One pie is just never enough

The responsibility of making dessert for July 4th fell on me this year, but I guess that's just an occupational hazard of being a baker. The real problem is when I want to make peanut butter pie topped with banana pudding and chocolate whipped cream, but my mom would really prefer classic apple pie a la mode. The logical solution? Make both.


Unfortunately I only got one picture of the peanut butter/banana/chocolate crazy layers pie before I smudged it (and by "smudged" I mean "ate"). From top to bottom it's chocolate whipped cream, sliced bananas, vanilla pudding, more sliced bananas, and baked peanut butter pie all piled into a graham cracker crust. Half of the brainstorming credit for this pie goes to brother Beau who I always consult with on food-related matters.


The apple pie I just kind of threw together. I started with a cinnamon pie crust which I filled with chopped apples tossed with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, lemon juice, and flour; then I covered that with another cinnamon crust and topped it with a mixture of oats, melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, and flour. The crunchy oat topping contrasted perfectly with the gooey filling (if I do say so myself!), and the addition of vanilla ice cream and homemade whiskey caramel really rounded it out.


More thorough recipes available by request!

work, work, and more work (not that I'm complaining)

My, how time flies! I've been working up a storm and we'll go ahead and use that excuse to explain why I haven't blogged since the dinosaurs walked the earth. Because it couldn't possibly be due to laziness... Aaaanyway, I've been working a lot, like I said, at a little bakery called Sweet Treets, and rather than bombard you with the usual ramblings and recipes, I'm just going to post some pictures that I've taken at work. So without further ado:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

A cupcake tower brimming with tiny cupcakes

12 of over 100 flowery cupcakes I decorated for a birthday

A cake under development

Same cake, still in the development process

The finished product

Good old chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream in the foreground and raspberry buttercream in the background


That's all for now folks! I'm hoping to get in here soon with some real pictures to look at and some recipes that very few people (if any at all) will actually bake. It's cool though, just come over and I'll bake for you!

Crappy cell phone pics, anyone?

Damn it's a good thing I'm not a professional food blogger, because to say that the pictures I'm about to show you are crappy is kind of an understatement. However, I'm hoping that the nature of the pictures makes up for their devil may care attitude. Okay, here we go.


You see what I mean? Anyway, Mardi Gras was earlier this month and as my family uses any excuse to party, we had a Cajun-themed dinner of gumbo followed by sweet, fluffy beignets. I had made beignets at work (I'm going to use my job to excuse myself from not having posted in I-don't-know-how-long since I work at a bakery and, come on, would you want to go to work and bake all day, then come home and bake some more? ...Who am I kidding? I do that anyway) and although they turned out really great once we oven-lovin' bakers learned our way around hot oil, I thought they needed something. So I made them at home and added cinnamon. That's a bingo!

I made a few changes to this recipe from Paula Dean which - amazingly - doesn't use butter! What were you thinking, Paula?

French Quarter Beignets
Ingredients

1 1/2 cups lukewarm water (around 100 degrees F- make sure the water isn't too hot or it will commit double homicide against the yeast and your final product)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 envelope active dry yeast
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup evaporated milk
7 cups bread flour
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup shortening
Nonstick spray
Oil, for deep-frying
3 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

Mix water, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.

In another bowl, beat the eggs, salt and evaporated milk together. Mix egg mixture into the yeast mixture. In a separate bowl, measure out the bread flour. Add about 3 cups of the flour and the cinnamon to the yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add the shortening and continue to stir while adding the remaining flour. Remove dough from the bowl, place onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Spray a large bowl with nonstick spray. Put dough into the bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a towel and let rise in a warm place for at least 2 hours.

When about ready to cut and fry beignets, preheat oil in a deep-fryer to 350 degrees F.

Add the confectioners' sugar to a paper or plastic bag and set aside.

Roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness and cut into 1 1/2-inch or bigger squares (the original recipe calls for 1 inch squares but I found that the smaller beignets were extremely uncooperative during the frying process and oftentimes refused to flip. Also, bigger squares mean bigger beignets!). Place about 10 beignets into the oil at a time, flipping constantly, until they become a golden color (if some of your beignets still won't flip, my dad and I found that gently stirring them with a big metal slotted spoon helped them to fry more evenly). Drain them on a paper towel and, every 5 or so batches, toss the beignets in the confectioners' sugar to coat. Or, you can wait until all the beignets are fried and then sift powdered sugar over them.

This recipe makes a TON so you should probably invite people over to help you eat them. Seriously, the first picture is only of half of the beignets. And the second picture is of this: