A Healthy Kitchen

My love of traditional style baking is at odds with my desire to eat healthily. Really  my desire to have Burrito eat healthily. I limit her sugar and white flour intake, she doesn’t have candy, and she never eats fast food. The only chips I let her eat are Sun chips.  Her juice has no sugar added and no artificial coloring.  And after a disturbing article I read about children entering puberty younger and younger, I’m considering switching her to almond milk. So all the butter, flour, and sugar that go with baking are the antithesis of what I’d like to be feeding her. 

I do, however, know that there is a big difference between something I bake at home and something I buy from a store that’s either “ready-to-bake” or prepackaged. Mine has no preservatives, or only the preservatives found in the milk and butter I used to bake which she has almost everyday anyway. And the only chemical used in my kitchen is baking powder.

I read years ago that the FDA limited the amount of red food dye that could be in food because it was a known carcinogen. Because of that I’ve always tried to avoid it. Now there are studies that show ALL food dye to have harmful effects on the body. But then how are we supposed to tint icing? Burrito turned two in April and I wanted to frost her cupcakes with pink icing. So I thought back, how did they tint things before food dye existed? Berries was the answer I came up with. Then I remembered my Aunt K’s strawberry glacé pie recipe. The glacé part is essentially an extra thick strawberry glaze.  It would make the perfect shade of pink icing, plus I had tons of strawberries from our weekly produce box delivery.  The glaze is made from boiling down mashed strawberries in some water, straining, adding sugar and thickening over heat with a little bit of corn starch. It’s so delicious and tastes just like candy. To make the icing I used my regular buttercream recipe but cut the sugar by half. It turned out perfectly.  I figure I can do a similar thing with other kinds of berries to make different colors (and flavors). Like trying blackberries or blueberries to get a shade of purple or blue. I have a feeling they might all just turn out to make various shades of pink... 

I think the next step in my baking to start using a whole wheat flour, or some other type of grain flour.  I know lots of people use applesauce instead of butter or oil (which can be just as unhealthy as butter if your not careful about the oil you use), but I’ve never done it. I’ve been reading about sugar alternatives, and while stevia seems like it might be the best one, I’m still on the fence. There are some nectars that seem good, but how do you adjust old recipes to go from having a solid sweetener to a liquid one? I’m sure all these questions would easily be answered if I took the time to google it , or take the time to comb through “alternative” cookbooks. But hey, I think by this point we all know that I’m pretty lazy. I mean, I’m writing this blog instead of packing for my next trip.

Instant Nostalgia

 

      Today I got something amazing from a yard sale down my street. It's a kitchen stool/step-ladder just like the one my grandmother had in her kitchen.  When I spotted it as we drove by, I gasped and made the Breadman pull a u-turn.  I NEEDED that step stool.  As I walked up the sidewalk, I could see there was a sign taped to it.  I crossed my fingers it didn't say SOLD.  It didn't.  However, I soon realized we didn't have enough cash on us.  Luckily the grocery store is just down the street and they have an ATM.
It's actually a really good thing I saw that chair because we forgot we were supposed to get the Burrito more milk on our way home. So it was perfect, we got milk and enough cash back to get the chair (doing it that way we also avoided any ATM fees).
The guy having the yard sale was a California surfer-type in his 60s. He said he was happy the stool was going to a nice young couple.  I was happy too.  He told me it is from the 1950s, not just a reproduction like the ones you can get at Target.  I would have been happy with a reproduction, but the fact that it's actually vintage makes it so much better.  And even better, it matches my kitchen perfectly!

p.s. I wrote this blog sitting on my new perch as Burrito took a bath in the kitchen sink.

200 Cupcakes

For my cousin Meg's 30 birthday I packed up my recipes, the Burrito and headed east to Baltimore. Cross-country weekend trips with a two year old are no piece of cake (pun intended), so I enlisted my brother to come with me. Leaving sunny 70˚ Los Angeles for a freezing Baltimore meant that I had to have my mum mail us our winter coats we left in storage in Cleveland after Christmas.

Once we arrived in Baltimore I discovered the party's venue location changed from Meg's husband's new bottega to our aunt's house because the number of guest doubled. That also meant the number of cupcakes we needed to make increased.

(For Meg and Adrien's wedding we had a family pie baking marathon instead of them having a wedding cake. Check out pictures here: http://hollywoodpiemaker.tumblr.com )

I decided on a color scheme (yes, for the cupcakes) of brown and pink. I made devil's food cupcakes with bright pink buttercream icing. I wanted to make pink cupcakes, but not use food coloring to dye them, so I went to the internet and discovered a recipe for pink lady cake that uses strawberry to make a pretty pink color.

