Donna Bell's Bake Shop

TWO THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

1. I hate, hate, hate this new fashion of preparing dessert that looks for all the world as though it has been dumped from the compost bucket or dropped on the floor, stepped on, swept into the dustpan, and dropped on a plate. Use as many tweezers, pastry bags, offset spatulas as you like, spend hours plating, but truth be told, it looks like compost. I don't want my cake ground up to resemble dirt or coffee grounds(and furthermore, I don't want coffee grounds IN my dessert), I don't want specks of frosting, dots of coulis, tiny squares of jello, itsy bitty bits of candied anything strewn across my plate in a decorative arch.  I want cake, not yesterday's compost.

2.  At sometime during every single day, NCIS is on my television, like right now. My cats love it. I can turn it on, and say, "I can name the killer in 22 seconds...because I have seen each and every one about 20 times...because anytime of the day or night, some channel is showing NCIS.

My bias is noted.

I got Donna Bell's Bake Shop for my birthday.  (Thank you Anne!)  It is the perfect baking book. Look at the cover.  Pauley Perrette is holding a cake. Yes, a cake. We know it is a cake because it has layers of cake, it has an a frosting on the layers, it has whole, recognizable fruit on the frosting. It is cake.  I like cake!  You will probably recognize Perrette as Abby Sciuto from NCIS. She started the bakery along with Darren Greenblatt and Matthew Sandusky. Perrette named her bakery after her mother, Donna Bell, who died of breast cancer in 2002.  Like me, her mother was from Alabama. Like me, Perrette's family moved around quite a bit, but even though she wasn't born there, she considers Alabama home.  

This cookbook is traditional, but don't for a minute think the recipes are ordinary. The book is filled with cakes and pies and cupcakes and bars and muffins and biscuits and cookies and they all look like what they are. Flip through the pages and you will exclaim, "That's a cupcake!" And you will be right though you might find that your cupcake has a homemade turtle topping of pecans, caramel, and chocolate!

There is a wonderful recipe for Lemon Bars, a very traditional and comforting dessert. But there are several great variations on your usual bar cookie, including this one.

Seasonal Magic Bars

Nonstick cooking spray
Shortbread crust

1 cup Reese's Pieces
3/4 cup shredded sweetened coconut
3/4 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1/4 cup white chocolate chips
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 c sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c evaporated milk

Heat the oven to 350F.  Line a 9-by-13-inch pan with aluminum foil, allowing enough foil to overlap the edges. Spray the foil with cooking spray. Place the Shortbread Crust into the prepared baking pan, making sure to distribute evenly.  Press down on the crumbs to form a crust. Bake until golden brown about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix together the Reese's Pieces, coconut, pecans, cranberries, white chocolate chips, and semisweet chocolate chips. Remove pan from the oven and immediately spread the chips mixture over crust. Mix the condensed milk and evaporated milk together in a small bowl or measuring cup. Drizzle evenly over the top. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool completely in pan. Grab the foil handles with both hands and lift the pastry out of the baking pan. Cut into 24 bars.then cut into bars.


Shortbread Crust

2 cup flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 cup (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Place the flour, sugar, and salt into a processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a couple of times to combine. Add the cold butter butter and pulse a few times until mixture resembles coarse meal. Be careful not to process too long or it will turn into dough.

Or, to make by hand, in a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt.  Add the cold butter pieces and quickly press between your fingertips to break the butter into the flour until it resembles coarse crumbs.

I don't exactly know why this recipe is "seasonal"  but it sure is good. I made it "seasonal" by replacing the Reese's Pieces with Cadbury Mini Eggs left over from Easter. Whip up a batch today and settle down in front of the television, I'm sure you can find NCIS showing no matter what time you indulge. 

Biscuits and American Cookies

All week Celia Sacks has been taunting me with lovely copies of cookbooks by Ambrose Heath.  Some I do have and, alas, some I don't.   It seems only fitting and proper that we feature our newest Ambrose Heath.  As you know, The Home Entertaining Series is one of my favorites. 

The Home Entertaining Series featured small, slim volumes on everything from banana recipes to growing and using herbs. They were published in London by Herbert Jenkins in the 1940's and 50's.  Like many an old-fashioned cookbook, there is very little in the way of directions; no tidy list of amounts, no exact baking times, just enough info to get one in trouble.

Today's entry is Biscuits and American Cookies.  In true British form, American Cookies are an after thought in this books.  There is one recipe given that cam be used for drop, rolled, sliced or squared cookies, the last being actually a bar cookie.  To this basic recipe there are about twenty additions to make that American cookie almond, chocolate, nut, lemon, and on and on.  Heath points out that Americans have a desire for filled cookies; a cookie achieved by placing a filling of some jam or mincemeat on one cookie and topping it with the other.

We do love this rather straight forward approach to baking.  What better to serve with a biscuit than a glass of wine.  Or should we say what better to serve with wine than a biscuit.

Wine Biscuits

Rub half an ounce of butter in half a pound of flour sieved whit a pinch of salt, and mix to a stiff paste with cream.  Roll out half an inch thick, cut into three-inch rounds, roll these out again wafer-thin, and bake them in a quick oven watching them carefully, as they need little more than just crisping.

We do long for a modern cookbook with gentle guidance instead of rigid numbers.  We want to cook something that needs, "little more than just crisping."

Treasured Recipes From The Charleston Cake Lady

It has been so dark and drear around here that we have tried to brighten up things by baking... OK by reading about baking.  Baby steps.

We pulled off the shelf our copy of Treasured Recipes From The Charleston Cake Lady.  It would seem that in the mid 1980's, Teresa Pregnall began baking and selling cakes from her kitchen.  20,000 cakes later she published a cookbook filled with cakes and other goodies.  We should have been terribly inspired but 20,000 cakes! We were just exhausted. 

There are pound cakes and chocolate cakes and spice cakes.  We were a bit surprised that the ubiquitous Red Velvet cake was no where to be found.  We moved on to brownies and finally settled on a popular Charleston treat, the Charleston Chew.  Pregnall points out that the editor quite innocently asked,"What exactly is a chew?"  It is one of those, "Where are you from?" kind of questions.  But an old Southern chew is basically a gooey cookie bar. 

Charleston Chews


4 large eggs
1 box (1 pound) dark brown sugar
2-1/2-cups self rising flour, sifted
1-teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1-cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Sifted confectioners' sugar for dusting


Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease a 13 x 9" pan.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs, brown sugar, flour, and vanilla extract until
well blended. Fold in the nuts.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden
brown on top. Sprinkle the chews with sifted confectioners' sugar. Cut into
squares when cool, and wait for the raves. 

Are we raving yet?  I must say, the sky looks a bit brighter...

The French Cookie Book

I ran across The French Cookie Book looking for cornmeal. Several people have made the recipe in this book for cornmeal cookies. I admit I am not a big "cookie" person. For me there is peanut butter and chocolate chip and peanut butter chocolate chunk and peanut butter blossoms and...well, you understand. French cookies are macaroons. Period. I asked my friend and fellow foodie Francophile, Anne, and she said basically the same thing -- French cookies? Really not something one thinks of off the top of ones tête.

Bruce Healy has thought about it a lot -- excessively, in fact. Healy is or was a theoretical physicist before he became consumed with pastry. His science background comes through in his exhaustive research of the French cookie. Combine the physicist with and actual baker in Paul Bugat and you have a cookie compendium of grand proportion.

According to Healy , and I am not one to argue with a theoretical physicist, these are very rare French cookies. They probably originated in the Bresse region of southern Burgundy. They are piped to resemble little ears of corn. Of course the cornmeal cookies would come from the South of Burgundy.

Cornmeal Cookies

1 3/4 ounces (50g), or 3 1/2 tablespoons, unsalted butter, softened

2 ounces (60 g0, or about 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

2 large egg yolks

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

2 2/3 ounces (75 g), or 1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons, all-purpose flour

2 ounces (60 g), or 7 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon, yellow cornmeal

Preheated oven to 475F

1 Place the butter in a small stainless steel bowl and beat with a wooden spatula, warming it up over low heat as needed to make it smooth, white, and creamy. Sift the sugar over the creamed butter and beat it in. Beat in 1 egg yolk with the wooden spatula. Then beating in the remaining yolk with a wire whisk. Whisk in the lemon zest. Sift the flour and cornmeal over the batter and mix them with the wooden spatula.

2. Scoop the batter into the pastry bag, and pipe the batter in 1/2 inch-(12 mm) wide fluted strips the length of the baking sheets, separating them by 1 to 1 1/2 inches (2 1/4 -4 cm). Score each strip crosswise at 2 1/2 inches (6 cm) intervals by pressing through the batter with a small pallet knife or the back edge of a paring knife. wipe off the blade after each three to four cuts to remove any batter that sticks to it.

3. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until the cookies begin to brown on the bottoms but are still pale yellow on the top, about 5 minutes.

4.Transfer the baking sheet o a wire rack and let the cookies cool to room temperature.

%. When the cookies are cool, separate them at the scored intervals.

These remind me of little sweet "cheese straw" like cookies. If you like this book, you will love Healy's others. He has put his exacting detail into another book on French pastry and one on cakes.

Cooking With My Sisters

Adriana Trigiani is a best-selling novelist. She immortalized her home in the Virginia hills, Big Stone Gap. Her books are filled with family and a strong sense of place, so it is only natural that her cookbook, Cooking With My Sisters, is, too. She grew up in a household with six children, four girls and two boys. They were a large Italian, Catholic family in the Baptist South of Virginia.

Trigiani tells of the first time they were fed “spaghetti” at school, an event she described as “shocking.”

"The noodles were boiled until you could see though them and then sloshed with sloppy joe mix, heavy on the ground hamburger. We did our best to swing the cafeteria staff toward authentic Eye-talian (as they put it,) but we gave up when they insisted that all spaghetti sauce needs is a base of chopped meat, a cup of ketchup, and a shot of chili powder."

It is a story I know too well. When I went to school in the North (South Dakota, so maybe still in the South.) I remember being served “cornbread.” Though it was not cornbread, but rather an overcooked, slightly crusty yellow cake, sweet and sticky and nothing close to my Mother’s cornbread. I was horrified.

Culture shock is a bitch!

Trigiani book is filled with stories and recipes, with a plethora of "notes" from her sisters. Here is a family recipe for cookies, but not the sweet kind, the small savory bites known as Taralli. A perfect compliment to a glass of wine with sisters.

Savory Taralli

1/2 packet (1 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water (105 –110 degrees)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fennel seed
4 cups all-purpose flour
In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water and allow to bubble. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the flour, to the yeast mixture. Add the flour and mix well.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Take a piece of dough ant roll it between your hands, making a pencil-like shape 4 to 5 inches long. Create a circle by joining the ends together and pinching them closed. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for about 8 minutes, or until golden brown.

Adriana Trigiani brings the same love of family and language to her cooking as she does to her novels.

SoNo Baking Company Cookbook

John Barricelli is a baker, and quite a good one. He always wanted a French style bakery in a little neighborhood and he finally opened The SoNo Baking Company in South Norwalk, Connecticut, hence the SOuthNOrwalk of the title.

After working in restaurant kitchens, he moved over to Martha Stewart Living and was cast on their PBS show, Everyday Food. Here are John and Martha torching a cake!

The recipes in the book are very "bakerly" and exacting. Of course, I feel many baking books are just too exacting, really, but then, I bake. Here is Barricelli's signature cookie recipe. I had guests this week and one of them remarked she loved EVERYTHING ginger. On her next visit, I am going to make a batch of these.

Ginger Cookies

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup sugar, plus 1/2 cup for rolling
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/4 cup unsulfured molasses

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger; set aside.

2. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the sugar and butter on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl halfway through. Beat in the egg and molasses until combined. Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture, beating until combined. Transfer the dough to a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until well chilled, about 1 hour (and up to 24 hours).

3. Arrange the oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or nonstick silicone baking mats; set aside. Place the extra sugar for rolling on a plate; set aside.

4. Use a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough, and roll into balls between your hands. Roll the balls in the sugar to coat, and place about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.

5. Bake one sheet at a time, rotating the sheet two-thirds of the way through the baking time, until the cookies are deep golden brown and the centers are firm, 15 to 20 minutes.

6. Transfer the sheet to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the rack, and let cool completely. Continue to roll and bake the remaining cookies in the same way.

Truth be told, I am not going to wait for her return... in fact, that bread looks rather fetching...

