Despite the fact that it will be February in one hour, rest assured that my project has been completed. I’ve just been a little too lazy in posting my final two weeks.

On Christmas Eve, I baked a Grasshopper Pie to take to my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. I referred to this as Booze Pie while I was baking it, because it contained a lot of booze. I had to visit two liquor stores in lovely Park Slope to procure the green Creme de Menthe and clear Creme de Cacao (which both made an appearance at our New Year’s Eve party when my husband and his friend made Ginger Mint Surprises and Cacao Zeroes (don’t ask).)

This recipe started with a Mint Oreo cookie crust that was made up of crushed Mint Oreos and butter. Delicious.

The filling was comprised of the aforementioned booze and not much else. Some gelatin and whipped cream were involved to both stabilize and lighten the filling:

The filling went into the pie crust, which was then refrigerated overnight:

The filling tasted incredibly alcoholic the night it was made, but mellowed out the next day. It came out deliciously minty with a nice chocolately finish from the crust. The party guests seemed to enjoy it.

The next post will be my last! I can hardly believe it.

Wowwww, I have been M.I.A. for some time. Sorry about that. I plan to rectify it in the next couple of days. I’ve only got a few more weeks of baking, and I need to get the blog caught up before the baking ends!

On the first full weekend of November, Rob’s sister and her boyfriend came over for dinner. We had falafel and a Free Form Apple Tart for dessert. The falafel was good, but the tart was better.

The recipe began with making a crust in the food processor:

The dough was then chilled and then rolled out in a (rough approximation) of a circle:

The next step was to layer apple slices in a circle on the dough in what I would describe as a snow-fort pattern. My first attempt was a little too tall and a little too narrow:

The next try was much better. Once the apples were down, the dough was folded over itself and then gathered around the edges:

The whole shebang was placed on a rimmed baking sheet and baked for about an hour:

Apparently the big thing with these Form Form Tarts is that they tend to leak. That’s why it’s so important to leave about two inches of the dough uncovered with apples to fold over; it acts as a barrier. I’m proud to say that my tart did not leak. And it was delicious. And even better sliced up with homemade whipped cream on top. I plan to make this again sometime soon. It was a lot of work peeling and slicing the apples, but overall fairly easy.

This week marked the first time I’ve brought baked goods into my new coworkers in Times Square. Now that I’m not driving myself to work, the baked goods I take in for my coworkers have to be fairly easy to transport. I don’t know if any cakes will make their way into that building. Pies, maybe, but the idea of taking a cake on the subway makes me cry.

So, for the first experiment, I thought cookies would be good. And what’s more sturdy and stable than a sugar cookie? But I couldn’t make just a boring old sugar cookie – and my cookie cutters are in storage, so I couldn’t even make cute shapes. I’d have to amp up the flavor.

Luckily, “The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book” had variations on their sugar cookie recipe that included a Lime Sugar Cookie. Sounded pretty delicious to me!

The recipe started with rubbing some lime zest into sugar, which the cookie dough balls would be rolled in prior to baking:

Next, a fairly straightforward cookie dough was made, with the addition of some more lime zest:

The first batch of cookies didn’t turn out so hot. I made the balls way too big and forgot to flatten them out before baking. So they turned out like this:

I made the cookie dough balls smaller the second time around and remembered to flatten them out. I also sprinkled some additional lime sugar on top to give them an extra crunch:

Much better. Unfortunately, I didn’t take very many pictures as I needed to get out the door with these cookies! My coworkers seemed to enjoy them quite a bit:

Last night, I made the next baked good in my series: S’mores Cupcakes. I plan to write about them this weekend. Highlight: Check out the reviews of Crumbs Bakery on Yelp! One of my coworkers said my cupcakes were better than the ones at Crumbs.

I can’t believe it’s taken we twenty-three weeks to bake a pie! But summer is finally here, and fruits are in season, so pie time it was.

Apple pie is probably one of my top five foods. I would love for my last meal to be stuffed peppers, apple pie with Jeni’s Honey Vanilla Bean ice cream and Framboise with ginger ale. That sounds absolutely perfect.

