whole grain burger buns

It must be some unwritten law of slapdash baking. After mutliple disappointing attempts to produce an acceptable (appropriate size, not too dense, mild flavor) homemade, whole grain, burger bun, I gave up and went back to buying them at the health food store. When I could get them. Which could have been yesterday, except I somehow overlooked that item on my list and came home without them. This was a problem, as I had thawed some ground bison and was looking forward to a burger for lunch today.

So, with a big sigh (and the idea of multi-tasking), I decided to throw together a dough last night that might (fingers crossed) supply both a small supply of burger buns and a pizza dough or two. I did not write down what I did. Because I gave up on doing that, where buns are concerned. Pizza dough, too, although that's more because even when it's "meh," it turns into pizza, and I'm happy.

So, that unwritten law I referred to has to do with the fact that THIS TIME, having given up on it months ago, and having not recorded what I did, I turned out a REALLY PRETTY GOOD burger bun. Fortunately (for me) I did use a measuring cup to scoop out the flour, and so have at least some idea of what I did. That may not help you, but here goes:

Slapdash Burger Buns

1 cup whole wheat bread flour

1 cup all purpose flour

2 cups "white" whole wheat flour

1-2 T gluten

1 tsp salt

Put all that in the bowl of your stand mixer, with the paddle thingie on, and mix on lowest speed to stir it all up.

1 T active dry yeast

1/2 C warm water

1 tsp honey

Dissolve the honey in the water, stir in the yeast, and let proof to make sure it gets good and bubbly.

While the yeast is proofing, whisk up (a fork will do) in a small bowl:

1 large egg

1/3 cup whole milk (that 1/3 cup is a guess)

a generous splorp of olive oil (2-4 T? maybe?)

Dump the proofed yeast-water and the milk-egg-oil into the mixer and run on lowish speed, adding in more warm water as needed. This is where it will help if you have some bread-baking experience, because I did not measure. Best guess: maybe another 1/2 cup?

"As needed" means until the dough comes together and gloms around the paddle, pulling away from the sides of the bowl in one mass. I know it when I see it, and hope you do, too. I'd have taken a picture for you if I had any idea that this batch would turn out well. Maybe. Truth is, I hate interrupting my cooking to take photos, which is just one of several reasons I'm a mediocre and sporadic food blogger.

Anyway, back to the dough. Once you've finessed the water content, switch over to the dough hook and run on medium speed until it's done: cool to the touch, firm and bouncy (even if sticky still), with nice gluten development. I wet my fingers with water and pull off a lump and stretch it to see how elastic it is. Beginners, if you are still with me, surely you've figured out this blog is not the best place to begin your bread-baking apprenticeship. The only way to learn when it's right is to make a lot of bread. There's no shortcut, although a good bread baking book, or a cooking class, could shave a few loaves off your learning curve.

I did an overnight-in-the-fridge proof. It puffed up gloriously and then fell by morning, which is fine for the OITF method. This morning I turned the dough out of the bowl, gently deflated, and cut into quarters. Two of the quarters were rolled into balls, pressed into disks, wrapped in plastic, and put in the freezer for future pizza dough use. The other two pieces I cut into thirds, also rolled into (six) balls, pressed into disks, and placed on a baking sheet, on parchment paper, and left to rise on the counter while I went downstairs to the workout room to earn some carb calories.

An hour later the buns had risen nicely, so I preheated the oven to 375 and baked them for 22 minutes. They cooled for about 10 minutes before I gave in and tore one in half to slather it with butter see how the inside looks. Perfectionists would have brushed the tops with something to make them shiny, but I didn't bother. Seeds of some kind would have been nice, but the only ones I could find in the spice drawer were of questionable vintage so I was cautious and left them off.

The verdict: a homemade, mostly wholegrain, burger bun I'll be happy to eat. The flavor is okay, not fantastic, but that's what I look for in a good bun. I want the burger to be the star of the show.

And, while I'm boasting about improvisational bread successes, here's a pic of a loaf I made a month or so ago. No recipe for this one either, although I did follow Peter Reinhart's method, which is a sure path to success even if my proportions and ingredients are subject to whimsy. This one started with a 6-grain cereal, includes some coarse-ground cornmeal I was trying to use up, and is 100% whole grain and organic, but other than that I don't remember details. I meant to take another pic of this to show off the very nice grain, but by the time I'd sliced and was eating it I'd forgotten. It was delicious:

Soursop Season

... is here, and I'm feeling intimidated. All that juice and pulp in the bowl is up to the "1-1/2 quart" line, and it's from just one fruit. The other bowl, on the right, is the skin (leathery and a bit brittle) and probably 80 or so seeds (hard, dark, the size and shape of of small almonds).

The reason I'm feeling intimidated is we've got another 2/3 of one in the fridge (I put a generous amount in my post-workout smoothie today, and barely made a dent in it), five ripe ones ready for attention, three more that will be ripe probably by tonight, and more on the tree.

Fortunately, evaluation of on-the-tree soursop goes something like this: not ready yet ... not ready yet ... not ready yet ... still not ready .... SPLAT! overripe and on the ground. Which means we won't have to deal with all of them.

I asked my yard guy if he had any advice on when they're ready to come off the tree, and he said, "about three days before they fall off." Thanks, that was helpful.

We plan to puree and freeze (in ice-cube trays) as much soursop as we can, because it is awesomely delicious in smoothies, which are a staple of our daily menu. It's also good frozen with banana, then run through the juicer, which produces a creaming, sweet, tangy delight that is remarkably like a rich icecream but without all that butterfat. Hmmm, I've also got some (purchased) blueberries and blackberries in the freezer, I think toss some of those in at least one batch.

