Thanksgiving : A Six Pound Souvenir

 Gingerbread folk for my friend Nolan's sixth annual Rock Band party.

My visit back home was fulfilling, with emphasis on the filling part. The spread at Thanksgiving alone would have been enough to make me cringe at returning to Singapore, where it's bikini season all year long.

 Sifting the dry ingredients.

I made velvet cake for the three family birthdays in November, coffee cake, Alton Brown's gingerbread folk, and Cheryl Smith's onion tart.  The cakes are from previous entries, the onion tart is best saved for another day. Right now is the time for gingerbread.

 Shortening and butter making friends.

Fats and sugars beaten to a grainy, fluffy finish.

I made the gingerbread folk cookies not only for Thanksgiving, but for my oldest friend's sixth annual Rock Band party as well. Decorating them is tons of fun, until your hand starts cramping from squeezing all that royal icing out of a pastry bag or cornet.

 Folding in the dry ingredients until just combined.

Gingerbread Folk Cookies
Adapted from Alton Brown's Gingerbread Cookies 101 at The Food Network
Yields a whole mess of cookies, in the 100+ range if using a 1" cookie cutter

3 1/4 C (325 g)  all-purpose flour

1 tsp  baking powder
1 1/2 tsp  cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp  ginger
1 tsp  all spice
1 tsp  cloves
1/2 tsp  salt
1/4 tsp  black pepper

1 stick (115 g)  butter
1/4 C (55 g)  shortening
1/2 C packed (110 g)

     brown sugar

2/3 C (230 g)  molasses
1  egg


All ingredients are at room temperature unless otherwise stated.
Top right: Floured dough on parchment paper.
Bottom right: Rolled and cut dough.

1. Combine all the dry ingredients and sift or whisk to combine and set aside.
2. In a separate bowl, cream together the shortening and butter until homogeneous.
3. Add the sugar to the fats and beat fluffy.
4. Add the molasses and egg and beat until combined.
5. Fold in the dry ingredients.
6. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap or place it in a gallon size seal-able bag and press flat to remove all air.
7. Refrigerate the dough over night.
8. The following day: Preheat the oven to 350F (177C). Work with half the dough at a time. Lay out parchment paper and lightly flour the surface, place the dough on top, flour again, and top with another layer of parchment.
9. Roll out the dough between the parchment to 1/8 to 1/4 inch (about 3 to 6 mm) thick, re-flouring to keep the dough from sticking to the parchment at necessary.
10. Dip your cutter in flour, tap it to remove the excess, and cut into the dough. Wiggle the cutter slightly before removing it from the rolled out dough to make cut-out removal extra easy.
11. Repeat step 10 until the rolled dough is completely cut, place cut-outs on a greased cookie sheet (it's okay to place them as close as 1/4 inch as they don't expand much).
12. Regroup the remaining dough and repeat steps 8 through 11.
13. Bake cookies 6-10 minutes, depending on the size, thickness, and desired firmness when cool.
14. Cool completely before decorating with royal icing.
15. Enjoy!

 Gingerbread folk ready to be baked.

Gingerbread Folk Reflections

I baked my approximately 3/8" thick, 1" cut-outs for 6 minutes for a medium-firm cookie, and received praise for the texture, flavor, and cuteness of my veritable army of gingerbread folk.

Mini rockers ready to be consumed by the masses.

I tried out two recipes for the royal icing: a traditional icing with egg whites and an icing without raw egg (I feared I might somehow make the three-years and under crowd ill at Thanksgiving, see JazzyCake's entry). I preferred the traditional royal icing; I found that I could get it to a much nicer consistency with less work and the end color was a much brighter white than the egg-less version. I did have issues with peaks once I lifted my piping bag away from the cookies, but that's easily remedied by beating the whites to a less firm peak in the future.

Guitars made of royal icing take practice. For cleaner looking gingerbread folk, be sure to brush away any excess flour before baking.

Gingerbread folk are fun to decorate, but I think I'll enlist the help of the wee little boys that ate the majority of the cookies at Thanksgiving for the next round. Another thing I'd like to keep in mind for next year is eating reasonably when I'm home to avoid packing a six pound souvenir from my short trip back to the States.

The only picture I got of the gingerbread folk made for Thanksgiving was at the end of the night. There were few survivors. Though a little more buttoned-up than the Rock Band crowd, these gingerbread folk held their own during the holiday.

Coffee Cake: "I feel like a huge idiot! All these years I’ve never tried coffee cake because I don’t like coffee. I didn’t know it didn’t have coffee in it."

Coffee cake cupcakes having a moment in the sun before a taste test with friends.

