.berry cream puff.

I had a luncheon today with some girlfriends. We all had our babies within a month of each other. We all had GIRLS! So we get together every month to hang out and eat and let our babies play together. It's a lot of fun. Today we had lunch at my house. I fixed some grilled chicken, grilled vegetable pasta salad (recipe below), greek salad (recipe to come), and for dessert...... berry cream puffs.



My husband insisted we didn't need a dessert for lunch. Puh-lease. I told him what I was thinking of making and he quickly jumped on board. LOL I guess you can have dessert with lunch!



I didn't want to do your typical strawberry shortcake, but I did want a fresh, fruity type dessert that screams SPRING! When I was at the store picking up supplies, I saw blueberries and blackberries with the strawberries. Mmmmm.... oh yah.



We made cream puffs daily at the bakery and filled them with pastry cream folded in with whipped cream, and topped the puff off with some ganache. Very popular. Making cream puffs isn't difficult, and they don't take very long to make. You will get a great upper body workout though from working in the flour and the eggs. Let me show you how to make them.



In a pot, put 1 cup water, 1/4 cup butter (cut up), and 1/4 tsp salt. Bring to a boil.

While you're waiting for the water to boil, break open 4 eggs and put in a bowl or measuring cup. You want to have all of your stuff ready to go because it's going to go fast and you won't have time to do all of this.

Butter a cookie sheet (I took that pat of butter off after I took this picture).

You want to butter this because those cream puffs will stick horribly bad if you don't.

When the water comes to a boil and the butter is melted, dump in 1 cup flour. Stir immediately using a wooden spoon. Stir until the flour is cooked and it begins to pull away from the sides of the pan and form a ball. Remove from the heat.

Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring well between each addition. This is what it will look like when all the eggs have been added. The reason why you want to add one at a time is if you dumped all of them in, it would cool your dough down too fast and you will get the wrong consistency and your cream puffs won't "puff" up the right way.

Spoon the dough into a pastry bag and pipe in a circular fashion little "hives". I made these puffs big today. Normally you can get about 8-10 regular sized puffs out of this recipe. You can easily double the recipe to make more.

Bake in a 375* oven for 35 minutes or so. You want them to be nice and golden brown. If you pull them out too soon, they will collapse as they cool. Big concern is you want to make sure the centers get cooked. Pull too soon and it'll be doughy inside. Our motto at the bakery with these were overbaking was better than underbaking.

Allow to cool.



In a bowl, mix together your berries. Like I said earlier, I used blackberries, blueberries, and sliced strawberries. Add a little sugar and some lemon juice. Let the berries macerate for awhile.

To assemble, cut the top off your cream puff. Take some whipped cream (which you can whip up while the puffs are cooling) and put a large dollop on the bottom half. Spoon some berries on top of that, then add another little dollop on top of the berries. Put the top back on.

Using a sieve, put a little powdered sugar in it and then tap lightly on top of the cream puff to dust them.

Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.

[Chef's notes: Cream puffs are great for parties. Make the puffs a lot smaller and fill with chicken salad, or with pastry cream or just whipped cream. You can make them up ahead of time and freeze.]

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_43c9tqv6cp

.banana cream pie cupcakes.

I have a problem. I can't stop coming up with new projects for me. LOL My husband retires from the Navy in October and I've been thinking if we move back to the Seattle area (where I'm from), my sisters and I could open a cupcake shop.

Cupcakes are all the rage right now! Martha Stewart even had a big cupcake week last week where she had people submit their cupcake photos for a contest. Martha even shared her favorite cupcake bake shops. I've had a bakery. I could surely have a huge successful CUPCAKE bake shop in the suburbs of Seattle, right? And to make it a family affair with my sisters? Perfect!

My husband told me NO WAY. :( :( And my younger sister, Marcia told me she wants to open a scrapbook store, not a cupcake store. I think I could convince her...or maybe we could do both!? *lightbulb moment!!*

The other night when we were watching a movie, I came up with yummy cupcake flavors. I have a list of about 50. This was one that is on the list. Banana cream cupcakes. Mmmm...

