Vanilla Creme Filled Doughnuts

I could definitely use some routine and regularity in my life. I am not one of those people who need to loosen up...

I am the person who is puzzled when her friends apologize for their messy house- they always look perfectly clean to me.

I am the person who will survive the blizzard stuck in her car on the side of the road, layering on the random bits of clothing in the back seat, eating granola bars and other bits of food that fell in the crack by the console and drinking from the countless water bottles littering the floor.

I am the person who doesn't know how to iron clothes properly, but it doesn't really matter, because I don't own any clothes that might require ironing.

Poor Eric didn't get much of a housewife out of this marriage deal.

In view of all this and certain New Years Resolutions involving productivity and organization, I, Mikaela of The Fox Fix, do impose a blogging schedule on herself for the year 2011. Hereafter, I promise you that you will find a post here every Tuesday and Friday, with the possibility of extra posts on special non-scheduled post days. If I fail, you can yell at me in the comments section. I hope this will encourage you to put your faith in The Fox Fix. Every Tuesday and Friday.

Phew, here it goes: the first Tuesday of the new regime.

Eric's brother Micah gave me a fantastic new baking book for Christmas. Flour, by Joanne Chang (who owns a bakery in Boston also called Flour), is a recipe-liscious, information-packed, picture-licking gem of a find. Not only are the American-classics-but-better recipes superb, but the book is full of tips and tricks and technical help. Its explains why over-beating egg whites is a problem. (desserts won't rise in the oven because the eggs' cell walls are already stretched to their limit) It finally made me care if my ingredients were all the correct temperature (for example, if the butter used for creaming is too warm, the sugar won't create the little holes in it that are necessary for a light cake. If the liquid is much colder than the creamed ingredients, it will create tunnels and holes and tough spots in the finished product.)

But mostly...Flour contains a recipe for Vanilla Creme Filled Doughnuts that made me melt into a puddle of delirious happiness on the floor. Whipped cream lightened pastry cream? Yes please. Preferably quickly and in large quantities.

It's a many-stepped recipe, so make sure to read the whole thing before you start, but if you've got a lazy weekend ahead and have a hoard of sweet tooths (teeth?) to satisfy, then step right up to the mixing bowl!

Bittersweet Chocolate Almond Cake

Haha! Success! Success with pastry cream!

I love pastry cream and I love it hard, but the stuff can be frustrating when used as cake filling. The potential for disaster during icing and/or transport goes through the roof when this sweet cream is introduced. Therefore, when making this chocolate cake with almond pastry cream filling, I took no chances and grimly added 2 tablespoons cornstarch in addition to the flour that the recipe called for. Flour is a thickener, but cornstarch is a THICKener, if you know what I mean.

In retrospect one tablespoon probably would have done the job, seeing as the chilled pastry cream was a gelatinous mass that could never spread across the delicate surface of a cake. I had to chunk and mash it on. But the cake was solid, man, solid, in every good way.

Believe it or not, this was my first time buttering and flouring cake pans. I am usually the kind of person who sprays the pans with vegetable oil spray (bakers everywhere gasp in horror), but I am learning the importance of proper pan prep.

The cake left residue on those little spots without flour, but nowhere else in the pan. Amazing.

Boston Creme Pie, plus a bit of a rant as a bonus.

Key Lime Pie is the official state pie of Florida. The state meat of Virginia is Virginia Ham. Utah's state snack food is Jello, the fruit of Idaho is a Huckleberry, and Grits are the official prepared food of Georgia.

And the Boston Creme Pie is the official dessert of Massachusetts. Just in case you're interested.

I think that unless you have very sturdy pastry cream, you should never attempt to make a three layer Boston Creme Pie, as it is very unstable and all the pastry cream squeezes out. This week I have had made two very ugly cakes with pastry cream filling, and I think I'm going to shelf that filling for a while.

I used a pastry cream recipe that used flour instead of cornstarch as a thickener, and I truly think that in the case of cakes, cornstarch is absolutely necessary.

See my squashed out creme pie below. We should probably rename it yellow cake with chocolate icing so as not to deceive people.

I made Cakelove's yellow cake with the same dark chocolate Martha frosting from the Chocolate Raspberry Cake, with chocolate ganache and pastry cream, but as I said before, CORNSTARCH is KEY.

It was a nightmare, really. I had to dump loads more chocolate all over the cake at the restaurant to try to redeem its looks because the whole thing became a chocolate mud slide on the drive over. And for the rest of the night, I was a chocolate mess. There was chocolate hiding everywhere I tried to lean for the whole of my shift, smears and blotches of chocolate kept turning up all over my apron, shirt, face, pants. I almost used up the tide pen and the chocolate kept on coming.

This whole situation was exacerbated by my much loved jeep's obnoxious cry for attention. Yes, it has been making a chirp-chirping noise for several weeks, but I intended to get it checked out very soon. Any day now, I promise.

My car was through being patient, though. As I pulled into the neighborhood where I work, I noticed some smoke slipping out of the hood, and by the time I pulled up next to the restaurant (30 min late, might I add), there was white smoke (steam, I guess) POURING from every crack and crevice of the front portion of my car.

As curious coworkers and customers crowded in the restaurant windows to get a better look, I grabbed a cake from the back and noticed that GOBS of antifreeze were gushing from my car and forming a RIVER in the street.

There was nothing I could do about it, of course, so the rest of the evening was spent hitching up my apron to hide the chocolate on my shirt and nodding when every man at the restaurant offered his diagnosis of my obvious car problems.

It was bittersweet when my loving husband came to pick me up at the end of the night. I was thrilled to see him, but I couldn't help but stare sadly as we pulled away, leaving my still, silent jeep all alone.