Archive for December, 2005
Pears are funny fruits. Much like bananas, when you have a group of them, they seem to ripen all at the same time. Unlike bananas, they also have a very short window in which they are perfectly ripe, firm but yielding to the touch. I frequently get pears as gifts, particularly this time of year and as I can’t seem to resist buying them in fairly large quantities when the price is right, I will occasionally be forced to eat many pears in a day or two. Poor me.
Once in a great while I will tire of eating pears plain and begin to hunt around for something to do with them. Pears and cheese, pears in soup, pears in my oatmeal, pear sauce. I don’t usually add pears to my baking because they don’t hold up as well as firmer fruits, like apples, but a recipe from Everyday Food caught my eye. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any granola for the topping and and wasn’t going out to get any. I ended up reducing the baking time and temperature, but making similar muffins.
Before I bit into one, I worried that I hadn’t put enough spice into these muffins. As I tasted and chewed, I completely forgot about the spices. These muffins managed to taste just like my pear clafoutis, less custardy by default, but strikingly similar. The pears were soft and gave a lot of moistness to the muffin. The relatively delicate flavor of pear was strong, which I loved. There simply aren’t enough pear-flavored things.
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While most people will have to scale a recipe from time to time, doubling a batch of rice pilaf for a crowd or halving a batch of pancakes to feed only one or two, not everyone will be require to scale recipes for baked goods. You have to be exact with a cake recipe. The first thing to do is determine what size pan you’re going to use. For this cake, I used a 14-inch by 2-inch round pan to make a 2-layer cake. I only had one pan this large, so I used it twice: once for each layer.
Depending on the increase you’re going to make, you will need to dust off your multiplication skills. I learned the hard way that trying to multiply more than a few ingredients at a time in my head was simply not practical, so it’s important to write down all your ingredients on a separate piece of paper. Before you can calculate the new ingredient amounts, you need to know how much batter you’ll need.
My usual chocolate cake recipe makes two 8-inch layers. A reference sheet like this one is useful for conversions between pan sizes, but my 14-inch pan is too large to be on a list of common sizes, so I used an easy volume calculation to find out that I needed triple my usual amount of batter, or 1 1/2 batches for each layer. I multiplied my ingredients and wrote them out. It’s easier if the ingredients are in grams or ounces and you can weigh them all, but using fractions is fine when you’re not opening a bakery. The baking time should not really change when you’re going from one pan size to another if the pan is the same depth. If you switch to a different style of pan – a bundt, for example – the time will definitely be affected. My baking time was identical to the time for 8-inch layers.
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I must confess that I never particularly cared for eggnog. Until very recently, I had only ever had store-bought eggnog and, while the consistency reminded me pleasantly of a thick milkshake, I couldn’t get past the semi-eggy, custard-gone-awry sort of flavor. I ordinarily like custard, too, but I basically gave up on the drink. I’d have a sip every now and again, in case my tastes changed and I found I enjoyed it, but I was far more likely to refuse ‘nog than not.
This year I finally decided to give homemade eggnog a try. I searched through countless recipes and tried quite a few to limited success. I ruled out anything that involved cooking the eggs, since I already knew that wasn’t what I wanted. I did not like the recipes that needed multiple bowls for beating multiple components. Since I never exactly wanted to indulge in eggnog in the first place, I didn’t want an overly indulgent recipe, either. Finally, I came across this recipe, which I liked because I wouldn’t have to separate and independently beat the eggs and because there is no cream to make it too rich. After a few tries, a few eggs and a few modifications, I had eggnog. And it wasn’t bad!
This eggnog is very easy to make and is relatively low in fat. You can use any kind of milk, though I recommend low fat. The resulting nog is creamy and slightly eggy, without having a trace of store-bought taste. It reminds me of a thin, but enriched, milkshake. The vanilla and nutmeg really compliment each other. The alcohol is entirely optional and you can substitute bourbon or rum to suit your tastes.
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I don’t particularly like crisp, buttery cookies with frosting on them. I feel like the sugary coating takes something away from the simplicity of that type of cookie. In other words, if it’s a good butter cookie, I don’t want to disguise it with icing. But Christmas cookies deserve to be decorated as much as the tree and there is only so much that one can do with sprinkles alone (which are, incidentally, a fine addition to butter cookies). Frosting can allow you to be a lot more creative. Christmas cookies just want to be frosted.
I like to use simple sugar icing for frosting cookies, since it’s not as rich or gooey as a buttercream, but still adds a nice, sugary taste. It is also easy to control the consistency of, so I can make it thin, for flooding large areas, or stiff, to draw the details. The frosted cookies themselves should be soft but firm, neither too sweet nor too buttery and they have to stay fresh for a few days. Gingerbread cookies are a good choice and easy to decorate, but whiter cookies give you a bit more color versatility, as well as less pressure to make ony gingerbread men.
Made with buttermilk, these cookies are soft and stay moist and fresh tasting for several days without getting too cakey or stale. They have a light vanilla flavor with a subtle tang from the buttermilk. The dough can be rerolled once or twice and holds it’s shape well in the oven, though it does puff up a bit. The dough is sticky when it isn’t cole, so be sure to have the dough well-chilled and your work surface floured. And the most crucial point? They hold up well to decorating and actually taste much better with the icing and sprinkles.
I’m already making another batch. After all, it’s still a few days until Christmas and, while these will stay fresh until then, I don’t expect them to last that long.
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Sometimes the simplest dishes are the best. That said, I would not say that making caramelised onions is the simplest thing. They’re not difficult to make, but they are relatively time consuming, taking well over an hour to reduce the onions to melt-in-your-mouth sweetness. Rachael says that they freeze well, but I’ve never been able to resist them for more than a few hours. The house smells so amazing as they cook that it really gets me in the mood to eat them. Caramelised onions make a great addition to just about any meat, vegetable or rice dish. They can enrich simple dishes like mashed potatoes and add a surprising twist to pasta dishes.
I followed Rachael’s method, taking about 2 hours instead of three to cook the onions, steamed the broccoli and tossed them together with some pine nuts, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, just like EatingWell recommended in their recipe for this dish.
While I was rather indifferent to the balsamic vinegar’s presence – perhaps I should have used a better one – I loved the broccoli with the onions. The crunch of the greens with the added flavor of the onions almost makes this elegant, which is pretty unusual for a dish of broccoli. The pinenuts were a nice touch, too. Mine were toasted, but next time I’ll look for salted ones to add a bit more interest to them.
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