Merry Christmas and buche de noel!

Ah, the fabulousness of a lazy day, with nothing to do but walk the dog and cook and eat dinner! Last night was lobster and salad and fresh bread. Today is crab cakes and duck on the rotissiere. And if I eat enough of that, plus the aforementioned bread, and save room for the dessert, well, then, the fresh pasta with mushrooms might just have to wait until tomorrow!

We have suffered mightily over the past two weeks here in the pacific northwest, home of the green and soggy Christmas - my personal favorite actually. Tons of snow finally melting, shoveling muscles very sore, many cars (not mine tho) injured in the slip slidey conditions.

The buche de noel is easy and delish - as many or as few little decorations as you care to add. This one is pretty plain, but the rich chocolate roll is filled with white chocolate mousse and frosted with chocolate buttercreammmmmmmmmmm. That is not a typo. It is very good.

Ultimate Fruitcake

This is a fruitcake to love, and to change people's minds about the whole fruitcake-hating thing. Which I have to say I don't mind the fruitcake haters too much because it leaves more for US, the smart and talented fruitcake lovers. This recipe benefits from lots of rum, and lots of yummy candied and dried fruit and nuts, with the candied cherries in there for a hit of color and tradition. Bake in a jellyroll pan, cool, remove from the pan, brush with more rum, then drape with a thin and lucious sheet of marzipan.

Check out Kim's posts at A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen for another really lovely recipe and some beautiful pictures!

The best part of this is baking it with friends right after Thanksgiving. I love the process and ritual of that so much that I wouldn't even mind if I ended up giving it all away, but of course I don't!

Ultimate Fruitcake

The Fruit and Nuts

8 oz. dried figs, stemmed and cut into pieces
8 oz. pitted dates – chopped
8 oz. candied orange peel
8 oz. raisins
8 oz. golden raisins
8 oz. currants
8 oz. candied cherries – cut in half
6 oz. almonds
6 oz. walnuts
½ cup dark rum

Cake Batter

2 ¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ pound butter at room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
4 large eggs

The Marzipan

½ pound almond paste
½ pound powdered sugar
2-3 T. corn syrup

The Syrup

1/3 cup corn syrup
3 T. dark rum


Method

Toss the fruit and nuts with the rum and let sit overnight.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees; butter an 11x17” sheet pan and line with baker’s parchment. Stir dry ingredients together in medium bowl (flour through cloves). Cream butter and brown sugar in electric mixer – add eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated. Stir in the flour mixture and beat until smooth. Scrape the batter over the fruit and nuts and fold everything together by hand – this may take a while, but be patient, it will all come together. Scrape it into the parchment lined pan and spread evenly, smoothing the top. Press a piece of parchment onto the top of the cake and bake 50-60 minutes or until the cake is just firm – do not overbake. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack. Take the top piece of parchment off right away.

Make the marzipan frosting – pulse the almond paste in a food processor with the confectioners’ sugar and corn syrup until it comes together. Knead by hand to form a smooth dough and cover with plastic wrap until ready to use.

Stir the rum and corn syrup together.

When cake is cool or just barely warm, flip it out onto a board or another cookie sheet and remove the baking parchment. Brush the entire cake with syrup until it’s all used up. Roll out the marzipan to make an 11x17 inch rectangle. Drape it over the top of the cake and press down to make sure it sticks.

If you really want it to look perfect and beautiful, trim ½” off of each side of the cake, but I don’t think that’s necessary. The cake can then be cut into 6 squares, about 5”x5” each, that make a great size to wrap up and freeze or give away. The cake is somewhat difficult to cut when fresh, but if you refrigerate or freeze it, it then cuts beautifully into small squares. It keeps in the fridge for several weeks or many months frozen.

Daring Bakers November Challenge!

November's challenge was a caramel cake with caramel butter frosting. The author of the recipe is Shuna Fish Lydon (http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2006 … he-recipe/). The hostess of this month's challenge is Dolores at http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com, where you will find the recipe for the challenge. The rules required us to bake the cake and make the frosting - size and shape of the cake and any flavor add-ins optional. I made the cake exactly according to the recipe - did not add anything in vecause the caramel seemed like a great taste on its own.

I baked it on thanksgiving day - of course - because there's LOTS of empty oven space that day :) So I ended up using the tiny oven, which meant I used a 6" round pan and a small cupcake pan. The flavor on this cake was fantastic, and I would try to make it again, but it was a bit heavy and dense - I would have liked it to be a lighter texture.

Here is the completed cake.And here is the caramel sauce - very flavorful!

A small slice.

The iced 6" cake.

The little cupcakes.

Ginger Scones

Oh yeah, we made Ginger Scones too! And sat with our lattes and gazed out the window for 10 minutes. These are really fantastic. I hear they're not bad as a hangover cure too :)

GINGER SCONES
400° F for 12-14 minutes

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar, plus additional for topping
1 T. baking powder
1 t. ground ginger
pinch of salt
6 T. unsalted butter
2 oz. crystallized ginger, chopped
1 egg
½ cup milk

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in butter until the butter is the size of small peas (it is fine to use the food processor for this), then stir in crystallized ginger. Mix egg and milk together. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the egg and milk mixture. Mix lightly until just combined. Turn out onto a floured board, knead for 30 seconds. Pat/roll into a round, cut into 8 wedges. Place on cookie sheet and sprinkle with additional sugar. Bake until golden brown.

I created this recipe after Mom and I visited Chris in Mill Valley and had something very similar at a café/espresso bar in downtown Mill Valley. I think it was called the Depot, and was located in the old train station. They used a star-shaped cookie cutter on theirs, which was nice because it makes for a lot of crunchy edge on each scone. These are interesting because they’re very delicately flavored – usually ginger comes with cloves and molasses and is very heavy and wintery, but these aren’t.

