Finally, a recipe fit for this heat wave… No, wait. A heat wave is like a gust of hot weather that rolls through the warm summer like a tidal wave and leaves sweaty, dehydrated people in its wake. It has a distinct beginning and most importantly, a distinct end. What has been going on here on the Eastern seaboard has no end. The sweltering weather hasn’t broken. All we do is sweat and sweat and sweat. I can’t remember the last time I sat in the park to read. Those who gaffawed about the cold winter “proving that there is no such thing as global warming” have been silenced. Climate studies and political leanings aside, we all agree that it’s goddamn hot and there is no way on Earth I will turn on that oven for something more than a few minutes in this weather. I want nothing interfering with my hard working air conditioning.

Thank God the wise Sunita chose a treat for this mad weather. The only baked thing was the cake. Others posted having difficulties with the cake cracking, I was bound and determined that it would turn out right the first time or not at all. I had to look at that part of the recipe through a magnifier to make sure I got it right. The first problem was the pan size. Since my jelly roll pans measure 15×11, not the 11×9 called for in the recipe, I had to do some hard number crunching to arrive at a recipe that called for amounts that would fit with the pan size (40% larger) without affecting the thickness of the cake or the baking times. I also only made one cake rather than two and used my souffle dish for the final construction. I didn’t make it chocolate since I’m actually kind of chocolated out after the last few challenges.

The cake turned out beautifully. I beat the whites and yolks separately and rolled the cake right out of the oven in a towel and left it to cool. It never split. It was a light, beautiful sponge that provided a nice foil to the trio of iced desserts that went with it. Instead of the plain whipped cream filling suggested in the recipe, I made strawberry frozen yogurt with the last of the fresh berries and used that to fill the roll. I wrapped it and froze it overnight to set.

The next day, I used half a recipe of David Lebovitz’s Fresh Apricot Ice Cream for the topmost layer. While I thank Sunita for the recipe, David Lebovitz is the god of ice creams and I used his fantastic The Perfect Scoop and Ready for Dessert for the ice creams.

I didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of a theme, if you will, I was going for with the dessert. I went more with what was in season and in the markets than some clear idea like German Chocolate Cake theme or something. That being said, it turned out to be a kind of icy Sachertorte with Strawberries. Sunita’s simple chocolate sauce went in the middle. I made it with Valrhona dark chocolate powder and it froze up almost like a chocolate sorbet. The last ice cream was the best, Lebovitz’s Caramel Ice Cream from Ready for Dessert. That ice cream is phenomenal. I’ll have to make it again just to have. The once downside was the caramelized sugar increases the ice cream’s freezing point and it was the first to get soft and melt. You can see it in the second picture above. The cake has scarcely been out of the fridge and that ice cream is already melting all over the cutting board. It made for a weak final layer on the cake. Another minus is that it never freezes too hard and that makes it far too easy to eat straight out of the container with a guilty spoon. But it is delicious and worth every calorie-laden spoonful. It’s better than anything they have at the Franklin Fountain and that’s saying a lot.

I took the cake to work where it was met with rave reviews and nary a crumb was left. Another perk of the challenge is the introduction of swiss rolls into my baking repertoire. Filled with jam and topped with a simple frosting or just a dusting of sugar, they’re a nice easy dessert to have in the freezer for company. Hoo-ray.

The Berry Chocolate Pavlova

Let me get one thing straight. I love chocolate as much as the next person but I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow when I saw the pictures of this month’s challenge. Brown meringue. Brown mousse. No relief in sight. And then I read the recipes. I think I felt some chest pain. Below are the lists of ingredients per section of the challenge:

Recipe 1: Chocolate Meringue (for the chocolate Pavlova):

3 large egg whites
½ cup plus 1 tbsp (110 grams) white granulated sugar
¼ cup (30 grams) confectioner’s (icing) sugar
1/3 cup (30 grams) cocoa powder

Recipe 2: Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse (for the top of the Pavlova base):

1 ½ cups (355 mls) heavy cream (cream with a milk fat content of between 36 and 40 percent)
grated zest of 1 average sized lemon
9 ounces (255 grams) 72% chocolate, chopped
1 2/3 cups (390 mls) mascarpone (don’t forget we made this a few months ago – get the printable .pdf HERE)
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp (30 mls) Grand Marnier (or orange juice)

Recipe 3: Mascarpone Cream (for drizzling):

1 recipe crème anglaise
½ cup (120 mls) mascarpone
2 tbsp (30 mls) Sambucca (optional)
½ cup (120 mls) heavy cream

Recipe 4: Crème Anglaise (a component of the Mascarpone Cream above):

1 cup (235 mls) whole milk
1 cup (235 mls) heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
6 large egg yolks
6 tbsp (75 grams) sugar

See what I mean? I knew it was going to have to make some changes.

I slowly shop for ingredients throughout the month for a Daring Bakers challenge and it lined up so I had everything ready on the 21st, a day boasting of the summer solstice, Spain v. Honduras, and a day of suffocating humidity in the city. I will admit I made the chocolate mousse the day before since it seemed like it would survive refrigeration without any bad side effects. I made 1/3 of the recipe.

The chocolate mousse is underway.

On the 21st, I came home from the gym and took the eggs out of the fridge and then made myself lunch. It didn’t take long for the eggs to warm up and I used two for the meringue since I wasn’t planning on making the whole recipe, but I love meringue so I made a little of of that part of it than the cream products. At the same time, with the two yolks, I made 1/3 of the recipe for the creme anglaise. And then the unthinkable happened. Sit down for the revelation. I broke the cream. I have never ruined a custard. EVER. I blame it on being distracted with the meringue, my goat cheese panino I was making, and washing the dishes. It was find when I added everything back to the pan with the eggs appropriately tempered. It must have boiled too fast. I hate wasting food. It’s an offense that should be punishable by, if not death, then something. I bend over backwards to not throw food away and have become adept at all kinds of Old World ways of saving produce and leftovers etc. But I had to throw this out. It looked like baby vomit and there was no saving it. It broke my heart, but there you have it.

The match was starting and I threw the meringue in the oven for its long, slow bake. Just after David Villa slammed the first goal home, I felt energized enough to try it again. This time, since it was the only food product I was making at the time, it came off without a hitch. I made a 1/6 of that recipe and finished it with some Creme de Cacao since I had no Sambuca and no wherewithal to drag myself to the state store just for that. The heat was positively withering.

My mother has made pavlovas as far back as I can remember and has always topped them with a simple topping of whipped cream and plentiful fruit. I made my pavlova in the spirit of that recipe. Unlike the challenge recipe, I made one and not many small ones. I hate individual servings of things, finding it far too fussy, something akin to doillies or “tablescapes”. Nigella Lawson agrees with me. See her recipe for creme brulee in Domestic Goddess. I also believe in baking but hate washing up and will take all kinds of shortcuts to not use too many dishes. Needless to say, I didn’t go near my piping bag and just freehanded it. I added some chocolate powder to the meringue, but only enough to turn it a light shade of sunkissed, not dark brown. I didn’t measure, I just sprinkled until it looked good to me. Thanks to the humidity, it turned out a little sticky when it was done, but not too bad.

I added a couple of sprinklings of milk to the mousse to soften it up enough to scoop out since it had been in the fridge overnight. It’s a smaller proportion than what the recipe calls for but lighter is better. I topped the pavlova with plentiful raspberries and blueberries, the first of the season. They should be the centerpiece of a pavlova, not the cream. I topped that with the other cream and then topped that with a few smashed brazil nuts. Almonds would have been better but I didn’t have any, so there.

A cross section of the pav.