A couple of months ago I was watching “The America’s Test Kitchen” show on PBS and they made a blueberry pie with a pie crust that included vodka! It was amazing! The reasoning was that too much water can make a pie crust tough. Vodka, on the other hand, mostly evaporates in heat, and therefore does not make the crust tough. And the alcohol completely evaporates, so you don’t end up with a boozy pie.

The recipe started with flour, sugar, salt being processed together in a food processor:

Next, shortening and butter were chilled and cut into small pieces and evenly distributed around the flour mixture. This was pulsed together until lumps formed:

The dough was then transferred to a bowl and the water and vodka were sprinkled over and smooshed together until the dough all came together. I got very nervous at this point, because the dough was incredibly wet. I was sure that I’d messed something up. The dough was divided into two pieces and each was wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated for an hour:

In the meantime, I peeled, cored and chopped ten apples! Five Granny Smith and five Cameos went into the pie. Once the apples were sliced, they went into a large pot with sugar, brown sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. As it turned out, I should not have put the lemon juice in at this point. But I don’t think it affected the pie in the least:

The apples were set over medium heat for twenty minutes so that they could cook down. Normally you do not cook down the apples before putting them into a pie. The authors of this cookbook feel that if you don’t cook the apples, when the pie is baked the apples shrink, leaving a gap between the apples and the crust. If you cook the apples down, you can fit the crust on top of the already shrunken apples and you will not have the gap.

After twenty minutes, the apples were dumped out onto a rimmed baking sheet to cool to room temperature. If I had just dumped them into the pie, the heat of the apples would have melted the butter in the pie crust. Not a good idea.

While the apples were cooling, the bottom crust pie dough was rolled out and fitted to the pie pan. The top crust pie dough was rolled out and put on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Both were then put back in the fridge to chill again.

The cooled apples were drained of the liquid that had collected and one fourth cup was reserved. This was when I should have added the lemon juice. The apples were loaded into the prepared pie pan and the reserved liquid was sprinkled on top of the apples. Then the top crust pie dough was rolled on top of the apples. The crust was trimmed and crimped, air vents were cut and I was ready to go.

But wait. Something was missing. I looked at all the scraps of dough I had left over from trimming the edges and remembered a cookie cutter that I had…

Excellent. I’m so proud of both the apple cut out and the crimped edges. I’ve always just folded my pie crust edges over into a messy seal, but I knew I had to do something fancier for my first blog pie.

The pie was baked for about 55 minutes and came out looking a little something like this:

I cut into the pie once it had cooled down and loaded it up onto a plate:

One look inside the cut apple pie revealed just how many apples went into that bad boy:

Over the weekend I had purchased some ingredients to make ice cream, but got sidelined by that nasty allergic reaction I mentioned in my last post. So yesterday morning when I woke up, I decided I would make some vanilla ice cream to go with this pie. How can you not have apple pie a la mode?

Everything was going fine with the ice cream making until I went to get the milk. I needed one cup, so I grabbed our milk carton from the fridge and realized that I had maybe one fourth cup splishing around in the bottom of that carton. Yikes.

Then I remembered I had some leftover buttermilk in the back of the fridge, thought, “What the hey?” and added in enough to make one cup. It came out delicious! The buttermilk made the ice cream a little richer and cut down on some of the sweetness from the sugar. Yum:

Next week I’m making some Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams inspired cupcakes for a friend’s birthday party. Salty Caramel Cupcakes and Root Beer Float Cupcakes with Honey Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, here I come!

So sorry I didn’t post this recipe last week when I should have. I baked on Wednesday evening and then Thursday evening, I started itching. I spent the weekend itching in agony, and finally went to Urgent Care Tuesday morning. The doctor confirmed it was an allergic reaction (which is good, as I was starting to freak out that it was bugs or something), but couldn’t tell me to what it might be a reaction. He prescribed me some Prednisone and it has helped immensely. A lot of my spots are starting to fade, and only my left wrist is itchy.

So, as you can see, I had other things on my mind over the weekend than posting about this baklava. And I really hope it wasn’t the walnuts and almonds that set me off (I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten both before), because this baked good was a hit.

The baklava was a special request from one of my co-workers, and how can I deny my adoring crowd? So I set out on Wednesday afternoon and got to baking.

The recipe started with the honey glaze that would be poured over the baklava once it was baked. It was a mixture of water, sugar, honey, lemon zest, cinnamon and whole cloves. This was set to boil over medium heat:

Next, I had to clarify the butter that would be brushed on the layers of phyllo dough. I was scared to death to clarify the butter; it seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. I melted three sticks of butter:

And then let it sit for ten minutes once it had all melted. Then, I skimmed the foam off the top:

Then I poured the skimmed butter into a bowl, being carefully to leave the milk solids behind that had settled in the bottom of the pan:

I did a pretty good job at it! I’m sure I left some foam in my butter, and let a few milk solids squeak by, but overall, it seemed like it worked!

The next step was to grind up the almonds, walnuts, cinnamon and ground cloves in a food processor. This would be the nut filling between the layers. This mixture was ground super fine.

Finally, I was ready to start assembling! I removed the phyllo dough from the refrigerator and…what’s that? Phyllo dough needs to be thawed? And thawing takes HOURS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Yup, I made the vital mistake of not checking the “Phyllo Dough Phun Phacts” (my spelling) in the cookbook on the page before the recipe. I should have left that dough out for at least four or five hours before I even thought about touching it. I decided to plunge forward. What’s the worst that could happen?

Well, the worst that could happen was that I could rip up the entire package. Twenty sheets of phyllo dough, torn right down the middle, cracking and flaking every which way. I had to throw it out. I took the other package out of the box and left it on top of my microwave while I made dinner and then went to a movie with Rob. I decided I could assemble the baklava once we got home (around 9:30 p.m.)

When we got back, it was much smoother sailing. I only ruined one or two sheets this time around, and things seemed to be going much better.

Action shot of nut layer going down!

Everything was going great until I got down to the last sheet of phyllo dough and realized something was amiss. I needed about thirty sheets of dough and I had about eighteen. Apparently, I really did need that other package. I was missing so much dough that an entire nut layer would have to be left out. A very short baklava.

I went on ahead anyway, finishing the assembly and cutting the baklava into diamond shapes before baking it for an hour and a half.

Once it was golden brown, it was removed from the oven and the cooled honey mixture was poured over the lines that had been cut. It was a heavenly smell. Some reserved honey mixture went over the top of the whole thing, and a pinch of reserved nut mixture was dropped into the middle of each diamond. It was quite pretty:

The baklava had to sit at room temperature until it cooled, which was going to take about three hours. It then needed to be covered with foil and allowed to sit for at least eight hours (clarified butter is the magical reason you don’t have to refrigerate baklava. Apparently it’ll keep for ten days). It was now 11 p.m., so I set my alarm clock for 2 a.m. and ran downstairs when it went off to cover the baklava with foil.

The next day, Rob forgot his wallet at home and I had to run it to him at his work before I left for work myself. I cut a piece of baklava to take to him (and also to take photos of it):

So, as you can see, it was a lot shorter than it should have been. Being twelve sheets short on phyllo dough definitely makes a difference. But, it went over quite well at work. The co-worker who requested it said it was “Awesome”.

That’s what it’s all about, folks. Pleasing the eaters.

This is also the first week I am taking photos with my new camera! Last week I got a Canon EOS Rebel XSi. I’m already in love with it. I’m still learning how to use the manual settings, so most of my photos so far are shot with the Full Auto setting.

This week (by which I mean today), I’m baking Blue Ribbon Apple Pie. I even whipped up a batch of vanilla ice cream to go with it. More on that later.

Twenty-one weeks! Now that I think about it, I should have baked something with alcohol in it, seeing as how my blog is now legally allowed to drink. Instead, I went with Cinnamon Rolls.

