Daring Bakers September 10: Decorated Sugar Cookies

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

Whew, it's been a while since I've been able to participate in a Daring Bakers' Challenge!  This summer was just so crazy that I'd conceptualize and start a challenge, but then fail to follow through.  But this month, since it is actually the anniversary of my membership in the Daring Bakers' and also the birthday of this blog, I made especially sure to complete the challenge. 

I have to admit, though, that I was a little disappointed when I initially read about the challenge.  Royal Icing and I have had quite the relationship and I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't be doing something "new."  But, then, I realized that I simply needed to stretch myself  and do something I hadn't done before.  I decided to paint the royal icing after it was piped and glazed.  I used gel food color (Wilton brand is what I had) and I used a little alcohol (Kirschwasser to be exact because I had it on hand) to liquify the color when needed.  See, I've learned from previous experience that water and royal icing really do not mix (the icing won't harden), but alcohol will work better. 

We were challenged to decorate the cookies in whatever "September" means to us (or should it be "we," hmmm).   Regardless of what is gramatically correct, "September" brings different visions to me now living on the East Coast than it did when I lived in the Midwest.  I'm used to the leaves starting to change to briliant autumnal colors during September.... to the weather cooling off....  I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for what I consider "Fall."  Fall, how I think of it, doesn't happen here until more around Thanksgiving, and even then, it doesn't seem quite as dramatic.  I know that if I was to go to the upstate, I'd get the traditional Autumn feeling that I'm use to.  But I probably won't get to take a trip like that this year, at least.  So I've painted "Fall" instead.  

And I flavored my sugar cookies with some of the same spices I think of when I think of Fall.  Cinnamon. Nutmeg. Ginger.  All "pumpkin pie"-ish spices.  Oh, and I threw in a little cardemom as well, but you've got to be careful with cardemom because even 1/8 tsp is noticable in these cookies!  Plus, I added a little salt to help open the taste buds to help taste these autumnal spices. 


RECIPES

Basic Sugar Cookies:


200g Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
400g All Purpose
200g Sugar
1 Large Egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Cinnamon, to taste
Ground Ginger, to taste
Freshly Grated Nutmeg, to taste
1/8 tsp Cardamom 
Pinch of salt 

Directions
• Cream together the butter, sugar and any flavourings you’re using. Beat until just becoming
creamy in texture.
• Beat in the egg until well combined, make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the sifted flour and mix on low until a non sticky dough forms.
• Knead into a ball and divide into 2 or 3 pieces.
• Roll out each portion between parchment paper to a thickness of about 5mm/1/5 inch (0.2 inch)
• Refrigerate for a minimum of 30mins.
• Once chilled, peel off parchment and place dough on a lightly floured surface.
• Cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a sharp knife.
• Arrange shapes on parchment lined baking sheets and refrigerate for another 30mins to an hour. It’s very important you chill them again otherwise they’ll spread while baking.
• Re-roll scraps and follow the above process until all scraps are used up.
• Preheat oven to 350°F
• Bake until golden around the edges, about 8-15mins depending on the size of the cookies.
• Leave to cool on cooling racks.
• Once completely cooled, decorate as desired.



Royal Icing:
315g – 375g Confectioner’s / Powdered Sugar
2 Large Egg Whites
2 tsp Lemon Juice


Directions
• Beat egg whites with lemon juice until combined.
• Sift the icing sugar to remove lumps and add it to the egg whites.
• Tip:  There are listed 2 amounts of icing sugar, the lesser amount is good for a flooding consistency, and the larger amount is for outlining, but you can add even more for a much thicker consistency good for writing. If you add too much icing sugar or would like to make a thinner consistency, add very small amounts of water, a few drops at a time, until you reach the consistency you need. (LV Note: Add more egg white instead.... it will dry much faster. 
• Beat on low until combined and smooth.
• Use immediately or keep in an airtight container.
• Tip: Royal Icing starts to harden as soon as it’s in contact with air so make sure to cover containers with plastic wrap while not in use.

Charleston Restaurant Week: The Ocean Room, Fall 2010

This past week, the fall edition of Charleston Restaurant Week occurred.  After drooling over many of the featured menus from restaurants at which I normally cannot afford to eat,  a couple of friends and I decided to visit "The Ocean Room."  Ironically, I did a stage at "The Ocean Room" before I worked at the "Jasmine Porch" restaurant (both within the Kiawah Golf Resort Sanctuary Hotel) this passed summer; however, I had never eaten at "The Ocean Room."

Note, please forgive the quality of the images.... My normal camera has been away for cleaning and my backup camera just doesn't have the same capabilities I'm used to.....

looking back at just a portion of the Sanctuary hotel

So we made the long trek from Charleston all the way out to Kiawah.  And, WOW, it was worth it!  As part of the Restaurant Week promotion, we had three courses for $30. We added a few things on to our meal, but still, for the caliber of restaurant, it was quite a deal.

To start, we shared with an additional appetizer: Southern Caviar (smoked trout & roe, mascarpone, dill, corn brioche, corn blinis).

Then my appetizer arrived: Farmer's Fall Salad (greens, honey vinaigrette, marcona almonds, kadota figs, cornbread croutons, camembert cheese) Delicious!

My two companions had a Golden Corn Soup (sweet shrimp, avocado, charred corn), which was poured tableside.

We all chose the same main course: 130 degree Prime Beef Tenderloin, (creamed silver queen corn, foraged chanterelles, black summer truffle jus).  I'm not usually a beef eater.  In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've eaten beef in the past 12 years.....  But this was some of the best beef I've eaten.  Sous vide style is truly the way to go.  The dish just melted in my mouth!

And then why not just add an order of "Truffled Pomme Frites" for the table to share!  Mmmmm.

And next comes dessert.....  I'm not exactly sure of the official name for this chocolate dessert, because we never saw the menu, but it featured a rich chocolate souffle cake with vanilla ice cream and an isomalt garnish.  We shared this dessert as a table.

My two companions each had the Goat Cheese Cheesecake (walnut crust, candied walnuts and wild huckleberry sauce.)

And I had the Banana Pudding (vanilla wafer tuile, roasted banana ice cream, caramelized bananas, toasted meringue). I thoroughly enjoyed all our desserts (and the rest of the food, for that matter), but I think I like my dessert best of all the desserts!

It was a great, memorable meal with good friends, good wine, good conversation.  Charleston Restaurant week will happen again this winter, and I encourage everyone to take advantage of the amazing promotions that happen.  I know I'll be saving up for future experiences :)  

If you're interested in finding out more about Charleston restaurant week, please visit here.  

If you're interested in dining at the Ocean Room, here's their website as well.  

Absence & Palmiers

I've been terribly, terribly absent lately.    Being a teacher is much, much more time consuming than even I thought!  But it also is just as rewarding.  I really love it!

I promise, more posts are in the works.  But please be patient :)

In the mean time, here's a picture of some GORGEOUS (and delicious) Palmiers made in the "Laminated Dough & Viennoiserie" class that I'm assisting with this semester.  Puff pastry & Sugar. What could be better?  (especially when it's puff pastry made with european butter....)

Life Changes & Plated Desserts Final

It's been a while.  Sorry :(  Once again, my life has flipped upside down!  Just when I thought I was getting all my ducks in a row, my ducks have all been replaced by new ducks! 

I guess there are two big pieces of news I have to share.

1) I'm graduating from Culinary School after finishing this summer semester.

2) I've been offered an adjunct teaching position at the Culinary Institute and will begin teaching in less than 3 weeks! 

This job is really a dream come true.  I really feel a great passion about pastry & desserts, and I truly desire to share that passion with others.  Now, I'll have a chance to do that again!

Prior to going to pastry school, I taught in the Culinary Corner Demo Kitchen at the University of North Dakota Wellness Center, a position I loved!  I taught a series called "Sweet Treats," (a name which also inspired the name of this blog as well!) and was privileged to teach UND Faculty, staff, associates, students & Grand Forks Community members how to bake.  Not only did I teach the courses, but I conceptualized the entire series, wrote & tested most of the recipes, photographed the subject matter and designed booklets for each participant, in addition to teaching the actual course.  For anyone who is interested, some of the material can be found here.  (I even won an award from the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association for the design work associated with the series.) 

