Pumpkin Pie Retraction, Pumpkin Fudge Addition, and Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

Pumpkin Pie Retraction:

I stand corrected. Apparently, my sisters do like pumpkin pie, which is why, at 641 on a Thursday morning, I already have crust rolled out and in the fridge waiting for filling.  I found two rounds of pie dough when I cleaned out the freezer last week.  I have no idea how old they are, but they’re frozen, so why the hell not…

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/ultimate-pumpkin-pie-recipe2/index.html

I did not use the crust instructions from this recipe.  I use the one from The Pastry Bible (author Berenbaum).  It shrank a bit with baking, despite the half an hour chill before being filled and put in the oven.  Admittedly, this tends to happen to my pies even when I chill, tuck the edges, and prick the holes in the bottom.  Cie la vie.  Someday, I’ll figure it out.

I did get to use my tiny leaf pastry cutters, which I love, to add a little flair.  In the past, I have stuck the dough leaves to the edges of the crust and, inevitably, they have burned, because they’re small and cook far more quickly than the rest of the pie.  I do have a silicon pie ring that drapes over the edges of the crust to keep it from becoming carbon, but if you put it on immediately, which is what you’d need to do to protect the delicate decorations, the rest of the crust never acquires a nice golden tan.  Normal baking does give the leaves an appropriate autumnal hue, but they don’t taste very good by the time the rest of the pie is done.  This time, as an experiment, I cooked the cut outs separately on a cookie sheet during the pie’s last 15 minutes.  They turned out perfectly.  I’m not sure how I’m going to attach them yet.  I might just push them into the custard before it sets fully, though this particular pie has a topping (cranberries, pecans, and amaretti cookies ground in the food processor.  I used the ginger snaps left over from the cheesecake crust because I had them and why not; ginger and pumpkin?  Yum.  Also, there is only one place in Portland that I have found real amaretti cookies and they cost a fortune).

Waiting for it to cool before its assembled.  Further reports to follow.

Pumpkin Fudge:

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1108208

My wonderful colleagues are having a pot luck baby shower for me on Saturday and I wanted to contribute to the food stash.  I usually make a dessert when we have pot lucks at work, and I decided to stick with the trend.  I was going to make a very complicated cake and then thought, “why don’t I just make fudge? That way, if I screw it up, it won’t be such a spendy proposition to redo.”

I substituted semi-sweet chocolate for the white chocolate, because I thought that the white chocolate would be to sweet.  I was a little nervous, because the consistency of the two “chocolates” is so different (yes, I know, technically white chocolate is not chocolate at all because it has no cacao content), but, I’m sorry to report, it came out perfect.  Like perfect.  Smooth, shiny, perfect.  I failed to find my giant bag of pumpkin pie spice, so I used fresh grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice and the combo is just right.

The only disaster was the pot spitting hot corn syrup and pumpkin at me while I was “stirring constantly” and my hand went numb (have I mentioned the pregnancy induced carpal tunnel syndrome.  who knew?)  at around the same time.  Also, I burned my hand on my candy thermometer.  I did remember to put my apron on before heating up the potentially explosive hot sugar, so when it splattered on that big old belly that houses Tiny Hockey fan, no damage done, except to the sushi fabric of the apron.

Make sure you use a candy thermometer.  If you don’t have one, get one.  They’re cheap and time estimates don’t mean jack when you’re working with boiling sugar.  I would also suggest having all of the ingredients measured and laid out before you start the cooking process.  In the past, I’ve had chocolate break and sugar crystalize when I had to prepare something else while one or both were waiting and that gives you oily chocolate, and/or grainy sugar, both of which ruin whichever candy you’re making, are gross, and go immediately into the trash.

Peanut Butter Cup Brownies:

I can make a Yule Log.  I can make my own cheesecake from scratch.  I can make gum drops.  I can make marshmallows from scratch.  I cannot make a decent brownie.

http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/peanut-butter-cup-brownies-10000001630042/index.html

I mean, come on.  The recipe is from Real Simple.  They should be… well, simple.

I burned them twice.

The first time, I used the wrong size pan.  It was too small, they were too thick, and so, the outside being over done while the inside was inedibly underdone makes a certain amount of sense.

The second time, I used the right size pan.  I mean, unless Pyrex is deliberately lying to me with the engraving on the bottom of their merchandise, because they want my brownies to fail, which I doubt.

Still burned.

To be honest, I’m not sure how.  I checked them. Repeatedly.  Way before they were supposed to be done.  Even at time, the middle was totally raw and the outside was already burnt, especially at the edges.  Personally, I’m not opposed to an undercooked brownie, but by the time the interior of these were edible, the top had black spots.  My brownies developed the plague.

Seriously.

We ate the insides.  The guts were delicious.

Thanksgiving Test Drive #3: Chocolate Cheesecake

I sent out a list of proposed Thanksgiving desserts to the family about a week ago.  I had, inadvertently, neglected to include anything of a chocolaty nature.  This is heresy at any festive meal at which my mother will be present.

Cheesecake was on the list, because Hockey Fan loves it.

Hockey Fan loves cheesecake.  Mom loves chocolate.

Chocolate.  Cheesecake.  Together.  Yum.

Right?

There are a million recipes, but Nigella Lawson is particularly proficient at rich desserts, so I chose one of hers:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/chocolate-cheesecake-recipe/index.html

I decided to use ginger snaps for the crust rather than graham crackers because, well, while I was food shopping this morning, my eyes drifted to a container of ginger snaps and I thought, “yum.”  Also, I’ve become a fan of the spice-combined-with-chocolate trend (still on the fence about the bacon chocolate, but saffron/cardamom chocolate is amazing) and I figured ginger and chocolate would be a good combination.  I also figured that if it turned out badly, I could blame Tiny Hockey Fan for giving me a ginger snap craving at the wrong moment.

Before pouring the batter into the spring-form pan, I decided to line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper because, previously, I’ve been unable to completely de-pan my cheesecakes for attractive display; the crust always gets stuck to the pan’s base and the cake goes on my pretty, crystal cake stand adhered to a metal disc.  I was hoping that the parchment paper would allow me to slide the cheesecake off of the base without cracking the cake and, if I couldn’t remove the paper fully, I would be able to trim it down so that it wouldn’t be visible on the cake stand.

I omitted the cocoa from the crust because I thought that, between the cake and the sauce, there was plenty of chocolate to be had, even by my mom’s standards.  The crust turned out a bit greasy for my taste (though it did, with the help of the parchment paper, slide right off of the pan’s base when it was time) and initially, I couldn’t figure out why, as I had used exactly the amount of butter called for by the recipe.  The reason for the grease becomes apparent when one compares a recipe for ginger snaps to a recipe for graham crackers, however:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/ginger-snaps-recipe/index.html

vs.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/graham-crackers-recipe/index.html

There is almost twice as much butter in ginger snaps as there are in graham crackers.  Thus, one might logically conclude that one should cut down the amount of butter to be used in a crust recipe if one is substituting ginger snaps for graham crackers.

Lesson learned.

The cake itself is a pretty standard cheesecake.  If you throw everything in the mixer and combine it well, it usually comes out just fine.  This one did.

Now for the fun part:

The recipe calls for wrapping your spring-form pan in “cling film” and then in foil because this cheesecake cooks, like a custard, in a water bath and spring-form pans consist of two separate pieces, that, while held together tightly when the ring portion is locked shut, still provide a crack through which water might leak.  For those of you who don’t speak British (the recipe author is from the UK): “cling film” = plastic wrap.  I considered the instructions for a moment and then thought, “there is no way plastic wrap can go in the oven at 450 degrees for an hour and not melt.”  So I wrapped the cake in two layers of foil and put it into the water bath.

When I unwrapped the cake, water poured out of the foil and the cake itself, while intact, had definitely taken a bath.  Granted, it hadn’t set fully yet when I tasted it, but the cake was definitely soggy.  The flavor was lovely, but the consistency was similar to that of a sea sponge (not that I’ve eaten sea sponge, but it was the consistency I imagine a sea sponge would have if you popped it in your mouth).

I did some research of plastic wrap in the oven.  Here is what I found:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/647482

So, apparently, there is a heavy duty plastic wrap that can go in the oven, however, the recipe does not specify heavy duty “cling film” and I think that the flimsy crap I get at Costco would probably turn into plastic soup, ruining my spring-form pan, my roasting pan (used for water bath containment), and my lovely cheesecake.  Which of the chowhound options to choose to prevent this multiple catastrophe?  Not sure yet, but baking without the water bath seems like a good option, or perhaps lining the entire inside of the pan with parchment, rather than just the bottom (though any separation in the parchment strips would provide potential entry points for errant water).

Maybe next time, I’ll use a bourbon bath instead of a water bath.  Think of the flavor that would impart…

The chocolate sauce was a total failure.  I actually think, in this case, however, that it was the recipe and not me.  I don’t know if something was lost in translation or if there was a misprint, but there was far too much liquid in proportion to the chocolate.  It’s supposed to be a thick sauce, and even with the corn syrup, there was no way that it was ever going to be anything except chocolate milk.  I think next time, I’ll use a double boiler and add the dairy a tablespoon or so at a time, and skip the corn syrup all together.  Ganache will work just as well as sauce.

Conclusions:

1) glad I did the test drive

2) technique is still in limbo and there is some experimenting yet to be done

3) cheesecake is both a little time consuming and a bit expensive to make and so, this one probably won’t be test driven a second time.  This means that I will have to break the cardinal rule yet again and there will be some test driving to be done when the big day arrives… DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER!

Thanksgiving Test Drive #2: Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

No one in my family eats pumpkin pie.  Every year I make it, and ever year it sits, forlornly and looks pretty but sad while everything chocolate based, in cookie form, or containing pecans and bourbon is consumed with great joy.

I decided to do an alterna-pumpkin dessert this year, one that people might actually eat.  I found this frosted pumpkin cake recipe in Cooking Light before the magazine vultures got to it when I left the stack at the office:

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1932649

I’m happy, or maybe it’s sad (for the sake of the blog, anyway), to report that this cake came out almost perfectly with a minimum of fuss and no catastrophe.  I’d rather make my own pumpkin puree, but that’s purely a me thing; personally I think the roasted goodness is better than the canned kind and I don’t mind putting the effort in, but beyond that…

The cake is a bit more dense than I had expected, so it may need a few more minutes than suggested to cook all the way through.  Use your judgment.  The center bit I stuck my skewer into was done, but there were other center portions that were a little squishy when I cut into the cake later.

Using the light cream cheese made no difference in the taste of the frosting.  It was still delicious.  I think the copious amounts of sugar cover for the lack of fat.  I might, however, go full fat for the big day, just for the hell of it.

I did powdered sugar the cat, but he didn’t seem to mind that much.  Then again, he eats popcorn and drinks coffee.

I’m going to test drive a new cheescake this weekend.  Hopefully, something will explode or burn or curdle.  There’s corn syrup involved, so there’s always the potential for a giant, sticky mess at the very least.

High Holiday Brisket

Hockey Fan, my sister, Med Student, and my Friend Kung Fu Jew, decided that they were going to go to Rosh Hashanah services together this year.  Not being much for religious ritual myself, I decided that I would stay home and make them a traditional, Jewish, High Holiday dinner.  Such dinners always include beef brisket.

Often, this brisket is served with a stewed compote of dried fruit called tsimmis that every one finds disgusting, but somehow continues to get itself made each year, at least at my parents’ house.  The brisket that cooks in said compote of dried fruit that everyone finds disgusting is, inevitably, mostly charred gristle by the time it comes out of the oven, with the aroma of carbon and the consistency of shoe leather.  We may be the Chosen People, but whomever chose our traditional meals was certifiable.

I decided I was going to break of of the box and make a brisket using a more modern recipe, one that would leave the meat succulent and tender, with no stewed prune residue.  I chose this one:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/passover-brisket-recipe/index.html

As there were only going to be five of us at the meal (Med Student’s boyfriend, Ironman, was planning on stopping by), I decided I did not need an 8-10 lb. brisket as called for by the recipe.  I purchased a two pound, kosher brisket at Trader Joe’s and figured that it would be sufficient, since Tiny Hockey Fan wasn’t much of a meat eater that week and half a pound would be more than enough for each of my guests.

Have I mentioned that I had never made brisket before?

Remember the rule about never, ever baking anything for the first time when you’re having guests?  Well, it applies to cooking too.  I just decided to ignore it.  I did not do a test drive and thus, did not learn the following, very important lesson until we sat down to our high holiday brisket:

My friends, just because you’re using a quarter of the amount of meat doesn’t mean the thing is going to need to cook for a quarter the amount of time.

Why, might you wonder, did I not use a meat thermometer?

I did.  I set it to the proper temperature.  It’s a really good thermometer, with an alarm and everything.  That alarm went off half an hour after I put the meat in the oven.  I decided that I didn’t believe the thermometer.  That the meat couldn’t possibly have finished cooking that quickly.

So, I made the sauce as directed and put the meat in it to braise for another half an hour.

For the good of your guests, the sanctity of the holiday, and your own pride, unless you like shoe leather, trust the thermometer.  If the meat doesn’t have time to braise in the sauce, then make the sauce into gravy, pour the gravy over the finished meat, and let it soak for a while.

