Fun food items coming up

 

Hello, hello.

We have some fun food items coming up.  This coming weekend you can order vanilla macarons and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  And the following weekend you can order a mixed nut brittle and mascarpone cream roulades with raspberries.

This weekend saw gougeres and Swedish visiting cakes come out of the kitchen, and also multiple chocolate snack cakes, and a potato dish, and a third batch of mac and cheese, and even more than that.  It was a busy weekend for cooking.

I wanted to do a little more, but I also spent a lot of time slicing up melons, and preparing other various things.  A fun weekend.  A busy weekend.

And then I ran out of my 4-inch snack cake baking cups (see pic above).   I wanted to do another batch of a different cake, and realized as I prepped for it that I was already out.  I have more on order, but they haven't arrived yet.  So I decided to bake it as a large 13x9 inch cake.  It will slice up nicely but I really wanted the little baking cups.

I have plenty more food prep to do this week as I work through my to-do list which has grown quite a bit over the past while.  But this month a lot of those items are being worked through.  My wife has passed out some food at her workplace, too, so I am taking enjoyment seeing more people enjoying what comes out of my kitchen.

One of the cakes that I made this weekend was a very delicious chocolate cake flavored with melted milk chocolate and also dark chocolate cocoa powder.  When I make this, I always melt butter and then drop in the chunks of chocolate and the cocoa powder and let it simmer for a while.  I mention this because I had a question recently about how this comes out so rich and chocolatey.  Well, that's how.  A high quality milk chocolate and very high quality cocoa powder are both very important. But melted butter and adding those to the butter before mixing up the cake makes a huge difference.  Don't just toss everything in to the mixing bowl on it's own.  And you can always add actual melted chocolate to cocoa powder when making a chocolate cake.  It's well worth it.

Stay cool, and have a great start to your new week.

Reheatability

 

This week has been filled with lots of cooking.  And that means it has been a good week!

I have made two of three planned batches of mac and cheese.  I'm pretty certain the first one will go on the menu.  The second one was good, but it doesn't reheat as well, and that's a primary quality I am looking for, reheatability.  I don't think that's a word, but I'll use it anyway.  I have a third batch to make tomorrow.  But I'm very happy with the first batch and I don't think the new one will change my mind.  As I said recently said in another post, I've made all three of these multiple times in the past, so they are all good, in fact, they are excellent mac and cheeses.  But only one will go on the menu.

I have also completed final testing on another couple new items.  One is a small chocolate fudge cake with a smooth creamy filling and a wonderful set frosting that wraps itself around the small cake.  This is ready to be added to the menu and hopefully that will happen in the next few days as soon as I make the time to do it.

Another item that has been tweaked is something called sitta, which is corn-on-the-cob with lemon juice and spices.  It is very flavorful.  However, while it reheats well on the same day, it doesn't come up to the level I want it to be if it has been chilled overnight and then reheated after chilling.  So this one won't go on the menu unless I can somehow in the future find a way to allow it be chilled and reheated without dropping below a certain level of quality both in taste and appearance.  

I make a lot of things that are hot and ready to eat.  But when I make those, they are items for which I have full confidence that if someone takes them home and puts them in the fridge they will reheat beautifully the next day and still be very delicious with a beautiful texture or appearance.  So the sitta is excellent, but it doesn't pass that test.  However, when, in the future, I decide to open up a food establishment, then this will definitely be on the menu to be made and served fresh.  

Everything that I make that is hot is tested to see if it passes that reheatability test.  I know not everyone will eat my food on the same day.  So this quality test is very important to me.

Today I also made gougere dough.  The dough has been portioned and is freezing and will be ready to go out the door tomorrow to be baked at home.  And Swedish visiting cakes have been baked and are sitting on the counter now.  They will be wrapped as soon as they are cool enough and will be ready to go out in the morning as well.

That's all for today.  I have more things to make during the month of July, and I will report on them all here. 

Making food

 

Yesterday I made a very delicious stovetop mac and cheese.  It used three different cheeses and had a fantastic texture.  And best of all, it reheated exceptionally well.  As you might remember from my last post, I am making three different mac and cheeses this week.  And one of them is meant to go on the menu. Not only does it have to taste great, but it has to reheat well.  I've used these three recipes before, many times, in fact.  But they rarely are around long enough to test the reheating.  So that is the task this week.  

Today I make a second mac and cheese.  And in addition to that I will make a chocolate snack cake.  Yesterday I also made my orange vanilla froth, mostly because I wanted a new picture for the website, but since it was so hot, it made for a great evening drink in the heat.

Today is mostly devoted to making food.  I did a little work on my landscaped beds outside and a few small tasks in the house.  But at the moment I am writing this, those things are all done and the rest of the day will be spent with food.

Days making food are great days.  There is nothing like making something yummy and passing it out to people.  There's something very satisfying about doing that.  

Well, here I go, into the kitchen now.  

July's first weekend

 

Happy Sunday to everyone.

I am in the first week of my long July break.  And it has been full of fun activities and good food so far.

This coming weekend we have Swedish visiting cakes and gougeres available for ordering.  And the following weekend we have vanilla macarons and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

A couple days ago I made something new for a family event:  a chocolate hazelnut torte.  This torte uses ground hazelnuts in place of the flour typically found in cakes.  It's a very simple recipe that combines sugar and cocoa with the ground hazelnuts, which is then gently folded into meringue and then baked.  And in this case I topped it with a sweet chocolate sauce, vanilla whipped cream and hazelnut candies.  I had planned to do a hazelnut cake, but with only a few days left before the event for which it was needed, I determined that I couldn't source hazelnut flour anywhere close by and it would have to be ordered.  I didn't trust that it would come on time.  So I opted to make a torte instead.  

The torte was nice, very nutty, mildly sweet, and filling.  But it wasn't something that I think I would make again.  So now I'm taking the time to source some hazelnut flour, get it ordered and delivered, and then make a cake that I hope will be much more to my liking.  I don't think the torte was a favorite part of the event, but that's OK.  It was experiment.  We tried it and determined it's not something to pursue again.  

That doesn't mean I won't try another hazelnut torte.  I love hazelnuts so I most certainly will.  But I will design a new recipe.

Today I'm shopping for the first of three mac and cheeses that I will make this week.  I have made all of these before, so this really a new trial run to compare all three and see if I want to add one of them to the menu.  My wife is a big fan of mac and cheese so she will serve as taste tester in addition to me.

These mac and cheeses each use a blend of different cheeses and each uses a different preparation method: one on stovetop, one in the oven, and one that combines both.  I love to do comparison cooking like this, so it will be a fun week.

That's all for now.  Enjoy the final day of your weekend and eat some good food that makes you smile and feel satisfied.

Tweaks and tortes

 

It's a hot day here in Kansas City and it's going to get hotter as the day progresses.  I am staying inside and doing odds and ends around the house and also working on recording recipe tweaks that I've notated over the past while for rolls and breads (such as the pain au lait dough balls in the photo above).  

I love the process of tweaking recipes.  Every time I cook something, I'm liable to have some tiny insight that comes to mind or I identify some small detail in the process that I want to adjust.  I make a note on my recipe sheet, and let them pile up for a while, usually, and finally record them all at once.  I suppose it's a way of constantly making progress, of thinking that nothing is ever quite perfect yet.  Of course, does everything need to be perfect?  I think not.

I'm also reviewing cake and torte recipes.  Tomorrow morning, I will make a chocolate hazelnut torte for a special food event.  It's something new I'm making so I hope it works out well.

This entire coming month of July, I'm hoping to take a lot of free time and put it into updating old foods and also working on new foods to be added to the menu.

Eat some good food and enjoy the day, everyone!

Gougeres and visiting cakes

Hello, all!

