Gotta Have a...Bundt?

Recently, I had one of those "I want to use that pan" moments. Maybe you aren't a person who has acquired a bizarre number of specialized kitchen items, and you don't have these moments. I do. The pan in question was a kinda-vintage butter yellow enameled Bundt pan, acquired either at a yard sale or at the free table in my old apartment building in Hyde Park. Either way, not exactly an investment - but I've had it for a while and had never used it. I also was getting some grief for not baking anything for the office recently, and on top of that - there were little hints of spring here in Seattle. Nothing really dramatic, but enough to trigger my craving for things involving either berries or lemon or both. (This recipe technically uses berry preserves, but I bet if berries were actually in season they might be juicy enough to be smushed up and used on their own.) I had been meaning to look for something...and then one morning in my inbox, via the Food&Wine Daily, there it was: Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake!

Blueberry-Sour Cream Coffee Cake (adapted from Food & Wine Online) [*note from your blogger: this link is a little fluky lately, but I'll give it a try*]

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup blueberry preserves, plus 1 Tbsp melted preserves
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Add the granulated sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, sour cream and vanilla. Beat in the dry ingredients just until incorporated. [*note from your blogger: USE CAUTION if using a stand mixer. I'd gotten used to recipes formatted for stand mixers, but I don't think this was because my cake had definitely been beat a little two much....cue my father's bad pun about black-and-blue and blueberries here*]
Spread all but 1/2 cup of the batter into the prepared pan. Using the back of a spoon, make a trough in the batter, all the way around the pan. Mix the 3/4 cup of blueberry preserves with the reserved batter and spoon it into the trough. [*note from your blogger: this is tricky. Beware. Mine was a teeny bit messy. Still tasted fine though!*]
Bake the cake for about 1 hour, or until it begins to pull away from the pan and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto a wire rack, remove the pan and let cool completely. Sift the confectioners' sugar over the cake, drizzle with the melted blueberry preserves and serve. [*note from your blogger: I was making this for the office and my colleagues have been leaning towards slightly healthier things of late, so I skipped the frosting. It was still tasty, and somewhat morning-snack-friendly*]

A very long post on very good cookies

So, it's the Sunday night before Christmas (err...Monday morning...). Most people fall into one of two categories right now: relaxed, everything is purchased, maybe some things are even wrapped.  Or: you find yourself frantically scouring Amazon for toys in certain age ranges, but only ones that are eligible for Prime high-speed shipping, and cursing the ones that meet that criteria but still have "out of stock" in small-but-deadly red font.  I actually fall into both of these categories simultaneously, but that's for another day. Here's the thing, people: you need sustenance. And maybe you need some cookies for that cookie swap you totally forgot about. Or maybe you just want the room to smell like something baked and delicious instead of desperation and smoking credit cards.  Either way, I've got a recipe for you.

Last weekend, I went on a baking spree.  And I do mean spree. I made somewhere around 400 cookies (three different kinds). The impressive stats: I went through 2 dozen eggs, 12 pounds of flour, 8 pounds of sugar, and 4 pounds of butter. My home smelled amazing, my kitchen looked like a bakery bomb went off, and I learned a few more recipes. Two successes, one not so much (gingerbread men were quite a bland disappointment). What follows are the stories of two great cookies.

For those of you oddballs with time on your hands...I give you: Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti. A number of years ago, in a phase of unemployment, I gave no Christmas gifts beyond my parents. Instead, I baked. For everyone. I was living with my parents at the time, and how my mother let me go that haywire in her kitchen for that long I don't really know. But I learned something very, very important...nothing is more valuable in this world than a serious KitchenAid stand mixer. They're pricey (at least the big solid ones) but they are worth every penny. This recipe was a prime example. It's not super complicated - dump ingredients in, let mix, bake, cool, slice, bake again - but doing that first bit with a hand mixer sounds nightmarish, given how thick this dough gets. Anyway: I made these, although with pecans, and wrapped in pretty boxes with the recipe included - not super complicated. No joke, people started calling me Martha Stewart. I think I got better reactions to those cookies than to most actual gifts I'd given in past years.  So, I share this with you in that spirit. The particular fruit and nut combo is up to you, although you probably don't want to go to far astray unless you're also removing/substituting the almond extract.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti 
Source: Real Simple

Makes 40 cookies
Hands-on Time: 15m
Total Time: 1hr 30m

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup shelled roasted pistachios
[note from your blogger: as mentioned before, I think any fruit and nut combo would work here. I haven't tried other dried fruits but have yet to actually use pistachios. I tried hazelnuts this year - tasty (and local!) but fair warning: BUY THEM CRUSHED if you don't own a serious food processor. I was afraid those hard nuts were going to damage the blades of my little chopper attachment to my stick blender.]


Directions
1. Heat oven to 350º F. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until just smooth. One at a time, beat in the eggs. Mix in the almond extract. Add the flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. Mix in the cranberries and pistachios.

3. Divide the dough in half and shape into two 10-by-2-inch logs. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until just golden around the edges and firm to the touch, 22 to 25 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes [Note from your blogger: don't rush this step - it needs the full cooling.]

4. Reduce oven to 300º F. Using a serrated knife, cut the logs into ½-inch-thick slices. Arrange in a single layer on the baking sheet. Bake until dry and crisp, 15 to 18 minutes per side.


For those of you with somewhat less time (although you'll still need some), I'll direct you to Lemon Shortbread Sables. This has minimal actual prep time, but does need to spend a decent amount of time in the fridge. The longer the better, it seems. Also, once you are actually cooking them they need to be turned halfway through baking (which is 5-6 minutes). So: make the dough, put in fridge, go to bed. Sometime the next day, bring your laptop into the kitchen and get baking (it's just slice and bake at that point). This way, you can shop and bake at the same time. These cookies are so wonderfully light that they cool in minutes on the rack, so you can get into a little rhythm as they keep coming out of the over, and you end up with a lot of little cookies (they should be about the size of a Nilla wafer, maybe smaller) fairly quickly. The cookie itself is an amazing just-right treat - light, delicately crumbly, salty and sugary and a little teeny bit crunchy. Delicious.

Full disclosure on the sables...this is now two posts in a row with a recipe from Amanda Hesser. This probably means, for fear of a lawsuit, I will have to stop posting her recipes now. Although it should be noted this is actually an adaptation, found on another site entirely.

Meyer Lemon Sablés
Source: the wonderful Orangette, where they are adapted from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte
Makes ~70-80 cookies, depending on your dough-snacking tendencies.

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup confectioner’s sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
2 Tbs finely grated Meyer lemon zest (from about 2 good-size fruits) [note from your blogger: I used two fairly large regular lemons, and they were great.]
¾ tsp coarse sea salt or Kosher salt
4 large egg yolks
¼ cup coarse Turbinado sugar, for rolling logs of dough

In a small bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, and whisk to mix thoroughly. Set aside.

Put the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl). Beat (with the paddle attachment, if you’re using a stand mixer) on medium-low speed until the butter is creamy; then add the confectioner’s sugar and beat for a minute. Add the granulated sugar, and beat for a minute more. Sprinkle the lemon zest and salt into the bowl, and mix briefly to just combine. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing briefly to incorporate after each addition. With the mixer on low, add the flour in three doses, mixing just until the flour is absorbed. Use a rubber spatula to do any last scraping and stirring; do not overmix. The dough will be quite thick and dense and sticky.

Divide the dough between two large sheets of wax paper. Using the paper as an aid, smoosh and roll and shape one blob of dough into a rough log about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Roll up the log in the paper, and twist the ends to seal it closed. Repeat with the remaining blob of dough. Chill the two logs until the dough is cold and firm, at least two hours and up to a couple of days.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and set a rack in the middle of the oven. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Put a large sheet of parchment paper on the counter, and pour the Turbinado sugar onto it, making a ridge of sugar approximately the length of the dough logs. Remove a log from the fridge, unwrap it, and roll it lightly in the sugar to press the crystals into its sides. Coat the log as thoroughly as you can; then slice it into ¼-inch-thick slices. [I found that a thin paring knife works well.] Lay the slices on the baking sheet, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie. Refrigerate the remaining dough.

Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes or until just golden around the edges, rotating the sheet 180 degrees halfway through the baking time. [Keep in mind that the cookies will continue to brown a bit after you have removed them from the oven, so it’s best to err on the pale side.] Cool them on the silicone mat or parchment paper on a wire rack [note from your blogger: the parchment is crucial: remember, you're dealing with a lot of butter here. This keeps the cookies from getting gridded on the bottom]. Repeat with remaining dough.

Store the cookies in an airtight tin at room temperature for up to three days, or freeze them in a Tupperware, with a sheet of wax paper between each layer.

"Can I get that recipe?"

A lot of my cooking lately has been baking-centered, and fruit-specific baking at that. This isn’t something I have always done much of. It was sort of an accident, actually. Over the past four years or so, I developed some bizarre food reactions. A little bit of research combined with a visit to a really great allergist in Princeton, NJ, and it turns out...I’m allergy to healthy things. Okay, not ALL healthy things - but a lot of raw fruits and vegetables. Turns out this isn’t as weird as it seems - not even that uncommon, just under-diagnosed.

I digress. Point is, can’t eat raw fruit. Fast forward to the holidays last year, when I was the recipient of a couple of Harry & David gift boxes...both of which included many fresh, juicy, delicious, pears. Which I can’t eat. What to do? Poached pears sounded so thoroughly unappealing. A little Google hunting produced a fairly simple sounding pear tart recipe (posted in full below), so I figured I’d give it a try.

The first time I made it, it came out looking like total liquid, and I fretted and I knashed and I wrung my hands and put it in the oven again and again. Since the juice was being created by the ongoing liquidation of the pears plus the brown sugar, this obviously didn’t help, but in the end it may actually have made it even more delicious (just as long as you don’t burn the crust).



Bottom line: simple, delicious, and the kind of thing that, if you bring it into the office, your colleagues will ask for again and again and again. Trust me.

Give this one a try...more baked fruit recipes to follow!

Rustic Pear Tart Eating Healthy in 2009. Copyright 2007, Ellie Krieger, All Rights Reserved.
Prep Time: 40 min // Inactive Prep Time: 30 min // Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves 6

Ingredients

Crust: [note from your blogger: I completely skip this crust business...Trader Joe's makes a terrific frozen crust that looks and tastes homemade. Defrost, roll out, and you're done. But if you're so inclined, this one came with the recipe...]

1/2 cup whole-grain pastry flour or regular whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons lowfat buttermilk
3 tablespoons ice water

Filling:

3 medium pears
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons light brown sugar [Note from your blogger: I rarely have light brown sugar on hand, so do the old half-and-half of dark brown and white sugar.]
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Glaze [Note from your blogger: I tend to forget to make this...the tart is still delicious either way, although probably not as pretty]:

1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon boiling water

Directions

To prepare the crust, in a medium bowl whisk together the whole-wheat pastry flour, all- purpose flour, granulated sugar and salt. Add the butter and using two knives or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour mixture until you get a pebbly, course texture. In a small bowl combine the buttermilk and ice water. Using a fork, gradually mix the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture. Pat the dough into a 4-inch round and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F, and prepare the filling. Peelthe pears, core them and cut into 1/4-inch slices. In a large bowl toss the pear slices with the lemon juice. Sprinkle in the cornstarch, brown sugar and cinnamonand toss until the pears are evenly coated. Set aside.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the chilled dough into a large circle about nine inches in diameter. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and draping the dough over the rolling pin, transfer to the prepared baking sheet. If the dough breaks at all patch it up with your fingers. [Note from your blogger: I haven’t attempted this - haven’t been confident the crust wouldn’t collapse on me with all the liquid the appears - so have been just putting in a pie dish. Arrange and fold as she suggests and it works out fine.]

Arrange the pears in a mound in the center of the dough, leaving a 2-inch boarder. Fold the border over the filling. It will only cover the pears partially and does not need to be even.

Bake the tart for 15 minutes, and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, keeping the tart in the oven all the while, and bake for another 40 minutes, until the pears are tender and the crust is golden brown. [Note from your blogger: at this point, mine often looks like it’s too liquid-y, as mentioned above. Don’t worry about it. Let it cool and the liquid will set. Just be careful to limit the amount of heat it if you serve it warm...which you should.]

In a small bowl stir together the honey and boiling water to make a glaze. When the tart is done remove it from the oven and brush the honey glaze all over the top of the fruit and crust. Transfer to a plate to cool slightly. Cut into 6 wedges and serve warm or a room temperature.