Baking Round-up!

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Kiesha

Whoa, it’s been a while! I’ve been doing lots of baking lately and not enough updating, so here’s a quick and dirty round-up of some of the things I’ve made recently.

Pink Beauty (Vegan Pink Lemonade) and Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes for a Largehearted Lit event at Word bookstore.

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Toasted Marshmallow Frosting for another Largehearted Lit event.

Vegan Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Frosting for the same Largehearted Lit event.

And, of course, Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving!

This is, in my opinion, the BEST pumpkin pie recipe. It’s from the “Cooks Illustrated” people. There’s a whole article about it here which includes the recipe. It comes out so creamy and perfect and I wish I had more of it to eat right this second.

The Vegan Pumpkin cupcakes also made another appearance so my sister-in-law could have a Thanksgiving dessert.

Upcoming Events Where You Can Find My Baked Goods

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Kiesha

Hi everyone!
The Brooklyn Baker is at it again. This coming week, I’ll be baking for two (count ‘em, two!) literary events at Word bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Tuesday night, you can find my Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Toasted Marshmallow Frosting and Vegan Pumpkin Cupcakes with Vanilla ‘Butter’cream Frosting at a Largehearted Lit event featuring authors Nathan Larson and Joshua Cody. Wednesday night, you can sample Blueberry Scones and Lemon Scones for the book release party for Leanna Hieber and her new book “Darker Still”. Leanna is bringing Earl Grey tea to go with the scones!

Both events are free and open to the public! For more information, check out the Word events page at the link above.

Happy Halloween from The Swedish Chef

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Kiesha

My sister-in-law threw her annual Halloween party last night. Unfortunately, the New York/New Jersey area got hit with a freak October snowstorm, so attendance was a little less than spectacular. That just meant there were more of these bad boys for those of us hardy enough to accessorize our costumes with snow boots.

The recipe for these cute cookies came from The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle. She improved on the previous recipe by including the step of dipping the cookies in yellow candy melts to imitate the yellow/orange/white color scheme of real candy corn.

These were a hit at the party. They’re pretty sweet, but they’re also fairly small, so eating one or two won’t send you into a sugar coma. And they’re incredibly easy to whip up, so there’s plenty of time to make these while waiting for the Great Pumpkin tomorrow night.

Happy Halloween!

Literary Baking (Middle Eastern Baked Goods for Craig Thompson Event)

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Kiesha

You may remember a few days ago I wrote about a couple of events for which I would be baking. The first of these events happened last Saturday.

I baked Middle Eastern cookies for the event celebrating the release of Craig Thompson’s newest book Habibi.

The first cookie I baked was called hab el hal, which are sugar cookies flavored with cardamom.

These were super tasty. The cardamom provided a really interesting flavor and they were incredibly addictive. I just wanted to keep. Eating. Them.

The second cookies was called baraziq, which were butter cookies coated on one side with sesame seeds and on the other with pistachios.

I’m not a big pistachio fan, so I only had one of these, but it tasted pretty good. Other people seemed to really enjoy them.

The event was great and Craig was nice enough to stay and autograph everyone’s book with both his signature and a drawing.

I even took a little plate of cookies to the table where Craig was sitting to do his autographs. I hope he enjoyed them!

My 30th Birthday Party

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Kiesha

Yes, it’s true. I’m finally finally 30! I’ve been waiting since I was about 12 to turn 30 and I’m pumped that I’ve finally made it.

To celebrate, I threw myself a county fair themed birthday party. It was basically an excuse to do a ton of baking and make a dessert table. I also organized a few games of skill and a 1981 trivia contest.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I will bore you with lots of photos* from the day. Here we go!

The dessert table

Whiskey Apple Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (this was the hit – not even crumbs left!)

Vegan Blueberry Pie

Vegan Cotton Candy Cupcakes

Vegan Ice Cream Conecakes

“Caramel Apple” Cakepops

* Some of these photos were taken by my sister-in-law Megan Duffy, but I can’t remember which are which. Obviously, any with me IN them were taken by her.

Upcoming Events Where You Can Find My Baked Goods!

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Kiesha

September is a busy month for me! Not only did I spend Saturday baking for seven straight hours in anticipation of my 30th Birthday Party (more on that soon), but I am also baking for two different events at Word Bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The first event, “An Evening with Craig Thompson” is this Saturday. Craig Thompson is an incredibly talented graphic novelist who is responsible for some incredible books, including “Good-bye, Chunky Rice and my favorite graphic novel “Blankets”. He has just recently completed his first book in about seven years, “Habibi”. It’s the tale of two refugee child slaves and, as Amazon tells me, “at once contemporary and timeless, “Habibi” gives us a love story of astounding resonance: a parable about our relationship to the natural world, the cultural divide between the first and third worlds, the common heritage of Christianity and Islam, and, most potently, the magic of storytelling.”

Tickets for the event are $40 and include a copy of the book. There will be a question and answer session, as well as a cocktail hour in which attendees can meet and mingle with Craig Thompson. This is where I come in. I will be baking two different Middle Eastern cookies for the cocktail hour; Baraziq cookies, which are cookies coated on one side with sesame seeds and on the other with pistachios and Hab el Hal, which are Cardamom cookies.

I understand tickets are going fast, so get yours today!

The second event at Word will be another Largehearted Lit event sponsored by blogger Largehearted Boy. You might remember that I previously baked Doukhobor treats for an event featuring Alina Simone. This time around, the authors are Libba Bray and Steve Brezenoff. Bray is promoting her new book “Beauty Queens” and Brezenoff is promoting his book “Brooklyn, Burning”.

For this event, I will be baking vegan Pink Lemonade Cupcakes and (non-vegan) Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes. This event is free and both books are young adult friendly!

Come on out, check out some great books and eat some goodies!

Beet Ice Cream from “Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home”

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Kiesha

Well, Ice Cream Week has come to a close here on the ol’ blog. If you only take one thing away from this week’s posts, let it be this; Beet Ice Cream is PINK.

This recipe intrigued me the first time I saw it in the cookbook. In addition to the milk/cream/sugar base that the majority of the ice creams in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home use, this one combines two roasted, pureed beets and mascarpone cheese and throws an orange peel into the mix to steep. Jeni calls for poppy seeds to be added while the ice cream is churning, but my texture issues with bits in food put the kibosh on that.

And there in lies the problem. I pureed my beets and forced the puree through a fine mesh sieve, but the ice cream is still full of tiny little beet bits. My husband Rob didn’t have a problem with the beet bits, but I sure did. Even though I enjoy the flavor of this ice cream quite a bit (it’s so interesting and not at all what you think it might taste like), I only had one bowl because I couldn’t deal with the beet bits. I wish there was some way to OBLITERATE bits in food so that everything could be completely super smooth. But until that magical device finds its way into my home, I’ll stick to the creamy recipes.

So that wraps up Ice Cream Week! I will definitely still post all the recipes I try, but autumn is in the air and there are MANY baked goods on my horizon. In fact, there are a couple of pies cooling in my kitchen as I type this. More about those later.

The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World from “Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home”

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Kiesha

Day three of Ice Cream Week! This time, it’s chocolate.

I made three recipes out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home before diving into chocolate. So when it was time to go chocolate, I decided to really GO chocolate and chose the recipe titled “The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World.”

This ice cream gets its intense chocolately flavor from a chocolate sauce that combines cocoa powder, bittersweet chocolate, brewed coffee and sugar.

Jeni notes that this ice cream has a slightly chewy texture, which is true. I sort of love it. I like chewing my ice cream; it makes it seem like a meal.

The only issue I had with this ice cream was my own fault. Pretty much every ice cream recipe in the book calls for a little cream cheese and I was using cream cheese from a small tub. I think I pushed the tub too far back in my freezer and froze the cream cheese, which then thawed back out. My cream cheese had tiny little ‘beads’ in it, like tapioca, which I thought I got all smoothed out, but which reappeared upon freezing the ice cream. It didn’t affect the taste or texture in the least, but it was a little strange to see ‘bumpy’ ice cream in the dish.

Tomorrow I’ll finish out Ice Cream Week with Beet Ice Cream! Think pink!

Watermelon Lemonade Sorbet from “Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home”

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Kiesha

Ice Cream Week continues! Today I’m spotlighting the Watermelon Lemonade Sorbet I made using the recipe from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

I love lemon. It’s one of my favorite flavors. There’s a lemon frozen yogurt recipe in this book that’s calling my name, as soon as I get the time I need to prep that thing (you have to let yogurt strain for at least 8 hours in advance!). I’m also a fan of watermelon, as long as I eat it with a fork so I can pick all the seeds out. I hate taking a big bite of watermelon and ending up with a mouthful of seeds.

Therein lies the problem with this recipe. You are instructed to cut watermelon into chunks, remove the seeds and then puree it. Removing seeds from watermelon isn’t the easiest task. The black ones come out all right, but those little yellowy ones do not want to let go. Then you’re instructed to remove one cup of the puree and reserve the rest for another use. I’m not sure what that other use is, so I just cut a little at a time and pureed it, until I ended up with a cup. And that cup was mostly liquid.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of ‘puree’, I picture applesauce. Or baby food. A thick, pudding-like substance. I put my watermelon chunks in my food processor and two pulses later, I had watermelon juice. There was very little by way of watermelon ‘puree’.

I went ahead with the recipe and churned the liquidiness in my ice cream maker. 20 minutes later, I had a good-looking consistency, but when I stopped the machine and started to scoop it out, I noticed there was still a lot of liquid in the bottom of the machine. I churned for about five more minutes, but I started to get nervous that I was going to make my sorbet crumbly, so I stopped the machine, poured it all into a container, gave it a stir to incorporate the liquid, threw it in the freezer and said a quick prayer to the baking gods.

Well, it froze solid. There was no scooping of this sorbet. It was more like a granita. I had to chip at it to get a bowl full.

But man, oh man, it tasted fantastic. Slightly tart, a little bit sweet, big lemon flavor mixed in with that watermelon. We served it to friends and one of them (a vegan chef!) told me it was the best sorbet she’d ever had.

I posted my problem on the forum at Jeni’s website to see if I could get any pointers. I was told that the sorbet should not be liquidy while churning and that the puree consistency will depend on the sweetness of the watermelon. Great. I can’t very well tell how sweet the watermelon is without cutting into it and eating it. A few other people posted, commenting that they had the same problem, so maybe Jeni will look into this one and tell us all what we’re doing wrong.

Stay tuned! Coming up next will be the Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World!