Welcome Super Online Sewing Match Readers!

Hi to folks from Sew Mama Sew! I'm Kristina, and I'm a contestant in this year's Super Online Sewing Match.  AW YEAH MAYNE.  (Major props to Kathleen for encouraging me to audition--thanks lady!)

It's me!  Dress is McCall's 6012 (vintage pattern)

I'm a little frightened and a lot excited to begin the competition. I've been sewing clothes and quilts for nearly five years now, but I usually do so pretty privately. When I first began sewing I shared about it here, but lately I really have been keeping things to myself.

Giant Starburst quilt, 2015 (inspired by a mini from Canoe Ridge Creations)

 

This year, though, I participated in Me Made May via Instagram (find me @kehdeebee) and I found it really interesting to post my work and be able to take a good look at the body of it, as well as get feedback from people I don't already know. (I fear my coworkers and friends and family are terribly indulgent towards me.) this, plus the encouragement of a fellow CJMQG member, gave me the courage to try.  

I'm hoping and expecting to learn a lot by participating in this contest, and Who knows--maybe I can help some of you, too!  So read around, hit up the archives, get a baked treat, make yourselves comfy.  I hope we'll be hanging out for a good while this summer ☺️

Lekala 4315 tie-collar dress

Onward and upward!

--Kristina, aka miss kate

Non-apologies

I hate it when people spend lots of time apologizing for not blogging, so I'm not gonna do it.

Suffice it to say I haven't been doing much domestic activity lately, so there hasn't been much to share.  It's been an unreasonably cold and grey winter here, and, probably in an attempt to bring warm, pleasant, hey-let's-go-out-and-DO-something weather to the region, I've been spending a LOT of time on my athletic hobbies of late.  One--swimming--is going VERY well.  I love my instructor/coach and the venue is very supportive--when I take class it's only other adults in the pool, and we have a great time. I think I am improving by leaps and bounds.  Every week I can tell I am a stronger swimmer than the week before.  I look forward to class and am reluctant to leave, and that's heartening and surprising for a person who decided ten years ago, after struggling for a year to swim competently, that she perhaps simply didn't like water.

The other--skating--well, I WAS making a great deal of progress this year but have had to change locations and instructors, and I'm not really making much progress right now.  The things I need to work on are very difficult to practice at public skating, and I'm still not far along enough to be eligible to skate during Freestyle hours.  I think I am rapidly approaching something of a crossroads with skating now--I've been doing this for several years, and I think I should perhaps be farther along than I am.  I am trying to decide if I should push forward to private coaching, but even finding out any info on how to do that is more difficult than it should be.  Or deciding whether it's worth it.  If I don't want to ultimately start testing*, then it might not be.  But I don't know if I want to test without more consistent instruction and getting over the hump on a few more elements.

It's very hard to get good consistent instruction, especially as an adult skater.  Folks tend to assume you're only on the ice to keep from being completely bored while your kid is in lessons, which is not my situation at all.  It's true that there are a lot of people in the classes for that reason initially, but in my experience the vast majority of those people want to learn, too!  Without a clear path to progress, though--adult classes so often feel like an afterthought, even though there are official curricula just like in the kids' classes--many of them simply fall by the wayside when a session ends or kids start the next season's sport or work gets busy--they don't have much incentive to keep pushing.  end rant.

So that's where I've been--at the skating rink or the pool, most days of the week.  I'm not apologizing for that, though I do worry some (hopefully without cause) that my domestic skills AND my writing skills are deteriorating.  I've only made one thing in the past month--a little near-instant-gratification clothing project that I'll show soon. 

*in order to participate in US Figure Skating Association competitions, you have to pass a battery of tests to demonstrate proficiency.  The tests are divided into levels.  Each level passed makes you eligible to enter certain competitions.  (You can go here for more info.)

Surfacing again--finish #4: BurdaStyle 02/2011 #101

*blows dust off blog*

Boy.  I'm kind of surprised Blogger hasn't revoked my blog-owning privileges.  It has, indeed, been a very long time.  Being crazy, insane, absurd busy (I'm really starting to hate that word) at work meant no energy for cooking or sewing.  After the last post, I only completed one other sewing project in 2013 (though I made a few more):  a dress I made for a tea party in September.  Check it:

The dress is a very simple one from a BurdaStyle magazine pattern.  The bodice has cap sleeves and is lined with cotton batiste, and the skirt is just your basic gathered rectangle skirt.   I'd made the bodice lining way back in the summer of 2012 and never got around to finishing the dress.  So when I found myself needing something for a tea party, I figured why not finish this?  Since I'd made the lining I'd already tweaked the fit.

I only got to wear the dress once, due to it being late September and getting too chilly right after.  So I didn't get to test it too much, though it did withstand hours of eating and tea-drinking and chatting quite well.

If I ever make this again, however, I think I'd like to move the zipper from the side to the center back.  Side zippers are a pain. in. the. butt for the large-busted.  Every time I am afraid I'm gonna get stuck in that thing.  And why have a center back seam if you're not gonna put a zipper in it?

But I've already finished a few things for 2014!  Those will be next :-)

Recently: Fresh Strawberry and Marshmallow Tarte

So as of last night, I've been added to the blogroll of the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild (of which I am now a member).  I'm not sure how many of the members actually read blogs, but I figure I should start back to providing actual content in this here space.  So first a few catchup posts.

I started this blog with a vague sense of recording domestic-y things, and most importantly, a desire to participate in the now-completed "Tuesdays with Dorie" project, a years-long bakealong that took I don't know how many home bakers across the US and the world through Dorie Greenspan's Baking:  From My Home to Yours.  When I started with TWD, I was home full-time, on a year-long research fellowship in rural Pennsylvania.  I needed something fun and fulfilling to do on a regular basis to focus on and to distract me from all the other tomfoolery going on (or not going on, as the case may be) in my life, and Tuesdays with Dorie was it for me.  The year ended, and I was fortunate to land another position, but this position is a full-time office based job, and I now live in an apartment with a small, dark kitchen, no air conditioning, and little cabinet space.  It became hard to keep up with the recipes, but I tried to bake and post whenever I could, and so limped on till the project was over.  The group began a new book when we completed Baking..., but I knew I couldn't commit to the new book, which had even more ambitious recipes than this one, so I very reluctantly decided to bow out.

So without that, I didn't really have much I wanted to share.  I share my successfully completed sewing projects on Facebook.  I haven't been baking very much and haven't done a proper decorated cake in about 2 years (though I did do up some cookies for a bake sale last fall).  I don't think my baking will increase much, at least until I get a kitchen more amenable to it, but occasionally I am commissioned to do something, and that leads me to today's project.

I was invited to a Bastille Day party last month, and decided after some thought that I wanted to bring something very French.  Enter this tart from Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets cookbook--her version of a tart served at Laduree, the famous Parisian bakery and tearoom. I spent a few days slowly putting it together, but it restored my faith in my baking abilities.

First, I made a vanilla bean creme patisserie.  There is a local dairy that sells milk at outrageously low prices, and they have this product I've never seen anywhere before:   superrich (richer than whole milk!) milk.

It is the BEST for making milky things like custards, pastry creams, rice pudding, and so on.  I only wish it came in quarts--I cannot bring myself to drink it--but at $1.99 a half-gallon I suppose I cannot complain much. 

The cream was easy enough to make--standard pastry cream.  In addition to the milk, it also had a nice quantity of butter to be mixed in.  Yay calcium!

vanilla bean cream with its first addition of butter

This went in the fridge while I set about making the strawberry-orangeflower marshmallows.
I've made marshmallows once before, a few years ago.  I remember being pleasantly surprised at how easy they are--really, the mixer does all the work for you--

make sugar syrup

whip up egg whites and add sugar syrup and gelatin to make meringue

fold in flavorings--here I used strawberry puree I found in the Latino frozen foods aisle, and orange-flower water

spread out in a pan and let cool for a day.

--but thinking they were too sweet.  This time, per Dorie's instructions, I dusted them with potato starch instead of powdered sugar.  This helped.  However, they developed a weird gelatinous layer at the bottom that I had to slice off.  It was pretty humid out, so I think the weather was not in my favor, but everyone said they liked them, even when I brought the extras to work a couple days later. 

