Cooking in the Kitchen

Today I had the pleasure of attending a cooking class at the Baltimore Chef Shop, where my dad and I learned how to make croissants and danishes.  The Baltimore Chef Shop opened a few months ago in the Hampden area of Baltimore City.  It's housed in a cute townhouse on the avenue along with lots of other kitschy little shops and restaurants.  The chefs at the shop teach classes on loads of different styles of cooking; from French pastries to Omelettes, from Pizza to Dim Sum, and loads in between.

When I first heard about it, I was super excited!  It sounded like such a good time.  And since my dad is already a fabulous cook who took a class like this in Italy (and loved it!), I thought it would be a great birthday present for him.  And it turned out it was.  We had a wonderful time!  Our class was supposed to be 3 hours covering danishes and croissants for the first 2.5 hours, then give us a chance to eat what we had just made. 

Well, the class quickly turned into a 4 hour affair seeing as the timing was a little rough. This was the first time the BCS had covered croissants and danishes, and since they're just a bit labor intensive, we were willing to overlook that.  But after all of that, we finally got to taste what we made, and that was most definitely my favorite part.  The cheese danishes were so darn yummy!  The croissants were a little too buttery, a little too heavy and a little too empty (I would have preferred Chocolate...) for me.  And while I probably won't be attempting croissants any time soon, I'm already hoping to give Danishes a try one of these days - of course I'll be needing a Kitchen Aid, a scale and a bigger kitchen...

Gifts in a Jif

Instead of focusing on the ridiculous loss handed to the Ravens yet again, at the hand of the Seahawks, I'm choosing instead to focus on Christmas.  That is the preparation for Christmas that includes baking cookies, making presents and crafting cards - you know, all those things that I'd rather focus on to forget about the fact that I really haven't purchased anything yet.  The fun stuff...

So I thought I'd share the best gift ever.  This is the most perfect present for anyone.  It's super easy, super quick and super delicious.  This miracle gift is  Sugar Cinnamon Coated Pecans.  Unfortunately, I don't actually like nuts, so I can't vouch for them personally.  But I made some batches last year and they were a HUGE hit.  And this year, I'm planning to use them for friends and co workers.  What's even better, is that for about $12 at Costco you can buy 2 pounds of Pecans.  That will fill about 6 small mason jars which means you have 6 ready made gifts to go in a jif.  

Yay for making Christmas easy peasy, super yummy and delicious smelling!

Friday Five

1. This little girl is about the cutest thing ever!  She belts out Adele way better than I ever could : )
                           

2.  Justin Tucker is my favorite Ravens player.  He's an amazing kicker, an awesome person and he also seems to be the only player that's decided to show up to work this season.  Now I find out he's also an amazing singer as well.  What can't he do? (The Ravens won't let the video be embedded, but the link works) He really is amazing!

3. I found these amazing coconut cookies on Pinterest (big surprise!) a few weeks ago and Christmas seemed like the perfect time to give them a try.  So delicious!  I love macaroons, I'm a bigger fan of chocolate chip cookies.  These are sort of a cross between the two.  And so easy!  Love a great cookie recipe!

4. If you need a good Tee Shirt, this is the one you should buy.  Not only is it cute, it's been created for women to support women and the funds go directly to Random Acts.  Such a great charity and such an awesome campaign!

5. Love this!  I most especially love this because an old teacher sent it to me because he remembered I loved Sunflowers.  How sweet is that?!

Last Minute Crafty

As a crafty person, I get excited when there are new things to make or when I get requests for things that I haven't thought of making before.  However, I also get stressed when things are thrown at me last minute - things that need to get done in a short timeframe, which means these new projects will usurp the ideas I had to craft.  

Such as when your boss decides to quit (not a surprise - she did that last week) and decides that she'll be taking everyone out tomorrow for a good bye lunch.  This means you'll need a cake - something you were planning to make for Friday - a card (also planned for Friday) and flowers for tomorrow.

Then someone you haven't talked to in about a year, decides she really needs you to make her a card for her kid's soccer coach.  While all of these things are lovely, and not even that much work, I wasn't super interested in doing them all in one evening after working the full day.  However, somehow, the craft and baking gods decided to conspire in my favor for a change.  The cake turned out beautifully - so delish looking! - and I'm very happy with both cards.  Aside from skipping my own personal Christmas crafting, the evening went pretty smoothly.  

