Gettin' No Le'Oven

For the past few weeks my baking has definitely gone down in quality and quantity for me. "Quality?" you say say. You're thinking that's something pretty sucky say already for a baker just starting out on her journey. I mean lower quality, however, in the sense that I haven't been baking anything I can call my own or even been experimenting as much to transform something else into my own. Basically I've been what I call "textbook baking". This is me going through some of my instruction-based (as opposed to recipe-based) baking books and baking up their basic recipes to a tee. My main focus has been on practicing the techniques to get the correct texture and expected flavors. If it is completely new to me, or I'm not sure if I got it right, I make an Internet search of what other people expect it to taste like.

So back to "quality", I guess a more proper wordage is that I've had a recent decline in enlightening baking experiences. I've discovered that I feel a stronger urge to bake when I have a specific dessert in mind, coupled with the desire to make it yummilicious for a targeted person or group. If the person is myself, then I aim to get a very specific flavor and texture profile that will drive me to experiment and get it juuuuust right.

Anyways, I've been textbook baking. This, along with my downcast attitude for not having found a food-related paying job yet, has NOT made baking very exciting for me. Whenever I learn something from the book, I risk getting frustrated at not being able to get the technique portions down. So in an attempt to keep my spirits up, I once again thought about putting away the textbook and bake one of my own creations. Since moving home, I have not attempted my Hazelnut Cream-Filled Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. (I really need a shorter name for them... Hazelnut Chocowiches? Chocolate Hazelwiches?) My cousin came over to study and I decided to bake these to-go treats for her to take to her bf (my future cousin-in law!) who works graveyard shifts.

(((insert pictures of cookies)))
The treats consist of a two, cocoa-dense chocolate cookies that I based off of internet recipes attempting to mimic Oreo cookies. In between is a hazelnut cream filling that I came up with by mistake. I was trying to make a smooth hazelnut mousse but when I tasted the consistency, it was more like the dense cream fillings of Oreos but a chocolate hazelnut version! That is how I searched for Oreo cookie recipes and ended up making bigger semi-chewy/semi-crispy chocolate cookies instead of the hard snap of Oreos. I didn't like the result as first (because they were meant to be as close to Oreos as possible) but my friends took a liking to them.

As I was making the dense dough, excited to have my favorite cousin taste the chocolatey-hazelnutty goodness, Desiree (my cousin) smelled something "funny". I stopped what I was doing and immediately cracked open the oven, which was in the process of preheating. A tiny billow of smoke poofed in my face and I shut the door quickly! It smelled toxic!!... like plastic! My eyes grew wide as it dawned on me what it could be. I turned on the internal over light and my heart sank. A clear liqiud was oozing down the racks of my beloved oven (okay, it's really my parents' oven, but still... I use it the most!). I got a flashback of a moment in which I opened the oven before to find that my mom placed our microwave plastic cover there for storage. I have no idea why she would do that. Perhaps because the microwave was right above the oven and the microwave door opened downward in a vertical fashion, just like the oven, so maybe she got the two appliances confused. Even if she did, placing the cover into the oven is an obviously noticeable mistake. One should notice themselves putting it on a metal rack as opposed to a glass rotating plate, so how could she do that? I thought she was probably lazy to take it out and expected me to look into the oven first whenever I preheat it. But the fault in that thinking is that I expect NOTHING to be stored in the oven! That's how it should be! So in my defense, the inside of the oven is not viewable unless the light is turned on, and I had just passed by the oven and pressed the buttons to preheat it, not knowing at all the plastic was inside. *huge sad face*

I ended up not baking that night, turning off the oven, and letting the plastic cool down. I considered wiping some of the wet plastic while it was hot, but doing so would mean I had to open the oven door. I wanted to avoid this as the strong fumes were most likely toxic.

The next morning I had to use cutter pliers to take off the hard plastic that had firmly dried up around the oven rack bars. It was extremely difficult with the crossbar sections and took me over 2 hours to clean them! Notice the bandage in one of the snapshots? While I was pulling on the plastic on one bar, my hand shot downward as I twisted off the plastic. I didn't notice a sharp piece of plastic on an adjacent bar was sticking out and it stabbed into my finger. Apparently the plastic had formed into icicle-like structures. I saw before them but at this point I though I had shaven them all off.

FINALLY the racks were cleaned, the bottom of the oven was scraped of plastic using a damp cloth and a little bit of muscle. I was soooo ready to bake my cookie dough waiting inside the fridge. Then, whaddayaknow... power outage!! Mind you, San Diego doesn't get much brownouts, only on rare heatwaves when people are abusing their AC. They usually last under an hour, but this time it was 7 hours!! So once again, another day without baking *super sad face*

The next day power was back on, and I was soooooo sooooo ready to bake! From the whole plastic debacle, I just had to make sure before baking that all the plastic residue was gone. Even though I cleaned the racks by hand with cutters, heated them up over a open fire to melt any small bits of plastic (we did this with the open firepit in our backyard which we lit during the power outage, since the house was engulfed in complete darkness), and then scrubbed them with soap and water to take off the smoke residue... But still, my overly cautious self wanted to do more!

After replacing the racks back into the oven, I proceeded to use the self-cleaning mode. Word of advice: NEVER USE THE SELF-CLEANING MODE IN KITCHEN AIDE OVENS! Actually, after doing my research, any oven shouldn't have it. Basically, the process uses extreme heat to turn whatever residue in your oven into ash, that way after the process is done you can easily wipe away the ashes. What I didn't know was that this process also damages your thermal fuse, so after a certain number of self-cleaning trials, your fuse blows out (as it naturally should as a safety precaution) and you can't use your oven!! What is the point of putting in such a feature that will eventually render your whole oven unoperational!!

