My Favorite Part Of Summer

There have been very few ways to beat the heat in New York City this summer. In fact, I've only found two: air conditioning and the ice cream sandwiches from Three Tarts Bakery. Y'all may remember Three Tarts from the first time that I wrote about them in May. I've kept frequenting the store since then, not just because of their delicious tarts, marshmallows and cookies but once it go warm, because of the ice cream sandwiches. They have terrific flavors like lemon basil ice cream on olive oil cake or carrot cake with cream cheese ice cream -- they are really inventive and truly delicious, always fresh and a perfectly sized little treat.

Since it is so hot today, I took Russell to Three Tarts before a stroll along the Highline. Tonight's flavors:


Cinnamon ice cream between hazelnut cake


Chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks between chocolate cake

Let me tell you, just like every time, the sandwiches were delicious and a great way to cool off on a hot, hot, hot summer night which is why they are my favorite part of summer.

Fruit Salad Done Right

I'm always a little terrified when I go to a friend's house and hear that fruit salad is on the menu. It's the thought of all that cut cantaloupe and honey dew melon; the whole grapes or limp strawberries; and oh, gasp, the brown bananas -- I just hate it and it hardly ever tastes very good! Most of the time people just pick out the fruit they like and the rest goes to waste anyway! The point, my faithful blog readers, is that we can do better justice to the fruit.

Try arranging fruit separately on a pretty platter or grouping fruits that all ripen in the same season together in a salad. Mixing together medium-dicing cantaloupe and melon, adding a bit of minced fresh mint, some blueberries, a splash of lemon and a tiny bit of sugar also makes a lovely salad but it doesn't even compare to the combination that I have absolutely fallen in love with from the sandwich chain 'wichcraft... For their little slice of deliciousness, combine segmented oranges and grapefruit with diced mangoes and pineapples and then toss in a few blueberries -- that's it. The 'wichcraft salad is so fresh and delicious that I can't go to the restaurant and not order it -- it's like heaven in a little plastic takeaway container.

The Doughnut Plant

While Russell and I were exploring the Lower East Side yesterday, we didn't just get our fill of sugar at Economy Candy, we were actually already pretty hyped up from a stop at The Doughnut Plant.


Grand Street storefront

The Doughnut Plant opened in 1994 in the basement of an old tenement on the Lower East Side. Back then, owner Mark Israel delivered the yeasted doughnuts he made using his grandfather's recipe by bicycle to various specialty grocery stores around New York City -- in 2000, with the help of his family, he opened the storefront that you can visit today at 379 Grand Street. Since then, Mr. Israel has invented the jelly-filled square doughnut, popularized a cake doughnut in flavors like carrot cake and tres leches, filled doughnuts with creme brulee and opened nine Doughnut Plant stores in Japan. Though the storefront is small, and a bit of a palaver to line up in, especially when the line-wait is 45 minutes, it is charming and the wait is worth it. The doughnuts are delicious, inventive, and super fresh.

We tried a few of the items on the menu, and can you blame us? After all, waiting in line all that time was hard work! Here are a few shots of The Doughnut Plant and what else, her doughnuts.


Saturday's Menu


A not-so-vast array of doughnuts -- they were busy!


Square Glazed Jelly Doughnut


A look inside

The Doughnut Plant is located at 379 Grand Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Economy Candy

My step-brother Russell is visiting New York this weekend and so we did a little exploring today of the Lower East Side. We checked out this place that I've been dying to check out for a while now called Economy Candy. It's an new-fashioned candy store at its best. There is a sugar-free section, acres of gum, vintage candy, bagged candy, nuts, chocolate, you name it, really. We kind of went a little wild in there but because it as "Economy" Candy, I left this store only $8.07 lighter!

Here are a few snaps of the store:



Note the jam-packedness of the store...


See, chocolate really does help with all life's boo boos


I wish I liked gum balls because these just look so fun!


My haul...at least one of these is fat-free (see the label, it's gotta be true!)and never you mind about the sugar!

Economy Candy is located at 108 Rivington Street (at Delancy) on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

And, if you are interested, one of my favorite food bloggers, David Lebovitz (he of the ice cream fame) recently was there too. You can check out his coverage of Economy Candy by clicking here.

Operation Wedding Cake: The Work On The Toppers Begin!

I've been a busy lady this week with school and externship business going on -- it's leaving little time for focus on blogs and wedding cake bits. Tonight though, since my hands were finally almost back to a normal color, I decided it was time to get to work on the cake topper. It's important to me that a cake topper has, to quote one of my chefs, 'a little personality'. I had been searching online for one that was sassy and fun and I came across plenty -- I came across plenty with enormous price tags (why is it that whenever the word wedding is in the title that things automatically get more expensive?) so I decided that I would try to make my own. Lucky for me, if things go south or if the perfectionist in me doesn't like my final result, I have plenty of (expensive) back ups -- I'm thinking of it as motivation.

A little known fact about Collin Murray, to anyone who isn't me or his family that is, is that he loves penguins. So to delight him I decided to make a "bride" and "groom" penguin cake topper. Here's what I've got so far:


When I started this evening, I had the penguin forms that I had made earlier this week and allowed to dry.


So after my work tonight, I have two wee penguins that I've dressed in their best whites.


I have a top hat and a selection of groom-like finishing touches -- I like the, ahem, Tiffany blue bow-tie with the red knot...


I also have a couple of bride-like necklaces. I can't decide which to use, I'm going to dust them with a little petal dust so the pearls with be iridescent and the red ones will be a little bit sparkly -- like garnets -- but we will have to see which one I decide to use in the coming days.


I've also started making some roses for a bouquet. I've got six right now but I might make more. Trouble is that they are only about as big as the head of a pen and kind of fiddly to make so we will have to see how my patience holds up!

Ridicously Easy Crispy Salami Bites

I know that it might seem like a lot of work but sometimes it's nice to have a dinner that consists of a couple appetizers and a side salad. It's something that Collin Murray and I do all the time and I promise you that it's really not a lot more work than making your everyday dinner!

These salami bites are really easy and really good. The recipe is one that I pieced together from a couple different sources so don't feel obligated to stick to my (super easy) recipe, you can top the bites with sour cream, Greek yogurt, cream cheese, whatever you like!


CRISPY SALAMI BITES
Servings depend on how much salami you purchase

Genoa salami, thinly sliced
Garlic and herb Boursin cheese
Fresh basil

Preheat your oven to 400F. Cover a half-sheet pan with parchment or aluminum foil and place the salami one piece at a time on the baking pan -- they can be touching but just make sure that they don't overlap. Bake for about 10 minutes, making sure you check them occasionally, some ovens generate heat better than others! The salami are done when they are crisp and their edges have lifted a little. Carefully remove the salami from the baking sheet and let cool slightly on paper towel. Place the Boursin into a bowl and mix with a spoon till it is spreadable (you can do with with any of the other fillings that I listed above too) and then place about a teaspoon of the filling on the salami and tip with a basil leaf. Place on a platter and enjoy!

Husk Cherries

On Monday, The Kitchenista and I visited the Greenmarket to shop for a cooking demo she was doing on Tuesday and as much as we were shopping with a purpose, she also introduced me to a unique little fruit that was totally new to me. A sister of the gooseberry, husk cherries have been peeking their little heads up around the market for about a month now.


The cherries are enrobed in a thin but sturdy little husk jacket but when you remove the outer skin, the berry's golden color is quite striking.


Inside the berry has tiny seeds but lacks the pit that you expect from normal cherries, it's a little but juicy but not overwhelmingly so and the flavor is truly unique. To me it tastes almost like an apple pear but other people told me that to them husk cherries taste like sweet tomatoes. Whatever you taste, I can assure you that these little nuggets are truly delicious!

Birthday Cupcakes For The Queen

So as I said in an earlier post, The Queen was visiting this weekend and Thursday just happened to be her birthday. Being that I did just graduate pastry school, I thought it was only right that I make The Queen something celebratory and something involving cake. However, being that I am convinced that my oven is trying to kill the kitties and me by suspiciously and randomly emitting enough carbon monoxide to set off the alarm...?! I thought the safest thing to do was make The Queen some cupcakes.


I love me a good cookbook and no one makes a cookbook quite like The Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, but since I didn't bring Ina with me, I resorted to her archives on The Food Network website to find a tasty recipe. The recipe I found for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes was pretty easy, tasty, and used a lot of pantry ingredients. I added a little piece of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup to the cupcake -- adding a little bit of something-something to the top of the cupcake is akin to putting on a little lipstick or a jaunty tie before you go out for the evening, it's like a finishing touch.

INA'S CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER CUPCAKES
Minimally Adapted from INA GARTEN
Makes 12-14 Standard Size Cupcakes

For the cupcakes:
12 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons freshly brewed coffee, cooled
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder, sifted to remove the lumps
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350F and line a cupcake pan with paper liners. Then, in the bowl of an Kitchen Aid cream the butter and both sugars on high until light and fluffy, being sure to scrap the bowl occasionally. Lower the speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and mix well.

In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk, sour cream, and cooled coffee. In another bowl, whisk the flour, sifted cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Then, on low speed, add the buttermilk mixture and the flour mixture a third at a time, beginning with the buttermilk mixture and ending with the flour mixture. Mix till blended incorporated, turning the mixer on high for the last 10 to 15 seconds just to beat out any remaining lumps.

Divide the batter among the cupcake pans using an ice cream scoop till cups are about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into one of the cupcakes in the middle of the pan comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

INA'S PEANUT BUTTER ICING
Adapted from Ina Garten (see link above)
Makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes with a piping bag

For the frosting:
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter (don't use natural peanut butter, the oils separate too easily and make for a soup-y looking frosting)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup heavy cream

Place the confectioners' sugar, peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of a Kitchen Aid. Mix on medium speed until the mixture looks cohesive, remembering to scrap down the sides regularly. Add the cream and beat on high until the frosting is smooth.

Frost with an offset spatula or piping bag and tip. Garnish with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup or salted peanuts.

Things Are A Changing

I just wanted to let y'all know that while school is over, my blog is not! I'm still working out just who The Tiffany Blue Chef will be without school but I would love if y'all stuck around to find out with me. I would also love if y'all told me what you might want to see on the site in the future. I know that there will be a certain person's (ahem, Collin Murray and I's) wedding cake and that there will be more New York highlights and adventures, but I would love to know if y'all had recipes, techniques, or other topics that you wanted to know more about! The floor is open as they say so stay tuned!


There are also more pictures to share like these baby artichokes that The Queen and I found at the market this past weekend!

Crepes With The Queen

My friend Ann, affectionately known as The Queen, was visiting New York this weekend and since much fun and debauchery was had, we needed a little pick me up this morning in the form of a delicious crepe. Near my apartment is a delightful indoor food mecca called Chelsea Market where they sell everything from lobster to leaf gelatin. And while that would certainly be enough to satisfy my taste buds, the market also houses a number of fun quick service restaurants like Bar Suzette.


Bar Suzette as seen from the entrance into Chelsea Market

Bar Suzette is an eclectic little spot, cash only and with hipster employees, one might worry that the crepe bar's offerings might lack finesse but they are actually rather wonderful. Naturally I had the nutella and strawberry crepe which was truly delicious but The Queen had what she said was a delectable crepe full of butternut squash, heirloom tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and ricotta cheese. Very tasty indeed and also relatively free of any mess since the crepes were delivered folded and in paper cones -- no forks needed!


My sweet crepe


The Queen's savory crepe

Bar Suzette is located at 425 W. 15th Street and while they don't have a website, you can check out their offerings on their Facebook page.

Healthy Man's Granola

Collin Murray is a granola freak. I say that with love and affection, really I do but the man is a granola freak. Problem is, a lot of granola out there is really quite fatty and only pretends to be good for you when it's really not. Enter my recipe for Maple Granola. Originally from Cooking Light Magazine, this recipe is amazingly simple and delicious. I like to use whatever nuts I have on hand which means sometimes I use almonds, sometimes walnuts, sometimes pecans and sometimes I get a little crazy and use a collection of all three.

MAPLE GRANOLA
Makes about 4 cups

2 cups regular oats
1/2 cup chopped nuts (use what you love)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons canola oil
Pinch of salt


Heat oven to 300F. Mix all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl till all the oats are coated with the maple syrup. Spread evenly on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring at about the 15 minutes mark. Cool on the tray and store in an airtight container.


*As a note, I have baked this granola with dried fruit before with lukewarm results. If you want to add dried fruit I would suggest that you add it after the granola is baked and cooled.

And....We're Done!

Well, it's all over. My cake came together excellently and I'm truly thrilled with it even though I am pretty sad that school is over.


I came in today and started by finishing the cornelli lace details on my cake. I had originally planned to pipe the lace all over the cake but when I finished the bottom tier, chef and I decided that I should leave my top tier blank so that the cake didn't get too busy. After I finished my flower arrangement on top of the cake (which literally took an hour because I was having a gigantic OCD moment while arranging all my flowers...), I decided to add the pink ribbon just to finish off the look. Once again, I'm really happy with the final product, it is better than I had hoped it would be and I wish it could be preserved forever!




Since we are at the end of pastry school proper or in-other-words, at the end of the in-school education of pastry school, I'm not sure what will go on with this blog. I begin my externship with a wonderful site called The Kitchenista on Thursday so you will soon see my work on that site but as for this site, I will likely update it a few times a week with posts similar to the non-school posts that y'all have been seeing since March. I do hope you tune in and I'm thrilled to have been able to share this experience with y'all. Thank you for tuning in, commenting, and supporting me throughout these last few months, going to pastry school has truly been a dream come true for me and I really do thank you.


Here's the whole crew. Hope they don't mind being on the world wide web! (Half of Shannon, J, Alicia, Kathy, Keiri, Katie (that's me!), Becca, Lucia, Sara, Jenna, Lisa, Jan, Emma and Hang) and the photo is courtesy of J.

I've Got Two Tiers!

We spent Lesson 99 covering our cakes in fondant and stacking them. Other people finished working on their gum paste flowers (which are the pastry equivalent of 'the song that will not end') but since I had finished those last week, I helped make an enormous batch of royal icing and began working on the cornelli lace detail on my cake.

Here are a few shots from the day:


My stacked cake! (I was rather excited that I actually got it covered and looking like a real live cake pretty much all by myself...I needed Chef's eyes to help me center the top tier...)


The beginning of the cornelli lace -- you can't really see that the cake is white and the lace is a very, very light pink to tie in the pink flowers


Cornelli lace detail

Tomorrow, Lesson 100, we are finishing our cakes, displaying them and partaking in our final reception. I wish I could say I was excited but we all know I'm a little bit sad. Stay tuned for tomorrow's final (final) product!

RE-POST: Operation Wedding Cake: It Begins

I hate to break it to y'all but sometimes I just don't quite know what happens with technology. I had originally written a post about the start of my (crazy, insane, why am I doing this) idea to make my own wedding cake a while ago but it seems to have disappeared.

So sorry. I have no explanations.

So here is a rundown, once again, of my plan. I'm going to make a wedding cake for Collin Murray and I complete with a lovely arrangement of gumpaste carnation flowers and then I am also going to create a bride and groom penguin wedding cake topper for our reception cake. It is going to be a long and hopefully not painful process but I will do my best to document it.

At the point when this post was originally written, I had just these carnation buds finished:



I also had, had a helper "assisting" me with the painful task of coloring the gumpaste (and incidentally my hands) with food coloring...



Isn't he cute? This is Gussy, "pointing" to the gumpaste as it took color -- here it looks a little like Pepto-Bismal, but it got better, slowly.

Wee Market Treasures

My Mama and her husband Robert are in town for my graduation on Tuesday and though it is their first time to the city, my Mama told me that she only wanted to see one thing: the Greenmarket. She didn't care about the Statue of Liberty, she would go to museums but it wasn't a big thing, even the Empire State Building didn't excite her: she just wanted to see the market. I guess being a foodie is something I inherited from my parents as both of them have always been great cooks and like me, they are easily delighted by all things foodie. However, there is one area where my Mama and Dad differ when it comes to food, my Mama has always loved little things and I'm not just talking about kittens and puppies here (although she likes those too, obviously). Mama likes anything little. Little spoons, little bowls, little teapots, little purses, but today at the Greenmarket, her world was full of little fairy eggplants, the tiniest (and sweetest) little tomatoes, and even wee little red onions. We had a grand time and I hope you enjoy the photos of some of today's wee foodie treasures.


Can you believe how small this tomato is? Literally smaller than a dime!


Fairy eggplant


I know I've posted pictures of these baby doughnut peaches before but are they not adorable?


Wee red onion


Baby zucchini and a hand model in need of a manicure (ahem, that would be me...)

The End Is Too Close

Pastry school is coming to an end far too soon. I am very sad about it and that emotion is shared by a few people in our class and then there are others who can't wait for school to be over. I can't believe it has all gone by so fast but I'm very grateful that Rod convinced me to start this blog because it is going to be a lovely scrapbook for me to look through when I'm done and remember the little details that fade with time in your memory.

That being said, today was another day of hard work in our kitchen. We started by making the strangest buttercream I have ever seen. It was called French Buttercream and it was weird. We start by heating milk and sugar till the sugar dissolved, then we chilled the sweetened milk over ice while whisking in flour and vanilla. Then we put the whole thing onto a 20 quart mixer and added three and three-quarter pounds butter -- no that is not a typo and heavy cream to the mixer, mixing till we had a light, fluffy buttercream. To be honest, it kind of tasted like butter: shocker, right?

So after the French Buttercream, we levelled and iced our six and ten inch cakes and froze them so that we can cover them with fondant on Monday.


Cake Rounds

After our cakes we safely stowed away, we continued working on our flowers. I petal-dusted all my "filler-flowers", my leaves, roses, and the rest of my carnations. I truly hope I am done with flower making for a little while because even though I find it to be a very zen experience, I ready to try something else.

\
Roses


Leaves

I'm Flowered Out

More flowers today. So many more flowers and there are still more to make. We didn't just make flowers today, we also began petal dusting of firm gum paste flowers. Petal dust looked kind of like loose eye-shadow and you use a dry paint brush to lightly highlight, or just color your flowers. I was, of course, in a state about doing anything to the flowers that I had worked so hard to make perfect but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.


Lightly petal dusted flower on top and un-petal dusted flower on the bottom


A "field" of petal dusted carnations!

Oh yes, here are my lack-lustre lilies from yesterday. I just can't get on board with them. I don't like lilies as a flower and I think it shows -- they are not my best work.


Tomorrow morning before class, I'm going to make more of the "filler flowers" -- the little flowers that take up the blank spaces in the gum paste flower arrangement, and probably I will make more carnations too as I am stressed about running out of them for the final cake product. Then, in class, we are going to be making buttercream and icing our cakes for Monday. I'm having a module three flashback and it hurts.

So Many Carnations, So Little Time

So the other day our chef announced that if he didn't show me how to make carnations that I would likely stab him in the neck. Personally, I think his choice of words was a little harsh but I'm not going to lie, learning how to make carnations was pretty high on my list of to-do's. He taught me today and I spent a lot of time working on them, and tonight, I will continue to work on them at home because I need so many for my cake that it hurts my eyes. Good thing it's fun.


Pretty carnations

We also finished our lilies today (which you will see tomorrow as I forgot to photograph them today), made leaves and I finished my mimosas from yesterday.



Tomorrow we start petal dusting our flowers and we will be baking for the last time in school as we have to bake the bases for our celebration cakes. A fact which, I have to admit, makes me a little sad. But anyway, before I get I weepy, I've got to get started on those damn carnations!