I Heart Cinnamon Buns

So, if you read any of my posts about the weekend at Pioneer Woman's ranch, you know that her Amazing Cinnamon Rolls were a huge feature of the weekend and were totally even more amazing in person than they look in her pictures.  SO.  FLIPPING.  DELICIOUS.  We made them a few times and didn't follow the directions so they didn't turn out as good as they were there... but dang they were still delicious.  And the dough... makes AMAZING Buttered Rosemary Rolls, which are also in her cookbook and you should make immediately as well.

Here are some pictures of our Valentine's Day Ladies Night in which we made... a few dozen cinnamon rolls.  Yum. 

Waiting for cinnamon rolls to finish baking is a real drag, especially when you've been waiting for hours for the dough to rise...

Oh so worth it!

Now this is Serious butter.  As-Serious-as-Tweed butter (anyone a LTR/LTT fan?  If not please don't ask).

Right, so if you didn't get it above already, the link to her recipe is here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/cinammon_rolls_/   It's 100% worth the two extra pant sizes, I promise you.  Or give them to your loved ones and spare your waistline, they will love you extra much for it. 

Bobo Making Cookies

I'm a little obsessed with pre-sliced frozen holiday sugar cookies... they're just so easy, tasty and cute!  They used to have three different holiday designs for the whole year, and now they've caught on and made a ton, for every holiday.  I'm surprised they didn't have Martin Luther King Jr. ones.  The sad thing is, I will buy any new holiday design they come up with!

I've shared my love of these cookies with Bobo, and HE loves them because these are one thing that he can 'make' all by himself!  He gets so excited when he sees these because during Christmas he got to make them for the first time.  I didn't even finish unpacking the groceries when he grabbed them, began dancing around, and telling me he had to 'make cookies' right away.  Who could resist that?

After someone opens the bag for him, and slides out the tray, he meticulously takes one cookie at a time and places it on the baking sheet.  When he's finally finished they are all mostly on one side, so he has to spread them out (and gets a little help before they are popped into the oven).

Then of course comes the waiting... but that's no problem thanks to his ten thousand trains that he has.  Notice the nice MAT on the floor... that was a gift from Todd.  I asked for a Silpat for Christmas (and notice how we are using it for the cookies, I loves it!), and Todd went last minute shopping without a list and all he could remember was that I wanted some kind of a mat!  So he got me a PLACE mat, and this FLOOR mat!  Nice attempt, but the best thing is this floor mat is AWESOME... its so comfy and makes you want to wash dishes... I'm not kidding.

And finally we have the cookies!  They taste best when they're warm (but I pull them out right after 9 minutes so they stay really soft even days later), so of course we gobbled up a bunch.  Mmm!  I think next time I go shopping I'm going to have to get another pack... you know, because they have TWO different Valentine's Day designs, and we have to see how the arrow heart ones taste!

Hey Bobo... did you eat a million cookies or what? (I think that's a yes.)

Monkey Bread from PW Cooks

When I saw this recipe for Monkey Bread by Pastor Ryan on Pioneer Woman Cooks... I immediately put the ingredients on my shopping list. It looked SO yummy, and personally I had never heard of it before. Click that link for the recipe and step-by-step instructions, I'm too lazy to write them out here. :)


I should say, this was like a heart attack in a bag, probably because I did something wrong? It calls for an angel food cake pan, and I used a bundt pan, which may have resulted in uneven butter absorption ... all the butter soaked the pieces at the top ... personally I love butter, but I couldn't even stomach these pieces.



At first when you cut up the biscuits and coat them in cinnamon and sugar, I thought they looked like the soft little calf nuts that PW is always going on about, and found that pretty amusing. They could also be from... monkeys, hence the name! Or maybe it's named for its resemblance to monkey poop- which they throw around for entertainment- that's the theory in my household.



Ridiculous amounts of butter! Just looking at this picture gives me indigestion all over again. Oh, and I would bake it longer than the recipe calls for next time... I still had some pieces that were very doughy and unappetizing. Overall, I don't think I would be in a rush to make this again... maybe the garlic parmesan version... with not so much butter! :)

How to Bake A Princesstårta Cake

When I first saw a Princesstårta I fell in love, they are so beautiful, so delicate, so Princess-like! They are a pale green, domed fondant (or marzipan) covered cake decorated with a rose on top. Inside they feature layers of sponge cake, vanilla custard, raspberry jam and artfully sculpted whipped cream. I mentioned my princess cake quest previously, and below are all the details.

Princesstårtor are popular cakes in Sweden, and since I had never seen one before I figured the only way I would get to try one was to make it myself (apparently though they can be had frozen from IKEA). I also was very attracted to the pink-hued variety, but in Sweden they are referred to as Opera Cakes (Carl Gustav cakes are yellow, in honor of their king)... and that just isn't as romantic to eat as a Princess Cake.



First off, let me preface this by saying this was my first experience with fondant and converting from metric measurements. I am not anxious to repeat either anytime soon. Or maybe I should be, since I obviously need practice (and patience).

I began my Princess Cake adventure in the obvious place... by baking the cake. The research I did suggested that a light and airy sponge cake was the traditional choice... which meant no butter (blah). I found a traditional Swedish cake recipe and converted the grams and mililiters to tablespoons and cups, etc. Obviously, I did something incorrect... or the Swedes like them some flat little tasteless cakes... let's just leave it at that. I am not going to write the recipe here because it was not good.


INSTEAD, let me advise you to begin your own journey by making a normal sponge cake using an American recipe (if you're American, that is). OR, use a boxed yellow cake mix... trust me it would come out fine and we don't really need total authenticity. I would much rather have yummy than authentic, and sponges aren't the tastiest cake IMHO.

To achieve the height and shape I used a pie pan and a normal cake pan, intending the cut the cake pan one in half (it was too short for that, sadly). With your NORMAL cake, it would be even easier if you used a pie pan and 2 cake pans for the requisite three layers... just divide the mix between the three... bake the cakes first and then the pie plate (for a bit less time as it's smaller). Invert the cakes onto cooling racks and let's move on to the next step.

I decided to go for custard next. Custard is called for on the second filling layer, and I decided to make some from scratch. You can also use vanilla pudding (instant box mix, whatever makes you happy). I'm not thrilled with this custard, again it is using converted measurements. It came out okay but ... maybe its my American palate, I like things a bit sweeter and more creamy.

Here's the recipe anyway if you want to go for the authentic:

• Score a vanilla bean into a large sauce pot, drop in the bean
• Add 1 cup of whole milk, bring to a boil
• Remove vanilla milk from heat once boiled and let infuse for 10 minutes
• Mix 3 egg yolks, 1/4 cup of sugar and 1.5 tbsp corn starch in a separate bowl
• After 10 minutes slowly poor the hot milk over the egg mixture and stir
• Pour mix back into pot and return to stove on high
• Stir constantly, it will thicken just after it begins to boil
• Once it thickens remove immediately from heat, and beat in 1 tbsp butter
• Immediately strain (or plop) into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to avoid a skin
• Cool bowl in a cold water bath and/or fridge

I bathed the bowl and then put it in the fridge until I was done with the fondant, and by that time it was pretty much all cooled. Next... FONDANT. I decided to go with marshmallow fondant because... it seemed easier and supposedly tastes better. Not easier than buying it like a normal sane person... but I certainly wasn't making a trip to a craft store to get some. :) Next time, I might...

To make the marshmallow fondant I grabbed a big microwave-safe bowl, poured in a 10.5 oz bag of mini marshmallows, sprinkled 2 tbsp of water over them and cooked for 2 minutes until they were all puffy. Like for krispy treats. Then, I took them out, and stirred them up. This was the point at which I was apparently supposed to add food coloring, which I forgot. I ALSO forgot to add almond extract, which was my intention... to make the fondant taste more like the traditional marzipan. Try this, I think it would be tasty.


Alright, now came the unpleasant part. You are supposed to grease yourself, a big spoon, your counter, and everything in sight. (It doesn't help so don't bother, unless maybe it will help for you, then go ahead.) Then you add in about half a pound of confectioner's (powdered) sugar, a bit at a time, stirring until it forms a dough. It was extremely hard to stir, so I resorted to hand kneading it... unfortunately you have to add TONS of confectioners sugar before it gets doughy enough not to be impossible to stir/knead. You then knead it like a dough, continuing to add more sugar (like you would flour to dough) until it is no longer sticky. I don't think I ever reached that point, and I was at it a LONG time.

