Back by Popular Demand – Fruitcake!

OK – this will never convert you if you’re a fruitcake hater, but let me tell you, you may hate fruitcake, but you will LOVE this, if you should ever be so lucky as to get some. This stuff is a tradition now, baked religiously the day after Thanksgiving, and on the occasional day in March when girlfriends from out of town arrive and they lobby hard for an off-season event.


The fruit is soaked in rum for at least a day before baking – figs, dates, raisins, currants, cherries and orange rind. Nothing fluorescent or green. The nuts are almonds and walnuts. There is enough batter to hold it together in a very low-key cakey sort of way, with cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg. This recipe is modified from the original – icky things like pineapple have been eliminated. And non-icky things that simply don’t belong in fruitcake, like macadamia nuts, have been substituted with more reasonable nuts.

It’s baked in a sheet pan, then brushed with rum syrup, and finally it is topped with a thin and lovely drape of marzipan. Rolled out by someone more patient than I am. We usually cut it into six pieces – about 6”x6” square. They’re better after a few days, assuming they last that long, and can be frozen for months without losing their quality. It’s fantastic cut into smaller squares and served with a cup of coffee or a port after dinner. Or, well, you can eat it for breakfast – fruit! Nuts! It’s healthy!!

Pine Nuts

Yipes! I blinked and January was gone! If only that were true, as January was in fact a long and dismal 31 days. Cold and dark. And cold. Only the chocolate helped. Rum Truffle Ritter Sport, to be specific. Oh, and my new copy of Gina DePalma’s new book, Dolce Italiano – she’s the pastry chef at Babbo, and the book is fabulous. I’ve been reading it in small doses, rationing it out like dessert. OK, I don’t actually ration dessert, but you get the idea.

I had to immediately make the pine nut tart on the cover – unlike my usual m.o., I didn’t change a thing in this recipe and it was fabulously perfect. The crust, which Gina notes she is particularly proud of, is probably the best sweet pastry crust I’ve ever used. It is firm but tender – holds up to the filling but doesn’t shoot across the room when you try to cut it with a fork!

Also featured in the above photo (thank you Jon!) is Potatoes Anna – I’ve never made them before but oh are they good! Thin rounds of peeled potatoes, layered in concentric circles in a cast iron skillet and brushed with butter between layers. You keep the flame on while you’re assembling it, shaking the pan from time to time, then pop the whole thing in the oven to bake for 45 minutes or so, with a lid on. You can see how wonderful they look, and they tasted just as good.

So, anyway, back to the crust. It makes more than you need for a 10” or even an 11” tart – she recommends saving the scraps and when you have scraps from two, you can make a third. Well, my freezer organization simply doesn’t lend itself to anything like this – it goes in, it gets unidentifiable with freezer burn, I take it out thinking it’s pizza dough and end up with pie crust, or vice versa. So that doesn’t work. What does work is using the dough to make mini tartlets right away. I baked three small ones, and then, lacking any fresh fruit to fill them with (see, general griping about January, above) I filled them with Fig Jam, for a homemade version of the Fig Newton® – humbly, these are better!!

About that freezer - ours pooped out on us, and I am having to use up stuff. I found the ready made puff pastry that I had bought last year, and was inspired to try an experiment. I cut the sheet into 2" squares, and pushed each square into a mini-muffin cup, then filled each cup with the pine nut tart filling from above. 20 minutes at 425 - they are so good! And they're small, so virtually without sin. You'll have to make your own judgment about adding ice cream, but it doesn't hurt!

December - a whole month in one bite!

OK, OK, it's been really really busy lately. . . .



First of all - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Scout - the chocolate dog with a caramel bow. The bow is courtesy of a box of Fran's nuts and caramels, and it is a testament to just how much I've eaten recently that the box still has any left in it . . . .


The baking continues since November. First, Dusen Cookies - little jam filled butter cookies. They can be made with an almond cookie base instead of a sugar cookie base, but the dough is more brittle and hard to work with, and the flavor is not that much better, so sugar cookies it is.

These have apricot jam in some and blackberry red currant jelly in the rest.








Then, just for fun, a dark chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and meringue mushrooms -so cute!


For Bryan's birthday party on 12/22. . . .








And yes, I know I am apparently crappy at taking pictures of the inside of the baked goods - the chocolate cake above is a case in point. I don't know how that happens - normally I just don't have the camera out at the cutting and serving point, and then poof it's gone!




But, here I have tried to take steps in the right direction - mom's stollen, whole and cut up, covered with melted butter and sugar. Won't last long.

And this doesn't even begin to touch the savory items, such as the puff pastry filled with Dungeness crab and cheddar cheese.


OK - more next year! XO - L

Odds and Ends

Seems appropriate to wrap up a short week by tidying up the desk and cleaning out the pictures I've kind of wanted to post but just didn't get organized enough to do.
A few weeks ago we stumbled on a quince tree - no one knows what to do with quince anymore, they're so old fashioned and definintely not available for instant gratification, but I love them - the smell is divine, they keep forever, and with a little sugar and some heat they get all soft and sweet and pink.

I poached mine until they were tender, pushed them through a sieve because they are a little stringy, and then made a crostata, the perfect Italian word to describe a lattice-topped jam tart. Since they don't really have pie this is as close as it gets - and as close as it needs to get as far as I'm concerned - nothing against pie, but I love these - kind of the foodie version of a pop-tart! Tender pastry, sweet fruit jam - mmm, perfect with a cup of coffee, healthy enough for breakfast (ok, my standards on that are admittedly not high) and fantastic with a bit of whipped cream.

The yellow Vespa - almost time for its first check up - I love this scooter! Over 400 miles so far.

And this pic from September - girls' weekend/lunch in the market - the shot just arranged itself and looked so pretty.

Back from Italy with Fabulous Pastry

So I spent the last 10 days of October in Florence with my mom. We went with several missions in mind, most of them having to do with food, but also involving silk scarves, leather gloves, patio umbrellas, chocolate, - oh right, that's food again - and wine bottle stoppers with beautiful Murano glass tops. More to come on all of those things - there are great buys in Florence even with the dollar at a terrible exchange for the Euro. Did I mention the chocolate? Here's one sweet place - http://www.cioccolatobecagli.it/

But, the one thing I went over there for above all others was to figure out the secret behind the Sfoglia di Riso. This pastry is an Italian staple - at least in Florence. Sfoglia (plural - sfoglie) means folder. The folder in this case is an envelop of sweet puff pastry, folded over a filling and baked until the puff pastry is shattering and golden and the filling spreads out inside and marries with the pastry in a sublime and fabulous way. There are folders filled with pastry cream, sweet rice custard, apricot, ricotta, chocolate, and other things as well - apple, pineapple, blackberry - the list goes on. Anyway, I had happily eaten my weight in these, both in 2005 and earlier this year when we were there in June. But I couldn't turn up anything on the internet or in cookbooks - apparently it is SO easy or intuitive that no recipe is required. OR, it's simply something that no one makes at home - I mean why would you? you can go into any caffe or bar and get one, warm, freshly baked every morning, for about $1.10 (Euro 0.85). Either way, they were a mystery to me, so this trip I resolved to figure them out.

After several false starts, I managed to talk my way into a pastry shop near the central market - even though they thought I was a little deranged, they agreed to let me watch the production - so from 6:00 AM until 7:30 AM one moring of the vacation, that's exactly what I did.

Oh my god - it was possibly the most fun I had on the whole trip! A tiny little kitchen with one long marble table, a dough sheeter, a proofing cabinet, some ovens and some cooling racks - the mixers looked to be in the small room next door. I watched the sfoglie go together, as well as the morning croissants, which they call brioche - go figure. Matteo, the pastry chef, was very nice, stopping his lightening-speed assembly long enough for me to get one picture of the filling going in.

This weekend, I tried it myself. The results, while not perfect because the dough distorted a little on me, were completely authentic in taste and texture - I made a double large batch of puff pastry from Rose Levy Bernabaum's cookbook, which turned out to be about 4 times too much! But nevermind, it freezes. I made 7 pastries - 6 with pastry cream and one, the best by far, with a mix of pastry cream and dad's apricot preserves. I have the rounds cut out for 27 more in the freezer! Perhaps I will be throwing a breakfast party one of these weekends . . . . More to come on Italy later on.

Torta Setteveli

"Seven Veils Cake" This cake consists of six different components, and nine layers, so the initial mystery is why it’s called seven veil cake, but it turns out that that’s not critical to assembly or enjoyment. The inspiration to make this was sparked by Ms. Adventures in Italy, a site I linked to just last week. Turns out we both have October birthdays, and that was basically enough.

Oh that and the picture there is just sublime. I will clearly be researching this next week when I am in Florence. But in the meantime, this is the way it turned out this weekend.

It was fabulous, and I am writing it here the way I made it, but lots of refinements are in order. The chocolate disks and chocolate cereal praline came out too hard, maybe some corn syrup is needed to make them soft even when they're cold. And frankly I think it could use another layer of chocolate sponge cake. More to come . . . .

The assembly – starting at the bottom

Chocolate sponge cake
Chocolate cereal praline
Hazelnut Bavarian cream
Chocolate disk
Hazelnut Bavarian cream
Chocolate disk
Chocolate mousse
Chocolate ganache, poured as a glaze

Oooh la la.

Chocolate disks and cereal praline – Cut 3 pieces of waxed or parchment paper and trace a 9” circle on each. Take 13 oz. (380 g.) of bittersweet chocolate – chips or pieces are ok, or chop some blocks – melt over low heat with 4 oz. butter. I used Guittard bittersweet pieces for this – bigger than chips but not by much. Heat gently until just melted – it should be just soft and have some body – not super liquid.

Spread approx ¼ to 1/3 of the mixture onto the paper to fill the disk you’ve traced out. Repeat to make a second disk. Stir 1 cup rice crispies cereal into the remaining chocolate and spread to form a third disk.
Then make a Chocolate Sponge Cake – use a 10” springform pan, lined with parchment or waxed paper - I used a 9" pan for a planned 9" finished product and found that sponge cake shrinks. Kind of a lot. I would just use a chocolate genoise and maybe bake it in a jelly roll pan and then cut out one or two rounds. But these are the ingredients I used. Technique is too long to include here.

3 eggs, separated
¼ c plus 1T sugar
1/8 t. cream of tartar
¼ cup cake flour
3 T cocoa
Pinch salt

Chocolate Mousse - from the Joy of Cooking – 2 egg whites, stiffly beaten; 4 oz. semi sweet chocolate, 2 T rum, ¼ cup sugar, 1 cup whipping cream, whipped. Make a syrup of the sugar and the rum. Melt chocolate with 3 T of the heavy cream. Stir in the syrup and let cool. Fold in beaten egg whites and whipped cream. This is the whipped cream going in - egg whites are already mixed in. Let chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

Hazelnut Bavarian Cream – 3 egg yolks, 1 envelope gelatin, pinch salt, ¼ cup sugar, 3 oz. hazelnut praline paste, 1 cup milk, 3/4 cup whipping cream, whipped. The technique for a Bavarian Cream is basically to mix the yolks, sugar, salt and gelatin. Scald the milk, and add the hazelnut praline paste to the hot milk, then cook the ingredients together as for a custard. Strain if necessary. Let cool in the fridge 1 to 2 hours, stirring occassionally, then add the whipped cream, which is what is shown in the picture.

Chocolate glaze – 4 oz. chocolate, ½ cup whipping cream, 1T butter – melt together over low heat – stir into pourable glaze. Don't have it too hot when you pour it on the torte.

Assemble by stacking the layers in a springform pan. Hold out 1 cup of the chocolate mousse and don't put the glaze on yet. Chill at least 3 hours.

Take off the spring form side, then ice the side of the torte with the remaining mousse. Then pour the glaze on. The chilled dessert will arrest the glaze so it doesn't run all over. You may need to work the glaze over the top and encourage it down the sides just a bit with an offset spatula.

Yeah, it was good.

Chocolate and Coffee

Lately one of my favorite things is chocolate and coffee - not as in a caffe mocha, not as in a coffee flavored chocolate, but as in a cup of coffee with a piece of chocolate. Now I am reluctant to even wade in here, because emotions run so high on this topic, but I love milk chocolate, and no that does not make me common or a bad person or one with no appreciation of fine food - though the looks I get suggest all of those things and worse. Nevertheless, a good espresso or americano with a piece of milk chocolate on the side is heaven - the perfect balance of sweet and bitter. My current and long time favorite is Ritter Sport - the butter biscuit is divine and the milk chocolate with whole hazelnuts is sublime. Both are good for breakfast. The rum raisin, a treat for later in the day, is often just what the doctor ordered. And there's the cappuccino, and the marzipan, and . . . . well, pretty much all of them. On a memorable day last summer we bought one of each, broke them into squares, arranged them attractively on a plate and served them as dessert after a lovely dinner on the deck!

I will also happily eat dark chocolate, especially with a coffee like the one in the picture - an espresso macchiato, in Florence. But not dirt chocolate, which is my term for pretty much anything with a higher than 85% cocoa solids. Come on people - that is just awful. There isn't enough sugar or cocoa butter to have a decent mouthfeel or to really bring out the flavor of the chocolate. There - I could go on and on, but I won't. Well, maybe a little - it's like eating deliberately underripe strawberries with no sugar - why? They are more succulent and delicious with sugar - not to mention a bit of heavy cream, so why not enjoy life a little?

Like with this chocolate confection at Mamma Gina's on the Borgo San Jacopo in Florence. Go there. Drink a Brunello, eat a bistecca, and find room for this dessert!

Of course dessert in Florence naturally leads me to chocolate (or hazelnut, or gianduia) gelato - with coffee it is beyond fabulous. More to come on that topic - research is still underway.

Pear Extravaganza

Pear-Walnut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

It's pear season, and we have them and then some. Our own Bartletts and d'Anjous, and Dad's exotic varieties from Australia and Germany - Peckham's Triumph, Forelle, and others I can't name. They say that the Boscs are the best for cooking, and I can't honestly dispute that, but we don't have any of those this year and with 40 pounds of free pears in the fridge, I'm not buying any!

This pear cake was inspired by a recipe of Mom's for a tea bread - after reading it, it struck me that it looked a lot like my carrot cake recipe. I will post the recipe as soon as I write it out, but if you use a carrot cake recipe, just substitute ripe diced pears for the carrot, and reduce the sugar by about 25%. Everything else stays the same. You could also substitute ginger and nutmeg for the cinnamon that is usually called for, and of course you could use pecans instead of walnuts. Leave OUT the coconut, pineapple and raisins that some heathens put in their carrot cakes.

My all time favorite pear recipe is French Pear Pie - an odd little pie crust made with oil and milk, filled with wine-poached pears, gingered sour cream, and topped with a nutmeg-scented crumble topping. It's a bit involved, what with all the different components - I usually make the crust and poach the pears the night before, then make the sour cream and crumble topping the day I bake it. It is pretty easy if you make the crust in the food processor first, then make the crumble topping, then make the sour cream filling, reusing the bowl without having to clean it.

French Pear Pie

This is worth the time and effort.

