Tag Archives: baking

NY style crumb cake, where art thou?

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Half-eaten New York style crumb cake in a sqaure baking dish

New York City has the best crumb cake, often sold in individual squares like brownies, with about two inches of crumb topping.  I used to buy hunks every now and again at Mama Joy’s when I was at Columbia.  I was leafing through the May/June 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated, which has a decent recipe, though the crumb is not exactly right.  It’s good, but not spot on.  It tastes too much like brown sugar and is floury so I may try to futz with it.  They do, however, give you the technique for producing professional-level crumbs.  The one thing I discovered is that you need to wrap the cake well and let it sit overnight to get the right texture.  If you have a good recipe then please email it to me so I can once again enjoy one of the few cakes I actually like!

Two meals for two in El Cerrito

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popovers 2008

My mom and I are on our own, the boys are in Chicago, and we are having a fancified breakfast for two.  I am in the process of roasting chicken sausages, and the popovers just came out of the oven.  Popovers were always around when I was a kid — something my parents made and enjoyed.  They are like Yorkshire pudding in that they are made from a thin egg batter and puff up over the sides of their baking receptacles, resulting in hollow eats.  In fact, they are small, Americanized Yorkshire puddings, originally baked in hot beef fat, but evolved into the sweeter buttery breakfast food we know and love.  This American creation first appeared in the mid-19th century.  Looking in older cookbooks is an easy way to find a good recipe.  Don’t be discouraged if they don’t work out at first – just keep plugging away until you get the hang of it.  Something you may want to have on hand is baking pan spray that has flour in it – in addition to plenty of eggs.

Turkey wings in crock pot

Turkey wings in a slow cooker

Dinner was an American food through and through – braised fresh turkey wings.  If you like chicken wings, you should like these.  Take whole, fresh turkey wings and put them in a Crock-Pot.  Add:  a whole onion, sliced; a few garlic cloves; a little soy sauce; a few scallions; a knob of ginger; salt and pepper.  Pour chicken stock over all of it until the wings are just covered. Crank ‘er up to low.  The wings should be soft after about 5 hours.  I eat this like a soup, adding rice or noodles about 45 minutes before the wings are done.  If you have leftovers, you’ll find the wings suspended in gelatin in the fridge.  I like gelatin, so I pry some of the contents out and eat them cold with a hard roll.  If you have people in your family who would be outraged by turkey wing bones (there is no such person in this house) then you can debone the wings before you serve, but I say to heck with that.  This is a good, honest, casual dish, and anyone who is above making like Fred Flintstone every now and then needs a swift kick in the rear end.

Tie-dye glaze for cakes

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bundt cake with tie-dye glaze

Steven’s birthday and Mother’s Day today, resulting in efficiency or someone being “screwed,” and I would say that this is Steven, since he has to share his special day with a lesser event.  He requested some sort of pound cake so I made that with strawberries and whipped cream.  I gave the cake a tie-dye glaze, in honor of Steve’s childhood in the 60’s and 70’s.  This is easy.  You need:  food coloring kit; lemon juice; confectioner’s sugar; 6 glass custard cups (or other cups that won’t absorb the colors); a fully cooled pound cake.  Place your cake on a large piece of foil or a sheet pan.  Mix 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar with a little lemon juice.  Add more lemon juice until you have a very thick glaze.  If the glaze is too thin it will dry transparently on the cake and all this will have been for naught.  Divide your glaze evenly among the custard cups.  Make red, yellow, blue and green, which are the colors that come with basic food coloring sets, by adding a couple of drops of color to each cup of glaze and then mixing with a teaspoon.  Make orange with some red and yellow.  Make purple (and this is a must) from red and green.  Using a clean spoon, spoon the purple glaze on the top of the cake, at intervals, so it runs down both sides and so you wind up with four or five strips of purple.  Do this with the other colors, one at a time, on the clean parts of the cake, overlapping now and again for a tie-dye effect.  Allow icing to harden completely before moving.  Cakes like this are good served with basic strawberry topping, which you can make by washing, stemming and cutting up strawberries (to your liking, i.e., sliced or quartered), and tossing with a good dose of sugar and a few drops of lemon juice.  Cover with plastic wrap, pop in fridge, and in a few hours you’ll have strawberries in syrup to serve over cake slices.   The cake and fixin’s were a big hit – especially with Berry, who kept a close eye on the operation.

Berry the akita wanting cake on Steve's birthday

R.I.P., sourdough starter

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live sourdough starter 2006

I forgot to mention that my sourdough starter died.  Sourdough starter is a good thing to have on hand if you like to make homemade breads.  My starter was cultivated using only wild yeast, meaning I did not add any commercial yeast at the beginning.  I’ll be making more soon and will chronicle the process on the blog, as well as care and feeding.  In memory of my fine starter, I have a photo to the right that shows how active it was when it was alive.  One of the wonderful things you can make using a starter is English muffins; all you need is a good sourdough bread recipe.  After the final rise of the whole dough just cut it into small pieces, form the muffins and set them on sheet pans that have been sprinkled with coarse cornmeal.  Cover with cloth and let them rise a bit.  You then “fry” them (both sides) in cast iron pans that have been sprinkled liberally with coarse corn meal.  Bring the pans up to decent heat and then keep them on a very low flame.  You want to cook the muffins through as they brown and not wind up with burned muffins that are raw inside.  If you want perfect circles, form them initially using metal rings, but I think free-form muffins are better.  These muffins will taste so much better than store-bought, and you will blow your family and friends away, since the recipe for English muffins is a mystery to most people.  Split with a fork and toast, then spread liberally with good butter and perhaps a little peach jam.

english muffins in pans

I like to have cornmeal around

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cornbread sqares on a plate

Try to keep corn meal on hand.  If you have corn meal and a few other staples you’ll be able to make corn bread, which means you can fix up a quick meal.  For example, corn bread with an over-easy egg and sliced ripe tomato.  If you have nothing but canned tuna and mayo, just serve the corn bread with tuna salad.  Use the recipe on the side of the container of corn meal you buy, but remember that recipes for corn muffins are sugar-heavy, so use them only if you want sweet corn bread.  Albers is what I use, and there is a solid Southern-style cornbread recipe on the bag.  Whichever recipe you use, get yourself a seasoned cast iron skillet to bake the bread in.  Lodge Logic (the “Logic” line = preseasoned) is very good, and you’ll be buying one of the last decent American-made products.  After you grease the pan put it in the oven and let it get hot.  Then pour the batter in quickly and bake.  This maneuver makes a difference, trust me.