My First Foray into Fondant!

What an exciting weekend!

It all began when I got the ambitious idea to make my son's cake for his second birthday party in October. I found this adorable Elmo cake on the net and decided that there was no reason for me to shell out another $80 for a fancy fondant cake like I did for the last party, by golly...I'm making it myself! Ambitious, no?

Ambitious, and quite the undertaking. The cake I found it a three tiered masterpiece, covered in...DUM DUM DAAAAAAHHHHHH...fondant.

This is what I knew about fondant as of last week:

1. My mom, the cake decorator, wouldn't touch the stuff. She's old school, royal icing all the way!
2. Fondant tastes funny
3. Fondant instantly makes a cake more expensive
4. Fondant looks AMAZING on all those Food Network Cake Challenge Shows...NO WAY I can pull that off at home.

Well, I decided if I'm going to make my son's cake, I needed practice. We were planning on hosting my mother in law's birthday celebration at our house on Sunday anyways, so why not just start my practice with that! I decided that if the fondant failed, I'd just rip it of and ice it in butter cream. No harm, no foul.

I did a lot of research on the net in the week leading up to the party and grabbed a few basic fondant items from the local craft store. I purchased a box of Wilton's fondant, a large fondant rolling pin, some circle cutters, and a fondant smoother and I was ready to go.

I chose to do a simple white cake from my big, red, Betty Crocker's Cookbook. I went with the "Silver White Cake".

2 1/2 Cups Cake Flour

1 2/3 Cups Sugar

2/3 Cups Shortening

1 1/4 Cups Milk

3 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

1 Teaspoon Salt

1 Teaspoon Vanilla or Almond Extract (When given the choice, I ALWAYS use Almond)

5 Large Egg Whites

My preference for almond extract over vanilla goes back to my childhood. My grandmother and my mother always used the same Christmas cookie recipe with one difference, Mom used vanilla extract, Grandma used almond. I loved both cookies...but there was always something about Grandma's that had me revisiting that cookie plate at Christmas. Once I was of the age where making Christmas cookies became important to me, I asked my grandma if she did something different than my mom...her answer, almond extract. From that day on, I was an almond extract convert!

Friday night rolled around, my son is in bed, time to bake the cakes! I gathered up my ingredients and got to work.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and greased up a couple 8 inch round cake pans. I also lined the bottoms of the pans with some parchment paper, which makes getting the cakes out of the pans SUPER easy!

I mixed all the ingredients except the egg whites in my stand mixer on low for about 30 seconds (scraping bowl), then on high speed for another 2 minutes (again, scraping bowl).Then I beat in the egg whites, on high, for an additional 2 minutes before pouring into my pans.

I baked for about 25 minutes or so, until the cake sprung back when touched, and cooled for a few minutes on the rack before turning the cakes out to cool completely.

Once cooled, I wrapped the cakes in plastic wrap and threw them into the freezer for the night.

Saturday evening, once the little guy was in bed, it was time to get this cake together! I started by making my vanilla butter cream. I found this recipe on the Food Network's website, and I've found that making a batch and a half usually works pretty well.

Don't you just love my messy kitchen!?

Now it was time to assemble my masterpiece! I leveled off my cakes and gave them a healthy layer of butter cream between the cake layers and slapped on a coat on top of everything.

This is when I ripped open my package of fondant and went to work. I read that fondant will take on some of the flavor of the butter cream, but flavoring the fondant itself is also a good idea. If you are going to flavor fondant (and you want to keep it white), you'll want to use a clear flavoring. Wilton does make a clear vanilla extract, but I still had some almond extract on hand, so I poked a hole into my fondant, poured a little in and kneaded it like it was dough for a while...a long while. If I keep this up I'm gonna have some nice pipes!

Once my fondant was flavored, and kneaded enough to be rolled, I dusted my rolling surface with some powdered sugar and got to rolling. I needed to get the fondant rolled out to an 18 inch diameter. Once we were all rolled out, it was the moment of truth...getting this stuff on my cake.

I managed to get it onto the cake without tearing it...but I don't think I cut off the excess quickly enough, as I wound up with this:

I was a little disappointed, but I planned on decorating the cake with more fondant cut outs, so I figured I'd just cover up all the creases!

The little instruction booklet that came with the fondant said that I should wait 2-3 hours before I started decorating the cake....crap! It was already almost 9:00PM and I wanted to get to bed sometime before midnight. So, I started on the next part of my project and figured that would just need to be good enough!

In the event that my cake bombed, I wanted to have some backup...my backup came in the form of cupcakes...from a mix. In my defense, I did whip up a nice batch of cream cheese frosting (Thanks again Heather from SprinkleBakes) and tinted it pink, my mother in law's favorite color!

My kitchen was a freakin' mess!

Now it was time to decorate the cake! I tinted the fondant pink with some decorator's gel color and donned some gloves to knead in the color. I was really impressed by how well the color worked into the fondant (just like on TV)!

I used my circle cutters to cut out some decorations and applied the cut outs to the cake by brushing the back of the cut outs with water. This is where I employed some camouflage and covered up the creases in the white fondant!

I planned on decorating the cupcakes the next day and it was after 10:00PM, so I needed a break! I had an "only in Wisconsin" moment and washed down some cake scraps and butter cream with a beer. Don't turn up your nose...it was DELICIOUS!

The next day (after enjoying a blissful 20 minutes of extra sleep while my husband fed Fox his breakfast), I put everything together! Drum roll Please.....

Not only did it look great...it tasted great too! The almond extract reminded me of my Grandma's Christmas cookies and the birthday girl was tickled...wait for it...PINK! The other party guests loved the cake (and cupcakes), and there was only one piece left once the party ended!!

Final Verdict: I'm no longer afraid of fondant!! I know what I need to do next time to clean up some of my boo-boos. First, I will be sure to roll the fondant a little thinner, and second, I need to trim the fondant as soon as I put it on the cake to avoid creasing.

I plan to make another cake in a few weeks to hone my chops...but I will bring about another bread posting soon! 















Challah Back Girl

I'm back, and I've brought bread!

This weekend I sought out to make Challah. Challah is a special Jewish braided bread eaten on Sabbath and holidays. I chose to make the three-braid variation (there is also a 6 braid variation in my text book). I was excited for this recipe because I've seen Challa on Food Network before, but I've never eaten or made it.

As always, I quartered the recipe:

Bread Flour 21oz

Instant Dry Yeast 0.25oz (which happens to be one packet!)

Water 8oz

Egg Yolks 4oz (this worked out to about 6 egg yolks)

Vegetable Oil 2oz

Sugar 2oz

Salt 0.4oz

Bread Flour for dusting

Yolks Only Egg Wash (equal parts egg yolk, milk and a dash of salt)

The flour and yeast are mixed in one bowl, and the remaining ingredients are put into the mixer bowl, then I added the flour yeast mixture to the wet ingredients and mixed on low for 4 minutes, then increased the speed to medium for another 4 minutes with the dough hook attachment. The dough was firm and smooth, not sticky (thank goodness)!

My lovely dough went into my rising bowl to bulk ferment for an hour.I covered the dough ball loosely with some saran wrap and went to fold some more laundry and load the dishwasher.

After an hour, I gave the dough a gentle fold and divided it into 156g pieces. This was tricky, add a little, take a little away...I'm super anal retentive and a pharmacy technician. I wanted each piece to be exactly 156g, so this might take you considerably less time than it took me!

Then the dough pieces needed to be pre-shaped into small oblongs.

To make a small oblong, you press the dough out into a small rectangle with your fingertips, then bring the left and right ends to the middle, pressing to seal. Next, you fold the top half to the middle, press again, and bring the whole top to the bottom, sealing with the heal of your hand. Then you just go a little Play-doh on your dough and roll it into a chubby little roll about 3 inches long.

Now, we rest...again. Cover lightly with a tea towel and go take a walk for about 10 minutes.

Once rested, fold the dough oblongs over into thirds and start to make your ropes!

This was fun, but harder than you think! The dough ropes tend to spring back and shrink...once I would roll one out to a foot long and set it aside to start on the next one, I would look back and have a 10 inch rope, so make them longer than what you really need!

The directions didn't say to do this, I just thought it looked cleaner, so I hacked off the ends with my dough blade to make everything even...again, anal retentive!

Now to braid the bread. I lightly dusted my dough ropes in flour to keep them dry for braiding. You would think that you would pinch the dough together at the top and braid like you would hair, from root to tip. Nope! We start braiding in the middle, flip the braid around and finish the braid, pinching the ends to seal.

 

I put the dough braids onto a parchment lined baking sheet and gave them a light little brushing of egg wash and let the braids proof, covered about one hour. I've found the best way to proof dough is to start up my oven at about 100 degrees for a few minutes, then shut it off and put the dough in to proof. This way the dough stays nice and lukewarm and doesn't get too cold in my air conditioned kitchen!

Once proofed, I added another careful brushing of egg wash and threw these beauties into a 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes. I took them out once they were a lovely shiny, dark golden brown. And...a shocker! I actually let the bread cool completely before slicing! Check it out:

I was so pleased to have this turn out so well!! This is probably the crowning jewel of my blogging baked goods! The bread was perfect! Nice little pockets on the inside, tasty and a beautiful color!

