Sweet Yet Sour

Caramel Peanut Topped Disappointment

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 | Wedding Cake Try-outs | 5 Comments

While flipping through Dorie Greenspan’s book, “Baking: From My Home to Yours” in search for another cake for the wedding cake try-outs, I happened upon, “Caramel Peanut Topped Brownie Cake”.  Sounds delicious, no?  You should see the pictures too! It looks delectable!

I decided to try it because it looked fun, not to mention yummy, and I have a fear of caramel that I’m trying to get over.  What better way to do that than to make some and throw it on top of a brownie cake?  And I thought it might be nice and casual for an informal wedding…

But, as you can see from the title of this post, in the end I was not happy with the results.  I think it was a combination of factors that induced my disappointment: A) I didn’t change the brownie cake recipe for the altitude because I wanted to see how it did without altering it, and B) I got a little over zealous on the caramel and may have laid it on a little too thick.

I’m sorry, but I won’t be sharing the recipe either, because frankly, for something that sounds like it’s just a brownie cake with caramel and peanuts on top, it was pretty complicated (the entire recipe took up two pages in Dorie’s rather large book).  Suffice to say there’s some melting of chocolate, butter and sugar, whipping of eggs, corn syrup, etc., some dry ingredients and voila! (Not really.) Here’s a nice picture of when I added the melted chocolate mixture in with the eggs:

Eggs and chocolate

After the cake baked, during which it unsurprisingly rose and then fell, I had to let it cool, flip it out of its spring form pan, clean the pan, remove the parchment paper from the bottom of the cake and then replace the pan around the cake.  See why this took two pages? And we haven’t even gotten to the tricky making of the caramel…

The caramel, which I watched like a nervous hen, did turn out nicely. And I learned a new trick, to test the color of the caramel to make sure it is a deep amber by putting some of it on a white plate.  After the caramel was done, I threw a cup of peanuts into the caramel, stirred them around, spooned them onto the cake and then dripped more caramel on top of all that.

Completed Caramel Peanut Topped Brownie Cake

It looked lovely and inviting, but it was 4 p.m. and there were kids to feed and put to bed. The picture above, by the way, was pretty close to the cake pictured in Dorie’s book, except hers seemed to have a lot more peanuts.

So we tried the cake about 8 p.m. after it had been sitting for several hours.  That’s when the real disappointment began.  The cake was not terribly moist and the thick layer of caramel had become pretty hard and chewy; it was very difficult to eat.  We actually decided that we didn’t want to eat any more of it and it sat for several days untouched until I gave up and threw it out.

Cake slice

For me, this one is not a wedding cake contender, although I do think I could make it better the next time by modifying the ingredients for altitude and not being so heavy-handed with the caramel.  It was difficult to make and took up most of an afternoon – which was fine since Mike was home – and didn’t seem to stand the test of time.  Although I may be able to make a cake on the day of the wedding, I’d rather not; I’d rather have the ability to make at least one of the cakes the day before and not have it disintegrate into a denture wearer’s nightmare…  Thoughts my readers?

3 Years of Playgroup

Sunday, March 27th, 2011 | Anna | 4 Comments

In March of 2008, when I was pregnant with Anna, Mike and I attended a birthing class at the hospital where I was to give birth.  For four weekends in a row we spent Saturday morning learning about what happens during labor, etc. from our wonderful teacher Mary.

The class was attended by 5 other couples whom we shared small talk and snack duty with for the duration of the class.  On the last day of the class the teacher asked if anyone wanted to organize a “reunion” for the class after all of the babies were born.  I volunteered (I do love to organize get togethers!) and got everyone’s email addresses and phone numbers.

A week later on April 5th Anna was born – so glad I scheduled the class when I did!  When Anna was about 5 months old I was able to organize a reunion with some, but not all, of the couples from our class. Our friends, Brooke and Ryan, whose twin daughters were born 4 days after Anna, were regrettably unable to come, and I never heard from the other two couples.  Anyway, we met at our house, noshed on some snacks and talked with our teacher about how everyone’s labor/birth went and how we had been doing so far.

Here is a picture from that day in August of 2008:

Reunion - August 2008

From the left are Bryan and Katie and their son Drew, Angie and Steve and their son Timothy and of course us, with Anna.

Ever since then we’ve been trying to get together regularly with the kids so that the kids can play and we can all get some adult time.  One of our original member families has moved (or at least disappeared off email), but there are three of us whom we have become great friends with; I consider them family at this point!  Mostly it’s us moms getting together with the kids these days, but every once in a while we can wrestle the guys to come on a weekend.

Anyway, recently I went through all of my pictures from playgroup to show what an amazing transition all of the kids have made in the three years that we have known them and their parents.