First, though, I've got to make room in the freezer, which is already hosting a vast quantity of frozen bananas (slice 'em, freeze on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then store in a gallon size zip-lock baggie). And my icecube trays are still full of frozen lemon juice.

The truly amazing moment was about a month ago when, for an entire week, we completely ran out of frozen bananas. I never thought that would happen. But then another huge bunch ripened, so we're good for a while now.

P90X - "phase 1" results

No one is as surprised as I am that I've stuck with this "extreme home fitness" program through the 30 days of  "Phase 1." I am not naturally inclined toward anything extreme, but hubbie was filled with enthusiasm, so I figured I'd give it a try, dislike it intensely, and return to more girly workouts by the end of the first week. But turns out I like it.

Not that I've followed the program ("lean" version,) exactly. For one thing, I hated (hated!) the "Kenpo X" (kickboxing) workout. Really, completely, loathed every minute of it. I slogged through it once, distracting myself from the so-not-my-type-of-thing awfulness by pondering what I would need to be paid to keep it in the rotation. Conclusion: $125/workout, or $500-$600 a month. No generous benefactor has materialized, so I have replaced it in my rotation with the oldie-but-still-goodie original "Firm Total Body Workout" that's been kicking my butt since the mid 80s.

Two other workout schedule adjustments:

1) "Core synergistics" is okay, but relies far too much on push-up, plank, and chatturanga variations for me; past reconstructive surgery limits my ability to do much of certain upper-body moves, so I'm doing Jillian Michael's "30-Day Shred," also a proven butt-kicker, instead.

2) "Cardio X": a fine workout, but the tougher option, "Plyometrics," is more fun, so I'm doing that one instead. I might, possibly, by day 90, be fit enough to get through the entire Plyo routine; in the meantime, it's fun panting and stumbling through as much of it as I can.

Best pleasant surprises:
-- "Ab Ripper X" (tough, but more fun than endless crunches, and it works!)
-- "Plyometrics" (even though I'm so wimpy at it still)
-- "Yoga X": this I did not expect to like. Yoga, I figured, should be taught by yoga instructors. But whaddayaknow... it's a VERY good (tough!) power yoga routine. I hesitate to describe a yoga workout as "brutal" as that language is so un-yoga-y, but wow, does this one kick yoga butt.
-- "X Stretch": the best hour of stretching I have ever done. Not sure yet how I'm going to fit it in more frequently, but I want to, 'cause it feels so good.

RESULTS from 30 days of upping the workout intensity six days a week:
Weight:  2.5 pounds down; had hoped for 3-5, but 2.5 is okay given noticeable improvements in strength overall
Waist and abs: each 1" smaller
Upper arms: each 1/2" smaller, and noticeably firmer

I regret to say that hip and thigh measurements have not budged since day 1, but things are definitely firmer down there, though not yet smaller. I have hopes for slimmer results by the end of Phases 2 & 3.

That's all WITHOUT DIETING (!). The program comes with a nutrition and menu plan, but I'd rather chew nails than weigh all my food and track nutrient ratios and calories. Pleh. Been there, done that, and just don't want to. I have nudged my eating, in general, SLIGHTLY towards fewer carbs/fat and more protein, but haven't changed much: less cheese and chocolate, wine on weekends only, that's about it.

What have I been eating?
Breakfast (post workout): banana-berry smoothie with a little yogurt and a scoop of vanilla whey protein
Lunch: turkey or bison burger on a whole wheat bun, maybe a small salad on the side if I'm feeling virtuous
Snack: small apple and some tamari almonds or a spoonful of peanut butter
Dinner: chicken or fish (sauteed with a little olive oil and spices 'cause it's quick and easy that way); lots of steamed fresh organic veggies; brown rice or quinoa; salad

I have not blogged about any of that because,well, it's chicken or fish, veggies, a grain, a salad. Not the sort of thing I use (or record) a recipe for.

Desserts, although limited to Sunday night only, have not completely vanished from the menu. I've got a post or two coming up about that, but this one seems plenty long enough, so I'll stop here.

Bring on "Phase 2"!

Feeling tubby

The Cake Junkie is feeling tubby. With good reason because, let's face it, I am a little tubbier than I used to be. "A little" in this case being a slow but steady gain of 20-something pounds over the past 20 years, since I was in my early 30s and looking and feeling pretty darned good. You can call it Middle Aged Spread (MAS) if you want to, but it's still pudge and I don't like it.

I had a plan to get rid of it. A nice plan. An easy plan. A plan based on simple math: a half-pound of pudge reduction every week, for one year, would result in being 26 pounds lighter by the end of 2010. That's more than enough! I could hit my target by Columbus Day, easy. And only half a pound a week? Even factoring in a middle-aged metabolism that ought to be doable without too much sweat and deprivation, right? (The Cake Junkie doesn't mind a little sweat, but she prefers a moderate workout to an all-out effort, and who are we kidding: deprivation in the food department is not ever gonna happen.) I figured some mental attention to LOA principles and some mild improvements in the move-your-hiney arena and I'd be on my way. No diet required.

Then Mr. Wonderful filled some night-owl hours by channel-surfing through a glut of workout infomercials, and got majorly psyched to make 2010 the year he fulfills a lifetime dream of becoming "super fit."

So, while I'd been making my minimal-effort-required slim-down plans, Mr. W went ahead and ordered the P90X workout, which promises jaw-dropping body transformation in just 90 days. Now, this kind of high-intensity, push yourself to the max 6 days a week for an hour at a time workout program is not exactly what I had in mind when I decided to get serious about losing weight (slowly!) without going on a diet. So when Mr. Wonderful told me all about it and how excited he is to do it, I figured it would be his thing. He’d sweat and grunt and jump up and down, and I’d take a more leisurely path to a new me. 90 days? What’s your hurry? I just want to be slimmer by the end of the year.

