Testimonial

I realize I haven't been consistent in writing posts. I do have a buttermilk biscuit post to write though!

I'm just writing a quick post....a testimonial from the bride and groom whose wedding cake I made earlier this summer. (that sentence does not sound right....)


Onward!!!

Here's what they said:

"It was so delicious and got many compliments from our guests. People said it was better than any wedding cake they'd ever had and how it tasted like real cake, rather than typical wedding cake."

- E&S

:)

I am content! Mission accomplished! Woot! Now I gotta start making business cards :)

yay!!

I thanked them for letting me be a part of their big day... yay!!! Smiles all around!


The end. 

Carrots! + flour + eggs and other goodness = CARROT CAKE!

So, it was my sisters birthday last week. I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, and here I was thinking I'd make her a chocolatey nutella cake... but she came out with Carrot Cake.... you learn something new everyday!  Carrot Cake, it was! I went online to look for some recipes... then I decided to check out my trusty Martha Stewart Wedding cake book. I remembered there was a carrot cake recipe in there. So, I took a gander and there it was, along with a yummy cream cheese frosting to go with it.

I was set, Martha, it was! So, I halved her recipe.. it was really pretty simple to prepare. Aside from grating 1lbs of carrots by hand (I MUST GET A FOOD PROCESSOR...STAT!), it was easy peasy! As an aside, I had a date that night, and mid-date I noticed my right hand was kind of orangey... I tried to hide it as best as I could... but in the end I guess it didn't really matter because I wasn't into the dude..... sigh... I digress.

Halving the recipe made good for a 10in cake! Also, I was going to layer the cake with the frosting, but I decided against it because I wasn't quite sure if halving the frosting would've been enough to coat and layer the cake... in the end I totally could've layered it.. notes for next time!

Oh, and also, the original recipe called for 1 cup of raisins.... I hate raisins.... i HATE raisins... like, why ruin perfectly good desserts and such with them.... challah with raisins... what? sticky buns with raisins? who? carrot cake with raisins... can I please get those raisins on the side.... same with oatmeal cookies.... I'll feel the raisins to the birds... as long as nothing bad happens to them.... So i substituted 1 cup of raisins with 1 cup of chopped walnuts! (My sister isn't a big fan of the whole raisin thing too, so it worked out well :) )

As another note, I changed the recipe up a bit.... below it shows 1.5 cups of veg oil.. I ran out so I used like 3/4 cup of veg oil and the rest with olive oil.... afterwards I should've tried it with apple sauce... I tasted the oil, I'm not sure if anyone else did. Also, I used my vanilla bean paste, the original recipe calls for 1 vanilla bean. I also changed up some of the spices... the original called for ginger and ground cloves.

Cake

3 c AP Flour

1 # carrots

3 eggs

1/3 c buttermilk

2 c sugar

1.5 c veg oil

1 tbsp vanilla bean paste

2 tsp bpowder

1 tsp b soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp cardamom

1 cup chopped walnuts

Frosting

2 pkg Cream cheese

1/2 tspn vanilla

4 tblspn butter

1# 10X

Directions:

Cake

1.  preheat oven to 325, grease up the pan, dust with flour

2. Whisk together: carrots, eggs, buttermilk, sugar, oil, vanilla

3. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinn, nutmeg, cardamom in separate bowl

4. Stir them together! Add nuts!

5. Put in pans, bake until done, BAM!

Frosting

1. Cream cream cheese and vanilla until creamy and light

2. Add butta... mix until well combined

3. Slowly add SIFTED 10x... BAM! DONE!

In conclusion: It was delicious. Next time I'll definitely use more spices because I couldn't really taste it... also maybe I'd use pecans instead of walnuts. I'd also definitely layer that sucker... I've still got that cream cheese frosting sitting in my fridge.

Below is a picture, please do not judge.... well, go ahead and judge, in fact, just put this up on cake wrecks, it deserves to be there. I had a lumpy lump of either butter or 10X in the piping bag, thus resulting in splooge. Also, the orange came out a bit too red and I should've put more of that ground up walnuts higher up on the sides. Also, I should've cared a bit more... I was in a rush :) I'd also like to note, that the frosting doesn't get super nice and stiff, so it wasn't the easiest to use for decorating.

Enjoy!

You must be yolking!

(I credit that wonderful play on words to my lovely funkmaster Jill)

Yolk yolk yolk yolk yolk!

If you read my prior post you'd know that once the wedding cake was done and complete I'd have about 5billion egg yolks left over. What's a girl to do with 5 billion egg yolks!!! Think of all that cholesterol! BUT! Think of all the delicious creations that could be made with those lovely, lovely, yellowy/orangey, silky smooth yolks! That was my challenge the begining of this week... be gone with the yolks! I am proud to say that from those 5 bajillion yolks I made 4 delicious desserts, and only 3 yolks remain! do do do do!! (yes I do deserve that royal trumpet sound)!

What, pray tell, would these delicious desserts be, you ask? Oh, don't you worry, I will share with you these 4 delicious desserts!

#1 Creme Brulee Ice Cream!
              
                 (yum)

So, this local gelato joint has some amazing creme brulee gelato (so I've heard, I haven't had the pleasure of trying it).  I took it upon myself to do the same, yes I'm a copy cat... sue me. I went online and I searched creme brulee ice cream recipes and this is the one I found.  So this lady, has this I guess vanilla sweet cream type of ice cream recipe and at first she made some toffee and mixed it in the ice cream... then, the second time around, she decided to put the ice cream in little pots and serve them as a creme brulee would normally be served, with torched, burnt sugar on top.

I didn't really want to do either of those. My original thought was, well the toffee is too thick, and I don't have enough pots for this ice cream brulee idea. What I wanted to do was, throw some sugar on the silpat and torch away, to have nice thin slivers of burnt sugar.

My friend came over and we proceeded to make this ice cream. Unfortunately, I have a small torch and it would've taken 10 yrs and a day to torch all of that sugar. Then we thought we could put it in the broiler, but thankfully I googled it, and silpat in broiler = no bueno. So, we opted for the toffee idea. I tried to spread it out as thinly as possible.

The outcome? The ice cream, like i mentioned above, tasted like a sweet cream vanilla ice cream, and the toffee, while delicious, was still too thick for my liking. Next time, I hope to either a) not make ice cream so late, thus having time to torch sugar or b) buy a bigger torch! :)

#2 Lemon Bars!

    (super yum!)


I must preface this with a little lemon bar story. Yes, I have a lemon bar story. When I worked at my old branch, an old coworker of mine made THE BEST lemon bars. Before her lemon bars I was strictly a chocolate dessert eater, I never really dabbled in the fruity dessert world. Her lemon bars are AMAZING! So, I got into lemon bars. One day we had a lemon bar bake off, she accidentally burnt her and they were still better than mine. The lemony goodness she has on top is like a custardy/curdy type of lemon topping... it's smooth and light and creamy, oh what I'd give for that recipe!

I researched lemon bar recipes, and I landed on this one.  Well, there are several recipes in this link and there are 2 lemon bar recipes. I tried the first recipe. For some reason I thought that this might be something close to what my coworker made... alas, it was not :( BUT! I definitely am going to try the second recipe in this link! The second recipe has heavy cream in its recipe! I don't know why I didn't think to try that one... the heavy cream might be the trick! I gotta try it next time!

#3 Hazelnut Ice Cream

          (eeep!!!)

I might have mentioned this before, if not this wont be the first time.... i love... LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE....love love love... looooooooove hazelnuts! Fucking Nutella! C'mon! Whoever doesn't like hazelnuts, I mean, I wouldn't even know what to say to them, just the thought of it leaves me speechless.  mmm mmm mmm!

I found this simple hazelnut ice cream recipe.  Super simple, super awesome. I did tweak the recipe a bit, instead of 4 cups of light cream I used 2 cups of light cream and 2 cups of 2% milk... for no other reason than my cheapness kicked in.  It is, of course, delicious! Although, it's a bit on the soft side, but that's okay... and the ground up hazelnuts are a little gritty, but that's okay too because it's hazelnuts and it's delicious! Oh, also, I omitted the vanilla extract... I wanted to taste the hazelnut and not have the chance of the hazelnutty flavor being overpowered by the vanilla extract. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy vanilla in my life, but it's seriously in almost every recipe!!! sheesh!

