Tomato Kumato

February 3, 2010

I’m a Writer

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes — Tags: , — emiglia @ 3:38 pm

The conversation is inevitable: after a few minutes of talking to a new group of people, of asking “What can I get you to drink?” and “So, where are you from?” comes the question I so loved a year ago, but that now I dread.

“What do you do?”

I take a sip from my glass. I pause. I try to decide if I should just make a joke and say I’m “funemployed” and let that be the end of it. But I suck it up. “I’m a writer,” I answer.

“Oh! Wow!” They say appreciatively, nodding. I hold my breath. The worst is still to come.

“What do you write?”

And that’s where I stop being able to answer. What do I write? Well… it all depends…

Every day, I blog. I write about things that people should be buying and places that people should visit. Never mind that I don’t buy most of the stuff I tell people to buy and I haven’t been to a great majority of the places that I research… that’s what I do, every day. And I do it in French.

I write about the places I’ve lived, like Paris, the one that stole my heart, and San Francisco the one that got away, for they are my inspiration, my muse. I write about my home of New York-Toronto-Cannes-San Sebastian-Paziols-Westhampton. Paris. sigh.

I write restaurant reviews. Somehow I got famous for this one in San Sebastian, where people, I think, had lofty visions of me being a female Calvin Trillin. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I generally get paid less per review than it costs me to go to a place, which means that 99% of the time, I only review places I was planning on going anyway: dive bars and cafés.

I do translations. I write other people’s resumes, cover letters and letters to the French bank (quelle horreur). I write letters to people I like and Facebook messages when I don’t have time, energy, stamps or stationery. I write recipes, as you all know by now. I write telephone messages. I write movie reviews. I write query letters… lots and lots and lots of query letters. I write some good stuff, but I also write a lot of bullshit. I’m OK with that, I think.

But when my fingers are aching for a pen and I answer distractedly to people’s direct questions. (”Em, you want pizza or Chinese for dinner?” “Uh… um… just a sec. One sec. One sec. Wait. What was the question?”) When I get an idea in my head that won’t shake free, when I remember why I chose this as a job: sitting at my desk with an endless cup of coffee that I microwave every few hours when I forget about it, trying to ignore Twitter so that I can actually get down to work… That’s when I write novels. Above all else, I’m a novelist; my heart lies in other people’s stories, in characters so real that I find myself falling in love with the good ones and promising them happiness and crying when I finally break their hearts on page 256.

“What do you write?” they ask. I want to answer… but I usually just shrug.

“You know. Stuff.”

Gingerbread (Culinary Concoctions by Peabody)

Peabody serves this with cream cheese frosting, which I’m sure is a dream. I chose to top mine with a Speculoos spread that isn’t available in the States, but if you ever find yourself in France, pick up a jar… it’s divine.

1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon ground Ginger
1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup  (1 1/2 sticks)  butter, softened
3/4 cups sugar, divided
1 egg
1/3 cup molasses

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a brownie pan and set aside.

In a small bow, mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.

In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar in large bowl with a whisk until light and fluffy. Beat in egg until well blended.  Gradually beat in flour mixture until well mixed. Stir in molasses. Spread evenly in prepared pan.

Bake 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes, then remove from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack. Spread speculoos spread over the bars. Cut into bars.

January 28, 2010

Apple-Cream Cheese Bread

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes, Quickbreads — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 6:54 pm

“Is there anything you can’t make?” The Artist asks me as she sits in a chair in my kitchen watching me put the finishing touches on an Indian feast one of my first nights back in Paris.

The Artist and I met for the first time at my Thanksgiving celebration last year, where she waxed on and on about this Pumpkin Tarte Tatin that has become a staple at my Thanksgiving table, going so far as to make it for her boyfriend, even though she only cooks tortillas and Kaiserschmarrn.

I thought about it for a moment. “Really simple things…” I answered, reaching for a dish towel to move one pot to another burner and stirring with the other hand.

“For awhile I didn’t like my tomato sauce… and I still can’t make latkes.” I kept thinking for another moment as I made a spice blend for the dal. Suddenly, it hit me.

“Bread,” I answered. “Anything with a yeast dough.”

