Puffs, the Birthday and the Raisining

Hello again faithful readers! Ms Jones back from another dry spell. It seems like I'm always apologizing for not updating you on the goings on in my kitchen. Regardless, its time (ie - slower day at work) for me to fill you all in.

The last time I was posting, I had just been to a Pampered Chef party and finished baking my first ever Friendship Breads. Alot has happened since then...I've made my first sets of Cream Puffs, Pastry Cream, a second round of Cream Puffs, more Friendship Bread, an incredible birthday dinner, and most recently, Oatmeal Cranberry Dark Chocolate Chip cookies and my first Shortbread. So shall we get to talking and photos? I hope you're all snuggled up in blankets with hot cocoa or tea reading with your eyeballs wide open.

Cream Puffs. I found the recipe I used from a recent 'Today' show segment and figured, it sounds simple enough...why not give it a go. When I start school in August, I'll be making these, so I may as well get a head start. I began by going to Cake Arts Supply to get a sturdy pastry bag and the largest round piping tip they had in the place. For those of you who aren't aware...the pastry used in Cream Puffs (and eclairs and gougeres,etc.) is called a Pate A Choux. Its different than most pastry doughs because it is cooked, then baked. You add flour to boiling water or milk and butter, then add eggs until you get a paste-like consistency. From there, you can pipe it onto baking sheets in a variety of shapes and when its baked, the liquid in the dough creates steam, which causes your pastry to puff up and become hollow in the middle. Using the recipe, i made small army of dough balls to be baked. I found the dough was relatively simple to make, just keep in mind to add the eggs one at a time. This egg addition process can't be rushed because you want to add each egg to the same consistency of dough. Adding more eggs before the others are fully incorporated could leave you with watery dough. You want the dough soft, but still stable enough to hold whatever shape you may pipe into.

Anyway, this recipe made an ARMY of quarter sized puffs and a few eclairs as well:

The end result was a perfectly hollow, lighty, buttery, and smooth pastry shell. My only mistake was leaving them sit out for too long. This dough is also pretty tempermental. It WILL dry out if you leave them sit for too long. Once they are cooled, which doesen't take that long because they're hollow, I highly recommend storing them in ziploc freezer bags OR in an airtight container until you are ready to fill them. If not, they'll become hard as a rock. This is why I had to toss 90% of these small ones and make a whole other batch of puffs to fill with my pastry cream. I also recommend serving them within 2-3 days of making them, if you're not serving immediately.

The pastry cream was also fairly simple to do. You just have to work quickly and really have your mis-en-place when you start to boil the whole milk and vanilla bean. Milk, when boiled gang, bubbles up QUITE fast. I almost had a crisis on my hands after turning my back for a split second. There was one ingredient that escaped me though. Coffee extract. I couldn't find it at any grocery or specialty store around here. So upon a tip from a WIlliams-Sonoma employee, I used instant coffee...1 tsp grounds per 1 tbsp boiling water. It actually turned the cream a coffee color, which was brilliant to match a slight coffee flavor. I also recommend using this within 3-4 days of making it.

I used the pastry cream to fill the new (and larger) cream puffs i made a few days later. As is the case with most projects in the Kitchen...it was easier to make said cream puffs 2nd time around. They didn't puff as much as I would have liked them too. I think they require a bit more baking time because of size increase...and the weather was really humid outside..so that played a factor too. But I snapped a couple pics before they were all eaten at work:

All feedback on them was positive. One got the top eaten off of it, and then there was a salesperson who asked if there was hummus inside of the puff. I laughed. Its not far fetched for a savory Pate A Choux to be filled with a hummus like substance...but not in this case. Wouldn't have gone well with the powdered sugar.

So the 12th of May was Ms Jones' big quarter century birthday celebration! For the big 2-5 a kind hearted woman at work, Anita, was nice enough to make a cake for me!!

Just how I like it. Plain white cake with a layer of strawberries inside and Vanilla BetterCream whipped frosting. And of course, more strawberries on top. Many of you don't know this, but Strawberry Shortcake is my ultimate favorite dessert. I LOVE anything simple with fresh ingredients...so this cake was perfect for my birthday! Murph, the morning show guy over at 106.5 and KC were nice enough to also get me a 4 inch personal Raspberry Lemon Cheesecake from Katz Sisters. Now the strawberry cake was cut up and made for sharing...but I took the selfish route on the cheesecake. A decent cheesecake is easy to find...cheesecake like Katz Sisters...you keep all to yourself.

The problem with my birthday is I like so many different types of foods, that I can never fully commit to picking a birthday menu. This year, it was a rough decision between sushi, fresh fish, and falafel. It must have been the day, but I was totally feeling the falafel. SO, I rallied up the Robers, picked out a complimentary salad recipe (thanks to Heidi's genius) and got the best falafel in town...Rumors. South Side Six is the only comparable place around here, but that's technically in BG. and the only thing i required was their homemade pita chips to compliment the hummus I picked up from Rumors as well. One dozen falafels there is only $6...so I spent about $10 for an amazing main course. The rest of our meal was a fresh zucchini, tomato, watercress, and sauteed mushroom salad. We seasoned the mushrooms with a bit of cumin and that perfectly played off the peppery taste of the watercress. It was served over field greens and then a touch of Heidi's signature 'House Dressing.' The dressing had mustard and a touch of sugar in it too. Things were prepared with my lovely birthday gift...a new 7-inch Santoku knife! Thank the culinary gods for friends who consider you stable enough to give you a giant knife for your birthday :) and despite the fact that we stuffed ourselves silly, we still managed room for cake. jRo put it best 'whether is fish or falafel...' we always end up with a great meal when we get together to cook.

Memorial Day weekend, my fellow foodie and partner in Sweet Cuppin Cakes crime will be back in town on vacation from NYC. Ah yes, NYC...that's another issue to be talked about soon enough. Apparently the kitchen in our new apartment is prime space for supper clubs...so those will be discussed as they get closer to happening. Our first SCC supper club though, will be held this Memorial Day weekend for Anna's visit in BG. We've been menu planning and this is what we've decided on:

APPETIZERS
Hummus - SS6 to save time
Salsa - homemade, of course
Pita Chips - SS6
Kale Chips - Homemade
Relish/Cheese Tray

SIDES
Sweet Potato Salad
Texas Cole Slaw w/Granny Smith Apples
Salad Bar

MEATS
Hot Dogs
Donnie Burgers
Black Bean Veggie Burgers

DESSERT
Strawberry Short-Cup-Cakes
Cherry Pie
Fruit Salad

Ice Cream

We love the idea of keeping simple, but also healthy. So alot of these things will not only be good, but super great for your body! For example, the cole slaw isn't made with mayo, the Cherry Pie is an HG recipe...SCC is going to be all about simple, FRESH, ingredients and taste. More on the Mem Day feast as it draws closer! Also more on the plans for SCC...we've got a number of brillant ideas already brainstormed, I can't wait to finally get them all down on paper. HINT: our signature giant cookie will look like THIS

Thursday night, I felt the itch to bake. It was time to whip out the cookie recipes. Something again, simple that 99.9% of people like....Oatmeal Raisin. This is a recipe I can do in my sleep and it turns out wonderful every time. I love the minimal amount of flour (1 1/2 cups) to the 3 cups of oats! Plus, the variety of add-ins is tremendous. This time around, I ended up with Oatmeal Cranberry Dark Chocolate Chip cookies:

Keep in mind too, there was also an oven full of them when I took these photos. Normally, I would have made them slightly larger, but I wanted to max the quantity, so I used my 1 tbsp. cookie dropper to made each one. I like the consistency of the ones that I had on the bottom rack more so than the top rack. Always a winner :)

I also decided to use a recipe out of Lora Brody's 'Basic Baking' for shortbread. I've said it before...Lora is a genius. Buy this book for your cooking collection:

BUY THIS BOOK! BUY THIS BOOK!

I gave this shortbread to a co-worker and am currently waiting to hear how it turned out. Looking at the actual result closely, you could see the teeny pockets of butter...so I'm thinking it worked out well. I'll let you all know whether it got the thumbs up or down as soon as I hear them. It wasn't tough to make either, all it consisted of is butter, flour, confectioners sugar. Couldn't be simpler. I just hope that it was pressed down well enough to hard together once its pulled out of the baking dish.

That's about all the updating I can give at this point my faithful few. I will be posting photos and final menus/reviews from the upcoming memorial day 2007 feast.

I'm making a list of cooking books that I want to have in my personal library:

Basic Baking - Lora Brody

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen - Harold McGee

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen - Jacques Pepin

The King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion

The Produce Bible : Essential Ingredient Information and More

Mastering The Art of French Cooking - Julia Child

La Technique - Jacques Pepin

The Professional Chef - CIA

The French Laundry Cookbook - Thomas Keller

Larousse Gastronomique Recipe Collection

Les Halles Cookbook - Anthony Bourdain

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver

Nick Malgieri's Perfect Pastry

All of the America Test Kitchen Cookbooks

Anyone want to donate a cookbook to La Bibliotheque de Ms Jones? Let me know :)

more to come ...