Buche De NOOOOOOOOO!

Dear Pickle:

Well, you’ve done it now. You’ve discovered a real culinary insecurity. I have made a rolled sponge cake exactly once. It was a good fifteen years ago and I don’t remember what exactly went down – but I do remember it did not end well (in fact, I think it became a trifle. Which is the destination point for many failed culinary attempts. Can make you feel handy and thrifty, but never like a hero. Sigh.)

With a few more years under my belt and a lot more confidence in the kitchen, I really thought this wouldn’t be a problem. I chose what looked like a good Martha recipe, a gingerbread roulade. I can’t find the recipe online and, really, it’s just as well. At first things were going well. Indeed, I was very proud of myself when I wrapped the cake up in the towel to shape it. It smelled wonderful and gingerbread-y and it was nice and high and I thought my cake-y karma was changing.

Ummm, maybe I should pay more attention to my Protestant roots and forget the Buddhist stuff. Did you ever have a granny who said ‘Pride goeth before a fall’? Yeah. Because SOMEBODY over here forgot to put icing sugar on the towel. So when she unrolled this 'perfect' cake to fill and ice it, it stuck. And cracked. And – boo-hoo. Sigh.

The Brown Sugar Buttercream gave me a hard time too, but this I could handle. A few years ago, I made (I swear to God this is true) FIVE wedding cakes in one year. All with Italian meringue buttercreams. This is why there was no cake at my wedding. :) So when my buttercream was lumpy, I just knew it was because my butter was too cold. Heating one cup of the bump icing in the microwave for 30 seconds and then beating it back into the bowl smoothed it out and made it gorgeous. I may have actually screamed out “THIS S*#& IS AWESOME!” despite having been alone in my kitchen with two babies sleeping upstairs. I didn’t even care if I woke them at that moment.

Alas, the 'awesome s*#&' had to go into dry, cracked, uninspiring cake. The gingerbread kinda drowned out the delicate brown sugar flavour - not complementary as I had expected.

I think I failed this one. Even my dad didn’t have anything nice to say, and that’s how you know when you’ve failed. Pride goeth before a fall indeed. Ya got me. Wish me better luck next time! (I kinda hope there’s another roulade challenge coming from you some day. Because you can bet I won’t be making one spontaneously, and I should probably get back on the horse before a real phobia develops.)

Sigh,
Gumdrop

Roll With It

Gumdrop,

Having seen the non-edible fruits of your Halloween labour, you are entirely forgiven for your tardy post. Mom duties and Gourmet grief must be honoured. I have to admit that I was always more of a supermarket checkout reader of Gourmet. Its stunning covers were a handy calming device when a 600-item customer was a head of me in the 10 items or less lane.

While waiting for your post, I’ve been contemplating the next challenge, bemused by the options available to me. Should we humour your inner-hippie and bake some ancient grains bread? Maybe it was time to return to pastry and bake rustic apple tarts?

But then two things happened: First, my mom came over for dinner and brought an old stand-by: a strawberry jellyroll. It was a bold move on her part because dear old mom has had a terrible run rolling those darn sponges. The last few attempts have been dry and cracked, like feet in summer after a few missed pedicures. This time, she managed a moist cake, but it still had a lot of cracks. I was disappointed to learn that she used store-bought jam, not my aunt’s homemade jam filled with plump berries. Then again, this is a woman who, as a schoolgirl, traded her homemade cake for store-bought cookies.

The second thing that happened was I came across this drool inducing article during my daily epicurious visit and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of brown sugar buttercream ever since.

So while it’s too early to challenge you to a bûche de noël, I hereby issue the next challenge as a brown sugar buttercream roulade. The degree of garnish fussiness is entirely up to you!

Enjoy,
Px

In Morning (sic)

Regretfully, due to technical difficulties, will have to post this without pictures for the time-being. It cannot wait a second longer! May need to fire live-in Tech Support which may be awkward on account of the marriage certificate and all.

Dear Pickle -

The mummy cupcakes are SOOOOOO CUTE! The fact is, this is why every child needs a cool aunt. I can't believe there were no Halloween baked goods in our house - I was too busy making costumes and endless autumnal dinners (that the kids don't eat). I didn't even have time to make myself a costume and just went as 'harried chick'.

I know I'm unforgivably late with this entry, but on top of Halloweening, I have also been in mourning for Gourmet magazine. Up 'til now, I'd been listening to all the stories about the death of print media with a certain devil-may-care imperviousness ('Denver Post' closes? Ooooh, sad. Oh look, 30 Rock is back - and there's a cupcake in the fridge!) But this sad passage one hits a little too close to home. I've been reading Gourmet for a good twenty years. Yup. Apparently I must write a will, before I croak in a La-Z-Boy. It was a kind of aspirational lifeline for a girl in a tiny industrial town where 'gourmet' meant you made your Jell-o salad with FRESH fruit instead of canned. Yes, it was impossibly snobby and almost impenetrable at times - I remember a lot of stories about the meats of Eastern Hungary as eaten on authentic stagecoach tours or how to prepare 'Chicken Liver Veloute with Quails Eggs and Pickled Starfish'. And when I went through my looooong vegetarian phase, I'm not sure exactly what I kept reading for. But read it I did. My bit of a girl-crush on the elegant and spicy Ms. Ruth Reichl may've helped boost me over the hump. I've got a huge collection of back issues, some even older than I am, which I refuse to throw away. Much to the chagrin of my garage-cleaning hubbo. But someday, someday, I'll have the time to cook my way through them.

However, I must admit that my subscriber copies have been sitting for longer and longer in their sterile plastic wrappers. I'd get the magazine, take a glance at the impossibly gorgeous pear on the cover, and then it'd end up sitting there. Dejected. Raw (i.e. - uncooked from). And then the next issue would arrive, piling on top of the second dejectedly. I can't immediately remember the last time I actually whipped something from the pages. My near-daily epicurious.com habit means that I must've made a few of their things recently, but even then it seems that most of the recipes I pull up to actually make are from the younger, somehow more in step with me 'Bon Appetit'. It's definitely a more user-friendly mag, packed with loads of recipes and using ingredients you can find. Without going to Hungary.

So I am sorry, Gourmet. I guess I was part of the problem. I will miss paging through you and being an armchair glutton/tourist. But I don't have enough money or time for all the things you asked of me - I don't purchase Cadillacs and I am not sure I am up to creating a Chicken Liver Veloute.

Instead I hope to keep blogging with my much-more-punctual blog-mate (more punctual than ME, that is, not more punctual than Gourmet, which always arrived on time.) Pickle, I am SO proud of you for making it all the way through this coffee cake dance marathon! I agree, making dough is something that ought to fit so easily into our lives, because the steps aren't difficult or time consuming, even for this particular monster-piece recipe I assigned us. In fact I managed to squeeze it in before hopping a cross-country flight. The relaxing steps of mixing and waiting, kneading and waiting, shaping and waiting - they all fit in well around wrangling a baby and packing a suitcase (then a suitcase for the baby.)

Although all three boys in my house went nuts for this, I have to say I found it kinda 'meh' in the final balance. It was a little dry, a little too danish-like for my liking. Because I am not a fan of the danish. Undoubtedly there are good ones in the world, but most that I've encountered have a dry staleness that belies their calorie count.

Plus we've already discussed that I have a large-ish hippie streak in me, a part that wishes to live in a commune and grow sprouts for a living. Bread-baking brings this alternate personality too close to the surface already. So making the bread into this kind of ornate lazy daisy shape threatened a full-on breach of the hippie bit I would much rather keep buried. Until next Halloween, maybe. Should I dress up as a hippie? ;)

x
Gumdrop

Boo!

Here’s a question you probably already know the answer to, Gumdrop. Q: what do you do to entertain a three year old for the afternoon? A: Bake intricate Halloween cupcakes. That’s what I did this weekend when my three-year-old nephew came to visit. So when he wasn’t ‘helping’ the IE paint the exterior of our house, I had a little sweet sweatshop, churning out Martha Stewart’s latest ghoulish gastronomic treats.

The ever-reliable one-bowl chocolate cupcakes were as moist and delicious as usual, although her suggestion of doubling the Swiss meringue buttercream left me with vats of excess frosting. I’m going to see how it freezes, as surely I’ll have a cake emergency in the near future. Next time, I’d make it before the little one arrived to make cupcakes as the process of making this sort of buttercream was torture for my little helper. Ten minutes to whip egg whites? Another 5 to beat the air out? Only a journey outside to test magnetic attraction of wet paint and a new shirt prevented mutiny.

That and the allure of candy. With frosting at the ready, we began with mini spiders. Bumble B had the honour of dipping the frosted mini into the black sugar and he was surprisingly adept at it. His attention to detail wasn’t quite up to his aunt’s when it came to the eyes though, which is why all the spiders have “m”s for pupils instead of the pure evil red intended. And after the difficult task of snipping shoeless licorice into the appropriate leg lengths, our first batch of Halloween horrors was complete.