The thing is, now that he’s so pumped up at the P90X idea, I have to admit that I’m kind of curious. Exercise is good. I'm not opposed to it. I do like to move my body some every day, and I do want to be more fit. It’s just that I’d planned to get there the long and lazy way, a teeny tiny bit at a time, over a long time. And I hadn't planned to ever aim for "super fit." Cake Junkie doesn't like to work out that hard, and besides, she's a girl, and she thinks six-pack abs on a girl are weird.

The Law of Attraction works in unexpected ways, however, and I’m unable to ignore the possibility that maybe my beloved hubbie was inspired (in part) to order P90X because it’s something that will be good for his beloved and slightly tubby wife, too.

So probably I ought to at least give it a try. When it gets here.

Good thing the parcel is still in transit, because no way am I starting on a workout program the moment my period arrived (hate the cramps, love the excuse to be lazy and eat chocolate for 48 guilt-free hours). Plus, I’m still working myself up to getting serious about maybe, possibly, doing a workout program with the letter X (for EXTREME!!) in it.

That's not a word that features prominently in my vocabulary. I'm more of an "easy-peasy" type, in all ways.

Herbed Spelt Popovers

These little lovelies are from the "Herbed Spelt Popovers" recipe in this book.

Don't know why I had popovers on the brain, but I did. But I wasn't at all convinced they are the kind of food item that can be duplicated using any kind of whole grain flour.

But apparently they can be. I actually followed the recipe almost entirely exactly. The only change I made was that it calls for either whole grain spelt flour or whole wheat pastry flour (and a small amount of AP). I'd planned ahead and put spelt flour on my shopping list, but when I got home from the health food store and reread the recipe I realized that no way was my white and fluffy spelt flour from the bulk bin "whole grain." So I mixed 3/4 cup each WW pastry and spelt flour and added 1/4 C AP and hoped for the best.

I also used whatever dried herbs I had on hand, and about 2 TB of pecorino-romano cheese. The batter was so thin I couldn't imagine I'd get anything other than eggy hocky-pucks from it. The recipe made exactly 3 cups of batter according to the marks on the side of my blender so I used a 1/4 cup measure to fill my buttered 12-muffin tin. Each "cup" was way more than the half-full recommended, which then had me worried that instead of remaining hocky pucks the batter would puff too quickly and I'd end up with baked-on and burnt popover batter all over the floor of my oven.

But my fears were needless. These puffed up gloriously, did not leak and overflow in the oven, and are delicious. Unfortunately, most of them de-puffed significantly as they cooled, so by the time I snapped this pic they were no longer at their most magnificent. I suspect this means they are slightly undercooked, and will bake them a few minutes longer next time. Fortunately, the yum factor is unaffected by deflation and once pulled open they perform admirably as what popovers of any kind really are, which is a delivery vehicle for butter.

We enjoyed these warm from the oven with soup for dinner on Friday night, and yesterday I used one cold from the fridge to make a chicken-avocado-sprout sandwich for lunch. Which was quite good, but the popover was not at its best cold. So for Saturday dinner I sliced a couple open and ran them through the toaster on a light setting. Yum again. There are still a couple left, and in a few minutes I'm going to make myself another chix-avo sandwich, but this time I'm going to toast the popover first. (A microwave oven would probably reheat them nicely, too, but then you'd be microwaving your food, which I don't do for reasons I'll maybe get into some other time and which will reveal my nutjob side.)

Seeing as how it's Sunday, which is "dessert night" in this house, after lunch I am going to make some kind of cupcake (carrot, maybe?) to hold up the leftover lemon frosting I took out of the freezer this morning.

And then I'm going to get serious about slimming down.

The Best Thing I Ate for Christmas

Hawaiian-Vanilla ice cream with Lemon-Ginger Sauce and crystallized ginger

No, I did not make the ice cream. I don’t do that. If I had an ice cream maker I might be tempted to use it, and then there would be way too much ice cream in the house. I do buy ice cream for special occasions, although I try to keep that indulgence to a few times a year.

This is Roselani Hawaiian Vanilla. It’s a beautiful creamy, almost ecru shade of ivory, amply speckled with vanilla bean and a luscious foil to any other flavor you might think to pair with it.

I thought “lemon” because the lemon tree is our yard is producing lemons the size of softballs. Seriously, some of them are huge. Here’s a quick quiz: which of these is the lemon and which is the grapefruit?

Yup, that's the lemon on the left. Freaky.

Sometime in early December I had made ae quick lemon syrup by juicing and zesting a few lemons and adding a roughly equal amount of light brown sugar and heating it all to a simmer on the stove. Yum, but runny and rather aggressively sweet-tart.

I used some to make lemon-pecan cookies (no photo of those: they were not the kind of holiday lovelies you think of as “Christmas Cookies”), using the syrup both to sweeten the dough and to brush on top before they went in the oven. Uh, no, no recipe either. They were a basic butter cookie, with a generous amount of ground pecans and some lemon zest added. I was not in a measuring or documenting mood, as so often happens in this kitchen.

The Lemon-Ginger Sauce came about because I was pondering what to make that would involve lemons and/or lemon syrup, and while browsing through my dessert cookbooks was advised by Sherry Yard, in “The Secrets of Baking” that a lemon sauce can be made by thinning lemon curd with simple syrup. Aha.

I figured I could use my lemon syrup to make a thin curd, by whisking in some eggs and cooking over low heat to around 170 degrees. I started with about a cup of the syrup, and added one whole egg and one yolk, and -- here’s where the true inspiration came in -- about a tablespoon of fresh ginger juice (made by grating a large piece of very fresh and moist gingerroot and pressing the results through a fine sieve). When the sauce was slightly thickened and to temp, I whisked in about a tablespoon and a half of butter.

