Pecan and Currant Salt-Crusted Rye Bread

It seems a rite of passage for women to stress and fret over a thanksgiving meal. And while I cannot begin to explain the mystical voodoo that makes women want to impale themselves with the nearest turkey baster, I do know that if you have some easy recipes for simple homemade holiday treats, the rest falls into a place. But as ever candid, very comical friend Jean says, “Sheesh, it’s just dinner, it’s not like you don’t eat for the other 364 days of the year.” Tried and true recipes, loving family and friends, and grateful heart, seems to be all you need for a great Thanksgiving.

So speaking of tried and true, this recipe was a gift. Literally, my graduation from college present, and my first experience in fine dining was when a wonderful family of friends took me and my childhood buddy to the Inn at Little Washington. Due to a fortunate mishap of events, they lost our reservation and we were seated at the chef table. Little did I know, years later I would be taking culinary courses from the then Souse Chef Bonnie Moore. Nor did I realize the privilege of watching Chef Patrick O’Connel work. Nonetheless, if the spectacular meal, in the grandiose fire place kitchen with monastic hymns was not gift enough, we received an autographed copy of his recipes. In that book was this recipe for a salt-crusted Pecan and Currant Rye Bread. It is very easy and always delicious.

For the bread…

2 cups of warm water not hotter than body temperature
1 Tablespoon of dry yeast or a package is roughly equivalent
1 Tablespoon of Sugar
2 ½ cups of rye flour
3 cups of all purpose or bread flour
1 ½ Tablespoons of Caraway Seeds (plus more for crusting)
1 Tablespoon of table salt
1 cup of currants or raisins
1 cup of chopped pecans

In a mug pour together the warm water, sugar, and yeast allows proofing for a few minutes while you prepare the rest of your ingredients.

In a separate bowl measure out all of your dry ingredients, don’t worry you will use it again. I pour it all in and use a whisk to mix up the seeds, salt, and flours.

Now into your mixer with the dough hook attached they all go mug o yeasty water and dry goods. After about two minutes and the dough forms a ball around the hook, add your pecans and currants. After another two minutes and the dough is a well incorporated ball, take a oil or cooking spray and grease the bowl you mixed all the dry ingredients. Place the dough in the greased bowl, cover with a warm damp tea towel, and allow to rest in a warm place. If you live where it is cold and your house is 60 F like mine, use this nifty trick. Take a mug, the same one you used before is fine, heat up a cup of water in the microwave. After a minute, push the mug to the back of the microwave and place in your dough. The mug and hot water will keep the microwave at about 80 F for an hour. Let your dough rise and rest for about an hour.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 F.

Shape your dough into three small loaves, and wet the top with tap water. Using your hands crust the top with more caraway seeds and your favorite salt. I used grey sal de mer, but kosher is plenty fine too.

Bake for 30 minutes on a greased cookie sheet.

There you have it delicious holiday treat with minimal effort. Serve it with any cheese, butter, or any jam or jelly you wish. I love it with cream cheese and pepper jelly.

Much love, many blessings, and happy baking and Thanksgiving! I hope you are having a blessed day of feeling full and grateful.

Rasberry Cheese Cake Layered Coffee Cake

This is an easy holiday coffee cake. The recipe is wonderful for the many holiday mornings or bake-take to parties coming up. It is easy enough to be whipped up last minute, and fancy enough to be served with mimosas at brunch. Best of all the ingredients are inexpensive and usually in our pantry and fridge.

You know that as-seen-on-TV sandwich machine gadget that would heat up and toast both sides of the bread while making little pocket of melty goodness. When I was little my father used to make us hot sandwich pockets of jam and cream cheese. My sister loves these sandwiches to this day. And happy memories of this are the inspiration for this jam and cream cheese coffee cake. I took my classic sour cream coffee cake and added the always welcome accompaniments of jam and cream cheese. The streusel topping is my unabashed attempt at being luxurious around the holidays.

To make this tri-layer coffee cake:

A couple hours or the night before you make this cake take out the butter, eggs, and cream cheese so they have a chance to come up to room temperature.

When you start getting out the ingredients to make the cake and toppings, preheat your oven to 350 F. Choose what you are going to bake the cake in. I choose a 9-inc spring form pan and layered a sheet of parchment paper on the bottom. You could really use any thing you liked but this is a sticky batter so the more butter and protective layers the better.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt

In your hand-dandy kitchenade mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. This is when I made my toppings. When light and fluffy, add the sourcream, egg, and vanilla. Sift together all the dry ingredients i.e. the cinnamon, flour, baking powder, and salt. (I know it doesn’t make sense but sugar is considered a wet ingredient. It is just one of those things you do because your mother said so. Kind of like how fish is considered not a meat by the Catholic Church. I just don’t get it; it’s an animal, its meat. Maybe that is just me. Ok back to the cake.) Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix for a few minutes. The batter will be very thick but creamy. Spread it in to a spring form pan, which is buttered and has a parchment paper bottom.

Streusel Cover

1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup of sugar bowl sugar
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
½ teaspoon or a good shaving of fresh nutmeg
¼ cup or ½ a stick of cold buttah (it’s like buttah)

Just throw everyone in the food processor and give it a bliz; just a couple of pulses and viola. Set aside until after the cake is ready.

Cream Cheese and Jam Topping

An 8oz package of cream cheese (softened because it was left out over night)
¼ cup sugar bowl sugar
1 large egg
A teaspoon of vanilla
½ cup of any jam (I used raspberry because that is what I had open)

Whip up all of these ingredients in your mixer of by hand. Then just pour over batter.

Bake the tri-layered confection for an hour (60 minutes) in a 350F oven. Let it cook and serve warm. In retrospect, I would have used fresh berries on top and made the streusel a little more crumbly with pecans. But according to my co-workers this is a fantastic coffee cake, so if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

As always, much love, many blessings, and happy baking.

A taste of summer mid-November

This one comes to us courtesy of my good friend Andy who celebrated her third or fourth 21st Birthday last week. In her honor this strawberry angel food cake was born.

Angel Food Cake

1 ¾ cups pasteurized egg whites, room temperature (roughly equalt to 12 large egg whites)

¼ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

1 ½ teaspoons of real vanilla extract

1 cup cake flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift flour, ½ cup fine sugar and salt; then sift it again, and again… until your patience runs out. Save the mixture for later use. In a very clean, dry bowl beat egg whites at medium-high speed until frothy and bubbly. When white but not yet forming stiff peaks add the vanilla and cream of tartar. Continue the beating on high until soft peaks form. The trick is to hold the beater upside down or just use a spoon as to not have to unhook and unplug your standing mixer. Once stiff, remove the bowl from the standing mixture.

Sift the flour mixture over egg whites and gently fold in with spatula. Pour the batter into an ungreased tube pan. The ones with the false bottom and little ledge on top to turn the pan upside down are the best.

Bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes. The top will look cracked and golden brown.

Turn the cake pan upside down on a cooling rack and allow coming to room temperature. When cool use a knife to loosen the sticky batter from the sides. Take out the false bottom and run the knife to loosen. Once you have rescued your cake and it is free decorate, ice, glaze, or simply just devour as desired.

For Andy’s cake I used a strawberry glaze, cream cheese frosting, and fresh strawberries to decorate.

I was always intimidated by angel food cake, don’t be just have the right pan and clean bowl to whip the egg whites.

As always, much love, many blessings and happy baking.

Fall Veggie Soup and Onion Tart... Its a good day for lunch at home

I think the art of good simple cooking is not locked away for the elite who can afford the outrageous prices of Whole Foods, nor is it reserved for the quaint country village of Provencal France. Nope, good quality and wholesome meals are the direct result of choosing to spend a little time and keep your vegetable bin moving. These two easy recipes do just that, and are delicious.

This classic recipe for veggie soup can use any vegetable you have in your crisper drawer, especially if they are starting to lack luster. I used asparagus, broccoli, onion, and potato, because that is what I had.

Soup Ingredients

2 onions

2 tablespoons of olive oil

3 cloves of garlic

4 cups of chicken stock (vegetable, beef, what ever suits your fancy)

1 potato (peeled and cubed)

1 teaspoon of thyme dried or four springs of fresh

1 bay leaf

1 lb of whatever green or not so green veggie you have in your home or crisper.

In your favorite soup pot heat up the olive oil and slice the onions. Add the onions and cook until translucent at medium high heat. Once translucent at the garlic and cook for just less than a minute. Burning garlic leaves a terrible bitter taste, if you do, better to scrap it and start over. Add the stock, potato pieces, and the herbs. The stock and herbs are for flavor, so please feel free to invent, amend, edit, add, experiment. The potato is to thicken and provide that serotonin induced carb euphoric mental state. Allow the soup to cook covered until the potato is soft and easily pierced with a fork. Once your soup is ready through in your washed, chopped, vegetables of your choice. Allow them to cook for just a few minutes, no more than 3 minutes, then turn the heat off completely. You want to blanch them so they turn bright green and lock in all of their flavor and nutrients. Any longer and you start to denature the proteins that are so good for you. Now, my favorite part, with your handy dandy wonder wand, hand held blender, cream your soup. You can eat it with out blending, you can also use a standing blender just remember to cover with a kitchen towel and not the lid. This allows the heat to escape their by preventing you from a to scale re-enactment of an a-bomb explosion.

