Caramels from Miette Bakery

I like to think I travel vicariously through the things I bake.

New York, D.C., L.A, New Orleans, Honolulu, and an infinite number of places outside the United States are on my travel-to list, except I'm a poor college student and the timing isn't right and that's the way things are at the moment. But one day, I shall conquer the world and learn how to say hello (and where's the bathroom) in every language.

I like to check out cookbooks by famous bakeries and get a feel for what might be out there. Granted I can't use their locally sourced ingredients native to their specific terrain, nor can I remake a dessert with a master chef's expertise, but I like to try anyway. It's fun to imagine that one day, I can visit these places and compare the sweets I had made with the "real thing," so to speak.

Recently I had the chance to check out the lovely bakebook by Miette bakery. Miette is hailed as "the most charming pastry shop" in San Francisco. True to this wide acclaim, the book's pages are filled with pictures and recipes of the most darling cakes, macarons, and other irresistible treats.

Unfortunately, most of Miette's cakes are on a smaller, 6-inch scale. (I use 9-inch cake pans.) However, seeing as how I'm big on caramels these days, I decided to give the Miette version a try.

The Miette caramels are decidedly simpler to maneuver, and one recipe yields plenty of caramels. In my personal opinion, I like my first caramel recipe a tad better. Just a tad bit. Some of my friends and family have tried both caramels, and opinions are varied. But there's no denying people go crazy over homemade caramels, period.

Amazing caramels. Amazing recipe. Miette bakery, you're on my places to visit in California!

Homemade Caramels

All right. I'm sorry. You deserve an apology.

I've been putting off writing this particular post for...a freakishly long time. I know some of you have been waiting. It's been weeks. Months. We're scribbling a different year on our checkbooks. It's that bad.

It's that bad, because these are caramels, which are candies, which require boiling sugar with a thermometer, which means a lot of things can go bad, very fast, very out of control, at very high temperatures. It's not necessarily your safety that's jeopardized, provided you don't spill hot caramel on yourself. Rather, the safety and yumminess of your candies are at extreme risk, should things boil for the worse.

It makes mixing a batter and popping it into a nicely preheated oven look like (excuse the pun) a literal piece of cake.

As of today, I've made about ten batches of caramels. And out of those only one single batch has been completely satisfactory to my aching, sugar-craving heart. I've intentionally (but mostly unintentionally) made plain caramels, chocolate caramels, gingerbread caramels, hard caramels, soft caramels, dark caramels, light caramels...blah blah blabbady blah and someone cue some sad self-pitying music, please.

Caramels are not impossible to make. They're quite maneuverable, given that you know what you're doing.

It's just I had an ideal caramel in mind. And once the idea hit, it wouldn't budge. I had to make. Period.

The perfect caramel, to me, was like this: reddish-brown with a brilliant sheen, firm and solid at room temperature (no drooping or molding to the wrapper), soft and chewy with an easy bite (absolutely no pulling teeth), and most importantly, full of that rich, deep, complex flavor from the perfect balance of butter, sugar, and cream.

I'm sure fewer bakers expect this much out of their caramel creations. But I'm hard to please. 

After many failed tries and too many caramel sets tossed whole into the trash, I got it right on my sixth try. The caramels were exactly how I wanted them to be. Honestly, I'm still not completely sure what went right. I still can't tell you with certainty what conditions, tricks, know-hows produce the most perfect, decadent caramels.

But what I can tell you is that homemade caramels, when done right, are so worth it. They're worth the time, the failed experiences, and even the heartache. There's really nothing like it. Store-bought caramels just do not compare.

So what I'm doing today is sharing with you...everything about my caramel-making experience. I'm going to tell you what I did right, what I did wrong, some of my thoughts on candymaking, and advice that has helped me some in the past. Hopefully you can take away something helpful from my goof-ups. Hopefully you can make the perfect caramels on your first or second try, and call it an excellent day.

