A Trip to the Homeland

Eliza and I recently returned from a trip to Rochester, New York—my hometown. We went to visit family and friends who hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Eliza. While there I was struck by how many foods I have been missing since moving to Texas. I made it my mission that week to eat all the foods I can’t get in Austin. I left Rochester after a week a few pounds heavier, but with a smile on my face.

For all the delicious food in Austin, one thing I have struggled to find is some good, hearty Italian food. I’m not talking wood-fired pizzas and “artisan” pastas. I’m talking about a big bowl of stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth gnocchi covered in red sauce that took three days to make. And that’s what they serve at Agatina’s.

For the most part, Eliza was a perfect doll the entire week, but when we went to Agatina’s, she really cranked out. Before our entrees arrived it became obvious she wasn’t going to settle down anytime soon, so we got our food to go and enjoyed it at home. It was still delicious and we had tons of leftovers. It was exactly what I wanted.

Among the other foods I gorged myself on last week were white hots, real bagels, scallion pancakes (I haven’t been able to find these in Austin), and white pizza from Martusciello’s Bakery.

But enough about the savory side—what about dessert? On our last day in the Flower City, we took a trip to Savoia Pastry Shoppe, one of the best bakeries in the greater Rochester area. After hemming, hawing, and trying to rationalize just getting one of everything, we settled on three varieties of cookies, a sfogliatelle, and a pasticiotti. I inhaled nearly all the cookies myself; of the three we got, the raspberry jam sandwich cookies were the winner, but just barely. The butter cookies with a plump dollop of chocolate frosting were the perfect combo of vanilla and chocolate, and the amaretti were, of course, sublime—perfectly chewy and crispy. I wasn’t impressed with the sfogliatelle (it was rather bland), but the pasticiotti was good—sort of a sugar cookie filled with pastry cream. You could fill a throw pillow with pastry cream and it would be delicious.

We also squeezed in a trip to Schutt’s, and even though Eliza seemed thoroughly unimpressed, I had a blast. We picked up a dozen fried cakes and a half-gallon of fresh cider to bring over to my grandmother’s house. It was a perfect fall day, still pretty warm, and the donuts and cider made a great snack.

But I’m still thinking about those Italian cookies. My next baking project is going to be to try to replicate those butter cookies. The great thing about the Italian butter cookies is their versatility—both the raspberry jam cookies and the cookies with the chocolate frosting from Savoia were made from the same basic butter cookie recipe. There are countless variations—different shapes, sizes, fillings, toppings, and flavorings. I look forward to a little experimentation.

Chocolate Chippers and Blondies

It’s taken me longer than I anticipated to get this post up. Why? Because I’ve been doing some freelance work, writing a book, keeping the house in order, staying social, and . . . oh yeah—taking care of my pride and joy, Miss Eliza! Am I complaining? Not even close. I really couldn’t be happier—or busier—right now.

A phenomenon I’ve noticed recently is Entire Day Disappearance. Some days I wake up, get some coffee, feed Eliza, check my e-mail . . . then somehow it’s eight o’clock at night and I haven’t crossed anything off my to-do list. Of course, I’ve still managed to squeeze in some baking. It’s something that makes me truly happy, and I hope I will always find time for it.

When I first started D is for Dessert, I did so with the goal of really pushing myself to try some baking techniques I’ve never tried before. I pictured myself making soufflés, macarons, and maybe a Buche de Noel around the holidays. In reality, I’m lucky if I can crank out a batch of cookies before Eliza starts getting fussy. Again, I’m not complaining, just noting my limitations.

So now I’m focusing on the simpler desserts: cookies, bars, maybe a cake or two. Just because they don’t take an entire day to prepare, and require myriad exotic ingredients, doesn’t mean they’re any less worthy.

In the past month I’ve made the following recipes twice each. They’re really simple recipes that produce absolutely delicious treats. The recipes I’m posting are adapted from Cook’s Illustrated (of course) to be dairy free. In related news, I’ve been given the green light from Eliza’s doctor to go ahead and eat dairy again (yay!) so my recipes will no longer be dairy free.

The chocolate chip cookies are gorgeous—big and satisfying without sacrificing depth of flavor. They’re not overly sweet, so you could really play around with add-ins, like coconut, nuts, or peanut butter chips. The blondies have been a big hit. They truly taste like a brownie minus the chocolate. They have the same texture and chewiness as a brownie, but with a lovely golden flavor. This recipe is also super flexible; I was thinking they’d be great with mini peanut butter cups or with coconut and toasted almonds.

Dairy-Free Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
(adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp table salt
½ tsp baking soda
12 tbsp Earth Balance, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mix the flour, salt, and baking soda together in a medium bowl; set aside.
2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix the Earth Balance and the sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in the egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in the chips.
3. Form ¼ cup of dough into a flattened ball/disk shape. Place dough disks on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets.
4. Bake, reversing cookie sheets’ positions halfway through baking, until the cookies are light golden brown and the outer edges start to harden yet the centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes.


Dairy-Free Blondies
(adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp table salt
12 tbsp Earth Balance, melted and cooled
1 ½ cups brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
4 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (or a mix of any kind of chips, nuts, coconut, candy bits, etc.)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Line a 13 x 9 pan with two perpendicular sheets of foil. Spray the foil-lined pan with nonstick cooking spray.
3. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in medium bowl; set aside.
4. Whisk the melted Earth Balance and the brown sugar together in medium bowl until combined. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Using a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into egg mixture until just combined; do not over mix. Fold in the chocolate and the nuts and turn the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula.
5. Bake until the top is shiny, cracked, and light golden brown, 22 to 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack to room temperature. Remove the bars from the pan by lifting the foil overhang and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into squares and serve.

An Apple Tart for Uncle Bryan

Erik's brother, Bryan, was in town for the night, so I thought I'd make a little dessert for us all to share. I love desserts with fruit (maybe on some level I believe the healthiness of the fruit cancels out the less-than-healthiness of dessert), and since fall is just around the corner--though you'd never know it here in Texas--I thought apples would be perfect.

In New York State, apples are synonymous with autumn. Growing up in Rochester, every fall we'd hit up Schutt's Apple Mill for apples, cider, and apple freezes (a creamy frozen concoction made from apple cider). In that part of the world the weather actually changes in the fall, and so we'd bundle ourselves up in thick sweaters and woolly socks to go find the perfect pumpin for carving or to lug home a big bushel of fresh russet apples. To this day, the smell of apples reminds me of fall in Upstate New York and of Schutt's.

Eliza and I will be visiting Rochester in September and I'm definitely going to pencil in a trip to Schutt's. It will be the perfect time of the year, and I'm excited to share the experience with Eliza.

In the meantime, I thought an easy apple tart would be a perfect dessert for Bryan's last-minute visit. I used the store-bought puff pastry I had in my freezer (once the weather cools off a bit I'll be making my own doughs again) and made the Quick Apple Tart from Epicurious/Gourmet. I followed the recipe pretty closely, with only a couple of minor changes (I used Earth Balance instead of butter and I sprinkled some almonds on the tart after it was done baking), and it turned out great. The bottom burned a little, but that was my fault--I baked the tart on the bottom rack of my oven when I should have put it on the top rack. Lesson learned. It was still delicious. There are three pieces left that will make awesome breakfasts for the next couple of days.

The tart would be equally yummy with pears, or even with peaches or plums. Or blueberries or raspberries. My point is, it's a very versatile recipe that I will probably use again when I need a fancy-looking dessert for last-minute company. Oh, and the almonds really did nothing for the tart. I will probably just skip them next time.

Quick Apple Tart
(adapted from Epicurious/Gourmet)

1 sheet frozen puff pastry (half of 17.3-ounce package), thawed
3 medium apples (I used Pink Ladies), peeled, cored, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons Earth Balance, melted
3 tablespoons sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup apricot jam, melted
1/4 cup slivered almonds

Preheat the oven to 400. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Unfold the pastry on the parchment paper. Using the tines of a fork, pierce a 1/2-inch border around the edge of the pastry, then pierce the center all over. Arrange the apples on the pastry, overlapping the slices and leaving the border clear. Brush the apples with the melted Earth Balance, then sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Bake for 30 minutes. Brush the melted jam over the apples, then bake the tart until golden, about 8 minutes longer. Sprinkle the almonds over the top of the tart. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Lemon Bundt Cake and Some Effing Good Cookies

First let me explain my photo. I made a lemon bundt cake on Thursday night, glazed it on Friday, and got so excited to give it to some dear friends that I forgot to take a picture before passing it along. Then, when I went to take a picture of the cookies I made, my camera’s battery died. I tried taking a picture with my phone, but the quality was even worse than with my regular camera.

Instead of posting without a picture, though, I thought I’d introduce you to the cutest kitty in the world, Mr. Geoffrey Jellineck.

Moving on. As I mentioned, I made a scrumptious lemon bundt cake this week that, adhering to my new dietary adjustment, was also dairy free. I adapted a recipe from (who else?) Cook’s Illustrated. The recipe was for one 12-cup bundt cake, but I only have a six-cup pan and a pan that makes six one-cup cakes, so I used those. It turned out to be a good idea, because I was able to make one big cake and a bunch of mini cakes, which allowed me to sample my goods before foisting them upon my friends.

The recipe also called for glazing the cake twice: once right out of the oven, and once when cooled. Eliza got super cranky right around when I was taking the cakes out of the oven, so the first glazing did not happen. I ended up glazing all the cakes the next afternoon and, frankly, I see nothing wrong with that. The lemon glaze was tart and delicious and a perfect pairing with the sweet cake. That first glazing might have allowed some of the glaze to penetrate the cake a bit, but it was plenty tasty the way I did it.

Two of the mini cakes went to our new next-door neighbors, and the big cake went to Akina and Todd (Akina is lactose intolerant, so the dairy-free cake was welcomed gratefully). The other four mini cakes ended up in my belly.

On Sunday night I had a hankering for some cookies. I looked online for a good cookie recipe that I could easily modify to be dairy free, and that also called for ingredients I had already since I didn’t feel like going to the store. The recipe I decided on was Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies (there’s an explanation for the name of the cookies here).

In my Google travels I’ve read a lot about Dorie Greenspan, but I’d never tried any of her recipes until this one. And I’m hooked. I will be buying Baking: From My Home to Yours very soon.

The World Peace Cookies recipe is a little funky. The dough is really, really crumbly, and the chilled dough logs were nearly impossible to slice; the dough just kind of fell apart and I had to mash it back together into cookie-like shapes. As a result, many of the cookies I made were unsightly—delicious, yes, but they were some ugly mofos. I guess it’s lucky my camera battery died after all.

But it doesn’t matter that they were ugly, because I couldn’t keep my hands off of them. They're super chocolatey, with just a hint of a salty bite. Their texture is like sand or, as Erik said, like "cooked cookie dough"—which somehow makes perfect sense. They are delicate and hefty at the same time. I'm pretty much addicted. I was only able to get 14 cookies from the recipe, and that’s a good thing, because if there were many more I probably would have turned into a giant World Peace Cookie.


Dairy-Free Lemon Bundt Cake
(adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

Cake
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Zest of 3 lemons
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup plain soy milk plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
18 tablespoons shortening, at room temperature
2 cups sugar

Glaze
2 - 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon plain soy milk
2 cups confectioners' sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan. Mince the lemon zest to a fine paste (you should have about 2 tablespoons). Combine the zest and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice in small bowl.

2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Combine the lemon juice mixture, the vanilla, and the soy milk/lemon juice mixture in a medium bowl. In a small bowl, gently whisk the eggs and the yolk to combine. In a standing mixer, cream the shortening and the sugar at medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes; scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Reduce to medium speed and add half of the eggs, mixing until incorporated, about 15 seconds. Repeat with the remaining eggs; scrape down the bowl again. Reduce to low speed; add about one-third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the soy milk/lemon juice mixture, mixing until just incorporated after each addition (about 5 seconds). Repeat using half of the remaining flour mixture and all of the remaining soy milk/lemon juice mixture. Scrape the bowl and add the remaining flour mixture; mix at medium-low speed until the batter is thoroughly combined, about 15 seconds. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold the batter once or twice with a rubber spatula to incorporate any remaining flour. Scrape into the prepared pan.

3. Bake until the top is golden brown and a wooden skewer or toothpick inserted into center comes out with no crumbs attached, 45 to 50 minutes.

