Bread Rotation

I just recently finished the bread rotation at school. A sometimes really intense rotation, filled with changes, and constant watching. I actually really enjoyed making breads, whereas I was worried that I wouldn't. I worked with some great people and I think that made it easier, but it was still intense. I like making breads as it is all about touching the dough, you have to know what you are looking for (or feeling for).

The hardest part for me was mixing. I often had no idea about the density of the dough - should it be a wet dough, or a stiff dough? But I think I'm better at gauging that now.

I'm looking forward to dough's again in the future!

Banana Sunshine

I miss fruit. I realize that it is Winter, but I'm feeling the bite. It is awfully hard to eat local here in the NW as there really isn't any fruit available right now that is local. So, I've decided that my luxuries are fruits from afar, and this jam/puree/goodness that I call "Banana Sunshine" is part of that desire.

It contains fresh (yes fresh! I've never used fresh coconut and coconut milk), banana's, orange and vanilla pods. That's about it really, but it is pretty tasty. I plan on trying it out as the base for some tarts - I was thinking a pate sucre base (baked completely), a thin layer of brushed on bittersweet chocolate, banana sunshine, and then just a simple pastry cream on top. Maybe some sort of chocolate sauce as well, but who knows!

This recipe was from the Christine Ferber book 'Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber". Amazing, amazing amzing. This recipe is simply called "Banana and Coconut".

Crepes

I had a couple of weeks of working in the culinary kitchens at school, a completely different vibe to the bakery. Kinda busy, seriously hot and manic. But during my time in the culinary kitchens I learned a few things. 

I made crepes for the second time but I used a fry-pan instead of a crepe pan. These are pretty easy to make the trick is to make sure your batter sits for at least an hour, and that you keep the heat pretty low (on my electric stove top it is set at 5 out of 8). 

Crepe Recipe (makes around 12 large crepes)

6 eggs

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

3 Tbs butter

salt

Mix using an immersion blender, and then chill for at least an hour before using. 

Ginger Beer

Yet another utterly unrelated post to baking. Ginger beer. I grew up on this stuff, not like the ginger ale here in America but this burningly good ginger extravaganza. 

We made this baby at school, after we tasted some really good stuff the quarter before us had made which didn't taste boozy at all. However, when we tested the stuff we made, it was incredibly beery...not so good in my book. I want the burn of ginger not of alcohol. 

The chef in charge said that it was probably because the natural yeast/bacteria in the beer had consumed all the sugar, so there wasn't a heap left. I'm guessing the solution would be to add more sugar. 

Hopefully the stuff I'm making at home will work our - I still have nearly a week to go before I can try it out, so fingers are a crossed. 

Once again, ginger beer is relying on the natural bacteria that our environment breeds. So a week before I bottled this baby, I simply grated ginger into water, added some sugar for food and let it sit at room temp (covered in cheese cloth) for about a week feeding it (with more ginger and sugar) every couple of days. This is called a ginger bug. Then you simply cook grated ginger in water, add sugar and let it cool. Add the ginger bug and dilute the solution with some water. Clean out some bottles, pop in the ginger and thats it. Sit and wait for a couple of weeks and you should hopefully have something resembling tastiness, but you never know...

Thank you Josh for the picts on this one!

Star Anise and Grapefruit Cookies

These sounded so weird that I thought I had to try them. I have to say I adore adore adore black licorice so I had no aversion in using star anise, the grapefruit however had me doubting.

The recipe is from the February Bon Appetite and it's by Elizabeth Falkner.

INGREDIENTS
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, diced
1 teaspoon plus 1/4 cup sugar
3 whole star anise
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons finely grated grapefruit peel

PREPARATION
Combine chocolate and butter in medium microwave-safe bowl. Microwave in 10-second intervals until chocolate is almost melted; remove and stir until melted and smooth. Finely grind 1 teaspoon sugar and 3 star anise in spice mill or small coffee grinder. Transfer to small bowl; whisk in flour, cocoa, coarse salt, and baking powder.
Beat remaining 1/4 cup sugar, eggs, honey, and grapefruit peel in large bowl until thick and smooth. Fold in chocolate, then dry ingredients. Cover bowl; chill batter until cold and firm, at least 45 minutes and up to 1 day.
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line 3 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop batter by tablespoonfuls onto prepared sheets, spacing mounds 2 inches apart.
Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until dry-looking and tester comes out with moist crumbs still attached, about 10 minutes. Cool on sheet 3 minutes, then transfer to racks and cool completely. DO AHEAD Can be made 1 day ahead. Store airtight between sheets of waxed paper.

You know the combination worked really well. You would eat a cookie thinking it was chocolate, and it was. The star anise is fairly subtle and then the ending is grapefruit. A pretty amazing cookie.

Earl Gray and Orange Syrup

We have theory nearly everyday, and every Friday we get to make something we've been talking about in theory. For the past couple of weeks we have made jams, and preserves of some kind from an amazing book by Christine Ferber called 'Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber".

It's full of seasonal, kinda bizarre jams and preserves. At school we made a caramel pear jam, a chocolate orange preserve and a marmalade made from mandarins. Some of the ingredients are a smidge obscure, but for the most part most of the recipes are easy to make and rather fascinating in their combinations.

I am currently obsessed (yes utterly obsessed) with tea. And as such, I thought I'd try making one of her preserves that contained tea (several of them do, there is another one in her book which has Jasmine tea in it).

This ended up being a seriously orangey preserve, rather sweet, with a hint of bergamot from the tea. My friend Ayumi adds it to her tea in the mornings and says it's mighty tasty in that!

Red Velvet Cup-Cakes Take Two

It's a method thing. I realized that previously I had written out the recipe for these but failed to give the method, which when I made them multiple times, I realized made a huge difference to the end product.

Main tips: Do not over-mix and make sure to sift the flour.

Red Velvet Cup Cakes Take Two

2.5 cups sifted cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbs Dutch Processed cocoa powder

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1.5 cups granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

3 Tbs red food coloring

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp baking soda

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350F, put cup cake wrappers in cup cake baking mold.

2. Sift the flour, salt and cocoa powder into a bowl.

3. Warm the butter up in a microwave for around 15 seconds to get it to room temperature, then place in a mixer with a paddle attachment. Mix.

4. Slowly add the granulated sugar to the butter.

5. Add the red food coloring and vanilla extract to the buttermilk and stir together.

6. Add the eggs, one at a time mixing between each egg to the sugar butter mixture.

7. Add 1/3 of the flour/salt/cocoa mixture to the and mix until just integrated.

8. Add 1/3 buttermilk mixture and mix until integrated. Repeat steps 6 & 7 another two times.

9. In a small bowl add the vinegar and baking soda together.

10. Immediately fold into batter.

11. Fill up the cup cake papers around 1/3 of the way.

12. Bake immediately, rotating 15 min into baking then bake another 6 or so min until a toothpick comes out clean.

13. Let cool, then ice.

Bake Sale Baked Goods

I was asked by a friend to make some baked goods for a bake sale she and a group were hosting this week. It was a pretty scary proposition, 320 baked goods (Linzer Cookies, French Macaroons, Fortune Cookies and Red Velvet Cupcakes) made over a few days in my wee kitchen with 1 oven, and two 5 quart blenders.

I had two wonderful people helping me out yesterday (thank you Jamie and Sarah!) and I don't think I would have been able to complete everything without their help.

I made many test batches of goods, especially the macaroons, which I had never made before. I tried two recipes and ended up liking the flavor of the first, but the look of the second. The red velvet cakes also ended up being rather difficult due to the consistency of the batter, but we figured out what worked best.

The recipe that worked (we tried three) was:

Red Velvet Cake (taken and only slightly adapted from "Joy of Baking" http://www.joyofbaking.com/RedVelvetCake.html)
2 1/2 cups (250 grams) sifted cake flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (15 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk
3 tablespoons liquid red food coloring
1 teaspoon white apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda

The macaroons were another matter. As mentioned earlier, I loved the taste of the one from Cooking Illustrated Holiday Baking edition, but the texture wasn't right. They were flat, and the color was too bright. So I tried the wonderful Tartelette's macaroons (very similar to: http://tartelette.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-heart-macarons.html).

I thought they looked lovely, I used both pink and blue food coloring (I added the liquid food (4 drops of red to one drop of blue for a very light pink batter) coloring to the sugar and let it dry out so it wouldn't effect the consistency of the batter). I like the look, but not the flavor as much, so I would add some vanilla extract to them next time I made them, in the same way I added the liquid food coloring (to the sugar).

All up this was an experience. Many late nights, lots of planning a nd pricing. It was an interesting project, and if given enough time to plan ahead one I would love to do again!

Kimchi - The Beginning

We've started to ferment things in class - doing the ol' sauerkraut and ginger beer thing. But we also made kim chi, which I had never really liked before. So I waited to try the stuff at school. It was actually amazingly tasty. Fresh, gingery and garlicy this stuff is slightly spicy but more....fresh. 

I thought I'd make it at home. We'll see how the results fair!

Croissants - The First Batch

I know it sounds like the title of a rather bad horror film, but the croissants I made at home worked out all right. An insane amount of labor went into these guys with me laboring for an hour over the final sheeting (a sheeting is where you roll out the dough - usually with a sheeter) where I had to get the dough down to 3mm in thickness.

This is the recipe I used (I halved it though, and so everything in the recipe is on a smaller scale and done by hand). It has a lot of steps, but I've put it in here to remond me how to go about making these guys again.

Note: To make the beurrage, you beat the butter (with a rolling pin - usually a French one) between two pieces of parchment paper into a rectangle that is around 10mm (1cm) thick. I really should have some diagrams for this but I hope the photo's help!

Straight Dough Croissants
Full Recipe (I used half this makes a ton of croissants!)

Ingredients
4Lb 8oz bread flour
8oz granulated sugar
2oz fresh yeast (or 40% dry yeast - saf yeast?)
1.25oz salt
20oz milk
16oz water
2.5Lb butter (for beurrage block)

Method
Day 1
Heat milk to 80F and dissolve the yeast in the milk. Pour in the bottom of a 20 quart mixer.
Add flour, then salt and sugar.
Using a dough hook mix at first speed. Wait 3 min and see if all the flour has been picked up off the bottom. If not, add water.
Dough should be a little lumpy, you don’t want to over mix.
Flour a large bowl and round the dough and place in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap.
Leave at room temp for 1 hour.
Refrigerate overnight.
Make the beurrage (either sheet it between two silpats into a rectangle at 10mm, or about the size of a 1/2 sheet pan). Refrigerate.

Day 2
Roll out the dough by hand so that it will fit the beurrage block in the center with the two sides of dough covering the butter like a door.
Place the beurrage in the center. Fold the flaps over so they meet in the middle of the beurrage.
Seal the edges with pressure from the rolling pin, as well as sealing the center the same way.
Sheet the dough with the middle closure parallel to the sheeter. Sheet until you can do a simple tri-fold on the dough.
Refrigerate 30 min.
Repeat step 4, but face the open end of the sandwich towards you (make sure to flour the bottom of the sheeter to prevent sticking and stretching).
Refrigerate overnight.

Day 3
Final sheet to 3mm thick (make sure to do width first, then length).
Use (see pictures below for croissant shapeing. Make sure to roll to 3mm thick, and each triangle should weigh 2.5 oz).

Mozzarella

Once again, totally not baking but still awfully interesting...to me at least. I recently read a book called "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver a great read it makes me wish I had 1/4 of an acre and the ability to grow things. Anyway, in the book she mentions making cheese, which sounded rather good to me. So I sent away for a package of goodies that included: citric acid, and rennet tablets (vegetarian) (amongst other things. And I made cheese. Not the greatest, but just the beginning!

In nut shell you add citric acid to cool milk (whole milk, pasteurized not ultra pasteurized) then heat it up. You add some rennet, let it sit, until the curds have separated, drain it, heat it up again pour out the excess whey and stretch it to create the shape. I also added thyme and lemon. That's it! For the milk I used Jersey Cows Milk which tastes pretty good - more of a warm flavor.

Bread Pudding

A simple bread pudding using ready made ingredients: challah bread, dolce de lechi syrup some bitter sweet chocolate and eggs. It was alright, I'd been wanting to try this recipe for a while and when I finally got around to having an occasion to make it (thank you games night!) it was pretty easy to assemble. Not the greatest pudding, but pretty good in a pinch!
Thank you Josh for the photo!

Oat Bread

A wonderful bread for winter, hearty, and filling this oat bread was pretty easy to make. It was also (by bread standards at least) pretty quick to make. 

I gave one to my diabetic neighbor Linda as an xmas present, and she really liked the bread. 

It is once again from the master of bread Jeffrey Hamelman "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes". 

Sauerkraut - Not Baking but Fascinating

Trust me this will stink up your entire house. It did ours. I adore sauerkraut - I don't eat as is (ie plain) but chop up some onion, soften that in butter, then add the sauerkraut, some juniper berries and some caraway seeds and I'm done. 

This was pretty amazing. We decided we'd give sauerkraut a go as I'd recently bought a book for school called "Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition and Craft of Live-Culture Foods" by Sandor Ellix Katz. It's pretty inspiring, and a really fascinating book, part history/culture and recipes it details both the ways people have eaten fermented foods for centuries as well as how we eat them today. The recipes are laid back and not too intense or crazy - but are utterly fascinating. They range from sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, cheese, beer, wind (herbal wines mostly) and ginger beer (which I just started today so we'll see how that goes!). 

The sauerkraut you see above is around 2-3 weeks old. It's so amazingly simple to make, it's simply fresh cabbage, washed and chopped, then you layer the cabbage,put on some salt, beat down the cabbage and then add another layer of cabbage and salt and beat until all the cabbage is used up. Then you keep an eye on it for a day or so to make sure that the cabbage releases enough juice to cover the final layer of cabbage in brine. Then you sit back and watch (and well, let's be honest sit back and smell) the cabbage. You have to watch for mold formation, which you clean off. When the cabbage is ready (it all depends on the heat of your place and the bacteria that are laying around feasting on the cabbage, but 2-3 weeks wasn't quite enough time for our sauerkraut - it was pretty sweet, and I like it seriously sour) you do what you like with it. 

As I write this Josh is making another batch in the kitchen, chopping up the cabbage we bought at the farmers market today (five cabbages!), salting it and beating it down. With the batch we intend to jar it and store it so we can use some in the seasons when cabbage isn't in season. 

Really interesting stuff, although as mentioned before hand really stinky. 

Pumkin Bundt Cake

From my in laws this year I received a wonderful bundt pan. I adore the angles on it. We went out and visited them last week but I didn't manage to make a bundt cake for them using the pan, So here is one I made later! It is a pumpkin bundt cake, made using a whole smallish pumpkin (a common sugar pumpkin was cut in half, seeds removed, skin removed, cut into small peices and placed on a baking tray. A little water was added, and then it was all covered in aluminium foil and baked at 375F until soft. Finally it was all mashed in a blender until smooth). I used the recipe from the blog "From Scratch" (http://foodpluspolitics.com/2007/10/31/pumpkin-bundt-cake/) with a few little changes:

Ingredients
3 large eggs
2 1/4 cup freshly made pumpkin puree (see comment above)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
300g all-purpose flour
380g sugar
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. fresh grated nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins or currants (160g)
1/2 cup chopped nuts, very optional
powdered sugar, for dusting

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt pan.

In a large bowl, whisk the 3 eggs until blended. Add pumpkin and oil. Whisk until smooth.

Add flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and spices. Mix well. Stir in raisins (and nuts, if using).

Pour into pan, bake 65 - 75 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan, let cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Vanilla Kipfel

These are xmas to me. Forget everything else. We didn't really have a traditional dinner at our place when I was a kid for xmas, we'd have some great tasting stuff usually a roladen or sauerbraten or if it was really hot we'd have schnitzel and a potato salad. I did love going to my Nana and Opa's place and consuming vaste amounts of food, but most of all you'd catch me in a corner with my brothers eating these guys.

At xmas time these days as I'm not usually there to celebrate anymore, Nana sends me a bunch of cookies in the mail, usuaully gingerbread, coconut macaroons and vanilla kipfel. These don't really make the huge trip accross the ocean, and so I end up with a bag of delicious crumbs, that I consume within a week. I love those parcels.

These guys are basically a shortbread made with ground almond meal as well as flour. They are shaped into cresents and baked, and then while they are still hot from the oven, you dust them with icing sugar which also has vanilla sugar in it. These are amazingly good. At least to me.... and my brothers.... and husband...and friends...

Paris Fog Ice Cream

Not the prettiest picture really but some seriously tasty ice cream. I made a simple custard base for the ice cream and then infused the cream with my favorite tea of the moment ([please excuse the product placement] Harney & Son's "Paris" tea). It's a black tea with a bit of Earl Gray (bergamont) and vanilla. A totally good, strong but not overwhelming dark tea.

