I love me some Granola

My morning meal usually consists of coffee, juice, yogurt, and granola.  Like I could eat that stuff every single day.

Until now, I’ve been buying our granola, but it’s quite expensive for the amount you get and it’s full of all sorts of weird additives and the like that I don’t really want to put in my system.

My mother used to make granola for us sometimes when we were kids, so I figured that I could probably do it myself if I tried.  And it’s easy.  And you can use what you’ve got in your cupboards, or what you can scoop up at the bulk food store.  Which means you can customize each batch.

So preheat your oven to 350°F and get out a large rimmed baking sheet.  I took the precaution of lining mine with parchment paper, so stuff wouldn’t stick.

The majority of granolas start with a base of oats, about 4 cups.  I used four double handfuls, because I measured my tiny hands once and put together that’s about what they hold.  And thus ends my list of measurements for this recipe.  Because you can do whatever you want.  So what else have I got going on here?  In addition to the oats, I have bran, ground flax, shredded coconut, sliced almonds, nutmeg, cinnamon, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, lavender flowers (yes), and then a selection of dried fruits: apricots, mango, and raisins.

Take all your happy dry ingredients (minus the fruits) and plop them in a bowl.

Mix ‘em up.

In another bowl, add about 1/2 cup runny honey,

about 1/2 cup maple syrup,

and about 1/2 cup melted butter.

*** EDIT: If you’d like granola that forms clumps (and that’s my favourite kind), whisk 1 or 2 egg whites into a froth and add them to the mixture as well.  The protein in the whites will stick everything together during the baking process.  Just use caution when stirring mid-bake, as the amount you stir will affect the size of the clumps you create. ***

Pour that golden loveliness into the dry mixture and stir until all the dry ingredients are coated.

Spread that stuff out on your baking sheet and chuck that in the oven for about 40 minutes.

Make sure to stir with a spatula every 10-15 minutes or so to keep the stuff on the bottom from burning.

While that’s on the go, get your dried fruit ready. I chopped up the apricots and mango slices a little to make them easier to get on a spoon.

Remove from the oven and let it cool in the pan, stirring it occasionally to break up the chunks.  The finer grained your ingredients are, and the more sticky wet ingredients you use, the chunkier your granola will be.

While it’s still a little warm, stir in your dried fruit.

Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks, and enjoy whenever you want!

Rules are for Chumps: the Glowing Meringue Igloo Edition

Unidentified blurry glowing object. Produced by SCIENCE.

As you may remember, I recently entered Movita Beaucoup’s pumpkin carve-off 2012.  I didn’t win.  It was very upsetting to me.  But all is not lost.  Movita also holds an annual gingerbread house contest.  And I’ve had this idea that’s been percolating in my wee brain meats for some time.  And I think I just might pull it off.  When I mentioned the idea to Cait over Google Talk, this was how our conversation went:

me: so the lady who does the pumpkin carving contest also does a gingerbread house contest

  but I was thinking, what about an igloo, made of meringue? with a yeti attacking a camp full of ninjabread men?

 Cait: ahahahahaha

  do they make edible googly eyes?

 me: no but I could pipe in googly eyes

  terror and dismemberment

 Cait: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2008/one-hundred-percent-edible-googly-eyes/

 me: I HAVE THOSE

 Cait: YOU MUST DO THIS

  IT IS THE ONLY RIGHT THING TO DO

 me: THEY WILL FIT IN THE MERINGUE PERFECTLY

 Cait: you’ll have to submit a video proving their googliness

 me: totally

  oh man

 Cait: i think you won the contest before it even started

 me: aside from not following any rules, I am so going to win this.

 Cait: rules are for chumps

 me: I’ve actually been thinking about this for weeks

 Cait: i can tell

 me: have I mentioned that this is one of the many reasons I love you?

 Cait: ahahahaha i want to eat your ninjabread men

  i don’t see how they could top this without having lasers and stuff

 me: I’m going to quote you on that

 Cait: maybe you could make it glow in the dark too

 like under a black light

  giving the internet its greatest ginger bread house ever

 me: I wonder if egg white glows naturally?

