Baking for Dummies

by Emily Nolan

  To use food coloring, drop several (no more than five) drops into the frosting you plan on using. Mix thoroughly. Add two additional drops at a time until the desired color is achieved.

  To use a coloring paste, dip the tip of a toothpick into the color and add to the frosting you plan on using. Mix thoroughly. Dip the toothpick a second time, if necessary. Coloring paste is highly concentrated, so a very little bit goes a long way. Make sure that you mix the frosting to a uniform color and that there aren’t any heavy color streaks.

  Be very careful when using paste food coloring. A very tiny amount will vividly color your frosting. Dip the tip of a toothpick into the paste and then dip that into the frosting. That tiny amount is usually just the right amount of color you’ll need for a large bag of frosting. Remember that, as the frosting hardens, the colors will darken. To color frosting, you can use liquid food coloring or paste food coloring, which is available in a baking-supply store.

  Choosing a tip

  The type of tip you choose determines the decoration you make (see Figure 9-3). Hundreds of tips are available for cake decorating.

  Figure 9-3: Decorating tips and the designs they make.

  The most important thing is to make sure that your tip fits your bag — they come in a variety of sizes for a variety of bags. Then choose the correct tip for the decoration you want to create. The following list presents five of the most popular styles of tips available:

  Drop flower tips: These tips make the easiest flowers for the beginning cake decorator. The icing is dropped directly onto the cake, either just dropped on or swirled to make it look like a flower. Popular sizes include 107, 129, 190, 217, and 255.

  Leaf tips: The V-shaped opening in these tips forms the pointed end of the leaf. Leaf tips can make plain, ruffled, or even stand-up leaves. String the leaves together to make an attractive border. Popular sizes include 65, 67, and 352.

  Petal tips: These tips are for a more-advanced decorator and are used in making roses, violets, carnations, and other flower shapes. You can also use them to make ribbons, bows, swags, and ruffles. Popular sizes include 101, 102, 103, and 104.

  Star tips: If you were going to get just one decorative tip, I would recommend buying a star tip. This tip enables you to make rosettes, drop flowers, stars, scalloped borders, rope borders, and shells. Popular sizes range between 13 and 22; the larger sizes include 32 and 43.

  Writing tips: Writing tips are plain, round tips. In addition to writing, you can also make polka dots, stems, vines, or just smooth lines for decoration. They’re quite handy to have for decoration. Popular sizes include 1–4 (small), 5–12 (medium), and 1A and 2A (large).

  Filling your bag

  To fill your decorating bag, place the empty bag (already with the tip in place) in a tall, narrow glass, as shown in Figure 9-4. Fold back about 5 inches of a cuff over the sides of the glass. Using a spatula, fill the decorating bag no more than halfway full with icing. If you fill the bag more than halfway full, the frosting may back up out of the bag. To close the bag, unfold the cuff and gently press all the frosting down toward the tip (don’t press so hard that frosting starts to come out the end, though). You just want to get the air pockets out of the bag. When the frosting is pressed down, twist the top of the bag (see Figure 9-4). Continue twisting the end of the bag, being careful not to squeeze it as if it were a tube of toothpaste.

  Using your pastry bag

  The amount of pressure on the decorating bag, the size of the tip, and the consistency of the icing will determine the amount of icing flowing out of the bag. By increasing the pressure and moving the bag slowly, you can increase the size of the line being piped out. If you don’t have a pastry bag, you can make one. See Figure 9-5 to find out how.

  Practice your decorations on waxed paper before decorating the cake. This will help you determine the type of decoration you will be making. If your tip gets clogged while you’re frosting, give the bag a little extra squeeze over a piece of waxed paper. Avoid doing this over the cake — otherwise you may end up with a big splotch of icing where you don’t want it to be. If this doesn’t unclog the bag, take a toothpick and poke it into the tip to release the blockage.

  Figure 9-4: Filling and using a pastry bag.

  Figure 9-5: Making a paper cone for decorating.

  A turntable or lazy Susan is a cake decorator’s best friend. It makes frosting and decorating cakes easier and faster.

  Most designs are made by holding the decorating bag at a 45-degree angle to the surface of the cake. Support the bottom of the bag with one hand, and twist the top with the other. Always begin with just a slight twisting pressure on the bag. Don’t jerk the bag around too much. Instead, let the frosting just glide out and fall onto the cake.

  Before making your design, lightly outline it with a toothpick. If you want to write a message on your cake, you can gently place small strips of sewing thread or dental floss on top of the cake to serve as a straight line on which to write (and then remove them when you’re done).

  If you make a mistake while decorating, don’t panic. Everyone has messed up decorating a cake. The easiest thing to do is to get a metal frosting spatula with a rounded tip and gently lift off the mistake and scrape away any additional coloring. With the tip of the spatula, gently smooth out the area and start over again.

  After decorating the cake, clean the tips well in hot, soapy water. Pick out the icing in the hard-to-clean cracks with a toothpick. Always wash your pastry bag and tips by hand. A dishwasher will send your tips flying, and they may become crushed, ruining the delicate tips forever.

  If you aren’t feeling adventurous enough to try using a decorative bag, see the section on garnishes in Chapter 18 to find ways to add some pizzazz to your cakes without adding stress to your life.

  Chapter 10

  Perfect Pies and Tarts

  In This Chapter

  Perfecting a flaky piecrust

  Getting ideas for top crust pies

  Making decorative crusts

  Fixing what went wrong

  Recipes in This Chapter

  Old-Fashioned Pie Dough

  Stir-and-Roll Pie Pastry

  Pumpkin Pie

  You’ll-Be-Glad-You-Tried-It Apple Pie

  Blueberry Pie

  Cherry Crumb Pie

  Pecan Pie

  Chocolate Cream Pie

  Banana Cream Pie

  Sour Cherry-Berry Pie

  Cran-Apple and Pear Pie

  Tart Lemon Tart

  Wonderful Pear Tart

  Everyone loves pies, and nothing is more American than a warm pie cooling on the windowsill. Whether that pie is filled with sweet summertime berries, hearty slices of tart apples, or thick pureed pumpkin kissed with brown sugar and cinnamon, pies are satisfying fare. Despite their love of pies, most people shudder at the thought of making the crusts that hold those delectable fillings. Often, they turn to frozen or refrigerated piecrusts to make their baking fuss-free, despite the fact those types of crusts can sometimes be flavorless and thin. But fret no more. In just a few easy steps, you’ll have the confidence to make your own dough for incredibly flaky crust.

  Pie doughs have simple ingredients: flour, fat (either butter or shortening), and a liquid (either water or milk) to bring everything together. The technique is what you have to master if you want tender, flaky crusts. The best method to achieve perfect pie dough is practice, practice, practice. Before long, you’ll wonder why you ever hesitated to make your own.

  Picking the Proper Pie Plate

  When choosing your pie plate, be sure to use heat-resistant glass or dull-finished metal pie plates for good browning. Never use a shiny pan, because the pan reflects heat, and the pie will have a soggy bottom crust.

  Be careful if you choose to use a nonstick pie plate. The Teflon coating doesn’t hold the dough in place while it cooks (and the dough contracts), so if your crust isn’t secured over the edge of the pie plate,
your dough may shrink up quite a bit in the oven.

  The most common pie size is 9 inches. Even though pie plates say that they are 9 inches, they can vary dramatically in the amount of filling they can hold. Make sure that your pie plate can hold the amount of filling that’s called for. Keep in mind that fruit fillings shrink as they bake, so be generous.

  Because crusts have plenty of butter or shortening in them, don’t grease the pie plate.

  Making Perfect Piecrusts

  Making a piecrust doesn’t involve many steps. You begin with flour, maybe add a pinch of salt, cut in the butter or shortening, and then add a few drops of water and chill (not you, the dough). By cutting in the butter or shortening, you create little bits of fat mixed in with the flour and held together with water. When you roll out the dough, you’ll flatten the butter even more. But when you bake the crust, the butter will melt into the flour, flavoring the flour and leaving behind little pockets where it had once been. And that is how a flaky piecrust is made.

  Mixing the dough

  Knowing that the butter or shortening melting into the dough and leaving little air pockets gives you a flaky crust, you can understand why overmixing the dough is so bad for a piecrust. It will incorporate the butter into the flour too much, and you won’t have little pockets of butter left before the oven has a chance to melt it. Kneading the flour too much also forms gluten, which toughens the dough. If you haven’t heard it before, you will hear it now: The secret to flaky piecrusts is less, not more, handling.

  Cutting in the fat

  Another challenge when making piecrusts is the butter. If you use your fingers to incorporate the butter into the flour, you run the risk of melting it (butter melts at 95 degrees, and your body temp is 98.6 degrees). A pastry blender (see Chapter 3) is a great help in cutting shortening evenly into the flour. If you don’t have one, you can also use two knives, cutting parallel with one another, to cut in the butter. Another option is a fork. (See Chapter 5 for tips on cutting fat into flour mixtures.)

  No matter which method you use, make sure that your butter is well chilled. You can even cut it into small pieces and toss it in the freezer for a few minutes before you add it to the flour if you like.

  Many bakers swear by shortening for a flaky crust. It doesn’t melt at the low temperature that butter does, and it’s easier to cut into the flour, resulting in less handling of the dough. But I find that shortening falls short when it comes to flavor. If the filling has good flavor, however, it can compensate for lack of flavor in the crust. You can do a mix of half butter and half shortening for the qualities of shortening and the flavor of butter.

  The technique I like best for cutting in the fat is the food processor. I chill the metal blade and precut my butter into 10 to 12 pieces before adding it to the flour. After just a few quick pulses (on-and-off blasts — never let it run on the On position), my butter is incorporated into the flour, and I haven’t touched a thing. I like to add the water by hand, though. I find the food processor overworks the dough when I use it.

  Choosing the right flour

  Very little gluten is necessary to hold a piecrust together. The flours with the least gluten are cake flours and Southern flours, such as White Lily brand. You also can find pastry flour, which is low in protein and great for tender crusts. In the bulk section of my whole-foods grocery store, I can purchase whole-wheat pastry flour, so I blend that with cake flour for some of my crusts.

  There are advantages to using all-purpose flour — the piecrust will shrink less. Also, Shirley O. Corriher, the doyen of kitchen science, recommends 2 parts all-purpose flour to 1 part cake or instant flour (Wondra or Shake and Blend) for tender crusts. Without a doubt, she knows what she’s talking about, so you may want to try that combination if you have the right flours on hand.

  Chilling the dough

  Chilling the dough is another important step in preparing pie pastry. After the butter or shortening is cut in, the dough needs to return to the refrigerator, well wrapped, for about an hour so the butter can re-harden and the dough can relax, making it easier to handle. If you have made dough for a double-crust pie, split it in half and flatten the halves into disks. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and then refrigerate. Skimping on this step could have undesirable effects on your finished pastry, so plan accordingly. Pie dough will keep in the refrigerator for up to one week or in the freezer for up to one month. Let the dough come to room temperature before rolling it out.

  Before baking the pies, be sure that you’ve preheated your oven. The initial contrast in temperature aids in the flakiness of your dough.

  Rolling out the dough

  After you’ve chilled your dough, let it sit at room temperature for 5 to 10 minutes before you roll it out to take the chill off. It will roll better if it isn’t too cold, but don’t let it get too warm, either. Pastry cloths, kitchen towels (not terrycloth), and a rolling stocking (a mesh or cloth casing that you slip over the rolling pin and gently rub with flour) are wonderful tools to have on hand because they practically eliminate sticking, and you need only a minimum of additional flour. Rubbing flour into your rolling pin and onto your work surface also works fine — just don’t use too much. Two tablespoons of additional flour is all you should need. The work surface I like best is a large wooden board, at least 12 x 12 inches. It’s flat and hard and gives me plenty of room to spread out.

  Instead of using just flour for dusting the work surface when rolling out pastry for sweet pies, use a combination of sugar and flour. The sugar acts like little grains of sand and isn’t as easily absorbed into the dough as the flour is. It’s a marvelous trick to keep pastry dough from sticking to the work surface, and it won’t toughen the dough.

  To roll out your piecrust, follow these simple steps:

  1.Begin rolling from the center of the dough outward, lifting and turning the pastry occasionally to make sure the dough isn’t sticking.

  Don’t roll the dough from the outside to the center or push the rolling pin back and forth, and don’t press down hard when rolling out the dough. Just let the weight of the rolling pin supply all the necessary pressure.

  2.Roll the dough out to 1/8-inch thick or less.

  It should be at least 2 inches larger than the pie dimensions (if you have a 9-inch pie plate, the dough should be 11 inches in diameter).

  If the dough rips while you’re rolling it, don’t worry. You can repair it by pressing the two torn sides together. Don’t ball it back up and re-roll it. Instead, moisten the edges of the torn pastry and gently press them back together again. If you re-roll the dough, you’ll overwork and toughen it.

  If the dough begins to stick, rub more flour into the work surface or rolling pin.

  Transferring the crust to the pie plate

  After you roll out the crust to the right size, the next step is to delicately transfer it into the pie plate. Doing so is not difficult, but you want to make sure that the pastry doesn’t tear. Here are foolproof steps to prevent that from happening:

  1.Gently loosen the pastry from the work surface and fold the pastry in half.

  2.Place the pie plate right next to the pastry, gently slide the folded pastry into the pie plate, and carefully unfold it.

  See Figure 10-1. Ease the dough gently into the pie plate and press it against the side of the pie plate so that no air is left between the dough and the plate, which can cause the crust to blister while baking.

  Figure 10-1: Sliding the pastry into the pie plate.

  3.Trim off the excess crust with a knife or kitchen shears and crimp the edges with your fingers, as shown in Figure 10-2.

  Figure 10-2: Crimping around the edges.

  See the section “Making Simple Pastry Edges and Decorations” later in this chapter for more ideas for crimping your crusts.

  For juicy fruit pies, brush the bottom unbaked crust with a beaten egg white or melted butter before filling it to prevent the crust from becoming soggy.

 
Don’t prick the bottom crust with a fork if you’re filling it with a fruit or custard filling. The liquid filling will make the crust soggy if there are holes in the crust.

  Old-Fashioned Pie Dough

  This recipe uses a combination of butter and shortening for a buttery flavor and a flaky crust. Use sour cream instead of water for added tenderness.

  Preparation time: 15 minutes, plus 2 hours for chilling

  Yield: One 8- or 9-inch double crust

  2 1/2 cups flour

  1/2 tablespoon sugar

  1 teaspoon salt (optional)

  1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

  1/2 cup shortening, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

  1 egg, beaten

  2 tablespoons ice water or sour cream, if necessary

  1In a large bowl, using a pastry blender, combine the flour, sugar, and salt (if desired). Using your fingertips or pastry blender, cut the better and shortening into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. (You will see a few larger or smaller pieces.)

  2Combine the beaten egg and cold water in a small bowl. While stirring lightly with a fork, pour the egg and water into the flour mixture in a fast, steady stream. Continue stirring, occasionally cleaning off the dough that collects on the fork, until the flour is almost completely mixed in but the dough does not form a ball.