HI (ate us)!

FRIENDS, don’t run away. I’ve been busy. I know, I’m sorry, it seems like I say that a lot. But check it–this time I’m totally excused. I have a new job and a new apartment and I’m mid-move…so not a lot of baking has been happening.

Give mama a few days to collect herself and spread out her belongings in a new place and then I’ll be back in a brand new kitchen, ready to rock your large brains (compliments: they’ll get you everywhere) with so much baking, it’ll make you sick. Sick like this awesome flip I performed this past weekend:

MARVEL ME. Then forgive, friends. Forgive me for my general flakiness. I’m not usually like this, and I’ma make it up to you. Promise.

Oh, honey

Oh. Honey. This ice cream? Words are failing me today. There aren’t any words. Just:

Go. Go to the store. Buy some cream, and some milk, and a vanilla bean. If you don’t already have those things.

Then get some honey. Some really f’ing good honey. Maybe your dad is a beekeeper (holler at me offspring of beekeepers!), and you have honey of your own, I don’t know. If not, maybe splurge at a natural foods store or farmer’s market to get some local stuff. You won’t use too much of it, and you won’t regret it. Store bought honey, I’m sorry, I need to be snotty here: it fucking sucks.

Then slice open that vanilla bean. Simmer it in some milk.

Stir in that honey and a pinch of salt after it’s cooled. Pour in the cream. Put it in the fridge. Do as I say.

Then get out your ice cream maker. If you don’t have one, go buy one! What is wrong with you? Don’t you love delicious ice cream? With your own mixer, it’ll cost you about $2 to make a quart of it, and you can put all sorts of crazy crap in it. If you get an electric one, there is literally no work to be done. GO. GO DO IT.

Then churn it. CHURN THAT DELICIOUS CONCOCTION.

THEN FREEZE IT. AND SCOOP IT.

PUT IT IN A BOWL. Put fruit on it. Dice up some nectarines and sprinkle in some raspberries. Eat it plain. I DON’T GIVE A SHIT HOW YOU LIKE YOUR ICE CREAM, JUST PLEASE TELL ME YOU’LL DO THIS FOR ME. FOR YOU. LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, I’M WRITING IN ALL CAPS.

Because there are no words, friends. No. Words. For how delicious this is. It’s the most delicious. It has no equal. Before I can bust out any more superlatives, please see for yourself. PLEASE. Go!

Honey Ice Cream
adapted from Pure Dessert

2 cups cream
3/4 cup milk (I used 2% but I think the recipe says whole)
1/2 vanilla bean (or splash some vanilla extract in there)
1/3 cup honey (you might want more. I like mine mild)
1/8 tsp salt

Cut the vanilla bean in half and slice one half open. Scrape out the seeds with the back of a knife and stir them and the pod into the milk. In a small saucepan, warm the milk & vanilla mixture over medium heat until it begins to simmer gently around the edges. Pour it into a medium bowl, and allow to cool completely. (This will prevent curdling when the honey is added.) Add the honey and salt, and stir well to dissolve the honey. Stir in the cream. Taste, and adjust the amount of honey as needed. Cover and chill thoroughly, preferably overnight.

Freeze according to the instructions for your ice cream maker. Then, before serving, store the ice cream in the freezer until hard enough to scoop, at least 3 to 4 hours.

Yield: about 1 quart

On things coming up Milhouse

What does it mean, dear readers, when a black cat avoids YOUR path? Because that is what happened to me the other day as I was walking down the street, minding my own bidness. There are only a few ways to interpret this reaction from His Unluckiness. 1) My luck is so bad that if a black cat crossed MY path, the combined unluckiness that it would create would cause the world to implode; 2) My luck is so GOOD that a black cat doesn’t want to cross my path and negate all his bad luck and cause the world’s magnetic fields to switch and we’d all turn inside out and fire and brimstone would rain down from the skies; or 3) Black cats are scared of blonde chicks with forceful walking styles.

My instinct is to say, easy, it’s clearly reason #1. It certainly isn’t #2. And come on, I have a LITTLE bit of hip-swagger, right? But then, the other day, I made this torte. No, like, I MADE IT. I didn’t even follow a recipe. I just threw a whole bunch of shit together and hoped for the best. And this is the strange part, friends. The best happened.

I’m one of those people. The best NEVER happens to me. I’m the girl who falls asleep with a mosquito in her room and a juicy foot dangling outside the covers. I’m the girl who shows up to her senior thesis critique an hour late even though it was held at the exact same time her class had been held ALL SEMESTER LONG. I’m the girl who cuts herself, or gets food poisoning, or trips on that tiny root, or pulls her hamstring 8 times, or spills oil on, then accidentally bleaches, then shrinks, and then rips a hole in her favorite shirt. I am her. She is me.

At least until the other day. When I made this torte. And my life changed.

Because….it worked. And I did it. It came from me and it wasn’t a complete disaster! Maybe the magnetic poles of the earth ARE changing. Maybe black cats are noticing this change in me. Maybe they can tell. Maybe, just maybe….everything is going to start coming up Milhouse.

Before we get carried away, let’s talk about the torte (or many wee tortes, as it were). First of all, I guess I need to retract my previous statement about this being “the best.” Don’t get me wrong (whenever I write that I sing that Pretenders song in my head as I type the words), it’s a very good torte, but it’s not the best I’ve ever had. It’s based loosely on something I ate last week at my new favorite bakery in the world, Tartine. Theirs was much more buttery and sugary, and a ton moister. I went hearty with mine, using whole wheat flour and sprinkling it with oats and nuts. But that’s just the kind of baker I tend to be…earthier and less sweet.

So, yeah, it’s good, probably could use more butter and maybe some sour cream or something for the cake part. But hey, it’s the first time I’ve ever tried to just bake something with no real direction. So let’s take it easy on me here. Hopefully as I get more comfortable with the basics, these kinds of things can happen more often. Oh, right, and I put some plum jam on 2 of the tortes (to make the heart-shaped ones red, natch). A little bit of that jam definitely tarted them up a ton, so feel free to experiment with this kind of ingredient shenanigan, although there is something so pleasantly mild and wonderful about an apricot that has been baked in the oven for a while that maybe you might feel the need to let well enough alone.

Whatever you do, go forth and experiment! It’s fun and sometimes it makes you feel like good old Milhouse when he grudgingly wore those floodpants for no real good reason, but then Homer flooded the streets of Springfield in the name of art, and, well, you know the rest.

Apricot Torte with Crumbly Topping
adapted from my life experience, my recent torte at Tartine, and some general research online

3/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter (8 tbsp), softened
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)
8-10 apricots, pitted and sliced into wedges

Crumbly Topping:
6 tbsp butter
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 11″ tart pan or several smaller pans.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar. Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the extracts, beating well. On low speed, add the flour mixture in thirds, beating until combined. Press into the tart pan with wet fingers.
Press the apricot wedges on top (don’t skimp, you’ll always want more).
In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter, flour, oats, and sugars. Beat with the paddle attachment on medium speed until the mixture is crumbly. Stir in the nuts. With your hands, sprinkle the topping on top of the apricots, pressing down lightly.
Bake for 30-45 minutes (I have no idea how hot your oven is), or until a knife inserted into the center of the torte comes out clean (well, maybe there’s some apricot juice on it…but clean enough).

Preserving the Plum

I’ve been AWOL, I know. I’m totally sorry. Life is strange and wonderful, and sometimes it’s a calm sea and I’m sailing in an open boat and the breeze is blowing lightly through my hair and I can see the shore, and sometimes I’m upside down at the bottom of the ocean wondering if that seahorse can administer CPR. That’s the best explanation I can give to you at the moment. I’m going to try to not let another week go by, but this coming week promises to be a doozy. Plus, Harry Potter comes out on Wednesday. HP! The penultimate! I mean, no nerd I know is not excited by that. And as far as nerds go…well, sometimes I feel like I put Liz Lemon to shame.

Today my sister’s friend Hannah came by to help us preserve the 850 million plums growing on the trees in the backyard. Hannah grew up on a ranch in eastern Oregon, and she makes her own yogurt and granola and she brought with her a fig and mascarpone tart, so she is obviously a woman after my own heart. After a trip to IKEA and Sur la Table, during which we had to keep ourselves from buying many assorted kitchen supplies (for real dudes, they had a miniature horse cake tin at IKEA!), we procured some canning supplies and set to work pitting each of the 850 million plums my sister and her boyfriend had picked.

I’m not going to lie, I did minimal work on this project, pitching in only to pit some plums and wipe the jars after Hannah ladled in the preserves. However, I was there to document the entire process, which lasted several hours, interrupted only by burritos outside in the cool Oakland summer air.

So, this plum jam is IN. TENSE. One might say it’s jam-packed with flavor, if one were inclined to make really insipid jokes all the damn time. It’s the kind of thing you smell and your jaw immediately starts tensing up, anticipating the tartness. Hooo boy is this stuff strong. But dag, is it ever good.

