The Advocate is Comin' to Town

So it turned out to be a baker's Christmas at the Treehouse. Cake boxes from my brother for the Veron sibling gift exchange, "science" of baking books that I have waited for patiently since the summer, a yogurt maker from Bingham, and the jewel of my heart (this is the part were the sopranos begin, a bright light appears, doves scatter & it appears from a cloudy fog)....a white Kitchen Aid mixer... ah...
Forget the Ipad! After years of the hand-me-down hand mixer, a wooden spoon, and some good old-fashioned elbow grease, I have finally moved into the world of "luxury baking" or as some might say...sane baking. I guess I was a good little girl this year...or probably just a semi-decent daughter.
And another Christmas surprise I didn't ask for.....a phone call from the Advocate. Turns out Mama Lisa has been up to her sneaky ways again and contacted the Advocate about the food blog and my obsession with baking. So the week before Christmas I received a lovely call from Cynthia Campbell who came by the Treehouse and interviewed me! The article will be featured in the food section on Jan. 13th.
So Cynthia asked me to have something "cooking up" when she came by for our interview and originally I was going to be trying a chocolate doberge cake for the first time for my little cousin's birthday. But instead, I decided to stick to what I'm good at .... carrot cake. I've made this cake at least 15 times, 3 layers of 9 in. rounds, each with cream cheese icing in between. I usually just do a cream cheese icing with minimal decoration since cream cheese icing is rather fussy when it comes to beauty but for The Advocate I'd go all out with the buttercream decor.
Unfortunately, Cynthia was coming 2 days before Christmas, I had a few parties and dinners to go to, and didn't get started on the carrot cake until pretty late (9 pm the night before our interview at 11 am to be exact). So Bingham offered to pitch in since I also planned to bake a Zulu King Cake. Everything was going smoothly until around 12 am......disaster struck.
Now, my oven is a half oven so I can only bake one layer at a time. As I was pulling out the second layer to check for doneness, fatigue or stress made me clumsy and I dropped the cake.....face down, partly on the oven door and partly on the oven coils! Soooo a little fire started, I began screaming for help at Bingham who had fallen asleep on the couch, and eventually bursted into tears. After calming me down, Bingham started making 1/3 of my carrot cake recipe to replace the fallen layer while I worked on the icings. After rescuing me, Bingham went off to sleep and I kept working into the night. When I got around to baking the last layer, the make-shift 1/3 recipe Bingham left for me, I noticed that the batter was thicker and off-colored...so I stared for a minute....then a minute more....no carrots!! As my Maw Maw would say "Oh Gawd!" but I guess we were both exhausted. No harm done; I just threw in the carrots and continued on. The replacement layer somehow turned out darker than the other 2 layers as you can see in the pictures, but bakers always say that changing the recipe quantity (whether that be doubling or halving a recipe) changes the final product so who knows what happened.
So I finished layering and crumb coating (a primary buttercream icing) the cake, which was sliding just to spite me the whole time, at 2 am and hit the sack. And let me tell you when I say hit the sack it was more like collapsing. My alarm went off at 6 am...wondermous. I hopped out of bed pulled out the troublemaker cake, and frosted the cream cheese icing on top of the buttercream & topped it off with buttercream roses/borders. This was the first time I did an initial crumb coat but it definitely made a different in the smoothness of my cream cheese icing and making the icing less "see-through."
This pain in my ass was complete at 7:30 am......when I started on my king cake. Still need to perfect the shell border, but at this point, who cares. Only 3 hours until showtime.
From 7:30 am until 10:30am, I looked like "somethin' Patty shot at" which is my dad's expression for a disheveled ugly mess. I rolled out the king cake dough into 3 strips & started on the cream cheese/semi-sweet chocolate chip/coconut flake mixture filling......wait a minute.....I FORGOT TO BUY THE DAMN CHOCOLATE CHIPS. After a flustered trip to Wal-Mart, I filled the dough strips, jelly-rolled (is that a verb?) them into ropes, braided them & left them to rise for an hour. During the hour of rising, I showered & blow-dried my hair. After shoving the king cake braid in the oven, I half-way finished my make-up when the Advocate photographer called....great my cakes are going to look better than my face.....oh well. The photographer arrived 10 min before the king cake came out the oven and right before I started with my satiny chocolate glaze. It was like Iron Chef but I somehow managed to finish! Phew.
Luckily I also had some pre-made low fat granola which they took a look at. When they left, I packaged the granola in little plastic baggies with ribbon and a business card :) which I gave away to Bingham's family and my aunts and uncles.

