Saffron Honey Marshamallows

I consider myself a fairly proficient cook and baker, but a novice when it comes to candy-making. To be fair, most of my history with attempting to make candy occurred in my childhood without the aid of a candy thermometer. I had to get by with being told to cook until the "soft ball stage" or "hard ball stage" and spent my time dropping bits of fudge or hard candy into glasses of water then scrutinizing its consistency. More often than not, this resulted in sweet goo which was edible, but nothing like what it was supposed to be in texture.

My first truly successful foray into the world of candy-making was recounted on this blog when I made the Times recipe for microwave saffron Turkish delight. In fact, I have made it twice and it turned out beautifully each time. In between this attempt at making marshmallows and that old success with Turkish delight, I made Alton Brown's homemade marshmallows recipe and it turned out fantastic. That recipe utilizes what many feel is the devil's breakfast drink of choice, corn syrup, but that didn't really put me off. As someone who cooks most of her own food (down to even making my own bread), I don't think a little corn syrup in the occasional homemade marshmallow recipe is going to be a significant detriment to my health.

Perhaps emboldened by that success, and being an enormous fan of the flavor of saffron and honey, I wanted to try the Times recipe for saffron honey marshmallows. It didn't hurt that the recipe showed up on my Facebook feed around Easter and the prospect of making cute, yellow sweets (though not shaped like chicks - I don't have that type of cookie cutter) seemed like a great idea at the time.

I followed the recipe to the letter except for one tiny point. I didn't use a 1/2 tsp. of crumbled saffron threads because it's too expensive to squander in that way. I used 1/4 tsp. Other than that, I did exactly as I was told and this was the result after I sprinkled colored sugar on it:

One commenter on the Times recipe page said hers turned out "gooey," but attributed it to her lack of skill. I'm not going to put the blame on me. The recipe is too wet. Far, far too wet. It was so wet that I decided to cut them up and separate them out several times in an attempt to get them to dry a little:

My first attempt was to gently take the soft, squishy blobs and put them in a container with no lid and more sugar. All that did was have moisture pooling at the bottom of the container much as it did the baking dish I'd poured them into. I allowed them to sit like that for two days and it did little to dry them. If I wanted to eat one, I had to put it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon because it was too wet and soft to handle.

After the container approach failed, I took them out and spread them on a baking rack so there was more air under them. I allowed them to be completely exposed to open air for three days to no avail. They were less sopping, and a few of them had crispy, sugary corners where they'd dried out, but, on the whole, they were still far too gooey and soft to handle.

In the end, I put them back in the container with no lid and just ate them slowly. Any hopes that they would dry out enough to be given to others to enjoy (which was my initial plan) was dashed. They sat on top of my refrigerator for two weeks and never did get dry, but they did start to eventually taste stale and I threw the uneaten ones away.

It is unfortunate that this is such a terrible recipe because the flavor was quite nice and the texture of the marshmallows fluffy and soft. The recipe adds in a total of 1 1/4 cups of water and I think that could be dramatically reduced to get a better result. I'm unlikely to try this recipe again, but if I were to give it another shot, I'd reduce the total water down to no more than 3/4 of a cup (1/2 cup of cold on the gelatin and 1/4 cup cooked with the sugar instead of 3/4 cup and a 1/2 cup).

Someone in comments who said she/he was a professional confectioner said that the issue is that honey is hygroscopic and that other liquid should be reduced so I'm not alone in thinking there is an issue with how wet it was. I don't know if there was an error in the original recipe or if the creator of the recipe did something different, but I wouldn't use this recipe as is. That commenter recommended Thomas Keller's French Laundry marshmallow recipe, which looks a lot like Alton Brown's. I'd recommend either of those over this. Though you won't get the honey and saffron flavor, you also won't get a pile of wet marshmallows.

