Author: Tsan Merritt-Poree

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Canelés

Kayso, I baked these recent­ly after years of canele envy, and man­aged to pull it off the first time, thanks to the labor of oth­ers on the inter­net, ever gen­er­ous with their time and skills.

For the first time in my life, I felt like that kid who nev­er went to class, then asked you for all your notes, and aced the exam. I did have to tweak the recipes, basi­cal­ly cher­ry-pick­ing best prac­tices.   There are lots of notes below, if you want to check out the process, but here’s the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1 tbl vanil­la bean paste

500 ml whole milk

200 grams white sug­ar

100 grams a/p flour

50 grams salt­ed but­ter, melt­ed and cooled but still liq­uid

2 eggs at room tem­per­a­ture

2 egg yolks at room tem­per­a­ture

60 ml rum (I used Myers)

for the mold

40 grams beeswax

60 grams unsalt­ed but­ter

12 canele molds (see notes below).

INSTRUCTIONS

Bring milk to boil.  Turn off heat and stir in vanil­la.  Set aside.

Whisk togeth­er the sug­ar, eggs and yolks.  The mix­ture will be thick and per­haps crumbly.  No, you did­n’t do any­thing wrong (yet).  Add the melt­ed but­ter slow­ly to the eggs and whisk until blend­ed.

Gen­tly tem­per the eggs by adding 6 table­spoons, a table­spoon of at a time, of the warm milk to the eggs while whisk­ing (you want to avoid adding hot milk to eggs too quick­ly because you don’t want the eggs cooked).  Once your mix­ture is warm, slow­ly whisk in the remain­ing milk.  Whisk in the rum.  Trans­fer the bat­ter to a mea­sur­ing cup with a pour spout, and place it in the refrig­er­a­tor for a min­i­mum of 24 hours and up to 5 days.

When you are ready to bake the canelés, melt the beeswax and but­ter in a small pan and swirl to com­bine. Pour the mix­ture to the brim of the first mold and imme­di­ate­ly pour the mix back into the pan (I used a pip­kin to melt the mix­ture because it has a pour spout).  Repeat until each mold is coat­ed with the but­ter-beeswax mix­ture.

Pre­heat the oven to 450 degrees.  Remove bat­ter from the fridge and gen­tly whisk or stir it to com­bine it (before adding the bat­ter to the molds, you will stir it again).  Don’t over­mix.  Fill the molds to near the top and place on a cook­ie sheet lined with foil (the wax and but­ter make a bit of a mess and when heat­ed, it will smoke a bit, so the foil makes it easy to clean.  Parch­ment has a ten­den­cy to burn).

Bake the canelés for 25 min­utes, then turn the heat down to 375 and bake for anoth­er 35–30 min­utes until the cane­les are very dark brown.

Remove from the oven.  After one minute, Invert each mold onto a plate.  The canele should eas­i­ly slip out of the mold.  Con­grats!

LOTS OF NOTES:

  1. I read a ton of blogs and a lot said that you should not over­beat the mix­ture or the cane­les will “muf­fin top.”  I also read a ton of blogs that said this is bull­shit.  I am team bull­shit.  Whisk until blend­ed, because it’s going to sit for at least 24 hours.
  2. There are some unortho­dox blog posts out there that try to get the trade­mark crunchy out­side with­out beeswax; they will tell you all you need is but­ter.  My under­stand­ing is the beeswax is not only used for per­fect col­or, but for tex­ture and fla­vor.  Don’t skip it.  Also?  Don’t try to “brush” your molds with the but­ter-wax mix­ture.  You will not be pleased.  Your wax will catch in the brush and the molds won’t be even­ly coat­ed.  The pour-in-pour-out method works per­fect­ly.  Toss out the remain­ing bit of wax (which isn’t much).
  3. These were made with sil­i­con molds because I’m not made of mon­ey.  Make sure you con­firm your molds are safe up to 450 degrees (or hot­ter).  Some sil­i­con is not safe.  I’d pre­fer to have the cop­per molds, but I’m wait­ing for a rich boyfriend.
  4. Let’s talk molds!  First, these were actu­al­ly part of a sin­gle 8‑piece tray.  I cut them with a scis­sors into indi­vid­ual molds.  In my hum­ble (brag) opin­ion, this is the only way to not either kill your­self try­ing to coat them, or kill your­self with third degree burns try­ing to get them out. Once cut, they are easy to fill, and easy to unmold.  DO IT!
  5. More on molds!  In look­ing at the lin­er notes for a few molds for sale, a lot of the Teflon (non-stick) pans note in the fine print that they are not designed for tem­per­a­tures over 400.  You should not be using Teflon any­way (unless you want babies with­out nos­trils), but seri­ous­ly, check to make sure it’s safe.
  6. Just do it.  Look, what’s the worst thing that can hap­pen?  A smoky house and some wast­ed flour and but­ter?
  7. Last note (prob­a­bly):  I think these taste bet­ter cold and at least a few hours old.  Bon chance, bitch­es!
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STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING

 

It’s not pret­ty, but it makes up for its looks in fla­vor.

Fun­ny sto­ry:  I spent two years reverse engi­neer­ing this dessert (and feel­ing pret­ty freak­ing smug about it), only to dis­cov­er the chef will give you the recipe if you ask for it.  This is my ver­sion, but I’m told by the impor­tant peo­ple in my life that I nailed the orig­i­nal.

I have to say that (short of being a canelé) this is prob­a­bly the best dessert ever made.  I’m talk­ing bet­ter than choco­late cake, lemon curd tart, pret­zel short­bread, world peace cook­ies, Sri Lankan wed­ding cake … I have had it on my birth­day many years run­ning, and there is always a doubt­ing Thomas or Thomasi­na who looks dis­ap­prov­ing­ly at the “rus­tic” vision drip­ping with tof­fee, only to end up hav­ing thirds.  Make this.  You won’t regret it.

 

Tof­fee Sauce

Com­bine 1 cup whip­ping cream, 1 cup unsalt­ed but­ter, and 2 cups of brown sug­ar over medi­um heat.  Stir, bring­ing to boil the mix­ture and boil for 5 min­utes.  Remove from heat and stir in 2 tsp of vanil­la.

 

Pud­ding Ingre­di­ents

6 oz pit­ted dates, chopped fine­ly

1 tsp bak­ing soda

1 1/4 cup boil­ing water

1/4 cup soft but­ter (1/2 stick)

1/2 cup brown sug­ar

1 egg

1 1/2 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp bak­ing pow­der

2 tsp vanil­la

Mal­don salt

 

Instruc­tions

Pre­heat oven to 350.  Mix dates, bak­ing soda, and boil­ing water in a bowl.  Set aside.

Grease and flour 6 small ramekins.  Put a heap­ing spoon­ful of the tof­fee in the bot­tom of each.  Beat sug­ar, but­ter, and vanil­la until fluffy.  Add egg and beat until smooth, then add the dates and water mix­ture.  Mix the flour and bak­ing pow­der togeth­er, then add to date mix­ture and mix just until blend­ed.

Divide the bat­ter even­ly into the 6 ramekins and bake for 15–20 min­utes, until cake stops jig­gling in the cen­ter and gen­tly springs back (don’t over­bake).  Remove from oven and run a sharp knife around the edge of each ramekin.  Invert each pud­ding onto a plate and pour the remain­ing warm tof­fee over the pud­dings.  Sprin­kle with a few grains salt, serve warm with vanil­la ice cream or chan­til­ly cream.

 

Some notes

Tof­fee is not caramel.  Caramel is made by brown­ing white sug­ar and adding heavy cream and but­ter (French caramel cooks the sugar/butter togeth­er first, then adds cream).  Tof­fee is made by com­bin­ing brown sug­ar, but­ter, and heavy cream togeth­er in a pan and boil­ing it.

I don’t think this is a good make-ahead dessert.  You can pre­make the tof­fee (and reheat) and you can let the bat­ter sit until you’re ready, but don’t bake the tof­fee pud­ding until just before you’re ready to eat it.

I don’t do gluten-free flour so I have no idea if it will work as a gluten free dessert.

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Frosé – the Drink that Hoist Me with My Own Petard.  And Why Open Hearts and Minds Still Matter.

