Here we are, mere days after my own big brother forgot about me waiting in the lobby of his workplace with a large tin of cookies…after I called about a time and texted that I was there. He even responded! There I was, cradling easily over two dozen cookies in a bright yellow tin for nearly half an hour. Did I get a very long apology? Yes. Did I call our mother to tell her what her son did? Yeah, before I even got the apology. haha!
I did get the opportunity to chat with the security guard in their lobby and I even gave him one of my brother’s unclaimed cookies. He loved it. I’m not saying this to boast about everything, but it was so nice to hear from someone that I am not related to or involved with about how much they enjoyed my baking. It’s something I love to do and it’s something I do in my spare time. Since starting this blog, I haven’t been stressing myself out over what I’m going to make, but rather excited about something new to learn and create. I have much bigger things to stress over anyway.
I’m beginning to wonder what sort of things would need to be in place in order for me to sell my bakes. Not on a grand scale, but small and controllable.
~Research Time~
Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen…
Anyway, yesterday I had a feeling. That feeling was…I need bread. So I made a restaurant copycat recipe. Let’s just say that they are known for steak and the founders only went to Australia after their restaurants took off. I’ve done a different version of it before, but this one turned out significantly better. My insignificant other loved it! We were making dinner last night and he kept dipping it into a simmering meat sauce. After our meal came together, we ended up watching Tag from Redbox. It was hilarious and we enjoyed every second of it. My bread and homemade butter served as an appetizer to our meal.
Foolishly, I was in such a bake and clean rush that I didn’t end up taking any pictures of it!
Now, here I am, scrambling for what to make! It’s getting later in the day and I still have errands to run. So what do I make? Seriously, I still have sugar cookies left over from just a few days ago. And silly me, Miss Candy-Addicted fun baker dating a guy that doesn’t particularly love sweets…I did not know that going in to this.
So here’s the thing. I’m not baking tonight. I’ll try to do something nice and light tomorrow (11/12/2018), but no promises. I’ve been having some stomach issues recently – I’m thinking the dairy heavy dinner we made last night didn’t help much.
11/12/2018 – Yeah, it didn’t happen. I did stop by my childhood neighbor’s and they want to invite me over for dinner and have me bring dessert. I quite like the sound of that!
In all, I could use this time to start planning desserts for Thanksgiving on the 22nd. Just 10 short days…
Surprise from Seattle. At least that’s where I am right now and not in my kitchen. I have run into many different kinds of things to pull inspiration from on this trip: coffees, teas, baked goods, and the occasional alcoholic beverage. So let me tell you about my trip thus far.
I drove up on Wednesday because I was meeting up with this totally awesome and cool person who has been taking the time out of her personal life to help me with my job hunt on Thursday. Thursday was my adventure in Seattle day. Did I spend 10+ years in Washington growing up? Yes. Did I spend all that time Downtown? Absolutely not.
I decided on public transportation because I have never known a second in my 27 years of life that Seattle wasn’t under construction. Also, I was meeting her at 4pm, which means we’d be done around the time that work traffic is terrifying enough that I’d rather just not. I went ahead and attempted to find a parking spot at one of the many park and rides. Couldn’t, so I went to another. Found one!! Then I had to wait for the bus. I was using the internet to find one, and lucky for me, this park and ride was where an Express started and ended. Easy enough to remember.
40+ minutes later, it drops me a few blocks east of where I need to be several hours ahead of the meeting time. I had already planned on walking around the Seattle Center area, so I visited some old stomping grounds. Okay, dancing grounds. I stopped at the Armory at Seattle Center cause I had not eaten yet, it has a bunch of food options, and I knew where it was because I had performed there at some point.
Anyway, couldn’t find anything I wanted to eat there, so I went adventuring. I even walked a few blocks out of my way to grab my McMenamins Queen Anne Passport Stamp (I know, I’m awesome like that). Finally it was about an hour before the meeting time and I decided to just duck into this cute coffeehouse/bakery across the street from where I was meeting the awesome and cool person helping me out. I landed at Sugar Bakery where I snacked on a Salted Caramel Croissant (they warmed it up) and a Raspberry Italian Soda sans cream and whip. Totally delicious and a little overpriced. Seriously though, I would have been licking the plate clean if I was in a back corner not facing a crowd instead of at the window bar in front of the world.
I was meeting the wonderful and magnificent person at La Marzocco at KEXP Radio Station. It is a showroom style cafe that switches out coffee-roasters on a monthly basis. Oddly enough, it was just named in a recent Buzzfeed video about Seattle! This month is SeeSaw, China’s pioneer in specialty coffee. It was 4pm so I ended up getting tea and was still up till 3am. I ordered the Flower of Oolong tea and it was perfect. I didn’t need to add sugar, honey, or anything.
After an hour, we parted ways and I had to rush to catch the same bus several blocks up bus…which I missed by one minute and one crosswalk. So I had to wait 15 minutes and I had 15% phone battery. We can skip my long diatribe of how much I don’t like bus systems because of how confusing they can be and that I’d rather trek 6 blocks to catch a bus I won’t need to transfer from 3 times (thanks, Seattle).
Anyway, it was time to meet up with my friends Ryan & Brittany at Tablas in Mill Creek. There we talked about their house renovations and current going ons and how Ryan and I regret not focusing on linguistics/languages in Anthropology because we’d probably get jobs where we could regularly travel and how we should have just gone straight to Graduate School because now we feel like we’ll never get the chance to go back. I know, a lot of detail. No worries, we also talked about current event, past events, and the social acceptance of people in transition.
Tablas is a Tapas restaurant. I had spicy garlic shrimp and sparkling rosé. I like rosé, especially when it sparkles. So, as you can see, I’ve been here for less than two days and have run across a bunch of flavors to pull from. I also purposefully didn’t do a facebook poll because I wanted to get out of town and not doing a poll would push me to do just that, even if it is to take meetings and see my family.
So I decided, of course, at the last minute, obviously, to go in a very different direction.
We’re making “I Voted” cookies!! I decided to do this while voting last night…on the 5th. I’m even going to pick up whatever ingredients (and regular groceries) I need after I drop off my ballot today. Most of the ingredients I need will actually be for decorating, because the cookie itself is a very basic sugar cookie. It will run me out of butter, but I’ll have enough to make the dough before chilling it (aka the time I’ll use to run out and vote!)
Now, it’s very much worth noting that I was unsure of where to purchase Meringue Powder for the icing. I ended up doing some research on what it was and where to get it. IT IS NOT CREAM OF TARTAR!! It’s a product used to replace egg whites when the egg whites would not be cooked to a safe temperature. You don’t cook icing, do you? But if you do, how did it turn out? I’ve never heard of someone doing that before. Meringue Pwder also contains a small percentage of sugar.
Anyway, I ended up looking it up at Michaels.com and applying a bunch of promo codes to get the best price. I’m able to do that by using the Honey extension on Chrome. I also use the Ebates extension to get some money back. I’m on a budget, ok? Honey ended up getting me a better promo code/coupon than the Michaels email I was sent that morning. Plus, Michaels allowed me to double up on my promos!! I got 50% off one item and 30% off another. I splurged a little and bought some fine tip icing bottles. Ebates is getting me 1% back on my purchase too. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing!
Let’s get going then, shall we?
Sugar Cookies
1 1/2 cups of softened butter
2 cups of white sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 cups of AP (all-purpose) flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Cream together butter and sugar until smooth, not just mixed or incorporated. I don’t feel as though I need to say this, but use a bowl.
Beat in eggs and vanilla
Mix in the flour, CAREFULLY (<- potentially messy step) and mix in the baking powder and salt
Cover the bowl with the dough and put it in the fridge for a minimum of one hour
When done chilling and ready to continue, preheat the oven to 400°F.
Flour a large and clean surface and begin rolling out dough. Try to get the thickness between .25 and .5 of an inch thick.
If you’ve already picked out your cookie cutters, drop them into some flour so that it’s easier to detach the dough. If you haven’t picked out your cookie cutters, do that and then the rest!
Place that cut dough on a cookie sheet that’s been lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. The will help with an even bake and make it very easy to release the cookie from the sheet.
Bake them for 6 to 8 minutes, depending on your oven and it’s temperature variant. GO FOR GOLD!
Allow to cool completely on a rack before decorating.
If you recall, in a previous post, this one, I mentioned the term “Flour Fliers” In this particular recipe, that would be setting 1 on my infamous KitchenAid. I’m not kidding. I had to take a pizza break while the dough was chilling simply to have the energy to think about cleaning it up. haha!
Also, until someone gives me a reason not too, I will be treating flour like the glitter of the baking world…I vacuum it up.
Step 1 –
I needed to soften the butter a little more
Add in the sugar
THIS IS CREAMED
Step 2 –
Add 4 eggs
and the vanilla
Mix that up
Step 3 – Fly Flour, FLY!!!
Incorporate 5 cups of flour
This was speed 1
Still did it
I chilled for well over an hour. I ran some errands and cleaned up the kitchen some. I also picked out a very simple and old cookie cutter duo and stuck them in my flour. I also cleaned my counter because that is my rolling surface. FLOUR IS YOUR FRIEND…AND FOOD.
Rexi got in the shot, but not in the doughThis recipe landed me with over four dozen cookiesBake times vary
I whipped up a quick royal icing and decorate a handful. I’m still a bad decorater, but there’s only one way to improve. That’s right. We bargain our souls!
The tub of meringue powder has a basic recipe on it, but it is worth noting that I used this one from HoneyBlonde.
It is my favorite time of year and that calls for a spooky recipe to try. In preparation for this weekend’s bake, I did another facebook poll. The options for my friends and family to choose from were 1) Trick-or-Treat or 2) Skeletal Surprise. Trick-or-Treat got 6 votes while Skeletal Surprise got 8. Prepare yourselves for…my first attempt at meringue!
