Blackberry-Peach Slump

I believe that anyone who’s ever baked has some negative history with one particular baked good. I don’t mean one cookie that turned out lousy in a batch of 5 dozen – I mean one category of product that has consistently turned out disappointing. Or rather, I should be more frank: a product that always seems to end up a failure of epic proportions. Several years ago, my sister and aunt had just such a tempestuous relationship with Tarte Tatin. I’m not exactly sure what sparked the obsession, nor do I remember how many attempts they made. Just know that I have numerous memories of the two of them baking the tarts and no memories of eating the tarts. And when I’m not eating, you know it’s a bad sign.

I myself have had a similar relationship with cobbler. Although I’ve tried my hand at what feels like several versions, I have yet to have one come out right. Part of it has to do with the size of the pan I use, part of it has to do with my incompetence – but I like to think a great deal of it comes from my lack of an old passed-down-for-generations family recipe imbued with secrets that impart deliciousness upon a rather humble dessert.

Whatever the reason, my repeated failures caused me to create what I call the Cobbler Mystique: “I can do cookies, no problem! Cakes, okay! Cobbler – get someone else to do it!” The ultimate shame of course, is that I love eating cobbler. Wonderful use of fruit, a biscuity layer to contrast the sweetness and add a little texture, and it’s the perfect baked expression of summer.

So when a friend came over and we were thinking of trying something that involved fresh summer fruits, cobbler was the first thing that came to mind. I tried to suppress it, the thought of my past humiliations seeping over my brain like The Blob at that oddly crowded movie theater, but to no avail. It was the clear choice. Until he (my baking partner, not The Blob) showed me a recipe he’d found for “Blackberry-Peach Slump.” I read through the recipe a few times. It was all there: the use of fresh fruit, summery ingredients, a biscuity top. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a cobbler, right? But no! It was a Slump! Whatever that is!

Suddenly, my fears dissipated, and those countless cobblers that were almost burned at the edges and raw in the middle faded as if from a long, drawn-out nightmare. We tried the recipe and it came together easily and enjoyably. With minimal modifications, we produced what I feel to be one of the greatest Slumps the world has ever seen. (Insert pun about a Slump coming from my cobbler slump here.) So if you’ve been having similar doubts, doubt no more. I may not be able to make a cobbler to save my life, but I guarantee this Slump recipe will make you feel pret-ty good about yourself – whether or not you deserve it.

Notes:
- I didn’t know what size pan to use, so I chose a standard rectangular cake pan and just added more fruit. My embarrassing admission is that I have no idea how much fruit I added, but I believe it was at least half a cup. When you mix the filling together, you’ll have quite a bit of juices, so it won’t hurt to add more fruit without adding more of anything else. Eyeball it.
- Vanilla beans are insanely expensive. I lacked them at the time, so I just added a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead when mixing the filling. If you’re determined to use vanilla beans though, buy them at Costco if possible – they’re much cheaper there than at specialty stores like Sur La Table.
- Make sure to keep the thickness of the biscuit discs uniform to ensure even baking. If your oven is notoriously inconsistent, I might remove and turn the tray around in the middle of baking.
- We used a combination of blackberries and raspberries to use with the stone fruit.
- The photos include both "before" and "after" baking pictures. I'm sorry they're bad -- the lighting in my kitchen is less than optimal. As are my photography skills.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

There's a scene in The Giver (required reading for all 12 year-olds) where the protagonist is looking at an object, and suddenly it changes somehow. At first, you have no idea what's going on, until you realize that the boy has learned to see in color -- up to this point, he has been living in black and white.

Life seems to be full of such moments when, as Obi-Wan once said, you realize you've taken your first step into a larger world. I had such a moment this past Sunday. For some reason, I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to bake two different batches of oatmeal raisin cookies from two different recipes. At first, it made complete sense -- I didn't like the products of the first recipe, so I tried a second one. Logical, right?

Well, several hours, 5 cups of oats, 4 sticks of butter, and countless dishes later, I realized I had churned out about 5 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. Five dozen cookies now sitting in my apartment. Where I live. Alone. And if that wasn't enough, the kicker was sitting on my living room floor -- a 9-pound box of Quaker Oats that I'd bought earlier that day. In fact, the act of purchasing it hadn't even seemed strange to me at the time. After all, a lunatic feels no shame at his lunacy; he doesn't think he's crazy.

I, on the other hand, know as I glance at that 9-lb box of oatmeal (now already less than 9 lbs, as I used quite a bit of it), that I have entered a Brave New World of baking. Now that I've tasted the sweetness of unmitigated baking fascination, I can't go back. And I don't think I'd ever want to.

