Bakin-n-Bacon

The Glories of Bacon

For once it looks like I was slightly ahead of the curve. A Time magazine article online today celebrates the pig in all its glory.

Maybe it's a recession-driven money saver, or maybe we just feel the need to get back in touch with what we eat, but Americans everywhere are discovering the pleasures of home-cured bacon. Culinary blogs are replete with homemade-bacon recipes, including how to make pancetta. Mario Batali's recipe for guanciale, cured pig cheek, has gone viral. Leading the piggy parade is food writer Michael Ruhlman, who has challenged his blog readers to make a BLT from scratch - including homegrown lettuce and tomatoes and homemade bread - shoot a picture, submit it and win a prize: his latest book Ratio.

Read all about it here.

Beet That!

The farmers' markets around here are in full swing, and I've been going crazy with purchases. Since a beautiful bunch of beets was only $1.00, I just had to get them, even though I had no idea what to do with them. The only way we ever had beets when I was growing up was as the predominant ingredient in vegetable soup. Apparently that stemmed from the time my great grandparents spend in the Ukraine, on the border with Moldova. The first time I tasted borscht, I immediately thought of my family's vegetable soup. It took me a long time to appreciate the flavor of the beet in that soup, but I finally grew to like it. However, the only other experience I had with beets was as garnishes on Greek salads, so I really didn't know how to use them.

Of course I went to the interwebs to see what I could find. A recipe for beet salad on epicurious looked promising and very attractive, so I adapted it to the ingredients I had on hand. I roasted the beets, then cooled and cubed them. They were topped with herbed goat cheese, mandarin oranges, and some fresh from the garden salad greens (the epicurious recipe used golden beets instead of the oranges, and called for baby mache, which I could not find here). I made a vinaigrette with toasted walnut oil I recently scored on sale, and sprinkled walnut pieces around to complement the vinaigrette. (The epicurious recipe called for pistachios and pistachio oil, and if I ever find some of that I'm buying it!)

The vinaigrette really brought the elements together, and it was great. I'm still not a fan of beets other than in vegetable soup, though. Count me among the unconverted when it comes to this really pretty vegetable.

New Bundt Shape (or, Another Promise Broken)

I was at the Mall of America (or, as my husband likes to call it, the Maul of America) last week, and of course I HAD to stop in at every food and/or cookware store I could find. Unfortunately there aren't many, although perhaps it's a good thing because I didn't blow too much money. I was on the lookout for a kitchen timer since my old one finally bit the dust. I guess there is a limit on how many times you can drop it on the floor and then accidentally kick it against the fridge while scrambling to pick it back up. At least it didn't suffer the same fate as the last one, which was dropped into a pan of boiling water and boiled alive. Oops. Perhaps I should just revert to an old-fashioned mechanical model, but I really like the feature that begins counting up when the timer goes off, so you can tell just how long you have overbaked your goodies since you had Cake (what else, when you are baking?) cranking on the stereo and couldn't hear the beeping.

So there I was in Williams Sonoma (which one of my friends has aptly renamed "Wellborn Senoras"), gazing at the lovely Apilco and shiny All-Clad that I really don't need (I have Mauviel 2.5mm copper pans, so I mean it when I say I don't need AC), when the new Bundt shape caught my eye. When Nordicware started coming out with all of the specialty shapes in Bundt pans I went crazy and bought each and every new shape they made, despite the fact that some of the shapes really didn't look good or perform well. I ended up giving my least favorite shapes away, stopped buying the new ones, and limited myself strictly (strictly!) to my six favorite specialty shapes, plus the original Bundt pan I started with. Well, since I hadn't bought anything for the kitchen since we moved in December (that has to be some kind of record), I splurged on this new pan. I did, however, avoid buying some cute little cupcake pans and popover pans, so all was not lost. Still, I broke my promise to myself. I think I will just quit making promises and save myself a step and some guilt.

This pan is one of the better specialty shapes. It released pretty cleanly, with only one little sticky spot, which I was able to "glue" back together with icing. The shape is gorgeous, notwithstanding that my photograph above is dizzying with its odd perspective.

I used my most reliable non-chocolate Bundt pan recipe in this. It came with one of the Martha Stewart Bundt shapes, although I forget now which one that was. I think it was the Star pan, which was one of my least favorites and was given away. No amount of greasing, flouring, praying and voodoo priestesses could keep that pan from having chunks of cake sticking to it. 

The recipe I used above is Lavender-Lemon Cake, and it's a great recipe. I usually grind the lavender flowers in my mortar and pestle before adding them to the cake batter, because those cute little lavender petals look a lot like dead pantry moths once they are baked into a cake. Ewww.

The glaze is simply confectioner's sugar and lemon juice. Easy yet tasty. Since I can no longer find the cake recipe on Martha's website, I am going to reproduce it below. It includes a couple of my tweaks, so if it doesn't turn out don't blame poor Martha. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Lavender Lemon Cake   

3 cups (12 oz) cake flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda    

1/4 tsp salt   

2 sticks unsalted butter   

1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest

2 tsp to 1 tbsp dried lavender flowers, crushed

1 1/2 cups (10.5 oz) sugar  

4 large eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 tsp lemon extract  

1/2 tsp vanilla 

1 cup plain yogurt    

 

Have all ingredients at room temperature. Position rack in lower third of oven and preheat to 325. Butter and flour a bundt pan; tap out excess flour. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt onto a sheet of waxed paper; set aside. In bowl of electric mixer, beat butter on medium speed until creamy and smooth, about 30 seconds. Add sugar, lemon zest and lavender and beat until light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes; stop and scrape bowl occasionally. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition; add lemon and vanilla extracts. On very low speed, add flour mixture in three additions, alternating with yogurt and ending with flour; blend each addition until just incorporated. Fold in lemon zest. Spoon batter into pan and spread so that outside edge is about 1 inch higher than inside edge. Bake until cake springs back when touched, about 1 hour (start checking after 45 minutes). Transfer to a cooling rack and cool in pan for about 15 minutes. Turn cake out onto a wire rack, cool to room temperature, and glaze as desired.

"Happiness is Baking Cookies"

The title of this post is a quote from Maida Heatter in her cookbook Maida Heatter's Cookies, which I recently purchased used from an Amazon.com vendor. I got the 1997 edition, which has a glowing foreword by Wolfgang Puck. (As an aside, I'm not sure how I feel about Chef Puck since I see him so frequently on QVC as I channel surf, hocking his latest cookware or gadget. I suppose it's great that he is making money and perhaps encouraging people to cook more. I guess I am prejudiced against any of the home shopping networks because there is just so much junk on them, even though there are good things too.)

Anyhoo, back to the book. Flipping through the book, there seem to be several potentially excellent cookie recipes, which I'm eager to try. The first one I attempted is a bar cookie, Cinnamon Almond Cookies. According to Maida they are "rather thin, buttery, crisp cinnamon cookies with a lemon glaze."

One of the problems I always have when beginning to bake from a new book is determining the weight to use for flour. It seems Maida likes to sift her flour before measuring, so I've taken a light hand with the weights. I used 3.75 ounces of flour per cup for this recipe but I might need to bump it up to 4 ounces because the dough seemed a tad sticky and the resulting cookies a bit greasy.

As I thought, the lemon flavor is weak since there is just a tablespoon of lemon juice in the glaze. Next time I might add either lemon extract or zest to boost the flavor a little. I also added nutmeg (the recipe only called for cinnamon, but I almost always add either nutmeg or cardamom to anything cinnamon, since I like both of those flavors better than cinnamon alone.)

All in all, a pretty good cookie, but not one that really knocked my socks off. They did go over quite well with friends, and I will probably try them again, with a bit more flour.

Even though these cookies didn't wow me, I still agree with Maida's quote. I might even stencil it on my kitchen soffit, if I ever get around to painting in there as I promised myself I would do immediately when we moved in...eight months ago. Other half-finished projects must be completed first, however. My husband has forbidden me from starting any new projects until I finish the old ones, and I suppose he's right (did you read that, honey? Good, because I'm not saying it again).