This coming weekend I'm taking time off to enjoy some things with family.  But next weekend we have Swedish visiting cakes and gougeres on the menu.

I'm getting ready to start a month-long break from teaching in July.  And that means I hopefully will be doing a lot of cooking.  I've got a list of several things I want to work on, some will be new, some will be decidedly experimental, and some will be tweaks of older things.

I'm hoping the summer heat won't be too bad.  We all know how much hot stovetops and ovens contribute to in-house heat during summer months.

It will be a good time to work on breads since the temps will be very conducive to great yeast action.

And I will definitely be making some ice creams.  We can't have summer heat without ice creams.

That's all for now.  Have a great day everyone and stay cool.

Cheeses

 

Good afternoon.  This coming weekend we have a cheddar horseradish dip and oatmeal candy cookies ready for ordering.  For the first weekend of July, I will be taking a few days off so there is nothing on the menu.  But more items will be available on the weekend after that.

I was recently given an assortment of cheeses (for Father's Day).  In the photo above, you can see English Cotswold cheese with chives, a strong Parmigiano-Reggiano, a very flavorful Swiss gruyere with a floral hint, a California habanero dry Monterey jack, and one of my favorites, a 10-year aged white cheddar.

It is a wonderful thing to try so many excellent cheeses all at once.  Comparing, contrasting, analyzing .... OK, what I really mean is it's great to eat them all.  LOL

Cheeses are amazing.  And there are so many different kinds.  The subtleties of each when compared to another are fascinating.  

Of the five above, my favorite for just plain eating is the 10-year aged cheddar, but the English Cotwold with chives is excellent as well.  The others I like best shredded and grated and put on top of something or into something.

The Parmigiano-Reggiano is a type of Parmesan that comes from a specific region and only that region and has to be aged at least 1 year and up to 3 years.  Often other parmesans are aged as little as 10 months.

There are all sorts of interesting facts one can uncover about each of these.  Cheeses are so unique, a lot of like wines in that way, I think.  But I won't go into all those now.  Suffice it to say that some people are experts at this and know a lot more than I do.

What I do know, though, is that I love eating them.  So I'm off to get another slice of the 10-year aged cheddar and maybe make a salad with sprinkling of a blend of the others.  

Bon appetit, everyone!

Peeling eggs and egg salad

I love egg salad.  On the menu for Bruce Bakery and Bistro, we have two different kinds, one savory, and one creamy and sweeter.  Typically when I make egg salad, I make a lot of it.  And that means peeling a lot of eggs.

Recently I boiled 3 dozen eggs to make a big batch.  And peeling all those eggs takes a lot of time.  But the real issue with peeling eggs is not time.  It's getting all the peel off without damaging any of the egg.

It seems that so many people all have their tips and tricks for doing this.  But I have yet to see one of these "tried and true" methods work every time unless one keeps in mind a very important thing, and that is that fresh eggs are harder to peel than those which have aged a bit.  And this is all because of the membrane between the egg and the shell.

You can read all about the "why" here:  https://www.scienceofcooking.com/eggs/boiled_eggs.htm

The idea of not using fresh eggs if I want boiled eggs is something I learned over time through trial and error and careful observation.  (It was only later that I examined the science behind it.)   And this means that I find it good to plan ahead.  If I'm thinking of making egg salad sometime in the near future, I should get the eggs very early and let them sit in the fridge for a period of days.  And then when they are boiled, they are much easier to peel.

However, as careful as I am at planning and organizing, sometimes I fail to do that.  And that was the case recently when I boiled 3 dozen eggs.  Consequently, it was a real chore trying to peel them.  Getting the shells off eggs that are too fresh is close to impossible without damaging some of the egg.  If I'm making egg salad, it's not as big a deal as it is when I'm making deviled eggs.  It takes a lot of time and I lose some of the egg material in trying to take the peels completely off, but at least they don't have to look pretty since they are going to be chopped up.