Often, I read the reviews and comments of the recipes I intend on trying out myself. Usually this is informative, but sometimes it's a little amusing. I don't think it's an uncommon assumption that coffee cake has coffee in it. Let's go along with the idea that it is referred to as coffee cake because it's great with a nice, hot cuppa.

 Blending the brown sugar and cinnamon topping with my favorite tool, the pastry blender.

If this cake were to be named for something that's in it, I'd go with butter. Sure, there's a generous amount of sugar, both brown and white, but who is ever shocked at the amount of sugar in a dessert? Certainly not me. This cake (now is the time you might want to look away if you've already had a slice) contains three sticks of butter. That's around 350g, for the metric folk out there. Before you start crying, I reduced my version down to 250g, or a bit over two sticks of butter. Not really out of fear of cardiac arrest, but rather out of necessity; I only had one brick in the fridge.

The cake batter is thick; be sure to have a rubber scraper on hand because even hard whacking against the counter won't settle your batter evenly in the pan.

If you can get past the outrageous amount of butter, you can begin to appreciate this cake for being remarkably delicious and Ree Drummond at Pioneer Woman for wrangling this out of her mother's recipe binder.

Coffee Cake
 Adapted from Ree at Pioneer Woman
Yields one 9"x13" sheet cake and nine cupcakes

Cake
1 tsp  salt
3  egg whites
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 C or 172g)  unsalted butter, soft
2 scant C (345g)  sugar
1 T  Kahlua or vanilla, optional*
3 C (298g)  all-purpose flour
4 tsp  baking powder
1 C  milk*
1/4 C  plain yogurt*

Topping
5 T (75g)  unsalted butter, cold*
3/4 C (75g)  all-purpose flour
1 1/2 C (302g)  brown sugar (not packed down)
2 T  cinnamon
1 C (130g)  pecans

*These are deviations from the original recipe. These are the original ingredients and amounts: No Kahlua or vanilla, 1 1/4 C whole milk, no yogurt, 1 1/2 sticks (172g) softened butter for the topping.

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (177C) and grease the cake pan and line the cupcake tins.
2. Combine the egg whites and salt and beat until stiff; set aside.
3. Sift together the flour and baking powder; set aside.
4. Cream together the butter and sugar and then mix in the Kahlua and yogurt.
5. Alternately mix in the flour-baking-powder and the milk; do not over mix.
6. Fold in the whites.
7. Combine all the topping ingredients and cut together with a pastry blender.
8. Fill the cake pan and cupcake tins about 2/3 to 3/4 full and sprinkle topping on.
9. Bake the cake 40-45 minutes and the cupcakes 20-25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
10. Cool to a temperature that won't burn your mouth (room temp is always a safe bet) and enjoy!

Coffee Cake Reflections

 The cake didn't bake up around the topping as much in the sheet pan compared with the cupcakes, but it was just as yummy.

I caught the cupcakes right at the point where the batter goes from goopy to solid, affording me the softest cake I've had in my life. The topping was crisp and a bit crunchy, a very nice contrast to the delicate sponge. This magic is a combination of the right recipe, not over mixing, and pulling the cupcakes from the oven at just the right moment.

The recipe made what I'd consider to be way too much topping for the portions I made. Perhaps if it was all done in a deeper pan or one with more surface area, the amount would have been just right. The topping recipe above is how I did it, so feel free to halve that (reduced butter) or the original recipe.

Something not so magical: My butter had been in the freezer up until I needed it. Sooo it wasn't exactly softened when I went to go cream it. I also, rather mysteriously, threw the sugar in with the other dry ingredients to be sifted. Awesome job, brain. Way to get those synapses firing at full speed at 10:30 in the morning. Despite my rough start, everything came together. The textures and flavors in this cake are pretty perfect. I think it has something to do with all that butter.

The cake made its official debut at a housewarming hosted by my friends at Ming and Milo. It became a part of the wine tasting later in the evening, which featured wines from my home state! If you happen to be in Singapore and are scouring the island nation for the best pairings, they are your guys.

Ladyfingers: Paving the Road to Tiramisu

 Ladyfingers piled into a tin shortly before being soaked in cold espresso.

I've done mis en place for tiramisu many, many times. I've even assembled these parts into a visually appealing (well, more or less given my fear of high speed plating) dessert on occasion. However, I've never made one of the very basic parts that arguably comprises a good two-thirds of the finished cake volume: Ladyfingers.

 Egg whites and sugar beat to stiff peaks.

