-up citrusy and I have to admit that the wheat germ added a nice texture contrast to the smooth topping.  Another winner for my repertoire.


Who doesn't love brownies?  Please don't tell me if you don't because frankly, you're not my kind of folk. I will still like you if we differ on carrot cake, or lemon squares or even on dreaded bananas, but if you don't like chocolate - we're through.  Go away.


Now that we are all in agreement, I have to say that these are easy, luscious and more fudgey than cake-like.  It calls for bittersweet chocolate which I was having trouble finding.  It is not the same as semi-sweet by the way, bittersweet has a higher cocoa content which gives it a darker richer flavour.  So to compensate, I put in a couple of tablespoons of a  new President's Choice cocoa powder that is AWESOME, and reduced my flour by that same amount.  They are so rich that they do not need any type of icing or glaze.    They were a big hit with everyone and I even got a special request for another batch at work the next week.  The other batch, well... that was like the old pre-martha Susan.  I added the cocoa powder but forgot to reduce the flour by the same amount.  The result?  **cough**  **cough**  As dry as the Sahara.  Picture camels coming to call.  That was embarrassing....


The third type of bar cookie I made was a salted caramel nut bar.  Yummy and I got to use my candy thermometer to make the caramel.  That was fun and the caramel alone was so delicious. I could have sat there and eaten a bowl of it.  No, I did not do that!  


That was the only bar that gave me a bit of trouble.  The caramel topping would not harden so they kind of spread a bit.  Not a big deal.  So here is the picture of these delights.

   

Should Baking Take All Day and Oh....It's Baking Powder Not Baking Soda!

I did my usual baking over the weekend, but it has taken me a few days to recover.  I literally baked all day on Sunday.  Started at 9:00 am and finally finished at 5:00 pm.  It was a work day.
Someone pay me!  


My bad (does anyone still use that expression?) because I chose two of the most complicated and multi-step cookies in Martha's book to make in the same day.  Perhaps if I read the recipes more carefully ...more about THAT subject later....I would have realized that I was biting off more than I could chew.  (yes bad pun intended).   However, as much work as they were it was worth it in the end.  They both came out delicious and one of them (the linzer hearts) looked as good as Martha's!!  The chocolate cheesecake thumb prints were a great deal messier than hers.  I can just imagine Martha standing over her food stylist minions making sure that each cookie is the exact same diameter, are completely smooth and the cheesecake centre is a perfect round.  I on the other hand, have no minions, no artistic ability and no care what they look like as long as they taste good!

Here is my version:

The Linzer Hearts were really a test of my patience.  First I had to "blanch" the hazelnuts.  This means you roast them so that the outer skins come off easier.  The skins are somewhat bitter so they are a no-no in your batter.  After they are roasted you rub them vigorously - it must be vigorously with a clean dish towel to get the skins off.  Only, it's not so easy.  It took me about an hour to do a cup of nuts and by the end of it I was.....no not nuts, I know you thought I was going to say that, I was FRUSTRATED!  There was still some skin that I could not get off despite picking at them so I just threw caution to the winds and ground them up with a little bit of skin.  The Linzer tradition is grinding hazelnuts to a find powder to incorporate with your flour.  


Then this dough had to be chilled, then softened, then cut into shapes, then frozen then....well you get the picture....and here is mine:

Aren't they gorgeous? I found the perfect seedless raspberry jam for the filling.  (Please no comments about the chipped platter).  


Now back to reading recipes.  Last night I was feeling ambitious so I decided that while I was cooking dinner, home made broccoli and carrot soup, poached chicken with orzo and pomegranate seeds, I  thought I would whip up a batch of cranberry pistachio biscotti.  I had bought all the ingredients on the weekend and it was not a complicated recipe.  You make the batter, form them into two logs and bake them until almost baked through.  Then you cut them on the diagonal and bake them again cut side up on a baking rack.    They came out of the oven and looked and smelled fabulous.  Until I tasted one.  Hmmm, that's odd, why does it taste so much like baking soda?  Did I  not measure correctly?  Perhaps it did not mix in well and it was only that cookie.  So I tried another, blech!  It too was awful.  So I go back to look at the recipe again and lo and behold, the recipe called for baking POWDER, not baking SODA!  Lucy Ricardo at her finest.


I will end this posting with the third picture that Jim included on his email when sending me the two from above.  The title of the email was "cookies" and included this photo:

This is Shai (pronounced shy).  She is the newest addition to our family.  We adopted her almost two weeks ago.  She is 9 years old but in great health, has lots of exuberance and is teaching Kayko the Diva to act more like a real dog.  She is not a cookie, but she is very, very sweet!

I will be remaking the biscotti tonight.

I've got my Mojo (or is it Mojito) back!

No I have not been drinking heavily this weekend...the mojito reference is for these amazing Lime Shortbread with Lime Glaze cookies that I made. The mojo reference is that I am back on track with my baking.  With only a few interesting cookies left before I move on to brownies, blondies and squares, I chose these delicious and pretty biscuits along with the ever loved Chocolate Wafer cookies with Vanilla Cream filling (otherwise know as oreos). 

Both came out lovely, although the dough for the chocolate wafers was a bitch to roll out.  It is extremely sticky and even after refrigerating I could not get it to roll out as thin as Martha likes them and still get them onto a baking sheet.  Each time I tried it fell apart.  In the end, I rolled them on parchment paper on the baking sheet and had to use a wine bottle because my rolling pin is too long!  Jim was helping me by holding on to the parchment and baking sheet while I did that, so it was a family affair.  After you roll them out, they go into the freezer for an hour and then you cut out the circles from the frozen dough using a cookie cutter, or in my case a biscuit cutter. 

After I baked the first batch, I realized that they were a little bit large, so for the next batch decided to go with a slightly smaller size.  You know what happened next of course, when I took them off the cooling racks to make room for the Lime Shortbread, I mixed them all up!  So, when I went to fill them I had to sort through to find the matching sizes!

The Lime cookies also had to be refrigerated after forming the dough into a rectangular log.  Just before baking you slice them and there were no problems there...oh except for the couple that I cut too thin and baked to a crisp...but those went to the doggies. What I really liked about these cookies was the beautiful pale green lime glaze that you top them with once they are cooled.  Not only do they taste amazing (lime is my favourite citrus flavour), but they are so pretty! 

Enjoy these photos and if you would like the recipe, just leave me a comment and I will send or post it.

Warning - too many cookies can make you fat!

I  have never been very good  practicing "moderation". I like to think that I can look a whole batch of freshly baked cookies in the eyes and say, "thanks, just one to taste".  I can't.  Firstly, cookies don't have eyes and though I am quite sure that they call out out to me, I know in my heart that they can't really talk.  Therefore, I have to take responsibility for my cookie munching ways. 

Last week, I felt that I really needed a break from baking sweets, so I decided to make a bread instead.  This was not my first time making bread, I used to bake my own bread quite regularly before Lilyan was born, but found myself a little busy after she came along.   I decided that I would bake a challah because it is delicious and makes me feel connected to my Jewish heritage.  There is a recipe for challah in Martha's book, so in keeping with my project, I decided to use that one.  While looking over the recipe, I noted that it used 8 - count them 8 egg yolks and was shaped in the traditional braid.  It all looked good so I went out to get some bread flour and some yeast.

Now, you may be thinking - a challah recipe from Martha Stewart?  Revered Queen of all Shicksas everywhere?  And you would be right!  No so great.  I will readily admit to not being the best baker-in-training, but it was not sweet enough, and lacked that cake-like quality that all Jews look for in a good challah.  I will take full responsibility for shape....

I also noticed that during my sugar free week, I felt better, did not have cravings for sweets and lost weight.  Hmmm....could there be a connection??  Well of course there is.  That stuff is damn addictive for me!  So, I put my cookie baking on hold for another week and decided to make a better challah.

During the week, I  browsed through a number of recipes looking for what I thought would be the perfect one.  I came across a recipe on a site for Jewish holidays that was contributed by Norene Gilletz from Second Helpings fame - the only cook book I remember having in the house when we were growing up.  This one had many less eggs and a little more sugar.  Instead of a braided challah, I thought that I would divide the dough in half and bake one half in a loaf pan and with the other, make some rolls that we would use for our fresh salmon cakes for dinner.

Why, oh why do I second guess myself?  The dough looked beautiful, shiny and smooth and it rose perfectly (twice), but when I punched it down the second time, it looked rather small and I thought dividing it would be a bit of a disaster.  I decided then to roll it into a loaf pan and make only the loaf and no buns.  Zut alors!  what a mistake!  Really there was too much dough for one loaf and it came out all misshapen on one side. From one side, it looked like a beautiful loaf of bread but from the other it had this huge ugly bulge!  I had completely forgotten to ask for a picutre to be taken of it before I  cut into it, so I cannot prove how ugly it was...let's just say I named it the Phantom of The Opera Challah.  Fitting because Lily, my friend Debra and I went to see the filmed version of the 25th anniversary production that was broadcast live from the Royal Abert Hall in London a few weeks prior.  It was phenomenal and if you have not seen it - go and do so!

