Here’s a quick excerpt that Jane sent me:

I just reading your posting requesting for help–I’d love to contriute articles to your site.

I have a food blog that I’ve just started to be more active in: http://butteredup.blogspot.com and I’d love to be more involved in the food blog community. I love desserts in particular, but I also love cooking too.

Ginger Pecan Scones

Most of my first year of university was spent being homesick. My parents were halfway across the world in Shanghai, while I was in Montreal, missing the comfort of home. On weekends, I went to my cousin Sandra’s apartment, desperate for some company. Without realizing it, she helped distract my troubled heart and jerk start the glutton in me.

We studied cookbooks (Donna Hay’s Instant Cook was our favourite) trying to decide on our weekend project. We sampled buttery croissants at Premiere Moisson on Mont-Royal. We trekked through a snow storm just to pick up a 10lb Rockaberry apple pie. I remember losing all sensation in my fingers and toes carrying that damn dessert and then eating two servings even though I’m not fond of pie, but just to make the walk seem worth it. Clearly, we shared a love for food.

There was one thing that Sandra made that was insanely addictive. They were dried cranberry lemon scones. Buttery lumps of dough studded with ruby fruit, speckled with yellow zest. I really couldn’t resist eating only one and I found lots of good reasons to eat a few for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No, I wasn’t eating my feelings of homesickness, though they definitely made the brutal winters more bearable. There was something magical about those scones, how they fall apart in your mouth, in a way that only cream and butter is able to do, and the dried fruit was chewy, inevitably wedging between your teeth.

A few years ago, Sandra moved to Shanghai. We haven’t talked since she moved (she’s difficult to keep in touch with) and I haven’t had those cranberry lemon scones since. I have however, tried other scones. There were cheddar and chive scones to pair with a juicy salad, but they were unremarkable. I’ve sampled Hungarian paprika scones, which is an entirely different animal; yeasty pull-apart breads that stain your fingers a beautiful rust color and pair perfectly with stew.

And there were these ginger and pecan scones. Hoo boy, they are good. So good, I want to rename them Dreamy Scones. They’re light and fluffy, and so crumbly, it will be hard to keep your table crumb-free. Three types of ginger are used here, ground, crystallized and fresh, but don’t shy away from ginger, the butter casts a spell on its heatness, toning it down. The pecans add a nutty crunch to the scones, making it hearty and breakfast worthy.

I promise that just one scone will make your troubles go away.

Ginger Pecan Scones
From Bon Appétit via Epicurious

I don’t buy buttermilk. I don’t want to purchase one ingredient if I’m not going to use it anytime soon. Instead, you can make buttermilk at home. Really, it’s a breeze. For 1 cup of buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar (even rice vinegar works) to 1 cup of milk (I use 2% and it’s fine), allow to sit for 5 minutes before using.

I only have heart shaped cookie cutters which I used to shape my scones, but you can use any round cutter you like, just make sure it’s about 2 inches in diameter.

Makes 12 scones

Ingredients:
3 cups of all-purpose flour
2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger
½ teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons (1 ½ sticks) chilled unsalted butter
1 1/3 pecan halves, toasted, chopped coarsely
½ cup plus 3 tablespoons of chopped crystallized ginger
1 cup plus 1 ½ tablespoons of buttermilk
1 ½ teaspoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 425°. Line large baking sheet with parchment. Whisk flour, 2/3 cup sugar, baking powder, ground ginger, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and baking soda in large bowl. Add butter; using fingertips, blend butter into flour until coarse meal forms. Toss in pecans and 1/2 cup crystallized ginger.
2. Whisk 1 cup buttermilk, grated ginger, and vanilla in measuring cup. Form well in center of dry ingredients. Add buttermilk; stir with fork until moist clumps form. Transfer to lightly floured surface. Knead just until dough comes together; roll out dough into a 12-inch round (about 1/2 inch thick). Using a round cutter cut out scones and arrange about 1/2 inch apart on baking sheet. Gather and gently reroll scraps. Cut out more scones and arrange on baking sheet.
3. Bake scones until golden and toothpick inserted horizontally into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool scones on wire rack.