Why on earth would you make the ladyfingers when you can buy them at the store and save yourself some time? I understand that at home, making tiramisu might seem like a lengthy process and the prospect of making each and every one of those little cookies (some of which break or dissolve to mush during the espresso soaking) sounds daunting, but I just can't help myself.

 Flour being folded into beaten egg yolks and sugar.

I need to know how things are made. I've come a long way from mixing flour, water, and food dye and "baking" it in the sun (I was a kid!), but the curiosity remains.

 Vaguely neat rows of piped batter.

Like I said, I've made tiramisu before, so that's part of the reason I won't go over the recipe (the other being it's not mine to share - oooh secret recipes). This, my friends, is about the humble ladyfinger.

 What I was aiming for.

Ladyfingers
Adapted from Delicious Days

Yields 25+ ladyfingers (these lovely approximations pop up when I start pinching cookies before the counting is done)

3  eggs, divided
90g  sugar*
1 tsp  vanilla
60g  flour
powdered sugar

1.  Preheat the oven to 200C (390F) and line two trays with silpats or parchment paper.
2. Combine the yolks and about half the sugar in a bowl and beat to around ribbon stage (pale yellow, thick, and leaves a trail when dribbled on the surface of the mixture).
3. Stir in vanilla.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the egg whites and the remaining sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.
5. Sieve the flour into the yolk mixture and fold to clear (no flour remains visible).
6. Add about one-third of the beaten whites and mix to lighten the batter; gently fold in the remaining whites.
7. Fill a piping bag with the batter, snip the tip off (to about half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter), and pipe the batter in lines about 4" long, 1" apart.
8. Dust the piped batter with powdered sugar (be liberal with it!) and bake about 13 minutes until light golden brown.
9. Immediately remove the ladyfingers from the parchment or silpat and place them directly on the oven rack.
10. Crack the oven door an inch or two and allow the ladyfingers to cool inside.
11. Enjoy immediately or store in an airtight container.

Ladyfinger Reflections

 Unique ladyfingers (like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike, at least not piped at my hands) placed in the tray to test for fit, pre-espresso soaking.

When these first came out of the oven, they were pretty soft cookies; a far cry from the stiff, boiling hot coffee resistant store bought breed I'd dealt with before. I decided to treat them like baguettes or any bread that I want a crisper crust on, hence steps 9 and 10. When they came out of the oven, they were a sturdier version of themselves, but still not nearly as tolerant of physical abuse as the pre-packaged variety, which was just fine by me.

The cookies are plain and pleasant enough on their own, very light and mildly sweet, the vanilla peaking through. Okay, pleasant enough that the Resident Taste Tester and I gobbled down a good handful without blinking.

 Home made tiramisu.

They did a lovely job in the tiramisu. I gave them a double turn in cold espresso and didn't have any of the problems of packaged ladyfingers (namely burning my hands trying to get the espresso all the way through without complete mushification). The RTT and I ate the cake straight away, and were both daunted by the task of finishing one piece each (these packed a triple layer of soaked ladyfingers and mascarpone, mind you); so rich and there seemed to be slightly too much mascarpone. But! After one night in the fridge, the cake had settled and found its stride; the textures and flavors and pieces all came together to make us swoon before lunch time.

Ladyfingers are not created equal. Rather, some are squiggly, some shorter or longer than 4", and some look, um, suggestive. None of this matters (at least, not to me personally). What does is that you took the time to make something from scratch just because, and it tastes mighty fine.

*I use this website for converting baking masses to and from volumes

Sort of Make You Sick: Lemon Bars

 A bit too sweet and lacking a firm base. I should have pressed the crust into the pan a bit more.

I have fond memories of lemon bars from when I was a kid. I remember helping my mom make some out of a box for a piano recital (gasp on both accounts - we all have to start somewhere), a touch of powdered sugar on top.

 The crust just after cutting in the butter. This is not the method Ina suggested, though I like doing crusts this way.

Fourteen years and several instruments later, I am playing with the big kids and making stuff from scratch. I tested out Ina Garten's lemon bar recipe at the foodnetwork.com. I was a little short on butter, but that was alright. I sort of wish I had read the reviews beforehand, which would have prepared me a little better for some of the imperfections, but I don't know that it would have prevented them.