Since I am on a roll (no pun...) with my weight loss at the moment, I will not yet go back to baking cookies and instead will make a third attempt at the perfect challah this coming weekend. I hope to report a great success next week.

Turkey and Treats

You must be asking yourseleves what does turkey have to do with baking?  You shall see....but first, let's talk about the treats.

Oh snap!! Lemon and ginger snaps I mean.  These were next in line in my cookie capers and because I love lemon as well as ginger, I had to make both.   I was also bringing some over to my sister's house for dinner Sunday night top celebrate my brother-in-law Gerry's birthday.  (Gerry is married to Ellen of the banana bread fame). 

I made the dough the night before, one for the lemon and the other for the ginger.  Sunday morning I go down stairs to bake and as I reach in to get out the ginger dough I remeber that I did not grate any ginger into the ginger snap dough.  I don't think you can call it a ginger snap if it does not have any ginger!  So I had to let the dough soften and then grate the ginger into it and re-refrigerate.  This is a typical Susan (in Lucy Ricardo mode) move.  You just gotta laugh!

Everyone seemed to like the cookies that I brought over, but I had forgotten to ask Chin to photograph them before we left for dinner.  I figured that he can just do it later when we got home with the ones that I kept for ourselves.  Except that the next morning all the lemon cookies were gone!  Who stole the cookies form the cookie jar?   Lilyan - that's who.  I should have been on guard when she kept saying how much she loved them!  So, no pictures of the lemon cookies.  Actually they look exaclty like the ginger snaps, only yellow.  So either use a highlighter or your imagination.

Another nice thing about these cookies is that you roll them into balls and then roll them in sugar before you bake them.  They spread out really nicely and since I used sanding sugar instead of table sugar, they had a nice sparkly finish on top.  Here they are:


Back to the turkey:
For those of you who don't know, it was Thanksgiving in Canada yesterday.  Because we were going to Ellen's on Sunday and then out for lunch with Chin's parents on monday, the only time for me to make a turkey was Saturday night.  And both Lily and Jim really wanted a turkey.  When we went grocery shopping, there were only really big turkeys left and we have trouble finishing a small one.  So instead I bought a bone-in Turkey breast and made stuffing, cranberry sauce  and of course gravy.  To be perfectly transparent...because this was last minute, I did not have the time to make my own stuffing or gravy, so I bought them.  (Good old Stove Top and Club House). Dinner was good.

There were of course  lots of leftovers, so I decided to make a turkey pot pie.  In the past, given my apprehensions about pastry and in particular pie dough, I would just buy the unbaked pie shells from the grovery store.  I was really tempted to do that, but then felt ashamed that I, who am working so hard to learn how to bake would use store-bought pie shells!  so I mustered up the courage to make my own. 

I am so glad that I did!  The pot pie was fabulous!  Not only beautiful to look at - but flaky and delicious as well.  Wow.  What has come over me?  The filling was really tasty with fresh vegetables (except the peas) and a creamy consistency. 

On top of all of that - I managed not to burn myself!!  It was a good long weekend.

Happy Days are Here Again

I am happy to report that my bitterness toward sugar cookies is gone!  Obliterated by a great weekend of baking.  First up was banana bread because I had a bunch of overripe bananas and what else is there to do with them?  Come to think of it, perhaps it was just a big conspiracy between Lily and Jim.  If they don't eat the bananas all week, then I will have to make banana bread on the weekend.  Hmmmm....I'm on to them now!  I tried a different recipe that only included bananas, so I did not have to make any omissions or substitutions and voila!  A beautiful looking banana bread.  Jim used the words moist and  banana flavour to describe and as of this morning all that was left was a tiny sliver, so I call it a success.  Once again, I asked Lily the magical question...."Is it better than Auntie Ellen's?" She had that deer in the headlights look and told me that it was close.  I am not trying to be competitive...really I am not...but it's hard to resist. 

Here is a picture of a slice that Jim took ....ummm..when he was upside down!

Back to Martha now....

