Guaranteed you know I’m already figuring out how to tweak these to make them better.
Tag Archive: baking
Freshly baked pandesal
In all honesty, there’s a part of me that wonders how the hell my weight hasn’t ballooned out of control. I like baking far too much to not making it a part of what I do. I make a lot of awesome stuff. The problem that follows though is me figuring out just when the heck to do with all of the food. ”Eat it” is definitely an option, but it’s rather risky. Taking that approach might mean that what I made will dominate my food intake for many days to come. That risk is multiplied by a little bit of impatience such that I may just want to eat it all quickly just so that I won’t end up eating it for days to come. See! Bad! Ah, but like I said, I won’t let it stop me from baking. Hell, I’m excited about that George Brown course to come.
So yeah, what’s pictured above? Those are some freshly baked rolls of pandesal. I kind of love the stuff. It’s available from many Filipino food stores but those bagged things just can’t compare to some freshly baked rolls. It’s got a nice crust with a soft chewy centre that’s a little sweet. Add a little butter or margarine and this stuff is insanely good. I saw a recipe for it in my mother’s cookbook. The instructions are handwritten. I photocopied the page when I was visiting their place. I had full intentions of trying out the recipe. This weekend I finally got off my butt to do it. I didn’t have any yeast, so I actually drove over to Walmart at 7 a.m. to get some. I wanted an early start. To my surprise, the assembly was pretty quick. The process of kneading and rising wasn’t tough either. It all just takes some patience. I eventually ended up with what you see above. I tried one of the smaller buns to see if it was worth sharing with other people. It was really tasty, so I ended up trying out another to be sure that I wasn’t imagining things. Eventually I downed a third for good measure. See! Baaaaaaaaad! These rolls definitely trump the store bought stuff.
Trust me: there will be a next time for this. It was simple enough that I could make these on a weekend morning as a project. I think next time I will try adding more sugar. I already increased the sweetness, but I think it could use a little more. Instead of just water, I want to try using some evaporated milk. Through a few more iterations I’ll get this recipe tight enough such that my bread will be well known, yeah? Hahah. First things first though. I need to eat/give away all of these existing ones. Blaaaargh.
Taking up the Arts
This course:
I am now registered in it.
I’ve been wanting to do it. And now I’ve finally taken steps to actually be a part of it all. It should be obvious from the blog, but I enjoy baking. As well, a lot of people enjoy stuff that I make. So, this seems to be a natural extension, right? It’s about time I got some proper lessons and theory down. Time to kick this sucker up a notch! Yeeeow.
Lime squares
This is definitely not the first time I’ve used this lemon square recipe. I know that it certainly won’t be the last. It usually turns out well enough barring any strange substitutions. I consider it one of my standbys that I can pull out when I’m in need of something fairly easy to make (blueberry buckle is another one). Well, last night I vowed to myself that I would honour my free time and not bring anything to a Running Room BBQ that was happening today. On my way home though I thought about the lemon squares and how easy it’d be to put together. All I needed were lemons. Well, after a bit of debate I ended up stopping at Walmart to get some fruit. I bought two lemons and two limes. I figured I’d give myself the option, at least.
When I got home I settled on swapping out the lemons in the recipe for limes. Lime, to me, is a lot more potent than lemon. Even though the fruit it small, the acidity is such that I figured a 1-to-1 swap for lemons in terms of juice would be good enough. The recipe also calls for the use of the zest of one lemon. Knowing that lime is really aromatic, I decided to use the zest from two limes. I wanted the effect to really be a heavy duty punch to the face. I kept the sugar levels the same. I figured that the tart nature of the fruit really needed a lot of sweetness to balance it all out. I added a few drops to green food colour to make it scream out lime. I figured a brighter green would psychologically enhance the flavour. As I baked it, I wanted to make sure things didn’t get too brown or too burned. I timed it all nicely and it came out looking like this:
I let this cool in the pan overnight. This morning, I took it out and started gently pulling it out of the pan. I put in parchment paper to help keep things from sticking, but I neglected to cover two of the sides. The result was that things stuck to the side making for a delicate operation. I didn’t want to pull so hard to make everything crack. After much cutting I eventually got it. I didn’t want the edges to go out so I cut the edges off an ate them myself. For the rest, I dusted the top with icing sugar then started cutting the sheet into 1″ squares. Any time there was a mistake, like if the piece crumbled or was too gooey and hadn’t set I put the mistake aside and selected another. All in all I was able to cut 48 squares.
I covered the basket with a tea towel and put it all in a bag. When I got to the event, I had someone else bring the bag to the BBQ because I was busy helping out. When I finally got there, I noticed that it was on the table, but all still in the bag. That meant no one had touched them. I took it out and left it. Soon there was a lot of buzz about them. Overall the feedback was really positive. I was almost embarrassed. They were gone fairly quickly. There were some people hovering above. Can’t say I could have asked for a better result. All of that reaction just makes baking worth the effort, right?
