A Year of Baking

It's been a hectic year full of fun, travel, work, play and yet still lots of baking in between. I just haven't taken the extra time to catalog much of it here. I have enjoyed trying all kinds of fun recipes - usually to make something sweet for dessert when we have friends over and sometimes just to try something new.

This past year, I tackled making croissant dough again, piping beautiful pillowy meringue on tarts, decorating holiday cookies with royal icing and a few things in between. Nothing was perfect, but all of it was fun. It was a way to exercise some creative energy, focus on doing something that made me happy and feel good about sharing something with others to enjoy. I often have wondered why I spend hours pouring myself into baking projects in my very little down time, but my sister recently shared this Huff Post article with me where psychologists explain the benefits of baking for other people. It's so true and after what I've been through in life and to help focus on something beyond the daily stresses of work life, baking has been it for me.

I made a few banoffee pies, including this one with the buttery Digestive biscuit crust and chocolate flakes sprinkled on top. 

I love baking with berries and made this blackberry clafouti for dessert one evening. 

We always have this homemade pecan, coconut and dried cherry granola in the house - whether it's to snack on or top our yogurt for breakfast. 

I've always loved lava cakes and tried a new recipe a few times for these molten chocolate cakes. 

In the summer when we were not up for a heavy chocolate dessert, we made homemade ice cream topped with lemon curd, blackberries and homemade candied pistachios. 

In the autumn after we picked apples, I made this tarte aux pommes for a dinner party. 

With my mum from England, I like trying different kinds of scones, so I made these two kinds of fruit scones and several batches of cinnamon chip scones (not pictured). 

 I love making cakes of all kinds for people's birthdays (and even my dog's birthday) I made a few more cakes after the unicorn this past year.  

This was a pumpkin cake with cinnamon buttercream frosting. 

Our dog, Tootsie, turned 13 and reaching that age deserved a two tier cake!

I love sticky toffee pudding and cake and made this amazing sticky toffee cake with caramel sauce and sea salt. 

I have made my own croissant dough before, but this time I tried making pain au chocolat.  Not perfect, but all my work and they sure still tasted good. 

We had extra lemon curd so I made some lemon curd tarts with meringue piped on top. I have made meringue before, but experimented with getting it the right consistency and piping it in different patterns on the tarts.

 We had our annual homemade cinnamon rolls at Thanksgiving and Christmas this year - all cozy by the fire. 

 I also did lots of fireside cookie decorating at the holidays including these snowflakes, ginger people and ornaments with royal icing.  

I had some white chocolate to use and tried these white chocolate blondies with raspberries and cream. 

I took an amazing puff pastry class and made this puff pastry pear tart with caramel sauce. We also made cheese straws and I used the puff pastry I brought home to make chicken pot pie topped with puff pastry. 

There's a lot more baking in store for 2019. I look forward to learning lots more and trying new projects. 

Nutella Pop Tarts

While I'm happy to say that Miss A has never had an actual packaged Pop Tart, she has enjoyed a yummy homemade one. Thanks to Pinterest, I got the idea to make these and thought it would be a fun treat for the kids.  

After making the pastry, they were really quite easy. You just have to be a bit careful putting the pieces of pastry together so they don't tear. 

After you roll out the pastry, you cut out the rectangles, place a dollop of Nutella on each square and then transfer a second square to the top. 

I sealed the edges with a little egg and the tines of a fork, brushed them with an egg wash and sprinkles cinnamon and sugar on top. 

While they weren't perfect, they turned out nicely for a first try and were oh so yummy. 

A grown up pop tart for breakfast. Yes, please. 

Jam Tarts

Jam tarts are one of the easiest treats to make and the absolute best use of leftover pastry. I made the peach and blackberry tart and made several of these with the extra pastry trimmings after making the tart crust.

Just combine your leftover pastry, roll it out and cut out several pieces of pastry with a large fluted biscuit cutter.  I have a special jam tart pan from England, but you could also make them as mini tarts, or place the pastry in the bottom of a muffin tin.

Grease the pan with Pam or butter, place the pastry rounds in the pan and fill them with a teaspoon of nice jam or preserves. I usually used homemade grape or strawberry jam, but haven't made any since I moved, so I settled for some nice organic jam from the market.  I bake them for around 10 minutes at 375 degrees or until the jam is bubbly and the pastry starts to brown slightly.

They are amazing warm from the oven with a cold glass of milk or a teatime treat!

Punk Rock Pastry

My culinary school friend and I went to a Cupcake Business Class in Chicago at the Bleeding Heart Bakery this past weekend.  Neither of us are truly interested in opening a cupcake bakery, but we're in culinary school, long to be pastry chefs and have both considered opening up a place of our own down the road.  It was a fun and informal class to hear about the background and experiences of two pastry chefs/bakery owners and it was eye opening to hear about their trials and most of all the time commitment.  The class was offered along with the blog, Cupcakes Take the Cake.  I loved hearing about Michelle Garcia's background and future plans and felt like we were amongst pastry chef celebrity since she's a contracted Food Network chef for the cake challenges. 

