Baking with Erin

Sparkling Ginger Chip Cookies

The holiday baking has begun in our house. So far, I've baked triple chocolate muffins and Chocolate Revel Bars, but I had not yet baked anything with Erin. Today is the day of my dept's Christmas party so while on childcare duty this morning (Erin is officially on holiday from her Montessori), we baked up a batch of these goodies for the annual cookie contest.

The recipe came from Heidi Swanson. I love Heidi Swanson and the beautiful aesthetic that's always a component in her recipes. This one was no different.

We used a 70% cacao Gran Saman chocolate for the "chip" part. I know, we could have used a plain old mini semisweet chip, but Swanson always makes me want to go the extra mile so we chopped our chocolate by hand.

Erin chopped chocolate too.

 

Only, her chocolate didn't really end up in the cookies.

 

This is truly a girl after my own heart when it comes to chocolate. She ate a few discs of that dark, dark, velvety and delightfully bitter chocolate and asked for more. I think this kind of taste is a bit unusual in a two-year old.

The dough with the ginger and the chopped chocolate was gorgeous and smelled heavenly.

Of course, I discovered midway through the prep that I did not have fresh ginger. I was home alone with two young children, it was pouring rain outside and I was already melting the butter on the stovetop. No way was I heading out for fresh ginger. Central Market had just filled the ground ginger bulk jar when I purchased it a few days ago so I just hoped for enough good, fragrant quality from that. I seem to be having some trouble reading recipes lately (perhaps it's lack of sleep? I'll just say that scarves don't knit themselves this time of year).

Erin really really enjoyed rolling the dough balls in turbinado sugar.

We also had a timely lesson in handwashing. I know that it sunk in because later when we were playing "restaurant", she made a point of washing my hands for me before I could eat the pretend cupcakes she was baking.

Also, Erin chose to empty that teeny bowl after the cookies were rolled out by sticking a wet hand in the rough sugar and licking it clean (over and over again until I realized how much sugar she was ingesting).

Here we are with Erin's batch. Note the kid-styled shape. Perhaps not as round and symmetrical as the remaining cookies, but Erin loved them just the same. She ate about half a dozen before I could divert her.

I think these may go in our regular holiday repertoire. Next time, I'm going to try to work a little faster so that the dough is a teeny bit gooier and holds the sugar a little better. Mine didn't sparkle quite as much as the originals appear to.

Here's the recipe, courtesy Heidi Swanson:

Sparkling Ginger Chip Cookies

If you can't locate whole wheat pastry flour, you can substitute spelt flour. Or feel free to use all-purpose flour if that is what you have on hand. As far as the unsulphured molasses goes, I use Wholesome Sweeteners or Plantation Organic Blackstrap Molasses. I used a Scharffen Berger Bittersweet 70% here. You can use light brown sugar, or light muscavado sugar in place of the natural cane sugar.

1/2 cup / 3.5 oz / 90 g turbinado sugar
6 ounces / 170 g bittersweet chocolate
2 cups / 8.5 oz / 245 g whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/2 cup / 4 oz / 113 g unsalted butter
1/4 cup / 2 oz / 60 ml unsulphured molasses

2/3 cup / 3.75 oz / 100 g fine grain natural cane sugar, sifted

1 1/2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger, peeled
1 large egg, well beaten

Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C degrees - racks in the top and bottom third of the oven. Line a couple baking sheets with unbleached parchment paper or a Silpat mat, and place the large-grain sugar in a small bowl. Set aside.

Finely chop the chocolate bar into 1/8-inch pieces, more like (mostly) shavings really.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, and salt.

Heat the butter in a saucepan until it is just barely melted. Remove from heat and stir in the molasses, sugar, and fresh ginger. The mixture should be warm, but not hot at this point, if it is hot to the touch let it cool a bit. Whisk in the egg. Now pour this over the flour mixture, and stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate.

I like these cookies tiny, barely bite-sized, so I scoop out the dough in exact, level tablespoons. I then tear those pieces of dough in two before rolling each 1/2 tablespoon of dough into a ball shape. From there, grab a small handful of the big sugar you set aside earlier and roll each ball between your palms to heavily coat the outside of each dough ball. Place dough a few inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Bake for 7-10 minutes or until cookies puff up, darken a bit, and get quite fragrant.

