Gee, that was beautiful! What did I do?

Pistachio ice cream, made into a biscuit, used for strawberry shortcake.

Yes, in my family we use biscuits not cake for shortcakes.  And now I will forever use ice cream biscuits.

In case you were wondering.

It's got Raisins in it. You like Raisins: Pork Cake

My friend Stella is on a historical kick at the moment. She's been exploring old cookbooks, posting crazy recipes and lore and shared this little tidbit from De Witt's Connecticut cookbook and housekeeper's assistant.(1871):

A little four line bit that contained all the ingredients, directions, processes and proclamations regarding this dessert. Yep, dessert. Yep, with pork. I imagined, on reading the recipe, that it would be something like a cross between mincemeat and barbeque. In keeping with the time, it was likely to be heavy, and primarily flavored, well, like cloves and raisins. So why in the world did I make it? Because Stella is allergic to pork, and there it was, a cake made with pork. I had to know.

When you think about it, we make cakes with eggs and butter and don't give it a thought. Eggs provide protein and structure, butter is lovely lovely fat. But really, couldn't both those things be replaced? Well, there's protein & fat in ground pork so that should work. As for structure, well, this was never going to be angel food.

I did have a concern (many, actually) about the pork. Pork as we know it is a lean meat, bred that way because of crazed calorie conscious consumers in the 80s who demanded more fat be removed during trimming and less fat present in the meat itself. Well, my only fat in this cake would be from my pork. Luckily, my farmer's market has a couple of terrific meat producers. They understand fat, and why it is good. They smile at me when I ask for fatty things. I got to hear all about boar hybrids and proper diets and was presented with more ground pork than I needed which is good because I really want to just eat the pork, sans cake. Mmmmm pork.

And so, armed with scale and scoop, I made the cake. Easy mixing, one big bowl. I did a half batch, because I don't commit to seven cups of flour unless I know what I'm getting in to. The batter was thick enough going in to the oven that a toothpick came out clean *before* I started baking it, so I relied on instinct for doneness and in that slow oven doneness happened at about the hour and a half mark. After baking, the half batch weighed 3 pounds, 2 ounces. Sheesh.

So..... how was it?

Now, I'm inclined to think well of spice cakes in general. I love a good spice cake, gingerbread is one of my all time favorites. Yes, there was a bit of a meaty aroma while this was baking but it wafted away after coming out of the oven. It was dense, like a good hearty meatloaf, but the flavor was... not bad. There were raisins and cloves and molasses and it was pretty good. However, it felt like it had developed its own gravity field and it was only a matter of time before spaghettification began. But it was certainly palatable. I did find another pork cake recipe, this one from about 50 years later that used eggs and baking soda, but at that point I would say skip the pork, and just go for a good gingerbread recipe.

But hey, now I know.

My role in the end times: chocolate zucchini cake

Yeah, in case of apocalypse, I'll need a farmer. Or at least a good gardener. Preferably one with no cooking skills whatsoever. The sum total of what I have harvested from all my plants this season, with the exception of herbs, is one (1) orange. I haven't even managed a green tomato, which is fine because I don't like raw tomatoes, but REALLY. Here we are smack dab in the prime season for dumping vegetables on your neighbors because you're sick to death of them and all I can do is be a recipient.

And make cake.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Pistachios

340 g all purpose flour

65 g unsweetened cocoa powder

6 g baking soda

6 g salt

8 g powdered ginger

375 g sugar

110 g butter, room temperature

105 g vegetable oil

2 eggs

5 g vanilla extract

110 g buttermilk

275 g grated peeled zucchini (don't use the seedy center because bleh. Also you could leave the peel on but why?)

175 g coarsely chopped dark chocolate (I used a 54%)

75 g pistachios, unsalted

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a 13x9x2" pan with parchment and spray lightly with pan spray.

2. Sift together flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and ginger.

3. Cream butter, sugar and oil together. The key to this is to have everything at room temperature, so it mixes together smoothly.

4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping the bowl between each addition, and then add the vanilla.

5. Alternate adding in the dry ingredients and the buttermilk to the butter/sugar mix. Mix it just enough to combine. Fold in the zucchini.

6. Smooth the batter into the pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chunks and pistachios on top.

7. Bake until tester comes out clean, about 45 minutes. You probably should wait until it is cool to eat it, but who am I to judge, since I didn't.

Why pistachios and ginger? Because I like them with chocolate. You could probably use some other nut, or leave out the ginger. But the chocolate chunks really are better than chips, so don't change that part, ok?

Tweaked

I figured out what makes me different from a hobbyist baker. I think.

It starts with a simple thing, really. My neighbor is gluten free, and yet still willing to be a guinea pig to my culinary experimentation. My plan was to make chocolate cupcakes anyway, why not try and make gluten free ones?

(Obviously, the answer to that is "You don't have to make them gluten free you crazy person, so what are you thinking?")

At first, a hobbyist and I may proceed upon the same course. There is an internet, and it has many many recipes on it, even for crazy faced gluten free chocolate cupcakes. Some of those recipes make TASTY crazy faced gluten free cupcakes. At this point the hobbyist might say, "Hey look, a recipe from the Babycakes folks! It's gluten free and vegan! I'll use that!" and then go shopping and start baking.

I find the same recipe and then I take the path less travelled by. Yes, I hear from many sources that this would be a tasty, tested, workable solution. But it isn't mine. And it requires a lot of ingredients I don't have in the house. Things like fava bean flour. And xanthan gum. Now I love shopping for ingredients, but am I going to use fava bean flour that often? And xanthan gum is expensive for how little I need. Surely there is a better way? Oh, and the vegan thing is a useful notion, I'll make mine vegan, too. Because I am crazy.

So first I find some gluten free flour formulas that contain things I already have in the house. Yes, I have tapioca flour hanging around. Then I look at a whole bunch of recipes noting similarities. I write down some notes. Some other notes. A few crazy wild hair suggestions. Then I grab the scale and start making some stuff. And it goes horribly wrong. I try again, restraining myself to the scientific method and only changing one variable. (this is really hard, because I want to change six.) There is edibility. Again. Well, ok. Ooo! Coconut milk could add fat and moisture! Not bad, but I really miss eggs. And butter. And flour. Once again. Hey, these are tasty! I would eat these! Did I write down what I did? Oh good, I did.

And so it goes. Do I need a gluten free vegan chocolate cupcake recipe right now? No. But it's good to have. When will I make it next? Depends on what the neighbors think of it. I can always change it a bit here, a nudge there. Always something that could be better.

Then my day off comes to a close.

the hands remember

It was one of those remarks that sticks with you. I was considering leaving my job with Monsieur Le Chef, and I wanted to consult with him first about the position I had been offered. (He was starting up a new venture himself and although he had given me the chance to tag along, there just wasn't enough work. That is how it goes sometimes.) He said yes I should take it, they would be lucky to have me but, and he meant this in the best possible way, "You need to watch your judgement, baby." And then proceeded to list examples. Sometimes, I hate examples.

What I am learning as my career progresses is that judgement is not in the head, it is in the hands. This is a tough lesson for me. I spend a lot of time hashing things out in my brain. I think and rethink. I create scenarios. I have an inexhaustible need to learn the hows, whys and wherefores. You ask me how something is made and I don't know, it is going to really bother me until I go and look up the answer.

And that is the problem.

Cooking is not about "looking up the answer". Sure that can help, but it comes down to those wiggly parts at the end of your arms, and your nose, and your ears, and all those other things not made from grey matter. I'm still learning to trust my senses. I'm not quite good at it yet. There was an incident at work, not long ago, when I looked at some bread dough and said, a la Miss Clavel, "Something is not right!" But my brain whispered sweet excuses in my ear. I went with my brain and paid for it the next day.

But I am improving. All of my recipes from Monsieur Le Chef are simply ingredient lists. No technique, maybe an occasional note. I have to trust that ethereal judgement will shape it. I made the chocolate mousse cake for the first time in over a year this weekend, and as I laid out my mise, I had no idea how it went together. I intended to just do part of the recipe, to be safe, to give myself time to think and remember. I was half way through the recipe when I realized that without any thought I had gone past my stopping point and set up everything to finish the whole shebang. And I knew what needed to happen next.

It came out lovely. The hands remember.

trying to perfect the imperfectable

I have a new obsession. Growing up on the East coast, doughnuts were either dunkin, or, in my world, Schneider's. I've gone through phases with cake and jelly. I distinctly remember my first beignets. I've moved around a bit, experienced hot doughnuts now, locally made doughnuts of good varieties and generally, I'm a fan. Hell, I even had them on the dessert menu at one of the places I worked. We called them Dishwasher Crack and had to take them off the menu because, strangely, sales did not match the number that were going missing each night...

To sum up, working in pastry has totally ruined doughnuts for me.

I can't imagine just grabbing a doughnut every morning. I mean, sure I could eat a doughnut regularly, but now, when I succumb to the urge, all I can think is "Crap. Mine are better." I can taste the bad fry oil (and worse, recognize it), notice the flavorless batter, scoff at poor quality toppings. Sure, there are good doughnuts out there, but, you see what I'm saying.

Now, I could make them at home. I just hate deep frying at home, for all the reasons anyone would hate deep frying at home. So I've embarked on a quest. I'm trying to make perfect baked doughnuts. Not "not too bad" as I saw one recipe described. Not a muffin. Not in a doughnut pan either because on some base level that seems like cheating. I'm trying yeast and chemical leaveners. I'm playing with flours, and I have a couple of weird ideas that may or may not work. And any real doughnut fan will tell me it is just not possible, because hello, frying! Totally different cooking medium! I'm trying anyway.

The ones in the picture are from batch three. They were ok. How many batches will I make before they come together, I wonder.

A question of Raspberries

Rhubarb has taken over my world, pies, turnovers and cases in the walk-in. The danish doesn't even have apples on it anymore and I thought that would be one of the holdouts. Yeah, sure there is a rhubarb apple pie, but seasons don't change overnight. Lemon curd still lingers. We're all looking ahead to strawberries. And savory is in on it too with rapini that makes me flat out hungry every time it is prepped.

But we also have a cake with raspberry buttercream. Now, it's raspberries that we got fresh and froze ourselves back in warmer times, but still, the berry bushes are spindly, mostly leafless and invisible. Even the plum tree in my back yard is barely past budding. So is this ok? A slippery slope? Where do you need to cross the seasonality line? When is chocolate's season, really?

Regardless, it is a damn good cake. And that's a slippery slope too. Someday I'm going to be the one deciding where the line is. What happens when it is a bad year for raspberries? Does an item like this, one of our cake staples, fall off the menu? Or do you devote what supply you have to just this item and change out something else? This is what I am learning about now. Good lessons.

...and there was a lincoln log in me sock drawer!

Devil's food cake and cinnamon marshmallow.

Think Pink! And Caramel

Share or Horde?

It baffles me that sometimes people, in this day and age, won't share recipes. I mean, really, is there a recipe for anything that can't be found in some fashion online? No, it may not be your Uncle Edgar's secret recipe for dumplings, but still, the dumplings are there. And why not make it YOUR recipe for dumplings?

I think Jeffrey Steingarten, in one of his essays (gratins, maybe?) talked about an endless quest to perfect a recipe. He tweaked and puzzled and got one that he could make and make again and it was perfect. And it turned out to be nothing like the original recipe. So really, what difference does the original recipe make?

I have one recipe that I won't share. One. And I won't share it because the chef who gave it to me is someone that I respect, and he specifically asked me not to share it. I also won't flat out copy a recipe exactly from a book and post that as my own, but that relates more to my opinion of copyrights, and why it was unfair that Sam Clemens was broke so often. Otherwise, there is too much of a teacher in my blood to horde.

Chocolate Moelleux for Diane.

100 g dark chocolate (this is the meat of the thing so a good dark chocolate is in order. I prefer a 70-75% bar for deeper flavor)

70g butter (you don't have a kitchen scale? But, um, why not? Ok, 5 tablespoons)

45 g (4 Tablespoons) all purpose flour

13 g (1 Tablespoon) cornstarch

60 g (3 Tablespoons) agave syrup

a pinch of salt

2 eggs

flavoring (see gilding the lily)

1. Preheat the oven to 350. This may take longer than anything else depending on your oven, so yeah, do this first. Spray four small tart rings or one 9" tart ring (or pie pan) with pan spray and place on a sheet pan. Love the pan spray. Fear it not. It is your friend.

2. Melt together the butter and the chocolate over a double boiler, or, if you are like me, a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water. stir together every once in a while as it melts.

3. In another, larger bowl, whisk together everything else possibly including any appropriate lily gilding. This is really tough, eh?

4. When the butter and chocolate are completely melted but not hot, whisk chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. The batter will thicken up as the chocolate cools. Spread the batter into the prepared tart rings.

5. Into the oven it goes. Now is the time to not get distracted. Before, not so bad. Now, well, this cooks up in about 10 minutes, maybe less depending on your pan, so if you hear the cat making the incoming hairball noise? Pretend it is just CNN and ignore it for a few minutes. You are cooking this until the edges feel set to the touch, but don't wait for the middle to set completely. It's going to be fudgy.

6. Let it cool in the pan. If you can. I mean, it's good while still warm. So it can be kinda hard to wait. It depends on what is happening next. If what is happening next is fancying it up, and serving for company, go ahead and do that after it has cooled a bit. If it is just an immediate chocolate fix, I recommend a nice cuppa (Earl Grey is also stellar with dark chocolate) to go with it while it is still warm. Do you have any idea how hard it is to write out recipes? Man I need another piece now...

Gilding the lily

Ok, I'm better now. The beautiful thing about this recipe is that you can do a gazillion things to it to suit your menu. Easy rustic? Mix in some chopped roasted nuts like hazelnuts, and serve with your favorite ice cream variant. Tropical? Try a sauce of passion fruit and mango nectars and serve with starfruit and lychee. Classic? A dash of grand marnier in the batter, and some candied orange zest and ganache on top. Seriously versatile. And then there is the Chocolate Mint version here, where I flavored the batter with a bit of mint extract, and topped it with ganache and some crushed sugar free peppermint candies.

On Welcoming the Power of The Cookie in Your Life

It's become reflexive for so many people.

"No, no, don't do anything special for me..."

Well, why the hell not? I'm certainly guilty of it too, particularly where food is concerned. We have translated cooking into, instead of an act of community, survival, sharing and comfort, an act of effort, of time lost, of conditions and obligations. As a professional, I worry that someone will hold themselves up to impossibly high standards when really, I'm so damn flattered that you would make anything for me that you could probably poison me and I'd still say thank you. Maybe. Depends on the gentleness of the stomach pump.

And when I'm doing the cooking? Well, man, this is what I DO, how I'm wired, this is my "to be". I don't care if it is nut gluten sugar fruit chocolate dairy egg free (although that would be depressing. And tricky. Steamed rice cake, maybe?) I want to cook for you. Hell, it's a chance for me to show off, and if humans didn't want to show off they wouldn't have invented language.

The Power of the Cookie works because we are flattered by generosity when we receive it, and because we get a similar rush of good feeling when we DO it. So rather than deny myself those happy endorphins from giving to others I just bake. And it doesn't matter what time of year it is.

It's just nice that right around now, people are so much more willing to take generosity of spirit as it is offered, and enjoy it, without feeling obligation.

Now if I could just get more people to act that way in July.

sugar free sweet potato madelines

42 Days

It doesn't seem like very much time, does it?

Rustic or refined?

I'm in the honeymoon phase. I'm feeling slightly awkward, slightly off kilter... the order of things is just different enough to keep me on my toes. My confidence level is weird, and I find myself asking for assurances in such a way that I find it annoying.

I'm working on that.

But the work itself is fun, interesting, the atmosphere a gazillion times better from what I left. (Sometimes I think that is part of the problem. I'm waiting for abuse that doesn't happen so I'm all confused. Human beings can be so ridiculous.)

The product we put out is lovely - small batch, artisan care, and serious commitment to the local. Our flour is locally milled. That is just crazy, and couldn't happen just anywhere. The style of the work is rustic.

Rustic is interesting. It doesn't mean careless, sloppy. There is a level of concern over the quality of our goods that I haven't seen in a long time. Indeed, sometimes the concern is a bit mystifying, given what I've been doing. What I have been doing, professionally, would not be called rustic. It would be considered a more finished style, more artful and stylized. Indeed, that's the kind of thing I tend to do at home as well, maybe even more so.

Now, I'm being asked to forget that. But still, there is finely detailed piping on those plain cut cakes. Deliberately placed currants among rough curled chocolate. Carefully cut and scaled laminated doughs filled with a local seasonal fruit mix. So I'm looking at a different style at home, too, for practice. The most perfect fresh prunes I have ever seen (The farmer told me they would be best baked, and then smiled and said considering where I worked, I would know what to do with them) become a rough torte. Monsieur le chef would have approved of this one.

Even if it is rustic.

Porch moments

We were never cake people. If I wanted cake, I wanted one that was very atypical. I remember at age six, when schools still insisted on a class cake for birthdays with no thought to allergies or nutrition, I wanted a spice cake. Lemon cake was another decent option, but otherwise, meh. Could care less. I still hate cakes.

That crisco icing on a dry sponge? Bleh. I think that was partially why I went for a French pastry education; the chefs understood that the world of dessert was so much better without a slab of yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

We love pies, though. What is not to love? A crust, baked dark to bring out the sweetness. Inside, those berries we picked off Mt. Otsego from that secret blueberry/currant/raspberry stash. Apples heaped high and topped with impossible amounts of brown sugar crumb. Or perhaps some lemon. Serious lemon. My first from scratch lemon meringue is legendary among my friends who tasted it. I cut down the lemon next time I made it, but that first one was sublime to me.

This past week I found this. It was a pie, online for the world. Whole lemons, skin and all, sliced thin. I saw the recipe and had to make it, feverish with desire, planning my time off around the ability to make this pie. I made it knowing there would be no one here to share it with; it would be, at best, distasteful to my nearest and dearest. Bitter with zest, tangy, just a bit of sugar.

The crust is my own, an all-butter deviation. I smiled as I crimped the edges remembering how magical crusts once were, how did she get that edge?, as a younger me watched pies made. Of course, the pies were never made by men. I never figured out why. Poor deprived souls. The filling is as I expected - this is a pie for my tastes alone, a race against spoilage. Can I finish it before it is lost to the world?

So I eat a bit more in the afternoon sun. For today, this is my favorite dessert.

Dangerous Times in Food Photography

I confess to a certain degree of perfectionism. I'm not a neatnik, I don't compulsively wash dishes or take tweezers to my arm hair, but I am aware of details. For example, when I put pictures up for public viewing, while I may not be the most skilled photographer, I want them to look decent.
I tend to take pictures of food on my porch. Natural light is better than the nasty apartment lights in my kitchen, leafy trees make better backgrounds and overall, it makes me happy. But well, there are occasionally issues.


See, I made this lemon berry dessert. Lemon mousse, a berry gelee, almond crumble, and a nice joconde with a pink abstract pattern. I really like the joconde. Came out awesome. And the whole thing tastes pretty good. The plan was to plate, garnish, snap a shot, write something about it. I got it in my head that I would rather do a sugar curl than a tuile. So I made one with the leftover nearly dead isomalt I have lying around for practice. This is a neat trick because 1. I was warming up the sugar in my toaster over 2. This sugar is really crystalised and dead. Inevitably, I hated it. And the next one. The next one as well. Then I broke a few.... you get the idea. I get one that is passable and now it's time to plate. I have an image in my head of what I want the plate to look like, so the sauce goes on easily. Dessert on the plate, almost perfect temperature now because it has been out of the freezer for a while. On to the garnish!

Strawberry, ok, blackberry maybe... oh hey, I have raspberries! Oh, they've gone moldy inside. Skip the raspberries, we'll make do with strawberry and blackberry. Ok, half a strawberry, yes, blackberry ok, sugar curl and...

No. Plate itself looks kinda empty and I don't like the balance of the fruit (Even as I am sitting here now I have another idea that would have been better. Oh well.) Try fruit on the plate. Nope. What if I move that strawberry? Oh, well, I guess the mousse isn't frozen anymore, will have to cover that and whoops!

"Hey!"

Adult that I am, I duck in the house so the kid who just got a mousse covered strawberry on his head can't see me.

Anyway I have another strawberry and you know I think I'll use one of those raspberries that's just moldy inside; it's just for the picture. Rearrange, no no no, ah screw it, I'll just cut this one open and get an inside shot. Decision made, I decisively pop the garnish fruit in my mouth. Including the moldy raspberry.

So here's the inside of this dessert, crumbs on the plate and all. I have to go drink something.

Start with the inspiration.

One of those spring days. It's grey and dreary from rain, making the green of the leaves brighter, the wet tree bark black. From this came thoughts of green, pistachio, pandan, what was I looking for? Green tea! And chocolate, and cherry. How should it go together? Have to try the ladyfinger batter with matcha idea. It comes out lovely, but dark, dark. How to brighten the look? I opt for a green tea buttercream even though I hate buttercream and find a gazillion other ideas after the fact - I even find an almost identical opera cake made with scientific precision on another site, with microthin layers of perfect cake and an absolutely smooth ganache top. Well, at least hers didn't have cherry. The cherry is a really good idea, so I add a whole one. Not bad for a first run, and I still have half a sheet of the matcha biscuit left...

My contribution to today

Everything I don't like about this cake was not my idea, so I think it's a nice little sample for a tasting. Entire cake is less than three inches wide and four inches high, to give you an idea of the size of the roses. Chocolate cake, ganache filling, wrapped in marzipan, coated in chocolate.