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KRINGLE

I was walking through Trader Joe’s the other week and saw a flat package wrapped in opaque wax paper labeled “Almond Kringle. From Wisconsin! Limited Quantities available!” You may know that I love almond everything. Side story: I love the almond soap they have on Amtrak trains. A lot. So much that I tweeted once about how much I love it and where could I find some? And Amtrak tweeted back to me, and I ended up getting a bottle of soap that doesn’t have a flat bottom (it screws in to the train) so I can’t use it unless I empty the soap into another container. And it was great.

YES! Thank you @amtrak! The man didn’t believe me when I said I LOVE THIS SOAP but he gave it to me anyway! Yay! pic.twitter.com/SmFTBLfW6u

— Yen Duong (@yenergy) June 1, 2014

Also, I’m from Minnesota, so if I run into something in Texas that says “from the midwest!” I’ll buy it (also I am a sucker). And “Limited quantities available,” because I am a sucker, means that I’ll buy it. All the ingredients were in place for me to get this magical, amazing delicious experience (I’m not the only one who feels this way). After getting home and taking a bite of the oval shaped pastry that came out of the mystery bag, I laughed and couldn’t stop laughing for five minutes. My husband had a bite, and then we both texted all the people we knew from Wisconsin and told them that while we loved them, they are not the best thing to come from Wisconsin.

After we polished off our TJ’s Kringle in three days (it’s a bit over a pound, and contains at least one pound of butter), I decided to try to make my own. The official recipe will have you use just over a pound of butter and take three days to make all the layers. But there are plenty of homemade ones out there that do not take three days or tons of rolling, and that’s what I did. You can stuff kringles with anything, but the TJ’s one was filled with marzipan (yum) and I did a coconut and almond filling for mine. Many recipes were just butterscotch (butter + sugar).

I also was still in a bit of a funk when I decided to impulse make the kringle, so no ingredient photos. The dough and recipe is super simple, but this was my first time making a filled pastry so I did a bad job (who knew you have to actually close it all the way, or the filling all falls out?!)

Dough or dough not, there is no try

The dough was just cutting butter into flour, then adding in yogurt (the recipe called for sour cream, but I use yogurt as a substitute for most white goops like mayo, sour cream, and sometimes butter/margarine/shortening). The dough is VERY STICKY.

Though if you want a doughnut this is not the recipe for you

Wrap it up in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for a while (all day is great, or overnight). Meanwhile you can put together the filling, which is another cup of butter beaten with brown sugar and shredded coconut and almond pieces. I put my coconut in a dry pan on the stove for a few minutes, until lightly brown and toasty. I also used sweetened shredded coconut, unsweetened flaked would also be fine.

Happy MLK Day! You could also think of social justice once a week all day, perhaps AllMond ays?

Now you split the dough into two halves, and leave one in the fridge while you roll out the other on a very floured surface (remember, sticky) until very, very thin. Far thinner than expected for a person who’s never made a filled pastry before.

I had some friends over while I made this kringle and we were watching Clueless and at this point I kept saying I was ‘rollin with my homies.’ Actually this isn’t true because I don’t have friends to watch Clueless with while baking.

Filling goes in one long line down the middle. If you want to make two separate danishes, like lines, then stop before the ends so you can tuck down the top. I put my two halves together so spread the filling pretty far to the ends.

If baking was Hollywood we’d celebrate avant garde fil(ling)makers

The recipe called for some fancy cutting and braiding, but didn’t have pictures. I attempted this on the first half and then all the filling went out through the holes. So, good luck to you if you decide to go the braided danish route- check for seals in your dough! Instead, I recommend just folding the two sides over and making a less beautiful but more structurally sound tube of dough.

Kringles at TJ’s come from O&H bakery in Racine, Wisconsin. The other option besides the O is an H shape. This is not true.

See all the holes in my kringle above? Don’t do that. But do make two tubes and tuck them together to make the beautiful wreath shape of the kringle. Bake at 375 until golden brown and it smells SO GOOD and it’s SO GOOD. Even if it doesn’t turn out beautiful.

20151209_190448

Easy coconut-almond kringle, adapted from Taste of Home

2 c flour

1 lb (4 sticks) butter

1 c full-fat plain yogurt (or sour cream)

1 c brown sugar

2 c sliced almonds

2 c shredded coconut, toasted

Cut 1 c (2 sticks) butter into the flour, until you have pea-sized chunks or smaller of butter. Mix in the yogurt well, until you have very sticky dough. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate all day or overnight or at least a few hours.

Beat the brown sugar with the remaining cup of butter. Toast the almonds and coconut by putting each in a dry pan over medium heat for a few minutes, stirring lightly a few times, until they smell yummy and look lightly brown/toasty. Mix the almonds and coconut (or whatever filling of nuts/fruits you want here) in with the butter and brown sugar mix.

Split the chilled dough into two halves. Preheat oven to 375. Roll out dough very thin into a rough rectangle, then put one half of the filling in one straight line down the middle of the dough. Either cut and braid the outsides in, or fold them over. Do so with both halves, then push the halves together into an oval shape on a baking sheet.

Bake for 25 minutes, until lightly browned.

Tags: brown sugar, butter, coconut

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Triple Ginger Cookies

10 Sep

I first made these cookies a decade ago, back when I was in high school, and was blown away by how good they are! They pack a punch with lots and lots of ginger flavor. I actually messed up baking these (used something that was not powdered ginger) but they still taste pretty good despite the potential garlic-onion in there. Sounds pretty gross but the molasses and fresh ginger and crystallized ginger sort of hide the strange savory notes. I also have old baking soda so the cookies didn’t rise as much as they should’ve. Oops.

Anyways! They’re even better without any onion flavor in them! I highly recommend these. I already had everything I needed to bake a half batch in my pantry; we like keeping crystallized ginger around to chew on if we have a stomach ache.

If you were running a Scottish daycare but didn’t have enough enrollment, maybe you’d put up a sign saying “SPACE FOR MO LADDIES AND MO LASSES”

It generally helps to have slightly softened butter when you start baking cookies, to easily cream the butter and sugar together. You don’t want it too soft, just to have been out of the fridge for half an hour or so. In this case I took butter out of the freezer an hour earlier, and it was still a bit too hard to beat. Thank you extremely strong Kitchen Aid stand mixer– it did a great job beating up the butter. Cream the brown sugar in, then add the molasses. Normally you have a pretty fluffy butter-sugar base for cookies, but the liquidy molasses makes it look a little grosser with clumps of butter suspended in the molasses..

If your lawn is dying and you start to see things that look like huge anthills appearing, take another look. You might see some creatures scuttling down into the holes, and you’ll catch a glimpse of some mole asses

Then mix all your dry ingredients, as usual. Flour, powdered ginger, salt, baking soda. Toss those in with the wet and mix. Finally, chop up the crystallized ginger (this is difficult if it’s very dry) and grate some fresh ginger, and mix those in too.

I have fairly large eyes for an Asian person, while my best friend has short eyes. My other friend is named Chris. If he were a redhead I could refer to him as Chris-tall-eyes Ginger

I just learned all about the Kuna, and their traditional garments. Mola says “give us our autonomy!”

After you’re all mixed, toss the dough into the fridge for a while. I’m not usually a good recipe-follower and I don’t often chill my cookie dough, but it helps these ones hold together (that tricky molasses!). They’re particularly nice if you roll them in sugar before baking, but I skipped that this time.

What if all the "l"s of the world were suddenly replaced by "r"s? Directions would be so muddled. We'd all be stuck in crazy morasses.

What if all the “r”s of the world were suddenly replaced by “l”s? Dilections would be so muddled. We’d all be stuck in sticky molasses.

A pretty quick bake (10 minutes) and they’ll be done! These are soft chewy cookies, not crispy. Again, pardon my old baking soda in the next photos. The original recipe makes massive cookies, but I like them smaller. So i did a half batch (original says makes 18) and I got out 27 cookies. Up to you! Surprisingly, smaller cookies bake in almost the same amount of time (9 minutes v 10)

Triple Ginger Cookies (half-recipe from allrecipes) Makes 27 cookies.

