My New Kitchen

This is my old kitchen. It’s small (yes, this pic captures it all) and dark, but yet I still made it work for the 15 months that I lived at my old apartment. I sacrificed a nice kitchen for the great location and low rent. After 3 months of searching Craigslist, I finally found an apartment I loved - and the kitchen is a HUGE upgrade.

My apartment is actually a 1-bedroom unit in an old house built in 1905. The bonuses there are the high ceilings and the decorative touches - such as the tile back splash and counter top and crown moldings in every room. 

The cupboards are original, so unfortunately, my plates are too wide and have to be stored in the cabinets below. 

I also now have a full size stove. I am tired of baking my cupcakes in separate batches. Cue my Doris Day CDs and give me my apron, it’s time to get baking! All the space and light will give me new inspiration.

Peach-Ginger Pie with Almond Crumble

It’s the peak of summer, the time of year for barbeques, picnics, and running through the sprinkler. It’s also the perfect time of year to enjoy tomatoes, berries, and peaches, so to celebrate my return to my Minnesota home, I recruited my sisters Colleen and Stephanie and my niece Lucy to bake a summertime peach pie.

To begin, we made the crust:

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

¼ tsp kosher salt

1 stick cold butter, cut into cubes

¼ cup ice water

This is a basic pie crust recipe, and is proportioned for the bottom shell only. We mixed the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Using a pastry blender, we cut the butter into the flour mixture until the butter cubes were the size of small peas. Then we sprinkled in the water one teaspoon at a time, until the mixture began to form loose clumps and just barely held together.

Then we turned the clumpy mixture onto a floured surface, formed it into a ball, wrapped it in plastic, and chilled it for 30 minutes. On a floured surface, we rolled the chilled dough into a circle and transferred it to the 9” pie dish (there are a couple of different methods for doing this, my favorite is folding the circle onto itself once, then again – so the dough is in the shape of a triangle – and then position it in the pie dish, unfold and ‘ta-da!’ The dough is centered and untorn.) Then the edges were trimmed and the crust pinched into the classic pie crust edge shape.  

The crust is all ready, so now to make the filling and the topping.

List of Ingredients

Crumble topping:

1 stick butter, softened

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp almond extract

1/8 tsp kosher salt

1 cup all purpose flour

¼ cup almond meal

¼ cup sliced almonds

1 tbs turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw)

Fruit Filling:

8 large peaches, sliced

1tbs chopped crystallized sugar

¼ cup packed brown sugar

1 tbs cornstarch

These peaches are perfect! So juicy they were difficult to slice, but we did, and a many slices were ‘sampled’ before making it into the pie. We sliced the peaches with the skin on. It’s your preference; however I like the color of the skin in the baked pie. The sliced peaches were mixed in a large bowl with the chopped ginger, brown sugar, and cornstarch, and then poured into the pie shell. 

The crumble topping is made by mixing all of the ingredients listed (minus the turbinado sugar) in a bowl. Using an electric hand mixer, the butter will incorporate into all the dry ingredients and form crumbles. This recipe calls for almonds, however there is a nut allergy in my family, so we omitted them.

Now we sprinkle on the turbinado sugar, for added crunch. The pie is ready for the preheated 375-degree oven. Bake for an hour, until the topping is browned and the juices are bubbling. 

The pie can be served warm or room temperature. We ate ours before attending an outdoor concert, another summertime treat. It was so juicy and sweet, in fact it was a bit too juicy, but there were no complaints. 

My sister Stephanie made me a ‘Welcome Home’ cake for my visit. She just finished a cake decorating class, and her roses are perfect! 

What's New Cupcake?

What’s new Cupcake is the class at Sur La Table which is based on a book by the same name. If anyone has read or flipped through the first book Hello Cupcakethen you would appreciate all the unique and creative designs. Most of the cupcakes call for plain cupcakes and tub frosting. Not that I am a cake snob (maybe just a little), this book is great for getting decorating ideas and this class offered 4 designs of cupcakes from the new book.  

This design is called “Mum’s the Word”. The flower petals are actually mini-marshmallows cut diagonally and dipped in colored sugar. So easy to make, but time consuming to fill each cupcake with petals. 

“Mini Bake Sale Pies” are created using M&Ms and frosting tinted with cocoa power and yellow food coloring. The foil cup is a nice touch. This was my favorite to make (and eat). 

This cupcake is called “The Coals are Ready” and is meant to look like BBQ coals and burger patties, which are caramel rice cakes spritzed with red food coloring. The coals are large cut marshmallows dipped in melted tub frosting and tinted gray. Oreo cookie crumbs and colored sugars give the coals their color. 

The picnic cupcake is made with colored coconut for the grass, and the ants are created using 3 chocolate covered peanuts for the body and chocolate frosting for the legs. 

This class was a great way to try some non-traditional designs for cupcakes. I usually make cupcakes that focus on the flavors, not the designs, so it was nice to just focus on truly FUN cupcakes. 

7-Minute Frosting

It’s called “7-Minute Frosting” but it somehow took me an hour and a half to make. I have seen this recipe in many of my cookbooks, but usually use my go-to butter cream frosting instead. The reviews were compelling “sweet”, “indulgent”, “light-as-air”, and even one “oh la-la”, I had to give it a try.

The Recipe:

2 large egg whites

1 ½ cups granulated white sugar

¼ cup cold water

1 Tbs corn syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

In a stainless steel bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, place the egg whites, sugar, water, and corn syrup. With a handheld electric mixer, beat the mixture for 3 to 4 minutes on low speed. Increase the speed to high and continue to beat for another 3 to 4 minutes or until the icing is shiny and satiny with soft peaks.

Remove from heat, add the vanilla extract, and continue to beat on high speed for another 1 to 2 minutes or until the frosting is thick. Use immediately.

I knew there would be issues, mainly because I did not own a handheld mixer.

Attempt #1

I used my bowl from the stand mixer and placed it over simmering water, just as instructed. I swirled the ingredients for a bit and then alternated mixing on the stand mixer, and placing it on the heat. 

It seemed to work; the mix got fluffy and resembled frosting. On closer inspection, I could see little lumps. I tested it, and there they were, sugar crystals, all lumped together and crunchy. In the trash it went.

Attempt #2

So alternating heat and whipping did not work. I need to be sure the sugar dissolves completely. What if I dissolve the sugar in the water first? This might work. In a separate saucepan, I melted the sugar in the water with the corn syrup. I poured the syrup into the bowl with the other ingredients and began the 7-minute whip. Again, this batch looked great, and again there were the sugar crystals. This time, my bowl was a mess. The sugar turned into a cement-like crust that required lots of scrubbing.

Attempt #3

If I boil the water and sugar longer, maybe the sugar will not re-crystallize? WRONG!

I now know how to make hard candy. Unfortunately, this batch was like pouring superglue into egg whites. My bowl was in even worse shape after this disaster.

Attempt #4

I couldn’t give up; I had a cake to frost. There was a temptation to run to the market and buy a 99 cent tub of vanilla frosting, but I overcame. How was I going to make this happen? I googled other 7-minute frosting recipes and they were all about the same as this one. However, one description said that the recipe has been used for over a century…and it came to me – they did not have hand mixers 100 years ago, I can do this!

I placed all the ingredients in the bowl over simmering water, started my timer, and began to slowly whip. One minute…2 minutes…my arm hurts, how am I going to ‘speed up’?…3 minutes. SPEED UP…4 minutes…5 minutes – that’s good, it looks beautiful. I removed it from heat and put the bowl on the stand mixer for the final 2 minutes and added the vanilla. 

Oh la-la, it looks amazing. It’s shiny, thick, soft, and fluffy. It reminded me of marshmallow fluff, and kind of tasted like it too. It was a simple and sweet flavor, perfect for the coconut cake that I was making.

So 4 attempts and almost 2 hours later, I had exactly what the recipe called for. It was worth the effort, I have big plans for this frosting in future baking endeavors.