Bakin’ & Bacon

Straw Bale, Pumpkin & Squash Cake

Inspired by many blogs and "reality" TV shows, I decided to really get busy with a cake last weekend. I went with a fall theme because I thought it would be fun to do a straw bale. Pumpkins and squash are also natural fall items that lend themselves well to cake, so I dusted off the old hemisphere cake pan and went to work.

I think it turned out pretty well, especially considering how long it's been since I made a cake. Looking good is only part of the equation, though - if it doesn't taste good, what's the point? I've seen many blogs with pretty cakes that are made with boxed mixes and ready made frosting.I know it's easier and cheaper to do that, but it will not taste as good. I have some friends that say they can't tell the difference between from scratch and boxed mix, but I call shenanigans on that claim. To me there is a marked difference in both taste and texture, with the scratch cake easily beating the boxed mix (well, at least the recipes I use. I am sure that there are a lot of crappy recipes out there that give scratch cakes a bad name).

This was made with my go-to white layer cake recipe (below) and a tweaked Rose Levy Berenbaum's Classic Buttercream made with more sugar.

Piping and assembly went pretty well, but I dropped one of the pumpkins AND the squash as I was transferring them to the platter. However, the baking gods smiled on me because both cakes did a complete 360 and landed upright. I didn't have to go all Gordon Ramsey this time, swearing just once during the process.

The straw bale is my favorite part. I baked the cake in an 8 inch square pan, then cut it in half and made two layers. I tried a couple of different ways to make the "straw" and settled on my husband's suggestion of using a small star tip (Wilton 15/16) with two slightly different colored icings. I used a skewer to make the indentation for the "wire," then piped a plain gray band in the groove. Anyone who grew up on a farm will note that I did my bale backwards - the grain should be vertical with the bands horizontal. I'll get it right next time. 

The pumpkins gave me fits and although the effect isn't quite what I envisioned, they turned out okay. I used a mini (6 section) hemisphere pan and sandwiched the halves together with icing. The icing for all of this is a classic buttercream made with egg yolks, a hot sugar syrup, and plenty of butter. Most icings called buttercream today are made with butter (or shortening, yuck) and confectioner's sugar. There's nothing wrong with that icing and I use it frequently, although it can end up way too sweet even for my  sweet tooth.

Many folks don't like classic buttercream because it can end up tasting like nothing more than slightly sweetened butter and it can taste really greasy. The first time I made it I shared that sentiment and ended up adding some confectioner's sugar just so I could choke it down. Of course the addition of confectioner's sugar killed the silky texture that is the biggest plus of classic buttercream. What I do now is add more sugar (almost half again as much) in the beginning, and I've come up with something that's not too sweet, not too greasy, with a luxurious texture. I added a splash of Grand Marnier at the end to give it a bit more flavor, and I found myself eating the stuff with a spoon. I ate so much Halloween night I think I screwed up my blood sugar! (Or maybe it was all the Halloween candy. Hmmm...)

Below is a closeup shot. The colors are not quite right - the lighting makes them look more washed out than they actually appear.

My husband and I split a pumpkin and my friends had some "bale" and it was great. The cake was moist and tender with the most delicate crumb. The buttercream icing was tasty too.

I think I need to make more cakes - that was fun!

"Blitz" Puff Pastry, Step-by-Step

For those who feel pastry-challenged, I offer this illustrated step-by-step guide to the puff pastry pictured in my previous post (alliteration not planned, but plentiful!). This is technically not puff pastry, because I am not incorporating a large block of butter into dough via a time-consuming process that is punctuated with potential pitfalls (there I go again!). Instead, this method utilizes a combination of pie crust and puff pastry techniques that results in a pastry with a lot of puff for its relative ease of preparation. (To view a step by step description of traditional puff pastry, see my post from 2008: Puff Pastry.)

First, we begin by cutting butter into flour. In this illustration, I'm using the Heavy Cream Flaky Pastry found in Flo Braker's Sweet Miniatures (amazon link is somewhere on this page). In the photo below, I have cut chilled (40 degrees F) butter into approximately 1/2 inch cubes. The cubes are probably between 3/8 and 1/2 inch; no need to get out the micrometer. I toss the cubes into the flour until they are well coated (in my grandmother's cherished Texas ware bowl). Cutting in the butter instead of using a block of butter is the technique borrowed from pie crust making. 

 

Then the butter is cut into the flour. Normally I would use a pastry cutter, but since I couldn't find mine I used two table (aka butter) knives, and that works just as well. No fancy equipment is needed for this process. The method I use with two knives is to cross my arms so the blades of the knives are opposite each other, and then I uncross my arms, bringing the blades together and then apart again on the opposite side but keeping them parallel to each other. I try to keep the blades about 1/4 inch apart but a lot of the times I'm sloppy and they clack together as they are crossing. You can also just use a chopping motion with the knives parallel to each other, which I often do to break up the monotony. Periodically I will scrape the knives to draw off any butter sticking to them. If you use a pastry cutter, stop every so often and carefully scrape the wires/blades clean as well.

Most recipes instruct you to do this until the butter pieces are "no larger than peas." Well, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation depending on the size of the peas that you are using for reference! Here is a shot of the butter partially cut in, but not yet complete:

 

Note that the pieces are irregular in size. Keep cutting until you get something that resembles this:

 

I'd say the largest pieces are between 1/4 and 3/16 of an inch in diameter; certainly no larger than that. The pieces are fairly uniform in size as well.

Now it's time to add the liquid. I drizzle over the smallest amount of liquid called for in the recipe (if there is a range for the liquid), then take a fork or spoon and stir to distribute the liquid:

 

Once the mixture starts clumping together, I switch to a rubber spoonula/spatula and repeatedly press the dough together against the side of the bowl:

 
I do this for a minute or two until the dough really comes together and there are only a few dry bits remaining. If after a couple of minutes the dough refuses to come together I'll add more liquid and try again. Once about 75 to 85 percent of the dough is in one big, ragged clump, I'll turn the dough out onto a piece of parchment or plastic wrap and use the parchment or wrap to incorporate the remaining dry bits. I press the edges toward the center with the parchment or plastic wrap, making sure I don't warm up the dough, until I have a single lump of dough. This is shown after I put the lump on a lightly floured board and sprinkled it with flour:

 

And just what constitutes "lightly floured," you may ask? In my opinion, this:

 

You can still see the board through the flour in many places. Now that I have my dough complete, I begin rolling it out. This particular recipe does not call for a rest in the fridge like many others do because this is a shortcut recipe. If, however, you feel that the dough has become too warm and is getting sticky, don't hesitate to throw in the fridge for a few minutes to keep the butter from melting. Since butter melts at a relatively low temperature, you'll want to chill the dough if its temperature rises higher than about 70 degrees F. If you are making this in a warm kitchen, you may even have to chill the flour mixture in the middle of cutting in the butter. Luckily (?) for me my kitchen stays a chilly 63-65 degrees most of the year so I don't have to worry about that very much.

Now that the dough is lightly floured, it's time to make the first roll. This recipe gives a finished size for rolling out the dough before folding it. If not, I usually roll it about 3/8 inch thick.

 

If it starts to stick to the roller I'll sprinkle on a little more flour. Also, I move it around on the board, adding a little flour if it sticks on the underside. I try to roll from the middle outward, but I admit that sometimes I roll straight across the dough. May the pastry gods forgive me!

Now it's time to fold the dough to begin the process of creating many thin layers. Flo Braker instructs you to just fold the dough in half, but I use the puff pastry technique of folding it in thirds, like a business letter:

 

 

This is then again rolled out into a 3/8 inch rectangle. The resulting rectangle is again folded in thirds. If necessary, during this process I will put the dough in the fridge for a brief rest to keep the dough from getting too warm (above 70 degrees F).

To recap, we went from 1 layer to 3 layers by rolling out the dough and folding in thirds. (This is called one "turn" by pastry pros. It is named such because you roll the dough into a long rectangle, fold it up like a business letter, then turn the dough 90 degrees, because you always want to be rolling along the longer side of the folded edges. ) This was rolled out and folded again, resulting in 9 layers (3 layers folded in thirds: 3x3=9). One more time gets you 27 layers, which is where I stopped (I think - maybe I did one more but I can't remember).

