A Food Year » Recipes

Cereal Milk Ice Cream

Ken — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:38:41 +0000

I can count the number of pastry chefs I can name on one hand, so it must be safe to say that Christina Tosi is a culinary genius. I’ve never even been to New York and I’m not even much into sweets and I know more about the Momofuku Milk Bar than most restaurants here in Montreal. I first heard about the cereal milk ice cream in passing, a signature soft serve item there, and thought it was an interesting idea. I vowed to try out when I first obtained an ice cream machine and then promptly shelved the idea, referring to how it was meant to be my first flavor in every ice cream related post thereafter.

If you were to have asked me at that time, I would’ve thought it would be nothing more complicated than simply making a custard out of residual milk from a cereal bowl. It really should be as simple as that, shouldn’t it? I stumbled upon this recipe through David Lebovitz and that idea went awry. The pictures were gorgeous and the recipe sounded official and that meant I had to trust it over my gut. So I made this recipe instead of trying to create my own.

It would be wrong to say that it doesn’t produce a good ice cream, because it does, it just does it in a horribly inefficient manner. The main reason for this is that it derives the cereal milk flavor from a large quantity of “cornflake crunch” (basically a cornflake granola) – which uses a stick and a half of butter and almost an entire box of cereal that are later simply thrown away. This is soaked in a liter of milk that is later awkwardly squeezed out of a soggy cereal mess to amount to a scant cup. The cornflake crunch topping makes sense, its usage as a flavoring ingredient does not. From my consumer perspective with supermarket prices, it adds (cost of a box of cereal, three cups of wasted milk and the butter) something like $9 to the ingredient cost just to infuse that milk. For a pint of ice cream to cost more than $10 to make did not seem logical.

I made a few revisions, churned up my alternate and presented both ice creams to my neighbors and their children as my blind tasting guinea pigs. They actually thought my cereal milk ice cream had more cereal flavor than the original recipe. Their little girl, who doesn’t even like ice cream, ate quite a bit of it. There was a small issue in that I used sweeter cereals than the original corn flakes and forgot to compensate by a reduction of sugar in the custard, but I have corrected that in the recipe I will share with you, should you choose to attempt it at home.

With many thanks to Cafe Fernando for a fantatic post that got me to finally make this flavor, here’s what I did to modify the recipe to be more economical, evidently more flavorful and less of a headache.

I vastly reduced the quantity of milk and cereal and the ratio of cereal to milk. It didn’t seem conducive to concentrating flavor, but went beyond the concentration point, wasting several potential breakfasts.
Without knowing what cereal would be used in Momofuku’s ice cream, corn flakes would not be my first choice. The defining flavor of cereal milk is some sort of harmony of milled grains and refined sugar that seemed better defined by more guilty pleasure cereals. A bonus of cereals like Captain Crunch or Corn Pops is that they still retain their shape when they become soggy and are far easier to strain out of the milk.
I eliminated the crunch ingredients that were essentially thrown away unutilized. That means the butter and some of the sugar. I kept the milk powder though, as it definitely helps to bolster the texture and flavor.

That’s it really. The rest of the recipe was just a basic custard base. I was originally planning on toasting the cereal in a dry skillet to try and bring out some of its “cerealiness” but after attempting this it didn’t seem to be making a huge difference. So in the sake of honesty this was an omitted step in the recipe below, but I don’t believe it all that important. I did, however, toast the milk powder, which was referred to as the “MSG of baked goods” in the original recipe, which likely makes a difference.

