Saffron snickerdoodles; marriage

The weekend we got married in New York was made memorable not only by our nuptials but by the sheer volume of amazing food we ate. Our favourite (measured by the number of repeat visits we made, anyways) was Blue Bottle Coffee; we stayed across the street from one and another makes an appearance in our beautiful photos. The drip coffee was phenomenal but it was the cookies that really won me over, especially the saffron snickerdoodles.

photo by the formidably talented Kateryn Silva, obvs

We’ve been married for over six months now, and it’s becoming normal to call each other husband and wife (but I still love partner best). My finger feels weird without my ring rather than with; the thin strip of gold now boasts some new scratches besides all the ones I put there on purpose. Watching friends plan their weddings has convinced us that we made the right decision, and every time I hear this song I smile because it was stuck in my head all that day.

Those cookies were also stuck in my head one day recently when I decided to google them, and it turns out that the recipe had been printed not only in the Blue Bottle Coffee cookbook, but on one of my very favourite recipe blogs less than two weeks before we wed. So I bookmarked them, forgot, remembered, had brunch instead, and finally made them tonight, the smell of New York in October filling our apartment while I sat with my husband and enjoyed being in our tiny family.

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After years of forgetting until the day has mostly passed, I marked March 14 (Pi Day) in my calendar almost a year ago and have been eagerly awaiting an excuse to eat pie on a weekday.

pi(e) day

Unfortunately, my lifelong battle with custard claimed another victim. The maple cream tart I made tasted fine, but the three ramekins of extra filling that I tried to bake turned out like watery scrambled eggs.

Next time, custard.

Life list fail – croquembouche for New Year’s Eve

I just want to make it clear: this was not Thomas Keller’s fault.

Choux pastry and I have a testy relationship. The first time I tried making it, the result was abject failure. Several factors contributed at the time – a terribly calibrated oven, a bad recipe from the internet, a lack of understanding on my part about the science of choux pastry (and therefore, the purpose of the process).

The next time I made profiteroles, the pastry worked just fine. I filled them with ice cream and ate them happily; if I recall correctly there was some plate-licking on Eric’s part.

How hard could it be, then, to make a pastry cream and some caramel, fill the pastries, and then pile them into a pyramid?

Bouchon did not let me down; it was hubris that did me in

Whipping up the pastry and the cream was a breeze (although I found that I really don’t like the chalky taste that custard powder imparts). But I never reached the caramel, because it turns out that a plastic bag with a hole cut into the corner is not an ideal tool for filling choux pastry with thick pudding. In fact, it’s much more likely to result in empty choux pastries and pastry cream all over your hands, counter, floor, and very happy dog.

At 530 on New Years Eve, I was left with only one choice. I ate 5 choux pastries, dropped one on the floor, shoved the remaining 39 in the freezer, and made brownies, which are always a hit anyways.

Maybe next year!

Thomas Keller’s Banana Bread Pudding

the main reason I run is to eat three pieces of this in one day, let’s be real.

As much as I love Eric, if Thomas Keller ever came into my life I might face some tough choices. Ideally, he would agree to just join our family as a platonic, kitchen-dwelling member, but he might want something in return. All I’m saying is that I’d be prepared to make that sacrifice.

Until that happens, I’m content with working my way through Ad Hoc at Home. My mom got it for me last christmas, and I spent the first year of owning it flipping through the pages in awe, mostly too intimidated to try the recipes. I dipped my toe in the waters with the chocolate chip cookies, and made the peppercorn beef tenderloin for Eric’s birthday, but other than that I would mostly use it for inspiration.

At some point this summer, though, I realized that I wasn’t intimidated by the recipes anymore. It’s partly that I’ve reached a point where I want to be more challenged when I’m cooking, and partly that I’ve read them enough times to realize that, while there are a lot of components to his recipes, they break down fairly simply.

So, with a carton of cream in the fridge and a loaf of stale bread in the freezer, I did what anyone would do – I made the most complicated bread pudding recipe I’ve ever seen. And cousin, it was worth it. This truly lives up to the “pudding” part of the dessert – it’s bread suspended in a light, vanilla-scented custard, fried golden on the outside; speckled with wild blueberries and striated with bananas.

Confessions of a terrible food blogger

So as you may recall, my 25 before 26 list included “cook 10 new things” (#6). Now, for someone like me, who loves to cook (ie, reads cookbooks for fun, has 100s of recipes bookmarked in safari, runs solely so that I can justify the consumption of more calories), this should be easy, yet with a month to go, I’m only at seven things.

Ad Hoc at Home burgers and grilled veggies

Okay, the game’s up – I’ve probably cooked 50 new things this year. I’ve made new kinds of pasta sauces, experimented with different vegetables, broken the spine on Super Natural Every Day, and even been starting to work on some Ad Hoc at Home recipes I’ve been drooling over for ages. But… I’ve discovered that I’m really bad at food blogging.

It sounds easy, but think about it – next time you sit down to eat, spend a few minutes looking for your camera. Then try and get a shot with decent lighting, in Canada, at 6pm in the winter, with east-facing windows (difficulty level: a million). While you’re doing this, wrestle a Great Dane away from the plate. Now sit down and eat your lukewarm meal, plug the camera into your 5-year old laptop, and watch a spinning beachball for an hour. Finally, you’re ready to type out a riveting 300 words and a recipe, then to increase hits you should probably do some social media stuff.

You guys, that is a lot. of. work. And I’m too lazy to do it when three-quarters of the internet is already doing it better than I am. Which is why you’ll have noticed that the lousy seven posts I’ve made usually have one instagram picture and a link to a recipe (or no recipe – I promised nothing!).

Go read Smitten Kitchen (I’m beyond excited for her book!). Pop over to 101 Cookbooks for some amazing vegetarian fare. Check out Tastespotting for hit-or-miss recipes but tons of inspiration. I may love cooking, eating, and writing, but I’ve discovered that I don’t think I like doing them all at once.*

*Unless someone wants to pay me for it to be my full-time job, and also teach me off-camera lighting. Then we could talk.

Public Service Announcement

Guys, this is important.

Promise me that, by the end of the holiday season, you will buy yourself the She & Him Christmas album,

bake yourself some shortbread,

pour a big glass of eggnog, and dance around your christmas tree with your partner and great dane, as applicable.

 

Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

What a week – two conferences at once meant that I was barely at my desk all week, and my schedule was really out of whack. The weather’s been changing from the lovely fall we’d been having to a colder, wetter, darker sort that seems determined to remind us that winter is right around the corner.

Eric’s now on week three of Mission: Independent Consulting, which is going well. The only problem is that he doesn’t have a particular reason to hop out of bed in the morning, which means that I’ve been dragging myself out from under the covers in the dark while he and the dog snuggle up in my spot.

All this to say, I needed a good snack to take in my bag with me, and I’m happy to report that I’ve finally perfected my oatmeal raisin cookie – no more buying $2 ones at Murray St Market for me! Although I probably still will, because that place emits a siren call when I walk by and I can’t seem to pass it without picking up at least a coffee, and often some expensive fancy cheese.

This cookie is thin, but not lacy; chewy, but not dense. The edges are just crisp enough, but the centre is soft and not cakey at all, like thicker cookies often are. With lots of raisins and spices, it’s the perfect fall cookie to hold you over until it becomes appropriate to pull out the christmas cookie recipes.

Below is a half recipe, which makes about 14 fairly large cookies (you want them to be big enough to get the different zones). Feel free to double it, and you can also freeze the dough easily – just cook for a few minutes longer.

• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg, grated
• 1/2 tsp salt (I use fleur de sel and often sprinkle a little extra on top before baking, but I love salty-sweet)
• 1 1/2 cups oats
• 1 cup raisins (I prefer sultana; Eric insists that thompsons are better)

Mix butter and sugar with beaters in a large bowl until smooth and light. Mix in egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix flour, spices, baking soda, and salt. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet until blended. Stir in oats, then raisins. Place tablespoons of dough on a cookie sheet, about 1/5 inches apart (they’ll spread). Press down on them lightly with the back of the spoon. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

Next up, I’ll be trying to recreate the Wild Oat’s Maple Hemp Seed cookies – they’re phenomenal, and only 80 cents, but I’m never in the Glebe these days! I tried a vegan version that I found online last week, but they were too cakey and dry.

Cookie Fiasco

In 2008, the New York Times published a 2-page ode to the chocolate chip cookie, as well as the ultimate recipe – the culmination of tips from some of the biggest names in the cookie biz.  I made that recipe, and they were phenomenal – huge, thin, chewy, and indulgently sweet, but with a wonderful contrast from the sea salt sprinkled on top.  They were definitely my favourite chocolate chip cookie ever.

image from NYT

But… I’m an oatmeal raisin girl at heart, and so the chocolate chip cookies remained a fond memory until recently, when I had a craving.  I pulled up the recipe online, whipped up a batch, and – disaster.

Okay, by disaster, I mean these things still taste great – they’re COOKIES, for pete’s sake.  But they didn’t spread.  Everyone knows that the best texture for a cookie is chewy, and they have to be just the right thickness to be chewy – too thin and they’re crispy (and crumbly); too thick and they’re just cake in disguise.

These cookies aren’t bad, but they’re edging into cakey territory.  It could be because I made them a tad small, but that shouldn’t have prevented them from spreading, should it?  I also didn’t use the two different kinds of flour, but I know that I didn’t the first time either, so I don’t think that’s it.  The only other variable is that I used a scraping of vanilla bean instead of extract, but I can’t imagine that 2 teaspoons of liquid would cause 36 cookies to drastically change shape.

Obviously, there’s only one solution – make the cookies again next week.  It’s a big sacrifice, I know, but I do it in the name of science.

25 before 26

I made this for Eric’s office last weekend

1. Run the Ottawa race weekend 10k.
2. Do the Ottawa City Chase.
3. Host a holiday.
4. Finish my sleeve for real.
5. Bake a 3-layer cake.
6. Cook 10 new things. (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven)
7. Volunteer.
8. Find flats that fit properly.
9. Have a party.
10. Train Gatsby to heel and to stop jumping.
11. Maintain my French.
12. Travel to a new country. (done and done)
13. Give grand and thoughtful gifts during the holidays.
14. Take a Beau’s brewery tour.
15. Go camping.
16. Bike to work enough to not need a monthly bus pass (not in the winter!).
17. Fix the walls from where the dog chewed them (Yes, you read that correctly).
18. Go to one charity yoga class a month. (Epic fail – I’ve been once!)
19. Unpack the rest of our boxes (sort, buy a shelf for what we’re keeping, give away or sell the rest).
20. Have a Christmas-time movie marathon with Harmony eggnog.
21. Take Eric to Chez Piggy in Kingston.
22. Re-create the koodoo noodles from the Sleepless Goat.
23. See a play at the Great Canadian Theatre Company.
24. Do a winter sport.
25. Get a longboard (thanks to OBH for the inspiration!).

As I mentioned yesterday, I tried to focus this year’s goals a bit better, to make sure that they’re all things I really want to do (instead of just throwing them on the list for the sake of having 25 things), and that they don’t contradict each other!

24 before 25 #13: Profiteroles

Back story: in 2009, when Eric and I had just moved to Ottawa, I volunteered to make profiteroles with pastry cream and a maple glaze for dessert for family Thanksgiving.  I had seen Laura Calder make them on TV, and thought they looked great – and, as everyone claimed, easy.

It was a disaster.

Due in large part I’m sure to our horrible stove (you had to guess the temperature within about 50 degrees because the knob was loose, and it didn’t really close properly), the pate à choux didn’t puff.  I don’t know what to blame for the pastry cream, but it never thickened.  We ended up throwing the whole mess into a loaf pan and baking it, and while this failed-profiterole-bread-pudding was actually quite decadent, I was disappointed.

 

Success!

Last night, I settled the score.  After some internal debate, I settled on this highly rated recipe from Epicurious, mostly because I didn’t have enough eggs for Thomas Keller’s version.  As I anxiously stared through the oven window, the transformation from raw dough to puffy goodness began – I had done it!

When the profiteroles cooled, we filled them with vanilla Haagen-Daaz and drizzled them with melted 75% chocolate from Ecuador.  They.  Were.  Amazing.  The recipe made 15, so we had the leftovers for breakfast this morning with banana yogurt inside.

I pride myself on being a fairly decent baker, so when things don’t work out I can get a bit intimidated.  Sure, I could blame the oven, but what if I had tried again and still failed?  I’m so glad that I overcame my fear of inadequate choux pastry and made profiteroles.

Next up – I have a bone to pick with the Baked guys and their chocolate malt cake.  It turns out that Ovaltine in Canada is totally different than in the US, and causes birthday cakes to collapse.