New Baking Ingredients! Happy dayz for me!

Look what the Santa-fairy brought me this week!

While I've used the disposable piping bags and the vanilla bean paste before, I've never had quite so much at one time until now. Im really looking forward to getting into those fruit pastes and seeing what awesome things I can make with them! They're no Boiron (a very high quality fresh fruit paste company), but I'm excited to take them for a test spin. 

Watch this space for awesome baked goodness from these products!

Tips for Better Baking: Butter and Eggs

Everyone probably has a baking horror story or two in their repertoire, of cakes that came out flat, or custards that curdled, or muffins you could have chipped teeth on.  In conversation a couple of years ago with a chef acquaintance, he and I agreed with the statement that, while cooking is a science, baking is more like alchemy.  If you think about it, there are a great number of chemical reactions that must occur in a particular order, at a particular time, for most baked goods to be successful.

What really makes me wonder, though, is thinking about how long-ago bakers -- our ancestors -- were able to achieve delicious, light, and perfect baked goods without the modern conveniences we take for granted today, like thermometers, stand mixers, food processors, gas and electric ovens, and ingredients that have been manufactured to the highest standardized quality.  How did they ever achieve that? *scratches head*

If you are lucky enough to have been taught how to bake by a skilled family member or friend, you may have heard reams of helpful advice that you might never find in a cookbook; it's these little hints and suggestions that can often save a baked good from failure, or raise it from mundane to exquisite.

Below are some tips and tricks that I have gleaned from several sources around the 'net and my own experiences that may help you to be a better baker; since there are so many, I have separated them out into sections.  This post will be about butter/fats and eggs.  Try one or many of these tips, and see how they work for you!  As always, comments are appreciated, especially if you know of some baking tips that I haven't mentioned below.

Butter/Shortening:

• Vintage baking recipes will not distinguish between using unsalted and salted butter; however, it is strongly recommended to use unsalted butter for modern baking.
• When just making cookies or quick-breads/muffins, any unsalted butter should do (or salted, if you're in a pinch), but if making pastry, the higher the quality of unsalted butter you use, the better it will taste. 
• If your butter is hard/cold, it will not cream efficiently. Quickly warm your butter to the proper temp by one of these methods: 
• Warm your sugar and add it to the cold butter; it should warm the butter while you are creaming
• Pour boiling water into a small glass, pottery, or china dish that is slightly larger than your butter; let it stand a minute or two to thoroughly heat the vessel, then dump out the water and place over top of the cold butter. Within a few minutes, the butter will be softened enough to cream successfully.
• Cut the butter into small chunks: Small chunks soften much more quickly than the whole stick or pound.
• Pound the butter: Put the butter in a ziplock bag and use a rolling pin or meat mallet to flatten the butter. This softens the butter while still keeping it cool. A few minutes on the counter and the butter will be up to room temperature.
• If you're in a hurry, set the butter over a warm water bath. Pour a few cups of very hot (just below boiling) water into a double boiler or a sauce pan with a metal bowl nested inside. Put the butter over the water bath and allow to soften. Keep an eye on it so the butter doesn't start to melt.
• Don't use spreads to replace butter, margarine or shortening one for one in a recipe. Spreads contain less fat and more water, so they won't perform like butter or margarine.
• Easily measure shortening without the mess by filling a large measuring cup with cold water, minus the amount of shortening you need. Add shortening to complete the fill, then pour out the water and you have the exact amount of shortening you need for the recipe. (example, in a 1-cup measuring cup, fill to 1/2 cup with water, then add shortening until the cup is full = 1/2 cup shortening).
• If your recipe requires a quantity of melted butter, melt the butter first, then measure it for a more accurate measurement.

Eggs:

