Soooo I've been taking the "sometimes" in thesometimes nibbler quite literally. "Sometimes" like, once every few months. I'm just going to jump right in - if you remember, a little before Christmas, I had two goals. I wanted to make macarons (check!) and bread. Not sure why, but the whole idea of having to bake with something that is, well, ALIVE (don't call PETA yet, I'm just talking about yeast) just scared me. I'm sort of a control freak and I can't really deal with failure. I always imagined each packet of yeast having its own little personality - always erratic of course (yes, I always assume the worst).

Anyway, last weekend I was inspired! I went to visit a Bagel restaurant my friend opened up in Shanghai- EGGHEAD BAGELS. It's warm little establishment, bustling with towering stacks of bagel-wiches (oh, and I won't even BEGIN to get into it's offering of gourmet cupcakes faite par C'est Cupcake). Our table ordered three turkey clubs with extra Swiss Cheese, and the matching-gloved couple next to us opted for a pair of toasted plain bagels with whipped butter. Memories of shuffling across the icy sidewalks, toes freezing because this (half) Taiwanese girl didn't know any better than to buy a pair of non-water-proofed Uggs...even before the sun had a chance to loiter up the edge of Lake Monona, I'd make a pit-stop at Einstein Bros. Bagels on State Street. A toasted cinnamon raisin bagel, crusted to perfection with a healthy lick of salted butter. I think I was able to down that baby before I even got to Memorial Library.

So there I was, inspired in a Bagel Shop in Shanghai, with memories of Madison - that's all it took for me to finally introduce myself to my very first yeast-ed bread.

As with everything else, I watched youtube videos, studied blogs and tried to understand the science of it all. What kind of flour to use and why? Why are bagels boiled? What's the story behind the "cement doughnut"? I'm not going to bore you all with those things here...but basically, there are two types. The Montreal Bagel and the holier than thou New York Bagel. That's right, I'm putting my foot down. I probably never tried a real-deal hard-knock New York-styled bagel before, but after reading about their Canadian frenemy, I'd say they better start worrying - a bagel baked in a wood burning oven MUST have some extra oomph! Just to make things clear, I definitely didn't make any Montreal Bagels - and I can't claim to have conquered the NY ones either (I wouldn't dare). I went with a simple bagel recipe from Thibeault's Table - it was totally perfect because they were mini!

Easy-peasy "you don't scare me" Bagels - (my name)

2 cups warm water

2 packs active dry yeast (I used Instant, one "pack" is 7 grams, so two packs would be 14 grams! So easy!)

3 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon salt

Around 5 3/4 cups bread flour (unsifted - finally!)

3 quarts water with 1-2 tablespoons of sugar

Cornmeal (no, I didn't have any)

Vegetable oil (to grease the bowl and baking sheet)

1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon of water (this is for the shiny eggwash that gives the bagels a shiny golden coat)

1. Pour the 2 cups of warm water into a bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water and mix together lightly so all of the yeast particles are coated...I think that's the point of this. Anyway, you're trying to proof the yeast to make sure it's alive and kickin'. Let the mixture sit for 10 minutes.
2. When you come back, it should have a thick-ish foam on top of the water. Yep, it stinks. If it has foamed, then congratulations, your yeast is alive, and it's probably going to be your friend today.
3. Stir in the sugar.
4. In a larger mixing bowl, mix together 4 cups of the flour and the salt. Just a reminder, salt will de-activate the capabilities of the yeast, so no direct contact!
5. Pour the yeast and sugar mixture over the flour and begin to mix with a wooden spoon. The recipe I looked at called for a standing mixer, but I'm without my KitchenAid here in SH, so I rely on my guns.
6. Slowly mix in another 1 1/4 cups of flour.
7. No, sprinkle your work surface with lots of flour and drop your dough onto the counter.
8. Knead (I recommend watching this on youtube - seriously) - pull up the dough and pressing down with the heel of your hand to form a ball. Do this for around 15 minutes. Feel free to throw it against the table...
9. Place your ball of dough in a greased bowl and cover with a slightly dampened kitchen towel. Let it rise till it has doubled (40 minutes - 1 hour). The kitchen I was working in was actually quite cool, so I placed the bowl in an oven that was switched off, it sort of trapped the warmth of the dough in the oven? Meh I don't know, I'm not a professional!
10. After it's doubled, punch down the dough.
11. Divide into thirds.
12. Set 2/3 of dough on your floured work surface and cover with some plastic wrap.
13. With the other 1/3, cut into 16 pieces.
14. Shape into bagels! youtube this please, but what I did was, ball up the dough in my palms and punched a hole with my forefinger and thumb. Then, I pulled at the sides of the hole to even it up.
15. Let the raw bagels stand for around 20 minutes.
16. Set the water and sugar to boil and grease your baking sheet. My sous-chef Jefferson added quite a bit of vegetable on to the baking sheet, this actually helped to crisp the base of the bagel I think!
17. Preheat the oven now at 204 C or 400 F.
18. After 20 minutes, turn down the water so it's just simmering, lightly drop 3 bagels at a time into the water.
19. Cook for 30 seconds on each side. Larger bagels will need to cook for 1 minute on each side. They should be floating at the top while you do the cooking.
20. Strain the boiled bagels and dry off on a paper towel.
21. Place bagels onto the baking sheet and brush over with the egg wash. You can sprinkle some sesame, poppy seeds, garlic powder...etc over your bagels now if you'd like!
22. Bake for around 20 minutes. Mine took about 17 minutes, but every oven will be different.