Cupcakes continue to remain popular over the years. Small cakes with a little lot of frosting in various flavor combinations will always be a hit with young and old alike. While American-style desserts aren’t my specialty, everyone needs to have a go-to cupcake recipe.

I found this White Velvet recipe from an old post on Curious Cupcakes. Like most cupcake recipes, it’s super simple, there are a few ingredients, and they cook real quick. I’ve already made these several times and every time I make them they come out fantastic. If you’re still making cupcakes from a box, you really should try these out!

White Velvet Cupcakes
courtesy of curious cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
- 2 large egg whites
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour (important! make sure you use cake flour and not all-purpose flour)
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F
Fill one 12-hole cupcake tray with cupcake liners

In a medium bowl, combine egg whites, vanilla and 1/8 cup milk.

In a large mixing bowl, combine cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and mix together to blend. Add the butter and remaining 1/2 cup milk. Mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed (high if using a hand mixer) for 1.5 minutes. Then add the egg, vanilla and milk mixture in three equal parts, beating for 20 seconds between additions.

Pour the batter into prepared cupcake trays. Try to fill each cake with an equal amount of batter. Try using an ice cream scoop to help make scoops of batter even. Each cupcake wrapper will be about 2/3-3/4 full. Place trays in the oven for 15-20 minutes, remove when golden yellow and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then place on a cooling rack. Let cool completely before frosting.

Cakes, as you may already know, aren’t a specialty of mine. When I do get the opportunity to make a cake for someone, I usually like to try something new out. In this case, I made an old classmate’s Red Velvet Cake and went the fondant route.

This cake I made for my team mate, Paul, on the request of his girlfriend. I learned that Paul’s favorite cake was red velvet. I’ve never tackled one of these before but with a good recipe (thanks Rianne!) it was a snap.

If you want to steal the recipe, venture over to her website and look it up!

It’s been a while since I’ve done much interesting cooking. Things have been quite busy for the foodgeek household with moving, new jobs, and getting back to daily life. We’ve got just about everything back in order, including joining a new CSA, Garden of Eden.

With CSAs in San Diego, you get lots of greens. It’s like we have eternal spring and the greens just keep on growing. This week, the winner was chard. We had a small bunch leftover from last week and got a new bunch of rainbow chard this week so something with chard was in order. Poking around on the internet I stumbled on this recipe

The recipe is pretty much everything you want in a quick-to-put-together weekday meal. The ingredient list is short, the pastry comes together without a fuss, and by the time it is cooked, the kitchen is clean. Big thanks to AppleSister for this recipe (which I shamelessly copied here).

Tourte Aux Blettes (Savory Swiss Chard Tart)

Pastry:
1 cup flour
¼ t. salt
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup water

Filling:
1 lb. swiss chard leaves
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 large eggs
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine flour and salt; add water and then the oil, mixing until thoroughly blended. After kneading briefly, the dough will be very moist like cookie dough. Press dough into loose-bottomed metal tart pan.

Wash and dry the leafy portion of the chard and coarsely chop the leaves. Wilt the leaves in a skillet, seasoned to taste with salt and pepper. Heat until most of the water has evaporated.

Combine the eggs and grated cheese; add the chard and pour mixture into the pan.

Bake for about 40 minutes, until crust and filling are golden.

I have to admit, I was going to skip this month’s challenge. I have so many excuses, “I’ve done them so many times”, “I don’t have all the ingredients”, “I don’t have the time”, “I don’t want to”, etc…After seeing that several of my macaron posts were referenced in the most recent challenge, I felt like a goat for not at least trying this one out. It’s three days after the challenge was supposed to be posted, but here goes…

I just so happened to have the makings of macarons already in my pantry, albeit with my not-so-favorite, unblanched, skin-on, almond meal from Trader Joes. This stuff works fine but the specks both me; it’s all I had on hand so please excuse the mess. The other ingredients, the sugars and the eggs, are things that I always seem to have on hand; it looks as if one of my excuses was a lie.

The recipe, as it so happens, isn’t all that different from past efforts: (Forgive me as I hack it up here)

Ingredients
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

I took the liberty of halving this recipe, just in case things went south with the method, the recipe, or my lack of practice. The big difference in this recipe is the lower amount of granulated sugar in the the meringue. I’m sure this will affect the sweetness as well as the difficulty of incorporating the egg white mixture with the dry goods. A stiffer, more sugary meringue will be a bit more forgiving, but alas, I gave it a go.

The general method of combining wet and dry ingredients is pretty much the same: incorporate the dry into the wet in three separate additions, make sure the ingredients are fully incorporated yet don’t completely destroy the meringue in the process. There’s also a hairy little secret most people don’t divulge: if you don’t mix enough, you get meringue cookies instead of macarons. Most of us have the opposite problem of overmixing the batter and getting wonderful, cracked, exploding macarons that break your will, yet we go back into the kitchen for another beating

The cooking of these macarons is where things get a bit interesting. Instead of allowing the macarons to dry at room temperature on the counter, the recipe has them cooked at a low temperature to dry them out first, then they are completed at a much higher temperature.

Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C).

Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

I’m a bit weary of this step but it could prove useful in speeding up production. Even when I made them in a restaurant kitchen with a fancy-shmancy convection oven, we always let them dry for hours before we baked them off. This high cooking temperature runs the risk of browning the macarons if they aren’t watched carefully.

Even with my doubts, I got the feet. They weren’t as pronounced as previous efforts, but they did come out. As expected, though, the macarons browned a little bit while waiting for them to be fully cooked. Even with about five extra minutes of cooking, I don’t feel like these baked as well as they do at a much lower temperature. The skin on the top of the macarons is so unbelievably thin that, even carefully taking them off the silpat, they cracked.

Yet another macaron recipe that works but not quite good enough, for me, to switch from my most recent efforts. I was happy to see them come together and form, and that, for most of us, is good enough.

It’s the beginning of summer and the Daring Bakers throw me an easy one: Bakewell Tarts. These little beauties are loaded with frangiapanne and a touch of jam. I’d almost have to say that these guys were a little bit too easy, but they’re just too yummy to pass up!

I decided to stray away from the normal jams I usually keep in the house and grab a few flavors I don’t usually stock: Black Currant and Apricot. I thought both jams would go pretty well with the almonds and was not surprised when I tasted them. I’m a huge sucker for just about anything with frangiapanne so these will most likely make a comeback in the future.

As you can see, these little tarts are easy to dress up and not at all hard to make. There’s a small time commitment in making the dough but even that isn’t all that hard. The flavors are easily varied and the shapes and sizes can be mixed up, too!

Don’t be too worried about the lengthy recipe. It looks scary, but all of the elements are easy to make and the instructions are well-written. The best part about pastries like this is they go together very quickly and the ingredients are almost always on-hand!

Bakewell Tart…er…pudding
Makes one 23cm (9” tart)
Prep time: less than 10 minutes (plus time for the individual elements)
Resting time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 30 minutes
Equipment needed: 23cm (9”) tart pan or pie tin (preferably with ridged edges), rolling pin

One quantity sweet shortcrust pastry (recipe follows)
Bench flour
250ml (1cup (8 US fl. oz)) jam or curd, warmed for spreadability
One quantity frangipane (recipe follows)
One handful blanched, flaked almonds

Assembling the tart
Place the chilled dough disc on a lightly floured surface. If it’s overly cold, you will need to let it become acclimatised for about 15 minutes before you roll it out. Flour the rolling pin and roll the pastry to 5mm (1/4”) thickness, by rolling in one direction only (start from the centre and roll away from you), and turning the disc a quarter turn after each roll. When the pastry is to the desired size and thickness, transfer it to the tart pan, press in and trim the excess dough. Patch any holes, fissures or tears with trimmed bits. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Remove shell from freezer, spread as even a layer as you can of jam onto the pastry base. Top with frangipane, spreading to cover the entire surface of the tart. Smooth the top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Five minutes before the tart is done, the top will be poofy and brownish. Remove from oven and strew flaked almonds on top and return to the heat for the last five minutes of baking.

The finished tart will have a golden crust and the frangipane will be tanned, poofy and a bit spongy-looking. Remove from the oven and cool on the counter. Serve warm, with crème fraîche, whipped cream or custard sauce if you wish.

When you slice into the tart, the almond paste will be firm, but slightly squidgy and the crust should be crisp but not tough.

Jasmine’s notes:
• If you cannot have nuts, you can try substituting Victoria sponge for the frangipane. It’s a pretty popular popular cake, so you shouldn’t have any troubles finding one in one of your cookbooks or through a Google search. That said, our dear Natalie at Gluten a Go Go has sourced some recipes and linked to them in the related alt.db thread.
• You can use whichever jam you wish, but if you choose something with a lot of seeds, such as raspberry or blackberry, you should sieve them out.
• The jam quantity can be anywhere from 60ml (1/4 cup) to 250ml (1cup), depending upon how “damp” and strongly flavoured your preserves are. I made it with the lesser quantity of home made strawberry jam, while Annemarie made it with the greater quantity of cherry jam; we both had fabulous results. If in doubt, just split the difference and spread 150ml (2/3cup) on the crust.
Annemarie’s notes:
• The excess shortcrust can be rolled out and cut into cookie-shapes (heck, it’s pretty darned close to a shortbread dough).

Sweet shortcrust pastry
Prep time: 15-20 minutes
Resting time: 30 minutes (minimum)
Equipment needed: bowls, box grater, cling film

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough.

Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Jasmine’s notes:
• I make this using vanilla salt and vanilla sugar.
• If you wish, you can substitute the seeds of one vanilla bean, one teaspoon of vanilla paste or one teaspoon of vanilla extract for the almond extract

Frangipane
Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Equipment needed: bowls, hand mixer, rubber spatula

125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in colour and very fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. In the words of Douglas Adams: Don’t panic. Really. It’ll be fine. After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow colour.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.

We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

This time around, the Daring Baker’s challenge contained two required elements: a chocolate flourless cake, the Valentino, and home made ice cream. We could make the cakes in any shape we desired and provide an ice cream of our choice just as long as it was homemade. There were too many possibilities that kept jumping into my mind so this month I went back to some of my basics. A small taste of dessert, a touch of ice cream, a few fancy garnishes, and a luscious fruit sauce.

The dessert consisted of a mini valentino cake, vanilla bean ice cream, sauteed bananas, and passion fruit sauce. I decided to go with a small taste of dessert because chocolate desserts are often rich and overpowering. The elegant plating was much appreciated by the eater and my apprentice.

As an added bonus, and because I missed last month’s challenge, I decided to incorporate last month’s DB challege, a vanilla tuile. The dragonfly pattern was cut out of cardboard and used as a template for the tuiles. I bent the wings while they were still hot and they cooled into shape.

The whole dessert seemed to balance nicely. The rich chocolate balanced nicely with the sweet, yet tangy, passion fruit sauce. The ice cream and the sauteed fruit rounded out the dish perfectly. The tuile completed the dessert and elevated this dish to restaurant quality.

Chocolate Valentino
adapted from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan

16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.

While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.

Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).

With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}

Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C

Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.

Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

My past attempts at the perfect macaron have not all been met with success. Many of these cookies have suffered the fate of the trash can with their cracked shells and hollow centers. I’ve tried many online recipes and even tried going back to an original recipe I used back in my pastry chef days but all of them have yielded spotty results. In my vast online research I’ve been unable to find a consistent go-to recipe that works for most people. With frustration setting in, the eater has come to the recipe with a few reinforcements; French Macaron cookbooks.

Let me start with this disclaimer: I do not speak, read, or even really understand French. I’ve never been to France. I’ve never taken a French class. The closest to France I’ve ever been is Montreal where they speak French, but I still didn’t understand what people were saying. The cookbook I tried out was 30 Recette de Macarons; I’m pretty sure that means 30 recipes for Macarons.

This book is all macarons, all the time. It starts out with a two page primer on the correct way to make macarons and some pictures…at least that’s what I imagine it says. The following pages all follow a pattern: recipe on left page, picture of a macaron creation on right page. The recipes are all quite short and contain the macaron and the filling. With a little bit of help from google I picked out a macaron recipe to try out. The recipe went something like this:

100g almond powder
100g confectioners sugar
100g granulated sugar
100g (3) egg whites

There was a whole bunch of French directions that I glazed over after I saw the ingredients and, I confess, skipped one-hundred percent. I know I could have spent time typing everything into google to get a pretty bad usable translation of the recipe, but I was too excited about the new book, the simplicity of the recipe, and the excitement of trying yet another macaron recipe.