As a yummy accompaniment I made Pissaladiere - French Onion Tart.

Dough

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2/3 cup of warm water

1 teaspoon of brown sugar

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Toppings

caramelized onions (2 onions, chopped, sauteed with olive oil, 1 tablespoon of honey, and a sprinkling of cumin)

Parmesan cheese

Throw together all of the dough ingredients, until it makes a sticky doughy mess. Allow it to rest in the bowl you mixed it in for 20 minutes or so. What to do? I don't know, maybe work on the soup while you wait, or mop? I always need to mop. I am affectionately refered to as the cuisine-art with no lid.

Crank your oven to 425 F

Spread out the dough on a floured board or cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. You can use a rolling pin, or your fingers, just roll it to the shape that make you happy. Using a fork or your fingers make little pockets in the bread to catch the onions and olive oil from the pan. How thick or thin you like it is really up to you. Drip over allow the sweet onions to lay on the bed dough you just rolled out. Sprinkle Parmesan or any cheese you have handy.

Bake for 10 minutes or less depending on how thick you laid the dough or how crunchy you want the bread. But check on it at the half way mark, you might not want crackers and you certainly don't want burnt.

Allow to cool and enjoy, with or without healthy veggie soup.

As always, many blessings, much love, happy baking, and happy fall

Two less than conventional birthday cakes

There is only two rule in my house regarding birthday cakes:
1) The birthday girl or boy gets to pick their cake.
2) The birthday person gets to eat the last piece or duel the challenger in a cut throat game of Jenga.

So while, I would prefer to make the incarnation of a sugar high, in all its fondant clad glory: these birthday girls got their own choosing, and for that I am most happy for them.

Birthday Number 1: Krissy’s Apple Birthday Cake

Topping and Center

6 apples, peeled, cored, cut into wedges (any variety is fine)
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
5 tablespoons of brown sugar

Cake

2 cups of sugar
1 cup of oil
¼ cup of o.j.
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
4 large eggs
2 and ¾ cups of cake flour sifted
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt

Crank your oven to 350 F

How’d you like them apples.

I always do my favorite thing first, therefore… I peeled and chopped the apples first. I think I love this process only for nostalgia. My great-grandmother, Mimi, could peal an apple with a knife in one long strip of peel. And she could do it in less a minute. My mother gave me one of those apple core-errs and slicers, and because she gave it to me, I try to use it at every opportunity. I through the corps of six apples and dusted them generously with the cinnamon sugar.

Get to the cake…

Add all the wet ingredients to your standing mixer (yes, sugar is considered a wet ingredient). Sift all your dry ingredients together, and then add to your mixer. The batter is de-lisouso!

Layers…

In a tube pan, or baking receptacle of choice, spray or brush a non-stick layer. I spray Pam, it is easier. Pour in half the cake batter, cover with a layer of apples. Pour in the other half of the cake batter, and then top with the rest of the apples. Through in any yummy apple juice and cinnamon sugar left in the bowl.

Bake…

Now, bake for what seems like hours, but really it is less than 2. I while I am big proponent of using whatever you have on hand to bake in, I definetly would not make this in a regular pan, this would take FOR-EV-ER to bake if it didn’t have heat coming from all sides including the center.

Top with powdered, sugar, insert candles… sing.

Cake Numero Dos: Ms. Sandra Cheery Cherry Cheese-Birthdaycake

I have to say, originally, I feared making a cheesecake for fear of the infamous curse of crack. Indeed this blemish did rear it’s ugly head, and that my dear is why you have a topping. I used a cherry, sugar, and cornstarch concoction. While, I would rather have a perfect top, the cake was super easy to make and delicious, fissure and all.

Graham Cracker Crust

1 cup of crushed graham crackers (I whizzed them in my food processor, but I see an excellent opportunity to vent some stress)
¼ cup of sugar
7 tablespoons of butter (yes, seven it is just shy of one stick)

Cheesey Sweet Goodness

12 oz cream cheese
1 cup of sugar
½ teaspoons of vanilla
3 eggs
Topping of your choosing

Crank your oven to 350 F.

Start with crust. Mix the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter. Press into your spring form pan, and bake for 10 minutes.

Whiz together your cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and eggs.

Pour into your pre-scorched crust, and continue baking for 45 minutes.

Some people are very fussy and double wrap their pans in foil, and lay them gently in bath of boiling water. They gently coax the in-process cheese cake out of the heat. Those people are correct, this would prevent cracking; however, I knew mine had a delicious guise called cherry topping.

Cool until room temperature, chill in the fridge until time for candles and singing.

Please enjoy these super easy very tasty recipes.

As always, much love, many blessings, happy baking, and happy birthday!

White & Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ying and yang, Regis and Kathy Lee, some opposites were meant to be together, dark and white chocolate brought into harmony by delicious and simple cookie dough. I have never understood milk chocolate eaters, either you eat dark or you eat white. Milk chocolate, lives in a realm of ambiguity that leaves you feeling unsettled; much the same as Clay Aiken and the people that answer a question with another question. Long and short of it, if you are going to eat chocolate, eat chocolate; don’t mess about with a milk candy confection when there is good chocolate to be had.

About good chocolate, if there is a trick to good food, it is good ingredients and good tools. There is one factor in chocolate chip cookie, it is the chocolate. The reigning king is AMEDEI, PORCELANA, 70% Dark, Single Origin Chocolate Bar, but at just over $100 a pound, I dare not bake with this. High sultan of the baking kingdom is France’s Tain L'Hermitage Valhrona. At first glance you might have visions of astronomically overpriced stale chocolate from Sur La Table, instead look in your humble Trader Joe’s impulse buy candy shelves near the checkout. At under $2 a bar, how can you pass it up? Should your patriotism inspire your cooking, San Francisco has some phenomenal chocolate. Seeing that I was a young child in that great culinary epicenter, Ghirardelli will always have a place in my heart. I love their white chocolate bars that I chunk by hand, or their semisweet oversized, kiss shaped chips. This is the kind of chocolate that makes the likes of Nestle and Tollhouse, blush for shame, as they should.

Tools: Parchment Paper, get it, you need it, don’t argue… just go. You needn’t bother yourself with expensive slip mats. Slip mats are wonderful but they are for candy making, cookies and other baked confections need parchment paper. Ok, I am off my soap box. Don’t you feel sorry for my Sunday school kids? Well, don’t feel too bad, I do bake for them.

The cookie recipe itself: I must confess I have been sucked into the vacuum that is the food blogosphere, and I love many a food blog. Hi, my name is Sandy, and I am addicted to food blogging. Smitten Kitchen has wonderful recipes, out of homage to this great communiqué portico these delicious bites of heaven were made and out of my impetuousness this recipe has been slightly modified.

Now the diatribe, my great American novel, is finally complete, please try these delicious, simple, crispy-on-the-outside, gooey-on-the-inside cookies.

The very good stuff:

½ cup of sugar bowl sugar
½ cup of brown sugar
1 stick of butter softened overnight
1 egg
1 teaspoon Tahitian Vanilla
½ teaspoon bicarb
1 and ¼ cup of all purpose flour
¼ teaspoon of sea salt
1 cup of best quality chocolate chips (no less that 65% cocoa)
4 oz bar of dark chocolate chunked (again no less that 65% cocoa)
4 oz bar of white chocolate chunked

Crank your oven to 350 F.

One at a time, in the order that it is written, throw your ingredients into your standing mixer and let her rip. I am sure that you don’t need to do them in that order; just habits are hard to break. Spoon them out on to your parchment clad baking sheets. Leave plenty of room to spread otherwise you will have a tasty blob reminiscent of B-rated sci-fi films. I heart my mini ice-cream scooper…
Bake for 7 minutes, then turn the pans 180 degrees, and bake for another 4 minutes. Rack'em up to cool.

Or don’t bake at all the cookie dough is phenomenal, a far cry from the prepackaged highly marketed cookie dough in your supermarket's refrigeration case.

As always, much love, many blessings, happy baking!

Dark Chocolate and Pecan Banana Bread

I have no problems using banana bread as a chocolate and pecan delivery system especially when it is good dark chocolate. One new years, many eons ago, my best friend and I did go on a culinary quest to find the best delivery system for chocolate, and while ham is not my favorite, nothing was worse than canned salmon. And while that maltaste lingers on your tongue for a moment, in my humble opinion pecan banana bread and chocolate good, salmon and chocolate not so much.

The Goods

1 cup of sugar
2/3 cups of butter
3 ripe bananas
2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/3 cup of buttermilk
1/2 cup of toasted pecans
1/2 cup of chopped dark chocolate

Crank that "happy it is fall" oven up to 350 F

Whip the sugar and butter in your standing mixer, mash in the bananas. Through in all the other ingredients save the toppings, and let her rip. When well mixed, fold in the chocolate peices and toasted pecans.


Bake until clean, I made 4 mini loaves that took about 35 minutes. I love using parchment as paper liners. Like oversized muffin cups, they add the functional element of easy cleanup and yet are charming rustic detail.

Enjoy, or make someone's day by offering a homemade treat.

Happy baking, and many blessings!