I love cinnamon something fierce. A friend of ours got us the Baker’s Assortment gift box from Penzey’s Spices for our wedding, and it contains a jar of Chinese Cassia Cinnamon, which has a nice bite to it. I understand that it’s a little stronger than your typical McCormick’s Cinnamon, so I was all for it.

My day started off with a drive to Penzey’s to redeem a gift card a friend had given me for Christmas. The Baker’s Assortment box had contained a bottle of strong vanilla extract that I LOVED and had used up, so I wanted to go and buy another bottle. What should have been a fifteen minute trip because about an hour trip, as the main road I needed to use was closed. As someone on Facebook said, “Henderson Road Fail”.

I finally managed to procure my bottle of vanilla and start baking.

The Cinnamon Rolls started with a dough made with warm buttermilk. I made sure the buttermilk wasn’t too hot so I wouldn’t kill the yeast this time around, like I did with the Chocolate Marbled Brioche Bread. Once the dough was kneaded for about ten minutes, it was turned out onto a floured surface and kneaded by hand into a smooth ball. That ball of dough went into a lightly greased bowl to double in size, which took just about two hours:

Once the dough had doubled in size, it was once again turned out onto a floured surface and pressed into a 16″ by 12″ rectangle:

I brushed some melted butter on top of this, and then sprinkled on a heavenly mixture of cinnamon, brown sugar and cloves. Mmmm mmmm:

Then, starting at the bottom, this rectangle was rolled up into a log. Then seam was pinched together and the log was rolled seam side down. It was then stretched into an 18″ log and cut into 12 equal pieces. These pieces were placed into a greased 9″ by 13″ baking dish:

The rolls were then left to proof for a second time. Before they were to go into the oven to bake, they should double in size and touch each other. When I came back an hour later, this is what I found:

Oh, look at that! They’re touching each other! Scandalous!

They then went into the oven for about 30 minutes. When I checked on them at the 30 minute mark, they still seemed a little pale, so I let them go for about another five minutes. They came out looking a little like this:

I cut them apart and flipped them upside down on a rack to cool while I mixed up the glaze. Check out all that yummy brown sugar/cinnamon goo on the bottom of those rolls. Delicious:

The glaze was a very simple mixture of cream cheese, powdered sugar and buttermilk that was mixed together until smooth:

The rolls were then flipped back over and the glaze was drizzled over the rolls:

I think I ended up baking these for about four minutes too long, as they are slightly dry. I threw them into an air tight container overnight, so I’m hoping that they may have softened up just a bit. They’re still fantastically delicious. Yum.

While I was waiting for the dough and the cut rolls to proof, I whipped up a batch of Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. These are the same ones that I made about two weeks ago. I loved them so much that I needed to make another batch. They came out quite yummy this time as well:

Yummmmmm.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to make next week just yet. I have a co-worker who has requested baklava, and that looks verrrrry interesting. It may be the winner.

This week started with a cake and ended with a bonus cupcake. I planned to leisurely bake a Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting on Wednesday morning, but I ended up spending a good hour of prime baking time picking my dog Scout up from the vet. So I was racing around like crazy trying to get the cake together and frosted before I had to hit the road for work.

The recipe started with a batter that combined a heavenly array of spices: Cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Yummmy!

Five medium sized carrots were then shredded. I hadn’t realized how long it takes to shred a carrot on a box grater. After the second carrot I was ready to take a break:

The batter was spread into two greased and floured spring form pans and baked. When the timer went off, I nervously pulled the cakes from the oven:

Beautiful! And I even managed to extract the layers from the pans without tearing up the bottom, like I usually do:

While the cake layers cooled, I whipped up a Cream Cheese Frosting, which I could have just eaten straight out of the bowl with a spoon:

The cake layers were supposed to cool for two hours before being frosted, but I had only about an hour and fifteen minutes until I had to be out the door for work. I wanted to take the frosted cake with me to work, so I ended up throwing the layers in the fridge and freezer to try to cool them down. They didn’t cool down as much as they should have, but I got them cool enough that the frosting didn’t just slide right off the cake:

I wrapped the cake up in plastic wrap and hauled it off to work with me. It was an incredibly heavy cake! As suspected, my co-workers tore into it like wolves on a baby rabbit:

I quite enjoyed my slice:

This cake was incredibly moist (which may have been because the cake layers were still warm when it was frosted) and very delicious. I’m not the world’s biggest Carrot Cake fan, but I could eat this cake every day. Especially for breakfast. I can only imagine how awesome it will be when I make it in the future and actually let the layers cool down like they should. Yum.