Lemon Bars
Adapted from Ina Garten at the foodnetwork.com 

Yields, um, far too much for me to eat on my own

1/4 C  sugar
1 C  flour
pinch of salt
6-7 T (100g)  unsalted butter, cold

3  eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 C  sugar
1  lemon's zest
1/2 C  lemon juice (about 2 1/2 lemons)
2cm diameter, 1cm height  ginger, grated (optional)
powdered sugar (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (177 C).
2. Toss the first three ingredients together and then cut in butter.
3. Press into the pan, chill for 5-10 minutes, and then bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
4. Remove from oven and cool.
5. Whisk all remaining ingredients together and pour over crust.
6. Bake 30-40 minutes until set (you may want to cover the top with foil to prevent over-browning a.k.a. burning before the goo is cooked nicely).
7. Cool, dust with powdered sugar if you like, and enjoy!

Lemon Bar Reflections

  Filling goo with too much sugar and not enough ginger.

I could definitely feel the sugar grains in the lemon sticky goo top; that might be resolved with some sugar and juice pre-cooking on the stove top. I would reduce the sugar by 1/2 C and maybe compensate with cornstarch to keep the same soft goo consistency; they're just a bit too sweet and sort of make you want to stop after a small piece, which is abnormal for me. I would triple the ginger because it's pretty wow when you get a bite of gingery spice with the lemon. A 2:1 ratio of crust to goo would be cool instead of the other way around, but that's just me.

 The crust post baking. Those funny holes are from bits of butter that were on the larger side. Heh.

The crust was a bit whack; it may have been due to my altered prep, but one batch had crumbly I-wanna-stay-with-the-pan crust and the other popped away just fine from the pan, but it also separated from the goo.

[UPDATE]

Like a good chef and a procrastinating blogger, I let this post simmer... for about a week and a half after I originally wrote it. Over the five-ish days it took to consume nearly all the lemon bars, they surprisingly got better. The grainy sugar texture faded and the flavors melded in a way that would suggest you should leave food laying around for days. Even problems like the crust separating from the goo settled with time. I would still reduce the sugar, but maybe only by 1/4 C, and I would definitely up the ginger. These only made me sort of sick because I was merrily eating them all.

The Resident Taste Tester is back. Thank goodness! I need some help eating all these things and I'm sure the charm of grainy built-in web cam photos is wearing off (look forward to the transition post on brioche!).

In other news, I'm conducting a taste test with my friend Z tomorrow; he's having his birthday in a couple weekends and I will be providing the baked goods de jour. Look forward to a new post on pavlova soon.

Velvet Cupcakes: Minus the Red, Plus Cream Cheese Frosting

Velvet cupcake with pillowy cream cheese frosting, perfectly balanced.

Red velvet cake is an American classic; the Waldorf-Astoria was known for it's rendition in the 1920's.

To me, this cake has always manifested itself in gorgeous double and triple layers, slathered in cream-colored frosting, waiting out of reach behind glass. This elegant, untouchable feeling was left behind when one of my friends made incredibly delicious red velvet cupcakes last Valentine's Day. She frosted them, topped them with red sprinkles, and even did a chocolate drizzle on top. I savored the chocolate cake wonder for days. It helped that she gave me several cupcakes to work on. I love my friends.

I wanted to try out the red velvet cupcake recipe at mccormick.com, but like almost all RV cakes, it called for red food coloring. I can't remember the last time I used food coloring; why should I get a bottle of red just for these? It doesn't impart any flavor or texture, it's just a visual thing with some history in how buttermilk and other acidic ingredients used to react with cocoa (as well as the use of beets during wartime, but... eh).

I refuse to buy red food dye because it will hang out in the kitchen, untouched, until I feel like making RV cake again someday. Hence the velvet cupcakes. Not too sweet, these ultra moist chocolate cupcakes with slightly tangy cream cheese frosting are total winners.

Red Velvet Cupcakes
Adapted from mccormick.com


Yields 8 cupcakes (original recipe quartered)

1/2 C  AP flour*
2 T WW flour
2 T  cocoa powder
1/2 tsp  bk soda
1/8 tsp  salt
1/4 C (1/2 stick or 60g)  butter, sft
3 T  sugar
1  egg
1/4 C  plain yogurt, greek or european style**
2 T  milk
1/2 tsp  vanilla

Photo: Step 2, dry ingredients before mixing.

*abbreviations: AP all-purpose, WW whole wheat, bk baking, sft softened
**the original recipe calls for sour cream, but thick yogurt and baking soda (1 C:1 tsp) combined is a suitable substitute

1. Preheat oven to 350F (177C).
2. Mix the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
4. Add the egg to the butter mix and beat fluffy again.
5. Add the yogurt, milk, and vanilla to the fluffy mix and beat until homogeneous.
6. Add the dry mix to the wet (pretty unfluffy now) mix and beat until just mixed.
7. Divide batter into lined cupcake tins, filling each about 2/3 to 3/4 full. (Don't fill more than 8-9 cups, otherwise you won't have a nice domed cake).
8. Bake 15-20 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean (17 minutes for me).
9. Cool 5 minutes in the tin on a rack then remove cupcakes to rack to cool completely.
10. Frost (optional) and enjoy!

