Viewing entries in
Baking
One of my favourite summer-time treats is a grilled hot-dog. Butterflied, dripping with yellow mustard (no ketchup for me) and if we are going all out, fried onions and hot peppers. I am getting hungry just writing about it! But let’s face it, part of the experience is the bun. There is no way to make hot dogs a health food, so no whole-wheat here, just soft, fluffy white buns!
When the older members of the family get their choice, including my now teenage son, more often than not, they choose a Ding Dong Cake. What the heck is a Ding Dong Cake? Maybe remember a spongy chocolate coated, cream and caramel filled chocolate snack cake in a cellophane package that sat on corner store shelves and could likely survive the apocalypse? That was a Ding Dong. What I make may be inspired by that snack, but it is so much tastier!
If you have been out to eat at least once in the last few years, you have likely seen Brown Butter something on the menu. Savoury and sweet chefs' love this ingredient for the nutty, complex flavour it adds to their dishes. There is good reason for chefs' obsession with Brown Butter…it is delicious!! Beurre Noisette (that is just the fancy French work for Brown Butter) is simply unsalted butter that is cooked to the point that the milk solids in the butter begin to cook and caramelize giving your butter a nutty flavour.
A true Angel Food cake is only leavened by eggs whites and requires only five ingredients plus some flavouring. Homemade Angel Food may not be as tall, but it should still be light and airy and it will also have a superior taste to the boxed versions. In fact, it tastes so good that my son thinks I should change the serving size on the recipe from eight to one to two servings!
Now when it comes to icings, I am all about the buttercream (check out my blog for my Swiss Meringue Buttercream Recipe). While buttercream is great in a sandwich cookie or as a dip for sugar cookies, it is not optimal for decorating as it remains soft and will squish and smudge. For detailed decorating you need to use royal icing. Royal icing is a simple mixture of egg whites, icing sugar and flavour that is easy to pipe with and dries hard so your cookies can be moved, stacked and stored without the risk of smearing.
Working with the butter block and keeping it contained in the dough can be a bit tricky and turns off many home bakers. But don’t be discouraged, the is a way to get a very tasty homemade puff pastry with a bit less (okay, a lot less) stress….Blitz Puff Pastry. As the name suggests, this is a faster version of puff pastry.
As a trained pastry chef I have to admit I am almost embarrassed to be offering this recipe. This once king of fine-dining desserts now gets snickers from chefs and foodies when it appears on a menu. It is now so common place it is seen as showing little creativity or technique from the kitchen. Despite the Lava Cake’s fall from fine dining grace, it is still hard to beat that first delicious bite of warm, oozing chocolate!
To use up all those bananas, I have tried banana-oatmeal cookies, banana snack cake, banana pancakes, banana ice-cream and more, but in my family’s opinion those are all a waste of time because chocolate-chip banana bread will always be number one in their hearts.
People can be divided into those who love Fruitcake and those who hate Fruitcake. It is very polarizing and there is little middle ground! I was in the latter group until one Christmas season I was reading my December issue of BonAppetit and saw a recipe for, “A Fruitcake to Love.” A light fruitcake that had olives in it! I present this recipe mainly for the haters in the hopes that you will stick your toe over the line and give it a try.
It is that time of the year when I am deciding what Christmas Cookies I will be baking this year. I always try two or three new ones from all those cooking magazines that I subscribe to. However, there are two that always make my list, my Grandma’s Shortbread and Ginger Snap cookies. As soon as the first batches of these are in the oven I start to feel the Christmas spirit!!
In previous posts, I have given you recipes for the best (in my opinion) chocolate, white and yellow cakes. As I am making a birthday cake for Glambaby #1 (chocolate, with chocolate icing, long sprinkles and round sprinkles, and a Power Ranger on top, in case you were wondering), I realized that cake is not really cake without icing! To be honest, I was never a fan of the icing as I always found it too sweet, but then I discovered buttercream and I was won over. I am going to teach about the various types of buttercream (not all buttercreams are created equal) and share my favourite go-to icing, Swiss Buttercream.
When we were studying pies in pastry school, so many of us said, “This is not how my grandmother does it.” Our Chef told us one of the problems of being a baker is always trying to compete with childhood memories. So even after two years of pastry school, my favourite pie crust recipe comes from grandma, written on the back of a cigarette package!