Red Velvet Marbled Brownies

Let me give you a prime example of an incredible FAIL:

Two really good friends, living in the same city, living less than an hour apart...meeting up and not being able to recall the last time they had seen each other.

Maybe this is a testament to us early twenty-somethings getting too old, too soon, but we can never meet up as often as we'd like. In fact, we text each other about being total fails....while rescheduling our dinner plans or Skype chats.

This. Is. So. Sad.

I feel like it's about time I talk about my friend Adithi on this blog. 

She's the sweetest soul, a true-blue friend, and one of the most huggable people on the planet. You just have to take my word for it. We met our freshman year while dancing in the same Bhangra/Hip-Hop dance troupe, where I got both the most spine-crawling, mortifying ten minutes of my life AND a good friend out of the experience. I'm very grateful for both. Yes, very.

Anyway...We finally met up for dinner, during the course of which I (semi-intentionally in an unintended way) vented for a good half-hour and afterwards apologized profusely for it. Then we took some silly and hilarious selfies on the parking lot by my car. Fast-forward to four hours later I was sick to my stomach, heaving and throwing up everything I had eaten earlier. Uhhh... surprise, Adithi!

(I'm really sorry you had to find out this way. Oh, and I don't think I can eat spinach pasta anytime soon. Just making it clear.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, no matter what, my friend is super awesome. And that she totally deserved these red velvet brownies.  

Fig-Walnut Muffins

We have a fig tree growing in our backyard that's bearing fruit this summer. Granted the figs likely won't be ripe enough to eat until fall, but the tree alone is a wonderful thing to behold.

I love figs. I love the big, fresh, bulbous purple figs fresh and cold, cold, cold. William Carlos Williams had his plums; I have my figs. Except I won't apologize to my significant other that I've stolen his breakfast. All mine. All good.

Fresh figs on top of silky, creamy buttermilk panna cotta and drizzled with honey....fresh figs atop a bed of sweetened mascarpone filling, encased in a buttery tart crust...grilled figs(???) and nectarines with whipped cream...salad with spring greens, figs, shaved white cheddar....and I like where this is going. New entries for the future? We'll see.

However, the recipe I'm sharing with you today uses dried figs, which have an entirely different charm of their own. They're chewy, fragrant, and reminiscent of your Fig Newton eating days. (I always used to pick apart the biscuit-cookie shell and eat the filling only.)

These muffins are down-to-earth good. Sweet and charming. Decadent yet approachable. Best when eaten warm, in my opinion, and definitely within the same day.

Although dried figs will never replace my love for freshly cut figs, this recipe is solid. I think they'd make a nice breakfast table addition when you have a large group of guests over, or a special treat if you're feeling nice and decide to feed your starving roommates.

Feel free to experiment with pistachios, macadamias, and other nuts you like!

Olivia's 6th Birthday Cake

So... I did this crazy thing again where I baked a birthday cake for someone.

This time, for a sweet six-year-old who likes blue dresses and loves anything strawberry. But then again kids say they like a lot of things, so you never know. But this strawberry obsession seemed legit.

Still, you don't want to take a chance on a birthday, of all days. I shuddered at the thought that a kid might be upset over vanilla vs. chocolate, pink vs. chartreuse green, Ariel vs. Belle, and so on. Given that I didn't know too much about Olivia, I called her mom to ask a few questions.

Actually, a string of the most probing confectionary inquiries no mom of a birthday kid should ever live through.

May I use fresh strawberries? (How soon will the cake be eaten? Where will it be stored?) One-tier or two-tiered? Is it just the two of you who will be eating it? Any buttercream or icing preference? May I place a tiara on top? (I really, really want to.) How about the design- any particular theme or color arrangement?

By the time I got to asking about fondant the mother stopped me short and told me to do whatever I want.

Which is the BEST thing an obsessed, totally dedicated baker can ever hope to hear.

Whipped Cream 101

Whipped cream was one of those things I've seen, read, and talked about over and over but the name hadn't actually registered in my slow-as-heck noggin until a few years ago.

Obviously I was aware whipped cream doesn't originate from aerosol cans. It just was...bought from the store, shaken vigorously, held upside down, and piled on high atop steaming hot cocoa. This was also when I didn't bake much at all, let alone use heavy cream in anything. So I didn't really give it much thought as to what it actually was and how it was made.

Whipped. Cream = Cream...whipped.

Well, of course.

Someone please PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one.

(As an extra side note: Cool Whip (or any other commercial "whipped topping") is not actually whipped cream. It's a type of emulsified "dairy" product that's actually mostly water, hydrogenated vegetable oil, corn syrup...a little of skim milk and cream...and some controversial ingredients. Just so everyone's clear.)

Once I realized how easy it was to make whipped cream at home, I've had a rockin' delightful time. I dipped and dunked whole strawberries. I baked a cake and frosted with it. I want to one day scoop an insane mountain of it on top of a chocolate-caramel icebox pie.

I'm going to show you how to make whipped cream for yourself. It's simple, but extra tips still prove to be helpful if you're a newbie. Not a must, mind you, but if you're interested...and of course you are...because I've written this post super duper detailed...there's some fantastic information on here...and of course you appreciate that and are insatiably curious about what's coming.

Classic Sponge Cake with Strawberries and Whipped Cream Frosting

I've baked my share of cakes here.

Okay, so not nearly as much as I wish... but I'm getting there.

Most of the featured cakes here are what's called butter cakes. That means these cakes are generally dense, butter-based (had you guessed as such?), and very common, at least here in the States.

And for good reason- they're really good.

Might I suggest a divine, decadent Devil's Food cake? Or how about the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten? Feeling like a Southern belle? This coconut cake is for you. And this golden vanilla cake will never, ever let you down. I promise.

But today I'm talking about a different kind of cake. I'm talking sponge cake today, something that's prepped very much like the French genoise.

(If you've just said "geno-WHAT??" it's totally okay. I'll get to that. Eventually but definitely.)

The sponge cake is light and delicate and airy and absolutely delectable. It gets some of its sweetness and most of its moistness from the sugar syrup that's brushed on its layers. The sponge cake doesn't have to exclude the butter, but it is nonetheless a lower fat cake. The namesake texture of the cake is from the rise and volume it gets from heavily whipped eggs.

Sponge cakes are also versatile and adaptable to so many different flavor combinations. For this cake, though, I stuck with vanilla layers with fresh strawberries and plain whipped cream frosting.

Total deliciousness. 

Harvest Apple Challah

Georgia's been having a crazy weather conundrum lately...which is, by all means to all of us here, annoyingly normal.

So some time ago we've had some March snow + flurries, and this past week we've had a clear but chilly day, a rainy/stormy day, a fairly okay but windy day, then finally, a really hot today.

Naturally my immune system freaked out, and now I have a full-blown cold.

Question: is it okay to bake things for people when you're sick? Is that just terribly gross and unacceptable, even if you wash your hands more times than you can count and when you run ten feet away from the kitchen just to sneeze, then come back?

I promise I had nothing but good intentions.

I baked this challah for a close family friend. She's also been sick and down in that place... where you live a few days in your pink fleece pajamas... and don't give a crap what anyone might say about it. She yelled at me for baking when I was sick. As in, sick and should've taken care of myself instead. NOT sick and shouldn't have dared to make food in my nasty germ-infested state.

Obviously this person is a saint, and obviously this person deserves a good bread.

This isn't our first run-in with the challah.

I've baked it before, in a classic two-braid log form, for someone very dear to me. We both loved this egg bread, and ever since then I've been on the lookout for more challah recipes. When I found this one featuring tons of apples and cinnamon and honey, I knew I had caught on to something good. Really good. Plus, seeing as how I'm trying to incorporate more whole wheat into recipes, I thought it'd be nice to sneak some in here, too, along with some ground flaxseed.

Result: this bread is some serious comfort food. Chicken soup, meet your match.