In a traditional puff pastry, the process is repeated 6 times, resulting in 729 layers (I've seen some websites that use different numbers - more on that in a minute). Of course, in that case refrigeration is a requirement because the friction of rolling the dough creates heat, and you can't do that many turns without putting the dough in the fridge for a cooling off period.

Once the desired number of layers is created, the dough is rolled out quite thin (1/8 inch thick), like so:

 

I lightly flour both the board and the pastry to do this rolling, adding flour only if the dough starts to stick. The edges of the dough must be trimmed to facilitate the maximum amount of rise (because the edges of the dough get squished more as a result of the rolling pin going over the edge and the edge just isn't clean and smooth.)

Since I was making square tarts I used a pizza cutter to cut the dough into squares. To form a raised border around the filling of the tarts, I used the back of a thin paring knife to cut halfway through the dough around the edge, in about 1/2 an inch:

 

Only go halfway through the dough on the inside edge or else the edge will just separate from the rest of the dough as it rises and your filling will leak out all over. Not pretty. Of course, you can make circles or ovals or use (very sharp) cookie cutters to make other shapes, but if you want a raised edge around the filling, you'll have to do the halfway cutting about 1/2 inch or so from the outside edge of whatever shape (the larger the tart, the bigger edge you can use, although I never go more than 1 inch). I like squares because they are easier, there is no waste and you don't have to try to re-roll the dough, which is always a crapshoot because it tends to toughen if rolled too many times.

Once you have your shapes cut, you can add your desired filling (or bake them plain and add a filling later):

 

Then the only step that's left is to stick those puppies in a preheated oven (400 degrees F) and bake until puffed and golden brown (see previous post).

Any questions? Post them here and I'll answer them if I can.

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One last note on the number of layers for traditional puff pastry: I've seen some websites that provide different numbers than 729 for how many layers are created. Some people use what is called a book fold - both edges are folded in to the middle, then the whole thing is folded in half creating 4 layers (also called a double turn). When you repeat that process you'll come up with a different number of layers. The reason I didn't do that here is because you end up with a smaller piece of dough to roll back out, and it is slightly more difficult to roll out the smaller piece to the same thickness. I don't know if it's that much of a difference, so feel free to use a book fold it you'd like.

One website really made me scratch my head, though. The author said that her traditional puff pastry had 944 layers. I've done the math using several combinations of letter and book folds, and can't come up with 944. If anyone knows how that number could be reached using letter and book folds, please let me know. I'm standing behind 729 as the more traditional number using letter folds. If you use only book folds and do 5 turns you would end up with 1024 layers. (Maybe I need to do those side-by-side to see if there is a noticeable difference). I have also seen a few recipes that use a letter fold to start and

Savory Tarts

I made these tarts after cruising the epicurious website for ideas. I used the Heavy Cream Flaky Pastry from Flo Braker's Sweet Miniatures book. It is ridiculously easy and performs nearly as well as a full-fledged puff pastry.

These tarts had goat cheese, herbs, fresh heirloom cherry and pear tomatoes, and caramelized onions. They made great appetizers, and now that fall is setting in I am already missing these late summer treats. Au revoir, summer...please come back soon.

Here is another shot:

Coming soon: this puff pastry step-by-step. I'm working on writing down the chocolate tart recipe but I'm afraid I already forgot it! Darn, that means I'll have to try it again...

Sharing chocolate with friends - what could be better?

A couple of weekends ago, I was invited to a dinner at an online cooking friend's home. Several of us dedicated Cook's Illustrated Bulletin Board participants gathered in the home of 2cool4MN's lovely home for a terrific evening repast.

Naturally, I made dessert, and of course for this group I chose Cook's Illustrated's Sour Cream Chocolate Bundt Cake (membership required to access the recipe - if you would like it, send me an email). 

This cake is very rich and chocolately, but that's a good thing! I used the Nordic Ware Bavaria Bundt pan, which is a little smaller than a traditional Bundt shape. This meant that gosh darnit, I had to make a small extra cake so I wouldn't overfill the pan. That turned into a few midnight snacks over the sink - one of my worst habits. If I have leftover cake or cookies, I will always arise like a vampire in the dark of night and eat them. That's one reason I try to bring leftovers to work so I won't be tempted when my willpower is nearly nonexistent.

