Chestnuts roasting

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.....

As big a fan as I am of Christmas and of the carol that sings of chestnuts, I have to admit that I've never actually eaten one.  In fact, no one I've ever known has admitted to eating one.  How odd is that....

Here are a few facts about chestnuts.  They are high in antioxidants that I understand become even more potent once the raw nuts are cooked.  They are also high in sugars and fiber, as well as potassium and phosphorous, and they even have a small amount of iron.  They also have anti-inflammatory properties due to the presence of those aforementioned antioxidants.  They grow on deciduous trees which are members of the beech family and which are native to milder regions of the northern hemisphere.

I understand you should not eat too many these as this will result from a bit of gastrointestinal distress due to the resultant gases from digesting them.  Dogs loves chestnuts apparently, but again they should not eat too many or they will also experience a bit of discomfort from the resultant gases.

One of these years perhaps I will actually try roasting them.  Until then, I will be content to listen to the carol every year.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

Molasses spice cookies

Today I am making molasses spice cookies.  These are one of the most popular cookies I make, and not just around the holidays.  To start with, flour is mixed with baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and black pepper ... yes, that's correct, black pepper.  Set this aside.  Now we need butter softened to room temperature and then creamed in the mixer until soft and thoroughly creamed.  To this is added brown sugar and molasses.  (I always use unsulphured molasses.)  A spatula will be necessary to occasionally scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure complete mixing.  Then the egg is added.  At first it will appear that the egg will not be easily combined with the molasses mixture and it will look like a broken mess.  But mix it for a minute or two, and then added the dry ingredients all at once, but only mix slowly at this point, on the slowest speed of the mixture.  Once it appears that all the ingredients are incorporated, remove the bowl from mixer.  Now take the spatula and scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl and gently mix in any remaining flour.  There is almost certain to be some at the bottom, but don't use the mixer for this.  We don't want to overwork the flour.

And here's how the dough appears when the mixing is completed.  It's a bit shaggy, very soft, and a little clingy on the hands.  So we need to chill this for a few hours.  Once it's chilled, then it can removed and portioned.  I make every cookie with precisely 36 grams of dough that is rolled into a ball.  The balls of dough can be kept in the fridge for a few days or frozen for a month.

The balls of chilled dough do not need to be warmed up before cooking.  The oven is set at 350 F.  The balls of dough are rolled in granulated sugar, and the flattened just a small amount after placement on the cookie sheet.  Once flattened, I always put a little green sparkling sugar on top, right in the center. 

After cooking exactly 12 minutes, they are ready to come out of the oven.  They need to cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before being placed on a cooling rack to finish cooling to room temperature.  Want to eat them right away?  Go ahead.  😀  Warm or cooled, they are excellent.  But when still warm they won't be as firm so hold them carefully so they don't bend and fall out of your hands.

This is a great cookie and very easy to make.  Just don't overwork the flour and don't cook them too long.  

Have a great pre-Christmas weekend, everyone!

More posts coming

 

Good morning, everyone.  It's been a few weeks since I've done a posting.  But I will be returning to my normal activity level this week with posts coming more frequently. 😃

This week I'm planning to make a few different cookies, some banana bread, and some gingerbread.  I have so many things I want to make as part of Christmas celebrations.  I'm also going to be testing out a few different mac and cheese recipes with different combinations of cheeses.  And I'm really hoping to make some pizzas as well.  

Here we are in the middle of the Christmas season and I can think of few things better than celebrating life by making lots of good foods and passing them out to friends and family.  It has been a challenging year with the pandemic affecting everyone is so many ways.  But as we end the year, we can be grateful for many things and look forward to a new year ahead.

So that's it for now.  But I will post again in a few days.  Have a great start to your week, everyone!

Posts and photos will continue

Good evening, everyone.

I took a break in fulfilling orders for a bit, and hoped to get back to normal sometime in November.  However, the pandemic numbers are still rising and in fact they are rising at an increased rate.  As a result I've decided to continue the order fulfillment break.  For the time being, no new orders will be taken on brucebakeryandbistro.com.  

However, I will continue to do new posts here, and also I will continue to post new photos on Instagram. 

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone, and stay safe.

Nuts - freezing, roasting and skinning

 

With the holidays coming up, many of the foods I plan to make use nuts, so I have accumulated a lot of nuts that are sitting in my freezer.  Why the freezer?  Storing them in the freezer helps extend their life.  All nuts contain oils and eventually these oils can go rancid which alters the taste of the nuts.  So all my nuts go into the freezer and last much longer than if stored at room temperature.

Roasting nuts is very easy.  Toss them onto a cooking tray and roast them for about 10 minutes at 350 F.  The roasting will fill your kitchen with a wonderful aroma and will intensify the flavor of the nuts.  If you're going to chop them, I would suggest doing that after you roast them.

With hazelnuts you have another problem --- what to do about the skins.  It seems that most of the time it is recommended that you use skinned hazelnuts in baking.  You can buy them skinned but not usually if you get them at your local grocery store.  You usually have to order them from a nut producer and have them mailed; and you can order skinned or unskinned, roasted or raw.  Why skin the nuts?  I usually hear two reasons:  appearance of the finished product and bitterness of the skins.  Taking those one at a time, I think bits of skin ground up or chopped up with nuts actually looks very nice in a cookie or a cake, etc.  And I have personally never noticed a bitterness that comes from skins of hazelnuts.  Consequently, I never skin them.  But if you wanted do it, how would you do it?

After roasting the nuts, the skins will more easily come off than if you try to do it before.  An oft-recommended technique is to pour the roasted nuts onto a large towel, then roll the towel over the nuts and hold the ends  Then start shaking and rolling and rattling the nuts to help them shed their skins.  If you've tried this you know what I know and that is that the skins flake off every where and aren't contained in the towel very easily and then your towel has many many flakes of the hazelnuts embedded in the fabric.  And to top it off, you don't even get all the skins off the nuts.

Here's an easier technique.  Get a large gallon-sized plastic bag, pour the nuts in, seal the bag and then start shaking the bag up and down.  Acting sort of like a rock polisher, this cause the nuts to tumble against each other in the bag and bit by bit the skins come off.  How long you want to do this is up to you.  As for me, I don't mind the skins on.  But try this out and you'll find it will work really well.

Have a great autumn week, everyone.

National Cappuccino Day

Today, November 8th, is National Cappuccino Day.  The word cappuccino comes from cappuccio, the Italian word for a hood that covers the head.  This was in reference to the Capuchin Friars of the Catholic Church.  It was so named because the color of the beverage was similar to the color of the hoods they wore.

Cappuccino is a blend of espresso, hot milk and steamed milk foam.  It is one of the most difficult espresso-based beverages to make as it requires precision in the amount of milk foam added.

It is thought to have been originally created in the 1600s after a Turkish army was defeated after marching in Vienna, Austria.  When the Turkish army departed, they left behind supplies of a coffee that was found by the locals to be bitter.  So they sweetened it with milk and honey and named it after the Capuchin Order.  Why?  Because one the friars was responsible for rallying the people to defeat the invading forces.   

The modern espresso machine was invented in 1945.  This machine began a big surge in the popularization of the beverage.

I have always been more of hot chocolate drinker.  But every time I see the decorative pattern on the surface of a cappuccino created by a barista, I always have the urge to drink one.

Have a great week everyone.  Enjoy the wonderful fall weather here in Kansas City.

Icing

Good morning, everyone.  Fall is in full sway here in Kansas City.  It's fantastic that we've already had a bit of snow; not a lot, but enough to call it a real snow, not just a dusting.  Here's hoping for more of the same.  I know many people don't like the snow, but for me it's the best part of winter.  Winter is a great time for cookies, and one I love to have around is my sugar cookie with bright yellow icing.

When I make sugar cookies, I'm particular about the icing.  I make it a very specific consistency every time.  The rough part is applying it.  Over time I developed a neat little trick.

This an icing we're talking about, not a frosting.  There is a difference.  I think of icings as thinner, more liquidy, they flow.  Frostings are thick and can be spread with a knife or a spatula, and they do not flow.  Since icings flow, they are perfect for my neat little trick.

I place a pastry ring on the baked cookie, which has been already cooled.  Since I've tested the process with this icing, I already know how much icing to use, and how long to let it sit.  I put in a specific amount of the icing using cookie dough scoops so that each cookie has the same amount.  The icing slowly spreads outward and down from the center.  And the pastry rings contain the icing flow.  They allow the icing to develop a nice neat circular edge.  I let the icing sit for precisely 10 minutes, and then I remove the ring.  The edge is disturbed just a bit when the ring is removed since some of the icing tries to cling to the ring.  But the icing hasn't completely set yet and so all by itself gravity does the work of smoothing out the edge.  And, voila!, the icing finishes setting.

It's much easier than using a knife or a spoon to apply.  And I'm always happy with the result.  If it's not quite perfect, that's ok.  Perfection is highly overrated.  

Have a great day, everyone!

Two week break

 

Hello, hello, everyone.  I have had a very busy couple weeks.  So if you go to the website, you'll see that I'm taking a break for the rest of October.  But I will be back in November with more food offerings.

In the meantime, looking ahead I've got a few different items I hope to put out for everyone soon.  So be on the lookout.  They will be announced here as always.

That's it for today.  But next post I promise will be more like usual.  

IDIC

 

IDIC -  Star Trek fans will know this acronym:  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

In our language we have only 26 letters, and look how many words they combine to create.  I've read that the average vocabulary of a grown adult is over 20,000 words, and their passive vocabulary might approach 40,000.  All of that from 26 letters.

In music, there are only 12 different pitches (unless one is using microtonal scales), and there are different octave ranges for those 12 pitches; for instance the piano has 88 keys comprising just over 8 octaves.  All of music combines just a handful of pitches in different octave ranges and different rhythms to create who knows how many musical compositions which have been preserved in writing over the centuries.

The periodic table of elements contains 118 different elements which combine to create everything in the universe.  Just 118!

In cooking, just a handful of ingredients can create something incredibly delicious.  And if you alter those just a bit, then something entirely different results.  Today I'm making some frosted sugar cookies.  The cookie base is made of just butter, flour, eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla and baking powder.  Only 7 ingredients gives us a fantastic cookie.  Yet the same ingredients arranged slightly differently yields something new.  I find this to be incredible.  It's magical.  It's fantastic.

It's cooking.  

Enjoy the autumn day here in Kansas City.  The weather is fantastic and hints of winter will soon start appearing.  I can hardly wait for the first snow.

Iced sugar cookies

Hello, everyone.  It has been a bit longer than normal since my last post.  I have had a busy busy week with many things going on.  But I've caught back up and so here we go with another post.

Coming up in just a couple weeks the cookies above will be offered for the first time.  I won't go into explaining a lot about these particular cookies since you can read the details on the main website.  But these cookies are really good, one of my favorites.  Of course, I say that about all the cookies on the full menu.  That's because nothing gets put on the menu unless it is one of my favorites.  

It took me a while to find the packaging I wanted to use for these.  The frosting is set with just a bit of softness so I wanted packaging that would allow me to lay them all out flat to preserve the pristine smooth surface of the frosting.

I love cookies.  Whenever I think of something quick and easy to make for a snack to have around for a day or two, my mind goes to cookies first.

I hope you'll give them a try when they appear on a weekly menu offering coming up.  Have a great week.  Enjoy the beautiful autumn weather.