Our littlest one had a birthday party today - she's turning 4 on Tuesday.
She's had something of an obsession with Chinese Lion Dances ever since seeing celebrations at a Lunar New Year festivities at the dowtown gardens a couple of years ago, and this year, she requested that her cake be done in this theme.
Here is what I came up with:
After many, many weeks of waiting it hit my doorstep yesterday.
I am engaged in other baking projects right now, but I had to take a look.
What already excites me: The vienoisserie section, that all recipes are in baker's percents, the sugar work, and the section on how to analyse a complex formula.
OK, there may be mistakes or things that are not to everyone's liking, but I am so anxious to get my other baking done and sit with this book that I can hardly stand it.
Woo Hoo!
Happy Baking
Anybody in Australia catch A Matter of Loaf and Death last night? How was it?
My kids and I are big Wallace & Grommit fans. That the new one is set in a bakery makes it irresistable.
I am attempting to read Janedo's baking blog 'Au Levain', having gotten hooked on the automatic translation that kept translating 'baguette' into 'stick' or 'wand'. I always wanted to learn French, and this seemed like a good motivation. What a treat to visit Anis Bouabsa and Patisserie Poilane. Very cool. As part of the exercise, I made a list of some baking terms. I thought I'd share them here, with the hope of getting some free proofreading and editorial comments.
Thanks,
Stewart (edited with new words and pronunciation hints 9 Dec 08)
GREAT USE FOR RIPE BANANAS
I had a couple of very ripe bananas that had begun accumulating brown spots on the skins and decided to look for a recipe where they could be used. I found a great recipe for Banana Muffins in Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Bread Bible" on page 121. Her recipe includes sour cream, butter, egg(s), grated lemon zest, vanilla extract, toasted and chopped walnuts, turbanado sugar and is made with cake flour.
Floyd's Cream Cheese Rolls were the final inspiration to try this recipe. I made a few little changes to the cream cheese. I added an egg yolk, sugar, vanilla and lemon juice. Used my blender and blended it all until nice and smooth. I made little packages filled with cream cheese with some baking sugar on top with half the dough recipe. We have some real sweet tooths around here!! But these are wonderful as they are not really overly sweet at all....very t
There is a good article in today's Oregonian on challah. Good timing, since I was thinking about challah and holiday breads in the shower this morning (yes, sadly it is true that some days I think about breads and baking pretty much around the clock).
