Dunk & Crumble

mollygilbert520

White Chocolate Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

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I’m a single gal… obviously. I mean, it’s always been just the one of me. At any rate, I’m also a single single girl. Which some people might say is my cue to be a Valentine’s Day hater, but I’m not biting. Yes, the commercialization of the holiday is rampant and gross, but I can’t help but appreciate a holiday so closely involved with chocolate. And sugar. And things that are cute and pink.

Take these, for example.


White chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. So cute!

These little Valentines are moist and cakey. And they’re sweet but not too sweet, as the best Valentines always are. Make them for your significant other or, if you’re single, for your significant others (hi Ems, Case, Mom, Katies, Jenny, Co, Rads, Carly, Kath, Meredith, Tina and Jeannie! Love you, txt me, cutie pies.)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

White Chocolate Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting


Ingredients:

For cupcakes:

  • 1 cup cake flour
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup butter, room temperature
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 ounces white chocolate (I used Ghiradelli white chocolate chips)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk

For frosting:

  • 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
  • 1/4 cup butter, room temperature
  • 1 ounce white chocolate, melted and cooled
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
  • 3 teaspoons milk or cream
  • 2-3 cups confectioners sugar
  • Conversation hearts, for decorating

Directions:

For cupcakes:

Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Line 24 cupcake molds with paper liners. Whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt. Melt the chocolate in the microwave at 30-second intervals, or over a pot of simmering water.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and beat until smooth. Add the white chocolate and vanilla extract. Next, add the dry ingredients and the milk in alternating additions, starting and ending with the dry. Mix until just combined. Pour the batter into the paper-lined cupcake molds, and bake for 20-30 minutes, until the cakes spring back to the touch and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes before frosting.

To make the frosting, cream together the butter and cream cheese. Add the chocolate and beat until smooth. Add the vanilla, zest and milk, and then add 2 cups of confectioners sugar. Beat to combine. If you want thicker frosting, add more confectioners sugar (just be aware that this will make the frosting sweeter, obviously).

Once the cakes are thoroughly cooled, spread or pipe the frosting on top. Decorate with conversation hearts.

Makes 24 standard-sized cupcakes.

Baked Eggs with Sesame and Sriracha Glazed Scallions

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Lest this become a blog dedicated entirely to baking (because wouldn’t that just be awful? Horrors.), I’d like to tell you about eggs. Did you know that the French only eat one egg at a time? It’s true. Just ask them, and they’ll tell you that one egg is un oeuf. Un Oeuf… enough…get it? Do ya get it? Y’know, because an egg, in French, is pronounced like enough… so, um, it’s funny because… because…

Fine.

So, eggs. Despite being an integral part of most baked goods and breakfasts (and even some lucky lunches and dinners) worldwide, it’s not easy to be an egg. Not a day goes by without an egg getting cracked, whipped, scrambled, beaten, or fried, and sometimes even (!) separated. The poor little dears – it’s just not right, all that egg-related violence, and I think something should be done about it.

That’s why I like to bake my eggs. Gently. I like to tuck them gingerly into little ramekins, nestled sweetly against a soft bed of Sriracha-glazed scallions, and tenderly bake them until they’re pleasantly set and ready to be served with buttered toast. The whole process takes minutes, and is really a very humane way of preparing a simple and delicious brunch.


If you bake your eggs on a pile of Sriracha-glazed scallions, which I highly recommend that you do (not only to support the institution of brunch but also to spread the message of intolerance for crimes against egg-manity), you’ll probably want to eat more than just one. Which I can assure you is perfectly alright. When faced with piping hot ramekins filled with sweet and spicy scallions and lovely, runny yolks, I think at least two or three eggs will be more than un oeuf.

…ZING!