It would have been better with the tsimmis.

Baby Shoes

Baby shoes are a silly invention.  Babies don’t need shoes.  And even the smallest, newest, barely mobile baby will only keep a shoe on his foot for a minute or two before he manages to wiggle out of it.  That said, baby shoes are adorable and one has to have them.  I was at Bolt (http://www.boltfabricboutique.com/), buying the fabric for the wall-hangings (see, Yes, Billy.  Super Glue does stick to everything…) and they had these tiny kimono baby shoes on the counter.  The “awwwwwwww….” factor was amazing and I quickly picked up more fabric so that I could make them for Tiny Hockey Fan (pattern at http://www.homespun-threads.com/patterns/kimonoshoes.pdf).

The irony is, I don’t sew.  I have a sewing machine that I begged for as a graduation present from college.  I had grand plans to make all sorts of stuff.  I made a couple of curtains, and then it went into the closet.  Here in Portland, it’s been up in my “office” (read: room I toss of my crap into so I don’t have to organize it neatly).

But I saw the shoes and figured, “how hard can it be?”

Keep in mind, the nice lady at Bolt warned me that the shoes were a little bit tricky, due to the fact that one had to make sure one arranged the fabric properly to get the one shoe to wrap right and one shoe to wrap left.  No problem, I figured.  ”How hard can it be?”  So I hauled the sewing machine down, the better to hang out with Hockey Fan while he… well, watched hockey, and got to work.

Problem #1: I didn’t know how to thread my sewing machine properly.  The thread would knot up, tangle, and leave a thick, unsightly seam.  Luckily, I have a consulting source at work.  She told me what she thought the problem was (that I wasn’t loading the bobbin thread correctly).  I checked the manual.  She was right.  You’d have thought that I’d have read the manual in the first place when I realized that something wasn’t working, but I’m sort of like a guy that way.

Problem #2:  I don’t know how to pin things properly.  I almost broke the foot of my sewing machine twice before I realized I had run them in the wrong direction.

Problem #3:  I can’t follow a pattern line to save my life.  I tried.  I really, really did.  But no matter how many times I backtracked, seam ripped, no matter how slowly I ran the sewing machine, I was always off just a little bit.  This resulted in oddly shaped shoes that didn’t match AT ALL.

Problem #4: I lined them up perfectly so that one would wrap right and one would wrap left.  I was certain.  I was POSITIVE.  I had no doubts.  And when I pulled the second one off of the machine, they both wrapped right.

Between pair #1 (the cat pair) and pair #2 (the skull pair), I managed to solve problem #1 and problem #4.  And mostly problem #2, though I did give myself a nice bruise on the finger when I jumped the one pin that was in the wrong direction and I got caught between the foot and the screw that holds the foot on.

Still haven’t solved problem #3.  Even on pair #2, though one wraps right and one wraps left, they are totally different sizes.  They look like two totally different shoes.

I hope Tiny Hockey Fan realizes that they were made with love, even if they are lopsided and funny looking.

 

Kitty Caper #1

When people decide to decorate for a given holiday, they’re usually concerned about what their child/children or dog might do with said decorations to hurt themselves.  I’ve never heard anyone say, “I”m really worried that the cat might get maimed/sick from the holiday decorations.”  I’ve heard, “the damn cat climbed the Christmas tree again,” or “stupid cat knocked over Aunt Flos crystal vase when I put it out on the table with the roses in it.”   But never, “I’m really worried that the cat might suffer fatal injury from the halloween decorations.”

People, I’m here to tell you, you need to worry about that cat.  Cats are sneakier than dogs (and most children) and they  have hunting instincts.  When they see something they want, they’ll go after it without mercy until it is theirs.

That said, my cat Pele (the boy cat) usually has the attention span of Hockey Fan when his ADD is at its worst.  He’ll poke you and prod you for a good petting and then the second you move your hand to scratch him between the ears, he runs away.  He’ll hook your lip with a claw in the middle of the night and then, when you realize you’re going to have to wake up and give him some attention or he’ll never leave you alone, he walks haughtily away to his bed, where he curls cutely up and goes to sleep, while you toss and turn and sigh.  I’ve seen Bettis, the girl cat, wait for an hour of a spider that had crawled under Hockey Fan’s computer, to emerge, at which point she proceeded to torture it with vigor, but Pele sat there for about three seconds and then went off to find his next misadventure.

Thus, I figured the Halloween decorations were safe.

