baking action 8/9/09

I wasn't cooking most of the week because I was on vacation, but I hate to admit that I missed it. I didn't miss not doing dishes, though.

This week in the brownie baking, I used the "standard" Hershey recipe but I melted the butter and mixed the cocoa with it. I like the taste and texture of that particular procedure. Everything else was the usual except I substituted 1 very ripe banana for 1 egg. The brownies have a slight banana taste and a fudgey texture. I also just remembered I forgot to put the vanilla extract in. Oh well, it worked anyway.

My yeast experiment this week did not go so well. I tried to make yeasted doughnuts from Favorite Breads from Rose Lane Farm but I must have done something wrong or it was just too hot. The dough smelled more like alcohol and I didn't bake with it. I think the yeast bloomed out too quick or I made a mistake in the directions. I buried it in the back yard;) I will try again next weekend to make the doughnuts. Not a good batting average on doughnuts so far - two strikes. I made the fried kind quite a few years ago. They turned out horrible looking and tasting. I was going to toss them but my younger son wasn't home yet and he knew I was making doughnuts. He saw them and thought they were chocolate covered, that's how bad they looked. My dad used to make doughnuts in a huge cast iron skillet. Our dog, King, would stay in the kitchen watching the doughnut production. Once in a while, Dad's fork (that's what he used to pick up the doughnuts) would slip and a doughnut would hit the floor. King would run over, grab the doughnut and take it back to his original spot. He'd wait patiently for the doughnut to cool off enough so he could eat it. He had more sense than my siblings and I - we'd try to eat it hot.

As for the cake this week, I had thought about making a pineapple pound cake. But there was a good price on strawberries at the grocery store, so I bought them. Now, my idea of strawberry shortcake is as follows - mashed sweetened berries, a biscuit/scone like flat piece and having the biscuit soak up the strawberry juice. Yummers.
But I was making a cake for my beloved and that's not what he's used to. So I made the vanilla cake, sliced up strawberries and put them on top. I did make a major error on that, too. I over filled the cake pan I was using. Luckily, I had enough sense to put a cookie sheet under the pan. I thought I would need the "jaws of life" to get the cake out of the pan, but it came out easily once the overflow part was cut away. Even the overflow part tasted good.

That's it for this week.I thought Iwas going to bake more, but I sort of pooped out (it is August, after all).
Have a good week.

today....

Today the brownies were the regular Hershey recipe, but I did something a little different. I read 2 recipes in the last week about how the butter is melted and the cocoa mixed into the butter before it's added to the sugar. So I though, what the heck, why not. So I did that and I think I am on to something. The brownies have a great texture, not too wet and not to dry. They seem to be more chocolately, too. I'll have to check with my guinea pig, I mean, my son, tomorrow. About 20 minutes into the baking, I put some frozen mini marshmellows on top of the batter. The marshmellows melted, but it looks as if I put oyster crackers on the top.
The bread this week is from The Redbook Breadbook, the overnight dinner roll recipe. It was
my first bread book and the one I use a lot of the time. I made the coffecake from the Martha Stewart's Everyday Food. I also made a Paula Deen recipe, it's her "ooey gooey butter cake" to take to work (they are having a potluck thing) . It's from her specialty magazine. the summer one. There are quite a few other recipes I want to try in that magazine.
Next week I think it will be a peach cake for Father's Day for my beloved. Peach flavored, peaches on it and peach buttercream icing. It could work...

and in today's baking....

The brownies were made with 1 overripe mashed banana. It gives it a slight banana flavor as well as making the texture more cake like.
The cake for my beloved this week is a Mountain Dew cake, with the recipe from the current Paula Deen specialty magazine. It probably would be more lemony if I had used lemon pudding instead of vanilla.
My brother's cake for this month - German chocolate cake with the coconut pecan frosting from the Trisha Yearwood cookbook Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen .

I want to bake more but it's a little hot and humid right now. So I'll have to be satisfied with what I've done....

