Chik's Crib: September 2017

30 September 2017

New! Alice Medrich's Macaroon Recipe

Cookies September 30, 2017 0

Because of my new-found hobby of churning ice cream every weekend, I have an over-abundance of egg whites frozen in the freezer - much to the annoyance of my housemates. One can only snack on so many Munavalgekook slices, but luckily, I have this recipe up my sleeve. The remnants of my pack of coconut flakes from the Avocado Coconut Ice Cream was sufficient for a batch.

This feels like a regular macaroon's older, more sophisticated brother. Unlike the typical macaroon that is made from dessicated coconut (which tend to be finer, and less mouth feel when biting into one), coconut flakes remain really crisp on the edges but releases an intense coconut fragrance when bitten into. I made the macaroons in several different sizes looking for the sweet spot for macaroon size, and after baking, I found myself reaching for the smaller ones, which tended to be much crispier than the larger chewy ones. I also experimented with the variations that Alice Medrich recommended, such as a lime-zest-and-cinnamon combination (wow! An award winning combination), and chocolate-topped.

Alice Medrich's Macaroons Recipe

Adapted from Food52

Pro-tip: if you're using frozen egg whites, one egg white from a large egg is 30g (Joy of Baking.) In this recipe, I halved the quantity of the original recipe as the crispness dissipates overnight, and macaroons in generally isn't something that I personally can eat a lot in one sitting. If you are making for a big group, or enjoy chewy macaroons, you can double the quantities listed here back to the original.

Lime zest and the touch of cinnamon is listed as optional, but it really shouldn't be, because extra zing of lime and spice elevated the taste of these macaroons from slightly above run of the mill dessicated coconuts into an art form.

Ingredients
130g coconut flakes
60g sugar
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 (pinch of) salt

Steps

1) Combine all ingredients in a metal bowl. Set the metal bowl in a wider saucepan filled with simmering water, and heat over medium heat. Stir the mixture constantly, scrapping the bottom of the bowl to prevent burning. The mixture is done when the egg whites thickens and turns opaque. It will be very hot to the touch, about 4-7 minutes. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes so the flavors can meld.

2) Preheat the oven to 175C (350F). Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven (if doubling this recipe.)

3) Using a spoon and your hands, mold the coconut mixture into attractive little heaps, about 1-inch in diameter. Position the macaroons two-inch apart. Bake for about 5 minutes, until the coconut tips begin to brown. Be sure to rotate each pan midway during baking, from upper to bottom third and left to right.

4) Lower the temperature to 160C (325F) and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until they develop deep golden brown edges. Again, rotate the pans midway during baking. (If the coconut tips are browning too fast in comparison to the middle, further lower the temperature to 150C (300F). Remove from the oven and let cool completely before removing the macaroons.

Variation
Chocolate:
Each macaroon can be topped with a center of unsweetened chocolate immediately after baking. (semisweet chocolate can be too sweet for this purpose.)

Lime-Cinnamon: Grate the zest of 1 lime into the batter before scooping it. Dash a sprinkle of cinnamon over the cookies just before serving (or grate fresh cinnamon sticks).

23 September 2017

Munavalgekook (Egg White Cake) Recipe

Recipe September 23, 2017 0

After churning several batches of ice cream in rapid succession, I ended up with quite a sizable collection of frozen egg whites in my freezer. Because there are only so many egg white omelettes that one can stomach, I started compiling recipes that call for egg whites, like the Italian macaroons or the classic French macarons. David Lebovitz's Homemade Marshmallows was another option, until an inspired session of recipe-hunting led me to Nami-Nami's blog.

The recipe calls for common ingredients that you are likely to have on hand, and yields a pastry with a soft sponge-like texture with rich eggy undertones (despite not containing any egg yolks.) I'm not halfway close to Estonian (heck, I can't even pronounce the name), but every bite of this soft fluffy cake with its lightly-sweetened texture came tinged with a sense of childhood nostalgia.

Although not part of the traditional Munavalgekook, I thought the cake lends itself quite well to a glazing of chocolate sauce. If you're feeling dramatic, you could even fill a mini-Baileys bottle with chocolate sauce and perch it over the top of a Bundt cake. When ready to serve, lift up the bottle to drizzle the cake with chocolate.

Munavalgekook

While making this recipe, I've decided that a microwave is a home baker's best friend.
My frozen egg whites defrosted in just under a minute in the microwave on high. The microwave also makes melting chocolate a breeze, with none of the worry of having chocolate seize from droplets of water from a traditional double boiler.

