Out of eggs and out of butter

Hello, everyone!

This coming weekend we have two different cookies on the menu:  molasses spice cookies, and peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and peanut butter candies.

The next weekend will also be a cookie-themed weekend:  speculoos, and sweet and creamy cookie dip.

Well, my month-long break from everything else in the world is just about done.  In just two days I start seeing my students again.  This past month has been very productive, though.  I have a list of 7 new foods, I think, to put on the menu.  They are all tweaked and refined and polished, and ready to go.  I will start adding them over the coming days probably beginning tomorrow and adding them one per day, or maybe with a couple days in between depending on what I feel like.

I've got a chocolate snack cake that is not on that list of 7 new items but that I'm really eager to put on the menu.  However, I'm taking my time with a couple tweaks to it, trying to decide whether to make a single large cake and cut it for orders or to make several small cakes in their own vessels.  Yes, it does make a difference.  I made three batches of that cake yesterday, and today I will test them out and see if I can decide how I want to offer them.   

Something very unusual happened yesterday when I finished that third batch of the snack cake.  I discovered I was out of eggs and out of butter.  That never happens.  I always keep plenty of both on hand.  But this past week has been devoted to baking many different items, many of them multiple times, and I actually ran out.  I sat down last night to think about what I wanted to cook and bake today, and then checked to see what ingredients I needed, and lo and behold I saw I was out of those two important kitchen staples.  I could have gone out this morning or set up a grocery delivery, but instead I replanned my weekend tasks, moving several chores from tomorrow to today, and some of today's kitchen activities from today to tomorrow.  I was already planning on being out Sunday morning anyway, so it made sense.

Over the past few weeks, four new items have been added to the menu, but I have been negligent in updating all of you on those items, so here they are:

1.  raspberry sweet cream

2.  focaccia buns

3.  double chocolate pudding

4.  deep dark chocolate pudding

Yes, two chocolate puddings, but they are very different.  And the focaccia buns look a lot like the burger and sandwich buns in the pictures on the ordering site (both are even plated on the same red platter), but that's simply a matter of lighting.  The focaccia buns are a little darker than they appear, and they are totally different than the burger/sandwich buns in taste and texture.  You'll see those on a weekly offering soon, I'm sure.

And today I added the last recipe to my newly developed database.  All 104 recipes for all 104 available items on the website are in a new format and integrated with the ingredient cost information as well.  It's taken me a long time to do that, months, in fact, but it's now done.  Of course, I still need to to back and proofread them, but that task is much less arduous.  

So I'm happy.  Between adding several new items to the menu, cooking dozens and dozens of foods, refining several recipes, and completing that most important work on my database, I am happy with how this month has gone.

July has indeed been a productive month.  But, of course, I still have so many more foods I want to add to the menu for everyone to try.  

Have a great weekend!  And thanks for reading!

Embossed shortbread cookies

Good morning.  We finally have a break in the heat here in Kansas City.  Today the high temperature will be only 90 F, after having several days at around 100 F.  And the entire upcoming week is set to be cooler.  Maybe the worst of the heat is now behind us.  Fingers crossed.

This coming weekend there is no weekly menu offering.  I'm taking the week off to focus on some new foods that are being added to the menu.  The first weekend of August we will have molasses spice cookies on the menu.  And also you can order something new, appearing on the menu for the first time:  peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and peanut butter candies.  I hope you'll give them a try.  So far everyone who has sampled them has said good things.  I certainly think they're good, but of course I'm very biased.

Yesterday for the time I played with a new kitchen "toy" sent to me by oldest daughter.  It is a rolling pin for making embossed cookies.  It's made by a company called Nordic Ware which was established in Minnesota after World War II, specializing in Scandinavian cookware products.  If you go to their website and read the "Heritage" section, you can read how it was started by a husband and wife team after he returned from deployment in World War II.  

Well, I followed the suggested recipe for shortbread cookies which was printed on the package.  And I gave it a shot.  I wasn't quite sure how hard to press as I rolled these.  And since this was a recipe that was unfamiliar to me, I wasn't quite sure how the cookie would bake up.  Would the embossment be lost if the cookie puffed a little?  That was my question.  A good shortbread cookie will not puff up like many other cookies will.  But I wouldn't be sure about this one until the first tray came out of the oven.

I baked up all the cookie dough and here are a few examples of what came out of the oven.

Not bad for the first try using this new rolling pin.  I looked at the website and saw some of the examples in photos there.  Those pictures show a cookie with a little deeper embossment.  Comparing those to mine, I can see that I can press much more firmly.  And I will either modify that recipe or use a different one.  I prefer a cookie that is a little different than the one that results from the suggested recipe on the site.

Anyway, I'll try these again sometime soon, and let everyone see the results.

Today, I have several things to make.  In fact, this whole week, since it's my last week of break before getting to teaching, I will be cooking a lot of different things.  And some new items will be updated to the menu as well.  

You'll see it all discussed here in my next posts.  Stay cool!

Lots of cooking

Good morning, everyone.

This month-long July break from teaching has been great so far.  Soon I'll be back to teaching (August 1st), and I won't have quite as much time every day to devote to things like cooking.  But for now, my days are composed of cooking and movies and online chess and whatever else pops into my head to do.

This week has been filled with  a lot of cooking already, and it's only Wednesday.  Macarons, sandwich spreads, salads, ciabatta, brownies ...... I've been busy making so many things.  And I've had so much fun.  

My day starts on the evening before when I take a look at my cooking "to do" list and decide what I'm going to work on in the morning.  I check to ensure that I have all the ingredients, and if I don't I either move that particular recipe to later in the week or plan on going out to the grocery store first thing in the morning.  Then in the morning, I take care of any necessary household or yard chores right away.  And when that's all done, the rest of my day can be devoted to whatever I wish.  And right now that means a lot of cooking because I still have many foods I want to give time to before my new teaching session starts.

Today, I'm working on vanilla macaron filling, a new ciabatta roll, a chocolate macaron, and maybe brioche buns as well.   I have a huge grocery delivery order coming in this morning with buttermilk and almond paste and many other ingredients that I only have on hand when I'm making certain foods.  I've ordered everything that I need for the rest of the week (I hope!) for things I plan to devote time to in the kitchen.

I hope everyone is having a great week despite the heat.  My advice to beat heat?  Keep lots of ice cream around.  Of course, I'd say that in the winter cold as well.  Everyone knows how much I love ice cream.

That's all for today.  Now it's time to start my kitchen activities.

Cooking on hot summer days

 

Mid-July and it's hot.  I've been doing a lot of cooking these past couple weeks, and that means my kitchen and my central air conditioning have been battling it out to take control.  And this week coming up looks to be even hotter than normal so I will try to do most of my cooking in the mornings.

For this upcoming weekend we have eggnog and vanilla poppy seed muffins on the menu.  For the following weekend, I'm going to take the weekend off.  That will be the last weekend of July, and it's the last weekend before I return to teaching my students on August 1st.  So I'm going to use the weekend to hopefully get a last flurry of work done on some new foods for the menu.

In the photo above you see an item that will be on the menu shortly.  It was a nice one to work on this past week because it's cold.  This is a chilled double dark chocolate brownie with a layer of chocolate mousse on top.  It's great straight from the fridge or at room temperature.  So it was nice thing to be working on since every time I sampled it, it was cold and felt so refreshing to eat while it was so hot outside.  

I sampled it many times for two very important reasons. First, I like to taste things several different times because how delicious seems to us can be influenced by how hungry we are or what else we have just finished eating.  So by tasting something several times, I get a good variety of tasting experiences to really be certain that I like the final result.  Second, I often like to taste something over multiple days to see how it ages.  And this item ages very well.

This item is ready to go on the menu as soon as I have determined how it will be packaged.  This issue is often a tricky thing because finding the right size and right type of packaging for a new menu item is not always easy.  I think I have identified a good way to package this new brownie (I can't package it the same as other brownies because of the top layer of mousse), and it's a packaging design that I think will work for other things as well.  And that's always a plus, when one package can be used for multiple foods on the menu.  So I will order a sample this week and once it comes in, if it does the job, then this new brownie with mousse will be officially added to the menu.

Well, today, I'm working on new sauces and spreads for sandwiches, and also working on macarons.  First, though, I'm going to eat a little ice cream and relax for a bit.

Enjoy the day no matter where you are in this big world.

 

100

 

Happy Sunday, everyone!

First off, quickly, here are the menu offerings for the next two weekends.  First up is savory egg salad and spritz cookies.  Then the following weekend we have eggnog and vanilla poppy seed muffins with lemon streusel.  Yes, the last two items sound familiar.  They were scheduled for yesterday and today.  Unfortunately, they had to be rescheduled two weeks out as my presence was required at an important event for friends.  

Yesterday I added "burger and sandwich buns" to the full menu.  This item is a milestone.  It is the 100th item added to the menu.  Each of the items on my menu has been carefully chosen as a favorite of mine, meticulously tweaked until I am very happy with it, and is part of an aggregate of many different types of foods and drinks that are available at Bruce Bakery and Bistro.

I never put an item on the menu unless I really like it.  Someone else might not like something, maybe it's too crispy or too soft, too intensely flavored or not enough, etc.  But that's OK.  Taste is not disputable.  (My students know that this is my favorite phrase to quote.)  I don't expect everyone to like everything on the menu because everyone's tastes and expectations are so different.  But I hope that most of you enjoy most of what is on the menu.

I have just finished a dark chocolate pudding and it will be added to the menu sometime this week.  I have also just finished focaccia sandwich buns and they also will be added to the menu later this week.  

The buns added yesterday as well as the ones to be added later in the week are part of a special sandwich request.  Next up is to work on a trio of sauces or spreads for the sandwiches, and the insides will be constructed after that, although the insides are already formulated in my mind.

Today I have continued work on macarons.  I hope to be able to add those soon as well.  

As you can see, July has been busy so far.  And it has been a lot of fun.  There are still 3 weeks left in the month, and I hope to continue to make progress on many items during that time.

So stay tuned to see what comes next.  Have a great week!

New items added

Good morning, everyone.  Well, maybe it's evening as you read this, or afternoon, but for me it's morning.  

Yesterday the two new items I have been working on were officially added to the full menu of Bruce Bakery and Bistro.

Peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and peanut butter candies.  And yellow snack cake which is offered plain, or with raspberry cream, or with blueberries and whipped cream.

Last night I was hard at work on the next couple items which I hope to add and which I also posted about earlier this week:  macarons, and a sandwich which I intend to offer with a choice of three different spreads.

These first days of July have been filled with a lot of kitchen work.  Trays of cookies and cakes have been lying everywhere.  And in between all that I've been eating lots of really good salads because I've been craving all the different things that can be put in a salad, and they are perfect for the hot weather, and because they are easy to fix and eat while I'm doing all this other stuff in the kitchen.

Trays of food everywhere -- that's one of my favorite sites in the kitchen.  I love seeing the results of all the kitchen work.  Who couldn't love seeing a cornucopia of delicious food?  This world moves very quickly almost every single day.  Holidays slow it down it a little once in a while.  And snowstorms in the winter do the same.  But for the most part, we all tend to move so rapidly all the time, trying to maximize our productivity, trying to multitask every hour of every day.  Cities never sleep.  News is always coming.  And deadlines are everywhere.

But when we sit down to a meal and just enjoy the simple pleasure, the visceral pleasure, of eating a good piece of fruit, a delicious dessert, an amazing pasta, etc., well, those moments are moments to be savored.  And when I see loads of food everywhere in the kitchen and think about the work and thought and care that went into it all, it's a great feeling.  And I just want to sit and take my time eating all that deliciousness.  Sometimes I eat too quickly, I admit.  People who know me will confirm that.  But I definitely enjoy it.

Food is one of the great pleasures of life.

Hot days ahead

Here we are in early July with hot and humid days ahead.  It's the kind of weather that's good for staying inside, watching a good movie and eating some good food.

This coming weekend, we have ice cold eggnog on the weekly menu and also vanilla poppy seed muffins which are making their first appearance.  

For the following weekend, savory egg salad (cold, of course, and perfect for our hot weather) and spritz cookies are on the menu.

I'm currently prepping chocolate chip peanut butter cookies and yellow snack cake to be added to the full menu.  Pictures have been taken.  I'm in the middle of updating the recipes in my database.  I'm working on descriptions for the website.

For each item that I add to the full menu, there are several tasks which have to be done in order for me to stay organized and in order for the items to be presented on the menu consistent with the way previous items have been presented.  It's a bit time consuming sometimes, but the end result is always something I'm happy with.  Too bad I don't have an assistant to help out with these tasks.

For the first days of July, I have focused on cooking.  Several batches of yellow cake and cookies have been made, cooked, taste-tested, and discarded (for the squirrels and birds and other native wildlife to eat).  Once I finish the updating of the new items to the website menu, I'll be focusing on a new sandwich and also macarons.  The sandwich will have meats and veggies and a special sauce to be spread on the bread, maybe even a choice of multiple sauces.  For the macarons, I will be starting with one flavor, most likely, and then over time I will add other flavors.  

I've been wanting to add macarons to the menu for quite a while.  Does anyone NOT like this cookie?  At one point, a few years ago, I ordered macarons from multiple places to see how different batches tasted, and to see how they packaged and mailed this cookie without cracking the outer surface.  What I learned is that no matter how carefully a bakery packaged their macarons, there were always some cracked cookies in the packaged received.  I also learned that there are many sub-par macarons being made and mailed all around the world.  Sometimes they had great form and texture but little flavor.  And sometimes it was the opposite.  But a few were very very very good.  Mine won't get put on the menu unless they hit that level.  I've played around with these before, but haven't pursued them in earnest until now.  I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.

Stay cool out there.  And think of cool breezy autumn days to help beat the heat.

Yellow snack cake

Today I've been inside cooking all morning during our early July rain that we had today.  I've been working on a yellow snack cake to fulfill a special request from son Ben.  

I have a few different yellow cake recipes in my repertoire, so I've played around with them, tested a couple new ones, and the picture above shows the one that will be added to the full menu sometime in the next few days.

This is a small snack cake almost 4 inches square.  It's mildly sweet and has a very nice relaxed flavor that is not too strong.  And it's the perfect size for one person or for two, just in case you want to share it with someone.

I'm thinking of pairing this with a raspberry cream as a topping.  Of course, when ordering it, everyone will have the option of no topping at all.  I will come up with other toppings as well.  It will not be topped with icing or frosting.  Instead, I think this cake is best by itself with nothing on it at all, or topped with a whipped cream flavored with pureed berries or some other fruit.  I will experiment with different toppings over time.

You'll see this hit the full menu in the next few days, and sometime soon I will put it on a weekly menu offering

I hope everyone is enjoying their Fourth of July weekend!

Chocolate chip peanut butter cookies

I have finished tweaking a new cookie which will be added to the full menu as soon as I get a chance.  Son-in-law Zak had requested a chocolate chip peanut butter cookie and here it is in the photo above.

This cookie is on the soft side.  It's chock full of crunchy peanut butter, large semi-sweet chocolate chips, and has 6 peanut butter candies embedded in the top.  And it's large.  I put a dinner spoon in the photo to show scale.  The uncooked dough ball is 100 grams of dough before the peanut butter candies are added.  It's a hefty dense cookie with lots of good protein from the peanut butter.  Because the chocolate chips are a larger-than-normal size, there are larger-than-normal pools of chocolate inside.  And the peanut butter candies add a nice touch.

There are very few ingredients in this cookie so it's actually pretty easy to make and quick, too, although the dough chills overnight before baking, so maybe it's not that quick.  But the mixing process is quick.  The dough is portioned into 100 gram balls before chilling.  After the overnight chill, the dough balls are flatted into discs a few inches across and then the peanut butter candies are embedded before they go into the oven.  

When making the dough, butter and sugar and brown sugar are creamed for a very long time, about 5 minutes.  And then when eggs and vanilla are added, another 3 minutes of blending takes place.  The dry ingredients go in with the mixer on the slowest speed.  When the chocolate chips are added, they help give a final even mix to the dough as their presence helps clear dough from the sides of the bowl as the mixing paddle turns and turns and turns.

I'll try to get this cookie added to the menu on the ordering website sometime in the next few days.  I'll be sure to have it on a weekly menu offering almost immediately after that so that everyone who wants to can give it a try.