The Case for Buttermilk

Ah buttermilk...what can be said about it that hasn't already been said?

To be fair, has anyone ever written a blog about buttermilk before?  Anyone...anyone...Bueller...??

We're going to be honest with you, for years we've kind of looked at buttermilk as the black sheep of the cooking world.  That random product they still sell at supermarkets that no one ever uses.  Honestly, how many of us can say we've ever had a glass of buttermilk?  Well, besides our grandparents.  Has anyone born since 1980 had a glass of buttermilk?  Honest question here.

Since we don't drink buttermilk, we've never had much reason to buy it.  In our humble opinion, why bother?  It's not that we're lazy bakers, but we're practical with our baking.  Why buy whole milk AND buttermilk when one can pretty much do the job of both.  Remember, this is a start up business...we're not rolling in the funds right now.

So we used regular milk for all of our baking needs.  We figured, hey, this tastes delicious, what could the harm be?

STOP!

If you were thinking the same thing, let us correct you.  There is a huge difference between buttermilk and milk.  If you're a casual baker, or baked good consumer, you may never notice the difference.  Half the time we still don't when we're eating the finished product.  But let us tell you, there's a HUGE difference.

  

What makes buttermilk buttermilk is that it's more acidic than regular whole milk, which gives it its different (and to many Gen Y- and X-ers unusual) taste.  Maybe this doesn't seem to be a deal breaker to you, but remember, baking is all about chemistry.  Ahh, chemistry, one of our least favorite classes in high school.  And chemistry, in baking, is super important.  It's what makes things taste so good.

So the extra acid in the buttermilk actually helps your baked goods.  It helps the milk to react and incorporate itself quicker into your batter (milk is usually one of the last ingredients you add), which leads to fluffier cupcakes, richer cookies, and beautifully dense cakes.  

Is it necessary?  Absolutely not.  But over the past few months as we've experimented with buttermilk more, we've found it's sometimes is exactly what you need to bring that "wow" factor.  Think about it this way...in baseball, a home run is a home run, so long as it leaves the park.  But for all those Pirate fans out there, how many of you remember a home run that just makes it over the fence, and how many of you will always remember the few baseballs that have landed straight into the river?  We want to launch our home run cupcakes into the river each and every time we pull them out of the ovens.

If you don't want to splurge and buy buttermilk (who does?) head over to this site, where you can learn how to make your own buttermilk with things you have around the house.  We usually use lemon juice, but have also used plain yogurt with similar results.

Next time you're baking, we challenge you to try using buttermilk.  Add some lemon juice to your milk, let it sit, and see how much better your baking becomes.  It's gonna be outta the park...and into the river!!

Happy (almost) Friday, friends!

Chocolate Whisky Cupcakes

As you guys have seen in the past 10 months this blog has existed (has it really been that long??), we bake a lot.  Cakes, pies, cookies, cupcakes, we do a lot throughout the year to create some pretty awesome sweet treats.  While we taste test and sample all of our goods before we deliver them, after doing this for so long there's very little we create anymore that completely blows our mind.  This weekend, though, we met our life-ending equivalent.  Game, set, match.  Mind blown.

To back up a little bit, though, last Monday we got a call from a good friend of ours asking if we could make a birthday cake for her husband's 30th birthday.  Oh my word, we're celebrating friends turning 30 already!  Where has our life gone?!?  :-)  Anyway, we bounced around a few ideas until she messaged us and said, "What about some whiskey cupcakes?"

Whoa.  Hold the phone.  Whiskey cupcakes?  This was new, and exciting, and a great idea!  We love making alcohol cupcakes, and have used rum, vodka, beer, wine, and tequila in past cupcake creations.  Whiskey, though...this was a new challenge.

When we're creating new flavor combinations, we like to spend some time on google looking up other similar recipes.  Not so we can rip off other people's ideas (we've had that happen to us before, and we know how awful a feeling that is), but to get some inspiration, and some ideas of where other bakers have gone in the past.  It helps us focus our thoughts and make a nice list of "Where to Start".

The overall theme we kept reading was chocolate and whiskey.  Chocolate, whiskey....hmmm, we had a plan forming.  We messed around with some flavor combinations, trying to find something that really hit the spot.  We added some espresso to the mix, because we liked the acidic with the whiskey, and then went about creating some cupcakes.

When the cakes came out our kitchen smelled like a man cave...strong coffee, whiskey, lots of chocolate.  It was a pretty fantastic smell.  Now we needed a great icing to go with it.

We believe that icings are the best part of any cake/cupcake combo. It's a make or break deal in our opinion.  Icings should not be flat and tasteless, they should be full of flavor, rich and creamy, and make you want to lick the bowl clean.  We hate when a promising looking cake ends up being dull because the icing isn't any good.  It's SUCH a disappointment.

This order was no different, the icing had to be pretty unreal.  So we took some whisky, and some melted dark chocolate, some butter and cream cheese and whipping cream, and set out to create a masterpiece. 

