Baking FAIL

This weekend some friends and i went camping, to celebrate Aimee's birthday.  Birthdays require cake.  But she is not eating much animal product (vegan as practical?), and seeing if removing gluten from her diet helps with some health stuff, which means not just any store-bought cake would do!  OK, and it's Miss Aimee the Cookie Mistress and no store-bought cake would do anyway, she's one of the best bakers i know!

Aimee loves salt.  She's taught me to be a little less fearful of it, and even taught me to add it to things i might not otherwise, like frosting, to add a little pop.  Also, we recently went to Tanglewood, and passed on some local salted caramel ice cream that all made us go "oooh".  I've never made caramel before (and it will show during this saga), but thought it sounded like a fun challenge.

It's a good thing sugar isn't expensive this was a complete fail, even after several tries.  And so the trash can had a feast.  These were my first attempts at a gooey filling (the sugar never melted enough) and harder decorative caramel (burnt).

Try #1 for filling came out grainy and gritty.  The sugar never melted enough, I think because i left out the 'optional' water, there was never enough moisture for it to get really soft.  

Try #1 for a harder caramel that i could break and use for decorating the cupcakes.  I let it get too dark and it burned.

I feel like maybe next time i should do some research about caramel before hand, as i ended up scrambling and not sure what i was looking for (hence so many failures!).  

This just wouldn't get hard, it kept melting at room temperature!

And here is Try #2 for a filling.  It's was way too thin.

The second time i adapted a non-vegan recipe, and substituted almond milk for the heavy cream.  This obviously cut the fat content way down.  Again, i maybe should of let this boil longer, as it was thin when i transferred it to the jar, but i was afraid of repeating my previous over-cooking error.  After a night in the fridge it was much more sticky and caramel like, but when i tried to use it, it was clear, it was way too thin.

I decided that the cupcakes should have a little more depth, rather than a single flavor note, so I made chocolate cupcakes, using a similar process to my lemon cupcakes.  These, however, were gritty, somethign didn't properly incorporate, either the flour or the cocoa.  But they looked ok, right?

Sadly, Aimee did not get cupcakes.  My time ran out before i could make a new batch of anything.  I would totally fail a reality TV cooking show audition.  We did, however, put candles in a cooked banana with chocolate chips and marshmallows for her on Saturday.  

Still, i will make these darned cupcakes for her!  Ian says that this is a sign i'm becoming a better baker, that i can tell things are not right and pitching them rather than making my friends suffer through my mistakes or something.  

CSA

Another weeks farm share, with Lucky investigating.  Lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes, peaches, heirloom cranberry beans, tomatoes and lots of peppers!

My First Cooking Class (but not the last!)

peach preserves

Last night, after work, i headed over to Billings Forge Community Works, in the Frog Hollow section of Hartford.  For those of you not familiar with New England's rising star, this is a neighborhood that is not-so-great, in charitable terms.  Billings Forge has decided to invest in probably the roughest area of Hartford, including the very fancy Firebox restaurant, as well as the Kitchen, which grew out of the catering side of the restaurant.  Both are farm-to-table style businesses.  There are also artist workshops, a community garden and a weekly farmer's market.  Oh, and did i fail to mention the mixed-income housing?  Or that it's all in former industrial buildings?  I know this blog is often about domestic things, but yours truly is an civil/environmental engineer who has a love for urban planning, so places like this do fill me with a certain joy, particularly when they succeed as well as Billing Forge appears to.

Among the many programs at Billings Forge, are some cooking classes at The Kitchen.  I was a little intimidated, having never attended a cooking class outside of 7th grade home ec, but a girl has to learn somehow, and books and youtube only go so far.

I'm happy to say this won't be my last time there.  The class was great.  We met in the dining area, and had an introduction to what Billings Forge is about, what the Kitchen does and met our instructors.  There were about 8 students in the class (3 pairs, me and another woman who came by herself) and 2 instructors, so there was lots of attention.  We had a short lecture on safety, and why it's important to follow instructions when it comes to preserving fruits and vegetables (botulism, among other reasons).  We also learned the difference between 'refrigerator' recipes versus recipes which require hot water baths and proper sealing.  We would be making refrigerator types of preserves, which won't last as long, but are much faster to make (and, after tasting my peach preserves, these won't be lasting long anyway, as i want to eat it all NOW!).  

We also learned that we'll be using a lot of sugar.  And this is critical, because that's what acts as the preservative binding with water in the fruit and preventing the growth of microorganisms, much like salt does in some recipes.  Then we headed to the kitchen to begin our hands on work!

Our instructors already had all the prep done for a pepper jelly, which they gave us the recipe for.  I don't have a lot of experience with savory jellies, but after trying a sample of this recipe the instructor had made a few days earlier, i'm excited to try some new things out!  The smells from the pot as it boiled were amazing.  

As we learned about pectin, we began to cut up our peaches for a preserve.  Pectin is extracted from fruits (some fruits have more pectin in them than others) and is used to make things gel.  It's in a number of products, in liquid or powder form.  We were recommended to check out Pomona Pectin, produced in Massachusetts, not only because they apparently make a great product, but it comes with a recipe book and a how to do your own recipe guide.  Liquid and powder pectins will produce different results, so you can't just substitute one for the other.  We would be working without pectin, which means we wouldn't be getting a really hard set product (hard set would be like Smucker's, when you scoop it out of the jar it sort of holds it's shape). 

I cut up 6 peaches unpeeled cut into small chunks and added 2.5 cups of sugar and just a little water to prevent the sugar burning before putting it on the stove. A good stir to get things going and then we let them go!  Some people added herbs to theirs, such as rosemary (i got to try a drop of this, and it was ZOMG good).  Basically we just let them boil, stirring occasionally, hoping to get to approximately 220F.  

Finished products

Because there are only so many burners on a stove, we made 1 large batch of the blueberry preserves (i forget what this was officially called), using the same process.  Lots of fruit, lots of sugar & a little water, setting to a boil and stirring occasionally.  Again with the wonderful colors and smells!  

We were told we could skim off the foam if we wanted from our preserves, it was just an aesthetic thing.  Some folks use a little butter to deal with the foam.  I didn't, and mine looks lovely anyway.  We also discussed how to tell if things were set without a thermometer.  Our instructor had a very fancy instant read thermometer, but you can also get an idea of your set with a frozen plate, and seeing if a skin forms or if it is runny.

We also spent some time discussing techniques for packaging, fancy jars, and trying some pickled items that had been made at the Kitchen, including beans, beets, onions, radishes and garlic snapes.  When things were ready we used a canning funnel to pour into our jars and ta-da!  Really, it was as simple as cut, stir, heat, stir more & pour.  

This class really boosted my confidence about making preserves,  both sweet and savory, and answered a lot of my questions regarding technique.  I just ordered a copy of Well Preserved, which focuses on small batch preserving, which fits with my food quantities better, and am looking forward to more adventures in preserving!.  

Last weeks CSA

Thought I would share a photo of last week's CSA share from Fair Weather Acres.  I've not been great at blogging our harvest, as Duncan has been picking it up, but it does give you an idea of just what comes in when, here in southern New England.  

On the streets of Hartford.

Thought I'd share this pic of a yarn bomb outside the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford on Sunday. It made me happy.