Law & Order: SBU (Special Bakers Unit) - Part 2

In the last episode, the lemon pound cake laid the ground work for a baking sequel. This is that sequel. The names of the dishes haven't been changed to protect the innocent. You have the right to remain hungry. Anything you eat may be used to delight your taste buds or add inches to your waistline. Or some such silliness.

When you're on a jury for such a long time, you can grow a little fond of the people with whom you serve. You trudge through the depths of the criminal justice system, deciding the fate of people's lives, having heated deliberations, sharing bits and pieces of your own lives outside of the jury room and when you realize it's almost over you're struck with the sense of an impending loss. As I said earlier, I've served on three other juries here in New York but this was the first time I felt that. Yes, I was going to be happy to get back to my normal routine but I still felt a kind of connection with these people and I wanted to leave them with something that would give them a smile or a fond memory of our time together.

Thus I hatched the grand baking plot. Something savory and something sweet. Since I'd been mulling over a new version of the ginger lemon creams, that was an easy decision for the sweet part of the plot. The savory part initially was to have been scones but I had to shelve that idea for want of buttermilk and clotted cream. I know I could have made both of those items but I really didn't have the time. Corn muffins would have to do. Granted, I'd never made corn muffins before but I had a jury to feed, dang it! I wasn't about to let something like a lack of experience with a dish get in my way.

Usually that kind of attitude sets the stage for some little baking disaster; not so this time. I had the right recipe (thank you again, Good Housekeeping Cookbook), two muffin tins and plenty of cornmeal for the endeavor. 

Assemble the ingredients!

By the by, one of these days I'll have a proper prep counter. This one I got at Ikea many years ago and it has a bit too much lateral shimmy when I roll pastry or use the mixer on it.

Förhöja - how in the heck do you pronounce that?

Still, has its advantages, not the least of which is that I can move it pretty easily if I need it in another room. Also, it's been a boon since we have such a small kitchen, with very limited counter space. It's like having a little kitchen extension.

You know, there's something about the smell of mixing anything involving cornmeal that takes me back to my mother's kitchen. I loved her cornbread and her dressing, which was cornbread based. I used to hang around the kitchen just to smell the cornbread baking after she popped it into the oven. This little project connected me to my mother in a way that I hadn't anticipated and for that I'm truly grateful.

Take all this....

...mix and bake...

...and pop them out!

All of this I did in the morning of my last day of jury duty. It's a good thing I naturally get up early, yes?

As for the ginger lemon creams, I started those days and days before. You'd think by now I would have settled on the definitive version of these cookies but something happened that made me want to refine it even more: I bought (wait for it)...a zester!

(dramatic sting)

Michele and I went for a wander around Brooklyn for flea markets, brunch and window shopping and I ended up in Whisk. It's a pretty cool, if small store, chock-full of gadgets that could get a guy like me to spend a lot of money (if, that is, I had a lot of money, which I don't). I resisted every temptation the place threw at me but I kept coming back to the Microplane zester. Something about hating zesting lemons and oranges and never having a proper tool bubbled to the forefront of my baking brain. It bubbled so hard that I threw caution to the wind and bought this one:

It was the purple handle that did it for me!

I know what Isaid about keeping this cookie as simple as possible but I just couldn't resistthe desire to taste what lemon zest would add to the filling. So there I was,scraping the outer rind of a couple of lemons into the other ingredients. Ihave to admit using a proper zester made all the difference in my experience. Iwas finished in no time -- and not once did I scrape any knuckles orfingertips! Oh the years I've wasted and the skin I've lost for want of an actual zester!

Once I had allthe zest I thought I'd need, I made another recipe-altering decision: use the lemonsto make a little reduction to add to the filling. Why the heck not? In for apenny, in for an even more complicated process, I always say. At this point I was kind of off the beatentrack and had to let my instincts, and what small amount of dessert making skill I've garnered over the years, guide me in.

A quick word about "skill": I think it's important to point out that there are times in my baking life in which I got lucky when I was trying to be skillful. Trust me when I say it's better to be skillful.

A quick word ends.

Luck and skill combined to give me a filling that seemed to have more lemony body than before and that made me very happy indeed!

Adding those two steps increased the difficulty of the process, so I had to devise a way to reduce the difficulty just as much. Fortunately for me, my brain had already devised just such a way. Using the "Just A Guy Who Bakes" stamp causes problems for me because it tends to squish the cookie rounds a bit so that some of them are larger than others and some of them lose their round shape. Not only that but a high level of dexterity and delicate spatula work is involved in transferring the rounds to the cookie sheet for baking. This can also deform them somewhat. Remember, the idea for these cookies is to approximate something I'd buy in the store (but much better all the way around), so I'm a big stickler for uniformity. How to surmount this problem?

Easy-peasy. Cut parchment paper to fit the cookie sheets. 

These are baking tools?

Roll the cookie dough on the parchment. Cut the cookie rounds. Then comes the cool bit: Work with negative space! Stamp the desired number of rounds with "Just A Guy Who Bakes" and simply remove the dough around each round until all you have left are the rounds, already on the parchment! 

Negative space...the final frontier!

See? It works!

Then take pick up the parchment, put it on the cookie sheet, and pop the whole kit and kaboodle into the oven. Once the cookies finish baking, put them on the cooling rack and reuse the parchment for the next batch. I couldn't believe how much quicker things went after I started using this process.

I guess I was on a roll because another idea hit me. Actually, it's something that should have occurred to me for my first ever batch of these cookies. I was staring filling, ready to spread onto the cookies and it hit me. Why use a spatula when you can use a pastry bag? Actually I had a pretty good answer to that question: "Because I forgot I had a pastry bag! I pulled it out, loaded it up and squeezed out dollop after dollop of icing. It's a crappy pastry bag, plastic and slippery, but it worked like a charm.

Use the bag, Luke!

The pastry bag made for much less mess and also made it easier to gauge how much filling I was putting on each cookie. I love learning things as I go! I will be procuring a couple of better pastry bags in the future. I already know of at least two other uses for them, so they're now a necessity for me to have.

Finito!

I packed everything up and took it downtown to the courthouse. Getting it through security proved no problem. I envisioned having to bribe the court officers with a muffin or a cookie, but fortunately the X-ray machine doesn't register baked goods. Once upstairs I placed it all in the little break room and let everyone know that there were goodies to be had. And had they were! At the end of the day, my baker's heart was light and happy because there wasn't a muffin or a cookie left!

Case closed. (Oh, come on! You knew I'd have to do that!)

Currently listen to: The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition (Alto Remix)

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Law & Order: SBU (Special Bakers Unit)

(Preface: I started this post a couple of months ago but am only just now getting around to posting it. I had to recreate the dishes I prepared because at the time I didn't have the time to photograph them. Oh. And there was a giant super storm that swooped in on us. Oh. And then there was the snowstorm.)

In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These aren't their stories. This is my story of baking and jurisprudence.

You know what comes next (click here)!

The mailbox is an amazing thing. You open it up, reach in and pull out all manner of missives from people who want your money. Every so often, though, you pull out something that causes your heart to seize, your stomach to drop and your blood run cold: "Official Notice: Grand Jury Summons". Yeah, that's the one. Over the twenty-odd years I've lived in New York, I've had jury duty three times and I've been picked to serve on a criminal jury each time. No one else I've talked to has that kind of, for want of a better word, luck. For some reason prosecuting and defense attorneys seem to love me. Come to think of it, I've never gotten out of serving, even when I lived in Dallas. This was, however, the first grand jury summons I'd ever gotten. Sure enough, I got picked and had to serve for ten, count them, ten days. Not a complaint, mind you; I happen to think jury duty is one of the most important responsibilities we have as members of this society, so I was happy to serve.

I can't tell you about the cases we saw because grand juries are sworn to secrecy. I also can't tell you about our deliberation process because grand juries are sworn to secrecy. Furthermore, I can't talk about the witnesses, undercover cops, victims or defendants from whom we heard testimony because grand juries are sworn to secrecy. There's a lot of secrecy swearing involved with grand juries, apparently. However, we weren't sworn to secrecy about what prosecutors were wearing: really unattractive ties, ill-fitting suits, badly-chosen hairstyles and ill-advised shoes. 

The other thing about which I am not sworn to secrecy is how cool I thought the other jurists were, even the ones I didn't get to talk with much. We had a broad range of ages, varied backgrounds, and careers that ran the gamut. And there was not one of us who took the duty lightly. I have to take my hat off to my associates. And that's where the baking comes into the story (Took me long enough, didn't it?)

Just like in the show! 

After having convened for almost a full week, I figured that I could help ease our deliberative burden by bringing in something delicious, but not too decadent. Pound cake was the obvious choice. I say that because it's the dessert I've been working on lately.

A Brief Personal History of Pound Cake: My pound cake experience begins and pretty much ends with my grandmother's version. The summer before I entered the first grade – 19 and 69, I believe – I took a cross country car trip to from San Antonio to L.A. with one of my aunts and her family. It was quite a journey which included a stop in Arizona, a gift of a rubber bladed tomahawk/flute and a deep appreciation of an overnight stay in a  motel (my first, if memory serves). The highpoint, however, was helping to devour the pound cake my Nana baked for us. This is a memory I'm preserving for both of us, since she says she doesn't remember it now. At any rate, the cake was moist, buttery-delicious and has been the gold standard for pound cake for most of my life.

A Brief Personal History of Pound Cake ends.

As I said, I'd been working on pound cake recipes before my jury duty stint, mainly because that L.A. trip memory bobbed to the surface of my mind when I was fishing around for a new baking project. The first recipe I tried came from my copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible.

I got this years and years ago but have barely touched it because I've been more of a pie/scone/tart baker than a cake baker over the years. I've only recently started going through it again and it's proving to be very interesting in its lessons on technique and attention to process detail. I figured if there was any place I'd find an excellent pound cake recipe, it would be between the covers of this book. I was only partly right.

When I told my father that I was baking pound cake, he laughed and suggested I not use the traditional recipe of "a pound of everything", which I'm sure is close to what Nana did for her cake. Fortunately the recipe in The Cake Bible substantially reduces the chances of a coronary incident for anyone partaking.

I have to admit that I wasn't pleased. Despite the description of the cake being velvety smooth and moist, mine turned out drier than I wanted. It was tasty but not what I was looking for. I'm going to have to give the recipe another shot later, because I'm sure something in my technique screwed it up. Still, I learned a bit from the book. For example, according to Ms. Beranbaum, sugar in a recipe also serves to cut up flour in the mixing to help release gluten. Baking is science!

Learning is fine but I still needed a cake I felt good about sharing with folks. I wanted something as rich and moist as my Nana's cake but without the heavy ingredients. Unfortunately the Good Housekeeping Cookbook wasn't any help. It's perfect for many things but sometimes it just comes up short. Once again, it was up to the Internet to lend a helping hand. Searching turned up several interesting recipes but only the one from King Arthur Flour caught my eye.

Another quick aside: Something I discovered years ago when I started doing my seven course, sit-down "Big Dinners" (again, remind me to tell you about some of them), is that I have the ability to read most recipes and tell if they are in the ballpark of what I want from a dish. It's a kind of recipe sixth sense ("my dessert sense is tingling...") that seems to keep me on the right track. It kicked in when I found the King Arthur recipe, and saw the addition of cream cheese; I just knew it was the right one. Also, any recipe that calls for lemon oil can't be bad! I mean, in case you haven't noticed yet, I do enjoy lemon-flavored foods.

Another quick aside ends.

