The other day I ran for the first time in over a month, and I was pleased to find that my Nike+ dashboard was displaying my running stats for 2009 (well, since September) in a completely adorable format. This is one of many reasons why I love the Nike+ interface:
Last month, I made cupcakes as a gift to my extended family because:
1) I am poor and couldn't afford to buy each family member a gift.
2) I can thankfully bake.
But what recipe to use? In the past I've used Paula Deen's recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and liked the result quite a bit. However, this time around, a friend of mine told me her favorite was the red velvet cupcake recipe from Pinch My Salt, and I noticed that it had butter, one ingredient Paula Deen's recipe lacks. And boy, do I love butter. So I gave it a shot, and it was so amazing I don't think I'll try any other RVC recipe ever again!
I halved the recipe I linked above, but the steps are still the same:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line one 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake papers:
Sift together 1 1/4 cup cake flour, 1/2 tsp. baking powder, and 1/2 tsp. salt into a medium
bowl; set aside.
In a small bowl, mix 1 oz. red food coloring and 1 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
to form a thin paste without lumps; set aside. Note: I decided to double my cocoa powder to 2 Tbsp. (because it was old and expired) and halve the red food coloring (I used 1/2 oz. instead), so I got a super thick paste as a result.
For this recipe, you need 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened. I didn't have this, so I put it in the microwave and accidentally nuked it. Oops! You professional bakers out there are probably horrified. Don't worry, it gets worse :)
I wasn't ready to pour melted butter in with my 3/4 cups sugar and expect it to cream properly, so I decided to put the plate of melted butter in the freezer. When I was finally ready to combine them, I had about half softened butter and half frozen butter shards:
The first time I made candied pecans was while visiting a friend of mine, and they were so amazing I had to make more once I was back in my own kitchen! I started this recipe for Sweet Coated Pecans from Allrecipes but made just a couple of modifications.
Here's the final product, which I will call Spiced Candied Pecans:
1 egg white
1 tsp. ground cinnamon (Next time, I think I'll double it to 2 tsp., though!)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
12 oz. pecan halves
Instructions
Beat egg white until foamy, then stir in cinnamon, sugars, salt and vanilla extract until well-mixed:
Stir in pecans until they are thoroughly coated with deliciousness.
Spread the coated nuts on a greased baking sheet, foil or parchment paper and put them in a preheated 250 deg. F oven.
Bake them for an hour, but for every 15 minutes, stir the nuts. Here are mine after the first 15 minutes:
After 30:
After 45:
When they're done, pop them out of the oven and let them cool off before popping them into your mouth!
Hunting for potential sugar-coated pecan bits amongst the crumbs in the pan was like panning for gold. Luckily, this prospector found one:
However, the bounty of the day had already been collected:
Next time, I'm going to try doubling the cinnamon and adding cayenne. Yum!
I have to admit, my life would be grand if I could just bake and eat, and bake and eat... and not get fat. As a result, I'm also a runner. So my life ends up being more like: bake, eat, run, repeat.
Not too long ago (mid-November of this year), I ran my first 10K in San Francisco with a few friends from UC Berkeley. We were representing our school (or alma mater, in my case) for the first annual Rival10 College Challenge in San Francisco. Proceeds went towards the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the participating schools. Getting up at 6 am was totally worth running the race, as the weather was beautiful by the time we started at 9 am.
The course was equally gorgeous, taking us right near the Golden Gate Bridge:
A couple of weeks ago, I made these delicious cookies from Baking Illustrated (pg. 463):
The dough turned out to be THE most crumbly cookie dough I have ever made:
- YUM. Hecka delicious, in fact. I will definitely make these again.
- Perfect proportions for ingredients. The right amount of nuttiness, butteryness, and sweetness.
- Coarse texture. This was my fault, though. The recipe called for superfine sugar, which I didn't have, and I didn't feel like food processing regular sugar for 30 seconds. As a result, the crumb of the cookie was somewhat coarse, and less melt-in-your mouth. Next time, I'll try superfine sugar or a mixture of granulated and confectioner's for even more delicious cookies!
- Extra baking time. 15 minutes more at 325 deg. F.
- 30, not 48 cookies.
- 1/4 c. of confectioner's sugar was all I needed for double-coating the cookies. The book calls for a whopping 1 1/2 cups.
- Work quickly with the dough. If you wait too long, the butter starts to soften further and they start falling apart when you form them.
"To prevent leakage and for best results, we strongly recommend using a tube pan made of one piece of metal (rather than a two-piece angel food cake pan, which has a removable bottom)."
Well, I didn't have a one-piece tube pan. So I lined my two-piece angel food cake pan with parchment paper instead:
Next, I prepared the streusels for the top and inside of the cake:
Then I prepared part of the batter, which contained copious amounts of butter and sour cream:
And the other part of the batter, which contained 4 eggs and more sour cream:
...then mixed them together:
Now, the fun part... layering!
After I was done, I put it in the oven. The tricky transition from cake-out-of-the-oven to pretty presentation is (gasp) double inversion. Here we are with inversion #1:
So far, so good. Time to invert it again... beautiful!
Time to dig in!
The Recipe:
Lemon-Blueberry Sour Cream Coffeecake (Serves 16)
Source: Baking Illustrated, pg. 340
Ingredients:
Streusel:
Cake:
Directions
For the streusel: Place the flour, granulated sugar, 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, and the cinnamon in a food processor and process to combine. Transfer 1 1/4 cups of flour/sugar mixture to small bowl and stir in remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar; set aside (this will be the streusel for the inside of the cake). Add the butter and pecans to the remaining dry ingredients in the food processor bowl. Process the mixture until the nuts and butter have been broken down into small pebbly pieces. Set aside. (The streusel with the butter and nuts will be for the top o the cake).
For the cake: Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan (10-inch diameter, 10-cup capacity). Combine eggs, 1 cup of the sour cream, and vanilla in a medium bowl.
In the bowl of a standing mixer, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt at low speed, about 30 seconds. Add the butter and remaining 1/2 cup of sour cream and mix at low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and beat 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Decrease the mixer speed to medium-low and slowly incorporate the egg mixture in 3 additions, beating for 20 seconds after each and scraping the sides of bowl as necessary. Increase speed to medium-high and beat for 1 minute (the batter should increase in volume and become aerated and pale in color).
Toss 1 cup frozen blueberries with 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest in small bowl. Add 2 cups of the batter to the prepared pan. With an offset metal spatula or rubber spatula, smooth the surface of the batter. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of blueberries and 3/4 cup streusel filling (without butter or nuts). Drop 2 cups of the batter over the streusel and blueberries, spread evenly, and then add the remaining blueberries and streusel filling. top with remaining batter and then the streusel topping (with the butter and nuts).
Bake until the cake feels firm to the touch
and a toothpick or thin skewer inserted into center comes out clean (although there may be bits
of sugar from the streusel clinging to the tester), 50 to 60 minutes. Cool
cake in pan on for 30 minutes. Place a rimmed baking sheet over the top of the cake and invert the cake onto the pan (the cake should now be upside down, with the streusel on the bottom). Remove the tube pan, place a wire rack on the cake, and reinvert so the streusel is facing up. Cool for 2 hours and serve or cool completely and wrap the cake in aluminum foil.
- I used a two-piece angel food cake pan but lined the bottom with parchment paper to prevent leakage. Cake turned out fine.
- I made the inside streusel without a food processor by simply whisking the ingredients together. Similarly, I made the butter and nut streusel by finely chopping pecans and butter before whisking them in with the flour, sugar and cinnamon.
- I had to bake my cake for an hour and a half--not 50-60 minutes--before it was done.
- There's a chance I didn't grease the pan enough, because the bottom two layers of batter, blueberries and streusel look rather squished in the final slice pictured above...
- There weren't enough blueberries in this cake for my liking. For a similar and equally--if not more--delicious recipe, try Dorie Greenspan's Blueberry Crumb Cake.
- The cake tastes WAY better on the second day, in accordance with BI's assessment: "We were pleased to find that if stored well, this cake actually improves with age."
The actual variation on sugar cookies from Baking Illustrated calls for lime zest, but I didn't have that. Excuse my non-flattering photo of the results:
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