I know it’s not an uncommon difficulty, but for me, it’s a very frustrating one. I bake all sorts of quickbreads, muffins and cakes with ease, and then the second I try to mix yeast, flour, water and salt, four simple ingredients, all Hell breaks loose and I end up with a rock-hard-on-the-outside, kind-of-raw-on-the-inside ball of tasteless yuck.

Oh well… someday I’ll figure it out, maybe. Until then, I can content myself with being good at this: I do love a nice quickbread, and this one is no different. It’s very light in texture–my father compares it to the inside of a cupcake. It’s all gone now, so I assume that’s a compliment.

Apple-Cream Cheese Bread

1-1/4 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 pinch freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. cardamom
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
2/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 apple, chopped
1 8 oz. block of Neufchatel cheese (or regular cream cheese)
1/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking pan (I used a tart pan and an 8×8 brownie pan) by greasing the interior and lightly dusting with flour. Set aside.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, combine the melted butter and sugars with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until completely encorporated and slightly lighter in color. Add the applesauce and vanilla to the wet ingredients and mix to combine.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing until just combined. Add the apple and fold into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared vessel of your choosing.

Combine the cheese with the remaining brown sugar, and dollop in small amounts over the top of the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the cake is set in the middle. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then remove to a rack to finish cooling.

January 12, 2010

Lime-Raspberry Quickbread (Lactose free!)

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes, Quickbreads — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 10:53 pm

I think I should set up an office in a train.

I can have a seemingly perfect setup at home: a desk, a bottomless cup of hot coffee, headphones, a blanket… and I’ll still sit in front of the screen, the cursor blinking at me, taunting me. So I distract myself with something else–one of my myriad of freelance jobs or a webcomic or messing around in the kitchen for awhile–and my characters stay in suspended animation in their unsaved wod document, waiting, waiting, waiting for me to get back to them.

But be it a half-empty subway car, the New Jersey transit train that takes me from Penn Station to Princeton, the LIRR that I ride home from the Hamptons, the RER C that I used to take out to Breuillet on the weekends, or the five-hour train ride that I so love—the one that takes me from north to south, from my beloved Paris to my beloved Cannes–the second I set foot on a train—any train—I’m scrambling for a pen and a notebook or the inside cover of a paperback or a crumpled receipt (or even my arm, as some of you may remember all too well) to jot down sentences and half-baked thoughts that I’ll come back to later, when I have time to think. When my hand has time to catch up to my racing brain.

I notice when I reread what I’ve written that the ideas I was sure about–the ones I had already been chewing in the back of my mind–are clear and sure. The things I don’t know about yet, the word vomit that spills so fast that I can hardly get my hand to write fast enough before the words are gone, that writing is riddled with errors, barely legible. I hope I can read it, when I finally sit down at sunrise and decode purple scribbles on the lined pages, crawling from within, their prison like vines on an iron gate. This is what I write when I’m on the train.

A billboard in Belleville : one must be wary of words.

A billboard in Belleville : one must be wary of words.

It’s not just stories–it actually hardly ever is. Most of the thoughts I write on the train are detached from any other reality. Sometimes they’re phrases, descriptions of things I never realized I’d thought of before. Sometimes they’re characters–someone who doesn’t yet have a place in any of the worlds I’ve created, but who, someday, may integrate themselves somewhere. Whatever it is, it’s not until I bring it home that I realize what I intended.

Trains are also where I do some of my best thinking: this cake, for example, was envisioned on board a train, when I was trying to decide what to make for a lactose intolerant friend. I scribbled a bunch of things in the margins of the recipe I’d printed, and by the time I’d arrived home, it was easy as pie. Or cake, as the case may be.

Lime-Raspberry Quickbread (adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody)

1 ½  cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 1/4 cup plain soy yogurt
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
3 extra-large eggs
2 tsp grated key lime zest
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
¼  cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup raspberry jam, heated with a bit of water until pourable

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium sized bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, 1 cup sugar, the eggs, lime zest, and vanilla. Slowly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Fold the vegetable oil into the batter.

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan. Spread raspberry jam evenly over the batter. Add the remaining batter on top of the raspberry jam.

Bake for about 50 minutes, or until a cake tester placed in the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Meanwhile, cook the 1/3 cup lime juice and remaining 1/3 cup sugar in a small pan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is clear. Set aside.

When the cake is done, allow it to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Carefully place on a baking rack over a sheet pan. While the cake is still warm, pour the lemon-sugar mixture over the cake and allow it to soak in.

January 4, 2010

Mini Speculoos Cheesecakes

Filed under: Cake Day, Daring Bakers, cheese — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 1:58 am

I swear I saw a stranger from a former life on my crosstown bus tonight.

It was appropriate, I suppose, considering the rest of my evening. It’s always been important to me to have intense people to call upon at all hours of the evening, friends who will force me to think and discuss. It’s always been important, but even moreso now that my daily bread is won by writing. Now, when I can spend hours and hours in front of a computer screen without ever looking up and participating in the world around me.

A writer is only as good as the stories he tells, and a writer’s stories are only as interesting as the life he leads. As a surgeon makes a point of memorizing the major arteries, as a chef makes a point of familiarizing himself with the food choices and trends around him, I must make a point of living my life.

I forget, until I get back here and see him again, see New York through the tinted glasses he eased onto the bridge of my nose nearly five years ago, how much of what I love about New York came from him: the Prep. One night spent the way we used to, the television on as little more than background noise to our long, persistent conversations about nothing at all brings everything back, and as I wander these streets, it’s as though the lights have changed. The director has called “action,” and I see New York the way I used to when we were still in love.

It’s in this New York that I can find the perfection in tiny moments like this, in discovering the poignancy of seeing a face that used to be familiar to me, a name that I’d forgotten I ever knew until I saw him and remembered. He doesn’t remember me… there’s no reason for him to. He was the Golden Boy, a boy I never would have spoken to had it not been for one night at prep school orientation, eight years ago now. I don’t feel old enough to reminisce about eight years ago, but there it is. We got off at the same stop: he walked east, I walked west. I didn’t look back… there was no reason to. But I laughed out loud to myself as I walked up Madison Avenue at night, shivering in the coat I borrowed from my younger self before leaving this evening, as I did so many times it came to be routine so many years ago.

Abbey’s Cheesecake

An oldie but a goodie, this cheesecake recipe comes from a Daring Baker’s challenge from last year, but it’s still my favorite. I sub speculoos for graham crackers and use crème fraîche in place of heavy cream. For mini-cheesecakes, make them in a muffin pan, and bake 20 minutes before resting for an hour.

Crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Cheesecake Filling:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

June 14, 2009

Cake Day: Birthday Cake

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 5:04 am

My birthday has always fallen right on the cusp of summertime. School is out, or is going to be out in a few days. People are making summer plans–in New York, this means they’re heading out to Long Island or to the Jersey shore. We were Long Islanders, and so every year, the weekend closest to my birthday was reserved for me being able to take a few friends out to our house, to open the pool, to swim and welcome summer.

As I got older, and especially once I went to boarding school, I didn’t bring anyone out to Long Island, but my birthday still always felt like that marker that ushers summer in. I had my siblings, and we had a group of family friends that had houses near ours on Long Island, so my birthday was always celebrated together, this day where everyone started wearing their sundresses and my brother fired up the pizza oven.

I’ve been away from home for three birthdays in a row now, something that would have been unthinkable in high school, where I counted down to my birthday, not because I was that excited about getting older, but because of what it meant: summer, lemonade, the pool, pie, the beach, tanning while reading junky magazines.

This year, I was supposed to be in the Congo for a journalism job: long story short, it’s not going to happen, and the month of June has no idea what it is planning for me. I let myself continue the way I was for a week or so, watching my birthday come and go without much fanfare at all. I made my own birthday cake, as many of you out there do, and Alex and I enjoyed it over the course of several days: my favorite birthday cake, bright with the summer flavor of lemon and soft and moist and perfect. Alex, the chocoholic, requested it for his next birthday. When it was gone, I checked out tickets to the beach on the French train website and closed the window as quickly as I’d opened it–apparently, the rest of Paris had the same idea as I had, and prices had skyrocketed.

But yesterday… yesterday was different. Yesterday, as I sat in my apartment with the windows opened, trying to work but my heart not really in it, I remembered a summer from a few years back, where June felt empty, and it was only me and my sister to keep one another company. We didn’t have a ride to the beach, so we’d biked to the library to pick up huge stacks of books–eight apiece–and set up camp by the pool in the backyard. We made giant glasses of iced coffee and tanned and read, every so often, jumping in to the pool to cool down. It was one of the best summer months I’ve ever had.

I don’t have a pool, but I do have a balcony, so yesterday, I collected an equally large stack of books–Knock, A Separate Peace, The Story of French, Modern Spice, Franny and Zooey–and I climbed out onto the balcony, equipped with a towel, my iPod, a bottle of water, a pen and paper and a tall glass of iced coffee. It’s not the same, but I’ve welcomed summer anyway, even if it was a week late.

Lemon Cake with Lemon Curd and Coconut Frosting

For cake layers (adapted from Gourmet)

1 cup canola oil, plus additional for greasing cake pans
2.5 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
2 cups sugar
4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease two cake pans with canola oil.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Combine the cup of canola oil, milk, vanilla and zest in another bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together until fully combined. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the oil mixture, starting and ending with flour. Use a wooden spoon to fully combine all ingredients.

Divide the batter evenly between the two pans. Bake on the middle rack about 30 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool the cakes in the pans for ten minutes before removing and cooling completely on a rack.

For lemon curd (Alton Brown recipe)

5 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
4 lemons, zested and juiced
1 stick butter, cut into pats and chilled

Add enough water to a medium saucepan to come about 1-inch up the side. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, combine egg yolks and sugar in a medium size metal bowl and whisk until smooth, about 1 minute. Measure citrus juice and if needed, add enough cold water to reach 1/3 cup.

Add juice and zest to egg mixture and whisk smooth. Once water reaches a simmer, reduce heat to low and place bowl on top of saucepan. (Bowl should be large enough to fit on top of saucepan without touching the water.)

Whisk until thickened, approximately 8 minutes, or until mixture is light yellow and coats the back of a spoon. Remove promptly from heat and stir in butter a piece at a time, allowing each addition to melt before adding the next.

Remove to a clean container and cover by laying a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd. Refrigerate until needed.

For frosting:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup cream cheese
1 tsp. vanilla
1-3 cups powdered sugar
shredded coconut

Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add vanilla and begin adding powdered sugar by the half-cupful until desired sweetness is achieved.

Assemble cake by placing one layer, flat side up, on a plate. Spread with the lemon curd. Place the other layer on top, and frost with the frosting. Cover the top of the cake with shredded coconut.


May 23, 2009

Cake Day: Buttery Apple Loaf Cake

Filed under: Cake Day, Quickbreads — Tags: , , , , — emiglia @ 6:02 am

I have trust issues.

*Phew* There. I said it. That feels better.

I’ve always had trust issues… I’m not too sure where it comes from. Maybe from growing up in a house where nothing–from the bathroom to your bedroom to even your diary–was private. Maybe it’s from moving around so often, always having to make new friends and never being sure what they truly thought of you. It could even be from being an awkward middle schooler, like so many of us are, even if we all feel like we’re the only ones.

At any rate, I have a hard time trusting people, and I tend to keep a lot of things, like most of my writing, a secret from the people closest to me, even if I have no problem posting it all on the Internet for strangers to see.

I have trust issues with my food too. Though I’ve come a long way from my soap fear, I still get nervous the first time I feed someone new, especially when that someone is a picky eater. Alex likes everything–he’s easy to please, but others aren’t so forgiving of little mistakes and cooking “au feeling.”

A few weeks back, we spent the whole weekend at Alex’s parents’ house in the suburbs, and when Saturday rolled around, Alex expected Cake Day, as usual. I wasn’t so sure: it wasn’t my kitchen, I didn’t know the oven, I didn’t know what ingredients were available… but he insisted, and I caved.

I wanted to pick something simple, something I would feel comfortable making, like a quickbread, which is hard for me to mess up. There were apples in the fruit basket waiting to be used up, and so I grabbed a couple and found this recipe at Culinary in the Country.

I moved my way through the hotel’s kitchen, unwrapping individually-packaged 12.5 gram pats of butter to get the right amount, rummaging through the unfamiliar collection of spices, tasting different mysterious white powders until I found the (unlabeled) box containing baking powder, subbing white sugar and honey for the brown sugar that is nearly never used in France.

I accidentally mistook plastic serving trays for baking sheets and almost burned the hotel down, standing next to the oven having a stress-fit while Alex expertly removed the bubbling trays from the oven.

