{"id":243,"date":"2014-03-10T00:22:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T07:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/?p=243"},"modified":"2014-11-10T21:55:23","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T05:55:23","slug":"baking-weekend-march-8-2014-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/10\/baking-weekend-march-8-2014-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Baking Weekend: March 8, 2014 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Saturday, March 8, 2014 – I’m taking a cake baking and decorating class at Sizzleworks<\/a>. So the time I would use for cooking, I now use for baking.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Before we get started, I’d like to show off my new toy:<\/p>\n

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I have a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer<\/a>, and the paddle attachment that comes with it leaves a lot to be desired. I recently discovered the New Metro Beater Blade<\/a> (courtesy of the folks at Sizzleworks), and it is amazing. This blade has single-handedly cut mixing time in half, and reduces the amount of scraping I have to do. If you’ve already shelled out the money for a KitchenAid stand mixer, you might as well shell out the extra money for a good set of blades.<\/p>\n

Just make sure you get the right blade. For Artisans, you’ll want the KA-TH (KitchenAid Tilt-Head), or as I like to call it, “Kathy”.<\/p>\n

In any case, the first baking class was learning the basics. Namely, the creaming method. Except I already know the creaming method, so it was really just applying their recipe for Double Vanilla Pound Cake. (Except I didn’t want to deal with infusing a vanilla bean into milk, so I just used vanilla paste.) It went well, except I think my eggs were too cold. But I’ll let you decide. Here are some super close-ups so you can see the crumb:<\/p>\n

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It’s more crumbly than spongy. And here’s the same piece from another angle:<\/p>\n

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Also, I’ve decided the best way to break an egg is inside one bowl, then pour it into the other bowl. Because breaking it on a table is a very good way to make an egg go splat on the table and entirely lose the egg. And breaking it in a bowl full of eggs is kinda difficult. (And breaking it on the side of the bowl, though common, is what they teach you not<\/i> to do in pretty much every cooking class.)<\/p>\n

Also, apparently to fill out a loaf pan, you need a whole pound of ingredients. The recipe called for a half pound of each ingredient, and as you can see, the pound cake is kinda short. (But it’s enough to fill out a 9 inch round cake pan though. Cakes are weird.)<\/p>\n

We also learned how to make a free spreads in class. I guess to add a little variety. So I decided to make lemon curd. It’s really easy. Lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, salt, egg, butter, and microwave.<\/p>\n

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Yes, you need a big cup, because it boils over quickly. Also, when it finally cooled, I used it as a spread on a slice of pound cake. (But let’s be honest, it didn’t need it.)<\/p>\n

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And lastly, before we go, a taste of things to come:<\/p>\n

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Saturday, March 8, 2014 – I’m taking a cake baking and decorating class at Sizzleworks. So the time I would use for cooking, I now use for baking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[63,62],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baking","tag-cake","tag-lemon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}