mix, mix…stir, stir

Vanilla ice cream is about the pleasure of tasting pure ingredients. It is the naked truth of ice cream. There are no ripe berries, rich chocolate ribbons, or crunchy mix-ins to hide behind, so if the ingredients aren’t top notch, the ice cream will be, well, rather vanilla. Though I dressed my dish of vanilla ice cream up with a papaya accent and some candied nuts, this vanilla ice cream is anything but hiding.

It’s 103 degrees F in Seattle today and 99 degrees F in my house at the moment. Somehow writing about ice cream seems like it should make me feel cooler, but it’s not working. Weather this hot is as befuddling to Seattleites as snow is. Having a stash of freshly made vanilla ice cream in the freezer from this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe has made for many brief escapes from the heat, so thank you to Lynne of Café Lynnylu for picking such a timely recipe for us to make. You can find the recipe on her blog if you need to create a summer escape of your own.

I grew up eating ice milk. I have such fond memories of ice milk with the sweet icyness that melted so easily on my tongue.  Ice milk, which is defined as having less than 10% milk fat, has been replaced by modern-day low fat ice creams. These new fangled low fat ice creams are designed to mimic the texture of full fat ice cream making them a completely different experience from eating ice milk. The imprint of ice milk on my young palate makes me biased toward lighter ice creams, which is one of the reasons I really like this recipe. Dorie uses equal parts cream and milk and 6 egg yolks. I have made many recipes with a higher proportion of cream and up to 9 egg yolks, and find them to be too heavy.

Have you ever wondered what the key is to making really luscious smooth ice cream at home? The length of time it takes to freeze the ice cream is key. I learned this from Kate Zuckerman in her book The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle. She is a big proponent of ice cream freezers that use a frozen canister rather than the more expensive machines with built-in cooling mechanisms. This is because they are so cold they get the job done in about 15 minutes, and the faster the freezing time the smaller the ice crystals, which results in smoother ice cream. The machine that I own has a built-in compressor and takes at least twice that long to freeze a pint. One tip she gives that I employ is to churn less ice cream at a time which makes it freeze faster, so I broke this recipe into two batches to freeze it.  Obviously having a really well chilled base is important, but by letting the base rest in the refrigerator overnight it becomes slightly thickened and will have a nicer texture once frozen.

A number of years ago I came across a recipe for Five Herb Ice Milk that was published in Gourmet magazine. The combination of herbs, cream (or milk in this case), and sugar is shockingly delightful. It was a jump-up-and-down-around-the-kitchen-squealing-with-joy type of flavor discovery.  If you are an ice milk fan you will love the consistency of this, and if you aren’t, just infuse the herbs in your favorite ice cream base recipe.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 84 recipes completed 137 to go!

Mrs. Cook’s is a Seattle gem. Comfortably nestled in the heart of University Village Shopping Center, Mrs. Cook’s has been fueling the inner chefs of Seattleites and visitors since 1976 when Carol Bromel first opened her shop.

As someone who loves to cook, just walking in a kitchen store makes my heart race. Filled with beautiful things that inspire my favorite hobby, how could it not be exciting? Mrs. Cook’s has all the elements that make a great kitchen shop with quality lines of pots and pans, cutlery, dishes, crystal, linens and gadgets. Shelves filled with products from industry leaders assures you will find what you need, but among all of these familiar brands and products are countless beautiful, unique, clever, and delightful finds that define the independent identity of Mrs. Cook’s, making it such a fun place to shop.

About a year and a half ago I had the opportunity to work at Mrs. Cook’s through the holiday season as an internship of sorts. Starting TableFare I felt it was really important to understand the retail kitchenware business, and how better to do that than work on the floor during the holiday season? It was an immensely valuable experience, and even during the height of holiday craziness, it was a lot of fun.

Look, that’s SpiceCare on the shelf!

Carol and her two long-time managers, Amy and Nancy, work as a dynamic team to ensure the store is always stocked with inspiring items to keep customers cooking, entertaining, and generally enjoying time spent in the kitchen. Though even with all the right merchandise a store is only as good as the overall shopping experience. It’s unusual in a retail setting, but the Mrs. Cook’s staff have been working together for years and have developed a deep knowledge of the products they sell, take time to get to know their customers, and make it a goal to provide great service which sometimes means advising a customer against buying an item that really isn’t what that person needs. It’s fun to shop in a store where the staff enjoys what they do, and they do it well; it makes for a great shopping experience.

