A Few of My Favorite...

So far this blog has been mostly about stuff I've made, with an emphasis on ingredients and flavor combinations. I've shown you tweaks I've made to other people's recipes, and different ways of combining component elements (taffy and Methocel puffs, e.g.).

That's all well and good, but I confess that sometimes it's fun just to make a recipe exactly as it's presented by somebody else. No tweaks. No novelty. Just a replication of something somebody else decided was good enough to publish. I did a fair bit of that sort of baking this weekend.

And this experience provides me with the first of (what will hopefully be) several opportunities to tell you about my favorite cookbooks.

This weekend, I made a couple recipes from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. In contrast to the fairly bold and sometimes exotic flavors I've been telling you about over the past few weeks, this book is all about subtle. Medrich divides her book into categories that reflect different classes of ingredients (milk, grains, sugar/sweeteners, fruit, etc.). In each category, she provides recipes that draw on the unique properties of those ingredients to provide flavor. Where simple staples like flour or sugar are just the base for other flavors in most desserts, Medrich gives them center stage.

What happens, for example, when you substitute buckwheat flour and cornmeal into scones? Crunchiness and a rich, nutty flavor, it turns out. What about using different sugars (turbinado, muscovado, piloncillo, etc.)? Rich sweetness in all sorts of ways. This book is great not just for its recipes, but (like any good cookbook, I think) because thumbing through it on the couch on a rainy afternoon is an educational experience. Medrich explains the ingredients and the effect they have on recipes, and details why she has chosen a particular grain or sweetener. She also talks about her experiments with them.

This morning I made her ginger snap recipe, which is one of my favorites from this book. They derive their spicy and intense ginger flavor from ground ginger, grated fresh ginger, and diced candied ginger. The intensity is rounded out with a bit of cinnamon and allspice; and counterbalanced with rich sweetness from molasses, white sugar, brown sugar, and a turbinado sugar coating. Delicious. And super quick to make.

When I had some friends over for tea yesterday, I made her buckwheat and cornmeal scones with walnuts. I improvised a little bit by adding some chopped white chocolate (1 c) and lemon zest (1 lemon). Delightful, and also very easy.

Back to more experiments next weekend, probably. Have a good week!