Next we tackled the aliens and monsters. There were some creative liberties taken with limb placement on the aliens, but who can say with certainty that aliens don’t have 6 limbs on one side of their body? Seeing how proud he was his handiwork almost made me regret my strict adherence to Martha’s rules when making the monsters. Almost.

Both us feel head over heels for the mummy cupcakes. Perhaps that’s why they were the most successful of our partnership. He added the eyes and mouth and then I covered them with ribbons of buttercream. Truly one of the most impressive cupcakes ever.

So while I did seem to have go through more icing and candy than can strictly be accounted for by the final product, it was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Xo
P

In Praise of Coconut and Other Things

I was scared, Gumdrop. I read through your new challenge recipe and wanted to run away to a bakery and cheat my way through this one. The recipe looked long and complicated and frankly, not much fun. But it featured coconut and that's one of my weaknesses. I dare anyone to resist the fluffy snowy purity of a coconut layer cake.

Or the golden buttery chewiness of the ridiculously yummy black bottom coconut bars from this month's Cookie Carnival. Brownie topped with coconut? That's my idea of heaven (do you think clouds might be made of coconut? If so, I may be tempted to start believing in an after-life). These little near-instant gems were so addictive, I had to hide this last morsel from the Hub before he could devour them too. I've decided to use these as my secret weapon whenever the IE is mad at me so I guess I'll need to whip some more up today since I was not a pleasant wife this morning (if he's going to object to the way I brew his tea, maybe he could give him his special instructions before I make it?).

But I digress. The simplicity of the bars gave me the comfort and confidence to tackle the coconut twist bread. With my father coming over for dinner last Sunday, I had both a reason to make it and the time. Oh the time.

But rather than being a burden, I found I really enjoyed working my way through the various steps of this recipe and once again, I was smitten with the miracle of yeast. Doesn't it make you feel like some sort of magician when you see the dough rise? It's about as scientific as I get.

Making dough really is easy and once you get used to handling it, it's something you could add into your regular routine, don't you think? Okay, maybe not regularly, but certainly more often than never. Maybe once a month. The challenge in handling this dough was that whole pizza pulling thing. It's quite difficult to get it evenly stretched. My middle got really thin with thick edges. Is there a way to avoid that? Maybe you want it like that to give thicker edges to the wedges once baked?

Assembling the layers proved to be quite fun and it always amazes me how my modern urban soul lifts when doing this sort of simple time-spun task. It makes me feel connected to world in some weird way, knowing that generations of people have moved through these steps before me. Is baking some sort of human legacy? Who knows, but my idea of fun now includes twisting strands of stuffed dough and brushing them with melted jam and runny icing.

I was inordinately pleased with myself when the coffee cake came out of the oven. It looked like a danish my aunt used to buy from Bernie's Bakery at the cottage when I was a kid (Proust had his madeleines and I have cherry danishes. And date squares. And apple crisp. Well, a lot of childhood memories tied to homely baked goods). It was difficult to contain my pride (or the whoops of self-satisfaction) as I commanded the IE to come and admire my masterpiece. He was duly impressed and snapped off some pictures, all the while begging me to let him try a piece.

He was, of course, denied. It had to wait until after dinner. I was a little sad that my dad didn't mention the resemblance to Bernie's tasty treats, but once I bit into that sweet dough, I didn't care. I was back in coconut heaven. Good thing too because after a day of working on this thing, I was one exhausted but happy baker.

The Next Challenge...

Dear Pickle:

I am a little bit obsessed with coffee cakes lately. Is this a function of the season? Of my soon-to-be-stay-at-home mom status? Of the same retro bug that has me sewing aprons? I’m not sure. But I’m obsessed.

I made this bit of Crumb Cake Deliciousness from King Arthur on the weekend, because my MIL came by for tea. I LOVE crumb cakes, they remind me of my brief time living in New York as they seem to be infinitely more popular there than they are here. Last year when Starbucks carried one for a while, I was absolutely thrilled (my pants, however, were not as they got a little overstuffed by the number of slices I ate.) There is something perfectly homely and autumnal about a coffee cake.

As you’ve got me fired up about yeast baking too, I hereby challenge you to a yeasted coffee cake. Not just any coffee cake, the Flo Braker fiesta from 'Baking For All Occasions' that I'm going to email you (it’s tough to find recipes for yeasted ones, actually, so if you like you can consider my control-freakiness as doing you a favour. Heh.) It's called 'Coconut Twist Coffee Cake'. Let's do it!

Yours Coffee-Klatsch-ily,
Gumdrop

p.s. I was going to post the recipe but it was WAAAAAAAY too long I couldn't figure out how to make a 'jump'. Scared yet?