Different stages of batter. Left to right: Step 3, creaming butter and sugar. Step 4, adding an egg. Step 5 + 6: yogurt, milk, and vanilla mixed in and dry ingredients on top. Step 6: wet and dry ingredients combined. Photo slice and dice credits to the Resident Taste Tester.

Step 9: Cupcakes cooled in tins, just before going to the racks.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from Janni at allrecipes.com


Yields about 1 cup of frosting

1/2 (4 ounces) package cream cheese, softened
2 T  butter, softened
1/2 C  powdered sugar
1/2 tsp  vanilla

1. Cream the softened cream cheese and butter together.
2. Add the powdered sugar and beat smooth.
3. Add the vanilla and beat smooth.
4. Use immediately and store leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge.

Red Velvet Cake Reflections

Velvet cakes are so wonderfully balanced and just plain nice. I've been told multiple times that Singaporeans and Asians in general don't like their sweets too sweet. While there are always exceptions to the rule, I've never had a single complaint about a baked good being too sweet for the Asian palate. I did reduced the sugar in the cupcakes by 25% (the quantity above is down said 25%); I tend to be on the scant side of measurement with sugar in most of the recipes I try.

This more-chocolate-than-sweetie-sugar cupcake goes well with the cream cheese frosting. It was so pillowy when I pushed it around on the cupcake tops that I grinned at the fluffy, sky-high frosting possibilities. I refrained from piling it on because I often find mounded frosting a tragic beauty; pretty to look at, but overwhelming for a baby cake.

The yogurt and extra baking soda made for a crazy moist cupcake that domed perfectly. Not too dense and incredibly moist; I don't think I've ever had a cupcake come out of my oven with that texture and yet there they were.

I brought my favorite chefy*** a cupcake when we met up for lunch. LOVED it. So much so, that he giddily reminded me that I'll be around for his birthday this year and should make his celebratory cupcakes. With pleasure, my dear, with pleasure.

Perfection.

***He cooks, I bake; when we get together, it's gastronomic bliss.

Chocolate Chip Yellow Cake Cupcakes With Chocolate Frosting

I'd been searching for a from-scratch yellow cake recipe and stumbled upon this one at Smitten Kitchen. I altered it slightly, so check the link for the original.

This recipe delivers a moist yellow cake, as promised. The frosting is the Hershey's cocoa back-of-the-box recipe I have always relied on with slightly more milk. The substitution of milk and lemon juice for buttermilk gives the cupcakes a hint of citrus, which I wouldn't mind pumping up for full on lemon cupcakes in the future. As always, do not over mix.

Chocolate Chip Yellow Cake Cupcakes


yields approximately 24 cupcakes or 12 large cupcakes


1C minus 1 T  milk

1 T  lemon juice

2 C  cake flour                                

1 tsp  baking powder    
3/4 tsp  baking soda    
1/4 tsp  salt              
1/2 C (1 stick)  salted butter, softened
1 C  sugar            
2  eggs, room temperature
1 tsp  vanilla extract                                        
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)                        

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (177 C).
2. Mix milk and lemon juice in a cup and set aside for 10 minutes to curdle.
3. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
4. Whisk together butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
5. Whisk vanilla into butter-sugar mix until fluffy.
6. Whisk in eggs, one at a time.
7. Alternately fold in curdled milk and dry mix in 3 additions, ending with the last of the dry mix and chocolate chips. Fold until just blended.
8. Spoon batter into lined cupcake tins (fill cups about 2/3 full).
9. Bake 16-20 minutes (test for doneness with a toothpick; if you stab a cake and it comes out clean, it's done).
10. Remove from tins and cool on rack.

Simple Chocolate Frosting

yields approximately 1 C of frosting

1/4 C (1/2 stick) butter or margarine, melted
1/3 C  cocoa powder (unsweetened)
1 1/2 C  powdered sugar
3 T  milk, more as needed
1/2 tsp  vanilla extract

1. Whisk butter and cocoa together.
2. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, whisking thoroughly and ending with a milk addition.
3. Whisk in vanilla.

Frosting tip: Plop about a tablespoon of frosting on top of a cupcake and push it around the surface of the cake with the smooth edge of a butter knife. Once the entire top is coated, pull the knife toward the center and gently pull up and away to get a sweet little soft-serve-ice-cream-esque peak on top.