 Cait: on tv on those crazy baking shows i think they use alcohol or tonic water?

  it is tonic water

  http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/upload/97882991872109887_8t24pxdz_b.jpg

 SO CUTE

 me: but then it wouldn’t taste good would it?

 Cait: you’d have to experiment. it may not take much to cause that to happen… i don’t know.

  i am not a glowing igloo scientist

  also they can’t taste it on an internet contest.

 me: find me a recipe for glowing meringue

  I just don’t see how the tonic water fits into it

 Cait: oh well google says tonic water has quinine which glows brilliant blue under black light

 and so whenever they make glowing whatever on baking shows they use tonic water

  and it glows

  so make some test meringue, brush that s**t with tonic water, or sprinkle, or whatever

  and then stick it under a black light for science

 me: you know, I could use it in the slurry i’m making with cornstarch, which will stabilize the meringue

Cait: i mean people’s minds will be blown by the googley eyed ninja bread men

  but BAM the damn thing glows

 i don’t even know why anyone else would bother entering

 me:  don’t forget the yeti

So you can see how this woman completes me in every way.  Long story short, this is what we’re doing.  And by We I mean me and a slightly-less-than-willing Pie, who, as Cait says, does not understand our vision.  And Cait will be offering moral support over Google Talk as she concocts a contraption for Ruby. I wish my computer could always be in the kitchen …

Before we got started I wanted to lay out my supplies.  I needed a piping bag (I used a plastic one with a piping tip stuffed in one corner), and my baking sheets lined with parchment paper.  I also needed some form of structure for my igloo, so I grabbed a metal bowl that looked like it was the right size to fit the ninjas I had in mind.

It was kind of an origami fest getting the parchment to cover the bowl in an appropriate way.  I used freezer tape to stick stuff down — on the non-meringue side, of course.

Then I made a little door as well.  I hope this works.

As we know, the first trick to making meringue is to bring the whites to room temperature, so I did that with 8 egg whites (wash out the shells and keep them for later).  And rather than use my usual method, which produces a beautiful, flaky and delicate meringue, I modified this recipe, which involves stabilizing the meringue with corn starch.

In a small saucepan, combine 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 1/3 cup cornstarch.  Whisk it up until you are sure it’s well mixed.

Whisk in 1 1/3 cups tonic water (I let mine get flat so the bubbles wouldn’t interfere — if you don’t want yours to glow you can use regular water) and heat over medium, stirring constantly, until the mixture is clear and thick, kind of like petroleum jelly.  Remove that from the heat and allow it to cool.  If you do it for too long you end up making plastic.  I’ve definitely done that before.  The science of it is pretty neat but it’s a pain to clean.

I also made some royal icing to use as glue for later on.

In a large metal or glass bowl (copper apparently works the best), plop down your egg whites, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar (another stabilizing acid), 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (who knows, these could end up being tasty).  Whisk that up until it gets all nice and foamy and soft peaks form.

Then, a tablespoon at a time, add in 1 cup granulated sugar.  The sugar, if you add it slowly enough, is another stabilizing agent.

Add in slowly as well that gross vaseline-like stuff you just made.

Whip that silly, until you get a nice opaque, shiny mass with stiff peaks.  The best thing about meringue is that unlike whipping cream, which relies on fat to stabilize, you can’t overwhip this stuff. So if you’re not sure, just keep going.

I think we’re ready to go here.  Preheat your oven to 225°F.  The cooler your oven is and the longer you bake your meringue, the drier and crisper it will be.  And we want to do this right.

I had a lot of meringue to work with, so I did some experimenting, shoving the meringue in a freezer bag with a piping tip jammed in the corner, I tried out different shapes, scrapping what I didn’t want.

I ended up making three yetis, and a tree.  And some blobs.

