It’s Fall! All hail pumpkin and pumpkin spice! It seems like every year the stores try to push us into the next season long before the present one is finished. Pumpkin products have been on the shelves of my local markets since August. In my quest to enjoy the products of each season when they are in season, I have studiously ignored this. Yesterday, however, was the first day of Autumn. With everything else that’s been going on it seems like the weather gods are giving Western North Carolina a bit of a break. This September has moved from the heat of summer to the cooler days and ...
Breads and Pastries
BACK TO BASICS WITH QUICK BREAD: NECTARINE AND MANDARIN ORANGE BREAD
A Basic Quick Bread Recipe is used to make a sweet, moist bread featuring fresh nectarine puree and dried Mandarin oranges. People often comment on how unusual my life has been: the many places I have lived and how different that is from their lives. It is true I have lived and traveled all over the world. But what I noticed is, that while the setting was different, the things we were doing, wherever we were, were the same things our families were doing back home. Thus it was that I sat on a beachside terrace in Bali and listened to my brother-in-law explain chemical equations ...
JUMBLED UP FRUIT BREAD: PEACH, BLACKBERRY AND WATERMELON
I’ll admit it. I am a sucker for the fruits of summer. Don’t ever leave me alone in a Farmer’s Market or I will return with half bushels of peaches, tomatoes and plums, a dozen (or more) ears of corn and at least one large watermelon. Not to mention berries of all sorts. As if I don’t have enough in my own garden! There comes a time when it is necessary to use these wonderful products or watch them go bad. Sometimes it calls for a touch of ingenuity, sometimes it just needs luck. A go-to of mine has always been quick bread. Quick breads are made with baking powder or baking soda ...
WITH THE BEST OF INTENTIONS: OLIVE OIL, LEMON AND GINGER ZUCCHINI BREAD
I started this week with the best of intentions. I thought that everyone must certainly be tired of Quarantine Baking so I planned to write a blog about something meaty, maybe something on the grill, something far removed from bowls and ovens and flour. Then I went out the garden and found the zucchini had decided this was the time to begin. Even then, my intention was not to start with zucchini bread just yet. I thought I would collect a number of recipes and then do baker’s choice for you all. But that was before I tasted this zucchini bread. This zucchini bread is moist, super ...
AN ENGLISH CREAM TEA
When you think of tea and the English do you think of a large Manor House with immaculately groomed lawns, ladies in long dresses and hats and gentlemen standing behind them? The High Tea of Downton Abbey! I think of a roadside sign on a back road leading to a charming cottage with a few tables set out on a rose flanked patio. The sign simply reads “Cream Tea”. Cream Tea is a summer institution in the United Kingdom. Cream Teas can be found at the best restaurants and in small tea shops. They are available in cities and in the countryside. They are most common in Devonshire and ...
HIGH TEA: VICTORIA SANDWICH CAKE
It’s time for the finale of my Great British Baking Show Competition and I am knee deep in flour, butter, sugar and eggs. I have one day to prepare three different elements of a classic British High Tea: Victorian Sandwich Cake, French Tarte Au Citron and Scones. Up to now I have not worried about the time requirement of each challenge but since I know how to make each of these items already I thought it would be interesting to try making them in the same time allotted to the contestants: five hours. Pastry dough for the tarts is made and resting in the fridge and I turn next to ...
DONUT JOY: MAPLE GLAZED WITH BACON OR CHOCOLATE GLAZED WITH NUTS?
Sweet and Salty Maple Glazed Donuts with Bacon Bits or Satisfyingly Rich Dark Chocolate Ganache Glazed Donuts with Crunchy Pecans, there is something for everyone here! In the beginning, donuts came in three varieties: filled with strawberry jam, coated in powdered sugar or sparkling with bright crystals of cane sugar. My favorite was, and still is, the jelly donut. Its soft pillowy exterior hides a blob of sticky red jam making each bite an adventure. Sugar donuts are also a favorite. When I was a child, my mother would cut the centers out of Pillsbury Poppin Fresh Biscuits, fry them and ...
ECLAIRS
Crisp and airy pate a choux shells are filled with vanilla or raspberry cream then covered with luscious chocolate ganache for two takes on the Classic Eclair. This is the year that time slowed down. Spring creeps ever so slowly across the landscape. Warm days are followed by cold and frost and my winter clothes have not yet rested safely in the back of my closet. Day follows day with extraordinary sameness broken only by the question of what the Great British Baking Show will ask me to make next. Truthfully, it seems like that show will never come to an end either! But it is coming ...
BRITISH BAKING SHOW BREAD WEEK: CIABATTA (NOT-AH)
Two days ago, I went for a walk and I found myself thinking about making Ciabatta Bread as a metaphor for living life by oneself in quarantine and maintaining a good mood. You start with the dough, which takes a lot more yeast than most other dough and you don’t add a lot of flour so it’s a very wet dough. Then you let it rise. And in spite of all that yeast it takes a long time to rise because you can’t put it in a proofing drawer or even in a warm place. It needs to rise slowly at room temperature. Eventually it doubles (or triples!) in size and you are ready to form the ...
WHEN LIFE GETS CHALLENGING, CHALLENGE IT BACK! BLUEBERRY COFFEE CAKE
Challenge yourself to make a beautiful blueberry filled coffee cake! Recipes for using cans of beans and other imaginative things to do with pantry staples are not really my thing. And there are a lot of much better chefs out there who are creating and sharing those kinds of recipes for you. I am working on the assumption that the cooks among you are looking for projects, something to stretch your mind and talents and hopefully result in something fun to eat (#gettingfatfromcoronovirus). Starting next week, I am replaying one episode from the Great British Baking Show, Season One and ...
