Bittersweet

Just because there are Brooklyn Bridge-sized gaps between my baking posts, doesn't mean I haven't been spending time in the kitchen. It just means I've been baking my standard issue sweet stuff, some of which I've already posted about here.

Now that the holiday season is gearing up, so am I. Baking and winter go together like central and heating, and when the days start getting progressively chillier, nothing warms me up physically or psychologically like working in a toasty kitchen making something sweet to eat. And then forcing those sweets onto unsuspecting friends and family. After all, if I'm going to add five pounds onto my rear end because of it, everyone else must suffer, too.

Baking is also wonderful therapy. When I'm up to my neck in work, frustrating deadlines, and any other number of life's little hassles, I shake things loose in my brain by doing something that requires both physical and mental exercise. Kind of like running, only I get to lick the bowl when I'm done.

This is what I made yesterday. Actually, it started the night before, when on a lark I decided to make a batch of caramel sauce, using the recipe in my tried and true copy of Williams and Sonoma's Pies and Tarts.

What:

1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

How:

In a heavy duty saucepan over medium high heat, stir together the sugar, water, and lemon juice. Stir just until mixed and then leave it alone, or your sugar will crystallize. Allow to cook until the sugar melts and just begins to turn a golden color. Turn heat to medium low and cook, shaking or tiling pan on occasion but not stirring, until a golden brown color. Remove from heat and add in the cream, pouring through a sieve to prevent splashing. Stir until cream is incorporated.

It will look like this. And it tastes fabulous. Better than anything you can buy in a store.

I have made caramel!

Now, what to do with it, other than eating it by the spoonful in front of the television? Why, make a tart, of course.

Normally, I'd use it to make a cranberry/almond tart, but since I didn't have any cranberries and I didn't have any slivered almonds, I decided to use apples and . . . what? Raisins? Nah. Pecans? Double nah. Then I remembered an apple and Gorgonzola pie I used to order at one of my favorite restaurants in Albuquerque, the now sadly defunct Chef du Jour. Man, it was delicious and I've never tried to replicate it. But blue cheese in some form or another is something I always have in my refrigerator, so there you go.

What:

For the dough:
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 large egg yolk
3 tablespoons ice cold water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

For the apple filling:
2 large or 3 medium cooking apples of your choice
Caramel
2 ounces blue veined cheese of your choice, crumbled
4 ounces sharp cheddar, grated

Blend together flour, sugar, salt, and butter in a larger bowl, either with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. You can also do this in a food processor. Mixture should look like this:


Beat together the egg yolk, water, and vanilla then pour into middle of flour mixture and use fork to stir until a rough dough forms. Again, you can also do this in a food processor.

Then, pour mixture out onto a clean, lightly floured surface, and knead very briefly until a dough forms:


Do not overmix or your tart dough will be tough.

If making tart right away, roll dough out on a thoroughly floured work space to a little less than 1/4" thick. Place inside a 10" non-stick tart pan with removable bottom and freeze for 30 minutes.

At the 15 minute mark, place rack in the middle of your oven and pre-heat to 375 degrees F. Line tart pan with heavy duty tin foil and fill with pie weights or beans to weigh down. Place in oven and bake for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, core and peel apples. Cut in half, then cut the halves from the top or bottom end into wedges 1/8" thick.

Once tart is pre-baked, remove from oven and start layering apple slices in an overlapped, circular pattern.


Pour the caramel on top, making sure to coat the apples evenly.



Bake tart in oven for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and top with the cheeses. Place back in oven for another five minutes to melt.

Remove, cool, and place in refrigerator. Tart should be served cold.

If any of you is the person who consistently outbids Moi on eBay for these plates, stop it!

Dim Sum Sunday: Bread

I used to bake bread nearly every week, mostly French bread, using a recipe from an old-as-the-hills yellowed, dog-eared paperback copy of The James Beard Cookbook. Growing up, my mother made all our bread from scratch and I soon fell into the habit of making everything except our sandwich loaves from scratch. In addition to French bread and a variety of sweet and savory loaves, I've attempted with varying success tortillas, pretzels, cinnamon rolls, naan, puri, and bagels.

I even bravely ventured to follow Bread Meister Nancy Silverton's instructions for making a sourdough starter from scratch scratch, which involved red grapes, water, white bread flour, and no end of hair pulling on my part during the a 14-day process. What did I get for my efforts? Something that looked like it was produced in the lab of some cheesy Hollywood Sci-Fi film and that proved utterly useless for bread-making, but which, when combined with some sugar, butter, and flour, made the best tasting pancakes this side of the sun.

One of my all time favorite breads, though, made utilizing a much saner method, is challah. With its brioche-like texture, challah is one of those breads you can eat on Saturday evening slathered with butter and dipped in soup and then slice up on Sunday morning for French bread.

The recipe I use is straight out of Julia Child’s Baking With Julia, and it’s pretty much foolproof. I make most of it in the bowl of my little red KitchenAide Ultra Power mixer, and then finish it up by kneading it by hand. Julia hits the nail on the head when she calls the result, “just a little sweet, just a little soft, and just this side of heavenly.”

What:

2 T unsalted butter, melted
1-1/2 T active dry yeast (or two packets)
1/2 cup tepid water (80ºF to 90ºF)
1/3 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup whole milk
1 T mild honey
2-1/2 t salt
4 large eggs
6 -1/2 cups (approximately) flour

How:

Brush a large mixing bowl with some of the melted butter; set aside. Reserve the remaining butter for later use.

Whisk the yeast into the water. Add a pinch of the sugar and let rest until the yeast has dissolved and is creamy, about 5 minutes.

