Birthday Cake!
A few days before my husband’s 30th birthday, I set down James Peterson’s Baking in front of him and told him “Here, choose any cake from this book, and I’ll make it for your birthday!” He looked at the pages for a few minutes and then exclaimed “that sounds good! I’d like that one”, pointing at a 2 page spread (that also refers to 5 other recipes to be found throughout the book for different elements of the cake). It was a Chocolate Hazelnut Cake with Chocolate Filling and Hazelnut Buttercream. As I looked at the page over his shoulder, my eyes grew wider, and my jaw dropped several inches. I could not believe what I had just done to myself! My husband should have known that I had never made a layered cake before! How could he do this to me? Of course, I kept my mouth shut, after all I was the only one to blame for this. Truth be told, he really had no idea how difficult his choice of cake would be for me to make. He just saw the title of the cake and thought it sounded yummy!
I went grocery shopping, gathered the many ingredients, and embarked on my most ambitious baking project to date. Little did I know that it would end up taking more than 7 hours to complete! I messed up some important elements of the cake and had to start them all over, losing a lot of time in the process!
I will not even attempt to share a recipe for this here… it would take me days to put it together! I am not one to boast but I feel I’ve earned the right to brag about this cake as I am still amazed I managed to pull it off. I mean, look at it! Isn’t it beautiful? Ok, ok, I’ll stop now. You get the point. I am very proud of myself!
The first step was to make dacquoise discs, which are rounds of French meringue made with hazelnut powder (I processed whole hazelnuts for this).
While the dacquoise discs were baking, I made the chocolate cake. This is one of the steps I had to do all over again because after baking it, I realized that I put twice as much flour as was needed (the original recipe was for 2 cakes but I only needed one so I did everything in half but forgot to do it with the flour). I only found out about my mistake when I cut the cake in half and saw that it was way too dense and hard. I lost over an hour over this stupid mistake.
Chocolate chips and cranberry scones.
Scones were completely new to me when I came to America as I don’t remember ever seeing any in a French bakery. I have lived in the U.S. for almost 9 years and until a few weeks ago, I had never had scones because they just didn’t look very appealing to me. Then I was invited over at a friend’s house for brunch and as we were discussing what I would bring, she mentioned scones. I thought it would be the perfect occasion to finally give scones a chance and see what they were all about! I remembered coming across a recipe on King Arthur Flour website so I decided to look no further since I have had success with all of their recipes so far! Everybody loved it, myself included and now I often crave scones for breakfast. I can’t believe I waited 9 years to give them a try!
Ingredients:
- 2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup cold butter
- 1 to 2 cups chocolate chips and cranberries or other combination of dried fruit and nuts (optional)
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extreact
- 1/2 cup half and half or milk
For the topping:
- 2 tsp milk
- 2 tbsp sparkling white sugar (optional)
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and work it in with a fork, a pastry blender, the paddle attachment of your stand mixer or even your fingers. There will still be some chunks of butter and that’s ok!
Add the cranberries and chocolate chips if using.
In a seperate mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla extract and milk (or half and half). Add this to the dry ingredients and stir until moist and all the dry ingredients have been incorporated.
On a floured surface, put the dough in a ball, and divide it in half.
Round each half into a 6″ circle (and about 3/4 in thick).
Brush some milk onto each dough circle and then sprinkle the sparkling sugar.
Using a knife, bench knife or pizza cutter, cut the dough into 6 wedges and pull them apart until about 1/2 inch separates them.
Place the pan of scones in the freezer for 30 minutes, uncovered. This will help with the texture and rise.
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes , until golden brown.
Let cool for a few minutes and serve warm.
Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour website.
The Pioneer Woman in Seattle!
A few days ago, I went to the Pioneer Womans’ book signing in Seattle. I bought her cookbook the week it came out and have been enjoying her recipes a lot! I asked my husband to come along with me to take pictures and he complied even though I am sure he would have preferred to do something else with his Saturday afternoon! I knew it was going to be busy and we would probably have to wait in line for a while but I was not prepared for what was awaiting us. We had to wait 5 hours to finally meet her! Thankfully, the bookstore was giving tickets so we didn’t actually have to stand in line during the whole time. There was a food court just outside the bookstore and we spent most of our time there, drinking coffee and eating cookies! While we were waiting, the Pionneer Woman’s oldest daughter and mother in law came and sat at our table! They were very nice!
Even after 5 hours of talking to strangers and signing books, Ree Drummond was smiling, joking, taking pictures of the husbands (my husband is the 6th one down on the post) and overall really nice! I was so great to meet her!
Polenta fries
Polenta fries are a great alternative to their potato counterparts. I made some last night for the first time and really liked it. I like my fries very crunchy and I was concerned that the polenta would not attain a good level of “crunchiness” but, to my surprise, they came out great!
I used one log of pre-made polenta and I would say there was enough to serve 2 or 3 so you might want to use 2 logs if you are feeding more people.
Ingredients:
- 1 tube prepared polenta
- 1.5 Tbsp olive oil
- salt, pepper
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
Preheat oven to 450°F. Cut the polenta log in half crosswise, then cut each half into 8 wedges.
Drizzle the olive oil onto a baking sheet and set the polenta wedges on it, in one layer. Sprinkle salt and pepper, then turn the wedges over to coat the other side.
Roast for 45 to 50 minutes, turning the wedges over half way through. Set the wedges on paper towels to absorb excess olive oil, sprinkle with about 1/2 tsp oregano and serve!
Recipe adapted from Everyday Food.
Pear Clafoutis
Clafoutis (also spelled without an S), is one of my favorite French desserts. I used to make them all the time when I was a teenager. Although traditional clafoutis is made with cherries, I have always had a thing for pear clafoutis. It had been probably about 15 years since the last time I made one and I have lost the recipe book that I used when I lived in France so I searched the web for about an hour in order to find the perfect recipe.
I finally settled on a recipe by Ina Garten on the food network website. It sounded easy enough to make and the reviews were excellent! The only thing I did differently is that I didn’t use any pear brandy. I did go to the liquor store but when I found out that the only pear brandy they sold costs a hefty price of $47 per bottle, I decided that I was going to have to do without! Although I am sure my clafoutis would have been more flavorful with the brandy, I can honestly say that it was wonderful without it! My daughter and I ate some clafoutis for dinner, when it was still warm out of the oven, and then had some the next morning for breakfast. It was a cold and rainy day and it brought a little sunshine into our home.
Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp butter, at room temperature
- 1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
- 3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
- 6 Tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp grated lemon zest (about 2 lemons)
- 1/4 tsp Kosher salt
- 2 Tbsp pear brandy (optional)
- 2 to 3 firm but ripe Barley pears
- confectioner’s sugar
Set oven at 375°F.
Butter a 10″ pie pan and sprinkle the pan with 1 Tbsp sugar. The sugar will caramelize when it bakes and it will taste wonderful!
In a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment), beat the eggs and 1/3 cup sugar on medium-high for about 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.
Kitchen disasters, Part 1.
Today, after after reading Baking Banter’s blog entry about Whoooops in the kitchen, I was inspired to start sharing my own kitchen disasters here. Some are funny, some are definitely not. This one isn’t funny but it taught me a good lesson.
I have a very small kitchen with very limited counter space. One time, I left a glass pie plate on a stove burner (one in the back) because I was going to use it later that day. I decided to make pasta for lunch so I set my pot of water to boil on one of the front burner… except I turned on the BACK burner, on high of course. I only found out about my mistake when, a few minutes later, the glass pie plate exploded into a thousand little pieces. Good thing I wasn’t in the kitchen when it happened… Imagining what would have happened to me gives me shudders! I spent the rest of the day retrieving pieces of glass all over the place!
Next installment will be about how I managed to get a 2nd degree burn on my upper thigh while cooking pasta. And, no, there won’t be any pictures!
Do you have any kitchen disaster stories you’d like to share?