When I was working at a pastry shop a while back, we would sometimes get customers who would want steamed milk over a tea bag, we called these "London Fog" drinks. I also used to go to a wonderful coffee shop in Seattle called Vivace (http://www.espressovivace.com/retail.html) and they added a dash of vanilla to theirs and called it "Beautiful Stephane". So I made an ice cream that combined both; tea and a bit of vanilla. It worked out wonderfully! And I hereby dub the flavor "Paris Fog" ice cream.

Rice Pudding

I heard that this isn't the way a lot of people eat their rice pudding, it really isn't that sweet, most of the good stuff is placed on top rather then integrated but this is the rice pudding I grew up with. I adore this.

Ingredients: Pudding
1/3 cup of long grained rice per person, rinsed in water until water runs clear
Pinch of Salt
Whole Milk

Ingredients: Topping
Salted butter (around 1 Tbs per serving)
Cinnamon and sugar (as much as people want)

Method
1. Place rice in a saucepan and cover with milk (you want around 1/2 inch over the top of the rice).
2. Bring to a boil.
3. Add salt to taste (not a lot as the butter is salted)
4. Turn down the burner and let it simmer until rice is cooked. You must keep stirring it as it will burn to the bottom of the pan. Also to keep the moisture content up you will need to add more milk during the cooking process to make sure that it doesn't burn. The consistency of the final product is smooth, no graininess, and pretty thick.
5. Melt the butter until brown (you want a hazelnut smelling butter - slightly brown).
6. Place the rice on a plate and squish it down with the back of a spoon.
7. Pour the butter on top and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. There you go rice pudding the way I like it!

World Peace Cookies - Dorie to the Rescue Again

These are yet another Dorie Greenspan cookie. They are wonderful, they have no eggs in them, they are chocolaty and they have a secrete ingredient that makes them even better. Salt. Specifically Fleur de sel. It adds a slight grittyness (much like Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in a weird way), and an amzing uplift to the cookie that is really tasty. The reviews I recieved were all positive for these babies so although they aren't pretty cookies they're seriously tasty cookies. Tasty far outweighs pretty in my book!

Bah Humbug and Stollen

I guess I grew up differently, because at around this time of the year I start to go insane. I think it's the music, the constant repetitive cheerful voices, the people telling me (very happily I might add) about how great it is to have snow (and well, yeah I have to agree there having had xmas in Australia in summer for the majority of my life), and about the virtues of Santa. Anyway, despite my bah humbug ways I decided to make Stollen with two buds from baking class, Sarah and Jamie. It was quite an undertaking and it taught us to read recipes before we decide to make them. This is specifically in relation to yeast and time.

Yeast takes it's sweet time eating starches and suagrs and so it needs a little time to burp. The recipe we used had a starter dough, as well as other rises, and benching proceedures so it took a while. There are plenty of recipes out there, we decided to use one recipe to make three mini stollen, which I think worked out nicely. The ingredients were another matter, specifically the candied fruits required. I went to a few places and found it difficult to get fruit that well...looked something like fruit (what cherries are green??) Eventually I found some (citron is green!) and we used that and a combo of candied citrus peel, golden raisins all soaked in rum for an hour or so. I grew up on stollen.

We had a European xmas in Australia with the celebration and present opening all done on the 24th. Nanna would sometimes make stollen or buy it, I remember the only part I ate was when she would make/buy the type with marzipan. I would rip out the marzipan and scoff it down while I would casually hide the remnants of the stollen in my hand until I could find the grabage bin and shove it in. Needless to say the stollen I made had a massive amount of marzipan (almond paste) in it and it worked out pretty well.

Stollen pairs brilliantly well with a warm drink (coffee, cider, tea etc) as it is by nature a fairly dry yeasted bread. But, if you like xmas, enjoy baking, want to do a fruit cake type of baked good, I'd give stollen a go.

PS. Sarah and Jamie! I erased the picts of all our stollens after they were made - I'm sorry!

Fig, Roasted Hazelnuts, Fennel Seed and Rosemary Bread

Wow, it's pretty jam packed. This bread is a 'quick bread' meaning it doesn't require a starter dough made the night before. However, I did start it around 9 am and finished it at around 2pm... so I guess quick bread isn't really the right name for it. However, it was worth it.

It is half whole wheat, half white bread flour, so it is already nutty without the addition of the hazelnuts. The fennel certainly gave it a anise kick, and the rosemary added some more oomph. The figs were sweet and contributed a lot to the crust color. A tasty bread, good with cheeses as well as with butter.

Taken from the Jeffrey Hamelman book "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes". An amazing bread book.

Coffe Cake - Asia Pear and Rosemary Crumble

I started to peel the pears and noticed they were soft - no biggy right? I can put them in something and baked them and all will be well. Then I cut them in half and they were seriously brown. So out they went. I panicked, this was a dessert for someone who was coming over to have dinner with us. I really didn't have much at home to use in the way of fruit (which I adore using). But on the weekend I had bought a couple of Asian Pears (Nashi Pears for the Aussies).

A while ago I went out with a friend and fellow baker Jamie to a place downtown called 'Taste'. It's attached to the art gallery SAM (Seattle Art Museum) www.tastesam.com/cafe_taste.aspx. We just wanted dessert, and they actually had some great desserts. One of them was a pie with an Asian Pear filling. It was pretty delicious. The pears kept their shape, and they had an unusually flavor, it was served with a side of cinnamon ice cream that complimented the pie nicely. Having being inspired (and admittedly desperate) I peeled, sliced and used the Asian pears. However they weren't the most flavorsome choice pears, and they weren't particularly moist, so I added rosemary and some pear liquor and well it worked. It had an interesting flavor mostly due to the addition of the rosemary - it was nearly savory. I think a cinnamon ice-cream or even a apple cider sorbet would have worked well with this one. Maybe next time I'll try that?

Choc Chip Cookies

Something simple and quick is what I've been craving to make. Nothing fancy and complex. These are just simply choc chip (bitter sweet choc was used) with a bit of vanilla extract, some walnuts and a whole heap of butter. Another wonderful Dorie Greenspan recipe. I have to admit I love Dorie. Her recipes are simple, straight forward. However they aren't simple in their taste. They often have an adventurous side to them for instance incorporating unusual spices. And, the best part is, her recipes usually work and taste amazing.

The Future of Food

It isn't usual that I go on about any political issues that may be occurring in the world. But the more I read, the more I visit the local farmers markets and the more I see out in the world the more concerned I am with what we consume, how things are grown, how distant we are from what we do consume and from those who grow it. 

A few months ago Michael Pollan (the author of 'The Omnivores Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food") wrote an amazing article in the New York Times magazine entitled "Farmer In Chief" (you can view the full article here: www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?scp=7&sq=pollan&st=cse). 

It's an article that kinda makes you sit up and pay attention to what's happening around you. America has some amazing land, that can grow a huge variety of crops, raise plenty of animals, it's just that as a consumer not everyone cares about that. We want what we want, now. Full stop. I want to make a chocolate raspberry tart in the middle of Winter - sure why not we can get berries from Chili. 

I'm worried that we are growing so far away from our food that our children may never have the opportunity to know how it was raised, where it came from or even what season it is tastiest in. 

Try the farmers markets, they are amazing and incredibly inspiring. Write to your government demand that they have a secretary of agriculture who supports local and sustainable agriculture (www.fooddemocracynow.org), ask that foods that contain Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO"s) are labelled. 

Food is so important and so amazingly diverse we need to look after the people growing the food as well as those buying it, namely ourselves. 

Squirrels and other Edibles

The last rotation at school was breads. It was mostly us, the first quarter getting things ready for the next day (weighing various amounts of flour, salt and fresh yeast most of the time). However, some days we did some quirky things. Like these. Squirrels? Weird yes, kinda weirdly cool - I think so. We have a book at school that basically details how to mold bread dough into various forms - masks, wheat stalks, rabbits, chickens, snakes, crocodiles, teddy bears and yes squirrels.

This guy was my favorite - it looks like he just fattened himself up on some tasty acorns. Next quarter we have to figure out some topping for foccacia that we'll sell down at the bakery at school - does anyone have any suggestions? We've done a lot of toppings that are pizza like ie. feta, olive, capsicum and tomato. But I was wondering if anyone had a topping that they really enjoyed on a pizza or a foccacia that we may try and use next quarter when we make the topping descions (2nd quarters tell the 1st quarters what to put on top). Sweet idea's would be great as well, we had one that was thinely sliced apples, a oatmeal, brown sugar and butter crumble and then some caramel on top as well. That one looked pretty amazing.

