Category Archives: Baking
Cooling Off {CtBF}
What a hot week! Temperatures were high in the nineties and the muggidity was stifling for a big part of the week. On the hottest day, a team of lawn guys, wearing black hooded sweatshirts, were working hard grading our backyard for a much-needed new lawn. Ugh!
I chose to live in New England to escape the “Hazy, Hot, and Humid” summers of my childhood in Maryland. Due to climate change, these many years later, more frequent, longer stretches of the Maryland summers have caught up with me in Boston. The difference, I don’t live in a house with central A/C now.
Frozen desserts like ice cream and popsicles are an antidote to the hot weather. It was fortuitous that the recipe chosen for Cook the Book Fridays, an Extra Edition on this fifth Friday in August, was ice cream!
The actual recipe was for Apricot Kernel Ice Cream. I didn’t have any apricot kernels to use. Instead, I remembered that Italian amaretti cookies, the ones that come in the red tin with pairs delightfully wrapped in paper, are made NOT with almonds but with apricot kernels. Without apricot kernels, I went the opposite way and simply made Almond Ice Cream by adding almond extract instead. I realize the flavor isn’t the same. The almond flavor was smooth where it would have had a bitter note with the kernels. However, I was in the mood for ice cream and didn’t have readily available apricots.
Without needing to steep the kernels makes the recipe simper. I added the sugar to the milk and cream which I warmed to dissolve the sugar. I immediately proceeded with the recipe by whisking the warm milk into egg yolks and heating to for a custard. I might have overcooked it slightly as it seemed to curdle at the end but pressing it through the strainer smoothed it out. I added a teaspoon of almond extract to the final mixture of custard and cream.
After chilling the custard for most of the day, twenty minutes in the ice cream maker froze the custard for a smooth ice cream. I let it sit in the freezer for a few hours to firm up further.
Almond ice cream was a refreshing topper for the last slice of the peach tart I made this week.
Note that when I was searching for a picture of the amaretti tin, I found this article in the New York Times archives that indicates I could have substituted peach, nectarine, or plum kernels for the apricot. That never occurred to me. Apparently, the inner kernel of all these stone fruits share the bitter almond flavor of the apricot. I wish I’d known that. I could have tried out the real thing. Next time.
You can find the recipe for Apricot Kernel Ice Cream on page 312 of David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen. Reviews of the ice cream recipe by other members of Cook the Book Fridays can be found here.
If you want to make a delicious peach tart before summer ends, here’s my latest favorite dessert concoction.
Peach Tart
One batch of your favorite Sweet Tart (shortbread style) Crust. My favorite is Dorie Greenspan’s recipe (I added ½ tsp almond extract with the egg yolk for an extra boost of flavor)
½ cup turbinado or demerara sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp almond flour
¼ tsp salt
2 Tbsp butter
½ cup peach jam
3-4 peaches, pitted and sliced (I don’t peel them)
First, prepare the sweet tart dough. Press into a 9- or 9½-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Freeze for at least 30 minutes. Line with foil and bake at 375F for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 3-5 minutes until lightly golden. Let cool.
Preheat the oven to 400F.
To make the topping: Whisk together sugar, flour, almond flour and salt. Use your hands to work butter into the dry ingredients until it’s crumbly.
Spread the peach jam on the bottom of the crust. Top with peach slices, arranged in concentric circles. Sprinkle with the topping.
Bake for 45 minutes until fruit is bubbly.
Animal Quackers {CtBF}
Duck fat: The liquid gold byproduct of Howard’s duck confit. Decadent vehicle for frying potatoes.
Here’s a new one to add. Fat to use for cookies. What? Cookies, you say?
The recipe on deck this week for Cook the Book Fridays is Duck Fat Cookies or sablés à graisse de canard, if you want to sound more elegant. In reading the notes accompanying this recipe in David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen, It wasn’t clear to me whether these cookies are actually made in southwest France where residents eat lots of duck fat or if these were just inspired by those customs.
Most of the ingredient list reminded me of the Victorian currant cookies that I sometimes make at holiday time. Currants are steeped in brandy to plump them up before mixing them into a shortbread-like cookie dough. However Victorian currant cookies don’t include any duck fat. In Duck Fat Cookies, more than half of the fat is duck fat. Interesting….
The dough came together easily in the stand mixer. The texture of the dough was very tender. The dough was divided and shaped into logs and chilled. Refrigerator cookies, one of my favorite inventions! I baked one log, freezing the other for another time. My cookies never really browned, even lightly, though I baked them extra time. I should have used a slightly higher oven temperature.
The cookies were wonderfully sandy, earning their name of sables. However, the taste was rather odd. I used duck fat leftover from Howard’s homemade duck confit, and I could taste the residual spices used to flavor the duck. In contrast with the sweet dough and the dried fruit, the savory spices were jarring. The first thing that came to my mind was the memory of a similar contrast in Salted Olive Crisps, where olives dotted a sweetish dough. I’m thinking savory additions, such as olives and nuts, would make a better combination with the duck fat dough.
To see how the others from Cook the Book Fridays made out, check out their links here. To try them yourself, you can find the recipe on page 297 in David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen.
The highlight of my week, and maybe the whole summer, was a daytrip we took to Duxbury, Massachusetts for a tour of Island Creek Oyster Farm. We booked the tour back in April when there was no way we’d know the weather would be picture perfect. We enjoyed a two-hour tour that included a visit to the hatchery where over 20 million oysters were seeded this season and a boat ride in Duxbury Bay to see where the oysters are farmed. The culmination of the afternoon was enjoying unlimited oysters at the new raw bar after our tour. Howard and I ate 4 dozen each. It was a fabulous day!
A Plateful of Happiness 