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  1. Macarons – Attempt #1

    March 5, 2012 by mtcfinkel

    As much as I enjoy working in the kitchen, I’ve never considered myself much of a baker. Everything’s just too fussy and you have to do things like follow recipes for things to turn out.

    So why would I be dumb enough to try to make macarons? Well, I needed something to do with all the egg whites I’ve been generating making homemade ice cream. (That reminds me: I still “owe” pictures of last week’s peach ice cream and banana ice cream in their cute little push pop containers. Where was I? Oh, yeah…)  So I made regular old meringue cookies and brought them into work a couple of weeks ago. A French coworker suggested macarons as a better way to get rid of my egg whites. “What are macarons,” I ask. He sends a link with a picture and description and I think, “Sounds yummy. Why not?”

    A bit of wisdom recently conveyed to me that had come from Leah’s great grandmother: you cannot go wrong if you use good ingredients. (I figure this especially holds true if you’re offering free cookies to your coworkers.)

    So this weekend, I used up all of the egg whites I had left on two batches of macarons. Bit of wisdom confirmed. Even the ones that didn’t make good macarons still make great almond cookies. The first batch I think was slightly over-mixed because the batter spread a lot. And then there were some oven issues… on the first pan the oven was too hot so the cookies crisped up and browned quite a bit, on the second pan the oven temperature came down a bit but someone (me) forgot to set the timer and the cookies again crisped up and browned even more.  Oops.  Good macarons they were not. But both of those pans yielded really good almond cookies. And I learned a lesson or two. Not all was lost.

    On to the second batch… I don’t think I overmixed this time since the piping seemed to go better. But as for the oven, for the next pan the oven temperature was better but still a bit too high and there was a little more browning and crisping than optimal. Then– ta da!– for the last pan the color and texture looked quite good and if anything they might have been a bit underdone (most of the bottoms were marred because they stuck to the parchment after cooling).

    Here’s a picture of one set of cookies from each of the four pans, before being filled.

    I filled some from both pans with chocolate ganache, some with lemon curd, and some with blueberry jam. Oooh, those are good. But how good? I mean, I’ve never had a macaron and have NO idea what they’re SUPPOSED to be like.

    So I took them to a family birthday party. I forced a relative who’d recently been to Paris to taste the last batch of macarons. She said they taste and chew like they’re supposed to. Hurrah! All of the macarons that I brought to the party and most of the almond cookies disappeared during the party. So even if they weren’t perfect, they were good enough to disappear.

    My only remaining issue: uneven feet. It looks like the foot formed then the smooth-skinned part of the cookie tried to slide off its perch. Not sure what to do about that one. Not sure if it matters. They still taste great to me and have wonderful mouth feel.

    Tomorrow I’ll see if my French coworker is in the office and I’ll get his opinion. Hope he likes blueberry jam or lemon curd, because the ganache is GONE.

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  2. Purim’s the Time…

    March 5, 2012 by mtcfinkel

    Leah came home from Sunday school today singing, “Purim’s the time when we dress up and play, dress up and play, dress up and play. Purim’s the time when we dress up and play. Oh, happy hol-i-day!”

    New for 2012: it is also the time when we BAKE. I made my first Hamantaschen this weekend and they came out very cute. I got a recipe when I volunteered to help make them for a fundraiser at the synagogue and decided it would be a fun project with Leah. She really enjoyed helping to knead and roll out the dough and cut the circles. She also did a great job at moistening the circles so I could fold them.

    I tried three fillings: raspberry jam, blueberry jam, and my own concoction of figs and raisins and pistachios.  All are rather yummy.

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  3. Custard-Style Ice Cream with My Vitamix

    February 10, 2012 by mtcfinkel

    First of all, I have to say thank you again to my husband for giving me the Vitamix for my birthday. Lovin’ it.

