The Baking Addict

Banana Bread!

2009-04-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Here is the long awaited recipe! Over here. You can read reviews and such!

Banana Banana Bread:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

I followed the recipe exactly, and I loved it. I doubled it and made 2 loaves. They were amazing, and they were done in about an hour and five minutes. Loved it!

I know, I know...

2009-04-08T21:36:00.001-07:00

So it's been awhile, yet again.

I made banana bread tonight! I will post the recipe tomorrow after I properly try the banana bread and deem it worthy.

I went to a wedding on Saturday, actually, I was in the wedding as a bridesmaid! Beautiful wedding cake, really made me want to scratch that itch I have for attempting a wedding cake.....

Tres Leches Cake

2009-04-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, I had a long weekend! Friday night I went out to pick up my friend Miranda from downtown, and she didn't leave until yesterday. That's my excuse for no posts!

I baked some stuff tonight, and will bake more tomorrow night, but for now I'll use an old recipe for a post.

Tres Leches Cake! It translates to "three milks" which in this case, are, heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk. The cake is then iced and covered in whipped cream.

I originally found this recipe on Eating Out Loud:

http://www.eatingoutloud.com/2007/03/insanely-good-tres-leches-cake-recipe.html

I thought it looked insanely pretty so I decided to give it a shot! I loved how his two layer cake looked, so I didn't go with the 9x13 option or the rectangle cut in half option. I baked mine in 2 9-inch round cake pans. I also found it very interesting to have a cake "soaked" in a three milk mixture.

I let them cool and then "peeled" the tops off the cakes. I "iced" the sides of the bottom layer cake, and created a "lip" to catch the milk mixture. Then little by little I soaked the cake with the milk mixture. Topped it with whipped cream, put second layer on top, and repeated the previous steps. I have to say, I really went at the cake with the poking, so that it would soak up the milk mixture. I was a little afraid that it would look terrible once sliced, but there were no holes whatsoever when it was sliced after being in the fridge, so go nuts with the poking if you want!

I topped the cake with strawberry slices, and it was absolutely delicious. The strawberries really complemented the cake, so next time I think I'll puree strawberries and add them to the middle layer as well, just to make the strawberry flavour really pop.

Tres Leches Cake
from Central Cafe, El Paso TX (as published in Texas Monthly Nov. 1999)

Cake

9 Eggs (room temperature)
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
12 Tablespoons Butter (softened)
2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Cup Milk
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Teaspoon Cream of Tartar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate egg yolks and whites, keeping whites at room temperature. In bowl of an electric mixer, cream sugar and butter together until pale yellow and fluffy. Add egg yolks and beat until fluffy again, 2 to 3 minutes on medium-high speed. In a separate bowl combine flour and baking powder. In a third bowl mix milk and vanilla. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk mixture to the butter mixture (a fourth at a time) until all are combined. Beat until smooth after each addition.

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form and, using a large spatula, gently but thoroughly fold into flour-and-butter mixture. Grease bottom of a 9- by 13-inch metal baking pan. Pour in batter and bake for approximately 25 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to cool. (May also be baked in an 11.5- by 17.5-inch sheet pan for 20 minutes; this size rises very evenly, helpful for inexperienced cooks.)

Three Milks

2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Five-Ounce Can (5/8cup) Evaporated Milk
1 Fourteen-Ounce Can (7/8cup) Sweetened Condensed Milk

Stir the milks together thoroughly; do not beat. Do not refrigerate canned milks before using.

Cream Icing

2 Cups Heavy Cream
1/3 Cup Sugar

Whip cream and sugar together until stiff. When cake is cool, slice or peel off the thin top crust. Ice sides first, creating a small lip on top to catch milk mixture. Pour milk mixture evenly over top of cake (if necessary, poke holes in cake with a knife or toothpick to facilitate soaking; you will probably need only 3/4of mixture). Finish icing top. (If using an 11.5- by 17.5-inch pan, cut cake in half to make 2 equal pieces. Soak first layer, ice top if desired, and place second layer on top of it. Proceed as above.) Chill cake immediately and allow to set for 2 hours (or overnight) before serving. Serves 12.

Quest For the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

2009-03-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

If you mosey on over to here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/09chip.html

You will see an article that definitely caught my attention and made me think: Is there such a thing as the perfect chocolate chip cookie? The answer is definitely yes.

