Vanilla Chiffon Roll

Tina wasn't kidding when she said people would be scared off by this recipe. It sounded soooooooo complicated. How many times can you invert a pan? I mean, really? But I likely won't have time to participate the next two weeks, and I don't want to be the first person ever kicked out of the Baking Beauties! To help me in what seemed like an impossible task I borrowed my mom's Kitchen Aid Mixer. And thank Julia I did, because I don't think I could have completed this cake without it. The directions were rather intimidating. Craig had to go out at 9:00PM on a Wednesday night to get me another baking sheet that was as big as the one I was using. So as to properly invert the cake. I'm a little short on pictures this time, because I was concentrating too hard on what the hell Julia was telling me to do. I actually had to ask Craig to read part of it to me, which he did while miming it, in order for me to understand.




The rolling of the cake was the most stressful part. And in the end, I don't think I did it right, because I don't this is what Julia had in mind:


It may be the ugliest cake ever made. But damn, it tasted good!

Also, on an unrelated note, I'd like to congratulate myself for completing this challenge the same week as my rehearsal dinner and birth of my new niece.



Oh, Hi... I'm Molly Sharon McPhedran and I have big feet. I like long walks on the beach and crying.

Buttermilk Scones

This week's Baking Beauty assignment was Buttermilk Scones. You better have read that as rhyming with John, because if you read it as rhyming with stone my mother will find you and beat you.

First, I would like to point out that I made these whilst wearing my super cool new apron courtesy of Mrs. Jackie Laird:

It says "Chasing Craigy" on it, amongst other things, and Craig did offer to take a picture of it for me, but I'm stubborn and wanted to take all pictures myself. Ah, love and team work and my inherent stubbornness.


Julia is normally so detailed, but this time she steered me wrong. What exactly do you consider small pieces of butter lady? These are things I need to know. Also, telling me I need to mix it until it looks like coarse corn meal doesn't help me, I don't really know what that is.


I added gouda from Culinarium this time. Specifically "Thunder Oak Red & Black Pepper Gouda" from Thunder Bay. I have a lot of cheese right now and I didn't want this to go to waste buried in the fridge.

While googling about gouda scones, I realized we had a bunch of apples that I could use. But according to the interwebs I needed about 4 hours to dry them out, which I did not have. I did however remember that I had these from an old Culinarium package:



Of course I remembered this after I had made the dough so chopping it up and adding it in seemed like a bad idea. No problem, I thought I'll just stick on on each of the scones:



Speaking of bad ideas:



S'okay though, they were salvagable. Though Craig did try eating one of the dried apples to see if they tasted as bad as they looked. Yes, yes they did. So off they came.



And I made a few giant triangle scones as well. Which feel more breakfast-sized to me.


By which I mean I'll eat just one of those instead of three of the little ones. Did I mention that these are awesome and when they're baking it makes everything smell like butter? Mmmmm, delicious butter. Other than adding the gouda, I followed this recipe as written. My only issue is they taste really lemony. But I like lemons, so I think I'll eat the whole pan.

I don't like meringue cookies

This week's Baking Beauties assignment was meringue cookies.

I decided to get drunk instead.


YAY Bachlorette party! Tina's meringues were a hit however. Especially with Craig. I think meringue may be oozing out of his pores as we speak.


Thanks for a great time Tina!

Blueberry Muffins

I know, I've been seriously neglecting my assignments. But as I mentioned, I'm planning a wedding over here, interwebs. What's that? Tina had to move with a baby strapped to her back? Well Tina's a million times more talented than I am, interwebs, so shush. Besides, how do you expect me to make Irish Soda bread and then eat the whole loaf in a couple of hours before it turns to stone? I need to fit into my wedding dress and that's not the best way to go about it.

This week's challenge is Blueberry muffins. I think I need to have a little chat with Tina & Misty about availability and seasons. You see my muffins only have 1/2 a pint of blueberries because I refuse to spend $20 on a full pint. That's what happens when they have to come all the way from Chile.... or when I decide to walk to Sobey's instead of drive to the Supercentre, because I likely could have gotten them for like $8 instead of $10.

Sadly I could pretty much only get eggs, milk and butter from Culinarium this time. I like the milk a lot. Something about getting milk in glass bottles seems so wholesome.



One thing I have improved on since our first assignment is my mise en place. I'm constantly putting things away and wiping up before my spills crust into glue, a definite improvment. I also managed to not coat my dog in flour or icing sugar. Also a step up.

