baking Archives - Page 2 of 2

May 14, 2015

Carrot Graham Cracker Cake

This was a productive weekend. I finally hung up the the little raincloud mobile I made…

…along with two paper lamps from the Japanese supermarket.

Then, I drilled drainage holes into my darling Anthropologie “Perch planters.” The store had a 20% off sale recently, and I checked out with a whole mess of fish-shaped planters because that’s the kind of person I am.

Aside: why don’t more cute planters come with drainage holes? Having those makes a huge difference in plant mortality. I mean, let’s not even talk about the Terrible Thyme Tragedy of 2013, or the Great Succulent Massacre of 2014 — for me, the grief is still too near.

Planters need outlets for water runoff or else you risk overwatering your plants (which will kill them), or underwatering them for fear of overwatering (which will also kill them). Now all the planters I buy get drainage holes punched into them.

I don’t have a clever segue planned, so I’ll just abruptly drag us back to the point of this post: I also spent the weekend baking a tasty carrot cake. Read more

AmyK

2 Comments

May 1, 2015

Sausage and Cheese Kolaches

Seattle has been my home for about two years now, and after being here, there are certainly a lot of things I don’t miss about Texas (the long commutes to get anywhere, summer mosquitos with more bloodlust than Patrick Bateman), but there are also things I miss every waking minute of every day. Okay, I exaggerate, but I do miss easy parking, wearing sandals for 90% of the year, and my Monday morning kolaches.

Kolaches are a Czech soft yeast pastry that’s kind of like a soft dinner roll, and traditionally they’re filled or topped with fruits or cottage cheese. The Texas kolache is a variation of this, filled with sausage, cheese, and a slice or two of pickled jalapeño. Most bakeries and donut shops in the Lone Star State sell kolaches just as regularly as they sell burnt drip coffee.

It was very much a routine to grab a donut (or two) and a kolache (or three) to kick off my Monday mornings — I liked to think of it as a “starting another work week” treat. To my dismay, since moving to Seattle, I’ve discovered that kolaches just aren’t a thing here. The closest thing to a kolache I’ve been able to find are pirozhki (Russian hand pies), and while also delicious, they’re still not kolaches.
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AmyK

24 Comments

April 7, 2015

Lemon Gradient Cake

My birthday was this past weekend, and I had a great time thanks to a wonderful dinner hosted by my friends and coworkers at Il Terrazzo Carmine (if you want the best clams and linguine in the city, that is the place). I also had boxes of treats sent to my home from my out-of-town friends and family, and who doesn’t like mail, especially if said mail contains cookies?!

I’m sure my heart did a Grinch-style “grow three sizes” thing, which was welcomed after a particularly rough week. So in case any of my Houston, Seattle, Atlanta, wherever lovelies are reading this — thank you from the bottom of my heart for making all of my years wonderful, and I look forward to spending yet another one with all of you.

Now that we have the sentimental crap out of the way, let’s get down to the really important business: cake.

AmyK

1 Comment

March 25, 2015

New Digs & Good Ol’ Sandwich Bread

Well well well, it has been a while, hasn’t it? You look different — did you get a haircut? Oh, me? I didn’t get a haircut, but what I did get is a new apartment. I’ve been busy with moving these past few weeks, so for a while I was living in what seemed to be a very boring box-themed amusement park. But now I’ve officially bid farewell to my first Seattle home, and hello to my second — now with 800 square feet of lounging space! Finally, room enough for me to stretch my legs, and maybe dabble in the occasional breakdance routine.

Ready to get that boombox pumpin’

With the new apartment is a much bigger kitchen, and I am delighted to report that my range and oven setup is no longer fun-sized. That’s right, my oven can now hold two — that’s right, two — 9-inch cake pans at the same time on the same rack. This shit’s about to get real, y’all.

I don’t know about your method of unpacking and nesting, but the first box I always tackle is the one holding all my records and record player. This way, I can have some tunes immediately. Then, it’s on to unpacking and organizing the kitchen so I can break in the new cooking space pronto. All those other boxes can wait just a while longer.
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AmyK

4 Comments

November 3, 2014

Dark Chocolate Tart with Sea Salt

Do you guys like chocolate? If so, have I got a sweet little something for you! This is one of those things that will kick your chocolate craving in the kaboose, as the kids say these days (do the kids say that?).

I know pumpkin, pecan, and sweet potato pie are the Thanksgiving pies de rigueur, and I’m all for tradition, but what’s wrong with shaking things up a bit from time to time? Take this luscious baby to your next holiday gathering and be ready to shake hands with more adoring fans than a presidential candidate.

AmyK

Hokkaido Milk Bread

Growing up, one of the staple weekend activities in our house was to go to the Asian market to replenish our fridge with bittermelons, salted eggs, Thai basil, and all that other stuff that we could never get from the local suburban supermarket. My mom loved to frequent one in Houston’s Chinatown called Hong Kong Market, and after an hour or so of grocery shopping (at the time, we had several aunts, uncles, and cousins living with us, so there were a lot of mouths to feed), we’d stop at the tiny Chinese bakery across the shopping plaza.

One of the things my mom would always get would be Hokkaido milk bread, though I always just knew it as “Chinese sweet bread.” It’s soft, fluffy, and a little sweet, and we always just ate it toasted with a thin layer of butter or completely plain. I guess the name “milk bread” comes from the use of milk powder or condensed milk, and some versions of the milk bread we’d get would also have swirls of grainy sweet milk mixture rolled in. It’s not as strange as it sounds, I promise!

This particular rendition of Asian milk bread doesn’t have anything swirled in, but I imagine you can easily roll in a cinnamon-sugar-raisin mix if you so please, or even the traditional milk mix (future recipe, perhaps?). The possibilities!

AmyK

4 Comments

July 14, 2014

Light, Fluffy Pound Cake

When I saw Deb’s recipe on Smitten Kitchen for a lighter, fluffier pound cake, I knew I had to give it a whirl. A pound cake that won’t be so dense and rich that it tastes like delicious regret? SOLD. I like pound cake, but I think I’d like pound cake even more if it wasn’t so assertive in reminding me that it contained a approximately a pound each of butter, flour, sugar, and eggs.

Delusion — I like to live my life in it sometimes.

Luckily, a friend’s birthday was coming up, giving me the perfect excuse to whip up a cake. But why is it that you need a reason to make a cake anyhow? Like if you made some cookies just for the hell of it, people would just all agree on the greatness of homemade cookies. But if you made a cake for no reason, all of a sudden it’s like “You’ve got a problem, do you need to talk to someone?” It’s unjust.

This recipe makes one regular-sized loaf of cake, or two mason jar cakes and one adorable mini-loaf. I sent the tagged jar to Atlanta, where I hope my currently sugar-free friend broke her fast for her own birthday or at least was able to give it to a pro-sugar buddy.

AmyK

3 Comments

July 14, 2014

Challah Bread

Bread is a wonderful thing, and I contend that there are few smells more alluring, inviting, and all-around wonderful than the scent of baking bread. I have made a few breads before, like coconut loaves and dinner rolls, but few things beat the tender, well, breadiness of challah.

Make no mistake, making bread can be a bit of a challenge if it’s not something you do often (or ever), but this recipe from Einet Admony’s incredible Balaboosta cookbook is approachable enough even for total bread newbies. Unlike some other recipes I’ve followed before, there are no starter doughs or anything of that ilk. You just need some brawn for kneading and looooots of time for proofing. Keep your courage! The payoff to your toils will be so worth it.

I made just a few changes to the original recipe. I use olive oil instead of canola because when I first made this, I only had olive oil on hand. The same goes for the honey and brown sugar substitute in place of plain white sugar or honey. All desperate substitutions initially, but I happened to like how it all ended up, so I’m sticking with it.

AmyK

2 Comments

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