MY Cereal Milk Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
3.5 ounces (105g) guilty pleasure cereal (Captain Crunch, Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, etc.), lightly crushed
2 ounces (60g) skim milk powder, toasted
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks, room temperature
1 cup heavy cream

Combine the milk and cereal in a large, flat container to ensure that all cereal comes in contact with the milk. Let sit until cereal softens, then strain in a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth into a clean bowl. This will yield approximately 1 cup of cereal milk.
Heat the cereal milk with skim milk powder, sugar, salt and vanilla in a pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it just begins to boil.
Place the egg yolks in a large bowl and whisk lightly. Remove the milk from the heat and whisk a few tablespoons of it into the egg yolks to temper them. Slowly incorporate the remaining milk into the egg yolks, then transfer everything back into the pot.
Return the pot to the heat and cook, stirring often, until thickened. Strain immediately into a clean bowl, mix with heavy cream and cover with plastic wrap directly against the surface to prevent a film from forming. Refrigerate for at least four hours before churning in an ice cream machine.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Ken — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:51:13 +0000

I couldn’t figure out why I’ve been craving spaghetti carbonara lately until I started making another custard base for the ice cream machine. Tempering all those yolks to make a thickened and delicious sauce… carbonara is basically the savory version of ice cream! At least to the part of my brain that decides what to have for dinner.

One of the things I vowed to do this summer was to make guanciale specifically for this dish. This isn’t our usual dinnertime fare since it’s fairly rich in its own way and the closest thing to a vegetable in it is peppercorns, so when I made it again, I wanted to make it special. Unfortunately I never got around to obtaining the curing salts required for such a preparation when the craving hit and therefore had to resort to putting other cured pork products in its place. I’m sure the real deal will happen some day.

The first time I had spaghetti carbonara blew my mind. I tried several times to get it right at home and failed miserably, curdling the eggs every time with every recipe that I attempted. They each insisted you could finish a sauce of egg yolks in a hot pan with noodles quite successfully. I’m now well aware of a better method and will carry on doing things this way from now on.

I can’t be certain, but I’d swear that fettucine Alfredo is simply a lazy bastardization of this dish. All that Parmesan cheese and luxuriousness, but too much timing required to get right, so copious amounts of butter and cream were added to reduce the margin for error. This is a seriously simple and rustic dish which isn’t much to look at, but it’s the kind of dish that lets you appreciate good pasta for what it is and offers nothing more than purely flavored accents of that. Although untraditional, the flavor of wild mushrooms is very welcome here, and if a nice bowl of pasta doesn’t suit your fancy, this would make a nice introductory or accompanying course for steak au poivre or any meal involving roasted root vegetables and/or chevre. Because, you know, lots of pepper cannot possibly overshadow those things, and lots of pepper is a must to make this dish what it is.

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 ounces (120g) pancetta, cubed
1 pound (454g) spaghetti
4 ounces (120g) parmigiano reggiano, finely grated
1 egg plus 3 egg yolks
salt and plenty of freshly cracked black pepper

Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil in a large pot over high heat.
Heat extra virgin olive oil and pancetta in a skillet over medium heat. Cook until fat has been rendered and pancetta begins to crisp, then crack a generous amount of black pepper into the pan and cook for a minute or two more. Set aside to cool.
Begin cooking your spaghetti for the length of time specified by the package, probably around 8 or 9 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together parmesan and eggs to make a smooth paste. Once the pancetta and oil has cooled, mix this in as well and set aside.
When the spaghetti is cooked, reserve a cup of the pasta water and drain in a colander.
Temper the egg mixture with a few tablespoons of the hot pasta water, whisking vigorously. Add the spaghetti, then add as much pasta water as necessary, tossing often, to make a smooth sauce to coat the pasta. Serve immediately with a few extra cracks of black pepper, additional parmesan and perhaps a grating of fresh nutmeg as desired.

This recipe makes a lot of pasta, so feel free to halve it if you’re feeding less ravenous appetites. Note that spaghetti carbonara can bring out ravenous appetites. This recipe is adapted from a seriously amazing issue of Saveur magazine on Roman cuisine.

Peach and Nectarine Tart

Ken — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:18:14 +0000

Confession: I’d never actually made a fruit tart before or really ever eaten one. The season for peaches, plums and the like here is so painfully short and even shorter in Alberta that I almost consider it non-existent. Therefore, my lifetime consumption of sweet pies is almost exclusively comprised of berry, apple, pecan, lemon meringue or pumpkin with the occasional banana, coconut or chocolate cream thrown in for good measure.

I’ve been seeing pictures of fruit pies turning up everywhere lately and few desserts look so elegant and beautiful to me. The shades of peaches are so reminiscent of the sun itself that how could they not capture our warmest season? The vibrant hues of orange and red look so stunning in food porn that it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to slice into the dish and eat it.

Okay, maybe not that hard to imagine. Making this was a lot of fun and surprisingly easy, though a fairly messy endeavor. It always surprises me how much liquid comes out of fruit when you macerate it for even a couple of minutes, and I’m surprised just a few tablespoons of cornstarch helped bind it all together into anything but a runny mess. I added the zest and juice of an orange for a bit of acidity, which gave everything a very pleasant warm marmalade essence.

I must admit I was nervous that this was going to turn out a soggy bottomed mess, but the crust baked surprisingly well and even with a bit of caramelized juice spillover, the cleanup wasn’t all that difficult. It’s safe to say that I loved this tart and would make it again in a heartbeat.

Peach and Nectarine Tart

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, frozen and cut into cubes
1/4 cup shortening, frozen and cut into cubes
3 tablespoons ice water

3/4 cup sugar
1 orange, zested and juiced
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 pounds peaches, pitted and sliced into eighths
2 pounds nectarines, pitted and sliced into eighths

To make the pastry: sift together the flour and salt into a bowl. Cut the butter and lard into the flour mixture with your fingers, a fork or a pastry cutter. Gradually add small increments of ice water into the contents, handling as little as possible, until they just barely hold together as a dough. Divide the dough into two portions, wrap loosely with plastic wrap, press into a disk shape and refrigerate.
Combine the sugar, orange zest and juice, vanilla extract and cornstarch to make a goopy slurry. Toss the peaches and nectarines in this mixture and let sit at room temperature for half an hour, tossing occasionally.
Roll out one of the pastry disks to fit a 12″ tart shell and press into its form. Prick the bottom lightly with a fork and chill for another 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees with the oven racks positioned in the center.
Remove the pastry shell from the refrigerator and arrange the peaches and nectarines in an overlapping spiral. I’ll freely admit I don’t understand how to do this seamlessly, as is evident by the image associated with this recipe.
Pour the residual juices evenly over the tart and bake until the crust has browned and the juices are bubbling in the center, about 45-50 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before removing the mold (this will be a tricky operation if you allow the caramelized juices to solidify) and then cool to whatever temperature you find yourself patient enough to attain before slicing and eating.

Plum Tarte Tatin

Ken — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:53:51 +0000

Another experiment with all this surplus sour cream was to try a sour cream pastry crust. After making two tarts with this I can conclude the following: pastry made with sour cream is more expensive, more fattening (if you can believe it!), harder to work with and produces a less desirable result. But that’s just my opinion! I’ve included the recipe in case you’re inclined to make such a thing, but I am certain I never will again.

The pastry wasn’t a total failure. In fact, it actually rolled out better and was easier to manage than my typical pate brisee type crust that I work with. It’s just not as flaky, not as crisp, not as… dry. Still, the crust is just one part of the equation, so let’s focus on better things for now.

Having made a Fig Tarte Tatin not too long ago, there’s nothing new or inspired here in comparison. The difference between these plums and those figs is that they were kind of sour from the get go, which produced a rather tart tart. I might be guilty of overbaking this a touch (though I swear that wouldn’t have redeemed the pastry!) and made the plums a bit too soft and yielding, but the flavor was very nice. Not so much on its own, but I served it with a dollop of sweetened creme fraiche and really liked the combination. Dessert doesn’t have to be cloyingly sweet and I really like that contrast in flavor. Surprisingly, this came out of my non-nonstick pan easier than the nonstick pan I made the fig tart with. I’m still scratching my head over that one.

Plum Tarte Tatin

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, frozen and cut into cubes
1/4 cup shortening, frozen and cut into cubes
3 tablespoons ice water

1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-3 pounds plums, halved and pitted

Preheat oven to 375 degrees with the racks positioned in the lower third of the oven.
To make the pastry: sift together the flour and salt into a bowl. Cut the butter and lard into the flour mixture with your fingers, a fork or a pastry cutter. Gradually add small increments of ice water into the contents, handling as little as possible, until they just barely hold together as a dough. Divide the dough into two portions, wrap loosely with plastic wrap, press into a disk shape and refrigerate while preparing the plums. You could also try the sour cream crust recipe below, but I don’t really recommend it.
Place the sugar and a little bit of water in a 12″ skillet and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Lower the heat and cook attentively until it starts to develop a golden caramel color. Remove from the heat as it begins to turn amber and quickly work in the cold butter with a spoon to stop the cooking, being careful as this will cause it to foam up. Stir in the vanilla, then arrange the plums, cut side down, in the caramel sauce. Cool completely.
When the caramel has cooled, remove one of the pastry disks from the refrigerator and, on a lightly floured surface, roll out into a circle roughly an inch wider on both sides than the pan (a 14″ circle). Place the pastry over the pan and gently tuck the edges into the pan to make a rimmed edge. Place into the oven and bake until the crust is golden brown, about 35-40 minutes.
Soon after removing the pan from the oven (or the caramel will harden and you’ll have a hell of a time removing the contents), wearing oven mitts or using dish towels or what have you, place a plate on top of the pan and quickly invert the pan so that the tart ends up on the plate.
Allow to cool, dust lightly with icing sugar and serve with a lightly sweetened dollop of creme fraiche, clotted cream, thick yogurt or vanilla ice cream.

Sour Cream Pastry

2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 cup sour cream

Combine the flour and salt. Cut the butter into the flour with a fork or pastry cutter, then mix in the sour cream. It will look deceptively dry because sour cream is not very liquid and therefore does not distribute like one.
Pick up the dough and work it with your hands into a ball. Separate into two balls and flatten into disks between plastic wrap. Refrigerate for several hours or up to a week before rolling out as necessary for your pastry requiring needs.

I’m only mentioning this recipe because it is what I used for what’s pictured. It provides a denser, more resilent crust, if that achieves your purpose.

Wild Blueberry Scones

Ken — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:20:37 +0000

After working with several baking recipes using sour cream over the last couple of days, I can safely say my preference is to isolate it to batter baked goods like cakes, or pastry cream and custard type bases, because sour cream is simply not liquid enough to be a managable ingredient in drier preparations. From what I gather, sour cream in a lot of baked goods takes on a thicker form of buttermilk, using the acidity to add a certain tang and to activate the chemistry required for baking soda to act as a leavening agent. It is also substantially more difficult to measure accurately.

In a recipe like a scone, where keeping things chilled and manipulated as little as possible for the most flakiness, sour cream literally has be kneaded into the dough, while buttermilk can be easily whisked in and incorporated with a lightly managed fork. With that said, these scones were still surprisingly good (I think we ate four each… is that bad?) after being both kneaded and cursed at while sticking to the countertop and leaking butter everywhere. Tea, anyone?

Wild Blueberry Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 cup wild blueberries, frozen
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup whole milk or cream
1/4 cup coarse sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees with the oven racks positioned in the center.
Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut the cubed butter into the flour using a fork or pastry blender, or simply smoosh it between your fingers to coat with flour and disperse throughout in pea-sized clumps.
Toss the blueberries in the dry ingredients to coat with flour and prevent them from bursting as much. Freeze this mixture for half an hour to thoroughly chill the butter for the kneading that lies ahead.
Remove the dry ingredients from the freezer and incorporate the sour cream with a spoon. Pick up the rather sticky mess of dough and lightly knead into a cohesive ball on the countertop.
Gently press or roll the dough out to square approximately 3/4″ in thickness, adding a thin coating of flour, if necessary. Dust of excess flour and cut the dough into four smaller squares. Cut the squares in half to make triangles, yielding 8 large scones, or in an X shape, yielding 16 smaller ones.
Place these on a parchment-lined baking sheet, brush the tops with milk and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake until the tops are lightly browned, about 12-14 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before eating as soon as possible with a smear of jam, clotted cream or butter, as scones do not like to linger long outside of mouths and bellies.

Banana Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

Ken — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:57:55 +0000

I always keep frozen bananas in my freezer. In fact, I just picked up an entire basket of maybe 10 pounds of bananas for a dollar just yesterday and am right stocked up for whatever or whomever might require a vast quantity of bananas. I like to leave them in the peels, I don’t think it’s too much trouble to thaw them a minute to slice them off, but I know a lot of people peel them, freeze them individually and store them in resealable bags. To each their own.

The flesh of frozen bananas smooths out and gets very creamy, so even bananas alone can be pureed for a pretty satisfying and luxuriously ice cream-like consistency. Which is why I was a little disappointed in the texture of this ice cream flavor I tried to concoct because I overestimated the bananas ability to keep things creamy by themselves once everything had frozen. Freshly churned the texture was amazing though, and the taste just like what I’d wanted for a banana bread flavored ice cream.

I sweetened this with dulce de leche because it has a mellow caramelized flavor I figured would work better than trying to devise a brown sugar solution. Okay, for the sake of transparency, this was really more or less thrown together to satisfy a specific craving. But honestly, I think if this were more of a custard base, the texture of this would’ve been perfect and I’d have no complaints, so I’m posting it anyway. Ha ha!

Banana Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

3 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups dulce de leche
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ripe bananas, frozen
(optional) 1/4 cup walnuts
(optional) 1/4 cup chocolate chips

Heat the milk with the dulce de leche in a pot until the dulce de leche has dissolved completely. Remove from the heat and stir in the salt, cinnamon and vanilla extract. Chill in the refrigerator until cool.
Blend the chilled mixture with the frozen bananas and then churn in your ice cream maker until it reaches a soft serve consistency.
Mix in walnuts and chocolate chips, if using, and continue to churn until it reaches a firm consistency. Eat immediately because you know you want to.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

Ken — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:30:33 +0000

My neighbor and I went to Costco awhile back and she picked up a bunch of sour cream for some sort of dip she was making for a party. Well, several weeks later, she still had a liter of sour cream that had gone unused and foresaw it going into the garbage soon, so it ended up in my fridge instead. I turned half of it into this delicious “back to school” cake and I’m still deliberating on the fate of the rest of it. Scones, perhaps?

This cake is borderline too moist, if such a thing could exist, with a rich chocolate flavor. Licking the bowl of residual batter is like a nice and airey chocolate mousse. With the exception of the icing, the cake is not overly sweet, which is something I really appreciate. My lovely wife did the decorating job of this cake or it would look particularly humble. I think a dollop more salt in this recipe would make for a better contrast, but the original recipe for the cake itself, found on Epicurious, tends to disagree with me.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

1 1/2 (180g) cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup (60g) unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (225g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cup (250g) light brown sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
1 cup sour cream
1/3 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 ounces (180g) semi-sweet or dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1/4 cup (60g) unsalted butter
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups (325g) icing sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the rack positioned in the center. Grease and flour two 9″ round cake pans, tapping out excess flour. You can also use one 9″ cake pan and bake the cake longer, slicing it in half to make the layers, or an 8″ and 9″ cake pans to have tiered levels, as I did.
Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking soda and salt.
In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the sour cream, water and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
Incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well. Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth the tops of each cake. Bake until a toothpick can be inserted into the center of the cakes and come out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before turning onto cooling racks to cool completely.
To prepare the icing: Melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler (a heat-resistant bowl atop a small pot of hot water will suffice), stirring until smooth.
Remove from the heat and stir in the sour cream and vanilla, then whisk in the icing sugar until you have a firm and spreadable icing.
Spread a thin layer of the icing on the bottom layer of the cake and top with the other cake layer. Spread the remaining icing over the surface of the cake and dot with decorative rossettes, if desired.

Caramel Corn Ice Cream

Ken — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:02:36 +0000

The only reason I bought an ice cream machine was so that I could try to make flavors that I couldn’t get anywhere else. There is a long list of these flavors somewhere in the backburners of my mind and hopefully I’ll get around to both remembering and experimenting with them all.

This wasn’t one of those flavors. This was just an experiment I decided to concoct after we made entirely too much popcorn for watching a movie this weekend. I’m slowly plodding along to try the cereal milk ice cream I set my sights on when this machine first came into our kitchen and figured that all that popcorn would reduce considerably if it was also soaked in milk.

Well, it did. You can fit an awful lot of popcorn into a bowl of milk. Once all that puffed air is removed, it’s hardly larger than the kernels that originally popped it. I remember hearing about impoverished settlers eating popped corn and milk as a breakfast cereal. Although puffed rice and puffed wheat stuck around, I guess people just preferred the taste of corn pops and went that route instead. That’s more or less what I thought this would taste like, which is a tad ironic as it was a departure from soaking corn pops in milk to make a cereal milk ice cream to begin with.

A popcorn ice cream by itself didn’t sound quite as appetizing and as a flavor boosted one, so I decided to add more “Cracker Jack” flavor with peanuts and caramel. I actually think Cracker Jacks are flavored with molasses/brown sugar syrup instead of caramel, but inspiration doesn’t have to necessarily be so accurately depicted.

The roasted nuttiness of the popcorn flavor combined with peanuts and caramel had a surprising effect. That is, it tasted very much like a creamy, frozen Payday bar. Anyone who enjoys the salty-sweet combination of a Payday bar will surely enjoy this ice cream.

Caramel Corn Ice Cream

6 cups popped popcorn
2 cups whole milk
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup dextrose (white sugar may be substituted)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup roasted and salted peanuts
1/4 cup caramel sauce or dark corn syrup

Soak the popcorn in the milk, pressing down as necessary to submerge all of the popcorn. Leave the popcorn in the milk for half an hour, then strain and discard the popcorn.
Heat the milk in a heavy bottomed pot over medium heat until scalding, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, dextrose and salt.
Whisk a few tablespoons of the scalded milk into the beaten eggs to temper them, then gradually whisk in the remaining milk until it has all been incorporated.
Pour this mixture back into the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it has thickened. Remove from the heat immediately and pour into a clean bowl. Cover with plastic wrap touching the surface of the custard and chill overnight, or for at least 8 hours.
To prepare the ice cream, place the prepared custard in the bowl of your ice cream machine and churn until it has developed a soft serve consistency. Fold in the peanuts and caramel sauce and eat immediately, or freeze in an airtight container for up to 3 months.

I used a commercially prepared caramel sauce for this because the quantity I needed wasn’t substantial, but making your own caramel isn’t very hard. Simply take 1 cup of sugar with a few tablespoons of water and bring it to a boil in a large, heavy bottomed pot. Once the water evaporates, the sugar will begin to caramelize, at which point you must pay close attention to prevent it from burning. When the sugar begins to take on a darkened hue (about 340 degrees, if you have a candy thermometer handy) immediately remove from the heat and whisk in 6 tablespoons of butter, then 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Be careful as it will rise substantially with the additions. Let the sauce cool to room temperature before using.

Double Chocolate Cookies with Fleur de Sel

Ken — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:02:08 +0000

There are several reasons why I haven’t done much baking recently. A major contributing factor is that it’s been summer, and having the oven on even long enough for a batch of cookies is completely undesirable. The motor of my electric mixer petered out right before the summer as well, which is a major hinderence since I’m not apt to cream butter and sugar by hand. As the temperatures have been cooling off slightly and my motivation for the sweeter-spectrum of things has picked up with stone fruits coming in season, I decided to buy myself a new electric mixer.

There’s been a lot of innovation in this whole electric mixer industry, I discovered, as I did a bunch of research on my new purchase. I was skeptical of the new digital technology as I was picturing a useless touch screen with no other benefit, but after reading a lot of reviews, I decided this was definitely the way to go. There are numerous benefits to this, but basically not only does it enable a “soft start” feature which won’t throw flour all over the kitchen, but it helps maintain a consistent amount of force to what you’re mixing by correcting for the resistance, something that you wouldn’t get with the normal transistors. I’m very happy with this new mixer, which I’ve been playing around with for several hours now. The model I bought is the PC digital one, because I pretty much swear by the PC line of anything kitchen related for its price and quality.

I’m always on the look out for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. This was an adaptation of David Lebovitz’s salted butter chocolate chip cookies and I must admit, they would’ve been much better with the addition of nuts, like he suggests. Still, it got me motivated to pick up some fleur de sel, which is a delicate sea salt that is just really nice to sprinkle on foods and desserts for a certain panache. The fleur de sel seemed to melt into the batter a bit more than I expected, so I think if I were to redo this I’d just sprinkle it on top as the cookies came out of the oven, but you can taste the different-saltiness of the grains when you bite into the cookie, so all is not lost.

Double Chocolate Cookies with Fleur de Sel

1 stick unsalted butter (115g), room temperature
2/3 cup (110g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (100g) sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup (180g) flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel
3/4 cup (100g) dark chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup (100g) milk chocolate, chopped

Cream together butter and both sugars, then mix in the egg and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
Sift together flour, baking soda and both salts and mix into the wet ingredients.
Fold in the chopped chocolate until well combined and then chill until firm.
Preheat then oven to 350 degrees with the rack positioned in the middle.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll the dough into 24 one inch round balls and place on the baking sheets, pressing down with your hand to flatten.
Bake until lightly browned around the edges, about 12-15 minutes. Cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cupcakes and Frosting

Ken — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:43:58 +0000

Shannon went through a brief phase where she wanted to start a specialty cupcake catering business. I say a brief phase, even though I know it’s still in the backburner of her mind, because she has yet to actually make or decorate a cupcake and the idea dawned on her almost a year ago. I bought her “Hello, Cupcake!” for Christmas and she loved it, but we just never got around to making anything from it. The reason is a combination of me having a next to zero tolerance for sweets and mostly being unwilling to buy a muffin tin in large part because of that.

I’ve had the cupcake cups in the cupboard for seemingly years now and recently stumbled upon them again. That’s not really the nicest story, as I had to do a rigorous cleaning, sanitizing and recompartmentalizing job as our pantry became infested with Indian meal moths, but hey, it wasn’t all bad, because now I’m making cupcakes. Of course I wouldn’t use that as a sales pitch to anyone, “I just cleaned out my cupboard because of a moth infestation – sample?”

For someone that doesn’t particularly care for cupcakes, I found these surprisingly edible. For the icing, I used up some leftover creme fraiche (which I’ve started keeping on hand as more or less a staple for scrambled eggs or what have you) and crumbled some granola on top because it seemed like it needed a finishing touch. Nothing particularly artsy, but nice enough, I think. No complaints anyway.

Cupcakes and Frosting

1 stick (125g) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup (125g) sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup (90g) self-rising flour
1 1/2 teaspoons (7g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tablespoons creme fraiche or sour cream
1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
icing sugar to taste
2 tablespoons whole milk
1/4 cup granola

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the oven rack positioned in the center. Fill a 12 cup muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Then, add the eggs, one at a time, then the milk and vanilla, whisking until smooth.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and mix into the wet ingredients.
Divide the mixture evenly into the cupcake liners and bake until lightly browned, about 15-20 minutes.
While the cupcakes are cooling, whip together the butter, creme fraiche and vanilla with enough icing sugar to make it taste sweetened. Adjust the consistency with the milk, if necessary. Spread on the cupcakes and sprinkle with crumbled granola.