What Does Amanda Palmer Know About Baking?

March 3, 2013 / The Black Hat Baker

I have no idea- I’ll have to ask Neil Gaiman about that- but she clearly knows a lot about small business and how to reach out to one’s audience. Here’s a link to here recent TED speech which has gone viral on the internet-
http://on.ted.com/Amanda

It should be noted that, while I am not a rabid fan of her music, I DO enjoy it and think she has immense talent, and after hearing this speech, I found myself taking mental notes.

The Black Hat Bakery is a small business. A VERY small business. And you, my readers and customers, are the lifeblood of it. More than that, however, you are all friends who see me and my work as enjoyable and worthy of support. Amanda is right- asking for help IS a very difficult thing for a lot of people, myself especially. Perhaps it’s more than coincidence that I saw this video right after starting up the Black Hat Bakery “Mad Hatter’s Club”- a small Facebook group (which you can join! Just send me a note for an invite!) of people who are willing to chip in a small donation so I can fund my experiments and keep putting great stuff on the menu.
The Black Hat Bakery isn’t where I want it to be- not yet. But I believe it will, and I’ll have you all to thank for it. 🙂

Stay classy, everyone!
-BHB

Turkey Day Turnout and Experiments Gone Wrong

November 29, 2012 / The Black Hat Baker

The BHB sans hat! Save this for posterity…

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to one and all! Hope everyone enjoyed time with family, porked themselves silly, and got to taste something wonderful!
My family was QUITE excited for me to bake up some goodies, and here we can see exactly how baking orders tend to evolve…

It all started with my uncle. He called and asked for a few desserts:
“Can you make, like, maybe two things?”
“Sure, what would you like?”
“Well, I know you like to experiment, so maybe we can do one of your weird recipes, and one thing a bit more conventional?

So I picked out my Carrot Cake (my uncle’s favorite) and a Sacher Torte (the godking of Viennese pastry.) Then I decided, “Hmm.. I’m not eating all this myself- I’d better crowdsource some ideas.”
Most of the people I asked just said “Anything you make, I’ll eat.” I love my family… so trusting! My sisters, however, made their opinions clear.

Little sister, Lauren: “I’m REALLY tasting cheesecake, and pumpkin pie…”
Older sister, Steph: “MAPLE BACON CUPCAKES. YOU PROMISED ME THEM FOR MY BIRTHDAY FOR TWO YEARS! MAPLE BACON CUPCAKES!”

So after three straight days of baking, you can see the results: Carrot Cake, Maple Bacon Cupcakes, Sugar-Free Pumpkin Pie (a favor to my father and other uncle, both diabetic), and an improved version of the Sweet Cinnamon Pretzel Cheesecake.

Mmmmhmm!

Since Thanksgiving has been over, I’ve had more time to get back toward experimenting. Although I AM careful to share all my successes with you guys, I won’t lie and say there haven’t been failures- the most recent being this brilliant idea: The Thin Mint Sachertorte.

The idea was brilliant and clever enough: Sachertorte is an amazing, dry, rich chocolate cake, layered with apricot jam, and enrobed in ganache. My idea was simple enough- Add mint wherever possible, and make a send-up to one of America’s favorite Girl Scout cookies. (I’m partial to Samoas myself- please don’t burn down my house!)
My lapses in judgement consisted mostly of my choice of filling- I used mint jelly. Now any sensible person knows the obvious differences between jelly and jam. In this case, the key differences I forgot involved structure and water content. Before enrobing, the cake is “iced” in the jam. When warm ganache meets jelly though, the jelly becomes sweet, mint-flavored water. Miserable structure, and miserable eye-appeal. The taste was also, as my chef would say, “not optimal.”
Ideas for next time: Use a jam that compliments mint, or perhaps create a sweet mint puree. Thoughts? Comment!

My next project took place two days ago. Those who may not know me personally may have ALREADY picked up on this, but I am a huge literary nerd. So when an Eagle Scout friend of mine sent me a recipe for Swedish Hardtack, calling it his troops “lembas bread,” I immediately wanted to try it.
Hardtack is a quintessential trail food- thick wafers of chewy, tough bread that eats well enough on it’s own, provides essential carbs for a hike, is lightweight, packable, and apparently NEVER goes bad. I have no pictures of this, but suffice to say that I will be making improvements. For those who would like the recipe, follow this link!
http://www.quietjourney.com/recipes/swedish_hardtack.html

That’s all the horror stories I have to offer for right now, but I WILL keep you posted! Next post will involve what’s currently in the oven- a holiday classic that I’ve never tasted before: mincemeat pie!

Stay classy,

The BHB

In Which Pretzels, Lovecraft, Voodoo, and Candy Make Themselves Known

October 7, 2012 / The Black Hat Baker

Greetings friends!
So now we’ve seen how good I am at keeping this blog updated regularly, but I shall improve on that!
The benefit of the long cold sleep, however… PICTURES OF MAD SCIENCE!

First of, the promised production from the first post- SWEET CINNAMON PRETZEL CHEESECAKE!

Still in the pan here, just before baking….

Oh child…. !

OoO

As can be seen in this photographic evidence, the cake was AMAZING. While I was a bit displeased with the pretzel crust (my food processor kicked the bucket, so that crust was brought to you by me, a rolling pin, a bag of pretzels, and some angry music), the filling was excellent. I had been slightly worried that sprinkling the cinnamon on top would be off-putting, but it proved to be flavorful and a most effective garnish! Perhaps in a clever design next time?

Next up- THE INNSMOUTH COOKIES!

For anyone that successfully managed to dodge that little pun, these cookies are my send-off to the works of H.P. Lovecraft- creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, and author of such works as “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, “At the Mountains of Madness”, “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, “Dreams at the Witch House”, and of course, “The Call of Cthulhu.” If you are not familiar with his work and are into science fiction and cosmic horror, you should certainly pick up a volume.
These cookies are inspired by the story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” in which a young man is touring Massachusetts and decides to stop in at the quiet city of Innsmouth and find out WHY people say it’s so strange, why people never seem to want to go there, and why the citizenry there seem to be ill-favored with certain characteristics that given them “the Innsmouth look…” To that effect, the cookies capture the flavors of New England- cranberries, walnuts, and oatmeal, with the strange addition of seaweed. (That’s the ONLY hint you’re getting. No spoilers here!)

At first I was slightly dismayed that the seaweed added little to the flavor profile, but I soon realized that in made for it in nutritional value (by adding seaweed, I could cut the salt in the recipe and include all the nutritional benefits of the seaweed itself), as well as it’s eye appeal and intrigue. What stands out first and foremost is the cookie itself- oatmeal and cranberry.

Finally, we come to my most recent experiment, and a bolder foray into candymaking-
BARON SAMEDI PEANUT BUTTER CUPS!

These were VERY exciting for me to make. It all started with making a batch of my Baron Samedi cupcakes (check out the menu!), and finiding myself having a bit of the spicy peanut butter filling left over. I was VERY pleased that the filling had come out well, and didn’t want to simply watch it sit in the fridge, waiting for another batch. So, having studied up a bit on chocolate work recently, I thought these would make for fantastic confections! But what kind of mold to use?! I wanted it to reflect the Baron just as much as the cupcakes did. I thought about plain cup molds and decorated with purple and silver sugar. I thought about rosette molds (black roses at a funeral)… and that when I wandered into my local outlet store and found a silicone skull-shaped ice cube tray, already for Halloween. Silicone is amazing stuff- it’s non-stick, it can be frozen, and it can take temperatures up to 500℉, making it perfect for candywork. Chocolate doesn’t get anywhere NEAR that hot (the working temperature for dark chocolate is around 88℉), but the non-stick quality made these perfect. The chocolate I picked was by one of my personal favorite companies, Green & Black’s (http://www.greenandblacks.com/us/). They specialize in organic, fair-trade, DELICIOUS chocolate. Their baking chocolate is fantastic (76% Cacao), but they’re snacking chocolate is also rather excellent for when you have a sweet tooth. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more candymaking in the future- thoughts anyone?

In the next installment:
Chocolate! Honeycomb Candy! MADNESS!!!
‘Till then, stay classy, everyone!

Let’s start at the very beginning….

August 9, 2012 / The Black Hat Baker

Hello hello, one and all!

Welcome to the blog of the Black Hat Bakery! Every Thursday, I expect to be throwing something new up on here for everyone to read and get excited over! Most of the time, it’ll likely involve baking or food. Sometimes it’ll be about projects and ideas currently in the works, and I might be asking for your input. Sometimes it may even just be random, curious ideas and thoughts I may come up with during downtime. Whatever it is, I hope you will all enjoy!

Perhaps the first entry of this blog should be a bit of an introduction-
My name is Matthew Strenger, and I am the Black Hat Baker. The bakery operates out of my home kitchen with everything from production to delivery, webmastering to advertising, done by one man- me.
I started this bakery for several reasons:

I love food. I love baking in particular, and I love feeding people over all.
In May 2011, I was jobless. I knew I loved to bake, I knew I was good at baking, and I knew I needed a job. If you follow what I call “The MacGuyver Principle”- If you need something, don’t have it, and can’t find it, get started making it. So I made myself a job
I love people. I like interacting with them, and I love making them simple and be happy. It is VERY hard to frown while eating a tasty cupcake.

As I type this, I’m experimenting with pretzel dough, and hoping to turn this particular batch into something special. I hardly like to spoil the surprise, but I’ll let you know just how successful it is, along with pictures in the photo album! Everybody loves pictures of tasty things, right? Right. So say we all!

That’s just about everything I can think of to say tonight- leave some suggestions or requests in the comments, and stay tuned for more mad science!

-BHB