Bakin-n-Bacon

Savoring the Mistakes

These mini carrot cakes were a mistake - albeit a tasty one. I had been craving carrot cake for weeks. A staff meeting the next morning coincided with finally having time one evening to make the cake, so I thought for ease of eating I should make cupcakes instead of a sheet cake. I didn't have enough regular cupcake liners so I ended up making mini cupcakes, which I really didn't want to do because it meant a lot more work in decorating. However, I also didn't want to run to the store to get cupcake liners, so my inherent laziness kicked in, even though in the end it was more work. There's some kind of moral there, I'm sure.

The mistake came when I did not alter the recipe to accommodate the change in size. For most cakes I do not change the amount of leavening when I use differently-sized pans, even though it does make a bit of difference. But the amount of difference is usually insignificant, so it isn't worth the bother of doing a lot of math (Rose Levy Berenbaum has a formula to use when making differently-sized layers in The Cake Bible). However, when taking a cake originally meant for a 9x13 pan and making miniature cupcakes out of it, the difference was more than slight. Counter-intuitively, the smaller the pan size the more leavening you need in your recipe. This is because in a smaller pan, the cakes bake faster, allowing less time for the leavening to do its work. For mini cupcakes, which bake in a matter of minutes, you really should increase the leavening  (especially the fast acting part - baking soda) to compensate for this. I didn't, and the cupcakes were flat instead of nicely domed. They still tasted good, though, and after I piped the cute little carrots on each and every one (I made 48 minis and 6 regulars), no one seemed to mind the flaws.

I really need to invest in some orange food coloring, because every time I try to mix red and yellow together to get orange, I get a really dark burnt orange. I don't do it often enough to get the hang of the proportions, I guess.

To form the carrots, I used a small plain round icing tip, and wiggled it back and forth as I squeezed and moved the tip down, easing up as I reached the tip of the carrot. I like the way these carrots look better than just one straight piped line the way most bakeries do it. Then I used my smallest star tip to make the greens. It looks really neat to use a really tiny plain round tip and make lots of individual greens, but I didn't have time for that kind of detail at 8:00 in the morning.

What I like about these is that it proves that even if you flub up your baking the mistakes can be delicious, so don't let fear of failure deter you from trying something new. I've had pastry creams that never set which I ate as pudding, and other flubs that ended up vastly different than I anticipated. Only very rarely have I actually had to throw something out, and even then I usually give it to the birds. They seem to appreciate even really bad mistakes.

A Cake Fit for the King, thankyouverrrymush

After a long absence, I'm back in the baking zone. I've been to Philadelphia, DC, Cleveland, and North Dakota all within 1 month. I drove to all locations except Philly, so it's been exhausting. Last night was the first time I felt like baking at all.

Our neighbors invited us over for dinner. I had already planned to make a banana cake to use up some overripe bananas (actually, banana cake is about the only reason I buy bananas anymore). Since our neighbor loves peanut butter, I decided to make an "Elvis" cake - peanut butter/cream cheese frosting and a chocolate drizzle for decoration. The cake is from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum, and it is my favorite cake from that book. I have made a modification, though. She calls for lemon zest to complement the banana flavor, but I have found that it adds an odd note to the cake, so I omit it and add a little more vanilla. I also do my "famous" substitution of a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil for a couple tablespoons of the butter. I really like the softness it adds to the texture.

I could tell it had been a while since the last cake - I couldn't get into a rhythm, and putting it together took longer than usual. I decided to try out one of the square cake pans I bought last month at Macy's, but I completely forgot to use the Magi-Cake strips to keep the edges from baking faster, rising higher than the center, and drying out. Professional bakers probably don't use Magi-Cake strips since their pans are heavier, but especially for lightweight aluminum cake pans they work wonders. The square pans I bought are very light, so next time I'll use the strips. You can see from my photo that I also need to get my wall ovens re-leveled. Apparently our floor settled a bit after our kitchen redo. Good thing I didn't get heavy stone countertops!

Once it came time to make the icing, I was starting to get in the groove - so much so that I didn't even measure ingredients. I put a couple of packages of cream cheese, a few dollops of peanut butter, a few shakes from the powdered sugar bag, and a dash of vanilla in the mixer and let 'er rip. It wasn't half bad, but needed a tad more sugar. Of course, now it will be difficult to recreate this recipe next time! The chocolate glaze worked the same way - I dumped some Ghiradelli chips into a bowl, microwaved a slightly larger amount of cream until it boiled, and stirred it up with a glug of corn syrup to keep it shiny. It turned out great - the perfect consistency for what I wanted to do.

Since time was of the essence (I started the cake at 4:00 and we were eating at 7:00), I couldn't fuss over the icing quality. I know there are cake decorators out there who get nice sharp edges on their square cakes. I have read the eGullet demo on how to do it, but haven't quite got the hang of it. Okay -  I'm not even close. My coworkers will be terribly put out when they have to eat my practice cakes, I'm sure.

Anyhoo, I slapped some icing (which was very soft due to the high temps here) on the cake and came up with what you see on the left. Like me, the cake isn't very photogenic - it looked a little better in person than on the photo, which makes it look terribly uneven due to shadow placement. Really it was pretty flat after I cut about 1/3 of a inch off the top. The scraps along with leftover icing and glaze went into the fridge for us to eat later since we left the cake with the neighbors.

Now I had to decide on decoration. I thought about random squiggles on the top but inspiration struck. I needed to practice my "spiderweb" technique anyway, but instead of trying to make a circle on the cake, decided it would be much easier to do parallel lines. (I really need a cake turntable - maybe I can buy someone's old record player at a yard sale and rig up a foot pedal to it - what do you think? I know, just spend the $75 and get a real one...but I'm cheap!)

As it turns out, I'm not so good at parallel lines, either. Maybe my blood sugar was messed up - I was pretty shaky. The two lines at the top aren't quite as close together as the photo suggests (stupid parallax). However, they could have been better. If I'd been smart I would have used a ruler and made little notches where the lines should go. I used a condiment bottle to apply the glaze since it was a bit runny for a piping bag. That part worked okay, but I do need to practice my starts - there was a little blob at the beginning of each line. It would be cool to rig up a bar that had several tips on it, so I could do multiple lines at once. Perhaps that's a project for my dear husband. 

Now all that was left to do was drag a skewer perpendicular to the lines, but not too deep (you don't want to gouge the frosting) to make the pattern you see at the top. It's simplicity itself but really looks flashy. I found that my left to right lines were a lot straighter than the right to left lines (WHY?!), so I got smart. I did the remainder of the left to right lines then turned the cake 180 degrees and did it again. I felt like Wile E. Coyote, sooper-genius (it should have been obvious from the beginning!). Again, a tool with multiple bars would have been slick. I need to buy a large tooth comb and remove some of the teeth - that should do the trick!

The cake was very well received and I think it is going into the "keeper" file.

Sweet Miniatures #19, Daddy Long Legs

Sorry I've been gone for so long - I am on vacation right now in the middle of the prairie, so I've been lazy. I have done hardly any baking - actually hardly anything at all. It's been very relaxing. Next Monday is going to be hell.

I did bake one recipe from Sweet Miniatures, one of the three cookbooks I brought with me to read. What, doesn't everyone take cookbooks on vacation?

I also brought a bag of hazelnuts with me, hoping to find some recipes to use them. That's how I chose this recipe - it called for the most hazelnuts. The cookies are called Daddy Long Legs, which is the strangest name. When I think of Daddy Long Legs, I think of a small body and long skinny legs. I haven't the faintest how these are related to their name. Maybe the nuts look like the insect bodies? If anyone has any ideas, please do let me know.

The cookies are one of the easiest in this book. You soften butter, add sugar, egg, toasted nuts and flour. The soft dough is shaped into a log and chilled for several hours. The chilling not only helps set the dough for slicing, it also allows the nuts to absorb moisture from the dough so they will soften and can be cut more easily.

These crunchy cookies taste better than I expected. There is no salt or flavoring in the dough, which I felt would make them very bland. Toasting the nuts helps boost the flavor, making them quite palatable. Put it this way - I made half a batch after dinner one evening and there were no leftovers. However, I still think a little vanilla and salt would make them pop.

I return from vacation on Sunday, then it's right back into the grind again. Sigh. But cooler weather is just around the corner, and with it baking will become a more frequent event.

Make August BLT Month!

I recently read that April is BLT Month, to which I would like to reply, "WTF?" April?! Where, oh where, can one find a tomato worth eating in APRIL? OK, maybe Florida, but dammit, even the best "heirloom" tomato shipped in from the tropics doesn't begin to compare with a fresh off the vine homegrown tomato. I think August should be named BLT Month.

Sure, tomatoes start coming in July, but in my opinion the really good ones don't hit until August. Pictured here are two varieties from my garden, Brandywine and Yellow Perfection (I leave it to astute readers to tell which is which). They were both absolutely, perfectly ripe and luscious. The bacon is home cured and expertly smoked by my DH, the greens are also from the garden, the mayonnaise was made fresh this morning, and the bread, well, um... It's embarrassing to me as a baker to have to admit that the bread is purchased. The sandwich would have been even more wonderful had the bread been freshly baked, but this bread is a close second. It's Ecce Panis, and has no preservatives, HCFS, or any other nasty crap in it. The ingredient list reads thusly: Enriched wheat flour, water, yeast, salt.

Even though I didn't make the bread, it was still a great sandwich and hopefully the first of many this month. My tomatoes have been slow to produce this year, although I probably had a few ripe last week when I was out of town. I had an early tomato variety that did have fruit in mid-July, but they tasted like crap. I didn't eat any of those tomatoes and instead waited patiently for the others to begin to ripen. Now that they are coming on strong, I'm leaving at the end of the week for vacation. I've told my neighbors to eat all they want - I don't want any of them going to waste.

Anyone care to join me in signing a petition to move BLT Month from April to August?

Colonial Meal

Well, I didn't eat dinner at the hotel. I am still being charged for it, but at least I avoided a tasteless, dry chicken breast. I ended up chatting with a very pleasant woman and her daughter who were staying at the B&B, and we decided to eat together. They already had plans to eat at a historic tavern across the street, so I joined them. I guess the place was a bit of a tourist trap, but the menu looked promising. The tables were set with pewter goblets (probably not real pewter, at least I hope not), and the place was lit mainly with candles. The wait staff wore period costumes, and I felt for them. They did not look comfortable, to say the least.  

Interestingly, the chef of the colonial-themed tavern was German and there was a special for the evening called Schlachtplatte, which tranlates into "butcher's plate." It was a plate of sausages and a boneless pork chop served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. I'm sure you are well aware of my fondness for pork products, so it comes as no surprise to you that I ordered it.

The sausages were good, but not outstanding. Surprisingly they came with no explanation of what type of sausages were on the plate. I think one was a weisswurst due to the light color (weisswurst means "white sausage"). It was fairly spicy but the flavor profile was unfamiliar. The other two were emulsified sausages. That's a fancy way of saying they were like hot dogs. One was indeed a frankfurter, but a good one. The other was larger and I don't know what it was supposed to be. It wasn't a bratwurst, but I suppose it could have been a knackwurst. The pork chop was very tender and juicy, not overcooked in the least. This is difficult to find due to fears of undercooked pork among the dining public.

The sauerkraut was good, especially since it wasn't Bavarian-style, which you often see in German restaurants. Bavarian kraut has caraway seeds in it, which to me is just awful. I like caraway in my rye bread, but leave it out of my sauerkraut, please. (My Alsatian roots are showing.)

My dining companions ordered the turkey pot pie and beef tips with noodles. They were quite pleased with their meals, and we shared a very nice Riesling to accompany the food. All of us were too full for dessert, but the dessert cart didn't look half bad. I believe they made the desserts in house - at least none looked like Sysco offerings. Kudos to the chef for that.  

The meal and the company were miles beyond what I would have endured at the hotel, so I consider it worth paying for two meals but eating one. 

Hopefully I will be able to cook and bake again soon. I'm suffering severe withdrawal at this point, but unfortunately I have to drive 325 miles for a funeral tomorrow, then tackle cleaning up the house before I can even think about baking.

However, at the end of next week I am traveling to North Dakota and should be able to do some tag team baking with my mom when I get there. I'll keep you posted.