Note to Self:: August 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Buttermilk Devil's Food Cake with Nutella Cream Cheese Frosting

Buttermilk Devil's Food Cake

I made this cake at 11pm.

After seven hours of law study.

I frosted this cake at 1am.

I was really needing some down-time from schoolwork.

AND considering it's my first cake ever made from scratch,

I'm pretty damned proud of the outcome.

I think I get it now.

I think I understand why you bakers do whatcha' do.

There's something very soothing about simply reading a recipe, portioning out ingredients and baking a cake.

And the reward is, um, very rewarding.

I totally took this recipe off the side of a cakeflour box.

I am a baking novice, and well, you've seen my bakefails even when I do follow recipes.

Baking doesn't really appreciate the shoot-from-the-hip cooking style that I tend to use.

Baking, she is a strict-but-loving mistress, like your mom who loves you because she sets your curfew.

Wait. Your mom's not my mistress. I am very tired, so my analogies are not tip-top at the moment. I also happen to frequently use hyphens when I get tired. Go figure. And go bake... I'm going to bed.

Buttermilk Devil's Food Cake with Nutella-Cream Cheese Frosting

taken from Pillsbury Softasilk

For the two cakes:

You will need two 10" springform pans, heavily pan-sprayed.

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 tsp almond extract

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups Softasilk cake flour, or other cake flour

1 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/4 buttermilk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Beat sugar, butter, vanilla and almond extract until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt until well-combined, beat into the butter mixture and carefully add buttermilk in small increments. Beat one minute more, until batter is smooth. Divide batter into both pans, bake for 30 minutes or until pierced fork comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before icing.

For the icing:

1 can of prepared cream cheese frosting (or make your own, did I mention I made this at 1am?!)

about 6 oz (half a jar) of Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread

1/4 cup powdered sugar

Seriously, mix all these ingredients until smooth and sugar is dissolved. Adjust flavor with more Nutella, if necessary.

Trick I learned: to frost a two-tiered cake, invert the bottom cake layer (so topside-down on the plate/cakestand), frost the top and place the second cake rightside-up on top. Frost the sides and the top with remaining frosting.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Heavy Cream should be your new BFF.

Sauteed chicken with mushrooms, shallots and bacon in rich cream sauce

Oh, heavy cream, how I heart you.

You should always have a little half-pint of heavy cream in your refrigerator.
Always.

You can do a million things with heavy cream, including making your own whipped cream, half-n-half (literally, half milk, half cream), and or make a finishing sauce for just about any meat course (fish included).

And it's so very easy to make a rich cream sauce. You just have to know how to make a reduction. Which means, do you know how to turn the knob on your stove up and then down? See, you already know how to reduce.

Heavy cream loves you, too. Like, really loves you. Ok, maybe not so great for the hips or the waistline, but it's good to indulge once in awhile. Love in small doses, right?

Sauteed Chicken with Mushrooms & Bacon in Rich Cream Sauce

2 lbs. sliced chicken cutlets (sliced chicken breasts)

8 oz. sliced white mushrooms

3-4 shallots, peeled and smashed

3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

2-3 slabs of thick bacon, cut into 1-2 inch slices

Half-pint heavy whipping cream

3 TBSP (pats) of butter, separated

Salt & Pepper to taste

Optional: dried tarragon (just a pinch)

In a large saute pan, heat one pat of butter on medium-high, until the butter melts and starts to foam (but not burn). Add the shallots and garlic, and saute slightly, add the mushrooms. Don't crowd the mushrooms, work in batches if you have to. With a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms to a bowl. Add another pat of butter to pan and melt, then add the sliced bacon, keeping the heat high enough to crisp the bacon well. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon, reserving the bacon grease in the pan. Add the chicken to the bacon grease, browning the chicken. Cook the chicken about 3-5 minutes, almost cooking completely and remove from the pan (add to the bowl of cooked ingredients). Salt and pepper the chicken and mushrooms and drain the bacon grease from the pan (leave about a tsp left in the pan). Pour in the heavy cream and raise the heat, allow the cream to bubble and boil slightly. Quickly lower the heat to a simmer, watch the cream sauce and allow it to thicken (if it stays too thin, raise the heat back to boil and reduce back down again to simmer). Taste the sauce, season with salt, pepper and tarragon, if using. Add the chicken, then the bacon and mushrooms, let it simmer. Toss and coat the cooked ingredients with the cream sauce. Done!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Whole Baked Pears in Flaky Pastry

As I write this post, I am knee-deep in my first week as a law student. To say the least, classes have been time-consuming.

One of the few ways I'm trying to calm down and prevent a total freak out is by maintaining this blog at least once a week. As Miss Kim would say, "We shall see."

Having to limit my foodblogging desires has at least forced me to consciously decide what to post about. So while some of my posts will still encompass my good ol' standby recipes, I think the majority of the upcoming posts will involve recipes I haven't tried before.

Remember my pear tart bakefails? This is kind of a continuation on that theme, minus the tart and minus the pate sucre. Okay, so maybe this is really just a continuation on pears.

Why am I still working the pear angle?

The answer is simple: Miss Kim. My mother.

I guess my mom is the answer to most of my food-related issues or inspirations.

In this case, she once again gave me a crap-ton of fresh pears from her fruit tree.

And while I loved the Alsatian Tart that I made after my bakefails, I wanted to use these pears to make individual serving desserts.

Making pate brisee (the flaky pastry dough) is freaking easy. So much easier than pate sucre, and it takes less time to chill and prep. Hooray! This recipe is very easy, while still creating a beautiful and impressive little dessert. It takes about an hour and half in total prep and cook, and tada! A French dessert that only looks as hard to create as it is to pronounce.

Bourdelots normands aux poire

(Whole pears in flaky pastry)

Adapted from La Cuisine-Everyday French Home Cooking

by Francoise Bernard

Make the Pate Brisee:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 stick butter, cut into pieces, slightly softened is ok

1/4 cup water, more if necessary.

In a bowl, combine flour with salt and add butter. Rub the butter into the flour with your hands, using your palms. Sprinkly with 1/4 cup of water and knead gently. Press into a disk. DO NOT overknead, it will toughen the dough (then no flaky texture!) On a floured surface, knead the dough away from you with the heel of your palm three times. Reform into a disk, wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate for at least twenty minutes.

Prep the pears (I used small pears from my mother's fruit tree, based on their size, the number of pears you use only affects how many individual servings you'll get per batch of dough.)

5 small semi-ripe pears, peeled, halved and seeded- you can hull out the seeds with a grapefruit spoon

Apricot preserves (enough to fill each pear cavity with at least 1 tsp of preserves)

1/2 stick of butter (approximately)

1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Fill each pear cavity with a pat of butter and top with apricot preserves. Roll out the dough roughly into a large square, and cut enough squares out for all your pear halves. You want each square to be large enough to wrap around the pear. Place a pear half onto one square and wrap the dough around the pear like a package, pinching the seams together. Brush with beaten egg to seal. Repeat with remaining pear halves. If you have extra dough remaining, roll out again and press small rounds (I used a cookie cutter) to lay on top of each pear (to cover the preserves) and brush again with egg. Lay wrapped pears evenly on a pan-sprayed baking sheet. Bake for 30-45 minutes, or until crust is light brown and flaky, and the pear has cooked completely. Serve warm (reheat to re-serve as well).

Monday, August 8, 2011

The Simplest Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken

Who doesn't love roast chicken? What's not to love?

The best thing about this roast chicken recipe is that the vegetables roast in the chicken juices, and the skin gets nice and crispy while the meat is incredibly tender.

See, here's the trick: you slide softened butter in between the skin and and the meat before roasting. The butter helps keep the meat tender, but also makes the skin papery-crisp.

Personal confession time. I have an unnatural fear of birds. I have really avoided being in close proximity to birds (of any kind) since I was a kid. That proved difficult at the restaurant, which was located at the edge of a duck pond.

I am not afraid to eat poultry, or most anything (with some noted exceptions), but handling a raw chicken for prep has always completely freaked me out. Although I've had this recipe for ages, I am ashamed to admit that every time I make roast chicken it requires a pair of gloves, two sets of tongs (for maneuvering) and several loud shouts and shudders from yours truly.

Except this last time. Maybe it's because of the blog, maybe because I'm just sick of being (pardon the pun) a chicken, but I trussed and prepped this chicken for this post without having to perform marionette-style lathroscopic surgery on the damned thing in order to prep it.
After so many years, this "simple" recipe finally is just that.

The Simplest Roast Chicken

One 2-3 lb. raw fryer chicken (gizzards, etc. removed, but nowadays they just come like that)

Kitchen string

1/2 stick of butter, cut into small slices/pats and slightly softened

3-4 whole shallots, peeled

6 oz of fresh herbs: I used oregano and thyme

Salt & pepper

Roasting vegetables: I used mushrooms, carrots, baby heirloom tomatoes and shallots

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Prep the chicken: pat all over with paper towels to dry. Gently lift the skin up from the breast and slide pats of butter between skin and meat. Smooth the butter by rubbing the skin gently. Add more butter to cavity and between wings. Season well with salt and pepper. Fill the cavity with shallots, then use kitchen string to truss the chicken. You can fancy-truss (if you know how) or simply tie the string around the chicken to keep the wings and legs in tight to the body. Trussing ensures that your roast chicken won't look like a nude sunbather when you take it out of the oven.

Line a roasting pan or deep baking pan with aluminum foil, and lay your fresh herbs down as a bed for the chicken. Place chicken in pan, breast-side up, and add your raw roasting vegetables. The juices from the bird with keep the vegetables moist during roasting, so don't worry. Roast chicken for 45 minutes at 425 degrees, then cover with a pan-sprayed aluminum foil sheet and lower to 350 degrees, cooking for an additional 30-45 minutes, or until the juices run clear from the bird when pierced. That's it!

Monday, August 1, 2011

The Woodland Fairy Birthday Party: How I went a little overboard.

Photo by Sarah Myrick

Many of you who follow my twitter feed know that I spent the last few months creating a DIY Woodland Fairy birthday party for my daughter, Ripley.

I received more hot glue gun burns and ingested more decorative moss than I'd care to admit.

Photo by Sarah Myrick

It was one of those snowball effects: poking around a few sites, getting a few ideas, and a few ideas more and then this little fairy birthday became a giant birthday bash complete with tent, costumes and fairy-inspired food.

Photo by Sarah Myrick

And because I spent two months making all the decorations, planning, and hand-dipping cupcakes, it seemed natural to use a photographer and florist/event planner for the occasion. For a four year-old birthday party. I know. But I'm glad I did.

Flower arrangements by Emerson Events + Design

Photos by Sarah Myrick

If you're in my area, you should definitely see Camden at Emerson Events + Design for all your event planning. She is an absolute doll, a good friend, and so talented. And Sarah Myrick is not only a great children's photographer, she also happens to be more adorable than Japanese anime.

Photos by Sarah Myrick

It was scorching hot, at least 103 degrees. But we managed to have a great time anyway, and all my wonderful friends came out to help and celebrate, and I'm so grateful.

So, here's the complete list of all the DIY projects, activities and menu for Ripley's outrageous Woodland Fairy Party. I hope some of it inspires you and lets you have a little laugh at my ridiculousness. I deserve it. But more importantly, Ripley deserved a fantastic party.