Coffee Cake and Adventures in Walnuts

Let's Terintino it.  We'll start at the end and work our way from there.  What caused Cynthia to say to me "why does this bar taste like boos?"

It's around Thanksgiving, this is the typical time that Chris' parents decide to start making Christmas cookies.  They only have a few family recipes, and are not huge bakers.  They only really bake once a year and it is only the Christmas cookies.  Also, as far as I know, they only really end up making one cookie.  It's an icebox walnut cookie.  For those of you who do not know about icebox cookies.  You make the batter, roll it into a long, poo shaped log, and refrigerate it until it's hard enough to slice.  Then you just slice and bake like those funny sugar cookies logs you can find in the supermarket.  (btw my family used to buy those when we were younger and we basically just ate the dough out of the tube until my mom started yelling that we weren't going to be able to make cookies anymore, even though she had def been eating it herself as well.  What can I say, the dough just tastes way better than the cookies themselves. 

Cut to Christmas cookie day at the Ensors.  Nancy has just come home from the store with the stuff needed to make the cookies except (GASP) there were no black walnuts at the store.  I'm thinking, wtf are black walnuts and why can't you just use the regular ones?  So I mention that I have some at home and I bought a big bag of them at Sam's Club to use for baking.  The Ensors decide that we just cannot make the cookies without the proper walnuts, so Chris, Bruce, and I drive nearly all the way back to our condo to go to the Sam's Club to pick up the nuts.  We get back to the house and they make the cookies.  I am really not a fan of nut refrigerator cookies (sometimes known as almond slices), so I pretty much never eat them.  I take a few nuts and eat them out of the bag, trying to figure out what is so freeking important about these special walnuts, and nothing really comes to mind.  They just don't taste good, so I decide that, as I thought, I'm just not really a nut person.

Cut to last week, I'm pulling recipes out of my gigantic stack, trying to decide what to make and I come across a recipe for 7 layer bars.  They sound incredibly easy, and the picture online looks delicious, so I give it a shot.  It's basically a graham cracker crust, walnuts, dark choc chips, semi-sweet chips, white choc chips, butterscotch chips, and shredded coconut.  Pour condensed milk over the top to stick it all together and throw it in the oven.  When it comes out and cools, you slice it into bars and eat.  I cut a few pieces and give one to Chris and eat one myself.  I take one bite and I'm like WTF is that?  It tastes like PLASTIC!?  I find these fairly disgusting.  Chris agrees that they taste a little weird, and he doesn't like them much, but they're fine.  Since neither of us likes them, I pack them up in tupperware and bring them to work.  I ask Cynthia to try them, and she takes a bite and says to me... "Why does this bar taste like boos?"

AHA!  Alcohol!  I totally agree with her when I take another bite, it's not plastic, it's an alcohol taste.  We both think it's pretty gross.  So we call in Lauren.  We offer her a bar, saying that neither of us like them, but maybe she will.  She takes a bite and we ask her what she thinks the alcohol taste is.  It's the walnuts.  Apparently that is what black walnuts taste like.  It's a very strong distinct flavor, and, like coffee, or licorice, you just have to like black walnuts to like the bars that I made.  She thinks they're delicious and offers to bring them with her to the homeless shelter that night.  So I ask you this... Am I the only person who did not know that there was a black walnut?  Is this just a Maryland thing?

In other news.  Before I realized that the walnuts tasted like ass, I used them in the strusel topping for the blueberry coffee cake that I was making.  And when I ate a piece of the cake, it didn't really taste odd.  I actually thought it was quite good, brought it into work, and offered it to the people in some of the other offices.  It was gone by the end of the day.  So there you have it folks.  A cup of black walnuts = absolutely disgusting.  A sprinkling of them on top of a cake = a slightly off but complimentary flavor.  And now for the pictures of the cake...

Pictures are getting a tad better,

Julibean <3

The PERFECT Brownie!