The recipe was easy to make and the end product, especially with the addition of the lemon glazing, was delicious! Just the right amount of moist for the desired texture but not heavy at all. It wasn't as fluffy and tall as a Sara Lee pound cake (which used to be very good and even Ms. Beranbaum talks about it in her book) but it certainly had a superior taste. The lemon glaze hits your tongue with an initial "zing" and then the buttery sweetness of the cake just melts in your mouth. Days later, it's still moist and tasty. This one is certainly a keeper for sure.

Interestingly enough I baked two different versions of this recipe: a round, bunt-style, for lunch with a friend of ours visiting from San Francisco, and the standard loaf pan-style for the Grand Jury. I love a recipe that gives me pan options because that helps with presentation and transportation. I very much enjoyed baking both versions and rekindling certain cake skills from memories of watching my mother, such as using wax paper coated in shortening to grease the pans – which suddenly reminds me that she also dusted the pans with flour to further keep her cakes from sticking. The advent of non-stick pans practically eliminates the need for these steps but the traditionalist in me wants to keep them – to honor my mother and grandmothers and all the bakers who preceded them. And I shall.  

At any rate, here's how the cake turned out:

Deliberate this!

I pre-cut the cake, boxed it up and carried it downtown to the ccourt building in which our grand jury was impaneled. My fellow jurors were pleasantly surprised when they saw the cake on the table in the break room (yes, there was a break room; I wasn't sworn to secrecy about that). It warmed my heart every time someone came out of that room with a slice and a smile. That's the best payoff for me as a baker.

This, of course, set the stage for a SBU sequel.

Currently listening to: Stevie Wonder - Free

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Sandy Sidles Up!

Just a quick note before things get too hectic here with the "Big S" (that would be hurricane/tropical/Nor'easter/mutant storm Sandy). It's tremendously windy. We're not in an evacuation zone in our part of NYC. And I've got bread dough rising in the kitchen. I think that, plus Michele's lentil soup will see us through.

I hope everyone stays safe and sound!

See you on the other side!

***

I couldn't help posting a picture of the bread! This is my first attempt at this kind of loaf and I'm very happy with how it turned out! We're pairing it with the lentil soup Michele made; what a delicious meal to share during the biggest, wettest storm of the year/decade/century.

When life gives you Hurricane Sandy, bake bread!

Once again, my Good Housekeeping cookbook comes in handy. This is a simple recipe (I'll probably post it later) and the technique is easy to master. I enjoyed kneading the dough a lot more than I thought I would. Talk about therapeutic! "Hmmm. Hurricane knocking on the door? I'll just smack and mush this dough around for ten minutes! Ah! I feel much better!"

This weekend (extended because we're not at work today or tomorrow) has given me time to do some major baking. Bread. Corn muffins. Cookies. And I'll probably get to the pound cake I've been trying to work on for a while now. The apartment is a little island of deliciousness! 

Currently listening to: Kimbra, Cameo Lover

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"So Sugar Is Sweet, So So Are You" Part 2

It seems as though my baking life is filled with problem-solving – even when what I'm doing isn't actually baking in the strictest sense of the word. That being said, I wouldn't have it any other way because what I'm doing is so much fun!

That said, I had to solve the problem with what was rapidly becoming my latest obsession. I needed to put on the thinking cap; it was a little tight (so many good thoughts in there) but I managed to squeeze into it. This immediately dislodged the the idea of silicone molds from some dark recess of my mind. Perfect! Heat resistant. Flexible. Easy to use. And I could get several different shapes! And off I went mold shopping.

Four kitchen stores, and a deep Google search, later and all I could come up with was this:

It's a shell game.

Color me so confused! I thought for sure there would be tons of different shaped molds for this project. I mean, isn't this the age of technological wonders? Isn't this the era of modern synthetic materials manufacturing? Alas, not for my rather esoteric needs. The molds I found, even when looking on-line, were either too big, too impractical or too boring. I mean, who wants boring sugar shapes to put into their coffee? Still, the shell mold was a good start.