Verdict: I didn’t like this recipe. I thought it was unnecessarily rich. Heavy cream lightly sweetened and then whipped makes a great contrast to the crunch to the sweet, brittle meringue. The fruit should be the star of the show. The addition of the mascarpone gave it an added richness and thickness I thought was unnecessary and unpleasant, but then this is coming from someone who abhors America-style cheesecake. It’s the summer. It’s hot, humid, merciless, and yet the fruit is starting to pop up in the markets. I wish the recipe chosen for this month would keep some of that in mind. I think I made the right choice by cutting a lot of the creams in amount and increasing the proportion of meringue and fruit. When will someone pick ice cream and a vessel to serve it in? I’d be all over that. As consolation, I made Raspberry Rose Sorbet from the great David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop.

In mere days, the critters will be out of school and all of us will be there as days turn into nights and then back into days, putting all the little broken Humpty-Dumptys back together again. The one upside? free AC as the city suffocates beneath the blanket of humid heat from now until September.

P.S. I finished reading The Big Short last night. I’m disgusted. I didn’t understand it all, all the machinations to make debt out of nothing, but then I think the point of the book is not many people did. They will never be punished for what they did.

P.S.S. I made vegetarian paella yesterday and actually managed to get the rice crispy on the bottom this time. Yay. The only unfortunate thing is I didn’t have a bottle of red Spanish wine to drink with it.

The first paella of the season.

Daring Bakers May Challenge

I’d seen this thing before, never in real life but in passing on the Food Network or something. I never imagined I’d make one. And then this was May’s challenge. We were required to make the pate choux puffs, creme patissiere, and the caramel or chocolate topping or “glue”. The weekend after I got back from San Diego was my last chance to do it and since it was cloudy and I didn’t feel like doing anything else, it was perfect.

Since the creme needed to be chilled and could be made ahead, that was the natural place to start. It came together easily. I’ve never had a problem with creams or custards and this one came together easily. The directions stated we could make whatever flavor of cream we wanted, but I stuck with the tried and true vanilla partly because I didn’t want to leave my neighborhood and could only shop for things at the corner mart and partly because I knew the caramel part would be the hardest. I was kind of stressing out over it. The only change I made to the recipe was I used 2% milk rather than whole since that’s what I had. The corner mart’s milk all had expiry dates within the next week and I didn’t want to purchase more just to have it go bad. I also only made half the recipe. This didn’t look like a dessert that would keep nor did it look easy to transfer to work. Here’s the creme recipe. I made half this so-called “half” batch.

For the Vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.

Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.

Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

Now for the pate choux puffs. I’d made gougeres before which are based on the same recipe. I think the recipe I used for those, though, called for only yolks. This one required the whole egg. Once again, I only made half of the stated amounts. It’s hard to divide 3/4 of a cup in half, but I guess and figured I could just cook it off for longer if I added too much. Stirring the eggs in took a good amount of energetic mixing with a wooden spoon but eventually they incorporated as stated. The recipe made about 20 small ones and I poured them out with my piping bag. I’m terribly uncoordinated but they turned out more or less the same size. I just patted down the more enthusiastic peaks before baking them. One thing I didn’t do was paint them with an egg wash. I hate egg wash, it’s such a waste of a perfectly good egg. Since this wasn’t for a special occasion, I left them as is. They baked up perfectly and I put them in a plastic container overnight.

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.

Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.

As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes.

It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.

Piping:
Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.

Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.

Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.

Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

The next day after the gym, I made some coffee and organized all my stuff for putting this all together. I had a few tiny Ritters from my Economy Candy raid two weeks ago and so I melted down two of those alongside the sugar and lime juice for the caramel. I had never made or attempted to make spun sugar before. I’d once seen Sherry Yard create ridiculous clouds of spun sugar on Iron Chef before but I never thought I’d be called to try to do the same thing. Clearly, attempting to do anything like Sherry Yard is like asking Michelangelo to teach you to paint, but an attempt was made. I used two forks to create some rudimentary strings and spun them around the little tower of puffs as much as I could. They didn’t all cooperate and there were numerous spots where the caramel was so think that it proved to be a hazard to teeth and fillings everywhere. If I make this again, I think I’ll make a softer caramel with some cream just to keep it more edible.

