baking

coconut cream bars

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Despite ending my amateur baking activity/fetish/obsession (?), I was still motivated to try something new and experimental (motivated by getting rid of ingredients, that is): coconut cream bars.

I had never made these before so I tried something new. I don’t usually taste-test my own baking (that’s what working in an office full of sugar-hungry people is for!). But in this case, I felt a bit worried, so I put one of these coconut cream bars in my mouth as I was setting up all the baked goods for my office to test. Once I could tell it tasted fine, I spit it out and threw it away. I know. I’m a fucking weirdo.

What I can say is that I think the biggest, best difference about these simple bar cookies is that they are made with brown sugar, which adds more depth and flavor.

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Coconut cream bars
Crust
2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter

Preheat over to 175C. Line a 13″x9″ rectangular pan with parchment.
Mix all ingredients together and press evenly into pan.
Bake 12-15 minutes. Cool 10 minutes.
Reduce oven temperature to 160C.

Coconut cream filling
3 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
3 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups coconut

Whisk all ingredients but coconut together. Stir in 3 cups of coconut. Pour over crust and top with remaining one cup of coconut.
Bake 25-30 minutes.

Pumpkin-stuffed snickerdoodles

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I don’t eat most of the things I bake – in fact, none of them. But I ate one of these because I cut one in half for the sake of the picture and thought, “Eh, why not?” But then, I really like pumpkin. These were not, as far as I know, the most popular of the cookies I brought to the office for Halloween this year… but I think if a person gave them a chance, they’d be pleased.

Pumpkin-stuffed snickerdoodles
Cookie dough
1 cup butter
1 cup vegetable oil
¾ cup sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
2 large eggs
4 ¼ cup flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar + 1 tablespoon cinnamon (+ colored sugar) to roll

Filling
2 cups (10 ounces) white chocolate chips
1 cup pumpkin
1 ½ cup finely ground gingersnaps
1 ½ cup digestive biscuits
4 tablespoons powdered sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 (8 ounces/about 225 grams) package cream cheese

First, make filling: melt white chocolate in microwave; stir, heat in 15s intervals, stir well each time, do not overheat. Smooth. Set aside to cool slightly. Mix pumpkin, crumbs, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and cream cheese. Add the white chocolate and mix – place in the fridge to chill and firm. Roll pumpkin filling mix into balls and place on wax paper – cover and freeze until firm.

Cookie dough: Beat butter, oil, sugars, eggs. Sift dry ingredients together and add dry ingredients to the butter mixtures in 3-4 additions. Form a ball and chill dough at least one hour.

Mix sugar and cinnamon together, and preheat oven to 180C. Bake for 12-15 m – scoop out balls of dough – press filling ball in and cover over with another bit of dough until completely covered – roll to seal. Roll in cinnamon and sugar mix and bake.

the bats of halloween

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Halloween, that time of ghoulish frights and tricks or treats. I don’t even like Halloween, but it seems to be the holiday that I celebrate. Or at least acknowledge. I send cards/CDs/candy and do a bit of baking. Or least I have but after this year will give much of it up. It has no meaning now.

The time, as poet Marin Sorescu commands, is nigh to learn flying blind: the future really is dark.

Let the bats teach us to see in that dark future.

Bat
–DH Lawrence

At evening, sitting on this terrace,
When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara
Departs, and the world is taken by surprise …
When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing
Brown hills surrounding …
When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio
A green light enters against stream, flush from the west,
Against the current of obscure Arno …
Look up, and you see things flying
Between the day and the night;
Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together.
A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches
Where light pushes through;
A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air.
A dip to the water.
And you think:
“The swallows are flying so late!”
Swallows?
Dark air-life looping
Yet missing the pure loop …
A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight
And serrated wings against the sky,
Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light,
And falling back.
Never swallows!
Bats!
The swallows are gone.
At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats
By the Ponte Vecchio …
Changing guard.
Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one’s scalp
As the bats swoop overhead!
Flying madly.
Pipistrello!
Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe.
Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive;
Wings like bits of umbrella.
Bats!
Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep;
And disgustingly upside down.
Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags
And grinning in their sleep.
Bats!
In China the bat is symbol for happiness.
Not for me!

 

The Bat
–Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

Photo (c) 2009 Michael Pennay used under Creative Commons license.

no bake

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Every time I have ever attempted to make no-bake cookies, it’s been a failure. These cookies, though, did work, even if the final result seems a bit dry. I think once you bite into one and start eating, it’s fine but these don’t really look pretty. The whole reason I went for this particular recipe was because I needed to use up a lot of steel cut oats I had on hand. Mine turned out to be drier than what is pictured in the original recipe source. I might give it another go… all I can say is that people ate them and thought they were good.

No-bake steel cut oat cookies
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup steel-cut oats
1/3 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 cups quick oats/rolled oats

Line cookie sheets with wax paper or parchment paper

In a heavy saucepan on medium-high heat, whisk sugar, cream, butter and steel-cut oats together. I suppose if you wanted to add something else (like cocoa), now would be a good time. Stir constantly, simmering until butter is melted and the edges become frothy.

Remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients with a wooden spoon. Let mixture sit for three minutes.

Use a scoop or large spoon and drop onto pans. Refrigerate cookies for at least two hours.

fruity cake?

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Nearing the end of my tenure as enthusiastic amateur baker (I remain forever an amateur but not enthusiastic any longer), I am using up ingredients I have on hand. I am also thinking about the “fruity cake” my friend Esteban and I have been joking about forever.

I tried out this lovely Berry Mascarpone Layer Cake from Life Love and Sugar. I don’t normally bake cakes so this was just… new. An experiment of sorts with a few slight modifications from the recipe in the cited blog.

Vanilla cake
2 1/2 cups (325g) all purpose flour
2 cups (414g) sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup (240ml) milk
1/2 cup (120ml) vegetable oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup (240ml) water (this is what the original recipe called for but I used about half this amount)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C) and prepare three 8-inch cake pans with non-stick baking spray and parchment paper in the bottom. (The original recipe called for non-stick spray and parchment. I went with the old-fashioned grease and flour. I experienced absolutely no problems with this cake sticking to my pans even though the original recipe said that there is a tendency for the recipe to stick.)
2. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to a large mixer bowl and combine. Set aside.
3. Add the milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and eggs to a medium-sized bowl and combine.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat until well combined.
5. Slowly add the water to the batter and mix on low speed until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
6. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cake pans and bake for 24-28 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
7. Remove the cakes from oven and allow to cool for 2-3 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Mixed berry filling
1 1/2 cup (240g) mixed berries (I used a frozen selection of strawberries, raspberries and …? I can’t recall. I threw in a few frozen blueberries as well. No idea if it is okay or not! Lab rats to the rescue…)
3 tablespoons (45ml) water
3/4 cup (155g) sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch

8. To make the berry topping, add the berries and water to a food processor and puree until smooth. You should end up with about 2/3 cup puree.
9. Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a medium saucepan. Stir in the berry puree.
10. Cook over medium heat, stirring until mixture thickens and comes to a boil, about 8-10 minutes.
11. Allow to boil for 1 minute, then remove from heat. Refrigerate and allow to cool completely.

Mascarpone cream frosting
2 1/2 cups (720ml) heavy whipping cream, cold
1 1/2 cups (173g) powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
16 oz (452g) mascarpone cheese, chilled

12. Add the heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar and vanilla extract to a large mixer bowl and whip on high speed until soft peaks form.
13. Add the mascarpone cheese to the whipped cream and whip until stiff peaks form. It will happen fairly quickly. Set whipped frosting in the refrigerator.

Put it all together

These are the instructions from the original recipe – I did it a bit differently. You can of course decide what works for you.

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14. To assemble the cake, use a large serrated knife to remove the domes from the top of the cakes.
15. Place the first layer of cake on a serving plate or a cardboard cake round. Pipe a dam of frosting around the outside of the cake. I use Ateco tip 808 for the dam so that it’s tall.
16. Spread half of the berry filling evenly on top of the cake layer, inside the dam. It should fill the dam about half way full.

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17. Add some additional mascarpone frosting to the top of the berry filling and spread into an even layer to fill in the remaining dam space.
18. Add the second layer of cake and repeat the filling layer with the remaining berry filling and additional mascarpone frosting.
19. Add the final layer of cake on top, then smooth out the frosting around the sides of the cake.


20. Frost the outside of the cake.
21. Finish off the cake with some swirls of frosting and fresh berries.


22. Refrigerate cake until ready to serve. Cake is best for 2-3 days.

the tail end of baking

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I wrote the other day about how I no longer derive joy from baking. But I discovered that in the middle of a medium-sized bake. Later I posted pictures of the baking, and everyone exclaimed, “You’re baking! But I thought you said you weren’t going to!” Yeah… I won’t. But I didn’t realize I didn’t want to until I was too far down the road of baking this recent stuff to stop. I finished the bake, vowed only to do my planned Halloween bake next month, and then that’s it.

Meanwhile, if you want to try your hand at the things I made for my office this week, here are the recipes:

baked out

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For the first time since last year, I am baking. With my old industrial-style bakes, I seemed to hit a peak in 2013-15, and it’s been slowing down ever since, finally reaching complete nothingness as 2017 dawned. I remember baking only twice in the second half of 2016, and what little inspiration I had for it has disappeared. I don’t think I have ever gone nine months in my entire life without baking – until now.

And now, as I take it up again, thinking I might get into it once I start, I keep thinking, “I want to get this over with.” For the first time ever, I got no joy from the process.

I think I have questioned before how these shifts occur, imperceptibly. You don’t realize that the excitement and drive is leaving until it’s just gone. I am not sure I understand. I don’t think I need to.

I will finish this particular bake, and I will do one for Halloween. And that, oddly, may be the end.

But the last year or so has seen me (almost) wave goodbye to all kinds of things I thought I’d never tire of: writing letters, creating and sending my Halloween cards and CD mixes (the last-ever physical copies go out in mid-October) and now baking. Other things have begun to be more important, and for the first time in my whole life, I have begun to think more selfishly. Good or bad, I am simply tired and no longer want to make these efforts.

Photo by Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

subtle change

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I may finally have emerged from a grey-food period. I was eating mostly the same mundane meal daily because it was easy, healthy and almost instant. But I’ve finally decided I should put in a bit of upfront effort and prepare some variation and make a few meals for a few days in advance.

My latest go-to, at the very least, is very colorful, although not necessarily pretty. With a base of a grain mix of quinoa, buckwheat, millet and amaranth, I throw in some beans (kidney or black usually), red and/or yellow peppers, red onions, asparagus, baby spinach, tomatoes and who knows what else? And then sometimes add a bit of salmon or a few prawns, if I am in that kind of mood (prefer mostly vegan eating but sometimes seem to need a change).

I think my laziest thing is that I don’t want to bother cooking, so if I do it all at once and make a bunch of well-measured out bowls and cook enough of this grain stuff to many such bowls, I don’t have to think about it every single day. I know people have been saying that to me forever – just take the one ‘hit’ in terms of time, prep, patience, and you will thank yourself. But even that, until recently, I could not force myself to do. But I suppose alongside all the rest of the changes this year, thinking ahead and preparing even for the most boring thing I can think of (eating) is something I can ken.

Now the question remains: will I ever bake again?

Parting in stations/Craving comfort

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For the first time in my life, I have no butter in the house. I usually have a small stockpile because I’m always preparing to bake. But I haven’t baked since Christmas, which must be the longest bake-drought of my adult life. If I were to get into it, I am sure the drive would return, but now isn’t the time. Sometimes I wonder about shifts like this – are they phases, or are they permanent changes in our make-up? Are lemon cakes and Anzac biscuits a part of the past?

While in the now (or ‘the noo’ to be all Scot about it), the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies does not waft through the air, I am surrounded by sunlight, poetry and music. All ache and exultation.

from Mean Free Path
by Ben Lerner
What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that. The slow beam
Opened me up. Walls walked through me
Like resonant waves. I thought that maybe
If you aren’t too busy, we could spend our lives
Parting in stations, promising to write
War and Peace, this time with feeling
As bullets leave their luminous traces across
Wait, I wasn’t finished. I was going to say
Breakwaters echo long lines of cloud

Oh, what could be more beautiful than “I thought that maybe/If you aren’t too busy, we could spend our lives/Parting in stations, promising to write/War and Peace, this time with feeling”?

Maybe the soundtrack du jour: Ruby Haunt’s “Crave”. It sounds just like something I would have fallen in love with in high school but sounds immediate at the same time. It pulls my heartstrings.

“Listen to the girl, who waits by your side, in a simple world, no need to ask why, nothing’s gonna change, the people pass by, you feel no pain, as she starts to cry. Craving, craving some comfort. You can’t explain, the things on your mind, you’re on your way, you won’t rewind. It’s over with, no need to lie, you’re just a myth, but you know it’s fine. Craving, craving some comfort.”

If only life were like living in a bubble of poetry, literature, music, going to gigs, walking through the fields and forests, last-minute adventures, linguistic parades and endless conversations.

Oh, wait, it kind of is.

Insouciance

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Back home – back to reading. Finished reading Slogans by Mark Burgess, am going to finish Une si longue lettre by Mariama Ba (Senegal) – finally – and then finally, finally finish the book on Congo. I have just finished putting together/writing the track listing for yet another of my increasingly frequent random-gum music mixes/life’s soundtrack (and addressed all the envelopes. Tedium). It’s been a rich and intense time for music listening. I can’t seem to help myself and just want to keep sharing.

I’ve got the latest season of Chef’s Table going in the background. Not being a foodie of any kind, I did not expect to care for this show, but a lovely former colleague recommended it to me, and I have been consistently entertained and surprised. In the first episode of the third season, the ‘chef’ is actually a Korean Zen Buddhist monk who does not at all consider herself a chef. In the second episode, they’re covering the relatively well-known White Rabbit restaurant in Moscow (even I had heard of it and I am not that interested in the world’s popular or best-regarded culinary marvels). The best part is listening to all the spoken Russian; the worst, seeing lovely live moose who were killed and eventually turned into the moose-lip dumplings the chef had long been dreaming of. Most of the series is all quite beautiful and exquisite in any case. And the back stories almost all fascinating. (The third episode on Nancy Silverton: “I think you need to be obsessed with bread… to be a baker.” Starting off on the right foot.)

Not many words to say about it, but my decision to ‘fake it til I make it’ in terms of forcing myself to pretend to be in a better mood worked – when I decided on the 14th that it would be my last day of moping and sulking, it was. I was not at my greatest or at the pinnacle of personal enlightenment on the morning of the 15th, but I gave it some thought, realized what I had been doing and from that moment on, everything has actually (I’ve not just been ‘acting’) been great – relief, release, mini adventure, deep thinking without thinking about anything in particular. Very freeing.

Revolutionary Letter #1
–Diane di Prima
I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines