Category Archives: Dessert

  • Warm Cinnamon Rolls For A Cold Winter Day

    January 17, 2013

    46 Comments

    Warm Cinnamon Rolls.

    Warm Cinnamon Rolls.

    It’s cold here in Norcal. And I don’t mean “wimpy-Californian” cold. I mean, its cold. Sub-freezing, burlap on the citrus, frost on the windows, see your breath, don’t slip on the driveway cold. The kids get a kick out of it (we don’t). But the house is still toasty and Carolyn knows just what to bake to warm us up, Cinnamon Rolls. You know, the big, puffy, swirling rolls with the thick white glaze….yup, those. Carolyn pulls out treats like this when the weather gets nasty, and they are so good we almost (and we do mean almost) welcome the cold.

    cinna11cinna9And these rolls are a special treat and a good baking project for a cold weekend, where indoor activity and warm kitchens are at a premium. They do take some time, work, and a little gear, but the reward is something almost everyone likes. And who doesn’t like a cinnamon roll? The whole house smells like a bakery, and then you get a big, sweet, warm and yeasty roll with a sugar and cinnamon filling and a sugary vanilla glaze. Hard to beat. Kid’s and adult’s eyes widen when these come to the table.

    cinna10Actually, the one person who may not “love” cinnamon rolls is the baker. These do take some time and effort. But this recipes works. It’s from King Arthur Flour, they thoroughly test their recipes, they know what they are doing. And the recipe is big enough so you can split the rolls into batches before baking and freeze half for future use (and the dough does refrigerate overnight or freeze well). So if you make the effort you do get a proven recipe and a batch in the morning or next weekend, if you like. We think it’s a decent payoff. (Right about now Carolyn will say “what do you mean ‘we’?”) 😉

    cinna5cinna4The extra work with kind of baking comes from using a yeast-based dough. Yeast is what makes for a soft and puffy roll, but you need to activate the yeast, add it to the dough and then let the dough rise. In most cases, yeast-based doughs requires just a bit more work, but a lot more time (in this recipe, up to a few hours) and some advance planning. And a stand mixer or bread machine really help here. You can make this dough by hand, but it will be a workout and the dough will take longer to rise. Not advised.

    cinna12Oh, and did we tell you about the “second rise”? That happens after you spread out the dough, make and add the cinnamon filling, roll up the whole thing and then cut it into slices. (At this point you can refrigerate for baking the next morning or freeze some for future use). You then put the slices in the pan, cover them and let them rise (puff) for another 2 hours, or so.  After that, you are ready to bake, and making the glaze is a snap. Again, not a ton of work, but a decent slug of time. Happily, you start to see what the finished product will look like, and it’s hard not to get excited.

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  • Orange Cake With Dark Chocolate Chips

    January 7, 2013

    40 Comments

    Orange Cake With Chocolate Chips.

    Orange Cake With Chocolate Chips.

    It’s January (frankly, a pretty crummy month) and we face a choice, should we start making resolutions or help people break them? Since most resolutions seem to involve people enjoying less food, drink and fun we favor “breaking” resolutions. (Unless you resolve to do more good things for yourself and others, in that case- carry on!) But if you are trying to rid yourself of an otherwise harmless and / or pleasurable indulgence and feel a bit of weakness, or lack of shame, or just admit that you want to live life without regret…well come on over, have a snack, grab a cocktail and enjoy some cake. We will be waiting here at the farm with open arms and a warm kitchen, always. And if you happen to amble by the farm in January, then you might be lucky and get some orange cake with dark chocolate chips.

    ocake3ocake4And thank heaven for citrus this time of year (and good chocolate any time of year). Just when you slog through that last bite of heavy (albeit lovely) holiday food, the oranges and lemons arrive to bring a burst of bright flavor back to winter. The Meyer lemons, cara-cara and blood oranges seem to save the light and bring it back to our houses, right when we need it the most (yeah, yeah, we are in California it isn’t that cold, but whatever ;-). The winter citrus gives us sorbet, cocktails, savory sauces, confections and this cake that combines fresh oranges and dark chocolate. Hard to go wrong.

