baking

the whole cake

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It strikes me every time I read something from several years ago how many repeated patterns there are in the lives of all the characters involved, including myself. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – I am a certain type of person, and despite changing my surroundings, approaches, and putting up solid boundaries when needed, it does not change the fact that I am the same person at my core, and the feelings with which I respond are essentially the same. It also does not change the kinds of people I encounter in my life, or the preferences my heart (or mind) seems to have. None of this is a value judgment – just observations about how fundamental, deep change is not easy or quick. If it happens at all, it happens like soil erosion – it is happening but isn’t visible to the naked eye or even perceptible for many years.

Autumn 2011 (?) – excerpts from an email

A weekend of major baking (1200 cookies for a PR event at work). I invited a young German assistant to come and help me.

Latest drama: Mal is convinced he is going to die, like a total hypochondriac, despite not actually having real symptoms of anything. All I could do was roll my eyes, even if I wanted to be sympathetic, because 1. what a total overreaction, 2. go to the fucking doctor if you are so scared, 3. he was sooooooo unsympathetic when I had my own much more realistic health scare not long ago and has not been sympathetic or understanding when I have told him about the actual health problems I faced. Eventually he saw a doctor who told him that his symptoms were imagined/psychosomatic. Being the dramatic manipulator he is, he uses even fake health crises to milk what benefit he can get from them. He told me he feels he has had a “near-death experience” now. Oh my god. Seriously. Until they are cutting your balls off and shooting radiation into some part of your body, don’t even talk to me about near-death. He apparently told a mutual acquaintance that if he had been diagnosed with something terminal, he would immediately pack up and move here, as if he had been invited to die at my house. At some point he told me the same thing, imagining I would be flattered that he would choose me as nurse and caretaker for his final days?! Me, being the cynic always believing the worst in people like him, I said, “Oh why… better free medical care in Sweden?” He got offended and said, “No! To spend my last days somewhere beautiful with someone who really cares about me.” I guess that is a nicer sentiment, but note that it is always about who cares about him, what he can get out of it and not about for whom he cares or some kind of mutual care or respect.

Of course I am not supposed to be talking to him at all since my deadline for getting rid of him was September 30. It really had become such a chore and difficulty that I literally had to give myself a deadline. It is beyond difficult to just cut someone off, even someone so destructive and selfish. I have put a lot of distance between us, causing him to call me a “frosty fucker” the other day (haha). I enjoyed being called a frosty fucker so much that I just had to repeat it. It has grown easier, though, because I’ve been working and dashing constantly from place to place – Oslo, Trondheim, New York, Seattle, Stockholm, and will be right up until the end of the year, meaning there is no time to mess around with his nonsense, inconsistency, excuses and bullshit. I sometimes find myself in the position of sort of missing him when we are out of touch for a while, but as soon as I talk to him again, listening to his stupid excuses and bullshit-filled banter, I am back to wanting to forget that this summer happened at all…

Actually being around R (the dentist), I was just struck again, hard, by the realization that it is just so easy to get worn down into a pattern with some people (ML) where you accept and think something, some pathetic behavior, is okay or even normal, which it totally is not. R is open, funny, generous, warm … he barely knows me but he invited me to stay in his house during this extensive dental treatment. We had some great conversations and even greater laughs… and you know, he did not have to do any of that – I was not his friend, but his sister’s, but he still did. I like to think I am a lot like that most of the time. I am not a taker, so when I am taking (like from R this past week), I am extremely grateful and gracious, offer to help in any way I can, offer whatever I have (in this case, I brought a shitload of cookies to him). I just don’t understand people who can take and take and barely register that it might require a thank you.

I was telling R about this situation with Mal, and he laughed and said, “It sounds like an indie movie… full of unknown actors.” It made me think… maybe I should write a screenplay or something out of this ridiculous summer. Then I would at least feel like I walked away with something.

These days, after this stupid summer entanglement and its idleness, I am oddly contemplative/reflective on what it is I really want to do in life… ever since Steve Jobs died the other day and I re-watched his Stanford commencement speech about death (or threat of it) being the best catalyst for taking action in life. Do I want to write product sheets about the Android OS for the rest of my life? No. The last thing I want is a routine life.

…And then on compatibility, with your husband and with people in general. I understand what you are saying about choosing the “right qualities” when you decided to be with him… his stability and some of the more fundamental things. Yes, you might have liked to have been with someone who wants long, deep conversations and shared literary interests, but it is rare (if possible at all) to get a whole package. Isn’t it a matter of what is most important – and how you can get by and relate in the day to day? And I guess, as we may have discussed before, you can get some of the more in-depth conversational needs taken care of with close friends, even if it is still not quite the same thing.

And if love is important – or what makes you feel loved, rather – I just talked to my German assistant about this. She is young, so inexperienced. She asked whether she should wait around for someone if she is in love with them and they just don’t respond to her in kind. I assumed she was talking about Mal (and if she wasn’t, that means she has gotten herself into yet another unhealthy situation with someone else), and it made me so intensely sad for her to know that she KNOWS it is not going to change. She is just an accessory and a “safety/back up” for him. It is not that he does not care at all about her, but that he cares more about himself. Obviously. He is always going to give her a few crumbs to keep her hanging on but will never give her the whole cake, so to speak. To which I almost screamed, “Don’t settle for stale crumbs. Wait for – and accept – only the whole cake.”

Broccoli-Herrgård pie

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I had broccoli, Herrgård cheese and pretty much nothing else. I decided to make a savory pie from it – hoping the coconut milk wouldn’t add too much “sweetness” to the flavor. I also did not want to make a pastry crust that required being rolled out, so here’s what we ended up with.

The pics don’t make it look too appetizing (photography isn’t my thing) but it’s bloody well yummy.

Broccoli-Herrgård pie

Preheat oven to 200C

1 head fresh broccoli, steamed and chopped

Steam your broccoli for about five minutes (until tender), chop it up and set it aside.

Crust
½ cup grated cheese (I used Herrgård because it’s what I had but cheddar would be great)
¾ cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
¼ cup melted butter

Mix cheese, flour, salt and mustard and add the melted butter in until just combined. Press into a pie tin. Set aside while you prepare the filling.

Filling
1 tablespoon butter
1 chopped onion
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup cream, half-and-half or coconut milk (that’s all I had on hand)
½ cup cheese, grated
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 eggs, slightly beaten

Melt the butter in a skillet, sauté the onion for about five minutes. Whisk in the flour, cream/coconut milk, salt, nutmeg and cheese until you have a kind of roux/sauce. Cook about one minute. Mix in the broccoli. Remove from heat and gradually stir in the beaten eggs. Pour into the prepared crust.

Bake for 15 minutes at 200C.

Remove from oven and reduce heat to 190C while you sprinkle a bit of extra cheese on top. Bake for an additional 20 minutes.

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Mini pecan pies

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It’s been a long time since I bothered to make miniature pies, but suddenly the urge was there. Mini pecan pies were born.

Here’s how you can go for it as well:

Crust:
1 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup chilled butter
3 tablespoons ice water

Sift flour and salt. Cut the butter into the flour until crumbly. Stir in enough cold water with a fork until it is just moistened. Form a ball and roll out on a floured surface. (For a regular pie, you would roll into a 12-inch circle for a 9-inch pie. For mini pies, just cut circles about the size of the outer edge of your tins). Fit the rounds into your mini tins and set aside.

Filling:
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup corn syrup (I used golden syrup)
1/3 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350F. First pour pecans into the bottom of the pie crusts. Pour the syrup over the top. (Pecans will rise to the top.)

Cover the tops and crusts lightly with foil and bake for about 30 minutes.

Remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes. The filling should not be overly runny/jiggly, so continue baking until it is relatively solid.

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Raspberry walnut swirl cookies

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It’s a good damn thing I am not trying to bake today – all weekend the power at my house has been going on and off, on and off… I don’t quite know what is happening because these are unplanned outages, according to the power company’s website. But it’s not weather-related. It’s still and not stormy (which is what normally knocks the power out).

Anyway things do not always go to plan. That’s kind of the point. I planned some time back to make some raspberry walnut coconut cookies, but the dough was meant to be rolled out, with the filling spread on top and then cut into slices. No. The dough was so crumbly and impossible to roll that it was hopeless.

All is not lost, though, even when things do not go to plan. I pressed about three-quarters of the dough into a pan, spread the raspberry mixture filling on top and sprinkled the rest of the dough on top and baked these into bar cookies. They seem to have worked fine.

Crust
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix together. Press three-quarters of dough into a square 8×8 or 9×9 glass pan.

Filling
¾ cup raspberry jam
½ cup coconut
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts

Spread filling on crust and sprinkle the remaining one-quarter of dough across the top.

Bake for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool and slice into bars.

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Gluten-free cupcake ideas

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Some time ago, I determined that I would expand my gluten-free baking repertoire. I never get very far because I am wrapped up in the regular baking and am paranoid about ensuring that the gluten stuff does not touch gluten-free stuff. I know there are a lot of people who eat gluten-free by preference, so gluten is not going to hurt them. But there are a few with tremendous sensitivity and for their sake, I try to be as careful as I can be in a kitchen in which both gluten and gluten-free baking takes place.

In any case, my bakes, as anyone who knows me knows, are industrial in their size and breadth… meaning that once the regular stuff is done, I don’t have a lot of energy left for expansive gluten-free experiments. Now I always make gluten-free/paleo coconut flour brownies because they are easy and I know they work… and often make stuff like coconut macaroons (also easy and foolproof). But cupcakes are a new area. I’ve been told that these were delicious.

Vanilla gluten-free cupcakes (makes 12)
1/2 cup (125 grams) butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup (115 grams) gluten-free all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup coconut milk

Preheat oven to 175C. Bake 12-15 minutes.

Line cupcake pan with paper liners.

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs – sift dry ingredients together and mix into wet ingredients alternately with coconut milk.

Fill cupcake papers just over halfway. Bake. Remove from oven after 12-15 minutes, when toothpick inserted in center of center-placed cupcake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for five minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Next up to try in my adventures in gluten-free baking:

Chocolate gluten-free cupcakes (makes 12)
210 grams gluten-free all-purpose flour
70 grams cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
1 cup sour cream
3 to 6 tablespoons coffee

Preheat oven to 175C. Bake 15-20 minutes.

Line cupcake pan with paper liners.

Cream eggs and sugar, add coconut oil – sift dry ingredients together and mix into wet ingredients in three rounds, alternately with the sour cream. Add in the coffee last of all, using as much as you need to make the right consistency batter and flavor you like.

Fill cupcake papers just over halfway. Bake. Remove from oven after 15-20 minutes, when toothpick inserted in center of center-placed cupcake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for five minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

(I used chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream and gluten-free sprinkles.)

Apple ricotta pie

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Finding myself with a container of soon-to-expire ricotta on my hands, not having used it for another planned recipe, I decided to make a pie to get a lot of various leftover ingredients off my hands (an overabundance of graham cracker crumbs, cream, etc.) In the end this was not such a great concoction – would be better perhaps if the apple mixture had some butter mixed into the sugar and cinnamon to make the apple layer more like apple pie. And the ricotta layer was also a bit dry and bland. I don’t know quite how I would combat the dryness (and it might not be necessary if the apples were more filling-like) but for better flavor, I might consider adding lemon zest.

Apple ricotta pie
Apple layer
3 cups sliced or diced apples
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Ricotta filling
2 eggs
1 cup ricotta cheese
½ cup sugar
½ cup heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon salt

For the crust you can either use a regular pâte brisée/shortcrust pie-pastry dough or a graham cracker crust (use about ¾ cup graham cracker crumbs, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons melted butter – mix together and press into a pie pan/tin. Bake ten minutes on 180C. Fill.)

For apple layer, peel apples and slice. Mix with sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Place in the prepared pie crust.

For the ricotta filling, beat eggs, then add ricotta, sugar, cream and salt. Pour over the top of the apples.

Bake at 220C (425F) for 10 minutes; reduce the heat to 175C and bake for 30 additional minutes.

Let cool. Serve.

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Making Do: Condensed milk cupcakes and icing

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I recently “hosted” a cupcake-decorating session with a group of adults – not knowing what other kind of activity to offer up when my turn rolled around to plan an activity for the group. It ended up being fun enough, but the interesting part for me was that, being the baker whose idea it all was, I had to actually bake all the cupcakes for use.

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When baking time rolled around, the weather was dismal – wintry, icy and everything I did not want to brave behind the wheel to go get the one missing ingredient – milk. Luckily, even though baking is a science, meaning that you can’t just throw whatever you want into a recipe and expect it to turn out, you CAN make successful substitutions.

I had a lot of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard, and I decided to give it a go in cupcakes (and in frosting).

