One Hour “Pastries”–Mini Doughnuts

For those that want to know, doughnuts are not pastries.  Technically, given the way they are made, they would be closer to cakes.  That being said, doughnuts are often sold in bakeries that specialize in pastries, because they are crowd pleasers.  And America is well known for taking liberties with food categories.  The truth is, I recently purchased a new baking pan from Bed Bath & Beyond and I wanted to play with it.  It was very quick, so I thought I would share my results with you.
First off, I will show you a picture of my helper chef, D’argo, who was a little too eager to be a part of the baking process that he was banned from the kitchen while I worked.  He almost tripped me twice, with his frenetic running around.  But he was hopeful through the end of the process that he would be allowed back in.


I promise to only trip you when you are carrying bacon...

 As always, I gathered my ingredients together, to make sure I had everything.  Success!  I had enough for a double batch, assuming everything turned out right.


If you have ingredients in jars your Grandma would love, it will taste even better!

 Here is the pan that started it all.  Isn’t it cute?  On the back of the packaging is a simple recipe for cake doughnuts, made with buttermilk and a touch of sugar.  Wait… there is also a tiny recipe for a vanilla glaze for the doughnuts…


These make mini-doughnuts... or large Cheerios.



If you can't read this, I give all the amounts below.

               















Let’s make that too.  I have the ingredients.  There’s not much to a glaze other than water, a touch of flavor, and a load of sugar.  I even have food coloring.  Ooh!  And sprinkles.  Great donuts have sprinkles! <drool>


Powdered sugar... the most dangerous powder I ever deal with.

 Anyway, back to the doughnuts.  First step, preheat oven to 425.  Second step, spray the doughnut trenches with vegetable oil spray.  Then, judging by the recipe – which you should always read through before making for the first time – my third step was to melt the butter.  As it wasn’t but 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter, it took about 25 seconds in the microwave.


Delicious delicious sunshine!

 Dry ingredients first.  In a big bowl, mix 1 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg, and 1 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Mix it all up.  I just stir with whatever mixing spoon I used last.  But, I'm not that picky.


Avoid the temptation to throw this at someone.

 Add the liquid ingredients: 1/2 cup buttermilk, the melted butter, and 1 egg, lightly beaten.  Stir until moistened.  Do not over stir, because you don’t want to de-fluff the dough.  The key to a great cake donut is fluffiness.  Just ask anyone who has ever eaten a squished doughnut.  They suck.


Don't' fling this at anyone either.



Okay.  You can fling this.  Just a little though.

              










If you have a pastry bag, this dough is just thick enough to load into it, which really helps in loading the tiny doughnut trenches in the pan.  I didn’t have a clean one at hand, so I did what anyone in a hurry would do.  I loaded it into a quart-sized Ziploc bag, sealed it really good, and cut a tiny piece of one corner off.  Quick-time pastry bag.  Fill the doughnut trenches half full says the recipe.  That is easy to do with a pastry bag.  Not so easy to do with a spoon.  You can trust me on this.


They kind of look like tortellini right now.



It looks gross, but trust me, this works.
















                             
Pop the pan in the oven and bake 4-5 minutes.  The doughnuts will be done when you touch one and it springs back.  For anyone who tries this and doesn’t know what this means, if you put your finger on a doughnut and it doesn’t leave an indention… they are ready.  They will still be pale, but don’t let that bother you.  Let it cool for 5 minutes before flopping out of the pan.  Mine pretty much fell right out.  Let them cool on a wire rack.  Respray the pan and load up another dozen.




If you eat one now, you will lose a few tastebuds.  Totally worth it.

     
The recipe says it makes 2 dozen of these bad boys.  But I made a little over three dozen.  As you can tell by the picture below, they overfilled a trench every so often.

