Losing an Old Friend - My KitchenAid Mixer

FORTY YEARS ago Dan spoiled me by encouraging me to buy a KitchenAid stand mixer. At that time in our lives, that was an extravagant purchase, and it took quite a bit of convincing on his part. But baking has always been a passion of mine, so I gratefully brought my new mixer home.

My "Almond" colored KitchenAid has moved with us from Salem, Oregon; to Newberg, Oregon; to Juneau, Alaska; to Albuquerque, New Mexico; and, finally, to Temple, Texas. It helped me raise our two boys. It was there for me when I baked with my grandkids.

It has has been used to make tasty breads;

It has helped me make ountless cookies of every variety;

It has beaten batter for birthday cakes, potluck cakes and family dinner cakes;  

It has partnered with me in making gingerbread creations;

And it saw me through my happy years with the "Daring Bakers" challenges. Here are a few of them:

Macarons

Nazook

Pavlova

Strudel

Tuiles

But . . . last month I was mixing up the batter for a Southern Caramel Cake to take to a church potluck when my beloved mixer began making a strange noise. I continued beating the batter, but when I turned off the mixer I heard Dan, calling from the other room: "What's wrong with your mixer?" I was in a little bit of denial. "Nothing!" I insisted. But when I tried to use it again, a little later, to make the caramel icing, I knew that I was wrong. The metallic noise and jarring vibrations coming from it now were so bad that I had to turn it off and finish making my icing with a little hand beater.

It's six weeks later, and I've really been missing my old "friend." It has continued to sit on my kitchen counter, but as nothing but a memorial of times past. 

So today Dan and I drove to Sam's Club and bought a brand new, even fancier model of KitchenAid mixer. If this wears out in 40 years, like the old one, I'll be 110 years old and probably won't be needing to buy a replacement. Two KitchenAids in one lifetime. Not bad!

I can't wait to try it out with some of my favorite recipes.

Did I mention the new color is "Aqua Sky?!"

Daring Bakers' April Challenge - Maple Mousse in an Edible Container

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

(Recipe HERE)

Of course, the main ingredient in this month's recipe was beautiful, sweet, pure maple syrup.


For the edible container, I chose to bake tuiles and form them into a bowl shape by draping them over a plastic cup. We had free rein when it came to this part of the challenge.


The mousse, itself, was easy to make, and didn't take a lot of time. It was just about the sweetest, richest thing I've ever tasted! In fact, it was a bit too rich for my taste, although Dan liked it a lot.


To top the dessert, I baked some meringues to a golden brown and let them firm up in the oven after turning it off.


Here is the finished product -- maple mousse in an edible container, topped with a lightly browned meringue dollop.

The Daring Bakers' May Challenge - Strudel

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers. (Recipe HERE.)













In what was an otherwise busy month, we were both off work and at home for Memorial Day, so I got up early and prepared the strudel for our breakfast. Instead of the traditional apple filling, I filled my strudel with a strawberry/rhubarb/apricot mixture. It was delicious. I used fresh strawberries, frozen rhubarb, sine there wasn't any fresh at the market, and dried apricots. It was sweetened with light brown sugar.

The first step was making the dough, which was easy and fun. It was a very soft, very pliable dough. The recipe said to let it sit for 90 minutes, but I left mine overnight. Then I cajoled it into a tissue-paper thin sheet. One Daring Baker remembered her mother telling her that strudel dough was to be thin enough "to read love letters through."

Butter and breadcrumbs were supposed to be sprinkled across the face of the dough, but I thought crushed ginger snaps would add a more exciting flavor to the rhubarb filling.


After baking, I glazed it with a powdered sugar icing and served it, still warm. Dan had his with a strong cup of espresso, and gave it his hearty approval.

Still hot from the oven.

Glazed

Ready to eat

Other Completed Daring Bakers' Challenges: Lavash, Pizza Napoletana, Caramel Cake, French Yule Log, Tuiles, Chocolate Valentino, Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna, Cheesecake

CLICK HERE NEXT (BAKEWELL TARTS)

The Daring Bakers' April Challenge - Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. (Recipe HERE.)

Cheesecake is something, believe it or not, that I've never made before, unless you count the no-bake version. So I eagerly ran out, right away, and bought the ingredients. I stayed home with Dan, when he had his eye surgery, and thought that being creative in the kitchen would be a good use of my at-home time.

According to our challenge-hostess, we were permitted to use whatever flavorings we chose, as long as we used the basic recipe that was provided. And that freedom almost got me in trouble! I made a strawberry swirl cheesecake, and here's a picture of it after coming out of the oven.


I baked it in a springform pan, and wrapped the bottom securely with extra-strength aluminum foil, since it was baked in a water bath. After 55 minutes in a 350 degree oven, I turned off the heat and let it sit another hour in the cooling oven, as directed. This was supposed to keep it from cracking on top as it cooled. Here's a picture of it just after it came from the oven. The swirls were made from melted strawberry jelly, and, as you can probably see, the cake did crack a little bit on top, despite my care. Still, it looked pretty good and smelled wonderful.

I should have stopped there, but NO; I had to try to get fancy! I had seen pictures of a cake called a Strawberry Mirror Cake, which was a Daring Bakers' challenge before I joined. I loved the "mirror" top and thought that it would be the perfect topping for my cheesecake. (You can see a picture of Tartelette's Strawberry Mirror Cake HERE. Isn't it gorgeous?)

Dan laughed at my "Rube Goldberg" apparatus for draining the strawberries.

So I cooked up the strawberries, sugar and water; and then let the berry juice drain, through some cheesecloth, into a bowl. To the juice, I added a gelatin "sponge" made from unflavored gelatin and a splash of lemon and apple juice. After letting the concoction cool, over ice, until it was a thick syrup, I poured it on top of the cooled cheesecake. It looked pretty good, so I put it in the refrigerator and, somewhat impatiently, waited for the gelatin "mirror" set.

Later in the evening I eagerly pulled out my cheesecake, uncovered it, expecting to see a perfectly smooth, shiny, brilliant red mirror top. But what I found was a mess! The cheesecake had developed more and deeper cracks, the gelatin mixture had seeped down into the cracks and, some of it, out through the bottom of the springform pan. It was a very sad looking cheesecake. I didn't know whether to cry, to laugh, to throw it out, to take a picture, or to pretend I never even attempted this challenge! What I did was scrub the red gelatin off the refrigerator shelf, put some fresh foil beneath the pan, cover the top of the pan with plastic wrap, and put it away for the night. I'd deal with it the next day.

As usual, things looked better in the light of a new day. Although the strawberry mirror had found its way through the fissures in the center of the cake, it had set up pretty well around the outer edge. A few dollops of whipped cream did a pretty good job of hiding the flaws, once it was plated. And, if I do say so myself, it was the best tasting cheesecake I've ever eaten. Some cheesecake is heavy and dense, but this was creamy and dreamy - much more to my liking. I'll be baking this recipe again and will probably experiment with different flavors. But no more Strawberry Mirror topping on any of my cheesecakes!



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Other Completed Daring Bakers' Challenges: Lavash, Pizza Napoletana, Caramel Cake, French Yule Log, Tuiles, Chocolate Valentino, Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna

CLICK HERE FOR NEXT (STRUDEL)

The Daring Bakers' March Challenge - Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge. (Recipe HERE.)

You may be as surprised as I was to see lasagne (aka lasagna) as a Daring Baker challenge! At first I was a little resistant to the idea. After all, my dad and grandpa were bakers, and they never sold lasagne as a baked good in their bakeries. But after giving it a little thought, I realized that the mixing and kneading of the dough for the noodles was certainly a close cousin to mixing and kneading bread dough. And, after all, the entire dish is baked at the conclusion! Besides, I find it hard to pass up a tasty challenge.


The noodles for this lasagne recipe are spinach noodles. I have to be honest . . . I'm not a fan of spinach. But the Daring Bakers' challenges stretch me in more ways than one. They stretch, both, my creative and my epicurean boundaries.

There are four main parts to this dish, the spinach pasta, the Bechamel sauce, the Ragu sauce and the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I started with the Ragu sauce, which included a combination of five ground meats, as well as minced vegetables, red cooking wine, chicken broth, tomatoes and milk. It cooked for a total of two hours, and filled the house with its wonderful aroma.

Next I made the pasta, completely by hand. We were allowed to use a pasta machine, if we had one, but I didn't. The simple ingredients - flour, eggs and spinach - worked up into a nice, pliable dough, but only after I added an extra egg and a little bit of water. Until then, it was too dry to form the dough. (I think our arid climate is the reason I often have to add more liquid to recipes.) The pasta dough was kneaded for a total of 15 minutes, and then allowed to rest, covered in plastic, for three hours. I divided the dough into fourths in order to roll it out. It had to be rolled very thin, and my kitchen counter would not have been large enough to hold the entire rolled-out sheet of dough. I cut the pasta into noodles approximately 4" x 8" and dried them over the towel-covered backs of our dining room chairs.

While the noodles were drying, I ran to the grocery store to buy the cheese - Parmigiano-Reggiano. I only needed 4 oz., but they didn't have a chunk that small. At $20/pound, the smallest piece in the case set me back $12.00! There was one wedge, weighing five-plus-pounds, with a price tag of $112.00! And to think that I've complained, in the past, about paying $8.00 for a two-pound loaf of Tillamook cheddar!

The final preparation, before the dish was assembled, was the Bechamel sauce, which is just a simple white sauce, with some ground nutmeg added.

I really did have fun making this authentic Italian dish; and fun is the reason I am a Daring Baker! I assembled it all and baked it off for dinner on Thursday of my Spring Break vacation. Dan was really happy with it, and I liked it too. I'm still not a true fan of the spinach pasta, so if I made it again, I would probably use plain pasta. And I would add some mozzarella cheese; I missed that! I'm pretty sure that I will make the Ragu again, though. That combination of meat and veggies was really savory. Here are a couple pictures of the baked lasagne, on our dinner table.





Other Completed Daring Bakers' Challenges: Lavash, Pizza Napoletana, Caramel Cake, French Yule Log, Tuiles, Chocolate Valentino

CLICK HERE FOR NEXT (CHEESECAKE)

The Daring Bakers' February Challenge - Chocolate Valentino (Flourless Chocolate Cake)

Here was this month's Daring Bakers' challenge: "The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge." (Recipe HERE.)


Chocolate Valentino is a flourless chocolate cake. The only ingredients are chocolate, butter and eggs (separated). That's right, only three ingredients! We were instructed to use the flourless chocolate cake recipe exactly as it was given to us but were encouraged to be creative in our choice of the accompanying ice cream. The fresh-strawberry ice cream that I made was a nice complement to the intense chocolate flavor of the cake.

I tasted flourless chocolate cake years ago, at the Fiddlehead Restaurant in Juneau. I loved it and quickly hunted down a recipe and attempted to make it at home. I was really disappointed with the results of that attempt, so I took on this month's challenge with two competing emotions - fear that I'd fail again, and determination to succeed.

I made plans to invite our friends, John and Betsy, over for Valentine's Eve dinner, and serve the cake and ice cream as dessert. A few days before they came I decided to do a trial run of the chocolate cake recipe. I'm so glad that I did, because I learned a lot from that "dress-rehearsal." The trial run cake came out mediocre, at best. It had a wonderful texture, but the chocolate was too intense and bitter, and the cake was way too dry.

Based on that trial run, I made some adjustments to both the cake recipe and to my preparation methods, then re-made it for the company meal. The first change was to add about two tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites as I whipped them. I also used a slightly sweeter chocolate to start with. These two adjustments helped moderate the bitterness. To keep the cake from coming out so dry, I whipped the egg whites only to very soft peaks - not as stiff as I did the first time - and I baked the cake at 350 degrees instead of 375. All of these modifications paid off in a perfectly scrumptious cake.

Chocolate Valentino was the ideal dessert for Betsy, since she is gluten intolerant, and this flourless cake has no gluten. And, since romance was in the air, baking it in a heart-shaped pan and serving it with homemade strawberry ice cream seemed the right choices. The cake turned out very moist, a cross between a brownie and old-fashioned fudge made with Hershey's cocoa powder. It was exceedingly rich, so a tiny slice satisfied. We found that the cake aged well, when sealed tightly in the refrigerator. There was no doubt that it was better the second day than the first, and it actually seemed to improve each succeeding day, as well.

Here are some pictures of the ingredients, the process and the final product.

The recipe calls for one pound of semi-sweet chocolate. On my trial run, I used Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate; it was too intense. The second time around I went with Ghirardelli's Semi-Sweet, and it was perfect.

I used my Alaskan ulu to chop the chocolate. It was much easier on the hand than the knife that I started out using.

This is the melted chocolate and butter. I didn't have a double boiler, so melted the ingredients in a bowl over a pot of simmering water.

Five whipped egg yolks were added to the melted chocolate, after it cooled a bit.

And then five egg whites, whipped to a soft peak, were carefully folded into the chocolate mixture, which was poured into the baking pan.

Here is the cake just after it came out of the oven. It is characteristic of this cake to sink a bit in the center, as mine did.

Before I served the cake, I sprinkled on some powdered sugar, using a paper doily to make a design.

And, here it is, all served up - flourless chocolate cake (Chocolate Valentino) and homemade strawberry ice cream. Yum! Even our friend with the gluten intolerance enjoyed every fudgy bite.

Other Completed Daring Bakers' Challenges: Lavash, Pizza Napoletana, Caramel Cake, French Yule Log, Tuiles

CLICK HERE FOR NEXT (LASAGNE OF EMILIA-ROMAGNA)

The Daring Bakers' January Challenge - Tuiles

It's the end of January already and time to post the results of the first challenge of 2009, from the Daring Bakers. This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux. (Recipe HERE.)

The ingredients are simple: butter, powdered sugar, flour, egg whites (slightly whisked), vanilla and, for my decorations, a tiny drop of red food coloring. The recipe results in only a tiny bit of dough, but it is sufficient for making quite a few cookies, since they are shaped by spreading the dough with a spatula over a thin template, so the dough is no thicker than the template. I decided to do hearts, since Valentine's Day is coming up. And I made my template from a piece of art foam, a little less than 1/8" thick.

After laboring (albeit with love) over the Yule Log last month, these thin, crisp, delicate little cookies were a breeze, and lots of fun to bake and shape. "Tuile" (pronounced "tweel" - sort of) is a french word meaning "tile," because the cookies are supposed to resemble the curved tiles on a roof. Traditionally they are baked flat and then set over a curved surface while still warm, giving them their characteristic curved-tile shape. I chose to shape my valentine cookies over a series of three small dowels, laid side-by-side, trying for a rippled shape.


I read somewhere that the surface should be slightly bumpy, something like the skin of an orange. There was a French word for that texture, but I've forgotten it. If you look at this closeup, I think you'll see that typical surface texture.


The Daring Bakers challenge also required that we serve the tuiles with some sort of a fruit accompaniment. For mine, I made a berry compote, by cooking up raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Here is the final result. The little vanilla flavored tuiles, along with the berry compote and a dollop of whipped cream were really tasty. Just ask Dan!


I wasn't really satisfied with the thickness of my tuiles. I decided that my template was slightly too thick. I used a second, thinner template with a bit of the left-over dough, and the result was a couple of cookies thinner than potato chips (see above). They were almost transparent, and extremely fragile. But they tasted wonderful, literally melting on the tongue. I think the proper thickness of template lies somewhere between my two, and I know I'll have to keep trying to get them perfect.

Other Completed Daring Bakers' Challenges: Lavash, Pizza Napoletana, Caramel Cake, French Yule Log

CLICK HERE FOR NEXT (CHOCOLATE VALENTINO)

The Daring Bakers' December Challenge - A French Yule Log

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand. (Recipe HERE.)

I became a member of the Daring Bakers back in September, with the expectation of being truly challenged. The lavash, the pizza and the caramel cake all had challenging aspects to them; but this month's French Yule Log has to "take the cake" when it comes to challenges! When I first looked at the recipe (which went on for page after page), my knees started knocking in a combination of trepidation and anticipation. "Take a deep breath and take it one step at a time," I told myself.

I decided to break the recipe into its six parts, and do them over a three-day span. I started, one evening, with the creme brulee section. I've made creme brulee before, but the recipe we were following had us bake the creme in a 210 degree oven, supposedly for one hour. Oh, my! One hour went by and the creme brulee was still nowhere near set. In the end I gradually bumped the temperature up to 250 degrees, and ended up baking it for over two hours!

In order I continued on, over a span of three days, to make the chocolate mousse, the praline insert (feuillete), the dacquoise (an almond/meringue "cake"), ganache (a rich, creamy milk chocolate layer) and the milk chocolate icing. I read the comments of several other Daring Bakers . . . "It really isn't that hard" . . . but I must take exception! I found it quite difficult, especially finding the time to complete it, during this, the most busy time of the year. And then there were the three dozen pots, pans and bowls that were soaked and scrubbed, just to be used again, for another ingredient - oh, my aching back! And, finally, there were the struggles of getting frozen portions out of their molds. I'd have given up right there, twice, if it hadn't been for Dan's skill and patience in getting them unmolded. In fact, it was only because of Dan's encouragement that I persevered and completed the French Yule Log (known, also, as a buche de noel).

I didn't take pictures along the way. I was too busy, and my hands were too sticky to touch the camera. But below are a couple shots of the completed dessert. Had I had more time . . . and energy . . . I would have (should have) spent some time making decorations for the log. Some traditional decorations include chocolate curls, thin chocolate or cookie leaves, berries, meringue mushrooms, etc. But since I finally finished my log the night before we were leaving for my mom's house, in Carlsbad, I felt pretty satisfied just to have completed the basics. Maybe next time I'll go the final step, and add an artistic touch. BUT, what I must report is that this rich French dessert tasted better than the sum of its parts! It really was delicious! Dan went back for seconds, and our neighbors, to whom I delivered a couple slices, called us to say it was wonderful. Nothing warms a Daring Baker's heart more than such compliments.


Other Completed Daring Bakers' Challenges: Lavash, Pizza Napoletana, Caramel Cake

CLICK HERE FOR NEXT (TUILES)