Panic

My baby sister is getting married in March. She is a total carboholic. She and her fiance decided to have a bread bar as appetizers for their reception. And she wants me to make the bread. Holy cow. I said yes like an idiot, thinking that it would be a fun challenge. What? Bread for 240 people that looks and tastes awesome enough for a wedding. What was I thinking? Her finace is in the military and is home for the weekend this weekend coming up so my mother and I decided to make some bread for them to kind of choose what they like and what they don't. I made potato bread, Challah, breadsticks, garlic bread, Norwegian rye bread and prezels. My mom and I together whipped up zucchini muffins, oatmeal rolls, savory cheese bread, parmasan bread, and corn muffins. That is a lot of bread! We are still trying to figure out the best way to present it. We are not sure if we should make loaves or rolls, if we should go with bread baskets or a dramatic presentation of everything on the table. We still are unsure of what we want to put on the breads. I am going to make a variety of flavored butters and cream cheeses, but beyond that we are drawing a blank.

Yay Cake!

My cake decorating skills totally leave something to be desired. My ability to make a layer cake is shameful. Also, because I bake, I am now the dedicated baker in my family, regardless of the fact that cake that I make looks like garbage. So I decided to take a cake decorating class. Because every time I would bake a cake I would scream and cry and my husband refused to come into the kitchen. Now I had two choices for decorating classes: one at Michaels (craft store) or one through the community college. Turns out they were both Wilton classes so I guess it did not really matter which I chose.

I just finished Intro to Cake Decorating. It was so much fun. I really loved it. I was really bad at it, but I really loved it. There is just something exciting about finally learning how they make that buttercream rose. The class was four weeks long for three hours one night a week. We did not learn anything that will probably have me leaving my day job anytime soon, but the girls in the class were fun and creative and the teacher was great. We made a cake for our last day and honestly its the prettiest cake I have ever made. I felt like I hadn't learned that much until my husband commented on how far I had come. It made me happy, like that cake might not be totally out of my relm. I immediatly signed up for Cake Decorating II. I think that it will be good for me to continue on this cake experiment.

The cake I made is lemon cake from a box (gasp) but I have not been ready to branch out that much yet. I figured if I can get a handle on some decorating skills then maybe I can branch out to homemade cakes. I made the lighter lemon curd filling that I found on Baking Bites. Its a fantastic lemon curd that is super easy with a whole lot less fat than any other lemon curd I have tried. Its basically become my go to lemon curd for everything from a quick lemon mousse to a pie filling. The frosting is the class buttercream, which really means that its shortening buttercream. I like the shortening buttercream to work with, it's very consistant. However, I like the taste of real buttercream better.

Wilton Class Buttercream
1 cup vegetable shortening
2 tablespoons milk or water ( I use lemon juice to cut the sweetness a bit)
1 tablespoon meringue powder (totally optional, just makes things a bit stiffer)
1 teaspoon clear vanilla (I use regular because it is what I have)
1 pound powdered sugar (about 4 cups)

On the Wilton.com website they have a slightly different buttercream recipe that is made with 1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening. I have made this icing before and it is pretty good, but it does get crunchy. It is fairly easy to work with though. Soon I hope to start baking my cakes from scratch and trying different icings.

Bread Machine Bread

The bread machine is a strange beast to me. I have never made anything in a bread machine. I always thought that it was a fine machine, but nothing I was interested in. To me, its about the process. It's seeing the dough come together, feeling the smooth elasticity in the kneading and the shaping of the dough.

However, there was a contest I was a bit interested in and one of the categories was bread machine white bread. So, I dug through my mother's cabinets and found her bread machine. I read the directions and decided to whip up some traditional white bread. It seemed easy enough. Pour the ingredients into the pan, push the buttons, wait three hours and I will have fantastic bread. Lo and behold, beautiful fluffy white bread emerged from that machine. I was stunned. Why didn't people make bread in bread machines all the time? I mean, making bread from scratch takes time and effort, but bread machine bread makes itself. If you are having people over and don't have time to whip up a batch of scratch bread, just toss some ingredients in your bread machine and go. My husband and I cut into it and a soft fat piece of perfect bread came off. Then another. Then the third cut and clang. The knife isn't going through this perfect soft bread. What is going on? We flipped the bread over and the little beater bakes itself in to the bread. What? How are you supposed to have perfectly shaped loaves of bread if you have to cut a huge chunk out of the bottom?