I’d made a nice little spooky autumn tableaux with those gel things that stick to the window.  Usually, I put them on the front door, but since it was pretty warm in the Pacific Northwest until last week, we’d been leaving the glass part of the door part way up so that the cats could sit in the screen and I didn’t have enough space for my lovely leaf, candy corn, and spooooooky cat display (the Happy Halloween letters were hopelessly mangled and the ghosts seem to have vanished).  We have a huge picture window in our living room that faces the street, and I figured that the trick-or-treaters would be able to see it the welcoming decorative scheme and know that we were open for business (we had a grand total of 4, by the way).   It looked great with the pumpkin lights and so, I figured we were ready for Halloween.

Over the next few days, I started to find the gel things scattered across the living room.  Hockey Fan and I couldn’t figure out how it was happening.  They were too far away from the window to have fallen off.  Some of them were still super sticky.  We figured that, maybe, the ghosties were out early this year.  And then, one Saturday morning, we were out on the front porch, unloading our bags from the Farmer’s market, and saw Pele, standing on his hind legs on the windowsill, very patiently biting, licking, and teasing, one of the gels from the window.  He carried it to a spot far away from said window and promptly began chewing in it.

Of course, then he threw it up.  He’s not the world’s brightest cat and I think he swallowed  some bits before we got to him.

I removed all of the gels I thought he would be able to reach.  He’s a pretty big furball, so I just left them along the top edge of the window, out of what I thought was his range.  Well, he found a way.

He even ate the spooky cats.  Cannibal.

So please, when you’re decorating, think of your kitties too.  They seem to really enjoy the texture of these gel things, and though we were lucky, and just had to clean up some cat barf, I imagine that if they ingested a lot, far worse things could happen to furry friends.

Yes, Billy. Super Glue really does stick to everything…

Hockey Fan and I were planning to paint murals of both PNC Park and Fenway Park for the baby’s room.  For those of you who aren’t sports folks, the former is the stadium where the Pittsburgh Pirates play, the latter where the Boston Red Sox play (the Pirates and the Red Sox are both baseball teams, by the way).  We took panoramic shots of the skyline last time we were the da ‘Burgh (yinz might not know this, but Pittsburgh actually has a really beautiful one) and, having been an obsessed Sox fan living in Boston for six years with other obsessed Sox fans, I know the Boston skyline pretty well.  We were ready!

Then, I went to Bolt, an amazing fabric store here in Portland (http://www.boltfabricboutique.com/) and spotted some Asian inspired remnant squares that screamed to be made into wall hangings, and that went particularly well with the sushi fabric I’d decided to use for the curtains (alas, I did not make the curtains myself.  One of my friends from work offered and I quickly agreed.  The fabric was just too spendy for trials and tribulations) and the Japanese fan (as in the implement used to move air around) that one of Hockey Fan’s friends had brought us from Tokyo and which I had mounted in a fabric-backed shadow box. Inexperienced as I was (and still am) I used fabric glue to attach the fabric to the back of the shadow box.  It’s a little wrinkled and baggy, but the fan covers most of it.  It’s sticking, but I would recommend something a little more substantial.  Or a little more patience on the drying front).

I was going to have Hockey Fan make wooden frames for the wall hangings, but then realized that it would be equally as cost effective, and probably faster, to buy canvases and stretch the fabric over them, at least for the smaller pieces of fabric.  I debated about which adhesive to use and then, in a basket of stuff waiting to go down to the basement, found…

… a staple gun.

Eureka, I thought.  Staples would hold the fabric taut and keep it secure, and the wooden frames of the canvases were thick though that the metal wouldn’t show through the front side.  And my experiment actually worked.  I had to pry out the corners a few times before I figured out that I needed to quasi-mitre them.  And had to pry out the long sides a few times before I figured out that I had to work from the middle out, but all in all, the first one and a half wall hangings were a great success.

And then I ran out of staples.  Instead of the satisfying, loud report of a staple gun driving metal into wood, I got an empty hiss of air and unattached fabric.  We had more staples, but neither Hockey Fan nor myself could get the damn things into the staple gun and we concluded that we had purchased the wrong staples (this was much easier on our egoes than believing that we couldn’t figure out how to load a stapler).

I hate leaving things undone, however.  HATE.  I have a very hard time walking away from a project in the middle, or leaving a room half-cleaned, or dishes in the sink even when the dishwasher is full.  This is something that Hockey Fan and I have had many, many… erm… discussions about in the five years that we’ve been together; ADD and OCD differ greatly on the acceptability of incomplete tasks.

I could wait to start the next wall hanging.  Really I could (eek!).  But I HAD to finish the one I was working on.  I was compelled.  Driven.

More than a little OCD.

I started searching the house, including Hockey Fan’s shop in the basement, for something to use as a bonding agent.  I considered fabric glue, but knew from the shadow box experiment that it wasn’t ideal.  I couldn’t find any regular glue that wasn’t in stick form, and I was relatively certain that it wouldn’t be permanent enough anyway.

And then I found…

… the Super Glue.

I swear it seemed like a good idea at the time.  I knew it would bond, I knew it would stay stuck.  And yes, I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch it directly.  And I didn’t.  I used a piece of scrap cloth, folded over several times, to press the fabric onto the glue that I had put so carefully on the back side of the canvas frame.

Super glue soaks through several layers of fabric rather quickly.

I totally glued the fabric to my hand.

I am a relatively logical person.  I like to think of myself as a relatively smart person.  I have a master’s degree in theology.  I am a nurse — I solve problems in a calm, rational manner every day.

I still glued fabric to my hand with Super Glue.  And when I discovered said gluing, still yelled, “Ah, ah, ah, I just superglued fabric to my hand,” loud enough to bring Hockey Fan running, without realizing that I should probably do something about the gluing, like, immediately.

The good news is, I am not still walking around with fabric Super Glued to my hand.  Both the bottle and the website give instructions on how to remove Super Glue from skin:

“Because Super Glue is so strong and bonds so fast, some people may find that they have accidentally glued two fingers together, or found that that small piece of balsa wood or plastic from a model they were building has completely bonded to their skin! Not to worry, for even though Super Glue is incredibly strong, it has one weakness: acetone.

Acetone is often found in household nail polish remover, and a small amount on the end of a Q-tip or cotton swab applied directly to the glue should dissolve the bond without damaging the skin. Be very cautious in gently peeling the skin apart as in removing a bandage from the skin; pulling the skin apart may rip the skin! Read the label to make sure that the remover actually contains acetone, as more and more manufacturers are turning away from the chemical because of the growing popularity of acrylic nails (which are loosened by acetone).”

— From the “Removing Super Glue section of the Super Glue website                   http://www.supergluecorp.com/removingsuperglue.html

The bad news is, it’s well nigh impossible to remove said glue from skin, and to remove whatever it is that you have glued to yourself from your skin, without removing a couple of layers of skin, despite the claims on the bottle and the website, even if you follow the removal instructions VERY carefully.

Despite all of that, I’ll have you know that I did finish the wall hanging.  It’s the yellow and red one in the picture.

The next time Hockey Fan and I went to Home Depot, we picked up some new staples.  We wanted to make sure we were “getting the right ones this time,” so we talked to the tool guru before making our purchase and explained to him what had happened with our previous box of staples.  He laughed (really really hard) and explained to us that we had been loading the stapler wrong; in our particular model, the staples didn’t sit on the sliding part as they would in an office stapler  but, rather, they slid into the staple gun itself and the sliding part locked them in place when pushed back in.

He swore to us, several times, that it was a very common mistake.

He kept laughing, though.

All in all, the wall hangings came out beautifully.  And the skin on my fingers has grown back.  No scars.

This time…

Thanksgiving Test Drive #1: Meyer-Lemon Cranberry Bundt Cake

I love Thanksgiving.  Actually, what I should say is, I love cooking for Thanksgiving.  I could take or leave the actual meal, but I always find great enjoyment in the preparation.  Especially the baking.

I’ve been told that I am a good baker.  This was not, however, always so.  I was probably the world’s worst baker/cook when I started creating in the kitchen.  Ah, 1995.  My junior year of high school.  One day, and I have no recollection of the impetus for his revelation, my economics teacher told us a really disgusting story about pate.  I decided, at that very moment, that I was never going to eat meat again (I have since reformed back into meat eater, much to Hockey Fan’s joy, though pregnancy has definitely toned down my carnivorous tendencies the last several months, much to his chagrin).

Returning to the relevant story:  I arrived home from school that fateful evening and told my mom, “I’m a vegetarian now.”  Her response, which caused much teenage angst at the time, but for which I am now grateful was, “Okay.  But I’m not cooking two meals, so you’re going to have to cook for yourself.”  My parents took me to one of the large, chain bookstores (I grew up on the East Coast, so no Powell’s there) and let me pick out a few cookbooks.  Being a snotty teenager, I picked one called “Cooking for Consciousness” and another one whose title I cannot now recall.

They were both TERRIBLE cookbooks.  And I was a TERRIBLE cook.  TERRIBLE.

