Pick Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Off, etc etc.

Yesterday's Fail has been preying on my mind.
It really pisses me off to waste expensive ingredients on something
that turns out to be inedible (almost typed indelible--here's a trick--stare at both words
long enough and your eyes will spaz out completely) and
still not even know the whys and wherefores of the problem.

So I did what I always do when faced with culinary roadblocks:

I called my mom.

I know how blessed I am to have reached this age and still have my mom
standing in, if not the wings, then at least within cell-phone range.
She has had over 62 years of cooking and baking for a family of five and
lived to tell the tales. Mom is the only one to still go through the time-honored
process of making kolache every Christmas--and she's not even Czech.
It's a family recipe from my father's side, and she learned at my
grandma's elbow how to make them.
Side note: none of my aunts ever did the kolache thing, but they loved my mom's!

I know that nearly everyone thinks that their mom is the best cook/baker
in the world--and poor, deluded souls they are, too--only I know that through
some accident of birth, some cosmic shake-and-shimmy, I am descended
from She Who Rules The Kitchen. If Mary Lou has had any Epic Fails in the
kitchen, I've never heard about it (but that would make a good post, wouldn't it?)

So I regaled her with my latest Red Velvet exploits. And, oddly enough, she had
absolutely no idea, no inkling (as she puts it) of why it happened.
We concluded that it probably wasn't my subbing in canola oil for the
vegetable oil written in the recipe, or the non-stick spray I used, since
both of us have used those things before with normal results.
As we talked it over, a vague olfactory deja vu hit me--

Yes, cats and kittens, I'd passed this way before (Note: see Seals and Crofts).
That--that--smell had assaulted my schnozz about a year ago. The memory is still
fuzzy as I write this, but then I've always been big on blotting out unpleasant
not to say traumatic experiences.

And the culprit?

Those bloody mini-Bundt pans!

Mom suggested that maybe some weirdo chemical reaction happened to
the non-stick coating of the pans when sprayed with the non-stick spray.
Sounds reasonable.
Of course, to be sure, I'd have to redo the entire thing exactly as before, including
forgetting to add the vanilla until after I added the eggs like I did the first time--
a non-crucial step, I'm pretty sure.

But a closer look at the recipe also revealed something Fourth-of-July gasp-worthy:

this recipe included a nutritional run-down--

In each normal-sized cupcake?

59.7 grams of fat!!!!!

I would be shrieking but this is not an auditory medium.

I will be plunging into the depths of my recipe files to locate a Red Velvet
three-layer cake recipe shared by a neighbor eons ago which I have
successfully made (in cake form, mind you) and try to modify it for cupcakes.

Stay tuned!

The Ants Go Marching One By One....

This cookies contain one of my favorite ingredients-or maybe I should call them decorations. You know them by several names: chocolate jimmies, chocolate sprinkles, but in JaneWorld, they are called chocolate ants.
As you might have guessed, there is a story behind this. And here we go...

I had the great good fortune to grow up with a mother who was a full-time homemaker. My mother has the gift of making every holiday outstandingly special, and when I was growing up, one of our favorite traditions was baking an overwhelming number of Christmas cookies and giving out 'cookie plates' to our neighbors.

When I was very young, I was allowed to help decorate the rolled-out sugar cookies. I looked forward to that day every December, when Mom would bring out her vast cookie cutter collection and I would watch her rolling out dough, cutting magical shapes out of that dough.

The best part of all was when the cookies had cooled and the embellishing began. I probably wore more colored frosting than the cookies did, and my attempts at frosting them were far from eye-pleasing but they looked beautiful to me.

Mom had an extensive assortment of sprinkles and dragees to top the cookies with, and this brings me to---

The Chocolate Jimmies Fiasco

One year Mom allowed me to invite one of the neighbor kids over to join in on the cookie decorating. His name was Shawn, and we were both probably around first grade.
Shawn and I were in the middle of adorning cookies when he reached across the table for one of the plastic bottles, which was open at the top.
Did I mention that Shawn was big for his age? And clumsy? And one of those kids that calamities just seems to happen to?

