July 7, 2014 by spatulagoddess

Mascarpone round 2 (Eureka!)

After the disappointing results of Saturday I pondered for awhile and came home from work to try again. Behold! A puff pastry stuffed with fresh mascarpone and drizzled with hot fudge sauce.

Mascarpone. That hideously over-priced Italian dessert cheese used in real tiramisu. Difficult to find in the grocery store. Case in point, I checked 5 stores and when I finally found it:

Shocking!

Lately I’ve been uninspired in the kitchen. I was talking dessert ideas with my sister and asked if she had ever eaten something with mascarpone? Her response was to lapse into silence for a moment, before rapturously describing the best dessert she had ever eaten. I figure that anything which evokes that response is something I must learn how to cook with. I wasn’t sure what I even wanted to make with it, just the possibility of working with it got me thinking. Lo and behold, making it only takes 2 ingredients; heavy cream 36% and a lemon. Ah hah!

Recipe source: I’m not sure where this idea originated, I found it on Pastry Affair, and searched around, everybody seems to use the same method; heat the cream and lemon juice, strain and chill and voila (hopefully). It looks the same on Mother Would Know. I found some very good pictures of the process on Savory Bites.

Time required: 1 hour of work + 8 hours to set

Yields: uh, maybe about 2 cups?

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: under $5 if cream is on sale

Kitchen implements I used:

heavy-bottom sauce pot
candy thermometer
strainer
cheese cloth
plastic wrap

Ingredients:

2 C heavy cream, aim for 36% milk fat, avoid ultra pasteurized
1 TBSP freshly squeezed lemon juice

Instructions:

1. Heat the cream to 88°C / 190°F. Stir often. Note for next time, skip the heat diffuser.

2. Stir in the lemon juice, and heat mixture for 5 min, trying to keep temperature constant.

UPDATED JULY 26: after 3rd try at this, have determined 5 minutes it just not enough, I think other people might have a gas stove with consistent heat? It took about 25 min on a coil-top stove for rounds 2 and 3

Disclosure: it’s supposed to take 5 minutes. It took me 20. The temperature kept dropping. I was using a heat diffuser which I discarded. The cream should curdle and thicken a bit. I found this part strangely difficult.

3. Cool to room temperature, either 20 min in a cold water bath or 45 min on the counter should do it.

4. Dampen cheese cloth lightly with water and line strainer, 4 layers of cloth. Put bowl under strainer.

5. Plop the mixture into the centre of the cloth. Don’t push it down. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 8 hours.

This looks much different from the first attempt where nearly half the “cheese” ran through the cloth within one second. You don’t believe that, do you? Here, preserved for posterity.

If yours looks like that ^, go back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, go make some pastry or something.

6. In the morning, cross your fingers and invert mass into container.

Peel off cloth. Ah hah!

Look at it, holding it’s shape and everything!

7. Stir well.

8. Spread into pastry and garnish. I made some hot fudge sauce the other night and figured why not.

Enjoy what you have wrought!

Verdict: Definitely good. Making it at home is much more sensible than buying a wee-sized container. If I had some fresh fruit I’d put that in a pastry but I’m out of fruit at the moment. You really need to make sure the cream thickens, something so simple was surprisingly easy to ruin. I declare making this yourself to be worth the effort.

Playlist: Halo – Mjolnir mix

June 9, 2014 by spatulagoddess

Cinnamon streusel coffee cake

I love coffee cake. Especially Starbucks’ coffee cake. I found this recipe and tried it out, and it’s delicious. I screwed it up and did it backwards but it still turned out marvelous!

Time required: 1 hour

Yields: uh, it’s hard to tell cause it’s round, a fair amount?

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $62

Kitchen implements I used:

Nemo the Kitchen Aid
two 9″ round pans
tin foil

INGREDIENTS:

Streusel topping:

⅔ C granulated white sugar
pinch of salt
¾ C flour
½ TBSP ground cinnamon
4 TBSP unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

1 C dark brown sugar
1½ TBSP ground cinnamon
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Cake:

¾ C butter, softened
1 tsp salt
1½ C granulated white sugar
⅓ C golden brown sugar
2½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp coffee extract
3 eggs
¾ C plain Greek yogurt
1¼ C milk
3¾ C flour

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 176°C or 350°F. Line pan with foil and grease it.

2. Make topping; in a bowl combine sugar, salt, flour, and cinnamon. Add melted butter, stir and set aside.

3. Make filling; in a bowl combine brown sugar, cinnamon, and cocoa powder, and set aside.

WTF. Okay, next time check if your brown sugar has solidified. Toss a piece of bread in and hope for the best. We’ll come back to this later.

4. Make the cake; this is where I screwed up. You’re suppose to cream everything except the flour and eggs together. I put all the dry ingredients plus flour together first. Ooops. Then add the eggs one at a time.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk together the yogurt and milk till well combined, don’t worry if it’s lumpy.

6. Add half the flour (hah) to butter mixture, half the milk, repeat. Beat til just combined. Get a face shot of milk when the mixer goes crazy.

7. Spread half the batter into the pans. Shake it to even it out.

8. Sprinkle the filling on top.

9. Add the rest of the batter.

10. Sprinkle on the streusel topping.

11. Use a butter knife and swirl it through, don’t worry about being even.

12. Bake 55 min if using 2 rounds (or 55-60 if a 9 x 13).
When it’s done, if you lightly press on the top it will spring back up.

13. Leave in pan, place on wire rack for 20 min to cool before slicing.

Verdict: This was great. I didn’t realize how much sugar was in coffee cake. Also surprised by the high cost of ingredients. You could omit the coffee extract but I wanted to try it. I’d use more of that next time, and I’d check the brown sugar first and soften it ahead of time. Chipping out brown sugar like you’ve got a pickaxe is lame.

Playlist:

Corey Hart – Sunglasses at Night

April 26, 2014 by spatulagoddess

Chocolate-covered bacon (redux)

“Boyfriend Unit? We’re invited to D’s birthday party. What does he like?”

“Meat.”

“Surely he likes other things than meat. What is he interested in?”

“Meat.”

“You’re a lot of help in gift planning. OK; wanna make him chocolate bacon, a big box of it?”

“If we make that I want to EAT IT.”

“Well you can’t. It’s a gift. You’re cooking the bacon.”

(Because dear reader, I don’t cook bacon. I don’t clean ovens either.)

“Wuah you didn’t clean the stove, I will have to photoshop it!!”

“Look. perfectly tempered chocolate!”

“What time is his party starting?”

“Uh, 7pm? 7:30pm? Lemme check… SHIT.”

“What??”

“It started at 5.”

“We don’t have enough time to temper the white chocolate.”

“Or the milk chocolate.”

“That’s ok, I can totally temper chocolate on the fly, watch this.”

(later)

“Happy birthday D! Here!”

“EVERYBODY BACK UP, IT’S MINE.”

(later)

“I’d say that was a success, wouldn’t you?”

March 24, 2014 by spatulagoddess

“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”

These didn’t come out quite as intended but they were delicious any way. I wanted to make Mini Egg cookies for Easter, and a test run was needed. (I was surprised how easily Boyfriend Unit accepted this flimsy excuse as justification to add a jumbo bag of Mini Eggs to the grocery list, but there you have it.) On a whim I dyed them green because I thought they would look cuter, like dino eggs in grass.

Except now that I’m more awake, I remember that dinosaurs roamed before grass covered the ground, which I learned from the making-of features in Walking with Dinosaurs. Whatever. The grass effect is artistic. Moving right along.

Time required: 1 hour

Yields: 24?

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $40

Cost per cookie: $1.70

Ingredients:

1 C butter, softened
1 C brown sugar, packed
½ C white sugar
2 eggs
1 TBSP vanilla
2 C white flour + 1 C cake flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
drop of kelly green fondant colouring
1 C of Mini Eggs (do not use “Eggies” they are not the same)

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat to 176° C / 350°F.

2. Beat the butter until it’s fluffy. When Boyfriend Unit comes to photograph for me I will always give a thumbs up. Cause I am a very cheesy person.

