Week 5: Diffusion, Gelation, Spherification

This pastry from Le Reve Patisserie in Wisconsin just may have gelation represented in two layers - in the fruit sauce on top and in the creamy center (if it's a Bavarian or Diplomat Cream stabilized with gelatin).

If you got this far, you're nearly halfway through the Harvard online food science class and for that, Harvard offers you a sense of wonder. This is not the Jell-O shots class, far from it. Instead, you'll wander into the world of molecular gastronomy.

For starters, we all know about gelatin because we grew up eating jiggly things in bright colors. But how does Jell-O, Jell-O pudding or that fright tomato aspic work? In this week's terrific lectures and videos, you find out.

Suppose there's a liquid in your bowl, and you want to make it solid. That's no problem with eggs; they easily change into their omelet overcoat (and sometimes rubber shoes) when you apply heat. What if there is no heat? Could you still make the liquid change?

Gelation is your answer. It's a phase transition that turns a liquid into a solid by forming these little cross-links at the molecular level. And you need a critical number of these cross-links for a liquid to solidify. Think of cross-links as being like people in a room, reaching out with both hands to grasp each others' hands. The more hands being held, the tighter the network becomes and voila, a room full of people demonstrate what happens when a liquid changes to a solid. At first they can flow around like liquid. Soon they're into a game of Twister.

Ferran Adria of El Buli fame took gelation a step further with his concept of spherification. This is the idea that you could take a liquid, add something to it and create tiny spheres that have a solid membrane on the outside but remain liquid inside the sphere.  And you could do it with different gelling agents - not just with gelatin but with natural ingredients derived from plants, seaweed, even bacteria. Zounds!

Imagine popping some of these gelled spheres in your mouth - think caviar - but once the sphere hits the warm tongue, the gelled edge gives way and you taste the sensation of the liquid inside the sphere. Via chemistry, which I leave to Harvard to explain, this is possible with foods you never dreamed of before. Spherification is like Grand Central Station, where science and cooking meet up under a great canopy.

We also need to understand the concept of diffusion, the motion of ions moving from one place to another. They do what's known as the "random walk," randomly switching directions but over time, making progress through Grand Central toward the exits.  The equation that characterizes the progress is the Equation of the Week.

Equation of the Week: L = the square root of 4Dt. L is the distance the ions move; t is the time elapsed. D stands for a set diffusion constant measured in centimeters squared per second. For calcium in water, that diffusion constant number is

8 × 10−6 cm2/sec.

You can use this equation to predict the thickness of a spherification shell. Why? Because if you do nothing to stop the gelation process of your sphere, eventually you'll create a solid sphere, because gelation starts at the outer edge and moves toward the center.

A-Hah Moment of the Week: When you're making plain old eggs, you need some fat. A little half and half in your scrambled eggs has a huge effect on texture. That's because it slows down coagulation of the eggs when heat is applied, by coating the egg proteins. If you don't add fat, heat causes the protein strands to align and bond into a network - the more you heat, the more this happens. Eventually, this network squeezes out the available moisture and the eggs get clumpy and dry. You know this. You've eaten them before. Throwing in some cream works, but cream overwhelms the egg's flavor. Skim milk doesn't add enough fat to coat the protein strands. Half and half is just right if you want fluffy, marvelous eggs.

2nd A-Ha Moment of the Week: If you add salt to your eggs after scrambling them, they get rubbery. If you add salt before cooking them, the salt affects the electrical charge on the protein molecules, reducing their tendency to bond together and squeeze out the water. I see.

3rd A-Ha Moment of the Week: Add salt when sauteeing onions. If you don't, they brown too fast but remain crunchy on the inside. When you add salt, it draws moisture from the onions, and this moisture now released into the pan helps protect the onions against the heat. They'll brown more slowly.

Final A-Ha Moment of the Week: Did you know that paper towels are not food safe at high temps? Instead of using them in the microwave, try coffee filters. A-Ha!

Number of Pages of Notes: Stopped Counting

Next Week: Heat Transfer

Week 4: Elasticity, Harvard Style

Measure the elasticity of rising rolls and again after the rolls are baked for a lesson in stress and strain, really!

For Week 4 of the Harvard online food science class, get yourself a rock. Bang it against your head, share it with the other rocks in your head or use it as a weight to measure the elasticity of a steak. The correct answer in this situation is all of the above.

Harvard wants you to know there's more to enjoying delicious food than just taste. There's also the enjoyment of mouthfeel - or texture. The concept of elasticity is one of the ways you can think about mouthfeel in scientific terms.

Here we meet the "elastic modulus," a way to measure a food's elasticity by exerting force on it (what ho, the physics). This tells you how stiff or soft a food is. What determines elasticity? The energy of the bonds in the food and the density of the bonds, or the distance between them. That right there is a mouthful. Think of it this way: When you cook food, you affect both the energy present in the food and the distance between the food's bonds. Doing so changes its texture.

What it means is, the more you cook a steak at high temperature, the harder to chew it is and the higher its elasticity. You can calculate this elasticity using a rock. No explanation follows here; my notes go on for pages of mathematical gymnastics. It is at this stage I knew I had to get a math/chemistry/physics tutor from here on. (Shout-out to Highland Park's own Dr. Stanton Ballard)

Equation of the week: E = Stress divided by strain = force/area, divided by the change in the length, divided by original length. Chew on that.

In simple terms, it's not how you deform the food in whatever way you cook it, but how you change the length of the bonds in the food. The shorter the distance between the bonds, the higher the elasticity, and the more the chew.

Ahah! Moment of the Week: Salt is important in bread dough and supports gluten development, but why? Salt, or sodium chloride, has positive sodium ions and negative chloride ions. These charges are attracted by the charged amino acids in the flour's glutenin protein strands. As glutenin strands begin to stack up next to each other, the positive sodium ions are attracted to the negative amino acids, neutralizing them. This means as the strands come closer together, they don't repel and gluten is formed. Salt of the world! It really matters.

A Ratio to Love: 1-1-1-1
1 part flour, 1 part sugar, 1 part egg white take 1 minute to bake into an angel food cake (in the microwave, using a paper cup).

Number of Note Pages: 21

Next Week: Diffusion and Spherification

Week 3: Phase Transitions, Harvard Style

Tarts can be an example of phase transition as the fillings change from liquid to solid forms.

Phase Transitions

The boss at Chez John declared my previous post on Energy, Temperature and Heat a review that crossed his eyes. He's got a point; a lot of this food science is food for thought, and some of it's bitter to swallow. Then along comes an aha! moment and you feel better. Here was one of my first in the Harvard course.

Aha! Moment With Alcohol: Why do we add vanilla or liqueur after a recipe has been heated and begins to cool? We say well, the alcohol would evaporate, but do you know why it does? Turns out that ethanol (pure alcohol) is liquid at room temp, and this is why we can pour ourselves a gin martini while thinking about the problem. However at 78 Celsius (about 172.4 degrees fahrenheit), it becomes a gas. That's why it might evaporate if your liquid is too hot. And that's the lead-in to phase transitions. Ethanol changes from a liquid to a gas. Voila!

Phase transitions happen when a substance changes from one state to another (solid, liquid or gas).

To get into this further, enter Chef Joan Roca, who some say is the No.1 chef in the world. Mon dieu!

Joan Roca shows you how to transform eggs, sole filet and anemones all through sous-vide cooking. Yep, some of the Harvard lectures are in languages other than English, but each includes a transcript so you can watch and read along.

Tool that's new to me: The rotovap (rotary evaporator). It's used to concentrate flavors in foods, freeze-dry foods at very low temperatures and separate dangerous, volatile compounds like methanol from cocktails. It does this by creating a vacuum, and that lowers the pressure around the food. (So the opposite of the rotovap is a pressure cooker.)

No. 3 Equation of the Week: U interaction = C x kbT

This formula represents the physical balance between the fact that molecules like to stick together (stay solid) and also like to jiggle around and evaporate off. There are many ways to change phases of food from solid and liquid to gas. You know one of them - temperature - but another is pressure (which happens by raising pressure in a pressure cooker, or lowering it in a rotovap. See, you just learned this if you made it this far).

Cool lab experiment: Yes, you can make a small amount of ice cream in a baggie, just following directions and using your hands - no ice cream crank at all. It's a demo of how a liquid turns into a solid - and that's a phase transition!

Number of Pages of Notes: 21
(am I improving on note-taking?)

Next up: Elasticity in Week 4, and if you think it's all about stretchy dough, not so fast.

Week 2: Energy, Temperature, Heat - Harvard Style

Harvard Online Food Science

We all know that heat is a form of energy, and energy causes change. Whether you make a creme brulee, filet mignon or sourdough loaf, how much change depends on things you can quantify.

So right off, we learn the Equation of the Week: Q = mcp delta t

That's a nifty formula that means the amount of heat needed to increase the temperature of a food depends on a specific heat constant of a material. OK, hold that thought.

Q is the amount of heat dumped into the food and is measured in joules. M stands for the mass of the food (its weight using a scale), measured in kilograms. Delta t is the temperature difference between where you started (like room temperature) and the food's final temperature (use Celsius, be cool). CP is the specific heat of material, a number that characterizes how much something heats up when you apply specific heat. It's measured in joules per kilogram.

A grand answer machine. Don't know how to find a specific heat or convert these units into other units? Use Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge engine that calculates for you. Bookmark it. You'll use it.

Know this: There is a direct relationship between the amount of heat applied and how much the temperature rises, that's all we're saying with this formula.

The message here is to learn what it takes to control variables for consistency so you get the same results every time. Observe and understand how ingredients function. You can't push to the next level in cooking just by switching ingredients on a technique. Learning cooking goes much deeper - understanding how new technologies and science relate to cooking. There has to be a reason to apply the knowledge, not just throw the science at whatever you're doing.

Dave Arnold of the New York bar Booker and Dax gives a terrific demo on how to make a campari and soda. Is there a better way to talk science than showing how to get those crazy bubbles into a cocktail? Dave spent years teaching other chefs how to apply new technologies and techniques; he's a lab master. In another eye-popping demo, he forces coffee into rum using nitrous infusion. This is the kind of stuff we should be showing students to fire the imagination for food science. (I'm advocating the art of the science here, not the consumption of alcohol.)

Cool point: Champagne flutes have low surface area to volume ratio, so they don't lose as much bubbles over time. That means, serve your bubbles in long, slender glasses, not those cuppy glasses in the movies.

Takeaway lesson: The most important innovation in cooking technology is lower-temperature cooking. The real revolution is in temperature control via tools like the immersion circulator. It keeps water accurately heated to a set temperature well below boiling - and that's how you get a perfectly cooked egg - by boiling it longer at 64 degrees instead of 212. Now sous-vide cooking begins to intrigue me. More on that as we move on.

Number of pages of notes taken: 34, an increase of 12 pages over Week 1
(but I rewrite all the math problems to "bake in" the concepts)

Up next: Phase Transitions in Week 3

Week 1: Fooding With My Mind: Harvard Style

If you want to build a better chocolate chip cookie, you'll have to learn how to compute the number of molecules in baking soda using Avogadro's number (6.02214129(27)×10²³ mol). Then calculate how much carbon dioxide the baking soda will produce in a chocolate chip recipe.

