"Fashion Knives" & Other Kitchen Non-Essentials

Wow, just wow.

Strawberry Angel Food Cake

The unseasonably warm Spring means strawberries are in season early. So, now is the time to create some of your favorite summer treats.

Tips for strawberries:
1) Buy them the day you want to use them. I went berry picking on Thursday afternoon, and most of my berries are already on the over ripe side.
2) Wash them only when you're about to use them, the water will make them soggy faster.
3) Store the berries in a single layer to to prevent bruising and sogginess. Preferably on a paper towel.
4) I store my berries on the counter instead of the fridge. I think the cold damages the fruit's skin.
5) Ugly berries can puréed or made into jelly. Do your best.

The Reason I've Been Missing for 3 Months & Other Wordlessness

Hipster Cakes Are All the Rage

The past couple of days, a friend of mine and I were plotting a surprise birthday cake to make for her husband. We thought about Lost, and Willy Wonka, and Books, and all manner of things that I am unskilled enough to try to achieve. Later, we settled on a little hipster bow-tie cake, suitable for the pocket protector wearing nerd you know and love.

The final product

Now I no Ace of Cakes or whatever, but I think this little guy turned out alright. Jon and I both worked on it, as we are wont to do nowadays when I have an order. One thing we did notice is that when a cake order comes in, tension runs high. We always believe our cake looks awful. Whenever it is delivered though, it aways brings joy. After this last bout of slinging icing and obscenities, it was decided that I need to go ahead and start my cake decorating classes. The theory is I will become more comfortable with the basics and won't fret so much.

I drove down to Hobby Lobby to sign up for the Wilton Decorating Course #1 a week ago, which was a feat in and of itself. The cashier was a total bonehead, but I walked out with my registration ticket in hand. Only $20 for a class! What a steal! That's when I started to read the back of my form. I forgot to pick up the supplies I needed for the class!

Later that week, I trudged back to HL and started grabbing the items from the supply list. My register total: $200! I almost fell over dead. How could a 2 hour class need so much crap? Thankfully, the other wilton courses use the same stuff so I will not have to repurchase anything. Jon is demanding that I take all the courses, even the ones I think are not up my alley (i.e. "Making Icing Flowers!") These cakes look like the old lady cakes you can get from Wal-mart. I would hope I produce a more ahem...slight artistic and higher quality product than that. Jon feels that may be true, but at some point, someone will want a granny cake for Mother's Day or something. So I will acquiesce and take it next.

Tonight is my first class, and I am about to head out with ym 3 bags of supplies. I'm nervous that it is going to be a complete disaster, and that I can't possibly learn enough in a 2 hour class to make a decent, plain looking cake. However, YouTube is quickly becoming a poor substitution for actual classroom instruction. So, away I go, dignity the only thing left to lose. Pictures of my work will hopefully be posted in the morning. Wish me luck!

What Did Santa Bring You For the Kitchen?

Well, if I ever decide to open a bakery, I think this Christmas took the cake (< see what I did there) when it comes to getting set up for it. I got about 9 million kitchen items to get the bakery started on firm ground in 2012. I think the most impressive gift I received was this:

The Cricut Cake Machine

This little machine cuts fondant and "icing sheets", whatever those are. It is like the Cricut machine that people use for scrapbooking, but made for cakes. I can't wait to use it. Let's hope it works as well as it promises.

Jon got me cake decorating lessons from Hobby Lobby. Those start in January and are twice a week. Very exciting. Maybe I will finally learn how to make super smooth cakes with butter cream. That is something YouTube just can't seem to teach me.

My mom got me one of these from Ross. It was just so cute she couldn't pass it up.

Hopefully it will make cupcake transport easier.

Strangely enough, I got two pressure cookers, two 9" round cake pans, and two bread pans. One of the pressure cookers will have to be returned, as will the 9" cake pans. Unfortunately, the cake pans have slanted sides. That will not work for cakes that are to be stacked. You need the pans to have straight sides. I might keep one as a biscuit pan. We'll see.

So... did Santa bring you for your kitchen?

Grandma H's Kolache Recipe and Other Disappointments

As my loyal readers (all 2 of them) know, I have been trying for year to get Jon's gran to give me the family recipe for kolaches. There's been a lot of back and forth.

In comes Christmas, and our obligatory family visit. I'm sitting alone, minding my own business, when Grandma H walks up to me with the biggest smile on her face and a little, folded piece of paper in her hands. She makes me come to dining table before she explains that she is giving me something special this Christmas:

BEHOLD!

