Shaping doughs

It's late in the evening here.  The night is dark.  The solar lights are lit in strategically placed spots in the various landscaped beds in the yard, illuminating paths and plants in the darkness.  The neighborhood is quiet.  I almost feel like doing some late-night cooking in the peace of the night.

This coming weekend, we have carrot bisque and chocolate chip cookies ready for ordering.  And the next weekend's menu has now been posted and it includes roasted tomatoes and savory egg salad.  Although it's still a little warm in the daytime, the evenings are cool enough that I'm ready for wholesome autumn foods such as these, especially the bisque and the roasted tomatoes which I think are perfect for autumn.

This past weekend I made a lot of pecan ice box cookies.  I love making these.  They are lightly sweet, full of flavor and have a wonderful texture.  But I also love the physical aspect of making the dough.  It doesn't take long to mix up, but it is the shaping afterwards that I especially love.  Once the dough is mixed, I empty it onto a tray with a raised edge and then I mold it slowly into a rough rectangle.  Then I bring out my bench scraper and, bit by bit, I start straightening the sides, packing the edges, pressing the top.  Eventually I have a block about four inches by ten inches and it's ready to go into the freezer.

That transformation from a rough pile of cookie dough into a nicely shaped rectangle is an aesthetic reward that I find quite satisfying.  I never make the top completely flat, but everything else is flat and straight (for the most part) so that the cookies, once sliced into quarter-inch-thick slices, bake into a shape that I find very pleasing.  That transformation is like sculpting, I suppose.  I'll never sculpt a piece of marble, but I'm quite happy sculpting cookie dough blocks.

This sculpting is part art and science, part whimsy and part precision.  It is creative and mechanical at once.  And it is satisfying.  Making food should be satisfying.  It's all part of the pleasure of enjoying what we eat.

The aroma of brownies

It is a beautiful and peaceful rainy morning here in Kansas City.  The sky is dark, the rain is coming down steadily, a little thunder punctuates from time to time...  It is a beautiful and peaceful rainy morning.

I am baking this morning, preparing food for weekend orders.  Yesterday I made pecan ice box cookie dough.  As the name suggests, it is in the freezer.  It stays there until time for slicing and baking.  The dough isn't even warmed up one tiny bit.  It stays frozen until it goes into the oven.

On the other hand, the brownie batter is made and cooked immediately.  I portion it into a Twinkie mold pan.  And the first tray is about to come out of the oven as I write this post.  The house is filled with the aroma of warm brownies.  And on a rainy morning like today, it is a perfect aroma.

The comforts of food and home are meant to be relished.  So make some food.  Fill your home with wonderful aromas.  And enjoy whatever weather happens to be in your neighborhood today. 

Lots of sweets and a little savory

Well, I didn't get around to my customary Sunday post yesterday.  Better late than never?

This upcoming weekend, pecan cookies and brownies are available for order.  I have several different varieties of brownies that I like to make.  These are baked in Twinkie-shaped molds and they are delicious.

The next weekend we have chocolate chips cookies and something savory, carrot bisque.

There you go:  lots of sweets and a little savory.

I meant to get around to doing final tweaks on some lemonades with fruit this weekend, but it didn't happen.  I will try again this week.  

I always have so many things that I'm working on and sometimes that means my plans don't come to fruition in the time-frame that I hoped.  I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's the way it is.  

Well, no matter what else happens, the cooking and baking continues constantly.  

Have a great day, everyone!  Later on this week, I think I'll post a recipe here.  So be on the watch.

A week off and then more food

 

Good morning.  It's a lightly rainy Monday morning and the high today is only forecast to be in the upper 60s.  I guess that means fall is about to start.

This coming weekend, I'm taking the week off to work on some new foods.  But the following weekend's menu has been posted.  You can order pecan ice box cookies or double chocolate fudge brownies.

This week I will be working on the final touches on some flavored lemonades, and maybe a little chicken tetrazzini, and perhaps some new ice creams.  Hopefully some of  those will make it onto the menu very soon.

With fall starting, cooler and cloudier days will happen more frequently, and I think those are great days to be inside cooking up a feast with a good movie or some good music.  That's exactly what I feel like doing this morning with our cool cloudy start to the week. I won't get to do that quite yet as I have other obligations today.  But it's nice to think about anyway.

Have a great day, everyone!

Don't crowd the cookie dough balls

Baking, cooking, proofing bread dough, anything done in the kitchen has so many subtleties.  

Over the past few weeks, I've made a number of cookies including snickerdoodles.  And the cooking of the snickerdoodles illustrates one of those subtleties.

In the photo above, I have spaced 6 chilled snickerdoodle balls, slightly flattened, on a baking sheet.  When they are spaced in this way, they come out looking as they appear on the cooling racks in this photo, slightly thick with edges that hold and define the cookie.

However, if instead of 6, I place 8 on the baking sheet, with the other two placed in the centers of the squares created by the placement above, the cookies spread more, coming out flatter.

Since the cookie dough is chilled, the placement density is crucial.  If there are too many dough balls on the tray, that cools the tray down and makes it take longer to heat up which in turn means that as the heat of the oven affects the dough on the top, the same effect on the bottom takes longer since the tray has to absorb more heat to counteract the chill of the extra dough balls.  Additionally, around each dough ball is a little pocket of cold air.  More dough balls means more cold air.  It's not much, but it's enough to, in combination with the colder tray as just mentioned, allow the cookie to spread more before the edges cook enough to firm up and hold the cookie into it's shape.  Too many dough balls, flatter cookies, less chewy, larger.  Just the right amount, slightly thicker cookies, a little smaller and a crisper outside to with a chewier inside.

At least that's my theory, a theory that has evolved from evidence over countless bakes over many years.

A well-known chef once said, "Don't crowd the mushrooms."  So we will paraphrase that here to say, "Don't crowd the cookie dough balls!"

September is here

 

September is here.  This morning I saw small leaves gently falling from a few trees.  Time to start thinking about gingerbreads, fruit tarts, and other good autumn foods.

This weekend, you can order double chocolate in two forms: as a cookie or as a pudding, or get them both!  The following weekend I will be taking the time off to work on some new foods. 

I made a lot of cookies this past weekend.  And my wife made tons of haleem and keema.  We shredded cheeses, and cut watermelons, and so many other things.  The fridge is full of many wonderful foods.  There is always a satisfying feeling when you know your fridge is well-stocked so that no matter what you are craving, you can always find something that sounds great to eat.  And this is especially good as we head into the traditional harvest time of year.  Of course, most of us don't actually harvest anything.  But somehow it still seems like a harvest season even in the middle of the city.  And that means a time of feasting and enjoying the fruits of one's labor from the spring and summer.  

That's all for today.  Place your orders and enjoy some good chocolate desserts.