Fun with Fondant

Wow, it is good to be back.  I have been super busy studying for a big test I had to take this past wednesday, but now that it is over, I can relax for a whole week before school starts.  For me, relaxing means cooking awesome foods..... obviously.   My week of relaxation also perfectly corresponds with a cake auction at my dad's work that I plan to bake a cake for.  Since most of the cakes I make are just for birthdays, I don't ever feel that much pressure about making them look super professional (don't want to have people think they are store-bought, right??).  However, a cake auction seems like sort of a big deal for me, so I want to make the cook look super good (along with having it taste super good too).  This being said, I cannot deny that pretty much every cake I have ever looked at and been like "wow, this cake is decorated really nicely" is made with fondant.

For those of you who don't know, fondant is basically like frosting dough that you can mold and cut to put on cakes to give that "bakery" appearance.  I have heard that sometimes this good look of fondant compromises its taste.  Therefore, I did my research to find the best-tasting/easiest recipe I could possibly find.  A marshmallow fondant recipe I found looked the most promising, but I was still a little bit skeptical about it so I decided to practice it in a low- risk situation.  Every saturday I tutor kids so I decided to bring them cookies... since bringing them any cookies (not to mention decorated cookies) basically makes their days, I decided if my fondant turned into not-so-(fun)dant I would not feel too bad.  

This endeavor had an even greater risk of failure do to the fact that I decided to make cookies.... in Gertrude.  For those of you that don't remember, Gertrude decides to take all of her pent up anger out on cookies.  Challenge accepted. 

I used the following recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/the-best-rolled-sugar-cookies/?scale=15&ismetric=0 with a few modifications.  I quartered the recipe because I only needed about 15 servings rather than 60 servings.  After quartering the recipe, I added a 1/4 cup of powdered sugar just because :) Also, I reduced the over temperature to 350 instead of 400 in an attempt to make it more Gertrude-proof.  This precaution, along with my raising the oven rack and putting the dough on parchment paper, turned out the most successful cookies I have ever made (in Gertrude that is).  

Next, I rolled out the fondant using a ghetto rolling pin (aka a plastic cup.... gotta love college) and used a similarly ghetto cookie cutter (a wine glass) to cut out fondant circles.  I did not have any normal frosting to "glue" the fondant to the cookies, so I decided to just put the fondant onto the cookies straight out of the oven with the hopes it would melt on.  In retrospect, this could have gone horribly, since in a very parallel universe the fondant could have liquified, turning into not-so-(fun)dant. However, that surprisingly did not happen and I have nine beautiful, happy cookies to give to my students today.  Not to mention the fondant tasted pretty good too.  Needless to say, I am happy with this fondant experience and feel confident about buying an absurd amount of marshmallows to make this cake (that will be featured on my next blog) happen!

IN THE (cal)ZONE.....

So it looks like this week I am going pretty much all out with the whole-wheat bread products.  From England on Monday with my English muffins, I decided to take a little stroll across Europe to the land of alfredo, pesto and mozzarella... Italy (I don't know for sure if Calzones actually originated in italy, but one can guess).  Anyways, those three things I mentioned... Alfredo, pesto, and mozzarella... well, I decided they should all be included in this calzone.  Before you assume this is going to be another peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake bar recipe where your arteries close by simply looking at the pictures, think again.  This recipe is actually decently healthy.  Whole Wheat Crust, a lightened up Alfredo sauce and spinach make this a filling yet wholesome recipe.

STEP 1: I got to use my handy dandy bread machine! First, I mixed the following ingredients, in order, into a bread machine and let go on the dough cycle (takes about 1.5 hrs on mine)
1 1/3 cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups bread flour
2.5 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons yeast

STEP 2: While the dough was doing its thing, I prepared the goodness that was going to be stuffed into these calzones.  I used the following recipe from http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=163122 the alfredo sauce:

Ingredients

1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
 

4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups skim milk
1 cup chicken broth
3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Top-Rated Olive Oil at Amazon

Directions

In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add garlic and saute until golden brown.

In a small saucepan, stir together milk, chicken broth, flour, salt and pepper over low heat until smooth and thick. Stir in parmesan.  

I'm always I little skeptical of these "lighter Alfredo sauces" since I am usually faced with what I call the "Healthification dilemma".  I will explain: I often see recipes for items such as "skinny cookie dough bombs", "healthy donuts" or "low-fat nutella cheesecake". The "Healthification dilemma" arrises when I realize that in order for these recipes to taste at least remotely close to their calorie and fat laden originals, they have to have an amount of fat and sugar that I would consider to be "unhealthy" according to my maniac-runner health-freak standards.   Therefore, I am faced with the question: why don't I just enjoy the real thing in slightly smaller/less frequent amounts, rather than dealing with this recipe ridden with an identity crisis as it just tried so hard to be "heatlthy" but really is neither particularly nutritious nor delicious.

Alfredo sauce definitely is one of these major dilemna foods: would I rather have a delicious,rich, creamy, buttery plate of Fettucchine Alfredo once every month as a treat or a seriously watered down version every week? Usually I would go with the first, but after perfecting this sauce, I may go with the second.  The key to making a decently healthy (but not overly so, of course) Alfredo sauce: patience, my friend.  In the words of our beloved Dory: "just keep (stirring)"!  The sauce took a good 20-25 minutes of stirring to achieve the thickness that hallmarks a delicious Alfredo sauce.  In chemistry class, we use magnetic stir bars to keep stirring the solution constantly.  I would imagine that someone has invented a similar invention with culinary uses,which I would like to acquire.  Until that time though, I found the best solution was to plop a chair in front of the stove and just keep stirring!

STEP 3: I just happened to have about 2 tbs of pesto in my fridge, so I just basically smothered it all over the 8 or so chicken tenderloins I had thawed, added about 1/4 cup of chicken broth and cooked on medium heat until done.  Sorry I don't have an exact recipe for the chicken, but at this point I was just wingin' it and making do with what I had.

STEP 4: After the dough was done, I divided it up into 5 balls, flattened them out into 7 inch or so rounds and began to fill.  I chopped up some spinach to add into the calzones along with the Alfredo sauce, chicken and a sprinkle of light mozzarella cheese. I must admit, I got a bit greedy with the stuffing.  I have never really made calzones before but now I know: there is a very fine line between deliciousness and disaster. Though three of the calzones worked magnificently, the other two  couldn't really keep in the filling after I folded them in half and sealed them.  But I made it work.

After baking at 375 for 20 min, here is the result: As you can see, my greediness in overstuffing continued to backfire as a few sorta exploded in the oven.... however, parchment paper was my saving grace because Gertrude miraculously decided not to burn the oozing cheese.

They made an excellent dinner.... and lunch.... and dinner.  I am a little (Cal)zoned out now.  Ciao!!!

English Muffins

Once in a while, I actually do what a food blogger should do: make up recipes.  Usually I  use already developed recipes with small adjustments (peanut butter chips for chocolate chips... *gasp*) that I don't feel comfortable crediting as my own.  However, this time around, a deficiency of a few vital ingredients forced me to essentially create my own recipe for..... English Muffins!

 I love English Muffins, but often don't buy them at the store because I find them ridiculously overpriced.  $4 for 6 English muffins that are probably going to go bad in 2 days??? I don't think so.  I've run the gambit on other bread products- bagels, pretzels, bread, regular muffins, etc- but I have never done english muffins.  This is another episode of cooking without Gertrude, since the odd part about English muffins is that instead of putting them in the oven, you heat them up on the griddle (okay let's be honest, I don't have a fancy griddle-  I used a skillet).  I guess the British had had enough of finicky ovens like Gertrude and resorted to other heating sources.

Here is the recipe I used for the muffins: 

1/4 cup warm water
1 tbs yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 vital wheat gluten
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 dry milk powder
3 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 egg
Whipping this together, I was a bit skeptical- I am always a bit skeptical when powdered milk is involved. The stuff has the oddest texture.  But it ended up working out  Anyways here is the process

1.  sprinkle yeast in 1/4 cup warm water (about 105-110 degrees F) in a bowl and allow it to become foamy (about 10 min) 
2. mix flour, salt and vital wheat gluten in a different bowl
3.  In another bowl (sorry for all of the bowls!) mix together the milk powder and water to make "milk" and add the oil, honey and egg.  
4. Add half of the liquid mixture into the flour mixture, followed by the yeast, followed by the other half. 
5. mix until smooth and then return to a floured surface to knead for about 5 min. 
6. let rest in covered bowl for about 1 hr until it doubles in size.  Ideally, this should be a warm place- luckily, I just plopped the bowl on my backyard and prayed that no woodland creature would try to snack on it.  It was just fine. 
7.  flatten out to about 1/2 inch and use  some object with a 3 in diameter to cut circles.  The dough was a little bit hard to cut, so I used a pizza cutter to cut the circles. 
8. let rest for another 20-30 minutes
9.  heat up a skillet and cook each side for 3 minutes, until the tops become golden but not burnt.  
10.  enjoy with cheese, peanut butter, a slab of butter or a drizzle of honey (probably not all of those together) 

  

A lot of catching up to do.........

