Pumpkin Loaves of Lub

That's "lub", not "lube", you crazies! Everyone always gets that wrong...

Anyway!

I made these pumpkin loaves and I was told that they were delicious. I don't really know whether they were or not myself because they were all gone and eaten before I could get a taste. The loaf itself was a pretty strait forward pumpkin loaf with walnuts just topped with an exceptionally delicious cream cheese icing flavored with lemon and vanilla bean. I'm told that they were moist and light--not heavy and dense like most pumpkin loaves that you find around town (shameless self promotion right there...). Instead of the required vegetable oil, I used some walnut oil that I found sitting at Winners and I think it really helped bring out some of the flavor. It's the little things.

The challenging part of these little loaves were the silly little loaf liners designed by the geniuses at team Paula Deen. Too awkwardly sized for any rational loaf pan, these liners look cute, but only cause unnecessary frustration. To make them fit better, I filled the empty space with aluminum foil, and this is the result:

The only thing that saved me from extreme shame at these misshapen trolls of the loaf/cake world were the adorable little boxes that handily went with the liners (all on sale at Michaels for 70% off!). I almost look like some kind of professional when I use these!

If you want to make these for yourself, they're very simple--just your basic muffin method at work here! I doubled this recipe easily and substituted walnut oil for vegetable oil, but other than that, this is pretty much it.

Pumpkin Walnut Bread
Adapted from The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1/3 cup water
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts (toasted)

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. In a large bowl whisk together first seven ingredients until thoroughly blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, water, sugar, pumpkin, oil, and vanilla.

2. Add the pumpkin mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk until blended and smooth. Add walnuts and stir. Pour batter into prepared loaf pans and level off the tops.

3. Bake for 55-65 minutes, until the bread is firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Transfer to a rack and cool before adding cream cheese frosting.

For Cream Cheese Frosting:
Combine 12 ounces softened cream cheese, 3 ounces softened unsalted butter, finely grated zest of one lemon, 10 ounces powdered sugar, and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla in a mixer. Beat until smooth.

Comfort Food: Blueberry-Blackcurrant Muffins

It's nearing the end of summer here. In fact some say that the summer had already come and gone by the middle of August. Yesterday I had to put on a sweater and crank the heat in the car. This seems somehow... wrong. Unfair even. The only thing I had to make up for the dismal weather was a bowl of blackcurrants I had picked the day before. Yes, I am that weird woman in her short shorts, batman t-shirt and Lindsay Lohan shades holding a little white bucket, picking currants off the bushes in public parks. I'm doing the city a service. And you can't stop me!

Anyhow...

I decided that the currants would go pretty well inside muffins with some blueberries. What I didn't count on was how much of a pain it would be to de-stem each and every one of these finicky little berries. I think I sat through 2 episodes of Mad Men while cleaning and separating (I didn't miss much--Don Draper was dashing and intense, Peter Campbell was creepy and intense, Peggy Olsen was weird and intense, and Roger Sterling was busy getting syphilis).

In the end, I managed to produce these delicious cakey muffins adapted from Sur La Table that were all eaten while the berries inside were still molten hot. Always a good sign I think.


Easy Morning Muffins with Blueberries and Blackcurrants
Adapted from The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet, page 148

2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
3/4 stick of butter (unsalted)
finely grated zest of one lemon (I used 1 tsp lime oil instead and it was really yummy)
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
6 oz fresh blueberries
4 oz fresh blackcurrants

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Prepare muffin tins. Blend together flour, 2/3 cup sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a medium skillet, melt butter with the lemon zest. Turn off the heat. Add the buttermilk to the melted butter and let sit for 1 or 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla to butter and mix well.

2. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Pour the butter mixture into the well and stir gently. Mix only until there are no more streaks of flour or pools of liquid and the batter looks fairly smooth. Gently fold in berries until evenly distributed.

3. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Sprinkle remaining sugar over the tops of the muffins.

4. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Saskatoonberry Ginger Ice Cream

I bought myself another toy. This new toy (like all my toys) has made me very excited because in 10 minutes and $70.00 it allowed me to venture into a whole new area of delightful food: the frozen dessert.

Frickin' ICE CREAM!!! I bought an ice cream maker and it is awesome.
Yes, it was a little bit more than I would have liked to spend on an ice cream maker--the ideal amount being closer to $0... But from what I've read, this baby will last me for a very long time if I give it the proper love and attention it deserves. A good thing because I plan on trying out a new flavour as often as I can manage.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to learn to be patient with my new little toy (and in life). The instructions that came in the box said to let the canister cool in the freezer for 6-22 hours, so naturally I figured that 5 hours would be enough to bust out some world class Hagendaz. Oh Erin... how naive. After standing over the mixing soupy swirl of purple cream for 45 minutes (when the instructions said only 25) I decided that I should maybe just throw it all in the freezer before I blow the motor on the first day.

After a night in the freezer though... wow. That ice cream was decadent and creamy and a little bit gritty because of all the seeds that I was too lazy to strain out, but good god it was delicious. I managed to create a roomful of smiling people with black chunks of saskatoonberry in their teeth. It was glorious.

The Saskatoon berry Ginger Ice Cream was adapted from Not So Humble Pie with saskatoons substituted for raspberries, a minced knob of fresh ginger in lieu of the candied variety, and a splash (that's right, a 'splash', I went there) of vanilla added in with the whole milk. I think it worked out amazing considering I completely botched the (very essential) churning step of the ice creaming process. Next time I think I'll try using just whole milk instead of mixing it with the heavy cream and maybe less sugar. Also, slightly less ginger. I really enjoyed it, but I don't think my family really appreciated the acute burning sensation that accompanied their ice creamy goodness...

Hee hee!! I love my ice cream!!

A Third Swedish Princess Torte for Easter

A huge log of fresh marzipan was waiting for me on the kitchen table early Easter morning. Its purpose: to cover six layers of genoisie cake filled with pastry cream and strawberry jam, topped with an enormous heap of stabilized whipping cream. My mission was to have this potentially elegant Swedish delicacy baked, filled, covered, wrapped in a pretty bow, and cooling in the garage before noon.

Shockingly, I did just that.

Making the cake itself was very simple. Beating whole eggs with sugar until the mixture had quadrupled in size and then gently folding in sifted flour (the key was to sift the flour over the egg mixture while folding at the same time so that I didn't end up with lumps of flour) were really the only two steps that needed to be taken to successfully (more or less) pull off the genoisie. The purpose of using a genoisie instead of a standard white cake is because this particular french confection is known to be really dry and somewhat tasteless until it is filled and sauced. Because the Swedish Princess Torte is so creamy, a more moist cake (like the Martha Cake I used for my last SPT) makes the final product dense and almost mushy. From all that I've learned, Swedes are anything but mushy.

The most difficult part about making the pastry cream and the strawberry jam was fending off the family that couldn't wait until it was in the torte before they got a taste.

Pastry cream has become one of absolute favorite things to make. This was after many pitched attempts that turned out looking just like scrambled eggs in water and tasting not too much better. When done right, pastry cream or custard takes on a smoothe texture and a rich taste that envelopes you like a warm hug and makes you smile against your will. Mixed with a fresh strawberry puree and you have simple bliss.

Once the cake was put together and topped with a generous (very generous) heap of stabilized whipping cream, I went about the task of colouring and laying on the marzipan. It's almond sugar paste and it's finicky. But I perservered and came away triumphant. Sure, it looked a bit like Shrek's head on a platter, but it was delicious nonetheless. Creamy and almondy with six (SIX!!) layers of cake that melted in your mouth. All done by noon.

Sometimes I am awed by my own awesomeness when under pressure.

My Quest to Understand Cheese

I don't like cheese.