This is how Spaghettios make each individual noodle

Now, on to the glaze!  Actually, as the recipe says, it is more of an icing than a glaze.  I added just a touch of yellow liquid coloring.  As you can tell by the photo, I over did it a little.  Well, I like it anyway.  If you want to make a donut glaze to make it look more like your traditional donut... heat the glaze just a little.  This will require you to dip the donut into the glaze, turn it back over, and let it drip over something as it dries (and it will, never fear).  That sounded like a little too much work for me, so I didn't do that.


That looks almost like liquid uranium.

 I decorated the doughnuts three different ways.  First, I used another Ziploc pastry bag (snack size this time) to put a circle of glaze on each doughnut, followed by sprinkles.  Second, I used the pastry bag and swiped stripes across several doughnuts, again followed by sprinkles.  Third, I left some without icing.  My husband, Brant, doesn’t really like icing, so I knew he would eat those.  Melted chocolate would also go over great with these.  But when hasn't chocolate and doughnuts gone together?


Just like the Simpson's doughnuts.... only yellow.



Plain.. for people who can't stand the happiness of sugar.



Tiger striping... you can pretend you are fierce when you eat these!

       
Now that they were done, I needed a taste-monkey to see if they were really good or just so-so.  Brant was the victim – er, taste-monkey – last time, so I decided to try someone new.  The dogs volunteered, but since they can’t talk and will eat anything I thought to find someone else.  So I took the doughnuts to work, and asked a friend from our neighbor lab, Stephanie Brosius, to try.  I captured her immediate reaction.


Taste-monkey Stephanie approves!



We want to eat doughnuts!  (and bacon!)

            

The Becker Scrapbook So Far

Hey there.  I know what you are thinking… “Oh no!  Not another scrapbook post.  We want to bake!”  Well, that one is just one blog down the pipeline.  However, I have actually had some readers (two, which is a large percentage of my core readership) tell me that they wanted to see the blank scrapbook I was making for my niece and new nephew’s honeymoon trip through Utah.  So, I have taken pictures of the pages so far.  I love these pictures, and I am proud to show them.
This is the first page. I know it is a little… busy. But I like it. I wanted to introduce an air of excitement. The main paper set I used for this is the Tim Holtz Idea-ology Lost & Found paper stack, but I also picked through my large private collection for anything that had a camping theme.  Unfortunately I do not know exactly what the titles of these papers are, but they were most likely bought at Hobby Lobby.  I included a small just above the title with a large tag halfway inside it for journaling.

Now the pictures are a little more laid back.  This one features stickers, both bought and handmade.  The letters are purchased. The signs in the top corner and down the middles are made.  I cut them from a paper full of them, and ran them through my Xyron machine.
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I like this set of pages.  The first page is pretty blank. I think that the place she is going will more than decorate the page.  I put up a couple of Quickutz suitcase die-cuts to decorate the page, a couple of sticker phrases, and a Tim Holtz sticker of a couple that has similarities to the Beckers.  the second page is just a large matte, for them to fill as they want.  If you look at this picture, you can see that the picture has a pattern.  I think it is a picture of a sweatshirt.

Another two page spread.  This time the large matte is first.  This one was just too cute to pass up.  The second one is another fairly blank page.  I did put more Quickutz handmade die cuts here, such as the US shape, the shovel, and the sign.  I also included a metal finding with a cute sentiment on it.

This two-page spread is more sedate than the others, but I think it is a great spread for travel.  I cut a page with a world map in half, to make the pages match.  The page matte is a wood pattern, so the picture mattes reflect the somber color.  To lighten the mood of the page, I put sticker phrases down, and made a couple of butterfly stickers out of a piece of pretty paper and foam tape.

I just had to use the frenetic papers I had with all the camping signs on them, they were just too fun.  Of course, it did need to be calmed a little.  So I used pickle-colored Bazzill cardstock for both the page mattes and the picture mattes.  All of the accents on this page are hand made, most are Quickutz.  In case you cannot tell already, I have a lot of Quickutz dies.

And finally, at least so far, the two-page spread based on a picture of a Utah mountain range.  I believe the blog about this spread explains this picture wonderfully.  And I love the way it looks.

Below are close-ups of some of the hand made accents I made.  Note that the butterfly is merely two identical cut-outs, stuck together at the body of the insect with a little tape, with the wings of the upper cut-out bent up a little bit.  Looks cool, no?
                      
I think my favorite die cut that I have used so far for this scrapbook is the Swiss army knife.  I used silver metal-looking cardstock for the knife and bits.  And the ladybug… that is just too cute to leave out.
                     

Making a Mountain (Scrapbook Layout)

While trying to come up with ideas for the Utah-based honeymoon album I a making for our recently married niece, I decided to look at pictures on the internet from scenic vistas throughout the state.  I saw one that was just perfectly framed, and it hit me.  it is layers of mountains... I bet I could make a page based on this picture.  The original picture if found at the Bess Realty Group website, believe it or not.
First thing's first.  I collected cardstock from my collection that matched well enough to make the layered colors.  For the sky background and farthest mountains, I used cardstock with white centers, so I could sand them (as I will show a little later).  The rest was from my beloved Bazzill cardstock collection.  And I pulled all my green Ranger Distress inks and a couple of extras (Black Soot, Chipped Sapphire, Weatherd Wood, Crushed Olive, Bundled Sage, Forest Moss, Peeled Paint, Shabby Shutters, and Pine Needless).  The rest of the equipment are: a pair of scissors, a fine knife for detailed cutting, a very thin (#005) marker for light details, and a nail file for sanding.


The sky is easy enough to do.  I could just leave the pretty light blue background plain, but I wanted to put a scant few clouds, like in the picture.  So I tore the top off of the file, to make myself a tiny file, and sanded in a circular motion until I got the shapes I liked.  I also used some Q-tips for painting, but forgot to add them to the picture.  Easy.
         

Next, I traced a mountain range on the gray-blue paper, putting the highest peak on the right page, and lowering the left side so it will fall under the next layer.  I cut this out, using the fine blade to get a couple of cuts a little more rounded.  I inked the edges of the mountains with the Weathered Wood ink to disguise the white center.


Before I get to the distressing of it all, I went ahead and cut out the rest of the layers.  Next up is the blue-green paper.  On the left it rises above the mountain in the background, and on the right it is basically on the same level while the mountain towers above it.  I just freehanded a few mounds, making sure that they were not too high to cut off the mountain, or too low to make the front range look weird.  Then the front, light green layer, starts on the right about halfway down the page and just curves down across both pages, until it is close to the bottom left edge.  I used one piece of paper for both the left and right, to conserve.  I hoard my Bazzill paper almost religiously.


Here is, in my opinion, the coolest part.  I cut two and a half inches off the bottom to reduce bulk, but you can leave it in if you want to.  Then I wadded them up into small balls.  I carefully pulled them back out, and didn't flatten.  I used another piece of the nail file to sand certain areas, easily done by sanding the folds, to resemble little snow trails like in the picture.  To make the mountain shadows, I used Chipped Sapphire and rubbed it where I wanted it with my finger.  This gave it a smudgy look, instead of just inking any folds from the crumbling.  When the ink dries, then I flattened it enough to tape it down onto the background.


For the middle range, notice that there are trees on them.  However, they are so small that I was pretty sure I couldn't draw them.  So, I used the cast off paper from when I cut it and experimented with my greens until I found three that looked good to layer over each other.  I chose (Bundled Sage, Forest Moss, and Pine Needless).  I took the lightest ink, Forest Moss, and just slid it back and forth on the page, to give a layer of color to the matte green background.  Then, I took Bundled Sage and a Q-tip.  I tapped the tip onto the ink pad a few times until it was saturated, and then just made lines in areas where trees might be on both pages.  The darkest ink, Pine Needles, repeated these lines, until I had a mess of lines in groups on this layer.  I let it dry and taped it down onto the page.  It looks cool to me.

The bottom range is brighter, with larger trees. I had planned to make some trees with green mulberry paper, but I was unable to locate any.  Maybe mulberry has fallen out of style.  So, I decided to leave it blank.  This will be where any pictures or journaling my niece wants to do will be added.

