Top 100 Cake Blog

Top 100 Cake Blog
Showing posts with label Paul LaRosa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul LaRosa. Show all posts

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies


Yesterday was a big day for the DH -- not only was it his 39th birthday but it was the publication of his memoir, a wonderful book called Leaving Story Avenue about growing up in a New York City housing project and eventually landing a job as a reporter for the New York Daily News.

The DH does not care for cake; he's more of a cookie man and so he requested peanut butter cookies for his birthday.  I do not care for peanut butter cookies, but I like to make him happy.

I found a promising recipe in my collection -- it seemed simple and possible, a big bonus among all these handwritten cards whose results are by no means guaranteed.   Best of all, these cookies were fantastic. Instead of the sandy texture of many peanut butter cookies, these are melt-in-your-mouth delicious (so I was told).

If you want to try your hand, here's some instruction.  Recipe card at the end.

Make sure the butter is soft and place it in a mixer with the peanut butter.  I used some fancy schmancy organic peanut butter from the corner store, but any type will do.  Add the sugars and then the beaten egg.  Mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt)  in a bowl and simply pour into the mixer.  Blend until incorporated but don't overdo it, lest your cookies become tough.


If you have time, refrigerate the batter.  If not simply roll into one-inch balls and place on the baking sheet.  Working with cold dough is a bit easier, as this is a bit sticky.



Press each ball down with the tines of a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.  Not essential, but a nice and traditional touch.


For shortening, I always use butter for its flavor.  Check out the original oven temperature instructions on the second card!



The DH enjoying his birthday cookies. And his gifts!

Monday, March 19, 2012

The Dark Side of Baking: An Opposing View

Today, I bring you a guest post from the DH, who blogs at PaulLarosa.com
As many of you know, my wife has a popular baking blog called A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn, a blog so popular she was recently featured in the Ladies Home Journal magazine. I get a lot of comments from people about how lucky I am because I get to try all these delicious treats, and that’s true but, let me tell you friends, it’s not all buttercream frosting and 7-layer cakes — there is a dark side of baking!
First off, there is the temptation. I am constantly being asked if I want to lick a spoon or a spatula to the point where I believe my wife thinks of me as a human dishwasher or perhaps a cat.
Then there are the constant taste tests. Do you realize how many calories one can consume just trying alittle bit of this cake or that cookie? I’ve spent a fortune having my Facebook photos digitally altered so they fit on the page.
Then there is the noise associated with baking. I came down to breakfast the other day and it sounded like a jet was taking off in the kitchen but, really, it was only the unbelievably noisy Kitchen Aid mixer. Do they make mufflers for those things? So I sat there with my morning coffee pretending I was aboard a 747. “Only five more minutes to wheels up,” my wife said sweetly.
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, there is the mess. I cannot tell you how often I enter the kitchen thinking the house has been ransacked. Pans, bowls, dishes everywhere, not to mention the sprinkling of white flour over every conceivable surface. I guess there’s a good reason not so many people bake from scratch anymore — they know of the dark side!
 http://www.paullarosa.com/ 

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Making Strudel the Old-Fashioned Way (despite my best intentions to go modern)



I promise a new baking post soon, maybe even tonight, but in the meantime, please enjoy this post from the DH, Paul LaRosa, about my baking-related experience this weekend!


FedEx delivers from Brooklyn to Manhattan — by air!

Normally, I have no complaints about FedEx. They do a pretty good job with most everything I send but last night I entered into the twilight zone of FedEx and the experience left me feeling like Tom Hanks in “Castaway” without the coconut to keep me company.
My wife is planning an event this week called “Real Housewives of Henry Street” and the idea is to show how immigrant housewives lived on the lower East Side back around 1905. In fact, the event costs $19.05 to get in. Clever, right?
Anyway, one of the treats she’s cooking up is apple strudel and she plans to make a lot of it. She needed a dough hook to knead the strudel dough so she wouldn’t be tied to the kitchen all day like, you know, a 1905 housewife.
Taking advantage of a modern convenience, she went online and ordered a dough hook to be delivered to her by FedEx to her work address which is on Henry Street in Manhattan. That’s where the fun began because there is also a Henry Street in Brooklyn and, for whatever reason, FedEx took it upon themselves to make “an address correction” and sent the dough hook to Brooklyn. My wife found out about the mistake yesterday and told FedEx they had made “an address in-correction” but it was too late. The hook was in Brooklyn, not far from Red Hook coincidentally.
After many phone calls and hours on the phone, she told FedEx she would pick up the package at the FedEx “world center” in Brooklyn. Some anonymous person on the phone agreed.  And that’s how we wound up on a very rainy Friday night on a long line at the FedEx “world center” in Brooklyn in a neighborhood where you definitely wanted to make sure your car doors were locked.
Finally, we got to the front of the line and, after much hemming and hawing, a FedEx gal produced a package. We signed, relieved and were about to walk out when I looked down at the name — it was not my wife’s.
“This is the wrong package,” I said.
The FedEx gal then disappeared into the back again and, when she reappeared, said another employee was doing her “a favor” by looking for our package. This is why I love when FedEx packages just appear and I am not forced to come face to face with this kind of customer service.
Another ten minutes went by and finally, a rain-soaked, frightened-looking FedEx clerk appeared. “Your package is here but I can’t give it to you,” he said. “It’s already been containerized and on the truck.”
Now mind you, we could see the trucks which were in the next room, a garage.
“What does containerized mean?” I asked.
“It’s in a container in the front of the truck and we can’t take it out without taking out a whole bunch of other packages. I’d get in trouble. We have to make the plane but it will be in Manhattan tomorrow.”
There were a couple of things about what he said that struck me. First that the package was going to the correct address, Henry Street in Manhattan but no one would be at my wife’s closed office the following day. She needed the dough hook to make a whole lot of strudel for the Sunday event. It was get it now or forget it.
The other thing that struck me was….THEY WERE PUTTING IT ON A PLANE TO GET TO MANHATTAN?????
“What do you mean, you’re putting it on a plane?” I asked. “There are no planes that go from Brooklyn to Manhattan!”
“Right,” he agreed, “we’re flying it from New York to Newark and then it will be delivered by truck to Manhattan.”
Even Mr. Rain-soaked man could see how insane this was. Remember, the package we desperately needed WAS IN THE NEXT ROOM AT THAT VERY MOMENT!
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” he said. “That’s just how we do things.”
I flashed on Tom Hanks with his stopwatch in “Castaway” where he plays a FedEx employee and realized he had nothing on this guy.
What followed were a lot of irritated sentences that ended with the phrase “you realize how insane this is” but he wasn’t budging. Finally, my wife told him to send the package back from whence it came — if she didn’t get it immediately, she couldn’t use it. The irony is that she wound up making the strudel by hand with no help from a motorized dough hook — just like they did in 1905.