afternoons in tablespoons

January 14th, 2010

brioche french toast with apple compote.

Some weekends are perfect for french toast. I was sick all last week, and the cold was definitely presenting some major deterrents to venturing outside for more than the most important of errands, so some warm, comforting food seemed like it would do just the trick. I’d made french toast dozens of times before, but never with home-made bread, so I decided to try out the brioche recipe from my brand new baking bible and then use the bread to make french toast.

qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

Okay, so apparently what’s her face never actually said that thing about cake, but still, people probably should eat brioche, because it’s delicious. Anyhow, like I said, it was a super cold weekend, but I managed to drag myself out of bed to get some supplies at the store. After I’d braved my way back home through the cold, I got started. The recipes in Baking and Pastry are almost entirely given in industrial proportions (11 pounds of brioche or 10-12 loaf pans, for example), so I had to scale back the recipe quite a bit to get something approximating what we’d be able to eat without turning into rolly pollies. The book is also big on measuring ingredients by weight, which I’d never done before and made me feel quite fancy. So, armed with my brand new, neato food scale, I weighed out each of the ingredients before placing them in the mixer. Then it was a matter of getting my super awesome mixer to do its thing with the kneading and getting the dough into the refrigerator for a long nap.

Late that night, after a splendid dinner with Chris and Jodi, I took the dough out of the refrigerator, separated it into two loaf pans, gave it an egg wash, proofed it, egg washed it again, and stuck it in the oven. The proofing didn’t turn out quite as perfectly as I might have hoped (I had to cheat and stick the pans in a 100 degree oven for a bit to get them to perk up), but the loaves came through pretty much as well as I could have hoped for a first try. They’d risen very nicely, turned a deep brown and gotten airy and fluffy. Overall, I think it was a fairly resounding success from a girl who doesn’t know jack about bread baking.

toast a la francaise

The following morning, I woke up early to get the french toast ready. Because the brioche was pretty fresh, I toasted it for a few minutes to get it to dry out a bit. Then I prepared the custard for soaking the bread. I used a recipe from epicurious, but modified it heavily; it called for six eggs and three eggs yolks. That’s basically nine eggs, people. Now, I love eggs and all, but nine eggs is pretty excessive for a recipe that prepares french toast for six people, unless you’re planning to go body building afterward or something. So I used three eggs and one yolk, then mixed them together with some cream, brown sugar, cinnamon, and almond and vanilla extracts. Then I poured all that over the toasted bread and let the slices soak for a few minutes. After that was set up, it was time to get started on the apple stuff. I heated some water with honey, sugar and cinnamon and then cooked it down with the apples until it got syrupy. I ended up with a bit too much liquid, so I had to drain some of it off, but after about 15 minutes it was a delicious apple compote.

After the brioche had soaked for a few minutes, I heated up the pan to fry them up. I had done some pretty hefty slices (about 1 inch thick), so they took about four or five minutes on each side to cook all the way through. I did two guys at a time and then stuck them in the oven at 350 to keep them warm while their friends were getting cooked. When everything was done, we sat down to eat with Coach and Boots. And oh gosh, it was really good. Really rich, but really very good. In retrospect, I would have used bread that was a bit less fresh and then soaked it in the custard for a much shorter period of time; the end result was a bit too wet. But aside from that, it was splendid. The apple compote was such a good pairing for the bread that I didn’t need any maple syrup. Hooray for winter mornings.

french toast redux: bread pudding

The only problem with having made the brioche, however, was that we had nearly half a loaf left after the french toast, plus two slices that had been soaked in the custard but not cooked. We could have saved it for making more french toast the following morning, or used the rest of the brioche for spreading with jam or peanut butter or something, but I thought better of all that and decided bread pudding was the way to go. So later that night, we went over to Coach and Boots’ place and I whipped up a bit more custard, soaked the remaining bread in it, and baked it for about an hour. And okay, that french toast was pretty good, but the bread pudding was spectacular: the top had formed a bit of a crust from the baking, and the inside was melty and sweet and warm. As Boots said, “tastes like hugs.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

recipes and more recipes, after the jump

Posted by girlcate in cakes, custards, fruit | 3 notes ≈

January 7th, 2010

sour cream cake with cocoa filling.

Hello, friends! I don’t know about you, but I had a very exciting holiday season, and I pretty much made out like a bandit. Among the host of awesome baking tools and cookbooks I received was a standing mixer from my favorite certain someone. It’s awesome and amazing, and also makes me fairly certain he has a huge crush on me. It’s grey and lovely and fits quite nicely into our increasingly fort-like apartment. Granted, it also takes up a surprisingly large percentage of our kitchen’s already hard-pressed food prep space market, but it’s still the coolest thing ever, and I’m certain it’s going to do lovely things for us.

After we’d finally figured out a place for the mixer to live and gotten settled after our holiday travels, I started poring through my new books to find something pleasant to make for a New Year’s Day potluck we were going to attend. My curiosity was piqued at pretty much everything in the Culinary Institute of America’s hefty tome, but eventually I settled on a cake from The Simple Art of Perfect Baking: a nice little sour cream tea cake with a cocoa filling and a jam glaze topped with a second, shiny glaze for a pretty, translucent effect. Also, it’s a bundt cake, and as I’d just received such a pan (I told you I made out like a bandit), it turned out I even had the right tools for the job.

baking, glazing.

Obtaining ingredients for cake on New Year’s Day was a little bit of a to-do, but we managed to scrounge up ingredients in one form or another. I set to work on the recipe, excited to try something by Flo Braker (I’ve read nothing but stellar things about her). First, butter is creamed, and then some sugar is added, followed by eggs and vanilla. Using the mixer is quite satisfying; what would have taken a few minutes and some wrestling with a hand mixer was super easy with my new guy. At any rate, then the dry ingredients are mixed into the liquid, alternating with the sour cream. I was a bit troubled by the thickness of the batter, but apparently that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The batter and the cocoa take turns getting into the pan, creating a nice little marble in the finished product. Then the cake hangs out in the oven for about an hour while the hot air does its magic.

While that was happening, I set up the ingredients for the glaze, which mostly involved straining a bunch of jam to come up with a half cup of liquid. I’m sure this is quite easy and quick if one has proper equipment, but all I had was a fine mesh sieve, so I had to let the jam strain for quite a while before I had the right amount. Braker’s recipe says apricot jam, but I went with a combination of blood orange marmalade and apricot spread, for funsies. I put the strained jam in a sauce pot and then sifted some confectioner’s sugar for the second glaze. After the cake had cooled and been freed from the pan, I heated up the jam and coated the cake with it. When the first glaze had chilled out a bit (maybe ten minutes later), I mixed some water into the confectioner’s sugar for the second glaze. Some of the still-warm jam mixed with the sugar glaze when I was coating the cake with the second time, but it ended up not affecting the appearance. After about 15 minutes of resting, the cake looked beauteous and appealing: shiny, crackly sugar glaze on top of a marbled brown and tan cake.

party magic

Later, after we’d eaten way, way too much delicious food at the potluck and spent what was probably too short a time recovering from dinner, we broke out the cake. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but I have to say that I was really proud of it. The cake was just the right amount of sweet and had a moist, fluffy crumb, the cocoa filling was a nice offset to the sour cream flavor, and the glaze was crackly and sugary without being cloying. The only disappointing thing about it was that didn’t bring it home with us at the end of the night (a decision we regretted the following day).

So, Happy New Year, folks. Make some cake, and stay warm.

sour cream cake with cocoa filling and blood orange-apricot glaze

get a recipe and soothe your post-holiday stomach woes with more sugar, this way

Posted by girlcate in cakes, chocolate | 1 note ≈

December 14th, 2009

la la rugelach

Oh, my goodness, it’s been so long. There have been many distractions, some of them terrible, some of them annoying, some of them great, and all of them quite time-consuming. But there’s finally been some baking going on, so let’s get to it.

I didn’t know about rugelach when I was a kid. There were always tons of cookies this time of year: shortbread, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter kisses, gingerbread men, spritz, snickerdoodles, but no rugelach to speak of. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I discovered the joys of these little rolls of jam and chocolate and joy. And now, they’re some of my favorite holiday cookies. I generally love anything that has a filling; I just think it’s more exciting. So anyhow, Friday was the first night of Chanukah, as you may know, and Kenan and I went over to his dad’s house on Saturday for a family dinner, which meant that rugelach was necessary.

rolling and filling

The only rugelach I’ve seen have been filled with some combination of jam and nuts, but I thought it’d be exciting to also make one of the fillings. Because I didn’t have the fresh fruit to make jam and also because I have a minor obsession with poppy seeds, I decided to make a poppy seed filling for half of the cookies. After I’d gotten the ingredients, I threw the dough together to set up in the refrigerator until the afternoon. The dough for rugelach is quite simple: a combination of cream cheese, butter, flour and salt. Simply run the food processor until just before the dough starts to ball up, and voila! Dough. The dough also doesn’t have any sugar in it (you can add some if you prefer), so it can also be easily modified to use for little hors d’oeuvres and things.

When I got back to the house, I got started on the poppy seed filling, which was also blessedly simple: poppy seeds, milk (or water), honey, a bit of granulated sugar, and one egg. I’ve seen versions that also include cream and butter, but I thought that might be a bit too rich when combined with the already buttery dough. So anyhow, the filling was a snap; I heated the poppy seeds, milk, honey, and sugar until they were thickened, tempered the egg, mixed it all back together, and then set it aside to cool. In the meantime, I rolled out the first portion of the dough, spread on some jam, sprinkled everything with a healthy dose of cinnamonsugar and chocolate, sliced the cookies, rolled them up, and set them in the refrigerator to cool for a bit before baking. Once they were sufficiently chilled, I brushed them with an egg wash, sprinkled them with more cinnamonsugar, and popped them in the oven for a little tanning session.

The first tray looked beautiful, but I had forgotten to use parchment paper, and some of the filling had leaked out of the cookies and formed evil-looking black ponds of sugar and jam on the pan. But once I’d pried them off the tray, they looked and tasted spectacular. The poppy seed guys, once they had chilled and been egg washed and baked, also looked great. They were a bit more petite than their jam-filled cousins, but they had all turned a nice, friendly golden brown and gotten crispy on the bottom.

cookietime

Later, after an intense and painstaking session of wrapping Chanukah presents with scissored-up brown paper bags and a frustratingly long trip into the city, we arrived at Kenan’s dad’s house, ready for drinks and a delicious dinner. And after dinner (and presents! Oh, my goodness, the presents!), there was dessert, and life was good. The rugelach were chewy and flaky and not too sweet. I think the poppy seed guys were my favorite, because (a) they tasted of poppy seed, and (b) they just kinda had a little something extra. But that is not to denigrate the jam guys; the combination of rose hips and strawberries was really quite astounding, and the chocolate added just the right amount of creaminess.

And there you have it. Just make sure not to eat four of them in a row after eating a huge dinner; it tends to upset the stomach.

rugelach (adapted from Dorie Greenspan)

roll those suckers and get your recipes, over here

Posted by girlcate in cookies, fruit | 3 notes ≈

November 14th, 2009

home is a place for punkin pie

I miss my family sometimes. You see, most of them still live in Northern California, and what with my being holed up in Brooklyn with student loans to pay off and a pay cut to deal with, I don’t get to visit them nearly as much as I would like. But sometimes, Kenan has things to do in San Francisco, which means that we get to take a nice little trip out there to sling comics and gallivant in the hills and sip wine and stuff. Which is exactly what we did, just a couple weeks ago.

As I believe I’ve mentioned, one of my favorite things about going home and spending time with my family is hanging out in the kitchen, talking and snacking and baking and cooking. Almost all of my favorite childhood memories are centered in the kitchen, whether they are of sitting at the table recovering from the yearly Thanksgiving stomach-violence, or rolling out dough and filling pie pans with fruit and custard, or stirring big batches of chili, or sipping tea and staring out the window at the backyard. So most of the time, when I think about going home, I inevitably start scheming about all of the things we’ll get to bake (and eat!).

But this time, we somehow managed to spend almost no time at all in the kitchen. Granted, we did get to visit the most amazing fish and sea beasties I’ve ever seen, and we got to sit on a comfy couch and sample amazing wine at a beautiful vineyard, and we got to eat treats at the most awesomest of San Francisco bakeries, and we got to gaze up at really freakin’ tall trees, and we got to pick expensive pumpkins and eat delicious cheese at a cute little farm, but between getting to and from all of those awesome places, we didn’t get to do any baking or cooking at all. We even bought the pumpkins at the farm for the express purpose of making pumpkin pie, but when we got home we were sleepy, so we took a nap instead. Which is, incidentally, also what home is about, so I’m not too terribly bummed about it.

brooklyn thanksgiving, with pilgrim hats and everything

The day after we got home from California, we got an e-mail from Emily, informing us that she would be hosting a (quite early) Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment because many of her friends would be out of town for actual Thanksgiving. Although we were still recovering from jet-lag and adjusting to being back home, we jumped at the opportunity. I mean, come on; who doesn’t love an excuse to eat delicious, delicious food and hang out with a whole passel of incredible folks in a cozy little apartment? And because pumpkin pie is probably one of my favorite things ever, I volunteered to bring some to the feast.

So, I know I’ve used several of Tartine’s recipes before, but eating their amazing food when we were in California was so inspiring and scrumptious that I felt it only fitting to use their pumpkin pie recipe for Emily’s Thanksgiving. The ingredient list included the standard cast of players: pumpkin, eggs, cream, sugar, a bit of booze, and spices. And their tart dough is, of course, basic and beautiful: flour, butter, and salt.

I started out in the morning. Tartine suggests doing the tart dough in a food processor, which I highly recommend: it’s quick, it’s thorough, and it involves almost no handling of the dough, which makes for a more tender, flakier crust in the final product. After that was finished and the dough had chilled in the fridge for a couple hours, I rolled the dough out. The fat in pie dough begins to melt as soon as it starts to warm up, so it’s important to work quickly to ensure that it stays cool while you’re rolling it out and shaping it. I then put the dough in a pan and cut the edges with a knife. After that I chilled the dough again, in the pan, in preparation for partially baking it. Tartine calls for pie weights, which are a seriously good idea, but I don’t have any, so I used another, smaller pan to weigh down the dough. This didn’t come out quite as well as I had planned – the dough shrank up a bit – but it was definitely an acceptable fix in a pinch. After I’d set the crust down to cool, it was time to get to work on the filling, which is really a snap.

The recipe calls for two cups of pumpkin puree, which is about 1/4 of a cup more than what’s in a standard 15 ounce can. This was a bit frustrating, because it meant that I had to use two cans and then have quite a bit of leftover puree for which I had no use, but no matter. I mixed in some sugar, the spices, a bit of booze, and some vanilla, and then poured the whole lot into the partially baked shell… and ended up with a lot of filling in the bowl when the pie was filled. As in, almost enough for a second pie. Part of this was probably due to my shell having shrunk up a bit, leaving less room for filling, but in any case, I tossed the rest in a second pie pan with no shell and called it pumpkin custard.

Tartine’s pie comes out pretty light; the filling is sort of a bright, golden, yellowy orange instead of the darker, browner color I usually expect to see on pumpkin pies. It smelled amazing, and the crust had just the right color and texture. The only problem was that, of course, everything had taken a bit longer than I’d planned, and it was time for dinner, and we had two very hot dishes to get across Greenpoint. We were able to wrap them up sufficiently, and then it was just a matter of guarding the poor defenseless little pies from babies and clumsy people on the bus (quite a feat, considering that I am one of the aforementioned clumsy people). And then we arrived at Emily’s place, and everything was pleasant and wonderful. Sarah had made top hats for the top hat-inclined, and little pilgrim bonnets, for those who wanted to get a little bit of the crucible in them. All of the food was seriously tasty, and we played bingo and drank too much wine and just generally had a really good time. To be perfectly honest, by the time we got around to dessert I was far too sated to really pay attention to how my pie tasted, but if my hazy recollections are anywhere near the mark, it was pretty swell. The crust was tender and toothsome (I would have liked it a bit more crispy, but it was still pleasant), and the filling was… good. Not great. It had a bit of a strange taste to it – maybe too much ground clove, or not enough sugar, or something, but I wasn’t entirely taken with it. Nevertheless, most of the people I asked seemed to have really enjoyed it, so I didn’t beat myself up about it.

pumpkin pie, redux

But luckily, a few days later, I was able to give the pie a second whirl. I had another pie’s worth of dough just sitting in the fridge, and there was no way I was gonna just let it go to waste, especially when I had another jumbo can of pumpkin lying about in my cupboard. This time, however, I decided to try a different recipe. I’ve recently become a big fan of Pithy and Cleaver, and they just happened to have a pumpkin pie recipe that looked super delicious. And boozy: half a cup of booze in the filling for one pie, to be exact.

I rolled out the dough and got it in the pie pan and then laid it in the fridge, but because I was using a smaller pan (8″ instead of 9″), I had a bit of dough left over. I thought it would be fun to do a little pumpkin free-form tart, so I rolled the rest of the dough out into a little round and stuck that in the fridge, too. After I’d mixed the filling and filled the first pie, I put some more pumpkin puree (about a 1/2 cup) in the leftover filling, just enough so that it had the right consistency to not ooze all out of the tart dough when it was baking. Then I folded it up and placed both of ‘em in the oven. After about an hour of baking, they had both turned a lovely, rust-orange color, and the crusts had gotten nice and flaky. I was especially enamored with the little free-form tart; I’ve never seen such a cute little pie! And they tasted amazing, the both of them. Definitely a bit boozy, but the flavor of the alcohol (rum, in this case) was a nice foil for the creaminess of the filling. We were definitely two happy, pie-filled little scrubs.

pumpkin pie

get your filling and get your recipes around the bend

Posted by girlcate in custards, pies & tarts | 2 notes ≈

October 29th, 2009

apple crisp, and a birthday

Let me tell you a story: After I graduated from college, I moved to France for a little while, to teach English and find my bearings in the big, scary world outside of the college bubble. When I was getting ready to make my triumphant return to the states, I decided that I would try living in New York (I’m originally from Northern California). So I packed my bags and came straight here, after two panicked and bewildering days wandering around in Charles de Gaulle. I had lined up a place to stay in Manhattan while I looked for a job and an apartment, but for various reasons, that situation didn’t work out, and I very quickly found myself homeless, jobless, and broke in a gigantic, expensive, and unfamiliar city.

That’s where Kenan came in. You see, I had met Kenan a few days before I became a wandering urchin. Although he didn’t really know me, and although he was also broke and barely had any space of his own, Kenan graciously, kindly, sweetly (and perhaps crazily) offered me a place to stay while I figured things out. And because I had nothing to offer in return other than my ability to wield a whisk, I baked for him and his accommodating roommates to thank them, and to calm my nerves while I sent out cover letters and went on countless interviews. Luckily for me, everything worked out: Kenan made sure that I took care of myself, I found a job, we eventually found an apartment of our own, and everyone got delicious treats. I mean, the guy even made me this site, not to mention the fact that he’s responsible for all the pretty pictures around these parts. In any case, a year and a half and many adventures later, we’re the happiest little scrubs Greenpoint has to offer.

So why am I telling you this, you ask? Well, you see, a couple weeks ago, it was Kenan’s birthday, and of course, I had to make something celebratory. When I think about birthday desserts, I think layered cakes and the like, but Kenan is a much, much bigger fan of fruit things, and apple crisp in particular. And my favorite gets what he wants, so apple crisp it was gonna be.

apple picking!

As I said, I’m a Northern Californian by birth, so there were innumerable fruits and vegetables in season at all times while I was growing up. But pretty much the only apples around were either in Gravenstein orchards or were primarily used for making apple juice. Sure, you could go pick a few apples in the fall, but it just wasn’t as much of a thing as it is here on the East coast. Add to that the fact that I could eat apples all day, every day, forever, and you’ll appreciate my extreme excitement when Kenan suggested that we go to New Jersey the day before his birthday to do some apple picking.

