A Frosting Secret

I love frosting. I like to make homemade as much as possible and I always used to run into this problem- I could always taste the powdered sugar once I was done...yuck!  So, while working at the St. Regis I became great friends with the pastry chef and this is what he told me is the secret to frosting--add corn syrup. It helps break down the powdered sugar (like how the milk does) without dissolving it and losing its consistency. So for today, here is my favorite frosting recipe (for now). I'm in the midst of finding/trying new recipes that are as to die for...

"PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
2/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
*2 TBL corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. *Add in 2 TBL corn syrup and beat about 20 sec longer. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla. About 2 cups frosting.

*My addition to the recipe.

Secret to honey butter

Since having moved to Utah I have found that I love honey butter. I bought some at the farmer's market in Park City last summer and fell in love. Local honey is fantastic for you and let's be real about how you can't go wrong with anything that includes butter. I told our pastry chef how excited I was about getting this, only to learn that the kind I bought was made wrong. Made wrong? Yes, made wrong. The incorrect way of making honey butter is to melt the butter and honey together, mix it, and let it firm up. It's just all wrong.

Here is the right way:
I like my honey butter extra sweet, so I portion mine with about 60% honey to 40% butter. Then, and this is crucial, when mixing the honey and butter, do not melt/heat it. It kills all of the great properties in the honey. Mix them together with the butter at room temperature using a flat paddle attachment (which causes a fluffier, yummier end result) instead of using a typical whisk-like attachment. By attachment, I mean if you're using a Kitchenaid or similar appliance. A flat paddle attachment causes more air to be beaten in to the butter and it makes it fluffier, though a standard hand mixer or whisk can be used.

 

Wire whisk (above) vs. flat paddle (below)

Pancake Secrets

Ok everyone, so I've been a little busy, let's take it easy. Before I was pregnant, and perhaps always, I have had this love for pancakes. It comes and goes but sometimes all I want to eat is pancakes. And not just quick out-of-the-box pancakes, but real homemade pancakes. Last winter I seriously made homemade pancakes twice a week. Working at the St. Regis has made me love breakfast food since I'm always around it and their pancakes are to die for (I got the recipe once, but my conversion from grams to regular measuring didn't work out so well, so I'm not posting the recipe quite yet).

Whenever it's slow at work I try to hang out with the chefs in the exhibition kitchen. They're all pretty cool guys and are willing to answer all of my silly questions, or just chat. One day the question came up: What's the secret to good pancakes?

And here it is:

Cook them 75% on one side then 25% on the other side instead of the usual 50/50. This helps the pancakes to rise better and become more fluffy than if you had cooked them evenly on both sides. Genius, who knew?!

Use room temperature eggs and buttermilk. I never would have thought of this, but when you're adding butter to homemade pancakes you don't want it to ball up because the eggs and buttermilk are too cold.

And don't overmix the batter (heard that a million times).

Selling Secrets

Alright everyone, here it is, the launch of my new segment Selling Secrets. Lately I've (and by "I" I really mean that people have been giving me great advice lately) come up with all of these great "secrets" that have come incredibly handy and I thought I should share. To me Selling Secrets sounds catchy, even though technically I'm not selling anything. So buckle up because here we go!

Selling Secrets volume 1

Brenan and I have a very interesting living arrangement. Our sofa was too big to fit into our "office" (which has really become a storage room/ pre-nursery area) for an office/living room area. Since it doesn't fit we had to move our TV elsewhere. This is a slight debacle when you consider the size of our room. Our 4-poster bed is in the middle of the room, nightstands on each side, with a dresser in one corner and a book shelf in the other. To top it all off  we have a large dresser at the end of our bed, giving us only about 3 1/2 feet clearance to the wall. We're crammed. So naturally, the TV went on the end of the bed on top of the huge dresser, with the Playstation and cable box. Super crammed. One night, out of no genius to me, we had a candle lit at the end of the bed as well (yes, though Brenan won't admit it, we both LOVE Bath & Body Works candles). As Brenan rounded the corner to the small little walk way, he bumped the TV which then bumped the candle and it did a flip onto our bed. Luckily it didn't catch fire, but it did leave wax all over my new coverlet. The thing about these candles is that they have a lot more scented oil in the wax than most candles, so naturally, it is a lot harder to peel off because the wax becomes mushy instead of waxy hard. After hours, yes hours, of scraping waxy gunk off of my new blanket with a spoon (suggested by a Google search) I was ready to wash it. 

Here's the secret:

When trying to get wax out of fabric wash it with a can of Coke and powdered Tide. 

Don't want to buy a full box of powdered Tide? Go to your local laundromat and buy a single serve box for $1.

Who knew.