Wow, so I totally stopped blogging as soon as I was able to ski in March. I probably should have stuck it out a little longer since I'm now seeing all these people posing hip questions in the comments. I feel like it's pretty fortuitous that I'm coming upon this now, since a lot has changed since my last post and today is kind of a significant day.
I skied for most of March. I wasn't great, but I did alright. I think my longest ski day was 3 hours, but I went for quality, not quantity. After the first couple days, I got super-bored lapping the slow chairs Gold Link, Painter Boy, and Prospector, so I made the transition to Paradise and East River, and then quickly to lapping off the North Face T-bar on the double black terrain. Unfortunately, that all caused a massive trigger point to build up in my right thigh, leading to referred pain in my right knee. After about a month of pain, I mentioned it at PT. I guess after 8 years of constant pain, I didn't realize I needed to tell people when things started to hurt. After lots of deep tissue massage, foam rolling, and trigger point dry needling, it's mostly gone at this point, and so is the pain in my knee.
When the resort closed, I started to weigh my options. Should I have a third surgery then, or wait until September/October to get it in before the upcoming ski season. At that point, Tom and I had scheduled our wedding for September 4th, so it just made sense to take care of the surgery as soon as possible so I would be able to wear jeans again and not have to hurry back from our honeymoon to get cut open again.
The third surgery was so minor compared to the other ones. It was a huge incision (most of my six-inch scar from the Ganz), so I went under general anesthesia again. I also walked into a hospital only to wake up from a procedure unable to walk out for the third time in less than a year. But the recovery was smooth and quick. I had all six screws taken out and was walking four days later. The biggest shock to me was that the morphine they gave me in the recovery room actually took the pain away completely, rather than taking level 8-9 pain down to level 6-7 like after the first two surgeries. It took place on April 27th, exactly six months ago.
I then proceeded to crash my bike hard in the beginning of June, necessitating a trip to the ER and pretty much knocking me out for the whole summer. I was busy with working two jobs and planning a wedding, so not a lot of baking happened.
After a fabulous wedding and a great trip to Hawaii, I feel like I'm really fully on the road to recovery now. I just did squat jumps and some other jumping exercises at PT for the first time today and wow did it feel weird to jump. My entire body is exhausted, but it's certainly a good feeling. So, today is huge because it has been 6 months since my last surgery and I'm finally doing dynamic exercises for the first time in a year and a half. We're also hoping to get out and go find some backcountry pow this weekend since it has been snowing in Crested Butte for days. Hopefully my legs will have stopped shaking from this morning's workout by then!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Extreme Cold Homes
So as I'm sitting in our fifty degree condo debating whether to build a fire (since I'm getting over a cold and I'd rather spend my calories fighting the virus rather than trying to stay warm) my sister sends me this article.
Now I definitely no longer feel like we're crazy for setting our thermostats at 50. Our life seems pretty cushy. Between our southern exposure, our electric blanket (that's right, we never have to get in a cold bed... ever), our wood stove, and my constant bread baking obsession, it's rare that our living space is actually only 50 degrees, let alone colder like the temperatures described in the article.
We do make an effort to warm up the upstairs when people come over for dinner, starting the fire early enough to get the stove to re-burning stage by the time our guests arrive. We also give overnight guests free reign with the thermostat in the guest room, as long as they leave the doors closed so their heat doesn't escape to the rest of the house. We have added extra insulation to all of our windows that open as well, unlike that crazy lady in Ridgway, CO who is fine with all her wood stove heat escaping through the slats in her roof.
All that being said, I'm wondering how many steps it takes for someone to go from our level of not minding living in a cold home to being comfortable enough to turn the heat off entirely. How far are we from the land of wearing long underwear and fingerless gloves in the house? Of course the odds of that actually happening are quite slim since the extreme cold would definitely interfere with the rising of my dough.
Now I definitely no longer feel like we're crazy for setting our thermostats at 50. Our life seems pretty cushy. Between our southern exposure, our electric blanket (that's right, we never have to get in a cold bed... ever), our wood stove, and my constant bread baking obsession, it's rare that our living space is actually only 50 degrees, let alone colder like the temperatures described in the article.