The cupcakes are a basic butter cake. Here's the recipe.


In a mixing bowl, cream together 1 cup (2 sticks) butter and 2 cups sugar.


Add 4 eggs, one at a time, mixing well. Keep mixing on high until the batter becomes really light and fluffy. It will almost look like frosting it's so fluffy. Slowly add 1 cup milk and 1 tsp vanilla.

In a bowl, sift together 3 cups flour, 1 Tbsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Spoon into the butter mixture while the mixer is on low speed.


The finished product will be light and airy. It will look nothing like a cake mix batter. This will give you a wonderful buttery dense cake.


Spoon into paper lined muffin pans. This will make 2 dozen cupcakes. Since we won't eat that many, I split the recipe in half to make only one dozen. Bake at 350* for about 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Dump from the pan and put on cooling rack.

While the cupcakes cool, make a box of banana pudding. Sure I could've made pastry cream myself, but I decided to give myself a break. Maybe when I have that cupcake shop, I might make my own pastry cream.



Slice up a banana and add to chilled pudding. Put the pudding in the fridge and hold until you need it.


Take a paring knife and carefully cut the cupcake top. Remove the top.



Spoon some of the banana pudding into the cupcake.


Pull off the cone part of the top and put the top back on.


Put some graham crackers in a ziploc and smash (or use pre-crushed graham crackers)







Make whipped cream.

Put 1 cup COLD whipping cream in the mixing bowl. Begin whipping on medium speed. If you put it on super HIGH, you'll have cream all over your cabinets and self.















When ribbons begin to form in the cream, add 1/4 cup sugar slowly.

Kick up the speed to HIGH.

When the cream is nice and stiff, add 1 tsp vanilla.


You want a nice stiff whip because we will be piping this onto the cupcakes and you don't want it to just slide right off. Put the whipped cream in a piping bag with a large star tip.








Pipe in a circular fashion making a nice peak. Sprinkle the top lightly with some of those crushed graham crackers and put a slice of banana on top.

Eat immediately (like I have to tell you that ;) ). If you make these ahead of time, keep them in the fridge before serving.

I really think these will do well in my cupcake shop. :D :D

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_34fxnx32d9

.strawberry shortcake.

I *love* strawberry shortcake! Growing up, we used to go into Kent Valley and pick so many strawberries we could practically swim in them. My mom would have us help her make freezer jam, and sliced strawberries to freeze. Whatever we had left we would slice and make shortcake. Mmm mm mmm.



My dad makes this awesome hot milk sponge cake that is perfect for the strawberries. Forget about those ones you buy at the grocery store. They turn to complete mush when the juice of the strawberries hits it. This cake stays nice and firm, yet moist. I promise if you take the time to make this, you won't be sorry.



Ron's Hot Milk Sponge Cake



In a bowl, mix together 2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt.



In a glass dish, heat 1 cup milk and 4 Tbsp butter in the microwave until hot and buter is melted.



Add 4 eggs and 2 tsp vanilla to the milk/butter mixture. and mix well.




Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until everything comes together. Don't overmix.










I like baking this in muffin tins to make individual cakes. You can bake this entire thing in a 13x9 pan.



If you use muffin tins, fill only halfway up as this does double in size while baking.



Put in a preheated 350* oven and bake for 20-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.




The tops should be nice and golden, and the cake itself should be nice and spongy... hence the name sponge cake.
















Remove the cakes from the muffin pan so they don't get soggy on the bottom from moisture. If you use the 13x9 pan, no need to worry about taking from the pan.















Clean the strawberries. Remove the stems and slice.



Add a couple tablespoons of sugar. The sugar will dissolve and draw out the juices from the fruit. This is called macerating. Let the strawberries sit with that sugar for a bit. The longer they sit, the more juice they'll make. I'm not patient enough so I don't ever get a lot of juice. Ah well. I'm okay with it.




