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.

One more time, from the beginning

Sometimes, you have to start with a dumb idea.

There's a whole Zen thing - and I am not even remotely well versed on the subject so don't yell at me if I am slightly off in my interpretation - about having a beginner's mind, Shoshin.  You come to an activity with a willingness to try everything, no preconceived notion of what can and cannot be done - no idea that something is a dumb idea.  From there, you allow yourself to explore possibilities that wouldn't occur to the expert, rigid in thought and process.

The idea that mixing ice cream and flour could make bread, for example.

I find weird ideas like this exciting. Of course I had to try it.  To me, the batter immediately suggested biscuits, rather than bread, so that's what I made - butter pecan biscuits, topped with raw sugar.  The only bad parts were my hands got really cold mixing the dough, and now I have to keep a supply of self rising flour around the house.  Because I don't already have enough flours around the house.

The good parts?  I have been inspired to play more with my baking. Not just with this recipe (although I really want to try using a good pistachio ice cream next. Or maybe beer and chocolate ice cream), but with bread in general.  What makes bread? Most bread doughs are variations on the theme of 5 parts flour, 3 parts liquid, plus leavening and flavoring.  But what does that mean?  If the liquid is water, I can develop a passable baguette, but what if I use the liquid I strain off yogurt? What if I just use yogurt?  How do different fats affect things? Different flours? So many possibilities.

There's a trick here, though.  It wasn't hard to get excited about an idea that involved two ingredients, little time and intuitively seemed like it would work.  Also, there was cheating involved on my part - someone else had already tried the idea and presented it to the world as something that works.  But when there isn't someone else showing you the silly, weird, odd ideas that shouldn't work but maybe they could work, where do they come from?  Being open to all possibilities means being open to bad ideas, as well; how can you recognize those ideas, and do you try them anyway?  Crazy Brain Me says yes, you should try them anyway, because you still get answers from failure.  You just need to not let those failures and successes stop you from trying more ideas.

Good thing I have biscuits to sustain me through the process.

Deliberately avoiding authenticity

It's five days before Fat Tuesday and the Paczki police are after me already.

Really, after more than a few months in the bagel business I should be used to this.  The internet has made this sort of commentary inevitable.  I should be jaded, steadfast, above this sort of thing.  I should just accept that I am wrong.  Acceptance is the first step in the healing process, right?

I am wrong.  There, I admit it.  My bagels, while New York style, are not the exact ones that Mr Expert #4 had on May 15th, 1982 at H&H. Nor are they the ones that Ms Professional Opinion #26 lyrically remembers from her childhood ramblings in which she accidentally while chasing a ball happened upon a 3rd generation bagel making family's one tiny storefront.  They aren't even the ones that you could get from any other bagel place right now.  They are too small, too large, too malty, not malty enough, not topped enough, topped too much, too different and sometimes not different enough. I did not grow up Jewish in New York City. Also, the water is different.  Despite all this, they are good bagels.

Paczki are a Polish pre-Lent celebration, a way to use up all your naughty ingredients, a damn tasty variation of the doughnut.  Thanks to immigration patterns, I discovered them in Chicago.  They are rich, with a supple dough, filled with custard or fruit, and I have missed them.  They just aren't found much in the neighborhoods of Portland, and each year I have seen other transplants seek them out, and end up disappointed. Really, what's the point of having a bakery if you can't fill a pastry void? So I asked. I made samples. And then a few more samples. They were well received. Now, for one single day we will celebrate one more puzzle piece of where we came from.

We post pictures, tell a story, and get the word out.  Then, it begins.  Those are too round, not round enough, not big enough, too big, probably don't have lard, aren't glazed, shouldn't be glazed, should be fruit filled, should never have chocolate.  Not the Real Thing. Also, they have never been eaten by any of these people.  It's even possible that they never will be eaten by some of them.

It's ok.  You are all correct.  I am not making something you may consider authentic. What I am making is a recipe passed on to me through who knows how many hands and minds.  I have adapted it to my own purposes.  And yes, I am daring to call these Paczki in full knowledge of this fact.  But my Paczki is made with a sincerity of purpose. It is true and genuine to what I know Paczki can be.  It also tastes really, really good.

What does authentic mean again?

And then a little something I did at home...

So this is not the kind of mini dessert we do at work. It wouldn't work for 800 people very well. But this is closer to the look I like, the aesthetic of what I want to make, and, indeed, what I want to eat.

What is it? In the cup is berry curd and a sliver of fresh berry. The pearls are guava (nice, but I could have punched up the flavor more with a better puree). The fresh berry made it, flavor wise, and I ended up not liking the chocolate cup as distracting. Some of the leftover guava gelee got sliced and layered with the curd and berry for some mutant fraisier action and it was distinctly better without the chocolate.

Something along this line has been puttering around my brain for days now, glad to get this first rendition out.

In other so I remember notes, it was suggested I make melon-based pearls very very soon. I can do that.