This post orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished for the Camp Sier­ra Newslet­ter.

I’m a red wine girl, if I’m going to drink rosé at all, it bet­ter be a skin-kissed orange num­ber with a lit­tle min­er­al­i­ty and some get­ting used-to (like me).  And it bet­ter be hot out­side.  Don’t get me wrong:  if you’ve got some Nico­las Feuil­lat­te, I’m your huck­le­ber­ry, but I gen­er­al­ly do not “do” the pink stuff.  In the words of the great Madeleine Kahn, it’s so … “ordi­nary.”

So it was with a sense of snob-like supe­ri­or­i­ty that I turned up my nose at the “Frosé” offered to me by the cutest Cuban wait­er ever in a Mia­mi brunch hotspot. Frozen Rosé?  Thank you, but no.  I’ll have a Sancerre, please.  I’m not a farmer.

Appar­ent­ly, he’d seen the haughty likes of me before and sim­ply replied, “I’ll just bring you some, any­way,” and off he went.  I’ll cut to the chase:  I had three glass­es, the wait­er and I became besties, and he even gave me the recipe.  I learned all about his life, how he land­ed in Flori­da from Cuba, and we even hung out after brunch and danced to the live sal­sa music.  I’m now a life-long lover of frosé, have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the Cuban spir­it, and can do the merengue.  Win-win.

When we’re kids, we are always so ready to believe we don’t have all the answers. That’s what makes chil­dren open to new expe­ri­ences in a way that adults are not. Don’t lose that curi­ous spir­it. Try the thing you thought you would hate, and don’t wor­ry if any­one’s watch­ing. It’s not your busi­ness what they think of you.

THE RECIPE: Here’s how to make Frosé. Pour a bot­tle of hearty rosé into ice cube trays and freeze.  The alco­hol con­tent will make the cubes a lit­tle soft, but they’ll freeze to a slush like con­sis­ten­cy suf­fi­cient to get them out of the con­tain­er.  Freeze about 8 ounces of hulled straw­ber­ries (or you can sim­ply pur­chase frozen ones).  Add the frozen berries and the frozen wine to a blender, with 3 oz of fresh lemon juice and (option­al) 4 oz sim­ple syrup.  Blend.  You can drink right away, or put back in the freez­er for 30 min­utes to firm up.  If you want to make it well in advance, I sug­gest adding a 1/4 cup of vod­ka before return­ing it to the freez­er. it should be just enough to keep it from freez­ing com­plete­ly.

Note:  Gor­don Ram­say’s restau­rant in Lon­don ser­vices this in paper cups (not glass) because it takes longer to melt that way.  Can con­firm.  BTW, this is a great way to use up left­over rosé.  I always have a few cubes and a few frozen berries in the freez­er for a Frosé

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Foccacia for People in a Hurry

Big lin­er notes on this one, but I promise, the instruc­tions are what makes this easy. This is great for overnight, but it’s also a deli­cious one you can start at 10am, and bake before 3pm, and be proud of it.  I hon­est­ly can­not get my life togeth­er enough to think about bread a day in advance, but if you can, the bread comes out even bet­ter. Spe­cial shout out to Ulan for proof-read­ing this baby.

Pic­tured is a fonti­na, carmelized onions, and sliced pota­toes with rose­mary. Gone in 60 sec­onds.

The ris­ing times are based upon a warm home, so your times may vary a bit.  I use my oven as a prov­ing box (turn on the oven for a cou­ple min­utes then turn off so it’s like a hot day in there).

The dough has 5 basic ingre­di­ents and we use the “fork knead­ing” method, which is real­ly cool.  The very short ver­sion of the instruc­tions is this:  (1) mix dry ingre­di­ents with water until sat­u­rat­ed; (2) trans­fer to oiled bowl after 1 hour (with fork knead­ing every 15 min­utes); (3) let rise twice for one hour each; (4) trans­fer to 9X13 oiled pan and let rise for 1 hour; (5) dim­ple, driz­zle with olive oil, dec­o­rate and bake at 425 for 30 min­utes. 

