AaishaShaikh.com

So I’ve been MEANING to write a new post.. but something always came up. And by ’something’ I mean me being lazy most of the time. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been experimenting! What have I been up to you ask? LOTS!

White chocolate macadamian nut cookies – 2 recipes so far… have yet to decide which one I prefer. I think I need a new box of baking soda because they came out a little flat

Plus a few other small things here and there (like chocolate covered strawberries), or things I can’t remember. Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. I finished the first course of the Michael’s cake decorating series in Dec 2009 and that was definitely fun! I may skip Course 2 because it’s piping small flowers and the basket weave (which I’m not a fan of) and move straight onto Course 3 – Fondant and Tiered cakes. Exciting!

I’ll post more pics of future projects soon! Promise! Until then…

A few days after I put up my profiterole post, a friend of mine asked me if I had ever been to Choux Factory. After I was done laughing (get it? “Shoe” Factory? Hah! Clever!), I said I hadn’t and was told it was a matter of near life and death that I HAD to visit as soon as possible. Well today dawned a balmy near 70 degrees, and I decided to walk on over to Mee Noodle for lunch. After a deliciously satisfying meal of shrimp and broccoli with fried rice, I suddenly realized I was a mere 2 block away from Choux Factory. Gasp! How did that happen? Ok I lie. I purposely had lunch at Mee Noodle knowing I could treat myself to a stroll and a bit of desert. Shrug
The shop sits on the corner of 48th and 1st (48th st and 1st Ave) across from the UN hub in Midtown East.

I walked in and was immediately greeted by two lovely women just waiting to take my order. Custard filled choux, chocolate choux, or a green tea choux? And each for only $2. That’s a STEAL considering the fact that cupcakes are near $3 (if not more) at most bakeries these days. Choices choices! Now I’m not a huge fan of custard, but I thought why not? Let’s give this bad boy a try. They picked an empty pastry from the few dozen that were baked and waiting, filled it for me, and off I went.

With a gorgeous day like this I knew I didn’t want to be stuck at work chowing down. I wanted to be outside savoring the weather and my desert. There’s only one place that could satisfy this situation, so I headed to the ‘park’ on 51st between 2nd and 3rd. I love this spot. It’s a great little getaway to take a break, and it’s right around the corner from where I work!

The pastry was baked perfectly – nice crusty, buttery, thin shell with great color. I’m not a huge fan of the sprinkled sugar so I scraped that off, and took a bite.

Oh. My. Word. It was delicious! The custard wasn’t too thick and wasn’t overpoweringly sweet. A nice subtle flavor, and perfectly thick consistency. I may have to change my mind about custards after this.

Here’s a close up of the pastry while I was munching away. You can tell how thin it is, and that it had baked perfectly on the inside before being filled. My pastry sure as heck didn’t come out like this, but now I know what to strive for

Next time I think I may try the specialty mango custard filled choux. It’s the one all the way to the right

This past weekend Maheen and I volunteered our apartment for a book club (more about the book at the end of the post). Of course any sort of gathering can only mean one thing… a chance to try out new recipes! Yeayy! This was just the opportunity my new Home Baking with the CIA cookbook was begging for I had full intentions to try out the Devils food cake with fudge icing recipe, yellow butter cake with citrus icing, and the profiterole recipe. Now we all know I tried out the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe for profiteroles in the past few weeks with mixed results, so I was really excited to see how the CIA recipe would hold up. But then, the inevitable happened – I ran out of time.
Three of my closest friends have all had babies in the past month and because of my darn cold, I have barely gotten time to see them! Out of the three, I had only met one! So instead of prepping Saturday night, I went out to see my friends A fair exchange in my opinion.
Sunday morning dawned grey and dreary, but it was plenty warm and cozy in our apartment. I figured I would give the cakes a go first since the recipes were similar and I could just pop them in the oven. I’ve learned (the hard way) that measuring out all your ingredients before you start mixing is the way to go. Saves so much time and energy!
I started with the yellow butter cake, and OH MY WORD it smelled DIVINE! I snuck a lick from the bowl after I had finish filling my cupcake liners. Pure. Heaven. And I’m a chocolate girl, so that’s saying something Next I started on the devils food recipe. Now I already have a tried and true recipe for chocolate cupcakes, but I wanted to see how CIA would stack up against Martha Stewart. Most of the ingredients were the same, though the order and quantities were different. With a shrug I continued on.
As the aroma of freshly baked cakes filled the kitchen, I started in on the frostings. Mind you, it was about 2pm by this point, and the group was scheduled to come in by 4pm! Eeeek! I hurriedly whipped up a basic buttercream and added some lemon zest and lemon juice to give it a citrus kick. Best. Frosting. Ever. If you haven’t tried a citrus buttercream, you are missing out! This was also the first time I was making a fudge frosting. I’m more of a cream cheese or buttercream base kind of girl. I don’t know what made me think I should try 4-5 new recipes in one day, but I was definitely starting to feel it by this point. The fudge frosting came out a bit bitter, but when I started adding more sugar to even it out, it became too sweet. I don’t know… just didn’t click for me.
Of course by this time I had no time to whip up profiteroles, so I pushed that recipe to another day. I frosted both sets of cupcakes and handed out a few to the book club hosts / discussion leaders (Moumita and Dinu) to give them a try. Results?
* Yellow butter cupcake – good taste and aroma, just way too dense and thick! I may have left them in the oven too long or creamed the butter incorrectly. When I ran a search for this recipe, others seemed to love it. I’m going to give this another try.
* Citrus buttercream – HUGE HIT! This one is a keeper
* Devils food chocolate cupcake – failure. Straight to the trash. The cake stuck to the liners, never fully reached that ‘chocolately’ color, and just tasted wrong.
* Fudge icing – epic failure.

Here are some pics of each of the leftovers!

The book we read was Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Three words – read this book! I knew Eggers was a good writer, but I don’t think I ever fully appreciated his writing until I read Zeitoun. It was simple enough so that I didn’t have to pause and look things up or reference previous sections of the book, but complex enough so that you really feel like you see the community and neighborhood, and feel the happiness, anxiety, and love between each of the relationships. Check out the reviews written by Haroon Moghul for Religion Dispatches, Jordan Robinson for altmuslim, and Wajahat Ali for Huffington Post.

It was a slow and lazy day for our protagonist as she lay in bed browsing culinary schools and their respective curriculums. “Choux pastry!” they flashed and tempted. Fill them with cream (whipped, pastry, or iced) to create profiteroles and éclairs; glaze them with a ganache or sprinkle them with sugar. “Wouldn’t you like to join the ranks of preliminary pastry chefs across the world?” they taunted. After a quick search, the screen was full of tabs from Food Network and blogs claiming how wonderfully, intoxicatingly, astonishingly simple they were. Would our heroine pass up the unstated challenge dancing before her?

Of course not!

Armed with a recipe from the Barefoot Contessa, and her trusty friends from KitchenAid and Cusinart, this brave woman dived into the depths of her kitchen. “Simmer oh milk and butter!” she cried! “Fight me not flour!” she proclaimed as she worked it into the butter and milk mixture. “Peace is what we aim for! Please work together great members of Dough and Egg”, she urged. And finally, they combined. It was finally time to mold new homes for all those that had been part of the struggle. And then… the most difficult part of any battle… the wait. Time would only tell if these new communities could battle the heat of the oven. Would they rise to the occasion, or fall flat like so many before them, tears of moisture spotting their newly built walls, absorbing and rotting the foundation?

20 minutes, another 10 minutes, another 15 minutes… What was the state of our great heroine and these newly acquired allies?

Success!!! They had survived! Overcome the heat of the oven, withstood cold drafts of ‘room temperature’, allowing both elements to strengthen their base. It was time to fill them with whipped cream, and test their roofs with the chocolate sauce. The strong foundations held up well, welcoming the new elements.

Video recipe by Barefoot Contessa –

Barefoot Contessa – Profiteroles

Actual pictures of profiteroles / cream puffs –

Update - It has been 1.5 weeks since our heroine has fought the epic battle of ‘Profiterole”, and has since tried another 3 times. In total, she has succeeded twice, and failed twice. She has called in for assistance in the form of Home Baking, by the Culinary Institute of America. She hopes that this new game plan will guarantee better results for all those involved, so that many ingredients will not fall victim to moisture and sink into themselves. Stay tuned for more updates as her ambitious journey continues. Until then, I bid you farewell dear friend.

A few weeks ago I had a post that dealt with Mehndi inspired cakes. I loved the colors and designs, but I am not a huge fan of gumpaste or fondant. What to do? What to do? Why… use white chocolate of course! I went down to my local Michael’s to pick up some Wilton white chocolate candy melts, along with two packs of candy colors so I would have more control over what colors came out. With my newly acquired goods, I set back home determined to make the most amazing chocolate cupcake topper motif things ever!

Prep chocolate – CHECK!
Color chocolate – CHECK!
Print out inspirational templates – CHECK!
Parchment cone – Um… How about a small ziplock bag instead? With a tiny hole cut out?

Right about then is when my lofty aspirations came tumbling down around me The ziplock bag didn’t give me much control, and my intended smooth curvy lines came out looking like a mess. You know that ‘crayon’ font? Or rather, even a child learning to write? Yea.. that about sums it up.

No worry! I’ll try another method! Why draw when you can have a cookie cutter snap out the shape for you? Pretty pink swirls embedded in a green base cut like paisley? What could go wrong?

Um… turns out I’m not too handy with a cookie cutter either. Plus, it didn’t help that I had my window open in the kitchen cooling my chocolate way too quickly.

Refusing to declare defeat, I finally gave in to the ways of the parchment cone. Oh… my… goodness. Why didn’t I follow the advice of hundreds of thousands of pastry chefs and chocolitiers to begin with? With a (semi)steady hand, I drew out paisleys, filling them with colors, dots, lines, and other squiggles. It works it works! And I have to say… great experience… definitely need to practice some more… but the crowds loved the results. Especially because they were chocolate!

Here they are topping my red velvet cupcakes

I survived to tell the tale, and try the adventure again another day!

My cupcake liners from BakeItPretty.com came in! Yeayyy!!! They are so pretty and I can’t wait to start using them! I forgot how tiny the mini liners were. My goodness. It’s like one bite of cake. Hmm.. have to figure out what to do about that.

Check out all of the actual pics on my Flickr page

Here are some to get you going

Anyone who knows me, knows that I absolutely LOVE browsing all the great talent on Flickr.com. What used to only be photography exploring, has turned into FOOD exploring! Uh Oh is right There are tons of people who post shots of their cakes and deserts, and let me tell you, there are some amazing works of art out there. These are just a few of the gorgeous South Asian Mehndi design inspired cakes I found – all things involving crazy colors, bling, and that lovely scroll work. Keep up the great work CupcakeEnvy, GlassSlipperGourmet, IcingDreams *2* (swoooon), misharohit, JamieAnderson, and darcitananda!

I especially love the paisley cupcake toppers that Icing Dreams uses. I can’t wait to try them out with chocolate

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I am so excited! I just ordered a BUNCH of cupcake liners from the fabulous people at www.bakeitpretty.com. If you need liners.. check them out! They have pretty decent prices, and their stuff is amazing. I do wish they also had chocolate transfer sheets, like these from FancyFlours.com. Shrug. Hopefully soon.

Here are some of the designs I ordered!

I will post pics of the actual cups when I get them. Stay tuned!

-Aaisha