Can you have your cake and eat it too? Yes, I think so. Here at the Library I oversee the cookbook collection, and then sometimes get to bake from some of those selfsame books for our staff meetings. I don't have to personally buy the books, but you and I get to use them whenever we want.
I’ve been cooking and baking from Ina Garten’s new
Barefoot Contessa book, Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust, and every recipe
is, in fact, delicious. But you can’t
eat from these recipes every day. Too
rich! Too fattening! And sometimes too expensive, too.
(Shrimp) Mac and Cheese |
This book has three recipes for lobster, and I don’t know
about you, but that is a special occasion recipe for me. I made the Lobster Mac and Cheese and
substituted shrimp for a more affordable option. It was outrageously rich, so full of cheese
that you could only eat a small portion, but I loved every bite.
LOL - who cut a piece out of the middle? |
Then I baked Chocolate
Chip Blondies – again, very chocolately, buttery and delicious – I put
the leftovers in the freezer so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat them. I have to confess sneaking one to savor –
still frozen - after dinner each evening in front of the telly.
Before and... |
...after. |
My husband requested carrot cake for his birthday in
December, but that just did not happen. Birthdays near the holidays should just not be
allowed – too much else goes on! But I
did make Ina’s Carrot Cake with
Ginger Frosting for Superbowl for him.
You really cannot beat Ina’s baking recipes, they are just uniformly
superlative versions of the tried and true.
The German
Chocolate Cupcakes were wonderfully balanced with a tangy sour cream
buttermilk cocoa cake and thick sweet coconut pecan frosting on top. But again, very indulgent and filling.
So pretty! |
For Valentine’s Day I baked the shortbread based Raspberry Crumble Bars, deep red
and beautiful and seductively delicious.
Help! My diet is shot to
pieces. I have to stop baking from this
book!
This morning, before work, I rolled out the refrigerated
dough I had made yesterday for the French
Apple Tart from Ina’s Back to
Basics Cookbook. Slicing up Granny
Smith apples and sprinkling them with sugar and butter, and then glazing the tart after baking with pear jam, this was a less crazily sinful dessert than the
four from Foolproof, but equally
delicious.
All of the Barefoot Contessa’s recipes are outstanding not
only because of their ease of preparation, but because of their quality and
simplicity. The ingredients are few and
easy to find, the directions are straightforward, and the results are consistently
wonderful.
Easier than it looks: crisp flaky pastry topped with sweet tart apples. |
French Apple Tart
Adapted from Ina Garten’s Back to Basics
2 cups all purpose
flour
1 Tablespoon white
sugar
½ teaspoon kosher
salt
1 ½ sticks (12
Tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
½ cup ice water
4 Granny Smith
apples, peeled
½ cup white sugar
½ stick (4
Tablespoons) cold unsalted butter
½ cup apricot or pear
jam
1 Tablespoon
Calvados, Triple Sec or Grand Marnier
Preheat the oven to
400 degrees.
Whirl the flour,
sugar and salt in a food processor. Add
the cubed butter, and process until the butter is mixed up into uniform
crumbs. Add the ice water and process 10
or 12 times until just starting to come together in a ball.
Form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and a baggie, and pop in fridge
for 1 hour or up to 2 days.
On a floured surface,
roll out dough into a 10 x 12 inch rectangle.
Place on a parchment lined sheet pan with sides.
Cut each apple in
half, and with a melon baller, cut out the cores. Slice each half into ¼ inch thick
slices. Layer the slices diagonally
across the dough in rows. Sprinkle with
the sugar. Dot with small cubes of
butter. Bake in the oven 45 minutes to
one hour, until the pastry and some of the apples are golden brown. You will know it’s done by the lovely smell
of the pastry. Some of the sugar and
apple juices will have run off the tart and turned black in the pan. This is as it should be – don’t panic.
Loosen the tart from
the blackend parchment and slide the whole thing off onto a clean sheet of
parchment paper and then put the tart with the clean parchment back onto the warm
pan. Let cool 10 minutes.
Add the liquor to the
jam and heat up gently in microwave.
Brush the mixture all over the apples and pastry so that it is shiny and
beautiful. Serve warm or at room
temperature.
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Cut into squares and pretend you’re in Paris ! The diet? – you can diet tomorrow.
Diane Whitman
Reference Librarian
Baker, Frustrated Dieter
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