Mum's Kitchen

Thursday, 8 April, 2010

Disasters in the Kitchen (chestnut roasting adventures)

let's just say... it happens to everyone!

I spend a great deal of time every day in the kitchen... baking for orders or trying out new recipes! Sometimes I hardly pay attention to what I'm doing... I think I could make ginger cookies with my eyes closed (why is everyone in Egypt so crazy about ginger cookies?? :)

Usually when we try something new, we are more careful because things can go wrong... but sometimes not careful enough!

The other day I wanted to make chocolate-chestnut mousse, because Majed brought me home chestnuts (thinking as a Canadian I must be used to eating them all the time "chestnuts roasting on an open fiiiire"). It was my first time trying them, and they were delicious! So I looked up chestnut recipes and this one sounded really yummy.

The recipe starts with about a kilo of "peeled" chestnuts..... well if you have ever seen them you know they have a very hard shell. So I assumed peeled meant roasted and then peeled. I googled how to roast them, and after watching a few videos of time consuming processes, I decided to just roast them on the stove and get on with my mousse-making.

Let's just say instead of chocolate-chestnut mousse I ended up with a melted rug, a burnt hand (ouch) and a bunch of burnt chestnuts! :O(

Hmmm... I will have to try again to make that mousse.... will post about that if I'm successful.
Remember kids, stay safe!

Friday, 12 March, 2010

Cupcake Tree

Have you seen something so beautiful?

This cupcake tree stand is now available to rent when you make an order of cupcakes for a special event! Contact us (see right side bar) for details.

Wednesday, 24 February, 2010

Vanilla / fanillia

One of the most important ingredients in baking!

This is one of those hard-to-find things that is just necessary in SO many recipes. I have searched in many supermarkets around Cairo and only ever found the powder "vanillin" (left in the photo). It is a sparkly, pretty white powder that smells faintly of vanilla, and definitely adds a vanilla-ish taste to baking. But there is no doubt that the liquid vanilla extract/essence is superior.

This is actually not easy to find in Canada either. Well... nearly every grocery store sells vanilla extract, but that almost always contains alcohol - helloooo non-halal muffins!

So I had found it once in a Safeway in Jordan (yes that is a Canadian chain of grocery stores!!) and was thinking I'd just have to keep bothering travellers to bring me many bottles from Jordan.

And then my friend Sara discovered a store which has solved the vanilla problem and many other of my baking woes. It is called Hillul-Bait (sweet's home) and it's in Heliopolis. They have... SO many things I've been looking for! Vanilla, different kinds of flours, frosting bags and tips...

As it turns out, there is also a store right down the street from me called Darbil-Barabra (the unpaved road of the barbarian.... not really sure what the relation is?) They sell many ingredients in bulk, including chocolate and cocoa powder and much much more! So, if you live in Madinat Nasr they are on Hassan Ma'mun near Naadi al-Ahly. I think the address is actually 9B Hassan Ma'mun, but don't be fooled. There are several 9's on the street and this store is nowhere near them. I'll try to post better directions soon inshaAllah.

One last note about this vanillin powder....

Because it's so sparkly I wanted to use it to decorate some cupcakes the other day. I knew it probably tasted strong but I thought a light dusting of it - a few specks here and there - wouldn't change the flavour too much. So after my third of fourth cupcake Majed came home and asked me what I was doing. I told him "I'm making my cupcakes sparkly!"

He asked me if I had any idea what that powder tasted like... I said "vanilla?"

Apparently not.

I licked a tiny tiny trace of the powder from my finger and it sent the most vile taste I have encountered in a long time, shooting down my throat. Yuuuuck!!!! Ouache!

So, the moral of the story is don't be fooled by the glittery vanillin powder, it is evil indeed.

Go for the nice dark vanilla essence (just make sure you check that it's alcohol free) or even better, if you live somewhere where vanilla beans are available.. try using that, and you will get the most authentic flavour!

Thanks Sara :O)

Sunday, 21 February, 2010

cupcakes in Cairo

The story of cupcakes begins with the batter.

I have talked to several people in Cairo about some hard to find ingredients - such as vanilla and baking soda - which I will write about soon inshaAllah. Don't despair! Pretty much everything is available here, or if not a very close substitute is.

Anyway, I have finally found all I need here in Cairo so I don't have to keep getting things from home! (yay!) I also found a nice beater at the "hypermarket" (this name just makes it sound as bad as it is...) in my neighbourhood. If you are interested in making cakes and don't have one of these, don't worry you can still do it by hand (takes a little more time and effort) using a whisk like this one:

So here is my batter all ready to go.... time for the baking!

The next step is dividing the batter evenly into a muffin tin lined with cupcake papers - remember they will rise so you don't need to fill them completely. I will have to devote a post of its own to cupcake papers and finding them here. But let's skip that step for now because I want to bake my cupcakes!

So I have spooned the batter into my pastel coloured cupcake papers which to keep it short I will just say I brought them with me from Canada when I came in August... they are the kind you can buy at any grocery store in a pack of fifty for a dollar (I never thought I would miss Loblaws).

And off they go to the oven!

Okay, you're not really supposed to open the oven while they're baking (it might make their pooffy tops sink in). You should just keep the light on and check them through the window until they look done. But I have a bad habit of peeking / sniffing while they're in the oven, so I snuck this photo.

I have a few friends who are intimidated by the gas oven. Thankfully I don't have that problem because I had one in my old apartment in Montreal too! I know at first the sound of gas and the blue flame are a little intimidating.

I had a problem with mine before that it wasn't lighting on both sides... so one side was letting gas escape. I had a lot of baking to do that day but some neighbours and our building's "bawwab" came up to figure out why there was a smell of gas.... they came in and turned my oven off :(

Anyway, my house didn't explode. So just be careful, say bismiAllah and turn the gas on, then stick a long (BBQ) lighter in there and light the flame. It is hard to really get a specific temperature on a gas stove, at least that's what I have found. Through trial and error you figure out how long each thing takes (cookies, cupcakes, lasagna...) and I basically bake them all at the same temperature (te2riban mi2a wa thamaneen). If you're finding recipes only give degrees in F just use a conversion website. My favourite is this one: http://www.onlineconversion.com/ it has EVERY conversion you could need in the baking section.

Well, with all this blabber our cupcakes should be done by now...

And here they are out of the oven, cooling down and preparing themselves to get all dressed up.

(Don't put your icing on while they're still warm!!) If you don't have a cooling rack (that is one thing I still have not found here, and thus have ordered from the US) just let them cool in the muffin tin for awhile and then set them out on a plate or your counter.

The possibilities of frosting are endless. I am just showing an example that I made this week for my friend Rachel's wedding. They are topped with a simple buttercream frosting coloured pink and applied with an icing bag and a big round tip.