Hello to my loyal visitors who are still checking this page despite my complete negligence.  That being said, though I have been slacking off majorly on the recording of my baking escapades, I thankfully have gone full force on the important part- the baking!  In the last... uhhh month... I have made a plethora of scrumptious treats that I am going to briefly talk about (and show pretty pictures obviously).  For those of you who are more interested in the play-by-play kitchen commentary, I will try to squeeze a little of that in too.  However, for the sake of brevity, I will resume with the step-by-step recollection of my baking experiences next time (earlier than September, don't worry).

RECIPE 1: First up is the famed bread that I briefly mentioned in a previous post.  Though I was showing the fairly primitive stages of the bread during that previous post, it evolved quite nicely as you will see below.  The recipe is at this link:  http://www.marthastewart.com/907240/chad-robertsons-tartine-country-bread

See the resemblance?? I don't either......

The bread some mean paninis with tomatoes, pesto, fontina and sopressata: 

 Just one more picture of 3 of the 7(!!!!) loaves:  It was quite a big time commitment so multiple loaves were necessary to justify the fact took a whole day to make! 

RECIPE 2: The recipe was not outrageous like a few of the ones to follow, but I had to mention these (http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/heath_bar_cookies/) Toffee cookies because they represent the first successful cookie-making endeavor in Gertrude.  The secret (or should I say secretS) is two pans stacked on each other, parchment paper, top rack, half the necessary time and 50 degrees less in the oven.  The result- beautiful, unburnt, chewy cookies.  In my opinion, crunchy cookies are not worth eating, so I am glad that attacking Gertrude at various angles allows for edible cookies. 

RECIPE 3: Cake batter balls.  Once in a while, I come across a recipe that I wish I didn't know about. In these cases, the reason for my desire of ignorance is that the recipe produces something in just too little time that tastes just too delicious.   This recipe (http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2011/03/cake-batter-truffles.html) is actually an instance of "Cooking With(out) Gertrude", since Gertrude played no part in this.  Despite Gertrude's lack of involvement, I had a minor fiasco with the dipping chocolate.  Though dipping chocolate is supposedly way easier to work with than chocolate chips, the addition of the cake mix to the dipping chocolate as mentioned in the recipe did not bode particularly well.  The chocolate did not get to the thin consistency I needed, and I ended up way overheating the chocolate to the point of no return.  Unfortunately, dipping chocolates are very hard to come by in Davis, California after 7 pm.  I thus had to resort to using white chocolate chips which though albeit delicious, do not look as attractive when melted. Luckily, covering the balls in sprinkles made everything better.   It helped that these cake batter truffles tasted phenomenal.  I don't think I will ever make the traditional cake balls again- why bake a cake, destroy it, then ball it up again when you just ball the batter up and skip those middle steps?? 

RECIPE 4: Oh boy, now I'm on to the good one.  Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough Cheesecake bars.  If every major obesity-related medical problem could be packaged into bar form, this would be it.  I mainly followed this recipe http://insidebrucrewlife.com/2013/03/peanut-butter-cheesecake-cookie-bars/ with a few modifications.  I did not have chocolate chips, so I just used peanut butter chips in the dough.  To compensate for the lack of chocolate in the dough, I added a layer of 12 big peanut butter cups that I broke up into pieces.  Then, I proceeded to add the cheesecake, more cookie dough, peanut butter chips and a chocolate drizzle.  There literally is no way for this to go wrong.  A picture is worth a thousand words. 

RECIPE 5: This one was fresh out of the oven today.  Yesterday at my work, my students (who are the lucky recipients of 95% of all of these baked good) finished off a box of drumsticks in about 10 min (2 drumsticks each).  A while later in the class,  I asked them what type of dessert I should bring for the next day (today).  They were all so full from the ice cream, that they jokingly suggested salad.  While I didn't go that extreme, I did use vegetables as an inspiration as I decided with zucchini cupcakes! I used the following recipe of http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/zucchini-cupcakes for the cake part and http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-caramel-frosting-303255 for the caramel icing.  Though I accidentally used bread flour instead of cake flour to make them a bit more "bready" then I wanted, they had a lovely flavor that was complemented well by with the icing.  And the picture turned out really well:

Man, I am sick of writing now.  Well, I guess that is my own fault.  Until next time!!

Cookie Dough Brownie Bombs.... Danger, Danger!

In summer time, I work for a tutoring company.  In order to stay on the good side of the kids I teach I make them treats eat week..... it's a great job. Anyways, I usually try to only make really intense desserts when I have a legitimate excuse, meaning I have many people to give them so they do not sit in my fridge for days on end (ok, maybe just a few days before they get eaten). I consider this job a very legitimate excuse (and I get reimbursed for the materials, even better!!).   Anyways, I decided to go with what I was comfortable with for the first week.... brownies, cooking dough and chocolate! Luckily for me, Gertrude's inability to make cookies was not a problem because this recipe has cookie DOUGH, not cookies.

