Bake and Shake

Domino!

I am seriously, sincerely upset by this news.

Dough, MTV Raps!

After they tore his brother's arm off, Hal was forced to face the Danish Gang by himself.

So what to make, with all your dough?

Croissants. Pain au Chocolat. Danishes. Pain au Jambon et Fromage. Pain au Action Figure. All of this can be done with this dough, and I did all of them, with varied results.

This dough is not a true croissant dough - the eggs weigh down some of the layers I think I would have acheived otherwise, and I can't deny feeling a little frustration with myself for not just GOING BIG and doing the Tartine recipe. It would have, from start to finish, taken the same amount of time. But hey. We're cool. This is a delicious, DELICIOUS dough - please try a scrap of the dough, uncooked, because you'll really get such a hit of buttery, fermented flavors that just 'sproing' off the tongue.

And the finished products are gorgeous - visible, pronounced layers, a high rise and they keep their figures well, for the most part. They are tasty, flaky enough to feel worth the effort and better yet, though they are packed with butter they are fresher, nicer, crisper and flakier than the kind entombed in plastic, waiting for a chance to drop down from their vending machine coils.

Elitist pastries that they are.

And then you feed the dough to the laminator!

"I was hoping to actually laminate baked goods. In plastic."

Two part post. Here we'll talk about LAMINATED DOUGH and how you can make it with your hand mixer. Because, like the pioneers before me, I don't own a stand mixer. I almost bought one a few years back, but decided not to - I see it as something that, though beautiful and lusty, I do not know enough about my future locations to warrant the purchase of one, because I don't know if I'll want to, or be able to, lug it along with me.

For the most part, I don't morn it - my Cuisineart, a huge beast that I don't use as much as I should, and hand mixer are more than adequate.

This leads to low self-esteem, though, when faced with recipes that specifically call for the use of one. I haven't made marshmallows, or many of the breads and fancier frostings. But this summer, I made traditional buttercream with my hand mixer and realized that there was a CD of motivational songs and a sweatband in my future - I was going to try to conquer more recipes with my hand mixer, and the big one on my list was croissants.

Just great. Just great.

I would like to hang these in my bathroom (Caitlin Shearer/Pepperminte on Etsy).

She's been all over, but they're so great I can't help but post them here, too.

Little ways to make yourself crazy

New banner, new year, new face. Right? Right. If it looks all messed up, please let me know.

This is the result of pillaging DaFont.com and looking at a lot of Kara Walker pieces, after coming across one of my favorite Vogue articles, a profile on her work and life and thoughts on so many things during my exodus of magazines I have kept for too long. That is interesting to no one but me, but boom, there we go.