I Scream. Strawberry.

My new ice cream maker arrived yesterday. I hauled the thirty-three pound monstrosity from campus to my apartment, and this morning my arms are incredibly sore O.o

I was worried it was a frivolous purchase. Maybe it was, but this ice cream definitely soothed my doubts some. It's strawberry ice cream from Emily Lucchetti's A Passion for Ice Cream. The recipe was so simple, and the results were fabulous.

I also figured out why I had some problems with the cocoa nib ice cream:

1) I didn't strain the base when it grew a skin on top of it, which resulted in a few funky bites that'd have little bits sticking to the spoon.

2) I churned it too long.

Someone at work told me this cuisinart automatically stops when it is done. I don't think this is true: the machine stops turning when the ice cream is too thick for the churning arm to operate properly. This is often after close to an hour of churning.

The ice cream will seem thick, but when you freeze it it will be too airy/icy. I suggest taking the ice cream out of the machine while it is still the consistency of a loose soft serve, then letting it harden in the fridge.

Almond Sticks with Cocoa Nibs

This week, i've been drawn to new recipes rather than old favorites. These almond dunking cookies are the fourth recipe Alice Medrich recipe i've baked in the past few days. I love cookies that are very convenient for dipping in a tall glass of milk.

Almond Sticks with Cocoa Nibs
adapted from Alice Medrich's Bittersweet.
3/4 cup whole blanched almonds
1 cup+ 2 T all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 T unsalted butter, cut into chunks
2 T water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp pure almond extract
1/4 cup cocoa nibs

Combine the almonds, flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor and pulse until it is a fine meal. Add the butter and pulse until the dough looks crumbly. Combine the water, vanilla, and almond extract and add it to the bowl, pulsing until it just looks damp. Add the cocoa nibs and pulse until evenly distributed.

On a big sheet of foil, press the dough into a 6x9 in rectangle that's 1/2 inch thick. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight. Preheat the oven to 350. Using a long, sharp knife, cut 3/8 in thick slices and place them on parchment lined cookie sheets, about 1 inch apart. Bake 12-14 minutes, until golden at the edges.

Cocoa Nib Ice Cream

It looks suspiciously like vanilla, but one bite into this ice cream dispels your assumptions. It tastes a bit like chocolate, but not quite. It's a hint of chocolate that reminds me of malted chocolate milkshakes, mild cocoa powder, and something I can't quite put my finger on.

It is damn delicious.

Cocoa Nib Ice Cream
adapted from Alice Medrich's Bittersweet.

1.5 cups heavy cream
1.5 cups whole milk
1/4 cup cocoa nibs, finely chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt

Bring the cream, milk, nibs, sugar and salt to a boil over medium heat. Remove from the heat, cover, and let steep for 20 minutes. Pour the cream mixture through a fine strainer into a bowl. Discard the nibs. Refrigerate, covered, until chilled. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions.

Local Fauna Loves Cuisine...

I live on the second floor of an apartment building. Sometimes i'll leave a tied up bag of garbage on the porch before I leave for the afternoon, thinking i'll carry it downstairs to the dumpster on my way out.

Yesterday, I attempted Dorie Greenspan's Cream Puff Ring and failed miserably. It collapsed into a soggy mess shortly after coming out of the oven. I threw the whole thing away. Eventually, I put the garbage outside.

Later, I return to my apartment and find a squirrel scrabbling up the brick near the stairs. Glancing at the garbage, I realized that not only has he ripped the bag apart, he has picked out -only- the remenants of the cream puff.

The squirrel didn't bother touching anything else.

Candied Ginger Cake.

This is a lovely recipe from Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2. It turned out much better than I expected it to! I will post the recipe after class.

New Job, New Observations.

I finished my first week as an assistant pastry chef at one of my favorite local cafes. Baking for a restaurant is very different from baking at home. This particular position is also very different from the other foodservice jobs i've worked.

There are little things you just don't know when you haven't worked in a restaurant or attended culinary school. Here are a few things i've learned this week (simple and obvious as they may seem):

1. Shoes are extremely important.
I didn't have non-slip shoes, and the floors in the kitchen are really slick. My new shoes are much more comfortable, and they make me much more confident on my feet.

2. No matter how professional the front of the house seems, the kitchen can be anything.
My coworkers are quirky and have plenty of crazy stories. Enough said.

3. There is a reason people wear chef jackets and aprons.
Man...I really need one of the above. I had to do laundry today because I didn't have any more clothes that were not spotted with chocolate and flour.

4. You need math skills.
I knew i'd need math, but I do a heck of a lot more math at work than I anticipated.

Right now I work four days a week from 5pm-11:45pm. We work after the cafe is closed, and I like it. The atmosphere is relaxed and non-hurried, and I really love the people I work with. We work hard, but we listen to good music and take occasional breaks for salad or dinner.

My chefs liked the Mozart cake so much we put it on the menu!

