for fun

Holiday Pocky

Pocky - chocolate dipped breadsticks

Quick, for 10 points: Pocky is/are:

a quintessentially Japanese snack
a thin sweet bread stick coated with chocolate and optionally topped with something else delicious
a fun alternative to traditional holiday cookies
easy to make at home
all of the above

(Hint: it’s E.)

I got the idea from Not Quite Nigella’s enchanting Pocky Christmas Forest, and used her recipe. Finely diced candied orange peel, shredded coconut, chopped pistachios, and crushed peppermint candy make fine toppings, but the possibilities are limitless.

pistachio-peppermint

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My Fall Macaron Line

ganache-filled macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

When I was introduced to macarons in Paris two years ago, the puffy almond meringue sandwich cookies and I became fast friends. I was captivated by the delicate smooth crisp shell, ruffled “feet,” chewy-soft interior, and shiny, creamy fillings, of these oh-so-French confections. But mostly I was seduced by the dazzling array of colors and flavors that beckoned from bright displays at the likes of Pierre Hermé, Ladurée, and countless other patisseries around the city.

sfbi-macarons

Blackcurrant Violet. Chocolate Passionfruit. Pistachio Caramel. Oh, the limitless possibilities…

So this month’s Daring Bakers challenge excited and inspired me. I can do that! With almond meringue as my medium, my creativity will be unleashed and I too will present an eye-popping parade of macaron artistry.

And that is exactly what I did. I managed to make several varieties of macarons, and I’m pretty excited about how they turned out. I figure my line is broad enough that I’m all set to open my own macaronerie. Soon I’ll be taking orders for:

The Underbaked Macaron
A thin, crisp shell (with feet!) surrounding a wet, sticky, married-to-the-silpat mess.

underbaked macarons

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Win My Textbook

Today I started the professional baking program at the San Francisco Baking Institute. For the next six months, I will spend six hours a day allowing the good and talented people there to mix, ferment, shape, proof, and bake me into the best baker I can be. I will be drilled on dough, tutored on tarts, coached on chocolate, lectured on lamination, guided on gateaux. (Yes, that’s right. I am paying good money to be forced to bake a cake. And they are breaking out the ice skates in Hades.)

Now if you’re anything like me, you may be thinking, how nice for you, Susan, but what is in this for me?

What’s in it for you is a chance to win my textbook. Because I already own a copy of the excellent Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas (SFBI’s founder and president, by the way), my first-day-of-school-issue copy is up for grabs.

Interested? Of course you are. If you live in the US (sorry, my international friends, but this thing is damn heavy and I’m springing for the shipping), leave a joke here in the comments by 11:59 PM on Friday, September 18. I’m asking for a joke because I will need something to laugh about after springing for the shipping on this book.

Career Options

dosa

I would like to thank this month’s Daring Cooks host, Debyi (The Healthy Vegan Kitchen), for not only offering such a tasty challenge in Indian Dosas, but also for reassuring me that if I can’t make it as a Daring Cook (and my utter inability to produce a round dosa definitely points in that direction), I may have a very bright future in psychoanalysis.

In my hands, these thin Indian pancakes are better than inkblots, don’t you think? Feel free to interpret them any way you wish and to leave your interpretations in the comments. Also feel free to draw whatever conclusions you like about me from my own perceptions of my edible little Rorschach tests, but please keep these to yourself.

And if my career as an analyst doesn’t take off, there’s always recipe translation work. I have a natural talent for this. For example, it was quite effortless for me to translate “ladle 2 tablespoons of batter into your pan until it is a thin, round pancake,” into “plop 2 tablespoons of batter into the center of your pan and swirl the pan around until the pancake looks like something the cat dragged in.”

dosa-4

If Jaws and Ms. Pacman had a child

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Secrets of Failure

[This space reserved for a gorgeous photo that didn’t happen.]

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I am happy to report that the planets have aligned, the ships have come into port, and all is once again right with the world. After two months of Daring Bakers successes, I can once again plant a tick mark firmly in the FAIL column.

And there’s even an added bonus: It was cookies. I was defeated by cookies! Not something even a little hard like genoise or lemon meringue. Who the hell is ever undone by cookies?

So yes! I can once again lay claim to the the title of world’s worst non-yeast baker. Go me!

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What It’s Still About

Today is the second anniversary of my first post on this blog. Since it’s my party and I’ll indulge myself if I want to, I thought I’d take a look at my very first post, which was about why I love to bake and why I wanted to start a blog, and see how things have changed, or not, over the past two years.

This is the entirety of that first post, with today’s annotations:

What It’s About

Let’s be clear up front: I really have no credentials, no business writing a blog, much less one that has anything to do with food. I’m not young, hip, witty, artistic, or visionary. I’m not a foodie, a chef, a writer, a critic, or a photographer. I can’t cook, although I sometimes try, but I don’t eat out much either. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the concept of a “trackback.” [At least I’ve pretty much got the trackback thing down by now.]

Yes, the sad truth is that I possess a solitary qualification: I bake a lot of bread. [Still true enough.]

That’s all about the bread, of course: perhaps the most universal of foods, a thing virtually synonymous with food itself. Infinitely versatile and varied, everyone likes it, every cuisine includes it, and no meal is complete without it. [I dare anyone to argue with that.]

But I’m a stone’s throw from San Francisco, and great bread of all kinds is in no short supply here; you don’t have to bake your own to eat very well indeed.

So, as it turns out, it’s equally about the baking.

It’s about a process that engages and satisfies every single one of my senses. Really, how many activities do that and don’t scandalize your mother when you let it slip that you gave some to your husband, your boss, and the guy next door, all in one day? [Ooh, talk gluten to me, baby! And let’s not forget the tutor, the carpet cleaner, and the window washer.]

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