Pete Fred

Nicola Lamb's Substack had a deep dive into almond cakes yesterday. I already have several recipes to draw on should the urge take me, but gave hers a go anyway... It's not the most exciting thing to look at and doesn't add much to what's already shown her article, but it's a nice cake and easy to make. I have a soft spot for this kind of thing, paired with minimally fussed-with fruit and a bit of thick cream. I'd just picked another tub of cherries fresh off the branch... ...and thought about making a quick compote, but ultimately couldn't be bothered just for the sake of a photo (sorry). Anyway, simply warmed gently in the microwave gave it a lovely moist, buttery almondyness. It'll freeze well for a handy stash as the summer fruits come and go. And I'll now be on the lookout for some of those sweeeeeeeet apricots and peaches, as above.

@Jim D. I don't disagree, but it strikes me that plated desserts like this are meant less to be eaten as a whole with each element in every mouthful. One can mix and match... except for the lovely smooth ice cream, which now can't fail but to have crumble attached. Of course I might also be the nerd who just wants to check the ice cream for ice crystals. ;-)

Another mention of the eGullet of yore here. "eGullet was the feral frontier of early internet food culture"

Brown cake... Or, to give it its fancy-pants name, Buttered Walnut Cake with Espresso Glaze by Yossy Arefi. Like most of her cakes it's a quick wet-dry method that yields a muffin-like texture. It was acceptable as cakey things go, but 'brown' about sums it up.

Other than chug it by the spoonful I couldn't think of much to do with the baked custard. After a quick rummage in the freezer and pantry I came up with... Tinned pear pan-fried in butter and sugar, brown butter cake, crumbs, and plum caramel. It made for a nice photo but I'm not sure it worked as a plated dessert. And I will berate myself for putting the rocher on top of the crumbs. I never understand why chefs do this (apart from the visual). I don't see the point of taking a lovely smooth, creamy thing and immediately contaminating it with crunchy rubble. But I was weak and followed the herd.

@Kerry Beal No, just vanilla and soft, light brown sugar as per O/G. (As an aside, I've been using Ugandan vanilla beans of late and have been pleasantly surprised with the quality. At less than a third of the price of similarly sized Tahitian/Madagascan here in France, it's a relief not having to sell body parts to fund my hobby.)

I saw an interesting technique for baked custard from a blogger based on an Ottolenghi/Goh recipe, so I went to the source. You make a stovetop custard and then bake it in a screaming hot oven until blackened and curdled; this monstrosity gets blitzed with a stick blender until smooth, then chilled to firm up a little. I ended up with this... Straight from the blitzing it had the texture of pastry cream. I baked the custard longer than indicated because I like that burnt milk flavour, so mine set up quite firm and ganache-like in the fridge, which made it rocher-able... Good Lord! it was delicious, like a grown-up dulce de leche, or a smooth version of the skin from a baked rice pudding or flan Parisien. I'll have to try it with a softer set at some point. Incidentally, I made the meringue brittle element of the Ottolenghi recipe a few months ago but didn't think to make the custard. I can definitely see how this take on 'affogato' would work.

@AAQuesada I prefer Gâteau Basque with the cream filling. But I've never made one with my own jam, so this might be a good reason to revisit. Thanks.

A Bakewell tart seemed like a good excuse to chip away at the cherry mountain... I threw some mahleb into the almond cream but I'm not sure if I could taste it because I was quite generous with the almond extract. Rookie error. The pastry scraps went towards half a dozen bite-sized egg custard tarts...

I'm still looking for things to do with all these cherries. Today it was cherry jam in a cream tea... I'm just back from collecting another couple of kilos (4 lbs)... Sadly, I think cherry fatigue is starting to set in. There's another four trees that are a couple of weeks behind the others, but my enthusiasm is waning. 'Pick Your Own' might be the way forward.

My cherry trees are absolutely groaning with fruit this year... I've filled about a dozen of these tubs in the last week or so... I indulge while picking, and have made a couple of jars of jam, but most went to friends and neighbours. It's always a kick in the guts that the vast majority are out of reach. I guess the birds, at least, are happy. With the ones I picked this morning, I made a quick compote to go with a slice of deep-fried bread and butter pudding and some vanilla crème fraiche...

@rotuts It's ok. I'm not adding to the French obesity timebomb (this time!). Because it's cooked to order, as it were, I thought it would be a little presumptuous to turn up on their doorsteps with a deep-fat fryer and a jug of crème anglaise. So they'll have to remain blissfully unaware of this pimped-up pain perdu.

The brioche left over from earlier this week got upcycled into a deep-fried bread and butter pudding... It was very good: a thin, crispy exterior, with soft, buttery insides; the sugar coating lent it a doughnut vibe. The only thing I'd do differently when plating is pour the crème anglaise around the slice (rather than placing the slice on top) which would hopefully counter the mottled effect in the sauce.

It's been a long time since I made a classic brioche à tête (translation: big-ass brioche). So when I saw a mould for a few bucks in a local store I couldn't resist a trip down memory lane... I tore off chunks of buttery goodness and dredged them through a dipping sauce made from Nutella thinned with a splash of cream... Too. Damn. Good.

So I made batter on Saturday, half of which got a 24-hour rest and made the last half-dozen on the previous page; the other half I gave an extended 96-hour rest to see if it made any difference to the final results. SPOILER: not particularly. Before we get there, I thought I'd take a few photos of the process in case it's of any use or interest. Coat the moulds lightly with beeswax... Fill... At this point if I notice any bubbles on the surface I'll give them a flash with a torch, but these were all good... After 10 minutes at full-blast (250C/480F) they've risen a little above the moulds... By 15 minutes they're hopefully as high as they're gonna go... ...and the tops are 'set'... (Incidentally, when souffléing happens and they rise higher than this, they expand horizontally a little, which means the canelés can't sink back into the moulds properly and cook evenly. You can remove them from the oven and try to get them to slip down before it gets too bad, but it's far from ideal.) At this point the tray gets a turn and I drop the temperature to 180C/350F. After 25 minutes there's some nice colour on the tops (bottoms)... And at 35 minutes they're starting to edge their way back down... Until by 45 minutes they're almost settled... At the 50 minute mark I'll grab one and turn it out to see how it's looking. I was happy enough... It's the one in the top left, below; the two next to it on the right were also fine for me... The bottom row needed a little more time in the moulds to get a better colour on the tops. From right to left, they took 55, 58 and 62 minutes. I could've left the last two in a bit longer but I think chasing an even colour is to their detriment. After a 40 minute wait for them to cool down and crisp up... For anyone who's made it this far, as an added bonus here's an alternative cross-section of the internal structure...

When it comes to multi-starred Michelin restaurants, Andy Hayler is probably your go-to man. He's reviewed both Chapter One and Patrick Guilbaud, although not particularly recently, so I'm not sure how useful that is. He's food-focused, so I'm afraid there's not much insight into romantic vibes.

Every time this thread ticks over I think to myself I really should get some moulds and dive in again. It's nearly six years since I last made a canelé and that was the last time I had a decent one. As I bemoaned a couple of pages back, the canelès here in France are usually pretty poor, even the ones in Bordeaux. So I bit the bullet and ordered copper moulds and tapped up a local beekeeper for some wax. The recipe I generally used to use was Pierre Herme's, but I noticed that I'd changed his icing sugar for caster sugar at some point. There was discussion earlier here as to whether the cornflour in icing sugar is a benefit, so I was curious if it makes a difference and made the batter using icing sugar. So batch number one... They kinda look OK, but there was a big issue with them souffléing above the moulds - they were often more out than in! I had to remove them from the oven a few times to settle back down. Not good. The downside of all the fiddling about is that the canelés end up being more squat... They also needed to bake longer to get an even colour, which affected the thickness of the shell and the texture of the insides... I know that a lot of people like them quite dark, but for me it toughens the shells too much, and the insides become pasty and gummy. I think it also negatively impacts the overall flavour, losing some of the vanilla and rum notes. I wondered if part of the problem with the souffléing might be that these were baked in a small toaster oven, which might not quite have the oompf to do the job properly. So with the other half of the batter I used a regular oven instead. Batch number two... Unfortunately there was the same souffléing, but this time I pulled them earlier so at least they wouldn't be overbaked (to my taste)... I did a better job of seating them back in the moulds this time, so they ended up a little taller. I was hoping that the reduced bake time would benefit the insides... Again, not great. The inside was softer, but not ideal. These cross-sections make it look like the mouthfeel would be worse, but they ate better than the previous ones due to the less tough shell and softer insides. With the oven as a factor now put to one side, I made some more batter using sucre en poudre (caster/superfine sugar) instead of icing sugar. On to batch number three then... What a relief. No souffléing, and a normal bake time. This is my preferred colouring. The shell is crispy all over, but at the top where it's paler there's a little bit of chew, and at the bottom it's more crunchy and brûléed. I like the textural variety rather than it being all crunch. The insides were noticeably softer and creamier, providing even more contrast to the shell. I thought they also tasted milkier, with the vanilla and rum more present. So there you go. Even if you never make or eat a canelé, at least you now know what a half decent one can look like. I'll finish with these full-res shots of my Platonic canelé for anyone who can't get enough of 'em...

