The Petit Four

Because it’s Thursday and Thursdays always need some sprucing up to help us get to the weekend faster, here are some things in the last few days that have made me unbelievably happy:

Nerd awesomeness number one –
My weekly Econundrums newsletter from Mother Jones was safely delivered in my inbox on Monday, equipped with a carbon calculator for my food!

Why is that important?  Well, Kiera Butler from MJ is here to explain -

Cows have become famous for trampling the planet: A four-ounce serving of steak creates 10.6 pounds of greenhouse gases, the same as a 95-mile car trip. But foregoing meat that once mooed without considering the carbon impact of the rest of your diet? That’s a little like telling someone who’s counting calories that the bacon explosion is off limits, but corn dogs, pizza, and chocolate cake are all fair game.

With books and movies like Fast Food Nation, Food, Inc., The Omnivore’s Dilemma, we’ve all thought (or at least pretended) to think about where our food comes from and what has to happen for it to get into our bellies.   And by now, we’ve heard the basic message – eat less meat, eat more plants. But it isn’t always that simple. Bon Appétit (the catering company, not the Condé Nast publication) has served up a calculator that can help you make ethically-minded eating choices.

The calculator’s not entirely accurate, but it gives you a gist of how many carbon points are in a generic piece of food. You choose a category and a food item, drop it in the frying pan and voilà! You have a general estimate of how much carbon was produced to make your lunch.

And what’s this thing about carbon points? Econundrums explains:

Foods are assigned point values based on their greenhouse gas emissions—one point equals .035 oz. of emissions. Researchers took into account both the agricultural and shipping emissions associated with each food—for a detailed account of their methodology, click on “What do these points mean?”.

And I say it’s a general estimate because there are some inaccuracies in that it doesn’t factor in certain environmental elements…and it’s produced by a catering company. But then again, it doesn’t tout itself as the end all be all. But I still think it’s pretty neat and that it can help people to make more environmentally-conscious (and healthier) food choices.

Nerd awesomeness number two. NPR time!

NPR is pretty great. You get great reporting, interesting stories that actually mean something (see any local TV news broadcast at 5 to see the opposite), and a way to continue learning about the world around you – all for free! Plus sometimes you can get pretty sweet swag if you donate. And now one of my favorite NPR news shows, All Things Considered, just released a cake cookbook, All Cakes Considered. Political news with baking? Be still, my beating heart.

Melissa Gray, an ATC producer, wrote this book after bringing a cake to work every Monday. It has a focus on American-style, comfy, down-to-earth cakes with recipes for things like the bundt cake of all bundt cakes, The Tunnel of Fudge, and others like the Brown Sugar Pound Cake. And I’m not only excited about the different kinds of cakes in the book, but also because of the writing that goes on in between the recipes. Gray has produced some of my favorite ATC stories.

I haven’t gotten my hands on a complete copy of the book, but I’ve secured a few of the recipes and am anxious to try them out.  But I’m pretty confident that NPR + Cake = Great.

And bonus - I found this on Flickr. Man, does it make me miss my dog.

Nelson! *I have no idea what is on his tongue. I don't really want to know.

There needs to be an amendment on the “There’s nothing as American as apple pie” statement. It’s just not true. The English gave us our version of apple pie.  The Dutch make a mean apple pie too. And those francophones have their tarte tatin.

Instead, I propose it should be “There’s nothing as American as chocolate chip cookies and brownies.”

Nobody makes a tray of chocolate chip cookies or a pan of brownies like an American. In Brussels’  grocery stores, they have a brownie mix in a box. The cover is vaguely 1970s in a horrifying outdated sort of way, which makes me wonder if it has been sitting on the shelf since 1973. The picture of the brownie itself is also pretty scary. It resembles a square form of… number two, to put it politely.

So this weekend, after my students started to get twitchy and unfocused as they’ve begun to go through their Mexican food withdrawal and started to bemoan the lack of brownies in their life, I found several bars of chocolate in my grocery basket and a task to bake.

Brownies, like chocolate chip cookies, have a mythical beginning. Nobody really knows who invented them or what the real Creation Story is behind the brownie. Some say it was created in the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago at the Palmer Hotel.  The ladies who luncheon needed a chocolate cake dessert but also needed it so they could eat with their fingers while viewing the expositions. Some say Fannie Farmer created it for her cookbook. And my personal favorite - a certain Mrs. Brown forgot to add baking soda to her chocolate cake destined for a bake sale. Not having enough time to make another cake, she cooled her flat chocolate cake, cut it in squares and took it to her church bake sale. And brownies were born. (Interestingly, here is a website that compares the evolution of the brownie recipe.)

