Category Archives: Baking

The Buttercream Project 3

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My favorite weekends always turn out to be the ones that revolve around cooking.  You know the ones I mean.  You have a dinner party, or a potluck, or an afternoon on the porch surrounded by cookbooks, or you watch a marathon of FoodNetwork shows while almost absent-mindedly spooning one of your favorite indulgences into your mouth…

I wouldn’t know what that’s like…

Seriously, though, I am suddenly having one of those weekends.  Our friend Sh. is sharing a pulled pork dinner with us tonight, so by 9am (which felt like 8am, cursed Daylight Savings…) I was standing at the kitchen counter, pouring ginger ale and Jack Daniels whiskey atop 4 pounds of pork butt in my slow cooker, and deciding whether it needed anything besides salt and pepper to round out the flavors (I decided on a big chunk of fresh ginger and a few shakes of Worcestershire sauce).  Now, I’m sitting in the kitchen babysitting a pot of polenta, which I’ll cook, spread, and chill today to be cut into squares, pan-fried, and eaten later this week, and keeping a wandering eye on some cornbread, which we’ll have tonight with the pulled pork.

And yet this post isn’t about any of those things.  Whether you believe it or not after that extended tangential introduction, this post is about buttercream.  Again. 

I’ve completed my third buttercream experiment, and I must report mixed success.  I decided this time I’d better try out the cake recipe I’ll be using for the wedding in cupcake form so I could start nailing down baking times.  On a whim, I picked up some cake flour, which I’ve never used before.  This was for texture: often my cupcakes, if they are not chocolate, end up with a suspiciously muffin-like consistency, and I didn’t want that for these babies.  I also picked up some mascarpone cheese to continue the experiment in de-sweetening the frosting.

The baking process involved a lot of checking the cupcakes with a trembling toothpick, hoping for the barest of moist crumbs, not a completely clean tester.  I have found the completely clean tester is a recipe for overcooked baked goods, especially when it’s something very tender and delicate like cupcakes, because the cake continues to cook for a while as it sits in its tin on the cooling rack.  Tough cupcakes would not do.  Fortunately for me, they cooked up the color of pale cream and sported perfectly slight, perfectly shaped domes. They were pillowy tender.  They smelled good too – sweet and soft with the barest hint of floral fruitiness from the sparkling wine I used.

As they cooled, I started the buttercream process.  I wasn’t nervous at all this time – hadn’t my previous attempt come out smooth and creamy and lusciously perfect?  This time, I was golden.

This time, unfortunately, my kitchen was about 59 degrees Fahrenheit and, despite having left the butter out for hours and hours, it wasn’t the same squashy softness it had been last time.  The mascarpone cheese I decided to use was fresh from the fridge, since it was already soft enough that it didn’t occur to me having it at room temperature would make a difference.

It does.

Here’s what happened.  I whipped together a cup of butter and a cup of mascarpone cheese.  I sifted in about 3 cups of powdered sugar, a slight sprinkle of salt, and then trickled in a couple tablespoons of whole milk and a splash of vanilla (I can’t find champagne extract anywhere besides Amazon.com, where it costs upwards of $12 for a teensy bottle.  Needless to say I haven’t bitten that bullet).

Immediately I knew this wasn’t going to be perfect.  Already I could see tiny little clumps of butter, rechilled by the cold cheese, and tiny lumps of sugar, courtesy of a hasty and careless sifting session.  I pressed on regardless, deciding in the moment that this experiment was about taste, not texture.  Let’s get the taste right first, I told myself, to avoid the tumble into hysterical depression the blue poo cake had wrought.

So I loaded up a piping bag with my new fancy-pants metal star tip and went to work on the full sized cupcakes.  In the process I got enough frosting on my fingers to be able to taste, and I have to say I was incredibly pleased.  The mascarpone cheese added another layer of velvet and creaminess, and because it is not sweet to begin with, there wasn’t as much overwhelming saccharine powdered sugar taste to the finished product.  The touch of salt probably helped with that too.  It was just incredibly rich and moist and lovely.

The texture, on the other hand, sucked.  Well, that’s not fair.  It wasn’t ideal.  It was slightly grainy, and the star tip’s sharp edges combined with my not-exactly-quite-as-smooth-as-I’d-wanted icing produced rough crumples on my swirls of frosting rather than delicate demure rosettes.

Hasty, thoughtless, and stubborn, I pressed on to my next experiment.  I’d found this the previous month: a video tutorial about making beautiful blue flowers on mini cupcakes, and I wanted to surprise my bride by testing these out.  I considered, as I dripped blue food coloring into the remaining buttercream, rewatching the video.  And then I talked myself out of it.  I’d watched it twice, I remembered basically what she’d said to do, and she made it look abysmally simple.  I’m marginally artistic.  How hard could it be? 

For starters, the frosting was now looking a little wet.  Terrified of a repeat blue poo scenario, I added more powdered sugar.  But now I was in a hurry, because I had girlfriends coming over for a TV night and I wanted to serve them beautiful, frosted cupcakes (notice I didn’t say beautifully frosted cupcakes.  I was trying to be realistic).  So I didn’t sift the sugar.

This, as you might expect, resulted in more lumps.  But I was not to be discouraged.  I slapped some icing into a bag with a tip that looked similar to the one in the video tutorial, and started trying to make flower petals.  I made circular blobs.  There were no delicate curling edges, no gentle petal shapes, and the lumps of powdered sugar I’d stubbornly ignored made the frosting emerge from the piping tip unevenly.  I ended up with deformed starfish in a lovely cornflower-esque shade on the mini cupcakes, and a spotty lace pattern surrounded by blue blobs on the tiny taster cake I’d made for the bride and groom.  (It was supposed to be cornelli lace, but when hunks of cold butter in your frosting burst out through the piping tip, all bets are off.)  I did, however, glean a valuable tip for frosting a cake from the Barefoot Contessa: once you have your layer covered, dip your frosting spatula in very hot water and run it gently over the sides and top surface of the cake.  The hot water lightly melts the very outer molecules of butter and sugar and solders them together while smoothing them out, resulting in a perfectly level layer of frosting.  I tried this out to great success.

But back to the cupcakes.  Undaunted by their aesthetically challenged appearance, I sprinkled them with silver-gray sprinkles and presented them proudly to my friends, who pronounced them praiseworthy masterpieces.  I privately thought them too kind, but it is gratifying to have good friends who support your stubborn goofy screw-ups and prevent you from being too hard on yourself.

It was only the next day that I rewatched the tutorial video and saw that not only was a using the wrong tip to pipe these petals, but I was holding it the wrong way.  This gave me hope.  Next time, next time when butter and mascarpone are at the same temperature, when it’s warmer in the kitchen, when a fresh bag of powdered sugar and careful sifting result in a perfectly velvet texture, and when I acquire a rose petal icing tip, I will be on my way.  The flowers won’t be perfect, but they will actually resemble flowers.  Next time. 

I keep ending these posts by talking about what I will do next time.  Upon reflection, it seems dangerous to be counting always on next time in this project.  There will come a time when “next time” no longer works, and on that day in July I’d better get everything right.  What if the butter is too soft?  What if I over whip it?  What if there are lumps?

Fortunately I still have a few next times to lean on.

Marshmallow Topping for Adults

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To me, there is no better title for this entry than Bittman’s designation.  Sometimes things don’t need to be complicated or alliterated or made cleverer.  Sometimes all they need is a little story to get them started.

