C'est Doux

Eating through the Big Apple: Day 3

2012-01-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

So technically, I've long forgotten how many days it took me to eat however many animals as I was gallivanting through NYC. I do recall one day walking through Brooklyn and thinking, "Wow! There are actually seasons here!" We are quite spoiled with our weather here in California, but sometimes I think it would be nice to actually see the leaves change.

Though I've been to NYC a few times now, I still haven't visited in the winter. November was still chilly enough to want to rush inside a nice restaurant to enjoy brunch with friends. I don't remember the name of the cafe, but they had pretty cool light fixtures.

Oh, and the eggs benedict wasn't bad either. I think I prefer them served with fries instead of hash browns. Being the gastro-genius that I am, I used the fries to poke at the egg and sop up any ooey gooey yolk and hollandaise sauce!

That evening, we decided to check out a very popular high-brow-ish pizzeria called Motorino. It's more upscale than your normal pizzeria and there was a line out the door for this tiny East Village joint. The wait was about 45 minutes, so we decided to pop into the gastropub next door for a drink.

A look at their menu, the personal pizzas are about $15+, which in my opinion is a bit pricey for a pie, but alas, its New York. I opted for the crimini mushroom and sausage pizza.

We also ordered what seriously is the perfect pizza wine. In fact, they even label it as such on the menu! Thank goodness for my high mega-pixel camera or else I would have never remembered the name: Gragnano, Cantine Federiciane, from Naples, Italy. It was slightly sweet and semi-sparkling. Yum!

My crimini mushroom and sausage pizza was tasty. Usually I'm not a fan of pizza crust, but take one look at their homemade crust and its perfectly crispy. I just wished there was some sauce to dip it in. As you can see, it was a tight squeeze at our tiny table (with my pizza hanging off the edge), but definitely worth the wait.

Motorino

349 East 12th Street
New York, NY 10003

Tel: 212 777 2644

Eating through the Big Apple: Day 2

2011-12-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

I do realize it has been almost a month since my last post. Trust me, I think about this every day. Okay maybe every other day, or at the least a couple times a week. I'd like to think its because I'm still digesting from my week of gluttony overload in NYC. I have recovered though. My second day in the Big Apple, my lovely friend and I dined at Public, a Michelin one star restaurant

Public is located in NoLita, and for those of you not too familiar with NYC, that's somewhere between NYU and Katz's Deli. I really enjoyed their menu and decor; what restaurant has a library card catalog in the foyer?

They served three breads, a sourdough, a foccacia with capers or olives, and well the third, I didn't ask for. Look at the big gas bubble in that sourdough. Yeasty!

For a starter, I chose the grilled kangaroo on coriander falafel with a lemon tahini sauce and green pepper relish. Yep, that's right... kangaroo! Another animal to add to my list of devoured delicacies. The kangaroo was a bit rare, and as most of you know my motto is 'the redder the better'. I would say it tasted like a cross between venison and rabbit.

For my main course, I had the snail and oxtail ravioli with pickled shiitake mushrooms, oven dried tomatoes, pea shoots, and smoked paprika oil. I like snails and I like oxtail, so I figured the combination would probably be tasty. I didn't taste too much of the shiitake mushrooms, and felt that the dish could have been salted more. The pea shoots were nicely blanched and still had a bit of crunch.

My friend decided to opt out of a heavy meal and ordered crispy Brussels sprouts with lemon miso sauce and Aleppo pepper and the sticky toffee pudding with Armagnac ice cream and hot caramel sauce. Don't argue with a woman if all she wants is a side and dessert. I didn't try the pudding, it looked a little too ooey and gooey floating in a pool of sauce.

Instead, my dessert calories were allocated to a fig bellini. A little bubbly makes any meal better (and a walk to the subway more fun)!

PUBLIC

210 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012

Tel: 212 343 7011

Eating through the Big Apple: Day 1

2011-11-20T23:38:00.000-08:00

In desperate need of a break from the Bay, I thought it would be a good idea to pay a visit to one of my friends from pastry school. Another friend had asked me what I planned to do while in NYC, if there were any particular sights I wanted to take in or shows I wanted to see. My response? I go to NYC to eat. And eat I did!

On my first evening, we noshed at The Spotted Pig, a one Michelin star gastropub in the West Village. Apparently a hub for celebrities (though I didn't see any on the night I went), this place was bustling with people and the wait was upwards of an hour for two people. The executive chef, April Bloomfield is of English origin and worked at Berkeley's Chez Panisse.

Though a lot of people were ordering burgers, I decided to keep it light with oysters, chicken liver toasts, and shared an overflowing plate of shoestring fries with my friend.

My friend, a vegetarian, ordered their roasted vegetable platter. She seemed quite pleased with the perfectly roasted brussels sprouts, but we both were a bit smitten with the fries. Wouldn't you be too? Not to worry though, being in Manhattan, we were able to walk off a lot of those fries on our way back to the subway.

The Spotted Pig
314 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10014-2369
Tel: 212 620 0393

Creepy cupcakes

2011-11-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit. They're not creepy. In fact they're quite cute. Cute cupcakes doesn't really sound like a fitting blog post for Halloween cupcakes though. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year.

Who doesn't like Halloween? Being able to dress up and stuff yourself silly with candy and not get any lip from anyone? Plus I love seeing little kids dressed up and even super creative adult costumes. Although I still think I'm in a baking funk, I couldn't resist baking off.. oh.. a few dozen cupcakes. Okay.. fine, a little over six dozen isn't quite a few and I was up until 2AM whipping up butter cream frosting. C'mon peoples, there are 24 usable hours in a day!

The cupcake recipe is Martha Stewart's Devil's Food Cupcake. To be honest, I didn't care much for it; it was a bit dense. Maybe there was a little too much flour because I'm used to weighing everything and not using cups and teaspoons. If there's a petition to have Americans start using the metric system for baking... sign me up! Other than the density issue, the cupcake was moist and had good flavor. For the frosting, I used French butter cream and also an Italian meringue butter cream (for the ghosts), which is just my Italian meringue recipe with almost equal amounts of butter added. I ended up using two to three pounds of butter for my 6 dozen cupcakes. I think next up on the list, I'll make some low-fat, oatmeal, artery cleansing date bars, and prevent my ~~unsuspecting victims~~ taste testers from going into cardiac arrest.

French butter cream:

Egg yolks 120g
Eggs 140g
Granulated sugar 500g
Water 125g
Butter 800g
Vanilla bean 1/2 (or two teaspoons of vanilla extract)

Cook the sugar with water to 121°C. Beat the eggs and yolks lightly, add the contents of the scraped vanilla bean (or vanilla extract). While beating, add the cooked sugar to this mixture once it is light and fluffy. Beat until the mixture is cool. Incorporate the softened butter. Continue beating the butter cream to increase volume. If storing the butter cream in the fridge, do not beat to increase volume, but re-whip prior to use. You may need to soften the butter cream in a bain-marie/water bath.

Strawberry pastry cream tarts

2011-10-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

I usually don't dedicate my posts to anyone. Okay, in fact I've never dedicated a post at all. However, this one time, this teeny exception I'm going to dedicate this one to my ever-relentless-hounding friend who is probably my only reader and biggest critic. Cinnamon, this one is for you.

As all aspiring home bakers know, making puff pastry from scratch is no small feat. It requires having your dough and butter at the right temperature/consistency and endless rolling, folding, and more rolling. If you have a pastry sheeter, it's not so bad. Last I checked, most people don't have a $5,000 piece of baking equipment in their home. And if you do? Well, I want to be your friend.

And for this reason, I don't have any qualms about using that store-bought frozen stuff. It's not that bad actually. A lot of professional bakeries will make their puff pastry ahead of time and thaw when needed.

Both Pepperidge Farm and Trader Joe's brand puff pastry dough sheets come individually wrapped, and two to a box. They're quite handy to have in the freezer to throw together a last minute dessert. Per box instructions, you need to let the dough thaw a little before handling.

For my strawberry tarts, I cut one of the pastry dough sheets into quarters and scored them along the edges. I then folded the edges over to make a 'frame' of dough. By doing so, I essentially doubled up the dough. When the dough rises and cooks, it will make a boat to nest the filling and fruit. I came across this method when making some blueberry boats for my brother.

Another important note is to make sure to generously dock the center of the pastry. Docking, which is a fancy shmancy name for poking holes, ensures that the pastry in the middle will not rise as much as the edges. I then brushed the edges with a light egg wash and baked according to manufacturers instructions.

See, they're kind of like little boats. Or maybe bowls. At this point you could probably fill them with anything, even a savory chicken pot pie filling. Yum.... pie. My filling of choice was pastry cream and strawberries. Pastry cream, or crème pâtissière, is the French take on custard and is a key ingredient in a lot of French pastries.

After the pastry cream was thoroughly chilled, I filled each of the pastries about halfway, leaving ample space for the fruit filling.

Next up, strawberries. The strawberries were definitely not as easy as the blueberries to maneuver into the small pastry space. If working with strawberries, I would suggest picking the smaller fruits, or slicing them for a better fit.

As a finishing touch to the tarts, I melt a quarter cup of apricot jam diluted with a couple tablespoons of water. The apricot jam has a neutral flavor and works nicely as a glaze, By glazing the berries, they'll retain an appetizing shine and won't get that 'old dried out' look once they've been sitting in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Pastry Cream:

Milk 500g
Eggs 50g
Egg yolks 30g
Sugar 125g
Flour 25g
Custard powder 25g (can substitute cornstarch)
Vanilla extract

In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil and add the vanilla extract. In a mixing bowl, combine the eggs, yolks, sugar, flour and custard powder. Once the milk comes to a boil, pour approximately a quarter of a mixture into the egg mixture to temper. Return the egg mixture back to the saucepan and continuously mix as the pastry cream comes to a boil. Allow the mixture to boil for three minutes. Transfer the pastry cream to a mixing bowl, cover with plastic film, and store in the refrigerator until thoroughly chilled.