But when I'm making deviled eggs and I've failed to plan ahead well enough, it's no fun.  Deviled eggs should be beautiful and smooth on the outside.  And by failing to plan ahead and have aged eggs ready for boiling, one is left with the certainty that at least some of the eggs are not going to be beautiful and smooth.

I'm in the mood for making deviled eggs soon,  Perhaps you'll see them on the weekly menu in the coming weeks.  So I'd better plan ahead and pick up a few dozen now.

Berry fools

 

Good morning to all.  I didn't get my customary Sunday post in yesterday, but it's here today.

This coming weekend we have whipped balsamic vinaigrette dip and raspberry meringue kisses ready for ordering.  And the next weekend we have a delicious cheese spread with a little kick to it and also a very sweet cookie on the menu.  

This past weekend, I made a lot of berry fools.  I got tons of strawberries and raspberries as well as lots of cream.   I decided instead of making several small batches to instead make one large batch.  So I was making big bowls of berry puree and cutting lots of strawberries to sugar in a bowl with raspberries.  

It's sometimes a bit of an experiment when you make a large quantity of something by doubling, tripling or quadrupling a recipe.  This is especially true of baked goods, I think, where precise measuring by weight is so important.  I'm not trying to say that baked goods can't be made in large quantities.  They certainly can. But I have found that when making extra large batches of some products then it's not always as simple as multiplying the ingredient measurements.  It can take a bit of tinkering to adjust the amounts and the mixing process for those larger quantities.  

At any rate, this past weekend as I made lots of berry fools, I was cooking my berry puree and preparing to add my thickening agent to it.  It was a a large quantity, and once the agent was added, it sat for a while before going into the fridge to chill.  A couple hours later I went to check on it and it wasn't as thick as expected.   Typically within two hours when making a smaller batch it thickens up just right.  But with this larger batch, it took longer for the puree to cool down, and longer for the agent to do it's work.  After another couple hours, it was was exactly as it should be.  

It was the first time I had made a batch as large as this, so you can be sure that I made notes on this to detail out the expected thickening time for me or anyone else who was using my recipe.

I enjoy this process of varying the preparation process and documenting the results.  It certainly increases one's awareness of the vagaries of food preparation that are sometimes in play.

The berry fools were great.  Everyone enjoyed them.  I saved a couple for me and my wife and we certainly enjoyed them.  And now I have documented the important information needed to know in order to prepare a much larger batch than my original recipe called for. 

Next up is to try a few other new berries to make some new fools, perhaps blackberry?  Cherry?  Blueberry?   

Delayed orders and National Egg Day

 

Well, I'm sorry to say, but all orders this weekend and next weekend have been pushed back one week.  Nothing terrible happened.  I just wound up having to reschedule some things in my normal weekly routine and that resulted in the push-back.  But next week things will be back to normal.

Today is National Egg Day.  Eggs are amazing.  Try reading the book Egg:  A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most Versatile Ingredient by Michael Ruhlman.  This writer has done several books exploring topics in the food world, and I highly recommend them.  Eggs are indeed incredibly versatile, and I use lots of them throughout a normal cooking week.  And I love them by themselves.  They are a great comfort food in all their forms.  And comfort foods are the best, especially when it comes to breakfast.

Recently, my wife and I took a short trip, and we stayed at a bed and breakfast.  It was a nice inn, very comfortable and very charming, but I was surprised by the breakfast part of "bed and breakfast".  It was nice, but it was very small, and there were no choices.  Food is a great element in life that brings people together and creates connections.  And one would think it would be an important part of a "bed and breakfast".  I continually go through ideas in my mind of a food establishment, a cafe, bistro, bed and breakfast, lots of different forms these ideas take.  And in every one of them, there is lots of food and lots of choices.  That's the way it should be, I think.  People remember the food.  People think about the food.  And it can draw us back to a place again and again.  It becomes a force in our memories.

Have a great day, and try to stay cool as the summer begins to heat up.