An Important Addition

I puzzled some more over my invisible ingredients and realized I forgot a very important one (now added to the list). Who are you baking with? I find the company I keep in the kitchen is half the fun. Be it a housemate or two passing through, or an assistant baker with lots of catching up to do, some good conversation (while dangerously distracting) has wonderful side-effects on your baking. Many of my best baking memories have great conversations attached.

So while you're out shopping for butter, eggs and chocolate chips, be sure to send in the order for a friend's company too.

Latte Art

Hearts, lilies and swirls of smooth micro-foam are the coffee lovers' dream. Only the perfect softness of steamed milk, buttery-ness of fresh brewed espresso and confidence of pour can create the lattes and cappuccinos that I visit in dreams when I return to Italy. That was until today when I learned how to measure, brew and pour the perfect latte! I wish I could have taken a photograph of my first attempt at latte art. The over steamed milk and self-conscious pouring made for a sad lump of textures. After a couple tries however, I was delighted to see a heart appear from the initial creamy dot in my Spanish latte (a cappuccino with sweetened condensed milk). Let's just say, the art of coffee is not far from the science of baking. Here's to delicious taste in liquid form!

Ginger Almond Biscotti

Its been awhile since I made hard biscotti and I was delighted to find that they are delicious extra crunchy. As I baked my "please hire me" cookies for my barista job interview, I considered that the owner might have a nut allergy or wouldn't be a fan of ginger: I never could have predicted that he is kosher and the manager gluten-free. The only person who tried my creation was the barista whose position I'm replacing...but the teaspoon of "please hire me" worked, I have a job!

Hopefully next week I'll start doing some baking. The small kitchen space is comparable to what I have here in Sunnyside, perfect! Our "trendy" diets will be covered at the coffee shop: kosher, gluten free and now me, the vegetarian.

Invisible Ingredients

I want to figure out the ingredients I add through intention. What are they? How can they be measured? "They" have no physical mass, but I know that intention pours from my mental measuring cup every time I bake. Part of it is experience, like "I remember learning how to make this from grandma" pie or "my childhood favorite" almond birthday cake; part is your mood, like "Today was shit I  need chocolate" cookies or "I just had a marvelous date" muffins; and of course the person/people you think about who are going to eat your creation. (Personally, that last ingredient is my favorite extract!)

Here's a break down of the factors that affect my intentions:

1. Nostalgia (memories attached to smell & taste)
2. Mood (love, frustration, excitement, etc.)
3. Recipient (who are you baking for? "Yourself" is not a bad answer)
4. Confidence (whether you know a recipe or not, a tentative baker yields tentative flavor)
5. Company (who are you baking with?)

So next time you bake, try analyzing what you're adding to your list of ingredients. I mix intention in with the dry and wet, and dust my hands with it before rolling out the dough. It's not a matter of controlling what you do, but recognizing what leads to the best baked goods and how to mimic those mental environments.

Banana Nut Muffins

There's nothing like baking when it's 93 degrees, but I had loads of time and four brown bananas calling my name. I substituted crisco for butter and added what butter I had for flavor. You can't taste the difference, although the texture is less moist. Walnuts add the perfect crunch and I spiced with a touch of nutmeg and cinnamon, not immediately recognizable but I think they add a little "home" to the muffins. Also, adding some roughly mashed bananas with the nuts (after mixing dry into wet) is a great tip I learned from an online recipe. The chunks mean pockets of sweet cooked banana in the mix, as opposed to just flavored batter. Only thing I'd change: add some honey. These aren't quite as sweet as I like.

It was a sweaty endeavor having the oven on to bake them, but I lay in the luxury of our new AC afterward as a reward.

P.S. Pie

My sister has recently gone gluten free, for that matter so have both my mothers. A little familial pressure and a rapidly growing market have inspired me to do some experimentation in the realm of alternative flours. My first trial was inspired by the bounty of fresh picked blueberries at the farmer's market here in Sunnyside, Queens. I set to work at home with the standard recipe, using Bob's Mill All Purpose Flour and Xanthum Gum instead of my normal King Arthur Flour. The dough tasted...miserable. I've always claimed that butter can rescue anything, but the savory chickpea mash that I rolled out on the counter resembled tortillas more than pie crust. A load of cursing and pounding later and the pie was in the oven. I figured I could rescue the fruit and make another frozen pie with it. I talked my friends out of eating any, and resolved that gluten free baking was a lost cause.

And then I took a bite. It's delicious. So here's to P.S. (it's gluten-free) Pie.

The Perfect Cookie Crumble Crust

After a brief stint in Thailand, I am back and baking more than ever! It seems the warm weather, a new kitchen in Sunnyside, and the oodles of time that lay before me have opened my mind and the cupboards to plenty of experimentation.

I made a batch of ginger cookies that I was very excited to post. Unfortunately, they were thick and bready. I blamed it on the oven at first and cleaned up in defeat (I later realized that the wheat flour I was using was not a good substitute for the recipe). With my mind clearer, and my sweet tooth still dissatisfied, I decided the cookies might crumble (haha) into something much more delicious...pie crust! It was a bit too hot in the kitchen to make fruit pie although I purchased a lovely bunch of blueberries and strawberries, so I resolved instead to make a yogurt pie. A little extra butter and a short crisping in the oven and the cookies were turned into a luxurious graham cracker-like crust. I mixed whole milk french vanilla yogurt and fresh pureed strawberries and poured them in. A couple of hours of freezing later, and I am very happy.

Here's to warm weather and cold desserts!