3. Before you add the eggs, beat them (one at a time) in a small cup, then pour in, and blend. Hmm. Something’s not right here. Attempt to cream the sugar now and fail miserable.

Cheer on glorious mixer, spin like a hurricane! (Yes, I really talk to my appliance, in exactly that tone.)

4. Hmmm, actually it seems salvageable now. Meanwhile…

… combine the dry ingredients (both flours, baking soda, baking power, salt), give it a stir, and then add it to the wet in thirds.

Struggle to mix it. Nemo started to make a chugging sound, this dough was very thick.

5. Almost add the eggs. Change your mind.

Add fondant colouring instead.

6. Introduce your dragons! Giggle like a fool.

7. Bake 12-15 min, checked at 10 but too jiggly, gave them another 2-3 min. Cool on rack a few min and consume hot.

Verdict:

Hmm. These are pretty good! And fun to make. I wasn’t sure how a Mini Egg would hold up to being baked in the oven, they still had the snap when you bit into them although the shells cracked in the oven.

“He was no dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon.”

I intended to cream the sugar into the butter before adding the eggs but I forgot. I’m not sure yet how these feel or taste after cooling, I only made 4 to test them.

I added cake flour to regular flour because I’ve had cake flour sitting around forever not doing anything with it and was curious how it would affect texture. It gave the cookies a nice consistency. I think I will tinker a bit and add some more flavouring, maybe cardamom. Something spicy for dragon eggs. A cookie fit for a khaleesi.

Playlist: Lit – My Own Worst Enemy

February 10, 2014 by spatulagoddess

Great Aunt Lucy’s tea biscuits

I love tea biscuits. Most everyone in my family does. Perhaps it’s genetic. It’s dreadfully cold here and I thought Sunday would be improved greatly if we had a slow-cooked dinner with tea biscuits. Prior to rolling up my sleeves, I called Mom to inquire about some of the finer points of biscuit-making since this was new territory for me.

“Now hunni, it’s a very wet batter. And if it doesn’t work out, don’t get discouraged.”

“That sounds ominous. Are these really tricky?”

(insert pause)

“No… just… don’t get discouraged, that’s all.”

With that fateful prediction in mind I got to work.

Time required: 1 hour

Yields: 9 (supposed to be 12)

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $24

Cost per biscuit: $2

Kitchen implements I used:

Nemo the KitchenAid
baking trays lined with parchment paper

Ingredients:

2 C flour
1 TBSP white sugar
4 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ C white shortening
1 egg
1 C milk

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 400° F / 204°C and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Combine the dry stuff. Now, if you have never run a stand mixer with only dry ingredients: DON’T. I forgot this crucial information.

3. Beat in the shortening until coarse crumbs form.

4. Add beaten egg and milk, stir in with a fork.

5. Turn batter onto floured surface. Get caught in the act of making mildly sorcerous hand gestures. WARNING. WARNING. Do not set wax paper on the surface. Put the flour right onto the cutting board or the counter top. Or you will be sorry.

Puzzle over next part of the instructions.

6. Knead 20 times. Knead?

“Boyfriend, what does knead mean here? What do I do?”

“Um… it’s what the cat does when he sits on your lap, just try that.”

“Okay then!”

7. ~~Cut out biscuits with a roundish shape~~. I didn’t want another dish to clean so I didn’t do that, and tore off pieces by hand, and plopped them onto the trays.

8. Bake 10-14 minutes. I checked at 10, not done. Gave it 2 more minutes, 2 more, 2 more, and at 16 they finally had that golden edge.

9. Remove from oven and immediately take off tray and transfer to cooling rack. Wait 5 min before eating.

Very nice with a cup of tea. Or with dinner.

Verdict: Success! Thank you Aunt Lucy.

Playlist: Vampire Hunter D, OST

January 2, 2014 by spatulagoddess

Toblerone truffles

So, my plan was to pipe Toblerone ganache into truffle shells, and dip them into perfectly tempered semi-sweet Belgian chocolate. I was envisioning something like a Lindt chocolate. After all, I had done this successfully before under the guidance of Hobby Victim and I was confident I could produce something worth keeping.

