“Stay at Home.”

Back in April I was experimenting with decorating cake using the batter itself, thanks to watching too many episodes of the Great British Baking Show. I was trying a technique that seemed to have many names: joconde imprime, Japanese Jelly-roll, and inlay cake. The writing above was not made with that technique. Rather, I took the  leftover vanilla batter and piped it on top of the chocolate batter to express the concerns of the moment.

I never did write a blog post about the decorating technique, or at least, I never finished one. But the motto is even more relevant now than it was back in April.

Not everyone has the option to stay home, but for those who do, it is a contribution to fighting the pandemic. I know we went over all this back in March and April, but to repeat–if all you can do is avoid getting COVID yourself, you have still done something to help stop the pandemic. You have created one less source of infection, one less draw on the increasingly limited COVID-related resources.

(That should have been “fewer”, shouldn’t it?)

Everyday life goes on… and on… and it isn’t possible to postpone everything. There are dental visits, doctor visits, and sometimes you have to call the plumber in. Sometimes you really want to pick out your own groceries, and sometimes you want to see a friend–even if it has to be from a distance, masked. But you can still choose to be careful and limit your exposure, especially right now when the risk is higher than ever for most people. If it made sense in April, it makes even more sense now, when there is almost ten times the risk, on average, of catching it.

In the interests of ending on a positive note, I’m going to tack on some of the photos from April’s baking experimentation. Maybe eventually I’ll have another try at the technique, but till then…

Till next post!

Cranberry curd tart

Cranberries are fun to cook and I really like the spiced cranberry sauce that I make each year to go with the Thanksgiving turkey and mashed potatoes. So when I saw the recipe for cranberry curd tart in the Nov/Dec issue of Cook’s Illustrated, I wanted to try it.

Why do I like cooking with cranberries? For a start, they are one of my favorite colors–a red-violet that I would probably call magenta. Second, they float in water like little corks or tiny round magenta buoys. And then there’s the way they bounce if you drop them, instead of squashing. How much cuter can you get?

I also like watching cranberries boil. At the start, you have firm red-purple berries floating in colorless water (with vinegar or sugar added, depending on the recipe.) After things heat up, you can hear the berries bursting–a quiet pop! pop! pop!–and you find you have squashy berries mixed into red-purple water.

Boiling cranberries

Long, long ago, I had a friend who made a spiced cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. Hers wasn’t sweetened, but it was tasty, so years later when I saw a “cranberry catsup” in Fannie Farmer, I tried it, changing some of the measurements. Delicious! Now I make it every year. Here’s my recipe, which is loosely based on the one for cranberry catsup in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 17th printing, copyright 1959.

Cranberry Sauce

Boil 12 ounces of cranberries with 1/4 cup white vinegar and 1 cup water. When berries are soft (about five minutes), strain, pressing the mixture against the strainer with a wooden spoon to get it all.

Put it back in the pot with 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 teaspoon clove, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Stir and heat together for three more minutes. 

(The original recipe has a higher proportion of vinegar and spices, adds paprika, and ends by mixing in 2 teaspoons of butter.)

This year Cook’s Illustrated came out with a recipe for a cranberry curd tart with an almond crust. I had to try it. I’m not going to put the recipe here, because this issue is still available in stores and I would feel bad about putting it on the internet. Also, I think it’s more fun if you read the description of how its creator developed it. (It may be available from your library on-line.)

I will say a bit about how the recipe goes, though. I used a 12 ounce bag of cranberries, because that appeared to be the standard size. Curiously, the recipe called for a pound. Since my 12 ounces was actually 13+ ounces when I weighed it, I decided not to change anything other than reducing the water very, very slightly. It came out just fine.

First the cranberries were boiled with sugar and water, so I got to watch the berries burst and the water turn crimson. Then they went into the food processor with an egg yolk mixture. There was some processing, some cooling, some added butter and more processing, then through the strainer and into the crust.

The cranberry tart, cooling

The crust. While all that processing and cooling went on, I messed up the crust. I mixed up a greasy, wet paste that baked into a greasy, hard crust. Clearly I must have mismeasured something. The taste was fine, and the crust was softer the next day, but that can’t have been the intended texture.

The greasy crust before baking

 Then the whole thing had to cool for four hours. Keep that in mind. Four hours. Fortunately, this was November 3 and I wasn’t planning on going to bed early anyway. When the tart was completely cool, it was time to whip the cream, which had been mixed with a bit of filling and chilled. I have to say, the piped design did indeed keep its shape well.

The final product

How did it taste? It tasted a lot like a lemon bar, except not lemony. Presumably it tasted like cranberry, but cranberry isn’t a taste I can easily identify. You might say it tasted like a berry bar–tangy and sweet. I’m glad I made it, but I don’t expect to make it all that often. Then again, I wonder what it would taste like if it were spiced like my cranberry sauce? Hmm…

Till next post.

I remember when regular yogurt came in lots of flavors and brands. That was before Greek yogurt took over, along with the sugar-free, fat-free, everything-free yogurts. The rising interest in full-fat yogurts was a brief respite, but it seems to be passing in favor of various international style yogurts. Regular flavored yogurts make up only a small patch of the yogurt section, and I think this is even more the case for vegetarians, since Yoplait uses gelatin in their yogurts. (They used to, anyway–I haven’t checked recently.)

I have long been a fan of Dannon coffee yogurt, and apparently a lot of other people are, too. I can still find it in four-packs in some stores… sometimes. But I can’t find it reliably, and Dannon lemon yogurt has been gone for a long time. Fortunately, I can mix up a decent coffee yogurt and a very tasty lemon yogurt using plain yogurt and flavoring. As long as you don’t mind stirring your yogurt before eating it, you can get a variety of flavored yogurts from one large tub of plain yogurt. (Some people only like yogurt when it has that perfect jelly-like consistency straight out of the container–I can’t think of a good word to describe the texture–and so would not like home-flavored yogurt.)

For lemon yogurt, I have been using a large spoonful of lemon curd. Make sure it hasn’t been sitting in your fridge for months–I think the flavor deteriorates. Put the spoonful in a microwaveable bowl and nuke it for 5-7 seconds, just until it softens and stirs easily. Then add plain yogurt and mix.

For coffee yogurt, you can mix up some instant coffee and sugar with a little water, and keep it in the fridge for flavoring yogurt. For maximum entertainment value, make Dalgona Coffee. A friend told me about this, and it really is fun to make if you have an immersion blender with a whisk attachment.

Immersion blender with whisk attachment

Mix equal parts coffee powder, sugar, and water (hot water works fine.) Whisk until really stiff. It’s amazing!

See how thick it is?

How do you use it? The on-line photos show it spooned onto milk, over ice, for iced coffee. It looks nice, but I just end up stirring it in, and it doesn’t taste any different.

Dalgona coffee also makes a nice cafe au lait when stirred into hot milk. And (more to the point) you can also add it to yogurt, though I suggest adding extra sugar. I haven’t tried whipping the coffee mix with extra sugar, but that would cut out a step if it whips successfully.

Dalgona coffee on yogurt–remember to stir!

Other flavorings: maple syrup (not maple-flavored pancake syrup, though I suppose that would be a flavor all its own), brown sugar (works well with yogurt), and what about jam? Presumably you could warm up strawberry jam just as easily as lemon curd and make fruit-flavored yogurt.

None of these ideas is particularly original, but sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that you have options.

Till next post.