This next recipe really intrigued me.  Reading it over I found that it had very little sugar and NO BUTTER! With that, Ina Garten and Paula Deen declined my offer of tea, but no matter.

They are called Seville Olive Oil Wafers.  A thin, crispy wafer with just the right amount of savoury and sweet.  They are also made with anise seed and smell divine when they are baking.  One must be patient though, because you can only bake four at a time using two baking sheets.  Well worth the wait....

This picture does not do them justice in the least. You really have to try them.  I brought them into work yesterday and a number of my colleagues insisted that I give them the recipe.    I am going to reprint it here, because they are so easy and so delicious that I want to share them with the world!  Okay, maybe that's a just a little bit dramatic....but do try them and do let me know!

Seville Olive Oil Wafers

                                                            From: Martha Stewart’s Handbook of Baking

1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

¼ cup sesame seeds

3 tablespoons of sugar plus more for sprinkling

1 tablespoon of anise seeds

1 teaspoon of baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons of ice water

2 large egg whites beaten until foamy

Preheat oven to 400^o F. with racks in the upper and lower thirds.  In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (can also be made with a hand mixer) mix flour, sesame seeds, sugar, anise seeds baking powder and salt on low speed until just combined.  In a small bowl combine water and olive oil and add to flour mixture.  Beat on low speed until just combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Shape a 1 ½ tablespoon of dough into a ball.  Place two balls at a time on a piece of parchment paper, at least 5 inches apart, and cover with another piece of parchment.  Roll out into very thin 8-by-4-inch ovals.  Transfer dough and parchment to a baking sheet.  Lift off top piece of parchment.  Generously brush ovals with egg white and generously sprinkle with sugar. Repeat with two more balls of dough. 

Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until cookies are brown around the edges and in spots on top, 6-8 minutes.  Transfer parchment and cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.  Repeat with remaining balls of dough.  Cookies can be kept stacked between layers of parchment paper in an airtight container at room temperature for 4 days.

 

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!  

Baking is More Creative Than I Thought!

I had been looking forward to moving on to the delicious coffee cakes in Martha's book.  Personally, I enjoy eating these types of cakes much more than those with layers of icing and cream.  Anyways, one of the things I love about cooking is that you can really be creative with ingredients and changes of technique because it is not based on chemisty as baking is. 

Well, I got my chance to show my "creativity" when I went to purchase frozen sour cherries for the Cherry Streusel Coffee Cake.  No frozen cherries.  No bottled cherries. Only disgusting gloopy canned cherry pie filling.  While I was in the frozen fruit section I saw a bag of organic mixed berries that included cherries, so I thought why not?  I know what you are thinking...
really?  Not a big leap from frozen cherries to frozen berries!  But for me, with my FOB this was a big leap forward.   Now don't get me wrong, I won't be throwing things in the mixing bowl without measuring or deciding mashed potatoes would be a fine substitute for bananas in banana bread, but I realize that even with baking, it is okay to "make do".

Here are the pictures from this delicious cake.  My colleagues very much enjoyed it!

As mentioned, we will be making a pilgrimage to the Motherland this weekend, so no new baked goods.  There are a couple of pound cakes left in the chapter and then I move on to cookies!  Got milk?

I Found My Thrill on Blueberry Hill

Just when you thought my blueberry obsession had abated, it's back to the blue!  Jim has been asking for a blueberry cheesecake and I have been stalling because:

1. I am not at the cheesecake section yet and Martha may not take kindly to my skipping ahead.
2. Cheesecakes are quite large and with only three of us it is too big.
3. Cheesecakes are easy for me to eat and therefore the large cheesecake may not be big enough once I get started.... 'shudder'.
4. all of the above. 

Despite that, I thought my food photographer deserved a little something...hey get your mind out of the gutter...so I found this recipe on another food blog for Blueberry Cheesecake Squares.  Because it's not in Martha's book,I don't feel like I am cheating on her,  so my conscience is clear.

I am definitely getting more confident because I didn't stress over the recipe beforehand.  Just whipped it up and voila!  Delicious squares that delight!

The blueberry blitz continues on Friday, when as requested, I make a batch of the blueberry cornmeal muffins to bring to my sister Gail and her family when we go to Montreal for the weekend.  I am very excited to see them and Kayko will be meeting her cousin Buddy for the first time.  That should be interesting....

Look for tomorrow's blog, when I continue my adventures with Martha making a Berry Streusel Coffee Cake and I ask the question why is there no coffee in coffee cake?

