this week's macarons

On a customer's suggestion, I decided I would try to post details about what I'll be selling at the Sunday market. Hopefully in the future I'll be posting earlier than now. It's hard to fit in the posting with all the baking. Anyway, I'm actually finished (well, more or less) at a reasonable hour today, so I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep. I'm crossing my fingers for the weather. Current report says light rain tomorrow, but it also says that for today and it's completely clear right now. Maybe we'll get a rainy morning and a sunny afternoon.

Now, to the menu. For macarons, I'll have

• chocolate
• coconut
• rhubarb
• cardamon pistachio w/ rosewater buttercream
• coffee

In tarts, I'll have

• rhubarb meringue
• chocolate pecan
• asparagus/ feta puff pastry

I'll also have palmiers (if they turn out), pithiviers with coconut curd and rhubarb jam filling, and the usual kouign aman. There may be one other item if I get up the energy for it.

Lots of rhubarb this week, but it is rhubarb week at the market after all. And not much else is in season besides asparagus. Off to finish a few odds and ends. Looking forward to tomorrow.

rhubarb soda

I love when baking one recipe leads to something unexpected and perfect. For last week's market, I made some rhubarb flan tarts which required macerating the rhubarb for a couple of hours. After the maceration, I drained the rhubarb to get it ready for baking. I was left with a gorgeous pink syrup, a perfect blend of tart and sweet.

Luckily the weather has started to feel summery around here (except for today, which is wet and dreary), so it's a perfect time for a sweet, pink soda. Just pour some of the syrup in a glass, add club soda to taste and toss in some ice. This syrup would also make a great cocktail. I would have tried it with vodka, but sadly there is no vodka in my house at the moment. I suspect this would also be good with gin, but I tend to think everything will taste good with gin.

To get this syrup, I macerated one pound of rhubarb with 2/3 cup sugar. I drained the syrup off after two hours. Since this method uses a lot of rhubarb, it's probably not the best method if you only want syrup. But, if you are going to be baking with rhubarb anyway, I would recommend macerating the fruit first so you can get this delightful syrup. It really is perfection.

If you only want the syrup, then you can make it by combining equal parts water, sugar, and rhubarb (you can adjust the sugar for taste) and bringing the ingredients to a boil. Once at a boil, reduce to a simmer and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Let the syrup cool and then strain. This should work very well, but I suspect the uncooked version will have a stronger rhubarb taste (which may be a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective).

Market Day

Boy, am I tired. All week, I've been wondering to myself, what was I thinking? In addition to preparing for my first farmer's market, it was finals week in my other life as a teacher and reluctant PhD students, so I spent hours responding to students and taking a final. I also had a deadline for a freelance article (about Ottawa farmers' markets, so at least on a theme) that I completely procrastinated. All of this other work has meant that my baking got pushed to Friday/ Saturday, and mostly Saturday. Yesterday was a 16-hour day, leaving me with 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Will is out of town at a friend's wedding, so I had to do all of the loading, unloading, set-up by myself. Luckily I have nice booth neighbors who helped me set up my canopy which I couldn't manage on my own despite my best efforts.

The day was freezing and I feel like I spent most of the day going for more coffee and jumping up and down to keep myself from going numb. I thought the Ottawa winter had toughened me up, but this cold May day pretty much did me in. My feet are still freezing. It's 7:30 and I want to be asleep. But I made it through my first market day!

I didn't get my signage figured out, so I sort of felt like a lost soul in my little booth, and I didn't have time to print business cards, but I do think my display looked good. Those weeks of scouring flea markets and ebay for trays and cake stands paid off. A photographer took some pics of me and my table for Ontario tourism or some such, so I think that says good things about my aesthetics.

Because of the weather, the market was pretty slow. People kept telling me not to be discouraged. Maybe I just looked discouraged because I was so cold. Overall, I felt pretty good about the day. I didn't sell as much as I'd hoped, but I traded a bunch of stuff for honey from Berg En Dal (my neighbors), greens from Hoople Creek (they said I should move in with them so we can all live happily on pastries and greens) and spelt flour from Waratah Downs. Having extra tarts just means I don't have to wake up early tomorrow to bake for the coffee shop, so that makes me pretty happy. My macarons were probably the biggest hit. They are the one thing that seemed to get people to come to my booth from afar. I will probably end up making a lot more of those than I had originally planned. For today, I made four flavors: strawberry-rhubarb, maple-pecan, chocolate, and lemon. I also made three kinds of tarts (walnut, rhubarb meringue, and lemon chocolate), kouign aman (more on this one later), linzer cookies, apple turnovers, rhubarb anise tea cakes, and pate de fruit.

When I started on this baking adventure, it was because I had been laid off from my teaching position. I figured it was a good time to do something I'd always wanted to try. A few weeks ago, I found out that I'm not actually being laid off. So, now I just get to relax into the baking and enjoy my time at the market. I don't have to worry so much about how much money I'm making. For me, doing the market is really about learning. It's hard to justify baking excess in day to day life, so now I can bake whatever I want. It's sort of like my poor-man's culinary school.

Now that I've gotten this first week out of the way, hopefully I'll be back to regular posting. Off to sleep now.

building

Sorry things have been so slow on the blog. It's only because life is so busy. The market starts on Sunday! So I've been shopping and planning and trying to keep up with my non-baking work and life. While I've been shopping for canopies and boxes and trays, Will has been building me a kitchen counter. Our kitchen is ridiculously small and almost entirely without usable counter space. Will's been talking about building another counter since we moved in, but with the market coming he got inspired and has been working day and night (well, sort of) to finish it up. Will did custom cabinetry for awhile in college, so he is handy at this sort of thing.

He was excited to be building something. I think the project was a labor of love for him--love for me, of course, but also in memory of his Grandpa Harold who died a couple of weeks ago. That's Harold's t-square in the top picture.

The counter is simple, with a long top and a couple of shelves and a bunch of open space for storage. Additional shelves may be coming, because Will is very amenable to my demands. And its the best color ever, a light turquoise which is going to go splendidly with my yellow KitchenAid. Here is the almost-finished product (just waiting for a second coat):

More baking to come in the next couple of days, as I prepare for the market.