Painting with egg yolk

painting a log of cookie dough with egg yolk

Good evening, everyone.  Well, it's evening now, but it might not be by the time you are reading this. Still ... good evening, everyone.

I posted a photo on Instagram a couple days ago, the photo shown above, painting cookie dough with egg yolk.  In conversations with a couple different people since then, I have been asked why in the world would anyone do that?  Well, here's the answer.

When I make my lemon sablés, I form the dough into a firmly packed log and chill it for quite a while.  When it's finally ready to be used, I whisk an egg yolk until it is smooth and liquidy.  (I know, I know, most people will say that liquidy is not a real word, but it is.  Honest!)  Then I take a pastry brush and paint the log of cookie dough until it has a thin layer of yolk all around.  At that point the cookie dough log goes to another tray where I have spread some plain old sugar, and I roll the dough over the sugar.  Without the yolk brushed on, very little of the sugar would stick to the chilled dough.  But the presence of the yolk changes that, allowing for plenty of sugar to coat the log.  Then I slice the dough into even rounds.

When they bake, the yolk and sugar create a thin crust around the edge of each round, sort of like a thin layer of bark on a round of wood cut from a felled tree.

fresh from the oven

And here you see a whole tray.  If you look closely, you can see the sugary ring around each cookie.

light lemon sablés

And here's the photo of these cookies from the menu on the main website.  It's very easy to see the "bark" on each of these cookies.  

I always enjoy eating these.  The slightly crackly edge contrasts nicely with the rich buttery sandy interior that falls apart in the mouth.  But just as nice is the process of making them.  Painting and rolling them in sugar is actually quite fun, and young kids and big kids and adults all seem to enjoy watching and then want to do it themselves.

Give it a try sometime with any cookie dough that you chill in log form.  Maybe you'll find it to be as much fun as it is for me.

Shapes and sizes

lemon cloud cake size test

Today has been a great day.  Lots of rain overnight and into the morning, and I love morning rains.  This summer, so far, has been rather wet.  I haven't had to water anything in the yard or garden all year long.  And the plants are growing like crazy.  The birds of course loved the rain and they were quite vocal, and that is always nice to hear in the mornings as they all take what they want from the bird-feeding stations that are scattered around my yard.  Today is also the first day of my mid-summer break from teaching, and that means lots of projects and especially cooking over the next few weeks.  

So while it was raining I started the day off listening to some Debussy and Beethoven while I prepped ingredients for lemon cloud cake.  Then I put the ingredients aside for a while to do other things.  I enjoy days like this where I can just take my time, luxuriating in the lack of a schedule.  Eventually, though, I returned to the cake prep.

I love making this cake.  It has a beautiful texture which comes from a combination of egg whites whipped not quite firm, oil and butter, and a bit of what to some people is an unusual ingredient in a cake, namely, mayonnaise.  It also has lemon zest for just a light bit of flavor to go along with rich vanilla.

In the past, I have always made this cake as one large pan cake and then cut it into squares which are then wrapped in plastic and left to sit for hours before serving.  However, as I have been toying with the idea of putting this on the full menu, I have been experimenting with different shapes and sizes.  So today I am doing what will probably be the final test run of these small versions of the cake.  

Trying out not only different sizes and shapes but also different cooking vessels is always a fascinating project no matter what is being baked.  It's amazing to see the end results that can sometime be quite different, affecting texture, in particular.  (Sometimes I find it's wise to test different oven temperatures with these variations in size and cooking vessel, too.)

Today's final run is to compare jumbo-sized cupcake versions in paper cupcake wraps with small tube-pan cakes, foil-lined large cupcakes, and small square cakes cooked in disposable aluminum pans.  The shapes are all different as is each cooking vessel.  They are in the oven as I write this and when they come out they have to cool completely and then will be wrapped until morning.  Only then will I test each version for flavor and texture.  It might be that I won't be as happy with any of these as I am with the way I have always made this cake, the full-pan size cut into square pieces which are then wrapped.  But no matter what happens, the process of this experimentation broadens my experience and adds to my knowledge base, and not just with respect to this cake.  Indeed, the results of tonight's bake will inform other choices with other cakes and breads and so forth in the future. 

