Butter. Flour. Eggs.

Posts Tagged ‘Coconut’

The can is purely ceremonial...

I’m beginning to feel self conscious: I’ve been boiling so much sugar lately that I’m afraid my neighbors must be thinking I’ve started a rum factory in my kitchen. The true explanation is quite innocent: I just happen to be baking things that require boiled sugar as part of their magic.

Let me tell you a little story. (Have a seat.) Many years ago I worked with a talented sleight-of-hand artist. While that sounds like the opening salvo of a very old-fashioned dirty joke, it is the truth. Sleight-of-hand artists differ from regular magicians in that everything they do is designed to be witnessed from very close range. While you watch an illusionist pull a rabbit out of a hat, part of your mind is usually doing the work to reverse engineer how the illusionist may have made this happen. At the very least you  know there’s bound to be something special about that hat—some way of hiding the rabbit.

With a sleight-of-hand artist all you see is a few coins, and a couple of pairs of hands, one pair of which likely belongs to you. My usual startled reaction to my co-worker’s tricks (and I use that word with a great deal of guilt) was, “How did you do that?” The answer was always, “It’s magic.” I could never figure out a better explanation.

I get the same zing when I boil sugar to 238 degrees: It never fails to amaze me that a saucepan of clear, dangerously hot, boiling syrup can magically transform into so many different things. Magic.

Sugar boiled to 238 degrees is commonly referred to as being at “soft ball stage.” It is called that because if you put a drop or two of the sugar syrup into a glass of cold water it should form a soft or malleable ball shape. This is cooking chemistry at its simplest. Boil the sugar to a hotter temperature and you get “hard ball stage.” You guessed it: a few drops in a glass of cold water would be hard to the touch.

If you’ve ever had Salt Water Taffy then you’ve had something that didn’t stray that far from soft ball stage sugar syrup. They cool the hot syrup on a marble slab, add a few drops of flavoring and coloring, then stretch and pull the mixture (usually by machine) until enough air has been incorporated that it has the soft milky quality that has pulled us in from the Boardwalk for so many years.

Remember the Scooter Pies I made a few weeks ago? The marshmallow I made to fill them is simply soft ball syrup whipped into gelatin. The frozen soufflé I made for Valentine’s Day had an Italian Meringue base made with egg whites and the very same soft ball syrup. The silky but rich buttercream on your cousin Debbie’s wedding cake likely started life boiling in a sauce pan (cousin Debbie may have her own dark secrets.)

Naturally if I didn’t have a Kitchen Aid-type stand mixer these things would not be in my repertoire. So it is only natural that I should find myself in front of the bubbling sauce pan again, this time so that I can resolve some unfinished business from last year.

A year ago in preparation for Passover, I decided to make Coconut Macaroons. I have an aversion to the kind they sell in the little cans. When I eat those I taste nothing but sugar and the can. I used a recipe I found that employed a generous dollop of coconut milk, a couple of egg whites, and some confectioner’s sugar. On paper it all sounded delicious. On the cookie sheet it was a loose, runny mess. I kept adding things to firm up the mixture: more confectioner’s sugar, a bit of Passover potato starch, even a touch of almond flour. Nevertheless the liquid from the cookies ran, dripped and burned onto the bottom of the oven. Have I ever told you about my fool-proof trick for ridding your kitchen of smoke? That’s because I don’t have one.

I tried that recipe a couple of times. While the resulting macaroons tasted okay they were also a bit greasy from the coconut milk. They were moist, but had no texture because the coconut was so wet it never got a chance to toast while the cookies baked. They were also far too rich for Passover dessert.

Back to the drawing board. This year it occurred to me to follow the k.i.s.s. rule: keep it simple, stupid (the latter referring to yours truly.) One package of sweetened coconut. One small batch of Italian meringue. Done. The result is a cross between a classical French Coconut Meringue (the crunchy kind) and the inside of a Mounds bar. The bonus is that they are relatively very light (as light as anything with coconut can be), and they are painless to make in quantity (you can easily double my recipe.)

Yes, by all means feel free to dip these in chocolate.

If you miss the can, you can supply your own as I did in the picture above.

It is part of the ceremony, right?

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Click here for the recipe for Coconut Macaroons.

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Coconut Oatmeal Nutella Cookies

As this is a blog devoted to that magic mixture of eating/baking/cooking/eating I wouldn’t blame you for seeing the title of this story and assuming that it is about Angel Food Cake. Apologies: there’s none of that spongy, pure-as-the-driven-snow cake this week, although there is an egg-less cookie. But more about that in just a moment.

I don’t think of myself as angelic; does anyone? But I have a friend who just made it easy for me to be an angel – and I’m still very much alive (last time I checked, anyway.) My friend Brian Hampton is a playwright of some note. He has written two plays which have been successfully produced all around the country. His first, a play named “Checking In” is about a small group of high school friends who reunite for a weekend in Atlantic City ten years or so after graduation.

This play is kind of like his first born child, so he feels a great deal of attachment to it. That’s why he wants to adapt it for the screen and produce it as an independent film. I told him years ago to sell it to Lifetime Movies for TV, but I think he just doesn’t have the stomach to sign away control of his baby and watch Valerie Bertinelli play a 28 year old.

(Who am I to judge? If they made a Butter Flour Eggs movie they’d try to cast Richard Deacon as me – if he weren’t, shall we say, otherwise engaged. But I think if the script is good enough, perhaps Matt Damon would be available? Why are you laughing?)

ANYWAY, I am now an angel, but in the old show biz meaning of the word: a backer, a patron of the arts, a philanthropist. Stereotypically these folks were old ladies who thought of themselves as artistically astute, but as with so many other things, the internet has not only flattened the playing field, it has built a whole new stadium. I am speaking of Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is a new venue for artists and entrepreneurs to put their ideas in front of the public and get them the funding they need to turn their ideas into reality. This is the link to Brian’s Kickstarter profile if you’re interested, but I also recommend the site as a good read.

His other fundraising idea – and the reason we’re here today – is that he is throwing a Prom. Yes, a prom as in: rented tuxedos and sneakers. Like any good benefit there is a raffle planned, and that’s where I (and the cookies) come in. I’ve been asked to prepare a Butter Flour Eggs sweets basket that will go to the highest bidder. Cookies for sale! Going, going, gone…

Keeping with the prom / high school theme my mind went to school lunch – my high school held its proms in the cafeteria, decorated for the night with a special theme. (I think the theme my year was Venice, as I have a foggy memory of one of my less graceful classmates puncturing the cellophane “water” that filled the canals with her stiletto heel. Doh!)

My usual brown bag lunch was some kind of sandwich, so I’m rolling out the sandwich cookies for the prom. Among the planned choices I’m making are PB&J’s, a simple square shortbread cookie filled with the obvious. Kitschy, yes?

The other cookie idea is inspired by a recent walk around midtown Manhattan when I happened on the Street Sweets truck , one of the great trucks roaming New York with upscale sweets that, during my walk, I couldn’t resist. One “Macarella” later I was hooked. Yes, the “Macarella” sounds like a late nineties line dance, but actually it’s a cookie. Two crunchy, pancake-flat coconut macaroons with a layer of Nutella in the middle. That is my inspiration for the second sandwich cookie.

Copycat? Not quite. I wanted a softer cookie to go with the oozing smoosh of Nutella. The big, crunchy macaroons made the Nutella leak all over my hands. A softer cookie will keep the Nutella off the raffle winner’s fancy Prom clothes. The actual cookie recipe – as previously mentioned made without eggs – is an old World War One recipe called ANZAC Biscuits (ANZAC stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps.) The lack of eggs helped the cookies stay fresh longer.

No, smart aleck, I wasn’t around then, I found the recipe in a cookbook. My contributions? Baking a slightly smaller cookie to use as a sandwich, and substituting sweetened coconut for the original recipe’s dried coconut to make the cookies soft and chewy.

Nutella is very cool again, and yes, it’s good stuff, but I just saw a TV commercial for it that claimed it can be part of a healthy breakfast. Listen, it’s yummy, but let’s be honest: nutritionally it’s not much better than frosting in a can. Don’t give it to your kids for breakfast.

Save it to stuff my cookies.

By the way, I do have a groovy After Prom Party planned. It goes something like this: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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Click here for the recipe for Coconut Oatmeal Nutella Sandwiches.

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

The Easter Bunny has been here...

I have to admit I love the kitsch aspect of any holiday. Paper honeycomb fold-out turkeys on Thanksgiving? Please put mine front and center. American flag toothpicks on Fourth of July? Can’t have enough. But for true kitsch lovers I think the real competition is between Christmas and Easter, although admittedly, Christmas wins by the sheer volume of electrically-driven things that light up, flash, and spin. Easter is slightly more analog.

Surely you can’t not smile at all the carrot-clutching stuffed Easter Bunnies currently lining store shelves? After a winter like we’ve had in the Northeast, I almost feel like I could get a tan from the jelly beans and yellow and pink Marshmallow Peeps smiling at me in the drug store. If their shiny pastel colors can’t cut through the gloomy weather, then the sugar buzz they deliver will.

My cousin Hope has invited me to her Easter egg hunt. She’s been arranging these hunts for her boss’ kids every year for a long time and I think she invites me because she has always thought of me as her “little cousin.” (We grew up a couple of doors away from each other, and she’s a decade older, so I think she’ll always think of me that way.)

I’ve always looked up to Hope for her artistic ability – there’s a strong artistic strain that runs through our family – and for her ability to marry a great business mind and entrepreneurial spirit with that ability. (She’s a catalogue merchant and jewelry designer.)

She’s also an excellent cook, although I suspect that what she really enjoys is supervising while her husband and I do the actual cooking.

This is my way of explaining that I find the thought of bringing her something from my kitchen a little intimidating. She is never less than supportive and complimentary of my baking, but in the past I have always copped out and brought candy. This year, there’s the blog you’re currently reading, evidence of my kitchen skills, and therefore an implied obligation to do more than just supply the elusive Avatar-blue Peeps.

I decided that a routine research trip down the Easter candy aisle at Duane Reade was the best way to start. While cruising this sugary Amazon, perusing the M&M’s bagged to look like carrots, the glowing jelly beans, and the foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, I realized that what I really wanted was to make something that included all of the above.

“Is there a way to bake an Easter basket?” I wondered. Hmmm. Why not?

Shredded coconut was my first thought – it would imitate the fake grass that people use in real Easter baskets. From that my mind went to the sticky, old-fashioned coconut cake I used to see protected by a plastic dome at Howard Johnson’s. That seemed ideal, except in scale. When the discussion centers on cake, scale is easily remedied by breaking out the trusty old cupcake or muffin tin. A cottony white cupcake, fluffy white frosting, the coconut, and just a few pieces of Easter candy on top. Each Easter egg hunter would have their very own, very edible, Easter basket, and that seemed just right to me. (And no chocolate mess.) (Well, from the cupcakes.)

White cake recipes usually try to dress up the end result with almond extract, but for my purposes the cake was merely there as a pedestal for other things, so no almond extract here. And to keep the coconut firmly attached to its pedestal I decided to use enough über-fluffy Italian Meringue to make the clouds in the sky jealous.

Obviously you’re free to use whatever Easter candy you prefer as the ingredients of each “basket,” but my choices were distinguished little gold-foil wrapped Lindt Milk Chocolate bunnies, a few Dove Milk Chocolate eggs, and a smattering of jelly beans. Enough sugar to sink a battleship. I skipped my original idea which was to tie licorice whips to each cupcake to simulate a basket handle; in theory it was cute, but in practice it set off the kitsch alarms.

If you’ve never made Italian Meringue, yes, it’s a bit convoluted. But don’t confuse convoluted with difficult;  with a Kitchen Aid mixer, a candy thermometer, and a little bit of patience, in short order you’ll be spooning little clouds of the stuff on top of cupcakes. (Meringue is also fat-free, not a bad trade off for all the sugar.)

The end result of my trial run was placed before a panel of experts pre-Easter to make sure kids would like the cupcakes. The panel (my brother, a rather large kid) declared that they were “…all about the meringue on top.”

Lavish praise indeed. Wait until the Easter Bunny tastes them.

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Click here for my recipe for Easter Basket Cupcakes.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com