Michelle's bakery, Bleeding Heart, is a very unique place unlike any bakery or pastry shop I've ever seen.  It's so very non-traditional and I'm so very traditional. But, while the punk rock pastry theme may not appeal to me, her pastries definitely did.  She had some amazing cupcake flavors, including a poached apple filled cupcake with caramel icing that we tried. 

These were some fun sugar cookies with a plaid design.  This is probably the frilliest thing we saw in there.

We LOVED the huge whisk attachments that they turned into light fixtures.

While I prefer classic white marble tables, these custom cupcake shaped tables were pretty creative.  It was a fun class and I need to go back to the bakery as I wanted to try her best selling scone, the "Take a Hike" scone, but they were all out.   

Stars, Stripes and Cherries

Happy 4th of July! I have always loved the 4th of July. What's not to love? BBQ, fun in the sun, fireworks and time with family. I also have always looked forward to my birthday being only a week away. This year, my husband is traveling far, far away (to the far east, in fact) and wouldn't be here to enjoy all those lovely things. While I knew he would have an amazing first class airline meal to choose from, we had our 4th of July celebration on the 3rd this year including a picnic, some time at the beach and a lobster dinner that ended with this yummy cherry pie with homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

This stars and stripes pastry idea was on the most recent cover of Martha Stewart Living. They used different pie fillings, but I decided to use cherries that are in season in Michigan right now and these cherries were picked just up the road from where we live.

I made my pastry a day in advance to allow it to chill. I actually made enough for four single crust pies, so I have some pie pastry in the freezer to save me some time later.

I made a small pie with some of these vintage pie tins my mum gave me. I was able to get the pie crust for the bottom and have plenty left over to cut out my stars and stripes to use for the top from just a single crust portion of dough. I used a rotary ravioli cutter for the stripes and a Christmas cookie cutter in the shape of a star.

I pulled this together quick while we were video conferencing with my husband's family and preparing our lobster dinner. Oh....and chasing our 1 1/2 year old around! The four stars and three stripes have no significant meaning aside from that is what I fit on this little pie.

After I arranged the stars and stripes, I brushed on an egg wash and sprinkled it with turbinado sugar.



Here it is all baked and ready to serve with homemade ice cream. The pastry got nice and golden brown from the egg wash and the fresh cherry filling was so juicy and sweet. The stars and stripes just weren't as pretty when it was cut into pieces, so I didn't bother taking photos after it was cut.

My First Day of Pastry School

While it was my first day of pastry school at the Secchia Institude for Culinary Education, I can't say that I actually made anything, studied a recipe or was even in a kitchen. My first class is the somewhat unglamourous "Restaurant Sanitation and Safety." However, after reviewing through the book (published by the National Restaurant Association) and attending the first lecture, I think it will be pretty interesting. And, I think it will be timely to take this course before the others so I can learn the food code and proper sanitation procedures prior to taking the baking courses. I was excited and just a touch apprehensive about diving back into school. I got my book, student I.D., found the building and figured out where to park. The room was full of an interesting mix of students, all mostly much younger than me. The first day certainly felt like the official turning of the first page in this next chapter in my life...on the road to become a pastry chef. Since I don't get to learn about baking and make fancy desserts, I'll just have to continue doing that week after week at home and keep practicing and creating. That's fun regardless and it will prepare me for when I do get to hit the kitchen and wear this cool chef's jacket that my sister and brother-in-law got me for Christmas.

Baby Cakes in Raleigh

On my recent visit to see a friend in Raleigh, North Carolina, she was sweet enough to take me to a few pastry hot spots in town to try some baby cakes with my baby cakes. Audrey has definitely caught on to the concept of "treats" and definitely knows how to say "cupcake." On our girls' day out, we went to The Cupcake Shoppe Bakery near downtown Raleigh. It was a very nice place and quite the after dinner dessert hot spot. They had a very classy bakery and eating area. I loved the marble counters (which are just like what I plan to have put in our kitchen) and gorgeous displays. Cupcake bakeries are quite the trend and I always like to check them out.

The cupcakes were mouth watering and gorgeous. I could have tried one of each, but had to hold back. My friend's daughter just wanted a pink cupcake and Audrey would have taken any of them. I think she would have wanted to try the cookie monster cupcake they had, but the strawberry cupcake sounded better to me. I also got a coconut cupcake to try later. They were all piped exactly the same with a tube tip and different adornments to match their flavor, like a little carrot for the carrot cake cupcakes.

Here is our "Pretty in Pink" cupcake that was fresh strawberry cake with strawberry buttercream.

As you can see, Audrey LOVED it! She took the fork and kept going for the frosting.

Another day, we went to the Hereghty Heavenly Delicious Patisserie. We shared an amazing quiche for lunch with a side salad and perused the pastry selection for something to have for dessert. It was definitely more of a European bakery with lots of different cake and torte selections, puddings, custards and some traditional bakery items, like croissants.

They also had a tray of all different french macarons and of course I was interested in trying these after having made them recently myself. They had a nice flavor, but were much smaller than the ones I made and I think they need to be larger since they are so airy and light.

We ended up sharing a chocolate almond Vienna cake that was very dense and rich, but had a great taste. Thanks again to my best girlfriend for a great visit and taking me to check out these bakeries.