Apple Picknz 2008!

Several weeks ago I made my second annual pilgrimage to Doe Orchards in Harvard in search of pie makings and some QT with some derby dames.

Sadly, my recent obsession with apples and peanut butter left me with few baked goods to show for all my effort of climbing in trees and splitting my pants.

I did, however, make one delicious thing I would like to share with you:

Rustic Apple Tart with Cream Cheese Crust.

1 stick of softened butter

1 cup of flour
6oz of cream cheese (softened)

a few apples

2 tbs brown sugar

regular sugar

cinnamon

ground cloves
nutmeg

To make: blend the first three ingredients together with fork, two knives, or a pastry blender. Form the dough into two equal sized balls and flatten. Encase in cling wrap and submit them to the Frigidaire for at least a half hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees or more. I'm not entirely sure.

Cut apples into 1/4 inch slices. (I use Macs and Cortlands)

Use only one dough ball and roll out until about 9 inches across. Lay in tart pan or on cookie sheet sprayed with Pam for Baking. Arrange and layer apples on the dough. Sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg and a few pinches of cloves. sprinkle with a light layer of sugar and then crumble with some brown sugar.

Fold up the edges if using a baking sheet.

Bake until edges are golden brown and apples are tender.

life and times of the spiteful baker

I moved. I have a brand new oven. Well, not brand new, but new to me. The model name of this oven... Caloric. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Along with my new oven, a new roommate who makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever and has doubled my already enormous collection of mixing bowls, baking pans, muffin tins and cookie sheets. This can not be a bad thing.

What else is new? Well I discovered this totally awesome food blog. It makes me wonder, why are photographers so good at cooking.. or is it that cooks are so good a photographing. Either way, Deb's blog has inspired me to do things like make pretzels!


















Make the dough, let it rise, roll it out, make the special pretzely shape, boil them.

Drop some of those slippery suckers on the floor and finally, bake them in the oven. Tah Dah!
Beer's bestest friend and a mighty fine vehicle for mustard.



I have not only been drooling over blogs and baking pretzels. I also made a beautiful bundt cake by following Gina Neely's recipe. You may think that pound cake is dullsville daddy-o. But trust me on this. This one is a winner!

More baking from my kitchen soon, it is apple and pumpkin season after all....

baking for the night terrors.. actually causes night terrors. interesting.

Last Saturday the Wicked Pissahs took on the Night Terrors, Charm City's two time champion home team. After a night of tailgating, bout producing, playing, drinking and dancing.. I finally drove home and retired to my bed, only to be awoken in the middle of the night with nightmares of burnt quiches, car towing and jamming. When my alarm went off at 7 am I was hardly in any condition to be using heavy machinery, like an oven. But I had to. In only a few hours the Pissahs and Night Terrors were coming over for a post bout bunch (aka face stuffing).

In my hour of exhaustion I created some of my best savory baking- Quiche! Spinach, Broccoli and Cheddar, Potato, Onion and Sun dried Tomato, and Zucchini and Cheddar. It made me think, why don't I make quiche more often? I must spend a fortune on brunch every year (being that it is my favorite meal of the week) and for what? Sub-standard omelets? No longer! Comment with your favorite quiche recipe, I'm collecting!

Shellby Shattered is has too many letters for layer cake.

On the 30th day, of the 3rd month Shellby Shattered celebrated her first and only 30th birthday. With maximum sneakiness Feev's set up a dinner for a "few people" for Shattered at some Mexican place in JP. By a "few people" Feevs meant round about 25 and so it was a fiesta indeed. (especially since there was a mariachi band!)

I wanted to make something very special for Shattered and so I set about dreaming up cakes in my head. Although I was pleased with the idea of chocolate hazelnut, that project was put on the back burner when I remembered a cake that I had only made once before. Black Forest Cake.

I was 10 years old the last time I made black forest cake. Mama J, seester and I made it for a lovely women named Denise who was our next door neighbor from the time my parents moved into their first Enfield house (14 Douglas Drive) until I was five and she move to Florida. At that point we moved into her house (16 Douglas Drive) which may be one of the weirdest things about my family. I remember the move pretty vividly actually. We threw most of our belongings over the fence in the back yard, but hired movers to big things like the fridge. I digress. Denise remained in Florida until Hurricane Andrew destroyed her home. The first time we went to visit her when she moved back to Connecticut we brought her Black Forest Cake because it was her favorite.

Back to 2008- I baked two thick chocolate cakes (using Jenn's Hot Water Chocolate Cake recipe) and made buttercream frosting with lots and lots of butter and set it all aside until after practice. I came home with Seester in tow to shower and frost the cake and make it over to JP. I used canned cherries and layered the cake up topping it all off with frosting and cherries on top. Turns out though "Shattered" has 9 letters and round cakes are only about 10 inches wide... So "Happy Birthday Buns" it was.

After eating delicious food covered in cheese we cut into the cake and passed it around toasting to a women who I am proud to call my friend. Happy Birthday Buns!

My Love/Hate Relationship with Food Network

Last night my roommate and I rewound Jamie at Home three times to watch Jamie fall in his garden in slow motion. I heart Jamie Oliver and his new show. I heart alot of programs on Food TV. In fact, I watch more hours of FoodTV than anything else and after all these years of viewership I feel I have earned my right to criticize the network for their failures. Namely: Ultimate Recipe Showdown.

Ultimate Recipe Showdown is maybe the worst idea ever. Hey let's watch boring Midwesterners pour pre-measured ingredients in a bowl and stir. Brilliant! Additionally, the judges have nothing interesting to say. Perhaps I am just used to watching quality judges like Mo Rocca, Ted Allen and Andrew Knowlton (swoon!) on Iron Chef America, or maybe it is that card board cut out people are more interesting.

Let's see what the rest of the blogging world thinks:

Food Network's Ultimate Recipe Showdown
1.) Commentary by the incredibly annoying duo of Marc Summers and Guy Fieri, both of whom are trying to match the original Japanese Iron Chef commentators.

2). Competitors are set up on fake Iron-Cheffy set. But they're sooooo slow and boring instead of fast and dynamic. It's a mental disconnect.

3). Randomly inserted, seated interviews with competitors (which actually makes them seem somewhat human, unlike their snail-paced cooking).

Quite possibly the worst Food Network show ever, with the exception of Dweezil and Lisa. A stunning new low, in my opinion.

I couldn't agree more! Weird-O interviews with Guy as they watch the judges eat their food.. LAME! Plus they are required to wear aprons that tie around the neck.. Middle aged women with a respectable sized bosom beware- these make you look frumpy!

Ultimate Recipe Showdown is like Iron Chef for regular folks… if you strip out the excitement of a secret ingredient, cooking in real-time, world class chefs, and the eccentric, campy charm of the original Japanese show and instead replace that all with a non-secret ingredient cooked by too many challengers per episode, jerkily edited cooking segments that barely hold your interest, regular home cooks, and the forced, witless humor of none other than Guy Fieri. Throw in the do-no-wrong credibility-infusing Marc Summers, and you still have a pretty weak show. In short, I didn’t love it.....

The whole spectacle just has too much of everything—too many hosts, too many challengers, too many dramatic pauses (there seems to be a horrible battle within reality competitions to see who can hold the longest dramatic pause), too many lights and lasers and sound effects… just too much hype. I found myself bored throughout my various attempts to get through the episode, hoping that something would eventually grab my attention. Nothing ever did. In a television world in which nothing is ever overdone (Lie detector game show? Sure. America’s Sexiest Fetus? Absolutely.), the producers just seemed to throw a little bit of everything into URS in the hopes that something would work.

All in all I guess all I have to say is: This is what happens when Friday's sponsors a cooking show. More from my kitchen and less from my couch coming soon.

Muffin love,

LJ

photographic evidence that I have in fact baked something.

