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.

Picnic Day Brunch

On April 17th I pulled off my biggest meal to date. Sadly, I have no pictures to show for it! While the food tasted great, I didn't have the time or funds to dedicate towards finding enough serving dishes for all of the food I made, so I ended up leaving them in big, aluminum pans which wasn't exactly picture-worthy. However, there are upwards of 30 people that will attest to the fact that this Picnic Day brunch was probably the best one being hosted in all of the city.
Picnic Day at UC Davis is currently a 96-year long tradition that is the most looked-forward-to event in any UCD student's year. While some take their celebrating a little far (I assure you, I knew none of these people), most drink heartily and run around campus with their friends, celebrating all of the cute and cuddly animals brought out for various events and soaking up the sun. Because my birthday landed on a Tuesday this year, I decided to wait the extra 4 days to celebrate it on Picnic Day by inviting all of the alumni and friends I haven't seen in ages to my down-town apartment for a mimosa brunch. This is the menu those lucky friends got to start their day off with:
Home fries with bell pepper, sweet onion, and paprika
Crab and chive quiche
Leek, mushroom, and asparagus fittata
Caramel apple French toast
Homemade Strawberry Pop-Tarts
Mimosas
Screw-drivers
Bloody Mary's

You may be wondering, "How exactly does one MAKE a Pop-Tart?" I would say it was simple, but it ended up being a long, labor-intensive process that I almost gave up on. But the results were awesome! I got the recipe from Bon Appetite and decided to double the recipe and give it a try. Basically, its a shortbread crust that is filled with strawberry preserves, frozen over night, and then baked on a cookie sheet. The dough has to be made, rolled into disks, frozen for several hours, rolled out, and cut into 16 3x5 squares that are sandwiched together around the preserves, frozen over night, and then baked. Even then, they are almost guaranteed to burst and ooze strawberry preserves all over your baking pan (it even stained my non-stick baking sheet liners) and generally make you frustrated and violent. Why should I even consider making these again? Because everyone LOVED them! I even loved them, after the cursing and blinding anger subsided.
Moral of this story: unless you're really willing to taste a better Pop-Tart, leave the work in Kellog's hands.

A small deviation...

So I know this has nothing to do with food, but I had to show this wreath off. I love to craft, especially things that spruce up my little 1950's apartment. I don't have a wreath for this time of year and because my boyfriend is Jewish, it's a little hard to find a holiday oriented wreath that both of us can agree upon (he didn't really go for the idea of an Easter-egg wreath, although I'll agree with him in that they were pretty ugly). So when I saw some really adorable sea-shell wreaths at Target I was inspired to bring a little of the beach to my land-locked home. A quick trip to Michael's for the seashells, ribbon, and the wreath base plus some hot glue and glitter I found in our sorority house and I had a season-appropriate wreath! I think it cost me around $10 to make, while the original wreaths I found cost at least $20 a piece. I win!

Chicken, Artichoke and Caramelized Onion Pizza

YUM! Slices of mozzarella, fresh basil, caramelized onion, artichoke hearts, chicken (for Leo), and home-made pizza sauce combined together to make this masterful pizza. And despite it being shrink wrapped, the Bobili pizza crust wasn't that bad! Next time you want a pizza with some ridiculous toppings, go to the grocery store and pick one of those bad boys up. I don't think I had ever used one and was always wary of them. I always imagined they'd be dry, taste of lard, and become rock hard once put in the oven. However, this pre-made pizza crust made a decent base for our amazing toppings. Again, YUM! So much better than delivery!

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!