I was so excited I almost wet myself! Finally, after 6 years of begging and pleading, I finally got a copy of the recipe. Gran, all proud, smiles and moves on about her holiday party. I quickly unfold the paper and scan for a clue about what I am doing wrong all this time. Then I realize this recipe is a little...vague. What I had clutched in my hands was not a recipe, it was a list of ingredients and their measurements. No other instructions whatsoever. It was as if Santa had shit in my cereal.

I finally get a chance to corner Gran and say very gently..."Um...this recipe seems to be missing the instruction portion, Gran." She laughed and said, "All you have to do is dump this stuff in a mixer. Nothing to it!" All of you that have seem my last June 11th kolache bomb know that is NOT all there is to it. So now I'm doing the delicate dance of "what is she hiding from me?"

Ten minutes later she comes back over and says, "oh, you want to mix your wet ingredients first, then add them to the dry." I dive for a pen, "DOES ANYONE HAVE A BLOODY PEN!!!"

Thirty minutes later she wanders back towards me with a quizzical expression, "Oh you want to make sure that you don't knead the dough. Just pat it down gently or the kolaches will be tough. I think I forgot to mention that."



*me feverishly writing, and thinking, I've never seen a kolache recipe where the dough was pressed flat*

"Pressed flat, Gran?"

"Oh yes," she said. "You have to cut it with a biscuit cutter."

Now I'm beyond confused. That is TOTALLY opposite from what I learned from the Kolache Master several years ago. I sit and stew over this a Gran rejoins the party.

Later I realize, I have no idea how long to cook these for and how many I can expect to get out of a batch. Is she purposefully trying to be elusive?!

I corner Gran in the kitchen again and ask her what to bake these on and how long. She gives me a rough temperature, and says the batch will produce 4-6 dozen. That's a huge variance!

One of Jon's aunts saw me plop down in a fit of exasperation after all of this and kindly wandered over and said this: "You are never going to be able to make them the way she does, because every time you try, she will sneak behind you and put something in the bowl while you have your back turned. That's how they always come out right."

So essentially, I think I am still at square one with the kolache recipe. It's been about 6 months since my last try. I guess it's about time to try again. Perhaps I'll see if I can 1/2 the recipes I do have in order to spare my poor soul kitchen for the tempest that is kolache making.

Bacon Candy

Well you asked forit: bacon, chocolate and caramel candy. I was supposed to make it last week for my #1 fan's birthday, but alas it was just too hectic of a week to get it together.

I am making up for it this weekend by making a gagillion things at once in my tiny little kitchen. It's like Thanksgiving in the home of my favorite blogger, NeNe.  Here's what's going down:

• Burner One: Pinto Beans and Sausage
• Burner Two: Stew 
• Burner Three: Double Boiler of chocolate
• Burner Four: Bacon.
• Oven: Sugar Cookie trial batch for snowflake cookie sales.
• Microwave: Carmel sauce.
• The Fridge...is very very afraid.

We just spent a ton on groceries, despite doing much better with stacking our coupons. I am determine not to waste any food this go round. So, today starts the cooking for the week so we can pack some of the leftovers away for another time.

Right now, the bacon candy is in the fridge hardening up, but I couldn't resist breaking off a bit to show you and um...consume unmercifully. Here it is.

I wish I wouldn't have tried it, I might eat it all before I can sell it.

So, the original recipe called for peanuts, but I left them out. This baby has plenty of salty and sweet textures, and the peanuts might have over done it. Not sure really, perhaps I'll offer two varieties: one with peanuts and one without. I've decided to package them in cute little cellophane bags with bows. It will be great.

On a side note, I am not advocating the eating of raw dough, but I had a teensy taste of the sugar cookie dough and almost died in a flavor coma. It was like sugared butter. I don't know if these cookies are going to get far from my kitchen. I was going to decorate them in royal icing and sugar pearls, then wrap them in the cellophane bags and give them away as Christmas gifts to coworkers. I am going to have to rethink my plans here. The original recipe said that it make 60 cookies. I probably should have made the whole recipe instead of cutting down to two dozen. There's no way I could have eaten all 60...right?

Are you preparing any special recipes to give away as gifts for Christmas?

Baby Shower Cake!

For a baby girl! Congrats Jen & Scott!

A Twist on the M&M Cake

Reese's pieces add a cute Halloween or Thanksgiving flair.

Cinnamon Roll Redeaux

I don't know why I spelled "redeaux" like that. I'm not Cajun or anything, I just think it's a funner way to spell it. Anyway, if you took a guess in the mystery dough challenge, thanks a million. The answer was cinnamon rolls. 


Now you're probably thinking, "Wait! You already taught us how to make those here." Well, that is true, but I don't think I did too good of a job showing you the hands on components on that batch. So, I'm going to try to set things right by showing you one more time. This batch came out monumentally better by the way.


Ingredients:
Dough from Scratch

1 cup milk (heated approximately 1 minute in microwave)
1/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature and beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
5 cups flour
2 Tablespoons of yeast

Good Cinnamon filler stuff:

1 cup firmly-packed brown sugar
4 to 5 tablespoons ground cinnamon 

Icing:
2 oz of softened cream cheese
1/4 cup of softened butter
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

1 cup of powdered sugar

Now, in my previous attempt, I had dumped all this Dough Stuff Ingredients in at once and turned my machine into this:

Yes, that is a spoon stuck in there. Don't ask.

Well, now that I was lucky enough to have a KitchenAid Mixer purchased for me during a bridal shower last year, this has never happened again. But I digress...

First things first, take out the eggs and butter so they can get to room temperature. Believe it or not, there is a difference between melted and softened butter. Just don't ask me to explain what that difference is. It would bring me back to that whole flawed logic of recipes that demand unsalted butter, but then you half to add salt to them.

Get your dry ingredients together and gently give them a stir to incorporate them. Next , in a separate bowl, take your eggs and give them a light beating. If your butter is still as hard as a rock, briefly nuke it til it is soft in the microwave. Microwave your milk until it is warm,, not scalding. If you pour super hot milk or water into eggs, you will get gross scrambled eggs in your rolls/cake. Not cool. Add remaining wet ingredients to the egg bowl and give them a little stir. Finally, mix everything together in your stand mixer. I recommend pouring wet into dry so flour doesn't fly all over the place. I don't know this from previous experience or anything...*no comments from the peanut gallery!*

Your dough will be slightly sticky, but mostly, it will want to stick to itself. Spread a couple tablespoons of oil on your counter top, and dump your dough blob onto it. Give it a good knead for 3-5 minutes, just squishing it into self. I don't know why this step is necessary, but it's fun to do just the same. In the end you will get this nice little ball that you may have noticed I posted like 15 days ago.

This post was intended to be finished by 11/14!!!

The next step is sprinkling a healthy portion of flour on your counter top so you can roll this bad boy into an approximately 2 foot by 1 foot, flat canvas. I have used a cup in the past, but I can't tell you awesome a rolling pin is for this task. It was like, they created those things just to roll out dough or something! Who'd a thunk it!

Rolling pins: Not just for whacking husbands anymore!

The dough is kind of elastic, so don't be afraid to keep coaxing it outward. If it tears, you can just ball it up and roll again. Just get it down to about a quarter of an inch in thickness.

Next, make up the Good Cinnamon Filler Stuff using the ingredients above. Brown sugar is the only baking item that I know of where you actually want to press it into the measuring cup until it is packed like a brick. So get to it and mix that stuff up in a bowl. If you have more butter lying around, you can brush the flattened dough with some to help the sugar stick. If not, it's no big deal. Once the filler is thoroughly mixed, you can spread it on your dough canvas. Don't be stingy.

Smelled so good at this point, you'll want to eat it now.
But don't or you'll get the runs! (raw eggs)

 Next is the most technical part of the whole operation. Pay attention Myrtle! You've got to roll this puppy up after just having smashed into flat submission. It will initially try to stay flat, once you get the roll started, it tends to behave. I like a lot of swirl in my roll, so I rolled the short side towards myself.

Don't worry about a little side spillage. You can always
scoop it up later and sprinkle it on top.

Now, some people say you shouldn't roll the dough too tight, or else your rolls may rise to mountain peaks when they bake. Those people can piss off! They are too Polly Perfect for me. I like the tight roll because you get a really distinctive swirl pattern. Some may get taller, but others don't. It's not the end of the freaking world.

Now that you have a swirled log of cinnamony goodness, you may notice some fat areas and thin areas. Run your hands along the log to try to get a more uniform shape. Tap the ends to squish them back to flat rounds.

Jon just saw this photo out of the corner of his eye and shouted,
"What are you posting!!!"

Now, you need a very sharp, serrated knife. Pay attention, Myrtle, this is important. A dull knife will tear the dough. A non-serrated knife will pinch it down and you will lose the swirl. Do the best you can with a sawing motion, cutting the log into 1" rounds.

Look at that awesome swirl!

 Once the rolls are cut, you will need to place them, not touching, on a greased jelly roll pan. Put them maybe 1" apart. They will need to rise an hour at this point. As they rise, they will move to touch each other, which is what you want.

Bake those bad boys at 350*F for 20 to 25 minutes. Your house will smell fantastic and you will get beautiful, beautiful rolls that look something in the neighborhood of this:

So beautiful, I almost cried.

You can go ahead and make the cream cheese icing to pour over these beauties. Or, you can continue to stare in wonder. Eat and enjoy.

And, that, my friends, is the answer to the mystery of the dough blob.