Miss Holly Got Adopted!

We're so happy for her!

See her original post here.

Adoption Spotlight: Holly

Poor Miss Holly.  It always breaks my heart to see a momma without her babies.  Holly's story is particularly heartbreaking.  She was found this winter in a Kodak parking lot, abandoned in her crate.  She was still full of milk and miserable without her babies. 

 How could you throw a face like this out in the cold by herself:

Despite still being away from her babies, Holly has rallied in an impressive way.  She is such a sweetheart.  She has a light in her that you wouldn't expect from a dog with such a recent trauma in her life:

Ever the momma pitty, she loves everyone around her.  She's still just a baby herself, only a year and a half old and you can tell that she just wants to be loved.  Whenever she can, she tries to cuddle with the people around her, crawling daintily onto the nearest offered lap:

She loves children, especially the canine kind which is not surprising since it seems like she wasn't able to spend a lot of time with her own.  She gets so excited when she sees a puppy, maybe she thinks it's one of her babies coming back to her:

Holly is looking for the comfort and protection of a safe forever home.  She would do wonderfully in any home setting, whether with a single owner, couple or family.  She just wants to love and be loved, and maybe be a lap dog if you let her.  

How could you say no to this face?:

Holly is available in the Rochester, NY area.  If you are interested please go to her web page to learn more and fill out an application to be her forever home.

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.