Mommie Dearest
Okay - a strange title for a foodblog, but I could really use a mommy hug right now. It's been one hellava summer. Victor's surgery, my wisdom tooth, then - and I'm sure it was from the pain meds and a complete change in diet for me - I was in and out of the hospital most of the week with bleeding intestines.I have no food restrictions, I can eat whatever I want whenever I want. I just have to stay away from NSAIDS - pain meds that are blood thinners. I didn't. My bad.
And then, to make a bad summer worse, my Unkie Dick passed away this morning. Only 77. Besides being just a fantastic and wonderful guy, he was also my very last uncle. I'm not ready to be the oldest generation. A mommy hug would be good right now.
But... Since mom is with Unkie Dick, I had to do the next best thing - make a dessert like she would have made.
My mother was queen of desserts. We had dessert virtually every night - and with six kids in the family, that was quite a feat. She could whip up something in a heartbeat, from scratch cookies to pineapple cream pie - or her most excellent fudge. And, as a modern housewife, she always had cake mixes in the cupboard. But a plain ol' cakemix cake was not mom's style. She had to doctor them up, create something new and wonderful. In short, experiment and have fun.
She had a Duncan Hines recipe pamphlet that she gave me with her cookbooks - and needing a mommy-recipe, I pulled it out tonight. Glancing through the recipes, I found a perfect "Mommy Dessert" - Buttery Cranberry Cobbler.
- 1 pkg Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Butter Recipe Golden Cake Mix, divided (I used America's Choice yellow cake. Better ingredients)
- 1 cup quick cooking oats (I used old fashioned, I never have quick cooking in the house)
- 3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened and divided (I used butter)
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup water
- 1 can (16oz) whole berry cranberry sauce
1. Preheat oven to 375F. Grease and flour 13x9x2-inch pan.
2. For topping, combine 1/2 cup dry cake mix, oats, and 1/4 cup butter in medium bowl with fork until crumbly. Set aside. (I added 1/2 cup walnuts - mom always improvised!)
3. For base, cut together remaining dry cake mix and remaining 1/2 cup butter with fork until crumbly. Stir in eggs and water until mixture is moistened. Spread on bottom of pan. (I used the mixer. Mom never followed directions, either.)
4. Stir cranberry sauce until smooth. Spread over batter in pan. Sprinkle with topping. bake at 375F for 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes before serving.
I cut the dessert into 8 pieces - in honor of the 8 of us who used to sit around that table every night - and actually juuust a tad more generous than mommy used to be. It came out great! In fact, I may just have to go back for seconds.
It was the perfect mommy-hug. Thanks, mom.
French Country Bread
It's cold outside. in fact, not only is it cold outside, but ice has been falling from the sky since yesterday. Welcome to the mid-Atlantic states. It's a mess out there. Not as bad as upstate New York - or Cleveland - but a mess all the same.
Last night, knowing that today was going to be spent indoors, I decided I needed to warm up the house by baking bread. Searching through recipes, I found one for a French Country Bread. It calls for making a sponge the night before baking, so last night I did just that...
Once upon a time I had a sourdough starter that had to have been older than me. It was an original wild yeast starter. I carried it around for years, feeding it, using it. It was great because I could really make bread whenever I wanted, and back in my youth I did bake a lot more bread than I do today. Part of it was the times, part of it was financial. Baking bread is cheap. I have no idea where it finally ended up, but it really made a great loaf of bread. The one I made last night calls for packaged yeast and would shock the purists, but heck - it's still a homemade loaf of bread, not squishy-white from the grocery store!
This particular bread is made with both whole wheat and white flour and has no oil or fat, so it's basically a use-the-day-you-bake-it bread.
The basic recipe is:
French Country Bread
Sponge:
• 1/2 cup wheat flour
• 1/2 cup bread flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup water
• 1-1/2 teaspoons dark corn syrupCombine the two flours and the yeast in a mixing bowl. Add the water and corn syrup and stir until well blended. Cover with a kitchen towel and allow to stand at room temperature overnight.
To prepare the dough:
• 3/4 cup water
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 3/4 cup wheat flour
• l-1/2 cups bread flourAdd the water, salt and wheat flour to the sponge. Stir in the bread flour, adding an extra tablespoon or two if the dough seems sticky. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour and 45 minutes.
When the first rise is complete, punch the dough down. Shape into a ball or an oval. Flatten slightly. Place on a greased baking sheet that has been sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover with a kitchen towel and let triple in size - 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Place an empty pie plate on the bottom oven shelf. Preheat the oven and the pan to 425 degrees. Five minutes before adding the bread, carefully pour 1 cup hot water into the pan. Careful here! This causes a big burst of steam!
Sprinkle the loaf with flour, and Using a sharp knife, cut 3 diagonal slashes across the surface of the loaf. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the pan and cool.
The bread is on its first rise right now... More details to follow.....
What a great bread! It has an extremely delicate crumb. Soft and moist, with a great chewy, crusty crust! Perfect for dipping into soup or stew, slathering butter, or making hefty sandwiches. it was incredibly easy to make, too.