For the past five years or so, my family has been driving up to Oregon to spend Thanksgiving at our house.  Since we discovered a recipe for Chipotle Mashed Sweet Potatoes, which melds the flavors of autumn with the heat of adobo sauce, we haven’t needed any additional fixings for our tubers.  This was not always true.  When we used to share Thanksgiving with a very dear set of family friends, L. inevitably made sweet potato casserole.  You know the one.  The sweet potato casserole.  Boiled sweet potatoes, mashed or beaten smooth.  Sweetened – as she was always proud to proclaim – only with orange juice.  Smoothed into a square glass baking dish and then topped until no hint of orange could be seen with a careful and meticulous layer of miniature marshmallows.  Thieving hands were scowled at.  Broil to perfect, swollen, golden-brown puff.

I liked this.  Well, I liked the idea of it.  Mashed sweet potatoes are delicious, and toasted marshmallows are my favorite part about a campfire.  But together, especially next to turkey and dressing and tart wonderful cranberries, it was never my favorite.  Bittman offers a grown-up alternative:

“60. Marshmallow topping for adults: Roast or boil chunks of sweet potato, put them in an oiled baking dish, top with dots of cream cheese, and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, chopped pecans and chopped fresh sage. Broil until lightly browned.”

In my imaginary food dictionary, this would appear under “decadence.”  It just sounds so rich and so perfect, without the chalky powdered sugar edge of marshmallows.  Here’s how it happened:

1 ½ huge sweet potatoes cut into 1 inch chunks (I think I used the kind marked as “garnet yams”)

2/3 cup chopped pecans

Scant ½ cup brown sugar, or perhaps less.  It was a bit sweet.

1 TB finely chopped sage

4 oz. cream cheese

About an hour before you intend to broil this, stow an 8 oz. block of cream cheese in the freezer. This is just enough time to allow it to firm up enough to cut into chunks without mushing all over your hands.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Toss the sweet potato chunks in olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roast them on a baking sheet for 35 minutes or until soft and slightly caramelized.  While they roast, combine the pecans, brown sugar, and sage in a small bowl and toss together well.

When the sweet potatoes are tender, transfer them to a lightly oiled 9×9 inch glass baking dish.  Remove the cream cheese from the freezer and cut it into small chunks.  Scatter the chunks of cheese evenly across the surface of the sweet potatoes, then crumble the pecan mixture evenly over the beautiful field of orange and white you’ve created.

Broil the whole delectable mess until the sugar caramelizes and begins to melt, and the cream cheese goes a little weak in the knees.  Don’t let it go too long or the sugar will burn.

Eat.

We did just that.  There was very little left over for repeat meals, so I had no excuse to repurpose the leftovers.  But in this case I wouldn’t have needed to, because it was stellar.  A bit on the overly sweet side, perhaps, but that’s what made it such an accurate modernization of the marshmallow madness it mimics.  The cream cheese, broiled to the edge of melting, was a tangier, softer version of the marshmallows from the original, and its form in small chunks just losing their shape made it look similar too.  Pecans and sweet potatoes are great friends, and with the addition of the brown sugar they became the equivalent of that couple on Valentine’s Day.  You know the one I mean.  Except you get to eat this, so it’s much better than intruding within a 20 foot radius of that couple.  The sage was an earthy, herby warmth that I wouldn’t suggest omitting.

My only suggestion about this, aside from perhaps cutting back a bit on the quantity of brown sugar, would be to add a little salt into the topping mix.  It would be a nice extra bite to bring out the pecan flavor, and salt with brown sugar is just so darn tasty.

This was delicious with Brussels sprouts seared in a cast iron pan, but it would be equally good with stuffed pork chops, or roast chicken, or the big Thanksgiving bird itself.  Or just in a big bowl, with a big spoon, and a private table.  And no one looking.  Fanciest take on sweet potato casserole I’ve seen in a while.

If that’s not fancy enough for you, I thought of a way of making it even fancier.  For appetizers, cut the sweet potatoes into rounds instead of chunks.  Roast and mix topping as directed.

Instead of freezing the cream cheese, let it come to room temperature and put it in a piping bag with a star tip.  When the sweet potatoes are roasted and have cooled a bit, pipe the cream cheese in a pretty little whirl atop the sweet potato round, then sprinkle with the topping and broil as before.  Presto!  Brilliance in two little bites.  No marshmallows required.

