FAQ #2: Do you watch all those baking shows?

In short, yes. Yes I do.

However, to further illustrate this, let me describe my current situation as I write this blog post:

I’m sitting in my chair conveniently facing my TV which is on its third hour of Hulu for the night. After finishing the final episode of Buddy vs. Duff (highly recommend) while fixing dinner, I watched a few minutes of Chopped (because it’s Chopped and it’s addicting), and then turned to my new series, Bakers vs. Fakers. All while updating my spreadsheets, planning my weekend baking schedule, posting on social media, and browsing some of my favorite food blogs.

So yeah, I love baking shows! I mostly love them as background noise that I can leave on while I get some work done. But growing up, I would eat, sleep and breathe Food Network.

You simply can’t recreate the drama of a croquembouche tower toppling or a ganache seizing or a last-minute tray of dropped cupcakes. I live for this kind of stuff! Only on TV, though, because when that happens in real life, it’s very terrible.

One of my favorite shows is Cake Boss, you know, with Buddy and his whole Italian/New Jersey family. He toured when I was in high school and stopped in Columbus, Ohio, and I had the privilege of attending his show (thank you, Aunt Tammy!). That was a pivotal point in my baking career—I left inspired, awe-struck, and determined to be Buddy one day instead of watching from the audience.

2012 outside the Palace Theatre in Columbus & in front of the Cake Boss trailer

I think part of the reason I love Cake Boss is because…that is my family! I love telling the story of our 2016 Guarasci Family Reunion. We had 76 people. Seventy-Six! Enough to fill up an entire wing at Deer Creek State Park, along with their golf course’s entire tee sheet that weekend. Let me tell you, though I may only be 25% Italian, I claim it more than anything, because no one knows how to cook, party, or love like Italians.

July 2016, the Guarasci Family! Since then there’s been countless marriages, births, and probably claiming people who aren’t even related as family.

This photo is a great reminder of the important things in life. Since we’re all so disconnected (and it’s looking like living behind masks might be our normal for awhile), taking a second to remember the warmth of family is a great encouragement to endure, whether you have a family of two or of 76.

I guess baking shows lead me back to family. Seems a little strange, even to me, but it’s true. There’s a simple child-like innocence that provides an escape full of buttercream and rainbow sprinkles.

Because I want you to experience the joy of baking shows, here are my favorites with a little insight on what each one offers. If you pay close enough attention, you can really learn a lot while you watch!

While you may still have ample time for binge-watching during quarantine, I hope you enjoy these shows as much as I do. Just make sure you aren’t too hungry when you watch—or else you’ll find yourself baking whatever you can get your hands on in your kitchen.

Talk soon, and feel free to send any of your favorite shows my way!

jorie

PS—the follow-up question is usually, “so when will we see YOU on one of those baking shows?!” My answer is simple—whenever Food Network calls! I have much to learn about competitive baking, but I must say I’m up for the challenge.

It's Macaron Monday!

Are Macaron Monday’s a thing in the baking world?

I’m not sure, because the truth is, I’ve always been too intimidated to make them! The precision required to weigh, sift, fold, pipe, bake, and assemble the little French meringue cookies scared me off…and I’ve owned a home bakery for ten years!

Because of this extended social distancing time, I decided to give macarons a shot since I’m not filling orders and have time for a little R&D. Let’s be honest, baking research and development trumps all other industries. I get to look through Pinterest, browse other blogs, take mouth-watering pictures—and it usually ends with a taste test.

For my first bake with macarons, I wanted to try a standard, vanilla recipe that would give good feedback and had clear instructions. You can find the whole thing here at one of my favorite blogs, Preppy Kitchen. I read through his tips and committed them to memory, and then just started baking.

You’ll need a few special ingredients for macarons, namely almond flour. I’ve never worked with almond flour, but it needs sifted. A lot. And then you need to throw away all of the parts that are too big for the sifter so they don’t impede your delicate meringue.

Oh, and the vodka. Like I said, this is strictly for R&D (wink), so I used the vodka to wipe down my mixing bowl and attachment to sterilize them and rid them of any excess oil that may deflate my meringue. But, if you find any secondary uses for the leftover vodka, by all means, continue that R&D! And please let me know how that goes.

I’ve also never baked with a scale before—I know, shocking. But I decided to put my new scale to use, since macarons have an incredibly low margin for error. Measuring in grams (as opposed to cups, ounces, etc.) really isn’t that difficult and there wasn’t as big of a learning curve as I expected.

Next came the actual making of the batter, or macronage, which, from what I gather, is a fancy word for stirring. It requires patience, attention, and some arm muscles (no seriously, folding 40-50 times really works your upper body!). The most important part of the mixing, once you get stiff peaks in your meringue, is folding. Fold, fold, and fold those dry ingredients some more until you get “figure 8 ribbons” in your batter.

Figure what? That’s about the most vague description I’ve ever heard. But this video from Sugar Geek helped me see that, yes, you actually do fold until your batter can make a continuous figure 8. So that’s what I did!

Then I filled my piping bag and piped 1-inch circles all over my parchment paper that I stuck down with some batter. I wasn’t sure how much the meringue would spread in the oven, so I spaced them out a good bit. After you pipe them, you let them rest until they set up and are firm to the touch.

The 40-minute resting time went pretty quick, because we had a family Zoom call to distract me!

Sorry, you probably don’t care about that. But I do! So that’s why I put in on here. Because it’s my blog and I do what I want (kidding, sort of).

Back to the Macs:

Here they’ve rested and are ready for the oven. The resting period lets them rise up in the oven instead of spreading out, or so I’ve been told.

And that’s exactly what they did! *silently fist pumps alone in my kitchen.

I put nonpareil rainbow sprinkles on half of them, just to further my R&D work. And because I love them.

Okay, the hard part is done! All that I did after celebrating their seamless baking process was whip up a batch of my favorite vanilla buttercream, threw it in a piping bag, and piped a circle onto the bottom of half of the cookies, then topped them off with the other half of the batch.

Well, then I rolled some in sprinkles, because like I said earlier, I can. And I love sprinkles.

To answer your question, yes, I did get a little heavy-handed with the buttercream. But again, buttercream is my favorite part of any dessert, and I made these macarons for myself. Therefore, I put lots of buttercream in them.

Now we’re done!

Except, don’t eat them. At least not for another day or two after they sit in the fridge. Supposedly the flavors develop to give you a cohesive Mac, but clearly I couldn’t wait, so I took a bite. But I needed a good picture (see above), so someone had to do it.

Best of luck with your own Mac bakes, and be sure to let me know how it goes! I promise, it’s not as scary as it looks.

If I can do it, you can too!

xoxo,

jorie