What a Weekend!

It seems I had a lot on my mind this weekend and found baking a solitary pursuit that allowed me to concentrate on other things like measuring, kneading and folding, but also gave me time to think.  Never underestimate the power of the smell of baked goods in your home.  It is addictive. Chocolate, sugar, eggs and cream, such simple ingredients that combined with my wayward oven fills the air with comfort.  I am actually beginning to enjoy baking!

First up were these Plum Coffee Cake Muffins that were so easy.  I love opening the oven and seeing those muffin tops all golden and sugary.  They popped right out of the pan and each was perfect. 

Then on Sunday morning, following the success of the muffins, I prepared to make my first scone.  Chin chose the chocolate recipe.  (How can you not love a man who loves chocolate?)

So back to the dough again.  Same issue as before, it seemed a little dry but who am I to know the difference.  I finally bought a ruler so that when Martha says to roll the dough out to a certain size, I can do that with confidence.  I rolled out my dry chocolate dough to the required 11" x 3" and cut them into six pieces.  Martha says they are to be six squares, but I could not figure that one out since the original shape was a rectangle.  So I cut six rectangles.  BIG rectangles.  They did not look like the ones you get at Star$.  The most fun was chilling the scones.  Unlike Martha, I only have one refrigerator, average size.  The scones have to sit on a big-a** baking sheet covered in plastic. I  had to spend 10 minutes rearranging my fridge in order for this baking sheet to balance precariously on the tops of assorted containers and firm vegetables which rest on the bottom shelf!  There were definitely some of my best  Lucy Ricardo moments every time I had to open the fridge. 

While my dough was being cool, I decided to make the Banana Loaf, which would be my last quick bread.  I had bought all the ingredients which included shredded coconut and toasted pecans.  Sounds delicious doesn't it?  Except that Lily would hate it.  The recipe makes two loaves (not confident enough to halve a baking recipe yet) and Lily would not touch any of it if I included nuts and coconut.   So, I decided to omit the offending ingredients and instead added a package of Hershey chocolate chips.  What you don't know is that I have to live up to my sister's banana bread recipe.  "Auntie Ellen makes the best banana bread" exclaims my teenage daughter with the discerning palate (ketchup is a vegetable serving to this kid).  I was determined to steal my daughter's banana bread heart away and what better way to do that than with...you guessed it...chocolate! 

If you recall, my previous loaf pan experience was a disaster so I made sure to buy two spanking new non-stick metal pans.  It worked!  They came out as perfect twin peaks!  By the way, no luck on being the Banana Bread champ.  The title still belongs to Ellen.

Back to the scones:  Martha says that they are very rich, almost too rich for breakfast so I decide to bake them while we are having dinner.  What could be a better dessert?  The smell was almost too much to bear, would I be able to resist? One would think so given how strange they looked - but looks are deceiving!

Martha would cringe until she actually bit into this chocolaty gift from the gods! The larger pieces of the chopped chocolate stay intact in the dough, but ooze just enough so that you have to lick your fingers.  I had to have a taste but stuck to just a taste.  Yeah for me and yeah for my colleagues who had a feast awaiting them this morning.  'Tis better to give than to eat it yourself and take in more calories with one bite than your whole  morning's allotment!

My boss is convinced that I  am trying to make everyone around me at work fat. Which is not a bad idea because then I can look like I am losing more weight! Hmmmmm.





The Good, the Good and the UGLY!

The Good
I finally made those cream cheese and chive biscuits this weekend.  They were much easier than I thought they would be; lots of rolling and folding and chilling (the dough I mean).  They are cut into squares rather than rounds and then they puff up a bit like little pillows.  The outsides were flaky and the insides a lovely soft bread-llike consistency.  I made fresh salmon burgers for dinner and we opened the biscuits up and used them as buns.  They were good.  Here is a picture:

I am now done with  biscuits and have moved on into the realm of muffins.  As you know I made those wild blueberry muffins last week and this week bought the ingredients for Plum Streusel muffins.  They look amazing in the book  and I can't wait to make them.

The Good
So while I was waiting for the biscuit dough to chill out I was rooting around the fridge and saw that I had almost a whole pint of wild blueberries left.  I had also picked up some white chocolate chips and found a recipe for Blueberry and White Chocolate Loaf.  I love loaf cakes(except banana bread - I detest bananas),  and know that they are really really hard to screw up -believe me I have tried!  So I thought I would quickly put that together and bake it before the biscuits had to go into the oven.  As expected it was delicious!  I added a tart lemon syrup I had made by poking holes in the freshly baked cake and pouring it over the top, letting it soak into the cake.  This gave it just the right tang and saved the cake from being too sweet.  This too was good.