Do you have any idea how annoying it is to pipe ganache? Seriously? It sucks. It starts out simply enough. Take some truffle shells and dipping tools.

Wrangle the ganache into a piping bag like a champion.

Plan to snip a tiny corner off, and overdo it. “Pipe” ganache into the shells.

And by pipe I mean try to at least get some of the god damn stuff into the shell. At one point the chocolate shot out of the bag and got *everywhere*. On the 3rd tray I got fed up and stopped.

Now, dipping the first one looks so neat and contained. A perfect little truffle waiting to be enrobed in Belgian chocolate.

However, all good things come to an end and after you’ve filled about half the tray, dripping chocolate starts to get everywhere. But after enough of them are dipped, a sense of pride starts to build. Smile at what you have wrought.

After all, the tiny imperfections are the charm of homemade chocolates! They tasted pretty good, but the fillings hardened the next day, so I’m going to put some more experimentation into how to get a Lindt-like centre. Need a little more time at the drawing board for these but overall a success.

Playlist: Celldweller

December 31, 2013 by spatulagoddess

Ganache gone wild – WTF just happened

Ugh. On Sunday I spent 2.5 hours making a perfectly emulsified ganache for an experiment. I let it chill overnight, and it solidified. I am so steamed.

Ganache is typically equal parts scalded cream to chopped chocolate, in this case Toblerone. To achieve a proper ganache that doesn’t crack or separate, you need to emulsify it. Emulsification is the process of combining two or more liquids, which normally don’t combine, into one. (Basically you stir and rest, stir and rest, chill, pass Go, collect two hundred dollars.) It was all going so well…

I poured the heated cream onto the chocolate and let it sit for bit, and then stirred every 15 minutes, for 2 hours.

The hell with stirring by hand. I’ll let Nemo do the work for me. After all that is what I have a stand mixer for, who wants to stand there the entire time? I have video games to play.

After 2 hours, it had lightened considerably, and had a smooth texture. All okay so far.

So I covered it with saran, and stupidly forgot to press it down to the surface, so the surface hardened.

I intended to use it on Monday but I was busy. I took it out of the fridge today, and lo and behold.

What. Is. This? I tried to save it by reheating but the fat started to separate. Wuah! This is no good.

I figured it might be salvageable if I could stir heated cream into it, and miracle of miracles, it seemed to recover.

Alright, we’re cooking with gas now. As to what I made this for, well, just stay right there and find out. Next year.

December 19, 2013 by spatulagoddess

“The charm of homemade chocolates!”

That phrase is code for “something went wrong”.

The first time I poured chocolate into molds, they had lots of air bubbles. I complained to my sister who wisely explained it’s like Ed Norton’s glassware in Fight Club, the little imperfections show it was hand-crafted and it’s just the charm of homemade chocolates. So now every time something untoward happens while I’m chocolatiering, you will hear an indignant curse from me, followed by a soothing assurance from Boyfriend Unit, “It’s the charm of homemade chocolates, don’t worry.”

And what goes wrong when you are making chocolates, pray tell? Air bubbles, cracks, bloom (cloudy spots), smudges, melting, seizing, fillings not centered, fillings exploded, misprint on map, et cet. But I no longer care. Because I know, when people open the box…

… and eat one, they are all “OMFG”. And that makes me smile.

We make a 9 piece box, with one dark chocolate, three milk chocolates, and five semi-sweet chocolates. This year Boyfriend Unit experimented with a sea salt dark chocolate since he hates raspberry cream. He really liked the result.

Using a full-sized block of chocolate was a new experience. This is a 5 kilo or 11 pound block of Barry Callebaut Belgian chocolate, classified as a well-balanced bitter cocoa taste, 53.8% cocoa solids. This is the base of all my semi-sweet chocolates.

I was so excited to open this!

Just look at that! That is a lot of chocolate.

My mother asked recently about my weekend plans.

“Making chocolate.”

“Oh hunni? Could you maybe send less dark chocolate this year?”

“Mom, there is one dark chocolate per box!”

“Oh hunni, that’s too much! I don’t like dark chocolate.”

“Ok Mom. No dark chocolate in yours.”

Stay tuned for how this was made and where to get supplies.

December 15, 2013 by spatulagoddess

Born to dye

Experiments with natural dyes have run amok. Using spinach, turmeric, and beets, I was able to produce pots of bright dye, but adding them to the fillings did not accomplish much.

Have you ever had an idea that seemed really great in your head? When I was little, I decided I would carve a wooden deer for my dad on Father’s Day. I had no source of income, ergo my consumer purchasing power was nil. So I decided to carve! Mind you I had no experience with carving, but I did have a stack of firewood and Dad’s set of carving tools. Several hours later, I had a mangled piece of wood and some splinters for my pain, no deer; that’s what homemade dye brings to mind.

The concept of dying my chocolate fillings seemed solid. Making a pot of dye is fairly simple, simmer about 4 cups of water with ½ C of puréed vegetable or spice, and voila! But after the dye is made, adding it to the filling did not change the colour. Oh, woe.

Notes from the drawing board:

This base yields enough filling for 30 centres x 4 flavours, 120 pieces total.

Combine: 2 C icing sugar, 1½ TBSP unsalted butter, ¼ tsp vanilla, 2 TBSP evaporated milk. Divide into 4 bowls.

Add flavouring oils to 3 bowls (none for the butter creams)

Peppermint oil = extremely potent, no more than 3 small drops. Several drops of spinach dye, no discernible difference. Cannot taste spinach.

Raspberry cream oil = very potent, 3 small drops quite strong also. Adding 8 drops of beat juice sweetened it, yields soft pink colour.

Orange cream oil = weak, lost count after 30 drops, flavour is mild and weak bouquet, wtf. Several drops of turmeric dye, no change. Cannot taste spice.

I like the idea of dying my chocolate fillings for two reasons:

I am a 2-bite chocolate person. I like to look at the centre before it’s gone, so I want to see a pink raspberry cream or an orange filling
It’s difficult to keep 4 bowls of fillings straight, after awhile your sense of smell and taste goes numb and you sit there, “Is this the orange cream or the butter cream??” The different colours would make it easy.

I don’t want to give up and use artificial dye. After all, my chocolate packaging hails them as containing “dairy, nuts, and all-natural vegetable dyes”. It’s either figure it out or give up on dye. It tooks days to get the letter spacing just so, no way in hell am I redrawing the chocolate map.

Boyfriend asked me, “Why do you want to dye peppermint patties green anyway? Aren’t they white??”

I think it was that I wanted 4 distinct colours since we had 4 flavoured cream fillings, and I thought peppermint leaves are green, raspberries are pink, butter is yellow, and orange is orange.

My problem is I don’t experiment before I need the dye, I just assume I will do XZY on Chocolate Shoppe Day and it will work. Clearly I need to try substituting more of the evaporated milk with the dye to balance out the liquid, and add enough to see the colour, yet not taste the base of the dye, perhaps more icing sugar to stiffen it up.

Playlist: Halo 2 – Mjölnir Mix

December 8, 2013 by spatulagoddess

Milk chocolates – all done

What was it like to use a professional chocolate tempering machine? Fabulous. Amazing. Spectacular. Am running out of adjectives. It works so well and it’s so fast. (Product review will be posted after Christmas.)

So basically my our tempering machine works even better than I had imagined. Yesterday Boyfriend and I made 66 solid milk chocolates (above), and 51 toasted almond milk chocolates (below). Look at that beautiful gloss!

Today we are going to make the Toberlone pieces, and then the milk chocolate is all done, next weekend is for the more labour-intensive filled chocolates. And the peppermint bark. Huzzah!

“Why do you have to name it?!?”

“I just do. And its name is Bernard. Deal with it.”

SpatulaGoddess.com

chocolatiering, baking, delicious recipes, spectacular disasters

Tag Archives: recipes

Mascarpone round 2 (Eureka!)

Cinnamon streusel coffee cake

Chocolate-covered bacon (redux)

“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”

Great Aunt Lucy’s tea biscuits

Toblerone truffles

Ganache gone wild – WTF just happened

“The charm of homemade chocolates!”

Born to dye

Milk chocolates – all done

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