June 1

Today I just made a single batch of the Hershey Cocoa's brownies. Nothing tricked out, no special flavor added, just plain old brownies. I can't say either Will or Dan noticed the peanut butter except after I mentioned it.
This week I made my beloved his birthday cake. He likes a yellow cake filled with strawberry Bavarian cream. I uses the "best vanilla cake recipe" in the special cake pans. And I used Jello's recipe of Bavarian cream. The cake did not really stand up to the pan. I should have used shortening to grease it instead of Pam or maybe the vanilla cake is not really meant to be used as a filled cake. It fell apart while I was taking it out of the pans.
The Bavarian cream - it separated into 2 distinct parts. The top was strawberry Jello with the Cool Whip and the strawberries. The bottom was just the strawberry Jello. I'm not sure exactly what I did wrong there - maybe it should have cooled off more? I think next year I will go back to the old "gold cake" recipe I generally use and use "The Joy of Cooking"'s Bavarian cream recipe. I will tell you that my beloved loved it and ate it, so I did something right.

cake pan addict

I hate to admit this, but I love cake pans. I even bought a lion cake pan to make a cake for my beloved, but I haven't used it yet. I really don't understand the fascination - it's not like I don't have the basic 9x13 pan or the 8 inch round pans. But when I see the novelty pans...I want them. I have cake pans shaped like Christmas trees, sunflowers and hearts. Really, how many do I really need? Plus the truth is the novelty cake pans are good for basic cakes, nothing with any sort of additives (such as Milky Ways) because the stick to the crevices...
Anyway, this week's brownies wil have a half a cup of peanut butter in them. It should be interesting and my older son Dan should like it. He loves the Reese's Peanut Butter cups. The cake this week - a lemon one with lemon buttercream frosting. I am using the "Woman's Day" recipe quite a bit. The buttercream frosting is so light and fluffy and I'm not normally a fan of buttercream.
Later this week is my beloved's birthday and I will making him a cake filled with strawberry Bavarian cream. That usually works out well except if it's too hot and humid. we shall see.

I thought I'd put this link in here. If you love chocolate as I do , you'll appreciate this particular contest:
Click here: Mars Real Chocolate Relief Act

ahhh

I skipped last week because it was Mother's Day. My sons were on vacation and I hadn't planned to make any brownies, but who am I kidding? I love brownies myself.
So I made 1 batch of brownies, using crushed pecans as well as Godiva's Chocolate Liquer in lieu of vanilla for flavoring. They were _excellent_.
My Mother's Day cake was a lemon cake with lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream frosting. It also was excellent.
I didn't make any bread last week, didn't get around to it. This week I did, I made rolls from Bea Tom's cookbook. They are alleged to be the best rolls ever. They definitely had a quick rise to them. But I wasn't that impressed with them and neither was my beloved. They tasted sort of like fresher "brown and serve" rolls to me. Good, but not great in my opinion. And I had to alter the recipe a little, but that could just be differences in ingredients and weather. I had to add about one half cup more liquid to make the dough actually take shape.
The cake for my beloved last week was coffee cake. This week it is a black raspberry jelly roll. I need to practice more with the jelly roll. I managed to get it in a roll without too much fuss, but it's been a quite a few months since I made one. I'll have to try to make jelly rolls a little more frequently.
The brownies this week? The "normal" Hershey's recipe, nothing special added or subtracted.
later....

May Fourth (be with you)

Awful pun, isn't it? I just had to share it.

This week's brownies were made the "normal" way with 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce standing in for 1/2 cup butter. I used all Hershey Cocoa this time. I love the texture and the taste. Ooops, almost forgot. I grated a part of a bar of Ghiradelli's Cark Chocolate with the citrus flavoring in with the brownie batter. It turned out great. No "yums" from my son, however.
I received one of those "add beer" bread mixes. I'm not really a drinker, so I added 12 ounces of orange soda instead. It was okay, but not really outstanding. As much as those mixes go for, it should knock my socks off but I can't say it did.
And yet another "oops". I made baking powder biscuits - I put regular milk in instead of buttermilk. The biscuits still rose, still had the same texture, just a slightly different taste. What was I thinking? TOss me out of the "southern cooks class"...
My beloved's cake was the "best vanilla cake" in the recent "Woman's Day" issue, with the "best vanilla buttercream". "Woman's Day" recipe uses 1 jat of Marshmellow Fluff to give the frosting a wonderful light flavor. I kept the cake vanilla, but I made the frosting raspberry flavored. It turned out pretty good.
I also made a chocolate chip cake. That's because I was too lazy to make chocolate chip cookies. It worked out pretty well, I think. I took it into work and they loved it.
Wonder if I'll bake next weekend with it being Mother's Day and all that?