Brownies can come in many forms – swirled with caramel, dotted with macademia nuts, topped with ice cream, fudgy, chewy, cakey. There are whole cookbooks devoted just to brownies and a person would be very hard pressed to find a brownie version they didn’t like.

I decided to try out these “Adult” brownies banging around the Serious Eats message boards. And hello! Fudgey brownies are really, really delicious. The heady combination of intense chocolate flavor and coffee is decadent enough to make you want a cigarette afterward. Thank god my students are getting all of these – they lead to bad decisions. And me being about 50 pounds heavier.

Some tips for baking brownies –

In general, if you want your brownies (or cookies!) chewier, try reducing the amount of flour by a ¼ cup or add 3 tablespoons of corn syrup. But since the latter is a little nasty and not as good for you, try reducing the flour first.

If you want a light, slightly crackly crust on your brownies and one that isn’t tough, ditch your mixer and beat by hand.

Metal pans bake things quicker than glass. In general, recipes give you a wide range of “done” times because it depends on what type of pan you are using. Metal conducts heat a lot quicker than glass, so your goods will be done much quicker. Also, to be on the safe side, you should start checking for doneness (metal or glass) every five minutes after 20 minutes.

It helps to mix your sugar and vanilla together first before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.  This ensures an even distribution of the vanilla and gives your baked goods a smoother, subtler taste throughout.

Butter-Brick Brownies with Coffee and Salt
Adapted slightly from Tam Ngo

2 tablespoons (1 1/2 stick or 6 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
8 ounces milk chocolate (41% cocoa), coarsely chopped
8 ounces dark chocolate (64% cocoa), coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 tablespoons vanilla
1/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted (you can go for 1/2 cup here if you want. I did just a 1/4 cup though and they were fudgey fudgey fudgey. Mmmm.)
1 teaspoon fleur de sel or sea salt
1 tablespoon dark coffee grounds, like mocha or dessert coffee

Preheat over to 325F.  Line an 8×8 baking pan with parchment paper so that there is enough overhang to work as handles.

Create a double boiler on very low heat by placing a large metal over a pot of simmering water, place the chocolate and cubed butter. Stir occasionally until melted. Remove from heat and stir until smooth.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine sugar and vanilla.  After the chocolate mixture has cooled to touch, pour the chocolate into the vanilla-sugar.  Next, beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the flour, salt, and coffee and mix vigorously by hand for 5 minutes.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and tap the pan on a counter top to even out the batter. Bake for 22 minutes, take out the pan, and tap the pan on the counter twice to further even out and condense the batter. Rotate and reinsert the pan to bake for another 22 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out moist but free of uncooked batter. You made need to adjust baking time and bake longer. The less flour you use, the more time it takes to bake.

Remove the pan from the oven and place on a cooling rack for 10 minutes. Remove the brownies from the pan using the parchment handles and place the brownies on the rack. Cool completely before cutting.

Tam Ngo based these off of brownies at Andronico’s in Berkely, California, which are famous for the brick-like texture.  Tam emphasizes that to make the brownies more brick-like, you need to let the brownies condense and collapse onto itself.  The way to do this is to let the brownies “stale” for a little bit.  I let them stale for about a day and a half and they worked beautifully.  Brick-ish and easy to handle.  The brownies might also seem a bit oily as they come out of the oven.  As they cool, the brownies will reabsorb the oil and work to make the brownies more condensed and fudgey.

Sometimes I have this weird ability to make myself insanely busy. Or overcomplicating things. And I don’t always match said weird talent with a companion talent like say, being able to balance everything.

So when I feel like I’m trying to dodge an impending ball of work (think opening scene of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark), nothing clears my head and calms me down quite like baking. The methodical sifting, stirring, pouring, folding massages out the lines of frustration etched onto my day. No matter how many times I mess up a verb conjugation or my tired brain says “garbaaage” instead of détritus, I can’t really mess up baking if I just follow the directions.  What matters is that I bake chocolate chip cookies while listening to This American Life.

