bakers and shakers

Shakers are known for their religious beliefs, but also (and more importantly in my case) for their delicious pies and distingushable pie crusts. So I took it as a compliment when Chef called our group "Shakers" last Saturday. Our baking task list included several pies and we managed to crank them all out at a good rate despite the fact that we were down a group member. It must have been the Shaker mentality. 

Pumpkin Pie

Strawberry Chiffon Pie

Lemon Chiffon Pie

Chiffon pies have beaten egg whites folded into the other ingredients so this makes them light and airy. A refreshing pie for summer, although they don't hold up extremely well in the heat.

Lemon Meringue Pie

This pie isn't finished without a light (or heavy) scorching of the meringue. A shout out to my partner Russ for the lovely toasting seen below.



Pecan Pie

This was my favorite of the pies we made this weekend. And I couldn't believe how easy it was to make! Basically, if you have a large bottle of dark corn syrup and pecans, you're well on your way to making pecan pie. 

We also made a chocolate silk pie which is not pictured because a) I forgot to take a picture of it and b) it didn't taste very good due to the fact that we used a recipe with cocoa powder instead of real chocolate. Not recommended for a taste of happiness.

Overall, I feel more confident in my pie making skills and I am looking forward to moving on to tarts next week. Also, I will never buy a pre-made pie crust again. Neither should you. Free pie crust making lessons will be offered if necessary. 

On a closing note, I'd like to share my very favorite dessert of the week with you. The plate full of scrumtrulescent chocolate dipped strawberries that awaited me when I arrived home from work on Thursday. Much thanks to my fiancé, Greg, who always seems to know how to make me happy.

fruit pies and one giant oreo

My first weekend back in the kitchen was pie-smashingly wonderful. We made several fruit pies and the crusts were divine. In my opinion, the crust is the most important (and delicious) part of the pie AND the best way to tell if you're eating a homemade dessert or not. There are many ways to make a pie crust and everyone has a reason why they use a certain fat. Butter adds flavor, shortening adds flakiness and structure, but at the end of the day a 50/50 blend of butter and shortening is the way to go for a flavorful yet flaky crust. It's the best of both worlds. Check it out.

This was our peach pie. There were a few other fruits poured into this crust first, as it took a several minutes to figure out which of the fruit pies should have "blind baked" crusts and which ones could bake straight in the raw dough. The answer: the precooked berry fillings can be poured into pre-baked crusts and the apple and peach ones should be placed into raw crusts to be baked. I made the apple filling.

We added a top crust and pinched the edges for this pie. When I say we, I mean the JR Mint group, as noted in our pie crust.

Here are two of the finished products. I ate a good amount of crust before I left the classroom, but still managed to bring a few pieces home for Greg.

Next week we're making several types of cream pies. As long as there's crust involved, I'll be one happy baker.

I also made a dessert at home last week that I'm calling the Inside Out Oreo Cake. It is a chocolate cake with a sour cream icing and it was very tasty and rather easy to make.

Dry ingredients.

Fast forward to post bake, pop these babies out of the pans and it's time for frosting.

I finally had the exact right amount of frosting for something and not a ton extra. Voila!

Slice it up, I'll take it.

Not quite getting the full Oreo effect? Dip this in a tall glass of milk.

just roll with it

One more week until I'm back in the kitchen on Saturdays and back here with weekly pictures and stories from class. On my last weekend of freedom from school until August, I decided to finally bake up the one thing I intended on making during my break from the school kitchen. Cinnamon rolls. There are more recipes online for cinnamon rolls than I had ever imagined, however, I was most intrigued by a recipe that was sans yeast. Could a cinnamon roll without yeast really taste as good? I was determined to find out.

The dough mixed up easily like a quick bread and there was a fair amount of baking soda and powder involved to help the bread rise. After a bit of kneading, I rolled the dough out and added a delicious cinnamon mixture to the top.

And promptly rolled it back up.

My favorite part is cutting the dough into the separate rolls. Just look at that cinnamon delight inside!

And into a well-greased pan they go. A thick coat of butter goes on top to add some shine (and extra fattening flavor).

This recipe called for a cream cheese frosting, which turned out good, but I'll admit that cream cheese isn't my favorite frosting ingredient. The leftovers did make a nice fruit dip though.

Time to eat! While Greg and I easily inhaled all of these rolls over the past few mornings, I still don't know if they're really better than a recipe with yeast. I'll just have to bake a comparison batch soon and find out.

There was another baked treat in my house this weekend, but it didn't come out of my oven. Two of my best friends (and bridesmaids) came down for a visit with their husbands on Sunday and one of them brought an exotic dessert along. I feel a little shameful admitting that I asked her to bring dessert, but it's only because I made the main course: salad, spaghetti and garlic bread. Plus, Ashley always makes a mean dessert and I knew she'd come up with something fabulous. Here's the proof - 

What's under all that fruit you ask? A Tres Leches cake of course. Tres Leches means "three milks." This Latin America inspired cake is baked like a normal cake and then a ton of milk is poured into it while it cools. Top it with real whipping cream and a variety of fruit and you've got a refreshing dessert to counteract a meal of garlic. It's sort of like pound cake with a glass of milk already included.

Variety pies, specialty cakes and French pastries are in my future for the next ten weeks. Je ne peux pas attendre!

busy but baking

I can't believe it's the middle of May already. What have I been up to while I've been ignoring my blog you ask? A lot. But I still managed to bake a little and capture the results on film to share with you.

Last weekend, Greg's parents were in town for a visit and we celebrated Mother's Day with a homemade brunch for both of our moms. Obviously I had to make scrumptious baked goods, so I decided on orange scones with chocolate chips and orange glaze.

The orange glaze made a bit of a mess, but it was totally worth it.

A lovely presentation of scones to accompany our egg casserole with sausage, onion and green pepper, a bowl of mixed fruit and bacon made for a delicious brunch. Mimosas made the card game played after brunch even more fun.

Still in a mini-chocolate chip mood this week, I decided to make my infamous banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. These are the most requested items that I make - even people who don't like bananas enjoy them. I added chocolate chips to half of the batch and it gave them an extra kick of sweetness.

The peanut butter frosting is what really makes them to die for though.

Lastly, here is a shot of our dinner last night. We decided to have breakfast for dinner and I used my omelet-making skills from culinary class last term to whip up some fluffy omelets. English muffins and hashbrowns (not pictured) made for a well-rounded dinner. Better than the chocolate fudge Poptarts we had for breakfast at least...

sugar with a side of sugar

Ah, Easter. All religion aside, Easter is a time for hiding colored eggs from children, standing in line to get your picture taken a big white bunny and for adults, eating a wide variety of overly sugared candy. This peep bathed in chocolate is just one of the ways that I managed to consume several pounds of sugar during the holiday weekend. Looks delicious, right? Good. Because this post is about pictures and I have a lot of them.  

Greg and I began our Easter weekend in the car with a six and a half hour drive to West Virginia to visit his family. What better way to start a long car drive than by eating a supply of the best donuts in Indy before you even get on the highway?

I have been a huge fan of Taylor's Bakery ever since someone brought a box of their donuts into work one day. Greg has never been there so we had to try a wide variety of donuts...

Chocolate donut holes

Jelly-filled donut

My all-time favorite - a cake donut with the best white icing I've ever tasted

Normally I eat four of these babies throughout the course of a work day. This morning I only had one, but I also had a colorful sprinkled version.

Note the coffee in the cup holders. We needed some caffeine after the sugar rush wore off. Greg is now a fan of Taylor's as well. See for yourself.

After three hours on the road, we stopped in Columbus, Ohio for lunch at a local place in German Village.

Katzinger's is a German market/deli with a smorgasbord of sandwiches to choose from. I went with a turkey, Swiss, and coleslaw-wich, while Greg chose a pastrami-wich.

The best part about Katzinger's? The pickles. There are two big barrels of pickles that diners can help themselves to while they eat.

They also had a variety of scrumptious looking desserts on display, but I was still feeling the sugar from my donut devouration that morning. Maybe next time I'll try some Kugels.

We spent two fun, relaxing days with Greg's family and there were enough treats to take out ten sugar cane fields. Bags of jelly beans (those things are addictive!) and other fruity candy, plates of cookies and cupcakes, ice cream pie, carrot cake, and several of the standard chocolate bunnies. You name it, it was probably at Grandmother and Granddad’s house. I allowed myself to indulge and try a lot of new treats, but my teeth feel like they have been soaking in a sugar bath for awhile.
   
Even a building on the campus of West Virginia University looked like a treat to me by the end of the weekend. Any guesses on what treat that might be?

I hope your Easter was as enjoyable and sugar-filled as mine. Time for me to go brush my teeth again.

hostess with the mostess

I morphed into a hostess with the mostess this past weekend when Greg and I had a few handfuls of friends over on Saturday night. I made two batches of paradise cookies and there were only five of said cookies left on Sunday. These cookies are light and fluffy and the pineapple involved kept them moist all party long. They were also a nice balance to the decadent mocha chocolate cake that my BFF Kristy brought with her from Fort Wayne. I asked her to bring something chocolate and she just about Betty Crockered her way into a bake off with me. Perhaps my cookies were almost gone because every time someone tasted and complimented her cake I made them eat a cookie as well...Hey, pastry chefs in the making need validation, people.

Here I am loading up a plate with cookies before the soiree.

And practicing my hostess with the mostess skills.

Kristy showed up with the mocha cake of decadence and began serving out slices later in the evening. I told her if the cake was good that I was going to take credit for baking it, but in the end, I gave credit where credit was due. See for yourself.

Decadence up close.



One of our friends managed to get cake on the front of his shirt and his sleeve while devouring a piece of cake. I promptly told him to wipe it off with a paradise cookie and make sure to eat that as well.

Since Greg was the host with the most for the evening, he also helped whip up something special. "Gin and titonic" ice cubes. Check out the vengeance of this iceberg (on the right) floating next to a few titanic-wannabes. Guaranteed to make any drink more fun - even the gag-worthy whiskey pictured here.

In the end, the party was a success and everyone had a great time. And don't worry; Kristy and I are still BFF's. Did I mention the cake was a box mix? ;)

orange you glad it's Spring?

Happy Spring everyone! Yes, I realize it was officially Spring at the time of my last post, but now it actually FEELS like Spring outside. And I, along with my creative juices, just love it. This weekend I pondered about what a chocolate chip cookie would think about having orange and oats injected into it. I decided it was a fabulous idea and that I was going to guesstimate the inclusion of these ingredients without looking up a recipe online. This is the story of the Chocolate Chip, Oat and Orange Cookie.

I'm a firm believer that no good idea can be successfully executed without a good breakfast. Which is why I was excited to start my Sunday with a breakfast of waffles and sausage made my by thoughtful fiancé. It's hard to go wrong when the trio of George Foreman, Hungry Jack and Aunt Jemima are in the kitchen with you.

This was all I needed to kick off a very productive Sunday. Mmmm pancakes, sausage and coffee...yes, I ate three waffles. No judgment please.

Later that day, I was set on adding orange and oats to my plain old mini-chocolate chip cookies. The oranges on my counter were begging to be zested, although I passed on the one sporting an inked smiley face (courtesy of the fiancé). Just the smell of the orange zest made me happy and I decided that the zest alone would add a nice flavor without being overpowering like an orange extract or juice might be.

The cookie recipe started out like the normal chocolate chip variety, but ended with a cup full of oats and a tablespoon of orange zest.

Ten minutes later, my fingers were crossed and my nostrils smelled a chocolate covered orange aroma. Much to my delight, these cookies tasted exactly like they smelled. Sweet cookie dough filled with chocolate chips and oats for texture with a little punch of orange in every bite.

See punch of orange below.

Welcome Spring! Next weekend will be filled with the fruits of paradise...