The Buttercream Problem 2: What Problem?

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Thanks for the support and thoughts on my previous buttercream post.  I appreciate knowing you are out there, lurkers and likers!

The title of this post might be a bit of a lie, because can you really call something “Problem, part 2” if it isn’t too much of a problem anymore?  Maybe “The Buttercream Project” would be more accurate.

Anyway, I owe this amelioration of gloop, sludge, and anxiety in part to my own intuition, but in larger part to Leah at “So, How’s it Taste?” and her recipe for Cinn-Chili Chocolate Cupcakes with Cinnamon Buttercream.  With a chapter draft submitted and a guiltlessly girly shopping trip/reward for my efforts over, I wanted to bake a little something for my officemates AND do a buttercream practice.

Here’s what I learned:

It’s important to sift the powdered sugar.  Otherwise you end up with little clumpy bits that don’t incorporate completely (which happened at New Year’s on the blue poo cake).

It’s important that the butter be fully softened, and that you whip it up well before adding any of the sugar, lest it not incorporate fully (which happened at New Year’s on the blue poo cake).

A couple of tablespoons of whole milk help smooth things out.

I probably should use champagne extract or flavoring, not champagne itself, because so little liquid is needed to keep this pipe-able and smooth (but not turning into blue poo.  I’m just saying…).

So the frosting whipped up really nicely – smooth and buttery and even – but the cupcakes were no slouch either. The combo of chocolate, cinnamon, and cayenne is, I’ve decided, one that should be present in everything from cupcakes to hot cocoa to coffee to a spread for sourdough toast. It was warm and toasty and dark and rich and left just a little lingering heat in the back of your throat after the last swallow of cupcake. The cakes were really, really dark – almost black – because I used Hershey’s “Special Dark” cocoa powder instead of just the regular stuff. They had a nice moist crumb and weren’t overwhelmingly sweet.

The buttercream was delicious too. It was pretty sweet, though that’s difficult to combat, I think, but the heat of the cayenne and the warmth of the cinnamon in the frosting cut the sugar. Also, after a night in the fridge the frosting seemed less aggressively sweet – giving the butter and sugar time to hang out together might have done something the mellow the cloying flavor buttercream can have. I used less cayenne in the frosting than Leah’s recipe specifies, though I did add the barest sprinkle over the top when the cupcakes were all frosted.

Here’s what I learned about the process of frosting: cupcakes are easy, and a properly made buttercream spreads with surprising smoothness over a flat surface (I made one tiny “cake” for the bride and groom as a taster and smoothed icing across the top). With an offset spatula or a metal scraper at my disposal, I bet I can get the thing even and gorgeous.

Here’s what I learned from the bride: she LOVES the idea of doing cupcakes and mini cupcakes as additions to the cake, and we’ve decided to use an asymmetrical cake stand  for the actual cakes. This means I don’t have to stack anything, just make three separate, differently sized cakes, and a Subaru-load of cupcakes.

So here’s the plan: the cakes will get frosted with buttercream and decorated in some as-yet-to-be-determined way. The cupcakes will get frosted with a star tip much like I’ve done here, and possibly drizzled with blue crystal sprinkles. As for the mini cupcakes, I found a tutorial for making pansy-like flowers out of buttercream on minis, and the next time I do a trial run I’m going to give this a try to see if it’s something me and my meager piping skills can pull off.

Next month: I’ll make the champagne batter the cake will actually be made of and bake it in cupcake form so I can start to get times down. It wouldn’t do to have dry cupcakes. Then I’ll try out this flower pattern on the minis and see how it turns out. With luck, it will go as well as this month’s new buttercream recipe did!

Stay tuned… I added a “wedding” tag, and all the buttercream and cake-related posts will end up in that category for easier access.

Quick, quick!

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So I’m behind again.  I have been cooking, I just haven’t been posting.  It’s funny, the cooking part feels necessary and timely because hey, it’s dinner!  But the posting part – if I’m typing something these days, it had better be either my dissertation or a PowerPoint slideshow for the class I’m teaching.  If it’s something else, Puritan guilt sets in.

But I have so much to share that I had to start working through the backlog.

“32. Cook couscous in stock or water. With a fork, stir in cinnamon, chopped mint, lightly sauteed pine nuts and melted butter.  Bake in an oiled dish or use as stuffing.”

The players:

1 box plain couscous

2 cups water

pinch salt

¼ cup pine nuts

¼ cup butter

¼ cup chopped mint

2 tsp cinnamon

salt and pepper to taste

The process:

Preheat the oven to 375F

Cook couscous in water with a pinch of salt according to package directions.  If you have vegetable broth or chicken broth, use that.   

While the couscous cooks, chop the mint, melt the butter in a small skillet and add the pine nuts.  Sizzle over medium-low until the pine nuts are barely browned.

When the couscous is done, fluff it with a fork, toss in remaining ingredients, and stir together.  Transfer to your oiled baking dish and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the top is just crunchy and golden.

We had this with smoked apple and chardonnay chicken sausages and some steamed broccolini and it was tasty, but not stellar.  The pine nuts were roasty and delicious, and the cinnamon added a nice flavor twist, but it seemed to be missing something.

My theories are as follows:

1.)    This would be better as a stuffing than as a side; I’m thinking stuffed pork chops or turkey.

2.)    It would be an awesome base for a tagine of chicken or lamb.

3.)    Dried fruit mixed into the couscous blend would add a sweetness for the cinnamon to play with.

I did only one of these things to the leftovers, and it made a definite improvement.  Diced dried apricots rounded out the flavors nicely and made it seem almost like a pilaf.  Chopped dried figs, dates, or currants would also be delightful.

 

I have so much more to tell you.  Cross your fingers I can make it through enough of my academic work to check in again next week!

The Buttercream Problem

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Folks, I have a problem.  It’s called buttercream.

I’ve been offered the great privilege of making a wedding cake for some dear friends who are tying the knot this summer.  I’ve never made a wedding cake before.  I’ve made a lot of cakes, most of them chocolate (in truth, most of them this one), but this is the big time.

I know the cake itself is going to be champagne.

I know the filling is going to be a lovely light whipped mascarpone cream, possibly dotted with fresh raspberries.

I suspect the frosting needs to be buttercream, because the bride wants to cover the cake in fondant (it’s going to be hot, it’s a cleaner look, it can be painted on with beautiful blue coloring).  But just in case I get good enough at smoothing out the buttercream, maybe we can just leave it at that.

I’ve done one practice run, for a small New Year’s Eve party we hosted (the wedding is in July, so there’s some time here).  The cake was delicious.  The filling was amazing.  The frosting was…

a disaster.

It was a simple American buttercream containing butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and a splash of champagne to go with the cake flavor.  I think the butter was too cold.  I think the powdered sugar wasn’t well sifted.  I think proportions were off.  The resulting frosting was gloppy and grainy and oozing, and when I spread it on the cake it clumped and ran and blubbered down the sides. You know how jeans that are too long for you puddle around your feet at the bottom?  Now imagine that in white, and made out of frosting, and on my cake.  That’s what it looked like.

When I was too frustrated to look at it anymore, I stuck it in the fridge for a while, hoping it would harden up a bit so I could spread it with more success.  While that happened, I mixed some blue gel food coloring into the remaining bowl of frosting and whipped that up, in hopes that a few rosettes on top of the cake would save it a little.

An hour later, I took on the icing again.  I scraped off some of the worst slumps and filled up my piping bag with the beautiful blue I’d created.  With a star tip, I piped on a rosette.  It dissolved into a blob and blurbed toward the edge of the cake.  I somehow lost touch with reality and instead of trying to scrape it off, I made four more around the cake.  They all slumped over the edge.  I tried to pipe a pretty pattern around the bottom edge.  It looked like a long ribbon of blue poo.  I shoved the cake back into the fridge and drank a couple of glasses of champagne before serving it. It was New Year’s Eve.  It was clearly the right thing to do.

So here’s the issue: I have to make a better buttercream.  I’ve done some research and found some killer looking recipes.  I’m planning to use champagne extract instead of actual champagne to avoid any issues with acidity or carbonation.  I’m planning to use fully softened butter.  I’m contemplating blending in some mascarpone to add body and lessen the overwhelming sweetness buttercream can have.

But I’ve also seen conflicting theories about how much milk to add during the whipping process and how long to whip and whether or not to add shortening so the color is a little whiter.  I’ve seen seen creamy dreamy looking recipes for Italian and Swiss buttercreams.  I’m in a buttercream frosting float.  Or, rather, I’m floating in ideas about buttercream frosting.

So I’m looking to you, tiny multiverse of readers.  Have you made buttercream?  How did it turn out?  What recipe did you use?  Was it American, Italian, or Swiss?  Did it spread smoothly?  Was it overly sweet?

Help!

Revisions

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At this point in the dissertation process, I am nearing the point where the researching will be finished, the drafting will be done, and the most hated part will begin: revision. Sometimes things don’t seem to need to change – to have a new vision, a “re” vision, is a strange and uncomfortable thing. It’s a painful process to re-imagine arguments, to rephrase key passages, whether they are written eloquently or clumsily. Cutting out words, sentences, whole paragraphs deemed “unnecessary” or “wordy” is as painful as amputation at the worst, and stings like picking a scab at best. Adding in new material and knitting new transitions is almost as bad. And at the end, you give it away to be read by others, who tell you what else needs to be done with it. There isn’t, at this stage, much savoring.

Thank goodness cooking isn’t like that. I love revising what I’ve done in the kitchen. So here, instead of telling you what I did (which involved undercooked ingredients and a side of roasted brussels sprouts in gorgonzola sauce), I’m going to tell you what I should have done. I’m going to tell you how to make this Bittman dish into a fantastic breakfast-for-dinner hash.

37. Sauté crumbled sweet Italian sausage with cubes of butternut squash in a bit of oil. Toss in cooked farro and dress with more oil and lemon juice. Serve as a salad or toss with grated Parmesan and use as a stuffing.

Here’s how it should have gone down:

1 cup emmer farro

2 cups water

4 cups chicken or vegetable broth

1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch chunks

16 oz. pork sausage

4 eggs, or as many people as you intend to serve

2 cups baby spinach or chopped kale leaves, hard stems removed

Juice from ½ a lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

The night before you want to eat this, put the farro in a pot with the water and leave it overnight. This starts to break down the grains.

After the farro has soaked overnight (and most of the next day probably won’t hurt), add it to boiling broth and simmer for two hours, or until the grains have bloomed and softened. In the last few minutes, add the spinach or kale and cook just until wilted. The farro will still be a bit crunchy, and may or may not have absorbed all the broth. If not, drain the pot and set aside.

While the farro cooks, preheat the oven to 400F. Toss the butternut squash chunks with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast until the squash is tender.

In a large skillet over medium heat, crumble and brown the sausage. When it is fully cooked, drain off some of the grease, then add the farro, greens, and squash to the skillet and toss together, just to let the grains and vegetables soak up some of the sausage fat and flavor. Squeeze in the lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper.

In another, smaller skillet, heat the reserved sausage grease and fry your eggs sunny side up, until the yolks are barely runny and the whites’ edges are frizzled and beautifully brown.

Serve your hash with a fried egg on top.  With a side of sourdough toast rubbed with garlic, if you like.  Let the yolk mix with the squash and sausage and hearty grain.  It won’t take much; you’ll quickly be full. Full of warmth and goodness. It’s the right kind of meal for winter.