A Flock of Cupcakes

I received a request from my brother for cupcakes when he came down to visit.  He specified these cupcakes, which are indeed the most adorable and edible thing I’ve seen in a long time.  I actually just like to look at the picture to swoon about how adorable those little sheep are.  Adorable and perfect.

In reality I think my brother was joking about actually wanting the cupcakes, but he knows that I think sheep are wonderful and sent me the picture as a way to combine my love of food and my love of sheep.  He may have been joking but I interpreted it as a challenge.

And I am crazy.  I have no cake decorating experience and I had no idea how to even start on these amazing creations.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Stewart just supplies pictures of the cupcakes and no direction on how to make them.  The only advice given is that the “wool” is made of mini-marshmallows.  As my mom would say, “No shit Sherlock.”

If you look closely, you can tell the wool of these "sheep" is made of mini-marshmallows.

Back in Action!

Patience is key when making toffee sauce.

Hey there folks!  Sorry it’s been awhile.  There are no excuses for abandoning my legions of fans (hello again mom!) for roughly a month.  One thing I blame it on is my evil, evil sewing machine.  “Sewing machine?” you say, “It is simply an inanimate object created to ease the lives of humans, a sewing machine cannot be evil.”  And there, dear reader, is where you’re wrong.  My sewing machine has conspired against me and my effort to create my first paid-for apron.  Which is the reason I haven’t been posting.  This apron was supposed to be done the first week of August and then I could post about it and then move on to other projects.  Alas, no amount of hitting or yelling could move the machine to work like it knows it should.  I’ll post something once I get this *$@#ing machine to work.  Without Andy’s cool head and mechanical knowledge sewing just doesn’t happen.  So once the machine realizes it can sew just fine (and perhaps, I learn to put a bobbin in correctly) apron #2 post isn’t going to happen.  I’ve learned to accept that.

But we still have to eat.  And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the past month.  Working and eating, some sleeping.  But not taking pictures and blogging.  Until today!

The makings of toffee sauce, without the brown sugar...

Sticky toffee pudding.  What more can be said?  Possibly... what is it?  I’d never heard of this dish until a seminal episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares where the sticky toffee pudding was the best dish in the whole restaurant, despite the head chef’s chagrin.  As I’ve mentioned before, I love toffee. So this dish intrigued me, despite never having made a British “pudding” (or an American pudding without use of a packet for that matter).  It’s like a cake, or a quick bread with dates and a toffee sauce.

Birthday Cake! (and cookies)

Yesterday was my birthday! I love birthdays. I’m incredibly bad at remembering other’s birthdays and getting gifts to them on time, so I feel kind of selfish in that respect. But when it comes to celebrating the fact that someone is here for another year, birthdays are great. As I’ve gotten older I realize I don’t need a big party or mounds of gifts. But I do need cake. Preferably chocolate.

Not too long ago I finished the previously mentioned book A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg. The final chapter was about her wedding cake, dubbed the “Winning Hearts and Mind” cake. I’ve been trying to find appropriate times to make this cake and nothing was working out right. Finally I gave in and just had to make it for my birthday. It seemed a bit odd to make a cake for myself, but I like the logic of it. After all, it’s my birthday and no one else should feel pressured to make or buy me a cake to celebrate. I should be feeding others so they have a reason to be happy that I’m around. So I made the winning hearts and minds cake for Andy and I, and delightful Toffee Chocolate Snicker doodles for work buddies.

The nice thing about birthdays is that they help you reminisce about birthdays past. A great birthday isn’t about the gifts, it’s more about the friends and family around you. And, if we’re going to be honest, it’s also about the cake. As a kid I had a birthday that was flower themed and a lot of fun to put together with my mom. It came complete with a cake that looked like a garden, with Oreo crumble dirt and gummy worms peaking out of the soil. There was the memorable birthday I had in Cuernavaca, Mexico where I actually received two cakes, one of which was involved in a food fight (that I later helped clean up). Then there was the year when my mom took a business trip to Florida and invited me along because I had nothing better to do and it was my birthday. We upgraded to first class for the occasion and went out to dinner with her coworkers. One got a little too tipsy and explained to me the wonders of asparagus pee, a delight I had yet to enjoy. After dinner we ate cake from Publix, which I thought sounded like a wonderful, for-the-people kind of grocery, and this birthday with strangers was a delightful one.

There were some, shall we say, not so great birthdays too. Such as the one in Indiana where my brother got a pair of Rollerblades for my birthday, thereby stealing my “this day is all about me” thunder. And by the time my brother’s birthday rolled around my family conveniently forgot that we now gave siblings gifts on birthdays too. Once I had to run the mile during weight training class. There was the year I had to go to band practice after getting a tamagotchi and had to keep feeding the damn thing when I should have been crashing cymbals. One year I had to clean the bathrooms of our house, which was probably more my fault for putting it off than my mother being mean. The worst of all birthdays was the year my Grandma Summerville died. We were leaving for Indiana shortly after the celebration to visit her in the hospital. Opening gifts that year didn’t have much joy and she passed away a couple days after my birthday.

Despite what it may seem, that’s what I like about birthdays. They help me to remember the good and bad, and the not actually-bad-but-rather-kind-of-funny-now-that-I-think-about-it times. It gets me to thinking about other people’s birthdays and the things I’ve done for them, the people I spent time with, and how the years keep rolling by, no matter what you do. I love birthdays and celebrating life.

Did I mention cake? I’m sorry to entice you with pictures and then blather on and on about memories. You’re probably interested in some cake. Andy graciously offered to make me Special K bars I declined. Mostly because I need actual cake on my birthday, but actually more because I’ve been dying to make the Winning Hearts and Minds cake. It only has FIVE ingredients! Five! That’s so easy. Andy doesn’t like cake much and requests brownies frequently for his birthday celebrations. When I answered his question as to what was in this cake he responded with, “So it’s like a brownie cake?” Yes. And he loved it. He said he wanted it for his birthday. And I’m more than happy to oblige. It has a delightfully crunchy crust and a soft, ooey center.

The only advice I have to give is to get high quality ingredients. This cake would cost you around $30 if you were to purchase a similar one from a particular Scandinavian bakery that I used to work at (in 2007 dollars). The one I made cost me roughly $10. Next time I would up the ante with a little Olive and Sinclair chocolate and hope to score some free range eggs from Andy’s coworker. Here’s the recipe that you can also find on Orangette.

7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 ¾ sticks (7 oz) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon unbleached, all purpose flour
5 large eggs

(Whipped cream for serving)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and butter an 8 inch round cake pan (I used a 9 inch one and it turned out just fine). Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper (craft time!) and grease the paper.

Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave or a double boiler. When the mixture is smooth stir in the sugar and then set aside to cool for 5 minutes. Then add the eggs one by one (be sure not to lose count!), stirring well after each addition. Add the flour and stir well. The batter should be dark and silky.

Pour the batter into your pan and bake for 25 minutes, or until the top is lightly crackled, the edges are puffed and the center of the cake looks set. It’s best to set the timer early and check on the cake every couple of minutes by jiggling the pan. It’s done when the center only jiggles slightly, if at all.

Cook the cake for about 15 minutes in the pan. Turn it out of the pan and flip it back onto a plate (or better yet, a cake stand!). Be careful with this, as I turned my cake out onto the edge of my dish and broke the edge. Cool completely before serving with a dollop of whipped cream (best if you whip it yourself).

We Need to do Something about these Bananas

While in Minneapolis (land of many, many good book stores) I couldn’t help but pick up a book that I had heard about on Design Sponge while browsing at Magers and Quinn. I am currently reading it, A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, and to be honest, at first I really didn’t like it. The structure of the book is a memoir that ends every chapter with a relevant recipe or two, sort of like how most food blogs work (and that’s how the author got her start). I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like the book, after all I love stories and food, and this book combines both with humor and emotion.

After some thought I realized I didn’t like the book because I was jealous, and that’s a tough thing to admit. The author isn’t that much older than me and she’s much more accomplished and well versed in cooking. Did I mention that she spent considerable amounts of time in Paris and speaks French? And, oh isn’t Paris just wonderful? But really what it comes down to is that I would loved to have spent considerable amounts of time in Paris and speak French. Though I did learn to cook for myself in Dublin (and I can count to ten in Gaelic), much of my short time abroad was spent studying (shock!), adventuring, and focusing on the liquid culinary offerings of Ireland. If I really thought harder about it too, if I went to Paris now and spent most of my time eating at wonderful French bistros, cafes, and bouchons, I would probably fawn over the food too, and perhaps even don a scarf. With my jealousy aside I was able to read with an open mind and appreciate the meld of food and stories.

One vignette in particular that I enjoyed was about how the author struggled with improvising and straying from a recipe. For a time I was like that and I reveled in my carefully controlled little food world. Then Andy walked into my life and scoffed at my dedication to a recipe and can whip up a delicious dinner completely off the cuff. It takes practice to be able to improvise well, which sound a bit contradictory but it’s true. Figuring out what flavors go well together means cooking more and if something doesn’t work out, generally it’s still edible.

The following recipe is one that I improvised a bit (not much actually) and is taken from A Homemade Life. This is the first time I’ve made a recipe from a book that I was currently reading. Which goes to show you how wonderfully this banana bread was described. I improvised this recipe on purpose and on accident. I didn’t have candied ginger at the time, though I did have piece of ginger root. Initially I was going to candy my own ginger but that took more time than I wanted to devote to cooking. My second, accidental improvisation came when I realized there wasn’t enough liquid. Adding some more yogurt solved the dry problem. I thought everything was going well until I was sliding the loaf pan into the oven and discovered I hadn’t added the melted butter. There sat my melted butter on the stove, explaining without words why the loaf was a tad dry. In the interest of not wasting good melted butter I fashioned up a new bread recipe using the formula from the book. An accident of de-panning caused the bread to end up more like cobbler than bread, so a second attempt will be made before sharing that recipe with the world.

