Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

My new cool baby

Sunday, July 10th, 2011 | Cooking | No Comments

We have recently acquired an ice machine with a built-in compressor, and we are enjoying every little bit of ice cream it’s churning out.

One of the huge limiting factors of being allergic to dairy products is that, well, most ice creams are made with milk and/or whipping/double cream (granted, there are some products based on soy with an uncomfortably grainy feel, and a few made on oats, but you pretty much have to travel to another country to obtain these). So, time to experiment at home!

With dairy allergies there are a number of alternative choices when preparing ice cream. Rather than milk you can use water, rice drink, soy drink, or oat drink as some of the more readily available solutions. And instead of cream you can use soy or oat based “creams” (they are generally somewhat lower in fat content than cream so some experimentation has to be made). I usually rather dislike the grainy substance of soy, so I tend to favour the oat based products. I generally use Oatly’s oat-based cream for all my cream needs (it’s the only one that’s readily available in Denmark), but if you’re fortunate enough to be in Sweden, for instance, there are a lot of different oat based products available to you, also with higher fat concentration allowing you to stay closer to the milk-based recipes.

One of the seemingly rather north European traits is an unending love of liquorice, so why not combine the two: ice and liquorice. One of the very best liquorices on the Danish market is a handmade liquorice by Johan Bülow, and one of my favourites is his Habanero-chili-liquorice. (Non-liquorice-loving people can now experience true, physical pain when eating liquorice—unless, of course, you have a resistency toward Habanero-chili).

To extract enough flavour from the liquorice, I have sliced it very thinly.

This is then covered with a mix of oat based cream and water (to simulate the fat content of milk mixed with cream).

The cream and liquorice mixture is then simmered over low heat for at least 30 minutes, and if you have been using good, natural liquorice, then you will get something like this (after a bit of using an insertion blender; the liquorice pieces aren’t completely dissolved so they can still contribute with a bit of a texture/bite to the finished ice cream):

If you do not use natural liquorice, you will get a gray unappetiteful pot of goo, so don’t do that. In a separate bowl, whisk some egg yolks and sugar together, then, while whisking, slowly pour in the liquorice cream, then pour the entire thing back in the pot and simmer for another 5–10 minutes (until it has thickened). Then it goes into the refrigerator for at least 4 hours (until it has reached about 5°C).

Depending on the freezing capabilities of your ice machine it will typically take 30–40 minutes to cool it to ice cream consistency that is ready for immediate consumption (otherwise place it in the freezer and take it out some 20 minutes before use).

This is a bit more than half a litre of liquorice ice cream that has finished churning.

Liquorice ice cream behaves rather like anise in what foods you can combine it with (anise also has a rather liquorice-y taste). So, typically, it will go wonderfully with strawberries and pineapple, just to name a few fruits.

The ice cream packs a good punch due to the Habanero chili, so this is definitely not a very kid-friendly ice cream, but if you love liquorice, chili and ice cream, this is a mix that cannot go wrong (unless you use poor liquorice, or mix it wrong, or…).

To save other dairy allergics from repeating a lot of experiments, then here is my simple recipe for an oat-based custard:

Chili-liquorice ice cream

• 240 g oat-based cream
• 240 g water
• 56 g liquorice
• 2 pasteurised egg yolks
• 100 g sugar
• pinch of salt

Combine cream, water and liquorice. Simmer for at least 30 minutes. Whisk yolks and sugar, gradually add cream mixture, pour back into pot and simmer for another 5–10 minutes until thickened. Add the pinch of salt and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Churn in ice cream mixer. Enjoy.

If you’ve kept reading until the end, then it was ice of you to stay with me so long (I know, I know, I need to brush up on my ice puns, that one was absolutely chilling).

Tags: ice cream, liquorice

New bread knife

Sunday, June 5th, 2011 | Cooking | 1 Comment

I have recently acquired a new bread knife from Yaxell, a Ran knife, made from 69 layers of Damascus steel. It is a thing of beauty and it carves bread like a wooden knife cuts through soft butter, mmmm.

I normally score my breads using the bread knife and our old bread knife just wasn’t sufficiently sharp to create interesting patterns, but here and now this changes. Now with even more fancy patterns:

It carves beautifully and the crumb isn’t mashed together like our old knife had a tendency to do. Most of my previous crumb photos took several slices before I got to a slice where the crumb was sufficiently nice to look at.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Yaxell in any way. I just love my new knives.

Tags: baking, bread

Sausage rolls

Sunday, November 14th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

The typical sausage roll is made from puff pastry, wrapped around sausage meat, brushed with egg and baked. I simply cannot stand these!

When I think sausage roll, I think some nice bread rolled around a real, actual sausage, not just ‘sausage meat’ (whatever that is). So, I take some nice basic french dough bread recipe and let it preferment for about 3–4 hours, then when we get to shaping, I roll out the dough (very much like making croissants, really, just with a single layer of dough and no fats), place a sausage at the fat end of a slice of dough and roll it up into the typical croissant shape (translated literally, we call these ‘sausage horns’ in Danish).

This is left to proof as normal, i.e. 1½–2 hours, and then baked at around 240°C for 10 minutes, then the oven is vented to let out steam, and finally they finish baking in another 10 or so minutes at 220°C.

And unlike my typical bread, these may be eaten hot. The taste of the sausage is typically a lot stronger than the flavour of the bread, so the added taste of actually letting the bread cool off completely isn’t really worth outlasting the temptation of eating them. And once you start eating them, you are hooked. I have yet to meet anyone who prefers the puff pastry versions to these. Bon appétit.

Tags: baking, bread

Chocolate-covered marshmallow treats

Friday, November 5th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

While many forms of candy are rather ubiquitous in Denmark, a lot of chocolate-covered marshmallow treats are produced here every day. The Danish factory, Elvirasminde, produces between 1 and 2 million chocolate-covered marshmallow treats daily to the entire world. There are also several high profile confectioners making exclusive chocolate-covered marshmallow treats with better forms of chocolate, specialised marshmallow filling, marzipan bottoms, and all kinds of other variations on the theme.

While Wikipedia currently attributes the creation of chocolate-covered marshmallow treats to Denmark (by way of a now defunct reference to Jerusalem Post…), it is more likely that they were invented in Switzerland or Austria, but the exact origin seems lost in the mists of time. Nevertheless, that shan’t keep me from having a go at making them. Since making marshmallows was rather easy, I figured these treats should be run-of-the-mill to make quickly before guests arrived, but, of course, that was not so.

To create these beauties, we start with a good chunk of marzipan and roll it out in confectioner’s sugar and cut out small circles of them.

These are then dipped in chocolate. Most confectioners only dip the bottom in chocolate, but I find it gives a more wholesome experience if the bottom is entirely surrounded by chocolate, provided, of course, that you use a good chocolate.

Leave in a cool place to set and get to work on the marshmallow interior. While a plain white marshmallow is typical as the interior, I wanted to add a bit of colour and taste to it, so I took out some frozen berries and cooked them with some water.

This gives a lovely dark red liquid that tastes of all the berries, this is mixed together with some sugar and cooked up to 117°C.

Remove from the heat and slowly add wet gelatine plates.

Who says you ever get too old to build card houses…

Slowly drizzle the sugar syrup into beaten egg whites and beat another 8–10 minutes.

This is then, supposedly, ready to be piped unto the chocolate coated marzipan bottoms, or so I thought, but it ran everywhere, so before damaging everything, I allowed it to cool a while in the fridge, albeit not enough.

I sort of managed to contain the runniness, but it isn’t as perfect as normal chocolate-covered marshmallow treats. So, given the lack of height, I call these… rustic chocolate-covered marshmallow treats. The smaller amount of marshmallow interior actually allows the chocolate and marzipan to contribute with more flavour than usual, not giving the exceedingly sweet marshmallow a chance to overpower it, and you could still pick up a very slight hint of forest berries, but most of the purple colour was lost after the whipping. Adding a bit of extra red fruit colouring while whipping would probably have made it somewhat more spectacular.

Normal, store-bought chocolate-covered marshmallow treats can be eaten rapidly, allowing you to easily consume 5–6 in a fairly short timespan, but even if you’re an experienced sweets eater, the dark chocolate, the marzipan and the rich marshmallow interior allows you to at most eat two of these, smaller marshmallow treats. And, apart from their rustic appearance, they were delectable, if I have to say so myself.

Tags: candy, sweets

Marshmallows

Saturday, October 30th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

Home made candy will usually always be better than the store bought variant (granted, home made candy can be abysmally botched as well, but with a bit of effort and control it is usually better). In particular the marshmallow, which from the store is kinda dry and mushy will, when fresh, be dry on the outside, but creamy and luscious on the inside. And when it comes to candy it’s practically one of the easiest candies to make.

A lovely mix of 500 grams of sugar and 100 grams of water is brought up to 122°C and once it’s removed from the heat you add in 10 leaves of dissolved gelatine (be sure to add the leaves slowly as they will make the sugar syrup foam up, but not dangerously so).

As the sugar syrup makes it up to that, you start whipping 120 grams of pasteurised egg whites (you could just go for plain egg whites, but they’re only heated by the sugar syrup and I’m not a betting man when it comes to salmonella—plus there’s less to fuss about when young children are handling eggs). When they’re nice and fluffy, you start pouring in the sugar syrup ever so slow. This is really a time where a stand mixer is a great benefit as the mass needs to be beaten for more than ten minutes.

After all the sugar syrup has been poured into the egg whites, you leave the mixer to do its thing for another 10 or so minutes, and then it’s ready to pour into a 30×20 cm shape. Be sure to dust the paper/dish with copious amounts of sifted confectioner’s sugar, this is what keeps marshmallows from sticking to everything.

Leave them in a cool place, though not cold, for some hours, and they’re ready for slaughter…

Dust each marshmallow in a nice bit of sifted confectioner’s sugar and lightly dust away the worst excess.

And voilà, you have home made marshmallow treats. A lot more rich, and a lot more tasty than the ones that are store bought. But beware, it’s impossible to eat up an entire portion all to yourself, so make sure you have friends over to share them with.

Tags: candy, sweets

Just plain bread

Sunday, October 24th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

Once in a while I find myself in the rather annoying situation of waking up and realising that we are out of bread, there’s no real good alternative for lunch, there is no poolish ready for use, and the stand mixer is in the dishwasher and not at all ready for use. At that point, I could, of course, do a bunch of kneading myself, but that gets rather gooey and unwieldy with the highly hydrated doughs I prefer to make, so, enter the no-knead process…

The basic process is this: mix everything and incorporate the ingredients, then walk away from it for a while. You could just leave it like this for a good 16–18 hours and the dough will magically have kneaded itself, but from waking up until lunch, 16 hours seems a bit unrealistic. Instead, you can gradually strengthen the gluten strands by folding the bread, say, every 30–40 minutes or so for 2–3 hours. After that, we can shape the bread, let the loaf proof for about five quarters of an hour, then stuff it into the oven at a good 240°C for 30–35 minutes, and finally let it cool completely before slicing the bread. That last part is usually the most difficult part of them all, but like a good roast, you will not get a full, rich flavour unless you let it rest (unfortunately bread usually takes more than 20 minutes to rest, it’s more like 40–60 minutes).

That is what 500 g flour, 10 g salt, 14 g fresh yeast, and 360 g of water will give you when folded every 30 minutes for 2½ hours, and otherwise following the procedure above.

