The Path To My Heart is Paved With Frosting.

Due to an unfortunate cookie accident, we're gonna have to postpone that blog until a later date. For now, fun with frosting!

Icing. Glaze. Buttercream. Ganache. Frosting. If it can be slathered all over a cake, I love it. Yeah, I said it. I share an emotional connection with all things cake, and the above are certainly no exception! Anything I bake becomes "my baby" and I send it out into the world to be enjoyed with a certain sense of pride. I know my snacks are delicious. I know it sounds arrogant, but if I'm good at nothing else (and I may very well not be), I can rest assured that I rock the isht out of the baked goods.

So, this weekend - after fudging a batch of Chipless Wonders (I said I was good, not perfect! ha ha) - I set to work on helping out a fellow start-up chef, Kim, with a decent sized cake order. My task was to make a batch of Divinity Icing and...sweet jeebus...a batch of White Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream. I had never made either, but I was sure this would be an absolute blast... I love a good adventure, eventually when it involves a stand mixer and 10x sugar.

Typically, when I'm making something I've never really messed with before, I look up recipes for like an hour before I decide on what I think would work and taste best. Obviously, this was no exception. So after scouring through many websites, including cook.com, chef2chef.com and many others, I figured out that all recipes agreed with the same thing: there was one 11 oz bag of chocolate & one 8 oz. stick of butter to every 16oz. of cream cheese. I made this frosting in two batches, that way if I screw it up, I'm only out half of my ingredients.

In the end, both batches turned out well. The first batch needed to be whipped a little extra after all the butter was in because there were little tiny bits of solid chocolate throughout. The extra time in the stand mixer took care of it. Here's a little pictorial of the step by step:


Melt your white chocolate...and try not to eat it!


Into an already beating stand mixer full of your cream cheese, pour the cooled chocolate in a THIN STREAM! (cannot stress this enough!)


Once chocolate and cream cheese are nice and smooth, add your butter one pat at a time! Did I do a good job of illustrating that here? (smile)


The finished product...SO DELICIOUS!! It keeps in the freezer for 2 months, and up to two weeks in the fridge.

This wasn't on my menu as an option for event cakes before, but it absolutely is now!


Now for that Divinity Icing...

I was the most intimidated by this one. I had never made it before, and I knew it was a lot more complicated than throwing a few items in a stand mixer. Looking up recipes only confirmed my fears: every recipe demanded that I use precise temperatures for the sugar syrup, and that I have a candy thermometer to keep track of my temperatures. Sorry internet...I don't have one.

So my first attempt, as you can imagine, went well. I tried to monitor the sugar syrup myself (I did a lot of work with sugar syrup in school, I was a pretty good judge of spotting the stages). I stood over it, my cup of ice water next to me and a spoon in my hand. Somehow, I ended up at hard ball stage and way too close to caramel to do anything else. So I made some caramel candy, handed it to my roommate and started over.

My second attempt wasn't much better than the first. I got the syrup to soft ball stage without incident; unfortunately as I was rejoicing and slowly streaming the syrup into the whipping egg whites, it fell FLAT. Piss, was the last thought in my head before I abandoned the icing for the night and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up refreshed, and ready to tackle the icing again. It was then that I remembered, I'd watched Paula Deen make this icing before! I'm convinced she's a long lost grandmother of mine; how can you not love her? So onto the Food Network site I went and, sure enough, she had a much easier method: ONE BOWL over a double boiler! Joy!

The third time was the charm: after starting with sugar and cream of tartar over a double boiler, I stirred in my egg whites and a bit of water. Then I dropped my hand mixer into that bowl and did it MJ style... I beat it! (smile) Needless to say, it worked beautifully. Thanks to Paula Deen for the great assist in getting me through my first experience with Divinity Icing! In my recipe box it goes...

So, despite the challenges, my opinion remains the same: the path to my heart is paved with frosting. And I was able to reaffirm the lesson that there is more than one way to skin a cat - in this case, more than one way to frost a cake. Also, I realized that, in my search for cream of tartar, I have a ridiculous amount of 10x sugar in my cabinet.

Keep Snackin',
Sami

Cookies!

Confectionery delight or torturous punishment? It depends what side of the table you're on...

I like to think that every child's first snacking experience involved a warm cookie and a glass of milk, or at the very least, an Oreo and a sippy cup filled with juice. This may not be accurate, but I'm just about certain that my introduction to the world of snacking consisted of just that. In my head, the whole thing plays out like a scene from an Oreo cookie commercial. Mom sits me down with a cookie and a glass of milk, planting herself next to me as she takes on the role of the cookie supervisor. And since I know my mother to be a passionate dunker, I imagine that the biggest part of this moment was comprised of her showing me how to dunk without losing half of the cookie in my cup. Now, leaving the whole 'dunk vs. no dunk' debate aside, I'd like to talk a little about your friend and mine... the cookie.

