Rumble in the Kitchen

Oh, Gumdrop, I think we're in for a bit of a rumble on this one, which isn't exactly in the holiday spirit of things. You've been too kind to let me participate in this decision. And more importantly, you've given me these options after I was grilled by my maman about precisely what I was bringing for Boxing Day dinner. Have you faced the wrath of a mother entertaining her daughter's in-laws for Box Day? I dithered, I waffled, I crumbled. I ran to Dorie too and came up with three options: the cranberry shortbread cake, the chocolate armagnac cake or the peppermint cream puff ring. Using your exact rationale, I settled on the cream puff ring (I do adore a pate a choux). My mother could sleep easy now that her menu was complete (although I suspect she tossed and turned a little about the table decor).

However, since I graciously told my mother that I would get the ingredients so she wouldn't have to, I do have some mom-free time to change my mind. So I propose the current contenders are: pavlova (although those upside-down Australians celebrate Christmas during their summer), a chocolate cream tart or the peppermint cream puff ring.

Round #2...

merry, merry,
Pickle

P.S. At least your childhood barf-fest was the result of a boozey dessert. Mine was a 4 year old's adventure drinking the dregs from beer bottles during a cottage afternoon. I've hated beer ever since. Don't both those stories tell you everything you need to know about growing up in the 70s?

The Mohammed Ali of Desserts...

Dear Pickle:

So it's a tough time to fit a challenge in, but I know you and I are facing the same dilemma this year. What dessert can we possibly bring to Boxing Day dinner to satisfy a mixed bag of fam and in-laws? This is a serious challenge!!!

Some people might think this an easy problem. These people are not us. The dessert in question must fit the following criteria:
1. Must travel well. No frozen things, elaborate constructions or whipped cream as an integral ingredient (added at the last minute whipped cream is fine, although a bit fussy.)
2. Must be interesting enough for a special dinner but not contain supremely weird flavours. It's gotta be special but if it is too 'sophisticated', we could lose some of our dessert eaters to the goodie tray, which should be considered a failure of desserting. Also, because there will be children, alcohol should be kept to a minimum (the time I got accidentally drunk and barfed at Thanksgiving at the ripe old age of eight might be 'memorable', but I am not sure it ought to be repeated.)
3. Must be festive but not heavy. This has gotta land nicely on a belly full of turkey. Ugh, I feel full already. Maybe we should just make mints.
4. Must be impressive but not intimidatingly so. People should like it but, like dressing for a wedding, we can't outdo the 'bride' (i.e. hosts). Croquembouche is probably out. Also, I have 5,000 other things to do in the next couple of days so we kinda gotta keep it real.

You have already expressed disdain for trifle, so I will save that challenge for another time. Mwahahahhahaha. My veto goes to fruitcake and/or mincemeat.

Because I am feeling festively generous and this is indeed important, herewith please find three suggestions for your boxing approval. Punch the one you like.

1. A chocolate Yule log. Just kidding. .
2. A Christmas Cheesecake from Epicurious - This may break #3 and/or be impossibly 80s. But it DOES sound good!
3. A tasty Pavlova from Nigella - . This is the traditional Australian Christmas dessert, so they must be on to something. Does require a little last minute fussing with whipping cream and fruit (which we can surely take some license with.) But sometimes it's nice to hide in the kitchen for a few minutes, if your host doesn't mind...?
4. A Dorie Greenspan tart. Maybe Chocolate Cream (I'd toy with a plain crust rather than chocolate to stay within #3)? Or Toasted Coconut Custard (although is coconut too divisive re #2?) Or Fresh Orange Cream?

Er, as you can see, I'm dithering. Whaddya think?

Love,
Gumdrop

Hey Hey You Ugly

So now it’s my turn to apologize for a very tardy post, Gumdrop. I did this post weeks ago, but work and life have kept me from writing about it until now. And maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t in too much of a rush to show you the ugliest thing I’ve ever baked.

Given the terrible reputation roulades have, I decided to be brash, be bold, be confident as I prepared for the challenge. I whipped up the cake batter, spread it into the jellyroll pan and deftly tossed it into the oven. Shabam - a roulade superstar was born!

Except that’s when I noticed I’d filled the pan too much. The cake came out far too fluffy, but repeating my mantra, I covered it in plastic wrap and a wet tea towel and rolled that sucker up.

Next, I tackled the buttercream. Did this recipe feel like a lot of work for not much reward or was it just me? Sure, it tasted good, but it wasn’t that different than good old swiss buttercream. Maybe it picked up on my skepticism because just as I was adding the last pat of butter, it all separated. I slapped the bowl into an ice bath and did what I could, but I’d developed a bad attitude toward the whole endeavour and it didn’t do much to improve the frosting.

Feeling like a kitchen delinquent, I unrolled my cake, and of course, that puffy cake split apart. In an effort to just get the damn thing done, I slapped on some nutella and then added a layer of the buttercream and struggled to roll it all up into a neat log. I didn’t succeed in the “neat” department.

Things took a final bad turn when I tried to ice it with the sub-standard buttercream. After 4 hours of work, I was past caring. I slapped that icing on like I was Sandra Lee making her grandmother’s peach birthday cake with canned frosting and Ziploc bags.
It was a sad day in my kitchen.

I contemplated throwing it out and beginning again, but I couldn’t face it. Then I remembered when my mother first started quilting and she made what has become known as ‘the ugly quilt’. It looked like something frugal Ma Ingalls would have made during a desperately cold Prairie winter – and tossed away because it was so ugly. I dug through my closets and found that ugly quilt and used it as the backdrop for my ugly cake. I was a little heartened to think this was just my ugly first attempt at a roulade and if I keep at it, I might make roulades as beautiful as the quilts my mother makes now.

I wound up taking the cake to a dinner party at a friend’s becaujavascript:void(0)se a) I didn’t have time to pick up a bottle of wine after spending the entire afternoon on this cake and b) I still didn’t want the ugly thing hanging around my house! Due to my friend’s own dessert disaster, the ugly cake was joyously welcomed and devoured. It was the yummiest ugly looking cake ever.

xo
P

Buche De NOOOOOOOOO!

Dear Pickle:

Well, you’ve done it now. You’ve discovered a real culinary insecurity. I have made a rolled sponge cake exactly once. It was a good fifteen years ago and I don’t remember what exactly went down – but I do remember it did not end well (in fact, I think it became a trifle. Which is the destination point for many failed culinary attempts. Can make you feel handy and thrifty, but never like a hero. Sigh.)

With a few more years under my belt and a lot more confidence in the kitchen, I really thought this wouldn’t be a problem. I chose what looked like a good Martha recipe, a gingerbread roulade. I can’t find the recipe online and, really, it’s just as well. At first things were going well. Indeed, I was very proud of myself when I wrapped the cake up in the towel to shape it. It smelled wonderful and gingerbread-y and it was nice and high and I thought my cake-y karma was changing.

Ummm, maybe I should pay more attention to my Protestant roots and forget the Buddhist stuff. Did you ever have a granny who said ‘Pride goeth before a fall’? Yeah. Because SOMEBODY over here forgot to put icing sugar on the towel. So when she unrolled this 'perfect' cake to fill and ice it, it stuck. And cracked. And – boo-hoo. Sigh.

The Brown Sugar Buttercream gave me a hard time too, but this I could handle. A few years ago, I made (I swear to God this is true) FIVE wedding cakes in one year. All with Italian meringue buttercreams. This is why there was no cake at my wedding. :) So when my buttercream was lumpy, I just knew it was because my butter was too cold. Heating one cup of the bump icing in the microwave for 30 seconds and then beating it back into the bowl smoothed it out and made it gorgeous. I may have actually screamed out “THIS S*#& IS AWESOME!” despite having been alone in my kitchen with two babies sleeping upstairs. I didn’t even care if I woke them at that moment.

Alas, the 'awesome s*#&' had to go into dry, cracked, uninspiring cake. The gingerbread kinda drowned out the delicate brown sugar flavour - not complementary as I had expected.