Now I can head off to bed while visions of paper crafting dance in my head ; )

Cookies!

My most favorite part of Christmas is Cookie Time!  In this house, we tend to go a little over board and make about a dozen different kinds.  We usually go with what we know - Chocolate Chip & Peanut Butter which are the well-known recipes.  Then we have Ginger Molasses and Mandel Brot which are not so well known.  Then we have secret family recipes for Sugar Cookies - 2 different kinds!

Then thanks to Pinterest, we found a few extras.  I'm pretty sure they're going to be keepers. Not as yummy as the our usual, but quite delish!

First up, Coconut Dream cookies from Add a Pinch.  I love me some coconut, and add in chocolate chips, and I'm in heaven.  It's basically a Mounds in cookie form.

Then we had Chocolate Crinkle Cookies from Sally's Baking Addiction.  These were supposed to be a cookie I ate a few years ago and have never been able to find in recipe form. They were not.  But they were yummy.  Very, Very chocolaty and very, very yummy!

Cake-tastrophe

I watch a lot of cooking shows.  I'm not really one for the shows that teach me how to cook. I'm more of a fan of the ones that go all over the country for the best food - it's pretty much how I plan vacations.  Anyway, that means I spend a great deal of time checking out Cooking Channel hoping that Unique Sweets is on.  So, today after my usual channel flipping, I happened upon a new show - Cake Hunters.

And, usually one for a new food show - especially one involving cake, I decided to give it a shot.  And?  And it was basically a train wreck.  But a train wreck that I couldn't look away from.  The premise is simple.  A couple goes on the hunt for the perfect wedding cake so they meet with 3 bakers and get their thoughts, then choose their favorite for their wedding.  

It could have been decent - not fabulous, but good in a pinch.  But it's just not.  Tonight's couple was from Maryland and seemed a little too focused on a cake for the wedding.  At one point they decided that the cake was the most important focal point of the entire wedding. Really?  I thought professing your love in front of friends and family was the most important.  

Now I'm willing to give them that the cake is important - not the most important - but a big part of the reception.  I judge most receptions by how yummy the cake is, so it's at least in the top 10.  But the groomzilla - yep, in this case the groom was a little off his rocker rather than the bride - was sharing what he was most wanting to see in his perfect cake.  Patterns. Not taste.  Not flavors.  Not texture.  He was most interested in a cake that had "patterns" on it. What?!

In the end they decided on some 4 foot monstrosity full of gilding, aqua butter cream strawberries and passion fruit.  Not a chip of chocolate to be found!  Most definitely not what I would have chosen for my future wedding.  But then again, I would definitely not choose to go on a show this ridiculous either...

Friday Five

1. 3 Words to Describe Comic Con: I suppose if I had to describe it, I'd choose, Super Awesome, Geektastic! 
           
2. This is 100% truth.  Though I highly disagree with #11.  It should be Books & Tea - wine is not necessary at all!

3. I'm kinda loving Complications on USA Network.  I was trying not to get interested, because I'm still mourning White Collar (How could USA cancel the best show on TV!?).  But I accidentally caught an episode on repeat, and it's pretty darn compelling.  I'm guessing it's because Jason O'Mara is darn watchable (and adorable, but that's beside the point.)  Oh and Parker from Leverage is playing his wife - how could it go wrong!?

4. A few years ago I found the Almost Better than Anything cake on the back of a chocolate cake box.  And fell in love with it.  It's basically a chocolate poke cake with the holes filled with sweetened condensed milk, caramel and toffee, then covered in whip cream.  Yes, it's as decadent and delicious as it sounds!  I hadn't made it in forever, until last night, and had forgotten just how amazing it actually was.  I do amaze myself sometimes : )

5. I'm in the middle of a little Lunchbox Project.  I've been terrible at taking my lunch to work with me lately, so I wanted to start.  But the problem with taking lunches is that I can never find something yummy to make.  That's when Pinterest came to the rescue.  For the last 4 days, I was able to put together some fairly healthy, delicious lunches that included snacks and goodies.  Oh and they're kinda pretty too!  Plans are to continue at least 4 days a week.  At least one day has to be out lunch fun day : )

Pinning in the Kitchen

After a bit of a drought on the cooking/baking front, I somehow happened upon 2 winners on Pinterest this week.  I actually went back and forth on trying either of them; I wasn't sure how they'd turn out.  But I'm super happy I decided to give them a shot.  They were both delicious, even if dessert wasn't exactly what I was expecting.