And signing my name.  If I’d dyed this with vitamin B12 it would have come out yellow, and I could have done the ol’ yellow snow joke, eh?

And the igloo itself. I originally piped on the meringue, but I didn’t like it.

So I used a spatula to smooth it out.

Then I baked them for about 3 1/2 hours (because there was so much stuff in the oven), and when they were done I turned off the oven and let them sit in there until the oven was completely cool.  Only then did I attempt to remove the parchment paper.  This is why I made more than one of everything.  Well, except for the igloo.  That was enough of a pain in the ass.

I know you’re saying, what’s a gingerbread house without gingerbread?  Well, this is a meringue igloo, so it’s not complete without ninjabread men.  Am I right?  Cait gave me these cookie cutters (by Fred & Friends) when she and Jul were here this summer and so I relished the opportunity to use them.

I won’t extend this post still further by walking you through the ninjabread process (because really, the point of this exercise is in the meringue igloo, people), but I’ll show you a few that we decorated, and I got the recipe from here.

Yes, I really do suck at piping icing.  I just don’t care enough to get better at it.  So deal.

I also just happened to have some empty gelatin capsules on hand, so took the opportunity to make edible googly eyes for all my participants.  If you’re interested in doing this, you can get the capsules from drug stores or health food stores, but you might have to call around.

So you take your capsule and you carefully puncture a hole in the end of one of the halves with fine pointy scissors (or a sharp craft knife or razor blade), then cut around until all you’re left with is a wee dome.  Do that to the other half of the capsule as well.

Now you need eyes that google.  I found these sprinkles at the grocery store, and they will make handy eyes — in pretty colours, too!

Use an empty capsule to make indentations in the meringue to hold your eyes, then jam the eyes in the indentations you made.  Make it go in far enough that it stays, but not too far that the eyes aren’t all wiggly.  I don’t know why it’s important that my eyes are googly here in a still photo, but it just is, darnit.

For the ninjabread, I glued them in with piping gel.  It meant they weren’t very googly, but this is a still shot anyway.

And now the setup.  Fortunately everything I have here is very lightweight, so I just set everything up on a piece of cardboard.  For the “ground” I used jumbo marshmallows that I cut in half.  The stickiness of the marshmallow made excellent glue for keeping it attached to the cardboard.  I also snuck a few of those empty egg shells in there, glued down with royal icing.  Egg shells glow pale pink under black light. I thought they might look a little like very subtle snow monsters. Then I set everything else up, using toothpicks and royal icing to keep everything in place.

And here we have our scene of mayhem and terror: poor ninja researchers travel to the Canadian north, only to be set upon by the very creature they came to study: the elusive yeti.

Yeah, I know.  It’s not the handsomest design in the cold light of day.  It looks like a hungover drunken science experiment.

And in the dark?  Well, I’ll let you reflect on that by yourself.  I never really thought this would ACTUALLY work.  BUT IT DOES!  It glows in the mother-freakin’ DARK!

The eggs don’t glow as pinkly as I wanted them to, but it was, indeed, very subtle.

Sincerely,

Rum-Raspberry Meringues

I had to fill in (on rather short notice) for one of the members of my Sweet Treats group at work, and so this is what I came up with.  I LOVE (love, love, love) meringues.  Always have.  In fact I think they’re the first thing I ever baked.  And so every time I make something with egg yolks I take advantage of the extra whites and whip up a batch.  The Pie isn’t a huge fan of the crispy, chewy, sugary goodness, but that hasn’t stopped me yet.  I’ve even branched out and made different varieties of chocolate meringue, one of which I posted about here.  But I keep seeing fruity versions, so I thought I’d give that a go.  Most of the recipes call for food colouring and raspberry or strawberry extract, neither of which are particularly yummy to me.  I mean, I understand why you would use them in this case — the fluffy egg whites are pretty delicate and would collapse if you put too much heavy stuff into the mix.

But I think we can give this a bit of a go, with some real fruit.  We just have to be very careful.