Final verdict, I will be making this again! We toasted some up with butter and garlic and had it with lasagna for dinner and loved it! I think this would also make a fantastic french toast!

A Red Velvet Father's Day Suprise

Yikes! Long time no post (bad blogger, BAD!). My apologies! Between holding two garage sales, dance recitals, camping and 18 month photos I've been a busy Beaver! However, fear not, as I have returned with a triumphant tale of baking from scratch.

This is another 'Non-Baking-From-Text-Book' posts, but since I delved into the world of cake baking that didn't involve a box of Duncan Hines; I felt compelled to share!

Some background. I've never liked baking caked from scratch because they never seem to turn out as good as when you use a mix. But, my husband is a HUGE fan of red velvet cake! Every time I visit our local cupcakery, he insists on a red velvet with LOTS of icing! So, with Father's Day fast approaching, I set out to make my husband an extra special red velvet cake with cream cheese icing from scratch.

My first stop when searching for desert recipes, naturally, was Heather at Sprinkle Bakes (Thank You Again Heather!!). I just love all of her whimsical recipes, designs and easy to follow instructions! I combed through and found the two recipes that I used. The first being Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet and the second being Cream Cheese Frosting.

I banished my husband from the kitchen on Saturday night and got down to business making my cake. I prefer to make the cake the night before and freeze it, which makes for easier decorating!

I was a tad shocked at the amount of liquid red food coloring needed, 2 ounces seems like a lot, but how else would we get that vibrant red color?

It turns our, McCormick makes red food coloring in one ounce bottles, so I grabbed two and a pair of gloves and set to work. I've learned the hard way that when working with food coloring or decorator icing color of any kind...gloves are your friend! This stuff seeps into the cuticles and doesn't come out easily.

The cake batter came together quite easily. My favorite part was getting to mix baking soda and vinegar together again! I haven't done that since I was a kid!

I baked the cakes on Saturday night, let them cool, and wrapped them in plastic wrap before putting them into the freezer. The next morning, my son and I let Daddy sleep in and started on the frosting.

I plopped my son down into his chair, gave him an oven mitt and some measuring cups to play with and put together my frosting.

Once I assembled and decorated the cake, Fox (my son) and I had some yummy cake scraps that met with the "Fox Seal of Approval"!

Here's what Fox and I came up with! My cake decorating skills are still a work in progress. I've only learned from watching my mom decorate cakes while I was growing up and writing on a cake can be a real chore!

My husband was thrilled! In addition to the cake, I also made his favorite chicken lasagna and this made the perfect desert!

Many thanks, again, to Heather at Sprinkle Bakes for the recipes! I'm sure I'll be making this at least twice a year for my Husband's Birthday and Father's Day for many years to come!

I promise to be back soon with another CIA recipe and hope for a result as good as this!

From U-Bake to Grissini and Back Again...

Having the right flour can make all the difference!

If you've read either my last post Gah! Grissini or even Durum Rosemary Dough...I Think, you'd see that I've been waging an ongoing battle against my foe; flour. I just haven't had the brains to find the flour that I truly needed to execute these recipes properly, and it's been my downfall on two recipes. I got on the net, and started doing google searches trying to find a specialty flour or baking shop and the local U-Bake store popped up. I had been under the impression that U-Bake was a place where you went to get frozen dough for breads and cookies (which they do have in abundance)...but they have a lovely selection of flours! When I popped into my local U-Bake location on Friday after work, I was delighted to actually, finally, find High Gluten Flour!

Not only did I finally find my High Gluten Flour, but U-Bake was a bakers mecca! Every kind of flour I could imagine, and an entire wall of sprinkles!! Since I pride myself on my cupcakes...I'll be returning soon and often to find some fun new decorations!

Back to this weeks recipe...Grissini, take II, the recipe is as follows:

High-Gluten Flour 1.25 lb

Instant Dry Yeast 8.75g

Milk, Room Temperature 9oz

Butter, Soft 3oz

Olive Oil 0.75oz

Salt 0.5oz (and YES, I measured correctly this time)

Malt Syrup 10.8oz

Olive Oil For Brushing

Optional Garnishes, I used Sea Salt, Poppy Seeds and a Buttermilk Ranch Spice Mix

As per my usual M.O., mix the yeast and flour in one bowl, and the other ingredients in the mixer's bowl. Mix on low speed (stir) with the bread hook attachment for 4 minutes, then on medium speed for another 3 minutes. The dough should be very stiff, which mine was (YAY!). Let the dough rest in the mixing bowl for 15 minutes.

