Daring Bakers: CAKE!!!

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was a caramel cake. So Jen and I (mostly her) decided to make a night of it. An afternoon of baking and a night with friends to eat it. Sounds great, don't it?

Like last time, we're going to do a tandem blog with Jennifer in italics. I'll start, but I'm going to start by telling to story of cake in animated .gif rather than words. I'll add some words later and let Jen take it from there...

I may have had a lot of fun with this image documentation from ingredients to cake.



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My favorite part was the Macgyver action I had to do in our baking. First thing's first: Jen's mixer didn't so much work when we plugged it in, so it took a lot of arm strength and about 4 or 5 different mixing tools, from forks to spoons to hand-beaters to silicone spatulas...but that was just the start of it. Having nothing to strain the browned butter (Jen's colander had very large wholes), I took a piece of foil and put it in and poked it. It worked surprisingly well! Also with the butter: I didn't want to wait for it to cool, so I made a cold-water bath in order to cool it quickly so we could get to the cake.

There were a few other moments like that, but those are the two that stick out.

Anyway, Jen, take it away! (again, Jen is italic, I am normal.)

I was very worried about making this cake and recipe work. I thought we might screw up the caramel sauce-- don't ask me how, but if there's anyone who can screw up a concoction of sugar and water, it'd be me. I always get apprehensive when in the kitchen. Printed, the recipe was six pages!

I had confidence that we could do it, I just didn't have confidence that I could do it without burning myself. I ducked down below the stove when I poured in the water to avoid burning.

For prep for this month's challenge, I knew we'd need round cake pans, a thermometer, and a sifter. Bought the first two, didn't have time to grab the sifter. Thanks to Rhea and her sifter, our team of two turned into a trio. Also thinking ahead, because this cake was unlike our last challenge (crackers), it seemed like a prime opportunity to throw a social night. And thus, "Cake and Cocktails" was born. While buying more sugar, I also bought $50 of mixers from Pathmark-- cranberry juice, grenadine, seltzer, tonic water, etc.

You know what happened when we were actually baking. Had to go get more confectioner's sugar, the hand mixer broke... I think that was the only real surprise. Mixing entirely by hand is a pain! (And how is it that my mom's hand mixer still works after twenty years and mine breaks after one or two?)

Because she probably didn't buy her's for $5...and pain? I was VERY sore the next day! I did the bulk of the mixing, though Jen certainly took over when I got fatigued...and then I went back to doing it once rested...and so on and so forth.

It's interesting that for a "Cake and Cocktails" night, most people went for the cake and asked for milk. (I think it's safe to say we had a success on our hands.) Heck, instead of sitting in the living room, we moved chairs into the kitchen to sit closer to the cake. I still have caramel sauce in my fridge, and leftover heavy cream. Last weekend, I used both to make a rather incredible ice cream sundae. Still wondering what else I can do with all the caramel. It's kind of a smoky wonderful flavor compared to the jarred caramel you find in stores.

There's always more ice cream!

If we have the time, I'd like to go back and make the caramel candies. (And also figure out how to make caramel decorations for the cake-- our experiments w/ the sauce were more of a mess than anything else. The cake looked decent, but it could have looked amazing if only the caramel would hold shape!)

And there you have it!

Until next month!

Sept. Daring Bakers: Lavash Crackers & Toppings

So Jennifer and I decided to join Daring Bakers. Basically, every month, i get an email with a recipe and we do our best to make it and not poison ourselves. This month was Lavash Crackers and toppings. The topping we went for was the included recipe of a peach salsa.

But now, to the documentation of our first adventure. Jen's comments are regular, mine are italic.

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So our adventure started with Jen meeting me at work and us going into Whole Foods in Union Square. We picked up our ingredients and were on our way. The highlight of our ingredient shopping was the chili peppers for the salsa: A small red chili pepper and an even smaller pepper that looked like a miniature bell pepper. They were unlabeled and we were unsure of what we were getting into. The cashier looked and said, "What are these?" Jen and I had no idea, so we were charged for a red pepper and a yellow pepper -- 25-cents total, since they are sold by weight -- on the logic that, "Hey; it's a pepper and it's red. We'll call that a red pepper!" I have since found out what the yellow one was, but forgot it. Either way, I know to never use it again.

First, as I put on a DVD of "Family Guy," Jennifer put all the dry ingredients together. Once they were all in a bowl, it was time to make it into a ball by adding water. A side-note out about dry ingredients: the recipe called for instant yeast. I am still unsure what kind of yeast we picked up, but it turns out we should have done our research. What we should have done was add water to our yeast first and measure more of it, otherwise, well, the dough wouldn't rise...but that comes later.



Once we had our ball of ingredients, it was time to knead! Who knew, but kneading gets tiring. We had to knead it for about 15 minutes.



Once our dough was ready -- which Jen tested so wonderfully (no picture available), it was time to let it rise. Jen got impatient and kept checking on it. But it still didn't so much rise because of, well, our yeast problems. Who knew?!



In the meantime, Jen and I started cutting up what was needed for the peach salsa, including half an onion, peaches, half a honeydew, and those peppers I mentioned above. They didn't look too bad, but when I accidentally touched my eye and had to go flush it, I knew we were in trouble. (And then the accidental lip touching, which BURNED!) Here is our salsa, un-mixed and without the lime-juice mixture that went in with it. It's very pretty looking, I must say!



Then the actual cracker-making:
We rolled out the dough to a paper-thin France-shaped object. I got a little Swedish Chef moment that had to be documented, though our dough was not alive and rising in front of our eyes...quite the opposite.





We decided to then separate France into three sections -- poppy, sesame, and cinnamon-sugar. You can tell the ones Jen cut from the ones I cut. I decided I wanted uniformity regardless of the shape of the dough and went with squares all across. Jennifer went with some triangle-type thing. While her triangles may look better in pictures, my squares were much better in person...trust me.



It's probably a good thing our dough didn't rise as much as it was supposed to because as is, we filled an entire cookie sheet and I didn't want to wait another 20-30 minutes of baking time for a second batch.

The following pictures are of the final product, Jennifer trying 'em out, and the salsa -- which neither one of us liked. The crackers, however, were more like pita chips and were fantastic!





So, Jennifer, anything to add?

Stunningly, they sorta turned out, even after the yeast mishap. (If there was a way I could make a pun off of yeast infection, I would. But I cannot think of a stellar one right now, so you're off the hook.) I think my favorite of our three flavors is the cinnamon-sugar. The other two weren't bad, but had too much salt. Plus I just really like cinnamon sugar.

I agree. Having nothing to do with the salt. I had no problem with the salt, as I like salt. I just LOVE cinnamon sugar. And not to mention that the squares kicked the behinds of the triangles...

How fun would it be to make our own cinnamon swirl bread from scratch? Without a bread machine! Yes!

Great...just what I knead...um...need...sorry -- the pun had to be made.

It's interesting that making crackers or bread, or other baked goods from scratch, has become a daring challenge. It makes me realize how utterly dependent we've become on boxed goods, grocery stores, and the packaged food industry.

and how utterly out of shape my arms are, in spite of the gym!

That salsa was perhaps some of the worst tasting stuff ever. It's still in my fridge. If I had some Corona, it might taste better. I wouldn't bet money on it though.

Jen was more adventurous than I. I smelled it and realized I wasn't going to like it one bit. That was good enough for me! I didn't need to taste it to know that I was better off not tasting it.

Lessons learned:
- Everything looks better with a flash. Need a better camera next time.
- Close the cabinets before taking pictures.
- Read up on yeast BEFORE cooking with it. We were very very lucky this time. If it were bread, we would have been up a creek.
- Try not too cook w/ chili peppers before a road trip that necessitates contact lenses.
- Try not too cook w/ chili peppers in general.
- Don't use a pepper that you have no idea what it is!
- Buy more mixing bowls?
- Did we mention not to touch your eye -- or lips or mouth -- when using chili peppers? Or at the very least, wear cooking gloves when handling them.

Can't wait until next month!