It took me long enough, but here it is! Introducing, the re-worked Pastry Chef Online!

Friends, here it is.  All the sweating, the work, the blisters-on-my-fingers.  All of the Amazing Linda’s work–long hours, making nice on the crazy woman (that would be Me), the pulling-out-of-hair.  As an aside, yesterday I offered to have made the Best Wig Ever for the Amazing Linda.  She chose hot pink.  Um, back to the announcement.  At long last, I present to you the New and Improved, Stronger/Faster/Better, Easily Navigable Pastry Chef Online!……………………..chirp, chirp………………………………..cricket, cricket……………………..Oh, what?  Some of you didn’t even know that there was an Old and Unimproved, Weaker/Slower/Worse, Unnavigable Pastry Chef Online?  Well, there was, and it’s prolly just as well that you didn’t know about it, because it was All That Stuff. 

Now, it’s lovely.  The Amazing Linda, from Linda Braun Graphic and Web Design, worked with crazy me for Ever So Long to pull this together.  She designed the keen logo and the look of the site.  I said something vague about having the site look like a ‘57 Cadillac or something.  I’m sure she Rolled Her Eyes heavenward, but apparently she understood, because I love it!  Please do go over and take a little tour.  I’m not big on recipes, as you know, but there are plenty there to get you started.   You’ll find discussions of mixing methods and ingredient function and a great segment called Restaurant Style in the Intermediate/Advanced section.  Plus, there’s a section called Baking Essentials with my recommendations for cook books, gadgets, appliances and ingredients.  There’s also a Special Section called “Don’t Waste Your Money.” 

PCO, like PMAT, is a work in progress, so I’ll often be adding pages–more recipes, more discussions, more categories (like maybe laminated doughs, to start), more recommendations.   Tell me what you’re interested in, and I’ll add it to the site.  As long as it has to do with Pastry Stuff.  Just so we’re clear, I’m not going to add a page about how to shape a surfboard or how to install a doggie door.  I’m just not. 

Now, in Honor and Celebration of the relaunch of Pastry Chef Online, I’m giving away a copy of the keen cook book, Starting from Scratch, of which I am a co-author.  The book is currently all wrapped up in plastic and cardboard, but the lucky winner need but Say the Word, and I’ll wrest it from its wrappings and write a Suitable Inscription on the inside cover.  Here’s all you have to do:  Leave some feedback about the New and Improved Pastry Chef Online–what you like, what you don’t like, what you wish you could see.  Plus, come up with a title for my first cook book.  No, I haven’t written it yet, but a title is a good place to start.  The Beloved will pick what he considers to be The Best Title from all the entries, and that person will win the book!  No, it’s not an objective, random-number-generator way to choose a winner, but it’s my blog.  So there.

If you’d like more than one chance to win, just make separate additional comments, each with some feedback on the site and a Proposed Book Title.  I’ll let The Beloved look at all the entries Sans Identifying Names, etc, and he’ll choose his favorite.  He probably won’t accept bribes, but do what you can.

Oh, you can enter between now and my birthday, November 23.  Enter as many times as you like.  Tell your family and friends.  Alert the media.

Huge thank yous to all of you for hanging out at PMAT.  I hope you find PCO as comfortable a hang-out.  If you want, I also have a forum that you can get to from the website, in the sidebar over there, and also from right here.

To recap:  New site=Yay!  Giveaway=Starting from Scratch–signed, if you’d like. Win by submitting a comment with feedback on the new site and a title for my first cook book.  Enter=Often.  Deadline=November 23.  I’ll announce the Incredibly Lucky Winner on November 24.

I am a sucker for a theme party.  So, with Ken’s Korny Corn Maze right around the corner from our new house, we knew that we’d eventually have to have a Ken’s Korny Corn Maze Extravaganza.  We did that Very Thing two weekends ago.  The only rule was that every dish had to have some sort of corn in it.  Everyone was a good sport, and we ended up with a huge corny feast.  Rocque and Peggy and Chuck and Susan made tamales.  Mary Lou made creamy corn pudding.  Thomas and Roberta brought cheesy corn casserole, chocolate/pretzel/Oreo/M&M/candy corn bark and pop corn.  Mom made chicken vegetable soup with corn in it.  Naomi made shrimp corn chowder.  Jeff brought Indian Corn, plus there was candy corn, too.  We ordered pizza for our young guests, who apparently hate all things corn related.  Who knew?

It was a Big Fun Time.  They grilled tamales outside on a grate on the fire pit.  Mary Lou’s power had been out all day, so she and Naomi cooked once they got to our house.  It was like having a Progressive Dinner without ever changing houses.  When a dish was ready, we ate it.  We had a great time.  The original plan had been to actually go to Ken’s Korny Corn Maze and Haunted House that evening, but it had rained all day, and we weren’t really interested in going to Ken’s Muddy Corn Maze.

The Beloved and I offered up some homemade corn dogs.  We used the leftover batter to make hush puppies.  There were Lots of hush puppies.  We used good old Alton Brown’s recipe for corn dogs, and it was G.U.D. Good.  I did find the batter to be just a bit too thick, so I think I added maybe another 1/3-1/2 cup buttermilk.  And because I can never leave Well Enough alone–to the point that one time Well Enough actually took out a restraining order against me–I added a bunch of black pepper to the mix.  Otherwise, it was pretty much his straight-up recipe, peanut oil and all.  Friends, peanut oil is Expensive.  I had no idea.  I looked longingly at the $7/gallon vegetable oil, but I went with the $17/gallon peanut oil because Alton told me to.  I’m such a sheep.  Baa.  But it is really great oil, and we strained it to use again, so there.

I bought some kind of hot dogs that were billed as “The Steak Lovers’ Hot Dog,” and it was a Very Good Choice.  (I just looked them up.  They were Curtis Beef Master Hot Dogs). I made 16 of these guys, and some folks ate three.  I think I might have had two.  Anyway, next time, I’m making 32 of them.  I doubled the amounts for the cornmeal batter, and still had enough goo left over to make about Eleventy-Billion hush puppies, so I’m thinking that you could probably do 16 with a 1X batch, even though AB writes that the recipe serves 8.  I’m not going to copy the recipe here, because you can go see it for yourselves with that link over there, but I will write down some Thoughts and Tips.

1)As I mentioned before, I added more buttermilk than what the recipe called for.  The batter was still very thick–think pâte à choux.  In Alton’s video, his looks thinner than mine was.  This is why volumetric measures are so Annoying.

2)When it says to coat the dogs in corn starch, really coat them well.  Mine were white.  I rubbed corn starch on them and then made sure to only leave a thin layer, but they were still white.  Plus rubbing hot dogs with corn starch is just kind of…suggestive.  Be prepared to giggle a lot.

3)Alton says to use those restaurant chopsticks that come stuck together.  I found some long, squarish chopsticks at the grocery in the Asian section, and they worked Just Fine.

4)Grated onion is very wet–just go with it.  I didn’t measure it; I just grated until my eyes stung too badly to continue grating.

5)I read on someone’s blog that they wished the batter had stuck better.  I humbly submit that they were perhaps Somewhat Lacking in the Technique Department.  Alton says to put the batter in a tall drinking glass and then dunk the dog into it, swirling to coat.  The batter is Way Too Thick for that, so I just left it in a big bowl, shoved the dog in the goo at a shallow angle–kind of like how they stick the needle in your arm when they’re getting a blood sample–and then used my hand to make sure it was evenly coated.  If the layer of goo is not uniform, big deal.  It’s homemade, by crackie, and it’s Way, Way Better than anything you could ever get in the freezer section or at the fair.  Get over it.

6)I think I limited my frying to 3 dogs at a time, just to keep the oil temp from dropping too much initially.  I just used a big pot–I don’t have a swanky restaurant-style deep fryer.

7)We mixed up some honey mustard, and that was Quite tasty.  But these guys were so good, they really didn’t need any sort of Condiment or Accoutrements of any sort.

And I think that about does it.  Please, enjoy the photos.  Thank Mary Lou for them–she is more conscientious than I.  Sadly, I didn’t think to take pictures of the corn dogs, or maybe I was just being Moody and Passive Aggressive.  Either way, the picture of the dogs is representative, not literal.

Mmmmm...Tamales!

Look how great--Naomi's shrimp and corn chowder.

The spread, minus the soups, which were in the kitchen, and the corn dogs, which were in the Lucky Few's tummies.

Here are pictures of happy, corn-fed (literally) folks:

We built up the fire a bit after the tamales were all cooked. We use Ye Olde Fyre Pit more frequently than we thought we would. Fun.

Here I am with friends Michael and Jeff. Michael is pointing towards The Beloved, so he's kind of in the picture, too.

It was Naomi's birthday, so I made that Creamsicle Pound Cake that I talked about a couple of weeks ago for her.

Rocque and Peggy. We are so lucky to have such great neighbors.

Just about the time The Beloved starts rubbing his hands together in anticipation of making his fruitcake, I begin dreaming of ghouls and goblins.  Not in a Wake Up Screaming sort of way, but in a How Can I Scare the Children kind of way.  I started talking to The Hansens, our Most Excellent Neighbors, and found out that they were all into The Scare as well.  We decided to do a Haunted Path leading from our house to theirs.  And then, we contacted our other Most Excellent Neighbors, The Walls, to see if they wanted In on the path idea.  Much to our delight, they were All Over It.  Thomas was all, “I’ll hide in the blackberry bushes with a fog machine and jump out and scare kids.”  Very, Very Cool.

As you know, I am a Rotten Photojournalist, so I didn’t get pictures of the Walls and Hansens stops on the Haunted Path, but let me paint a picture for you.  The Hansens had tombstones, black lights, a scary light-up tree and a crazy mister skull (not Mr. Skull, but a skull that spews out mist) with blood and a spider crawling out of one eye.  Hooray.  The Walls had Real Animal Skulls hanging from their weeping willow tree, a graveyard with plastic skeletal arms coming up out of the ground, a strobe light that made thunder sounds and an Enormous Spider on their porch.

The Beloved and I decided to decorate the Entire Wrap-Around Porch and send kids all around the porch and down the side steps.  If they were Brave Enough.  Here is Photo documentation of said decorated porch.  All the gray tattery stuff is dyed cheese cloth, cut/shredded so as to add to the Eeriness.

Thomas let us borrow some rope lighting so no kids would trip and fall. We just didn't want to deal with a lawsuit.

The only thing that prompted kids to come on up was the Lure of Candy.

I had two of these guys--one on each top post. Very Hitchcockian, no?

Okay, so I don't water my hanging baskets. In a burst of inspiration, I hot glued some wee skulls into the poor, dead plant. Very effective skull plant, I think.

This corner was a little bare, so at the last minute, I shoved a bunch of plastic grocery bags under some old white curtains, creating instant ghost dude. His sign says "Hanged for Trespassing." I never got around to making a sign that said "No Trespassing," but there's always next year!

My friend Jennifer gave this to us a few weeks ago. How cool is she? She tells five different fortunes, plus she lights up all blue and green, and her head sways AND her eyes roll around. The least we could do was name her after Jennifer.

So, we had a little niche to fill up with...something. I got these wee dead guys from the $ store, and hung them Strategically About with a sign: 'Ware the Shrunken Dead. Awesome.

Eeek! Another shrunken dead dude!

The pumpkin had a natural scar across its face. I used it To My Advantage, don't you think? The blood is red food coloring and glue. I free-handed his look of anguish.

If we had kids come up the side step (which we did), they were met with a sign that said "Do not ring bell. Look what happened to him (the jack o'lantern with the dagger in its eye). Around the corner await treats for the brave."

Kids exiting by the side steps were reminded to Stay on The Path. Or PERISH. Mwah ha ha.

The caution tape (thank you, $ store) led the kids down and around to Thomas' house.

Okay, so that’s all the decorations in the calm light of day.  Now, here’s what the front looked like at night, with the strobe light and the fog machine going.

Cool, huh? Plus, the dude on the door moans and rattles. Double cool.

And where, you ask, is the Madam of Ceremonies?  Here:

Originally, I was going to go for serene, icy vampire. I ended up as Drunken Dead Italian Grandmother. Whatever. The children were Still Afraid.

Okay, so if you’ve suffered down to the end of my Obsessive Halloween Decoration Extravaganza, you deserve something for all your trouble.  I posted this Ages Ago, but here it is again.  A perfect adult snack for Halloween.  Or whenever.

Spiced Caramel Corn

First, you need Some Sort of Spiced Nuts.  Pumpkin seeds are Festive and Seasonal.  Or get some of those pepitas, Mexican pumpkin seeds.  Mix up some egg white, salt, cumin, chili powder, orange zest and brown sugar.  Lightly coat the nuts/pumpkin seeds with the mixture, spread out on Silpat and bake at 250F until dry and golden.  Let cool, and break apart any big chunks.  Or not.

Sorry, but you’re on your own as far as measurements.  The recipe for the caramel corn makes a Ton, so you might want to shoot for 4 cups of nuts and 2 egg whites as the base for the spice mix.

Now, for the Corn

• 3 1/2 cups popcorn, popped.  This makes a ton.  Seriously.  Like 3-4 GALLONS.  That’s about 12-16 LITRES for you Metric Folk.  Half the recipe if you aren’t that hungry, or if you don’t want to share.  If you can find “mushroom popcorn,” use that.  If not, don’t worry about it.
• 4-ish cups spiced nuts
• 1 1/4 c. corn syrup
• 20 oz. butter (5 sticks)
• 30.5 oz. brown sugar
• 3 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt.  Yes, tablespoons.  You can cut back a bit, if you want, but salty is Good for this
• 1 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

Put the popcorn in two Very Large roasting pans that you have coated Liberally with pan spray.  Add half of the nuts to each pan.

Melt everything but the baking soda together in a Very Large Pot.  Once the butter is melted, turn up the heat and bring to a gentle boil for 5 minutes.  After 5 minutes, kill the heat and stir in the baking soda.  It will seriously bubble up and look just like caramel shaving cream.

Pour half of the shaving cream over each vat of popcorn.  Stir it in as well as you can.  Bake at 225F for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Every fifteen minutes or so, open the oven and stir.  Each time, the popcorn will get more evenly coated, so don’t stress if there is some Naked Corn in the pans when you first put them in the oven.

After the Requisite Time, take the pan out of the oven and stir again.  Stir it every few minutes to keep it from clumping up into a large Brick O’ Popcorn.

And now you’re done.  What are you waiting for?  Eat some.  Mangia, mangia!  Oh, sorry, that’s the Dead Italian Grandmother coming out.

So, how was your Halloween?  If you didn’t make anyone cry, you’ll just have to try harder next year.

PS Whether or not you know who Clark Griswold is, you deserve to see his Handiwork:

Hello, all.  I think I have sufficiently recovered from two extravaganzas in a row–first, Ken’s Korny Corn Maze Extravaganza, about which I shall write on Sunday.  Second, Halloween.  Or Hallowe’en.  It is my Hands Down favorite Holiday, and my life is not complete unless I make at least a couple of children cry.  Just a little.  Plus, I bestow upon myself an Award of Merit if a)They tell me they aren’t scared (lies!), b)They run down the steps screaming and/or c)If they back away from me in Horror.  All in all, it was a Very Satisfying Event this year, especially when compared to last year’s Dismal Failure.  I’ll share more, as well as some vaguely Pastry-Related Items on the morrow.  Until then, please consider this a teaser:

Oh, the things that can be accomplished with a melon baller and some red food coloring...

Creamsicle Pound Cake, or THDAY cake. I made it for Naomi's birthday, but by the time we (I) got around to taking a picture, it no longer said HAPPY BIR. Never mind that, though--do you see how moist and lovely it looks?

Yes, The University of Pastry Methods and Techniques (Mascot: Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man) is now offering another class.  No more pussy footing about with Van Halen Pound Cake here and Sammy Hagar Pound Cake there.  Oh, no–today, it’s The Whole Enchilada.  So, sit back, pull up a seat and prepare to Take Notes.  As usual, you can pick up your certification at the end of class.

Back in The Day (being the late-ish 1700’s), pound cake was made with a pound of each of four things:  flour, eggs, sugar and butter.  They shoulda called it a Four Pound Cake, but what do I know. I wasn’t there.  At any rate, as you can imagine, this cake was dense (leavening?  Where are you, leavening?), not terribly sweet (1:1 flour to sugar as opposed to modern pound cake at about 1:1.5 flour to sugar), and not terribly flavorful (salt?  vanilla?  Hello?)  It was prolly a bit tough (a bunch of water in all those egg whites and no dairy to creamy it up a bit, not to mention whatever kind of Crunchy Colonial Flour they were using).  Gee, sounds yummy, huh?  Maybe not so much, but hey, the recipe was pretty easy to remember, right? 

The good things about pound cake were that the crumb was fine (the Cup Half Full side of “dense”), it toasted and sliced well, and the recipe really was easy to remember.  Most likely, some Renegade Colonial Bakers started tinkering with the basic recipe to lighten it up and just make it plain taste better.  These changes weren’t necessarily written down, though.  This I understand.  I generally just fling things together, myself, so I can’t fault these Intrepid Bakers for just Going For It.  At some point, someone decided to start writing down some changes.  Good for them! And good for us, too.  I shan’t be looking up all the baby steps that it took to get from Four Pounds O’ Stuff to Van Halen Pound Cake.  Let’s assume that there were many, though, shall we?  Sorry about my woggly columns; I am not Table Girl.

Original Recipe         PMAT’s Modern Van Halen Recipe
Flour             16 oz.                                        13 oz. cake flour
Sugar            16 oz.                                         19 oz.
Eggs               about 10                                  5
Butter           16 oz.                                        12 oz.
Milk               huh?                                          8 oz.
Leavening    huh?                                         1 teaspoon
Salt                huh?                                         1 teaspoon, barely
                                                                           rounded
Flavoring      huh?                                         2 1/2 teaspoons

Take a look at these changes: 

1. Reducing the flour by 3 oz, or about 2/3-3/4 cup by volume, as well as using a low protein flour reduces change of too much gluten formation.
2. Increasing the sugar by 3 oz, or about half a cup, not only makes the cake sweeter, but it also adds to the tenderness and brownability.  Yup, I’m pretty sure that’s a real word.
3. Cutting the number of eggs in half reduces the amount of water in the cake and allows for a thicker batter and less chance of gluten formation.  And do we seriously need 10 eggs in a cake?  The 5 yolks add plenty of richness and contain enough lecithin to keep the batter nicely emulsified.
4. Someone decided that it was Necessary to reduce the butter by 4 oz (1 stick) because who needs a pound of butter in their cake?  Don’t answer that.  Plus, it further lightens things up.
5. Adding the dairy keeps things from being too stodgy, allowing for better mixing and a more even rise.  Plus, the lactose further sweetens things. 
6. To get a Serious Rise, you’d have to use 3 teaspoons of baking powder.  With a pound cake, we want that nice, tight, velvety crumb, so 1 teaspoon is all it gets.  Just enough to help the Creaming Method air bubbles expand a bit during baking.
7. Salt and flavoring?  Well, they just make the cake taste better.

Using this Pound Cake Formula, I’ve made Ye Olde (Newe?) Van Halen Pound Cake four or five times now, and I’ve not made it the same way twice.  You can read about most of them on PMAT already, but the newest incarnation, and the one that I’m proudest of, I’ve been saving that one.  Introducing The Creamsicle Pound Cake!  Yes, it is so good that it deserves italics, bold and an exclamation point.  Here’s how it goes:

• 13 oz. cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt, barely rounded
• 12 oz butter at cool room temperature
• 18 oz sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom
• 1 tablespoon Microplaned orange zest
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup (2 oz) orange juice concentrate, thawed
• 1/4 cup (2 oz) half and half
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) heavy whipping cream, lightly whipped

For the Citrus Soak (I just made that name up)

• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste.  Don’t go crazy with the sugar, unless you reduce the amount in the cake by the same amount.
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup water

For The Glaze

• powdered sugar
• equal parts orange juice and half and half
• pinch of salt
• bit o’ vanilla

So that might look like a Ridiculous Lot of ingredients just for the cake alone, but look closely.  It all sticks to the basic ratio for the PMAT Van Halen Pound Cake.  Really.  I’ll show you.

Okay, so we have flour, baking powder, salt, and butter.  So far, so good. 

There’s 1 fewer ounce of sugar than in the Master Recipe.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Cardamom and orange zest?  I consider those flavoring agents, and I don’t include them in the formula.  They’re present in such small amounts (volume and weight-wise, not taste-wise) that I don’t even worry about them. 

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract=2 1/2 teaspoons, so we’re good there, too.

1/4 cup orange juice concentrate + 1/4 cup half and half + 1/2 cup heavy cream = 1 cup dairy/liquid + 1 ounce sugar.  The sugar was hiding in the OJ concentrate.  Sneaky sugar.  I found this out by looking at the back of the can.  It said that 2 oz. concentrate contained 24 g. sugar, and that’s almost an ounce, so there you have it.

And that’s really it.  Use a modified creaming method, thusly**:

1. Cream butter until smooth and light. 
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and light.
3. Add salt, flavorings (cardamom, zest, extracts) and cream until well combined
4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating about 20 seconds between additions.  Make sure your eggs are at room temperature.  If you don’t, your mixture will get curdly looking.  That’s because the butterfat hardens up (thanks, refrigerator temperature eggs) and won’t stay in emulsion with the water.  Honestly, I forgot a few weeks ago, and it happened to me.  It didn’t hurt the final cake, as far as I could tell, but it hurt my feelings.  Plus, it just looked kind of gross.  See:
   

   See, I told you it looks kind of gross.

5. Whisk flour and baking together very, very well.  Add half to the batter, barely mixing it in.
6. Barely mix in the OJ concentrate and the half and half.
7. Add the other half of the flour mixture in.  Again, just barely bring it together.
8. Whip the cream to very soft, slumpy peaks.  Gently mix into batter.  Finish by folding everything just a few times to make sure all the ingredients are incorporated.

**Assume that there is plenty of bowl scraping going on between additions.

I bake this 1t 325F for an hour-ish in a 10-cup Bundt pan that I spray liberally with pan spray and then coat with a lot of flour.  I go outside and knock the cake pan against the side of the porch to make sure there’s no extra flour lying around to gum up the works.  You don’t have to go outside, but do make sure that you knock out the loose, excess flour.

It’s done when it’s just starting to pull away from the sides of the pan, when it’s golden, lovely and well-risen, and when a knife stabbed down in the middle of the cake comes out clean.  I usually check at 50 minutes and then go another 10-15.

Let cool in the pan for thirty minutes.  Turn it out on a cooling rack, and then put the pan right back on it and turn it over again so it’s back in its pan.  Whisk together the soaking ingredients until the sugar is dissolved.  Pour it evenly all over the cake.  I even pulled back the sides of the cake a bit–gently–so the soak could run down into the bottom of the pan, too. 

The cake will seem Alarmingly Gooey.  I called my mom for moral support, and she expected the worst.  She’s a very nice lady, but she tends towards Glass Half Empty sometimes.  She did say we could just serve it in a cup.  How’s that for making lemonade from lemons?  Go, Jane!  To keep from fretting, do not mess with the cake At All until it has cooled down to room temperature.  Go shopping, or carve a gourd or something. 

When the cake has cooled down, turn it out onto a serving platter.  If you turn it out onto a cake rack, the bottom might sink down between the Skinny Rails of the rack and then end up on the top of the stove when you use two large spatulas to move the cake from the rack to a platter.  Don’t ask me how I know this.  I Just Do. 

Once the cake is completely cool, you can glaze it.  I made my glaze by putting about 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar into a bowl along with a pinch of salt.  Then, like some kind of OCD Freak Girl, I added a few drops of OJ, and then a few drops of half and half.  Then a few drops of OJ, and then a few drops of half and half.  I whisked in between so I could check the Viscosity of the Glaze.  I was going for thick pancake batter/icing just a bit too thin to spread.  See:

This isn't the Actual Glaze, because I didn't take pictures of it. This glaze is from another iteration of VHPC, just for reference.

When I was Almost There, I added a wee bit of vanilla, and then I was There.

Refrigerate until about an hour before serving.  This cake should live in the fridge–the part that you’re not actively Putting Into Your Face, that is.

Okay, so now you can make whatever version of pound cake you want.  Try it with all vanilla and all cream.  Try it with almond.  Use different spices.  Consider using some lime aid concentrate and some coconut milk in place of the dairy.  (I just thought of that–I’ma have to do that sometime, myself).  Use sour cream in place of the milk/liquid.  Make the creamsicle one and increase the concentrate to 1/2 cup (decrease the sugar by an extra ounce, of course).  That’ll be my next variation.  And maybe I’ll add some Grand Marnier or some Cointreau. 

Take the basic formula–13 oz cake flour, 19 oz sugar, 12 oz butter, 5 eggs, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 barely rounded teaspoon salt and 2 1/2 teaspoons of flavoring–and make it your own.  You could even try a chocolate pound cake.  Bonus points for anyone who can tell me how they’d do it.  And why.  Okay, that’s it, then.  Happy Halloween, everyone, and don’t forget your Pound Cake Prowess Certification.

I'm so happy and proud to be a part of Starting From Scratch.

So, a few months ago, my friend Drew from How to Cook Like Your Grandmother proposed a Project.  He wanted to put together a small-ish cook book to help folks feel more comfortable in the kitchen.  As you know, that’s right up my alley, so I jumped at the chance to be a Part of Things.  It soon became evident that the scope of the Project needed to be much broader.  Being a People Person, Drew contacted some of his other friends and experts in different areas of cooking to contribute material as well.  The result:  Starting From Scratch:  The Owner’s Manual for Your Kitchen. 

When Drew sent me the finished Table of Contents, even I was surprised by how comprehensive it was.  There’s information–great information–about everything from meats to knives to canning to vegetables to desserts to nutrition to equipment.   Plus a bunch more.  All the co-authors are truly experts in their fields, and the text is very conversational yet informative.  As a Bonus, there are a couple of Unconventional Sections.  If you’re a fan of The Absurd, they’ll be right up your alley.  If you’re looking for a Dry Cooking Text, this ain’t it.  And guess what?  Drew even let me keep my Gratuitous Capitalization.  Yay!  Thanks, Drew.

Wander on over to Starting From Scratch to take a look, read about the other co-authors, swipe a free chapter and Ponder Ordering.  Ponder hard, friends.  Think of the kittens. It’ll be available on November 2.  If you order before November 2, you can get a discount!  Cool, huh?  Just thought I’d let everyone know. 

Guess what else?  The book is available either for download as a .pdf file (E-Book) or as a Real Live Hold-in-Your-Hands book (print on demand): Click here to view more details 

“Oh, how do I get the discount?” you ask.  Good question.  On the order page, ”scratch1“  is the Secret Code for getting the print on demand version, and  “scratch2” is the Secret Code for the e-book version.

Hey, wait a minute! I thought mousse was supposed to be smooth and creamy and poofy. What's with those antlers? (Photo attribution at end of post).

First, I must start with an Apology.  Friend Freckles asked about how to keep mousse from getting all crunchy when you start folding the chocolate into the rest of the ingredients.  She asked this a Very Long Time ago.  I had every intention of writing an Amazing Post to answer her question, but then it fell out of my brain completely.  My brain is Very Small and Cramped.  Anyway, rather than Berating me and calling me mean names because I didn’t do what I said I was gonna do,  she instead employed the You Catch More Flies With Honey Than With Vinegar approach and left another comment the other day, ending with a friendly, “by the way–how’s that chocolate mousse coming?”  Non-threatening and honey-esque, yes?  Of course, my first thought was, “What is she talking about?” See, I told you my brain is small and cramped.  At any rate, I did finally remember the question,  so here I am to answer her Excellent Question to the best of my ability.  Sorry for the tardiness, Freckles, but thanks for being nice!

Okay, so what do we know about chocolate?  Chocolate is an emulsion–wee dry particles of cocoa liqueur suspended in the bunch of different fats that make up cocoa butteYou’ve heard of chocolate’s seizing, right?  Well, that’s because you’re accidentally introducing just a Tiny Amount of liquid into the now-melted emulsion.  Do you think the liquid is going to mix with the dry particles or the fat?  I’ll give you a moment.  Insert Jeopardy Theme Song here.  The dry, you say?  You are correct!  Water is hardly going to play nicely with the fat.   So now what has happened is that this Tiny Amount of water has stodged together the dry particles.  The only way to unstodge them is to add enough liquid that the particles can freely slide past each other as opposed to clumping up.  Ever added just a few drops of water to a big old pot of sugar, maybe in preparation for making caramel or something?  The sugar just clumps up and gets stupid.  Keep adding water, though, and eventually you’ll be able to stir it freely and the sugar will even dissolve.  Lovely.  Same principle applies to chocolate.

Here’s another thing we know about chocolate:  you put it in the fridge, and it gets hard.  The fats firm up to the point of Rock Hard.  So, if you start mixing melted chocolate together with some crazy cold cream, it’ll get all chippy on you.

To fool melted chocolate into playing nicely with water-based and cold  ingredients, you’ve got to take both Things We Know About Chocolate into account.  As far as the emulsion deal, you’ll want to fold in the ingredient that has more water in it first.  And that’s egg whites.  Plus, egg whites whip best at room-ish temperature,  so you won’t have to really worry about the cold factor coming into play.  As far as the cream goes, you want to make sure that it’s not crazy cold.  Yes, they always tell you to make sure the cream is as cold as possible and to stash your bowl and beater over at the local Cryogenics Lab alongside Walt Disney before whipping.  But, here’s the thing, if your cream is too cold, you’re running the risk of chipping up your chocolate.  Besides, when it comes to making mousse, I advise only whipping until barely soft peaks.  You’ll continue to “whip” the cream as you fold everything together.  If you whip to medium or stiff peaks, you run the risk of overwhipping during the folding process and ending up with grainy mousse at best and chunky buttery mousse at worst.  Yum.

To avoid Unfortunate Chippage, fold in almost-all-fat yolks first, then fold in the whites.  These have enough water in them to keep the cocoa solids from clumping up, ‘member?  Last, fold in your slightly under-whipped and decidedly-cool-but-not-Arctic cream at the end.

And that’s pretty much that, I think.  Any of you guys have any tricks for avoiding Unfortunate Mousse Chippage?  If so, do tell.

Hello, Ms. Go-at. You don't mind if we make cheese out of your milk and bake it, do you? Na-a-a-a-a-a. Goat humor. Gotta love it.

Several years ago–well, m0re than several, if you want to get technical–The Beloved and I enjoyed a lovely dinner at a restaurant in Charlotte:  300 East.  (So, I just went to their website, and an iteration of this appetizer is still on the menu.  Keen)!  For our appetizer, they brought us (because we ordered it) baked go-at cheese and baguette.  What showed up at our table was a wee log of chevre submerged in herbed olive oil and served with a sliced baguette.  The go-at cheese was Warm and Spreadable, and it was a simple but fantastic appetizer.  The Beloved and I looked at each other and said, “Heck, we can do this.“  And ever since, baked go-at cheese is our go-to easy/romantic light supper.  Along with a bottle of wine and a light salad (or not), it really is the perfect supper.  And now, I’m going to share it with you.

Of course, I’m just going to tell you the way I make it.  You may take any Liberties with this that you care to.  Use smoked go-at cheese.  Change up the herbs.  Use herbed or pepper-crusted go-at cheese.  You can even change up the oil that you use.  As with most of my “recipes,” this one is really more about the technique.  Take note, and go forth and make some of this.  You won’t be sorry.  I daresay you will be Very Happy.  You may thank me later.

Baked Go-at Cheese a la 300 East as Interpreted by Moi

• 1 log young go-at cheese–whatever you like
• a bunch of extra virgin olive oil
• kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• whatever herb blend makes you happy
• Some sort of crusty bread cut into 1/2″ thick slices

I am lucky enough to have some little Pyrex baking dishes that are only about 5″X7″.  I don’t know where I got them, but they are perfect for this.  Use whatever small broiler-proof shallow baking dish you have.  Put the whole log of go-at cheese in the dish, and drizzle on a Very Ton of olive oil.  I like to have about 1/4″ pooled in the bottom of the dish.  Don’t worry, you’ll use it up in a later step, and it’s good for your heart.  See, I care about your health.

Sprinkle on a healthy pinch of kosher salt and pepper and whatever herbs strike your fancy.  You can probably even use some kind of crazy dipping oil blend that you have in the back of your cabinet from that Christmas party from last year.

Place in the oven about 5″ from the broiler and let it go until the top of the cheese is a delightful golden brown and it’s all bubbly and wonderful.

In the meantime, toast the bread on both sides–I do this with the broiler, too, because my wee Pyrex fits alongside my baking pan.  Yay.

Once your bread and cheese are browned, take everything out of the oven.  Arrange the bread Attractively on some sort of platter, leaving room in the middle for the cheese.  Drizzle/spoon the hot, herbed oil over the bread, making sure that each piece gets its share.

To serve, use a metal spatula to place the Very Soft, Very Hot cheese in the center of the platter.  If you have any oil left in the baking dish, drizzle that on top of the cheese.  Use a spreader or knife to spread the hot cheese on the toasted bread.  You can call them crostini if you want.  Or even bruschetta.  Whatever–just make some.

What kind of chilled, swirly confection lives in you, old refrigerator?

So, guess what I did a couple of Fridays ago.  Give up?  Fine.  I went with my wonderful friend and neighbor, Susan, to her daughter’s third grade class to help them make dirt cake.  Here’s how that happened.  I was lounging around on the divan, eating bon bons and petting the kitties, when Susan called, asking me for my Culinary Expertise.  I quickly sat up, donning my Grown Up Chef Hat, bon bons and cats scattering to the Four Corners.  “So, what can I do for you?” I queried.  Susan told me all about the dirt cake, and she had some questions about making it.  I asked her what was in it, and she listed cream cheese and butter and sugar and vanilla and crushed up Oreo cookies.  And then, she said The Words:  Instant Pudding and CCCCOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL  WWWWHHHHIIIIIIIPPPP (read that in a really deep, really slowed down voice).  Dear Lord, is it not possible to get away from Cool Whip?  I guess the answer is a big fat NO.

Let me stop for just a minute and let you guys know how great Susan and her family are.  We are so thrilled to be their neighbors we can hardly stand it.  Susan is funny and fun and smart, and she accepts my strange working-in-my-jammies job and is generally fun to hang out with.  Her lovely husband, Chuck, is wonderful too.  We hang out over there in the evenings sometimes, enjoying Adult Beverages and talking and laughing and laughing.  And Jackson, their son, is going to help us with our Scary Halloween Extravaganza.  We’re going to wrap him up in tea-dyed cheese cloth so he can Wreak Havoc on our Haunted Trail as a mummy.  It’s going to be Awesome.  Jackson is a Very Good Sport.  Sophie is delightful.  She reminds me of myself as a kid, which is kind of a fun thing.  She has a great sense of humor, and she loves our kittens.  When we go Away for a weekend, she and Susan come over and play with the chill-ren and make sure they are fed and happy.   They also have a big muddy, slobbery dog.  His name is Howard, and he is a Piece of Work.  We like him a lot, too.  So, everyone  understand this:  just because I hate Cool Whip doesn’t mean that I don’t love The Hansens.

Now, back to Gentle and Loving Ridicule.  There was a whole Episode on the phone wherein butter melted in 4 seconds in the microwave.  Four seconds?  Really?!  Out of the fridge?!  What kind of Mutant Microwave are these people using?  That explains the gentle glow they give off at night.  At any rate, I told Susan I’d be right over, so I slapped on a baseball hat and wandered over to their place.  Turns out,  it wasn’t butter that melted.  It was margarine.  A very different animal, and one I Fear.

This whole dirt cake deal involved creaming together some cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar and then folding it together with an Instant Pudding/Cool Whip death duo.  Then, that gets layered in a Vessel (they suggest a clean flowerpot.  We used a bowl) with crushed chocolate cookies and Gummi Worms.  Then, you chill the Whole Deal and scoop it out, worms and all.  Yum?  Well, I think it could be Yum, but I’d make a chocolate mousse for the goo and some homemade chocolate wafers instead of using every form of hydrogenated fat known to man.  I guess there is some strange satisfaction to be had from making Dr. Mengele’s Death Cake, but at the moment, it escapes me.

Anyway, we mixed up our chocolate goo and headed off to Sophie’s school.  I had The Best Time there.  ‘Member that I used to be a Special Education Teacher?  I fell back into my role pretty smoothly.  In someone else’s classroom.  At one point, a little girl in a pink shirt raised her hand and I actually Called on Her.  Oops.  After that, I tried to sit on my hands and let the lesson go where it would.  I did gravitate to some of the more squirrely children in the classroom.  I enjoy the squirrely ones.

Here is a Reasonable Facsimile of the Dirt Cake we made.  Of course I didn’t take any pictures.  Remember, I ran over there In Haste to save Susan from the industrial strength killer microwave.

Do click on the picture and read the caption over at flickr. The last sentence made me laugh and laugh. You'll see why.

So then, yesterday, I wandered over to The Daily Spud.  There’s a giveaway going on right now.  If you live in the Ireland-ish area, you could win tickets to a Keen Chocolate Festival.  If you don’t live in Ireland-ish, you could win a book on chocolate.  Anyway, she posted a recipe that is basically just a chocolaty-buttery ganache with Digestive Biscuits mixed in.  You chill the whole deal and then just slice off slabs of the stuff.  I know, right?!   It’s like a DIY Gourmet Kit Kat bar.  This confection put me in mind of what I refer to as Zebra Cake and what others refer to as Nabisco’s Famous Chocolate Wafer Cake.

I first heard about this cake when I was a kid reading a Judy Blume book.  I can’t remember if it was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret or Deenie or what, but I do remember that the parents had gone out, and Our Herione was home alone with a box of wafer cookies and a can some sort of Pressurized Whipping Cream.  She made the cake by stacking the wafer cookies together with whipped cream until she had a Log O’ Cookie.  Then, she swirled the whipped cream attractively all over the outside of the log.  It ended up looking like an albino buche de Noel.  In a good way, of course.  This scene has stuck with me for probably thirty or so years:  whipped cream layered with chocolate cookies.  Oh, hooray; yes, please!

I didn’t get around to making one of these guys until years and years later.  I searched high and low for the Special Cookies (search high–they’re usually on the top shelf at the grocery store.  Sometimes they’re on one end or the other of the cookie aisle.  Sometimes they live with the ice cream cones and stuff.  You’re welcome.) and some whipping cream and I just Went For It.  After all, it’s not like it was rocket science.  It’s cookies and whipped cream.  I’ve seen folks make them so they look like Schema for Cake, but I prefer them in log form.  I’m not going to give a recipe for this stuff–I trust that you’ll all be fine.  I will suggest that you can flavor your whipping cream however you’d like.  You can even change up the cookies.  I’m thinking that ginger snaps might work quite nicely for a Thanksgiving Treat, thankyouverymuch.

Thank you, Judy Blume, for introducing me to this particular heaven.

You’ve made it this far; now it’s time for the Tie In.  I prolly should have taken care of that way up at the top, but I didn’t want to start with a Thesis Statement.  So, here we go.  That we can enjoy (or not) Dirt Cake and Zebra Cake rests totally on the advent of refrigeration.  Once the refrigerator made its appearance in homes, recipes for “icebox cakes” proliferated.  Cakes that really weren’t cakes at all–layers of gooey, crunchy and creamy that came together in the chill of the refrigerator to make a Spectacular Dessert.  As an aside, Jell-o also got a big boost when refrigerators started popping up in everyone’s kitchen.  Here is a Most Excellent History of the Ice Box Cake for your enjoyment and edification.

So, do you have any favorite, or infamous, recipes for ice box cakes?  Better Than Sex Cake, perhaps?  Better Than Robert Redford Cake?  I’d love to hear all about it.  Bonus points for use of Gummi candy of any kind.

Friends, I have missed you.  Now, I’m back(ish), so I want to let everyone know what’s going on in the land of PMAT and PCO and Life in General.

1)If someone offers you free kittens, run away.  Quickly.  It’s a very good thing that we love them and don’t mind eating ramen noodles and sand.

2)I finished all my linking stuff.  Hooray!  I will now quietly accept all of your Congratulations………….Thanks.  My web guru is feverishly working to get Pastry Chef Online online in its New and Improved Form.  I’m pretty excited, and I hope everyone will like the new look.

3)I’m a co-author!  I contributed some material to my friend Drew’s new book, From Scratch, and he introduced me on his wonderful blog, How to Cook Like Your Grandmother.  Go see!  When the book is Out, there’ll be a link over here if you’d like to pick up a copy.  I think you should, of course, and not just ’cause I wrote some of it.  It’s a comprehensive guide to the basics.  I think you’ll enjoy it.  Hats off to Drew for all his hard work in herding the Unruly Contributors and editing like a Champ.

4)I made another iteration of Van Halen Pound Cake a few days ago for Uncle Ray’s 93rd birthday Celebration.  I call it “Cinnamon Cream Pound Cake.”  On account of it has about 3/4teaspoon of cinnamon and a cup of lightly whipped cream.  It was G.U.D. Good.  You should probably go ahead and make one now.  Use 3 sticks of butter and 2 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla plus the cinnamon and the cream–and if you have some, use some brown sugar along with the white for a total of 3 cups or 19 oz.  Everything else is the same.  I’m considering making it with the two-stage method at some point, although if it were any more tender than it already is, it might Kill Me with Deliciousness.

5)Since I last saw you all, my Best Friend Who I’ve Never Met, Linda, has turned into a friend In Real Life.  How cool is that when that happens?  Linda is a wonderful pastry chef who works at a keen country club in Lynchburg, VA.  She came down to stay with us a couple of weeks ago, and we had the Best Time Ever.  We laughed and talked and ate and drank Adult Beverages and had a fire in the fire pit and took a nap on Saturday afternoon.  Not together, but still.  I also gave her a Blogging Lesson, and I expect her to write Amazingly Informative Posts.  Here’s her blog (I don’t think there are any posts yet, though):  The Accidental Pastry Chef.  Do check back occasionally, because you won’t be disappointed.  She really knows here stuff and is one of the most creative and funny people I know.

And now, I’m off to talk to my web person so I can let everyone know What’s Happening with the Site.  Before I go, here are some videos for your Enjoyment.  You’re welcome.This one is for my mom–she adores Brian May.

Here’s one of Adam singing One Republic’s Come Home.  Lovely.

And here’s my boy singing Time for Miracles.  Yay!