;

After you taste it you start dreaming of all the ways you’re going to use it: on english muffins with cream cheese, generously scooped on top of vanilla bean ice cream, swirled into yogurt, sandwiched between a cakey bottom and a crumbly top in a jam bar. The possibilities, although not endless, are endlessly mouth-watering. Or jaw tensing as it were.

The other thing about this jam is that it is one of the prettiest colors I’ve ever seen. Such a deep and satisfying purple, glowing from within sparkling glass and gleaming metal lids. It’s really a sight to behold. It’s the kind of thing that inexplicably makes you feel good. It’s beautiful. It’s jam and it’s beautiful and life is good.

Wild Plum Jam
adapted loosely from Chez Panisse Fruit

2 1/2 pounds plums (about 5 cups diced) [we probably tripled this recipe]
3 cups sugar

Wash and pit the plums. Cut them into 1/2-inch pieces. In a large heavy-bottomed pot, stir the fruit and sugar together and let stand for 15 minutes. Put a small plate in the freezer to use later to test the consistency of the jam.
Prepare 4 8-oz canning jars and lids in boiling water, following the manufacturer’s instructions.
Bring the pot of fruit to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally to make sure it isn’t sticking to the bottom. As the mixture comes to a boil, it will rise up in the pot with big bubbles. During the first 5 minutes, skim off the foam that rises to the top. When the jam subsides but is still bubbling thickly, start to monitor is closely, testing frequently by putting small spoonfuls of jam on the cold plate. When it has cooked to the consistency you like, remove from the heat and carefully ladle the jam into the prepared jars, allowing at least 1/4 inch of headroom, and seal with the lids, following the manufacturer’s instructions. The jam will keep for about a year. Makes 4 cups.

Complicaked

There are things you should know about my friend Purd. We were friends in 1st grade, in Mrs. Purse’s class. We watched The Little Mermaid together in class (and I laughed out loud with the rest of the class when Scuttle twisted the fork in his hair and it poofed out, even though every time I watched it at home, by myself, that part never made me laugh. it’s funny how we do things like that, isn’t it?) and afterward we sang the songs from the movie together in the side yard next to the classroom. Purd left for California in 2nd grade, and in 3rd grade, clearly still beaten up about the disappearance of my friend, I wrote a touching multiplication poem about her (which we discovered together years later, in high school, and almost peed our pants reading). Three times ten is thirty. There used to be a girl named Christen Purdie.

So, we go way back. When Purd came back in 6th grade, her hair was short and she wore California-cool clothes, and we became friends again, slowly, bonding over such age-appropriate things as Sailor Moon and being bitter about how stupid boys are (we still bond over that). And we’ve been friends since. So when our vacation time (well. my whole life is a vacation at this very moment, friends) on Long Island overlapped, and Purd needed help creating a cake for a family party, you have to know I was happy to volunteer my services. Plus it meant we could hang out for about 5 hours straight. It was a complicated cake.

You can see the final product there. Impressive, right? Well, of course we took a bunch of shortcuts that I don’t recommend you taking if you decide to embark on this crazy ass adventure in baking. And to be honest, we’d do some things differently taste-wise. Helping me out on this massive expedition was Purd’s boyfriend, Wes. Here are his hands, cutting mangoes:

Actually, Kristen didn’t really do much at all, except take all the pictures and add the wrong amount of gelatin to the mousse and serve as Art Director when it came time to decorate. But she supervised as Wes and I fumbled our way through what ended up being a very promising but not-quite-the-ticket cake. Here we are, mid-fumble:

It’s not that the cake wasn’t lovely. I assure you it was. But there was something lacking. Some sort of zinging taste that it needed. We thought the lime-flavored icing would do it, and we thought the mango mousse would be more powerful, but we were wrong on both accounts. Next time we might 1) buy mango puree from the store instead of making it from fresh mangoes (we think it would have more of a concentrated mango flavor); 2) perhaps cut the cake recipe in half, making 2 cakes and then cutting those in half for a more slender 4-layer cake (the cake was delicious but a tad overwhelming); and 3) squeeze some lime juice or something into the frosting (as it was there was only the zest, which is beautifully fragrant and subtle and wonderful, but mama was looking for some f’ing ZING, you know?). Also, I smushed one of the cakes with my unwieldy oven mitt. Check it:

AND, because we rushed the cooling process, and because we didn’t have a cake mold (seriously, who has such things?), the cake was a bit on the wonky side. It just looked like one side was a bit droopy, like the cake had a stroke or something. Anyway, Kristen took a ton of pictures, and I’m going to let them do the talking from here on out.

So if you have time to kill and people to impress, I challenge you to this cake. Also, I think you should think about taking elements of this cake and creating different combinations. The lime frosting, for example, I think would be kick-ass with a strawberry chiffon cake. The actual yellow cake from this recipe is pretty perfect for just about any tiered cake endeavor, and I can imagine a nice lemon curd and buttercream frosting going fantastically well with this. And the mango mousse I could’ve eaten plain (and indeed I did…lay off, I needed to taste it to make sure it was the right consistency, 80 separate times). So volunteer to make a birthday cake for one of your friends and experiment. Or don’t, god, you’re so boring, why are we even friends?

Mango Mousse Cake with Lime-Hinted Frosting
adapted from, and with much thanks to, Confessions of a Tart, who thanks Helen of Tartelette

Assembly: Set the first layer of the cake inside a mold. Brush the layer with one-third of the lime/rum syrup (or the mango/rum syrup if you are us). Spread half the mango mousse on top of the cake layer. Lay the second cake layer on top of the mango mousse. Gently press on the top to distribute the mousse evenly. Brush it with another third of the lime/rum syrup. Spread the rest of the mango mousse on top. Place the final layer on top and press lightly. Brush the top with the last third of the syrup. Wrap tightly with plastic and refrigerate for two hours or overnight. Unwrap the cake and either unmold (if using a cake mold) or carefully turn it over onto a round cake board. Prepare the whipped cream frosting and frost the cake. Decorate and allow to set for at least 3 hours.

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake (Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes)
3 3/4 cups cake flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon plus 2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 sticks (10 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups plus 1/3 cup buttermilk
5 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter three 9-inch round cake pans. Line the bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper.

Combine the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixer bowl. With the mixer on low speed, blend for 30 seconds. Add the butter and 1 1/4 cup of the buttermilk. Mix on low speed briefly to blend; then raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the whole eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, and the remaining 1/3 cup buttermilk until well blended. Pour one-third of the egg mixture into the cake batter at a time, folding it in completely after each addition. There will be 9 cups of batter.

Bake for 26 to 28 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Turn the layers out onto wire racks by placing a rack on top of a pan, inverting it, and lifting off the pan. Peel off the paper liners and let cool completely. When the layers have cooled, place a cardboard cake board on top of a layer, invert again, and lift off the rack. To make the layers easier to handle, wrap them on their boards completely in plastic, so they don’t dry out, and refrigerate them.

Mango mousse (Tartelette)
3 teaspoons powdered gelatin, 3 tablespoon water
8 oz mango puree (I made my own from 2 large mangoes, but next time, I think I will buy it for more concentrated mango flavor)
4 tablespoons sugar
1 cup heavy cream, cold

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let it soften while you prepare the fruit. In a medium saucepan, bring the mango puree and sugar to a simmer. Remove from the heat and add the softened gelatin. Stir until the gelatin is completely melted. Transfer the fruit puree to a large bowl and let it cool to room temperature.

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream on medium speed until soft peaks form. Fold about 1/3 of the whipped cream into the fruit puree to lighten it up (do not worry about losing air at this point). Carefully fold in the rest of the whipped cream. Use within one hour.

Rum/lime simple syrup
1/3 cup water
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons rum
1 tablespoon lime juice (we replaced this with about 1/2 cup of mango puree and let it simmer down)

In a small saucepan set over medium high heat, bring all the ingredients to a simmer until the sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally. Let cool to room temperature.

Stabilized Whipped Cream Frosting (Tartelette)
2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 tsp powdered gelatin dissolved in 3 Tb. cold water
grated zest of one lime

Rub the lime zest into the sugar to release the oils. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream with the sugar/lime zest until soft peaks. In the meantime, dissolve the gelatin in the microwave for 10 seconds. Or set the cup where the gelatin was in a large saucepan filled with a couple of inches of water, bringing the water to a simmer and waiting for the gelatin to melt. Slowly pour the gelatin in one steady stream over the whipped cream and continue to whip until firm. If you add your gelatin a little cooled and before the whipped cream is still at soft peaks stage, it should not clump on you. Decorate your cake with the whipped cream and return the cake to the refrigerator to chill until you are ready to serve it, at least 3 hours.