Makes roughly 4 dozen.

Friendship Bread

Erin and I have had a rough time getting cupcakes made lately. She carried around a cold for a while there (and missed over a week of school due to the Thanksgiving holiday) and I certainly didn't want to pass any germs around via cupcakes (though baking is turning out to be a great way to talk about germs - i.e., make sure you don't cough, etc. into the batter)!

Yesterday, we decided to make the bread from our friend Amy's Amish Friendship Bread starter.

Erin had a lot of fun mixing the additions into the batter. She was especially enamored of the little spoon measurement contraption shown in the picture.

She also enjoyed mashing the dough after we put it into starter bags for friends.

We made one loaf of plain cinnamon sugar and another with raisins. It filled the house with a warm, yeasty smell which was perfect for yesterday's cold and rainy afternoon.

The kitchen post-baking, however, was a wreck. We weren't that messy, but we hadn't straightened up in a few days and having to use the last of our flour, oil, and sugar (I had to dig out three opened bags buried deep in the pantry of sugar just to have barely enough for the recipe) just made a huge mess. So, this week's baking tip with a toddler? Start with as clean a kitchen as possible - less distraction, less frustration, less temptation for little fingers. As it was, I was having to work to snap pictures without documenting the large mess around us.

Note my old Madame Alexander doll who made it into two of the photos, though. She is sporting some fabulous ponytails and no clothes.

Cupcake #3: Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes

So, I'm sure that when I started this blog, I had nay-sayers. Folks who thought that doing this project with a two-year old was, to put it mildly, unwise. This was a day for these folk. So, read on.

First error. I used cupcake baking as a lure to get Erin into the car and home. I was actually planning to bake cupcakes tomorrow before our friends come over but I used everything in my mother arsenal to get Erin off of the playground and into the waiting vehicle. I thought she might forget about the cupcakes when we got home.

Even though I was feeling stressed, when she brought it up I thought, "what the heck," and started to gather our supplies. Note that we were making VCTOTW's version of red velvet cupcakes. Yes, I said red velvet cupcakes. RED velvet. RED. As in food coloring. I sort of knew the day would come when we had the food coloring incident. I was unprepared for that day to be today. The day she was wearing a new outfit.

Here's that new outfit twenty minutes into our affair:

That would be her new American Apparel clothes soaking in liquid laundry detergent, vinegar (which we needed for the cupcakes anyway), and warm water. A quick visit to the internets suggested this technique. I'll let you know if we actually get the red splotches out. It's a little spooky how much it looks like she bled all over her clothes.

I was so mad (at her, at myself for leaving RED food coloring too close to the edge of the counter - mistake number 2) that I didn't even let her put the cupcake liners in the pan. I thought I'd blog about this one being a total failure and just make the cupcakes myself after she went to bed.

But she wanted to forge ahead. So we did.

That's some reeeeeeed batter. And would be appropriate for special effect usage in a horror film, by the way. It was, er, viscous.

Mistake number 3. In my flustered state after the red food coloring affair, I'm pretty sure we put in too little flour. The recipe called for 1 1/4 cups. I'm pretty darn sure I forgot the extra 1/4 cup. This may explain why the cupcakes taste a little "wet."

Still, they turned out pretty:

Mistake number 4? I was going to frost these with the vegan cream cheese icing from the cookbook. Only, I bought the herbs and chives Tofutti cream cheese instead of plain. I suppose it was a good thing I noticed before making the darned icing.

So, since I already had the margarine in the mixer, I just defaulted back to the fluffy buttercream standby. And I wasn't inspired at this point to do any fancy piping. Instead, I made use of the black sugar I had on hand. I think it paired quite nicely with the skeleton decorations I bought a few weeks back.

The best news of all? These are delicious! Even without that extra 1/4 cup of flour and, thankfully, without herb and chive cream cheese icing.

Recipients: Various friends in celebration of my very favorite holiday. That is, if David doesn't eat them all tonight - he's on his third. He's also watching The Lost Boys, FWIW.

Don't forget about the head vampire.

Happy Halloween.

Cupcake #2: Basic Chocolate with Mocha Buttercream Frosting

Well, it's taken us longer to get to cupcake number two. There was that mysterious 2-day virus that we passed around the house. We also took a trip out of town. There was also the general malaise that accompanies humid, sticky days. But today we were inspired.

Only, we didn't have baking soda. I did a little browsing on google to see about substituting, but it didn't seem wise (3 times the amount of baking powder might work, but also might affect the taste? no thanks) so we trudged to a neighbor's and borrowed, not the mythical cup of sugar, but a little baggie full of white powder.

Erin curdled the soymilk with vinegar. She also laid out the liners and, of course, taste-tested the batter.

 

It was deemed tasty. The girl has a penchant for chocolate too b/c she also cleaned out the dusty bowl where we mixed the cocoa powder with flour. That's right - she ate plain cocoa powder with flour just like it was Ovaltine out of the jar.

The batter was runny again, but this time the recipe said a few lumps were okay.

I just barely had enough batter to fit in 12 liners. One fell a little short, so it was the one I taste-tested.

The house smelled divine while these babies were baking, even better than the Golden Vanilla ones.  When they came out of the oven, I told Erin they needed to cool and that she could have one in the morning and she didn't ask again. Out of sight out of mind I guess b/c I set them to cool on a higher counter this time and avoided the run-by stealing that happened last time.

Once again, I frosted them after the girls' bedtime. I lightly frosted a plain chocolate buttercream for Erin and then added the coffee for the remaining frosting. I even took the time to pipe on the frosting because it whipped up so nicely.

David and I enjoyed the final product when he got home from work this evening. These are truly delicious. I deem these a much bigger success than cupcake #1.

Recipient: A fellow AustinMama who had emergency surgery earlier this week will be receiving a batch of these tomorrow. And we may set aside a few for Erin's Montessori guides to enjoy.

Halloween Prep

To fill the afternoons, we sometimes go shopping. Erin loves to visit the grocery stores around town, trying out all the varieties of carts that are out there. Today we made a family trip to Target because we needed baby wipes. This meant we also got to peruse the Halloween aisles.

Erin's a little scared of Target's skeleton butler, whom she refers to as the Halloween-man or the Wrist-man, though we can't quite figure out the origin of the latter. The dude may look harmless here in this small image, but he stands about 6 feet tall and makes some pretty weird noises, so I don't fault her at all for being careful. While avoiding this monstrosity, she had a lot of fun carrying as many of those plastic pumpkin pails as she could at one time and then putting them all back on the shelf in their proper places (good girl!).

I perused the Halloween baking area and found these:

They're mini ghost pans, in case you can't tell by the picture - the package even said "perfect for cupcakes."

I think the Dulce Sin Leche cupcakes out of the Vegan Cupcakes book would be ideal for these. The description reads "light-textured coconut milk cupcakes with a ribbon of homemade vegan 'milk' caramel, a hint of lemon, and a sprinkle of coconut.(p. 93)" They are sprinkled with shredded coconut on top. That seems like it could be ghostly.

These do appear to be a more complicated cupcake so they may be a larger undertaking with a toddler. But I'm anxious to truly introduce Erin to the world of coconut. I could live in a world of coconut.

I also found these:

They are from Wilton - a skull cupcake liner and topper combination pack.

I think the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes (p. 55) would be good for these (this would be Vegan Cupcakes' version of Red Velvet, referred to in the book as a cupcake with an "intriguing burgundy color"). I don't think I can eat Red (or Burgundy) Velvet without cream cheese frosting and, thankfully, there's a vegan version of one in this cookbook.

I also have this at home:

This pumpkin pan is a little trickier because it's really little cakes and not cupcakes. To get the jack-o-lantern faces to show, you don't really want to cover them with frosting. It's possible they could take a glaze. Last year I made these with a pumpkin pound cake recipe. I'd really like to do something similar this year because I love pumpkin cake/bread and it bakes up orange-ish, perfect for little jack-o-lanterns. I'm not holding myself to the book only for baking so we may break out of the cupcakes briefly to make the little jack-o-lantern cakes.

