Goodbye, Mr. Easy-Bake.

My love of baking began with the Easy-Bake oven.

Sadly my passion had little to do with craft or artistry, but with making money. My parents weren’t the allowance types, which meant that acquiring spending money (money I typically used for candy) meant either working for my parents’ sweatshop-like wages (10 cents to iron a piece of clothing?!) or generating some type of entrepreneurial scheme.

I often sold things door-to-door, either cleverly packaged, holiday-themed snacks or greeting cards. I could always sale my wares, but I was painfully shy and rarely willing to venture farther than the friendly doors in my immediate neighborhood.

The one money-making venture that never failed me and never forced me to leave my own front yard was the sugar cookie business. My sisters and I would spend long summer mornings cutting and baking bite-sized animal-shaped sugar cookies. Our cookies were well-loved in the neighborhood and they always made us a happy stash of money. The ingredients were so basic, my parents didn’t even expect a cut of the profits.

Our cookie-baking mornings always began with batches made in my sister’s Easy-Bake oven. I think we reasoned that tiny cookies required a tiny oven. We would eventually realize that sticking with the Easy-Bake would take all of our time and we would never make any money, so we would switch to the Big Oven. Yet, even as we baked in the Big Oven, we’d still run batches through the Easy-Bake. I suspect we believed this practice added more authenticity to our process. And as children, we found a certain kind of magic in light-bulb baking that just didn’t exist in the Big Oven.

Every time we baked our sugar cookies, even though we were fully aware of the limitations of the Easy-Bake, we started off with the tiny light bulb oven.

This week, the inventor of the Easy-Bake oven, Ronald Howes, died. In memory, I baked a batch of tiny sugar cookies. I think everyone has an ideal sugar cookie from childhood. My husband’s is crisp, lightly spiced with nutmeg, and topped with colored sprinkles. This is mine: soft, cakey, and oh-so-slightly browned. And bite-sized.

Only the Big Oven to work with today. Tasty cookies, but not quite the same. Goodbye, Mr. Easy-Bake. And thanks.

Cut-out Sugar Cookies
4 oz unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
3 ½ cups flour
½ tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Whisk together flour, salk and baking powder, set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla. The mix will be lumpy and separated, but no worries. Stir in dry ingredients until just combined. Divide dough into two balls. Roll one out to ¼ inch thickness. Cut dough into desired shapes and place cookies on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, rotating baking sheets halfway through. The dough scraps can be re-rolled.

These cookies are great plain, with icing, or with a sprinkling of cinnamon-date sugar.

orange cream trifle

When I lived in England more than a decade ago, I was pretty excited about the prospect of eating trifle. It is English after all. Sadly, most of the trifles I ate while there were a lackluster mix of red jell-o, Bird's custard, and store-bought sponge. I will rarely turn down any type of sweet, so I ate this sad trifle quite happily, but I was always wanting more.

Despite my longing for delicious trifle, I never actually made any. Why? Too many steps, too many servings, no trifle bowl? Finally, a few years ago in planning for a family Christmas party, I decided it was time for trifle. I purchased a trifle bowl for all of $10 and got to work planning ideas. I drove Will and my sis crazy with my thoughts on the trifle: "What about this? Do you think that will taste good?" Really, I was annoying. But the results were lovely.

For this year's celebration, I decided it was time to give the recipe (and my trifle bowl) another go. From the first attempt, the trifle needed a bit of perfecting which I think I achieved. The trifle is sweet and lovely--a cakey, custardy version of a creamscicle. The trifle relies on my favorite winter citrus, the blood orange, for its flavor and color. I've only made the kid-friendly version of the trifle, but it would amazing with a bit of booziness soaked into the pound cake. Grand marnier would work wonderfully with the citrus flavors, but but there are plenty of other good options--brandy, rum, the traditional sherry. Just add a brush of whatever you choose to the pound cake slices before assembling the trifle.