The final result is very pretty.  And I proved to myself that I can be creative without a template or someone else's help.  And so can you.  Now, go choose a simple picture and amaze me.

Scrapbooking with a Template, Take One

For those of us who want the time to enjoy scrapbooking as well as making something interesting, there are a plethora of helpers out there.  They are called templates, and they can be found in blogs, magazines, magazine websites, and even your fellow scrapbookers have probably doodled lots of them.  I know I have.  I buy magazines every so often and like to read them, and then cut out everything I like and add it to a box.  They come in handy when I have scrapper’s block, or when I want to make something intricate but don’t have the time or inclination to think of what to do.
Today, I made a two-page spread for the honeymoon scrapbook I am working on using a template.  Yes, it was a blank page for someone else to put their pictures in.  But that doesn’t mean you cannot do this for yourself.  Why not make blank pages for yourself, so that if something awesome comes along, you already have pages ready to put them into to wow your family and friends.  It is faster, in my opinion, to make blank pages than to make ones for pictures you have had sitting around for ages.  But don’t worry, I have ways to make those pages go faster as well.  Anyway, let us continue.
Here is the template.  It was cut from a magazine, but honestly I could not tell you which one, because I cut this out well before I decided to make a blog.  It looks cool, and not too difficult (in my opinion).  The best thing about this template, and what makes it fairly easy, is that dimensions are written on there for everything I have to cut.  After that, picking out the papers to use is the fun part.  I only used paper, a paper cutter, and a little ink for cut edges for this page.

As you can see, I decided to move away from the greens and browns of the scrapbook so far and use a bright, delicious orange for the background.  This is going to be a page about food and taking a break, so I thought it would be appropriate.

When I am making blank pages, I work from back to front.  I start with the base paper, then the background paper(s), any large decorations, journaling, photo mats, and embellishments.  I know this sounds like “duh, how else would you do it?”  Well, normally I pick pictures that I want to see together, matte them, then figure out what should go behind them to make up the page.  So I pretty much am going to go backwards for me here.  After laying out the base papers, I cut out and tape down the background paper.  There are two large rectangles in this template that make up the background.  I cut the large piece of paper behind the picture mats.  It looks like it is supposed to be a single piece, but I used an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, which wasn’t big enough.  So, I used two coordinating pieces of paper.  I think it looks kind of funky.

The second back paper I decided to make a potato brown.  For the large, interesting shape, I freehanded a previously used piece of Ranger Distress paper.  It had a kooky bingo pattern on it that I like, but can never find a use for.  One of the best things about abstract shapes used for filler is that they don’t specifically have to match the theme.  Their only job is to look good.  And possibly provide a nice space for journaling if need be.  Which I think this will likely be.

Next came the long pieces of paper across the bottom of the page.  Now, it looked to me like these could oh so easily be have been ribbon, or fabric or anything I wanted it to be.  For me, I saw this as a perfect way to use up those extra bits of paper I always get when I trim down background paper.  So I went into my scrap paper stash and found two pieces that matched the color scheme and were close enough to the right sizes for the page.  Note that I said close enough.  Like I say, templates and measurements – at least on this blog – are guidelines, not rules set in stone.  Besides, they look sweet.

Remember that potato brown paper I cut for one of the background papers?  I cut as many mattes as I could from the leftover for about four of the picture sizes listed on the template.  I put off white cardstock on those mattes, inked around the edges with walnut Ranger Distress Ink.  For the rest of the photo mattes I used a lighter orange cardstock than that of the main background.  Still sweet.

