Valentines Day Vintage

This is what I woke up to this morning. I am a lucky girl and I have a super thoughtful boyfriend.

Over the weekend we headed out to Montclair to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of a friends Vintage Boutique called Garnish.

Talk about coveting everything in a store! I love my friend Lisa's taste and the way she had the store laid out so neat and adorable totally gave me shoppe envy! I could have walked around in there for hours just looking at every last little detail of every item.

I seemed to have recently begun this obsession with old mechanical clocks. I think it has something to do with my obsession with old mechanical sewing machines, but who knows. They're just pretty cute too.

Anyway - I saw this clock and fell in love. I  totally couldn't justify my purchasing it cause I just don't need it. I kept shopping around to find a little something a little more practical to spend my money on that night. (HA - practical.) Not sure if I can call what bought practical, but I guess they are a bit more useful than the clock

I wound taking home a baking book from 1961 and a mechanical egg beater. Again - am loving anything mechanical that is not electric these days!

Here they are:

Saturday Morning, I immediately had to make something from my new book. (see - totally practical!)
I knew I had some poppy seeds in my pantry, so lemon poppy seed pound cake it is.
Oops, no recipe for that in my new cook book. But that's okay, I will happily make do.

I used the Basic Pound Cake recipe found on page 116 and added some lemon juice and poppy seeds and all was well and right in the world.

Here is the recipe in case you are interested:

Basic Pound Cake

A delicious, old-fashioned cake, especially good toasted (from the book, not me)

6 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
(I added the juice of one lemon, some zest & half a bottle of poppy seeds)

Set oven to 350 degrees. Grease a deep, 9 inch tube pan and dust with flour.
In a large bowl, combine eggs and sugar and beat for a minute. Set bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Place saucepan over low heat for about 10 minutes, or until eggs are slightly warmer than lukewarm. Don not let water boil. Stir eggs occasionally while they are being heated to prevent them from cooking on the the bottom of the bowl.

While eggs are warming, cream butter and flour till light and fluffy. Add vanilla.

When eggs are lukewarm, beat them until cool, thick and tripled in bulk.  Quickly stir 1/4 of beaten eggs into creamed mixture. Pour mixture over remaining beaten eggs. Fold in gently. Be careful not to overmix.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake about 50 minutes, or until cake is golden brown and pulls away from sides of pan.

Megan Side note: All that business about warming the mixture over the hot water was skipped in my version. I just made sure the eggs weren't cold when I mixed them with everything else. I did this by letting them sit under warm water coming out of the tap of the sink. I also didn't really beat the eggs as they said. I beat them with the sugar with my new beater, but then procedeed to add all the ingrediants and bake it.

The more I think about it, I really didn't follow the directions at all (suprise, suprise). But my turned out okay. I had to take it out of the oven a bit early cause I had to head to work so there was some oozing batter when I cut into it later that day when I tried a pice. This was because it wasn't quite cooked all the way through. But I have to say, I am a big fan of any cake just a little bit underdone. Is that gross?

Hoboken Guide @ Design Sponge

A fellow business owner here in town passed along a link to a Hoboken City Guide on the Design Sponge Blog. I am soooo honored to be a part of this piece, as I absolutely love Design Sponge!

"Welcome to Hoboken. A vibrant New Jersey town just a hop, skip and jump over the river from Manhattan. Hoboken was made famous as the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, the filming location of the Marlon Brando movie On The Waterfront and the music venue “Maxwell’s” where Bruce Springsteen filmed the video for “Glory Days.”

Hoboken is also the town of many firsts, including inventions like freeze-dried coffee, bubble wrap and ice cream, as well as the first organized baseball game and the first brewery. It boasts the most bars and restaurants in one square mile of its town’s boundaries, and the indie/designer/art scene is on its way up due to many artists and musicians living here. It is also home of the infamous Cake Boss from the Lifetime show."

And here is what they had to say about us, under the category Art, Craft Supplies & Galleries:

"M. Avery Designs — Also home of the Hoboken Handmade Collective. If you love fabric, this is the place to visit. They also host classes and socials and offer open studios for use of their sewing machines. All items in the store are handmade and gorgeous. 266, 7th Street (at the corner of Willow Ave.)"

Read more at Design*Sponge  

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2011/01/hoboken-city-guide.html#ixzz1AlrVWDHV

Sweet Tees & Crumpets

Time to have a Girls Night Out "Tee" Party !

Get your ladies together for a night of T-shirt Deconstruction.

In this private party each guest starts with a plain used t-shirt and turns it into any of our fabulous deconstructed styles.

Our instructors will teach your group the basic design & sewing skills needed to play fashion designer for the day!

Get a group of six or more ladies together and everyone will design and stitch their very own custom deconstructed t-shirt and leave with it after the party. Don't worry, there is absolutely no sewing experience required!

You do the leg work, our staff will do the finishing touches to make sure your finished product is sturdy and professional looking when you take it home after this two-hour private party.


Check out a few of the photos, taken by photographer Adam Gallagher, of our first "Tee" Party. 

Or head to the website to find out all the details. 

Get a load of this - Salty sweet chocolate cake

Yesterdays project involved this great cookbook I checked out from the library. It's called Baked - New Frontiers in Baking and it's full of recipes from their Brooklyn Bakery.

Their signature creation, most requested recipe and most beloved cake at the bakery is the Sweet & Salty Cake and I couldn't wait to try it. Since today some friends and I are putting on a little informal baby shower for another friend I thought this would be the perfect excuse to try the cake and bring it over for the shower. And let me tell you I CANNOT wait to try this little cake!

Now, as you can imagine, their recipes are not simple. But I guess none of the recipes that I ever want to try, are simple. This one, actually really wasn't that bad, but I baked the cake layers a day ahead. I made the caramel and frosting yesterday and put the cake together. Since lately my apartment temperature hovers around 59 degrees, it was the perfect temperature to make a perfect buttercream and assembling the cake was a snap!

Here is the list of ingredient for the three components of this cake:

Classic Chocolate Cake Layers:
3/4 Cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups hot water
2/3 cup sour cream
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar (which I just realized I forgot to put in, uh oh)
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla

For the salted caramel
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 cup sour cream

For the Whipped Caramel Ganache Frosting
1 Pound Dark Chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 cups (four sticks) unsalted butter, soft but cool, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

And you need roughly 5 teaspoons of fleur de sel (sea salt), for the layers of the cake and for the garnish.

Now to make the cake, pre-heat the over to 325 degrees (thank god, this totally warmed up my apartment on this frigid weekend!) butter/oil three 8" round cake pans, cut out parchment paper rounds that fit in the bottom of the cake pans and oil them, as well.

To make the cake batter combine the cocoa powder, hot water and sour cream and set aside to cool.

Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together into a medium bowl and set aside. (I will be honest, I amost never do this for cake recipes. I end up just adding all these dry ingredients to my wet ingredients at the end. I am a big fan of not dirtying as many bowls as most recipes suggest and most of the time, the recipe comes out just fine.)

Beat the butter and shortening in the kitchenaid with the paddle attachment for about 5 minutes. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at at time and beat between each addition. Add the vanilla and beat a little more. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for another 30 seconds.

Add your dry ingredients, alternating with your cocoa mixture. Divide the batter between all three cake pans and bake for about 40 minutes, until you can stick a fork in the middle of the cakes and the prongs come out clean.

Make the salted caramel by adding the cream and the sea salt. Heat until the salt is all dissolved.

Add 1/4 cup of water, the corn syrup and the granulated sugar to a different saucepan. Heat on high until the mixture reads 350 degrees (6-8 minutes). Remove from heat and let cool. Add the cream mixture to the sugar mixture and let it cool. Put it in an airtight container and store in refrig until you are ready to assemble cake.

Making the caramel ganache frosting start out the same way as above.

Make the salted caramel by adding the cream and the sea salt. Heat until the salt is all dissolved.

Add 1/4 cup of water, the corn syrup and the granulated sugar to a different saucepan. Heat on high until the mixture reads 350 degrees (6-8 minutes). Pour the mixture over the dark chocolate in another heat-proof bowl. Let it sit for a minute until it starts to melt the chocolate.
Mix up this mixture until all the chocolate is completely melted. Let it cool and transfer to your mixer bowl. Beat this chocolate on low until it's completely cool.
Increase the speed to med-high and start adding the butter in small pieces until all is completely incorporated . Beat on high until the mixture is fluffy.

Assemble the cake

Place the first layer of the cake on a serving platter, add 1/3 of the salted caramel and spread it out. Add 1/4 of the ganache frosting and spread it out. Sprinkle some sea salt over this layer and add the second layer of cake. Add the caramel, frosting and sea salt in the same way. Add the third layer of cake and caramel. Crumb coat the cake with the ganache and put in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. Frost the cake with the rest of the frosting and garnish with the remaining sea salt.

Phew - done - Finally!

I will let you know how it tastes after we sample it at the shower dinner tonight.


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