Ombre red velvet, aka dinner.

Someone always has to get the last word.

Summer peach pie

Yes, it is January.  But lately here in Southern California, you could almost believe it was summertime again.  That and I currently have a large stock of photos I need to get through before I start sharing more recent endeavors.  So here is my first from-scratch peach pie circa 4th of July weekend, 2011.

The last company I worked for used to give out food as holiday gifts.  They regularly gave all one hundred-something employees turkeys for Thanksgiving and boxes of fruit for the 4th of July, along with other various food stuffs for important holidays.  I didn't stick around long enough to find out what they gave out for Christmas.

I've never made a pie crust from start to finish but I had to do justice to those peaches.  So I reached for my kitchen Bible- The New Best Recipe.  Here's my crust coming together in my ancient hand-me-down food processor.

I really wanted to do this right so I even went for the classic lattice top.  This peach pie ended up taking me two days since I did the crust and top a day ahead and storing them in the freezer.  This made assembling the pie loads easier.

The filling ended up being a bit of a fiasco.  The peaches were not very ripe and despite several days of sitting them in a covered bowl with the ripest peach I could find, I ended up having to deal with working with hard peaches.  I massacred those peaches, boy.  I don't know if you've ever tried to remove the pit of an unripened peach but I do not suggest you try it.  Lots of new and creative curses were invented that day.  But I persevered.

 The before and after pictures.  My oven is still a total mystery to me, so there were a few edges that were a little deeper golden brown than I had intended.  Despite that, the reaction was undeniably positive.  We were even fortunate enough to be able to pair it with home-made ice cream!

Coming up, I'll share my first commissioned baking project.  Next time: Baby bottle sugar cookies.

A year in cupcakes

The last year or so has brought a lot of change, but one thing remains the same: I bake. I bake to forget when times are hard and I bake to celebrate when life is good. I love to document my experiments but haven't had the equipment or dedication to share them as of late. But recently I found some motivation (and a new computer) to start investing more time into this blog- my coworker asked me to make cupcakes for her wedding this summer! I've been doing more baking for special events, like the three pumpkin bourbon cheesecakes I made for Thanksgiving (which nearly killed me), and this would be my most important and "high-profile," if you will. So in the coming months I will be documenting all of the recipes and decorations I test out for the big day. But to start things off, I want to share a collection of cupcakes I've made the past year. My favorite recipe involves my most unhealthy addiction: Oreos.

Chocolate raspberry ganache cupcakes.

Cookies and cream cupcakes with chocolate buttercream icing.

Pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

Deja vu: cookies and cream with CoHo chocolate buttercream frosting.

I love the different colored Oreo fillings they come out with throughout the year.  Springtime cupcakes.

Cookies and cream cupcakes with vanilla buttercream for my coworker's wedding-day lunch.

Now, you must be curious about this cupcake recipe. I found it on food.com, formerly known as Receipe Zaar. You can find it here. As for the icing, it comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, The UC Davis Coffee House cookbook. Here it is, in all it's simplicity:

CoHo buttercream frosting

*1/2 cup butter, softened

*2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

*1 egg yolk

*2-3 tablespoons milk or light cream

*1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Cream butter. Add 1/3 of powdered sugar and beat until creamy. Repeat with another 1/3 of sugar.

2. Add egg yolk, milk, and vanilla. Beat in remaining sugar.

3. Add more milk or powdered sugar to obtain desired consistency.

I have a huge amount of pictures I haven't shared, so my next post is going to be a trip down memory lane. Next up: from-scratch peach pie.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

This flourless cake looks great, but flour wasn't the only thing omitted from this recipe. Half way through baking this treat I realized- I had forgotten the sugar! Luckily, 8 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate and a dusting of powdered sugar helped cut any bitterness that may have totally ruined it. Before serving, I decided some warm strawberry jam might be a nice addition. Not bad, but still not what I wanted!

I must make a suggestion for anyone who might be reading. After taking a intro to beer class (and getting an A in it!), I've really begun to taste the quality differences in the beer I buy. After swearing off any Anheuser-Busch product (which is a huge percentage of any beer aisle in the country), I finally bit the bullet and purchased some of what I consider to be the best beer in the country. Dogfish Head breweries are located on the east coast and put out several year-round brews as well as a few sensational seasonals. Because the brewery is still quite small, they don't distribute to many stores and if you can find them on tap, tell me where! If you can manage to find it, you won't always be able to afford it. Four bottles of their 90-minute IPA costs around $12! However, their IPA is considered to be the best in the country and it packs a big whollup at 9% ABV. So next time you're at the store, really scan those racks of beer bottles. If you're lucky enough to find it, I suggest you snatch up a bottle and give it a try. It will soon become a guilty pleasure!

PB and J chippers

For a while now I've been wanting to make some kind of peanut butter and jelly cookie. I'm almost 23 years old and I still eat PB+J sandwiches (specifically Uncrustables- despite what I'd classify as a semi-refined palate, I consume frozen, plastic wrapped sandwiches with delight) on a very regular basis. So when I was going through another one of my favorite cookbooks and realized that I had everything to concoct their peanut butter cookies, I decided to test the idea out.
I used our very own ASUCD's COHO cookbook for the peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie recipe. It was simple and made a delicious batch of treats. On about half of the cookies I decided to take them out about three minutes early, spoon a small amount of strawberry jam in the center, and put them back in for the remaining time. This helped create a well of jam in the middle that I couldn't have done while they were still raw (the dough was too sticky to shape, so I had to wait until they were almost done to add the jam) and also didn't cook the jam to the point that it was chewy and sticky. The result: a delicious combo of flavors that even my boyfriend couldn't get enough of! Really, I've never seen him eat so many cookies in one day before!
On a side note, I bet you've figured out by now that I'm a little in love with owls. This is a common theme that you will see throughout the blog. I have more owl fabric and trinkets than you could imagine, so they'll surely be popping up in a lot of pictures! Oh, and something else that will be popping up is my curious, intrusive kitten. Lilah loves attention, so when I'm giving it to anything but her, she HAS to get involved.



Next time: my flourless chocolate cake. And no, I still didn't get it right!

Fresh Fruit Tart with Pastry Cream

What a delicious treat! I made this tart for my boyfriend's birthday. He really doesn't go for sweets, so I made a list of his favorite fruits and loaded them up in this sweet pastry shell. My favorite part about making this dessert was making the pastry cream. I once again used my America's Test Kitchen tested cookbook (The New Best Recipe) for the recipe, which calls for half-and-half, sugar, egg yolks, cornstarch, butter, and vanilla. Nothing very extraordinary. After simmering the half-and-half with the sugar for a little while, a mixture of the egg yolks, some sugar, and the cornstarch is added and heated. Suddenly, what once was two runny liquids transforms into a thick, pale yellow custard. And it only gets better! Mix in some vanilla and a little butter and you get a rich, thick, slightly sweet bed that only compliments fresh fruit. Needless to say, this recipe pleased even my sweets-impaired boyfriend.

Chocolate Decadence

Hello! If you have stumbled upon this, you are either an awesome friend or it's 3am and you're very hungry.
I've realized recently how much I love cooking (specifically baking!). I worked at a local cafe over the summer and ended up in the kitchen, decorating cakes, cooking lunch and breakfast, and making some of the baked goodies. The job reinvigorated a passion in me that I had ignored since I left my mother's very well-equipped kitchen and moved off to college. While I had to leave the job due to, um, conflicts (read: clingy manager), I haven't stopped experimenting in the kitchen.
Which leads me to this first entry. I looked on my hard drive and realized that I've kept a semi-decent record of recent culinary projects. After seeing a sorority sister's blog displaying her beautiful decorated cupcakes (I will post a link later), I got inspired! This will be my virtual food portfolio.
Here we have one of my "professional" cake designs. This is a chocolate decadence cake from Ciocolat in Davis, CA. The cake is a layer of thick, fudgy chocolate with a hint of espresso on top of a chocolate sponge cake. It is topped off with cocoa powder and chocolate espresso beans. It is a staple at the cafe and is truly delicious! I definitely suggest it if you ever find yourself staring into their dessert case.