Caramel-by-the-Sea

To say that I was excited about making this months Daring Baker's challenge is to put it oh so very mildly. After a two month drought of savory items, I was thrilled to see our hosts Dolores, Alex, and Jenny had selected a cake this month!
I was initially a little disappointed in the texture of my baked goodies as they were not as light and fluffy as they aught to have been. But that is very much my fault and not due to the recipe. I was listening to Ender's Game on tape while making this, and was highly distracted by the climax of the story. So in an effort to minimize the time the mixer was running I didn't cream the butter and sugar as long as necessary. Bad bad baker. But the flavor of this cake was oh so wonderful. Very sweet, but fantastic. I added some coffee to the frosting in an effort to combat the sweetness many of the other daring bakers complained about. It helped, but if I were to make this again I think I would try a different method. Perhaps by filling the cake with a complimentary flavor. As cupcakes enjoyed with some strong coffee is was fine, but I think the caramel on caramel lacked complexity and would benefit from a stronger secondary flavor.

Caramel Cake

by Shuna Fish Lydon

10 Tablespoons unsalted butter, room temp
1 1/4 Cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 Cup caramel syrup
2 eggs
splash vanilla
2 Cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1C milk, room temp

Preheat oven to 350F
Butter one tall 9" cake pan. (or make cupcakes!)

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth.
Add sugar and salt & cream until light and fluffy.
Slowly pour room temperature caramel syrup into bowl.
Scrape down bowl and increase speed. Add eggs/vanilla extract a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down bowl again, beat mixture until light and uniform.
Sift flour and baking powder.
Turn mixer to lowest speed, and add one third of the dries.
When incorporated, add half of the milk, a little at a time.
Add another third of the dries, then the other half of the milk and finish with the dries.
Take off mixer and by hand, use a spatula to do a few last folds. making sure batter is uniform.

Place cake pan on cookie sheet or 1/2 sheet pan. Set first timer for 30 minutes, rotate pan and set timer for another 15-20 minutes. Your own oven will set the pace. Bake until sides pull away from the pan and skewer inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool cake completely before icing it. Cake will keep for three days unrefrigerated.

Caramel Syrup

2 Cups sugar
1/2 Cup water

1 Cup water for "stopping"

In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand. (I instead prefer to use a very wide pan. It caramelized a bit faster that way, and it's easier to judge to colour. In a tall pan the syrup will look darker than it is, and can lead to undercaramelization)
Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush.
Turn on heat to highest flame.
Cook until smoking slightly: dark amber.
When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and prepared to step back.
Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. {Obviously wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it.}

Caramelized Brown Butter Frosting

12 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Pound sifted powdered sugar
4-6 Tablespoons heavy cream (I just used milk since I didn't have any cream)
2 teaspoons vanilla (I dissolved about a tablespoon of instant coffee with this)
2-4 Tablespoons caramel syrup

Cook butter until brown.
Pour cooled brown butter into mixer bowl.
In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, add confectioner's sugar a little at a time. When mixture looks too chunky to take any more, add a bit of cream and or caramel syrup. Repeat until mixture looks smooth and all confectioner's sugar has been incorporated. Add salt to taste.

Caramelized butter frosting will keep in fridge for up to a month.
To smooth out from cold, microwave a bit, then mix with paddle attachment until smooth and light.

The recipe says to strain out the little browned butter bits, but I think they are half the charm of using browned butter, so I kept mine in.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

My husband asked me the other day to make some cupcakes for the pre-holiday work meeting he was having this weekend, and I just felt the burning need to make something spicy and adorable to usher in my favorite time of year.
I first saw this recipe on How to Eat a Cupcake back in the early days of my food blog stalking. Cassie made adorable little graham cracker houses to go on top of her cupcakes, but I decided to use up some free gingerbread cookie box mix I got awhile back. The mix was by Stonewall Kitchen, and it was just so so. I'll stick to making my own from now on. The one I tasted was a little dry from over baking, but other than that they were pretty darn tasty.

