Newbie Gourmet

My boss encouraged me to join The Daring Baker's Forum as a way to experiment with new recipes. Each month, a challenge is issued and members are asked to make a recipe they might not be comfortable with or to change up a recipe they might make regularly. This month's challenge was cheesecakes, based on Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake recipe, chosen by Jenny Bakes.

I'm great with cheesecakes. I love making them, eating them, watching others eat them. Well, I couldn't just do a cheesecake, because that would be cheating, so I decided to experiment with a new flavor combination for April. I wanted something floral and light, and roses seemed to fit the bill. But everyone knows how to do a rose cheesecake; they're all over the internet. Thankfully, I found another flavor to mix it up a bit: orange blossom water. Using these two flavors in a marbled cheesecake made for the perfect cheesecake for the month of April.

Elizabeth's Spring-Blossom Cheesecake

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

3/4 c. graham cracker crumbs
3/4 c. Savoiardi (ladyfinger) crumbs
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 tsp orange extract
6 TBS butter, melted

For the Cake:

2 1/2 lb cream cheese, softened
1 3/4 c. granulated sugar
3 TBS all-purpose flour
2 egg yolks
5 large eggs
1/4 c. heavy cream
1 TBS rose syrup*
1 TBS orange blossom water*
Red and yellow food coloring

*Note: I use Al-Rabih brands.

Preparation:

PREHEAT OVEN TO 300F DEGREES

1. Wrap an entremet with parchment paper so that the bottom and sides are tightly covered. You'll see in my pictures that I use tight triangular folds all around the outside to do this. Mix the crumbs, extract, and the sugar together in a small bowl, then add the melted butter to the crumb mixture. Use your hands to press the mixture into the bottom and sides of the entremet so that there is a nice, even distribution of crumbs across the bottom and sides.

2. In a large mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, whip the cream cheese until it is light and fluffy. You cannot over-mix the cream cheese at this point, so make sure there is not a single lump in it when you are done. Use your hands to scrape the cream cheese from the paddle and sides of the bowl between mixings until no lumps are left at all! It's so important for the final texture of the cake.

3. When the cream cheese is fluffy and lump-free, add the sugar and flour. Mix well, but do not overmix.

4. Add the yolks and mix until just incorporated. Add the eggs and mix until just incorporated.

5. At this point, mix it with your hands to make sure everything is mixed and that nothing has lumped together or settled on the bottom. When you are sure everything is mixed together correctly, add the heavy cream and mix only very briefly. If you over-mix the cream (it should take just seconds to mix), then your cheese cake will rise and crack during cooking.

6. Divide the batter equally between two bowls. In one bowl, gently fold the rose flavoring into the batter. In the second bowl, gently fold the orange blossom flavoring, two drops of red food coloring and three drops of yellow food coloring into the batter.

7. Pour half of the rose batter in the cake pan so it completely lines the bottom. Tilt the pan so that the rose batter also lightly covers the sides. Gently add the orange batter to the pan so that it covers the rose batter; leave 1/4 c. for the marbelization. Put the remaining rose batter on top of the orange batter layer, then use a spoon or a piping bag to create a spiral of orange blossom batter on the top of the cake. Use toothpicks to draw the batter from the middle of the cake to the sides of the cake so that you will achieve a marbelization effect, as shown below.



8. Bake the cake for one hour at 300 degrees. The cake is done when the center of the cake is firm to the touch, though it may jiggle a lot. The sides will have risen up only slightly and may even have cracked a bit. Let the cake cool on a cooling rack for an hour or so until it is at room temperature before removing it from the mold. Removing it too soon could cause it to collapse. When it has reached room temperature, you may remove it from the mold and freeze or refrigerate it. Just make sure it is well chilled before serving.

So, today I came into work all ready to go. You know, when you go into work in a mood to accomplish everything? Well, it was one of those days and I was on a roll (no pun intended). Cheesecake ingredients out, baguette dough rolled onto the table, pastry dough defrosting and butter softening all before nine in the morning.

Well, my boss came by and said she wanted to show me how to do the baguette rolls. I thought that was odd since I had done four batches of baguettes (maybe more) since I started working there and thought I had it down. I'll be the first to admit my last batch looked a little lumpy. Okay, a little deformed. Well, maybe a lot. It was because I was focused on making sure that each baguette was exactly one pound rather than baguette-looking. I knew they looked bad. What I didn't know was that everyone thought that they were, I mean, really ugly.

My boss said my last batch of baguettes looked like a bunch of "cancerous penises," and that they were "scaring the wait staff."

I laughed, because I was imagining how that conversation with the wait staff went. I asked the waitress about it later (she and I are friends), and she admitted that she had told Mary that I might have been sexually frustrated when I made the last batch. Maybe. I don't know.

In any event, this is how you make artisan baguettes look like baguettes and not like cancerous penises:



Put a good dusting of flour on your pastry board (or table, in my case). Use your hands to stretch the dough into a roughly rectangular shape with a width as long as your baking sheet (in my case a little under 18". Don't worry if you can't pull the whole thing out. In this picture, you can see I didn't have enough room on the table to stretch the whole thing out. I just focused on the end on which I was working. You can see it's about 18" wide. I use a scraper to cut my bread, but you can certainly use a knife.

Go straight across the dough and make sure it is nice and even, about an inch thick. The cut should look like this:


I always put the cut-side facing up, as in this picture. The dough rises better that way. After letting it rise for ten minutes, I cut four diagonal slits along the top, about 1/4" deep for artistic effect and also so that the bread doesn't split while baking. I let it rise another twenty minutes to a half-hour and spray it down with a lot of water before throwing it in a 400 degree oven. The water is what makes the crust crispity crunchety on the outside while maintaining a doughy soft interior.

This makes for delicious bread that is phallic, to be sure, but would never be called cancerous penis-like.

The baguette recipe I use at home is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.

Photo by Gene Deason for The Brownwood Bulletin

They posted this image in the local paper. It's my boss and her husband accepting the award for Small Business of the Year. She was so nervous about having to do a speech...and it turns out she didn't need to make one after all. Oh, that was a fun night.

This week was very busy, and very exciting, too. On Tuesday, my boss was set to go to the Taste of Abilene event with one of my coworkers. My coworker was "sick" (read: having a panic attack because her boyfriend of three years surprised her with an engagement ring!) so I got to go instead. My boss spent all morning making wonderful sorbetto flavors for the event: pineapple, cantaloupe, lemon, and blood orange. We were one of the last restaurants to show up, but were early enough to set up everything before the event began. Last year, apparently, there was a lot left over, so this year my boss didn't bring as much stuff. We had bags with information about the restaurant, the city, and the Way Out Winery Tour, but most of the people who came weren't interested in any of that, and we had several who were honest and up-front about it, choosing to cut-off our About-the-Restaurant spiel with, "Just tell me what food you got."

We sold out the sorbetto pretty quickly.

I, meanwhile, began working on my super-secret Daring Baker's April Challenge, which would be really fun to tell you about but I can't because...it's a secret. So, that will be discussed in late April, when the challenge ends and I can post pictures and the new recipe I made just for the challenge. Of course, you can certainly come to visit the restaurant, where my challenge recipe outcome was good enough to serve to the masses and currently resides in the gelataria display case.

More exciting, my boss, Mary Stanley, and her husband, David, were honored by the city yesterday evening. They received an award from the Chamber for Business of the Year and were quite pleasantly surprised and flattered. So, we all went out to celebrate and had many drinks between us in their honor. For my part, I may have had too many drinks, as I was giggling a lot during the awards ceremony and for the life of me, cannot remember what on earth was so funny. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one.

Work has been getting a lot easier since now I've gotten the technique down for most of the recipes and my bread, especially, has drastically improved. Here's a picture of my gorgeous focaccia bread:



The recipe I use for home baking is in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which I have read several times over now as part of homework for my job. Mary was telling me how great my bread was lately, and she let me know not to change a thing despite one customer complaining that the bread was "too crunchy for Brownwoodian teeth." There's always going to be that one customer, I suppose. You can't please every one.

Baking is just so much about technique. It's a point Mary keeps drilling into my head. It's not just a bunch of ingredients you smack together and throw in an oven. The more I focus on perfecting technique, the better things taste. Case in point: palmiers.

I hate that I forgot to take a picture of the last batch of palmiers I made. They came out excellently delicious, with a perfectly carmelized exterior and a perfectly flaky interior. I used the same recipe as I did last time (which I will post in my next blog post), but used a different technique. Last time, they did not crisp up, did not carmelize, and as many burned as were undercooked. This time: perfection. I love learning new tricks.

Monday is date-night for me and my hubby, which is basically just one day a week when we agree to be extra nice to each other and either he or I make dinner (or go out) and watch a movie or work on something together. It's just a very relaxing evening for the both of us.

Tonight, I made the dinner and we had, amongst other things, some feta cheese-stuffed mushrooms with balsamic vinegar...but of course there was dessert afterwards. I mean, this is me, people.

Dessert was a very basic (and therefore date-night appropriate) but nonetheless delicious chocolate truffle recipe, which I've made from various recipes I've tried over the years. These truffles remind me of Lindt truffles, the way a hard chocolate shell gives way to the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate inside. They are very rich, so you only need to eat two or three before you've had your fill. They keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, though, so I don't see a need to reduce the recipe.

Ten-Minute Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients:

10 oz. semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips or bar
2 1/2 c. unsalted butter

1 c. milk chocolate chips or bar

Toppings*

*Toppings can be anything you imagine. For the picture, I used Andes mint baking chips, but you can use crushed nuts, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, or anything else.

Preparation:

Put the butter in a medium bowl and microwave for one minute, or until melted. Stir in the semi-sweet chocolate with a spoon until completely melted, about two minutes. The mixture should look like chocolate syrup. Refrigerate for thirty minutes, or until completely solid.

When the mixture is solid, use a melon baller or better yet, a tiny scoop, to form the hard chocolate mix into balls and place on a Silpat (or plastic wrap--something nonstick). I usually have to resort to rolling the balls in my hands to make them round. Smaller balls are better because these are rich.

Melt the milk chocolate in the microwave for a minute, or until melted, stirring every thirty seconds. Use a fork to lift the semi-sweet chocolate balls and dip them completely in the milk chocolate. Then transfer them back to the Silpat. Let sit for two minutes, then dip again in the chocolate. Repeat. You want three coats of milk chocolate shell. On the third dipping, sprinkle on your topping of choice before the coating sets.

Refrigerate or eat and enjoy. They are delicious and decadent.

My biological father came down for a visit today and I treated him to these wonderful little Cranberry-Ginger Scones that I made yesterday for my husband to grab on his way to work. They are adapted from a work recipe and are dry and crumbly--the perfect texture to go with a morning coffee.

Now, the story behind this recipe is that I was asked to make two different scone recipes during my second or third day at work: a cranberry-almond recipe and a ginger-orange recipe. "Unfortunately," I merged the two recipes because I didn't interpret my boss's directions clearly. Thankfully, they came out quite delicious and everyone ate them and loved them anyway. Isn't that how the best recipes are made anyway? Messing something up?

It's how chocolate chip cookies were made, actually. You can read the whole story here, but the short version is that Ruth Wakefield thought that by crumbling a chocolate bar into a basic cookie recipe, she could make chocolate cookies. "Unfortunately," chocolate bars don't work that way, and now we have a very awesome cookie recipe that every child knows and loves.