OMG, this stuff is delicious! And it packs a very gingery punch. The sweet, cool, smooth, creamy vanilla ice cream is awesomely perfect with it. Add some diced crystallized ginger on top and yum.

We had this for Christmas Eve dessert. I’d thought maybe I would use the remaining sauce to make some kind of lemony-gingery mousse (reheat with another egg yolk or two, add some gelatin, fold in whipped egg whites and whipped cream... yes, a day will come when I will need to make that particular vision a reality) but the ice cream combo was so delicious we simply repeated it the next day.

If you want to try making something like this, start with a basic lemon curd recipe, cut the egg quantity in half, and the butter to very little, use light-brown sugar instead of plain old white, and add a generous amount of fresh ginger juice. It might not turn out exactly the same as mine, but I can promise you it will be delicious.

Lemon Layer Cake

We had a birthday in the house this week, and birthdays call for layer cake. I made this one with fresh lemons from the tree in our yard.

For the cake layers I made the Whole Wheat Genoise from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. The only change I made to the recipe was to blend a about 2 TBSP of fresh lemon zest with the melted butter before adding that to the cake. This recipe made a generous amount of batter. So generous it was almost too much for my mixer bowl. If I make this again (and I probably will) I'll adjust the quantity downward by about 20-25%. Other future changes include adding lemon extract, which I would have used  had I remembered to buy some). With just lemon zest the citrus flavor of the layers was not as pronounced as I would have liked.

This genoise is the basis for Daffodil Cake on page 404 of the cookbook. I glanced at that recipe but planned to use other sources for the lemon filling and buttercream parts, so didn't study the details. Now I wish I'd read the bit where they recommend soaking each cake layer with 1/4 cup of citrus syrup, which seems like a lot. I thought I'd drenched generously, but probably only used at most half that amount per layer and yes, the final result is a little dry. Not a problem if the cake is served with lots of icecream, but next time around I'll drench more thoroughly.

Overall, I'm impressed by any genoise that can handle 1-3/4 C of whole wheat flour, even if it's ww pastry flour. This did turn out well, and managed to not have the overly eggy flavor of the last genoise I made. It is a little denser than a white flour genoise: it does not slice as cleanly and should be flavored more aggressively.

I cooked the genoise in two 8" round pans (rather than the three pans the recipe calls for), so they came out about 2" thick each. I then sliced each into two layers, to make four total.

For between-layer filling I started with a half recipe of Master Lemon Curd from this reliable book (made a couple of days ahead).

I did not bother to strain the curd as recommended, because I felt leaving the little bits of lemon zest in there would improve the flavor and I knew no one eating the cake would notice or object to the zesty bits. The lemony-ness of the curd improved noticeably from the make-ahead date to the time the cake was assembled, so advance prep is not only convenient, it resulted in a better flavor, too.

When I was ready to fill and frost the layers I turned the lemon curd into a mousse by first soaking 1 tsp of powdered gelatin in 2T of lemon juice mixed with water. The next step with gelatin (after soaking in cold liquid) is to heat and dissolve, which I accomplished by pouring in a little bit of the hot lemon syrup I boiled up for the Italian Meringue Buttercream frosting (more on that, below). I stirred the warmed gelatin into the lemon curd, then used a whisk to fold in some of the (extra) meringue I'd made for the frosting. Mousse typically also includes a fair amount of whipped cream, but I left that out as unnecessary excess and well over the line into just-too-much-more-work land. I chilled the mousse until it had started to set, then spread some over each of three cake layers and chilled the layers until the mousse was fully set before assembling the final cake.

This lemon mouse made a not-too-heavy but very stable cake filling that did not squish out the sides even under the weight of multiple whole wheat genoise layers. I will definitely use it again, and look forward to experimenting with other flavors.

The final piece of this effort was a lemon frosting which was close to a disaster. I have not attempted a classic Italian merinque buttercream in many years and thought I'd give it a go. As mentioned above, I made extra (2 add'l egg whites) of the meringue so I could use some for the lemon filling. The meringue turned out perfectly! I've used my stand mixer to whip egg whites before, but this was the first time I'd done a hot sugar syrup meringue with it, and the results were awesome, huge, voluminos peaks of fluffy but exceptionally stable sweet lemony whiteness.

Unfortunately, that's where the success ended. Adding the butter sort of seemed to go okay: the whites did not curdle, and remained a smooth emulsion, but the loss of volume seemed way beyond what it should have been, and the result, while not the "soupy" texture threatened by too-soft butter, was not stiff enough to frost with. So I stuck it in the fridge to chill up a bit.

In hindsight, I can see that's where I went wrong. I should have put the bowl of not-stiff-enough into an icewater bath while continuing to beat with my hand mixer as it firmed up. Left to its own devices in the fridge a horrible separation of liquid into the bottom of the bowl occured. This appeared to be way, way, way beyond the "curdled" effect that buttercream troubleshooting tips say can be saved, and I was running out of patience, so I drained off the liquid and beat in another stick of butter and some confectioner's sugar.

At that point it was still a bit soft but I could see it would be way too much quantity by the time I got it to a spreadable consistency, so I removed half of what was in the bowl to a freezer container for some future use. To the remaining portion I mixed in a quickie white chocolate ganache I made by melting a bag of white choc chips in some heavy cream. I have great faith in the firm-up potential of ganache and it did chill up beautifully. The final result -- half failed lemon buttercream and half white choc ganache -- handled extremely well, did not sag or droop or end up in a pool on the cake platter, and tasted divine, with an exceptionally smooth texture and a lovely subtle flavor hinting of vanilla, white chocolate (which can be too cloying on its own), and lemon with no one element dominating. Too bad this exact frosting will never be duplicated, as it is well worth eating again and again, but that's what usually happens when I cook.

