Alligator!!!

For some reason I know an unnaturally large number of people who share February 7 as their birthday. For instance, my grandmother Kiki would have been 100 this year (and she wouldn't have let us forget it either if she had lived so long). In addition to Kiki, my boss' little son turned 7 this year (lucky 7!). As it turned out, our annual Super Bowl party also fell on that day. So my boss' son wouldn't feel like a bunch of old graduate students stole his birthday, we decided to sing to him at half time. I volunteered to make cupcakes and turned out 36 of the little treats. As I planned my treats, I realized that I just didn't want to serve up generic cupcakes but wanted to produce something a little kid would love. After one of my exhaustive google searches, I saw a picture of this alligator cupcake "cake" in which 24 cupcakes were arranged and decorated to look like a fierce(ish) alligator. Such imagination! Unfortunately, the book had been checked out of my local library and I was forced to figure it out from the pictures online.

I whipped up 24 vanilla cupcakes and then frosted them with the help of my handy pastry bag with green vanilla frosting to look like they were each covered in lizard scales. Next I bought some Keebler chocolate covered grahams and carefully cut them into little isosceles triangles for the ridges on his back. From a box of Runts candy, I fished out all the yellow banana candies to use as claws. Finally, the teeth and eyes were fashioned out of large marshmallows that I either cut to size and shape, or covered in frosting and m&m's. Lastly I arranged them as shown. In all, it took about 2 hours.

To complete the "cake" I made 12 chocolate cupcakes and topped them with vanilla frosting and silver sugar sprinkles. I melted some semisweet chocolate and used my pastry bag to pipe "Happy Birthday Harry" onto a piece of parchment paper. After a few hours in the fridge, it was hard enough to stand up on the chocolate cupcakes as in the picture below. If you do this, just make sure the chocolate is at least 1/4" thick so it doesn't fall apart.

This was my first cake for such a young kid, but it was fun to do something more whimsical than my usual fare.

My First Roast Chicken

Given the variety of interesting things I prepare on a fairly regular basis, it's shocking to me that I had never done something so basic as roasting a chicken. So this is what I did on Friday night. To be honest, it wasn't even my intention to roast a chicken; my original plan was to make some game hens (certainly would have been on the "interesting things" list). But alas, the supermarket only had frozen game hens. So I found the smallest (3.5 lb.) chicken in the place and decided I probably should learn to roast the little guy. When I got my chicken home, I went to my go-to source for learning things about which I have no clue: Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

For those of you who may not know this, I'm generally a squeamish person. In fact, I hate touching raw meat. It's slimy to me. And it makes me queasy. (This is why I'm a chemist, not a doctor.) So challenge number 1 was getting those gizzards out of the chicken. I wish someone had video-taped this for my mom. I couldn't bring myself to reach in and grab them, so I gently used a fork (and was making a "yuck" face the whole time) and pulled them all out. I really had no clue what to do with them, so I just left them on my counter in a bowl. (Someone out there right now is screaming "MAKE A STOCK!") After I got the gizzards out, I was too queasy to go after the neck. So I just left that little guy right where he was.

Challenge number two (after I seasoned it with salt, pepper, butter, and tarragon) was to truss the chicken. Julia Child has a great pictorial guide to trussing your chicken so that he remains nice and compact during cooking. This process required me to touch the chicken though. Not fun. I felt a little bit awful as I strung the twine through the chicken but generally was far less grossed-out when all was said and done. I would even go so far as to say that it looked pretty good when I finished. Tightly tied up and ready for roasting!

Challenge number 3 (and this was the easiest!) was roasting the chicken to perfection. Thanks to the handy dandy meat thermometer that Chris's mom gave us for Christmas, the chicken was cooked through and not the least bit dry. I basted it every 10 minutes or so over the 1 hour 20 minute cooking time. By the end, it was a very nice golden brown color. Right after I took it out of the oven though I had the realization that I had been so focused on my chicken that I absolutely forgot to cook everything else! Luckily mushrooms sautee very quickly and you can steam carrots in the microwave in 4 minutes. Lastly, I used a few tablespoons of the chicken pan juices with 1 cup beef stock and 1 minced shallot to make a quick pan sauce. I can now say that I've successfully roasted a chicken!

Toffee and Truffles

I absolutely love giving away treats and there's no more perfect time of year for wrapping up some homemade goodies than the holiday season. Last year Chris and I gave homemade candy canes and peppermint marshmallows. This year I was inspired by my cousin to try my hand at toffee. I've never been a big toffee fan but last year I was blown away by cousin D's homemade confection. Can you think of a better combination than butter and sugar? If not, toffee is for you.

To go with this super easy candy, I prepared an adaptation of the Chocolate Chambord and Macadamia Nut Truffles from the book Bakewise by Shirley Corriher. I received this book last Christmas from my sister and it's one of the best resources I have. It delves into the hows and whys of baking and has a ton of educational information that help you understand why your cake looked awful when you tried to omit one egg. Anyway, I couldn't find Chambord in my local supermarket, so I substituted Kahlua instead. I was tempted to omit the Chambord all together but it very specifically said that if enough "water-type liquid" was not added, the chocolate would seize. The other modification I made was to roll half the truffles in crushed macadamia nuts and the other half in unsweeted cocoa powder. These truffles have something for everyone; the mac nut truffles have a burst of salty followed by the sweet smooth chocolate while the cocoa coated confections have a slightly bitter cocoa taste surrounding the sweet chocolate center.

The finishing touch on this years tasty treats were fantastic treat boxes by Martha Stewart through Michael's craft store. They come with everything from the boxes, to the tissue paper, to the ribbons and labels. I'm just in love with them.

I Declare Holiday Baking Season Open!

It's started! The nonstop month of baking between Thanksgiving and Christmas! I've got recipes lined up for just about every occasion and decided to open the holidays with a favorite recipe of mine. Most people seem to avoid chocolate desserts on Thanksgiving in favor of more standard fall treats; so I decided to go with my favorite Chocolate-Glazed Chocolate Tart from last year's Gourmet magazine (which no longer exists sadly!). The idea is pretty simple - start with a chocolate graham cracker crust, add a chocolate custard of sorts, and top it off with a thin layer of chocolate ganache. In all, it takes less than 2 hours to prepare but tastes like it took a week. It's also a great opportunity to use some of your favorite chocolate; I wholly recommend using a good quality bittersweet chocolate for this since it is the centerpiece of the recipe.

Black and White and Cake All Over

It's been a little while now since I baked like a maniac. Fortunately, one of my labmates again gave me a good excuse to destroy my kitchen. We decided to go with 4 dozen cupcakes and a two-tiered cake to match! I was really conflicted over what kind of cake I wanted to do. For some reason I was just stumped. Then, it came to me. My bedroom curtains were the perfect inspiration! I have an eclectic mix of black and white striped and black and white floral curtains in my bedroom that made for what might be my favorite cake yet. I decided to add to the mix of patterns by stacking a round cake on top of a square one.

On the cupcake side of things, I went with 4 different designs to give everyone a good choice. First off were vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream adorned with pearlized silver sprinkles and gold-dusted white chocolate "J" pieces. Second were (my favorite) red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing adorned with silver sprinkles and gold-dusted dark chocolate finials (generously gold-dusted by E.!). Also with cream cheese icing were a set of carrot cake cupcakes (easy as pie to make!). Finally, I went with a unique caramel cupcake with a caramel buttercream (E. and I ate all the extra out of my bowl!) and spun sugar abstract decorations on top. All this baking taught me one thing: I need to make cupcakes more often. The most difficult thing: keeping Chris away from all the cupcakes for any appreciable amount of time.

I was very pleased with how it all turned out and even more surprised we got everything to the park in one piece! I had good help with the transport. Hopefully there will be more cupcakes in the future.

Stormy Weather Stew

It may not have been what many of you east coasters would call stormy, but it was stormy enough by my Pasadena standards to warrant a good, hot, rustic stew. This is a little late coming, but a few weeks ago, it got cold (for about 2 days) and even rained! When I say cold, I mean it got below 70 (in the 50s at night!) and when I say "rained," it might have drizzled for 20 minutes. That's a big deal here in October! I seized the opportunity though to bust out my first real winter dinner of the year! My favorite nasty weather recipe is none other than my mom's beef stew recipe. I have no idea where it comes from or how old it is, but it does the trick when I feel icky and cold. It takes a little while to braise the meat and get the veggies to the right amount of "mushy," but it's worth the time and little bit of extra effort. In the end, it may not look pretty, but it always hits the spot.

I started with 1.5 lbs of pre-cut stewing beef and dredged it in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. In a small amount of heated oil in a heavy bottomed cast iron enameled Dutch oven (my FAVORITE!), brown all the meat, being careful not to crowd it too much. After all the meat is browned, add 2 32 oz. containers of low sodium beef broth (I use low sodium so that I can control the level of seasoning). Once you add the beef broth, you get to the best part: DEGLAZING! Make sure you get all those brown flavorful bits off your pot and into your broth (wood spoon, please). After you've delgazed, bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour. While that's simmering, give 8 carrots and 6 red potatoes (peeled) a rustic chop job and set aside. After the 1 hour, toss in your veggies (and whatever else you want really) and simmer covered for another 45 minutes. If your stew doesn't thicken up enough during the cooking process, you can use Wondra mixed with a little water to thicken the stew after cooking is done. The last thing I add is a little salt, pepper, and gravy master. You can dress this up however you please; it's kinda like a blank canvas in that sense. I serve it steaming hot over egg noodles with fresh sourdough bread and a good red wine.

This is the first real family recipe I've made recently and posted. I'm hoping to get a few more of my mom's favorites up here in the near future.

Hometown Homage

Yesterday another one of our labmates graduated and as is becoming the custom, I made the cake. It's been a little while since I made a big cake (and as such I must have forgotten saying I would never make one during the work week again), so I was itching to do something big and extravagant. Our labmate is moving on to a postdoctoral position in New York and this is where I drew my inspiration. What better way to instill excitement about his upcoming NY adventure than an homage to my own hometown in cake? I went with a 2-tiered blue fondant white cake with vanilla buttercream. The bottom tier was rectangular while the top tier was a small round cake offset from the center of the lower tier. Around each cake I depicted silhouettes of the city in black fondant (tip: buy black fondant, don't dye it yourself!). The lower tier had silhouettes of the city skyline while the upper tier had a Brooklyn bridge silhouette wrapping it. Both cakes had the little yellow "Broadway lights" along their lower border (and great thanks to Chris's little sister for rolling all those for me!). On top of the round cake I thought I would mould a "Big Apple" our of rice cereal treat (great trick for keeping it light) and cover it with fondant. To finish it off, a Broadway street sign, a few subway line signs, and a little "I Heart NY" sign surrounded the big apple. For the first time ever, the cake I served actually looked like the picture I drew. Maybe I'm getting a little better at this or maybe I'm becoming more realistic about what I can accomplish in a week's time in cake (likely the latter).