I think I failed this one. Even my dad didn’t have anything nice to say, and that’s how you know when you’ve failed. Pride goeth before a fall indeed. Ya got me. Wish me better luck next time! (I kinda hope there’s another roulade challenge coming from you some day. Because you can bet I won’t be making one spontaneously, and I should probably get back on the horse before a real phobia develops.)

Sigh,
Gumdrop

Roll With It

Gumdrop,

Having seen the non-edible fruits of your Halloween labour, you are entirely forgiven for your tardy post. Mom duties and Gourmet grief must be honoured. I have to admit that I was always more of a supermarket checkout reader of Gourmet. Its stunning covers were a handy calming device when a 600-item customer was a head of me in the 10 items or less lane.

While waiting for your post, I’ve been contemplating the next challenge, bemused by the options available to me. Should we humour your inner-hippie and bake some ancient grains bread? Maybe it was time to return to pastry and bake rustic apple tarts?

But then two things happened: First, my mom came over for dinner and brought an old stand-by: a strawberry jellyroll. It was a bold move on her part because dear old mom has had a terrible run rolling those darn sponges. The last few attempts have been dry and cracked, like feet in summer after a few missed pedicures. This time, she managed a moist cake, but it still had a lot of cracks. I was disappointed to learn that she used store-bought jam, not my aunt’s homemade jam filled with plump berries. Then again, this is a woman who, as a schoolgirl, traded her homemade cake for store-bought cookies.

The second thing that happened was I came across this drool inducing article during my daily epicurious visit and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of brown sugar buttercream ever since.

So while it’s too early to challenge you to a bûche de noël, I hereby issue the next challenge as a brown sugar buttercream roulade. The degree of garnish fussiness is entirely up to you!

Enjoy,
Px

In Morning (sic)

Regretfully, due to technical difficulties, will have to post this without pictures for the time-being. It cannot wait a second longer! May need to fire live-in Tech Support which may be awkward on account of the marriage certificate and all.

Dear Pickle -

The mummy cupcakes are SOOOOOO CUTE! The fact is, this is why every child needs a cool aunt. I can't believe there were no Halloween baked goods in our house - I was too busy making costumes and endless autumnal dinners (that the kids don't eat). I didn't even have time to make myself a costume and just went as 'harried chick'.

I know I'm unforgivably late with this entry, but on top of Halloweening, I have also been in mourning for Gourmet magazine. Up 'til now, I'd been listening to all the stories about the death of print media with a certain devil-may-care imperviousness ('Denver Post' closes? Ooooh, sad. Oh look, 30 Rock is back - and there's a cupcake in the fridge!) But this sad passage one hits a little too close to home. I've been reading Gourmet for a good twenty years. Yup. Apparently I must write a will, before I croak in a La-Z-Boy. It was a kind of aspirational lifeline for a girl in a tiny industrial town where 'gourmet' meant you made your Jell-o salad with FRESH fruit instead of canned. Yes, it was impossibly snobby and almost impenetrable at times - I remember a lot of stories about the meats of Eastern Hungary as eaten on authentic stagecoach tours or how to prepare 'Chicken Liver Veloute with Quails Eggs and Pickled Starfish'. And when I went through my looooong vegetarian phase, I'm not sure exactly what I kept reading for. But read it I did. My bit of a girl-crush on the elegant and spicy Ms. Ruth Reichl may've helped boost me over the hump. I've got a huge collection of back issues, some even older than I am, which I refuse to throw away. Much to the chagrin of my garage-cleaning hubbo. But someday, someday, I'll have the time to cook my way through them.

However, I must admit that my subscriber copies have been sitting for longer and longer in their sterile plastic wrappers. I'd get the magazine, take a glance at the impossibly gorgeous pear on the cover, and then it'd end up sitting there. Dejected. Raw (i.e. - uncooked from). And then the next issue would arrive, piling on top of the second dejectedly. I can't immediately remember the last time I actually whipped something from the pages. My near-daily epicurious.com habit means that I must've made a few of their things recently, but even then it seems that most of the recipes I pull up to actually make are from the younger, somehow more in step with me 'Bon Appetit'. It's definitely a more user-friendly mag, packed with loads of recipes and using ingredients you can find. Without going to Hungary.

So I am sorry, Gourmet. I guess I was part of the problem. I will miss paging through you and being an armchair glutton/tourist. But I don't have enough money or time for all the things you asked of me - I don't purchase Cadillacs and I am not sure I am up to creating a Chicken Liver Veloute.

Instead I hope to keep blogging with my much-more-punctual blog-mate (more punctual than ME, that is, not more punctual than Gourmet, which always arrived on time.) Pickle, I am SO proud of you for making it all the way through this coffee cake dance marathon! I agree, making dough is something that ought to fit so easily into our lives, because the steps aren't difficult or time consuming, even for this particular monster-piece recipe I assigned us. In fact I managed to squeeze it in before hopping a cross-country flight. The relaxing steps of mixing and waiting, kneading and waiting, shaping and waiting - they all fit in well around wrangling a baby and packing a suitcase (then a suitcase for the baby.)

Although all three boys in my house went nuts for this, I have to say I found it kinda 'meh' in the final balance. It was a little dry, a little too danish-like for my liking. Because I am not a fan of the danish. Undoubtedly there are good ones in the world, but most that I've encountered have a dry staleness that belies their calorie count.

Plus we've already discussed that I have a large-ish hippie streak in me, a part that wishes to live in a commune and grow sprouts for a living. Bread-baking brings this alternate personality too close to the surface already. So making the bread into this kind of ornate lazy daisy shape threatened a full-on breach of the hippie bit I would much rather keep buried. Until next Halloween, maybe. Should I dress up as a hippie? ;)

x
Gumdrop

Boo!

Here’s a question you probably already know the answer to, Gumdrop. Q: what do you do to entertain a three year old for the afternoon? A: Bake intricate Halloween cupcakes. That’s what I did this weekend when my three-year-old nephew came to visit. So when he wasn’t ‘helping’ the IE paint the exterior of our house, I had a little sweet sweatshop, churning out Martha Stewart’s latest ghoulish gastronomic treats.

The ever-reliable one-bowl chocolate cupcakes were as moist and delicious as usual, although her suggestion of doubling the Swiss meringue buttercream left me with vats of excess frosting. I’m going to see how it freezes, as surely I’ll have a cake emergency in the near future. Next time, I’d make it before the little one arrived to make cupcakes as the process of making this sort of buttercream was torture for my little helper. Ten minutes to whip egg whites? Another 5 to beat the air out? Only a journey outside to test magnetic attraction of wet paint and a new shirt prevented mutiny.

That and the allure of candy. With frosting at the ready, we began with mini spiders. Bumble B had the honour of dipping the frosted mini into the black sugar and he was surprisingly adept at it. His attention to detail wasn’t quite up to his aunt’s when it came to the eyes though, which is why all the spiders have “m”s for pupils instead of the pure evil red intended. And after the difficult task of snipping shoeless licorice into the appropriate leg lengths, our first batch of Halloween horrors was complete.

Next we tackled the aliens and monsters. There were some creative liberties taken with limb placement on the aliens, but who can say with certainty that aliens don’t have 6 limbs on one side of their body? Seeing how proud he was his handiwork almost made me regret my strict adherence to Martha’s rules when making the monsters. Almost.

Both us feel head over heels for the mummy cupcakes. Perhaps that’s why they were the most successful of our partnership. He added the eyes and mouth and then I covered them with ribbons of buttercream. Truly one of the most impressive cupcakes ever.

So while I did seem to have go through more icing and candy than can strictly be accounted for by the final product, it was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Xo
P

In Praise of Coconut and Other Things

I was scared, Gumdrop. I read through your new challenge recipe and wanted to run away to a bakery and cheat my way through this one. The recipe looked long and complicated and frankly, not much fun. But it featured coconut and that's one of my weaknesses. I dare anyone to resist the fluffy snowy purity of a coconut layer cake.

Or the golden buttery chewiness of the ridiculously yummy black bottom coconut bars from this month's Cookie Carnival. Brownie topped with coconut? That's my idea of heaven (do you think clouds might be made of coconut? If so, I may be tempted to start believing in an after-life). These little near-instant gems were so addictive, I had to hide this last morsel from the Hub before he could devour them too. I've decided to use these as my secret weapon whenever the IE is mad at me so I guess I'll need to whip some more up today since I was not a pleasant wife this morning (if he's going to object to the way I brew his tea, maybe he could give him his special instructions before I make it?).

But I digress. The simplicity of the bars gave me the comfort and confidence to tackle the coconut twist bread. With my father coming over for dinner last Sunday, I had both a reason to make it and the time. Oh the time.

But rather than being a burden, I found I really enjoyed working my way through the various steps of this recipe and once again, I was smitten with the miracle of yeast. Doesn't it make you feel like some sort of magician when you see the dough rise? It's about as scientific as I get.

Making dough really is easy and once you get used to handling it, it's something you could add into your regular routine, don't you think? Okay, maybe not regularly, but certainly more often than never. Maybe once a month. The challenge in handling this dough was that whole pizza pulling thing. It's quite difficult to get it evenly stretched. My middle got really thin with thick edges. Is there a way to avoid that? Maybe you want it like that to give thicker edges to the wedges once baked?

Assembling the layers proved to be quite fun and it always amazes me how my modern urban soul lifts when doing this sort of simple time-spun task. It makes me feel connected to world in some weird way, knowing that generations of people have moved through these steps before me. Is baking some sort of human legacy? Who knows, but my idea of fun now includes twisting strands of stuffed dough and brushing them with melted jam and runny icing.

I was inordinately pleased with myself when the coffee cake came out of the oven. It looked like a danish my aunt used to buy from Bernie's Bakery at the cottage when I was a kid (Proust had his madeleines and I have cherry danishes. And date squares. And apple crisp. Well, a lot of childhood memories tied to homely baked goods). It was difficult to contain my pride (or the whoops of self-satisfaction) as I commanded the IE to come and admire my masterpiece. He was duly impressed and snapped off some pictures, all the while begging me to let him try a piece.

He was, of course, denied. It had to wait until after dinner. I was a little sad that my dad didn't mention the resemblance to Bernie's tasty treats, but once I bit into that sweet dough, I didn't care. I was back in coconut heaven. Good thing too because after a day of working on this thing, I was one exhausted but happy baker.

The Next Challenge...

Dear Pickle:

I am a little bit obsessed with coffee cakes lately. Is this a function of the season? Of my soon-to-be-stay-at-home mom status? Of the same retro bug that has me sewing aprons? I’m not sure. But I’m obsessed.

I made this bit of Crumb Cake Deliciousness from King Arthur on the weekend, because my MIL came by for tea. I LOVE crumb cakes, they remind me of my brief time living in New York as they seem to be infinitely more popular there than they are here. Last year when Starbucks carried one for a while, I was absolutely thrilled (my pants, however, were not as they got a little overstuffed by the number of slices I ate.) There is something perfectly homely and autumnal about a coffee cake.

As you’ve got me fired up about yeast baking too, I hereby challenge you to a yeasted coffee cake. Not just any coffee cake, the Flo Braker fiesta from 'Baking For All Occasions' that I'm going to email you (it’s tough to find recipes for yeasted ones, actually, so if you like you can consider my control-freakiness as doing you a favour. Heh.) It's called 'Coconut Twist Coffee Cake'. Let's do it!

Yours Coffee-Klatsch-ily,
Gumdrop

p.s. I was going to post the recipe but it was WAAAAAAAY too long I couldn't figure out how to make a 'jump'. Scared yet?

Baguettes. Le sigh!

...As Pepe LePeu would say...

Oh, Pickle, I fear you may have done it this time. I have dabbled in bread baking but, to be honest, I have never understood the urge to take it ultra-seriously at home. I've always lived in city neighbourhoods where a great loaf of one kind or another is just blocks away. I've had those Ma Ingalls/nouveau hippie urges to bake my own bread, sure. I'm often seen kneading up a batch of fresh rolls for Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever. Sometimes I get fancy and put sweet potatoes or something in them. One time I bought a rather expensive baking stone, although Mr. Salty mistook it for a brick and threw it out after spilling pizza sauce on it in the oven, thereby ending that 'run' at serious home baking.

But this is the first time I've really seriously made a kind of artisanal quality bread at home.

I went hard-core, inspired by your challenge, and chose the recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I really was up early Wednesday morning to make a Pate Fermentee, which I learned is like a mini-version of the dough to come (flour - half bread and half all purpose, yeast - surprisingly instant again - water and salt). You knead this and then leave it in the refrigerator overnight, like an insurance policy on deliciousness. Although, part of you does feel ripped off that you did a whole bunch of work and nothing is coming out of it. YET.


You can't call this recipe 'easy' in fact, because there are a lot of steps that take a looooooong time - but the steps in and of themselves aren't complicated. On Thursday I got the Pate Fermentee out to de-chill, which took it an hour, then cut it up to add to a new batch of dough (which used the exact same simple ingredients.) Mixing - I went with the stand mixer because I am unlike Ma Ingalls in that I hate hand mixing stiff bread doughs. Kneading - this I did by hand because it's tremendously satisfying. Rising - 2 hours during which I did a bunch of work. Shaping - I even made a homemade couche for the bread to rise in from a piece of linen, spritzed with oil and sprinkled with flour. Rising part II - about an hour. Slashing - Xacto blade worked like a charm. Baking. Steaming while baking - first with a steam pan in the oven and then with three visits at short intervals to spritz the oven walls with more water, which had my babysitter certain that I was BONKERS. And THEN you have to wait a torturous 40 minutes before you get to eat them. I'm exhausted just typing that.

It was worth the wait. Leaving Paris out of the equation (because one must, always, or it is unfair to the rest of the bread-baking world,) AND leaving modesty out of the equation, I don't think I've had baguette this delicious. No, really. There are some good ones around, but there is something about the freshness. The work with the steam was a good investment, I think, making for that chewy crust that marks this species of bread.

I sent a loaf home with the babysitter, as payment for having to work for a crazy lady.

Thank you SO MUCH for making me do this. It won't be the last time - I figure that now that I've done it, it will get easier. Right? Right?!? This is the part where I think you may have done it. If I get serious about this...? There goes the rest of my leisure time. And my hard work at weight-loss.

Get ready for a new challenge before Tuesday. And don't put the yeast away!!!

Bisous,
Gumdrop

Cultural Exchange - Haiku Meets Baguette

Seven this morning
Momma the insomniac
Makes Pate Fermentee...
- - - - -
Old school recipe
The dough aging overnight
Torture for my soul
- - - - -
Oh! The thought of it!
Fresh baguette tomorrow night!
I can smell it now!
- - - - -
Children must eat it
Momma loves carbs but also
Anthropologie...




Thanks for the mountie
Husbands toiling on movies
At least good for laughs...

Banish the Baguette (but not why you think)

Ma chère Gumdrop:

This is not a picture of a baguette. It’s a picture of the IE filming on location. This, as you will recall, was the reason I needed to bake bread. But I’ve discovered another problem, possibly a bigger one. The problem is that I love bread. I love bread too much. But bread does not love me the same way. Sure, it pretends to love me; it makes me feel good with that first warm crusty hunk, so I go back for more. And more. Until I feel sick with self-loathing for loving something that just ends up making me feel bloated and pasty. Then when I swear off bread, it comes back with that come-hither scent wafting from the oven.

So that’s why there isn’t a picture of my warm, golden, albeit slightly misshapen, baguette. I loved that baguette so much; I had to kick it to the curb before I could take a picture.

This fantastically simple recipe from the talented bakers at King Arthur Flour was just the sort to make a novice bread maker like me fall head over heels with homemade bread. It’s so easy; I could even handle making it the old-fashioned way (with a wooden spoon and elbow grease) since I didn’t have my kitchen-aid at the cottage. As it was a rainy autumn day in August, the time required inside wasn’t a hardship, although the actual work time is paltry enough. It’s really just the waiting that makes the whole bread thing a chore.

So, recipe: dead simple and I found the second half of the dough, which I used the next day, produced lighter bread, but that may have been because I rolled the second batch into a longer shape (a baguette is a lot longer than you think and definitely a lot longer than your average baking sheet!).