Although I will do some things differently next time I make a lemon layer cake (which will not be for a good long while, layer cakes being way too much work for anything other than special occasions, although they can be a fun way to make a mess of the kitchen), this was a delicious cake and we ate a lot of it. Leftovers have been divvied up into more reasonable portions and frozen for future cake night indulgence.

Farewell, my toasty friend

My toaster, a Cuisinart model from the late 1980s, died yesterday. I am very sad. And guilty: I suspect I killed it when I turned it downside up over the trash bin and shook it to get the crumbs out. I'm so sorry...

This toaster served me well for many, many years. About twenty of 'em, in fact. I bought it at the flagship Macy's in NYC (I lived in Brooklyn then), and I think I paid $39 for it, which was a lot for a basic toaster in those days but works out to only half a penny per day.

The plastic knob on the lever came off several years ago, but the lever still worked, so we kept using it. And the chrome finish, as you can see, has been no match for the humid ocean air here in Hilo. Even the shiniest bits are no longer very shiny. (Ignore, please, the streaks of flour dusting Hercules, perched to the left; I'm in the midst of making bread and haven't cleaned up yet.)

My husband has been dropping new toaster hints for some time now, but the grungier and more pathetic-looking this one got, the more loyal to it I became. It worked so well still, and I felt compelled to reward its stalwart service with continued use and appreciation.

But the dreaded day has finally come, and we have replaced it. Our new toaster is a KitchenAid, sleek and black and shiny, and it works fine, but I'm having a hard time warming up to it. It's from Macy's, too (the Hilo outpost, which we're glad to have in town, but which is much, much, smaller than the Herald Square store, with only three toaster models to choose from). I paid $50 dollars for this one (sale price). I wonder if I'll get 20 years of use from it....

Pineapple-Mango Upside Down Cake

I was all set to make an apple dessert the other day. But apples keep for close to forever in the fridge, whereas the white pineapple and a lone mango in my fruit dish were aging quickly and needed to be put to use soon or end up in the trash.

So I made a Pineapple-Mango Upsidedown Cake instead. As you can see, it's the kind of "cake" that is at its best spooned into a bowl and topped with the creamy dairy product of your choice. My husband ate his from a plate, with a fork, and without the topping, but I think he was missing out. I've tagged this post as both "breakfast" and "dessert" because the result has performed delectably in both functions.

There's no precise recipe for this, as I was in my typical slapdash baking mood, and didn't bother to measure anything. For those who are curious, here's my best guess at what I did:

1) Lavishly buttered a 9x13 baking dish.

2) Cut up approx. 4 cups combined fresh mango and pineapple, in roughly 1" pieces, which was extremely juicy so I set it in a strainer over a bowl to catch the juice. Went off to do something else for about 20 minutes, then put the drained fruit in the baking dish and sprinkled with two handfuls of macadamia nut pieces.

3) Added the reserved juice (1/3 C?) to some light brown sugar mixed with lemon juice and zest (which was loitering in the fridge as an uncooked syrup waiting for me to do something interesting with it; quantity is anyone's guess), and brought it all to a boil in a small saucepan to reduce for a few minutes. Don't ask me how long; I didn't time it. Stirred in about a tablespoon of unsalted butter and set it aside to cool slightly.

4) Cracked three eggs into the bowl of my stand mixer, added a splash of vanilla extract, and whipped on high with the whisk attachment, while drizzling in most of the sugar-juice syrupy stuff (still warm, but not so hot it would cook the eggs on contact). Let Hercules (my mixer) run for a few minutes, and drizzled the remaining syrup (a few TB) over the fruit.

5) When eggs were very light and foamy (though not greatly increased in volume, probably because the fruit syrup had a lot more moisture in it than straight sugar would have), I added about 3/4 C ww pastry flour and tapped in some baking powder straight from the cannister.

6) Ran the machine on medium briefly to mix it all up, then poured the batter over the fruit and baked at 360 for 40 minutes, until a lovely brown on top.

Experienced cooks will recognize this as a very haphazard sponge cake. The result was a very light, not too sweet cake with a delicate fruity aroma/flavor. The fruit was nicely cooked without disintegrating, and the whole thing was not overly juicy or mushy. I'll definitely take this approach again, although next time I might reduce the fruit syrup a bit more before adding to the eggs.

I doubt this would win any cooking awards, but for a slapdash effort it turned out extremely well. We've been enjoying it both as dessert and breakfast, with plain yogurt. It's the kind of dessert that is awesome warm from the oven with vanilla icecream, but that's not the sort of thing I keep in the house.

There's a reason...

... I don't trust cake recipes that call for adding a whole lot of hot water at the end. I've tried a few of these, and although Taraka's birthday cake turned out well it did lead to some improvisations. And the last two times I've made a cupcake version they've turned out like this:

(These are from about a month ago. I found the photo in the camera today.)

Flavor is good, hard to go wrong with dense dark chocolate. But the sag factor is considerable. I'm willing to concede that I'm doing something wrong, but don't know for sure what it is: wrong oven temp, too short a bake time, something. But they're DONE, not underdone, and still, the collapse as they cool.

Not that it's a total disaster, because what's a cupcake without frosting, and with these, you get a LOT of frosting, because that nice big dimple holds a lot.

I'm not going to make them again, though. I wouldn't have made this second batch if I'd remembered I'd been disappointed the first time. Clearly I'd been so perturbed I'd forgotten to make a note on the recipe page to try another version instead, next time. This time I wrote that down.

