Adam's Adventures in Baking, continued
Jan. 8th, 2003 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiTonight's episode: No. More. Pie.
Having had a long day, I decided to relieve stress in the kitchen.
When baking, I knew that optimal conditions must be achieved. So I waited until![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shadesong had gone out with chelona, and Elayna was still awake and asking for things like dessert. This is the ideal time to be in the kitchen, as it allows you to focus on ten things at once, some of which may have something to do with the recipe. For ther ecipe, I chose the Chocolate Chiffon Pie recipe that had been staring at me for days, ever since I accidentally flipped to it while browsing through the food porn cook books.
Whipping the cream was easy. I'd whipped cream before, and since I now knew where the mixer was, it was just a few minutes of work. THen I got to the fun part -- melting the chocolate in the condensed milk.
Understand, I've never melted chocolate before. And melting it in another liquid was even trickier. I poured the milk into the pan, then tossed in the chopped chunks of chocolate. And waited for it to melt (the instructions were clear -- use low heat, going against my instincts, which are always to turn the dial up to "10").
Ten minutes later, nothing.
I look at the burner. Doesn't seem to be glowing. I hold my hand near it. Don't feel anything. But since I'm not used to using "low," I'm not sure how far heat would radiate. Eventually, curiosity gets the best of me (handily beating common sense, which never puts up much of a fight), and I touch the burner. Ice cold.
Fortunately, the other burners are working fine, so I switch to them. And eventually, melting starts happening. Slowly. Really slowly. Probably because I didn't break the chocolate up into small enough pieces, so I help things along by chopping away at the chocolate with the spoon as I stir and mix the chocolate and milk. Halfway through, Elayna comes into the kitchen asking for dessert. I manage to grab the Tofutti out of the fridge, scoop some into a bowl, and serve that, the vitamin, and her juice, all while darting back to stir the chocolate. Barry Allen has nothing on me!
After that's done, I make the gelatin. Something else I've never done before. You're supposed to let it sit in the water for a bit before stirring it. Alas, I got distracted by finishing stirring the chocolate (found a few lumps), and let it sit too long. The problem here is that the gelatin had started to gel up around dried gelatin powder, leaving clumps. Fortunately, gelatin comes four packets to a box, because they know about people like me.
I got it right on the second try, and mixed the gelatin, vanilla, and chocolate mixture. I then folded (another first! I never folded a non-solid before!) the whipped cream into the chocolate. It looked horrible at first -- it looked like it would never all mix together, and that I'd end up with a marble-looking mixture. Fortunately, after about an eternity, it all stared to come together, and it looked chocolaty!
I then poured it into the crust (store-bought, so bite me!), and put it in the fridge.
One of the dirty secrets of cooking is that all pie recipes leave filling that won't fit in the crust. This is why all good chefs are fat, and why I'd never trust a skinny cook. I therefore felt obligated to clean out the rest of the saucepan the old-fashioned way (since Elayna's allergic to milk, I couldn't offer her any -- I need to find some good milk-free recipes for next time). It tasted damned yummy. My major concern is whether the cake will be solid enough to be eaten with a fork (I'm not sure the whipped cream was whipped enough, as I tried to under-whip it, as folding heavily whipped cream can create butter (or so The Joy of Cooking tells me). But I don't know if it was too under-whipped (and wow, is it possible to talk about baking without making everything sound like an innuendo?), or the gelatin took care of it.
But the adventure is over for now -- the pie is in the fridge, and by 10:00 or so, it should be ready for human consumption!
Having had a long day, I decided to relieve stress in the kitchen.
When baking, I knew that optimal conditions must be achieved. So I waited until
shadesong had gone out with chelona, and Elayna was still awake and asking for things like dessert. This is the ideal time to be in the kitchen, as it allows you to focus on ten things at once, some of which may have something to do with the recipe. For ther ecipe, I chose the Chocolate Chiffon Pie recipe that had been staring at me for days, ever since I accidentally flipped to it while browsing through the Whipping the cream was easy. I'd whipped cream before, and since I now knew where the mixer was, it was just a few minutes of work. THen I got to the fun part -- melting the chocolate in the condensed milk.
Understand, I've never melted chocolate before. And melting it in another liquid was even trickier. I poured the milk into the pan, then tossed in the chopped chunks of chocolate. And waited for it to melt (the instructions were clear -- use low heat, going against my instincts, which are always to turn the dial up to "10").
Ten minutes later, nothing.
I look at the burner. Doesn't seem to be glowing. I hold my hand near it. Don't feel anything. But since I'm not used to using "low," I'm not sure how far heat would radiate. Eventually, curiosity gets the best of me (handily beating common sense, which never puts up much of a fight), and I touch the burner. Ice cold.
Fortunately, the other burners are working fine, so I switch to them. And eventually, melting starts happening. Slowly. Really slowly. Probably because I didn't break the chocolate up into small enough pieces, so I help things along by chopping away at the chocolate with the spoon as I stir and mix the chocolate and milk. Halfway through, Elayna comes into the kitchen asking for dessert. I manage to grab the Tofutti out of the fridge, scoop some into a bowl, and serve that, the vitamin, and her juice, all while darting back to stir the chocolate. Barry Allen has nothing on me!
After that's done, I make the gelatin. Something else I've never done before. You're supposed to let it sit in the water for a bit before stirring it. Alas, I got distracted by finishing stirring the chocolate (found a few lumps), and let it sit too long. The problem here is that the gelatin had started to gel up around dried gelatin powder, leaving clumps. Fortunately, gelatin comes four packets to a box, because they know about people like me.
I got it right on the second try, and mixed the gelatin, vanilla, and chocolate mixture. I then folded (another first! I never folded a non-solid before!) the whipped cream into the chocolate. It looked horrible at first -- it looked like it would never all mix together, and that I'd end up with a marble-looking mixture. Fortunately, after about an eternity, it all stared to come together, and it looked chocolaty!
I then poured it into the crust (store-bought, so bite me!), and put it in the fridge.
One of the dirty secrets of cooking is that all pie recipes leave filling that won't fit in the crust. This is why all good chefs are fat, and why I'd never trust a skinny cook. I therefore felt obligated to clean out the rest of the saucepan the old-fashioned way (since Elayna's allergic to milk, I couldn't offer her any -- I need to find some good milk-free recipes for next time). It tasted damned yummy. My major concern is whether the cake will be solid enough to be eaten with a fork (I'm not sure the whipped cream was whipped enough, as I tried to under-whip it, as folding heavily whipped cream can create butter (or so The Joy of Cooking tells me). But I don't know if it was too under-whipped (and wow, is it possible to talk about baking without making everything sound like an innuendo?), or the gelatin took care of it.
But the adventure is over for now -- the pie is in the fridge, and by 10:00 or so, it should be ready for human consumption!
