Is baking your main gig or your side hustle? I’ve wondered when you’ve mentioned selling the goods. I’ve realized something recently, which is that when my household went from 4 to 3 (college) and will in a bit be going from 3 to 2, I can’t bake as much anymore. There is always too much. Sometimes my kid will bring it into school, but sometimes he won’t. I last made a batch of pistachio cookies that he wouldn’t bring in, because he didn’t want to run afoul of any school-nut prohibitions. And with both of the adults here working from home, and no coworkers to share with, we just get stuck with too much. Selling would be a nice possibility, except as you say, regulations. Also, the skill level here is not up to par yet.
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Yes I tried that one too. With nectarines and the boiling water on top. Interesting method, tasty outcome!
Is that Ina? She used to make me laugh on her show, because everything was good this and good that. Good olive oil, good butter, good bread. And she had an odd way of asking questions too, like “how could that not be delicious.” Verbal tics. Bam! maybe being the original over-used one. Or… Ah-gar-on-tee!!
Yup, that’s her.
Cooking was my main gig, but I decided I didn’t want to keep doing it. This is the last restaurant I worked in that made me finally call it quits:
After I came here I was baking mostly as a hobby, but I’ve slowly been selling and hope to keep selling more. Especially now with having a sort of niche with cheesecakes I’m hoping to eventually get more clientele through social media if people who have lived here their whole lives and know everyone. Donuts and bread will be other things that I think will sell well and I have no competition.
I don’t mind the idea of cooking, but after quitting food service I realized I liked sales and I wouldn’t want to depend solely on cooking for a living. I don’t want the stress of making food to order either. It’s fun once in a while still, but very tiring. I’ve thought about having something like the various ethnic delis in NYC, where other products are sold and you can also buy various foods. I loved buying food at Polish delis, or Balkan/Russian/Italian ones.
Or a supermarket is another idea because I hate the unscrupulous, careless way the two here are run— expired items and if you tell them they take them away and put them back; or you inform them something is expired and they shrug and say someone will buy it; lack of knowledge of products so that they never know when you ask them if they have something, etc.
And ideally the supermarket would have a kitchen and we’d sell baked goods, maybe savory food. But those are rather ambitious ideas from a financial standpoint. And I’m happy just baking for now anyway. A friend here tells me that I could make good money once I get decent clientele going.
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This is what’s killing me, both from baking and cooking aspects. Okay, not really killing me, but you know. I went from cooking from 6-8 all the time now down to just cooking for 3, and sometimes (if the in-laws are up to visit) 5 at most.
It’s a hard transition. I still buy too much, cook too much, and it’s hard to stop. A few weeks ago cryovac’d picanha (rump cap) were on sale and also whole top sirloin on sale, so running on autopilot I got 3 of the picanha (my favorite whether I make as roast or steaks) and 1 whole sirloin.
I stuffed them in the basement fridge and the next day thought, “Okay, who the heck am I going to feed all this meat to???”.
Sigh.
This invoked a “Wow, what?” response from me:
I’m in the grocery daily, most often at both our big chain and Aldi each day. Both of these guys, if I show them stuff past sell-by they pull it and (as near as I can tell, being back there the next day), they do not reshelve it.
Do you think it’s more of a New York “laissez faire” (or maybe “caveat emptor”) thing going on?
Of course, it might be the difference between small local stores vs. larger chains with more controls in place. I did point out some way over-due stuff in a small market here and got a “Shrug” kind of response.
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Some time ago I baked these orange rolls and I was pleasantly surprised that they came out perfectly on first try since that rarely happens. They were exactly what I wanted!
It was a way to use up some of my candied peel. I pounded candied orange peel into a paste and combined with equal parts butter and added some vanilla and orange blossom water.
I used a reduced amount of Dan Lepard’s cinnamon roll dough, which is still one of my favorites. I then forgot to write it down so this time I wasn’t completely sure what I’d done for the filling. 
But thankfully I think I got it because this batch was as delightful as I remembered. This time, because I had the last of a container of sour cream I wanted to use up, I made a dough with that and some sourdough starter, too. Sour cream makes for some really nice, soft bread, so I thought it would be great here. The dough also contains an egg and butter and a little cardamom. Cream cheese icing flavored with a little orange oil and juice on top.
These rolls taste ultra orangey in a way that other rolls I’ve made with orange as the main flavor do not. The candied peel isn’t overpowering either, which I worried about when I first made them since peels have some bitterness to them. They’re just right in terms of sweetness, too, which is one of my major problems with a lot of orange-flavored rolls—they have often been disappointingly sweet.
And I baked a few vanilla cream puffs. No cream in sight lately, so I went with my usual alternative of whipping the pastry cream into some mascarpone.
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Yeah this would never happen in the USA 
. I live in the Dominican Republic now and in a small town at that, so it’s just a whole different ballgame. It’s another reason I wouldn’t mind running a place— because I’m used to USA standards when it comes to service. I don’t know what exactly the employees do at one supermarket in particular. There is often very obviously spoiled food that just stays there for weeks.
In fact I stopped selling items at that supermarket because aside from selling better on my own and being on the same shelf as much lesser quality goods, they just leave items when they don’t sell because they refuse to accept losses. And I really didn’t want to see anything I’d made still sitting there even when quality is no longer acceptable to me. Just recently I was in there and saw the awful cheesecake slices they sell (they are just so poorly made and far more expensive than what I make to boot) and a whole bunch of them were molding. A man was about to buy one and I stopped him because he didn’t notice the spots of mold at first.
And then at the other supermarket, which is only a tiny bit better, they had a malfunctioning dairy fridge for weeks. You could poke the butter and see it was completely soft. They obviously knew something was wrong because they eventually replaced it (but only with a fridge from another business the owner had just sold— these owners would never invest in a new piece of expensive equipment), but do you think they got rid of the dairy that had been sitting in that broken fridge all that time? Nope, they moved it elsewhere while they installed the other fridge and then put it in there as if it was perfectly good.
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I really appreciate you sharing your story. I’ve often though about turning my love of food and cooking into some type of profession. But practicing law is too well compensated, too stable, too good of benefits to throw it away and open a bakery instead. I’ve had some moments of weakness between jobs, and then come to my senses again. That said, I can very much see doing some type of cooking/baking/store/deli for income when I retire. I know I won’t just want to go part time or volunteer in my same line of work, because when I volunteer now, I’ll do just about anything except pro bono law. I’ve done that, but I just can’t make it work volunteering and also getting paid for the same thing. Just a me thing. I want the variety.
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Sunshine really liked the brown sugar brownies I made earlier in the week… so much so, she wants another batch with chopped walnuts. We are doing our big shopping on Sunday, so I’ll pick up some nuts, then. In the mean time (in an attempt to stave off any Chocolate Emergencies); I made up another batch of “Chocolate In-Betweens”. Sunshine likes these, as well. She kept checking on them, as they were cooking to see the progress. I told her once they cool, she can have one.
I think I’m developing a nice technique for making these, as its becoming easier and easier to crank out a batch. I’ve learned to score them with a knife, while they are hot which makes cutting them so much easier (once they cool).
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Blueberry baked donuts. A recipe from the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, these make for a nice, closed-crumb baked donut.
I used partially frozen garden blueberries. A half-batch yielded four donuts (not six) in my Nordic Ware pan.
These were easy enough, fun, not overly sweet, and with good texture (once fully cooled). Will make again. Probably worth a drizzle of glaze if indulging. As it were, I sprinkled the tops with a little cinnamon-sugar before baking.
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Blueberry cheesecake crumble bars. These started out as Chain Baker’s recipe because I had some condensed milk in the fridge, but I felt his should be baked in a 9x13 pan so there wouldn’t be so much crust. So I cut the recipe in half to make an 8-inch pan. But I thought the amount of condensed milk was too much (even though I was a bit short on the 150 grams I would have needed) in relation to the cream cheese, so I doubled the cream cheese. Still felt as I did last time I gave condensed milk a shot in cheesecake that it was too sweet, so I added some sour cream.
And the thing was I decided this crust suited me more so I ended up using it. I love this channel btw. Great recipes and I like she usually includes salt unlike a lot of the Asian channels.
However, I don’t have a convection oven and so even accounting for higher temp my topping just doesn’t get as brown. I baked the bottom for 20 minutes rather than 10 because I know more time is usually needed. For my liking these baked a bit longer than ideal in order to try to get the topping a bit more brown. Using brown sugar would have helped, too. I would likely par-bake the topping along with the bottom crust next time so I can have perfectly baked cheesecake and more golden topping. The bars are very tasty even with what I consider over-baked cheesecake.
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A variation on Dorie’s World Peace cookies. I used mint chocolate ( I have several giant bars I bought at Winners for unknown reasons) and replaced the vanilla with 1/2 ts mint extract. So good!
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That sounds amazing.
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It is really good!!
This bread is so good. I think it would be great with smoke salmon and cream cheese(none here) but it got a thumbs up.
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King Arthur’s European style rolls.
This is a low-effort recipe incorporating both a pre-ferment and a retard. I divided the recipe into 8 (not 12) for larger rolls. These are baked cold from the fridge, and slashing is quite easy.
The result is a flavorful roll with a crispy, blistered crust on the outside (I used steam) and tender crumb on the inside. While a little too domed and lacking in breadth for an American-style Dagwood sandwich, they would be great as a dinner roll, or for butterbrot or similar picnic fare. DH ate a couple straight away with butter and jam, and advised me not to freeze any of the remainder, which means they’ll be gone by tomorrow. Will make again.
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Wow these look absolutely perfect!
Thank you! I’m really pleased with the recipe.
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Oh my gosh! Stunning!
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