This is when I remembered it was supposed to be green... so I added food coloring (still on my hands, I might add) but decided to skip the extract. Finally I decided it was time to roll out, as bed time was getting close. I coated a rolling pin in powdered sugar, and attempted to coat the counter in it too, and still my sheet of fondant kept sticking. Finally I made it work ... and then realized I hadn't assembled the cake yet. Bollocks!

Quickly I whipped up a batch of whipped cream. Super easy, just pour heavy cream/whipping cream into your mixer, beat it, pour in a little sugar, splash in a little vanilla, and keep beating it on high speed until it forms stiff peaks. Stop if you think you're done and test it with your finger... you don't want to overdo it or you'll have butter.

ASSEMBLY:

To bring your creation together, take one of your cooled round cakes and slather it with raspberry jam. Be generous, it is the most flavorful part of the cake. You can then add a splat of whipped cream if you made a lot, or a bit of custard. Next, top with the second cake, and smother that with custard. Frost the whole thing with the custard, getting it down the sides and into the previous layer. Then, put the pie pan layer on the top, with the smaller side facing upwards to form a bit of a dome shape. You can add another bit of jam and custard if you like.


To get the dome shape, take your fresh whipped cream and splat it on the top, piling it up in the middle. Use a spatula and frost the cake into a dome. You can bring whipped cream down over the sides to make a more pleasing shape, but make sure the top is rounded and dome-like. The dome is key!


Alright, now we're ready for fondant/marzipan covering. I re-sugared everything, managed to somehow roll out a huge sheet of fondant, smoothed off all the stray sugar, rolled it carefully around my rolling pin, brought it over to the cake and had julie hold one side of it while I carefully draped the fondant sheet over the side of the cake.


I was shocked, the fondant actually went on so easily! It was still very pliable so I just smoothed it down over the sides, pressing it into the cake plate at the bottom and making sure there were no unsightly wrinkles which was very easy to do, it just stretched out. Then I took a sharp knife and cut around the base, removing the (tons) of excess fondant. I also colored a bit of the fondant pink and made a quick and kind of deranged looking rose, which I put on the center of the cake (you can use a real rose too, apparently).

Finally, I cleaned the cake plate and sprinkled a powdered sugar snowfall over the top of the cake to make it all nice and pretty. I've seen a lot of pictures where people use stencils to shape the powdered sugar and this looks really pretty, especially a stem and leaves for the rose. Also, a lot of people use a length of ribbon around the cake's base, or pipe a bit of white frosting around it. At this point though, I was done!


All that was left was to take a bunch of pictures, then mutilate my creation! I don't have any super sharp big knives at the moment, which would have helped, but it cut pretty easily with a semi-dull knife and retained it's unique shape. It's been sitting in the fridge now for two days, with plastic wrap pressed to the exposed innards, and it is still the same exact shape, so it does store no matter what people might say.

There, I hope you enjoyed my little, slightly unsuccessful journey. I am quite proud I managed to make it at all, and it did come out pretty. Unfortunately, mine did not taste as good as it looks, and you can see how flat and dense the cakes came out. In the future I would probably just use a normal yellow cake divided into the three pans, a quick custard or vanilla pudding and way more raspberry jam. Oh, and marzipan instead of fondant.

Princesstårta = Accomplished

UPDATE:

I won! I conquered the Princesstårta.... mostly.


More on this later. In the meantime... anyone want to come over for cake? We cannot finish this thing.




(Original Post)

This is my next project:


A delicate, delicious and absolutely beautiful Swedish princess cake romantically called... Princesstårta.

First I have to go grocery shopping to pick up supplies.

Next, I will be making homemade marshmallow fondant.

Then I will be baking the sponge cake.

I will spend a very long time trying to assemble the whipped cream dome.

Finally, I will totally fail at spreading the fondant over the whole thing.

If I haven't gone nuts by this point, I'll decorate it (or give up and make Julie do it).

Wish me luck.