Ovocne knedliky

There is a long list of foods that are more appropriate for the Ultimate American Holiday than Czech fruit dumplings. But you know what? I’m not really in the mood for American fare. It’s too hot out to make a pie crust, I have no interest in many layered and many colored jellos, and…what else do people eat on the 4th of July?

So we’re here with some authentic American quark, straight from good ol’ Vermont. Quark is related to cream cheese I think…it’s much tangier and cheesier though, if you dig. I’ve never made dumplings with it, but it’s the traditional way to make a cheese dough (I once tried with cottage cheese….disaster). In Czech it’s called tvaroh, and you can find it in any Whole Foods. You can also substitute half mascarpone/half fromage blanc, or some sort of combination of soft and tangy cheeses and I bet you’d be golden.

What you’re looking at here is what happens to your dough when you LEAVE THE ROOM FOR 15 SECONDS TO LOOK FOR YOUR PIZZA CUTTER, which you SWORE you packed with you in your overstuffed luggage. But you didn’t, and you wasted precious time rummaging through clothing and various baking accoutrement, and then some sneaky dog sniffed her way towards your freshly rolled out dough. Here’s the part where I should’ve learned, from the Strawberry Cake incident, not to leave my baked goods on the low-ish counter of the butler’s kitchen. But I didn’t. Because I’m not intelligent. Because I repeat my mistakes ALL. THE. TIME. and probably will cotinue to do so for the rest of my life.

But, the silver lining is that I managed to save most of the dough, and Zella spent some time in her crate, where surely she was thinking long and hard about what she did and how she’ll never ever do it again to me. So then I tucked some plums from my sister’s backyard trees into my soft dough and rolled them around until they were cute and spherical, like pudgy racquetballs.

And then I boiled them until they floated and my sister and I set up the 2 different traditional toppings for fruit dumplings: poppyseeds and sugar, and breadcrumbs and sugar. Variety is the spice of life, friends.

And then we poured some melted butter over them for good measure, and dug in.

And they were beautiful, friends. Tart, yes, but beautiful. Next time, knowing how tart the plums from the trees are, we’d add more sugar to the toppings, or maybe even pit the plums and scoop some sugar into where the pit used to be. Next time. Because there will be a next time. Because this is the food of my childhood. I remember sitting down to baseball-sized dumplings and mounds of poppyseeds and sugar and pools of butter at my grandmother’s friend’s house in the Czech Republic. There are comforting things in life, but very few as comforting as the dumpling. The tender dough, the tart fruit, the sweet topping…they’re amazing, and I can’t quite figure out why American culture hasn’t embraced them.

So while you’re thinking about the American Revolution, also be thinking about starting a dumpling revolution. It’s time for dumplings to be represented in our daily cuisine. Will you accept the challenge?

Look at them. How could you resist?

Olga’s Fruit Dumplings with Cheese Dough
adapted from the Eugene Register-Guard, strangely enough

2 cups all-purpose flour
8 oz quark (or 4 oz mascarpone, 4 oz fromage blanc)
1 egg
pinch salt
1/4 cup milk
8 to 10 small italian plums (halved & pitted) or 16 very small plums (whole)

Mix the flour, cheese, egg, and salt together in a bowl. Add milk by the tablespoonful until the dough becomes smooth and soft, but not sticky. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Bring a pot of lightly salted water to boil.

Dust a workspace with flour and roll the dough into a 12-inch square. Using a sharp knife or pizza cutter (ONLY IF IT IS READILY AVAILABLE OR YOU DO NOT HAVE A THIEVING DOG), cut the square into 16 smaller squares.

Place each plum in the center of a square. Pinch up the corners and then roll in your palm until the fruit in completely enclosed. Drop the dumplings (in batches) into the boiling water and boil for 5 to 7 minutes, turning them from time to time. After they rise to the surface, they should cook about 1 or 2 minutes longer.

Remove with a slotted spoon. Serve on small plates.

For toppings:

Breadcrumbs: In a small frying pan, melt a few tablespoons of butter. Add a cup or so of breadcrumbs and about 1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar. Add more sugar as desired (usually depends on how sweet your fruit is). Sprinkle generously over dumplings.

Poppyseeds: So, for this, you either need to buy a poppyseed-sugar mix (my sister brought some back from the Czech Republic), or you need to grind up a whole bunch of poppyseeds (probably around 1/2 cup). You can probably do this with a mortar and pestle if you are hardcore, or in a food processor. Then, mix with about an equal amount of powdered sugar (maybe a smidge less, yeah?). Sprinkle generously over dumplings and then pour some melted butter over the tops.