Summer Baking

It was absolutely blazing earlier today.  I was slightly miffed because I had to go outside and because I had to turn the oven on.  In hindsight, the oven part isn't so bad.

The baking need arose from a container of plums I got from Costco a couple of days ago.  I was about to purchase $9 cherries, when I spotted $5 plums.  I made a quick switch.  Once I got the plums home, I realized that they were extremely ripe.  They were so ripe that they tasted a little like pears.  These would need to star in a crumble or a crisp real soon.

Once I realized that I wouldn't finish the sewing project I was working on in time, I decided to take a break and head to the kitchen.  Here's what I came up with:  a plum crisp.  I adapted the recipe from Baking Illustrated.  If you've read my blog in the past, you know I am an America's Test Kitchen believer.

Starting here was a no-brainer since I had limited time and patience.  (I wanted to get back to the other hobby.)  This recipe was amazingly simple.  I think it went together in less than 20 minutes.

Make the topping first.  Flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg (freshly ground, please) and salt go for a spin in the food processor.  It's been a while since Miracle and I have hung out.

Add the butter and pulse until you get something that looks like wet sand.  Chill immediately.  (Not you, the topping.)

Move on to the fruit.  The recipe called for sliced fruit, sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice.  I had two of the four.  If substituting plums for apples, CI wanted me to have tapioca pudding too.  Yeah right.

Since my plums were very ripe (look at 'em; they look like beets), I used about a couple of tablespoons of sugar.  For the acid, I thought balsamic vinegar would be hot.  Don't sleep on balsamic vinegar and fruit.  It will change your relationship with strawberry shortcake forever. I used about 1 1/2 Tbs.  I used a tablespoon of cornstarch in place of the tapioca.

Let's assemble. Dump the fruit into a buttered baking dish.  

Creatively distribute the topping over the fruit. Ain't that pretty?

Get thee to a pre-heated oven.  I let it bake at 375 for 30 minutes and then jacked up the heat to 400 for browning.

Hallelujah!! All I need is some white ice cream (my uncles' term for vanilla ice cream.)

Tools of the trade

• Microplane Grate and Shake Nutmeg Grinder/Grater, Black
• KitchenAid Food Processor
• OXO Bench Scraper
• Pryex Baking Dish

Another One In the Arsenal?

While I was visiting my aunt in New Orleans, I spent my days watching cooking shows and leafing through her cookbooks and magazines. She has a nice selection of the Cook's Illustrated special publications. In one of these, I found a recipe for a Cold Oven Pound Cake. Me being the lazy person I am decided not to copy the recipe then. I have a CI online membership. Surely, I'd look it up when I got home. So, um yeah, it's not on the website. It's a Cook's Country recipe.

Wouldn't you know it? I had a copy of the recipe anyway. It's in my America's Best Lost Recipes. Silly me. This book takes a slight departure from the regular CI formula. As the recipes are submitted by readers, there isn't the usual lengthy preamble for each recipe. This is the first time I've used a recipe from this book. I'm writing as it bakes, so we'll see how well it does.

I'm slightly worried because I had to violate a specific note in the book. You're supposed to use skim or 1% milk for this. For once, I only had 2% and whole. Oh well.

Let's get started, shall we?

The batter has four parts: wet, dry, fats and leavening. The dry is flour and salt. Wet is milk vanilla and egg yolks. Fats are butter and shortening (these are creamed with sugar). The leavening is egg whites! In a pound cake??! You'll see.

Whisk your flour and salt.

Cream the butter, sugar and shortening.

Whisk the egg yolks, milk and vanilla.

Now, beat the egg whites until you get soft peaks. This is where having two mixing bowls for Old Faithful really pay off. Make sure your bowl and whisk attachment are impeccably clean. I wipe mine down with a little vinegar just to be sure.

Alternate adding the flour and liquid to the fat. Start and end with the flour. Mix each addition just until incorporated.

Here's the batter after the last addition. See the dry flour? Don't let the mixer run until it's fully incorporated. You run the danger of over mixing and creating a tough cake with tunnels in the crumb.

 Finish up by hand. Isn't that pretty?

Gently fold in your egg whites. The first batch I fold in are sacrificial; they get stirred into the batter. They are used to lighten the batter so that folding in the rest will be easier. The rest are folded. Here's the finished batter.

Move on to your prepared cake pan.

Move on to your cold oven.

Bake for 45 minutes at 300 degrees. Increase temp to 325 and bake 45 more minutes. Nothing left to do now but wait (and clean up the kitchen).

The cake is done. I am disappointed in the crust, but I take 100% of the blame. I didn't use the right type of milk and I lowered the oven temperature by 15 degrees because my Bundt pan tends to cook quicker than the average pan. I'll go strictly by the book next time and update the post.

Here's the cake - cut into and enjoyed by some What's Cookin' Chicago Meetup members. The flavor was excellent. Just gotta nail the crust.

Tools of the Trade

• Pyrex Measuring Cup
• Williams-Sonoma Gold Touch Bundt Pan
• KitchenAid Stand Mixer

Things Fall Apart (Or Never Set Up)

Last Sunday was really a great day for me -- figured out how to get to church using public transportation and made it back to the kitchen to rock a four-course meal. I got tired before I finished cooking, but that's not the point.

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I was most excited about making lemon bars. Think about it: the house smells like cookies from the crust, you get to nibble on the raw dough and the filling -- lemony heaven! Unfortunately, that was not the case with these.

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I wanted to do another post in the Buy the Book series, so I chose the lemon bar recipe from the Nordstrom Friends & Family Cookbook. Had I just stopped to think, I would've remembered that I really didn't like the lemon bars at the Nordstrom Cafe. I could've used the recipe in Baking Illustrated instead. Not that the recipe in the Nordstrom book is the same as what's in the store, but I dislike the ones in the store so much that I wouldn't have chanced it (had I been thinking). Yes there is really a combination of butter flour and sugar that I don't like. I know it's shocking.

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Things started off well enough. The dough for the crust came together just fine. I started by creaming butter and powdered sugar.

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I then added flour.

I ended up with a really soft dough.

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I got it into the pan and pressed it in as evenly as possible with my fingers.

I moved to the oven. Here is where the problems start. I ended up baking it twice as long as the recipe called for to get the lightly browned color called for. This sent me to Williams-Sonoma later in the week for an oven thermometer. So after 40+ minutes, here's the crust:

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The crust has to cool completely before you can add the filling. To start the filling, beat some eggs add some sugar and beat until pale and thick.

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Whip out your favorite lemon-working tools. Mine are a Microplane and a citrus press. Use whatever you need to get the juice and the zest.

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Add the lemon stuff to the sugar and eggs. The recipe calls for flour and cornstarch too.

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Pour the filling over the crust and bake until "the filling is set -- firm on the edges, but still a little soft in the middle -- 15 to 20 minutes." Yeah. Not so much.

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But what good sweets-loving girl would let this deter her? Certainly not me. I grabbed a fork a pressed on.

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Eeewwww, ick and yuck! These were void of big lemon flavor and too sweet for even me. I couldn't finish a whole bar. Well, I couldn't finish the gooey, runny mess that should have been a bar. I have never been so disappointed. However, the taste was the same as those in the restaurant. Silly me.

Tools of the trade:

• Pyrex 9x13 Baking Dish
• KitchenAid Stand Mixer
• Microplane Multi Citrus Tool
• 2-in-1 Citrus Juicer

Rising To The Occasion

If you have a better dinner roll recipe than Rose Levy Beranbaum, email me immediately! In the meantime, here is the best yeast roll ever. This is from the venerable The Baking Bible. I'm warning you now, bread baking is about patience. It's also about precision, so please buy a food scale.

These rolls start with a sponge. A sponge is a way to develop flavor. You mix part of the ingredients until they become thick batter. You then sprinkle the rest of the dry ingredients on top. Cover and let ferment for several hours. I love to do all of this in the bowl of my KitchenAid. I'm glad I invested in the lids for the bowl too. The sponge will bubble through the dry ingredients.

Add the melted butter and mix for a minute. Allow the dough to rest.

Now, put your mixer to the test and knead for 10 minutes. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and allow it to rise for two hours.

This picture doesn't do it justice, but it has doubled in size.

Take the dough out and gingerly fold it. Allow it to rise for two hours.

Yep. It doubles again.

Shape the rolls and dip them in butter. Allow them to rise. Hey, you only have to wait 1 1/2 hours this time. You saved 30 whole minutes!

Your patience has been rewarded. Look at these ... okay, ignore the camera shadow.

Get these to a hot oven!! Now, the directions say to create a little steam by allowing a pan to preheat on the floor of the oven and then add ice cubes to it. I skipped this method on this batch. The rolls were still tasty. They had a nice bottom crust because I placed the pan on my baking stone.

Tools of the trade:

• KitchenAid Stand Mixer
• KitchenAid Bowl Covers
• Pyrex Square Dish
• Pampered Chef Pizza Stone

Sunday Favorite

Okay. So my last two posts have been about fried foods; check out the blue cheese potato chips and fried catfish if you haven't seen them. I've posted about fried chicken before, but now I'm revisiting it. (Once you break out oil, you tend to fry a whole lot of stuff.) This is the recipe I use when I have time to plan ahead -- buttermilk brined fried chicken. Believe it or not, this works with boneless skinless chicken breasts, which I almost always have on hand.

Grab a container for the soak. My favorite is my 8-cup measuring cup. Dump some salt in the bottom. I never measure, so I can't tell you how much. If you need precise measurements, check out Cook's Illustrated's Ultimate Crispy Fried Chicken recipe. Throw in some spices or use an all-purpose seasoning like Tony Chachere's. Add some freshly smashed garlic. I also add fresh herbs (lots of them). Add your buttermilk and stir well (you want to dissolve the salt.)

Drop in the chicken breasts and refrigerate for at least four hours. I let mine sit for eight hours and the flavor was unbelievable!

Now, pull the chicken from the brine and shake of any excess liquid. Dip into seasoned flour (don't add salt.) Shake off any excess flour. Dip it back into the buttermilk brine and then back into the flour. This double-dipping is worth it.

Now, let the chicken rest on a wire rack for 30 minutes. This helps the adhere to the meat and gives you that crispy crunch. The longer you let it sit (refrigerated of course), the crunchier your chicken will be. Check again with Cook's Illustrated to see what the max air drying time is. This time, I went straight to the skillet after dipping. There's no difference in taste. I think you do lose more of the flour to the bottom of the skillet when you don't let the chicken air dry.

Now, heat your oil. I didn't use a thermometer. I just add a pinch of flour to the oil and watch it fry. If it sinks to the bottom, the oil is too cold. If it burns to a crisp, the oil too hot. When the oil is right, carefully add the chicken to the pan. DO NOT MOVE IT AROUND!!! Fry until golden brown on the bottom, flip and fry the other side. The second side will cook faster.

Drain on a cooling rack or go old school and place the chicken on some paper towels.

Isn't that beautiful??!!

Leftovers note: This chicken is amazingly good cold out of the refrigerator the next day! When I have this as leftovers, I never reheat it. It even stays crispy after days in the fridge.

Tools of the trade:

• Totally Bamboo Butcher Block
• Shun Santoku
• Lodge Logic Cast Iron Skillet
• Oxo Tongs
• Pyrex 2-Qt Measuring Cup