afternoons in tablespoons

March 12th, 2010

apple strudel.

It’s a trip to Germany this week at afternoons in tablespoons. Last weekend, Kenan and I planned to head over to Chris and Jodi’s place to catch up on Lost and do some hanging out. Chris is part German, spent some time in Berlin last year and seems to have a general delight for all things Deutschland. So when I was scheming about things to make for the gathering, I immediately decided strudel would be sufficiently delicious and German-themed. I’d never tried it before, so I thought it’d be fun to give it a whirl.

Ja, voll (yea, verily).

And as luck would have it, my new, hefty, exciting baking tome had a recipe for strudel. I was most intrigued by the dough: strudel is made not like traditional pastry, for which one prepares a dough that has a very high fat to lean ratio and needs to be turned one or two times before use, but rather with a very elastic paste that is rolled out and then stretched until it reaches almost the breaking point. Apples are not exactly in season, but I decided to go with an apple strudel anyway, because none of the other fillings suggested in the book looked alluring, and also because those were the only passable fruits I could find at our local grocery store.

I started on Saturday morning, stopping at the farmer’s market and grocery store to get fruit and other sundries. Back home, I got cooking. I placed some flour, water and salt in my new standing mixer and kneaded the dough for 10 minutes, until it got super stretchy and supple and sticky. Then I coated it with some oil, wrapped it up in plastic and set it aside to rest. Resting the dough allows the gluten structure to relax; if the dough is not allowed to rest, it can overstress the gluten and cause the dough to tear and become tough. After a few hours of resting, the dough was ready to roll out.

I laid a linen cloth out on my work surface and dusted it heavily with flour. The fabric facilitates the stretching process and also allows the filled dough to be easily rolled up and transferred to the baking pan. At any rate, I then placed my little doughy friend in the center of the cloth and rolled it out. Because the dough is so elastic, it’s incredibly easy to work with as long as you keep dusting the work surface and the top of the dough with flour to prevent sticking. After it was rolled out, I coated the rolled dough with some butter, covered it, and allowed it to rest for another 20 minutes or so.

In the meantime, I prepared the ingredients for the filling. I heated up the oven and then peeled, cored and chopped a mixture apples (granny smiths, jonagolds and pippins) and stirred them together with some sugar and spices. Then I weighed out some bread crumbs and mixed them with some melted butter. After that, it was time to give the dough its final stretching and fill the strudel. I enlisted Kenan to help me with the stretching process, as it’s a bit of a two-person job. We stood on either side of the work table and gently slid our hands to the middle of the dough, lifting and gently pulling the dough toward ourselves. We got a few little tears, which I chalked up to our being first-time strudel stretchers. I was a bit worried about the tears, but I was able to patch the holes up fairly satisfactorily with some of the dough from the sides. Then I coated the dough with a bit more butter, sprinkled the whole lot with the bread crumb mixture, and strewed the apples at the edge. Then it was time to roll everything up, which was a bit of a harrowing task.

You see, when the dough is stretched out, it’s about 21 inches long and 15 inches wide; not exactly petite. But I rolled up my sleeves and went at it, using the towel to fold the dough over the apples and quickly (or rather, as quickly as possible) roll everything up into an at least somewhat picturesque little package. I was then faced with another problem: getting the sizable strudel log (ahem) onto my tiny, Brooklyn kitchen-sized baking pan. The dough, as I mentioned, is already stretched to the breaking point and fairly difficult to handle without tearing, which further complicated an already delicate task. I ended up dealing with the situation by gently nudging and cajoling the strudel onto the pan with a combination of shaking and prodding and then bending the dough into a sort of crescent shape once the bulk of it was safely on the pan. Then I cut some steam vents along the top of the strudel and coated the lot with some more butter. Then it was into the oven with my little German guy.

Baking and Pastry says the strudel should take about 45 minutes to bake, but for whatever reason, my oven took forever with this thing. But eventually, well past the 75 minute mark, the thing looked done: ever-so-slightly golden brown and crackly around the edges and top. I took it out of the oven and wrapped it up for its journey over the Chris and Jodi’s place.

lost and treats.

Over at Chris and Jodi’s place, we ordered some food and settled into a couple episodes of Lost and some growlers full of delicious beer. After we had done a small modicum of digesting, we tucked into the strudel. The crust was incredibly difficult to cut through and necessitated an inordinate amount of sawing. Taste-wise, it was rather bland: the texture was nice, but it didn’t have the buttery tenderness that I look for in a good pastry. The filling was good, but not terribly inspiring or amazing. All in all, I think there are some improvements I could make to this guy, but it’s a pretty good starting place nonetheless.