I ardently believe that there is nothing bad about a cookie. You simply can't talk shit about something so great! They're portable, versatile, and let's face it: they're really just slap-yo-mama delicious! Baked in a wide variety of sizes, any cookie lover can have a different kind of cookie for every day of the month - and may still have extra cookies to try! In fact, I went through hell deciding which cookies I would put on my menu. The whole experience was part of what led me to wanting to make my clients' snacking fantasies come true. I do have a set menu, but if you want something special, let's talk! All of my clients so far seem to love this about my company, and it's a lot of fun for me.

I noticed recently that cookies are making a comeback. A number of fast food chains sell cookies, and I'm seeing more and more that people are using cookies as party favors in lieu of the traditional plastic and lace bundles. Decorated cookie favors, packaged in a baggy with a bit of curly ribbon, are absolutely adorable and inexpensive. What's even better about them is that they're space savers: no more need for knick knack shelves because you've eaten your favor within twenty four hours with a cup of coffee!

I did my first cookie favor order back in February, and I decided that this would be something I’d love to throw onto my specialty menu. A friend and I had a hell of a time getting it together, between the quick-drying royal icing and the second cookie batch spreading like crazy! But when it came right down to it, the cookies looked great, and were absolutely gorgeous once they were all packaged and ready to go. Regretfully, I didn’t get pictures of the cookies after they were wrapped. But here are a couple of shots of the cookies, all iced and ready to get fancy:





The cookie favor order got me wondering what else I could do along those lines. Will sugar cookies and royal icing be considered the acceptable packaged favor? Or would potential customers be interested in a Chipless Wonder (simply a chocolate chip cookie without the chips, also on my menu!) coated in glacage (thick chocolate glaze, made like ganache but with butter added) with a white chocolate design? Either way, all of these options are available! Why? Because I’m a lunatic that wants to please every client I meet! (smile) Part of the reason I got into the culinary world is because I love…LOVE…watching the “First Bite Face”. The reaction a person makes when they taste my food for the first time…or the second time…or anytime. I’m sort of made for the whole customer service excellence thing, and since I love to cook – why not open a bakery? Yup, that’s totally what you’re thinking too. (smile again)


I’m gonna give the Chipless Wonder Favor a try tonight I think – any results I’ll post on my next blog! Please keep reading, because my goal is to maintain this blog while I get set to open a cake studio SOMEWHERE in the five boroughs. And hey, maybe I’ll mail a batch of cookies to my first ten followers or send some sort of coupon to my first 100! Ha, I love getting ahead of myself. Peace!


Keep Snackin’,
Samantha

Cherry Blog!

Sure, it's a gross title to signify the beginning of the blogging
portion of my career but hey...

Snack Girlz Bakery. Just one third of my package of dreams. It's been a long time coming. I've always wanted to do this, but really never knew where to start. I recently spent two years at the Art Institute of New York City (formerly the New York Restaurant School) earning my AOS in Culinary Arts & Restaurant Management. The whole experience gave me direction and helped me define my goals. Now I know what I want, where to start, and how to get there.

I've been building a pretty steady client base with event cakes, cheesecakes, and other treats. Everyone has been great; I'm finding a whole new level of customer satisfaction! Then again, many would be pleasant knowing they're about to have a sinfully delicious treat for their very own! (smile) So far, I've got the official website up and running; I can also be found on Facebook, if only to chat with me and look at pictures of the things one can order. I'll go ahead and add here and now that the Facebook page is constantly being updated, mainly because I'm constantly baking and taking pictures!

My event cakes have opened up an entirely new world to me: Vegan Baked Goods! I'm as much of a carnivore as anyone else, and I'll be the first to admit that I was the tiniest bit hesitant when I took on my first Vegan cake order. But after trying a couple of recipes, I thought to myself...WOW! You'd never think a cake without eggs or dairy would work. I know I didn't. But they're pretty delightful! So thank you to Jessica, Jessyca, and Mari for making a believe out of me - yes, Virginia, vegan cakes DO taste great! Although, nothing beats a buttery yellow cake with a traditional Italian, Swiss, or French buttercream.

Now that I've written an entire chapter, I'll sign off. And so went Samantha's first Snack Girlz blog...not too shabby! I'm going to be doing more baking in the very near future, so I'll be sure to post my adventures!

Keep Snackin',
Sami