Are You Nuts?

Oh yes we are for these! I have already made 3 batches and each makes a lot. Every time I go fill a gift basket with a jar of these, B. comes down fron his study and starts munching claiming he needs the energy...160 research papers and 160 finals and we are leaving on Thursday! He has proclaimed himself the official Santa Gift Basket Tester...good thing we'll be walking a lot while in France

The recipe from these is straight out of Real Simple magazine and I only did minor alterations to the ingredients and process.

Spiced Mixed Nuts, adapted from Real Simple

2 large egg whites
2/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
6 cups mixed nuts (I used almonds and peanuts but any combination of untoasted walnuts, pecans, cashews, and pistachios works great)
1/4 cup (½ stick) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 300° F. Line 2 large baking sheets with foil or parchment. Grease lightly and set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Gradually add the sugar, beating to a loose, meringue like texture. Beat in the cinnamon, Worcestershire sauce, chili powder, cayenne, and salt. Add the nuts and butter and stir well to coat evenly.Divide the nuts between the baking sheets, spreading evenly in a single layer. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes to a golden brown (do not allow the nuts to darken too much), rotating the sheets during cooking for even roasting. Line a work surface with foil or parchment.After removing the nuts from oven, immediately slide them onto the foil or parchment. Cool completely. Store, refrigerated, in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

I want to apologize if my posts are short and not filled with interesting memories or tidbits but I reserve that for the coming weeks : thursday we are going to France for 3 weeks, spending Christmas and New Years with my family. There will be a lot of posts about our traditions, our menus and the excellent chefs and meals in my family. One example, when I called my parents yesterday my mom was at a neighbor's house preparing foie gras....and when I called back she was in the finishing phase of her onion and fig confit....and my brother called me requesting that I made Yule logs for New Years and by the way one of the guys attending that dinner is trying to get a star on the Michelin guide for his own restaurant...talk about pressure!!

I will post as much as I can, promise...!

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Holiday Meringue Kisses

One more item destined to my gift giving baskets. You are probably starting to wonder how big these are getting! Well, not everybody is going to receive every single item I have blogged about so far, (allergies, preferences, etc...), but they are pretty big indeed. They're really not baskets however... I got very holiday-ish decorated hat boxes and filled them up. The last set of ggodies will be completed tonight.

I made a couple of things over the weekends that left me with 3 egg whites. I am running around like crazy before our trip so I chose not to venture into macaron making and since I wanted to use them for my goodie baskets, I chose the safe route with Meringue Kisses.

These are the easiest things to do and they go great with chocolate mousse, parfaits, trifles, ice creams..". They are also called "Forgotten cookies", and sometimes include nuts and chocolate chips. I am pretty sure everyone has a version of them. I can't tell you where this particular recipe comes from as I found it on a old wrinkly piece of paper in my mother in law recipe box and no source was included.

Holiday Meringue Kisses:
3 egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt.

Start these in the evening, you will understand why at the end.
Preheat oven to 350.
In a stand or hand held mixer, start whipping the egg whites. When they start to foam and form a soft mousse, add in the sugar 1/4 cup at a time in a nice steady stream (don't just dump it in there or your meringue will plunk). When the meringue has a shiny gloss and stiff peaks, stop mixing and put the mixture in a piping bag. Pipe rosettes on parchment lined baking sheets.
Put in the oven, turn the oven off and leave the meringues overnight. In the morning they will be done and dry!

I divided my batter in 2 and added a couple of drops of red and green coloring, gave to spatula turns and piped them for a holiday feeling.

Only one problem with these: far to easy to pop in your mouth one after the other. Not sure if the neighbors will get any tomorrow....!

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Crackers Au Bleu

Yes, cheese, blue cheese to be exact is sneaking its way into my "everything sweet and baked" blog. No, I have not gone mad....since it has to do with baking, flour and butter it qualifies.

I wish I could have made this with Roquefort cheese but for a couple of reasons I went with a basic Gorgonzola: the taste is strong enough to show through the cracker once it is baked and I am trying to use up as many perishables as I can before our upcoming trip. I am also including these in my goodie baskets for Christmas because not everybody likes sweets...I know crazy eh?! They go really well with the rest of the assortments, especially beside a little box of spiced nuts.

I found the recipe ages ago and originally made them for a cocktail party but they never made to the munchies table because B. and I devoured the whole batch before our guests arrived....they are excellent. You can really taste the blue cheese because there is barely enough flour to hold them together and they are so buttery that they instantly melt in your mouth.

These are really convenient to have around during the holidays. The dough can be made way ahead of time since it needs to refrigerate before baking and you can cut slices as needed if you have a small party. Believe me, that won't be necessary.... If you have leftovers, which I highly doubt, the baked crackers will keep for a week in an air tight container in the refrigerator.

Blue Cheese Crackers, adapted from Pascale:

100 gr. all purpose flour
80 gr. salted butter (unsalted works fine too)
1/2 tsp. chili powder ( I used piment d'Espelette)
1 Tb cornmeal
100 gr. blue cheese

Crumble the cheese. Cut the cold butter in small pieces. In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients with you fingers or a pastry cutter and gather into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a cylinder about 6 inches long. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 350. Cut the log into 1/2 thick slices and spread them out onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. They will spread a little. Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges start to get golden brown.

I made another batch the other day and baked bigger slices, about 3 inches wide and topped them with smoked salmon for an appetizer. Delicious!

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Cranberry Biscotti

I hope you are not getting tired of my cranberry obsession but I found a cup left of home dried ones and after sampling the chocolate biscotti from Dorie Greenspan, I decided to go for the first recipe I had noticed: her Lenox Biscotti. We are not getting tired of the mighty berry yet but that reminds me if a time where the executive chef ordered me two cases of pears instead of one. You would not believe how many desserts, recipes, creations, adaptations I came up with trying not to waste any. I almost thought about writing on book on pears.

Another great one from that book, so good that I made another batch right away since we could not stop dunking and finding inventive reason why we should!
Her original recipe called for chopped almonds which I replaced with cranberries, and I used orange flower extract instead of almond extract. If you want a foolproof recipe that you can adapt to your heart's content, well look no further.

Lenox Biscotti, adapted from Baking From My Home To Yours

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cormeal
1 stick butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp almond extract (I used orange flower water)
3/4 cup sliced almonds ( I used dried unsweet cranberries, but store bought work well, believe me I have tried aready)

In stand mixer (hand held is fine) cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the flavor extract you chose.
Sift together the flour, baking powder,salt and cormeal and add to the butter mixture. Fold in the cranberries (or nuts).
Scrape half the dough onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Using a spatula and your fingers, form the dough into a log, 12 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. Repeat with the second portion of the dough.
Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until the logs are light golden but still soft to the touch. Let cool for 30 minutes but keep the oven on.
With a long serrated knife cut slices from each log and spread them out onto baking sheets. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes until firm.

Next step? Try to wait until they are cold enough not to burn your tongue....! Happy dunking!

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White Chocolate and Cranberry Cake

I don't know whether to blame or thank Lisa for that one! I have made it twice already and my neighbor ordered a whole on after sampling some over the weekend. A few days ago she mentionned a white chocolate and cranberry cake I should try in order to help me use the one bag of cranberries I still had. The mere thought of these flavors melding together in a cake made me crave a taste. She graciously emailed me the recipe and it sounded too good not to make it on the spot. The flavors of white chocolate and cranberries go perfectly together and the addition of orange zest and juice made it close to heaven. Perfect with a cup of bergamot tea on a cold afternoon...that's the part I have to imagine because it was 72 today.

The recipe calls for a tube or 9 inch round pan but I wanted bite size squares (except for the picture) so I used a 13x9. The cake is supposed to be drizzled with a white chocolate-orange icing but I skipped that part. Why? Could not wait that long to eat it! The only thing I will do next time will be to reduce the butter from 2 to 1 or 1.5 sticks.

White Chocolate-Cranberry Cake:

1-1/2 pkg. (9 squares) whit chocolate, divided
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
3 Tbsp. grated orange zest
5 Tbsp. orange juice, divided
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1-1/2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour 9-inch tube pan or fluted tube pan.

Chop 6 of the chocolate squares; set aside. Beat butter and sugars in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs, orange peel and 3 Tbsp. of the orange juice; mix well. Add flour and baking powder; beat until well blended. Stir in chopped chocolate and the cranberries.
Bake 1 hour to 1 hour 10 min. or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 min.; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely.

Place remaining 3 chocolate squares and remaining 2 Tbsp. orange juice in small saucepan; cook on low heat until chocolate is completely melted, stirring frequently. Drizzle over cake. Let stand until glaze is firm

Another winner going into my gifts baskets, cut into squares and nicely packaged in tin boxes.

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Marshmallow - Chamallow

Sounds like an insult but really it is just pillowy cottony light homemade marshmallows that I am including in my gift baskets. When I was a child, they were known to me as "chamallow", I guess the French had an issue with the pronounciation, but if you were a purist, they were "guimauve" and they were good...no matter what you called them!

I had been wanting to make them from scratch for a while and although the technique is not difficult I never really had the occasion to take out the powdered sugar, candy thermometer just because I had 30 minutes to kill and why not stand at the stove to watch that syrup get to 260!

When T&D invited us to dinner and I was preparing their goodie basket I remembered a long standing joke regarding T. and some very precious marshmallows. About two or three Christmases ago, he was showing the town to a couple of friends visiting for the holidays and they stopped at a Williams Sonoma store. The ladies got a couple of items and T. grabbed a couple of bags of marshmallows. I had never seen someone as close to a heart attack as when the cashier said :" And your total comes to $30, sir"..... were they coated with gold, was there a precious stone inside one of them? Not wanting to look like a Scrooge, T. took out his wallet and paid. The worst part was that they were not "that" special....and that really bites coming from a fine-gourmet store.
As a joke I decided to make him a couple of bags and the three marshmallows you see in the picture above are the ones that I managed to save for us to sample.

The process is actually quite easy and like in most things confectionary the only requirements are a good dose of patience, following instructions, and a thermometer.

Marshmallows, adapted from Cooking Light:

2 1/2 envelopes unflavored gelatin (2 tablespoons plus 1 1/4 teaspoons)
3/4 cup cold water, divided
2 cups granulated sugar, divided
2/3 cup light-colored corn syrup
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg whites
2/3 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch

Line a 13 x 9-inch baking pan with heavy-duty plastic wrap, allowing plastic wrap to extend 1 inch over sides of pan. Lightly coat the plastic wrap with cooking spray.
Sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cold water in a small bowl; set aside.
Combine remaining 1/4 cup of water, 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, and corn syrup in a large saucepan. Cook, without stirring, over medium-high heat until a candy thermometer registers 260° (about 15 minutes). Remove from heat; gradually stir in softened gelatin (mixture will appear foamy).
While sugar mixture cooks, beat the vanilla, salt, and egg whites at high speed in a heavy-duty stand mixer with whisk attachment until foamy.

Gradually add remaining 1/4 cup granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until stiff peaks form. Gradually pour in gelatin mixture, beating until very thick (about 5 minutes). Gently spread marshmallow mixture over coconut in prepared pan. Coat 1 side of another sheet of plastic wrap with cooking spray. Place plastic wrap, coated side down, over marshmallow mixture. Chill 8 hours or until firm.
Sprinkle powdered sugar and cornstarch over a cutting board. Remove top sheet of plastic wrap. Invert marshmallow mixture over powdered sugar mixture. Using a dough scraper, cut mixture into about 1-inch squares. Store between sheets of wax or parchment paper in an airtight container.
Yield: 8 dozen

Results? Delicious! I am definetely making more! Next time I am trying them in color!

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