Well, we did cut a chunk out of the bottom and it was still white and fluffy. It tasted good, but it lacked the depth of some of the bread that takes me all day to make (or two or three days). I think that I will continue to use this bread machine, for whipping up a loaf of bread in a hurry. But I still enjoy the process of making the bread, possibly more than eating the bread itself. So I will continue making my bread from scratch.

Eggs

My girls have finally blessed me with some beautiful fresh, homegrown eggs. Right now they are a little small yet to use much for baking, but I guess that is what a kitchen scale is for.

Disasters and frustrations

I tried my hand at some French macarons this weekend. They were a total disaster. So much of a disaster, I do not have a photo. There was no foot. They turned brown. Terrible.


This is Tornado. He is the other sort of beast that I enjoy wrangling. I have had him for ten years through much good and bad. He has been frustrating me here lately because I have recently purchased a new trailer and he refuses to get on it. Now, I just need to train him to get on it, but like those macarons I have never made before, there is a lot of trial and error along the way. Quite honestly, I have become almost fed up with both things (ok, I haven't given the macarons much of a fair try but still) that is until I went to lunch today.

I work in a small town and for lunch there are mainly fast food options. Consequently, I end up eating a lot of Subway if I forgot to pack my lunch. Today as I was standing in line, a new employee waited on me. There was no one in front or behind me so he took me through the whole sandwich himself, no assembly line today. Now I have eaten at Subway countless times. I have been waited on by dozens of staff members, who are usually extremely efficient, getting my sandwich to me in the smallest amount of time possible. But not today. Today, this new employee painstakingly arranged my spinach and tomatoes. He carefully counted out my pickles and onions and squeezed on just the appropriate amount of mayo. Not to little or to much. It struck me that a sandwich I had eaten so many times could be so lovingly prepared. Something that was typically slapped together, today was carefully arranged just so.

It made me contemplate how vary common it is for me to rush through a task, especially in baking, and then am frustrated with the result. How if maybe I were more conscientious with my work, perhaps more success would come my way. I need to learn to be less bogged down by the clock and to just enjoy the time I have with each task be it learning a new recipe or trying to load my horse on trailer.

English Muffins

My husband is a breakfast food fanatic. Especially if this breakfast food entails eggs of any variety. Consequently, we frequently eat breakfast for supper, especially if there has not been a trip to the grocery store in quite some time. Since I got home from work before him, this particular day, I decided to make English muffins to accompany our eggs.

English muffins are surprisingly easy to make. The English muffin recipe that I use is from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice (big surprise). It is made using the direct dough method, so you can decide on a (sort of) whim to whip these up. They only take a few minutes of mixing and raise in a couple of hours. One thing that I learned about making English muffins, are that they are initially pan fried and then finish baking in the oven. I have made these before, but had a little trouble because they stayed fat, the muffin did not flatten like traditional English muffins. I then read Nicole's post about English muffins that stated if your dough was too stiff, the muffins do not flatten out appropriately. I then increased the water a bit and had more success this time.

My husband and I made bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches with them later that evening and the next morning I enjoyed another one with butter and jam. The key to getting the signature nooks and crannies is to fork split the muffin, not to slice it with a fork. They quite delicious. Next time I may change it up a bit and add some whole wheat flour or maybe some raisins.

Homemade Marshmallows

It seems everywhere I look, food bloggers have made homemade marshmallows. And in reading their posts, these homemade marshmallows sound absolutely delightful. The photographs of these marshmallows look spectacular, like fluffy clouds of awesomeness. I just had to make homemade marshmallows. They actually were surprisingly easy to make, boil the sugar and the corn syrup, whip with the gelatin until fluffy. Yes, they were sticky, but candy making always is

My sister is getting married and in the spirit of looking for a pretty dessert for the dessert tray, I decided to cut them into heart shapes and dip half into chocolate. They turned out so cute. I took them to her, quite excited about my newest creation. She told me they were beautiful and took a great big bite. "Oh Heather, these would be perfect if they didn't taste so much like Peeps." She was right. My homemade marshmallows taste like Peeps. Or at best, store bought marshmallows. But nothing like the greatness I was hoping for. The recipe I made called for a vanilla bean, however, I did not have any vanilla beans and consequently used vanilla extract. That may have been my downfall. I would like to try and make them again, maybe with a different flavor, maybe with a real vanilla bean.