Processing pictures of pastries

2011-10-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

I'm sure at least a few of you have been wondering what I've been up to. Your daring displaced person, valiant vagabond, or even tenacious transient has not been quite the busy baker as of late. With a new little person (not mine) in my life, a new camera, and looming deadlines at work, I've been a bit preoccupied. I didn't realize what I had gotten myself into when I ordered Plate to Pixel, nor when I bought my new camera. It wasn't until I installed Photoshop Lightroom did I think, "whoa this is going to be a lot of work!" Taking pictures is easy. Taking well thought out, balanced and appetizing pictures of food is tough. Really tough. In her book, Helene Dujardin stresses that the more effort you take into taking good pictures, the less post processing you'll have to do. Since I don't understand most of Lightroom at the moment, I'll stick to what I've gleaned from the book. Let me know what you think? Here is a relatively decent pictures I took of profiteroles.

It's advised that you start out by taking pictures of fruits or vegetables, things that are relatively static and aren't runny and melting. Of course I'm not one to take the easy route, right? Runny? Melty? Perfect! These profiteroles were made using my pate-a-choux recipe. I filled them with scoops of vanilla ice cream and topped them with chocolate sauce. Unfortunately I can't tell you what goes in the chocolate sauce other than chocolate, golden syrup, and maybe water? That's what happens when you let people into the kitchen.

I also made some Lemon Ricotta Cookies that one of my best friends is very fond of and turned me onto. I like how soft the cookies look.They have an almost airy look to them, which means they're low-cal right? Course. I've realized that I don't like taking aerial pictures of food as many food photographers do. I guess I figure that you really don't look at food like that when you're about to eat it. I guess a good rule of thumb is to think... would I want to eat that?

A lot of good food photography is achieved by using the aperture priority on the camera to manipulate the depth of field. Increasing the lens aperture diameter (decreasing the f-stop value), decreases the depth of field. In layman's terms, that means that the thing in front is focused, and stuff in the back (or sometimes front!) is fuzzy. Looks nice though right? I hope so. I've a bit more image post-processing to do, but I'll have a full post with recipe up soon!

Holy Guacamole!

2011-09-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

I often forget how lucky I am to live in California. When I lived in Paris and came across people in the workplace, they'd always say how it was their dream to visit California. I always wonder what the stereotype of a typical Californian was; bleach blond surfer a la Baywatch? People do love the Hasselhoff. It isn't always an ethereal land of sunshine, though I can't complain too much about the weather.

What else is California known for? Apple, Google, and Facebook? Yes, as a state, we do boast the 8th largest economy in the world. Gold rush, Hollywood, and national parks? Sure I guess. When I think of California I think about us being on the forefront of the sustainable food movement. In fact, Alice Water's Chez Panisse in Berekely just celebrated their 40th anniversary. It does benefit to be in an area where you can get seasonal fresh produce.

One of my favorite items I can always find at the farmers market or grocery store are Hass avocados. These large avocados are of Californian origin, and were grafted and patented in the 1930's by an avid horticulturist by the name of Rudolph Hass. Yes peoples, this is the first time that a patent was ever given for a tree. A TREE! Okay, maybe I'm the only one who finds that interesting. In any case, this variety of avocado is the most important commercial avocado worldwide and accounts for 95% of the the Californian avocado crop.

The avocados are large with a lot of flesh, and oftentimes I'm able to find perfectly ripened ones that aren't very bruised. I grew up eating avocados, but not so much with Mexican food. In Vietnamese cuisine, you'll find avocado smoothies, or sometimes an avocado served up with a spoonful of condensed milk. Nowadays, I can't handle them in such decadence; I usually make guacamole.

My guacamole recipe, isn't really a recipe. I use fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, lemon juice, cilantro, pepper, salt, and of course avocados. I couldn't tell you the exact amounts, but approximately half of the mixture is avocado, a quarter is tomato, and a quarter is well, everything else. Just add enough lemon juice and spices until it tastes right. It's not really rocket science.

I usually score the avocados while they're still in their skin so that I don't have to do much chopping. It also saves me a slimy mess on the cutting board. Once scored, the flesh can be scooped out with a large spoon. Mash it up a bit, and voila, guacamole! I like mine a bit chunky, though I've known people to process theirs to the point where it looks like that stuff you can make from a mix. Eww.

With some tortilla chips, all that's missing is a margarita!

Churros

2011-08-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

Every time I eat a churro, I'm transported back to when I was a kid at an amusement park convincing my parents to buy me a churro from the guy with the rolling cart. There was something so appealing about the long pastry batons, crispy with their cinnamon-sugar coating and yet they always seemed too big for my pint-sized self. Alas, I could always count on my brother to polish any remainders off.

Perhaps it's because they seemed so manufactured and perfectly straight, that I never really put any thought into actually making them. As I've mentioned before, I have a strong aversion to frying anything, so that's another reason I've always put off making them. But they really are quite simple. And no, I don't say that about everything I make.

Churros are essentially the Spanish take on a donut. However, Wikipedia offers a very interesting take on the origins of this tasty treat. Apparently the Portuguese came back from Asia (of course everything is stolen from the Asians, right?), and they modified a recipe for Chinese fried donuts, You Tiao or Youzagwei in Southern China. Of course the technique was lost in translation, and since the Portuguese didn't learn the art of pulling the dough, they ended up extruding it through a star tip. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, considering the consistency of both doughs aren't quite the same. Chinese donuts are a lot more airy and probably require some sort of leavening agent, whereas churros are fried pate a choux. In any case, the Chinese didn't figure out how tasty these things are with a mug of hot chocolate.

The recipe I used was from Allrecipes.com. There are a couple good recipes on the site, but I prefer the ones with egg in them. After mixing up the dough, I filled a pastry bag with a large star tip and shallow fried 4 inch pieces of dough at time. The trick is to have a scissor handy so you can cut the length of dough once piped out of the bag, directly into the oil. Once the churros are golden brown, quickly remove them and roll them in cinnamon sugar. The cinnamon sugar won't adhere as easily once the churros have cooled.

You can serve them with chocolate sauce, hot chocolate, or in my case, a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

Banana chocolate chip cookies?

2011-08-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Yes. This is how scatterbrained I've been lately, that I can't even remember what I baked. I'm surprised I even know what day it is, to be honest. Surviving a birthday that ended in a 0, in the midst maybe buying a house, moving, family woes, and pending family additions... well folks it's as if I've bitten off more than I can chew! Well, if you think about it.. not really bit off.. but there's a lot being shoved down my throat at the moment in any case! I've eased off on the baking a lot lately too...

I think these cookies had bananas in them. Actually I'm about 95% sure they did, and that's a high confidence level if you ask me. I think I got the recipe off www.allrecipes.com too, though I can't manage to find the recipe right now. Go figure. Well okay, they definitely had chocolate chips in them. Lots of them.

It's quite interesting playing detective to your own baking. Judging by the consistency of the dough in the next picture, I think I'll have to boost my confidence level up to 97%. That's 97% positive there's bananas in there somewhere.

It's a bit runny and mushy, almost the consistency of banana bread, no? Oh wait! I realized in the picture with the chocolate, the recipe is in the background. And my culinary nerdiness and sleuthing tells me that looks like a Martha Stewart logo. Turns out they're Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk Cookies! Hurrah! Okay bear with me peoples. I promise the next post won't be as craptastic. Promise!

Plate to Pixel

2011-08-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

So here's some new food for thought. I just picked up Helene Dujardin's Plate to Pixel over the weekend and think, wow, why haven't I looked into taking better pictures of my food before!? Sure, I do alright with a point-and-shoot clickity camera, but it would be nice to be able to take really really good pictures.

She writes just about as well as she takes food photographs and though I could pick up any old photography book, I'm glad this one talks about EVERYTHING including food styling and props! I'll give you all an update as I dig deeper into it. So excited!!

Hand-dipped chocolates

2011-07-20T18:47:00.000-07:00

I know I've been neglecting my blog lately. With temperatures rising, introduction of new social mediums (Google, please integrate blogger to G+), new toys at home (Google, please create a blogger iPad app), and feeling that my proverbial plate is overflowing and thus stressing me out, sometimes culinary therapy just doesn't cut it. I'd like you all to believe that I'm some sort of domestic diva, but sadly I have a life that extends far past the kitchen. Most of the time I'll gladly answer to anyone's "back to the kitchen, woman!" but lately I've preferred crawling back into bed.

This brings me to an interesting point. Where did the stereotype of depressed women eating chocolates in bed come from? So technically chocolate has polyphenols that inhibit the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, i.e. it can lower the risk of a heart attack. Hmm, that can't be it. According to a scientific study, researches argued that "we want chocolate in times of stress, anxiety, pain and so on. Chocolate is a natural analgesic, or pain killer." Sweet... who needs Advil?

So whats better than chocolate? Chocolate covered in chocolate with an added boost of fat and caffeine: coffee flavored chocolate truffles. Braving the heat, (and being prohibited from turning on the oven) I decided to make some truffles. Correction, I decided to make some hand-dipped chocolates, which are a lot more sophisticated looking than truffles. Like I've mentioned n times before, there are lots of baking ingredients and tools you can find in France that you can't find in the states (without costing you a small fortune). When in school, we used 'cadres' or ganache frames to create our dipped chocolates. We poured the runny ganache into the frames and then cut them with a chocolate guitar. And no, I'm not talking about one of these, but rather one of these. Since I wasn't going to be shelling out $2k+ for one of those contraptions, I figured I could just pour my ganache into a mold and then slice it up. For the life of me, I couldn't find a frame, so I decided to macgyver one. All I had on hand was a rice krispies box. Hmm.

After a bit of cutting, I had something that sort of resembled a chocolate ganache frame.

And here it is ready to go.

So the next part was actually a lot more simple.. make the ganache. My ganache consisted of two types of Ghirardelli chocolate, cream, coffee, and a little nutella.

Once the cream came to a boil, I poured it over the chocolate and then stired the melted chocolate until smooth.

I then poured the ganache into the homemade frame and left it to set overnight in the fridge.

Day two of chocolate making, I pulled the ganache out of the fridge and sliced it into squares. Originally I tried using fishing line to slice through the ganache, as the guitar would, but found the line to be far too weak.

This made for messy ganache squares. I wasn't too pleased, but given my lack of equipment, and working with chocolate in the middle of summer, I just shrugged and carried on. Next up was tempering the chocolate. As I've mentioned before, working with chocolate can be really tricky. In order to achieve enrobing chocolate that will solidify upon cooling, you need to melt the chocolate to a certain temperature, cool it to a certain temperature to crystallize the chocolate , and then maintain it at a certain temperature whilst you're working with it. These temperatures are dependent on the type of chocolate you're using, or precisely, the amount of cocoa butter.

White chocolate melts at around 36-38 degrees Celsius, crystallizes at 23-25 degrees Celsius, and should be worked with between 27-28 degrees Celsius. Milk chocolate melts at around 40-45 degrees Celsius, crystallizes at 24-25 degrees Celsius, and should be worked with between 29-30 degrees Celsius. Dark chocolate melts at around 45-50 degrees Celsius, crystallizes at 26-27 degrees Celsius, and should be worked with between 31-32 degrees Celsius. For those of you who'd like to know what those temperatures are in Fahrenheit? Well too bad... I'm a metric girl when it comes to baking, so go Google it or something. It is really important to respect these temperatures, unless you're aiming for globs of melty goo that wont set.

Making chocolate is a lot of work, and most times I don't think people appreciate how much work goes into them (especially since commercial chocolates are made on huge machines). However, the benefit of hand-dipping chocolates for 3 hours is that afterwards you can't stand the smell of them. I think I might have tried one... for quality control purposes.

Black bottom cupcake fail

2011-07-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I'll dig through my baking books and look for something new to try. One book I brought back from France was David Lebovitz's The Great Book of Chocolate. Funny story about this book, actually. I went to one of David's book signing events out of a 'boite bouquiniste" along the Seine. For those of you who aren't familiar with Paris, these are the little book kiosks along the river where sometimes you can find some out-of-print special edition, and other times just random trinkets and souvenirs. I didn't have enough Euros on me at the moment to pay for the book, so he kindly let me pay the difference in metro tickets.

Any chocolate lover will pick up this book. Any chocolate enthusiast will pick up Mort Rosenblum's Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light. Any chocolate-crazed person with a few thousand to burn will check out the Paris chocolate tour hosted by these two chocolate aficionados. Me? I'll stick to picking out a recipe to try. I decided to make David's black bottom cupcakes. Black bottom cupcakes are chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese filling. You're supposed to fill a cupcake pan with the chocolate cake batter, and then put a dollop of the cream cheese mixture on top, which in theory should sink and make a nice filling.

I followed the recipe exactly. I'm not one to cut corners or take liberties when it comes to baking, since it is an exacting science. Mr. Lebovitz says to fill the cupcakes to the top. This was a bit disconcerting, as I figured the cake/filling would rise and it would end up oozing everywhere all over my cupcake pan. As a devout follower, I mustered on, filling my pan. In face he states, "This will fill the cups almost completely, which is fine." No sirree. It was not fine. Not at all. Not by a long shot. Maybe I overfilled them, but I could have sworn the pan was 'almost' full.

I won't show you what they're supposed to look like because, heck, that's just depressing. They ended up looking like chocolate cupcakes with some sickly muffin top/frosting thing on top. Black bottom cupcakes = FAIL.

Too hot to bake

2011-06-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

With the highs in the 90's today, it definitely made for a sweltering first day of summer. On a technical note, it isn't quite the first day of summer... but rather mid-summer i.e. summer solstice. I don't mean to get all nit-picky about it, but it just really irks me that people seem to think it's the FIRST day of the summer, rather than the day that we're actually the closest to the sun, which should technically be the middle of summer, no? I guess my collegiate astronomy classes paid off.

In any case, it's waaaaaaay too hot too bake. Really peoples, I know you love your pastries and all, but yours truly is NOT going to be fishing cookies and cakes out of a 350 degree oven when it's this hot outside. I really don't care to have my already melting face burned off. Plus I've been banned from baking today and heating up the house; without central AC it's a much needed hiatus.

So what do I do when it gets really hot? I say ya'll have to fend for yourselves and I'm off to make myself a hedonistic treat. Years ago after watching the movie Serendipity, I knew I had to pop into Serendipity 3 when I visited New York City to try their oh-so-famous frrrozen hot chocolate. Yes, I am quite the hopeless romantic (deep deep down under the cynical façade). Their crazy good frozen chocolate treat can easily supplement a meal. Or at least it should considering how calorie laden it is. Well, luckily for me, one of my favorite food bloggers, David Lebovitz decided to post a recipe of his rendition of this yummy drink.

The recipe requires mixing cocoa with milk over the stove, pouring that goodness over chocolate to melt it, cooling the mixture and then blending it all with some yummy ice cream and ice. Overall it's a bit lighter than a milkshake, but still very rich. Who am I kidding though? In this apocalyptic heat, I'm way too lazy to throw stuff in a blender (I made this drink a couple weekends ago)! I've settled for a double caramel magnum ice cream bar, which in itself could be whole other post.

Peanut butter cup cookies

2011-06-16T20:05:00.000-07:00

The problem with being a transient (well okay technically I'm not), or rather living out of a suitcase is that you can never find anything. My problem is that I know everything is in storage somewhere, but I just don't know exactly where to go digging.

I came across this problem when I wanted to make some peanut butter cup cookies that required this Wilton Silicone Mini Muffin Pan. I scoured high and low through all my boxes of baking goods and it was no where to be found. I'm not really one to lose or misplace things and I have a good enough memory to recall that I didn't throw it into one of my many Goodwill bags.

Annoyingly, I had already bought some peanut butter cups. So whats a girl to do? Take the angst out on a chopping block and make some chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.

Equally as yummy, but not quite what I was going for. Fast forward a month, I finally find the mini muffin pans in a box tucked away in an obscure place I'd never have thought to look in the first place. Dumb luck I guess. Or maybe just dumb. I've made this cookie recipe several times before and its pretty fail/fool-proof. It's a basic peanut butter cookie recipe that you bake into the molds.

Once the baked cookie dough comes out of the oven, it is imperative to smash the peanut butter cups into them as quickly as possible. Take your time and the dough will start to set and they don't look as nice. Why not bake the peanut butter cups directly into the cookie? Well my dear Watson, the peanut butter cups are likely to melt far more quickly than the dough cooks, and you'll end up with a cookie with a gloopy mess in the middle. If that does it for you, well go right on ahead and don't mind me.

What's better than a peanut butter cup? One nested in a peanut butter cookie. They're intense and I generally can't handle more than one of them with a glass of milk. These cookies are always a hit, unless you have a severe nut allergy. Then they're just a death wish, I suppose.

Pretty pastries

2011-06-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

The other day someone asked me if I'd rather make pastries that looked good versus pastries that tasted good. I was a bit baffled. Why do you have to choose? I don't think having desserts that taste and look good are mutually exclusive. Can't you have your pretty cakes and eat them too?

The way I see it, desserts have to be visually appealing for you to want to eat them, and they have to taste good for you to be a returning customer. Plus compromising was never one of my strong points.

When I was in pastry school, we had to take art classes to learn the aesthetics of food. Food is like art, meant to be appreciated. Desserts, in my opinion, require a bit more finesse and detail, though some culinary students will argue against that. But seriously, make a sugar or chocolate sculpture, and then we'll talk about finesse and detail. We learned the importance of balance, the use of color, focal points, and the ever-so-important rule that things in odd numbers are always more visually appealing. That's why when I make my tried and true marzipan roses, there are never two, nor four, but three roses.

Along with the fruit charlotte above, the other day I made some pastillage (sugar paste) just to play with. I made a quick-drying recipe that was actually really tricky to work with. The pastillage dried out far too quickly for my liking and cracked a bit. Sadly since I don't have an airbrush kit (hint hint peoples), I resorted to painting them with a mixture of alcohol and coloring. It's a bit like painting with watercolors. Not too shabby for just messing around in the kitchen.

Cadbury creme egg chocolate cupcakes

2011-06-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

Now folks, do not try this at home. I'm serious. Well okay, if you must, you can try it... but don't come running to me when you go into some sort of sugar-induced anaphylactic shock. This is the stuff that your mother warned you about; this is the stuff that diabetes dreams are made of.

It wasn't until I was ten years old that I discovered the sugary chocolate joy that comes around only once a year: Cadbury creme eggs. No, I wasn't a deprived child who didn't get to ravel in the splendors of the Easter bunny. I was just an impressionable one.

Do you remember this 80's anti-drug video? Well at the tender age of maybe five, I seemed to think that eating runny yolks equated to doing drugs. Riiiiiight. I'd only eat my eggs scrambled or in an omelet. And somehow I let my brother convince me that the sugary goo inside a Cadbury creme egg was raw egg, so I'd give mine to him. It's a good thing I didn't grow up watching this video. I'm not sure what sort of antics would have ensued.

Anyway, I digress. Around Easter, I was forwarded a link for Cadbury creme egg cupcakes. Being the economical sort, I swooped in the day after Easter and got some eggs at half-off. Score! The eggs were a bit too big for the cupcake pan. They'd actually be better suited for giant cupcakes. The recipe I found used mini-eggs, but they were nowhere to be found in my local Safeway.

I think I would also try freezing the eggs prior to baking them, so that the gooey insides don't harden/dry up. After careful dissection, it was clear that the eggs took up the majority of the space and there wasn't a whole lot of cake. Intense would have been an understatement. Though these were definitely interesting to make, I prefer my ~~drug~~ sugar induced coma without the cake. I even got a bit of retribution as one bite of cupcakes gave my brother the shakes and he had to chase it down with a pint of milk.

Millionaire's shortbread

2011-05-23T20:13:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you combine shortbread, caramel, and chocolate? Super yummy goodness. Millionaire's shortbread comes from Scottish origins and is also known as caramel shortcake, caramel slice, millionaires slice, and wellington squares. Quite frankly, I don't care what it's called, but it's damn good. If you're a fan of Twix candies, you should definitely give these a try. But be warned, if you eat too many you'll need a millionaire to pay for your lipo or bypass.

Though some have already asked, I won't share the recipe for these squares of sugary bliss (it's coveted by a friend) but a quick Google search will render tons of variations. At the base is shortbread, which on its own is already rich and tasty.

Next up is the caramel. Anyone who knows me, will attest to my aversion to caramel or any type of molten sugar. Why you ask? Hot sugar is worse than hot oil. Not only will it burn you, but if it's hot enough, trying to get the blasted stuff off will also rip off your skin. Trust me. I know. Every now and then I'll tempt the 3rd-degree burn gods and make myself some caramel. This was one of those days.