Ja!

apple strudel

get your precise prussian recipe below the fold.

Posted by girlcate in fruit, pastry | leave a note ≈

February 22nd, 2010

bittersweet chocolate dipped macaroons

Snow days. You probably heard all about it on the news: massive snowstorm batters the east coast, end of the world as we know it, we’ll never be able to leave our houses again, Fox News makes outrageously irresponsible and and misinformed statements about global warming, yadda yadda yadda. What it meant for me was that I got to leave work at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. It was amazing; it felt like skipping out of school at recess. And what was even better than the coming home early was that there was ample time to bake. So I pulled out Elinor Klivans’ wonderful Big Fat Cookies, looking for an inspiring idea for cookies. I’ve made many of the recipes from Klivans’ book before, but not in recent years, as my copy lives at my mom’s house. But I was wanting to make some of those recipes again, so a few weeks ago, I went out and bought a new copy, and I’ve since spent a bit of time reacquainting myself with the aforementioned big, fat cookies. And so, on that snowy, blustery afternoon, I chose a recipe for chocolate-dipped macaroons, because, well, macaroons are awesome. Let’s get to it, shall we?

oh, macaroons.

I made a quick list of ingredients and went, perhaps foolishly, back out into the snow to the grocery store (luckily, I had Kenan at my side, for moral support and also to make sure I didn’t disappear under a snowdrift). Somehow, we survived the muck and arrived back at the apartment, armed with baking supplies and treats from Champion, ready for some snow day baking time.

These coconut-chocolate babies are lovely and simple. First, I mixed together some sweetened shredded coconut, sweetened condensed milk, salt, and vanilla and almond extracts. Ms. Klivans’ recipe calls for a surprising amount of almond extract (1 1/2 teaspoons), which, even as someone who adores the stuff and uses it every chance she can get, I found a bit excessive. But I decided to trust the lady’s tastebuds and adjust things later if need be. In any case, then I whipped a large egg white with cream of tartar until it formed soft peaks, added some sugar, and whipped again until it formed those oh-so-desirable shiny, stiff peaks. Then I folded the whites into the coconut and we were ready for business. I dropped the cookies in large spoonfuls onto a lined baking sheet and popped them in the oven. Roughly 20 minutes later, they had puffed up a bit and gotten ever so slightly golden brown. I let them cool completely and then did the chocolate dip thing, melting bittersweet chocolate with a tiny bit of oil to make it shiny and then allowing it to cool just enough to thicken slightly. Then I dipped the bottoms of my cookie friends into the chocolate and flipped them upside down, allowing the chocolate to set completely.

holding hands, eating macaroons.

Even though we wanted to keep our little mounds of coconut happiness to ourselves, we decided it would be more neighborly (and better, in the end, for the well-being of our stomachs) if we brought them downstairs to share with Coach n’ Boots. And they were spectacular: chewy, a bit crispy on the outside, moist, and just generally delectable. I think my doubts about the amount of almond were correct, however: the macaroons were delicious, but the taste of almond was just a bit overwhelming. My other concern about these guys is the amount of processed stuff that goes into them. I have no desire to know what sweetened shredded coconut actually is, but I’m sure making it involves lots of chemicals and processing and other generally icky stuff. And I have similar concerns with sweetened condensed milk. All of this is not to denigrate the recipe; it’s fantastic, and they’re probably the best macaroons I’ve ever had. I’m just saying that I’ll probably want to return to the macaroon, to see if I can’t make something just as moist and incredible with regular, unsweetened, unprocessed shredded coconut and, you know, without the canned milk.

But for now, throw caution to the wind and luxuriate in some awesome macaroons. I mean, it’s certainly still winter outside, and how else are we all going to keep our winter padding on?

macaroons!

make macaroons to your hearts delight and get yr recipes, over this-a-way

Posted by girlcate in chocolate, cookies | leave a note ≈

February 14th, 2010

chocolate pie!

Chocolate pie, my friends. I think that’s pretty much all one needs to know. Last weekend was super duper cold in this city, and the cold always ups my craving for comfort foods. We had a small get-together on Friday night, wherein Boots made delicious, delectable pizza, and I pulled out a recipe for a chocolate souffle pie from the good folks over at chocolate bar. I’d made it before, a few years ago, and had nothing but fond memories of sinking my teeth into this rich, chocolatey, melty pie; I was certainly ready to relive the experience.

mixings and fixings.

chocolate bar’s recipe is fantastic, and fantastically simple: a basic sweet pie crust is filled with a rich chocolate pudding-esque liquid and then baked for about an hour. The result is a pie that is creamy, indulgent and messy (well, at least messy if you don’t chill it, which I don’t). The only thing that’s even remotely a to-do is the crust, which really is only time-intensive insofar as it involves a modicum of advance planning. I picked up some ingredients on my way home from work on Friday and set to work straight away, so the crust would have ample time to chill before any baking happened. In my food processor, I mixed together some flour, sugar, salt and butter, and then added iced water until the dough started to clump together. Then I turned it out onto a piece of parchment paper, wrapped it up and placed it in the chill box for a few hours. Then it was downstairs to Coach and Boots’ place to see what was happening.

