Upstaging

I’m going to make a confession here.  I have a tendency to one- up at gatherings.  I’ll be invited to a barbecue or party and I’ll rack my brain for something to make that could have potential to be the best thing there.  It’s not that I want the attention.  That’s the part of it I don’t like.  It has to be the Italian in me or something… to just hear people talking about how they like my food.

This happened this past weekend when my friend decided to throw a barbecue dedicated to ribs.  They were on sale so we made a day of it.  Instead of deciding to make a side or something like that, I bought a rack of pork ribs and put all my efforts on those.  I made a dry rub and proceeded to make a homemade barbecue sauce to lather on top while grilling.  I needed these to be epic.  Why?  Because I’m a tool like that.  Of course I would choose to make a most excellent set of pork ribs when the host was making racks upon racks of beef ribs.

The outcome?  Awesome.  This may become the spring of ribs for this girl.

Let’s travel all the way back in time to Superbowl Sunday.  I was invited to sweet ass party and decided I needed something phenomenal.  That was a pretty loaded weekend, as there was a birthday party the night before and I knew I wouldn’t want to make anything outrageous the next day.  I decided on a very  healthy rosemary bean dip, which was excellent and homemade Kit Kat Bars.

This was a foodpress recipe.  Some chick decided to make her own, and kudos because I basically took her recipe and modified it. I’m going to walk you through this one instead of just listing it.  It’s more fun that way.  As an introduction, I had really REALLY been craving chocolate covered pretzels with peanut butter.

To begin, you line a baking dish with club crackers.  I’m talking about those buttery delicious Keebler treats that come in the green box.  And here’s where I said, “Recipe, I’m going to own you.”  I bought a bag of rectangular pretzels and added a layer of those on top of the crackers.

Next, I threw the following ingredients into a sauce pan: 2 sticks of unsalted butter, 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs, 1 cup of dark brown sugar, 1/2 cup of milk, and 1/3 cup of granulated sugar.  Boil for a couple of minutes, stirring to make sure all this fatty goodness is blending together.  Then pour half of this over the cracker/ pretzel layer.  You want to smooth this out as much as possible with a spatula, which can get a bit tricky because of the pretzels.

Then add another cracker/ pretzel layer and pour the rest of the mixture on top.  This was where I kissed the pretzels goodbye and decided enough was enough.  I added one last layer of crackers and then went for the big finish.

Get another saucepan and add 2/3 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of semisweet chocolate chips, and 1/2 cup of butterscotch chips.  That’s what really won me over here.  The addition of butterscotch chips more or less had me wailing in delight.

When all of these are combined and smooth, pour that all over the top layer.  I smoothed this out and attempted to cover the sides, sort of.  Then I popped it into the fridge to congeal and release all the magic that goes along with creating candy.

During all of this, I was sharing the kitchen with my roommate, who was making an epic macaroni and cheese for the party he was going to.  It was amazing that we were both able to work in there at the same time, and both of us couldn’t help but oggle the others’ food preparation.

And I will say that these were a freakin’ hit.  Who doesn’t like all of those delicious things smushed into delicate squares?  It was a definite success and I will say very easy to make.

And what was I to do with all the leftover chips?  I spent my Wednesday night melting chocolate and butterscotch chips in the microwave and then dipping peanut butter filled pretzels in there.  Sometimes you just need to indulge.

Christmas Through Food- Pt I: Petits Fours

I’m well aware that I’m super late on a post like this.  To be honest, I had done so much cooking and baking at the end of December I was completely overwhelmed by the idea of blogging about it.  My plan was to save it all up and blog during the week and a half I was going to be in Jersey visiting the fam with nothing to do.  What ended up happening was that I realized I enjoy doing nothing.  So instead I cooked, ate, and decided to lay around instead of doing anything productive.  The result, is now my backtracking.

So I’m going to go all the way back to mid December, the beginning of my holiday cooking.

PETITS FOURS

This was the goal. Look at how perfect they are!

 

I’m not sure if I’ve already touched on this in the past.  If so, pipe down and lap up my good humored thoughts on the subject until I get to the new stuff.

I first encountered Petit Fours over a year ago at my old job.  They had accidentally come to our office in LA instead of the Denver branch.  We all greedily saw the perishable label on the package and called Denver to tell them whatever it was would probably be spoiled by forwarding along.  With success, we ripped open the package to find a tray of beautifully decorated bite- sized cakes.  I immediately fell in love.  While I’m more of a savory girl myself, when I do crave sweets I prefer cakes and tarts as opposed to plain old chocolate (I know, disgraceful).  As a chubby kid, I was the one buying the box of Zebra Cakes while all my friends were stocking up on candy.  So needless to say, these treats were just my style.

Around Thanksgiving was when I was starting to dream up what holiday treat I’d be baking this year.  Every year for the past 4 at least, I’d baked some sort of Christmas delicacy to shove down anyone’s throat who was around and bring home with me.  My sister takes care of the classics (and this year brought round delicious new cookies I’d never even think of).  She’s got the real skill for baking, making each cookie beautiful.  I’d like to think of myself more as an artist.  My treats don’t always look elegant, I’d say rather homemade, but I strive to make sure the flavors are on point.  So this year, I had my heart set on Petit Fours.

I had decided, as I do with most recipes, that I wanted to make everything from scratch and I wanted the real deal.  None of this shortcut bs.  I did extensive research on the genoise I’d have to make up to the fondant to top it all off.  I started thinking about the flavors I wanted to use.  It was all coming together.

I decided to do 2 rounds, so I could perfect whatever went wrong the first time around.  The flavors?  Chocolate cake, Raspberry jam, Amaretto Custard, and plain old fondant.

Wet and wild and ready for action.

I researched genoise.  This is a french sponge cake that’s supposed to be light and fluffy.  I decided to make a chocolate version.  This was my first time ever making sponge cake.  This was exciting for me because in order to properly execute this cake, you need to boil a pot of water and then place a bowl on top of that to mix your ingredients in.  We’re talking a double decker here.  It’s very precise, as you’ve got eggs cooking in there and don’t want them to actually cook.  The goal is to heat all the ingredients until it’s warm to your finger.  Then you remove the bowl from the heat and whip the crap out of them until you have a fluffy combination that’s tripled in size.  My issue, was that I needed to fold in the cocoa powder to this fluff.  Every time I thought I was good to go, I’d see a secret pocket burst and powder flow out.  This batter was laughing in my face.  So naturally, my first round came out dense and fudgy due to over-mixing.  I wrapped her up and stuck her in the fridge.  I had planned out the steps perfectly so as not to be overwhelmed with all the baking and construction in one night.

On day 2 I created the Amaretto simple syrup to brush over the cake.  Yum!  I also made an Amaretto custard for the middle layer.  There’s no secret to this recipe, as I discovered.  You make a regular custard and just add a few tablespoons of Amaretto to it.  Bam.

I also decided to construct and cut.  This is part one of my downfall.  I took out the sheet of cake and tried trimming the top off.  I think it was a personal issue at this point.  It was as if I was killing the spirit of my cake by cutting so much off.  The end result was very tall Petit Fours as I didn’t have the guts to cut them down small enough.

I cut my long piece of cake into two, for stacking purposes.  On the first layer a healthy amount of simply syrup, followed by jam, followed by the custard that was still room temperature.  Another mistake.  I learned that night that the custard should be cold and completely set.  I ended up with a bit of a mess on my hands, but was able to get it all together.

I'm still trying to stay uniform at this point.

Custard Rebellion.

Now the real pain in the tush.  The cutting.  I dropped the top layer of cake down and took a deep breath.  It was time for this baby to feel the wrath of my knife.  (I would like to note here, that in all the various recipes I read, they all made this part look so easy.  Just use a serrated knife, Bingo, perfect tiny squares.)  I started out making vertical cuts.  Ok, not so bad.  When I started taking each log one by one and cutting those down into squares is where things started to look bad.  The warm custard would ooze out, and I really saw how lopsided these little squares were.  I started giving some of them haircuts to even things out a bit.  It got to a point where I realized these just weren’t going to be the perfect morsels I dreamed up.  It was time to just make something that tasted awesome and looked a lot like something a five year- old would proudly serve to Mom.  Game on.

