Cinnamon Rolls, Mushroom and Fennel for Dinner

Things have calmed down a bit in Mikey-land; I even got a quick weekend trip to Seattle in. This means back to baking and cooking; I took this as an opportunity to handle a long-standing request from coworkers for cinnamon rolls. The recipe is straight from Artisan Breads Everyday, one that I have even used in the past (the dough, not the filling). And if I remember one thing from that, it was the amount of glaze called for by the recipe was preposterously excessive. I used a quarter of the called-for glaze and still had a bit left; I don't know why anyone would want to dump a full two cups of sugar on top of something already filled with it.

The filling was what I thought traditional, and the book as well, but my coworkers seem to have differing ideas w.r.t. the makeup. Cinnamon and sugar, plus equal parts chopped pecans and raisins. For a brief moment, I contemplated walnuts and went so far as a taste test. Walnuts taste like... walnuts. Dry things. Salads with apples in them. Pilafs. A single bite of the pecan brought back memories of cinnamon rolls as a child; the association is so strong that I think pecans taste like cinnamon rolls. The only tweak I did was a bit of lime juice in both the dough and the glaze; a hint and no more. They also puffed immensely in the oven - below is the just-sliced photo; a two hour rise later, they didn't look much different. 20 minutes in a hot oven, and they almost filled the pan.

I also quicked a cook dinner with E the other night, though she honestly did most of the work. I was in charge of a veggie side, knowing the main was garlic and lemon flavored. Asparagus is an obvious choice, but an overdose in the past week left me blasé on the matter. Mushrooms with fennel seemed a good idea. There wasn't anything remarkable in the dish - the mushrooms were cooked in a pan with salt, no oil, until they began to sweat then a bit more. At that point, you add the oil and a few minutes later the fennel, cooking it for just long enough to not. Something learned: however many cloves of garlic we used were too many, especially to deglaze with a splash of white wine and dump on the potatoes.

Ginger-Puffs

Over the slow weeks of the holidays, E and I talked a few times about making cookies but never quite got around to it. Something about lazy days spent huddled in front of your computer, slaying dragons and harvesting all manner of material, makes me want cookies. Unable to resist the urge any longer, I created these beauties:

The recipe is mine, approximated by browsing a few cookie recipes online to get some basics (I don't know how much flour you need per egg, nor the baking soda/powder requirements) and took the rest from my long history of making shortbread. The goal here was a fluffy cookie - Blue Bottle has these snickerdoodles which transcend cookie-dom; they are fluffy and airy, not too sweet, full of flavor. I wanted something like that at home. An aside: the rest of their cookies are spectacular, specifically the Sesame Absinthe Cigar (né Biscotti Regina) and their Gingersnaps.

For flavor, I didn't want to go grocery shopping which left me with a few options: fresh ginger, chocolate (chips or powder), nuts, oats, and molasses. Also malted barley, which I use for bagels, caught my eye; molasses in cookies is good but adds a heavy flavor; I figured the malted barley would do a lighter flavor and keep the cookies a white/yellow color. That plus ginger settled it, and so I got these. They are very fluffy and not too sweet with a ginger punch that has gotten stronger overnight; they almost border on biscuit/scone territory, but are definitely cookies.

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Ginger-Puffs

Makes ~15 cookies (feel free to double; this is roughly a half-batch)

1 cup flour

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)

1/4 cup sugar
1 egg (I wouldn't double this - most recipes online are 1 egg for every 1.5-2 cups flour)
1 tbsp malted barley (you can use honey as a substitute)
~1 knuckle fresh ginger (1 tbsp most likely, though I didn't measure)
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda (because there is some acidity in the cookies)
1/4 tsp baking powder (because I wasn't completely sure there was enough)

If you have a mixer, this recipe is really easy. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy stirring. I don't, but I still did it. Combine the butter and sugar and mix quickly until creamed. It helps if you chop up the butter and leave it on the counter to soften. Add the egg to the bowl and beat on high for as long as your arm can take, then another minute or so (at least 5 minutes). The goal is to get some air into the batter.

Add the baking powder, vanilla, salt, barley, and grate the ginger over the bowl (so that if any liquid comes out you get that as well). Stir for just a minute or so, until blended. Line baking sheets with parchment. Form cookies by filling a tablespoon with batter and level off, then scoop out with a spoon onto the sheet - these are your cookies. Cover with plastic and cool in the fridge for at least an hour. Cook at 350 for 17-20 minutes, until the edges have begun to brown.

If you want, you could chill the dough between mixing and shaping; this would allow you to actually shape the dough by hand instead of plopping it onto the sheet because anything else is too sticky.

