Baking

Bacon fat cookiestravaganza. Or, how to make you fall in love with me. Except that I probably wouldn’t tell you what was in these if I was trying to woo you.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I hadn’t had a peanut butter cookie in a really long time.

And when Nick went out to get dinner stuff, he mentioned that maybe I should do the dishes, and I was like, “If I’m helpful, maybe he’ll come home with a present!” So I did the dishes, and Nick came home, and I pointed out the four dishes I washed, and he wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped, and then he asked if I bothered to clean out the fridge yet. Of course I didn’t. But I thought, I could at least open it and see what happens. And then it happened. The bacon fat resurfaced!

Mmmm!Please don’t quit on me yet. I promise you, this is worth your while.

Bacon fat is better for you than margarine, if you haven’t heard, and while I can’t actually back that up, it’s a fact, and if you want proof then I would be happy to recommend some literature that will help you along. And we’re in a recession. And I’m saving the butter for mashed potatoes. My grandmother used to make the best peanut butter cookies in the world using schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat), which would have been left over anyway, which she kept in the freezer just for baking. And being (constantly) broke, my cold little heart breaks when I have to throw stuff out. I always save my bacon fat.

The peanut butter cookie recipe I like the best comes from Fannie Farmer. I have long been a fan of Marion Cunningham, who is like everybody in the world’s grandmother’s cookbook (but not my grandmother, the story of who’s cookbook is a novel for another time) mashed into one divine being who makes everything you want to eat and is tall (I imagine) and regal and is friends with Jeffrey Steingarten, who is another kind of hero. I make half-batches of this recipe, because two dozen cookies is quite enough for me. The recipe in its full measure claims that it will produce 120 cookies, which I have never found to be true. This is either a gross miscalculation or they’re supposed to be tiny little cookies, and I hate little cookies because they’re a tease and before you know it you’ve eaten two bags of mini rainbow Chips Ahoy and you’re drunk and it’s 3:42 am and you’re crying on the kitchen floor (again) and the reason is embarrassing but also you wish you could carry on a conversation with normal people without saying something wildly inappropriate or them thinking you had tourette’s syndrome, for once, and who the hell let you have the phone in the first place?

Peanut-Butter Bacon Fat Cookies

(Adapted from the recipe for Peanut-Butter Butter Cookies from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, circa 1984. Makes about two-dozen cookies.)

  • 1/2 cup bacon fat
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Beat your bacon fat, peanut butter, and sugar together in a large bowl. You want the colour of the goop in the bowl to lighten and get creamy. Once it’s there, crack open your egg and drop the contents in, and keep beating the mixture.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, mix well, and then slowly add it to the mixture in the bowl, beating until all your ingredients are combined.

Cookie doughIf you’re like me and you’ve never been disappointed by a hunk of cookie dough in your mouth, then sample away. At first you may think it’s a little weird – and it is. But in a good way. The bacon fat makes the peanut butter seem peanut-butterier.

Roll the dough out into balls about an inch or so in diameter. Place about an inch apart on a cookie sheet, and press the tops down with a fork dipped in granulated sugar.

Raw cookie deliciousnessBake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, and cool for a bit on a wire rack before eating.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with myself/these cookies, and not just because I used something in the fridge and therefore made progress toward a cleaner tomorrow. They are TASTY. You really ought to try this. I’m pretty sure a pound or so of bacon will produce enough fat for these, and then some, if you don’t already save your fat. Don’t waste fat. Baby Jesus cries when you wash the fat of the pig down the drain.

COOKIES!Seriously. You need to try these. Go render some pork fat, and then let me know how it all works out. Or, just come over for cookies and milk, and inhale my good baking stink.

Old-Fashioned White Bread from Sponge and Homemade Butter.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

What were YOU doing at 1:00 this morning?

I was in my bathrobe, sitting on the kitchen floor and having big ideas. I couldn’t sleep. It was Sooin’s bachelorette party last night, and as I’ve been a tad under the weather and it was a forty-five-minute drive away, I decided to only go the dinner part, and to not drink. I drank about fifteen Diet Cokes, and then got home and tried to go to sleep. No luck – I was abuzz. Then I decided that I would make a bread sponge in anticipation of a luscious loaf of sourdough in the morning. But it doesn’t work that way. A sourdough starter takes three days, and if I was thinking clearly, I would have realized that sooner. So I made a regular bread sponge, because I made butter and don’t care to wait three days to eat it, and resolved to start a sponge for sourdough at 1:00 some other morning.

Sponge

SDC10245It’s a good idea to save a knob of your last batch of dough to add to your bread sponge. I keep a little ball of it wrapped in plastic in my freezer, so that it can be pulled out and dropped into a frothy batch of sponge and allowed to ferment and grow yeasty, yielding a richer, crustier, OMG-so-much-better loaf of bread. You don’t need much – a bit of dough about the size of a golf ball is plenty.

What is a bread sponge, you ask? Well. It’s very simple. It’s a portion of the ingredients you’re going to use to make your bread, just thrown into a bowl a few hours or a day or two in advance. Science happens in the bowl, and you end up with a loaf that’s soft and chewy on the inside, with a crusty exterior that just begs to be torn into with teeth. Also, because the yeast gets its little selves in there a bit earlier, the mix ferments a bit and develops a much better flavour. You can really just whisk everything together in a bowl and then go to bed. Eight to twelve hours later, you just put the rest of your ingredients together and proceed as usual.

Sponge:

  • 2 cups warmed milk
  • 1 teaspoon yeast
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 little dough ball

Whisk together the milk, yeast, and flour in a large bowl. If you have a ball of dough, defrost it quickly and drop it in as well. Cover with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel, and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 12 hours.

SDC10244

When I woke up this morning it was sunny for the first time in a week, so I was super-impatient, so the sponge only got about eight hours to get good, but it still smelled yeasty and sour, like the perfect start to a homemade loaf. I started in immediately, because I wanted to go out to play.

Here’s the bread recipe. For the butter, go here. Follow her steps exactly. These two in combination will give you an earth-shattering foodgasm, and you’ll be all, “Thanks, Emily. I’ve always liked you.” No really. Make the butter. It won’t save you any money, but the taste (and gloating about how you made your own butter) will be totally worth it. I’ve got big plans to use it on a barbecued ear of corn tonight. BIG PLANS.

Another recipe for white bread, but this one’s different, okay?

  • bread sponge (see above)
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 3 tsp. yeast
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 2 tbsp. melted butter (plus extra for greasing your bowl and your loaf pans)
  • 1 tbsp. salt
  • 4 cups flour, plus extra for kneading

Combine the yeast and the water. When yeast gets foamy, add it to your sponge. Add the sugar, butter, and salt as well, and stir to combine. Add your flour and stir until mixed, and then dump the lot onto a floured surface to begin kneading. As always, please knead for eight to ten minutes. If you have athletic, powerful arms, it may take less time – you want the dough to become elastic – but I have flabby “looks good in sweaters” arms, so I knead for the full amount of time. Muscles are for chumps, right?

Transfer your dough to a large bowl that has been buttered lightly on all sides. Do round things have sides? I guess if you don’t know, they might as well. Cover with plastic and a kitchen towel, and allow to rise in a warm room until doubled in bulk. About an hour, hour-and-a-half. You know the drill.

dough in bowl, risingOnce your dough is big and smells good, dump it out onto that floured surface again (add new flour), and cut it in half. Form the dough into two loaf-pan-sized rectangles. Place your dough into your pre-buttered loaf pans, cover again with plastic and a kitchen towel, and allow to rise again, about an hour/hour-and-a-half, until the dough has risen an inch or so above the tops of the pans.

dough in pans

Preheat the oven to 375°F. I brushed the tops of my loaves with some melted butter and sprinkled them both with Kosher salt, but this is optional. Put your loaves into your oven once it’s raring to go, and bake the loaves for 35 to 40 minutes.

Cool these on wire racks. I find that bread tastes better once it’s cooled and then reheated (toasted), because there’s a complexity of flavour that develops once the bread does it’s sciencey thing on the racks.

BREAD!I sure hope you made the butter.

Butter, homemadeButter your homemade bread with the homemade butter. Revel.

Homemade bread with homemade butter.I realize now that I promised Heather the key to easy spaghetti carbonara, and am now about a week late in following through. I don’t have any bacon at the moment, and I just made butter, so the next pasta I make will probably involve this butter and the beautiful leaves of sage that are flourishing on my deck, but that’s not to say it isn’t coming. Give me a week. Then I’ll tell you everything. I promise.

New Jersey Crumb Buns. Or, “Be Nice to your Wife, Jerkface.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 14 Comments

Until recently, I had no idea what a crumb bun was. They don’t exist on the west coast, and especially not in Canada. Apparently they only exist in New Jersey, which isn’t terribly helpful, and unfortunately, they are a thing that Nick is not content to live without.

About six months ago I acquired a recipe that purported to be authentic – hours of following the recipe EXACTLY and letting the bread rise to the precise specifications and topping the whole thing with a crunchy streusel topping, also from the recipe. The result?

“These aren’t them.”

“The topping’s too crunchy.”

“Yeah, I don’t really like these. Good try, though.”

That he is not smothered in his sleep is a testament to my enduring patience.

And so crumb buns were largely forgotten. By me. Nick speaks of them often enough that they never fully disappear, and fails to understand that, “crumb buns – you know, like, I don’t know. They’re kind of like cake, but not, and the topping is, you know, crumbly and stuff” is not a description I can work from.

And then, recently, as luck would have it, Nick’s parents went to New Jersey. They brought some home, and I set out to copy the recipe.

This is a crumb bun. Tasty!
This is a crumb bun. Tasty!

These have a yeasty, subtly sweet, almost eggy taste. And while Nick swears that the most important part of these is the streuselly crumb topping, I’m inclined to believe that he has no idea what he’s talking about – the base is the part that’s the riddle. I made two batches of dough before I got to a recipe I felt would work. The final dough smelled a lot like the crumb bun sitting on the arm of my couch, so I figured that’d be a start.

I figured out the problem early on: Lemonade. How am I supposed to be creative if I’m all inhibited and crap? Right? Of course! So I popped open a bottle of prosecco and set to work. Result? The right stuff.

So with the dough rising in it’s buttery pot of incubation, it was time to microanalyse the crumb part of the crumb bun. It’s not completely soft, but it’s not crunchy either. It’s buttery and cinnamony and slightly nutty, and the recipe I used for these those many months ago was right on with the taste, even if it was way off on the texture. Solution? Add more butter. (Fact: “More butter” is almost always the correct answer.)

Here’s the recipe.

New Jersey Crumb Buns

Bun part:

  • 2 tbsp. yeast
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup for kneading

Crumb part:

  • 1/4 cup almond butter
  • 1 1/2 cups butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 4 cups flour

Heat the milk until just warm, about 105°F. Forty seconds in the microwave should do it. Sprinkle your yeast over top and let sit until foamy, about five minutes.

Meanwhile, cream together the sugar, salt, and butter – beat these until the sugar dissolves and the butter becomes fluffy and lighter in colour. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla. Pour in the yeast-milk mixture and continue to beat. At this point the batter will separate and you’ll probably think that you’ve ruined everything. I promise, you haven’t. Add in the flour gradually while continuing to beat the mixture.

The dough that’s produced will end up quite a bit softer than a regular bread dough. Flour your work surface, and knead the dough – eight minutes should do. It should be soft and elastic and have a slight sheen. Place the dough in a large greased bowl and cover with greased plastic wrap. Throw a kitchen towel over top, and let rise in warmth and comfort until doubled in bulk, about an hour and a half.

Make your streusel. Cream together almond butter, regular butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Gradually add in your flour, the same way you did with the bread part. Don’t over-beat this – you’ll see it form loose, crumbly chunks. Break apart any overly large crumbs with your fingers – crumbs should be about the size of peas. Refrigerate these until ready to use.

Cover a baking sheet (make sure it has sides) in buttered parchment paper. Once your dough has grown to the appropriate size, give it a quick knead, and stretch it out so that it’s about 10 x 16 inches. Cut into rectangles approximately two inches wide by four inches long, and lay them out on the pan so that they’re close but not touching. Brush the tops with milk, and sprinkle about half the streusel over the tops, pressing lightly to make sure it sticks. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and allow to rise until doubled (again). One-and-a-half or two hours.

When the buns have risen, sprinkle the rest of the crumb over the tops.

Heat your oven to 375°F. When the little red “the oven is not ready” light shuts off, put in the buns and bake for about thirty minutes. Cool on a rack, and then, when cooled, sprinkle these with confectioner’s sugar. Inhale. Delightful smell.

Crumb buns cooling on rack.

When Nick finally ate one of these, the reviews were mixed. The bread part is spot-on. Tremendous news, as that was the part I was most concerned about. The streusel?

“It’s better from the store my mom buys them at.”

He gets nothing. Ever. And I’m pouring out the rest of his beer.

The crumb wasn’t as soft as he’d wanted – it turned out a bit softer than an apple crisp kind of topping. Still good though. In the end, he ate but half of one of these. I have more than two people can eat left over, and they’re going stale waiting for validation. They are, or I am – either way, it’s not good. I’ve never liked Nick.

A blurry photo of a crumb bun in action.
A blurry photo of a crumb bun in action.

I am not sure whether I am going to continue to play at this – I think if Nick wants soft streusel topping, he can find a recipe and make it himself. He has to learn sometime, and I figured out the bread – that was the hard part. I have an inkling as to what might make it work. I might even share my theory with him. But for now, he gets dishes. And a healthy amount of fear.

A day of many delights: Rapini, and then blackberry scones.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

When I came home today, I found this:

NoteWhich is a shame, because I came home with a fabulous bottle of sparkly pink wine and a huge hunk of his favourite cheese, and for all he knows, I could have been amorous. And I was. But not for him: Whole Foods opened on the corner yesterday, and today I paid my first visit (and healthy chunk of my payday earnings).

I didn’t even cry at my wedding.

