Looking a little seedy.

This burst of frugality was inspired by the theme ingredient: honey. I really love honey meringue frosting and since it would give me an opportunity to use up some extra egg whites, I figured I’d see how far I could take the concept of using only things I already had.

Seedy indeedy.

I thought about some things that go well with honey that I also happened to have. Lots of teas and flowers, obviously, but I wanted something different. Something special. Something that was just languishing in my kitchen cabinet.

It looks kind of fanciful.

A lone jar of tahini was my answer. Sesame and honey are awesome together! I boosted the intensely nutty sesame cake experience with a crunchy chewiness via some of the toasted sesame seeds that I always keep around.

A little monochromatic but look at that crumb!

Since the meringue frosting is so insanely sticky-sweet, I figured I’d tone it down by torching it a bit, but I wanted something else to cut through both the sweetness of the honey and the tender fatty richness of the cake itself.

Sunshiney!

I decided to go with  a nice sour lemon marmalade, with a little honey cooked into it to give it a nice floral note and tie the flavors together a bit. I think it does the trick quite nicely – though lemons were the only thing I didn’t have. Luckily they can be had cheaply in the store downstairs from my apartment, so it didn’t really matter.

Anyway, these cupcake are pretty crazy. The frosting is so light and billowy yet marshmallow-like in stickiness, and it completely collapses when you take a bite. The cake is just as insubstantial, due in part to the extreme fattiness of sesame seeds (also this recipe just makes crazy soft and tender nut or seed butter cake). This is why the directions call for repeatedly freezing the cupcakes during the decorating process. Altogether they’re a bit exotic and unusual, but definitely tasty. Don’t skip the torching step – even if you have to do it with a Bic lighter the toastedness is essential.

On a pedestal.

Burnt Honey Sesame Cupcakes with Sour Lemon Marmalade

First Make the Marmalade:

1. 1 lemon (weighing about 125g)
2. 250g water
3. 200g sugar (superfine if available)
4. 50g honey

Thoroughly wash the lemon. On a plate with a substantial rim (so you don’t lose any juice), use a sharp knife to slice the lemon very thinly, reserving the seeds. Chop the slices up further until you have very small pieces of outer skin attached to the flesh. Dump the lemon and juice into a small saucepan and cover with the water. Tie the seeds into a cheesecloth pouch and add to the pan. Bring to a simmer and cover, cooking gently until the rind is soft. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar and honey until the sugar is dissolved. Return to heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook on a low boil for about ten minutes, testing on chilled white plates to see if it’s set. Once it is, remove from heat and squeeze all the pectin you can out of the cheesecloth bag. Allow to cool fully before attempting to use.

Then Bake the Cakes:

1. 5 oz. (1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp) butter
2. 1 cup sugar
3. 1 egg
4. 2 tsp vanilla
5. 1 cup AP flour
6. 1/2 tsp baking soda
7. 1/4 tsp salt
8. 1/4 cup buttermilk (regular milk with a couple drops of lemon juice or white vinegar is fine)
9. 5 oz. (1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp) hot water
10. 1/2 cup tahini
11. 2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 350F. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, scraping down the bowl and making sure it is fully emulsified into the creamed mixture. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add it to the batter alternately with the buttermilk and hot water, scraping down the bowl often. Add the tahini and sesame seeds and beat on medium-high for a couple of minutes, until light and fluffy. Spoon into a lined muffin tin and bake 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Allow to cool fully before assembling.

Finally, Make the Frosting:

1. 1 cup honey
2. 2 egg whites, room temperature
3. Pinch salt

Place the honey in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. In the meantime, whip the egg whites and salt to medium-stiff but not dry peaks. Reduce the whipping speed to medium and pour in the boiling honey in one continuous stream. Return the speed to high and whip until stiff, glossy peaks form and the meringue is about room temperature or a little warmer.

To Assemble:

Freeze the cupcakes solid and trim any excess cake overhang with kitchen shears. Using a small circle cutter, cut the center out of each cupcake, reserving the plugs of cake and trimming them down to 1/4″ thick lids. Fill each cupcake with marmalade and top with lids. Freeze again until solid. Using a small spatula or a butter knife, spread the frosting on the cupcakes, leaving the sides thick and the top fairly flat. Using a kitchen torch or just a high powered gas burner, brulee the outer edge of the frosting on each cupcake, then sprinkle more toasted sesame seeds in the middle. Makes 12.

Ooh, springy!

Yes, salad. Not something you’d normally bother to post a recipe for, but it was so cute, so tasty, and such a happy coincidence of ingredients that I knew I needed to share.

Color means flavor!

It was actually SO tasty that I ate one four times in two days, until the magical combination of fresh pea shoots, sweet sugarsnaps, crisp seedless cucumber and brilliant red strawberries ran out. If i come across this combination all at once again I’ll replicate this salad for sure – I’ve still got plenty of the flavorful local honey and I always have Balsamic, extra virgin olive oil and black pepper on hand.

Sweet, leafy and crisp.

This salad is amazing served at any time of day…I ate it for breakfast a couple of times, as dinner once and as a late-night, post-work snack another night. Get the freshest ingredients possible and only buy strawberries that fill the air with their sweet berry perfume. Use good honey. Enjoy devouring springtime.

Amazingly addictive and happily healthy.

Springy Peaberry Salad

1. 1 pint strawberries
2. 1 smallish seedless cucumber
3. About 30 fat sugar snap peas
4. 2-3 cups pea shoots
5. 1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
6. 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
7. 2 Tbsp honey
8. Up to 1/4 tsp black pepper

Wash all the vegetables. Hull and slice the strawberries. Slice the cucumber in half lengthwise and slice each half in 1/4″ thick slices. Remove the stems and strings on the sugar snap peas and chop each in half crosswise. Place all in a large bowl. Combine the Balsamic, oil, honey and pepper in a small bowl and whisk vigorously until emulsified. Pour over the salad and toss well. Serve immediately. Serves four.

Ah, that even feels healthy to write about! Don’t worry, though, the next two posts will be all about the ice cream – one fruity with a somewhat curious recipe, the other an eggless but still VERY indulgent classic you probably never thought of making at home.

Such humble-looking little cookies.

A bit of honey and a dash of cardamom later and I had some delicious, slightly exotic cookies. So what’s the problem?

They don't really look much like meringues.

For something made with things I wanted to use up they were unexpectedly wonderful. So wonderful that Z requested I make more as soon as possible. But…that would require buying more nuts and separating more eggs.

Lumpy bits mean walnutty goodness!

See, I would actually like to make these again. They were a bit overdone due to my panicking at them not crisping up at all in the oven. I think it was the humidity, they were very rubbery outside and wouldn’t hold their shape. Since it was late, I turned off the oven and left them in there and went to bed.

Could be fluffier, could NOT be tastier.

I guess I should have cracked the oven door open – they were crispy, crispy, crispy in the morning. Which was actually kind of interesting in that around the edges the walnuts were the softest part about them. So yeah…don’t do what I did, do what I SHOULD have done if you make these.

Odds and ends can make a wonderful thing.

Honeyed Walnut Cardameringues

1. 3 egg whites, room temperature
2. 1/4 cup sugar
3. 1/4 cup honey
4. 2 cardamom pods, seeds removed and crushed finely, pods discarded
5. Small splash of orange flower water
6. 1 cup walnuts, chopped finely

Preheat the oven to 350. In a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment or with a hand mixer, beat the whites to a foam, then gradually add the sugar and honey. Add the cardamom and orange flower water and beat to medium-stiff peaks. Carefully fold in the chopped nuts. Plop onto lined cookie sheets (I find Silpats do a better job at not burning the bottoms of meringues but parchment is ok too) in medium-sized mounds 1″ apart. Bake for 20-30 minutes, then turn the oven off and crack the door open a little bit. Let rest in the oven for a few hours or overnight. Keep in an airtight container.

If you don’t have walnuts on hand, these cookies would also be lovely with almonds or pistachios. The honey works beautifully to carry the flavor of the cardamom, and the orange flower water is nearly imperceptible but adds a tiny extra layer of mysterious flavor – just as it should.

Like a buttery wall of poofitude, holding back the delicious contents within...

One thing I have noticed during my time in pastry school is that nearly all of the past Daring Bakers challenges are covered in the curriculum. And why not? Many of the challenges are traditional desserts made with classic elements, just like the things we made in school, which are based on a gradual progression of said elements and the different ways they can be assembled together.

Well hello my pretties.

So at the beginning of the month, when I was sitting in the hall at school on my lunch break, checking to see what this month’s challenge was on my phone, I wondered if it was something I had already covered in class. I doubted it was, since I was only a month into the class and had only made a bunch of tarts, cookies, pate a choux and a handful of puff pastry items.

Puffy little cap!

I was actually smack dab in the middle of the puff pastry unit, and was struggling like hell through the insane amounts of rolling (the actual rolling and turning process didn’t bother me, it was the early morning rolling of the pastry that had been chilling overnight that killed me…I’m not so good in the upper body strength department and my lack of height does not give me an awful lot of leverage). I opened the forum and saw the words “get out your rolling pins!”

Who likes figs?

Oh no. Oh nonononono…

Vols-au-vent. Which I had literally made the day before. And failed miserably at, I have to mention. Mine came out flat – they didn’t rise or poof at all. It was EMBARRASSING. I decided to give the challenge another couple of weeks so I could get over my traumatic first experience with these little towers of buttery yumminess. And you know what?

I like figs!

By the time we hit the second week of puff pastry I was doing just fine. It still took me a little longer than everyone else to roll out my pastry, but I was getting better every day and I was able to haul ass and completely catch up by the time we cleaned up for lunch every day. And I got a 96 on my puff pastry practical, with picture-perfect palmiers and a near-flawless pithivier. My speedy vol-au-vents were slightly less than perfect but I didn’t mind. I surprised the chef who had been after me all throughout the unit to catch up and be faster. I proved that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t the quickest at the start – slow and steady, right?

One of my favorite things about making these at home on my own was that I didn’t have to stick to any recipe exactly. I could make whatever filling I liked and even a variation on the pastry itself. Which I did, quite happily.

Beautiful fork, beautiful puffs.

We had made chocolate puff pastry in class, which is made by substituting cocoa powder for a small percentage of the flour by weight. Well, I thought to myself as we mixed the beurrage layer (which was going on the outside since it was an inverse base), I know something I like even better than chocolate that is powdered and pretty to boot!

The color was a great contrast to the horribly gray rainy day we're having.

Matcha puff pastry? Has it ever been done before? I don’t know but it’s unlikely. So I went for it.

I want to live in the little green tower!

I am actually very surprised that the matcha vols-au-vent got as puffy as they did – I had quite a lot of trouble with butter breaking up on the inside of the dough as I rolled it. I gave it a couple of extra turns to tuck the butter chunks on the inside and it clearly worked out fine in the end.

Imagine if I'd actually made the vol-au-vents with that cutter instead of just using it for the insides...sad part is I considered it. For like 2 seconds.

I had slightly different plans for the fillings of both versions. I was originally going to make a homemade mascarpone for the larger plain vols-au-vent, but just couldn’t find the time to ferment the cream. I’ve had a very busy week (and have an even busier one ahead of me – eek). I did have some leftover cream cheese from some semi-failed cupcakes a couple of weeks ago, so I just beat it with some orange blossom honey and a dash of orange blossom water before spreading it in and topping with fat, fresh figs and a drizzle of extra honey (plus some cris-crosses of honey on the plate). I actually panicked last night because I had been saving some figs a bit too long and they’d started to go fuzzy on me. I set out for Chinatown last night to find more – and my supply has completely dried up! I gave in and went to Whole Foods, where I paid a little more but got some delicious, lovely Turkish figs that went beautifully with the tangy cheese, sweet honey and buttery pastry shell.

Yeah, it's tiny.

The matcha vols-au-vent were meant to have a chocolate ganache filling to go with the tangy little pomegranate seeds and grassy, bitter pastry, but I realized a bit too late (on the way home last night) that I didn’t have any good chocolate to use for a ganache. However, I did have quite a bit of cream that was no longer going to be made into cheese, so I whipped it and added some powdered sugar. I thought about adding lemon zest and juice directly for flavor but worried about the cream curdling so I just sprinkled some zest onto the cream after piping it into the pastries, then arranged the pomegranate arils on top.

Sweet, sour, bitter, creamy and buttery - what a tasty combination.

Both versions turned out very tasty but I think I prefer the matcha one – not only is it gorgeous to look at but there are few things I like better than tea, freshly whipped cream and pomegranates. It’s buttery, bitter, sweet, sour and tangy all at once, with the seeds providing a nice crunchiness.

If you’d like to try making flavored puff pastry yourself, you can use any recipe and substitute matcha, cocoa powder or any other powdered flavoring element for 10-20% of the total weight of the flour. I substituted closer to 10% because my matcha is very high quality and quite strong and bitter – I would exercise the same caution with a Dutch process cocoa which is dark and bitter.

Expect to see some tasty palmiers here soon, since I have all the lovely leftover buttery dough hanging out in my freezer!

I just love the way they nestle in there.

You get a slightly unusual but very delicious combination of Italian flavors in a traditional French cookie-cake-thing!

Basil courtesy Luigi, my amazingly alive and thriving basil plant.

I wanted to use up some leftover ricotta and wondered if it might be substituted for some of the melted butter in a madeleine recipe, since I’d had such great success with coconut oil. I decided to just go for it, and be really risky and daring by replacing the OTHER half of the melted butter with olive oil.

I tried to make a basil glaze. You can see the flecks of basil on the madeleines. I'm not including the glaze recipe because it was more like a soaking syrup, is completely unnecessary and I'm short on time.

I also remembered I had some chestnut flour in the fridge that was crying out to be used (after my idea of chestnut flour macarons fell through I think it was sad) so I went for a total Italian flavor profile, adding a little honey to enhance the sweetness of the chestnut flavor. Also, I love honey. And I knew, after double-checking in my favorite book (which is turning a year old this week – yay! Happy birthday Flavor Bible!) that everything would certainly taste deeeeelicious together, despite its untraditional mish-mash of European styles.

And once you're done soaking in the tea, get in my tummy!

I used orange blossom honey since I had some on hand, but you could use wildflower, chestnut or clover honey and it would all be fantastic. The madeleines are sweet and slightly sticky from the honey, though they lose a little of that stickiness if you let them chill out in the fridge in an airtight container. The chestnut flour comes through nicely with an earthy, almost wholesome tone, and the ricotta isn’t really noticeable but does lend a nice fluffiness to the finished product.

Oh madeleines, always so pretty.

Italian Madeleines

1. 3 eggs
2. 2/3 cup sugar
3. 1/2 cup AP flour
4. 1/2 cup chestnut flour
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/8 tsp salt
7. 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
8. 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
9. 1 Tbsp honey

Beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer on medium-high for about 5 minutes, until they are pale in color and tripled in volume. Meanwhile, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt. Sift a small amount of the dry mixture over the egg mixture and fold in completely, then repeat gradually with the rest of the dry. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, ricotta and honey.  Fold the oil and ricotta mixture into the rest of the batter by thirds. Cover with plastic and chill for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375. If your pan is not nonstick, butter and flour it thoroughly (you will have to wash, dry and reapply the butter and flour between batches if you have more batter than your pan(s) can hold in a single batch – for a mini pan with 10 indentations you will need to bake about 4 batches). Spoon batter into each indentation, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for about 10 minutes for miniature madeleines, 15 minutes for regular-sized. They will be browned around the edges when done. To remove from pan, rap the pan sharply against the counter and turn out onto a cooling rack.

I brought some of these in to the chefs who teach my pastry class. They agreed that the glaze idea was unnecessary and told me that there were too many things going on in the madeleines. They said that you shouldn’t use more than three flavors in a single product AT MOST. Boo to that I say! You can’t even taste the ricotta! Perhaps they were just offended that I made madeleines less boring? Don’t let them stop you. I think these are AWESOME.