The problem I found with it was that the silicone was all wobbly when I pressed the sugar into it. Now a little wobble in a mold isn't a disaster but this thing flopped around like it was having a seizure! Whenever I loaded up one row and moved to the next, the previous row snapped up and flung the sugar out of it! Onto the table. And onto the floor. I didn't take me long to figure out that I needed a better process if I didn't want to be constantly sweeping up wasted sugar.

What I eventually came up with was spooning sugar into each section until I filled the mold. Next I covered the mold with plastic wrap and pressed evenly across the entire mold. Originally, I used waxed paper but the sugar stuck to it too much. Turns out the plastic wrap wasn't any better but I soldiered on. I removed any sugar that wasn't packed into the sections so I could reuse it in the next batch and popped it into the oven.

Spoon it in, pack it down, scrape it off, bake it up.

Figuring out the right temperature and time to bake the moisture out of it without setting it on fire, or causing the molasses content to darken at all, was of paramount importance because I can't stand the smell of burned sugar. Who does? I reasoned that towards the top-end of the range used to warm up leftovers was safe. 200° for twenty minutes would probably work  best. Anything hotter than that would cook the sugar instead of dry it out.

Sea shell sugar shapes.

Let's hear it for intuition (I've scorched enough desserts and dinners in the oven to have acquired a bit of that)! Because of the silicone, the shells popped right out with no problem at all. And there I had it – relatively simple, definitely cute, easy to use sugar shapes! There was much rejoicing in coffee land!

Until I discovered an evil little fact about brown sugar shapes: unless you keep them in an air-tight container, while your back is turned they will suck up every last bit of moisture in the air and go soft and mush together into a lump that will then harden up into an unusable mass. Why, oh why, must it mess with my mind in such ways?!? I invested in a few of the aforementioned containers and I was well on my way to enjoying being able to drop sweet little sea shells into my coffee. And yet...

And yet I still wanted a variety of shapes to have on hand. Again the thinking cap went on. Again it was a tight fit. Again an idea popped right out. I needed candy molds! That would give me access to lots of different shapes. And what was more, they should be antique metal molds so that they were easier to press sugar into the sections and be extremely heat resistant! Quick! To the Ebay Machine!

I set up and saved a search for "antique metal candy mold" and soon found and purchased this:

Old mold gold!

This is a mold made in the 30s, I believe, and it's actually for chocolates. It's sturdy, heavy and takes the sugar quite nicely. With shipping, it cost under $30 and therefore fit my budget quite nicely. And it's pretty! The same process worked for the metal as did for the silicone, with one alteration. I kept trying to figure out how to press the sugar into the molds without getting sugar stuck to my hands. The wax paper, the plastic wrap, the rubber gloves I purchased (one set specifically made for candy handling) all ended up caked with sugar. I puzzled and puzzled without coming up with a solution to this particularly annoying problem. Upon seeing the smoke drifting out of my ears, Michele asked me why I didn't just use the plastic that the sugar comes packaged in. Use. The. Sugar. Plastic! A Gru-type moment of clarity washed over me! Thus was born the process I now use to great success with every batch of sugar I make.

Hammered into shape.

Since the metal mold isn't flexible, I have to tap it every so gently with a hammer to get the sugar to fall out. Obviously I don't do this a midnight, considering how bell-like the mold rings when I'm convincing it to let go of my cubes. 

And now a word from our sponsor, Humility (a division of Crow Eating, Inc.)

At this juncture in my narration, I feel I must tell you of a humbling incident I had with a couple of these molds. The metal mold pictured above isn't actually the first one I bought. It's a replacement (same style) for the first one I bought. The first one I bought suffered a catastrophe caused by my own faulty reasoning. A couple of years ago, right before my birthday tea, I made sugar using two molds. Now, I usually wash the metal molds after I'm finished with them and pop them back in the oven for few minutes to dry them. They're old and prone to rust, so I don't let them air dry. I did that, turned off the oven but left the molds in. Michele came home later that night, and wanted to preheat the oven for her dinner. She noticed the molds and asked about them. "They're metal, so just go ahead," I replied. 

