Christmas desserts 12.26.11

Elm Road, Cromwell, CT

There's nothing like a spread of homemade desserts at the big Christmas family gathering.

Sesame crunch and almond crunch candy

Christmas cookie assortment

I'm going to have to learn the difference between all of these things.  Cenci, chiacchiere, frappe, lattughe, nastrini, lover's knots, bugie, crostoli

Yule Log

Gingerbread cookies

Russian Tea Cakes

Stollen

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie Reprise 12.24.11

Here's a second try at the old fashined apple pie.  I didn't buy enough apples unfortunately, and I undercooked the pie.  The flavor was okay, though.

Here's the pie dough, which I made using shortening.

Here's the pie after it was baked.  It's not as high as I would have liked.  I also needed to crimp the top and bottom together better.  ...next time.

Quebrada Baking Co 12.21.11

Quebrada Baking Co, 208 Mass Ave, Arlington, MA

This is such a charming bakery in Arlington.  The parent store is in Wellesley Hills.  I was able to visit the Arlington store recently and pick up a few samples.

A Christmas sugar cookie
This tasted like your standard sugar cookie.  I thought the decoration was exquisite
.

A croissant
Tasted good, nice and fresh, but mine had a hole.

A pumpkin muffin (by recommendation)
I'm actually not a big fan of pumpkin cakes.  This one was good.

Jake's Ice Cream 12.19.11

I'm so lucky to work with someone who knows a lot about ice cream.  My favorite ice cream yet is Jake's chocolate .  It's made with Valrhona Manjari 64%. It's rich, but has a light texture.  It's very creamy with an intense chocolate taste, but not so intense that you can't finish off 3 scoops.

The second ice cream is banana cinnamon.  Kind of strange tasting, this one wasn't my favorite.  You could taste the banana and the cinnamon, but they didn't go together well in this ice cream.  Also, the banana flavor was too concentrated for me.

Christmas Cookies 2011

These cookies came out very yummy.  I had a few problems to overcome as I made them.  Firstly, the recipe is for the Wilton spritz cookie.  I leave out the almond extract.  The recipe is in volume measures and I usually add extra flour to this mix to make the dough stiffer and easier to press.  However, I have not narrowed down exactly how many ounces of flour to add to each batch.  I have a written in note to add about 1/4 c flour, but being a volume measure, that's not exactly the most accurate thing. 

I needed to run an errand before baking the cookies, so I placed the dough in the fridge for half a day.  This makes the dough very stiff, and I tried to make up for the lack of stiffness by piping it a little cool.  However, this did not work and the dough just got stuck in the tube and was too sticky anyway.  

I used red and green food coloring for the cookies.  This again was a mistake, as I should have realized the common perils of using red food coloring.  The food coloring (even though I was using gel colors) added too much liquid to the dough and so the red cookies stuck to the baking sheets.  I was thinking this as I was adding insane amounts of red gel, and I should have added more flour immediately.  But I think I was having so much fun getting the perfect Christmas red, it was like an addiction and I just couldn't stop.  Amazingly, the cookies still tasted very good, although they did not rise much and turned out flatter than their white and green counterparts.

I was able to salvage some of the ornaments.  And I was very happy with the red color. 

The final result!

I'm all set now for round 2 cookies, which I'll bake after the New Year.

Raisin Croissant 12.11.11

Not so great things can happen when you start experimenting.  Here's some croissant dough with raisins thrown in.  I should have rolled in the raisins for a more equal distribution.  But it did make a yummy loaf.

Mike's Pastry 12.11.11

Mike's Pastry, 300 Hanover St, Boston

I've finally found a great New York style black and white in Boston.  It's at Mike's.  It was the perfect size and texture, with the proper flat icing and hint of lemon.  It's probably slightly better than my own, but only because I need to perfect my icing.  I even like how the vanilla icing is placed on the cookie before the chocolate.  Oh, I'm way too picky.

Doctor's orders: BID ice cream 12.7.11

Angora Ice, 3-A Boylston Street (Shaw's Shopping Plaza), Chestnut Hill, MA

Angora Ice is a strange place.  It has this funky orange lighting that is appropriate for anything but an ice cream shop.  However, the woman inside was the nicest ever and told all about how the Chestnut Hill location of Angora is trying out how to make their products healthier (very difficult for desserts).  Unfortunately, I forgot to ask her name.  But she spoke about her whole wheat waffle recipe she developed and offered a sample of the waffle with chocolate and bananas (which also comes in a low sugar version).

