The Crumby Baker

Friends often ask my husband and I, "How are you not 500 pounds?" Quite honestly, I have one big rule: I don't make more sweets than the two of us can or should consume in a sitting or two. Mostly that means no whole pies or cakes, brownies, etc. unless I have someone else to share them with.

Yes, it means less projects during the year. It also makes sharing food with friends a special treat, as it should be. My momma is of course always quick to point out when the sharing train doesn't make a stop at her house, and she is the inspiration for this particular journey. My aunt used to always bring back candied figs from Guatemala and when our fig tree went into overdrive this year, producing more figs than anyone should jam and can in the heat of New Orleans summer (and keep some semblance of sanity), my mom requested I try my hand at these.

Definitely one of those best idea/worst idea suggestions. While her taste tests concluded I haven't gotten them "quite like she remembers", she keeps encouraging me to continue sending samples her way until I've gotten it right. Ever the crafty one, my momma. ;) They. Are. So. Good. It's truly testing my commitment to the sharing rule because I just keep eating them all. I eventually plan to dip some in chocolate too, if any of them make it that far... In the grand scheme, this recipe is quite simple: cook figs in sugar; dry them out. But the whole process does require quite a bit of time and patience.


Candied Figs
Ingredients
1 pint of ripe fresh figs, washed with stems removed*
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup water

*Use figs that are ripe but whole and intact, without any bruising or skin blemishes.

Instructions
1. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, line up figs in a single layer and cover with sugar and water. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring often. The figs should be suspended in the syrup. Let boil for about a minute and remove from heat. Cover and set aside until cooled. Repeat process, leaving them to sit covered overnight. Repeat heat and cool cycle until skins are brown and look semi-translucent. 
2. Using a slotted spoon, remove from syrup and evenly space figs on a dehydrator rack. Reserve syrup for another use. Dehydrate according to your machine's manual, flipping and rotating figs until skins are dry and shriveled but the center still feels soft. Set them in a container continuing to air dry, until the skins are no longer sticky and tacky. The time it takes will largely depend on the size of the fig, with smaller ones will taking only a few hours. (For the larger varieties, I spaced 3-8 hour dehydrator sessions over one to three days.)

Crumby Notes:

• Stored in an air tight container, in a cool dry place, these will keep for quite some time. I've yet to make a batch that survives my picking for more than a week though! Check out information from the National Center for Home Food Preservation on storing dried fruit. 
• My personal preference is to let the skins air dry until you can see some of the dried syrup crusty and white on the outside, but the inside is chewy and soft. Alternately, when they are still tacky and warm straight from the dehydrator, you can roll them around in granulated sugar before setting in a container to finish air drying.
• The leftover syrup is deliciously figgy and I love it drizzled over fresh figs and yogurt for breakfast.
• This process is made easier with a dehydrator if you have one. I treated myself to this Nesco FD-80 Dehydrator when it on sale last year for around $60. My first few projects had mixed results but I was excited to put it to good use because it does take up some valuable real estate in the kitchen cabinets. I like this model's ability expand and add more trays, but the 4 included trays have served me well.
• If you don't have a dehydrator, set the figs, evenly spaced, on a cooling rack set inside a baking sheet. Dry figs in an oven set as low as it will go (mine goes down to 170F). Heat them for a few hours and turning the oven off, leaving the door cracked open over night. Check often for consistency, heating and drying as necessary. Swinging the oven door open every once in a while will help create air circulation. I've also seen people who will leave the oven cracked open with a fan pointed into the oven to circulate air.  The key here is heat and air circulation, so any way you can rig it to work for you will dictate how long the process will take. 

~Happy baking!

Spring in New Orleans is a wonderous time of the year. Ok. Alright. Anytime in New Orleans is pretty exciting...I mean we use any excuse to party, so we do it all year, but spring has it's own specialties that come in this post-Mardi Gras haze: Festival Season. Crawfish season. And another one of my favorites, strawberry season.

I've struggled with pie crust in the past. Now I've found at least one recipe/technique I really like. I've only tested the one batch so far, but I'm really pleased with the flakiness. The two secret ingredients are: vodka and lard.

I used Cook's Illustrated foolproof pie dough, which uses half water and half vodka to ensure a flaky but malleable and forgiving pastry. The vodka provides extra liquid but limits the amount of water in order to shorten the gluten bonds forming, which will give a more tender crust. I adjusted the recipe slightly and instead of shortening, I used lard I picked up from my local butcher, Cleaver & Co. Lard, like vegetable shortening is better for pastry crust because it has a lower water content than butter, which ensures a flakier crust. This recipe uses a butter/lard combo to get the best of both worlds--is it the end all be all best pastry crust recipe ever? Probably not, but it's worth trying. It's tasty and flaky. The biggest downside was despite freezing the crust before baking, neither attempt kept the shape of my pretty pie edge designs. So I'd suggest doing something pretty basic as far as finishing goes.

The pecan pie recipe is adapted from Southern Living. The original recipe didn't fill my 9-inch pie pan, so I made some quantity adjustments. If this makes too much for you, make sure to look over at their recipe. I also substituted Steen's Southern Made for the light corn syrup. This particular Steen's product is part molasses/part corn syrup, so you get some of that molassesy goodness. If you want to mix the two yourself, I'd recommend about an 80:20-ish ratio of corn syrup to molasses (almost a cup of corn syrup and about 2 tablespoons or so of regular molasses (not blackstrap). Also, I made this recipe twice so far. The first one (pictured in this gooey slice on the right/above) was just a bit under cooked and the middle didn't quite set perfectly, but it tasted delicious. The second was just a tad over cooked and set up well but didn't taste as nice, so just keep an eye out on your pie in the last 10 minutes or so and see how its doing. Again, is it the greatest pecan pie recipe of all time? Eh....it was really good but I want to try out some other recipes as well. That said, I'm still keeping this one in the memory bank for now too.

So last year's BBQ cookoff at Finn's I made these really delicious BBQ pork cupcakes. They were mindblowing in that crazy sweet and salty bbq porky kind of way and one of my favorite creations that I kind of pieced together from here and there. Since they won the cookoff last year, I felt like it would be cheating if I brought them again this year. So I set out to think up some other bbq-y desserts when I stumbled upon this lovely post from Big Butz BBQ Sauce on shortbread cookies with bacon and bbq sauce.

They sounded pretty dang cool so I incorporated the idea into my go-to shortbread recipe and I feel like the end result was a pretty cool bacony bbq cookie--salty and sweet and crumbly in your mouth deliciousness.

So I've been up to some pretty fun cake decorating projects in the past few months--all for some pretty cool guys who happen to be friends with an insane girl who loves crazy projects and big messes. It all goes back to the Crawfest Cake and the ridiculous Goonies creation. Once the guys in our group realized I'd be up for just about anything they could throw at me, the project line started...so here's a little update on what I've been working on.

I think Kevin put in his order for his groom's cake before they even had a date set! It seems like ages ago when we first talked about it so I had plenty of time to think about how I was going to pull it all together. I busted out my Nintendo NES and favorite video game of all time--Tetris--to do a bit of research and just have some fun. It was a yellow cake base with chocolate buttercream frosting and 100% cake and I'm always excited I'm able to make it work without using rice krispie treats...I always feel like that's cheating.

All of the labels and writing was hand-painted, which let me tell you took quite a bit of time a patience, but in the end I think they looked really impressive. I used my marshmallow fondant and Wilton's Sugar Sheets Edible Decorating Paper, and for the most part everything went smoothly. One of the early snafus was forgetting to order this Chefsmaster colored spray like I used for the Crawfest silver pot. Of course the shipping time would have taken too long to arrive by the time I remembered to order it, so the helpful folks at Shop Bakers Nook pointed me to this gold glaze instead. It all worked out great thanks to them, but I found I really like Duff Goldman's line much better. The colors really pop, the coverage is excellent, and they even sell it at my neighborhood grocery store now!!

As always, when it comes to projects like this, it's the details that really sell the project. The labels may have took a bit of time, but they looked really great and I spent who knows how long painting the Nintendo logo on the front of the console, but in the end I think that's what made it so awesome. Also, I collect interesting candies whenever I find them and catalog them mentally if I ever have use for them in decorating projects. Haribo licorice wheels came in quite handy for the controller cords because they had the perfect shiny gloss finish that made it look authentic.

A few notes on the Wilton sugar sheets:

• Painting the sheets with gel food coloring diluted with alcohol worked fabulously and I was able to do much of this in the week before the wedding. Being able to do this in advance was critical because it took so much attention to detail that I needed to be able to do it without the pressure of having to do the rest of the baking and building at the same time. 
• Always remember that its easy to paint dark colors over lighter colors but not not so much the other way around. 
• The sheets peel away from the plastic backing fairly easily at room temperature, but if it's hot and humid (hello, New Orleans!) well, its much harder to make them cooperate. Also if you heavily paint them, they can be a bit more fragile and delicate to handle. The easiest quick fix I found was to throw it in the freezer for about 30-60 seconds and it should come off much easier. I also found having an exacto knife near by was very helpful to get the corners started if its being stubborn.

Thanks to Kevin and Blake for being the cool cats they are and letting me make this very awesome Nintendo cake for them...and giving me the honor of making the one of a kind headpiece I whipped up for the bride.  and I couldn't be more excited to have been a part of such a legen---wait for it---dairy night.