Once rested, the dough then needs to bulk ferment for 30 minutes. I transferred the dough to my handy rising bowl (sprayed with a touch of Pam) and covered it with plastic wrap, then I went and folded clothes.

Now we come to the fun part! Grissini is basically a long, skinny bread stick and the method of making the grissini in my text book is to use a pasta machine. I purchased this model from Bed Bath and Beyond a few weeks ago after they sent out a 20% off coupon in the mail.

I divided my dough into hunks for ease of rolling. The dough needs to be rolled out into strips no wider than the pasta machine and about 12 inches long.

Once you have your strip of dough, it is run through the rollers of the pasta machine at it's widest setting, then again at setting #5. This left me with a nice thin sheet of dough, ready to be made into thin strips. We're getting ever closer to the elusive Grissini! 

Using the fettuchine cutter attachment, I rolled the dough through my spankin' new pasta machine creating neat little strips of dough!

The strips of dough then are laid out, not touching, on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Then it's time to let the dough proof, covered for 30 minutes. Once proofed, I lightly brushed the strips with olive oil and sprinkled them with the salt, poppy seeds and ranch herbs. Into a 360 degree oven for about 13 minutes, or until golden brown!!

HOORAY!!! It only took two tries, but I finally made Grissini!!







I will say that these were fantastic!! They were light, crispy and were reminiscent of the bread sticks you used to see in Italian restaurants! In addition to being tasty, they were surprisingly easy to make!

Now that my husband has seen my pasta machine at work, he's excited for me to put it to it's intended use and crank out some pasta! His first request...Buffalo Chicken Ravioli! 

Gah! Grissini...

This one didn't go so well...

I started out with the greatest of intentions, however, I was again foiled by flour.

Grissini was the next recipe in my book, and I was SO excited to try out my pasta 'machine' that I picked up on sale last week. Grissini is basically a long, skinny, bread stick and I was looking forward to spending the week crunching away one grissini at a time. If you sense a hint of sorrow, you are spot on. I hit a wall...a big wall made out of flour.

The grissini called for 'High Gluten Flour'...unfortunately, what I purchased wasn't actually 'High Gluten Flour' and instead was a pure gluten flour.

So, what started out as this (cute huh?):

...ended up as this (ew!):

A pure gluten laden mess...not at all anything even CLOSE to dough.

I've decided that I need to stop trying to shop at my local grocery store when it comes to an ingredient I've never used or heard of before. I'm seeking out a specialty baking store, or hitting up Amazon to order what I need on the net.

Stop back soon, because I'm trying this one again.....



Soft Roll DOH-No!!!

Knot & Parker House Rolls Using Soft Roll Dough

Say it with me now...DOH! It was bound to happen again...sooner rather than later, I manage to eff things up. Naturally, I didn't realize that I screwed up until the very possible end; the taste test. Since I did spend all afternoon embarking on my roll-tastic journey, I'll take you through it until the very, very, salty end.

The next two recipes in my text book were for Knot Rolls and Parker house rolls, both utilizing the same dough, just shaped differently. Being the adventurous sorta gal that I am, I opted to just try them both! I was so psyched to finally have graduated past the 3 ingredient bread phase and was  thrilled to finally be making something with eggs, milk and butter!!

Business as usual, I quartered the recipe. Here is where I screwed up, I neglected to quarter the salt Dum Dum Daaaahhhhhh. Essentially, I prepared the dough with 4 times the amount of salt necessary and allow me to say, that sucks! It sucks salty dough balls! Here is the recipe with the correct amount of all ingredients:

Bread Flour 1.25 lb

Instant Dry Yeast 8.75 g 

Milk, room temperature 10 fl oz

Butter, soft 2 oz

1 Egg, (I always allow my eggs to come to room temperature when baking)

Sugar 2 oz

Salt 0.5 oz (NOT 2 oz, as I used, I cannot possibly stress this enough)

Egg Wash (for knot rolls)

Clarified Butter (for parker house rolls)

I mixed the yeast and flour in one bowl and the butter, egg, milk, salt and sugar in the mixer's bowl fitted with the bread hook attachment. As I mentioned above, I let my egg come to room temperature along with the milk and butter, I think I learned this from my good buddy Alton Brown...

I added the flour/yeast mixture to the other ingredients and mixed on low for about 2 minutes, kicking the speed up to medium for another few minutes until I reached the improved stage of gluten development. I checked for this by taking a small piece of dough, dipping it in flour and stretching it to a thin membrane.

I transferred the dough to my rising bowl, sprayed with a touch of Pam, and loosely covered it with plastic wrap to bulk ferment for one hour.

Today, during what I like to call my ‘rising time’, I actually had some peace and quiet! My poor little son who has been battling chronic, back to back, ear infections finally decided that a nap was in his best interest, so some rare quiet time was nice! While my dough was rising, I was able to take my time folding some laundry, something I had come to take for granted. Typically I have my son in the laundry room with me, and quietly folding towels takes a back seat to keeping him out of the laundry room cabinets while I hastily wad up the clean laundry.

As the dough was rising, and I was folding, I was thinking how nice some homemade rolls would have been during last weekend’s Easter meal. I decided that, from now on, I would make them my go-to rolls for any upcoming holiday (made correctly of course).

Once the laundry was folded and another load started (WHEN DOES IT END?!) I gathered up my tools for the next phase. I've come to love these silicone mats that I found at Aldi a few years back, they make for a much easier counter cleanup!

Once the dough had risen, I gave it a nice fold and divided it into two one pound hunks-o-dough (and one little, leftover, hunk). I preshaped the dough into rounds (check out Lean Dough Take II for preshaping instructions). Once preshaped, I moved the rounds to my baking sheet, lined with parchment paper, and covered with a towel for about 15 minutes to relax (the dough relaxes, I however had a short, little blond gentleman kindly requesting to be rescued from his crib).

Now for the fun part, time to commence roll making! The dough needed to be divided into 50 gram pieces. This sounds easier than it actually is, trying to get a consistent sized dough ball was a little tough, but the scale really helps! If you don't have a kitchen scale by now, do yourself a favor and pick one up! I think mine was about $15 or so and I've certainly gotten a lot of use out of it!

Now that I have a lot of balls... it's time to shape them out! I decided to do half knot rolls and half parker house rolls.

Starting with the Knot Rolls, you'll need to work sequentially, shaping the first dough piece that you cut, so I worked from left to right. To make the knots, I began by flattening the dough with my fingertips, folding the top half to the middle of the dough, pressing lightly with my fingertips to seal, then folding in half again, sealing with the heal of my hand. Then I just simply rolled it out, Play-Do style, until I had a 6 inch long rope.

Once rolled, all there is to do is tie the dough in a knot and pinch the ends together. This was a little easier said than done, and I found that I needed to roll the dough into slightly longer ropes to accomplish this feat. Trust me, I got better at this as I went along!

Once knotted, it was time to egg wash. Just one egg and a little water, beaten together and brushed on.

The knot rolls then just needed to rest & proof, covered (they've had a long day) for about 30 minutes, hit 'em again with the egg wash, before going into a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown and shiny.

Now onto the Parker House Rolls. The instructions seemed simple enough. I started out by re-rounding the dough pieces and letting them rest, covered, for 10 minutes. Rest was a much needed thing at this point, as I'd allowed my son to have free range in the kitchen...needless to say, we were in desperate need of some non-kitchen-play-time!

Once rested, I finally got to break out my new rolling pin, and rolled each piece of dough into an oval about 5 inches long. The dough was then folded in half (top comes down to the bottom), flipped over so that the fold was closest to me, then I rolled the bottom few inches of the folded dough with my rolling pin to create the Parker House Roll.

Now all there was to do was put the rolls onto a parchment lined baking sheet and brush on some clarified (basically, melt down some butter in a saute pan, and strain it through a mesh strainer with a piece of paper towel) butter.

Once bathed in butter (that just sounds amazing, doesn't it), the rolls need to proof for about 30 minutes. I did this by placing them in a slightly warm oven. Once proofed, bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes until golden brown and shiny, brush again with the butter as soon as they come out of the oven.

Once I had all of my rolls out of the oven and started tasting, my husband and I both proclaimed "these are REALLY salty". That prompted me to re-check my math, and I realized that I added WAY to much salt (as in 2 oz when I should have used 0.5 oz). The rolls were reminiscent of the dough creations some of us made as children with the water/salt/flour dough, painted and gave to our parents as an ashtray or paperweight.

Quite frankly, these would have made fantastic paperweights! Into the trash they went, and a hard lesson learned. Just like in carpentry, measure twice, cut once! In my case, check your math!

Disappointed, yes. Discouraged, no. I will make these again, correctly, the next time the occasion calls for a nice dinner roll and I encourage you to do the same! Impress your friends, your family, your mother-in-law, with a scratch made roll, rather than the roll-in-a-can or the par-baked rolls we've all grown accustomed to!

Tune in again soon for my next (fingers crossed) triumph in baking: Grissini!!