    Some of the recipes in the accompanying book, however, do not appear to be well tested. For example, frothy tomato soup didn’t work (it got tossed mostly uneaten). And the homemade ice cream recipes yield cold confections that are too icy and/or… missing something. The best one I tried was the basic “put dairy and sugar and frozen fruit in your Vitamix, blend, and tamp until four mounds form.” It tasted quite good. But it wasn’t ice cream. You know, real ice cream.

    I don’t have an ice cream maker. And the thing is, I don’t really want one. More to store, more to clean, probably have to figure out how to fit a canister in my already-crowded freezer. Doesn’t seem worth it to me. But the Vitamix seemed so… promising.

    So I’ve been obsessing for the last couple of weeks about making a good custard-style ice cream with my Vitamix. Looked around a lot online for ideas, mumbled to myself a lot while driving and walking the dog, that sort of thing. This past weekend I finalized my plan and implemented it. Success! It smells like ice cream and it feels like ice cream in my mouth and it tastes like ice cream. I might not ever need to buy ice cream again!

    It is a two-phase process, but so worth the time!

    Looking around the web at various ice cream recipes, a typical ratio seems to be 2 egg yolks, 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, and 6 oz fruit for each cup of dairy… with a little salt and vanilla thrown in for better flavor. I opted for partial substitutions of corn syrup (replacing some of the sugar) and evaporated milk (replacing half of the fresh dairy in the recipe) to help avoid iciness.

    For the custard in Phase I, I used a method I found for making creme brulee with a Vitamix. It turned out quite well with the substitutions, except that I tried the ice cube tray trick (theoretically to freeze the custard more quickly, thereby reducing iciness), but it was an incredible pain in the neck to get the frozen custard out of the ice cube tray. Next time: a chilled rimmed metal baking dish.

    Once the custard was frozen and ready to go, I decided to split up the custard and try Phase II three ways: skim milk only, half milk and half cream, and cream only. Made the mistake of trying these with portions almost too small to tamp down in the blender, so the fruit wasn’t broken up very well. But the flavor was really good. I started with the milk-only version and I was surprised with how tasty it was out of the blender (and how much it smelled like ice cream–yum!), although it was way too hard to scoop after freezing for four hours. Next I tried the half and half version, and was even more excited about the flavor and mouth feel out of the blender, but it was still a little too hard to scoop after freezing. Last I made the cream-only version and of course it had the best taste, but I thought it felt a bit too fatty in my mouth right out of the blender. Although still a bit too hard, it was the easiest of the three to scoop after freezing and –as a nice surprise– the freezing took away the overly creamy/fatty feeling. Nice!

    I held a little unscientific taste test with my husband, our daughter, a neighbor, and her daughter. Results were mixed, with two of us preferring the half and half version, two vocally preferring the cream-only version, and one undecided between the two. No one picked the milk-only version as a favorite, but all agreed it was still good. My initial conclusion: ice milk is out, but the vote was close enough between the other two that it would be worth it to save the calories and go with the half and half.

    So, figuring it would average out well, I threw all three versions into the blender with a little more custard and a little more dairy, whirled, tamped, transferred to a metal bowl, and put it in the freezer. The larger portions allowed the tamper to do its job better, allowing the blender to pulverize the fruit for better texture. And taking a cue from The Kitchn, I set the timer for 45 minutes, after which I pulled the ice cream out of the freezer and hit it with my hand mixer for a few minutes. A couple of hours later: a significant improvement in texture and scoopability! Ta-da!

    But then more bad news: after a day in the freezer, the texture was a little grainy, I’m guessing from very small ice crystals forming due to the high water content in the fresh milk. My revised conclusion: no fresh milk (evaporated milk yes, cream yes, milk no). From now on, in Phase II, I’ll use only cream when the calories just don’t matter, or I’ll use half evaporated milk and half cream if I want a lower fat version.

    Now my recipe for custard-style ice cream (in my Vitamix) is on my list of regulars.

