Doña Lupe’s Kitchen

So there was this chocolate sauce just sitting in my fridge, left over from the eclairs.  The chocolate glaze was in there too.  Seriously, they were calling me, begging not to be left in there on their own.  Several times, i walked over and thought maybe I should make more eclairs.  Maybe creampuffs.  No, it’s too hot. Then today it got to be too much.  I finished the chapter in the book I was reading and headed for the kitchen .  I sat at the table with the recipe and my cup of coffee and decided to go for it.

The chocolate glaze had hardened so I set it in simmering water.  I decided to do the same lavender-orange pastry cream since it turned out so delicious and decided at the last moment to pour a little lavender into the chocolate glaze.  I love lavender chocolate.

The pâte à choux was easier to do work with this time.  I’m not sure why but it was.  In fact, the whole thing was so simple, I am worried for my hips.  I could easily make these all the time.

I piped big fat circles onto parchment paper covered baking sheets and set them to bake.  I know!  Baking again in August.  Crazy I tell you.  Estoy pero bien loca.  That means I’m pretty crazy in Spanish.

The circles puffed beautifully, everything went like clockwork.  I decided to scoop the remaining chocolate sauce on the bottom of each cream puff, then load it with the cream and top with glaze.  They were delicious, rich and sinfully decadent.

I think I’m going to live to regret having these in my repertoire…you see my dilemna.

Jasmine really loved the chocolate glaze.

The Challenge: Chocolate Eclairs from Pierre Hermé’s book, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé.

The Hosts: Tony Tahan and Meetak

Many, many thanks to our wonderful hosts this month. What a wonderful recipe they chose and how supportive and marvelous they were. (Insert applause here).

Hurry up Autumn, I’m getting a little tired of baking in a 100 degree kitchen and worrying I’m going to drip sweat into dough or something. This month’s challenge was Pierre Hermé’s (swoons cuz he’s my loverman and I worship the pastry laden, rose petal Isapahan ground he walks on) luscious chocolate éclairs.

Did I stay true to my idol’s recipe? Um well I changed one little thing. The cream filling was not chocolate but something summery and lighter. Lavender-orange pastry cream. The rest was true to Mr. Hermé’s recipes (is it not wonderful that he is not only a pastry God but has the same last name as that vintage buttery leather 72k handbag on ebay)? I’m just saying. Pastry, Birken…ecstasy, heaven. Okay, okay get on with the recipe. No one cares about my obsession with Hermé, both the bags and the chef. And yes, I know the bag is Hermes but its close enough for me.

Marissa dropped the kids off early and we washed up and got ready to bake. The first thing we started with was the pastry cream. It turned out perfectly, smooth, thick and lucious until i put it into its ice water bath. I turned to grab ingredients for the chocolate sauce and Aiden took the opportunity to add about a quarter cup of ice water INTO THE CREAM! Yeah, so. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. He’s three, he thought he was creating something wondrous and being helpful. I wanted to fix it, but I couldn’t. It was his little creation. So we had runny cream filling, so what?

Continue Reading »

Recipe submitted by Darlene Chan

I hate buying buttermilk for one recipe because ultimately I use 1/2 cup and then it sits in the fridge until I throw it out. This time I thought I’d be a bit smarter. I had originally bought a quart to use for buttermilk pancakes, which left me with 3/4 of a carton to use! A peach cobbler recipe caught my eye, it was a hot summer day and voila! Another 2/3 c of buttermilk used up. I still ended up throwing most away, but at least I got the cobbler out of it.

Peach Cobbler

Fillling:
1/4-1/2 c. sugar, depending on fruit’s sweetness
1 T cornstarch
1 1/2 lbs peeled peaches (or nectarines) halved, pitted and cut into 1/2? thick slices and cut in half again
1 T fresh lemon juice

Topping:
1 c. all purpose flour
3 T plus 1 tsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3 T unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1/2? cubes
2/3 c low fat buttermilk

Make the filling: preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a pot of boiling water drop peaches in for a couple of minutes. Drain and peel skin. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar and cornstarch. Add peaches and lemon juice; toss to combine. Take a little bite from a piece of peach and decide if you need to add more sugar. Fill one 2 qt baking dish and transfer to a rimmed baking sheet.

Make the topping and bake: In a large bowl, whisk together flour, 3 T sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Using a pastry blender or your fingers, blend in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk; stir just in dough forms. Drop dough onto fruit. Sprinkle dough with remaining teaspoon of sugar. Bake until fruit is bubbling and biscuit topping is golden brown, 35-45 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream, whipped cream or as is!

I love cooking and baking and take just about any opportunity to try something new or make something. If I’m cooking, I’m a happy camper. So when my roommate Rachel wanted to buy Challah for Shabbat with a friend, I jumped right in and asked if I could make it.

I had this recipe floating around that belonged to my grandmother Ruth on my dad’s side of the family. Grandma Ruth was a tiny bird of a woman who ruled with the proverbial iron hand in velvet glove. My grandfather Cecil Gleason towered over her at 6’8 and she was a tiny just under five feet woman. He was Irish, she was Jewish/English (or maybe Welsh) I believe. I wasn’t as close to them as I was to my Mexican grandparents but they loved me and they were sure interesting as hell. Grandma Ruth’s father Cornelius Losey was from Holland. I’m not sure when they came over or how the Judaism got left behind but that’s all I have from my dad. If any long lost family members see this and want to fill me in, I’d be grateful. I think my Grandma Ruth gave me this recipe years ago when I was still married and came over for a vist in a little envelope with a few other recipes. I’ve never tried any of them, although I really want to try her oxtail soup recipe.

I dug around for the recipe and there it was on a faded index card and found not too much to go on, no measurements. See I get that from both grandmothers!

The recipe was written as follows: flour, honey, yeast, eggs, oil, salt and water. Braid into six strands and bake. Garnish with poppy or sesame seeds. Continue Reading »

When I first saw this challenge posted, my first thought was, “oh holy crap no, there’s no way I can make that, I’m skipping this month,” but then I shook myself off and started thinking about fillings. The fillings got me going and as I read through the recipe, it actually didn’t seem that hard. Watching the video helped immensely (thanks to our hosts for providing that link) and I found other videos on Youtube that helped as well. I was starting to get excited about this recipe.

I ran into a few small snags. One was the weather here in Los Angeles. It was so hot I was calling in it Hell A instead of L.A. I worried that my dough wouldn’t hold the butter so I kept putting it off, hoping for cooler weather. One morning I woke up and decided to head off to Silverlake for ingredients. I neglected to check the weather and only when I was there did I find it was 110 degrees! Still I was dressed for the weather and determined to get what I needed. It turned out to be quite the odyssey.

For my fillings I wanted one to have something to do with these amazing glazed, roasted figs I had found a few months ago at The Cheesestore in Silverlake. I was lucky and found the one package they had left which caused a bit of consternation. Would it be enough? I quickly decided that chopped Fuji apples would be great with the figs and Brie and would augment my small quantity of the figs. The second braid would be filled with brandied cherries and dark chocolate, a little homage to someone I care deeply about whose favorite cake is Black Forest. To find out more about my crazy day hunting ingredients in 100-degree weather, check out my L.A. Journal.

I also sweet-talked my brother into taking me on a separate day to the Indian store I love in Los Feliz. They have a huge selection of spices and I was happy to find several varieties of cardamom. The proprietress let me snap away pictures at will in the store and seemed to be amused by my desire to do so. I have to go back, I completely forgot rosewater to try my hand at macarons ala Pierre Hermes.

Finally, a cooler day arrived and I was eagerly anticipating my baking. I gathered up my ingredients and three teenagers (my niece Arielle, my nephew Jesse and their friend Debbie who are out on summer break) and set off for last minute ingredients. We put off the dough for one more day and hung out a bit until they went off to the movies. The next day my brother Jesse dropped three sleepy teenagers off at my house and left whistling. I dubbed them Daring Baker Dude and Bakerettes and put them to work. Arielle grated orange rind, Debbie handed me flour and Jesse did a last minute store run for more flour. They all got to sniff the cardamom that I had found in cheaply at an Indian store in Los Feliz and I got to give a little impromptu class on spices, dough, yeast proofing and other fun tidbits. I found I really like teaching teenagers to bake! It helps that they were into it, interested and eager to learn. (If my brother is reading this, it does not mean your kids can hang at my house all summer long). Continue Reading »

Rachel and I throw one hell of a party. She is the event organizer extraordinaire, full of ideas, creativity and excitement. I am the cook and baker who takes her party ideas and gives them the voice of taste, aroma and color from the kitchen. I keep telling her we should go into business designing parties for people.

Last Saturday we threw another one of our parties (the last one we say). This one was for the Sex and the City movie. We gathered up a group of girls, dressed up and headed for the movie then came back here for laughter, conversation and desserts. We had New York style pizza delivered as well.

We wanted to do desserts and have fun with them and have one fancy thing. Rachel wanted to use the new trifle bowl she bought so I came up with a fun dessert menu that paid a little homage to Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha as well as the fabulous city of New York that I love so much.

We chose Mini Paris Cupcakes (recipe at Epicurious.com) for Carrie’s time in Paris, Alpineberry’s fabulous Meyer lemon bars for a taste of the sweet and the sour the girls experienced on the show and in the movie, double chocolate espresso brownies for those dark Manhattan nights and a decadent peach trifle because the show was so over the top with fashion that we figured an over the top dessert was in order.

I adapted the BBC’s recipe for the Madeira cake, adding more butter and more sugar for a sweeter, richer cake, then used their custard recipe, adding a little lemon zest to it along with the vanilla. I used Montbisou Pêches, an intensely flavored liqueur, I bought at Trader Joe’s a while back to soak my finished slices of Madiera cake in and slathered them with a homemade tart pomegranate jelly instead of raspberry jam. I blanched peaches in white wine and peeled the skins, then sliced them and added them to the third layer. Homemade whipped cream, lightly flavored with Pêches topped the dessert and, as a flourish, I added shaved chocolate and hand poured dark chocolate butterflies. It was as sexy, decadent and hedonistic as Samantha Jones and everyone loved it.

Sexy Sex & the City Peach Trifle

Madeira Cake (adapted from the Traditional Trifle Recipe, BBC)
My changes were to add an ounce more butter, an ounce more sugar and the zest of one whole lemon rather than a half. I wanted something a little more intensely flavored and it turned out beautifully.



For the custard, i used the BBC’s recipe to the letter with the exception of the bit of lemon zest I added (about 1/4 of a lemon).

I brought a mixture of white wine and the Pêches to a soft boil, then quickly blanched whole peaches in it until the skins were easily removed. I let them cool, saving the white wine, mixture in the freezer. I figure it can use it later for a simple syrup or maybe even a peachy vinaigrette. Once cooled, the peaches were peeled and sliced and set aside.



I sliced the Madeira cake into chunks slathered on the pomegranate jelly, then drizzled them with the Pêches to form the first layer in the bowl. That layer was then topped with the cooled custard.



The second layer of Pêches soaked cake topped with pom jelly was also covered with the custard and then topped with the sliced peaches to completely cover the custard. Another layer of cake and the last bit of custard and peaches formed the third layer. I then covered it and put it into the fridge to chill for a few hours.


For the whipped topping, I took heavy cream and beat it till stiff, slowly adding drips of the Pêches, crossing my fingers and hoping it wouldn’t curdle the cream. I managed to get about a 1/4 cup of the liqueur into the cream, giving it a nice peachy flavor with a kick. A half cup of caster sugar poured in a bit at a time gave it sweetness.



I scooped out the cream and filled the rest of the bowl with it. Topped it with grated dark chocolate and hand poured (a little sloppily but I couldn’t find my piping bag, I think Jasmine or Aiden made it disappear) two fat chocolate butterflies. Back into the fridge it went to chill until the party. This trifle is intensely flavored, extremely rich and a little goes a long way. I’d say it serves about 20-25 people in small servings.

Every holiday my grandmother made her famous pan (bread). I never knew where she got her recipe, I only know that I am the only one left in my family who can make it just the way she did. Everyone has the recipe, there’s just something about it that requires special handling. If you don’t knead it just enough, it can be a little too dense, it can taste a little flat or just not quite right. It’s still good bread, still looks great, but that special something is missing. I think what it is that makes it turn out just right is my grandmother’s rule knead it till the dough whistles. Yep, it whistles. It takes a long time and bread machines don’t get it. The flavor goes off. You have to completely work that dough - no cheating and no slacking. Knead it till it whistles.

Grandma Lupe’s Pan

4 packages active dry yeast (don’t get rapid rise - another thing that makes the flavor go off)

4 eggs (room temperature)

4 cups hot water (not too hot - it’ll kill the yeast)

1 c. sugar

1 c. butter (softened)

dash salt

flour (my grandmother liked to use 13 loose cups sifted, I use a bit at a time till it feels right and I never sift)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Pour four cups of hot water into a large mixing bowl then sprinkle the dry yeast on top of the water. I always add a tablespoon or two of sugar to test the yeast. Dissolve the yeast by mixing it with a wire whisk, add the sugar and let it sit for a few minutes. If it starts to form big bubbles on top, foamy like beer, then the yeast is good and you can move on to the next step.

Take the softened butter and mix it into the water and yeast mixture. Never, ever use margarine but find the best creamy unsalted, butter you can. I buy this amazing Normandy butter from The Cheese Store in Silverlake. It’s expensive, but sooo worth it. You can’t beat the taste or the succulent flakiness that it gives the dough.

Add the cup of sugar, the eggs and the dash of salt and whisk it all together. Let it sit for about five minutes.

Now for the flour. I take about a cup at a time and start whisking it in. When it becomes to thick and goopy for the whisk, I switch to a spatula and then my hands. I put in enough flour to produce a smooth, slightly sticky dough. Let that dough rest for about 20 minutes, then turn out onto a lightly floured board.

Knead the dough until it whistles, sprinkling small amounts of flour to the dough and the board each time it becomes too sticky to work. It usually takes me about an hour to knead the dough till it gets the air bubbles in it that makes it whistle. Like I said, it’s a lot of work but little hands love to help and I find that it’s a great and fun time with my grandchildren.

Turn out the dough into a buttered mixing bowl and cover it with a cloth.

Let rise for about two hours. It should double in size. Once it has, punch it down and re-cover it and let it sit for another hour.

Now the dough is ready to form or roll into shapes. We always make braids, monkey bread, crescents, rosettes and just plain rolls.

Once the dough is formed, place them onto greased baking sheets and let rise again for about 15-20 minutes. Just before popping a tray into the oven, brush your bread with an egg wash. I use egg yolks with a touch of cream. You can also add sesame seeds if you like.

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Bake each tray at 350 degrees until the bread is golden brown. Baking time depends on the size and density of your roll. Small crescents will take about 10-15 minutes, a large braid may take 40 minutes. It depends.

This bread is light and airy, touched with sweetness and tastes marvelous dripping with butter or dipped into coffee or hot chocolate. It’s great toasted the next day and makes an incredible turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. I make big rounds of it for just that purpose.

This recipe makes A LOT of bread but I promise, it won’t go to waste.