That's just a taste of a free online course through Harvard: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science. Will you learn amazing truths? Absolutely. Is there a killer molten chocolate lava cake recipe waiting to be discovered, a better french fry, perfect scrambled eggs? Oh yes.

Can you do the math for chemistry, physics and engineering concepts as they relate to food? Does your calculator handle big numbers? Can you grab a study buddy who loves this stuff? If the math is a deal-breaker (I understand, believe me), audit the class. Give it the old college try. Learning enlightens the soul (and food will lift your spirits).

The weekly lectures are insightful and full of "a-hah!" moments - as you would expect from Harvard. There are top-tier chefs too famous and too many to mention, but you've heard of Ferran Adria of El Buli fame? He's part of the lecture series. Supplementary reading comes from Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen." 

Note to self: Buttering the inside of a ramekin and sprinkling it with sugar does NOT give the souffle something to cling to as it rises, says McGee. Stop saying this in my French pastry classes.

Many giants in the industry lend their expertise, demonstrating techniques you've likely heard of but never seen - like popping marshmallows into liquid nitrogen, then straight into the mouth; carbonating cocktails; using gelation to make olive oil gummies. Sous-vide tricks. Explained!

For an easy overview to fire your interest, here are my takeaways, starting with the first week.

Week 1: 

Heavy on the history of food science, with a good anecdote about German chemist  Justus von Liebig, who accidentally changed the way the world cooked steak. He believed the juices mattered more than the meat fibers, deciding one must cauterize the steak with high heat to seal in the juices. Even the French went along with it; today we take a much gentler view of how to treat both fibers and juices to avoid shoe leather.

You'll hear of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford; he invented the modern oven. There's the turn of the century Poison Squad - tasked with eating some of the most commonly used food additives to study the effects. (One wonders if they had T-shirts with the words "None but the brave can eat the fare.") Members would eat increasing amounts of an additive, tracking the impact on their bodies until they started to get sick. Read more in the Esquire article The Poison Squad: An Incredible History.

You'll learn how new thoughts and ideas developed - from how to finish sauces with meat extracts to the first electric blender. You'll take the journey from cooking via the bounty of nature to Adria's bounty of the imagination.

You'll mull the first Equation of the Week (in a collection of 10 equations): 1 mole = 6.022 x 10²³ molecules.

Each week, you'll discover a new equation that typifies the main concepts presented, and you'll work through problems using that equation. There are mini quizzes, weekly homework problems and labs. No tests. Memorize that.

Number of pages of notes I took in the first week: 22 
(awright, so I don't know a molar mass from a molecule).

Next up: Energy, temperature and heat in Week 2.

Chocolate Molten Lava Cake

Running wild on a suggestion that I might learn something in the Harvard online course Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science, I took the plunge. Let's save a discussion of how it's going for another post. Just know this: There's chocolate about halfway through the 10-week course. This is a soothing reward for all the physics and math you'll go through (and forgot the moment you took the SAT).

Molten Chocolate Lava Cake started out as a goof when a chef underbaked it and served it anyway. This launched a taste for firmness on the outside and gooey richness on the inside. Trouble is, many of us manage to bake the cake all the way through - as a cake should be - and that disappoints the guests, who want to slice in and release the lava. These cakes are often baked in small ramekins and placed in a 350-degree oven for some mysterious amount of time that nobody understands (remember, it was a MISTAKE when it first happened). The cakes are removed from the ramekins presumably set, inverted and whacked with whipped cream, ice cream, fresh raspberries, what have you.

I've taught the recipe before for Sur La Table and blanched at the results - fully cooked through in under 8 minutes, merde. Imagine my glee in getting this cake as a lab assignment in which we take the cake's temperature at 3-minute intervals to learn about how heat transfers, or diffuses, through the batter. In the above image, notice how the slice taken at the blue pansy is baked solid through at 30 minutes. The slice at the bottom was at 18 minutes; the 15-minute slice could not be sliced, it was so gooey. See the slice in the middle, just left of the pansy? That's perfection at 21 minutes.

Here's how to hit that mark. Use a hot water bath, just as you would for creme brulee or other custards where you want to slow down the outside cooking to give heat time to diffuse inward. In a boiling water bath, the temperature around the cake batter is 212 instead of 350 like the oven. This gives you much more control and more time to achieve what you want - a set exterior and a gooey interior. Do it like this, from the Harvard class.

Molten Chocolate Lava Cake

120g dark chocolate, chopped

8 Tbsp butter (107g)

120g sugar

5 large eggs (275g)

60g flour

0.5g salt (pinch) 

Preheat oven to 350F. Boil some water for adding to a baking pan large enough to hold 6 ramekins 4 ounces in size.

Melt chocolate chips and butter in a small pot on low heat, stirring, until melted. Allow to cool slightly. In a separate medium bowl, whisk sugar and eggs together. Slowly whisk in chocolate mixture.

In another bowl, place flour and salt, stir to combine, then mix into the wet ingredients. Whisk a bit to remove any flour clumps.

Place the ramekins in a baking dish and pour batter evenly across each ramekin (at least 1 inch high).

Pour boiling water around the cups until about 1/2-inch deep, being careful not to splash any into the ramekins.

Bake. At 21-24 minutes you should still have a molten center but a good baked cake around it.

I ate the rest of the test results. End of story.

Canele Je t'aime

Canele de Bordeaux

This is a story of beauty and the beeswax. There is a happy ending.

It's all about the Canele de Bordeaux, a little cake originating from the French city of that name. Caneles are available throughout France but in Dallas, we know of only one bakery offering them, the boulangerie Village Baking Co.

The canele is rare and fabulous (like creme brulee once was), a combination of caramelized exterior with a soft, almost custardy interior. There's a bit of something more on the outside that you can't quite name.

Many stories involving nuns, thefts of flour along the waterfront and other mysteries surround the canele, and Paula Wolfert has those tales to tell. Let's just say whenever French patissiers form a confrérie (brotherhood) to protect a product, it's important news. The confrérie establishes standards to protect the tradition, in this case, for the canele.

Even before the first bite, you notice the shape - it's small, circular like a Doric column and fluted. It has a little indentation on top, which offers room for a good apricot jam, a dollop of pastry cream or a single cherry.

To make it, you need a canele mold.

These can range from the pricey $8 mold to the eye-popping $25 copper version from Amazon. (Silicone molds are out there, with varying degrees of performance vs. the metal molds.)

Next, you need a method that has worked out all the issues of timing and temperature. The canele method from Chez Pim performs deliciously well. Pictures and directions carefully walk you through the key steps.

That crunchy but elusive exterior ingredient comes from beeswax. In a 1-1 ratio, a bit of edible beeswax gets melted with butter and coats the mold's interior. Chez Pim shows you what happens if you don't use it. This baker found beeswax essential for the taste and texture, giving a hint of honey essence. Find beeswax wherever honey is sold at farmers' markets.

Tip from the beekeeper: Freeze your beeswax. When ready to use, place in a plastic bag and hit it with a hammer; it will splinter for easy melting, better than trying to cut it up.

We had a silicone mold and one Canele Bordelais Mold ("Bordelais" meaning "of Bordeaux"), so we tried the batter in each type. Result? We rushed out to buy the rest of the Sur La Table metal molds. The silicone mold was floppy, so it didn't sit straight on the rack when in the oven. The fluted edges weren't clean and sharp, the uneven distribution of heat left the interior sagging once out of the mold (leaning tower of pisa) and worst of all, some of the batter spilled onto the surface of the silicone and quickly burned there. We have not been able to clean off the residue. We'll stick to metal.

Notes: At a small dinner, we served the caneles with a dollop of pastry cream and handed out some caramel sauce. The hostess brought out gelato and voila, magic. The leftovers were frozen and are holding up well, at least for a week. For the batter, we chose Grand Marnier over rum. Otherwise, we followed the Chez Pim method and will do it again and again. Plan ahead if making for an event. The batter must rest about 48 hours in the fridge.

Canele de Bordeaux makes the treat tray for the dinner with the boss (see previous posts), because it soars on all levels. It's portable. It fits in the hand. It's lovely to look at and beautiful when tasted, not overly cloyingly sweet like that other character, The Cronut. 

It's rare and it's fabulous.

After all, it has its own brotherhood keeping watch.

Be Holed, the Cronut

Lemon Glazed and Cinnamon Sugar Croissant-Based Doughnuts

Last post, we looked at must-have goodies for a treat tray to take to El Jefe's house. There were chocolate chip cookies and fudgy finds, brownies, favorites and sure bets.

Then I got greedy and started messing around, for that is what happens if you go for the Cronut, butter and sugar go everywhere. My first inkling of this croissant-doughnut breakout star came from the British - who wondered (with longing) if the New York sensation of Dominique Ansel Bakery would cross the pond. You can read about it in The Guardian.

I checked with the talented and gifted Ellen Colon-Lugo, who knows her NYC from top to bottom, to see if she had heard of the new rage in town. Her European interns at Ellen Christine Millinery have joined the long line at the bakery ever since, hoping for a capture.  Like The Guardian's reporter I wondered, could you make a Cronut at home, and could you do it well enough for the boss?

The answer is yes, but.

To the question "would you make it again" the answer is no, but.

The real deal is a proprietary pastry for Chef Ansel and as such is a trade secret. The rest of us are just attempting a knock-off, and if you want to, the method I followed is from the KitchenSurfing blog. Please know going in that you can achieve a delicious combination of crunchy exterior and creamy, layered interior with a sugary glaze that seals the deal. Yes, you can make it, but should you?

My "yes, but" answer means that if you follow KitchenSurfing's method, you will get a show-stopping pastry that comes close to the superstar. (Let me know how the croissant dough works out; I used my own batch, long ago embraced from Gayle's Bakery in Capitola, California.)

That said . . .

My "no, but" answer is tied to three small points. The Cronut is 1. rolled in sugar; 2. filled with cream; and 3. topped with glaze (quoting from the bakery here). In short, if you make it, you daren't eat it.

Remember, it starts as croissant dough. Butter, butter everywhere.

Then it is deep-fried, sugared, creamed and glazed. Yes, I did eat it and certainly, it was magnificent. The richest indulgence ever. It is also a guilt-inducing madness of artistic genius and a marketing marvel, too. There isn't a person I've met who hasn't heard of the Cronut.

No I won't make it again, but it is a wowza.

Awright so if you're going to do it, I did learn a thing or two.

1. KitchenSurfing suggests you cut two circles (and two smaller circles out of the middle), then stack the two together. The dough rose just fine, but once it hit the hot oil, the top piece started to fry away from the bottom piece, that is, sort of topple over, lopsided. I could see it would never stack attractively, so I separated the two while they were still in the oil, and continued frying them as if they were doughnuts. As you see in the photo, they look like doughnuts, but that's OK because do you really want to put a pastry the height of two doughnuts in your mouth?

2. The Ansel Bakery uses grapeseed oil for frying, but I went with good old canola. Grapeseed is expensive, and this was only a test run, n'est-ce pas?

3. KitchenSurfing called for rolling the fried rings in a sugar/cinnamon combo, but it made them very sweet (and recall, there was still a glaze to come). I preferred the plain version.

4. KS also used a chocolate glaze, but that seemed in theory just too rich, so I used a lemon glaze from Heartbreak Recovery Kitchen. A hint of acid always helps sell the sugar. We're in the business of selling sugar, so a little acid is a must. (That's what lemon juice, buttermilk, sour cream and vinegar do). Jacquy Pfeiffer of the French Pastry School in Chicago told me that. He would know.

5. The Cronut's shelf life is short and does not include the refrigerator, so it will not make it on the treat tray.

Now the Canele de Bordeaux on the other hand . . . next time I give it the glory.

If You Give a Boss a Cookie

Chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, coconut macarons, Pave Montmartre almond cake

Peanutty blondies with fudge icing, brownies, french chocolate macarons with raspberry buttercream

We're invited for dinner with the boss. To the eternal question "What Can I Bring" he replied, "BYOB, but if you want to do pastry, sure."

We live in Dante's Inferno - better known as the month of August in Texas. Most desserts have no chance of making it from my house to the party without melting, sweltering or falling face down on hot pavement. Rather than sweat this assignment, I'll turn to the experts in cookies and brownies and come up with a Treat Tray. Good plan.

These recipes deliver in ways that delight a crowd.

Find David Leite's article "The Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie" in The New York Times, then try his recipe, adapted from "Mr. Chocolate" Jacques Torres. Right now I have a big batch of this dough "aging" overnight in the fridge. This cookie dough is so good, you could save it in the freezer for those times when friends need immediate solace. (I once soothed a co-worker with a log of cookie dough at the office. We hid in a closet and ate it.)

Dorie Greenspan shares her "Salted Butter Breakups," and thank goodness. This unusual cookie is crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside and attractively scored with cross hatches made by a fork. It's meant to be rolled out large and served in one giant piece for the table, allowing guests to break off what they want. For my purposes, I might precut it into diamond shapes so they fit on the tray.

Another Greenspan gem is the Peanuttiest Blondie from her book "Baking From My Home to Yours." A blondie makes a good visual counterpoint to the ubiquitous chocolate version, so try this nutty recipe loaded with peanut butter, nuts and chocolate chips. I added 1/2 teaspoon of cardamom after generously adding peanut butter, which left the dough too much of a good thing. Cardamom and peanut butter, make a note.

Speaking of brownies, Smitten Kitchen has a wonderful version The Huffington Post called "the only brownie recipe you'll ever need." No more fussing with how much and what kind of chocolate makes the best brownie - this recipe uses Dutch Process cocoa powder. My DP cocoa of choice is the E. Guittard Cocoa Rouge.  I took this brownie to Iowa for the annual Ragbrai bike ride across the state. I needed more than I brought. It disappeared faster than a certain bike team riding with a certain former Tour de France winner. The brownie is a champion.

Over on the Heartbreak Recovery Kitchen site, Jeanne Ambrose has a "Quick Salted Caramel Fudge" that's a great answer to a day of too many meetings. It's no-bake, it's fast, it's good for the soul. If you don't have Dulce de Leche for the top coat, may I suggest the caramel sauce at Epicurious.com?

By the way, have you noticed how I love to mention Jeanne, who talks about David Leite, who talks about Dorie Greenspan, who knows Ruth Reichl? When you find what you like, it's natural to share what you love in this sweet world. My fantasy birthday party would include all of them, the good folks from King Arthur Flour (Jeffrey Hamelman, this means you!) and Kathleen Flinn, the one who wrote "The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry." Why not Jacques Torres himself? Feel free to tell me who else should be there.

Speaking of Reichl, there is a chance I'll go overboard with the treat tray concept and spin the ice cream in Reichl's post on the classic American sundae. The vanilla ice cream and the fudge sauce are the stuff of childhood happy faces. This could truly impress the boss' two children.

Finally in thinking about treats, I scribbled these coconut macaroons from a magazine page found floating around in a salon. They remind me of what macaroons used to be before French fashion took over and we all learned how to make the shells and buttercreams of a fancier dessert. I like that little twist with the lime. I recently interviewed the winner of a cookie contest. She adds gin to hers.

Lime Coconut Macaroons

2 large egg whites

¼ cup sugar

1 tablespoon grated lime zest

¼ tsp kosher salt

7 ounces coconut (4 cups)

Preheat oven to 325.

Whisk egg whites and sugar in a large bowl to combine until frothy. Whisk in lime zest and salt, add coconut, fold to coat. Drop by tablespoons on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake 18-22 minutes, rotating halfway through.

Store in airtight container at room temp. They freeze beautifully.

Did I say finally? For visual appeal, let's add on. It's for the boss, after all.

Strassburger Cookies
(adapted from a final exam at Le Cordon Bleu)

Unsalted butter, room temp          6 oz

Powdered sugar                                4 oz

Eggs                                                    1 each

Yolks                                                   1 each

Vanilla extract                                   ½ tsp

Cake flour                                          10 oz

Cardamom                                         ½ tsp

Raspberry jam (or other for finishing)

Preheat oven: 360

           

1.     In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter, powdered sugar and cardamom until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.

2.     Add egg and yolk, one at a time, mixing between each to incorporate. Add vanilla and continue mixing.

3.     Add cake flour and mix until incorporated and all flour is worked in, but don’t overmix.

4.     Fill piping bag fitted with star tip, pipe out cookies in figure eight shapes onto baking sheets lined with parchment.

5.     In separate piping bag, add raspberry jam, then pipe in two places in the middle of the figure eight shape.

6.     Bake 3 minutes, rotate pan, bake 3 more minutes or until edges just begin to brown. Remove to a cooling rack.

Eye on the Pie of Iowa

A homemade pie of blueberries and gooseberries, Eastern Iowa

Pie is out there. That's the good news. Could there be any bad news? Well, yes.

In a recent journey through Iowa during Ragbrai, the annual bike ride across the Hawkeye State, many pies were sighted. Some were tried. Few measured up.

So let's get into this. If the "eyes eat first," as the saying goes, overall crust execution is key, whether selling in a bakery or along a bike route.

Is the pie crust thick, thin, attractively crimped? How's the score on top? What's the overall effect? Let's examine the "Blue Goose" pie in the photo above. The crimped edge is heavy compared with the thin top crust. During baking, the edge broke away from the top. The good scoring of a swirl pattern with tiny fork cross hatches gets lost under the juice spilling over it. That suggests this fruit pie of blueberries and gooseberries is not thickened enough. The vendor heard my "hmmm," and quickly admitted the interior was runny, but she did add "lots of flour."

I forked over the $13 for Blue Goose because I had to taste that blue and goo berry combo.

I wanted to tell her to read the "Thickening of Fruit Pies" entry on King Arthur Flour's blog, but I held my tongue. Thickening with flour is old school. Cornstarch is a better choice, as is Clearjel, made from waxy maize. (Learn more about Clearjel here.) Read the KAF blog entry for a comparison of fruit pie thickeners.

The Blue Goose crust seems to be from the Crisco Generation - I'd suggest heave-hoeing the shortening and going with unsalted butter for better flavor. The interior was a good blend of tart and sweet - not too overpowering in either direction, but it was also the consistency of soup. Berries should not float in their own juices.

The Blue Goose met a bad end in a gas station. The riders in our camp would have none of it. This is a shame, because I'm sure it was made with love. There is no shortage of love in Iowa.

In Western Iowa, women from a Methodist Church had the right idea.

This raspberry pie had a delicate, well-rolled-out top layer, was caramelized nicely, and had diminutive crimped edges (nobody eats those thick crimped edges; they're always left behind). The interior was all berry, though it appears a bit runny in the photo. This pie showcased the fresh raspberries, not the pie crust, with satisfying results. The women had an irresistible marketing edge, too. One of them had a tremendous voice. Her bleating of "peeeaaach pie" in singsong auctioneer style drew me across a crowded street of bike riders. The local TV station stuck a microphone under her chin to catch the delivery.

At the beginning of Ragbrai, we saw these offerings.

They might have been delicious - they just looked damaged, or handled roughly, so we passed. As Carl Sagan said it, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Handle with care.

We wish we could go back to Eldon, Iowa, and the American Gothic House to meet Beth Howard, known as "The Pie Lady." Her Shaker Lemon Pie at theworldneedsmorepie.com looks just like what we wanted - thick, fruity interior, light hand on top with the crust.

Word of mouth.

Before entering Iowa, we visited one of those bakery restaurants in Nebraska where the menu is deep, the pastry case extensive and the shelves stacked with fresh bread. Our two cents? Offer less and do it better. More does not make better. Better is better. The pie prop in the following photo has a better lattice top than what we saw.

Piece out.

A fine pie prop made of balloons, Minden, Iowa

Jammin' With Apricots

If you go to the store for kale and see fresh apricots, this is a sign. Grab a handful (gently) and move out.

Fragrant and elegant in their way, they make a wonderful jam if you have two days with nothing to do. We teach an Apricot and Ginger Jam in the Sur La Table kitchen. Thing is, who can wait for these beauties to macerate overnight when they look so eager to be transformed right away? Further driving the sense of urgency one feels, they don't last long in stores. One day they're here, the next, zoot! Gone.

Ruth Reichl, who needs no introduction but her credentials are here, has a "do it now" apricot jam she calls "Dangerously Delicious" that is not only just what you need, it's also simple to do and avoids all the hot water bath tools and tribulations needed for long-term storage of your homemade jam.

When I teach canning, I tell the class that we learn the safe way to preserve food as a foundation - but that doesn't mean you have to fill your stockpot with water and heat up your kitchen when across the country we're all just hanging on by our margaritas in the prevailing swelter that is summer 2013.

No, you can make a jam, chutney, compote or marmalade without the hot water bath trial by fire if you'll just store your goods in the fridge. See, canning is easier than you thought. Forget the hot water and just get to the good recipe. And that's Reichl's jam, which I stirred up today.

You must have it. Please at your convenience head over to "Dangerously Delicious Jam."

I'll understand if you hang out at her blog - that's what I do. My only tweak on the jam was, I used an immersion blender at the end. Her recipe calls for half sections of apricots (no chopping!), but that can leave pieces too big for the canning jar. If you don't want to mess with finding a good vanilla bean, I recommend the Nielsen-Massey vanilla bean paste. Use one tablespoon instead of the bean, and add it at the end of cooking, after the jam is off the stove.

Here's another lesson in "just do it," this time with a few good veggies. Texas Chef Stephan Pyles has a Tomatillo-Jalapeno Chutney in the same vein as Reichl's - meaning, stir it up, serve it up and store the rest in the fridge if it'll last that long. I went through two Mason jars over July Fourth weekend, so I had to replenish. After the jammin' with apricots, I jumped into tomatillo production.

This tangy condiment goes on everything - grilled hot dogs, salads, eggs quite naturally. At his former Routh Street Cafe, Pyles served it with grilled quail and warm goat cheese, but it goes with any game dish and is not limited to game day, either. I'm not sure why his cookbook version is different from the recipe published by The New York Times, which also tweaked the spelling of his name - it is Stephan, after all. (What would Reichl make of that? She was The Dining Critic of The Times with a brilliant career. Read her books, read her books.)

I feel certain you'll be just fine following the recipe in The Times, but go ahead and add in the 1 clove of garlic, minced, and the 1 tablespoon of chopped cilantro mentioned in Pyles' cookbook New Texas Cuisine because after all why wouldn't you use garlic and cilantro when tomatillos and jalapenos are present? This is New Texas Cuisine, ya'll. The book also makes clear he's recommending 2 small red bell peppers; the Times version leaves open to interpretation what kind of red pepper it is.

There now. Go get some glass jars with lids and stir things up.

What's In Your Carry-On?

Recently there was a matter involving my hand luggage at LaGuardia security.

"Is this your bag? Please step over here." I had already prepared myself mentally that no one - certainly not a TSA agent (who it turns out loves to bake) - could resist looking through my hunter/gatherer bag. Here then is the first installment of "What's In Your Carry-On?" or what I carry with great care.

First up? Fox Run's 6 bowl covers set. Why? Assorted sizes fit everything from 3-9 inches. They're washable, portable, colorful and remind me of shower caps for picnic foods - a vague nod to Kramer making salad in his shower.

Seen it in Dallas? No

Found It: Brown and Roberts Hardware, 182 Main St, Brattleboro, Vermont
(802) 257-4566
acehardware.com

I Heard: This folksy hardware store is so good, it beat Home Depot, which pulled out of Brattleboro.

Almost made it out of Vermont Kitchen Supply before spotting this gem at the register. The store says it's the No. 1 product they sell. Called the Lily Pad Silicone Lid, you have to see it in action. The lid seals tight on all smooth rims - from stainless bowls to ceramics and plastics. You can lift the lid by its pink stem and it will not release the bowl, but it peels off easily after use. Think of it as a splatter guard in the microwave, for food storage in the fridge or freezer, and as a way to keep food warm on the table. An alternate to plastic wrap. Like the shower caps for bowls, it works for a picnic, too. The maker is Charles Viancin Group. A little extra: A simple design on the back of the package shows how the lily pad shape inspired the lid. Good touch.

Seen it in Dallas? Nope

Found It: Vermont Kitchen Supply
4712 Main St. Manchester Center, Vermont
(802) 362-0111
http://vermontkitchensupply.com

I heard: Tongue-clucking from friends, who couldn't believe I didn't show them the lid until we got to their house in Newfane. They wanted the lid, too.

I wasn't in the market for a new scale but my Escali is nearing its end and I WILL be in the market soon. I found this high-precision mini Escali version at King Arthur Flour. It only measures up to 18 ounces so I waffled on it. It did make my shopping basket for a once-around the store, then I set it back down in the section where they highlight the products they love to use in the classes taught there. I paid for my other must-haves, had a coffee outside, then sidled back in and grabbed it. You know that feeling of regret even before you've left the premises - that you'll fly home several states away and never see this product again? I couldn't risk it. I imagined myself using two scales at a time - the bigger one for the flours and the smaller one for the spices. The mini stole my heart. After all, this mini can also weigh postage!

Seen it in Dallas? Never

Found It: King Arthur Flour
135 US Route 5 South
Norwich, Vermont
(802) 649-3361
http://www.kingarthurflour.com

I've seen a chocolate thermometer in use but never knew where it came from. Why did I want it? Because it's out there! It helps you temper chocolate (the process of warming, cooling and rewarming couverture chocolate). Although a digital thermometer can do that, I like the idea of being able to see at a glance what range the chocolate's in - whether it's getting hotter or cooler. The thermometer is made of durable laboratory glass and has a non-mercuric column, whew! It comes with a yellow carrying case to keep it safe. Not a big investment, it was on sale, too.

Seen it in Dallas? Not anywhere

Found It: King Arthur Flour

Also at King Arthur and blissfully marked down was the 9-piece Fondant Punch Set from Fox Run. I had looked all over Vermont for anything that could make small, attractive holes and designs in pie dough, having succumbed to the lure of the book "Pie Pops" and its excellent cover photography (but this is for another story). Honestly, it irks my craw when something looks adorable and doable and you buy the book and then wham! It tells you they've used "a variety of novelty cookie cutters to achieve fun and interesting shapes," and if you'll just go on some British website for ideas and so on and so on. I fell for it and found nothing in the realm of outstanding online, but just to show there's no hard feelings, the author of Pie Pops is Carol Hilker and her food blog is YeastConfection.com, if you'd like to read on. The fondant punch set solves my problem. See this is what I love about King
Arthur.

In a ditch or in a pinch, they can pull you through.

Seen it in Dallas? I wish

Found it: King Arthur Flour

Flower to Flour: A Beautiful Friendship

What the mind imagines, the hands can make.

These beautiful adornments are an inspirational palette no pastry chef can resist. In fact, Warren Brand of the family owned and operated M. &S. Schmalberg company, tucked 7 floors above West 36th Street in the Fashion District, tells me I am not the first chef to peruse the showroom and warehouse of gorgeous custom flowers for ideas. It seems a master builder of wedding cakes has been here before me, touching and feeling the possibilities. His mind did surely reel. It's that good - like landing in the rainbow of Oz.

Schmalberg is the largest direct manufacturer of custom silk fabric flower pins in the U.S. and has adorned the apparel, millinery, accessory and bridal industries since 1919. How many bakeries can match those years?