    Update 2/26/12: I made the ice cream again this weekend and realized that there was a problem with my recipe… size. I had been dividing the recipe to make half of one flavor and half of another, but tried a whole recipe of one flavor this weekend. Turns out that doing a whole recipe at a time is just too much for the Vitamix.  So, I’ve changed the recipe to do the flavors in batches. Sorry!

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  4. Cupcake Magic

    January 21, 2012 by mtcfinkel

    Getting ready for a Magical party for Leah’s 6th birthday, these fun magic hat cupcakes came straight out of Michele’s imagination:

     

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    The magic hat cupcakes were a hit. Here’s what I did:

    Several days in advance, I made the brims of the hat from black fondant (Duff’s brand from Party City). It didn’t dry nearly as well as the fondant that I’d used for the Neverland cake a few years back, so the brims were slightly saggy– I think I was the only one who noticed, though. The outside diameter of the brim was created by using a Tupperware bowl as a cookie cutter, and the inside diameter by a large circular fondant cutter (aluminum, from Michaels). I have to say– again– that I LOVE my fondant rolling pin with the spacers for rolling to an even thickness. As I was working, I learned quickly that the fondant needs to be warmed in the micro to make it easier to work with. And I figured out that it was even easier to roll out if I formed a long rope with my hands and then wrapped the rope around the aluminum cutter before placing the fondant between sheets of parchment and attacking it with the rolling pin.

    The magic wands are small pretzel sticks dipped in dark almond bark (colored with black gel), then the tip dipped in white chocolate.

    Black cupcake wrappers came from Michaels; I trimmed the frills off to give it a cleaner look, but lived to regret that decision, as the wrappers started to unwrap themselves a few hours after I removed the cupcakes from the pan.  Fortunately, frosting makes good glue, and my Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator made short work of adding frosting.

    For the final “magical” touch, red edible glitter from Michaels. DONE! Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, as my daughter would say.

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  5. Cabin cakes

    January 16, 2012 by mtcfinkel

    Blueberry pancakes, topped with both Vitamix-blended blueberry syrup and fresh blueberries. My husband deemed it a “masterpiece of blueberry-ness.”

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  6. Chanukah Oh Chanukah, Come Eat the Menorah

    December 14, 2011 by mtcfinkel

    So it all starts in November when my 5-year-old daughter sees a picture of a gingerbread house in the back of her Ladybug magazine and says all dreamily, “Oh, mommy, I want to make one of those.” My husband and I agree: too Christmas-y.  My daughter is of course disappointed (I mean, look at all the candy), so I propose a compromise. “How about we make a gingerbread menorah instead,” I ask, thinking that I’ll easily find a template for one on the internet. I mean, I cannot be the first person to think of this, right? She immediately gets really excited and says that she wants to use lemon drops for the candle flames. Mental note to self: get lemon drops.

    So after much time searching on the internet for a template, I found just about nothing. Lots of flat menorah cookies, but we negotiated for one that stands on its own. No Kwanzaa kinaras that I could adapt, either. Okay, I admit that I found one menorah cookie. But the slots are a little too complicated and the design is definitely way too delicate to give to a 5-year-old to decorate and have any reasonable expectation that the cookie will remain in one piece and avoid a meltdown.

    So I realized that I was on my own and started looking into gingerbread decorating ideas. More time, but I find a recipe I like and note that a quarter inch seems to be about the average cookie thickness, and figure that this is useful information. Now, during this search I also found posts indicating that gingerbread houses are huge time drains and to put aside a good three days for the project. But I stupidly figured that the house was more complex somehow and that didn’t really apply to menorah making. How hard can it really be, anyway? Ha.

    Assuming a quarter-inch-thick cookie, I spent much more time designing and refining a template (including building one using cardboard and refining some more). And then there was even more time gathering appropriate candies and sprinkles and decorating supplies from Michaels and the Sweet Factory and the grocery store.

    With my final template, a working recipe, and supplies in hand, we traveled up to see my husband’s aunt and uncle for Thanksgiving, thinking I’d whip something up for my daughter and her younger cousin to do. I spent pretty much our whole vacation on the project. Not complaining, mind you, as it was fun and an adventure. And I was in the kitchen where everyone congregates anyway, so I got to visit a lot. But it was a LOT of time and I’m glad I wasn’t at home feeling like there were eighteen thousand other things I should be doing instead of making cookies…

    Thanksgiving afternoon before we head over to another aunt’s for dinner, I stand in the kitchen making and refrigerating the dough. And more dough. And more dough. Enough for cousins and me to play, too. I end up making about twice as much as I needed since I didn’t know how many menorahs I’d get out of a recipe. Fortunately our aunt has a nice stand mixer, or it would have taken longer. That day, I also print the template on cardstock and cut it out.

    Friday morning and afternoon, I :
    (1) roll out the cold dough per the recipe instructions. Not as easy as it sounds. As I’m rerolling the scraps, I figure out that it’s MUCH easier to roll room-temperature dough between the layers of parchment THEN refrigerate the flattened dough. But now all my dough is in cold lumps and I have to deal. Lesson learned for next time.
    (2) figure out how to use the templates to cut the dough. Slow going, but it works. Boy, do I want custom cookie cutters.
    (3) bake the cookies. On the positive side, I discover that my template works like a charm. I just have to remember to re-trim the inside support pieces when they come out of the oven so that their edges are straight. Cookies have this annoying tendency to spread when baking and the edges soften intolerably.

    Friday evening and Saturday morning, I make the syrup “glue” and begin assembly. A candy thermometer would have been useful, but I make due. I keep having to add a little more water because the sugar concentration gets high as I’m slowly working on the assembly. The cooled, hardened syrup is great for mortar and the cookies are starting to look like I imagined. Another plus: only very minor burns from the hot syrup. (Zowie!) I take lots of pictures along the way but Someone-who-shall-remain-nameless later accidentally deletes them from the camera without uploading them to the computer. This after-the-fact picture still kinda shows how the menorahs went together.

    Saturday morning, I make and color the royal icing (using meringue powder so that I don’t have to worry about the kids eating raw eggs). I put each color in a dispenser. Then I pull out all of the candies and sprinkles I collected and four of us get to work with the decorating.

    The kids had a lot of fun and their menorahs turned out really cute. Mine too. I had thought that licorice would make great candles, and it did work okay on my daughter’s menorah, but skewering mini marshmallows on toothpicks as I did for my menorah worked even better.  The banana Runts that I bought at the Sweet Factory made the BEST flames. Lemon drops turned out to be a little too heavy for the licorice. Minor bummer.

    In case you weren’t counting, I spent several hours on each of six different days (shape search, recipe search, template design, shopping, dough, baking, decorating) to create four cookies. Four. Those blogs were right. Big time drain.

    That being said, I’ll definitely do it again next year. :)   For the remainder of the dough (after we returned home), I decided to make smaller menorahs using a small cookie cutter for the face and back of the menorah and a manually cutting single small wedge piece for the middle. There’s not enough room along the top of the small cookie for any sort of “candles” though, so they get only icing for the candles and flames.

     <Picture to come>

    Cutting and baking go much faster with the cookie cutter. Definitely want that make-your-own-cookie-cutter-set before next year when we do the bigger menorahs again.

    Everyone I tell this story to says that I need to post my template and tips only so that the someone else might benefit from my efforts and my lessons learned. If that’s you, good luck and enjoy!

    P.S. – The template would work well for a cookie kinara as well. I think that the licorice might be a good thing for kinara “candles” since red and black are readily available and green licorice twists are available online. (I got blue twists at the Sweet Factory, and they might have the green twists as well.) I’m thinking that inserting toothpicks into the hollow center of the licorice twists will help with stability… lemme know if I’m wrong.

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