Creme Patisserie- Makes Everything Fabulous

This is worth learning- not difficult, the most rewarding building block of the pastry world, and delicious on its own.. It is simply a pudding, enriched with egg yolks and finished with butter. If quality had a flavor, this would be it- you can taste everything- creamy, rich, subtle. You will be unable to use packaged substitutes after trying this; it is so simple you will not need to.

We will need:

450 ml/ 2 C whole fresh milk

4 egg yolks

50 g/ 4 T corn starch

130 g/ 2/3 C sugar

pinch salt

vanilla, or better still a plumped bean to steep in the milk

50 g/ 4 tablespoons butter

Heat the milk to simmering in a heavy-bottomed pan, with the vanilla bean if you are using one. Beat the yolks, add the sugar slowly and carefully as you beat, and then the cornstarch and salt. Very slowly spoon warm milk into the yolk mixture, whisking as you do, to bring it slowly up totemperature. When you have added half of the milk ad the mixture is quite hot, you can add it all back into  the pan with the warm (not boiling) milk. Continue to whisk over medium heat- making sure the whisk makes contact with the bottom of the pan all over, until it thickens, which will happen all at once at the end. Keep whisking and let it nearly boil another minute. Remove from the heat, and genty whisk in the butter in small pieces, one at a time. Squeeze the seeds from the vanilla bean into the cream if you are using one, or add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl (even with the most careful whisking) into a dish and cover with a round of non-stick parchment. Cool, then chill, then use as you like for instance in a creme chibouste to fill a meringue.

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Greece's Classic Holiday Cookie- Rich with Butter, Light as a Snowflake.

Many cultures lay claim to Kourabiedes- Mexican wedding cakes, Russian tea cakes, Swedish tea balls, Viennese crescents. The reason there are so many versions of this cookie is because it is divine. This barely sweet shortbread, rolled while hot and buttery in powdered sugar to make a layer of creamy icing, then dusted with more sugar after cooling so it's white like snow, is everywhere during the holidays here in Greece (along with the moist, syrup-kissed, walnut filled melomakarona). It has just 3 ingredients, so it is also divinely tricky- we are not relying on showy spices or splashy chocolate for impact, but texture. A little care and three simple steps and your buttery Kourabiedes will be rich, crumbly, and ethereal as a snowflake. 

We will need:

250 g/ generous 1 C butter

1/4 tsp/ salt

60 g/ generous 1/2 C powdered sugar

a little vanilla 

300 g/ 2 1/2 C flour

then-

lots more powdered sugar for rolling, at least 400 g/3 1/2 C

The first step to a light texture is beating the butter (together with the salt) to make it as airy as possible. Use an electric mixer, and scrape the sides often (turning off the mixer before you do so). After 5 to 7 minutes, it will be nearly twice the original volume, and have lightened from pale gold to nearly white:

Beat in the powdered sugar and vanilla. The second step to keeping them light is to add the flour gently by hand (beating the flour in could toughen and deflate the batter), stopping just as soon as it is smooth.

These are good plain, but most Greek versions have almonds:

Toasting them deepens their flavor- just put them in the oven for about ten minutes as you are heating it up, and chop them roughly with a serrated bread knife. A teacup's worth will be generous enough.

A difference between the Greek version and the many other international versions of this cookie is that Kourabiedes are quite large. This generous batch will yield just 20 - 24 cookies. The advantage of size (apart from the obvious)- they are less likely to dry out, and you can best appreciate the melting crumb of them when you can take a good bite.

Typical shapes are flattened ovals, and crescents:

In this batch, the ovals are plain, the crescents with toasted almond, and the balls with walnuts and cinnamon- a departure altogether (Polverones).

The third step to a light and crumbling kourabie is watchful baking- Bake at 170 C/ 350 F for about 20 minutes- they will have puffed slightly and the surfaces will be entirely dry. But they will have taken on nearly no color at all except for the bottoms, which will be gold. They will yield slightly when you press them, then firm up as they  cool. If you wait until they are firm to come out of the oven, their texture will be dry rather than melting.