Let me just back up for a moment to mention condensed milk, as I am sure I have done before. I do not any longer take for granted that it is freely/readily available and something of a staple. When I moved from the US to Iceland, long ago, I was stunned to find that condensed milk was nowhere to be found. I asked a lot of Icelanders, who seemed confused or, worse yet, acted like I was stupid for not being able to find and use milk. Yes, they did not know that condensed milk is not just milk. Eventually Iceland got condensed milk, although usually only to be found in Polish and Asian shops.

Moving to Sweden, I found that pretty much every shop has condensed milk (hoorah), which lulled me into the false sense of security that I would be able to find it again upon return (and needing to bake) in Iceland. No such luck.

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Vanilla condensed milk cupcakes (this should make between 20-24 cupcakes)
170 grams butter
500 grams condensed milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons baking powder
250 grams flour (if making chocolate cupcakes, replace about half to two-thirds of the flour with unsweetened cocoa – I guessed on this proportion)

Preheat oven to 175C. Bake about 20 minutes, until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean.

Beat butter, condensed milk together. When well-blended, add eggs and vanilla. Then add the dry ingredients.

Line your cupcake pan with cupcake papers and fill each about halfway (or slightly more). Bake.

Let cool in pan for about five minutes after removing from the oven; move the cupcakes to wire racks to cool completely.

Icing
I am trying to remember exactly how I went about making the icing… it was butter, powdered sugar and condensed milk (the 500g called for the cake recipe above is about one and a half standard-sized cans; the leftover half-can should be used here, though you might ultimately need more). Icing is a lot more forgiving than a baked recipe – so you should just mix the stuff you want together until you get the right balance of texture/consistency and flavor.

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Back to basics: Brown sugar shortbread

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As I’ve written about before, there are different ways to make the baking world’s most basic baked good: shortbread.

I like my regular shortbread recipe, and it’s pretty basic and easy to bake (press it into a pan and bake – cut into slabs when done).

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But my friend Jane gave me a brown sugar shortbread recipe that has even fewer ingredients and can easily be rolled out and cut into desired shapes. I don’t usually have the patience for the rolling-and-cutting rigmarole, but this year I decided I’d go for a few.

I cut a few trees and a few stars. I used some raspberry jam in small indentations on the trees; I used some lemon curd in small indentations on the stars. These were popular – and they’re nice because they have a very different crisp but not too crispy texture. And they turned out to look very simple and beautiful.

Cuckoo for coconut: Naturally gluten-free baking choices

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I had an ambitious baking plan recently (don’t I always?), and – for once – I was ready, armed with plenty of time and all the needed ingredients. Then southern Sweden was hit by an unusually powerful windstorm, which knocked my power out two days in a row. While the outage only lasted a few hours, it robbed me of my motivation… ambition out the window.

I still managed to bake quite a lot, but not everything that was on my list – and the gluten-free baking options suffered most. I had very much hoped I could make my standard gluten-free paleo brownies (which I did) but also venture into the world of more adventurous gluten-free cookie options. At least in my first round of baking, I did not succeed, and the brownies were the only thing that got made.

On the second round, I still had some lingering hope for gluten-free experimentation, but the only thing I managed to do was make some very basic, simple coconut macaroons. It was a new recipe for me, which I grabbed from Food.com – apparently Ina Garten’s recipe. The final product turned out well, but I actually had to add a lot more coconut than the recipe asks for. I’d suggest adding the amount listed in the recipe and see if you get the right consistency for a “dough” that can hold its form and bake into a cookie but that is not too “wet” from the condensed milk.

Give it a shot.

Coconut macaroons
14 ounces of coconut (4.27 cups or 397 grams)
14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 extra large egg whites
¼ teaspoon salt

Combine coconut, condensed milk and vanilla in one bowl and set aside.

Whip egg whites and salt on high until medium-firm peaks form.

Carefully fold eggs into the coconut mixture.

Drop tablespoons of the mixture onto baking sheets covered in baking paper.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes until golden.

Back to mixed basics: Chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal cookies

Chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal cookies
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I had some oats and some peanut butter I wanted to finish. Instead of making different cookies, I whipped them all together in one cookie – the chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal cookie.

You can make some too.

Recipe
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup butter
3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 1/2 cup oats

Preheat the oven to 180C. Form dough into small balls and place on a baking sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes.