Baking Season- again!

A couple months ago I swore up and down I would be back. Although I haven't been baking I have certainly been cooking. That is all about to change because it is in fact baking season. It's hard to talk yourself into slaving away in a hot kitchen the summer. The last few weeks or so it's finally been cooling down enough that I'm dying to get my hands covered in flour.

Initial thoughts- Scones.

I'm not sure what brought those into my head but I thinking scones would be a fun thing to tackle in the kitchen and I'm already mentally concocting festive flavors. Pumpkin obviously because 'tis the season. Maybe a white chocolate, cranberry? The BF is a big white chocolate fan so I try and incorporate the flavor into as many desserts as possible. Thus far I'm enjoying the challenge. My white chocolate, almond, sea salt cupcakes were something to brag about.

Back to the scones. I've been Googling to find a decent recipe but I'm torn. I saw one that mentioned refrigerating the dough before baking as it allows the dough to rise a little better. Most others don't recommend the step however in the comments section everyone discussed how important the 30 minute cooling was to the texture. That was a King Arthur recipe found here.

I keep promising the BF I'm going to send him into work with some goodies but I've been slacking. We have a Saint Bernard puppy (Kona) who demands a lot of my time.

But I adamant this time- I have the itch. We have a wedding we're going to this weekend in PA so I unfortunately won't be able to start playing in the kitchen until Sunday. Stay tuned!

Hello old friend

It's been years. People say that all the time but it has literally been years.

I have a number of excuses ranging from laziness, to a temporary exit from the kitchen. My biggest excuse is kitchen size. After my Thanksgiving pie post I started school as a transfer at The Catholic University of America. Despite the fact that I was coming in as a junior I stayed at the dorms. Admittedly I probably could have kept baking and razzled and dazzled with my dorm kitchen skills but for those of you who haven't been to a kitchen in a girls dorm... keep it that way. It's disgusting and I simply cannot work in such filth (read in a French accent). After I finished up at school I got my first apartment and the kitchen, although cleaner, still wasn't doing it for me. I was in a whopping 400sqft studio. My oven wasn't even a standard oven size; it was more like a little tike’s kitchen appliance. The two times I did bake I over-cooked and nearly burned. In my defense I was going from an electric oven to gas. I made a couple pies for my firefighter boyfriend to take to his firehouse (food is truly the way to a man’s heart) and a pecan streusel and pumpkin cookies, again for the firehouse. The streusel, while tasted fine, was definitely overcooked making the top way too crunchy for my tastes.

Recently, move boyfriend and I moved in together so for his going away I made 2 peach pies, 2 blackberry pies, a black cherry, and the boy’s favorite, lemon meringue. I probably made too many but we did some damage.

I also recently found a really great recipe for homemade bread here. I stumbled upon the recipe on Pinterest and had to try it. I read the comments on her blog and decided I had a few of the same issues with bread rising that were mentioned. Other than that, it's super easy. This being my first attempt at homemade bread I’ll take slightly less risen dough any day. It was still delicious and made fantastic sandwich bread. I think I’m going to attempt the recipe again this weekend while my fireman is at work.

 

All that being said, I’m still in the kitchen and still baking. Now that I have some actually counter space in the new place anticipate more baking experiments to come!

I am thankful for pie

Obviously, because pie is awesome. I hear about this great place called Dangerously Delicious, and it's all pie. I haven't been but it sounds pretty spectacular and came highly recommended by a fellow cook. I'll have to go there soon, nothing like warm pie on a winter evening. Any guy friend of mine reading, this would be a great date.
Speaking of pies, dessert was my responsibility for Thanksgiving this year. I ended up making two Pumpkin Pies, two Pecan Pies, and one Apple. On a side note I was watching When Harry Met Sally last night which is awesome because I always say "Pecan Pie" the way Billy Crystal does in that scene with Meg Ryan. Back to my pies, they turned out great but no holiday is complete without a little drama. Pecan Pie, for those of you who don't know is very watery before it bakes. Although I use the same recipe for my Pecan Pies I do tend to change up my pie dishes. I only have one decent pie dish so when it comes time to bake a lot I buy the pie tins from the store. Well this year I must have purchased a pie tin that was a little more shallow than usual because as I was loading my Pecans into the oven some of the sugary goodness spilled over. It sounds silly to say but my mom and I weren't too concerned about it and left it alone. Thirty-forty minutes later, I open up the oven to a massive cloud of smoke. My dad claims he couldn't see the kitchen from the living room but he tends to be a little dramatic (read very dramatic). I don't know what the chemical process is that takes place when something bakes but I can tell you that sugar continues to burn and burn...which now seems like common sense, oops. Once we removed what had turned into a black chunk of sugar moon rock and fanned out the kitchen, we were good to go. Another side note, our fire alarm did not go off which is pretty scary, I think the house would burn down before we'd get a chirp out of that damn thing.

So aside from a little bit of smoke, the rest of the pies turned out fine and drama free. I think I may have made the crust a little too thick with my Apple but my mom and I are big crust lovers. Crust is, after all, the secret to a great pie and it just so happens I have a great recipe from a friends grandmother. If you're curious for it shoot me an email and I'll send it to you, you've got to work for it.