Twins and Anna - October 2008

After the reunion in August of 2008, the next time we got together was in October of 2008 and the twin girls were able to come, as pictured above.  There’s Keira on the left, her sister Morgan and then our Anna.

In December of that year we met again, without the twins unfortunately, and dressed the kids in their Christmas finery.  Here are Timothy and Anna from that day:

December 2008 - Timothy and Anna

We got together with Drew in February of 2008 (again without the twins) and I snapped a picture of the three of them standing up:

Anna, Drew and Timothy - Feb 2009

In March of 2009 we went to see the twins at their house and put all the kids on the couch for a candid shot of them eating the foam floor pieces:

Twins, Anna and Timothy March 2009

There is Morgan, Keira, Anna and Timothy all looking so big!

After that it was a while until we got together again (Angie and I were both pregnant with our second kids during this period).  But in June of 2010 we had playgroup at our house and everyone sat so nicely for lunch:

Twins, Anna and Timothy - June 2010

Ever since then we’ve been able to get together pretty regularly with the twins and Timothy and it’s been wonderful.  The kids are learning to play well with each other and us moms are having a great time too.

Morgan, Keira, Anna and Timothy - March 2011

Although I do feel badly for Timothy; he’s surrounded by girls and when he wants to play dress up, he has to use girl clothes.  Here he is in one of Morgan’s favorite sweaters and her boots:

Timothy in boots and sweater

And later that same day he tried on an Easter hat and some Barbie shoes:

Timothy in hat and shoes

Bad for you Timothy, but good for your parents and their “blackmail” file later…

The “next generation” of playgroup, Henry and Timothy’s little sister Kate, (born two weeks apart) are working on learning how to play together as well:

Playgroup - next gen

And last but not least, here are all the kids making an absolute mess of Henry’s birthday cake.  Oh the good times we have had and will continue to have!

Kids on Henry's birthday

Cake, Cake and More Cake

Thursday, March 24th, 2011 | Wedding Cake Try-outs | 5 Comments

A beloved friend who is getting married in June of 2012 has asked me to make a few cakes for her informal wedding.   The wedding is going to be held in her parent’s backyard, the groom will be wearing his best jeans, and her Aunt and cousins are making the food.  Sounds lovely to me!

It’s an honor really and I am going to enjoy making cakes for her.  So far, she hasn’t been specific about what she wants, just not the “traditional” wedding cake. She has been very clear about staying away from the highly decorated high layer cake with man and woman on top…  Since we all know I’m no cake decorator, that won’t be a problem, but I do want to make a few nice cakes.  I’d like to have a nice mix of things so that people who are chocolate people can get some chocolate and people who don’t like chocolate (despite having something seriously wrong with them!) can have an alternative.

In preparation for the wedding, and since I have more than a year before my deadline, I’m going to start a new blog series called “The Wedding Cake Try-Outs”.  I’ll be making a different kind of cake as often as I can, documenting the process and then writing a blog post about the cake.  I’m sorry that most of my readers are too far away to do tastings as well – but I do want you all to express your views about whether or not a specific cake is something you would like to have at an informal wedding.

I’ve decided to rely heavily on a book I received a long time ago for Christmas and have yet to touch, Dorie Greenspan’s, “Baking: From My Home to Yours”.  I adore Dorie, she’s always on NPR and seems like my kind of cook; sometimes she follows the recipe and sometimes she just throws stuff into a bowl and prays. And honestly, there are some beautiful looking cakes in the book that have been tempting me for a while.

My friend has a favorite of my cakes that I will also be making and putting up for a vote; it’s a layer cake of chocolate sourdough cake, a layer of chocolate mousse that I add gelatin too to stiffen it enough for it to be molded into a cake layer, either fruit or whipping cream in between the layers and a frosting of chocolate ganache.

But I have plenty of time for that, so I began with a recipe from Dorie’s book, “Nutty, Chocolaty, Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake”.  I picked this cake almost entirely on the basis that I had all of the ingredients and also that I thought I could get it done during the 1 hour I have to myself while both kids nap in the afternoon.

Dorie Greenspan’s “Nutty, Chocolaty, Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake”

For the swirl:

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped or 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

1/3 cup plump, moist raisins (dark or golden) or dried currants

2 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

pinch of nutmeg

pinch of salt

For the cake:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups sugar

grated zest of 1 orange

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 large eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

I made the following modifications to the above ingredients: I used pecans not walnuts (I’m allergic) and I reduced the sugar in the cake to 1 1/2 cups for the altitude.  (High altitude cooking generally requires a reduction in the moisture in cake recipes, either by reducing the sugar, eggs or other liquids, otherwise cakes will, as I have learned countless times, sink in the middle. Granted, a bundt cake sinking in the middle isn’t really possible, but it will create a nice cavern in the center of the ring.)  Also, I didn’t have an orange, so I used some of my pure orange oil instead, about 1 tsp.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a bundt pan and then dust with flour, shaking out the excess flour.

Mix all of the swirl ingredients together in a bowl and set aside. (It looks delicious all by itself!)

The cake filling

Whisk all of the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.  Add the sugar and zest to a mixing bowl (I used my electric mixer) and rub them together until the sugar is fragrant.  With the paddle attachment beat on medium speed for 4 minutes.  Add eggs one at a time, beat for one minute after adding each one and then add the vanilla.  Slow the mixer down to low speed and add in the sour cream.  Add in the dry ingredients until they are incorporated into the batter.

Put 1/3 of the batter into the bundt pan and then evenly sprinkle in half of the filling.

Adding in the filling

Then add the remainder of the batter to the pan.  Make an indentation in the center of the ring of batter with the back of the spoon and then add in the remaining filling in the indentation.  Fold in the batter on the sides of the indentation.  (This is really tricky and I didn’t get it right; the batter is thick and it was terribly difficult to make an indentation, let alone fold it over the filling.)

Bake for 60-65 minutes, or as Dorie instructs “until a thin knife inserted deep into the center the cake comes out clean.”  Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes before un-molding it from the pan.   Dorie suggests sprinkling the cake with powdered sugar once it cools, but I’m not a fan of that.   Next time I might make a glaze with some orange juice, powdered sugar and little melted butter, but it was a beautiful cake without anything at all on top:

Finished Cake

I think that next time I will put less batter in before the initial filling addition, since the filling swirl seemed to be mostly at the bottom of the cake; I would like it a little more in the middle.  Also, I think next time I will reduce the amount of sugar in the filling mix itself.  With the nuts, raisins and chocolate chunks a good portion of the sugar sank to the bottom of the bowl and seemed like a waste.

Slice of cake

I have to admit, I love this cake and will be making it again, whether or not I make it for the wedding.  The smell of the orange, chocolate and cake that filled the house was wonderful and the taste of the cake was even better.  Mike didn’t feel that the raisins were necessary in the filling, although he sure loved the cake and ate a lot of it, but I liked the contrast in the filling between the crunchy nuts, melted chocolate and soft raisins.

For me, this is a contender for the wedding because it is pretty simple – I got it done while the kids napped – and yet there are wonderful complex flavors.  If any of you want to come over and try some, just let me know and I can whip up another one lickety-split!

Henry Turns 1

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 | Henry | 2 Comments

As March 21st approached I kept having to remind myself that Henry would be turning 1.  It does seem like just yesterday that I met him at the hospital at 4:09 a.m.

But then, it has also been a long year of learning and a lot of growth on everyone’s part.  Henry has just plain grown, and Mike and I have grown as parents, mostly due to having to figure out how to handle two kids.

The change in Henry has been most dramatic.  Here he is only a few days old:

Henry - a few days old

And here is Henry just a few days ago, looking so much older:

Henry in March of 2011

It always seems like the first few months of a child’s life go so slowly.  You wait and wait for them to roll over (the first big baby milestone) and then it begins to speed up so quickly, going from them rolling, to crawling, to pulling-up to stand, etc.  Henry is now working on walking on his own.  He is quite capable of cruising around the furniture and does great at us holding on to one of his hands and him walking alongside with us – it’s slow, but it’s walking!  I feel sure that quite soon Henry will be walking by himself (and then quickly after that running!)

Henry is also working on his first few words – “Da Da” was of course the first one, which he says with glee every time he sees Mike and he’s also working on “Mama”, “all done”, and “cracker”.  We’ve been teaching Henry a few signs for things and he does “All Done” and “Milk” quite well.  “Water” and “more” are just around the corner as well…

On March 5th we spotted Henry’s first tooth and he seems to be working on another few these days.  He’s not eating as well as I would like and he’s getting me up at least twice a night – so I better see some teeth soon!

For his birthday we had a little mini-party with playgroup.  Our friend Brooke brought her two twin girls who are only a few days younger than Anna and our friend Angie brought her son Timothy, who is a month younger than the girls.  We played, ate lunch and then dug into some birthday cupcakes.  I had made my mother’s chocolate sourdough cake recipe and covered each cupcake with chocolate ganache and sprinkles…

It was Henry’s first cupcake so when I gave it to him, he sort of marveled at it, as if to say, “What do I do with this?”:

Henry marveling at his cupcake

And then he decided (as he does with most things) to put it in his mouth and see what happened:

Henry digging in

In the end he didn’t actual eat much of it, but instead destroyed it and spread it all over his tray:

Henry and the cupcake remains

What you can’t see here is the amount of cupcake buried in his shirt, on the floor by his high chair and the great swath of cupcake crumbs under the table where the older kids were eating.  All in all it was a good birthday for Henry, he got some new toys, books and clothes and his first chocolate cupcake.  I don’t think it will be his last cupcake either, especially in our house!