Back to the dinner - it was fantastic, as one might expect from a group of food enthusiasts (I just can't bring myself to use the word "foodie"). Check out these great ribs:

here were also great side dishes to accompany these. Luckily I remembered to wear elastic waist pants.

Thanks to 2Cool for hosting this event, and thanks to everyone who showed up for a fantastic evening!

A Berry Nice Tart

I could have done a much better job in assembling these tarts to make them purdy, but let's face it - when you come home at 6:00 p.m., make lasagna, a salad and salad dressing from scratch, you get to a point where good enough is good enough. That's the point I was at last night as I assembled the tarts before sitting down to dinner. I really wanted to lay perfectly overlapping kiwi pieces that nestled just so around the edge of each tart, with the berries lined up in concentric circles inside the perimeter, but a) I didn't have enough kiwi, and b) I was hungry! So this is how they looked.

The berries were from my friend's raspberry bushes and were picked the day before, so it would difficult to get fresher fruit. Of course the kiwi is not from a local garden, but it was perfectly ripe. The pastry cream and tart shells were made the evening before, and I'm lucky I didn't burn the shells to a crisp because I got distracted watching Mad Men and forgot all about them until a commercial break. I really need a timer to hang around my neck, preferably one that slaps me when I ignore it.

Anyway, these tarts were yummy, even if they weren't the epitome of perfection.

One more thing - does anyone have a secret on how to expertly dab on jam to make them glisten? I heated some black raspberry jam, strained out the seeds and even thinned it with a little water, but I still ended up with this:

It really didn't improve the looks of the tarts at all, although it did add to the taste quite nicely. I tried to do the flicking/daubing technique that Cook's Illustrated discusses, but it still looks like a berry monster sneezed on the tarts.

The pastry cream recipe is from Cooks Illustrated (Sept./Oct. 2001 I believe), and it results in a great consistency for spreading in a tart shell. It's firm enough to hold its shape, but not at all rubbery. The tart shell is of course the great one by Flo Braker in Sweet Miniatures (linked at left I believe), and is an excellent cookie-like shell that is neither too soft or too hard (why is Goldilocks coming into my head?).

In his book Ratio, Michael Ruhlman suggests that for a firm pastry cream you should use 8 yolks to 2 cups of milk/cream. I think that would be too eggy for me, so I stuck with the 5 yolks to two cups of liquid ratio espoused by C.I., along with the 4 tablespoons of butter stirred in at the end. That's what really gives the pastry cream its silky texture. But then again, what isn't improved with copious amounts of butter?

One thing I do differently than C.I. is that I prefer to strain my pastry cream through a fine mesh strainer after cooking. Cook's instructs you to remove the chalazae (the spiral strands that connect the yolk and white) from the egg yolks before making the pastry cream, so you don't have to strain it. Well, the chalazae are only part of the potential curdling/texture problems in a pastry cream, so I skip this step and just strain the damn stuff. Really, it's more work and messier to remove the chalazae than it is to just pour the finished pastry cream through the strainer. Plus, any other stray curdled bits/undissolved cornstarch lumps will be caught if you strain, so that's what I do.

No matter how thoroughly I whisk the cornstarch thoroughly into they yolks, carefully temper the yolks and religiously stir the pastry cream, inevitably I end up with tiny bits of curdled yolk or cornstarch bits that could impart an unpleasant texture in the pastry cream. After straining, the cream is always silky smooth, so I'll stick with this old-fashioned, extra step.

Baking Season is Nigh Upon Us

With the hint of fall in the air, my thoughts are turning more frequently to baking. A friend's recent birthday offered the perfect excuse to pull out the stops for a decadant dessert.

This is a basic chocolate tart with a few embellishments. While I like to ooh and ahh over really fancy cakes and pastries (I still frequently drool over the photographs from Saveur magazine of the Demel bakery in Vienna), sometimes the simplest tarts can be stunning as well. And they are far easier to accomplish, especially when you have other pesky commitments like jobs, spouses, housework and pets.