Mrs. Cook’s is the first kitchen store to stock SpiceCare, so in my opinion this makes them the best kitchen store ever! True to their dedication to good service and product knowledge, I was given the opportunity to train their staff on SpiceCare this week.  They are now SpiceCare experts and ready to help you get your spice collection organized; truthfully I feel good knowing they will only sell you our product if it really is the best solution for you. Stop by and visit their store in University Village or online. You can also find them on Twitter and Facebook too.

Here is my first video blog to introduce SpiceCare. I hope you enjoy it!

I usually have a general idea of what something will taste like as I am making it, but there are those occasions when the first bite of the finished product is a complete surprise. Of course surprised can be good or bad, and this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was a delightfully good surprise.

Blanc-Manger (for those of us that don’t speak French, it’s pronounced blah-man-jhay) is cream, milk, sugar, ground almonds, and gelatin. I expected it to be like panna cotta or flan in texture and when I tasted the batter before it chilled that seemed like a logical conclusion. It behaved quite like a panna cotta or flan would when unmolded from the pan, but the moment the first bite hit my mouth this dessert immediately deviated from the smooth  texture familiar to custards and other gelatin desserts. It was light and foamy as though it was effervescing with every chew. This was much more of a creamy rich mousse that just happened to be in the unexpected form of a tart. The big difference between this and panna cotta for example, is the cream is whipped and folded into the milk /gelatin mixture which incorporates air bubbles; air bubbles that pop and tickle your mouth as you eat it. It was the most delightful and unexpected surprise.

Now, a light airy gelatin tart might seem intimidating to make, but it’s as simple as whipping some cream, warming some milk, adding a few flavoring agents and spreading it in a pan to chill for a day. How perfect is this when you need an elegant dessert for a dinner party and you don’t need one more thing to do the day of? I cut out the rounds and placed them on a cocoa-star anise cookie so I could deliver these to friends and they could easily be eaten out of hand, but for a plated dessert I would opt for a thin layer of sponge cake under the tart. I spread a bit of raspberry jam spiked with Chambord and a touch of gelatin over the top. Overall I loved this dessert and thank Susan of  Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy for selecting it for this week’s baking activity. Susan has the recipe posted on her blog if you would like to experience the delicious effervescence yourself.

I experimented with leaf or sheet gelatin for the first time. Though there seems to be some debate about it being any better than the common granular gelatin, I wanted to try it because it’s what all the cool kids use. The trickiest thing about working with it is trying to decide how much to use when a recipe calls for granular gelatin. I have seen all sorts of different conversion rates in my research. For this recipe I settled on 3 ½ sheets (3” x 6” each) and the texture was perfect.  Like granular gelatin it must be soaked in cold water before being added to anything hot; if gelatin isn’t pre-soaked it can clump and not dissolve easily when added to warm mixtures. The texture of the soaked sheets is very strange. They become very slippery and floppy, but surprisingly are still very strong. Once added to hot liquid the sheets seem to dissolve instantly, which I suspect is the primary appeal of working with leaf gelatin. The other big benefit for me is I don’t end up spilling little granules of gelatin everywhere while measuring.  Somehow I always manage to spill gelatin and yeast when measuring them.

Two last little notes:

According to the food science guru, Harold McGee, gelatin doesn’t strengthen hair and nails. He says there just isn’t any good evidence to support this widely held claim. The protein found in our hair and nails is keratin and gelatin isn’t any better at creating the elements needed to form keratin than any other type of protein source. So you can eat gelatin, but you could also have a nice juicy steak, beautifully grilled piece of fish, or a tall glass of milk and provide your hair and nails with the building blocks they need.

If you want to add a little zip to chocolate cookies, but don’t want to go the common cinnamon route, try a little star anise. It adds the same warm sweetness like cinnamon, but with a fennel/anise flavor that is a nice twist.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 83 recipes completed 138 to go!

Tuesdays with Dorie is named such because everyone participating in the weekly baking group posts their results on Tuesday; kind of obvious. Today I feel like I am back in school showing up to class with an incomplete homework assignment. I saw this coming because wasn’t able to squeeze a baking project in before leaving town last week. I got home last night at midnight and all week I had been debating as to whether or not I should just skip this week, but that just didn’t feel right so I woke up this morning and started the dough. Of course the week I am pressed for time the recipe involves  yeasted dough rather than a quick batch of cookies.

The dough is mixed and undergoing its first rising and I wonder if I will manage to get the tart made and posted by the end of the day, then it occurred to me to invite you to follow along with the process through real-time blog updates as I progress through the recipe. Brilliant! I just went from a tardy homework assignment to an interactive experience for my readers. Sometimes it just comes down to how you choose to look at a situation.

I hope you will enjoy seeing my Brioche Plumb Tart come to life throughout the rest of the day. To get you caught up: The dough was mixed and rose in a warm spot of about an hour. It was then deflated and put in the refrigerator to rise for 30 minutes. At this point I came up with the post-as-I-go idea so a photo was taken. I have three more 30 minute refrigerator rise and deflate cycles to go through and will move on with then next step in about 1 1/2 hours. In the mean time I will head to the store to see what sort of fruit is ripe. I can’t guarantee this will end up being a plum tart. Isn’t it exciting? Together we have no idea where this is going to go!

2:00 p.m. update: In the pan
Brioche is not a dough that puts up a fight, so it’s fun to work with. It has a soft supple texture thanks to the addition of eggs and butter, which also gives the dough a beautiful golden color. With gentle patting and stretching the dough easily filled the tart pan, in fact, it seems like a lot of dough for this size pan. Hopefully it won’t rise beyond the boundaries and become an uncontrollable bready monster once in the oven.  Now for a 30 minute chill, and then on to the filling. I found some beautiful ripe fruit at the store. Not plums, so check back in a bit to see where this tart is headed (Queue dramatic and suspenseful music in your head).

 3:10 p.m. update: Tart filled
The fruit reveal…apricots! It is one of the alternates that Dorie suggests if plums aren’t available along with apples, pears, or mangos as great winter fruit options. The filling is fruit, jam, and a few tablespoons of chopped nuts and sugar. I included a little ginger zing by adding 1/4 teaspoon of finely grated fresh ginger to the apricot jam, and a warm spicy note by adding 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground cardamom to the sugar and nut topping. The tart is resting in a warm spot for 30 minutes and then it will go in the oven. In just about an hour it will be time to unveil the final result. Stay tuned…

5:40 p.m. update: Ta-da
Out of the oven and filling the house with the beautiful aroma of freshly baked bread; it now needs to cool for 45 minutes. I am suspicious that the slightly sunken center is actually a raw center, but I need to get to FedEx to ship a package before they close, so I have to leave it be. The upside of needing to run an errand is I don’t have to try to resist digging in while it cools for 45 minutes. The ideal timing of this dish is to make the dough the day before and let it hold in the refrigerator overnight so the bread develops more flavor. In the morning it can be filled and baked for a really spectacular breakfast or brunch dish.

Well, the sunken center did turn out to be a result of under baking. I am a little bit sad about that, but given that I worked this project in with everything else going on today, I’m happy to have gotten it baked. It’s really hard to beat the rich buttery flavor of brioche, especially when topped with ripe seasonal fruit. Interestingly, apricots seem to be one of the few fruits that is actually improved with cooking. The flavor of the fruit really comes to life after being exposed to some heat. I have read comments to this effect from pastry chefs and having just eaten some of the leftover fresh apricots, I can attest that the baked apricots are much more flavorful. The ginger and cardamom additions are nice, but a little too subtle. Next time I will use 1/2 teaspoon of grated ginger in the jam and then add the 1/2 teaspoon of cardamom to the brioche dough rather than putting it on the apricots.

If you would like to see an example of a beautiful Brioche Plum Tart, visit Denise at Chez Us. She selected our baking activity this week and the recipe is posted on her blog. I look forward to making this again when I am able to give the process my full attention.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 82 recipes completed 139 to go!