We do make an effort to warm up the upstairs when people come over for dinner, starting the fire early enough to get the stove to re-burning stage by the time our guests arrive. We also give overnight guests free reign with the thermostat in the guest room, as long as they leave the doors closed so their heat doesn't escape to the rest of the house. We have added extra insulation to all of our windows that open as well, unlike that crazy lady in Ridgway, CO who is fine with all her wood stove heat escaping through the slats in her roof.
All that being said, I'm wondering how many steps it takes for someone to go from our level of not minding living in a cold home to being comfortable enough to turn the heat off entirely. How far are we from the land of wearing long underwear and fingerless gloves in the house? Of course the odds of that actually happening are quite slim since the extreme cold would definitely interfere with the rising of my dough.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Bagels at 9200 Feet
I'm back from hiatus. We had Tom's family here for the holidays and then I started PT and have been pretty much exhausted from that. I sleep a ton and spend a lot of time with either heat or ice on. When I'm not doing that, however, I am baking bread from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. Tom gave it to me for Christmas in the hopes that I would take to it and start baking massive amounts of bread. Of course his plan worked and I've been baking a ton, which leaves little time for blogging about baking.
The Bread Bible is the real deal. I have learned about starters and pre-fermentation. I have baked ricotta loaf and beer bread. It is truly the epitome of aggressive bread baking. It has outstanding photos and, thus far, has led to great results. After doing a little experimentation, I decided it was time to try the bagels.
Now, I was thoroughly intimidated by the bagel recipe. She has it broken down into a half recipe and a full recipe because she says it's stiff enough that she prefers using the mixer to kneading. I still don't have a mixer, so I would be stuck kneading by hand. The recipe is also literally 10 pages long. I decided to make my first batch on a day Tom was taking off from skiing. There was no way I was going to attempt it on my own. So Tom got dressed up for some aggressive baking in his body armor (he's sponsored by 661) and we got to work.
The first part of the recipe required making a dough starter, or sponge. We mixed 1 teaspoon of instant yeast with 2 1/4 cups of water and 468 grams of flour (our Hungarian High Altitude Unbleached All-Purpose Flour in spite of the high-gluten flour called for in the recipe). We whisked like mad to incorporate some air bubbles. Later, during the fermentation process the yeast produces gases which make the air bubbles larger and more flavorful. We covered the dough with plastic wrap and moved on to what Beranbaum calls the flour mixture or blanket.
In this case, the flour blanket was a mixture of 320g of flour, another teaspoon of instant yeast, 1 tablespoon of malt powder (we didn't do this since we don't have any), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of black pepper. We sprinkled it on top of our sponge and covered the sponge plus blanket with plastic wrap.
Then it was time to wait, with the sponge in a warm place (by our south facing windows). She recommends leaving it for 1 to 4 hours, or for a fuller flavor, leaving it in warm room temperature for an hour before putting the bowl in the fridge for up to 24. This process is super cool because the yeast starts to work with the flour in the sponge and it ends up bubbling up through the blanket on the top. It also starts to smell of fermentation.
After giving the sponge its four hours of pre-fermentation, we mixed the blanket into the sponge with a wooden spoon. Once the dough came together, I kneaded it for about 5 minutes then left it to rest with the bowl over it for 20 minutes. Another thing I learned from the book was that flour absorbs water fairly slowly. If you allow a sticky dough to rest for about 20 minutes, it will absorb a lot more moisture and become much more manageable. I then kneaded the dough for a further 15 minutes to develop a strong gluten structure. That's what makes bagels so chewy and delicious and I felt like I couldn't skimp since we used a lower gluten flour than what the recipe recommended.
The dough went into a bowl to rise until doubled and then I deflated it, folded it into a tight little package, and then set it in the fridge to develop some more flavor. The cool environment of the fridge allows the yeast to work slowly, developing better flavors in the dough. According to the recipe, the dough must sit in the fridge for 4 hours and it can be left, tightly wrapped, for up to 2 days. So yes, the bagels take a long time to do their thing, but if you plan ahead, you can spread the process out over several days and not ever have to do too much at once.
We took the dough out and gave it some time to come up to temperature before forming our dough into 10 bagels. We used the snake method, which can be viewed here. It mostly worked, and then we let them rise for a bit while we got the water bath ready and preheated the oven to 500F.
