Pie for Breakfast

Well, I got my grump on for about an hour, and then got bored with it.  (I don’t stay grumpy very long; it takes too much of an effort and I’m rather lazy.)  I went online and surfed around the Baking Archipelago, and don’t you know that Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice had posted about decorating wedding cupcakes.  She has pictures; you should go look!  Well, she mentioned that she had taken Wilton decorating classes, which made me sit up and pay attention.  

Turns out the Michael’s in Knightdale (about half an hour from here) had a Wilton Decorating 1 class that started tonight and there was one place left in it — so I signed up and ran right over after work.   I enjoyed it thoroughly, and now I’m all excited about the rest of the course.  I’ll get to learn the flowers and the borders and the fancy designs I was hoping to learn!  I have homework for next week, and I’ll be posting my little triumphs as I go.

Um, thanks for tolerating my grump, folks.  Sometimes I really am only about six years old.

I was signed up to take a cake-decorating class tonight, and I was really really looking forward to it.  I was gonna learn to make royal icing look like baskets and roses and pansies and wisteria, learn to do crumb coat and slice layers so they look level, play with fondant and create pretty borders.  Maybe I would even learn to write legibly with icing!

Alas for my hopes.  Three people signed up for the class.  No last-minute, register-the-first-night-of-class decorators.  Class was cancelled.  It won’t be offered again in the summer, but maybe in the fall.  No class for Ann-Marie.

Excuse me.  I’m going to go grump in a corner someplace.

I give up.  I have so far started four New Year’s posts, and then deleted each one because I keep getting into the area of resolutions, goals, grand plans for 2008.   I wasn’t going to do resolutions this year, because I’m not very good at keeping them.  But it seems my stock of optimism is high right now, and plans for the new year keep bubbling up.  So even though I might not be good at keeping them, I’m going to put them out there.

1.  We need to move to Michigan in 2008.  That involves fixing this house up, selling it, finding a new house outside Detroit, and moving all our Stuff (Wiggy and I are both Olympic-class packrats; this won’t be pretty).  The first one is straightforward, the second will be nervewracking, the third shouldn’t be too hard, and the fourth will tax all our strength.  

2.  I’ll be working on my baking this year, and looking into making it my career.  I’ve registered for a cake decorating class at the local community college, which starts next Tuesday.  I’d love to do more, but that’s the only culinary-oriented class at any community college for about four counties around.  Once we get moved, there are a number of programs I can get involved in, so this is just a place to begin.  At least it’ll have me baking a cake to decorate every week!

3.  Diet & health.  I know I feel better when I eat less carbs and more protein, but if I’ll be baking, I’ll probably be absorbing flour and sugar through my pores.  And I flat-out refuse to completely give up baked goods.  So I plan to eat a lot more chicken and fish, and lots more green vegetables, but I’m going to have to actually get moving, too.  That means walking to start with, and maybe working my way up to — dare I even hope this? — running.  The concept of me running is pretty laughable at the moment, but stranger things have happened.  (I’m sure they have.)  And I would love love love the chance to learn yoga from a real teacher — one who could teach a round person, and have patience.

4.  Blog more.  Two or three times a week, and once on weekends. 

5.  Work on food photography.  I get involved in the baking process, and forget to stop and record what I’m doing.  All words and no photos make for a fairly uninteresting blog.  And the more I photograph, the better the photos get.

6.  Work on having more patience with my Mom.  Like most mother-and-daughter sets, we have issues and history and an unerring instinct for the hot buttons.  But she’s 80 years old, we won’t have her forever, and when I remember how impossible I was throughout my adolescence and young adulthood (and that’s assuming that I’ve even stopped being impossible), I think I owe her a bit more forbearance.

7.  (This one’s fun.)  Enter into the Daring Baker challenges with joy and enthusiasm, learn from my mistakes, and cheer on my sister and brother bakers!

Welcome, New Year.  I know you’re carrying some very big surprises in your pack, and I won’t always know what’s going to happen next.  I’ll try to keep up with you, though!

I come from a family of unexpectedly good cooks.  I mean that looking at the kind of person they were, their temperament, what they did for a living, the era they grew up in, you probably wouldn’t expect to have really good food emerge from a kitchen they inhabited.  Let me introduce you to my mother’s father, my Poppy, Joe O’Hare.

Poppy was a wiry, tough, second-generation Irish who grew up in the North Bronx when it was a patchwork of Irish, German and Italian  neighborhoods.  He didn’t get much more than an elementary school education before he left school to work, and then joined the cavalry.  When he returned from his stint in the Army, he joined the New York Police Department in the 1920’s as a mounted patrolman.  When he married my Nana, he inherited and had to live with her mother, Grandma Enright, who by all accounts was a drop-forged battleaxe.  He worked long late shifts in dangerous parts of New York City.  He had his nose broken more than once in the line of duty, he carried his “roscoe” till the day he died, he had a real drinking problem and smoked like an old chimney, finally passing in 1978 of emphysema.  He was the last person you’d expect to have an interest in really good food.  But from his kitchen came amazing roast beef, roast turkey and leg of lamb, mashed potatoes that nobody in my family can duplicate to this day, beautifully light Yorkshire puddings, lovely fresh vegetables, perfect omelets and crispy hashbrowns, and lemon meringue pie that stood a good eight inches off the tabletop.

My Nana taught school, and never had any interest in cooking.  That meant that cooking fell to Poppy, whenever he could.  Grandma Enright cooked when Poppy worked the night shift, and managed to get everyone fed — although my mother refers to her dinners, after a moment’s thought, as “uninspired”.  Family legend has it that Poppy would talk to the cooks and chefs who were off-duty from the ocean liners when they were docked in the Hudson River along Manhattan’s West Side after the Atlantic crossing, and learn from them about dinner dishes.  He’d also sit in diners and greasy-spoons on dinner break from wherever he was on patrol, and talk to the short-order cooks there about breakfasts and eggs and pancakes.  He could have learned about lemon meringue pie from any of them, I guess.  And then he would come home and put everything he learned into practice for his family, and later for his grandchildren.  Nearly thirty years after his death his cooking remains the stuff of legend for us.

I’ve been thinking about Poppy a lot these past couple of weeks, and I’m not sure why.  He had very little patience with children, and he and I had some wild fights when I was in my difficult adolescence.  I don’t think he ever had a chance to teach any of his children how to cook, and the kitchen in that apartment on Fordham Road was so tiny that there wasn’t room enough for anyone else to be in there while he was creating his masterpieces.  What I’d give right now to perch like a bird on the windowsill and watch him!

Our Christmas dinner this year was standing rib roast, Yorkshire pudding, peas & carrots, mashed potatoes, and Buche de Noel.  Except for the Buche, it could have been my Poppy’s table — although probably not quite as good as his.  Merry Christmas, Poppy and Nana!

(There has GOT to be a way for me to get the right accents into WordPress text.  Edited to add:  I shamelessly lifted those three words from foodbeam’s blog, because having it wrong on my page just got under my skin.  Thank you, Franny!) 

We had the Bûche for dessert on Christmas Night.  Ohhh . . . . I have to say that that was one of the best cakes I have ever made.  The genoise was so light it would have floated away if not for being held down by two kinds of buttercream frosting.  And the layering of coffee and hazelnut and chocolate was inspired, if I do say so myself. 

After reading many reports of other DB’ers flavor choices, I have a list of combinations I’d like to try for next year.  Fortunately, there should be enough birthday cakes between now and then for me to try most of those combinations before I choose just one for Christmas!  THANK YOU to all my sister and brother bakers out there who took the challenge and made wonderful things for us to learn from.

 At last it can be told!  This was my first challenge as a Daring Baker.  I’d been reading about them for a couple of months, and while the October Bostinis looked delicious and fun (let’s be honest, Pie is in this for the chocolate), I think that November’s potato bread was the clincher.  So many intriguing takes on bread, from so many bakers all over the world!  I was especially thrilled by the simple arrangements that might never have occurred to me, but were purely and happily inevitable to someone else — the potato bread bowls filled with good soup leap to mind.  (I forget whose those were, but thank you for posting them!)  I know that my life (and particularly my job) is filled with Rube-Goldberg-type complications designed to get everything done, and sometimes it’s a real relief to remember that simple solutions still work best.

This month the DB challenge is a Bûche de Noël, or Yule Log, suggested by our Gracious Founders, Ivonne and Lis.  And here is mine.

I made a Bûche about fifteen years ago in a burst of high spirits and with serene disregard for my lack of experience in baking anything that didn’t come out of a box.  It turned out to be recognizably log-shaped, but it was so sweet it made my teeth ache, and the mess in my kitchen was Not To Be Believed.  (Now there was something I should have taken pictures of.)  These days I have a bit more in the way of baking experience, and I was ready to tackle a Bûche again.

Lis and Ivonne originally specified a genoise cake and a coffee buttercream for the outside, with the filling left up to us.  (The recipes are here.)   I went with a chocolate genoise, and filled it with a chocolate-hazelnut buttercream.  Chocolate, hazelnut and coffee — how good is that?

Well, the genoise turned out beautifully, and rolled up over the waxed paper and tea towel just like it knew what it was doing.  (Hilda, thanks for the suggestion of the dampened tea towel to roll it up!).  I made up the buttercream recipe through the eggs, sugar and butter, and then divided it.  Half I flavored with the espresso powder and cognac, and the other half with Nutella and a tablespoon or so of Frangelico liqueur.  Oh, and I also used some of the Frangelico to make an imbibing syrup for the genoise.

The Nutella and Frangelico combination was amazingly good.  The buttercream was smooth and elegant-looking, even a little fluffy — which I thought ws a good idea for the filling.  I took a taste of it, and realized I’d have to fill the genoise, roll it up and get it into the fridge in a big hurry or I’d start eating it by the spoonful.  (I admit that my rubber spatula and I got the bowl pretty darn clean after the genoise was filled.)

The espresso and cognac buttercream, on the other hand, really didn’t want to play nice.  I beat in the flavorings and it looked just okay . . . and then I put it in the fridge to stiffen it up a bit.  (Once again I have to learn the hard way what other people already know.)  Naturally when I took it out an hour later, it was completely curdled and looked like tawny cottage cheese.  I tried warming a bit of the buttercream and beating it back in, but that only succeeded in  deflating the egg whites and making it all runny.  Made another batch and tried again, this time NOT putting it in the fridge.  Lo and behold, this one looked much better and the Buche was successfully frosted.  The espresso/cognac combination tasted a little sharp, so I sifted in about a tablespoon of cocoa, which mellowed it just enough.

And the meringue mushrooms were simple and fun, and I probably shouldn’t be allowed to have free access to piping bags.  (Milo came and put his paws up on the counter while I was piping them out.  After I told him “Off!” three times and he wouldn’t off, I piped a blop of the meringue right on his nose.  It took the poor dog a minute to figure out what I’d done, and then he retreated under the kitchen table, completely confused.)  I now have a flock of the most cheerfully inebriated-looking mushrooms you ever saw outside of Fantasia.  I forgot to dust them with cocoa before I baked them, but they turned out cream-colored anyway, just about the same color as regular button mushrooms.

Now if I can just keep Wiggy out of the fridge, we’ll be having Bûche de Noël for dessert on Christmas Day.  Merry Christmas, everyone! 

Wiggy and I have family all over the country, and it’s a tribute to the wonderful people we’re connected to by blood and marriage that we’d like to be with all of them for the holidays . . . no matter how crazy they make us.  This year, though, it’s going to me just the two of us — plus assorted livestock, of course — here at home.  Mommy-pie is going up to my sister and brother-in-law in Cape Cod, with one brother and his partner, plus my uncle; the other brother and his wife and daughter will be in Iowa; Wiggy’s stepmother Kathy and her kids, grandkids and assorted extras will be in Wisconsin; his sisters will be in Baltimore, Omaha and Denver (we think).  Since we can’t be everyplace, I’m sending cookie boxes to everyone.

Last Saturday and Sunday were spent making and freezing dough for gingerbread swirl cookies, dark chocolate butter cookies, vanilla sugar cookies, and raspberry/chocolate bar cookies.  Next Sunday I’ll be baking all of those, and make some cardamom shortbread dipped in dark chocolate, cranberry hootycreeks, and maybe some kipferl. 

I don’t think I can do it this year, but has anyone tried overnighting frozen cookie dough, with baking instructions in the package?  I’d love to send a package like that for delivery on Christmas Eve.  That really would be the best of both worlds — fresh baked cookies, made with love by someone, and the recipient doesn’t have to clean up the kitchen.

I have a kitchen staff, did I tell you that?  Here is my sous-chef Zone Five.  I took out The Way to Cook to get Julia Child’s perspective on cream puffs, and within three minutes Five had curled up in the middle of the book and was sound asleep.  I’m sure she simply intended to mark my place.

You’re the top! 
You’re the Colosseum,
You’re the top! 
You’re the Louvre Museum,
You’re a melody 
From a symphony by Strauss,
You’re a Bendel bonnet, 
A Shakespeare sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse.

Cream puffs — and their bigger sisters, eclairs — are the kind of thing you sit and savor.  They’re French, they’re elegant, they’re haute, they’re the top!  First the intense chocolate flavor of the ganache glaze that fills your whole mouth and head; then the crisp-but-rich texture of the puff itself, like very fine brioche; then the smooth sweet pastry cream inside, sometimes with a hint of citrus, sometimes simply a pure rich vanilla flavor.  I’d look at them in the bakery case and know that no mere mortal made these pastries.

Never one to admit that I am a mere mortal,  it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at creating these lovelies.  Starting with Sherry Yard’s recipes from The Secrets of Baking (have I said I love this woman?  I love this woman), Sunday was devoted to cream puffs filled with pastry cream and covered with ganache glaze. 

The pate a choux dough was far simpler to make than I thought it would be.  The flour went into the hot milk and sugar without a lump, which surprised me, and it firmed up and the excess moisture cooked out right on schedule.  The eggs went in like they knew what they were about, and the dough became as smooth and elastic as you could wish.  It got a little more complicated in the piping-out part, though.  I did discover that 12-inch pastry bags are just a little too small for this recipe — you really need 16 or 18 inch bags.  And you need to pipe the blobs straight down onto the parchment, no silly little swirls like I’d seen somewhere on the Food Network. 

(Swirls, once baked, will get you some very relaxed snails, not puffs.)  The egg wash has to be thinned with water, and not just be all-egg.  And most important of all — don’t prepare your baking tray until the oven is preheated and ready for it.  Pastry blobs spread out when they sit on the parchment, and the egg wash will start to dry and prevent the puffs from puffing, so pipe them out, egg-wash them, and get them immediately into the oven.  This is not a time to prepare ahead!

See what I mean?

The pastry cream called for 1.5 tsp. of fresh orange zest, but I think I’ll try a bit more next time, maybe 2 tsp.  Holding a puff with one hand and manipulating a pastry bag full of cream took a certain amount of dexterity, so maybe next time I’ll cut the tops off completely, fill the insides, and then put the tops on again before I glaze the puffs.

I didn’t have any apricot jelly for the ganache glaze so I left it out.  I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips in the glaze, and it had a wonderfully intense flavor, but I’d like to try the apricot jelly next time around. 

Mommy-pie and I had several tiny ones last night, and I brought the rest to work today.  My co-workers are a wonderful audience, and I got some very positive feedback from them.  I thoroughly enjoyed making them, and I know I’ll do that again.

(tip o’ the hat to Cole Porter)

The ebullient Marye of Baking Delights is giving away a copy of I’m Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas by Marcel Desaulniers and Ron Manville.  The photo on the cover is an airy-looking confection that seems to have chocolate mousse and pistachios, wrapped around with chocolate lace . . .  wow.  I snuck over to Amazon.com and looked at the index — it shows a recipe for Christmas Breakfast Sour Cream-Chocolate Crumb Cake.  Ohhh . . . . Christmas breakfast cake with chocolate. 

 My home in North Carolina has a much better chance of seeing a chocolate Christmas than a white Christmas, so I may just have to change the lyrics of the song to suit.  (Sorry, Bing.)  Go take a look at Marye’s blog and read about it.  And then go read the rest of her blog — I love the way she writes!