cakewalk

Boy, I hope you like egg salad! I'm sure it will taste great on all the egg-rich brioches you can bake. Gougeres are egg-rich, and can be frozen. I think freezer space is key here. Do you have a lot?

Those infamous Neiman Marcus cookies. Been reading that story for years, but never made them until last night. It's a very good cookie.

I'm wondering if it's an age-related thing. I'm in my sixties. I have quite a few cookbooks (already been through several "cullings"). I use the baking books much more than the cookbooks (I enjoy baking much more than cooking, and yes, cooking is much more flexible), but I enjoy the cookbooks for ideas and for reference purposes more than for particular recipes. (And also because they look so nice on my shelves!) I still buy cookbooks once in a while, but I find that I rarely buy new cookbooks, meaning new as in "newly published," and also new as in "not second-hand." I buy baking books usually, and I find that Amazon's used books are a great resource. The price is right (a Maida Heatter cookie book for one dollar? How can I not buy that? Even with the $4 shipping fee it's a steal.), and, as I've mentioned in another thread, I rarely find that the newer books have a lot of new things to offer. The web can be a great resource for recipes (you need to have strong filters, as with most things web-related), and I use it a lot. But I do not think it's a good resource at all for understanding the methods or styles of particular chefs, and why it's helpful to understand those different methods and styles. If that's important to you (I find it very important), then I think the cookbooks are necessary.

Tahini cookies, from a recipe I found on the web. They're all from the same dough. The ones on the left are a bit larger than the ones on the right. (18 gr and 15 gr, respectively.) The ones in the middle I shaped into a rectanlge and sliced, didn't roll them in sesame seeds. The ones in the middle are by far the best, which was totally unexpected.

Lovely description.

Interesting. Personal preference, of course. But it's always possible to use your favorite chocolate chip recipe (or oatmeal raisin recipe) and just, well, put fewer - or no - chocolate chips (or raisins) in it. I'm guessing that everyone on this forum could figure that out without Dorie! I'm sure we adapt recipes to our own tastes all the time. I would have been more inclined to buy a smaller-scale book that included just the savories. But at this stage anything she publishes will create major sales, so I can't blame her for going full tilt. I don't share (or understand) the enthusiasm of others for it, but if people like it, then they like it.

They look lovely. But that's essentially a chocolate chip cookie without any chocolate chips. What's the point? I know everyone is all head-over-heels about this book, but I don't really get it. I looked through the Amazon pages and was not taken by it at all. I find a lot of repetition, and not so many cookies that don't already exist, either in her own books or in hundreds of other books. She does not seem to offer anything groundbreaking or even new. I understand the desire to have yet another cook book, I succumb to it quite often myself. I have Baking from My Home to Yours and Around My French Table, and I like them both well enough. But this new one just isn't doing it for me. (She has good timing, though, publishing right before Christmas.)

The cucumber sandwiches are indeed from Oscar Wilde's brilliant play, The Importance of Being Earnest. It was made into a wonderful movie in 1952 with Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell ("A handbag?"). The cucumber sandwiches scene, and particularly the butler's low-key rejoinder, is classic.

Cucumber sandwiches (or lack thereof): There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. No cucumbers! No, sir. Not even for ready money. (No Googling!!)

I never heard of twice-baking bread. What does this do?

More bread. Bread flour, WW flour, pumpernickel, and semolina. It's a yeast bread, with a few tablespoons of starter for good measure.

Then I have to ask: what makes you classify something as a kugel? And if it's not a kugel, then what would you call it? I'm not totally sure how I would define a kugel, but I know it when I see it!

Noodle kugel doesn't have to be sweet. I prefer the savory ones myself, although I have no qualms about eating the sweet ones, too. But even with the sweet ones, I've never seen them served as dessert, always as part of the meal. Anyway, here's a recipe for salt & pepper kugel: https://food52.com/recipes/24335-savory-noodle-kugel-aka-salt-and-pepper-kugel I haven't tried this one, but it looks good. Although I would never use fine noodles in a kugel (unless it's a Yerushalmi kugel, but that's a horse of a different color), but that's just me.

I second the idea of biscotti. They can be festive, and they keep forever. I often make Tish Boyle's Christmas Biscotti, although I use dried cherries rather than dried cranberries. Together with the pistachios they look very nice, and the combination of honey and olive oil gives it great flavor. http://tishboyle.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-biscotti.html

Yes, lovely crumb. Like velvet.

I dunno. I read all these posts in other threads where people are against "recipes." You have to understand the ingredients, get a feel for ratios, recipes are too limiting, etc. And now when a recipe is "imprecise," everyone is against that imprecision. Sheesh. Which one is it?

Maybe not a tapenade, but close enough: https://smittenkitchen.com/2009/04/artichoke-olive-crostini/ It has the olives and capers, but also the addition of articoke hearts (from a can, with absolutely no regrets). I haven't thought about this recipe in a long time, but this thread reminded me of it. And now I have a hankering ...

Well, that's Marcy Goldman's website, so who am I to argue? But that looks like a revamped recipe, not the one that came out years ago. Coca cola? That's new. The older recipe had 1 cup of coffee, she's changed it to 1/2 cup coffee and 1/2 cup coke. I've always used the recipe as it appears on Epicurious from years back. It's pretty similar, I think the coke is the only change. I use buckwheat honey, it makes a big difference, and whiskey. Despite what she says about mixing a thick batter, be aware that this batter is so thin you can almost drink it. The first time I tried to make it in an angel food pan, but it seeped out the bottom almost immediately. I see now she suggests parchment paper in the angel food pan, but that was not in the original recipe. I grind fresh spices for this cake (cloves and allspice), and I also add about 1/2 tsp each of fresh ground nutmeg and ground ginger. The baked cake really needs to sit overnight for the flavors to shine. The only other thing I can say is, there's a lot of leavening and the cake rises alot. I would normally fill a loaf pan about 2/3 to 3/4 full. With this cake, I fill it just a bit more than half way, I've had it overflow on me otherwise. Also, it's nice with sliced almonds, I just forgot this time. Good luck and Shana Tova. And the eggs: original recipe has 3 eggs, not 4. Here's the link to the one I make: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/majestic-and-moist-new-years-honey-cake-350153

Marcy Goldman's Majestic and Moist Honey Cake, a staple for me around this time of year. One recipe makes several small loaf cakes, which I like to give to people. The two little ones on the left were scarfed down almost immediately. (By me. Both of them.)

Not sure what a Secura grinder is. I use old coffee grinders for dry spices. I have two, not for wet and dry but for sweet and savory. I use one for cloves, allspice, etc. The other for cumin, pepper, etc. (Although lately I've been forgetting which is for which.) They're good, but only for small quantities. I clean them with a damp cloth, which I find works better than grinding rice. They're rotary grinders, left over from before I bought my burr coffee grinder.

And here it is.

I used to freeze cake batter. I'd freeze it in a ziplock bag, defrost overnight when I needed it, then pour into a pan and bake. Never had a problem with it. Only did it with plain cakes, as mentioned above, nothing that needed whipped egg whites or anything, you'd most likely lose all that volume, but try it, let us know how it works. One of the first threads I ever started on eGullet (so many years ago) was about freezing cake batter.

Great blog, thank you very much. It's fascinating to see a slice of life so very different than my own. Do your dogs ever eat the ducks? I admire their restraint! (And their training.)

Interesting. Babette Friedman's Apple Cake is a classic Rosh Hashana recipe, although I do not know if that was the original intention of Babette Friedman! I made it once, many years ago, and I remember that it was very good. But I'm also pretty sure that the recipe above is NOT the recipe I made! I know I used oil rather than butter (it had to be pareve), I'm sure there was no Calvados in it, etc. I don't know if the recipe I used was already altered from the original or if I just made my own changes as I went along. I know I have a printout of the recipe somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. (These days I make Marcy Goldman's Majestic and Moist Honey Cake, which also goes through a lot of changes on the web, but I use her original recipe always, and it is perfect.) Oops. I just realized it wasn't the Babette Friedman cake I made, it was this recipe from Smitten Kitchen: https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/09/moms-apple-cake/ I remember now I was looking at apple cake recipes and the Babette Friedman recipe was all over the place, but I liked the looks of the Smitten Kitchen one better. (I guess I made the right choice.) But the name Babette Friedman really stuck in my mind!

Sourdough. I made a large boule, cut it into quarters. Almost finished one quarter already. The rest will go in the freezer. This is bread flour, whole wheat, rye, and buckwheat flour. It's very good. I know it's against the grain (no pun intended), but I'm enjoying "winging it" with sourdough. Keeps me on my toes.