The Ugly
When we had gone shopping earlier that day, I found one of these silicone loaf pans that seem to be all the rage these days. Everyone says that your food or baked goods just slide right out of them and they are so easy to clean as well. 

 I was really excited, about to see my loaf drop gracefully from the pan with nary a crumb sticking to bottom.  The timer dinged and I opened the oven door to see this:

UGLY!  Instead of rising up as the cake would do in a rigid loaf pan, it BULGED OUT!  And to add insult to injury (now I know what that phrase means) there were some little bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Now, as I said before, it tasted very good.  The cake was really moist and flavourful.  But so  U G  L  Y!!!

This disaster reminds me of one of the traumatic events of my childhood and quite possibly contributed to my F.O.B. (fear of baking). It was my parents anniversary and they were going out to dinner.  After finishing our Swanson's T.V. dinners, my sisters and I decided that we would bake them a cake for the celebration.  Looking through the one or two cookbooks in the house we found a recipe for chocolate cinnamon cake that looked easy enough.  (Who makes chocolate cinnamon cake)?  So we go ahead and mix up the cake and then bake it.  We take it out of the oven and realize that it really needs a good chocolate frosting.  We find a recipe for that and whip it up, oh....we don't have icing sugar (whatever that is), we'll just make it with regular sugar....what could be bad?  Okay, so it's a little grainy, but its chocolately and thick.  Hurry, we have to get it on the cake before Mommy and Daddy get home!  We slather it on top and then start to notice that it is melting into the cake!  What?  You have to let it cool first before you put on the frosting?  We are confident that it is going to taste good anyways so we proudly serve up when our parents get home.  It has to be the most pathetic cake ever.  It is sickly sweet because of the double whammy of sugar, the texture is wet and grainy from the melted frosting and the cinnamon and chocolate are an atrocious combination. 

Now do you see why I rarely baked in the last 40 years?

I'm just wild about Wild Blueberries

Out of all the fruits of the harvest at this time of year, my favourite is wild blueberries.  There is just no comparison to the bland cultivated variety.  These little purple nuggets just burst with flavour and stain everything they come into contact with.  Despite looking like I just voted in an election in Iran,  I can sit and eat a whole pint.   But since I am on this baking journey, I decided to (shhhh...don't tell Martha) skip ahead a page and make blueberry muffins.  This also afforded me the opportunity to use my brand new shining Kitchenaid Stand Mixer!  Sure it takes up half my counter space, but it looks so professional!  I look so professional.  It is so heavy that I can barely move it. (Note to self: get to the weight room stat).

Now, I have made muffins before who hasn't, so I was not at all intimidated and in fact really relaxed and enjoyed myself.  There is something very soothing and calm about baking.  I like how you gently fold in ingredients.  Lightly knead dough and then you let it rest. You don't beat the sugar and butter, you cream them together.  And then finally, you dust the powdered sugar on top.  Practically a zen experience!

After doing some reading on ovens and what to do when you have a wayward one, I adjusted the temperature up by 10 degrees F. and the baking time was perfect.  All of the hints and tips that Martha espouses were spot on and I came out with a batch that not only tasted delicious, but looked like the picture in her book!  Have I reached the pinnacle in muffin making?    You decide:

Note my feeble attempt at food styling.  I think I might have to turn to Martha once again for home decor tips....

Oh, and thanks to Chin who takes these photos and politely says "yes dear" when I badger him about camera angles and lighting!

Oh, and if anyone is reading this blog, don't be shy to write a comment or two. I can take it!

Cornmeal Biscuits- Muy Caliente!

I love cornmeal anything. I seem to recall that corn muffins were a favourite of my mother's.  Warm with a little pat of butter...there's that word again! 

I bought many pounds of butter and am armed and ready for my adventure with cornmeal biscuits.  I decided to make a meal around them but wanted something different than the traditional chili or jambalaya.  Who is the Doyenne of Southern cooking?  Paula Deen y'all.  So I went on her website and found what looked like a delicious recipe for Cioppino Stew.  Okay not typically southern fare unless you are in Italy, but a seafood stew sounded just right.  Making some modifications as I often do (and I wonder why my baking sucks), I began my evening in the kitchen.

