Puff Pastry: Day 1

We have finally embarked on our Puff Pastry journey. So far, so good. We have already overcome our two main obstacles: no pastry scraper and no marble slab. Instead we are just chilling our pastry a lot and using a metal spatula to scrape when needed. Today we managed to make it through our second turn, and will complete the process throughout the week, ending on Friday, using our final Puff Pastry to make Napoleons. Keep your fingers crossed that this will work!!

Since our Puff Pastry will not show results today, we decided to make biscotti using a base recipe from Baking Illustrated, which we modified to fit our desires. The recipe was one for Orange - Almond Biscotti, which we changed to Lemon-Almond biscotti. We simply substituted the zest of a lemon for the zest of an orange to make the change. The result: a lovely, lemony biscuit.

Tea anyone?

K & G

A First Attempt at Chocolate Souffle

Chocolate Souffle - doesn't that just sound marvelous?

I (Kelley) was home for the weekend, and could not resist the call of the oven. So my mother and I decided we ought to try to make a chocolate souffle. She happens to have a wonderful cookbook called, The Greatest Ever Chocolate Cookbook - everyone should own this.

The Process:
This specific recipe was primarily egg whites and chocolate - how could we go wrong? After my sad experience with eggs in our last post, we took every precaution to make sure the egg whites were properly beaten. We did modify the recipe, which originally included dark rum. We took out the rum, added extra coffee and vanilla extract. Our biggest dilemma was in the folding department - how much, when is it mixed enough, etc. We struggled because the whites were mixed into a very stiff chocolate concoction. In the end, I think it turned out as it should. The recipe also was meant to be baked in individual souffle dishes, but we opted for one large dish.


The Result:
A delightfully light way to eat chocolate. Truly, we could eat it all day. Because no flour, or egg yolks were used, the souffle deflated rather quickly, and especially when we dished it up. But it still tasted phenomenal. To add a little sweetness, we topped it off with some powdered sugar and whipped cream. Says my mom, "It must be very healthy, right? No egg yolks?" Very minimal amounts of sugar, only enough butter to grease the pan, egg whites, and chocolate (which we all know is good for us...)

Butter Scrumpins Cake

Congratulations us!! Our very first entirely Julia Child recipe: Biscuit au Beurre (that is, Butter Spongecake for those of us not fluent in French).

This delicacy involves a lot of whipping if you don't use an electric beater. Rotating every minute, we marveled at the strength Julia must have had in her forearms - ours were screaming in protest. Mind you, we spend HOURS exercising.

You know how good cake batter tastes from a box? Well, we don't even think boxed cake batter will taste good anymore after tasting this. It is light, sweet, buttery...everything you could ever want.

We had slight confusion as to what type of cake pan to bake our cake in. We decided on an angel food cake pan. This was not the best choice. It was much to big for our cake, and it would have done much better in a normal, round cake pan. Our cake also did not rise as much as we think it should have; which we attribute to not beating our eggs correctly. To cover all manner of injuries, we whipped up some cream to make a lovely topping to our somewhat-shrunken cake.

So, Julia: 1. Kelley & Gillian: 0.
Our cake declined a picture for this blog post, but don't worry folks, we'll keep trying.

Until next time,

G & K

Sigh...Lucious Lemons

Waking up at the unfortunate hour of 5:30 in the morning is never a good start to a day.

Neither is the crushing realization that you will not be able to bake something you really want to bake.

Alas, this was our fate this morning. With deep longing, we ogled the recipe for Napoleons in Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume II). To our despair, we realized the complexity of puff pastry would not fit in our small window of time between practices.

Nearly choking back tears, we turned to Glazed Lemon Cookies, found in Baker's Illustrated as a more feasible alternative. These simple, fresh cookies turned out delightfully, and take very little time to prepare. Lemon lovers will swoon when they bite into these delicate, very lemony cookies!
Hopefully in the near future we will have enough time and patience to tackle the tricky puff pastry!

A Tale of Two Scones

After a grueling morning practice, Kel and I decided to make the most delectable of second breakfasts: scones. To shake things up, we experimented with recipes. My recipe is from Baking Illustrated, and Kelley's is a secret specialty. The Baking Illustrated recipe, like all of Christopher Kimball's creations, boasts to be "the best". I made the Lemon-Blueberry variation of Cream Scones. The result? A fluffy buttery scone with just the slightest hint of sweetness. I would have liked there to be more of a lemon flavor to them, although the zest did give it a nice yellow compliment to the marbled blue color throughout.

The proportions of flour, sugar, "cream" substance (sour cream and milk instead of just heavy cream) in Kelley's old family recipe differ from the Baking Illustrated one. Her recipe required a little more baking powder, and a period of time to rise. Kelley's, which required a 1/4 cup of sugar, were much sweeter than Gillian's. The texture rivaled a muffin, which is not bad, but maybe not what a scone should be??



Overall, both these recipes were easy enough to follow and make in a little under an hour. We suggest that smaller scones would be preferable, and that one should cut them into the triangle shape, like Gillian did, rather than just molding them by hand. It might take us another try at this brunch treat to get it right. Cheers to second breakfast!

As an aside, I (Kelley) also whipped up one of my favorite cookies today: Chocolate Crinkles. Nothing, I repeat, nothing, can warm the chocolate lover's heart quite like these cookies. These delicacies are a bit more complex to make than your average cookie, but are worth every minute of waiting. I was given this recipe by a friend, Steph Duncan two years ago and I have worked for perfection. The key to achieving the perfect fluffy and yet melty consistency of the Crinkles is to use mini-semi sweet morsels and to let the dough chill overnight. In fact, I chill the dough in between rounds of baking. The temperamental nature of these cookies makes me love them even more - everything must be just right for them to be fantastic; but when it does they are unbeatable.

Baking Our Way Through January

In the cooking world, to julienne is to take a fat, stumpy vegetable and to cut it into thin, long strips in preparation for it to be made into something far more wonderful. The month of January is not unlike an over grown tuber, plucked from the earth in winter, dull and knotted, without even a coat of grocery store polish to recommend itself to consumers. But fear not you month of doldrums and dreariness! We have come to rescue you from your short, dark days, freezing temperatures, and all around sluggishness. We are armed with pastry cutters to liberate you from the defeatist attitude that you must be suffered through until springtime berries return!

Thanks to our recent gifts of The Joy of Cooking and and Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and a long-held idea of baking through January during a free J-term we have started this blog to save all seasonally-depressed people with delicious baked treats, fresh ideas and a warm bowl of lentil stew.

Day 1: The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Gillian has perfected the most beautiful chocolate chip recipe. Just for fun, today, we are baking these delicious cookies on three different surfaces. (p.s. our extensive scientific research proves the success of cookies depends on the amount of time you chill the dough, up to 24 hours)

1: Air-bake cookie sheet

2: Regular cookie sheet

3: Regular cookie sheet + silicone baking mat

Results: The air-bake cookie sheet definitely produced the evenly baked cookie, with the silicone baking mat coming in for a close second. The regular baking sheet was just not quite up to 'barr'.

xoxo!

you know you love us!

g&k