The Green Pizza

Ok, I made enough macarons today to make a normal person's head spin, so this blog is decidedly going to be "non sweet."  Friday night here at the Auble household is pizza night, or rather "stay home and make pizza night" and when I say "we", I mean me of course.  We usually have something with red sauce, cheese and homemade pickled jalapenos, but today I was feeling a bit daring....behold:

Pizza Crust

1 cup warm water
2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar

Put the first 3 ingredients in the bowl of a Kitchen Aid mixer and let stand until frothy- usually about 10 minutes.

Start kneading with the dough hook and slowly, by about 1/2 cups, add about 3 cups of flour and 1 tsp salt.  I say about, because depending on a million different factors (weather, flour, cycle of the moon), you could use more or less.  You want to end up with a soft, almost sticky ball.  You will need about 7-10 minutes total after you have added the flour.  Once the dough ball is ready, I like to scoop it out of the bowl, spray the bowl with cooking spray and put the ball back, covering with plastic wrap.  Let rise about one hour.  After one hour, I like to punch the dough.  Feel free to punch it as hard as you like, it doesn't care, it's dough.  Your main goal here is to deflate it to let it rise again, let it sit, covered, another hour.

Green Pizza

1 recipe pizza dough
Jarred alfredo sauce  You can make homemade, but who are you trying to impress?
1 bunch green onions, sliced thin, green and white parts
1 large bunch spinach- steamed, squeezed of all water and chopped -today I got mine out of the garden and got some bonus earwigs and a big fat red spider.  For the love of god, please wash everything before you put on the pizza
1 bunch asparagus, sliced thin
Pecorino Romano
Black Pepper
Zest of one lemon

Preheat oven to 500 degrees
Stretch pizza dough out on sheet, cover with alfredo, sprinkle on chopped spinach, green onions, black pepper, asparagus and lemon zest.  Sprinkle liberally with Pecorino Romano cheese and drizzle with olive oil.  Bake for about 15-17 minutes, voila!

-Jenny

Pet Pictures Are Better Than Nothing!

We have had some crazy weather in San Diego this week. Not only did it rain so hard that our roof sprang another leak (expletive!), but it actually hailed. Luckily, the hail bits (pieces? drops?) did not get any larger than pea size, so I didn't end up with any dents in my car. However, there were enough little white peas to blanket the neighborhood. Check out the confused plants.

"B-b-b-b-ut, I thought it was spring!"

And the plants weren't the only ones confused; Arigato the cat spent most of the day cowering under the bed. He bravely endured the sound of the rain beating the roof and skylights, but once the hail hit--he was over it. I'm really just telling you this so that I have an excuse to post another picture of my cat. It was a weak transition, but at least I tried!

Looks like somebody is getting a treat!

- Jenn

Cherry Pie and 1982

So an old friend of mine from grade school, sent me a message today saying that her daughter had her first sleep over and that this sleep over proves that if you are a - let's say not so good kid -it will come back to bite you in the ass later in life.  Well, it looks like my friends' time has come.



Barb, Cherry Pie and Jenny- July 29, 1982

That classy lady in the middle of the picture is my beloved pillow doll- Cherry Pie, and maybe it is to her that I owe my life long obsession with food.  I slept on Cherry Pie for years and could not go anywhere without her.  She flew across the country many times and has lasted over 30 years- she is in my bedroom now (in the closet) as we speak.
-Jenny

An Ode to buttercream

I find myself thinking about frosting and those things covered with frosting more often than I should.  To say I am a sweets addict is an understatement, I don't just have a sweet tooth, I have sweet teeth.  Every square inch of my body craves sweet delicious things, and since Jenn introduced me to Swiss butter cream, I have been a frosting fiend.

I recently made a chocolate cake for my mother in law, Sandra's birthday. 
Recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/beattys-chocolate-cake-recipe/index.html
By far, the BEST chocolate cake I have ever made, although I had a ton of issues getting it out of the darn pan- another story for later.

Anyway, this amazing chocolate cake, needed some amazing chocolate frosting:

Chocolate Raspberry Swiss Butter cream

4 ounces egg whites- most of the time this is about 4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Over a double boiler, or what the french refer to as a "bain marie", I say bain in my ass, whisk the sugar, egg whites and cream of tartar until all of the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is fluffy and gorgeous.

Then add this mixture to you mixer, and mix on high until you start getting some glossy volume:

This is where the fun begins.  At this point, I add 1 tsp of raspberry extract and 2 ounces of COOLED, melted bittersweet chocolate.  Making sure it's cooled is very important here, don't get lazy. Then it's time for the last magical step:




It's not called butter cream for nothing.

You want to drop in 2 sticks of room temperature butter, while the mixture is running, by the tablespoon and do it slowly.  Once the butter has been added, continue beating at high speed for about 3 to 5 minutes.  You may start to think that it is never going to get thick enough to be frosting, but as soon as that thought leaves your head, you will see the mixture almost start to look curdled.  Continue beating and voila!

Just remember you made this for a cake, try not to eat the whole batch out of the bowl.

-Jenny

Back in Le Saddle

Jenny did such a great job describing our most recent baking adventure. We were both pretty flummoxed by the whole experience and we knew we had to jump right back in the saddle. The following Saturday found us each baking up another batch of persnickety macarons in our own kitchens. Interestingly enough, we both chose to make them in a vibrant, come-hither shade of pink.

Hot pink bakes into a beautiful rose shade. 

Less garish now, no?

These macs turned out great and I got to share them with my brother and his family who seemed to like them. (Though I think my nieces were much more interested in the fillings.) I know Jenny's macs were also a success, and confidence was restored in the kingdom. So much so, that I finally busted out my grinder and made some pistachio macarons. I think I should have gone a little easier on the green coloring, but they look pretty nice with their golden yellow friends.

Too green?

On second thought, maybe I'll make up another batch for St. Patrick's Day. I promise not to fill them with corned beef or cabbage.

- Jenn

We just made our first $55!

Hello all! Sorry for the non existent blog as of late.  Both Jenn and I have been busy getting sick, recovering from being sick, entertaining guests, oh and making our first macaron sale!  That's right you heard me: we are somewhat semi-official. 

It all started last month when Jenn was having lunch with a friend...long story short, we were asked to provide macarons for an upcoming party.  We said yes.  Actually I think it was, "Hell Yes!"  We were stoked, people wanted to buy stuff we were making, it was kind of surreal.   A fancy party wanted some of our macarons. 

Well, last Wednesday the battle began, and when I say battle, I mean hellacious battle.  The Battle of the Jenns' sanity. It was us versus the macarons and the cookies almost won.

It all started innocently enough with me showing up at Jenn's house to start our baking.  We had each made a batch of Swiss butter cream (I made vanilla bean, Jenn: mandarin orange) that morning at our houses so we could just focus on the shells of the macarons, which are really the most important part of the cookie. We starting with the dreaded circle piping:

Jenn has way more patience for this than I.  If it were up to me, I would free hand EVERYTHING in my life. Luckily I have Jenn to show me that we sometimes need structure.

Then we piped cookies:

So far so good.

Then we took our first batch out of the oven and they were a disaster:

Cookies should have bottoms, as a general rule.

We were perplexed. Not once had Jenn nor I had so many issues when making these fussy little French cookies, but every problem known to man was happening to us, batch after batch.  We were starting to panic.  Then we finally had a perfect batch:

After this, it was hit or miss.  It basically took us 6 hours to make 55 cookies and by the end, since they are French, we decided we needed to start being rude to them before they went into the oven.  "F-you cookies", we would both yell as we closed the oven door.  This seemed to do the trick.  By the end of the day we had all the cookies we needed--barely.

Sanity restored.

It feels strange, we still haven't cashed our check, but I am thinking now that maybe we should have it bronzed.

-Jenny

Candied orange peel- thoughts of home

When I was growing up in Escanaba, MI, my all time favorite treat was chocolate covered candied orange peels and I would get them here: http://saykllys.com/ And since I just checked out their website, I am sad to report they are no longer being offered, but hopefully this is just an on line situation and all the people of Upper Michigan can still get them in their local store, and we won't have some sort of candied orange peels riots.

In case you don't live in Michigan next to a Sayklly's store, here is a recipe to make them yourself:

Candied Orange Peel
4-5 oranges, lemons, limes or grapefruits, but don't mix them, do each batch separately please
1 cup water
1 cup sugar plus more for sugaring the peels later

Take a vegetable peeler and carefully peel all the yummy rind off the fruit being careful not to go too deep and start taking off the pith as well.  Once the fruit is peeled, julienne into small strips and place into a small pan of boiling water, simmer for 10 minutes.

Julienned orange rind in first water bath

After 10 minutes in the simmered water, drain the peels and repeat for another 10 minutes in more simmering water.  The purpose of this blanching is to take the bitterness out of the peel.  Some recipes I have read can have you doing this up to 4 times, it's all up to personal taste.

Once you have finished boiling the peels a second time, combine the sugar and water in a small pan and simmer until all the sugar is dissolved, once dissolved, add the blanched peels.

You want to simmer the peels in the sugar syrup until the peel start to look translucent.  Once translucent, turn the heat off and let the peels sit in the sugar syrup for 4-6 hours.  When you are ready to take them out of the pan, simply turn the heat on low until the mixture is syrupy again and not one big clump.  Drain and roll in sugar, let dry on wax paper overnight.  Enjoy!

As for the choclate part of this recipe, dip 'em, don't dip 'em they are amazing either way.

-Jenny