Cupcake baking

So, it was raining and the Baker decided to bake cupcakes. But, being the Baker, she could not just bake one kind of cupcake. That would be too boring. Instead she decided to create two types, both adorned with blueberries. She delineated the two by topping one kind with one blueberry and the others with three.

Here is the recipe for one blueberry cupcakes:
1 egg + 1 egg white
2ish tablespoons cocoa powder
3/4 cups white sugar
1/3 cup buttermilk or more
red corn meal
salt, baking soda (1 pinch each)
a lot of flour

And, the recipe for three blueberry cupcakes:
1 egg + 1 egg white
2/3 melted bitter sweet chocolate
3/4 cups white sugar
1/3 cup buttermilk or more
white flour
salt, baking soda (1 pinch each) and baking powder
Both were topped with a mixture of melted chocolate, butter, vanilla, and of course, blueberries.


And, here's a small tutorial on how to ice cupcakes with a runny icing. First, dip the tops of the finished cupcakes in the icing.
Then, hold it over the bowl and slowly tilt it to get rid of any excess.
After that, just turn them the rest of the way, and finish them off by putting a blueberry on top.

Baker bakes bread

So the Baker hasn't gotten to bake much, because she's been busy with schoolwork. So, when Spring Break came around, she was excited about having the time to catch up on her baking. First task: bake bread. She decided to bake a simple whole wheat bread. She used this recipe, but of course, only loosely, but did not say what alterations she made.

The cast of characters (ingredients):

And the finished product:

The non-baker gets creative

So occasionally the non-baker lacks ingredients to make, well, much of anything. So in these instances, she has to summon up her creativity, take what she's got and change it slightly so that she finds it palatable.

Last night she figured that she would finally use up the can of butternut squash soup that had been sitting around for a while in her pantry. But, she generally finds canned soups too salty and flavorless. So, she added some orange juice, some white wine, a dash of pomegranate champagne vinegar, and some cinnamon and....voila! Delicious soup. Of course, being the non-baker, she doesn't have much use for measuring cups in these situations and so, like when the baker bakes for fun, there's not much of a recipe for recreating the thing.

And tonight, same thing. She decided to make some whole wheat couscous. And then she figured that she'd add on some of the tomato-basil tomato sauce that was sitting in the fridge. But her body wanted more protein and so she took a can of cooked black beans and added those. Then, she noticed some taco seasoning sitting around and figured that she might as well make chili. So she added some chicken seasoning, a whole bunch of ground black pepper, and some paprika, and instant vegetarian chili.

Blizzard creativity

So the Baker and the non-baker dealt with some......interesting weather this week. And, as a result, the non-baker didn't leave her house for something on the order of 48 hours. Since the non-baker never remembers to go grocery shopping, it was time for a bunch of creative cooking.

The non-baker managed to convince one of her roommates that a blizzard was the perfect weather in which to try out a recipe for scallion pancakes that she had made over the summer. She mostly used this recipe. Well, sort of. First they mixed up the dough, doubling the recipe, and using 5-ish cups of flour and 2 cups of water and kneading it into dough and coating it with a little bit of oil. Then they let it sit for 30 minutes.

And this is where she started to change the recipe. She didn't have scallions sitting around, and so used onions instead. Then they took pieces of dough and, as per her roommates instruction, put some onions in the center and then flattened the dough into a pancake shape. They then heated up a pan, put a little bit of oil in the bottom of it and cooked the pancakes, a few minutes on each side until they were a bit brown on each side.

Rather than a traditional dipping sauce, they mixed up a bit of soy sauce with white vinegar.

But they ended up with a fair amount of leftover dough, since they had made so much to start with. So, the next day, the non-baker used more of the dough, this time making plain flatbreads, since they had used up all the chopped onions the day before.

But even that didn't use up all of the dough. So, the next day, the non-baker decided to use some of the dough to make a dessert. As usual, the non-baker wanted to find a way to include chocolate and peanut butter, which shouldn't be a surprise, given her penchant for peanut butter and chocolate nutella. The non-baker decided to make chocolate peanut butter potstickers. She made little potstickers, put 2-3 chocolate chips in them, and a small bit of peanut butter.

Then she warmed up a pan, put a little oil on it and browned the bottom up the potstickers. Then she added a quarter cup of water to the pan and covered it, letting the water dissolve. And voila! Delicious dessert potstickers.

Baker mushes things together in an effort to take up an activity that isn't baking and that will please her mother

So the Baker and non-baker's mother's birthday is tomorrow. And the Baker, because she is the nice and adoring daughter that she is, who wants to limit her intake of whatever dessert is present for said birthday, decided to make her mother a special birthday treat. A chocolate one, of course. So, she and her father whipped up (almost literally), Bailey's Chocolate Mousse. (Nicely enough, the part where she was making something different from what she usually makes means that she was willing to rely on a recipe with exact measurements. However, in classic Baker tradition, this did not stop her from making the recipe in 2/3rds proportions, since that was how much heavy cream she bought at the store.) See the pictures below.