I used a plastic bag to fill the puffs with the cream and a knife to make a small indentation in the puffs. I only have two nozzles for the pastry bag and both would be too big to fill the puffs that were only about an inch in diameter. I dipped the filled puffs in the caramel and made a little pyramid out of them. I bound them together with the attempted spun sugar and then topped the whole thing with strands of the melted bittersweet chocolate.

It’s delicious, probably the most taste-friendly thing I’ve yet made with the Daring Bakers. There’s nothing like a French classic. It was fun and it’s good to be reminded that choux pastry is really that easy to make. I’ll probably never make a croquembouche again, but I’ll revisit the choux again, that’s for damn sure.

P.S. I find the name “croquembouche” comical because this dessert is such a filling hazard. It may be all nice for Frenchmen with their nationalized health care, but for Americans on their own to foot those bills, it’s downright frightening. I’m an anti-dentite anyway. I’m proceeding with care.

P.P.S. Oh, yeah, I took that first picture using my hot shoe flash unit. I’d never used it before. The creme picture was taken with my phone.

RECIPE SOURCE:

Mascarpone Cheese – Vera’s Recipe (Baking Obsession) for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese.
Savoiardi/ Ladyfinger Biscuits – Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home
Tiramisu – Carminantonio’s Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007

Well, this was so time-consuming that if it hadn’t been for the big snowstorm mid-month, I never would have gotten it done. It also marked the first Daring Bakers challenge that I have had to repeat a part of the process. I don’t love tiramisu and prefer gelato as dessert rather than this rich tourist favorite, but this version has an great cream filling that benefited from some small changes I made to the requirements.

The first part I made were the savoiardi on a night off midweek. I attempted to make them using my pastry bag but it was a disaster and the resulting cookies looked like tortured tree branches. I knew they were fated to be lost in the cream, though, so I wasn’t worried, but their complete ugliness prompted me to attempt to make the recipe again the next week. This time, I used a cut off plastic bag instead of the pastry bag and the results were much more even. Recipe-wise, if I ever make them again, I’ll top them with granulated sugar rather than the confectioner’s called for in the recipe. I doubt I’ll make them again, though. Biscotti are so way funner and taste better.

I have never in my life made cheese. It belongs to that family of foods that defy rhyme or reason why someone would want to make it at home when others do it so much better. But, fathfully, I followed the recipe, I even purchased cheesecloth. I have no idea what went wrong. I thought I had done it right, but the resulting product was just a step away from the original creaminess of the heavy cream itself and a far cry from the mascarpone you buy in the store. Due to the price of whipping cream, I didn’t repeat this recipe, since I was also running out of time to get all the pieces done.

On the day of the forcasted (and as yet unseen Snowicaine), I made the zabaglione and the pastry cream as well as finished the tiramisu. I have made zabaglione before but this time it didn’t turn out quite right. I used coffee instead of marsala since I don’t have marsala in the house and I intended to take this thing to work and not keep it at home. I don’t own a bain marie and usually use a glass bowl over water in a saucepan for melting chocolate. I used the glass bowl setup this time as well and proceeded according to the recipe. After 40 minutes of stirring and no change in the stiffness of the cream, I got desperate and moved it to a smaller saucepan that I set inside the larger one. Glass is a poor heat conductor and less so when you’re counting on it to cook the food in the bowl and not just heat it. A stainless steel bowl has been added to my shopping list for next month.

The pastry cream cooked up like a dream, though and I’ve continued my streak of good luck with custards. I used orange zest both in the pastry cream and the zabaglione instead of lemon zest for a nice twist. Oranges are so in this time of year.