Have ready a large bowl of powdered sugar for rolling, and a tray where they can all fit without touching one another. Roll them generously in the sugar one by one while still hot from the oven and place them on the tray- if they touch they will stick together. The powdered sugar draws the warm butter to the surface, clings to it, and forms a layer of icing. You will see them go from white and dry to yellow and moist as the sugar absorbs the butter. Once cool, roll them again generously- the dry sugar will stick to the icing, and look like snow.

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Apple Pie with Beurre Noisette and Rum in a Classic Lattice Crust.

The casually Baroque galette has become our pie of choice in its single-crust simplicity. With the first of the pink ladies though, only this classic lattice topped americana will do.

Any apples would be delicious, but these are our new favorite. For years we favored the granny smith for its tartness, but these have all that too, plus they are complicated and spicy. Apples collapse when baked- in a lattice pie this leaves quite a gap. Sauteing the apples briefly in butter does two things- the apples collapse into dense suppleness, and they become infused with the flavor of butter. So much butter also changes the pie's direction. There is just a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg in a nod to the classic combination. The fullness of the favor is carried by the browned butter. With that, rum is a natural pairing (Trader Vic's hot buttered rum, butter-rum lifesavers... ). A little vanilla adds even more depth.

             

 

We will need (for our largest pie tin), for the crust:

300 g/ 2 1/2 C flour

1/2 tsp. salt  

1 tablespoon sugar

250 g/ a little over 2 sticks butter, frozen

1/2 C ice water

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, grate in the frozen butter n the large holes of a box grater, tossing occasionally to keep them each as separate flour-coated strands, and then sprinkle in the water, slowly, with one hand as you toss with the other (as we did here). Shape into two disks, one slightly larger than the other, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate.

For the filling:

2 K/ 4 pounds apples- about 15-16 medium apples

100 g butter

a shot glass full of rum

vanilla extract or the seeds from a vanilla pod (homemade here)

a small pinch of cinnamon, a light grating of nutmeg (marvelous with the rum)

a  pinch of flaky salt

250 g/ 1 1/4 C raw demerara sugar (white  sugar would be fine if that is all you have but the raw sugar is perfect here), plus more to taste

50 g/ scant 1/2 C flour

Divide the apples into fourths, remove the core from each piece, and slice crosswise, like this:

It will seem like more apples than you could ever need,but they will cook down in this step and be just right. Melt half of the butter and brown it over medium heat, stirring all the while so none of the brown specks have a chance to blacken. Add half of the apples and saute until they are evenly wilted. Add the sugar, rum, vanilla, salt, and spices.

Transfer the apples into a large bowl to cool. Rinse the pan clean, and repeat with the other half of the apples, transferring this batch to the same bowl. Blend and test for seasoning and sugar. 

When the apple mixture is cool, add the flour and mix gently. Heat the oven to 200 C/ 400 F.  Roll out the larger disk of chilled pie  crust and drape it into the pie dish. Use scissors to trim  the excess and put it aside.

Squash the second disk into a rectangle and roll it out longer rather than wide, to cut strips from for the lattice, using a fluted cutter if you have one:

Arrange the strips as you like- we use a traditional weave, lifting strips as necessary to get the desired effect:

Your weave can be as close or as open as you like, the strips of dough wide or narrow. When the weave is complete, trim again, fold the crust into a neat edge, and crimp as you like:

The crust will puff beautifully as it bakes and any imperfections, as you see  here, will be perfect when gold from the oven. I wet the strips with water and dust a little more sugar over for extra sparkle.

Bake the pie on a  low rack, checking often after a half an hour to make sure nothing blackens, but do not be  surprised if your pie takes as much as an hour to be golden all over:

We had ours warm with vanilla ice cream, then cold for breakfast.

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Hamentaschen- For a Day of Feasting and Gladness.

A pastry even richer with nostalgia than with fruit.

When I was a little girl we lived in the St. Lawrence valley- a frozen, barren landscape inhabited mainly by Catholics, most of whom were sadly not Italian. The supermarkets were stocked with hamburger helper and canned potato salad. The food was terrible. Two or three times a year though we would drive to New York City. The Lower East Side, it was a juicy mouthful of paradise- toasted buttered bialys from Kossar's, cheese blinzes with sour cream and applesauce at Ratner's, Russ and Daughters' lox in all its supple lavishness. You know how we see those people coming to Greece from the northern counties and laying on the sand drinking in the sunshine like it's water and they're parched? It was like that- all this Jewish food quenched; it warmed. It sated a deeper, colder hunger of months, not hours.

The first hamantasch I ever had came from Moishe's Bakery on Second Avenue- an institution now but pretty new then. The pastry was a massive triangle- bigger than my hand, bulging with rich fruit filling. I tried one for the sheer dazzling size but kept getting it for the crumbling sandy crust, the almost chewy, bright tasting apricot puree (lekvar). They are made all year, but they are traditional for this holiday, Purim. No community has ever fed me better- ok, maybe the Italians (it would be a tie). In honor of this, and lots more, and despite the fact that I am barely even an *Episcopalian- let alone Jewish- when it's Purim, I make hamentaschen.

Inspired by the hamentaschen of Second Avenue in spirit only, these are quite a bit richer, and more petite (The buttery dough could not support such grand proportions. So just eat two.) I'm neither blessed nor bound by tradition, so I have been free to make up my ideal version.

We'll need:

250 g/ 1 generous C butter

150 g/ 3/4 C sugar

2 ml/ scant 1/2 tsp. salt

5 ml/ 1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 ml/ scant 1/2 tsp. almond extract

1 egg

320 g/ 2 1/2 C flour

For the filling:

Dried fruit of your choice, and a little bit of sugar if we need it.

Let's start with the filling-

Take about a cup of your favorite dried fruit and cover it well with water. Put a lid on the pot and set it on to simmer for quite a while, making sure the water doesn't boil off and they scorch. 

Prunes (pitted) are a great favorite. Here we have some dried nectarines. They have that same rich tanginess as the Blenheim apricots we have in California, and make a hamentasch beautiful to behold. I added a few pinches of sugar and a vanilla bean as they poached (with prunes, perhaps I would not). When the fruits are plump, boil the poaching liquid down rapidly (to keep in all the flavor) and then let them cool. Puree them in a food processor, test for sugar, and blend again until smooth. It should be a puree, not a paste- add some of the poaching liquid if it seems too dense.

The dough:

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the salt and the vanilla and almond and beat again:

Add the egg, beat more, then blend in the flour gently. The dough will be soft enough to sink your fingertips into. Put it in the freezer for a few minutes so it is easier to work with. 

I've shaped the hamentaschen using a method that is unorthodox (in every sense), but just as quick, and more fun. Rolling out dough is messy- the flour all over the place, the dough sticking to the counter, and the scraps needing to be patched together and rolled out again, usually toughening in the process. Instead, you could form them with your hands- much more fun, less messy, and no waste. Form the dough into smooth balls the size of a very large walnut- this made 2 baking sheets of a lucky 13 pieces each. Then take each ball and pinch it into a round the size of your palm. Put a large spoonful of filling in the center, and fold the sides in to form a triangle:

These look more rustic than those from rolled dough cut with a wineglass, but I think they are the lovelier for it:

The rough edges hint at their buttery, crumbly texture when baked.

The dough has proportionally more butter than most recipes, so to help keep them from schlumping in the oven, I let them firm up in the freezer for 15 minutes before putting them in to bake at 180 c/ 375 f. They are petite, but dense with filling, and needed a full 25 minutes in my oven. Start checking them after 20 minutes. They should turn golden, with a little golden brown in the corners, but the dough will still be soft when you press it. It will firm up right away as it cools. The bottom takes a deeper color:

Be careful not to overbake them, as they will become less delicate. 

As you see, some of them will still schlump. They taste none the worse for it.

I also made a fig batch.

Indeed, it is a day of feasting and gladness. (And I am very glad for the community that taught me how to feast.)

*No food traditions. If you Google "Episcopalian food" the results are praiseworthy- lots of feeding of the hungry, but you'll find almost no recipes. People do joke about molded Jello salads- I confess a fondness for them.

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A Buttery Marble Cake and the Reluctance for Lent

A respite from pork is one thing, but butter, that's hard. Or at least I suppose so- I haven't done it yet.

This beauty was visiting San Francisco when I was.

Lustrous, radiant with life, butter is peerless- certainly irreplaceable. For the rest of Lent, I'll try to share recipes that shine when made with oil instead of butter and do not need rich golden eggs. But plain marble cake is not one of those. 