I'm still making do with just my handheld mixer... I'm getting better at following the time tips, if Julia says light and fluffy should take 3 minutes, then I whip for 3 minutes damn it.
Also, I'm not ashamed to admit that, often times, at this butter and sugar step I'm tempted to stop and just eat the whole bowl:

Kristina messaged to see if I'd tasted my muffins yet. Apparently Andrew thought her muffins tasted like "eating a stick of butter wrapped in paper with blueberries". Which to me doesn't sound like a problem... but for the record, mine did not taste like that. My final outcome seems to look quite close to hers though, so I'm not sure what the difference was:


Also, considering that I only used half the amount of berries, they turned out pretty full of berries :)

I really like these and will probably make them again!

Galettes

Okay, I'm a little late with this post, it should have gone up on Sunday. I'm planning a wedding over here interwebs, give me a break.

Recipe #3, Purchase #2 - pastry blender:

I'm okay with it though, since it gave me an excuse to buy something at Crate & Barrel.

The pastry blender in action:

I really liked this dough. It was super easy to make and they gave both manual and food processor directions which I appreciated.

The only thing Culinarium contributed to this recipe was the cheese.
Unfortunately my tomatoes came from Mexico and my basil from Dominican Republic.

They still tasted pretty good in the end. I put it on our pizza stone because I didn't have any parchment paper. It stuck a little, but the flaky crust survived! I managed to only eat half of it, but I'm sure if Craig weren't here I would have eaten the whole thing.

X Cookies

My friend Jacqueline corrected me last night - I keep calling this a "baking challenge", but when I explained the premise she said I'm in fact in a "baking club". The thing is it's pretty challenging for me, so I prefer my way of saying it. Sounds like I'm suffering for my baking. However it also sounds like one of us will be crowned Grand Baking Queen at the end of the year, and let's face it, that would be Tina, so in order to not give up all hope I shall refer to it as my "baking club" from now on.

I have this horrible tendency to read the ingredients of the recipe and not the directions. So challenge number 1 I discover is that a food processor is rather heavily needed for the X Cookies. Me, I have this :

For a recipe that ends up making 5 dozen cookies, this is going to take a while. I ended up halving it like Tina suggested.

Culinarium's contribution to this recipe is once again butter and eggs.

I didn't quite follow this recipe to a T. Which likely explains why I didn't really care for the final cookies, either that or I don't like figs, I can't be sure.


The Bulk Barn didn't have "candied orange peel" just something generically called "citrus peel" which I used instead. Also since I was buying all my ingredients there I skipped over the dark rum, as that's not really something you can get at Bulk Barn. Then I promptly forgot I needed it at all until after I'd made the dough. So I took to the internets and replaced the rum with molasses. If you told me 5 years ago that I would be the type of girl more likely to have molasses in her kitchen than rum I would have laughed. In your face. And called you a liar. But old lady me has in fact turned out this way.

The thing about using molasses is that it's quite sticky. Like glue-sticky. So trying to roll something like that into a rope, it's just... gross. Combine that with the fact that I missed a portion of dough hiding behind my hand blender and I may have overfilled the cookies. Also, I didn't have parchment paper, so the bottoms may be a little darker than normal.

On the plus side that extra dough allowed me to produce other cookies. I used the dough and a little dollop of jam. I made five with Lime Marmalade and five with Ginger Jam. Those. I loved. Perhaps due to their lack of figs. Though they weren't nearly as pretty:

Our Oscar Feast

The thing is I'd love to have an Oscar party, but I'm an old lady. I don't know if you know this but the Oscars tend to go a little long. Like at least 20 minutes. Which means that I watch the end of the show from bed in my PJs. So instead of a party menu Craig & I made an Oscar feast for two.

Making dessert first, here are some cupcake shots:



Craig doing what Craig does best, making sure I don't cry.



So here is our final menu.

"Benjamin Button" Stuffed Mushrooms


"Milk"shakes
Okay, this is admittedly the weakest of all. We made sausages and mustard for "The Reader", because it's German... and really, what are you going to do for a movie like that? Also, I would have liked to have big German-like sausages, but the only turkey option was this:


"Slumdog Millionaire" Samosas


These things were a little ridiculous, each samosa was one teaspoon of filling and an entire pastry sheet. So we ended up with this on the plate.


Last but certainly not least "Frost"ed "Nixon" cupcakes. Though there's nothing Nixon about them.



The full spread, now off to finish watching the hours of coverage.