ginger pumpkin cake

More play with dehydrated flavor sheets in batter.

This time— dehydrated pumpkin in a fresh ginger root cake. This sheet, because it contains solids, is more of a chewy leather than a brittle crisp and converts to a soft, melting texture in the moist environment of the batter.

On the left are random strips embedded in the batter. On the right, strips were layered horizontally. Notice how the as the cake rose, it broke and disrupted some of the sheets. Interesting pattern, but I was going for a layered cake look. Next time, I'll try laying them in vertically.

Besides adding visual and textural interest, I think the true merit of this technique is in producing a cake with a baked-in filling. Now, to figure out how to get the frosting in there too.

Download recipe: ginger pumpkin cake

perfect apple pie

A standard of perfection is as fluid as the emotions that define and measure it. Because it is an arbitrary judgement, it evolves with time and varies from person to person, with no one being wrong.

I thought that the very first apple pie that I made was perfect because it looked like the picture in the cookbook. It came out of the oven all golden and full of promise. Everything but its appearance was a disappointment.

I had piled the apples high in the center and carefully draped the top crust over them, but when I cut into it, the top crust collapsed into the cavity that was left by the shrunken apples. And although the crust was crisp on the outside– inside, it was pasty from the steam created by the cooking apples (even though I had cut vents in it). The filling, too, was a disaster. I had used the wrong apples (this was before I understood the difference between a cooking apple and an eating apple) and had sliced them too thin, causing them to break down into mush. And even though I had followed the recipe precisely, the juices turned into starchy glop.

In all of my subsequent attempts at achieving my vision of pie perfection, I came to the realization that tossing a bunch of ingredients into a sealed crust, with no way of adjusting the texture and flavor as it cooked, was a leap of faith.

At one point, I thought that I had found the perfect apple pie when I tasted Tarte Tatin: crisp, flaky pastry; crisp-tender caramelized apples, cooked only in butter and sugar. It set a new standard in texture and flavor, but it wasn't really a pie– not in the American-as-apple-pie sense.

Later, I discovered that blind-baking the bottom crust ensured that it would be crisp and flaky all the way through, and that caramelizing the apples separately allowed me full control of their texture, But then there was the problem of the top crust. Not wanting to compromise the perfectly cooked apples with further cooking, I topped the compressed apple filling with pre-baked streusel crumbs. By my standards, I had created the perfect apple pie, but it was a Dutch apple pie– not the double-crusted, golden-domed, All-American apple pie.

I don't know what took me so long to figure out that the top crust could also be pre-baked and then 'glued' to the bottom crust to produce the iconic form with all of the components cooked separately to their respective states of perfection, but I'm glad that I did. It reinforces my belief that techniques are sometimes perpetuated because of tradition, not because they are perfect, and in the search for perfection– everything needs to be reexamined.

peach melba pie

frozen raspberry ice cream… cold peach curd… warm peach compote… all wrapped up in flaky pastry…

How?

corn cake

Autumn always catches me off guard.

Summer lulls me into a false sense of permanence. The world feels right and full of possibilities when the days are filled with warmth and sunshine that extends late into the evening. I'll certainly miss the seamless transitions from indoors to out and the sound of birdsong in the morning and crickets at night. My feet will miss the freedom of flip flops. Most of all, I'll miss the flavors of summer.

For today, at least, there are ears of corn from the farm up the road. There are oxheart tomatoes from my mother's garden. There are blackberries from the brambles in the woods. And there is a bushel of peaches from a generous tree. Summer's last hurrah.

microwave corn cake

peach pudding

tomato meringue

brown buttermilk

blackberry

calendula

Download recipe: Microwave corn cake

caramel corn donut

In the last post, Larry P. left a comment describing Johnny Iuzzini's deep-fried chocolate ganache "doughnut". I assumed it was from his book Dessert Fourplay, which I own, but have only read cursorily. Sure enough, I found it on pages 170 & 171. I really need to get to know this book better.

As Larry pointed out, Johnny Iuzzini's doughnut features a creamy ganache blended with methylcellulose to hold it together while frying, and sodium alginate to allow it to be encapsulated in a calcium bath. The doughnut are then dipped in egg, coated with panko, and deep fried. Larry successfully executed the doughnuts in this post.

After succeeding at producing a cake with the frosting baked inside, my thoughts immediately turned to an old donut fantasy. One of my most gratifying achievements in baking was making a yeast donut that rivaled those found in donut shops. For awhile, I became a bit obsessed with the idea of making a filled ring donut. I abandoned the idea when I couldn't achieve the desired results.

Revisiting the idea with new hope and armed with a viable technique, I set out to encapsulate the filling and layer it between yeast dough. Then I reasoned that encapsulating might not be necessary as the dough itself would act as a capsule, and that adding methocel to the filling would stabilize it and help it keep it's shape.

The good news is that it worked.

The bad news is that the textures suffered in the process.

The filling– popcorn-infused cream and fresh corn juice, reduced and enriched with butter– lost it's fluid creaminess and became more of a custard. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I preferred the texture before heating. The yeast dough, which is very soft and wet and a challenge to work with, but produces the most ethereally light and fluffy donuts, turned out sodden and heavy. I suspect that the weight of the filling inhibited the final rise and that the moisture that escaped during cooking became trapped inside the dough.

As a control, I fried a round of dough (without the hole) and filled it with the cream (without the methocel) post-cooking by piping it in through a hole poked in the side. The textures were notably better: thin, crisp crust gives way to pillowy-soft dough; creamy filling spills out. This is the recipe that I am including here because, at least for now, I can't improve upon it.

Download recipe: caramel corn donuts

inside-out cake

I've been toying with the idea of a cake with the frosting baked inside. I haven't had much luck using a conventional method of layering the frosting in the batter. Invariably, it would sink or create irregular pockets. Further attempts at lightening the frosting caused it to be partially absorbed by the batter. I was holding out for a clean and neat delineation.

In an unrelated experiment, I was heating an orb of butter that had been reverse-spherified in an alginate bath and realized that it withstood a fair amount of heat before the membrane ruptured. You can guess the rest.

This carrot cake was still warm when I cut into it, causing the cream cheese frosting to flow, but it was centered and well-defined. It took a little trial-and-error to get it to this point.

In the first trial, I scooped balls from the firm, chilled frosting and dropped them into an alginate bath (5g sodium alginate/ 1 litre water) for 30 minutes. The alginate reacts with the calcium present in the cream cheese and butter– forming a clear membrane around the frosting. Muffin tins were filled halfway with batter, a frosting sphere was embedded in each, then covered with another layer of batter. As they baked, the spheres rose up and broke through the surface of the batter and the membranes ruptured. Fail.

In the next trial, I flattened the frosting into a disc and repeated the steps, using a broader ramekin as a mold. This worked, I think, because it created more surface tension, keeping the frosting submerged.

I can't deny that it was satisfying to succeed, but I am far more excited about the possibilities that have opened up.

carrot cake

Back when I was baking full time, I had a customer consult me about a dessert to complete a special meal for a houseguest. He explained that the guest was foreign and he wanted to serve him a classic American cake. I made suggestions, and after some deliberation he decided to order a carrot cake. Just before he left, he felt inclined to inform me that the guest was a world-renowned French pastry chef. When he dropped his name, I nearly fainted dead away.

In the ensuing days, I became obsessed with carrot cake. It occupied my every thought. It infiltrated my dreams and became fodder for nightmares.

I knew that I had to hit this one out of the park and that the bakery's recipe that I inherited was not going to cut it. The frosting was easy– it had to be cream cheese and butter, lightly sweetened and brightened with lemon juice. The cake was the crux. I gathered and analyzed every recipe that I could find, looking for the je ne sais quoi that would make it distinct. I made small test batches using various additions of nuts, coconut, pineapple, and even chocolate chips. These, I decided, were perversions and only distracted from what I wanted to achieve: a refined cake with a fine, moist crumb that tasted of sweet, caramelized carrots. It was back to square one.