Gingerbread Cupcakes
from Crazy About Cupcakes

1/2c butter
1/4c dark brown sugar
1/4c granulated sugar
1 egg, room temp
2/3c light molasses (I only had dark, worked fine)
2tsp lemon zest
2 1/2c all purpose flour
1 1/2tsp baking soda
1tsp cinnamon
1 1/4tsp ginger
1/2tsp cloves
1c sour cream, room temp

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream butter and sugars until light and very fluffy, 3-5 minutes on medium high. Beat in egg until fluffy. Beat in molasses and zest. Scrape down bowl and beat at least thirty seconds more.
Sift dry ingredients. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, then add half of the sour cream. Repeat, finishing with the last third of the dry. Scrape bowl and beat for another ten seconds.
Bake 15-20 minutes. Makes 20-24

Cream Cheese Frosting
(this is my own tossed together recipe)

8 oz cream cheese
4Tb butter
2 cups powdered sugar (more if you like it sweeter)
dash vanilla
pinch ginger

Cream cheese and butter until light. Add other ingredients and mix on medium low until smooth.

Gingerbread men frosted with powdered sugar and milk frosting. Aren't they adorably small?

Best Car Comercial... Ever

I found this in the ever amusing Cake Wrecks website (check it out if you aren't already a fan, it's solid gold)

The commercial


And the making of. Short and sweet and full of awesome detail. They made a full engine out of cake! I'm so impressed and pleased. In this age where instead of building set and painting mats Hollywood just drops in digital environments and actors, it pleases me to see that this was made from the ground up by their hands.

Do storm troppers like apple pie?

Highly ashamed of the pathetic effort I put into photographing my mini apple pies, I decided to redeem myself by photographing the living daylights out of the pie I made last week. I was still using up the half bushel of apples I bought at Apple Hill weeks ago, so I decided to make a very fat pie to take to dinner with my mother in law. While slightly under baked, the pie was still excellent. Fresh and tangy and not too sweet, it would have made a great accompaniment to some vanilla ice cream. Next time...

Double Crust
(altered from The Dessert Bible by Christopher Kimball)

20 Tbs frozen butter
2 1/2 c all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
2T sugar
8-10 Tbs ice water (I generally end up adding about 11-12)

Sift together flour and sugar. Grate frozen butter into the flour mixture (if your kitchen is warm, sticking the grater in the freezer for a few minutes can help keep things neat). Toss mixture to break up any clumps of butter. Sprinkle water over the flour and toss with a fork until it is somewhat evenly distributed. Kneed a time or two to get the dough to stick together, but no more than you have to. Divide in half and shape each piece into a disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for about half an hour (not super critical, but it makes the dough easier to work with)
Roll half of the dough out on floured surface and place in pie tin.

Filling
(also from the Dessert Bible and altered to my tastes)

9-10 granny smith apples, cored and sliced
2Tbs lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c packed brown sugar (if you like a sweeter pie, use 3/4c)
1/4 tsp nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves
2 Tbs flour

Sprinkle apples with the lemon juice. Combine all other ingredients and add to apples. Fill pie dough and top with other half of the pie crust, flute edges. Brush tops with eggs wash and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Cut an air vent or two.
Bake at 375 for about an hour. The top should be nice and brown while the filling is bubbling in the air vents.

Enjoy!

And as to the post title, yes indeed they do. Or at least this one did! (my husband is a little crazy in love with Star Wars. Here he is modeling his new helmet)

Pizza Pizza

As per usual, I waited until the last minute to do my "baking homework" for the Daring Bakers challenge. My first round of dough didn't turn out so well. I put it in the oven to proof it a bit faster, but my oven warmed up a bit too fast and started to cook the outer part of the dough. Sigh. Round two went slightly better.
My husband and I both work in places that make pizza, so it was hard to find the desire to make my own dough when I can just grab a wad from work at anytime, but in the end it was satisfying to make my own from scratch. It sat out a bit too long so tossing it didn't work so well. I filmed my attempt, but it was feeble and unexciting, so I will spare you all. Pressing and stretching the dough worked just fine, and in the end I had a fairly tasty pizza.