I love Halloween planning (and Halloween in general)! Plus, it's the gateway to the holiday baking season. I can smell the cinnamon and nutmeg now . . .

Baking with Erin: The Beginning

So, here's the deal. I love baking and I want my kids to love baking too. I also love lists. And food blogs and kid blogs. So I thought it would be a grand idea to bake my way through a list of recipes in a cookbook. With my toddler, Erin (2 years). Am I crazy?

I was inspired by the Cupcake Queen over at 52 Cupcakes who has announced that she is working though all 175 of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes recipes. I'll admit, 175 seems daunting with a toddler. Plus there's the whole fingers in fancy batters filled with uncooked items like eggs issue. That's when it came to me - vegan cupcakes.

Vegan cupcakes don't contain raw eggs so their batters are perfect for little fingers going into mouths. And I knew about a book that was perfect for this venture - Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. There are 39 cupcakes in the book, plain to fancy, and I know people rave about them all. So, there you have it: 39 cupcakes with a toddler. Yes, it was 1am when I came up with this idea and I was nowhere near a kitchen or the toddler. But still, I liked the idea. 

The other part of the project is to give the cupcakes away (the cupcake love). Maybe to someone having a rough week or month or year. Maybe to a friend who needs perking up. Maybe just as a whimsical how-do-you-do to a neighbor, acquaintance, teacher or colleague. After all, we don't need to be eating 39 different varieties of cupcakes all by ourselves. 

And please note, this site is a work in progress. I'm trying out a new blog service (Typepad) with fancy new options so it may take me a while to get comfortable. The look and feel may be changing a bit over the next few weeks. The content and the purpose will remain the same.

We started Sunday with the first recipe in the book: Golden Vanilla Cupcakes.

Erin + ingredients

I started while she was finishing lunch, knowing that toddler time is a fickle thing. We got out all the ingredients and looked them over.

This is the oil.

Note the quesadilla still in hand. She put it down to fill the cupcake pan with cute little pink and green plaid cupcake liners, counting all the way to ten as she went. Eleven and twelve just sort of took care of themselves.

Erin was actually very interested in the process. She helped measure and stir, and since standing on a chair near the sink is one of her most favorite activities of all time, she mustered the courage to face the dreaded Kitchen-aid Mixer. Once we started adding oil and soymilk and flour and vanilla, she and the mixer were at a truce.

The batter looked too runny so I stopped beating it to take a look and, curious about how it would suit up in the little paper liners, I went ahead and poured it in the pan. I had glanced at the part of the recipe that instructed me to beat the batter until there were no lumps, but, at this point, I didn't think the cupcakes would work out anyway so I forged ahead. I forget these are vegan cupcakes and may look, batter-wise, different than what I'm used to. Runny appears to be okay, but, yes, my batter was lumpy.

Here's what they looked like after 20 minutes in the oven:

a dozen freshly baked 'cakes

Up close:

single cupcake

Even with the lumps, they baked up to a lovely golden brown and smelled divine (we added both the vanilla and the almond extracts and that little kick of almond ratcheted the beguiling smell factor just over yummy!).

Erin and I thought they tasted pretty good. So we set them aside to cool on racks. I frosted them with VCTOTW's basic vegan "butter"cream frosting after Erin went to bed and gave them a dusting of autumnal hued sugars. And, yes, I let her have a half a frosted cupcake with breakfast (they're vegan, so they're healthy, right?).

They're pretty good. I wouldn't say they're fantastic, but that may be my own fault and my lumpy batter. They taste very golden vanilla-y if you know what I mean. They taste like that sounds. I still think it's cool that they're vegan and I imagine that we'll be revisiting this recipe again to try and perfect it.

Recipient of this recipe: none, since this was our first foray out in the baking-with-toddler world, we're playing it a little safe and keeping our slightly lumpy, slightly chewy, but yummy smelling Golden Vanilla Cupcakes out of the fray.

Up next: Basic Chocolate, and we WILL share these (and I WILL make sure I follow the recipe and beat the batter just as long as I'm supposed to).

Welcome, Autumn