i heart bread

I can't say how much I just love Breads & Rolls. Bread is a long process - we make the doughs on Monday to ferment overnight and then bake off on Tuesday - and we are usually baking about 5 breads each week. The ice day we had at the beginning of the semester set us back so we've been playing catch up ever since so we could make all the breads on our syllabus. And all of the breads we've made in class have been a huge hit at work. This week was particulary awesome because we made English muffins and at the time I was eating English muffins every morning for breakfast. It's also fun to learn how to shape, like boules, batards and baguettes. Here's a look at our breads:

Whole Wheat Batard

Semolina Boule

Garlic and Cheese Drop Biscuits

Focaccia Bread

English Muffins

JELLO Puddings

Let me start by saying this was by far my least favorite week (if weeks were strictly decided by desserts). We made several different types of puddings and souffles. It is always fun to learn how to bake different types of deliciousness, but I am not going to lie, it's a little bit more fun when I enjoy what I eat taste.*

I will rank in order of yummyness:

1. Savory Souffle (aka Cheese Souffle) who doesn't lurve baked eggs and cheese?!
2. Caramel Sauce ok, technically NOT an individual dessert, but was perfect for dipping apple slices
3. Steamed Blueberry Pudding I was totally surprised this was sooo good
4. Chocolate Bread Pudding as a chocoholic, I was disappointed I didn't enjoy this more
5. Chocolate Souffle see above note. Chocolate and eggs - not a winning combo
6. Rice Pudding it wasn't horrible, but the texture was just weird

Savory Souffle

Souffle Anecdote: In the bakeshop we have several smaller size mixers (think KitchenAid size as opposed to the larger 12 quart mixers we use for most everything else) that we use a lot for whipping creams & egg whites. On this particular day, there were not enough whips (the whisk looking attachment) and instead of waiting for one to become available I decided to start whipping the egg whites by hand. Lemme tell you, it was certainly an arm work out, but I got the whites to stiff peaks and the souffles turned out great! I know it's not really a major feat, but in this day and age where we depend on electronics for everything I felt rather accomplished.

Rice Pudding


Individual Rice Pudding Portion

Caramel Sauce

Caramel Sauce Anecdote: This caramel sauce looked too good to use just for rice pudding (which as I mentioned was texturely unappealing). The Subway at school sells apple slices so me and another group member took a little field trip to Subway during class so we could enjoy a tasty snack. It was worth every penny.

Chocolate Bread Pudding

Individual Bread Pudding Portion

Steamed Blueberry Pudding

Steamed Blueberry Pudding with Hard Sauce

I had never heard of steamed blueberry pudding, but this was really good. It's basically brown sugar, butter, bread crumbs, milk & blueberries (with small amounts of eggs, cinnamon and flour). We topped it with a hard sauce which is very similar to a buttercream frosting, but with a higher percentage of butter. The hard sauce melted on top of the blueberry pudding creating a really nice rich flavor.

Up Next: Ice Creams!! And lots of plate presentations....

*I would like to say I can just taste the items we bake in class, but that would be a flat out lie. I do have a sweet tooth, and recently it has been a little out of control so for Lent I gave up sweets (quelle horreur!). The provision is I can only TASTE in class.

White Chocolate Mocha Cupcakes

As soon as I claimed my mixer on Friday afternoon I decided it had to be used immediately. I was actually planning on making cupcakes, so it was pretty much an added bonus I finally had a stand mixer instead of my hand-held mixer that I don't like very much because it is just too fast. Anyway, I have been wanting to attempt this recipe for a while now. I didn't really find it from anywhere so I had to scour websites, blogs and cookbooks to find an acceptable recipe for both the cupcakes and the frosting. One of the main problems I had was I wanted to use melted chocolate (a mixture of bittersweet and semisweet) and all the recipes I was finding called for unsweetened cocoa powder. And then I remember I am a baking student with a big fat text book, and voila, I had a recipe.

Since I pulled a recipe from my textbook, I need to weigh the ingredients instead of measuring.