6 TB butter

1/2 c brown sugar

1 egg

2 TB molasses

1 C + 2 TB flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

pinch salt

1 TB grated fresh ginger

1/4 c chopped crystallized ginger

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, then mix in the molasses.
Stir together flour, ground ginger, baking soda, and salt. Add to the wet ingredients and mix.
Add the grated fresh ginger and crystallized ginger, and mix thoroughly.
Chill the dough in the fridge for awhile. (I did overnight)
Preheat oven to 350.
Roll heaping teaspoons of dough into small balls, then roll in sugar. Place on ungreased cookie sheet, and bake for 9 minutes.

Tags: butter, cookies, ginger

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Mmmm rummmm cake

9 Jul

When I started this blog I couldn’t imagine the directions my life would take. Two and a half years ago, I did a post on a semi-homemade rum cake and titled it “Shame on me” for being semi-homemade instead of from scratch. Rereading it, I feel like that’s the cake I should’ve made the other night. I was feeling bad because I’d found a fundamental problem in my research (still unresolved…) after wasting away my morning and before picking up the baby late from daycare because I’d forgotten an umbrella. So after putting the baby down and eating dinner, I decided to make a rum cake. During this time I was chatting with my husband and offhandedly asked him the last time he was proud of me. He said “I’m proud of your right now, you’re making that cake. You’re so capable.”

Hell yes I am capable! My research is stagnant; last time I timed myself it took me 13.5 minutes to run a mile; I keep not getting the oil changed on my car. BUT I’m trying research, I am active, and my baby is still alive. AND I made a rum cake.

Some days, you need pep talks from those who love you. Some days, you need to bake a cake.

Semi-homemade doesn’t hurt the eggsecution of this dish

I didn’t have a Bundt pan (we don’t know what happened to that old one but rum cake is the only thing I make in a Bundt pan so it seems silly to buy one), so I used a 13 x 9 pyrex instead. Generously grease and flour it, then sprinkle with nuts (I used peanuts do not do that. Use pecans or walnuts).

Peanuts, equality, and granite- doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as liberté, egalité, et fraternité. I guess France can keep its flag-they’d be nuts to adopt this one, even though it rocks.

Then you make your doctored cake by adding pudding mix, an extra egg, and rum. Yum. This makes the cake a bit lighter and bouncier while somehow super moist (that’s the pudding mix).

When you whisk upon a star, you’ll probably burn up no matter who you are. Because stars are really hot and why would you be whisking anyway anything you wanted to bake would already be burned to a crisp/nothingness

I thought this label was hilarious on the box:

IF I PUT THINGS IN ALL CAPS YOU WILL READ THEM. (google translate:) Si pongo COSAS EN MAYÚSCULAS USTED puedan leerlas.

So then I took this picture:

Breaking all the rules! That’s me! Or illiterate! O analfebetos!

Anyways, while that’s baking you can doodle around the house for half an hour, then make the glaze- it’s just butter + sugar, boil it, then add rum.

I ran out of white sugar so I substituted in brown for the remainder. Insert appropriate racial joke here? It’s hard because multiple ethnic groups claim “brown” which doesn’t make sense because isn’t everyone some hue of brown? I’m staring at my white husband’s skin right now to try to figure out the color. Pinky-peach but not like a sunset. He just held up a piece of paper but white people aren’t all albino. I don’t know. I’m not good with colors. That’s why I subbed in the sugar.

After the butter and sugar have boiled, turn off the heat. Make sure you use a deep sided pot, not a pan, because when you add the rum things get exciting and it fizzes up.

This isn’t a zero-rum game

After the rum

After the cake comes out of the oven, poke it all over with toothpicks or skewers, as much as you can until you get bored (so maybe 40 times?). Then drizzle half the glaze all over it. Wait a bit, invert the cake onto a plate or baking pan, and poke again + drizzle again. It’s great warm, but it’s awesome about 12 hours later, when the rum has soaked in a lot and everything is moist and rummy.

Buttery rum cake, adapted from allrecipes

cake part:

1 c chopped nuts (I prefer pecans)

1 box yellow cake mix

1 box vanilla pudding mix

4 eggs

1/2 c each water, vegetable oil, rum

glaze part:

1/2 c each butter, rum, white sugar, brown sugar

1/4 c water

cake part: grease and flour a pan (Bundt if you have it, 13×9 if you don’t, two 8″ or 9″ rounds if you don’t have that either, if you don’t have those I’m not sure why you’re looking at a cake recipe) Sprinkle with nuts (toast if you so desire)

Whisk together cake mix and pudding, then add remaining cake ingredients and mix. Pour into pan, bake at 325 for one hour.

glaze part: fifteen minutes before cake is done, melt butter in a pot with sugars and water. Bring to a boil, constantly stirring. Take off the heat and stir in rum BE CAREFUL IT BUBBLES UP.

When cake is done, poke holes all over it. Dribble half the glaze over it. Carefully loosen sides of the cake from pan, then cover with a serving plate and invert the cake. Poke holes all over the nutted top half, and dribble remaining glaze all over it.

Tags: booze, butter, cake, semi-homemade

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Soda-unders? Nope, popovers!

17 Jun

I wonder if the author of The Circle is really into baking. He must get that a lot.

When baby was four months old I was really itching to start baking again, but I needed things that required very little time/effort and preferably had lots of reward. Turning to my trusty Moosewood Cookbook (affiliate link), I paged through until I saw a super easy recipe that included the word “or” in the ingredient list. I don’t think I’ve said enough how much I love this cookbook- the recipes are so good and so forgiving and I actually follow them. I love that this recipe says “2 or 3 or 4 eggs.” And despite my love of excess amounts of butter (see super easy french toast souffle), Moosewood in general uses little butter to great effect.

So these are popovers, which I hadn’t had before but I guess are a thing. A DELICIOUS thing! First, butter some muffin tins- I have these little ceramic ramekins and I microwaved two tablespoons for thirty seconds and stirred it up. Also, we have pastry brushes now (thanks, Crate and Barrel wedding gift cards!)

I haven’t greased pans a lot in this way- guess I have to BRUSH up on my skills

Butter, flour, eggs, milk, salt. That’s it for these crisp-on-the-outside, custardy-on-the-inside soft rolls. And it’s just one bowl.

I feel like I’m running out of puns… guess I should milk my head for what I can

After whisking up the eggs, add the flour and salt and beat that. Then pour into your buttered muffin tins.

My lovely ladle lumps (I realize that is a whisk but I am tired let’s just pretend it’s a ladle and that ladle sounds like lady)

I used to always get confused when people said “in” after a “y” sound because I thought it sounded like my name (Minnesota accent?). I wonder if that famous blind musician got confused a lot when people baked muffins and said oh look, an ar-RAY of muffins

That’s it! Half an hour from start to finish, even faster than lime pie! These are so good fresh and hot with nothing, or with a bit of jam or butter on them. After they come out, poke the top sides with a fork so the steam can escape.

Moosewood Popovers

2 TB melted butter

4 eggs (moosewood says 2 or 3 but I love eggs)

1 1/4 c milk

1 1/4 c flour

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 375, and grease a muffin tin with the melted butter. Whisk the eggs with the milk until mixed, then add the flour and salt and whisk together. Pour into the muffin tins and bake for 35 minutes until the top looks dry. Prick with a fork and eat!

Tags: butter, easy, savory

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Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Pumpkin gnocchi with sage brown butter

26 Oct

In my last two weeks of pregnancy I really, really wanted cinnamon rolls. Turns out cinnamon rolls are one of those things that are everywhere when you aren’t looking for them, and then mysteriously disappear as soon as you want them/are super gigantic and can’t travel very far. I ended up getting some from the grocery store (the Mariano’s ones were way better than the Whole Foods ones), and an un-iced one from the bakery down the street (why would you have an un-iced cinnamon roll?!) These were not satisfying, so the last thing I baked before baby came was those awesome vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls that I always make when I want cinnamon rolls.

Cinn-fully delicious. This is apparently a standard cinnamon roll pun.

They were packed with butter because I’m not actually vegan. I should’ve made cream cheese frosting for them instead of the vegan simple white icing (powdered sugar + milk + vanilla).

Anyways, almost every time I make those cinnamon rolls I end up making pumpkin gnocchi, because they don’t use an entire can of pumpkin. They leave just enough leftover pumpkin to make a recipe of gnocchi. Pumpkin gnocchi = way easier/faster than potato, though probably the same if you start from raw pumpkin. It’s taken me three hours to make potato gnocchi, while pumpkin come together in about half an hour if you don’t bother to do the dimpling (which I don’t because I’m lazy).