Because of this shortfall, my baguette did end up misshapen as I said. It looked more like a French loaf than baguette, but hey, it still looked French! And with some wine and good company, it passed muster for a rustic cottage weekend. The loaves gave the most wonderful thwack when tapped and had a fabulous flake when torn. Like the best bread, it was a small soul-satisfying experience (I’d love to try it with actual King Arthur Flour next time, but that would require a road trip. Interested?).

I do need a bit more practice with my shaping technique before I take to riding my bike through the city with a few jaunty homemade baguettes and a lush bouquet of fresh flowers in my basket. But I’m definitely a few steps closer to the kind of life portrayed in an Anthropologie ad. As long as I remember not to eat any of bread. Who am I kidding? That baguette had me at bon jour…

Adieu,
P

And yes, this is just a random picture from the IE’s movie. While not a baguette, Mounties are yummy too.

Cake Shopping Will Help Too!

Oh, Pickle!

Don't be sad, I can't bear it! (Would it help to tell you that I would DIE for a couple of months by myself and spend them running around the house naked while eating bon-bons with no husbands or kiddos to steal them from me or to be startled by my bouncing buttocks? The truth is I would probably just sit in an armchair and enjoy the fact that my shoes are where I left them and I don't need to vacuum like, hourly. Still, jaded bliss...)

We will totally cheer you up with baguette. Warm. With butter. How can one be sad then?

In the mean time, go look at adorable cupcake accoutrements here. I ordered a whole bunch including the absolutely charming Christmas cupcake kit, full of retro toppers that make me wish it was December, and the pirate cupcake kit which will undoubtedly make little boys very happy. I also ordered a bunch of darling cupcake papers which came packaged with little decos to coordinate with them. That will help! And just think, no husband to scrutinize your package of imported foo-fas when it arrives = less guilt.

I have some pictures coming up of a couple of baked goods which will feature the blue gingham cupcake papers.

Love and warm bread to you,
Gumdrop

Bake Away the Blues

Dear Gumdrop:

Lately, I’ve been feeling a little blue. A husband who has been MIA for 2 ½ months is to blame (damn movie-making in far-flung locales!). Not even a burst of truly summer-like weather has been able to lift my spirits. But I think fresh-baked bread might do the trick.

A homemade baguette might be the bread-lover’s equivalent of those pillow boyfriends you see Japanese girls with blunt cuts and knee socks clutching in indie fashion magazines. After this challenge, IE may find me curled up with an olive boule (and sporting a stylish yet sensible new haircut) when returns.

So feel the love, bake some bread.

Pickle

Kreskin Hearts Crackers

Dear Pickle:

Remember the amazing Kreskin and his act? Okay, here’s my version:

ANSWER – Knit scarves, the rules, jokes about your mother and crackers.



QUESTION – Name things that are better if you make them yourself…

My apologies to Johnny Carson.

You’d never know it by how late I am with this one, but I too loved and was comforted by making these crackers. The first time I made bread I was like nineteen and going through the obligatory college hippie phase. I hereby apologize to High School Boyfriend and His University Buddy, who were forced to eat the leaden loaves I enthusiastically produced from the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book (the original hippie GET BAKED bible). OHMIGOD, soggy and kind of anvil-like and absolutely indigestible.

If only I’d started with delightful, delicious SIMPLE crackers! And, maybe, some nice white flour instead of sprouted rye or WTF I was brainwashed into at that point.

The recipe I used was from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, a gorgeous book that won the James Beard award and the subject of yet another weekly blog circle that I had dreams of joining at some, more ambitious point. I was a bit shocked to see instant yeast used here as I thought maybe purists wouldn’t think of such a thing, but I faithfully bought some and with the additions of honey, oil and flour I had a dough in like thirty seconds! No proofing of the yeast with the sugar or anything!

It’s been a mega-stressful summer for me work-wise, and yet it all kind of melted away with the ten minutes of kneading required. This is one of those things that every time I do it, I am all like – why don’t I knead something EVERY DAY?!? (Oh yeah, because I was born at the wrong time. Drat. Though I do appreciate the indoor plumbing and anti-frizz hair products available nowadays.) I guess the tricky part was finding a day when I would be at home and sane for two hours while the dough rose, but once it was done working it’s magic on a sunny windowsill, I swear it only took me another thirty seconds to roll these mofos out on a counter lightly sprayed with cooking spray.

I chose to sprinkle them with alternating lines of poppy and sesame seeds, although the book’s author uses a number of spices so I may have to go back and try that too… Anyway, they were light and crisp and joyous - if not perfectly, evenly browned. They were consumed enthusiastically by all members of my little household, despite the fact that they came out of the oven mere moments after dinner, the smell having been just too intoxicating to ignore. And I got to feel all smug that they had no preservatives and didn’t come out of a package (er, for once.)

Anyway, I hope your summer has been good to you and I can’t wait to dig in – so please, challenge me!!!

Crackers for you,
Gumdrop

Look, gratuitous cute baby eating ice cream as my apology to you! Peanut just turned ONE!

Mea Cracker

Dear Gumdrop:


Um, I guess I kinda sorta need to apologize for all my cracker grumblings. So... sorry. I will happily admit that baking homemade crackers was one of the most comforting things I’ve ever done. There was something so entirely honest and homely about it all. I was so content, I wound up dancing around my kitchen working with this unbelievably silken dough. It was one of my favourite challenges so far!

I chose this olive oil cracker recipe from 101 Cookbooks. An excuse to use the dough hook on my kitchen aid is never to be missed (although I’m in no hurry to drop the mixing bowl on my toe again anytime soon. My poor toe is still black and blue, but at least it goes with the purple polish). The dough itself was easier than pie and came together lickety-split. My absolute favourite part was shaping the dough and rubbing it with olive oil -- it was just this amazingly relaxing tactile experience. I actually felt connected to the food I was preparing.

Having let the dough rest, it was now time to roll ‘em out and splash on some flavour flourishes. I chose a few different toppings – sesame seeds, poppy seeds, cracked pepper and sea salt. The one tip i have is to roll the dough out to almost the desired thinness and then add the topping and finish rolling. It helped press the seeds and things in a bit more.

The other thing I did, which was probably just a misunderstanding of the directions was to bake the crackers on the cornmeal. It was a bit messy when eating, but I really adored that extra crunch.

I arrived at the cottage with some seven-year-old Canadian cheddar and some stinky gooey riopelle, which along with the delicious homemade crackers, made for a crowd-pleasing afternoon snack. My brother was impressed to learn I had made the ‘amazing flatbreads’ from his favourite restaurant. The old me may have jumped at the chance to call these the more impressive sounding ‘flatbread’, but the new me is dazzled by the honesty of ‘cracker’. After all, they even pleased my three-year old nephew’s discriminating taste buds. Who can argue with that?

Pickle x

WTF?!

Crackers, Gumdrop? Crackers?!?! It's like punishment for enjoying the cookie challenge too much.

Like my aversion to rhubarb and chocolate, I loathe cooked stawberries (why do I keep objecting to the cookies in the cookie carnival? They're cookies for god's sake. By their very nature, they can't be bad). Instead, I shall be baking some dried cherry and white chocolate cookies in honour of Canada Day.

And looking for cracker recipes. I suppose I could rouse some excitment by contemplating the fine cheese that will go with them.

Patriotically yours,
P

Strawberries In Cookie Form...

Dear Pickle:

Just under the wire, I finished my Strawberry-Shortcake Cookies for this month's Cookie Carnival. Recipe from the inimitable Ms. Stewart (bow before her, and wear a clean apron because it WILL be inspected.)

They look cute, don't they? With Canada Day coming up tomorrow, a cookie that's a riff on a strawberry shortcake seemed perfect. I'll be toting them to a barbecue. It's an interesting recipe, kinda like a pie crust recipe. You rub the butter into the flour and then add some cream to bring the dough together and then fold in diced strawberries. It's a soothingly old school prep, and I felt a bit like Ma in 'Little House on the Prairie'.

I remember reading once that it violates the whole 'thing' of a strawberry to cook it. That heat turns them flabby and evaporates their bright but ephemeral flavour... Can't say I disagree generally. These are - nice. I know. Not the biggest compliment in the world. For me, they just weren't sweet enough really. But I fully admit to having twenty sweet teeth, so I thought this could be just me. They're certainly lovely and tender and the nice pioneer feeling carries through.

But then Mr. Salty pronounced them 'not up to your usual standard'. Ouchie! And HE (who, as we know, prefers salt to sweet and so doesn't share my juvenile sense of taste) thought they weren't sweet enough either. (Full disclosure - I WAS mom-baking. Which means I was also making dinner, listening to NPR, checking for work emails, doing laundry, corralling small kids and drinking. Just kidding on the drinking. But it IS possible I missed one tablespoon of the sugar. But it seems to me also that 7 tbsp of sugar is NOT a lot of sugar for three-and-a-half dozen cookies. Right?)

So it's back to the drawing board for another cookie to represent our country! Any ideas...? Blueberry and maple syrup? Something molasses-y for our easterly friends? A thumbprint cookie with butter tart filling? I'm open!

xxx,
Gumdrop

This One's For Polly

Dear Pickle:

Oh! Now I am in love with your Meme too! As a person who takes (too much!) comfort in food when having a terrible day, it is nice to know that food WRITING brought an undeserving bad-day victim a little solace. Maybe I will try re-reading your blog entries next time I want to cry (instead of, y'know, eating frosting by the spoonful...)

The Faux-reos got me intrigued about other supermarket staples that people used to make from scratch. A lot of my bread-baking books have recipes for (drum roll please) - CRACKERS.

Let's see if our home-made crackers leave Mr. Christie in the dust!!! (I don't mean the dust at the bottom of a cracker bag, but actual dust.)

xxx
Gumdrop

Cookies = Love, part 2

Sometimes when your day starts badly – you show up to a morning appointment that’s been canceled, you spill coffee down the front of your dress, your husband is a trillion miles away and wants to talk about banking, – you can barely contemplate what the rest of the week will hold without the specter of a few sad tears fogging up your vision But then you read something really simple and lovely like the existence of a homemade Oreo and suddenly there’s a little bit of sunshine back in your day.

And it’s nice to know that someone else knows the illicit joy of frosting made with shortening. It was my Dutch grandmother’s secret weapon in creating a pure white frosting that sustained the heat of summer better than butter. Add in some Dutch cocoa powder for Meme’s Chocolate Frosting and spread it over yellow cake for one of my grandfather’s favourite snacks (nb: she’s a Meme not an Oma because she married a Red Cross worker from Quebec during the war. And yes, cake was an acceptable snack at their house as it should be at every grandparents' house).

Cookies,
Pickle

Cookies = Love

Dear Pickle:

Your mom said 'turd'? About cookies? Heheheheh! That is the best thing that happened this week.

I LOVE your disappearing cookie photos. The fact that you can 'whip' things up at the cottage. That your hubbo gets bribery cookies (very smart) to greet his Yukon crew. That you forgive me all my transgressions - even rhubarb and chocolate. So! On to the challenge!

You know that I love frosting. I love icing. I love glaze. I love most things that are called ‘topping’ (yes, even including ‘that’. Especially with Jell-o.) I have been known to discard the bottom parts of cupcakes if no one is looking and just use the ‘muffin top’ part of the cupcake as a buttercream delivery system.

For this reason, it is rather strange that I have never made a sandwich cookie, the kind that is filled with sweet, sweet frosting/icing/what-you-will. Maybe it’s because I like to make things with big yields (Little Miss Greedy) and you have to use two cookies to make each sandwich cookie, thereby halving the number of cookies you end up with. How is that fair? But your challenge seemed the perfect opportunity to stretch my cookie-making skills over into the filled arena. (And an excuse to make frosting.)

I made these chocolate sandwich cookies with a creamy filling. Perhaps you’ve heard of their supermarket counterparts… Yes, I made Faux-Reos. That isn’t my overly cutesy name, that’s the moniker bestowed by the King Arthur Flour cookie book. Cutesy names aside, I am a little bit obsessed with this book. It is filled with old school cookie recipes, but I am obsessed mainly for one practical reason.

Have I sermonized to you yet about the wonders of using a kitchen scale? It makes baking about a thousand times easier if you don’t have to fiddle with cups. Not to mention more accurate. Throw in a Kitchenaid and you can have a batch of cookies in the oven in mere moments. Alas, most North American recipe books use the old cups system and you have to find not only European/British cookbooks, but also European/British editions of those cookbooks to cook using weight. Except for the wonderful bakers behind the King Arthur test kitchen in Vermont! Their blog, here, is for my money the best how-to baking blog on the net and a MUST READ. (If you need to be convinced of the merits of baking by weight, just make one batch of peanut butter cookies with a scale – i.e. without scraping the sticky stuff in and out of measuring cups – and you will be a convert. I did that but they didn't survive long enough to be photographed!)

These are made from a very soft cocoa dough, which you must chill for at least a few hours before rolling out. Even after an overnight chill, I still had to roll them out on a Silpat with loads of flour. (And NOW I read on their blog a different recipe that doesn't seem to require rolling out and looks way cuter than mine... Damnit!) The filling is – well, there are some things you wish you could un-know. One of these things for me is that the centers of Oreos are, apparently, largely shortening. Blurgh. The shortening gets beaten with a lot of icing sugar and a little dissolved gelatin, with vanilla for flavour.

The results were more delicate than a supermarket Oreo, a reminder that sometimes less flavour is more. Subtle cocoa cookies sandwiching a filling that whispers of vanilla. Old fashioned and gentle and delicate, they were totally picnic worthy. The wafers had a crispy quality you would never find in a preserved, shelf-stable substitute and it played off the filling in a way real Oreos could only dream of. I’m glad my little guys tasted them before they ever tasted the commercial variety – although we’re just not going to think about how the health effects of all the shortening was consumed in my house this week.

Thanks for fitting such a tasty challenge between the crispy cocoa wafers of my life. What a big yield!

X

Gumdrop
p.s. I am like a cookbook pusher.

p.p.s. I too made a crazy chocolate chip cookie variation this week for a visit to my parents/brother's cottage - a summery and off-beat combo of Dried Blueberries, White Chocolate Chips and Slivered Almonds. Photo to follow.

p.p.p.s. New challenge tomorrow!!!

p.p.p.p.s. I will be your kid and eat your cookies after school. I will also accept cake and milk, like Harriet The Spy.

Baking, Kinda Sorta Just Like Mom

Dear Gumdrop-

You are a dear friend and I will always forgive you for any lapse in blog postings, particularly when a persnickety mutual friend’s notorious deadlines are involved.

However, I’m not sure I can forgive you for the rhubarb and chocolate combination. You can swear it was delicious up and down the golden horseshoe, but I’ll never be convinced. Potentially barf-inducing is putting it mildly. I still shudder thinking of the combination (but I also hate it when my food touches on the plate. Gross. Some childhood habits die hard).

I also shudder when I think about those cinnamon squares. I’ve made them before too. As part of my campaign to buy the in-laws love and adoration with baked goods, the squares were part of this Christmas’ homemade present. I’m thankful that Latvians have a hearty constitution after endearing all those years under Russian occupation. Who else could stomach a lump of sawdust and call it festive?

This Christmas, I’ll be filling people’s stockings with Chipster-Topped Brownies, assuming I don’t succumb to a sugar-induced coma before then. These are bit-sized morsels of insanity. I under-baked these a bit, which some hypercritical-but-otherwise lovely and supportive mother suggested was some sort of violation of international baking laws. She was wrong, of course. That gooey chocolate brownie topped with the golden buttery chocolate chip layer should be nominated for a Nobel peace prize. One little square could ease tensions in the middle east (they’re kosher, aren’t they?). I have to admit; I was a little scared about spreading such heavy cookie dough on top of the brownie dough. I might try to flip the layers next time, just to see (that sounds like a legitimate reason to make another batch, doesn’t it?). These do fit nicely in a cookie jar, but they certainly don’t last long. Certainly not long enough for me to take a picture.