REAL bagels are actually supposed to "retard" over night in a refrigerator, but I wanted instant gratification - and gratification I got! Give it a go and let me know how your cement doughnuts turn out!!!

Pineapple Tarts - Something Asian...finally

Call me the failed planner, I won't hold it against you. I had created a wonderful menu of sweet and savory (unbelievable, I know) goodies to give out as gifts to friends and family to celebrate Chinese New Year. They key words here are: "had" (it was planned, never materialized) and "menu" (having a menu does not necessarily equate the actual coming together of ingredients, because that would take...well...time). Let me whip out my virtual legal-pad on my phone and enlighten you all - I had: Pineapple Tarts, Savory Sesame Crisps, Matcha Macarons with Red Bean Paste filling, Orange Zest Fortune Cookies.

So the little voice in my head, which by the way talks like one of the curiously famous starlettes on The Hills kept saying, "Chinese New Year holiday lasts, like, totally long, its like, 10 days or whatever, and like, when I did the Christmas box it was so much work, it was a complete and utter travesty for my skin - to quote Cher from clueless". But in my defense, I DID end up making the Pineapple Tarts as well as the Matcha Macarons.

There are actually quite a lot of bloggers out there that make CNY-themed pastries to celebrate the season - the most popular recipe being Pineapple Tarts. These aren't the traditional Taiwanese type that we remember hauling back to the mid-west during our college years (not applicable to those that are in NYC or California). These are a Malay/Singaporean version that uses various spices (cloves, star of anise, cinnamon) in the pineapple jam, and a crumbly pastry that doesn't usually end up completely encasing the jam.

My recipe is a combination of what I learned from the wonderful Angie at Sea Salt with Food as well as Billy Law at A Table for Two. I absolutely loved the idea of shaping the tarts into mini pineapples with cloves on top. I must admit, for being such a crafty little lady, the spikes on the "pineapples" were quite difficult to maneuver with my clumsy kitchen scissors. Check out the other blogs, they did a great job of showing how to make them. I just took photos of the final product - are you beginning to question my baking-credibility?

Pineapple Jam

3 baby pineapples or 2 cans shredded pineapples

200 grams granulated sugar

1 clove

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

150 grams liquid glucose. this is so low fat you have no IDEA

2 tbsp all purpose flour

1. Finely shred the pineapple till fine. This took me ages...my dad managed to take our dog out for a walk and when he came home, I was still on pineapple two. What can I say, perfectionista I am.
2. Strain the pineapple till dry. Now that I think of it, I should have kept it for juice or something. So, do that - live and learn right? Save your pineapple juice, the lessons of life.
3. Simmer the pineapple in a pan till the rest of the juice dries up.
4. Add sugar and spices. Is that part of a country song perhaps?
5. Keep stirring. Focus on those arm muscles. We'll all be body builders soon.
6. When the mixture starts getting dry, add liquid glucose
7. Stirrr till the jam is thick and sticky icky icky - and sort of dry
8. Add the flour.
9. Continue to stir until the jam is almost completely dry - it should take around 10 minutes.
10. Let the jam cool off a bit and then shape into small ovals, around the shape of the first joint of your thumb. Is that even usable as a measuring device?

Pastry

180C

350 grams all purpose flour

50 grams corn flour (okay, I used corn starch, am I completely wrong? maybe. but they turned out all KINDS of fabulous)

250 grams unsalted butter at room temperature

50 grams icing sugar

2 egg yolks

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg yolk for glazing

1. Sift together all purpose flour, corn flour and salt
2. Cream together the butter and the icing sugar with a mixer until it gets light.
3. Beat in egg yolks one at a time.
4. Add in the vanilla extract.
5. Fold in the dry ingredients. Mix everything together until it forms a dough. It should still be light and crumbly though.
6. Scoop out around a tablespoonful of dough, roll it into an oval, use your thumb to create a little well that big enough to fit the ball of pineapple jam.
7. Place the ball of jam into the well and wrap the surrounding dough around the visible part of the jam to cover it completely.
8. When you finish doing this with all of your dough and jam, you're actually ready to slip them in the oven already. BUT if you want to make them look like pineapples, click on the links above - you basically cut "v" shapes with a pair of scissors across the length of the dough and stick a clove on one of the ends!
9. When you're done decorating...or whatever, brush the rolls with the beaten egg yolk.
10. Bake for around 20 minutes or until they come out golden brown.