• 1 large egg = ~50 g, 1 large egg white = 30-35 g, 1 large egg yolk = 20 g. 1 egg white is also equivalent to 2 tablespoons worth.
• Eggs separate best when cold, but whites whip best when they are room temperature or warm.
• Eggs perform best in a baking recipe when they are room temperature; don't use eggs just out of the fridge for any recipe. To quickly warm an egg, place uncracked egg in a bowl of very warm (but not hot or boiling) water for 3-5 minutes.
• Pasteurized egg whites in cartons freeze well; just pull it out of the freezer night before you need it.
• Beat egg yolks with a fork before adding to your batter to ensure a more even distribution.
• To retrieve stray eggshells in your mixture, use the emptied half-shell -- eggshell sticks to eggshell. If you don’t get them all, they will sink during baking, so you can turn a baked cake over when cool and carefully pick them out.
• If you leave a drop or two of yolk in your separated egg whites, they will not whip as effectively (or at all) into meringue; to retrieve one or two drops of yolk, use an emptied eggshell to scoop it out. This will not work if you have a lot of yolk in your whites (you will have to start over).
• When mixing egg whites for meringue, wipe all utensils and bowl with vinegar or lemon juice on a paper towel before they come in contact with the egg whites (including the mixer whisk attachment). Any trace of grease will jeopardize your meringue.
• To check freshness of eggs, put in a bowl of water–if they sink, they’re fresh. If they float and stand on one end, they’re not.
• ”Eggs” typically means Grade A, large eggs.
• When making macarons, the older the egg whites are, the better they work. Age your egg whites by leaving them on the counter at room temperature overnight (ONLY RECOMMENDED if using pasteurized egg whites from a carton).

 Check back for my future posts on other ingredient tips and tricks!

Blast From the Past: Baby Block Baby Shower Cake

Since I've discontinued writing in my former blog, I thought for a continual series I would bring over some of my previous blog posts and discuss past cake commissions as appropriate.

One of my favourite cakes I've made in the recent past (March of last year, to be exact), was a baby block "Welcome the the Family Little One!" cake. I made and decorated it with a fellow pastry chef, and we had a lot of fun with it!

We were given a picture of an inspiration cake, plus a napkin with the baby shower theme (jungle/safari animals), and were asked to "glom" them together.  As I remember, each "baby block" was a different, premium cake flavour as well.

 

Inspiration picture plus themed napkin

Our final design concept

We also made a metric butt-ton of cupcakes in the shower colours too

This little fishie in a tiny bowl (seen here on a palette knife) is my personal favourite

Little Tigers make me happy

Both of them

And who could hate this adorable little blue monkey? What's that on his tail?

Why, it's the fishing lure/bobber for the little fishie!

All in all, a great, fun cake to make, and we absolutely thrilled the clients, who have been faithful customers ever since.

And that's really what it's all about, isn't it? *wink*

Commission Tales: So many little'uns, so many birthday cakes...

Right after I had completed the birthday cake commission mentioned in the previous post, I had to start work on the next one due only a few days later.

Also a vanilla funfetti flavour (totally a coincidence, whodathunk...) for the bottom tier, and deep chocolate for the top tier, this cake was a gift to an amazing couple I've known for a while now.   The dad, A, and I met back in 2009 while working part-time at my college's bookstore while I was going through pastry school, and I met his lady love, K, in 2011 when they started dating. Now they have an adorable little boy with a *kick-ass* name, and I wanted to give them a special gift of the cake for his first birthday party. 

This cake was to be safari animal themed; a friend and I had made a jungle/safari themed baby block cake back in early 2012 for another client, and I was interested to tackle it a little differently this time around.

This time, the cake was to be two-tier, with zebra stripes on the bottom tier, and a jungle/safari theme (my design discretion) on the top tier. Unfortunately, I had managed to fillet my right index finger quite messily the evening before I was to do a dry-brush edible paint technique along the sides of the top tier, emulating tall grasses, trees, birds and swinging monkeys, so I sadly had to leave that off the final cake. At least I had already made the fondant figures for the top, so they were good to go...with one exception..dun dun DUNNN!

I had made a sweet articulated fondant monkey figure for the top tier that was to hang off the side of the cake, like he was playing in the (to be) painted trees, but as I was boxing the cake up the morning it was due, he suffered a fatal fall and shattered.  Creepily, the few pieces to survive the fall were both of its wee front paws, which I must say looked super-disturbingly realistic, and reminded me uncomfortably of the novel, "The Monkey's Paw".  No monkey-related pictures were taken prior to the accident, and I was just too disappointed after the fall to document the tragedy, so nobody but myself, my friend Miss Kitty, and the Hubster will ever know how cute he was going to be.  *sniff*

Moving on...!

Of the other fondant figures, I made an elephant and a python, as well as two golden fishies for a small pond circled by stones.  My technique continues to improve; I'm hard on myself, but I know there's nowhere to go but up!

In any event, here's the final cake in all its (unpainted) glory:

  

Zebra stripes hand-cut and layered. First time for me, and I think I know how to do it even better next time (thinner pieces, more slight curves, fewer white spaces).

Yes, I know you can see the layers through the fondant in the top, but that would have been covered over by the brush technique mentioned above. Shuzbut.

 

My next challenge looks like it's going to be a monster-themed cake for Hallowe'en. Miss Kitty and I have some ideas of auctioning off the cake for fundraising purposes for our local Scouts Canada group, of which we are both active volunteers.  Watch this space!

Wedding Cake Commission - August 2013

Here are some photos of a wedding cake commission I did for a new client a few weeks ago.

The bride to be wanted a very simple cake; three Madagascar vanilla tiers to serve 100 guests, with vanilla Swiss buttercream filling and fresh summer berries in each layer, covered with ivory fondant, and wrapped with a mallard green and gold ribbon (the bride's colours) on each layer. 

And she wanted roses. Lots of big, beautiful, creamy white roses.

I recommended a few other flowers to balance the colours a bit; namely yellow mini roses, some baby's breath, and green ivy. I then made a wire wrapped flower bouquet strand about 4 feet long, and secured it around the cake in a spiral when we set up the cake at the reception site.

Lastly, I made a quick cake topper from some of the leftover flowers, just in case the bride and groom didn't have anything for the top of the cake (they didn't).

This was one of the first times I've worked with fresh flowers for a cake, and there are definitely challenges to keeping the blooms perky long enough to both wire them and display them on the cake. I personally prefer gumpaste flowers; they last for a long time, they can be made well in advance of the cake's delivery date (they need lots of time to dry properly), you can create "fantasy flowers" in literally any shape and colour you can imagine regardless of season or availability, and, stored and handled properly, they keep their shape and colour for a long time. On the minus side, they are far more expensive than fresh blooms because they're much more difficult to create than to just buy fresh, and it's a specialized skill that not all cake decorators have in abundance.

All in all, I'm pleased with how the cake turned out from inspiration to execution, and though I would do some things differently next time, I believe the clients were pleased with their cake too!

Welcome to my brain droppings!

*blah blah vanity blog, blah blah*

What is the purpose of this blog, you may be asking?  You may wonder why you're even bothering to read further than this line here, as I've already failed to capture your attention....so let me explain.

After co-hosting a mildly successful baking blog for a couple of years, I felt it was time to start anew with my own blog, dealing with not only my baking exploits but my other interests as well.  And, since I have been accused of having the memory of a goldfish and the stick-to-itiveness of Hammy the Squirrel from the animated movie Over the Hedge, I tend to have a LOT of interests!  In my own defense, I do tend to go back to my "old" interests in a cyclical manner, depending on what's going on in my own life, the seasons, and whether anyone has asked me to make them something. This blog will be a good place to post pictures and tutorials on how I made stuff, as well as occasionally write about stuff going on in the world or my own little world.

So, a list of the hobbies and interests I've been pursuing over the last several years:

• Baking: My most successful and long-run "hobby"; it's more of a passion, really, and I *do* have professional training in this and my own micro cake-decorating business. I still count it as a "hobby", however, until I start making enough money to support myself financially. Which will probably be never.
• Knitting: Lots of scarves and a few blankets at this point.
• Crocheting: an abject failure so far; but I shall persevere!
• Quilting: I bought a sewing machine years ago for this purpose, and I have tons of fabric since I can't seem to stay away from fabric stores...but I haven't made a single quilt square to date. I'm getting there, though! One day...
• Fabric Arts: I got into this recently because I decided to make both guest boutonnieres and a bridal bouquet for myself out of non-perishables, such as brooches, bead flowers, and fabric flowers. 10 glue sticks later and a lot of burn marks on my fingers, and I can happily say SUCCESS! Pics and tutes of the bouquet after the wedding.
• Computer games/surfing the 'net: While technically a hobby, it's not exactly within the same sphere as listed above, but I list it anyway for full disclosure.
• Board and tabletop RPG's (role playing games): Yes, I'm "one of those".

I also have other interests that are less "hobby" and more "activity" related. But, since this is not a dating site and I don't want to bore you any further, this is what I'm sticking with.

Well, that wasn't an exactly efficient "sum-up", but I hope to bang all the rust off my writing style soon, and get to some more interesting posts!

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to feedback!