Stormy Day Baking

You can tell I'm stressed because I'm trying to make time for baking and calm my mind. Last weekend I was able to bake for Easter. This weekend Jon and I spent the weekend at home because we were threatened with a big storm. As I sit here we have only had some intense rain, but nothing huge. I'm kind of disappointed. I LOVE thunderstorms. After we made some yummy waffles this morning, we ran off to the store to get all the fixings for a nice dinner and dessert. There was a recipe I saw in Martha Stewart's Raspberry-Cream Sandwiches in her cookie book YEARS ago and I've always wanted to make them but never had access to full vanilla beans. My sister-in-law made sure I got some in our wedding gift. Today was the day to try the recipe out.

Martha Stewart's Raspberry-Cream Sandwiches

Ingredients:
1 3/4 C all purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 1/4 unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 C sugar plus 2 t sugar
1 large egg
2 t pure vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved
6 oz (1 cup) fresh raspberries
7 1/2 ounces white chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup heavy cream

Directions:
Preheat oven to  350*. Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt, set aside.

Mix butter and 1 1/2 cup sugar with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add egg, extract, and vanilla seeds; mix until smooth. Reduce speed to low. Gradually mix in flour mixture.

Scoop batter using a 1 inch ice cream scoop, space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes and let them cool on parchment papers on wire racks.

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This was my first venture with real vanilla.

My awesome vanilla from Trina! (Yay!)

Super flavorful vanilla beans! Delicious!

The Raspberry-Cream Filling is a yummy white chocolate raspberry ganache. The recipe in my cook book called for 1 1/3 cup of raspberries and the online version only calls for a cup and I can see why. I think the extra 1/3 cup creates too much raspberry puree and throws off the balance of the liquid and chocolate. The filling didn't set up as much as I would have liked. Next time I won't use as many raspberries. The flavor was delicious but I would have loved for it to have been thicker. 

Directions:

Puree raspberries and remaining two teaspoons sugar in a food processor. Pour mixture through a fine sieve into a small bowl, pressing to extract juice; discard seeds. Set mixture aside. 

Melt white chocolate in a heat proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Remove from heat, whisk in cream in a slow stream. Slowly whisk in reserved raspberry mixture. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes. 

Beautiful creamy white chocolate

Spread 1 heaping teaspoon raspberry cream on the underside of half the cookies. Sandwich with remaining cookies. 

I served these for dessert after the dinner we made for us and our parents. We served them with ice cream. Delicious! 

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Dinner:

  Jon and I made a yummy dinner. I haven't been home much because of work and school. I wanted to spend some time this weekend making something that required more than a half hour to make when we were both hungry home from work. We made Alton Brown's Pork Wellington and I made some potatoes that were inspired by Pinterest. It was a great success. 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pork-wellington-recipe/index.html

http://pinterest.com/pin/6614730672937786/

Today was a delicious success. I'll be making a cake next weekend for a birthday so I get to bake again. I'm glad that after 3 whole months of barely baking that I'm making a come back in April 

Happy Easter!

It has been far, far, far too long since I have had time to bake and time to update this blog. Luckily, I had my last day at Old Chicago last weekend and so now I have a little bit more free time. While I have a lot of school work to do, I took a mental break. Easter was a perfect excuse to get to baking again. My little sister, Nora, got me some adorable tulip cupcake liners for Christmas and Easter was the perfect reason to use them. I made a yellow cupcake filled with lemon curd and topped with a butter cream frosting. They were delicious and a perfect treat for a lovely Spring Easter Day!

I found a new white cake recipe, I'm always on the hunt for a good, moist white cake. This was a pretty good cake. However, it had a REALLY weird creaming method. It was delicious though. 

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake

from Sky High Triple Layer Cakes

For the cake:

4 whole large eggs

2 egg yolks

2 tsp of vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup of buttermilk

3 cups of cake flour

2 cups of sugar

4 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

8 ounces of butter at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of three 8-inch cake pans. Line with parchment paper and grease the paper.Place the eggs and the yolks in a medium bowl. Add the vanilla and 1/4 cup of buttermilk and whisk all the ingredients well. Set Aside.Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in the bowl of a mixer; whisk to blend. Add the remaining buttermilk and butter to the dry ingredients and with the mixer on low speed, blend together. Raise the mixer to medium speed and beat until light fluffy; 2minutes.Add the egg mixture in three additions, scrapping down the sides of the bowl after each addition.

I then piped them full of lemon curd. I think lemon curd is so yummy and much easier to make than most people realize. I ended up making Ina Garten's lemon curd. It was different than most lemon curds as it used the entire egg and not just the yolk. It also used a lot of lemon peel. The lemon sugar smelled SO good. 

Ingredients

• 3 lemons
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 extra-large eggs
• 1/2 cup lemon juice (3 to 4 lemons)
• 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions

Using a carrot peeler, remove the zest of 3 lemons, being careful to avoid the white pith. Put the zest in a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the sugar and pulse until the zest is very finely minced into the sugar.

Cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then add the lemon juice and salt. Mix until combined.

Pour the mixture into a 2 quart saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened (about 10 minutes), stirring constantly. The lemon curd will thicken at about 170 degrees F, or just below simmer. Remove from the heat and cool or refrigerate.

The curd was delicious, but a little sweet. It also didn't firm up as much as I would have wanted. I think I might go back to the curd I used for the Lemon Raspberry cake I made last year. It's always worth trying new things though! 

I brought these over to my parent's house for Easter dinner. They were a hit and everyone enjoyed them. Ignore my bright red face in the picture (I walked 10 miles outside yesterday and didn't think I would need sunscreen, boy was I wrong!)

The liners were adorable. They were even cute when opening them up and they were the cutest crumpled up after the cupcakes had been enjoyed!

How cute!

It still looks like a tulip!

I hope everyone enjoyed this lovely Spring Day, had a Happy Easter/Passover. I hope I get to bake more often! I miss it and I miss blogging. I should be back more in the next few months.