For assembling the final tiramisu, I used a loaf pan for ease of transport to work. The homemade savoiardi just fit a row across end to end at the top to make up for the empty space. I’m glad i remade them so I had cookies that were approximately the same size. Once the three layers were done, the loaf pan was filled all the way to the top. I topped it with chocolate curls rather than powder. I always hate the powder on top of tiramisus and wasn’t going to do the same thing with my own. I have an entire box of chocolate odds and ends and this was as good a time as any to use them.

There is one thing I must vent about. The required 2 cups of espresso is far, far too much. It could be my savoiardi were smaller than average, but given the recipe we were given, I doubt they were that much smaller. Unless I misread or misunderstood the 2 cups to mean 2 demitasse cups of espresso rather than the 500ml I made, it’s a huge, wasteful amount. Not even half a cup of it was used. And i had put Grand Marnier in it instead of rum. What a waste. I feel awful. As I write this, it’s sitting on my stove sadly blinking at me. I hate, hate waste and I hate how I didn’t listen to my common sense on this one.

As far as the finished product is concerned, as of this writing, I have yet to taste it but if the leftovers of the cream were any signal, it’s a good version of the dessert.

Addendum 2.28.2010: I’ve tried the tiramisu. It’s less coffeesque than I’d hoped. Maybe that’s from my using instant espresso powder to make the coffee rather than brewing it. Also, it’s a bit too sweet for me. If I made it again, I’d notch the sugar down. The cream doesn’t keep its form and just sliding down so the layers look like a mudslide in slow motion. I’ll stick with my old recipe if I ever make it again.

Yesterday, the Garces group opened the Garces Trading Company on the outskirts of the gayborhood. Today, I went. It’s smaller than I thought it would be with a cafe with waiter service in the middle and the food purchase areas around the perimeter in a sort of racetrack around the eating area. Cheeses and charcuterie are next to each other with bread over in the corner. The serve-it-yourself oil and vinegar section is facing it in the little alleyway. Croutons and crackers are beneath and sweet spreads and marmelades are at one end and savory canned goods on the other. Pastries and the coffee bar are in the back with a single bar table in which to sit. There’s a refrigerated section for canned and bottled drinks. The other side of the area is a temperature controlled section devoted to the new wine shop. It’s owned and operated by the PCLB but the wines are actually stored right, the employee knows how to help you, and there are a good deal of wines not seen anywhere else in the state of Pennsylvania. It’s all-European with the Italian section being the largest. Beyond, in a corner is the cashier for the wine and alcohol.

The place is lovely with a bit of the rustic feel of Amada. Employees are neatly uniformed and a few were very helpful (I try to be realistic about service, we are in Philadelphia after all). The cheese section has nothing DiBruno’s wouldn’t but it’s well-curated and they’re generous with the samples. The charcuterie is geared towards the Iberians and I bought my beloved sobrasada not found anywhere else in the this city (to my knowledge). There’s a small yet immaculate collection of olives. It is not self-serve, thankfully, something that has always bothered me about the olive bar at DiBruno’s. While it has fewer varieties than the Italian shop across town, the varieties are hand-picked. I got some arbequinas, not always available unlike their French and Italian relations. Since I have bread at home right now, I didn’t take a look at that section but many other people were and I can only imagine it’s as perfect as the bread served at the restaurants in the group.

There are some interesting oils, once again a carefully curated collection with even one California one in there for balance. It’s self-serve, though. Patrons fill their own bottles which are then sealed at the cashier. This could be a disaster in the making, especially with liquid gold like white truffle oil. Hopefully, the cheese and charcuterie section will always be heavily staffed to avoid catastrophes from happening. I wonder if children should be banned at the door.

Among the preserves from France and Italy is a small collection of Garces’ own cheese accompaniments including roasted garlic dulce de leche, truffled lavender honey, sangria honey, and the cherry fig preserve I bought. They’re a steal at $5 a piece. The savory canned section has piquillo peppers and real navajas. I bought a tin of conchas and can hardly wait to eat them when I’m done writing this. Condiments other than vinegars and oils were few.

The pastry section has great deals on the little cookies like financiers, macarons, and madeleines. The chocolate ones were calling my name with a perfect sugar crust, but they will only sell them in dozens. Knowing I’d eat them all if I got the dozen, I didn’t.

Overall, the place has great food but the layout is a bit tight and it’s smaller than I thought it would be. I was there are the end of an ordinary work day on Ash Wednesday so it was steadily busy but not exploding with people. I can’t imagine the chaos that would ensue on a Saturday when larger crowds descend on anything of Garces in this town. It also seemed to be fairly dark in there. I don’t know if it was on purpose mood lighting, but I didn’t know there were signs with the menu above our heads until I had been there about half an hour. There also seemed to be a lot of employees, a lot. And with the space being as limited as it is, it made for a tight squeeze. Though there’s a coffee bar with a full barista, I couldn’t imagine wanting to hang out there. All food purchases must be made at the one cashier by the coffee bar. Forget about relaxing reading your paper whilst being jostled by those waiting to pay and those looking at the dessert case.

The wine boutique has some real gems, though, and given Pennsylvania’s ridiculous liquor laws, it’s the first of its kind. There is knowledgeable, genial help in there and that, my friends, is priceless. Also, there are great deals. You don’t have to pay even $20 to get a good bottle. Plenty has been selected at the more everyday end of the scale. You have to pay separately than the food, but then that’s the world we live in. The cafe looks nice and you might actually have more breathing room sitting in there eating and drinking while people do their grocery shopping on the perimeters.

I can’t help thinking they need more space for all they’re trying to do. I wonder what they could have done with a space like DiBruno’s Chestnut Street location, but it is what it is. The food’s of great quality, there are Iberian specialties not found anywhere else in this city of Italians, and we can buy wine now from people who actually drink it.

Thanks, Jose.

Who knew? Crippling snowstorms would fall on the city on Saturdays in the same winter. Shocking. In a near reiteration of the last storm before Christmas, this one dumped 18″ on the city. Most businesses were closed in the neighborhood with the exception of places frequented by locals. The gyms were open, two coffee shops, and the cheese store. Starbucks, the one chain in the neighborhood, was closed.

I made paella and nearly imagined myself in Valencia. I also got a huge amount of work done except for any reading or writing.

The best thing about this challenge was the side-challenge of the graham cracker recipe. They blow the store-bought ones out of the water. The second-best thing about this challenge was the relative ease of the recipe. After a grueling month of parties and ridiculous cooking feats, it was comforting to have a relatively simple bar cookie recipe. And it was no-bake! I don’t think I have ever crammed that much butter into so small a space, but it was fun and I did it on a weeknight.

I made the graham cracker pastry one day of the long New Year’s weekend and then rolled it out and baked the crisps on another day of it during such a bitterly cold day that I didn’t feel I was wasting the day by staying inside. The original recipe given was gluten-free but since I will probably never use those flours again and I hate to waste food, I used all wheat flour. The original is always the best. I also used something else from my pantry and instead of buying mildly flavored clover honey, I used some expensive Italian forest honey. It isn’t mildly flavored, but it was between that and my cherished jar of chestnut honey. It wasn’t a close battle. During the baking of the crackers, I discovered that a) I sucketh mightily in measuring dough, b) can’t cut in a straight line to save my life, c) my oven heats unevenly and c) none of that mattered. The crisps were delicious. Three days after making them and becoming afraid I’d eat and distribute too many to make the bars themselves, I forced myself to pulverise some of them to smithereens.

The bars themselves got made on a day off work after spending another long day at my favorite coffee bar in the history of humanity. This recipe had a lot of ingredients and a little of them like a few tablespoons of heavy cream, pudding mix, almonds, an egg, chocolate powder, a couple of different sugars, and a huge, disgusting amount of butter. The bars were done in an hour and I chilled them well before cutting them with a sharp paring knife. I allowed myself to eat and photograph one of them before packing up the rest for work. I got 36 out of the pan. I’ve never gotten so many bars out of a pan that small but I couldn’t imagine making them any bigger.

As far as tastes are concerned, I adored the graham cracker recipe and I will be making those again though next time I may not bother cutting them at all and just baking two full sheets and rolling a pizza cutter through them a few minutes into the process. Measuring is for people who scrapbook. Seriously. They were amazing, though and I may get a straight rolling pin just for the purpose (I have the tapered kind since I usually make tarts). The use of good honey didn’t go to waste.

As far as the bars themselves are concerned, they were kind of fun to make but used a lot of dishes. The washing up was a bore, what with the bain marie, the mixer, a saucepan, and several spatulas getting used and that’s not counting what I needed to use to chop chocolate and almonds. They also had a lot of ingredients, including somewhat weird things I may never use again. Like the organic pudding mix I got at Whole Foods that will now rot in my pantry since my brain will hurt too much when trying to figure out how much to decrease the milk to make the box as stated. The heavy cream will also languish in my fridge. I may be able to use it in a soup or if in doubt, freeze it. The bars were too sweet for my tastes but the people at work *loved* them. Someone said the one she had eaten was the best thing she had eaten in her life.

Now back to the big project at hand…

Note: Picture quality is very poor since I’m still learning my way around this phone. I can’t be bothered with the big camera except for big things anymore.

I stumbled upon an article on what chefs say their death row meals would be. Now, I’m not a chef but since I can cook better than just about anyone I know plusly, it’s a fun thing to ponder, here’s mine. It would have to entail soft boiled eggs with runny yolks, deep Italian bread, luscious pungent cheeses and olive oil. And a huge chunk of chocolate. Yes, in spite of my multiple food feats and my love of great dining, I’d pretty much go with the cheese plate.

Speaking of chocolate, I stumbled onto an article about Green and Black’s doing well in spite of the economic downturn. Let me say two things: chocolate is a great, cheap (less than new shoes) fix that makes just about anything feel better and Green & Black’s sucks. Sorry. I’d prefer Cadbury if I had to have something from the same company. But as for best chocolate, I’m a milk chocolate whore and I love Michel Cluizel more than any other I’ve ever eaten ever. So there.

P.S. I have yet to try Amadei. Maybe I’ll have some tomorrow after my massage.

I had every intention of doing it, even if I was flying back from South America the day before the post was due. If everything had gone according to plan, I would have hit the domicile by noon on the day. But as with all travel lately, that didn’t happen. The flight was 1.5 hours late getting out of Buenos Aires in an electrical storm and the reason wasn’t even because of the weather. The excuse this time was that the plane was too heavy and they had to take some weight off. Instead of asking for the over-packed or the clearly-not-starving to take a flying leap out of the cabin, they had to get the ground crew to get a pallet of cargo off and then re-weigh the plane. You’d think that wouldn’t take long. You would be wrong. I tried to divert myself during the wait by listening to the crew’s bad Spanish translations of the proceedings for the Argentine passengers. I think the word “cargo” was translated as “warehouse”. I was glad to be out of the madhouse that was the airport terminal, though. I think it was planned that all planes board at the very exact same moment.

By the time the weighing and purging was done, it was 1.5 hours later than stated on the ticket. I got to Atlanta and by the time I’d gotten through customs, my connecting flight to Philadelphia had gone. Good thing there are a lot of flights out to Philadelphia. To add insult to injury, there were small children on the flight who appeared to be parentless. Maybe they’re brilliant at being in touch with their feelings, but respecting the personal space of others is not one of the lessons these little darlings are learning. Good thing the flight is short or someone would have died and someone would have gone to jail.

Of course the plane from Atlanta to PHL was also delayed thanks to PHL’s now infamous comfort with precipitation. It was still raining in Philadelphia and by the time I dragged my carcass into the door of my condo, it was close to 1600 and I needed to buy produce. The market’s close but you’d have a hard time finding almond flour there at a less than usurious price. I made soup, unpacked, washed my junk and was asleep before 2200.

That is why I didn’t do this challenge.

The End

With the onset of the new season, food and the new fall menus are being hysterically discussed again in this food-crazed town. Here is where I’d like to eat next, in no specific order:

• Modo Mio: Italian BYOB with an outstanding set menu deal.
• Cafe Nhu Y: Much-lauded Vietnamese subs in South Philly.
• Bibou: A French Queen Village BYOB by G. Perrier ex-chef de cuisine. Reportedly, the French BYOB to end all French BYOBs.
• Paesano’s: Fishtown’s Italian sandwich shop run byt he same people who run Modo Mio.
• Ekta: Widely agreed upon that it does some of the best Indian in town… and will deliver anywhere in CC.
• Village Whiskey and Tinto: Jose Garces… enough said.

Well, this is it. My first challenge with the Daring Bakers.

The challenge was vols-au-vent, which are canapes (or larger tarts) made with puff pastry. They could be filled with whatever the baker chose, sweet or savory. Though I have a sweet tooth a mile wide, I broke with my usual tradition and made savorys with the last of the summer’s vegetables. I took them to a spa event I had organized to rave reviews.

Though in name the challenge was to make vols-au-vent, in actuality, the real challenge was to make the puff pastry that makes up the crust. Puff pastry is one of the most finicky things to make in the home since it requires cold, huge amounts of butter, prodigious arm stamina and nerves of steel. Early September is not the best time to be making this in Philadelphia. It’s still warm and could be disastrously humid. And it was warm that first weekend, which is when I made the pastry. But I knew my calendar was full, what with a trip on the horizon and dates and dinners and spas, so there was nothing for it. I had to make it that first weekend.

It was in the high 70′s and damp when I took that butter out of the fridge and the clock started ticking. I also have very cheap, very crappy, very 80′s countertops, so that didn’t help. Stone helps since it has a tendency to remain cool. I stayed in for most of that day, like a loser, since I could feel the heat getting to the butter. Originally, I had planned to make only half a recipe since I had plans for some of that butter and didn’t want to use a whole pound all at once. But, since it would be so much work, I said to hell with it and used it all. I used half pastry and half all-purpose flour and rolled that sucker like there was no tomorrow. A few of the bottom layers got kind of screwed up since I don’t think I’d done the original wrap quite right and had left a few thin spots in the dough. I used the bench scraper to keep everything more or less neat.

After I had finished the six turns and the laminated dough sat on the counter more or less dry and ungreasy, I wrapped it and threw it into the freezer. With nerves frayed and arms tired, I put some shoes on and went out. There has never been so much effort put into no immediate satisfaction.

Two weeks later, I took it out of the freezer, cut off about a 4th of it and put the rest back in. It was spa day and I had gotten up early to make the canapes. I decided against any creams or sauces or mousses or anything too heavy. I chose to highlight the summer’s produce and make a sham light filling since there was so much butter in the crust already. The previous day off, I had roasted and cooked the red peppers much like Jose Andres does in his book Tapas. I cut the CSA’s small yellow tomatoes in half. I filled each canape with a very small piece of aged rachlette (they’re invisible in the pictures), a strip of pepper, a tomato, and a leaf of fresh parsley. Boring, maybe, but Andres’ peppers have so much flavor that they enliven everything they touch.

The rest of the puff pastry sits in my freezer, awaiting its turn. Maybe I’ll make a tarte tatin when I come back from South America. I’m not in a hurry to use it. It cost me too much to make it.

Moral of the story: Puff pastry is a winter-only food. September in Philadelphia is still summer. To avoid emotional damage, avoid making it in the summer.