Original recipe taken from “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart.

Makes 6 pizza crusts (about 9-12 inches/23-30 cm in diameter). (I made just three slightly large pizzas)

Ingredients:
4 1/2 Cups bread flour or all purpose flour, chilled
1 3/4 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Instant yeast
1/4 Cup Olive oil or vegetable oil (both optional, but it’s better with)
1 3/4 Cups Water, ice cold (40° F/4.5° C)
1 Tb sugar
Semolina/durum flour or cornmeal for dusting

DAY ONE

Method:
1. Mix together the flour, salt and instant yeast in a big bowl (or in the bowl of your stand mixer).

2. Add the oil, sugar and cold water and mix well (with the help of a large wooden spoon or with the paddle attachment, on low speed) in order to form a sticky ball of dough. On a clean surface, knead for about 5-7 minutes, until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are homogeneously distributed. If it is too wet, add a little flour (not too much, though) and if it is too dry add 1 or 2 teaspoons extra water.

NOTE: If you are using an electric mixer, switch to the dough hook and mix on medium speed for the same amount of time.The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom of the bowl. If the dough is too wet, sprinkle in a little more flour, so that it clears the sides. If, on the contrary, it clears the bottom of the bowl, dribble in a teaspoon or two of cold water.
The finished dough should be springy, elastic, and sticky, not just tacky, and register 50°-55° F/10°-13° C.

note on the note, I just mixed the whole thing with the hook. Switching attachments just seemed like too much work.


3. Flour a work surface or counter. Line a jelly pan with baking paper/parchment. Lightly oil the paper.

4. With the help of a metal or plastic dough scraper, cut the dough into 6 equal pieces (or larger if you want to make larger pizzas).

NOTE: To avoid the dough from sticking to the scraper, dip the scraper into water between cuts.

Another note, I just cut it with a knife.

5. Sprinkle some flour over the dough. Make sure your hands are dry and then flour them. Gently round each piece into a ball.

NOTE: If the dough sticks to your hands, then dip your hands into the flour again.

6. Transfer the dough balls to the lined jelly pan and mist them generously with spray oil. Slip the pan into plastic bag or enclose in plastic food wrap.

7. Put the pan into the refrigerator and let the dough rest overnight or for up to thee days.

I put them in a tupperware container with a bit of olive oil (ok, a lot of olive oil) in the bottom.


DAY TWO

8. On the day you plan to eat pizza, exactly 2 hours before you make it, remove the desired number of dough balls from the refrigerator. Dust the counter with flour and spray lightly with oil. Place the dough balls on a floured surface and sprinkle them with flour. Dust your hands with flour and delicately press the dough into disks about 1/2 inch/1.3 cm thick and 5 inches/12.7 cm in diameter. Sprinkle with flour and mist with oil. Loosely cover the dough rounds with plastic wrap and then allow to rest for 2 hours.


9. At least 45 minutes before making the pizza, place a baking stone on the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven as hot as possible (500° F/260° C).

NOTE: If you do not have a baking stone, then use the back of a jelly pan. Do not preheat the pan.

10. Generously sprinkle the back of a jelly pan with semolina/durum flour or cornmeal. Flour your hands (palms, backs and knuckles). Take 1 piece of dough by lifting it with a pastry scraper. Lay the dough across your fists in a very delicate way and carefully stretch it by bouncing it in a circular motion on your hands, and by giving it a little stretch with each bounce. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss.

Feta, roasted garlic, italian peppers in sauce, green olives, artichoke hearts, and kilbasa. Can you tell I was using up odd bits from the fridge?