I spent the whole day before the party making cupcakes. It turns out that I made nearly 200.  To be fair they were mini-cupcakes, and I did have help spooning them into the pans from my aunt.
It wasn't that bad really, making cupcakes is pretty easy. The really challenging part was icing them the next day.

Icing cupcakes can be tricky. It was February and cold outside, so the heat was on inside the house. This made for some runny icing. I used a star shaped icing tip to make the cupcakes look like roses. Unfortunately, that also uses a lot more icing than if I had just spread the icing with a knife. Also, the heat in the house and the heat from my hand on the icing bag made the buttercream essentially melt. It was very messy and not working out. Add on top of that an angry Burrito upset that I was paying more attention to cupcakes than her and you have a migraine. I plowed right on through, and decided after the first failed buttercream attempt to just move on to the chocolate icing and ice the remaining chocolate cupcakes later.

The chocolate icing was much easier to work with. The recipe I use makes the icing resemble fudge. So the icing is nice and rich, and isn't easy to melt. As you can see, the chocolate icing really did make the cupcakes look like little roses, or it did to me, but it could have been the massive sugar high/migraine I had. And luckily, there was so much chocolate icing left over after I iced all the strawberry cupcakes, I went back and iced all but five of the remaining chocolate cupcakes.  I even finished icing all the cupcakes early. Unfortunately, while no one was looking, Burrito managed to sneak off and "sample" some cupcakes. She got her hands on six before anyone noticed her. But knowing the messes I used to get into, I'm lucky it was so few. Everyone was happy to eat her all the evidence of her mess (really she just took one bite of each and licked the icing off). I think it was a little torturous for them to even wait that long. The house had been smelling awfully good those two days. I'm proud to say the hard work was worth it. The cupcakes were delicious, looked beautiful, and most importantly made Meg happy. And in the end, making sure Meg had a good party and an even better birthday was the whole reason I got on a plane in the first place.

The Finished Product

(courtesy of Sarah P.)

Child-Free Flights

I was reading the times this morning and came across this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/travel/14babies-journeys.html
As someone who flies frequently, and now frequently with a child, I was a little upset by people's reaction to children on planes. The worst was one Ian Burfurd's reaction to screaming child. Apparently he thought the parents weren't trying hard enough to quiet their child. His solution, "...give them a pacifier, do something to make them stop." Really?! Give them a pacifier? well guess what Ian Burfurd, my daughter doesn't use a pacifier, and would yell even louder if I tried to shove one in her mouth. So stop trying to parent someone else's kid.
I understand how trying it can be to be on a plane with an upset child, I wasn't always a mother, but I have always tried to be sympathetic. Just remember that as difficult as it is for you to listen to a baby scream it's about one hundred times worse for the parent. You never know how your child is going to act on a flight. My daughter has made many cross country flights, and has behaved differently on each and every one. She is usually very well behaved, but there have been flights where she has done nothing but cried. And try as I might, there was nothing I can do about it. We do tend to fly first class, and, as you can imagine, some other passengers don't always appreciate it. However, on our last flight, the man behind me didn't even know she was there until he stood up and looked over my seat as we were LEAVING the plane. So all parents can do is try to prepare for every possible situation, but sometimes parents are just as helpless as their children.

All my friends are insects

At any given time of any given day there is a great chance that a song from the show Yo Gabba Gabba is running through my head. While my brain used to be a veritable radio for rock from any and all decades, my station is now tuned exclusively to songs for a toddler.

I must say, if there was ever a kid's show whose songs were to play on an endless loop in your head Yo Gabba Gabba would be the one for a music lover.

I mean, come on, a show created by a DJ and The Aquabats? What more could a young hip parent ask for? If you ever wanted to see Rivers Cuomo sing and dance in a giant flee costume, Yo Gabba Gabba is the show for you. Weezer's YGG song "All my friends are insects" reminded me how much I loved them and even made me consider buying their new album HURLEY.

But perhaps my all time favorite song from the show is from Brobee's birthday episode when The Ting Tings sing "Happy Birthday," coincidentally is the same song that plays (in this case performed by Altered Images) in "Sixteen Candles," one of my absolute favorite movies.

What?!?

So I just started this blog and it took me three times to get that thing to prove I'm not a computer right. I am not a computer! My inability to figure that out should prove that. Who gets those things on the first try anyway?