blogger bake sale

We baked a difference!

bakesalenkh
Hi folks! Just a quick update to fill you all in on how my very first Blogger Bake Sale went…

I spent the morning prior to the bake sale visiting all the different offices in my building to make sure they knew about it, and had my elves put signage up all over the place on the morning of the sale, just to make sure no one missed the fact that we were selling deliciousness for a good cause. We were set up by 11, with the intention of staying open until 1pm. We had everything from pink lemonade cupcakes, to marshmallow-dark chocolate brownies, to lemon-blueberry pound cake, and the line formed at 10:58am. Things were looking good.

(By the way, if you’re looking for a really great, straight-forward brownie recipe, this one is wonderful! I just added a layer of marshmallows on top during the last 3 minutes of baking to make them extra gooey.)

By noon we had sold 3/4 of our goods, and had raised over $200. In fact, things went so fast that I didn’t have time to take pictures before we had to start selling. By 12:45pm, we were totally sold out, and we had raised $311! That doesn’t count the few online donations we received, as well.

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It was a crazy busy week, but in the end, totally worth it! My fellow bakers and I, plus our volunteers who helped set up, sell, and tear down, have a lot to be proud of, and we’re very lucky to work with people who are so generous. I will definitely be doing this again next year. Maybe I can organize something at school. Hmmm…

There’s still time to make a donation, if you’d like. Just head on over here.

Don’t die of shock, but we’ll actually have a recipe on Thursday, and it won’t be sweet OR baked! I’m going to share one of my favorite summertime snacks with you, so stay tuned.

Kitchen 101: (Almost) Everything you knead to know about flour

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii there. I took a three day weekend from work and it feels like I’ve been on another planet or something. I’m back on planet cubicle and wishing I could blast off again, but duty calls. Or something. I realized that we were overdue for a Kitchen 101 around here, and seeing as the Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry is this weekend and I’m about to be knee deep in it, I thought I’d give you a little lesson on flour.

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For those of us who didn’t grow up around/with prolific bakers, our first introduction to flour was probably good old All Purpose. My mom wasn’t a baker at all. In fact, I was more familiar with the yellow box of Bisquick and the Duncan Hines box than I was real flour, but we did occasionally make a batch of cookies. Sometimes, she would attempt my Granny Bea’s biscuit recipe, too. Generally speaking, though, I would have never known there was more than one kind of flour if I hadn’t spent time in my Granny’s kitchen. She introduced me to Self Rising flour, which is one of two ingredients in her “The Easy Way” biscuits.

Nowadays, even the regular grocery store will probably have a pretty overwhelming list of flours available. Not only will you see all the flours made from wheat, you’ll also find flours made from a variety of other grains and nuts. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to stick to the wheat flours for now. If you are  using alternate flours because of gluten sensitivity or other dietary concerns, my guess is that you probably know more than I do (almost nothing) about how to use them. If you have any specific questions about them that you’d like me to research for another post, feel free to leave them in the comments.  The Bob’s Red Mill website has a ton of good information, though, and they say it a lot better than I could.

Let’s do a quick review of wheat anatomy before we get started. We’ll use this handy dandy little graphic from breadpastry.blogspot.com.

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A wheat kernel, the part we eat, is made of three components: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. Processed flour comes from the endosperm. If you see a flour labeled “whole grain,” this means that the bran and the germ are included.

All Purpose (AP) Flour is the most commonly used flour. As its name implies, this flour can be used in just about anything, from breads to pastries. Nearly all the AP flour sold in the US has been enriched, to add back the vitamins and minerals lost by removing the bran and the germ.

Self Rising (SR) Flour is literally just regular flour with baking powder and salt added to it. It’s great for biscuits (I promise to share my Granny’s recipe with you someday soon!), but because it already has a leavening agent in it, it gives everything bake with it a little bit of a lift. Take note that 11% protein Self Rising flours is the SR equivalent to AP flour, and the ones with 8% protein are the SR match for Cake flour. If you are using a recipe that calls for SR flour and you don’t have any on hand, just add  1 teaspoon baking powder and  1/4 teaspoon salt to each cup of AP flour and combine well before adding to the rest of your dry ingredients.

Whole Wheat Flour, or whole grain wheat flour, is made from the entire wheat kernel. Because bran is included, the gluten development is restricted. Baked goods made with this kind of flour will be denser and heavier than those made with AP flour, so many bakers use a combination of AP and Whole Wheat flour to get the texture they want.

Bread Flour is very similar to AP flour, but it has a higher gluten content. This makes it a better choice for making yeast breads. Why? The gluten helps the dough develop the elasticity it needs to hold on to the gas produced as the dough rises and the bread bakes.

Cake Flour is a much softer, more finely textured flour with low protein and higher starch than regular flour, making it ideal for pastries and cakes because it helps keep the final product tender.

Semolina Flour is the coarsely milled endosperm of durum wheat, a very hard wheat. It has a very high protein content, which makes it the perfect flour for making great pasta. It’s very rarely  used for pastries or breads all by itself, but it can be blended with AP or cake flour. This recipe from MarthaStewart.com is a great example of how to utilize semolina flour in a dessert. I’ve used it (with a few minor edits) and can vouch for it’s deliciousness. It’s still tender because of the cake flour in the recipe, but the semolina flour adds an interesting texture and flavor.

Those are the facts, kids. I hoped that helped sort things out! As I’ve mentioned in a previous Kitchen 101 post, if you have to make a choice about what flour to keep around as a staple, AP flour is the way to go. Any other kind you have on hand really just depends on the kind of baking you do.  If you keep some type of flour around for no other reason, you should have some handy to smear on your face and sprinkle in your hair when people come over for dinner so it looks like you’ve been slaving away all day, even if there isn’t a speck of flour in anything you’ve cooked. 🙂

P.S. I’ll probably remind you again on Thursday, but if you’re interested in learning more about the Blogger Bake Sale or the No Kid Hungry campaign, head on over here for the details.

“You owe me one.”

That’s what chef said to me last night as he was assigning out recipes for the evening. I was ready to volunteer to make anything else on the menu other than dessert, even the pain in the ass crab soup,  after last week’s gingerbread debacle. He had other things in mind.

“I think we all know who is in charge of dessert tonight, ” he said as he looked me right in the eye. “You owe me one.” And just like that, I was making Applesauce Cake with Caramel Glaze.

So off I went to the bake shop to get the pans, then back to the kitchen to get something into the oven as quickly as possible and start working on the back-up just in case the first one failed again. Why did the gingerbread collapse last week? Because I didn’t mix it long enough. At home, I don’t have a stand mixer. I do everything by hand, so I mix and mix and mix those cake batters to death. I assumed that the mixing time would be shorter with the stand mixer, but as it turns out, that’s not the case. My batter was under mixed and my cupcakes fell. Simple as that.

So, this week, I took that lesson to heart and built in plenty of time for mixing. Also, instead of doubling the recipe up front, I simply made the recipe twice (well, one and a half times). I’m not the best at math and while doubling a recipe sounds pretty simple, it’s actually really easy to screw one up if your math isn’t spot on.

This recipe as it’s written is meant for a bundt cake pan, but feel free to just make two 8 inch layers instead. I ended up doing a full bundt cake, plus half the recipe for another single layer cake.

Equipment:
2 Mixing bowls and a spoon and your stand mixer with the paddle attachment if you have one
measuring cups and spoons
sifter
medium sized pot
pastry brush (a cheap 25 cent paint brush from Home Depot is fine)
small bowl
bundt pan, tube pan, or two 8 inch cake pans

Ingredients:
For the cake:
1 C unsalted butter at room temperature
2 C packed brown sugar
1 egg
3 C All Purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves
2 C unsweetened applesauce
1 C raisins
1 C coarsley chopped walnuts

For the glaze:
1 C brown sugar
1/4 C unsalted butter
1/4 C evaporated milk

Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease and flour your cake pan(s).

Sift together the 10 oz (about 2 and 1/3 cups) flour, baking soda, salt, and spices in a bowl. Set aside. Dredge the nuts and the raisins in the remaining flour so they’re well coated. This will help keep them from sinking to the bottom of the cake.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and mix in well.

Alternate adding the applesauce and the sifted ingredients a bit at a time, mixing each addition in very well before adding the next, until all of it is incorporated and the batter is well mixed. (see? now i’m obsessed with mixing until my arm falls off!)

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Fold the raisins and nuts into the batter. Pour into your prepared pan(s), making sure the batter is evenly distributed.

Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a cake tester or skewer or knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. My bundt cake took about an hour and ten minutes.

Allow to cool in the pan for at least 30 minutes, then carefully loosen the sides and invert onto a rack to continue cooling for another 30 minutes or so. This is a pretty moist cake, so it’s important to let it cool completely so it doesn’t fall apart on you when you try to cut into it.