I’ve mentioned Boots several times in this here blog-thing, but what I don’t believe I’ve written about are her prodigious cooking skills. Seriously, the lady cooks a mean dinner. And what’s even more remarkable about that particular talent of hers is her ability to look in her fridge, see five or six seemingly (at least to the untrained (i.e., my) eye) disparate and non-complementary ingredients and magically create an awesome, hearty, tasty meal. What’s more, she never seems to make the exact same thing twice. Seriously, I may be pretty good at this whole baking thing, but Boots is an artist when it comes to meal preparation. All of which is to say that her meals are looked forward to and enjoyed with relish on the part of Kenan and myself. Which is why we went knocking on her door on Friday night, bearing pie dough and coyly asking what was happening for dinner. And sure enough, Boots was in the middle of chopping up vegetables and rolling out pizza dough, and Coach was breaking out a new tin of white truffle oil (holy moly). It just so happened that Chris and Jodi were coming over, and there was more than enough pizza to go around. Hooray for comfort food.

high time for pie time.

Everyone chipped in and helped make the pizza, and it was lovely and amazing, and we ate each small, delectable pie with joy in our bellies. After the pizza baking was done and we had sated our appetites for cheesy goodness, I took the pie dough out of the fridge and cleared some space to roll it out. This particular crust recipe is very dry, so things got a bit crumbly and stuff, but it was easy enough to roll out and patch together where it was needed. Then I placed the dough in the pie pan, crimped the edges and set it in the fridge to cool a bit before baking. When the crust had firmed up sufficiently, I popped it in the oven to pre-bake, and about 20 minutes later, the crust had turned a light tan color and smelled of butter and sugar. I got a bit concerned about halfway through the baking process because the bottom of the crust had started to sweat and looked greasy (due to the high ratio of fat to lean material), but it dried out and baked up nicely in the end. After I’d nestled the baked crust on the window ledge to cool its heels until baking time, I was ready to move on to the filling.

And, as luck would have it, the filling is just as reassuringly and heartwarmingly simple to prepare as the crust. First, I mixed some gigantic eggs with a bit of flour, some sugar, vanilla extract, and salt. Then I melted chocolate, butter and cream and mixed the chocolate into the egg mixture. I poured the whole lot into the pie crust, but there was still quite a bit left, so I poured the rest into muffin molds so we could have mini muffin friends. I know; really awesome.

After the pie had baked for about an hour, the top was puffy and ever so slightly cracked and smelled of chocolate and butter in the best way. And it was so, so very delicious. The crust was flaky and buttery and tender, and the filling was luxurious and sweet – all in all, absolutely amazing. Granted, it’s also very rich, so be careful when eating large amounts of it if you want to avoid a tummy ache, but otherwise, it’s a home run.

So make some pie, before spring creeps up on you and leaves you terrified that you’ll actually be expected to leave your apartment.

melty chocolate pie

get a recipe and a tummy ache, below the fold

Posted by girlcate in chocolate, pies & tarts | 6 notes ≈

February 8th, 2010

fussy chestnut cake

Apparently, I was in the mood for some fancy-pants baking this past weekend. Like, multiple-day, million-step, fussy-as-can-be baking. As I mentioned in my last post, I’d been fantasizing recently about chestnuts. I just love those little guys so much; they’re sweet, they’re meaty, and I feel like they’re a bit underutilized in the baking world. I mean, sure, one always hears about chestnuts going in turkey stuffing or whatnot, and of course there are always those dudes selling them on the street, but I don’t think I see chestnut desserts quite as often as would be desirable. So I started poking around for something inspiring to do with chestnuts, and lo, I found one over at the Queen of Domesticity’s place: a chestnut cake filled with chestnut pastry cream, frosted with a bittersweet ganache, and finally topped again with a chocolate-armagnac glaze. Holy moly.

can you say fussy?

Okay, so let me get one thing out there: I’m not the hugest fan of Martha Stewart, but I think she’s awesome at what she does, and generally, her recipes are really quite outstanding. So when I saw a recipe for chestnut cake on her site, I thought, “well, this looks a bit complicated, but certainly worth a try.” We were even planning to go to dinner at Kenan’s dad’s house on Sunday, which gave me at least somewhat of a reason to get this adventurous on what otherwise would have been a fairly sleepy weekend. So, on Saturday morning, I went off to the grocery store to get supplies for this chestnut cake to end all cakes. First on my shopping list was a jar of whole roasted chestnuts, which rang in at a whopping $13. My original thought had been to get fresh chestnuts and roast and shell them myself, but alas, they were nowhere to be found, at least at my usual grocery haunts. Which left me stuck buying an outrageously expensive thing of nuts. At any rate, I also got a bit of armagnac (a type of brandy similar to cognac but made using a different type of still), milk, cream, eggs, and butter.

And then it was time to get started. First step: make a chestnut puree. This involves simmering some chestnuts, half a vanilla bean and some milk until the chestnuts soak up a lot of the liquid and everything cooks down. Then the mixture is strained and pureed until it comes out to about the consistency of a thick hummus. I tasted a bit of it, and it’s seriously, outrageously delicious. It’s sweet, it’s nutty, and I wanted to spread it on toast. So after that was done, make a pastry cream using the aforementioned chestnut puree: whisk some yolks together with sugar, add corn starch and some chestnut stuff, heat up some milk, temper the yolks with the milk, pour everything back into the pan, heat it until it comes to just under a boil, strain it and then let it hang out in an ice bath until fully cool. When those two things were done and I had cleaned everything up (I think I managed to use every mixing bowl in my possession at least twice), I called it quits for the day.

The following afternoon, I started in on the cake. Ms. Stewart’s recipe requested a nine-inch pan but didn’t specify how deep. Because I knew the cake was supposed to be cup into three layers, I figured she meant a springform with thick sides. But all I had was a ten-inch springform, so I threw caution to the wind and used two regular eight-inch pans and cut each of them into two layers, thus creating a four-layer cake. Take that, fussy recipe. So anyway, first, I sifted together the dry ingredients. Then I scraped out the seeds from half a vanilla bean pod and mixed it with some granulated sugar. Next came the butter, which is whipped with the sugar until it gets pale and fluffy, as per usual. Then the egg yolks, and then the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the rest of the chestnut puree and a bit of milk. Then I whipped five egg whites with some sugar until they formed medium-stiff, glossy peaks, and folded that into the other mess. The batter is pretty thick, as these things go: almost like the batter for a tea cake. Then I baked the suckers until they puffed at the top and turned a golden brown, which took about an hour. While the cakes were baking, I whipped up the armagnac simple syrup, which would be coated on the cake layers later. There was still much more to come, but there wasn’t really much I could do to assemble the cake until we got to Kenan’s dad’s place, so I wrapped everything up and we left for Manhattan.

fun times, eating times

Over on the Upper East Side, I sliced the cakes into two layers each and coated them with armagnac syrup. Then I stacked the layers up, topping each one with a layer of pastry cream, and then let the whole lot hang out in the fridge for a while. And then we shared an amazing dinner with Kenan’s family, and, after too much wine and far too much food, it was time to do the rest of the cake. I scurried back to the kitchen and got to work on the whipped frosting. I simmered some heavy cream and then poured it over bitter sweet chocolate and whipped it until it got fluffy. Then I spread it over the cake, let it sit for a few minutes and got started on the glaze while the frosting was setting. I simmered more cream, poured it over more chocolate, let it stand to allow the chocolate to melt, mixed the stuff together, added some armagnac, and then drizzled the whole mess over the cake.

The thing look fantastic: a towering mountain of chocolate and chestnuts, all shiny and aromatic and lovely. I was very, very excited to dig into it. And… I was not entirely thrilled. Sure, the taste of chestnut was great, and the frosting and glaze were delicious, but the cake itself was a bit dry. Kenan’s sister pointed out to me that the texture was not unlike angel food cake, which I think is true. I mean, I don’t have any problem with angel food cake, but there was something a bit chewy about this particular cake that I wasn’t too happy about. Don’t get me wrong; it was certainly a good cake, but it wasn’t great, and I really don’t think it was worth so many hours of preparation and so much fuss to prepare. It also didn’t really seem to be worth the money: two sticks of butter, a lot of whole milk, lots of heavy cream, 14 ounces of baking chocolate, a jar of chestnuts, and armagnac. It is, however, very, very impressive, and not too shabby if you’re willing to put all the work into it. But for myself, I think next time I might do something more straightforward, like a chestnut pudding – perhaps using some of the chestnut puree, which is outstanding, in a more standard pudding or custard recipe.

And that was that. Not the best in the whole world, but still worth the try. Have at it, if you’re up to a challenge.

chesnut cake with chocolate-armagnac glaze.

get fussy and get a recipe, after the jump

Posted by girlcate in cakes, chocolate, nuts | leave a note ≈

January 27th, 2010

gingerbread pudding with almond cream sauce.

A couple of weeks ago, Kenan and I were over at Boots and Coach’s place, enjoying a nice dinner. Afterward, while we were digesting and enjoying some quality bonding time with the sofa, I started leafing through a few cookbooks I had brought over to plan for my next baking adventure. Looking over my shoulder, Boots noticed a recipe for steamed gingerbread pudding and asked, coyly, if I could make something similar for her half-birthday, which fell the following week. I said yes whole-heartedly. I mean, I probably hadn’t heard anybody mention half-birthdays since middle school, but I find something charming about the idea that people in their mid-twenties can still get excited about (and celebrate, and bake for) un-birthdays. So we set the (half-)birthday celebration for last Friday, and I started researching.

cake or pudding?

So first of all, let’s clarify that steamed pudding is not what Americans generally think of as pudding: in Britain, steamed, boiled and baked puddings generally refer to a cakey type of dessert, rather than something custardy or otherwise milk-based. So when you hear someone refer to a steamed pudding, think cake, not cream. Steamed puddings are made from a thin batter which is placed in a sealed container (or a pan covered tightly with foil) and then either baked in a water bath or boiled on the stovetop in a large pot with a steamer rack, depending on the technique. The moisture from the water allows the pudding to stay incredibly moist while at the same time baking up to a nice, fluffy consistency. I’d never done one of these guys before, so I was excited to give them a try. I’d also been thinking for a while about doing something cozy and specifically wintry, and gingerbread definitely fits that bill.

My problem with most ginger-based desserts, however, is that they’re a bit lackluster: sweet, not quite spicy enough and seemingly lacking anything substantial to say for themselves. I like ginger things with a nice little bite to them. I’m not talking about something so kicky it’ll knock your socks off, but I want a little bit of heat: a reminder that I’m eating something with an actual spice in it. Armed with those considerations, I set off to look for an appropriate recipe. And really, I wasn’t quite satisfied with anything I found. Each recipe was either too bland, or too full of weird ingredients, or otherwise not so awesome. But I found one that seemed decent, so I decided to go with it, though I ended up using it as more of a general guide than a specific recipe.

ginger up

On the night of the celebration, Kenan and I headed downstairs to Boots and Coach’s place (they’ve moved into our building; this becomes relevant later on). Boots was making pizza for dinner, so both of us got started on our respective tasks. But as I went to preheat the oven, I realized that Boots was going to have to use said oven for pizza, which would preclude my using it for gingerbread. So I went upstairs and preheated our oven, hoping that I wouldn’t spill the cake all over the stairs when I took it up to bake it or, you know, burn our apartment down. Then, back downstairs, I got started on mixing up the pudding. First, I melted some butter and set it aside to chill out. Next it was time to mix together the dry ingredients: some flour, baking soda, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and, of course, ginger. I whisked three eggs with some brown sugar and then the melted better until the stuff got light and fluffy. Then I mixed some blackstrap molasses (yum!) with honey, hot water, and some very finely chopped fresh ginger. Then I mixed everything together, alternating dry and wet ingredients, and voila! The thing was ready to steam. I hauled the pan upstairs, placed it in a water bath, covered everything with foil, and popped it in the oven for about 40 minutes. And when it came out, oh man, it was fluffy and a nice dark brown and smelled like everything that’s amazing about winter. Now it was time to let the cake cool off a bit and prepare the sauce.

I had elaborate plans for the sauce to go with this cake: I wanted to do something with chestnuts, and I was really interested in making a nice caramel sauce and then mixing in some candied ginger or lemon zest. But this time, owing to laziness and a dearth of the appropriate ingredients, I kept things simple, hoping that the spices in the cake would shine through. I heated up some heavy cream on the stove, whisked it a bit, stirred in a little brown sugar, and finally added some almond butter. I cooked it down for a few minutes, and it was ready to go. And the combination of the sauce and the cake was delicious, and spicy, and creamy, and rich as hell, just as such things should be. There was some debate about what should be the proper ratio of sauce to cake (Coach n’ Boots wanted the whole slice dipped in the sauce and then slathered with more; Kenan preferred a less saucy gingerbread), but everyone agreed that the pair went together splendidly. Certainly a perfect thing for a wintry evening, and for a celebration.

gingerbread puddin’.

get a recipe and line your tummy with winter happiness, after the jump

Posted by girlcate in cakes, nuts | leave a note ≈