Here is the delicious Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger recipe from A Homemade Life.

Ingredients
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips (I didn’t have much ginger, so I made up for it with 1 cup of chocolate chips)
⅓ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger (Here is where I used about 2 inches of fresh ginger root, minced)
2 large eggs
1 ½ cups mashed banana (about 3 large bananas)
¼ cup well-stirred plain whole-milk yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

The How To:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan (9 x 5)ish. In a small bowl melt your butter (we don’t have a microwave so I do it on the stove. Don’t forget about it!) Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add the chocolate chips and crystallized (or regular) ginger and whisk well to combine. Set aside.

In a medium bowl (let’s hope you have a set), lightly beat the eggs. Add the mashed banana, yogurt, melted butter, and vanilla; stir to mix well. Pour the banana mixture into the dry ingredients and stir gently, scraping the sides. Do not over mix. The batter will be thick and somewhat lumpy, but there should be no unincorporated flour. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake until the loaf is a deep shade of golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour. If it’s browning too quickly, make a tent over the top with tin foil. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes (10 might even be better). Let it cool completely before slicing (I did not wait and therefore my slices were smeared with melted chocolate. Yum!)

There are so many delicious recipes from this book that I’m just giddy with waiting to make them. Next up, this weekend I’ll be baking the Winning Hearts and Minds cake in honor of Independence Day and our Minnesota visitors! It sound decadent and I can’t wait.

Here's a taste of the apple bread to come!

Sorta Sorbet

I love sweets. So when someone gives me blackberries in exchange for muffins (of Muffins Madness fame), I get pretty excited. There was no way I could eat all those blackberries before they went fuzzy, so I had to figure what I could do to best utilize them. Time for sorbet!

When I don’t know how to make something the Splendid Table is one of my main go-to resources. I know the information and recipes will have been tested, and also it’s a creative and down-to-earth. Simple and straightforward is good, and that’s what I get at the Splendid Table. (This isn’t a paid advertisement by the way, I’m a public radio member so I pay them, they unfortunately, don’t pay me.)

In the case of the blackberries Hungry Woman’s Simple Sorbet pretty well stood up and said “Make me because my name explicitly describes what you are and what you want to eat.” I couldn’t argue with that logic so away went the blackberries into the freezer.

If you want to know a little trick to freeze berries so they don’t form one large berry mass follow these directions. Wash them good, dry them off, and put them on a cookie sheet and place in the freezer. This way all your berries freeze individually, so when the time comes to make your sortbet you have nice individual berries to utilize. If you’re not going to to use the berries right away, after they’re good and frozen just pour them into a zipper bag continue utilizing that space for such important tasks as frosting beer mugs. As an aside, the cookie sheet technique works well for freezing veggies and homemade meatballs as well.

The recipe infinitely improvisational. I actually didn’t have the amount of fruit called for, and I was lazy and not about to get more. All you have to do is adjust the amounts of the other ingredients slightly, since there’s not much of them it should be pretty easy. Pay particular attention to the amount of salt though. Salt lifts up flavors and in a sweet dish you shouldn’t be able to taste the salt. Inadvertently I did not proportionally decrease the amount of salt I put in my sorbet, so instead of a pinch, my sorbet had a relative dash of salt. This made for a salty sweet treat, which is what my husband likes, but not me.

Despite the saltiness this was an excellent (might I say guilt-free?) dessert. You can use any fruit you have on hand, cut out the sugar, change out the flavorings, and save many a fresh fruit from having a green, fuzzy end. I most like at the end of the recipe is that it calls not for putting the sorbet in bowls, but in teacups or wine glasses. We have these tiny purple wineglasses that never get used because a laughably small amount of wine fits in them. But they’re an heirloom and cute, so I haven’t gotten rid of them. Putting the sorbet in these little wineglasses cheered me up so much that I didn’t mind this recipe going from down-to-earth to slightly fancy.

Here’s the recipe from the Splendid Table website:

Hungry Woman’s Simple Sorbet
© 2005 Lynne Rossetto Kasper. All rights reserved.

This cross between a fruit ice and a sorbet sidesteps the usual sorbet formula of sugar syrup and smoothing out in an ice cream machine. It's crumblier and more rustic than a sorbet, and takes 3 minutes in the food processor.

The whole idea here is how to make even mediocre frozen supermarket fruit taste very fine, and how to make great frozen fruit even better. All you need are my flavor boosters: almond extract, salt and lemon. Almond lifts fruit flavor as does salt and citrus. Consider them insurance policies.

• 1 14-ounce bag frozen peaches, or other fruit, or 41/2 to 5 cups home-frozen fruit chunks
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• Pinch salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
• Juice of half a small lemon

1. Turn fruit into a food processor. Add other ingredients and puree. Taste for sweetness and balance, adding more sugar or extract as needed.
2. Immediately pack into teacups or wine glasses. Top with shavings of fresh ginger, or mint, or whipped cream. Serve very cold.