Chocolate and Caramel

Oh! This stuff has such potential. Chocolate caramel mousse. With an artistic sort of a flair- you know, a jaunty little tilt to the whole thing. I have to thank Tartlette for the idea and recipe and the link to the pastry chef. There was a lot of "oh la la-ing" going on in connection with this post, and it wasn't necessarily limited to food. But, sadly, the execution turned out to be a little less than what you might have hoped for - but maybe consistent with Tartlette's experience with other recipes of his. In any event, the caramel mousse was a little gummy - too much gelatin I think! But the chocolate mousse was yummy - light and airy, though I wouldn't hesitate to go back to my usual Joy of Cooking chocolate mousse instead, since I can make that one with my eyes closed.

Anyway, the caramel was lots of fun to make - here it is ready to go into the champage flutes. And here is is again resting on its side to get the proper angle.



And another shot of the lovely finished product.

Bread of the Angels

Pane degli Angeli

I’ve been looking for my favorite yeast lately – Dr. Oetker, a German brand that makes really superior bread and pastry. Nicer texture, more controlled rise, better gluten, and wonderful aroma. And, you usually only need to use half a packet, even for heavier doughs like whole grain or brioche. And I’ve been craving brioche lately, though for reasons explained below, that hasn’t happened yet.

Anyway, my usual sources for the yeast have dried up because they say they don’t sell through it fast enough. People are so funny – I haven’t found that yeast goes bad or that it falls flat even past the “sell by” date, but the whole obsession with “sell by” dates is a rant for another day. I finally found it in DeLaurenti’s, of course, though I don’t usually think of buying baking supplies there unless it’s fruitcake season. But that’s another digression. Anyway, right next to the Dr. Oetker yeast was this box of what looked very much like Italian yeast – oh, I was so excited – visions of pizza crusts danced in my head. And the name was just perfect “PANEANGELI” – bread of the angels!! Wow, with a name like that it’s got to be good! And the packaging was so pretty! And “Lievito” DOES mean yeast, it’s just that it apparently also has a more generic meaning – which turns out in this case to mean a premeasured mixture of baking soda and baking powder for cakes and cookies! And all of a sudden I have a box of 10 packets!

Now, in retrospect, there WERE some warning signs that should have alerted me, but the box was all in Italian and I kind of skimmed the words as I grabbed it, so I must have seen only what I wanted to see. I get it home and start to look more closely at it, and here are words like “dolce”, meaning “sweet” – still ok for croissants, right? And “vaniglinato” meaning “vanilla flavored” – well, still ok for brioche. . . . . And “istantanea” which of course means instant, which I took to mean “quick rising”. Well, in the end it I’m sitting there with these packets, a little annoyed at myself, but figuring I’ll find a way to use them. I love the Italians! Each packet has a recipe on the back! All different. And numbered so you can track them! And the web site for this product has a “recipe of the week’!

So I have to bake my way through them, of course. So far we’ve got Ciambelle, which are little rings, Crostata di Marmellata, or jam tart, and Torta al Limone, or lemon cake. It’s great, because they all taste really Italian – who knew there was a secret ingredient like this!

Jam Tarts

Pastry crust filled with a tender almond cake and a dollop of apricot jam, or blackberry redcurrant jelly.

I had a naming contest for these at work. My personal favorite is “Jammy Cakey Tarty Thingies”, but it may be reduced to a simple “Jammy Cakes”. I took some tartlet shells and filled them with a bit of Almond Cake batter – a dense and moist almond pound cake – then I plopped in some jam (apricot in some, blackberry red currant jelly in others) and then put more batter on the top.



Funny how all my baked goods look the same – kind of round and golden. Anyway, the crispness of the pastry crust played off of the tender cake in a subtle but very nice way, and the jam was fabulous – next time I would probably add more jam, but I was trying to avoid the potential for them all to turn volcanic in the oven, so I used a bit less than I really wanted to.

Scout, my adoring fan!