4. While the cake is baking, whisk 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, the soy milk, and the confectioners' sugar until smooth, adding more lemon juice gradually as needed until the glaze is thick but still pourable. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack set over a baking sheet for 10 minutes, then invert the cake directly onto the rack. Pour half of the glaze over the warm cake and let cool for 1 hour; pour the remaining glaze evenly over the top of the cake and continue to cool to room temperature, at least 2 hours. Cut into slices and serve.


Dairy-Free World Peace Cookies
(adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours)

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

11 tablespoons Earth Balance shortening, at room temperature

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1. Sift the flour, cocoa, and baking soda together.

2. In a standing mixer, beat the shortening on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both the sugars, the salt, and the vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.

3. Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time; if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of times more. Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.

4. Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before baking—just slice the logs into cookies and bake the cookies 1 minute longer.)

5. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

6. Working with a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1/2 inch thick. (The rounds are likely to crack as you’re cutting them—don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them.

7. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes. They won’t look done, and they won’t be firm, but that’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack.

The Three-Day Cake I Cannot Eat

Picking out our wedding cake was one of the most enjoyable parts of planning my and Erik’s wedding. I knew from looking at countless photos of cakes that I definitely wanted fondant—it has such a clean, polished look. As far as I can remember (all our film was stolen from the reception hall, so there are no surviving pictures of the cake), our cake was ivory fondant with ivory swirls and scrollwork all over it. It also had some of our wedding flowers in between the tiers: aubergine and flame calla lilies.

I looked forward to the cake tasting for weeks, and I could barely restrain myself from inhaling all the little slices the bakery gave us. We settled on three tiers: one was raspberry Chambord cake with vanilla buttercream, one was chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream, and the top tier—also raspberry Chambord—was ours to take home.

The cake was delicious and it made me very happy.

Erik is out of town this weekend. He’s on a “mini tour” with the super awesome Akina Adderley & the Vintage Playboys. Originally, I thought I’d make myself a coconut cake this weekend (one of my absolute favorites) because Erik doesn’t like coconut very much and it wouldn’t be fair of me to make a big, delicious, fluffy coconut cake when he’s home and then not be able to share it with him.

I started to plan the cake, and decided to go all-out with some decorating. I’d always wanted to try playing around with fondant, so I figured this would be a good opportunity. I also thought I’d try messing around with gumpaste flowers, too. In essence, I was making a mini-wedding cake.

As my decorating plans grew in complexity, the cake itself became simpler. Instead of spending the whole weekend making a multi-layered coconut concoction, I opted for the simpler—but no less delicious—classic yellow layer cake with chocolate frosting. I knew I could bang it out way faster than a coconut cake, leaving me more time for decorating.

On Friday I made the cake and the frosting. I decided to make a six-inch cake—my favorite size for home consumption—which gave me enough left-over batter for six cupcakes. I doubled my usual chocolate buttercream frosting recipe and had more than enough left after frosting the cake to frost the cupcakes.

I froze the two six-inch cakes I made on Friday, and then sliced them into four even layers on Saturday. I frosted them with room-temperature frosting, and then put the whole thing in the fridge until today.

This morning I rolled out my fondant, which I tinted light blue on Friday afternoon. I rolled the fondant a little too thin, so there are a few blemishes on my cake, but all in all I think I did a pretty good job.

With royal icing I glued some pearly nonpareils along the bottom edge of the cake to hide the seam, then added rows of dots of icing all over the cake. My original idea was to make some white gumpaste roses and pile them on top of the cake, but you know what? Gumpaste is really hard to work with. I realize now that I need a lot more practice before I’ll be making anything decent-looking enough to grace a cake. So, I just went with all-over dots. I like the way it turned out; it’s a bit simple, maybe, but I‘m definitely proud of the overall effect.

I used the following recipes for this one:

Rich and Tender Yellow Layer Cake
Easy Chocolate Buttercream

Sadly, due to Eliza's delicate constitution, I have to give up dairy products for a while (see A New Direction). I don't mind, really; it's a small price to pay for for my child's well-being. But now there's a lovely cake in my fridge that I can't eat . . . does anyone in the greater Austin area want a piece?