Cinnamon rolls are not a necessary ingreedyent, but make them if you’re feeling greedy.

So few ingredients! Flour, pumpkin, eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg. Also, in our defense I made the gnocchi the day after the cinnamon rolls. So that’s why we’ve already eaten four of them.

Orange you glad I make so many puns for you?

The key to gnocchi is to not mix it too much- a very, very light touch is needed, or else the dumplings get gluey/chewy instead of pillowy. Start your pot of water boiling now. Once your ingredients are barely mixed, you need to lightly roll the dough into four ropes (about half an inch in diameter) and cut the dumplings with a fork.

Let me show you the ropes, kid. These are the ropes. No literally.

This would be a terrible pillow fight.

I cut one rope at a time, then toss that batch of gnocchi into the pot. It takes about the same amount of time to cut a rope as it does for one batch to cook. The gnocchi are done when they rise to the top of the water. Use a slotted spoon to pick them up.

I wonder if the author of Tortilla Curtain makes pasta a lot- you know, b/c he’s Boyle all the time.

Leave them in a colander and toss them with a little olive oil so they don’t stick to each other.

I have a windowsill herb garden so I threw tons of sage leaves into a most of a stick of butter.

When horses take photos, I wonder if they go “Say Gee!” (sounds like sage)

Sage brown butter, if you haven’t had it before, is amazing. Just put butter into a pan until it sizzles, then stops sizzling (that’s the browning part), and then put in a ton of sage leaves. Recipes on the internet call for eight leaves, which is crazy. Put in as many as you can. The crispy sage leaves are delicious! And they impart such a rich flavor to the butter.

Once the sauce is done, throw the gnocchi in the pan, toss, and eat with some grated parmesan on top.

Pumpkin gnocchi with sage brown butter sauce

Gnocchi recipe is unadapted from The Skinny Fork, so I won’t write it here.

Sauce:

Melt 6-8 TB of butter in a pan, until it sizzles, foams, and subsides. Butter will be nut brown. Add 8-20 sage leaves and let them fry for a few minutes. Don’t let them burn! Eat with anything.

Tags: butter, pumpkin, savory

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Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Chris’s super-easy and super-impressive French toast souffle

15 Jul

I’m a huge sucker for deals. The other day I wanted ice cream and was going to buy a pint, but then saw that for just $1 more I could get TWO half-gallons (a two for the price of one deal). So I ended up getting those, only to realize when I got home that I’d accidentally bought LOW FAT ice cream (egads!) So I feel like I got suckered into buying a product that I didn’t want. That said, we’re still eating the ice cream; it’s just not as good.

That story was just an intro to say that this dish is a really good deal. It’s very, very little work for a lot of return-literal “ooh”s and “aah”s. My friend Chris (who, incidentally, made one of my favorite sites involving Rodents Of Unusual Size) sent this to me via one of those chain-email recipe exchange things that never work. Lucky for me I got this recipe, which I’ve made again and again since 2011.

You’ll maybe not want to whisk life and limb for this souffle, but definitely try it to your fullest CAPacity

I realize I took the above photo a little bit late- the first thing you want to do is put a stick of butter in your pan of choice (Chris likes deep and narrow; I like whatever I have on hand), and stick it in your oven, which you’ll heat to 425.

Not a pun: I think I’ll start calling grilled cheese sandwiches “butter melts”. Sounds so good right now.

While the butter is melting, put all your other ingredients in a bowl and whisk, whisk away. I do the eggs first, then other stuff.

I hate it when people sugar-coat bad news

Just give it to me and maybe I”ll figure out if it’s a mixed blessing or not

By the time your oven is preheated, your butter should be melty and bubbly. Pull out the pan, pour your bowl of delicious stuff right on top of the butter, and toss it back in the oven.

If someone with ombre blonde-brunette hair hangs from her knees on monkey bars, would you call her upside-Brown?

This POURcelain dish is perfect for what’s happening here.

Who needs root beer floats when you can have a butter float?

After thirty minutes, you’ll have a gorgeous, poofy souffle that took none of the work compared to usual souffle recipes. I’ve had it with cinnamon sugar on top, maple syrup, or my favorite, toss on cut up berries (any kind) and a spoonful of sugar- the heat will slightly cook the berries and sugar. Serve IMMEDIATELY (or the poof will go down) with a side of berries. I love the almost crispy chewy crust in contrast with the creamy center pieces. It’s all delicious.

Chris’s French Toast Souffle

1/4 cup (1 stick) butter

3 eggs

1.5 cups milk

6 TB sugar

3/4 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Optional toppings: more sugar, cinnamon, maple syrup, berries…

Put the stick of butter in a pan, place in oven, and preheat oven to 425.

Whisk eggs in a bowl. Add milk, sugar, flour, and salt and mix until smooth.

If the butter isn’t bubbling yet, wait. When it is, pour batter into the pan over butter.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve immediately with desired toppings.

Tags: brunch, butter, souffle

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Snickerdoodles, or more morning baking

12 Jun

This KitchenAid stand mixer is changing my life! Baking during breakfast is awesome!

No normal subgroups here! Sorry, this is a math pun, and only if you’ve taken abstract algebra (no normal subgroups = simple)

I particularly liked my students this semester, so I made cookies for the last day of class. The first summer I taught (the very first college course I taught!), I made two kinds of cupcakes for my students. But I didn’t actually like the students that much (the cupcakes were DELICIOUS- margarita flavored (tequila-lime cupcake with salted lime frosting) and Irish car bomb flavored (Guiness cupcake, filled with whiskey-chocolate ganache, topped with Bailey’s frosting)), just baking. And it was summer, so I had extra time. Anyways. These cookies were thrown together while I was making hashbrowns + eggs for

If I put some trinkets in a glass of lemon+sugar+water, it probably won’t be as good a kitsch in ade as this one!

Snickerdoodles are ridiculously straightforward: beat butter, sugar, eggs, add flour and leavening. Pretty much all snickerdoodle recipes out there tell you to use cream of tartar+baking soda instead of baking powder, but I didn’t have any. Whatever! They still ended up delicious! Form into balls and roll in cinnamon-sugar.

I should try this pick up line on husband while making these: will you be a sin o’ mine, sugar?

We watched Clueless yesterday and I can’t stop thinking about “rollin with the homies”

Bake for not too long while you eat breakfast!

Sometimes he likes to help out in the kitchen, but he never knows when I’ll go BALListic on him (those are too close, damnit!)

These also cool nicely and pack well in tupperware.

Ridiculously easy snickerdoodles (adapted from the internet and cut in half from most recipes, makes about 2 dozen)

1 stick butter (1/2 c butter)

3/4 c sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 c flour

1/2 TB baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 TB sugar

Beat the butter with the sugar until fluffy, then beat in the egg. Add flour and baking powder and beat. Form into balls.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Roll the snickerdoodle balls in the cinnamon sugar, then place about 1 inch apart on a baking sheet (they do spread, but only a little bit)

Bake at 400 for 10 minutes until just golden brown on the edges (you want crisp edges but soft and cakey middles). Let cool.

Tags: butter, cinnamon, cookies

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Fractions are hard, or way too many brown butter cookies

8 Feb

Sometimes I have parties at my house. I enjoy hosting people, and I especially enjoy feeding people. There usually comes some time between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. when there’s no more food but still plenty of people, and I get ~~bored of my friends~~ antsy to bake. I threw a party to celebrate moving out, so of course at some point I stopped what I was doing and made brown butter cookies.

I bet Fall Out Boy would love these cookies. We’re going brown, brown… sugar we’re going brown baking

I love brown butter with some sage leaves, tossed over gnocchi or pasta, so I wondered if brown butter cookies would work out. I didn’t have a lot of people over, which meant I didn’t want to make 5 dozen cookies, so I decided to divide the recipe by four. Totally reasonable.

Start by melting your butter: two cups divided by four is half a cup, or one stick.

Foam, foam on the range, where the butter and the pots play, where seldom is heard, a discouraging burn, and the skies are the ceiling all day

It’ll foam up and then die down, and you just let it cook for a few minutes until it turns a beautiful brown.

There used to be some loose tea in this bowl, but it vacated when the butter moved in. If I look into these patterns, can I read how tea leaves?

While the butter is browning, toast up some pecans, either on the stove in a hot pan with nothing in it (stir every thirty seconds or so) or in the oven. I went with oven. Takes a few minutes in either case.

Hear hear, a toast! We didn’t think P. could, but yes, P. Can!

Set aside about two tablespoons of the butter for icing, then mix all your ingredients except for flour together with the butter, starting with the brown sugar.

Brown butter-brown sugar. I can’t remember if I used brown eggs- guess I browned out. (This is a double entendre but not a sexual one).

Then add the flour. Here’s what I did: the original recipe called for 3 cups of flour. I looked at it and thought, oh, 3/4. Inexplicably, I then multiplied 3 by 3/4 to get 9/4, or 2 and a 1/4 cups of flour, which I then dumped in.

Hippies need to leave- there’s way too much flour power going on here

“That’s weird…” I thought. These cookies are WAY too floury to hold together. It took me another few minutes to figure out what had gone wrong. Frankly, I was amazed I’d done something so bone-headed. (This is funny because there’s a really big bone in our heads, and I’d be concerned if someone didn’t have a skull.)

Of course I wasn’t going to give up on these cookies now. So I halved the recipe and did everything again (because 1/4 + 1/2 = 3/4, a fact that I triple checked before I restarted).

Now the dough was a reasonable texture, and a dropped tablespoon at a time baked for ten minutes resulted in beautiful, buttery, brown cookies. Mix the set aside butter (now there should be about 6 tablespoons) with some powdered sugar (I used around 3/4 cup) and a dash of vanilla, and use it to frost the cookies. Apparently you were supposed to mix hot water in there too, which I didn’t realize until now. Given how well I’d done earlier in the night with reading comprehension, I shouldn’t be surprised I messed up another step.

Anyways. These cookies are super delicious and ridiculously rich and buttery.

Brown butter cookies, recipe poorly followed but turned out great from all recipes:

To make 45 cookies

3 sticks of butter (1 and 1/2 cups)

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 egg

vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

2 1/4 cups flour

handful of chopped pecans (I used the rest of a bag in my freezer)

1 cup confectioners sugar

Melt butter and let foam and die down until it’s a rich brown color, then pour into a big bowl. Take out 3/4 cup or so and put in a small bowl, set aside.

Preheat oven to 350, toast pecans if you want them.

Mix the butter with the brown sugar, then add the rest of the ingredients except for flour, pecans, and powdered sugar. I like putting in a liberal amount of vanilla- maybe 1/2 TB.

Stir in the flour and pecans. Drop onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes to get a slightly crisp outside and soft middle.

Mix the powdered sugar with the set-aside brown butter and another dash of vanilla until frosting-like. Recipe says to add hot water, which would make it easier to spread and icing-like. If you need more powdered sugar, do so. If it’s too sugary, add some water. Use to frost cooled cookies.

Tags: butter, cookies, nuts

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Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Go shortcake, it’s your birthday

4 Oct

As summer wound down (very very quickly) I thought I’d grab the last of the fresh peaches and make a lazy peach shortcake for a Sunday afternoon treat. Now that we’re full into fall I guess this recipe isn’t as relevant, but maybe for my California family- this recipe works with any fruit. Strawberry is the obvious choice, but any kind of berry or mix (blueberry-peach? raspberry-mango?) will work. Don’t be stingy with your whipped cream and you’ll be fine.

Basking in bis(cuit ma)king

Biscuits are super easy. They’re one of the first things I made when I was studying abroad and had a teeny tiny kitchen in Budapest. We had no measuring spoons and didn’t really know how to use the oven, but we made delicious little bumps of dough that turned out great.

Oh biscuits, I’d whisk it all for you

Again, you want to use a whisk or sifter here. No one likes baking powder clumps in their baked goods.

Chip chop in the bowl

The party don’t stop no

I’m used to using two knives to cut in butter, but a pastry blender would be better. Or a food processor!

There there, batter, everything’ll be okay. Just need a few pats (of butter)

The recipe I used called for rolling out the batter and cutting out biscuits, but why would I do that? Clumps of dough totally work.

