Citrus and jasmine madeleines

My madeleine pan had been calling to me for months claiming it was lonely stacked up against the muffin tins. So, on an early morning stroll through Dorrie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours I found some inspiration in her Earl Grey version.

As much as I love earl grey, its had a lot of air time on this blog and I thought it might be nice to give another tea the spotlight. Years ago when people in the U.S. started drinking green tea, I did too. There was just one problem–no matter how many mugfuls I downed, I couldn’t seem to acquire a taste for it. It was too, well, green for my Western palate. That is until I discovered Trader Joes jasmine green tea. Who doesn’t love a tea that smells pretty?

This was a fun recipe to experiment with because Dorrie has you steep the tea in melted butter. It also directs the baker to strain the tea out of the butter with cheesecloth before incorporating the other ingredients. However, I liked the texture the tea added and so used a mesh strainer so that some of the leaves were left behind.

Much of the loveliness of jasmine tea lies in its fragrance. So, I was uncertain that the fragrance would translate into flavor when baked.

I shouldn’t have worried. The jasmine and citrus zest played together really well to create a subtle and unique flavor to the little cakes.

The only problem is that I that I couldn’t figure out a good compliment to serve these with…what kind of tea does one pair with tea flavored cookies? Coffee?

Open (your mouth) says me!

Today, we move away from the gluten free toward the exotic (not that the two have to be mutually exclusive). All year I’ve been trying to make my way back to Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s cookbook Jerusalem. Their chocolate krantz cakes remain one of my favorite recipes for 2013. So, I was happy to finally find some space to tackle one of the many recipes I’ve dog eared.

This recipe is all about the sesame. Tahini to be specific. Until now, I’d always associated the seed paste with savory–most notably as a key ingredient in hummus. However, after experimenting with black sesame in ice cream and macarons, I knew these little seeds had the ability to transition like champs. And so, by transitive property, should their paste.

I found tahini in a larger, local grocery store in the international foods section (a sort of antiquated descriptor that always brings to my mind 1970s housewives and canned chow mein noodles). The recipe calls for light tahini paste but I could only find regular. As a note–double check the ingredients before purchasing. I assumed tahini paste and tahini sauce were the same thing. Not so much. Tahini sauce has garlic in it.

This is a sticky dough that is finished unusually by dumping it out of the mixer and kneading it a few times until everything is just combined.

I’ll admit, I used a food scale to get uniformly-sized cookies.

I wasn’t following directions closely enough and added the cinnamon with the other dry ingredients rather than dusting each raw cookie with a sprinkle. Oops. So, I improvised the garnish and sprinkled the tops of each with a few sesame seeds.

These cookies have a very mild, slightly nutty taste with just a touch of spice and a texture that begs them to be enjoyed with a cup of tea.

I have a sneaking suspicion that these little goodies will make their way into my holiday baking this year.

As for open says me. Or, open sesame rather. I remember learning the origins of this phrase in a folklore course I took in college. I can remember the quarter I took the class, where I sat and the professor’s pointy beard. I also remember the lecture was used as a way of demonstrating how certain phrases are mythologized well before their supposed first appearance, in this case in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from One Thousand and One Nights. What I can’t remember of course, is the original story. So, I went with Popeye and completely bastardized the magical words, a-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga.

If you like this you might like these

Black Sesame Ice Cream

Black Sesame Macarons

Tahini Cookies

from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Ingredients

2/3 C /130 g superfine sugar
2/3 C/ 150 g unsalted butter at room temp.
scant 1/2 C/ 110 g light tahini paste (fully leaded worked well too)
1/2 tsp vanilla
5 tsp / 25 ml heavy cream
2 C + 1 1/2 TBS / 270 g all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
sesame seeds to sprinkle on top if desired

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line 2 sheet pans with parchment.
Cream together sugar and butter in a stand mixer or use hand mixer on medium speed for 1 minute.
With the machine running, add-in tahini, vanilla and cream until combined.
Add-in flour and mix for one-minute until the dough comes together.
Transfer to a work surface and knead until smooth.
Pinch-off 2/3 ounce / 20 g / 1 1/2 TBS dough and roll into a ball. Use the back of a fork to push down lightly on top of the ball so that it flattens just slightly and takes on the tine marks.
Place on lined baking sheet and sprinkle with cinnamon and sesame seeds.
Continue with the remaining dough, spacing cookies about 1 1/4 inches apart (they won’t spread much).
Bake for 15-17 minutes until golden brown (watch the bottoms of the cookies).
Cool before serving. Will keep in sealed container for up to 10 days.

Hello, my little Lamington

As I think I’ve mentioned, TD and I spent a couple of weeks in Australia during the second half of May. As I’m sure many people do, we have an ever-lengthening list of places in the world we’d like to go and Australia had been on that list far too long. I also happen to have on my own personal bucket list, with the goal of spending at least one birthday on each continent. Australia made for continent number five.

Deciding to go to Australia or sort of like deciding to go to the United States in terms of geographic breadth. Not wanting to spend the two weeks on planes, we chose three cities: Melbourne, Sydney and Port Douglas (an hour outside of Cairns). This meant only two domestic flights and maximized our time on the the ground.

As I’ve said at least a million times in previous posts, my favored souveniers come in the form of photos and recipes (or at least inspirations for recipes). We dropped the ball a bit on photos. I’d estimate that at least half of the 50 or so pictures we took are of wallabys and a certain koala we met at an animal sanctuary. Of those, a surprising number happen to be selfies of said koala and TD. Hmm. Luckily, Australians do like their baked goods and sweets. The most famous of which is, the Lamington.

This little tea cake is named after either Lord Lamington, the Governor of Queensland from 1896-1901, or his wife, Lady Lamington. Like red velvet cake, the mythology of the treat’s exact origins differs by account. However, the most common story suggests that the yellow cake, dipped in chocolate icing and then rolled in coconut, was developed by the Lamington’s chef when confronted with unexpected guests at tea. Lacking fresh cakes, the chef used the day-old sponge cake and the rest is history.

I have an admission, we didn’t have a chance to actually try Lamingtons while in Australia. I know it makes me a poor researcher, but I assumed the cubes of coconut covered confections were giant marshmallows. Oops.

It wasn’t until late in the trip that I realized my gaff, and so, I set about rectifying my mistake by making my own.

In reviewing recipes, I settled on David Lebovitz’s version. Because, it makes so much sense to make an Australian cake using a recipe from an American living in France.

While he was in Australia, he didn’t get to try them either.

I think these would be a ton of fun to make with kids.

Mostly because they’re incredibly messy. See that unappetizing bowl in the top center of the photo below? That was my hand-wash station. True Lamington form requires one to dip the sandwich cakes in the runny icing (by hand) and then roll them around in the coconut (by hand). Not wanting to get coconut in the icing (in retrospect I have no idea why I was so concerned), I dipped, rolled, set, washed hands, dried and repeated. Sixteen times.

I’m pretty sure I lost about a quarter of the icing and coconut to what ended up on me.

In the end, it was worth it. The recipe calls for desiccated coconut. I was too lazy to find the desiccated version and went for shredded. The Australians seem pretty okay with variation (in fact, they seem pretty okay with just about anything), so I don’t think they’d mind.

These reminded me of something Little Debbie would make. In a good way. Little Lamington does have a certain ring to it.

Now, consider yourselves warned. By my count, I’ve got six more Australia-related posts in the pipeline. Next week we’ll take a little break for some Fourth of July fun but after that it’s back to my version of boring vacation slides.

And one more thing. Well done Bruins Baseball! If my math is correct, that’s 109 championships, a first for baseball and about a million 8-claps.

Soundtrack

Colin Hay of course

Lamingtons

adapted just slightly in technique from David Lebovitz

16 Individual Cakes

Ingredients

For the spongecake:

6 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup (175 g) cake flour*
2 1/2 ounces (70 g) melted unsalted butter, at room temperature

For the chocolate icing:

6 ounces (170 g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 ounces (40 g) unsalted butter
3/4 cup (180 ml) milk, whole or lowfat
2 cups (220 g) powdered sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, natural or Dutch-process (sifted if lumpy)
2 tablespoons boiling water
3 cup (200 g) unsweetened shredded coconut

Directions

1. To make the spongecake, butter a 9-inch (23 cm) square cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC).

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whip the eggs and granulated sugar and salt on high speed for five to ten minutes, until thick and the batter forms a well-defined ribbon that remains on top of the batter when you lift the whip. Stir in the vanilla.

3. Fold the flour into the egg mixture by putting the flour in a sifter or mesh strainer and sifting the flour over the top of the beaten eggs while simultaneously folding the flour in using a whisk.

(You might want to steady the bowl on a damp towel, twisted and rolled up into a circle, or get someone to hold the bowl while you fold.) Fold in the melted butter until no streaks of butter are visible, but do not overfold.

4. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes, or until the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Remove from oven and let cool completely.

5. When cool, unmold the spongecake onto a cutting board and remove the parchment paper. TMH note: since the origins of the cake involved day-old sponge, I wrapped up the cake tightly and froze it over night for ease in cutting. And authenticity.

6. Trim the ends and cut the cake in half horizontally using a serrated bread knife. (I find it easier to cut the cake into two rectangles first, and cut each one separately.)

7. Make the chocolate icing by melting together the chocolate, butter, and milk in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Remove the bowl from the pan of simmering water when smooth, then whisk in the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.

8. Spread a generous 1/2 cup (125 ml) of the chocolate icing over one layer of the spongecake, then top with the other half of the spongecake, sandwiching the two together with chocolate icing in the middle.

9. Cut the cakes into sixteen squares. TMH note: I was worried about the two halves sliding around during the dipping process and so, arranged the squares on a 1/4 baking sheet and put them in the freezer for 30 minutes to encourage the icing to form a stronger glue. It worked as I can report no slippage.

10. Whisk two tablespoons of boiling water into the icing. Put the coconut into a shallow baking dish or bowl.

11. Use your hands to dip the Lamingtons into the chocolate, rolling them around to make sure each side is coated with the chocolate icing, then wipe off any excess on the side of the bowl. Place the Lamingtons in the vessel of coconut, tossing them around gently to get them coated on all sides.

12. Once iced and tossed in coconut, place the Lamingtons on a wire cooling rack and let stand until the icing firms up a bit.