A Birthday....and A Cake!

Happy birthday! This Friday, my sweet little niece, M, turned two years old! To celebrate, my parents and I spent the weekend with my parents, sisters, brother-in-law and other nieces at her home in Monsey. As is tradition with me, I made the birthday cake. In previous years, I decorated Elmo, Care Bears and Ariel cakes to celebrate. This year, I chose to make Strawberry Shortcake. She's just so cute! I'm not sure that M really appreciated it, but maybe she'll remember some years down the road. In any case, for me, it's practice, something that I love to do, and something I love doing for my yummy nieces. The look on her face was worth the pink stains on my hands and the digging through the garbage for missing tips. That's love. The compliments don't hurt either ;). The recipe is for a classic yellow cake, courtesy of Wilton, as is the buttercream frosting. Easy, reliable, and crowd pleasing. What more could you ask for?

Basic Yellow Cake
from the Wilton site

3 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
2/3 cup butter or margarine (I used margarine)
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk (I used rice milk)

Preheat the oven to 350. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Place the margarine in the bowl of your mixer.

Cream until light and fluffy.
Add the vanilla and eggs, one a time, mixing thoroughly to combine.

Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk and mix to combine.

This is what the resulting batter should look like.

Have your pan greased and ready to go. Grease liberally. And I do mean liberally.

The batter is in the pan,

and baked to golden perfection.

The cupcake batter.
Lots of cupcakes!

Here is Strawberry Shortcake almost complete. I gave her a nose and finished her shirt. Not perfect, but it made alot of people very happy.

Reinhart's Poolish Ciabatta

Although this is the latest posting of a bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, this Ciabatta was actually the first bread that I made from this book. The pictures have been lingering on my camera and my computer for a while now; I'm not sure why it took me so long to post. This Ciabatta is the version made with the poolish. I assembled the poolish the night before and was greeted in the morning by a nice bubbly starter. Assemblindg the dough was fine because I used the KitchenAid. Ciabatta's reputation of being a wet dough and difficult to manage by hand (I know that it can be done!!) preceeds it so I decided to just let the machine work this one. Rising and folding from there were no biggies, just alot of impatient waiting. I'm working on that! I portioned the dough into three loaves and allowed them to rise once more. I tried to figure out Reinhart's shaping instructions but I couldn't. The loaves looked nothing like his in the book. So I turned them over and they turned out looking presentable. I do think that all the handling sadly burst all the bubbles that the yeast worked so hard to create... which meant a pretty closed crumb. That was disappointing. Next time I won't shape them, I will just place the loaves as they were cut onto their rising surface, looks be damned. My steaming technique was also lacking, which accounts for the pale color. I really need to get me a stone!! The flavor was ok; I think I much prefer the Ciabatta from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. I will try the Ciabatta with Biga sometime soon to see if there is any recognizable difference. Until then, check out this week's Yeastspotting for more yeasted goodies!

The poolish ingredients..

...all mixed.

Nicely risen.

The remaining dough ingredients...

...plus the poolish.
Mixing to combine with the flat beater..

...and then upgrading to the dough hook for some thorough kneading.

The dough prepared for a fold.

Half a fold...

...completed fold.
Here's the dough after its complete rising.

Portioned into three.

My brand new couche!!!! It's huge!!! I feel like a pro!!!

The dough resting on the couche.

Very oddly shaped, I know.

Turned over and proofing.. ready to be baked!

The final product! Aside for its pale hue, it looks kinda nice!

Lemon Tart Part Two: Lemon Curd and Meringues

Lemon curd. Can't you just taste that rich, lemony goodness? I know the word curd can turn some people off, but all I can say is get past it! You won't be sorry. I for one am not fond of creamy textured things- no squirting whipped cream into my mouth, sorry- I was completely in love with this. It was light and perfectly lemony without being too tart and puckery and it went so well with the homemade graham crackers. I guess that's why they're part of a classic combination. The recipe is from a recent addition, Sherry Yard's The Secrets of Baking. Like I said, it was practically perfect. It's kind of a culinary miracle that some eggs, sugar, and lemon and good elbow grease create something this wonderful. But there you have it. For those of you who are not familiar with the renowned pastry chef of Spago restaurant, get acquainted. Both this and her other book, Secrets by the Yard, are seriously wonderful additions to any serious collector's library. The tart was topped off with baked meringue cookies, which were more for achieving the lemon meringue pie effect but I think they were cute. How can meringues be bad? Unfortunately, I don't have a final photo as this dessert was served and consumed on Shabbat, so I could not photograph the result but use your imaginations!

Lemon Curd
adapted from Sherry Yard's The Secrets of Baking

2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp finely chopped or grated lemon zest
3 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
4 tbsp unsalted butter or margarine, chilled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

Prepare an ice bath, using a large bowl to hold the ice. Fill a medium saucepan three-quarters full of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

Combine the lemon zest and sugar in a small bowl.

Rub together to release more flavor in the zest.
Lots of eggs, yolks, and the lemon/sugar mixture in a heat proof bowl.

All mixed together and sitting over a double boiler. Immediately begin whisking. Check to see if the sugar is dissolved. Once it is dissolved, add the lemon juice and cook, stirring constantly for about five minutes.After alot of whisking, when the curd reaches a temperature of 160 and it has thickened to the texture of sour cream, remove from the heat and thoroughly whisk in the butter/margarine one piece at a time. Press through a strainer if desired.
My luscious lemon curd is complete! And oh so licious!

Here it is spooned into the graham cracker shell.

As for the Meringues:

4 egg whites,
2/3 cup sugar
squirt of lemon juice
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla

Place the egg whites in a squeaky clean bowl. Start beating on medium speed. When the eggs have developed a foam, add the lemon juice and salt. Increase the speed and slowly add the sugar. After all the sugar is incorporated, add the vanilla.

This is what they should look like.

Pipe the meringue onto ungreased, heavy duty aluminum foil.

Bake in a preheated 250 degree oven for about one hour. Turn the oven off and allow the meringues to dry inside for as long as possible or for an hour. Enjoy!

Lemon Tart Part One: Graham Crackers

The idea for Shabbat afternoon dessert had been lingering in my head since last weekend, when I made the Strawberry Shortcake Parfaits. I had been thinking of making a deconstructed lemon meringue pie parfait: dollops of curd with a meringue cookie and a half a graham cracker sticking out from the side. I had it perfectly visualized in my head but instead decided to translate that into a tart. This is the beginning of my take of that classic. I began by making the graham crackers from scratch, using a recipe from Carole Walter's Great Cookies and then crushed them and added melted margarine to form the base for the tart. Making the graham crackers was a really fun experience, in part because they're a childhood classic made homemade, and that's always great, and in part because my almost nineteen year old sister, who also took some of these photos, helped me bake for the first time ever! That made it all the more fun. These graham crackers are so delicious! They don't taste exactly like store bought, (when does that ever happen?!) but similar and nicely crunchy and cinnamony and the little bit of honey definitely shines through and gives it that familiar taste.

Graham Crackers
From Carole Walter's Great Cookies

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter or margarine, slightly firm
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp regular sugar
2 tbsp honey
1 egg
1 tsp pure vanilla

In a bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

In the bowl of your mixer, cream the margarine until light.

Add the sugars and beat well to combine.

Add the egg, vanilla, and honey,


and mix well to combine.

Add the dry ingredients.


Mix until the dough just comes together. Divide the dough into two portions. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill until firm and rollable. Is that even a word?

Beginning with one piece of dough, roll out to desired thickness. That's me with my mom's ginormous rolling pin.

Nicely rolled and floured. Make sure that the dough is liberally floured to prevent sticking.

Cut the dough into an even square.

Cut into thirds, and then again crosswise to form six rectangles. Or shape them however you please.


Transfer the dough pieces to a parchment lined cookie sheet...


...and dock with a fork to get that traditional Graham Cracker look.
Bake until golden brown and delicious.
Do with the crackers as you please. Eat the whole batch, give them away, or make S'mores! I put them in a bag and crushed them with my aforementioned ginormous rolling pin to make crumbs. I added about a stick of melted margarine- just enough to make them clump together when squeezed.

Line them in your pan and bake for about ten minutes. Fill as desired. More on that coming up!