Lots of bread

Fresh from the oven:

1) a (mostly) whole wheat sandwich loaf

2) a few dinner rolls because I could tell I'd made too much dough for my one loaf pan. The rolls will be delish with the leftover chicken soup we're having for dinner tonight.

3) an herb foccaccia, which is probably no more than 60% whole wheat, and which puffed up more than expected, so is probably nice and fluffy inside for those of us accustomed to eating more earnestly whole-grainy bread products.

Still rising: the other half of what became foccaccia, without the herbs and extra olive oil, which I'm hoping will turn into burger buns that don't so closely resemble hocky pucks as the 100% whole wheat ones I've made in the past. This is my last attempt at burger buns. If they don't turn out right I'll stick with store-bought. "Right" in this case means sufficiently whole-wheaty that we're willing to eat them, but with a subtle enough character they don't overwhelm whatever burger-shaped food product ends up between their halves. I like whole wheat buns, but they should be a background player, not the most prominent flavor in each bite.

There's no recipe for any of these. I bake bread two or three times a month following the "just wing it" plan, although I do use the "start the day before" two-part method from this awesome book. This time, as usual, I used both whole wheat flour and a generous amount of somewhat cooked (I poured boiling water over 'em and let it sit for an hour) rolled oats and oatbran, and some millet, in the "sponge."

The not-100%-whole-wheat aspect of today's baking came about because I do not have any "instant rise" bread yeast, only the "active dry" stuff that needs to be proofed in warm water. I don't mind the proofing, but I've learned from experience that the extra water throws off the moisture content of the dough, requiring the addition of significant amounts of additional flour, which ruins the wonderfulness of the "start the day before" method, which works better the less flour you add on day 2.

So, I thought I'd try using AP flour to balance out the wet-dry ratio when I did the final mixing today, and see how that worked. Additional water for proofing the yeast, plus quite a bit of AP flour to get to a dough (vs. a glommy, sticky, glooey mess) means I got a LOT of bread baked today.

It was, of course, way too much for Hercules (as I've taken to calling my KitchenAid stand mixer), so I started with half each of the "sponge" and "biga" plus some yeast/water, some olive oil and molasses, and about a half cup of sunflower seeds.

The other half of the starters I blended up with more yeast/water, a spoonful of brown sugar, several tablespoons of olive oil, and two eggs. I mixed that all up and divided in two before adding in any of the AP flour. I used one part for the foccaccia, adding some "pasta seasoning". The other will be the burger buns. I stuck that part in the fridge for a bit so I could get things in the oven in batched, so it's just rising now. I'd better finish this post up, too, 'cause I think the first rise is probably done...

Final notes on the foccaccia: pressed out a rough rectangle of dough and lay it in a liberally-buttered 9x13 pan, poked all over with a fork, then brushed the top with some olive oil mixed with a bit of sea salt, about 1/2 tsp of dried chipotle powder, and a large pinch of dried thyme. A quick grind of fresh pepper over all and into the oven it went.

I just ate a piece off one end, and it's sublimely delicious. I kindof hate to say that, being the 100% whole grain believer that I am, but really, with all that AP flour in there it's light and yummy.

Picnic Food

I come from a family of picnickers, so getting in the car for a day trip means "picnic" to me. Here's what we took to Volcanoes National Park on Saturday:
~ egg salad on whole wheat
~ a half-bottle of organic lemonade, plus some herbal iced tea (hence the odd color)
~ "Ginger-Os" sandwich cookies
~ tamari almonds (more a snack than lunch, our go-to emergency provisions for any excursion, along with the next item...)
~ dark chocolate (can't leave home, or stay home for that matter, without it)
~ carrot sticks (an homage to my Mom, but turns out we really did eat most of them)

Missing from the photo is a small tupperware container of fresh pineapple chunks and a couple of forks. Apples are my picnic fruit of choice, but we're out of those.

We had a lovely afternoon at the volcano, didn't hike as much as planned due to windy and drizzly conditions at the main crater (forecast was for clear skies and 20% chance of rain, clearly a joke), so we drove down Chain of Craters Road a bit to get out from under the clouds. Ate our picnic perched on a lava-stone wall around an old, small crater now grown up with trees. Not one of the more spectacular sites in the park, but a pleasant spot for an alfresco lunch. As usual, I forgot to take any photos. I did remember to at least bring the camera with us, though, so that's a step in the right direction.

Too many bananas

We're on our second huge bunch of bananas in a month all ripening at the same time. When I say "bunch" BTW, I don't mean a "hand" of 6-8 bananas, like you might purchase at the grocery store. I mean a whole banana plant's bounty, many hands on a stem, in the neighborhood of probably 30 pounds or so of fruit, 60-80 bananas at a time.

There's only one thing to do: freeze 'em. I've been peeling and cutting up bananas onto parchment-paper lined cookie sheets for 3 days now.

Once the banana chunks are frozen I peel them off the paper and put them in large ziplock bags, back in the freezer. Freezing them on a sheet first, like this, may seem an unnecessary step, but it's not. If you just cut up your bananas and put a whole lot of them in a ziplock bag in the freezer, they'll freeze up in a one big lump. Good luck prying off a handful to put in the blender. Pre-freezing is easier in the long run. The chunks do still cohere a little bit, but not so much you can't retrieve however many you might want.

These will keep us in smoothies for a good long time. Fortunately, we consume a lot of smoothies around here. I add some frozen berries, a scoop of protein powder, and some plain yogurt (and water) to the bananas in mine. If I'm feeling a need to be ultra-healthy I add some ground flax seeds, too, but just as often I forget.

