Lemon-scented Thumbprint Cookies

Cooking for people still terrifies me. When my editor asked me to bring dessert to a small gathering the other night, I was momentarily paralyzed. Should I bring out the old show stopper poached pears? No. She has a favorite recipe of her own, and I probably shouldn't challenge it. Something with chocolate? Maybe. But what? But what.

I only had a few hours, so that killed the [amazing] chocolate ganache tarte [picture]. After a few minutes, I remembered a conversation we'd had a few weeks before about thumbprint cookies. I bought one from the Continental Bakery for a dollar apiece, was rightly annoyed and vowed to make some myself. [Don't get me wrong, I think Continental and Chez Lulu do some great stuff but their prices are highway robbery].

Bingo. Thumbprint cookies. I figured it would be better to totally rock a simple recipe, so I found one from Bon Appetit. The lemon peels and incredibly short procedure helped it stand out from the rest.

Assembly was easy but would have been better if I'd let the butter soften more. Ingredients went everywhere when I creamed the butter and sugar. I filled half of the cookies with peach-raspberry jam, my favorite from Long Island's Briermere Farms, and the rest with Favorit apricot jam. I'm not sure what it was about the apricot jam, but I wasn't crazy about it. I opted for the chewier filling and jammed the cookies before baking.

They were a total hit: buttery, lemony, and as-sweet-as-you-like (depending on your jam). The reactions were almost over-the-top; it took me a few seconds to decide whether the other guests were being sincere. I knew for sure when they'd each eaten about six cookies a piece.

Joanie's Pastry Adventure: the beginning

For those of you who don't know, I recently moved to New York - not only to get away from my dull corporate job, but to finally realize my dream of going to pastry school and becoming a real pastry chef! (cue triumphant music) And because I know all of you are checking this blog not just because you love food, but in order to procrastinate from working for the man or studying, I'm going to blog about my experience as a pastry student!

I have a full-time job working as an administrator/office manager at a small artisanal bakery in SoHo. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings I hop on over to the French Culinary Institute for 5 hours of class. The FCI is an intense program aimed mainly at those who do not have a lot of restaurant experience. Most people in my class have worked in bakeries or in food service and are avid home bakers, which is my experience as well.

Wednesday my classmates and I all arrived super-early to get our ID cards & get dressed. Our uniforms consist of houndstooth MC Hammer pants (complete with elastic waistband...tres chic) a neckerchief, chef's jacket, long apron, and side towel. Class starts quickly, with Chef Rebecca & Chef Kir introducing themselves and all of us eager students doing the same.

Day 1 is apple tart day, so appropriately, we start off with apples for an apple compote. Chef Rebecca does a quick demo and then we're off! The demo is informative, but very basic - she doesn't spend time going over every minute detail. My table partner and I grab some apples, get our mis en place ready, and start peeling. The peeler we are given is abominable, so I resort the ubersharp paring knife. Unfortunately, I don't peel apples that often - I'm lazy and like peels - so I was rather slow and ugly in my peeling. My knife skills also left much to be desired, but that could have been the slightly squishy Golden Delicious apples I had to work with. Then again, it wasn't like my entire class was schooling me in perfect dicing - you just feel pressure to be totally awesome in a class environment where there's a professional chef eyeing your knife technique.

After the dicing part, we concocted a simple apple compote with our diced apples, sugar, lemon juice, & vanilla paste (more concentrated than vanilla extract, not quite as good - or as expensive - as vanilla beans). It cooked til it was a chunky applesaucey consistency and then was spread out on a sheet pan to cool.

Next was pate sucree. Francophiles and foodies will know that this means "sugared pastry" and is a very simple dough to make. We creamed butter & powdered sugar together and gradually added eggs to make an emulsification. Then cake flour was slowly added to make the dough. Pate sucree is similar to a shortbread dough, and not nearly as temperamental as pate brisee or a traditional pie crust.

For our own tart shells, we used pate sucree made by a previous class, because dough needs time to chill and rest before shaping. We started by hammering out our dough circles with rolling pins. With 18 students on stainless steel tables, it was a bit loud. We brushed off all the extra flour from the crust (more flour = more gluten = tough dough) and rolled it into a prepared tart ring.

Post-dinner, the tart shells came back out and were filled with the cooled apple compote - which looked kind of like canned crushed pineapple, oddly enough. We had to peel more apples and slice them ever-so-thinly to spiral around the top. Never have I appreciated granny smith apples more - they are so nice and firm, so perfect for cutting into thin fancy slices! Golden delicious apples, not so much. Many of my thin little apple slices came apart, but I managed to salvage enough so that they appeared pretty. I spiraled my apples and then we sprinkled them with vanilla sugar, then into the ovens!

While we were finishing our tarts, Chef Rebecca told us a little about the philosophy of French pastry. For apple tarts, cinnamon is a major faux-pas. The French believe that the pastry to be about showcasing the fruit, with only a limited number of other ingredients just added to enhance the natural flavor. So for the apple tart, only some lemon juice, vanilla & sugar, et voila! another class.

One apple tart may not sound like a huge undertaking for a 4-hour class, but it went quickly and we were rushing around using every moment. Even having made pies and tarts before, it was a bit stressful. None of us quite know where everything is yet, but are all trying to impress and make our tarts as beautiful and as tasty as possible.

Once I stumbled home late at night, my roommates peeped out of their rooms for some apple tart enjoyment. It was still warm and quite tasty, with a thick crispy crust and sweet filling.

Stay tuned for more adventures in tart-making....



Technorati Tags: Baking, Cooking Class

Summer = S'mores!

And if you're like me and you really could do without all the bug bites and sunburns that camping brings, just stay inside your apartment and make S'mores Cupcakes. They're a lot prettier than regular S'mores, and last longer too!

I found this recipe at Cupcake Bakeshop, a fabulous blog that chronicles the cupcake adventures of one woman in California. She uses crazy things like jackfruits and Himalayan goji berries in her cupcakes, plus she takes lovely pictures. While I don't encounter jackfruits too often in my local grocery, I had been ogling the S'more Cupcake recipe for awhile and finally caved.

The secret to the S'mores cupcake - and many other of the filled CB cakes - is the cone technique. You see, this summery cupcake not only has a graham cracker crust, similarly flavored cake and a smooth chocolate ganache topping it off, but it is filled with marshmallow fluff. And the cone technique is how that scrumptious fluff gets inside the cupcake.

The cone technique goes like this: after the cupcake is baked, take a small serrated knife and cut out a cone shape from the top of the cupcake. Chop off the pointy part of the cone so that you still have a cupcake top left. Spoon some fluff into the hole of the cupcake and replace the cupcake top, and ta-daa! You're ready to throw on some ganache! Feel free to experiment with your favorite chocolate or vanilla cupcake recipes, filling them with raspberry jam, custard, nutella, or any other deliciousness you can think of.

NB: In the ingredient section of the recipe, the amount of butter is listed as 3/4 cup. But in the note after the recipe, the author says that this makes the cakes too small (for her liking) so you may want to try using less butter. I've made these cakes both ways, and both are delicious - with more butter you get a more dense, heavy cake. With less butter, the cake is much fluffier, which I think contrasts better with the rich filling and topping. But either way, f'amazing.

Technorati Tags: Food, Cupcake, Baking

Pumpkin Muffin Bliss

Until my recent baking revelation, I hadn't had too much success with the desserts (see: iPile); especially delicate baked goods like muffins. Back in the November Gourmet, I was captivated by a pumpkin muffin recipe in You Asked For It. It seemed foolproof (and I won't lie, that's what I look for in baked goods).

The recipe had a short ingredient list (flour, canned pumpkin, eggs, flour, spice, and a few others) and I had an extra can of pumpkin from my unposted (?!) pumpkin pie episode so I figured I had nothing to lose. I didn't know the half of it.

