Baking Pro Tips

A lot of times when people try something we've baked we receive a very similar reaction to the product: "I make this all the time and it doesn't taste anything like what I'm eating now!"  It's not a bad thing...people are just awed that something they may be familiar with can have a different taste than what they're used to.

We usually don't share full recipes with people (it's taken us awhile to develop some of them), but we figured we'd take some time to let you in on a few tricks and tips we use in our kitchen to reach the desired results in our desserts.  Some you might have heard of, others you might be shocked to read, but we hope next time you're baking you remember a tip or two and try it out in your kitchen.

1. We use a lot of salt in our icing.  A lot.  Most recipes you see for call for a "pinch".  Depending on the amount of icing we're making we will use anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon.  We feel like it really helps to balance the sweetness so it's not too overpowering.

2. When you want to make a chocolate icing from scratch, melt down good chocolate in a double boiler.  Yes, you will pay more, but you will definitely notice a difference.  And before you ask, no, Hershey's is not considered a "good" chocolate.

3. We mentioned this before in a past post, but you really need to start using buttermilk in recipes that call for buttermilk.  The taste is just the tiniest bit different, but it's definitely worth the extra effort.  Try it once, and you'll never go back to cheating with regular milk again.  We promise.

4. If you love vanilla cake (and really who doesn't), make yourself a batch of vanilla sugar.  Take a whole vanilla bean, split it open, and put it in a plastic container full of sugar (one that seals tight).  Put it on the shelf and forget about it for awhile.  Next time you go to bake a vanilla cake, use the sugar in the container.  Sugar takes on flavors of objects around it, so your sugar will be infused with vanilla, adding to the ridiculous amounts of vanilla you're about to add to the batter already.  This will send your cake into the vanilla stratosphere.  Trust us.

5. A lot of cheesecake recipes out there tell you not to "over mix" the egg/cream cheese mixture you're creating.  We couldn't disagree more.  We like our cheesecake to be a bit on the airy side, still thick and full of bad-for-you calories, but with just a hint of a whipped surprised.  If your cheesecake weighs the same as a small child, we feel it's a little too dense.  We over mix our cream cheese mixture, and love the results.  Sure, there are probably some cheesecake connoisseurs reading this who are cursing at the very idea of over mixing their batter, but if you're up for a fun challenge, try it next time.

6. If you ever make a Boston Cream Pie (and really, they're so easy, who wouldn't?) there are lots of ways to cheat on the recipe a little.  Use a boxed mix, microwave the chocolate topping, etc.  One are you do not want to cheat, though, is the cream center.  DO NOT use Jell-O mix, guys!  It takes just as long to make the pudding as it does to make some delicious from-scratch cream.  Just google a recipe.  It's worth it.

Hope this helps you guys next time you're in the kitchen!  Share all the yummy things you might cook up, we love fun stories!

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!!