Yeah, I’m terrified.
Especially because it decided to rain. Meringue + rain…meringue + moisture… these combinations = bad. Yes, I can math.
Anyway, I decided to put on a Halloween Disney CLASSIC! That’s right. Halloweentown.
You read me. HALLOWEENTOWN! Immediately followed by Halloweentown 2: Kalabar’s Revenge. Don’t worry, I also own Halloweentown High and the other one that we pretend never happened.
There was only one persons bones I wanted to meringue and those are Benny’s, the corny joke crackin’ cabbie in Halloweentown.
Eggs, Salt, Cream of Tartar, and Sugar. First of all, the bulk section of Winco is the best. I spent 88 Cents and came home with 2 ounces of Cream of Tarter. I only needed 1/4 of a teaspoon, but that’s not the point. The point is I forgot how much I needed while at the store and I tried not to panic so I convinced myself that I would be making meringues forever and now I have 2 ounces of Cream of Tartar.
Now, you may be wondering what could I possibly know about bones. Osteology. Skeletal Remains. Surprise, I have a degree on them. Okay, it’s in Anthropology. But I focused on Biological Studies and also completed a Forensic Field School.
I decided to pull out my old used textbooks that I spent a fortune on…
JK, I can’t even draw a straight line
That being said, I didn’t want to make a stencil because I just wanted to play with my first time piping. Also, I tried to draw a generic bone and I was completely terrible at that too.
We start with the eggs! The recipe may not call for them, but after some research, I learned it is best to use room temperature eggs. I had just brought some home from the store, so I deemed them good enough. Separate the 3 yolks and egg whites. Keep the yolks or toss them away. I had no use for them within a few days, so I was a little bit wasteful.
Start whipping!
Another note I found that was not in the recipe was to use fine sugar. However, I do not own a food processor that can turn regular sugar fine in a few pulses. What I do possess is proper measuring equipment. Behold! The Thing!
Has multiple units of measurement and measurements for dry and liquid ingredients
Stop using your liquid measuring cup to measure dry ingredients. There is a difference in volume! Stop using your dry cups to measure liquids! It’s hard to pour out because there’s no spout!!
Now before you start adding that sugar, measure out and beat in the 1/4 tsp of cream of tarter When you get around here…
Then you can start adding the sugar.
Add sugar a tsp. at a time
Keep adding sugar…
I was not kidding. 1 tsp. at a time.
Be warn…spooning sugar into a whipping KitchenAid can result in a mess. Don’t ask!
Stiff peaks look like Marshmallow Fluff
When you get here, whip in the teaspoon of vanilla. Mmm, flavor.
Guess what?! I’ve never really practiced piping before. I looked up a youtube video though. It was educational. I had already purchased some piping tips though because I simply don’t trust myself. I did end up using one of the techniques from the video on my second bag. My lack of skill does not mean that the tip does not have merit.
I taped corners of both bags and gave little snips. I used a circular ended tip on the first bag. I put the bags in tall glasses to help me put the mixture into them. It really helped. Unfortunately, I still suck at drawing. When I texted my sister pictures, she asked me why they looked phallic.
Before you start drawing on nothing, make sure you have at least two baking sheets and the (possibly) stenciled parchment papers ready with the pencil drawn side down. Nobody want to eat graphite.
I’M BAD AT DRAWING
I listened to the instructions, I swear. I had brought the oven temp to 225°F and turned it off before putting in the baking sheets. I left them in there for the entire hour…an entire hour that there was a storm carrying on outside. When I took them out to let them cool, there was still a storm happening outside. The meringues still were not set.
I looked up some tips on what to do when this happens. My source said to put them back in for 10 minutes at 200°F. They came out and I believed they were set!
They were not. I did it again!
I was done. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. They were okay if I ate them quickly when out of the oven, but after that, they turned back into a shaped sticky mess that falls apart when looked at too strongly.
Sorry, Benny. I tried and it went just okay. They tasted great, but the weather threw me for a loop. A loop that I was on for quite a while. Still, I had fun and I got to play my favorite Halloween movies.
Arrange oven racks in top and bottom thirds of oven. Heat to 225°F. Make 6-inch bone template and trace onto 2 large sheets parchment paper, leaving 1 inch space on each side of stenciled bones. Line 2 large baking sheets with the paper, stenciled side down.
In medium bowl, with mixer on medium speed, beat egg whites and pinch salt until foamy. Add cream of tartar; beat on medium-high until soft peaks form. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Beat until meringue stands in stiff, glossy peaks. Beat in vanilla extract.
Transfer meringue to large disposable piping bag and snip off end. Using stencils as guide, pipe bone shapes onto parchment.
Turn oven off. Place meringues in oven 1 hour with oven door closed. Remove from oven; cool completely. Cookies can be stored in airtight containers at room temp for up to 2 weeks.
The Bake Trip 