Chocolate birthday madeleines, for a birthday girl

Hey there!  I have been away for so long ... still cooking, albeit probably not quite as much as I was a few months ago.  Then, I sorta kinda lost my tiny little camera for a while ... it is pretty tiny.  But then, hurray!  It turned up yesterday buried in some luggage I hadn't used for months.  So - hopefully - I'm back!  :)

I wanted to share some fun little cookies I made for my friend Christina's birthday last month.  My mom got me a madeleine pan for Christmas a while back, which is what produced these pretty shell-like shapes.

These cookies were so easy, because I just used a brownie mix to make them.  It was a Ghiradelli brownie mix that called for 1 egg.  I used 2 eggs instead to make the final product a little fluffier than a chewy brownie would be ... these came out to have a consistency somewhere between a chewy brownie and a fluffier chocolate cake, which was just what I was going for.

I laid out some wax paper over a cookie sheet, then melted some semi-sweet Ghiradelli chocolate chips in a bowl.  Some fancier folks than I might do this in a double boiler, but I just use the microwave.  It works perfectly fine, although you do want to be sure to stop the microwave and stir the melting chocolate every 20 seconds or so, to make sure it doesn't burn.

I also chopped up some dried apricots (see below) and had those on hand, along with some colorful sprinkles.  The tiny apricots because this was an event for a very sophisticated urban dweller, don't you know, but the sprinkles were befitting a birthday party attended by the quirky, at times whimsical crowd that we are.  So we had both.

The outline of the shell at the wider end of the madeleine mold is so pretty, so we dipped the plainer, small end of the cookie in the melted chocolate.  Then just gently roll the chocolate-covered cookie in sprinkles or apricots, and place on the wax paper.  Alternatively, you could sprinkle the apricots or sprinkles on the wax paper and lay the chocolate-covered cookie on top to cover one side of the cookie, then sprinkle the tops.  That way may be a bit faster.  

After the sheet is full of cookies, you can put it in the refrigerator for at least 10-15 minutes to help the chocolate to set.   

These were pretty, and fun, and yummy, and I would absolutely do them again!

Baking class. Uh-huh. (and lemon curd tarts and tartlets)

That's right: I'm in a baking class.  It's super fun.  I've been waiting to sign up for one of these since the summer when I was in the thick of my dissertation and had absolutely no business even thinking about signing up for a baking class.

Turns out, getting into baking class isn't easy.  This school is so popular, you've got to sign up even months in advance to get a spot - at least, if you can't go to any of the classes given on weekday mornings and need to hold out for an evening or weekend one.

I really like baking class.  The first week we learned to make cream puffs.  One of the students in my class made these gorgeous cream puff swans.  You can see the cream puffs I made in the back.  They're the round ones with white icing drizzled over the top.  That's amaretto icing, by the way. 

The next week we made tarts and pies.  These lemon curd tartlets were what appealed to me.  Here's some of what I learned.

November rose?

What??  What is this guy doing out in the middle of November - and in New England, no less??  What's going on?

Spotted last Saturday on my way home from baking class, where I mixed, kneaded, and baked bread for the first time ever.

More on baking class soon.  In the meantime,

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Autumn Return: Orchids, weddings, cupcakes, and more

Dear friends, It has been a LONG time.  More than two months, in fact.  The Kitchen in the Yard has been on a rather extended vacation while I finished my degree and started new work this fall. 

So, yes!  That means I am a doctor now!  A research doctor - not the medical kind, mind you.

All the foodie-ness of this blog has been a saving grace for the past 10 1/2 months since I started posting, and perhaps especially during major crunch times with my dissertation since about April (e.g., when I was really tired, there were times I would tell myself: "As soon as you complete X part of this article, you can edit some photos and write a post!).  I did, in fact, finish the entire dissertation in that time and submitted the final version in early October.  Then all manner of life kicked in and it was time to start new work (more research training), buy a car (I haven't owned a car for almost 8 years!), and get used to many new routines.  

But now it's time for us to catch up.

In my memories of these very recent past few months, working on the dissertation definitely dominates.  However, other things happened, too.  Here are some of the highlights of the past few months since my last post.

Babysitting my friend Megan's orchids while she was between apartments early this past summer.  Having these around was so great, it tempted me to get some of my own.  But let's face it; my track record with plants is absolutely terrible, and that's why I no longer have any in my home - they have all gone to a better place.  Good thing Megan found a suitable home for herself and these, and took them back before too long.

