Last day of June

Here we are on a hot day in the last handful of hours of June.  And I'm in the kitchen dealing with a hot oven, and hot water, too, as I wash up each dish and pan and utensil one by one as I use them.  

Today I have multiple batches of chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough already made and chilling in the fridge.  And I have made multiple batches of yellow cake batter (see the pic above).  To start the day I realized I didn't have sour cream, even though I was certain that I had some in yesterday's groceries.  So I rushed out to the store, got some, along with a container of ice cream (for the hot day, of course), and then went home.  When I arrived and put the sour cream in the fridge I found I actually had a container in there already.  While at the store, I saw cake flour on the shelf as I passed it, and thought about getting some, but realized I already had some at home.  You see, I keep extra containers of everything so that I never run out.  So in my flour cannister was cake flour, and I had an extra box in the pantry.  Or so I thought!  When I started setting up ingredients to make cake batters, I realized I only had a small amount of cake flour in the cannister and none in the pantry.  How that happened, I do not know.  But I had to go out to the store again for cake flour.  At least that time when I got back, I didn't find that I actually had a box in the pantry.  

I always keep extra bags and boxes of everything:  flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, bread flour, eggs.  You name it.... I have extras.  Well, at least most of the time; apparently, not today. 

This week's chocolate chip peanut butter cookies are being developed as a special request from son-in-law Zak.  And the yellow cake is for son Ben.  I will spend the next few days working on them and tweaking and adjusting until they are ready to be added to the full menu.  I'm working from past recipes I've already used, so it's more a process of refining than of discovery.

Tune in to the next blog post here to see how this month of working on new menu additions is going.

Try to stay cool, everyone!  And have a great start to July!

Summer cooking and cinnamon toast

It's Sunday, June 26.  In two days, I begin my mid-summer teaching break -- almost five weeks during which all my students are on break, and piano lessons are put on the back burner.  And that means I'm ready to do a lot of cooking.  

First, though, is this week's menu:  chocolate mousse, and almond cakes with blueberries and cream.  Next week, you will have a chance to order eggnog and also something that is appearing on the weekly menu for the first time:  vanilla poppy seed muffins with lemon streusel.  

During July, I will be cooking lots and lots, so I hope the weather is not too hot because cooking in a hot kitchen during a hot summer day just makes it all seem even hotter.  But no matter whether it's a hot July or a cool July, I have a lots of things I am looking forward to working on in the kitchen.  That means I'll be sampling lots of different things, so my meals will consist of little bits of things rather than full courses during many days of the month.

In the middle of all this cooking and baking, there will be some simple pleasures as well.  One of my favorite simple pleasures is a slice of brioche toasted just right, spread with a liberal amount of Plugra butter, sprinkled with a light dusting of sugar and topped off with an aromatic cinnamon.  Cinnamon toast is such a simple little thing but so enjoyable.  And I often indulge in it while also working on much more complex foods.   

I like to keep a lot of simple foods around: fresh cut fruit, boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, bowls of berries, sliced cheese, and bowls of my favorite corn flakes or cinnamon spice oatmeal.  I love having these simple things around because they are perfect for filling a moment in a busy schedule that needs filling due to a little bit of hunger or the simple need to have something delicious to munch on.

And when I cook, I do a lot of munching on things like these simple foods as well as samples of everything I'm making in the kitchen on that particular day.

OK, enough rambling.  Today's post is not very substantive or memorable, perhaps, but I enjoy sometimes just rambling on about simple things just as I love eating my simple foods.    

A week off

As we head to the final weekend in June, I'm going to take the weekend off.  Sorry to say there will be no food this weekend.

But next weekend is chocolate mousse and almond cakes with blueberries and cream.

As we head into the final days of June, I'm preparing for a period of more than a month with no teaching.  And the plan is for me to use all that free time for making food, trying new recipes, doing updates to my recipe database, and other related activities.  

I hope to completely finish the initial entry of all remaining recipes into my database and then begin proofreading everything.  Once it's done, I will have everything organized and in a format that will be very convenient and very efficient.  I was hoping to have it done a couple months ago, but to be honest, it's not that much fun to update.  I don't feel much reward from doing it.  But I will feel reward from getting it done.  And that's one of the most important things I want to get done during the month of July.  After that, as new recipes are added, it will be easy to maintain.  It's typesetting all the existing recipes in this new format that is time-consuming and brain-numbing.

In addition to the database updates, I have several foods I'm working on as special requests from different people.  These include a sandwich with sauce, a strawberry cream cake, a yellow cake, macarons, a new ice cream, and a new cookie.  Plus I want to work on cinnamon rolls which I have been promising everyone for a long time, and also buns for sloppy joes and other sandwiches.  And let's not forget the continued work on something I've already started -- a pasta meat sauce.

Someone might say, "Can't you just get any old recipe and use that?" (for the pasta meat sauce, for example) -- but the answer is a resounding, "No!"  I experiment, I tweak, I adjust, I test, I test some more, and finally I end up with a recipe that I've made my own, one that has certain qualities in the finished product that I love.  It certainly takes time, but it's worth it.  When it's done and added to the full menu, the recipe has been tested and sampled, and the printed copy has notations I've added regarding the technical procedure for making it in addition to how to prepare certain ingredients.  Everything is written so that not only are the proper ingredients in very specific quantities detailed but also how to mix or fold, how long to let it sit, what kind of baking vessel to use, etc.

So July will be a vacation month, but a busy vacation month.  And that sounds fine to me.

A hot week ahead

 

Summer is here.  Today is going to be hot and steamy.  The entire week ahead will be hot and steamy.  Perfect for staying indoors and making cold foods.

This next weekend, the weekly menu is comprised of blueberry cinnamon snack cake, and also farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.  The blueberry cake is such a pleasant relaxed dessert.  I eat it plain, with whipped cream, accompanied by a glass of milk, or anything else that comes to mind.  It goes with so many things.  And it's not overly sweet so you can eat a lot.  The pasta salad is a cold pasta salad.  And it's perfect for a hot day.  It has something from every food group in it, so it's a complete meal.  And it's incredibly delicious.  

For the following weekend, I have just set the menu with chocolate mousse, and also almond snack cakes with blueberries and cream.  

Today as I write this post, it's almost 10:00 AM here in Kansas City.  I've already done things I wanted to do outside today, getting them done early to beat the heat.  And I'm in for the day now.  Part of my day is going to be dedicated to reviewing my list of items that I want to tweak and add to the full menu. Another very fun part of my day is going to be dedicated to perusing recipes and brainstorming foods, specifically things that are new that I've never seen before.

I love going through recipes in books or online and coming across one and it hits me:  "I have to make that!"  Of course, that increases my list of new recipes I want to try, and I will probably never come to the end of that list.  There are simply too many great foods to experience.  I have many passions, as people who know me will attest.  And with each one of those, I could immerse myself in them for the next 60 years and still not learn everything I want to learn.  And that's perfect.

Ok.  On to the rest of my day now.  Time to get a cold glass of milk and take a look at some recipes.

Small vs. big

 

Blueberry cinnamon snack cake is on the menu for next weekend.  My last post talked about the choices I made regarding blueberries for this cake.  Today something else is on my mind which is also connected to this cake:  small vs. big.

Sometimes I will experiment with a recipe to see what kind of size options I have.  When I was preparing to add this snack cake to the full menu long ago, I thought about what sizes I wanted to offer.  Certainly, a full-sized 9-inch diameter cake was going to be one of the options.  But I also wanted to offer smaller sizes.  I experimented with different sizes and even with loaves.  But in each case, the finished cake wasn't quite the same as the original full-sized cake.  There was something slightly different in how it baked which altered the texture enough that I noticed it.  And adjusting baking times didn't eliminate that difference.  I like the full-sized version a lot so I wasn't about to accept something that was even a little less good just because I wanted to offer a smaller size.  This is why both a full-sized cake and also individual slices are on the full menu -- slices instead of a small version. 

I find this fascinating.  The same cake, the same batter, the same recipe, but a different result depending on what size baking option is used.  This doesn't occur with my Swedish visiting cake.  The 4-inch size and the full 8-inch size are identical.  (Note:  The full-sized Swedish visiting cake is not on the full menu, but I make in on request sometimes.) Brownies?  No difference.  But there are some things for which it seems that the final size affects the final baked result in a way that is easy to discern.  Why is that exactly?

I haven't made a list of items where this happens, but perhaps over time I will start keeping track.  I am always interested in trying to answer these sorts of questions.

That's all for today.  Have a great day and a great weekend.  

Cookies and cakes and salad

It's early June and the weather is mild.  Summer hasn't officially started and won't start for several days, but it certainly seems like we are in for a mild summer over the next few months.  Of course, that could change with one big week of intense heat.  If that happens, I'll make lots of ice cream, and smoothies, and slushes, and even some soda syrups to add to tonic water, club soda or seltzer.

This coming weekend, we have Swedish visiting cakes and Swedish oatmeal cookies on the menu.  These oatmeal cookies are a bit different from what one usually thinks of with an oatmeal cookie.  Trust me, though, they are really good.  And they have little tiny chocolate chips in them which are an added special touch.

I just now selected and posted the menu for the following weekend.  It will be blueberry cinnamon snack cake and farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.

When I first developed the blueberry cinnamon snack cake, I had to decide first of all whether to use wild blueberries or regular domesticated blueberries.  I chose wild.  They are smaller and they have less water in them.  Then I had to decide how I was going to incorporate them.  If you put cold blueberries in a cake, that brings down the temperature of the batter and makes getting a thorough bake much more difficult.  So I began to also make sure my blueberries were not just at room temperature but actually warmer than that, courtesy of a quick stint in the microwave.  After warming in the microwave, they tend to release a little juice.  So I spread them out on paper towels and cover them with more paper towels and gently roll them around until there is no liquid.  This "no juice" is an important thing because I don't like my blueberry snack cake to be blue!  I want no juice mixing in with that batter.  That also means that the mixing process has to be gentle so that none of the blueberries are damaged because that would cause them to release juice.  Is there sometimes a little juice that is let out?  Yes!  No matter how hard one can try, there are always times when things don't come out exactly as hoped.

But in the end, hopefully I have a non-blue cake with lots of wild blueberries in it.

The pasta salad is one of my favorite things to have in warm weather.  It is a cold salad.  And I spent a lot of time working out the balance of flavors until I had just what I wanted.  A bowl of this salad is an entire meal and perfect to have on a warm summer evening.

So take a look and order what seems interesting and delicious to you.

And in the meantime, have a great week!