Getting ready to scale out ingredients

Weighing the butter

The recipe I used was for a basic chocolate butter cake, but I took some liberties here and there. I really wanted a cake with a strong coffee flavor, not a chocolate cake with a hint of coffee. The formula called for 14 oz. of milk, so I substituted 7 oz. of milk and 7 oz. of cold coffee. The flavor worked out well, but I think I need to increase the amount of chemical leaveners I use next time.

Coffee & Milk mixture

My machine, hard at work, creaming butter...

And my beautiful batter...

This formula yielded approximately 36 cupcakes. They were on the smaller side and they didn't rise very well, but I suspect that is because of the proportion of coffee vs. the proportion of baking powder. And since I totally altered the recipe in a somewhat major way, I really wasn't expecting perfection in the presentation the first go at it.

Cupcakes cooling...boy, those look good

Next up, I had to prepare the white chocolate buttercream. For the frosting, I found a recipe online so I turned out quite nice.

I usually like to ice with a large star tip, but typically I think it leaves the cupcakes with a little too much frosting, plus since my formula gave me 36 cupcakes, I wasn't really sure if I would have enough frosting. Instead of a large star tip, I used a #12 round tip. They still looked pretty and I had just enough frosting.

Frosting the cupcakes

The finished product looked nice and tasted wonderful. I think the flavor balanced out nicely, but the frosting could of had a little more chocolaty flavor.

White Chocolate Mocha Cupcakes

I promise I will post the formulas later.

Cookies + Brownies = YUMMY

Sometimes I struggle to come up with creative blog entry titles. I admit, the above title is rather lame and/or cheesy, but it will have to do. C'est la vie. And now for the actual commentary.

The school semester is quickly coming to an end. Which is good and bad. It's fun to be able to bake and decorate at no cost to me (well except for tuition, but that's just a technicality) and I think my oven issues have been well documented. But I am ready for a break from studying and projects (oh yes, it is not all just fun and games). We have ended fundamentals with cookies and brownies.

In the past two weeks we have made: devil's food cake with chocolate buttercream, jam tarts, nut cookies, Texas Gold cookies, butter cookies, bicotti and brownies. The Texas Gold cookies were definitely one of my favorites and probably a cookie I will make again in the future. I promise that one day I will pass on that recipe. Here is a little looksy at the products.

Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

The jam tarts are a basic short dough cookie with a raspberry jam filling and then finished with powdered sugar. In my opinion, they are the perfect cookie for a Mr. S. Claus on Christmas eve.

Jam Tarts

Nut Cookies

The Texas Gold cookies were super soft, super chewy and super chocolate-y (and I think everyone knows by now how I heart chocolate). The cookie dough is made with unsweetened & bittersweet chocolate and has semi-sweet chocolate chips....that's three different types of chocolate if you weren't counting.

Texas Gold cookies

The butter cookies were made with a good amount of almond paste so they were more like almond butter cookies. After mixing the dough was placed in a pastry bag and piped onto a sheet pan. Don't they look pretty?

Butter cookie -- make-up

Unfortunately, the dough was too warm before going into the oven and then cookies spread and lost their form. But it didn't affect the flavor.

Butter cookie -- finished product

Biscotti

We had some leftover buttercream from the devil's food cake the week before, so we frosted our brownies with some of the delicious buttercream.

Brownie

Next week is practicals and I will get a second attempt at the almond butter cookies. I also have to bake the lemon buttermilk pound cake from a couple weeks ago. I'll let you know how it turns out. And maybe (if I get my act together) I can send some pound cake to North Carolina and Virgnia.

The Cheesecake Conclusion

I know everyone has been holding their breath with anticipation waiting to hear how the cheesecake finally turned out after approximately two and one half hours of baking. You will notice this post lacks any photo evidence of baking. The final presentation was not very pretty, but the taste was wonderful. I actually tried something a little different this time for my cheesecake. Instead of 32 oz. of cream cheese I substituted mascarpone cheese for 8 oz. of the cream cheese. The recipe I used has been adapted from Joy of Cooking, a must have for any cook or baker.

Graham Cracker Crumb Crust:

4 tblspn unsalted butter
1 c graham cracker crumbs

Cheesecake Filling:

24 oz cream cheese
8 oz mascarpone cheese
1 1/3 c sugar
4 large eggs
1/4 c heavy cream
1/4 c sour cream
2 tspn vanilla

In a medium bowl, combine butter and graham cracker crumbs. Coat bottom of springform pan evenly.

In a large bowl mix cream cheese and mascarpone. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Mix in remaining ingredients until incorporated.

Bake @ 325 degrees for 50-60 minutes (or in my case 120-180 minutes...) Cheesecake should be set, but jiggle slightly in center. Turn oven off and let cool in oven for an hour. Let cool completely before removing from pan. Refrigerate overnight.

I prefer to bake my cheesecakes in a water bath. Once the cheesecake filling has been poured into the springform, place the pan onto a sheet of heavy aluminum foil and fold up the sides of the pan. Place in a large roasting pan. Fill roasting pan with boiling water so it reaches halfway up the sides of the springform.

I would love to try this again, but in a more reliable oven. Maybe for a Christmas dessert?

Love/Hate Relationship

I am a very tired baker right now. And I am currently in the hate phase of my love/hate relationship with my oven.

Now that school is winding down, and two of three projects have been successfully completed and turned in, I have started to focus my energies on recreational baking and trying out new recipes. Tonight I am currently making a vanilla cheesecake which has been in my crappy apartment oven for about two hours. For those of you who don't know, a cheesecake typically takes 55-60 minutes to bake. I am sure a sensible person would ask why I insist on making cheesecakes when I know my oven takes about three times longer to bake them than it should (this is the 2nd cheesecake attempt), but I am headstrong and would scoff at any such person. So instead I am sitting on my couch waiting for a cheesecake that may never finish baking, completely exhausted. And I have an early class tomorrow.

Maybe at a later date I will share some pictures, but I can tell you now it is definitely not a pretty looking cake, but I do believe it will be quite tasty.

Mint Chocolate Chip Deliciousness

It has been a while since I have been able to bake for fun so I decided last weekend I needed to make some cupcakes. If you have been following, the early part of this fall was dedicated to burnt orange cupcakes so it was definitely time to try something new. I had the perfect recipe in mind: Chocolate Chocolate Chip cupcakes with Mint Buttercream frosting.

Mise en Place

The recipes I used I came across on a now defunct cupcake blog, aptly named the Cupcake Bakeshop. I made a couple of changes to try and get the result I wanted.

Devil's Food Chocolate Cake

2 cups flour (I used cake flour so I added 2 tablespoons)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Mint Buttercream Frosting

1 cup butter
4-5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/4 cup milk (I used a small amount of cold water)
1/8 teaspoon all natural peppermint extract

I used the creaming method to mix which is as follows:

Cream butter & Sugar;
Gradually add eggs, mix until combined;
Alternately add sifted dry ingredients with liquid, beginning and ending with dry.
In this case the sifted dry was the baking soda and cake flour and the liquid is the milk. I added the flour in three parts. I also incorporated the cocoa powder and vanilla before the flour. Lastly, I folded in the chocolate chips after the batter was mixed.

Make-up & Panning

I filled the cupcake liners 2/3rds full with the batter and baked @ 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. The cupcakes turned out pretty nicely.

Just out of the oven

I usually let my cupcakes cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes after pulling them out of the oven. I then let the finish cooling on a cooling rack so the bottoms don't get soggy from the steam. I made the cupcakes on Friday evening and waited until Saturday morning to do the frosting. The cupcakes had good flavor, tenderness and moisteness BUT all the chocolate chips sunk to the bottom. Oh, the lessons you learn through your mistakes! Of course I will be trying this recipe again until I get it just right, but I think I will try cutting chocolate chunks instead of chocolate chips.

Finished Product: Mint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

The flavor combo of Mint Buttercream and Devil's food cake was so delicious! Once I work out the kinks with the chocolate chips/chunks* it will be a most excellent cupcake!

*Someone gave me a tip that if I coat the chocolate chips in flour they won't sink. I asked on of the baking instructors and he said that may not work because chocolate chips have a waxy coating and are heavy. It was suggested I try the chocolate chunks.

Foam Cakes

We have moved on to cakes and cookies in fundamentals, which is both good & bad. Good because cakes and cookies are so yummy; bad because cakes and cookies are so yummy...and I have a rather large sweet tooth.