First they took 3 eggs and sugar (see amount in recipe, the Baker, when recollecting recipes, makes no note of such unimportant things) and mixed them together, put them in a metal bowl over simmering water, continuously mixing until it reached 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then they took it off the heat, and for about 10 minutes, whipped it together.

While it was cooling, they melted 2/3s of 12oz semi-sweet chocolate in the microwave.

Then they mixed the Baileys with the heavy whipping cream and whipped it until it small peaks began to form.

Then the chocolate was ready (and lukewarm.) They folded the chocolate into the egg/sugar mixture.
Afterwards they folded in a little bit of the cream mixture at a time with the chocolate.
And they folded it til it was blended. Then they covered them and put them in the refrigerator to chill overnight.

Baker, non-baker and birthday girl go out for birthday girl's birthday dinner

So recently the Baker and non-baker's parents decided to visit them again. And, they realized that, though they usually took birthday girl, one of the non-baker's roommates, out for her birthday, that they had not done so this year. And with that the Baker and non-baker's parents had the perfect excuse to try out a new restaurant, Girl and the Goat.

Once at the restaurant, the non-baker and birthday girl decided to order drinks. They ordered a dark and stormy and a some other gin and lime based cocktail.
And, once the Baker arrived, the party began to order food (despite the fact that the restaurant was incredibly full and they ended up eating in the lounge section.) First came the rye bread. It was accompanied by house thousand island and a cheese-mustard spread. The thousand island was good, but the cheese-mustard spread was amazing. Since they were all hungry they began eating immediately, and, once they started it was hard to stop since the bread was so tasty.
Next came a complimentary dish, the hiramasa crudo with crispy pieces of pork belly, aji aioli and caperberries. While it was difficult to get all of the components of the dish together, the taste was worth the trouble of doing so.
Next came a shaved kohlrabi salad with fennel, evalon, toasted slices of almond and ginger dressing. (Yum!)
And then roasted cauliflower with pickled peppers, pine nuts and mint. It was delicious, though to be fair, the Baker and non-baker had mainly ordered it because the people sitting next to them, the Sandwich Couple, had gushed about this particular item moments before insisting that the Baker, non-baker and birthday girl try the squash ravioli that the Sandwich Couple had ordered. And boy, were the Sandwich couple right. The roasted cauliflower was fantastic.
And then, though the Sandwich Couple had not particularly recommended it, came the goat pizza. Not goat cheese pizza. Goat pizza. Specifically, a smoked goat pizza with apple soffritto, black kale, ricotta and cipollini.
They also ordered seared scallops with pumpkin brandade, pecans, fried brussels sprouts (which were surprising and astoundingly delicious), tarragon and pomegranate.
And then they ordered more bread, stocca this time, and it was just as good as the first. It came with roasted garlic and white anchovy butter to spread on it, though the Baker, non-baker and Birthday girl continued to use the condiments from the first bread.
But then, of course, it was time for the cheese course. Birthday girl picked out the cheese. She chose one cheddar, one goat cheese. They were served with flatbread, crackers, beets, and onions with mustard (a combination that the non-baker is itching to try her hands at.)
And, of course, since it was Birthday Girl's birthday, they got dessert. The dessert, delivered with a candle, was a dark chocolate salt brownie, served on a toffee crème fraiche with a shitake gelato (which, though it sounded odd, was possibly the high point of the meal.) The flavors were fantastic and crisp and the use of salt made the Baker, in particular, exceedingly happy.
Overall, the restaurant was a fantastic choice for Birthday Girl's birthday dinner. While busy, the restaurant was nice and the Baker, non-baker and Birthday Girl also enjoyed meeting and talking with the Sandwich Couple. The flavors were incredible, if unconventional.

The non-baker's easy sweets snack (aka homemade nutella)

So, occasionally, though she doesn't tend to like to admit it, the non-baker doesn't feel like cooking or baking but wants something dessert-ish and sweet. When this happens, she makes what most people would call homemade nutella. (She doesn't really have a name for it.) How do you make this wonderful and simple treat?

Simple. All you need is the following:
however many semisweet chocolate chips you want (not so dark that they won't melt well, but if they're milk they won't contrast as well)
A microwave safe bowl
Nut butter of some sort (the non-baker generally uses peanut, but has recently rediscovered the joys of almond butter)
And a chopstick or small spoon

As for instructions:
Pour the chocolate chips into the microwave bowl
Microwave the bowl in 15 second intervals, pulling the bowl out and stirring it between intervals until the chocolate has melted
When the chocolate has melted, add nut butter to taste (generally, around 1/3 of the amount of chocolate works well)
Mix well and serve- either plain (thus the spoon), or with something else

It's not a huge discovery of a recipe, but it's delicious. And, if you want to make something with a texture that's a bit more of a ganache, add a little bit of water to the chocolate when you melt it.