Morning

Closer to noon, but who's counting.
Super strong French-press coffee, and nectarine-berry-black pepper galette.
We watched Julie & Julia last night and the Julia portions were delightful. I think this is why I woke up wanting to make something French. Emily is planning to make boef bourguignion and tarte tatin tonight in tribute.



I had a single nectarine left, and it wasn't very ripe, and I was hungry. Somehow this seemed like less work than trying to eat an underripe nectarine.



Threw a slovenly pastry dough together in my mixer bowl: 1 stick butter, ~1 cup flour, a bit of salt and enough cold water to bind together.







Breakfast. Lunch. Brunch. It's 1:20pm.

Rugelach

Ruuuuugelach. Rugelach rugelach rugelach.

regular rugelach (apricot-walnut-raisin):



chocolate-walnut-nutella rugelach:



how to ruge your lach:
















RUUUUGELAAAACH

Recipe courtesy of Epicurious.com Modified to chocolate version by me. I recommend using less filling than stated in the original recipe, as it oozed everywhere while baking.

Ham cake recipe

Here's the recipes I used, in case you wanted to make a ham cake of your very own:

Red Velvet Cake

2.5 c. sifted cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
2 oz. red food coloring (2 Tbsp.)
1.5 c. sugar
1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. buttermilk
1 tsp. white vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9x13 pan, two 9" rounds, or three 8" rounds.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a small bowl, mix food coloring and cocoa powder to form a paste without lumps; set aside (adding a small amount of white sugar helps make cocoa powder dissolve)
3. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then add vanilla and red cocoa paste. Scrape bowl down to ensure even mixing. Add flour mixture in thirds, alternating with buttermilk and ending with a final addition of flour. Beat until well combined, scraping bowl with spatula.
4. Add vinegar and mix well to combine. Pour batter (or spread, it's rather thick) into pan(s) and bake for 25-30 minutes (a few minutes longer for 9x13 pan) or until cake passes the toothpick test.
5. Cool cake in its pan until it is warm enough to handle, then de-pan onto a plate or wire rack. Allow to cool completely before frosting (or better yet, put it in the fridge so it's cold)


Boiled Milk Frosting

1 cup whole milk
3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
1 c. unsalted butter
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Whisk flour into milk and place over medium in a small saucepan. Cook mixture until thickened (when it barely comes to a simmer); remove from heat and add salt, then set aside to cool slightly.
2. In a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla.
3. Add still-warm milk mixture a spoonful at a time to the creamed butter mixture while the stand mixer is running at medium speed (I switched from the leaf paddle to a whisk attachment at this point, to incorporate more air). An emulsion will slowly form. Be sure to scrape the bowl down for even mixing!
4. You should wind up with an extremely fluffy, light, and buttery frosting when completed.

HAM CAKE

So. Friend Lauren dislikes ham due to having an overabundance of it in her childhood. Upon hearing this, I immediately decided to be an ass about it and told her that I would make her a cake shaped like a ham for her birthday.

I am a man of my word. A figurative man.

Months went by and I didn't think much about how to make ham cake a reality. Then I drew up a schematic two weeks before the birthday and then didn't use the schematic at all. Just as Michelangelo saw an angel in the block of marble and used his chisel to free it, I saw a ham in the pile of cake and used a bread knife. Yeah what, I just compared myself to Renaissance master, whatcha gonna do?

The cake itself was red velvet cake, which I baked the night before assembling (so the cake would be cold and easier to work with).
Red velvet cake is a buttermilk cake that has a little cocoa powder and a ton of red food coloring in it. I used up all of Emily's red food coloring which she had bought for making fake blood for zombie movies a few years ago. We do not anticipate needing a lot of fake blood for zombie movies anytime soon.



I had originally planned on making a full-size ham cake, but then I realized that is a shit ton of cake and we don't have enough people to eat it all. So instead I made a half-size one using a half-sheet of cake (one 9x13 pan's worth).

First, I cut the rectangle of cake in half, then split the layers.



Never done that before. I like the way split-layer cakes look when cut, though, because the insides are that much more intricate.

Protip: Whenever you frost a cake, always lay down strips of wax paper or foil around the perimeter of the plate, then stack the cake on top of it. The foil will catch all that frosting you smear around and after you're done, you pull the strips out from under the cake and get a pristine presentation plate.



Boiled milk frosting(aka butter roux frosting):



The internet told me this is the traditional frosting for a red velvet cake. The process intrigued me so I gave it a shot, and now I am in love with this frosting. It's very light, silky smooth like a buttercream but not as oily, and easier to make.

I proceeded to cut the split half-rectangles into rough triangles, and stacked up a roughly triangular shape that got smaller higher up.





Then I took my really big bread knife and roughed out a ham shape.



It looks very pointy from the back.



Then came time for the crumb coat. Doing a crumb coat greatly improves the appearance of a frosted cake. Prior to doing your final coat of frosting, you smear on a thin layer that covers every square inch and seals in all the cake crumbs that would otherwise mar the outer surface if you tried frosting it in one go. You put the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes so the crumb coat sets up, then you do the real decorating.