Truly beurre noisette/browned butter is all the rage lately. There's a reason for that- all the dairy richness announces itself with such chutzpah. Still sophisticated, but happily a lot less subtle. In a recipe for a plain cake, like a marble cake, it makes an audible (loud!) difference.

A good plain pound cake is a marvelous thing. Once you swirl chocolate batter throughout anything though, something tricky happens- there becomes a chocolate part and then a non-chocolate part. Chocolate is a bold, attention-getting flavor- it can be hard for more discrete delights to shine beside it. To make a great marble cake you need to make sure that the white part is not just the "non-chocolate" part but that it has a definite personality of its own. Brown butter makes a white batter that stands up to the flashy dark swirl running through it.

To make this marble cake I did four things differently than a marble cake recipe usually calls for. The first thing was browning the butter. As I had girls impatient for cake, I started with cool but still liquid butter so I could not hope for volume from creaming the butter and sugar together. Instead I beat it long with the addition of the (many) cold eggs- they chilled the butter and gained great volume. The second was preparing the pan- thick layer of butter spread in with bare fingertips and coated with coarse sugar rather than flour- the cake slipped effortlessly from the deeply fluted (cheap and poor-quality) pan and had a glittering crunchy crust. The third was to use melted dark chocolate to flavor some of the batter- rather than using cocoa powder and water as most recipes do, and the fourth difference was to add some finely chopped dark chocolate to the chocolate batter for punctuation and texture. The effect of all this was that each batter made the other shine- that dark contrast with the chunks of chocolate running through it highlighted the rich buttery purity of the lighter batter.

For this very generous cake (rising to the top of a large bundt pan), we will need:

225 g/1 C butter, plus an extra small lump for the pan
350 g/ 1 3/4 C sugar

6 eggs (yes, 6!)

10 ml/2 tsp. vanilla (homemade here)

390 g/3 C flour

20 ml/4 tsp baking powder

5 ml/1 tsp. salt

330 ml/ 1 1/3 C yogurt or buttermilk

150 g/6 oz. melted dark chocolate + 50 g/ 2 oz. chopped chocolate

some coarse sugar for the pan

First prepare the pan- using just your fingertips smear the soft butter all over the pan in a not very thin layer. Coat it all over with coarse sugar. 

Now we can brown the butter. I melted over medium heat and then kept dragging a silicone spatula over the bottom of the pan so as many of the milk solids as possible would have a chance to turn toasty bronze without blackening. Be gentle with it- take it off when it smells rich and a little like hazelnuts (noisettes!)- it can blacken suddenly.

Pour the butter into the mixing bowl and let it cool (I set it out on the veranda). Even if it is still liquid, you can beat in the sugar. Adding the eggs, one at a time and beating hard, will see the volume increase tremendously:

Those rich brown flecks are from the butter.

Add the salt and the vanilla.

The butter, sugar, and eggs beat up very fluffy.

Now mix the flour with the baking powder, blend in half, add half the yogurt/buttermilk, the rest of the flour, then the rest of the yogurt:

Now set aside a little less than half of the batter. Chop the dark chocolate, melt the 3/4 of it gently, and blend it into the batter, along with the bits of chopped chocolate.

Put some of the lighter batter into the pan and top with dabs of the chocolate batter, and then dabs of the rest of the lighter batter:

Swirl the batters together gently with a butterknife, and put in the 170 c/350 f oven.

Note there's plenty of room for the batter to rise- we're going to need it. The rich, heavy batter rises slowly to the top of the pan:

It needs over an hour for a wooden skewer plunged in to come out clean- this one took and hour and ten minutes. 

Let it rest a few minutes before turning it out onto a cake dish- it slips easily from the pan, The glittering, almost crisp crust makes a nice contrast to the moist interior, and saves the cake nicely from drying out should it stay around longer than a day.

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Better Late than Never Panettone

Panettone, ready for the oven.

True, we are full into January now. But traditions are so pleasurably acquired through the years, and usually none are discarded along the way, and so it is possible, likely even, to have missed one or two rituals during the holiday season proper. No matter! Although a royal-icing decorated snowflake cut-out cookie may be December-specific, many classic recipes are simply winter, and festive- and panettone is one of these. Add to this that, in the richness of life, there will always be someone else you are grateful for- it is an endless affair.