This tart has a basic chocolate tart crust (I think I used Alice Medrich's recipe from Cocolat), and a simple ganache made with equal parts (by weight) of fresh cream and good quality 59% bittersweet chocolate from a local gourmet food store. I hadn't heard of the brand before (Cordillera), but it is one of the best chocolates I have eaten in a long time. It has a lot of fruity, maybe even floral, undertones. To gild the lily I threw in a couple of tablespoons of good bourbon (Woodford Reserve).

One nice thing about our move is that I can now easily find non-ultra-pasteurized cream, formerly known simply as cream.

May I digress but for a moment? I fondly remember the local creamery in my teeny, tiny hometown in rural North Dakota. It was just a couple of blocks from my parent's house, and whenever we needed cream we would grab the Tupperware pitcher and walk to the creamery. There, a creamery worker would take a ladle with the longest handle I had ever seen, dip it into a gigantic vat (hundreds of gallons) of fresh cream (fresh as in in the cow that morning), and fill our container with this thick, ivory nectar of the gods. I know that sometimes we see the world through rose colored glasses, but I know that the cream we purchased from that now-defunct creamery was thicker, richer and better-tasting than the cream now sitting in grocery store coolers, full of carrageenan and guar gum. Ah, the good ol' days. Maybe not everything was better back then (the fashions of the 70s were horrendous, for one thing), but that cream sure was.

Anyhoo, the regular, just plain pasteurized cream whips up much better than the ultra-pasteurized version, although the taste difference is not as pronounced as I hoped it would be.  I've found that it lasts a few days beyond the sell-by date, which is good since I don't always use it immediately.

The raspberries came from the local farmer's market, and were perfectly, delicately fresh.

OK, now it is confession time. I was going to just put the cocoa border around the edge and leave the beautiful, nearly flawless shiny center of the tart alone. I had gone to extra lengths to ensure a perfectly smooth top, being very gentle in stirring the cream and chocolate to not incorporate too much air, and painstakingly pricking the few bubbles that emerged after pouring by using a very thin cake tester to pop each tiny little flaw. I carefully leveled the tart in the fridge, sticking a skewer under the low side. However, all that work went down the tubes when I left the cake stencil on just a tad too long and it stuck to the middle of the tart. Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh! (Yeah, I sound like a pirate when I bake.) Surprisingly, I didn't swear much, though. I immediately went to Plan B, stuck a star tip on a pastry bag, filled it with the whipped cream I was going to serve the tart with anyway, and piped a quick border in the center. I added the raspberries and no one was the wiser. At least not until now.

The border, by the way, is from a Martha Stewart Spring cake stencil set. This particular border is supposed to look like grass, and of course you would use green sugar for it. The illustration shows little candy easter eggs in the center of the cake using this border. However, I thought it had a contemporary abstract vibe to it, so I used it for this tart. The other borders in the set, however, are pretty unambiguous like eggs and butterflies. This was a guy's birthday dessert and butterflies just didn't seem suitable. He really liked the tart (and so did I).

New Bundt Shape (or, Another Promise Broken)

I was at the Mall of America (or, as my husband likes to call it, the Maul of America) last week, and of course I HAD to stop in at every food and/or cookware store I could find. Unfortunately there aren't many, although perhaps it's a good thing because I didn't blow too much money. I was on the lookout for a kitchen timer since my old one finally bit the dust. I guess there is a limit on how many times you can drop it on the floor and then accidentally kick it against the fridge while scrambling to pick it back up. At least it didn't suffer the same fate as the last one, which was dropped into a pan of boiling water and boiled alive. Oops. Perhaps I should just revert to an old-fashioned mechanical model, but I really like the feature that begins counting up when the timer goes off, so you can tell just how long you have overbaked your goodies since you had Cake (what else, when you are baking?) cranking on the stereo and couldn't hear the beeping.

So there I was in Williams Sonoma (which one of my friends has aptly renamed "Wellborn Senoras"), gazing at the lovely Apilco and shiny All-Clad that I really don't need (I have Mauviel 2.5mm copper pans, so I mean it when I say I don't need AC), when the new Bundt shape caught my eye. When Nordicware started coming out with all of the specialty shapes in Bundt pans I went crazy and bought each and every new shape they made, despite the fact that some of the shapes really didn't look good or perform well. I ended up giving my least favorite shapes away, stopped buying the new ones, and limited myself strictly (strictly!) to my six favorite specialty shapes, plus the original Bundt pan I started with. Well, since I hadn't bought anything for the kitchen since we moved in December (that has to be some kind of record), I splurged on this new pan. I did, however, avoid buying some cute little cupcake pans and popover pans, so all was not lost. Still, I broke my promise to myself. I think I will just quit making promises and save myself a step and some guilt.

This pan is one of the better specialty shapes. It released pretty cleanly, with only one little sticky spot, which I was able to "glue" back together with icing. The shape is gorgeous, notwithstanding that my photograph above is dizzying with its odd perspective.

I used my most reliable non-chocolate Bundt pan recipe in this. It came with one of the Martha Stewart Bundt shapes, although I forget now which one that was. I think it was the Star pan, which was one of my least favorites and was given away. No amount of greasing, flouring, praying and voodoo priestesses could keep that pan from having chunks of cake sticking to it. 

The recipe I used above is Lavender-Lemon Cake, and it's a great recipe. I usually grind the lavender flowers in my mortar and pestle before adding them to the cake batter, because those cute little lavender petals look a lot like dead pantry moths once they are baked into a cake. Ewww.

The glaze is simply confectioner's sugar and lemon juice. Easy yet tasty. Since I can no longer find the cake recipe on Martha's website, I am going to reproduce it below. It includes a couple of my tweaks, so if it doesn't turn out don't blame poor Martha. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Lavender Lemon Cake   

3 cups (12 oz) cake flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda    

1/4 tsp salt   

2 sticks unsalted butter   

1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest

2 tsp to 1 tbsp dried lavender flowers, crushed

1 1/2 cups (10.5 oz) sugar  

4 large eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 tsp lemon extract  

1/2 tsp vanilla 

1 cup plain yogurt    

 

Have all ingredients at room temperature. Position rack in lower third of oven and preheat to 325. Butter and flour a bundt pan; tap out excess flour. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt onto a sheet of waxed paper; set aside. In bowl of electric mixer, beat butter on medium speed until creamy and smooth, about 30 seconds. Add sugar, lemon zest and lavender and beat until light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes; stop and scrape bowl occasionally. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition; add lemon and vanilla extracts. On very low speed, add flour mixture in three additions, alternating with yogurt and ending with flour; blend each addition until just incorporated. Fold in lemon zest. Spoon batter into pan and spread so that outside edge is about 1 inch higher than inside edge. Bake until cake springs back when touched, about 1 hour (start checking after 45 minutes). Transfer to a cooling rack and cool in pan for about 15 minutes. Turn cake out onto a wire rack, cool to room temperature, and glaze as desired.

"Happiness is Baking Cookies"

The title of this post is a quote from Maida Heatter in her cookbook Maida Heatter's Cookies, which I recently purchased used from an Amazon.com vendor. I got the 1997 edition, which has a glowing foreword by Wolfgang Puck. (As an aside, I'm not sure how I feel about Chef Puck since I see him so frequently on QVC as I channel surf, hocking his latest cookware or gadget. I suppose it's great that he is making money and perhaps encouraging people to cook more. I guess I am prejudiced against any of the home shopping networks because there is just so much junk on them, even though there are good things too.)

Anyhoo, back to the book. Flipping through the book, there seem to be several potentially excellent cookie recipes, which I'm eager to try. The first one I attempted is a bar cookie, Cinnamon Almond Cookies. According to Maida they are "rather thin, buttery, crisp cinnamon cookies with a lemon glaze."

One of the problems I always have when beginning to bake from a new book is determining the weight to use for flour. It seems Maida likes to sift her flour before measuring, so I've taken a light hand with the weights. I used 3.75 ounces of flour per cup for this recipe but I might need to bump it up to 4 ounces because the dough seemed a tad sticky and the resulting cookies a bit greasy.

As I thought, the lemon flavor is weak since there is just a tablespoon of lemon juice in the glaze. Next time I might add either lemon extract or zest to boost the flavor a little. I also added nutmeg (the recipe only called for cinnamon, but I almost always add either nutmeg or cardamom to anything cinnamon, since I like both of those flavors better than cinnamon alone.)

All in all, a pretty good cookie, but not one that really knocked my socks off. They did go over quite well with friends, and I will probably try them again, with a bit more flour.