This recipe can be scaled up or down as necessary. I scaled the proportions down to 2/3 for the four frozen egg whites in my freezer, but left the proportions unchanged here.
Ingredients
100 g butter (just under a stick), plus more to butter the bundt pan
160 g plain/all-purpose flour
1 heaped Tbsp potato starch or cornflour
1 tsp baking powder
6 large egg whites
250 g caster sugar

Steps
1) Melt the butter in either a saucepan set over a small flame, or in the microwave in 10s interval, stirring after each interval. Set aside and let cool. Butter the bundt pan and set aside.

2) Preheat the oven to 180C

3) Sift flour, potato starch and baking powder into a bowl, then add castor sugar (while reserving 2 tbsp of sugar for whisking the egg whites.)

4) To whisk the egg whites: first dry the whisk and bowl thoroughly (no droplets of water allowed!), and then rub down the insides of the bowl and the whisks with a slice of lime/lemon. Pour the egg whites into the bowl along with 2 tbsp of castor sugar and then whisk on medium speed until soft peaks appear, then increase to high speed until medium peaks form.

5) Fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture gently, and then the cooled butter.

6) Pour the batter into the bundt pan and rap the pan on a tablecloth to let any air bubbles escape. Bake for 30-40 minutes (if using a single bundt pan. If using smaller cake pans, check for doneness with a wooden toothpick about 20-30 minutes. It is done when the wooden toothpick comes out of the middle of the cake clean, with no wet batter coating the sides of the toothpick.)

7) Cool slightly before turning out of the cake tin.

Note
I used David Lebovitz's Hot Fudge Sauce to make the chocolate sauce, but decided that I wanted a much runnier consistency than hot fudge, and so I added milk in and stirred over a fire until I reached my desired consistency. It's not the easiest way to approach a recipe, and if I were to do it again, I would reach for his Chocolate Sauce recipe instead.

17 September 2017

A Guide to Citrus Sorbets: Recipes

Sweets September 17, 2017 0

It has been quite the whirlwind of fruit sorbets these past few months. I used to anticipate winters with a bit of dread - fruit choices at the supermarket are usually limited to pears, apples and citrus fruits, and I much prefer the fruits of summer like plums, grapes and cherries. But ever since I started experimenting with batches of these fruit sorbets, I've developed a newfound appreciation of all things citrus.

This post is less of a recipe post than my usual posts: rather than posting a recipe for a specific citrus fruit, this is more of a guide on churning up any and all citrus sorbets. The method works for all sweet citrus and is pretty foolproof. Heat sugar with a bit of fruit juice until it dissolves, then stir in the rest of the fruit juice and churn. Full Stop.

My initial batch was made of blood orange, and the second batch, regular navel oranges. Both developed different end-products: the blood orange one was a bright crimson, the orange, a sunny orange. The blood orange was also a little more icy and brittle, the navel orange was much softer when thawed. The striking contrast in color was worth the price of the blood oranges by itself. At the risk of being accused by J of sounding pretentious, I highly recommend using blood oranges at least once - for the visuals and experience if nothing else. Navel oranges work great too, and Cara-cara oranges yield a darker orange, slightly sweeter sorbet. Grapefruits are the easiest to juice (Someone left a bag of grapefruits in Maroondah's Hospital's common room alongside a note to help ourselves, and I unabashedly took 3 and turned them into a sorbet.) So the name of the game is certainly to use whatever that's available to you, and don't be put-off if the varieties of citrus I use is not available in your area.

If you don't have a juicer, you can do it the caveman method (as I did), which uses a fork to scrap pulp and juice out of the orange halves. Standard rules apply for juicing citrus fruits: they yield the most juice at room temperature, and smooshing the whole fruit against the tabletop before cutting into the fruit helps release juice from the pulps. Pulp can be strained and discarded if you prefer, but you can choose to keep the pulp in the mixture - David says that's what he does, and you should too. As the sorbet melts in the mouth, the pulp adds a next textural contrast.

David suggested adding chardonnay can make the sorbet softer. Based on my limited experience (total attempt = 1, and was comparing two different species of oranges), chardonnay made the sorbet noticeably icier. Alcohol doesn't freeze (hence, some ice cream recipes may call for a splash or rum or vodka), but I suspect the alcohol content of white wines are pretty tame, and wines do freeze in the freezer... Although Blood Orange Chardonnay Sorbet have a fancy ring to it, and at the risk of being called out by J for being even more pretentiousness, you can add a splash of chardonnay for the extra fanciness that comes with it.

Pictures by R

Citrus Sorbets Recipe

Original recipe by David Lebovitz

The basic proportion is 100g sugar for every 500ml of pulp + juice. The quantity of oranges listed here is a rough guide, and you may wish to err on the side of having more oranges to juice rather than buying exactly 10 oranges.

The flesh of my blood oranges were generally orange, with a touch of red along the periphery. That's perfectly normal, and the juice would still be reddish. I lucked out with a couple of blood oranges that were red all the way through, which turned the sorbet colour into a rich red hue.

Ingredients
500ml of pulp + juice (about the juice of 10 oranges)
100g granulated sugar

Steps
1) Juicing the oranges: the oranges should be at room temperature to release the most juice. Roll the oranges firmly against a countertop before cutting to release juice from the sacs. Cut the oranges in half and using a fork, scrap out as much juice as possible. (I blended the pulp and the juice afterwards to smoothen the texture, although it's entirely optional.)

2) Pour the sugar into a small saucepan, and add just enough juice to saturate the sugar. Heat over a medium fire until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and pour the rest of the fruit juice into the mixture and stir well.

3) Allow the mixture to chill thoroughly before churning it in the ice cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Notes
Honey can be substituted for sugar. As David mentioned, as honey is sweeter than sugar, use 3/4 of the amount of sugar the recipe calls for.

Lemons are much more sour than oranges and require more sugar per batch. My adaptation of a lemon sorbet recipe can be found here.

10 September 2017

Chocolate Truffle Cake Recipe: It's Spring!

Recipe September 10, 2017 0

It's officially the start of spring.

By the sides of the roads, the tell-tale pink bloom of the occasional cherry blossom tree breaks up the symmetry of green and umber. An occasional chilly breeze still sweeps across the streets, bringing with it the last vestiges of winter, but there's no doubt in anybody's mind that spring has arrived.

Picture by R

On the home front, I'm just about to wrap up a pleasant six weeks in Maroondah Hospital. After spending most mornings getting plied with coffee and pastries by several consultants, a small guilty voice in my head started to remind me that a little reciprocation is only right. I was a little cautious about bringing in an untried recipe, and so I turned to the classic hand-shaped chocolate truffles recipe from Alice Medrich. The recipe made plenty of chocolate truffles, and on a sudden whim, I turned the remaining chocolate truffle mixture into a cake. Say wha?

It's true, and what a result! Well, I can't claim credit for this idea; I recently bought Luxbite's Epic Chocolate Cravings, and I thought the chocolate layer tasted remarkably similar to chocolate truffles. So I gave my idea a whirl, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it looked - and tasted.

This deceptively fancy-looking cake could not have been easier to do; it's even easier than making the original truffle recipe. There's none of that cutting, moulding, shaping or coating to do. Just pour the truffle mixture over a chocolate-graham base and let chill and voilà! a cake is ready to be sliced up and served.

Chocolate Truffle Cake Recipe

Makes a 8.5 x 8.5 inch cake
Inspired by Luxbite's menu. Recipe adapted from Alice Medrich's Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts

I made a few changes to the original truffle recipe. For her truffles, Alice Medrich advised using chocolate of less than 62% percentage. I assumed it was meant to make the truffle body sweeter and balance the contrasting bitterness from rolling the truffles in cocoa powder afterwards. For this cake, as only the top is coated with cocoa powder, I think using chocolate with a higher percentage (but no more than 70%) helps bring the sweetness-bitterness ratio back to balance. The chocolate-graham base recipe was given to me by Karen Z.

Ingredients
200g chocolate digestive biscuits, finely crushed
50g unsalted butter, melted

2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
450g (1 pound) semisweet chocolate (about 65-70% percentage cacao), coarsely chopped
140g (5 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/8 teaspoon salt, preferably fine sea salt
115g (1/2 cup water), boiled

Unsweetened cocoa powder for dusting
white chocolate, shaved (optional, for decoration)

You Will Need
A strainer
A food processor, or a handheld blender
8.5-inch square baking pan, preferably with a removable bottom, or else lined with foil on the sides and bottom

Steps
1) Preheat the oven to 180C. Combine the chocolate digestive biscuits and the melted butter. Pack the bottom of the cake pan firmly with the crushed biscuits-butter mixture and bake for about 10-15 minutes. Set aside and let cool. When the cake pan has returned to room temperature, brush the sides of the cake pan with butter (to ease the removal of the chocolate cake afterwards).

