The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book: Strawberries and Cream Cake

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Recipes:3

It's been awhile since I made a cake, so I decided to try out the Strawberries and Cream Cake recipe from The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. The cake only uses five ingredients - sugar, flour, melted butter, vanilla and eggs (separated). How easy!

The first step of any cake is to grease and line your cake pan. A quick trick to make a circle of parchment perfect for your pan is to fold a piece of parchment paper in half twice. Put the fold in the centre of your pan and trim the excess away from the edge. Tada! A perfect parchment circle!

Now, back to the ingredients. First, mix the egg yolks, vanilla and butter in a small bowl and set it aside for later.

 Next, whip the egg whites until foamy.

 Then add sugar while still whipping.

 The egg whites are done when they're stiff.

Once the egg whites are whipped, add the butter mixture and half the flour. Fold it together.

 Then fold in the remaining flour.

The recipe suggests baking all the batter in one pan then cutting it into three layers. Instead, I baked it in three pans (I really don't trust myself to cut three equal and level layers!)

The next part of the cake is the whipped cream. The recipe in the book calls for whipping cream, confectioners sugar and vanilla. I also added a bit of meringue powder to help stabilize it.

The last task before assembling the cake is to slice some strawberries.

To assemble, place one layer of cake on a cake plate and cover with some whipped cream. Top that with strawberries.

Repeat with the next layer of cake. Top with the final cake layer then cover with the remaining whipped cream.

Decorate with six to eight whole strawberries (the recipe calls for eight, but the strawberries I had were huge).

This recipe was very easy to put together and hardly took any time at all. The resulting cake was simple but elegant, tender, moist, satisfying to the sweet tooth without being too sugary, and deliciously summery. What an impressive dessert to bring out at the end of a meal or take along to a friend's house when you're asked to bring a little treat.

I will definitely make this cake again!

The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book: Pistachio-Spice Cookies

Job Applications: 38

Interviews: 0

Recipes: 2

I didn't realize until today how much of my free time I filled with the Olympic for the last two weeks. Now that they're over, what's an unemployed girl to do? Bake of course! Today's recipe was for Pistachio-Spice Cookies from the Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. They were pretty easy to make, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the results. These cookies are basically butter, sugar, eggs, flour, flavour and pistachios. Easy. 

First, butter and brown sugar are creamed together.

Then, molasses, flavouring and egg yolks are added. Finally, the dry ingredients are mixed 
                                                                                  in

                                                     and of course chopped pistachios.

The dough is then formed into two rectangular logs then left to chill out in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

Once they've chilled, they're sliced then baked.

I thought the cookies were a bit on the bland side while still managing to be a little artificial tasting. They also didn't hold their shape well while baking, despite the fact that I allowed them to chill for more than the minimum two hours suggested.

This one is probably not a recipe I'd make again.

UPDATE: I did try these again. This time I left the dough in the refrigerator for almost 48 hours before baking. I also left out the almond extract. The flavours blended together nicely and it was a really tasty cookie. The spices made it feel like comfort food while the texture allowed it to still be a light treat. Perfect as an afternoon snack with a cup of tea or coffee.

The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book: Beer Batter Bread

Job Applications: 31

Interviews: 0

Recipes: 1

Today is International Beer Day! In honour of such a special occasion, I decided that the first recipe from The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book I'm going to try is Beer Batter Bread! It was a really easy recipe to make. For copyright reasons, the recipe will not be published here, but here's the basic idea:

Mix dry ingredients, including flour, salt, sugar and baking powder.

Pour in some beer.

Stir it all together, drop it in a loaf pan and pour some melted butter over the top (I like salted butter for this, as it adds just a little extra mmm to the bread), then bake it. 

I made two loaves to take to a family dinner and decided to add some finely chopped garlic and fresh parsley to one (with the sugar omitted). The garlic was baked right in and had a subtle flavour, while the parsley was sprinkled on top just after the bread came out of the over, adding a little pop of freshness. The bread itself was soft and had a nice crumb. The butter pored over the top really added depth to the flavour of the loaf. This recipe is a winner.

The best part of the whole thing: delicious bread with no need to wait for yeast to rise!

The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book Adventure: Before the Beginning

I've decided to bake my way through the Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. The entire Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. I'm going to make every recipe. Even the ones that make me cringe (like anything with cream cheese in it). I can't promise I'll do this quickly (after all, how much dessert/bread/thigh-expanding-goodness can I expect people to eat?), but I do promise every recipe will be tried (usually exactly as written, but there will be substitutions when meat is involved - I'm a pretty strict vegetarian), tasted (though in the case of the offensive cream cheese concoctions, not by me), and reviewed. This might sound slightly crazy to you (and okay, maybe even to me a little), but I recently finished school (a Master's degree) and I've been looking for a job with less than zero success. Baking every recipe in the WSBB seems like a good way to fill my time and distract myself from the facts that 1) my degree appears to be useless, 2) I am contributing absolutely nothing to society, and 3) it's going to take me a lot longer to save the world than I hoped.  

So let the Williams-Sonoma Adventure begin!

P.S. Not a fan of WSBB? Worried that post after post about recipes from a single book might get boring? Have no fear! I plan on spreading out my WSBB baking and including lots of posts about lots of other things to keep it fresh.