All About Baking: Mini Maddies

A few weeks ago I bought a mini Madeleine sheet, and I am very excited to tell you that I used it today!

I made chocolate Madeleines rather than your basic lemon, but I am sure it won't be long before I try the traditional type too!

Today I want to first go over how to adjust when you realize that they recipe you chose was not the best recipe.

I made the first round of my mini Maddies thinking that the batter was too think, but because I followed a recipe I stuck with it. Sadly, the first set (while still tasting great) did not form those cute little shells on the front like they should. I attributed this to it's thickness and inability to really cover the sheet properly. What did I do you ask? Well, I added a little bit of milk at a time until I came up with a thin enough consistency to fill the sheet without having to spread the batter myself.

The original recipe is as follows:

1/4 c. flour

1/4 c. cocoa

1/2 t. baking powder

2 oz butter (1/4 cup)

1/2 t. vanilla

1/4 c. sugar

1 egg

2 egg yolks

375 degrees

cream sugar, vanilla and butter

add eggs one at a time

mix dry ingredients together

add dry ingredients to batter

So I ended up adding probably about 2 Tablespoons of milk, maybe 3 to a half batter. Which would me to adjust this recipe it would be best to add 1/4 c. milk. OR it would be good to test it and melt the butter originally to see how that affects the consistency.

But, since I didn't foresee the problem I had to adjust accordingly during the recipe. Here's a picture between the two.

To the left are the thicker battered maddies and to the right are the adjusted ones. Excuse the bright flash

But, end result: tasty tasty tasty and fun! So, never be afraid of adjusting while baking. If you ever have a baking question, please ask away and I would be happy to answer you as best I can!

Decorate with powdered sugar!

pretty little shell shape!

This was All About Baking: Mini Maddies. Please stay tuned for more baking tips!

All About Baking: Gluten-free Tea Party

This past Saturday I threw a super cute and fun Tea Party for my lovely sister-in-law, Kristen's birthday! The theme was Alice in Wonderland, with small and large tea pots and a variety of teas and goodies.

Kristen and I

Here's what the invitation said:

Alice: Unbirthday? I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand. March Hare: It's very simple. Now, thirty days has Septem -No. wait... An unbirthday, if you have a birthday, then you - March Hare: She doesn't know what an unbirthday is. Join us for Kristen's 27th birthday party as we celebrate in style, mad style. According to Cheshire Cat, most everyone is mad here. So, for the madness we are going to have a beautiful tea party accompanied by a tasty spread and give wonderful gifts. This will be an Alice in Wonderland themed party (in case you haven't noticed yet), but don't be alarmed all that requires of you is to wear a dress and not be late for this very important date :) Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more tea? Alice: Well, I haven't had any yet, so I can't very well take more. March Hare: Ah, you mean you can't very well take less. Mad Hatter: Yes, you can always take more than nothing.

 This Tea Party was not just any tea party, it was a Gluten-free Tea Party. It was my first time baking gluten-free. I made homemade scones, tartlets, cucumber sandwiches, chocolate cupcakes, lemon curd, and devonshire cream.

The Scones (click for recipe)
This recipe turned out beautifully. You would never know these little things were gluten free. They tasted scrumptious.

Kristen had the cutest flower shaped liners to place them in.

The Tartlets

This recipe turned out beautifully. Tasted more like a shortbread cookie, but did the job very well.

The Cucumber Sandwich

*Gluten free bread cut with a rabbit shaped cookie cutter, sliced cucumbers, dill cream cheese*

The Chocolate Cupcakes

*The recipe was not a choice recipe

*The cupcake was sticky and stuck to the paper

*The icing did a good job of hiding the stickiness

*Next time I would not use a cookbook, but rather a 5 star rated recipe from the internet like I did with the others

blurry, but you can see it is sticky

Stuck to the wrapper

Still cute though

The Lemon Curd

* I love Lemon curd, and it is so easy to make

*Also refrigerates for a long time, like a jam

The Devonshire Cream

YUM YUM YUM

So, tasty! This was the best part and goes so well with scones!

Whipped cream, cream cheese... does it get much better?

The Decorations

My two tea cups from Turkey (the pink and blue), my mini Mexican tea set, and 2 antique tea cups from Debbie Gosney set with yellow carnations on a platter. Dressed with my yellow Turkish pashmina and a purple scarf.