Ten minutes later I decided to pull the molds out and cool them off before putting them away. I opened the oven door to see them starting to drip and pool all over the oven like a bad Dali painting! Oh. No! Not solid metal: solid frames with solid sections soldered together! I quickly removed the melting molds but the damage was already done. The inside of the oven was coated with puddled and splashed solder. I freaked like I never freaked before! I'd destroyed the oven! I'd destroyed my birthday tea plans! And I'd destroyed my wife's dinner! 

To Michele's credit, she kept calm and in doing so calmed me down, too. Within minutes I was merely hyperventilating instead of having a coronary. We determined the best course of action was to find out how to remove the solder, determine if the oven was indeed destroyed, and figure out if I'd have to cancel my birthday tea because I'd need the oven to do all my baking for it. Interestingly enough, there wasn't anything on the Internet that could help me with the first of those, nor could anyone at any hardware store. And we didn't dare call the super just yet. All I could do was buy supplies that I thought might help: heavy gloves, paint scrapers, sand paper, blowtorch, dynamite and some pixie dust. Okay, those last three weren't really on my list but I was sure the first three would be just as effective and we'd end up buying a new oven. And I'd have to cancel my birthday tea.

The next evening after work I donned the heavy gloves, grabbed the paint scraper, opened the oven door and prepared to do battle with the consequences of my lack of foresight. Some of the solder had splashed onto the inside of the oven door and I decided to start there, applying the scraper to the hardened bead of metal. And it came right up with no effort at all. Not willing to believe what had just happened, I applied the scraper to a large-ish blotch nearby. It, too, came right up! I held it in my hand, a moment of time frozen in solidified, yet soft, metal and two realizations came into my head. First, solder works best on specific metals, and apparently the enameled steel of the oven didn't qualify. Second, the oven was...not quite clean, having experienced more than its fair share of my baking and cooking spillages. I had been meaning to clean it for some time now. The, um...residue of those mishaps had given the oven what amounted to a Teflon coating of sorts. all of the solder, even what had gotten on the racks, just came right up when I applied a little pressure to the scraping! Saved by laziness! 

It didn't take long for me to have the oven cleaned and ready for baking. The birthday tea could go on! We didn't have to buy a new oven! My heart stopped aging faster than the rest of my body! Unfortunately, Michele's ruined dinner would never be reclaimed.  About this I am still very, very sorry.

The moral of the story: Always make sure you know what the hell your sugar molds are made of. Oh, and don't be so diligent about cleaning your oven!

Word from our sponsor ends.

I've procured several great molds on E-bay and I'll post pictures of them from time to time here. Also, Michele bought me some very cool high-temperature plastic molds that I use from time to time and I'll post images of those as well.

If you get the urge to make your own cubes, let me know what you use and what your process is! I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have or learn any nuances you come up with!

Currently listening to: "Glide" by Pleasure

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"So Sugar Is Sweet, So So Are You" – Part 1

Inserting Preface: 

Let's set the record straight: I am a Marxist through-and-through. A Groucho Marxist, that is. The title of this post comes from a Marx Brothers movie, Horse Feathers. I'm sure there are a couple of readers who can tell me the scene I'm quoting. (It's here, 1:10 into the clip, for the many who won't know what the heck I'm talking about). Not that the Marx Brothers have anything to do with this post, other than the use of the word "sugar" mind you. I really just wanted an excuse to link to that clip! (By the way, remind me to tell you about the time I was cast as Chico Marx in a friend's video festival entry in Dallas.)

Preface hereby ends.

Now let's talk about sugar. I've been a fan of sugar longer than I have been a fan of the Marx Brothers (but not by much). Maybe for about fifty years...but who's counting? More specifically, though, sugar to put into my coffee has become something of a growing obsession (there's that word again) for some time now. As I sipped my way through my early coffee life I was aware of a few ways to sweeten my daily cuppa: white sugar, brown sugar and sugar in the raw. Like everyone else I knew, I would "liberate", for future use, many packets of Sugar In The Raw from various and sundry restaurants I patronized. This was long before they started selling it in grocery stores.

My true sugar love, though, is the concept of sugar cubes: compact, uniform shapes of sugar that you just pick up and plop into your cup with no muss and no fuss. For the longest time only processed, white sugar came in cubes, which always seemed a shame to me because the taste of brown and raw sugar in coffee makes me very happy. For always wished I could combine the taste of raw or brown sugar with the geometric perfection and ease of use of white sugar cubes.

The summer of 1984 proved a watershed for me. That was the summer I spent in Munich, Germany, working as a freelance writer and trying to figure out what my life was supposed to be. I had absolutely no success with the latter but the experience did wonders for my appreciation of coffee and introduced me to this:

"Parrot Sugar," in plain parlance.

Brown sugar taste in a cube-like shape? It gave me a whole new appreciation for the question of how many lumps I'd like in my coffee. (Actually, this taught me everything I needed to know about lumps and coffee – 4:36 into the clip.) All kidding aside, I was in heaven for four months while I was in Germany. Coming back to Texas, though, put me in coffee sugar purgatory, if not hell, because La Perruche was nowhere to be obtained.

Many years passed and I eventually moved to New York, where it didn't take long for me to happen upon several sources for this wondrous product. It also didn't take long for me to figure out that the cost of having it on a regular basis would wreck my budget for sure. Back then it was around $8 and change for a pound. Now it's $14! These days there are similar brands but the prices don't vary much. This means that for the last fifteen or so years I've only had my favorite sugar a relative handful of times. Darn my inability to win the lottery or have generous, rich relatives!

At this point you're probably wondering what this has to do with the baking theme of this blog. Hang in there, sweethearts.

A few years ago I got a bee in my bonnet: why couldn't I make my own brown sugar cubes? It couldn't be that difficult because my brown sugar is always turning itself into bricks while my back is turned anyway. You know what I'm talking about, right? You're baking cookies or a flourless chocolate torte or something. You have a full box of brown sugar up in the cabinet so you grab it, ready to measure it out, but your spoon hits a block of granite instead. It almost doesn't matter when you bought it, if it's been opened once, it's turned itself into stone.

Until you want it to turn to stone, that is. I bought a couple of plastic mini ice cube trays, loaded them up and set them aside to dry out the sugar. It never did. Even after a couple of weeks the sugar remained just as moist and ready for baking use. Talk about messing with your mind! Granted, I could have just used an ice pick or some other chisel-like tool to break up an already solidified brick of brown sugar, and in truth I've done that upon an occasion or two, but that doesn't give me the relative size uniformity I want. One would rather not have to guess how much sugar is going into one's coffee, wouldn't one?

So, how to solve that problem? Heat. Oven heat. And plenty of it. (See? I told you the oven would come into play at some point. Oh, ye of little faith in my obsessions.) That meant I needed to find something that could withstand said heat. Fortunately I didn't have to look any farther than my baking supplies to find my mini cookie cutters and draft them into service.

Too cute!

It was such simple idea! Pack the cutters with sugar.

Filled with sugar and awaiting the oven.

Bake them enough to dry and harden the sugar.  Remove the cool shaped sugar from the cutters. Um. Remove the cool shaped sugar from the cutters. And that's the part that just didn't work out like I planned it. It was only with significant effort that I was able to remove the sugar from the cutters. I'd say about half of what I made was usable.

Magically delicious! But what a chore to remove from the molds!

They looked cool but dang it, that particular process was way too much work. Ease of use, remember? That should cover the making as well as the using.


As Wyle E. Coyote once said: back to the old drawing board.

Quick aside: I'm a little embarrassed to say that I actually didn't have any trouble removing the batch of shapes I made to illustrate the process. Turns out the bigger problem I was having back then was using dark brown sugar, which has more molasses to harden stick to the metal than the light brown sugar. Oh, well. You live and learn. 

Quick aside ends.

End Part 1

Currently listening to: Deep Forest, "Night Village"

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