Cut butter into small pieces and heat with milk in a saucepan until hot to the touch and the butter has just melted. Pour into a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a large, electric stand mixer), and add the remaining sugar, the honey, and the salt, stirring with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar and salt. Let the mixture cool to to 110ºF or lower.

Add the yeast mixture to the milk mixture, along with the eggs, and stir to mix. Stirring vigorously, or with the mixer on low, add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stopping when you have a dough that cleans the sides of the bowl and is difficult to stir.

At this point, you can continue to let the stand mixture knead your dough, but I’ve never been satisfied with the results, so I remove and knead by hand.

Form the dough into a ball and transfer it to the buttered mixing bowl. Brush the top with a little of the melted butter, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and then a kitchen towel. Let the dough rises at room temperature for one to 1 1/2 hours, or until double in size. When the dough is fully risen, deflate it, cover as before, and let it rise until it doubles in bulk again, 45 minutes to one hour.

Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Cut the dough in half and keep one piece of dough covered while you work with the other.

Divide the dough into three equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope about 16 inches long; it should be thick in the center and tapered at the ends. Align the ropes vertically, side by side, and pinch the ends to seal and tuck under the loaf. Braid the pieces and then pinch the other ends together and tuck under the loaf. Braid the second loaf. Cover both loaves with a towel and let rise at room temperature for 40 minutes, or until soft, puffy, and almost doubled.

Pre-heat oven to 375ºF.

Beat together one large egg, one large egg yolk, and one T heavy cream. Brush tops and sides of loaves with the glaze, let stand five minutes, and brush again. Reserve left overs. Sprinkle glazed loaves with poppy seeds, caraway seeds, or coarse salt.

Transfer bread to a baking sheet, bake for 20 minutes in the middle of the oven, then brush newly exposed dough with the rest of the glaze. Bake another 15 to 20 minutes longer, or until the loaves are golden in color and sound hollow when thumped on the bottom.

Let cool, slice, and eat!

Head on over to Dim Sum Sunday's host, Big Shamu at Karmic Kitchen, to see what everyone else baked up!

Dim Sum Sunday: Baking

The thing about having a sweet tooth the size of a Mac Truck is that, in spite of all my running/hiking/swimming/biking/worrying, the pounds can really sneak up on my ass because of it. So I haven't been doing much baking lately. I think I'm still hungover from all that holiday partying, so I've mostly been sating my sweet tooth with fruit and tiny bits (ah hem) of hard candy. But when Shamu announced a Dim Sunday Sunday with a baking theme, how could I resist?

This recipe is inspired by something La Diva Cucina made during my recent visit to her swanky Miami abode. After plying Moi with wine, tostones, grilled skirt steak with chimichurri sauce, potato salad and the best cole slaw I've ever had, I still managed to have room left over for a fig compote with walnuts, balsamic vinegar, and mascarpone cheese. Which promptly made me think of how wonderful the combo would be as a tart. Which I fully intended to make for this challenge, but when I found out a dinner guest to whom I would serve the tart didn't like figs (!?!?!), I used strawberries instead. But I still intend to use the figs at some point . . .

Anyway, here's what I did, using what in my mind is the most fail safe tart dough known to man, courtesy the sadly now defunct Gourmet magazine. I apologize in advance for the crap photos. I STILL can't figure out my camera. Sheesh. Math.

STRAWBERRY & MASCARPONE TARTLETS

What:

For the dough:
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 large egg yolk
3 tablespoons ice cold water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

For the strawberries:
Core and cut into half a pound of fresh, ripe strawberries, and place in large bowl. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of granulated sugar stir, and let sit about 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Place strawberries in a sieve over a small saucepan, and let the juices slowly strain into the pan, about 30-60 minutes. Reserve berries. Add to the juice in the pan 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar (you can also use any alcohol of choice, like sherry, port, Kirsch, etc.), along with a tablespoon of sugar. Stir and bring mixture to a rapid boil until sugar has fully dissolved, about 2-3 minutes. Let sit for about 30 minutes to cool and thicken.

For mascarpone:
Take one pound of mascarpone cheese (2 cups) and thoroughly mix with 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar, and one teaspoon each of fresh lemon juice and vanilla extract.

Hardware:
Set of six, 3" diameter tartlet pans (I like the shiny tin ones from Williams and Sonoma. They're French, don't cha know, and their surface is perfect—your dough won't stick, but neither will it slip and shrink while baking like non-stick surfaces tend to do.)

OR: a 10" round tart pan with removable bottom.

How:
Blend together flour, sugar, salt, and butter in a larger bowl, either with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. You can also do this in a food processor. Mixture should look like this:


Beat together the egg yolk, water, and vanilla then pour into middle of flour mixture and use fork to stir until a rough dough forms. Again, you can also do this in a food processor.

Then, pour mixture out onto a clean, lightly floured surface, and knead very briefly until a dough forms:


DO NOT OVER MIX or your tart dough will be tough.

Form dough into a flat disk about 5" around, wrap in wax paper, and refrigerate for 30 minutes or up to overnight.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. with rack placed in the middle of the oven.

Once dough is thoroughly chilled, take out of fridge and roll out into a round disk about 1/4" thick. Use tartlet pans to cut out perfectly formed disks and press those disks evenly into the pans, building up a kind of ridge at the top. Place tartlets on a larger baking pan.


Line each pan with a small piece of tin foil and fill with pie weights or beans to weigh down. Place in oven and bake for 20 minutes. Take pan from oven and carefully remove foil and weights. Place back in oven and cook another 15-20 minutes, turning once, until shells are an all over uniform deep golden brown. Cool in pans about 30-45 minutes.

To assemble your tartlets, spread about two tablespoons of mascarpone in each tart shell. Then, top with strawberries and drizzle the balsamic vinegar glaze over the top.



EAT!