Felicia update

I'm pleased to report that we have enjoyed my favorite kind of weather: much ado about hardly anything. Felicia has faded to a depression and moved far enough to the northwest that Hilo is by now out of range of anything but the barest fringe of the edge of a rain band. I confess I enjoy all the drama of watching severe weather approach, but am greatly relieved when nothing comes of it.

Except a kitchen full of baked goods: I can now also report that Apples Felicia are delicious, and an easy alternative to pie. Some bits of the crust were a bit crunchier than necessary, but the flavor is excellent, it was not too dry, and leftovers for breakfast, with a hefty dollop of plain yogurt, are awesome, and worth eating two days in a row as I just have.

I now have an embarrassing supply of oatmeal cookies on hand as well, and am faced with deciding how many of them I dare leave accessible, and how many would be best put into the back of the freezer with hopes that I will forget they are there.

It's a good thing I have this workout on DVD, because I need to burn some extra calories today:

Hurricane Cookies

Here in Hilo we've been keeping a wary eye on Hurricane Felicia* as she's approached from the east. Yesterday she was headed straight for my house:

* now Tropical Storm Felicia, I'm happy to report, and expected to weaken further before she arrives tomorrow.

Hurricane preparedness has been on my mind. And sure, stocking up on "non-perishables" is a fine idea if you think the power will be out for a week, but why not also bake up something that will keep at room temperature for several days? Like, say, oatmeal cookies.

I made a double batch, following the "Wholesome Oatmeal Raisin Cookies" recipe in Moosewood Restaurant New Classics fairly closely* without any additions, then split it in two and added generous amounts of raisins and walnuts to one bowl, and heaps of macadamia nuts, unsweetened shredded coconut, and white chocolate chips to the other.

* I used half whole wheat pastry flour, cut the sugar down slightly, and only used a teeny bit of cinnamon.

A double recipe plus the good stuff made about 4 dozen 3" cookies. They turned out great. These are the raisin-walnuts ones:

And these are the white chocolate-coconut-macadamia nut ones:

Both are delicious, chewy in the middle, crisp around the edges, lacy and chunky at the same time. I may have to pretend there's serious weather brewing around here more often.

TIP: these are FRAGILE when they first come out of the oven, although they firm up a bit as they cool. Bake on parchment paper so you can slide the paper off the pan and onto a cooling rack, rather than trying to remove the cookies individually from the pan.

Apples Felicia

I've had an apple dessert in mind all week. With hurricane baking already going on, today seemed like a good time to make one.


After some cookbook browsing, I decided to make something like the apple variation suggested for "Lauren's Peach Crumb Cake" from A Piece of Cake. I'm calling it "Apples Felicia" in honor of this week's weather obsession.

This is basically a shortbread crust and crumb topping with sweetened fruit in between. If you ask me, it's a lot closer to a pie than a cake. I'm making mine in an 8" square pyrex dish, 'cause I didn't feel like messing with the recommended springform pan, and my deep dish pie plate is in the dishwasher (I baked a round bread loaf in it, not a pie, or I wouldn't be making this dessert today).


I made my usual tweaks to the recipe, using 1/3 whole wheat pastry flour instead of all AP, and cutting way back on the cinnamon. Really, it's such an aggressive spice, a TEENY bit adds a nice edge to the flavor without overwhelming all the other ingredients. To make the base, mix up flour and sugar and then cut in butter until sandy, which I did by pulsing it all in the Cuisinart. Remove 3/4 cup to a small bowl and stir in your preferred quantity of cinnamon, and reserve that bit for the topping. The rest gets pressed into your (lavishly buttered) baking dish.

Fill with sweetened fruit and some small tapioca pearls for gel factor. I used three Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced into 1" pieces (almost 5 cups total), 1/3 cup light brown sugar, 2 T lemon juice and 2 T of water, and 4 T of tapioca flour (which is what I have, no pearls in the pantry today).

Sprinkle the crumb topping on top of the fruit. I was going to do so when my inner health nut spoke up and suggested adding rolled oats. So I put the reserved topping back in the food processor, added 1/2 C oats, and pulsed a few more times. One of the benefits of not being a "clean up as you go" cook is that the Cuisinart bowl was right at hand, rather than in the sink and full of soapy water. I'm glad I added the oats, because I'm not convinced the original topping amount would have been ample for the size of my pan.

Bake low in the oven at 400 until done. I think this took about 45 minutes:


We're having this after dinner tonight, so I can't tell you yet if it's any good, but it sure smelled amazing coming out of the oven.

It never did get more than slightly bubbly, though, and the apples didn't cook down as much as expected, but I didn't want to leave it in the oven any longer because the edges were getting too brown. I suspect the bottom crust absorbed a lot of the moisture, and -- judging by the quantity of steam that came out of the oven when I opened the door -- the crumb topping isn't doing as much as a regular pie crust would to keep moisture in where the fruit is.

Even if it's a little dry, though, I'm sure Apples Felicia will be delicious: it's a shortbread-y base, with sugary baked apples and a sweet crumb topping, what's not to like? A good dollop of yogurt on top will add any necessary additional moisture (so would vanilla ice cream, but plain old yogurt is what's in my fridge).

This was so much easier to throw together than a traditional pie that unless it's truly awful (and how could it be?), I am already thinking of making it again. When I do, I'm going to add a cup or two of frozen blueberries or raspberries, which I think will produce a better, blubblier, center.

Banana-Pineapple Muffins

Our new house has fruit trees in the yard, hooray. Here's DH picking soursop. They're too big for our pole-picker, so he figured he should climb up there after them:


But seriously, how many bananas and soursop can two people eat? If these all ripen at once we're in trouble


I already had too many yellow ones on the counter. This was handled by making banana-pineapple muffins.