Hey all!  I have been testing all of my recipes and trying to perfect things.  I am reading a billion baking blogs and taking down their recipes to try them out and see how they compare to my own.  Now I have about 100 pages of recipes printed out waiting for me to try them.  I try to make or at least prep something every day, but I also met with my personal trainer for my "welcome to the gym" meeting or whatever yesterday, and I'm going to try to stick to my workout schedule first, and then see what I have time to bake afterward.  Health is more important than cookies, although I wish it weren't so. 

Through my travels I have tried many a brownie recipe, but none of them were quite right.  Most did not rise as much as I would have liked, and one in particular, the Martha Stewart recipe was so cakey and dry that I was most displeased.  Until I found this recipe.  My search is now over.  I have found the perfect brownie and I am never going back.  It is dense and fudgey and perfect.  So rich and delicious, moist, and incredibly chocolatey.  Now that I have made you crave brownies, here are some delightful pictures of them.

I've been doing my best to learn how to take quality food photos.  My desserts may be incredibly delicious, but no one is going to buy them if the photos look amateur or messy.  So far, what little I have learned is this.  Don't use the flash.  Put your camera on the macro setting.  Use a plain white background.  Try to plate the food nicely.  And use natural sunlight whenever possible.  This last bit is hard because most of my baking is done after work, and as it is winter still, there is little to no sunlight left by the time whatever I've made is out of the oven, cooled, and ready for plating.  If anyone has anything more to tell me about it, let me know!

Breads!

Here are a few other photos of things I made in class but forgot I had pictures of until now.  I know, my photo taking is fucking awesome.  Don't hate.

Italian Bread.  Rounding is probably the hardest part of making bread.  When you're shaping the boule you have to really tuck the bottom under and round it with your hands until it is very tight to not end up with bread that looks like a mushroom.  I got much better at this as time went on.

Italian Bread and French Baguettes!

Challah Bread.  omg looks so delicious

CHALLAH! (HOLLA!)

Lovely deformed brioche a tete.  That ball on top is supposed to be in the center all nice and pretty like so you can pull it off and share it with someone.  Brioche "for two".

Slightly better looking normal brioche.

Cinnamon Raisin bread.  It looks like I forgot to flour the raisins or something because they seem to be mostly attached to the outside.

Pecan Cinnamon Rolls.  Looks like we ate one.  I have since made much better cinnabons, but this was the recipe that was in the textbook that we were told to make.  I think I like mine better.  

 Until next time.  Julibean <3

Old Baking Photos

I recently plugged Chris' old digital camera into our computer and found a few photos that I had taken while in culinary school that I never got around to posting on here.  The most interesting is the cake I had to make for my cakes final.  For each section we had in class (basics, cakes, breads, and advanced techniques), we had a written final and then a practical final.  Chef Katie would write down random foods from that section on slips of paper and make you pull them out of a mis en place cup.  For my basics practical I had to make crispy chocolate chip cookies and apple pie.  For my breads practical I got semolina bread and apple crumb loaf.  The advanced techniques final I got spiral danish and babka. And for the final final we chose items from the entire year.  Oddly enough, I got the exact same pick as the breads final and had to make semolina and apple crumb again.  The cakes final was really epic.  We got to be really creative within the parameters of our pick.  I pulled white cake, swiss buttercream, and baby shower.  So I could make whatever shape/decoration/colors whatever cake I wanted as long as it was themed for a baby shower, was made out of white cake and was finished in swiss buttercream.  We had a full day to complete it, but of course I had delusions of grandeur and designed an intensely complicated cake.  Everyone else was struggling so much that she ended up giving us the morning of the next day as well and allowed us to take home fondant and make our decorations if we needed to.

So.  Even though I had never had to frost a square cake before, (it's more difficult because it's all corners instead of one round side and one top), I had the awesome idea that I would make a baby blocks cake consisting of 15 mini square cakes stacked on top of each other.  WTF was I thinking. lol.  I made white cake in a half sheet pan so I could stack them easier, spent a lot of time measuring to make sure the cakes were all the same size, layered them with raspberry jam, and then began icing them.  I had mini cake squares everywhere, many of them shoved in random corners of the reach in refrigerator waiting for a second coat of icing.  BTW swiss buttercream is not as simple as let's say, simple buttercream.  It's easier than italian, but you still have to heat the egg whites and allow the  mixture to cool before you add the butter, so yeah.  I started with two double batches of icing which was not nearly enough.  I must have ran out of icing about 7 different times.  Luckily my friend Mihwa also had swiss buttercream and had finished her cake early, so I could use her leftover icing.  After frantically icing cakes for the better part of 4 hours, it was time to go home.  I had cut out the letters for the blocks already, but I took the rest of my fondant home to make my fondant decorations.

The next day I was positive I wasn't going to be able to finish, but somehow it all came together in the end.  Not my best work, but as a first try for such a complicated cake, I was rather proud of myself.  I would do a much better job of that cake if I were to try it again now, from all that I learned.  When it was time to bring it to Chef to be graded, she was like "WTF are you fucking kidding me?  When you said baby blocks I thought you meant like three big ones with like pictures of animals on them.  How the hell did you do this?"  Then she asked me who Heather was, to which I answered, I have no idea, no one, it was just the right amount of letters to support the top word.  I got like 100 on that fucking cake for sheer madness and ridiculous execution of a crazy idea.  Need I not mention that everyone else had done like a traditional two layer round, or a simple sculpted cake.  There were other standouts for sure.  Mihwa made Mr. Met out of a semi circle cake and it had a little baseball hat on and everything, so cute!  Someone made a wedding dress cake, and someone also made one of those cakes with the barbie sticking out the top.  I honestly don't remember what anyone else did except for Jamie and Brooke who made Dr. Seuss and Mix Tape cakes respectively.  I was in panic mode for 2 days straight.  The only comment Chef had was that the purple outline of the blocks should have been one continuous line instead of separate squares.  I actually had planned on doing that, but did the first few wrong and had to just stick with it.  Anyway, without further ado - my crazy ass bridal shower cake. 

P.S.  That thing was huge and heavy.  I went to work across the street after school, then had to come back to CALI to get it out of the fridge and tried to drive the 40ish minutes home with it in the front seat of my car.  I was dying to show my parents, but when I was getting out of the car a few of the letters fell off and the T and S ended up in the yard covered in dirt.  lol!

Julibean <3

Life Changes

A lot of things have changed since the last time I did a real post here.  I have a lovely lady named Jes to thank for that.  She commented on my frustrated post with some really warm and genuine advice.  It was just the kick in the pants that I needed to stop whining and worrying about it and make it happen.  So thanks!

A week or two ago I decided that it was time to stop waiting for my life to change itself, and to start doing what I really wanted.  To be happy I needed a large project, something to keep me busy and motivated, something that I really truly enjoyed and had a set metric for progress and goals.  So one day I woke up, looked at Chris, and said, "I want to start my bakery".  He did not miss a beat.  He automatically started thinking of the techological aspect, bought my url and started designing a server for me on his old desktop.  He began researching rules and regulations for small businesses.  We went to the library and I took out a stack of cook books and small business ownership books.  We went to the Sam's club and I priced out all of the ingredients and found the unit price so I could get a ballpark for my materials cost.  I started talking to Elise about a logo and theme and she jumped up to the task.  I collected all the oddball ingredients I would need from Wegman's and started testing recipes or multiple recipes every day.  I started making adjustments and modifications, feeding people brownies, and getting really excited.  I bought a lot of tupperware and organized the kitchen.  I started writing a menu of offerings and organizing my recipes.  It feels amazing.

It's going to be difficult.  I can't really afford to rent a commercial kitchen or anything until I begin to turn a profit.  I can't take any orders until my website is active.  My website won't be active until I figure out what I'm selling and for how much.  Until then it will have to be classified as a "hobby" and I'll be feeding the people at Lauren's homeless shelter desserts until they beg me to stop giving them chocolate.  It's pretty time consuming.  Luckily I have a job that allows me to fill my day with other things, but you really don't know where the time goes when you're baking something every day.  My to-do list is out of control.