 
While I had hoped this opportunity to teach would come someday, I never dreamed it would happen so quickly.  I'm excited to get started with all my lesson plans!  These weeks will go fast....

So this course, Plated Desserts, I've been taking this summer is ending up being my final course as a student at CIC.  I've learned so much in Plated Desserts.... many of the formulas & techniques we learned are now included in my little book of "best" formulas.
 

 
For our final, we were asked to take all the knowledge we've accumulated throughout our class experiences and develop one cold and one hot plate design.  We had two class periods to prepare, execute, and present our best work.

This is my cold plate, all based around the flavor of Earl Grey tea:  A trio of mousses (Milk Chocolate, Earl Grey & Vanilla Bean) with Earl Grey French Macarons filled with Mango Cream, Mango Curd Sauce, Vanilla Chantilly Cream and garnished with Chocolate Leaf Decoration, Fresh Blackberry & Mint. 

While there are always things I would change if I could go back and do it again (like, lining my mousse molds with acetate so the layers would have better definition), I still think this dessert is one of the best I've done.  Conceptually, it took a great deal of thought, both in deciding what flavor components to include and which formulas best showcased those flavors.   I've loved Earl Grey tea since visiting London with my sister in 2008 and I've loved the London Fog beverages we use to make at Archives Coffee House when I worked there.  I wanted to draw on both of those experiences, but also throw in a twist with the milk chocolate and mango components.  Plus, I love French Macarons :) 

 The mousses are adapted from a fabulous mousse recipe we learned in class.  If you're interested in making mango curd, Epicurious.com has a great recipe here.  I'll write more about my hot dessert soon!  It includes Golden Grahams Cereal Milk Ice Cream!  Yum!

Unfortunately, my computer is rebelling against me and won't open the program where I've got the recipes stored... So, I'll have the recipes up in a few days!  

Bittersweet.

I've had a couple more France posts in the works, but as you can see, I haven't exactly posted them yet....   Life seems to have gotten in the way.  And life hasn't exactly been kind lately.....  In fact, it's been quite bittersweet.

I struggle with how much to reveal, but things haven't been easy.....

I like having all my "ducks in a row"....  knowing what's coming....  having stability....  succeeding at what I do.  All these  options seem to have flown to the wind lately. The future is even more crazy unknown.  And I'm failing miserably.

Every situation happens for a reason, but finding that reason can be quite painful.  


Recently, through the "explore" option on my Google Reader, I've discovered the blog "things we forget" and have found some consolation.   

"Don't let success go to your head or failure to go to your heart" #513

"Don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do" #519

Yes, the future is unknown.  Yes, discovering you aren't good at something (and are, in fact, terrible) isn't fun.  Yes, the next months will be much more difficult than I thought they would be.

But there will still be learning experiences. There will still be good times.

Bittersweet.  It's how I've been feeling.  

So, with some free time this afternoon, I decided to make scones.  Bittersweet Chocolate & Cherry Scones, to be exact.   Things may not be going as smoothly in my life as I wish, but I can still make scones!

I love the sweet flavor of cherries.... I've been eating tons of them lately!  They provide not just sweetness, but lovely color to the scones.  And the dark chocolate chunks provide a slight bite and are chocolaty without being overwhelmingly sweet.

Then, I couldn't just leave them plain and naked.  I had to glaze them :)  Confectioners sugar with a little Kirschwasser (additional cherry flavor) and a splash of almond milk.  Mmmmm!

So, whether or not you've been feeling slightly bittersweet, or perhaps life is a little sweeter these days, think about making these scones.  Cherry season doesn't last long! 

Bittersweet Chocolate & Cherry Scones

yields approximately 16 scones

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup Sugar

2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Salt

1 stick (1/4 lb) Unsalted Butter, cold

3/4 c Buttermilk, cold

splash of almond extract

125 g. chocolate chunks (use chocolate bars, not chips.  I used part 70% dark and part 85% dark chocolate) 

160 g. Fresh cherries, pitted and quartered 

Instructions:

1.  Using a box grater, grate the cold butter into small pieces.  Then, place the grated butter into the freezer to chill approximately 30 minutes. 

2.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

3.  Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.  Add the frozen butter and rub together with your hands until it forms a crumbly mixture.  Do not work too much or else the butter will melt. 

4.  Add the almond extract to the buttermilk.  Form a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the buttermilk mixture.  Mix by hand.  Additional splash of buttermilk may be added if the dough is dry.  When the mixture is nearly combined, add the chocolate and the cherries and mix only until combined. 

5.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  Using a large scoop, portion dough into mounds on the sheet pans.  Let the dough rest 20 minutes.  

6.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  

7.  Allow to cool and glaze (recipe follows) if desired.  Enjoy! 

Cherry Almond Glaze

Ingredients

Confectioners sugar

Kirschwasser (cherry brandy)

Almond Milk

Instructions

1.  Whisk a splash of Kirshwasser and Almond Milk into the confectioner's sugar until it forms a thin glaze.  Add additional liquid or confectioners sugar until the desired consistency is reached. 

2.  Dip scones into the glaze or pour over the top.  

France: Pique-nique

We did some creative eating while traveling through France, mainly in the form of "pique-nique" or "picnic" for those of you who aren't fluent in "franglais."  By eating pique-nique meals some of the time, we were able to save some of our budgets for the important meals (and of course, ice cream)!

How simple to run to a Monoprix or Carrefour for some cheese, bread (though generally crappy), yogurt (because Europe has greatly superior yogurt than the US has), fruit, and probably something sweet.    Ironically, I'm not a big cheese fan (except for parmesan) in my daily life in the US.  Nor  do I particularily fancy yogurt (thought I've taught myself to tolerate greek yogurt).  But in France, neither of those indifferences mattered!

Mmmm.... Cheese!

Delicious comte cheese, my second favorite cheese variety of the trip, devoured in Lion-sur-Mer  

Amazing, amazing Mustard cheese from Alain Hess in Beaune.

Seriously best cheese of my life! 

And then the delicious mustard cheese was turned into one of the best sandwiches ever during our "biking through burgundy" picnic!  We bought all our ingredients from the "smashing" Saturday market.

Baguette, cheese & local tomatoes, combination recommended by the owner of the bike shop where rented our bikes. 

But alfresco meals pose a few challenges one often doesn't think of prior to buying the desired ingredients.....

picnic in Nice 

Like I said, we consumed copious amounts of yogurt.  But, we didn't have any spoons! So, we drank all our yogurt!

mmm.. rhubarb yogurt, consumed during a pique nique in Dijon!  

Aaand, we also didn't have any forks.  So a wicket from a bottle of Cremant (French sparkling wine that is not from the champagne region) was used to eat carrot salad!

yes, we are very creative.

But, even with all these pique-niques and creative eating, we still had many memorable times filled with laughter and good food! 

only a couple more France posts... I promise!  I'm using these as a sort of visual journal for myself as well! 

France: Markets

Charleston is very fortunate to have one of the best farmer's markets in the US offering "fresh locally grown produce & locally processed food products as well as distinctive hand wrought arts and crafts." You can read more about it here.  After moving from the midwest to Charleston, I became completely spoiled by both the length and the products available at various farmer's markets around where I live.

Well, hold on to your hats (or perhaps reusable shopping bags), because if I thought the Charleston farmers market was amazing, it's nothing compared to what I saw in France!  Here are a few markets I had the pleasure of experiencing during my trip.

CAEN: Friday Market

And Kelli's favorite part of the Market?  Fry Man!  He makes some of the most delicious "frites" I've ever had!  We got spicy Samurai sauce with ours.

BEAUNE: "Smashing" Saturday market. 
I like to research (yes, it's true). And so I bought several guidebooks before our travels.  This book mentioned that Beaune had a "smashing saturday market." And WOW they were not at all joking!  We felt some sorrow we couldn't spend more time experiencing the Beaune Saturday market, but alas, we had already rented our bicycles for the day and planned a slightly vigorous route (well, vigorous for me).  Another sad fact about the wonderful Beaune market: my digital camera card decided to corrupt a good chunk of photos I'd captured at the market.  So unfortunately I cannot share all my memories with you.  I just encourage everyone to go themselves!

 

potentially the largest asparagus stalks I've seen in my life!