Raspberry/Apple Tart

I have no Thanksgiving food to post; my only contribution was bread and non-adventurous versions at that. E provided green bean casserole with every ingredient from a can (the way it should be). There was a lot of other cooking this weekend, however. For starters, E proved she could cook things that don't come from cans and then some using my new tart pan with this:

A delicious raspberry/apple tart with a hint of cinnamon and a dash of sugar, but not much else. As much as I doubted her filling would work, I was much impressed by the final result. She added no liquid to the filling, simply cooking half the berries and the apple over medium until it transmogrified into a sauce. Magic, I know. It made a great dessert to the simple pasta I had prepared as well as breakfast and dessert over the next few days. I guess for revenge E didn't believe me that my pasta would work; fresh pappardelle noodles with heirloom beans, tomato, and kale. No sauce apart from what the beans cooked in, finished with some cheese. The cheese should probably have gone in the bean sauce, but otherwise wonderful

You'll also note another thing of note in the photo above - wine glasses. I caved and purchased some, which we promptly used with white wine despite the shape tending toward red (or so my casual wikipedia browsing has informed me, making me an expert in the subject of course).

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Apple Raspberry Tarted

Makes a 6-inch tart with leftover crust for cookies

1 batch "pâte sucrée" pie crust (that is, one with an egg, no water,  and about half as much sugar as flour)

1 small carton raspberries

1 red apple

1 tbsp granulated sugar (+more to taste)

1 tsp corn starch

1 tsp cinnamon (+more to taste)

E decided to not pre-bake the curst; different recipes seemed to disagree on what one should do. Julia Child recommended we cook it all the way; the internet couldn't decided if we should not cook it, cook it half way, or cook it fully before adding the ingredients. Given that we were using apple (long cook time) and a sugar crust (prone to burning), I think the decision was a great one.

So, yes, prepare your pie crust as instructed by whatever recipe and put it in a 6-inch mold. Preheat oven to 350. Chop up about 1/2 the apple into berry-sized chunks and put in a sacuepan with half of the berries, sugar, cornstarch, and cinnamon. Stir over medium heat until it is a sauce. Taste and see if you want it sweeter or with more of a cinnamon kick; the provided amounts are a bare-minimum.

Fill the crust with the chunky sauce and place the remaining berries evenly on top of the tart. Cook for about 30 minutes, until the crust has browned, the berries on top have gotten juicy, and the apples have softened. Let cool for 15-20 minutes before slicing and eat the remainders cold for breakfast.

Crackly Coffee Shortbread

My drip coffee ritual is now a common occurrence during the work week, thanks to a generous coworkers gifting of an electric burr grinder to the kitchen area. This also means that a dwindling bag of beans, not quite sufficient to brew a cup, has become something of an issue. I think I've got a solution to that, though. Adding to my long list of shortbread recipes is this one, a pleasantly crunchy, caffeine-spiked addition to any breakfast, snack, or tea time. The amount of beans I used was essentially a random guess that turned out to work quite well; the vanilla amount less so. The butter, sugar, vanilla, and coffee stage of the recipe smelled like heaven, but adding the flour muted the vanilla and baking it seems to have eradicated it completely. I'd recommend playing around with the vanilla amounts to try and preserve that flavor.

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Crackly Coffee Shortbread

Makes ~12 cookies

1 cup flour

1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup)

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tbsp roasted whole coffee beans, plus extra for garnish

1/2 tsp vanilla

Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl. If you don't cream them and instead just mix them, you will get a denser cookie. With a mortar and pestle, grind down the coffee beans to a size bigger than granulated sugar (if you like crunch) or finer (if you don't). Incorporate the coffee and vanilla into the mixing bowl. Add flour and mix until the dough goes back to being a dough, not a bunch of clumps of butter and flour. You may need to "knead" the dough a little by hand if mixing via spoon.

Take a portion of dough about the size of my thumb, or about 1/12th of the dough, and roll into a ball. Flatten between palms of hands and place on a baking sheet. Garnish each cookie with a bean or two (optional) and maybe a fancy design (also optional). Turn oven to 350 and while that is heating, place the cookies in the fridge (not optional in the slightest). After no less than 10 minutes in the fridge, and if the oven is heated, bake for 22 minutes or until the edges have taken a very light browning.

Shortbread + Irish Cream

It has been quite some time since the last round of shortbread, but they are not forgotten. To the contrary, I made biscotti regina a bit ago from this recipe, but didn't honor it with a post. I would recommend adding some anise (or anise-like flavor, like absinthe) to that recipe and otherwise no changes. But! Shortbread! With Irish Cream! The goal of this experiment was to make the shortbread still look like shortbread, but have a creamy boozy flavor to them. It almost worked; the final texture is very nice and they taste good, but the cream doesn't really come through. More booze, maybe? I used 2 tbsp Irish Cream and 1 tbsp olive oil; I've changed that (without trying it) to 3tbsp Irish Cream and no olive oil in the recipe below. Otherwise: A++ would bake again.

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Irish Cream Shortbread

Makes 1 dozen cookies

1/2 cup pastry flour

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup)

1/4 cup powdered sugar

3 tbsp Irish Cream

large crystal sugar for garnish

Cream the butter; if using a blender this is easy. If using your muscles, I like chopping it finely and then stirring with a fork. It may not cream; no worries, the Irish Cream will save you. Once the butter is creamed, add in the sugar and cream again. Add in the flour and mix until it begins clumping; it may not form a ball; that is fine Irish Cream will save this as well. Add in the Irish Cream 1 tbsp at a time; the dough should now definitely form a ball. Using your hands, divide the dough into about 12 pieces and shape each like your thumb (by rolling it into a ball, then rolling the ball between your hands to elongate it). Put the shaped cookies on a baking sheet, sprinkle the sugar over the tops and lightly press it in, then refrigerate for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 and cook for 25-30 minutes, until they have browned slightly around the bottom. Rotate the pan at some point if you want to be anal about these things or your oven has a vendetta against even baking.

You must must must let them cool; unlike cookies, shortbread fresh from the oven is not good as it will still be soft.

Handmade Tortillas + A Delicious Tart

Just last post, I had made pitas from scratch, just-in-time for the meal. This week, I did the same with corn tortillas. Both of these are members of a very illustrious family of bread products - ComesInALargePackThatGoesBadBeforeICanEatThemAll. They are from Qwlghm, you see, where last names are much more descriptive than your Continental sensibilities may prefer. If time goes on, I may be forced to make the last member of the family--hot dog buns--though I don't think they can be made with as short of a notice as tortillas. Which, by the way, can be made with about 30 minutes of warning and very little work. They don't necessarily look pretty, though, but the taste is there.

Also, it only requires two ingredients, one of which you are sure to have handy. The other might require visiting a specialty food store, or one with a large bulk selection, but can be purchased in large quantities.  To go with the tortillas, E made a salsa fresca with tomato, corn, onion, and lime. There was no cilantro to be found at the grocer, so it lacked the kick one would expect. This wasn't helped by myself, chef of the main course, which was... unseasoned beans and rice. Now, these were delicious beans but still lacking in kick. I couldn't bring myself to use Sriracha on the meal, but red pepper flakes worked in a pinch.

There was also the matter of dessert. It being berry season made this a rather easy decision, and after searching around a bit we ended up with this crumble recipe. The reason? It said "Oatmeal" in the title, and I love oatmeal. Seems to be a good recipe selection tool, that. We quartered the recipe linked, which was hard with the salt and cinnamon, and also left out the almond extract (didn't notice). We used less sugar than requested (about 1 cup if doing the full recipe) due to a 50/50 split of raspberries and ridiculously sweet blackberries. It cooked in ramekins; one for myself, one for E, and one split for breakfast the next day. A good amount of dessert, though the cooling time was unbearable with the smell in my kitchen.

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Corn Tortillas

Makes 2 tortillas (enough for one person, recipe easily scales)

1/4 cup masa harina

2 tbsp + 1 tsp hot water

pinch of salt

cast iron pan

In a small bowl, combine the masa harina and water and mix with a spoon. It won't quite form into a cohesive ball but should rather clump up. When squeezed by hand, it should form into one piece. If it is sticky at all, consider adding more flour. If it doesn't squeeze into a ball by hand, add a pinch of water at a time until it does. If making enough for one, you can lazily knead it in your hands. If making more, knead on an unfloured work surface. The first time we cooked them, they were a tad on the dry side; when I tried again the next night, they were too sticky. Based on this, I'll say the consistency you should aim for is kneads fine, but when you fold it back over itself it may rip a little instead of stretching.

The dough dries out very quickly, you can always let it sit a bit longer to dry it out. After kneading, put it in something covered for at least 20 minutes. Heat a cast iron pan over medium heat until it is warm. If you have a tortilla press, use it. Otherwise, tear off a golf-ball-ish chunk, roll it between your hands into a ball and flatten slightly. Between two pieces of plastic wrap, carefully roll the ball out into something resembling a tortilla. If the dough is too wet, it will stick and get ruined. Transfer to pan and cook for about 10-30 seconds, then flip it. Cook for a minute, then flip back to the original side and cook for up to a minute longer. Keep warm, or eat quickly, as it will harden if you let it cool.

Rough Pastry Dough Begets Strawberry Puff Triangles

Way, way, way back I posted a photo, and quick description of, palmiers. Made from a very simple version of puff pastry dough that doesn't require making a detrempe. For those that don't speak French and don't know how to use a search engine, "detrempe" translates roughly to "what the fuck have I gotten myself into that was way more work than I thought and it isn't even the dough yet". Keep in mind my French is a little rusty, so I'd ask a professional translator to really get a feel for the subtleties in that. I don't know why I haven't made more puff pastries since then; I guess biscuits/scones are fairly close. Also, I've been eating some delicious pastries recently from Tell Tale Preserves - it seems all of my favorite hip/trendy/urban/home office coffee shops have started stocking them. They make these grownup versions of pop-tarts, as well as basically what I'm making below, but in a larger size. And tastier, but I'll work on that.

I'm going to give you two recipes below - one for the dough, and one for the pastry itself. You can use this dough anywhere a recipe asks for "puff pastry" without running to the store to find some. Some recipes you will see require several days of work - those are probably better. This stuff just gets the job done, looks good while doing it, and only needs ~45 minutes (most of that spent sitting in the freezer, actually). You'll get slightly less defined layering, but still all of the light crisp and flakiness you would find in a three-day concoction.

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Rough Puff Pastry Dough

2 parts (by weight) butter

2 parts (by weight) pastry flour

1 part (by weight) water

lots and lots of additional flour in reserve

(For the math-challenged, this means for every stick of butter you need about one cup of flour and 1/4 cup water).

Chop the butter into cubes, then place all the ingredients (each in a separate container) into the freezer for about 15 minutes - don't let the water freeze. On a work surface, put down some of the flower, place the butter on top, then put the rest of the flour on top. With a pastry blade, cut the flour into the butter briefly, getting the butter into tiny chunks. It should look like this.

Once the butter and flour are a pile of delicious, fatty rubble, pour a little bit of water on top and cut the water in. You don't want to pour too much water on, as it won't get absorbed and you'll just end up with a wet work surface/counter/pants. Continue this process, pouring in a little water and cutting it in, until you don't have any more water. Now your pile of rubble is starting to gain sentience - it'll look like below. Quickly, before it becomes a seething mass of butter-golem, intent on destroying squishy human flesh - roll it flat!

This stage is a little tricky - for the first flattening, you should kind of pat it flat with a floured pastry blade. Then, turn the top third of the blob over itself, then the bottom third. Lift it with pastry blade, flour underneath, put it down so the folds are now vertical, flour the top, and roll it out with a pin. Do this process at least 4 more times, if not more, but do not let the butter melt at all. The first fold won't be much of one as it will be chunky - after 2-3 folds/rolls, it should be one cohesive piece.

 On the left is it right after the first fold, on the right after the 4th roll.

Now that your dough is one piece and rolled flat, fold it up one more time, wrap it in plastic wrap, and put it in the freezer (if using it within 15 minutes), the fridge (if using it sometime from 30 minutes from now until a day or two later), or in a very deep grave (if you aren't planning on using it and wish to stop the butter-golem uprising).

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Jam Puff Pockets

Some amount of above recipe (I used 1 stick of butter worth)

Granulated sugar

Powdered sugar

Jam

(optional) milk (cow, soy, coconut, doesn't really matter).

A note - mine were not very sweet, so the recipe has been modified to add a little bit more sugar than I used. The glaze should really push it into sweet land, but is entirely optional. I didn't use it. You could also try putting in a bit more jam, but that requires thinner dough and probably making squares, not triangles.

Preheat oven to 400. Line a work surface with granulated sugar, and roll the dough out into, roughly, a rectangle-ish shape. Go for something very thin. Using a pastry cutter, chef's knife, or some other long thing, cut the dough into a grid of squares. I'll just say 3 inches by 3 inches, but only because I suck at estimating distance and that seems like a good number.

Sprinkle a little bit more sugar on top of the squares, then put a very tiny dab of jam in the center. You can either fold it in half diagonally and seal the sides, or put one square on top of another and make ravioli-ish pastries. Either way, be very careful to only put pressure on the edges so you don't squeeze the jam out. Press a fork along the edges to give it some nice texture.

On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, place the prepared pastries. If you want, you can make a glaze by combining a little bit of milk into some sugar and whisking, adding milk slowly until it hits the consistency you like. Spread some of this on the pastries, but leave some in reserve. Either way, sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

Cook for 15-25 minutes, depending on how thick the dough was and how brown they get. If using a glaze, let them cool for about 10 minutes then apply another bit of glaze. Either way, wait until they have cooled completely and add sugar again. Then eat them.

Scones Are Just Biscuits with Dried Things

On Saturday, Emily had a good friend in town that we spent a good part of the day doing stereotypical SF things with. Ferry Terminal for brunch, Dolores Park in the sun, Borderlands, seeing naked people (on bikes, not in the Castro). As we were walking to Dolores I had a craving for Tartine - and lo, it wasn't crowded. The line wasn't even out the door which I can (maybe) thank SXSW for. I got one of their scones; crispy on the outside, flaky on the outside. And then I decided I should make some.

Turns out, at least according to my bread book, that scones are just biscuits with fruit added. So I used the recipe I've used before for biscuits, with the addition of ~1 cup of assorted dried sweet things. Roughly 1/4 cup cranberry, 1/2 cup raisin, and 1/4 cup candied ginger. No additional sugar, which was a great idea. I did two things wrong but neither impacted the recipe much. I did one additional letter fold-and-roll (so 5 roll outs of the dough) - for scones, this didn't matter, but if you are cooking biscuits do not not not do that. It mostly god rid of the layering effect that was so prominent in the last batch.

I also maybe should have used a layer of parchment paper, or doubled my baking sheets. The bottoms were quite scorched due to how small I cut the scones and the heat of the oven. But the end result was still tasty - not quite at Tartine's level (I would need to add some large sugar crystals on top), but better than the dry scones you'll find at most places.

Also the recipe has almost as much dairy as flour. 1.75 cups of flour to 1.5 cups of dairy (1 cup heavy whipping cream, 1/2 cup butter). And I can't really say no to something that rich.

Something Like Rugelach

I found myself flipping through a bread book, as usual, deciding what to bake and bring in to work. I've done a lot of bakery-style bread recently, and wanted some a little less healthy. Scratch that, a lot less healthy. Full on dessert. I saw a beautiful picture of bread - babka it would be! Then I read the recipe. Egg yolks? Egg white wash? 3-4 hours of proofing/shaping/baking/cooling with fridge time? Blech. But, hey, I like that it was covered in chocolate. I can take that and run with it.

I decided to take the general idea of melting a bunch of chocolate and butter, covering dough in it, then rolling it up and shaping it. For dough I took a much simpler dessert dough - cinnamon roll dough. With none of the annoying rising, really. I prepped it, left it in the fridge for two nights, and gave it maybe an hour in the morning to rise (covered in warm chocolate for part of the time, which I'm sure helped).

The flavor/texture was most similar to rugleach (think of something like a chocolate strudel). Now, rugelach has a special place in my stomach. The best I've ever had was in Israel, purchased at a shuk in Jerusalem for practically nothing - I believe we got enough rugelach to make 3 people feel somewhat sick for ~5 shekels (around a dollar at the time). There is a delicate balance between making a soft-but-crispy dough, filling it with a mixture that is both crunchy and sweet, and covering it in a good streusel. Wikipedia says the secret is cream cheese, but I doubt that because I didn't use any and mine came out great. I've eaten attempts at it in Chicago (the filling was too dry), Vancouver (pretty good actually), and Mountain View (overall too dry), but never anything as good as the fresh stuff from the market.

Chocolate Marble Shortbread

After the truffle failure, I find myself with a bag full of pure cocoa powder and a deep desire to use it. Should I put it on bread? Try making truffles again? Snort it direct from the source? While I try and find a dinner recipe to use it (cocoa rubbed pork tofu?), I might as well work it into my shortbread experiments. Except, thinking myself skilled at the shortbread, I made a larger-than-experiment batch.

There really is something grand about making shortbread; the many little things to tweak in the recipe, the simplicity of the ingredients, how awesome creamed butter is, and the smell it produces when baking. To keep this an experiment, even though the batch size was large, I only added two ingredients. Wait, that isn't an ingredient - aren't you only supposed to have one variable? Well, I added the aforementioned cocoa powder and a pinch of vanilla extract. You know, to get a chocolate and vanilla combo going on.

The only thing I would change in the process is my marbling/striping procedure. I had split each half (chocolate and plain) into 10 pieces and rolled each. I then alternated them on the work surface and rolled it together; despite this, they still mostly broke apart on the lines between dough types. Rolling both sides and not just the top may have helped; alternatively, I could have simply take the pieces, mashed them together, and rolled that out.

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Chocolate Marble Shortbread

Makes ~15 bites, 30 minute prep (including freeze time), 20 minute bake

1/2 cup (8 tbsp) flour

1/4 cup (4 tbsp) butter

1/8 cup (2 tbsp) powdered sugar

1 tsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter (stir it vigorously until it gets creamy). Add in the sugar, and cream again. Mix in the flour and stir until you are left with a bunch of clumps of flour. Add in the vanilla and stir again - it should now form a ball with the extra moisture. Separate the dough into two equal piles and add the cocoa powder to one. Mix with a spoon a bit, and then finish working the powder in evenly by hand.

Marble the dough as described above and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place, covered, in freezer and preheat oven to 350 degrees. After about 15 minutes in the freezer, remove the dough and indent it with a butter knife along the lines you want it to break. Place it in the oven for ~20 minutes, or a little longer if you want them extra crispy. Let it cool for at least 30 minutes, preferably overnight.

Strawberry Shortbreads

On a recent trip to the grocery store to stock up on necessities, I was surprised to find fresh, California strawberries staring back at me from the organic shelf. I grabbed a box and ran home to devour them; a few strawberries in I realized this wasn't the best idea. Its not that they weren't ripe nor delicious (they were both), but rather that I should savor them. So I stopped my feast, hands painted in red, and went about mixing some bread.