This scone recipe makes just enough for my husband and I to nibble on for a day, about eight or so. If you have a large cookie cutter, double the recipe. The dough freezes well enough. At home, I use a simple round cutter to make little patty-sized scones, but at work my boss has this lovely little heart-cutter that makes larger and more adorable scones.

The thickness of the scones will determine how moist they are. The thicker they are, the less dry they will be, and that could well be your preference. The original recipe called for a thickness of 1/4 inch, but I found that I liked them better at 1/2 inch thickness. It's really up to you to experiment with the recipe and see what works for you.

Cranberry-Ginger Scones

Ingredients:

2 c. flour*
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 c. cranberries
1/2 c. crystallized (or candied) ginger, chopped
1 tsp orange zest
1/4 c. almond slivers
2/3 c. buttermilk
Egg Wash**

*Pastry flour works best, but all-purpose flour will also work.
**I make egg wash by mixing one egg and one TBS water until well blended.

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover one baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl. Use a pastry blender or food processor to mix the butter into the dry mix, creating a coarse crumb-looking mixture. Stir in the cranberries, almonds, ginger, and orange zest. Add the buttermilk and stir just until the mix comes together. You don't want to mix it to death.

Take the (very wet) dough ball and transfer to a lightly floured surface. Knead it a few times to make sure everything is mixed together well. Use a floured rolling pin to roll the dough out to about 1/2 inch thickness. Use your favorite cookie cutter (the bigger the better--aim for palm-sized cut-outs) to cut the scones out and transfer them to baking sheets.

Brush the top of the scones with the egg wash and bake them for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack and hope your husband thanks you in the morning.

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while. I've done them in the past, while at college, but always gotten too busy to continue doing them. I would make regular posts for a month or two, miss one, and then forget the blog existed.

So, what's changed? Well, now I don't have to worry about exams or parties or the million little things that seem so important when you're in your late teens, early twenties. Now, I just have to worry about my cats and dog, my wonderful fiance, my nice big house and my new job as a baker's apprentice at The Turtle Restaurant in Brownwood, TX. Basically, I am a much more relaxed person with a lot less on my mind and a lot more time on my hands.

I've joined the Daring Bakers over at The Daring Kitchen and will be blogging about the monthly challenges conducted there. Per their rules, though, I can't blog about ongoing challenges and this month is my first challenge, which I can't tell you about until it's over in late April, early May. In the mean time, expect me to be telling you all about my battle wounds as I learn the art of bread baking and cake making.

Hah, the first day working there, I almost cut my finger-tip off. I was not paying attention to my cutting as well as I should have--I was so used to using my dull knives that wouldn't cut through a tomato with ease. Well, I noticed blood on the board and thought, huh, I'm the only person here, so that must be my blood. Sure enough...

Well, I didn't want anyone to see I had cut myself on my first day of work, so I taped my finger back together, put a glove on, and got a new knife and board. Not ten minutes later, the Chef comes in and says, "What did you do to your finger?" (Except he said it with many expletives in that dirty way that I suppose most chefs talk.)

Well, I said all nonchalant, "Whatever do you mean?"

He points to my gloved hand, and I look down to see that blood has pooled all in the glove and it is really rather grotesquely obvious I have injured myself. So, he showed me where the first-aid kit was and the lovely waitress bundled up my finger. I earned my nickname, Stumpy, from Chef that day. Lovely.

For better or worse, Chef has given me a new nickname, Lumpy, due to my unusual need (or love) of trying a little of everything I make: cakes, pies, bread, brownies, creme brulees...it's all good.

My latest battle wounds were blisters on my thumbs from rolling out dough for several hours. That was two weeks or so ago, and Chef of course offered his support: "Learn how to use an [expletive] rolling pin and you won't [expletive] get [expletive] injuries like that. What is WRONG with you?" I love Chef. He's hilarious, and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.

First post down, a million billion to go....