Looking at the recipe for the biscuits, I was delighted to find that there is no kneading of dough or cutting of biscuits.  Hey this one should be  easy.  Martha if you are reading this, I think the next edition of your Handbook of Baking should start with this recipe.

Once again, I follow the directions just as Matha wrote them...except that I added some minced pickled jalapeno peppers.  What can I say, old habits die hard and really how bad can some jalapenos screw up the biscuits?

As I mentioned, instead of cutting the biscuits out, you just drop them from a spoon.  I can do that!  I did that.  Somehow I thought that they would magically shape shift into perfectly formed biscuits.  I have spent far too much time pretending to be interested in sci-fi for Chin's sake. I take them out of the oven, 10 weird looking blobs of golden goodness.

You can actually smell the jalapenos and of course the butter. They are a little bit sweet, a little bit salty and just the right amount of heat from the jalapenos. My Cioppino is delicious and the biscuits are the perfect compliment to the stew. We enjoy our dinner that night.

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Looking forward to cream cheese and chive biscuits next! I snuck a peek at thre recipe and they should be quite the challenge.

Buttermilk Biscuits with Cheddar Cheese

Q: What is more decadent than a cream and butter laden Baking Powder Biscuit?
A: A buttermilk, butter laden biscuit with 3 cups of Cheddar Cheese!

As I lock the door and lower the shades in fear of the fat and cholesterol police, I once again face the dreaded DOUGH. Same basic dough...same problems. Only this time I know to use more of the dry and crumbly dough per biscuit. Getting fed up having the biscuits fall apart once I put them on the backing sheet, I decide to hell with the overworking, this thing needs a good working over! So I get in there and make that dough stick together enough to hold its shape.

Same oven, so this time I am not surprised that it takes longer than Martha's. I have to do some research on what to do in this situation. Do you increase the baking time or do you increase the heat? I will let you know when I find out.

The biscuits are now done, redolent with the smell of sharp cheddar. Not bad, although I notice that some of my towers of dough have let themselves go and are spreading around the middle.

These too are a hit with my bf who has two with dinner, so I nibble one one to see for myself. OK, not the best I have tasted (red lobster), but not too shabby. I bravely take two into work the next day for my manager. He seems sincere when he says they are really good and I witness with my own eyes that he does eat the entire thing. I will consider this one a success.

I have now run out of butter and need to buy more in order to create the cornmeal biscuits...

Baking Powder Biscuits with Herbs

As a good student of cooking classes, I prepared my mise en place, took a deep breath and began. I properly measured, just as Martha insists, used the appropriate equipment and felt that nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?

Wrong, My Nemesis is dough. Any kind of dough. I followed the directions exactly as written, I looked at the picture for reference and yet...still....my dough was too dry and crumbly. Being mindful of the warning:"Do not overwork", I tried my best to be gentle and coax the dough into submission. Like my dog and/or my teenage daughter, the dough was having none of that and insisted that I use it "as is". Okay.

I took my 2 1/4" biscuit cutter and cored away. Hey, not too bad. It actually did stay together in their disc shape so I cut out the other eleven and put them on my brand new baking sheet. In they went into my preheated oven and the timer was set for half time in order to turn the around in the oven.

I went back to the counter to clean up and noticed that there was a great deal of dough left over. Enough for another batch. Hmmm, did I double the recipe without realizing it? Shrugging off my doubt I waited for the timer to ring and to get my first glimpse of these delectable little treats. When half time came, I turned them and they still looked kind of raw? No, that's fine, they will be flaky and golden once the full baking time is up.

Once again the timer rings and walk over to the oven eagerly anticipating my first successful biscuit batch. Oh dear, not done, not flaky, not golden....Did I mention that one thing besides a popover pan I did not buy that Martha suggests is an oven thermometer? I now suspect that my oven is developmentally delayed (the term slow is so old school). So I keep them in the oven set my timer to 3 minute intervals and watch and wait.....Soon I lose count of how many more times I Set that thing but finally, FINALLY they are looking (almost) as described.

They smell delicious and I take them out to cool on the wire rack that Martha suggests. I go back to the book to compare them with Martha's and notice that they are about half the height of hers. Ahhh, maybe that is why I had so much dough left.

They are a hit with Chin who slathers margarine on them and scarfs them up. I have 1/2 of one, without the margarine because I know how much butter went into the recipe and am impressed with myself. Maybe this forage into the world of baking won't be so hard....