Desserts and Salads

In the late 1800’s Gesine Lemcke ran cooking colleges in New York City and in Brooklyn. She was the author of several cookbooks, including Desserts and Salads. It seems an odd combination for a book. With an exhaustive compendium of over 1000 recipes, there are very little desserts or salads left to chance.

In her preface, Lemcke lays out the instructions for using her book. It has all the didactic poetry of a stern teacher who sent young women into the homes of the rich and famous for a life of relative drudgery!

Preface

I ask every one who may become possessed of this book to read the recipes herein contained carefully and thoughtfully before attempting the making of any of them, and also to observe the following instructions:

Weigh and measure all ingredients exactly, and have every thing ready to mix before you commence.

If you measure your ingredients by means of a cup be sure you use one which holds a half pint.

Use neither more nor less of anything than the recipe instructs you, and be sure to have your fire just right, as also instructed be the recipe.

If at first success does not come to you do not despair, but persist in following the advice of the old adage: “Try, try again.”

You should always bear in mind that honest work is never lost and that reward must come in the end.

Recently, the New York Times ran a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that called for the dough to be refrigerated for up to 36 hours. The reasoning was that resting the dough made the cookies more flavorful and easier to cook.

Lemcke’s recipe for these cookies features that same sort of resting period.

Aniseed Wafers

Rub some shallow tin pans with wax, place 1/2 pound of sugar and 4 whole eggs in a bowl, set the bowl into a pan of hot water, beat the contents of the bowl with an egg beater 15 minutes, then remove and beat till cold; add 1 teaspoonful well-cleaned aniseed and 1/2 pound sifted flour, fill the mixture into a pastry bag and press small cakes on to the waxed tins, cover and let them stand till next day, when the little cakes have obtained a crust, then bake them in a slow over.

There is something rather interesting about letting the dough sit out and dry out before cooking. After reading this, I kept thinking of other cookies that might benefit from this “drying out” process. I wonder if any cookie that is supposed to be crisp might benefit from being cut and left to dry. I am not very fond of crispy cookies, but I think it might work.

The Art Of Fine Baking

In the early 60’s The Art Of Fine Baking by Paula Peck was the bible of baking. Even today, the book holds up to the onslaught of baking books. While the recipes are very traditional, they offer the classical techniques that form the basics of baking. There is a good list of equipment that a baker will need and a very dated and funny looking list of sources for baking needs with shops listed, (most of them in New York) and an assurance that they offer mail order. The last entry on the list:

Williams-Sonoma, 576 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California. Imported aids to the baker and cook. Descriptive price list available.

To this day you can get a “descriptive price list” from Williams-Sonoma. It is funny to think of them as being a little store in San Francisco. Now days, of course, one just looks online for any baking need.



Peck taught at the James Beard School for many years and Beard would say of her:

“She is an outstanding juggler with rolling pin and mixing bowl, and the magic results fill her larder and freezer to overflowing. Her home is an oasis for hungry travelers and guests, for there is always enough delectable food in her kitchen to serve a good-sized party.”

Here is a fun and flourless cookie:

Nut Crisps

1 1/2 cups nuts (almonds, walnuts, filberts)
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

Grate or grind the nuts fine.
Cream butter and sugar. Stir in the ground nits, salt and vanilla. Form dough into a long roll, I inch in diameter. Wrap in wax paper. Chill until firm.
Set oven to 350 degrees.
Cut into thin slices. Place slices on ungreased baking sheet.
Bake about 7 minutes, or until cookies are lightly brown. Watch carefully to prevent burning.
Place cookies on paper towels to absorb excess fat, if any.

Generally, I am not that fond of nuts, but I am thinking of putting aside my prejudice for this cookie!

Domestic Cookery

Domestic Cookery is a very old American cookbook. First published in 1845, my copy dates about ten years later. It followed an early tradition of combining receipts, home remedies, and household elixirs in a single volume. In one book you get recipes for oysters, tomatoes, and custard. You also get recipes for boot blacking, mending china with milk and cleaning kid gloves. And finally, you get a recipe to cure lock-jaw, warts and cramps.

And there is advice for the new housewife. Again, it the mid 1800’s, and the women who are buying cookery books have considerable disposable income. Mrs. Lea writes,

“When your circumstance permit, a good manservant is a valuable acquisition; and they are sometimes more easily governed than females.
If mistresses were better informed, they would not complain so much of the ignorance and awkwardness of their domestics. Always give them their orders in time. If a new dish is to be cooked, superintend its preparation yourself.
If you are capable of directing, a cook will soon learn to do without your constant attention.”

Get the cook working on a batch of these.

Crisp Ginger-cake

Take three pounds of flour, one of sugar, and one of butter; mix these together with three table-spoonsfull of ginger, some cloves and aniseseed, and wet it with molasses; roll it thin; cut it in shapes, and bake with a quick heat.

If she has never attempted Crisp Ginger-cakes before, do superintend. Then, go out and find yourself a manservant, as I hear they are quite handy.

Chez Panisse Café Cookbook

It is hard to talk about "American Food" without mentioning Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. While it is hardly unusual to cook with fresh vegetables, it was unusual for a restaurant to insist on the finest ingredients from a few miles away. It was unusual for a restaurant to cook only vegetables that were in season and not flown in from thousands of miles away. It was unusual for a restaurateur to cultivate the local farmers and for them to reciprocate with amazing fruits, vegetables, meats and cheeses. Now, it's hardly unusual, in fact many cooks now have their own farms to provide for their restaurants.

Alice Waters was the spark for this revolution. Chez Panisse Café Cookbook features a collection of recipes from the restaurant, some dating back to its opening in 1980, while some are very new. waters not only presents recipes, but in this book she looks at those farmers that have been such and integral part of making Chez Panisse's signature style. She introduces us to Bill Niman who raises beef and to Nancy Warner whose family brings eggs and to many others whose day to day tending of the land bring it to life.




The book is beautifully illustrated with David Lance Goines colored block prints, making it a feast for the eyes as well as -- just a feast. A feast if you start cooking the recipes. Lets start with dessert.

Orange-Currant Cookies

10 ounces (2 1/2 sticks butter)
1 1 /2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup finely chopped candied orange peel

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, mix well. Stir in the flour and salt. Finally, stir in the currants and orange peel. Form the dough into 2 logs, each about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic and freeze. Slice into 1/4-inch rounds and bake at 350 F on parchment paper-lined baking sheets until the edge of the cookies are golden, about 12 minutes.

I love a recipe you can make and then throw in the freezer and get back to it later. Seriously, in the evening when you are in the kitchen anyway, and the dishes are going to be dirty, and the cupboards open, think about making up some cookie dough that freezes. The next day, you can bake with almost no fuss at all.

Whistler’s Mother’s Cook Book

Typical! Everybody and his mother wants to have a cookbook, even Whistler's mother.

Among the items of James McNeill Whistler, bequeathed to Glasgow University by his sister-in-law, was a small manuscript of recipes, collected by his mother, Anna. Margaret MacDonald, who compiled Whistler’s catalogue raisonné, assembled many of the recipes into the charming document, Whistler's Mother's Cook Book.

Whistler wanted to be an artist but to keep the family happy he followed family tradition to West Point. While excelling in drawing he failed chemistry and was discharged. Whistler said of the incident, “Had silicon been a gas, I would have been a major-general.”

Whistler loved to throw parties, his favorite being breakfast, where he held court and told elaborate stories over food and wine. Whistler would write out the menus and sign them boldly, with his monogram. There are over a hundred such hand-written menus in the collection at Glasgow University.

His mother made fine sugar cookies, often referred to as "cakes."

Sugar Cake

4 cups Sugar, 2 cups Butter, 4 Eggs, and as much flour* as will make them stiff enough to roll.

Beat the sugar and butter together until creamy. Beat in the eggs alternately with the flour to make a light dough. Roll it out on a floured board and cut into shapes with a biscuit cutter. Put the shapes on a greased baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Cool them immediately on a wire rack. Makes 100.

*As much flour seems to be 5 cups.

With all of his interest in food, Whistler was foremost an artist whose interest in color or the muted lack of color led him to experiment with painting in shades of black and white and grey. His painting Arrangement in Grey and Black was shown in 1872 in London at an Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art. Thomas Carlyle requested a portrait in a similar pose which was entitled, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2. the first "Arrangement" became known as Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1. While Whistler cared only about the composition and color and paid little attention to his model, her identity would shape the painting and it would become known simply as, Whistler's Mother.