Hazelnut shortbread wafers

roasting hazelnuts

This weekend I added a new item to the full menu at brucebakeryandbistro.com.  I love hazelnuts.  I never ate them as a kid.  When I discovered them as an adult it was still at a time when they weren't really a big deal here in the US, although they had been one of the most popular nuts in Europe for a long long long time!  Over the last few years that popularity is catching on here in the US, although I still find quite a few people who have never had a hazelnut.  I try to convert as many as I can.  

The new item added is hazelnut shortbread wafers.  These are light little cookies, crispy and thin.  They are not difficult to make although it took me a while to figure out the right thickness and shape and cooking time to get them to come out just the way I wanted.  

Hazelnuts are roasted and then ground.  When I do this for this particular cookie, I generally do not remove the skins as most people try to do when they use hazelnuts.  (I said skins, not shells.)  By keeping the skins on and grinding them up with the rest of the nut, the cookies have a bit of dark speckling here and there when they come out of the oven, and I absolutely love that.

The ground hazelnuts are mixed in with flour, salt, a small amount of sugar, lots of rich butter, and, very importantly, allspice and cinnamon which adds a bit of spicy warmth to the finished cookie.  The roasted nuttiness combined with that bit of spice is a very nice combination especially considering the light texture of these cookies.

They are rolled to a precise 1/6 inch thickness and then chilled.  Once firm, I cut them into 2-inch squares with slightly rounded corners, using a metal cutter to get as clean a cut as possible.  They are cooked exactly 17 minutes at 325, a relatively low temperature for a cookie but perfect for these.  

hazelnut shortbread wafers

And here they are.  Check them out on the site.  For those who are recent new invites, just remember to enter the password on the main page and you will be in and can see the entire menu.  I hope to be back to sending out food weekly again soon as the world tries to regain what normalcy it can after all the covid19 shutdowns.  So take a look as there have been several additions to the full menu since March.

Have a great late spring night everyone and enjoy the cool while you can.  Summer heat is on the way.

    

Bananas

banana bread

I love bananas.  I love them fresh, in pie, in fruit salad, but most of all I love them in bread.  Banana bread is one of the most amazing breads ever made, at least in my opinion.  But since I only make things I enjoy, I guess my opinion is the only one that matters on this issue in my kitchen.  OK, I'm kidding just a bit here, but you get my point, right?

Fruits in baked foods are bit of a ticklish issue with me when it comes to eating foods that others have prepared.  I love blueberries, but I don't often love blueberry pies because so much of the time the skins create what to me is an unusual texture in the pie filling.  I love strawberries, but in pies they always seem a bit too ... something ... I don't know what exactly, but I know that most strawberry pies don't really fit my tastes.  Perhaps I think they're too strong.  Apple pies are often cooked in such a way that the apples are still a bit crunchy or least firm, and I hate that.  Come on, let's cook those apples all the way through!  I want them soft and spiced and flavorful.  Cherries are great eaten fresh, but don't give me a cherry pie.  Remember that issue with blueberries and skins?  Well cherry skins create a pie filling texture I just can't get on board with because those skins just don't seem to break down, at least not in most of the pies that I've been served in the past.  When I work with a recipe for a baked good with fruit, I only use it and pass out the finished food to people if I can work around these issues (at least issues to me) that so often seem to show up in recipes that are used by home cooks or found in so many cookbooks or even produced by commercial bakeries. 

Bananas, though, are so soft and mushy by the time they are ready to be made into banana bread that they always work.   However, once in a while I see a recipe for a banana bread with chunks, actual chunks of banana, in the mix, chunks large enough that when you eat the baked and cooled bread, you're still eating chunks that to me just don't work.  If I wanted this sort of thing, I would just make fruitcake.  However, that's another topic entirely which we'll save for a different day.

Banana bread is always good.  Sometimes I eat it plain, and sometimes I spread a nice layer of very creamy soft butter on a slice.  I have no idea where I learned to add the butter, but I've been doing it since I was a kid.  People always look at me with a quizzical expression when I do it, but that doesn't sway me at all.  It's too good.  

I remember back in 1987, I made banana bread to watch the premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV.  I don't know why I specifically remember that except that I've always been a big fan of Star Trek in all its iterations and obviously also a big fan of banana bread.  I recently went back and tried the same recipe that I used back then.  My tastes have changed a lot.  I didn't care for it as much.  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't the same as the recipes I use now.  But I still remember enjoying eating an entire loaf while I watched that television event (the return of Star Trek to the airwaves many years after the original series was aired in the late 1960s).

Why am I discussing banana bread tonight?  I really have no good reason.  Maybe it's because I'm craving a good loaf.  Maybe it's because I recently saw a recipe with chunks and it's been bugging me.  Maybe it's just because I felt like it.  Maybe it's just because I pulled some cookies out of the oven that seem like they would be great crumbled and crushed to top a big sweet banana split.  

The reason doesn't matter, I suppose.  All that matters is that banana bread is great.  I think I'll make some this weekend.  

Have a great evening everyone!

Mascarpone cream roulade

egg whites whipped firm

Well, today here in Kansas City it's our warmest day of the year .... so far.   Upper 80s, but to be honest we've had so few days in the 80s this spring that I'm not at all worried about a spring build-up of heat that often presages a monstrously hot and humid summer.

I woke up this morning set to make double batches of roulade.  What is roulade?  It's a rolled sponge cake that is filled with a wonderfully creamy center.  This center is made of cream, mascarpone and berries.  Mascarpone is an Italian cream cheese that is something often found in my fridge.

This recipe starts off with six eggs separated, and the egg whites are whipped, with sugar, into meringue until quite firm.

lightening egg yolks with meringue

The six eggs yolks are whisked for a minute or so before a portion of the meringue is added and combined to lighten up the yolks.  This is in order to be able to more easily fold all the ingredients together.

folding meringue, yolks, flour and corn starch

Then the lightened yolks are added to the bowl containing the remainder of the meringue, and flour and cornstarch (which have been whisked together) are added on top.  Then everything is folded together, not stirred, not mixed, but folded, until all the dry ingredients are incorporated.  The batter should still be little light from all the air whipped into the egg whites.

All of this is poured into a rimmed baking sheet, 12x17 inches, although it can also be done on a rimless baking sheet since the batter does not spread but holds its shape once spread by hand.

roulade sponge fresh from the oven

After 9 minutes or so at 400 degrees, the sponge is cooked.  As soon as the pan is removed from the oven, I immediately run a dinner knife around the edge to release it from the pan.  I'm not concerned about the bottom because the pan was lined with parchment paper cut to size before the batter was added.

removing parchment paper

I place a lint-free flour-sack-cloth towel over the pan with the sponge and carefully invert it and remove the pan.  Then I peel away the parchment paper, and the sponge, still quite warm, is immediately rolled up in the towel and left to cool to room temperature.  

sponge cake cooled and unrolled

After it cools, the sponge is still malleable.  It can be rolled and unrolled without any concerns of breakage.  

blueberries soaking in 200 degree sugar water

Now on to the filling.   Two cups of water and a cup of sugar are placed in a saucepan and brought to a boil.  Immediately, a pint of blueberries (not wild blueberries) are added to the hot water and the pan is removed from the stove.  I always do this in a smaller rather than larger stainless steel saucepan because I find the heat retention is better with this size of pan and with this material (stainless steel) than with other pans in my kitchen,  The water seems to stay hotter for a longer time in this pan after removal from the stove.  While it drops down from boiling temperature, it stays above 200 degrees long enough to satisfy me.  Doing this ensures that the skins on the blueberries soften and cook just a tiny bit.  (This same technique is applied when cooking blueberries for baby-food.)  If raw blueberries are used, I find that the berries have a bit of "bite" to them, and, compared to the creamy filling and the soft sponge, they almost feel crunchy, which is not the right texture composite to have, in my opinion.  On the other hand, when I make this with raspberries, I do not cook them.  They go into the filling raw.  They are already soft and the fresh raspberry works very well with the other components of this dessert.

The blueberries in the hot water are left alone to cool to room temperature.  Before they go into the filling they have be drained and and then left to dry for a few minutes on paper towels or in a colander.  I like to dry them with paper towels under and over the berries, just letting them sit for a while without applying any pressure.  The berries will still be moist, but no longer dripping wet.

mascarpone, powdered sugar and vanilla being combined with whipped cream

Mascarpone, powdered sugar and vanilla extract are gently mixed together in a bowl.  Whipped cream is added in order to lighten the mixture and then more whipped cream is combined with the lightened mascarpone via folding.  Then the berries are added.

spreading the filling on the sponge cake

Now we're ready to fill the roulade.  Unroll the sponge cake, spread the filling over, and then re-roll the sponge cake along the long edge.

roulade ready for chilling and then cutting

The roulade is then wrapped up in plastic or in the towel before chlling for a couple hours in the fridge.  Some bakers like to dust the towel in powdered sugar when the roulade sponge comes out of the oven which adds a sweet outer dusting that moistens and sticks to the hot cake as it cools.  However, as you can see here in the photo, this roulade doesn't have any evidence of powdered sugar coating because I don't always do that. The sponge cake is only lightly sweet, and I usually like to keep it that way.  Once in a while, though, I will roll up the roulade to cool in a powdererd-sugar-dusted towel, and then it looks just a bit different than it does in this photo.

three 5-inch portions from one long roulade

After chilling, a bit of each end (1/4 inch maybe) is cut off to give a clean appearance (and I always eat those scraps, of course!).   Then I cut each long roulade into three 5-inch portions to give out to people.  But I could just as easily keep it one long roulade if it's staying at home with me or if I want to take it as a single long cake to a dinner event or party.

So there you go.  It may sound complicated and involved, but it's really not a difficult dessert to make, and just about every aspect of it is very forgiving and mistakes don't usually become an issue.  

And, most importantly, it tastes amazing!

Herbs and spices and .....

herb barrel from my garden

I read a short article today about Ireland, specifically that this week is National Herb Week in Ireland.  During this week there are many varied events and discussions about herbs and herbal medicines.  I get the feeling the herbal medicine aspect is the major element, but it got me thinking about herbs and spices in foods, and the variety of benefits we get from them both in taste and in how they affect our health.

In my yard, which has been terraformed by me (perhaps a grander term than is warranted, but I will use it anyway because I worked long and hard on that project), I have placed a number of small barrel planters scattered in various planting areas.  Each of these is intended to be used as a small contained garden devoted to a specific herb or vegetable, etc.  The trouble is, they have been there for a while but I still haven't started using them all.  I planted a clove of garlic that was sprouting on my kitchen counter some time ago and it's growing very well this year, lots of green shoots popping up all over inside the planter.  I've put plants in a couple others simply to have something growing, and I've let a few take in wind-strewn seeds, letting them go just to see what would sprout.  But I really haven't started using them in full for the original intent.  For that matter, I have two beds of creeping thyme bordering a seating area and I never think to go out and get some trimmings to use when I'm cooking a stew or preparing meat which could benefit from fresh thyme.  

from my garden ... I believe this is a variety of spiderwort, sometimes called widow's tears

I also think sometimes about flowers.  Many flowers are edible, and petals crystallized with sugar are a pleasing thing to add to some desserts both for the visual and the taste enhancements they bring.  I've never taken the time to more thoroughly research the range of flowers which can be used this way, but the subject intrigues me nonetheless. 

I suppose I should get moving on those ideas, but at the same time I enjoy going at my own pace.  I walk through the terraformed landscape and I see the barrel planters and I think yet again that I really get should get started on growing more herbs.  But those walks, those perambulations, haven't yet sparked the action.  At some point it will happen and I will just decide that today is the day to add that aspect to the landscape and make those things freshly available for me to use in the kitchen.  Until then, I will think about it, wonder why I haven't started yet, and then let it go from my mind.  

As I said, I enjoy going at my own pace. 

Peanut butter cups

part of my yard

My yard has many different types of plants in various garden beds bounded by gravel pathways.  I love it.  I spent a considerable amount of time over the past years sculpting it, planting it, helping it evolve.  I love how so many plants grow so well together, not just visually, but in terms of how each plant can add something to a garden area that is beneficial to all the other plants there.

And that idea of multiple things working so well together takes us directly to peanut butter cups, that great combination of peanut butter cream and chocolate that go so well together just like those plants in my garden.

Did you know that May 18th, today, is "I Love Reese's Day"?  In 2010, Hershey, which had purchased the Reese's brand and candy company back in 1963, sponsored a Facebook petition to have May 18th declared a candy holiday.  40,000 people signed the petition and that's how "I Love Reese's Day" was born.  The National Peanut Board promotes it every year.  And why not?  How simple a combination, yet how delicious.

As I finish writing this short entry tonight, dusk is settling in, and I'm going to head out to the backyard and eat a peanut butter cup while I listen to a squirrel who is chattering incessantly about something.  I have a bag of unsalted peanuts I keep around for the birds and squirrels so maybe I'll toss him a couple to enjoy while eat my own snack.

Have a great evening and enjoy your own delicious snack.  Life is meant to be good and food is a good part of a good life.

Sugar + water = caramel

from my garden

Some things are so incredibly simple and so simply incredible.  The flower above from my garden is one of those things.  Petals, colors, an elegant shape .... it's simplicity is deceptive.

I love making vanilla crème caramel.  It is deceptive in its simplicity as well, and so visually incredible when it is served.  The rich custard which is primarily egg and cream and sugar is topped with a layer of relatively thin caramel syrup that is just a bit bittersweet, a wonderful contrast.  But what I find amazing is how simple the caramel syrup is:  just two ingredients is all you need -- water and sugar.  With just these two ingredients cooked on the stove top for just a short bit, you get something that tastes amazing.

Sugar is placed into a saucepan, and a small amount of water is poured over it.  Then it is heated until boiling and left untouched while it cooks away.  The syrup initially is clear, just sugar water.  But as it heats, it starts to cloud just a bit as it boils and foams, and then as it get hotter and more time passes it begins to turn darker, eventually a rich amber color.  At this point, it is poured into ramekins.

caramel syrup in ramkins

The process is so easy to do yet so amazing.  As the water and sugar solution heats, it goes through the various candy stages:  thread, soft-ball, firm-ball, hard-ball, soft-crack, hard-crack.  Each of these stages in succession has less and less water.  Finally at 320 degrees the water is gone and the sugar is liquefied and turning a light amber.  At 338, the syrup is now darker as the sugar is caramelizing.  The sugar is breaking down and many different compounds are forming which contribute to a complex rich flavor.  But if it goes just a bit more, to 350, it is too hot and the syrup becomes bitter and burnt.

Once the syrup is poured into ramekins.  It immediately cools and hardens.  Then custard which has been cooked on the stove top is poured into the ramekins and they are placed in a pan surrounded by hot water and covered with foil.  They cook this way in the oven for about an hour.  As it cooks the caramel liquefies under the custard.

When the ramekins come out, they have to cool, and sit in the fridge for several hours.  Finally, they are ready to serve.  A thin narrow knife is inserted into the ramekin, pressed against the side and taken around the entire edge of the custard.  This loosens it just a bit from the ramekin.  Place a serving plate over the ramekin, turn the whole thing over, and just tap the ramekin a bit on the plate.  It might take a bit of coaxing, but the entire custard comes out onto the plate, gently and holding it's shape, and on top is a beautiful amber layer of thin caramel syrup which pours over the sides and onto the plate.

This dessert is incredible.  The custard is silky smooth and rich.  The caramel syrup is complex.  I love to give these away to people.  I have to give them away or I would eat them all myself in a very short time.  I know that for sure because I've done it, and not felt guilty about it one bit, not one bit.

They are too alluring and too amazing to be left sitting in the fridge. I simply can't resist them.

Grocery store trips

focaccia

I miss grocery store trips. During this covid-19 health crisis, my son has been doing all the grocery shopping for me, for the past seven weeks or so.  And that means that I haven't had regular walks down an aisle looking at products, thinking about meals, planning ahead for future cooking ideas.  I haven't stood in front of a huge pile of produce, seeing all the colors and inhaling the wonderful aromas.  I haven't gazed at the bakery counter and wondered how many donuts I should get.  I haven't talked with the person manning  the deli counter as I try to decide on meats and cheeses. 

Some people dislike grocery shopping, but I love it.  Of course, I usually go early in the morning when crowds haven't picked up, and that certainly is nicer since it almost seems as if I'm the only one in the place and I get the entire cornucopia to myself.  I always go with a list, but invariably extra things get picked up as well.  That's the nature of the experience, I suppose.

There's a great book about grocery stores titled Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America.  It's a wonderful homage by the writer to his experiences with grocery stores and his father, and a discussion about where grocery stores are headed in the future.  I highly recommend it.

With the country and most states and most major metropolitan areas starting to slowly come back to life a bit after rigid activity lockdowns, I imagine I will be getting out again soon, albeit carefully.  Food is important, and to me the experience of going to the grocery or the market is an important one and I find it life-affirming.  And anything life-affirming is good.

Food waste

ants on peony bud

I'm a big advocate of using things up, using things completely, getting as much out of things as possible before discarding them.  That doesn't mean I spend every waking minute trying to account for every piece of trash I produce or every ounce of carbon my activity footprint is responsible for.  But it means that I am aware that we need to take care of our environment and I endeavor to do what I can.  Plus, as I've written about before, I love being efficient.

One of the most important things to me is to take inevitable food waste that results from all the cooking I do, and do something with it besides simply throwing it into the trash, and then into the trash collection truck, and from there into a landfill.  The way I look at it, if I can improve the condition of the soil in my gardens by using the food waste I produce, I see that as a big win.  It saves me the time and the expense of making soil improvements using commercial products that are found in stores.

from my yard

Plus it's kind of fun to peel a bunch of carrots and then take those peelings and just toss them out into one of my planting beds.  Sure I could go ahead and build a big mulching area, but I haven't.  However, my planting beds have soil that has become better conditioned over the years simply from the food waste that I've casually tossed out and left to decompose naturally.  It's made a difference that can be seen in the quality of plants that grow in those areas now compared to years ago when the soil wasn't as rich and full.  I love that cooking feeds me and my family and my friends, but also feeds the earth around me, the environment around me.  I see more insects, I see more organics in the soil, I see better plants, I see more birds that come for the insects, and the chain goes on.

I applaud anyone who makes good use of their food waste in similar fashion.  For those who don't, I understand.  It's hard sometimes to make changes to how we do things.  I'm not perfect either.  But I get tremendous reward from knowing that my food waste goes into the soil and not into the trash, and that feeling keeps me doing it again and again day after day.

Pizza week +

iris bed

This week my irises began to bloom.  I have a large bed of these, and right now lots of yellow and a couple white are showing.  I imagine the blues will come along soon.  But for now the bed is looking very cheerful and sunny.  I love the early and mid-spring.  The temps are usually pretty mild and so it's perfect weather for making pizzas before the summer heat sets in.  Why is that important?  Because I crank the oven up to a very high temperature, not as high as pizza shops with ultra high temp ovens which routinely are taken to 800 F, as I understand it (and I've heard of some pizzerias going further, up to 900 F +), but I take mine to 500.  I have a set of pizza stones that all fit together to equal one large or I can keep the five individual pieces separate if I want to bake something small on a single stone.  Well, at 500 degrees, and with these stones in the oven absorbing and radiating that heat, I am able to produce a pizza crust I am happy with.  High temperatures are important to a good pizza crust.   Sometimes I take my oven up to 550, but I like to work with 500 and refine my recipes and baking techniques based on that slightly lower temperature and still get consistently good results.

I spent a long time sourcing a great pan as well.  Williams-Sonoma has a high temperature pizza pan made for them with a special non-stick coating that can take heat all the way up to 660. (Typically non-stick pans are not made for high heat, including the ones you use on your stove-top, so be careful.)  It's made for gas and charcoal grills, but I use mine in my oven on my pizza stones and it does exactly what I want.  Plus it has handles which is certainly a nice touch that is not normally found on pizza pans.

I could cook the pizzas directly on the stones and a piece of parchment paper (or with no paper), but I like the ease of using this special pan.  I still put down the parchment paper because I don't want to abrase the pan on the pizza stones.  After being in the oven at that high temperature for 10 or 15 minutes on those stones, that parchment paper is quite brown.

I made pizza almost every day for the last week.  I've made pizzas for many years, but I've decided I want take them to a consistently higher level so I'm testing out and tweaking different crust recipes.  And so I am using the same simple basic sauce, the same cheese combination, and pepperoni and mushrooms for the toppings.  In this way, every pizza has everything the same except for the crust so it's easy to tell which crusts I am happiest with without having that judgment affected by differences in the other parts of the pizza.

I have more pizza crusts to test still, and then I will be back for a second round to start refining my finalists, trying to improve my instincts for the dough and the baking time and the amount of toppings that can go on, etc.  It's a long process, but a fun one because ... well, just think about all the pizza I get to eat and share.

In the end, this process is important.  Baking consistently good pizzas in a non-commercial pizzeria oven is something that takes practice.  Pizza dough doesn't really take that long to make (aside from the time for the dough to rise) so even though it sounds like a huge amount of time is going into this, it's not as much as it appears.  But it is fun.  How could it not be with all that melted cheese, savory sauce, great toppings and beautiful crusts to compare?  It is time well spent.

Frosting on sugar cookies

bird feeding station and shade plant bed

It is a nice day out there today.  Usually I wait to write my blog posts in the evening, after dark, one of the last things I do in the day.  But today I've decided not to wait and just now went out to snap a picture of part of my yard.  As you can see, there's lots of green, flowers are blooming and the sun in shining.  It is a nice day out there today.

sugar cookie dough

Recently someone asked me about the neatness of the frosting on my frosted vanilla sugar cookies.  First of all, let me say that I love making these sugar cookies.  The dough is very rich, and quite tasty by itself, although that can be said for most cookie doughs, of course.  When it comes out of the bowl, the dough is formed into a disc and wrapped in plastic wrap before going into the fridge for a chill.

rolled out sugar cookie dough

Then the dough is rolled and cut thick.  I want these cookies to be thick and just a bit on the soft side which means that the oven temperature and the baking time have to be just right.

frosted vanilla sugar cookies

And what you get as a finished product is what you see above.  But going to back to what I said earlier... Someone asked me how I get those circles of frosting to come out looking so neat and tidy.  It used to be in days long ago I would hand-spread the frosting.  I would use the back of a dinner spoon to slowly spread the frosting in an ever-widening circle.  This looked nice, but the circles of frosting were never quite circles.  The frosting is not firm when it goes on, it still flows a bit, not much but enough to allow the frosting to set with a smooth surface.  So what to do?  I tried a variety of things over time and eventually settled on a very simple solution:  pastry rings.

I keep a number of pastry rings in my kitchen, two different sizes.  I use them for all sorts of things.  For these cookies, I place the pastry ring on the cooled cookie, centered, and then inside put a measured amount of frosting and coax it to outward until it meets the ring.  Then I just let it sit, not for long, only about 5 minutes.  Any longer and when you pull up the ring a bit frosting tries to stick to it and so you have a frosting edge that is not as neat as it could be.  Pull up the ring too soon, and the frosting is still flowing ever so slowly, but enough that it is not yet ready to retain the circular shape imposed by the ring.  You want to pull up the ring when it is not quite set so that any unevenness caused by ring removal is smoothed over as the frosting settles at its edge.  There's actually a nice margin of error in the timing of the ring removal.  And it's an easy solution that is low-tech and requires something I already have in my kitchen.

Well, today is a nice sunny day, a perfect day for those nice sunny-looking frosted sugar cookies.  I almost always do them in yellow so they always seem sunny.

Go out and enjoy the day, everyone.  It's a wonderful spring.