I started with the basic structure of the cake: fat, starch, sugar, liquid, eggs, leavening, flavoring, and looked at their ratios. While oil (typically used in carrot cake) ensures a moist product, it makes it… well, oily. I opted for the flavor and texture of butter– putting it into the butter cake category where butter, flour, and sugar are used in equal amounts (by weight), liquid makes up about 2/3 and eggs about 1/3. The ratio for a basic butter cake looks like this: 3:butter 3:flour 3:sugar 2:liquid 1:eggs (plus leavening and flavoring). The tweaking of these ratios would be largely dependent on the form of liquid, or moisture used. In a typical carrot cake recipe, some of the moisture comes from the grated carrots as they cook in the batter. Not wanting the coarseness of grated carrots, I tested a recipe using carrot puree, but I didn't like the diluted flavor of the precooked carrots. Freshly extracted carrot juice provided the bright color and flavor that I was after.

After adjusting the ratios to produce a soft, moist cake, I examined the flavor. I dropped the amount of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger) so that they were a mere whisper in the background. I replaced some of the sugar with brown sugar, then Muscavado (Muscavado has a purer flavor because the molasses isn't removed in processing as it is in brown sugar) in an effort to deepen the flavor. Overall, I was satisfied with the cake, but something kept nagging at me. It was the deep, buttery, caramelized flavor of a fine dark rum that my brain kept referencing. I wished that I could've added caramel without seriously affecting the texture. Then I remembered a 'trick' I used with creme brulee, where the sugar was cooked to a deep amber, allowed to harden, then ground to a fine powder. I simply replaced the sugar in the recipe with this pre-caramelized sugar and I had a superlative cake that I could be proud of, not only because I was confident that it would please a discriminating palate, but also because it was uniquely my own and it pleased me.

I left that restaurant shortly afterwards and never did get any feedback on the carrot cake. Years later, I read an article in a food magazine that asked international chefs for their favorite American foods. A certain world-renowned French pastry chef was among those interviewed. I think I remember his list containing chocolate chip cookies and key lime pie, but I will never forget that on that list, in black and white, was carrot cake.

Download recipe: Carrot Cake

raspberry kaffir shortcake

brown butter biscuit

raspberry

kaffir cream

honeysuckle

This is my third attempt at writing this post.

In the first, I told you about my childhood friend's flower garden and how she introduced me to the concept of flowers-as-food when she showed me how to suck the honey out of honeysuckle.

In the second, I told you about my struggles to find flavor pairings that would do the honeysuckle justice, and how I found inspiration from a bottle of yuzu juice.

Then, I wondered if the backstory was necessary when all I really wanted to say is that these flavors made me happy. Very Very happy.

Third time's a charm.

earl grey junket

yuzu curd

whipped honey

malted meringue

honeysuckle

cheddar corn chives

snacks:

ice cream float

Sweet corn ice cream with cheddar beer. Yep, that's right: cheddar beer. It's better than I expected and it keeps getting better with age. The real gem here is finding a use for chive flower stems– their rigid cellulosity renders them inedible, but makes for fantastic straws.

corn krispies treat

Ethereally light and crisp freeze-dried corn kernels and chives, bound with buttery isomalt syrup. More like a sweet/savory popcorn ball. Eminently addictive.

funyun

OK, so it's really an onion ring. But it's kinda fun, and definitely 'yuniony' courtesy of chive blossoms, thinly sliced Vidalia onions and ground, dehydrated onions in the tempura batter. The batter gets an extra boost from cheddar beer. I thought of making an onion beer for this but even I wouldn't go there.

pixy stix

Remember these? The sweet/tart powdered candy-in-a-straw goes savory with freeze-dried corn, chive, and cheddar powders. The straw (cheddar water with Ultratex) is edible, too. Break it open, use it as a dry dip, sprinkle it on the float–or better yet–directly on the tongue.

Download recipe: Cheddar corn chive snacks