First up, for dinner was the Chicken Caprese Flatbreads.  This one I sort of winged.  I can see the pin, and click on it, but no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to scroll down and see the recipe.  But I sort of got the idea from the picture, so I just rolled with it. Maybe you'll have better luck.  

I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to grill the bread dough like that, but it's a fabulous idea!  I used chicken thighs because I like them, and they shred well, and excluded the arugula and pesto, in favor of garlic oil.  I also strategically placed the tomatoes between the chicken and the cheese to avoid the whole warm tomato conundrum.  (There's a good chance you won't have to do that, since you're probably not as weird about hot tomatoes as I am, but in case you are, it worked perfectly!)

Conclusion: Perfect dinner for a super hot and humid summer day!

Next up, for dessert was Peach Cobbler.  Now, I LOVE peach cobbler.  It's one of my most favorite desserts. However, it's quite difficult to make when you don't have really good peaches, which is the whole reason I chose this recipe.  It used canned peaches as opposed to fresh, which is a good thing since it's not quite peach season time yet.  I had a bit of problem with the pin not matching the recipe; it's basically 2 recipes in one.  And seeing as I misread and forgot the self rising flour, there was a bit of finessing of the recipe - AP Flour mixed with baking powder seemed to do the trick.  I also had to bake it for a full hour as opposed to the 45 minutes.  I probably would have baked it longer, since I was dreaming of  a crispy top, but the master baker prevailed and I finally took it out.  It was no where near what I was expecting. In the photo it looks all nice and crisp and crunchy on top.  Mine was neither, but...

Conclusion: It was pretty darn tasty with vanilla ice cream!  Delish!

Looks like it was a 2 for 2 evening in the kitchen - love it when that happens!

Friday Five

1.  I've been dreaming of this suitcase since I discovered it this morning.  Can you imagine how easy packing would be if you basically had a portable dresser at your disposal?  I mean, sure, it's probably heavy and bulky, but what a fantastic idea!  It might be worth the extra bag fees.

2. Fenwick Bakery in Parkville, MD: The place has been there for decades and somehow I've never been there before.  OMG. I'm lucky it's nowhere close to me because if it were, I'd weigh approximately 500 pounds.  The peach cake was to die for!

3. I've been coveting these Kelly Purkey Stamps for a while now and I finally broke down and ordered them this week. Seriously, how cute are they?!  I think they'll be perfect for the travel albums to come.  If you read her blog, I love how she uses them on her photos with white ink, so needless to say a lovely white stamp pad will also be arriving soon in the post.

4. Maxi Dresses!  I have a serious problem this summer with purchasing them.  I love them so!  The problem lies in the fact that my legs are too short for them.  So when I do find a tremendous deal on some super cute threads, I have to go spend about 15 bucks to have 3-4 inches taken off the bottom, so one can actually see my feet.  It's a whole thing.  If this weren't the case, I'd have way more of them than I already own!  

5. The best German Chocolate Icing I've ever made!  I HATE making German Chocolate Icing.  However, it's the one cake that my dad requests each year for Father's Day and seeing as he was out of the country on Father's Day there was a week delay on cake making and consumption.  That gave me some time to find the perfect recipe for the icing and I do believe I found it.  This year, it actually set up and didn't appear to be melting off of the cake. Thank goodness for Pinterest!  Aside from the dumb pecans that are apparently required, it was pretty darn tasty! 

In the Kitchen: Danish Dream Cake

I was so excited when I found this recipe for Danish Dream Cake last week on Saveur (another reason to love Twitter - Recipes!!).  It looked absolutely delicious!  How can you say no to coconut.  What's even better, which is slightly out of the ordinary for a Saveur recipe, it seemed fairly easy.  There were no crazy expensive ingredients that would only be used for this cake, and never to be seen again. 