While the cake is cooling, you can make the glaze.

Put at least a cup or so of cold water in the small bowl.

Combine the evaporated milk, the brown sugar, and the butter together in a pot over medium low heat and stir until the butter is melted and the sugar has dissolved. Keep stirring (not too vigorously) as the mixture starts to cook. You want it to reach soft ball stage, or about 220° – 235° on a candy thermometer.

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Wash down the sides of the pot with your cold water and the pastry brush if you start to see the sugar crystallize on the sides.  You want to re-dissolve those crystals into the caramel before they have a chance to fall off in a big chunk into your mixture. Once that happens you have to start all over because just one little seed crystal can set the whole she-bang to solidifying. On top of having ruined the caramel, it becomes a giant pain in the tookus to clean the pan because it all seizes up into brown concrete.

When the caramel reaches the right temperature and consistency (drizzle-able? is that word? i think i just made it one), remove the pot from the heat and beat it with a whisk or a spoon until it thickens. If your cake isn’t ready to come out of the oven yet, leave the pot on the warm stove top while you wait so it doesn’t get too cool. You’ll probably have to give it another quick stir before you glaze your cake with it.

Once your cake is cool, it’s time to serve!

This is the bundt cake…

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annnd here’s the other single layer cake…

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As you can see, both are pretty delicious looking, so go with whatever works for the way you want to serve it.

I feel pretty vindicated this week… so vindicated, in fact, that I’m thinking I’m going to use this recipe for cupcakes to sell at our Blogger Bake Sale in a few weeks. Just a reminder, if you’re in the Denver area on May 2nd and want to stop by, feel free! If you are out of state and would like to hold your own bake sale, just join the team! Orrr… if you just want to contribute some cash to the cause, I won’t turn down your money!

Click here for all the details.

Best Laid Plans and All That Jazz

*JazzHands*
It’s a late post, and a quick one, but I promised an update today, and I try to be a woman of my word.

Plans are moving along. We’ll start recruiting bakers for the Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry hardcore on Monday. I wanted to tell you about all the fun recipes I’m testing, but as you know, school started this week, and it’s kicking my tooshie getting back into the swing of things.

I can tell you about one baking project I started this morning before I left for work. It’s a sourdough starter. I’ll do a full blown walk through after the weekend, but what I can tell you now is that it’s not a regular starter. I used the dregs from a bottle of a beer called Slap Your Momma in it. Those dregs still have a lot of little yeastie beasties in them, and those, along with the wild yeast that is naturally in the air, will hopefully join forces to make an interesting sourdough.

Here’s a picture of my infant starter. I’ll feed it a little every day to keep it bubbling and alive until it’s ready to use.

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I’m hoping to make some delicious mini loaves to sell at the bake sale. Fingers are crossed!

Even $1 Makes a Difference!

Hi folks!

I could really use your help. We’re one month away from the Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry. On the weekend of May 1st through May 3rd, bloggers all over the country will be holding bake sales to raise funds to help end childhood hunger. I’m testing out some recipes and meeting with our community giving team at work next week to recruit more bakers to help out. I’m really hoping to get this entire office building, plus folks from surrounding businesses involved in promotion and participation.
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bakesalenkh
Here’s what I need from you– Just share. Share this post to your social media accounts. Share the stuff I post about the bake sale on the I’m Gonna Cook That! Facebook page, re-tweet my Tweets about the Bake Sale. We want to sell out of our tasty baked goods here, AND we want to raise lots of money for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign. If you have a blog and can’t organize your own bake sale, feel free to join my team by clicking the Join Team link, and promote the heck out of the personal fundraising page the No Kid Hungry folks will give you.

If you’re able to donate, click here (even $1 helps!) or you live in the Denver metro area and want to bake for the sale, just leave me a comment or shoot me an email at gonnacookthat@gmail.com.

I’m incredibly excited about this opportunity to make a difference– a much bigger one than I could make all by myself. As a child, my family and I experienced food insecurity, and as a Big Sister with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, I’ve seen my Little Sister’s family experience the same kind of stress and worry that comes from not having enough to eat. If we can play a role in helping to make sure our country’s kids have enough to eat, why wouldn’t we?

Next Thursday, I’ll be sharing a progress report, plus details on some of the treats the team and I will be baking for the sale.

Thanks so much to all of you for the support!