Next weekly menu

Here we are heading towards the middle of May, and warm summery weather is finally coming in the week ahead.  We've been fortunate so far to not have a spring that is too warm.  The rains have been plentiful, and gardens everywhere are growing quickly. 

Here are the menus for the next two weekends:

speculoos and sweet creamy cookie dip

and

triple chocolate sablés and Swedish visiting cakes.

The speculoos and cookie dip have been paired in one offering to fulfill a special request from one of the regulars here.  The triple chocolate sablés and the Swedish visiting cakes are being offered because I've been craving them.  I suppose I could just make them anytime, but it's nicer when I can make them and send some out the door so that I don't eat them all myself.  

You know how it is when you go to the grocery store and you're hungry.  At least for me, when this happens I always wind up buying much more than I intended and not all of it very healthy.  Well, in the same fashion, when I'm craving something and I make it, I'm very likely to quickly eat through the entire batch, eating much more than I intended.  It's just the way I'm wired.  I suppose a fair number of people have the same wiring.  

I will take one cookie, and then say to myself, "Well, what's the harm in one more."  Before too long, I'm doing that again and again.  Fortunately, I don't do this all the time.  And I regularly keep trays of cut-up fruit and vegetables on hand to snack on.  But there are those times when I want nothing more than a whole pile of rich chocolate cookies.

On the other hand, when I'm craving something, it's a good time to browse recipe books, looking for ideas.  It doesn't erase the craving but it's great fun.

I've read that sometimes people crave foods that contain things they need; meat and the associated iron, for example.  What does it say when one is craving ice cream or cookies then?

As I write this, I'm at the end of a morning of yardwork and tedious household chores, and I did it all without the benefit of breakfast.  I guess that's why the subject of craving is on my mind.  I'd better go eat something at least a little healthy for my first meal of the day.

I hope everyone can enjoy our first summery week of the year!  

Early mornings

 

Today is Saturday.  Last night I made peanut butter cookie dough so that it could chill overnight.  This morning I baked that dough and made multiple batches of lava field brownies.

All that cooking meant that I was up early this morning.  When I get up early in the morning and start a bunch of cooking and baking, it's quite a peaceful experience.  Sure, I might be a little drowsy at first, and it might take me a while to get going.  But once that food starts coming together, and the dawn begins to break and I'm already ahead of schedule ... that's a nice feeling.  I often put on quiet music when I cook in the early pre-dawn hours, and between the tasting and the baking and the music, it all makes for an enjoyable beautiful morning.

When I feel like I'm the only up in the whole entire world, I kind of like that.  And when I'm preparing delicious food for people who will appreciate it, I feel like my time is well-spent.  So to me, it's worth it to be up early.  Plus, if I'm up early, I can do everything at a leisurely pace and that makes the kitchen experience much nicer.  

One typically hears of all the fast-paced activity that goes on in a commercial restaurant.  But for me, I'd just as soon have a more casual relaxed approach.  And that's what I get when putting out food from my own kitchen.  Then cooking is a ritual of sorts, not just something that is done as quickly as possible to get a lot of food to a dozen tables all at once.  If the day comes when I have a dozen tables waiting for food, everything will be organized and done with a schedule that allows for a more relaxed pace, even if those tables have to wait just a bit longer for the plates to show up.  I think it's important that the people making the food enjoy what they're doing as much as the people eating the food enjoy it.

So take your time making some food when you get the chance.  Don't hurry.  Don't rush.  Enjoy the ritual.  

Here's what's coming up

It's the first day of May.  We're well into the spring and so far we have had no significant heat.  I've always thought that if we have no significant heat before May 15, that the heat of the coming summer won't be too bad.  Sure, we may roast once in a while in July and August, but without the longer buildup of heat in April and May, it always seems to me that the following season is a gentler summer.

This coming weekend we have lava field brownies and peanut butter cookies on the weekly menu.  The following week's offering was designed as a result of a request from one of the regular eaters here at Bruce Bakery and Bistro.  It was suggested that speculoos and my sweet and creamy cookie dip were a perfect combination.  So I'm making lots of both.

This evening after making food yesterday, and working out in the yard both days of the weekend, and after hosting family here for a bonfire and movie and food day yesterday, I'm taking it easy.  I'm watching some fun TV shows while drinking lots of milk and scarfing down mini chocolate chips.

I keep lots of chocolate around all the time because I use so much of it.  That also means that I snack on it whenever the craving is there.  I love to take a small ramekin and fill it with my favorite brands of mini chocolate chips, and plop down in a comfortable chair while watching a movie or TV show.  I always intend to eat them one at a time, casually, without rushing.  But invariably I start grabbing two or three or nine.  The problem is that when I start grabbing more, occasionally one of them drops from my fingertips which are trying in vain to hold too many chips.  The chair I'm most often sitting in is a black desk chair.  And under it is black square of flooring for the chair to roll on easily (instead of carpet).  This means that if I don't catch one of these little tiny mini chocolate chips before they fall, it's likely I will looking for it for quite a while as the black chip will disappear into the black of the chair or the black of the flooring square.

I grab my flashlight and get down on my hands and knees looking for the chip.  It might be on the chair in which case I will be sitting on a slowly melting chip if I don't find it.  It might be on that black square of flooring and if I don't find it I may roll over it with the wheels of my chair.  My cat comes over and is very curious to see what I'm doing.  He gets in my way as I look for the chip.  Eventually I find it.  And then I stand up and vow to not drop another chip ever again.  Usually I drop another one within five minutes.

Oh, well.  It's something that's going to happen if I keep insisting on snacking on these little tiny chips.  So I resign myself to it and always make sure that the flashlight has charged batteries.

Have a great week!

Waffle cones

 

Spring is warming up.  Cold nights are happening less frequently as each week passes.  Summer is on the way and that means perfect ice cream weather.  And for me that means making lots of waffle cones, too.

I love waffle cones.  In fact, I love to have them around just to snack on them without any ice cream at all.  They can be eaten with many different things, but perhaps most importantly, I love eating them with nothing, just plain.  They are like cookies, except thinner and with less sugar.  But they are just as snack-worthy.

Here's the recipe I use for waffle cones

Ingredients:

the whites of 2 large eggs

92 grams flour

84 grams sugar

31 grams of unsalted butter, melted

1/8 tsp of salt 

1 tsp of vanilla extract

1 tsp of almond extract

First, whisk the egg whites until they are a bit frothy.  Then add the salt, sugar, and both extracts and whisk again.  Whisk part of the flour into this mixture.  Then slowly add the melted butter while continuing to whisk.  Then add the remainder of the flour and whisk thoroughly.

Now all you need is a waffle cone iron.  Plop a small scoop of batter on the hot iron.  Experiment with time and temperature settings to get just the right color and doneness.  With my iron which is made by Chef's Choice International, I use setting #4 for 90 seconds for each cone.  That's how quickly they cook.

If you're going to shape them, well, you had better do it quickly because once they cool, they won't shape at all.  This is where it's handy to have some inexpensive disposable gloves in the kitchen, because those cones right off the iron are pretty hot.  I usually let them cool for about 15 seconds and then quickly shape them with my gloves on.  They're still pretty warm through the gloves, but it's workable.

And once they're cooled, store them in a Ziploc bag, and they're ready whenever you want them, whether that's for ice cream, whipped cream and berries, or just plain with nothing at all.

Good stuff.   

Have a great weekend!

Offerings up next and Swedish treats review

 Hello, hello!

I've just posted the updates to the next two weekly offerings.

First up at the end of this week is hot milk cake with apple compote, and also savory egg salad.  This hot milk cake is on a weekly menu offering for the first time.  With or without compote, it is a wonderful and flavorful dessert.  You can put just about anything on it and it will be good. The cake itself has a tender crumb and a fantastic texture.  The savory egg salad is a favorite for a quick sandwich and goes with just about any bread.  I can never get enough egg salad and will easily eat two or three sandwiches to make a nice lunch.

