[aaronatthedoublef]

Sorry I'm late to this and it's been a while since I piped anything but I've found it easier in a cooler kitchen. Also, my hands tend to get warm and that can melt sometimes make the frosting a little too runny. The last time I piped I was making a big cake, it was about 85 and I had no AC. I would take a break from piping and place my hands on a bag of frozen peas.

Gloves might have helped if I'd thought about it then.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just looked at her "About Rosie's" page and it says she opened in 1974.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, I have the same one - All-Butter Cream Filled Baking Book but it must be a different edition as it's from 1991 and it appears to have some different recipes (it does have the honeypots, for example). 154 has whitecaps which is a kind of bar. Her blog is here but after regular updates through 2013 it has one entry from Passover 2014 and then another for Sep 1 2017. And that is just a pointer to an article of someone who loves Rosie's and discovered it 35 years ago. Not sure what happened.

Rosie's has been around for a long time as it was already well known and well established with multiple locations when I moved to Boston in 1980. I probably haven't been there since 1994 which is when I left Boston but her products always looked great and tasted even better.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, just looked in my edition of Rosie's and there is a chocolate chip cookie recipe but not your thin crisp choco chip recipe.

For what it's worth the chocolate chip cookie recipe says 375 for 11-12 minutes until the middle puffs up and the edges crisp up and brown.

[aaronatthedoublef]

That's disappointing. That book has been out for a couple of decades. Things like that should have been fixed years ago.

So far this week I've made pizza. I need to make something for book club Thursday night. Not sure what I'll do yet.

I saw a new garlic-free tomato sauce at the store - Rao's sensitive marinara. Rao's is our sauce of choice but I've never tried the garlic free version. It's a bit spendy too at the grocery stores - 32 oz. for $7.99 but at Costco it's 40 oz. for $7.99 but they do not (yet) have the garlic free version.

I buy cases of it on sale at Whole Foods when it drops to $5.99 and then I get a 10% discount per case which brings the price down to about $5.40 a jar.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Skeptic. I want something about 40 degrees - around our refrigerator (which is actually under 40).

Ice floating on cold water is typically about 38 degrees so that would be good.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, thanks. I've probably gone buy the honeypots a couple thousand times! Looks good. I may try it.

I have two seeded ryes in the oven. I got good oven spring but one already has a blow out. I think I didn't seal it well enough. But pre-shaping has definitely helped.

[aaronatthedoublef]

ItalianCook, we just use TJ's store brand mozzarella. The family also likes Poly-O but we cannot find that except in string cheese. I like to add some provolone but my wife doesn't like it. Not sure about the kids.

I will usually pre-cook pepperoni or sausage just to cook off some of the fat so the pizza is less greasy. I do not usually pre-cook vegetables although that would reduce the water but that has not been a problem. I've also par-baked crusts to crisp them then added sauce, cheese, and toppings but it's extra work that no one seemed to appreciate so I stopped that. We haven't tried black garlic but if I see it I might. We do like garlic and we like out onions with a little bite. But I might try Mike's suggestion off cooking them first just for something new.

Also, if you start pre-cooking ingredients you may need to put them on the pizza after it's baked a bit. And if you use something like prosciutto put it on right after the pizza comes out of the oven and the residual heat will cook it. Otherwise it will burn in the oven.

Like BA I put my pizzas in on parchment then after a couple minutes slide the parchment out so the pizza is directly on the stone. I've done a couple of pizzas on sheet pans and also used parchment there. I've cooked pizzas in cake pans and just sprayed them with cooking spray but if I were to do it again I might cut and use parchment.

Mike, what is a honeypot?

[aaronatthedoublef]

12 ounces of cheese per pizza! Wow. I use about 4 ounces and my wife says I am using too much. 🙂 In college one of the two adults who managed all us students in the kitchen insisted we use 2 ounces which was just not enough. He would bring out the scale and watch us for a few then get bored and leave and we would sneak more cheese on.

I made five, 12 inch pizzas and used 20 ounces of cheese. We didn't have any goat cheese this week though.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi Italiancook. The only mozzarella my family likes that is readily available is Trader Joes. When I go by TJ's I grab a bunch and throw it in the freezer. I thought I had one thawing this past Sunday but I didn't so we left it on the counter for a half hour then grated it by hand (it would be easier/faster with a food processor but more cleanup and setup). We could also grate the cheese and then freeze it which, now that I write this makes more sense. We don't by grated cheese because it always has cellulose which really is fine but for some reason just creeps me out. And really, it only takes a few minutes to shred the cheese myself (it takes my kids a little longer).

So you can keep dough, sauce, and cheese all frozen which is the foundation. Then you can put whatever you want on it and whatever you have in your house. We've been using chard because we had a share of a community sponsored agriculture from a local farm and the last few Fridays we've picked up chard. That is also where the onions and sweet peppers have come from. We usually have goat cheese because my wife and oldest love it. We always have olives because everyone loves them except me.

You can absolutely make pizza in a pan. Some of my favorite pizza in the world - Giordano's stuffed - is baked in a pan (their thin crust used to be too). And the first pizza making job I had was in my college dining hall and we made pan pizzas there. The whole point of making our own pizza is to make what we like and make pizza that is a little less bad for us. So whatever floats your boat is fine.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made pizza Sunday night. It has become our pizza night. I made a cheese, a sausage, an olive, and a vegetable with sweet peppers, Swiss chard, and onions. I've been putting the chard on when the pizza first went into the oven but I should probably wait until I turn the pizza and then add the chard. It gets over cooked. Although last week I made a white pizza with chard, onions, peppers, goat cheese, and mozzarella and that worked well.

I need to make some challah and English muffins this week as well as an apple pie. I'm thinking of using macouns and macintosh.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I like the ginger on oatmeal idea, especially as oatmeal time is now (after a week of 80s and 90s we are having nights in the 40s).

We can buy caster sugar here at Whole Foods and we needed it for some recipe. Had I known that it's just an English name for super fine sugar I would never have bought because it was stupid pricey but my wife likes to follow recipes and this was one from Jamie Oliver. And now that we have it I will not throw it away because it was stupid pricey. 🙂

And while much has dropped in price since the Amazonization of Whole Foods, they've yet to touch the baking aisle ingredients.

If you've ever read any of Rick Riordan's books he has one where his heroes must fight the queen of the Amazons who is, of course, the true head of Amazon (sorry Jeff B). It is the Amazons' secret plan to have us all buy everything from them and that is how they will conquer the world!

This book is about old so Mr. Riordan was pretty prescient.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Good idea. I had some caster sugar in the cabinet and didn't think about using it. It wasn't enough anyway. I use it for adding to cold drinks. I'll add it to my list for Walmart. Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made a double batch of brownies. My recipe uses all unsweetened chocolate because that is how my mom used to make them. But the batter usually is a little gritty with sugar so I may switch to 3/4 unsweetened and 1/4 semi or bitter sweet and back on the sugar. The lecithin in the semi/bitter sweet might change the feel too.

I changed my pizza dough recipe and added a half cup of chickpea flour to increase the protein in my pizza. My pizza is one of the few things my daughter will eat besides pasta so I am trying to get some more protein in her. The chickpea flour is gluten free so in addition to cake and white whole wheat flours I added some bread flour. It was still a soft, unstretchy dough.

[aaronatthedoublef]

First, I was making a two wedding cakes - the brownie cake and an Australian style fruitcake (the groom was an Aussie). This was in the nascent days of the web and there were no recipes online so it was some trial and error with some non-baking Aussie friends acting as taste testers (and they tried some really vile cakes). I eventually got it right with a couple days to spare.

I moved onto the bride's cake. She was a dear friend of mine and I tried to convince her to allow a mutual friend who was a James Beard nominated pastry chef to make the cake but my friend wanted me to make it. The cake was fine but I could not make the buttercream without it breaking (I was not allowing it to cool before dumping in the butter). This was all happening the morning of the wedding. At the last minute my brilliant girlfriend suggested I used whipped cream and we decorate it with flowers. She saved the day.

Of course I should have waited to put the whipped cream on until AFTER we transported it. And I should have made EXTRA whipped cream to repair any damage that happened on the ride over but we made it to the wedding on time with both cakes in one piece!

The mother-of-the-bride put the cake at the end of the buffet and after the wedding the husband of the bride went through the line and cut himself a huge corner of the cake before the bride and groom cut it. I can still hear the shrieks from the bride and her mom.

But the brownie cake was completely consumed (I should have but did not make a topper -doh!) and the fruit cake was about half gone. And it was heavy. So it was a success and I will retire with my streak intact.

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