So to replenish my woeful makeshift cookie jar (how could I neglect to register for something so essential?!?!), I whipped up a batch of chocolate malted milk ball cookies while I was at the cottage. I’m not usually a fan of chocolate cookies, but I quite like these ones. They’re a bit more cake-like than cookie-like so they’re almost like a whoopee pie texture, but filled with chocolate chunks and malted milk balls. Brilliant really. My one adjustment would be to leave the malted milk balls whole. Chopped up, they disappeared too much for my liking. I much preferred biting into that crunchy texture against the silky chocolate dough. And my mother did demur that they looked too much like ‘turds’ for her dainty sensibilities, but really, don’t all lumpy chocolate baked goods look like pooh? C’mon.

While I don’t have kids yet, these are the sort of cookies that make you daydream about sitting at the kitchen table with a mop-topped kid talking about their day at school over a cookie and a glass of milk. That never really happened with my mom, but if it happens on tv, it must be possible in real life too, right?

Said imaginary kids will not be getting any of the newly baptized Yukon Chip Cookies. The other day, I improvised a batch of milk chocolate, white chocolate and toffee chip cookies for the IE before he sets off to the Yukon for the summer. They did not last long enough to get a picture either. They were a classic buttery chip recipe with excessive amounts of the above-mentioned chips tossed in and they were pretty much the perfect cookie – chewy and caramely with the warm squigginess of melted chocolate. They’re absolutely deadly, but should win the IE some instant friends on the crew when he gets his weekly care package. And no, that’s not bribery. That’s love.


Off to get my own copy of the new Baked Bakeshop Cookbook. How do you know about everything? You are my culinary lifeline.

Yours in cookies,
Pickle

Tuesdays with SORRY!

Forgive me, Pickle my blog-mate, for I have sucked. It has been – ohmigod has it really been that long since I posted? Jeez, I really do suck. I wouldn’t be speaking to me if I were you. I’m not speaking to me, in fact. Especially after I essentially dessert-bombed your first Mother’s Day with your MIL. Wowza. (Y’know, I don’t trust Malgieri either. I had a big dinner party flop from one of his recipes a good ten years ago and I still haven’t forgiven him. Also, do you ever find it harder to do your own challenge? It’s like tickling yourself, it’s just harder to get off on your own challenge! AND there have been raccoons in my attic, a new and disturbing fascination with making over my garden and which points to the fact that my mother IS colonizing me, speech therapy and assorted childhood diseases for Pretzel, teething for Peanut, major computer problems - and lotsa deadlines for a certain mutual friend who likes things turned around fast…)

This slowness on my part is also a testament to the fact that I seem to have a mental block and think anything with a crust is far more difficult than it is. I kept waiting for an expanse of time to make my chocolate-crusted tart – and the fact is that I didn’t need anything near an ‘expanse’. I whipped off this quite lovely Chocolate Crusted Strawberry Rhubarb Tart in a very economical half-an-hour!!! The recipe is courtesy of Caprial Pence, who I remember from the very early days of Food Network as a little stiff on the hosting side, and anything but stiff on creating delicate French-esque flavour combos. And this tart does remind me of the enviable way a french girl dresses - classic and well put together, but with an unexpected, understated twist. The chocolate crust.

Speaking of, I know what you’re thinking. Chocolate and rhubarb. Weird. Potentially barf-worthy. I was full of trepidation – but I also had a yard full of rhubarb and I’m too bone-lazy to freeze it. I hoped that the strawberry would somehow marry the two. But the strawberry was a light flavour, and the surprise ingredient was another thing that filled my trepidation basket. Orange peel. Orange and chocolate are friends, orange and rhubarb are friends… Together, it was an elegant and juicy combo. Mr. Salty said he couldn’t believe the amount of work I’d put into this ‘clearly difficult dessert’. I let him have his illusions. Hey, marriage must have its mysteries.

I’d recommend trying this crust, it’s got quite a delicate flavour with only two tablespoons of cocoa and it just kind of rich-ed up (what’s the actual word I want there?) the whole tart. It was a nice and easy press-in crust and I felt silly for having not made it earlier. Mental baking blocks – who knew? Maybe I need some kind of a coach.

It’s not like I haven’t been baking since posting the challenge.
I also kept up with some of the Tuesdays with Dorie challenges. Here is a platter (beautiful cake plate courtesy of YOU!) that I took to a parenting group evening I had to go to – this is what you get when you ask me to provide snacks for one meeting. I mean, you do have to put up with the subversive mom rolling her eyes in the back corner and laughing at inappropriate moments in what is meant to be a sincere forum. But in exchange you get this (instead of the perfunctory box of Timbits some of the other parents have brought when it was their turn. Tsk.) In the foreground are Cappuccino Squares, a variant of Cinnamon Squares. These were – meh. Nice and simple and appealing in a snacking cake way, topped with fast and impressive ganache - and yet, a little dry. And I know I didn’t overmix, I tend to undermix if anything. Meh. I have a few more in the freezer if you want to come by (I know, I’m sooooo good at invitations.)

In the middle, some Rhubarb Squares. Because I DO honestly have a yard full of rhubarb. These aren’t a Dorie recipe but were nice and old-fashioned and simple, a shortbread crust with a super-fast version of pie filling. (Some of these in the freezer too!)

In the back, and unfortunately not-too-visible, another Dorie special – Chipster-Topped Brownies. Dude, these should not exist and trust me, there are none left in the freezer. Because they are – get this – brownies that are topped with chocolate chip cookies. This is insane. Forget gilding the lily. Honestly, these are like gilding the UNICORN. Chewy cookie, gooey brownie, 8,000 calories of butter. Holy heck. I made people faint at the parent group and at work. Unlike the tart, though, these are a lot of work and it maybe doesn’t show as much as you'd like when you've slaved away. You have to make two full batters. So I won’t be rushing to make them again – which is a good thing, considering I am probably responsible for a number of pounds of parent and coworker weight gain.

Here is some of Dorie’s Mango Bread, which I gather is like Banana or Zucchini Bread for those who get to live in exotic Florida (where they have rhubarb problems year-round…) I was not a big fan of this on first taste as it has a lot of spice, lime and raisins. It was – GASP! – a little fruitcake-y. Ugh. This made Mr. Salty (who loves his fruitcakes) happy but made me very sad. But then, two days later, a revelation. This cake aged beautifully, all of the flavours mellowing out and letting the mango come through. Quite nice! Will definitely try again.

Here are some of her Coconut Thins, made with a rather unique technique of rolling out between two plastic baggies. Delicate, stuffed with macadamia nuts, coconut and lime and completely at home alongside tea. But I’m afraid they were too delicate for my tastes – I’m more an unsubtle brownie type, apparently!

In between I also made Oatmeal Cookies for a playgroup that Pretzel was in and some tasty Baked Bars from the new Baked Bakeshop Cookbook – like 7-layer bars, but THICK, like two inches thick, and insane with three kinds of chips (chocolate, butterscotch and white chocolate. Can you believe this? I told you – I’m unsubtle to the core.) I am obviously reaching some kind of new baking cardio fitness level and will be all over your cookie jar challenge! The boys at my house thank you for issuing it! (And ‘Magaloo’? Cutest name ever - to go with the cutest little thing ever!)

I promise to try and write WAY more often.

Miss you,

Gumdrop

Who Stole the Cookie?

Dear Gumdrop-


Haven’t heard from you lately, which I assume means you’re on the front lines of the busy mom war. Balancing work and the little ones must be grueling, but maybe this little mini-challenge will help you claim a small victory. Since my niece Magaloo is coming this weekend, I thought I’d take inspiration from your quest to quell the impeding teenage disdain by plying her with baked goods. So, the only criteria for this one is it’s gotta fit in a cookie jar!

Xo
P

Patron Saint of Bakers

Salut Gumdrop,

Having just stuffed myself with an enormous, melty chocolate chip walnut cookie from Le Gourmand, I finally feel able to recount my experience with chocolate pastry.

I know a poor worker blames her tools, but I’m going to lay the blame for this catastrophe firmly at the feet of Nick Malgieri and his book The Modern Baker. More specifically, I’ll blame the gorgeous look of the book. Like a complete sucker, I feel for its fresh and modern style, but when I started to make Chocolate Pecan Tart with Chocolate Nut Dough, I just knew I was in for a bad run. Have you ever had a moment like that? You’re only on the first step and it already feels wrong? I must have read the recipe five times just to find out what temperature to set the oven.

The dough was easy enough to prepare, but utterly uninspiring during the experience. Likewise, the filing wasn’t complicated in and of itself, but I did ask for a bit of trouble by making this a large tart instead of tartlets (having received a ruffled tart pan for the wedding, I wanted to use it. A fine lesson in what you want isn’t what you need). This meant that my chocolate caramel ganache didn’t set properly. Regardless of that little disaster, the chocolate overwhelmed the caramel flavour, so I wondered what purpose the caramel really served?

With all the bad mojo during the baking, I had a sense that all might not be right with this tart. I decided that I needed to try this beastie before I served it to the in-laws for Mother’s Day. It wasn’t good. It looked so awful when cut; I couldn’t even bring myself to photograph it. Some things only a mother can love, but that’s not the case with mothers-in-law, is it? For a split second, I thought I could pretend the IE made it instead of me, but as my father would say, that was just too far-fetched a story. In the end, I whipped up an emergency Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding instead. Once again, Dorie saved the day. She should be the patron saint of bakers.

The true casualty of this experience is that I was totally unwilling to work with nuts and ganache again and scrapped my plans to make the Hazelton Sandwich Cookie for the Cookie Carnival. Instead, I whipped up a Red Velvet Cake during the weekend up at the cottage.

Red Velvet Cake has had a bit of a popularity surge recently, but it’s a nostalgic cake for me. Every girl has one of those childhood movies we inexplicably adorable and for me, it’s Steel Magnolias. I think because it reminded me of my mom and her gaggle of girlfriends, who each reminded me of those magnolias. For a while, I had a version of my future that involved marrying a Louisiana lawyer and arguing over a Red Velvet Armadillo Groom’s Cake (not that whole diabetes/no children thing).

The movie was the first time I’d ever heard about the cake and my imagination ran wild wondering what it would actually taste like since neither the colour red nor velvet itself had much of a discernible flavour as far as I could tell. So one year when my family was in Myrtle Beach for our annual vacation and my mom and I came across a Red Velvet Cake at the Harris Tweeter or Piggly Wiggly (have you noticed that all Southern grocery stores seemed to be named after cartoon characters?), we had to try it. Now, I can’t recall if it had a cream cheese frosting (I suspect it didn’t), but that cake was just not right. It was the most peculiar, flavourless thing and everyone except my grandfather refused eat it after the first bite.

Maybe some things just need a little time to grow on you, but this version from Epicurious was delicious and charming in its simplicity (it was the cottage, so I didn’t bother with a crumb coat, making it the homely thing here). When the hubby says, "it’s so good, I want to lick my teeth," I think it’s something that’s going to stay in the repertoire for a good long while. All those Steel Magnolias would be proud.

Px

Guilt Be Gone

Oh Gumdrop, your baking industriousness is a thing of true beauty as are your noble efforts to fuel your children’s love with cookies. It’s an absolutely brilliant plan and even if it all goes pear-shaped by 2015, you’ll at least have the memory of all those sticky kisses from the golden days of toddler love.

You see, I’ve been feeling a little guilty lately about all the baking I’ve been doing. It’s the prime contributor to the newlywed 15 the IE and I are battling. But now I’ll HAVE TO bake cookies to honour my commitment to the cookie carnival (buying a bike to ride to work is also helping with the guilt). Maybe I should run to the market right now to pick up some fresh lemons and almonds….

Px

Slices of Spring - Lemon Bars for the Cookie Carnival...

Greetings Pickle -

Even though Pretzel and Peanut are only 2 and 9 months old respectively, I am already very worried about the teen years and the hatred they are bound to feel for me! Daily, I wonder to myself - how can I curry enough favour to keep the teen hatred at the 'mild' setting? One of my preventative strategies, cribbed from my Nana, is to always have a jarful of homemade cookies on my counter. Surely eleven years of homemade cookies will earn me a place in their hearts, no matter what an embarrassing dork I actually am. Right? Right???

This full jar policy led me to the folks who are having a great time over at the Cookie Carnival. Each month, they pick a new cookie recipe. How fun is that? I know - as much fun as a carnival! It was dreamed up by the talented and amusing Kate over at The Clean Plate Club, and this month's recipe and round-up are courtesy of the sweet baking machine called Holly over at Phe/MOM/enon.

I have to admit that the Toasted Almond Lemon Bars chosen for this first month didn't fit neatly into my cookie jar, so that was a little sad from the get-go. I have to admit also that I'm not even a giant lemon bar fan, although I know this puts me in the minority in the world. But they are from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book , and as you know I loved the recipe for Pretzel's birthday cake which came from the same source. And they did scream Spring. So I dug in!

The unique thing about this recipe is that it features ground, toasted almonds right in the crust and almond extract in the filling. I LOVE almond flavoured things. These, though, were a little too subtle in the almond department IMHO. If I make them again, I'll definitely up the almond content. However, where they were perfectly subtle was in the lemon department. They weren't all sour and puckery like too many of those lemon bars that use peel. I took some to a job, and the boss was very vocal about not liking lemon squares because they're too tart. And then she ate three. So I am now an office favourite, thanks to the bars. Who could ask for more?

Actually, I could - because Pretzel gave me a giant sticky hug after the lemon bar he got for dessert tonight. And then, before I noticed, 9-month-old Peanut grabbed a huge hunk of crust and chowed down on that with little hums of satisfaction. And then Columbo the dog licked the crumbs up with apparent doggy glee. Ahhhhh. Another deposit into my Anti-Teen-Hatred Account.

Toasted Almond Lemon Bars

From The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy

For the Crust:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup confectioners' sugar

1/2 cup sliced blanched almonds, lightly toasted

1/2 teaspoon salt

20 Tablespoons (2 1/2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

For the Lemon Filling:

4 large eggs

1 3/4 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 7 lemons)

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar for sprinkling

To Toast the Almonds:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the almonds in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until lightly golden and you can smell them. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Before You Start:

Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9 x 13 - inch pan with nonstick vegetable cooking spray. Make a parchment "sling" by cutting two pieces of parchment paper, measuring 16 1/2 inches long by 12 inches wide (you can also use aluminum foil). Place one piece across the length, and the other across the width of the pan, with the excess hanging over the edges. You will use this sling later to lift the finished bar from the pan. Spray the sling with the cooking spray.

To Make the Crust:

1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade, pulse the flour, sugar, almonds, and salt to combine. Add the cold butter in pieces and pulse until the dough comes together in a ball.

2. Turn the dough out into the prepared pan and press evenly into the bottom and 1 1/4 inches up the sides. (This crust, once it is baked, needs to act as a liner in which to pour the liquidy lemon filling. So be sure to do a good job of pressing the dough up the sides - no cracks!). Cover the dough with a piece of parchment paper or aluminum foil, and fill with pie weights ( you can use dried beans or uncooked rice as pie weights as well). Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until lightly golden. Carefully remove the pie weights and the liner and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until the whole crust is golden. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

To Make the Filling:

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until smooth. Add the almond extract and flour, and whisk until smooth. Add the lemon juice, and whisk to combine.

To Complete the Bars:

1. Pour the lemon filling into the prepared crust. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees F. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the filling is firm and lightly golden. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

2. When cool use the parchment sling to lift the entire bar from the pan and onto a cutting board. Slice into twelve 3 x 3 1/2 - inch bars. Remove from the pan and, using a small sifter, dust with the confectioners' sugar.

Challenge: Conquer Chocolate Crust...

Dear Pickle:

This is your fault - because those butter tarts WERE fun and got me into pastry mode. And I'm seriously jonesing to pull out that rolling pin again... So, the new challenge is:

Chocolate Pastry, in a pie or tart of your choice. I've never made it, but it sounds divine - and how could it fail to make so many pies and tarts that much better?

Martha has a recipe for chocolate pate sucree here.

I think I'm going to try Cindy Mushet's from her beautiful new 'Art and Soul of Baking'. Cindy warns that you have to be very careful not to burn it as you can't use the usual golden brown indicator to tell you when it's done...

Enjoy!

x
Gumdrop

Butter Tarts: The Easter Maker

Cher Pickle:


Well, this is the kinda challenge guaranteed to put a grin on the face of a small town Ontario gal! Butter tarts are kinda just burned into the DNA, aren’t they? In my case an appreciation for the tart is sandwiched right between the gene that allows me to find a Pepsi anywhere within a two-mile area and the gene that assures I am quite decent at a game of catch, even if years have elapsed since the last one. (We will leave the gene which gives me a genuine appreciation for the Jell-o salad for another day.)

Just right off the top I will declare my rules. Not ‘preferences’, rules. Tarts must be made in a muffin tin, not any kind of tart tin, which makes them too delicate and ultimately pretentious. In this case, even though I enjoy a soft pastry on a pie, the pastry must be crispy. And there must be NOTHING other than delicious goo in the middle of the tart. No raisins, nuts, coconut, currants, extraneous pastry cut-outs. NOTHING. Part of this preference is due to the fact that I come down very firmly on the side of runny (hee). One bite should send the filling pouring down your fingers and off your elbow. You should be consumed with panic at the thought of missing one delicious drop. Fillings just dam up the flow and distract from the delightful gooeyness of it all. My favourite kind of butter tart almost makes an argument for being eaten with a spoon – although you cannot, that’s another rule, but it should be tempting.

My current cookbook collection is decidedly lacking in a good butter tart recipe – most of the older vintage books are still in boxes after our recent move. (What do you mean fourteen months ago doesn’t count as ‘recent’?) But I do have to say that I TOO love the Five Roses cookbook and was excited to hear that you use it – if only I’d been able to locate it in the basement! It contains the ONLY correct recipes in the world for both peanut butter cookies and pineapple upside-down cake. (Although I am a little freaked out by the butchering diagrams, something that has bothered me since childhood. I think maybe reading the Five Roses is when I first realized that meat came from animals.)

Anyway, speaking of lard, I got a pastry recipe here at Home & Country magazine. It’s quite a good one - rest assured, though, no lard. I felt instinctively that the tablespoon of icing sugar was right. Also the bit of vinegar. Although, of course, I had to replace half the shortening with butter. That’s how I get down. But it did feel specifically like a pastry for butter tarts, which is a nice thing.

Agree with you completely on the surprising ease of making tarts. I don’t make them often because they seem fussy in my head – but in fact they are in some ways easier than a pie crust because you don’t have to fuss with a perfect circle or creating a large area at exactly the same thickness. Maybe the muffin tin makes this still easier because there is no fluting or forking required!

So I made the crust the day before Easter and went to make the filling the morning of. But with family coming over soon, I couldn’t devote the time needed to finding the perfect filling recipe. I felt like I wanted a little actual MAPLE in my tarts. (Does that make them into Tarte au Sucre instead? Are you no longer my friend? Did I go too twee with the Canada theme here?) So I went with this recipe from Canadian Living magazine, which seemed an a propos source. To their credit, they said it was 'custardy' right from the top...

In the interest of family harmony, I did hold my nose and add nuts to a few (for my mom) and raisins to a few others (for Mr. Salty). I left half of them straight up for my dad and I, who know how to eat things properly.

There was a minor squabble when my mother, alone in the kitchen, ate one that got stuck in the tin and tried to blame the transgression on my completely innocent dad. But otherwise the harmony was indeed preserved. After an Easter dinner, they may have been a less-than-traditional dessert, but they were delicious. And we were glad.

However, I still feel the need to make a proper runny batch because these weren’t it - and now there's an itch which must be scratched!!! I think I will use this crust recipe again but I may have to forego my maple pref. Will report back when/if my real butter tart itch gets scratched!

xxx
G

PS - The pictures are of only one tart - because that's all that was left!!! Must learn to unabashedly take pics before serving food...

Battle: Butter Tarts

Like you, Gumdrop, I was in need of a baking challenge. I needed to muck about with flour and measuring cups, butter and rolling pins. I needed it desperately. I tied on my armor (okay, apron) and braced for battle.

You see, I decided to solve my own conundrum: which butter tart is best? Would it be the pastry made with pure butter or did a little shortening give a flakier crust? And having never imagined a world where butter tarts had corn syrup (isn’t that cheating?), I had to taste it for myself. Of course with 48 tarts on the loose in my house, I definitely needed to enlist help in determining which tart was best. Luckily, my mother’s birthday was looming and I’d have a captive, butter tart loving panel.

The opponents in this battle would be brash new school Wanda’s Pie in the Sky (Batch A), a local bakery that uses corn syrup in the filling and a pure butter pastry versus old school Five Roses (Batch B) with a classic butter tart recipe of straight butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs, but whose pastry was half butter, half shortening. I will admit to a certain partiality to the Five Roses recipe based on pure nostalgia since it’s the cookbook my mother and grandmother used as their baking bible. It’s Prized Shortbread recipe is the only enduring family Christmas baking tradition that my non-baker of a mother adheres to (probably because my brother and I would mutiny on the whole obligatory family thing otherwise).

With the soldiers prepared for battle, I whipped up the pastry. I’ll admit, I always feel some trepidation with pastry making, but with a little preparation and respect for procedure, my confidence has grown. Chill the fat, ice the water and refrigerate the dough before rolling it and you’re pretty much guaranteed that it will turn out well. And how fun is it to use a gadget like a pastry cutter? My lovely metal one from Williams Sonoma even has a little divet for your thumb. Very clever.

While tarts may seem a tedious when you contemplate having to roll out the pastry and cut out all those little circles, it really is very therapeutic. As someone’s days are a chaotic mélange of people and ideas, it’s nice to escape to something that demands time and patience. Up to my elbows in flour, music wafting through the kitchen, it’s probably about as Zen as I get.

As for the fillings, they were essentially the same except for that addition of the corn syrup.

I mixed it up by making each version with and without currants (you’d be court marshaled for nuts or raisins in this girl’s culinary army). Watching the filling bubble and bronze in the oven, I couldn’t help but admire the simple beauty of this humble little Canadian treat. Maybe it’s just a symptom of the times, but I’m going through a love affair with homey looking dishes right now. The days of fiddling with pristine pastry leaves and edible gold leaf seem like punch-drunk opulence now, all style and status and devoid of flavour and sincerity. Maybe I’m romanticizing those poor little tarts, setting them up for a mighty fall when some flashy gâteau catches my eye, but for now, I’d much prefer to nestle up with a lumpy homemade pottery mug of tea and a comfy rough hewn dessert.

The IE was on the frontlines of the taste test, plucking a golden orb almost straight from the oven. To offset the scalding nectar, he doused the poor thing with vanilla ice cream. Thus, he was an immediate fan of Batch A’s very runny filling as it mingled with the melting ice cream. Ooey gooey goodness, as he called it.

Personally, I’m not a fan of a dessert that needs a dribble bib, but the pastry had a lovely colour and tasted delicious (vast lashings of butter does that). So with one vote very firmly cast for Batch A, we sent off to visit the family, armed to the teeth with baking ammunition (What’s a birthday without cupcakes and a giant cupcake cake? This frosting, much like the one you made for Pretzel’s birthday, except with gobs of melted chocolate, is like eating chocolate mousse on cake toast. It’s definitely the kind of frosting you eat straight from the bowl in a frenzy until someone (like your startled new husband) discovers you with it smeared all over your face and you know the only way to not be judged is if you offer them a spoon, but your greedy neediness makes you hesitate to share a joy so pure babies would weep. Yes, I like this recipe).

But back to the butter tarts. Firstly, butter tarts in general are always a crowd pleaser. It doesn’t seem like anyone hates a butter tart if they’re over the age of 5. Mom, Bro and Nou (my bff) all chose Batch B, vehemently in favour of the flaky crust and the firmer, less sweet filling. A true and magnanimous butter tart lover, my dad was happy with both versions and demonstrated his affection by eating them until he got a stomachache.

I was completely alone in my currant preference, but most generals rule alone, don’t they?

Px

I’m feeling a little sleepy on this rainy Spring evening, so I’ll post the butter tart recipes later this week since both are so old school, I can’t track them down online.