Maida's quote reminded me of the line that Julie Powell's character in Julie and Julia said about baking as she made a chocolate cream pie. To paraphrase, no matter how hectic, horrible or chaotic your work day has been, it's good to know that you can mix together chocolate, eggs and cream and it's going to become thick and delicious.

I am going to end this post with a request. If anyone has any recommendations from Maida's cookie book, please share them here. I'd love to know if there are any great recipes that I might miss because the description doesn't do them justice.

Flea Market Finds

I normally do not purchase vintage kitchen implements or tools. I'm not going to replace my KitchenAid with a hand-cranked beater any time soon, so any nostalgia I have for old-fashioned implements is limited to those handed down to me by family members.

However, I had to make an exception for the vintage decorating tools I spotted at a local antique shop. This lovely set of decorating tools was still in its original box, with the original tissue paper wrapper around the tips, and complete with the instruction manual, all for the unbelievable price of $6.00!

I'm not sure how old this set is, but I think it must be 50-60 years old. I base this on the type of box used, by the illustration of the stove in the instruction manual, and on the fact that the coupler in the set is metal.

I probably won't use the tips themselves, since I have most of those tips in my toolkit already, but I have already used the coupler. I really dislike the plastic coupler, since I am afraid I will break it, especially if I have a really stiff icing. That probably wouldn't happen, but the plastic coupler is also more bulky and just doesn't feel right. However, this metal coupler is very sturdy and heavy, and I know it will not break no matter how hard I squeeze.

If anyone has any idea of how old this set is, please let me know. The box, tips and booklet are now in a safe place so I don't ruin them, but the coupler resides with the rest of my decorating tools. What a great find.

Coming soon - another flea market find in the same vein.

Coconut Layer Cake

This cake was so pretty - was being the operative word. Once we dug in it started to look a bit peaked.

It's a coconut layer cake with a lemon curd filling  and a coconut/cream cheese icing. I made a horrible mistake when baking the cake - I added two cups of flaked coconut to the cake batter that was supposed to be toasted for the sides of the cake. However, I have an excuse. The recipe listed all of the ingredients for the cake, then in a separate section, the ingredients for the filling and icing (which I did not use). The cake is Cook's Illustrated's Coconut Layer Cake (membership required to view the link) and the ingredient listing for the cake part lists 2 cups of flaked sweetened coconut.

Here's where my excuse gets a bit lame: I did not read the directions. After all, I thought to myself, I bake cakes all the time - why do I need to read the silly directions? So I just jotted down the ingredients and prepared the cake batter, folding in the flaked coconut at the end. As I was doing that, I though it was a bit strange to have coconut in the actual cake batter, but I shrugged off my gut feeling and popped the cakes into the oven.

Since I couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss, I went back and re-read the recipe. Whoops - the coconut was to be toasted when the cake came out of the oven, then cooled and sprinkled over the icing. Knowing it was too late to do anything about the mistake, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Luckily, the cake turned out fairly well, although the texture added by the coconut made it impossible to slice neatly. Since the taste was still good, I didn't fret about it.

Since my favorite lemon curd recipe is too loose to use for a cake filling, I added a couple more tablespoons of butter and another egg to see if that would be sufficient. It's still a bit loose, so I should probably try one of the lemon filling recipes that uses gelatin when I want a layer cake. Still, it held together reasonably well and tasted sooooo good.

The cream cheese icing was made up on the spot. I had left over cream of coconut from the cake batter and some leftover coconut milk from another recipe (about 1/2 cup total), which I added to beaten cream cheese (1 lb), powdered sugar (2 cups - 7 ounces), and unsalted butter (2 sticks). I added a teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract for good measure.

This cake was pretty yummy, and this post ends my long drought between posts. Sorry about that, but it's been crazy around here (a water leak, trip to Ohio, and countless other activities). Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things now.