The Weekend

After 2 days of trying to channel my Great Grandma Balangero, I served my home made pasta with heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, and a bit of olive oil. I am quite proud of the accomplishment. I am also more understanding of why grandma Dorothy was more inclined to the modern convenience of pasta from a box or Genova Delicatessen. My goal is to work a little faster and a little better. Not much of either at first. Maybe next weekend it will only take me two and a half hours instead of three and my noodles will have a nicer cut. Or maybe it will all go dreadfully wrong, my Italian ancestors betraying me, and it will take 5 hours to get 5 noodles. That's okay, though. I am determined. It is really worth the effort once you taste the noodles.
Sunday evening I remembered who I am and I baked a cake.

Fresh Ginger Chocolate Gingerbread from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours". I cant decide if I did something wrong or if it is simply not the cake for me. Everyone else loves it so I think it might just be me. In the picture you can see the tiny bits of ginger and chunks of chocolate. Why don't I love the is cake?
I think I need to bake something I know I love. A little comfort baking. Banana Cake Cockaigne, perhaps. Or just a good chocolate chip cookie.
Now, check out my mise en place.

I do love my pretty plastic prep bowls. I can't help it. I also love looking at all the ingredients laid out. The flour and spices before I whisk them together are especially pretty.

It only took three hours!

I made pasta today. I was successful. I would say more but I am totally beat and I need to bake a cake.
So I leave you with a picture.

Pasta- My First Attempt

This morning I went out and bought a pasta machine. I really believed that by tonight I would have fresh pasta to cook for dinner. I also believed that I would have so much time after making this pasta that I would also bake a cake. Well, those were both pretty lofty goals.
I think i will have to go through this step by step.
1. Ingredients.

They look simple enough, right?
2. Now make a well of flour. Pour eggs and water in the center of the well.

That's even kind of pretty to look at. However, this is where it started to go wrong for me. While i was stirring the flour into the egg, the wall of my well broke. My counter (it is actually a large cutting bored over my stove because my kitchen is the size of a shoebox and my kitchenaid takes up the majority of counter space) was flooded by egg. I worked fast to save the ingredients. I stirred as I pushed the egg back towards the flour. It was unpleasant and a bit discouraging. In the end I won.
3. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest.

Doesn't look too bad, eh? I thought it was smooth sailing from here on. I was wrong. Suprise!
4. Roll the dough. Simple, yes? I put it through the machine on its widest setting. Basically, i followed the directions given to me. Unfortunately, after going through the whole process, I folded the dough over in thirds and cut nice ribbons of pasta. Then the dough morphed itself back together, each ribbon becoming a sort of long fat dumpling. I tried to unfold them to no avail.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat. I try again.
6. Success (sort of)! Out of all of that dough I managed to create 5 noodles. I felt triumphant and proud.

So I ate them.
I'm going to try again tomorrow. This time i will start with a bowl.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk.

Yesterday's treat. Peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. I was going to make "Nell's Wonderful Peanut Butter Cookies" from Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters but i was missing some reasonably important ingredients- like peanuts. So I just added a bit of salt and more chocolate (cut chunks from a bar rather than the mini chips called for in the book). They turned out rather cute and delicious. Out of 48 cookies made yesterday there are 4 left.

A Lesson in Poor Taste

I did it. I thought out my recipe. Wrote it down. Researched to see if there was anything exactly like it already. I couldn't find one. So i decided to go ahead with it. My goal was to make a chocolate chip cookie with a bit of cinnamon and a bite on the tongue. A touch of spice. I did find cookies like that but they were not exactly like what I was thinking of. I added dark brown sugar with the white and a touch of cayenne. The batter came together nicely. It all looked great. I mean, look at the pictures! Gorgeous batter, right?

It tasted fine too. The batter was good. I swear. I cross my heart. Scouts honor (if I were a scout). Something happened in the oven. When the flavors all came together it was different than when it was a dough rather than cookie. At first bite there wasn't anything wrong. I couldn't decide if they were actually good but I didn't think they were bad right off. They were sweet, chocolatey, with definate cinnamon, and a bite. Exactly what my goal was, really. Just not terribly delicious. And then it came. The most horrible, awful, dreadful, and offensive aftertaste I have ever had from a cookie- or any desert, really. It was just disgusting. Kind of spicy. Kind of bitter. I can't even do it justice. But the best part is that it lingered for hours. I swear to god I can still taste it.
The good news is that I learned several lessons.
1. I need to taste a lot more food before I go throwing things together. I am positive that there is a pepper that would work nicely. I am positive someone somewhere, out of the reach of my Google skills, is already doing it. I am not giving up.
2. I can construct a good cookie. I mean the shape and texture were great. Perfect! Crisp around the edge, chewy in the center, thin, but not too thin. Again, look at the pictures!

3. Taste the first batch and if I am not sure, STOP baking anymore until I am. I spent an awful lot of time baking cookies that went to the trash. I was afraid my guests would see them and think "Oooh! cookies!" and eat one before I could stop them. I would have been mortified.
If I do any baking today it will be something from a book. Something I am pretty sure can not go wrong. but I think I am taking the day off. Unless i feel compelled not to. Sometimes I just can't help myself. I get an itch to make something and I simply must do it. I think it is part of my obsessive nature. But I think it is an okay thing to be obsessive about. There is this plum cake that I have thinking an awful lot about.

A Love Letter to Dorie Greenspan

I recently purchased Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours" and I must say it is one of the best cook books I have. The chocolate chunk cookies are really the best ever (at least the best next to Shuna Lydon's Cardamom Chocolate Chunk Cookies).
Yesterday around four o'clock a breeze managed to flow through my house. I took this as nature's invitation to turn the oven on. I had everything I needed to bake the Sugar Topped Molasses Spice Cookies and they are as good as everything else I've tried from the book. I think Ms. Greenspan makes me out to be a better baker than I really am. The cookies are almost gone. At first I thought perhaps my pinch of black pepper was not a large enough pinch but as I was biting in to my 9th cookie of the evening I realized they were absolutely perfect. Moist, chewy, thin, delicious and with just enough spice. My son and husband ate almost the rest of them. My daughter refused as they are not covered in a hard candy shell. I tried to explain that they were dipped in sugar but there is only so much a mother can do.
This afternoon my son and I will head over to International Blvd. in search of Mexican oil cloth and perhaps some nice chocolate. I'm still thinking about the Mexican chocolate cookie idea. Hopefully it will come to be more than a thought by tonight or tomorrow. I would really like to be able to include some original recipes here. Wish me luck.

Trial and error or 8 months with a broken oven.

As my profile states, I began baking about 8 months ago. For a while it was very hit and miss. Cookies would burn. Muffins would take for ever to firm. It was unpleasant, yet I had to keep doing it. What i realized, after the very nifty and thoughtful purchase of an oven thermometer, was that my oven was a very tempermental and angry beast. The temperature would fluctuate between 450 and 225 randomly. It's really amazing that I managed to make anything worthwhile. About 2 weeks ago I was finally able to replace the beast with a much more passive and sweet creature. Is it fancy? No. I rent so the purchase was up to my land lord. But it works and that makes me happy. I can not explain the joy in setting the timer and walking away. I do not have to stand there checking the temp every 3 minutes and adjusting. My baking has become instantly more consistant and, well, BETTER. Hooray for a functioning oven! Viva la Hotpoint!

Now that I have a pretty good understanding of how to make a cookie and a cake I think I am ready to start dabbling in my own recipes. I'm not sure I will come up with anything ground breaking but thats okay. I want to experiment and have fun. Who knows what will come of it. I think my first effort will be a cookie either using Mexican chocolate or all the spices involved in that. We will see. Are you on the edge of your seat now?