But it came out in the end, a little burned on the top, but perfectly serviceable. And yet, something wasn’t quite right. The apple topping was tasty, the ribbon of sugar in the middle had come out right… but the cake itself was surprisingly bland. I had taken some liberties and added nutmeg to the cinnamon, which had been the only spice, and had thrown a bit of both spices into the cake itself, but something was still missing… I’m assuming vanilla, which I didn’t notice was absent from the recipe, but afterwards, I wondered if it was a typo.

No problem, says Alex, heading to the industrial-sized fridge for a package of pre-made crème anglaise. He generously pours it over the top and declares it delicious. When his picky sister agreed–a self-declared hater of cinnamon in any form–I decided I could trust his pronouncement–and the recipe.

This recipe is my submission to this month’s FBI Gloves blog event, hosted by Marija at Palachinka. You can stop by Joe’s awesome blog any time before May 31st to pick a recipe to make and blog about.

Remember: if you’d like your baked goods featured in the weekly Cake Day post on Saturdays, just send me a hyperlink to the post, and I’ll include you in my round-up!


Buttery Apple Loaf Cake (adapted from Culinary in the Country)

Note: We served this with crème anglaise and it was fine, but in the future, I’ll definitely be adding vanilla to the batter, and so I’ve written the recipe to reflect this change.

For the topping:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp. honey
8 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

For the cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup yogurt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 cups peeled and diced tart apples

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix together topping ingredients until crumbly.

In a large bowl, whisk together flours, sugar, baking powder, spices and salt.

In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, melted butter,  yogurt and vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients and mix just until moistened.

Place half of the batter into a 9 x 5″ loaf pan coated with nonstick spray. Cover the top with half of the apples and half of the topping mixture. Place the remaining batter on top and spread to cover. Scatter with another half of the topping mixture, the remaining apples and finish with the leftover topping.

Bake until golden and a toothpick placed in the center comes out mostly clean - about 70-80 minutes. Remove and place on a wire rack. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then carefully remove. Let cool completely. Serve with crème anglaise.

May 16, 2009

Cake Day: Cream Cheese Sandwich Cookies

Filed under: Cake Day, Cookies — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 9:05 pm

I used to think I didn’t care what people thought of me.

I’m brutally honest and wildly sarcastic. I’m high-stress and low-energy. I’m acutely aware of being mildly to moderately crazy, depending on the day and my caffeine intake, and I don’t hide it from anyone. It took me a long time to really get to know myself–I spent most of my years in high school being known as “lobotomy girl” because of my penchant for drastically changing my personality every few months–but now that I do, I don’t apologize for it.

Apparently, my self-confidence doesn’t translate to French.

I moved to France for many reasons, but my main and original motivation was to learn French. I have taken every opportunity offered to me to completely immerse myself in the language. It is surprising, then, that one of the biggest things I miss from living in the States is my native language. There is an ease with English–and an ease that comes with being an American–that makes social situations with other Americans and other English-speakers easy.

I am bold in English, engaging strangers in conversation, telling people exactly what I think of them and making friends with random people in random places. In English, I’m well-read, well-traveled and well-educated. I can hold a reasonable conversation with most people concerning most topics. I am not afraid of being ignorant, as long as it doesn’t make me seem stupid, but I’ve found that admitting ignorance usually makes you look anything but stupid.

I spend a lot of time feeling stupid in France.

Ease of conversation and turn of phrase that come so easily to English are distant verbal memories as I try to remember the proper way to greet each individual: Do I use their first name? Can I use the informal tu? Are they expecting a bise, or just a handshake? If I don’t understand what has just been said, should I laugh along and hope no one notices, or is it an inside joke? If I try very hard to blend into the wallpaper, will they maybe just not notice I’ve entered the room?

I’ve become what I haven’t been in years in English: I’m shy.

Luckily, Alex’s family reminds me of the cousins and aunts and uncles who used to trickle into our open-plan kitchen/den every Sunday when I was growing up. In my family, we yell to be heard, we tell stories over one another without listening to what the other is saying. We laugh at each other, with each other, at ourselves. We make ourselves look stupid, but we don’t dwell on it, because someone else is always making themselves look even more stupid.

I first met Alex’s family as they trickled in, one by one, into my life in Paziols. In Paziols, where I had the safety net of being in the majority as an English speaker but also had the advantage of being one of the few bilinguals. I got to know his family slowly, edging my way into conversations with them, conversations that faded into the end of the summer and picked themselves up in September, in Breuillet.

Alex and I make the trek to Breuillet, his childhood home, nearly every other weekend, usually on the last train out on Saturday, sometimes on one of the trains that lazily take the hour-long journey on Sunday mornings. I usually have something left over from cake day: a few cookies, two cupcakes. Last weekend, I brought these cookies, a product of Alex’s imagination: cream cheese cookies filled with a cream cheese frosting (he was first introduced to cream cheese frosting at a recent birthday, and the combination of this and his newfound love of New York-style cheesecake means that cream cheese is a valid addition to any cake day concoction.

These cookies mark more than one milestone for me: they’re the first cookies I have ever made in my new oven without staring unblinking through the glass window in the front of the oven, waiting and hoping that I’ll catch them before they burn. They also mark the day where I finally got to the point where I could sit at the table and not be a mess of nerves trying to follow the conversation in vain. I laughed along at jokes I understood and smiled vaguely when I didn’t understand the punch line, welcoming explanations. I contributed to the conversation when it came to things I knew about, and sat back and listened when others knew more than I did. It sounds so simple, but to me it was a breakthrough: instead of worrying the entire time over whether I was reacting the proper way, I allowed myself to be myself. I became, once again, myself: honest, sarcastic, high-stress, low-energy, crazy and American.

Cream Cheese Sandwich Cookies

For the cookies:

2 cups plus 3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
170 g. (6 oz.) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
225 g. (8 oz.) softened cream cheese softened
1 cup Sugar-in-the-Raw
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking pan. Sift the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and set aside.

Combine the butter and cream cheese with a rubber spatula until completely combined. Add the sugars and the vanilla, and combine. Add dry ingredients and stir until combined.

Use a teaspoon to form balls of dough and drop them on the baking sheets. Bake 3-5 minutes, until just browned on the bottom and the tops are set but not firm. Remove and cool completely.


For the frosting:

125 g. (4.5 oz.) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
250 g. (8.5 oz.) softened cream cheese softened
1 tsp. vanilla
several cups of confectioners sugar, to taste

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until completely combined. Add the vanilla and mix well. Add the confectioners sugar by the half cup, whipping it into the cream cheese mixture and tasting as you go. When the frosting is sweet enough, refrigerate it until you are ready to make the sandwiches.

To assemble the sandwiches, take a small spoonful of frosting and place it on one cookie. Place a similarly shaped cookie on top. (I dipped some in a simple chocolate ganache made with melted dark chocolate and cream, but this is optional.)


April 27, 2009

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake

Filed under: Cake Day, Daring Bakers — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 6:14 pm


The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
When I was in my first year of college, I spent a lot of my food budget on Philadelphia cream cheese. I spread it on bagels, on toast, mixed it into my pasta and mashed potatoes and added it to my baked goods. I couldn’t get enough of the stuff.

Moving to France meant giving up on my bagels, not to mention my Philadelphia. But when the Daring Bakers announced that this month’s challenge would be cheesecake, I went searching.

I went to every store I could think of, and the closest thing I came up with was Philadelphia light, imported from Switzerland and extremely expensive. But it had never even crossed my mind to sit this challenge out: I love cheesecake, and so I did a little bit of subsituting.


I was nervous to make a plain cheesecake: on the one hand, there are very strong opinions on cheesecake–opinions that I share–that state that any cheesecake that’s worthwhile can stand on its own. On the other hand, if I wasn’t going to be using the same base ingredient: cream cheese, how could I expect it to turn out right?

I had tried a more expensive version of this fromage à tartiner that I found at Monoprix, but I had never tried this version before. Because I didn’t want it to be an expensive mistake if, in fact, making cheesecake without the appropriate cheese turned out to be a mistake, I went with this version and added a container of mascarpone cheese, because really, when in doubt, more cheese is always the way to go.

Before mixing the ingredients together, I tasted the fromage à tartiner: it wasn’t quite as cheesy as Philadelphia is, so I made sure to add the lemon juice as expressed in the recipe.

All good… right? Well… not quite.

The other requisite part of cheesecake is the crust, which is usually made out of graham crackers. Guess what? No graham crackers in France. I decided to use speculoos, a Belgian spice cookie, instead.

To mirror the flavors in the cookie (and to cover up any mistakes I might make), I decided to make two sauces: one was simply strawberries mascerated in sugar with fresh basil, and the other was a chocolate ganache infused with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Both were tasty, but the strawberries ended up pairing better with the cheesecake. The chocolate, I will save for later adventures.

OK, good. So there’s cheesecake and there’s crust. I’m making mini cheesecakes because I have a fear of large cakes. I put the pan in the oven, wait for it to bake (I baked for about 20 minutes), then wait for it to cool in the oven, then, finally… it’s time to take them out…

*BOOM*

Cheesecake on the floor. Under the oven. On the oven. On my foot. In the vaccuum cleaner tube. I let off a string of words that sent Alex into the living room to hide from me. I would directly quote myself, but sometimes my mom reads this blog, and I do have some shame.

Luckily, the taste didn’t suffer. I served up the two that had been injured the most in the fall (put them out of their misery and whatnot), and as the second batch baked up, we finished off the first. Alex and I decided that French cheese, speculoos, and a death-defying drop from the oven does not a ruined cheesecake make.

Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake

I’ve included my changes in parentheses next to the original recipe. Please note that the baking instructions are for a full-sized cake. For mini cheesecakes, bake 20 minutes and allow to cool for about half an hour in the oven before finishing cooling on the tabletop and then removing from the pan.
crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs (I used speculoos)
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar (I did not add the extra sugar)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (I did not add the vanilla)

cheesecake:
24 oz. (680 g.) cream cheese (I used 450 g. of fromage à tartiner and 200 g. of mascarpone)
1 cup / 210 g sugar (I used 3/4 cup)
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream (I used crème fraîche… it’s cheaper here than liquid cream)
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

April 18, 2009

Cake Day: Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies

Filed under: Cake Day, Cookies — Tags: — emiglia @ 2:38 am

I have a secret: I don’t have measuring cups.

I don’t have measuring spoons, a scale, a thermometer for my oven… anything. I’m basically baking blind.
When I first started baking, all I had to contend with was my mother’s perfect electric oven. A digital thermometer alerted me when the oven had reached the appropriate temperature, and my first few batches of oatmeal cookies turned out perfectly.

I then moved to Toronto: the oven was an electric, but there was no gauge. No problem… I just preheated for a really, really long time to make sure everything was working. I’m over-cautious… can’t help it.

My oven in my first Paris apartment had a dial in celsius that showed me where it was supposed to be, although I think it ran a bit hot. Oh well… I still managed to get it close to where I wanted it to be.

When I moved in to Alex’s apartment, I was greeted with my first gas oven, complete with a dial that was just a graded line from thick to thin: not even a guess for which temperature I was near.

“No problem,” Alex says. “Just bake au feeling.”

I don’t do anything au feeling, much less bake. I plan out my days on post-its. I color code everything. I buy my plane tickets as soon as they go on sale (one year before the date of travel). I plan my menus weeks in advance. Sure, I might change them, but the plan, the organization, is there in some form. Baking is made to be an exact science. You are not supposed to bake au feeling. I, of all people, should not be baking au feeling.

I burned a lot of cookies when I first moved in here. Cookies that spread all over the baking sheet or burned to a crisp without the chocolate chips even melting. I pulled cakes out of the oven that were gummy on the inside and crisp on the outside. I went in search for an oven thermometer and came back empty-handed.

But this week, I have accomplished something. My oven and I have finally gotten to know each other, and I have baked a batch of cookies that did not spread or burn.

The not spreading may have something to do with the fact that I recently learned that French all-purpose flour is comparable to American pastry flour and is not suitable for chewy, delicious cookies. I bought some organic flour that’s closer to the American grain, and these cookies stayed exactly the way they were supposed to: thick and soft with criss-cross patterns on the top. They taste exactly the way a peanut butter cookie should taste: like peanut butter and nothing else.

Alex watched as I got into my rhythm, forming balls of cookie dough in my palm, rolling them in sugar, placing them on the baking sheet and making the criss-cross pattern with the tines of my fork.

“Can I try?”

It was like watching a kid: so unsure of what he was doing. He took too much dough, rolled it in the sugar before it was a ball. “Here,” I offered, “Let me show you.”

I think you can probably tell which cookies are Alex’s: the ones that look like they were made by an overzealous little boy.

Alex’s version of baking au feeling. He may be better at that than I am.

Note: Please remember that if you would like your weekly baked goods featured here as a part of Cake Day on Saturdays, feel free to send me a permalink to your post, and I’ll include it in my roundup!
Peanut Butter Cookies (adapted from Baking Blonde)

1 cup + 2 Tbsp. peanut butter
1/2 cup salted butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp. milk
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup sugar (for rolling dough balls, may need more or less)

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the peanut butter and butter together until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until combined. Add the egg and milk.

In a bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together. Gently add to creamed mixture and mix until just combined. Chill dough for at least 15 minutes.

Run your hands under cold running water to cool them, then roll tablespoonfuls of dough into balls. Roll the dough balls in the sugar until covered all over, and place dough balls on a buttered baking sheet. Carefully press each ball with fork tines to create a criss-cross pattern.

Bake for 5 to 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops have puffed up and feel cooked through when you touch them. Remove from oven and cool on baking sheets for 5-10 minutes… if you can wait that long.

March 28, 2009

Cake Day: Lemon Cake

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes — Tags: , — emiglia @ 8:13 am


I’m starting to understand the distinction between what are traditionally considered “guys’ jobs” and “girls’ jobs.”

Of course, there are exceptions to all of these, but there are certain chores, certain jobs around the house that are generally considered to be one or the other.

First, an obvious one: the grill. Fire is manly, that’s easy. But maybe there’s something else? Grilling is straightforward. I know that–at least in my family–the grilling was definitely done by the man, but the pre-grilling, the menu planning, the seasoning, all of that was done by the women. All the guys had to do was throw a slab of raw animal on the grill and let us know when it was done (a feat in and of itself: I still have a hard time grilling.)

But I digress.

Some jobs are men’s jobs: grilling, driving, taking out the trash. Most of the other work around the house is traditionally considered to be “women’s work.”

(Yes, I realize this is changing, but it’s either all French men (and a few Canadians) or just those that I’ve met who seem to be stuck circa Donna Reed.)

I was thinking about this as I cleaned the kitchen and Alex took out the trash. All of the jobs that have typically been men’s work, from grilling to mowing the lawn, have immediate results and are clear from the get go: the trash is full, it must go out, now the trash can is empty: job over.

Even if cooking is now sometimes in the realm of men, one thing that seems to be staying a girl’s job is baking.

Baking is difficult, at least at first. There is a specific order in which you need to add things to a recipe, a specific way in which you need to combine each set of ingredients before moving on to another step. Unless you’re interested in chemistry (Alton Brown), at first, these steps can seem pointless, and I know several guys who would look at the list of ingredients and dump them all in a bowl: the first time I ever baked, I was baking cinnamon bread with my father. I was scared of yeast doughs for years after because the dough we ended up with was so expanded and so wet and messy that we dubbed it “the snot.”

Sorry, that was gross.

I have, however, managed to get over my fear of baking… enough to instate Cake Day at least, and so here’s this week’s contribution. (Remember: if you’d like your weekly baking featured here, just send me an e-mail with a permalink to your post, and I’ll include you).

This week’s Cake Day featured a Lemon Cake that I found at Nosh with Me, in honor of Lemon Day, a blog event devoted to everything lemon.

The recipe made enough for two loaf pans, but since I didn’t have two, I baked one loaf and a dozen muffins.

Then I licked the bowl. I’m not sorry.

I may be no Donna Reed, but I can definitely bake a cake.

Lemon Cake (adapted from Nosh With Me)

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar, divided
4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature (I used five medium eggs)
1/3 cup grated lemon zest (I used slightly less: the zest from four lemons)
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup plain yogurt

Lemon Syrup
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 freshly squeezed lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease one loaf pan and one muffin tin.

Cream the butter and 2 cups sugar. Add the eggs, combining each one into the mixture one at a time, and the lemon zest.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. In another bowl, combine 1/2 cup lemon juice with the yogurt. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately to the batter, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide the batter evenly between the pans, smooth the tops, and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Combine 1/4 cup granulated sugar with 1/4 cup lemon juice in a small saucepan and cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves. When the cakes are done, allow to cool for 10 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pans and set them on a rack set over a tray or sheet pan. Poke holes in the cakes with a fork, and spoon the hot lemon syrup over the hot cakes. Allow the cakes to cool completely.

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