Autumn foods

Autumn is in full swing.  Today in Kansas City the weather is mild, the winds are up, the leaves turning color, and the tall grasses are in seed waiting to feed the birds during the coming cold weather. 

This coming weekend we have savory egg salad ready to order and one of my favorite autumn foods,  allspice muffins with streusel toppings.  The following weekend's menu has slow-roasted tomatoes and corn bread.  These are also great autumn foods, in my opinion.

My kitchen had a lot of activity this past week.  Cookies, rice, beef kababs, and other foods as well were all part of kitchen production.  Lots of ingredients were measured, lots of butter was cut, many dishes were washed.

Speaking of butter, does anyone get supreme satisfaction when measuring ingredients such as butter?  Unsure of what I mean?  Ok, here's what I'm talking about.

I have sliced up so many blocks of butter over time for precision weighing that sometimes now when I cut off a chunk of butter and place it on my kitchen scale, the weight that I have eye-balled is just about what I need.  I need 140 grams, I cut the butter and it is very close to what I need, and sometimes exactly what I need.  I get supreme satisfaction from this tiny little event.  Somehow I find it immensely gratifying that I can portion almost exactly what I need after so many days and nights in the kitchen cutting and measuring and weighing all sorts of ingredients. 

Surely someone else must feel that same elation.  Ok, I said "supreme satisfaction" first, and now I've upgraded the emotion to "elation".  No matter what it's called, it's pretty cool that it happens.

Today, I'm making strawberry froth, eating lots of leftovers, and planning a menu for the coming weekend when family will be visiting for food and bonfire.  

I hope everyone has a great Sunday and enjoys the waxing autumn.

Good morning! and blueberries

Good morning!

This coming weekend we have two different cookies on the menu.  Chocolate chip pecan and ginger spice.  I just finished updating the menu for the following weekend.  You can order allspice muffins and savory egg salad. 

Today I'm making another attempt at my latest iteration of a high-protein, gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream (for oldest daughter).  I had a good batch last time, but it still was not quite right.  Today I'm going to do the same batch but this time I will alter the freezing process.  We'll see how it goes.

Someone asked me about using blueberries in batters.  So here are a few thoughts from my experience.  First of all, whether to use wild blueberries or non-wild (which we can call cultivated) is always an important decision.  Most people like cultivated in blueberry muffins and pancakes or for snacking by hand. These tend to have much more moisture and they are larger of course.  But sometimes in baking, I've found it makes much more sense to use wild.  They are smaller and have significantly less moisture.  You can only really buy them frozen in the grocery stores, it seems.  So when I use them, I always let them thaw and warm up to room temperature.  Then they are ready to use.  And because of their size I don't have as much of a problem with berries sinking to the bottom of a baked good during baking.  With using any blueberries comes the risk of juice making your batter blue once you start mixing.  I have found that if I take thawed wild berries and warm them up a bit in the microwave for maybe 30 seconds, I can rinse off the expressed juice in a colander, then let them dry on paper towels (top and bottom) and then finally pop them into the batter.  If I do all that, then I don't have to worry about blue batter.  

Could you pop them into the batter frozen?  You could but you won't have a batter that is baked all the way through.  They are basically little ice pellets you are mixing in, and they will keep your batter very cold for quite a while in the oven.  They shouldn't even be cold from the fridge. Let them come up to room temperature before mixing them in.

Now I have a craving for blueberry muffins.  And I have a large bag of frozen wild blueberries in my freezer, so maybe that will be my next activity today.

Have a great day everyone.  Colder temps are on the way, it seems, so get out those winter coats.

Weekend offerings and a new smoothie

Good morning on this chilly October morning.

A new smoothie has been added to the menu.  This is called a tropical sunrise smoothie.  Pineapple, banana, papaya, kiwi and mango are all included.  Other flavor highlights include coconut and orange.  This is one of my favorite beverages to make.  It is very healthy, very delicious and it can even be made vegan on request by replacing the small amount of dairy-based yogurt with a vegan yogurt, or simply omitting the yogurt altogether.

This coming weekend's menu include two different strawberry drinks.  And the following weekend's menu has just been updated with two cookies perfect for the fall season:  chocolate chip pecan and ginger spice.

I've had some requests for raspberry roulade, mint chocolate ice cream and smoky sloppy joe filling to make fresh appearances on the weekly menu, so I'll try to do that soon.

Today I'm thinking of making a chocolate cake, and perhaps a couple other things as well.  I have to head to the grocer today to pick up more of the European-style butter that I use, and I use a lot of it.  And at the same grocer where I usually pick it up is also something else I like to have on occasion:  corn flakes.  Ok, I know that doesn't sound like anything extraordinary.   But I happen to like breakfast cereals and milk for a light snack, and there is one particular brand of corn flakes that I especially like.  And for me the simplicity of corn flakes, cold milk and just little bit of sugar added is really amazing.  I find it to be refreshing and satisfying, a perfect snack sometimes.  Brilliantly-made complex foods are great, but sometimes something simple and easy is perfect for the moment at hand.

Enjoy the morning, everyone.  Eat something delicious.  

Technique matters

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today I'm making cookie doughs for orders tomorrow.  Two types of cookies, both of which need the dough to chill overnight before baking.  While making one of the batches today, I came up with an idea for today's post.

Technique matters.

I was making a batch of pecan ice box cookie dough.  In fact, I was planning on making more than one batch today plus dough for French butter cookies.  I set out all my ingredients.  I had everything ready.

I put the shortening (not butter for these cookies) and two types of sugar in the mixer and let it do it's work.  Then I got ready to add the eggs and vanilla.  But my mind was elsewhere and I wasn't focused on what I was doing.  I was finishing double checking the weight of the flour and baking soda, and then instead of grabbing the eggs and vanilla which were already whisked in a separate bowl, I tossed in the flour.  The mixer immediately started combining it with the sugar and shortening mixture.  And then I saw the eggs and realized that I had made a mistake.  I dumped in the eggs just to see whether this could be salvaged.  So instead of the eggs being mixed in the proper order, with the shortening and sugar mixture, they were going in after the dry ingredients.

The picture above shows on the left the cookie dough with the eggs going in at the wrong time, and the one on the right was done properly.  It can clearly be seen that the one on the left does not hold together the same as the one on the right.  And no amount of pressing and molding with the hands will change that.  The one on the left is lost, gone, finished, unusable unless one wants to experiment.  There is no way it will yield that same cookie that the one on the right will yield.  The ingredients are exactly the same, down to the gram.  But the order of mixing makes a huge difference.

Technique matters, whether it's the order of mixing for individual ingredients, how long something is mixed, how fast the mixer beater is moving, whether it's done by hand or machine, etc.  You can have great ingredients and a great recipe, but in the end the technique to bring it all together must be the right technique.

Here is the shaped block of dough from the good batch of dough using the proper mixing order.  This is now in my freezer where it will sit overnight until morning.  Then it will be sliced and baked and sent out with people who will enjoy it.

For all my recipes, I continually improve the techniques with little adjustments over time.  And I notate all of these in my recipe database.  I back up the file as well.  Twice!  I never want to lose track of those tweaks, those technical adjustments which are so vital to turning out something that is scrumptious.

Enjoy your weekend.  I'll post again probably on Sunday.

Strawberry froth

Good morning to all!

It's a cool clear morning here in Kansas City on this early October Sunday.  I can feel the change of seasons in the air, and it can certainly be seen with the shortening of the daylight.

A new item has been added to the menu.  This is a strawberry froth, similar to the orange vanilla froth posted yesterday.  This is very refreshing and very healthy as well.  I love drinks made of fruit.  They simply make the body feel good and the spirit feel light. 

Another new beverage will be posted sometime this week.

This coming weekend we have pecan cookies and French butter cookies on the menu.  And the following weekend you can order the new strawberry froth and also the new strawberry lemonade which was just added to the menu days ago.  I hope you will give them a try.

Yesterday I taste tested the new high-protein, gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream that I've been working on for oldest daughter.  It tastes pretty nice.  I've a got a few tweaks to make and I want to adjust the freezing process.  So I'm not quite satisfied with it yet.  And I'm not yet certain that it is the end product.  I'm still working on a couple different variations on this recipe to get a balance of flavor and texture that I'm happy with.  This is my first try at making a dairy-free ice cream, so there has been a lot of trial and error.  But I'm hopeful that soon I'll see a finished product with which I am happy.

Today I'm working on sandwich rolls and maybe a chocolate cake as well.  And I'm in the process of developing a new recipe for a strawberry cream cake at the request of youngest daughter.  

Enjoy these early days of fall.  The coolness in the air, the lengthening of the nights, and the flocks of Canadian geese flying overhead in vee formation all portend the coming winter.  I can hardly wait.

Orange vanilla froth

 

Welcome to October!     

A new beverage has been added to the main menu of Bruce Bakery and Bistro.  This is an orange vanilla froth.  The name says it all:  a frothy drink with orange and vanilla as the main flavors.  I wouldn't call it a smoothie, but I will say with certainty that it is fun and marvelously refreshing.

Another couple drinks will be added in the next few days so stay tuned, as the saying goes.

Have a great Saturday, everyone!