Tag Archives: Baking

French Macaroons

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French Macaroons seem to be all the baking rage lately. Some will also have you believe that you need to be a French pastry chef in order to make them. WRONG. Its easy. Easy if your not like handicapped in a way that you may run out in busy traffic or play golf in a raging lightning storm.

The French Macaroons are a cookie made with ground almonds, sugar and beaten egg whites. If you have a nut or egg allergy beware. I don’t want any news that one of you allergic types tried these then you seized up and had to take fifteen Epi-Shots in your butt to keep you from heading into the bright lights.

Generally speaking the cookies have either buttercream or jelly/jam spread in between the cookies. I went the butter cream route today. The cookies have a semi hard plastic shell type exterior and soft chewy interior. You can dye them any color you like.

Here are a few pictures of my examples I busted out this afternoon.


French Macaroons
 
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A cookie. Its French and they call it a macaroon. They are in vogue right now, so make them and impress people.
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: French
Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • ¾ cups Finely Ground Almonds
  • 1 cup Powdered Confectioners Sugar
  • 2 Egg Whites
  • 4 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar
  • 2-4 Drops of Food Coloring
Instructions
  1. Grind and sift Almonds into bowl
  2. Sift Powdered Confectioners sugar into bowl with ground Almonds
  3. Using a whip attachment on mixer or handheld blender whip Egg Whites to soft peak stage
  4. Slowly add Granulated sugar a tablespoon at a time to whipped Egg Whites until stiff peak stage
  5. Fold stiff peak Egg White / Sugar mixture into ground Almonds and Confectioners Sugar until well incorporated
  6. Add 2-4 drops of Food coloring of choice to cookie batter and stir to incorporate
  7. Spoon cookie batter into piping bag or ziplock bag with corner cut off
  8. Pipe dime sized batter onto parchment lined baking sheet, well spaced out. Batter will flatten out a bit
  9. Leave baking sheets with piped out cookie batter on counter to rest 15 minutes to form a crust on top of each cookie
  10. Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees
  11. After 15 minutes rest and oven pre-heat place baking sheets with cookies into oven and lower heat to 300 degrees
  12. Bake for 8 minutes
  13. Rotate baking sheets in oven
  14. Bake for another 8 minutes
  15. Remove baking sheets allow cookies to cool for 10-15 minutes
  16. Remove cookies from baking sheets and allow to completely cook on racks
  17. Gently spread buttercream frosting or jam of your choice between cookies

 

So long weekend we hardly knew you.

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As I sit here with mixed emotions pondering the weekend, I guess I have to say it was a good one. Well they are always good, just go by too fast which we have discussed previously.

Sunday I awoke to a small “Cool Front” here in sunny Florida. Cool is 77 degrees and humidity below 85 percent. Below 74 degrees and its freezing and I start swearing. It was like 69 degrees at 6:30 am Sunday. I headed for the central heat. Relax. I didn’t turn it on.

I did fire up the oven and make some cinnamon rolls though. I felt rather re-newed and in a fall-ish mood so figured what the hell. Facebooked my intentions for baking, and had some friends over to help me eat the goodness.

I put the recipe over in the recipe section.

Guys if you can change your own oil, fix a flat tire, and replace a burnt out light bulb, you can bake these. Now I know, you’re saying, “why the hell make those when I can buy them in the grocery store and be done in 30 minutes or less”? I’ll tell you why. It’s because these are better. They will always be better, and now listen to me closely. If you make these for say your wife or girlfriend you will score major points. Remember the pancakes and waffles I showed you a few weeks back? Same thing here. A woman will love you long time if you take a turn and cook for her once in a while. Sure you can impress her with some Pillsbury tube rolls from the dairy section. She’ll be so proud of you for making the effort. If you makes these from scratch and put in the little extra effort the rewards will be increased by a factor of say eight or nine. You are moving into well lets just say your moving into Corvettes and Harley Davidson territory and the other private things you only get on your birthdays. Ok maybe not, but it cleans up your “punk card” and puts credit in the bank for later screw up.

Yesterday afternoon I caught some football at a local joint with friends. I ate some wings and watched the Jets loose to the Patriots. I have been a Jets fan for many years but I am about the throw in the towel on Sanchez. I can put up with Rex Ryan’s fat ass.  The Tebow mania doesn’t bother me. That bumbling idiot Sanchez is getting on my nerves. Its understandable if Sanchez doesn’t have the necessary protection on the offensive line, but for Christ’s sake, if he needs to unload the ball 10 yards or less in a hurry he’s like a retarded moron. How can a NFL quarterback fire a ball 30 yards like a bullet but cant get it 10 feet when he’s under rush pressure? Then when the damn fool hangs on to the ball when he is in trouble, he can’t hang on to the thing and hit the ground without it popping into the opponents hands. It was hard to see them loose to New England last night. That should have been a win. Oh well. What are you going to do? Well I know what I would do. I would have Tebow’s ass throwing the ball 1500 times a day until he developed that arm into NFL material then tell him to put his magic Jesus underwear on and start him.

Speaking of Jesus and whatnot, yesterday I learned something. There are churches that have “love offerings” during the service. I also learned that certain people who may or may not attend these churches that have “love offerings” also have rather twisted and foul thoughts regarding certain acts of love. Now I am not purposely trying to be cryptic here because frankly I only got a portion of the conversation. The point is sometimes you hear the strangest things from some of the people whom you’d never expect to hear such things from. I almost blushed, in fact I may have. I cant say for certain if what this person was talking about and the love offerings at this particular church are connected, but I most certainly asked more about the church. I may need to get some of this churching in that my friend seems to be involved in. Im just saying. I’ll report back on this topic as I learn more.

Try and have a good Monday.

Let’er rip tater chip!

Oreo Cake

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Recipe posted by Yvonne Ruperti via Serious Eats.

Ingredients for the cake:

  • 3/4 cup all purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1/2 plus 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/8 teaspoon of salt
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sour cream
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 large egg
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a nine (9) inch cake pan with non-stick spray. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt into bowl, set aside. In another bowl or bowl of stand mixer whisk together the sugar, sour cream, oil, egg, and vanilla extract until smooth.

Now whisk in the flour and cocoa mixture  to the wet ingredients in step above until smooth. Pour this batter into the cake pan you sprayed with the non-stick above. Cook in oven for 25-30 minutes until a tooth pick inserted into middle of cake comes out clean. Cool cake in pan 15 minutes, then turn out and cool cake on wire rack for about an hour or until its room temp.

Cut six (6) Oreo cookies in half and set aside. Be careful and watch your fingers, ask me how I know! Then take the rest of the Oreo cookies from the package and chop them up to  something like 1/4 inch chunks. I said to hell with that and put them in the food processor and pulled the trigger about a dozen times for a second or two each time. You wind up with a course Oreo crumbly mixture. Resist urge to shove face in bowl and inhale like Tony Montana in Scarface. Set these Oreo crumbs aside.

Ingredients for Oreo whipped cream:

  • 50 Oreo cookies. I just used a complete package of regular Oreo cookies. Who has time to count?
  • I quart of heavy cream.
  • 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
  • I tablespoon of vanilla extract

Make the whipped cream in two (2) batches. Pour half the quart into a bowl and with a blender or a stand mixer with the wire whip, whip the cream until light peaks form. Scoop this first batch of whipped cream into a large bowl and put in fridge.

Make second batch of whipped cream with second half of quart of heavy cream. This time add the sugar and vanilla extract and whip to soft peaks again. Now add this batch of whipped cream to the fist batch of whipped cream sitting in the fridge. Fold and mix the two batches together. You should now have a full quart of heavy cream turned into whipped cream in a big old bowl.

Now of all that whipped cream, take and spoon out about a cup of it and put in the fridge.

Take all those crushed up Oreo cookies you didn’t try and snort like Scarface, and pour into the whipped cream. Fold it all together and mix well.

Take your cooled off chocolate cake sitting on your wire rack. Cut it in half with a long knife horizontally.  Put the bottom slice of cake on your serving plate. Scoop out about 1/3 to almost a 1/2 of the Oreo whipped cream mixture onto the first cake layer. Spread it out on that first layer. It will be about an inch or two thick.

Place second layer of the split cake on top of this whipped cream layer. Scoop the rest of the Oreo whipped cream mixture onto this second cake layer. Spread it out all over the top and sides of cake. Make neat, take your time. Its easy. Honest

Now you’re almost there. Put the cake in the fridge for a couple hours. It will chill and the cookies in the whipped cream will soften up a bit and the whipped cream with stiffen up a bit.

Last step.

Get that last cup of plain non-Oreo whipped cream that you set aside and put in fridge. You want to pipe this whipped cream out with a pastry bag into rosettes (12) of them around the perimeter of the chilled cake. I know I know. Who the hell besides foodie maniacs or baking enthusiasts has a piping bag? In that case, just scoop the whipped cream into a zip lock bag. Cut the corner off the bag and waa-laa you have a pipping bag on the cheap. Pipe 12 little puffs of whipped cream around the top of the cakes edge and then take a piece of the six Oreos you cut in half and place a piece on each little whipped cream puff, or rosette if you had a pipping bag and correct tip.

Look at your masterpiece! Told you it was easy.

Stuffed Bread

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3 cups (12 3/4 oz) All purpose flour. I use King Arthur for all baking period the end.
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup Non-fat dry milk powder
2 tablespoons of potato flour. If you cant find it, you can substitute instant mashed potatoes
1 1/4 teaspoons of salt
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 1/2 teaspoons of instant yeast. I use SAF yeast for all baking period the end.
I cup (8 oz) of warm water.

Put all dough ingredients into a mixer with dough hook or a bowl and mix/knead until cohesive dough forms. 5 minutes mixer

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for an hour.

Place dough on lightly floured surface, roll out into a rectangle 12″X18″

Now here you can do what you want for filling. Spread with mustard or not. Leave about an inch space around perimeter. Layer with ham, cheese, Salami, whatever you like.

Roll the dough lengthwise into a roll. Tuck ends underneath and try and pinch the seams to close.

Place roll/loaf on baking sheet with parchment or silpat, cover with plastic again and let rise for another 1.5 to 2 hours. Loaf will puff up. Take scissors and cut about a 1 or 2 inch long slit across the top every few inches.

375 degree oven for 35 minutes.

Let cool for 5-10 minutes, slice and eat.