A lovely creamy crumb, and a wafer-thin, flaky crust. In a professional bakery, the ovens are able to take in water and turn into steam in certain intervals inside the oven, which keeps the bread moist and prevents the crust from forming prematurely—home bakers are, typically, not as fortunate, so we have to make do with alternative methods of getting those thin crusts. A lot has been written on the topic: people throw in ice cubes when they load the loaves, they put in wet towels that give off steam, they put a pan of cold water below the plate with the breads on, etc., etc.; In my opinion, this is all much too much work (plus the ice cube thing might damage the oven, crack the glass in the oven front and whatnot, plus it interferes with the bottom heat for my baking stone). Instead, I take some cold water from the tap, and place it in the cup of my hand and slowly drizzle it across the unbaked loaves between my fingers, then bake it just like that. This, of course, keeps me from doing fancy flour-patterns on top of the bread, but I didn’t really plan on doing those in the first place.

At any rate, for a fairly quick bread (yes, my quick breads take in the vicinity of 6 hours), it has a nice taste, but not as pronounced a taste of wheat as the 12+ hour breads do. But, at least, there was bread for lunch.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Forest berry slices

Saturday, October 9th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

There is this small cake that is a staple at almost any Danish bakery, the raspberry slice. While it is small and not terribly fancy compared to a lot of other cakes, it has a rather religious following of people who simply cannot do without it. At the basic level it’s two thin layers of baked shortcrust pastry on top of each other, separated with a layer of raspberry jam and decorated with layer of glacé icing and hundreds and thousands. But for some reason, a bite of this unseemly cake can compete with a lot of fancier cakes.

So, it is on shaking ground that I break with dogma and not only replace the raspberry jam with forest berry jam (we were out of raspberries, sorry!), and use margarine instead of butter (so us poor lactose intolerant people won’t suffer the worse, apart from gaining weight). Of course, we didn’t really have any jam at all, so we had to make that first from a blend of forest berries that we had in our freezer, along with some fresh Danish apples to provide thickening.

Allow to cook in with a smidgen of sugar.

Once that’s reduced a lot more, we can apply it to the baked shortcrust pastry slices.

And now, with jam, glacé icing and hundreds and thousands ready, just smear, smear, smear (carefully, though, so the slices don’t break apart).

Once the jam is applied on two of the slices, the remaining two are carefully placed on top. If you are wondering, this is what too much jam between the layers looks like.

So, just add the glacé icing and the hundreds and thousands, carefully cut into mouth-sized bites (provided you have extremely large mouths).

You can see how the jam is spilling out a tad too much. But even if we broke dogma, they had that raspberry slice feel and taste to it that is always great to bite into. Our daughter applied the hundreds and thousands; according to dogma, they should only be placed in a small but generous strip in the centre of the slice, but that was a bit too much to explain to a two year old who got to sprinkle them across the slices (I know, it’s almost sacrilegious).

Tags: baking, cake, pastry

Honey top cupcakes

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 | Cooking | 2 Comments

Time passes quickly and life with a two year old doesn’t leave much time for anything much, least of all blogging, so these pages have seen little love for a good long while now. In fact, baking has been this hurried event where I’ve started using the same one or two recipes over and over again for bread, which makes for rather boring blog posts, to be honest.

Today when my daughter woke up from her midday sleep, she resolutely pointed to one of my baking books, flipped around for a short while then resolutely pointed to a recipe for honey top cupcakes and making them could only go too slow (she was trying to get her apron fastened almost before we managed to get into the kitchen).

With such a scrumptious base, how can you go wrong? In case you wonder, we like to bake—probably also more than is good for us, but that is another story—so we have a decent stock of cupcake forms, here nicely added to our metal form to lessen the clean-up mess.

Our daughter diligently helped mix flour, spices, egg, wheat-based cream and the sugar-honey-margarine base above into a coherent dough that we (more or less successfully) managed to move into the forms.

This just leaves a bit of baking to be done for a while.

And, of course, no cupcake is complete without some form of icing. A nice lemon icing with red fruit colour. Nothing too pompous so our darling daughter won’t die of sugar shock.

It’s awesome to be baking the whole family together, in case anyone should be wondering.