Tomorrow is the Kentucky Derby and my husband and I have been invited to attend a Derby BBQ/Party. The invitation suggested that we could bring side dishes, so how could I not bring a cupcake?

I flip through cookbooks on a regular basis during breaks at my job, and I knew I’d struck gold when I found the Mint Julep Cupcakes with White Chocolate Mint Frosting. Perfect! I set out after work today to acquire the ingredients I would need, including fresh mint leaves, white chocolate chips and Creme de Menthe.

I’ve never worked with, drank or even seen a bottle of Creme de Menthe, so I had no clue where to find it in the grocery store. I checked Google on my iPhone, but it wasn’t really helping me out. I called my husband who suggested that I ask one of the clerks. I knew what the answer would be, but I asked anyway, hoping that maybe someone would be a weird liquor connoisseur. The exchange went a little something like this:

Me: Do you have Creme de Menthe?
Clerk (with blank stare): What’s that?

Just as I had suspected. I drove to a liquor store up the road a bit and asked the guy behind the counter there if they had Creme de Menthe. His response? “What’s that?” Luckily, another employee knew what I was talking about and said that they did not carry it, but another close liquor store might. I called them and they confirmed that they did have it in stock. I made the drive and procured the liquor.

As I was waiting for my credit card to go through, one of the clerks said, “What kind of drink are you making with that?” And I looked at him and said, “Well…it’s actually for a cupcake…”

I’m pretty sure all the old dudes in that store shook their heads sadly at me when they heard that.

The magic liquor:

This recipe started with the White Chocolate Mint Frosting. I started by heating whipping cream and butter until the butter melted. The mixture was removed from the heat and white chocolate chips were added in and melted. Finally, the Creme de Menthe and green food coloring were added, turning this:

into this:

The frosting went into the fridge where, in two hours, it was supposed to set up enough to have reached spreading consistency.

The cupcake batter was a fairly straightforward mixture of flour, baking powder, salt, butter, sugar, eggs, mint leaves and my substitute for bourbon: Old Grandad Whiskey:

I didn’t want to buy a whole bottle of bourbon for a half cup, so Rob suggested I just use the Old Grandad Whiskey still left over from our wedding reception six months ago. It seems to have done the trick:

Once the cupcakes had cooled, I took the frosting from the fridge. It had decidedly not reached spreading consistency. It was way too thin. Luckily, I remembered that I had a can of Betty Crocker white frosting in the cabinet, so I mixed a little of that in. I know it was cheating, but when you’ve got a dynamic cupcake planned for an event, you’ll do what you’ve got to do to make them look good. Once the hybrid frosting was put into a freezer bag, it covered the cupcakes quite nicely. I added some green sugar and a fresh mint leaf:

Mmm mmm! Baked, the whiskey took on a much mellower taste. And the frosting has a nice minty kick. I think these will be a lovely snack for the Derby watchers.

This Sunday is Scout’s sixth birthday, so I’m planning to bake homemade dog biscuits for her! That’s right, a non-human baked good!

This recipe required me to buy some new toys, which made me very happy. I went to Crate & Barrel for these:

That’s a bench scraper, a French rolling pin and a loaf pan. As it turned out, I didn’t actually need the rolling pin (I smooshed the dough out with my hands), but I will need it eventually. These three items set me back less than $25.

This was also the first time that I got to use the dough hook on my KitchenAid mixer. I’ve now officially used all three attachments that came with it. Sooner or later, I’ll get that pasta attachment, but that’s another blog.

YARRRR!