We started with Angel food and Chiffon cakes. Both cakes have a large amount of egg whites which help the cakes rise. Angel food cake reminds me of my childhood - It seems like every week my parents would be an Angel food cake from Tom Thumb. Normally, I would rave about my bakeshop creations, but truthfully, I still love that Tom Thumb Angel food cake from my childhood so much more! I think it needed some more vanilla. On the other hand, the Chiffon cake was great!

Angel Food Cake

Chiffon Cake

We also baked a lemon buttermilk cake last week which was so delicious! This is a cake I will definitely make again. I think I would like to try it as a layer cake with strawberry filling.

Lemon Buttermilk Cake

We ended Tuesday's class period with a traditional favorite: Chocolate Chip cookies. The dough was too warm when we put them in the oven so our cookies spread quite a bit (which according to the instructor is bad. And makes ugly cookies.) But according to those who consumed the "ugly" cookies they were the best cookies ever! (Just fyi: I am not the only one who consumed the cookies. I brought them to work where everyone went crazy for them.) The cookie recipe was just your basic, back of the Tollhouse bag so nothing too special there.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

On deck: Devil's Food Cake

Pies & Tarts

"Baby don't you cry, gonna make a pie, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle. Baby don't be blue, gonna make for you, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle. Gonna make a pie from heaven above, gonna be filled with strawberry love. Baby don't you cry, gonna make a pie, and hold you forever in the middle of my heart."

--Waitress

The last couple weeks have been focused on pies (and a couple tarts) in my Fundamentals class. I have never really considered myself a 'pie' person. I have a wicked sweet tooth, but I prefer cakes and cookies over pies. But after this class I have learned that pies can be just as divine and yummy as cakes and cookies! And homemade pie dough makes all the difference in the world - the flakiness and the flavor really adds to the pie. Here is a rundown of what we have baked:

• Chocolate Cream Pie
  
• Key Lime Pie
• Old-Fashioned* Apple Pie
• Peach Sour Cream Pie
• Cherry Pie
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan Pie
• Lemon Meringue Pie
• Walnut Tart
• Fruit Tart & Tartlets

We also did cream puffs and eclairs with the pastry cream we made for the Fruit Tart. I don't have pictures of everything, but here's some of our group's beautiful pies (and tarts. and eclairs & cream puffs.).

Cherry

Pumpkin

Pecan

Lemon Meringue

Walnut Tart

Eclairs & Cream Puffs

Fruit Tartlets

Fruit Tart #1**

Fruit Tart #2**

*Old-Fashioned is actually the method used to prepare the pie.

** Our group made two fruit tarts. I did the fruit design on the first tart, and another member of our group, Nicole, did the design on the second tart. We used plums, strawberries, kiwis and mandarin oranges.

Move over Krispy Kreme...

Did you miss me? I know I am getting seriously behind in this blogging business and I definitely have some delicious pictures to share - be prepared, there's a lot!

I'll start with bakeshop...We ended our time with breads and rolls last week. On Monday we made doughnuts and corn muffins; Tuesday was soft rolls with dough we prepared on Monday.

Chocolate icing & chocolate sprinkles

Vanilla icing & rainbow sprinkles

As you can see we were able to ice our doughnuts with vanilla or chocolate icings and accessorize with chocolate or rainbow sprinkles. Our group did half and half and tossed the doughnut holes in cinnamon sugar. It was a great (read: delicious) day! But I think the cinnamon rolls still get the blue ribbon for best day ever.

Corn Muffins

Corn muffins are seriously the easiest thing to bake. I feel so Southern now that I can make corn muffins. All I need now is some fried chicken. Paging Paula Deen...

Single knot rolls

On our final day of breads we made single knot rolls. We portioned our dough into 2 oz. portions, rolled our the dough and tied it into a knot. The sheen on the rolls is from an egg wash that was applied prior to baking. The culinary side had made an awesome herb butter the day before which we were able to use when tasting our rolls in the bakeshop.

This week was practicals. We usually bake in groups, but for practicals we make the product individually. I don't have any new product to share, but next week we start pies. Tomorrow I will try and catch up on my cake decorating.