Here is the recipe:
http://thedomesticrebel.com/2013/02/20/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-brownie-bombs/

 Anyways basic idea.... make cookie dough (without eggs of course!), roll it into balls, make brownies, smoosh them up, roll smooshed brownies around cookie dough balls, dip in chocolate.... there really is no way they could not be delicious.  And the were.  These are a little bit too good, so I was very happy to get these out of the house very quickly.  The whole process went very smoothly (hence I don't have a long story like I usually do!).  Gertrude can handle brownies pretty well, so I only had to do some minmal edge trimming to ensure the brownies were fudgey enough to smoosh.   Nom Nom Nom Nom

Stay tuned for more kitchen adventures!!

The father of all berry pies

I really have just been on a roll with these fruity desserts lately.  While for mother's day I made lemon cupcakes, I went with a berry pie for father's day as per the request of my wonderful father. Pumpkin and apple pies are the only types of pies I have experience making, so I was slightly worried about the idea of a berry pie.  I imagined a sloppy, juicy mess of berries that would seep through the crust to make it more of a cobbler instead of a pie (not that there is anything wrong with that, but my dad specifically requested a berry PIE).  Regardless, I decided to go with a fairly simple recipe (aka the first recipe listed on google): http://allrecipes.com/recipe/three-berry-pie/ 

I went all the way out to a local fruit stand to get the berries for this project (have to get the best for dad, right?).  However, apparently raspberries have been pretty popular so I literally got the last basket of raspberries.  The recipe calls for two cups raspberries, and I only had one cup because of this tragic raspberry shortage. Therefore,   the final berry amounts I used were one cup strawberry, two cups blueberries and two cup raspberries.  Although this was 1/2 cup less total berries than the recipe calls for, I am glad I did not use more! As you will soon see, my pie exploded a bit!

For this pie, there was no way I was going to trust Gertrude after the bread roll disaster of last week: (great recipe btw if you are interested http://allrecipes.com/recipe/light-wheat-rolls/ )

That does not look too bad, does it??? OH, wait. That was the one not BURNT roll.  Here are the bottoms of all the rest!

Not cool Gertrude.  I think you understand now why I was not going to trust Gertrude with this berry important project that was my pie.  I ended up using my parents' oven to bake my pie after I finished creating a beautiful lattice on top.  I realized aftwewards though, by creating a lattice I effectively reduced the volume of the pie that was allowed to hold berries (compared to if I had a full crust on top that prevented any spillage).  Therefore, some of the berries oozed out a little bit in the baking process to create a not super aesthetically pleasing pie.  Luckily, the pie was simple DIVINE! The cornstarch I added helped to thicken the berry filling to squelch all qualms I previously had about having a too-juicy pie.  The slices did not slice as well as I hoped (hence the lack of nice "pie slice" pictures), but this was definitely one of the best pieces of pie I have ever eaten- and believe me, I have eaten a lot of pie in my day.

When life hand you lemons, add more butter.

This past Wednesday was another one of my roommate's birthdays (leaving me as the only 20 year old left in the house!).  I have decided that weekend birthdays are much easier for the cake bakers, since some of the cakes I would love to make are a bit too elaborate for me to successfully complete while trying to go through my daily schedule.  After not-so-subtly asking the birthday girl the day before her birthday what type of dessert she would like, she gave me five different options that I could choose from in order to create an element of surprise.  I found that the one that I could most easily squeeze (pun intended) into my day was this one http://www.ziplist.com/recipes/574736-Lemony_Lemon_Brownies.

These was actually not made in Gertrude, since my trusty sidekick and I wanted to actually surprise the birthday girl so we headed down the street to some friends' house to use their oven. Funny story about making these... If you read the instructions, you will see it calls for 1/2 cup butter.  This should be a very simple piece of instruction to follow for a fairly avid baker like myself.  However, the butter I was using was not in the normal shape.... it was longer and thinner than usual.  For some reason in my head, I thought that I needed to add TWO sticks of butter to make 1/2 cup.  So I did.... and I did not realize until they were baking that I may possibly have doubled the amount of butter.  But honestly, can you ever go wrong with doubling the amount of butter? Of course not.  After putting both lemon glaze and  frosting on these bad boys, I was pretty positive that these would be pretty delicious.  And I was right! They were gone within a matter of hours (to our credit, it was an 8 by 8 pan, not 9 by 13). Think lemon fudge.

To conclude, I want to give a special shout-out to my trusty lemon zestor... without your fine lemon zesting (and juicing) technique, none of this would possible.