Picking tomatoes in my aunt's garden in Lancaster, PA in August.  Gorgeous, aren't they?  These are all different types of tomatoes!

Stopping by random farm stands in Lancaster County, where lovely blooms, fresh vegetables, and home-baked treats were being sold by a rather eccentric city lady newly relocated to the country.  I love characters like these, and the tarts she'd baked were delicious!

Baking the wedding cupcakes for my dear friends Anna and Willie, who got married in August.

Rustic Cherry Tarts in Cardamom Pastry

Remember these?  This is the bowl of halved, and then slightly sugared cherries that resulted from my kitchen exploits last week, as I figured out how to prepare cherries for tarts using the materials I happened to have on hand in my kitchen.

I did, indeed, actually make those tarts later that day, using a concoction of flavors that's been in my head for months now.  Basically the combination of cherry and cardamom.

Cardamom, you are a complicated spice and I must admit that I don't fully understand you right now.  You have an exotic name, and I rather like your speckled-y soft appearance, and your scent, like a flower's, then like a medicine's, then sweet, then spicy ... well - it's all very intriguing.  And I can't quite figure it out, but I want to spend some time with you and find out more.   

These tarts look simple enough, right?  Make a pate brise, toss some cherries in the center and fold into tarts, right?

What what made these really special, though, was the little hint of that je ne sais quoi, aka cardamom that was in them.  Okay, and a little nutmeg, too.  Not to mention all that butter.  Sigh.

Anyway, I just want to share.

I started off with an adapted recipe for the pastry that I found on the blog Secret Ingredient.  As usual, I posted the whole recipe below in case any of ya'll want to try it out.      

How to Halve and Pit Cherries, in inventive urban kitchen fashion

Cherries are in season, and I've had a hankering for cherry tarts for a while now.

I think it's something to do with my oft-resurfacing desire for the currant pies and tarts of my adolescence in Eastern Europe, and I can never find those in this country.  Cherries are kind of similar in flavor ... not to knock fresh American cherries, which are, of course, delicious in their own right.

Anyway, I found myself with all this going on inside, plus a big sieve full of cherries in my refrigerator today, and I decided it was time.

Yet a problem arose, a problem I have fairly often, and that is that I had this food in mind to make, but realized that I didn't really have all the kitchen tools to use that would make creating the food the most straightforward process.  I credit this to the rather haphazard way that my kitchen has been stocked.  Basically, when I'm going to make something new, I a) buy the materials I need and add them to my stockpile, as long as said materials aren't too hefty for my graduate student budget, b) improvise with what I have if I can research or invent an alternative solution (which has produced knowledge about a host of foods in the pantry that could be used as pastry weights, for example), or c) make something else if options a) and b) aren't feasible.

I know you can get an actual cherry-pitting device which seems to make doing the task super easy.  But do you think I have that very specific device for a fruit that's only in season for barely a few weeks every year?  Of course not.

Willie's Guacamole, and a little pico de gallo

Everyone!  I want to share something with the big wide world today.  It's this guacamole.

It is so good.  And I'm not patting myself on the back saying that, either, because I didn't make it - my friend Willie did.

Imagine that last time you felt just so, so famished, like you needed to eat a bacon cheeseburger with barbecue sauce and fries to stick to that empty stomach ... (Oh, am I the only one who gets that??).  That's how a bunch of Willie's and my friends felt after a day of gallivanting around town in Maine while we were up there on a long weekend together last year.

We came back to the house to find a huge bowl of fresh guacamole that Willie and Anna had just made, along with a creamy potato-beet salad (another recipe for another time), which were supposed to be for dinner a few hours later.  But we ate all of it in practically no time at all.  Anna and Willie were nice and just let us all have at it.     

Willie tells me that his mom in El Salvador used to make guacamole this way, and that's how it started.  They used to use an herb that grew in their garden in El Salvador, which he's never seen here in the U.S.  But the cilantro seems to work well, here, as a substitute.  

This year in Maine Willie was nice enough to give me a guacamole-making lesson (let's face it - I'd been waiting on it for a year), now formally documented in this post.  Here goes.  Tell me if you love this guacamole as much as my crowd does. 

You're going to need 5 avocados, 2 medium-large tomatoes, a bunch of cilantro, 1 large red onion, 6 hard-boiled eggs, 2 radishes, 1 small jalapeno pepper, 1 lime (or lemon if you forget to buy a lime like we did), and some salt and pepper.