Step up to the plate, boys, and watch the mound- he’s got a good one in there

Yeah? Him and what army? Oh.

While the shortcakes bake, you can cut up your fruit and sprinkle a little sugar on it to let it macerate in the fridge.

Feeling peachy!

And then whip the cream, just as we did for the pavlova.

Remember that this takes a few minutes but the results are so worth it.

Then assemble! I didn’t feel like doing it myself so I just put out all the ingredients for everyone to make their own.

DIY dessert

Worked out pretty well!

Peach shortcake (From David Lebovitz, but lazier)

2 c flour

2 c baking powder

1.5 TB sugar

1 stick butter

2/3 c buttermilk (I put 1 TB white vinegar in a measuring cup, then add enough milk to make it to 2/3 cup. Let sit for a few minutes)

4 peaches

1 TB sugar

1.5 c heavy cream

1/4 c powdered sugar

Dash vanilla

First, you can cut up the peaches and throw some sugar over them for as long as you like before you start.

Mix dry ingredients for biscuits (flour, sugar, baking powder), then cut in butter using two knives until it’s the size of corn kernels (wow, nice job, David Lebovitz!) Add the buttermilk and mix until just blended. Knead lightly, then form into 12 small biscuits or 6 big tall ones if you like cutting them in half. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until lightly browned on the edges.

For whipped cream, whip the cream for a long time, until it starts to have some volume and density to it. Then toss in the sugar and keep whipping until it looks like whipped cream. Add in the vanilla and whip until mixed.

Assembly: cut the big biscuits in half or layer little biscuits in a sandwich with peaches and cream. Yumsters!

Tags: butter, fruit, whipped cream

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

Flourless chocolate cake

15 Sep

Birthday boy pavlova + flourless chocolate cake!

It’s been done a million times and you’ve had it in all the restaurants, but it’s still so good and so easy. Flourless chocolate cake. Four ingredients: egg yolks, butter, chocolate chips, milk. You should make this when you’re feeling VERY indulgent. I paired it with the pavlova from last week for my boyfriend’s birthday, and it went quite well: the light airy pavlova with the ultra-dense gooey chocolate cake.

No ingredient picture this time because I was making it while making the pavlova and was a little overwhelmed.

Butter? I barely know ‘er!

Melt your butter, set aside. Then in the same pot, melt your chocolate chips in the milk and whisk until smooth:

How I whisk you were here… I’d make you a cake!

The recipe called for seven egg yolks but I just had the six from the pavlova. Whatever! Still delicious!

Ah, to be free of this yoke of unused yolks!

Aside: apparently there’s all sorts of food safety with saving leftover yolks/whites etc. If you aren’t making two desserts at once like I did, you should check out this site with food handling tips. Then again, that site says not to do the egg separating trick because shells can hold bacteria. Where are you getting your eggs?!

Anyways, beat up those yolks, then alternate adding the butter and yolks to the chocolate-milk stuff, beating each time.

Beat a bit of butter in your batter. Then do it again with yolks.

Finally throw the whole thing into a greased pan and bake for half an hour!

I had a friend in middle school named Em. If he were here I’d say Em, pour! Yum! And he’d be like, Yen we aren’t in a store here.

Let it cool (maybe throw it in the freezer), and top with powdered sugar and fresh fruit, or whipped cream.

Recipe adapted from about.com I am so serious:

6 egg yolks

2 sticks butter

1 c milk

1 bag chocolate chips

Melt the butter, set aside.

Whisk the chocolate chips into the milk over medium heat, until smooth.

Add about 1/3 of the butter to the chocolate-milk and beat until mixed. Then add 2 of the egg yolks and beat. Alternate butter, egg, butter, egg until you’re done.

Pour into a greased dish [I used a glass 8″ pie pan] (or a springform pan lined with parchment paper if you’re fancier than me). Bake at 350 for half an hour. It’ll look totally uncooked in the middle; don’t even worry about it. Take it out, let it cool, throw it in the freezer/fridge.

When ready to serve, top with powdered sugar and fresh fruit. Serves lots of people.

Tags: butter, chocolate, easy, gluten-free

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Baking
Author yenergy

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