As we said in the beginning of this post, there's very little anymore that absolutely floors us anymore when it comes to baking.  This whisky icing...holy crap was it a show stopper.

The best part about these cupcakes was that they ended up going to a good friend for his 30th birthday.  It doesn't get much better heading to a party with some cupcakes you made knowing they're about to rock everyone's world.  Sharing in the party is half the fun in our opinion!!

So happy 30th to our good friend John.  Nothing says "manly cupcakes to celebrate the last few days in your 20s" like chocolate whiskey cupcakes!

August Living

IT'S AUGUST!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

We're sorry for all you haters out there, but August is our favorite month of the year!  Besides it being our birth month (and who doesn't love their birth month??!!?!) it's also,  in our opinion, the best summer month out there.  It seems like all sorts of fun things happen in August.  Family vacations, bonfires, early football games, pool parties....did we mention vacation??  Because we're going on vacation in less than 2 weeks, and we absolutely cannot wait!

We have one last order this weekend, and then we're peacing out for a 14 day hiatus until we're back with some more orders in late August/early September.  In that two week span we will:

1. Head to the beach with our favorite sister for some sun and surf (and boys!  Lots of boys.)
2. Attend our first ever Backstreet Boys/Jesse McCartney/DJ Pauly D concert in Cleveland.  Don't be jealous, even though we know you are.
3. Head out to a first place Buccos game.  We love baseball games in general, but heading out to a Buccos game right now...it's absolutely electric
4. Try out a few ideas we have for some new cupcake flavors.  Fall is coming...is it too early to start investing in some pumpkin?
5. Watch lots of awful television that we haven't had time to catch up on.

Even though this is a job we love (and we mean LOVE!), we still like to take some time off every once in awhile to sort of relax, refocus, and get all our ducks back in a row.  Whenever we've taken some time off in the past we've come back chomping at the bit to get back in the kitchen...that's always a good sign that you're doing something you love.  Most people don't like returning to their jobs after vacation, and to be honest, if someone wanted to pay us to never work again, we'd be fine with that too.  But coming back from vacation and heading back into the kitchen...we can't wait!

It's been a tremendously busy few weeks, and we've been honored and humbled by all the love, support, and (maybe most importantly) orders you guys have sent our way these past few weeks.  Birthdays (lots of birthdays!) weddings, baby showers, we have seen just about everything under the sun these past few weeks.  And we love it!  It's great to watch as our business slowly starts to grow through recommendations from others who have sampled some of our previous tastes.

Now the only question remains...who's going to bake us a birthday cake??

Have a fabulous weekend, guys.  Let's go Bucs!

Cookie Cake: Minecraft Edition

Hello friends!  Another beautiful weekend has come to an end, and we're not sure where all the time has gone.  Probably into the kitchen, where we've spent a good chunk of our weekend.

We had a fun task this weekend of making a very different birthday cake: a Minecraft themed cookie cake.  Carson's birthday party is Tuesday, but he's not a fan of cookie cake.  That's ok, though, because his mom told us he was a huge lover of cookie cake (who isn't?)  She wanted to know if we could make a cookie cake themed after a video game he loves, Minecraft.

If you've never played Minecraft, it's an interesting concept.  It's like Legos meets survivor meets Erector Set.  The game involves building homes out of different "element blocks", creating things through mining, and pretty much wasting a bunch of time you already don't have.  What's interesting about this game is how many people are flat out addicted to this game.  Kids as young as 5 play it, as well as some of our friends who are in their 30s.  It really doesn't have a limit to what it can do, unless your imagination limits it.

The graphics of the game is somewhat different and takes some getting used to.  Everything's very geometric and simple looking.  We felt like the game walked off our 1992 family computer.  Once you get past that, though, it's easy to become addicted.

With the idea of cookie cake as the background, we wanted a tasty cake that was decorated well.  We decided to make it 3D with some fun cookie blocks we built, that really kept true to the spirit.

So what do you think?

These pictures seem a little blank, and it's true, they're missing some things.  There are some Minecraft figurines that need to be added to the cake too, but they won't go on the cake until it's ready to be eaten.  We'll post some updated pictures later this week.

Happy birthday Carson!  Hope you have a fantastic day!!

And to the rest of you out there, hope you have a wonderful week.

**UPDATE**

Finally got a picture of the completed cake.  Looks like it was an awesome party!!

Open the Floodgates!

Since Pittsburgh has been receiving SO many flash flood warnings these past few weeks, we thought it would be funny (funny ironic, not funny hahaha) to bring some flooding into our own bakery.  We decided to flood some cookies.

Now our guess is the majority of you read that last sentence and pictured us dumping some delicious cookies into a bucket of water.  Why in the world would we ruin perfectly good cookies like that?  No, flooding cookies is a method used to ice certain cookies, usually sugar cookies, and it's something we love to do and never seem to make time to do it.  Well we made time finally and flooded up a storm...er...maybe it's the other way around since storms cause flooding.

