House Guests

Things have been very busy in the Marshmallow household for the past two weeks, and that has meant not blogging as frequently as I had hoped. I'm sorry! We've had house guests for the last two weekends, and being as nit-picky as I am, that means that I want everything to be just so...of course, it never is, but I do try. 

This past weekend our house guests were Hubband's parents, so I (attempted to) pull out all the stops. I tried something new with my go-to apple pie recipe, baked scones, made cannelloni with homemade pasta, and whipped up some of Jude's Honey-Whole Wheat bread to go with my chicken salad. That was before they even got here on Thursday night. During the weekend, I also made a big batch of shirred eggs, Hubband grilled rainbow trout and corn on the grill, and I put together some light and fluffy buckwheat pancakes. We also took advantage of Orlando's large selection of restaurants and dined out two nights. 

Back to the baking: I made scones on Thursday morning, both because I know my guests enjoy them and because there is a scone recipe in my Tartine cookbook that I've been eyeing for some time. It is the recipe for their much-touted buttermilk scones, with Zante currants. I decided to rearrange things just a little, and used dried unsweetened Bing cherries instead, as well as replaced half of the all-purpose flour with whole-wheat pastry flour.

The scones baked up moist with a wonderful texture and some flaky layers. It's a little hard to describe these scones; they were dense and substantial, but didn't sit in the belly like a rock the way so many often do. I really liked the addition of the whole-wheat flour, both for nutrition and flavor, and am curious how they would turn out using 100% whole-wheat pastry flour. Next time I would add more citrus zest, and would maybe try orange instead of lemon. 

Buttermilk Scones

Adapted from Tartine

The original recipe calls for Zante currants. I used cherries, but these could easily be made with blueberries, raspberries, apricots, or raisins. If you fresh fruit, freeze it before adding it to the dough so the pieces don't leak juice and dye the dough as you mix. I think that next time, I will increase the amount of citrus zest, but I am listing the original amount here. I find it much faster to place a bowl on my kitchen scale and weigh out all of my ingredients, so those are the measurements I've included here.

100g (3 1/2 oz) Dried unsweetened Bing Cherries 

340g  (12 oz) All-purpose flour

340g (12 oz) Whole-wheat pastry flour

15 mL (1 Tb) Baking powder

3 3/4mL (3/4 tsp) Baking soda

100g (3 1/2 oz) Granulated sugar

6 1/4 mL (1 1/4 tsp) salt

255g (9 oz) Unsalted butter, very cold

375 mL (12 oz) Buttermilk

5 mL (1 tsp) Grated citrus zest 

Topping:

45 mL (3 Tb) Unsalted butter, melted

Large crystal sugar such as Demerara for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 400 F and line a baking sheet with parchment. If using dried fruit, plump it by placing it in a bowl and adding enough warm water to cover, then let it sit for ten minutes. Sift together the flours, baking powder, and baking soda into the bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment. Add the sugar and salt and mix, then cut the butter into small cubes and scatter them over the dry ingredients. Pulse the mixer on and off until you have pea-sized lumps of butter throughout the flour. You don't want to break up the butter too much, so keep an eye on it. Add the buttermilk, zest, and fruit all at once and mix gently on low speed until you just have a dough that will hold together. You should still have some visible bits of butter in the dough. Dust a work surface lightly with whole-wheat flour and turn the dough out onto it. Use your hands to gently shape the dough into a rectangle that is 18" long, 5" wide and about 1 1/2" thick. Brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar, then using a dough scraper or long chef's knife, cut the dough into 12 triangles. Place on the prepared baking sheet and bake 25-35 minutes, or until the tops are lightly browned. 

To Mom, With Love

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and although I'm not a mom myself, it's always a day I enjoy. I like having a day dedicated to doing whatever Mom would like, and I love that when she says "Oh, you decide..." I have the most excellent rebuff of "No, it's Mother's Day, and you're the mom! What do you really want to do?". Thank you Mom, for being understanding, supportive, and a hell of a lot of fun to be around. I love the time we get to spend together, and I'm always thankful for it. 

For Mom this year, we started off the day with Mimosas and Bellinis. What an excellent start it was! We added a bit of Cointreau to the Mimosas and Creme de Peche to the Bellinis. Both brought a lovely little zing and depth of flavor. 

As for actual food, I tried a recipe of Tartelette's, her beautiful Sweet Potato Vidalia Scones. I modified the recipe slightly by using a little extra of the delectable Garnet yams I picked up, sauteing my onions a bit differently, and substituting brown sugar for granulated white. We topped the little lovelies with poached eggs and a sprinkling of chive. They were fantastic; moist, deeply flavored, but still light and incredibly addictive. I think if I had made a triple batch, we would have found a way to eat every last one. 

We couldn't have a family breakfast without bacon, so I picked up a delicious thick-cut applewood smoked variety. It was great, as always, but I've been noodling over making my own lately. I think it would be a fun project, but Mom worries that it would turn out so superior to anything store-bought that we would be then unable to bear anything but homemade, and that I would then turn into the permanent bacon-maker. I personally don't think that sounds like such a bad gig. Isn't it sweet that Mom worries that I would be too good at something? 

"Sweets to the sweet" as they used to say, so of course Mom deserved a dessert. I didn't want to make anything too heavy for so early in the day, so I tried my hand at a Pavlova. It was easier to make than I had anticipated, and turned out remarkably well. Of course, I was a little curious about this dessert that I had not only never made before, I had never eaten, so I was examining it, and although I had read that "pav's" are quite fragile, I somehow neglected to remember that fact, and in the course of my investigation, I broke the meringue. In fact, 'broke' isn't really even the right word. The poor lovely thing shattered. I was shocked that I had been so silly and careless, and then Tim and I found the silver lining to that sad little cloud: now we got to make sure it was good! We picked up shards of the crisp, airy outer crust and used them to scoop up the fluffy, gooey, decadent center. "Dessert-nachos!" we happily proclaimed! Even better, there was some tart homemade raspberry-rhubarb preserve leftover from a Linzer torte experiment earlier in the week. It was wonderful paired with the sweet pav. We enjoyed more than we should have before dinner, and then I got back to business and made a second meringue. I was a bit more careful with this one, especially during the transfer from baking sheet to cake stand, and it traveled to Mom's without incident. Once there, I topped it with fresh sweetened whipped cream, another batch of tart stewed rhubarb, strawberries, and blueberries. 

The pavlova was universally liked. It was fresh and flavorful, sweet enough to feel like you were really being decadent but light and airy enough so that no one felt uncomfortably full. It was just wonderful. This one definitely goes into the dessert repertoire. 

Yam-Vidalia Scones 

adapted from Tartelette

1 small Vidalia onion, diced

1 C all purpose flour

2 Tsp baking powder

1/2 Tsp salt

1 Tsp packed light brown sugar

1 generous C mashed cooked Garnet Yams

3 Tbs butter, melted, cooled, divided

In a medium skillet, saute the onion with a little butter or nonstick spray. When the onion is just tender, remove one-third and set aside. Allow the remaining two-thirds of the onion to continue sauteing until they become a deep golden brown. Sift the dry ingredients together into a small bowl. Add the brown sugar, being sure to break it up between your fingers as you sprinkle it in.  In a separate container, mix the mashed yam with 1.5 Tbs of the melted butter. Add all of the onions and mix well. Add the dry ingredients to the yam mixture and stir just to bring it together. The dough will look floury and you may be tempted to add some liquid, but just turn it out onto a floured surface and mix it a little with your hands. It will quickly come together. Pat the dough out till it reaches 1/2" thick, then use a 2 inch round cutter or just cut into triangles as I did. Brush the tops of the scones with the remaining 1.5 Tbs melted butter. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Makes 10 small scones. 

Cocoa Pavlova

adapted from Joy of Baking

 I followed Stephanie Jaworski's recipe and method pretty closely, so I will link to her excellent explanation.  My main change was to omit the chopped chocolate pieces and use 2 Tb of cocoa powder instead of 3 Tb. I really only wanted a cocoa-tinged Pavlova, not a sweet chocolate bomb. It turned out perfectly. 

Happy Mother's Day!