Baking with the Boys

Who doesn’t love the smell, taste and texture of freshly baked bread?  These sensory delights must explain why I keep - after many MANY failed attempts - trying to make my own bread.  That and the fact that I am horrified every time I read the labels in the bread aisle.  Enriched that, high fructose corn syrup this.  About every six weeks or so, I get fed up and try to make my own loaves.  They are edible but never very palatable.  

Part of my problem is what motivates me to knead to begin with…I want it healthy.  I am always scaling down the recipe to its bare bones and I am clearly not talented enough to make it work (yet).  So, I finally owned up to my shortcomings and went for a nice white flour molasses two toned bread.  Huzzah!  Success! 

I made one loaf (wary of wasting ingredients on yet another middling experiment) yesterday and it is all gone.  My son told me it was the “bestest bread” I ever made.  Hmmm…I love marble rye and now I am feeling confident.  More success in the future?  We shall see….

The recipe (coming soon) is Two Tone Bread adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens Recipe Collection 2003 which my mother-in-law was nice enough to give me after I spent an inordinate amount of leafing through it at her house.

The task for this week was Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake chosen by Caitlin of Engineer Baker.  It seemed from the beginning that this cake had an uphill battle to climb.  I have to say, if I was baking through this book on my own, I would have completely skipped over this recipe.  And, according to the reactions of some others in the Tuesdays with Dorie group, they were still happy to skip over it.  The ingredients are a little unusual and there is no mouthwatering visual to tempt you in the book.  When Caitlin chose it, however, I got very curious and couldn’t wait to see and taste the end result.

Normally, I bake on Sundays (full time job, full time mother, full time wife…you get the idea) but I thought this might be a good cake for our Friday Breakfast Club at work and, I admit, I was impatient to see the end result. 

I subbed out the figs (meh) for dried apricots and “cherry” craisins.  After reading the comments of others who had forged ahead, I cut down a little on the sugar and unintentionally ended up using about half honey half agave nectar.  I would have bet money there was 3/4 cup of honey in that bear.  Good thing I am not a betting woman.  I used a 9.5inch tart pan and poured the remainder into 4 ramekins for mini-cakes. So far so good.

Dorie says the cake is better the next day but I am not known for patience when baked goods come out of the oven.  I gobbled up one of the little ramekins and thought it was pretty good.  Somewhere between a very sweet cornbread and cake.  I gave one of the mini-cakes to my son, Will, for breakfast the next day.  He halfheartedly took one bite and told me he was allergic — his way of saying he doesn’t like something without actually saying he doesn’t like it. 

I toted my full cake to work hoping for a better reaction.  I have worked in many offices and they all share one trait in common.  Free food is devoured on sight.  I was confident that you could set almost anything in the kitchen and it would be gone in record time.  Until I met my poor misunderstood polenta cake.  Bad enough to be snubbed my dessert loving son (I told myself it was just too sophisticated for him) but to be snubbed by an entire floor full of adults??  By the end of the day only slightly more than half was gone.  I heard a rumor that someone was telling everyone it was cornbread.  I guess “cornbread” with apricots wasn’t so appealing to the masses and I wasn’t about to start force feeding my co-workers.  I started to feel sorry for the maligned cake and ate another piece (after swearing I wouldn’t).    Still feeling badly (irrationally, I know) for the cake, I ate another ramekin Friday night. 

So, bottom line:  The cake tasted good…the kind of cake I would be happy to be served but would not buy or order on my own.  I probably wouldn’t have made it again anyway, but, after it’s less than enthusiastic reception, it’s definitely out of the repertoire.   My waistline can’t take the pressure of eating all of the leftovers.  I am glad I made it, though.  As much as I like my usuals, life would be awfully boring with no surprises.  To see if the others fared better check out Tuesdays with Dorie.

Next week:  Peanut Butter Torte (yum….) chosen by Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food.

It was a very slow week as I was in Toronto on business.  But I am planning to tackle Bill’s Big Carrot Cake for Tuesdays with Dorie soon.  It was my first time in Canada.  I was there for a conference.  First, we got incredibly lucky with the weather.  It was in the 60s and sunny all week…great weather for walking around the city. 

The majority of time was spent at the hotel in the conference but I did manage to take some time to explore the city.  Right before I left for the aiport I walked up to the St Lawrence Market.  I had a great time poking around all of the food stalls and was a little disappointed I didn’t have a nearby kitchen to bring anything to. 

I also had lunch at the 360 restaurant in the CN Tower  (the tallest building in the world, who knew?).  The food was fabulous — I have a new appreciation for sweet potato fries — and the view was even better.  Despite my lifelong issue with heights I did manage to briefly step onto the glass floor.  Very briefly. 

One of the motivations for starting this blog was to join Tuesdays with Dorie.  This was my first official week — although I did make the yummy lemon tart from last week.  Let’s just say it was an interesting start.  Before going in I had no burning desire to make homemade marshmallows and clearly my subconscious was telling me something.  For one, I don’t have a stand mixer.  I covet those brightly colored kitchen wonders but I am making do for the foreseeable future with my hand mixer.  Somewhere in the book, but not in the recipe itself, Dorie mentions that this is one of the few recipes where the mixer makes a difference.  I am sure the result was really due to operator error, but I am blaming the mixer nonetheless.

I am not positive just where the problems started….limp egg whites, over cooked syrup, random distractions…but when I poured the syrup into the egg whites and it immediately began to crystallize I knew it was a downhill slope.  Doesn’t everyone enjoy a little hard crunch in their marshmallows?  I perservered picking “candy” chunks out the mixture and let them set up.  I will say that I owe one of the small successes of the recipe to reading the board discussion beforehand.  I oiled my parchment paper and used a pizza cutter and had no problems removing or cutting my sad little marshmallows.  The other piece of good fortune is that I live with two children who could smell sugar a mile away and aren’t terribly picky about its appearance and texture.  They loved the marshmallows and ate every last one. 

The finished product was far more reminiscent of some of that weird multi-colored gel like candy that is marketed only to kids than a traditional marshmallow.  Good week for my camera to be acting up.  I had to take the one and only picture with my phone.  No great loss. 

This recipe is exemplifies one of the reasons I love to bake.  If the end product isn’t what I expected, no great tragedy.  Throw it out (or foist it on some unsuspecting children) and move on. 

Welcome to my blog.  I have started this blog to chronicle my cooking adventures with my two boys, ages 6 and 3.  They are very enthusiastic in the kitchen, especially for the end results!  We have just finished a birthday cake for grandpa….will post pictures when it is finished. 

I am very novice but enthusiastic baker.  So, when I enter the kitchen and try something new there are always lessons to be learned.  This effect magnifies when cookng with *young* kids.  For example, with this cake, I learned a valuable lesson about cooling the layers.  One would think that the counter is a logical place to cool your cakes.  I thought so too until I came back to discover the 3 yr old had been “snacking” on one of the layers.  Very fortunate that this was a cake for a grandparent…a category of people preternaturally disposed to finding all foibles of their grandchildren (and their grandchilren’s resulting projects) adorable.  I did try to take a picture of the architecturally challenged (yet tasty) cake but I am having some technical difficulties with my camera.