Bake-En

Craft of Baking Sour Cherry Scones

2010-06-12T09:19:00.000-04:00

The Craft of Baking by Karen Demasco is a lovely new baking book. I highly suggest these little sour cherry scones. They take seconds to make and are truly delicious. Cherries aren't in season YET, so I used frozen cherries which worked wonderfully.

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Maple Walnut Creme Fraiche Candies

2009-12-12T14:30:00.003-05:00

I made Maple Walnut Creme fraiche candies with my mom in mind. She loves maple walnut ice cream more than anything. I wanted to make something for her to eat during the winter when ice cream can be a bit too cold to swallow in Vermont. This recipe is excellent. Smaller sized candies are better as these are very flavorful.

Maple Walnut Candies

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons creme fraiche
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
5 ounces toasted walnut halves

Method

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Stir in granulated sugar, maple syrup, salt, and creme fraiche. Raise heat to medium-low, and cook, whisking frequently, until sugar has dissolved. Raise heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring frequently and scraping sides of pan with a spatula, until mixture reaches the soft-ball stage (240), 10 to 15 minutes.
2. Remove from heat. Carefully stir in the vanilla (mixture will steam and bubble). Let cool, without stirring, for 2 minutes. Add walnuts, and beat vigorously with a spoon until slightly opaque but still creamy, about 2 minutes.
3. Drop small spoonfuls onto baking sheet. Let stand until set, about 30 minutes.

TWD Apple Turnovers

2009-09-15T06:36:00.001-04:00

I had high hopes for these turnovers, but I never fell in love with them. The dough was too sweet and the apple filling not nearly enough. I hoped the sour cream would make the dough tangy, but the cloying sweetness overpowered it.

The upside is that this is a dessert I didn't go back for seconds on. There's something nice about that.

Julie of Someone’s in the Kitchen picked this recipe as this week's TWD pick of the week. You can find the recipe at her website.

TWD Chocolate Souffle

2009-09-08T12:03:00.005-04:00

There's dessert and then there's DESSERT, souffle falls into the latter category. The magic of eggs and sugar whipped and folded together to create a puffy dessert that must be served immediately. Fun to make, serve and especially to eat. Thanks to Susan of She’s Becoming DoughMessTic for choosing this recipe. You can find the recipe for the chocolate souffle on her website.

Souffle's are amazingly easy to make. Some people find them nerve-wrecking, but as long as your ingredients are room temp, and you can whip your whites properly; it's a piece of cake (or souffle in this case). The only change I made to the recipe was I halved it because I was making it for two. I also added a pinch of salt to the egg whites and reduced the overall sugar by 1 tablespoon to bring out the chocolate flavor.

(Souffles as soon as they came out of the oven)

The souffles were just lovely. Airy and very chocolaty. Joe liked them so much he ate two! We pair the souffle with Schweiger Port VII which was perfect with the souffles.

For dinner that night we made a simple risotto with just a bit of finely chopped asparagus topped with an asparagus bacon garnish and buttery seared scallops. We paired our risotto with Patrick Bouland Chiroubles 2006, which was a perfect wine for this dish. Though most people wouldn't pair a red wine with a scallop dish we chose it because it was a nice light Beaujolais. We prefer reds to whites in general, so we frequently drink Beaujolais with meals that are more white friendly. As far as meals go, our scallop risotto and chocolate souffle night will go down as one of the top 10 meals of 2009.

Ratatouille

2009-09-04T16:09:00.003-04:00

(ratatouille with Bulgar)

Joe and I are the type of people who go to a grocery store and buy veggies that look good. Well, lately lots of veggies have been looking good, and I found myself alone with WAY too many veggies. Luckily, Audrey from Food from Books blogged about Ratatouille last week. Her post was the inspiration for what to do with my cornucopia of produce.

You can find Audrey's post here.

The recipe for this delicious ratatouille can be found here. The only change I made was I tripled the recipe and increased the mint. I love mint in savory dishes. Tomorrow I'll be making a tart with some of the ratatouille and I'll probably try the gratin recipe from Fine cooking too because I made so much. One note about this recipe. It takes a very long time to make. Next time I make this I'll roast some of my veggies in the oven to save time.

Avec Chicago

2009-09-04T14:41:00.004-04:00

Publican was Joe's favorite Chicago restaurant, but mine was Avec.

(Photo from Avec's website.)

Avec is a wine bar serving rustic food influenced by Southern France and the Mediterranean. The wine selection there was lovely. We sat at the bar (highly recommend), and our bartender did a great job suggesting wines and food for our dinner.

Panzanella salad with cherries, roasted vidalias, fennel, pickled feta, mustard greens and balsamic. We loved this salad. So much so, that I barely had time to snap a picture before it was gone.

Chorizo-stuffed Medjool dates with smoked bacon and piquillo pepper-tomato sauce. Avec is known for this dish, and now we know why. It's amazing, and the dates are huge! The perfect sweet-savory dish.

Coffee braised pork ribs with radish, napa cabbage, kohlrabi and horseradish vinaigrette. The ribs were so good. I liked the ribs at Avec more than the ribs we had at Publican the night before. These ribs with slightly sweet with lots of meat on them (wish the picture came out better).

Pan-fried lake trout with pain perdu, lemon aioli, cornichons and watercress. This was our favorite plate. The trout was perfectly cooked, just a bit crispy from being pan fried. The slightly crispy fish and the peppery watercress balance the soft savory french toast beautifully. For all of it's fattening qualities (crispy, aioli and custard), this dish was amazingly light.

Another amazing meal in Chicago.

Publican Chicago

2009-09-04T13:53:00.003-04:00

Our second restaurant stop in Chicago was Publican for dinner. The restaurant focuses on simple dishes containing mainly pork, fish and vegetables. Clean, simple food. They also have an amazing beer list, and a great wine list as well.

We knew our night would be great when our waiter asked if we had been there before. After hearing we hadn't; he gave us a quick breakdown of the restaurant and offered to come back with beer samples. Yes, please! Within a couple minutes we had two local beers in front of us, and we were ready to order.

Before we begin some of these pictures are lack luster. For more beautiful pictures please go to Publican's website. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible when I take pictures at restaurants; because of that they often don't come out great!

First out came bread with bright flavorful butter. Nice crisp, chewy crust. Tried not to fill up on it, but that buttered bread was hard to resist.

Chefs selection of three hams. Serrano, La Quercia rossa ham and Prosciutto. Our favorite was the Serrano. This was a fun plate to share.

Just dug radishes quartered with butter and fleur de sel. Simple, perfect.

Our favorite (how couldn't it be). Frites with Louis's organic egg. I don't know who Louis is, but I would like to shake his hand. Those eggs were outstanding. The frites were fried in both animal and vegetable fat. So good. Our waiter treated us to a side of aioli, which was perfect for dipping. Not diet friendly, but worth every bite.

Next we had the Market salad which was contained onion, cucumber, haricovert, sungolds, ricotta salata & hazelnuts. I forgot to snap a picture of this one, probably because it was a little too salty for us. The veggies were fresh and the hazelnuts added a nice crunch though.

Finally, we had the Potée which was toulouse sausage, pork tenderloin & two ribs with some vegetables. This was lovely, but we were so full when it came to the table, we could barely eat it. My favorite on the plate was the toulouse sausage while Joe's was the tenderloin which was perfectly pink in the middle.

Writing about Publican makes me wish I lived much closer to Chicago. The next day Joe wanted to go back there for dinner because we had so much fun. The restaurant is beautiful. I loved everything there from the bar with the wooden taps, to the long wooden table, to the bathrooms with a communal sink. This place is about great food and socializing.

One last thing about how great this place is. Oftentimes at restaurants we'll want to keep our food and drink menu nearby, but because of space issues we have to give it to the server. Publican solved this problem. Their chairs all have a shelf below them to hold your menu-clever.

Frontera Grill

2009-09-01T11:03:00.003-04:00

Joe and I took a mini vacation to Chicago a couple weeks ago. Our goal was simple, eat as much of Chicago as possible.

First stop: Frontera Grill

When I was a student at the CIA I briefly met Rick Bayless at the Worlds of Flavors conference. Upon meeting him, what stood out was his excitement about food and how nice he was to us students. Friendly, respectful, encouraging, etc. The kind of chef I want to work for. I was happy to hear he won the top chefs masters conference.

Before we begin. Some of my menu descriptions might seem a bit vague, and that's because well; they are. We were there in August, and the menu online has changed to September, some of the items we ordered are no longer available. Hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves.

Enough about that. It's really about the food (and one delicious margahrita).

First up (complimentary):

Peanuts, pepitas and sunflowers seeds with chili flakes

Nice nibblers. Very beer/cocktail friendly.

Next:

A baked (fried?) tortilla with black beans, a guacamole-like sauce, frisee, cheese and pork (maybe pork belly?)

For Drinks:

Summer Margaritas and Ayinger beers:

The margarita had a cilantro salt rim and was flavored with cucumber and a lovely tequila.

Entrees:

Tacos al Carbon (description from website: Red chile-marinated Maple Creek pork (pastor style), with charcoaled pineapple, slab bacon and red onion served with two salsas, frijoles charros, guacamole and homemade tortillas.

This was very good. I wished there had been a bit more of the pineapple, bacon, red onion mixture, but other than that it was perfect.

The next item was an enchilada stuffed with braised pork and topped with a sweet mole. Delicious.

(entree picture in back with fork)

Unfortunately we didn't have room for dessert.

Next time we go to Chicago we will go back to Frontera Grill. We had a great experience. Our server and the rest of the wait staff were great. We never felt rushed even though we had a coveted seat on the patio. One of the best lunches I've had.

TWD Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie

2009-08-25T16:18:00.003-04:00

Linda of Tender Crumb decided on Dorie's Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie as this weeks TWD recipe. You can find the recipe at here at her website.

Love isn't a word I use often, but when a recipe for a 9" pie calls for 2 1/2 sticks of butter in the filling ALONE, I feel cupids arrow honing in on my heart.

I followed the recipe for the filling exactly as Dorie described except I added candied ginger instead of fresh. The custard came together very quickly on the stove top, under 6 minutes. After letting the hot mixture cool in the blender for 8 minutes, I slowly incorporated the butter, letting it blend for a full 3 minutes once it was all in there. The liquid was pourable once done blending, but after chilling for 4 hours it became very thick and ultra smooth.

For the crust, I baked extra cookie dough I had in the freezer. I used the vanilla pepper dough I made a while back. Once the cookie dough had cooled, I pulsed it in the blender with 3 pieces of candied ginger. Once that was finely ground, I added a touch of orange juice to bind the dough a bit. Then I patted the crumbs into my buttered tart shells and froze them for about an hour. After the hour, I baked them in a 400 degree oven for 9 minutes.

The very second I deemed the shells cool enough, I made a swiss meringue. For the meringue I used 4 egg whites, 1 cup of sugar, a pinch of cream of tartar and a little vanilla extract. I love making swiss meringues because it's easy, doesn't required a thermometer and always looks beautiful.

This tart/pie is love. The contrast between the sweet light meringue and the dense creamy lime filling is the stuff poets write of. Also nice was the additional spice/heat from the candied ginger in the tart shell. The ginger wasn't that pronounced, but it brought a beautiful brightness to the overall flavor of the tart.

TWD Classic Banana Bundt Cake

2009-08-04T09:26:00.004-04:00

Mary of The food librarian chose banana bundt cake as this week's TWD recipe.

There's not to much to say about this cake other than, make it. Make it now. I loved it. The aromatics of it as it bakes are reason enough to pick up bananas and sour cream at the grocery store. If I could capture the smell of this cake in a candle, I would be a millionaire.

Making the cake is very easy. I halved the recipe and it made 6 mini bundt cakes. They baked for 23 minutes, and looked picture perfect right out of the oven.

How you like them apples? I mean, banana cakes:

(Forgive me, clearly Boston is starting to effect me in a negative way... quoting a movie from 1997. Wow, Good Will Hunting is 12 years old; that makes me...)

For fun, I made three different glazes; chocolate, rum and caramel. Caramel was my favorite because I liked the crunch against the soft cake.

Chocolate Cake with Mocha Icing

2009-08-01T14:35:00.004-04:00

At Sofra we make a cake that I like to call a mayo cake. We whip eggs and sugar together then we whip in olive oil very slowly creating an emulsion very similar to an aioli. The resulting cake is amazing. It's moist with a beautiful crumb structure.

The emulsion in that recipe reminded me of some of the older cookbooks I have which contain recipes for cakes with Mayonnaise. Never one to fear mayo, I decided to try out a chocolate cake recipe fromThe Wooden Spoon Dessert book. I tweaked the recipe a bit, but mainly stayed true to it. It's a great recipe to make if you're in a pinch and need to whip up something fast (as is the following icing recipe from the same book). The cake tastes lovely and you would never know the "secret" ingredient.

Chocolate Cake adapted from The Wooden Spoon Dessert Book by Marilyn Moore
Preheat oven 350F
Grease a 9x12" pan (I used mini bundt pans)

Sift together:
2 cups AP flour
4 Tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Vahlrona)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

In another bowl mix together:
1 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup granulated sugar

Add alternately (3 dry:2 coffee), blending after each addition
reserved dry ingredeints
1 cup cold coffee (I had instant espresso, so I made 1 1/2 cups of hot espresso; chilling one cup and reserving the other half for the icing)

Fold in:
3 oz 70% chocolate (I used Lindt)

Bake in a 9x12 pan fro about 30 minutes or in mini bundt pans for 23.

Quick mocha frosting
again adapted from The Wooden Spoon
Sift into mixing bowl:
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

whisk together, then add

4 tablespoons soft butter
pinch salt
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons of warm espresso (from extra brewed for cake)

I wanted this icing to be runny, so I increased her recipe from 2T coffee to 4T espresso.

Guiness Bread

2009-08-01T14:09:00.003-04:00

I love Guinness, and had some left over after making my Guinness mustard. After a quick search on the internet, I found an interesting Guinness quick bread to make.

Bread making doesn't get much easier then the recipe I came up with. Here it is:

3 cups minus 2 tablespoons AP Flour
1 1/4 tablespoons baking powder
3/4 cup evaporated cane sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vietnamese cinnamon
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
12 oz Guinness Stout

Mix your flour through cinnamon in a bowl. Add guiness mix about half way. Add cranberries and walnuts fold into batter mixing till incorporated, but taking care not to overmix. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or till a skewer inserted in the bread comes out clean.

This bread is great. It's nice to eat on it's own, with some butter. It's also nice to toast and top with some cheese. Next time I make it I will bake it in tiny loaf pans. Once baked and fully cooled I'll slice the bread and dry it out in the oven creating little melba toasts. Then I'll use it as an appetizer with some blue cheese, hopefully my favorite Point Reyes Blue.

TWD Nutella Swirl Ice Cream

2009-07-28T10:58:00.001-04:00

Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu decided on Vanilla Ice Cream as this week's TWD recipe. Check out Lynne's blog for the recipe.

Vanilla ice cream is such a fun base to play with. For today's treat I decided to add nutella (about 1/2 a container) and some finely chopped toasted hazelnuts (about 1/2 cup) to my ice cream. I added the nuts to the base about 4 minutes before it was done churning. Once it was fully churnned I folded in the nutella.

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that this ice cream was beyond delicious. There is just no way nutella, hazelnuts and vanilla can go wrong (unless of course you're allegic to nuts).

Spicy Guiness Mustard

2009-07-27T13:22:00.005-04:00

In my opinion mustard is an underrated condiment. It's uses are endless; sandwiches, vinaigrette's, marinades, meats and fish all benefit from mustard. I even had mustard ice cream at Taylor in NYC (though not sure that was my favorite mustard application). I love all types of mustard, but spicy, grainy mustard's are my favorite. I was excited to see this recipe on Saveurs website.

Anything made with Guinness scores big with me, so I went to Penzey's and picked up some brown mustard seeds to make the spicy Guinness mustard. This recipe was a breeze to make. You combine Guinness, red wine vinegar, spices, sugar and mustard seeds in a bowl and let it sit out for 2 days.

After two days process it for about 3 minutes in a food processor.

That's it. Funny, if you combine all the time I spent "making" the mustard, I'm sure I've spent more time on occasion trying to open a bottle of commercially sealed mustard.

This mustard is delicious. It's complex with a nice spicy kick which will mellow out over time. I'm sure I'll come up with some interesting ways to use mustard, so stay tuned.

Olive Oil Madeleines

2009-07-25T15:53:00.003-04:00

Pretty? Yes

Easy? Yes

Best Ingredients? Yes

Tasty? Not so much

I really want to like everything I bake, but sometimes there's no love to be found. I found a recipe in this month's Gourmet for Olive Oil Madeleines. The recipe came from Eleven Madison, so I was pretty sure I would love it. They baked off perfectly. Beautiful bubble on the bottom and just the slightest color on the "shell." They looked perfect. Flavor wise they were bland, bland, bland; which was shocking because I used an amazing olive oil from Lebanon and the zest of two lemons. I think this recipe could work if I wanted to make a "spiced-up" madeleine, but for the time being; I use my stand-by madeleine recipe.

Sofra Eye Candy

2009-07-23T18:08:00.004-04:00

We're having so much fun at Sofra with seasonal fruits and veggies. Here are some recent photos from the bakery.

Blueberry tart

Persian spice donuts

Market tart with Sienna Farms broccoli and sumac

Pate a choux donuts:

Chamomile Umm Ali with nectarines and almonds

Blueberry sweet cheese tarts

Croissants

Bee sting

Insiders view of pastry display

TWD Blanc Manger

2009-07-21T14:33:00.004-04:00

Susan of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy selected Raspberry Blanc-Manger as this week's TWD recipe.

I loved the idea of this cake, but the end product was a bit lack-luster. Two things I did that I won't do again. I used natural almonds which created a non-blanc manger. Second, I make the cake in VT, and I accidently grabbed a 10" cake pan instead of an 8". The resulting cake was really thin, maybe only 1/2" tall. I would like a taller cake next time. I did love the contrast between the tart raspberries and creamy almond mousse. I found myself only eating the sections that had both raspberries and cream.

I love the idea of a go-to no bake summer dessert, so I'm going to try this again soon. Next time I'll infuse my cream with thyme, and I will use a smaller cake pan and blanched almonds.

Buoncristiani Dolcetto di Nonno 2006

2009-07-08T18:16:00.002-04:00

Joe went to California last month, and I've been fortunate to experience his trip via the wine he brought home. We've already drank some wine from our favorite wineries such as Unti and Michel Schlumberger, but last night we had something special.

Joe opened a bottle of Buoncristiani Dolcetto di Nonno 2006 from Dry Creek Valley. I find it hard to describe this wine because I was so impressed by it. It was smooth and floral with structure that's not biting. Really it was one of the best wines I have had in a long time.

I did a little research, and Buoncristiani is owned by 4 brothers. This wine is named after their Nonno (grandfather). I'm sure he would be proud if he tasted this wonderful wine. For more information check out their website here.

TWD Katherine Hepburn Brownies

2009-07-07T10:34:00.003-04:00

Lisa of Surviving Oz chose Katherine Hepburn brownies as this week's TWD recipe. I had made these once before using the optional cinnamon and wasn't thrilled. Today I decided to make them without the cinnamon, and kept my fingers crossed that I would like them.

Shockingly enough, I'm a bit chocolated out. After the brownies I made for my dad, and the grandmother's cookies from Martha… I'm ready for some vanilla or fruit.

