Bread Baking Babes - Cuban Bread

Cuban Bread by Bernard Clayton from New Complete Book of Breads.

Delicious. Scrumptious. Amazing.

The bread so nice I made it twice.

Easy.

Want to be a Buddy? Bake the bread, recipe here, then send a link to Ilva at luculliandelights AT gmail DOT com by January 28. Use the subject 'Bread Baking Buddy' in your email.

You will LOVE this bread.

I'm not including a picture because they're just that bad...

I came across Nigella Lawson's recipe for Apple Latkes and lo and behold I had all the ingredients on hand for breakfast the next day.

They were fairly fast to make and very very delicious - my bottomless pit of a child ate 4 of them!

I have no photos to show as all the ones I took were so bad I was ashamed.  And if you've seen some of the pictures I've posted over the years then you'll know just how bad they were.

Recipe: Apple Latkes

100 DIWALI SWEET RECIPES FROM INDUS LADIES- MOST AWAITED E-BOOK IS PUBLISHED

                                                            

 

I think i am the last one to write about this most eagerly awaited e-book from Indus ladies .U can download this e-book here . There are so many wonderful , unique recipes being published.I am elated that my BOONDHI LADOO recipe is also featured in this book :) Thanks a lot INDUS LADIES !!

New Italian Cookbooks 2011

I'm not sure any other cuisine can top Italian, when it comes to comfort food. While Italian cookbooks are a dime a dozen, three really stood out for me this year and are nice enough variations to warrant adding to your collection if you're an Italian food fiend like me or give them as gifts.


Cucina Povera Tuscan Peasant Cooking was sure to strike a chord with me, because I lived in Florence for 6 months. It is written by ex-pat Pamela Sheldon Johns and it shares a way of life, of not wasting anything and eating frugally. In the book you'll meet all kinds of people from Italy who cook and garden and make things from scratch. The recipes are for some things you may already know about like Ribollita and Pappa al Pomodoro (and if you don't, then by all means you need this book) but also more obscure recipes that you are unlikely to encounter in a restaurant.

Recipes you'll want to try include Tuscan Cornmeal, Kale and Bean Soup, Stewed Peppery Beef Cheeks, Farmyard Crostini (finally a use for giblets!) Plum Jam Tart and Ricotta Cake.







The family I lived with in Italy ate very formal meals, I don't remember a single one course meal. But they do exist and that is what Piatto Unico is all about. The book shares hearty, comforting dishes many that are particularly perfect as we head into Winter. Recipes are divided into chapters like Prime-Time Pastas, Minestrone and Other Big, Bountiful Soups and Braises and Stews.

Recipes you'll want to try include: Asparagus Spinach Crepes with Taleggio, Thick Chickpea and Porcini Soup, Escarole, Anchovy and Cheese Salad.












Another noteworthy book is Rustic Italian Food. This is satisfying and lusty food, not fussy food although many of the recipes do take effort and are not just weeknight jobs. It's filled with homemade breads, pastas, salumi, pickles and preserves. They all demand the use of top quality ingredients. It's written by a restaurant chef, but designed for home cooks.

Recipes you'll want to try include: Spaghetti in Parchment with Clams and Scallions, Eggplant Lasagnette Alla Parmigiana, Veal Breast 'al Latte' with Fried Sage, Cold Farro Salad with Crunchy Vegetables

DO NOT REPRINT WITHOUT PERMISSION! ©2011 Cooking with Amy. All rights reserved. This material may NOT be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission. If you are reading this post somewhere other than Cooking with Amy, the Oyster Local blog or Gather.com, then the site where you found this post is illegally publishing copyrighted material.

Noble Pig, Kamloops

(december 2010)

deep fried pickles

tropical pizza

cubano sandwich

the noble pig

650 victoria st

website coming soon (?)

Baby Shower Desserts Part 3 - Mini Cupcakes

For this baby girl baby shower, I made mini chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with blackberry cassis buttercream, decorated with royal icing booties.  If you plan to decorate with booties, you'll need to make them at least 3 days ahead, as they need to dry and harden completely before using them.

To make royal icing booties, start with royal icing mix (from Michael's or a cake decorating store), or make your own using pasteurized egg whites.

Royal Icing
3 large pasteurized egg whites
3-3/4 cups sifted powdered sugar + 1/4 cup, divided
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon flavoring of choice (vanilla, etc)

Reserve 1/4 cup sugar and mix together all other ingredients. Beat for 7-10 minutes until the icing holds a strong peak. Add more powdered sugar if necessary. Beat in color of choice ( I use a toothpick to add color so I have control and don't add too much). Keep the frosting covered with a damp cloth to keep it from drying out.

Prepare a pastry bag with a coupler and a #12 round tip (the coupler allows you to change tips without emptying the bag).



 If you want to, you can mark a piece of partchment paper with rounds so that you have a bit of guidance in how big to make the bookies. Always mark on one side, turn the paper over and then pipe on the backside so that you don't contaminate the frosting with the marker. Hold the bag at a 45-degree angle and pipe from the toe towards the heel, releasing the pressure as you get to the heel.



For the heel you can either hold the bag straight up-and-down- or you can angle the bag slightly towards the toe and then pipe upwards. Dip a dowel in powdered sugar and then press into the top of the bootie. Don't worry about excess powdered sugar - when the booties are dry you can brush away the excess with a small paint brush (food-safe).


Switch to a #2 tip and pipe 'lace' at the top of the bootie (you'll have to experiment with this to see what looks good - I sort of made loops while raising the tip up). These booties are quite small, so it is hard to add a bow to the front. Instead, I made laces at the front of the bootie using the #2 tip. I used the same color, but you could do contrasting color if you like.


Don't put the booties on the cupcakes until just before serving, as the royal icing could get soft when exposed to the buttercream. These cupcakes are very small, so you might want to just use one on each (the opening photo has chocolate cupcakes with 2 booties and the vanilla with just one, for comparison).

For the Cupcakes
Before offering the recipes, I wanted to tell you about the new muffin pan that I just bought at Sur La Table. It makes 24 mini-muffins, but the best part is that the cups are shallower and wider than regular mini-muffin tins. The result is that the paper liners go in easier with no pleating and they come out of the pan much easier too. 

Old style pan on left

For chocolatete cupcakes, use the recipe for Filled Chocolate Cupcakes Revised (but don't fill them).

I'd never actually made vanilla cupcakes, always opting for chocolate, but I had a baby shower to do and the mom-to-be didn't like chocolate, so it provided a good opportunity for me to work on my vanilla baking.  I started with my all around sheetcake recipe from my book, cutting it down to the appropriate size, but the results were not really what I wanted - they were too sweet, two vanilla tasting and the texture wasn't quite right for a piece of cake that gets eaten out of hand.  Fortunately, the fix was easy and I didn't have to rebake them more than once.  I simply cut down on the sugar and vanilla and added more milk.

 Vanilla Cupcakes
187 grams all-purpose flour -- measured by fluffing, scooping and leveling
1 -1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

5 ounces unsalted butter
1 cups sugar
1 -1 /2 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs

1 tablespoon oil
3/4 cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. with a rack in the lower third of the oven (use a hotter oven if you want cupcakes that crest higher). Place baking cups in each muffin space.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Place the butter and sugar into a large mixer bowl, and beat for a full 5-7 minutes until fluffy. Beat in the vanilla. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating for 30 seconds after each addition. Scrape down the bowl and then beat for a minute to blend everything. Beat in the oil.

By hand, stir in 1/3 of the flour mixture into the batter. Stir in 1/2 of the milk. Repeat until all of the flour and milk has been added. The batter will be very thick, as you'll see in the photo.

Spoon a heaping teaspoonful of batter into each mini-cup or a heaping tablespoon full into each full-size muffin cup.  The cups should be about 3/4 full.

Bake for 8-12 minutes for minis (6-8 if using a hotter oven), 15-18 for full size cupcakes - until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out absolutely clean.  Let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes and then take them out of the pan and set on a cooling rack until completely cool.  Rinse the hot pan in warm water and then cool water.  Repeat the process with the remaining batter. 

You can see that the muffins didn't crest very much, despite the fact that the cups were well-filled.  If you bake them in a hotter oven, they should crest more.  Try 375 degrees - but just watch carefully that they don't overcook.  Makes about 36 mini muffins.  I didn't make larger muffins, but I'm guessing that it would bake 12-15 of the larger muffins.

Blackberry Buttercream
Blackberry Buttercream is more on the more purple side of pink, which worked for me, since the colors of the event were pink and purple.  Blackberries are so much easier to sieve than  raspberries, that I was thrilled that the color would work for this party.  I opted to do my Easy Meringue Buttercream rather than Simple Buttercream (uses Marshallow Fluff instead of egg whites) because I wasn't sure if the simple version would handle all of the blackberry puree, but you might want to give it a try, since it is so much easier to make ( see Filled Chocolate Cupcakes Revised), and since this version had problems with the puree as well (details follow). 

10-12 ounces frozen blackberries, defrosted as per below instructions
2-4 tablespoons cassis liqueur, optional
180 grams (6 large) pasteurized egg whites (I used Organic Valley egg whites - in a carton)
2 tablespoons water
 1-1/2 cups superfine sugar (or you can buzz regular sugar in a coffee grinder)
4 sticks (21 ounces)  unsalted butter
1/2  teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup blackberry puree (see below)
1/2 cup powdered sugar

For the blackberry puree:
Defrost the frozen blackberries, retaining all of the juice.  Boil the juice until it is reduced by half (you can add some cassis liqueur to this, before or after boiling, depending on whether you want to get rid of the alcohol or not). Run the blackberries through a food mill and add this puree to the reduced juice. Sieve the mixture through a medium strainer to get rid of all seeds (blackberry seeds are pretty large, so a medium strainer works).  You should have about 1/2 cup blackberry puree. Do not add it to the buttercream until it is at room temperature.

For the buttercream:
Remove the butter from the refrigerator and cut it into tablespoon-size lumps so it can soften while you prepare the eggs.

Boil 2 inches of water in a pot into which your metal mixer bowl will fit. Place the egg whites into the clean, grease-free mixer bowl. Whisk in the water and sugar.



Place the bowl over the simmering water, and whisk –stir constantly until the mixture reaches 120-130 degrees, about 1-3 minutes (very warm to the touch, if you don't have a instant-read thermometer). The mixture will be very warm, and the sugar granules should have dissolved. Remove the bowl from over the water. If you see any un-dissolved sugar crystals in the bowl, wipe these off with a paper towel.

Beat the egg white mixture , increasing the speed to medium-high to high speed , as quickly as possible without having the egg whites splash out of the bowl. Beat until the mixture looks like thick shaving cream, and the egg whites and bowl are cool - about 20 minutes.


 This is easiest done with a standing mixer using a balloon whisk. To hasten the process, wet a towel and place a few cupfuls of ice chips into it. Wrap it up and place this under the bowl so that it in constant contact with the bowl.

By now the butter should be at cool room temperature. If you press down on it with your thumb, it should yield readily, but should not be soft and melty. If too soft, refrigerate it just for a few minutes to firm it back up. Place the butter into a large mixing bowl, and beat until creamy. On low, beat in 1/3 of the whites. Repeat with the remaining whites, 2 more times. When all of the whites have been added, increase the beater speed to medium-high, and beat until the mixture curdles,



and then smoothes out into thick and creamy frosting, about 10-15 minutes.



Beat in the blackberry puree, about 2 tablespoons at a time, beating after each addition until the buttercream is smooth again.  Beat in the powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time.  Adjust the flavor/sweetness by adding more cassis liqueur or more powdered sugar, to taste. Normally, buttercream can be frozen, but with this frosting, freezing created lots of problems.

For starters, I tried to beat it before it had come to room temperature (a definite no-no with all egg-based buttercreams).  Here's what happened:

Now, this has happened before, and when I let the mixture come to room temperature it beat up nicely, but this time that didn't happen.  In fact, as it got warmer, it got worse and worse:

It was the day before the shower and I had just spent 12 hours decorating cookies, so needless to say I was in no mood to remake the buttercream.  I'm guessing this happened because of the large amount of liquid I had added to the buttercream (1/2 cup of blackberry puree plus some cassis liqueur).  There was one last fix that had worked in the past.  I softened 1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter to cool room temperature.  I spooned the buttercream back into the mixer bowl and beat in 1/2 cup powdered sugar.  With the mixer on medium speed, I added the butter 1 tablespoon at a time, and lo and behold!  The buttercream re-formed.

So, keep this in mind if you plan to make the buttercream ahead, or if you have trouble with another buttercream you have made.

The only thing left to do, is to pipe the buttercream onto the cupcakes.  Refrigerate until 2-3 hours before serving , placing the booties on the cupcakes when you take them out of the refrigerator and the frosting has started to soften.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/sBff/~3/JALW7FoK45E/coming-soon-duck-shrimp-and-sausage.html

Becca's Baby Shower Bear Cake

After making marshmallow fondant for my last baby shower event, I was excited to try covering a cake with fondant.  I had been hesitant before, because commercial fondant doesn't taste very good, but marshmallow fondant tastes pretty good and doesn't have a lot of artificial ingredients in it.  The second drawback came when I saw that fondant shouldn't be refrigerated.  That doesn't work for me, because I usually use buttercream made with egg whites and butter.  I decided to use Marshmallow Fluff instead of egg whites, but I wouldn't sacrifice the butter.  Somewhere along the road, I read that if the cake were kept at 45 degrees, the fondant would be okay.  Since I have a second refrigerator, it was easy to make that adjustment, and as you can see from the picture, the fondant came out beautifully.  The lettering is done with Wilton Sugar Sheets, and I didn't know how they would do refrigerated either, but they seemed to be fine as well.

I made the bear a week in advance to give it time to firm up so that I could easily move it to the cake.  It took an entire recipe of marshmallow fondant, and I added the green while the marshmallows were melted. This way I didn't have the arduous and messy task of kneading in the green.  (I needed some black and pink fondant, which came from the white batch that I made to cover the cake). Work on a piece of waxed paper, so that you can move the bear after it has been made.

Start with the legs.  They need to be fatter at the top (the hip/thigh part) and taper to the foot.  Just bend the bottom of this piece to make the foot, which you can perfect after the bear is assembled.

The legs are going to attached midway, or slightly farther back from the center of the body.

Once the legs are made, the body can be shaped.  It needs to be pear-shaped so that it comes down between the legs.  Make the body taller and thinner than it needs to be.  The head is going to weigh it down so that the finished bear will be shorter and fatter than you started. Attach the legs with a little water.







The arms get fashioned in the same manner as the legs with the top shoulder/bicep fatter than the hand.  If you have the arms too long, you can always pinch off some to get them right once you have the bear all assembled.

For the head, start with a round ball about 1/3 the size of the body.  Put a toothpick or stick of spaghetti into the body and then stick the round ball on.  Once you have the ball stuck onto the body, you'll be able to see if it is proportioned right.  If it isn't right, you get something that looks more like a pig, so just keep playing with it until it looks right.  The snout, nose and eyes, though will really start making it look like a bear.

Some directions for teddy bears have the snout be flat and oval, but mine just didn't look bearlike until I made the snout stick out and be more triangular.  Once you have it the shape you like, attach it with water.

Color a small bit of fondant with either dark brown or black coloring.  Make the nose a reverse triangle from the snout.  My bear has a substantial nose!  I think it could be smaller and still be very bearish.  The eyes, on the other hand, need to be pretty small to be right, and to me they seem to look best if they are touching the snout rather than farther up on the head.  The mouth is easiest made with an edible marker.

For the ears I flattened a very small ball of green fondant, and then made them slightly concave.  I used a fondant ball tool to make the indentation for the pink fondant.

To add the final touches. put on the pink foot pad with a small brown pad at the bottom.  For the toes use the edible marker.  The toes can either be on the pad like I did, or off the pad on the green part (these are the claws, so they can even be right at the edge of the green part of the foot).




To make the fur, use a small scissor to make tiny clips into the fondant, which will stick up and look like fur.  Lastly, score the head/snout area so that it looks like the head has been stitched.  I used a flat toothpick, but there is a fondant tool for this purpose, if you have one.

Slide the waxed paper and bear onto a cardboard round and set aside to dry for 5-7 days at least. Once the bear has dried out, you'll be able to lift him off of the paper and onto the blanket, or wherever else you like.

For the blocks:
The blocks came from a Wilton design, which you can find at http://www.wilton.com/idea/Baby-Block-Cake.  For the round cake, I had to proportion the blocks smaller, but you'll  have to adjust them to the size cake you make (mine was 12-inches).   To see if the proportions would work, I cut the blocks out of paper and laid them on an upside down cake pan.  Once I had the right size block, I printed out letters on my computer, testing out different fonts and sizes to get the one I liked best, and the size that looked good on the block size I had chosen.  After you do that, you can use the Wilton instructions for cutting out the Sugar Sheets and applying the sanding sugar.  A word of caution - you can't pipe and sprinkle all of the blocks with the sanding sugar, and then hope to transfer them to the cake.  If any of the piping gel has gone onto the back or off the sides of the block, the blocks will adhere to the surface you have them on.  Instead, cut out all of the blocks, attach the letters and only  apply the edge gel and sugar just before placing them on the cake.  To get the spacing nice, I put my little paper mockups on the cake, and then replaced each one with the Sugar Sheet block.  That way it was easy to see which block went where.

Making the blanket:

I used the blanket to hide the little cardboard round that the bear was on.  I was afraid that the bear might sink into the cake, so I put 3 straws into the cake (cut even to the top of the cake) to support him, and then the bear was on a 3-inch round cardboard that I found at Michael's Craft Store.



To get the correct size, I just kept adding strips to the blanket until it covered the cardboard.




To begin making the blanket, sprinkle a work surface with powdered sugar and roll a piece of fondant to  just thicker than 1/16-inch.  Cut out strips, about 1/8-inch wide.

Lay the strips horizontally, and  weave 1 strip through the others so that one horizontal is on top and one on bottom, alternating until the whole strip has been woven.

Fold back the strips that are underneath the vertical strip.

Place on another vertical strip, close to the first one.

Fold down the strips that were up, so you now have two strips that are woven.  Fold up the strips that are underneath, and repeat the whole process.  Move the strips close to each other after they are woven in.

When the blanket is the size you want, press down on it to mesh it all together nicely.

Cut the tails to an even length.  To make the fringe, make small cuts into the tails with a knife.  Slide the blanket onto a small round or square cardboard so that you can move it, and so that it provides a nice base for whatever will go on top of it.

For the cake I used the chocolate cake recipe from my wedding cake (http://amazingdessertrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/06/tales-of-tiered-cake-final-recipes.html) . I used a nail rose in the center of each to make sure that the cake cooked evenly in the middle (don't forget to remove it when you flip the cake out of the pan!).  It worked beautifully.  A center cone would also work, but then you have to put in a plug, so I prefer the nail method.  The frosting was an easy marshmallow meringue buttercream- see http://amazingdessertrecipes.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentines-day-layer-cake.html.  Leave out the cassis and use the powdered sugar and corn syrup sparingly, to taste.  Don't forget that you'll have the sweet fondant on the outside, so you don't want the frosting too sweet.  Some people won't eat the fondant, though, so it should be sweet enough.  You'll need a double recipe (3 pounds Marshmallow Fluff).