FRENCH PEAR PIE

Pears:

1 bottle white wine

1 cup water
2 cups sugar
juice of half a lemon
4 bosc pears, peeled, halved and cored

Pastry:

2¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
9 tablespoons vegetable oil

Sour Cream Filling:

3 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1½ cups sour cream

Topping:

1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup chilled butter

Poach pears. Combine wine, sugar and lemon and boil 10 minutes, add pear halves and simmer 10-30 minutes until they pierce easily with a knife. Remove pears and reserve liquid for reuse.

Make pastry. Stir flour and salt together in a bowl. Combine milk and oil but don't stir. Pour all at once into flour. Mix and form into two balls. Roll half the dough out between two sheets of waxed paper – do not try this any other way or the dough will fall apart – and fit it into a 9-inch pie pan. Freeze the other half for use another time or make two pies.

Prepare filling by mixing all ingredients together.

Prepare topping by mixing dry ingredients and cutting in butter until mealy.

Arrange pear halves in crust. Pour on filling and sprinkle topping over. Bake at 400°F for 25-30 minutes or until pie is golden brown. Do not overbake.

This is Billie Moreland's recipe from her restaurant in Spokane. I waitressed there my senior year in college and was captivated by her desserts. She never gave out recipes, so I was thrilled to find this in a cookbook 11 years later. It was a favorite of customers when she made it and it was always cut into 6 enormous pieces – I think it actually serves 8 unless no one has had anything else to eat.

I have also modified the recipe to make a bar cookie - Plateau Creme de Poire - simply use an 11x17 cookie sheet and make the crust in a food processor with 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar, and one stick of melted butter - add a bit of water if necessary until it is the consistency of damp sand, then press it into the parchment lined sheet and prebake for 20 minutes. Then spread on the sour cream topping, pave with thinly sliced poached pears, and finish with a double recipe of the crumble topping. Bake for an additional 25 minutes. Let cool and cut into bars to serve.

Empirical testing has shown that pears poached in wine, even crummy wine you wouldn't drink, taste far better than pears poached in water - even if you dress the water up with lemon juice and sugar. Since we make our own wine, we have a fairly reliable supply of not-so-great bottles, extremely suitable for cooking. But a $4.99 bottle of Riesling or a $2 bottle of any kind of white from Trader Joe's is perfect, I promise. Heck, take a small glass for yourself if you want - the pears won't miss it!

Fruit Tarts

OK - here is another non-chocolate post. Don't worry though, more chocolate ganache filled macarons are coming up, as well as a planned visit to Theo Chocolate upcoming in the very near future. But it's August and it's fruit season. And these bake very quickly, not heating up the kitchen. Not that that's been a problem - it was 60 degrees and pouring rain on Sunday. . . .


One thing that I'm learing quickly is how hard it is to photograph food and make it look beautiful, especially rustic type food that doesn't have the advantage of sugar paste flowers and food coloring and royal icing swags. That stuff, in pinks and purples and yellow and red and green, that stuff pops. These humble tarts don't really pop until you put them in your mouth!

But with your eyes closed, I'd put these babies up against anything. The first one is a plum tart with almond creme. The second is an apricot jam tart with frangipane and pine nuts. The difference between almond and frangipane? Well, for purposes of these recipes none - both use frangipane, which is almond paste, sugar, egg, and butter (maybe a touch of flour) that is used as a base or a topping and bakes into an almondy creamy wonder. Under the plums it stays soft and creamy. On top of the apricot jam it gets a lightly crunchy top crust and supports the pine nuts.

Either way the texture and flavor are perfect with fruit or jam, though I think I make it sweeter when I plan to use it with otherwise unsweetened fresh fruit, and less sweet when it is going on top of jam.

The puff pastry is a dream - I found it at Big John's, premade, frozen perfectly flat, two sheets per package. $7.50 for the all-butter, less than that for the half-butter. It's good, it keeps, it's always ready to use, there's no waste. The only thing you miss is the "oh my god I can't believe I pulled this off" feeling you get when you make your own successful puff pastry. But I can live with that if the trade off is having a fantastic dessert in 30 minutes from orchard to table.