August 2012
2 posts
carrot cake
The summer months are pretty slow for our little bakery. Recently, a co-worker suggested making our cakes a little more cost-effective until business picks up in the fall by baking them in larger sheet pans instead of 8” rounds. It makes sense, and besides, who among the trickle of customers coming in is going to want a huge, fussy piece of cake covered in heavy frosting when it’s 100...
the blind cook
When I was little, and drawing was the love of my life, I had constant nightmares about injuring my hands. Other than losing my family, I couldn’t imagine anything scarier than losing the ability to hold a pencil.
I think we’re all familiar with the fear of losing that one thing that enables us to do what we love best. Which is why it’s worth taking a lesson from a total badass...
July 2012
3 posts
homemade rye bread with caraway and molasses
I’ve finally gotten around to organizing my kitchen, and guess what? It turns out I own a whole legion of little hand-me-down spice jars I’d completely forgotten about, from marjoram and mustard seed to coriander and caraway. That discovery prompted me to try my hand at my first batch of rye bread.
After reading through several recipes (and sifting through the comments for helpful...
home (a love story)
I treated myself to an incredible cookbook today: Tartine, from the Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. It is a truly beautiful book, from the photographs so full of air and light, right down to the texture of the pages themselves — not at all glossy like a magazine’s, thank goodness.
Inside the cover is this gorgeous black and white photo of a bunch of fresh pastries cooling on a rack....
cheesecakes of all kinds
You may have been able to tell, based on the lack of posts, that I’ve been stuck in a bit of an inspiration drought recently. And then, for some reason, I decided out of the blue that it’s time for me to master the art of the cheesecake.
By the word “mastery,” I am actually referring to general competence — not overcooking the cakes, and figuring out once and for all...
June 2012
1 post
homemade peach pie
Baking pies is going to be addictive for me. I can just tell. The moment this one was fresh out of the oven, I immediately wanted to start making another. I certainly didn’t do anything interesting with the crust, in my eagerness to get this first one into the oven… which means next time, I’ll have to play around with fluting the edges or maybe making a lattice pattern for the...
May 2012
4 posts
lemon cupcakes
I’m immensely glad that this time of year has arrived. Even though the month of May has been busier than usual at both of my jobs, I’ve been working hard to put my free time to valuable use, resisting the urge to collapse into an exhausted heap on the couch. Between trips to a nearby city to catch up with friends over really good sushi to a day of relaxation (and mild sunburn) at the...
whole wheat apple muffins
Yeah, we’ll get to those. FYI, we’re taking the scenic route today.
I love my life. I support myself with creative work that I can share with others. I have a peaceful home, great friends, dear family, those lovely plants you see there on my windowsill (which I haven’t yet annihilated with my usual tendency to over-water!) and plenty of work to do. I’ve learned the...
whole-grain pancakes with vanilla yogurt
I’m finally getting into a rhythm on my dessert-making days at work. On Sunday, I prep two rounds for the chocolate stout cake. Mondays I saturate them with chocolate Guinness syrup and finish with an outer layer of ganache. When that’s done, I choose two or three other desserts to make.
I thought about baking some vegan peanut butter cookies, but decided to save them for next time...
the breakfast challenge
I’m kind of lousy when it comes to breakfast.
It’s not that I can’t appreciate breakfast foods. (If I owned a waffle iron I’d never eat a balanced dinner again.) My problem is that I only get around to starting my day with breakfast once or twice a week.
We’re talking basic life skills, here: waking up and feeding yourself so you’ve got energy for the day. One...
April 2012
6 posts
banana maple pecan muffins
I woke up this morning with a hankering for maple-pecan anything. Shortly afterwards I realized that I had three wilting bananas on the counter, well past their prime, just sitting there beside the maple syrup and the chopped pecans, begging to be mashed up and turned into something fresh again.
The recipe is part composite, stitched together from a half dozen others, and part I still can’t...
cup pies à la chuck, part two
I had a little bit of pie dough leftover from my last post, so today I decided to use it up on another small batch of cup pies with fresh blueberries in the filling. I still used a squeeze of lemon juice, omitted the cinnamon but kept the nutmeg, and added a tiny bit more sugar and vanilla extract to the mixture. I probably should have monitored these more closely towards the last few minutes of...
pear gruyère cup pies, à la charlotte charles
Confession.
Once upon a time, there was a little show called Pushing Daisies that I still, to this day, have an irrational and embarrassingly gooey spot in my heart for.
Everything about it, from the premise to the psychedelic colors to the fondness for repetitive and alliterative names, is completely fanciful and over the top. Generally, I’m all for subtle. Minimalist, even. Less is...
boozy little flourless cake
Okay, this isn’t precisely a cake. It’s more of a torte, composed of chocolate mousse atop a nutty no-bake crust, which is chilled in the freezer to set. But that’d make for a really long title.
With that out of the way, allow me to enumerate all the lovely things about this recipe: it’s gluten-free. It’s quick to make. It doesn’t require you to turn on the...
chocolate chip and salted caramel bars
Know what’s pretty nerve-wracking for the uninitiated? Trying to melt ten ounces of chewy caramel candy down to a soft, spreadable consistency.
Yesterday at work I made chocolate Guinness stout cake, a favorite among our regulars. Bolstered by the fact that I didn’t completely botch the recipe, I decided to try another new one: these amazing-looking bar cookies, with chocolate chip...
strawberry cheesecakes: kind of a disaster
I finally have a reason to adore Mondays.
After talking with my boss about some changes we’re hoping to make around the bakery (which, to my delight, included changing up my work schedule), I now have one day per week to devote exclusively to creating desserts. Cakes and cupcakes, tarts and pies, biscotti, cheesecakes, bar cookies, even candy — I’ll be working on a little bit of...