The chocolate chip cookie has a certain allure to it. It’s a basic combination of flour, butter, sugar and chocolate, but it somehow has managed to create this certain je ne sais quoi that gets people up in arms about the perfect cookie. Some people, like the New York Times, think they have the Chocolate Chip Cookie’s “come hither” taste down to a science, claiming that it is the ultimate chocolate chip cookie. Others have certain rules and procedures they follow when making the “perfect” cookie. But I say to hell with it. Part of the reason why the Chocolate Chip Cookie is great, why it has that certain je ne sais quoi quality, is because it’s true essence lies in its simplicity. You, a bowl, and a wooden spoon. A powerful combination that can result in something that will make most men weak in the knees. If you try and deconstruct the cookie you’re missing the point. So, I won’t claim this is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, I’ll just say that it’s just damn good and the act of making it is therapeutic perfection.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Dorie Greenpan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. baking soda
2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2/3 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
12 oz. bittersweet chocolate
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment or spray with cooking spray.

In a small bowl, whisk flour, salt, and baking soda together.

In a large bowl, beat butter on medium speed for about 1 minute until smooth (you can use a wooden spoon if you want.)  Add the sugars and beat for another 2 minutes until well blended.  Beat in the vanilla.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each egg is added to fully incorporate into the batter.  Reduce mixer speed to low to avoid spraying, and slowing add the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is fully incorporated.

With a wooden spoon, mix in chocolate and nuts if you are using them.

Dough can be covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Spoon the dough by slightly rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheet, leaving about 2 inches between spoonfuls.

Place the cookies in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. At the midway point during baking, rotate the baking sheet.  The cookies will be done when they are brown around the edges and golden in the center.  Pull the baking sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for 5 minutes before transferring to cool on racks.

In my mind, cinnamon rolls = truck stops. And not just any truck stop, but The Wheel Inn. Growing up, The Wheel Inn was the place to go to hide in the back booths, consume massive, plate-sized cinnamon rolls or pineapple-strawberry milkshakes on seventies-orange Formica tabletops, and indulge in an illegal cigarette or two…or pack. And since it was open 24 hours, it was always there to welcome you with open arms.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time there in high school.

In a brief claim to fame validating The Wheel Inn’s existence (and the number of hours I spent there), Jeff Goldblum stopped there one fated summer night mid-road trip.  Legend has it (on the authority of my friends Marisa and Elyse who had the nerve to sit and drink coffee with him) he, like many who came before him, rustled up some late-night driving energy on The Wheel’s famed cinnamon rolls.  I’m sure he dove into the heaping, swirly pile of warm gooeyness with reckless abandon.  It’s hard not to.  The crispy dough encircles a fragrant mixture of cinnamon and sugar, topped with oozing frosting that dribbles down the sides and onto the edges of the plate.  Paired with a cup of truck stop coffee and it’s enough sugar and caffeine to keep you up all night.  The stuff crack is made of.

I don’t really know if The Wheel Inn still holds the same appeal to angsty teenagers in my hometown.  I rarely go back when I’m home. Partially it’s because I’m afraid that the kids who sat underneath the “No Smoking” signs lighting up cigarettes will still be there, still lighting up but slightly more paunchy and possibly balding. But also because the place isn’t the same. Since I left, they’ve replaced the orange formica table tops, waitress skirts and printed menus with…puce. Now, instead of walking into a den of 70s whitetrash nostalgia, you walk into…well, a place where Jeff Goldblum would never stop in order to fill up on caffeine and sugar. It’s sort of sad really.

Plus, now I’m older and can make my own cinnamon rolls. Not the plate-sized extravagant offering from The Wheel Inn, but a homemade extravagance in its own right. I decided to make these one night when I was suffering from some intense anxiety over recent life developments and needed to mellow out. And after I pulled these out of the oven and smothered the rolls with the maple frosting, I had just the right amount of sugar and gooey, warm carbs in my system to put my life in order. I think Jeff Goldblum would have approved.  Now I just need to figure out the milkshakes.

Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Frosting
Adapted from Pioneer Woman

2 cups milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 package active dry yeast
4 + 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 heaping teaspoon baking powder
1/2 “scant” teaspoon baking soda
1/2 heaping tablespoon of salt
2-3 cups melted butter
1 cup sugar
generous sprinkling of cinnamon

Mix the milk, vegetable oil, and sugar in a pan and heat on the stove until just before boiling.  Take off burner and leave to cool 45 minutes to 1 hour.  When the mixture is lukewarm to warm, but NOT hot, sprinkle in the package of Active Dry Yeast.

Let this sit for a minute.  Then add 4 cups of all-purpose flour.  Stir mixture together.  Cover and let rise for at least an hour.

Add 1/2 cup of flour, the baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Stir together.  At this point, you can cover the dough and put it in the fridge until you need it.  It can keep overnight to day or two later if necessary.