Baking Day with the Girls!

Eeeeeeee! Sunday was absolutely the most fun day EVER. 60's and 70's music on the radio, and baking baking baking. We made 8 pounds of fruitcake, 6 dozen peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, the caramel pear tarts from the prior post, but in 5" shells instead of 3", and we split and filled and iced some little 6" cakes as pictured. The cookies were inspired by the discovery of tiny little peanut butter cups at Trader Joe's - they melted into the cookies instead of retaining their shape like chocolate chips, but this was not a negative! And, we did not bake the Panettone because we didn't have the secret ingredient extract at the bakery with us, but we will live to bake again another day. Recipes to be posted with pics upcoming.

Pear Caramel Tarts

100 Best Foods in the World

Happy Birthday to me :)

This list is a work in progress - I am giving myself at least 30 open slots for new stuff!

100 Best Foods in the World

1. lasagna
2. BLT on toasted sourdough with mayo
3. risotto
4. french fries with ketchup
5. Italian chocolate with hazelnuts
6. Manchego cheese
7. YooHoo
8. marcona almonds
9. artichoke hearts
10. grilled sweet peppers
11. pizza margherita
12. nocciolo gelato
13. giandiujia anything, especially gelato
14. Reese’s peanut butter cups
15. raspberry jam
16. apricot jam
17. croissants
18. brioche
19. champapagne
20. pasta with pesto
21. duck breast with Chinese 5 spice
22. chicken fried rice
23. hot and sour soup
24. Coquille St. Jacques
25. lobster tails with melted butter
26. Dungeness crab with melted butter
27. almond pear tart
28. artichoke and parmesan dip
29. arancini – preferably with mushrooms
30. tortilla chips with lime
31. chocolate almond cake
32. porterhouse steak grilled outside
33. blackberry pie
34. roasted chicken with rosemary
35. mashed potatoes
36. salted cashew nuts
37. chicken with peanut sauce over spinach
38. Green curry anything w/ coconut milk
39. fried goat cheese rounds on a salad of wild greens
40. Homemade turkey on rye with stuffing, cranberry sauce and mayo
41. tuna salad with sweet pickles and lots of mayo
42. ginger scones
43. napoleons
44. new potatoes and peas in cream
45. macaroni and cheese
46. snickers bars
47. homemade potato chips
48. Dairy Queen soft serve vanilla cone dipped in chocolate
49. fresh mini doughnuts
50. herring in sour cream
51. fried egg sandwich with cheese, mayo and ketchup
52. rum cake
53. grilled cheese sandwich
54. grilled beef tenderloin
55. Rose’s Cheesecake – the Cake Bible
56. blueberries
57. noodle salad with egg roll and bbq pork
58. figs with manchego
59. orange hazelnut pinwheels from Macrina bakery
60. mezzelune stuffed with ricotta and herbs in a porcini sauce, garnished with shrimp
61. leberkasemmel with sweet mustard
62. Ritter Sport white chocolate and blood orange
63. seafood louie salad
64. duck pate
65. Sfoglie di riso
66. pappardelle with cinghiale sauce
67. Ravioli rose’, with ricotta spinach filling
68. stollen
69. guacamole
70. white chocolate mousse with raspberries
    

Camera's broken, but still eating!

Pappardelle with wild boar ragu

OK - the Canon is in the shop - "lens error". Crap. though I am happy to have the excuse not to post any pictures - pulling them off the camera and putting them on the computer and then uploading to the blog site is a task that I dislike in a way that is way out of proportion to how much time it actually takes. I personally can't wait until the day that I just hold my camera up next to the computer and tell the photos to hop on over - wouldn't that be great??

Had potato chips and petit syrah for dinner the other night. Don't knock it until you've tried it! Ruffled, and salt and vinegar. You kind of have to make a potato chip sandwich with them to get the exact right blend of crunch and salt and tang. The salt and vinegar are too intense, and the chips are too thin, while the ruffled ones are too bland and too thick - together they are sublime! This always makes me think of sitting outside in a cafe in Italy at about 5:00 and having an apperitivo with some of those little dishes of chips and peanuts and olives - I LOVE that!

Last week we had dinner at il Fornaio - one of the best lasagne ever! Seriously - beschamel, a nice meat sauce, fresh pasta - it was really really good! But not as good as the ravioli pictured below - in Florence, near the central market - filled with ricotta and herbs with a light tomato sauce and pareggiano reggiano on top. This is clearly what the pillows in heaven are made out of!

Tomato Cheddar Pie

This is from a Laurie Colwin column in the August 1992 Gourmet - I still miss her. I think her food writing was some of the first that inspired me, and during all my "I'm taking all of this stuff to Goodwill" phases, her books stay on the shelf, never at risk.

This pie is so good, kind of like a baked tomato sandwich. It is best if it is reheated in a 350°F oven so the cheese is melted and the pie is hot. The recipe says you can use canned tomatoes, but I never make it with anything but fresh, preferably ones you picked yourself. Or someone picked for you :)



TOMATO CHEDDAR PIE
Crust:
2 cups flour
1 stick butter
4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup milk

Filling:
2 pounds fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and sliced
or 2 28-ounces cans of plum tomatoes, drained and sliced
chopped basil, parsley or chives, to taste
1½ cups grated cheddar cheese
1/3 cup mayonnaise mixed with 2 T. lemon juice

Make crust as for biscuit dough. Roll out half and line a 9-inch pie plate with it, add the tomatoes, then the herbs, then 1 cup of the cheese, then the mayonnaise mixture and then the rest of the cheese. Roll out the rest of the dough and fit it over the top, pinching the edges to seal the crusts together. Cut several steam vents in the top and bake at 400°F for 25 minutes.