What you need is some egg whites, at room temperature.  I have some pasteurized egg whites that came in a carton which has been sitting in my freezer since Cait and Jul were here, so I might as well use that. Then you need some cream of tartar, which is your stiffening agent. And some sugar.  For sweetness.  Obviously.  You can use any sweetener you like, but I prefer the ease of good old regular sugar.

And you need some fruit.  I’m going to use about a cup and a half of frozen raspberries here, which I thawed, and I’m going to gently stew them for a little bit with 1 teaspoon corn starch.  To prevent lumps of corn starch forming, mix the spoonful of starch with a small amount of the raspberry juice first, to form a slurry (this technique works really well when adding thickener to gravies, too).  I added in a tablespoon or so of sugar, just to get rid of the bite of the raspberry acid.

Then I’m going to strain them (and by that I mean shove the mess through a sieve with a spoon), and come out with a nice little coulis.  Let that cool for a bit.

Now you can start your meringues.  Preheat your oven to 250°F and line some baking sheets with parchment paper.

The regular proportions I use come from The Joy of Cooking, and involve 4 egg whites, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon vanilla (which I made from rum!) and 1 cup sugar.  You can multiply or divide this recipe however you wish.  In my carton o’ egg whites the label says there is the equivalent of 8 egg whites, so I’m going with that proportion, which is a double batch.

Of course, I didn’t learn until after I’d put it all together that pasteurized egg whites (such as those that come in a carton) do not lend themselves well to making meringue.  So I had to start all over again.

SO very much not what I was aiming for.

So you have your room temperature egg whites, and you chuck them in the bowl of a mixer with your cream of tartar and your rum/vanilla, and you beat the crap out of it with your whisk-y thing.  When you’ve got nice foamy peaks, you can start adding your sugar in, a little bit at a time.  Keep beating until you have nice firm peaks.

That’s more like it!

These peaks not only hold their own weight, but they can support the weight of the heavy metal whisk as well!

Once the egg whites form stiff peaks, you can gently fold in your coulis.

I spooned the meringue stuff onto the baking sheets in decent cookie-sized heaps, and ended up with 42 of them.  Bake them for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (maybe a bit longer if they’re still squishy on the bottom, and make sure to rotate your sheets if you’ve got them on two levels), and let them cool inside the oven after you’ve turned it off.  If you cool them too quickly they’ll collapse.  Store them in an airtight container and make sure to eat them all within a few days of baking.

Greetings from inside the oven …

These are strongly reminiscent of those fruit-flavoured hard candies that they hand out in restaurants, that you suck on for a while and then you chew and the inside is all squishy and sticks together.  That’s what biting on these is like.  Taste is very similar, too.

Chocolate Rose Birthday Cupcakes

Yesterday was Kª’s birthday (otherwise known as The Lady Downstairs).  She’s now 19, or somewhere close to that .  She’s also the mother of two very energetic young boys, and if you include her husband, she’s outnumbered in the house by males 3 to 1.  So I thought that for her birthday I’d give her something incredibly girly — a flowered cupcake.  The recipe is Martha Stewart and I got the idea for the flower from here.  The decoration part is really time consuming (at least, with my amateur skills) but so totally worth it.

This recipe makes 24 large cupcakes.

First, preheat your oven to 350°F and line two muffin tins with paper liners.

In a bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon baking soda and give that a stir.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, plop in 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) cocoa powder and 6 tablespoons hot water and mix them into a paste.  Apparently this helps to intensify the chocolate flavour.  I found I had to add an additional 4 tablespoons of water in order to get a paste, so keep that in mind.

Add in 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) buttermilk (or soured milk), 6 tablespoons melted butter, and 2 whole eggs plus 2 egg whites and whisk until combined.

Gradually add your bowl of flour and sugar and whisk until smooth.

Scoop the batter into your liners and bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the middle cupcake comes out clean.  Place the muffin tins on racks and allow the cupcakes to cool completely.

While they’re cooling, plop a 250g package of plain cream cheese in a mixer together wtih about 2 cups icing sugar.  Whip that up until it’s smooth and creamy.  This is your icing.

Frost your cooled cupcakes generously.

Here’s where the ridiculous part comes in.  You’re going to need several packages of Fruit by the Foot, or some kind of store-brand equivalent.  I haven’t had this stuff since I was a kid.  The Pie was thrilled and went off in the throes of nostalgia, an extra candy sticking out of his mouth.

You will need 12 strawberry flavoured ones (red) and at least 1 apple-flavoured one (green).  I could only get these variety packs, so I had to cut the green bits from the multi-coloured ones, and I ended up with some purple roses.

Unroll one of your red strips and use a knife to cut a sine wave down the middle of it lengthwise.  Don’t worry about being perfect — it will look fine no matter what.

Take one of the halves and, starting from the end, tightly roll it up for about five inches.  This is your “bud.”

Take the bud and plop it in the centre of one of your frosted cupcakes.  Carefully drape the rest of the candy around the bud, tapping it into the frosting to anchor it.  I find it helps if I sort of let it feed through my fingers on one hand and use the other hand to rotate the cupcake.

Then cut out two small leaves from the green stuff and tuck them into the frosting under the flower you have created.

And so you are done.

Now you just have 23 more to go.  And actually the purple ones are kind of nice, I think …

Blue Egg Group

Happy Friday the 13th!

I do not suffer from triscadecaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th.  Normally it’s an extremely lucky day for me.

And true to form, what do I get but some fresh St. Phillips BLUE eggs, a gift from Miss Awesome?  It’s always my lucky day.

Aren’t these beautiful?

I don’t want to waste them on something banal, so stay tuned for the amazingness I plan to create with them.

I have a number of project ideas lined up for the next few weeks, but they all take a bit of time, so please be patient with me if the posts you’ve been seeing are a little simpler than you are used to.  As Blackadder would say, it’s all part of my cunning plan …

White Cake with Blueberries

This is kind of a mish-mash cake I made for Rusty (the man loves his cake), and it turned out pretty well, all things considered.  The cake recipe comes from Epicurious.com and the icing is a modified version of the one I used in the Pie’s vanilla birthday cake.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and butter and flour a 9″ x 9″ square cake pan (or, in this case, a 10″ round springform pan).

Cream together 1 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup softened butter.  Then add in 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.

Combine 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour with 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder and add that to the butter/egg mixture.

Finally, stir in 1/2 cup milk until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and level the top.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the cake springs back to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Remove to a rack to cool completely.

I was a little disappointed at how flat this cake turned out.  I suppose if I were to do it again I would separate the eggs and whip the whites to boost the volume.  You can gently fold the whites into your mixed batter to make your cake much fluffier.

While the cake is cooling, prepare your icing.  In a double boiler, melt 4 oz white chocolate.

Cream together 1 package (250g) softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup milk, 4 cups icing sugar, and 2 teaspoons vanilla.  If you use heavy cream instead of milk you will need less icing sugar.

Add in the melted chocolate and blend until smooth.  Put that gooey goodness in the fridge to cool.

I decided to add a fruity boost to the cake with 1 cup blueberry fruit sauce (you can see the basic recipe here).  Make sure your sauce is cool before you put it on your cake or it will melt your icing.

When the cake is cool, carefully slice it in half horizontally so you have two layers.

Slather some white chocolate icing on the top of the bottom slice and cool that in the fridge for a few minutes.

Plop about three quarters of your fruit sauce on top of that icing layer and smooth it out.  I may have licked the spoon.  But everyone who ate it was related to me.

Plop the second cake layer on top and ice the whole cake with your icing.  Mine was pretty gooey and so oozed down the sides, but it worked out for me.

Pour the remaining fruit sauce on top of the cake.

Swirl with a knife for a marbled effect and then cool in the refrigerator until set.

EAT!

Delicious Disaster

Well.

I should know by now that experimenting with recipes before a dinner party is not a good idea.  But who else can I experiment on but my hapless dinner guests?

My goal was a dense, gooey, flourless chocolate cake, maybe with a glossy dark chocolate ganache poured over top.  I thought I had found the ideal recipe here.  It had four simple ingredients and no-nonsense instructions.  It even gave me the opportunity to use my kitchen scale, which had long sat unused.  Working in metric is such fun.

I’ll give you the recipe here, and then you can see for yourself how things went horribly wrong.

Preheat your oven to 180°C (that’s about 350°F for those of you who don’t have both measures on your ovens).  Grease (with lots and lots of butter) a 22cm/9″ cake pan and set that aside.

Measure yourself out 250g dark chocolate and chop that sucker into pieces.

Melt that in a double boiler with 100g butter until smooth.  Remove from the heat.

Separate 4 large eggs.  Sift 175g icing sugar into a bowl, add the 4 yolks, and whisk until pale and creamy.

Fold the melted chocolate into the egg mixture.

In yet another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until soft peaks form.

Using a metal spoon, gradually fold the whites into the chocolate mixture.

Pour the mixture into the greased pan.  Mine nearly filled it, so I put a pizza pan underneath to catch any spills.  I needn’t have worried, it turns out.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the surface begins to crack but the centre is still gooey.

Alas, though the cake baked up perfectly and smelled divine, it wouldn’t come out of the pan, no sir.  Not at all.  I don’t even think lining the pan with parchment paper would have helped.

This is it after it cooled.

I ended up with warm, gooey, dense chocolate cake bits in a pile on a plate.

With three hours until the dinner guests arrived, the Pie said, “Well, you have time to make another cake.”

I gave him a dark look.

“Or,” he says, backtracking, “you could make a trifle?”

Huzzah!  Dessert is saved!  Another floor pizza crisis averted.

Of course, having never made trifle in my life (I save that duty for my mother-in-law, because Mrs. Nice does it so well), I do not own a trifle bowl.  Not to worry, I will improvise.  Though I wouldn’t mind getting a trifle bowl someday, hint, hint …

Trifle is all about the layers.  The traditional version is a sponge cake, usually soaked with some form of alcohol, like brandy or sherry, topped with fruit, custard, and whipping cream in alternating layers.  In a straight-sided container like a trifle bowl you can see all the layers and the effect is quite pretty.

This being a chocolate cake, I thought the custard would be inappropriate.  If I had more time, I would have made chocolate pudding as a substitute for the custard, but I didn’t have the time needed for the pudding to set.  Instead, I opted for a strawberry fruit sauce with drizzled melted chocolate between the layers of whipped cream, and topped with fresh raspberries.  I drizzled a wee bit of Grand Marnier over the cake and let that sink in.

When I made the fruit sauce I added a little bit of corn starch just so it would thicken, and then I made sure to let it cool.

I added butter to the melted chocolate so that when it cooled it wouldn’t be as hard as it was originally.

I also added a wee bit of cream of tartar to my whipped cream so that it would hold its shape better while chilling in the refrigerator.

Then I did my layering …

Gooey cake.  Drizzled chocolate.  Strawberry goodness.  Whipped cream.  Repeat.

Drop a handful or two of fresh raspberries on top and drizzle the remaining chocolate all over and we’re set.

The layering doesn’t look as pretty from the side but we have to sacrifice aesthetics sometimes.  Chill that sucker for a couple hours then feed it to your unsuspecting dinner guests with a sob story about your failed dessert.

Chocolate Meringues

Happy Birthday Minda!

I love meringues, and they’re something I actually mastered as a young child, though how I had the patience for them I will never know.  The sweet, crispy, chewy lightness of the meringue cookies made it worth the wait.

Recently I’ve been looking at alternative forms of meringue, and other methods of making them.  I made these amazing chocolate mocha meringues last year around Valentine’s Day but of course I can’t remember where I got the recipe from.  Do you remember Kª?  Perhaps it was an issue of Every Day Food.  Who knows …

In an effort to recreate these magic chocolate tasties (and because I had 8 egg whites left over from my foray into vanilla ice cream [post to follow next Wednesday, stay tuned]), I flipped through The Joy of Cooking (2006) for a new take on the old classic.  These ones are from page 741, and I doubled the batch (of course).

Now I’ve mentioned this before, but make sure that your egg whites are at room temperature before you start whipping them.  If they are cold you can always warm them up by putting them in a bowl of warm water.

Preheat your oven to 225°F.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a mixer, plop in 1 egg whites, 1 teaspoons vanilla extract, and 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar. 

Whisk ‘em up at high speed, and add, gradually, 2/3 cup granulated sugar. 

When you get to the stiff peak stage, you’re done.

Sift together 2/3 cup icing sugar with 3 tablespoons cocoa powder and fold it into the beaten mixture as well.

If it’s still a little swirly, that’s okay.

Spoon the mixture onto the parchment and shape it however you wish.

I had enough leftover for a large meringue to make into a sort of pavlova.

Bake it for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (seriously).  You can see if it’s done if you can remove a meringue from the parchment without it breaking.

Turn off your oven and prop the door open a bit with a wooden spoon.  Leave it like that for an hour or so (again with the waiting).  The trick with good crisp meringue is to let it cool slowly. 

Store the meringues in an airtight container or wrap them tightly for up to three days.

For my little pavlova, I cut up some fruit for the top: raspberries, strawberries, and grapes.

Then I melted some chocolate in a double boiler.

Plopped the berries on the meringue.

Drizzled the chocolate on top.  It’s pretty much a pavlova, minus the whipped cream.

Macaroons with Plum Jam

Welcome to Newfoundland, Freshly Pressed visitors!

This recipe comes courtesy of the lovely and talented Tes (and her adorable son Yaseen) at Tes at Home.  You can see how she did her version here.

I LOVE macaroons.  Like, there’s serious ♥ going on when it comes to me and macaroons.  So to find out that they’re as easy as Tes made them out to be was totally awesome.

I found a box of Ontario plums at Belbin‘s, and because I missed the quality of fruit from my adopted province, I snatched them up.

Preheat your oven to 325°F.

In a bowl, whisk together 2 egg whites, 1/3 cup granulated sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla until it’s all nice and frothy.

Stir in 2 cups dessicated coconut.  I thought mine was a little mushy still so I added a bit more.  Maybe I didn’t whisk my whites enough?

Spray a baking sheet and make little balls, about 2 tablespoons’ worth, and then make a little well in the top of each one.

Mine kind of fell apart a little but I think I need more practice.  They were certainly goopier than Tes’.  Maybe the coconut was too coarse.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and cooked through.  I put mine on a rack and let them cool.

While those are baking you can start on your jam.  I used slightly more than 500g of plums, because I figured the pits would take away the weight when I threw them in the compost.

I peeled my plums before I cooked them, and I think that’s why my jam didn’t thicken as much as I wanted it to — a lot of the pectin is held in the skins.  Anyway, it still tasted great.

My mother-in-law Mrs. Nice and I decided that to peel a plum you would go through the same process you go through for peeling tomatoes, which is, you scald them.

Take a pot of boiling water.

And a bowl of ice cold water.

Plop the plums in the boiling water for about 30 seconds, then scoop them out and drop them in the cold water.

Tada, your plums practically peel themselves.

Now, of course, because I’d peeled them, they were super slippery and really hard to cut, so I more or less just squished them to get the pits out.

Plop them in a saucepan with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water. 

Bring the mess to a nice foamy boil, then simmer on lower heat for about 20 minutes or until it starts to thicken.

Remove from the heat and cool it down.  If you spread it out it will cool faster.

I ended up with just over two cups of tart and sweet plum jam.

Spoon drops of jam into the wells in your now-cooled macaroons and serve.

Thanks, Tes!

Vanilla Cake

For his birthday (which was on the 21st), the Pie requested a vanilla cake.  Conveniently for me this is also the type of cake requested by Chel and Invis for their wedding cake, which I will be making next May.  No time like the present to begin perfecting a recipe.

Vanilla cake is also traditionally known as “white cake”, which forms the base for millions of different kinds of cakes.  This one, however, I wanted to make sure that vanilla was what you got out of the whole thing, not just some bland cake designed to set off a fancy frosting.

You may not know this, but vanilla extract is made by soaking cut vanilla beans (which come from orchids) in a strong dark spirit, such as rum or bourbon.  I figured, what the hey, might as well try it myself.  I got two vanilla beans from Belbin’s and poured about a tablespoon of Screech into the little tube.  You’re supposed to leave it for a few months, but I only had a week.  So that’s what I did.

I was also careful to scrape out all the vanilla bean seeds to enhance the flavour.

The batter for this cake was inspired by the Whiteout Cake in Lewis and Poliafito’s Baked.  When I go to Manhattan to visit my brother, I want to see their bakery.  Anyway, I changed the icing, added jam, and of course used extra vanilla, both my own special Screech blend and regular pure extract.

THE CAKE

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Butter three 8″ round cake pans, line them with parchment circles (which I make using my personal kitchen compass), and then butter the parchment as well.

Dust the pans with flour and knock out the excess.  I definitely did something wrong in this step, because my cakes STUCK.  But I’ll get to that later.

Separate three eggs and bring the whites to room temperature.  I set mine in the sun for a few minutes.  Use the yolks the next day in a tasty omelette.  We did.

Sift together in a bowl 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 1 teaspoon baking soda.  Set this aside for a spell.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup vegetable shortening on medium speed until they’re creamy.

This will take about 3 to 4 minutes.

Add in 1 3/4 cups sugar and 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract.

Beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Scrape down the bowl and add one whole egg, then beat until just combined.

Turn the mixer to low and add your flour mixture as well as 1 1/2 cups ice water.  Add the flour in three separate additions, alternating with the water, and starting and ending with the flour.  Scrape down the bowl and mix on low speed for another minute or so.

In a separate bowl, whisk together your 3 egg whites with 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar until you reach the soft peak stage.

Gently fold the egg whites into the rest of your batter.

Distribute the batter amongst the three pans and smooth the tops.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, rotating halfway through, until you can insert a toothpick in the middle of the cake and it comes out clean.

Invert onto racks and let cool completely before frosting (you can remove the parchment when they’re cool).  You will notice how I lost a few of my cake edges.  But I guess that’s what icing is for — to fill the gaps.

THE FROSTING

In a bowl, plop in 2 250g packages of cream cheese, preferably at room temperature.  Add in 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, as well as 3/4 cup heavy cream (whipping cream) and 3/4 cup icing sugar. 

Beat with a hand mixer until mostly smooth.

In a double boiler or a heat-proof bowl set above a pot of barely simmering water, melt 12 oz white chocolate.

Add the melted chocolate to the cream cheese mixture and beat the crap out of it until it’s smooth.

THE CRUMB COAT

Set the first layer of your cake on your serving plate and slather the top with a generous layer of icing (don’t worry, you’re not going to run out).  Add several dollops of jam.

We love our Auntie Crae’s.

Plop on the second layer and repeat the above steps.  Plop on the third layer, and now you can begin your crumb coat. 

We do a crumb coat so that you can get all the messiness out of the way beforehand.  Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of icing.  Don’t worry if crumbs or jam gets into the icing.  This is your priming coat in any case.

Pop it into the fridge for at least fifteen minutes for the icing to set.

Bring it out and slather it with more icing.  You see how that sealant coat keeps the cake’s interior from interfering with the exterior.

Decorate to your whimsy and serve. I used dragées and white sprinkles for this effect.

Keep leftovers covered in the refrigerator.  It has a slight lean because I didn’t bother to level the layers before attaching them, but the Pie liked it well enough.