Panettone hits all the right notes- lavish, festive, rich, fruit laden, and basically wraps itself. But- it is a bread. Therefore it is technically sensible, and never "too much" after a season of indulgence. It is also sturdy, shipable, and maybe even better stale than fresh. This particular panettone became a family tradition after my mother gave me a pre-season gift of a small, gimicky-looking Williams-Sonoma cookbook called "Gifts from the Kitchen." Well, I am not going to squirt some wine vinegar into a glass bottle and add a strip of orange zest and a sprig of rosemary and call it a gift. But the baked recipes are consistently excellent. The first time I made this a friend burned his fingers in his greed to dig it out of the extra large San Marzano tomato can it was baked in, then went on directly to burn his mouth with the steaming hot bread. It was hysterical and very gratifying.

This recipe has been gently scaled up, made metric, and has non-Sonoma temperature kitchen times. 

We'll need:

about 800 g/ 5, 51/2 C flour

100 g/ 1/2 C sugar

12 g. 1 1/2 T/ 1 1/2 envelopes dry yeast

about 8 ml/ scant 2 tsp. salt

180 g/ 3/4 C butter

140 g/5 oz/ about 1/3 C honey

360 ml/1 1/2 C milk

zest of 2 large oranges and one large lemon

3 eggs

5 ml/ 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Scant liter/ 4 C mixed dried fruits- cut into pieces if necessary. Here we used figs, sugared dried pineapple, and prunes.

This makes 2 large panettone forms, or three large tomato cans. 

This rich bread, which requires only minimal mixing and no real kneading, nonetheless needs time. This batch here took all day- I started around 10:30, and just made it to the courier (it was going to Athens) before the 8 o'clock pick up.All of the steps are fun, and hard to mess up. It just needs to sit a long time- much longer than the original recipe indicates.

Start by putting half of the flour and all of the rest of the dry ingredients (except the fruit) in the bowl of your mixer, or a large bowl if you will use a hand mixer or simply a wooden spoon (another advantage of this fine recipe- you really don't need a mixer at all):

Zest the citrus:

Measure out the butter and honey (so much easier to measure sticky honey with a scale):

Then heat the milk, butter, honey, and zests- this is the only part where you need to be careful- it should be heated to about 52 C/125 F- warm enough to dissolve and start activating the yeast, but not so hot as to kill it. No thermometer? Put your little finger in to the second joint, and count to 13 ("One one-thousand, two one-thousand...."). You should just be able to stand it.

When it's ready, the butter will have melted/
Stir it a little. It smells heavenly.

With the mixer on low, blend the warm liquid into the dry ingredients to make a thin batter. Beat a couple of minutes, add the eggs and vanilla, and beat again to combine well. then add as much of the rest of the flour as you need to make a stiff, sticky batter (really it's not so much a soft dough as it is a stiff batter). Put it into a large oiled bowl:

You can see the texture, the stickiness of the batter. Not a dough.

Now the batter can be covered and set aside to rise, and here we differ from the original instructions, which claim an hour and a quarter rise will see it doubled. In a winter house, even near the heater, the batter needs a few hours to rise. Imagine the air slogging through the weight of the eggs and butter and honey! It takes a while. In the meantime, we can cut up the fruit (scissors make this easy) and have it ready:

We punch the batter down- revealing the web of dough and air bubbles that have slowly developed. Now we blend in the fruit- there's a lot of fruit, and the dough is quite sticky- lightly oiled hands work best:

Now we divide it into the molds:

and then cover them with plastic wrap, which helps them create their own warm, moist environment to rise in. I also put them directly on the radiator this time, to hurry things along.

Let them rise to almost double- certainly about 2/3 more- and get the oven ready. Put the rack in the second lowest position, and turn the oven on to 170 c/350 f. In the meantime get the loaves ready too- cut a deep "X" in the tops with scissors, brush them with an egg wash, and dust them if you like with pearl sugar or crushed sugar cubes. When the oven is warm, transfer the loaves. They will gain some more height in baking:

Before...

and after. A little gain in height.

How to tell when they're done? As you see, they darken easily. Also, being so rich with egg and butter, the hollow tap sound will not be of help. Try testing like we test a cake- a wooden skewer (a toothpick is too short for our tall breads) inserted into the center should come out clean. Have a thermometer? The interior temperature will be 85 c/185 f.

These take a while to cool, but they're great hot, and great stale- toasted lightly, spread with a little butter for gloss and show. To wrap- classic is gathering them in a big sheet of cellophane and tying with a bow:

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Butter Cherry Tart- Bliss, Golden and Black

Make this when you have shy guests-
really, we talked of little else but how beguiling it was.

Last week at the market the vendor misheard me and gave me 2 kilos of black cherries rather than one. They were extraordinary- more like small plums in size, glistening and firm. He started to lighten the sack, but that didn't seem like a good idea.... Anyway, we were 7 at home that week; it really wasn't a daunting quantity. They went into a large glass bowl in the refrigerator, next to a smaller glass bowl of fat golden cherries. We did blind taste tests. They were both achingly fabulous.

Of course we took some to the beach, along with nectarines, and washed them in the waves to enjoy biting through their slightly salty skins. We had them cold from the refrigerator and ate handfuls of them at the sink. Still, what with the watermelon and the sagging trays of nectarines and apricots (it is such a generous season), some remained, and started to shrink up and condense.

They were just enough for a tart (and not too many to bother pitting), filled out a little and bound with a little... something. For me, cherries have a magnificent affinity for vanilla (think of the marvelous ice-cream flavor), and a little bitter almond underscores their aroma (think of the scent of the Jergen's lotion). I love a frangipane, but it can be a little dense, and detract from the fruitiness. The more delicate buttery, pudding-like texture of both lemon bars and pecan pie- a nutless frangipane if you will, leaving us with just butter, sugar, egg and a whisper of flour to hold it together, vanilla and almond to perfume. 

The shell:

For a baker, I am unfond of rolling out dough unless it is going to be showy- galette, lattice-topped pie, etc. This tart crust, adapted from Alice Medrich, is at once sturdy and delicate, and leaves you with a clean counter and just one bowl to clean up. 

1/2 C/ 125 g butter

1 1/3 C/ 130 g flour (maybe more)

2 Tablespoons sugar (for tenderness and structure)

Line the bottom of a 9"/ 24 cm springform pan with parchment (I don't cut a circle- I just put a square over the base and close the ring around it, trimming the overhang from the outside of the rim with a pair of scissors)

Melt the butter in the microwave and add the sugar and the flour and stir. It takes a moment for the butter to absorb the flour- wait a moment while it continues to stiffen, and then add a little more flour if you need it. We are aiming for a crumbly dough- not a paste- which we then press onto the bottom and sides of a pan, neatening the top edge.

The crumbly- not sticky- dough is pressed easily into the pan

No need to be too tidy- just make sure there are no tears.

This goes into the freezer- an indispensable step: the frozen crust, plunged into the hot oven, will bake without schlumping like a borphin, and there are no tiresome linings and pie weights to contend with. When the crust is frozen (it freezes quickly as it is so thin), bake at 375F/185C

for 10-12 minutes, until it takes on a golden color. 

The crust, pitted mixed cherries, and the rich golden egg/butter mixture
(Greek eggs have spectacularly orange yolks)

The filling:

As much fruit will fit loosely in the shell- that's about:

2 C cherries, pitted

or 

15 or so apricots, 

3 quite large peaches.... no real need to measure here.

1/4 C/ 60 g melted butter

3/4 C/ 150 g sugar

2 eggs

3 Tablespoons flour

1/8 tsp/1.5ml salt, if the butter is not salted

a few drops of bitter almond extract (discreet)

natural vanilla to taste (generous) 

Cherries strewn over the golden crust.

The filling- poured over the top- seeps all around them.

Put the fruit into the partially baked shell, and pour this mixture over the top. Bake for about 30 minutes- the filling will puff a bit, turn golden, and be just barely set in the center- still wobbly.

I have never made anything that smelled better than this- the butter-vanilla-sugar-fruit aroma knocks you out. It tastes of every individual thing- the eggy richness, the butter, the flavor of the sugar (not just its sweetness), of course the lush jammy fruit. We talked of little else all evening.

Cooling on the windowsill, it perfumed the veranda.

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