With Kenan’s mom and stepdad in tow, we went to Eastmont Orchards, and oh my goodness, I’ve never seen so many apple trees, or so many different kinds of apples in one place. It was a crowded day, and there were plenty of screaming children and obstinately aimless suburbanites crowding the rows, but we managed to find some gorgeous Crispins, Ida Reds, Staymans and Fujis for our baking adventures. We also made a stop at Delicious Orchards to get some life-changing apple cider donuts. And so, apples and donuts and other supplies in hand, we headed back to Brooklyn, dodging crazies on the train and trying not to bang up the apples too badly.

i want crisp in the afternoon

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a raging debate going on in the apple crisp baking community. And by raging debate, I mean that there are a couple different variations on it, and I am decidedly in favor of one over the other. You see, some apple crisps are sorta granola-y: baked apples topped with a crunchy mixture that seems to be mostly oats and brown sugar. While I’m not one to turn my nose up at any dessert (my sweet tooth is equal opportunity), I just don’t really care for those kinds of crisps. I mean, if I want to eat granola (and quite often, I do), I’ll just sprinkle a bit over some fruit and be done with it. But what I strongly prefer to bake, and happen to think are more enjoyable as dessert, are heftier, richer crisps: I like toppings that hold together somewhat when they’re scooped out of the pan – somewhere in between a biscuity texture and a crumbly mess, I suppose. So I chose an Ina Garten recipe that looked like it had those qualities.

Apple crisp is so lovely; simple, elegant, and prepared with the most basic of ingredients: flour, butter, brown sugar, spices, and, of course, apples. The only time-intensive step is coring and slicing the fruit. Most recipes will tell you to pare the apples entirely, but I love the texture and flavor of the skins, so I leave the skin on about 15-20% of the time; just enough to give things a crunch without making it all too rubbery. I also prefer to use two or three different varieties of apple, because they cook down at different rates and add further to the consistency of the baked product. For this crisp, I used three or four Staymans (crunchy, tart), one gigantuous (yes) Crispin (crisp, semi-sweet), and three or four Ida Reds (sweeter, a bit soft, somewhat like a Red Delicious), all of which added up to about five pounds. After paring, coring and chopping, I mixed the fruit together with some brown sugar, spices, salt, lemon juice, and a bit of bourbon (the booze was not called for in the recipe, but I thought it would be a nice addition). Then I mixed butter with some sugar, flour, oats, and a few more spices. Ina Garten suggests using a mixer, which I did, but I think I would have been better off with a food processor: it involves less handling of the batter, and probably would have been quicker. Anyhow, then I spread the filling in a casserole dish, sprinkled everything with a thick layer of topping, and dropped that sucker in the oven.

…And then we waited. Ms. Garten says the baking takes an hour, but my crisp wasn’t ready for maybe an hour and twenty. I think this was likely a problem with my oven; we live in a new building, where everything looks fancy but is secretly a cheap, tawdry version of an actually nice thing (hello, Magic Chef), so it’s possible that the oven was just being wonky. At any rate, the thing finally got all golden and, well, crispy on top, and filled our home with the glorious smells of apples and flour and butter.

friends eat, friends drink, friends are nice.

After we’d waited for the crisp to cool down, we headed to Diamond, where we were meeting some folks to celebrate Kenan’s jour de naissance. We got started on the crisp right away, and I was really quite pleased. The topping was buttery and crumbly and the apples had a lovely texture. I would make a couple slight adjustments next time, however: the filling was a bit too sweet, so I would lower the amount of sugar, and the topping was not quite as toothsome as I would have liked, so I think I would use a slightly lower ratio of flour to oats. But all in all, it was quite lovely, and no one seemed to have any complaints. And so, over pints of beer and generous servings of crisp and whipped cream, we joked and pontificated and bantered late into the night, and I thought quietly to myself that I really am very, very lucky to have a Kenan.

apple crisp

apples and sugar and oats and recipes, oh my, yonder

Posted by girlcate in cobblers & crisps, fruit | 7 notes ≈