Gluten and Dairy Free Almond Cake!

Hey! Someone had a birthday! It was my mom and, as the title of this post may lead you to believe, she can not have gluten or dairy. While a little more difficult, it's not impossible. In fact, I love baking for my mom because it gives me a challenge.

So I made an almond flavored cake with coffee flavored buttercream. Mmmmm. Delicious. I mixed the gluten free flour myself and it contained white rice flour, millet flour, tapioca flour, almond meal, and flax seed. I found the mixture recipe in a vegan cookie book I own. It worked very well as a cake flour. The cake itself was very delicate but I think that had to do more with the fact that there were no eggs in the cake. Mom can't eat eggs, either. 

Instead of eggs I used a combination of applesauce and baking powder. It works well enough, and makes it very moist, but does anyone have any other suggestions? I know that vegan egg substitutions are mixtures of starches but I'm not sure which ones and what the ratios are... help a girl out?

Coffee is not my favorite flavor, which surprises people because I'm a barista, but this frosting was amazing. I brewed some ridiculously strong instant coffee and used it for the liquid content of the buttercream. Seriously, this coffee smelt burnt and was undoubtedly disgusting but combined with enough sugar all was well. It's one of my favorite frosting flavors I've ever made.
As for the piping pattern I just thought it might be a fun challenge (it was) and something my mom would like (she did.) I wish the pictures were better but they were not taken with my camera so it's hard to see some of it. It's not perfect but I'm very happy with the colors, although I was having a little trouble with Wilton colors not blending well with the vegan buttercream. I've heard that Wilton does that with real buttercream too sometimes so I may start replacing my colors with other brands as they run out.

Oh, and see the cursive up there? I've never done much cursive piping before so I gave it a try. It's good to know and now that I'm decorating cakes for work I should learn how to do it right? What you see in the pictures was probably my 5th try. I had to wipe away buttercream so many times. But I got it eventually. At least enough to be legible. That has to count for something.

xoxo
Stephanie

More bread! Also, a cake that must've been made in Whoville.

I love taking a baking class. When I don't have the time to bake at home I can feel better about it knowing that I have a whole day each week when I get to bake. Not to mention I have a huge kitchen and all the right tools to bake with.

Here's what my class group and I made the other day:

Banana nut muffins! They were delicious, by the way. All those other baked goods I didn't make, though. They're all made by the students and sold to more students. It's a pretty neat set up because since we're just learning and we're making so many the baked products are sold at very decent prices.

We also sell these for $0.25 a roll. Seriously, one batch made five or six dozen.

So many little rolls. Unfortunately, these did not puff up as much as I would have liked. I'm not sure exactly what happened, I was talking with the chef (teacher) when my group was doing the actual mixing, but there was talk about there not being enough flour. I asked our chef about it and yeup; not enough flour. They didn't have enough to hold together the structure just right. See how I'm learning?

Oh, and speaking of learning. I am having a blast at my cake decorating job! I don't think I've mentioned it here in the blog, but I have two jobs right now and one is decorating ice cream cakes at Baskin Robbins. It's amazing. I pretty much can do what I want on the cakes. I also love it because I can decorate cakes without having to make and eat so much cake. Here's one that I did the other day.

I would very much like to apologize for the quality of this photo; it was taken with my phone. Obviously I had a lot of fun with this cake. I swear I made a classier looking cake later, I just didn't get a picture. I just adored the look of the "paint" streaks in some photos they had and I wanted to give it a try. For a finishing touch I could not resist the little sugar star on a spring. Well, I made it have a spring by wrapping the wire around a pen. It gives it a fun little pop!

Life is good. Really good.

xoxo
Stephanie

Busy little bees

School has begun, friends. I've been pretty busy that starting but I just wanted to share what I did in class yesterday.

Mmm.... French baguettes. It was the first time I'd ever made bread and I'm really excited about it. They're all different colors because each one has a different egg wash, or lack thereof. The furthest on the left was a whole egg wash, the next had no wash, next was just whites, and the last one was washed with yolk.

One of the things I like best about baking is that you can making something out of almost nothing. Those loaves right there have four ingredients. Four.

I also made sandwich bread, but in all the excitement (and the ending of class) I forgot to take pictures of that.

Anyway, once my schedule gets a little more set I'll be able to figure out a regular time to blog. Get ready for a lot of class pictures, too.

xoxo
Stephanie

Grandma's Apples Pie

Yesterday myself, my husband and baby visited my grandparents, like we do nearly every week. During this visit they offered us some of their newly-ripened apples for us to pick and take home. My husband being 6’2” tall was the one who was chosen to procure the fruit from the higher branches. It was generous of them…and seeing the apples hanging off the tree all ripe and tasty made me envision a flaky, tender and sweet destiny for them! 

Aren’t they a thing of beauty? Just the thing to welcome the coming early autumn season. After doing some research once we had brought the apples home, I discovered the apples were Alkemene and Golden Delicious which were perfect for pie since they are tart and firm! I’d been looking for an opportunity to make a pie ever since my husband bought me that great cookbook I shared with you in April.

So today I got to work making my pie. I’ve made pies before (cherry, which is my favorite), but almost forgot how incredibly fun it was! Especially fun was pinching the butter into the flour and salt mixture.

Few things feel better in the kitchen to me than that old-fashioned hands-on approach (I’m a firm believer that if you don’t make even a little mess on your hands and in the kitchen, you’re not enjoying yourself!) This is cultured butter, too, by the way. Interesting note: The traditional way to make that pie crust flaky is to use cultured butter, because its acidity is what breaks down the gluten in the flour.

Once the dough-making process was complete, with two balls of dough chilling in the refrigerator, each one of the star attractions of this pie was tenderly washed, delicately de-leaved, and carefully peeled…

 and keenly chopped…

I tossed the pieces together with sugar, flour, and cinnamon! While that perfect unity of ingredients sat together stewing happily in a big bowl, I shaped my pie crust, rolling it out into big circles (with a bit of hand patting for good measure, and a good deal of mess!)

Once the first circle of crust was place in the pie pan, it was time to bring it all together!

Mmm…apple pie. The top crust was put on, of course, and into the oven it went! What came out was what looked like pie perfection (really, please click ALL the following pictures to enlarge to see the full flaky detail!):

Well, my husband couldn’t wait much longer than I could to cut a few early-morning slices, but not before throwing on some powdered sugar for good measure. Once sliced and plated, I knew that I had achieved my best pie to date.

The flaky golden crust, the juicy spiced apples that retained their crisp texture just enough to still melt in your mouth. No lie, when I tasted this pie, I declared with no small amount of pride and quite loudly “This is the best pie I have ever eaten!”

No, you won’t find the recipe for this pie here. Why? Because I want you all go out and buy the amazing book The Lost Art of Real Cooking, by Rosanna Nafzinger and Ken Albala. Go and get it right now! For this is one delicious and surprisingly simple pie…baking recipes these days seem so scientific and standardized and complicated and statistical, but this book brings it all back to the poetic basics. Follow the recipe, but make this recipe your own…they encourage it in the book. I myself added extra butter and a splash of vanilla in the crust, and used confectioner’s sugar, and adjusted the baking time.

Whatever you do, write down your alterations, and enjoy your pie! It will be scrumptious! 

Blueberry Tree Cake

Hey. This cake looks familiar. A month and a half later, my life is out of moving boxes and it's time to show the world. Here is is: the blueberry tree cake. Complete with pine cones.

Blueberry seems like a funny cake flavor, doesn't it? That's what I thought too when my wonderful boyfriend said that's what he wanted for his birthday. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "What kind of cake would you like for your birthday? I'll make anything you want!"
Michael: "Hmm.... blueberry. With trees on it."

That, ladies and gentlemen, was what I had to work with. So I started brainstorming. How could I make a blueberry cake? It was during this brainstorm session that I remembered the strawberry cupcakes I had made last Valentine's day. Those were delicious! In theory I could easily swap the strawberries for blueberries and it would work. I was very confident about this.

Tell you what, it worked. Peek underneath the cut to see how I did it.

Pretty Peach Roses

I'm a little bummed. I went to my decorating class this last Tuesday night and made so many different flowers: daffodils, violets, lilies, and roses. The daffodils and lilies I was especially excited about because I just love those flowers. Lilies in particular are my favorite.

