mix, mix…stir, stir

Sunny warm air and a bounty of ripe fruit can only mean summertime. Of all the luscious seasonal offerings a perfectly ripe peach stops my world. Plump and fuzzy with blushes of ruby red, orange and pale yellow, based on appearance alone there is a promises something lovely.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, selected by Tommi of Brown Interior, had me down at Pike’s Place Market searching for some beautiful peaches to make Honey Peach Ice Cream, and though I love ice cream, I knew it would be a challenge to forgo eating the fresh peaches to make this recipe. Standing at the counter staring at glistening pile of juicy ripe peach slices was a test of will, but most of them did make it into the ice cream.

I really can’t seem to heat milk or cream without the thought of a flavor infusion creeping into my mind. I became fixated on the idea of mace with this ice cream and infused one large mace blade in the cream and milk for 10 minutes, and then preceded with tempering the eggs and cooking the custard with the mace blade, removing it before chilling the mixture. The flavor was exciting, spicy, warm and peachy. The mace seemed a touch too pushy but when I tossed in a pinch of pink flake salt the flavors balanced to a lovely harmony.

The cool creamy texture initially hijacks the tasting experience, but once the texture is satisfactorily processed, the sunny flavor of fresh peach blooms bringing with it smooth spicy hints of nutmeg from the mace infusion. I used my good honey for this ice cream; the honey that gets to live in my new honey pot.  Last month I attended the International Food Blogger Conference organized by Foodista, and one of the sample products, or gifts, graciously bestowed to the participants was a ceramic honey pot from Le Crueset. Growing up we always used a honey pot with a wooden honey dipper, but I seem to have gotten by all these years using the handy upside down squeeze bottles, which are an amazingly clever idea. Though clever and handy, the squeeze bottle misses on the pleasurably tactile experience of dipping and drizzling honey from a pot.

Special honey now lives in my pot. I don’t know if it was a happy coincidence or a well planned strategy, but a beautiful jar of Guajillo honey from Range Honey in Texas was also gifted to us conference attendees. I had a Winnie the Pooh moment while making this ice cream when I was standing over the sink licking every last drop of honey out of the measuring spoon. Needless to say, I really like this honey.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 78 recipes completed 143 to go!

First, there is a bit of a back story for this one that is described in my previous post. I made the ricotta cheese for for the very first time for this cake. Now for those who have never made ricotta it may sound impressive, but anyone who has made it knows it is no big deal, and I am thrilled to now count myself as part of the no-big-deal camp and will forever enjoy the pleasure of fresh warm ricotta cheese. If you haven’t tried making it you must.

I actually call these Honey Snack Cakes. The figs and polenta are no doubt significant flavor elements, but this cake is driven by the flavor of the honey. Polenta makes the texture of the cake work; the sturdy crumb and lovely crunch of the larger polenta grains seem necessary to stand up to the ricotta and honey combination which make for a very moist and somewhat sticky finished product.

I love to make bite-sized food for hors d’oeuvre/mingle type parties and thought this recipe would lend itself well to such an application. The tartlets worked beautifully and because the structure of the cake is dense and moist they are easy to pick up and eat by hand. Another plus for these little gems in a party application is they are better the next day, so you can make them a head of time.

In reviewing some of the comments on Tuesdays with Dorie from other bakers who had already made the cake, a number found the cake to be too sweet. Heeding their words, I cut the sugar by half, but still find it a bit sweet. I am incline to also cut back the honey a bit next time. This batter struck me as a perfect canvas for a spice element, considering the figs and honey, I added some ground anise seed and it was a nice match. Because I was making tartlets, I cut the figs in to small pieces rather than just in half and distributed them among the tins. The only other change I made to the recipe was by pure oversight. I neglected to dot the tops with butter before baking and can’t see that any harm came from the deletion.

Feeling like the tartlets were too sweet, and wanting a garnish on them at the same time, I turned to the fresh ricotta cheese I had left. A little scoop on top of each tartlet created the perfect creamy counterbalance to the sweet sticky little cakes. Now I loved them! My venture into to ricotta cheese making really paid off! Please don’t top these lovely little cakes with commercial ricotta, homemade ricotta is that much better. See my previous post and make some fresh ricotta cheese – it’s really worth it!

This selection for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie baking group was made by Caitlin of Engineer Baker. You can find the recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.