It’s that time of the month again … time for another Daring Bakers‘ event. This time, Kelly from Sass & Veracity and Ben from What’s cooking? hosted us to make a Danish Braid. Making this was a lot of fun. I have never made this kind of pastry before. The process is somewhat like making puff pastry (also on my list of things to try to do). After making the dough, which is deliciously flavored with orange and cardamon, you spread it with butter and fold it up on itself, then you keep rolling it back out and folding it in on itself several times over the course of a couple hours, so that you have thin layers of dough with butter in between. The dough is also yeasted, so after assembling the braid, you let it rise for a couple hours. Mine actually didn’t rise as much as it probably should’ve, but it still tasted fine and made a nice light, flaky dough.
This time we were allowed to put our own touch on the recipe by choosing the filling. The recipe came with directions for an apple filling, but I decided to use blackberry preserves instead. At the last minute I remembered that I also had some blanched almonds left over from the Opera Cake last month, so I ground those up with some sugar and an egg to make almond paste, which I spread in the braid underneath the jam.
This is definitely a recipe I will try again, and since the dough made enough for two braids, you might even hear about it again if I think of an interesting enough filling!
I didn’t make any changes to the dough recipe, so I will refer you to Kelly’s post for the recipe, which came from Sherry Yard’s book The Secrets of Baking. Thanks to Kelly and Ben for a great event! And make sure to check out everyone else’s Danish Braids on the Daring Bakers’ Blogroll … there are some great ones out there!
I know you’re all thrilled to hear we are back in town and finally getting to do some cooking again! The food on our RAAM trip was actually pretty good thanks to the hard work of Anne, our resident chef, but it still feels good to get back in the kitchen.
I’ll readily admit that this is not the most photogenic side dish in the world — but it sure is delicious. Matt and I bought The South Beach Diet Cookbook several months ago, with a plan to try to eat along those lines. The diet didn’t last long — instead we decided to start a food blog! But, we have enjoyed a few recipes out of the cookbook, particularly this one for edamame, which we make all the time. It goes well with stir fry, as in the picture, but it’s often just a go-to vegetable side dish for us, since we can keep everything on hand. It is definitely quick, easy and healthy, and it’s surprisingly delicious, especially considering how little there is to it. I urge you to give it a try!
Sesame Edamame
adapted from The South Beach Diet Cookbook
12 oz frozen shelled edamame
1 T light soy sauce
1/2 c water
1 1/2 t sesame oil
Dash of hot pepper sauce (we use either Tabasco or Crystal, depending on how spicy we want it)
Combine edamame, soy sauce, and water and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce to low and simmer for about 12 minutes, until tender. Continue to cook until the liquid has evaporated and the beans get a little bit shriveled-y and caramelized. (I think it’s best if they seem to almost be getting dried up. They seem to have more flavor that way.) Stir in the sesame oil and hot pepper sauce.
Mary dropped a very un-subtle hint that she’d like me (mom) to guest write an entry while she and Matt are providing support for the Team H4 as they pedal their way across the country. While I had great intentions to write while traveling, even including pictures, I have left home without my recipe! So I’ll have to provide specifics of this recipe taken from an issue of Cooking Light magazine at a later date. (You may be able to tell that key ingredients are fish - I used halibut-, grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, and basil. In this case, I served with orzo pasta and fresh asparagus).
But I can tell you that the team has made it into Missouri today and they’re more than halfway through their 3,000 mile Race Across America. We’ve been tracking their progress and it sounds as if the team is really working together, in spite of the challenges of sleep deprivation and storm tracking.
Yeah, I’m way behind the curve on this one, but whatever. I’ve beenreadingforawhile about the wonders of macarons (not to be confused with American macaroons). I finally bought some recently at La Baguette, a French cafe at the Stanford Mall. I’m sure they were somewhat (ok, hugely) inferior to the famousones you find on the streets of Paris, but I thought they were still pretty tasty. They’ve been in the back of my mind for a while now of something I need to try, but they are notoriously difficult to get right. They must be mixed for exactly the right amount of time so that they have a perfectly frilly “foot” at the bottom, but are not too dense. Some say they must be left out for up to a couple hours before cooking to develop a “skin” to help form that beautiful domed shape and ruffled foot, etc., etc.
So when I finally decided to try my hand, I of course carefully looked back at all the detailed directions I had seen of what to do to produce the perfect macaron, right? No, of course not. At 10:00 pm on a recent Saturday, I felt a sudden urge to bake. I was getting started kind of late, so I didn’t want anything that would take too long, but any type of cookie I had made before just didn’t seem exciting enough. I was sure David Lebovitz would have a recipe for macarons, and of course he did. Last time I tried something from his site it turned out pretty well, and I had all the ingredients on hand, so I was good to go. These actually come together pretty quickly, so 45 minutes or so later (including cooling) I had myself some very un-authentic macarons. (Though apparently I should’ve let the flavors meld overnight instead of eating the entire plate that night … I’m only barely exaggerating.)
The good news? Despite my inattention to detail (the tops are peaked, they are too narrow and tall and shaped somewhat like acorns, many of them cracked on top, but miraculously, some of them do have a decent-looking foot) they still taste pretty delicious, even if they don’t look anything like they are “supposed to.” The even better news? I’m sure I’ll be trying these again (perhaps with a morecreativeflavor), and when I get it right, I’ll fill you in on the results!
If you want some more details on what to do to have adequately-tasting but ridiculous-looking macarons, here’s what I did wrong that I will correct next time:
Since our freezer is still filled with Honey-Lavender-White Chocolate Opera Cake, I halved the recipe. This meant folding the dry ingredients into only one egg white, which was very difficult to do.
Fold the ingredients together more thoroughly. I was super-worried about overmixing, but based on these tips, I think my batter was too stiff. (Hence, I ended up with the peaked-top acorn-shaped cookies.) Apparently the batter should “flow like magma”, not hold any shape you pipe it into exactly.
Pipe out bigger circles. (This could’ve been partly from the too-stiff batter.) I realized after the fact that David says 1″ circles and about a tablespoon for each cookie. (I just read the 1″ part the first time.) I don’t know, maybe when you move to France your definition of an “inch” shifts. At any rate, my 1″ circles were way less than a tablespoon, and I think they should’ve been a bit bigger and also flatter. Though the almost-bite-size result was kind of cute.
I used leftover ground almonds from the opera cake, which I realized later had a little bit of flour in them. I don’t know as much about baking chemistry as I would like, but my guess is that’s probably not kosher (sorry, I know that’s a terrible pun, I’ve been hanging around Matt too long), so next time I will add a bit of the powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the almonds from turning to butter.
Let egg whites come to room temperature. I have no idea what effect it did or didn’t have on the end result (in fact I saw one recipe saying to keep the egg whites chilled), but next time I’ll follow what most recipes seem to say and use room temperature eggs.
Don’t grab unsweetened instead of bittersweet chocolate from the pantry for the filling. (Yep, that’s how little attention I was paying. Amazing, huh?)
I know, I know, we’ve been a little flaky lately. It’s not for lack of trying, but things have been pretty busy, with work and finals and planning for RAAM. And now it’s about to get worse … we are leaving for this cross-country adventure that is crewing for Race Across America tomorrow night! And we probably won’t do much (read: any) cooking while we’re gone, but I’m sure we’ll have plenty of stories to share when we get back.
In the meantime, there’s several ways to keep track of us:
GPS tracking device (Most of the team is already down in Oceanside now, so you can watch them as they run around doing last minute errands until the race starts on Wednesday.)
We’re going to try to get a couple posts to go up while we’re gone, and if we get internet access we may try to fill you in on what’s going on. And if you’re really lucky, Mary’s Mom (and cooking inspiration) will share some of her secrets as a guest author sometime before we get back.
And if you’re new here and saying, “Huh? Bicycles? Racing across the country? No cooking?!? I thought this was a food blog?!?!?!” read this or click on that ad in the sidebar to get filled in.
I didn’t make any changes to the dough recipe, so I will refer you to Kelly’s post for the recipe, which came from Sherry Yard’s book The Secrets of Baking