For as long as I can remember, the only cheese I would eat would be the kind melted on pizza, nachos or inside a grilled-cheese sandwich. And the only way it tasted any good was if it was heavily laced with salt, pepper, pickles or ketchup. I limited myself to cheddar and mozzarella. Parmesan smelled like bile (it IS made of bile...), brie smelled like dirty socks, and havarti had the weirdest texture that I just could not get used to no matter how many times I tried it.

My Austrian grandparents love their cheeses. Gouda and swiss emmental especially. You sit down for lunch and no matter what it is you're about to eat, there will be a platter with gouda and swiss cheese handily sliced up for everyone to enjoy. However, while everyone else is blindly masticating, I sit there and think about how it smells like a pile of pungent old laundry mixed with a unique sour smell that I can't even describe. My mom is also a huge fan of melting brie cheese in the microwave and eating it with a spoon. The smell of the melting cheese permeates the whole entire house so that you can't escape the heavy musky odor.

But over Christmas, with all the wines and cheeses and crackers and people, I was peer pressured into trying some different cheese. And in doing so, I discovered Boursin cheese. It's light and fragrant and has the consistency of butter. It doesn't even smell like an old man's body odor! I went back for cracker after cracker until the whole ball of cheese was gone and I was picking up loose crumbs of cheese with my fingertip.

From here, I decided to begin a quest to try and understand people's love for cheese.

I can say that I've made a conscious effort to buy new and different types of cheeses to try in recipes, like applewood smooked cheddar in potato soufflees (recipe here, from Almost Bourdain). I've made these soufflés a few times, and the best was when I incorporated the applewood smoked cheddar instead of regular cheddar or parmesan. It adds a whole new level of subtle flavor to the dish that you can't get with just spices, salt and pepper.


So while I won't claim to love cheese, I will say that I am trying to understand the (odd) fascination some people seem to have with it and use it to my advantage.

the one that bites back...

Have you ever put a lot of thought into the cranberry? Honestly, have you? That bizarre little bud of a fruit that only really comes out at family dinners doesn't get a whole lot of consideration when placed next to the traditional holiday fruits (whatever they might be...). You get a little dollop of cranberry sauce plopped right in between the turkey and the stuffing and that little bit of tart sweetness is usually just enough to add a nice bit of contrast to your otherwise savory-studded meal.

Cranberries are weird. For a little fruit that pretty much grows in swamp-like conditions, it is super dry when you cut it open. I mean, if you eat a cranberry uncooked just by itself, it will suck every drop of moisture right out of your body within seconds. And that's exactly what it tastes like too. You pucker your lips and squint your eyes when you bite into that berry or even when you take a sip of cranberry juice. It's potent stuff! Also, unless you happen to slice your own cranberries (and forgo the canned variety for family gatherings), you might be interested to know that the inside of the hollow berry is a startling white with little seeds shaking about in there.

How do I know all this? Well, after Thanksgiving had come and gone and the turkey carcass had been picked over by my fellow vultures until there was not much left that could be considered edible in polite company, I realized that I still had a batch of cinnamon spiked pie dough in the fridge and a whole bag of fresh cranberries that needed to be used up. So while the emaciated bird carcass sat stewing in a pot over the stove with some celery and carrots, I looked for a nice pie recipe that would use up my dough and my berries. Not surprisingly, I found a promising one in my Sur La Table The Art and Soul of Baking book (this book is more of a tome...). However, I haven't been having very good luck with the recipes in this book lately. In fact, Most of the ones I have made have turned out kind of... mediocre at best and inedible at worst. But I figured that the book deserved another chance, and opted to throw together a cranberry crumble tart mostly because it meant that I wouldn't have to leave the house to get any more ingredients.

I gotta say, consider the book redeemed. That tart was fantastic.

The filling was sweet, but had a definite bite and the orange zest that was mixed in with it gave it a nice smooth taste that evened everything out. There was a simple mild crumble topping that worked out to be lovely with the cranberry filling that had such an intense flavor. I could even go so far as to say that the texture of the tart was just right--crunchy on the top and the bottom but nice and soft inside. I even dug through the freezer and got out some ice cream to go with it, and for me, the added cream made the whole dish perfect (although I would say that ice cream can make anything perfect).

So this one dish redeemed the Art and Soul of Baking for me. I guess in that respect it DID certainly bite back.

thanksgiving pie politics...

This Thanksgiving I endeavored to make the pumpkin and apple pies that would follow the meal. This already was cause for a significant amount of consternation as it would mean that my grandmother wasn't making the dessert and it would be, by default, "just not THAT good". That was fine. I've dealt with this pressure before and I would have to put up with it again. I'm used to it.

To change things up a bit, I decided that it might be interesting to do a bit of a variation on the classic pies by topping the pumpkin pie with Italian meringue, and mixing in a few pears with the apples in the apple pie. Only a small part of me wanted to do this just to enrage my family of die-hard traditionalists. Maybe not that small...

I got the idea to top off the pumpkin filling with meringue from an old post by Tartelette and a desire to use my brand new kitchen torch for the very first time. I doubled the recipe for the pumpkin filling given by Tartelette, and used Jamie Oliver's recipe for pie dough, spiking it with a pinch of cinnamon to give it a little bit of extra flavour. That was all pretty standard. The dough rolled out nicely and the filling baked nicely after about 40 minutes in the oven (instead of the recommended 20). The interesting part came when I made the meringue. Now I have made French meringue for pavlovas and individual meringues, and I have made Swiss meringue for buttercreams, but I have never attempted (or seen the need for) Italian meringue. Bringing water and sugar to a boil and then up to 245 degrees (F) while beating the egg whites into peaks seemed a bit extreme. I mean, you need a candy thermometer to pull it off and meringue is supposed to be simple! Needless to say, I was a little bit aprehensive going into this.

But the desire to finally put to use my fancy new kitchen torch spurred me on.

And I was stunned at how easy it was.

I admit, it was a little bit annoying having to wait for the sugar syrup to get hot enough (it had to reach the "soft ball" stage), but once I poured it into the beaten egg whites, you could see the meringue taking shape almost instantly. The hot syrup cooked the eggs and it became a big, soft, fluffy, mass. Kind of like a soft marshmallow. And it tasted delicious. Absolutely decadent. I plopped the fluffy whiteness onto the cooked pumpkin pie, and then played with it until it looked just the way I wanted.

Then I got to fire up my torch and caramelize the edges. It smelled just like roasting marshmallows. Tasted like it too...
The reviews for this pie were mixed. I liked it a lot. It was traditional enough that it still had that same spicy pumpkin taste with a nice flaky crust, but the added soft meringue made whipping cream unnecessary and made the dish nice and light. Others, however, were not as keen on it as I was (my sister refused to eat the meringue portion of the pie in an effort to boycott change).
I thought the apple pie was pretty good too... I ate a huge piece of it for breakfast this morning.

my KLA-FOO-TEE...

"What's for dessert?"
"I'm making clafoutis."
"Sounds like an STD. Or STI if I'm being politically correct, but I'm sure it will be yummy... whatever it is!"
"It will be yummy. French."
"Hey, I'd eat syphilis if it was on a dessert menu."

Making a dessert that no one quite knows how to pronounce definitely has its advantages. The first of which being that your test subjects will usually have no idea what they're about to put in their mouths. You can also get the idea into your head that you need to create a dish called "syphilis" that tastes so absolutely delicious that all people will say that they would eat syph. Weird.

I used pluots again as the fruity aspect of my clafoutis. Traditionally, this dessert is made with dark cherries (pits and all), but because I'm having a love affair with the tart-suculent flavor and bright pink color of the pluots and wanted to use as many of them as I could before they went out of season.