Happy New Years from your favorite spiteful baker! This year I hope to be better about updating my blog more often, and also losing thirty pounds. How those things will effect each other will remain to be seen. For now, enjoy a few pictures of things I made toward the end of the year. Due to my baking fatigue from Spite's cake, I didn't make that much.. but a few things.

Thanksgiving pies: mincemeat, papa J's favorite and the best apple pie i have ever made ever.

Sweet potato pie, my first ever. I'm going to say it only came out only okay, since it was never finished and eventually molded.

Yet another attempt at making yeast breads. Although these did not rise well, they had a nice crumb and flavor. Since this attempt I have had a tutorial with Mama J on proper bread making techniques.

That is not all I have made, but perhaps all I have photographed. I have taken a keen interest in bread puddings and other custard dishes as well as savory and bread baking. I hope to bring more interesting tales from my kitchen to you in the coming year.

Love and best wishes for all good things in this new year,

Lauren

Cake for Spite... Literally!

I know, I know, I have been a very neglectful blogger. I assure you it is not for lack for baking. On the contrary, I have been baking more then ever on a very special project for the one and only Betty Spite.

If you have read any of my previous blog posts or know me at all you might understand that I'm a bit of a disaster, wrapped in calamity, and topped with the essence of a bull in the china shop. When Betty Spite asked me to make her wedding cake, I said yes. You may question why. I know I did.

I figured that I am pretty much capable of anything if I try (I once hung a door with a leatherman and a bread knife- since then I've been unstoppable), so I started by doing a little bit of research and then making practice cake after practice cake. I choose my roommates family recipe for Hot Water Chocolate Cake. And although it does not rise as much as a box mix will, it has a delicious rich flavor and is a sinch to make.


Versions one, two and three of this cake were mostly to develop flavor and texture and to get the recipe down pat. After version 3.0 I decided that the cake, though delicous might just weigh too much for a wedding cake. So when making 4.0 (Jillian's birthday cake) I tried to doctor up a boxed mix, cut each layer in half, and fill it with frosting.

Everyone at Jillian's birthday party were like "oh this cake is so good" and "lauren did you really make this?" I'm pretty sure they were just drunk. Drunk people think any cake is good cake, beileve me, I'm a pro at this. The cake wasn't bad, it was just ordinary and what I would call an asctetic monstrosity. The wedding was a week away, the frosting had crumbs all through it, the cake was all but falling apart and I was officially in panic mode.


I dedicated the following Sunday to making 5.0. After going to the craft store to buy new pans and other equiptment to build the cake and four trips to the grocery store (why doesn't anyone sell buttermilk!?!) I sat down in my kitchen to develop a new plan. Clearly using the slicing and filliing technique was out. I decided that the safest thing to do was bake thin layers and stackign those on top of eachother. No slicing. No crumbs.

I mixed it up a little bit by baking half of the layers with that Chocolate Hot Water Cake and the other half with what I like to call Wicked Pissah Velvet Cake. It wasn't until I tried baking these thin layers that I realized my oven was lopsided. SHIT.FUCK.POOP. I would have to find another oven to bake the final product in.

The next day I stacked them up and glued them together with buttercream frosting. I used dowels to keep the cake together and even practiced driving it to my weekly kickball game. My teammates were willing taste testers since I couldn't even think about eating any more cake. It received rave reviews (before they were wasted, so I actually kinda believed them) and best of all I discovered that when you stack the chocolate then red velvet then chocolate then red velvet then chocolate with the pretty white buttercream inside. OY! It was so beautiful! Maybe I could do this after all.

(that isn't a fifty as much as it is a 5.0)

I took the day before the wedding off from work and started baking at my friend Sarah's house around ten o'clock. Her oven was level, thank God and after a few hours I had all the layers cooked and cooled. I transported them a few blocks to my house and whipped up some butter cream to stack them. Later that day I had my first experiementation with fondant.

December 31st 2007: ** augh. I haven't posted since august because writing about Betty Spite's wedding cake adventure was too much pressure. So I will just say this: Betty Spite got married, she was beautiful, her wedding was perfect and I didn't drop the cake! hip hip hooray!!! **

conquering the cape!