Cream Tea Scones

To celebrate Julie's delicious gift of fresh lemon curd from Merry Ole England, I made another batch of scones this morning. Last time I posted about the King Arthur Blueberry Sour Cream scone mix, and mentioned I normally get the 'plain' kind. So here are pictures of the King Arthur Cream Tea Scones. Yummy!


There are two suggested ways to prepare it, the cream method is to add 1 egg and 3/4 cup of heavy cream to the mix. The other is the traditional method, which is to cut in butter and add some milk. Today I went the cream route because at 6am I was feeling a bit lethargic. I think the butter method produces a more moist scone, which is my personal preference. I will say I preferred the texture of the blueberry scones, which I used the butter method for.



So, why am I so lazy that I need to buy my flour and baking soda and sugar already sifted together instead of taking the 6 minutes to do it myself? I dunno! There's something just so easy and relaxing about whipping out a box... like making bisquick pancakes. Maybe I'll make a bunch of dry mix and put it in containers... some day. It's on the list. :)


Oh, and the divine lemon curd that we slathered all over these babies? Post on that is upcoming.

Blueberry Sour Cream Scones

YUM!

I really like the King Arthur Cream Tea Scones mix they sell at the grocery store... it comes out really yummy. I asked my sister to pick up a box at the store, and unfortunately she came back with the Blueberry Sour Cream variety. Ick, I thought, I don't like blueberries! Well, out of desperation for scones to compliment the rainy weather and my warm English Breakfast tea, I decided to try it. Here's the before-baking shot:


And guess what... King Arthur didn't let me down, these are delicious! I still don't like blueberries, but these scones are moist and doughy and yummy. I don't know that I would put lemon curd on them as I usually do, but they were good enough to eat just on their own. Mmm.

I like to put a lot of sugar on the top to make it all crunchy and delicious, but they were very sweet on their own. And this was after I picked out about half the million blueberries (couldn't resist trying!).

Aeggekage is Perfect

I love breakfast, and I especially love baking for breakfast. I was in search of new and interesting egg recipes when I came across this gem... Danish Aeggekage. I'm assuming that translates to Egg Cake. I was pronouncing it aggle-kak-en-kugel. *That's not correct, weirdly enough. It tastes like a thick crepe in the middle (I love crepes) and the puffy edges taste like popovers. Delicious.



So I've made this a fair number of times over the past few months... I'm trying to perfect it for my situation. It's originally meant to be quite large, containing 8 or 10 eggs... but I made my first few with 6 eggs and have since downsized to a 4 aegge kage. It is really filling and I would have it left over for days if I stuck with the large size. It tastes fine if you heat it in the microwave (and will puff up if it wasn't baked long enough)... but fresh out of the oven all buttery and hot its just ambrosial.

The original recipe I started with was here on allrecipes.com. This is what I have settled on for the moment:

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees F.
In a big bowl, combine:
4 eggs
1 cup milk (or 3/4 milk and 1/4 cream)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar (use 1 teaspoon if you want this savory / use a full cup if you want it like a sweet crepe)
1 teaspoon salt

Whisk the batter together until the lumps are gone and its airy. Supposedly you are supposed to let it rest for half an hour, but pffft.

Grab half a stick of butter (or more if you want bigger pools of golden deliciousness on the top) and put it in a 9x9 glass baking dish, or a 9x13 baking disk, or any random container you want to use... I'm trying a cookie sheet next. Anyway, put the butter in the dish and pop it in the oven until the butter is just melted. Take it out and coat every speck of the dish with the melted butter, all the way up the sides. I find it easier to take a piece of cold butter and rub it along the sides to ensure they're covered.

This is from a 9x9 pan, I think it ends up puffing higher and being more airy than the larger pan, or maybe it was because I put a whole cup of sugar in this one by accident (came out yummy though!):


Next, pour the batter over the hot butter. It'll start to pool up on the edges. Then pop it in the oven (make sure it's not close to the top because it puffs). I found I needed to leave it in 18-20 minutes for maximum 'rise'.

Keep checking it though, it'll keep puffing up but you probably want to take it out before it gets too brown on the top, unless you like crispies.

After that, let it cool a little (or just rip it off immediately and burn yourself like I do) and serve it up with whipped cream or fresh berries and lemon juice or cashew chicken... it's tasty with everything.

Agave Nectar is Not a Better Alternative

So, a little while ago I was going through some recipes for 'healthy' baked yummies... the kind those crazy raw food / super health nuts would make for their kids and husbands. I'm trying to generally trend towards healthier foods with less chemical additives, so I figured why not go to the source. I kept seeing references to Agave Nectar, and these women were touting it as a healthy and fabulous miracle sweetener that was totally 100% great to use in place of horrible things like corn syrup, sugar, or honey (which everyone knows rots your insides and makes you 50x more likely to die immediately).


Well, I figured if it was so healthy it must taste NASTY, but maybe the sacrifice would be worth it to make healthier cakes and such for my family, right? Imagine, serving up a tantalizing torte that was GOOD for you? Anyway, I wanted to see what it tasted like- then amazingly I actually found it at a local grocery store and snapped it up. Well, it's been sitting on my shelf for a while, as I was too afraid to try it. My sister informed me that agave it was the same plant they make tequila out of, so I just had horrible visions of semi-sweet, thick tequila goo. It was off-putting.

Well, tonight I broke down and tried it, and imagine my surprise at how TASTY and PURE it was! I purchased the light variety, and the flavor is so clean, sweet and most of all... delicate! I wanted to make little fairy cakes with it. It is more liquid than corn syrup or honey but still a little viscous. It reminded me of a honey but thinner and lighter and without the flavors of honey, just the sweetness, and no aftertaste.

Of course, this stuff tasted delicious- no way it could be good for you.. those health nuts were morons! Couldn't they taste this stuff? I wanted to eat it out of the bottle for Pete's sakes! Well, unfortunately I was right on this count, it isn't good for you, and might be worse for you than stuff like white sugar and even high fructose corn syrup... because it contains 90% fructose in a condensed syrup which really makes it not nutritious. Certainly not any better than maple syrup or honey at all. Only reason to like it is if you have problems with glucose I guess. But it just causes other problems in response!

Well, you don't have to believe me you can go google it, there are lots of places that say it's unhealthy. Here is one person's summary that I found pretty complete, but it is from a raw foodie perspective so ... grain of salt. And here is the website of the company which made my Agave Nectar. Notice they also make it sound like dew from heaven. So, basically, go try the stuff if you want a nifty new syrup to play with... but not if you're looking for some healthy sugar substitute.

Oh well, if something sounds too good to be true... At least I will be able to make some unhealthily delicious little tea cakes!

Valentine's Oreo Truffles

Instead of buying people chocolates this year I made some Oreo truffles, after seeing them on Bakerella's website. They looked SO good I had to make them. I kind of winged the recipe, and since I was crushing the cookies by hand ended up adding some heavy cream to make them easier to crush, which I wouldn't do again they came out kind of mushy.

Here is what I came up with after mushing up about 3/4 a package of Oreos, a big pour of heavy cream and four ounces of cream cheese with a potato masher. They're shiny because they're gooey and damp, just like you dipped your Oreo cookies in milk. Mmm, oreos and milk...


Then I melted various types of chocolate and had one heck of a time dipping and dripping, in the end they came out lumpy and messy but that makes them more fun to eat, right?

Arin loved them, as you can see he was the one eating these while I assembled the little festive boxes. He managed to snag two, the peanut butter one and a dark chocolate one.

I added some heavy cream to the dark chocolate and the peanut butter when I was melting them, so the coating is a bit mousse-like, which made them easier to 'frost' and more light and fluffy. The milk chocolate ones came out with a traditional hard-shell coating.

This is what Arin has looked like this for the past three days, I swear. No chocolate is safe.

And here is the updated Valentine's table with just SOME of our assorted goodies on it. Minus the strawberries which are chilling on the porch, and a bunch of delicious from-scractch chocolate cupcakes. Those cupcakes there are Julie's attempt to make red-velvet. :)

Almost V-Day

This year Arin will be big enough to appreciate Valentine's Day for what it really means... chocolate. He's obsessed already, I can already imagine what a great day he'll have with a whole bunch of treats to sample.



This is from my birthday breakfast that Julie and Lauren made... but it gets the idea across.

Someone small and sweet stole my heart... and then ate it messily.