This is my sister's favorite dessert. She gotten into the habit of begging me to make it at every possible opportunity. Because of this, I have used any and every friut at hand to crreate this dessert from blackberries to canned peaches (although I wouldn't recommend the canned peaches as they are far too bland and add nothing at all to the taste of the dish). From this, I learned that the more tart the fruit, the better the clafoutis turns out (and this can be true for many other desserts as well).

I've tried two different recipes or this dish. One was a fancy recipe involving heating the milk and cream over the stove with the vanilla before whisking in the eggs. The other was a far simpler method whereby you just throw all the ingredients into the mixer, mix for a while until frothy, and then pour it into your baking dish. The simple one I found in a food magazine alongside an ad for cream and I believe it is, by far, the better of the two in terms of ease, taste, and time. Taste being, naturally, the most important consideration!

Raspberry Peach Clafouti
(from a Real Cream ad in a magazine I don't remember)

1. Butter a deep 9 or 10 inch pie plate. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat 3 large eggs and 1/2 cup granulated sugar in a medium bowl using an electric mixer. Add 3/4 cup cream and beat until combined. Stir in 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup all purpose flour, and a pinch of salt.
3. Sprinkle fruit on the bottom of the prepared dish. Pour batter over fruit.
4. Bake in preheated oven for about 45 minutes or until set. Cover loosely with foil during cooking if top is browning too fast. Serve warm or cold. Serves 6-8.

a test of stock...

Pluot and Pistachio Crumble Strudel (and an Apple Strudel too!)

I come from very thick Austrian stock. It's a potent and sticky stock that is quite often difficult to shrug off. Not that I would ever want to shrug it off at all, but it makes it very difficult to resist the urge to bake certain things. It also comes with a lot of pressure (mostly self-inflicted) to create the best of these things. Not the least of these things being a traditional Austrian strudel.

Let me begin this discussion of Austrian Strudel by saying that the most difficult and defining aspect of this dessert is the dough and not-as one might expect- the filling of the finished product. What makes this dough unique-and at the same time frustrating enough to make you want to pull out your hair by the roots and chuck said dough through a glass window- is the fact that when it is pulled and stretched it should be translucent. The dough needs to be worked and stretched until it is thinner than paper and and as big as a table meant to seat six people.

The very first time I made this I learned something very important about baking: if the recipe advises you to make two batches of something "just in case", not only will that something be as temperamental as a a cat being fed a pill, but also do be sure to actually make two.

The dough itself is the easiest thing you will ever throw together (seriously. A proboscis monkey could do this blindfolded). Flour, water, oil, and vinegar go into your mixer and you let the paddle do all the work. What you get is an innocent little ball of soft fluffy dough about the size of a fist. You throw the ball around for a while to work the gluten in the flour and then coat it in oil and let it sit while you watch tv for an hour. When Grey's Anatomy is over you can start peeling your apples (or in my case, peeling my apples and slicing my plum-apricot mutant hybrids) and putting together your filling.

Now the fun part. When you initially roll out the dough you will think that this process is easy. That I have entirely overstated the difficulty level here and obviously need to have my head checked. But once the dough gets too big to handle... BAM! Your first rip. Work through it. There is still hope. You now lay the increasingly unweildly mass of dough on your floured tablecloth and begin to really stretch it out. The rips and tears will really start to develop as you try to bend the laws of physics in order to create a sheet of dough only a few atoms thick.

Here's the really painful part: you have to move very quickly as you do all this because the dough will dry out to a crispy, unmanageable sheet that is completely useless if you take too long.

Ecited yet?

In all fairness however, strudel dough is one of the few things I have ever baked where you can clearly see progress every time you make it. And when you get to that point where it stretches beautifully and you can read fine print right through it (all without having a mental breakdown half way through), you will absolutely beam with accomplishment. This I promise.


The real test came when I invited my Austrian grandparents over for dessert and my diabetic grandfather snuck thirds while my grandmother quietly copied the recipe down. Obviously my own Austrian stock hasn't been spoilt!