My family was a north shore family. My Nana would rent a summer house in Gloucester and sun herself all summer long as my grandfather would commute in and out of Boston for work. When my mom was old enough, she too rented a house up that way. I grew up driving up to Long Beach from my hometown in Connecticut and staying overnight in the big red Cape Ann Motor Inn on the edge of the beach. My sister and I ate cereal out of mini boxes with plastic spoons and of course Nana's infamous blueberry cake. Blueberry cake is as much a part of going to the beach as hunting for snails or sand in my sheets.

Jenn, my roommate, invited me to join her family down the cape for a few days and although I have never actually had fun at the cape (once we couldn't find a beach.. pathetic i know, but we are North Shore folk) I jumped at the chance to see what all the fuss was about and have a family vacation experience!





As a thank you, and because a trip to the beach wouldn't be right without it, I baked my Nana's cake. The recipe can be found here if you scroll down a bit.



I am happy to announce that it was much easier then I remember, and just as tasty! As for the cape? The Ruoccos showed me a fantastic time! We headed up to Ptown on Friday since it was raining and had a beautiful beach day on Saturday!

red velvet pissah cakes!

There are two kinds of baking days. There are the days where I bake out of obligation, scrambling to find something I have the ingredients for and running about the house in an utter frenzy. And then there are the days where I have no time constraints and baking is soothing and satisfying. Although the later kind is few and far between, I was delighted when last Friday turned out that way.

Although it was sweltering hot out, Friday afternoon I started making Harlot Feevah's Belated Red Velvet Pissah Cakes. My wireless internet finally started working again so I spent my time mixing and beating and listening to This American Life. To seek refuge from the heat I put a spray bottle in the fridge and sprayed myself down every few minutes, drank one or two britas full of water, and stuck my face under the facet. It worked without folly.

The Red Velvet Cupcakes came out beautifully, glowing. vibrant. pissah red. We Pissahs got together to finally celebrate officially our Cinco de Mayo Championship Victory by BBQing at Papa Feevah's and going mini golfing. It was a fantastic day and not even losing my ball in the wood somewhere around the 11th hole could ruin my good mood.

For more information on Red Velvet Cake...

sugar and spice

Last week was Miss Mary Smack's birthday and a cause for great celebration because she is the one woman on earth with a sweet tooth stronger then mine! Upon request I made yet another carrot cake, but decided that the original recipe could use some improvement.

Dispite the flood like conditions on mass ave. i drove up through Arlington until i reached penzeys. now, i had heard a lot of buzz about this so called penzeys place but had no idea what it was all about.

Thankfully my roommate Jenn came with me because this place was all about smelling. the nice ladies stuck jars in my nose and looked at me for response. not that this is an uncommon event for me, being anosmic i do this all the time. i either pretend that i can smell just to save the hassle or go through the standard questions. "oh you can't smell?" "have you even been able to smell" "can you taste?" "what about gasoline, can you smell gas?" "so you walk by a bread store and you can't smell it?"

This Penzeys lady was very nice and simply moved on to help me find what I needed. i told her i wanted to make a very spicy spice carrot cake. We picked out new ginger and cloves and I was off to create the very best birthday carrot cake known to man.

I do adore making layer cakes, first because they are pretty and second there is a higher frosting to to cake ratio. Every piece is an edge piece! My trouble is that making my own frosting has lead to a few cake landslides and Smack's cake was no exception.

Please note how it starts off lop-sided before it even leaves the counter.

Please also note how the moment I try to put it in my car, my cake holder fails me and it comes dangerously near my gravel and hair infested car floor.

Furthermore, you should also note that I proceeded to eat the frosting off my purse on my way over to JP.


and lastly, you should note that the cake was a smashing success (no pun intended... not that what i said was even a halfway decent pun) even if i forgot to put in the pecans. i told you i forget ingredients!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MISS MARY SMACK!!!