Kitchen Chick

Gâteau à l'orange (Tunisian olive oil orange cake)

I first learned about cakes that use olive oil instead of butter when I saw an orange cake recipe sample in a catalog promoting this book, and I gave it a try and found it quite tasty. So I was delighted to see an olive oil orange cake as one of the demo items at the recent Zingerman's Tunisian Cooking Demo class. I was intrigued to note that the recipe I tried long ago was attributed to a "Madame Mahjoub", and Onsa Mahjoub was sharing her recipes for the demo class. Are they same Mahjoub? Or perhaps related? The recipes, while very similar, have just enough differences (such as almond extract in the other one) to cause me to wonder if they are by the same person (though, of course, people vary their recipes over time). Or did Nancy Jenkins, author of Essential Mediterranean, adapt the recipe when she wrote it up? All very intriguing. Perhaps one of my readers will know.

Anyway, this is the recipe as we tried it in class, and it was quite delicious, with hints of bitter orange cutting the sweetness. By itself, some tasters felt that it needed a glaze, but I personally think that if you serve this with sweetened mint tea (North African style!) it doesn't need a thing.

Tunisian Gâteau à l'orange
Onsa Mahjoub of Moulins Mahjoub

Zingerman's testing notes: this may need a pinch of salt and perhaps less baking powder, but you can't really tell until you've tried it with salt.

Kitchen Chick's notes: after measuring out the baking powder, I removed about a half teaspoon and put in a half teaspoon of salt. I didn't research proportions of salt or baking powder for cakes. It worked fine for me. Amounts are in metric, so you will need a scale that has a metric setting.

1 lb small organic juice oranges (get organic because you're going to use the peel)
4 eggs
400 grams sugar (500 if you like it sweeter — I used 450)
500 grams pastry flour (or all purpose flour)
200 ml extra virgin olive oil (or you can use 250, which is just over 1 cup)
20 grams baking powder
sesame seeds

Heat oven to 140 or 160 degrees Celsius (160 C = 320 F). Oil a 11x15 inch (or 12 x 15 inch) baking pan. (Or equivalent in multiple smaller cake pans.)

Wash oranges. Cut stem and blossom ends off of oranges and discard. Cut in half and remove seeds. Chop into large pieces then puree in food processor to a pulp or in food mill.

In a mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar until frothy. Sift the flour into the mixture. Add baking powder and olive oil. Stir to combine. Add oranges and stir to combine. Pour into baking pan(s). Sprinkle top with sesame seeds.  Bake until top is nicely browned and cake springs back when poked gently with finger tip (about 1 hour — less if you're using smaller pans, so be sure to check them).

Galette of Rhubarb

I have these incredibly fond memories of cutting rhubarb from my grandmother's neighbor's plants (I was allowed) and chewing on the oh-so-tart stalks. I bought a few rhubarb plants over the years, but they were never quite the same. One, a 100% green variety, bolts almost as soon as the first leaf unfurls. The other has these tiny short little stalks. Definitely not the rhubarb of my memories. So I was delighted when a few years back a friend offered me some field rhubarb plants from her garden (thanks, S!).  She needed to get rid of them, and I was happy to give them a home.

Since rhubarb doesn't like to be transplanted, I was very nice to it and left it to grow unmolested so it could establish itself. This year I deemed it ready to pick. Strawberries and rhubarb are the classic pairing that everyone knows about, but in Michigan, rhubarb is ready well before strawberry season. I wanted to find a simple recipe that used only rhubarb, but oddly so many of my cookbooks don't feature rhubarb-only dessert recipes. (I did find one, and you'll be seeing the results of that soon.) Fortunately, my friend D came to the rescue and sent me this recipe from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (of Silver Palate fame ).

If you haven't cooked with rhubarb before, please note the leaves and roots are poisonous. Only the stalks are edible.

Galette of Rhubarb
adapted with slight changes from The New Basics Cookbook

Pastry
1 1/4 C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbs granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 tsp unsalted butter (aka 3 oz), cold, cut into pieces (I've used salted butter and it was fine)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
2 Tbs ice water

Filling
5 Tbs confectioner's sugar
2 1/2 C rhubarb stalk chunks (1-inch)
slivered orange zest (I used Penzeys grated orange, soaked in water, but slivered zest will be prettier)

Rosso and Lukins have you combine the dry ingredients and then use a pastry blender, knives, or your fingers to cut in the butter and orange zest. I am far too lazy for that. I put the dry ingredients into my food processor with the cutting blade, pulse to mix, then add the butter and pulse some more until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Then I slowly add the ice water and pulse so that it begins to come together. I do the final kneading by hand — just enough to bring it together into a dough and pat into a flattened disk. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

I like to let the chilled dough warm up just a touch to make it easier to roll out. Roll into about a 11 inch wide circle. I found this dough to be stiff and prone to tearing. (Maybe because I use a food processor? Or maybe that's just the way it is?)

Transfer to a lined baking sheet. Mark off a 9 inch wide circle in the center. (A 9 inch round cake pan makes a great stencil.) Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the confectioner's sugar. Cover with the rhubarb. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of confectioner's sugar and top with the zest. Fold the dough edges over the rhubarb. You should have a nice open area in the center.

Bake until crust is golden and the filling bubbles. Approximately 40 minutes.

Cool slightly before serving.

Kitchen Chick's notes: The first time I made this I didn't have an orange (or any citrus fruit) on hand, but I keep a jar of Penzeys grated orange peel in the refrigerator. I soaked the peel in a bit of water to rehydrate it before using it. The second time I used grapefruit zest as the top garnish, and the Penzeys orange peel in the dough. The grapefruit zest worked wonderfully.

Tomorrow is Paczki Day!

I've been in the clueless department this month, so in case any of you have been as crazy-busy to notice what time of year it is, I offer this Public Service Announcement:

Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, which means it's Paczki Day!

I'll be picking up mine tomorrow from Copernicus, which brings theirs in from Canada. If you're ordering 3 dozen or more, you can call them at 734-222-9633 and they'll have them packed up and ready to go; otherwise, just show up at 617 S. Main St., Ann Arbor.

Amadeus makes their own fabulous paczki, but it may be too late to order from them. They haven't been answering their phone all day today. (They're probaby crazy-busy making those paczki!) 

Finally, some people are partial to Dom Bakeries.

Support a local business and make your co-workers happy, too: buy some paczki tomorrow!

Caramel Nut Tart

I had never made a tart before.  Something about them always intimidated me, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why. I had conquered pie crusts, so a tart crust shouldn't be that much different. Then I finally realized: tarts seemed ridiculously hard because I lacked a tart pan.

It's a belief of mine that if you have the right equipment or ingredients on hand, then cooking (or baking) is easy. Lack of a crucial ingredient or equipment, and suddenly a recipe becomes that much more difficult. A dinner that should take just 30 minutes to cook can —  if you need to make extra trips to the store for those missing items — be so impractical as to be impossible at that time. So planning is everything.

Not that I plan or anything. When I saw this caramel-rich tart featured in the March 2009 edition of Bon Appétit, it reminded me of a "musician's tart" but without the fruit. We were getting together with some friends for an evening of food, conversation, and piano music on their newly restored 1876 Steinway grand (I'm soooo envious!), and I decided it was the perfect dessert for the night.

Which meant it was time to buy that tart pan and make my first tart.

Of course, I decided this the night before I needed to make the tart. The next day, I took a lunchtime trip to Macy's (it's close to my work) for a tart pan, but couldn't find one. So I went further into the mall to Williams & Sonoma, but they only had square ones. They had been out of round ones for months and didn't know when they would have more. The recipe specified a round pan. I was in a rush and not up to converting the area of the square one to see if it'd be equal to the round one that I wanted. That afternoon I called Baker's Nook in Saline, but learned that they closed at 5pm and there was no way I'd be able to make it there in time. Finally, at the end of the day, I remembered that Ace Hardware has an excellent kitchen department. They were a bit out of my way, so I called first. Yes, they had tart pans. Many tart pans. In many sizes. And they were open late enough for me. Whew! Disaster averted. (Which is to say: I didn't have to search for a different recipe.  Or square the circle.)

Let that be a lesson to me! Plan further in advance!

And I am glad that disaster was averted, otherwise I would not have discovered this delicious dessert. The orange juice and zest gives this caramel a great citrus flavor that goes fabulously with the nuts. With all those nuts (and the vitamin C from the citrus!) you can pretend it's almost good for you. 

(recipe in extended post, or at above Bon Appétit website)

Blackberry Clafoutis

A local grocery store had a huge sale on blackberries and I loaded up. Small cartons that probably sold for around $4 each were flying out the door at an amazing $1 each. (And I helped a few more fly out the door, along with some blueberries that were on sale, too.)

I've been meaning to try this cherry clafoutis recipe for a while, though I never seem to think of it when I have cherries on hand. Also, pitting cherries is not a lot of fun. Blackberries were an obvious substitute, and better yet I didn't have to pit them. And to make it just perfect, I happen to have a bottle of blackberry brandy on  hand. Mmmmmm... 

It's fast and easy to make. So easy that I made a second one today with a mix of blackberries and blueberries for breakfast.

Blackberry Clafoutis
adapted from "Black Cherry Clafoutis" in One-Pot & Clay Pot Cookbook

butter, for greasing
2-4 cups of blackberries (adjust amount as needed), washed
1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/2 C confectioner's sugar (icing sugar) - plus extra for dusting, which I forgot
4 eggs, beaten
1 C milk (whole/full cream milk preferred)
2 Tbs blackberry brandy (or other appropriately flavored liquor such as kirsch, cherry liqueur, raspberry)
vanilla ice cream to serve

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease baking dish with butter. The original recipe calls for a 5 cup (1.2 liter) baking dish. I used this rather large Emile Henry 13 inch oval dish, which is wider and more shallow than I think the recipe calls for but worked fine. Scatter berries in baking dish. (The original recipe calls for only 2 cups of fruit, but that didn't seem like enough for my wide dish so I used around 3 cups.)

Sift or whisk flour and sugar together. Gradually whisk in the eggs. Add the milk and whisk until smooth. Stir in the liqueur. Pour over the berries. Redistribute berries if needed so they are evenly spread out in the pan.

Back for about 40 minutes, until golden brown and the egg mixture is set. Test with a knife if you're not sure. Knife blade should come out clean.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

This also works well — Joe thinks it's even better — with blueberries!

Pomegranate & Lime Cupcakes

The sad but true fact is that the end of pomegranate season is nearly upon us, but you don't have to have fresh pomegranates to enjoy these cupcakes. Originally, this was a sheet cake recipe published in bon appétit's 2008 Thanksgiving Special, but I wanted to bake something a bit more finger-food friendly and made cupcakes instead. They are tasty on their own, but I think they'd make great afternoon tea cakes.

Pomegranate cupcakes with lime glaze
12 cupcakes plus a bit extra

1.5 C all purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C sugar
1/2 C unsalted butter, room temperature (I used salted, and it was fine)
2 lg eggs
3/4 C pomegranate juice (divided into 1/2 and 1/4 cup portions) (Juice! Not the concentrated syrup. Not the molasses either.  Try a Middle Eastern store.)
4 tsp grated lime peel (divided into two 2 tsp portions)
1/2 C Greek-style yogurt (a thicker yogurt than American yogurt. I used an Indian brand of yogurt. Worked fine.)
1.5 C powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Toppings: the original sheet cake recipe called for scattering pomegranate seeds and mint over the top. Or, you can use extra lime gratings, which is what I did since I had neither fresh pomegranate or mint.
2/3 C pomegranate seeds
2 Tbs thinly sliced mint leaves

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line a cupcake/muffin pan with paper or silicon cupcake liners. I used a "normal" size cupcake pan, and not a jumbo-sized one.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Beat sugar and butter with electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Beat in 1/2 C pomegranate juice and 2 tsp lime peel. Mixture may appear curdled. Beat flour mixture until just blended. Stir in yogurt.

Drop batter into cupcake liners. I generously filled a 1.5 Tbs cookie scoop to measure out the amounts. (Worked fabulously.) Bake until tester comes out clean. ~25 minutes, possibly longer. Let cool for 15 minutes or so. After cooling, use a fork to poke small holes into the top of the cupcakes. This will allow the glaze to seep into the cupcakes.

Sift powdered sugar into medium bowl. Whisk in remaining 1/4 cup pomegranate juice, vanilla, and 2 tsp lime peel.

Remove cooled cupcakes from pan and carefully remove silicon liners. Place cupcakes on wire rack. Pour tablespoons of glaze over each cupcake until top is covered and glaze drips down the sides. Grate extra lime peel or top with pomegranate seeds and mint, or even silver dragees.

If you used paper liners, you may want to keep the cupcakes in the pan and glaze them there so that the outsides of the paper liners don't become gooey with glaze.

Kitchen Chick's notes:
The glaze is thin, so don't be thinking like I did that the holes for the glaze need to be large, or you'll have holey-looking cupcakes. If you'd rather make this as a sheet cake, use a buttered and floured 13x9x2 cake pan.

12 cupcakes use less batter than than one sheet cake. I put the extra batter into two small 3" wide soufflé ramekins (pictured above) and baked them up as special treats for the baker and her husband. :-)

More limes than I can count!

Egg yolks for key lime pie

I inherited six pounds of limes. No, that is not a typo. 6 pounds. Three 2 lb bags.

There was lots of rum involved.

And pirates.

No, don't ask.

In the end, I had six pounds of limes sitting on my kitchen counter.

This has led to an unprecedented amount of key lime pie baking. Yes, I really do make the recipes I post here more than once. Four pies in the space of two weeks. And lime-ade, too. I have enough limes to make some pucker-y lime sorbet. (I cannot sing enough the joys of having an ice-cream maker in the house.) After that, I will probably still have enough limes for another pie.

Or something else.

Please, I'm up for suggestions.

Six pounds of limes is an awful lot of limes, even for someone who loves limes like I do.

Easter Chocolates from Tammy's Tastings

Tammy Coxen of Tammy's Tastings

Can you believe Easter is just around the corner? You can celebrate Easter in the traditional way with chocolate. Hide a box of Tammy's Chocolates for your friends or family, and watch them tear apart the house trying to be the one to find them. My friend Tammy has been making small production hand-made truffles from high quality ingredients for several years now, and each year has been better than the one before. Every chocolate-loving holiday has a different selection of flavors. This Easter she is offering:

• "Turtle" Bunny or Egg (larger than a normal chocolate) filled with salty caramel and toasted pecans and coated in dark chocolate.
• Raspberry - dark chocolate and raspberry
• Chai Spice - Milk chocolate with a blend of cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger wrapped in a dark chocolate shell.
• Lemon-Rosemary - White chocolate and citrus-y lemon with a hint of rosemary.
• Hazlenut Praline - dark chocolate shell surrounding a combination of toasted hazelnuts, caramelized sugar, and milk chocolate.

Tammy's Easter truffle collections will be available locally starting Tuesday, March 18 at Everyday Wine, Main Dish Kitchen, and Knight's Market. She also ships across the US and (inquire first) to Canada.

Kitchen Chick: Tell me a bit how you became a food enthusiast. You know, some people were interested in being a chef since they were little, while others have some transformative event in their lives. What's your story?

Tammy: I don't know that I have a transformative event. I've been interested in cooking and baking for as long as I can remember, and I've forged most of my best friendships around the dinner table. But when I look back at my life, I realize that I've always had an affinity for food-related businesses. When I was a kid, it was sidewalk bake sales. Later, my boyfriend and I made bread and sold it to friends and coworkers - we didn't have a car, and I remember us carrying home 20lb bags of flour on the back of his bicycle! I made apple pies and chocolate cake and sold them to a local restaurant/cafe - I realize now that my markup was ridiculously small and I was barely covering the cost of my materials, but that's what they could afford to pay and I was just so thrilled to have an opportunity to share what I had made. So I guess it's no surprise that my life path has led me back to starting a company where I can share my own creations, and also share my great passion and enthusiasm for all things "foodie."

(More in the extended post, including Tammy's chocolate recommendations!)

"Angel-Cake Surprise for your fanciest party!"

My friend P invited us to her fabulous 1950s party. She was cooking all the savories — three kinds of meatloaf, delicious home-made mac & cheese, boiled veggies (how '50s!), salad, buttermilk biscuits — and retro desserts like pudding and jello. (It can't be the 1950s without jello.) She invited the rest of us to bring additional desserts. I wanted to make something that fit the theme, yet also looked pretty and tasted good, unlike some 1950s delicacies. So I pulled out Joe's 1953 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook and was stopped dead in my tracks by the above photo (which I have scanned in for your viewing pleasure).

"Angel-Cake Surprise for your fanciest party," read the header. "Listen to the "oh's" and "ah's" as you cut through the whipped-cream frosting and light, tender angel cake and find a tempting whipped cream, nut, and fruit surprise filling."

"Oh's" and "Ah's". Indeed. If there's one thing I love about early to mid 20th C cookbooks, it's how they describe the food.  I truly hope that my nephew and godson's generation has as much fun reading today's cookbooks 50 years from now as I get out of reading the cookbooks from my grandmother's days.

Scary-looking. Then I read the ingredients. Whipped cream and more whipped cream. Hmm... one of my favorite ingredients used in abundance. A bit of fruit. Some nuts. Marshmallows. And NO jello. (I hate jello.) Angel-Cake Surprise was sounding better and better. Reader, I baked it.

And, truth be told, it was tasty! If you like whipped cream and ambrosia, you'll like Angel-Cake Surprise. It was a sweet, fluffy, creamy, and lightly refreshing dessert in a retro 1950s way.

And, truthfully, when you unveil this cake, people really will go "ooh!"  (Before you unveil it, people will pester you to tell them what the surprise is. Which gives you the opportunity for creative disinformation.  I hope nobody actually believed Joe that it was filled with deviled ham; the color's kind of similar...)

Recipe in the extended post.  Here's my version of the cake:

Cranberry-Maple Pudding Cake

Just because the holidays are over doesn't mean that it's time to give up cranberries!

I was browsing the January edition of bon appétit (yeah, it's really lower case now) and spotted a lovely and simple "cranberry-maple pudding cake". One of my favorite fruits, plus maple syrup? How could I resist? So when our friend M offered to come over and cook us this lovely lentil soup from 101 Cookbooks, I knew what dessert I wanted to try. Joe whipped up a batch of maple-walnut ice cream from the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cookbook to pair with it.

It cooks up quickly. The bread topping is a mix of flour and cornmeal, which is a great combo for creating a moist bread with some depth of flavor and crisp edges. (I use some cornmeal in my wheat pancakes for the same reason.) As it cooks, the biscuit-like topping absorbs the liquid, creating a rich moist bread pudding on top of a layer of cranberries. Joe's maple-walnut ice cream was a great match for it.

All three of us agreed that the basic recipe just didn't quite suit our tastes. It was too sweet, and the flavor a little too... one dimensional, and we wanted more cranberries. So I tweaked the recipe last night — a touch less maple syrup, a touch more salt, added some cinnamon, and more cranberries — and gave it another try. There may be more tweaking yet to do, but I think this is a good start.

Cranberry-Maple Pudding Bread
based on a recipe from the January 2008 issue of bon appetit.

Cranberries
3 C fresh cranberries
3/4 C real maple syrup (preferably Grade B, or Grade A dark amber; slightly stronger flavor that way)
2/3 C heavy whipping cream
1 tsp orange zest
1/4 salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I may up it to a full teaspoon next time)

Topping
2/3 C all purpose flour
1/3 C yellow cornmeal
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
3 Tbs sugar
1/2 C whole milk
1/2 C melted unsalted butter (1 stick or 4 oz.), cooled a bit
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Mix cranberries, maple syrup, whipping cream, the 1/4 tsp salt, and cinnamon in a sauce pan and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for a minute. (The cranberries may begin to pop, so watch out.) Remove from heat and pour into baking dish. I used a 10 inch pie dish, but it'd also fit into an 8x8x2-inch baking dish or an 11x7x2-inch dish.

Whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and sugar. Add milk, butter, and vanilla extract to the egg mixture. Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and whisk to blend. Pour/drop (depending on batter thickness) batter over the cranberries.  Don't worry if you have gaps. The batter will expand to fill the dish.

Bake until golden and the cranberries bubble at the edges — about 28 minutes. Cool 15 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream (maple walnut is a really good choice as it turns out), whipped cream, or crème fraîche.