Last but not least? Chocolate. I decided to go with some Ghirardelli chocolates. I melted down the chocolate, and once the caramel cooled, poured it over the top. The most difficult part of this recipe was waiting for the shortbread to set. It's a good thing patience pays off.

Post bake sale... post

2011-05-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

So after all that baking, baking...and more baking, and spending the better part of the day in San Francisco, what were the results of the bake sale? We were able to raise a whopping $2400 for the Share Our Strength charity. Well, that's at least one less kid going hungry for today. And what about childhood obesity and diabetes, you ask? I'll have to save those causes for another day.

For the bake sale, I made French macarons, a fraisier, and madeleines. Though I didn't stay for the entire time, I did get to witness my cake getting sold off to a nice gentleman who purchased it for his mother's 92nd birthday!

It was quite a bit of work packaging everything up late on Friday evening, but luckily I had some friends stop by to give me a hand.

What do you guys think about the artwork? Many thanks to my brother for helping me out with the design, even though it required a fair amount of bartering and pleading. Overall, it was a pretty fun event. I met a lot of other food bloggers and was quite impressed at what some people can crank out.

I was particularly pleased at how my macarons came out. I've nearly perfected making them in the U.S. Making them back in France seemed fool-proof with high-quality fine almond meal and ovens that weren't so finicky. Yes, whenever there is a baking mishap, I will ALWAYS blame the oven. As I write this post, I'm putting another batch of macarons in the oven, and am happy to say that I've tamed the oven beast. Though macarons are super labor intensive, they sure are pretty.

Unfortunately I had to throw away over half of the macaron shells I made for the bake sale. They didn't have the perfect 'foot', but I think I've managed to figure out how to get them to rise evenly in the oven.

SF food blogger bake sale!

2011-05-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Yes party people, the SF Food Blogger's Bake Sale is tomorrow! Yours truly will be there.. hocking my wares of course. I'll be at the Guerrero Street location from 12-1 manning the booth if you want to come and say hello. Plus remember, its for a good reason too! Do something good, and score some tasty bites.

What's on the menu? I'll be supplying a fraisier (strawberry sponge layer cake with mousseline cream and marzipan), lemon madeleines, and assorted French macarons (matcha green tea, raspberry, lychee, and lemon). See you there!

Culinary Therapy & Bake Sale info

2011-05-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm stressed, down, or just feeling out of it, I always turn to my kitchen for solace. Now I'm not talking about foraging in the fridge for leftover Chinese, or trying to Iron-Chef a meal together where the secret ingredient is ice cream. I find therapy in baking, creating, and, of course, feeding other people. By the frequency and nature of my blog posts, you would assume that by now I'd be ready to be committed to the loony bin. Perhaps so, but I also bake on my good days, which pretty much means I'm baking all the time. Right. However, I think it's the accuracy and skill required that distracts me and pulls me out of my reverie of doom, stress, or whatever I might need therapy from. Plus the smiles on the happy faces of the recipients of my treats is sure to brighten anyone's day.

Though I've been baking run-of-the-mill treats for work, occasionally I'll have an event to bake for, which is definitely a pick-me-up. For a little girl's 5th birthday, I decided to do strawberry filled cupcakes with Italian meringue frosting.

However, I ended up with extra strawberries, genoise, and italian meringue and decided to make some other treats.

I quickly whipped together some pastry cream and made a couple smaller cakes and a parfait. Now I was suck with leftover pastry cream. What to do? Make choux pastry of course. I mixed up some pate-a-choux dough and baked off some cream puff swans in the oven. Not too shabby for an afternoon of baking.

On another note, I'm definitely participating in this year's SF Food Blogger Bake Sale! For all of those who ~~stalk~~ follow me via my blog, now you can stop by on Saturday May 14th and try some of the tasty treats! The proceeds benefit a great cause as well. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to bake, but keep posted for a list. My goods will be at 18 Reasons located at 593 Guerrero at 18th Street in San Francisco. I'll be manning the booth from noon until 1PM. If I'm not there, I'll likely be passed out at nearby Dolores Park with some Bi-Rite ice cream in hand!

Lemons!

2011-05-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

What do you do when life hands you lemons? Make lemonade? Although it is getting warm enough here in the Bay Area for a frosty glass of citrus-y goodness, I'd rather bake mine into something tasty. With a bagful of lemons on hand, I decided to crank out some lemon bars, lemon madeleines and lemon pound cake with a lemon glaze.

Having never baked lemon bars before, I made the mistake of not carefully watching my crust. Sadly it came out a little burnt, but was still good.

The lemon glazed pound cake was my variation of Elvis Presley's Favorite Pound Cake, with lemon juice and zest added to the batter. Now if only I could figure what to do with the figurative lemons in my life!

Les brownies

2011-05-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

I've been baking, baking, and yes... baking some more. I've been baking more than I've been blogging. Luckily for me, I have no problem getting people to try my baked goods; there are always hungry mouths to feed or baking requests to fulfill. Sometimes I need to take a break from throwing six dozen cookies in the oven, and I opt for things that can be baked in a pan. Brownies usually go over well with the masses.

In the past I've used the recipe on Baker's chocolate to make my brownies. Since going to pastry school, I now opt for my 'les brownies' recipe from France that uses actual chocolate instead of unsweetened baking chocolate. I decided to use a mix of 60%, 72% and 86% Ghirardelli chocolates. Believe it or not, the French love 'les brownies' and 'les cookies'.

I also had some left over dulce de leche, and decided to swirl it into a second batch of brownies. However the chocolate ended up being a bit overpowering and on hindsight, I don't know if it would have been better to just drizzle the dulce de leche in near the end of baking.

Les Brownies:

Dark chocolate 55% - 300g
Butter - 250g
Granulated sugar - 400g
Eggs - 200g (approximately 4 large)
Vanilla extract - 5g
Flour - 200g
Baking powder - 5g
Salt - 1g
Chocolate drops - 150g
Chopped walnuts - 150g

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (170 degrees Celsius). Melt the butter and the chocolate. Mix eggs, sugar and vanilla extract with a whisk without providing volume. Pour this mixture onto the chocolate. Add the sifted flour and baking powder. Incorporate the chocolate drops, walnuts and salt. Fill the buttered and floured molds/pans. Bake the brownies for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Bananas for banana muffins

2011-04-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

I thought to title this blog post with an excerpt of Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl lyrics, but thought better of it. When most people think of bananas, they think monkeys. I think of my friend from pastry school who could not for the life of her stand bananas. I think it was something to do with their texture, or how they were a bit slimy. She didn't dislike them; she was disgusted by them. However, if they were baked into something, she'd eat them. People are odd, but I can empathize when it comes to texture. One day, I'll tell you all about my odd relationship with beans. Anyway, I digress.

I, on the other hand, love bananas. For me, they're perfect when they reach some harmonious balance of no longer being green, and not yet developing brown freckles. This so called 'window' of banana perfection is oh-so important because I hate that feeling you get in your mouth from eating a raw banana, and I don't like when they're overly mushy and sweet. Once these bananas have gone past their prime, there are two great uses for them: 1) shove them in a bag with under-ripe fruit (ethylene gas is awesome!) 2) shove them in the fridge/freezer until you've amassed enough to bake them into something tasty.

Well, I amassed enough to make some yummy banana muffins. Since I didn't have any nuts on hand, I decided to garnish them with some dried banana chips. They made for a pretty tasty, low-fat breakfast!

Dulce de leche cheesecake

2011-04-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Though I haven't been blogging as much, I've still managed to get elbow deep in doughs and batters every week. I've been baking for the masses at work, for birthday parties, and for fun. It's been really nice to get back into a kitchen and bake and not feel like you're going to get screamed at if you accidentally burn a batch of cookies. However I do find myself defaulting to American recipes, since it's a lot harder to find French ingredients here.

One of my favorites? Cheesecake. Of course I often try to kick things up a notch, so I swirled some dulce de leche in the batter. My favorite recipe uses a simple graham cracker recipe, a batter that has less than 5 ingredients, and is quick to whip together.

Since the base recipe is so simple, you can improvise with the filling. I've added chocolate chips, made a tuxedo cheesecake, and this time I decided to swirl in leftover dulce de leche. The key to this cheesecake is that you cook it at a low temperature for a longer-than-average bake time, which gently cooks the protein molecules in the egg, instead of expanding them and then quickly shrinking them when they cool. This is why most cheesecake recipes call for a water bath, to regulate the temperature since water can't get hotter than 100 degrees Celsius. Plus who wants to deal with a pan of boiling water anyways?

Squirrel stew

2011-04-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

Okay. Now before you get all grossed out, I'd like to explain a few things. 1) People DO eat squirrel. 2) I have a long standing vendetta with squirrels. 3) According to the CDC they're not all that bad.

I first got this idea into my head after watching this episode of The Perennial Plate. Didn't look so gross. Shortly after, a friend mentioned to me that they saw an episode of Anthony Bourdain hunting and eating squirrel pot pie in the Ozarks. Sure, that guy eats some gnarly stuff, but heck he's still alive... so why not? Apparently it's a delicacy in the UK too? Watch out peoples, Heston Blumenthal might just open up The Fat Squirrel.

This vendetta I have towards these furry critters is deep-seeded back to my days of attempted gardening where the neighborhood squirrels would spite me by ravaging all my vegetables and throwing half-eaten figs on the ground. Nutty bastards.

I had a few people voice their concerns of my potentially consuming a rabid rat with good PR, but after doing some digging around, according to the CDC, they generally check out ok. In fact, you can only get rabies if an infected animal bites you. I highly doubt a rabid squirrel would come within 10 feet of someone with an air rifle. Interestingly enough, the most frequently reported cases of rodents with rabies are of groundhogs. So folks, I wouldn't be so quick as to pull Punxsutawney Phil from his burrow to ask him about Spring.

I've also heard the argument that squirrels are just too cute to kill. Then again, I think goats, pigs and chickens can be cute too and most people wouldn't bat an eye before chowing down on one of them. Also, no baby squirrels were harmed because baby-anything is just adorable (except for baby spiders), and not worth shooting because they're so small.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to skin and gut the little beast. Instead, I prepped a mirapoix and let the hindquarters stew for a couple hours. The verdict? Quite tasty actually. The meat was a bit nutty and stringy and I'd say it was a cross between rabbit and chicken. What I found really amusing is that most people thought the stew looked really good... before I told them what went in it.