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Pineapple upside-down cake
It’s the first pineapple upside-down cake of the year, so it must be springtime!
Grandma's Seven-Up Poundcake
In my good spirits I’ve decided to divulge the recipe..
1 cup butter (2 sticks – room temperature)
1/2 cup shortening
3 cups sugar
6 large eggs (room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup 7-Up or Sprite
2. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Grease and flour a bundt pan. Use Baker’s Joy if you trust it. I don’t.
4. Put the butter into the mixer. Turn it and let it run til it’s all smooth and silky.
5. Add the shortening – mix til uniform.
9. Add in the flavorings. I gave you my grandmother’s measurements, but I can’t make up my mind on this. I tend to go 2-3 teaspoons of vanilla and at least a full teaspoon of lemon extract and up to 1 1/2. I’ll say to taste.
10. Here is where some care needs to taken in terms of your mixing. If you overmix the flour, you’ll get a brick. It is called a poundcake but we still want a kind of lightness to it and being mean to the flour won’t get you anywhere good.
11. Add the flour one cup at a time, wait until it is almost incorporated before adding the next – Don’t worry so much about scraping down at this point. You want it mixed in as few passes of the paddle as possible.
13. Take the bowl off the mixer and add the soda. Using your spatula, fold the soda into the batter, lifting from bottom to the top – be gentle, but thorough. It’s gonna be nice and satiny.
15. Bake it for 30 minutes at 350. Then reduce the heat to 325 and bake for another 60 minutes. If a toothpick comes out clean – take it out of the oven.
- If your oven is whack, check the cake after first 15-20 minutes – if you see brown edges already, reduce the heat asap. If your oven has a glass window and a light – use it. If not, do not open the door anymore than you have to – it fucks with the heat. My grandma also insisted on us not making a bunch of ruckus around the oven. . . “you’ll make my cake fall.” Is it true? No idea, but I’m careful not to make a ruckus around the oven while my cake is baking.
16. Let it cool 10 minutes, then flip it out of the pan. If it sticks – stop using Baker’s Joy and go back to Crisco and flour.
Now.. Sprite vs. 7-up? I don’t like 7-up, so why would I use it to bake when I’m going to end up with leftover soda I won’t want to drink.
blueberry pr0n..
...the edible kind, that is!
i spent this past weekend visiting some friends out in western massachusetts, about 20 miles from new york state. while we were there, chris made pies. the first night was fresh peach pie; regrettably, i forgot to document the pie making or the pie eating, but it was really good!
since the night before chris had made enough of a buttery dough for two pies, and only used one up, we decided to make another fresh fruit pie. we had seen a few Pick-your-own blueberry places lining the roads, so we decided to go look for one. we hit the jackpot!
picking our own berries was so much fun! if we accidently picked one that was a bit too green, just move on to the next one!
we picked about six pounds of them and the total was only $7.50!!
once we got home, chris got to work on the pie. first, he blind-baked the pie crust, making sure the edges wouldn’t burn:
the filling was next. a handful or so of the blueberries were washed and blended to make part of the filling:
then, added the crust texturing! i am sure there’s a better term for it, but i can’t think of it:
and, voilà, the finished blueberry pie
i should have taken more pictures, but when the vanilla ice cream was brought out of the freezer, the pie didn’t last. may it rest in peace, with the knowledge that it fullfilled our bellies!
Christmastime Baking
This Christmas I thought I’d try my hand at the classic French desert, Bouche de Noel. I’m not going to lie, it was sort of a pain to make. My first trials were with the genoise (cake part,) because I don’t exactly own a jelly roll pan. So I “made” one out of aluminum foil and parchment paper. It actually worked ok.
The filling is chocolate mousse, which I’ve made a zillion times before, but this recipe was different than what I’m used too, and the results were not as “stiff” as I would have liked, and some of the filling oozed out of the roll. Chilling it for a long time was the solution, and really, once I iced it no one saw any of the cracks in the genoise or the mousse leaking through said cracks.
It’s iced with a plain chocolate ganache that I added some rum into for something a bit extra.
Making the meringue mushrooms was the easiest and most fun part, and they looked really convincing.