With cinnamon, ginger and ground clove these cupcakes taste very Christmasy (basically the same things we stuff into our Christmas cookies over here). So, with a chance of beating even the store advertisements… have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Tags: baking, cake, cupcake

Highly hydrated doughs

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 | Cooking | 2 Comments

Since the time I started baking I have read copious amounts of information on baking, primarily perusing titles from master bakers here and there, and some successful owners of bakeries in Denmark, Sweden and the United States. Some give good advice, others not so good, but the main thing I’ve taken away from having read all this is… it’s food, experiment and find something you like (though do be accurate about what you do so you can recreate it).

In some peoples’ opinion (and mine too for that matter), you should try to master the plain bread before you start adding all sorts of extra things to it. In a basic bread there are four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast (or sourdough). That is it. No seeds, no additives, no lard, no herbs. Just four plain ingredients. I use organic flour and Maldon sea salt, mainly because I do not fancy eating flour with all kinds of remnants of artificial fertilisers, and Maldon sea salt because I like their salt taste the best (but do try a bunch of different salts and find the one you like best).

The amount of flour you put into this thing mainly controls how much bread you will have once the process is done (this is an over-simplification, each ingredient influences the final outcome in a lot of surprising and complex ways, so take the following with a grain of salt), the amount of salt will control the taste (and to some degree how well the gluten strands develop), and the yeast will control how quickly the fermentation process will happen (more yeast, faster bread and less taste, less yeast, slower bread and more taste), and finally there is the water. This is usually the ingredient you turn up and down to control the handling characteristics of the bread. The lower water rate, the more manageable the dough is, the higher it is, the more you will feel like you’re battling some sticky monster from hell as you try to shape everything up into loaves of bread.

So for a while I have been giving the breads very low amounts of yeast (around 1–5 grams), rather long time to ferment (from 5 to 18 hours depending on how busy our daily schedule is), and very high amounts of water (around 90% the weight of the flour) a try. This has given me a very open and creamy crumb with a soft crust the first few hours after baking, which hardens into a denser crust after 6–12 hours and a superb taste. In order for such a wet dough to stick together, it is necessary for the gluten to be able to keep it all together, which is what the long fermentation will help you achieve. For a brief few illustrations I have taken some photos of a 5 hour fermentation followed by 10 hours retardation (placing the dough in the fridge).

The lighting is a tad shoddy. It is surprisingly difficult to pour dough, handle a camera and get the lighting just right around 7 am after having stumbled out of bed. There is some nice gluten strands here, but without the retardation they are typically longer and tougher. You can tell how strong they are by how long they can get before they snap if you pull at the dough.

Next, there are more fun ways to influence the result of your bread: how you bake it. With steam? without steam? at what temperature? for how long? I usually pour a bit of water over the loaves just before I put them in the oven, which will create enough steam to keep the crust from setting too quickly. Since the dough is highly hydrated, the loaves need to bake for a good while (usually around 40 minutes in my oven), and I start out at the high end of the temperature range at 250°C for 15 minutes, then I vent the oven (open the hatch for a few seconds to let out the steam), then I finish baking over the next 25 minutes, slowly reducing the heat once in a while to keep the crust from scorching.

After baking, you will have a nice, creamy, open crumb and a wafer thin crust that flakes like it does with plain bread from a good bakery. Flour, water, salt, and yeast. That is it.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Chocolate cupcakes

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Cooking | 3 Comments

Recently, my youngest sister wanted to bake these ‘advanced’ cupcakes, so she asked whether I would bake them with her. Never avoiding a chance to bake with others, I immediately agreed, and we had a lot of fun preparing, decorating, and not least eating the cakes.

It’s a fairly standard chocolate cake with whipped egg whites carefully folded into the chocolate batter. After a good bake we piped butter frosting over the cupcakes and drizzled candied violet over it.

Looking closely we can see the small pieces of candied violet better:

Normally I don’t fancy cupcakes too much as I think they have a tendency to become a bit too dry, but these were very good. Yummy.

Tags: baking, cake