balance

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Feeling a bit mischevious, I wondered what would happen if I baked my tart free form, and then rolled it up while still warm, like a jelly roll. The minor fact that all my tart pans are hibernating 30 miles south east of my current geographical location had nothing at all to do with my daring leap out of the boundary of a pan. In retrospect, after watching frangipane escape all over my baking pan, I see the error of my ways. After all, there is a LOT of butter in that lovely almond mixture, and hoping that the race between protein gelatinization (from the flour and egg) and butter melting would be initially won by team protein was similar to rooting for the Cubs. You keep hoping. They keep choking.

Take home message 1: use a tart pan. Or something with sides.

I remidied my burnt edges with a bit of trimming, then attempted to make a roulade Bakewell (perhaps the name is meant to humble us into trying multiple ways of baking it?) tart. This feat was accomplished through a few burnt fingertips, a bit of help from a silpat, and the ability to not cringe when my beautiful frangipane top started to crack and bulge in protest of such treatment. I may not be master of what goes on inside of the oven, but I can pretend I am queen over what comes out. Pretend pretend pretend.

Roulade did not do the beauty justice. See this bakewell tart glaring at the camera, wishing I had done something to make it feel a bit more sexy? It's almost speaking. Can you hear it?

Take home message 2: Trim edges and then cut into bars.

However, my three filling choices made my toes curl with joy. Blueberries (augmented with the blueberry stuff on the bottom of a Danon fruit on the bottom yogurt), cherry jam (alce nero), and my own home-made strawberry rhubarb jam.

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
3 cups washed, hulled and mashed strawberries
3 cups rhubarb pieces
2 cups sugar, divided
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 Tbsp Pomona's Universal Pectin
1 Tbsp calcium water

Combine strawberries, rhubarb, 1 1/2 cups of the sugar and lemon juice in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Cook until the rhubarb is almost tender. Meanwhile, mix the nutmeg, cinnamon and pectin with the remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Stir into the stawberry mixture an bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in calcium water. Fill clean jam jars or freezer-proof containers with jam, allow to cool overnight in the fridge and then freeze.

Various escapades aside, this is a lovely mid-morning snack, and stacks up well with a nice herbal tea like Rooibos or, I imagine (due to my non-coffee drinking-ness), quite well with a cup of espresso. You can see all the other daring escapades here. I send you to my fellow Daring Baker, Bumblebutton (don't you love her blog name?) for the basic recipe.

10 years ago today, B and I climbed up a Minnesota butte, wind whispering around a sunshiney evening, sprinkling the air with dust glitters. 10 year ago today, B looked at me in all his twenty-some-odd young years of seriousness and asked "Are we sure about this?" before kneeling down and asking me to spend eternity with him. 10 years ago today, I mentally counted to sixty, carefully following my father's advice to "make him sweat a bit," before quieting B's shaking hands with a simple yes.

I gained a whole new family 10 years ago today.

My mother-in-law introduced me to this recipe, and I've made it enough that the family now call's them "Chou's Scones." Nevermind that the recipe comes from Simply Classic, a cookbook given to my mom-in-law by a close family friend, this recipe, through a magical series of bakings and eatings represents me to my entire family. Both sides. To celebrate how something foreign becomes familiar and then claimed, just like my personal journey from unknown to familiar and then claimed within my new family (or my husband's journey within my family), I invite you to try these fabulous scones.

Scones
2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 large egg + enough lowfat buttermilk to equal 3/4 cup
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Lemon Butter
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp lemon zest

Method:
Oven 425F. Preheating very stronly encouraged. Similar to filing taxes by April 15th encouraged.

Combine all the dry ingredients, tossing together like piles of dandelion heads, and then cut in the butter until the dough is crumbly with a few pea-chunk bits of butter left throughout.Stir together buttermilk and egg until each individual identity is remade into something new. Add to the flour/butter mixture, and toss with a fork until evenly moistened.
The dough will seem a bit dry, that's ok. Sometimes I add a tablespoon more of buttermilk, if I feel it needs it, but generally not. Knead together 10 times, brief kneadings that gently strengthen the gluten network. Turn out onto a floured surface and pat or roll into a rough rectangle.
Using a sharp knife, introduce a bit of strife: cut the dough into four parts and stack one upon the other. A bit like moving to New York City, for scone dough. Beat down with your rolling pin, then roll out into a rectangular-ish shape.
Smoosh a bunch of frozen (or fresh, but frozen are easier) blueberries into your dough, like commuters patiently waiting for a train not yet in sight. Then introduce strife again by cutting the dough in half and folding blueberry side onto blueberry side. Pat down.
Now for fun, smoosh another group of blueberry commuters on top.
Cut into geometric shapes that appeal to your mood.
Arrange on your favorite greased baking sheet, and then bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes or until golden. While waiting impatiently for your scones, mix the lemon butter together, a task simplified if your butter is warm. Frost scones as soon as they emerge from the oven, then feed everyone you love happy blueberry scone ballad bites.

This recipe makes enough for two people to eat significantly too many scones in one sitting. When guest-less, I freeze 50% of my scones on a baking sheet, then transfer to a freezer-proof bag. Then (generally the next day) when you are craving more scones, remove your frozen beauties from the freezer and allow to thaw for ~30 minutes. Bake as you would non-frozen scones.

My parents gave me boundaries. I could go out, and even take the car, but I had to be home by 10 pm. If for some reason (boys, traffic, dancing in parking lots to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) I was running late, a phone call sufficed and the curfew flexed into a ephemeral new shape. They met my boundary transgressions (no phone call, for example) with temporarily tighter boundaries that slowly relaxed back to normalcy within a set time period. Every year, the boundaries changed to accommodate my shifting life, growing larger and larger until I found myself, no longer at home, with only the memory of an imaginary line running through the decisions I made in my life.





Brownies

Stir in:

Bake in an 8" round pan at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean, around 20 to 25 minutes.

Breakfast, when not my standard morning fare of raw oatmeal and yogurt, tends to flit about in wild bursts of exploration. Breakfast salad, mini-breakfast pies, even brownies for breakfast enthusiastically grace my table in bursts of flavor, color, and ideally, energy. More often than not, the humble egg takes center stage, blushing furiously that she is once again spotlighted.

Egg cooking reveals the delicate dance between heat and protein structure. As an acolyte of the mysteries of egg, I still leave proteins coagulated across pan surfaces or oh-so-occasionally mistempered. Bringing egg from object in fridge to object in mouth brings me a bit closer to the mysterious heart of the egg.

At least that’s what I like to think. However, reality demonstrates how little we know about reality. I imagine an egg simple, life dictates an egg complex, brimming over with curious properties and behaviors that exert a mysteriously bewildering pull on even the most hardened types. I recently listened, raptured, to César Vega of Mars Botanical (at the ECC 2nd anniversary symposium)carefully explain his research linking together the amount of time an egg is cooked at a certain temperature with mouthfeel.* A renegade few in the culinary business have made egg cooking an ever increasing game of numberical importance; my favorite is the egg-cooking calculator from a group in Oslo, a review of other fun moments in egg cookery can be found at fooducation.

Eggs of course star in this latest breakfast adventure. In a way, these savory breakfast pies mimic quiche with a fraction of the effort. You still need pie crust, but beyond that . . . a quick and elegent weekend brunch dream awaits.

Savory Breakfast Pies
1/2 recipe Pie Dough (or any pre-made pie dough), rolled out and cut into 6" diameter circles (or so) using your favorite bowls, placed into a muffin tin and baked at 425 for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cooled overnight since you really didn't want to do this all in the morning.

Adjust amounts below for serving sizes (listed is one serving)
1 egg
1 tsp milk
1 tsp chopped cilantro
1 tsp chopped green onion
1 tsp shredded pepper jack cheese
your favorite salsa
salt and pepper to taste
optional: anything you like. I think caramelized onions with gruyere sounds good . . .

Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of cheese in the bottom of each pie cup. Whisk together egg and milk with a fork, then whisk in cilantro and onion. Cook in a small smattering of butter in a non-stick saute pan over low heat, stirring regularly and often to scramble. Remove eggs when medium-soft to soft scramble and place in pie cups. Top with cheese and garnish with salsa and whatever else strikes your fancy. Serve with orange juice, because orange juice always tastes wonderful with eggs.

*My notes are missing. I'll try to find them. If I remember correctly, he demonstrated that although you can hold an egg cooked at low temperatures for an extended period of time at that low temperature without suffering negative textural or flavor changes, at some point the egg texture continues to change even though the temeprature has not changed.