I am feeling a little lost not being able to participate in this week or next week’s baking fun. I expect to have some interesting food experiences to share next week. I am hungry for Mixed Berry Cobbler, I had better go read some blogs at Tuesdays with Dorie.
No, no, stay with me here. Basil is an amazing chameleon of an herb and has a talent for transioning effortlessly from the savory into the sweet. I discovered this thanks to Kate Zuckerman’s recipe for Basil Ice Cream in her fantastic book The Sweet Life. Occasionally there is one recipe in a book that is so intriguing it alone justifies the purchase. Basil Ice Cream is the reason The Sweet Lifeis part of my cookbook collection. I really couldn’t imagine how it would be and it blew me away! I have served it to numerous people to confirm that it’s not demented taste buds on my part, and they also loved it.
When Caroline at A Consuming Passion selected the Peppermint Cream Puff Ring for this week’s Tuesday’s With Dorie baking assignment, I fully intended to make it peppermint. When the day came to make my puffy delights I was planning to buy some peppermint, in fact it was written on my shopping list, and then I remembered I had a very large quantity of fresh basil sitting in my refrigerator. Change of plans! I revisited the basil ice cream recipe to get an idea of the quantity of basil to use and proceeded to infuse 3/4 of an ounce in the cream for ten minutes. I strained and chilled the cream and proceeded with the rest of the recipe as Dorie suggests up to the point of the garnish. I didn’t have sliced almonds and briefly thought about making a trip to the store, but then I remembered the pine nuts I had in the freezer. I tossed them in some simple syrup and baked them to create a nice candy coating and it makes the perfect garnish for the puffs. The pine nuts also give the eater a hint that there might be something a little different about what they are about to eat.
This is a lovely cream puff recipe. My culinary experience was expanded by the need for creme fraiche, which I made for the first time. It is as simple as mixing 1/2 ounce of sour cream with one cup of heavy cream and letting it stand overnight at about 80-90 degrees F. It was fantastic! One issue with the whipping cream based filling is it has a potential to make the pastry a bit more soggy than a standard pastry cream filling, but the lightness of the whipping cream filling makes these puffs eat like little clouds. I’ll be making these again and even if I have peppermint, I may make a trip to the store to get some basil.
You can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours
Ten minutes of summer on a plate, well more like four minutes. So far this Strawberry Tart is the first sign of summer I have seen in the Northwest. It has been day after day of cool, gray, and rainy in these parts. Thankfully California is growing strawberries and shipping them North so we can have a little taste of what will hopefully be here at some point.
The delicious result of this week’s Tuesday’s with Dorie selection by Marie of A Year in Oak Cottage! You can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspans Baking: From My Home to Yours I did play a bit with this assignment, beginning by making small tarts for individual servings. To better accomodate the small tart shell, I decided to slice and layer the berries. The it’s-what-I-have-on-hand syndrome was employed a few times as well, starting with using Rosemary Rhubarb Jelly rather than the suggested strawberry jam, which would have required a trip to the store. Of course strawberry and rhubarb are happy old friends so the flavors worked wonderfully and I was pleased to utilize a bit of my last jar of this precious jelly for such a fancy application. Thankfully it is rhubarb season so I can do some canning soon and re-stock my pantry to hold me for another year.
The next thing I know I am rooting around in my spice drawer and come up with a container of Grains of Paradise. Perfect! A little more floral and complex in flavor with less heat than black pepper. It fits into just about any application calling for black pepper, but I especially like to use it in dishes that have delicate flavors and in garnishing. When crushed, the seeds are creamy white on the inside making a beautifully speckled garnish.
I played a bit in the spice drawer while making the crust as well. I added 1/2 teaspoon of Mahleb (see previous post) which added a warm nutty flavor that is not exactly identifiable, but just that little flavor of something in the background. Having read other baker’s posts about the crust being a bit hard and cookie-like I thought that could be troublesome with the smaller sized tarts making them rather difficult to eat. I didn’t want my tart shooting across the room when I try to dig my fork in for my first bite of summer. I replaced 2 tablespoons of flour with cornstarch and the crust was delightfully delicate and crumbly.
I was not lucky enough to be able to use brilliantly fresh local berries, so I employed a little trick I learned from Teller, yes, of Penn and Teller. Last year I had the good fortune to win a fundraising auction for brunch at his home. He made a wonderful brunch and shared the great tip of adding a splash of rose water to strawberries if they aren’t quite as ripe as you would like them to be. The rose water brought the most beautiful aroma to my berries which further fueled my delusions of summer for a brief, but delicious moment.
And for my husband, who does not share a love for strawberries, these tarts held rich chocolate pudding just fine!
This intriguing spice seems to go by many aliases, which only adds to the exoticism and thrill of discovering a new spice from a far away land. I came across this spice a few weeks ago at my local spice shop, World Spice. They had just received a shipment which apparently took months to get and despite having no idea what it was, I knew I needed to get some and start playing in the kitchen.
Mahleb is the dried pit of a small sour cherry that grows wild in the Middle East and Southern Europe. It is commonly used in baking celebration breads and pastries such as the braided Greek Easter bread known as Tsoureki, Turkish kandil rings, Arab Ma’amool, and Chorek, which are Armenian sweet rolls.
Mahleb has a slightly floral scent that dances between almonds and cherries. It is a nutty warm flavor with a slight bitter note. Not having any link to the cultures and traditional applications of mahleb, I decided to play around with it in some of the things I like to bake. It seems to play the role of an amalgamater quite well by adding a warm flavor that is difficult to pin down. Now granted, someone who grew up eating baked goods flavored with Mahleb might be able to identify it easily, but to me it is a little nutty, almondy, sweet, and a hint of floral, but not one distinct flavor.
I added 1/2 teaspoon to madeleine batter, 1 teaspoon to a shortbread recipe using 2 1/4 cups of flour, 3 teaspoons to a loaf of brioche/challah style bread, and 1/2 teaspoon to a tart crust. The mahleb never overwhelmed, it just added a nice background flavor much like vanilla but not as familiar. It will be my secret ingredient anytime I want to add a little flavor intrigue to a batter or dough. Pancakes, layer cakes, scones…nothing will be safe! In addition to sweet applications, I have seen reference to using mahleb in savory applications, so I still have much experimenting to do.
The pits are rather soft and easy to chew, which makes them very easy to grind in a coffee grinder/spice grinder. When ground it is a beautiful pale yellow color and a very light fluffy texture. Like all spices, it is best to buy them whole and grind as needed.
More than any other dessert item people seem to be passionately loyal to their favorite brownie recipe. Maybe it’s because brownies are more diverse than most desserts. Do you like cakey, chewy, or fudgy? A crispy top, soft top, or frosted top? Are nuts a requirement or a crime? How about other mix-ins like dried fruit, chocolate bits, or spices?
Maybe that is why Dorie Greenspan offers us twelve different chocolate brownie recipes and two blondie options in her book Baking: From My Home to Yours. This week Di, at Di’s Kitchen Notebook, had all of us in the Tuesdays with Dorie baking club whip up the French Chocolate Brownies. Interestingly Dorie developed this recipe with the intention of it being a French chocolate fondant cake, but when she served it to dinner guests and they excitedly exclaimed “brownies!” She wisely rolled with it and the recipe is now known as French Chocolate Brownies.
The unique characteristics of this recipe are rum-soaked raisins, cinnamon, and 3 eggs. More eggs than typical brownies, but this was originally intended to be a cake. Anyone who likes their brownies on the cakey side will like these, but don’t think these are dry fluffy cake-like brownies. No sir, they are still very moist and dense with the requisite crackly top. You may bristle at the rum-soaked raisins, but I tell you they are delightful little taste treasures that surprise the palate with each bite. The raisins dress these brownies up; like fancy French brownies!
I am no different than any of you and I have my favorite brownie recipe that this will not replace. A key criterion for brownies in my book is to only dirty one bowl during the process of making them. I have also come to realize that cocoa powder is what delivers that true brownie flavor I seek. The Chocolate French Brownies don’t meet either of my personal brownie criteria, so judging them not as brownies, but as a delicious chocolate dessert, I really like them.
I followed the recipe as written with a slight baking variation. I did not place my pan on a baking sheet in the oven and I baked them using the convection fan which cooked them a little quicker. I would have like them a little less sweet and next time would use a 70% chocolate or cut back the sugar a touch. To tone down the sweetness, I dusted them with a Mayan spiced Valhrona cocoa powder that complemented the hint of cinnamon in the recipe and added a little chile kick as well.
