So thanks to Andrew’s constant harassing I’m updating this thing. My über web talented fiancé extraordinaire is currently redoing my website with a much more “me” palatte (gray ain’t really my style) so i’ve kind of left this blog to die til then. But after daily comments about “I’m tired of seeing the goofy cake” I gave in. So a short but sweet I’m alive type post.

So what’s new? Wedding obviously. Going home in a week and a half for good ol Morrison family debauchery and a weekend of running around with cake and invitations and dresses. You’d think I made enough other peoples wedding cakes that I’d have a vague idea of what I’d want…nope. So that’ll be interesting. I can’t wait.

Since Andrew enjoys tasty things I post here ya go- petit fours I made a while back with white cake and amaretto buttercream. Pain to make and my kitchen looked like I dipped it in fondant but pretty and yummy.

I made a coconut genoise cake for Kate’s birthday. She hid it at her desk all day and in the late afternoon decided to share it. I found good dessicated coconut for the sides which was good.

Best picture I have on my phone in recent months- what they do to me at work. Being the only girl with lots of hair to play with, one supervisor figured out a couch cushion (yes the whole big cushion) rubbed violently on my head made my hair look funny. This was amusing to him for an easy half an hour. Talk about a bitch to brush out after the fact!

So for now the pictures will be clumped at the bottom I think til I dig open wordpress. And with that I have new renders that I have to push through comp in an hour. Be back soon. Promise.

Here’s 2 miscellaneous baking tasks I make recently. One of my bridesmaids, Kate, has an adorable 2 year old neice named Ruby. I was her official cake baker for her 1st birthday so naturally, she gets more Jessica cake for her 2nd! I made Kate’s wedding cake as well as other baked goods over the years so I like to just think of myself as her families personal baker

Anyways, Ruby adores Goofy (a child after my own heart with Disney!) So I made a rather large white cake marbled with strawberry. The top I did a hand drawn buttercream transfer of Goofy’s face. From the pictures I saw she just loved it!

Round 2 of my baking adventures was more of a cleaning the pantry and found random things to cook type situation. I found some almond flour (but come on, its more like an almond meal. You pay enough for it, you’d think they could properly grind the stuff for you!) But I had plenty to make a batch of macarons. So After some digging I settled on pink shells with a hint of cheesecake flavoring. The filling was a cheesecake buttercream with a tiny dollop of leftover homemade strawberry jam from last summer. I fought the urge and only tasted one but oh man were they yummy! The smell from the box I brought them to work in was heavenly and I was literally attacked for them…I think they lasted half an hour before they were flat out gone and I had a yummy smelling Tupperware box left behind to sniff all day!

I’ve noticed I’ve become more and more lazy in my picture taking. Why pull out my camera, take a picture then plug it in, load it, etc when I could just snap one on my iphone and use it instantly? Sigh..I’ll get better I promise.

Macarons Help available here (click)
(recipe from the always perfect Tartlette)
For the Shells: (makes about 20-30 depending on size)

3 egg whites (I like to use 1-2 day old egg whites)
50 gr. granulated sugar
200 gr. powdered sugar
110 gr. almonds

a few drops pink food coloring

a drop or so Lorann candy oil in cheesecake
For the whites: the day before (24hrs), separate your eggs and store the whites at room temperature in a covered container. If you want to use 48hrs (or more) egg whites, you can store them in the fridge. In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites to a foam, gradually add the sugar until you obtain a glossy meringue. Do not overbeat your meringue or it will be too dry and your macarons won’t work. Combine the almonds and powdered sugar in a food processor and give them a good pulse until the nuts are finely ground. Pass through a sieve. Add them to the meringue, give it a quick fold to break some of the air and then fold the mass carefully until you obtain a batter that flows like magma or a thick ribbon. Give quick strokes at first to break the mass and slow down. The whole process should not take more than 50 strokes. Test a small amount on a plate: if the tops flattens on its own you are good to go. If there is a small beak, give the batter a couple of turns. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809) with the batter and pipe small rounds (1.5 inches in diameter) onto parchment paper baking sheets. Preheat the oven to 300F. Let the macarons sit out for an hour to harden their shells a bit and bake for 12-15 minutes, depending on their size. Let cool. If you have trouble removing the shells, pour a couple of drops of water under the parchment paper while the sheet is still a bit warm and the macarons will lift up more easily do to the moisture. Don’t let them sit there in it too long or they will become soggy. Pipe or spoon some buttercream on one shell and sandwich with another one. One tip I read is that if you use fresh whites, zap them up in the microwave on medium high for 20 seconds to mimic the aging process.

Cheesecake Buttercream
1 stick room temperature unsalted butter

a few drops to taste of Lorann candy oil in cheesecake (I love these for adding a little bit of very unique flavors to treats. The marshmallow is always a hit and no one can quite place what they’re tasting!)

enough powdered sugar tobeat into the butter to make a thick buttercream

A few drops of milk as needed to thin

To assemble, pipe a blob of buttercream on a shell followed by a tiny drop of strawberry jam in the center. Top with another shell.

So I made my king cake for 2009. If anyone recalls last year was not as I had hoped. I made a praline filling and it got hard, then goopy in the middle from making the candy. Tasted good but not what I was going for. Most New Orleanian’s I know swear solely on McKenzie’s now extinct plain king cake. It was spongy, cakey, bready…all sorts of things mixed together to make a VERY plain but somehow incredibly yummy, satisfying Mardi Gras treat.

SO, going off of mistakes of last year I figured I’d work this simple. McKenzie’s claimed to use a simple but good brioche for their recipe. So, I’ll make brioche. But a damn good brioche, so I went off of Pierre Herme’s Brioche recipe which is regarded as one of the best.

There are brioche lovers out there and I mean people that will flip for it! Me….eh. I’d rather have cake or plain bread. Brioche is a waste of calories (which believe you me, there are tons in this!) and just not a flavor I enjoyed. Plus it stales VERY quickly.

Brioche is a sweet bread made with excessive amounts of butter and eggs and some sugar making for a slightly sweet, buttery yummy yellow soft bread…I state my case that I don’t like eggs. Never have. I love to cook them, but not eat them. Just never liked the taste of egg. This brioche I followed the recipe to the T and it is VERY eggy tasting, which was my main gripe over it. It was very rich but on its own, not drenched in purple green and gold sugar? It would fall flat for me. Next year Im going with a coffee cake recipe.

Pierre Herme’s Brioche

500g strong white flour (bread flour)
12.5g fresh yeast (google the subsituation of active dry- thats what I did)
50g caster sugar (I upped it to 150g and it still wasn’t barely sweet)
7 eggs
1 tsp salt
400g unsalted butter, at room temperature

for the glaze
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp caster sugar

(note- I didn’t use a glaze here- just brushed on milk, which will make it more tender)

Pour the flour into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Ass the crumbled fresh yeast and sugar. Mix on medium speed and add four eggs. Mix again then add the 3 remaining eggs, one at a time.
Once the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl, add the salt and the butter cut into small pieces. The dough is ready when it comes away cleanly from the sides of the bowl again.
Transfer the dough to a large bowl, cover with cling film and leave at room temperature for 2-3 hours. Lift the sticky dough and place it on a lightly floured surface. Punch down the dough with your fist and put it back into the bowl. Cover with cling film again and place in the fridge for 1 1/4 hours. Press down the dough to check if it has risen agan, then remove it to the work surface and gently punch down to deflate.

Butter four 18 x 9cm loaf tins. Divide the dough into four equal pieces, then divide each portion into four. Roll each piece of dough into a ball on a non-floured surface. Set four balls closely side by side into a tin. Repeat with the remaining dough.
Leave at room temperature until it has doubled in size. Brush with glaze (just mix everything).
Using a pair of scissors, cut a cross in each ball. Bake into the oven, preheated to 180°C for 25 minutes, until well risen and golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

In my case, I did everything til the shaping. Then I formed it into a ring for the final proof and covered it in the sugars before baking. I hid the baby in afterwards, of course!

I am currently sitting here with big puffy chipmunk cheeks…I gave in and finally got my wisdom teeth removed. Overall not as bad an experience as I thought. My lip and chin are (a day later) totally numb still and without the meds, there is a ton of pain, but right now I’m nice and drugged up. So, what better to do on a day off of work then catch up on months of blogging?

Had a few recipes I tried and wanted to share the results so read on and enjoy.

I’m on a plane right now back to cold uninviting Detroit. I’m leaving warm, sunny amazing new Orleans. I’m iPhone typing and too slow as it is to worry about typos. You understand.
I was looking out the window taking off and as the plane was rising we flew over lake ponchartrain- dirty nasty lake that it is. And something looked different. It was…pretty. I mean it’s still a gross mess but the sun is shining sky is clear and blue and the water was clear! I could see the shelf as it got deeper! That’s me we happened but I saw it and then a perfect v of pelicans flew right under where I was looking. It was perfect. I could see the causeway and knew my dad was on it right then driving home from the airport and found myself mad at the plane for not flying closer so I could see him. I didn’t stop looking out that window til I was beyond certain no part of Louisiana I knew was visible. And when we could still see the causeway-not even flew to the northshore yet-the lady came on that we could use iPods and things. Again I was mad at the plane! Show some respect- were not even gone and you’re saying we can forget where we were and move on? Never.
I love it here too much. This weekend I got a snoball and almost cried it tasted so good. I sat on the tree stumps at sal’s snoballs with my parents just like I did as a child and I wished I was a kid again. I was so sad that I had a job and things, adult things, I had to ever leave for. It feels like getting to go to Neverland but then leaving over and over. It’s terrible.
I was home to do wedding planning. My mom and dad and I ran around to the lady redoing my grandma’s dress top and to the florist, who is a lovely lovely lady. We had fun. I ate shrimp and crab and catfish. I drank a Barq’s red cream soda. We tried the champagne were having at the wedding. It was perfect, although far too short.
I have a wonderful fiancé waiting at the airport for me when I land and he is the only reason I had to make myself say ” ok let’s go to the airport.” otherwise, forget it. I’ll move back here thank you very much. Seriously if anyone ever said they don’t like new Orleans or the people from here I’d punch them square on the mouth. I’m far too attached. And it always makes me cry to leave. Why don’t I live closer?? I’d give ANYTTHING to live within driving distance of my family.

We all know what time of year it is. Its Mardi Gras time! My favorite time of the year. Mardi Gras is less than a week away and last year I attempted to make a McKenzie’s style king cake. It was…ok. Looking back on it, I could have gotten closer. So this year is round 2. King cake is just brioche, right? (Sweet, very rich bread) So why not make the best brioche I can and and toss on some sugar on top, and boom, I should have a king cake fit for this discerning king cake palate. So Im going with Pierre Hermes rich man’s brioche with LOTS of butter and eggs. Only hiccup is Detroit and it’s surrounding areas inability to stock fresh yeast in its stores. Ah well, I shall make due. But, assuming all goes well I’ll make a NO FILLING brioche style king cake. Colored sprinkles/ cherries on the ends and all. Stay tuned.

I love a lot of food blogs. One of the best things Doug ever showed me was google reader-I love it. All my blogs at the click of a mouse.

Well today I left work saying “I saw the most beautiful lemon tart online…I must make it!” So I did. Smitten Kitchen- I would trust my kitchen in your hands anyday…such delicious desserts. So I saw a beautiful lemon tart on her site and even with my hesitance to the recipe- the lemon element is literally a whole lemon rind pith and all- I had to make it.

Wow. That’s all. A few hours later I have a perfect replica of her lemon tart on my stove and Doug and I anxious to eat. I covered it in a fresh raspberry sauce I made and we dug in…

YUCK!

I like to think I have a fairly refined palate. Especially with baked goods. Well, half a bottle of prosecco later and I still can’t get the taste of lemon pith out of my mouth. I worried about that in the recipe- grinding up a whole lemon- but trusted the recipe. wrong move. I described it to Doug as that taste and feeling in your mouth right after you throw up…just bitter bitter and dries your mouth to the core. The tart looks perfect and initally tastes sweet flaky and yummy. Til you swallow, then hellloooo bitter city.

So what’s the point? Well I still love reading Smitten Kitchen but I’ll leave my lemon tart fillings for lemon curd not a ground up lemon- nasty bitter part and all. I feel so sad…a beautiful tart and I cant bear to feed it to anyone. Your fate should be better than a trashcan, tart, and I’m sorry.

I gotta give props where props are due. GumboPages, you haven’t ever let me down. Its a good site for basic New Orleans recipes. I highly recommend the site. But, last night I needed to make something I had never considered making myself before, even with a lifetime of Italian raised-ness: The Muffaletta.

There’s a little Italian place down the street from where I work. They have a muff they guarantee you’ll love. I got it and was digging through rock hard bread going “Where’s the olive salad?” It was some ground up black olive paste stuff more resembling tapenade. Suffice to say, I did not like their muffaletta.

A muff, for people not from my neck of the woods, is a deliciously bad for you sandwich about the size of your head. Its a loaf of seeded italian bread, about a pound and a half of Italian meats and cheeses (provolone, mozzarella, hard salami, mortadella, and ham) topped with heaps of olive salad. Olive salad is key. Its composed of a variety of pickled veggies, peppers and capers and then packed with a ton of big green and black olives (not the grocery store jarred kind of olives- I’m talking fat, Greek olives and big ol green ones like you find in the olive section at the grocery) All of this gets mixed together, spices thrown in and enough good olive oil dumped on it to make it look almost like a bizarre soup. The recipe for the best olive salad is a closely guarded secret of Central Grocery, a little Italian store in the French Quarter that’s been making them since before I can think. When we were home for thanksgiving, I didn’t get one cause Central closes on Sundays. Guess what day we went to the Quarter.
So, I wanted one last night. Bad. I found GumboPages recipe for olive salad that is as close to the ingredients as I could remember from eating them as a kid. I made it. My kitchen reeks of green olives and olive oil now. I got all the meats and cheeses and some Italian bread knockoff I could find at the store (looked like ciabatta.) I’d take a picture of the leftovers if there were any. I offered a hunk to anybody willing to try it and most liked it. I did. So, I figured I’d post the recipe for olive salad for anybody out there in need of one as I was:

Courtesy of GumboPages (http://www.gumbopages.com/food/samwiches/muff.html):