In this post, I will give you my top 3 chocolate chip cookie recipes. The first, is from the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/091crex.html?ref=dining

The recipe, which was adapted from Jacques Torres, was one I set out to try immediately, as there were many things about it that I never heard of in a cookie recipe before. The first, was that it used cake flour and not all purpose. The second, was that the cookie dough was refrigerated for 36 hours before it was baked. And yes, I tested it: the cookies that were baked immediately after mixing were not quite as flavor filled as the ones that had time to really "soak up the liquid (eggs and butter.) The last thing that intrigued me? Salt was sprinkled on the cookies before baking.

This cookie definitely has a bit of a grown up kick to it, with the mix of sweet and salty.

I definitely give my approval of that recipe being included in the article, but I wanted a more traditional cookie that was just soft, chewy, and filled with chocolate chips. I found this cookie recipe, on AllRecipes.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Award-Winning-Soft-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies/Detail.aspx

I followed the recipe with some minor changes (2tbsp of vanilla, 2tsp of baking powder, and 1/2tsp of salt) baked for 8 minutes, and what came out of it was a delicious, soft, chewy chocolate chip cookie that reminded me of those "chewy" Chips Ahoy cookies. I had tried many cookie recipes that came out a little bit crispy and crunchy, but this one was super soft.

Now that I had found the best homemade-tasting chocolate chip cookie, I decided to try a recipe for a big bakery style one, and that one also, was found on Allrecipes!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Big-Fat-Chewy-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie/Detail.aspx

This one I followed exactly, but found the dough to be pretty sticky, so I followed a reviewers suggestion to refrigerate the dough for an hour, and it was perfect. It firmed up, and I used my little 1/4cup scoop to put the dough on the pan, without forming them into balls or anything because my scoop made them look like little pucks. I lined my pans with parchment and baked for exactly 15 minutes, and they were the biggest, softest cookies I've ever tasted. These definitely win over bakery cookies :D

So there you have it. My top 3 "tried and true" chocolate chip cookie recipes.

All About Me

2009-03-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, now that I've introduced you to the blog, it's time for all the stuff about me!

My name is Tamarah. I'm 22 years old, and I live with my boyfriend. I'm currently working at McDonalds to save up money to go back to school.

What I'd really love to do is take the Baking and Pastry Arts program at George Brown,

http://www.georgebrown.ca/Marketing/FTCal/chefschool/H113.aspx

followed by a cake decorating course at the Bonnie Gordon School of Cake Decorating and Design. Here's a link to the classes here:

http://www.bonniegordoncakes.com/pages/classes/classes-workshops-main.htm

If you scroll down to the "Professional-level Certificate Programmes" you'll see a "Masters Confectionary Arts, and that's what I'd like to do!

See, I want the 2 year Baking and Pastry Arts Program because I love all baking, and I'd love to be able to know everything about it, including how to make breads, danishes, bars, cookies, cakes, etc; whereas the Masters Confectionary Arts one is, well, all about cake design and decorating. In the long run, I think I'd love to make cakes and decorate them, but as a baker, I'd love to be able to do all of it.

Now all I need to do is save up the money for it!

Welcome!

2009-03-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

So my sister recently made a blog. You can view that one here:

http://tobylinn.blogspot.com/

And she's always been telling me that I should make a blog, so when she made hers and I went to view it, and was all "wow, cool!" I decided I'd try making one.

I'm not a gaming nerd, although I must admit, I do love WoW. And I'm not a computer geek, not really anyways. And I don't have any strong opinion on politics, nor do I enjoying critiquing books or movies (well I do a little bit, but not in a "I want to blog about it" sort of way)

But I do love baking, and honestly, I could talk about it all day long. Unfortunately for me, I'm pretty sure most of my friends really only want to hear that I made them baked goods, but not the techniques I used to make them :P I can't even count the number of time my boyfriend has said "wow, baby, that's soo interesting...uh huh.." (that's right, I know you're not listening!)

So that's why I have this blog. Because I think about baking pretty much 24/7, and also, I'm always trying to find new recipes to try out, and it would be awesome to be able to post about it here, complete with the recipe, the source of the recipe, and how it worked out for me. That and, my friends always complain about me making them hungry when I talk about recipes I want to try. At least this way, it's their choice to read about it or not, right? :P

So that's basically the premise of the blog. I love baking, and as I try new recipes, or recap my tried and true recipes, I'd love to write about my experiences with each recipe, and also post photos.

More about me in the next post!