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.  

Last day of June

Here we are on a hot day in the last handful of hours of June.  And I'm in the kitchen dealing with a hot oven, and hot water, too, as I wash up each dish and pan and utensil one by one as I use them.  

Today I have multiple batches of chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough already made and chilling in the fridge.  And I have made multiple batches of yellow cake batter (see the pic above).  To start the day I realized I didn't have sour cream, even though I was certain that I had some in yesterday's groceries.  So I rushed out to the store, got some, along with a container of ice cream (for the hot day, of course), and then went home.  When I arrived and put the sour cream in the fridge I found I actually had a container in there already.  While at the store, I saw cake flour on the shelf as I passed it, and thought about getting some, but realized I already had some at home.  You see, I keep extra containers of everything so that I never run out.  So in my flour cannister was cake flour, and I had an extra box in the pantry.  Or so I thought!  When I started setting up ingredients to make cake batters, I realized I only had a small amount of cake flour in the cannister and none in the pantry.  How that happened, I do not know.  But I had to go out to the store again for cake flour.  At least that time when I got back, I didn't find that I actually had a box in the pantry.  

I always keep extra bags and boxes of everything:  flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, bread flour, eggs.  You name it.... I have extras.  Well, at least most of the time; apparently, not today. 

This week's chocolate chip peanut butter cookies are being developed as a special request from son-in-law Zak.  And the yellow cake is for son Ben.  I will spend the next few days working on them and tweaking and adjusting until they are ready to be added to the full menu.  I'm working from past recipes I've already used, so it's more a process of refining than of discovery.

Tune in to the next blog post here to see how this month of working on new menu additions is going.

Try to stay cool, everyone!  And have a great start to July!

Summer cooking and cinnamon toast

It's Sunday, June 26.  In two days, I begin my mid-summer teaching break -- almost five weeks during which all my students are on break, and piano lessons are put on the back burner.  And that means I'm ready to do a lot of cooking.  

First, though, is this week's menu:  chocolate mousse, and almond cakes with blueberries and cream.  Next week, you will have a chance to order eggnog and also something that is appearing on the weekly menu for the first time:  vanilla poppy seed muffins with lemon streusel.  

During July, I will be cooking lots and lots, so I hope the weather is not too hot because cooking in a hot kitchen during a hot summer day just makes it all seem even hotter.  But no matter whether it's a hot July or a cool July, I have a lots of things I am looking forward to working on in the kitchen.  That means I'll be sampling lots of different things, so my meals will consist of little bits of things rather than full courses during many days of the month.

In the middle of all this cooking and baking, there will be some simple pleasures as well.  One of my favorite simple pleasures is a slice of brioche toasted just right, spread with a liberal amount of Plugra butter, sprinkled with a light dusting of sugar and topped off with an aromatic cinnamon.  Cinnamon toast is such a simple little thing but so enjoyable.  And I often indulge in it while also working on much more complex foods.   

I like to keep a lot of simple foods around: fresh cut fruit, boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, bowls of berries, sliced cheese, and bowls of my favorite corn flakes or cinnamon spice oatmeal.  I love having these simple things around because they are perfect for filling a moment in a busy schedule that needs filling due to a little bit of hunger or the simple need to have something delicious to munch on.

And when I cook, I do a lot of munching on things like these simple foods as well as samples of everything I'm making in the kitchen on that particular day.

OK, enough rambling.  Today's post is not very substantive or memorable, perhaps, but I enjoy sometimes just rambling on about simple things just as I love eating my simple foods.    

A week off

As we head to the final weekend in June, I'm going to take the weekend off.  Sorry to say there will be no food this weekend.

But next weekend is chocolate mousse and almond cakes with blueberries and cream.

As we head into the final days of June, I'm preparing for a period of more than a month with no teaching.  And the plan is for me to use all that free time for making food, trying new recipes, doing updates to my recipe database, and other related activities.  

I hope to completely finish the initial entry of all remaining recipes into my database and then begin proofreading everything.  Once it's done, I will have everything organized and in a format that will be very convenient and very efficient.  I was hoping to have it done a couple months ago, but to be honest, it's not that much fun to update.  I don't feel much reward from doing it.  But I will feel reward from getting it done.  And that's one of the most important things I want to get done during the month of July.  After that, as new recipes are added, it will be easy to maintain.  It's typesetting all the existing recipes in this new format that is time-consuming and brain-numbing.

In addition to the database updates, I have several foods I'm working on as special requests from different people.  These include a sandwich with sauce, a strawberry cream cake, a yellow cake, macarons, a new ice cream, and a new cookie.  Plus I want to work on cinnamon rolls which I have been promising everyone for a long time, and also buns for sloppy joes and other sandwiches.  And let's not forget the continued work on something I've already started -- a pasta meat sauce.

Someone might say, "Can't you just get any old recipe and use that?" (for the pasta meat sauce, for example) -- but the answer is a resounding, "No!"  I experiment, I tweak, I adjust, I test, I test some more, and finally I end up with a recipe that I've made my own, one that has certain qualities in the finished product that I love.  It certainly takes time, but it's worth it.  When it's done and added to the full menu, the recipe has been tested and sampled, and the printed copy has notations I've added regarding the technical procedure for making it in addition to how to prepare certain ingredients.  Everything is written so that not only are the proper ingredients in very specific quantities detailed but also how to mix or fold, how long to let it sit, what kind of baking vessel to use, etc.

So July will be a vacation month, but a busy vacation month.  And that sounds fine to me.

A hot week ahead

 

Summer is here.  Today is going to be hot and steamy.  The entire week ahead will be hot and steamy.  Perfect for staying indoors and making cold foods.

This next weekend, the weekly menu is comprised of blueberry cinnamon snack cake, and also farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.  The blueberry cake is such a pleasant relaxed dessert.  I eat it plain, with whipped cream, accompanied by a glass of milk, or anything else that comes to mind.  It goes with so many things.  And it's not overly sweet so you can eat a lot.  The pasta salad is a cold pasta salad.  And it's perfect for a hot day.  It has something from every food group in it, so it's a complete meal.  And it's incredibly delicious.  

For the following weekend, I have just set the menu with chocolate mousse, and also almond snack cakes with blueberries and cream.  

Today as I write this post, it's almost 10:00 AM here in Kansas City.  I've already done things I wanted to do outside today, getting them done early to beat the heat.  And I'm in for the day now.  Part of my day is going to be dedicated to reviewing my list of items that I want to tweak and add to the full menu. Another very fun part of my day is going to be dedicated to perusing recipes and brainstorming foods, specifically things that are new that I've never seen before.

I love going through recipes in books or online and coming across one and it hits me:  "I have to make that!"  Of course, that increases my list of new recipes I want to try, and I will probably never come to the end of that list.  There are simply too many great foods to experience.  I have many passions, as people who know me will attest.  And with each one of those, I could immerse myself in them for the next 60 years and still not learn everything I want to learn.  And that's perfect.

Ok.  On to the rest of my day now.  Time to get a cold glass of milk and take a look at some recipes.

Small vs. big

 

Blueberry cinnamon snack cake is on the menu for next weekend.  My last post talked about the choices I made regarding blueberries for this cake.  Today something else is on my mind which is also connected to this cake:  small vs. big.

Sometimes I will experiment with a recipe to see what kind of size options I have.  When I was preparing to add this snack cake to the full menu long ago, I thought about what sizes I wanted to offer.  Certainly, a full-sized 9-inch diameter cake was going to be one of the options.  But I also wanted to offer smaller sizes.  I experimented with different sizes and even with loaves.  But in each case, the finished cake wasn't quite the same as the original full-sized cake.  There was something slightly different in how it baked which altered the texture enough that I noticed it.  And adjusting baking times didn't eliminate that difference.  I like the full-sized version a lot so I wasn't about to accept something that was even a little less good just because I wanted to offer a smaller size.  This is why both a full-sized cake and also individual slices are on the full menu -- slices instead of a small version. 

I find this fascinating.  The same cake, the same batter, the same recipe, but a different result depending on what size baking option is used.  This doesn't occur with my Swedish visiting cake.  The 4-inch size and the full 8-inch size are identical.  (Note:  The full-sized Swedish visiting cake is not on the full menu, but I make in on request sometimes.) Brownies?  No difference.  But there are some things for which it seems that the final size affects the final baked result in a way that is easy to discern.  Why is that exactly?

I haven't made a list of items where this happens, but perhaps over time I will start keeping track.  I am always interested in trying to answer these sorts of questions.

That's all for today.  Have a great day and a great weekend.  

Cookies and cakes and salad

It's early June and the weather is mild.  Summer hasn't officially started and won't start for several days, but it certainly seems like we are in for a mild summer over the next few months.  Of course, that could change with one big week of intense heat.  If that happens, I'll make lots of ice cream, and smoothies, and slushes, and even some soda syrups to add to tonic water, club soda or seltzer.

This coming weekend, we have Swedish visiting cakes and Swedish oatmeal cookies on the menu.  These oatmeal cookies are a bit different from what one usually thinks of with an oatmeal cookie.  Trust me, though, they are really good.  And they have little tiny chocolate chips in them which are an added special touch.

I just now selected and posted the menu for the following weekend.  It will be blueberry cinnamon snack cake and farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.

When I first developed the blueberry cinnamon snack cake, I had to decide first of all whether to use wild blueberries or regular domesticated blueberries.  I chose wild.  They are smaller and they have less water in them.  Then I had to decide how I was going to incorporate them.  If you put cold blueberries in a cake, that brings down the temperature of the batter and makes getting a thorough bake much more difficult.  So I began to also make sure my blueberries were not just at room temperature but actually warmer than that, courtesy of a quick stint in the microwave.  After warming in the microwave, they tend to release a little juice.  So I spread them out on paper towels and cover them with more paper towels and gently roll them around until there is no liquid.  This "no juice" is an important thing because I don't like my blueberry snack cake to be blue!  I want no juice mixing in with that batter.  That also means that the mixing process has to be gentle so that none of the blueberries are damaged because that would cause them to release juice.  Is there sometimes a little juice that is let out?  Yes!  No matter how hard one can try, there are always times when things don't come out exactly as hoped.

But in the end, hopefully I have a non-blue cake with lots of wild blueberries in it.

The pasta salad is one of my favorite things to have in warm weather.  It is a cold salad.  And I spent a lot of time working out the balance of flavors until I had just what I wanted.  A bowl of this salad is an entire meal and perfect to have on a warm summer evening.

So take a look and order what seems interesting and delicious to you.

And in the meantime, have a great week!