Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Kaffir Lime Leaf Bombe with Bubble Tapioca and Lime Zest Powder

Adam bought me this book, Frozen Desserts by Francisco Migoya, for my birthday over a year ago. It is an amazing and inspiring book. Essentially a textbook, using professional kitchen equipment, in restaurant portions, with hard to find ingredients - I thought of it more as a picture and inspiration book than something I would actually make a recipe out of. However Adam is incredibly persistent to the point of being obnoxious when he wants something. And he really wanted me to make a "Kaffir Lime Leaf Bombe with Bubble Tapioca and Lime Zest Powder" for over a year. So I made it.

To make it, over a year I had to acquire the following, which I did not have before. While most of these items I wanted to get anyway, I also had this recipe in mind.
- stand mixer
- candy thermometer
- scale
- bombe flexi-molds
- kaffir lime leaves (not sold in most supermarkets)
- bubble tapioca (not sold in most supermarkets)

So I made this the other day, and I would have to say I impressed myself. It required a lot of precision in timing, but I read the recipe over and over again and came up with a game plan. The only problem I kept running into was that I didn't know if what I was doing was right. It required me doing and knowing a lot of things I have never done before and don't know how to do. I wish Francisco was there with me. I bet he's really uptight, though.

The only thing I would do differently is not put as much gelatin in. Instead of using gelatin sheets, I used the Knox gelatin, and I think my conversion was off. But again, I have no idea what it was supposed to be like, so who knows, maybe it was supposed to have the texture of frozen fluff.

Adam was very happy, as was I that I challenged myself.





Saturday, February 13, 2010

Nibby buckwheat linzer hearts- for your LOVA

Yoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyyo!

I was in a loving, giving and caring mood, so I decided to make some special Valentine's Day cookies! I turned to none other than my current favorite dessert recipe author, Alice Medrich- author of Pure Dessert- and made her Nibby Buckwheat Linzer Hearts. It is essentially a butter shortbread sandwich cookie, made with some buckwheat flour, walnuts, and cocoa nibs, with blackberry jam in between. It produced wafer-thin complex cookies with some dark notes from the buckwheat and nibs (sophistacated!) and all put together, it had just the right proportion of jam to cookie. Not too sweet, either. If you can't tell I hand-cut the hearts in the top cookie. Quaint!

I packaged a couple of them up to give to people. Recognize the crafty art school skills- thanks for paying for my education, parents!




Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Unhealthy and awesome breakfast

Occasionally, I come up with strokes of genius that even I am blown away by. May I present to you bacon, sauteed apple, and whole yogurt drizzled with honey breakfast. This was one of those breakfasts that I made without much afterthought - I had all of these things on hand, so why on earth would I not make this? I think that there is a reason why bacon and apples are associated with sinning and un-religious activity. Like masturbation, these things are just too good to be true.

Salty fatty sweet bacon, sweet juicy, still slightly crisp apples, tart tangy fatty and creamy yogurt, drizzled with a sticky sweet honey. SATAN!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Semolina Bread... with beef stew

I have been trying out a variety of bread recipes from different sources. The first book I used a couple years ago was the Tassajara bread book, which is good but for hippies. The bread was too healthy tasting, and not very interesting. Then I started using Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe, because I got a Le Creuset dutch oven- holla!. Thats my go-to bread recipe, but it takes a lot of time, and I am not good at anticipating my desire for bread 13 hours in advance. So I was up for something new.

So I decided to make a recipe out of Bakewise by Shirley O. Corriher for Semolina bread. This is a great book for someone who is interested in understanding why things happen in baking. It is a great resource, and I have been using it as a textbook lately. Especially to figure out what goes wrong with product at Magnolia sometimes. It has taught me the science behind baking, and how important it truly is for the equation to add up. Dorking out time.

So I made it, and really liked it. It's hard for me to know if I am doing something right when I am making bread. I am not at all an expert, and want to know more about how the dough should look and feel at certain stages. One of the interesting things about this recipe is that it requires part of a tablet of Vitamin C- apparently this has something to do with the bread's rise. This made me slightly suspicious- do other bread bakers ever use Vitamin C? Despite this, I thought it came out pretty well, and tasted damn good too. And it went well with the beef stew I made.






Thursday, February 4, 2010

Guess what I am going to be doing for the next week!

So guess what was on the front page of the Daily News this morning! Magnolia's "Love Note" cupcakes. This makes me both excited and full of fear. Why? It takes over 10 minutes to make a box of them. Who's making them? Me! And now all of New York is going to want one!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Malaysian Roast Chicken

mmmmmmm hot stuff. Recipe.


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Sesame Seed Cake

I absolutely love the book Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich. Her recipes are perfectly written, easily adaptive, and really good. Everything I have made from her book I absolutely love, as do those who reap the benefits of my baking. I was intrigued by her recipe for Sesame Seed Cake, so I thought I'd give it a go.

This is essentially your standard layer cake recipe using the creaming method, only with a different and much more interesting outcome. It is a single layer, uniced, stand alone cake. Which is something I really love, because its like saying hey this is a really fucking good cake on its own and you should TASTE it- it doesn't need anything. It is inspiring- I want to see what else I can add in this recipe- different spices? walnut oil? chestnuts?

While it is exceptional on its own- buttery and moist, velvety with the interruption of sesame seeds, toasty and complicated- I also served it with some sliced mango and vanilla ice cream. I think it would also be good with honey or a light chocolate ice cream. Or maybe a fruit sorbet too.

I have posted the recipe, in somewhat abbreviated form, below. Just because it's that good.

SESAME SEED CAKE
by Alice Medrich in Pure Dessert

Everything should be room temp:
1 C. AP flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
2 lg eggs
2.5 t. toasted sesame oil
1 t. pure vanilla extract
1 stick unsalted butter
1 C. sugar
1/2 C. buttermilk
1/4 C. toasted sesame seeds

Oven to 350, butter and line an 8" cake pan.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt 3 times. Set aside. Whisk together the eggs, vanilla, and sesame oil. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together. Gradually add the egg mixture. Alternate the flour mixture, in three additions with the buttermilk. Stop to scrape after each addition. Do not overbeat. Add sesame seeds with the last addition of the dry ingredients.

Pour into the pan, and bake about 35 minutes.





Monday, February 1, 2010

Gingerbread house

One of the reasons as to why I did not post in a very long time is due to a little gingerbread house project that took ALL OF MY FREE TIME. This was a Magnolia project that I was asked to work on, which we all stupidly agreed to do during the busiest time of the year for the bakery. Even though it was awful getting through it, the sense of accomplishment and pride that came from doing it might have been worth the while. It was to benefit the group City Harvest, and was on display along with other bakery's submissions at the Le Parker Meridian Hotel in midtown New York (also home of the delicious Burger Joint restaurant).

The challenge was to create a giant structure- in this case Grand Central Terminal- out of essentially a large cookie that wants to crack. Each wall was baked a couple of times, and the center of the building is a giant rice krispy treat to provide structure. Royal icing is holding it all together. The structure of the roof is made out of graham crackers, with Nilla wafers and candy on top. The facade of the building is covered in royal icing and then fondant tiles (all meticulously cut by me) and white chocolate plastique detail. We threw in some candy canes, gum paste wreathes (me!) and cars (me!), oreo cookie crumb drive, and voila, a Grand Central Terminal. I worked with a great team.

The opening event was attended by Duff Goldman from Charm City Cakes, who seems like an alright guy, and received a lot of media attention, which is great for City Harvest, which it all benefited.