Even though these cookies didn't wow me, I still agree with Maida's quote. I might even stencil it on my kitchen soffit, if I ever get around to painting in there as I promised myself I would do immediately when we moved in...eight months ago. Other half-finished projects must be completed first, however. My husband has forbidden me from starting any new projects until I finish the old ones, and I suppose he's right (did you read that, honey? Good, because I'm not saying it again).

Maida's quote reminded me of the line that Julie Powell's character in Julie and Julia said about baking as she made a chocolate cream pie. To paraphrase, no matter how hectic, horrible or chaotic your work day has been, it's good to know that you can mix together chocolate, eggs and cream and it's going to become thick and delicious.

I am going to end this post with a request. If anyone has any recommendations from Maida's cookie book, please share them here. I'd love to know if there are any great recipes that I might miss because the description doesn't do them justice.

Flea Market Finds

I normally do not purchase vintage kitchen implements or tools. I'm not going to replace my KitchenAid with a hand-cranked beater any time soon, so any nostalgia I have for old-fashioned implements is limited to those handed down to me by family members.

However, I had to make an exception for the vintage decorating tools I spotted at a local antique shop. This lovely set of decorating tools was still in its original box, with the original tissue paper wrapper around the tips, and complete with the instruction manual, all for the unbelievable price of $6.00!

I'm not sure how old this set is, but I think it must be 50-60 years old. I base this on the type of box used, by the illustration of the stove in the instruction manual, and on the fact that the coupler in the set is metal.

I probably won't use the tips themselves, since I have most of those tips in my toolkit already, but I have already used the coupler. I really dislike the plastic coupler, since I am afraid I will break it, especially if I have a really stiff icing. That probably wouldn't happen, but the plastic coupler is also more bulky and just doesn't feel right. However, this metal coupler is very sturdy and heavy, and I know it will not break no matter how hard I squeeze.

If anyone has any idea of how old this set is, please let me know. The box, tips and booklet are now in a safe place so I don't ruin them, but the coupler resides with the rest of my decorating tools. What a great find.

Coming soon - another flea market find in the same vein.

Coconut Layer Cake

This cake was so pretty - was being the operative word. Once we dug in it started to look a bit peaked.

It's a coconut layer cake with a lemon curd filling  and a coconut/cream cheese icing. I made a horrible mistake when baking the cake - I added two cups of flaked coconut to the cake batter that was supposed to be toasted for the sides of the cake. However, I have an excuse. The recipe listed all of the ingredients for the cake, then in a separate section, the ingredients for the filling and icing (which I did not use). The cake is Cook's Illustrated's Coconut Layer Cake (membership required to view the link) and the ingredient listing for the cake part lists 2 cups of flaked sweetened coconut.

Here's where my excuse gets a bit lame: I did not read the directions. After all, I thought to myself, I bake cakes all the time - why do I need to read the silly directions? So I just jotted down the ingredients and prepared the cake batter, folding in the flaked coconut at the end. As I was doing that, I though it was a bit strange to have coconut in the actual cake batter, but I shrugged off my gut feeling and popped the cakes into the oven.

Since I couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss, I went back and re-read the recipe. Whoops - the coconut was to be toasted when the cake came out of the oven, then cooled and sprinkled over the icing. Knowing it was too late to do anything about the mistake, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Luckily, the cake turned out fairly well, although the texture added by the coconut made it impossible to slice neatly. Since the taste was still good, I didn't fret about it.

Since my favorite lemon curd recipe is too loose to use for a cake filling, I added a couple more tablespoons of butter and another egg to see if that would be sufficient. It's still a bit loose, so I should probably try one of the lemon filling recipes that uses gelatin when I want a layer cake. Still, it held together reasonably well and tasted sooooo good.

The cream cheese icing was made up on the spot. I had left over cream of coconut from the cake batter and some leftover coconut milk from another recipe (about 1/2 cup total), which I added to beaten cream cheese (1 lb), powdered sugar (2 cups - 7 ounces), and unsalted butter (2 sticks). I added a teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract for good measure.

This cake was pretty yummy, and this post ends my long drought between posts. Sorry about that, but it's been crazy around here (a water leak, trip to Ohio, and countless other activities). Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things now.