Fresh cranberies! Bread

It's been so long since I posted that I've probably lost all two-to-three of my loyal readers. Where have the months gone? Well, I spent several weeks (and months leading up to it) baking and fine-tuning recipes in the wee hours of the morning in a pizza shop using their deck ovens and a variety of baking pans from my own house.

I was going to open a morning bakery in the pizza shop. But I missed science, so I stayed in grad school. Unfortunately, I didn't photodocument any of those creations, not that I had much energy left over for such.

Then I went on vacation.

I came back, and, truth be told, I was burned out on baking (and eating), so the oven sat cool for a while.

I moved.

Then I got back to some baking, slowly, almost trepidatiously, and definitely rusty. I over-salted a pie crust. I burned the bottom of a batch of cranberry bars. I set a chocolate cake on the glass stove top whose burner was on.

And I didn't bust out the camera to share these trials-and-errors. It wasn't part of the routine in the new house.

But last weekend that changed. I set out to bake more bread to fill the freezer for a post-swim snack in the mornings. I was craving brioche, and tried to ignore the strong lobby for chocolate bread in the house. Note that tried is the operative word here.

My brioche recipe, which women seem to prefer over the chocolate bread, and my chocolate bread recipe, preferred by men hands-down (go figure) are both rich in fat and delicious, but are different species:

Brioche: 5 eggs, 3.5 Tbsp sugar
Chocolate bread: 2 eggs, 1/2 c sugar.

So there I was, making brioche, or so I thought, when I added half the eggs and twice the sugar called for in my recipe. Plus vanilla extract. Oops. Apparently the Chocolate Bread Lobby was vocal enough to affect the hand.

Not willing to give in, I had about a pint of fresh cranberries in my fridge leftover from the cranberry bar episode. And cranberries need a lot of sugar. So I added fresh cranberries, almonds, and maybe a bit more flour to make up for the extra moisture from the cranberries. The result: delicious. These doughs are so forgiving, I think the only thing that messes them up is overproofed dough. I'll make this again. I will add more cranberries next time. At least 1.5 pints, maybe 2 full pints for this much bread. As it stands now, there are only about 2-3 cranberries per slice. It looked like a lot when I kneaded it in.

I blame the rise.


First, make a bit of prefermented dough:
400 g flour
1 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
500 g warm milk

let that sit on the counter for a while, until it gets bubbly. A few hours should do it.

Then whisk in until smooth:
5 eggs at room temperature
1 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla

After which, knead in:
650 g flour
1.5 tsp yeast
1.5 tsp salt

Knead well, then let it sit on your kneading surface for about 5-10 minutes for the gluten to develop before you go adding fats (remember, it's "shortening" because it shortens the strands of gluten that develop). During this time, you might consider washing your hands off and getting your other ingredients in order. This would involve chopping up some almonds- I probably used at least 1/2 cup, though next time I'll use more. And make sure your cranberries are picked over and washed.

After you've let the dough rest, go ahead and knead in 1 stick butter (1/2 cup), breaking up into about 6 pieces just to make it easier to work into the dough. When it's pretty well worked in (you will still see some chunks of butter) add your almonds and cranberries. Knead them in just until mixed through, being careful not to burst the berries.

Let rise for 1 hr, fold, then let rise again until about doubled in size.
Split into 3 equal pieces and shape into loaves. Put the dough into greased loaf tins and let it rise, covered, until the bread is close to the top of the pan- within 1 cm or so is fine. This should take 45 min-1 hr.

Bake at 350 for 45 min.

If you ever get tired of banana bread

Try banana cake.

Blasphemy! Tired of banana bread? Okay, maybe "tired of banana bread" is the wrong way to sell this recipe. Who gets tired of banana bread? Rather, think of it as a versatile alternative that can be dressed up as a layer cake or dressed down as a simple glazed cake.

This is the first recipe I tried from a newly-acquired used cookbook, Lee Bailey's Country Desserts. It bills itself as a collection of down-home southern comfort desserts. It's a decent compliment to Jim Fobel's Old Fashioned Baking Book. I couldn't decide which one to buy, so I bought both. Browsing this book, my confidence was bolstered by the repeated appearance of recipes from Edna Lewis. I've been waiting for the right reason to try something out of it.

I had a bunch of bananas ripening in my kitchen, which I was planning on turning into banana bread, but for some reason I couldn't get the idea of a banana cake out of my mind. I think the seed was planted by a post about banana cake on Mark Bittman's blog, but I had forgotten about it, or else I probably would have tried that recipe.

This is lighter than banana bread- it's correctly billed as a cake. It's good and banana-y (very important for me), not too rich, not oily or greasy. It goes nicely with a cup of coffee. I was too rushed to make the frosting and layer cake that the recipe suggests, so I poured a brown sugar glaze over it, which is slightly addicting once it hardens into a sugary substance that cracks and drips just so, inviting you to pluck little pieces off. I'll make it again, probably for an occasion, next time as the suggested layer cake, replete with the layers of sliced bananas in the middle.


The Cake

2.5 c. sifted cake flour
2.5 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
pinch of ground cloves
1.25 tsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
(I also added 0.25 tsp cardamom to the group of spices)
0.5 tsp salt
1.25 c. sugar
1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 c. mashed ripe bananas

(if you're making the fancy layered cake, you'll also need several bananas for filling)

I made this in a tall 9" round cake pan, which took forever and a day to bake (at least an hour). Layers would work better on two fronts- both to speed baking, and to ensure that the cake doesn't overbake. The recipe calls for 2x 9" round cake pans, greased and lightly floured. Go ahead and preheat your oven to 375F once you figure out your pan situation.

Sift together all the dry ingredients. Cream the butter and sugar together until they look light and fluffy. Beat the eggs in one at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in the vanilla. Finally, alternate additions of the dry ingredients with the mashed bananas, mixing after each addition.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan(s) and bake- 25 min for 2 pans, about an hour for 1 pan.

Because the cake took forever and a day to bake, it came out of the oven at some inconveniently late hour while I was puttering around the house, so there was no chance it would cool enough to frost before I fell asleep. I figured I'd bring it into work- well, most of it- but who has time for boiled frosting in the morning before work? Fortunately for me, the neighboring recipe, "Brown sugar glazed cake" (courtesy of Edna), provided a perfectly simple solution. Brown sugar dripping over banana goodness that has been spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. Like some kind of cake-ized version of bananas foster, minus the rum. That could be worked in there, though...


The Glaze

1 c. firmly packed light brown sugar (LIGHT brown is actually important here- dark brown tastes a bit burned)
3 tbs cold water

Combine ingredients in a small saucepan and set over medium heat. Let boil until it reaches the soft-ball stage (234-240F). Don't stir during the cooking. Remove from the heat and put the pot in a bowl of ice water to cool it down. You can spread it on thick if you wait for it to cool long enough, or you can drizzle it all over the cake while it's still gooey. It will harden up either way.




The Frosting

(untested by me- let me know how it works if you try it)
1.5 c. sugar
1/2 c. water
3 egg whites at RT
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

"To make the icing, combine the sugar and water in a heavy sacuepan over high heat and boil until the syrup reaches the soft-ball stage (238F). Beat the egg whites with salt until they form soft peaks. Pour hot syrup, very slowly, into the beaten egg whites, then beat constantly with an electric mixer until frosting stands in stiff peaks and is of preading consistency. Stir in vanilla."

SoCal Coffee Cake

Southern California:  Oranges. Avocados. Lemons. Strawberry fields...

The branches of citrus trees have been hanging heavy with fruit for months.  Oranges have been practically dripping off the trees.  It's a welcome sight here in San Diego county, what with the seemingly ever-expanding parade of strip malls.  I'm sure that any good orange-based citrus would work wonderfully in this simple and delicious coffee cake. 

Besides being surrounded by fresh oranges, I'm also lucky to work with a woman who has relatives that own a pecan farm in Texas.  She claims to have bags of pecans falling out of her freezer when she opens it, so she occasionally brings me a bag- which I happily bake into some treat to share.  Such a gift is just what inspired me to try this recipe- a fresh bag of pecans, and everything else I needed was languishing idly in the fridge or cabinet.

This recipe comes from "Jim Fobel's Old Fashioned Baking Book", which I wrote about in my last post, only this time I actually followed through and baked from it.  He introduces this recipe for Orange Coffee Cake as being frequently made when his family lived in Orange County and had ready access to fresh, seasonal citrus.  

The orange flavor is subtle, the cake is moist without being either too dense or too spongy.  The recipe, as it's written, yields a coffee cake with about equal parts cake and crumbly topping. Some might prefer a thicker cake, in which case I'd suggest making 1.5x as much batter.   I'm into the topping, so I won't change a thing.  And I'll definitely make this again.

Topping:
1/2 c. pecans (or walnuts)
1/4 c. AP flour
1/4 c. sugar
2 Tbs butter, chilled
1 Tbs. grated orange zest
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Batter:
4 Tbs butter, melted
1 c. AP flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 Tbs grated orange zest
pinch salt
1/2 c. fresh OJ
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 400 F
Grease the bottom of an 8" round pan.  

(Jim suggests a 8" square pan, which by my calculation has more SA than a circular pan, and I'm not sure I'd want these any thinner.)

First, make the topping.  I used a pastry blender to mash it all up, which did a nice job of bruising the zest and getting the orange oils in the peel well-distributed throughout the topping.  It also served to coarsely chop the pecans, which saved me that step.  If you don't have a pastry blender, you can chop the pecans and the zest together, then work everything into small balls with your fingers or a few knives.  

To make the cake, melt the butter in a small bowl in the microwave or on the stovetop.  As it melts, mix together the dry ingredients and the orange zest.  Make a well in the center and add in the orange juice, egg, melted butter, and vanilla.  Stir the wet and dry ingredients just until moistened.  Pour the batter into your prepared pan, sprinkle the topping over the wet batter, and throw it into the oven for 20-30 minutes, until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Let it cool a bit before you dig in.

A note:  

I used one orange for this, mostly because it's all I had.  Two would have measured up better according to what's called for.  I had to add some water to bring the volume of OJ up to 1/2 cup, and I'm not sure I got a full 2 Tbs zest into the cake.  Didn't matter, it still came out great. 