So now, once again, I am ovenless :( My dad and I ordered the oven part and will install it ourselves, avoiding all the horror stories I read in forums about crazy repairman costs). We used this site: http://www.appliancepartspros.com that I found in said forums. I'm not exactly fully promoting the site, as we are currently waiting on the part, but I will update you as soon as we get it.

In the end, it's been a frustrating week. I will, however, end it on a good note.... I got a job!! Whoohoo!! I'm sure I'll be back here to report to you both my adventures and MISadventures in this new development :)

I Second That!... From the Heart

Phew, my second post... okay, not really. I've been baking, and blogging, then baking and baking, and blogging, and baking... well, you get the point. At the end of the day, I didn't publish the posts and they all remained as drafts. Each post was never good enough for me to publish. My brother, who is also my web designer, reminded me that my blog is whatever I want it to be and is a form of self expression. Still, I continued to hesitate.

The last few weeks have been humdrum in my baking journey. I've been going through one of my baking textbooks and have learned a lot about sponge cakes, the first basic type of cake in building my foundation. I am faster at buttering and flouring pans, I now know what "ribbon stage" looks like and how long it takes, I've got a system in place that allows my ingredients to be perfectly set in measurement and temperature before coming together in cake harmony. But the fire inside has dimmed slightly. It was until the week of my friend Charlene's birthday party.

As I pondered what I wanted to make for Charlene, ideas popped into my head like pop-up windows during unsecured web-browsing (o_0). I abandoned my textbooks and baked from the heart. I took ideas from my personal recipe book collection, and melded them with ideas from the web to create my first alcohol-inspired dessert: The Whiskey Caramel Brownie.

Originally the idea was sparked by my friend Charlene, the birthday girl. Charlene's usual drink at the bar is the "Jack & Coke"; that is a shot or two of Jack Daniel's whiskey mixed with cola soda. I made a thick whiskey caramel sauce, shaped them into balls and, they held together by being rolled around in sugar. Then, I created a cola cookie by adding reduced cola soda into a plain cookie batter. I refrigerated the dough so it would be pliable enough to wrap around the caramel balls. The cookie came out okay but the caramel ended up very chewy. I thought to myself, "how good would this taste in a chewy, chocolatey brownie!"

I made a basic stove-top brownie with semisweet chocolates and swirled in the whiskey caramel sauce. The brownie came out very soft and with a slight gritty texture from the caramel becoming crystallized within the brownie batter during the baking process. The crystallizing was unexpected. I was going for a more dual-textured brownie of gooey caramel and chewy brownie. Nonetheless, the brownies were a hit at the party, especially with the birthday girl!

Since then, the fire has reignited within me. Whenever I bake for someone close to me, I visualize a dessert in my mind that's especially for them. I want it to have the perfect taste, the perfect texture, and the perfect look to what I have in my head. That's how I developed my red velvet cupcakes. I baked them till they tasted exactly how I wanted them to, and I shared them with my friends and family.

So as it stands now, the whiskey caramel brownies are not perfect. While everyone at Charlene's party praised the brownies for what they were, it still didn't match my vision. So back to the drawing board it is! More booze, more ooey-gooeyness, and more chewy chocolatey... I'll be so excited when it finally comes together and when all the experimenting pays off when I offer the finished product to everyone. Stay tuned for all the brownie bits!

With the purpose of creating and sharing something wonderful for someone I cared about, the passion had filled me up once again. Now, here I am blogging wholeheartedly and not thinking twice about hitting this publish button.

Cake Walk

Excited, anxious, confident.  The last word is pretty bold to write for an amateur as myself.

Let me introduce myself.  My name is Tiffany and I am at the ripe age of 27 years old.  I completed my Bachelor's in Psychology and worked a couple years as a therapist with a great company.  The job was terrific.  Being with my clients was rewarding and my coworkers and supervisors were awesome to work with, but there was a something simmering inside of me.  Growing up I always enjoyed baking for friends and this continued well into college, so naturally I began bringing in baked goods to work. Slowly I was turning up the heat as I continued to bake for other gatherings.  I began focusing on specific recipes, like red velvet cupcakes and mini cheesecakes, tweeking the ingredients or the techniques with each batch.   I would anxiously ask for feedback, having people compare one product from the last ones they tried, or had friends taste-test a tray of samples each baked at different temperatures, baking times, etc.  More and more the passion boiled on inside of me.

Then, on my birthday I received a baking book as a gift.   It was formatted more like a culinary textbook rather than a recipe book.  I eagerly shuffled through the pages, examining the pictures of decadent desserts and the detailed techniques on how to create them.  The passion inside me boiled over into a sweet, syrupy mess! More questions popped into my head and I Google'd for answers, went on forums, Yelp'd up bakeries for me to visit and try their goodies.  A month later, I took my very first trip to New York City.  Bakeries and cafes galore!  I was struck by the sheer amount of talent & creativity. Every smll busniess was able to put their own stamp of flavors in their baked goods.  Watching them work, tasting their sweets, admiring their drive, I was inspired.  And for the first time in my life, I immediately said with confidence, "I can do that.  I WANT to do that."

After my NYC vacation, things began to settle down back home.  I went back to my job, back to my everyday simply content lifestyle...  but I was changed.  There was a weight in my heart, as if something was sitting on my chest and holding me back.  I searched my soul and found that it was ME.  My own fears were holding me back.  After realizing this, I braced myself and I took the leap: I quit my job and moved back in with my family.  Scary? Nerve-wracking?... sure.  But not as frightening as the thought of me not trying, not willing to put on my apron and see where this path will take me.  So here I am.  Walk with me, I am sure you will get something sweet out of it  :)