I enjoyed a good long wander through the store, making mental notes of all the things I’d buy someday when I have a lot more money than I do now. The stack of salts, all different colours and textures in their plastic containers labeled with their exorbitant prices were so mesmerizing I stood staring, slack-jawed like a brain-damaged mule, for a good ten minutes, my eye shifting slightly to the left to the stack of Le Creuset pots in every colour before shifting back. I died a little inside when I realized that to buy any desirable combination of these would render my financial situation unliveable for the next two weeks, so I walked away slowly, barely keeping back the tears.

And then I found the cheese section! Needless to say, I am the proud new owner of $40 worth of cheese. So, three different kinds.

The goal today was to write about scones – and I will, I promise, because I bought a hideously expensive container of frozen organic Abbotsford blackberries, and the scones happen to be revelatory. But I got all tripped up by this:

Rapini with lemonAnd I discovered that if you shriek in the grocery store, no one will ask you if you need help, but you’ll find yourself with all the space you like.

My favourite thing to do with fresh greens, such as this vibrant bunch of rapini, is to sauté them in a little butter, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, and too many capers, then toss them with pasta and add a generous helping of parmesan cheese and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. You don’t need a recipe – it’s impossibly simple. Salt and pepper to taste, and a bottle of good wine for accompaniment, and you’re set. And then you end up with this:

Pasta with rapini and capersAnd the whole time I was eating it, I was all – “this cost under five dollars to make – why do I ever eat out?” Well, it might have cost more, but I amortized the cost of the cheese over several meals.  Which is what you do when you budget.

So I ate all this, and drank most of the wine, and was just about ready to ease into my favourite kind of stupor when I realized that I was going to make scones. And I started making the scones and realized that in my shrieking Whole Foods love fest, I didn’t buy milk. But whatever, right? You can make scones without milk. I made mine with yogurt and a bit of water in place of the milk. DELICIOUS.

Here’s the recipe (with milk, because that makes good sense).

Blackberry Lemon Scones

(makes about eight)

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. lemon zest
  • 1/4 cup butter (plus a bit of melted butter to brush over the tops)
  • 1/2 cup milk (I used peach yogurt, because that’s what I had)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup frozen blackberries (I prefer to use frozen berries for these because they keep their shape better than fresh berries)
  • 1 tbsp. turbinado sugar (or regular, but I promise, it’s not the same)

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Combine your dry ingredients (including zest) in a mixing bowl, and mix well. Add the butter, working it in with your fingers until it’s fully integrated and the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the milk and the egg, and then the berries, and mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Form into a ball.

Lightly flour your work surface. Empty your bowl of dough, which by now is very pretty and marbled with purple juices. Knead lightly. Pat the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick, and paint with the melted butter. Sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the top, and press lightly to make sure it sticks. Cut the round into eight pieces.

Place your scones about an inch or so apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Clearly I have no idea how much an inch is.
Clearly I have no idea how much an inch is.

No matter how big a mess your apartment (or life) is, baked goods always make everything okay.

These turned out mostly scone-shaped. Some of them are shaped like retard scones, but they are no less tasty. I am just really bad at geometry.
These turned out mostly scone-shaped. Some of them are shaped like retard scones, but they are no less tasty. I am just really bad at geometry.

You know what the weird thing is? I got a raise today, and the best part of my day involved rapini and blackberries. That’s not to say the raise – though small – isn’t good news: it’s enough to cover another two bottles per month, if I choose wisely. And more wine is always a thing to delight in.

Rehab, when I finally get forced into it, is really going to suck.

Scone. On plate.Serve the scones warm. They are great with butter, but if you’re all alone and no one’s watching, a drizzle of maple syrup makes these indulgent and fattening. Some days, there is nothing better.

Scones. Soup. Codeine. Trifecta?

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Pre-baked scones

I’m feeling much better. And Nick came home and was very sympathetic and the kitchen is mostly clean now, so I made soup and scones and everyone is happy and we’re watching Iron Chef and Nick is trying to teach me to take pictures that aren’t blurry but he should know by now that I can’t be taught much of anything as far as technology is concerned. Also, I’ve ingested more codeine than is probably healthy today, so it’s a wonder I’m even upright. Apparently the camera isn’t as simple as he thought. He keeps asking me questions. Why does he keep asking me questions?

Since Sunday tea, I’ve been all loins-aflame for scones. Also, my pots of herbs on the deck are growing wildly – specifically the spearmint and the thyme, which are dominating their respective pots and choking out the other plants. Stay tuned for a recipe for minty English potatoes later this week – for now, I needed to tame the thyme. I chopped up a bit of the parsley for these as well.

Potato and herb scones with cheese

(makes 4 scones … you could double the recipe and make more!)

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 grated cooked potato (I baked mine, but it would work just as well with boiled potato. I would have boiled mine but I had no clean pots.)
  • 1 large clove finely minced garlic
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 tbsp.  chopped fresh thyme
  • 1/4 cup grated cheese (I used pecorino because that’s what I had. Parmesan, or even cheddar, would also be good.)
  • 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp. cold butter
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Combine your dry ingredients (including the herbs and cheese) and potato in a mixing bowl. Stir well. Add the butter, working it in with your fingers until it’s fully integrated and the mixture looks like a big bowl of crumbs. Stir in the milk and the egg, and mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Form into a ball.

Lightly flour your counter, which is hopefully clean like mine was before I made these, and dump the dough out onto the surface. Knead lightly. Pat the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick and cut into four pieces. I thought the pieces looked ugly, so I rounded the edges and corners.

Place your scones about an inch or so apart on an ungreased baking sheet, top with a bit of grated cheese, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Scones, hot from the oven.It’s the fresh herbs that make these so delightful – because they aren’t baked for all that long, they kept their bright green colour. Which, as it happens, matched the soup. You should serve these hot from the oven and slathered in butter. Dipping is optional.

Spring Green Pea Soup

(Serves two)

  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp. fresh ginger, minced
  • Zest and juice of one lime
  • 1 can coconut milk
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen green peas
  • 1/3 cup fresh chopped basil
  • Salt and pepper to taste

While your scones are baking, throw your ginger, garlic, and lime zest into a pot with a dribble of oil. Whatever kind. It doesn’t matter all that much. As the garlic is turning golden, pour in the coconut milk and the water, and juice the lime right over the pot. Let it come to a boil together, and then reduce the heat to medium. Add your peas and simmer until they’re soft, two or three minutes, then remove from the heat, add the basil, and purée the mixture in a blender or with a hand blender, which is probably one of the greatest kitchen tools ever.

Return the mixture to the heat to keep warm and adjust your seasonings. I found that I wanted a bit more acidity, so I added a splash more lime juice to cut the sweetness of the peas. If I had some jalapeno peppers, I would have added them as well. But it’s two days before payday, and two dollars for peppers is completely out of reach at this point. Poverty like ours is a skill!

I like to serve this (hot, of course) with a soft poached egg in the centre and a light sprinkling of black pepper. Try it. It’s super good that way.

green soupIn a few days, once I’ve had a chance to wander down to the market and see what’s fresh in fruit these days, I’ll give you a recipe for sweet scones – note: You really ought to go out and purchase some turbinado sugar to top them with. Crunch! You’ll see what I mean.

dinner!Nick just shouted at me that my camera sucks and that I’ll just have to learn to take better pictures. I thought that was the case, but he needed an hour’s worth of fiddling plus some time Google-searching to confirm this for me. It’s all very exhausting, this learning and typing and eating. It could be time to shave some T3s over a bowl of ice cream and take a bath.

Conclusion? Soup makes you feel better, scones are delicious, and sedatives are the root of all happiness.

Things that are not okay: Wanting to slather your naked self in frosting and only not doing it because you’re at tea with your mother-in-law who probably wouldn’t care if you did it but might still think less of you even though she might not say anything.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Today I went for tea in Fort Langley. Ordinarily, the suburbs are not really my thing – wide open spaces make me anxious and uncomfortable, and there are minivans and Home Depots everywhere, which is only kind of true, but I get all weird anyway, even though there are two Home Depots within ten minutes of where I live now and I’m not afraid of Home Depot as much as I am the idea of Home Depot and renovations and owning a home and being a grown-up and caring about things like different kinds of hoses or door knobs or wood things or epoxy.

But I really like Fort Langley. It’s a delightful place and not at all scary, and there’s lots of cool stuff there. Like Tracycakes.

Sign

White house

I was delighted to find that they had my favourite vanilla bean tea, and each person at the table gets the tea of their choice in a little white teapot so I didn’t even have to share.

Jess, Nick’s sister, arranged the whole tea time, and apparently knew all about this in advance – when we got there, there was no order to be placed. We were there for high tea, so we waited for our teapots, then for the tower of awesomeness. We didn’t wait long.

tower of awesomeThe top tier contained little sandwiches – cucumber, egg salad, and turkey – and sausage rolls. BTW, I received a belated wedding gift today – the meat grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. My mom says I should get over my preoccupation (obsession) with owning a wiener dog because they’re nervous and they pee everywhere, but I’m all, “Um, hello? Me?” And then I got this meat grinder and I swear the joy caused me to pee a little, which made me nervous, but it turns out I didn’t pee and I was just a little sweaty. Overshare.

Anyway, I’m going to start grinding meat and making sausage, the connection here being that since I mastered pastry, the next logical step is to master sausage rolls. I reworded that last sentence like, eight times, because I COULD NOT type “I want to master sausage” and have you think I wrote that without knowing that it could be misconstrued and then laugh at me.

Oh! The scones! I do so love a good scone. Scones comprised the second tier.

sconeThese scones were fluffy and light and gave me a total England boner. Inappropriate. Cranberry and orange, they were, and served with raspberry preserves, lemon curd, and clotted cream. As soon as my bank balance moves back into the black (Thursday), I’ll be acquiring some cranberries and making a feastload of scones. Stay tuned.

On the bottom tier there were cupcakes and butter tarts and a few things I couldn’t immediately identify but knew were probably mighty tasty. The cupcakes (and other baked goods) were fantastic, since they’re what Tracycakes seems to be known for. I would say that these are better than Cupcakes cupcakes, if only for the frosting. I had a caramel one that was perfectly frosted and drizzled with caramel, with a cake that was soft and moist and soaked with errant drops of golden sugar love.

I heard while I was there that this place is closing at the end of the summer, which sucks, because the only other location is in Abbotsford. Which means if I don’t go back to Fort Langley before the end of the summer, I will have tasted my last Tracycake this afternoon. I think I would like to take my Mom there, and perhaps the next sunny Sunday I am out that way, I will kidnap her and make her eat cupcakes. This will be a challenge. But I will succeed.

If you’re considering Fort Langley as a destination, it’s worth your time. There are other good things there – The Lamplighter is tremendous and you will need to go there for dinner, and for some interesting fruit wines, The Fort Wine Co. is the place to go. The main road (only road?) through town features a wide variety of shops and restaurants and places to wander, and if you’re all loaded up on cupcakes the town is just the right size for a waddle.

So, the moral of the story is that there is adventure outside of the city, and Home Depot is nothing to be afraid of. And cupcakes = love.

A perfectly lovely flex-Friday breakfast for one.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

It’s Friday! And I’m not at work! And Spring Is Here!

Look! Spring! There it is! This is what spring looks like from my balcony.
Look! Spring! There it is! This is what spring looks like from my balcony.

This is all tremendous, and worthy of glorious celebration. And I am alone – Nick is at work, so once again, I can have whatever I want.

For Nick, there is no better breakfast than fried eggs, fried bacon, and fried perogies with onions and sour cream. And a can of cold beer, which he usually has one or two of, because he always saves a couple for morning and for the shower. And that’s all well and good, because all of those things fried are quite delicious. But they are not worthy of my mood today. No.

I wanted pancakes. Correction: I wanted pancake. Singular. And I wanted to sit on my deck and drink a cup of tea and look at the flowers and bask in the glow of the sunshine. So, Dutch Baby-style, I put the pancake in a ramekin and threw it in the oven. I sliced a few strawberries, drizzled the last of the cream over top, and sprinkled them lightly with sugar.

See?

Joy.
Joy.

So what do you need for a perfectly lovely breakfast for one? Oh, easy.

You need:

  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp. sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly grease a single ramekin with butter. Put it in the oven while the oven heats – about five minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, milk, egg, sugar, and vanilla. Pull your ramekin out of the oven, and pour in your batter. You may find that the ramekin sits better in the oven if you put it on a small cookie sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

While your apartment is filling with the smell of pancakey goodness, slice as many strawberries as you have or as you’d like, add a dribble of cream, and sprinkle the top lightly with sugar. Boil a pot of water for tea. Though, a cold, sparkly glass of prosecco would also be delightful. Note to self. For next time.

When it comes out of the oven, your pancake-Dutch Baby-thing will be puffy and fantastic. And if you greased your ramekin properly, it will just slide out. I got too excited and missed some spots, apparently, so it clung to the sides a bit. Oh well. It still tasted good – crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy and wondrous on the inside.

Serve on a plate with maple syrup or golden corn syrup, and all your delicious strawberries on the side.

Now? Oh, big day. I’m going to put on a sundress, and maybe some tights as it’s a little nippy out yet, and then, because it’s Vancouver and I live on a bike route, I’m going to ride my bike and have an adventure or something. SPRING!

No, seriously. JOY.
No, seriously. JOY.

Phoning it in with Focaccia Bread.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Sometimes I have a very hard time sleeping. My nephew told my mom that there is always stuff going on in his head because he has four brains, and I understand the feeling, though I don’t think I’ve got four brains, just one that’s hyperactive and not doing much of anything but keeping me up.

I usually just pour myself a giant glass of milk and eat something soothing, like homemade bread toast or this pint of strawberries, and read a book, but I’m reading a very good book and it’s so good that I don’t want to finish it right now because then it will be over. I’m not ready for that. So I’m kind of phoning this one in, sharing an old recipe, and hoping that the plicketing of my keyboard will lull me to sleep.

Focaccia bread, my stand-by for something easy and impressive that you can make with stuff you already have. File this one under cheap and easy.
Focaccia bread, my stand-by for something easy and impressive that you can make with stuff you already have. File this one under cheap and easy.