I shall be making this, again. And again.
Christmas Cookies
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Well, actually, it's beginning to look a lot like I've been in the kitchen making a mess, but the two concepts do go hand-in-hand with one another.
It's the holiday season, and that means breaking out the Kitchenaid and going to town making a bazillion cookies. Every year we swear we're going to make less - and every year we seem to make more. It's a holiday tradition in excess, for sure.
This year, though, we have Gino, Victor's 10 year old nephew coming down to help and to learn a few of the traditional family cookies! This shall be fun! Gino has definitely shown an interest as well as an aptitude for learning. (His dad's a really good cook, too!)
The most important cookie to learn is Aunt Emma's Apricot Cookie. This particular cookie elicits arguments all Christmas season from various cousins - and one particular uncle. "It's made like this" It's rolled like this" It's... It's... It's..." It's delicious no matter HOW you put them together - and everyone seems to think THEY have the "right" way. Sadly, Aunt Emma hasn't been around for about 15 years to let everyone know that WE do them the right way!
We'll also be making several different biscotti's and pizzele's... And my mom's spice cookies, Aunt Dolores' Rum Balls... and... and...
I've already made a half dozen different doughs... Vanilla Almond, Chocolate Almond, A Peppermint Pinwheel I've never made before, as well as a Spiced Apricot and Walnut that I sort of made up... All sitting in the refrigerator awaiting that magic moment when the double ovens get fired up and the score of sheetpans get covered in parchment, the butcherblock island cleared off of all but rolling pin and flour and the Christmas music blares from the speakers all over the house.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, indeed!
The Best Birthday Cake
Okay. I know my way around a cake. I LOVE cake. It's one of the essential food groups, right up there with full fat ice cream and deep dark chocolate.
I don't think I could even remotely remember the number of cakes I've baked in my life or the number of cakes - wedding cakes, anniversary cakes, engagement cakes, birthday cakes, whatever cakes - I've decorated. But there comes a time when one just wants to EAT a piece of cake. And good cake - like an exceptional wine or an honest politician - is not always easy to find. Until today, that is...
We were invited to Victor's cousin Kristy's today for her 40th birthday party. A fun-filled afternoon of family and food - with emphasis on the food. One never worries about going hungry at one of these family events. No matter how many people are there, there's always enough food for twice again as many more. I just let the belt out another notch and dive in. After all... it's family, right?!? Uncle Rudy's chicken livers were the best, ever, and the table was bending under the weight of pastas, sausages, meatballs, baked ham, fried chicken, salads, breads and rolls. I ate some of everything. Okay. I ate a LOT of everything. But as I was eating, I was keeping my eye on the sideboard. There was one of the best-looking birthday cakes I'd ever seen calling my name.
The cake was the creation of Shannon (aged 9) and Kayla (aged 7) McDonald. Shannon and Kayla are the daughters of the aforementioned Birthday Girl.
The truly impressive part is they made the cake themselves. And decorated it themselves. All of it. It was a visual masterpiece from two girls of such tender years. I looked at it in awe - recalling the first cake I ever made with my sister Judy when we were about their ages. THAT cake was a blue and green marble cake that had the look, feel (and weight!) of Carrera marble! Of course, our cake looked reasonably good, too, until we bent the knife trying to cut it...
Shannon and Kayla's cake lived up to its looks - and more. It was a rich, yet light and delicate chocolate with a barely perceptible layer of raspberry filling. The raspberry offered the perfect compliment to the chocolate and the rich and creamy vanilla icing. Nothing overpowered. Every bite was a perfect balance of flavors. It was like biting into heaven.
As I was searching my memory for that cake we had made lo these many years ago, it dawned on me that Shannon and Kayla added an extra ingredient to their cake that Judy and I had not added when we made that cake for ourselves.
They added a heaping tablespoon of love.
Fantasia Confections and a Stroll Down Memory Lane
What seems like several lifetimes ago, a very shy little boy was forced into a job at a local Donut Shop in San Francisco. Well… ‘forced’ may be too harsh of a word, but it certainly wasn’t my idea to get up early on Saturday mornings to scrape parchment paper pan liners and wash sheet pans. My father had decided that his enormously shy son needed to get out of the house and actually interact with people once in a while – and he knew the owner of the donut shop really well.
The Donut Center, on Taraval and 40th Avenue had fairly recently moved up the street from its former incarnation as “Billie’s Donut Shop.” It was a neighborhood coffee shop, serving breakfast, lunch, and great donuts, Danish, coffee cakes… Bear Claws, butterhorns, figure 8’s, cinnamon rolls, coffee rings of every imagination…
John Kennedy was in the White House, the world was optimistic, no one knew where Viet Nam was. “High Hopes” had been JFK’s campaign song, and ‘high hopes’ permeated the air in the early sixties eight short blocks from the ocean in San Francisco…
There was an old German baker there named Hans. Well… I thought Hans was old, but as I look back I don’t think he was more than 35 at the most. He was a bit gruff, which made him seem old to this timid little kid. Hans made all the pastries and coffee cakes, and he made it look so effortless. Over time, as I had finished scraping the parchment paper and caught up on washing my sheet pans, Hans would let me roll out his pastry dough. He was extremely picky about how it was done, and I soon found out it wasn’t nearly as effortless as it appeared! It was exacting work. Proper temperature, proper pressure while rolling, rolling in certain directions to achieve proper proportions. In his heavy German accent, Hans explained to me why it had to be a certain way. He taught me how to feel the dough, what to look for, how to count (and remember!) how many times it had been folded and refrigerated.
Those early years at The Donut Center became the foundation for a life that has been involved in food – in one way or another – for the past 45 years.
This little stroll down Memory Lane comes because of an email I received a few days ago.
Back in 1966, I quit the Donut Center in a huff. I got into a fight with the owner – I have no idea what it was about – and got a job at Blum’s downtown. Blum’s was an institution in San Francisco. It was where blue-haired and bejeweled matrons held court over sumptuous sandwiches and even more decadent desserts, and where mothers and grandmothers brought their daughters, in their maryjane's, gloves, and with ribbons in their hair. It was located on Geary Street across from Union Square. It had a back entrance into Macy's. Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake was one of those desserts – and it was to die for.
Fast forward to April, 1995. I am volunteering at Project Open Hand in San Francisco – an organization feeding AIDS patients throughout the city. I strike up a friendship with a woman named Helen Kane, who, after we share histories a bit, tells me she has the original Coffee Crunch Cake recipe from Blum’s! The following week, she brings me the recipe, neatly written on a 3x5 card.
In the ensuing 11 years, I have made the cake numerous times – always to raves. It’s a bit time consuming, and you can’t make the coffee crunch on a really humid day, but it is one damned good cake! Several years ago, on epicurious.com, I mentioned in a review of Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie, that I had the recipe, and I have shared it freely for years.
The email was from Sandy Weil, the daughter of the man who invented the Coffee Crunch Cake! She said that her father, Ernest Weil, had worked at Blum’s in the mid-40’s and had created the cake, and left in 1948 to open his dream bakery Fantasia Confections in Laurel Village – a small shopping district on California Street in the Laurel Heights neighborhood. The even better news was that her father had finally written a cookbook with all the recipes they had made there for 40 years! Of course I had to buy one, and the autographed copy arrived on Monday!
I’ve been having a blast reading the stories, reading the recipes, and deciding what to make “first.” I finally decided that my trip down Memory Lane had to start with Danish Pastry. It was, after all, the very first thing I ever learned how to roll out, lo, these many years ago.
Making Danish is a two-day process. The dough needs to sit overnight after the rolling/folding/rolling/chilling – repeat – repeat – repeat… But it is sooooo worth the time and effort! They came out fanfreakintastic! Light, flakey, buttery. The perfect amount of sweetness. I brought two over to our next door neighbors - still warm from the oven - and ten minutes later I received a swooning phone call thanking me profusely! They are really really good!
So... the shy little boy came out of his shell, and has lived and worked all over the USofA. But those memories of sweet youth and Danish pastry in San Francisco linger on...
The book is available from http://www.lovetobakecookbook.com
Buy one, today!
Easter Pie
It ain't Easter without Uncle Rudy's Easter Pie! While I was slaving away at work today, Victor was busy making these! They are the best!!!
Here's the recipe.
Uncle Rudy's Easter Pie
Rudy Rinaldi
This makes 2 pies.
- 3 Lb Ricotta
- 8 eggs
- 1/2 c. grated cheese - whatever your favorite is.
- Note: All meat should be DICED/CUBED - small
- 1/2 lb Ham - sliced about 1/4 inch thick
- 1/4 lb prosciutto - sliced thin
- 1/4 lb pepperoni - sliced thin
To Taste:
- Garlic Powder
- Pepper
- Italian Seasoning
- Parsley
Place pie crust in plate - fill with the mixture and cover with second crust
Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour - the crust should be nice and golden.
And for dessert.....
So what could be better than a quick Strawberry Cream Cake?!? BH&G yellow cake with a Strawberry Icing Fruit from CK Products and a strawberry whipped cream filling/icing with the same icing fruit.
I bought a few flavors of the icing fruit a while back from someplace online - I don't really recall who (I'm a junkie - I just buy the stuff!!) and, while it's tasty, I have to admit I didn't check for ingredients before I bought. It appears that, after reading the label, no strawberries died in its creation - or at least not very many. It's not your typical "all natural" product by any means... But - it does have a shelf life just short of plutonium, so if I'm in a pinch, it's available!
***edited to add: I threw it out.
Chocolate Hazelnut Marble Cake
So... whilst I was back here in the office bloggng away about dinner, Victor was in the kitchen baking a cake for dessert! Just a simple recipe from Better Homes and Gardens - but with a Victor twist. He took half the batter and added Ghirardelli Chocolate Hazelnut Cocoa Mix to it! Oh YUMMY!!
And then added a simple cocoa and powdered sugar topping. No heavy buttercream icing tonight. We have to watch our figures!!
Yes... life is good!