Sprinkle a rolling surface generously with flour.  Take the dough and form a rough rectangle.  Then roll the dough thin, maintaining a general rectangular shape (this will help later when you’re making “the roll”).  Drizzle melted butter over the dough.  Now sprinkle sugar over the butter followed by a generous sprinkling of cinnamon.  And I mean generous.  Just dump it on there.

Starting at the opposite end, begin rolling the dough in a neat line toward you.  Keep the roll relatively tight as you go.  Pinch the seam to the roll to seal it.  Spread melted butter in round, foil cake or pie pans.  Make sure the bottom and sides are covered.  (You can use spray, but really, the melted butter makes these magical.  You want the butter. You need the butter.  You deserve the butter.)  Begin cutting rolls approximately 3/4 to 1 inch thick and laying them in the buttered pans.  Repeat this process with the other half of the dough.  Let the rolls rise for 20 to 30 minutes, then bake 400 degrees until light golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes.

Maple Frosting
1/2 bag of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon maple flavoring (like syrup)
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons strongly brewed coffee
1/8 teaspoon salt

For frosting, mix all ingredients and stir well until smooth.  It should be thick but pourable.  Taste and adjust as needed.  Generously drizzle over the warm rolls.  Use all the frosting.  You won’t be sorry.

My life has been all over the place as of late.  I’ve started an exciting new venture where I’m working at an organic, all-local, punk-rock themed bakery on the weekends, but I’ve also mysteriously found myself with many, many other things on my plate.

One of these things includes a very sudden, very surprising trip to the US Virgin Islands - starting tomorrow.  So from Wednesday to Sunday, you’ll find me hanging out with monkeys, iguanas and oh-so-much rum.  And maybe a mango beer or two.

So, until I get back, you can look at these pictures of what’s to come when I get back - the lowdown on my Easter festivities.  Why Easter stuff now?  Well, I was the smart kid who left her purse with her wallet, apartment keys, bike lock key and most importantly for you, my usb cable back in Michigan.  Trust me, that will not be happening again this week.

I am not Polish.

This is probably not surprising to a lot of people, but this is a new development for me.  For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has been going around talking about how Polish she is - enough so that I’ve been walking around thinking that I’m half Polish.

This summer my family visited some of our relatives in Columbus, Ohio and during the visit, my grandmother let a comment slip about how Polish we all were.

“Gladys, we are NOT Polish,” said my aunt Barb.  “You are French.  Your maiden name is Beaubien for pete’s sake.”

I’ve been duped by my own grandmother.  I feel so had.

So I decided to honor my not-heritage by making paczki (punchkey or poochkey) for Fat Tuesday.

Never really exposed to the art of paczki making (now I know it was for a very good reason), a quick Google search yielded a recipe that was found handwritten in someone’s Polish grandmother’s cookbook.  Plus, the recipe featured butter, tons of eggs, cream and deep frying.  Can’t go wrong, right?

12 egg yolks (but I just used 6 whole eggs)
1 tsp. salt
1/8 oz. active dry yeast (about 2 packets)
1/4 c. warm water
1/3 c. room temperature butter
1/2 c. sugar
4 1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. rum or brandy (I chose brandy because it seemed more authentic…I’m not sure how accurate that is)
1 cup warmed whipping cream (I just poured it into a glass jar, nuked it in the microwave and called it good)
1 1/2 cups preserves or cooked prunes or apples or poppy seed filling or custard or whatever delicious filling your heart desires.  To really fulfill my non-Polish potential, I went with the traditional prune filling.
Enough oil, butter, lard or shortening for deep-frying!

Beat eggs and salt in a small bowl for several minutes.  The recipe (found here) says beat until the eggs are thick and pile softly.  I didn’t know what that meant so I just beat the hell out of the eggs.  And then set aside.  These will come in later.

In a different, bigger bowl cream the butter (this is why it’s important to have it at room temp) and gradually add the sugar till it’s nice and fluffy.  While you are creaming the butter and sugar, mix the yeast and warm water together and let it sit to soften.

After the butter and sugar are creamed, slowly beat in the yeast/water mix.
Stir in 1/2 c - 1 c. of the flour into the yeast/water/butter/sugar mix.
Add the rum or brandy and half of the cream.

Beat in half of the remaining flour and add the rest of your cream.
Add the remaining flour and the egg mixture and beat for about two minutes or until the dough begins to blister.  My dough never blistered, but I just kept mixing anyway.  You’re going to want to do a good job of mixing.  I decided to stop beating the carbilicious mixture when it seemed bread-y to me.

Cover the bowl and let it rise until it doubles in size.  I’m impatient and started this recipe at 7 o’clock at night and knew that I wanted to sleep at a relatively normal hour, so I’m pretty sure I only convinced myself that it had doubled in size and it still worked out.  When it doubles, punch it down, cover and let it double again.

Punch it down for extra measure and then roll the dough out onto a floured surface.  When I did this, the dough was very elastic and kept stretching out and shrinking back in a little bit.  Which I think actually worked out really well because I have a tendency to roll things out too thin and you want your dough to be about 3/4? thick.

When it’s rolled out, cut it out with a circle or a glass.  I chose a glass that was about 2? wide to cut out the dough.

Put about 1 tbsp. of the filling in the middle of half of your cutouts.  You’re making sandwich-like things here so set aside enough to cover the filling topped bottoms.  I thought that my dough cut-outs were too small so I only used 1/2 tbsp.  Personally, I thought that there wasn’t enough filling in them when all was said and done, but others thought that it was the perfect amount so tomato tomata.

Brush the edges of the dough with water, top the bottom halves and seal the edges really well.  Let the paczki rest on a floured surface for about 20 minutes.

Grab your preferred way of deep frying (I chose shortening in my dutch oven) and deep fry until the paczki are a deep golden brown on both sides.  Pull them out of your dutch oven and let them rest and cool down.  When cool, cover with sprinkled sugar and enjoy!

I know you may be tempted to have them right away (oooh, the warm gooeyness of the prune filling.) but take my word for it, the morning after and the day after - these are delicious.  Warm, soft, gooey, fatty, deliciousness.  Also, I’m pretty sure world peace can be achieved if everyone woke up with their apartment smelling like paczki every morning.

When I brought them to the office today, I was greeted with “WTF are those?” that quickly switched to “oh.my.God.”  Now I just wish I had some left to send to my grandma.

I think I had my first life crisis when I was in second grade.  There I was, wearing my pink and purple octagon shaped glasses filling out the “About Me” pamphlet we were all going to hang the hallway.  And there it was.  Staring me down as it stuck its chin out in defiance, letting me know that it was there and it was going to stay put for.ev.er.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I knew I wanted to be different and not have my parents’ professions.  So teacher and nurse were crossed off the list.  And because I was in second grade at a Catholic school and couldn’t think of something else a girl could do (oh, the glory of breaking away from gender confines!) I panicked.  What could I become?  I frantically peered over my classmates’ hands, clumsily writing answers on their stock cards and then it came to me.  I’ll be a nun. I quickly scribbled it down and handed it off to Mrs. Kurnz before putting my head down for nap time.

The next day our cards were hung for everyone to see.  All I could see was “NUN” penciled in my awkward handwriting next to my name and the chunky drawing of our house and loopy trees.  Not that I clearly remember this, but I’m pretty sure my face twitched into a look of horror and suffocation.  I knew I didn’t want to be a nun.  And then I felt guilty because I was lying.

While I no longer going around (much less writing down) that I want to be a nun, that feeling of horror and suffocation still happen from time to time when asked about my future life plans.  Generally I get around it by making half-hearted jokes about how I went to hippie liberal arts school so my retirement plans consist of living in my fancy pants older siblings’ bathtubs.

Then one day, my friend Jake told me that after taking classes in drafting and engineering, he realized he was going to hate his job.  So he quit and dropped out of school.  With no idea what he was going to do with his life he started to train to become a firefighter.  “When I was little I always told people I wanted to become a firefighter. I figure, I thought it was cool and was attracted to it for a reason, why not do it?”  Through the course of training and playing with the truck’s siren and saving cats, Jake came to realize what he did want to do – become a nurse.  Which I think is a genius way of working towards things.

So at the risk of sounding cheesy or hokey or what have you, I have started this blog as a promise to myself.  I will work at incorporating the two things that I have been the most passionate about pursuing- wanting to own my own restaurant/bakery/baking and writing.  There are a few things that I know for sure right now and more things that I don’t.  But I do know that I never want to become the person who stays in an office because it’s comfortable.  And most importantly, I never want to be that person who talks about everything in the same way they talk about brushing their teeth.

Ten-year-old Emily, meet adult Emily.  The goal, the mission, if you please?  I will start to cook more and discover the love for all things cooking and baking I had when I was younger.  In the process I will end my hiatus from writing.  In the meantime, I will pollute the blogosphere with yet another food blog and I will patiently sit by and see where this takes me, just like Jake.  And hey, if not anything else, at least I can secretly hope that this path will somehow end up leading to Oprah.  That’s an admirable goal, right?