Baked Eggs with Sesame and Sriracha-Glazed Scallions

Ingredients:

  • 2 eggs
  • 8 scallions, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1-2 teaspoons of Sriracha, or to taste
  • 1-2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
  • salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
  • extra chopped scallions, for garnish

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Heat olive oil in a medium sauté pan over medium high heat. Throw in the chopped scallions and sauté, stirring occasionally, until the scallions start to become soft. Stir in the Sriracha, and cook for about a minute. Deglaze the pan with the rice wine vinegar, stirring the scallions for a minute, until they look shiny and glazed. Turn the heat down and season the scallions with salt and pepper. Off the heat, stir in the sesame seeds.

Spoon the scallions into the bottom of two small ramekins (or one larger ramekin, big enough to hold 2 eggs) placed on a sheet pan or cookie sheet. Crack the eggs into a bowl, and gently pour one egg into each ramekin, on top of the scallions. Be careful not to break the yolks.

Lightly season the top of the eggs with salt and pepper, and place the ramekins into the oven. Bake the eggs for 10-15 minutes, or until the whites have set and the yolk is still a bit runny.

Serve immediately, with an extra sprinkling of scallions and a slice of buttered toast (or maybe even a flaky croissant).

Serves 1.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

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I’ll give you cake guesses as to what I made in school this week. Umm I mean, eight guesses. Eight layer guesses.

Shoot.

Ahem. This week at school we made cake. Lots and lots of cake. And buttercreams and Bavarian creams and ganaches and fruit mousse and chocolate mousse and Marty Moose. It was delicious.

Cakes on parade:

Vanilla Genoise (Egg Foam Cake) with Vanilla Buttercream

Angel Food Cake

Chocolate Genoise Cake with Chocolate Ganache Glaze

Dacquoise Cake with Coffee Buttercream

Charlotte Russe, Pear Bavarian Cream

Marjolaine Cake

Lemon Loaf Cake

Charlotte Royale

Chocolate Cupcakes

…with chocolate fudge frosting

Fruit Miroir Cake

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Pecan Coffee Cake

Nice little lineup, huh? Maybe try this one:

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I was never big into carrot cake, but I think it’s mostly because of the walnuts. Being as I’m allergic, I always shied away from walnut-clad cakes and, since most carrot cakes are choc full of that tricky nut, I never had the pleasure of enjoying this delightful treat. My version uses pecans, and is both dense and flaky, faintly sweet from the carrots and sufficiently tangy from the cream cheese frosting. I suggest you try it. Especially if you’re finding yourself fading in your early January resolution to “eat healthier this year.” I mean, come on – this thing is bursting with bright, health-inducing carrots. It’s like eating a salad. Except it’s way better. Because it’s cake.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

  • 125 grams cake flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 220 grams granulated sugar
  • 170 grams vegetable oil
  • 60 grams pecans, chopped
  • 165 grams carrots, grated (about 1 large carrot)

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

  • 450 grams cream cheese, room temperature
  • 180 grams butter, room temperature
  • 200 grams powdered sugar
  • zest of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 tablespoons sour cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter and flour one 9-inch cake pan. Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside.

Whip the eggs and the sugar in an electric mixer until foamy and doubled in size. When you lift the whisk from the bowl, the egg/sugar mixture should fall in a thick ribbon from the whisk and keep it’s ribbon shape for a few seconds after it falls into the bowl.

Very slowly drizzle the oil into the egg/sugar mixture. Once the oil is fully incorporated, add the sifted dry ingredients and mix just to combine. Gently stir in the nuts and grated carrots.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake the cake at 350ºF for 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Immediately (and carefully! The cake will be fragile and crumbly) unmold the cake onto a cooling rack.

To make the frosting, cream together the cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar until smooth and soft.

Add the lemon zest, sour cream, and vanilla extract.

Once the cake is cool, slice it carefully into two layers. Spread a small amount of frosting onto the bottom layer and cover with the top layer. Completely cover the layered cake with the frosting. This recipe makes a lot of frosting – you may have some left over. If you wish, pipe rosettes on the top of your cake using a star tip, and garnish with extra chopped pecans or marzipan carrots.