Of course you can see where this is going. He somehow managed to dump an entire bottle of chocolate sprinkles all over the kitchen linoleum. And when I say 'all over', well...and they really did look like an army of ants convening in our kitchen. ("I'd like to call this meeting of the Ants local 231 to order...")

Every year thereafter we rehash that story as we decorate cookies. All my kids loved this tradition and licked many a gob of frosting off their fingers over the years.

My kids are now 26, 23, 20, and 18 but I still shanghai them into the kitchen when it's Christmas sugar cookie time. They still enjoy decorating the cookies, or maybe they're just humoring me, I'm not sure. But I love every minute.

Chocolate Truffle Cookies
(a Taste of Home recipe that I changed slightly)


Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups butter, softened
2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup baking cocoa
1/4 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
(2 cups chocolate chips, which I omit)
1/4 cup chocolate sprinkles

Method:

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter, confectioners' sugar and cocoa until light and fluffy. Beat in sour cream and vanilla. Add flour; mix well. Stir in chocolate chips, if using. Refrigerate for one hour or overnight.

Roll into 1 inch balls; dip in chocolate sprinkles. Place, sprinkled side up, 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 325 degrees F. for 10 minutes or until set. Cool 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.


I omit the chocolate chips because I think they get in the way of the truffle-like taste. I also think there are more than enough cookies out there that require chips; these cookies stand on their own very nicely.

This recipe doubles very well. In fact, I've never made a single batch. These are my husband's favorite cookies.

Maple Tea Scones

I first got curious about scones when I tried one in Chicago. We were staying at the Palmer House Hilton and Sunday morning found us wandering the neighborhood for something that looked breakfast-y and open. (Call me naive, but I hadn't realized that many restaurants in downtown Chicago would be closed on Sundays).

We finally found a bakery and I grabbed an orange scone and ate it on the fly.

For a few steps, that is.

The little bit of saliva that naturally resides in your mouth was not equal to the task of moistening this hunk of arid dough.
I found a drink and tried manfully to wash the floury wad down without spraying my brand new husband with a flurry of very dry crumbs.

It was pretty embarrassing. Here I was, trying to impress said husband that I was cosmopolitan, familiar with foreign pastries like scones that neither of us had grown up with. But this--this--thing should have been enough to teach me to avoid scones like The Plague, if not for the wonderful chain, Panera Bread Co.

"But that's not real--it's mass-produced schlock!" You cry.

I know. I'm a baker, remember? But they do make a mean orange scone: moist, more cake-like in crumb, with a tasty orange glaze over it. I've put a few of those puppies away in the past few years, I admit.
My point, however, is that Panera has shown me that it is possible to create something much more palatable.

(Cut to a shot of a computer with a wild-eyed woman feverishly scanning recipes on the internet.)

I'm happy to say that I now have a cache of favored scone recipes that are my go-to's every time I find myself with leftover cream from making, oh, let's say, ganache from something horridly high in calories and v-e-r-y satisfying.

All of the recipes preserve a natural moistness and flavor. The one I share today is especially cake-like, delectably maple-ish, although I did whip up a maple syrup/confectioner's sugar glaze for it because you can't have too much of a good thing.

So, for today, I give you--



Maple Tea Scones

3 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 C. unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
1/2 C. milk
1/2 C. pure maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp. good vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a baking sheet or use parchment paper to line it.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in the butter with a fork or pastry blender or use a heavy duty electric mixer until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In a 1 cup measure, combine the milk, syrup and vanilla. Add to the dry mixture and stir until a sticky dough is formed, adding a few more tablespoons milk if the dough is too stiff.

Turn out the shaggy dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently about 6 times, just until the dough holds together. Divide into three equal portions and pat each into a 1-inch thick round about 6 inches in diameter. With a knife, cut each round into quarters, making 4 wedges. The scones can also be formed by cutting out with a 3-inch cookie cutter. Place the scones about 1 inch apart on the baking sheet.

Bake for 16-20 minutes until crusty and golden brown. Serve immediately with jam or Devonshire cream. Or whip together a glaze of maple syrup, confectioner's sugar and a bit of milk and drizzle over scones.

These are incredibly good just after they're cooled, but they also keep very well for 2-3 days in an airtight container.*





*found this recipe at thatsmyhome.com so thank Hannah when you see her!