The most important thing for a good cake is to start with a good orange.   I wonder how a blood orange would work...

Is this how the Clif Bar came to be?

Dear Clif (Bar),
While I have been known to enjoy your company over the past seven-ish years, I'm afraid that our time together is coming to an end. You see, I have found another. No...that's not quite right.

I have created another.

While I do appreciate that you use organic ingredients when possible, and that you aim to reconstruct deconstructed food into nutritionally balanced bars for an optimal exercise experience, you are a far cry from perfect. Your extensive ingredients list, disposable package, long shelf life, and the slight tackiness you leave on my fingers set my mind adrift. Hopefully we can stay friends. I'm sure I'll enjoy your company casually in the near future.

Love,
Lea


The inspiration for this recipe came from, of all places, Jim Fobel's Old Fashioned Baking Book. I found an old copy of the book and was wooed by the romantic idea of baking the treats my grandmother probably enjoyed. The book has an inspiring introduction about Jim's Finnish grandmother who raised her family of seven on the shores of Lake Erie in the early 1900s, baking both a cake and a pie every day of the week.

With history like that, how could I go wrong? I have Scandinavian roots. These are the recipes of my people! So I started out with Grandma's Oatmeal Cookies. Its subtitle is: "This is surely one of the oldest recipes in this book. It makes a lovely light, flavorful cookie. Whenever I'm in the mood for an old-fashioned cookie, this is what I crave." All of this seemed promising. I was, after all, trying to find old-fashioned.

Then I read down the list of ingredients. 1.5c oats...1 c flour... 1.5c butter...1 egg...3/4 c brown sugar... and I started to get curious about how this compared to the Betty Crocker recipe in my 1996-edition New Cookbook. So I read down that list of ingredients. 3c oats...1c flour...2 c butter...2 eggs...1.33 c total sugar...

Confusion reigned. In the new recipe: twice the oats, same flour, twice the eggs, not much more butter, almost twice the sugar. These recipes are nothing alike!! They will produce very different results! The only way to do this right is to make both!

So I threw caution to the wind and... used whole wheat flour. I was (now) going for a nutty graham-like oatmeal cookie. I wanted saltiness to stand up to the chocolate chips, and cinnamon to pair with the nutty whole wheat.

Good intentions for a good cookie took a nosedive near the world of health-conscious food. In tweaking the BC recipe, I accidentally left out half the fat. I didn't miss it at all, didn't even realize it was gone until I went to write the recipe down. Fortunately they don't share any of the negative qualities typically associated with healthy foods. Plus they keep well, or at least they keep well for as long as you can keep them around.



and I will call them...


Cliffhangers
2/3 c. packed dark brown sugar
1/2 stick butter
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 1/2 c oats
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 (generous) cup chocolate chips and chunks

Preheat oven to 350F.

I creamed the butter with the brown sugar, then added the egg and beat for another minute. Scraped everything together, added all the dry ingredients except the oats. Mixed for another minute on medium speed. I didn't want to develop the gluten, but this is less of a concern with whole wheat flour. Scraped everything together, added the oats and chocolate chips, then dropped them on an unlined, ungreased sheet to bake. I used bits and pieces of chocolate- some of which was little shavings that were the dregs from a chocolate-chopping session from a bobka baking. The little shavings got well-dispersed. You could just shave a small square of chocolate into the batter for a subtle hint of chocolatey goodness throughout.

They're moist and chewy, with a bit of toothiness. Satisfying. Not too sweet, not too buttery. Slightly nutty. Mission accomplished- these will be made again. Next time, I might try adding a bit of water to the batter to soften up the oats. That would be a good trick to steal from Jim Fobel's grandmother.
She puts in 1T.

You might want to double the recipe if you're baking for more than just yourself.

The (purportedly) six-minute cake

I was recently charged with baking some sort of birthday treat for one of my esteemed mentors in the lab. The recent Beet Cake planted the seeds of the Ultimate root cake in my mind, and I was tempted to tinker with my favorite carrot cake recipe to turn out this dreamed-of baking project, but... time was short. As we're almost out of beet season, this might become a project for next winter.

Pushing carrots, beets, and parsnips from my mind, I turned to the second best thing: chocolate. It was a glorious day, and there were many things to do besides bake. This recipe for "Six-Minute Chocolate Cake" is tucked away in the last chapter of the Moosewood Book of Desserts. A chapter, it should be noted, entitled "Moosewood Classics." How could I go wrong? Chocolate...coffee...six minutes...a classic.

I got out the ingredients and set the timer. Maybe I'm slow at scooping and leveling cocoa powder. It took me something closer to 12-15 minutes by the time I was ready to put this all into the oven. Still, they're worth it for the ease of preparation and the fact that the ingredients are inexpensive pantry staples (for me). It's a good recipe. I doubled it for the purposes of sharing with the masses and keeping a few for myself.

Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled there came the issue of topping them. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of frosting. Maybe that's sacrilegious when a birthday and cake are both involved. Maybe I've grown out of the frosting-phase of my life.

Being the person in charge of the cupcakes, and knowing I couldn't bring them in with just powdered sugar topping without getting a few desultory looks, I opted for a chocolate ganache topping. As the birthday girl (a self-proclaimed fan of frosting) put it upon sampling, "this topping elevates the birthday cupcake to an adult treat." A chocolate glaze would also work well, and is what the book suggests you use. This allows you to keep the cake vegan, or top the cake in the case that you don't have heavy cream kicking around the back of your fridge.

The Cake
(Makes either 12 cupcakes, a 9-in round cake, or an 8-in square cake)

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Sift together:
180 g (1.5 c)
1/3 c. unsweetened non-dutch processed cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c. sugar

Separately, mix together:
1/2 c. veggie oil
1 c. cold coffee (or water)
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Pour the liquids into the dry ingredients and mix the batter with a whisk. Not too much, just get things moist. When the batter is smooth, add

2 Tbs cider vinegar (this reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise)

and stir quickly. There will be milk chocolate-colored swirls in the dark batter as the vinegar reacts with the baking soda (this is fun to see.) Stir it just until the vinegar is evenly distributed.

Bake 20 min (cupcakes), or 25-30 (cakes), then cool.

The Ganache

3/4 c. heavy cream
4.5 oz bittersweet chocolate
pinch salt
optional: 1 tsp vanilla, or 1 tsp hazelnut-flavored liqueur...

This is quick and easy, too- pour the cream into a small saucepan. Bring that to a simmer on the stoveop, then toss in the chopped up chocolate. I stirred it for a minute or so on the heat, then took it off the heat and just kept stirring until the chocolate was all melted. I seasoned it with salt at the very end.

Let it sit on the counter for a while- at least an hour- it will harden up as it cools. I spread it on the cupcakes while it was still the consistency of a glaze, so it brushed on easily and solidified nicely. Put the finished products into the fridge to harden, then cover them up for longer-term storage in there. As you can see, half the cupcakes were garnished with coconut flakes, half I left unadulterated. You'll have enough ganache left over for making a few cups of hot chocolate or mochas, or rolling out a few truffles, or for snacking straight from the fridge... or you could just try making less. Next time I have leftover ganache, I'm going to mix it with peanut butter and use it as a decadent topping for toasts in the morning, I think. That wouldn't suck.

I came back from a noontime swim at the pool to find both boxes of cupcakes empty. So my suspicion that ganache-topped chocolate coffee-infused cupcakes might appeal to adults seems... confirmed?

Chocolate (Beet) Cake

The curiosity that is red velvet cake has been on my mind for some time now. Specifically, how did it come to be, and what, in particular, makes it red? To address the latter, beets have long ranked high on my list of suspects. I figured that the cake doesn’t find its “roots” in red food dye, so to speak. Why would anyone dump a vat of red food coloring into an otherwise perfectly fine chocolate cake?

A vat of food coloring? The New York Times ran an article a while ago with a recipe for red velvet cake. It calls for 6 Tbs of red food dye. That’s more than 1/3 cup coloring. I bet the box mix isn’t much different. I’m not against food coloring on my Christmas cookies, but this seemed ridiculous.

Refusing to succumb to modern convenience left me without red velvet cake for some time. Last week, I was browsing my Moosewood Dessert cookbook and what did I happen upon? None other than a recipe for "Red Devil Cake"… Beets! Vindication! I immediately set about collecting the ingredients for said cake.

Next problem: the ingredients include a can of beets. At Vons, my beet options were limited. I rolled the can around in my hand for a bit, checked the list of ingredients. Beets were followed by high fructose corn syrup and vinegar. "That's not the cake I want to make," I thought. Then I meandered over to the “fresh” produce section and found a small cluster of very sterile-looking overpriced limp beets. The only thing to do in this situation was to head over to Peoples, where bought delicious fresh beets, with hairy roots and dirt still clinging to them.

My excitement was mounting.

Got them home, scrubbed them clean, quartered them and put them in a pot with water to cover. Boiled them for about 45 min, until they were done, then removed them from their liquid and let them cool down to room temp, at which point I peeled them. I boiled the cooking liquid down a bit more to concentrate the color (not sure if this is necessary, but I was determined to turn chocolate cake red) and let that cool as well.

When everything was cool to touch, I pureed the beets (1 lb) in the blender with about 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid until smooth. Set that aside, it was nice and red. Beet-y. Once the beets were ready, everything else went quickly. Of course, if you use the canned beets, all you have to do is puree those beets with 1/2 c of their liquid and you're ready to go. In either case, the recipe calls for 1.25 cups of beet puree.

The cake:

Whisk 3 eggs well. Then whisk in, until very smooth:
1.5 c. sugar
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1.25 c beet puree

The following dry ingredients should be sifted together and gradually added to the wet, whisking until smooth:
1.5 c (180 g) unbleached white flour
3/4 c (65 g) non-alkalized (not dutch-processed) unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

Pour into prepared cake pan- buttering and flouring the bottom of the pan is sufficient. If you do this all the way ‘round the edges, the cake may have trouble rising. The book says to use a 9-inch pan, I used a 7-inch pan to make it taller, but had to bake it longer. I also did a few muffins and mini-muffins for kicks. Bake at 350 until done (at least 35 min).

While the cake baked, I made the frosting:
Beat 4 egg yolks on high speed 2-3 min until they lighten. Let that sit while you make a simple syrup by heating 1/2 c sugar in 1/4 c water on the stove. Bust out your candy thermometer- the book instructs us to heat the syrup to 239F. Once you reach this magic point (I suspect this has to do with both the consistency of the syrup at this temperature) Immediately remove from heat.

While beating the egg yolks on high speed, add the syrup gradually. Beat until it's not hot to touch (5 min). Add 3/4-1 c butter a bit at a time, beating well. When finally thick and creamy, beat in 1 tsp vanilla and 2 oz melted chocolate, cooled to room temperature.

Let the cake cool and frost away…

The result?



The frosting is delicious. Not sweet in that ominous-raincloud way that is fun to look at, but can ruin part of your day. Rather, sweet in cumulous cloud sort of way, soft and fluffy.

The cake is quite good, too. Moist and chocolate-y. I can taste the beets, but no one else seemed to be able to. (The sample size included at least 10.) Tasty though it was, I was disappointed that it wasn’t red! Seriously, mine was a very dark chocolate cake.

After reading more on red velvet cake, here’s my take on the situation:
Before cocoa was processed (alkalized, raising its pH from 5 to 7ish), which gives it a milder flavor and darker color, chocolate cakes sometimes took on a reddish hue due to a reaction of the cocoa, itself an acid, with acidic batter. So, the vinegar which I eschewed in the canned beets is important. I think that to enhance the redness, I could use less cocoa and add in vinegar. Many recipes also call for buttermilk. I suspect that the moistness of the beets can take the place of the buttermilk, but the buttermilk is also acidic. I might blend the beets in 1/2 c buttermilk.

I’m sure a chocolate cake with a red hue can come from this. But I now see my initial suspicions were off… I think red food dye made its way into the cake before the beets did. Cooks were trying to amp up the red color, especially with the advent of the processed cocoa. The beets found their way in there when sugar got pricey.

This discovery that beets in cake is good brings me one step closer to my ultimate fruit-and-root cake, which will include carrots, beets, pineapple, raisins. Maybe apples and coconut if I get crazy.

Goat Tang

I'm on a goat milk kick.

A confluence of events has led to this current state. First, the obvious: goat cheese is great. Second, perhaps less-obvious, goats are great. What really got the ball rolling was my friend, Matt, who pointed me to LaLoo's goat milk ice cream. Telling me about it, he looked heaven-ward and nearly drooled while saying "It is sooooooo goooooood". Which is how I found myself purchasing a pint of Rumplemint for the bargain price of $7 at Whole Foods. It is very good... but don't expect ice cream. This is a treat in its own category, nestled somewhere between a post-dinner cheese plate and brownie a la mode. It's got a goat-cheesey tang that I detect near the back of my tongue as it melts in my mouth. I can't wait for cobblers to get in full swing. Goat milk ice cream will lend a sophistication to such homey summertime desserts.

However, at $7 per pint, goat milk ice cream is not a sustainable habit for me. So I bought a quart of goat milk (for about $3.50, we're doing better already) and did some internet research to come up with a recipe. Three egg yolks and two vanilla beans later (now the cost must be a wash), I had myself a pint or so of homemade goat milk ice cream. After ripening overnight in the freezer, it's safe to say that it's okay... not as good as LaLoo's, but it has potential. The texture is excellent. It's not overwhelmingly rich, and not at all icy. The problem with thae recipe I used is that its creator was trying desperately (it seems) to cover up the goat-y flavor, to drown it in vanilla and custardy-eggs and sugar. That needs some tinkering with before I reach bargain goat milk ice cream nirvana. Bring on the goat tang!

In the meantime, I had a few cups of leftover goat milk rattling around my fridge. Scones lept to mind. I had some candied ginger in the cabinet and a few Meyer lemons in the fridge, so I pulled out Nancy Silverton's "Pastries from the La Brea Bakery" and set to work. I browsed all the scone recipes and decided that the proportions of butter-flour-liquid she uses are all similar, regardless of the liquid. So I just substituted the goat milk for the cream.

It worked beautifully. It goes with the lemon-ginger because this is a pastry that borders on savory. Just like with the ice cream and the cheese, the scone has got a subtle tang at the finish that makes your tastebuds sort of sit up in wonder. These scones really are delightful. They're not dense or dry like the ones so often found out in the world. They are layers of flakiness that makes them seem kind of ethereal. The ginger gives a hint of spice, but nothing overwhelming. Its intensity seems to be mellowed by the surrounding pastry. The lemon zest complements both the ginger and the goat milk with a floral bouquet of refreshing citrus. If you can't find Meyer lemons, you might try a combination of lemon and orange zest, finely chopped together, or use regular lemon zest for a more lemon-y punch.

To make the scones,
First, mix together your dry ingredients:
2 1/4 c (270g) all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/3 c sugar

Then cut in 1.5 sticks (6 oz) cold butter and the lemon zest. I used a pastry cutter to get it going, then rubbed the butter into the flour with my fingers until it resembled a coarse meal. You want flakes of butter to remain intact, so that they melt as little buttery pockets (like with the bobka).

Stick the bowl into the freezer and wash some dishes to distract yourself for a bit. This is kind of like pie crust- you want to keep the butter cold!

After about 10 minutes, take out the bowl, stir in the chopped candied ginger. Fashion a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in 1/2 c. goat milk (or cream, or buttermilk). Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones with your hand, moving the bowl in a circular direction until the dough starts to come together. If it's not coming together, you can add a few Tbs more liquid, but don't get too crazy. Instead, have some confidence and believe that this is going to work (it will). Dump it out on work surface and fold it on itself a few times until it comes together well (see? I told you it would). Don't overwork the dough.

Roll it out or form it with your hands to be about 3/4" thick. Cut into desired shapes. Because I'm against overly large pastries, I used a 2.5" round. (Monster pastries have taken over. No one needs a 1/2-lb scone. I want a scone to accompany my morning bowl of oatmeal, not as an entire meal to itself.) Re-form any scraps by gently gathering them and then cut out more scones. Avoid re-kneading the scraps or you'll work too much flour into the dough and melt all the buttery pockets you lovingly created.

Brush the tops with a bit of milk/cream/butter/egg, as you please. Bake in the middle of the oven at 400F for about 15 min, or until they begin to brown.

Notes:
I rolled mine out thin, to about 1/4-1/2". While this made many more scones than the recipe promised (they said 8, I got at least 16), it also makes them look more like thick cookies, less like scones. So be sure to roll them thick.

What's next for goatmilk? Good question. I'm thinking of a lemon-rosemary scone, or a polenta poundcake recipe from Moosewood that I think it would be interesting to try in as well. And there will always be the ice cream...

Traditional, twisted.

I made marmalade a few weekends ago. The meyer lemons I’ve been buying at People’s are so floral and sweet that I’ve been eating them straight up. And the oranges… and the grapefruit... It’s citrus season! I couldn’t NOT try marmalade.

This being my first attempt, I got two books on preserves and jams. Perused them, then decided that I prefer to read the useful-but-detailed instructions and the science behind jam-making AFTER I make my mistakes. Plus I watched a 2-minute video online, which I naively thought was sufficient to give me an idea of what set jam would look like. So… I made a ruby red grapefruit-orange-lemon marmalade that’s tasty, albeit with a very stiff set. Then I made a meyer lemon marmalade that tastes... not unlike a bunch of lemons. Seems like the sweetness and the floral notes that I covet in the meyer lemon grew wings and flew out of the pan as quickly as they could.

Both are bitter, that's the MO of marmalade. Nary a sliver of pith sneaked into the gooey mixture, maybe the pith's bitterness oozed out of the pip bag, where I included it to develop the pectin? I need to test these marmalades on my favorite Irishman, who is a jam-and-marmalade fanatic.

Until then, I have 8 jars of marmalade waiting to be given purpose. So I made sugar cookies filled with lemon marmalade, hoping that the sweetness of the cookie would balance the tartness of the jam. It did okay...the richness of shortbread might stand up better to the preserves.

Half the dough went toward this experimental lemon sandwich, half went to the traditional frosted sugar cookie. And I might have been convinced that the lemon cookies were pretty good. Good, until the old standby stole the show back from this interloper.

Sugar cookie recipes are all pretty much the same. There are slight variations in butter or eggs, it seems one balances the other. Some leave out the cream of tartar. The older recipes I've found use less butter. This recipe is adapted from my favorite of mom's cookbooks: the 1970s orange hard-back Betty Crocker cookbook. There are two sugar cookie recipes in there: the Traditional (here, minus the cream of tartar) and the Deluxe (more butter, powdered sugar, cream of tartar).

A side-by-side bake-off revealed that I am, after all, a traditional sort of girl.

Traditional Sugar Cookies
3/4 c butter
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2.5 c all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cream of tartar (optional)

Cream together butter and sugar until light. Add vanilla, then eggs- 1 at a time. Mix until incorporated. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add in 3 batches, mix just until combined. Chill dough at least 1 hr, overnight is better. Roll out on a well-floured surface, cut out cookies. Bake at 350.

If you take the preserves-filled route: spread marmalade/jam between 2 raw cookies. Use a fork to seal the edges so that jam doesn't leak out everywhere. Bake it as a sandwich.

If you take the frosting route: Cream 1 stick butter and 1 tsp vanilla together in a mixer, add powdered sugar to taste along with 1-3 tablespoons milk to achieve desired consistency. It usually takes about 1 of those cardboard boxes of confectioners' sugar for 1 stick of butter. Frost when cookies are cool.

Here's a better view of the marmalade cookies:




post script: Not all is lost on the marmalade front. A versatile condiment, the orange one goes with everything from roasted pork tenderloin, to mashed sweet potatoes, to butternut squash.

Eggplant! Hold the chocolate.

My favorite eggplant story: a good friend of mine took a bite of a sandwich stuffed with a medley of roasted vegetables (including a thick slice of eggplant) and proclaimed, “This pork chop is amazing!”

If you’re not a big vegetable eater, don’t let the poor lighting in the photo above scare away your appetite. It is easy to settle into a dinner centered on this ragu and find in it a satisfying winter meal; it is warmth and comfort without a hint of aggression.