At this point I had to go to Emily's to get my gel icing colors and run back and color the frosting. By then the crumb coat had set up, and I was ready to frost the outside for reals. I probably should have colored the frosting initially and had the whole crumb coat be colored too, because white frosting started peeking out when I spread the colored stuff too thin.

I don't have pictures of the rough job, but I do have pics of the cake after hot-knifing.

Hot knifing is when you take a metal spatula (or butter knife), dip it in hot/boiling water, wipe it on a clean towel and then use the hot knife to smooth out frosting. It gets rid of all the spatula marks that usually come from frosting a cake, and makes an uncanny smooth fondant-like finish.

Like this.





It's lucky that I used some cocoa powder to deepen the frosting color, because I'm pretty sure that's why there's so much depth to the color after hot-knifing. It really resembled the browning patterns you get from roasted meat.

I used dental floss to make the crosshatch pattern, then piped on tiny cloves with a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off.

Emily had the brilliant idea of styling the cake with some broccoli:



The inside:



Lauren almost didn't want to cut into the cake, it looked so good. But it was made of cake and it was meant to be eaten.

Pasta and Pie

I'm aliiiiiive
And I have pasta



And berry pie



This is what happens when you can't ever find your camera while you're cooking, and you're too busy making it up as you go along to take photos anyway.

I did manage one "before" shot of the pie:



Made the pie by the seat of my pants. It was also my first attempt at a lattice-top. Kind of fun! No recipe for filling or pastry, just kind of went by feel. The crust probably suffered a bit from this (not super awesomely flaky), but at the end of the day it was still pie and we ate the shit out of it.

The pasta was a bit of a step outside my comfort zone when it comes to quick weeknight meals--it uses absorption cooking methods and the final sauce contains a novel ingredient: plain yogurt. Also pictured: pieces of Italian sausage, parsley from the container garden, thin-sliced lemon rounds, green peas, herbs de provence.

By the way--these photos? Like, a month old. Better late than never?

Figgy

Yesterday, I still had leftover potato water for additional breadmaking endeavors and I had some under-utilized dried figs in my pantry.   So those two things plus lots of flour and some soft butter, small handfuls of flaxseed, wheat germ, shakes of cinnamon/clove/nutmeg and a small heap of brown sugar equals:

Breakfast for the next few days!

I am really liking the King Arthur flour I bought (unbleached white whole wheat).  It was something of an impulse purchase but I think I may buy it again in the future.  It behaves a lot more like white flour than a whole wheat flour and you can't really pick out the wheat germ particules because of the finer grind.  I've been cutting it with some store-brand all-purpose flour as a way to make my 5-lb. bag last longer.

The thing I like about baking bread

The thing I like about baking bread is, after enough practice you can mess around with no recipe at all and still produce something tasty.  Bread is stupid easy, which I guess is why humans have been making and eating it for millenia.

This is kind of like ciabatta in that it was a very wet dough that produced a very flat loaf with a rather open internal structure, but seeing as how I have never taken the time to read a recipe for real ciabatta, I shall call it fauxbatta.

I made colcannon last night, so I saved the water left over from boiling the potatoes and used some of it to make this bread.  The water was already salted from potato-boiling, so I didn't add any salt to the bread dough.

The dough was mixed and kneaded and put in the fridge overnight, taken out in the morning and punched down, and then shaped, proofed, and baked after I got home from work.

I think I shall use it to soak up bits of stew.

St. Patrick's Day Part II

True to my/our word, I made Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes tonight so I could try getting buzzed off of cake.
In the course of gathering ingredients and such, I discovered I am a squirrel yet again:


On the left: the existing cupcake liners in my pantry. 

On the right: the package of cupcake liners I bought today because I couldn't remember if I had any.

My cupcake pan is AWOL so I just put the foil liners on a baking sheet:


Right. On to assembly!

The first thing you do is stir a cup of Guinness and a cup of butter together in a pan which is kind of weird but okay.

Looks scary.

Then you measure out cocoa powder

And add it to the simmering fatty-Guinness:

And you whisk it until it looks like pudding, which it almost is:

I have no pictures of the rest of the batter assembly but you basically beat eggs and sour cream, add the fatty-chocolate-Guinness mixture to make what is essentially Guinness chocolate pudding (minus the sugar), then add flour and sugar and baking soda and suddenly it's not scary chocolate beer pudding anymore, it's cake batter.  

The one thing I did differently from the smitten kitchen recipe was to decrease the sugar from 2 cups to 1 2/3 cups, because seeing "2 cups flour" and "2 cups sugar" together in a cake recipe is terrifying.

Anyway this is what the cupcakes looked like naked:

I used a clean cheapass vegetable peeler to core the cupcakes:

You can see clear down to the bottom!

There were 24 cupcakes, but only 23 made it to this stage. One got kind of smushed during the transfer to cooling racks. Sad.

Here are all their guts.  I ate them, as it was my perogative.

I was expecting the cupcakes to be quite dense and rich due to the heaviness of the beer and all, but the texture turned out to be light and fluffy, and they all had perfect lightly crisp tops. They were quite chocolatey without being too rich, because the Guinness added body and flavor.  I didn't miss the 1/3 cup of sugar I left out (but then again, I like semi-sweet chocolate so your mileage may vary).  I would totally make these again any day of the year (except maybe tomorrow).

But enough about the cupcakes themselves, let's keep violating them!
In order to do it properly, I needed whiskey and dark chocolate ganache. Here is a picture of Nick's bottle of whiskey that I borrowed:

Here is a picture of a lovely tempered chocolate ganache with cream and butter and Jameson in it. It's about half Valrhona, half Toll House, because I was too lazy/cheap to run out to a fancy food store to make up the difference in nice chocolate.

Nick thinks "ganache" sounds like an STD.  Say it out loud.

The resulting pile of reamed cupcakes, filled with ganache.  Ewww.

Foreground: the large freezer bag I sacrificed in the name of ghetto piping technique.

Alas, I have no pictures of the finished cupcakes, since final assembly was done at Emily's. It's easier to transport a bowl of frosting + tray of unfrosted cupcakes than it is to wrangle 2 dozen frosted cupcakes into a car without making a mess.  

I am hoping Emily took a photo, but for now, just imagine the cupcakes topped with a thin layer of white buttercream with a shot of Irish Cream in it, because that's exactly what they looked like before we ate them.

The ganache was quite alcoholic and I think I got buzzed from eating two.

TAKE HOME LESSON: Pastries are a prime vector for alcohol delivery, if you are a wimp like me who can't metabolize alcohol.

Clementine Cake

Apparently we all have a crush on Smitten Kitchen's clementine cake, because it's been making the rounds on the blogs.

Being as susceptible to suggestion as we are (when it comes to food), we went and bought a bag of clementines one Saturday and totally forgot about them for a whole week.

Then we boiled the clementines, as per the first step in the recipe. The weirdest thing was they smelled like cake while they were boiling. So anyway, the boiled clementines went into the fridge for four days because nobody had time to make this goddamn cake (but we all wanted to eat it). Then I made it, or something like it.


The Beater+ paddle makes a sort of squeaky noise when it scrapes.

Due to dietary considerations, I wanted to adapt the recipe to be nut-free, which is kind of a tall order when the entire body of the cake consists of ground almonds. I still wanted to have a dense cake, with a similar nutty flavor, so here's what I came up with.


Top to bottom: brown rice flour, ground flaxseed, all-purpose flour

A note on grinding flaxseed: If you screw an empty pasta sauce jar into the base of your blender, you get an awesome way to grind stuff up without having to clean a giant pitcher! I am so going to make pesto this way from now on.


Looks kind of like ground-up almonds.

I added butter just because, you know. Butter.




Blarf.

I buttered and floured a springform pan, then poured in the batter and hoped for the best:





This here is a photo testimony to why you should butter and flour everything before you bake in it. Look at that beautiful clean release. Even plain nonstick doesn't do it this well unless it's brand-spanking-new.



It's done! Looks a little naked, though.
Oh hey I sure do have a Meyer lemon in my fridge that needs using up, and a lot of eggs, and some butter and sugar...


LEMON CURD-ed!

It was delicious. Mellow, sweet, and a little orangey. Texturally, it resembled a dense banana-nut bread, and I am happy to say that there was a bit of nutty flavor from the flaxseed. The lemon curd provided just enough acidity to cut the sweet richness of the cake.

It's even better on the second day.


Clementine Cake
adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Nigella Lawson, who is totally cute.

4 to 5 clementines (about 375grams/slightly less than 1 pound total weight)
6 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons room temperature butter
3/4 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup brown rice flour
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder

1. Put the clementines in a pot with enough cold water to cover; bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours. Drain and let cool, then cut them in half and remove any seeds. Chop the whole fruit finely in a food processor/blender/by hand.

2. Preheat oven to 375 F. Butter and flour an 8" round springform pan.

3. Beat the eggs, then add sugar and dry ingredients and butter. Add chopped clementines and mix well.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake at 375 F for about 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.


Meyer Lemon Curd
something I half-assed, with help from the Internet.

2 egg yolks
1 whole egg
1/4-1/3 cup lemon juice (How tart do you want it? Meyer lemons are sweeter, so if you use regular lemons then I'd say do 1/4 cup juice.)
1 Tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
1/2 cup sugar
4 Tablespoons room temperature butter, cut into pieces

1. In a stainless steel bowl set over a pot of simmering water, whisk the eggs, sugar, and lemon juice. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture becomes thick like sour cream or mayonnaise (about 10 minutes). You can also use a Pyrex bowl if you don't have stainless, but it will take a lot longer to get everything up to the right temperature.

2. Remove from heat immediately and stir in zest, then whisk in pieces of butter gradually until they have been incorporated.

3. Try to let it cool down a bit before you eat it all.