Aebelskiver, aka Danish Pancake Balls

A couple of years ago some students at the end of the year gave me an aebelskiver pan. Proof that I had taught them well! Since I live alone I never make pancakes. There is always too much batter and no use for it. But since I got this pan, I do every now and then make a batch of aebelskiver. Since they freeze wonderfully, a prerequisite for registration in my breakfast course. They also make a great afternoon snack.

The recipe, from Beatrice Ojakangas in The Great Scandinavian Baking Book.

1 cup milk,  heated to lukewarm

½ cup melted butter

3 egg yolks

3 egg whites, whipped to stiff peaks

2 tbs sugar

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

Melted butter for brushing pan.

Whisk together milk, butter, egg yolks, and sugar, Whisk in flour and baking powder. Fold in egg whites. Heat pan over medium heat, reduce heat to low and use about one heaping tablespoon batter for each Aebelskiver, lightly butter pan before each round.

Bouquet of (Paper) Sunflowers

Homemade Cavatelli with Vodka Sauce

The recipe is from Lidia's Italy. The semola makes a silky smooth dough and the cooked pasta is pleasantly chewy. I ran out of patience shaping the individual cavatelli, and just ended up rolling them between my palms. A hand cranked cavatelli maker with wooden rollers is now on my Amazon wish list.

The sauce is half an onion very thinly sliced and sauteed, an anchovy mashed, a small can of tomato paste, half a cup of water and a cup of cream, a lot of salt and pepper and a big splash of vodka.

Chocolate Rum Cake Balls, No Cake Mix or Canned Frosting Alllowed

These chocolate rum cake balls combine two super simple recipes:  Beatty's Chocolate Cake, courtesy of Ina Garten, and Creamy Chocolate Frosting, courtesy of Cook's Illustrated. Bake the cake in a 9x13 pan, or in cupcake liners, or in a couple of 8 or 9 inch round or square pans, and when it cools just dump it into a bowl and break it up into crumbs. Then moisten the crumbs generously with rum -- 1/3 to 1/2 cup -- and fold in the entire batch of frosting. Refrigerate for several hours, roll into balls, roll the balls in almond meal seasoned with fleur de sel, and let ripen in the refrigerator as much as four or even five days. The cake balls change texture and develop flavor as they sit. They start very good and they become spectacular.

To everyone caught up in the cake ball craze, please, please, just put down the cake mix and the canned frosting and walk away slowly. It gets better, it really does!

Yukon Gold Cinnamon Rolls, 24ct

Over the years I have tried a lot of different recipes for cinnamon rolls, and the outcome almost always falls short of expectations. I want a cinnamon roll that is light, moist, fragrant, sweet but not cloying, and that freezes without complaint.  The closest I've gotten to my ideal so far is the formula by Marion Cunningham in her classic The Breakfast Book. Her recipe is simplicity in a single bowl and produces a much more satisfying treat than the overworked brioche-based entries from otherwise superb sources such as Nancy Silverton and Rose Levy Beranbaum. But even granting Marion Cunningham her due, this recipe for Yukon Gold Cinnamon Rolls at Epicurious, brought to my attention this week by a friend, exceeds the high standards she established. It is -- drumroll -- decidedly the best in category within my admittedly not exhaustive but not so shabby experience. Which is to say that after one round the print-out of the recipe has taken a privileged spot in my kitchen:  in my acrylic recipe holder among about two dozen or so other pages of recipes that are just too good to tuck away in my black three ring binder where I might forget about them.

The recipe as provided does however benefit from some adjustments. Kitchen notes follow without further ado.

1. The 2 cups water for boiling the potatoes is way too much. Instead 1 and 1/2 cups is more than enough.

2. In place of active dry yeast, I used 1 and 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast.

3. Since I used instant yeast, I also changed the assembly of the dough. After making the mashed potato-salt-butter-eggs-flour mixture, I combined 3 cups flour, yeast, sugar, and peel from one orange in the bowl of my stand mixer. Then I added the potato mixture, and worked it with a dough hook. The additional 1/2 cup water again was too much. Instead add just enough to get the dough going, and then flour as necessary after a couple of minutes to get a very very very sticky dough. Definitely keep the dough wet!

4. I baked these in jumbo aluminum muffin tins, and got 24 total, and even then some of them were overflowing too much the tins.  But however one slices the dough, I think a reasonable yield is anywhere from 18 (still really big) to 30 (a bit small, but then more treats to share).

5. For the glaze I just thinned confectioners sugar with fresh squeezed orange juice and added a big pinch of fleur du sel. The overall hint of orange is subtle and satisfying and suits just right. And anything more complicated I think is not necessary and perhaps out of balance.

6. Did I mention that these cinnamon rolls love the freezer?

Magic Ball (aka Dragon's Egg) from video tutorial by Jo Nakashima

This sphere (almost) is folded from a single sheet of paper. The design is surprisingly simple. Just a 16 x 32 square grid, pleated in staggered rows, the ends seamed together with a piece of masking tape. The pleats bring out a curve in the paper, so that the finished model takes a spherical shape almost by itself. (Click here for the tutorial.) Choice of paper is crucial. I used a sheet of tant, 35 x 17.5 cm, and it worked wonderfully. I got all the way from start to finish without a hitch.

Chocolate Chip Cookie and Coffee Ice Cream Sandwiches! Scrumptious!

Although I enjoy very much the music of Jacque Brel and never get through the final scene of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg without busting into tears and have read Pride and Prejudice five times and would install a champagne faucet in my kitchen sink to go with the hot and cold if I could, I am not a romantic. Least of all do I believe in such a thing as matches made in heaven. Any fruitful coupling, I have no doubt, is a matter most of all of chemistry. Yet some pairings are uniquely positively charged. Home-made chocolate chip cookies, the recipe from Jacques Torres. Home-made coffee ice cream, the recipe from David Lebovitz. Call it inspired. Love at first bite. Written in the stars. An affair to remember. But most of all call it scrumptious!

En Route, Chicago to Seattle

Fresh Raspberry Tart = The Reason Vanilla Ice Cream Was Ever Invented

This raspberry tart is incredibly simple and even more delicious. The ingredients:  a rectangle of home-made puff pastry; a pint of local organic raspberries; some sugar over the berries, some butter to dot the whole, a very light touch of fleur du sel. Bake at 400 for about 35 minutes.

The heat of the oven brings out the intense tartness of the raspberries. They keep their shape above as their undersides become slightly jammy and fragrant. I coated the berries with about a tablespoon of sugar before before popping the tart in the oven and after baking all they kept saying was, "You want to pucker with me?" It took a scoop of vanilla ice cream to quiet them down and keep their freshness in check.

Another Tree Frog by Lang

From a 9.5" square of medium thickness  O-Gami luster. Got a bit tight at the finish, but still worth sharing I think.

Origami Bridal Bouquet

For whatever reason the past months I've been lacking patience with my camera. As a result I have a winter length of projects that I've neglected to document. Some examples: A beautiful batch of lemon turnovers. A couple of loaves of apricot walnut bread. Several roast chicken dinners. A very large dutch windmill quilt. 

This bridal bouquet I made for a friend. (All the flowers I've been making the past year were a prelude to this main event.) Since I wasn't happy with the pictures, and was too lazy to borrow a pair of female hands and take the bouquet out for a stroll in the sun and capture some better images, I ended up delivering it to the bride as a solution to my frustration. Out of camera range, problem solved. Only I immediately started to regret not having a couple of good images to share. Hence this posting, and the best of a mediocre bunch.

And here it is on the big day, in action and out of focus. 

Money Turtle by Lo Yu (Origami Tanteidan 17th Convention)

This fine little creature begins with a 1:2 sheet of elephant hide (4"x8").  

Gravity

100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Loaf

This is the result from the first formula I tried from Peter Reinhart's latest book, all about whole grain breads. No one has ever accused me of favoring whole grain anything, but this loaf is outstanding, and I am excited to explore more of the formulas. The crumb is soft and chewy and sweet and nutty and fragrant and buttery. The frugal side of my brain notes that it would have been cheaper just to buy a loaf of bread. The home baker side of my brain can't wait to make this again. (For the soaker I used buttermilk; for shortening in the final dough unsalted butter; for sweetener organic honey from Wisconsin; for the grain I used a freshly milled organic whole wheat flour from a farm in central Illinois. The carefulness with the ingredients really shows in the product!)

A Scoop of Butterscotch Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Recipe from The Perfect Scoop. Tastes as good as it looks!

Camellia, Dahlia, Iris, Narcissus

Camellia

Dahlia

Iris

Narcissus

One Brownie, Two Friends

Another drab spring day, another delicious brownie! Here's the recipe:  Cook's Illustrated Chewy Brownies.

Alphabet Baby Quilt

Elephant Costume (Happy Purim!)

Morello Cherry and California Apricot Hamantaschen

Purim is approaching, so I decided to bake some Hamantaschen. (First time ever.) For the cookie dough I used the recipe by Nancy Baggett in The All American Cookie Book. The apricot filling is her recipe also. The cherry filling is a jar of morello cherries from Trader Joe's reduced until syrupy and then chopped fine. Awesome.The cookie starts off a bit dry, and softens and develops more flavor after sitting a couple of days. When I brought these to class they were a big hit.

To form some of the cookies I patted out circles of dough, centered a spoonful of fruit filling on top, and then folded up the edges. Tedious work. Then I realized I could shape the dough into a triangular log, slice it, and push out the center of each slice with my thumb to make space for some filling. Much quicker and a more triangular shape also.

Mystery of the Macaron aux Marrons

As a treat for a friend's 40th birthday dinner a few weeks ago, I returned with some trepidation to the fussy world of the macaron. My first attempt several years ago ended in a lot of frustration and a little reward. Not in taste - they were consistently delicious. But in presentation. My fortunes the second time around were no different. From the same single batch of batter I got wildly divergent outcomes. Half with lovely smooth domes and exposed bubbly feet, all the hallmarks of a stylish macaron. Half cracked and spreading tops and smooth rounded edges, no different in appearance from a chocolate crinkle cookie.

The formula for the batter is by Pierre Herme, from a spread years ago in Bon Appetit. (I used a batch of whites that I had collected and frozen last summer, the surplus from an ice cream session.) The filling is my own invention:  about a pound of chestnuts blanched, peeled, simmered in milk, then cooled and pureed with unsalted butter, confectioner's sugar, heavy cream a splash of rum, and a pinch of fleur du sel. Inconsistent appearances aside, the macarons made a superb finish to a winter banquet..