Happy 1 year birthday my beloved son!

A Hard Day’s Night

Saturday, March 12th, 2011 | Updates | 6 Comments

It’s been ages since I’ve posted!  Every time that I think about posting I am overwhelmed by the amount of things that have happened that I need to write about.  And then I fear that if I do get going on a post it will be this long drivel that will bore everyone within two paragraphs… So instead I haven’t blogged at all!

I have much to say about Henry and Anna, but I’ll save it for a later post when I have some pictures of the cuties to go with the post.

Today I’ll just write a brief update on Mike and his job situation.  The first week of May last year Mike was hired on contract with a large mobile phone company after leaving his previous job due to pay and benefit cuts.  The contract job sounded great at the time, it was a shorter commute, more pay and Mike was going to be doing lots of new software development, which he loves.

Within a few weeks our collective mood about the new job had changed; Mike was moved to a team with no new development and we were feeling the pain of higher income, but having to pay for our own health, dental and life insurance.  And then after a few months it became clear that the company that Mike was working for was not above making it’s contractors virtual slaves.  Mike has worked many long hours, weekends, nights, been on conference calls at 2 a.m., etc.  We’ve missed having him around and it’s been a strain on our family to be without him so much.

So a few weeks ago Mike began a job search in earnest and along the way got in touch with a recruiter.  The recruiter forwarded his resume on to a few positions, including one at my former employer (where I worked from 2000-2005), a large cable company.  An interview was scheduled and while Mike was awaiting the interview he contacted one of our friends and my former co-worker about the people with whom he was interviewing.  My beloved friend Pete didn’t know the people, but did forward Mike resume on to Pete’s employer, since they were also looking for software developers.  Long story short, after two interviews and a few nail-biting days, Mike has an offer letter in hand and will be starting his new job on March 28th!

If ever there was a work week that made us appreciate the new job (which promises more of a work/life balance), then this was it.  Mike was on a conference call at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, was at work on Sunday at 7:30 a.m. (and worked a full day) and then was at work all this week at 6 a.m., sometimes working 12+ hour days.

The new job will be 10 minutes away (he’s even working in my old building!), is a full-time salaried position and has great benefits.  Pete even reports that there is another homebrewer in the office!  Mike is really looking forward to starting his new job (and ending his current hellish one) and Anna, Henry and I are looking forward to seeing Mike for dinner, weekends and sometimes even lunch.  Hooray!

What Our Family is Reading…

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 | Anna, Books, Henry | 4 Comments

I’m trying to be a little better about posting regularly; I have two friends who are partaking in Blog365 in which they post everyday and I’m a little jealous.  Let’s face it though, I can’t even get a shower every day with two kids, so it seems unlikely that I will be able to blog everyday!  But, I thought it might be fun to do a post about what all of the members of our family are reading these days.

As for me, I have just finished Run, by Ann Patchett.

This is my third Ann Patchett and I am back to loving her after reading Run.  I read Bel Canto a long time ago and loved it so much I recommended it to everyone I knew.  But then I read The Magician’s Assistant and was disappointed that I was not as enthralled with the story or the characters as I was with Bel Canto.   Run has wonderfully developed characters; you love them all, despite their faults, and this was again one of those books that I did not want to put down.  The book does a great job examining family, adoption and race.  I recommend to everyone I know that they should read Run.

For my next book I’m reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; I’ll let you know what I think!

Mike is currently engrossed, but not done with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

I don’t have a final review from him, but he can’t seem to put it down and I’ve already bought him the second in the series, Catching Fire.  On his bedside table Mike also has Brew Like A Monk, The Gunslinger (Dark Tower I), Under the Dome (both by Stephen King), and Michael Chabon’s Fatherhood for Amateurs.

We generally read Anna three stories at naptime and bedtime and being a toddler, she sometimes gets stuck in a rut and likes certain books repeated.  For a long time I got to read The Wheels on the Bus, Curious George Goes to a Costume Party and The Little Red Caboose over and over and over.  Another lovely tradition is reserved for the times when her daddy puts Anna to bed; Mike makes up little stories about a little girl name Emma (who is basically Anna) who goes on little adventures.  Emma goes to the park, the ocean, on helicopter rides, etc. and Anna truly adores her Emma stories.

Lately her favorites are: Bedtime for Francis by Russell Hoban,

I Like You More Than Elephants, by Norm Byers and Good Work Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish.