But I still wanted strawberries, and I have poor self control when it comes to these things, so I compromised. One strawberry for a shortbread experiment, and no more until tomorrow. If you remember last time I attempted to make savory ones with baking powder. It worked, but not spectacularly - it was far too dry and didn't plump as much as expected. I know that many moist breads get that way by using butter, buttermilk, or oil. Butter was out because, well, I think these things have enough butter already. Buttermilk was out because I would only be using a teaspoon or less. So, olive oil it is.

The baking powder ration for the bread also seemed wrong the last time: 1 tsp for 8 tbsp of flour was definitely not right. The smallest measuring spoon I have is 1/4 tsp, so that decided it for me: the perfect ratio of baking powder to flour is going to be 1/4 tsp to 2 tbsp, damn the consequences. Turns out it may have been a bit much; I think 1/4 tsp to 4 tbsp might be a more accurate measure. When I put this on the cookie sheet, it was round and about the diameter of my thumb; you can see in the photo how far it spread out and how much it rose. Rolling tighter may be in order next time, to get the shape to keep.

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2 tbsp flour

1 tbsp butter

1/2 tbsp powdered sugar (probably could reduce this to 1 tsp and not notice)

1 strawberry, cut into strips, mostly eaten after you realize you only need 5 pieces.

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp olive oil

In very small container (think an espresso cup, or maybe a little larger), whip butter until it gets airy and creamy. Add sugar and blend until mixed. Add flour and baking powder, again stirring until mixed (it should form a crumbly mix). Add olive oil and mix until it forms into a ball. Shape into a log and, with the back of a knife, press gently into the dough at an angle and wiggle the knife to create a depression large enough to fit a strawberry chunk. Place strawberry chunk in said depression.

Place dough in fridge for 20+ minutes, until it hardens. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and cook shortbread for 20 minutes. Let cool for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour. They are much better room temperature after the butter has solidified than fresh out of the oven when it is gooey.

Sovrano Grana and Mushroom Shortbread

Mushrooms are a funny food to me. I think I hate them, on the whole, but I find it hard to not try using them every few weeks. I don't quite learn my lesson, or I see a recipe that looks good, or I think "maybe this time they will taste good". I'm not quite fooling myself, either, because I have enjoyed mushrooms and I even know a kind I can reliably enjoy. But I still branch out from there. So, crazy idea, why not stick some dried mushrooms and some strong cheese on shortbread? Don't mind if I do.

I found myself going to the mushroom shop in the ferry terminal surrounded by things that sounded delicious. Candy mushrooms? Sweet mushrooms? Almond mushrooms? How could any of these things be bad? So I picked up some almond mushrooms and took them home. I opened the bag and almost immediately gagged. These things are strong and pungent. They taste nothing like almond and mostly like ass. I persevered, hoping for the best. The amount you see below is how much I thought I would use, but the smell and taste convinced me to only use half as much (for nine shortbreads about the size of two thumbs put side-by-side). Any hint of mushroom flavor baked out in the oven, so I was left with only their texture. Maybe more next time, or maybe just not mushrooms.

I made a slight change to the recipe I've used in the past, adding a tiny bit of baking powder to get more rise out of the shortbreads, figuring it more fitting for a savory dish. The cooking time/process, however, got miffed a little - they cooked a bit too long and got very crispy internally. You can see the browned bottoms below. The amount of baking powder was a complete guess - 1 teaspoon seemed good, as 1 tablespoon was obviously too much.

Sovrana Grana and Mushroom Shortbreads (makes 9 biscuits/half a cookie sheet)

• 8 tbsp (1/2 c) flour
• 4 tbsp (1/4 c) butter
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• few pinches of grated Sovrana Grana (feel free to use any salty, hard cheese)
• (optional) few dried almond mushrooms, chopped to bits. Use at least twice what you see in my photos

In mixing bowl, "whip" butter. If it is fresh from the fridge, just stir it with a wooden spoon in a small bowl until it gets creamy. Add sugar, blend, add flour and baking powder, blend again. On cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, form biscuits by pinching off a bit of dough. Roll dough between palms quickly to get a sphere, then rock side-to-side while pressing to make a nice biscuit shape. The quicker the better, so the butter doesn't melt.

Put a some of the mushrooms into each biscuit by pressing them in, then plop grated cheese on top of each biscuit, also pressing it in lightly. Place, covered, in fridge for at least 30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees; cook biscuits for 10 minutes, rotate, and cook for 5-10 minutes more (depending on desired crisp).

I'll do an experiment later with baking powder to get a better feel for how to make lighter, more savory shortbreads.

Shortbread, Now Entering Beta Phase

Knowing I had an evening of nerds planned for tonight and only a few hours last night to whip something up, I went with shortbread. The host of the evening is a ginger fanatic, to say the least, so the natural topping seemed to be ginger. Got home too late to go shopping, but I had candied ginger lying around. Doesn't quite match the triple threat of his candied/dried/fresh ginger cookies but it will do the trick.

What you see here are the finished bites - basic shortbread, topped with a small piece of candied ginger and a light sprinkle of crushed black pepper and sea salt. You can't quite make out the salt in this picture; a coarser grind would have been both more delicious and more visually appealing. The salt and pepper form an X, but these are meant to be eaten in one bite so the unequal covering won't matter. You can actually see it clearly in the pre-baked shot which is both better post-processed (thanks Picasa!) and a better angle.

I think my alpha batches have been serviceable, maybe even sometimes delicious, but this new beta phase is miles above the previous batches. It might be the flavoring. it might be the thin-ness, or it might even be the prep method. But because I wasn't experimenting I changed far too many factors to really know. Maybe it was just a combination of all of the things I've done before (350 degree oven, 20 minute cook time, no funny flours, very thin for ultimate crisp).

Ginger and Pepper Shortbreads (makes 15-ish bite-sized shortbreads, feel free to double/quadruple recipe for a "normal" batch)

• 8 tbsp (1/2 c) flour [unbleached all-purpose or pastry flour]
• 4 tbsp (1/4 c) butter, frozen
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• Candied ginger
• Coarse sea salt
• Fresh ground black pepper

Grate the butter into a mixing bowl (I'm trying this because it worked so well in the biscuits) and add in the sugar. Mix with a fork until it the sugar is incorporated. Add in flour and whisk to distribute the ingredients. Usually, the butter is beaten and everything incorporates easily. However, with frozen butter, that won't happen without either a liquid (currently banned from my shortbreads) or some pressure. So, after ingredients are evenly distributed, get in there with your hands and squeeze the dough until it all forms into a ball.

On a lightly-floured cutting board, roll out the dough into a rectangle or square. It should be very thin - slightly thinner than a #2 pencil. Use a metal spatula to square off the edges. Transfer dough to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and, with the spatula, cut most of the way through the dough to form a square grid - you can cut all the way through, but half is enough. It will break apart easily after cooking.

In each square, push a piece of candied ginger into the dough so that it forms an indentation. Hopefully this is enough to get it to set. Sprinkle a cross of black pepper from one corner to the other of each square, and a sprinkle of salt perpendicular to that. Turn on the oven to 350 degrees and place the cooking sheet in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

Remove the chilled-again tray and place in oven for 10 minutes, rotate, and cook for 10 minutes more. Let cool. Eat one to make sure they are good, then break the grid apart completely so it isn't obvious you ate one before bringing it over to a friends place.

Shortbread Thickness

For today's shortbread experiment (well, Friday's but posted today), I played around with thickness/shape. Unfortunately, in doing so, I regressed w.r.t. the baking temperature. I mistakenly baked at 325 for 20 minutes, despite finding out in a previous experiment that 350 was optimal.

We have three sizes here: normal/normal, half/normal, and normal/half. The first part is how thick it is, the second part is how wide it is. You can see that the thinnest one is the most colored inside, but then you realize it is an optical illusion due to my phone camera taking a bad photo and my cleanup attempts failing. The half/normal came out the crumbliest, and the normal/half and normal/normal were indistinguishable. Remember, the goal for shortbread is to cook out most of the butter so it becomes crumbly instead of mushy. Here is my pinky for reference. And, yes, these things are small.

On the left we have pre cooking, and on the right post-cooking. They do plump a little in the oven, and lost a little bit of their shape. The important bit is letting them cool completely - they are actually best the next day (or, at least a few hours after baking) instead of fresh out of the oven like most cookies are. Yay for not during myself!

Shortbread, Now With Buckwheat

For todays (well, not todays but you know what I mean) micro-recipe, I did a 50% sub of buckwheat flour for normal flour, and a baseline of 1/2 tbsp powdered sugar. So, roughly 1/2 tbsp powdered sugar, 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp buckwheat flour. The dough was a lot firmer and required far more stirring to get the ingredients to come together.

 Pre baked on the left, post baked (but pre cooled) on the right

The finished cookies also tasted like buckwheat, obviously. I'm not sure this was a good thing. Another thing I experimented with in this batch was cooling time - I split the single-serving into two biscuits. I at one after 30 minutes cooling time, and ate the second after about 2.5 hours of cooling time. The 2.5 hour cooling time was far superior, as after 30 minutes the biscuit still had quite a bit of heat and chewiness (not something one looks for in an ideal shortbread). The 2.5 hour one was not quite that perfect combination of flakiness and dryness I expect, but it was much closer. I think my baking time/temperature might need some adjustment.

