Road Trip Recipe

It's fall!  We just wrapped up our first (annual?) West Coast Road Tour, serving 5 meals in 5 cities and a total of 70 guests.  One of these guests wrote an awesome blog post about her experience in Portland here, if you'd like to check it out!  She also complimented the dessert I served, a fig and frangipane tart, to which I supplied the recipe.  I love it when I can give someone a recipe, and hope they make it!  Since I took the time to write it down, I thought I should share it here, too, and hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed a photo of the dessert course. 

Here is the recipe, and please share your experience!  If I messed it up in the transcription, please let me know.  It's a combination of a few recipes, from Ina Garten and Sweet Cakes Bakery in Chicago. This calls for figs, but any other yummy fruit works, I’ve used stone fruit, berries, etc.  Just scatter or arrange evenly before baking.

Frangipane Tart with Fig

Toasty Nut Crust (makes two, I like to freeze one portion for another time, it's also criminally versatile and doesn't require any rolling or resting):
3/4 cup toasted nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans..etc), chopped coarse
3/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
2 Cups AP flour
12 tablespoons cold butter (1 1/2 sticks), diced
1 egg yolk
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine the flour, nuts, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and the egg yolk. Mix, either by hand or with an electric mixer, until crumbly.
Freeze half for later in a container or ziplock bag if only making one tart. Press the rest into a tart pan with a removeable bottom. Top with filling:

Frangipane Filling:
2 tablespoons sugar
4 ounces (one stick) butter
8 ounces almond paste (not marzipan; this product has less sugar)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons flour (cake is best, but all-purpose will do)
Cream butter and sugar in a mixer, as if for cake.
Break up almond paste into 1-inch chunks and add to butter and sugar, mixing until not quite fully incorporated (a few BB-sized bits are OK).
Add eggs one at a time.
Add flour all at once and continue mixing until just incorporated. It should be very soft and spreadable, like the creamed butter and sugar. Store in the fridge or freezer, where it will last for weeks.

Topping:
Then top with fruit (10 or so halved or quartered figs, a pint of berries, one or two sliced stone fruits) and bake until puffed and golden around the fruit, about 20-30 minutes depending on your oven. Rotate the pan once or twice to ensure even browning. You can also bake it without fruit and top the cooled tart with chocolate ganache and (gasp!) flaky sea salt.


Happy baking!

Logan

If I knew you were coming...

I'd have baked a cake!

Well, I did.  Thanks for coming.

For last night's Mid Week meal I wasn't sure what to do for dessert.  I feel that desserts, and food in general, should be simple and delicious enough to eat on their own.  Maybe it's just my lack of formal training, but I'm overwhelmed at the thought of three sauces and multiple preparations for each dish.  This cake was no exception.  I found some blackberries at Whole Foods and decided to adapt a recipe I'd seen on Smitten Kitchen.  It is sorta like a big, delicious muffin top, and while it is great by itself, could only be improved with some freshly whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream!   Here it is:

Berry Lemon Yogurt Cake

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (I used our housemade bourbon vanilla)
1 lemon (really, any citrus will do), zested with a fine grater
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup plain yogurt, preferably greek
1/3 cup milk or cream 
2 cups fresh berries, quartered if strawberries

Preheat oven to 375°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together yogurt and milk, set aside.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. 

In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1 cup (146 grams) sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla and zest, if using. Add egg/yolk and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with yogurt/milk mixture, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter berries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons (22 grams) sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes, rotating halfway through baking time. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate. Try to keep your family's hands off it before company comes, or eat it while standing over your sink with a cup of coffee.

Opening Night

I found this waiting to be completed from last year, when we started Cellar Door.   I had forgotten about it and am happy it exists.  How apt.

Hello all. Gary and I recently started a pop-up restaurant in our apartment. One of those "why CAN'T we do this?" kind of things. As it turns out, we can. We can the shit out of it. Things were amazing and beautiful and delicious.