The bark was created by just melting down some semisweet chocolate and spreading it on a piece of parchment, letting it cool, and then rolling it – it flaked off very nicely
I also made an assortment of cookies this year. They look (to me) pretty impressive. These are mini black and white cookies, which TOTALLY rocked and tasted exactly like NYC black and whites, a soft vanilla cookie filled with raspberry filling, and harder chocolate cookies filled with a white chocolate cream and topped with a little bit of dark chocolate. All of them were really good, and didn’t stick around too long.
All of the cookie recipes came from Martha Stewart’s holiday cookie book, and the bouche recipe came from her website. I fully feel, after doing all of these recipes that Martha Stewart is crazy, AND her cookie yield isn’t quite accurate – if you make some of her recipes plan on having about 10 less cookies than she says you will.
Overall-I’m pretty impressed with myself! Happy New Year everyone!
Stained Glass Sugar Cookies
I made these cookies on our wonderful snow day! They looked fantastic but the taste…...well, honestly the cookies were salty.
The recipe is from Martha Stewart’s holiday cookie recipe book, and called for “coarse salt.” I interpreted this as “sea salt” because, well, sea salt is coarse, and it was either that or regular table salt. I think she more meant like..kosher salt or something but whatever it was, I didn’t have it handy in my house and used what I thought would be a proper substitute. Not so the case, and they were salty cookies.
But they were fun (if somewhat a pain) to make. I will also say that my chopped up Jolly Ranchers looked NOTHING like what she had in beautiful little bowls in the magazine. I went from big honking chunks achieved by whacking them in a ziploc baggie wrapped inside a kitchen towel with a rolling pin, or putting them in my mini “Queeeze” and decimating them into a fine powder. Actually, either method melted fine, but I think the powder melted too quickly during the baking, and the window pane was slightly bubblier than I’d hoped for.
It should also be noted that I think that something kind of funky happens to the candy during the baking process – they don’t taste quite as good after baking. I don’t know why and it could just be me, but….they tasted off.
But they sure are pretty.
Mama's Birthday Cake
I spent yesterday evening making this. It’s two layers of yellow cake, with a white chocolate mousse and sliced strawberry filling. Then topped with buttercream frosting and more strawberries (which were incredibly good for being out of season and ass out expensive).
The buttercream is 2 to 1 butter to shortening for better mouth feel than 100% shortening frosting.
I actually spent most of the Thankgiving holiday baking something. Wednesday evening it was german chocolate cake for the dessert at my aunt’s house, Friday evening, I decided to make some dinner rolls to go with our leftovers, that somehow got burned. . .so Saturday it was back in the kitchen to make rolls again, this time from the challah dough. I made one braided loaf and the remaining dough I shaped into double knot rolls, no pictures, sorry. (bad lex!) Then I also made peanut butter cookies. And of course, on Sunday I made the pictured cake.
Fruit Salad as Art
I made this with one of the last of the “good” watermelons available this season.
Interestingly, there’s not much different between carving a watermelon then there is carving linoleum or wood. I’ve been working on ways to make more “attractive” displays, and this was one of my first attempts.
The salad is made up of watermelon pieces, strawberry slices, blackberries, Maine blueberries, chiffonade of lemon peel, a small bit of orange juice, and fresh mint leaves. The mint left a great flavor and I was pretty pleased with the outcome.
Banana pudding parfait
Just a twist on the usual old banana pudding. . .
Make up a box of instant banana pudding, crush up a package of graham crackers, grab a tub of Cool Whip, and slice up a couple of bananas.
Take out a couple of tall glasses. I used pint beer glasses, but if you have something prettier, that will work, too. Start stacking the ingredients in layers in this order: graham cracker crumbs, pudding, banana slices, Cool Whip. Repeat until the glass is filled. Top with Cool Whip, sprinkle graham cracker crumbs as a garnish, and stick in a single banana slice. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.
Eat with a long spoon!
Cakes made with cake mix
Lex and I have been experimenting with quick and easy cakes made from cake mixes lately. We’ve tried three so far. Lex made mini pineapple upside down cakes. I’ve made Big Red cake and coconut cake. So far, all have proven to be quite tasty and very popular at parties or with coworkers. The little mini pineapple upside down cakes were particularly cute and are great to take to potlucks.
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