Kristen's antique Hall tea pot, my baby mug, Italian tea cup, Limoge mini tea pot, Hummel mini tea set,  Malaysian pewter mini tea pot, and kid tea pot and tea cup. Dressed with 2 Turkish pashminas (you can't see from this angle) and scarf from Thailand (a gift from my friend, Maureen) 

First time using Kristen's China set.

Antique tea pot that I want to find one similar to.

Orange gerbers

Everyone's name was written on a playing card... remember Alice in Wonderland.

Paint the roses red!

Guests:

My mom, Mary Urban (local author - book, Tapestry of Trust, is now available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Nobles. com)

Kristen's mom, Debbie Gosney (local company owner, Wood Designs)

Debbie's friend, Linda.

Kristen's friend, Miranda.

Kristen, the birthday girl (VP at Wood Designs)

Andrea, me (Graduate student)

Isaac, Kristen's baby and my nephew!

Baby Isaac!


This was All About Baking: Gluten-free Tea Party. Stay tuned for more All About Baking!

All About Baking: Ingredients

What do the ingredients in your baked goods do? Why do we use them? 

The Roles of your Ingredients

Fat

• Butter, Margarine, Crisco, Oil
• Creates tenderness and texture
• Decreases cohesive forces in batter, allowing it to move during baking

Eggs

• Nutritive -  whole protein value, Vitamin A
• Creates leavening (affects fluffiness)
• Increases cohesive forces - provides structure - when the proteins settle they don't move
• Emulsification (create a solid homogenized batter)
• Color (yellow in egg yolk)
• Flavor

Sugar

• 
• Natural white or brown
• Flavor
• Tenderness
• Browning, crisp
• Attracts water which delays starch gelatinization (becoming a gel)
• Decreases cohesive forces, similar to fat

Flour

• All purpose, cake, or bread*
• Provides structure via gluten* development  (*see Food Facts: Gluten for more information)
• Cake flour is best for high volume, fine textured cakes
• Tunnels found in cakes are a result from undermixing or overmixing, or too much flour

Leavening

• Air
• caused by mixing, creaming, beating
• volume is increased when more air is incorporated
• Steam
• high initial temperatures in oven
• causes steam to create volume
• examples: popovers
• Carbon Dioxide
• baking powder
• mix of baking soda and acid 
• double reacting - 1st with moisture, 2nd with heat
• baking soda
• used in presence of an acid (i.e. honey and buttermilk are acidic)
• yeast
• feeds on sugar and starch, biproduct is CO2

Liquid

• Milk, water, evaporated milk, buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, cream
• Dissolves sugar and salt
• Adds moisture, reacts with baking powder
• Hydrates starch and protein
• Amount of moisture determines texture
• example is the difference between a cookie and a cake

Heat

• 
• Reacts with baking powder
• Denatures proteins, sets the gluten structure
• Browning (Maillard reaction - sugar + heat)
• Promotes starch gelatinization (forming a gel)

All about Baking: Methods

Methods do affect the end result of your baked product.

Here are 3 standard methods to mixing your baked good.

1. Quick/Dump Method: where you dump all of your ingredients and mix, there is no real order. This is going to create less airy products like brownies. If you like dense cakes or cookies you can consider mixing all of your ingredients roughly all at once.

2. Conventional Method: this is where you have step processes. First you cream your butter and sugar, the longer you cream it the more air that will be incorporated, therefore the lighter your texture you will be. Then you mix in your egg completely. Next you add dry and liquid ingredients, however, you alternate the two in even amounts to ensure not over mixing. Over mixing can cause toughness to occur. This is how you bake your cookies and cakes. Cookies do slightly differ in the fact that they do not have the liquid added in the end, in their case you just mix in the dry ingredients.
**When adding the dry and wet ingredients in the end you are not supposed to use beaters, but stir by hand. If you do not prefer to do that, it is okay just know that it can affect the texture. And, everyone can alter steps some depending on the texture they themselves like.
            For example yesterday I baked chocolate chips cookies, but I followed the recipe to a T, which I never do. And, to be honest I did not care for the texture as much as when I cream the butter and sugar less time. But, that's my personal preference. Experiment and discover yours! Oh, and let me know what you like :)




3. Muffin Method: (which I have to confess I have never used, because I never knew about it, but I am going to try it soon). This method is where you completely mix all of your dry ingredients and all of your liquid ingredients in separate bowls. Then you create a hole in the middle of your dry ingredients, pour in the liquids and mix gently by hand.



This was all about baking: methods. There will be more to come in this category!