Mint Chip and Coffee Oreo Ice Cream
I was talking with the woman at the store so much, I forgot to think about how the ice cream tasted.  Oops.

Whole Wheat Waffle with chocolate and banana
What's amazing about this waffle is that you can't taste the whole wheat unless you are eating the waffle alone, without the toppings.  They are advertising the waffle as breakfast anytime, but it's really sweet I think it's more of a dessert item.

Rancatore's Ice Cream and Yogurt, 1752 Massachusetts Ave, Lexington MA

I'm a huge fan of tart yogurt, but since this was my second dessert today, I tried to go a little lighter by getting sweet (not tart) yogurt instead of the ice cream option.  I was stunned and fascinated by the Hydrox yogurt and just had to get it.  It was great.  Super sweet (too sweet for me to have regularly), but I was so happy to be eating Hydrox.

I loved reading Rancatore's FAQ page on their website.  Joe Rancatore, founder of Rancatore's Ice Cream and Yogurt, is the younger brother of Gus Rancatore, owner of Toscanini's.  I love Toscanini's!

Pumpkin Mousse 12.4.11

I had extra pumpkin puree from the pumpkin crunch cake.  I also had heavy cream, so I decided to try whipping  either a mousse, bavarian, or a pudding. I ended up finding a pumpkin mousse recipe on about.com.  I adapted the recipe to make the following pumpkin mousse.

Pumpkin Mousse
15 oz pumpkin puree
1 c plus 2 c heavy cream
3/4 c sugar
3/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
2 oz white chocolate, shaved

I halved this recipe and omitted the white chocolate.   I heated the 1 c cream and sugar until the sugar was dissolved.  I then added the pumpkin and flavorings.  I added a little more flavoring, assuming that the flavor would dilute after adding the cream.  I cooled the pumpkin mixture, then blended with the whipped cream.  I added a little too much of the whipped heavy cream.  The mousse turned out tasting like pumpkin whipped cream.  I think next time I'll try a pudding recipe, or a mousse with eggs.  This would also be nice with some gelatin to make a bavarian creme.  Pumpkin napoleon?

I ate some of the pumpkin cream with graham crumbs sprinkled on top.

Bova's Bakery 12.3.11

Bova's Bakery, 134 Salem Street, Boston, MA

I finally visited Bova's bakery! I had been to Mike's and Modern, but to complete the trifecta I still needed to try Bova's bakery. There is a diminutive store front, like Clear Flour. I purchased three treats to sample some of the items.

Lobster Tail - recommended by the staff
It was good.  It was crispy on the outside and the cream was yummy on the inside. I'm glad it was not ridiculously gynormous like what you get at modern, but it didn't blow my stars. :(

Fruit Tart
They are beautiful looking and pretty good, but not as good as the frangipane filled tarts we made at Le Cordon Bleu.

Scallia bread
The most delicious Italian bread I have ever had.  However, I think Bova's is the only italian bread I've tried that wasn't from a grocery store.  Nevertheless, it was delicious.  The crust was thin and the crumb was soft and rich with impecable texture.  Also, their bread comes out at 6pm each day and I arrived around 4pm.  So I was basically tasting day old bread, and I still thought it was pretty good.  The man behind the counter was nice enough to give me a short tour of the bakery.  I saw their large mixing bowls (about 160 kg capacity), belt moulder, rotating oven, and watched as the bakers were scaling some sourdough portions using a balance scale.

Mike's Pastry 12.3.11

Mike's Pastry, 300 Hanover Street, Boston, MA

I have to admit, it seems that now I go to Mike's everytime I'm downtown.  And especially when I have guests from out of town.  Today I tried the chocolate cupcake.  For the cake part, it was exactly what a chocolate cupcake should be.  The frosting was a little too much for me, but remember I'm losing my sweet tooth.  So I threw out most of the frosting.  But it was good:  8 out of 10.  I still think Lyndell's has the best cupcakes.

Chocolate cupcake

And I was also thinking the 10 million cannoli flavors are getting a little ridiculous.  

Dave's Pumpkin Crunch Cake 12.1.11

I work with Dave, and this is his recipe.  It's a pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting, placed on a base of chocolate and pecans.  The pecans provide the crunch.  The recipe is a gluten free recipe, although I substituted AP flour for the gluten-free flours.

Here's a closeup of the chocolate pecan base.

Sweet Cream Ice Cream 11.28.11

Here's some sweet cream ice cream from work. The texture was great, but the flavor was off.  It was a little too sweet.  Too much fructose?  Who knows.