Loosely based on my TNT (tried and true) Banana Cake. We had some not-so-fresh fresh pineapple in the fridge, so I added about 2 cups of that, then cut way back on the liquid ingredients, used only about 1/4 cup safflower oil for fat, and cut sugar in half (figuring bananas and pineapple are both sweet).

The muffins turned out fine, but not quite worth making again, so I'm not posting a detailed recipe. You can taste both fruits in good balance, but with so little fat and sugar they're kindawimpy. Some chopped pecans would have been a good addition, but I didn't have any on hand. I've been eating these cut in half and smeared with cream cheese, because otherwise even two of them just don't add up to breakfast.

another move

I knew as soon as I knew we were moving (again) that May would be consumed by planning and packing, June by moving, outcleaning, and unpacking, and that July would be a mad scramble to catch up on everything that got pushed to the back burner during May and June because moving is such a flippin' time-and-energy eater.

I'm pleasantly surprised that, as we edge into the end of July, I'm on the verge of feeling caught up. Yay.

And double, triple, quadruple "yay" that finally we are in a house that we love and want to stay in forever. Don't know how or when we'll be in a position to buy it (for now, we're renting) but that's the plan.

There are so many "best parts" of this house, but one is the kitchen. Bright, spacious, incredibly functional, plenty of storage and counterspace for all of our many appliances. After the horrible kitchen in the previous house -- dark, poor use of space, horrible spidery musty cabinets I couldn't bear to put my dishes in (note to owner: good appliances alone do not make a decent kitchen!) -- it is such a joy to be in this one.

I haven't done much creative cooking lately (lots of the same old, same old meals around here), but have a few items to share, coming up.

Lilikoi Cupcakes

I wasn't sure, until it had defrosted, whether that container of deep orange something from the freezer was tangerine or lilikoi (passionfruit), but it was the latter: cupcakes seemed like the perfect thing to make from it. I'm especially happy with the frosting, which is a completely natural (no food coloring needed!) beautiful yellow, with a very intense tart-sweet lilikoi flavor. I might top it someday, but right now I think it's the best frosting I've ever made.

LILIKOI CUPCAKES

(makes 1 dozen; preheat oven to 350)

1 C whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 C all purpose flour

2 T cornstarch

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 stick unsalted butter (soft)

3/4 C light brown sugar

3 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 C lilikoi juice

Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside. In bowl of stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Add half the flour mixture and blend on low (or by hand) just until mixed in. Add the lilikoi juice and vanilla and mix in. Add the rest of the flour and blend just until mixed.

Spoon into prepared muffin tins (I used fluted paper liners) and bake for 22-25 minutes, or until done (tops should be lightly browned).

LILIKOI FROSTING

1/2 C lilikoi juice

1/4 C light brown sugar

1-1/2 sticks (12 T) unsalted butter, soft

2 T heavy cream

2-1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

Mix the lilikoi juice and brown sugar together in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil, stirring frequently, until syrupy. (I don't have a candy thermometer, so had to guess when it was done enough -- a drop into ice water just held together rather than dissolving, probably not quite to "soft ball" stage.) Set aside to cool to room temp.

In bowl of stand mixer, with paddle attachment, beat butter and 1 C of the confectioner's sugar until well blended. Mix in the cream and another C of the sugar.

Very slowly, just a little bit at a time, pour the lilikoi syrup into the butter/sugar mix, with the mixer running. Take your time with this, especially if the syrup is still a bit warm: you don't want to melt the butter. When all the syrup has been incorporated, add the rest of the confectioner's sugar and blend in.

This frosting will be very soft, but the high butter content means it gets quite stiff when cold. Refrigerate briefly if it seems too runny to work with (mine was fine at room temp), but don't overchill or it will not be spreadable.

BTW: Both the cupcake and frosting recipes use light brown sugar 'cause I don't have any white sugar in the house at the moment. I think it adds a nice richness to the flavor, but you could substitute white sugar if that's what you've got.

Two duds in a row

I must be losing my touch: two duds in a row. The first was an attempt to create something called "Cinnamon Caramel Bundt Cake." I made up the name for a treat to be consumed by characters in my novel in progress. Future plans include posting recipes for foods from the book on an author website someday--assuming I get a publishing deal and create a website--and I've begun the mess-around-in-the-kitchen stage.

CCBC was supposed to be a pound-cakey kind of a thing, with some brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans layered in. Don't know what I did wrong, but for starters using a half-recipe seems to be a terrible idea with the KitchenAid mixer. I think it's just too small a quantity to process well, and the batter gets overworked. It's also possible that my baking powder has lost its umph. It's not near the expiration date yet, but the tin has been open for a while. The cake is okay -- hard to go wrong with butter, brown sugar, eggs, and flour -- but the flavor's a bit flat and the cake is, too. Hasn't stopped me from enjoying some with my coffee in the morning, but it's nothing to be proud of.

The pumpkin cake turned out a little better, but also didn't rise well , which lends credence to the wimpy baking powder theory. I followed my recent pumpkin muffin recipe, omitting the raisins and struedel topping and -- where I went wrong -- tossed in some no-longer-all-that-fresh pineapple that was in the fridge. Which threw the moisture ratio way off. So, that one's a little damp and dense. Tasty, and good for breakfast (pumpkin, organic eggs, whole wheat pastry flour, oat bran, yogurt, pecans, unsweetened coconut, pineapple... the only not very healthy thing about it is the light brown sugar). But a long way from a baking triumph.

The nice thing about baking is that so long as you don't mess up something truly crucial (like confusing salt for sugar), even the duds are edible.

I think I'll give up on the CCBC, though. It's occurred to me that I could hold a reader contest and get other bakers to send in their recipes, and pick the best one to post on my future author website. That's the mark of a master, right? To get someone else to do the work?