YAY! for Christmas!!

For Christmas Eve dinner I made a Yule Log Cake. I make one almost every year. This is the recipe I use:


CAKE

• 3 eggs
• 1 C sugar
• 1/3 C water
• 3/4 C flour
• 1/4 C cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 recipe Fudgy Icing
• 1 recipe Chocolate Mousse
• 
  

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375°

Line a jelly-roll pan with wax paper, grease paper.

Beat eggs until thick and lemon colored. Beat in sugar, then water and vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients. Gradually beat into egg mixture. Mix until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake 15 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes then turn out onto tea towel sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar. Slowly roll up cake and towel. Let cool.

When cool, gently unroll cake. Spread Chocolate Mousse on cake and re-roll. 

To decorate, pipe fudgy icing with a rose tip in long and short stripes to resemble bark.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

6 oz chocolate, chopped

2 cups whipping cream, divided

3 2 T sugar

DIRECTIONS

Bring 3/4 cup cream to a boil, pour over chocolate, stir until melted. Let cool.

Whip remaining 1 1/4 cups cream and sugar to stiff peaks. Fold into chocolate. 

FUDGY ICING

1/3 cup butter, softened

1/3 cup cocoa powder

2 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1-3 T hot water

Beat butter, cocoa, and sugar. Add vanilla and enough water to make it pipable. 

FUDGY ICING

YAY! for penguins!!!

The quilting bug has really bit. I spend a lot of time thinking about quilts and what to make next and reading all the lovely quilt blogs. When I went to the fabric store to get backing fabric for the tree skirt I saw the cutest penguin fabric and thought, "I have to get that for my manager" She LOVES penguins, teal blue is her favorite color, and her birthday was coming up. Then I saw the price tag, $7.99 per yard. That didn't fit my budget. Along came the Black Friday sales and the flannel was only $1.49/yard. I could afford that! So I went and stood in line for way too long and soon I had 7 yards of penguins and a few yards of blue, and enough black for a binding.

Hunter likes penguins too!

I brought the fabric home, looked at it, and finally came up with a block design. I decided to do a rectangle because it seemed more modern, and went with a 2 1/2" strip so the penguins would be mostly intact. I made 6 rows of 5 blocks, but decided that 6 was too long, so I put one row on the back, just for fun!


 I quilted it in straight lines along some of the seams, using my walking foot (which it turns out I can't use with my quilting bar? silly Kenmore)

I'm really pleased with how well this one turned out, and the birthday girl seemed to like it too.

Next up, the zig zag quilt, but first Christmas cookies. 

YAY! for cha siu bao!!

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Cha Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

This was a great challenge as this is a favorite treat!

Cha Siu Recipe:
1 pork fillet/tenderloin (roughly 1-1.5 pounds) (I used two pork chops because everything at the store was much larger than 1 1/2 pounds)
4 large cloves of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 tablespoon peanut oil
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
½ teaspoon ground pepper
pinch of salt
½ teaspoon (2 gm) five spice powder
½ teaspoon sesame oil
½ teaspoon red food coloring (I use a paste color, so I used a LOT less than 1/2 tsp)


Mix everything together an pour most of it on the meat. Let the meat sit in the fridge for 4+ hours. Pre-heat oven to 350F. Heat a heavy pan until it's hot, add meat, cook to form crust of marinade. Put meat in oven and basting frequently, cook for about 20 minutes or until cooked through.


Let cool. Make bun dough:


1 cup milk, scalded and cooled to 100-115F
¼ cup (60 gm/2 oz) sugar
1 tablespoon oil
¼ teaspoon (2 gm) salt
2½ teaspoons (8 gm/1 satchel) of dried yeast
3 cups (420 gm/15 oz) plain flour


Mix together all ingredients. Knead well, let rise until doubled. Punch down and divide into 30-40g pieces. While the dough is rising prepare the filling 
12 oz char sui, finely diced
2 shallots (finely diced)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil


Stir together in a frying pan or wok. Add ¼ cup water mixed with 1 tsp corn starch, cook until thickened. Let cool while prepping the dough balls.


Press the balls into rounds, put about 1T of filling on each, pinch shut. Place on parchment squares and let rise 15-30 minutes. 
Steam for about 10 minutes, leave plenty of room, they expand a lot!

I steamed some in the rice cooker and some in a large pot with a vegetable steamer insert.

YAY! for Christmas Quilting!!

I've recently taken up quilting, and have been busy getting things ready for Christmas! I made a new tree skirt

The tree isn't up yet, so the tree skirt is hanging out on a rocking chair, sometimes with a poinsettia pillow.

I used a disappearing nine block (tutorial here) It was a lot of fun to put together. The skirt started as a square, 10 x10 blocks. I got a little carried away and had leftover squares, some of which I turned into pillows for the sofa. I used metallic gold thread for the quilting for a bit of Christmas Sparkle, and I like the way it turned out.

This pillow is living in my bedroom right now

 I've also done a penguin quilt, a post on that will be here soon, and I have fabric to make a yellow and gray chevron quilt. 

YAY! for Sans Rival Cake!!

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

I made a cashew sans rival with a chocolate french buttercream (from my own recipe, it uses whole eggs not just yolks). The meringue came together quickly and easily. I traced 5 4"(ish) circles on parchment and piped a half recipe onto the rounds. I baked them for about 20 minutes and let cool. I cut a cardboard round about 5" (I just traced bowls for the circles so the sizes are approximate) to stack the cake onto.

The project wasn't too difficult or time consuming. The buttercream I used wasn't as solid as I would have liked, and if someone was paying me for it or I was trying to impress someone I would have added a second coat of buttercream after the first was cold (this makes it easier to get sharp corners with soft icing)

YAY! for Fancy Bread!!!

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

I used the recipe provided but made my own filling recipes because I wanted to use ingredients I already had. The first filling was made by combining almond meal, cinnamon, sugar, and egg whites in the food processor until smooth and spreadable. 

 The second loaf had a poppy seed filling with lemon zest. I used 2 cups of poppy seeds and boiled them with water. I blended them with sugar and lemon zest

 The dough was wonderful to work with. It rolled out so thin so easily on the sheet. It was very silky 

Recipe:

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp flour

1/4 cup warm water

1 T yeast

1 cup milk

6 T sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/4 cup butter, melted

4 cups flour

Stir together the first four ingredients, let stand until foamy.

Heat the milk to a simmer. Remove from heat and let cool to 105-110F. Stir in yeast mixture, sugar, and salt. Mix in beaten eggs and melted butter. Mix in flour until just barely sticky. It could take more or less than 4 cups, depending on the flour you use and the weather. 

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Let rise until doubled in size.

Divide the dough in half. Dust a sheet with flour. Roll and stretch the dough on the sheet until super thin. Spread with filling of your choice. Lift the sheet to start the dough rolling. Coil the dough into a greased loaf pan. Bake in a 350F for 15 minutes. Reduce temp to 300F and bake another 30 minutes. If it browns too much, cover with foil.

Let cool completely before cutting.

YAY! for Cupcakes!!!

I got these yesterday and just HAD to get flowers to put in them.

They are SO CUTE I can hardly stand it!