Birthdays

Lori's Birthday Cake - This was a special request for "something apple". So, that left me with plenty of discretion, except that pie of course isn't for birthdays, and the size had to be big enough to feed at least 16 people, because unlike the rest of us greedy and cake-hungry souls who don't want to share, Lori always invites everyone on the entire floor!

This was my first run with this particular square cake pan - for some reason I am loving everything square these days - picture frames, rugs, and now cakes. This pan is fabulous - it's Wilton, either 10"x10" or 11"x11" square - really a perfect size for brownies or cakes. The apple cake is a carrot-cake-like concoction - lots of oil and eggs and sugar, a dash of cinnamon and some diced Pink Lady apples - nuts optional. It's very dense and moist. I made two full cakes and used them as layers - sandwiched and frosted with nearly 2 pounds (!) of cream cheese frosting! So the entire structure was somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 pounds! omg. OK, maybe 9 pounds. But still. And we did get close to 20 servings. Anyway, it was quite the cake.

Apple cake

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups apples, peeled and chopped

(optional - 1 cup walnuts or pecans)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, sugars, cinnamon, salt and baking soda) until thoroughly combined.
Whisk together the wet ingredients (eggs, oil and vanilla) and stir into the dry ingredients. Stir to just combine. Fold in the apples and nuts if using.
Spread the batter into a greased and floured pan. Bake 50 to 55 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Make sure the cream cheese and butter are at room temperature!

Mix 2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, 1 stick unsalted butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla and confectioner's sugar to taste with an electric mixer. Beat until really light and fluffy. Spread over top (and sides if you want) of cooled cake.

Ravioli ala Bunker

Far and away the best ravioli I've ever made - and I didn't even have to make them! A collaborative effort (read - Lisa bossing others around in the kitchen) with Gary and Tarri and Matt. These used a tomato pasta, just for the fun red color, but you could use plain or spinach as well.


Tomato Pasta
3 cups flour - all-purpose, unbleached
3 eggs
3 oz. (1/2 small can) tomato paste

To make the pasta, combine the ingredients in the work bowl of a food processor and process until well combined - it will be moist and mealy and hold together well - add a few drops of water if it seems dry - better too moist because you can always work extra flour in, but if it's too dry it's never going to be right. Roll it into sheets using a manual pasta maker (Atlas), and then fill with the herbed ricotta and walnut filling below, using a ravioli maker - actually just the plaque that lets you fill and form them by hand. So, even though they call it a ravioli MAKER, it doesn't really make them for you . . . . I have never used any of the other kinds though, and this is way better than shaping and cutting them individually. . . .

Herbed Ricotta Filling with Walnuts

1 -12 oz container of ricotta - firm/drained
a handful (3/4 c.) of fresh mixed herbs - we used flat leaf parsley, lemon thyme, chervil and basil
a handful of walnuts
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan
pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the herbs are finely minced and the walnuts are no longer chunky. Fill ravioli. These need to boil for about 2-4 minutes. Serve with cream sauce and additional parmesan cheese - sprinkle with chopped parsley if you want.

Was finally able to post additional pictures - here is the ricotta we used, and the basket of fresh herbs! Absolutely use lemon thyme, it was fantastic!

Girls Baking

We had a play-hooky-and-bake day on the 13th! So fun - started with a trip to PFI for chocolate, olives, cheese, almond paste, and other essentials, then to Bargreen's just for looking around (excellent source for pizza pans and peels, among other things), then for coffee, I think, then to the grocery store for eggs and a heart-shaped cookie cutter, then back home. So, no baking actually underway until nearly 1:00 PM. But when we got going, it went fast.

First, Nocciola Cheesecake to take into work - no particular reason. OMG - divine!

Then, truffle brownies, later to be cut into heart shapes, and the crumbs ingeniously rolled into cocoa dusted truffles!

Then, pine nut tartlettes - small technical glitches involving honey overflowing into the oven - that's what the foil on the bottom is for!

Then, at the last minute, heart shaped cookies with jam-filled windows! I know, I know, a bit heavy on the photos and light on text and recipes, but that's how it is sometimes!

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