Veg mini cakes

I love to sneak a vegetable into a sweet treat. I guess it's the deceptive part of me; attempting to make something that usually isn't (or at least shouldn't) be healthy into something that is well, a tad more healthy.

These had an array of veg in them, namely: carrots, parsnip and zucchini, with an apple thrown in as well. It was published in a magazine I got from the local super market called 'Edible Seattle'. I liked the title I have to admit as I like to think that there are amazing places in Seattle to eat, and buy great produce. Unfortunately, there were only a few recipes in the mag, and this was one. Originally it was meant to be a sort of flat cake, one with which you would spread the cake on the bottom, ice it and then cut it into cubes. I decided to make mini cakes, using cup cake containers and then took off the bases. The main reason I removed the cup cake bases was that the cake is extremely oily, and so it soaked right through the cup cake paper.

These were nice, and as mentioned previously I do love hidden veg so it gets bonus marks for that.

Chard, Blue Cheese and Apple Galette

I was talking to a friend and fellow baker Sarah during the week and she was telling me about her rotation on doughs. She said that the only pastry she ever bought (that she made) was a galette with chard, onions, balsamic, apple and blue cheese. I thought I'd give it a burl at home. It was a magnificent combo. The crust is a simple one - I just got lazy. Originally I was going to make some snazzy yeasty thing, but then I couldn't be bothered and so I made a crust without yeast, made some fancy crusts. I then simply washed, chopped and sauteed some gorgeous chard with some red onion, added a ton of balsamic vinegar. I placed thinly slice granny smith apples on the base, placed the chard on top, then the blue cheese. Finally I put on some pine nuts, and then baked it until the crust was a smidge brown. That's it, so simple, and so very tasty!

Pignoli's

Earlier this year Josh and I went to New York. It was here that I first tried a pignoli (which is the plural of pignolo meaning pine nut). I remember going into this Italian bakery and looking at a wall of cookies, most of which I hadn't encountered before. I decided to try the one's that appeared most foreign - the pignoli was amongst these. They are delicious, soft and chewy, weirdly dense although the texture is light (I think it's because when you bite into a pignoli the air escapes and you create a dense texture due to the sugar and egg whites mashing together). I love the pine nuts, they add a meaty note to the whole thing pretty tasty all round, and really easy to make. Another egg white left over recipe.

For the full recipe see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121300303.html

I love these!

Snow Men and the art of piping

I have absolutely no skills in piping, seriously. I have a bit of a shake, and I get nervous at the idea of something being permanently attached to something. But I decided to try and make some of my left over pate sucree into snow men - simple one's without too much glitter and glam.

The easy part was rolling and cutting (although I'd like to have made them closer to 4mm rather than 7mm so they would have gotten a little more firm quicker). When it came to decorating I was stumped having never decorated xmas biscuits except with my nanna and opa (these consisted of a basic white icing with a smidge of lemon, and sprinkles on top - which are delicious, just not, well I guess 'elegant' for lack of a better word). So I started researching what to put on the biscuits, I could so colored sprinkles, colored icing, I could add candy, do some serious piping decorations... I just got lazy and made some royal icing and piped on a scarf, some buttons and a hat.

I really need to work on my piping skills.

Pavola

This is an Australian treat (or New Zealand treat depending on who you beleive although of course I always was brought up to believe it was Aussie) named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova.

A Pavlova is basically a giant merangue (although you can make small versions that won't take as long to bake) that has a firm outside and a almost soufflee like interiour. I don't know what makes it this way - I've had merangues that are firm all the way through with very little differentiation in the texture (read firm, hard, often on the verge of being brittle), but the good ol' pav (pavlova) has this incredably supple texture.

The idea is that you have this egg white base, and then you pile in freshly whipped cream and fruit. The pav's that I grew up looking at I never really like. They were filled with strawberries, maybe raspberries and passionfruit all pilled on top to resemble something that one regurgitates rather then ingests.

For the pav here, I simple used whipped cream with a touch of vanilla and sugar, a raspberry coulis (simply frozen raspberries from summer simmered with sugar and a smidge of lemon juice and strained through a sieve) with some kiwi fruit and persimmons on the side. It worked out pretty well - I'm looking forward to trying this one in Summer with beautiful fresh berries.

For the recipe I used see Smittenkitchens blog: http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/04/a-ballet-of-sorts/