It's a fun process trying all these variations in cooking a specif item.  But it can take a while, as in days or weeks, and sometimes can be frustrating.  But when, in the end, I come out with the version that I want, it's always something I am glad I took to time to do. 

   

Grated cheese and other favorite things

from my garden

Earlier this week I got to do one of my favorite things: grating cheese.  I had a block of fontina cheese and I decided to shred it.  I sliced a few pieces to use in spicy egg and cheese burritos.  But I had quite a bit left and thought by shredding it I could then use it on a whim for other things I might put together in the kitchen throughout the week.

grated fontina cheese

Well, the idea was nice, but if you're like me you know the temptation grated cheese sitting in your fridge can be.  Every time I opened the fridge door I saw the bowl filled with shredded cheese covered with transparent plastic wrap, and every time I opened the door and saw it, I grabbed a pinch.  Grated cheese is so good!  Doesn't matter what kind of cheese it is -- it's always especially good when grated.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it's the texture of all those little bits.  Perhaps its the ease of just grabbing a little bit or a lot depending on your mood.  Whatever it is, though, it's enough to make it too difficult to leave it alone.  After a few times eating a pinch, I began to take larger amounts, and by evening it was all gone with a final flurry of consumption that erased every little crumb from the bowl.  Yum, yum, yum.  Sometimes I'm the same way with sliced American cheese.  A single slice makes a great snack and once in a while I can't help but have that single slice multiple times per day.  

This happens with other foods as well, though some of those other foods are much healthier to eat in large quantities than cheese.  Applesauce cups come to mind.  I like to keep several multi-cup packages in my fridge, and there are days where I snack on multiple cups throughout the day.  The texture, the fresh taste, the coolness, everything about it is intoxicating to me.

Cherry tomatoes ... ditto.  Cucumber chunks ... ditto.  Chocolate chips ... very ditto.  

I keep all of these things on hand and others as well, and it's a good thing that some of these things are very healthy.  I suppose what they all have in common is that they allow for grazing.  Sometimes eating a big complex meal is fun, but just as often spending a day periodically heading to the kitchen to eat little bits of different things is the best way to eat through a day.

I do that a lot when I'm cooking.  Sometimes on TV or in a movie, someone on screen is cooking and drinking a glass of wine periodically as they work in the kitchen.  I don't really do that wine thing.  For me, it's continually grazing through various foods while I'm busy making something entirely different.  I love doing that.  And I love that I can keep so many of my favorite grazing foods around.  I think I'll go find something to graze on one last time before I head into my pre-sleep routine.  

Have a great evening everyone and thanks for reading, whether it's something informative that I write or just meandering thoughts such as what I've written tonight.  

Hiatus is over

from my garden

Happy Sunday everyone!  Today I am pleased to announce that the hiatus due to Covid-19 for www.brucebakeryandbistro.com is now over.  The website has been updated to reflect this.  Items are listed which can be ordered anytime for pickup next weekend, July 3rd, 4th or 5th.  As was the case before the hiatus, each week new menus will be posted for the upcoming two weeks.  Everything is free for friends and family who have been invited.  If you don't remember the password to get into the site, just let me know.

Don't forget to read the FAQs if you are unfamiliar with ordering and picking up.  Or feel free to contact me if you have any questions.  

I am very happy to be able to again share some of my favorite foods with all of you!

Folding egg whites and cream

from my garden

Good evening.  I hope everyone is enjoying the summer so far.  It's not been too hot, nor too humid, although those are relative terms, of course.  But in my mind so far this has been a pleasant early summer made so by evenings and mornings that are fairly cool and dry, as in "not humid".  