Our water bath contained about 3 1/2 quarts of water with 2 tablespoons molasses and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. According to the recipe, baking soda helps to make the crust golden and molasses makes it shiny. After we boiled the bagels (about 1 minutes per side), they went onto a towel before going on the sheet pan. At that point they looked pretty sad and pathetic, but we had high hopes. They were starting to come apart at the seam. We were nervous about what would happen when we baked them so I tried to squeeze them back together a little bit. We glazed them with a beaten egg (the recipe calls for 2 egg whites and some cold water beaten and run through a sieve, I had no patience for that after working on the bagels for 9+ hours).
The bagels baked for 5 minutes at 500 on the stone, then 20 minutes at 450. Then the instructions said to turn the oven off and let the bagels sit in there for 5 minutes followed by 5 more minutes with the oven off and the door open.
In spite of their pathetic looks before going into the oven, they actually turned out quite well. They tasted nicely of pepper and the texture was pretty much dead on. We split one that night (we finished them just after 10 pm) with butter. They were great with cream cheese and an outstanding vehicle for sandwiches of all types also (after the first day we stored the leftovers in the freezer and defrosted then lightly toasted them). Next time I will definitely start them a couple days in an advance and see if I can spread the process out a little bit. I will also probably incorporate the optional 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Beranbaum allows this for a softer and lighter crumb in your bagels (but doesn't recommend it because it's not traditional), and Tom has requested it.
The Bread Bible is the real deal. I have learned about starters and pre-fermentation. I have baked ricotta loaf and beer bread. It is truly the epitome of aggressive bread baking. It has outstanding photos and, thus far, has led to great results. After doing a little experimentation, I decided it was time to try the bagels.
Now, I was thoroughly intimidated by the bagel recipe. She has it broken down into a half recipe and a full recipe because she says it's stiff enough that she prefers using the mixer to kneading. I still don't have a mixer, so I would be stuck kneading by hand. The recipe is also literally 10 pages long. I decided to make my first batch on a day Tom was taking off from skiing. There was no way I was going to attempt it on my own. So Tom got dressed up for some aggressive baking in his body armor (he's sponsored by 661) and we got to work.
The first part of the recipe required making a dough starter, or sponge. We mixed 1 teaspoon of instant yeast with 2 1/4 cups of water and 468 grams of flour (our Hungarian High Altitude Unbleached All-Purpose Flour in spite of the high-gluten flour called for in the recipe). We whisked like mad to incorporate some air bubbles. Later, during the fermentation process the yeast produces gases which make the air bubbles larger and more flavorful. We covered the dough with plastic wrap and moved on to what Beranbaum calls the flour mixture or blanket.
In this case, the flour blanket was a mixture of 320g of flour, another teaspoon of instant yeast, 1 tablespoon of malt powder (we didn't do this since we don't have any), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of black pepper. We sprinkled it on top of our sponge and covered the sponge plus blanket with plastic wrap.
Then it was time to wait, with the sponge in a warm place (by our south facing windows). She recommends leaving it for 1 to 4 hours, or for a fuller flavor, leaving it in warm room temperature for an hour before putting the bowl in the fridge for up to 24. This process is super cool because the yeast starts to work with the flour in the sponge and it ends up bubbling up through the blanket on the top. It also starts to smell of fermentation.
After giving the sponge its four hours of pre-fermentation, we mixed the blanket into the sponge with a wooden spoon. Once the dough came together, I kneaded it for about 5 minutes then left it to rest with the bowl over it for 20 minutes. Another thing I learned from the book was that flour absorbs water fairly slowly. If you allow a sticky dough to rest for about 20 minutes, it will absorb a lot more moisture and become much more manageable. I then kneaded the dough for a further 15 minutes to develop a strong gluten structure. That's what makes bagels so chewy and delicious and I felt like I couldn't skimp since we used a lower gluten flour than what the recipe recommended.
The dough went into a bowl to rise until doubled and then I deflated it, folded it into a tight little package, and then set it in the fridge to develop some more flavor. The cool environment of the fridge allows the yeast to work slowly, developing better flavors in the dough. According to the recipe, the dough must sit in the fridge for 4 hours and it can be left, tightly wrapped, for up to 2 days. So yes, the bagels take a long time to do their thing, but if you plan ahead, you can spread the process out over several days and not ever have to do too much at once.
We took the dough out and gave it some time to come up to temperature before forming our dough into 10 bagels. We used the snake method, which can be viewed here. It mostly worked, and then we let them rise for a bit while we got the water bath ready and preheated the oven to 500F.
Our water bath contained about 3 1/2 quarts of water with 2 tablespoons molasses and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. According to the recipe, baking soda helps to make the crust golden and molasses makes it shiny. After we boiled the bagels (about 1 minutes per side), they went onto a towel before going on the sheet pan. At that point they looked pretty sad and pathetic, but we had high hopes. They were starting to come apart at the seam. We were nervous about what would happen when we baked them so I tried to squeeze them back together a little bit. We glazed them with a beaten egg (the recipe calls for 2 egg whites and some cold water beaten and run through a sieve, I had no patience for that after working on the bagels for 9+ hours).
The bagels baked for 5 minutes at 500 on the stone, then 20 minutes at 450. Then the instructions said to turn the oven off and let the bagels sit in there for 5 minutes followed by 5 more minutes with the oven off and the door open.
In spite of their pathetic looks before going into the oven, they actually turned out quite well. They tasted nicely of pepper and the texture was pretty much dead on. We split one that night (we finished them just after 10 pm) with butter. They were great with cream cheese and an outstanding vehicle for sandwiches of all types also (after the first day we stored the leftovers in the freezer and defrosted then lightly toasted them). Next time I will definitely start them a couple days in an advance and see if I can spread the process out a little bit. I will also probably incorporate the optional 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Beranbaum allows this for a softer and lighter crumb in your bagels (but doesn't recommend it because it's not traditional), and Tom has requested it.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Calabresi: Italian Almond and Lemon Cookies
In an effort to broaden my horizons beyond Scandinavian and American cookies, I thought I would attempt an Italian cookie this year. I checked into my Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and only found two recipes. Since one called for whipped egg whites, and I have zero desire to do that by hand, I decided to make the Calabresi instead. Besides, I absolutely love almonds and lemon and it was another food processor recipe.
I started out by blanching 4 ounces of almonds in boiling water for two minutes then peeling then by putting the hot boiled almonds in a damp kitchen towel and rolling them around. Eventually, all the skins popped off and I had beautifully skinned almonds. Here's the recipe taken from Marcella Hazan's book.
Ingredients:
4 ounces almonds, blanched and skinned
1/2 C granulated sugar
2 egg yolks (that's right faithful readers, I successfully separated eggs for the first time ever for this recipe)
2 heaping C flour (I actually did 2 scant ones to try to compensate for our dry flour)
salt
zest of one lemon
1/4 C fresh squeezed lemon juice
Butter for smearing the cookie sheet or pan
1 egg beaten lightly with 1 T water
Method:
1. At least 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Pulverize the almonds together with the sugar in a food processor. Pulse until they are a fine powder.
3. Add the 2 egg yolks, the flour, a pinch of salt, the grated lemon zest, and the lemon juice. Run the blade until the batter forms a smooth lump. Mine didn't so I added the slightest little bit of water and ran the processor for a minute, then slightly more. I was determined to not mess these ones up after the checkerboard debacle.
4. Lightly flour a work surface, a rolling pin, and your hands. Pull a piece the size of a large apple from the dough and roll it out to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Use a 2-inch cookie cutter (I used an old jelly jar instead since I sorely lack cookie cutters) to cut the dough into disks and place them edge to edge on a cookie sheet or pan that you have smeared with butter. Add another ball of dough to the scraps and roll and cut again.
5. Once you have a full pan to go into the oven, egg wash the top of your cookies. Bake for about 10 minutes and pull out lemony almondy goodness. I found the glass pan I used required 11 minutes to get even a hint of brown in 11 minutes, but the dark metal cookie sheet burned in 10, so keep that in mind.
They're delicious and easy to make and they keep for weeks. They're also interesting in that all the fat in them comes from the egg yolks and the almonds. This was the first time I ever made a cookie without butter or shortening in them.