Anyway, I -LOVE- my job. It's fantastic. I am starting to toy with the idea of trying to make pastry a career...

Playing with Garnish.

My chefs liked the Mozart cake so much that we're putting it on the menu with some minor structural tweakage. The head pastry chef told me to think about a garnish or accompaniment, so at home I practiced making piped chocolate garnishes and caramel coated fruits and nuts.

At some point I got a little bored and fidgety. Somehow that lead to making strange caramel covered hazelnut alien guys.

Mocha-Hazelnut Roulade.

I thought my roulade was smiling at me.

This is another recipe from Chocolate Holidays by Alice Medrich. The souffle cake base is wonderfully moist and studded with just noticeable bits of hazelnut. The filling is a sinfully delicate espresso flavored whipped cream. I picked this recipe because i've never made a jelly roll, and i'm a sucker for anything flavored with coffee and hazelnut.

Baking is very relaxing to me, and I find it very theraputic/stress relieving. Since I was very small, i've needed time alone to recharge.

Sometimes between ages three and five i'd get upset and tell my mother "I just need to be alone with my animals." I would shut myself in my room and sit on my animal-covered bed until I felt better.

Now that i'm older, i'm more likely to bake, work out, read, or take a short walk. It gives me time to process and recover.

Chocolate Hazelnut Roulade
(paraphrased.)

Cake:
1/4 cups hazelnuts, toasted and cooled, skins rubbed off
2 tbsp all purpose flour
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
8 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 eggs, separated
3/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
2-3 tbsp dutch process cocoa powder

Filling
1 cup heavy cream, cold
2 tsp instant espresso powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1.5-2 tbsp sugar

Equipment:
16x12 or 11x17 jelly roll pan, lined with parchment or foil

Preheat the oven to 350.

Finely grind the nuts and flour in a food processor. Set aside.

Melt the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler or a microwave. Stir until smooth and melted.

In a large bowl, whip the egg yolks and 1/2 cup sugar until pale and thick. Stir in the chocolate mixture.

In a seperate bowl, whip the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually add the remaining 1/4 cup sugar until stiff but not dry.Fold 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate along with all the hazelnut/flour mix. Fold in the remaining egg whites. Spread into the prepared pan and bake 12-15 minutes until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs. Cool the cake completely on a rack, in the pan.

Dust some of the cocoa on a 16inch sheet of foil. Upend the cooled cake onto the foil and peel off the parchment.

To make the filling, whip the cream, vanilla, and espresso powder until it starts to thicken. Gradually add the sugar and beat until soft peaks (make sure it is stiff enough, or your roll will be squashy.) Spread the cream over the cake and roll up with the help of the foil. Don't worry if it cracks a bit, it will be okay in the end.

Wrap in foil and refrigerate before serving. To serve, transfer it to a platter and dust with additional cocoa, powdered sugar, or decorate it however you like.

Pierre Herme's "Mozart"

Despite being a bit time consuming, this recipe was relatively simple. Best of all, I got to flambe for the first time!

You take 150g of diced apple, cook it in butter, sugar, and cinnamon until caramelized, douse it with rum, and ignite! The flames were brilliantly orange and blue.

My new job continues to be great. I keep meaning to post about it, but once again i'm tired, sick, and need to sleep.

If anyone has suggestions for what they'd like to see in this blog, let me know. I've been wanting to try and do brief interviews with people working in the Pittsburgh food industry. We'll see how things progress.

I Broached the Brioche.

Brioche is one of my favorite foods. I'd been eating almond brioche for years without even realizing it; there was a small french bakery next to my sister's ballet studio and my mom would usually buy me a pastry when we picked her up (probably to compensate for the many hours spent waiting in the parking lot for ballet class to end.)

The most memorable almond brioches i've had resently came from Ollie's Bakery in Winston-Salem, NC and Michel Richard in Los Angeles. I highly recommend them both.

The prospect of making brioche intimidated me. It's a long process, and I didn't expect the nervous anticipation that came with it. I was paranoid that despite the 15 minutes of kneading and multiple rises, my loaves would ultimately result in failure.

Thankfully, Melissa of The Traveler's Lunchbox posted a fantastic recipe for a vanilla bean brown butter brioche that is really hard to mess up.

I have a few suggestions of my own. If the butter isn't soft enough to incorporate after you've removed it from the fridge, you can beat it in your electric mixer using the paddle attachment to soften it. Also, Melissa suggests creating surface tension by rolling up the dough jelly-roll style. I did one loaf that way and the other using a folding method (you fold the outer thirds of the square to the middle like an envelope, then reshape the dough and do it in the opposite direction.)

The latter technique made for a much lighter loaf that rose higher. Even though it did get a little pocket in the middle, the air bubbles were bigger, and the crust was crustier.

I highly recommend trying your own brioche! It was really perfect with the Kumquat preserves I made.