kitwilliams

This thread is going to be my obsession this summer...summer pudding porn is right! Abra and jackal...gorgeous, simply gorgeous. Mmmm. Tomorrow is Wednesday. Santa Monica Farmer's Market, here I come!

Both my butters you can find at Trader Joe's...Plugra for baking and the Devon Clotted Cream Butter (is that what it's called? someone correct me if I'm wrong) is awesome for spreading on bread. Thickly spread, I might add.

I'm in the food processor camp. And, if I am doing quantities, just do my mise en place for several quantities, line 'em up and whiz 'em up, one by one, without having to clean the food processor in between. Must admit that once I've added the fat to the flour, I dump it out of the processor into a bowl and add the ice water by hand.

Gorgeous, jackal! Question: What make and size of pudding basin did you use and approximate total weight of fruit? Thanks!

Women cook with cinnamon when they're trying to seduce? Crap. I've been getting cooked for by the wrong women. ← Not cook. Bake. I should have made that distinction. Big difference. Hasn't someone ever invited you over for Sunday breakfast? Makes for a wonderful Sunday afternoon!!!!!

I remember reading (and have subsequently found it to be nearly 100% true) that men are unstoppable when accosted by the scent of cinnamon. Might just be American men. No, I'll have to add British men too! Anyone care to comment?

The jarred Tart Montmorency Cherries from Trader Joe's make fabulous pies. Drain them well. I use 1 cup sugar to nearly 1/4 cup of flour. Sprinkle half in the bottom pie shell, add drained cherries, sprinkle 1/4 tsp. almond extract over cherries, then top with remaining sugar/flour, then top crust.

I purchased quite a few small Mason Cash pudding basins online a few years ago in which to steam Christmas puddings and give as gifts...can't remember the site, don't feel like looking for the receipt, so found them on Amazon for very reasonable prices. As I recall (my basins are at work), the Mason Cash basins oddly have only three grooves in the bottom to keep the string from slipping . I'm not clever enough to figure out how to rig them that way and prefer the T G Green basins with four grooves which make tying simple . Can anyone explain the three- versus four-groove? Back to puddings...other than Christmas puddings, I've only ever made a lemon sponge pudding which was light and luscious and I'm puzzled as to why I don't make them more often. Oh! I know! Because they're so good that I tend to eat the whole damn thing!

Just saw Tyler Florence's Ultimate show on Sandwiches. The sandwich he made at the end of the show looked awesome. Roast turkey, avocado and fontina on slices of a nice boule which had been spread with an herb butter then grilled (pressed down with his foil-covered brick) and devoured, close-up, on camera. I'm drooling. And not just for the sandwich, of course. Mmmmm. Tyler.

ChezCherie: I love the kurobata (Berkshire) pork. Keep it simple. Just salt and pepper. And oh, the pork fat! But my new Trader Joe's love is the Devon Double Cream Butter. I just made a sandwich of ciabatta with the above-mentioned butter and pont l'eveque. Pure, simple pleasure. Bread and butter alone, with this butter, is magic.

And in order to be a true Cobb, don't forget the crumbled bleu cheese and, most importantly, the watercress. My brother has become famous among his friends for his Cobb Salad. He's on W. 92nd. Head over there, shout "Bruce!" and he might invite you up.

absolutely. and you can look through their bins and pick up utensils and stuff that will last a lifetime and cost a few bucks. it's not the prettiest place, nor should it be, but you can spend an entire day in there. i know because i have. ← Bridge is the greatest and expensive? I think not!!! I'm on the west coast and I've purchased quite a few items from them and even with shipping, prices are not outrageous. As far as not being the prettiest place, I beg to differ. But I always have preferred the rustic look to prim neatness. To me, Bridge Kitchenware is a thing of beauty! Which reminds me, someone borrowed my catalog and hasn't returned it...if whoever I loaned it to reads this, please return asap.

Don't get hooked on the expensive habit which I now have. I desperately needed coffee one day so made myself a cafe au lait with milk, a dash of cream for richness and about a tablespoon of Trablit -- the only form of coffee I had in the kitchen at the time. It makes a very rich, smooth cafe au lait. I don't know about the caffeine content but the taste was spectacular! And I concur. Trablit is great. A coffee panna cotta would taste lovely and soothing after the evening of drinking last night.

In re-reading one of Ptipois' posts, perhaps my percentage of pastry cream to almond cream was too high and the larger amount of the two components should be the almond cream... I'm hungry for more of this cake.

Oh! So disappointing! Which recipe did you end up using, Linda? Since I made changes to the Madeleine Kamman recipe, I'm going to post it here: Gateau Breton (formerly Gateau Breton aux Pruneaux) 228 g. lightly salted butter 1 egg 3 egg yolks 125 g. sugar 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 1/4 tsp. almond extract 180 g. sifted flour 5 g. sifted cornstarch 1 tbsp butter for cake pan Cream butter on medium low speed until WHITE. Add egg, yolks, sugar and flavorings and beat continuously for 10 minutes on medium speed. Combine flour and cornstarch and add to butter mixture by gently stirring in until incorporated. Use remaining 1 tbsp butter and spread on bottom and sides of a 9" round tin. Spread batter into pan. Smooth top and brush with an additional egg yolk and, with tines of fork, make crisscross pattern. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Note: in MK's original recipe, only 2 egg yolks are used in the cake and one is used for the topping. I goofed and added all three to the cake but am glad I did as it is a very short cake and, even with the third yolk, it is still delicate to slice and fill. Handy to have cardboard cake circles to slip between the layers once sliced and, once filling is spread on bottom layer, just slide the top layer off the cardboard circle directly onto the bottom layer. Almond Filling: These are the proportions I used. You might want to up all the almond cream ingredients (paste, sugar, butter) by a quarter to get the filling you're looking for. The filling as is, was creamy. The filling in Fi's picture looks LUSCIOUS and thicker. 8 oz. chilled pastry cream 125 g. almond paste 25 g. granulated sugar 55 g. unsalted butter, softened slightly Combine almond paste and sugar and mix thoroughly. Add butter in bits and beat until creamy. Add cooled pastry cream and stir to combine. Split cooled cake and fill with almond pastry cream. Eat.

left the book at work, Fi, but will PM it to you later. wish i had some leftover for breakfast!

I took a stab at something like this cake today and although my filling wasn't quite as gloriously unctious as the one pictured above and my cake was a Breton Butter Cake without almonds, I have to say, Damn! It was good! In Madeline Kamman's "When French Women Cook", there is a recipe for a Gateau Breton aux Pruneaux. I baked the cake (which consists of butter, sugar, whole egg, yolks, flour, cornstarch. i substituted vanilla and almond extract for the orange flower water) without the prune filling (I've made it with the filling before and it is very good). When cold, sliced it and filled it with 8 oz of pastry cream combined with an almond cream consisting of almond paste, sugar and butter -- no egg or flour. It looked very similar to the photo except, as I said, the filling was more like pastry cream-iness than like the thickness and viscosity of the original almond filling. It was absolutely gorgeous and I'll try it again, maybe adding a larger percentage of almond cream to the pastry cream. But maybe not, as the flavor was purely almond-y and just right. As I think chefzadi said above, this tasted of the best of home made (or something to that effect). Luscious. A keeper.

I only used it in the dough, Jason. If you try it in the topping, let me know. I wasn't sure if it might burn. And, as I said, I'd put 4 tsps rather than 1 tbsp into the 360g of flour my recipe calls for.

I reduced the cinnamon considerably in the sugar/cinnamon coating -- the ratio was probably 1/4 tsp. to 200g of sugar. So there was a hint of cinnamon in addition to the matcha. Works well but, as I said, I think I'll add one more teaspoon of matcha next time. And there will be a next time.

I DID give it a try and they are goooo-oood! My recipe calls for 360 grams of flour and I added a tablespoon of matcha. Next time I'll try 4 teaspoons instead...I think it could take a touch more of the tea flavor.

Actually, this seems more like a Gateau Basque, which has almond flavored pastry cream in the middle. The cake of the Gateau Basque is almost a cross between a pie dough and cake batter...it is rolled out, placed in the tin, covered with the pastry cream, another piece of dough rolled out and placed on top and baked. But, in your photos, the cake does look more like the very short cake of a Gateau Breton. I think someone has come up with a hybrid of Gateaux Basque and Breton! Sounds awesome!

Anyone tried making Snickerdoodles with Matcha? You could call them... "Matcha doodle about nothing" cookies. sorry. couldn't resist! Actually, I think I'll give it a try!

Nuttin' better than linguica (Portuguese) and scrambled eggs. In fact that's what I'm having for breakfast. We have a new sausage guy at the Long Beach Marina Farmer's Market and I'm trying his product for the first time. Well, not really the first time...I had lots of samples at the market on Sunday. Good stuff. But he doesn't carry andouille, despite the fact that someone complains about that nearly every week. Get on it, dude! Back on topic: linguica and eggs. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Pretty sure they do. Yup they DO!

I wish I'd had older sisters who drank diet drinks...I only have brothers who could eat and drink anything they wanted, never having to worry about their girlish figures, so all the drinks I stole were full of sugar.