Note: This is a very delicate cake, so, if you have time, you might want to consider freezing it overnight before cutting and icing – the frozen cake will be easier to cut and assemble. The cake is best served the day it’s assembled/decorated.

Buttermilk Pancakes

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Some pretty things for a Saturday afternoon during a warm spell in January:

gold flecked macaron cookies

pink gerbera daisies

brioche à tête rolls, looking like little Russian dolls. Or maybe birds on a wire.
my favorite new pie dishes, from Anthropologie

miniature brioche beehive, covered with torched french meringue and marzipan bees
And as it’s Saturday, I thought you might like a nice pancake recipe. Much easier to make than pains au chocolat, and perhaps just as delicious.
Saturday Pancakes
Adapted from The Cookworks

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups buttermilk
  • 1/4 cup melted butter
  • chocolate chips, fresh blueberries, sliced strawberries or sliced bananas

Directions:

In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In another bowl, whisk together the wet team: eggs, buttermilk, and melted butter.

Add the wet team to the dry team, and stir gently with a whisk or wooden spoon, just until the batter comes together. The batter will look lumpy and under mixed – this is good. Over mixed batter makes flat, heavy pancakes.

Heat some butter in a skillet over medium heat. When the pan is hot, spoon 1/2 cup batter into the skillet, and sprinkle a few chocolate chips, blueberries, or bananas on top. Cook for about 2 or 3 minutes, until little bubbles begin to form on the surface. Flip the pancake and cook for another 2 or 3 minutes.

Serve with extra butter and maple syrup. And maybe some bacon.

Makes about 12 pancakes.

PANCAKE?
by Shel Siverstein

Who wants a pancake,
Sweet and piping hot?
Good little Grace looks up and says,
“I’ll take the one on top.”
Who else wants a pancake,
Fresh off the griddle?
Terrible Theresa smiles and says,
“I’ll take the one in the middle.”

Pains Au (Ohhhhhh) Chocolat

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There was a time, not too long ago, when, like many of today’s youth, I was in college. That time was four years ago. …Sigh. I’m still jealous of people who get to be college students – people who get to live in dorms and apartments surrounded by all of their friends, who get to spend gorgeous fall days reading novels (or, um, maybe just drinking grain alcohol) outside “on the quad,” get to take naps at 1:00 pm on a Tuesday… people who get to spend a semester studying abroad.

When I was in college (those four, long years ago), I took the opportunity to study abroad for a semester in Paris.


View from la Tour Montparnasse

Pyramide du Louvre

Place des Vosges

View from the Seine

Notre Dame

Sacre Coeur

La Moulin Rouge


The experience was, on the whole, awesome. I lived with a french family, the Fraisses, in the 15th arrondissement – Hughes, Brigitte, and their 20-year-old daughter, Solveig. They were perfectly lovely and did their best to try to make me, an awkward, semi-french-speaking college kid, feel comfortable in their spare bedroom. I lived with them for five months and ate dinner with them nearly three days a week, but, though we tried to connect, French to American and American to French, we were never really close, the Fraisses and me. I think it’s because of the food.

Three nights a week, I’d sit down to dinner with the Fraisse family and, three nights a week, it would be weird. Forget coq au vin or saumon en croute, heck, forget a simple wheel of brie – the Fraisse family liked to eat fish sticks from the freezer and sad, limp pains au chocolat that came out of a supermarket package. They once served me soup that contained spaghetti noodles, grapefruit slices, and mussels out of the shell. I’m not sure where they got the idea for that recipe, but let me tell you, it was a bad one.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or snobby – I like fish sticks just as much as the next person and I did, afterall, very politely choke down the entire bowl of grapefruit/mussel/noodle soup, but I mean come on – I was in Paris, for goodness sake! I had an entire world of culinary mastery at my fingertips – crusty breads and smelly cheeses and meltingly braised meats – and there I was, at la dinner table des Fraisses, eating a frozen fillet of cod.

You know what? I didn’t care about the cod. I could deal with those unfortunate mussels. What really got me were the pains au chocolat. Those poor, sad little pains au chocolat, dense and soggy in their packaging, looking like little chocolate-studded lumps of defeat.

In all fairness, the Fraisses made up for all of their culinary shortcomings by being an exceedingly nice family and always having a jar of Nutella in the cabinet, but to this day, the thought of those heavy, stale, storebought pains au chocolat makes me wince. So whenever I see a real, fresh, patisserie-style pain au chocolat, flaky, chewy and airy, butter-scented and filled with pockets of deep chocolate, I sigh a great, heaving breath of pains au chocolat relief.
And I gobble it right up.

 

Pains Au Chocolat

Chocolate-Filled Croissants

Ingredients:

  • 500 grams bread flour
  • 65 grams granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 40 grams butter, pounded with a rolling pin (between sheets of plastic wrap) until it is soft and has the consistency of hand cream.
  • 25 grams fresh yeast (can substitute 13 grams active dry yeast)
  • 125 grams water
  • 125 grams milk
  • 300 grams butter
  • 1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water, for egg wash
  • chocolate bâtons
Directions:
Making the croissant dough:
In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the 40 grams of softened butter, and mix until incorporated.
Dissolve the yeast in the water and milk, and then add the liquid mixture to the dry mixture, mixing just to combine. The dough should be very rough and shaggy. Gather it into a ball, and wrap the dough in plastic wrap, shaping it into a square as you do so. Let the dough chill and rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
When the dough is fully rested, roll it out into a rectangle approximately 3/8-inch thick.
Prepare to incorporate the 300 grams of butter – place the butter between sheets of plastic wrap and smash it with a rolling pin until it is as soft as the rest of the dough. Shape the butter into a square – this will be place on top of the rolled out rectangle of croissant dough and folded in, so you want to make sure that your square of butter is large enough to cover 2/3 of the croissant dough.
Place your large butter square over the bottom two-thirds of the rectangular croissant dough.
Now, for the folding – think of a business letter. Fold the top flap of croissant dough, which should be free of any butter, down, on top of the middle 1/3 of the buttered dough. Then, fold the bottom 1/3 of buttered dough up, so it rests on top of the other two sections of folded dough. It now looks like a business letter. Rotate the dough 90 degrees so that the fold is now on the left, and then gently press the dough together with the rolling pin, so that the package of dough compresses slightly. This is called a “letter turn,” and you’ve just completed one.
Wrap the croissant dough and chill it for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, unwrap the dough onto a floured board, and place it so that the seam of your “letter” is on the right. Again, roll out the dough into a rectangle approximately 3/8-inch thick. Do another letter turn – fold the top third of the dough down, and fold the bottom third up, making a package of dough that looks like a business letter. Re-wrap the dough and chill it for another 30 minutes.
The same rolling/folding/turning process will be repeated 1 more time, for a total of 3 letter turns, resulting in consistent, distinct layers of butter and dough – this kind of dough is called a laminated dough.
Important: be sure to wait at least 20 – 40 minutes between each “turn” of the dough – this helps the gluten to relax and prevents the butter from melting out, and ultimately results in a flakier, more tender croissant.
At this stage, the package of croissant dough may be frozen for future use.
Assembling the pains au chocolat:
Using a sharp knife and pressing straight down, cut the package of croissant dough in half. Roll the two halves of croissant dough into two rectangles, each approximately 24 by 8 inches and approximately 1/4-inch thick. Next, cut each rectangle of dough in half the long way, so you end up with 4 long rectangles of dough, each roughly 24 wide by 4 inches high.
Place two of the rectangles on a sheet pan and chill them in the refrigerator. Working with the two remaining pieces, brush the top edge of each rectangle with egg wash. Place a row of chocolate bâtons along the bottom edge of each piece of dough, opposite the side with the egg wash.
Fold the near edge over the bâtons and place a second row of bâtons on the dough. Fold the dough again to encase the second row of chocolate bâtons, and to meet the egg-washed edge.

