Baking Day

We hit the Seattle Restaurant Store yesterday for about $300, replaced the dishes and got excited about cooking even more.

Nancy got a new stockpot and made a killer soupe a l'oignon. Apparently the key is to buy the purple onions - I would've thought we needed the sweet ones. The onion acid permeated the kitchen so we wore the new ski goggles. Also a thin crust pizza (Nancy is great at crusts from scratch).

Today while Finn and Nancy went skiing at Snoqualmie Summit and Elijah and I baked. We started with creme puffs which are pretty easy - you boil a cup of water and a stick of butter, then throw in a cup of flour and mix. Then let it cool a little and mix in 7 (seven!) eggs. No sugar! These turned out perfect on our aluminum baking sheets without any butter or nonstick coating or parchment paper.

Then Elijah wanted "black cream!" and I asked him how one made that. He insisted on brown sugar, heavy cream and vanilla. Dad's idea was to add a cup of Dutched cocoa, which really did turn black. This chocolate whipped cream didn't have nearly the volume, but it tasted wonderful and it was plenty to fill then twenty or so puffs.

Elijah types: b

Then we started on the creme brulees. (Elijah pronunciation: kremah bay!) I only wanted to make this to test out the torch we got. Since I was out of heavy cream we used the creme caramel recipe instead, which it turns out is lighter (milk and whole eggs, rather than the cream and yolks of creme brulee), and is kinda more eggy and separates a bit...if you've had both you'd know the difference. But the sugar/melty/firey/crackey thing is where the excitement is anyway. Those went in the fridge til Finn and Nancy came home.

Finally we made a chocolate cake (at Finn's request). The cake is just a mix, but I did a professional buttercream icing (sugar syrup to softball stage into 6 heavily whipped yolks, then add a pound of butter on high for 20 minutes or so - and we added half cup of cocoa too). This is incredibly light and yummy. Mom taught me everything about baking cakes but I got some new ideas from James Patterson's book. I cut the cakes into 4 layers, and used springform pans. I brushed the layers with an orange liquer before putting the buttercream between them, and covered the whole thing. It really is a lot lighter-feeling than the powdered sugar and butter I'm used to. This cake is incredible and so far we've only eaten the scraps from cutting the layers with leftover icing.

So, no meals today (just a salad) but a whole dinner of desserts. Finn claims he likes desserts more than me...heh. Maybe the eating of them...