Pumpkin Bread Puddin'

So obviously there is a bit of a trend here with the pumpkin posts. I love me some canned pumpkin. It's true. Collin Murray loves the canned pumpkin too and so when I came across a recipe for pumpkin bread pudding, I figured, what the heck, it must be delicious.

Baking puddin'

The recipe was easy enough. Cut stale bread. Melt butter. Mix some things with a whisk. Combine. Bake. Easy, yes: tasty, uhh, sort of. It wasn't that it was bad. It's just that is was not fantastic. I would call it mediocre and not even Collin Murray could muster a greater compliment then that. Nevertheless, here is the recipe, enjoy?

Pumpkin Bread Pudding
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk (any percentage will do)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
2 large eggs plus 1 extra yolk
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
5 cups cubed stale bread (I used Really old sourdough)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350F. Place the butter in a 8x8 inch square baking dish and then toss it in the oven to melt while you are preparing the rest of the ingredients. Using a bread knife, cut the stale bread into 1-inch (or so, don't get out your ruler) pieces and place in a large bowl. Mix the cream, milk, sugar, pumpkin, eggs, salt, and spice together in a medium mixing bowl until smooth. Carefully remove the baking dish with the melted butter from the oven and pour the butter over the bread cubes, tossing gently to ensure they are all coated with a large spoon or tongs. Place the bread back into the baking dish and pour the pumpkin liquid over it. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the custard is set in the middle of the dish.

Ready to eat puddin'

Pumpkin Pie is All About Compromise

I always like to celebrate American Thanksgiving because well, I'm half American. I mean, I probably would celebrate it even if I wasn't American because I love Thanksgiving but I suppose my citizenship is just an easy excuse. The only problem with Thanksgiving in my opinion is that one is expected to make pie. I'm going to apologize in advance and say I really hate pie. I don't mind eating it but really, I sort of hate, despise, dare I say loathe, making pie. The problem is, Collin Murray loves pie. He could eat it morning, noon and night. Enter this recipe, my compromise, a graham cracker crust and a no-bake pumpkin cream cheese filling, topped with deliciously slightly sweetened whipped cream. 

I found this recipe on this delightful site called Joy the Baker and it was the perfect end to a delicious Thanksgiving meal. And though it may seem that one could only make this recipe for Thanksgiving, I think it would be the perfect end to any fall meal.

Yum.

Almost No-Bake Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream
adapted just a touch from Joy the Baker

For the Crust:
1 1/2 cups crushed graham crackers
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter

For the Filling:
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon molasses
2 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree

For the Topping:
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar

To make the crust, in a medium bowl, combine graham crackers with sugar, salt and melted butter and using your hands, coat all the crumbs in the melted butter. Press the crust into a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom -- you will have to be careful, it's quite crumbly. I like to use a measuring cup to evenly press the crust into the sides of the tart pan, it's easier then using your hands when a crust is crumbly). Bake at 400F for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely before adding the filling.

To make the filling, beat the softened cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until smooth. Slowly add the powdered sugar to the mixture and beat until smooth. Add the vanilla, pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin puree and beat until combined. Spoon the filling into the tart shell slowly because there will be more filling then there will be room for in the tart pan (at least there was for me). Let tart chill in the fridge overnight so that everything can get all happy and tasty.
To make the whipped cream, beat together the heavy cream and confectioner's sugar until soft peaks form. Spoon over the tart and enjoy!

I even enjoyed some for breakfast...

Operation Wedding Cake: Meet Mr. and Mrs. Penguin

I know, I know, I said I was done with the wedding cake stuff but I promise that this really is the last of it now. And no, thanks to my experience with making my wedding cake in New York, I will not be making my wedding cupcakes for our wedding reception -- not happening, just ask Collin Murray. However, I did manage to finish Mr. and Mrs. Penguin for the reception. They will be set atop a cake which will be set atop a tower of chocolate and red velvet cupcakes...I think they make a damn cute couple.

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Penguin

Goodbye New York

This past week has been a big one for Collin Murray and I as we had to say goodbye to New York. In between packing up a household and shipping it to another country, carting cats on the plane, and being sad that we had to leave and say goodbye not just to a great city but also to the wonderful friends that we met while there, it was a tough week that leaves us asking, what's next?

Collin Murray is all set, he begins a new job tomorrow and is sure to be excellent at it -- I say this not just because he is my hubby but because he's good a being a chef-y and I hope he knows it. As for me, there are too many possibilities right now. The next couple weeks will be spent getting our apartment here in Canada in a suitable living condition (like, wouldn't it be nice to see the stove and to easily open the fridge door? -- so many boxes, so much stuff!), and preparing for our wedding reception, after that, when life is in order, I'm not sure what is in my future. Of course, I will definitely be writing on this blog because my faithful followers are so lovely, but I will also writing for a couple of other projects that I'm working on and will be telling y'all about quite soon... And I will also surely be baking and cooking up tasty savory things too so there will be lots of recipes and pictures and fun times in the kitchen to look forward to. Y'all will have to be patient as The Tiffany Blue Chef figures out its new identity now that it no longer takes place in 'the city that never sleeps': really, we all have to get used to life not lived in New York.

I don't really want this post to be a goodbye to New York because I know I will be back but the reality is that on Thursday, we did have to say goodbye to New York and the wonderful experiences that Collin Murray and I both had while we were there. We didn't love every minute of it, there were some pretty tough times, some times that were pretty low and the city really did try to break us both -- it's not always glamorous let me tell you. However, there were some amazing times too, and lucky for us, there were more of these times than there were low ones. Plus, we met people in New York that we will never forget and never lose touch with; good friends, true friends and friends that we are truly grateful for. On that note about gratitude, I think that I can speak for both Collin Murray and I when I say that we were truly grateful for the experience of getting to live in New York. To be able to go to school there, to work there, to experience the city for as long as we did, it was a true blessing, there is no other word for it.

Food Styling and Photography Class Round Up

So all weekend long I've been at a Food Styling and Photography class and I have to say that my head is rather full. Who knew? Seriously. I could go on and on and on about all the stuff that we learned (like did you know that usually when frosted cakes are photographed for magazines that they are filled with mashed potatoes and have icing piped in between the layers, over the potatoes -- nothing is real people!) but honestly, it would be way too tedious. However, the biggest take-aways for me from the class were to use a tri-pod, to learn how to use my manual settings, to use calibrate my white balance (...see it is too confusing to go into too much detail), and that using natural light makes food photography so much easier.

Here are a few of the other shots from the weekend (to see them better, try clicking the pictures to make them bigger -- it makes a difference in the look of the photo, ask Rod...).

Sunny Raspberries

Seckel Pear

Lovely Eggs

Food stylist trick -- wax to make round things stay upright!

Roasted Chicken and Vegetables

Market Cabbage

Seckel Pears

Bar Suzette -- The French Onion Remix

I've gushed about Bar Suzette, the crepe stall in Chelsea Market before, but my friends, it is time to gush again. Until October 23, there is food market of sorts set up in near Madison Square Park and Bar Suzette is there churning out the most delicious crepes I've ever tasted. Really, all I have are these four words: French Onion Soup CREPE. Yes. It's true and it's scrumptious and you should not miss out.

Bar Suzette's Stall at the EAT Food Square in Madison Park

The basic premise of the crepe is this, onions are caramelized and then reduced in a broth that contains mushroom and beef stock, among other things to be sure, for SIX whole hours. When Bar Suzette crafts the actual crepe, a savory crepe is topped with fontina cheese, the onion mixture a sprinkling of truffle salt and few leaves of fresh thyme. Since the crepe is left on the hot crepe griddle for a minute or so after being topped with the cheese, when you bite into it, the cheese is nice and melt-y and tastes just like that fantastic first bite of French Onion Soup -- it's amazing.


Crepe folded, cheesed and getting a healthy dose of onions



Finished crepe being folded -- crepe maker's hands are lightening fast!

 Since Bar Suzette makes its crepes to order, sometimes there can be a little wait to taste your delicious crepe but hey, what's a couple minutes when the end result is a delicious crepe?!

Melt-y cheese + onion-y deliciousness = yum, yum good.

Bar Suzette's original location in Chelsea Market is still pumping out the crepes as always but their temporary stall in the Madison Square EAT Market will only be up till October 23. Stop by, say hi, and have a crepe -- Collin Murray and I promise you won't be sorry!

A Class on Food Styling and Photography

So as if I didn't have enough going on in life, I'm taking a food styling and photography class this weekend and all I have to say so for is that I thought I knew about taking photos but really, I had no idea. At all. None.

We started the class going over how a camera works and then talking about the different settings that you "should" be manually adjusting. I had never heard about white balance and aperture and all that jazz -- I turned my camera on, set it to automatic and then macro and just started shooting. Not anymore though. One of the instructors (there are three, two pretty famous food photographers and one food stylist) took me through my camera and taught me how to work it and what I need to do to improve my photos -- which was awesome. Then, we broke up into groups and "styled" our own shots. Though the instructors had their cameras set up, all the other students had brought their cameras to class too and so we all got to shoot a lot of great stuff today.

Here are a couple of shots that I took and styled today:

My group, shooting with our own cameras

Artichoke detail

Fig, cheese, and grape plate

Baby Artichoke

Our slightly melting oyster plate

Oyster Detail (I styled that!)

Tomorrow we are meeting at the Greenmarket and going to buy product to shoot in the class and then they are going to lecture more about tricks to help you when food styling...like using Windex and saline solution...and learn how to use photo shop. Yee-Haw!

Operation Wedding Cake: It's Done!

I've been an absent blogger lately but this is what happens when you have to write a business plan, graduate from culinary management, extern, and what's that last thing again, I can't remember...oh right, GET MARRIED!

So I had a plan for Operation Wedding Cake. It involved writing a number of posts and it also involved me being calm. The fact is, my plan for the wedding cake involved me making the cake over a number of days but it got compressed into a number of frazzled hours. As such, here is what is likely the last Operation Wedding Cake post: unless I decide I need to make our wedding cupcakes in which case you will see another post and I will be self-medicating...

For our wedding cake, Collin Murray and I wanted a small cake. We weren't going for tons of tiers or gaudy decoration and I promise you that I spent (along with some of my faithful pastry friends) hours trying to decide what size pans to use and in the end, I purchased a 7 by 3 inch, 5 by 2 inch and 3 by 2 inch set of pans to use in making the cake and I was pretty happy with the scale of them all together.

Pretty pans lined and buttered

When you paper a 3 by 2 inch pan, the parchment round is teeny tiny!

Collin Murray also insisted on having red velvet cake -- you may remember from this post, the man loves his red velvet... Me, I'm less fussy on it, it is not that I don't like the cake but I just would always rather have chocolate. The recipe that I used was from epicurious.com and I think it was rather good. The cake had a nice moist crumb and good flavor. I won't post the whole thing it, but I will include a link to it at the end of this blog -- I didn't change a thing!


One thing is forsure -- this was a RED red velvet cake recipe!

I made the cake the evening before I needed to decorate simply because I had to. Normally, you make the cake a few days ahead or ideally, you use a cake that has been frozen and thawed. I know it sounds weird, but in pastry school, our chefs taught us to make our lives easy with these little tricks and having a firm cake to work with, or a partially frozen or even just a cold cake (which doesn't affect the taste at all) makes the decorating and shaping of the cake easier. Since I didn't have time to freeze the cake or even really make it in advance, I had a hell of a time shaping the cake because it was so moist and fluffy.

I'm just glad the pans fit in our mini oven!

The cakes rose well and retained their lovely red color after baking

So cute (PS: don't you love the color coordination with the cake and the apron?!)

You will notice in the pictures below that the cake goes from being iced and stacked to being covered with fondant -- that there are no pictures of shaping or the covering, this is because I had a pastry chef melt down during this part of the process. For one, I forgot to trim the sides of the cake before I iced it; I cut my cardboard rounds too small so it was hard to ice the outside of the cake properly (usually you use the cardboard as a guide to help you evenly ice the cake) and I was just super stressed and fretting the whole time. It is hard to be a perfectionist with your own wedding cake on a time crunch.

If only it was that easy!

You can't see it, but there are raspberries in the middle of the cake!

Next time I make a wedding cake, I will require more counter space!

With that being said, I finally got all the cakes covered in fondant, I stabilized them with lollipop sticks in the middle and stacked them. I had pre-made all my gumpaste flowers so all I had to do was arrange them and I also had purchased ribbon that I was going to use to accent the cake. My plan had been to pipe on the middle layer with red royal icing but I simply just ran out of time and patience. I ended up finishing the cake off with a ribbon detail instead and I was really happy with that.

The finished product!

Though I don't have any pictures of the cake being sliced yet (our photographer has those), I will say that the end result was pretty tasty and looked good. Naturally, I'm not 100% happy with it but I would say that for my second cake ever, my first three-tiered cake, and my first cake without professional supervision, I think I did pretty well. And, if you are wondering where the penguins are, they didn't fit on top of this cake -- we will be using them for our reception wedding cake and I will be sure to post a picture of the finished toppers when they are in fact finished!

Gumpaste carnations made by moi!

 And finally, for the Epicurious Red Velvet Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting Recipes, click here.

Francois Payard Bakery -- FPB

On my first day of pastry school, our chef asked us if we knew who Francois Payard was. She was rather upset when not one person raised their hand. Apparently Chef Payard is a legend in the New York dessert scene -- his croissants and pastries were frequently named the best in the city. He used to own a pastry shop on the Upper East Side but was forced to close it after the rent was hiked up so high that he could not longer afford to do business. Enter Francois Payard Bakery -- FPB:

Fetching awning, no?

Earlier this week his new bakery opened near enough to our house for Collin Murray and I to stop by and get a taste. Boy are we glad we did. Collin Murray had the croissant, me the pain au chocolat. Really, the pastries are technically almost the same -- the same dough is used but each pastry is rolled differently and the pain au chocolat has a chocolate baton (read: fancy term for little stick of chocolate that don't melt at high temperatures) inserted into it prior to baking.

Collin Murray's croissant

Pain au chocolate Before

After

The store also sold breads and lovely little cakes and tarts as well as sandwiches and an array of specialty drinks that look positively delightful.

I'm a little obsessed with the strawberry tarts

Francois Payard Bakery is located at 116 West Houston (between Thompson and Sullivan). For more information about the bakery, click here.

Photos are by Collin Murray, once again.

Billy's Bakery

Ever just crave a cupcake? It happens to me all the time and honestly even though I went to pastry school and everything, I rarely make them and I know it might sound crazy eqaully but I also rarely eat them. However, when the cupcake craving reared its ugly head today, it seemed like the perfect day to try out Billy's Bakery, a charming little bakery in our neighbourhood.

In the flesh! Billy's!

I had long been told of Billy's. One of my chef-instructors made the bold claim that Billy's made the best cupcakes in the city -- a claim that had me curious as I have had some tasty little cakes in New York. If you are wondering, there is actually a Billy. He used to work at the famed Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker street (you know, the one that you see in Sex and the City...) and when he left Magnolia, he set up his own shop. As a result, the cupcakes at Billy's are strikingly similar to Magnolia's -- both are heavily topped with buttercream and dotted with old-school sprinkles.

Our selection (Chocolate, Red Velvet, Chocolate, Carrot Cake)

Collin Murray and I tried the chocolate, red velvet and carrot cake and were reasonably pleased with our cupcakes. The chocolate and red velvet were pretty dry but the carrot cake was absolutely delicious. It was moist and tender and the perfect balance of carrot and spice. Topped with cream cheese icing that was the perfect dose of sweet and sour, this cupcake was by far the favorite of the day.

Carrot Cake deliciousness...with a little bit taken out of it!

Billy's Bakery is located at 184 9th Avenue and there is also a location in Tribeca. Either way, you can also visit their website by clicking http://www.billysbakerynyc.com/.

We ate them all...almost...

Pssst...I forgot to mention, Collin Murray was our photographer today! I think he did rather well!

The New Fulton Fish Market @ Hunts Point

I was up in the wee hours this morning in order to take a little field trip with my culinary management class to the New Fulton Fish Market at Hunt's Point in the Bronx. Fulton is one of the largest fresh fish markets in North America, as such, it was an incredible experience that I didn't mind having to be up so early for! Our large, and I must say, fairly rowdy group for the time of day, left the school on a "party bus" at 4:30 to be at the fish market by 5am. Ironically, as early as it was, we were actually getting there a little late -- the fish market's prime hours are from 1am to 5am. Being "late" meant that we had missed a lot of the serious buying action from the city's various purveyors but I still got to hear a little haggling and bargaining which was rather delightful. 

View down the market

I can't even begin to list all the different types of fish that I saw at the market. One of the chefs from school accompanied us on the trip and was able to tell us about certain types of fish but the fish mongers themselves were not at all shy if we had questions, in fact, they were quite the characters. They were also incredibly skilled. We watched one gentleman fillet fish in less then 10 seconds. He made four cuts, flipped the fish over and before we knew it, he was on to the next one! It was fascinating. 

Sassy fish monger

What surprised me about the fish market was how many purveyors were selling shark(!) and swordfish -- it was pretty crazy to see whole sharks and headless baby sharks just hanging out. Who knew there was such a demand for them? The market also had a ton of red snapper, blue crabs, tons of different white fish, lobster, tons of catfish, sea urchin, scallops, monk fish, mussels, clams (of literally every size), salmon, tuna, prawns...you get the point -- they have everything.

Baby shark and half of a larger shark

Here are a couple more photos of our fishy morning:


Sea Urchin



Hungry?

Enormous catfish

Fish hook -- what the fish monger's use to move the fish

The big buckets are attached to scales and used to weigh the big fishes