2) Put the egg yolks in a small metal container, and place the container into a larger bowl filled with warm water, until the yolks are slightly warm.

3) Melt 140g of butter in a medium-sized saucepan over the smallest flame on the stove. When all the butter melted, add chocolate and salt. Stir continuously until the chocolate has melted, taking the saucepan away from the fire for brief periods of time if you're afraid the chocolate might burn. Remove from heat once the chocolate has melted and mixture is warm, about 49-55 C. (Alice suggests using a double boiler, but I always used this direct flame method for heating chocolate+butter and never had a problem before. Plus less stuff to wash = win.)

3) Bring 1/2 cup of water to boil, and let cool a little. Pour the just-boiled water in a steady stream into the 2 egg yolks, stirring constantly to prevent bits of the egg from cooking. The final temperature should be at least 71C (160F).

4) Place a strainer over the chocolate mixture and pour the egg mixture into the chocolate. Tap the strainer against the bowl to let the more-fluid egg mixture through, but do not press on the cooked eggs. Stir the mixture well.

5) Pour the mixture into a food processor (make sure not to overfill!) and pulse for a few seconds. Scrape down the sides of the food processor, and blend again for 20-30s, or until the mixture becomes smooth, like a chocolate pudding. Scrape the mixture into the prepared pan and let come to room temperature. Then cover and refrigerate until firm, for at least a few hours.

NotesTo crush the digestive biscuits, pound a few biscuits at a time in a plastic bag until the biscuits become finely crushed and no big chunks can be seen.

I haven't tried it for myself, but it seems that regular digestive biscuits can be used together with melted chocolate (maybe about 25g?) and melted butter.

04 September 2017

Lemon Candied-Ginger Ice Cream Recipe

Sorbet September 04, 2017 0

Ever since I introduced the joy that is homemade Ginger Ale to the rest of the house, our home had a surplus of boiled chopped ginger. Although R gave eating it plain a good go, one can only snack on so much candied ginger before getting sick of the taste (although, current medical literature - and our end-of-year examination - helpfully informed us that ginger is an effective anti-nausea medication...)

In a sudden burst of inspiration, I thought that the zippy pieces of ginger would be terrific when paired with lemon ice creams. I located a couple of recipes: my first recipe was from Epicurious, which TY liked, but I found the dairy products overwhelmed the lemon flavor and was not nearly as tart enough to pair well with the ginger pieces. So I found a sorbet recipe which uses no dairy products: this time from The Kitchn. It was a success! Both lemon and ginger are tropical in nature and meld wonderfully with each other. The spicy-sweet ginger slices gave the tart lemons in the ice cream a lively undertone.

The recipe below is adapted from The Kitchn, which was the one R and I preferred when paired with candied ginger, though I included links to both the recipes in the paragraph above.

Lemon Candied-Ginger Sorbet

Makes 2 pints, or about 900ml
Recipe adapted from The Kitchn
If you don't have a zester like me, I make shallow (horizontal and vertical) incisions on the lemon using a serrated knife, then shave off the bits of lemon skin using that same knife.

To get the maximum amount of juice out of the lemons, warm them to room temperature and firmly massage the lemon hard against the counter-top, aiming to release as much juice from the pulps before cutting into the lemon.

Ingredients
420g (1 3/4 cups) water
400g (2 cups) sugar
Half a lemon's worth of freshly grated lemon zest
2 cups (about 6 large lemons) freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup of leftover ginger pieces (from the ginger ale recipe)

Steps1) In a saucepan set over medium heat, heat water, sugar and lemon zest until the sugar dissolves (about 1 -2 minutes), stirring as you heat. Remove from the flame and let cool.

2) Add the lemon juice and combine. Put in the fridge to chill thoroughly. (This is when I cheat and put it in the freezer for about 45 minutes.) In a separate container, keep the leftover ginger pieces in the fridge.

3) Transfer to an ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer's instructions. 2 minutes before the sorbet is done, add the ginger pieces in.

4) When done, transfer sorbet to a tupperware. Covered tightly, it will last for a couple of weeks in the freezer. It will continue to harden in the freezer. Let thaw 5-10 minutes on the countertop before serving.