Why do some people gravitate to eggplant if it's on a menu? I've heard it said that, in cultures where chocolate is not readily available, women have been known to crave eggplant. While I am inclined to believe this, a few Google searches offered no corroboration. However, “crave eggplant” turned up some 63,000 hits. Also, there are a surprising number of recipes out there for cubes of eggplant sautéed in oil, then dipped in chocolate. I was looking for “eggplant in lieu of chocolate”, not “eggplant in chocolate.” In the case that you are one tempted by the unusual, this combination didn’t get rave reviews by those who tried it. The most interesting thing I learned is that eggplant and its relative the tomato both contain trace amounts of nicotine.

No matter how you slice it, I love it and crave it- roasted or sautéed, salted or not, stuffed or pureed.

This recipe capitalizes on eggplant’s ability to soak up the flavors around it, and here the flavors meld together beautifully. Simple preparation leads to a dish complex in texture- the tomatoes fall apart a bit and lend slight acidity, the eggplant softens but holds its shape, the roasted peppers add a hint of something almost sweet. The whole mess thickens up as the eggplant absorbs the water. Try it on a heap of red quinoa with toasted pine nuts. Toss the leftovers with pasta and shaved parmesan. Decorate grilled polenta cakes with the ragu and feta cheese. Spread it over homemade pizza.

Next time…I already bought the ingredients for next time.

Recipe adapted from Gourmet, February 2008

1 medium eggplant, cut into 1/2" cubes
1 cup onion, chopped
2 tsp chopped garlic
1/2 tsp dried oregano
3 T olive oil
1/2 c. roasted red peppers, chopped
3/4 c. water

Toss the eggplant with 1 tsp salt in a colander and let it sit for 30 minutes to drain. If you've got a meyer lemon rattling around your house, squeeze half of it over the eggplant- it brightens it up and adds a sublte undertone of floral tang. After the eggplant has drained, grab handfuls of it and squeeze to get out the excess moisture. Transfer the eggplant to a plate and blot it with a paper towel.

Cook the eggplant, onion, garlic, and oregano in olive oil over medium heat with a dash of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Give it a few stirs and cook until the eggplant and onion are soft, then add the tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and water. Simmer everything together, covered, stirring occasionally until the eggplant is very tender and the tomatoes have fallen apart a bit (about 10 min). At this point, the ragu should have thickened up. If it gets too thick, no worries, just add a tablespoon or two of water.

When it's done, add some chopped flat leaf parsley for both flavor and color.

To serve with red quinoa, while the ragu cooks, bring 1 1/2 c. salted water to a boil. Add 1 c quinoa and simmer on low heat 20-30 min. The grains will sprout. Let it stand 5 min off the heat, then fluff it with a fork.

Yes, that's an egg on my pizza. And I'm happy to see you

What goes into a good egg sandwich? Toasted sandwich bread slathered with mayo, cradling a fried egg topped with molten cheese that oozes onto the plate upon slicing? A juicy tomato in the summer, or an avocado? Add a side of spinach salad- that's what I call lunch.

Sometimes, though, inspiration calls for a bastardization of said culinary delight.

Today, that inspiration came in the form of pizza. We made pizza one night this weekend and I had some leftover tomatoes, which, really, only improved with age as they were marinating with basil and garlic for the past few days. Add to that an assortment of cheeses. And some baby spinach... the pizza was practically crying out for an egg to be cracked on top.

This, while I'm sure is not novel, has struck me as an interesting idea for some time. In the beginning, I wanted to make it like an Italian take on the breakfast burrito with egg and small pieces of either bacon or proscuitto. Tomatoes instead of the salsa. I think potatoes would be too heavy, but if I had hash browns sitting in the fridge, I don't doubt that a few would make it on there.

But it was lunch, and I didn't have bacon. Or hash browns. And, truth be told, I wouldn't change anything about this. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner, it would be satisfying and delightful at any of those meals.

Crust:
360 g. flour (3 cups)
2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp instant yeast
3 T olive oil
1 c water, room temp

The night before:
Mix together dry ingredients. Add water and oil. Knead. Place in a bowl oiled with remaining 1 T oil and set in a cool spot in a covered bowl (this winter trick works brilliantly in a coastal San Diego apartment with relatively poor insulation and heat that is left off all night for fear of burning the place down). I don't know what my average night time room temp actually is, I'd guess in the low 60s F?

If it's a cool day, leave it on the counter until you're ready to use it. If it's warm, throw it into the fridge. Keep an eye on it, if the dough has risen a lot, stick it in the fridge until about 1.5-2 hr before you want to use it, then take it out and bring to RT, turn your oven on to 475F while you think of it. If you don't have a pizza stone, put a baking sheet on the bottom rack while the oven heats up.

20 min before you're ready to make pizza, divide the dough into 2 or 3 rounds. Let the rounds rest to relax the gluten.
Shape pizza on parchment by either stretching it out with your hands or by using a rolling pin. If you're doing battle with the dough, try letting it rest some more then stretch it out again.


Topping:
For the tomatoes, mix together:
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes, drained.
Add lots of dried oregano. At least 2 tsp.
Salt, to taste. Start with 1/4 tsp, you might need 1/2 or more
Pepper, fresh ground
Red pepper flakes- a good shaking if you like it hot
Olive oil- more of this than you might think. Drizzle it in there. You will need at least 1 T., maybe more.
1 minced clove garlic (optional)
It's hard to screw this up, feel free to play.

Assemble the pizza:
For extra deliciousness, spread a clove or two of garlic over the bottom of the pizza. Or, for more subtle flavor, halve a clove and crush it a bit, then rub the dough with the exposed surface of garlic.

Spread the tomatoes lightly over the crust. It won't be a solid layer of tomatoes by any stretch. You don't have to use them all.
Fashion a well in the center of this tomato topping.
Crack an egg into the well.
Grate a combination of mozzarella and cheddar on top of the pizza. (Go easy. A little cheese goes a long way in its melted state.)
Put baby spinach on top of everything.
Drizzle with olive oil. (Do this after the spinach is added, it will prevent the leaves from getting as browned as mine did).
Sprinkle with salt.

I bake it on the parchment, since I don't have the skills to slide the pizza from a baking peel directly onto the pizza stone (yet). It should take about 8-12 min. If you time it right, you can get it so that the cheese is melted and starting to brown, but the yolk is still runny.

Next time? Carmelized onions.

Sweet Tart three times fast

Not one to make excuses, I'll simply apologize for unposted missives of late.

I busied myself with an apple tart several weeks ago for the following reasons. One, I love apples. Two, I have been meaning to work on my pie crust technique. Three, we were having fondue for dinner, and I wanted to contribute something that's not overly decadent after a potentially heavy meal.

Being a relative novice at pie dough, I wanted to approach this exercise well-equipped with at least an understanding of where I would go wrong. So I turned to the Pie Crust section of my new Christmas gift, "CookWise". A wealth of information! Shirley Corriher, the author, points out that flakiness and tenderness don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. A dough that produces a flaky crust needs pockets of butter that will melt, creating airy spaces within the dough (this same "butter pocket" technique is critical to bobka). A dough that produces a tender crust needs to have the fat broken up into many tiny pieces, such that it coats (tenderizes) the flour well. I decided that my goal (it's good to have goals) was a flaky crust. And I wanted one that's very thin, highlighting the fruit over the crust.

Next- flour, fat. I used a mix of whole wheat pastry and all-purpose flour with the thought that the pastry flour, which has less gluten, would lead to a more tender crust and would also provide a nuttiness to the finished dough, and I added sugar to tenderize the dough. I followed her lead in the fat department.

120 g w.w. pastry flour (1 c)
60 g unbleached all-purpose flour (1/2 c)
3/4 tsp sugar (this also helps to tenderize the dough)
1/4 tsp salt
8 T butter, cold
2 T crisco
approx 5 T ice-cold water

Mixed together dry ingredients, cut in the fats with a pastry cutter, still leaving large chunks of butter and then put the bowl in the freezer for 10 min.

Took it out, dumped everything on a cutting board, and rolled over it with a rolling pin a few times to flatten the butter, making large flakes, rather like dried potato flakes. Then I added the water 1 T at a time until the dough came together.

Shaped the dough into a 4" round disk and put into the fridge for about 30 min while I readied the apples.

The Apples:
I used 2 Braeburn and 3 Granny Smith apples (both large). Peeled and cored them, reserving peels and cores. I sliced them as thin as I could, squeezed just a bit of lemon over them and sprinkled with 2 tsp sugar. Tossed the apple mixture with my hands, set it aside.

I rolled out the tart crust as thin as I could get it, trying not to over-flour or over-work the dough. I didn't want to destroy all those lovely butter pockets, and I didn't want to build up gluten, which will toughen the crust. It was nice and thin, so I folded it in half, then half again and transferred it to the greased tart pan.

Arranged the apples in there in concentric circles, on their sides, slightly overlapping, and piled a few extra up by the border of the tart pan. I folded about an inch of crust on top of the tart, and crimped it every inch or so. Brushed the whole thing with melted butter and sprinkled with 2T sugar, then put it on the baking stone in a preheated 400F oven.

Baked for about 50 min, rotating every 15 min to ensure even browning.

Apple Glaze:
Meanwhile, with those leftover bits of apple: put them into a pot with a bit of water, maybe 1/2 cup, and 1/2 cup sugar, plus 1" of a split vanilla bean (scrape the seeds out into the pot), 2" of cinnamon stick, and a sprinkling of ground cinnamon. Boil that up while the tart bakes- about 30 min, it will reduce to a syrupy glaze. Strain it through a mesh colander or cheesecloth, pressing down on the apples to get out all the juices.

The best bit:
What do do with the leftover scraps of pie dough and apples? I gathered the scraps and pieced them together in the cups of my mini-muffin tin, which I greased with the extra melted butter. I chopped up the extra apples and sprinkled them into my little dough cups. Sprinkled sugar all over that and popped it into the oven, under my tart.

The crust is good and flaky, the tartlettes stand up well on their own, and they're so cute! I wish I had a whole batch of these. I can just imagine a few on a plate with a little dollop of whipped cream. Oh, or better- a cube of sheep's milk cheese and a cube of cheddar. Well, the family gets the big tart, and the tartlettes are the baker's treat. Shhh...