I would be proud to partake in your Pecan Piiiie...

Cinnamon Swirl Pancakes

I actually made these a couple weeks ago. I was pretty excited to post about it but ADD kicked in and I forgot, my bad. Despite the late post I can still taste the buttery cinnamon filling, and let me tell you it was delicious. The brown sugar that makes up the cinnamon swirl sort of caramelized on the pancake making a... crème brûlée layer on the top. The cinnamon was great but I think that little bit of a crunch is what made it. No one likes a soggy pancake so it was nice that even after they sat for awhile they still maintained that sugary crunch. The recipe I found suggested a cream cheese topping but I think I mentioned before, that’s just too much for breakfast. With butter and syrup these cinnamon swirl pancakes didn’t need anything else. I would definitely suggest this recipe.

As you can see my swirl is a lot thicker than what they used in the recipe. I wonder how a thinner line of cinnamon would change it. Also I really messed up on the first attempt at a spiral, the cinnamon was still too wet from the melted butter so if you try this recipe, let it cool down before trying to pipe it on the batter otherwise it kind of goops out of the bag.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so I will of course be making some desserts. If I can remember I will try to take some pictures tonight on the pie process, I’m making two pecan pies, a pumpkin and an apple. Also on I received an order for a sheet cake to be completed by Sunday so look for pictures on that too. I will be a busy baker this week, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Cupcake Inspirations

Yesterday, as you may or may not recall, I was supposed to make some of those delicious pancakes I posted about. However, because my school is in the ghetto, once night approached we were a little apprehensive about traveling to the store for the ingredients. Damn, we'll have to wait until next weekend. Instead of pancakes Gretchen and I went to Barnes and Noble. Can I just quickly say how much I love book stores? Especially B&N because they have Starbucks in them. I miss Borders though because Borders always had more seating, it's like B&N doesn't want you to stay. Anyway while there I found some books I liked and found a really pretty journal. I thought of how my mom has a little wine journal that she takes with her to take notes on different wines we try at restaurants and such and decided that would be a great idea for cupcakes. I'm always jotting down scribbles and notes on different ideas that hit me and I inevitably end up losing most of them. With that in mind I decorated my first page and am more than ready to start collecting some ideas! Keep an eye out for some of my thoughts!



Big Opportunity

I can't believe I forgot to post this. Last week I recieved an email asking if I would like to potentially be a sponsor for the opening of Walish Gooshe in the DC area. I've never heard of the brand but surely you can imagine how awesome it would be to have my name and logo being advertised on their website and on banners at the event. That would provide me with so much business! Unfortunately I had to decline. Even though in my last post I was talking about making pancakes and such, school has been way too demanding these last few weeks. If you can believe it we're already half way done with the semester which of course means- midterms. I send the woman who contacted me an email apologizing for my conflicting schedule and asked (begged) that they would think of me for future events. She responded quickly and said she would, so hopefully this isn't the last of Kristie's Kreations big event opporunties.

Baking Season!

Even though it has technically been fall for about a month now, until temperatures start hitting the 40's and 50's I don't really consider it autumn. It's hard to get into the festive mood when you're wearing shorts and tank tops. So now that the fall season has finally arrived I have been in my head about what wonderful treats I should bake. As some of you, all three of my readers, may know I am back at school. And while I to tend to venture home more often than not it's really hard to bake at school. For one, the community kitchen is disgusting, I mean really girls? Your mothers would be so disappointed. I had some waffles I wanted to pop in the toaster for a quick breakfast (come to find out we don't have a damn toaster) and there was egg all over the place, a stack of dishes in the sink that were overflowing, gunk everywhere, I mean it was worse than a teenage boy's room. I'll admit, I'm pretty OCD when it comes to stuff like that but I'm quite positive this would be disgusting by anyone's standards. Long story short, the only time I bake is when I'm home.

I won't be home this weekend because it's Halloween but the Today show did a segment on festive sweet treats so I'm very much looking forward to the next time I'm home. They talked about chocolate fudge cookies and it reminded me of this recipe I tried out a few years ago, Chocolate Snowflake Cookies. You roll the dough in powdered sugar before you bake it and when it's done it looks like a snow flake! Best idea ever! Needless to say I'm pretty excited for the Christmas season so I can start baking stuff like this.

Even though I'm stuck with mostly pumpkin flavors for now, I still have plenty of seasonal ideas pertaining to the fall. Something I think my friends and I will try to tackle this Sunday is Cinnamon Roll Pancakes. I know they look pretty intense but I'm confident in our abilities. I think maybe the cheapo ketchup dispensers like the ones I used for my Red Velvet cupcakes would work perfectly for the cinnamon swirl part. Maybe a few diced apples for an extra added piece of awesome? I'll admit I'm not loving the icing drizzled on top, I think that would be a bit much. I'll stick with maple syrup. Be sure to check me out on Monday to see how we did!