Cake!

For a friend's birthday, I made a variation of what I was told was his favorite cake: Black Forest.

First I made a chocolate wacky cake in a bundt pan. My error here was not using parchment which, in retrospect, would have a been a good idea. The top of the cake stuck a bit; I reconstructed it as best I could. I ended up using it to my advantage later as it was a great way to pour cherry syrup into the cake.

Most of a pint of homemade maraschino cherries were put into the center of the bundt cake and the syrup was poured over the cake slowly so it all would be absorbed. When it was time to serve it, I made some fresh whipped chantilly cream and decorated the top with more cherries and dried rose petals.

The cake was super moist because of the cherry syrup. The kids voted it one of the best ever.

Happy Birthday!

Flowers and Berries

This year the mulberry tree in our yard has been fairly prolific. In three picking sessions I got enough juice to make a batch of mulberry jelly. Since I didn't see the lime juice in the fridge right away, I grabbed the key lime juice instead. I think it makes it even better:

4 cups mulberry juice

3 T. key lime juice

5 cups sugar

1 package powdered pectin

Makes 7 cups plus a little more.

The other thing I'd been toying with was the idea of a rose jelly. Not rose hips, just an extraction from the petals. I have scarlet creeper roses in my yard and picked enough to make 2 cups of infusion. Now, the issue here was that I didn't want to add lemon juice because the rose flavor is pretty subtle and easily overpowered. Cooking also causes the rose essence to evaporate or something. So I added some tartaric acid for the acidity without changing the flavor. Why tartaric? I didn't have citric acid but I did have tartaric acid for cheese making.

2 cups rose petal infusion

1 tsp. tartaric acid

4 cups sugar

1 package liquid pectin

1 T. rosewater

I tossed the rosewater in after the jelly had its one minute hard boil so there would be that rose scent and flavor preserved. Into each jar, I added 2 fresh rose petals. This made 4 cups of jelly.

School Project

For English, the youngerchild had a project due today. The assignment was to pick a poet from a country other than the US and make a presentation about the poet and their poetry as well as incorporate some of the elements of the culture. Creativity was encouraged. My child chose Hafez, a poet from Persia in the 14th century. So, in addition to the writing parts, we jointly decided that there should be traditional Persian sweets for the class to consume while the presentation was happening.

Last week the youngerchild and I made baklava. It went pretty well, considering the youngerchild hadn't really done anything like it before. My goal was to step back and let my kid do most of the work and we had a lot of fun. This stayed in the fridge, uncut, until yesterday when we were putting everything together.

Yesterday we attempted zoolbia. This was much harder as it required deep frying and then dousing the fritters in saffron and rosewater syrup. First we made the syrup and set it aside. Then we made the batter with corn flour, yogurt and water. On the first attempt to use a squeeze bottle to drizzle the batter into hot oil, the squiggles were too thin and they looked like shredded wheat. I cut off the tip of the squeeze bottle and tried again but the batter sank in the oil and stuck to the bottom of the pot. So I carefully transferred the hot oil to a muffin tin and tried again, getting hot oil EVERYWHERE. Amazingly enough, nobody got burned. In the muffin tins, the batter came together more like a cookie than a squiggle, but at least they didn't stick. I would transfer the zoolbia into the syrup and the youngerchild would take them out when they were sufficiently infused and put them on the cooling rack. We put them in a container and poured more syrup over them to give them more flavor and then this morning before taking them to school drained off the excess syrup. They taste good even if they don't look quite right!

Gummies

While we were all sick, it was suggested we take elderberry as a supplement - supposedly it has anti-flu properties. They taste great but they're rather expensive. I figured I had elderberry syrup around and it might be fun to make my own. So I bought some silicone molds and gelatin and played around.

The first batch was with unsweetened rose hip juice which I had in the freezer. Let's just say, it needs to be sweetened with more than a heaping tablespoon of honey. They set nicely but taste pretty bland.

Today's batch was with the elderberry syrup. One cup of syrup plus another 1/4 of water and 2-3 packets of unflavored gelatin. Once they're in the molds they go into the fridge for 2 hours or so to set. They set well but were tacky so I coated them in sugar to make them less likely to stick to the plate or our hands or the counter. These taste really good, too! I don't have any more elderberry syrup but I have elderflower and cherry, maybe I can play around some more.

Profiteroles

Before the onslaught of illness, we were supposed to have dinner with friends at their house. I planned to make profiteroles, which are pate a choux puffs filled with ice cream and then topped with some sort of chocolate sauce. I made them, and then they hung out in the freezer until we finally all got well enough to reschedule.

Gougères

I wasn't sure how my oven would deal with pate a choux. It's not well sealed, and loses heat all the time, and I was afraid it would lose the moisture created in the first half of the baking process. Thankfully, it didn't, and I got 20 puffs made without much fuss. I used the rest of the pate a choux batter to make gougères by mixing in shredded cheese and some mustard and scooping the batter onto a baking sheet. These were amazing and got consumed within a few hours. Yum.

The next step was making rose flavored ice cream, just like I did for class a year ago. A custard base, with rose water added, then that rested in the fridge for a day. After that I churned it in the ice cream maker and, while it was still soft, piped it into the puffs. I know this isn't the usual way to do this, but I thought it might be interesting to have them filled this way. It did work out, although I had to move quickly to keep from being covered in melty rose-flavored ice cream!

These then lived in the freezer in an airtight container until last night. To top them off, I made a saffron-white chocolate ganache, with 4 ounces of white chocolate, 4 ounces of cream, a little butter, and a generous pinch of saffron (added after the cream was heated, before being added to the chocolate). By the time we got to dessert the ganache was the perfect pouring consistency. I also brought chocolate fudge sauce because I wasn't sure how the kids would like the saffron. We ended up all trying both. I think the saffron ganache was the better choice!

Snickerdoodles

Yesterday, I made a batch of snickerdoodles. They were so easy! But I used my #24 scoop, which was too much dough per cookie. It's my smallest scoop, and I thought I'd be OK. Not really. Some of the cookies ended up hexagonal because they ran into each other. I decided to try again.

Today's batch was a touch different. Rather than rolling them in cinnamon and sugar, I decided to use cardamom and sugar instead. Which meant, of course, that I needed to add some rosewater to the dough! I added a teaspoon of rosewater. Maybe not enough. It smelled great before baking but lost the rose flavor/scent after. The cardamom tasted great, though!

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

The tail end of Tropical Storm Hermine has finally arrived in our area and we are getting some much-needed rain. Indoors, I had the last four cups of rose hip juice waiting to be turned into jelly. First, though, I needed jars. Before that, I had to take the car into the shop for service. Having done all that and getting a rental for however long that takes, I got home and started working on the jelly.

Same recipe as before:  4 cups juice, 1/2 cup lemon juice, 5 cups sugar, 1 package powdered pectin. As this is being added to the gift stash, I am using 4-oz jars. The recipe made enough to fill 12 jars, one whole flat, plus a little extra for us.

This brings the gift stash up to 42 jars. That's excellent!

Now I have my eyes out for elderberries. I drove by the place I usually get them but they didn't seem as plentiful this year. I have a few other options I will check out in the next day or so.

Rose Hip Fruit Leather

After I extracted all the juice from the rose hips I ran them through the food mill and was left with a bright orange pulp. To this I added about two cups of sugar and then spread it out on saran-lined baking sheets. I don't have a dehydrator so I put them in the oven on warm overnight. The following morning, one of the two leathers was ready but the other one was too thick so took an extra day.

With each one, I cut the leather into eight equal pieces and left the saran on the one side. Then I could roll them up and put them in single serving bags and they wouldn't stick to themselves. We ate one and it was so tasty and the perfect texture.

Perhaps if I had a dehydrator it would be easier but I would rather just get a new oven with a dehydrator mode. For now, this works.

Sunshine in a Jar

Every few years I get a chance to drive up to my (now former) boss's house and borrow his driveway. He lives near a beautiful beach just teeming with beach roses and this time of year the rose hips are ripe. A few days ago he sent me a photo so I could tell how they were doing and it was certainly time to get them if I had time to get over there. So my husband and I made a day of it with the 11-year-old. We drove up, walked along the beach, watched the sandpipers, skipped stones (well, tried to), and collected rose hips. After that we drove up to Woodman's of Essex and tried out their fried clams. They're very very good. I am going to have to go back up to the Clam Box so I can compare while these ones are still relatively forefront in my mind!

When we got home I washed and trimmed all those rose hips and simmered them. I turned off the stove and left them in the pot while we went to see a movie and when I got back I was able to quickly extract 4 cups of juice to make jelly:  4 cups rose hip juice, 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1 box of powdered pectin and 5 cups of sugar. Two of the jars are slated for the fair (making a total of 10 canning entries) and the rest will be for us and the gift stash.

As an aside, the movie we went to see was Kubo and the Two Strings. Truly the most stunning animation I've seen in a while and the story was beautifully told. I highly recommend it if you get the chance!

There is still another 4 cups of rose hip juice and a whole lot of pulp. I'm going to run the pulp through the food mill and see what I can do with it. I have read it makes a tasty fruit leather.

Days 15 and 16: Cakes, More Cookies, and an Experiment or Two

Yesterday we made an insane number of cakes. It's hard to keep it all straight but, as we were learning about sponge cakes and other similar cakes, we made about ten different types of cake. In insanely huge quantities. We made an immense batch of white genoise which made 18 cakes. The bowl in which it was mixed was big enough for a small child to sit in (we so rarely get to use that bowl!). There were also chocolate genoise, almond genoise, coffee biscuits (for Tiramisu), joconde (4 layers), Alhambra cake (like a chocolate joconde, 3 layers), ladyfingers (two kinds), a lemon-ginger cake, and another chocolate cake called a Sacher. Almost all of these were frozen, more gifts for the future when it comes time to assemble more cakes. The only one we used was the white genoise to make a Poeme cake. Here it is:

Buttercream on the sides and top, with a kirsch mousseline on the inside.

By the end of the day I was wearing a little bit of every ingredient we'd worked with. Even the strawberries. I had coffee extract on my face. Everyone, including the chefs, was amused. Amazingly enough, all those stains washed out.

After I got home it was time to make my project for class. I still have to hand in the written assignment but here's what I did. I made a tart using pâte sucrée dough, saffron pastry cream, poached Asian pears, and sumac. The sumac was sprinkled on the dough before pouring the cream and then again on the pears after the tart had cooled. The whole thing was glazed with some apricot glaze thinned with the syrup from poaching the pears. It was served with rose ice cream and garnished with candied rose petals. I would have liked to get organic roses because then they would have actually been edible but apparently I will just have to use my own roses in the summer if I want people to eat them. The tart was well received by my classmates and the three chefs who tried it. Everyone really liked the ice cream! It was a simple base of egg yolks, cream and sugar and then I added rosewater and a drop of red food coloring when it was cool enough.

Today's classes involved Italian cookies. We had 15 recipes to make and Chef asked each of us to work individually. I made Biarritz cookies which were almond and hazelnut with orange zest and sandwiched with hazelnut paste. My other batch was Rochers, essentially a Swiss meringue that was piped (the easiest time I've had piping so far, so I took advantage of it and made a bunch of shapes), topped with nuts and then baked at a very low temperature for a very long time. We were efficient today, finishing in enough time to start our evening lecture at 3-ish and we were out for the day at 6 pm.

Tonight's lecture topic was herbs. We were each tasked with making a chocolate ganache with some sort of herb or herb combo and then made them into truffles. Chef said there were only a few herbs that didn't apply well to desserts, one of them is chive. Challenge accepted! I decided to try to make a chive truffle. I used chives and some lemon zest. It was really interesting: after steeping the milk with the chives, you could really taste them. As soon as it went into the chocolate, the chive flavor disappeared. Chef suggested I add more chive straight into the chocolate ganache. His theory was he already knew it was going to taste bad so I couldn't make it any worse. They were finished with a little flake salt and cocoa powder. Since they were so controversial, I even drew skulls and crossbones on their tray so people would know they were eating it at their own risk. Even my own husband wouldn't try one. The elderchild did, and reported, "This should be a thing you don't do."

Rose Hip Smoothie

Yesterday, I got a call from Lisa, with whom I was splitting a spring lamb delivery.  She had picked up the lamb and was swinging by to drop off my share.  After she left, it became necessary to make room in the freezer.  As I was cleaning out the freezer, I found 3 cups of rose hip infusion I had frozen to make smoothies.  Because one of the bags ripped, I decided now was as good a time as any.

This morning I tossed yogurt, the rose hip infusion, some mango chunks, a banana and honey in the blender.  It came out absolutely perfect!

Also in the freezer:  nettles, pumpkin puree, some venison, some coffee, and lots and lots of bones and veggie scraps for stock.  Oh, and a loaf of chocolate zucchini bread, which we ate with dinner last night.  This was just the upstairs freezer.  I need a better way to keep my freezers organized, otherwise I will end up in this situation again, rediscovering things that I forgot I had.

Squeeeee!

Seedless Red Raspberry Jam

"Other" Grape Jelly

Rose Hip Jelly in the "Other Jelly" category

Happy Donna!

Sunshine

That's what my rose hip jelly looks like.  Sunshine.  See?

I used a different recipe this time, for low-sugar pectin.  I got it off the pyo website and thought maybe I'd try it.  The recipe says it'll make 7 cups but I only got about 5 and a half.  I made 4 half-pint jars (2 for the fair, 2 for us) and 2 half-cup jars for gifts, and the rest is in the fridge.  Here's the recipe:

3 cups rose hip juice

2 T. lemon juice

3 drops yellow food coloring

1 package low-sugar pectin

4 cups sugar

It tastes better than I remember the previous batch tasting and I'm quite happy with it.

Yesterday I enrolled online for the fair.  So far, I've entered 3 classes:  Other Jelly (for this one), Raspberry Jam (for the Lime-Black Raspberry, but if I make regular raspberry I'll swap out with that one) and an assortment class of 3 jams, all different.  I plan to use the Lime-Black Raspberry, Triple Berry, and Seedless Blackberry.  If I make the red raspberry in time, I will enter the Lime-Black Raspberry in the Other Jam category instead.  I have to have my submissions in on September 14.  That doesn't give me much time!

A Walk on the Beach

Yesterday, the weather was perfect.  It was warm but not too hot, not very humid, and there was a nice breeze.  The rose hips are ready and I went out to the beach with Lisa to pick some.  It was just the thing to do on my birthday!

I saw beach peas and sea beans, too, but didn't have a whole lot of time so didn't go exploring.  I did get a bag full of rose hips, ultimately about 10 cups once they were all cleaned.  These were simmered for an hour with 2 quarts of water and drained through a jelly bag.  I got about 6 cups of rose hip juice.  I'll use a bunch for jelly in the next day or so, and then save the rest for smoothies - that rose hip mulberry smoothie was really terrific and I'll try to recreate that with some other berry.

For my birthday dinner, we had a pork roast, topped with my only jar of black walnut applesauce.  Yum.  The kids and my husband made a fabulous chocolate cake, with my raspberry jam as the filling between the layers and chocolate whipped cream for the frosting.

It was a perfect day.

Mulberry-Rose Hip Smoothies

Remember way back when I foraged a whole bunch of rose hips off a beach and made jelly?  I froze the leftover rose hip infusion, with an intention of making a lassi or smoothie out of it.  Well, I'm cleaning a few things out of the freezer and found it, and tonight made an excellent smoothie.  Even the 8 year old loved it.  And had seconds.

I put about a cup of homemade yogurt (yep, I'm still making yogurt fairly regularly) in a blender with about 1 cup of rose hip infusion, a handful of mulberries from MY tree, 2 cups of milk and some sugar (didn't measure it, maybe 3/4 cup?) and blended away.  Really tasty and vitamin C enriched!

Rose Hip Jelly

Yesterday morning, I found myself on a lovely beach. I'd just come off of my overnight shift, and I was tired. The weather was perfect. Just warm enough, a light breeze, sunny, not humid at all. I grew up on the water and, when I encounter a day like yesterday, I remember how much I miss it.

But, as usual, I was there with a purpose! The Chair of our department lives a few blocks from that beach and had been keeping an eye on the rose hips for me. Last week he said I'd better get over there to pick them if I was going to. He even let me park in his driveway, lest I get a ticket for being a nonresident. The recipe I was using called for 4 quarts of hips; I packed 2 half-gallon pitchers in a backpack and brought them with me. I had them filled within a half an hour.

Here's the recipe, in case that website ever goes away:

4 quarts rose hips
2 quarts water
1/2 c. lemon juice
1 package powdered pectin
5 cups sugar

Clean the hips, remove the blossom ends and, if you're really inspired (I wasn't), remove the seeds. Boil them with the water, mashing them when they are softer. Strain the juice, and use 4 cups for the jelly. Add the lemon juice and pectin, bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the sugar all at once, and return to a hard boil for 1 minute. I ended up with well over 6 cups. It's a reddish orange and tastes citrusy, but not really orangy. I have seen it described as like tangerine or hibiscus. I don't really think it's either of those. It's a taste all it's own. But it's very, very good.

Unusual Flavor Day

We've already canned mulberries with rhubarb and vanilla today, what other weirdness can we come up with? Well...

My in-laws had left 3 grapefruits in my fridge. Now, I like grapefruit, in theory. I like those little Sunkist fruit gels and, of those, my favorite flavor is grapefruit. I like the smell. I don't like eating them; the membranes are too tough, and they splash in my face when I try to eat them by halves. Not to mention, eating them in halves makes me feel as though I'm on a diet. (Maybe it's a learned aversion?)

So here are these grapefruits, metaphorically burning a hole in my fridge. And I hate wasting food. And if I'm not going to eat them, I highly doubt anyone else in the family is going to. I set about looking for something to do. I came across this recipe but, as I have probably previously mentioned, I'm not a big fan of marmalade. Then I found this recipe for grapefruit jelly. Those wheels in my brain started up again. I have another vanilla bean and I have rosewater. I even have a rose in the backyard from which I can grab a few petals to put in the jars. Voila!

Rose-Vanilla Grapefruit Jelly
3 cups grapefruit juice*
4 cups sugar
1 package powdered pectin
1 vanilla bean
2 drops red food coloring
2 T. rosewater

*I simmered the grapefruit with 1 and a half cups of water and then strained them through a cheesecloth to get the juice. The food coloring and the rosewater were added after the boiling step. This yielded 4 half-pint jars; I put 1/4 of the vanilla bean and 1 rose petal into each one.