What my kitchen should have ….

to cook with coffee. 

What my kitchen should have ….

First and foremost coffee, fresh beans or ground fresh, freeze dried instant. Pick your favorite and buy the best. Keep in hand extra flour, ancient grain, and butter, real butter made from happy cows, as well as a can of non-stick cooking oil spray and parchment or waxed paper for your baking. Almost all of the baking recipes in the book call for them. Disposable pans and cookie sheets are good to keep in hand, especially when you plan to give away a tray of brownies, a loaf of bread, a small cake and even to bake cookies or when your kitchen space is very small as is the case with my daughters homes right now. I still place a regular cookie sheet or baking pan under the disposable ones to help me put them into the oven and take them out with out risk of spilling; pans also help with keeping the bottoms of the baked goods cooking and coloring evenly. (Tips to Cook with Coffee and share with friends and family.)

Both, hand held or stand up mixers will work as will immersion or regular blenders to Cook with Coffee and for everyday use. For young cooks I would start with good stand up mixer, they are almost hands free equipment. For small kitchen spaces I would recommend strong hand held mixers. And for both, to quickly and easily clean and Cook with Coffee I would recommend the immersion blenders, I am just in love with them. I buy every variety that comes out to test them, and the only recommendation I have, is that it allows you to separate the motor and the blade to clean it; it will last forever.

Spatulas, one of each, plastic for scraping and metal for decorating, pastry bags (1, “20, 1 # 12) with round couplings and tubes. Though you can also experiment with the plastic tube decorating products, which look like ketchup bottles from jack in the box toys. They might be a bit harder for starters but they are great for clean up. And make it fun; so what if the design comes out crooked at the beginning. Let your children use them too. Children, at least as we were all growing, and mine too, have had coffee in the mornings to go to school. Like everything in moderation, they too can drink and Cook with Coffee. For those that don’t agree decaf does the work and keeps its antioxidants too.

A rolling pin that suits your size (I use small wood rolling pins) are all fun things to keep at home for the preparation of the recipes for baked goods with coffee. Sealable bags in all sizes are something I use every day, to store, to use as small decorating pastry bags, to give cookies and sweets to my neighbors and more. A trick I have is to have my plastic flexible cutting boards in hand for starters to lift pastry that has stuck to the working table. Covering them with plastic wrap or sliding it with some flour on the edge, gently moving it under all the pastry and then placing a tart or pie pan over it and flipping is a great trick that works!

Two good oven mitts and a whole bunch of towels are around me when I cook. I love white kitchen towels sold at inexpensive stores, they come in packages of 4s. Cake pans that I use the most are the two 9 inch heavy quality cake pans or silicone ones places over baking xheets. A large bundt pan, I adore bundt pans, a small or 8 inch tube pan –my recommendation for starters, they always work and if the batter sticks you can scrape the sides and the cake comes out perfectly- and one 10 inch round baking pan; a 9 and a 10 inch spring form pans to Cook with Coffee. Cookie sheets, at least 3, one jelly roll pan, 3 half size 9 x 13 baking sheets, 2 inch and miniature muffin pans, can be silicone, as well as tart pans (I use for pies and quiches) in all 3 sizes, 4, 9 and 10 inch. Loaf pans in the 9 inch and the European 10 inch sizes. Scoops are very useful not only for serving ice cream but for scooping out cookie dough and cupcakes evenly all the time: I have the large #24 scoop (cupcakes), a small #40 (mini muffins and cookies) and # 60 (smaller cookies). A single large roasting pan with a non-stick rack that gets used with turkey, pork butt and large quantities of Cornish hens.

For small families and small kitchens, a small baking pan set, that fits my toaster oven with its rack too; baking sheets that fit the toaster oven come in handy not only for cookies but to cook single or double servings of fish or chicken.

Stainless steel bowls, I adore so I keep them in all sizes. Skillets in 7 and 11 inches, sauce-pans in a very small 2 cup size for melting butter and doing small chores, 1 1⁄2 and 2 1⁄2 quarts, are very useful in my everyday life; one 9 quart stock pot that I use for cooking pasta or preparing stocks is basically all you need to stock a usable kitchen.

And last but not by any means least… An inexpensive serrated knife is invaluable for slicing through baked goods with ease. Mine costed less than 2 dollars and sits in my kitchen drawer since the 1980’s, along with an immense variety of knifes from all over the world. I too, try every brand of knives that comes out. By the way, some of you will remember ones on TV shopping, the Ginsu knife set, those too I still have some from the 80’s.

Remember I am a professional pastry chef, cook at heart and love each and every product that can be practical and of high quality for me to Cook with Coffee. So keep you kitchen as simple as you want. It works perfectly.

That’s it!