I found Schmalberg thanks to a tip from master milliner Ellen Colon-Lugo, the "Hattie Golightly" of Manhattan who is a one-woman Broadway show in her own right. She shares the view that there's a wonderful connection between hats, flowers and pastry - all seek to catch the eye and broaden the smile. If "the eyes eat first" in pastry, as they say, the same applies for hats and how the world receives them. The fashion press has vetted Ellen's mastery of the exquisite more times than the Queen has matched her handbag and shoes. Ellen knows. Only a fool would squander one of her tips. 

And so I went, heart pounding, and found myself in a room like this.

And this.

And this.

Staff member Pam met me at the door and welcomed me into this carousel of color, as Disney used to says about the world. She introduced me to Warren, who showed me how the fabrics are stretched, cut and assembled, right there by talented hands. At one time 100 companies were doing this work, he says, but no more. There were shelves upon shelves that held heavy molds of flower shapes, which could have been from the turn of the century for all I know. If they could only talk - if they could be used for chocolate and fondant work - if only there was time to sit still and learn from Warren and his crew.

It seemed an impossible task to make a choice, but people were waiting for me in Herald Square and the skies were threatening to open up, and so my mind reeled. I couldn't leave without taking some of the beauty with me. Thank goodness Pam could steer me through displays and boxes that towered to the ceiling, or I'd still be there.

Here's the real beauty. You can buy the flowers, too. There's no secret password, as this is not Hernando's Hideaway and you don't have to be a suit from Neiman's to step inside.

Seek out Schmalberg on your own in New York, that wonderful town, for a taste of the divine.

I give it 4 creme brulees and 4 top hats, my highest rating.

(And by the way, did I mention they'll give you the name of the feather maker for Broadway?)

M. & S. Schmalberg
242 W 36th St. 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10018
212-244-2090

Food Revolution Day: Biscuits Delivered

The hard part was over. I'd figured out what to make for Food Revolution Day, Jamie Oliver's  global day of action to help keep cooking skills alive. I'd made the biscuits - a life skill if there ever was one, passed down by hand through the generations.

Now, where to take the biscuits? My friend Betty would be an excellent prospect. She's the tallest member of a group of women I call "The Beautifuls." Each week they pull on their tap shoes and dance together in a small studio. They're perfectly coiffed, smartly dressed and always accessorize - the rest of us are ragamuffins in comparison. Did I mention they're from The Greatest Generation? Some of their early dance steps were beside visiting soldiers during World War II. They know how to live. They cherish the moments that bloom as memories.

Betty had missed a few classes, so what better excuse than to ring her doorbell, hand over the biscuits and check on her? Remember my goal to "think small" in the previous post? Baking for just one person has a power all its own. Very strong magic.

Hoping to amuse Betty, I dressed like a mom from the 1950s, baked Dorie Greenspan's Saint-Germain-des-Pres Onion Biscuits from her cookbook "Around My French Table" (and in case she needed some chocolate, also the Korova cookies from Greenspan's book "Paris Sweets."). I had lemon curd on hand, I had strawberry rhubarb jam, so those went into a basket, too. Once I got going, I just wanted to share it all. And that was the point of Food Revolution Day: Cook it, share it, live it.

To my delight, Betty and her husband, Bill, were at home. They placed the Korova cookie on a stunning china saucer, which sat on a silver tray, covered with white linen.

They poured out tea and with it, their stories.

I've never felt so regal, so rewarded.

Food Revolution Day: A Beautiful Biscuit

A lifelong passion for a well-rounded biscuit

Think small.

Getting involved in Food Revolution Day is as easy as a biscuit and as significant as salt of the Earth. British chef and media personality Jamie Oliver started the food initiative in 2012 as a global day of action to help keep good cooking skills alive. This year's theme is to choose a food, cook it and share it. That can be as simple as handing a dish to a neighbor or teaching a class on how to make it.

Award-winning cookbook author and Beurre & Sel creator Dorie Greenspan tweeted Oliver's idea and encouraged her "French Fridays With Dorie" group to get involved. If they needed a starting point (and don't we all), they could choose a recipe from her cookbook "Around My French Table," and go from there. That's where I jumped in. It took some noodling and stirring about in my own head, but I managed to think small and remember her onion biscuits.

(When we think too big, we talk ourselves out of action, concocting a million excuses why we don't have the time, resources and French finishing salt to get the job done. Thinking small is the key to hopping forward, a way to participate that feels doable.)

Biscuits are a natural for me; I was raised on them. Once my mother found out we learned biscuits in home ec, I had to make them every Sunday. My first efforts were flat, lifeless disks and often shaped like the bell or star cookie cutters we had. She persisted, and I handled the dough enough times (and used a champagne glass to cut the shapes) so that we got to know each other better - the biscuits and me, that is.

Mom was adamant on sticking with it: If you could make a good biscuit, you could get a husband, she said. We'll discuss that later.

Roll forward to these days. Well, a year ago. While prowling the bookshelf of my friend Jeanne Ambrose (she is editor of Taste of Home magazine and the author of Heartbreak Recovery Kitchen), I found Greenspan's cookbook and her recipe for Saint-Germain-des-Pres Onion Biscuits. I scribbled the recipe on the back of a ukulele song sheet (the only paper at hand) and vowed to try the biscuits. Once I did, I forever turned my back on the old buttermilks. I've stirred many versions over the years - from angel biscuits leavened with yeast to Southern style rounds dipped in bacon fat - even topped biscuits with red beets for Better Homes and Gardens. There is something about Greenspan's onion version - sweet, salty, softly oniony, fluffy - that hits all the marks of a comforting experience. And then there is the ease of it.

Food Revolution Day gives me a great excuse to make biscuits, but whom to share the biscuit with?

The story continues today, the actual Food Revolution Day, but for now . . . go stir things up.

You have time.