Orange Cream Trifle

one pound cake : I like Dorie Greenspan's recipe in her lovely Baking for its lightness and general fail-proofness, but any would work--as would storebought

vanilla pastry cream: I go for Greenspan/ Herme here, a recipe which can be found in Desserts and Chocolate Desserts

blood orange curd:
8 large egg yolks
zest of two blood oranges (make sure you buy unsprayed)
1/2 cup, plus two tablespoons of blood orange juice (fresh is best, but you can often find blood orange juice in Italian food shops)
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
10 T. (5 oz) unsalted butter, cut into chunks

Whisk egg yolks, zest, juice and sugar in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook over med-high, stirring constantly until the mix reaches 160 F and is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove pan from heat. Mix in salt, then add butter one piece at a time until smooth. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a medium bowl. Cover surface with plastic wrap and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled and thickened.

chestnut whipped cream
2 cups whipped cream
1 cup chestnut paste (creme de marrons): found in most Italian food shops or other fancy food stores

blood orange segments, from 4-5 blood oranges, pith removed entirely. To easily segment oranges, slice of top and bottom, then remove remaining skin and pith with pairing knife. Slice flesh along the membranes to remove.

rasberry or red currant jam

dark chocolate


To Assemble:
Cut pound cake into 1/2 inch slices (depending on preference, you may remove the crusts). For fit, I slice these slices further into approx. 1 inch by 4 inch sticks. Heat up jam (about 1/2 cup) until smooth and slightly run. Brush each cake slice with jam (and alcohol, if using).

Cover bottom layer of trifle bowl with cake slices. Top with half of the blood orange curd. Lay all orange segments on top of the curd, and top with a scant amount of vanilla pastry cream just to cover the orange slices.

Arrange another layer of pound cake and top with the remaining curd.

Arrange final layer of cake and top with vanilla pastry cream.

Make chestnut cream. Whip two cups of whipping cream until stiff peaks form. Scoop 1/3 of the cream into a bowl and gently fold in chestnut paste. Then fold this back into the remaining whipped cream. Spread this on top of the pastry cream. Shave dark chocolate over the top as desired. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve. To allow flavors time to develop, it's best to prepare the trifle a day before serving.

new season

Autumn always makes me feel a little melancholy, especially days like today when the cold air is tempered by brilliant sunshine, and there's a tiny breeze lifting up the papery leaves strewn about. Autumn typifies transition to me, a state of being I've never been fond of. Too much unknown, too much anticipation for what may come, too much longing for what has passed.

This entire year has been transitional for me: a marriage, a move, a job lost, a job returned, a baby. And then there has been my baking and this blog. So many new experiences and so much floundering. I feel lucky to be living my life.

Being able to bake this summer, to go each Sunday to the farmer's market and sell pastries and talk with people has been an immeasurable joy. My favorite moment of the summer was when a woman buying a bag of apricot jellies lingered to tell me about a candy store that used to be in Ottawa, where every creation was handcrafted. She described layers of taffy and oversized candy canes and her delight in all. As she described all of these remembered moments, she was clearly transported back to her childhood and I was there with her. It was magic. And this is where a little fruit, a little sugar, and a bit of craft can take you.

I was planning to finish up my season with the last two weeks of the market, but my life seems to be getting too full to manage everything. My sincere apologies to those of you who I told you'd see me sometime during October. I hope you'll understand. And thank you, thank you, thank you for stopping by my booth on Sundays. I can't even tell you how much I've loved every minute of this experience.

I will be continuing to blog here, so I hope you'll stop by. And I may be back to the market next fall.

For now, to take the edge off autumn melancholy and the cold air, there are pumpkin doughnuts. These are basically this recipe, but I swapped out half of the flour for spelt flour, and for the topping I used a mix of white sugar, date sugar, with a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg.

back to the market

Apologies galore for being so absent from this blog and so absent from the market! I spent three lovely weeks at home in Utah, where the only things I baked were a peach pie for my dad and a princess cake for my niece. It was a good break and we spent some much-needed time with family and playing in the mountains/ desert.

For the remaining two months of the market, I will be attending on a more limited schedule. For September, that means this Sunday, the 13th and the following Sunday, Sept. 2oth. I'm still working out my plans for October. My reduced schedule is due to a couple of factors: first, I'm back to work at my full-time job and second--more importantly--is that I have a new little baking project in the works. I am pregnant, with the new little person set to arrive in March. With the return to work and the pregnancy, I just haven't had the time or energy to make every market. So, I will look forward to seeing you all occasionally this fall. I wish I could be there every week, but life right?

So, this week I'm still tweaking the menu, but it looks like I'll have:

kouign amann
ground cherry clafoutis tarts
peach-blackberry pie
pear tart
something plummy

in macarons:
gianduja
apricot
maple pecan


and, finally, apricot jellies


see you at the market!

sunday's market

I hate to say this, but because of an unexpected and lingering illness (got to love those nasty summer colds; maybe it's all this rain?) I won't be at the market tomorrow. I am planning to be back to a regular blogging and market schedule next week. See you then and enjoy the market! Be sure to go support all of those farmers who have been harvesting in the downpour!

sunday market menu

Life has been hectic and wonderful the last couple of weeks, which has led to no blogging. Sorry! And sorry I didn't get the menu up last week. sigh. Looks like tomorrow will be a lovely day, so hopefully a busy one at the market. Cherries will be at the market tomorrow, which I'm pretty excited about. Can't wait to make some sour cherry jam.

I'll be taking next week off from the market (will and I are taking our tandem on a bike tour), so be sure to stop by tomorrow for your macaron fix.

In macarons this week, I just have three flavors:

• mint chocolate (ganache made with some crazy amazing swiss candy mint from Riverglen Farm; they only seem to bring it when I ask them for it, but stop by their booth to check it out--potent and delicious)
  
• strawberry
• coffee

In tartlets, I'll have:

• strawberry-rhubarb lattice (loved them so much, had to give them another week)
• rhubarb flan with ginger streusel
• chocolate--maybe with a little strawberry, maybe just plain

Pithiviers are back this week (s'mores aren't making the cut, but will be back soon). I'll also have a chocolate beet cake. And, of course, there will be kouign amann.

Rhubarb and strawberry jam. And maybe, if I get it together, there will be rhubarb jellies.


Hope to see some of you at the market. If you read the blog, be sure to say hello when you stop by!

tart-finished pig

At the end of the market day a couple of weeks ago, I tossed a pile of mangled tarts into the bin. My booth neighbor yelled (very nicely, mind you) at me for wasting them and told me that his pig would love them. He jokingly said he could finish the pig on tarts. So, now I toss my mangled and unusable tarts into a plastic bag to be carried home to a certainly happy pig. I love the idea of a pig growing fat on bits of sugary tarts, its snout covered in sweet meringue and flaky crust. It's no surprise that I'm enchanted by the notion of a tart-finished pig. The image in my head is reminiscent of one of the more singular reading experiences of my childhood.

Charlotte's Web is one of the best foodie novels I can think of. What impacted me when I read the book as a child (and still) isn't so much the emotional drama of Wilbur and Charlotte's friendship, but the unexpectedly luxurious descriptions of food. Fern picks wild raspberries and sucks nectar from clover delighting the abundance of farm-life. But even better are the descriptions of what Templeton the rat and Wilbur the lucky pig are eating.

At the fair, Templeton delights in "a real gorge": "popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles, partially gnawed ice cream cones." In his slop bucket, Wilbur finds "skim milk, crusts, middlings, bits of doughnuts, wheat cakes with drops of maple syrup sticking to them, potato skins, leftover custard pudding with raisins."

As a child, I was delighted by how my mouth would water with these descriptions of pig slop and a rat smorgasbord. As an unashamed carnivore, I don't think every pig should have Wilbur's fate, but I do try hard to ensure that my meat-eating is ethical. I don't consume much meat, and I make sure to buy that meat from small producers. I believe it is ok to raise and slaughter animals for meat, but I believe those animals should be well-cared for. And I believe that tarts, whether for human or pig consumption, make life just a little bit better.