And honestly, seeing it come out of the oven, I was pretty darn proud of myself.  I mean look at it!  It's gorgeous!

                 

 

And while, it's beautiful, it wasn't exactly what I wanted.  The cake itself was pretty good - more like a pound cake than I was expecting.  And the topping was coconut-y, but for me it was too coconut-y.  Too sweet!  The verdict is that it's definitely not my favorite, but I have to say - I might have to make it again, just for the sheer wow factor of just how pretty it is : )

Girl Power!

There are probably much better ways to celebrate International Women's Day; however constructing an Ikea cart and nailing Madeleines on the first time, all by myself was how I chose to spend mine.  So, you know...Girl Power!

I am woman, hear me roar! : )

Banner Weekend for Baking

After a weekend in the kitchen that included spilling melted butter all over the hardwood, dropping an egg on said hardwood, shooting salsa all over myself and the cabinets and spraying powdered sugar all over the cabinets, I suppose it's all well and good that any food made it out of the kitchen at all.  But after seeing this little Pinterest inspired beauty, I'm pretty darn thrilled with the results (if not the process...).  Actually having it taste delicious was icing on the cake (see what I did there? : )  

Third Time's a Charm

I have what one might call, an obsession, with macarons.  Ever since I tried them last year, I've felt the need to taste-test them every time I see them somewhere.  Originally, I was convinced they couldn't be that difficult.  There were only about 4 ingredients to them.  How could they be so delicious and so difficult?  I was very, very wrong.  It turns out the most difficult recipes are the ones that only have a few ingredients.  Test recipes 1 and 2 were epic fails.  Both had decent flavor but texture and look were just terrible to say the least.  

So I've been leaving the darn things to the professionals for the last few months.  My fragile ego couldn't take the pressure.  But I had a dream about them last night, and woke up with a renewed desire to nail the little pieces of heaven.  I've been hoarding real almond meal (as opposed to the stuff I made that caused the epic fails) for a few weeks so I had all the ingredients to give them a go.  After a few minutes of stress, and angst over whether or not they'd turn out - I'm ready to admit, the third time's a charm.  They were AWESOME - even if I do say so myself.  They looked like macarons.  They felt like macarons.  And most importantly they tasted like macarons!  I'm also willing to concede that even though the recipe for these coconut and chocolate macarons came from a cookbook that spelled the word "macaron" incorrectly on every single page (including the cover), it's a pretty perfect recipe that I will be treasuring for a very long time!

PS: On top of nailing the macarons, these are probably the best food pics I've ever taken. So you could say today was a banner day in the kitchen for Kristen.  Though I'm sure this new found cockiness will come back to bite me in the butt sometime soon...

Easter Sweets

For the record, I can go months without eating candy, but come Easter time, it's all I crave! Today was officially Easter baking day and of course I turned to Pinterest.  Where in the world would I be without it?!  All of the recipes turned out pretty well, I think.  The Bunny Tails are super sweet so if that's your thing, they're perfect for you but I'm not such a fan. Other than that, my track record was much higher than usual.  All recipes can be found below - Enjoy!

Coconut Bunny Tails      Butter Creams     Peanut Butter Bon Bons     Hot Cross Buns

Sunday Sweet

After finding this recipe on Pinterest this week, I just knew I had to try it.  I'm an eclair fiend and I sort of always assumed they were much too difficult to attempt.  However, this recipe made the cake version seem insanely easy.  I stole the cake part itself directly from the recipe, but I changed mine up a bit and made the custard and chocolate from scratch.  While it was yummy, it could have been a bit better.  My 9x13 pan wasn't exactly 9x13 - it was a bit smaller- so the cake was a bit thicker than I was hoping.  Other than that it was the perfect treat for a cold, rainy and in some parts snowy Spring (!!) Sunday.

In the Kitchen: Breakfast Pie

There are a few recipes that I love to make and tend to make quite often.  This breakfast pie is my specialty and I make it probably a great deal more than I should.  It's good for breakfast, but I usually have it for dinner with lots of salsa.  The salsa is a special recipe so I can't share that, but I will share the pie - it's so simple and is the perfect dinner for a busy week night!