Next weekend we have lava field brownies making their first appearance, and also peanut butter cookies.  The brownies are bit different what you might be used to, but they are scrumptious.  The peanut butter cookies were requested by one of my regular eaters, so here they are.

Last week I posted a picture of snack foods from Lindsborg Kansas, also known as Little Sweden.  And I promised I would give a little review of these.  Please refer to the picture above as I give my thoughts on each. 

The Ahlgren's Bilar Fruitkombi are similar to typical gelatin snacks here in the US except that these are combined with marshmallow.  They are fruit-flavored, but at a mild level, nothing intense.  And they are not too sweet.  Shaped like cars, they will appeal to any kid.  I found them tasty, although they weren't my favorite from this group.

The Toggi Wafers are a bit like Kit-Kats.  However, they was more flavor in these, and I didn't taste as much pure sugar as in a Kit-Kat.  I liked these, and I could easily eat several.  This package was milk chocolate covered, but they also come in a dark chocolate variety.

The Mandel bars were somewhat soft with just a little bit of chew.  I found them quite delicious accompanied by a glass of milk.  The flavor is not too strong:  fondant, dark chocolate and almonds are the principal ingredients.

The Lakerol salty caramels are small button-sized bits of caramel.  No sugar was added to these so I wasn't sure how I'd like them.  But I was pleasantly surprised by the dark dusky taste.  They weren't easy to chew, weren't very soft, but they sat in my mouth and melted for a quite a while.  

The Gille orange-flavored oat crisps were my second favorite item in this group.  Don't confuse these with an oatmeal cookie.  These are thin and light crisps with a fantastic toasted oat flavor with a balanced amount of orange.  The chocolate stripes were an added bonus.  I ate this whole package very quickly.  They were simply too good to resist easily.

My favorite from this group is the Kolsvart Torsken.  Kolsvart is the company name.  Torsken is Swedish cod.  These are Swedish fish, but not like what we get here in the US.  The are longer and shaped just like the cod for which they are named.  Koslvart produces them in multiple flavors.  This package was black currant and raspberry.  The flavor is incredible.  The texture of the fish is much nicer than that of it's US copycat.  I've had a couple of the other flavors in the past as well.  Every one I've tried is really quite delicious.  I highly recommend these.

So I had a fun time trying these snacks.  All of them except the Torsken were new to me.  I enjoy trying things from places all over the world.  So next time any of you happen to be someplace where something unusual and exotic is available, don't hesitate to pick something up for me to try.  I won't refuse it, most certainly not!

Offerings for this weekend and Swedish snacks

It is a cold wet day here in Kansas City.  As I write this in the early afternoon, it's about 37 F and there is a bit sleet falling mixed in with a slow rain.  Perfect for staying indoors and watching a good movie while eating some snacks.

This coming weekend, the menu offering is two different cookies:  one made with almonds and hazelnuts, and the other with lemon.  These are great small cookies, full of flavor, and fun to keep in a bowl on the countertop in the kitchen to dip into every time you pass by.

Next weekend will be hot milk cake with or without apple compote, and savory egg salad.  You can combine them into a single nice meal, perhaps.  

Yesterday I made several foods (cookies, brownies, muffins, ice cream) and today I'm taking the day off from any cooking at all.  I just want to relax and enjoy eating and reading and watching.

Oldest daughter and her beau stopped by today after traveling.  (Does anyone still use the word "beau"?  I guess I just did.)  They are on they way home but stopped in here in Kansas City to drop off some snacks they got in Lindsborg, Kansas.  Lindsborg is a small town in Kansas that is often called Little Sweden.  It has a long and proud Swedish heritage that is kept alive by numerous traditions, celebrations and businesses in the town that draw on Swedish origins.

They were kind of enough to pick up some things I wanted to try from the local stores there.  The picture on this post shows what they dropped off for me to try.

Over the next few blog posts, I will talk about each of the snacks in the photo individually.  But for now, I will spend this quiet cold wet spring day inside sampling them and watching a good movie.

I hope you're having a pleasant Easter Sunday and that you are getting to do something just as enjoyable as I am getting to do.

Containers

One of the biggest challenges to making lots of different foods to send out to all my friends and family is containers.  There are myriad containers both for baking in and for storing in that are available.  And yet sometimes when I'm preparing a new food for the menu, I can't find the right size or shape that I want to use.  One would think that with all the options out there, it would be an easy task.  But it's not always easy.

I often end up deciding on portion sizes based on the availability of containers rather than by what I would like to offer.  And cooking times have to be adjusted as well if I'm going to use a cooking container that can remain with the food when it goes out door and if that container size is not the same as what a recipe is originally designed for.  So I'm very careful about keeping the right containers on hand.

Even getting a substitute container if one is temporarily unavailable is tricky.  For example, I use baking cups for one of my brownies and those cups have a specific thickness that, if changed, would affect the cooking time.  So it's important to keep a good supply of those on hand.  

Bread bags, especially, are tricky to find in the exact sizes I want.  But when it comes to bread, I don't vary my loaf sizes to fit packaging.  If I'm sending out a loaf, I want it to be a specific size that I think is good for a person or family to have.  It's not like with cookies where you can order 2 or 12, easily changing your quantities.  You can't order 1 loaf plus 1/4 loaf of bread without cutting into a loaf.  So I try to make loaves a good size and worry about the packaging later.  

Wouldn't it be great to be able produce on-demand sizes and shapes of containers right here in my own kitchen!  That would be fantastic!  Or at least it would be good to have an assistant who could take over the task of sourcing packaging among other things.  I'd much rather spend my time on the food.  But for now, I do both.

Well, I'm heading into the kitchen now to make a couple things today.  Brownies and lemon poppy seed muffins.  Have a great day, a great weekend, and a great Easter.

A weekend off and singular moments

 

It's a warm Sunday afternoon here, the first really warm day of the spring, about 80 F.  Winter was just here days ago, but already it seems like the distant past.  Now we get to look forward to spring rains, pleasant mornings, and longer days.

This coming weekend I will be taking time off from cooking for everyone.  I will spend the weekend recreating with chess and baseball and movies ... and also testing a few new recipes.  Whenever I take time off, part of that time off is spent with new recipes.

The following weekend I will be offering almond-hazelnut cookies and light lemon sablés.  Both of these cookies are small, almost bite-sized but not quite.  They have wonderful light flavors and are perfect with a cold glass of milk, a cup of tea or whatever else you can find to put in a mug.

Today I made some mint chocolate chip ice cream mix.  It's chilling in the fridge and will be frozen tomorrow.  And I've been thinking about making some brownies to go with it.  Brownies and mint chocolate chip ice cream are a perfect combination, in my opinion.  But something else, not the ice cream, made me think of brownies.  I was rummaging through my chocolate basket looking for some yummy chocolate to snack on.  Yes, I have a chocolate basket.  It's filled with many different kinds of chocolate that I use in my baking.  As I browsed the contents, the aroma was forceful.  And that made me think of brownies in the oven.  There is a moment when brownies are cooking when suddenly one can breathe in the aroma of intense chocolate.  It's a great moment.  I love that moment.  When brownies are in the oven, I wait for that moment.  First there's nothing and you couldn't tell anything was baking in the house.  Then all of a sudden, the chocolate seems to fill the air as the brownies reach that point in their baking when they come alive.  It is an amazing moment.  And that moment made me feel like I must make some brownies sometimes this week to go with that ice cream.  

A day spent in the kitchen working with food is filled with many such moments.  Every sense is activated when one spends a day making their favorite foods:  seeing the colors, breathing in the aromas, hearing the sizzle in a skillet, feeling the texture of a smooth frosting when swiping the beater with a finger, and of course tasting everything as much as possible.

On this warm pleasant day in early spring, not many things sound better than a day making wonderful foods and experiencing all those wonderful moments.

A brownie recipe

Today I thought I would post my recipe for brown sugar fudge brownies.  I love making this brownie.  It's uncomplicated.  It's super good.  And it's super-forgiving by which I mean that it doesn't take an incredible amount of precision to make this brownie come out right.  Here are the ingredients:

This recipe makes 9 brownies using the particular baking molds I like to use for these:  Katgely 4.25- inch extra thick baking molds.  However, they can easily be made in a variety of cups, molds, pans, etc.  Just tweak the cooking time a little to adjust for the different sizes.