With everything in place, it was time to start. I mixed cinnamon, sugar and brown sugar together in a bowl, then milk, butter and eggs in a mixing cup, and then started dumping the flour, yeast and salt into the mixing bowl. Once the dry ingredients went in, I added the wet and started kneading:

(How many photos did I have to take to get a decent shot? Three.)

Once the dough had cleared the sides of the bowl, but still stuck to the bottom, I turned it out onto a ‘lightly floured’ counter. This time, ‘lightly floured’ actually meant ‘lightly floured’:

Once the dough was kneaded into a smooth, elastic ball, it went into a greased bowl with greased plastic wrap and sat for a little over an hour to double in size. Once that was achieved, I turned the dough back out onto the counter and smooshed it out into a rectangle. I then wet the dough and sprinkled the cinnamon/sugar/brown sugar mixture on top. Then it got dampened again. I would have taken a picture of this, but my hands were covered in cinnamon and I didn’t want to gum up my camera. The dough then was rolled up jelly-roll style and dumped into the loaf pan:

From there, it was left for another hour to rise again. Once that was achieved, the top was brushed with butter and sprinkled with some reserved cinnamon/sugar/brown sugar mixture. Then it went into a 350 degree oven for “40 to 60 minutes.” The ambiguous times in this particular recipe irked me a bit. I know that ovens are finicky and you have to watch your food rather than rely on a clock, but twenty minutes??? I’m not going to sit in front of my oven starting at the 40 minute mark and just wait. So I set the timer for 25 minutes, at which point I rotated the pan. Then I set it for another 25. This is what I got:

I think it turned out fine. I shook it out of the pan:

It kind of looked like a covered wagon. My only issue with the loaf was that one end was pointed up and the other end was pointed down. I’m not sure how I could have fixed that. I’ll have to look into if/when I bake another loaf of bread.

Finally, after some cooling, it was time to cut into the bread and see what happened on the inside!

HOLY COW IT WORKED! Look at that swirl!

I’m so glad this worked out! The bread is DELICIOUS and may be the best thing I’ve made so far.

Tune in next week when I make Vegan Chai Latte Cupcakes for Rob’s birthday!

You know how sometimes you start a project, and a fourth of the way through it, you find yourself thinking, “There’s no way this is going to work?”

That’s how these scones started out.

When I mixed the dry and wet ingredients, the dough was super sticky. The recipe instructed me to turn the dough out onto a ‘lightly floured’ counter and ‘lightly flour’ the dough enough that it wouldn’t stick.

I apparently have no concept of what ‘lightly flour’ looks like, because when I used a ‘light’ amount of flour, the dough stuck like crazy. So I floured it more. And more. And more. By the time I got these things in the oven, I discovered that ‘lightly flour’ actually means ‘use more flour to dust the counter than you actually put in the recipe’.

I finally got a ball of dough together that looked like this:

From there, I had to roll the dough out into a sqaure, then fold the square on itself, and then put it in the freezer for five minutes. This was the point where I thought it wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t unstick the flour from the counter without tearing it apart. So I did the best I could and stuck the blob in the freezer.

After five minutes, I took it out and rolled it into another square, at which point I studded it with the blueberries:

(Side note: I’m not the biggest fan of raw blueberries. I tend to only eat them in muffins and pancakes. I didn’t realize they’re not blue on the inside! I was so disappointed.)

Once the blueberries were down, I rolled it up jelly-roll style (with some more sticking and more flouring). Once it got rolled up, I smooshed it down and started cutting:

Once they were cut into scone-like triangles, I put them on the baking sheet with My Precious, the Silpat:

A little baking and voila!:

Close up:

So I guess the lesson is to have faith in your abilities. If you’ve proven yourself good at something, take a chance and try something a little different in that field. It might start out a little rough, but if you rely on your past knowledge, it’ll usually turn out all right.

The only problem I had with these scones is that they created a TON of dishes:

Next week is the season premiere of “Lost” and Rob and I are having some friends over. I plan to bake some Cinnamon Swirl Bread that will be easy to grab blindly off a plate while our eyes are glued to the television screen.