(My) Tartine morning buns

It's been a long Sunday! Here are beautiful pictures of my fruits of labor, Tartine's famous morning buns.

If your in the Berkeley area, come get them while they're hot ;)

(recipe to follow).

Birthday Cupcakes

These little cakes of fluffy love are inspired by the birthday cake my mom made for me and my brother every birthday. But now that we're grown, my brother doesn't get a cake and I apparently, make my own! And I was just as excited to make "birthday cake" for my friends and me as I used to be for mom's birthday cake. Her cake was a classic white cake with fudgy Hershey's cocoa frosting with fabulous "Happy Birthday Joanna" colored lettering. These cupcakes use the same white cake with a fluffy vanilla cream filling and chocolate ganache. This recipe is from the 975 edition of The Joy of Cooking. My mom has the original 1964 edition-and it's so wonderful to flip through the batter-stained pages.

White Cake

Preheat oven to 375. Have all ingredients at room temp. (70 degrees)

Sift before measuring:

   2 1/4 cups cake flour

Resift it twice with:

   2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

   1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream well:

   1/2 butter

Add gradually and cream until very light:

   2 1/4 cups sifted sugar

In a separate measuring cup combine:

   1 cup milk

   1 teaspoon vanilla

Add the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture in three parts, alternating with the liquid combination. Stir the batter until smooth after each addition.

Whip until stiff, but not dry: 

    4 egg whites

You want the egg whites to make peaks like this!

Fold them lightly into the batter and bake in: two 9-inch round pans or in cupcake tins. Cake pans should be greased with butter and a bit of flour. If you bake cupcakes, turn the heat down 25 degrees. Both will bake for about 25 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cake cool completely before frosting.

Vanilla Cream Filling

(from Baking Bites blog)

3 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 cup milk- any percent fat will work

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk together the flour and milk and cook in a small saucepan over medium/low heat until thick (a few minutes) Stir continuously to prevent the mixture from clumping and do not bring to a boil. Once thick (like custard consistency), strain with a mesh strainer into a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let cool completely to room temperature.

When the milk mixture is cool, cream the butter and sugar together in a medium bowl until light. Add in the  milk mixture and vanilla and beat at high speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (about seven minutes).

Scrape into a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip, or a large ziplock bag with the corner cut off, and set aside until ready to fill your cupcakes.
 

For maximum filling, cut a funnel-shaped hole with a very sharp knife

After the filling is added, the top fits back on concealing the filling

Chocolate Ganache

(from Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten)

1/2 cup heavy cream

8 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules

sprinkles for decoration (optional)

Melt the heavy cream, chocolate chips, and instant coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring constantly . Dip the top of each cupcake in the ganache. Decorate with sprinkles. Do not refrigerate.

Yum

Chocolate's what's up

This blog entry is, if nothing else, for myself to refer back to.

Here’s a list of chocolates used in baking, kind of in order from the least amount of cocoa liquor (which is cocoa beans that have been fermented, dried, roasted, then ground and pressed into a paste) to the highest amount of cocoa liquor content.

Through  researching the varying percents of cocoa liquor in different “types” of chocolate it is apparent that depending on the brand of chocolate it can have a wide range of cocoa liquor in it as well as varying amounts of added sugar. So, for example, one brand’s bittersweet bar, could be sweeter than another brands semisweet bar...

So I will base this off of Guittard and Baker's Chocolates-my favorites!

White Chocolate

Contains no cocoa liquor (but it does have cocoa butter), milk product, vanilla and lecithin Cocoa butter is created by separating the low-fat cocoa solids out of the cocoa liquor, leaving the high fat cocoa butter .

Milk Chocolate

A mixture of chocolate liquor, sugar and milk solids, which is why it has a creamier flavor than bittersweet or semisweet chocolate. Guittard’s Milk Chocolate contains 38% cocoa liquor.

Baker’s German Chocolate

54% cocoa liquor, which is less than most semi-sweet chocolates

Guittard Semisweet

61%  cocoa liquor

Guittard Bittersweet

72% cocoa liquor

Unsweetened

Pure chocolate liquor with no added sugar (used for home-made brownies and flourless chocolate cakes, yummm).

More questions about chocolate? Email me... I'm off to dream about the birthday cake cupcakes with cream filling and chocolate ganache frosting that I'm going to make Friday morning!

Boozy Fruit

It's not exactly baking, but it is definitely an adventure in the kitchen. It started, where so many great ideas do, with an article in the NY Times, A GOOD APPETITE: Spiking Summer Fruit in Order to Preserve It. And it will likely end with a few pretty tipsy people.

As I read the article I got increasingly excited to try this- something fun to do with liquor, great! A creative holiday gift idea, great! Ways to use boozified fruit in sinful desserts to get you through the harsh, bitter cold California winters- incredible. Hair of the Dog Muffins?! Upside Down Tipple Cake?! Yes, please.

Luckily it wasn't just me that thought that. Two days after emailing the article to my friend I got her to take the train after work into Berkeley from SF just to make some. At Berkeley Bowl West we picked up baskets of strawberries, yellow and white peaches,  a pineapple (we had just missed the last of the cherries for the season) and a few cinnamon sticks. Back at home, where I already had canning jars, brandy and rum, we set to work chopping and pouring.

 

Anyone can make this,  even if you swear you can't bake or cook, because there is no one specific way to do it and no exact measurements, just a few important guidelines. We looked at various recipes online and worked off of these two: Fruits preserved in alcohol (Cole, allrecipes.com) and Brandied Late Summer Fruit (Myers, culinate.com). And this is what we did:

Boozy Fruit

Items

• Canning jars
• any summer fruit you want to preserve and enjoy (boozified) in winter- It must be ripe, ready-to-eat fruit
• any liquor that is at least 80 proof- vodka, rum, brandy....
• sugar
• lemon (optional)
• cinnamon sticks (optional)
• vanilla beans, cloves, orange rinds (all optional)

Recipe

If you have a fruit with skin like nectarines or peaches, get one pot of water boiling, and another pot filled with ice water. Place the fruit in the boiling water for about 30 seconds. Then plunge the fruit into the ice water. This allows the skin to slip off the fruit easily.

Chop your fruit into chunks.

Create a layer of fruit at the bottom of the jar, sprinkle with sugar, repeat until the jar is full or your out of fruit. Don't forget to put in any extra flavorings like a cinnamon stick, juice of a lemon and a couple of peels of lemon rind.

Pour the liquor into the jar until all of the fruit is covered, sprinkle a bit more sugar on top for good luck.

Seal the jar. Let sit for a couple of hours, or through the day. Turn the jar upside down a few times to redistribute any undissolved sugar. Place the jars in your fridge for one month.

And of course, you can make the fruit into anything from ice cream toppings to a tart. The flavored liquor is perfect for  fruit martinis and other creative cocktails. Cheers!

Makin' Bacon

It's been reported back that the Jalapeno Bacon Brownies were just OK and that there was "too much going on"...Not really surprised, but also not discouraged. We're going to go in a slightly different direction. Apparently the jalapenos didn't add enough spice, while the bacon pieces oozed too much grease into the cooked brownies. So I'll keep the bacon component but instead of jalapenos try adding a nice chile powder to the mix (just for a hint of heat). Still haven't decided how to take care of the greasiness inside the brownie....

 

 

 

  

  

  

 

 

This is all I got when I asked for a picture of a brownie out of the pan- Taken with my boyfriend's iPhone. The brownies were taken along on his annual weekend cabin trip, while I was left at home (thankfully). While home I had time to perfect the Peanut Butter Cup Banana Cookies. Follow this for the recipe.