Recipe notes:

- I am posting the recipe of the "better" cookies below, though my office mates preferred what I thought turned out to be the unsuccessful batch. The other recipe yielded products that tasted more like candy than cookies to me -- all butter and sugar, a caramelized flavor, but slightly greasy and too spread out and lacking a good taste to the dough part of the cookie. If you're still interested in them though, let me know and I'll get you the recipe
- I added walnuts to this recipe because who wants an oatmeal raisin cookie without nuts?! Except for those who are allergic, and to you I say: I am so, so sorry.
- I also added vanilla. To me, a cookie without vanilla is like my life without baking, which is to say generally drab, boring, and other words that mean the same thing -- un-fun.
- The resulting cookies were slightly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside! Hooray! They had a great oat-y flavor and the nutmeg really complimented the oats nicely. Though I do think they could also benefit from a little cinnamon. On the whole, a delightful (albeit pale) cookie, and one I will certainly make again.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. nutmeg
16 TBS (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
3 cups old-fashioned oats (instant oats won’t taste as good)
1 ½ cups raisins
1 ½ cups chopped walnuts
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine butter and sugars with an electric mixer or by hand with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined.
5. In three parts, slowly mix in the flour mixture with a wooden spoon until just combined. Mix in the oats, raisins, and walnuts until just incorporated.
6. Using a regular dinner spoon to help you scoop out the dough, shape large/medium balls with your hands (~2 TBS) and place them on parchment paper on your baking sheets, ~ 2 ½ inches apart. Flatten each one a bit with the palm of your hand.
7. Place 2 baking sheets in the oven at a time and bake for 22-25 minutes, making sure to switch and rotate the trays halfway through the total baking time. Remove from oven when the cookies are lightly golden but the centers are still soft and puffy.
8. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes, then serve warm or transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: ~ 32 cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies, Episode II

The New York Times recently ran an article about chocolate chip cookies, touting that they had come upon the Holy Grail of chocolate chip cookie recipes. The food blog Serious Eats had a similar article about this. The internet is filled with the legends about the $250 cookie recipe, or debates about whether a chocolate chip cookie should be chewy or crispy or perhaps even a little bit of both. People have really torn each other to pieces over this topic. Did Ruth Graves Wakefield accidentally drop a bunch of chocolate pieces into her batter, or was it the purposeful act of a genius who would change our lives forever?

As far as I'm concerned, the swirling rumors and historical inaccuracies tend to add complexity to perhaps the greatest aspect of the chocolate chip cookie -- its simplicity. I doubt the world will ever agree upon which recipe is "best," considering that I am hard-pressed to think of another topic upon which we all agree. So you can take your panel of "chocolate chip cookie experts" and food historians and cookie chemists and the whole lot. I am not an expert, but I am looking for a cookie that:

- Is chewy in texture (due to the ingredients and techniques rather than to simple underbaking)
- Has some caramel/toffee notes in it
- Does NOT skimp on the chocolate or insist that it be in enormo-chunks or perfectly factory-ized chips
- Puffs up just a bit instead of being flat and runny
- Does not have nuts, but would be perfectly wonderful with the addition of something like walnuts or pecans
- Is large enough to feel substantial in your hand but NOT large enough to feed a small nation

In my ongoing quest to hit upon the perfect recipe to yield the cookie detailed above, this recipe is the closest I’ve yet come. I posted one version of this recipe before, but the one thing the NYTimes article imparted upon me was that the "chill the dough first" strategy was one worth exploring. I made a double batch of these (because my recipe usually yields a measly 2 dozen cookies), and, so sayeth Dinah Washington, "What a difference a day made." I mean, really. I couldn't be bothered to chill the batter for 36 hours -- what an odd period of time -- but a bit less than 24 hours seemed to do just fine. Oh and don't begin to be impressed, I did not come up with this recipe out of my little brain. It is a modified version of the Neiman Marcus one posted online at their website.

Chocolate Chip Cookies, v 2.0
Ingredients:
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
3 TBS granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 tsps. vanilla extract
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant espresso powder
1 ½ cups (~9 oz) chopped bittersweet chocolate

Directions:
1. Cream the butter with the sugars using a wooden spoon. Mix until homogenous.
2. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract with the wooden spoon. Add espresso powder and mix until evenly distributed.
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder with a wire whisk.
4. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in three parts and use wooden spoon to combine until dry ingredients are just incorporated.
5. Use a rubber spatula to gently incorporate chopped chocolate bits into the dough.
6. Chill dough for 24-36 hours.
7. When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 300 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
8. Using a teaspoon and your hands, form large rounded lumps of dough (~2 TBS each – it should feel like a small handful when rolling, about the size of a ping pong ball) and place them on your cookie sheets ~3 inches apart. Make sure to give them the proper space.
9. Bake for about 20 minutes or until cookies are starting to lightly brown at the edges. If you want your cookies soft and chewy, do not let the cookies themselves turn golden on top. Simply remove after ~23 minutes (checking periodically) and leave them on the sheet for a few minutes to let them continue cooking before removing them with a spatula and placing them on a wire rack to cool.

Blueberry Muffins

When I was little, I assumed that all of my mom’s baking genius was rooted in the spiral-bound recipe book she kept in one of the kitchen shelves. Even though she had numerous recipes around the house, it always seemed to me that whenever she was making one of my favorite treats, the book was out there on the table, making sure everything turned out just right.