Focaccia Bread

  • 1 (1/2-pound) Yukon Gold potato, peeled and quartered
  • 1 cup cooled (but still warm) potato water
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (or one packet)
  • 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
  • 4 1/4 cups flour, divided (1/4 cup will be used to kneed)
  • 1/4 cup herbs de provence (don’t have it? I’ve used any old dried spice – basil is nice, as is rosemary)
  • 1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon sea salt, divided (1/4 tsp. to be sprinkled on bread before baking)
  • 1/2 pound roma tomatoes, thinly sliced crosswise, or as many small tomatoes as you think look good on top
  • 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped (but not minced)
  • 1/2 cup mozzarella or parmesan cheese
  • Two basil leaves, chopped

I never use a mixer for this – I do everything by hand, and I promise, it’s neither strenuous nor is it exhausting. Or I wouldn’t do it. But you can use a mixer, or anything you like.

Generously cover potato with salted water in a small pot and simmer, uncovered, until just tender, 10 or so minutes. Drain water into a measuring cup. Cool potatoes slightly, then mash until smooth.

Add sugar to potato water. Sprinkle yeast over mixture and let stand until foamy, about five minutes. (If mixture doesn’t foam, start over with new yeast. I have really crappy yeast at the moment, so I let it stand longer – if it doesn’t start working within ten minutes, swear out loud, dump the whole thing, and either start over or cry and then go to the store and buy new yeast. You’re only allowed to cry if you’ve invested in a full jar though. I make a lot of bread so I buy it by the jar, and that’s a lot of little organisms to have failed, so crying is okay.)

Measure out four cups of flour and dump into a bowl. Add 1/4 cup herbs de provence, and one tablespoon of salt. Add the mashed potatoes and oil, then pour in your yeast mixture. Mix it all together until the dough is very soft and sticky, then drop the dough onto a floured surface to begin the awesome task of kneading. This is my favourite part of bread-making, and is particularly delightful with this bread because of the herbs, which smell like warm sunny countries that I haven’t been to.

As usual, you’ll want to knead this until the dough is quite elastic, about eight to ten minutes.

Scrape dough into a lightly oiled large bowl and cover bowl with oiled plastic wrap. I always oil my stock pot, and the lid, and put it in there with the lid on for this. Let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Generously oil a cookie sheet.

Punch down dough (do not knead) and transfer to baking pan, then gently stretch to cover as much of bottom as possible (dough may not fit exactly).

Cover dough with oiled plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, 1 to 1 1/2hours.

Preheat oven to 425°F in lower third part of oven (near the bottom, but not the whole way).

Soak tomatoes for ten minutes in balsamic vinegar, then arrange tomatoes on focaccia (do not overlap), then sprinkle with basil, cheese, chunks of garlic, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon sea salt and drizzle with remaining 1/4 cup oil.

Bake until center is firm, and top and underside is golden (lift to check), 20 to 25 minutes.

Loosen focaccia from pan with a spatula and slide onto a rack to cool slightly. Cut into pieces and serve warm or at room temperature.

Well, now … that didn’t work. I’m still awake, and nowI am getting all food-lusty for bread. Nick is snoring away in the other room, and I’m all stimulated. Probably the strawberries, which may have been a bad idea – too much fruit = the scoots. And now I’m oversharing. Make the bread. People will love you and think you’re the best, and then you can be all, “I am! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Ugh. Maybe I do have four brains. Four parrot brains that don’t really do anything but annoy me at bedtime. Good night.

Broke and full. Success!

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

It’s the day before payday, which is always bleak. Well, bleak in that we can’t indulge our usual gluttonous passions – no beer, no wine, all out of eggs, and a dwindling supply of vegetables on hand. The fridge is sparse at the moment. But it’s after nine, and I’ve got bread in the oven for tomorrow’s meager breakfast before our bank balances nudge ever so slightly into the positive. And we’re full, most of a pot of soup gone, all of yesterday’s meatload depleted.

Nick said it was the best soup I’d ever made, which put me in a bit of a pout, because I like to think that my specialty, my sumptuous sweet potato and coconut soup with lemongrass and red curry spices, is far better, more interesting, more favourable. Tonight’s soup was hobo soup, essentially. A head of cauliflower that’s been tucked in the back of the fridge for three weeks, maybe a month. An onion, some garlic. The remainders of two cartons of chicken stock, about three cups. The rest of the non-sour milk, maybe a cup and a half. A small round of that delicious Boursin cheese. Salt. Pepper. Cayenne. And that’s that, simmered until the cauliflower softened, then blended with my awesome new hand blender.

Ever notice that a meal of just soup is kind of sad, no matter how good the soup? Me too. I had just enough butter left on hand for a half-batch of baking powder biscuits. Once they came out of the oven, I sliced them, and stuffed them with the remaining meatload  from yesterday, with a sprinkling of cheese.  We are fat and sassy. We are full and content, Star Trek TNG on TV, a loaf of soda bread in the oven smelling our space up real nice.

Tomorrow, I will buy groceries for the next few days, bake brownies for Nick’s bake sale (he’s not 7 … he’s 27), and life will return to normal. We will have beer again, and possibly wine. But for now, we’ve enjoyed a lovely evening. Am pleased. Tra-la-la!

Dutch Babies: Good to Eat

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

Nick asked me the other night to tell him my favourite thing to eat. Choose one thing? Who am I to say that a beautifully roasted duck breast and a chewy, buttery lobster tail aren’t equally worthy, or that peanut butter cookies, wonton soup, Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, or beet carpaccio aren’t equal and each distinguished in their own right? I couldn’t pick one. But, if I had to pick a favourite thing to eat in the morning, it would be Toad in the Hole – Yorkshire pudding with sausages and onions baked in, all fluffy and crispy and meaty. Yorkshire pudding on its own is pretty fantastic.

So Nick got me thinking about my favourite things, and among my favourite things: Yorkshire pudding. Right. I believe we established that. A few weeks ago, we made a brunch date with two lovely friends, Aimee and Evani, and so while planning a mid-day stat-holiday feast, visions of puffed batter were dancing about in my head.

I had two savoury dishes on the menu already – tortilla with cucumber and avocado salsa, and “potato stuff,” which is a genius of a thing that comes from every kitchen of every person I’ve ever met’s mother (1 can Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, 1 cup sour cream, 2 cups grated orange cheddar cheese – don’t use white, it turns out gross-looking, and most of a bag of hashbrowns, stirred together and baked covered in a Corningware dish for 30 minutes at 450°F).  So, no Toad.

Ooh! I forgot to mention – I bought some lovely fresh free-range happy-UBC-farm-chicken eggs the other day, so I had another reason to make something Yorkshire-puddingy.

Anyway, so I thought – why not add a bit of sugar and top them with a warm raspberry-lemon compote and way too much whipped cream? It turns out such a thing already exists and has a name (with or without any version or variation of the compote or anything else) – and it’s a fairly awesome name at that – who doesn’t love joking about eating babies?! “I can’t think of a better use for them!” “Hahaha!” Ahem. You want the recipe? Of course you do. It’s quite simple/excellent/fun to make fun of babies.

I scraped a little bit of vanilla bean into mine, because I have some (though, since Nick tossed the lid to the container during a mad clean-freak sweep of the kitchen, they may all dehydrate before long). You can use a teaspoon-or-so of vanilla extract if you’ve got it. Almond extract or a little maple syrup would also probably be quite tasty.

Dutch Babies

  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 6 large eggs
  • 1 tbsp. granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 vanilla bean
  • Butter

Preheat your oven to 450°F. Butter six ramekins and place them on a baking sheet, and toss them into the oven.

In a single bowl, combine your flour, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla. You used the butter to grease your ramekins, remember? Don’t worry. You won’t need it again. Work quickly, whipping everything together – make sure you don’t leave lumps. If your vanilla bean refuses to spread out and act normal, go in manually – use your fingers to separate the blobbies – that’s what they’ll look like: little black blobs, sort of like frogs’ eggs, but less gross.

When your batter is ready, pull the ramekins out of the oven and divvy the batter up between them. This recipe makes just enough for six. When the batter’s in, put it all back into the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes. Monitor their cooking via the oven light: You are not allowed to open the oven door until they are done. They will go flat, and then your brunch guests will not be as impressed.

When they come out of the oven, don’t wait too long to serve them. Drizzle them with a bit of sauce, and serve with whipped cream. For my raspberry sauce, I used two cups of frozen raspberries and the zest and juice of one lemon, reduced until the mixture was thick and nearly jammy in texture – I started them in a pot over medium-low heat about an hour before I had to serve everything, and didn’t watch them too closely, just stirred them occasionally.

I was quite pleased with the way these turned out – I think the eggs were really what made them. The yolks were a fantastic golden colour, and imbued the Babies with a very springy yellow hue. I wish I had a camera to show you! I will get one soon, I promise. And then I’ll make them again, and post pictures, and you’ll be all, “wow, those are lovely. It’s a good thing she’s a baker and not a breeder, because her real life Dutch babies (well, half-Dutch, which is funny, because she’d totally have gone Dutch on the genes for those whippersnappers) would probably not be nearly as good-looking.”

I wonder if it’s necessary to mention that brunch means you can get drunk during the day without everyone shouting “ALCOHOLIC!” and pointing at you. Nap time!

UPDATE: Toad in the Hole is shown on This is why you’re fat. Goddamn it.