Shortbread Micro-recipe, Take Two

A follow up to the last post is in order. I made the 1-2-4 shortbread (a single serving, in fact) last night. This one came out much better. Same process: chop butter and whip it with a fork, add sugar and whip again, add flour and stir. I shape the dough with my hands, then put it on parchment and slip it in the fridge for 30 minutes. This time I went with 325 degrees instead of 350, but the same cooking time (9-10 minutes). This is just about when the shortbread begins to glisten but not lose its shape.

Pre-baked is on left, post baked is on right. The dough was noticeably stiffer, but it still "melted" in the oven. I think this is going to be a normal part of this recipe, as I hesitate to add any more flour. After I let it cool for an hour, it had hardened into what I would consider normal shortbread consistency - flaky and very solid. It was also delicious. Up next: either adding another ingredient (vanilla? raisins?) or playing around with the flour (whole wheat, buckwheat, etc).

Remember, this was made with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 2 tablespoons of flour. And it made exactly one shortbread. Working with an amount of ingredients this small is phenomenal - I take one of my tiny sake cups and a tiny fork and can whip the butter with minimal effort; it softens quite easily given how little there is.

Experimenting via Micro-Recipes

While eating a piece of shortbread, I thought to myself, "Mikey like! Mikey make?" except not necessarily in terms so simplistic. So, straight to the internet where I discovered many interesting facts about shortbread - its long and storied history, its place in cultures across the world, and its humble origins. Namely, 1 part sugar 2 parts butter 3 parts flour. If you check wikipedia, you'll note the flour bit says "oatmeal flour" but since when have I read things properly?

My plan, and I will continue with it, is to take advantage of the few ingredients and simple ratios of shortbread to experiment by making a very small  batch (a cookie or two) and tweaking things one at a time. I started off today with a baseline where I took a single tablespoon to be a part. Two biscuits where formed - a baseline sweet to be topped with powdered sugar, and a baseline savory to be topped with sea salt. Other than those toppings, applied after baking, there were no differences in the biscuits.

I made a guess on preparation and baking - refrigerate the dough to set it after shaping and an oven heated to 350 degrees, cooking time of 10 minutes. Now, that wrong type of flour mentioned above truly bit me on this night of baselining. See, oatmeal flour is a thicker, heartier type of flour than the unbleached all-purpose flour I employed. The beautiful 1-2-3 ratio did not produce much beyond slightly heated dough. Post-baking, the biscuits had notably melted and failed to solidify the least bit. Once cooled, they were semi-firm and questionably delicious - they reminded me of sugar cookie dough. I dutifully ate them, however, in the name of science.

 The next step, then, is to re-baseline the recipe using a 1-2-4 ratio. While not as mnemonic as 1-2-3, it pleases me that it forms a list of powers of two. From there, assuming I get good results, I will experiment with toppings, fillings, and dough ingredients - and I will reduce down to a half tablespoon as the "part", which will make a single biscuit. Hopefully I get good results out of this experiment, though eating a spoonful of flour butter sugar isn't the worst thing a man can do.

Thumbprint Rolls (Blueberry and Cinnamon/Sugar Crumble)

More free time than usual due to the holidays, so I'm doing more baking. The original plan was to cook something using Panettone dough as it is a very involved and time-consuming process. Luck (or laziness?) was on my side, and I was spared to ordeal when I read the recipe in my book - it used a starter. As my starter is still forming, I did not want to try substituting instant yeast in for a recipe that complex.

 I found a recipe that looked awesome - Fruit-Filled Thumbprint Rolls. I'll spare the dough details, as it is just cinnamon roll dough (use your favorite recipe). After getting your dough all ready, at the point when you are ready for it to rise, form it into tiny rolls and proof. Right before they are to go in the oven, wet your thumb and push into each roll in the center, creating a nice divot to fill with sugary substances. My rolls had in issue - I either didn't make big enough divots or I didn't let them rise for quite long enough. Many rolls "popped" when baked, rejecting their sugary implants and depositing them all over their surface.

Of course, you should have made your sugary substances by this point. I went with two filling options - blueberry filling and a cinnamon sugar crumble with raisins. The blueberry filling was made using a slurry of sugar, water, and corn starch that was stirred constantly over medium until it was boiling, then blueberries were thrown in as it was removed from heat. Boiling sugar water is really fun, you should try it some time. The cinnamon sugar crumble was, well, cinnamon, sugar, butter, and flour mixed together (flour added last), then topped with a few raisins once the pastry was filled.

The final part of the recipe was much looked forward to by myself - making a sugar glaze, brushing it over the rolls the second they come out of the oven (covering them in a fine, and mostly invisible, layer of sugar). The real topper was waiting for them to cool and then drizzling ever more glaze on top. To make glaze, put a dash of vanilla in a cup of sugar and whisk, then gradually add liquid (water, milk, etc) while whisking until it hits the consistency you are looking for.