...anyway...

If you've never flooded cookies before, it's a fairly straight forward process.  There are a few things we suggest to all first-time flooders:

1. Use sugar cookies (they bake with a flat top, which is essential to get a good cookie iced this way.
2. Use simple shaped cookie cutters.  You'll see in the pictures below we used a random assortment of woodland creatures (thank you Ikea!)  DO NOT USE CRAZY COOKIE CUTTERS LIKE THIS IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE.  Stick to hearts, or squares, or another geometrically simple shape.  Trust us.
3. Practice makes perfect.  It will take you probably a few cookies to find your groove. Do not despair if your first few look like your kids finger painted all of them.

If you have some cooled sugar cookies, you're pretty much ready to go.  Oh, but first you need some royal icing.  Of course, searching for "royal" anything this week brings up nothing but William and Kate's baby. 

 

No, Google, we DON'T want to read another story about this.  We actually just want a recipe we can share with our readers for royal icing.

If you've never made royal icing before, click here for a super simple recipe.  Ours is slightly different (and slightly better in our humble opinions), but we don't like to give trade secrets out on the world wide web.

The trick to flooding cookies is to build a dam to stop the icing from spilling over the side of the cookies.  And what do you build the dam with?  Why icing, of course?   This is where you will need some practice if you don't have a steady hand.  Be patient, it will become easier.  And you will find that not all of your cookies look awful after they've set.

So once you've dammed up the cookies, they look like this, nice and yummy and ready for flooding...

We think that's a bear cub.  These Swedish cookie cutters are questionable, though.

To flood, you take the same royal icing, water it down, and drip it carefully into the center of the cookie.  The hope is that your icing will spread around the top of the cookie but not overflow thanks to the wonderful white-walled icing dam you have built.

Here we're watching the icing spread.  If you're impatient like we are (who has time to slowly watch this spread??) or if there are little nooks and crannies you just can't seem to get the icing into, you may have to help it along.  You'll find tools that work for you, but we often suggest starting with a tooth pick.  Just be careful the white icing outline stay in tact.  

You will eventually get it to spread over everything, and it will be finished and ready for drying.

Once everything's spread across the cookie, it's a good idea to look for any air bubbles and pop them as well.  Again, we suggest a toothpick, but find what works for you.

If you get really fancy, you can start to add details to your cookie that will help define it better.  Below we took a snail, added a swirl, and gave it a little more character than the bear cub up above.

Once it dries completely the snail will be the cutest little thing.  You can add other items too, sprinkles, candies, you name it.  It helps to really make flooding cookies a ton of fun.

So now go practice!  Take an evening and try it out!  Let us know what you think, and how successful it was.  And if you happen to be using the same Ikea cookie cutters...give us a call!!

Happy Wednesday!!

Yep...It Happened

Welp, folks, our morning started off really well.  Wanted to try out a new recipe, and we figured what better day to do it than an overcast Sunday in Pittsburgh.

Then...well, then this happened...

One cookie cake in 20 pieces on our counter.  Yep.  Happy Sunday to us!

We've told you many times for every wonderful thing we make we make an equal mess that ends up in the garbage.  Here's proof.

If you're in the area, though, it tastes delicious.  We added 3 types of chips, dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and butterscotch, as well as some walnuts.  Yummmm!! :-)

Dog Days of Summer

Man, guys, it's so hot!!

We hate this stretch of the year, when the heat and humidity just kill any motivation to bake that we have.  It's no small wonder we love baking in the winter, when it's super cold outside.

Our sister is a photographer (shameless plug, click here to view her ridiculously good photos) and she always talks about how her wedding business has a "down time", usually in the winter where not a lot of people choose to get married.  We wish we had the same "down time" in July with our baking, but alas we don't.  It seems you people always want to eat cake!

So through these hot months we crank up the air conditioning and pray for cooler days.  As in, nothing like this past week.

Nevertheless, baking still goes on.  We have quite a few orders in these hot and humid summer months, which is great news for us.  Starting a business is a ridiculously slow process (we think we've seen paint dry quicker than this business take off), but we're happy to see things starting to snowball. We have more orders now than we did a year ago, and it's a trend we're looking to continue in the coming months and years as we move into the next phase of our "Build a Bakery" stage.

We have another themed birthday next week that we're excited to tell you about in future posts.  If you follow us on Facebook you might already know what the cake is going to look like.  It should be a blast to make, and will allow us to do something we've never done before.  This blog is all about new experiences, so we're happy for the chance.

We're also trying to find some good reasons to spread our skills around for reduced or no costs.  If anyone reading out there knows of a good cause in or around the Pittsburgh area that might have need for some baked goods, give us a call.  Your talents and gifts are wonderful things, but they mean so much more when you share them with others.

We're out to go cool off the kitchen.  Wheeeew-eeey, this heatwave needs to break!

Stay cool, friends!