illy: for moka pots

illy makes a coffee specially ground for use in moka pots.  In short, this is delicious: strong enough to not taste watered down, but not overstrong; very smooth; and finely ground enough for the moka pot.  An excellent standard!

Cake citron (lemon cake)

This came from our awesome new French cookbook.  Originally I'd wanted to make something to take in for work the next day, so I had to find a recipe that wouldn't make us go out and buy anything.  This recipe used standard kitchen supplies along with some lemons, which we seem to have a lot of right now; I think it's because I can never correctly estimate how much lemon juice is in one lemon, so I tend to buy too many at a time.

I didn't end up taking this to work, mostly because I didn't want to have to transport it across icy sidewalks.

Our notes:

• This is basically a pound cake.  That loaf pan was pretty hefty after I put all the batter in!
• The amount of flour should be adjusted for the ambient humidity; 300g of flour is a little too much for a Michigan winter.

The cake before it went into the oven.

• I used the lemon juice option for the glaze: much more flavourful than just water!
• The recipe called for the knife test of doneness; accordingly, I ended up baking this for somewhere between 35 and 40 minutes rather than the 30 listed in the recipe, but I still ended up with an underbaked center (a common problem when I bake cakes in loaf pans).  However, this would lead to some delicious consequences.
• The recipe said to put the glaze on the cake while the cake was still hot, contrary to my normal tendency of waiting until a cake is cool before glazing it.  I was a little skeptical, but I like to follow recipes to the letter the first time I make them, so I duly made the glaze when the cake came out of the oven and glazed it right then.  It seemed that most of the glaze was absorbed into the cake on account of the cake's temperature, rather than staying on the outside which is what happens when I use my usual method.
• Since the center didn't get completely baked, it collapsed a bit, leaving a small hollow between the top of the cake and the center.  I kept pouring glaze through the knife cuts from when I tested the cake; the crumb absorbed all of this glaze, so the center of the cake had an even more pronounced lemon flavour.  This, to be honest, was by far the tastiest part of the cake!

Glazed cake.  Photo credit goes to Dom for this one.

Verdict: a recipe to keep!  Though I might want to get better at baking cakes in loaf pans before I make this for anyone else; I suppose not everyone appreciates underbaked baked goods like we do...

A shot of the crumb just after I had sliced off the end.  By the time we got to the center areas where the glaze had absorbed into the crumb, we were too eager to enjoy the cake to take photos!

Le Cordon Bleu's Pâtisserie & baking foundations: classic recipes (2012), p. 75-76
Writeup background music: Kylie Minogue, Enjoy yourself (1989 U.S. version); thank you, Penn State University, for lending me your copy of the album!

Holla' for Challah

We've been wanting to try making this for a while now - and we finally got to it!  We used the recipe from our copy of Joy of Cooking (pp 600-601).  Everything went pretty well, so just a few notes:

Notes:

• We ended up with extra flour in the mixing bowl, though we suspect that was due to the dryness of the air (it is Michigan in the winter-time).
• We only baked it for 20 minutes instead of the 30-35 called for - but it was already browned quite nicely (as you can see in the picture), and had a hollow sound when thumped.
• The three ropes in the braid stayed pretty much separate through baking, so we are considering next time reducing or omitting the flour on the ropes that was called for in the recipe.

This recipe does take a decent amount of time as you have let it rise several times, but it is worth it.  See for yourself:

Just before baking - the braid came out quite well - except for the pinching together at the final end.  My bad...

Out of the oven - with a nice crust and delicious inside!

A nice view of the crumb inside.

Verdict - definitely make again!

Glazed lemon cookies

A while back (as in, before the holiday season), I was on a big cookie kick.  When I realized I couldn't go to Dom's department's holiday party, I still wanted to make some treats to send with him, so I chose a glazed lemon cookie recipe from Real Simple.  These turned out pretty well, to say the least.

My notes:

• While gathering all the ingredients together, I realized that the only lemon flavour came from the glaze; there was neither lemon juice nor zest in the dough itself.  I ended up using the zest of one lemon and the juice of about 1/2 a lemon in the dough, added with the egg yolks, salt, and vanilla.  A bit of raw dough was nicely flavoured before baking, but if anything, I should have use more juice or zest to get a stronger flavour in the baked cookies.
• The extra lemon juice helped pull the dough together; perhaps because our apartment is frightfully dry, the dough was really crumbly after adding the flour.  Adding enough lemon juice helped smooth everything out and imparted some lemon flavour to the dough itself.
• The recipe claims to produce 48 cookies.  I don't know if I did something wrong or what, but I came out with 32 cookies (two sheets of 18).  It's not even like I made them gigantic--they came out to a perfect two-bite cookie.  So I'm not sure what that was about, but it didn't seem to be any kind of a problem.
• Each sheet of 18 got about 13 minutes in the oven--neither brown nor very underbaked, but perfect for us.
• I drizzled the glaze over the cookies rather than dipping the cookies in the glaze.  This had the double effect of using less sugar (probably about half of what the recipe called for, but I just added sugar to the lemon juice until I got glaze, so I have no idea how much I actually used) and making the cookies look all fancy.
• From a subsequent trial of the cookies in which I didn't add any lemon zest to the glaze for aesthetic reasons, I found that the lemon flavour in the glaze was not as strong.  So next time I make these, I'd sacrifice the aesthetics of a totally smooth glaze for the stronger flavour provided by the zest.

I have extremely high standards when it comes to my own baking.  Usually I pronounce what I create as "all right", but I almost always have a "but..." to go along with it.  Not so with these.  As soon as I bit into one of these I knew this was a recipe to keep (with all the modifications, of course).  A bright, clean, intense lemon flavour, not too sweet, not too dry, not under- or over-baked, and just enough cookie to get a good taste without having too much cookie.  What else do you need?

Delicious.

I may have taken one already...

Irish Stew

This is a hearty stew for the coldest of winter days on the Emerald Isle (or in the Mitten).  This is another recipe from our favorite Joy of Cooking (pp. 496).  This is a lamb stew, and we were able to pick up some lamb chops at our local Kroger to throw in.  The result was very tasty.

Notes:

• Quantity - the recipe called for 3 pounds of stew lamb.  As Kroger did not have stew lamb, we picked up a couple of packages (~ 2 lbs total) of some bone-in lamb chops, which seemed to work quite well.  We didn't really scale back the amount of vegetables, but that can't hurt, right?
• Liquid - the recipe said to use either chicken stock, dark stout, or water.  We opted for about half-and-half chicken stock and stout (Murphy's Stout - 'twas a bit less expensive than Guinness but still tasty - just not if you ask Caroline ;-) ).  This seemed to work out well, and helped it taste close to the Irish Stew at Conor O'Neill's (on Main St. in AA).
• Thickening potatoes - we sliced up some potatoes that were supposed to disintegrate and thicken the stew, but this didn't work.  In discussing why it didn't work, we came up with the theory.  The time we've had potatoes thicken a stew we cooked it on the stove - this recipe had us cook the stew for an hour and a half in a Dutch oven in the oven.  Perhaps the stew needs to cook harder for this to work, or else you have to slice the potatoes really thin.

Pictures!

Before going in the oven.

Ready for consumption (the carrots are added after an hour in the oven).

Verdict - a very tasty dish that makes good left overs and should be made to warm body and soul!