Now on to the shell.  I've used Dorie's recipe for years now, so I always go to it--it rarely fails me.  It's a delightful shortbready crust, and I use almond flour for part of the flour to give it a little extra yum.  You
basically dump everything in the food processor and blitz BRIEFLY, then pat out and freeze.  Then bake.

dough in processor

dough in buttered tin

all patted out!  I like to roll it out but it was too sticky (See:air conditioing, no) so I just went with it.)

cover with buttered foil and freeze

bake from the freezer.  Dorie says you don't need weights when you bake the crust from frozen, but I beg to differ--I've never gotten anything but headaches when I've tried it, so I always figure weighting doesn't hurt anything.

baked crust, ready to fill!  Mine shrunk a bit, but I don't care.  

 The day of the party, all I did was bake the crust and fill it.

I cut up the pretty pink marshmallow block.

I arranged the strawberries in a pan to get an idea of how to pack them in!

Fill the crust with the creme patisserie and spread over some of the berries, macerated with a bit of sugar and mashed.

Cram on halved berries and brush with redcurrant jam

Dot with marshmallows!

It was a hit at the party--so much so that I never got a chance to have any!  It also reminded me of how much I love tarts, so I made myself a lemon tart (my FAVORITE) the next week.  I'll have to see if I have pix of that...

'sup.

I haven't forgotten about this space.  I'm just at a point where I'm not sure what to say on it.

I'm still keeping up with Tuesdays with Dorie, more or less, but I have become one of those annoying people who only gets around to two of the recipes each month.  And then I often don't get around to posting about them.  Last year, I had time to go hunt for ingredients and spend all day baking and try a recipe over the course of a few days and take decent photos and alla that.  Now...well...not so much.  Sometimes I have everything but never get around to the recipe (like this week's Pots de Creme, or the madeleines of a few weeks ago, for which I bought a brand new pan!)  I kinda hate when I visit other TWD blogs and all there is is a picture and a line or two to say "oh, it was good,"--to me, if we are gonna bake together, I want to see the process and hear about how it worked out for you.  But anyhow, I'm trying to decide whether to continue with that.  We're well along in the book, and I really enjoy being forced challenged to try stuff I wouldn't otherwise, either because I think it seems unappealing or difficult or the directions require that I have 36 people in my kitchen ready to consume the week's delicacy minutes from the oven.

But if I'm not posting about that, then what?

la la la

*taps mic* Is this thing on?

I'm on the road yet again, traversing my beloved Southeastern US, so no TWD post today.  Still deciding whether to do so later in the week.    In the meantime, you can find other bakers here!

TWD: OMG MEGA POST: February is Kind of a Wack Month, Anyway

So just as I started picking up some occasional readers on this here blog, I get ghost.  Not altogether atypical of me, but as a blog reader, I do so hate that!  There really hasn't been much going on (besides a general complete and utter lack of motivation to do much of anything--your hostess is Not At Her Best these days), and I have been keeping up with TWD;  just not always in time to post for Tuesday. 

So today--even though it's late--I'm gonna do a catchup post on the last three TWD entries*, all of which were cookies, so of course I made them all, and I've got the dough in the fridge to show for it.  Enjoy!

1.  Brownies for Julia

My very first substantial post here at OC was about brownies.  I love brownies, but (surprise surprise) I am very particular about them.  I don't care for brownies masquerading as cake, nor do I like squares of frosting or fudge pretending to be brownies.  The post gave my favorite recipe, an old one from the 1950ish Betty Crocker Cookbook.  These brownies, to me, are perfect--shiny-topped, nice and easy to cut and sticky-chewy chocolate goodness--basic box brownie consistency but a 100% better taste. 

I was a little iffy when I saw TWD posts describing these brownies as "gooey", and also when I saw the rather intensive process involved in making them.  But I signed up for this group for a reason--to challenge myself to try the recipes I might not ordinarily gravitate towards.  So I bought the chocolate and off I went.

I did a half recipe in an 8x8 pan.  I lined it with parchment to avoid sticking.

I also baked them a little longer than the directions called for.  The edges were good and cookie-like;  the middle was squishier but still had some texture to it.  

Verdict:  good.  Very buttery, some chewiness; the more fudgy sections in the middle were still edible enough.  I was glad I used the half-recipe-in-similar-pan edit;  if I had twice the batter I think they would have been too fudgy to be edible for me.  I don't think these will replace my BCC recipe in the everyday repetoire--for one thing, they are too fussy--but they might get a repeat viewing if I want a slightly different brownie.