My haste, this time, did not produce any waste. My original method of making macarons, using the ingredient break-down listed, produced an almost perfect macaron. There were a few things I did pull out of the book while waiting for the little shells to dry out though:

The shells were a little bit larger than I normally make them
I cooked these at 320F.
I double-panned them while cooking.

As you can see, filled with a nice chocolate ganache, these macarons came out nicely. This recipe seemed to work, was easy to remember, and didn’t deviate from the techniques I’ve already learned. I think this book may be a keeper!

This is one of those recipes that looks scary: six different elements, all sorts of different ingredients, hot sugar, gelatin, and meringue. To the untrained eye this challenge would appear to be almost overwhelming. Like many intricate pastries, this one can be broken down into its basic parts, made in advance, and assembled right when you need them. I’m sure this was a relief to many bakers out there.

Surprisingly enough I actually started this challenge a few weeks ahead of time. I shopped around and found a buche pan at Sur la Table for a not too unreasonable price. I then tackled the components: the custard, gavottes, and dacoise. The ganache and the mousse were prepared last and everything was assembled with the help of the pastry chef’s best friend, the freezer. Once assembled, frozen, and removed from the pan, a chocolate mirror glaze was prepared and the whole thing was glazed.

While the pastry tasted great, I have to say I was a bit disappointed with myself in the execution. There were a few things I probably could have done better, like glazing. There’s something about getting the glaze on the pastry in a nice, even format that always seems to elude me. I have strategically cut out or hid the spots where the glaze did not cover, but trust me, I missed several large spots. This is definitely an area of pastry work that I could use a little more practice.

There were a few small things that annoyed me about my own execution of this dessert. The layers aren’t even, the custard was too thick, and I failed to create a proper dacoise for the crown of the pastry. While this was an optional element for the challenge, it was something I intended on creating but failed. I know, I know, it still looks great, but these are the things I constantly think about when producing anything. The eater always tells me nobody will notice the flaws but I just can’t let them go.

I served the pastry to my parents for our Christmas celebration (a day late) and they ooo’ed and aww’ed at the pastry just like parents (should) do. After seeing the pictures and getting over my own failures, I think it turned out pretty good. Now that I have this fancy new buche form I will have to utilize it in new and unusual ways!

Up here in the northeast it’s cold, dark, and time for ICE CREAM! I know it sounds a bit strange to want ice cream when it’s so cold outside, but when ice cream calls, I must answer.

I was left with loads of egg yolks after several tests of macarons. What to do with all the yolks? That’s easy, ICE CREAM! Once again, The Perfect Scoop came to rescue. While I’m not usually a big cookbook person, there’s always something nice about having a good recipe that just works. This time I didn’t use just one recipe, I used THREE!

I chose three full-fat, full sugar ice creams: Chocolate, Oatmeal Cookie, and Fleur de Lait. There was no rhyme nor reason, I just chose three that sparked my interest. Chocolate because it’s my favorite, Oatmeal Cookie because I really dig the cookies, and Fleur de Lait because I just wanted to see how it would come out.

As usual, all the recipes were spot-on, easy to prepare, and worked. If you can make cream anglaise, you’re most of the way there to making ice cream. Many of the recipes in David’s book are based on this sauce so if you were able to make one of the French-style ice creams, you can pretty much make them all. The only difference in many of the recipes is the addition of certain ingredients or mix-ins.

I did choose an unusual egg yolk-free ice cream, Fleur de Lait. I was a bit intrigued by an ice cream that was thickened with corn starch and not flavored with anything other than sugar and milk. Since there is corn starch in the ice cream, it still has to be cooked so the cornstarch can work its magic thickening the mixture. When fully mixed and frozen, it comes out of the machine very white. The taste is very smooth, like frozen milk, but not icy at all. The best part about this flavor is you can mix anything into it or onto it and the flavor is not at all lost. It’s a lot like vanilla, minus the vanilla.

The only problem with making all this ice cream is now I have to eat it!