March 2012
4 posts
about dorie
For those in my life who follow this blog either to see what I’ve been up to lately or to humor me, rather than strictly out of a shared interest in baking — which is probably, um, most of you (hi, Mom) — allow me to introduce you to Dorie Greenspan.This woman has written ten cookbooks and worked with Julia Child. Her ninth cookbook (which I am now thrilled to own), Baking From...
devil's food cupcakes with oreo frosting
Full disclosure: I am not Wonder Woman. The cupcakes I made yesterday came from a box.
Two boxes, as a matter of fact — one containing devil’s food cake mix, the other a packet of Jell-O instant chocolate pudding. To which I added half a cup of semisweet chocolate chips. Even without the giant chunk of Oreo cookie jutting out like a topsail, there is an awful lot of pre-packaged,...
homemade peanut butter cups
Does it still qualify as insomnia when you successfully fall asleep at a perfectly reasonable hour, only to find yourself wide awake one REM cycle later? And is it unusual if you then find yourself devouring food blogs in lieu of a midnight snack?
Yeah, I’ve become that person.
I didn’t know that person existed, but apparently she does, and when she can’t get to sleep and...
strawberry, red velvet, and cheesecake cupcakes
I generally have no problem staying humble about the food I make. After all, I’m not a pro. I’m a student. Every recipe is a dare (e.g., “I dare you to make cream puffs today”). And my mistakes, which are many, offer powerful lessons in what not to do as a baker.
But I’m feeling cocky today. I’m feeling shamelessly, outrageously proud of my most recent batches...
February 2012
1 post
parmesan flatbread with honey, thyme, and sea salt
As a personal challenge, I’ve decided to try a few new things this week: Waking up early every day. Ditching the coffee I suppose I don’t really need in favor of green tea. Getting back into running, for the first time in nearly three years. And branching out from the raspberry cheesecake cupcakes I just cannot seem to stop baking lately.
I’ve made them at home. I’ve...
January 2012
4 posts
raspberry cheesecakes & mocha cupcakes with...
So, ordinarily, I’d launch right into detailing the awesomeness that is freshly puréed raspberry and the beauty of little flecks of espresso whipped into buttercream frosting. Not to mention the vast superiority of the flavor and consistency of homemade graham cracker crusts, as opposed to the storebought kind (especially considering how easy they are to make). But today I’ve got a bit...
chai pumpkin raisin bread, and a few words about...
A few things have taken me by surprise since I became a baker. One of my favorites is the way people react when they find out what I do. They aren’t skeptical, condescending, or disinterested. They don’t size me up as an amateur (as amateurs like myself often secretly fear they will). No — they tell me stories.
Do you ever notice how vividly some people can remember their...
blueberry goat cheese tart
My friend and her sweet dog hit the road yesterday morning. They were such good company in the short time they were here that there was no sigh of relief over having the place to myself again, just a weird empty nest sort of feeling I was determined to eradicate. Without missing a beat, the cat reasserted his reign over the couch, and I plunged straight into two things I never thought I’d...
slight departure
My kitchen has seen a lot more cooking lately than baking, and oh so much more frequent dishwashing than it’s used to. Since I have company staying with me for a few days (and together we already polished off a small batch of chocolate Nutella cupcakes), I figured I should probably be a good hostess and fill the house with a few items not comprised entirely of butter, sugar, and heavy...
December 2011
10 posts
chocolate cake with almond buttercream
Boy, I can’t wait for someone to point an actual camera at the stuff I make. The lighting in this photo kind of makes the slice look superimposed onto the plate.
Still, I’m pretty jazzed about what I made for work today — a two-layer chocolate cake with almond buttercream frosting, drizzled with melted chocolate and roughly chopped almonds. I loosely followed the bakery’s...
oh yeah.
These are gonna keep me real busy.
christmas eve
I am so thankful to have made it home this weekend for a rare family visit. We spent most of the day in the kitchen together, snacking and improvising recipes, baking rolls and holiday pumpkin bread, cooking dinner, cracking each other up. I couldn’t ask for more.
My mother’s home is a lovely combination of new and old, with most of the items in it being either thrifted,...
cinnamon rolls
First attempt at cinnamon rolls that not only didn’t pop out of a cardboard tube, but are entirely made from scratch. I found the recipe at Tartelette, which is run by a legit pastry chef and food photographer who probably never uploads photos from her phone.
So, this is what happens to cinnamon rolls when you ignore the baking instructions and space them a little apart on a baking sheet:...
omg, cream puffs
Remember that show Supermarket Sweep? I’d like to do that in a store full of baking supplies. In fact, should I ever become outrageously wealthy, you’ll probably want to peek into my kitchen, because the stacks of mixing bowls and cake plates and springform pans will teeter right up to the ceiling in a show of gravity-defying weirdness to rival that of Carhenge.
As it happens, my...
croissants with julia
Lately I love to cozy up under the blankets and watch old episodes of The French Chef with Julia Child. In this one, she’s baking croissants. And barely five minutes in, she’s already breathing life into her ingredients, talking about them as though they’ve got personalities and motives.
In my job at the bakery, I make three varieties of croissants. We use frozen croissants,...
no-rise bread
Made some of this no-rise bread yesterday. I didn’t get photos — too many were gone before I thought to reach for the camera — but they’re fantastic, soft and sweet, perfect with butter.
The recipe only requires about 20 minutes, start to finish. It still calls for yeast, but you just mix it with warm water, sugar and oil and let it stand about 5 minutes until the surface...