I grew up with the Francis series and with Amelia Bedelia so it is lovely to be reading these books to my own daughter.  The Francis series are about a little girl badger who is pretty much like every little girl in the world.  Bedtime for Francis is about Francis finding every little excuse to avoid going to bed: ” ‘There is a giant in my room.” said Francis, “May I watch television?’ ”

I Like You More Than Elephants is a book that Anna came home from school with and is truly adorable: “I like you more than elephants, they don’t fit in the house…I like you more than timber wolves, they tried to eat my mouse!”

And then there is the always lovable Amelia Bedelia series; Amelia Bedelia is an inane housekeeper who takes all of her instructions literally.  When asked to “Make a sponge cake.” she makes cake batter, cuts a sponge into pieces and stirs it in!  When told that her employers would like a “chicken dinner”, she serves them cracked corn since, “That’s what chickens eat for dinner.”

As for Henry, we are still at work on a consistent bedtime routine, so the books that I read to him are the same every time he goes to bed or nap.  I did this with Anna, always reading Eric Carle’s, The Very Hungry Caterpillar last.  That way, Anna knew, since she wasn’t able to understand what I was telling her, that it was bedtime.  We do the same things in the same order every time and it makes bed time a lot easier for babies.  Currently we are reading You and Me Baby by Lynn Reiser:

It’s full of color photographs of real babies, mommies and daddies.  It’s great for babies and toddlers, since babies like to look at other babies – especially themselves in the mirror – but other babies will do just fine.  As for Henry, he loves to reach out and touch the pictures of the babies and then help me turn the page.  It’s not high literature, “Hey baby! Look at you, looking at me!” and Mike can’t stand reading it, but the simple language and pictures are enough to make small babies happy.

And to finish up right before the light goes off and I kiss him good night, Henry listens intently (but yawns) to Time for Bed by Mem Fox and Jane Dyer.

This is a beautifully illustrated book that is about all sorts of parents putting their little ones to bed. I actually have it memorized so that if Henry is especially sleepy I can “read” it to him in the dark, “Time for bed little goose, little goose, the stars are out and on the loose.”  Cuddled on my lap in his fleece sleeper with feet I can feel Henry relax, see him yawn and rub his eyes and I can tell he knows that it’s time for bed…

The Kids are Alright

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 | Anna, Henry, Updates | 2 Comments

Update post… yay!

As usual, it’s been a while and mostly what has been missed is Henry’s development (more about that later).  But there’s plenty to talk about with regards to all of us – here goes!

For Thanksgiving we went to my sister’s for dinner and before we ate we took a few family pictures.  This is what happens when you put a four-year-old and a two-year-old in charge of holding an 8-month-old:

All the kids

Anna had an adorable dress on that day and I tried to capture how cute she looked, but as usual, she wasn’t much into posing for me:

Anna in her party dress

These days Anna is going to one class, another pre-pre-school class that is one day a week, but lasts from 9 -11:30.  For her first class last week she wore underwear, came home dry and apparently peed on the potty at school.  This is great news, since we have been duking it out with her over potty-training.  Anna was doing great with it for a while, but then decided that the baby was getting more attention and decided for several weeks, “I want to be a baby” and wanted to wear diapers.  We just had to grit our teeth through that stage (cross our fingers that it’s over) and we seem to be onto a stage where she’s working pretty hard at getting this potty-training thing right.  She even got out of the bath the other day to pee (and then promptly got back in all by herself).

Anna is in a “I’ll help you” stage that is pretty cute.  She decided the other day that she wanted to help her Daddy, who was programming on his computer on the couch:

Anna helping Mike

Mike decided that this was the best place for her, so that he could get some actual work done.

And she also likes to help me bake.  The other day when I was kneading bread dough she wanted to help and was even willing to don an apron to do so.  Granted, I discovered that her favorite part of helping me knead is to put her hand under the dough and have me squish the dough onto her hand:

Anna helping with kneading

Perhaps someday she’ll be a little more helpful…

Anna’s favorite toys that she got for Christmas are her tea set (straight from The Empress in Victoria, B.C.), her playdough set, and her new baby doll that can take baths with her and whom she has named, “Jessie” after the cowgirl in the Toy Story movies.  Jessie sleeps with her, goes practically everywhere with her and even sometimes has to be fed some of Henry’s baby food.  My favorite thing that she says these days is something she says to me when I’m trying to leave her room at bedtime, “I’m just talking to you!”

And finally, I took Anna to get her haircut the other day and had them cut her hair into a bob to make her thin hair look a little more plentiful.  We think it looks pretty adorable:

Anna in her new bob haircut

Henry is in that baby stage where changes come frequently.  Since my last post at the end of September (when Henry turned 6 months old) he has gone from sitting up, to commando crawling, to pulling up to stand, to cruising around from piece of furniture to furniture.  He’s still incredibly adorable though – that hasn’t changed!

Henry on Christmas

Henry just had his 9-month check-up on Dec. 29th (yay! no shots!).  He weighed 17.5 lbs and is 28 inches long.  He’s 5th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for height.  Since he’s apparently so, “small” our doctor advised the same thing that she did when Anna was his age, slapping butter, olive oil, cheese and cream into all of his foods.  I’m thinking about switching doctors…

Henry’s favorite toy is anything that his sister will let him play with – which isn’t much – and his favorite activity these days is crawling around and finding something to pull himself up to standing upon.  He’s pretty good at it, but every once in a while, there’s a mishap and he has the bruises to prove it.  Up next, walking!

Henry’s other favorite activity is unfortunately bugging poor Cash.  Cash has never been a big fan of babies, not that he knew much about them until Anna came along, and he’s definitely not a fan of them in his space.  He is however, an easy dog to train; he growled at Henry just one time, was spoken to harshly, and has since backed down.  Case in point:

Henry and Cash

Here is Cash quite content to have Henry on his bed and chewing on his rawhide toy.  Anyone who says that Greyhounds are not docile dogs hasn’t really met one!

As a side note, our back-up babysitter is in Vet Tech school and told me that the school adopts a certain number of Greyhounds every year as they come off the track.  These Greyhounds spend a year in the school being the “test dog”, for the students to practice examining, taking blood, etc., and then are apparently adopted out.  It makes me a little sad to know this, because it can’t be that great going from the track to being a student practice dog, but on the other hand, these are some of the most docile dogs that have ever walked the earth.  I hope that they find great homes eventually – ours has!

Mike has been working, working, working and sometimes taking a break for racquetball and beer brewing.  Today, for example he arose at 3:30 a.m. to be on a phone call for work at 4 a.m.  Yuck!  Anyone who knows of a nice PHP or ColdFusion job with regular hours, good pay and the ability to work from home frequently, email me!

Anyway, he does love beer, learning about it, tasting it, pairing it and especially brewing beer.  He spend this last weekend at the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival with his friends Nate and Scott.  As usual they had a great time, learned a great deal and came home exhausted (and maybe a little hungover) the next day.  Mike is always experimenting with trying out new craft beers and with trying to find good food to pair with beers.  We attended a beer pairing dinner in November and were fascinated to find the different pairings that a professional chef came up with – including a Cascadian dark I.P.A that was paired with a smoked chicken ravioli (that was yummy!).  I have to brag that Mike’s favorite beer pairing lately is my hazelnut fudge with a New Belgium’s Frambozen Raspberry Brown Ale.

Here is Mike and Henry on a recent brew day, checking out the beer process:

Mike and Henry on brew day

That particular brew day Mike was making his 16th batch of beer, a Belgian Blonde that he will be calling “Anna’s Ale”.  Henry, by the way, had his own batch of Amber Ale made around the time of his birth…

Here is Mike showing off the beauty and clarity of his beer after it was brewed:

Brew Day results

The beer has since been bottled and will be ready for tasting near the end of this month.

As for me, I am, as usual, trying hard to keep up with the two kids.  It’s rare that I have a moment to myself, and generally that’s during nap time, so I either clean, read or bake.  As can be seen from the previous post, I tried painting the kitchen during naps, with little success, but finally we were able to finish with the help of our friends Angie and Steve who had 4 kids on their hands for 4 hours! They’re great, but crazy!  The kitchen is now a lovely “Apple Crisp” color (that’s the official Behr name) and I’m loving the color.

When I do have time to bake, I have been trying to beauty up my results, I’m usually sort of a slob, figuring that taste will win out over appearance.  Mike requested a carrot cake a few weeks ago and I went so far as to toast the coconut that I put on top of the cream cheese frosting.  I think it looks pretty good:

Carrot Cake

So that’s pretty much it from here, we’re good, and the kids are alright (anyone else a Who fan?)  We hope you are too!

Adventures in Bagel Making

Thursday, January 6th, 2011 | Cooking | 3 Comments

This month I got to choose the baking challenge on Have the Cake.  As much as I love all the sweet stuff, I thought I would try more of a straight “baking” challenge and offer up bagels as this month’s contest.

Before attempting this project however, I needed to finish my other project in the kitchen – painting.  Before Christmas I started painting the kitchen, suffering from a brief memory lapse that allowed me to think that with a toddler and a 9-month-old I would be able to find the time to complete the painting before Christmas.  Thanks to some wonderful friends who took the kids for a few hours this weekend, we finally completed the painting and here is the finished product:

New Kitchen Color

And now on to bagels!

The bagel recipe that I used was one clipped from an old Sunset magazine of my mother’s.  It’s a recipe for Asiago bagels, but since I didn’t have Asiago (and don’t really like Asiago bagels) I made onion bagels and Everything bagels with the basic bagel recipe.

Onion/Everything Bagels (Makes 12 bagels)

2 packages active dry yeast

3 Tblsp. sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

3 Tblsp. dehydrated onion (optional)

About 6 cups all-purpose flour

1 large egg yolk

1. Combine yeast and 2 cups of warm water in a large mixing bowl; let stand 5 minutes until the yeast has bloomed.  Mix in the sugar, onion, salt, and 5 1/2 cups of the flour until the dough forms a sticky ball.

2. Spread 1/2 cup of flour on a board and knead the flour into the dough.  Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky, adding flour if necessary.

3. Put the dough into a warmed and oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a cloth towel.  (To warm the bowl swish hot water around the bowl, dry off the excess and then oil the bowl.) Allow the dough to rise until doubled in size (about 40 minutes).

4. Once the dough has risen, knead the dough briefly on a floured board and then divide into 12 equal portions.  Form each piece into a ball and then while holding the ball in both hands use your thumbs to form a hole in the center of the ball.   Keeping a thumb in the center, work around the bagel to make it smooth and evenly thick.

5. Allow the bagels to rise on a floured board, covered, for about 10 minutes.

6. Meanwhile, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.

7. Once the bagels have risen, drop them into the boiling water and boil until the bagels are spongy, but firm, 3 to 5 minutes.

8. Remove the bagels from the water with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on a towel or board.  Once drained, put the bagels on greased baking sheets.

9. Beat the egg yolk with 1 Tblsp water and brush over the bagels.  Add more onions for onion bagels and for “Everything” bagels, sprinkle with onion, salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds and anything else you would like!

10. Bake the bagels in a 375 degree oven until browned, 30-35 minutes, and then cool on racks.

The dough itself was easy to make and I got it done quickly while the baby was napping and Anna was at her pre-pre-school class.

I do love kneading bread dough – there’s something really relaxing about the folding and pushing of the soft dough under my hands.  It was especially lovely kneading the dough since the baby was quiet, Anna was gone and I was listening to the “Garden State” soundtrack.  I then let it rise in my warmed, oiled bowl:

Bagel dough

Once I had formed the bagels (I really did not get the “12 equal portions” thing right!) and they had risen, I plopped them into the boiling water.

Boiling bagels

Fair warning here – I discovered that bagels get MUCH larger while they are boiling – I ended up with some really huge bagels!

After they were drained I basted the bagels with the egg wash and since I was using a paintbrush Anna, who was back from class by then, had to help with the basting:

Anna basting bagels

She also had a great time helping me sprinkle all of the toppings onto the bagels…

While I was trying to boil, baste and then bake the bagels I had stupidly timed it to coincide with lunch time.  So, while I was boiling bagels I was trying to also feed Henry his baby cereal and make Anna’s lunch.  It became a little hectic and I accidentally left Henry with the cereal spoon within reach.  After sliming himself with the cereal from the spoon he got tired and starting pulling at his hair, resulting in this:

Henry disaster

And yes, there was a bath for the small boy after the bagels were done…

But the chaos was well worth it as the bagels turned out beautifully!

Finished bagels

They were yummy and chewy; just what I was hoping for in my bagel making adventure!

You Had Me at “Short”

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

Any baking project with the word, “short” in it appeals to me since I have a 9 month-old and a two-year old, so when this month’s Have the Cake baking challenge turned out to be shortbread, I knew I could come through!

I even exceeded myself and made two different kinds! Both shortbread versions are thanks to my handy, “Short & Sweet” book by Melanie Barnard (I love this book!).

I made both Cranberry-Orange Shortbread and Honey Nut Shortbread. Both begin with the same wonderful ingredient:

Ah! Butter!

For the Cranberry-Orange Shortbread I used:

Cranberries and Orange Peel

8 Tblsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 Tblsp. grated orange peel

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degress.  Place the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and melt.  Remove the pan from the heat stir in the orange peel, cranberries and powdered sugar.  Then stir in the flour making a stiff dough.  Spread the dough into an ungreased 8 x 8 square pan and bake until the shortbread is golden brown at the edges, about 20 minutes.  After it cools cut into squares, cool again and then remove from the pan.

These were lovely, but I only had dried orange peel around, and they would have been better with fresh orange peel.

Cranberry-Orange Shortbread

The Honey Nut Shortbread began with the same buttery main ingredient, along with these:

Honey, Nuts and Vanilla

(Our lovely babysitter read my Christmas list on the refrigerator and provided me with the Mexican Vanilla extract I wanted, complete with sombrero and serape!)

For the Honey Nut Shortbread use:

8 Tblsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1/4 cup honey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup coarsely chopped salted mixed nuts

1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Again, preheat the oven to 350 and set out an ungreased 8 x 8 square pan.  Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and when melted remove from the stove.  Add in the honey, vanilla, and nuts.  Then stir in the flour to make the dough stiff.  Spread in the pan and bake until golden and firm at the edges, about 22-25 minutes.  Cool again before cutting and then cool further before removing these from the pan.

The Honey Nut Shortbreads were easy and beautiful,

Honey Nut Shortbread

but I think Cranberry-Orange ones were my favorite.

Either way, I loved this challenge because it was easy, used ingredients I have around the house anyway and allowed me to make it and quickly get back to these guys:

Henry and Anna

Gotta love that!

Nellie’s Sourdough Pretzels

Friday, September 24th, 2010 | Cooking | 2 Comments

I was intrigued by this month’s Have the Cake challenge, pretzels, as chosen by Rena, and so I felt that I should definitely try to make the time to participate.  It is rare that I have the time to bake, (as shown by how little I post on HTC) as I really need both of the kids to be napping to get any work done.  Since my sourdough start should be used and “fed” every ten days and I had last touched the stuff oh, three weeks ago, I searched high and low for a sourdough pretzel recipe – two birds, one stone!  It was a little difficult, but I finally found one on Group Recipes.

As a side note, during my recipe search I found several sourdough bakers who have named their sourdough, which I find, well, a little odd.  Granted, I do think of it as a sort of pet that lives in my refrigerator.   My sourdough pet demands flour and milk and gets nasty if I ignore it, but I never thought of naming the stuff!  In the interest of perhaps treating the start better if I do name it, the start has now been named “Nellie”.  Nellie was my great-grandmother who grew up in San Francisco and who passed the start down to my mother.  So, Nellie, would you like to make some pretzels?

Twenty-four hours before I was going to make the pretzels I got Nellie out of the fridge and took 1 cup out and added a half a cup each of milk and flour.  Anna wanted to help – she’s an excellent stirrer – so here she is mixing the start and getting it ready to proof:

Anna stirring the start

Twenty-four hours later I scuttled Anna off to the drop-off daycare place (she cries if I turn on my Kitchen-Aid mixer), put Henry down for nap and began to make the pretzels.

Sourdough Pretzels:

1 1/2 cups sourdough start

1 cup hot water

3 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons butter (the baker did not specify, but I assumed unsalted butter, and then not paying attention I accidentally added 3 Tablespoons instead of 2 – worked out in the end!)

2 tsp salt

@ 5 1/2 cups flour

I warmed up about 3 cups of hot water and then put 1 cup of water, the sugar, butter and salt into a bowl and mixed them.  When that was cooled to lukewarm I used the remaining hot water to warm up my mixing bowl and then put the proofed start and the water/butter stuff in the bowl and mixed them.  I then added flour a 1/2 cup at a time until the dough balled up and came away from the sides of the bowl – which ended up being about 4 cups of flour.

After that, I put the dough down on my lightly floured pastry board.  My beloved husband surprised me a few weeks ago and bought me the best pastry board! It’s a lovely wood board with a lip to hold it on the counter and a lip to keep the dough from rolling off the top, rulers on the side and top and circles for different diameters of crusts. Thanks honey! Anyway, here is the dough on the new board after I kneaded it and added probably another 3/4 cup of flour:

Pretzel dough

I kneaded it until it became smooth and not sticky, “like a baby’s bottom”, as my mother used to say, and since I change a lot of diapers, I know exactly what that feels like…

I put the dough into a greased bowl, rolled it around to coat it and let it rise for 2 hours. At that point I put a pot on the stove and began boiling water while I took egg sized pieces of dough and rolled and twisted them into pretzels.  Once they were done and the water was boiling I put a few pretzels into the water at a time until they rose to the surface and then put them on a baking sheet.  (Note for next time – the recipe does not say to put them on a greased baking sheet and I won’t be making that mistake again – grease that sheet!)  The recipe doesn’t say this, but I did it anyway; I beat an egg with a little water and then brushed that on each pretzel before I generously sprinkled them with Kosher salt.

During this whole process, while I was rolling and baking the pretzels, Henry sat on the couch and moaned… Poor thing had his 6 month birthday/check-up that day and was not doing well with the four shots he had received at the doctor’s office.  See, he looks pitiful doesn’t he?

Henry - looking pitiful

I popped the pretzels into my preheated 425 degree oven and baked them for what ended up being 19 minutes.  My husband ate 4 of them before they had a chance to cool – and said something in between bites about, “You could make me a batch of these every week!”  Okay then – I think we did good Nellie!

Here’s a picture that I took of the finished pretzels before they were eaten:

Finished Pretzels

They were very yummy!