Monthly House Meeting - One Month Late

Melting delicious butter for the cupcakes

So, I have once again been very lazy about posting my latest baking adventures. It's finally spring break, not that graduate students get a spring break, but this should be my chance to finally catch up on posting and perhaps get some more baking done :).  Just don't tell my advisor, I should be catching up on my research.

So this post is for the February (yes February) house meeting. In addition to subjecting the house council members to my random rants during the meeting, I also subject them to my baking escapades after the meeting.  For the February house meeting, I decide to bake the Chocolate Cupcakes with Crispy Magic Frosting on page 186 and the Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies on page 103.   

Chocolate cupcakes cooling on the stove

So, I've learned a couple things already during this baking project:  1. It's actually really easy (and fun) to make everything from scratch.  2. If you knew exactly what went into these items, you would never eat them.  It's the buttery, sugary goodness that makes it delicious.  

The cookies and the cupcakes were no exception.  I was surprised when I was baking how fast everything actually was coming together, until I started icing with the crispy magic frosting.  Yes, that's right, magic frosting.  I set up my pastry bag and star tip with the goal of making a cupcake that looks as good as the ones in the cookbook.  They make it look so easy, surely I could do it to, right.  

Cookies fresh from the oven

Wrong.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't ice the perfect cupcake.  For some reason, the so called "magic" frosting would rather stick to itself than the cupcake.  After 1 hour, I finally iced a couple reasonable cupcakes and had several catastrophic failures.

I boxed up the cookies and cupcakes and took them down to the meeting.  The cookies and cupcakes all magically disappeared, even the cupcakes with the questionable frosting.  Gotta love graduate students.  I unfortunately didn't get a chance to sample the cupcakes, but the cookies were fantastic.   My favorite cookbook item so far!

The final cupcakes - some were more elegantly iced than others

Winter Officer's Retreat = Epic Baking Challenge

Pie crusts in progress.

Life as a graduate student can sometimes be overwhelming.  Actually, it's overwhelming most of the time.  The past couple of weeks, make that months, have been one of those overwhelming times.  Lots of random things to take care of and no time to post about my latest baking adventures.  I'm finally getting around to it now.  I guess a month late is better than never!

Ahmed making the blueberry pie filling.

If you know me, you likely know that I'm really involved with student activities at my dorm Sidney-Pacific.  At the end of January, we host a retreat for all of the 50+ officers involved in the government.  As one of the retreat planners, I thought it would be a good idea to bake all the desserts.  I thought it would just take me a couple hours, I'd be able knock a couple recipes off my list, and the officers would be able to enjoy some home-baked treats.  Unfortunately, as usually happens in research and in life, I grossly underestimated the time required.

Midnight Chocolate Cakes cooling

For the retreat, I decided to make the Double Two-Apple Pie on page 203, the Blueberry Lemon Pie on page 217, the Plum Clafoutis on page 252, and the Midnight Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Buttercream on page 163. Not an easy task, so I decided to start early on Friday night with the pie crusts (Pate Brisee I on page 92.  This portion of the baking was actually easier than I expected, it only took me 30 mins to make the dough for 2 pie crusts and the mess was pretty minimal. 

Double two-apple pie ready for baking.

Since the retreat and the baking was all going to happen on the same day, I decided to recruit a baking helper.  Ahmed was lured in with promises of sweet treats and only two hours work.  We worked away for four hours in the big kitchen at SP to prepare the dessert for the retreat.  I wouldn't have made it without Ahmed and Mirna's help.  As it was, I just scraped out 20 mins to clean up and finish preparing for the retreat. 

Overall the results were delicious and the house government walked away from the retreat dinner high on buttery, sugary goodness.  They didn't even seem to notice the the snafu with the chocolate chunks in the icing (they were there by design, I swear!).  Overall, recipes approved (especially the blueberry pie!) and five recipes to take off my list.  Epic baking challenge completed!