Try the World: Chaidim (lemongrass/pandum), Coconut Crispy Rolls, Coconut Flower Syrup (Thailand Box)

Sometimes the assortment in a "Try the World" box doesn't lend itself well to combining multiple elements at once. In such cases, I often feel that the little guide book tries extra hard to pull more than one ingredient together to form a cohesive whole. In this case, they didn't have to try hard at all.

I should begin by saying that I didn't know what pandum was before I got this box. I chose the tea because I knew it'd be the least familiar. After I smelled it, it was much more familiar as I recognized pandum as one of the most aromatic elements of tom yum soup.

When I tried the tea (Chaidim lemongrass/pandum tea), it was very hard to separate the smell and taste of it from the broth from that soup. It didn't taste like "tea" to me until I sweetened it with the Chiwadi coconut flower syrup. I used one carefully measured teaspoon of the super thick syrup and it transformed the tea into something complex and lightly sweetened. I was a little worried about the syrup because one of the ingredients is coconut vinegar (5%). I didn't know one could make vinegar out of coconut, but I guess you learn new things all of the time if you're trying new food.

The tea still smelled like tom yum broth, but it tasted like flowers and honey spiced with something unidentifiable and exotic. It's a bit like having turmeric in sweets for the first time. It seems a little weird at first, but gets better as you get used to it.

The Virgin Coco Coconut Crispy Rolls were much more approachable. They are like a thick, but very light and crispy sugar cone with three hits of flavor. First, you get orange, then a strong burst of coconut, then the sweetness comes along to bind it all together. They are delicate, but have very present flavor. All in all, a very tasty addition provided that you like coconut (and I do).

Strawberry Shortcake

When I was growing up, "strawberry shortcake" had a very particular meaning. It was little shallow cups of somewhat dry sponge cake bought six to a pack at the supermarket. Into these ads specimens, we'd scoop a pile of mashed strawberries copiously mixed with sugar until they could have been jam. Once the requisite fruit was added, more sugar was spooned on top followed by enough milk to decimate the molecular cohesion of the shelf-stable baked good.

It wasn't until many years later that I realized that "shortcake" didn't refer to the height of the cake, but rather to butter mixed with flour and very little liquid. I had no idea that one could make ones own cake to accompany the berries, nor that other people didn't douse their cakes with milk and create a pile of milky, sugary, strawberry-laced mush as a way of enjoying that dessert.

Perhaps because of my experience growing up, I rarely eat strawberry shortcake as a dessert and I've only attempted to make the cake itself once before. That attempt was so-so, most likely because my baking skills at the time didn't include a thorough knowledge of the evils of overworking your flour or using cold butter. A trip to a local discount store and two large containers of relatively sour berries had me looking once more toward trying my hand at a proper shortcake.

I did a search on the New York Times and found a recipe for which I had everything on hand. Many of them included sour cream, whole cream, or whipping cream and I did not have these items around. Fortunately, Mark Bittman's recipe for shortcake had an ingredients list that I could fulfill and a stunningly easy method of preparation.

I was actually a bit dubious of the recipe because he tells you to blitz the butter into the flour completely with a food processor. I'm not averse to my life being made easy in this way, but a relatively small amount of fat thoroughly mixed into flour made me wonder what it might do to the texture. When I make scones, I always make sure not to mix the butter in completely to keep things tender. Nonetheless, I followed the recipe as stated except for a few things.

The primary change I made was to cut the recipe in half and make only 6 cakes (1 cup flour, 2 tbsp. butter, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, pinch salt, and 7 tbsp. milk). This was in part because my husband and I are the only consumers and I didn't need a ton of them and in part because I don't have a food processor and have to rely on a tiny bowl "processor" that came as an accessory to my immersion blender. I blitzed the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt with the miniscule amount of butter until it looked like boxed pancake mix.

I then dumped that dry ingredients and fat mixture  into a bowl and made little wells and slowly added the milk, pushing the flour mixture into the milk to gently mix. I wanted to be absolutely certain not to overwork it given how little fat there was. I did not knead it or stir it. I just moistened it and even allowed some of it to stay dry. I put a lid on the bowl and tossed it in the refrigerator for an hour or so to let the flour absorb the milk. This was the other major departure from the instructions, but given how little I'd mixed it, I thought it needed the time.

When I took it out, it was fairly cohesive on its own, with a bit of dry bits at the bottom. I did find that it was sticky, but too thick to use a tablespoon to drop it on the cookie sheet. I cut it into six roughly equal pieces with a butter knife, gently shaped the dough, and put it on parchment paper and baked at 450 degrees for about 8 minutes. It did start to brown and I was worried that it might not cook inside while browning outside, but it turned out okay. I do think my oven may run a bit hot and I might want to reduce the temperature by 25 degrees down to 425 next time. I also didn't add as much sugar to the strawberries when I macerated them (only two tablespoons).

I really had low expectations of this, but it was fantastic. The interior was tender, the exterior was crispy with a good amount of give. It was lightly sweet - much sweeter than I expected given that each cake had only two teaspoons of sugar in it and provided a great base for the lightly sweetened berries.

These are definitely reminiscent of scones. In fact, out of the oven, they look like scones, but they do have a textural difference and a firmer structure in general. They're less delicate than American scones and less layered than English ones. I do believe that they could be eaten for breakfast with other types of fruit or even just like a scone with jam and butter. The odd thing is that they are probably less unhealthy than the average scone given how relatively low they are in fat and sugar (only about 160 calories per cake). I think blueberries would be great on these, add would really ripe peaches. I will definitely be making these again. 

The Silver Palate's Chocolate Cake

The introduction to this cake recipe talks about its "incredible simplicity." As someone who rarely makes cakes, I think any recipe that requires me to whip egg whites until they have stiff peaks, fold in egg whites, melt chocolate with boiling water, and cook icing on the stove top doesn't qualify as incredibly simple. It's not that any of these tasks are so difficult, but I've made simpler cakes from scratch on the rare occasions that I've made them.

However, I'm not in this for the simplicity. In fact, I'm in it for what is different from what I've tried before as I hope the techniques used will produce a result which will surprise. After all, there's no point in doing what I've always done as it'll just give me what I've always had.

I've been craving a really lavish cake lately, and by "lavish", I mean something with good frosting. It is extremely rare for me to make such a cake and I tend to rely on supermarket bakeries when I get a craving. The reason is, in part, because they are more reliable when it comes to decent frosting than me. Mine always turns out tasting like powdered sugar and has a grainy texture. My frosting is also often too heavy. Part of the appeal of this recipe for "The Silver Palate's Chocolate Cake" is that the icing is made from chocolate chips and is cooked. That, to me, signaled an increased chance of something which didn't taste like my usual sub-par frosting attempts.

I followed the recipe precisely as stated except for two small changes. I don't have a tube pan, so I made two round layers. In accord with this change, I reduced the baking time to 30 minutes so as not to dry them out. The timing was perfect and the cakes rose well. They have substance without being too dense. They lack the overly hole-y look and texture of a cake mix cake, which I was happy about.

Because I had two smaller cakes, I stacked them in layers and spread a thin amount of the icing on top of the first layer before adding the second one. My cake looked like this:

Don't judge my stacking. I hurt my finger and manipulating anything is tricky. I kept getting icing on my latex-glove-protected, bandaged finger while trying to do this as it had to stick out all of the time. I think that the amount of icing is about right when the cake is made as a double layer one. However, it would have been more decadent with more filling. My husband felt that the proportions were exactly right for the amount of cake so that's quite a solid endorsement. The man likes a good cake to icing ratio.