Now to the whipped cream. Trust me again when I say this. Make it! Don't buy something in a can at the store. If you've never whipped your own cream, it's not difficult and I promise you, you will never want anything but homemade ever again.



You want to start off with cold tools. I put my Kitchenaid bowl and whisk in the fridge for about half hour before whipping. If you have room in your freezer, great. The colder the better. Whipped cream will give you better results the colder it is.



Pour your cream (2 cups) into the mixing bowl and start mixing on medium speed. Don't go full speed from the get go otherwise it will splatter all over the place.




When ribbons begin to form in the cream, kick up the speed and add 1/4 cup sugar.



Keep whipping on high until firm peaks form and the cream becomes nice and fluffy like clouds. Don't overwhip or else you'll start making butter!




Turn off mixer and add 1 tsp vanilla. On slow speed, mix the vanilla in.










Mmmm... say it with me. Whipped... cream....



To assemble your strawberry shortcakes, cut one of the cakes in half. Put in the bottom of a bowl. Spoon strawberries and some juice on the cake. Put a nice dollop of whipped cream. Place cake top on the whipped cream. Add some more strawberries if you want and top with more whipped cream.



To make it fancy, put a sprig of mint on top and/or dust with powdered sugar.




http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_14ft69zbd2

.chocolate fudge cake.

I have a confession to make. I'm a food magazine addict. What's worse is stores ENABLE me by putting these things at the checkout line so while I'm waiting for the checker to scan all my items, I thumb through them. Sometimes a magazine can lure me to buy it from simply the cover. You know what I'm talking about, right?

I have stacks of food magazines in my house. They clutter my cookbook shelf, they clutter my bedroom. I don't want to pack them away because I won't have easy access to them. I really need to go through and pull the recipes I continue to go to time and time again and put them in my family cookbook. (mental note: make a blog entry in the near future about the family cookbook.)

A few years ago, one of the magazines I picked up had an amazingly simple, MOIST, and delicious recipe for a chocolate fudge cake. I can whip this cake together in 5 minutes - no joke. That's about how long it takes to open and mix a box of perservatives we like to call a "cake mix". I thought I'd share this recipe because when I go to reach for a chocolate cake recipe, this is the one I go to first.

This only makes 1 cake but can easily be doubled to make two. Enjoy!

1 cup flour
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp. baking cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 stick butter (if you use unsalted butter, add 1/4 tsp salt to the recipe), melted
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 350* F. In a bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt (if you used unsalted butter). Set aside.

In another bowl, mix together the melted butter, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, and water. Pour into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir just until it's incorporated and the batter is smooth. Don't overmix.

Pour batter into a greased 8" or 9" round cake pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove from pan and let cool on a wire rack. Once this cake is cool, you can wrap with foil and put in a Ziploc freezer bag and store for future use.

When the cake has cooled, make the ganache.

[(gə-näsh') n. A rich icing made of chocolate and cream heated and stirred together, used also as a filling, as for cakes or pastry. ]

Heat 2 cups cream in a saucepan on medium heat until the tops forms a slight skin. (this is called scalding) Do NOT let the cream boil. Immediately remove from heat and pour over 1 12-oz bag of chocolate chips in a bowl. Let it sit for a minute or two and then stir until the chocolate is completely melted and it makes a nice smooth sauce. If it's too runny, add more chocolate chips, and put on top of a pot filled with an inch of water. Using this double boiler method, heat it so the added chocolate melts.

Put the cooled cake (still on the rack) over a baking sheet. Pour the warm ganache over the cake and smooth with an icing spatula over the top and sides until it is well coated. Place the cake (still on the baking sheet) in the fridge and chill until ganache sets.

When I serve this, I slice and put a hefty dollop of chocolate whipped cream on each serving. To make the whipped cream, start with a pint of cold cream. Using a mixer, whip until the cream begins to form soft peaks. Add 1/4 cup sugar gradually, while still mixing. When firm peaks form, add 1 tsp vanilla and 2 Tbsp cocoa. Mix well.

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_4dwsrzrkf