You love books, right? And of course you love baked goods. If you’re in the area, stop by Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Word bookstore this Tuesday, March 26th for the latest in the Largehearted Lit series.
This month’s event will feature Michelle Orange and Teddy Wayne and will also feature Pink Lemonade and Chocolate Stout cupcakes by yours truly!
For more information, click here.
Hey everyone! I am doing my very first giveaway and wanted to invite you all to participate!
I’m giving away cookbooks to three lucky winners. Two people will receive a copy of “Cake Pops” by the talented Bakerella and one person will receive “Whoopies!” by Susanna Tee.
To enter this contest, all you have to do is “like” The Brooklyn Baker on Facebook! Already like it? Then you’re already entered to win! Want two chances to win? You can get an extra entry by sharing this post on your own Facebook page. Just hit the “Share” button under the post to post it to your own Facebook page.
Contest will end Friday, April 27th at noon EST. Three winners will be selected at random and will be notified Monday, April 30th via Facebook. The winners will also be announced on this blog. The books will be mailed out the following week.
You might think you know marshmallows. Those big, puffy white pillows that come in a Jet-Puffed bag or those tiny, crunchy blue stars and red hearts in a box of Lucky Charms. Think again.
Shauna Sever (of the blog Piece of Cake) brings you a myriad of delicious and delightful marshmallow recipes in her new cookbook “Marshmallow Madness”. The recipes range from classic Vanilla Marshmallows to boozy Margarita Marshmallows to fruity Key Lime Pie Marshmallows (rolled in crushed graham cracker crumbs)!
I set out to try one of the recipes and settled on Root Beer Float Marshmallows.
These marshmallows are made with actual bottled root beer. Root beer is mixed with the gelatin and it’s also added into the sugar/corn syrup mixture, which gets whipped along with the gelatin to within an inch of its life.
Shauna’s recipes are clear, concise and easy to follow. I was skeptical that the liquidy mess I was pouring into the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer would turn into marshmallow, but sure enough, it tripled in volume and became a gooey, sticky, delicious confection. Wary of getting a spatula coated in marshmallow, I simply coated my hands with cooking spray and scooped the marshmallow goo into a greased 8×8 glass pan by hand.
The hardest part of the whole marshmallow-making procedure is waiting six hours for the marshmallow to cure and set up. But set up it does! These marshmallows aren’t anything like those Jet-Puffed ones; they’re light and airy but with a little bit of jiggle. The people who tasted these marshmallows compared their appearance to tofu or flan, but I think that had more to do with the slightly tan color that came from the root beer.
I only had two issues with my marshmallows. The first was that the root beer flavor was just a little too subtle. Shauna writes that root beer extract is optional if you’re using a high-quality root beer. I went with Virgil’s, which is an amazingly flavorful root beer, but the intensity of the flavor just didn’t carry over. When I make these again (and I will make them again), I will definitely add the root beer extract for the added oomph of flavor.
The second problem was that my marshmallows seemed to absorb the powdered sugar and cornstarch coating that they were dusted with. The coating helps to keep the marshmallows from sticking together, but my coating just got absorbed. I’m not sure if I should have dusted them and then laid them all out single file on a baking sheet instead of throwing the in a Tupperware bowl (which is what I did). I will play around with this coating in my next few marshmallow attempts until I get it right.
There are so many wonderful recipes in this book that I can’t wait to try. I’m especially looking at the aforementioned Key Lime Pie marshmallows and the vegan ones for my sister-in-law.
And, just in time for Easter, Shauna has linked a couple of videos on her blog that will teach you how to make your very own Marshmallow Peeps! I’m already committed to bringing an Angel Food Cake to my family’s Easter dinner, but those Peeps were second on my list!
Good news, everybody. I now have a page where you can read about upcoming events wherein you can sample my baked goods, as well as see a list of my past events and what I baked for them.
Also, if you’re interested in having some of my baked goods at your event, please contact me and we’ll see what we can work out. I even have a rate sheet now!
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!
When I woke up this past Friday morning, I had no idea that in a few short hours my husband and I would be sitting in a window at Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street, eating Chicken Parmesan and tiramisu affogato. Or that our food would be prepared by celebrity cook/cookbook author Katie Lee. Or that said food would be served to us by one of our favorite comedians, Mike Birbiglia.
(Photo by Flickr user Agent J Loves Agent A)
Mike is in the middle of a promotion he’s doing with Downy, the fabric softener people. He’s spending a week living (and sleeping!) in a window at Macy’s in Herald Square, NYC to demonstrate that washing your sheets once a week with Downy fabric softener will leave them smelling as sweet and April fresh on the seventh day as they were on the first. Continue reading
In early September, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend of three years got engaged. They held an engagement party over this past weekend, and I volunteered to bake vegan cupcakes for the event (more on those in a future post). But I knew I wanted to do something else, something personal and special…cake pops.
But not just any cake pops, Mr. Met cake pops. Megan and Michael have an intense love affair with the Mets. Their spare bedroom/office is decorated with enough Mets memorabilia that it rivals the gift shops at Citifield. Mr. Met even made a special guest appearance at Michael’s 30th birthday party earlier this year.
Look at his perfectly round head… So well suited for a cake pop.
A cake pop, for those uniformed among you, is a ball of cake and frosting dipped in candy coating. Oh, and it’s on a stick. For a tutorial and photos that will make your jaw drop, visit Bakerella, the endlessly talented lady who has elevated the ball of cake and frosting to an art form.
So I set out to create Mr. Met cake pops. I did a little testing in the weeks leading up to the engagement party. I made pumpkin cake pops and cat cake pops, neither of which was documented. There was much swearing and gnashing of teeth in the pursuit of the perfect pop. By last Wednesday, I was ready to go.
Forming the cake balls was the easy part. I mixed white cake with vanilla frosting and put the balls in the freezer to chill. Meanwhile, I melted the white candy coating and gathered my white Tic Tacs (his nose, of course), and started dipping.
Everything actually went pretty smooth. Only two cake pops fell off the sticks, and only three pops ended up with light bulb heads.
Then the drawing began. I spent the better part of an hour drawing on the faces and then retired for the night. I came back the next night and added the stitches. Then I set to work on the hats, which I formed out of marzipan.
When they finally came together, they were pretty darn cute.
They made a lovely addition to the party.
The bride and groom with their cake pops.
And finally, all good (and cute) things must come to an end.
Update: The wonderful Bakerella posted these guys over at her website! I’m a Pop Star!
This is totally unrelated to baking, but a few months ago I went to an open casting call for a music video for my favorite band, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The video was finally released last week. I make a couple of appearances…see if you can find me.
I spent a good part of today following new mobile food vendors on Twitter. I even made a list of all the New York area food vendors that I follow. I thought people might be interested, so here’s the list of people I follow:
Wafels & Dinges, my personal favorite. A beautiful yellowy truck that delivers Belgian waffles and a variety of toppings, including the addictive graham cracker-y spekuloos spread. They are Twitter addicts, so you’ll never have to wonder where the truck is parked, and they always offer a free dinges for answering a question or performing a task that they assign. Today for instance: “Tell us how many more Mel Gibson rant tapes will come out.”
The Treats Truck, mobile bake sale, stocking classic cookies and brownies. I haven’t had the pleasure of trying this place, but I am now following them so I can see where they park and remedy this situation.
Cupcake Stop, a cupcake truck. I haven’t stopped here yet, but I’ve noticed that they are pretty close to my work on some days, so I may hit them up soon.
The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, mobile ice cream. This one is elusive! I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve heard a lot about it.
Rickshaw Truck, specializing in dumplings. I’ve only caught a few fleeting glimpses of this beauty, but now I’m following them, and as soon as they get close enough to my work or home, I’m going to attack.
The following Twitterers are stationary, and definitely worth a visit:
Baby Cakes, probably the most famous vegan bakery in New York City. They have a cookbook. And they have tons of loyal customers, including celebrities like Jason Schwartzman. They update their Twitter account every day with the various goodies they’ve got in stock for the day.
Sweet Melissa Patisserie, Park Slope location, an amazing bakery on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. Twitter updates are infrequent, but often awesome. They haven’t done this since February, but for a while they were offering cookies or cupcakes with a drink purchase if you had the code word from Twitter.
The current issue of New York magazine (the ‘Cheap Eats’ edition) features a two-page spread with adorable cartoon versions of many of NYC’s mobile food vendors. You can see the images and information here, but that spread is amazing. I want a print to frame and hang in my kitchen. Here’s the Wafels & Dinges truck:
Oh, I’m on Twitter too. You can follow me here if you’d like.