Sixty Square Feet

Showing posts with label Sweets. Show all posts

April 5, 2011

Sweet and Salty Cake

Remember the Whipped Salted Caramel Ganache Icing I shared? The cupcakes were just the taste, texture and pipe-ability (?) test. Here's the real deal:

Whipped Salted Caramel Ganache Icing

March has been a month of many birthdays so I've been auditioning a few icing recipes. This is a Whipped Salted Caramel Ganache Icing I tried and love. It starts as an angsty, moody, emo ganache (I hear You Oughta Know),

and after a pound of butter and a little dance to Whip It,

Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart

Last Saturday we finally got around to celebrating Hijiri's birthday. Belated though it was, we had a great time eating, shopping and eating again.

The gals came over for a casual lunch of good French baguettes and a platter of sandwich fixings including ham, chicken, cheese, tomato and lettuce. B also contributed to the lunch with a collection of divine scones (cheese, white chocolate and cherry, and chocolate).

Mocha Cake with Italian Buttercream

Never before have I met a person who loves celebrating her birthday as much as my dear friend Louise (B to me). It's perfectly normal for her to make multiple announcements a day informing any nearby ears that her birthday is only X more sleeps away. Granted, part of the reason it's such a special day is that her son was born on the same day (!) but I have a sneaky feeling that we'd be reminded just as frequently were that not the case.

Amelia & Italian Buttercream

There's a new baby in the house. Meet Amelia.

(Look Jess! After 5+ years, I can now shut up about wanting one!)

She's 25 lbs, over 11 inches and beautiful. Not long ago I shared how envious I was of Hijiri and her stand mixer but now I'm part of the club! It all happened unexpectedly on an unusual Friday.

Last Friday I was owed a day off work so Mami and I planned a road trip to Seattle with my grandmother (Halmuhnee) and her friend. We were browsing at the Premium Outlet when I spotted a special on red KitchenAid stand mixers at the kitchen store. How convenient that my kitchen colours are red and blue! Four days and a drive of death later, she was home.

I've been telling myself repeatedly that getting one was out of the question because of the lack of space and admittedly my limited counter space has been significantly compromised but I simply couldn't pass on the price. Price trumped counter space. Seriously, I've paid more for jeans and shoes (obviously a lifetime ago, when saving up for a condo was not even on the horizon).

...and the inaugural recipe? Cupcakes from a box. Not the most distinguished recipe for Amelia but we're not judgmental here in this small kitchen. Besides, I needed cupcakes to practice piping techniques for upcoming birthday cakes and cupcake orders. Didn't bother taking pictures of the iced cupcakes because they weren't v. pretty. (Oops. So maybe we're slightly judgmental in this small kitchen.)

The next recipe was Italian Buttercream. Boy, was it ever fun to watch Amelia beat the curdled mess into smooth oblivion. And forget about it when she teams up with BB, because when put together, baking becomes exponentially fun. What I actually did with the buttercream was fun too. Check out the practice roses piped with my new 1M icing tip. Now I need to practice piping a clean finish. I've already shown improvement.

I spy with my little eye

a rose that perished as a snack
and Amelia's foot.

And we're done like dinner.

February 22, 2011

Lemon Loaves & Baking New Recipes

Mrs. Stark's Lemon Loaf recipe just wasn't cutting it any more.

In theory, the loaves I bake now should far exceed the ones I used to because I know more about baking and I have better equipment but the exact opposite is true. It's as though ignorance was bliss with her recipe. I've made many great loaves since she gave it to me when I was 11 (12? 13?) but for the last 5 years, I haven't had stellar results (my case in point. Appetizing? Hardly.) My successful loaves could have been due to a number of things including:

technique - using butter and eggs straight out of the fridge, totally breaking baking law
pans - I swear Mrs. Stark's original loaf pans made the edges of the top crust lovely and crisp. They have been lost since the move from Waterloo to 36th
equipment - I used a cheese grater for the lemon zest. I'm sure I ended up grating a lot of the lemon pith but it's all I had access to
oven - the oven at our Waterloo house was straight from the 40s with a door that required a Franken-coat hanger to keep closed (so ghetto). I doubt it kept anything at a steady temperature

The short story is that I found a new favourite Lemon Loaf recipe. The long story is that I documented how I approach new recipes. I cleared an afternoon to bake Dorrie's version that I'd had marked for a while.

Baking new recipes starts with choosing one from the many cookbooks that litter my bed (nighttime reading.) I love them and am quite proud of how few I own considering how many are on my Want This list. On my night table: Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorrie Greenspan and Simply Perfect Every Time by David Herbert.

On my bed: The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond and The Main: Recipes by Anthony Sedlak.

The next step is clearing out the sink. I am tragically terrible at putting things away but doing this eases the cleaning process.

Pull out all required ingredients.

Put a temporary garbage bag at the corner of the sink. Super helpful for lemon stickers and egg shells.

Measure ingredients. When I'm trying a recipe for the first time, I nearly always measure with measuring cups, then, if it's a recipe worth keeping, I'll convert everything into weight measurements.

Use a container to corral measuring cups and spoons.

Continue measuring and putting each ingredient in its own bowl/container.

Thank you for being so handy and within reach, Garbage Bag. PS, my grandmother has been using a garbage bag/bowl-on-the-counter trick long before RR started marketing it.

Save the egg carton for math lessons.

Dirty dishes in the (emptied!) sink.

All ingredients measured and lined up left to right in sequential order (as listed in recipe).

Oops, forgot the lemon zest.

Use a post-it note to mark place in recipe. Girl, your recipes are wonderful to read in bed but hard to refer to in the middle of a project. I still love you.