Preheat your oven to 325 F.  Yes, that's correct:  only 325. 

Set out your baking molds on a cookie sheet.  

1.  Grab a medium-sized mixing bowl and into it you will place the cocoa powder, the flour, and the salt.  Whisk it all together and set it aside.  The cocoa powder should be a very high quality powder.  I use Cacao Barry Extra Brute cocoa powder.  It's worth it to ensure that you have this cocoa powder on hand for many of your chocolate baking needs.  It's excellent!  As for salt, I prefer using kosher.  And the flour is simply all-purpose flour.

2.  Melt the butter.  Doesn't matter if you melt it on the stove in pan, or on the stove in a metal measuring cup (yes, that's a neat little thing to do), or in a container in the microwave.  European style butter is best, if you can get it.

3.  In a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, whisk the melted butter, the sugar, and the brown sugar on medium speed until thoroughly combined.  Make sure it's light brown sugar, not dark.

4.  Add the eggs to the sugar mixture and whisk on low speed until thoroughly combined. (Make sure these are large eggs, no medium and not extra-large.)

5.  Add the dry ingredients from Step 1 and whisk on low speed until combined.

6.  Add the mini chocolate chips and whisk on low speed until combined.

7.  Place 2 large cookie scoops of batter in each baking mold.  I keep a variety of cookie scoops in various sizes in my kitchen.  This particular scoop holds between 3/8 and 1/4 cup in volume.  So that will give you an idea of how much batter to use.

8.  Gently spread the batter around the baking mold with the back of a spoon.

9.  Bake for 28 minutes.  When they come out, let them cool to room temperature.

These are so easy to make.  And they are so good.  I wrap these in plastic wrap after they are cooled, and on Day 2, they are just as good as on Day 1.  That's another reason to love these great chocolatey fudgy brownies.

You'll notice in the ingredients list, I also mention using Valrhona chocolate pearls.  Mini chocolate chips are great, but I love using the pearls when I have them in my pantry, which is most of the time.  (Although I have to admit, they are a great snack, so I don't have them hand as much as I'd like since I'm continually eating them in small bunches!)

I hope you'll give them a try.  Once you do, you'll never want to stop making them.

This week ...

Good morning!  I made a lot of cookies and pudding this weekend.  And that means I taste-tested a lot of cookies and pudding this weekend.  One of the perks of making all this food is I always have yummy things to eat in bits and pieces.

This coming weekend we have a savory pie with lots of great flavor.  It's a real filler-upper for when you're hungry for something satisfying.  And we also have speculoos, a wonderful crispy thin spiced cookie that is excellent by itself, dipped in milk, or crumbled over vanilla ice cream.

Next weekend, there will be no menu offering, but I will return with more food the week after that.

As I write this, my cooking for weekend orders has been completed and I've eaten too many sweets.  I'm going to sit down and have one of my favorite snacks:  a bowl of corn flakes with cold milk.  I don't just grab any corn flakes.  It's always the same brand which is NOT Kellogg's or Post or any of the other major commercial brands.  It's a less expensive brand that tastes so much better than the major brands and which holds up in the milk without getting soggy as fast as the major brands.  

There's something I really like about the simplicity of a bowl of corn flakes.  I use the word simplicity which I suppose is not truly the case since this is a highly processed food product.  But the simplicity is the idea of just the cereal flake and the milk.  I find it so delicious and refreshing.  I'm a milk lover, which is part of it, I suppose.  Whatever else makes me enjoy it so much can't be expressed because I don't know what it is.  But I love this for a snack, and it always makes me feel satisfied after I've eaten too many sweets.

Why am I writing about this?  I don't really know, LOL, except that it's on my mind as I get ready to eat a bit more healthfully for the rest of the day.

Well, whether you eat something that has simplicity or complexity, please enjoy and eat lots of it, whatever it is.  Good-tasting food is one of the most enjoyable of life's luxuries.