2.  My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

If I am exacting about brownies, it stands to reason that I'm exacting about chocolate chip cookies, too.  Like my brownies, I like them chewy and buttery. I also like a HEALTHY dose of brown sugar and salt--to me, it's those things that make chocolate chip cookies exciting and addictively delicious, not the chips, which I really often think people go overboard with. 

Looking over this recipe, it's a lot like the basic Toll House recipe, the one I usually use, but with a decreased brown-to-white sugar ratio and more exacting directions.  There's really not much to say about putting them together--chocolate chip cookies are about the most basic things ever.  My only real tweaks:  I did go for full salt, I added about a cup of walnuts, and my chocolate chips/chunks were a mix of 60% chocolate, 70% chocolate, and a few milk chocolate chips I had leftover from something a while back.

Verdict:  Excelente.

I could definitely taste the difference--the decreased brown sugar flavor--right away, but after a day or so I didn't really miss it.  The salt is a must.   The texture was great--they were nice and chewy and the mix of chocolates was very good.  A lot of TWDers complained that their cookies were flat;  I don't know why, but mine were not flat at all but lovely little plump discs that held the exact shape they were scooped into.

 

yeah, yeah, I know.  I took the polish off, ok?

They get a bit more crunchy after a day, but they are still chewy in the middle.  I've now had the dough in the fridge for over a week and every so often I scoop out a pan and bake twelve, a very nice plus, especially since I cannot stop eating them.  (Which reminds me why I never make chocolate chip cookies--it's not just because I can't decorate them.)  I don't have to toss my beloved Toll House recipe overboard, but I likes.  An entirely acceptable alternative.

3.  Honey-Wheat Cookies

These seemed more exciting.  Definitely not somthing I'd choose to make;  who the heck has wheat germ sitting around the house?  I'm not even sure what it is used for;  I am just old enough that I do vaguely remember when "wheat germ" was code for "crunchy granola hippie weirdo food"  and since our household was neither crunchy nor granola nor hippie-esque, there was no place for such in the larder.  Plus the stuff goes bad!  Really? 

But!  I found a small-ish bag of wheat germ at the local Snooty Chain Supermarket in this here Tiny Town, and all the other ingredients I did have on hand, so I got to work.

I had lemons in the fridge, but I didn't feel like zesting them (see: motivation, complete lack thereof) so I broke out my little bottle of dehydrated lemon zest and rehydrated them suckers.

I also found I had two kinds of honey in the cabinet.  I'm not even sure what the difference is in various types of honey, but I went halfsies on each.

The dough was very very soft, but I got it into the fridge without incident and left it for about 4 hours.

I liked forming the cookies, though the dough got all melty on my hands.  It reminded me of something I would have made with/for my sisters when they were very little--I seem to recall some "healthy" "no-bake cookie" concoctions involving peanut butter, honey, and oatmeal... 

 

 

The cookies are like little honeyed wheaty teacakes.  Kept their shape, light brown on the bottom and pale on the top.

Verdict:  I just made these, so jury is still out.  They are nice (and cute!) but I'm not yet certain they are addictive.  Not much butter flavor;  really I just taste SWEET and WHEAT.  If I make them again I'm definitely going for the real lemon zest;  you can barely taste it.  I'll have a better sense in a couple of days, I think. 

Now I'm all caught up. Let's see if I can get back on track this weekend...

*thank yous go to Tanya at Chocolatechic, Kaitlin of Kait's Plate, and Michelle of Flourchild for all the cookie goodness!

I'm still alive.

However, I am on the road.  Will hopefully make up by posting double on Tuesday or Wednesday, for realzies!  I made last week's TWD recipe and I plan to do this week's, too.  Bake on, party people!

ahem.

I haven't neglected the blog.  I've spent the past three days at a conference, so I haven't been doing much that is blogworthy.  Never fear--posting will resume on Tuesday with this week's TWD selection.

Ready, set...

Hello!  Welcome to Ornamental Confectionery.  I'm Miss Kate, your hostess.  As you can guess, I like to bake, I mostly bake sweet stuff, and I like decorating sometimes, too.    I mostly set up this blog because I am dying to participate in the Tuesdays With Dorie challenge, but I imagine other things will appear here, too.  I cook or bake something just about every day.  It might take me a minute to work out exactly what else I want to do, so bear with me.  I'm not sure if I want it to be a "food" blog per se because frankly I find them kinda boring, but who knows?  Look around, lemme know what you think, etc.