I got a little satisfaction from the fact that my torture was also my family’s torture.  It was around that time that my parents, who both worked, had me start cooking for them and for my sisters, so they had to eat the slop I was concocting just like I did.

They teased me about it.  Mercilessly.  For years.

Gradually, though, I learned what tasted good and what didn’t.  Moving from the burbs to a big city for college (Washington DC) gave me the opportunity to sample a myriad different cuisines for cheap (and not so cheap when the rents were in town).  Moving  to Boston four years later gave me an even wider appreciation for food and its diversity.  Sampling so much variety taught me what I liked (pretty much everything) and what I didn’t (very little).  It also taught me how to combine ingredients in ways that enhanced them, rather than pounding people over the head with them, how to make the sum excellent without forcing anyone to gag over the parts.  I learned a lot from Food Network too, (that’s right kids, TV can be educational) like how to use a knife properly and that it’s okay to spend hours cooking a meal that takes twenty minutes to eat, as long as you enjoy yourself while you’re doing it.  I learned that macaroni and cheese does not have to come out of a box and that I too could cook Asian, Indian, and Italian food if I wanted to.  I few months ago, I made Japanese seafood consume.  Successfully.  I learned that I wasn’t ever going to be much of an innovator, but that knowing how to look at a recipe and figure out, “that’s going to taste good,” or “that’s going to be nasty” was an equally important skill.  I’ve amassed quite a collection of cookbooks since 1995.

The original two are either in storage at my parents house or in the trash.  Let us hope that they are buried somewhere deep, deep down in the ground under mashed cars and dead batteries, and that the anthropologist who finds them, sifting through a landfill in upstate New York one hundred fifty years from now doesn’t think that the information contained therein is indicative of how we actually ate in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I still make mistakes.  A lot of them.  I still pick bad recipes.  I still make disasters out of good ones.

I have learned the importance of the test drive.

I was watching Food Network one day (I don’t remember when and, unfortunately, I can’t remember which show) and the host imparted this sage advice: never cook anything for the first time when you’re serving it to someone else.  I have ignored this advice at my peril and that of my friends and guests.  I haven’t killed anyone yet, as far as I know, but I have engendered some polite declining of further helpings and some actual laughter (which I totally, totally deserved).  Once, my friend Steph and I nearly blew up an oven with an apartment full of guests when we (following a recipe to the letter, I might add) poured a bottle of port wine over the Thanksgiving turkey and then closed the door, leaving the alcohol to burn off with nowhere to vent.

I have, for the most part, learned my lesson.  Usually.  Most of the time.

So, after the trifle that didn’t set (two years ago), the turkey that almost exploded the apartment (three years ago), the tarte tatin that collapsed because someone moved it to the bottom rack of the oven and it hit the top rack while it was baking after I had spent hours and hours and painstaking hours rolling out my own, home-made puff pastry dough (it wasn’t me), and the pumpkin-caramel cheesecake that went into the fridge too soon and required a mallet for the breaking of said caramel (this past summer) I am test driving all of this year’s Thanksgiving desserts with extreme prejudice before the big day.

Test Drive #1: Meyer-Lemon Cranberry Bundt Cake

This recipe was published in the latest issue of Food Network Magazine, one of the few pretty, glossy things that still lands in my mail box.  Unfortunately, I brought said pretty glossy thing to work, accidentally left it in the staff room and was then out sick for two days and had the weekend off.  By the time I returned, the magazine vultures had gotten to it and it was gone (there are two things nurses can’t resist: free food and magazines/catalogs.  Do not leave either in the vicinity of one or more nurses unsupervised if you ever want to see them again).  Happily, the recipe had been posted to the Food Network website.  You can find it here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/meyer-lemon-cranberry-bundt-cake-recipe/index.html

Successes first: I did not use the cake flour that the recipe calls for because I didn’t have any and I was too lazy to go out and get more.  Usually, the type of flour one uses, especially for baking, makes a huge difference.  In this case, while the cake was a little bit more dense than it would otherwise have been, the texture was just fine.  I did sift the all-purpose flour that I used to aerate it a bit.  Perhaps that helped.

Being a resident of the Pacific Northwest, I don’t have an immediate source of Meyer lemons.  Sometimes one can find them, sometimes one cannot.  I have to admit that laziness kicked in here as well, and I didn’t really look that hard.  Also, I had a bag of lemons at home that I didn’t want to waste, seeing as how the previous two bags I had purchased had turned fuzzy and green before I’d gotten to them and Hockey Fan and I are trying to conserve cash for the coming of tiny Hockey Fan in December.  It turned out just fine, so if you can’t find the Meyer Lemons, don’t worry.

Now comes the part where I prove the importance of the test drive.  The test drives, rather in this case (there were 2).  The things I learned that will keep me form crying on Thanksgiving Day.  And I cry a lot more now than I used too.  Hoping that stops when tiny Hockey Fan is born…

On the first test drive, I pulled my Bundt pan out of storage and discovered that it was rusty.  I considered my angel food cake pan but 1) it was too big and b) I was afraid that it would leak (ironic considering what I’m about to reveal).  I do, however, have several cake pans, so I figured I’d just slop the batter into one of those and park it on a rimmed cookie sheet while it baked.  Might take a little longer, I thought, but I had time.

Test drive tip #1: Always put your cake pan on a rimmed cookie sheet during the baking process (your un-rimmed one will do you no good here).  It took me a very long time, and several hours on my  hands and knees scraping charred gook off of the heating elements in several different ovens to learn this lesson.  Good thing I actually remembered on test drive day, because the cake exploded.  Over the sides of the cake pan, down onto the cookie sheet, spreading all the way to the edges.  The batter AND the cranberry filling.

Test drive tip #2: Use the right equipment.  If the recipe calls for a Bundt pan, use a Bundt pan.  I baked the cake it until the outside was pretty well done, but when I cut into it, the middle was still raw.  There is no way to cook this cake in a cake pan without a hole and to have the middle cook thoroughly before the outside is carbon.  If you’re going to bake, invest in one of each kind of pan.  They don’t have to be fancy or expensive.  I found a great, non-stick Bundt pan at Target for around $15.  It’s a Wilton pan; a reputable, durable brand knowing for the excellence of it’s baking equipment, still purchased on a budget.  It will last forever, provided that I dry it when I take it out of the dishwasher or wash it by hand.

Test drive tip #3 (garnered from previous test drives): Do yourself a favor and grease your pan with cooking spray instead of doing the butter/flour thing.  I don’t know about your cakes, but mine always, always, always, get stuck when I use butter, no matter how much I grease and how well I flour.   I either have to use a knife to pry it out, ruining the pan, or the cake comes out in pieces.  When I use cooking spray, no additional grease or flour and the thing slides right out onto the cooling rack.  I used to hate cooking spray.  Now, I love it.  Also, even if the pan you buy says “non stick,” you still need to grease it.  I have learned from many a previous test drive that cakes and pastries always stick, no matter what promises your pan is making you.

Test drive tip #4: This recipe doesn’t call for sifting the confectioner’s sugar when you make the glaze, so I didn’t on test drive #1.  I probably should have known to do it anyway,  but the Food Network recipes are usually pretty idiot-proof, so I tend to follow them word for word, when I am baking (in the words of the immortal Paula Deen “Cooking is an art.  Baking is a science.”  I’ll play with dinner, but not with dessert).  The test drive #1 glaze had gross, tooth-numbingly sweet blobs of confectioner’s sugar in it, which totally destroyed both the look and the taste of an already ugly cake.  I  hate ugly cakes that don’t taste good (if they taste good, I shrug and get a fork) and I know you do too.  On test drive #2, I did sift the sugar.  Much improvement.

Test drive tip #5:  When the recipe author says “don’t let the cranberries touch the sides of the pan,”  don’t let the cranberries touch the side of the pan.  On both test drives, the cranberries made a break for it.  I thought, “meh, no big deal.”  The result: burned cranberries.  On test drive 2, it didn’t affect the taste, but my pretty cranberry ring had brown blotches.  I hate brown blotches almost as much as I hate ugly cakes that don’t taste good.

Test drive tip #6: When the recipe author recommends letting the cake sit in the syrup for 24 hours before serving, do it.  Don’t get impatient and upend the thing after an hour.  You’ll be glad you waited.

The test drive #2, cooking-sprayed, Bundt paned version was far more successful, despite the slightly charred fruit.  It got a thumbs up from Hockey Fan and our friend Rob, who is currently staying with us.  Also, it lasted almost two weeks under a cake dome, which is truly impressive for any baked good.  It has passed the testing phase and will be on the Thanksgiving menu.

I didn’t know I was going to start this blog when I made the cake, so no picture on this one.  I will take one when I make the cake for the big day and post it then.  No matter what it looks like.

Next up: Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Cheesecake

I’m skipping the pumpkin pie this year.  No one eats it anyway.