I started out by blanching 4 ounces of almonds in boiling water for two minutes then peeling then by putting the hot boiled almonds in a damp kitchen towel and rolling them around. Eventually, all the skins popped off and I had beautifully skinned almonds. Here's the recipe taken from Marcella Hazan's book.
Ingredients:
4 ounces almonds, blanched and skinned
1/2 C granulated sugar
2 egg yolks (that's right faithful readers, I successfully separated eggs for the first time ever for this recipe)
2 heaping C flour (I actually did 2 scant ones to try to compensate for our dry flour)
salt
zest of one lemon
1/4 C fresh squeezed lemon juice
Butter for smearing the cookie sheet or pan
1 egg beaten lightly with 1 T water
Method:
1. At least 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Pulverize the almonds together with the sugar in a food processor. Pulse until they are a fine powder.
3. Add the 2 egg yolks, the flour, a pinch of salt, the grated lemon zest, and the lemon juice. Run the blade until the batter forms a smooth lump. Mine didn't so I added the slightest little bit of water and ran the processor for a minute, then slightly more. I was determined to not mess these ones up after the checkerboard debacle.
4. Lightly flour a work surface, a rolling pin, and your hands. Pull a piece the size of a large apple from the dough and roll it out to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Use a 2-inch cookie cutter (I used an old jelly jar instead since I sorely lack cookie cutters) to cut the dough into disks and place them edge to edge on a cookie sheet or pan that you have smeared with butter. Add another ball of dough to the scraps and roll and cut again.
5. Once you have a full pan to go into the oven, egg wash the top of your cookies. Bake for about 10 minutes and pull out lemony almondy goodness. I found the glass pan I used required 11 minutes to get even a hint of brown in 11 minutes, but the dark metal cookie sheet burned in 10, so keep that in mind.
They're delicious and easy to make and they keep for weeks. They're also interesting in that all the fat in them comes from the egg yolks and the almonds. This was the first time I ever made a cookie without butter or shortening in them.
Peanut Butter Blossoms
In the interest of me getting recipes to you before the holidays are completely over, I'm going to attempt to control my wordiness and from here on out only give you the recipes, some images, and any crucial commentary. We had some visitors last week and Tom's family arrives tomorrow so I've been trying to keep our cookie tins fairly well stocked. I'm also planning on using the cookies to bribe my PT guy to let me use his exercise bike even though I don't officially have a prescription yet. Since I've already done checkerboards, peanut butter blossoms were the next on the list. They are a fairly straightforward peanut butter cookie and you just push a hershey's kiss into the center of each cookie as it comes out of the oven. Who doesn't love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate? The dough is also the easiest cookie dough I've made to date at altitude without a mixer (I'm aggressive!).
Recipe:
1/2 C shortening
3/4 C creamy PB (I have yet to attempt it with "natural" PB, but I might give it a go and I'll let you know how much extra sugar is needed)
1/3 C granulated sugar
1/3 C packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 T milk
1 t vanilla extract
1 1/2 C flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
extra granulated sugar for rolling
enough hershey's kisses so you have one for each cookie (I used the dark chocolate ones as per my grandmother's suggestion...)
Method:
1. Heat oven to 375°F. Remove wrappers from chocolates.
2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well.
3. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.
4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet. They won't grow a huge amount in the oven, so leave some space but don't worry too much about it.
5. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immedi ately press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Do not attempt to eat a cookie at this point. The chocolate will get very hot and you will burn your mouth. Badly. I speak from experience. Remove them from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool for approximately ten minutes and then enjoy. They will not last long. Do make sure the chocolate has hardened completely before you try to store them. It usually takes several hours.
To get you into the holiday spirit, here's a photo of Tom decorating the tree. He had just come home from skiing to hang out with me and we figured it was as good a time as any to get the ornaments and lights up. Does anyone have a good idea for a tree topper besides our string of dried chiles?
Recipe:
1/2 C shortening
3/4 C creamy PB (I have yet to attempt it with "natural" PB, but I might give it a go and I'll let you know how much extra sugar is needed)
1/3 C granulated sugar
1/3 C packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 T milk
1 t vanilla extract
1 1/2 C flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
extra granulated sugar for rolling
enough hershey's kisses so you have one for each cookie (I used the dark chocolate ones as per my grandmother's suggestion...)
Method:
1. Heat oven to 375°F. Remove wrappers from chocolates.
2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well.
3. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.
4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet. They won't grow a huge amount in the oven, so leave some space but don't worry too much about it.
5. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immedi ately press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Do not attempt to eat a cookie at this point. The chocolate will get very hot and you will burn your mouth. Badly. I speak from experience. Remove them from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool for approximately ten minutes and then enjoy. They will not last long. Do make sure the chocolate has hardened completely before you try to store them. It usually takes several hours.
To get you into the holiday spirit, here's a photo of Tom decorating the tree. He had just come home from skiing to hang out with me and we figured it was as good a time as any to get the ornaments and lights up. Does anyone have a good idea for a tree topper besides our string of dried chiles?
Friday, December 11, 2009
Swedish Refrigerator Cookies
This post is a little delayed for a couple of reasons. First, I spent yesterday afternoon in Gunnison shopping for food and a Christmas tree (after it's decorated I will provide pictures). Second, and more importantly, I managed to pretty much screw up a family recipe. Tom thinks the cookies taste amazing, but I'm still horribly embarrassed that my Mom might see this and see the amount of effort it took me to fix a recipe that wouldn't have been a problem if I had just done it correctly in the first place. It's especially embarrassing because these have been my favorite cookies since I was about 10!
I dug through her recipe file when I was home over Thanksgiving and found this recipe for "Swedish Refrigerator Cookies," which I've always called checkerboards. They're essentially shortbread cookies that looks somewhat fancy due to the coloration of half the dough with cocoa powder and a little clever shaping. Martha Stewart's recipe advises the use of a ruler to get perfectly square checkerboards, but that seems a little ridiculous to me.
To being with, I creamed a full cup of butter and 3/4 cup of sugar in my food processor (another reason this recipe rocks my mixer-free world). Once they were well combined and looking somewhat sandy, I added 2 1/4 cups of flour as well as 2 teaspoons vanilla. That's when I made my first mistake. I neglected to take into consideration that Chicago, Buffalo, and Cazenovia (and probably Sweden, for that matter) all have significantly more moisture in the air than the alpine desert that is Crested Butte. As a result of this substantially lower humidity than any other place where anyone in my family has attempted these cookies, my flour was too dry and 2 1/4 cups ended up being too much. The dough is supposed to be crumbly, the only true liquid is the mere 2 teaspoons of vanilla, but mine was like a fine powder and didn't stick at all.
Foolishly, I tried to fix it in the food processor. I figured that, like the pie crusts we make up here, I could fix it by adding a bit of ice water. This was the most significant mistake. The water sunk to the bottom of the dough (go figure) and the top still felt dry enough that I added far more water than I ever should have. Looking back, step one would have been to decrease the flour for the altitude and dryness. Step two would have been to knead in sprinkles of water, so that I could make sure I had my hands on the dough when it transitioned from unworkable to workable. As a result, I overwatered the dough and ended up with a sticky mess.
I still managed to work the dough into nearly equal balls and color half of it with the cocoa (1 T). Then I stuck it in the fridge as is in the hopes that the drying effect of the fridge would suck some of the extra moisture out of my cookies.
After being in the fridge overnight, the dough was workable, if not quite right. I divided each color into fourths and set out with my rolling. The basic premise of the checkerboard cookie is that you roll each piece of dough into a long snake, with the goal of getting 2 cocoa ropes and 2 vanilla ropes of approximately the same length. Then they get stacked next to each other and on top of each other to form a nice cookie "log" that will produce checkerboard slices after it chills. I hope the images below give you some idea because I know my description is rather confusing.
Once I had my logs made, I wrapped them in saran wrap and popped them in the freezer to set up some more. When I was ready to bake, I preheated the oven to 350 and started to slice my cookies. The dough was still a little funky, so I ended up having to cut the cookies a little thicker than is ideal (~3/8 inch) and so they took around 12 minutes to bake instead of the recommended 8. They came out okay, but not great. The texture is a little funky and they're not quite the right size. I'm sure the next time I'll nail them.