It's delicious :)

#4 Chocolate Almond Creme Brulee

                     (yum?)

I only question the deliciousness of this recipe, because I haven't tasted it yet. Here's the recipe. I haven't tasted it because, clearly I made a shit ton of desserts... 3 of them in one day. I'm not about to sit on my couch like a fat ass and gobble all of this shit down... I'd like to, but I surprisingly enough have the will power to JUST SAY NO! This is a no-bake recipe, which is supa cool! So, I made the custard and poured it in my ramekins, stuck them in the fridge to stiff up, then individually wrapped them and stuck them in the freezer... I hope that's okay!?

The one thing I changed in this recipe is the almond topping. Hopefully, when I take one or several out, I will remember that I wanted to grind up some toasted almonds, mix the almond meal with some sugar and burn that together, I think it'll call for a nice, sweet, nutty, toasty, chocolaty flavor!


I was lazy and took crappy pictures on my phone of the last 3 recipes.. I'm not sharing them because they're crap :) Fine... I feel bad... I'll just share them... sigh...... but, let me say, they don't do any justice :)

hazelnut ice cream!

lemon bars...

Almond Chocolate Brulee

enjoy!

Wedding Bells!

Hey hey hey!!

Woo!!! so! Last week was a craaaaaaayyyyyy-zy week! :)

My sisters friends got married on saturday. They attended my sisters wedding that I made my first, ever!, wedding cake for! They loved the cake, thus asking me to do their wedding cake! This was truly such an honor! When I bake stuff and people taste it and tell me they love it, I always think they're just saying it to be nice... but this was an amazing validation for me. That, fuck yeah, my shit was good! :)

I was so excited to do this project... and so terribly terribly terribly nervous! So, I met with the couple at the end of winter? Just before spring? It was forever ago! I met with them and we went over the flavors they wanted for their cake, and how they wanted it to look. A couple of months went by and I did a test run of the recipe. I have Martha Stewarts Wedding Cake book...so, the couple wanted a pound cake with an almondy feel to it. I tweaked Marthas pound cake recipe and incorporated some almond flour with it. The taste test I did was one recipe with almond flour and one with almond extract. They liked the one with almond flour.

The final of what they wanted was this: almond pound cake, pastry cream, raspberry jam, vanilla bean buttercream, 2 tiers, spacer, seasonal berries on each tier, natural spatula looking feel to the buttercream around the cake.

Rewind to last monday. Monday morning I bought all the ingredients needed.... here's the total of what was needed for a 3 layered 12 and 10 in cake:

Cake

2# butter

12 1/3 c cake flour

1/3 + 1/4 c almond flour

7 1/2 tbsp baking powder

1 1/4 tsp salt

3c + 10tbsp milk

5 tbsp vanilla extract

8 3/4 c sugar

30 egg whites

Pastry Cream

1qt milk

1 c sugar

1/2 c cornstarch

4 eggs

4 egg yolks

8 tbsp butter

Vanilla Bean Buttercream

3# butter

3 3/4 c sugar

15 egg whites

2 1/4 tbsp vanilla bean paste

Crazy hu?? So, i shopped on Monday. Tuesday Morning and evening (before and after work), I made 2 12in cakes. Wednesday, afternoon/evening I made the 10in cake and the pastry cream. Thursday, I cut the cake layers (kinda took the day off from any baking). Friday (i had off of work specifically to complete this :) ), I assembled the cakes, made the buttercream, crumb coated them, and final coated them. 

I was exhausted!!! There were nights where I was tossing and turning, because I was so nervous and hoping and praying all would go accordingly! In the end everything went smoothly and worked out really well! My sister came over friday night to help me bring it to the couples house. They were anxiously waiting the arrival of their cake, super cute. 

I only took a few pictures during the cake making process.... here are a few of them, along with the final! By the way, I must add, I didn't take a final picture, because I completely forgot, and plus, they put the berries on day of so I can't take credit for the lovely arrangement.

Picture time baby!!!

(I really wish there was a more user friendly way to upload pics on here! ) UGH!

We've got Pastry Cream, Buttercream, first layer, rasp. jam, second layer with pastry cream, then third layer, crumb coating, and then the finished product!

                                                         

 

(these two pics below are the beautiful creations my sister and I did with the scraps. To the left is my sisters and to the right is mine :) )

The Verdict?? My sis was at the wedding, they invited me to the reception part but I was too nervous to see the cutting of the cake and everyone eating it! Anyways, my sister reported back that it was a success! Everyone loved it and there's a shit ton left over! Woot! 

That's the end to this wedding cake fairytale!

<3

SuperMarketRant

Here is my SuperMarketRant!

Why, I ask you, why can't I just buy one celery stalk? Because that's all a single woman needs. Just one celery stalk. I don't need a whole bunch consisting of 10 stalks... because we all know, that as much as I hope and wish and pray that I'll use that up, it's going to be trashed by the end of the week! The same thing goes for carrots! I can't keep on freezing leftovers! My freezer isn't an endless cavity waiting to freeze veggies.

I mean, I get that it'd probably be a bitch to sell one celery stalk at a time. And, when I have a family of my own, I'm so sure I'll appreciate the bunch of celery stalks, but please, Mr. SuperMarket Corporate Man, please show some appreciation to me, the single gal consumer.

It would be super cool if the SuperMarket gods created some sort of section for the single people. I don't need a whole bunch of carrots or celery or whatever. I just need one or two to get my dinner started and going. Sure, leftovers are a great thing. But how would you like to eat the same thing for a week straight? It gets tiring!

I know this whole post is probably really annoying and lame. But fuck it. All I wanted last night was one celery stalk,  and one carrot, just one... and I only had to use half of the stalk and 1 carrot for my delish wildrice pancakes! Now, I gotta find ways to use the rest of the bunch, or freeze it or trash it. Carrots I'm cool with, but I'm not a big celery fan but I can try and do something.....like!

Juice it! or Peanut Butter it! Orrrr Soup it! or Sorbet it?!!?!?

hmm...

Okay Mr. SuperMarket Corporate Man.... I accept your challenge this week.... but until next time! Please please please, find it somewhere in that big ol' corporate heart of yours to please show a little bit of appreciation to your lovely, single gal consumer :)

thanks!

Petit Fours

Petit Fours - is a small confectionery generally eaten at the end of a meal (e.g., with coffee) or served as part of dessert. The name is from the French petit four, meaning "small oven". (thank you wikipedia for this lovely definition)

So, this term I'm taking an Advanced Cake Decorating class. A class that I surprisingly enjoy a lot. A significant part of my school career my strongest suit has been bread baking and my weakest has been cake decorating (also the one I fear the most for some reason.). This class really helped me gain my own confidence in the intricacies of cake decorating. It's creative, it's artistic, it's whimsical... all the things that I believe I am.

Anyways, the final in this class was to create 4 Petit Fours with a partner and in 2 1/2 hours turn out 8 of each item. The stipulations? 1. There had to be a Pate a Choux item 2. There had to be a crust item 3. There had to be an almond glace with filigree item and 4.  Student choice!

After coming back from France for my sisters wedding and ranting and raving about the cocktail hour and the delicious food that was presented, it definitely got my wheels turning. Also, I brought a few sweet items back with me, like violet sugar, violet essence, and some cooking magazines. I know I definitely wanted to incorporate some kind of floral essence in this project. So with my fresh outlook on this assignment and my partners open, smart, creative, mind we came up with an amazing set for our final!

1. Pate a choux with a lemon pastry cream
2. Lavender Honey Macaroons
3. Rose scented frangipan with rose buttercream covered in a pretty pink glace
4. Creme Brulee spoons with strawberry jam

So, we had 2 1/2 hours to make and assemble all 4 of these items. We were given 2 in house items, meaning already made, one of them was the frangipan and the other we got to choose, so we chose buttercream. The game plan was that I make the creme brulee, and the lemon pastry cream,  and flavor the buttercream, my partner was to make the pate a choux, macaroons, and the strawberry jam. Once those components were made we would wing it on whatever else needed to be done.

Things were off to a great start! I made the creme brulee first because it had to sit for at least an hour before serving (i found this amazing no-bake recipe!), while I was making that my partner made the strawberry jam. Bam! That was done with flying colors! I moved onto the pastry cream and my partner moved onto the macaroons. Here is where I ran into a slight... well.. harsh bump!

I make pastry cream all the time at home.... all the time... all the time that I should be able to do it with my eyes closed! Something happened, I don't know what it was, probably the stress that this was a final and my nerves were shaken up! But I fucked up the recipe! It was too liquidy, so then I started to freak out and hard core question myself and my ability!

How could I screw up fucking pastry cream!?! Was my final going to go down the drain and my confidence in baking follow with it?!?! What the fuck was going on with me!? I thought I was clearly going insane! Was it really 2 WHOLE eggs or just 2 egg yolks? I could've sworn I wrote the ingredients out right! It was almost the same method and ingredients as the creme brulee, I thought I had this in the bag! I asked a classmate if it was egg yolks or the whole eggs, and she said yolks..... then my other classmate verified it for me. So, down the drain my liquidy pastry cream went! It was a nightmare. I thank the people who endured my insanity and helped me out <3

Anyways, the last half hour.. the last 15min was insane crunch time! We still had assembling to do and things to put together... man was it stressful! But of course, at the end of most suspenseful action packed scenes, a beautiful masterpiece ending follows! This my dear friends, is the end result of the insanity!
  

   

Et, voila!

Maybe I'll post up the recipes in a later post! I definitely want to make those creme brulee spoons again, they were a HIT! Anyways, we were supposed to get a 98, but since we turned out our finished project a few min late we got a 94. Chef loved the flavors, nothing too overpowering or not scented enough. Although, I thought I might've over rosed the frangipan petit fours but apparently it was just at the cusp of being subtle and too much, so I guess it was just right!

My partner and I were so happy with the outcome and so proud of ourselves and the obstacles we overcame during this whole experience! We fuckin rocked it!

<3

Delicious France and other goodness!

So, I haven't written in here in like 2 weeks?? I was out of the country!!! I was indeed! I went to France for my sisters wedding. We have family that lives in paris and my sisters husbands family lives in the Cotentin which is in the Normandy part of France. It was a beautiful wedding, but the weather sucked! Rain rain rain rain rain all week long!!! But it's all good because love was the sole purpose of this trip, and nothin beats love :)

Since being back I've baked a lot, like a lot! It was crazy of me to bake in this crazy heat Philly got hit with! A 3rd floor walk up, no AC, and using an oven.. hot diggity dawg! Hot hot hot! I survived though! I made 2 batches of croissants... that was a tough challenge! On Days 2 and 3, rolling out that dough, wooo! so hard! Well, by day 3 I had installed my AC in my bedroom (realizing that I now need to buy one for my living room if I plan on doing any more cooking this summer... which I do :) ). So, the smartest thing to do was to do the roll out and shaping of the croissants in my bedroom with the AC on blast! And my dear friends, that is what I did (below is the picture for evidence).

(my room is now titled the croissant factory, until further notice)

I dragged my kitchen table into my room, set my AC to 65 and bam! rolled and shaped away. It was still a mess though! The dough was proofing while I was shaping and it was sticky... ugh, my croissants look crazy "special." But I got a whole batch of plain croissants and half a batch of almond and half of chocolate croissants.... I hope they turn out deliciously :)

I not only made croissants but I also did a trial run for a wedding cake I'm doing in July. I had the bride and groom do a taste test last night between 2 recipes I tweaked and the decision was happily made! Yay!

Anyways, I'll focus on writing a post of that cake when the time comes around.

Back to France!!!

France! Delicious France! A few things I want to mention. Of course I ate a croissant within the 1st hour of being there, thanks to my Uncle Leon (big props to him :) ). I ate half of a personal sized raspberry tart by the 3rd hour I was there, kudos to Paul. Later on that day I had generic Nutella on a baguette, which I might add, had more of a hazelnut flavor than Nutella does, yum!!!

Food at the wedding!! I wish I took photos of the cocktail hour! I took photos of everything else but the cocktail hour! The cocktail hour had delicious, amazing, melt in your mouth foie gras! AMAZING! mm! Apparently there was some grilled foie gras I didn't get around to tasting. There were fresh oysters (I didn't hit that part, not an oyster fan), smoked salmon and some other kind of fish, there were endless glasses of champagne. Little chinese soup spoons with a piece of steak and a pear sauce (? I think), or soup spoons with some kind of shrimp thing (didn't try that one). There were waiters walking around with trays of mini croq-monsiers, or fried dumpling type of things, there was just so much I know I'm forgetting things! But, that was by far, the best cocktail hour... (well it was 2 hours long)... I ever experienced. DELICIOUS! I took photos of the dinner we had.. I forgot to take a photo of the appetizer which was a glass with layered crab salad, shrimp salad, some kind of green sauce, I think there was a lobster salad too? All very delicious! Here are the photos I did take of the dinner:

1.  

2.

3.

Okay!!!!

#1- The place setting with the menu and a piece of bread :)
#2- Dinner!! Sea Bass with a most amazing, delicious cream sauce. Top Right corner was a little mound of veggies, like a little almost sorta ratatouille mix. Top Left yummy risotto! Bottom Left a hazelnutty buttery/oily garnish.
#3- Dessert!!! (my favorite part!!!) Top Right- mini fruit tart, no big. Middle- a delicious opera cake!!! The difference was that the bottom was a pecany, carmely mixture, sooo delicious!!!!! Bottom- a delicious citrus mousse with a thyme glaze on top, the combo was seriously amazing.

The next day we went to this little restaurant at Lindbergh Beach called Le Bac a Sable. It's run by a British guy and he's got some banging fish and chips! (that's the only good link I could find for it!) Or you can try this link too!

The last 2 days of the trip was spent in Paris. Hanging with the family. One night my cousins and I went to this delicious fondue joint by where they live, called Le Chalet. Really yummy fondue and an interesting way of doing raclette, which is the original way of doing it (but I never did it this way). Here David Lebovitz has some good pics of racletting!  I love cheese, and melted cheese is almost even better!!!! So delicious!!!!

I was just about to finish this post up and remembered that I had one more important thing to mention!! Something that has apparently existed in France for a while and my brother just learned about it from browsing through David Lebovitz's site.... this is the most amazing thing you could ever try... no doubt, hands down, delicious!

 It is called Speculoos! sigh.... do you enjoy eating graham crackers? If you ask me what my favorite part of a cheese cake is, I'd probably tell you that the graham cracker crust is.... because it is!! It's just so freakin delicious!!!! Now, if you are a graham cracker crust (or non crust) lover, this is the spread for you. Imagine a graham cracker spread. Yup, let it sit with you for a second. It's like peanut butter, but its not, its a spread made out of these delicious cookies... Biscoff cookies..... it's fucking amazing. AND! GET THIS!!! THEY SELL IT IN THE STATES TOO!!!!! Two days after coming back to the states and me cursing myself for forgetting to buy jars upon jars of this wonderful goodness, my brother gets back from the market with a surprise for me, SPECULOOS!!!!!! But! In the states it's called Biscoff Spread. Now, not all super markets carry this, but my brother happened to find it sitting right next to the Nutella! So friends, please do yourself a favor and search every market in your area and buy this thing, it's truly life changing.

I was asked if I was stranded on an island and had to choose between Nutella and Biscoff, which would I choose.. I really couldn't answer.... and most of you who know me know how much I love Nutella, so that says a lot.... This is what the jar looks like... keep an eye out for it, PLEASE!

It's actually a Belgian product. So let's give those Belgians a big HIGH-FIVE!!!!!!!!!

okay!

The end!

ENJOY!!!!!!