This is not just a bunch of cold cuts and cheese. Anyone can make that. That’s not to say that the meats and cheeses aren’t important — they are. You can get good quality Italian meats and cheeses in most good supermarkets, but you’d be better off at an Italian market (especially for the mortadella, which isn’t always easy to find at a conventional supermarket.
To make this, you need two very important ingredients — the bread, and the olive salad. In a pinch any good Italian bread will do, but for an authentic muffuletta you need a muffuletta loaf. It’s round, usually sesame-seeded and about 10 inches in diameter. I’m told that many New Orleans muffuletterias (a new word I just made up) get their bread at Angelo Gendusa’s bakery. If you want a Liuzza’s-style “Frenchuletta”, use a good light-bodied crispy-crusted French bread. Then … the olive salad. The Holy Grail of sandwich fillings.
The olive salad recipe is the Number One single most-requested recipe on The Gumbo Pages.
While Central Grocery do not give out their muffuletta olive salad recipe, lots of folks have tried to duplicate it, with varying degrees of success. I’ve been saying for years now that I’m going to get a jar of olive salad from Central and reverse-engineer it, but until then, this will do quite nicely.
New Orleanian cook and cookbook author Chiqui Collier was kind enough to share this recipe with me for this site, and says, “It is my pleasure to send you the recipe for the original muffletta sandwich that was created by the grandfather of a lady i worked with 28 years ago.” (Presumably that was Signor Salvadore.)
“The recipe for the olive salad is the exact way it was given to me. It makes over a gallon, but since your comments indicate that you love it, i’m sure you won’t want to cut it down. It stores very well in the refrigerator for many months and makes great gifts along with the recipe for the sandwich. It does appear in my cookbook, “Cookery N’Orleans Style”
• For the olive salad:
• 1 gallon large pimento stuffed green olives, slightly crushed and well drained
• 1 quart jar pickled cauliflower, drained and sliced
• 2 small jars capers, drained
• 1 whole stalk celery, sliced diagonally
• 4 large carrots, peeled and thinly sliced diagonally
• 1 small jar celery seeds
• 1 small jar oregano
• 1 large head fresh garlic, peeled and minced
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 jar pepperoncini, drained (small salad peppers) left whole
• 1 pound large Greek black olives
• 1 jar cocktail onions, drained
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl or pot and mix well. Place in a large jar and cover with 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 Crisco oil. Store tightly covered in refrigerator. Allow to marinate for at least 24 hours before using.
• For the sandwich:
• 1 round loaf italian bread
• 1/4 pound mortadella, thinly sliced
• 1/4 pound ham, thinly sliced
• 1/4 pound hard Genoa salami, thinly sliced
• 1/4 pound Mozzarella cheese, sliced
• 1/4 pound Provolone cheese,sliced
• 1 cup olive salad with oil
Split a muffuletta loaf or a loaf of Italian bread horizontally. Spread each half with equal parts of olive salad and oil. Place meats and cheeses evenly on bottom half and cover with top half of bread. Cut in quarters. Enjoy!
Serves four timid dieters, two hearty New Orleanians or one incredible maiale.

Tell me you’re not hungry now?!

Even with my mom doing so much of the planning…what a whirlwind of stuff to plan. Registries to make (ahem…Douglas?) bridesmaid dresses to pick, flowers, cake…CAKE. Don’t get me started on cake. I’m too much of a cake snob and will just terrorize the poor decorators on our cakes.

Hmm..well, what updates then? Andrew Marcec (Mr. Manager) is our most awesome best man, and my brothers Jarrod and Jayson are the groomsmen. Katie White is the best maid of honor ever (no one could fill her sassy shoes!) Kate Newman and my longtime friend Rachael (seriously…like were at 2 decades now) are my bridesmaids. It will be at the fabulous Sacred Heart chapel and followed by an amazingly yummy dinner at Antoine’s (Doug’s new favorite restaurant with steak so good it almost made him cry!) Cake and flowers…no clue yet.

Dress is of course my Grammy’s amazing dress. It’s behind a bunch of debutantes and Mardi Gras queens to get cleaned then I get to go home and get a new top built. It’s going to weigh literally a ton but it will be so beautiful. My grammy had a gorgeous bouquet of orchids and my mom tried to get the same one (hers had orchids but different ones) and I know I want my bouquet to match both of theirs.

Honeymoon has been discussed and I think we’re thinking a little over a week touring around Italy.

I can’t wait. So, in the very near future, we get to talk to the priest up here to do marriage prep and a little after hopefully I can drag Doug to get registered and start looking at wedding bands together.

Ahhh…so thats where the Hogan wedding is at for the time being…I shall keep everyone posted (all 2 people who read this)

Oh, and our sweet cat Toby is getting declawed tomorrow (we put it off and tried everything but after he ripped down the blinds yesterday it was enough.) I’ve just never seen a cat who can’t control his claws. It has to hurt, so they’re going bye-bye. So good luck Tob-cat. We love you and your not so bright ways.

I’m ENGAGED!

Finally! Doug proposed on friday night and now we are so happy and overwhelmed with phonecalls and emails and…were getting married! I couldn’t be happier right now if I tried! That goofball got down on one knee after a huge fancy birthday dinner and asked me. It was perfect. PERFECT. What a better way to celebrate Christmas now than with my future in-laws and in a week, with Doug’s parents and mine all together up here in Michigan! That’s going to be insane and fun. I’m really that giddy girl on cloud 9 right now!

So with that, Merry Christmas and I hope everyone has a wonderful start of 2009 (If I don’t write here first!)