Puff Piece: Cream Puffs

Shall I re-introduce myself perhaps? Unfortunately, I have yet to proclaim "I have a reader comment that isn't from a family member/friend!!" like the wonderful Julie - so I'll go straight into it.

Jess bought me a beautiful cookbook for Christmas - Baking At Home with The Culinary Institute of America and flipping through it, I just completely consumed! Kinda like the Brioches grew legs and walked into my kitchen, took off their little top hats...let the buttery steam out...mmm..

There aren't as many photos as I wish there were, but it's really elegantly done. Tons of tips and techniques as well! I'm considering one day applying to the wonderful school...would the accept a vegetarian? I think they have a pastries and baking program (yes, I've already looking into it. I'm searching for sponsors...anyone? really) which probably wouldn't involve too much non-vegetarian things. So anyway, I decided to try out the Cream Puffs! As usual, I also did some research off other blogs and I found someone that tried to replicate the Beard Papa Chocolate-topped cream puffs, and omigosh - its so simple!!! I'm tempted to not share this...but alas, I'm a giving person. Ha!

SO, Pāte á Choux and Pastry Cream from the CIA cookbook, Chocolate topping from the uber cute Wendy at mybutteryfingers. There are quite a few components to this, at least for me - but I'll do it step by step here...

Pāte á Choux - you can actually make these ahead of time if you're living in a pretty dry area. The idea here is to get some volume in the center of the puff (err...hence the name) so the CIA recommends starting at a high temperature (to get the rise) and then lowering the temperature to dry the puffs out. Look at all these things I'm learning already! They better accept me when I apply. Here's what you need

1 c. whole or low-fat milk. come on - whole!!!

8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, diced

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 c. bread flour, sifted

3 large eggs

1 large egg white

Preheat to 190C/375F, baking sheet lined with parchment or Silpat ♡ Also, you'll need a pastry bag with a round tip - or, like the macarons, just cut a corner off of a zip lock bag.

1. Combine the milk, butter, sugar and salt into a saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and add the sifted flour all at once
3. Stir well
4. Gross right?
5. Cook the grossness while stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Before you know it, the grossness will pull away from the sides of the pan, takes around 5 minutes.
6. Transfer to your standing mixer (paddle attachment) and beat on medium speed until it's cooled to body temperature.
7. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula after each egg.
8. Beat in the egg white. It should be the consistency of cake-batter right now...if I did it correctly!
9. Transfer the dough into a pastry bag.
10. Pipe the dough into golf-ball sized balls onto the baking sheet.
11. If you want, see below on how to Beard-Papa-ize these guys. If you want these puffs beard free, keep going...
12. Brush the unbaked puffs lightly with egg wash (1 large egg whisked with 2 tbsp cold milk).
13. Bake until the pastries are puffy and lightly browned (around 20 minutes)
14. Lower the oven temperature to 162C/325F until they're a rich golden brown (another 20-25 minutes). SO MUCH WAITING.
15. Remove from the oven and puncture a small hole in the side of each of the puffs. I learned this from another blog...you need a little hole on the side of the puff to help the steam release from the center. It's a big no-no to have moist-centered puffs, and that happens when the steam is trapped.

Chocolate Topping

40g cake flour

10g cocoa powder

50g unsalted butter

50g granulated sugar

1. Cream together the butter and sugar. I know...we're always creaming.
2. Fold in the flour and cocoa powder.
3. Put the dough on a piece of plastic wrap and press together to form a log - kind of like the icebox cookies that we made before...
4. Chill the logs for at least 30 minutes or until the dough is stiff.
5. Slice into around 20 portions, or however many puffs you are planning on baking.
6. Place one chocolate slice on each of the (unbaked) puffs.

Pastry Cream - an OH MAN is this good. If you have any left over, you will most likely feel the urge to use it to dip, spread, baste, marinate....yes - that good. I made this more than a month ago and I can still smell the creamy vanilla.

1/4c. cornstarch

3/4c. sugar (divided use)

2c. while milk (divided use)

4 large egg yolks, lightly beaten (use the egg-whites for you macarons, dolls! PS. I made some Matcha and Red Bean Paste macarons yesterday)

1 pinch salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp unsalted butter

1. Combine the cornstarch with 1/4 cup sugar in a mixing bowl, then stir in 1/2 cup of the milk.
2. Blend the yolks into the cornstarch mixture.
3. Stir with a wooden spoon until completely smooth
4. Prepare an ice bath (dishes that are rich in eggs need ice bathes because it helps speed the cooling process to prevent scrambled eggs from happening). Use a large bowl, but make sure it can fit the mixing bowl your mixture is in. Add ice and then enough cold water to come halfway up the side of the mixing bowl that you'll want to cool down.
5. Combine the remaining 1 1/2 cups milk with the remaining 1/2 cup sugar and the salt in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil.
6. Temper the egg mixture by gradually adding about one third of the hot milk mixture, whisking constantly.
7. Add the remaining milk mixture into the eggs.
8. Return the mixture to the saucepan (is this confusing? time to get organized!!!)
9. Continue cooking over medium heat while stirring vigorously with a whisk until it comes to a boil and the whisk leaves a trail in the pastry cream (5-7 minutes).
10. When you get to that point, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract and the butter
11. Transfer to the ice bath
12. Stir occasionally until the cream is cool
13. Spoon into a piping bag and fill the puffs!!

Blogging is a full time job isn't it...

Birthday Strawberry Shortcakes

We've always had cakes for birthdays, which is entirely fine - except my stomach seems to celebrate birthdays a lot more passionately than the birthday-persons. I prefer to skip the meal and go straight for my slice of cake (plus the left overs - which usually is more than half the cake - which I gracefully eat with my fingers the next morning, it's a little like the walk of shame when I leave the kitchen)
Anyway, after Chocolate cake after lunch, my dad requested a light Strawberry Shortcake for his birthday dessert. "Real butter or fake?" my sister asked. REAL. "Real cream or low fat *gasp". REAL. "Real shortcake? Or the cake-type?" What? Had I been eating faux strawberry shortcakes my entire life? Aren't they layers upon layers of fresh whipped cream, fluffy vanilla sponge cake and strawberries?
Let me educate. Real strawberry shortcakes are actually sweet butter biscuits baked, cut in half, and layered with fresh whipped cream and macerated strawberries - I added blueberries for my dad's big Five-Five, you know, anti-oxidants and all.
These were so simple and I'll definitely do this again for a small dinner party.


From The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Fruit
2 quarts strawberries, hulled (you can hull the berries with one of those spiky edged piping tips)
6 tablespoons sugar

Shortcakes
2 cups all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons sugar
1tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter
2/3 cup half-and-half
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 large egg white, lightly beaten

Whipped Cream
Whipping cream 1 cup
Sugar 1 tablespoon
Vanilla tiny splash

1. Crush 1/3 of the strawberries with a fork or a potato masher. Slice the rest of the berries. Sprinkle sugar all over the berries and lightly mix the berries until sugar is mixed in. Let it sit at room temperature - watch the berries start to release all it's juices. You can squeeze some lemon juice on top if tartness is what suits your palette...The "maceration" will take around half an hour, but you can let it sit for longer, they won't complain.
2. Preheat the oven to 218C or 425F.
3. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. The cookbook recommends pulsing the ingredients together with a food processor, but I don't have one so I just sifted. I'm thinking the pulsing part has more to do with the next step though...
4. You're supposed to scatter cut-up pieces of butter and then process until the mixture looks like a coarse cornmeal - BUT, because I don't own the machinery, Jess (my sister) suggested that I just use a coarse cheese grater and great the cold butter. It worked beautifully!! Remember, it's butter but can easily be mistaken for grated cheese if you're cooking on an empty stomach. It's not cheese. After grating the butter into the flour, sort of toss the bowl around so that the butter pieces get coated in the flour and leave it alone while you mix together the next part..
   
5. Blend together the half and half with the whole egg and pour into the bowl with the flour/butter.
6. Stir everything together lightly with a rubber spatula until large clumps form.
7. Turn the mixture onto a lightly floured counter and knead lightly.
8. I formed my own circles and placed them onto a baking tray, covered, and refrigerated until dessert time. It's good to get the butter really cold again before you bake them so it bakes into a fluffier biscuit and doesn't just sink into itself.
   
9. You're supposed to brush the tops with the beaten egg white and then sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar but...umm...forgot.
10. Bake the shortcakes until golden brown (12-14 min).
11. While you're waiting for them to cool, whip up the cream. Whip together the cream, sugar and vanilla in a chilled bowl with an electric mixer on low speed until frothy and the sugar has dissolved (1 min.) Increase the speed to high and continue to whip until doubled in volume and soft peaks form.
    
12. Assemble by cutting biscuits in half - generously fill with strawberries, then a healthy dollop of whipped cream, and cap it with the top of the biscuit.