Chris was away this week so I tried to keep myself busy so I wouldn't be depressed.  I may have overdone it a tad, because now I feel like I didn't get anything done, but I did spend a lovely week with my valentine Cynthia.  We ate take out and watched Watson on Jeopardy!  We saw reruns of Big Bang Theory and watched the dvds of the fabulous BBC show she has introduced me to: Sherlock.  Seriously, it's amazing, go watch it, and try not to imagine Holmes and Watson having sex.  I dare you, try.

Another bit of my massive to-do list centered around cleaning the house and nesting.  I've been in serious nesting mode ever since we repainted the second bedroom and put the guest furniture and my desk inside.  We have so much more space and room in our closet.  I have my sewing machine out on my desk at all times and I can use it whenever I want for all of my sewing projects.  My stacks of magazines and notes to myself have a home that is somewhere other than out in the open of the condo.  Baking all the time means that the kitchen always needs to be cleaned.  In school, every day after class we would sweep the floor and then spray it down with water and disinfectant.  Then squegee the water into the drains on the floor.  Sadly, this cannot be done in my home kitchen, and if you walk in the kitchen you will inevitably track bits onto the carpet and throughout the rest of the house.  So we also need to vacuum and clean both bathrooms. 

Chris fixed up the TV cabinet and rewired everything so that it was nice and neat (I begged).  Put up a new towel rack and toilet paper holder in the second bathroom, put new hinges on the chest, and repainted and moved the furniture into the second bedroom.  All is going rather well.  I had so much energy on super bowl Sunday that I also organized the laundry room and our closet.  I placed everything strategically in the second bedroom closet, and my next plan of attack will be the coat closet.  Also, hanging the curtains in the second bedroom and  making a cushion for the chest so people can sit on it, and throw pillows for the couches.  Did I mention we have new couches?  My boss very kindly gave them to us when his wife was redecorating.  We have a like new, blue microsuede reclining 3 seat couch and love seat.  They are a bit too big for the room and carrying them into our place was among one of the most difficult tasks I have ever completed (so heavy that my arms literally gave out and I fell down a few times), but our place looks so much more like a home now.  We pulled the dining room table out so that we could actually eat on it. 

I actually got myself to a meetup from meetup.com and met a group of lovely ladies from all over the Baltimore region.  I will hopefully be going to another meetup soon to get to know them a bit better.  I reconnected with my friend Hannah from college which also feels AMAZING.  I am so incredibly happy to be talking to her on a regular basis.  We are emailing pretty consistently right now and I am going to try to do the same with Morgan and possibly Matt (who is currently recovering from heart surgery in the hospital). 

Wedding plans are going well.  I'm talking with our photographer now about when to schedule our engagement shoot and what our theme/ideas are going to be.  Elise's NY shower is booked, I have a flight booked for her NH shower and great ideas to help Amanda with some of the stuff she has planned.  Her bachlorette party is also booked and will be super fun!  We are going to the 80s prom in the city and getting all crazy 80s dressed up.  Heat up your crimping irons, this is going to be epic.  It feels like our calendar is filling up very quickly with all of these things.  So glad that we have a vacation booked for April.  We will be going to New Orleans and then on a few day cruise to Mexico, then back to NO.  I'm very excited to hang out on Burbon street and eat some bignets. I'm helping Elise book her hair stylist now.  We are going to my house on Long Island this weekend to help her put together her invitations.  Laura and Jason will be there as well, and hopefully I'll be able to catch up with Jaclyn and Jamie as well. 

I have a lot of pictures of things that I have been baking and a before and after of the kitchen organization to post next.  Hopefully I will get those up tonight.  Thanks for reading!

Julibean <3

Fill in the Blank Friday!

As always, thank you to the lovely lady over at The Little Things We Do for the questions. 

 

1.   I am       a people oriented, crazy organized baker, little sister and fiance to a wonderful man.  Notice how I reference myself in relation to other people?  I just noticed that.  When people ask me who/what I am, I always respond "a little sister". 

2.  The bravest thing I've ever done was    break up with my ex boyfriend.  I was so afraid to do it, but it was really the right decision.  I think I feel the most brave when I do something to test myself.  Can I survive alone?  Can I withstand whatever response I might get from saying this thing I've been keeping inside?

3.  I feel prettiest when       I look at pictures of myself from high school/early college.  Need to get back to that point.  Everyone needs to feel good about themselves, and I'm not quite there yet, but on my way.

4.  Something that keeps me awake at night is   obsessing.  I think too much, all day, every day.  If I'm worried about something I will panic and go over it and over it and freak myself out.  Also if I have something going on the next day that I have to be up early for, I will wake up and stare at the clock.  OMG it's 2 a.m., I only have 3 hours to sleep, that's just not enough, I'm going to be tired, go to bed, go to bed, go to bed.  Just like that.  I actually got rid of the alarm clock on my side of the bed and make Chris tell me what time it is when I'm sleeping and have my glasses off.  If he's sleeping, I don't get to know.

5.  My favorite meal in the entire world is   that's tough.  I guess I would have to go with BBQ.  My standby is usually ribs, baked potato, corn on the cob, bbq veggies (especially crispy black red peppers), corn bread, and a beer.  Or dessert, obviously.

6.  The way to my heart is        through textbook romance and humor.  Recite lines from a favorite movie or book of mine and I'd probably melt right then and there.  But if you can make me giggle and laugh at myself, that sort of carefree love is amazing as well.

7.  I would like to       get my college group of friends back together and living in the same place again.  How awesome would that be, sure we all have jobs now, but a good old life discussion on the porch with a 30 wold make my day.

Fill in the Blank Friday!

Another fun fill in the blank Friday from  The Little Things We Do!

 

1.   If I could only read one magazine publication for the rest of eternity, I would choose Martha Stewart Living?  Maybe Bon Appetit, not that I even get that magazine, but I could start.

2.  If I were to run my own magazine it would be    Colorful, fun, probably wedding or baking related, and designed by my sister.

3.  I buy my magazines (at the grocery check stand or via subscription)       Via subscription.  I rarely pick up a magazine when I'm out in a store, but I have been known to pick up a couple that I don't read very often in a airport for a long trip.  They are relaxing to read while traveling.  

4.  I prefer my magazines (in print or online)   Of course in print.  Online magazines are obscenely distracting with popups and links everywhere, they are disorganized and no different than reading anything else online.  I get a magazine to actually pick up the glossy paper and read the actual thing.

5.  The number of magazines I buy each month is    Well subscription wise I usually get a Cosmo, Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Weddings, Real Simple, and Bride.  In addition, Chris gets Motor Trend and Car & Driver.  It's pretty funny that there's a pile of Motor Trends and Cosmos in the bathroom in a pile.

6. My favorite magazine genre is (lifestyle, gossip, home, etc...)       Wedding, food, and home magazines.  My ideal magazine would probably be a cross between Martha Stewart Weddings, Real Simple, and like Lucky or some fashion magazine.  I actually really liked Seventeen for fashion, even though I've outgrown it at this point.  I also really enjoy reading all the science magazines that my parents get.  I'm a big fan of Time magazine and the Baltimore magazine that Chris' parents get.  My parents probably have like 10 subscriptions including; National Geographic, Scientific American, Air & Space, Consumer Reports, Time, Weight Watchers, Popular Science, & Discover.

 

P.S.  To all of you that were actually following and reading my blog, I made it private because it was becoming more personal than I originally anticipated and I decided that strangers and certain other people didn't need to be reading it.  If you'd like me to add you or someone to the list of readers I'm allowing on here, let me know.  

 

Julibean <3