The next day, Christmas Eve & my little cousin Nate's 2nd birthday party, I brought the carrot cake to the "backa hesta" aka Hester, Louisiana for the annual Roussel family Christmas Eve bonfire celebration.


Dad and Nate dig in! I like Nate's way....no fork, just hands.

Nothin' like a happy plate and a messy face!!

Christmasin' Me Crazy

Once upon a time, Christmas was the most relaxing time of year. No school, lots of free desserts, parties with family & friends, & excessive hours of TV....the days when I did none of the work and reaped all the benefits. I always use to think Mom was just throwing herself a pity party when she said she was exhausted from cooking all day around Christmas time, but now I feel her pain. Guess this means I might be an adult after all ....bleh. Juggling gift shopping, parties with family & friends, parties with boyfriend's family & friends, baking for loved ones & for order, & interviewing for the Advocate all in the same week was a whirl-wind.
And my baking perfectionism....lets just say it hasn't been getting along with baking deadlines. The day before Christmas Eve, I was so delirious I started speaking in an Indian accent to myself while trying to figure out where to store my 30+ croissants in my miniature kitchen. But, if "crunch-time" baking was the challenge.... then I said bring it on. The 3 days before Christmas I stayed up 'til 2 am & got up at 7 am, dropped one layer of carrot cake on my kitchen floor at 1 am, and ate only 2 meals a day. But I did it and succeeding was worth the physical and mental stress. Oh yea, it doesn't hurt that I's obsessed with baking either.

Enough of my blabbing, here are my lovely creations that I slaved over until the bags under my eyes drooped down to my chin, some of which I can barely remember making, all of which were delicious!!

King Cakes Galor!
I made 5 king cakes the week before Christmas. Baton Rougians' dedication to Louisiana tradition is out of control: LSU, football, Saints, king cake, gumbo....you name it, the people love it, and they'll do anything to have it.
My first sold king cake to my pre-med friend & third? cousin, Mary Grace. She got a traditional cinnamon sugar in a lovely pink box, cake boxes were a gift from my brother for Christmas.
2 Cinnamon Pecan Christmas King Cakes for a Dr. at Pennington! I gift wrapped!!


Another Christmas king cake for my aunt and uncle!
Christmas Berry Surprise Cupcakes
Sour cream cake with raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry surprise centers! I found it best just to use straight up frozen fruit for this, no strings (i.e. juices/syrups) attached.
So you wondering how did I get so many different sizes....overfilling the cups, only fill the cups about 4/5 full or else you get a huge mushroom top cupcake, the professionals use an ice cream scoop to make sure all cupcakes have the same amount of batter...I don't have one :(
Another tip, if you are making cupcakes for a health conscious group....make mini's like the LSU color ones here, even if you're on a diet, who can say no to one bite-sized cupcake! You will end up with less left overs for sure!
This order was for a friend, Matt Dardenne, peanut butter calls and LSU mini suprise cupcakes, I threw in giant monster cookie (oatmeal, peanut butter & trailmix) as lagniappe.
Pecan Pie
Everyone likes their pecan pie a little different. My mother likes hers full of pecans, I like mine with pecans at the top and a sugary base beneath. This one was made using a recipe given to me by Bingham's mom, Mrs. Vickie Giamalva. It's from Camelia Grill & the crust was homemade by myself. I made this one for my friend from work, Tiffany.
A trick that I did not use here is to place foil over just the crust to keep it from over browning.

Dinner Rolls
I tried a recipe from a holiday Taste of Home magazine for a family dinner. I suggest using salted butter rather than unsalted for rolls. It gives them a bit more flavor, although you may have to let them rise for longer since salt hinders yeast activity.