Before:

 After

PS: I've seemed to figure out the blogging, the cooking and the crafting but not so much the photography just yet.  It may not look appetizing but I guarantee it's delicious!

Kristen's Breakfast Pie
Makes 2 Pies

Roll of Breakfast Sausage
One Green Pepper
One Onion
8-10 eggs 
Pillsbury Pie Crusts 
Grated Cheddar Jack Cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste
And any other yummy ingredient you'd like

Preheat oven to 375 and lay out pie crusts in 2 pie pans,  
Saute onions and peppers until soft.  Remove then fry up the sausage.  When sausage is fully cooked, add the cooked onions and peppers and mix well.  While they're warming on the stove, crack and scramble the eggs and add cheese as you like.  Add the sausage mixture to the egg mixture then dump the whole mix into the opened pie crusts.
Bake for 20-25 minutes.  In the last 5 minutes, sprinkle some cheese on top if you'd like. 

Enjoy with your favorite salsa or accompaniment!

Kitchen Pinning

Two more hits this evening from Pinterest.  Dessert was a slightly bigger hit than dinner mind you, but my record is getting much better.  Usually at least one recipe fails miserably but somehow I managed to eek out two wins in the same evening.

First up is the Broccoli Cheddar Quiche.  Only thing I can add is that the cooking time is way, way off.  I basically had to double how long it said to cook it after quite a few attempts at cutting into liquid.  Oh, and be sure to cut the broccoli small - my chunks were just a bit too large.

Next up was dessert - Banana Foster Crumble.  I noticed it last week because it made the rounds quite quickly.  Before I pinned it, I saw it at least 5 times, then 3 more people pinned after I did.  That's always a good sign.  And boy was it ever a good sign!  It was absolutely delicious!  I didn't make the Kahlua Chocolate Sauce, mostly because I had none of the ingredients. But I don't really think it needed it.  It was sweet enough and with the cold ice cream, it was pretty darn perfect!  Also, you have to love a recipe that uses so few utensils.  Yum!

PS: Is it odd that I'm strangely fascinated by the fact that I have 500 food pins exactly?  I kinda don't want to pin any more recipes since I've reached a cool number : )

Baking Bomb

As you can see from the below, the baking bomb has gone off here.  A very long day full of lots and lots of yummy cookies!  Always a great way to spend a Sunday.

Ginger Molasses 

Pecan Balls (ick!) 

Chocolate Chip with Pecans (ick!) 

Peanut Butter 

Pizzelles 

Pop-Pop's Sugar Cookies

My favorite cookie of the day, I called her Elizabeth I (she beheaded another cookie - heehee! : )

Warm and Cozy Sunday

A Ravens win (finally!) and Easy Peasy Cheese Strudel for dessert - Gotta love a warm cozy Sunday!  Especially when it feels about 25 degrees outside.

1 For 2 in the Kitchen

As I said last week, I've been trying a bit harder with cooking and baking lately.  Pinterest has been a big inspiration and I've loved trying to find new and interesting recipes to try out.  Sometimes these recipes are big hits and other times unfortunately they are huge misses. Today I went 50:50 on the hit miss scale - One was most definitely a hit and one was most definitely a HUGE miss.

 

First up in the miss department we have Chocolate Cream Cheesecake.  At first glance, it's the perfect recipe: Dove Dark Chocolate Squares and Cream Cheese. Yum!  It even looked pretty coming out of the oven.  But after letting it cool and having a taste, I decided looks were deceiving.  It had a weird non-cheesecakey texture and the 24 squares of chocolate I was told to add, was much too much chocolate even for a chocolate lover like me. After throwing it out, I decided to delete the recipe from my Pinterest as well - Don't want to make that mistake again.

In the hit department we have Cheesy Chicken Quesadilla Pie.  It was everything it promised to be and much, much more.  I thought the batter over the chicken would get gloopy and heavy but it wasn't at all.  Also, I decided to change it a bit and leave out the disgusting cilantro it called for and added instead, green onions - it worked perfectly! The only problem I had was the tortilla on the bottom was a bit difficult to cut through after they baked.  Aside from that, with a little salsa, it was the perfect dinner!  Ironically: I was more worried about this dish being terrible than I was the dessert - Shows what I know : )