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| King Cake, part two |
A days' worth of rest and then it was back at it for king cake, nombre deux. This was a sweet yeasted dough filled with cinnamon, sugar, and butter, almost like a cinnamon roll. I toyed with the idea of adding some pecans, but decided not to. The dough was a little more tough than I'd wanted, and I am sure that I rushed the rising a little given the weeknight timetable. I'll have to work on some more sweet breads, for sure, to get them to that lovely, lofty texture.
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| Popovers! |
By the time that the weekend rolled around, it seemed to be time to test out some popovers. Specifically, we were into the Lenten season and I remembered that, the year before, a group of us went to a Friday night fish fry to investigate the Lent specials. The restaurant that we chose touted freshly baked popovers as one of the sides which sealed the destination decision. It seemed like a perfect Saturday morning to pull out the new popover pan* and take it for a test drive. I went with the King Arthur recipe, but eschewed the blender in favor of good old fashioned elbow grease. As I am also numerically challenged in the morning, I only made 6 instead of the dozen (?) that it called for. Thus, they were a little dense on the bottom. That didn't seem to matter too much once they were split and accompanied by some smoked salmon and fresh mozzarella.
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Matcha and white chocolate
madeleines |
Next on the bake agenda was another attempt at the madeleines. I had, in the interim, acquired a second metal madeleine pan. Went with a matcha and white chocolate version. The flavor was very nice with the extra note of lime and the texture was just right. However, even with the two shiny light metal pans baking on the same rack, I still had variations in browning. The final verdict is that the preferred madeleines came from JW's original pan. This, of course, means that the pan remains one of his few surviving pieces of kitchen paraphernalia.
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| Grapefruit and mint tart |
Having dipped my toe into the late Winter/early Spring citrus bounty, I forged ahead and tried my hand at a grapefruit and mint tart. This was similar to a key lime pie, however I found the ruby red grapefruit filling to be a little too sweet for my tastes. I like my citrus desserts to pack a serious pucker. Perhaps increasing the amount of mint muddled in would have balanced out the sweetness. The crust had a bit of cornmeal in it which added a nice textural element and helped defend against the dreaded soggy bottom. It could have been browned just a little more. The filling set up just right, though, and the little grapefruit peel curlicues were charming additions.
*Part of our dinner conversation involved a lively discussion as to whether a popover needed to be made specifically in a popover pan. Now I'm all for MacGyvering kitchen solutions, but the argument must have been convincing enough for me to have added to my kitchen pan piles.
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