Croissants
My second go round with these fluffy, buttery and flaky babies. Creating the layers requires about 5 rounds of folding and rolling out a block of butter covered in dough. I figured out that each croissant has about a 1/2 stick of butter in it....but you only live once and they taste AMAZING. You can see a step by step from my New Baking Horizons post.
Be careful, these need to be baked in baking sheet with raised edges. I learned this the hard way, used a flat baking sheet, & ended up with a smoking oven and blaring fire alarm. Croissants also bake quickly due to their high fat content so they need to be monitored during baking or else the masterpiece you just worked on for 5+ hours will burn...which kinda happened to me last time.
Never stretch the dough with you hands always use a rolling pin since the warmth of your hands will melt the butter. I also watched a tutorial on youtube on how to roll these up.
I made 2 batches so I had a ton but I figured if I was going to do that much work it better be worth it.

Peanut Butter Balls
So rich and delicious. My mom, sisters and I always use to pile in the kitchen before Christmas and make these together, rolling the balls and dipping them in the chocolate. I found out this go round that doing it solo is rather tedious and less enjoyable. When I finished the chocolate dipping and resigned to my bed at 2 am, I realized baking with company is really the best part of baking.

So I didn't go through all the recipes for these goodies but I will in the future as I have noticed that some people enjoy using the blog as a "cookbook" of sorts. Lots more to come, at least until school starts :). Lick those plates clean people!

Thanksgiving Sweets

Family, friends, brace yourselves.....I have now dedicated an entire website solely to my baking: www.katiestreehousetreats.com

I'm pretty sure my job at Pennington is coming to a close due to budget cuts and the like so I will try to make some money doing what I love, the way I like to do it....at least until med school.

With the new so-called "baking business" which has made a total profit of about $70 for about 20+ hours of work and the school work I've been half-assing, I haven't had much time to post but here are a few of my recent creations (some purchased, some for family & friends).

Pumpkin Cream Puffs!

So light and delicious, I kind of improvised for this recipe, I'm not even sure I could replicate it exactly if I wanted to. I just made a basic cream puff and piped in a whipped cream/pumpkin puree/pumpkin spice/left over cream cheese icing concoction. A nice light dessert to follow a heavy thanksgiving meal.

White Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake

Just awesome. I topped mine with a almond whipped cream and a caramel drizzle to make it extra awesome. I sold one to my nurse friend from work and made another one for our family's thanksgiving, it was a hit.

Turkey Day Carrot Cake
My 3rd order for a carrot cake from my loyal RN friend from Pennington where I work. I decided to spice it up for her by decorating it with a toasted pecan turkey :)

Luscious Fudge Brownies

Made these for the first time, very rich and chewy. I topped them with chocolate ganache. Very elegant looking if I may say so myself. Sold these to my mom for a dinner she went to...I know weak, but money is money.

Amaretto Cheesecake

Light and airy, this cheesecake calls for amaretto liqueur and whipped cream. Definitely a unique spin on the classic. I read up and found out that letting it rest in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 nights helps meld the flavors so make your cheesecakes in advance! I also finally figured out the keys to keeping a cheesecake from cracking, here are my 4 tricks:

1) Don't over bake it, it should look wiggly in the center (about a 3 in circle of jiggle) when you take it out to cool & put it in the refrigerator.

2) Bake it in a non-springform pan so you can place it in a boiling water bath right before placing it in the oven. This means you'll have to line the bottom of the 8x3in cake pan with parchment paper so you can remove the cake via inversion later. Also, when you take it out of the fridge you'll need to place the pan over low heat to get the bottom of the cheesecake to un-stick.

3) Let the cheesecake bake for 45 min at 350 then another 45 min at 250 and finally shut off the oven and let it bake there for about 45 as the oven cools - cracking is often caused by drastic changes in temp.

4) Run a knife around the edges of the pan when you take it out of the oven to cool, the cheesecake will condense when it cools and if it sticks to the sides of the pan it will crack.


Happy Eating People! More to come soon, I've gotten orders for some cool stuff!