Chrismukkah treats

Tonight is the eighth and final night of Chanukkah, so I wanted to share a recipe for some delicious and fun treats.  In the spirit of being culturally diverse and all inclusive, I hereby declare the entire month of December the season of Chrismukkah.  

First, gather some friends, selecting those who like to bake.  For this recipe, the three little foodies were together again.  Kitchen Em, RD'lite and myself.

Next, open a bottle of wine. 

Make sure you have the necessary tools and decorations.

A little chocolate gelt goes very well with the wine. 

Choose a recipe.  Make sure its one that will impress all your friends, and fill them with awe and wonder at your culinary talent.  Shortbread cookies and macarons should do the trick.  

Macarons are a meringue based cookie.  So the first step, is separating the eggs.  This egg separator gadget certainly did the trick!   

Let the KitchenAid mixer do its magic and beat the eggs until you get stiff peaks.  Add the sugar for both taste and stability.  From what I remember in my university courses, the sugar acts as glue by holding the micro bubbles intact (wow, my prof would be proud!) 

You may need to check the recipe twice to ensure you have the correct ratios.  (ahem, ahem)

 Gently fold the almond flour into the beaten egg whites. 

  

Fill a pastry bag (or in this case a ziplock bag), and pipe the macaron batter into small circles, about an inch wide.   

There are many tricks and tips to bake a perfect macaron.  Most experts agree that how you fold the flour into the meringue is crucial.  One extra fold, and its all over.   They also suggest giving the cookie sheet a good bang on the counter to get the bubbles out.  Another controversial discussion on the macaron blogs and websites (yes, they exist and I've read them) is whether to bake them immediately or let them sit before they go in the oven.   The goal of all this advice?  To get the perfect feet on the macaron.  Apparently, this is what we should all strive to achieve.  Being the shoe lover that I am, I had no objections.  

Ours had feet! See them?  The distinct spread at the bottom of the macaron.  

Lastly, fill them with ganache, buttercream or anything else that sounds good.  For this recipe, we used buttercream raspberry icing, and paired them up to make little sandwiches.  

Meanwhile, make some shortbread cookie dough.  Roll out to the desired thickness and select holiday themed cookie cutters to create various shapes.

Bake and let cool so that your frosting and decor won't melt and then slide off.  (I speak from experience on this one).

 Be creative.  There are no rules in cookie art.  

 Happy Chrismukkah everyone!

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So you think you can bake?

Yes... I think so...Maybe... Well, I used to be able to.
Hmmmm.  Good question.

When I was younger, I used to bake all the time.  My favorite go-to recipe was chocolate chip cookies, found in my mother's Second Helpings Please cookbook.  I can still remember the recipe.  2/3 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup white sugar, 3 cups flour, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla.... I used to whip up a batch of cookies without a second thought.  And if ever I was feeling too lazy to spoon out the dough, they became chocolate chip bars.

During university, I got more adventurous.  I used to watch cooking shows on Saturday morning on PBS (no cable, pre-Food Network) to get inspired, and then spend the rest of the day trying a new recipe.  Being a student with a very low income, I would buy only one kitchen gadget at a time, and it was a big deal.  I can still remember the excitement when I bought my pastry cutter and no longer had to use two forks to combine the butter and flour.  Because I was studying to be a dietitian, I was enrolled in food science courses, one of which included a cooking lab.  We experimented with the chemistry behind baking by purposely making mistakes and seeing the results.  Do your muffins have too many tunnels? Are the tops peaked too high?  There's a reason for that!  Over-stirring, under-stirring, too much baking powder, not enough...you get the picture.

Fast forward to me being a busy working girl, and baking seems to have fallen off my resume.  It was a combination of not having the time, not having the mouths to feed (I certainly don't want to eat a cake all by myself), and losing the passion.  I love to cook, even if I don't do it often, but baking is a whole different  phenomenon.  When you bake, you actually have to follow recipes.  Don't get me wrong, I love reading recipes and cook books but I use them for inspiration, not as instructions.  I can't remember the last time I actually measured something that I was cooking.

And so, my adventures in baking have recommenced.  I purchased some new baking books on cupcakes, cookies and whoopie pies.  I bought liners, wrappers, sprinkles, food dye and decorating tips.  Armed with my new baking accessories, I was ready to rediscover the joys of baking.  I was excited.  And this is only the beginning....

It all starts with my fabulous KitchenAid mixmaster.

These are would-be whoopie pies.  They weren't successful because it turns out you can't just use cake batter in a whoopie pie pan.  The result is way too soft and delicate to make sandwiches out of.  But they were delicious eaten like a muffin top!

Mini-cupcakes

I learnt a very useful tip from one of my fellow food bloggers.  If you add some raspberry jam to vanilla icing, not only does it add raspberry flavor, but it turns the color pink.  I like this way better than food dye.  

I also learnt that the easiest way to ice mini cupcakes is by heating the icing and dipping the cupcake upside down into it.  This technique results in a smooth, even, glossy coating.  

On Thanksgiving, we made gingerbread men.  Little hands are very helpful, especially when they are stirring the cookie dough and not just eating it.  

 Gingerbread army men, lined up and reporting for duty, Sir!  

(They were made by little boys after all)

Most of the icing went straight into their mouths, but we managed to decorate too  :)

Thanks to a fabulous book, What's New Cupcake, we learnt how to turn our cupcakes into little green monsters.  All you need are some gummy candy rings, gumdrops and a little imagination.  

We also made rubber duckies.  The head is made from a donut hole, the tail is a marshmallow cut on the diagonal and the eyes are M&Ms.  Cute, eh?

   If this isn't incentive to keep on baking, I don't know what is.

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A Fish Story

Once upon a time, there was a little fish named Nemo.  Ok no, its not that kind of fish story.  But I will be happy to tell you a different story.

Once upon a time there were three little foodie friends.  They were all dietitians and they all worked in Napa.  Sometimes, at the end of a long day they would meet for dinner at the unique and quaint restaurants that surrounded the valley.  On this particular night, they headed to the Napa Riverfront, to a place call Fish Story.

What made this restaurant special is that they only served sustainable, seasonal, ocean fresh seafood, in accordance with the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch guidelines.  

The three little foodie friends started their evening with a cocktail from the bar...a cosmopolitan.

They were given an amuse bouche...a bay shrimp croquette.

They agreed that the Hawaiian tuna tartare sounded delicious, and so they all ordered one.  It was served with Asian pear, serrano, citrus zest, hazelnut oil and avocado mousse.

This little foodie friend ordered the pumpkin lobster bisque and they prepared it at the table right in front of her eyes!  She also couldn't help but quote Seinfeld..."No, I mentioned the bisque" over and over.

The next course was pan roasted Morro Bay black cod with cranberry beans, fennel, gypsy peppers and watercress.

For dessert, the three little foodie friends ordered a chocolate bread pudding topped with a Maker's Mark bourbon sauce.

Since the three little foodies had such a good night, they decided to end it with Gingerbread Wishes, a special dessert with a special purpose.  The restaurant featured a fresh-baked gingerbread cookie and decorating kit, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation.

They broke their cookie into three pieces, each decorated their part, and re-united them again.  The three little foodie friends always found a reason to enjoy dessert, but helping a child make a wish was by far the best reason of all.   

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