Here are complete instructions:

  1. 10:00 am.  Into a stand mix­ing bowl, add the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents.  If you don’t have a mix­er with a dough hook, a reg­u­lar large bowl will do.
    4 cups flour / 515 grams –Bread flour is great for this, but A/P will do very well
    2 tsp fine sea salt
    2 tea­spoons instant yeast
  2. Add 2 cups very warm water and mix with dough hook until ful­ly mixed and there are no dry bits.  If you are mix­ing by hand, use a rub­ber spat­u­la.  Regard­less of your method, you will have a pan­cake batter‑y dough.  It’s 89% hydra­tion, so it’s not going to be firm and will not look pret­ty.
  3. 10:30am Cov­er the bowl with plas­tic wrap or a plas­tic store bag, or (if you’re not an eco-ter­ror­ist) a damp kitchen tow­el (with a rub­ber band around it), and let sit for 15 min­utes.

    [If you plan to bake the bread the next day, place dough in a very well greased plas­tic con­tain­er with a lid and refrig­er­ate.  I use olive oil – and lots of it – and I also grease the top of the dough.  Let sit for 12–48 hours, then skip to step 7].
  4. Let dough sit out in a warm room and use the fork knead­ing method to turn the dough on itself, every 15 min­utes, for 1 hour. This will make a total of 4 kneads with the fork. Fork knead­ing:  using two fork, go around the bowl,  lift­ing the out­side edge of the dough and guide the dough to the cen­ter.  Do this eight times (takes about 1 minute).
  5. When you’ve fin­ished the knead­ing the 4th time, you should see that the dough has lots of yeast stri­a­tions.
  6. 11:30am.  Grease a clean bowl with olive oil or neu­tral oil.  Scrape your dough into it, rub oil on the top of the dough, and cov­er.  Let rise until dou­ble in size. About an hour.
  7. 12:30 pm.  Deflate the dough, and then use the fork knead­ing method, and let rise again in the bowl, about an hour.  If your dough is com­ing out of the refrig­er­a­tor, it will prob­a­bly take 2–3 hours for the same rise.
  8. 1:30 pm.  Lib­er­al­ly oil (and I mean lib­er­al­ly) a 9 x 13 pan with olive oil.  Trans­fer the risen dough to the pan and, stretch it so that it attempts to fill the bot­tom of the pan (it won’t).  Cov­er pan and let rise one hour.  Even­tu­al­ly, the dough will relax and make it to the cor­ners (or you can push it there).  In the mean­time, prep your top­pings, if any.
  9. 2:30pm Once the dough has risen, and cov­ers the pan, you’re ready to dim­ple, dec­o­rate, and bake.  Pre­heat the over to 425.  Grease your fin­gers and with the tips of your fin­gers, dim­ple the dough (like you are play­ing piano).  Driz­zle dough with 4 table­spoons of olive oil, press in your ingre­di­ents (or just sprin­kle with sea salt), and bake for about 25–30 min­utes, or until gold­en.  Serve imme­di­ate­ly, or let cool, uncov­ered, then wrap in paper.

Notes:

  • If you are going to use cheese along with oth­er ingre­di­ents, put the cheese on the dough as the first lay­er, rather than the last.
  • This makes a thick, sand­wich style focac­cia.  If you want thin­ner, use a cook­ie sheet.
  • The more oil on the bot­tom, the crispi­er it will be, but don’t go crazy.  If you don’t want to use lots of oil, use parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
  • You can put almost any­thing on focac­cia, but watery veg­eta­bles make for sog­gy tops and burnt veg­gies.  Con­sid­er roma toma­toes (less water), and dry­ing out things like egg­plant and pota­toes, before top­ping them on your dough.
  • We tried this at high alti­tude, and it worked with the fol­low­ing changes:  addi­tion­al ½ cup water; slight­ly short­er rise times, and greased parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
  • Note that I pre­fer cooked veg­eta­bles, but if you like raw, use raw.
  • Some of my favorite top­pings
    • Fonti­na, caramelized onions, pota­to, rose­mary
    • Rose­mary and salt
    • Shal­lots and moz­zarel­la
    • Piz­za style:  moz­zarel­la, toma­to sauce (or toma­toes), and ricot­ta
    • Sauteed mush­rooms and thyme (then dot with gor­gonzo­la when it comes out of the oven.
    • Parme­san and herbs.
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Kouign Amann

OK, folks, it’s only been 6 years. I’ve been busy. What­ev­er. First recipe to post: kouign amann. Enjoy it.

INGREDIENTS

lay­er­ing ingre­di­ents:
1.5 lbs soft but­ter
2 cups sug­ar mixed with 1.5 tbl fleur de sel or oth­er salt

dough ingre­di­ents:
1 lb 4 oz. all pur­pose flour, plus extra as need­ed
1 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups warm water (about 110 degrees)
1 tbl vanil­la
3 tbl veg­etable oil
2 tbl sug­ar 1 tbl active dry yeast

muf­fin pan prep ingre­di­ents:
1/4 cup but­ter
1 cup sug­ar

PREPARE THE BUTTER
1. Place the soft but­ter into a gal­lon size fre­ex­er bag. Using a rolling pin on the bag, attempt a rec­tan­gle the the full width of the bag, and about 2/3rds the length of the bag. Then place in the refrig­er­a­tor so the but­ter will hard­en. You can do this step a week in advance.

Don’t wor­ry too much about this step. So long as the but­ter is in a rec­tan­gle, you can reshape it once the but­ter is cold.

PREPARE THE DOUGH
2. Mix the flour and salt togeth­er and set aside.
3. in a large bowl, mix togeth­er the water, vanil­la, oil, sug­ar, yeast, and a few table­spoons of the flour, and let sit for a few min­utes until you see bub­bles form­ing (that will sig­ni­fy the yeast is work­ing).
4. whisk in the flour until you have a thick, glue-like paste, then switch to a spat­u­la and fold in the flour until you have a soft, but work­able dough. Add more if need­ed, or less.
5. Turn flour out onto a floured board or a pas­try cloth (I pre­fer the pas­try cloth) knead the dough 10–12 min­utes until it is smooth and pli­able. Knead in as much flour as you need, but do not make the dough ter­ri­bly stiff.
6. Form the dough into a ball. If you are mak­ing the dough over two days, refrig­er­ate the dough at this point overnight.
7. Cut a cross at the top of the dough to assist in the ris­ing process; then place the dough in a large bowl that has been oiled, cov­er with plas­tic wrap (or a tow­el), and let rise for one hour in a warm room.

PREPARE THE LAYERED PASTRY

  1. Once the but­ter has hard­ened, cut the the freez­er bag away from the hard­ened but­ter.
  2. After an hour, turn the dough out onto a floured board. Roll the dough so it is the width of the but­ter and three times as long. Place the but­ter in the cen­ter of the dough and fold the dough over the but­ter, like an enve­lope.
  1. fold the dough into thirds (again), make the 1/4 turn, and roll out again. Sprin­kle an addi­tion­al half cup sug­ar.
  2. Do this twice more to use the sug­ar, and then twice more after that with­out the sug­ar, end­ing by rolling out the dough, but not fold­ing it. Your dough, if sliced, should have mul­ti­ple lay­ers and it should be about 1/3 inch thick (or there­abouts).

PREPARE THE MUFFIN TINS

  1. Brush the inside of muf­fin tins with but­ter and then dust with sug­ar. Sprin­kle the bot­tom with a tiny pinch of sea salt.

SHAPE THE KOUIGN AMANN:

  1. Pre­heat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Shape the dough and place in muf­fin tins.

There are two ways to shape kouign amann, either spi­ral shaped or dia­mond shaped.

SPIRAL SHAPE: using a knife, slice off a strip of dough 1/2 inch wide; roll up like a sleep­ing bag and place in the muf­fin tin (left image).

DIAMOND SHAPE: using a sharp knife, slice a 3“X3” square of dough. fold each cor­ner of the square toward the cen­ter and place inside the muf­fin tin (right image).

Bake kouign amann for 30 — 40 min­utes, or until gold­en brown. If you real­ly like salt, sprin­kle the top with a bit of sea salt. LET COOL 5 min­utes, remove from pan, and let cool com­plete­ly. Enjoy.