52 Weeks of Baking

Week Forty-Eight: Thanksgiving!

December 16, 2009 in Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good, pie | No comments

(The Pear-Honey-Cranberry Sauce recipe came from allrecipes.com and the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie recipe came from How to Eat a Cupcake.)

Thanksgiving! The second best holiday of the year (Christmas is number one, of course, and Halloween is probably third). My Thanksgiving this year was different from all my past ones; instead of watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, I got to see it in person!

Also, my mom came out to visit from Ohio! This was also a pretty big deal, as my mom has never been to New York City before. We took her around to all the tourist traps and posed for pictures with the Naked Cowboy. Much fun was had.

My darling husband insisted that I make some kind of crazy cranberry sauce this year, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that combined cranberries with pears, sugar and honey and seemed easy enough to figure out. It actually turned out quite lovely. I’m not a cranberry sauce fan, but even I put a little on my turkey this year:

My main project though was a Pumpkin Pie. My husband’s family is all about traditions at holiday events, so when I told Rob I wanted to mix things up a little bit and make a Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, he was beyond nervous. He was so afraid that the pie would be some radical experiment. But it wasn’t! I followed the recipe from How To Eat a Cupcake, and it turned out great! The only problem I had was that my pre-baked pie crust slid down the pie pan on one side a little…not enough to ruin the pie, but enough to ruin the aesthetic.
What makes this pie a little different is that it incorporates gelatin and whipped egg whites in with the traditional pumpkin filling. It makes for an incredibly light pie. I like pumpkin pie well enough, but after one piece I’m usually done until the next Thanksgiving. I could have eaten two or three slices of this one.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the pie-making process, as I was really busy putting it and the cranberry sauce together the night before Thanksgiving (we had to be up at 5 a.m. Thanksgiving morning to get to the parade route in time). But here’s the finished product, which went over very well:

Tags: Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

Week Forty-Seven: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

December 16, 2009 in Cookies, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s recipe came from allrecipes.com)

A few weeks back, Rob and I went to visit our friends Alison and Brian in Scarsdale. They have two kids who are four and two, and it was my responsibility to bring dessert. I tried to think of something that kids and adults would like that wasn’t just a chocolate cupcake or sugar cookie. I found a recipe for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies and thought, “Eureka!” Pumpkin is a flavor that adults and kids both seem to enjoy, and who doesn’t like a nice, thick layer of sweet creamy filling?

The recipe started with a really thick batter. It definitely did not have the consistency of a chocolate chip cookie dough, but it was thicker than a cake batter:

The batter went down on cookie sheets and, as I learned from the Iced Pumpkin Cookies, I put it down in exactly the way I wanted the cookies to turn out, as pumpkin cookies don’t spread much:

They baked up into beautiful golden cookies that were slightly springy and moist:

The filling for the middle was made of Crisco and sugar and a few other things and was delicious. I spread a thick layer on half the cookies, and then sandwiched another cookie on top:

The cookies were a big hit. Brian and Alison both loved them, and their kids worked on those cookies for the better part of ten minutes (they were pretty big cookies), licking up every crumb. I’m so happy that they enjoyed them, because I was living in fear that they’d take one bite and then spit it out.

Kid-tested, mother (somewhat) approved (the kids did run around like crazy people after all the sugar!).

Tags: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Week Forty-Six: Free Form Apple Tart

December 16, 2009 in "The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book", Tart, Weekly Baked Good | No comments

(This recipe came from “The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book”.)

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.

Tags: free form apple tart

Week Forty-Five: Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

November 20, 2009 in "Cupcakes Galore", Cupcakes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s recipe came from “Cupcakes Galore!” by Gail Wagman.)

For Halloween, I wanted to bake something that would invoke childhood. Halloween, no matter how old you are, is always about dressing up and candy. And when you’re older, booze. So when I saw the Chocolate Malt Cupcake in Gail Wagman’s cookbook, I knew I had to give it a try.

The recipe started off with an incredibly light cupcake batter that included Ovaltine. (”Be…sure…to…drink…your…Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?”). This batter is so light that it’s scary. It seems more like frosting than batter. Getting it into the cupcake tins was kind of a nightmare:

They baked up fine, if a little fragile. Light cupcakes require a really light hand, which I sometimes don’t have. It’s why I like heartier fare:

The recipe included crushed Whoppers candy in the batter, which I wasn’t a fan of. I feel like the Ovaltine got the malt aspect across just fine. The other weird thing was that the cupcake papers started pulling away from the cupcakes! I think it’s because the batter was so light that it didn’t even stick to the papers. Weird.

The frosting was much easier. And tasty!!! Chocolate malt is actually a pretty good flavor when it’s not on the inside of a Whopper and all crunchy:

To make these the ultimate in Halloween cupcakes, I had to top them with candy! I picked up some miniature candy bars at the grocery store and topped each cupcake with a candy:

These went over very well at work. I carried them around to different offices and forced people to say, “Trick or treat.”

I also made some Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (Danae over at The Busty Baker gave me the recipe for that delicious, delicious frosting) to take to my sister-in-law’s Halloween Party. They were also a success, but I neglected to take photos of the process. This is all I’ve got:

(I ran out of frosting for those last two cupcakes, so they just got some powdered sugar.)

Next up, a Free Form Apple Tart!

Tags: chocolate malt cupcakes, pumpkin spice cupcakes with cinnamon rum frosting

Week Forty-Four: Apple Tarte Tatin Cupcakes

November 20, 2009 in "Cupcakes Galore", Cupcakes, Weekly Baked Good | No comments

(This week’s recipe came from “Cupcakes Galore!” by Gail Wagman.)

I’m sooo behind! Eek! My job’s kept me really busy (I started daytime hours, so while I have a more normal schedule, it also means I have more time to read, watch TV or play video games rather than update my blog). But fear not, I haven’t missed a week of baking.

A few weeks ago, I made Apple Tarte Tatin Cupcakes. This is another cheater post, as I made these earlier this year to take on TV with me when Carmen Owens and I pimped CupcakeCampColumbus on a morning show. But these cupcakes didn’t really get their due, and I think they’re pretty fantastic, so here they are again!

The cake part of this cupcake is a pretty straightforward brown sugar cake:

The cool part comes with the apples:

The apples are sliced into 16 pieces and then fried in butter in a skillet. Tip: Make sure you get firm apples. I think I got Braeburns or something, but they started falling apart as soon as they hit the pan. I managed to salvage enough for the cupcakes, but it was a pain!

Once the apples had caramelized with butter and sugar, they were placed on top of the cooled cupcakes:

Meanwhile, I whipped up some caramel to drizzle over the apples. This caramel never quite thins out the way I think it should…it stays very thick and starts to harden as soon as it’s removed from the heat. But it tastes amazing: