Bagels!!

   This was incredibly fun!  So my grandmother gave me these VHS tapes that she had recorded awhile ago with 'Baking with Julia' episodes on them.  And since I'm taking an extended break from cable (I was really addicted, no time for baking, and we just couldn't have that!), I have nothing to watch, so I popped one in and decided to see if it was good.

   It was her later show where she is in her late 70's and had co-hosts on.  A segment came on with this wonderful lady (will post her name later) that was making bagels.  And I was like, this sounds awesome and fairly easy to do.  So I was very gungho to do it.

  I got the cookbook with the recipe in it, also from my grandmother, and started the dough the night before.  Then in the morning I rolled them and added the ingredients.  I made 2 cinnamon raisin (funny enough, you don't have to add extra sugar just around 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/8 cup of raisins), 2 plain, and one potentially good parmesan and oregano.  We'll see if it turns out, I mostly just did it quickly because I wanted to make another flavor and just happen to have those ingredients.

   Another semi important thing too, you can use ground cornmeal in a pinch but it makes a really crunchy layer on the bottom of the bagel.  Which, if you like crunch I guess wouldn't matter, but it is much better to have the bigger cornmeal that usually comes on bagels.

   With the plain too, they had a nice teensie flavor of yeast.  I love the taste of yeast in rolls, so I like this feature.  I know some people don't like it, but it's only a small hint of it.  Especially if you add cream cheese or butter.

  The tops of the bagels in the picture are a little darker on the top because I put an egg wash finish on them (including the yolk), which I didn't mind, but the recipe calls for egg whites and water.  Eh.. it worked out and it tasted lovely, that's the important part.

   So I hope you got an itch to go make fresh bagels for yourself one day, they are delicious and well worth the trouble.  I have all of the ingredients anyway, and it's definitely better than spending lots of money on bagels at the grocery store!

The Know-How

Hello all,

   It's been awhile since I've actually posted anything on here besides just recipe posts.  Today I figured I'd say HELLO! and greetings to those that have viewed my blog.

    I hope you have enjoyed everything you've seen and that some of you have actually baked some of these things yourself.  Being an amateur baker I love when I can find new and interesting recipes from fellow bloggers that are just like me and are trying it for the first time.

 So I'd just like to say that I'm hoping to start really being vocal on this blog.  Not just recipes anymore.  One of the reasons that I have decided this is that I'd like to share with everyone (and mostly get advice/comments) the new project I'm starting.

Just a little backstory:

    I majored in Film Studies in college, and have since graduated, to find that not many people are hiring in my field.  So as many young fresh-out-of-college students are finding menial jobs to take up their time, and pay their bills, I have done just that.  I'm working at a restaurant here in Raleigh, and it's hard work, but it's suiting all of the needs I have for my bills and what not.  But I'm not really gaining many skills from it.

My project:

     I'be started a little baking home business.  Nothing big just to people in my neighborhood, and maybe at work.  But it would be something to occupy my time and it would make me feel like I'm doing something good.

    **  I know I'm probably saying exactly what you bakers and chefs out there know, but baking is such a passion for me.  It makes me feel good inside, and it calms me down after a stressful week, much like meditation would for others.  I love that people smile when they taste my pastries and it makes them happy or gives them something that brightens up their day.  It's a fabulous thing to be able to bring people that little moment of happiness in a crazy day.

    So I want to bake more.  I want to be able to bake for other people besides just coworkers.  And not to be rude but the money wouldn't be bad either.

   Working in the food industry is ok, but I'd at least like to be learning and practicing what I want to do in my free time: like baking.  AkA I'm trying to get a job that will be something I like doing and it will help me get better.

To get to the heart of the matter I'm going to teach myself how to master- class decorate cakes and cupcakes!    

  I will be practicing with different icings (because I want to find the best one).  I will also be making more gumpaste flowers and getting better with gumpaste.  This is where the comments and advice come in.  So as I go along here teaching myself and decorating the heck out of some cakes, if you'd like to send me a comment and get in your two cents, I'd love to hear it!

    I hope you all are having a great start to the week and will hopefully be posting soon.

Megan

White Chocolate Truffles

This is the second time I've made these and they turned out much better.  I'm not very good with chocolate but the ganache was fantastic.  I made rose and orange flavored chocolates; some coated in white chocolate, and some coated in a coco powder (which is my favorite!).  When the bitter coco melts with the sweet white chocolate, it's sooo amazing.


It takes a few stages but it is well worth it.

(more later)

Fondant & Gum Paste

I've been really wanting to try doing more fondant cakes and gumpaste decorations.  This one was only an experiment which is why it looks a little rough.  I wanted to try out decorations so I used half the batter for the cupcakes, and half the batter for the cake.  It's a gold cake with a strawberry jam center.  I did a crumb coating then lay the fondant on top.  The cake is so soft that I think the fondant weighed it down a little too much, which is why it's better to have two layers I'd imagine.

The cupcakes on the right are the gold cake with a chocolate ganache topping and fondant decorations. The buttercream frosting next to it wasn't the best recipe (I have since tried others) but it's a vanilla buttercream frosting.  The consistency was very strange, but I've found a whole bunch of different frosting recipes that are much better suited for what I was trying to do.  Boiled icing is very much interesting.  It has a really great texture, and it's completely fat free.  It's more like marshmallow texture, so some might not like that, but it's got a really nice look when you ice the cake because of the structure of the mixture.  It holds up very well.


Gumpaste is pretty interesting to work with.  I bought gumpaste powder to mix together with fresh ingredients to make the gumpaste that I used.  It was really fun and definitely a learning experience.  I tried for carnations.  They were pretty though a little 'wilted' looking.  Another thing that might have affected all of the decorations was the humidity.  It's been terrible lately with all of this rain so that might have been why all of the decorations were a little iffy.  I will be practicing more, since practicing is definitely what it takes.  And I'll hopefully be able to post more on it.


**To all of the creative types who have always wanted to try these things**

  If you want to try gumpaste and fondant but you're scared of what might happen, do it anyway!  I always believe that people should do something and figure out how to fix things on their own, just trying different things until you find a solution.  Not everyone can be trained on these things or just know how to do it.  So if you want to, you should go ahead and do it, if it turns out bad, gumpaste is just a little sugar, you can always make more.  You dont always have to buy the powders in the store, you can make it from scratch, but I hear it's a little difficult that way.  But the powder you buy makes quite a few flowers so you have leeway if you do buy that.

Good luck!  ....  I'll need some myself :)
                                                   

Easter Bread

      Thankfully Easter was here faster than I knew it so I gathered all of the recipes I wanted to do and got to work.  There were two big ones that I wanted to try.  The pictures are my first and second baking of easter bread.  I got this recipe from keikos-cake.com


  I'm on here monthly newsletter, and even though you have to subscribe to her site for most of the recipes, she does send out free ones every now and then.

  This bread recipe is fantastic!  It turns out nice and fluffy, and is best eaten slightly warm.  If you can't eat it right off the cooling rack, you should heat it up for 20-25 seconds.

  The next was a hollow chocolate easter egg with candy filling which I will be writing about soon.

On to the bread:

                   
Keiko's-Easter-Bread.pdf

Above is the pdf of the recipe.  It has all of the pictures following along with the recipe, which I found very useful when I was kneading the dough.  This is the second recipe that I've added the butter post batter creation.  The first was puff pastry dough, which is why I think this batter is so fluffy, or at least a contributing factor.  It also rises about 3 times which was not as bad as I thought it would be.

  It's a pretty simple batter, thought the ingredients are all in ounces and grams I believe, but she's local to Germany so that's why.  You will need a food scale for this, but they are pretty cheap at walmart and places like that.

  *helpful tip* I found out recently that it's actually better to weigh ingredients out on a scale like that because some things like flour weighs differently depending on how you add it.  For instance if you pack it in to a measuring cup, or are you supposed to have it loose in the measuring cup?  ect.

  Ingredients
Flour                  100 g (3.5 oz.)
Bread flour         400 g (14.1 oz.)
Sugar                  50 g (1.8 oz.)
Salt                     10 g (0.35 oz.)
Dry yeast           8 g (0.28 oz.)
Milk                   280 g (9.9 oz.)
Egg                    30 g (1.1 oz.)

Butter                 80 g (2.8 oz.)   - let your butter sit out for some of the day so it can get soft and easy to                work with when you start kneading it.  

    In the beginning to dissolve the yeast you'll want to heat the milk up, but just to body temperature so that you don't kill the yeast.  Heat will kill yeast if it's too hot!!  Then you use half to dissolve the yeast, and stir it just enough to break up the yeast clumps so that you wont have to dig them out of the bowl with your fingers and maybe lose some of the yeast.

  You will be getting your hands 'dirty' on this one so just prepare for a fun food sculpting day.  As you can see from the photos there are several different ways to braid or design easter bread, and I've only used two here.  The bunny is really cute, but I still haven't mastere the bunny's head.  The first batch came out ok, but then the second .. well let's just say they didn't really look like bunnies so much any more.

I also wanted to experiment with the second batch and try to simulate fur on the bunny with almond slices and this is how it came out:

   My family let slip something about porcupines but I didn't really listen, it was good with the almonds and it looked pretty cool compared to the other bunnies.





*Tip*  Some things to serve with the easter bread:  I've found that you can eat it plain if you want, especially if there are almond slices or crushed up almonds, also jam and butter are favorites for this type of yeast bread.

   BUT the best I've found is a light Icing.  The reason I suggest this is it will soak into the bread and keep it moist so you don't have to heat it up for it to be soft.  It doesn't even make it too sweet either.  It's just a small hint of sugar for the yeast dough.

  I just mixed up about 1/4 cup of powdered sugar and a table spoon of milk I believe.  It's sort of a 'make it until it looks like you want it too' kind of icing.  Be careful! when adding the milk though because a little goes a long way.  It takes ALOT of powdered sugar to get it close to icing if you've aded too much milk.  

  

   I hope you all enjoy!!