You should now have a long roll of dough containing two rows of chocolate bâtons. Slice the log into individual pastries, about every 4-inches. Place the raw pains au chocolat onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, making sure to spread them out evenly, leaving them plenty of room to expand. Repeat the entire process with the two remaining rectangles of dough.

Cover the raw pastries with plastic wrap sprayed with nonstick cooking spray (such as PAM), and leave the baking sheet to sit in a warm place for about 30 minutes to allow the croissants to proof. Make sure that they’re not left to sit someplace too hot, or the butter in the dough will melt out. The ideal temperature for proofing pains au chocolat is about 75 degrees F.

After the croissants have proofed for about 30 minutes, or once they are nearly doubled in size, brush them with egg wash, completely covering the exposed surfaces but not allowing the egg wash to drip or pool.
Bake the pains au chocolat at 350 degrees Farenheit for 15 to 20 minutes, or until medium brown and flaky.
Once finished, remove from the oven and place the pastries on a cooling rack – this will prevent them from getting soggy.
This recipe makes about 20 pains au chocolat. You could probably halve the recipe, but as these are so labor-intensive, you may want to make a full recipe and either freeze the unshaped dough for later use, or freeze the assembled, un-proofed and un-eggwashed pastries. Then, when you want fresh pains au chocolat, you can remove a few, unbaked, from the freezer, place them on a sheet pan and bake them from frozen.
Important notes to remember about assembling pains au chocolat:
  • Do not roll the dough too thinly, or the layers in the dough will be destroyed.
  • Keep the dough chilled at all times while working with it.
  • Use only a little bit of flour on the bench when shaping the pastries.
  • When rolling the chocolate into the dough and assembling the pastry, try to make sure that the seam runs down the middle of the pastry – this will prevent the pain au chocolat from unraveling while it bakes.
  • Pains au chocolat do not keep well, and should be served the day they are baked.
  • If, however, you are wondering what to do with day-old pains au chocolat, use them to make bread pudding!

All Carb Diet

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Look at this. Do you see this?

Cinnamon Nut Danish

Spiked Pecan Sticky Buns
Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread.  Swirls of orange and cinnamon.

Pear, Cherry and Apricot Fruit Cake

This is what they call a nice, big eff you! to any kind of resolutions anyone might have had for a slightly leaner 2010. It’s also what I’ve been making at school this week. Apparently, Viennoiserie doesn’t just mean “yeast leavened baked goods.” It also means “chubby 2010.”

Well, you know what? FINE. As long as I keep getting to learn about yeast and proofing and fermentation and crumb and crust, I’m decidedly ok with that. I mean, just look at these.

See that? I made that!

That, dear friends, is what is called a Sally Lunn Bun. Not only is it buttery and chewy and delicious, it has the best name I’ve ever heard for what is basically a dinner roll. Now I don’t know who Sally Lunn is, but I will say this – I like her buns.

I know it doesn’t look like it now, but I do have recipes for you – they’re coming soon, I promise. For now, check out my brand new, interwebs-savvy twitter page. Olivejuiced Dunk & Crumble tweets!

Dropping The Ball

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Wait What? What just happened? I think I blacked out. I remember a lot of cookies, some kind of miracle that took place on 34th Street, some Chinese takeout and something about a ball dropping… at any rate, now it’s bitterly cold outside and the sidewalks are covered in pine needles and confetti.

Any ideas? Hm?

Let’s see… from the look of it:

cookies

tiny lederhosen-wearing cookie

Snowmen cookies. And Brett Favre.


It was definitely not my birthday (no cupcakes is clue number one), and I’m pretty sure I’d remember Flag Day.

Anyway, I have this list of “resolutions” I found on my desk the other day, and I thought I’d share:

1. Learn to make croissants.
2. Blog more. More than twice a month. Once a week.
3. Have more fun exercising.
4. Visit Seattle. And Brasil.
5. Read more books.
6. Learn to can things. Canning.
7. Go ice skating.
8. Understand what’s going on on LOST.
9. Spend more time with friends and family.

So, what about you? What are your Flag Day resolutions?

Bourbon Pecan Cookies

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Well, I finished my second full week of pastry school. I can’t truthfully say it was the best week ever – mostly because I got dreadfully sick and spent the week fighting a fever and trying to keep my lungs from being coughed out of my chest, but there were some pastry-related incidents as well.

Because of the fever, I had to miss éclair day. My pastry cream came out lumpy. I burned a pan of caramel so badly it ended up looking like a pan of dry, blackened charcoal. Oops. Also, we made croquembouche, which were supposed to look like holiday-themed, conical towers of pâte à choux (pat-ah-shoe… cream puff dough). I tried to decorate mine to look like a snowman, but instead of looking clean and elegant like this ones,


it ended up looking like someone threw up all over a perfectly good croquembouche.


Ah well. No one said this pastry thing was going to be a cake walk. I mean, we haven’t even gotten to cakes yet. I’ll keep you posted. For now, I’ll just stick with cookies.

Bourbon-Pecan Cookies
From the French Culinary Institute Classic Pastry Arts, Level 1

Ingredients:

  • 170 grams pecans
  • 170 grams butter, room temperature
  • 200 grams sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
  • 2 tablespoons bourbon
  • 230 grams all-purpose flour
  • 1 egg, for egg wash
  • extra pecan halves or pieces, for garnishing

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toast the 170 grams of pecans in the oven or in a dry pan until lightly browned. Cool completely. Pulse the nuts in a food processor, until they’re the size of coarse cornmeal.

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the ground nuts, egg yolk, salt, scrapings from the vanilla bean, and bourbon, and mix until thoroughly combined.

Add the flour, and mix gently until just incorporated.

Shape the dough into a log approximately 2.5 inches thick. Roll the log up in a sheet of parchment paper and chill in the refrigerator, about 30 minutes.

Once chilled, slice the log into 1/4-inch thick slices, and place the sliced cookies on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

Lightly brush the tops of the cookies with egg wash, and place a pecan half (or some crumbled pecan pieces) on top of each cookie.

Bake the cookies for 7 to 10 minutes, or until nicely browned on the edges.

Makes 50-60 cookies.

Snappy Gingersnaps

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Shall we tally up? Let’s see. The past eight days of pastry school have yielded me:

  • 4 apple custard tartlettes
  • 8 vanilla crescent cookies
  • 1 tarte aux noix
  • 6 shortbread cookies with candied citrus zest
  • 1 pear tart with almond cream
  • one dozen homemade fig newton cookies
  • 1 banana cream tart
  • 4 lemon meringue tartlettes
  • 6 Scandanavian butter cookies
  • 1 caramelized onion tart
  • 1 cherry clafoutis
  • 1 chocolate ganache tart
  • 8 fresh fruit tartlettes
  • one dozen gingersnaps
  • 1 baked apricot tart
  • 1 chocolate Bavarian tart
Apple Custard Tartlettes

Vanilla Crescent Cookies

Lemon Meringue Tartlette
Homemade Fig Newtons

Baked Apricot Tart

Scandanavian Butter Cookies with Raspberry Jam


Um, yes. That’s twenty-four tarts and forty-four cookies. In my first week and a half as a pastry babe. Do you even know how much sugar I went through this week? Do you even know? How many pounds of butter? Do you know how hard it was, how much I toiled to bake all of these delicious, delicious things? These twenty-four tarts and forty-four cookies? …WELL? DO YOU?

Just kidding. I love my life.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Molly, WHAT in the name of Santa Claus do you DO with so many sweets?” Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. I eat them.

…Not really. Gotcha again.

While the thought of ingesting one billion pounds of buttered sugar does sound enticing, I thought I’d do well to keep my arteries clear(ish) for now, so I’ve been pawning off my sixty-eight treats to friends. And classmates. …And school staff and homeless guys and fellow subway riders. Really anyone who looks like they could use a cookie or two. Could you use a cookie or two?

Here, try one. Or two. I don’t know. Start your own tally.

Gingersnaps

From the French Culinary Institute, Classic Pastry Arts Program, Unit 1

Although I’m swimming in cookie recipes these days, this one seemed the most seasonally appropriate… they’re also just really good. They’re gingery and snappy and full of warm, winterish, gingery snappiness. I hear Santa likes them.

Ingredients:

  • 150 grams butter
  • 400 grams white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 160 mL molasses
  • 20 mL white vinegar
  • 525 grams white bread flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking soda
  • 1 tablespoon ground ginger
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • extra sugar, for rolling

*Note: I realize this recipe gives amounts in metric units. I’m sorry about that. However, I’ve found it extremely useful to weigh out ingredients while baking – and it’s much less of a pain than it sounds. Buy a cheap kitchen scale and give it a try. If you don’t feel like scales are your thing but still really want to make these, let me know – I’ll do my best to convert it to the standard American measurements for you.

Directions:

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated. Add the molasses and the vinegar slowly, to avoid separating the mixture.

Sift together the dry ingredients, and add them all at once to the creamed butter mixture. Mix just to combine – try not to overwork the dough.

Form the dough into a log, wrap it in parchment and chill it until firm. Once firm, divide the dough into 50 small, equal portions (about 15 grams per cookie), and roll the pieces of dough into balls. Dredge the raw cookies in sugar, and place them on a parchment-lined cookie pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 7 to 10 minutes. If you like chewier gingersnaps, take them out closer to 7 minutes, when the cookies are just browning. For snappier snaps, leave them in a bit longer. The cookies will spread in the oven, the sugar crust will crack, leaving behind a map of gorgeous cookie crevices, and your whole kitchen will smell like the holidays. Enjoy.

Makes 50 gingersnaps.

Gramma Inez’s Chopped Chicken Liver

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I’m feeling overwhelmed. It’s been almost a month since my last post, which is, frankly, unacceptable. I’ve done approximately no writing and no recipe sharing in the past 27 days, and I’m not happy about it. I mean, even if no one actually reads these little posts, it makes me happy to have them here, dotting the internets with pictures of risotto and tales of apple tart.

At any rate, I have almost a month’s worth of news to share, so you may want to settle in.

Firstly – and this is kind of a big one – I, uh… I graduated from the culinary program at FCI last week.

…YAY official chefdom! You’re looking at a real, live chef here, people. It’s true! Okay, so you’re not really looking at me, but trust me, I’m a chef. At least, I have a ridiculously tall hat and a laminated diploma that confirms it. …Laminated, you guys.


Yep, after a month spent in the level six kitchens, churning out stuffed calamari and venison and clam consommé, and then after a day spent completely freaking out/taking the final exam (during which I had to make clam consommé and pear tartlettes, among other things), the powers that be (ahem, the folks down at the French Culinary Institute) declared me worthy of chefness. Yes!
Soooo yeah, I’m kind of excited about that. I’m also kind of sad that it’s over. I mean, it’s not really over – I have another six whole months in the pastry program (a regular chef I may be, but a pastry chef I am not. Yet.), but it’s not the same.

Which brings me to news item number two: yesterday was my first day in the pastry program. So far things are going well – I successfully managed to make a bunch of tarts (banana cream tart, pear & almond tart, fresh fruit tart, yadda yadda yadda tart), but, as I mentioned, it’s not the same. I miss my old classmates. I miss Nadine and Steve and Rodney and Tina and Big Rob and Dave and everyone. Sigh. At least I know I can find consolation in pastry cream.


Next is news item number three, which isn’t really a news item so much as a major national holiday. Yeah that’s right, I am talking about Thanksgiving. Thaaaanksgiviiiiiiing! Ahem, yes. It was on Thursday. I know Thursday was six days ago and you’re probably tired of talking about giving thanks and family and mashed potatoes, but it’s my very favorite holiday (by a landslide. A huge one.) and I’d like to discuss it further. Besides, what kind of food blogger would I be if I wrote nary a word about the most gluttonous holiday of them all?

So yes, Thanksgiving. Mine involved a raucous game of football,

numerous pies,


a video camera, a pan of stuffing that was accidentally dropped on the sidewalk, a delicious batch of macaroni and cheese (to replace said stuffing), a turkey carve-off, a rogue batch of whipped cream, and, of course, a lot of Gramma’s chopped chicken liver. All in all, another wonderful Thanksgiving, filled with much to be thankful for, including:

  • my family
  • electric mixers
  • tall chefs hats
  • old classmates
  • new classmates
  • chicken liver
  • Grandmas


Finally, we come to item number four: this year, six days after Thanksgiving, what are you, invisible reader, thankful for? I, as a chef (!), would like to know.

Gramma Inez’s Chopped Chicken Liver

Remember that time I wrote about offal, and how darn awful it is? Well, this one doesn’t count. This is my Gramma Inez’s Chopped Chicken Liver, a staple at every Thanksgiving since the beginning of time, and a shining beacon in the world of organ meats.

If you’re feeling a little wary of a recipe that involves chicken fat, chopped livers and hard boiled eggs, it’s okay. I’ll admit, it’s not my normal, everyday fare, but, smeared on a crispy cracker, with a glass of wine in hand and my family chattering around me, this stuff is downright delicious. Creamy and salty, with a nice crunch from the cracker… happiness in an appetizer. Still feeling skeptical? Fine, I won’t make you try it. …More for me. Thanks, Gramma!

Ingredients:

  • 2-3 Tbsp chicken fat (schmaltz)
  • 2 lbs chicken livers, rinsed and dried with paper towels
  • 2 large yellow onions, chopped
  • 1/2 small yellow onion, finely chopped
  • 10-12 eggs, hard boiled
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • paprika, to finish

Directions:

In a large skillet, melt the chicken fat. Add the two large onions and cook over medium low heat, until onions are soft and translucent. Add the chicken livers, and cook over medium heat until the livers are cooked through. Season with salt and pepper.

Once the liver mixture is done, transfer it from the pan to a large mixing bowl. Using two table knives, chop the chicken liver mixture into pea-sized pieces. Add the hard boiled eggs and continue chopping, until the mixture is thoroughly diced. You can use a food processor to chop and mix all of the ingredients, but you’re looking for a grainy, chopped texture, so be careful not to completely purée your livers. Mix in the remaining 1/2 onion (uncooked), and more salt and pepper, to taste.

Grease a bowl or round jello mold with more chicken fat. Pack in the chopped liver, and chill in the refrigerator. Alternatively, you can just skip the molding part and pile the chopped chicken liver onto a platter. If you go with the mold method, unmold the liver by running a sharp paring knife around the edges of the mold and turning it out onto a large platter. If the mixture sticks to the mold, don’t worry, it’s easy to patch up. And in all honesty, it’s hard to get chicken liver looking that pretty, anyway, so don’t worry about any unmolding mishaps. Just dust the unmolded chicken liver with a bit of paprika, surround with table crackers, and serve to a room full of hungry Jews (…or non-Jews who are into things like chopped chicken liver. I mean, it’s possible… right?)

Serves about 20, as an appetizer.