My daughter will be 5 in May. She did a great job on these.

After all my squares were cut and all different sizes, as I had thrown caution to the wind in any attempt to make them all look the same.  I took each one delicately and smoothed the edges, smearing custard and jam across the sides like glue.  I realized that I would be covering these with fondant, so maybe all wasn’t lost.  And as I’d been tasting as I was going (I am the ULTIMATE grazer when I make anything, which I guess is a good thing for a cook.), I knew they would at least taste good.  I threw them all in the fridge to await the next night.

This is the point where I would like to have a mini flip out session due to my own ignorance/ internet trickery.  As I previously stated, a lot of these elements were knew to me.  I was excited to try my hand at making something like fondant.  I learned there are at least two different kinds.  One, is the kind you see featured on all those cake shows.  You have to roll it out and you can cover or mold just about anything.  It’s kind of a cheat really because it’s maleable.  But, there is also a liquid version.  That’s what I was going for.  I read through some recipes that had a cheat for it, but like I said, I was going for a genuine recipe.  I liked the challenge.  Unfortunately, what I deemed ‘genuine’ turned out to be a freakin’ glaze.  I know, I know.  How could I not realize this?  When a recipe calls for 6 cups of powdered sugar, one should rethink what’s going on.  I just didn’t know any better.

Very obviously a glaze.

So I cooked up this glaze.  Yes, I was very proud of myself.  “Fondant.  Pshh,” I said to myself.  I didn’t understand what everyone made a big deal about.  This beast was supposed to be fickle and annoying, but I had a playful puppy on my hands.  Again, none of this tipped me off.  So I heated, and spooned the glaze over my treats.  This in itself was not an easy task.  I developed a two fork routine.  I’d spear the top, lean it over the pot while I spooned enough glaze to cover all sides, and then take a second fork to pry the little cake off the speared end to gently place it down on a tray.  Many of these attempts ended with expletives as the cake would roll onto it’s side, ruining the glaze.

Some of them came out slightly pretty. They wouldn't have been the last ones asked to dance in High School.

After finishing I looked at my work: A tray of all differently sized cakes that looked nothing like what I had wanted to create.  I popped one in my mouth.  I actually really enjoyed it, but it was not at all what I was trying to recreate.  So I sighed, ate another one and wrapped them up.

I brought some to work, and mailed out to packages of them.  The following week I rolled up my sleeves and got back to work.

This time my cake came out perfect.  It was light and fluffy.  I trimmed it respectively, glazed it and threw it in the fridge.  That same night I made the custard, so it would have a night to stay cool.  The next day I constructed my cakes.  With the cake being much fluffier, the cutting was a little easier.  I also decided to use my grandmother’s method of cutting cheesecake: dip your knife in a glass of water after each cut.  Booyah.  I was back on track.  The squares weren’t all even, but they were a lot closer.  I was also very picky about getting rid of the end slices and so on.  I became a Petit Four Nazi– only the perfect ones survived.  (Too much?)

This time around I said a big ef you to the glaze recipe and was still feeling too burnt from it to attempt another fondant.  I decided I was on a new path to making the most delicious treat I could think of.  The answer was Chocolate Amaretto Buttercream Frosting.  Heyoo!  I decided if I was making little tiny cakes, they were going to be exactly that.  None of this frenchy vagueness.  Pure American cake style.

I whipped this mother up and she was the perfect addition!  I decided to wait on icing these babies until I returned home to Jersey, so I packed everything up for my trip.

With my remains, I created little parfaits for myself and my roommates!  Yeah, I’m a dork, but wouldn’t you like a parfait?

So all in all, I attempted to master this decadent dessert and I don’t think I did that.  Instead, in my true fashion, I created some sort of Americanized hybrid that tasted pretty good.  By the time I got home for Christmas, I was so over the sweat and tears that I didn’t even bother to ice them.  I just served them with the icing on the side.  And of course I didn’t take any pictures of the second go around to boot.

This time, you won France but watch your back!  I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve.

Stay tuned for more savory Christmas dishes!