Pastry people

I am a pastry person. You can call me a dough ho, a sugar slut, or a brownie bitch; but I probably would look at you and ask," really that's all you got? The meatheads from JWU (pronounced j-woooo) were way more creative than that." I could live on bread, and chocolate is a severe addiction. I admit it, so I'm thinking that meetings are unnecessary.

I, of course, have wonderful friends who are culinary people. They get all hot and bothered over sauces and bok choy and beef tips. I love these people. They make my life complete, in the most foodie-sense it can be. I am just sadly not one of them. I love to make good food, but I just don't have a real passion for it. Recreating a recipe is about the distance I'll go, and since Matt gets all hot and bothered when I make cheesesteaks I don't really have to ever run a marathon.

This weekend I stayed in Boston and got my pastry people fix. My friend Kate and her roommate Evan were both pastry majors at JWU. Evan has a Kitchen Aid stand mixer that makes me drool every time I see it. When I spent Halloween with them, there were red velvet cupcakes with icing that looked like an eye in their fridge. Now that is what, after the first week of Emerson, my life needs.

Kate and I spent most of Friday night figuring out how to put together this apron kit she bought. It was honestly adorable, but the directions were in a different language. Ok they weren't technically in a different language, if you understand what "clip, turn, and topstich" means, you probably would have been a useful addition to our Friday night escapades. Instead of really thinking about the pattern, we resorted to the uber-mature method of me singing out "clip, turn, and topstich" and Kate bending over on the floor laughing. This kind of fun Friday night doesn't come around every weekend, and it is absolutely and understandably ok to be jealous.

Saturday morning Kate and I made pancakes. She had been telling me all about these buttermilk pancakes that she made at home and I was of course all for a re-creation. She had powdered buttermilk that had the recipe on it, but we had bought real buttermilk.

Flashback to breads class: When using fresh yeast, leave out the extra water needed to bloom the yeast.

I think you can guess what we did to the pancakes. I saw Kate putting water into the pancakes and wondered why the pancakes would need water in them, since we were putting real buttermilk in the recipe; it was Kate's kitchen so I kept my mouth shut. The pancake batter turned out a tad bit liquidy, so what did we decide would be the perfect solution - Add more flour! Talk about a flashback to breads class. I think I resorted to this method many times, and it worked most of the time. It didn't work when some idiot in my group left the yeast out, when she was supposed to mise-en-place (get everything together) the day before; but that's a totally different story.

Our pancakes were not as fluffy as Kate had hoped. We added about a cup of chocolate chips to each pancake, so in the end it was a total success. After leaving Kate's apartment, I thought to myself how much I laugh when I'm hanging out with her. I think it's because we both get hopped up on chocolate, but we're pastry people. It's what we do best.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily