December 4, 2013 by Rachel Sally

Shorted

The kitchen burned down.

No, I did not burn it down. Thank goodness.
No, the building did not burn down. Thank god.
Everyone is safe, but there was major damage done.
I am hardly the one most affected in this whole ordeal.

Let me tell the (theorized) story.

People staying over Thanksgiving break understandably wanted to make latkes to celebrate Thanksgivukkah with the house.
They deep fried the latkes, took the pot of hot oil off the burner, and placed it on another burner.
All good. Except they failed to check if the second burner was off (people were cooking like crazy, and it’s an electric stove, so)… It was not off.
It is no ones fault; there is no blame to lay. It was a complete and total accident.

Apparently, the fire alarm went off while they were eating dinner, and it was discovered that there was a grease fire raging on in our house kitchen.

The sprinklers dumped gallons and gallons of water into the kitchen. It flooded.

The lounge flooded.

The remediation crew came in and threw everything out.

Everything. From my hoarded Madagascar vanilla beans to my favorite, homemade apron. (This one.)
My carefully curated pantry was emptied.

Where bags of flour, sugar, cocoa, and spices once resided, there is nothing.
Today, they’ve gutted the kitchen. There is no longer even a cabinet.
I cried. Not gonna lie.

The apartment below the kitchen, a faculty member’s, has had extensive water damage and flooding through the ceilings. They have 2 dogs and 2 small children. My heart goes out to them in this trying time as they attempt to put their life back together.

Our kitchen will (fingers crossed) be back up and running at the beginning of winter quarter.

~~None of~~ you are probably wondering what will happen to this blog in the two weeks to come, before I can go home.
A lot of no bake stuff, some posts I have saved up, some cookie swapping.

Enter these memorable cookies, which I made 2 weeks ago and which are still fragrant and melting on my tongue.
I was craving something buttery and sweet, something that balanced coconut, raspberry, and salt.

Putting raspberry jam in cookies has proven to be too steep a task for me recently, so I decided on something simple, that could be served with the jam on the side: enter the classic Scottish shortbread.
And, honestly, no one touched the jam but me. It’s not necessary, but you will include it on a serving tray with these cookies if you know what’s good.

The cookies are a mash-up of ingredients I had in my pantry (before it burned down, RIP).
Coconut oil, butter, cream cheese. Flour, salt, sugar. Simple, simple, simple.

The dough is easy: cream, mix, press, crimp, bake.
My friend who thought she didn’t like coconut loved these! Yay! Yet another victory for coconut oil!

Back soon with peanut butter. Or lemon. But not both. (Ew ew ew that’s probably something only my dad would like.)

Coconut Oil Shortbread

makes one 9-inch pan
ingredients:
2.2 ounces (4 1/2 tablespoons) butter
3 ounces (5 1/2 tablespoons) coconut oil, solid
1.5 ounces cream cheese
3 ounces (3/4 cup) powdered sugar
7 ounces (1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons) flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
scant 2 ounces (1/4 cup) sugar, for sprinkling

directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour a 9-inch round pan.
Cream butter, coconut oil, and cream cheese together for 3 minutes, until homogeneous and smooth.
Scrape the bowl and add the sugar, flour, and salt.
Mix on low until a crumbly dough forms.
Scrape the crumbs into the prepared pan and press down firmly.
Prick all over with a fork; crimp the edges and score if desired and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for 22-25 minutes, until shortbread is golden and fragrant.
Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.
Eat with raspberry jam! Please!

February 25, 2013September 13, 2013 by Rachel Sally

Doux-Amer

Sometimes, you see something you really, really wish you hadn’t.

A text or a phone call, an email or a photograph, numbers on a scale or old pants, a person, a place, a thing: a reminder of days gone by.

The kind of thing that instantly feels like a little stone in the pit of your stomach.
The feeling that makes the tips of your ears red and the ends of your fingers cold.
That dead weight right in the middle of your body that is the exact opposite of butterflies.

You know what I’m talking about.
We’ve all been there.

It happens. We see it.

And it sucks.

The mildest form of it is like a buzzing gnat of regret, purely annoying and easily swattable; the worst, a punch in the gut.

It’s the things you could have gone your whole life without seeing, the ones that tug the hardest on your heartstrings or stab the deepest into the recesses of your mind, that produce the most confounding emotions (of course).

The tears that come, inevitably, are the saddest and the sweetest- and the saltiest- of all.

There are no bad memories or experiences without good ones preceding.

It’s off the good which we measure the bad.

It’s not easy to let bygones be bygones.

However, it is true that at some point, you will be rudely reminded of an unsatisfactory or tender moment of your past, and it will hurt, and you will have to let it go; you will have to accept it for exactly what is was, and exactly what it wasn’t.

We cannot change the past, which is a sad and terrifying reality which few can easily come to terms with; the rest of us have to simply put up with our own mortal inclinations and wishes.

Such is life.