One thing I can say about this cake is that the quality of both the baking chocolate and the semisweet morsels you use really matter. I used Trader Joe's baking chocolate because it was what I had, but I was impressed with its flavor when I tasted the batter. It's also easy to use if you don't have a kitchen scale as it is a box with four individually wrapped one-ounce portions. I used Nestle's semisweet morsels (the type used in Tollhouse cookies) for the icing. I think both worked well, but I wouldn't scale any lower on the chocolate scale than the Nestle's morsels and think that Ghirardelli's or some other high quality brand would be a good idea. If you use cheap chocolate, my guess is the flavor will suffer, but the texture will be fine.

This is a great chocolate cake that is worthy of the accolades it gets in comments on the recipe page, though I'm not sure what all the fuss is about using salted butter. Someone claimed that that would "ruin" the cake, but there is no salt in the actual recipe and I used salted butter and it didn't taste overly salty at all. My best guess is, again, that the type of chocolate may be a part of this, but salted butter should work fine.

When I ate this cake, my taste buds weren't sure what to make of it. I believe this is my first experience making a homemade chocolate cake. I've made only yellow cakes from scratch and there is a certain quality to this which is cleaner and fresher that is very hard to describe in words. It won't taste like you're accustomed to, but it will taste good.

Almond-Lemon Macaroons (Almendrados)

The men in my life (all two of them - my husband and a good friend) are great fans of all things lemon when their gaze turns to sweets. My tastes are more varied, but I'm all onboard with lemon as well and almonds are just the icing on the cake. This simple recipe for a cookie with only four ingredients was pretty irresistible, though the need to set the dough aside for at least twelve hours was at odds for the desire for immediate gratification.

Before I put this together, there was one thing that I knew I'd change and that was the amount of lemon flavor. It was beyond imagination that the scrawny zest of one lemon was going to impart enough flavor so I added in a teaspoon of natural lemon extract as well as a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. The vanilla is probably some sort of sacrilege for a Spanish cookie recipe, but I often feel it adds depth to lemon-based sweets and notice its absence when I omit it from other recipes.

The only other alteration other than one and a half teaspoons of extra moisture in the form of those extracts that I made was to use almond flour instead of making the almond meal myself. The conversion that I made and have confirmed with web sources is that one cup of almonds yields 2/3 cup of almond meal/flour. I prefer recipes that work by weight rather than volume because of the imprecision brought to the mix, but this recipe only gave volume measurements. This may have been why my cookies ended up looking like little pancakes instead of the nice, rounded mounds in the picture on the recipe page:

I allowed my dough to rest for 22 hours and, when I formed balls, they came together very well, but I imagine the only reason that these flattened out was that I didn't use enough almond flour relative to what would have happened with a cup of almonds that I ground up fresh. It's also possible that I pushed down too hard when I stuck an almond in the top and flattened the little dough balls too much (or a combination of both). I'm certain I cooked them for the proper length of time though give that the recipe says they should be baked very little and just to the point of having some color (which you can see by the cookie that I flipped over was the case). I baked them for 9 minutes.

Regardless of how they look, they tasted amazing. There is a perfect combination of flavors and the texture is a mixture of a crispy exterior and a tender, chewy interior. It is hard not to gobble down a large number of these little cookies (mine made 27) at one sitting. I will definitely make these again, though I'm certain to increase the almond flour volume to 1 1/2 cups next time and I probably will just skip the almond on the top completely and just bake the little dough balls as is. The almond on the top adds one bit of crunch and salt in my case as I used salted Spanish Marcona almonds, but I don't think it does that much for the experience overall. Next time I try these, I'll do an update with a new picture to see if the changes make a difference in taste, texture, and appearance.

English Scones

I taught English in Japan at a chain language school for two years. Part of the cultural enrichment that I received was the experience of working with native English speakers from a variety of places including England, Wales, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, and Canada. Nearly every one of them spent time at one point or another lecturing me on what was "wrong" with American language, food, ideas, etc. They did this because Japanese people generally viewed everything related to foreign culture as it pertained to the West through the prism of American culture.

The fact that the textbooks tended to do things like spell color without a "u" vexed no small number of them. Some would write their "corrections" into the books during their lessons. A smaller number would write snide remarks in the books in response to what was perceived as an American cultural reference. I recall one book had a sentence about a fictional character taking a "psych course" at college and someone had written "Is this some awful American thing?" next to it.

This competitiveness was tiresome. Personally, I was interested in teaching all variations of English to the students and did not feel any version was "wrong," but rather that each was different. With the folks who invented the language, this attitude absolutely was not shared. They were "right" and we were "wrong." To their credit, these angry, adversarial people helped me remember language and culture differences far better than if they had been offered in a civil and convivial atmosphere.

One day while I was having lunch in a communal eating area, one of the Australian teachers was raving about the food at the local KFC. In those days, it was still called "Kentucky Fried Chicken," and it wasn't a greatly widespread chain in Japan, but we had one near the school I had worked at. I don't eat fried food so I didn't pay much attention to the joy taken at the lip-smacking deliciousness of the food there until he started talking about the "scones" that were offered. Even the Japanese called these little bready nuggets "biscuits" and that is what they are called in America. You can't go into a KFC anywhere and order a "scone" without dumbfounding the server.

I mentioned to the Australian fellow that they weren't scones, but they were biscuits. He insisted that they were scones even though they were called biscuits. After some pointless quibbling about the name of a blob of baked carbs, I let it go. I had already had more than my fill of this arguing over what was "correct" and, if he wanted to call the KFC biscuits "scones," then it was no skin off of my back.

The attentive reader may see where this is going. I tried The New York Times recipe for scones. I have a pretty amazing recipe of my own already for scones, but these are supposed to be an "authentic" English version. What they are is essentially a version of a KFC biscuit. The main difference is that the top and bottom are crispier, or at least they are straight out of the oven.

I usually make a scone recipe that is very soft and tender with a gentle crumb and a top brushed with milk and egg and sprinkled with sugar. It is undeniably a treat. It's also really not very dissimilar to this recipe. It uses a bit more butter and sugar, and has egg in the dough itself, but it's not substantially different. The results, however, are worlds apart in texture. Instead of tender crumbles like my usual scones, this is more like somewhat bread-like layers. It breaks apart along a line in the center.

I followed the recipe precisely except for one trivial difference. I added a splash of vanilla to the milk. I found that after 12 minutes the centers were still a little doughy even though the tops and bottoms were golden brown, so I threw them back in for two more minutes and that seemed to finish them just barely enough. I think that rolling them out compresses the dough in a way that may make them bake more slowly through the middle than my standard scone recipe. When I make the other scone recipe, I pat it into a round or rectangle and then slice it into triangles or squares so the texture is uniform and not compressed. For comparison, I will show a picture of those scones here as well:

The reason I'm making comparisons is that the fact that these are different is the important point. Of course, if you are used to buying your scones pre-made in a market, a restaurant, or Starbucks, you're not going to be familiar with what a homemade scone is like anyway as all of those are enormous, bread-like, over-sweetened monstrosities made by mass production. Those scones are nothing like either of these recipes. However, if you want to come extremely close to the English scone without baking a thing, you can drop by your local KFC and order a biscuit.

January 27, 2016 update: I revisited this recipe to provide an appropriate accompaniment for a faux clotted cream recipe (because I can't find the real thing anywhere in America and I can't find heavy cream that isn't ultra-pasteurized and can't make a proper version). The faux clotted cream was a bust, but I learned a few things and the scones were better the second time around.

I followed the recipe exactly this time, except that I did not roll them out. I didn't like how doing so compressed them and made a denser scone so I patted the dough into a large rectangle and cut it into 15 small rectangular pieces (which is why the scones are not round - it was a 3 x 5 grid with uneven ends). This made them rise better and cook more evenly than the first time and saved some trouble. It gave them a lighter texture overall and made them easy to split for spreads. The main benefit of these scones over my usual recipe is that they have a firmer structure and are less delicate (which is why I made them to go with clotted cream). They're good, but a different experience.