These muffins came out in the top five best muffins I've ever had in my life. Perfectly moist, not greasy, not achingly sweet, just a pumpkin pie distilled in bread form. The texture was a bit denser and moister than typical banana bread. For some reason, I didn't have 'pumpkin pie spice' so I mixed my own of cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves, and nutmeg (leaning heavily on the ginger and cloves).

Next time, and oh there will be a next time, I was thinking about adding a bit more ginger (maybe even crystallized ginger) and some shredded coconut. I don't want to ruin a good thing, though. We'll see.

And I was inspired thusly to photograph the muffins. Check out the whole thing on flickr.



Technorati Tags: Food, baking, Pumpkin Muffin, Cooking

Gourmet's French Macaroons

I don't think I've ranted about my oven before. Since I moved in this past September, I hung a thermometer in there because it always seemed unreliable. We learned it was usually anywhere from 25 to 50 degrees off. And when the stars line up just right, as it turns out, the temperature can get up to 75 degrees hotter in practically no time at all. This was particularly infuriating when I was making these beautiful, delicate Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons.

Before I go into the annoying details about the oven malfunctions, I want to start off by mentioning the difficulties I had making a meringue when I had never made one before. Interpreting the instructions was vexing. "Soft peaks" ok. I can deal with that, but "stiff" "glossy peaks" is much more subjective. How stiff is stiff? How glossy is the perfect gloss? Will it get glossier if I beat it for a little longer, or will it turn to butter. It didn't turn to butter, but I think I was a bit conservative on the whipping times.

The recipe also recommended cutting the corner of an unpleated plastic bag to create a makeshift pastry bag. I'd seen them, I'd read about the best way use them, but I had never actually used a pastry bag before. And I cut the corner a little too large (it was probably about 1/2-inch rather than 1/4).

Filling the buggers was no easy task either. The first time, I spooned it right in and got the batter everywhere. I'm not a fan of sticky things, and let me tell you, it was glue city. Learning from my mistake, I placed the empty paper bag in an empty cup and proceeded to spoon in the filling. Much cleaner. It made the whole thing a lot less stressful.

The meringue was ungainly, possibly because it was under-whipped, but had accepted that I would likely have malformed cookies. Combining the mildly-runny patter with my inexperience with pastry bags and wax paper. There was quite a bit of swearing andmore than a few ugly cookies (see photo), but I still had hope for the final product. The taste was all I cared about.

While I squeezed the future macaroons out, the oven warmed. The temperature was compensated for, so it was about 300 degrees when I put the first sheets in. I walked away for two minutes. Two. And I come back to find smoke billowing out the back of the oven. Open the door. Burnt cookies. 400 degrees. The dial still said 280 (ish). I was pissed. They weren't completely ruined, but they were close.

To make matters worse, since I used wax paper instead of the requested parchment, the burnt macaroons had fused to it. My wont of parchment wasn't for lack of trying, though. I went to four grocery stores, including Fairway, and hardly any of them even had wax paper. Leave it to me to start making cookies during the one time of year everybody makes them. I ate one or two with the paper still on them, just to see if people could notice. They would. Instead of throwing out the bunch, I called my baking-est aunt to see if she had any recommendations for loosing the meringues. She said exposing the sheets to extremes, either hot or cold, might help improve their situation.

Putting them in the freezer didn't help, so I put them on a wire cooling rack above a pot of simmering water. The wax paper (and the burnt bottoms) got full of steam and they came right off, leaving the inedible parts behind, still stuck to the paper. I was pleased.

As the cookies cooled, I made the ganache. Being a equipment-impared cook, I do not have a double boiler. To get around this, I would have sat a pot in a pot of simmering water, but the recipe clearly warned against this, so I tried to work on an alternative. My trusty cooling rack came to the rescue again, when I used it to put distance between the scorching water and the smooth, delicate chocolate. Worked like a charm.

The cookies were a hit. The raspberry-chocolate ganache was a brilliant foil to the mostly-bland cookie. For the second batch, I thought it might work well to make regular chocolate ganache and pair it with raspberry preserves. It wasn't bad but the added sugar from the preserves brought the sweetness level to nearly aching.

And I got to experience the joy of making 4 dozen cookies and eating four. At least everybody liked them (and I actually got to say, "Here's a cookie; but if you're going to rave, please rave quietly because there aren't enough for everyone." And that was worth it).

Technorati Tags: Food, Cookie, Baking, Chocolate
Special thanks to my old camera for the photos.

Introducing iPile (and two other apple pies)

A few weeks ago I undertook to bake my first pie. Apple pie, as I've learned, is wrought with peril.

In my three apple pie experiences I fell into three of the most notable traps: soupy filling, undercooked center, and 'the incredible shrinking apple'.

Before I talk about the failures, because, really, they weren't failures since each of the pies were still quite decent (if I don't say so myself), I will talk about the one consistent success. Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts performed admirably; tasters could tell it wasn't homemade, but never had any objections to it.

Pie No. 1 - iPile 1.0 - Southern Living (previously mentioned)

The first was an Apple-Cranberry pie from the Nov. issue of Southern Living. Its short and user friendly recipe is what got me started on the idea of pieing. Liz got tired of peeling the 15 required apples, so we stopped at 11 or 12. Unfortunately I couldn't find the recommended types at the Union Square Greenmarket, so I ended up using Gala (recommended), Braeburn (recommended), and Rome (not recommended for anything, ever). The Galas, I imagine, were for structure, the Braeburns for tartness, and the Rome apples did nothing useful. They, in fact, melted into the consistency of watery apple sauce. Fine for apple sauce, less than ideal for pie. My co-workers dubbed it iPile, since it didn't hold its shape long after leaving the plate. The cranberries added some needed complexity and distracted from the soupy Rome glop. (If only I'd read "mediocre as a fresh fruit" beforehand)

Braeburn apples will probably be in most of the pies I make. Liz said that they tasted like apple cider. I agree. The galas didn't taste like much, and the Romes, well, sucked. In the end, the Southern Living recipe was great, but user error prevented it from being all it could be.

Pie No. 2 - Deep Dish - Cook's Illustrated

A week after iPile 1.0, Meg and I endeavored to prepare the Cook's Illustrated deep dish apple pie. Their editors also recommended pre-cooking and were more forthcoming about why it was necessary. Cooking (most of the filling elements) in a Dutch oven (or heavy, covered, pot) activates the pectin in the apples, which discourages them from shrinking when cooked. The covered pot, they said, helped distribute the heat. Skillets tend to get the apples too hot. Read Cook's, they're full of interesting stuff.

The Granny Smiths, Braeburns, and Galas came out wonderfully. We drained the goo off after pre-cooking and were left with an apple-y pie with an adequate amount of chohesive sauce (it wasn't swimming in apple sauce like the Southern Living pie was). The only thing was that the Cook's pie was much more involved than the SL one but there wasn't a significant difference in taste. The Southern Living pie took a lot less work and tasted just about as good (perhaps better if I hadn't botched it)

Pie No. 3 - Rum Raisin/Apple - Gourmet

It could have been because this was the final pie in the batch, but this apple-rum-raisin pie was lightyears ahead of the others. Lightyears. I undertook this pie alone; no Liz or Meghan to peel and core the apples this time.

I'm a sucker for things that I haven't heard of at the Greenmarket. This time the filling was made up of Northern Spy, Winesap, and Opelescent apples. The recipe differed from the others in that it didn't have cooks precook the apples (to keep them from shrinking). I was hesitant, but hey, it's Gourmet. They know what they're doing. And the apples shrunk as much as Cook's warned. Eh. Whatever, it still tasted great. The rum-soaked raisins shined; I soaked them for about a day and they livened the pie up.

Next, cookies. Maybe in time for [some of the] holidays. This post has been a long time coming. Sorry about the wait.

Technorati Tags: Food, Pie, Apples, Cooking
As for the pictures, they were mine; the top was an extreme closeup of the Cooks Illustrated, and the bottom one was showing the sad, unfortunate shrinkage of Gourmet's.

Fear of baking

After yesterday afternoon's unsettling discovery, I set out to try some new recipes. With a meal consisting of Cook's Illustrated penne alla vodka and Southern Living's Apple/Cranberry pie, I won't admit it isn't just a little strange, but whatever. It's fall. Fall means apples, and apples go with pretty much anything. And one last thing before I start: today's moral is: follow the recipe, it's there for a reason.

Instead of scarfing down my freshly-made food like I do practically every monday (since I never seem to allot enough time for preparation, eating, and cleanup), I started quite early tonight (though that extra time was eaten, as it was, by the pie's cooling time). At any rate, it was a good first step to getting better.

Like some Cook's recipes, the penne was incredibly easy (like the coq au vin) and quick to prepare (unlike the coq au vin). Most of the ingredients were gathered at the 14th St. Trader Joe's, where I accidentally bought whole, peeled tomatoes with basil. When I got home and realized what I'd done, I decided the extra basil couldn't be a detriment. It was fun using liz's little chopper/grinder to 'puree' half of the tomatoes while I diced the rest (until I realized that the pureeing peeled whole plum tomatoes were splattering in a fine spray around the kitchen; still fun, but in a gross kind of way).

Everything else about the penne was straightforward, except my getting flustered and sprinkling the red pepper flakes instead of measuring them. I really wish I knew how much I used because it wasn't nearly enough, so the outcome was solid in the viscosity department, but sadly lacking any kind of heat. More onion seems wrong, but a bit more garlic may have been welcome.

Overall, totally worth it. I'll be making this penne again. (with added heat)

And onto the Apple-Cranberry pie. I've never really been excited enough about a pie on paper to want to cook it, but the damn-easy instructions in this month's Southern Living encouraged me to beat the fear of baking and I went down to the Union Square Farmer's Market to get some fresh locals (um, apples, of course), and only then remembered that it was Monday. Monday is the market's off day and usually disappointing, and instead of getting the suggested Gala, Macintosh, and Granny Smith apples, because the latter two weren't available, I ended up with Gala, Braeburn, and Romes.

My awesome roommate peeled the apples, about 9 of them (the recipe called for 12, but the growing pile began looking ridiculous). Some lemon juice, some flour, and 1 1/2 cups sugar (damn). They did reduce, but it was still quite overflowing when we got it into the shell. The shell, btw, was a bit annoying to work with; I chose a Pilsbury 2x9-inch refrigerated pie crust and it did not unroll well.

As the apples reduced I could see what would eventually become the pie's ultimate problem: soupy apples. The Romes (I'm pretty sure it was them) began gooeifying during the saute phase and continued on their slippery slope until they turned into a (delicious, but) soupy mess during the baking phase.

We decided against the lattice, as you can see (above), and I think the steam vents suited it fine. We also didn't cover the crust in tin foil, as suggested, to prevent over-browning; thankfully it wasn't an issue.

And the result: Braeburn apples rock for pie. Rome apples do not. Pilsbury crusts suck before their cooked, but once they are they're quite decent. And Southern Living can make a great pie.

Next time I might add some grated orange peel and cinnamon/nutmeg/allspice. This was Liz and my first pie, and it was a good, solid start. Oh, and to be a food nerd for a moment, Cook's Illustrated said that precooking the apples helps them keep their shape BUT you have to make sure the heat doesn't go past 140 degrees. They recommend using a Dutch Oven instead of a saute pan. If I'd read that before making the pie, things may have turned out better. Maybe.


Technorati Tags: Food, Ham, Butternut Squash, Cooking
Extra special thanks to me for taking this photo. I should really take more photos.