Since I'm more than 1,000 miles away from Louisiana for Mardi Gras this year, I decided to make a king cake and share it with my coworkers. The King Cake newbies seemed a little alarmed by the colored icing, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. It involves a lot of butter and elbow grease (for the stirring) but it's totally worth it. This can definitely be filed under "All I want in life is a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer."

I got the recipe from a Web site, made it once before and decided to make a few changes the second go round.

1/2 c. warm water
2 packages active dry yeast
1/2 c. plus 1 tsp. sugar
About 5 cups of flour, more or less as needed
1 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. warm milk
5 large egg yolks
1 stick plus 2 T. butter, cut in slices and softened
1 egg slightly beaten with 1 T. of milk
lots of ground cinnamon (I used about 3-5 tablespoons)
1 tiny plastic doll (you can find the dolls at a party store in the baby shower section)


Optional Cream Cheese Filling all creamed together:

1 8-ounce pkg. cream cheese
1 c. confectioner's sugar
2 T. flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
a few drops of milk



Cake Directions:

Pour the warm water into a small shallow bowl and sprinkle yeast and 2 teaspoons of sugar into it. Allow the yeast and sugar to rest for several minutes, then mix thoroughly. Set yeast mixture in a warm place for 10 minutes (I put mine in front of a space heater). Combine 3 and 1/2 cups of flour, remaining sugar, nutmeg, a tablespoon of cinnamon and salt in a large mixing bowl. Make sure the ingredients are all mixed up.

Separate center of mixture to form a hole and pour in yeast mixture and milk. Add egg yolks and using a wooden spoon, combine dry ingredients into the yeast and milk mixture. When mixture is smooth, beat in 8 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. Soften the butter in the microwave but be careful not to let it totally melt.

This is the arm work. Keep stirring the mixture for about 5 minutes. It will start to get really elastic. The recipe claims that it will turn into a "medium soft ball" but in neither attempts did this occur until I started mixing in a little more flour.

I used my counter top to knead the dough, cleaning it well ahead of time and cover it in flour. Keep kneading it and adding more flour until it's no longer sticky. Knead for another 10 minutes until "shiny and elastic."

Using a pastry brush, coat the inside of a large bowl evenly with one tablespoon softened butter. Place dough ball in the bowl and rotate until the entire surface is buttered. Cover bowl with a heavier kitchen towel and allow dough to rise in a warm place for about 1 and 1/2 hours or until it doubles in volume.

Coat a large baking sheet with one tablespoon of butter and set aside. After the first rising, place the dough on a floured surface and punch it down with a heavy blow.

On second attempt I decided to split the dough in half and make two cakes. They fit better on the pan, were less doughy (which was kind of not good) and allowed for a filed and plain version.

Beat the dough out into a long rectangle. Sprinkle a good deal of cinnamon over the middle of the rectangle. For the cream cheese filled variety, spread it over the middle. Fold the rectangle in half long ways and twist so it's spiral shaped.

Then bend it around to make an oval, pinching the ends together. Place it on the buttered cookie sheet.

Place the completed ring on the buttered baking sheet, cover it with a towel and allow it to rise for 45 minutes or until it doubles in volume. After the second rising, brush the top and sides of the cake with the egg and milk wash. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack and hide the plastic baby inside the cake.

For the cake pictured above, I just used food dye to color store bought icing. But last time I made a really delicious royal icing recipe.

For the icing:

5 tablespoons powdered egg whites (found on the baking aisle of your local grocery store)
6 tablespoons water
1 pound powdered sugar
2 tablespoon vanilla
food dye

Combine all ingredients except vanilla and food coloring. Beat with a hand mixer until they form a stiff peak. I did this once using real egg whites and it took much longer to get to peak.

Stir in vanilla and food dye and spread away.

---- Ginger

San Jose held the Wine and Pear Festival this weekend (side note: what kind of lame festival is that? At least Louisiana has better themes, like Shrimp, Petroleum or Rice. Way to live up to your snobby rep, NorCal.) Jokes aside though, it was pretty cool because Giada DeLaurentiis spoke and signed books. Giada's talk was good, she's really cute and personable just like on TV. And she really is THAT skinny. The woman just had a baby! She eats pasta all the time! And she's like, a size negative 2? I don't get it. Life is cruel.

Giada's Q&A wasn't terribly cooking intesive, but she talked about how she got into cooking and about being on the Food Network (she did mention that she LOVES Paula Deen, and that she is one of the nicest people she's ever met. That made me really happy. Has anyone read Paula's autobiography? It's so great. She's a fabulous Southern Lady.) As for cooking, she did mention that lemon juice can be substituted for wine in most recipes if you don't have any booze around or if you don't drink (yeah I know, that really applies to all of us. Y'all can stop laughing now). I have better photos on my camera, but can't seem to locate the USB cable. So for now I'm just putting up the picture I took with my phone, even thought you can't see much.

The line for books was around the block, and to get in for that I would have had to skip her Q&A. Plus I didn't have a book to get signed. Oh well.

In addition to Giada, there were lots of food booths, wine tasting ($20 for 6 tastes? Not in my price range) and the weekly Farmer's Market. I think I'm going to go back to that every weekend because the produce was amazing. And it was cheap too! I ended up buying some local honey because my allergies have been bugging me out here, and some candied ginger (really yummy with fruit or in pies). Plus I ate a meal's worth of samples, including some crazy good Afghani spinach bread. Not a bad day at all.

In preparation for my Giada encounter, I made her Pine Nut Cookies. I've been eyeing the recipe for awhile now because I love pine nuts. Luckily, I can get them really cheap at Trader Joe's, much cheaper than back home. Its about $4 for half a pound, instead of $5 for a little 1 oz. jar. (Trader Joe's is a foodie's dream. Anyone want me to ship them some? Jk) But for the cookies you only need a handful of pine nuts, so its not too bad.

The recipe calls for fennel seed, but after consulting with our resident Pasta Queen and Italy Expert Erin Parker, I decided to nix that. I don't really like that taste of fennel (does anyone?) and it seemed like it might give the cookies a weird texture. But that's up to you. The dough need to stay cold for you to slice it, or the cookies will just fall apart. Put the log of dough back in the fridge in between batches. On a whim, I also sprinkled some turbinado sugar (the "sugar in the raw" that you see at Starbucks?) on top of the cookies along with the pine nuts.

Other than that, just follow Giada's directions:
Giada's Pine Nut Cookies

Here are the finished cookies after my friends got to them. I forgot to take a picture, and only a few survived...



What is your favorite Giada DeLaurentiis recipe?

-Sarah

After watching the first half of the Project Runway season finale, my friend Kristen and decided to bake up some late-night chocolate chip cookies to help finish off our bottle of wine.

We based it off the Nestle Toll House Recipe but added a few of our own touches.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) chocolate chips (we threw in a few more until it was extra chocolaty)

The Toll House version said to preheat the oven to 375 degrees, but the first batch was a little crispy so we dropped it to 350 with better results.

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.

Cream the butter, if straight from the fridge, its easier if you stick it in the microwave for about 15 seconds, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla.

Kristen and I spent this portion of the process lamenting about how we wish we had a Kitchenaid stand mixer.

Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Use a spatula to stir in chocolate chips. The recipe calls for pecans, but we opted to leave them out. You can mix in anything else you want. (I suggest a little peanut butter)

Scoop on to cookie sheet spray with non-stick spray. They work best using a tablespoon to make big heaping cookies.

Bake 9 to 11 minutes. Cool, or eat when they're nice and gooey.


-Ginger