It was with the routine expectation of a gloriously successful product, then, that I set out to make her famous Sturbridge Blueberry Muffins – direct from the spiral notebook. I had copied the recipe by hand into a spiral notebook of my own when I got my first apartment. When I finally got to try one, I was beside myself with excitement. But alas! They were exactly like my mom’s…minus the flavor.

I called her up with the humility that only comes from a failed baking experiment, and whined that I must have followed the recipe incorrectly. There was a short pause on the receiver, then, “Hm… you know… I might have made a few changes to that recipe.” Wait wait wait CHANGES?! From the all-knowing BOOK?! As it turns out, my mom’s genius was not rooted in the book at all, but in – her genius. She made what a friend from my old office once termed “Mamafications.” There are some types of moms who deliberately alter recipes before distributing them to retain their family secrets, but mine isn’t one of them. When it comes to baking, she’s one of those intuitive individuals who just makes whatever changes she thinks are appropriate at that time. And they nearly always turn out fantastic. Phooey.

Okay so I haven’t inherited the talent for Mamafications, but I made a few changes of my own, and several mediocre batches later, here they are. They don’t photograph well, but they do make for a great breakfast. I am incredibly inept at making streusels, so instead I combine the topping ingredients into a bit of a paste and apply a little to each heap of batter prior to baking. This results in a sweet crust and a nicely shaped top over a moist, tender blueberry muffin.

Sturbridge Blueberry Muffins
(with norafications)

1 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 TBS baking powder
4 eggs
1 TBS salt
1 cup shortening
3 cups blueberries (whole)
1 cup milk
4 ½ cups flour

Topping Ingredients:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, cut into cubes
1/4 cup flour
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. nutmeg

Yield: 24 muffins

1. Put paper muffin liners in each cup of a 12-cup muffin tin (or paper two tins if you have two). Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine sugars and shortening in a large bowl with a wooden spoon.
3. Add the eggs and mix heartily with a wooden spoon until well blended. Add milk and stir until combined.
4. In a medium bowl, sift dry ingredients using a fork or a whisk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients with minimal stirring. Mix until just combined.
5. Fold the berries into the batter using a rubber spatula.
6. Use two spoons to distribute half the batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups.
---
Topping Directions:
1. Sift flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
2. Combine butter and brown sugar with a fork.
3. Add dry ingredients to creamed butter/sugar mixture; combinue using fingers, and lightly pile paste evenly onto muffin batter (once divided between the cups in the tin) prior to baking.
---
7. Pop the tin into the oven and bake the muffins for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing them and setting them on wire racks to complete cooling.
8. Make sure to let the muffin tin cool before washing it out and putting the second set of cups in and filling them with the rest of the batter. Repeat the baking process.

Ici: Ice cream review (lament)

My sister always used to tell my mom that she was impressed by my confident air that (presumably) implied I knew so much about life. Until the day she realized that I say everything with confidence -- even when I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Yes, it's true, I am a prime offender when it comes to speaking with conviction while lacking the necessary expertise to do such. Call it a quirk, call it a flaw, call it exceptionally annoying, whatever you like. In my quest for the best Berkeley ice cream, however, I've made the sad discovery that I am not the only one with this tendency.

The problem with living in a new city where you don't know anyone is that the only people whose opinions are available about food destinations are those on the unfiltered internet. This is not to say that I think of sites like Yelp and Chowhound as electronic hangouts for the Great Unwashed. What I mean is that you need people you trust to lead you to the best place for you. My boyfriend understands this better than anyone, in that every time I rave about a restaurant, his first question is, "Yes, but would I like it?" It takes an individual who knows you quite well to be able to answer that question, and unfortunately for me, none of those individuals are members of the online review boards.

This is all a big build-up for me to say that my experience at Ici, an outrageously popular ice cream establishment on College Avenue in Berkeley, was underwhelming. Yes, the owner was the former pastry chef at Chez Panisse. Yes, they boast exotic flavors like chickory-cinnamon, cardmom-rose, and lemon-thyme. And yes, my ice cream was tasty (one scoop of coffee ice cream in a cup -- it's cheating to get yours in a cone when reviewing a place, as ice cream nearly always tastes better in a cone).

BUT! My ice cream was not worlds better than any other ice cream place (except when compared to a place like ColdStone, my opinions on which could make me spontaneously combust). In fact, the first bite immediately made me wish I was eating the ice cream of Fosselman's instead. The texture was smooth and creamy, but I tasted more pure sweetness than coffee flavor, and I found myself thinking of it as the Nice Guy of ice cream. [As has often been said, girls tend to avoid dating the Nice Guy because he's all sweetness -- no edge, no complexity, no excitement.] Would I eat it if it was free? Certainly. Would I call it the best? Not by a long stretch.

The fact is, the simplest, most traditional flavors are the best ones by which to judge any ice cream joint because there's no novelty of the Gourmet Ice Cream Mad Libs that goes on nowadays. You know, [normal ice cream flavor] + [random trendy herb or spice] = [cutting edge]. Besides, if you find there's a combination that sounds great as a garnish for a steak (such as the "lemon-thyme" on the menu yesterday), isn't that a sign that it wouldn't make the best ice cream? So for now, I'm still on the lookout for a Berkeley standout.