@Jim D. I was only going by what Ottolenghi said in the article about Ethiopian humera sesame. Given he sells Al Arz in his shops, I think it's safe to assume that fits the bill. I did look at multiple labels on Amazon and there was no mention of the source of the seeds, except for the brand that I eventually tried. It might be that all 'decent' brands use sesame seeds from that general region, irrespective of where the tahini is actually manufactured. Edit: Just checked and my stuff was made in Turkey...

Funny you should say that because the lace cookies spread so much that you have to have a conveyor belt of trays on the go. There's even a 'hack' to streamline the process...

Skinny peanut wafers by Maida Heatter (recipe)... I made these double sized. They were ok. Honey-roasted peanuts would certainly have added a little more interest but they don't appear to be a thing here in France so I had to make do without. There's no salt in the recipe - presumably because salted peanuts contained waaaay more salt back in the day before the health police stuck their beaks in - so I gave them a generous sprinkling of sea salt to finish, but the dough itself would've benefitted from another pinch or two. Erna's lace cookies by Marian Burros... These were good. Super-thin and delicate, and pleasingly crisp with a nice buttery caramel flavour. Very moreish.

@Jim D. I'm not gonna pretend that my opinion is worth a bag o' beans. I simply follow this advice from Ottolenghi. I recently found the magic words hulled, toasted and Ethiopia on this stuff at Amazon France, took a punt, and was pleasantly surprised... Right consistency, nice deep colour, and I could eat it straight from the jar, which makes a change from the pale, claggy stuff that's the only thing available in shops within 200km of me. I see that Al Arz is available at Amazon US, but I've never tried it. Cortas is also a brand I've happily used before. In the UK I used to buy Al Nakhil which was also good. Good luck in your quest!

A couple of not so great cookies... The tahini-honey ones are normally pretty decent, but this time I was using up some second-rate honey and third-rate tahini... And the matcha crinkle cookies suffered from inferior matcha... But even if I'd used the ceremonial grade stuff from the Emperor's personal stash they still would've disappointed, mainly down to the recipe from some random French blogger - too powdery and claggy, as well as being bland.

Nutella cheesecake by Honey & Co... I improvised the base from a recipe for migas dulces (sweet crumbs) that was stale cake blitzed with walnuts, milk powder, butter, sugar and egg, then baked to a crumble consistency. I didn't bother with the chocolate sour cream topping. It had a light, creamy texture, more custardy than cheesecakey, but that might partially be down to my preferred method of baking in a very low oven. The Nutella flavour was sadly lacking, mostly because of the addition of the coffee grounds, which overpowered; I'm not sure what they were doing in there. Recipe here but I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend it to Nutella fans, and certainly not without omitting the coffee.

Another day, another nata or ten... When I made fairy cakes last month I regreted not fully embracing the nostalgia by fashioning the "wings". As it's been giving me sleepless nights... The ooze was provided by the seemingly inexhaustible supply of plum caramel that I made last year. I had a litre of raw milk that was past its use-by date so made caillé or curds. I usually eat it as is, with a sprinkling of cassonade (brown sugar), but decided to make a couple of small Yorkshire curd tarts instead... Ordinarily I would use a pâte sucrée for the tart shell but this time I went with an unsweetened shortcrust made with butter and lard. It had a nice, melting texture but it looked a bit anemic and I missed the crunch you get with a sweet paste. And because I hadn't put the nata moulds away, a couple of dinky ones used up the scraps...

A couple of recent purchases... Amazon were celebrating 25 years in France with a €25 voucher so I was happy to let Mr Bezos chip in. And I've been pretty impressed with the bowl holder. Would recommend to anyone who thinks they might find it useful.