French Strawberry Cake

Finally, a seasonal recipe! I mostly used my strawberries from our CSA, but had to supplement with some from the grocery store at the last minute. Also used some eggs from KEG.


I'm not a baker, I don't know what Genoise is, and I don't think it's what I made. Julia put the time at 4 -5 minutes before the egg & sugar mixture was whipped to the proper consistency. Mine was more like 15 minutes... or at least I stopped counting at that point. All I know is that I hate sifting flour, but I did it twice for this recipe.... and it still didn't turn out properly.

I do however want to point out that I love these Mario Batali prep bowls my brother and his girlfriend got us. That way I didn't have to stand there hovering with 1 teaspoon of vanilla for the "final moments" of whipping, unable to put it down. I could just stick it in this bowl and do dishes while it took FOREVER to whip.

So obviously I did something wrong is this is my cake that I'm supposed to cut in three:


I'm not sure if the scale comes across in that picture, but it's about an inch high. I have a problem with the direction of "fold". I don't really understand what that means. Especially with this mixture, since it was mostly like foam, which would hide giant pockets of flour that I wasn't aware of until I tried to stir in the butter.

I did manage to somehow cut that cake in half.


And now behold, the world's ugliest cake:




I didn't even bother with the rosettes and decorating directions. At the point of decorating it was obvious this was a little beyond saving. It tasted as good as ugly cake and cream and strawberries could. Which is to say, amazing!

Craig Cooks Baked Mac & Cheese

This week Craig learns how to whisk and how to butter a casserole dish.

Water was boiled.

Pasta was weighed.


Cheese was shred

A roux was made, though the book didn't call it that.

Sauce was poured on pasta:

Pasta was poured in a casserole dish and baked


Then we ate it. It was good, creamy and crunchy at the same time. Held up well as lunch the next day as well.

Cantuccini

Yeah, I'm a week late with this post and didn't make the Fruit Focaccia this week. I'm the worst Baking Beauty, but whatever.


Mostly I found this recipe a little boring. I've never made biscotti before, so it was new to me. It just wasn't all that challenging.

This was the worst part. Julia says the dough is going to be a little dry, but this was like the freaking Sahara dessert or something:


This is me measuring out my 12 inch log before I realized it was supposed to be 2 logs.

And, well then there was biscotti, sorry cantuccini


I dipped some haphazardly in chocolate. The chocolate ones have not survived.


They tasted like biscotti - which I'm not terribly fond of, but they were alright.

Also, I made a strawberry rhubarb pie with some of my leftover pastry dough crust.

Craig Cooks Sausage & Beans

There really wasn't much to this recipe. Store bought sausage, boiled beans, thrown in the oven with some spices and olive oil.

Here's the part where Craig feels like Jon Gosselin in "Jon & Kate + 8 + Emeril" (you really need to have seen that episode to get my joke at all here):




However, Craig's a little happier than Jon was... and let's face it, a little less high:

The beans were boiling for about an hour. Neither of us have cooked dried beans before, so we were really sure what we were doing and had to follow the book exactly. There was actually a point where I said out loud "Why is he trying to make us burn these?" Seriously, it told us to drain the beans and put them back in the pot for another 10 minutes. No liquid, no heat reduction. What the crap, Mark?

Craig basically just stuck the sausages in a pan, no brainer there:



Cooper gets a little concerned when we cook sausage. Or hungry, hard to say really:


And ladies and gentleman, I hate to say it, but we have our first dinner fail.


It was alright, it's just the beans were really dry. Craig followed the recipe exactly, it's just that boiling them for an hour and then leaving them in a pot with no liquid for 10 minutes and then putting them in the oven for an hour with bread crumbs... well they'd have to be made entirely out of liquid not to be dry at that point.


I think of this as our penance for the very tasty and very quick salmon from last week.

French Apple Tart

I made this yesterday, I promise. I just got sleepy and went to bed before posting. Maybe that has something to do with this taking FIVE HOURS to complete.

First I heeded Kristina's advice to make half the pie crust dough recipe. The actual Tart recipe says to make a quarter of the recipe, but I can't do that kind of math. If you want to know what 6 minutes and 30 seconds minus 2 minutes and 45 seconds is I'm your gal. If you want to know what a quarter of 5 1/4 cups is I can't help you.

Trouble is, I got distracted watching my mixer to see what the constitency of the dough was... Then I read "ice cold water" and panicked because I needed to pour it in and it was not ice cold. So I start running the water and dump it in. Then I read "just mix until combined" and I thought, "geez, that's going to take forever... why is this so wet?" Ah crap, I forgot to halve the water amount.


So I started again, and at the point of adding the water I just threw in the sopping wet dough.
I froze the other 3/4 of the recipe. I guess I need to make three pies this month.

Problem #2 - apparently the only difference between a pie and tart is sloping edge vs. straight edge of the crust. I made a pie.

Problem #3 - that's a lot of apples to peel. Whoever made my peeler didn't take into account that metal piece stabbing into my thumb while I peeled 8 apples.


Problem #4 - I really should have taken heed when they said "large bowl". Basically I should always use a bowl one size larger than I think. If only to help with my clean up later.

I don't think this is what Julia had in mind when she said to use a potato masher to mash up the baked apples, but this is my potato masher:

I thought I'd bake the apples while the pie chilled, but then didn't realize the crust was supposed to bake at 400 degrees, while the apples were 375. So after baking my crust looked like this:


Not exactly flaky and golden brown. So I threw it back in for about 15 minutes.


Mandolin sliced up apples (thanks Jackie!):


Mashed apple filled crust:
Putting the slices on the tart/pie:

Craig likes the look of this:


And, five hours later (with Craig's urging of peace in the background) she's DONE:


Just missing a small part of the crust that fell into the oven:

Craig Cooks Salmon

We skipped one week in there, but Craig's back and he's making awesome salmon. And this is how he feels about it:


Our very own herbs from our very own window sill:


Essential kitchen tool - measuring tape:

Rubbing some oil on the salmon:

Sprinkling with herbs:

Getting the asparagus ready to grill:


Et Voila:

Foil Packed Fish with Herbs & Lemon and Grilled Asparagus:

It was the best fish ever served in this home.