In all honesty, I think I’m getting the feel that this could be another career track I could jump to if tech doesn’t work out. I’m certainly getting a lot of satisfaction out of it. Who knows what the future holds, eh?
Smaller batches
I had an urge to make some muffins. God, it’s so much easier to make a small batch. It was fairly simple to slap together. I’m sure it will go quickly enough. I need to think more about adjusting recipes to create just enough food for one person. It’ll reduce the change that I’ll get entirely sick of the food before reaching the end.
I’m good at this!
In talking with someone I know, we kind of identified the fact that I like to do awesome stuff to somehow get the approval of other people. ”Oh, I’m good at this! People are going to think I’m awesome!” I know it’s sort of neurotic-sounding when I frame things that way, but it’s sort of true. It’s part of why I coach. It’s part of why I do improv. It’s part of why I bake. It wouldn’t be uncommon of me to really go out of my way to do something to help out even though it would be a big time sucker for me and my personal time.
Over at my not-so-local Running Room they’re having a bit of a Canada Day potluck event on Wednesday. I wanted to contribute! I was thinking about it on my way back home from coaching. I would probably make glazed shortbread cookies, but that would require blocks of butter, which would require me to head to the store. By the time I get back it’d be about 9-ish, which would mean I have a few hours to get it all together. While I’m working on that I could multitask and work on coding a website that I volunteered to do. I could do that all while catching up on PVR’d episodes of shows that I’ve been meaning to catch up on. If I’m lucky I could get to sleep by 1 or 2 a.m. Hurray! Yeah, after outlining things that way, I decided to just let go of baking for the event. There’s just no sense in trying to cram that in. There’s no time! As much as it would be appreciated, it’s not a matter of life or death if I participate. And in not doing so people are not going to judge and say “Oh, Jason is so damn lazy!” There’s no need to kill myself for a bit of approval. If I bake it should be because I genuinely want to do it.
Pie observations
I summarized my findings about my orange meringue pie experiment on Twitter earlier, but I might as well give a short rundown here.
- Orange is tasty, but it’s not strongly acidic or has a strong punch-to-the-face effect. I think it would do better as pie filling if it’s paired with another citrus. I’m sure lemon/orange would be a great combo. I don’t believe it can have a starring role.
- When making the filling, it’s supposed to be a thick goo. Adding too much juice makes it too runny. Better to have it thick and hold its place. Only reason I added more juice was because I didn’t find the juice of one orange that effective. So: point 1 leads to point 2.
- Less water with the dough means that the dough shouldn’t be sticky. Having not-so-sticky dough means using less flour to coat the surface where the dough is rolled. Using less flour means that the crust won’t be that hard. Important!
Yeah, people liked the pie, but I know that I could have done better. I need to up my game! Reputation to maintain!!!
Stupid pie crusts
I have a bit of a reputation (whether self-imposed or not) as a guy who knows his way around a kitchen. I know how to bake. I’m kind of decent. I’m not going to win any awards any time soon, but no doubt: I generate a lot of tasty stuff. So, when I end up making something that’s kind of ugly for something that’s going to be brought to a get together, I feel a bit anxious. One thing that I still haven’t mastered is pie crust. Geez. Every time I give it a go something goes wrong. Usually, it shrinks. Earlier I tried to make a crust for something I’m bringing to a get together on Friday. The instructions I was reading said that I should cover the crust with foil and weigh it down with rice or dry beans. Well, covering it didn’t help. The butter in the crust bubbled over and turned the bottom of my oven into a greasy mess. Oops. Every time I opened my oven door clouds of smoke poured out. I had to turn off the smoke detector or risk having it go off late at night. The crust was flaky, but it shrank and became all wonky.
It’s not pretty. I didn’t want to present the thing like this, so I was tempted to head to the store and get a ready-made crust. In the end, I decided that failure was not an option. I still had butter in the fridge, so I went ahead and tried again. For my second attempt I tried to be meticulous about keeping everything cold. I made sure not to use too much water. I tried not to roll things out too much. After freezing the shell, I pricked the bottom with a fork and popped it in the oven. Fifteen minutes later I checked on it and saw the crust bubbling up from the bottom despite pricking the shell. Ugh! I opened the door to adjust, but smoke blinded me. I also burned the side of my arm on the oven door. I took the shell out, put the foil/rice on top to weigh it down, then put it back. In the end, the crust isn’t perfect, but it’s somewhat better. It’s acceptable.
I’m going to fill this in later. Meanwhile, I wasn’t about to throw the old crust out. I thought about what I had in my freezer and cupboard. I wanted to do a blueberry filling, but I didn’t have enough berries in the freezer. I knew I had a lot of chocolate chips in the cupboard so I settled on making a chocolate custard pie.
See, despite the wonky crust, this thing looks awesome. One day I’ll get my pie crust technique down. Determined to have it by year end!
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