Biscotti

I went through a phase when I was younger where I loved hard, dry cookies – including my baby cousin’s teething biscuits. I’ve always thought of biscotti as a kind of more adult version of teething biscuits, albeit slightly tastier. I’ve had a standard biscotti recipe that I’ve been making since I was in elementary school, but for some reason I decided I wanted to mix things up a little and try something new. As someone who typically has a difficult time with change, I think I may have found a new standard. But should I really be surprised? They are, after all, from Dorie Greenspan, and when does she ever fail?

lovely toasted almonds awaiting the food processor

awaiting the first baking

sliced up and ready for the 2nd baking

of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I made chocolate ones, too.

with a smear of chocolate

double chocolate

Chocolate Biscotti

adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From my home to yours

2 cups  flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tablespoons instant espresso powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temp

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped almonds

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped or 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

2. Sift together flour, cocoa, espresso powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until pale (about 2 minutes). Scrape down bowl. Add eggs and vanilla and beat for about 2 minutes (mixture may look curdled). Reduce mixer speed to low and add dry ingredients in 3 additions, mixing only until dough forms. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix in nuts and chocolate.

4. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and knead in any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

5. Divide dough in half. Working with one half at a time, roll dough into 12-inch long logs. Flatten both logs so that they are about 1/2 to 1 inch high and about 2 inches wide. Carefully lift each log onto the baking sheet.

6. Bake logs for about 25 minutes, or until slightly firm. Remove baking sheet from oven and cool logs for about 20 minutes.

7. Working with one log at a time, cut each lot into slices between 1/2 and 3/4 inch wide (use a serrated knife). Stand the slices up on the baking sheet and bake the cookies again for about 10 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Yellow cake with Chocolate Frosting

A few of you might remember that I had some issues with the yellow cupcakes we made for our cupcake party a few weeks ago. What with the crazy lemon bars and the hole-y cupcakes, I was starting to feel like somewhat of a fraud and a failure. Despite all the reassurances from my friends that the cupcakes were fine, the fact that they were less than ideal was really bugging me. In order to prove to myself that I can make a good basic yellow cake without the assistance of the Pillsbury Doughboy, Betty Crocker, or Duncan Hines I felt the need to try again.

a much better yellow cake

My plan had been to fill it with the leftover coffee buttercream I had from the party, but I quickly nixed that idea when I failed miserably at reconstituting it.

gross coffee buttercream

I quickly changed plans and filled and frosted the cake with chocolate mousse buttercream…much better idea.

And finally…ta-da! Much better than the cupcakes!

Sorry, no pictures of the interior. Despite my intentions, I forgot to bring the camera with me to our friends’ house where we ate it. Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering, all of this was done a couple days after the cupcake party…I just haven’t had a chance to post in since then. So the coffee buttercream didn’t go bad due to age…more like user-error.

Lemon Chiffon and Lemon Butter cake

Today was about experimenting with lemon cupcakes. A friend of mine requested “lemon cake with lemon frosting” and I found myself at a bit of a loss…do I even have a lemon cake recipe? After a bit of searching, I found that the only ones I have are for a lemon pound cake. Now pound cake is all good and fine – actually, lemon pound cake is delicious – but I wanted something a little bit lighter and fluffier than pound cake. So off to the internet I went.

My initial thought was that I could find a good recipe for a “lemon layer cake,” and adapt it into cupcakes. However, most of these recipes were for a white, or vanilla, cake with lemon curd filling and a white frosting. Not exactly what I was going for. I did find a recipe for a lemon chiffon cake from Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes, which seemed interesting, but I was really more interested in a lemon butter cake. At that point, I decided to forget the internet and tinker with my favorite yellow butter cake instead.

I ended up making both the lemon chiffon cake and a lemon butter cake. Both turned out pretty well. Actually, the lemon chiffon cake turned out to be an almost perfect replica of my favorite Chinese sponge cake, which was a delightful surprise – I’ve always kinda wondered in the back of  my mind if I could figure out those Chinese cakes. Despite that, I think I preferred the butter cake – it was, not surprisingly, a sturdier cake and easier to handle. However, I think I do want to tinker a bit more with the flavoring.

I also took this opportunity to play with some ideas I’ve had for some upcoming wedding cupcakes:

Lemon Butter cake with sugar pearls

Butter cake with fondant flowers

Lemon chiffon with initials

More difficult to see - a sugar rim around the edge of the frosting

Varying the "swirl" technique

And now, for anyone who is interested, the recipe I used for the lemon butter cake:

Lemon Butter Cake

adapted from Baking Illustrated, by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated

1 3/4 cups (7 ounces) cake flour, sifted

4 large eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp lemon extract

1 tsp almond extract

1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) sugar

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt (I used Kosher)

16 tbsp (2 sticks) butter, softened but still cool and cut into 16 pieces

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pan with paper liners.

2. Beat eggs, milk, and extracts with a fork. Reserve 1 cup of this mixture and set aside. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of a standing mixer. Beat on low speed for about 30 seconds. With mixer still running on low, add butter 1 piece at a time; mix until butter and flour begin to clump together and look sandy, with pieces about the size of peas (about 30 -45 seconds after all butter is added). Add reserved 1 cup of egg mixture and mix at lowest speed, about 5-10 seconds. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Add remaining egg mixture in slow, steady stream. Stop mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat at medium-high speed until thoroughly combined and batter looks slightly curdled, about 15 seconds.

3. Divide batter evenly into cupcake pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake about 12-15 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, rotating pans midway. Cool pans on a wire rack for about 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and continue to cool. Cool completely before icing. Frost with desired frosting.

Cupcake party!

This past Friday I had the pleasure of hosting my first cupcake party! The idea was born between my lovely friend, Stephanie, and myself when we were drooling over the pictures in Hello Cupcake! Our goal was to be able to make lots of different cupcakes and not have to eat them all…thus, we invited a bunch of our friends over to assist us in creating a huge sugar-y, delicious mess.

Stephanie and her sister came over early to help bake the cupcakes. Although I had list of about 8 different kinds I wanted to do, we decided to keep it simple and stick to chocolate and yellow cake.

The chocolate cupcakes are from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book (actually, they are technically a devil’s food cupcake), and the yellow cupcakes are based on a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Despite having successfully made that yellow cake before, the cupcakes are a little…interesting. Please ignore the holes on the tops of the them…and their very interesting texture. Our guests were extremely polite about them and did not comment on this.

After a lovely dinner, we got down to business. Although my intention was to just let everyone go for it, they insisted on a demonstration.

fitting a coupler

piping

And then the creations started…

Transamerica Building or Eiffel Tower?

Those are just a small sampling of the beautiful creations that came about…I had a blast putting this together and sharing one of my favorite activities. I hope everyone else enjoyed it, too!

Lemon Bars = FAIL!

I’m not ready to admit defeat yet – obviously, this is something I should be able to do. I don’t know what happened, but in an attempt to use up some lemons my mom gave me, I made what were supposed to be lemon bars. When I say “lemon bars,” I mean a bar cookie with a shortbread crust  a creamy lemony-curd topping. Something akin to this:

but no…I ended up with this:

I have no idea what happened. I used a recipe that my sister has, which she makes successfully all the time. Hers don’t have a disappearing crust or a strange spongy layer on top. 

Of course, their odd appearance didn’t stop me from eating nearly half the pan. I kept cutting off more pieces hoping that it would somehow get better. They didn’t taste too bad, but they were definitely not what I had in mind when I started. Over the weekend I also made a very questionable swiss meringue buttercream. I’m worried that my baking mojo has gone bad…and this is really not a good time for that.

what i’ve been doing…

go to www.homedeconstruction.wordpress.com to see where i do when i’m not baking

Sweet Almond Cake with Lemon Curd & Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

This was an awesome new cake I tried from my awesome new book, The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, which I recently purchased from the awesome Powell’s Bookstore in Portland! Whoo-hoo! Tax free! This is another book that was written by the owner of a bakery (Sweet Melissa Patisseries) in Brooklyn, New York. Again, it is a book that has been out awhile and has gotten rave reviews – I am just really slow to jump on the bandwagon.

This cake immediately caught my eye and I knew I was going to have to try it. I mean, really, what’s not to love? Almond cake (made with browned butter!), lemon curd and lemon frosting. The original recipe is actually  for a lemon mascarpone frosting, but I was a bit lazy and didn’t feel like going out for mascarpone cheese. I also adapted the lemon curd a little bit and used my favorite lemon cream recipe from Dorie Greenspan.

Because they are much easier to share and disperse out of my kitchen, I decided to make cupcakes rather than a huge layered cake…and here they are:

It’s a little difficult to see, but I filled some of them with the luscious lemon cream mentioned above. I say “some” because apparently I missed a few when my husband called me while I was working. Oops!

I also topped a few of them with sugar pearls…I was told that they are surprisingly crunchy, but cute, no?

I’m still here!

Hi there! Sorry for my seriously long absence from all of you; I’m beginning to feel like a broken record, but life has been really busy, and it just all gets in the way of blogging. However, this does not mean my oven and mixer have been neglected. On the contrary – they have been getting as much attention as they ever did. Sweets have been flowing out my kitchen…at least one cake a week! Unfortunately, aside from some lovely memories, there is little record of them. As I have said before, I am terrible, horrible, at documenting what I do. This blog was supposed to help me get better at that, but, alas, that has not really happened. 

My most recent project was a purse cake that one of the nurses asked me to make for her birthday. Apparently, she is quite the bag lady (the good kind), and she really wanted a cake that represented her. This was my first attempt at a sculpted cake, and I have to say, it was a good learning experience.

The cake is based off a purse the birthday girl owned…it is a lovely chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache and chocolate buttercream. Mmmmm…yummmy…

As I said, it was a learning experience…in many ways. Something I discovered is that I am not good at learning from my previous mistakes. One of the biggest challenges I have had with fondant is that I do not let the base layer of buttercream to sufficiently firm up, thus, creating a lumpy cake! Lumps! Gak! 

So here is the finished purse cake:

and from the side (you can see where one side started to slump…)

The handles are made from gumpaste painted with silver luster dust. They looked pretty good, but were quite fragile. Upon delivering the cake, they actually fell off and we had to make some less than ideal repairs. I was grateful that I remembered to take pictures before the whole thing fell apart.

One of the best part of making a sculpted cake, though, is all the scraps! Yummy cake scraps that I can snack on while I work. With this particular cake, I had so many scraps that I decided to make some cake pops to accompany the purse to the party.

Apparently, these were a huge hit at the party. I was unable to attend the party because I had to work, but people told me lots of nice things about the cake. (The people I work with are so nice and polite.)

Here are a couple pictures of a cake I made a few weeks back – not great pictures, but proof that I have not been neglecting my oven.

chocolate cake with salted caramel and chocolate ganache

completely forgot to take pictures before the sun went down, which makes for less than ideal pictures

didn’t taste too bad

Taking a breath…

Hi everyone! First, I want to apologize for being so MIA from this blog…it feels like all my time lately has been eaten up by work (both real work and working on the house), and blogging just has to take a backseat. And to be completely honest, I recently started (and finished!) the Twilight series and so life had to be put on hold while I was busy attending to that, too.

But despite my lack of blogging, it does not mean that I wasn’t baking and creating! I actually have been quite productive, so I’ll post a few pictures of what I’ve been up to…

First, I finally got around to trying my idea of mint/lime macarons. I did manage to get some pictures of the process, but they got eaten up before I had a chance to take pictures of the final product.

almonds, sugar, and mint

sugar and lime zest….mmm…yummy

pretty shells!

lime curd for filling

As I said, I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the finished lime/mint ones, but a few days later, I tried out a strawberry shell and filled those with lime curd and/or chocolate ganache. Here’s a picture of those…

And then the other thing that I’ve been working on is a wedding cake for my husband’s cousin’s wedding…actually, i’ve just mostly been working on some flowers for that. What do you think?

I hope you’ll all forgive me for my lack of posting…I am hoping that things will calm down a bit for me and I’ll be able to remember to take better pictures of the stuff I am doing. July was (is!) just a crazy month. Although August does look busy, I hope I’ll be able to make more time for this. Thanks for checking this stuff out!

Red, White & Blue cupcakes

So I think it’s pretty clear that I haven’t been terribly good at getting posts up in a timely manner lately…regular life has just been crazy lately, and I don’t really see it calming down any time soon. So just a warning to anyone who is reading this: posts might be erratic and brief in the next month or so.

I feel almost silly posting these now – we are so far past the holiday that they look like they should be marked “90% off!” and stuck in a discount bin, but I really wanted to share them with everybody because I thought they turned out pretty well and were fun to make. The story behind these isn’t too interesting: Ryan and I were invited to a picnic for the Fourth of July and I wanted something cute and theme-y to bring. I think the best part about these cupcakes is that this was the first project that Ryan really “helped” in the kitchen!

These were also very easy to make, if slightly more labor-intensive. We accomplished these by mixing up a batch of white cupcakes, splitting those into two bowls, and coloring one bowl blue. Then we did a half batch of red velvet cupcakes, and then layered the three colors into cupcake liners. Easy-peasy! 

setting up 

Ryan, sifting

I hope I did all my conversions right!

Two bowls of white

White and blue

Mixing up the red

Here we go…super red!

Into the oven

Ta-da!

The layers are a little uneven, but you get the idea

Ready for the party!