Last but not least, I added

One Hour Pastries–Tarte Tatin

So I am a baking fan.  And yes, I can make my own pastry doughs, crèmes, fondant, crusts, ganaches, and all that rot.  But I know that most of these take more time than I have to spend in an evening.  So, I have decided to find recipes for pastries that can be done in about an hour, like my eye glasses.  First up on the chopping block: Tarte tatins.
A tarte tatin is a French pastry.  It is basically an upside down tart, normally with apples, where the “bottom” is caramelized sugar and butter, then sliced fruit, then pastry on top.  It is served with cream, and is best served warm enough to melt the cream on contact.  It is a lovely treat with very few ingredients, so I knew that it could be done well on the first try.  Several pastry sites and blogs have the tarte tatin on them, and they fall in two categories: those that make the caramel first and those that let the oven do the job.  Unless you are good at making caramel in a pan, you are going to mess up the first times, making it take not only over an hour to make the tarte tatin, but use up more ingredients than you need to.  So, today’s pastry will let the oven do most of the work.  It comes from the website bon appetit, with only a couple of changes based on what was available to me.  I am making both a banana one and an apple one.  Tradition uses apples, but Kathryn (me) loves bananas.
Before your baking night, you will need to gather the following ingredients: 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (1/2 stick left out for 20 to 30 minutes); 8 tablespoons light brown sugar (don’t use Splenda based, it doesn’t quite caramelize); 4 ripe bananas; 1 sheet puff pastry, thawed (leave this out for at least 30 minutes).  These amounts will vary depending on what you bake the tarte tatin in.  The site’s recipe calls for several crème brulee tins, but I don’t have those.  I used a 9” cake pan, and as you will see, the amounts of ingredients are only guidelines.

First, turn the oven on to 400 degrees.  This is important for you time management.  Believe me, because I forgot this step.  Next, take your pan in one hand and the butter in the other.  Slather that butter all over the inside of the pan, and make it thick.  This is why the measurements don’t exactly matter.  There just needs to be enough butter to prevent anything from sticking to the pan, and to keep the caramelized sugar yummy.  When you are done, say “eww, gross” and throw the rest of that butter away before you are tempted to make some toast.  Real butter is too delicious to eat.  Now is also a great time to wash your hands.

Next up, sugar those babies!  Again, the amount is only a guideline.  Cover the bottom of the pan with a good amount of brown sugar.  I put a couple of tablespoons in my hand and sprinkled until the pan was evenly covered.  For the banana tarte tatin I was feeling spicy, so I added a dash of cinnamon to that sugar.  And yes, I made a mess.  Anyone that knows me is not surprised here.

Now, cut the fruit.  For bananas, just cut diagonally into several pieces.  It took me two bananas for me to cover the 9” pan.  For the apples, I cut each into 8 pieces.  I broke the handy apple corer I was using, but a butcher knife makes quick work of an apple so it was easily done.  Be sure to peel the apple pieces.  Here is where your creativity can shine.  I kept mine simple.

Pastry time!  Using a little flour on a flat surface, roll out the pastry dough to thin it out a little bit.  Then you can cut it out to just a little bigger than the pan you are using.  I laid the dough on top of the fruit and cut around the outside of the pan.  Tuck the dough into the pan, around the fruit.  Don’t be harsh here, just make sure all the fruit is covered by the dough.

The oven should be nice and hot by now.  Put the pans on a cookie sheet (just in case of an overflow) and throw them in the oven.  Set the timer for 25 minutes (less if making a smaller one, but no less than 20 minutes), and go do the other chores you need to do.  I cleaned up the mess, did the dishes, made some peach tea, and watched about five minutes of the Big Bang Theory.

Ding!  D’argo and Rusty, my honorary bakers, run to the kitchen, and we pull out the treats.  Oh… my… goodness to they smell good.

Let them sit for about 5 minutes then flip them over onto a plate.  BEFORE YOU DO:  put a pot holder or towel underneath the pan to prevent finger burn.  Put the plate over the top and flip.  I like to tap the bottom of the pan a couple of times too.  Done!  If you don’t have any crème to serve with it, use whip cream or a little ice cream.  We had none, so I served it up naked to my test-monkey, Brant…

So there we have it.  An easy, low-ingredient pastry that is quick enough to make in an evening, and will be eaten even faster.  I will leave you with a picture of my honorary bakers, D’argo and Rusty.  They are not allowed to touch anything, but they hang around just in case I drop something.