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Sunday, January 10, 2010

It’s Not Complicated

Posted by Melanie at 15:02 1 comments Hot from the oven

I've been making croissants for years. I’m not daunted, anymore, by all the folding and rolling required for that wonderful flaky texture and refrigeration of the dough, necessary so the butter doesn’t melt.

In Meryl Streeps latest movie she works in a bakery coffee shop. Given her recent movies I wonder if she, really, knows how to cook? Anyhow In one scene, with Steve Martin, she makes croissants from scratch, seductively rolling chocolate up into each one.

In another one of my marathon kitchen baking blitzes, which included bagels, chocolate chip cookies and croissants I decided to put chocolate into some of the croissants. I used an organic baking chocolate called Vivani, available at Save On Foods or health food stores. I like it because the first ingredient is cocoa mass not sugar and it tastes fabulous.

Mnn Chocolate

I was unsure how much to use and worried about chocolate oozing all over the place. Silly me, next time I’m definitely using a lot more chocolate.

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Sunday, August 9, 2009

Don't Mess With Perfection

Posted by Melanie at 19:47 0 comments

Oats and chocolate are two of my favourite things to eat. When I tasted the Oat Fudge Bar a few years ago, sold at Starbucks, I was hooked. There are three Starbucks outlets in Prince George but, they are all a car ride or very long bike ride away. And, I imagine the oat fudge bar to be made of, well, oats, chocolate, sugar and probably unpronounceable things designed to keep it fresh. It’s these things I want to avoid eating AMAP but, my desire for a Starbucks oat fudge bar is unreasonable. In order to satisfy my desire I embarked upon a quest to make Oat Fudge Bars at home. At first, Googling Starbucks oat fudge bar came up with zero hits. I tried combining recipes for brownies and oat squares which, while tasty, did not emulate the real thing. The word fudge should have tipped me off but I’m blind.

Last winter I found this recipe on the internet. I was a little leery of the condensed milk but I bought a can anyway and instead of chocolate chips I used organic dark chocolate, my newest obsession on the road to healthful eating. Dark chocolate contains more flavonoids, the good stuff, and being organic it’s got to be better than the other kind. Oh, and it tastes divine.

Anyhow, the recipe made up into something, which while edible was not perfect.

In the spring my oven blew up and was out of commission. Needing something sweet to keep me centered I decided to make chocolate fudge because it requires no oven, I can get my allowance of flavonoids and it’s ultra sweet.

Some time later, after the oven was fixed and my gastronomic life was back to normal, I was blindsided with the obvious thought I should combine the fudge recipe with the oat part of the Starbucks recipe.

I’m so dumb.

Because, the oat dough needs to be creamier and butterier than the one in the recipe, I tweaked it, reducing the flour by almost a cup and increasing the oats by more than a cup.

Oat Fudge Bar

The result is superb. I ‘ve been known to eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner until it is gone.

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Saturday, May 9, 2009

Lemon Char er Tart.

Posted by Melanie at 06:37 0 comments

When I saw this I could almost taste its sour sweetness. I got an intense craving to make one for myself. I couldn’t find a recipe I liked so I ended up inventing my own.

I used lots of sweet butter, 4 lemons, 4 free range eggs, white sugar, white flour and cream. I made the crust in the usual way cutting the butter into the sugar and flour, adding just enough water to bring it together into a soft pastry. I rolled it out, put it into my pie dish and placed it in a hot oven to partially cook. I grated the rind off the lemons, squeezed out all their juice and beat them up with the eggs, sugar and cream. I took the partially cooked pie shell out of the oven, poured in the filling, turned the oven down to medium and put it back in.

After a reasonable amount of time I checked it and then again a bit later. The filling still had not set. So I poured a glass of wine and grabbed my laptop to read one of my favourite blogs. I followed one of the links to a scathing review of. At that precise moment I smelt burning. NOOO. I pressed the cancel button on the oven as I opened it. The lemon tart was spouting flames, I stared at like a dumbstruck deer in the car headlights, I toyed with the idea of picking the tart up and taking it outside in the hopes the flames would somehow die down but instead decided the flames were too big and with my luck I would probably set myself on fire as well. Then the fire alarm started screeching. I slammed the oven door shut.

Black smoke was everywhere. I opened the kitchen door then noticed the oven was going into panic mode issuing digital readout instructions telling me to turn off the power. One quick flip of the switch in the fuse box and the screeching stopped. The stove was silenced but black smoke still filled up the house. I decided, as I ran around opening the rest of the doors and windows, that I needed a great big fan.

Downstairs again I opened the oven door to see the flames had almost gone. Using oven mitts I picked up the pie blew out the last of the fire and took it outside onto the deck. It was charred black.

Hmmn

When everything was back to normal, I went back outside to examine it. I found I could scrape off the char with a spoon, underneath was a delicious looking, deep yellow, lemony filling. I carved a piece off the edge. It taste divine.

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Friday, January 9, 2009

Sometimes I feel like my t-shirt

Posted by Melanie at 12:35 0 comments

I’m bummed because my ski partner decided to forgo an awesome, powder filled trip to Powder King in favour of dealing with a crisis at work. To avoid having to clean my dusty, crumb filled house and to stop myself from emulating my t-shirt I decided to make:

Sometimes I feel like my t-shirt

1) refritos out of the black beans I soaked yesterday.

2)Bran muffins

3) Cook the dough for the chocolate chip cookies I whipped up yesterday. I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from the New York Times. Unlike what the recipe says I used regular Bakers chocolate chips. Do use the coarse salt and unsalted butter, it makes all the difference in the world.

But, before I did any of this I went for an extra long cross country ski around the neighbourhood with my ipod tuned to the latest podcasts.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Wild Fruit

Posted by Melanie at 19:51 0 comments

Yesterday we picked seven quarts of Saskatoons and a pint and a half of wild blueberries. We managed to do it after work and before it rained. The Saskatoons were plump and juicy, hanging from the bushes in big purple clumbs. I didn't notice the blueberries untill I had stepped on a few, they are about a third of the size of a Saskatoon and grow on bushes about eight inches above the ground. They are not fully ripe yet and it properly would be better to go blueberry picking in a few days.

When I was in the Italian deli I picked up a glass jar of double Devon cream. The only other time I have seen double Devon cream for sale is in the English shop in Steveston.

Last week I made a tart with a chocolate pastry and a filing of cream, mascarpone cheese and white chocolate, mixed together and topped with fresh raspberries. I got the recipie from Nigellas Lawsons book, How To Be a Domestic Goddess. The tart was tasty enough except I thought the pastry was a little doughy. This week I decreased the flour a bit and increased the butter by about a tablespoon. The resulting pastry was very short so I didn't bother with the egg, meant to bind it all together. Instead of rolling it out I just patted the pastry into the ungreased tart pan.

The Devon cream is thick beyond belief. There is no need to whip it. A far cry from the anemic excuse for cream we get in the average Canadian supermarket. The difference is probably the cows, our Holsteins versus their South Devons. The resulting tart almost melts in my mouth. The crust is light and chocolately, the filing rich, dense and creamy, the blueberries adding just the right amount of tartness to balance out the flavours.

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