The flowers... didn't quite make it through the drive home.

Really, this is okay in the big picture. I wasn't going to use them for anything. I just wanted to share them on the blog and now I can't.

Instead, I have these cupcakes that I was going to post about along with the ill-fated flowers. I  made these a couple of weeks ago (see how behind I am on blogging?) and they were my very first attempt at making roses.

I felt pretty good about them, being my first try and all. The Wilton method has you do them in layers of 3-5-7, but sometimes I forgot to count so I ended up with extra petals on some of these. It just makes for fuller roses!
Roses are so simple to make. They always looks so lovely and, with practice, I think that anyone can do it.

These pictures don't do the blue roses any justice. In real life they were a wonderful and quirky aqua color. I mixed leaf green and sky blue and the result was just beautiful. For the peach I mixed rose pink and lemon yellow. I had never tried either combination before. I was pleased as punch.

The cupcakes themselves were a delicious, moist chocolate. I didn't bake from scratch, I used a box mix. To spice it up a little bit I used the same method I used for this bundt cake; although I didn't have enough Bailey's to make them Irish cream-chocolate. I'm sure that would have been tasty. Instead I used what I had and used replaced the rest of the liquid with water. The Bailey's was just enough to make the cakes super moist.

The frosting was a simple powdered sugar buttercream. I added vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract and oh. my. goodness. It makes such a difference.

I have a big cake project coming up in the next few days that I'm excited about and I can't wait to share it!

xoxo
Stephanie

Sweet Nostalgia

I found the very best thing ever when at the used bookstore the other day and I just had to share.

What I have here is a little piece of my childhood. This book is the same one my mom had when I was a kid. At a bargain price of $4.00, I can relive some of my favorite recipes. Also, I won't have to ask my mother to e-mail me the sugar cookie recipe anymore.

This is a treasure of the early 90's. Just look at the shining face in that picture. I know cookies make me smile like that. What I really like about this book is that every recipe is straight-forward and simple. If I could do these as a kid you bet I can do them now even better. Something fun I like is that there's always a picture to reference. I'm not saying every cook/baking book needs pictures, but when trying new things I'm grateful when my cookies look like the ones in the book. Otherwise I'm just guessing.

   

Look at these adorable chapters! There's even a few cake and pie recipes in there, too. Everything looks so delicious I can't really decide where to start. Any suggestions for me? Those bar cookies are looking pretty scrumptious, but so are all the others.

Oh, and speaking of adorable and delicious: take a look at my new cake server.

Cupcakes! Isn't this darling? I received it as a gift and I adore it. It's the cutest piece of kitchenware that I own, that's for sure.

I can't decide if the cupcake wearing a crown is my favorite, or if it's the one with the party hat. It's too difficult to make that choice.

xoxo
Stephanie

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons

These. Are. So. Good.

These cookie were an unexpected treat I made last week (yes, I'm behind on my blogging. Expect a lot of posts this week as I play catch up) due to the fact that I had shredded coconut in my house and I never have shredded coconut in my house. I'm thinking of making it a staple from now on.

If you like macaroons, I promise these are amazing. They may also be one of the the easiest cookies I've ever made. There are only four ingredients!

• 3 large egg whites
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 14 oz. package of sweetened flaked coconut

Looking at that picture you may be thinking "Hey. That doesn't look like a full package of coconut." It isn't, but there was still enough to make the cookies.

See, I had made some granola early in the week that needed just a little coconut and I had most of the bag left over to do something with. In case you're wondering, the granola needs work but it was edible.

The first step is to preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Then, in a large bowl whisk together the egg whites, sugar, and salt until frothy.

Yum. With a fork, or spatula like I used, mix in the coconut nut until moistened.

Pack the mixture into level, tablespoon amounts and drop onto baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes. I checked mine at 20 minutes and they were perfect. Know your oven.

Once they were cooled I made up some ganache; because I had some cream I wanted to use up and chocolate-dipped macaroons sounded amazing. Ganache is also ridiculously easy, but here's the recipe for anyone who would like it.

4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 cup heavy cream

First, chop up that chocolate as fine as you can. This will help it to melt more evenly. Place it in a heatproof bowl. Next, bring the cream to a boil over medium heat in a saucepan. Pour the cream over the chocolate and let it sit 10 minutes. Stir the mixture gently until fully incorporated. The ganache should appear glossy.

After I made that I dipped the cookies half-way into the ganache and placed on waxed paper. I did not get any good shots of this process, but you can imagine. Then they're all done!

I took these to work and they were gone within an hour; and that was even with the cupcakes that someone else had brought in. Those were not gone in an hour, but to be fair, there were more cupcakes than cookies.

xoxo

Stephanie

*recipe from Martha Stewart. Again.

Adventures in Gluten-Free Baking

I love having company over. It's a lot of fun and I make a lot of food. One of the greatest joys I get from baking is the happiness it brings to other people. Unfortunately, some of these people can't eat what most others can. Namely: gluten, eggs, or dairy.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a house guest last weekend that needed her own specialty cake. It was interesting for me to bake this way; very different. There were some challenges (guar gum is harder to find than the much more expensive xanthan gum) and uncertain moments (don't know how I feel about those fake butter sticks...) but overall, it turned out great.

 For the cake I used the same chocolate cake recipe from Martha Stewart that I used before in this post, but changed it up a bit.

Instead of regular butter I used Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks, almond milk instead of cows milk, applesauce and baking powder took the place of eggs, and I found some gluten free flour and guar gum. I'm glad I found the guar gum in bulk because I only needed a little bit.

Just a little note: I used 1/4 cup of applesauce plus 1 tsp of baking powder per egg. It worked really well.

Stepping out of the comfort zone....

When I inform people that I've never baked a pie I'm usually met with some form of "What?! How can that be? You have to bake a PIE!"

... well. Apparently I have to bake a pie. They're frightening though, didn't you know that? According to my sources the crust has to be perfect or else the whole. thing. is ruined. Oh, and they're really hard to make perfect. I'm excited already.

Okay, sarcasm aside. I was excited and I like challenges. I've been doing cakes a lot and last year it was cheesecakes so I may as well step it up and bake a pie. That's right, I fear no flaky crust. Bring it on.

First I need a recipe. I'll just head over to the trusty (and sometimes not so trusty) allrecipes.com and pick one out. Hmm... what has the most stars? We'll start with that one. It, of course, doesn't have a recipe for crust ("They're too hard! Buy a pre-made! Turn back now!"). I went with the classic Crisco recipe because, hey, think what you will but they've never let me down before.

After I baked it I already knew a couple of things I would change, but for the sake of telling the tale as it happened, I'll mention those at the end...

Crisco Classic Pie Crust

2 cups All Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup well-chilled Crisco®

4 to 8 tablespoons ice cold water

Apple Pie

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

8 Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced

Cinnamon*

*I was a little appalled to see an apple pie recipe without cinnamon. So I added some.... 

Simple pink roses

I'll just be giving a quick post today, but I have something more exciting coming up tomorrow! Promise.

I love cake decorating, but I've only just begun and haven't got the hang of anything particularly difficult yet. I haven't, for example, made successful flowers. I kind of made daises once but they weren't anything to brag about. I didn't even use them on the cake. Sad, but it's true.

While not giving up hope but still wanting to do something lovely I was super excited when I saw this rose cake over at "i am baker." So adorable! So easy! I wish I had thought of this.

Want to see how to do it?

Bananas and blueberries

Good morning. You know what I love about mornings? Breakfast. I've only recently discovered how much I really love this meal but now I cherish the mornings I have the time to cook up something delicious. Some days I want to put in less effort than others, though, so a quick muffin recipe does the job.

This recipe comes from another adorable book of mine, "Scones, Muffins, & Tea Cakes." It's a dainty little book with lovely recipes. I've only used a few recipes so far and the one I've used multiple times is the one for blueberry banana muffins.

  

Tasty inside and out. The fruit makes them healthy... right? Well, I can dream.

Blueberry Banana Muffins
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3/4 cup sugar
 2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (2 to 3 ripe bananas)
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries