Happy Thanksgiving! In honor of Turkey-Day, I am posting a recipe I made recently…that has absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Yaaay!!! Now, I am making my Pumpkin Pie with Vodka Pie Crust and Apple Strudel Rolls this morning to take to Christian’s family’s Thanksgiving festivities this afternoon, but I have already posted about those*, so I decided to go with something new; something delicious, (mostly) classic, and as All-American as Thanksgiving itself: Chocolate chip cookies…with a twist. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: November 2013
Bakeology: On Pie Crusts and Gluten Formation
Pie Crusts and Gluten Formation
Welcome to the first post in the Bakeology series!
Since pie season is upon us, and the holidays are right around the corner, I figured my first Bakeology post, very fittingly, would focus on the star of my holiday meals: Pie! More specifically, pie crust. And gluten. And what is all that about? I just recently tried a pie crust recipe with vodka in it, and had great success. The crust was buttery, flakey, and delicious. But why? What does the vodka do that makes this recipe better than one with 100% water? Let’s explore…
First, what is gluten?
Gluten is a strong, sticky, stretchy protein found in foods made from wheat and similar grains that helps give dough its elasticity. When you add water to flour, the two wheat proteins, glutenin and gliadin, combine and form gluten.
Liebster Award
In a break from my usual confectionery posting, I am writing to respond to the recent nomination I received for the Liebster Award from fellow blogger My Year of Cupcakes! Thank you so much for thinking of me!
Bakeology: The Science of Sweets
Good day to you all!
It is a good day today because I have decided to start a new blog series, which I am calling “Bakeology: The Science of Sweets”. I will probably commonly refer to it just as Bakeology. For those who don’t know me, I majored in Chemical Engineering in college, which makes me a B.S.-certified nerd. In true nerd-form, I want to know all of the facts – down to the molecule – about baking and the science behind it. Also, I like structure, and need structure to effectively work and learn. Therefore, this blog series will FORCE me to learn at least one new thing a week! Hopefully, I will learn much more than that and I will not have nearly enough weeks to post about my wealth of knowledge on the science of baking. Why recipes call for room temperature eggs, how gluten forms, why use this fat over this one, and what really is the difference between cake flour and all-purpose flour? All these questions, and more, will be answered in this blog series.
If you have any baking science question or mystery you would like me to investigate, please comment on any post in the series as we move along and I will definitely try to answer it in a future post! Stay tuned later this week for my first Baking Science post!
Pumpkin Pie with Vodka Pie Crust
This past weekend was my mom’s birthday (which birthday, I will not say, to preserve her youth…let’s go with 35). I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, and her response was simply, “I don’t want cake; I want pie.” Continue reading
Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin Bread: Classic, easy, and absolutely delicious. I love pumpkin bread, and apple spice bread, and cranberry walnut bread, and all the other breads of the holidays. Continue reading
Chocolate Layer Cake with Pumpkin Pastry Cream and Maple Bourbon Buttercream
To finish off my 4-week long fondant cake decorating class, we were tasked with making a cake to cover in fondant and bring the uniced cake into class. Seeing as Halloween was later that week, my class decided pumpkin cakes would be fitting to make as our final cake project. Continue reading