    ocake5ocake6And very hard to go wrong if you use the best dark chocolate you can find. As a special Christmas gift, the boys and I gave Carolyn a big bag of Mast Brothers dark chocolate chips. The Mast Brothers hail from Brooklyn and have some of the best chocolate we have ever tasted. We are all for local chocolatiers, and many do excellent work- but great is great, and we can’t do better than Mast Brothers chocolate. Simply awesome, and worth a mention all the way out here on the left coast. We usually reserve our best chocolate for eating out of hand, but this cake combines chocolate chunks and a chocolate ganache glaze with sweet, bright orange flavor and a light “cake-y” texture. It is a perfectly balanced bite, and the better the chocolate, the better the cake.

    ocake9ocake10As for the recipe, we adapted it from Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa), who adapted it from the famous Hampton’s bakery and caterer Loaves and Fishes. Good recipes tend to travel well and this is no exception. There are no special ingredients or techniques in this recipe, it just asks for a bit of extra effort and good chocolate. The recipe for the cake is mostly standard, as is the recipe for the chocolate ganache you use to “glaze” the cake. The only extra step is to create an orange syrup and brush it into the cake. But this step does make a difference. Every bite explodes with the sweet oranges and a blast of deep, dark chocolate, but the acid of the oranges and slight bitter edge of chocolate balances the flavor. Good from beginning to end.

    ocake2So when you decide to give up on that resolution about cake, or sugar, or chocolate, or fun…try this recipe out. If you’re gonna break the resolution, it may as well be worth it. Or, even better, just bake the cake and share. No resolutions required (ever).

    Orange Cake With Dark Chocolate Chips: Continue reading →

  • Gingerbread Cake For Christmas

    December 25, 2012

    17 Comments

    Gingerbread Cake. Merry Christmas!

    Gingerbread Cake. Merry Christmas!

    Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas to all! For all the stress of the holidays, it is still a magical time of year. At it’s best, Christmas is a celebration of hospitality and generosity. While we hope it is never a necessity for anyone, it is good to have an annual reminder that giving to others (or baking, or cooking, or mixing a cocktail) is its own reward. We wish you peace.

    ginger3ginger4While Christmas does have deeper meaning, we also enjoy the food and drink. We already shared some Christmas cocktails (and remember there are twelve days of Christmas to work with), but we also want to share our favorite dessert, gingerbread. We enjoy gingerbread any way we can get it, in cookies, sheet cakes or this beautiful ring cake. We love the deep spicy flavor of gingerbread and the smell says “holidays” to just about everyone. The funny thing, though, is that we think that you could just as easily call it “molassesbread”. This recipe features a big splash (does molasses splash?) of molasses and oatmeal stout beer. When combined with a full slate of holiday spices, the funky molasses and roasted maltiness of the stout make for one seriously moist and flavorful cake. Once you have this gingerbread, it’s hard to go back.

    ginger5ginger2The recipe comes from the Gramercy Tavern in New York City and was published in 2008 by Smitten Kitchen. We are lucky enough to have dined a few times at the Gramercy Tavern and it is simply one of our favorite restaurants anywhere in the world. As for Smitten Kitchen, it is one of the best food blogs out there (great cookbook, too). And we get to visit Smitten Kitchen any time we want, we don’t even have to be in New York. In any event, when one of your favorite blogs posts a recipe from one of your favorite restaurants, the dish is likely to be good. We made this recipe for the first time a few years ago, now we can’t wait for Carolyn to make it as a Christmas treat. Oh, and did we mention you can make French toast with this gingerbread? (And if there is any left over, you should.)

    ginger6ginger7Making this gingerbread is, happily, pretty standard baking. (We will note this is another very moist cake that uses oil, rather than butter, hmmmm…) The only real trick here, and it is a BIG deal, is to thoroughly and completely butter and flour the bundt or loaf pan. And we mean completely. If you miss a spot, the cake will stick. Take your time and if you see even a tiny open spot, you need to fix it. This won’t take long, but no one likes a cake with chunks missing, even if it is one of the best tasting cakes they have ever had. And we are betting this will be one of the best cakes you’ve ever had. Merry Christmas from all of us here at Putney Farm!ginger8

    gingerGingerbread Cake:

    (Adapted from Gramercy Tavern and Smitten Kitchen)

    Notes Before You Start:

    • You can use a bundt-style pan, a ring pan or use loaf pans for the cake.
    • The cake is better the second day and should keep a few days. It is very good toasted or made into French toast.

    What You Get: Very moist, spicy and funky gingerbread. If you like molasses, you will love this cake.

    What You Need: No special equipment required.

    How Long? About 90 minutes with 30 minutes active time. With planning, an anytime dish.

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  • Basler Laeckerli: Spiced Honey Cookies

    December 18, 2012

    18 Comments

    honeybar7If there is one constant in our kitchen during the “holidaze”, it’s sweets. We have a number of birthdays, Hanukkah and Christmas to celebrate, and somehow candy, cakes, cookies and donuts seem to pop up all over the place. As our designated baker, candy maker and kitchen chemist, Carolyn is very busy this time of year (I help clean up….and eat too much). But Carolyn isn’t too busy to try new things, and this year for a cookie exchange Carolyn made these Swiss spiced honey cookies. And they turned out to be a very tasty, and relatively easy, treat. So good that they will be a regular holiday item for us, and as we include Putney Farm honey in the recipe, something we can share with friends that includes a little of our “farm”.

    honeybarhoneybar8Basler Laeckerli cookies (really more like a bar or blondie, but whatever) include honey, sugar, spices, nuts and candied citrus peel with a dash of Kirsch, a clear cherry brandy. Most recipes include a glaze to add sweetness and for better presentation. We adapted a King Arthur Flour recipe, because their recipes rarely let us down. Recipes vary a bit in the spices, lemon vs. orange peel and hazelnuts vs. almonds, but if you follow the general recipe you can adapt the final ingredients to fit your tastes. And these cookies taste delicious. The dense bars feature a full blast of honey sweetness followed by spice and citrus notes, the nuts add just a little crunch. If you eat one of these, you are likely to eat three…or four…or five.

    honeybar9honeybar3Making the cookies is an easy process, but somewhat untraditional. After combining dry ingredients (flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda) you cook the sugar and honey until they dissolve and then add the Kirsch, candied citrus peel and nuts (we use orange peel and almonds). Then you stir in the dry ingredients and let the mixture cool into a firm dough. To bake the cookies, you press them into a parchment or foil-lined pan and then bake for about half an hour, and enjoy how your kitchen smells. After cooking and cooling the cookies you make a quick glaze to brush on the cookies. The one big trick here is to use very hot glaze and work rapidly, the glaze cools quickly and will not spread well if you dilly-dally (Carolyn’s words). Once you get the glaze on, just cut and serve.

    honeybar2honeybar5As for the history of Basler Laeckerli, the name tells you most of the story. The cookies originated in Basel, Switzerland and the name lecker means “delicious”, and the cookies are indeed delicious. The recipe dates back at least 700 years and supposedly was a way for spice merchants to promote their product. And if the streets of Basel were filled with the smell of these spiced cookies in the oven, we bet that it wasn’t a hard sell. When you make these cookies and their aroma fills the air, you may find your family lined up in the kitchen.

    honeybar6

    Basler Laeckerli: Spiced Honey Cookies:

    (Adapted from King Arthur Flour)

    Notes Before You Start:

    • The recipe suggests almonds and candied orange peel, but you can substitute hazelnuts and / or candied lemon peel.
    • The recipe suggests a 10 x 15 baking pan, but you can use a slightly larger or smaller pan, but adjust cooking time up / down with thickness.

    What You Get: A unique and very tasty honey and spice cookie / bar.

    What You Need: A 10 x 15 baking pan is recommended. No other special equipment is required.

    How Long? About 1 hour, with 20 – 25 minutes of active time. An “anytime” dish.

    Ingredients:

    (Makes about 40 cookies)

    Dough:

    • 3 cups (12 3/4 oz.) all-purpose flour
    • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
    • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
    • 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
    • 1 cup (12 oz.) honey
    • 1 cup (7 oz.) granulated sugar
    • 2 tablespoons Kirsch
    • 1/2 cup candied orange peel, finely chopped
    • 1 1/2 cups almonds, chopped fine but not ground
    • Butter or cooking spray for buttering pan

    Glaze:

    • 1 tablespoon water
    • 1/4 cup (1 3/4 oz.) granulated sugar
    • 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

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  • Sweet Potato Cupcakes With Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

    December 11, 2012

    32 Comments

    Sweet Potato Cupcake With Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting.

    Sweet Potato Cupcake With Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting.

    spcake15If you visit Putney Farm regularly, you may notice an affinity for cupcakes. And this isn’t because cupcakes are all the rage these days (not that there is anything wrong with that), but because we have two boys with lots of friends, birthdays, sports and school events. And everyone knows we cook and are willing to be dragooned “volunteer”…. 😉 So when we want to feed a horde of crazed kids crowd, cake or cupcakes are very good options. (So is barbecue, but that is for another post.) We often make chocolate cake for a crowd, but there is something about the cupcake that is even more special. People from ages one to one hundred just love a cupcake. It’s sweet and tasty, it’s easy to handle and it’s all yours.

    spcake2spcake5spcake6But sadly, many cupcakes really aren’t all that good, the big blob of frosting covers for a dry chunk of cake. The problem, surprisingly, is the overuse of butter in most cupcake recipes. While we love real butter, it has water along with the butterfat and when the water cooks out it makes for a drier, crisper cupcake (the science is pretty solid, btw). This is good for pie crust, bad for cake, and especially bad for small cakes with a lot of surface area vs. mass (that would be the cupcake). The secret to a moist cupcake is to use vegetable oil (no water) and often to add another moistening ingredient. And this recipe not only uses oil but adds mashed sweet potatoes for an extra moist and sweet cake. Yum.

    spcake3spcake4spcake7Sweet potatoes in cupcakes? Well yes. They work famously well in biscuits, so why not cupcakes? You don’t taste sweet potato, but mixed with winter spices and orange zest you get a super-moist, caramel-colored cupcake with deep wintry flavors. Topped with sweet caramel cream cheese frosting, this cupcake is good all the way through. And as the oil and sweet potato keep the cake moist, you can easily adapt the recipe for either large or thimble-sized cupcakes with no loss of quality. A neat trick, and something to keep in mind when the size of the crowd may vary.

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  • Amazing Persimmon Bread

    December 6, 2012

    48 Comments

    bread8While we love cooking with the season, winter can be a bit tough, even in California. Lots of produce is available, but some of it has moderate appeal (we love kale, turnips and broccoli, but not every day) and some is just confounding. We love our pomegranates, but they are hard to eat and you can only sprinkle the seeds on so many salads. The citrus is a bright spot, but somehow tends to end up in desserts and cocktails, and after lemon chicken how many savory dishes are there?. And then we have Persimmons. These bright orange, beautiful fruits light up the farmers market, but what do you do with them?

    bread2bread3For Fuyu persimmons, the round ones, the answer is easy. Treat them like apples and place raw slices into salads or serve with cheese or charcuterie. But what about the heart-shaped Hachiya persimmons, what to do with them? It turns out you need to let them ripen almost to the point of rot over-ripeness and then scoop out the pulp. The pulp will be very sweet with pumpkin and citrus notes. One of the more popular uses of Hachiya pulp is to freeze it and serve it like sorbet, but the other primary use is in baking. And this is where we get to this amazing sweet bread. And we don’t mean “amazing way to get rid of persimmons” we simply mean “amazing”. This bread is one of the best surprises we’ve had here at Putney Farm.

    bread4bread5In some ways, we shouldn’t be surprised. The recipe comes from David Lebovitz, one of the best pasty chefs and food writers in the world, and is adapted from a James Beard recipe. Yep, James Beard. The original recipe comes for his book “Beard on Bread“. So we are working from some very solid source materials. Ironically, the recipe itself is a bit “squishy”. You are encouraged to add or subtract sugar to your taste, add some booze and play with different dried fruit and nut combinations. We even use some white whole wheat flour with good results. But the unifying factor is the Hachiya persimmon pulp. It gives a bright pumpkin note and keeps this bread incredibly sweet and moist. With the fruit, nuts and spice this bread has lovely texture and flavor. You can eat it at breakfast, or as a daytime snack or even dessert.

    bread6bread7And making the bread is a straightforward operation. First you must buy and then ripen some Hachiya persimmons. Leave them out and wait. They are ripe when they feel like overripe tomatoes about to burst (Lebovitz describes it as “water balloon about to burst”). You may also see discoloration on the skin, but that is OK. When the persimmons are ripe, spoon out the pulp and purée in a blender, food processor of food mill. Then you are ready to go. And making the rest of the bread is easy. Chop some nuts and dried fruit, we use pecans and dried cranberries, but walnuts, raisins, apricots or dates will work. Then make a standard sweet bread. Combine the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients, make a batter. Butter some loaf plans, then pour in the batter. Bake for an hour at 350 (the kitchen will smell great), cool and serve. And enjoy, this is the good stuff. So when winter produce gets you down, buy a few Hachiya persimmons, let them ripen and make this bread. It will be a bright spot in winter.

    bread

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