Pitty Puppies

Meet Faye! 

And her fabulous ears!

She's an adorable, rambunctious little puppy.  She loves to run in and play with everyone as if she's known them forever, even if they've only just met.

This beautiful little girl is Adalai:

She is such a beautiful color, and and even more stunning personality.  

For Faye's page

For Adalai's page

Madeleines With Dad

My first recipe to be posted on here featuring my dad!  He's basically one of the biggest reasons that I got into baking in the first place, and food in general.  

Anyway, my big gift for him from Paris was a french pastry book for us to translate and use together.  For whatever reason, we didn't use it to make these madeleines, but we used a recipe from Julia Child instead.  It was a great recipe though, and turned out pretty much as we expected, not as big and rounded as the ones I had in France, but I'm beginning to think that's a different recipe because when I googled Madeleine recipes I got a few different kinds.

The first thing you have to do is melt and clarify the butter.  I'm going to emphasize this because I didn't realize what the recipe meant by this when I made it so I almost messed up big time.  Basically you just need to melt the butter and allow it to cool in some sort of container that you can use to pout off the top (yellow) layer to use in your madeleines.  The bottom will be white solids that you don't want to use:

My dad whipped the eggs and sugar  by hand.  Our recipe was a little bit different, it also had us temper the eggs and sugar before beating it.

Add in the dry ingredients:

Then add the butter, which should look like this if clarified:

Add in and mix thoroughly:

Pour into your prepared pan and bake!

And just for fun, a picture of my gigantic bottle of vanilla, and the spiced rum that we put in ours:

Adapted from Patisserie Lerch, via Paris Sweets

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients:

3/4 cup (105 grams) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon double-acting baking soda

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar

Grated zest of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces; 70 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Sift together the flour and baking powder and keep close at hand. 

Working in a mixer fit with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar together on medium-high speed until they thicken and lighten in color, 2 to 4 minutes. Beat in the lemon zest and vanilla. 

Switch to a large rubber spatula and gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter. 

Cover the batter with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal, and chill for at least 3 hours, perhaps longer–chilling helps the batter develop its characteristic crown, known as the hump or the bump. (The batter can be kept tightly covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

 If your Madeleine pan is not nonstick, generously butter it, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. If the pan is nonstick, you still might want to give it an insurance coating of butter and flour.

Divide the batter among the molds, filling them almost to the top. Don’t worry about smoothing the batter, it will even out as it bakes.

Bake large madeleines for 11 to 13 minutes, small ones for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies are puffed and golden and spring back when touched. 

Pull the pan from the oven and remove the cookies by either rapping the pan against the counter (the madeleines should drop out) or gently running a butte knife around the edges of the cookies. Allow the madeleines to cool on a cooling rack. They can be served ever so slightly warm or at room temperature.

Pits and Pastries Goes to Paris!

Over winter break I got to go to Paris, one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  I went with a two of my aunts, a cousin and my grandmother and we had an absolute blast.  Granted, when we arrived, I was a bit thrown off by the guards in the airport with Uzi machine guns but once we left the airport I was too busy looking at everything around me to keep worrying about the guards.  We went to the apartment that we were staying at and had to suffer through an unnecessarily long tour by the woman who was renting it out for the owner.  She was an absolute treat, she drove us all mad.  We wanted to smack her by the end of it.

While half of us passed out from the jet lag (a 6 hour time difference), my aunt, cousin, and I went across the street to the bakery to see what we could find.  The bakery was amazing.  It was just a little corner shop but it had chocolates, and pastries and best of all; baguettes.  Everything had a gorgeous glow about it that showed just how fresh it was.

One of the first things I noticed was something labeled galette des rois, or "king cake."  The only kind of galette I've ever made was a strawberry galette which looked completely different (and was a complete failure). Here's a picture of the galette des rois display:

We had no idea what was so special about them about them but we saw them everywhere.  On our last day there my cousin found out the hard way that a galette des rois is a special treat made for the Epiphany and it has a special "trinket" (choking hazard) in it.  The person who gets the trinket in their piece has "various privileges and obligations."

Here's a recipe if you'd like to try it yourself.

We also saw a bunch of pastry and candy shops.  The macaroon displays were particularly stunning.  Here's one of the most stunning that we saw:

Unfortunately we didn't get to go into this shop, but I did get macaroons elsewhere, and they were delicious! 

One of the days we went up to the top of a huge hill to visit an enormous church.  You could see the whole of Paris from the top.  We watched a bunch of guys practicing capoeira for tourists.  After walking around for while, dodging sketch artists and other peddlers, we had a light snack in a restaurant overlooking a square where artists were painting.  I had my first crepe!

It was fantastic.  The crepe was wonderfully light and the chocolate sauce was to die for.  I don't think that there was a single smear left on my plate by the time I was done with it.  I also had a cute tea in an adorable wrapper:

And not surprisingly, there were pitties in France! I was delighted by how many we saw.  Here's a handsome boy patiently waiting for his owner to come out of a grocery store:

It was amazing to see how well behaved the dogs in France were.  We saw them leashless almost everywhere, obediently following their owners around the city, even in the market place:

More soon!

Candy Cane Sugar

This is a fantastic and super easy idea for the holidays.  I made enough for several gifts with a double batch.  It looks really pretty in a pint sized mason jar or an old school spice bottle like these:

Mason Jar and Spice bottle photo credit

Another great idea is to give them a tin of coco mix or a mason jar hot chocolate kit with the peppermint sugar.  There's nothing better than peppermint flavored hot chocolate or coffee during the cold winter months.

Helpful hint: Run to Walmart and Target right after the holidays (like right this minute) and pick up a ton candy canes on super sale (I saw packages at Walmart for 10 cents).  Target also has amazing after Christmas sales, especially on wrapping paper, so stock up, especially if you're a poor college student!

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar

2-3 candy canes

Pour the sugar in a food processor or blender.

Add the candy canes and blend until you are happy with the consistency.

Doesn't get any easier!

Recipe and photos from: Pip and Ebby

Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookies

One could not ask for an easier or more delicious recipe. Just like a chocolate chip cookie, but AMAZING.  Well I suppose anything would be with a bunch of oreos chucked in.  This recipe is courtesy of Picky Palate (link at the bottom of the recipe) as is the last picture in this post because I forgot to take a final picture.  Seriously, try this recipe out, it's not as overly sweet as it sounds.  Even I like them.

Cream together butter and the sugars.

Add in the egg and vanilla and mix well.

Add in flour and dry ingredients then mix in the oreos and chocolate chips by hand.

Bake for 7-9 minutes. Try not to eat them straight off the pan, they'll be hot haha.

Ingredients:

1 stick softened butter

6 tablespoons (about 1/3 cup) sugar

6 tablespoons (about 1/3 cup) brown sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 ¼ cup flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

8 (or 13) broken pieces Oreo Cookies

1 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream butter, and sugars until well combined. Add egg and vanilla until mixed well.

2. Place flour, baking soda and salt into a large bowl, stir to combine. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients then stir in oreos and chocolate chips until just combined.

3. With a medium cookie scoop, scoop onto a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet. Bake for 7-9 minutes or until cooked, but still soft. Let cool on baking sheet for 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Recipe from: Picky Palate