Battling My Sweet-Yeasted-Dough Demons: Paul Hollywood's Brioche

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For some reason, every time I decide to make something sweet that's yeast-based, whether it's challah or gooey butter cake, the elements contrive to work against me and the thing turns out to be a huge flop.  I end up nervously hovering over my dough, waiting for it to double while I curse the rain and wish I had ever seen what doubled dough should look like so I could be sure I'd recognize it when it happened.  And usually I give up and bung it in the oven after waiting an hour past the recommended time, and usually that ends up being a mistake and I can only guess that my dough was under-proved... I don't have this problem with savory breads (but maybe it's just that it's less noticeable when they're a bit under-proved, and they're just a bit denser which isn't such a big deal in my book), but the sweet doughs always seem to elude me.

So I'm not sure why, when Bloomsbury asked me to test a recipe from Paul Hollywood's new book, How to Bake, I chose brioche.  It's everything I'm crap at: a sweet dough, with more ingredients than your average bread, and a recipe that requires planning, patience, and 2 days to babysit your kitchen.  And yet, somehow, once I saw the photo of that fluffy, gorgeous, golden crown of deliciousness, I just couldn't get it out of my head.

Pretty in Pink: Thomas Keller's Gorgeous Grapefruit Cake

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Sometimes it's nice to try something new.  I mean, I love me my lemon bars and  cakes and cookies, every now and again I read a recipe for something kind of out there and think 'hells yes, this must be made immediately.

And that was exactly the response I had when I read the recipe for grapefruit cake in Ad Hoc at Home.  Now, granted, pretty damn near everything in that book sounds delicious– I think I've spent more time drooling over it than the bf has, and it was his Xmas gift from me!– but this one definitely caught my eye.  Because, really?  Grapefruit?  In a cake?

Um, yes.  Really.   Ooooooh yes really.

Gingersnaps and a new respect for composition

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I may not have a fancy camera, but I can at least move the cookies out of the kitchen and into the light!

When my boyfriend requested gingersnaps, I was hesitant.   They seemed like a lot of work, and while I've always liked them, they're not my favorite (and we end up with a LOT of cookies every time I bake, so I damn well better want to eat them).  Nonetheless, he does support my silly amateur baking endeavors with gusto, so I figured why not give the man what he wants, rather than just making him want what I give him (he's rarely complained, but still)?

OMIGOD chocolate chip cherry oatmeal cookies!

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So I've been paging through The Joy of Cooking, and there are about a million things I want to make: crepes, sour cream pound cake, chocolate mousse cake, and most of all angel food cake, which was my dad's favorite birthday dessert when I was a kid and so it always reminds me of being allowed to eat sweet things (starting to get a sense of why I'm so obsessed with baking?).  But, as mentioned in an earlier, whinier post, I don't have the tools required to make any of those recipes.  Nonetheless, I soldiered on, and last night I decided to try the famous chocolate chip cookies.  Then I watched Desperate Housewives and read a hundred pages of the book I'm assigned for class and had dinner and watched a BBC program on the African Rift...

Cupcakes in Cali

Pin It My sister and I have always shared a love for crafts and Martha-Stewart-y activities, but the difference between us is that she actually plans (and pays for) said activities. Usually all I have to do is show up. It's one of the things I like best about her.

Now that she has a three-year-old son, she's more nutso than ever about this stuff; she pretends it's for him, but we all know better. The other weekend we found ourselves in the same place at the same time, which is unusual for us, and I agreed to do some cupcake baking/decorating. She had bought this book:

At first glance, I assumed we'd fail miserably to re-create any of the decorations pictured in the book, but the author promised that all the cupcakes can be re-created by anybody, without special tools (just plastic baggies, canned frosting, and a lot of strange props). So we gave it a whirl.