I'm getting ready to announce a date on which I will start offering food items from my kitchen again.  Covid-19 is not gone by any means, but as we are all adjusting to the reality of it, I am looking forward to getting back to cooking for everyone.  So watch here or on the main website for that announcement very very soon.

Today I am responding to a question posed to me:  How does one fold whipped egg whites or whipped cream into a much thicker mixture without losing all that whipped airy-ness?  Well, here is an easy way to do it.

portion of whipped on right goes into thick on left

First, I take a portion (about 1/4 or 1/3) of the whipped lighter mixture, the egg whites or cream, and plop it on top of the thicker mixture, and fold it in, although in reality because the thicker mixture is so much denser, it's not really folding as much as it it gingerly combining.  The key thing here is that by combining in this way, the thicker mixture is lightened considerably, even if much of the air is taken out of the initial addition of the whipped material.  That's OK, though, because by lightening the thicker mixture, you've made it much easier to fold in the remaining whipped mixture.

add remaining whipped to thick

Now, add all the rest of the whipped cream or whipped egg whites to the lightened thicker mixture.  At this point, it is quite easy to fold in all that nice whipped stuff.  The thicker mixture is not so dense anymore, and it easily incorporates all the whipped stuff without requiring such force that the air is lost.

everything folded in

And there you go.  Now you have a nicely folded mixture that started out with something very dense.  Trying to fold everything in at once can be a really tricky thing.  This easy solution works very well. And that's important because a lot of great foods have fantastic texture that comes from folding in whipped egg whites or whipped cream.

That's all for tonight.  Have a great end-of-your-week.  Eat some good food, everyone.  Bon appetit!

 

Thank goodness for ice cream

from my garden

On today's date, June 15, in 1851 in Baltimore, Maryland, a man named Jacob Fussell did something very important:  he opened the first commercial ice cream factory.  Fussell ran a multi-route delivery service for milk and cream.  He was asked if he would take over a small local catering business which was producing small quantities of ice cream as part of its operation.  Fussell looked at the market and saw that with the surplus volume of milk and especially cream that he often had, he could produce high volumes of ice cream and sell it for less than half of the typical market price at the time.  Consumers got a lower price, ice cream became more readily available, and his factory became very profitable.  

So in these early days of summer as the heat is starting to build towards its apex in July and August, when you feel like heading out to the store for a pint or a quart of ice cream, just remember that our modern-day wide availability of ice cream on demand in high volumes all goes back to 1851 in Baltimore.

Gingerbread and lemon zest

from my garden

Hello, hello, everyone.  Tonight is the end of a hot day in Kansas City that started out as a very cool day:  58 degrees to start the day, and then ending with the upper 80s.  That's quite a temperature spread, especially for mid-June.  It made a great morning for cooking, though, since it was so cool.  I opened up the window on the back door to let in all the birdsong from the garden, started some Debussy playing, and got everything ready for gingerbread loaves.  

These are a very special item to me.  I love gingerbread cake.  I usually make it as a loaf or a jumbo-sized muffin.  The combination of dark brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, cloves, and of course the ginger makes for an almost intoxicating flavor.  Sometimes I am in the mood for a deep dark rich gingerbread, one that is very very potent in terms of the spices.  Then other times I want something with all that dark flavor but lightened with an additional flavor component, and for that I go to lemon zest.  

For this recipe I take the zest of 3 medium-sized lemons, about 12 - 13 grams of zest, and it's stirred into the batter after everything else is already combined.  And what you get when it comes out of the oven is a spice-warm cake with a zest-cool component that makes it all seem lighter .... yet not.  It's hard to describe, but I guarantee it's delicious.  The lemon doesn't come out as a separate flavor.  It acts rather like an invisible element that affects the final product but doesn't let you see what it is.  

gingerbread loaf with lemon zest

And I love it.  I hope you will, too.  Before the end of this upcoming weekend it will be out on the full menu of the main site.  I haven't decided whether to offer it as a loaf or a jumbo muffin, but I will try to put into a weekly menu very soon so anyone who wishes to will have a chance to give it a try.  FYI, after going on hiatus for the health crisis shutdown, I am just about ready to announce a resumption of weekly food offerings, so keep an eye out both here and on the main site for that information.

Have a great summer evening.  And sleep well.

Potluck

Recently, piano students of mine who are from Mexico brought me a wonderful gift of fresh traditional authentic tamales.  They were still hot as they were taken from the pot just minutes before they were given to me.  It was a delicious morning for me.  The sharing of good food is quite a wonderful thing and not just for the obvious fact that you have something delicious to eat.  The sharing creates a bond, a connection, even if only for a moment, using one of the most fundamentally important things in our lives.

This simple occurrence made me think back to something long ago that I hadn't thought about for ages upon ages.  When I was kid, I remember from time to time families from the area getting together at a local country church.  Everyone brought a different dish.  Potluck it was called.  Some people still know this term, but I've been surprised to find out that many more people either have forgotten or have never been introduced to this word.

The idea of sharing a communal meal with every participant bringing something that they actually made, not something bought, not something already processed, is a powerful idea.  And that's what potlucks used to be.  Of course, people don't make food as frequently as they used to.  Grocery stores have ready-to-eat meals all arranged in nice little trays that are microwave-proof.  Fast-food options are abundant.  Restaurants have carry-out meals available on the spur of the moment.  And frozen dinners are still eaten even though everyone agrees that they aren't as good as the fresh alternative.  And there's simply not much time it seems in most people's days.

The world moves quickly in a seemingly unending flurry of activity, and everyone is running to someplace in order to tick off yet another list item from their schedule.  People often feel they can't afford the time to actually make something.  And our schedules are so busy that the ubiquitous potluck seems to have disappeared from many people's experience.  To be sure, we all sometimes get together for a holiday dinner or some such.  But I am told by many people that even with those, oftentimes the food that is there is provided only by the host and more and more frequently is previously made by someone else.  I am sure potlucks still exist and I just don't hear about them, but as I said before I have been surprised to find that so many people don't know the term and haven't really experienced a true potluck.  

I remember those potlucks in my youth, dishes lined up on tables, families bringing food in whatever casserole dishes or trays or pots they happened to have at hand, the tables laden with such a variety of foods, favorites of all the families, that were all so much fun to sample.  After eating what seemed like a ton of food, adults would sit around and chat, and kids would run around outside in the dark night on the grounds around that church and then eventually drift in to eat a bit more, especially all the wonderful homemade desserts that were always in abundant supply.  My memory of those events are such they seem rather magical in my recollection.

Perhaps this is why I so enjoy preparing a feast with as many different things as I can.  I love to see tables spread with a huge variety of different things so that one can choose to focus on only a couple foods or sample a bit of everything, but there is enough there to satisfy everyone no matter what.  I used to make huge weekend morning breakfasts for my kids and we would sit around and watch a movie while we ate eggs and pancakes and sausages and biscuits with gravy and muffins and fresh fruit and more.  I loved those big breakfasts and loved sharing them with my kids.  I suppose those were our in-home version of a potluck, not that everyone brought something, but that there were so many things to eat, way more than we could all possibly consume so that there were leftovers to tide us through the rest of the weekend.

Making and sharing great feasts is a wonderful thing.  After all, a great feast is something that has the potential to make us all feel a bit more relaxed in this busy world, being amongst friendly people in the midst of tables of plenty

Doughnuts

Today, June 5th, is the first Friday of June.  And as such, it is National Doughnut Day.  This day was started back in 1938 by the Salvation Army in Chicago.  Today's post it not about this day's history, however.  If you want more on that, I would suggest reading the relevant article on Wikipedia.  It's quite interesting actually.

But what interests me as much as the history of this food day is another aspect altogether.  For as long as I can remember, Sunday mornings have been for donuts.  Everyone I have ever talked to has said that if there is one day that is reserved more for donuts than any other in their household, it is Sunday.  That doesn't mean that donut shops don't sell plenty of donuts on other days.  Certainly offices all over in any city or town are frequent purchasers of donuts on weekdays, often as a morning perk for their employees.  But as far as residences go, I wonder how many people buy fresh donuts en masse on weekdays.  Sunday mornings will often find a crowded donut shop with people buying whole boxes of them to take home, but I never really hear of people doing the same thing on a non-Sunday.  On non-Sundays I see people buying a single donut, maybe two, (unless they are going into an office, of course) but it always seems that on Sundays everyone is buying boxes of them.  

To be sure, I have no statistics that help to clarify this conundrum.  Neither do I have any statistics to even validate this premise that Sunday is the main donut-buying day for most households, at least when buying boxes full.  I am only going on observation and hearsay from many people over the years.

Is this issue worthy of the time and energy I am expending in order to ponder it?  I have no idea.  But it's something I've always wondered about.  I think I'll ruminate a bit more while I eat an old-fashioned.  Yum.  

Taste

from my garden

As times passes, day by day, I make a certain effort to try new things in my kitchen.  I do the same thing with the piano music that I learn and perform and teach, and also with the movies and shows I watch, and with the plants that go into my garden landscaping.  To be sure, I have certain things that I come back to all the time that are definitives in terms of what I like, what I most prefer.  With music, on any given day I am easily in the mood to listen to Debussy's La Mer.  With movies and shows, I'm always in the mood for some Star Trek or one of my favorite baseball movies.  With my garden, I'm always happy to plant more coreopsis or weigela.  And with food, as everyone knows, I can make and eat ice cream every day without tiring of it.

However, I like to explore and discover new things as often as possible.  I think it's important to do that.  Certainly with food, it's easy for some people, I have noticed, to fall into a pattern of only eating certain things.  Some will completely eschew any foods they do not consider worthy of their refined preferences, of their refined tastes.  Others are on the opposite end of the spectrum and will not try anything that they might consider too pretentious or too elitist.  And some are simply reluctant to try anything that is not already part of their experience.  

As for me, my desire for exploration and discovery doesn't mean I will eat anything just for the sake of trying it.  I've only ever had Brussels' sprouts twice in my life and I can't see trying them again.  Liver has not made an appearance on my dinner plate in all my adult years.  I can't imagine sampling tripe ever.  How about escargot?  Probably not.  Haggis?  Doubtful.  I simply don't have any desire to give them a chance, at least for now.  

As my appreciation for flavors and textures evolves over time, I find less enjoyment in some processed foods or so-called fast foods.  While it's almost an axiom to state that these kinds of foods have less flavor than homemade counterparts, nonetheless I still sometimes wonder if I am becoming a food snob.  Then I think about it and realize that sometimes I really just crave a fast-food cheeseburger from under the golden arches in our modern-day fast-food utopia.  Sometimes I just want a bowl of highly processed cereal that at least tries to masquerade as something highly nutritious.  In these cases, I could certainly substitute something more refined, something fresher, etc.  But I don't disallow their consumption when I feel in the mood.  And thus I realize I need not fear becoming a food snob.  As long as my kitchen frequently turns out plenty of fresh roasted tomatoes, wonderful baked salmon, fresh made bread, and other similar things, a few "junkier" things are not going to do any harm in my opinion.

There's a Latin phrase I teach all my piano students that translates in English as "taste is not disputable".  I love that phrase.  These simple words can be used to diffuse any argument about why someone likes a particular thing.  When it comes to food, on a particular day I might be in the mood for baked chicken breast with tarragon butter (one of my favorite simple dinner dishes to make) or a frozen pizza from the nearest grocery store.  It might be said that one of these two choices is of much higher quality and therefore of more inherent value than the other.   But all that matters is what you crave the most, for in that moment in time taste is not disputable.