Le Bois Sucré

This is a blog about learning how to cook from scratch, trying new recipes, trying to improve my cooking and baking skills. This is also a blog about stretching the dollar in this bad economy. I will bring back the "waste not want not" sensibility but without all the lima beans, casseroles and the love of mayonnaise-yuck! With the addition of access to organic eggs and my mother in law's garden we will try to do "free food meals" and other shopping challenges in expensive Stamford, CT.

Monday, June 6, 2011

THINKING GRAND (MARNIER)

When I am gifted something like a candy bar I always think how can I make this into a cookie? Cookies currently are my favorite thing to bake. I like that I can make a giant cookie and then cut and freeze it and it is sort of the stir-fry of baking. Once you have a great batter and have confidence in your ingredients then you just are only limited by your imagination (and/or a mean case of diabetes). Most people only have an angel and a devil on either shoulder while I have a fat girl that gives me hints when I bake. She says things like, "really just one 2 cups of chocolate chunks, the texture of the cookie will be ruined and uneven, double it!"

My mother in law got me the best Easter basket a Grand Marnier chocolate bar by Turin and a Barnes and Nobles gift card. Oooh! I am so excited! Grand Marnier is so good and has made some of my favorite alcoholic drinks taste divine! My favorite drink (and was my wedding drink) is Cosmo Royale and Cosmos done well are great. With the Barnes and Nobles gift card I got a variety of books including one about how to make pretty cookies (I make sturdy good tasting cookies but they are not pretty) and others related to art/photography/and sewing.

I used the Barnes and Nobles card and now I have been thinking what to do with that candy bar! And the easy way out would probably need to get a whole lot more candy bars and taste the candy bar to see what is going to go well with the chocolate. I actually was inspired not to use the candy bar. I just ate two squares and therefore I keep leaving less and less chocolate for the cookies. Perhaps I will do something like the Hershey Peanut Butter Blossoms (ie a cookie batter then you press in the chocolate) but orangey with the with future Grand Marnier chocolate bars by Turnin. But the below is my experiment that was inspired by the Grand Marnier chocolate bar by Turnin.

I found out in my experiment that Grand Marnier cannot exactly compete with dark chocolate's tones. When you mix Grand Marnier with dark chocolate it needed a little Orange Extract to kick it up. I realized that dark chocolate bars are expensive plus Grand Marnier and orange extract. While running errands my husband gave me about $7.00 to go into the store to get the heavy whipping cream. He though I would come back with $4.00 and in fact it cost $6.99 for a quart of Heavy Whipping Cream. So this is a very rich dessert and that is before sinking any teeth into the cookie. This is a great limited edition cookie and people seemed to love my cookies. It is fun and nice addition to the spring/summer mix. So this is not exactly a cost saving cookie but it is really worth the money and there will be no waste not, want not here!

How Grand Marnier! Cookies

(Doubled recipe)

Ingredients:

4.5 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups (4 sticks) butter softened
1.5 cups granulated sugar
1.5 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons Grand Marnier
2 teaspoons Orange Extract
4 eggs

Chocolate Ganache with Orange Panache Recipe (below)

Chocolate Ganache With Orange Panache!
my variation of Chocolate Ganache's from page 82 of Whoopie Pies; Dozen of mix 'em, match 'em, Eat 'em up recipes by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwill.

Ingredients:

24 oz chopped dark chocolate
1.5 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons of Orange extract
3 teaspoons of Grand Marnier

1.) In a large heatproof bowl place the chocolate.

2.) On medium heat in a large, heavy saucepan heat the cream just until it bubbles.

3.) Add the cream over the chocolate and let it stand for 10 minutes while it slowly melts the chocolate.

4.)Stir using a wooden spoon or spatula until smooth.
5.) Add in the Orange extract and the Grand Marnier when it is cooler.

6.) A.) Allow the mixture to rest at room temperature until firm enough to spread which is about 2 hours
OR
B.) Place the mixture in the refrigerator for 30 minutes stirring every 10 minutes until firm enough to spread.
7.) Put the Ganache to the side
8.) Sift together: flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium sized batter bowl. Put aside.

9.) Cut up room temperature butter into small pats of butter and place in the mixing bowl. Using the flat blade attachment in mixer cream the butter, Grand Marnier, brown sugar and granulated sugar together.

10.) Beat the egg mixture with a fork to break up the egg. Add the eggs one at a time to the mixture of creamed butter/Grand Marnier/brown sugar/sugar. Make sure in between eggs to beat the mixture well.

11.) Stir in the Chocolate Ganache with Orange Panache into the mixture. Make sure that the stand mixer spreads the ganache through out the mixture by using a flat spatula to scrap down the sides.
12.) Add the sifted dry ingredient slowly folding it into the wet mixture. Run until the dough is mixed thoroughly.

Tips: If the mixture is uneven: fold the mixture by hand if necessary to mix the bottom part of the dough with the top layer. If necessary then run the mixer again.

13.)Cover the cookie dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate in the mixing bowl for about 20 minutes.

14.) After 20 minutes preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Form the cookies and bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden.

(Tip: I got three Giant cookies out of this recipe plus 4 large sized cookies. I feel this recipe is better with the Giant cookies pan because the dough is very sticky! I added for this event red sprinkles for Memorial day. I baked the cookie for about 20 minutes at 350 degree Fahrenheit)

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

DEMO OF THE UGLY DUCKLING KITCHEN! AND BONES OF THE SWAN KITCHEN

It took about 2 hours to demo my Ugly Kitchen and about two months for the kitchen to be put back together.

When planning a kitchen demo in a small 600 square foot condo I recommend getting a small student fridge, budgeting for take out food and to plan on reducing your food in your fridge freezer to almost nothing before the renovation. I also recommend money, and lots of it!

We were not planning to do the kitchen for another month but I was luckily already packing and I did not at the time realize how much crap and lack of space I had. On the day of the renovation we midnight shifters were awakened at 7:00 am and still had so much to clear out of the kitchen. We look like drunken college students scrambling in every direction. No longer being on "normal" people hours it was so painful to be awake at the time! We started just throwing things instead of organizing them onto the table and on the floor. We wanted to just get this kitchen done and to go back to bed! The two months renovations and midnight shifts were painful. To have to be up after a long shift or to have to make decisions without much sleep is not a good idea.

I got to take down the first cabinet with a sledge hammer! That I have to say it is a liberating thing to destroy an inefficient kitchen cabinet. To totally rip the cabinet into shreds and to declare there is nothing in this kitchen that I want to keep and be able to budget to put it back together again.

There were issues that came up just in the demo. It turns out that the gas was never capped correctly before the demo (not the contractors fault but it was before the demo). So there was a gas leak luckily I noticed and they were back in an instant. The lighting guy could not come for over a week so we had an empty kitchen for over a week. Then there were just so many delays like deciding on different doors, and things not in stock. Then the counters guys could not come at one point and then there was an extra space to accommodate for the counters. Then the sink that came with the counters was actually too big for where the plumbing was... and so we started in October and a couple of weeks before Christmas we were actually using non bathroom water. We had for that period only one source of running water! So you know we did not cook even when all we were waiting for as our kitchen sink. So for two weeks when the kitchen was mostly complete except for the kitchen sink! A lot of it had to do with getting condo board with us or scheduling time to shut off the water/etc because our condo is all connected with all of the condos.

This waiting resulted in us having to live like were trying to try out for A&E's show "Hoarders" for such a long time. We just wished it was already over since we had to eat out until we got the fridge back (two or three weeks later). It was just us and a cooler and we never seemed to have cool drinks. It was worth it two months later when we got ice maker in the fridge we have now. But all I wanted was iced drinks and we could not get it.

Jonathan and I who just wanted to be in our kitchen especially as the winter holidays were upon us. We flipped through cookbooks saying-- oh that looks so good! We would drool and wish and wish.

Enjoy the pictures below and I will update with final pictures in another post.

Don't you love the Martha Stewart paint samples?

This was above the fridge and you could never get anything in or out of it!
I hate above the fridge store unless it goes out as much the fridge and has
storage like I planned for my platters/etc.

The upper cabinets that were so low that you could not wash dishes in the sink without
hitting your hands on them. Yet there was so much room ABOVE the cabinets too.

Normally if I walked into this situation I would be upset, but not today!

The fridge turns out was leaking majorly and when
we took it out it had huge puddle. If it was not for the
three layers of laminate the people downstairs would
have been in a squalor's Venice!