The recipe was very easy to make. You melt your butter then add cocoa powder and espresso powder. Next beat in your eggs and vanilla; followed by dry ingredients and chocolate chunks. I love that this recipe is done by hand so quickly. The resulting batter is dark, dark, dark studded with bits of lovely bittersweet chocolate.

I left the brownies in the oven for an additional 5 minutes because they were still liquid after 30 minutes of baking. After reading a bit online, it seems like I should have used a metal pan instead of a glass for them to bake in the 30 minute zone. Regardless, these brownies are good. Their intense fudginess almost screams for vanilla ice cream. Luckily, I didn't have any on hand...these are so fudgy that you can't eat too many. As far as brownies go, I still prefer the Scharfenberger recipe to this one. That being said, I would be proud to serve these to company.

Strawberry Sandwich Cookies

2009-07-06T15:48:00.002-04:00

Martha Stewart's Cookies is my latest cookbook obsession. I bought it last week at TJ Maxx (yes, I did get the max for the minimum), and have been obsessing over most of the recipes ever since. Each recipe has a picture, which I love. They are not just pictures either; they're pictures from Martha Stewart's talented staff, so they look amazing. I hope to one day take pictures as good as theirs.

I wanted to make macaroons for the 4^th of July, but it wasn't in the cards. Instead, I made Martha's cookie dough recipe for her raspberry cream sandwiches. The dough is full of vanilla flavor. The recipe calls for a whole vanilla bean and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. I was afraid the vanilla would overpower my jam, so I used half a vanilla bean and only 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. I also added a heaping ¼ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper to bring out the pepper in the jam. The dough was delicious and I had high hopes for the finished baked cookie.

While baking, the dough spread more than I thought it would. I ended up cutting the baked cookies with a cutter to get the shape I wanted. The flavor of the dough was good, but very sweet. Once I added the strawberry jam they were sugar bombs, and I was running for my toothbrush after eating one. I wouldn't combine this cookie dough and jam together again. The dough is delicious on its own though, and I bet it would be great with some bittersweet chocolate. I have lots of left over dough to play with, so I think I might try to use it as a flat tart base later in the week. If I do I'll be sure to post my results.

(Not my) Grammy’s Chocolate Cookies

2009-07-06T11:56:00.004-04:00

Martha strikes again. Grammy's chocolate cookies are addicting, chewy, crunchy (from the turbinado) and insanely chocolaty. They spread a lot while baking and become very flat; making them the perfect cookie for sandwiching with some vanilla ice cream.

For the recipe, please reference Martha Stewart's Cookies or visit Martha's website here.

The only difference I saw between the two recipes is the book calls for an additional 2 tablespoons of AP flour; and it calls for rolling the cookies in sanding sugar (not granulated). I highly suggest rolling the cookies in either turbinado or sanding sugar. Sanding and turbinado sugars add a nice crunch to baked items because they typically don't dissolve in the oven.

Another suggestion I have is use the best cocoa powder you can get your hands on. The cocoa flavor dominates this cookie, so the better the cocoa powder the better the cookie.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

2009-07-06T11:34:00.003-04:00

Nancy Silverton's recipe for coffee cake is by far the best I have come across. Made with crème fraiche, it is light with a beautiful crumb structure. Our 4^th of July started early this year because my bocce partner Kady and I were playing at 10:00 AM in a bocce tournament. Knowing we would need a solid food foundation to start off our day of merriment; I decided to make the coffee cake for breakfast.

Lesson learned on this cake, use crème fraiche. I decided to make this cake last minute, so I didn't have time to make crème fraiche. Nancy says you can use sour cream, which I did. The resulting cake was much heavier and chewier than its crème fraiche variation. Everyone at the party loved it, but knowing how great it is with crème fraiche I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed.

Here's my adaptation of the recipe from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from La Brea Bakery

Crumb filling:

1 cup chopped walnuts (toasted)

¼ cup plus 2 Tb light brown sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix above ingredients together, set aside.

Batter:

2 large eggs

2 cups crème fraiche (or sour cream)

1 tbsp vanilla

8 oz cold butter cubed

2 cups sugar

3 cups AP flour

1 Tb baking powder

1 tsp salt

Butter a 14-cup capacity bundt pan.

Preheat oven to 325.

In a bowl, mix dry ingredients. In another bowl whisk crème fraiche, eggs and vanilla together. In a mixing bowl paddle butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Add the crème fraiche mixture to the creamed butter a little at a time till fully incorporated. Add the dry ingredients in 3 batches till fully incorporated. Put half the batter into the bundt pan using your fingers to smooth it out (wet fingers with water first, it makes it easy to spread). Scatter the brown sugar walnut crumbs all over the batter. Put the remaining batter on top of the crumbs, using wet fingers again to smooth it out. Bake for about an hour till firm to the touch.

Crepes with Quatre Epice Pastry Cream and Honey Ginger Apriums

2009-06-30T10:49:00.004-04:00

Mornings spent with my husband are few and (too) far between. This morning I was so happy to wake up and see him there; I shot out of bed and started making us a celebratory breakfast. Knowing I had apriums to use; I immediately thought crepes. I reached for my copy of Lenotre's Desserts and Pastries for inspiration. There I found a recipe for poached whole apricots with honey and candied ginger, crepes Suzette and pastry cream; with those recipes as I starting point I began to tinker.

I halved the apriums and cooked them in 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup plus 1 T sugar, 1/4 cups honey and 1 T of chopped candied ginger.

Once they were cooked; I separated the liquid from the fruit and cooked the liquid down to a syrupy consistency then strained it.

I followed Lenotre's recipe for pastry cream except I added 1/4 tsp of quatre epice and about 1 T of butter.

I based my crepe batter on Lenotre's crepes Susette. Here it is:

40 g of unstalted butter
125g flour
40g oil
30g sugar
3 eggs
1 cup milk

Method:
Brown the butter. Mix flour, sugar, oil, eggs and 1/2 cup of milk till smooth in a bowl. Add the rest of the milk whisking well making sure there are no lumps. Let rest one hour. Cook the crepes for about 1 minute on each side.

To plate spread a little (or a lot) pastry cream on half a crepe, fold over then fold over again. Put 4 filled crepes on a plate. Top with poached apriums and the reduced sauce.

Strawberry Black Pepper Jam

2009-06-24T13:36:00.003-04:00

Last night I made strawberry jam using the strawberries we picked at Verrill farm. I loosely followed a recipe from Blue Ribbon Preserves by Linda Amendt. Essentially, I halved the recipe in the book and then decrease the sugar a tiny bit (good idea), added freshly crushed black pepper, a tiny bit of salt and some home-made apple pectin. It turned out lovely. I plan on using the jam in something during 4th of July weekend; though I have found a nice snack in the meantime. Spread a little bit of goat cheese on a black pepper water cracker, then top with the strawberry jam. It's lovely.

Here's my recipe

Strawberry Black Pepper Jam
2 cups hulled strawberries kept whole if small, halve or quarter if large
1 tbsp fresh strained lemon juice
3 cups sugar
1 tbsp of home-made apple pectin

Combine strawberries, sugar and lemon juice in a large pan. Turn the heat on low and stir just about constantly till the sugar is melted.

It seems like way too much sugar, but just be patient and it will melt. Turn up the heat and bring it to a boil, skimming all the foam that rises to the top. Once the mixture reaches 221 F, add your home-made pectin and stir it in well. Bring it back to a boil once again, for me it took about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and process if you're going to can it.

Strawberry Picking at Verrill Farm

2009-06-24T08:10:00.003-04:00

I was lucky enough to go strawberry picking last week before the never ending rainstorms began. Joe and I went to Verrill Farm in Concord, MA. It's a lovely farm that's close to Walden Pond so you can make a day trip out of it (weather permitting). The day we went strawberry picking couldn't have been nicer. It was a cool, dry, crisp morning with the sun shining upon us. As soon as we started picking I felt a sense of tranquility (and a pain in my lower back; squatting for that long is difficult!). Regardless of my back pain, it was a fun experience. We picked a basket full of tiny beauties. When we went to purchase our berries we couldn't help but buy their beautiful english peas, golden beets and easter radishes.

Here's a list of the produce they have available right now:

Peas - shell & sugar snap
Asparagus
Arugula
Bok Choy
Rhubarb
Swiss Chard
Spinach
Parsnips
Micro greens
Lettuce
Strawberries
Scallions
Radishes

If you would like to go strawberry picking at Verrill Farms I posted their hours below. Make sure to call before you go though to make sure the pickings are still good.

Pick-your-own hours depending on conditions:
Mon - Fri: 9 am - 12 noon
Sat & Sun: 9 am - 3 pm

My Dad’s Brownies

2009-06-23T13:15:00.005-04:00

I take after my mom for my never ending desire to bake; and my dad for my never ending desire to eat baked goods. Growing up, we used to hide boxes of cookies under a basket turned upside down on top of the fridge, so that he couldn't find them. The funny thing is for all the cookies he ate back then, he was still in great shape (why didn't I take after him for that!). Now, my dad is over 50 and eats much healthier than back then. No more sweets for him, he's taking care of his heart. Every now and then though, he will indulge; and the following brownies are the perfect reason. They are dense, chewy and chocolaty.

A little over two years ago, I made 16 batches of these brownies for my wedding reception. That's when my dad fell in love with them. I can't tell you have many times during the wedding weekend he said how good they were, or better yet; how many times he's brought them up since the wedding. He LOVES these brownies. So, for Father's day this year, I decided to send him something he would actually like (I bet you can guess what).

The brownie recipe comes from The Essence of Chocolate by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg. It is a beautiful cookbook full of great chocolate recipes and really interesting information on chocolate. I highly recommend it. The recipe can also be found here.

Chicken with dates, spicy sausage and bulgur

2009-06-21T16:46:00.002-04:00

There are many reasons why I love my job, but one is our growing cookbook collection. It seems like every week there's one or two new additions. One book we have that is absolutely beautiful is Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey by Greg and Lucy Malouf. If you haven't looked at this book, go to your local library and get it. The recipes are inspiring as are the stunning pictures. By the time I had looked at it from back to front (I'm a pastry chef; I always start at the back); I was on expedia looking at airfare to Turkey (slight exaggeration). In all seriousness though, this book is worth looking at.

Some people love pizza, others chocolate, but me; I love Bulgur. The hot side uses it at Sofra, and I'm particularly obsessed fond of our carrot kibbeh. The more bulgur recipes I look for, the more I'm inspired to use it. I have found breads, puddings, cakes and loads of savory dishes. While discussing my bulgur obsession with Christy (of The perfect bite); she suggested I make the Clay Pot Chicken with Dates, sucuk and bulgur from Turquoise. She had made it, and highly recommended the dish. As always Christy was right. The dish has warmth of spices, and the comfort of home. Here's my adaptation of the recipe:

2 oz butter

1 Tbsp evoo

2 red onions, but into thick rings

1 clove garlic, sliced

2 long red peppers, seeded and cut into rings

2 long green peppers, seeded and cut into rings

1 long green chile, seeded and diced (they call for 2, but all I could find was jalapeno)

1 heaped tsp ground cumin

1 level tsp ground cinnamon

Generous splash of sherry

2 large vine-ripened tomatoes, seeded and diced

2 oz fine bulgur, washed

1 ½ C chicken stock

1 cinnamon stick

(2 star anise-didn't have on hand so didn't use)

Few sprigs thyme

2 pounds of chicken breast on bone (they call for 2 1# chickens)

Sea salt

Black pepper

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 oz spicy sausage (they call for sucuk-a Turkish sausage)

8 dates seeded and cut into quarters (they call for 4 medjool dates, but my grocery store didn't have them)

Preheat oven to 400. Put 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the chicken and lightly brown the meat all over. Add the sausage and cook till it's golden on all sides. Remove the meat and pour out any excess fat (or leave it if you want). Add the butter and evoo to the pan.

Gently sweat the onions, garlic, peppers and chilies with the cumin and cinnamon for about 5 minutes or until the veggies soften. Add the sherry, tomatoes, bulgur, chicken stock, cinnamon stick, star anise and thyme and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover and simmer gently for 5 minutes. Add the chicken and sausage to the vegetable mixture and tuck in the dates.

Cover the pan and cook in the oven for 20 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning and serve immediately.

Sour Cherry Vanilla Jam with Salty Almond Cookies

2009-06-09T16:40:00.003-04:00

Cherries are my mom's favorite fruit, so this past Mother's day I decided to make her sour cherry jam. Growing up, we had a big sour cherry tree in our backyard. Once we fought past the birds we would pick buckets of cherries during the height of the season. Then off to the kitchen we went for the messy task of pitting the cherries. Covered in cherry juice we would spend the next hour wiping down ourselves and sometimes the kitchen walls. They were juicy.

The following recipe yields a sweet tart jam with a hint of complexity due to (I think) the vanilla and sourness of the cherries. The jam is lovely sandwiched between salty almond cookies (recipe follows).

Sour Cherry Vanilla Jam from Madelaine Bullwinkel's Gourmet Preserves

2 pounds pitted sour cherries

1 pound granny smith apples (2 ½ cups peeled and chopped)

1 vanilla bean

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 ¼ cups sugar

Place the cherries in a good processor and pulse for 15 seconds to chop them medium fine. Peel, core and quarter the apples. Chop them to a medium-fine texture in the processor. Combine the cherries and apples in a 5 quart pan.

Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean, and add the seeds and pod to the fruit. Cover the pan and bring to a boil. Uncover and simmer for 15 minutes to reduce the juices, stirring regularly. The mixture will thicken, but should not stick.

Stir in the lemon juice, and then add the sugar in 4 equal batches, waiting for the liquid to return to the simmer before adding more. Stir frequently. Let the jam actively cook 10 minutes more. It will noticeably thicken and reach a temperature of 210 to 212 F.

Pour the jam into a heat resistant 1-quart measure. Remove the vanilla pod. Fill hot, sterilized jars to within ¼" of lips. Wipe the rims clean; attach new lids and screw caps on tightly. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Salty Almond Cookies (or JV Snacks-Croq-Télé) from Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets

These cookies are extremely easy to make if you have a food processor. Once the dough was made, I tried 3 different shape cookies. The first as described by Dorie was the easiest, but a little too rustic for me. I formed the rest of the dough into logs and tried to make slice and bake cookies with the dough. It worked, but not very well. The last method I tried was I shaped tiny cookies by pressing the dough into my ¼ tsp and slid them out. They were extremely cute, but time consuming.

¾ cup (100g) blanched almonds

½ cup (100g) sugar

¼ tsp to ¾ tsp salt (I used ¾ tsp of Kosher salt)

1 cup (140g) AP Flour

7 tablespoons (100g) cold unsalted butter cut in 7 pieces

Preheat oven to 350.

In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, process the sugar, nuts and salt till finely ground. Make sure to scrape the bowl frequently. Once processed turn the mixture out of the bowl.

Put the flour in the food processor and with the motor running drop in the cold butter pieces. As soon as the butter is in; switch to pulse mode. Pulse till the mixture looks sandy. Add the sugar-nut mixture and pulse until the dough forms small clumps and curds. Scrape the dough out onto a piece of parchment or wax paper.

To shape the cookies take small pieces (about the size of a cherry) in your hand and form irregular sized chunks. Place the pieces on a lined baking sheet leaving ½" space between them. Bake for 9-11 minutes rotating the pans after 5 minutes. You want the baked cookie to set, but not brown.

TWD Parisian Apple Tartlettes

2009-06-09T15:47:00.003-04:00

Jessica of My Baking Heart picked Parisian Apple Tartlettes as this week's TWD "recipe". It's hard to call it a recipe because you're supposed to buy puff pastry, cut it into a 4" round, and top it with half an apple and a bit of butter and sugar and bake. For a Dorie Greenspan recipe, this is as "semi-homemade" as she gets.

Instead of buying puff pastry, I decided to make a dough that acts like a quick puff pastry. Essentially mix equal parts butter, cream cheese, flour and a pinch of salt in a mixer till a dough forms. Chill then roll and use in place of puff pastry. I like making this dough because it's so easy, gets nice layering and I usually have all the ingredients on hand to make it. The dough works best with an overnight rest, but due to time constraints I had to make mine an hour and a half before baking. Even so, I was a little nervous that it would grow out of control, so I docked each tart shell and then topped with the apples.

Once they came out of the oven, I realized that docking them was a bit overzealous. They didn't rise as much as I expected them to, but the dough was still lovely.

The resulting tartelettes were okay. I baked them for an extra 5 minutes because the apples were still leaning towards raw, but that still wasn't enough time. Technically there was no way I could have baked the apples through and not overcooked the dough. Due to its simplicity, I think this recipe has a lot of potential. However, the apples should be sliced thinner, or the chunks should be par cooked before baking. This was so easy to make though, I'll definitely play around with it again.

TWD Cinnamon Squares

2009-06-02T18:15:00.007-04:00

Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures chose Cinnamon Squares as this weeks TWD recipe. Visit her blog to find the recipe.

I've spent the last two days traveling back and forth from Boston to Vermont, so I thought there was no way I could fit this recipe in. Well, after a quick look at just how easy it was to make I decided there was no way I couldn't make this recipe. Essentially, you mix your dries together, then add your wet ingredients, then follow by folding in some cooled melted butter. I think all together it took me about 10 minutes to assemble my ingredients, make the batter and get the cake in the oven. That was fast.

Since this cake is all about cinnamon, I decided to head over to my local Penzeys store in Arlington, MA and pick up some special cinnamon. I bought their Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon ($7.65 for 4 oz). It has a lovely aroma, and a powerful cinnamon flavor. It was the perfect spice for this cake.

I followed the recipe as written except I halved it, and baked it in a 4" round cake pan. It took 40 minutes to bake at 350.

Instead of making the chocolate frosting, I decided to make a simple cinnamon glaze. For the glaze I put confectioners sugar, a dash of milk and a big pinch of cinnamon in the bowl and whisked together till smooth.

TWD Chipster Brownies

2009-05-26T16:48:00.004-04:00

Beth of Supplicious decided on Chipster-Topped Brownies as this weeks TWD recipe. What exactly are chipster-topped brownies you ask? Only a brownie with a chocolate chip cookie layer on top! If it sounds like a dream come true, you should go over to Beth's blog for the recipe.

I was fortunate to have people to serve these extremely rich brownies to. My parents threw a memorial day party at the log cabin they are building in North Hero, VT. Joe and I loaded the dog, all the my baking ingredients and a ton of other stuff into the car on Sunday after work and drove to VT. We were so lucky because the weather was perfect, and most of my mom's side of the family was able to make it. It was fun to see all my relatives, and nice to bake something so appealing for all of them.

Both batters were easy to make and the bar was fast to assemble. First you make the brownie layer and then the chocolate chip cookie topping.

I baked it for about 50 minutes.

The brownie part was a little underdone, but that was intentional. Everyone loved these bars, even my dog, Mason wanted some:

I thought they were okay, but way too sweet for me. I loved the brownie layer, but the cookie topping was lackluster. If someone asked for them, I would make them again; but I think I prefer my cookies and brownies separate.

TWD Tartest Lemon Tart

2009-05-12T15:02:00.004-04:00

Today's TWD recipe Tartest Lemon Tart was chosen by Babette of Babette Feasts. For the recipe please visit her website here.

In the Buswell household my husband and I have an undeclared (but very active) war over lemon (specifically zest). I love lemons in everything, but he doesn't like them at all. To him, lemons taste like soap, especially lemon zest. So, I spend lots of time thinking of ways to sneak lemons in desserts without him noticing. Sometimes this works, but I can't count the number of times I've heard "Is there lemon in this?" or "I would love this if you hadn't put lemon zest in it." Oh well, if at first you don't succeed… make the tartest lemon tart ever.

I was unsure if Joe would like this, so I made a half batch of this recipe. I've made the sweet tart dough with almond meal more than a few times, so it was fast to assemble. The filling was fast as well. The only change I made was I blanched the lemon peel 3 times to get rid of some of the peel's bitterness.

Once the peels cooled, I blended them with the lemon, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, cream and melted butter. One thing I loved about this recipe is the ease of making it. The filling really took no time at all to make, and the ingredients are all items that I usually have on hand (except maybe the heavy cream).

Since I knew I would be making a half batch, I decided it was time to get some new tartlet pans. I had heard there was a cute kitchen store in Concord, MA; so I headed over to The Concord Shop before I made the tarts. This store has everything a baker/cook could want and more. They also have a nice selection of newly released cookbooks. While I was there, I picked up two 4" tartlet pans and a small offset spatula.

The only downside of the Concord shop was the service. I was the only person there and I had to wait 5 minutes to be rung up because a woman I think was the owner was giving the counter girl a hard time about losing an invoice. I was thinking "isn't this something that could wait" as I stood there. Also, I think greeting a customer with a smile is important; and it was frown city in Concord. Lastly when I got home, I realized they had charge me an extra 50 cents for each tart. Regardless of all that, I'm going to hope it was just a bad day there. I really want to like this shop because it has a lot of great kitchen equipment; and few store in the Boston area do. I'll give it one more try before I decide to spend my money somewhere else.

Back to the tarts; they baked at 325 for 20 minutes and then at 350 for 20 more. Total baking time was 40 minutes. I put the extra custard in ramekins and they took another 10 minutes at 350. The tarts looked just as described set with a light sugary crust.

They smelled and looked amazing when I took them out of the oven. The tarts were amazing. So amazing, that Joe even liked them. I bruleed one tart, and kept the other plain. Aesthetically, I liked the look of the unbruleed tart better. I'm also glad that I blanched the peel before making the filling. Other TWDers found the filling to be too bitter, but mine wasn't at all. I will definitely make this tart again.

Book Review: The Bread Bible

2009-04-29T15:53:00.007-04:00

I have found a lot of inspiration from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible lately, so I thought I would give a quick review of it.

Pros:

-There are 300 recipes in this book from coffe cakes, to pizza, to whole grain loaves, to biscuits to bread machine. It truely covers a lot of dough.
-Though I've only tried 1% of the recipes, so far so good.
-Lots of unusual recipes. Next up on my list to make is Lemon whole-wheat egg bread with nasturtium butter. Any cookbook that finds a use for edible flowers has a special place in my bookshelf (and heart).

Cons:

-No pictures, except for the cover.
-I wish it had a section on each recipe where it says total time it takes to make the dough. Also, I love how King Arthurs Flour has a symbol on their recipes where a dough needs to rest overnight. I think all cookbooks should do that.
-You have to read the beginning of the book if you've never made bread before. I know this sounds strange, but she gives all her helpful tips on kneeding, proofing, etc in the beginning. I could see that confusing people who are used to reading a recipe and immediately making it.

Overall: If you're even remotely interested in bread baking, buy this book. The recipes are well laid out and simple. So far I've made her gingerbread, oatmeal bulgur bread and sour cream braid; and they were great. This is a book I plan to bake from again and again.

Sour Cream Braid

2009-04-29T14:27:00.008-04:00

Ahh, the sour cream braid; so pretty, so delicious and so...easy. Easy? Surprisingly so. Beth Hensperger's Sour Cream Braid recipe is shockingly simple. By means of a food processor you can have your dough made in well under 15 minutes (including time to proof your yeast). Then all you have to do is proof the dough for an hour, braid it, proof again, egg wash and sprinkle with cardamom sugar and then bake. Seriously, it is as easy as it sounds. Anyone who's fearful of bread should put their fear aside and make this. You'll feel like a pro.

I followed the recipe nearly to the T. It calls for sour cream, but I used low fat sour cream because that's what I had on hand. Once the dough had proofed I divided the dough into 6 ropes and made two separate braids (I froze one). Lastly, I used demerara sugar instead of granulated in the sugar crust.

Overall this is excellent bread. It has a tight crumb, but is moist with a slight sweetness (due to the sugar crust). The demerara and cardamom made it interesting, but not unapproachable to a person who doesn't like that sort of fanciness. I will make this bread again.

Sour Cream Braid from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible

Dough
1/2 cup lukewarm water
2 1/2 tsps active dry yeast
2 tbsps plus 1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup cold milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
3 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) room temp unsalted butter cut into pieces

1. In a 1-cup-measure pour in the warm water. Sprinkle with yeast and 1/2 tsp sugar. Stir to dissolve

and let stand till foamy about 10 minutes.

In a small bowl whisk ingredients milk through almond extract together. Add the yeast mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring to combine.
2. In a food processor bowl with a blade combine flour, 2 tbsps sugar and salt. Dot the top with butter pieces. Process 10 seconds. With the motor running, pour the yeast-milk mixture through the feed tube in a steady stream. After the dough forms a soft, elastic ball and clears the sides of the bowl, process 45 seconds more to knead.

3. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and give it a few kneads. Place the dough in a lightly greased container, cover with wrap. Let rise till doubled in bulk about 1 hour.

4. Divide dough into 3 portions (I did 6). Shape each into a 12" rope tapered at each end. Form into a braid.

Let proof till doubled in bulk about 45 minutes on your baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Sugar Crust:
1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water
1 heaping tbsp sugar (use demerara, you won't regret it)
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
5. Twenty minutes before baking preheat oven to 375. Combine sugar and cardamom in a small bowl. Gently brush the surface of the dough with the egg glaze. Sprinkle sugar mixture all over dough.

Bake in the center of the oven for 35-40 minutes.

Chocolate Cream Tart (TWD)

2009-04-28T17:24:00.004-04:00

There are some desserts that need little to no explanation. Introducing today's TWD chocolate cream tart. Slightly bitter tart shell with silky chocolate pastry cream and sinful whipped cream.

For this recipe please visit Kim of Scrumptious Photography. Her photography truly is scrumptious.

Enjoy.

Gingerbread

2009-04-28T14:29:00.003-04:00

This past week I made gingerbread from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible. Her recipe calls for a combination of maple syrup, brown sugar and molasses. I grew up in Vermont, so any recipe with maple syrup as a sweetener is bound to peak my interest. All in all this was a fun easy recipe to make. The recipe calls for adding baking soda to boiling water and then adding that to the batter. It turns into a neat example of chemistry in action.

As far as gingerbreads go, this was great. I like it better than Dorie Greenspan's gingerbread which was a bit too bitter because of the espresso chocolate edge. This gingerbread was moist with a medium spice level. I love spicy gingerbread, so next time I make it I will add come finely chopped candied and fresh ginger. I made an 8" cake and a baby gingerbread loaf. As soon as it cooled I froze the 8" cake. I hope to make a layered cake with it sometime soon.

Here's the recipe:

Gingerbread from The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger

Makes one 9" pan or twelve 3" round cakes.

Preheat oven to 350 and grease cake pan

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups AP Flour

2 Tbsp instant espresso powder

1 Tbsp ground ginger (increase this if you want a bold ginger flavor)

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp grated nutmeg

¼ tsp ground black pepper

Grated zest of 1 lemon (I omitted this because I didn't have one on hand)

8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter

½ Cup light brown sugar

½ Cup unsulfured molasses

½ Cup maple syrup

2 large eggs

2 tsps baking soda

1 cup boiling water

Method:

Combine Flour through lemon zest in a large bowl and mix well with a whisk.

In a small saucepan combine the butter through molasses. Stir frequently over low heat till butter is dissolved.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the hot butter mixture. Add the eggs and quickly beat with a wooden spoon till smooth. Combine the baking soda with the boiling water. Pour over the batter and stir gently to evenly incorporate.

Pour into greased pan. Bake for about 30 minutes.

TWD Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

2009-04-21T17:38:00.006-04:00

I am no stranger to bread pudding. It is something I have made on countless occasions while working in the baking and pastry field. At Sofra we make a special brown butter bread pudding on weekends that people swoon for. While at Henrietta's we made a chocolate bread pudding with a banana rum caramel sauce. At Bouchon we made hotel pans of chocolate bread pudding and would cut them into cylinder shapes and top with a canele of caramel whipped cream. So much bread pudding in such a short career (now almost 4 years).

Since I've had so much exposure to bread pudding I wasn't planning on making this recipe. Also, the truth is bread pudding doesn't really do it for me. I'm not a huge custard fan, and I usually find it to be a bit boring. I decided to make this because I had a little bit of stale bread left over from the Oatmeal Bulgur bread I made on Sunday. I couldn't stand to see this bread go to waste, so I decided to make a very small batch based on Dorie's recipe. I made 1/6 of the recipe and changed it a bit. I didn't have whole milk or heavy cream, so I subbed skim and evaporated milk. Also, I read in the P&Q section of TWD that it wasn't chocolaty enough, so I added a little cocoa powder. Here's the recipe as I made it. For the actual recipe was Dorie would make visit Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle. She picked this TWD recipe.

Extra Chocolaty Chocolate Bread Pudding

2 ounces of cubed bread

A small handful of dried cherries

½ cup of skim milk

2 Tbsp plus 2 tsps Evaporated whole milk

1 scant Tbsp Valhrona cocoa powder

1 large egg

1 Tbsp plus 2 tsps sugar

1 ¼ ounce Scharfenberger 70% finely chopped.

Put the cubed bread and cherries in a bowl large enough to hold about 2 cups. Bring skim milk, evaporated milk and cocoa powder just to a boil in a small sauce pan whisking frequently. Once the liquids come to a boil whisk together the sugar and egg. In a very slow stream pour the hot liquid into the egg sugar mixture whisking constantly. Once all your liquid is in the bowl. Strain the hot liquid onto the chocolate. (Side note: I have no idea why she doesn't say to strain the custard, as a rule of thumb it's a very good idea to always strain custards). Whisk the custard/chocolate mixture till all the chocolate melts. Pour the mixture onto the cubed bread and cherries.

Let sit for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring some water to a boil for your water bath. Carefully take your soaked bread cubes and cherries out of the custard putting it into a ramekin (I used an 8 oz ramekin). Try not to man handle your cubes too much or else they will disintegrate. Pour your custard remaining custard up to the line in the ramekin (not the very top).

Place your ramekin into a larger dish that has tall sides and is oven safe (I used a larger ramekin). Pour your hot water into the larger dish to create a water bath.

Carefully put your dishes into the oven and bake for 33 minutes (till a knife comes out clean).

When the bread pudding was in the oven, I realized the recipe didn't call for salt. I'm a huge fan of salt, so I decided to make a salted caramel to go along side the pudding. Unfortunately, I didn't measure it out, but essentially all I did was I put about 3/4 cup of sugar in a pan and brought it to the caramel stage. Then I poured in some evaporated milk (maybe ¼ cup), added a touch of butter and a very healthy amount of fleur de sel. Whisked all that together, and there was my salted caramel sauce.

We ate the bread pudding and caramel sauce warm. They were very nice together, but I think next time I would also add some vanilla ice cream to even things out. Will I make this again? Sure, if I have left-over bread. I think the Oatmeal Bulgur bread was perfect in this, there was no hint of "healthiness" (from the bread) in this chocolate bread pudding. It was all about indulgent chocolate, custard and caramel.

Oatmeal-Bulgur Bread

2009-04-21T11:52:00.004-04:00

On a grocery shopping trip to Sevan in Watertown last week, I purchased 2 pounds of fine bulgur. With that purchase, a new obsession began. What to do with all this bulgur? I knew I could make Kibbeh, but being a baker, I really wanted to bake with it. After a quick internet search I found several interesting recipes to choose from. One that really stood out was a recipe for Oatmeal Bulgur bread from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible. Then two awesome things happened. One being Maura told me I could make the bread at Sofra. Second, Maura lent me her copy of The Bread Bible.

The bread was fun to make at work because it's one of those recipes that involves 5 to 10 minutes of work here and there over a few hours. Often when I make bread at home, I feel chained to my house because there's always a punch down on the horizon, or something along those lines. While at work, I was able to make this, while making tons of other things. No feeling of being chained down by the bread.

Overall this bread took a little under 4 hours to make from start to finish. The resulting bread was a little sweet with a tight crumb and a dense texture. This is the perfect toast with peanut butter bread. It would also be great sandwiched with turkey or ham. The next time I make it I will increase the hydration of the bread a bit because it never really relaxed after I shaped it into boules. As you can see by the pictures below, the bread was still pretty rounded on the edges.

Oatmeal Bulgur Bread from The Bread Bible

Sponge:

1Tbsp active dry yeast

2 Tbsp lt. brown sugar

2/3 Cup bulgur wheat (fine or medium grind, I used fine)

2 ¼ cups warm water

2 cups AP or Bread Flour (I used AP)

Put water the work bowl of a heavy duty mixer. Sprinkle yeast, brown sugar, and bulgur wheat over the surface and let stand for 5 minutes. Add 2 cups of flour and beat hard until well moistened and cream (about 2 minutes). Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temp till foamy (about an hour).

Dough:

1 ¼ Cups regular rolled oats

¼ Cup wheat bran (I didn't have this, so I used 2 Tbsp whole wheat flour and 2 Tbsp more of oats)

¼ Cup lt. brown sugar

3 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 Tbsp salt

3 to 3 ½ Cups AP or bread flour

To the bowl with the sponge add the rolled oats, bran, sugar, oil and salt. Beat hard for 1 min. Add flour ½ cup at a time until the dough pulls away from the sides. (I used about 2 ¾ cups flour). Turn the dough out and kneed till smooth and elastic about 4 minutes. Place the dough in a greased deep container.

Proof till doubled about 2 hours.

Deflate the dough, and divide into 3 equal portions. Shape into rounds or shape and put into 3 8x4-inch loaf pans. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in bulk about 45 minutes (mine took about an hour and 15 minutes).

Score dough. Bake at 375 for 35 to 40 minutes or until loaves are browned and sound hollow when tapped with your finger.

Chocolate Amaretti Torte

2009-04-14T06:56:00.004-04:00

Today's TWD recipe 15 minute chocolate amaretti torte was chosen by Holly of Phe/MOM/enon.

I went to Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, MA looking for Amaretti cookies. Formaggio is one of the places I've been trying to go to for a while, but because of parking issues haven't. The weather on Saturday was pretty bad, so I decided to take my chances and park in a resident only spot. I have found that in Cambridge there is a direct correlation between weather and parking tickets. Good weather = tons of tickets. Bad weather = less tickets. I knew I would be in and out quickly, so I wasn't too worried. They had an assortment of amaretti cookies, but not the ones Dorie suggested. I purchased Doria Amaretti cookies, and I'm glad I did. I am surprised how much I liked these little cookies. They are so crisp and slightly over baked; in the extra-caramelized-kind-of-way that I love. The back of the bag suggests dipping the cookies in red wine. We tried this, but decided they are much better alone or dipped in milk. We like our red wine without cookie crumbs.

The torte truly lived up to it's name. From start to finish it was in the oven in 15 minutes. Making it reminded me of why I splurged on a food processor last year. It made the whole "process" so easy. The recipe says the cake takes 25-30 minutes to bake. My cake ended up baking an extra 4 minutes (34 total) with a knife coming out with some streaks.

The next morning I made the chocolate glaze, which was easy too. I love that the recipe suggests putting the chocolate in a "pourable" container. It makes glazing the cake so easy.

Overall, this was a delicious cake. Since I knew it would be extremely rich; I cut the cake into 12 slices. The portion size was just perfect; anything bigger would have resulted in leftover cake on plates (ugh!). As far as cake goes, I prefer traditional cakes to tortes. To me, traditional American style cakes (think devils food with vanilla butter cream) are more satisfying because you can eat more! That being said; I will make this cake again because other people loved it; and well, it's not always about me.

Easy Banana Walnut Bread

2009-04-13T19:17:00.003-04:00

Sure, I have many Banana Bread recipes in my repertoire, but what's wrong with one more.

Today I made a double batch of Easy Banana Walnut Bread from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. Easy? Yes. Delicious? Yes. So why not add another (healthy) banana bread recipe to your repertoire?

Easy Banana Walnut Bread from King Arthur Flour Whole Gain Baking

Here is a doubled version of the original recipe. The recipe below makes 2 9x5-inch loaves
1 cup (2 sticks, 8 oz) unsalted butter
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract (I only increased this 50%, the original recipe called for 1 tsp)
3 cups (24 oz) mashed very ripe bananas
½ cup (6 oz) honey
4 large eggs
4 cups (1 lb) whole wheat flour
1 cup (4 oz) chopped walnuts.
Preheat 350 degrees. Grease 2 9x5-inch loaf pans.
Beat butter, sugar, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla till smooth. Add banana, honey and eggs beating till smooth. Add flour and nuts, stir till smooth. Spoon into prepared pans. Let rest at room temp for 10 minutes (I forgot to do this, so my breads were a little flat).
Bake for 50 minutes. Lay a piece of foil over top (I didn’t do this) and bake till a cake tester comes out clean 10 to 15 minutes more. Let cool 10 minutes then remove from pan.

TWD Banana Cream Pie

2009-04-07T16:36:00.004-04:00

Today's TWD recipe Banana Cream pie was picked by Amy of Sing for Your Supper. As luck would have it, I actually had a reason to make a whole pie this week. My sister and her boyfriend Ben came to Boston for the Red Sox's opening game. Luckily (for me), the game was rained out; so they had to stay another day.

I have to admit, up until about a year ago; I wouldn't touch banana cream pie. The idea of pastry cream, bananas and whipped cream never did it for me. It wasn't until I worked at the Charles Hotel that I discovered how good banana cream pie can be. There we made a pie with pastry cream that was lightened with a rum caramel sauce and whipped cream. We then folded in bananas, put that in a pie shell, topped with whipped cream and drizzled more rum caramel sauce on top. It was so good. The pie crust was just salty enough to add a bit of complexity to the whole pie, it was just delicious.

Due to my relatively new found love of banana cream pie, I was psyched to make this recipe. I made Dorie's good for almost anything pie crust, which I've made before and liked. This time I was in a bit of a rush, so I made it, put in my blast chiller (i.e. freezer) for 30 minutes. Then I rolled it out, put it in my pan and put it back in the freezer while the oven was preheating. Once the oven was warmed up, I docked the pie dough, put in a piece of foil and some beans, and baked it according to the recipe. I was a bit worried the pie might shrink or fall because I rushed it, but it came out perfect.

The pastry cream was easy to make. The flavors in the pastry cream were nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. I added a teaspoon of rum since rum and bananas go together so well. I found the pastry cream to be a bit on the "eggy" side.

On its own it reminded me of pumpkin pie which I'm not a fan of (gasp), so I lightened it up by folding in about ½ cup of whipped cream. Once the pie and pastry cream were completely cooled, the pie was fast to assemble.

In the pie shell you put a thin layer of pastry cream down, top that with half your sliced bananas, more pastry cream, more bananas and then the rest of the pastry cream. Next you top the pie with the whipped cream mixture. I whipped my cream to stiff peaks, added the sour cream and whipped it a bit more because I wanted to pipe the whipped cream on.

All ingredients combined, this is a delicious pie. The "eggy" flavor was no longer noticeable with the addition of the whipped cream and bananas. All four of us cleaned our dessert plates (Joe grabbing another serving), so it was a success. While eating dessert my sister told me that banana cream pie is my father's favorite pie. I had no idea. Next time I go to Vermont to visit my parents; I'll have to make this pie again.

TWD Mixed Berry Brown Butter Crumb Cake

2009-03-24T15:51:00.004-04:00

Sihan of Befuddlement chose Blueberry Crumb Cake as our weekly recipe from Baking: From my home to yours.

Today is Joe and my anniversary, so I thought this would be a lovely way to start the day. The recipe is simple. First you make the crumb topping, then the cake. I decided to make a brown butter crumb topping because I love the combination of berries and brown butter. To make the topping, I simply followed Dorie's directions for the crumble except I browned the butter, poured it onto the dry ingredients and mixed it by hand.

Then I crumpled it up with my hands and laid the crumbs out on a plate which I put in the freezer. For the cake, the one thing I omitted was the lemon zest because Joe hates lemon zest. Usually I'll add lemon zest anyway because I love it so much, but since today is all about our love for each other; I decided to leave it out. I used the fancy berry mix from Trader Joe's instead of just blueberries. It contains blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. I find this brand of frozen berries to be consistantly good. One of my favorite ways to eat the mix is to microwave ½ cup of it in a bowl, then top it with Greek yogurt and a little maple syrup. It's heavenly.

Back to the cakes.

Originally I had grandios ideas of making a two tiered crumb cake as kind of a faux wedding cake. I divided the cake mix into one 4" round and a 6" round. After 55 minutes in the oven, I was glad I had made a 4" cake because it was done way earlier than the 6". I think the 6" cake ended up in the oven for at least an hour and 10 minutes. Joe and I are very impatient people. Especially when we've already had our coffee hours ago, and are staring at a very pretty 4" cake.

With cake aroma swirling around us, I decided to forgo the 2 tiered cake idea and dig into the little guy. We were glad we did because it was lovely warm.

Just another delicious recipe from Dorie Greenspan. I loved the contrast between the berries, the soft cake and the crumble. This is something I will make again.

An Irish Feast

2009-03-17T16:05:00.003-04:00

I had Monday's off, so Joe and I decided to celebrate St. Patty's Day a day early this year. After a weekend away in Vermont, we were eager to get cooking at home.

Matt Murphy's is an Irish pub in Brookline, MA. It has great ambiance and is well known for its food. I would be a regular patron of Matt Murphy's if I lived on that "side of the River" (that's Boston speak for South of the Charles River). One food item they are particularly well known for is their Irish soda bread. Last year around this time I was obsessed with another Irish Soda Bread, and I saw a post about how great their bread was. Lo and behold, they posted on their recipe on their website which I jotted down and shoved into my desk. Today to my amazement, I found the tattered copy of the recipe still in my desk!

I also noticed that Matt Murphy's still has a link to the recipe here. It couldn't be simpler to make. You put all your dry ingredients in a bowl and then pour enough buttermilk in to make a sticky wet dough, but not so wet that it's runny.

I halved the recipe since we're cooking and baking for two today. As for oven time, Joe was braising the corned beef in our oven all day at 250, so I tried to bake it in the toaster oven. It worked okay for a while, but then I had to pull it because the top was getting too dark.

I ended up finishing the loaf in the oven at 250. Due to those factors I have no idea how long it took because I left it in at 250 till it smelled "really" good and was hollow sounding when I tapped it's bottom.

Joe bought a nice corned beef at Whole Foods, and braised it at 250 for 6 hours with beef stock, onions, carrots and spices. I'm not usually a corned beef fan, but it made our house smell like a country home (at least what I imagine one would smell like), just lovely. About 30 minutes before the beef was ready, Joe added some potatoes and then a little later some cabbage to the pot.

I am not much of a meat eater, but I loved this meal. Corned beef is the kind of meat I turn my nose to because it's fatty and well… gross, but Joe turned it into something special. He's an amazing cook.

No beer for us Monday evening. We decided to drink a bottle of Sequoia Grove Cab (2005) in our crystal wine glasses from Galway. We received them as a wedding gift, but had only used them once before. Since they were made in Ireland we thought it would be the perfect evening for them. They were nice to drink from, but I was a little freaked out by the lead warning, so I switched to a normal glass after the first.

It was a great night!

For Saint Patty's day we went to The Burren in Somerville, which is one of the best bars outside Boston. In fact, back when I was in my 20s I moved to Somerville just to be closer to it! It is that fun. We went there today for lunch which was a great time. The bar was very busy with every person in good spirits. Joe and I had a couple of Guinness's, fish and chips and a burger. The food there isn't the best ever, but it's great for the price and the ambiance.

Happy Saint Patrick's day!

TWD French Yogurt Cake with Brown Sugar Yogurt Mousse and Quince Marmalade

2009-03-17T04:48:00.001-04:00

This recipe has been on my radar for some time. Finally two great reasons to make it; I had friends to bake for at a ski house in Vermont this past weekend and it's this week's TWD recipe. Thanks to Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction for picking such a fun recipe to play with.

I decided to bake the cake in a round rather than loaf pan since I wanted a classier presentation. The cake was so fast to make, I kept rechecking my ingredients because I felt like something was missing. Once I realized it was actually THAT easy; I baked it for 38 minutes.

Once out, I let it cool completely and then I started playing around. At Sofra we make a quince marmalade that is to-die-for. The smell of it is so intoxicating; I could almost be happy just breathing in its aroma. Our marmalade isn't as thick as store bought brands though, so I decided to cook it down some more. I cooked it for about 15 minutes on a pretty steady simmer until the liquid reduced to a thick syrup; stirring it frequently. Quince marmalade has a wonderfully floral fruity taste to it, but none of the bite of a "normal" marmalade. To get a bit of "bite" back into this recipe, I made a yogurt mouse with just a bit of brown sugar. Essentially what I did was I whipped some cream, and then added some labne (very thick yogurt) and a tiny bit of brown sugar. Labne has a great tang to it, so it balanced the sweetness of the cake and the quince marmalade.

Overall, I loved this cake. I especially loved the presentation because it looked très French. I hope everyone liked this cake as much as I did. I will certainly make it again.

TWD Caramel Crunch Bars

2009-02-24T16:05:00.004-05:00

Whitney of What's left on the table? chose Caramel Crunch Bars as this week's TWD recipe. I made these delicious bars a while back and sandwiched them with ice cream. They were truly decadent. Today, I made a half batch knowing how addictingly good they would be. There's no sense in setting myself up to eat a 9x13 pan of these goodies.

One thing most people don't know about me is that though I am a pastry chef, I can't find a thing at the grocery store. Honestly, I used to know my way around a grocery store till I move to St. Helena. Anyone who's ever been to the Stop and Shop (or is it a Star market?) knows what I'm talking about. The butter is in the beer isle. THE BUTTER IS IN THE BEER ISLE!!!! That makes no sense at all, and one day I spent a good 15 minutes looking for butter! Once I finally got used to grocery stores in Northern California, we moved back to Boston, so here I am lost once again. The only place where I can get in and out quickly is Trader Joe's, and that's only because it's so small. All that being said, I decided that rather than spending an hour looking for Heath Toffee bits at the grocery store, I would be better off making toffee at home. I'm not sure where I got this recipe, but it's pretty good, and really easy. The only change I would make for next time is to cook it a little longer. I cooked the candy to 294F, but I think I should have gone up to at least 300F. After reading some recipes afterwards I discovered some people cook their toffee to as high as 310F. Here's the recipe I used:

½ # Butter

1 cup Sugar

1 Tbsp Corn Syrup

1 tsp Kosher Salt

3 Tbsp water

Method: Put it all in a heavy bottomed pan. Stir frequently and bring mixture to 300 degrees (see above). Pour onto a silpat and let harden.

This toffee recipe will make more than enough toffee for the caramel crunch bars (full size).

The recipe for the bars is super easy. Basic creaming method followed by vanilla extract then dry ingredients and chopped chocolate. I love that this recipe calls for instant espresso powder for two reasons. One is that the bitterness of the espresso powder balances the sweetness of the bar itself. Second I'm happy to be using one of the obscure items in my pantry.

These bars are very good. I think I prefer them sandwiching vanilla ice cream then on their own though. Next time I make them with the intention on serving them as bars, I will use less chocolate on top and I'll sprinkle some sea salt in addition to toffee on top of the bars.

Madeleine Patisserie NYC

2009-02-17T16:54:00.003-05:00

Madeleine Patisserie in NYC on 23rd Street is charming. It's one of those cute places that you want to put in a box and keep all to yourself. I was lucky enough to go there and enjoyed a huge crunchy almond croissant with a piping hot cup of coffee. 10:00 AM seems to be a great time to go there because I easily found a cozy seat in the cafe area (it was a weekday). The almond croissant was the twice baked variety which I really like. If you place your order to stay they give you a cute silver tray with your goodies on it.

One important thing to mention about Madeleine is that though they do have an impressive array of Madeleines; the real draw is their huge selection of french macaroons. They can have up to 25 types of macaroons lining their silver trays in an impressive array of colors on any given day. My personal favorites were the caramel fleur de sel and almond. I forgot to take pictures of them before we dove in! Here are the remnants of the lavender-nougat, almond and chocolate.

A Lobster claw even a vegetarian could love

2009-02-17T14:25:00.002-05:00

Joe and I stopped by Modern bakery in Medford before a long weekend in Vermont a few weeks ago. Joe lived up to his (well deserved) reputation of always ordering the most extravagant thing on a menu. Weighing in a what felt like 5 pounds Joe purchased a gigantic lobster claw filled with custard. He loved it, but it was even too much for Joe to handle. He only ate about 1/4 of it before declairing defeat. I got a slice of ricotta pie which was a little too sweet for me.

TWD Floating Islands

2009-02-10T17:20:00.002-05:00

Floating Islands have always perplexed me. When I think of the islands, I envision blue skies, teal sea water and luscious brightly colored fruit. Why then, is the traditional floating island such a bland looking dessert? White meringues floating on beige anglaise is tasty, but kind of boring to look at. Today I decided to vamp up my floating islands by first poaching them in milk infused with toasted coconut, then floating the meringues atop a pinapple sage soup.

I did follow Dorie's recipe for the meringues which were easy to make and to poach. For the poaching liquid, I toasted some shredded coconut (about ¾ cup), and I infused some skim milk with the toasted coconut. I did that by bringing the milk with the toasted coconut in it to a boil and then turning the heat off and letting it infuse for about 30 minutes. Next I strained my milk/coconut mixture and poached the islands. I was immediately unimpressed with the meringue. I don't know if I only like Italian meringue, or if my whites weren't that great, but all I could taste was egg after poaching. I also tried poaching them for different periods of time, but that didn't seem to help. Once I was done poaching liquid, I strained it again, so I could use it in the soup. For the pineapple sage soup, I pureed a quarter of a pineapple with a sage leaf and pureed it in a food processor. Next I added some brown sugar and the flesh and juice of a blood orange, a pinch of salt, the coconut infused milk and a couple good sized spoonfuls of yogurt to give it more tang. Once that was fully pureed, I strained the soup and refrigerated it. While I was doing all that I diced some pineapple, tossed it in turbinado and baked it till caramelized (like candy). I also, cut thin slices of pineapple and dried them out in the microwave.

I love the soup that I made. All of the components worked beautifully together. I dropped the candied pieces of pineapple in the soup right before serving. I was hoping they would float, but they fell to the bottom so you can't see them in the picture. They were a lovely addition of texture to the soup. The soup was great, but I didn't feel the same way about the islands. They were way too eggy for me. Unless I hear countless rave reviews from other TWDers I won't make these again.

TWD Baked or Unbaked Deliciousness

2009-02-03T20:22:00.005-05:00

World peace cookie dough is the best unbaked dough I've ever made at home.** Friends who knows me really well (especially in a work environment) know the years of research and caloric intake it took to make such a bold statement. Prior to culinary school I was a bit squeamish about tasting anything raw, but my friend and schoolmate Erin clued me in to how good doughs and batters were raw. Erin even went so far as to eat raw yeasted dough-more than once! (Side note-Erin, maybe you're actually growing a chocolate cherry loaf in your belly?) Thanks to Erin, I've been trying raw cookie dough ever since and I'm proud to say that I think it's made my immune system stronger!

So yes, World peace cookies are amazing raw (no raw eggs to worry about either, so you can go crazy). They are also amazingly simple to put together. Good ingredients are key to making these cookies amazing.

I made my cookies with Valrhona cocoa powder, fleur de sel from Brittany and a combo of Scharffenberger 70% and Callebaut milk chocolate. Those ingredients with fresh butter and King Arthurs flour combined to create an addicting chocolate cookie.

The salt in these cookies really brightens the flavors of the chocolate, and makes them feel more "adult." Thanks to Jessica of Cookbookhabit for chosing this recipe. You can find the recipe at her website.

**Sofra employees know that the best unbaked cookie dough in a bakery is either Maureo or Chocolate Chunk (the debate will never end-they are both that good).

Pizza Chronicles 2009 Part 1

2009-02-01T07:51:00.004-05:00

If there's one thing Joe and I agree on for dinner its pizza. While making pizza last night we realized how much value we get from making it together and an idea was born. This year, we're going to chronicle our pizza experiences. I'm sure there will be some interesting doughs, toppings, take-out places and restaurants involved. Even more fun will be us working together on this. We'll share our thoughts on the pizza "du jour" and any insights (or weight gain) will be noted.

Our first pizza of 2009: Eggplant, caramelized onion, chicken, chorizo and whole roasted smashed garlic clove pizza with shredded mozzarella cheese and Trader Joe's pizza sauce.

Michelle on the dough:

My current favorite pizza dough is from Nick Malgieri's How to Bake. His recipe for Neapolitan pizza is quick to make and with a proof time of about an hour it's becoming one of my go-to recipes. Aside from the ease of making this dough it has great flavor and it produces a pizza that is crispy with a nice crust around the edge.

Here's an abbreviated version of that recipe (makes 2 12" pizzas):

1 ¼ Cups Warm Tap Water (about 110 degrees)

2 ½ tsp (1 envelope) active yeast (I like SAF yeast)

Put the warm water in a bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over the water; let it soften for 3-4 minutes.

While yeast is softening, in a large bowl combine:

3 Cups AP Flour (we only use King Arthurs)

2 tsp salt

Mix them together. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Once the yeast has softened whisk the yeast and the water together, then whisk in:

1 tbsp Olive Oil (use the good stuff)

Once you have the oil, water and yeast mixed pour them into the well in the flour. With a spatula mix the flour water together as far as you can (it may start to form a soft, sticky dough; if it doesn't take your hands and kneed it a few times in the bowl to get everything incorporated). Turn the dough onto a lightly flour surface and kneed it till the dough is smooth and no longer very sticky. It should take about 5 minutes. Be careful not to overknead because the dough will be tough. Form the dough into a ball.

Put the dough in a bowl with about 1 tbsp of olive oil in it. Place the dough into the bowl, and move it around so all the dough is covered with oil. Make sure the top of your ball is facing upwards and wrap the bowl with plastic wrap. Allow the dough to double in size (about 1 hour).

Once your dough has fully proofed, take it and divide it in half. This recipe makes 2 medium pizzas, so I often freeze half the dough. Take the dough you will be using and form it into a ball. Let it rest for about 10-15 minutes with a towel covering it, then stretch it to approximately the size of your pizza stone (or pan). We don't have a pizza peel, so we take our stone out of the oven, put our dough on it; and then quickly put the toppings on before putting it back in the oven.

Joe on the toppings:

On this pizza we used Trader Joes Pizza Sauce. Although we never use gravy from a can for pasta, we've found that for pizza Trader Joe's sauce works great. This sauce has a good consistency for pizza, and when used judiciously, still allows for a very crispy crust. We use a small amount, not covering the whole crust, leaving it streaky before the other toppings go on. The next topping to go on were four cloves of whole roasted garlic that we smashed. They were roasted in the skin, and peeled right before application. Also added were caramelized onion (low and slow till caramelized in a pan), broiled chicken breast (roasted bone in and cut into strips), a couple small pieces of chorizo, and shredded Mozzarella. For Mozzarella we prefer fresh, but store bought grated is good in a pinch, or to save a little cash. The final topping and our favorite right now, was roasted eggplant. We simply cut the eggplant the long way into sections and then crosswise just over half an inch thick. We then oil and salt them and roast in a 400 degree oven until just before done (they'll start to brown and be soft, but not mushy). When the pizza comes out, they will have the slightest amount of crisp on the outside, but be creamy in the middle. Roasting them first gets them to perfect doneness, and also decreases their moisture content, allowing the pizza to be crispy.

The verdict:

You'll know your pizza is done when the edges are brown, cheese is melted and it smells so good you can't stop opening the oven door to check on it. We've made several variations of this pizza and it's so good. When we take our pizza out of the oven we slide it onto a cooling rack so that the crust will stay crispy. We've found that if we put it on the cutting board right away the steam will get trapped and the crust will get soggy.

With our pizza tonight we had a bottle of Michel-Schlumberger 2003 Syrah from Dry Creek. Though the wine was very nice it was a bit too hot and peppery to pair with the pizza. The flavors were competing a bit too much, and the pizza overpowered the wine. Our glass before the pizza was lovely, but with the pizza it just tasted hot. Next time we drink that bottle we'll pair it with a lightly seasoned pork tenderloin so we can enjoy the flavors of the wine more.

Bake-En on Boston.com

2009-01-28T15:51:00.005-05:00

Boston.com currently has a section featuring food photographs by some of Boston's amateur photographers. I feel so lucky to have some of my photos shown on such a prestigious website. To see my pictures and many more inspiring food shots click here.

TWD Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

2009-01-27T07:17:00.002-05:00

Do you remember a Stevie Nick's song with these lyrics?

"I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. What can I do when I'm crazy for you?"

Insert "I'm crazy for you" with "I want to eat you", and that's how I felt while waiting for my fresh ginger and chocolate gingerbread to "cure" for a day. Seriously painful! So painful in fact, that I only made it about an hour before I tried a piece. Luckily I made two 4" round cakes and one baby loaf pan.

The gingerbread loaf was immediately sacrificed, I just had to know what it tastes like, but we'll get to that later.

While reading the P&Q section on TWD, I was surprised by how many people said they thought the recipe called for too much ginger. Too much ginger? Is that even possible in a gingerbread cake? Does a fruitcake ever call for too much fruit, or a chocolate cake call for too much chocolate? I guess, but I'm all about excess; so I thought the amount of ginger in this recipe was appropriate. I even candied some of the fresh ginger I had left over to garnish the cake.

Joe and I don't have any plans to see people this week, so I halved the recipe. The only ingredient I couldn't find was the stem ginger. For chocolate I used Scharffenberger 70%, which is a favorite of mine.

It is kind of pricey, but it has always proved itself to be worth the splurge in baked goods. The recipe was easy to follow except Dorie doesn't say what to do with the 1 tbsp of sugar (I used 1 ½ teaspoons). I assumed it was to put on the finely chopped ginger to extract it's flavors, so that's what I did.

The recipe says that the cakes will rise, but not to worry because they'll level out once they come out of the oven. Mine rose, but stayed nice and tall. I think it may have something to do with the fact that I used such small cake pans. I love the look of domed cakes, so they are fine with me. Plus, what really matters is the taste.

As I said earlier, I had to try a piece once it came out of the oven, and I wasn't that impressed. The chocolate was still warm and I was having a difficult time picking out the chocolate flavor in the cake. A few hours later, I tried it again, and again, and again. The cake was so good plain that I considered not frosting it, but that would be just, well… wrong. Once frosted the cake was delicious. The ginger and the chocolate played off each other beautifully. All together the cake and frosting weren't a sweet as I had thought, so that was nice. I think the bittersweet chocolate is what makes this cake exceptional. Thanks to Heather of Sherry Trifle for choosing this recipe which I will certainly make again.

Blackberry Spoom

2009-01-23T17:45:00.003-05:00

This Christmas I received the cookbook Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts by Claire Clark as a Christmas gift (thanks Kate!). For those of you who don't know, Claire is the head pastry chef at the French Laundry in Yountville, CA. I was lucky enough to work in close proximity to her a few times while I was a pastry cook at Bouchon. She would come over to the bakery every once in a while to borrow some chocolate, or to talk to Ethan (he was the pastry chef at Bouchon then). I could tell from the few encounters I had with her that she is an amazing pastry chef.

Indulge is inspirational; every turned page revealed a new recipe I want to make. Today, I made the Blackcurrant Spoom on page 198. I chose this recipe because I love the idea of a tasty low fat dessert; and that's exactly what this is. In addition, I'm a huge fan of making and tasting Italian Meringue. Meringue is so simple and beautiful. According to Ms. Clark a spoom is a light fluffy type of sorbet. The recipe calls for 14 oz of frozen blackcurrants, but I couldn't find them. I ended up using 10 oz of frozen blackberries and 4 oz of mix frozen berries (black, blue and raspberries).

The blackberry spoom was delicious, though there are a couple changes I would make. First off, if I make blackberry again I will cut back on the sugar a bit. I know that sugar helps crystallize the sorbet, and prevents it from getting too hard; but it was too sweet. I think what I'll do is cut back on the sugar and add just a tiny bit of booze to the sorbet so that it won't get too hard (not too much though because it won't freeze). Second I would love to make this recipe again as directed by Claire with the blackcurrants. I can imagine how the acidity of the currants would play nicely with the sweet meringue.

Blackberry Spoom (adapted from Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts by Claire Clark)

First, place an empty container in the freezer large enough to hold 2 quarts (1 big bowl will do). You'll need this at the end of the recipe.

14 oz frozen blackberries

3 ½ oz water

Thaw blackberries in a pot. Once they're thawed add the water. Cook over very low heat till tender. About 20 minutes. If your water evaporates add more to bring it back to the original level. Puree the mixture and strain it through a fine sieve. From that you should get at least 9 oz of puree.

Put 9 oz of puree in a heavy bottomed pot with:

5 fl oz water

4 ½ oz sugar

Bring to a boil. Stir in:

Juice from one and a half limes (Claire suggests ½ lime with the black currants). The blackberries really needed the extra acid to perk them up. Take the mixture off the heat and cool completely.

Once your fruit mixture is completely cold, process it in your ice cream machine. Once the sorbet is nearly done spinning (about 12-15 minutes in my machine) start making your Italian meringue.

In a small heavy bottom pot bring the following to a boil:

2 ¾ oz sugar

1 ½ tbsp water

Here's a tip. Put the water in the pan first and then pour the sugar directly into the middle of the pan. Take your finger and make a cross through the sugar so that the water gets fully incorporated into it. Try hard not to get any sugar on the edges of the pan. If there is water on the edges of the pan, wash down the sides with a brush soaked in water.

Once the sugar has started to boil. Whisk:

2 egg whites (room temp is best)

With a hand mixer to soft peaks. Once they reach soft peaks and your sugar reaches 245 F, turn your mixer to low and slowly pour your hot sugar mixture into your egg whites. Be careful not to get sugar on your beaters, but make sure to move your beaters around so that the sugar gets incorporated. Turn your hand mixer back up and beat till the meringue is no longer warm, smooth and holds a peak.

Combine the meringue with the sorbet so that you have ripples of both white meringue and sorbet in it.

Put your spoom mixture into the container you had put in the freezer earlier. Put that back in the freezer for at least an hour. Once it's frozen you can pipe or spoon it into your serving dishes. Serves 8.

TWD Savory Corn & Pepper Muffins

2009-01-13T06:25:00.000-05:00

Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake picked this week's TWD recipe; Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins. Rebecca's blog is one that I often look at, so I was happy to see it was her turn to choose a recipe. Extra awesome is the fact that we're not baking something sweet this week (at least not in the typical sense).

This recipe could not have been easier to put together. Simply put your dry ingredients in a bowl mix in your wet and then add the chunky stuff.

I like many other TWD'rs, made chili alongside the cornbread. While making the chili I got a little overzealous and I accidently put all my chopped red pepper into the pot! Good news is that I checked the recipe before I added the whole hot pepper to the chili as well. Though I live in a big city (Boston), I couldn't find a jalapeño to save my life (okay! I only went to one store, but it was a big one!). I ended up with this:

It looks like a jalapeño, but it's red. Regardless of my peppers heritage; it was spicy and delicious in the cornbread.

I can't believe how good this recipe was. There are so many BAD cornbread recipes out there; I'm happy to add this recipe to my good cornbread file! I baked the muffins in mini muffin pans for 11 minutes (5 minutes; rotate; 6 minutes) at 400 degrees.

They came out perfect. So perfect in fact, that I'm sure we ended up eating more cornbread for dinner than chili. Also, as a side note, these seem to keep pretty well. In a moment of desperation, I ate one that was two days old, and you know what? I ate another, it was still that good.

TWD French Pear Tart

2009-01-06T16:46:00.005-05:00

Dorie Greenspan picked this week's TWD recipe. For those of you who don't know; Dorie wrote the book Baking: From my home to yours and has written several other great cookbooks both on her own and with the likes of Pierre Hermé and Julia Child.

The recipe for the French pear tart was very simple. Dorie actually okayed using canned pears (gasp!) in this recipe. I chose the alternate option which was poaching pears. No offense to the canned pear industry, but as a pastry chef I prefer to poach my own. My Bartlett pears took about 25 minutes to poach.

For the base I made the sweet tart dough with pistachios. I decided to cut back on a tablespoon of butter because I thought the fat in the pistachios would make up for it. The rusting dough was a little crumbly. it wasn’t too difficult to deal with though because I have a lot of experience putting nut doughs in tart shells from my time at Bouchon. I simply took the dough and pressed it into the pan.

My time was limited, so I didn’t freeze the dough as Dorie suggests. Luckily it didn’t shrink while it was blind baking, and it came out lovely.

I bought a food processor for myself as a Christmas gift in December, and I’m so happy I did. Making the almond cream was so easy (as was the tart dough). Instead of grinding my own almonds, I used the almond meal you can buy at Trader Joe’s. It’s a nice time saver, and it has worked well in everything I’ve used it in so far.

The tart was easy to assemble. My pears were a bit on the huge size, so I had to use less of them. Even cutting back on the amount of pear, their width was so big I had to squeeze them in into the tart shell.

Luckily, after baking the tight fit wasn’t noticeable. The almond cream neatly puffed up around the pears.

This tart is certainly a crowd pleaser. It looks beautiful, and many people love the almond cream/pear combination. It’s très French. Joe loved this tart, however I found it to be way too sweet for my liking. While eating it, I realized I would like it much more if I had a strong cup of tea to counteract the sweetness. Since Joe liked this tart so much, I’m sure I’ll be making it again. Next time, I’ll be sure to try my piece earlier in the day with a strong cup of black tea.

09 Already!

2009-01-01T18:19:00.002-05:00

Amazing. It seems like we just moved to Boston yesterday, but we've been here a full year. This year ended similarly to last; with a move. Joe and I have the worst timing, and once again we found ourselves moving between Christmas and New Years. We decided to go in with a bang this year and throw a dinner party two weeks after the move. It was hectic, but worth it. We had a great evening.

Dinner began with help from our friends. Cheese, crackers, potato latkes and 3 types of Stromboli started the evening. Next we had French onion soup paired with Ayinger Jahrhundert beer.

The main course was braised shortribs served on top of baked polenta. For dessert I found a really interesting recipe in Baking with Julia for a creme bruleed chocolate bundt cake. Essentially you make a chocolate chiffon cake and a custard. Right before serving you fill the middle of the cake with fruit mascerated in sugar and alcohol. The recipe suggested fresh raspberries with chambord, but I used fresh cherries and pomegranate seeds with a little vanilla sugar. Once you fill the middle of the cake with fruit, you pour the custard over the cake, sprinkle sugar all over it; and then brulee.

No blogging for two weeks

2008-11-17T09:26:00.001-05:00

I'm sending my computer back to HP to be fixed. Hopefully I will be blogging again in two weeks.

Thanks for checking in.

Michelle

TWD Rugelach

2008-11-04T18:47:00.002-05:00

Rugelach is a cookie that took me by surprise a few years ago. It was December 2005, and I was working as a manager at a busy bakery in St. Helena, CA. The pastry chef started baking a ton of new cookies for the holiday, and one in particular caught my attention. It was flaky, cut into a jelly roll shape and had dried apricots; it was rugelach. The cookie looked beautiful, so I asked about it; only to be disappointed to hear it contained walnuts. I have never enjoyed nuts in my baked goods, so I wrote them off until one day when I smelled them right out of the oven. The smell was intoxicating and I decided to give them a go. Well, wouldn't you know it; I liked walnuts in this cookie. It was by far the best cookie she made that holiday season.

I've been lucky enough to eat Dorie's rugelach cookies before. My friend Sharon made them when the original concept of my blog was to have my friends bake from a specific cookbook, and then we would all get together, sample the goodies; and I would blog about it later. It was a great idea except for the fact that all my California friends moved out of state; including myself! When Sharon made these cookies we loved them though, so I was excited to try this recipe out myself.

I spent most of today running errands and waiting in line to vote. An hour and a half after getting in line to vote; I was relieved to put my ballot into the machine and walk out with a feeling of hope, and a fun project in front of me. On the way home I stopped by Starbucks for my free voter coffee; big mistake! I am still over caffeinated 2 hours after drinking the coffee (or maybe it has something to do with all the sugar I consumed after making these J).

I doubled the recipe because we have a big family party to go to on Sunday.

After processing the doughs and letting them chill for a few hours; I started the process. I made four different types of rugelach. The first was Dorie's chocolate filling except I subbed cranberries for currants. The second batch was Dorie's filling sans walnuts. For the third batch, I decided to play around with Nutella. My cookie contained Nutella, hazelnuts and espresso sugar.

Lastly, I made a cookie that contained caramel pear butter, cardamom sugar and almonds. Here they are before going in the oven.

They were all fantastic, but if I had to choose I would say the Nutella, espresso sugar and hazelnut rugelach was my favorite. Many thanks to Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal for picking this recipe.

TWD Pumpkin Muffins

2008-10-21T06:32:00.000-04:00

It's that time of the year again. The leaves on the trees have changed, all the bakeries are selling hot mulled cider and pumpkin is showing up on every menu in the Boston area. I have a love hate relationship with pumpkin. I love pumpkin breads and muffins. I love carving pumpkins for Halloween. The only problem with pumpkin is pumpkin pie. The only reason pumpkin pie's a problem is because we're going to be making literally hundreds of pumpkin pies next month! It's not that I hate pumpkin pie, I'm just not a fan of the anxiety I feel when I think about the logistics of baking hundreds of pies. Oh yeah, did I mention we're making our own pumpkin puree? No cans for us, we're a hard core bakery and we only use the freshest ingredients. Next month is going to be a whirl wind of pumpkin and pie dough. It's going to be so much fun, I can't wait to see how it all works out.

Why all this talk of pumpkin? Because Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp chose pumpkin muffins as this week's TWD recipe. The recipe was really easy to make, and I followed it to a T except I didn't add nuts or raisins. I was surprised by how thick the batter was. I've been making a lot of breads/muffins lately that use canola oil so I'm used to a wetter batter. This one was very thick.

Surprisingly, I didn't like these muffins. I am pretty sure that I overbaked them after reading what other people wrote about this recipe. Foolishly, I decided to would squeeze a quick shower in between putting them in the oven and taking them out. I got back just in the nick of time to take them out at 24 minutes. They were certainly done at that point, so I'm sure I could have taken them out earlier. It seems like other TWD'ers really liked this recipe though, so I'll have to try again soon.

Caramel Pear Butter from Bon Appetit

2008-10-20T14:41:00.004-04:00

When one finds themselves with 10 pounds of pears, what does one do?

In this case, make caramel pear butter. I found the recipe in a recent issue of Bon Appetit and it seemed like it would be a cool gift to give people. One thing I forgot was just how long the whole canning process takes. From cleaning all the jars, to boiling the huge vat of water, to making the recipe; it takes forever! I started this project at about 5:00, and I wasn't finished till 9:15. Over four hours of, ugh, fun?

Here's the recipe. I increase the amount of pears to 7 1/2 pounds because my Moonglow pears were so small I thought they may not yield as much fruit as Barlett's once they were chopped up. I ended up filling 7 1/2 half-pint jars once the recipe was finished.

Caramel-Pear Butter
Brown sugar gives this pear butter a caramel-like flavor. See our guide to canning for additional tips and tricks.
Makes about eight 1/2-pint jars
Recipe by Jill Silverman Hough

October 2008 Ingredients
1/4 cup apple juice
6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided
7 pounds ripe Bartlett pears
3 cups (packed) golden brown sugar
1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

Preparation
Combine apple juice and 4 tablespoons lemon juice in heavy large deep pot. Peel, core, and cut pears, 1 at a time, into 1/2- to 3/4-inch pieces; mix pears into juice mixture in pot as soon as pears are cut, to prevent browning.

Cook over medium heat until pears release enough juice for mixture to boil, stirring frequently, about 16 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer until pears are very tender, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes (mixture will splatter). Remove pot from heat. Press pear mixture through fine plate of food mill into large bowl. Return pear puree to same pot. Add 2 tablespoons lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, and 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.

Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered until pear butter thickens and is reduced to 8 cups, stirring every 5 minutes to prevent scorching, about 1 hour (I actually stirred it more than that because I could feel the puree starting to cling to the bottom of the pan).

Ladle pear butter into 8 hot clean 1/2-pint glass canning jars, leaving 1/4-inch space at top of jars. Remove air bubbles. Wipe jar threads and rims with clean damp cloth. Cover with hot lids; apply screw bands. Process jars in pot of boiling water 10 minutes. Cool completely. Store in cool dark place up to 1 year.

Meat Cake and Beer Making

2008-10-20T12:17:00.004-04:00

What happens when I leave my husband alone to plan a dinner menu while I'm at work? Meat cake, that's what happens.

A few weeks ago, Joe and I went to Crow Book Shop in Burlington, VT. While I was there I found a copy of David Burke's book David Burke's New American Classics for sale. I purchased it because Joe and I had just been to David Burke's restaurant David Burke and Donatella in NYC the week before and like it. Joe was really excited to see the book because of one recipe in particular; the Meatloaf Bundt Cake. I knew Joe would find a reason to make that cake as soon as possible. The following Sunday, I got a call at work saying we had company coming over and asking "do we have any croissant dough in the freezer?" It was meat cake time. Luckily we did have croissant dough in the freezer because I made the croissant recipe from Baking with Julia a couple of months ago and froze the extra dough.

That night, I came home to what can only be described as a glorious meat cake. It was a sight to behold that's for sure, and the taste was amazing. I know for a fact Joe will be making this again... looks like I should start making more croissant dough.

In addition to making meat cakes, Joe also likes to make beer. On Saturday, he and a friend make two batches of beer at our place. One pale ale and a dark brown ale. I can't wait to see how they turn out.

Cookie Love

2008-10-14T19:44:00.005-04:00

I randomly stumbled upon this recipe last night while poking around on Chow. Apparently the recipe is from Cooks Illustrated. I decided to make them because I had all the ingredients on hand, and people on Chowhound were raving.

The only thing I regret about making these, is that I didn't double the recipe. Brown butter and brown sugar mixed together in a cookie…pure bliss.

Brown Sugar Cookies

Makes 2 Dozen Cookies
14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 3/4 sticks)
1/4 cup granulated sugar (about 1 3/4 ounces)
2 cups packed dark brown sugar (14 ounces)
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons (about 10 1/2 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Heat 10 tablespoons of the butter in a pan over medium-high heat until melted. Continue to cook the butter until it is browned a dark golden color and smells nutty, about 1 to 3 minutes. Transfer the browned butter to a bowl and stir the rest of the butter into the hot butter until it melts- let this rest for 15 min. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a baking dish, mix granulated sugar and a ¼ cup of the brown sugar until combined well; set this mixture aside to roll dough balls in. Mix flour, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl. Add 1 ¾ cup brown sugar and salt to cooled butter and mix until there are no lumps. Add egg, yolk, and vanilla to butter mixture and mix well, then add flour and mix until just combined. Roll dough into balls about 1 ½ inches in diameter, and roll balls in brown sugar and white sugar mixture. Place balls about 2 inches apart on parchment lined baking sheets.

Bake sheets one at a time until cookies are puffy and lightly browned, about 12- 14 minutes. (It says the cookies will look slightly raw between some of the cracks and seem underdone, but be careful not to overbake.) Cool on sheet for about 5 minutes and then transfer to a rack to cool.

Almost Apple Picking at Bolton Spring Farm

2008-10-14T09:37:00.002-04:00

Joe and I went to go apple picking at Bolton Spring Farms' yesterday. It was a beautiful fall day, just the right conditions for apple picking. The only thing was that once we got there, we found out they only had one size bag and one price for picking. We just didn't need a bushel of apples for $20! We decided to walk across the street to the farmstand and think it over. While standing there, deliberating about what to do we noticed we were standing in front of a table of seconds. We ended up buying a ½ peck of Paula red apples, 2 ½ pecks of Moonglow pears and a cheese pumpkin for under $8. I was so happy about the great deal that I forgot all about apple picking. As Joe said after "nothing cheers you up like a great deal."

By the way, how beautiful are moonglow pears?

The name alone makes them sound magical.

I've had Alice Medrich's book Pure Dessert on my "Bake from this soon" list for a while. Her recipe for Bea's apple crisp looked delicious, except Joe doesn't like orange zest and I didn't have dried apricots; so I had to omit those two items. Also, she calls for cubing the apple and leaving the skin on, but I prefer skinless apples in recipes like this. Here's my version of her recipe resulting in an exceptionally delicious apple crisp.

Apple Crisp adapted from Pure Dessert

Topping:

½ cup AP flour

½ cup rolled oats

Scant 1 cup coarsely chopped walnut pieces

½ cup sugar

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut small

1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine flour, oats, sugar and salt. Add butter and work it in with your fingers to pea sized pieces. Add walnut pieces

Filling:

11 Paula Red apples (they were small, so if you're using larger ones you may only need 6)

¼ to ½ cup sugar (depending on tartness of apples)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Peal, core and cut apples. Toss with cinnamon and sugar. Put in a buttered 2 quart dish. Top fruit with crumb topping. Bake at 350 for 1 ¼ hours to 1 ½ hours.

TWD Lenox Almond Biscotti

2008-10-14T09:10:00.003-04:00

I've made a lot of biscotti recipes over the past few years. They were on my production list when I worked at Bouchon, so I've made literally thousands of them. I once made 5 different kinds of biscotti for everyone I knew as Christmas gifts. All that being said, I love really good biscotti. My definition of good biscotti is a cookie that's firm on the outside, but still a little soft on the inside. I hate biscotti that cause me to contemplate calling the dentist, as in; did I just break my tooth on this thing?

After reading Dorie's description of these cookies, I decided they were a must try. At first I was going to make one of the playing around recipes, but when I read that she makes these cookies in double batches twice a week, I thought maybe I should try the original recipe first. I'm glad I did. The recipe itself is really easy. Basically cream butter & sugar, add eggs, add dry, fold in nuts. One thing that surprised me was that Dorie didn't call for resting the dough. I find that biscotti dough firms up, and is easier to form into a log if you let it rest in the fridge for a while. That being said, I followed Dorie's directions, and I formed the logs right after making the dough.

They were a little sticky, but easy enough to shape. I was surprised by how much my biscotti spread in the oven, but they ended up looking great once I cut them.

This turned out to be one of the most delicious biscotti's I've ever eaten. The almond flavor is amazing, it actually tastes like there's almond paste in the cookies because they're so tender on the inside. I found Dorie's description of them to be true "crunchy but not rock solid, dippable, dunkable and eminently munchable." Many thanks to Gretchen of Canela & Comino for choosing this recipe. Because of you, Gretchen, I was able to justify eating a cookie for breakfast this morning. Anyone interested in making this recipe, can find it on Gretchen's website.

TWD Caramel Peanut Topped Brownie Cake

2008-10-07T04:43:00.000-04:00

How fabulous is this cake?

I've made it 4 times in the past year.
Peanut butter, caramel and chocolate.
Beautiful, shiny caramel topping for extra sparkle.
It's impossible to have just one piece.

Someone had to pick this recipe, and I'm glad that Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy did just that. I can't wait to see how much the other TWD'ers loved this recipe.

The recipe is very straight forward. I have a few pointers to help anyone who is going to make this cake based on my own experience.

Make sure to not overcook your cake. When you think about it, it's a brownie cake, and honestly; who doesn't love a brownie that's a little underdone? I made the mistake of drinking a little too much vino while making the cake for Thanksgiving last year. Oops, I left it in the oven a little too long. It wasn't burned, but it was too dry for my liking.
Watch your caramel very closely. It can go from beautiful amber to bitter black very quickly. Also, never add cold cream to a caramel. It results in major caramel eruptions. Instead, slightly warm the cream, or at least make sure it's room temp. The caramel will still sputter when the cream is added, but not nearly as much as it would if adding cold cream.

I hope everyone enjoyed this cake as much as I have in the past.

TWD Dimply Plum Cake

2008-09-23T13:59:00.000-04:00

It was my turn to choose this week's TWD recipe. Exciting? Yes. Difficult? You bet! There are so many fantastic recipes in this book, it was nearly impossible to choose one recipe. I decided on the plum cake because I love plums and cardamom is one of my favorite spices. Also, I've been very busy with work and travel lately, so I decided it would be safe to choose an easy recipe that I could throw together quickly.

Wow, I'm so thankful I choose such an easy recipe. In addition to working 14 hour days at the bakery; last week I went to a Star Chef conference in NYC for two days, and then Joe and I went to NYC again Sunday returning late last night. Both trips were great. I hope to post about the conference sometime today, it was amazing. Yesterday we had a nice lunch at David Burke and Donatella, and afterwards I shopped around while Joe went to an appointment. We got home late last night, and skipped dinner because we were still stuffed from lunch.

Back to the plum cake. First off, I decided to halve the recipe. Both Joe and I have been consuming copious amounts of baked goods since Sofra opened, so I decided we didn't exactly "need" 8 servings of this cake! I baked the cake in a 6" round cake pan, which worked out perfectly. I think the cake may have been slightly shorter than Dorie's, but I wanted to fit more plums on top of the cake and I knew my 4" pan would only hold about 5 plum halves. The recipe was easy to make. Cream butter and sugar, add egg(s), add oil, zest, and vanilla; and finally add dry ingredients till just incorporated.

I scraped the batter into my cake pan, leveled it out a bit, and then topped it with 7 plum halves (I couldn't squeeze the last one in).

My bake time was surprisingly longer than Dorie suggested. I baked the cake for just over 45 minutes at 350.

When the cake came out of the oven, I was slightly disappointed with how dry the plums looked.

I decided to beautify it by making a plum cardamom glaze. What I did was I cut a plum up into small pieces and put it in a pan with some sugar, once the sugar started to melt, I added two fresh cardamom seeds and a little bit of brandy.

I left the skin on the plums because I love the color that plum skin leaches while cooking. Next I went to the dining room to pay bills. Having forgotten about my plum glaze, I came back to a nicely caramelized plum glaze (phew)! I wish every time I forgot about something on the stovetop that would happen! I added a little bit of water to thin out my glaze and topped the cake with it.

Appearance wise, I think the glaze made this a really beautiful cake.

It's the kind of cake I would want to buy at a bakery based on appearance. I swear my pictures don't even come close to showing just how pretty this cake was. Overall though, I wasn't blown away by the cake itself. I have a feeling it's because my plums weren't that great. There were hundreds of purple plums at the grocery store, but they were all rock hard. I chose the ripest of the lot, but that's not saying much. I will certainly make this cake again when I can find some beautiful plums. I have a feeling that will make a huge difference in the overall flavor of the cake. Also, I'm interested to see what this cake tastes like tomorrow. Dorie says that the first day the cake is like corn bread and the 2nd and 3rd days it's soft and moist. Perhaps I'll fall in love with it tomorrow.

Just a side note. If you have David Lebovitz's book Ripe for Dessert try his recipe for a yeasted plum tart with red wine-plum sauce. It's a fantastic plum recipe. Also, today I plan on catching up on some posts. Check out my posts on both Sofra and the Star Chefs Conference.

Here's the recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: from my home to yours

Dimply Plum Cake (page 41)

1 ½ C AP Flour

2 tsp Baking Powder

¼ tsp salt

Scant ¼ tsp ground cardamom (optional)

5 Tbsp Unsalted butter, room temp

¾ C Packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1/3 C flavorless oil, such as canola or safflower

Grated zest of 1 orange

1 ½ tsp pure vanilla extract

8 purple of red plums (in the fall, use Italian prune plums), halved and pitted

Getting Ready: center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degress F. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan, dust the inside with flour, tap out the excess and put the pan on a baking sheet.

Whisk the flour, baking powder; salt and cardamom, if you're using it, together.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until soft and creamy, about 3 minutes. Add the sugar and beat for another 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for a mixture after each addition. On medium speed, beat in the oil, orange zest and vanilla. The batter will look very light and smooth, almost satiny. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only till they're incorporated.

Run a spatula around the bowl and under the batter, just to make sure there are no dry spots, then scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Arrange the plums cut side up in the batter-I usually make 4 rows of 4 plum halves each-jiggling the plums a tad just so they settle comfortably into the batter.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until the top is honey brown and puffed around the plums and a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 15 minutes-during which time the plums' juice will return to the fruit-then run a knife around the sides of the pan and unmold the cake. Invert and cool right side up.

Star Chefs Conference

2008-09-23T13:39:00.003-04:00

I am incredibly fortunate because Ana invited me to the Star Chefs conference last week. For those of you who don't know; the Star Chefs Conference is a conference for chefs (savory and pastry), bartenders, sommeliers and the like held in New York City. There were many big hitters at the event including Masaharu Morimoto, Anthony Bordain, Wylie Dufresne and many more. Overall, it was an amazing event. I attended as many demonstrations and workshops as I could, and I learned something new from every presenter. My favorite presentation on the main stage was the presentation by Candido Lopez and Joan Roca. They were so charasmatic, and they made suckling pig much more interesting to me. I'm usually not one to want to cook meat, but after their presentations, I'm not going to say no if Joe wants to cook one :)

The real highlight for me was I was able to attend a workshop with Michael Laiskonis the executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin. He is an incredible pastry chef, and though my class with him was short, I feel I learned quite a bit. Here are some pictures from his workshop:

Chocolate Corn Petit Four:

Chocolate Menthol Petit Four:

Menthol Crystals:

The three petit fours he presented (two above plus peanut butter cup):

Additional Petit Fours:

If you're interested in learning more about Michael Laiskonis check out his blog at:
http://michaellaiskonis.typepad.com/main/

Sofra Bakery

2008-09-23T13:12:00.004-04:00

Sofra bakery finally opened just over a month ago now. I feel very fortunate to work at such a great bakery with such amazing people. Here are some pictures from the first week we opened. I hope to update my blog with more pictures in the coming months.

If you are in the Boston/Cambridge/Watertown area please come and visit. We're located at 1 Belmont St. in Cambridge. www.sofrabakery.com

Exterior:

From Food as of 8/17/08

Farm Stand:

From Food as of 8/17/08

The Saag's:

From Food as of 8/17/08

Egyptian shortbreads with fig jam (the jam is seasonal will change to quince soon)

From Food as of 8/17/08

Espresso Craquelin:

From Food as of 8/17/08

Almond and apricot brioche:

From Food as of 8/17/08

Maureo's and earthquakes:

From Food as of 8/17/08

Fresh Figs with Homemade ricotta

2008-09-02T18:50:00.002-04:00

Time is very short for me as of late, but I love making desserts at home.

Luckily, I'm working near a great grocery store that has amazing fruits for great prices. A couple weeks ago, I purchased some amazing figs there.

They were ripe, and I wanted to showcase just how great they were. What I did was I made some ricotta (1 quart of milk brought to a boil with some lemon juice, then strained), then I chilled it.

After chilling the ricotta for a while I cut the figs in quarters and topped them with a little ricotta and some honey from Lake Champlain Apiaries.

The inspiration for this recipe was David Lebowitz's Ripe for Dessert, I followed the concept of his recipe, but I tweeked it to be my own.

TWD Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters

2008-09-02T18:10:00.002-04:00

Technically Dorie Greenspan calls these cookies "chunky peanut butter and oatmeal chocolate chipsters", but as I used smooth peanut butter I didn't feel right calling them that. Thanks to Stefany of Proceed with Caution for chosing this super fast, easy recipe.

Please note that I started my long awaited amazing job at Sofra Bakery two weeks ago, so my posts will be short and sweet till I have more time to blog.

I decided to halve this recipe because Joe and I have been eating way too many baked goods from Sofra lately! The recipe was a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe with peanut butter added during the creaming stage as another fat. I creamed my butter on the cold side because I read that chilling the dough was good, but I didn't have time for that. I've been seeing more and more recipes for cookies where using cold butter to cream is more than okay. It many cases it results in a better product.

From Food as of 8/17/08

What can I say about peanut butter and chocolate chips cookies, of course they were great! I loved that added texture of the oats as well. This recipe is very similar to my beloved King Arthurs Flour's "Nutty for Oats Cookies" except KAF blitzes some of the oats in the food processor in place of flour. I would highly recommended trying that recipe if you liked Dorie's.

From Food as of 8/17/08

TWD Granola Grabbers

2008-08-17T17:39:00.002-04:00

I'm sorry this post is so late! I actually made the grabbers before they were due for TWD, but then I got held up at work and never posted!

Michelle of Bad Girl Baking chose Granola Grabbers (page 82) as this weeks Tuesday with Dorie recipe.

I should start this out by saying that in general, I don't like granola. I find the store bought kind to be laden with extra fat and preservatives. I do like making my own granola though, so I decided to make it for this recipe. One of the bakeries I worked at while I lived in California made huge batches of the most delicious granola. I like to play off what we made there, but I use a lot less of the fattening ingredients. For today's granola, I put 3 cups of oatmeal on a sheet pan, a few handfuls of slivered almonds and walnuts, a good sprinkle of sesame seeds, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and mace, and I poured some warmed maple syrup and honey (with about a tablespoon of canola oil) onto the dry ingredients. I made sure all the dries were well covered with the sugar mixture and then off into the oven it went. I baked the granola at 350 for somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently so the granola baked evenly.

From Food as of 8/17/08

Once the granola was cool, I started making the cookies. The recipe was very easy to follow. Essentially, you cream the butter and brown sugar, next you add your egg and salt, followed by the flour; and finally the nuts/fruit/wheat germ/coconut mixture. I followed the recipe except I subbed cranberries and small pieces of dried apricot for the raisins.

This recipe was okay, but I don't think I'll ever make it again. I think the flavor was good and I liked the chunkiness of the cookies. The problem was these cookies tasted healthy to me, but they are certainly not. If I'm going to bake/eat something that's unhealthy; I want to feel the decadence of the product. In this case, these cookies are loaded with fat and calories (coconut, butter, nuts, dried fruit), but they taste like they were made at a health store. Truth be told, I think these would be 100% better if I had subbed the raisins with chocolate chips; and I'm kicking myself for not going with my gut instinct and doing that in the first place J

TWD Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

2008-08-12T18:20:00.001-04:00

Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity chose Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream (page 434) as this week's TWD recipe. I'm in the middle of a very busy month, so I was excited to see that such an easy recipe had been chosen. Also exciting, was that I used my ice cream maker for the first time this year. Funny though, because after making this recipe; I remembered why it's been in hiding. I really don't like the way my Cuisinart ice cream maker freezes. The blade doesn't touch the wall of the frozen container, so it leaves a ring of frozen ice cream around the container that never gets incorporated. Small gripe, but anyone out there looking to purchase an ice cream maker stay away from the Cuisinart Frozen Yogurt and Ice Cream maker, it usually retails on sale for about $70.

Now onto more important things, like ice cream. It was extremely easy to put together. Simply bring blueberries, sugar, lemon juice and zest to a boil till the blueberries explode. Whirl the blueberry mixture in a blender for about a minute. Finally, add the sour cream and heavy cream to the mixture and blend till just combined. Chill in the refridgerator (I did this overnight), and then process in the ice cream maker.

Fresh blueberries are my most favorite food to snack on, so I had a feeling I would like this ice cream. It was so good. My only complaint is that it was pretty hard and kind of crystallized, but I'm blaming that on my ice cream maker. I'm sure that if I was to spin this ice cream base in a commercial ice cream maker it would be even more delicious.

I'll have pictures up soon. The battery in my camera died this morning right before I started spinning the ice cream. As soon as I get a replacement battery, I'll post the pictures.

Birthday Cupcakes

2008-08-05T13:16:00.002-04:00

My friend's birthday party was this weekend, so I made some cupcakes for the big event. First, I made coconut cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut "sand".

I also made chocolate cupcakes with Dorie Greenspan's chocolate frosting recipe. I don't have the book in front of me right now, but it's the frosting she uses on the chocolate cupcakes. I love the way these cupcakes looked with the silver dragees.

Lastly, I filled some of the cupcakes with nutella, and then I topped them with chocolate icing and candied hazelnuts. They were my favorite of the three cupcakes.

Quick post today. No TWD post because I don't care for the banana bread recipe that was selected. My friend made it a while back, and we both thought it was just okay.

1 Ostrich Egg, 6 friends and a whole lot of wine

2008-07-29T15:15:00.005-04:00

1 ostrich egg, 6 friends and a whole lot of wine equals a whole lot of food and good time had by all.

Last week Mike and LT became the proud parents of a very big Ostrich egg's days were numbered.

Mike told Joe about the egg over the weekend and they immediately "hatched" a plan of attack.

Take said egg, take drill/knife; make countless egg dishes. That folks, is exactly what happened.

We arrived at Mike and LT's with dessert, wine and some "sides" for the egg. Mike just about bought out the grocery store with items that might go well egg. With ingredients combined we had the makings of 3 very delicious frittatas, as well as hash browns and some roasted cauliflower.

But first, how to crack the egg. When we arrived, LT plugged her drill charger into the wall "just incase we needed it." After reviewing a YouTube video, and 5 people giving advice; Mike decided to go the old fashion way; knife and mallet please.

The egg contained an enormous amount of egg substance. Apparently, one ostrich egg is the equivalent of 2 dozen chicken eggs. We had a lot of egg to work with.

Our first frittata contained tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. After cooking it on the stovetop till almost set; we topped it off with some more mozzarella and some delicious pancetta. It turned out great.

The next frittata was vegetarian (but certainly NOT vegan). It contained broccoli, peppers, onions, mushrooms, goat cheese and a little mozzarella. Before we put it under the broiler we added some cheddar cheese to the top. The resulting frittata was loaded with veggies and 3 cheeses.

Though we were all getting full, the wine was starting to kick in so we decided to make one more. The last frittata contained bacon, potatoes, goat cheese, green onions, tomatoes and thyme. It was delicious as well. After eating that, we were all full.

But then there was dessert:

Before:

After:

(Clearly we found room for dessert, though we forgot about the ice cream)

We drank 3 bottles of wine, but I only got the names of two. Both were from Schweiger Vineyards (where Joe works). We had Mr. Pink (an amazing Rose) and 2004 Cab (great as always).

Cheers!

Thanks to Mike for buying such an interesting ingredient, and for sharing it with us.

TWD Summer Fruit Galette

2008-07-29T14:41:00.006-04:00

Galette's are one of the pastries that inspired me to be a pastry chef. Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of inspiration from my mom, some aunts and my memere; but the first time I made a galette (Jacques Pepin's recipe) was an eye opener. Jacques recipe is very simple, the dough is a pate brisee, and you top the rolled out dough with apples, a tiny bit of sugar and a little butter (of course!). After you bake it, you glaze the crust with an apricot cognac mixture. The result is the most beautiful, simple dessert ever. The first time I made it; I really understood what a great pastry was, and from there I was inspired to try different recipes, fruits, techniques, etc.

Michelle from Michelle in Colorado Springs selected Dorie’s Summer Fruit Galette as this weeks TWD recipe. I was excited to make it because I’ve never made a galette with custard in it, and as I mentioned above I love galettes. First I made the dough which was quite simple. Surprisingly, I had shortening in the house (Joe bought it to season our cast iron pans); so I followed the ingredient list. The only change I made was after processing the butter and flour, I transferred the mixture to a bowl and added the ice water; mixing by hand. I did this because I didn’t want my butter pieces to get any smaller, and I almost always finish my doughs by hand. Here’s the resulting dough, pretty nice huh?

While the dough was chilling I went to the grocery store, and I picked up some yellow and white peaches, strawberries and blueberries.

Joe was in Napa last week on a business trip, and he came home with two preserves from LouLou’s Garden. He picked up Rangpur Lime Marmalade and Strawberry Rhubarb Jam. I’m also fortunate to have received some rose petal jam from the bakery I will be working at soon called Sofra. I also had a little bit of peach preserves left over that I made last summer. As you can tell by the number of preserves at my fingertips, I was about to have a lot of fun.

I decided to make four small square shaped galettes. At Sofra we will be making some square shaped baked goods (like English muffins, cakes, etc), so I thought I may as well “get my square on” now. The flavors I decided on were white peach with rose petal jam, strawberry, blueberry and yellow peach with rose petal jam, strawberry with strawberry rhubarb jam and finally yellow peach with peach preserves.

I didn’t have graham crackers in the house, so I ground up some oats and added a bit of cinnamon and brown sugar to it; to act as the absorbing agent.

The galettes came together quickly. After 20 or so minutes in the oven, I took them out and added the very simple custard to the galettes. I ended up adding about 2 teaspoons to each galette. After 14 minutes in the oven the custard was set and they were ready to come out.

Once they cooled, we took them to Mike and LT’s for a very special dinner party. Last week Mike purchased an Ostrich egg, so we had an Ostrich egg party last night.

Check out my next post for more on that. That was a lot of egg (about 2 dozen).

The galettes were delicious.

The two favorites were the strawberry and strawberry, blueberry, peach.

The peach galettes were great as well.

The strawberries I purchased were so amazingly good that those galettes tipped the scale towards extraordinarily delicious.

Jacque’s recipe will always be my favorite, but I loved this galette recipe was well. I guess Dorie’s recipe will truly be my summer galette recipe, and I’ll save Jacque’s for the other seasons.

TWD Cherry Blueberry Rhubarb Cobbler

2008-07-22T21:56:00.001-04:00

Today was something else. It started off amazing, and it ended not so much.

Yesterday I drove from Boston to Burlington, Vermont. Joe's away in Napa working at his winery, so I thought it would be fun to spend some time with my family for a few days. The drive was long, but once I hit Stowe, the clouds cleared and it was a gorgeous day in Vermont. Green, green grass; amazing blue skies and mountains lining the landscape. It was one of those days when I wonder why I don't live in VT (then I remember the aweful winter weather very quickly). After a nice visit with my family, I went to bed.

I didn't wake up till 10:00. That's something of a miracle as I barely ever sleep in. In fact, I never sleep through the night. Last night was different though, I went to bed around 11:00 and woke up at 10:00. I felt great, and amazingly the weather was still nice. I decided to go blueberry picking.

Berry picking in Charlotte, Vermont is something I've been doing with my family forever. It's something of a zen experience for me; I truly love picking blueberries. We either go to Pelky's or Charlotte Berry Farm. Today I decided to go to Charlotte Berry Farm. There were both raspberries and blueberries available to pick, and they also sell honey. It was a beautiful day, and there were lots of dark blueberries. After four pounds of blueberries in my bucket (and one pound in my stomach); I decided it was time to go home and make cobbler.

I'm fortunate because my parents have rhubarb growing in their backyard. I picked 4 stalks and I decided to use the fresh berries in addition to the cherries. Dorie's cobbler recipe was very simple. You simply add some sugar, cornstarch and ginger to the fruit and mix it. Then you make the cobbler topping; which is essentially a biscuit-like topping. Once that's made, you put your fruit mixture in the baking dish and top it with 20 cobbler balls. Then you bake it…well, you bake it as long as smoke and fire isn't billowing out of your oven!

Yes, that's right. Smoke and fire before I even put anything in the oven. Something went very wrong in my parents (aweful) GE oven. They have had nothing but problems with it since they bought it about 4 years ago. My parents keep their oven very clean. There was nothing inside of it, but it just started smoking and then flames shot out of it. This incident was the last straw for my dad. He pulled the oven out from under the countertop, and said they're never using it again.
That being said, the cobbler was never baked. It's now wrapped in the freezer for my mom to bake off once they get a new oven!

Frustrating end to the day? Yes, but at least I was able to share this day with my family! When my mom finally bakes the cobbler off, I'll report back. I'm sure it'll be great.

Here's a picture of the fruit for the cobbler:

The cobbler assembled and ready to bake:

The world's worst oven, may it rest in peace (with flame and smoke marks!):

TWD Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

2008-07-08T15:20:00.001-04:00

Amy of South in Your Mouth selected Double Crusted Blueberry Pie as this week's TWD recipe. I had every intention to make this pie myself until the heat and humidity in my apartment reached the level of, too hot to bake. I swear if I turned on the oven my husband would either:

Have me sent to an insane asylum, or
Called a divorce lawyer

Luckily when I lived in California some of my pastry friends and I would have baking parties. We would bake either certain types of items, or different items from the same cookbook. The gods must have been shining on me the day we had a pie party, and my good friend Wendy made Dorie's Double Crusted Blueberry pie. Even better, I had my camera and took notes because I was planning on blogging about it. Nothing like a cross country move to get in the way of intentions to blog J

That day 5 of us got together, and we had a number of different pies. Annie made an apricot crumb pie while she was at work from random ingredients she had on hand. Darcie made two pies, one a coconut macadamia cream from Pie Pie Pie: Easy Homemade Favorites by John Phillip Carroll, and a peach raspberry pie which she created herself. Erin made an apricot pie which she "baked" in her (smoker) egg because her oven died that week. She found her recipe in Provence: The Beautiful Cookbook by Richard Olney. I made a peach pie with cream cheese crust from The Pie and Pastry Bible.

Overall, we liked the Blueberry pie the best. The flavor and crust were awesome. Dorie get's a lot of credit for this recipe, but really Wendy is an amazing baker (chocolatier and slave to TFL as well-he he); so I'm sure she added some special secret touches. Wendy has a gift for producing the most amazing dessert items in a fraction of the time it would take a normal person. As for the other pies, Darcie's coconut macadamia cream pie was a real standout. Erin and Annie's pies were great with amazing fruit flavor. My pie was good, but I hate how complicated the directions were for the cream cheese dough…a bit much if you ask me J. The peach flavor was a great compliment to the cream cheese dough though.

Please enjoy the pictures below:

Dorie/Wendy's blueberry pie:

Erin's apricot pie:

Darcie's coconut macadamia cream and peach raspberry pies:

Annie's apricot crumb pie:

My Peach Pie:

Slices of all the pies:

TWD Apple Cheddar Scones

2008-07-01T22:45:00.000-04:00

Karina of The Floured Apron chose apple cheddar scones as this weeks TWD recipe. The heat and humidity in Boston this week has been awful. I had to wake up at 5:00 to make these because I knew my kitchen wouldn't be too hot then.

This recipe is really easy, and I followed it pretty much as written. The only changes I had to make were I finely chopped a granny smith apple in place of the dried apple. I also pureed apple in my food processor because I didn't have apple juice. I was afraid the pureed apple wouldn't result in enough liquid, but it worked out fine. The only comment I have on making these is expect a very sticky dough. It's hard to shape into a rectangle because it's so sticky. I ended up shaping it into a rectangle and cutting them with my bench scraper. The resulting scones would not have been pretty; so I heavily floured a round cookie cutter, and I squished the scones into that to get a round shape.

I really liked these scones. I wish the apple flavor was more pronounced, but I'm sure if I had used dried apples it would have been. The scones were extremely tender and delicious warm. Next time I make these, I'll grate an extra ¼ cup of cheese, and sprinkle cheese on top of the scones before baking.

Side note, I'm having major problems with blogger and my computer. I haven't been able to post more than a couple of comments on other people's blogs without getting mulitiple error messages. I've contacted blogger, and they're working on the problem. I have been looking at everyone's blogs though, and everyone is so inspiring. Hopefully I can get this problem fixed soon, and I'll be back to commenting on your beautiful work!

Here are some pictures:

The chopped apple:

Dry Ingredients:

The pureed apple:

Before going in the oven:

Wow, the baking soda and powder sure worked:

Apple Cheddar Scones in all their glory:

TWD Mixed Stone Fruit Cobbler

2008-06-24T19:20:00.001-04:00

Remember in college when you had to completely clean your room from top to bottom before you could even consider studying? I don't know why, but I just HAD to clean my kitchen today BEFORE making the cobbler from Baking from My Home to Yours. I know it was pretty clean to being with, but when I have the cleaning bug (rarely happens, must be a full moon); I have to clean everything. Now with all my appliances dusted, dishes sparkling, floor gleaming as only a clean floor can… I will get flour everywhere J

Beth of Our Sweet Life chose Dorie's Mixed Berry Cobbler
(pages 416-417) as this weeks TWD recipe. I was really excited to make this recipe till I went to the grocery store and discovered the berries are a bit out of my budget right now. Luckily, the stone fruits were on sale, and they looked surprisingly good for this time of year.

I decided to cut the recipe in half because a cobbler that serves 8 is a little too much for two people. It's not that we can't eat 8 servings, it's that we can (and would), so I halved it. The thing about the topping I changed was I used whole milk instead of cream. After adding the milk, I realized I should have either upped the flour or decreased the liquid. My cobbler topping was a bit on the mushy side, but it came out fine anyway J

For the fruit filling, I used white and yellow peaches, yellow nectarines and beautiful red/purple plums. I decided to leave the skin on the plums because I knew the color would permeate the filling making it a gorgeous color. I did remove the skin on the peaches and nectarines though because Joe doesn't like the texture of skin in baked goods. I followed Dorie's sugar/cornstarch ratio except I used brown sugar instead of plain-old granulated.

The results were good. I guess when it comes down to it, if I have great fruit I prefer to make pies instead of cobblers. That being said, if I'm ever in a crunch, I would make this again.

Here are some photos:

The flour-butter mixture before adding the milk:

After the milk addition:

The lovely fruits:

The fruit after being sliced and adding the brown sugar/cornstarch (and a pinch of salt):

With the topping in the oven:

Viola:

Gougères from Tartine

2008-06-17T14:23:00.001-04:00

It was a beautiful fall day last year, when Joe and I decided to drive to San Francisco to get treats from Tartine. At the counter we ordered a plethora of items; quiche, croissant, lemon meringue cake, chocolate cookies and gougères. With our bounty in hand, we walked over to the park for a nice picnic. While sitting there, enjoying the sun; Joe said (holding a half eaten gougères in his hand) "Can you make this?" I replied "Yeah, it's just pate a choux with cheese and herbs." The look on Joe's face was of astonishment (at how easy I made it sound), and then hurt "why haven't you made these yet?"

9 months later (after moving from Napa to Boston), I picked up the Tartine Cookbook at my library. As soon as I saw the Gougère recipe, I knew I had to make it for Joe. Joe was like a kid in a candy store once I told him I was making them to go with our dinner that evening. The first thing he did was he ran to our local wine store and picked up a bottle of Domaine Roger Perrin Cuvée Prestige Veielles Vignes Côtes Du Rhône 2005 (long name, perfect pairing). For dinner that night we had grilled pork chops (thick cut) with a mustard-thyme sauce, a salad and the gougères. The wine, chops and gougères paired perfectly together.

The cheese I used:

Close up of the fresh thyme:

Here I am mixing the dough on the stovetop:

The dough after adding the eggs, cheese and fresh thyme:

The gougère before baking. I also made little greyere crisps to put on the salad (in case you're wondering what the little piles of cheese are all about):

Close-up:

Close up of some small ones that I froze:

The final, glorious product:

TWD Not Even Close to a Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

2008-06-17T12:39:00.001-04:00

Little known fact, there's nothing I love more than pâte à choux. Every aspect of this dessert appeals to me; from making the dough on the stovetop, mixing in the eggs, to baking off these beauties. Growing up, my grandmother would make cream puffs as her extra special dessert. She would make them only for the most important events (wedding showers, Easter). Everyone in my family would be so excited to eat them. We would know she was making cream puffs weeks before she actually did, and the anticipation would grow as the event drew closer. Being so young at the time (5 or 6-years-old), I remember the puffs to be enormous, softball sized pastries filled with chocolate pudding. I'm sure they were smaller then my memory recalls, but small hands recall big memories J

I made these for my 30^th birthday party, so there aren't many pictures. We made so many items for the party, that I barely had time to make everything; let alone snap pictures. Joe and I had about 25 people over, and we had at least 6 appetizers, Middle Eastern pizzas, regular pizzas, brownies, strawberry shortcakes (I actually forgot to put them out), choux swans, éclairs sable cookies and the birthday cake my husband made for me. We're still eating leftovers 3 days later.

I decided to make chocolate pastry cream instead of the peppermint cream. Mint only appeals to me when it's in a Girl scout thin mint. Dorie's chocolate pastry cream recipe was easy to follow, and it resulted in a smooth very nice pastry cream. I have seen pastry cream recipes where the end result is something like a creamy jello jiggler (are those still around?). Luckily, this recipe was a beautiful thick pudding.

The choux recipe was easy to follow as well. I ended up making mini-eclairs, mini Paris-Brest and swans. I learned how to make swans when I was at the CIA. They are so fun to make, that I'm always looking for an excuse to make them again. Many thanks to Caroline of A Consuming Passion for choosing this recipe as this weeks TWD recipe; any excuse to make swans is highly appreciated.

Here's a photo of the choux paste:

This is what happens when you leave your brother alone with a deformed eclair and deformed Paris-Brest. I laughed so hard when I saw this:

A swan:

Final group photo:

One final note, check out my post on the gougères I made from Tartine's cookbook. It's interesting to see how pâte à choux can be both savory and sweet.

TWD French Chocolate Brownie

2008-06-03T09:23:00.000-04:00

Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook chose French Chocolate Brownies on pages 92-93 as this weeks TWD recipe. I swore to myself I wasn't going to make these brownies because:

A: My life is super hectic right now (changing jobs, my 30^th birthday in two weeks, 7 weddings this summer)

B: The only thing I hate worst then raisins is raisins with rum.

C: Brownies will contribute to my ever widening body.

D: Joe and I did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen yesterday, and it looks fabulous.

That being said; here I am blogging, with my brownies in the oven.

The recipe was extremely easy to follow. I had some Plugra left over from the brioche dough we made last week, so that's the butter I used. I also used Callebaut dark chocolate. As for the rum and raisins, those were not included. I did add a small handful of dried cranberries to one corner of the brownies. I plumped them in the water that was simmering for melting the chocolate. I also didn't have foil, so I used parchment instead to line the pan. Here are some pictures pre-baking:

What resulted was a perfect brownie. So perfect, in fact, I have a belly ache to prove it. I loved the crackled top, and how fudgey they were. I didn't care for the section with the cranberries as much as I did for the plain brownie section. I will make these again (and again, and again...).

Here's the recipe:

French Chocolate Brownies

- makes 16 brownies

-Adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours.

Ingredients

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

1/3 cup raisins, dark or golden

1 1/2 tablespoons water

1 1/2 tablespoons dark rum

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons; 6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into 12 pieces

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 300°F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil, place the pan on a baking sheet, and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, salt and cinnamon, if you're using it.Put the raisins in a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the water almost evaporates. Add the rum, let it warm for about 30 seconds, turn off the heat, stand back and ignite the rum. Allow the flames to die down, and set the raisins aside until needed.Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Slowly and gently melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and add the butter, stirring so that it melts. It's important that the chocolate and butter not get very hot. However, if the butter is not melting, you can put the bowl back over the still-hot water for a minute. If you've got a couple of little bits of unmelted butter, leave them—it's better to have a few bits than to overheat the whole. Set the chocolate aside for the moment.Working with a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until they are thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Lower the mixer speed and pour in the chocolate-butter, mixing only until it is incorporated—you'll have a thick, creamy batter. Add the dry ingredients and mix at low speed for about 30 seconds—the dry ingredients won't be completely incorporated and that's fine. Finish folding in the dry ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula, then fold in the raisins along with any liquid remaining in the pan.Scrape the batter into the pan and bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top is dry and crackled and a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and allow the brownies to cool to warm or room temperature.Carefully lift the brownies out of the pan, using the foil edges as handles, and transfer to a cutting board. With a long-bladed knife, cut the brownies into 16 squares, each roughly 2 inches on a side, taking care not to cut through the foil.

Serving: The brownies are good just warm or at room temperature; they're even fine cold. I like these with a little something on top or alongside—good go-alongs are whipped crème fraiche or whipped cream, ice cream or chocolate sauce or even all three!

Storing: Wrapped well, these can be kept at room temperature for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.

TWD Pecan Honey Sticky Buns

2008-05-27T05:34:00.000-04:00

This weeks TWD recipe was Pecan Honey Sticky Buns. I decided to make them for the the morning after our friends' annual bocce tournament. Due to time constraints I have to keep this post super short, but here are some thoughts on this recipe.

1. I would marry these sticky buns if I could.

2. I think my friends would marry me if I promised to make sticky buns for them daily till death do we part.

3. Move over Salt & Vinegar potato chips, Dorie's sticky buns are my latest hangover cure! Don't worry coffee, you're irreplacable.

I had a lot of fun making these, but even more fun sharing them with my friends this morning. Thanks to Mike and LT for hosting yet another amazing party. Congrats to LT for finishing her first half marathon by 10:30, playing bocce by noon and staying up till just before midnight. You are my hero :)

Here are pictures of the sticky buns from start to finish:

The brioche dough mixing:

Brioche after mixing:

The next day, dough rolled out:

Butter, cinnamon and sugar added:

Rolled up dough:

At this point, I froze the dough and then took it out the day before I baked it off.

The rolls before proofing:

After proofing and right before going in the oven:

Here are the beautiful results:

The last piece:

TWD Traditional Madeleines & a side of croissant

2008-05-20T09:37:00.000-04:00

There’s something about Madeleines that I love. To me, they are simply the most beautiful baked good; part cookie, part cake; usually scented with a touch of lemon. They were one of my favorite things to bake when I worked at Bouchon bakery.

As with many recipes, I already have a favorite Madeleine recipe. My go-to recipe was posted in Gourmet magazine back in 2006. It has honey, and the flavor is absolutely perfect, sweet yet delicate. Knowing how great all of Dorie’s past recipes have been, I was excited to see how the recipes compared.

The recipe itself was extremely easy. Whip eggs with sugar/lemon mixture till light, fold in dries, then fold in melted butter. I love recipes that take less than a few minutes to make. I piped the batter into my Madeleine molds because it is so much easier (and cleaner) than plopping spoonfuls in. I have what I think are traditional sized madeleine pans, but my yield was more than 12. I ended up with 20 Madeleines. Then I had to wait 3 hours to bake them off.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock…

As luck would have it, I had something to bake off while I was waiting for my Madeleines to chill.

Last week, I made the croissant dough from Baking with Julia. This morning I shaped them into crescent shapes, and then set them aside to proof. My kitchen is extremely cold (aside from the oven, there’s no heat in it). The recipe said it would take 3 to 4 hours to proof. They actually took 6 hours before they were fully proofed. We went from having afternoon tea with fresh croissants, to having a dinner of croissants sandwiched with gruyere and ham with a side salad. Believe me when I say, they were worth the wait. Absolutely amazing flake and so buttery. I used Plugra (butter), which made them stand out even more. I’ve already eaten one and a half croissants and they’ve been out of the oven for only an hour. I better put some in the freezer soon, or else I’m will be feeling very guilty tomorrow. My only problem with the croissants is dissatisfaction with the person who shaped them (me), they look a bit like crabs.

Back to the Madeleines.

They baked in 11 minutes. Once they were out of the oven, I played around with them a bit. Chocolate on some, a lemon glaze on others and confectioners sugar on the rest. The overall flavor of the madelines was nice. They were more cookie than cake; I like them the other way around.

I prefer the recipe from Gourmet to this Madeline recipe. Unfortunately, I'm not the only person with an opinion in my household :) My husband loved this recipe declaring it "the best Madeleine he's ever had." Looks like I'll be making these again.

Here's the recipe for Traditional Madeleines:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
½ cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¾ stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Working in a mixer bowl, or in a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and fragrant. Add the eggs to the bowl. Working with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together on medium-high speed until pale, thick and light, 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in the vanilla. With a rubber spatula, very gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the batter and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours, or for up to 2 days. This long chill period will help the batter form the hump that is characteristic of madeleines. (For convenience, you can spoon the batter into the madeleine molds, cover and refrigerate, then bake the cookies directly from the fridge; see below for instructions on prepping the pans.)

GETTING READY TO BAKE: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter 12 full-size madeleine molds, or up to 36 mini madeleine molds, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. Or, if you have a nonstick pan (or pans), give it a light coating of vegetable cooking spray. If you have a silicone pan, no prep is needed. Place the pan(s) on a baking sheet.

Spoon the batter into the molds, filling each one almost to the top. Don't worry about spreading the batter evenly, the oven's heat will take care of that. Bake large madeleines for 11 to 13 minutes, and minis for 8 to 10 minutes, or until they are golden and the tops spring back when touched. Remove the pan(s) from the oven and release the madeleines from the molds by rapping the edge of the pan against the counter. Gently pry any recalcitrant madeleines from the pan using your fingers or a butter knife. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature.

If you are making minis and have more batter, bake the next batch(es), making certain that you cool, then properly prepare the pan(s) before baking.

Just before serving, dust the madeleines with confectioners' sugar.

makes 12 large or 36 mini cookies

serving: Serve the cookies when they are only slightly warm or when they reach room temperature, with tea or espresso.

storing: Although the batter can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, the madeleines should be eaten soon after they are made. You can keep them overnight in a sealed container, but they really are better on day 1. If you must store them, wrap them airtight and freeze them; they'll keep for up to 2 months.

TWD Florida Pie

2008-05-13T10:28:00.000-04:00

Dianne of Dianne’s Dishes chose Florida Pie as the TWD recipe for this week.

On first inspection of the recipe, I knew I had to tweak it. I’m not a fan of shredded coconut. I was the kid who two months after Halloween had a bag full of Mounds and Almond Joys, and nothing else left. I would end up giving my coconut tainted candies to my Memere because she loved them. I do love the flavor of coconut though. I love sticky rice and pina coladas. When I was first going over the recipe I considered boiling the cream with the coconut, and then straining the coconut out. After much internal deliberation, I decided to skip the step all together because I love the flavor of Key Limes, and I knew the pie would be tasty without the coconut.

I debated buying Key lime juice over juicing them myself, but I find bottled Key lime juice to be sulphery. Wow, I never could have anticipated just how fun juicing Key Limes is! That was tedious, but those little limes actually contained a lot of juice. I bought a one pound bag of Key Limes, and used all but 5 of them. Key limes are so cute!

After juicing the limes, things started to get a bit hairy. As directed, I bought a premade graham cracker crust. As I opened the container I realized it was broken in several places. Taking this as an opportunity to try the crust (it was broken anyway), I determined it was flavorless and unimpressive. Turning a lemon into lemonade, I knocked the crust out of the tin, crushed it, and then added ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and some melted butter. Then I baked that crust in a pie plate for about 10 minutes at 350.

The key lime filing was a breeze to make. Three ingredients: juice, yolks and sweetened condensed milk.

It doesn’t get much easier than that... until...

THE POWER GOES OUT!

Well, it wasn’t all the power. Actually, the outlets still had power, but we had no lights in our apartment at all. Ugh, we live in a very old house in Somerville, and it’s “charm” is wearing thin with all the problems we’ve had here!

By candle light, I filled the pie and put it in the oven. Then as directed, I set it out to cool for a bit, then put it in the freezer.

Oh, one side note. We were having friends over for dinner that night! Yes, that’s right. No power and the guest were about to arrive.

While the pie was cooling, I made risotto to go along with the short ribs Joe had been braising all day. I discovered cooking by candlelight is fun as long as you have a good bottle of wine by your side.

Back to the pie. After the pie was in the freezer for an hour, I took it out and made the meringue. I really did not care for this meringue recipe at all. I made it as directed and I found it to be overwhipped before it cooled. It looked broken and all together aweful. Into the garbage that meringue went, and I made my standby Swiss Meringue recipe from Martha Stewart.

Our guests arrived with candles. We ended up having a great night with them. We sat in our living room discussing the food, the wines, places to live and visit in the future. The pie was excellent the perfect balance of sweet and tart.

Here are final pictures of the pie. Sorry the lighting is a bit off, there was none!

Here’s the recipe. Keep in mind that I didn’t used the meringue recipe listed below, nor did I make the coconut cream. If you would like to make the meringue I did make, it can be found here:

http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.fc77a0dbc44dd1611e3bf410b5900aa0/?vgnextoid=62d261876e70f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=swiss%20meringue&rsc=header_7"

Florida Pie
1 9-inch graham cracker crust (page 235), fully baked and cooled, or a store-bought crust
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
4 large eggs, seperated
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup fresh Key (or regular) lime juice (from about 5 regular limes)
1/4 cup of sugar

Getting Ready:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put the pie plate on a baking sheet lined with parchment of a silicone mat.
Put the cream and 1 cup of the coconut in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring almost constantly. Continue to cook and stir until the cream is reduced by half and the mixture is slightly thickened. Scrape the coconut cream into a bowl and set it aside while you prepare the lime filling.
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl beat the egg yolks at high speed until thick and pale. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the condensed milk. Still on low, add half of the lime juice. When it is incorporated, add the reaming juice, again mixing until it is blended. Spread the coconut cream in the bottom of the graham cracker crust, and pour over the lime filling.
Bake the pie for 12 minutes. Transfer the pie to a cooling rack and cool for 15 minutes, then freeze the pie for at least 1 hour.

To Finish the Pie with Meringue:
Put the 4 egg whites and the sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over medium-low heat, whisking all the while, until the whites are hot to the touch. Transfer the whites to a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, or use a hand mixer in a large bowl, and beat the whites at high speed until they reach room temperature and hold firm peaks. Using a rubber spatula, fold the remaining 1/2 cup coconut into the meringue.
Spread the meringue over the top of the pie, and run the pie under the broiler until the top of the meringue is golden brown. (Or, if you've got a blowtorch, you can use it to brown the meringue.) Return the pie to the freezer for another 30 minutes or for up to 3 hours before serving.

TWD Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake

2008-04-29T08:35:00.000-04:00

Caitlin of Engineer Baker chose the Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake as this weeks TWD recipe. Essentially it is a tea cake containing honey, polenta, ricotta and dried Mission (in my case) figs baked in a tart shell. I love all of the above ingredients, so I was more than willing to try this recipe. In fact, a few weeks ago I was thumbing through Baking From My Home to Yours, and I secretly wished that someone would select this cake soon. Clearly Caitlin is a psychic fairy godmother of sorts.

As far as ingredients were concerned, I bought some beautiful organic cornmeal at whole foods. The scent of corn when I opened the bag was heavenly.

My dried Mission figs were purchased at Trader Joes, as was the ricotta. The figs were super moist, so there was no need to soak them. I did halve the figs though because I prefer to eat small bits of dried fruit over large ones. Also, I knew that if I halved them, I would get a nice distribution of figs throughout the cake. Finally, I had some Orange Blossom honey in the cupboard, so I decided to use that.

I found the recipe simple to follow. The only questionable section was whisking the ricotta and water until “very smooth.” My ricotta never did get all that smooth. I mixed it for 5 minutes on low, and decided that it was as smooth as it was going to get. I considered pushing the water/ricotta mixture through a chinois to make the ricotta particles smaller, but I thought that might be a great example of just how “Type A” I really am. My batter was extremely thin, but it baked beautifully. I didn’t have a 10 1/2” tart pan, so I used my 9” and I filled 4 little molds that I have with the rest of the batter.

Here are some pictures of the baking process.

First my thin, but beautiful, batter:

The tart pan and mini-cakes half full with the figs layed out:

The cakes right before they started to bake:

The orange blossom honey in the cake made my whole kitchen smell like orange blossoms while it was baking. It was amazing. I took my mini-cakes out of the oven at 35 minutes, but I left the 9” in for about 15 more minutes. I was surprised by how raw it was in the middle at 35 minutes of baking. The mini cakes ended up looking pretty cute.

The little layer of cake over the fig half got stuck to the inside of the molds, so the cakes ended up looking kind of like flowers with the exposed fig. The 9” was beautiful as well. It became a nice golden color after baking.

I plan on making this cake again. I think it will be a lovely addition to my arsenal of recipes under the subject “perfect winter dessert.” The cake itself was a little too sweet for my liking, but I know that my French Canadian relatives would love the level of sweetness. Maybe I should put it under the subject of “perfect for a person with sweet-tooth.”

Here's the recipe:

Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake

About 16 moist, plump dried Mission or Kadota figs, stemmed
1 c. medium-grain polenta or yellow cornmeal
½ c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 c. ricotta
1/3 c. tepid water
¾ c. sugar
¾ c. honey (if you’re a real honey lover, use a full-flavored honey such as chestnut, pine, or buckwheat)
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 large eggs

Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 10 ½-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom and put it on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat.

Check that the figs are, indeed, moist and plump. If they are the least bit hard, toss them into a small pan of boiling water and steep for a minute, then drain and pat dry. If the figs are large (bigger than a bite), snip them in half.

Whisk the polenta, flour, baking powder, and salt together.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the ricotta and water together on low speed until very smooth. With the mixer at medium speed, add the sugar, honey, and lemon zest and beat until light. Beat in the melted butter, then add the eggs one at a time, beating until the mixture is smooth. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are fully incorporated. You’ll have a sleek, smooth, pourable batter.

Pour about one third of the batter into the pan and scatter over the figs. Pour in the rest of the batter, smooth the top with a rubber spatula, if necessary, and dot the batter evenly with the chilled bits of butter.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. The cake should be honey brown and pulling away just a little from the sides of the panm, and the butter will have left light-colored circles in the top. Transfer the cake to a rack and remove the sides of the pan after about 5 minutes. Cool to warm, or cool completely.

TWD Bill’s Big Carrot Cake

2008-04-22T10:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have to admit that I played around with this recipe a bit. First off, I decided to lighten it up. Summer is quickly approaching and if I ever want to see myself in a bathing suit (gasp), something's got to give! I cut back the oil and sugar in this recipe by 25% (¼ cup and ½ cup less respectively). I also subbed half the flour with whole wheat. I don't care for coconut, and I hate raisins in baked goods, so those were out as well. Due to the reduction in oil, I increased the carrots by ½ cup for extra moisture.

Even with all the changes, I really liked the resulting carrot cake. It was moist with great carrot and pecan flavor. I ended up making cupcakes, which I'll forever think of as Michelle's Big Carrot Cup Cakes, because they were huge! I baked the batter in 12 individual sized panettone wrappers (I like to think of them as upscale cupcake papers). The cakes rose so nicely that they were almost too tall to eat. The icing was nice, though next time I'll use vanilla extract and not lemon juice. I thought the lemon overpowered the cream cheese flavor a bit.

As a garnish, I candied some carrot strips and attempted to make ribbons out of the strips. Next time I'll use longer carrots because my strips were so short, it was difficult to tie the ribbon. I ended up breaking up some of the candied carrot strips and using them as confetti, which looked cute.

Luckily, my official taste tester was around to see if my changes to the recipe would result in an inferior product. After eating his first cupcake, Joe said "so, if they have less fat and whole wheat flour in them, I can eat another; right?" I'll call that cupcake success.

Pictures and recipe below. The changes I made are in italics.

Bill's Big Carrot Cake

Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

¾ teaspoon salt

3 ½ cups grated carrots (about 10 carrots)

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans

1 1/2 cups sugar

3/4 cup canola oil

4 large eggs

I didn't include: 1 cup shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)

I didn't include: ½ cup moist, plump raisins (dark or golden) or dried cranberries

For the frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat), room temperature

1 stick ( 8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 pound or 3 and ¾ cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice or ½ teaspoon pure lemon extract

Candied carrot garnish

Getting ready:

I sprayed 12 cupcake liners with release spray and put them on a sheet pan. If you're making cakes, do this:

Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter three 9-x-2-inch round cake pans, flour the insides, and tap out the excess. Put the two pans on one baking sheet and one on another.

To make the cake:

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. In another bowl, stir together the carrots, chopped nuts, coconut, and raisins.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the sugar and oil together on a medium speed until smooth. Add the eggs one by one and continue to beat until the batter is even smoother. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture, mixing only until the dry ingredients disappear. Gently mix the chunky ingredients. Divide the batter among the baking pans.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, rotating the pans from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point, until a thin knife inserted into the centers comes out clean. The cakes will have just started to come away from the sides of the pans. Transfer the cakes to cooling racks and cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes and unmold them. Invert and cool to room temperature right side up.

The cakes can be wrapped airtight and kept at room temperature overnight or frozen for up to 2 months.

To make the frosting:

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar and continue to beat until the frosting is velvety smooth. Beat in the lemon juice or extract.

Willow Hill Farm

2008-04-19T19:36:00.000-04:00

Joe and I went to Vermont last month to visit family. While there, my sister and I decided to visit Willow Hill Farm. It's located in Milton, Vermont; which is about 25 minutes away from where my family lives. We drove up I89 till the Champlain Island exit, and then we followed Mapquest there. The farm was very still. For all we could tell we were the only people on the farm at that moment. We drove past the sheep on our right.

Immediately after the flock of sheep was a building in the process of being built. It was still lacking siding. We thought maybe it was where the cheese was being made, BUT we didn't see a sign (think Vermont, mid-winter, lots of snow), so we decided to keep driving up the very steep road in my sister's Suzuki car... well, of course luck would have it that we tried to make it up the hill, but we got stuck in a snow bank! Thanks to Angie's quick maneuvering, we were able to get out after about 10 minutes of going up a few inches, and then sliding down about 10 more! Once we got out of the snow bank we decided to head home. While we were going back down the hill we saw that the building being worked on was actually the cheese shop. Originally, we didn't see the sign because the snow was in front of it, but coming down from a higher angle we were able to see it. We decided to complete our mission, so we pulled over into their driveway. Here's a picture of Angie (my sister) at the store front. There wasn't a person in the store. I guess this time of year in Vermont, it's honor system time; which I love.

For those of you curious, here's a picture of the room they make the cheese in. Sorry it's so bad. I had to take the picture through a glass partition, and this was the best I could get.

As for cheese. We put our $10 in their drop box, and took home the Paniolo and La Fleurie. The Paniolo was extremely pungent. It had many of the charateristics of stinky French cheese (which I adore). La Fleurie on the other than was smooth and rich. It had a nice level of complexity (very earthy, almost piney) to it, but it was mild compared to the Paniolo.

I can't wait to go back to Willow Hill Farm. Winter is a hard time to go because the sheep aren't really producing. I'll be there this spring or summer with a full report on what they have to offer. I'm extremely excited to try their sheeps milk yogurt.

TWD As Promised Pictures from previous posts

2008-04-19T17:13:00.000-04:00

I finally found the cord that connects my camera to my computer! Here are some photos from TWD's Apple Cake, Snickery Bars and Pecan biscuits that I couldn't post before.

Grandmother's Apple Cake:

Snickery Squares:

The nuts cooling on a silpat

The cookie layer, covered with Dulce de Leche and candied peanuts:

The final product:

A square of the final product.

Two perspectives of the Sour Cream Pecan Biscuits:

Is there an easier way to blog?

2008-04-19T16:04:00.001-04:00

Anyone?

Please excuse this tangent, but I have had so many problems blogging lately! I've had whole posts disappear, and then instantly blogger will save the deleted post so all my information is gone. Then, I started blogging in Word, which I love. However, my pictures won't upload from word (learned that one the hard way!). Now I'm blogging in word, uploading my photos to Flickr, and then linking the html from Flickr to my blog. Also, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to widen the area on my page where I post. My postings look so narrow. There has to be an easier way to do this, right?

If anyone has any insight, please let me know. I would love to post in Word and have my whole post (including pictures) uploaded in one easy step.

TWD Marshmallows

2008-04-13T18:35:00.001-04:00

Marshmallows are one of those sweet items that I feel people either love or hate. Joe doesn't care for them, but I on the other hand, I REALLY care for them. Leave me alone in the house with a bag of marshmallows and I'm pretty sure at least 50% of that bag will be gone by the end of the day. The only reason I drink hot chocolate is because it's a vehicle for marshmallows. Don't even get me started on why I can no longer purchase large tubs of Fluff. Hey, they're fat free, right?

Back in August my friends and I got together for a big night of eating. I decided to make home made smores for the event. I made the Charles Chocolate graham cracker recipe (posted on chow.com), and I made Dorie's Marshmallows. Those were by far the best smores I've ever had. When I saw that TWD was making marshmallows this week, I was really excited to make them again.

This time around I decided to make espresso marshmallows. I have a small bottle of Trablit that I love to add to different desserts for a great coffee flavor. My kitchen was really cold today, so I had to heat my whites over my stovetop (very carefully!) to warm them up. From that point on I followed the recipe pretty much according to the directions. The one thing I noticed is that the recipe called for an extra tablespoon of sugar, but there was no mention of it in the method. I assumed that it was supposed to go into the whites when they were frothy, so that's what I did.

Here are some pictures of the process and of the final product. I can't wait to add these marshmallows to my hot chocolate tomorrow J

TWD Russian Grandmother’s Apple Pie Cake

2008-03-11T22:27:00.001-04:00

This week and next; my posts will be on the shorter side. It's restaurant week here in Boston, and that means I'll be working many extra hours. The upside of restaurant week is that Joe and I will be eating dinner at Excelsior on Friday night. I can't wait for that!

This apple pie cake was fantastic. I found the dough fun to work with and quite tasty. I loved the way the dough hugged the apples as it was baking, revealing the fruit within. I baked this cake with Cortland apples, and I found the flavor of them worked well with the dough.

Luckily, there isn't much to say about this cake/pie other than I will make it again!

TWD Snickery Squares

2008-03-04T18:29:00.001-05:00

I can't think of anything more exciting than a bar or cookie that might taste even remotely like a snickers bar. I make pastries for a living, but give me a snickers bar over crème Brule any day! When I saw that Erin of Dinner and Desserts had chosen the Snickery Squares I was delighted. So happy in fact, that I made them for a dinner party on Friday.

These squares were super easy to make. First I made short dough in the food processor, and baked it off. Next, I candied some salted peanuts. Finally I melted some chocolate with some butter. After a quick assembly, you have an absolutely addicting treat. Now, that being said; production wise there are some things I will do differently next time I make these. First, I will line my square baking pan with parchment paper going up and over the sides. Even though I buttered my dish, the short dough still stuck to my pan. It wasn't a huge problem, but it made my squares slightly less picture worthy. Second, I will add a tiny bit of melted butter to the nuts after I caramelize them (when they're still in the pan), just to get the caramel coating the nuts a little more evenly. Last, I will make two times the recipe because these were so good. I am not lying when I say that I almost got into a fight with my husband when I came home from work on Sunday night and (gasp!) he had eaten the rest of the squares! I was so disappointed, but I guess it's for the best. Swimsuit season is just a few months away J

One note about the Dulche De Leche called for in this recipe. I used the brand La Salamandra Farmhouse Dulce De Leche. I purchased it at Whole Foods for $6.99, which I thought was a bit expensive. After opening the jar, I realized I had struck gold. The flavor of the dulce de leche was the perfect balance of caramel and vanilla. I will buy this brand again if I don't have time to make the dulce de leche myself. The only downside of using this brand is that the caramel never really sets up when you refrigerate it. Personally, I love gooey desserts, so it was perfect for me. It just made them a bit messy.

I promise pictures will be up soon. Somewhere between California and Massachusetts lies a USB cord to connect my camera to my computer. If anyone finds it please let me know J I hope to get a cord by the end of this week, so hopefully pictures will be up by Sunday latest.