Sunday, February 12, 2017

Happy Birthday, Mom

So my Mom had a birthday and I decided I would make her a cake. It took three days, if you consider I made the cake and then froze it for a day until I could do the rest. One of my favorite cakes from school was a white genoise cake with strawberries and kirsch flavored mousseline. I decided to make it with a chocolate genoise instead. The genoise was easy. (I used half of the recipe in the text, and that made enough for one cake. Perfect.) The rest used every pot I had: kirsch flavored syrup to soak the cake, pastry cream and buttercream for the mousseline. Here's the sink when I was done with all that:
I then chilled the cake and yesterday morning removed the ring (using the torch) and then decorated the top with more berries and a little chocolate. Then glazed the berries using apricot glaze mixed with a little strawberry jam.

Mom was pleased. 
I also brought the last baguette to their house and made garlic bread with it for dinner. It was phenomenal.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Blizzard and Baking

The other day we had a blizzard, dropping about 15 inches of snow on our area. After spending a few hours at work (I went REALLY early so I could be done before the worst of the snow started) I tried a second time to make baguettes. This time, I used a recipe from one of my culinary school pals but I used the school method of folding the dough every hour to build up the air pockets. I was also much more careful about overproofing. I may, in fact, have underproofed slightly but that is less of a problem in this case.
My friend has a different method for folding the dough and I'm going to try that next time and compare. Instead of the dough being flat, it's kept round and then the sides are folded up and over like flower petals. It'll be interesting to compare.

Last night another friend came over and we had the bread with my homemade paté, some cheeses, and a really terrific artichoke spread she brought with her. The bread sliced easily and had some nice air pockets but didn't have quite the crumb I was looking for. This is why I want to try the other method and see what I get.

I have another project I've been working on, but I won't be done with that one until later today and then I'll see how it all looks....

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Valentine Linzer Cookies

With Valentine's Day coming up, I needed to make some cookies for the kids. Thankfully, shortbread-type cookies work just fine in my oven and that's exactly what Linzer cookies are. I made them without almond flour so they were just regular flour, butter, sugar and egg yolks. I cut my recipe into a third and that made 22 cookies. I suppose could have made them smaller, but these felt just right.

The filling is strawberry lavender jam from my stash. Half are being frozen for now and the other half can be eaten in the next few days. Yum!

Saturday, February 4, 2017

First Attempt

The other day I learned how to make azuki bean paste from a friend. I brought some home and, since the youngerchild loves bean buns, tried to make my own.

Let's just say, they looked nothing like the photos on the webpage. They were edible. That's the nicest thing I can say about them. I didn't take photos.

So, for future attempts:
  1. Don't make the dough circles too thin
  2. Mash up the bean paste more
  3. Don't overproof
  4. Put down some sort of parchment or rice paper on the steamer first
  5. Don't let them touch each other in the steamer
I'm sure there are more things I could do better, but this is a start. I think I had ONE out of sixteen that looked like it was supposed to.