Month: October 2021

We’re back! Happy Halloween everyone! For this week I made gluten free sugar cookies with buttercream frosting.

Before we get into how I made them, my mental stae this week has been fairly decent and mostly stable. School of course has been the most stressful for me recently as there have been a lot of diferent things do all at once. However, I have been using many diferent ways to reduce my stress and anxiety and baking has been a very effective tool.

To start off, here is a link to the recipe I got off of allrecipies.com.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/240496/gluten-free-sugar-cookies/

Now, to start off, I had never done gluten free baking before, but I thought since a couple people in our class can’t have gluten, I’d try my hand at something they could eat! My first step was going to the grocery store to find some gluten free flour, and get the few othe ringredients I did not yet have in my house. The first step for making the dough was to mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Then to cream the sugar in with the butter and mix in some vanilla extract.

After this, the two eggs are mixed in one at a time until smooth. The wet and dry ingredients are then combined/ The though is then formed into a ball, wrapped in saran wrap and placed in the fridge for at least an hour. This gave me the time to  go out and purchase the cream cheese I forgot to get for the icing. After an hour has passed, I took the dough out of the fridge and cut it into four sections and left it on the counter to warm up a bit. Afer it was warmed, I pre-heated the oven to 325°F and rolled the dough on the counter and cut the cookies, then placed them on a baking sheet and out into the oven for around 10 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies begin to brown.

Once they are done, I took the pan out of the oven and left them to cool for a couple minutes as they would fall apart if I tried to take them off right away. After cooled slightly, the cookies are removed from the sheet adn placed on a wire rack to cool completely. While cooling, I started to make the icing. I used my stand mixer for this. I mixed the cream cheese, butter and vanilla until smooth, then beat in the confectioners sugar. Once this was mixed completely and I was happy with the taste, to make the cookies fit the halloween theme I dyed the buttercream orange with red and yellow food colouring.

Once the icing was ready I then put it on some ofthe cookies! They looked good, and let me tell you, they were delicious!

Thanks for reading! Tune in next week for another tasty treat!

This week, I was having trouble picking out what I wanted to bake, so I phoned my father and he said “why not boiled rasin cookies!” Now, I’d never heard of these before, but he told me that they were his favourite cookie growing up, so I decided to give them a try.

As alway, I will start of with a shot blerb on my mental health this week. I have been doing okay, though to be honest I have been a little down this past week, though I am not too sure of the reasons why.

Here is a link to the recipie if you would like to try for yourself  https://www.food.com/recipe/grandmas-boiled-raisin-cookies-196432

Now for the cookies! To start, I put a pot of water on to boil. Once it was boiling I added two cups of rasins to the water and let it boil for 5 minutes. After this I removed the rasins from the water and put them both to the side to cool. And don’t forget to preheat your oven to 400°F.

From here I then creamed the sugar with the butter. The recipie calls for margerine, and then in the instructions it says shortening, So I think the original reecpie called for shorthening, but I decided to sub this out for butter, and it still turned out! After this I mixed in three eggs.

Once the rasins had cooled I put them into the butter and egg mixture and added one cup of the water I used to boil the rasins.

After this I transfered the mixture to my stand mixer adn added the baking powder, salt, cinnimon and allspice, mixed for a but then added the flour. And of course swapped the whisk attachment for a dough hook as I was unsure how think the cookie dough would be when I was done. After all the ingredients were mixed in, I began to drop the batter onto a greased baking sheet. If you try this recipie for yourself, dont worry if the batter is a tad thin, as long as it’s not runny you should be fine.

Once you are ready, place the cookie sheet in the oven and cook for about 10 minutes, then pull the sheet out and remove from baking sheet to cool.
And there you have it! Boiled Rasin Cookies! Absolutely delicious.

Hello!

For week three of my Baking Adventure, I decided to make Drunken Apple Pie!
“oooooo” the crowd says, Well fear not! For I shall tell you how I made it!

As always, to begin I will talk a little about myself and my mental health. I have been a little more anxous this week about school since a lot of things are coming due at the same time, though once again, through baking I have been able to let that all go for a few hours while I make a delicious treat.

I have made a few pies before, but I have never made the crust by hand before, so this was a whole new challenge to me. To start, I laid out all my ingredients on the counter and started with the crust. I first cut two and a half sticks of butter into hald inch squares and placed them into the freezer as per the recepie. I then mixed the flour, sugar and kosher salt together. It was then that I realized that I don’t have a large enough food processor with the right attachments to make the dough, so it was time to break out the pasty cutter and get to work! I then added the butter and began to mix.

After the butter is well mixed in, you beging to slowly add iced water and mix until you are able to shape the the dough into two small disks and then wrap in plastic wrap.
IMG_0284

After I had made the dough and placed it in the fridge, I realized that I did not have a pie dish anywhere in the house, so I went and picked up a ceramic one from Penna & Company at Broadmead Village. When I got home I got to work on making the filling for my pie. I started with peeling and coring my eight granny smith apples, which took a lot longer than I first expected. After this I cut them into slices, and mixed together the spices for the filling. This included sugar, potato starch (I didn’t have any cornstarch so I used this instead), cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. Put this in a large mixing bowl, added my sliced apples, then poured one oz of my Knob Creek Burbon overtop. I then tossed the apples in the mixture until they were evenly coated. Now, this is where I made my mistake. I had forgotten to take the pastry dough out of the fridge before I started my filling, so it was as hard as a rock. As a result of this, I had to wait for a bout 30 minutes for the dough to warm up enough, and the sugar and alcohol began to break down the apples a bit and draw out a lot of the moisture from them. So instead of having very well coated apples, I had somewhat well coated apples and a bunch of liquid in the bottom of my bowl by the time the dough was rolled out. At any rate, I rolled out my dough into two thin sheets, placed my bottom layer and trimed the excess, added my filling them placed my top layer of pastry and trimmed that. I then sealed the dough with an egg wash and crimped the edge with my finger, put some slits in the top layer to let the steam out, and placed the pie into my oven, pre-heated to 425 degrees. After 15 minutes I reduced the heat to 375 and baked for another 45 minutes. After the time was up I removed my pie from the oven and set it on a rack to cool. After about an hour and a half it was cool enough for me to cut myself a piece. And let me tell you, it was delicious!

Thank you all for reading anoter entry into my baking adventure, I shall post again next week with another delicious goodie!

Hey again!

I’m back again for my second post in my weekly baking adventure. This week I made Scottish pan shortbread, the receipe I used, I was given by my Grandma.

I am not as anxous about school, though my mental state for this week is a little worse than this time last week. This is resulting from the sad news that a good family friend had passed, so that event has been weighing on me since I found out. Thankfully, as was the case last week, I put on some music, and for eth time it took to make my shortbread, I did not think of anything but what I was doing in the moment.

Making pan shortbread can be quite difficult. To make it, you must first cream a cup of caster sugar into a pound of butter, Once it is fully mixed in, you then mix in three cups of flour, minues three tbsp of flour and add three tbsp of potato starch. After it is mixed in, you take a fourth cup of flour and mix in just enough so you can remove the dough from the bowl and kneed it. You must kneed the dough for around ten minutes, or until it is smooth enough. This will be figured out after making it a few times. While kneeding the dough, the fourth cup of flour should be used to keep the dough from stickign to your hand and the counter, though it is not necessary to kneed in the whole cup. Once the ten minutes is up, or the dough is smooth enough, the dough must then be spread out by hand into an 11/15 inch cookie cheet or jelly roll pan. If you dont have a pan exactly 11/15, whatever you have closest to that size will do. This is the most difficult part, as the dough must be spread evenly across the entire pan to avoind uneven cooking. Additionally, if you push too hard on the dough, you may overwork it and cause the end product to be very overly dense.  Another thing that makes this dessert difficult is that it must be in the oven for 40 minutes, anywhere from 250-300 fahrenheit, and as every oven is different, you need to figure out what temperature in that range through trial and error. After the 40 minutes, you take the shortbread out of the oven and press lightly in the centre, and it should spring back. If it does spring back, you take a knife and clut it into pieces while it’s still hot, as if it is allowed to cool down it will crumble and fall apart whe you try to cut it while cool.

The end product turned out very nice. One of the better batches that i’ve done, though there is still much room for improvment. In another 10-20 years I might be able to make it as well as my grandma could. Hopefully!

Hello all!

Today I made espresso panna cotta.

First off, my mental state recently has been stable, with only a minor amount of anxiety, though I have been quite stressed out with many things being due at the same time. While making my panna cotta, I forgot about everything to do with school, all stress was lifted from my shoulders and I was completely engrossed in my baking. Though, as when making panna cotta and a brittle timing is everything, and it is very easy to burn things, so it was a little stressful.

The whole process went smoothly, though I was unable to procure hazelnuts, so I had to settle for walnuts for the brittle. Additionally, here in Canada you can’t get double cream, but you can use whipping cream as a substitute and you can’t get leaves of gelatin, but the conversion is three gelatin leaves per one tbsp. pouch of gelatin. I started by making a pot of espresso in my stovetop espresso maker, then when that was done, I measured out all my ingredients and began to mix and heat the cream, whole milk, espresso and caster sugar on a medium low heat. While this was heating up, I turned on the oven to toast the walnuts and put a cup of caster sugar in a pan to start creating the caramel. Now, at this point there are three things going on, all of which need to be watched very closely as all can burn very quickly. As things were heating up, I prepped a baking sheet with a silicone mat to pour the eventual caramel, cinnamon and walnut mixture on to cool and harden. Once the caster sugar had completely turned to a liquid, I added the cinnamon and walnuts and mixed it together. I then poured it over the silicone mat to cool and harden. It was at this point I almost forgot to check on the mixture for my actual panna cotta, so I quickly pulled it off the heat and added the gelatin. Once the gelatin was dissolved, I poured the mixture through a sieve into a bowl to filter out any lumps, and there were a few. From here I used a ladle to transfer the mixture into a silicone muffin tray, put it on a wire rack and placed it into the fridge to set. After it had began to set, I threw it into the freezer to speed up the process. After a couple hours it was all set and I put one on a plate, placed some walnut brittle around it and dug in!

The panna cotta was very rich and smooth with a nice coffee taste. The espresso really starred in the flavours. The texture was quite smooth with no lumps. My only complaint is that I can’t eat more than half of a serving as I am lactose intolerant!

I hope you enjoyed reading my experience with making espresso panna cotta! Check in next week for another treat!