Going Retro With the Ring Ding

In which I find inspiration from Dorie Greenspan's chocolate thyme cake . . . and the original Hostess Ring Ding.

Before starting this story, I ate two spoons of frozen chocolate frosting, one of those Babybel cheese balls and a slurp of yesterday's coffee, washed down with lemonade. That's sugar, cheese, caffeine and sugar. There might have been a leftover sourdough pancake in there, too. Finally, a little smoky Lapsang Souchong tea got me going.

I'm in a phase where I just think Dorie Greenspan has everything right. She's written 10 cookbooks and won six James Beard and IACP awards for them, including Cookbook of the Year. She has a New York Times Bestseller in her book "Around My French Table." She's co-authored books with Pierre Hermé, the king of Parisian pastry, and scribed one of my favorite cookbooks, "Baking With Julia," for Julia Child. Mon incredible dieu.

Naturally I take my cues from the top shelf - if you must steal for inspiration, steal from the best. From her book "Paris Sweets," I found a recipe for a cake with chocolate and thyme. That intrigued me, because unusual flavor combinations just fascinate the tongue, don't you think? I never need an excuse to fling flower in the kitchen, I just storm in there and blaze a trail in the quest to discover what works in wondrous ways that never cease. If she's the pie piper, I'm following along.

My Greenspan phase is directly tied to the fact that as a result of her years of experience in New York, Connecticut, Paris and beyond (including her Beurre & Sel emporium in Manhattan and online), she's highly adept at giving us recipes that work, taste fabulous and never talk in language as if they were intended for a room full of doctoral candidates in molecular science.

If she says chocolate and thyme go together, then they do and I want to know what it's like. I didn't make the leap to try, though, until I  flipped through a copy of "The Art and Soul of Baking" and its recipe for Retro Ringers - a twist on the classic Hostess Ring Ding (or Ding Dong, read here to straighten out the confusion).

This book's yeah, yeah recipe for the cake's cream filling and devil's food cake looked so-so, but then it hit me: Use the Greenspan chocolate thyme cake to make the Ring Ding shape. I already had in my possession a chocolate frosting (see mention of taste-testing above), but I used the chocolate cake, thyme syrup and thyme cream from Greenspan's book to make a new version of the Retro Ringer.

Make the cake in an 8-inch square pan, then use round cookie cutters to make the shapes and go from there. Choose your own berries and edible flowers. Find Dorie on Facebook and tell her about it. Don't be shy.

To dare is human.

Flan Fellowship

Make new friends, and keep the old. One is silver and the other has gold.

Gold, in this story, is a luscious batch of flan.

Our dear friend Sara is a talented mixologist who's always in demand for the party spirits. Recently she showed us even stronger magic. During our family funeral reception, she brought her grandmother's Cuban flan. Sweet, creamy, cut into perfect single servings, it was a master stroke and a crowd favorite. There was nothing for it but to ask her to do a cooking class at Singing Wheat Kitchen.

She not only brought the flan ingredients, she brought the Top Shelf margaritas, too - what a grand girl! We popped a few folding chairs just behind the stove and watched her whisk the brilliance.

Remember the lesson of Sara's gift: As you gather with friends and share something marvelous, write down where you are and who you're with. Food connects us with our memories. A recipe without a story lacks the spirit of the thing, the motivation, the intention, the essence of how you felt when you first discovered it.

Sara loves this flan because her grandmother handed it down to her. She remembers her grandmother's cooking talent extended only to desserts. "She was a beautiful, wonderful woman who doted on us and shared with us the joys of the simple, sweet bites of life," Sara says. 

That's what you have to capture and preserve, the stories in addition to the ingredients. This idea is the cornerstone of author Kathleen Flinn's next book, a multi-generational memoir with recipes. She wrote "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry" about attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and it made me feel better about my experience with the Dallas branch. She told what it was like to withstand the world's most famous cooking school and ended every chapter with a recipe. 

Recipes tell a story, and if they don't, they're not as powerful as they could be. Just ask the mixologist.

By good fortune, here is her marvelous flan.

Cuban Flan Recipe by Sara S. Hewitt

With this recipe, if you are going to make one, you might as well make two, so here goes:

                                             For One Flan               For Two Flans

Caramel Sauce:

Sugar                                          3/4 cups             1 ½ cups

Water                                          1/4 cup               1/2 cup

Flan Ingredients:

Evaporated milk                          1 cup                          2 cups

Sweetened Condensed Milk       1 14 oz. can                2 14 oz. cans

Well-beaten eggs                        5-6 large eggs           10-12 large eggs (Sara likes 10)

Vanilla Extract                     1 teaspoon                 2 teaspoons

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Place in the oven a 9x13 metal pan filled 1/3 full of water.

In a saucepan, heat the sugar and water over medium high heat until it becomes syrupy and a golden color (about 15 minutes). If you want a darker brown, let it heat longer. Have one or two bread loaf pans ready. Watch carefully and do not overheat because it will burn to black in a hurry. At high altitudes, really watch it! When the caramel sauce is where you want it, pour it into the loaf pan and run the hot caramel slightly up the edges to coat the four sides of the pan. The caramel sauce will be very hot so take care not to spill on your hands. Let the pan sit to cool and the caramel sauce will harden.

While you are waiting for your caramel sauce to get to the syrupy consistency, hand-whisk the remaining ingredients. Efficiency tip: When making two flans, I usually use just 1 12-ounce can of evaporated milk and top it off to 2 cups with whipping cream. More calories, but you don’t have leftover evaporated milk. Pour the mixture into the loaf pan(s) and then place in the preheated, water-filled 9 X 13 pan (water bath) in the oven. The loaf pan(s) should sit in the water. Add more water if too much has burned off.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes until set. DO NOT OVERCOOK! Let cool. Take an offset spatula and run it around the edges to make sure the flan will fall out easily. Cover the top of the loaf pan with the serving dish and quickly invert the loaf pan so that the flan slides out easily. Spoon out the extra caramel sauce onto the flan. Chill for at least 4 hours before serving.

Serves 12-16 depending on how thick you cut the slices. Serve “as is,” or you can garnish with fruit (blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries) and whipped cream.

There will be a hard candy crust on the bottom of your loaf pan(s). Pour hot water in the pan and let sit until the hard crust dissolves.

(To cut for party servings, make one long cut horizontally through the center of the loaf pan flan.  Then make short cuts vertically - the short side.)

A Pie for the Derby

One of my fine Derby plates, waiting to get crowned with a slice of pie

Once I interviewed for a job at the Louisville Courier-Journal. Only two weeks in the calendar were sacred and you couldn't take off, they said: Christmas Week - and Derby Week.

Horses and roses, juleps and hats, so much beauty in one majestic day. For a newspaper, that would be a lot to cover, so all hands had to be at the keys, not the gates.

I lived in Louisville once, so my heart sings when I think of the bugler and the call to the post, the singing of "My Old Kentucky Home" and all those hopeful jockeys. We can't all sit on Millionaire's Row at Churchill Downs, wearing the hat of our dreams, but we can mark the day with a party and a pie. And you should. The First Saturday in May is coming. The talented and regal milliner Ellen Christine is already crowning heads for this year's race, so it's not too soon to think ahead.

In the Louisville suburb of Prospect, there used to be a place called The Melrose Inn. This was the home of a legendary pie made for the Derby. Learn more about the pie and who's making it now here. Notice I don't call the pie by its name, because the name is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the state of Kentucky. Meaning? You may not publish a recipe and call it hmmmmm hmmmmm. Just ask Nestle and Bon Appetit; they've found out the bitter way. There are countless other names for the dessert, like Bluegrass Pie, Winner's Circle Pie and Pegasus Pie.

This pie is a rich combo of nuts, chocolate chips and various additional tweaks, because the original is a closely held family secret. Here then, is the pie I make for Derby Day.

Pie for My Derby Plates

1 no-roll, unbaked pie shell (recipe follows)

4 ounces of butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
3 eggs
1/2 cup corn syrup
pinch salt
1/4 cup bourbon
1 teaspoon vanilla
sprig of mint (optional)
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375

For the pie:

In a large bowl of a stand mixer (or using a hand mixer), cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add the flour and mix on low speed to incorporate. Add eggs, one at a time, mix well. Add corn syrup, salt, vanilla and bourbon (As an option, presoak the mint sprig in the bourbon, then remove before using). Fold in nuts.

Spread chocolate chips over the unbaked pie shell, then pour in filling. Bake about 40 minutes. The filling should look chewy, not runny. Allow pie to cool on a rack 30 minutes before serving. The pie is best served slightly warm. Top with a dollop of whipped cream.

Tip: The pie is so rich, it is best served in thin slices versus a traditional wedge.

No Roll Pie Crust:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 350

In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients, mix well. Use your fingers to press the dough into a 9-inch pie plate. If the recipe calls for an unbaked shell, bake 5 minutes, then remove and allow to cool before filling. If recipe calls for a baked shell, bake at 425 for 10 minutes.

The gift of granola

Homemade granola and a few springy flowers from friends

Continuing on the theme of what to give in times of grief, how about handmade granola? It's crunchy and portable, and blessed with good shelf life. It wraps up nicely and looks attractive. You can snack on it by the fire after playing your ukulele, add it to your breakfast yogurt or ice cream, make a good cookie out of it. Whatever path you choose, this gift is sure to bring a wink and a smile.

I made a batch for the other family in mourning - and found myself devouring the leftovers. When Ellen came by with her edible boutique of veggies, I ended up pressing my container of large-flake, unsweetened coconut in her hands and urging her to go make granola. (Selfishly, I did not give her the small-dice dried papaya from Whole Foods.)

The idea got started when my pal at Taste of Home Jeanne asked for a good granola recipe. This was on a weekend when she was playing around in her kitchen with whatever she had on hand, some pepitas, real maple syrup, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla - she's a terrific flavor-builder. I sent her the Coconut Granola Crunch from Diane Morgan's book Gifts Cooks Love. In its story about the book, The Dallas Morning News published the Coconut Granola Crunch recipe here.

Granola gives you so much room to play and interpret. I didn't feel like skinning hazelnuts hidden in my freezer - or opening every dry goods bin to find the flax seeds, so I left those out. Instead, I went with almonds and pecans for the nutty touches, and dried papayas, cranberries and raisins dark and golden. I meant to add dried apricot but upon opening the pouch for the first time, was alarmed at the dark contents hidden there (I've seen this before with organic dried apricots; something about the package seal failing).

The Gifts book says the granola will last for a month if stored at room temp in tightly sealed glass jars or cello bags.

It didn't last four days at my house. I gave some to Ellen as she departed. She said it didn't even make it to her house.

As I look through my copy of the book, you know what also jumps out?

Blueberry-Blackberry-Basil Margarita Puree - an adult slushee! Speaking for Dueling Margaritas, we cannot help but feel intrigued. This makes us feel better.

In praise of the edible bouquet

Texas celery, broccoli, radishes and beets from a dear friend

The next time you muse over whether to send flowers to a memorial service, think about this: Give a fresh bouquet of vegetables.

It's a brilliant gift that keeps on giving when transformed into maybe a celery soup, radish tea sandwiches, broccoli cheese casserole, dill pickles and beyond.

A week after the back-to-back funerals, my dear friend Ellen arrived, handing over her share of her co-op box. First she gave me a dozen eggs in various sizes and colors. Who gives eggs to a grieving family? Someone who knows an egg's versatility for breakfast, baking, deviling - and brownie/cookie/cake making. It surprised me, how much I wanted those eggs.

Then came the long, leafy green celery, the purple beets, the broccoli, fresh dill, red leaf lettuce and radishes. She also brought a Tuscan bean soup and artisan rye bread from The Village Baking Company. As I looked at the haul, I realized she had done exactly as I had suggested in earlier posts about food for grieving families: Bring out the soup, salad and bread. Don't forget the power of a good cookie. Ellen made snickerdoodles.

How clever she was to wait a week, when the floral bouquets had finally been removed, the thank-you notes had been mailed and there was little interest in grocery shopping. Actually, there was zero interest, for shopping involved decision-making, and that was hard. Even Julia Child was known to say "I hate making decisions about things."

Ellen had struck gold with her vegetable bouquet. This lovely gesture reminds me that if we could only crank back the clock to life on the farm, this is exactly what we would have received from the neighbors - good eggs, fresh produce and baked goods. Ellen's vegetables have dirt on them, real dirt! No wax, no weird twisty ties or bar codes.

Her edible bouquet is a tender mercy.