Still to come: Butternut Squash and Bacon Risotto and Peanut Butter Blossoms. Let me know if you want any of these recipes as ingredients and directions rather than narrative.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
And So It Begins: Dark Chocolate Balsamic Truffles
As I said in my last post, I'm getting more mobile, but I'm still not quite walking. As a result, the boredom is setting in even more. Especially since I spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday watching copious amounts of snow fall on Crested Butte. It never seemed like it was snowing particularly hard, but it also didn't stop for 3 days. We now have several feet of the fluffy white stuff and we're back to being in the negatives every morning.
Anyways, I spent Sunday and Monday making delicious confections and, as promised, I'm sharing photos and recipes. The first thing I made was something entirely different from anything I've ever made, but they sounded too good to pass up. I came across the recipe (from Giada De Laurentiis) on Sunday morning while I was looking for a good entree idea for Christmas and knew I had to make the truffles immediately.
It was super easy, I just melted 2 1/2 bars of Newman's Organic Dark Chocolate with 1/4 cup of heavy cream in my improvised double boiler. After it was all melted and smooth, I stirred in 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and then popped the whole bowl in the fridge for a little over an hour. Of course then I did my part to clean up/ensure quality by licking the spoon.
After the ganache set up, I pulled it out to warm up for about an hour. I scooped out hunks of chocolate with a small spoon and rolled them into balls and then dropped them in a bowl of cocoa powder. I would usually go for about 6-8 truffles before my hands were too covered in chocolate and the ganache was too sticky. At that point, I'd pop the bowl back in the fridge, pluck the truffles out of the cocoa powder, put them in my airtight container, and give my hands a wash. After 5-10 minutes of chilling, the ganache was ready to go again and I could do another 8 truffles. It's definitely a messy process, and I would recommend wearing rubber gloves if you have warm hands.
The results are more than worth it. Bitter cocoa on the outside gives way to dark, rich, intense chocolate on the inside. They do not taste at all of vinegar, more a subtle grape flavor that really compliments the darkness of the chocolate. The only change I'll make before my next batch is adding salt in in some way. I absolutely love the combination of chocolate and salt. I haven't decided yet whether to incorporate the salt in with the balsamic, or later when I roll them in cocoa. I highly recommend this recipe to anyone. It is way easy and the results are tremendous.
Next: Swedish Refrigerator Cookies and Butternut Squash and Bacon Risotto
Anyways, I spent Sunday and Monday making delicious confections and, as promised, I'm sharing photos and recipes. The first thing I made was something entirely different from anything I've ever made, but they sounded too good to pass up. I came across the recipe (from Giada De Laurentiis) on Sunday morning while I was looking for a good entree idea for Christmas and knew I had to make the truffles immediately.
It was super easy, I just melted 2 1/2 bars of Newman's Organic Dark Chocolate with 1/4 cup of heavy cream in my improvised double boiler. After it was all melted and smooth, I stirred in 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and then popped the whole bowl in the fridge for a little over an hour. Of course then I did my part to clean up/ensure quality by licking the spoon.
After the ganache set up, I pulled it out to warm up for about an hour. I scooped out hunks of chocolate with a small spoon and rolled them into balls and then dropped them in a bowl of cocoa powder. I would usually go for about 6-8 truffles before my hands were too covered in chocolate and the ganache was too sticky. At that point, I'd pop the bowl back in the fridge, pluck the truffles out of the cocoa powder, put them in my airtight container, and give my hands a wash. After 5-10 minutes of chilling, the ganache was ready to go again and I could do another 8 truffles. It's definitely a messy process, and I would recommend wearing rubber gloves if you have warm hands.
The results are more than worth it. Bitter cocoa on the outside gives way to dark, rich, intense chocolate on the inside. They do not taste at all of vinegar, more a subtle grape flavor that really compliments the darkness of the chocolate. The only change I'll make before my next batch is adding salt in in some way. I absolutely love the combination of chocolate and salt. I haven't decided yet whether to incorporate the salt in with the balsamic, or later when I roll them in cocoa. I highly recommend this recipe to anyone. It is way easy and the results are tremendous.
Next: Swedish Refrigerator Cookies and Butternut Squash and Bacon Risotto
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