We spend our lives wishing, hoping, working to change the past or future; we must never forget, in the instantaneous moment of the present, that our attempts may be in vain, and to appreciate the fact that that lost effort is okay.

It’s human.

We have to embrace the mistakes in the past and those to come, and in doing so, accept the profound emotions which accompany them.

La mélancolie et le bonheur… Les emotions douces-amères.

Bittersweet.

What you see here is a matcha cake with tangy cream cheese frosting.

The green tea imparts just a slight herbaceous and umami quality; it’s fragrant and well offset by a sweet, sticky icing.

I made it ombré by varying the amount of tea and adding a touch of green food coloring.

I actually grind my own matcha powder out of loose leaf in a coffee grinder. (If you want to do the same, make sure your grinder is 100% clean by grinding some plain rice into powder in it before adding the tea. Coffee will distort the flavor and color of the matcha.)

The white chocolate roses that I made out of homemade modelling chocolate were just the right finishing touch, I think.

The cake is, appropriately, aigre-doux: bittersweet.

Yeah, I saw it.

I felt bad for a minute or two. I might even have had a short, ugly, and relieving cry.

Then I had a piece of cake. And you know what?

It was delicious.

Ombré Matcha Cake

ingredients:

4 ounces unsalted butter, softened

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons sugar

3 egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ½ cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup milk

1 scanttablespoon, 1 ½ teaspoons, and ¾ teaspoon matcha powder, divided

a tiny bit of leaf green gel food coloring

directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter and flour as many 6- or 8- inch pans as you have; you will end up with four layers, so if you have 2 pans, just bake two of the layers, cool and clean the pans, and bake the second two layers.

Cream together the butter and sugar for about 2 minutes, until very fluffy and pale yellow; beat in the vanilla and egg whites until combined.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Add to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk; start and finish with the dry.

Divide your batter in half as evenly as possible (I weigh mine out), then divide those in half, too.

Pour one quarter of the batter into a pan as is.

Add 1 scant tablespoon of matcha and 2 drops green food coloring to one bowl, in another, add 1 ½ teaspoons matcha plus 1 drop green food coloring, and in the third, add only ¾ teaspoon matcha.

Stir each well, and pour into prepared pans.

Bake for 15-17 minutes.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely.

For the [tangy] frosting:

ingredients:

4 ounces sour cream (a heaping ½ cup)

8 ounces cream cheese

4 ounces butter, softened

3 cups powdered sugar, sifted

pinch salt and dash vanilla extract

directions:

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until fluffy and pale.

Add in the sour cream, vanilla, salt, and sugar, and beat on low speed until combined.

To assemble the cake:

Torte (level) your layers if need be, then layer them, starting with the darkest.

Don’t add too much frosting between the layers, because the ombré effect will be slightly less cool.

Frost the outside of the cake as desired!

[Note: this frosting is not pipeable. Instead, go for homestyle swirls, homeboy.]

September 26, 2012September 13, 2013 by Rachel Sally

Ardent

My dearest readers… If there are any of you… (Mom and Dad, if you guys have been visiting my blog hundreds of times more than once daily, you are giving me false hope. STOP.)

Think not that this blog has fallen to the wayside, nor become a wasteland of sweets lost in the vast Internet.

I promise I’m still here! And today, to make up for my long absence, I have four cakes for you.

Four!!

Baked, decorated, delivered, devoured and demolished in the span of 24 hours.

This hectic succession of cakes was brought on by the overwhelming number of September birthdays.

Now why did I feel compelled to bake for four birthdays which fall on a successive Monday and Tuesday? Because I’m stupid crazy kind of a little teeny bit nice sometimes. Like once every seven months. Mainly I’m just too preoccupied with whining to be kind.

And now that I’m on the subject of whining, I might as well get some of my daily bellyaching over with now.

My oven and I are fast friends and mortal enemies. We have a love/hate relationship, which is comprised mainly of hot, burning hatred for the other.

I swear, this fancy “Wolf” oven is more temperamental than me. I mean, god, it’s no wonder we don’t get along.

Sometimes, like last week, for example, my oven will be set to 350 degrees F and still manage to burn hot enough to scorch the bottoms of half of a batch of otherwise perfect chocolate macadamia shortbreads. Awesome. I love trying to scrape blackened ash off of flaming hot cookies. Said no one ever.

On the flip side, when I’m trying to bake a simple and tiny, mind you, boule, something I’ve done literally HUNDREDS of times before, this handy appliance will be blasting at 500 degrees F with a nice steamy inside for a crunchy crispy crust and will still take 50 minutes to bake the damn loaf of bread (Teeny! Loaf! Of! Bread!). How hard can it be, man?! Get your act together.

Sometimes I wish we could work together more harmoniously, but when I have four cakes that turn out just beautifully, with none sticking to the pan, none over nor underdone, none with domes nor crevasses, I am grateful for my stupidly expensive oven.

Brown Butter Almond Bundt
for the cake:
ingredients:
2 sticks of butter
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
5 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour
1 cup slivered almonds (optional)
directions:
Generously butter and flour a 10 cup bundt pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Brown butter in a large saucepan. Meanwhile, combine sugar and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Once the butter is browned, add it to the sugar and mix until combined. Whisk the eggs and vanilla into the milk and slowly add to the sugar mixture. Once homogeneous, add in the flour and baking powder, and mix until combined. Stir in almonds. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a skewer inserted all the way into the cake comes out with relatively few crumbs.
for the glaze:
ingredients:
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch sea salt
handful slivered almonds, toasted in a pan (optional)
directions:
Heat cream until almost boiling, pour over chocolate chips and salt and allow to sit for three minutes. Stir together until shiny and completely melted; pour over cooled cake and garnish with toasted slivered almonds.

English Tea Cake

for the cake:

adapted from Sky High

ingredients:

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour

1 1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk (save the white)

1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons buttermilk

directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter 3 6-inch pans, line with parchment paper, then butter the paper. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together, then return to the sifter. Whip the cream and vanilla to soft peaks, then add the sugar and beat just until combined (not to stiff peaks). Then add the egg and egg yolk and whip the mixture to soft peaks. Sift a third of the dry ingredients over the batter and fold in. Repeat until the dry ingredients are all incorporated. Fold in the buttermilk and pour into pans. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes.

for the frosting:

ingredients:

2 egg whites

1/2 cup sugar

pinch sea salt

1/6 cup strong English tea (I used Lady Grey)

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter at room temp

directions:

Place the egg whites into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Combine sugar, salt, and tea in a small but heavy saucepan fitted with a candy thermometer. Heat to 238 degrees F, without stirring. Once the sugar syrup has reached 230 degrees, begin to whip the egg whites on low. After the syrup has cooked, increase the mixer speed to medium low and slowly pour in the sugar syrup (do not pour on the whisk, as it will splash onto you). Whip until the meringue is cooled and the bowl feels neutral to the touch. Add in the butter one tablespoon at a time, until all is incorporated.

to assemble:

1/2 cup orange marmalade, slightly warmed in a microwave until spreadable

directions:

Place one cake on plate, top with 1/4 cup of the marmalade. Repeat, then put the last layer on. Frost with a crumb coat before adding the final coat of frosting. I decorated mine with some handmade marzipan roses. I dyed the marzipan with a few drops of fuchsia, yellow, and green gel coloring.

Cherry Garcia Cake

for the cake:

adapted from Sky High

ingredients:

1 1/2 cups cake flour

1 cup sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick butter

2/3 cup buttermilk

2 whole eggs

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup dried sour cherries, chopped roughly

1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips, chopped roughly

directions:

Heat buttermilk slightly in microwave, then add cherries and allow to soak for at least 15 minutes. Butter, line with parchment paper, and then butter (again) 3 6-inch pans. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Beat the sugar, salt, and butter together until creamy. Add in the eggs, egg yolk, buttermilk, and vanilla (Whisk the wet ingredients together first.). Next, add in the flour and baking powder and mix until homogeneous. Fold in chocolate chips and pour into prepared pans. Bake for 22-24 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch.

for the frosting:

ingredients:

1 stick butter, at room temp

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

pinch sea salt

1/3 cup mascarpone

4-4 3/4 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup sour cherry jam (I used D’arbo)

directions:

Beat the butter, cream cheese, and salt together until fluffy. Add in the powdered sugar slowly, then beat in the jam. Taste as you go, and beyond 4 cups, only add more sugar if you want it sweeter.

to assemble:

2/3 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup heavy cream, heated until almost boiling

directions:

Pour the heavy cream over the chocolate chips and allow to sit for at least 3 minutes. Meanwhile, frost the cake and place in fridge to set. Once the chocolate chips have melted, stir the ganache together until it is shiny and smooth. Pour over the top of the cake. Do not refrigerate the cake with ganache on it.

Mocha Cake

for the cake:

adapted from Sweetapolita

ingredients:

6 ounces flour

10 ounces brown sugar

3 ounces cocoa powder

2 tablespoons espresso powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup coffee

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter 3 6-inch pans and dust with cocoa powder and flour mixed together. Weigh dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment and mix until there are no clumps and all are thoroughly combined. In a large measuring cup, add the oil, buttermilk, coffee, eggs, and vanilla, and whisk with a fork. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix until homogeneous. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 22-24 minutes.

for the frosting:

adapted from Sky High

ingredients:

4 ounces melted bittersweet chocolate

2 cups confectioners’ sugar

2 sticks butter

4 tablespoons cream

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon espresso powder, or to taste

directions:

Add all ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until smooth and well combined.

for the chocolate curls or shavings

Melt chocolate, gently, then spread thinly over a cookie sheet and allow to harden. Using a cheese knife or a putty knife, slowly but firmly push the chocolate off the sheet. It will curl up.

La Pêche Fraîche

Category: tea

Shorted

Doux-Amer

Ardent