Summer Update

Summer is coming to a close soon, and it's hard to believe. The days are already becoming chillier, the cats seem much less miserable, I don't have the AC blasting in my room 24/7, and the coconut oil in the pantry has solidified. 

I've had a pretty lovely summer working in Boston, meeting some wonderful people, getting to know the city. My family has a place on Martha's Vineyard, which is incredible for me because it's like a little home-away-from-home, much closer to me now that I'm in Boston. Plus, my mom and sister were there for most of July, so I got to spend the weekends with them. 

I also got to go to Alaska this summer with my Dad's side of the family, which was absolutely incredible. I'd never been before, and it was just breathtakingly beautiful every day. It was also the first time that my entire beautiful and very large family has been together in a very, very long time. 

Seeing family, seeing cousins who are growing up, spending time with the still fairly new husbands and wives of some of my cousins, taking senior photos for my sister and talking about college with her, it all brought thoughts of the passing of time to the forefront of my mind. I am more aware of the changes that have been taking place and that will take place than I have ever been before, I think. As a child the future (whatever that means) seems so far away, so unattainable. As an adult (whatever that means), it seems much more accessible, and much scarier. It makes me sad that I'm so far away from my mom and sister, and that after this year we will probably be spread even further across the country from each other. That's why summer moments with them are so beautiful and so important. 

Alright alright, I will cut it out with the sentimentality now, and do a few blog posts with some photos from my summer!

Strawberry JAMboree

This jam project went like most of my projects usually do: it was ill-advised from the start, I made decisions on a whim, several things went wrong, I ended up kind of winging it, but it turned out pretty dang good in the end.

To begin, a brief update about my life is that I've moved to Boston! I live in Somerville and work in Cambridge, and I really really love it here. No more high altitude baking woes, although things turning soggy is a new obstacle that I've had to deal with....

Now this jam thing all started at the farmers market in Davis Square. I'm always on the lookout for good strawberries, and I have pretty strong feelings about what makes a strawberry good. These memories are tied to my family, summers in Europe, and stuff that's important to me, so when I say strong feelings about strawberries, I mean it. The strawberries you get in the grocery stores are pumped full of who-knows-what growth hormones, and they're probably genetically modified to hell, and the end result is a strawberry that's as big as my hand, white on the inside, practically crunchy, and almost flavorless. So when I saw a stand at the farmer's market just bursting with little cartons of beautiful red strawberries, I got pretty excited. That excitement led me to make a stupid decision. 1 pint of strawberries was pretty expensive. Because people want you to buy a lot of whatever they're selling, 3 whole quarts of strawberries was also pretty expensive, but not much more than just one measly pint! Think of the savings!

So that's how I ended up with 3 quarts of strawberries. And I realized that I can't eat 3 quarts of strawberries. And that I'm a fool. But I'm a fool who has been meaning to make jam for quite some time, and jam was going to be the answer to my strawberry problem. I can can. So I headed out to Market Basket for some pectin.

The first jam snag happened because Market Basket only carries instant pectin. Most jam is made with regular pectin, and it has to be boiled. The boiling is what sanitizes everything, and help the jam keep from spoiling. Instant pectin, however, is a little different from regular pectin. Like The Hound, instant pectin is scared of the flames. He wants to stay far away from heat, it really screws him up.

just like instant pectin. 

Maybe his brother, Sure-Jell, pushed his face into the flames as a child. Maybe his sister Pomona did it. Either way, you're not getting instant pectin anywhere near heat.

you gelatinous bitch. 

So how do you make jam without boiling everything? Either you eat your jam before it has the chance to mold or spoil, or you stick it in the freezer, the other place where gross stuff goes to die! It might not be the way your grandma made jam, but a lot of people say that freezing jam helps it keep its fruity flavor a lot better than boiling the heck out of it. So my jam would be freezer jam.

Snag 2 was the fact that I'm trying to be more healthy, and jam has A LOT of refined white sugar. But I had just bought way too much honey (I clearly have a problem with amounts) at Follow the Honey, one of my favorite stores in Harvard Square, and I decided I'd just use honey instead of sugar. I'd seen jam recipes that used honey before, so I figured it would probably work.

And it did work. And I now have a couple jars of delicious strawberry honey jam in my fridge, and 3 more in the freezer. And ya'll have a recipe for strawberry honey jam:
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Strawberry Honey Jam

6 cups sliced strawberries (about 1 1/2 quarts)
1 1/2 cups honey
Juice from 1 lemon
7 tbsp instant pectin

Put all your strawberry slices (you want these to be pretty small) into a bowl, and mash them up. It would be easiest to do this with a potato masher, but who has one of those? Just improvise. For example, I used the bottom of a mason jar. Next, dump this strawberry mash into a pot, and put it over medium-high heat. Add the honey and lemon juice, and stir it all until it bubbles a bit, and the honey has melted and incorporated with the berries. Take it off the heat, and leave it to cool. Since you'll be using instant pectin, you pretty much have to let it cool all the way back to room temperature. Once your strawberry mash/honey/lemon mixture has cooled, add the instant pectin and stir. Pour immediately into mason jars, tupperwares, or whatever you're keeping this jam in, and let it sit for about 30 minutes so the pectin can go about its business gelling everything up. After 30 minutes has passed, you have jam! At this point, you can put as much as you think you'll eat in a couple weeks into the fridge, and put the rest into the freezer. Also, because this jam is made with honey instead of sugar, expect it to be at least slightly runnier than most jam, and a good deal runnier than jelly. Mine came out pretty solid, definitely more solid than I'd expected, but this is just a heads up.

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Now you've got some berry delicious jam! So far, I've had mine over greek yogurt, and in the almond butter and jam sandwich that I take to work every day.

I'll leave you with these images of jam-related puns. 

I wish I could have attended Ms. Day's JAM-boree.

Early Grey Buttercream and Thoughts on Graduating

So I finished college. I haven't officially graduated yet (that's on the 20th), but I had my last day of class yesterday, and I just picked up my cap and gown today. I have to say I'm having mixed feelings about the whole thing. I'm happy and proud to have finished my education, and at a very good school no less, but I'm a little sad that it didn't all turn out how I'd envisioned it would when I was younger. I'm sad that I had to go through a lot of hardships, that I lost friends, that I had to leave my first school. But as my good friend and mother of my incredible god-daughter told me, I went through things that a lot of college-aged kids don't have to, and I came out of it a changed (and I'd like to hope stronger and better) person. The struggles brought me to new friends, strengthened my relationships with old ones, and even took me all the way to Greece, the most magical place I've ever been. And now I get to embark on a new adventure to Boston!

So yes, I did experience some heartache over these past few years that will be with me always, but I also experienced some wonderful things, and all of it has brought me to a new and exciting chapter in my life. Finishing college is certainly something to celebrate, which is why I made chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with earl grey swiss buttercream and salted caramel (recipe) for everyone last night! They were delicious.

I didn't alter anything, but I would alter the cake recipe if I made them again, because they came out a little crispy on the edges and sunken in the middle (the pitfalls of cooking at 6,000 feet). Really any chocolate cake would work with the supremely delicious earl grey swiss buttercream. And the salted caramel is totally optional, but there are few things that it doesn't make better, and the saltiness helps to combat the super sweetness of the frosting. (Another tip for high altitude bakers: make this buttercream in a stand mixer if you can. My arm practically went numb from whipping egg whites with a hand mixer for about a hour.)

Vanilla Cake

mmmmmmm

When my mom's boyfriend said he wanted vanilla cake for his birthday I was initially a little disappointed, I'm ashamed to admit. I have been all into stuff like salted caramel, ganaches, molten chocolate, souffles, etc., and I wanted to do something really fancy. I realized quickly that I was being hard on vanilla. Why can't vanilla be fancy? Somehow the first thing I had pictured was some Betty Crocker vanilla box mix cake (I swear I have nothing against Betty, box mix is easy and delicious, that's why it exists) with can frosting and "Happy Birthday Dan" scrawled illegibly with some of that weird "gel" frosting that stains your mouth forever. But it didn't have to be this way, no it did not. It had to be my way, which was a 3-layer vanilla bean cake with a brown butter vanilla bean buttercream. And it was delicious.

I used this recipe from Sweetapolita altered a bit for the cake. It was pretty easy, and the copious amounts of egg whites ensure that it's quite fluffy. The frosting I sort of made up as I went along, and went something like this:

4 sticks butter
3-4 cups powdered sugar
3 tbsp milk (you can use more or less depending on what consistency you want)
1 vanilla bean, scraped
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup cream cheese (totally optional)

I first browned the butter, which took a while because it was a lot of butter. Once it was a nice nutty brown with those little flecks of deliciousness, I stuck the whole pan in the fridge to harden the butter back up some. One the butter was soft but no longer a liquid, I whipped it up with a mixer and added the rest of the ingredients. You don't need the cream cheese if you want to keep this a traditional buttercream, but I like my frostings a little more tart, so I added it in at the last minute.
Yum! Vanilla cake that was definitely not boring.

frosting in my great-grandmother's apron!

caramel caramel yumyum

I made my very own caramel sauce for the first time ever! And I was especially happy that it worked out on my first try (very unexpected). I used the tutorial at Bakers Royale, which was SO helpful. It has step-by-step carmeling instructions and even a color chart so you know exactly when the caramel is ready. I ended up having to use a bit more cream than the recipe calls for (high altitude funkiness rears its ugly head again?), and I also added several grinds of sea salt to evolve caramel into its hipper, more exciting form: salted caramel. 

I plan to use this delicious magic sugarsauce for my friend's birthday on Tuesday, in a recipe that is currently developing in my head but will most likely be based in a molten chocolate cake. Stay tuned.

Apologies and Strawberry Cake

Hello, all! Yes, it's been a super long time. I'm sorry, ok? Seriously.
So what have I been doing? Going to school mostly, baking and cooking, hanging out with my cat, you know, the usual stuff.

I wanted to share with you all an incredible cake that I made for my little sister's birthday (which was November 2. I get it! It's been a long time!). It's a strawberry cake, because that's her favorite. I searched the internet for a while trying to find the perfect strawberry cake recipe, and ended up choosing this one, by Heather Baird of SprinkleBakes (I love SprinkleBakes)!

I modified it a bit, of course. The recipe calls for strawberry puree, but I just kind of made my own by putting strawberry preserves in the ol' food processor, and adding water a teaspoon at a time until it reached the consistency that I wanted. Since I bake at high altitude where everything is bone dry and crazy it's a little hard for me to suggest modified liquid amounts with any more clarity than just "until you reach a good consistency" or "you'll know when it's the right amount." I fear this is also a habit I've inherited from reading the handwritten Swedish and Finnish recipes translated by my grandmother that say things like "add an appropriate amount of this" or "add as much of this as you think is right" or "keep adding this until it feels like enough." I also left the white chocolate shavings out of the frosting because I really wanted to keep the cake a bit sour, not too sweet. That also explains why I chose this particular cake, the cream cheese frosting, duh!

So Happy Birthday, Mia (several months ago)! 

Check out "Pretty Wolves" by D/Wolves, an awesome band fronted by Joel Williams (who happens to be the little brother of Wavves' Nathan Williams).