Baking Pumpkin Bars for Eighty

Posted on 6 May 2012 by christao408

Recently, a friend was cooking at a dinner for eighty people, one of these social events where everyone pitches in to help cover the costs of the food. Being from the panhandle of Florida, she was preparing a Cajun-inspired menu and asked if I would help with the dessert. While I was originally going to make sweet potato pie, plans morphed and we ended up with pumpkin bars, which turned out nicely nonetheless.

Sweet potato pie would have been much more authentic for a Cajun dessert but local sweet potatoes are very small and the larger imported sweet potatoes are ridiculously expensive. I opted instead for pumpkins, which are plentiful and much less expensive. Scaling up from a recipe that serves maybe 16 people, I wasn’t sure just how much pumpkin I needed, so bought six.

After cutting them, steaming them, and peeling and mashing the flesh, I had a lot of pumpkin puree. In fact, it was about half again what I ended up needing. That’s okay – you can freeze pumpkin puree.

Instead of a usual pie crust, I decided on a recipe that used shortbread. Shortbread is not only easier to make than pie crust, it also adds a different dimension to the texture – providing a crispier base versus a tender and flaky one.

Instead of pies, which would be more difficult to transport, I opted for four large aluminum trays that came with plastic covers. I spread the shortbread dough on the bottom and then baked it for about 15 minutes until it started firming up and tanning.

The filling was pumpkin puree, brown sugar, cream, egg yolks, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger powder, and cloves. I whipped egg whites in a separate bowl and folded them into the mixture, creating a lighter texture.

The filling baked in about thirty minutes. After cooling to room temperature, I put the four trays in my refrigerator and carried them to the event the next afternoon. A little chilling helps film up the pumpkin pie and makes it much easier to cut and serve.

The end product, shown from a smaller test batch I did two days before. This version didn’t have the egg whites whipped separately, so the filling isn’t as tall as in the final version. Still just as tasty, though!

Baking: Lychee and Rhubarb Pie

Posted on 9 April 2012 by christao408

Two weekends ago I traveled to Samut Songkhram, the smallest of Thailand’s 77 provinces, located about ninety minutes to the southwest of Bangkok. There I had lunch with Ajarn Yai (literally, “big teacher”), the retired director of the rural school where I previously volunteered as an English teacher. This being lychee season, Ajarn Yai insisted that we take several big bunches of freshly-harvested lychees. Once home, I decided to try something new: a lychee-rhubarb pie.

Lychee are the fruit of an evergreen tree that grows in tropical and subtropical climates. The fruit is round, about one inch (two to three centimeters) in diameter, and is covered in a leathery rind. Peeling is easy, if slightly tedious.

The interior flesh has a grape-like texture – firm but slightly squishy. Most lychee have a large, inedible pit but some trees produce seedless fruit informally called khathoey (or ladyboy) lychee by the Thais. The flavor of lychee is sweet and perfumey, not overpowering but slightly astringent – especially in not-quite-ripe fruit.

It is this astringency that made me think of rhubarb. Since the lychee were sweet and astringent and the rhubarb is tart, I thought they might make a refreshing dessert – kind of in the same way that a lemon sorbet can cleanse your palate between courses in a meal. I peeled the lychee, chopped the rhubarb, and mixed in some sugar and corn starch as a thickener.

Trying something different for my pie crust, I cut rounds (in honor of the shape of the lychee) to form the top crust. It then went into the oven for about 40 minutes until the crust was golden and the filling cooked through.

The end result: The filling was a little dryer than I would have liked and quite tart, too. That’s probably because I added only a half-cup of sugar. I liked the flavor, though, and it worked very nicely as a refreshing dessert after a richly flavored meal, cutting through the flavors of the meal better than a heavier, sweeter dessert would. Next time, though, I think a bit more sugar is called for and also a few minutes of pre-cooking the filling to extract more juices.

Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

Posted on 26 March 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to show her how to make pie crust. When I asked what kind of pie she wanted to make, she suggested a sweet potato pie. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve never had a sweet potato pie. Nonetheless, I agreed and sought out a recipe. Ultimately, I settled on a combination sweet potato / pecan pie.

The sweet potato pie isn’t that far off from a pumpkin pie. You roast sweet potatoes, skin them,then mix the flesh with sugar, a little salt, and an egg. That filling is put into an unbaked pie shell and topped with pecans and a pecan pie filling – a sugar syrup and egg mixture. Bake it until set.

End result with freshly made whipped cream. Turned out nicely!

Making Chocolates at Baker Republic

Posted on 12 March 2012 by christao408

In February, a new store opened on Sukhuvmit Soi 49. Called Baker Republic, it specializes in the supplies candy and cake-makers need to produce the finest desserts. In the run-up to Valentine’s Day, they offered complimentary chocolate making classes, for which Chow and I signed up.

Fresh flowers add a touch of elegance to Baker Republic’s light-filled store on the second floor of the 49 Terrace shopping center.

The shop is owned by a family whose business is importing packaged foodstuffs. Since many of the brands they import sell goods used for baking, opening a shop like Baker Republic was an obvious next step. On the right side of the picture is their climate-controlled chocolate storage room. Like a humidor for fine chocolates, this room ensures that the chocolate you buy is at its very best.

As part of the class, we were invited to conduct a chocolate tasting, working through different brands and different percentages of cacao. As hard as it was, I forced myself to put up with this tortuous task! By the end, I had confirmed that I prefer darker chocolates to lighter ones and more expensive chocolates to cheaper ones.

Some of the other baking supplies offered at Baker Republic. From candles to sprinkles, fillings to flours, they seemed to have just about anything you would need in order to bake. Now, an interesting question arises here: do enough people in Bangkok bake to really give a shop like this a chance to survive? Most city homes don’t have ovens, at least not full-size baking ovens.

Our instructor started with white chocolate, melting it on top of a bowl of simmering water in order to “temper” the chocolate. I had heard of the process before but hadn’t understood it. Tempering is the process of controlling the size of the cocoa butter crystals. When the crystals are of a uniform, small size, the surface of the chocolate will have a uniform sheen and it will snap when you break it. Untempered chocolate will have irregular, larger crystals and the surface will have a matte appearance, crumbling when you break it.

There are a few different methods to temper chocolate but the result of each is that you bring the chocolate to a high enough temperature to melt all the cocao butter crystals, then cool it slowly to a point where the medium- and small-size crystals form, stirring all the while. Finally, you again heat the chocolate, but only to a temperature where the medium-size crystals melt. Yes, it is a little tricky.

To make different colored chocolates using the white chocolate as a base, we added food coloring. The secret, though, is that you have to use an oil-based food coloring with chocolate. Water-based colorings, such as those you use when baking Red Velvet cake, won’t work.

From left: the powdered food coloring mixed with a small amount of melted cocao butter; the resulting paste dribbled onto tempered, partially-melted white chocolate; and then the color being stirred into the chocolate.

Parchment paper bags were filled with the chocolate and we started filling the plastic molds. Above, Chow tries her hand at filling the molds so that there are no air bubbles.

One thing I quickly learned is that you don’t have nearly as much control over the squeezing of the chocolate as you think you do. I suppose it takes a practiced hand to build sufficient technique.

Trying to get fancy, I add layers of different colored chocolate, popping the tray into the refrigerator for a few minutes in between each layer to help it set.

Mid-way through the process you can see some filled molds as well as others where I’ve tried to add squiggles that will then be topped with chocolate of a different color. Trying to create fine, thin lines of chocolate was a challenge.

The goal was to not have any air bubbles, so after filling the trays we would tap them on the counter several times, then hold them up and inspect them. You can see several bubbles around the yellow squiggles where the purple chocolate hasn’t filled in the spaces completely.

Next, we moved to dark chocolate. Truth be told, I don’t much care for white chocolate, although it can more easily be colored.

Close-up of my chocolate molds. Again, you can see the challenge with air bubbles. As you tap the trays on the counter, the bubbles work their way to the surface. But if the chocolate has cooled too much, the shape of the popped bubble holds and you don’t have a pleasantly smooth surface. These are the very chocolates that appear (finished) in the first picture of this entry.

P1200416

After about twenty minutes in the fridge, the chocolates popped right out of the molds. You can see where those bubbles on the purple and yellow striped chocolates never went away. The chocolate was nicely tempered, though, and had a nice sheen and pleasant snap.

The other two students, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, used heart-shaped molds and piped the letters L-O-V-E – backwards and upside-down, nonetheless – to create this cute presentation.

After this experience, I’m inclined to think that, just as with baking macarons, making chocolates is one of those skills for which it is better to just pay for someone else’s expertise! That said, I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about chocolate making at Baker Republic.

Baked Donuts

Posted on 25 January 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago a couple of friends came down from Chiang Mai and so I invited them over for brunch. Since they don’t have an opportunity to enjoy good old fashioned American breakfasts that often, I decided to make something special for them: baked donuts. (Recipe here at 101cookbooks.com)

Left: the dough about half-rised; Right: freshly-cut donuts starting the second rise.

Baked donuts start out very similar to their more common, Krispy Kremed cousins. They are a basic yeast dough that is allowed to rise, is rolled and cut out, and then allowed to rise a second time before cooking. But instead of going through the hassle of deep frying (and having your house smell for days afterwards), you put them into the oven. While you can glaze them, I opted for a brush of butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar. The end result is fluffy and delectable – different from deep-fried donuts but still very enjoyable – and with the cinnamon-sugar, it has a classic element.

We couldn’t be bothered with a tripod so as to fit all three of us into a single picture.

For dessert, I thought it would be nice to do something refreshing and relatively healthy. It was a bit of a splurge to buy raspberries and blueberries, both of which are imported, but they were really sweet and juicy. Paired with a bit of natural yogurt and homemade granola, the berries made for a very celebratory parfait and a tasty concusion to a special brunch.

Baking Pecan Tarts

Posted on 20 January 2012 by christao408

Every time I visit the US, I make a trip to Costco and buy several pounds of pecans and walnuts. Nuts (with the exception of cashews, peanuts, and macadamias, all of which are grown locally) are very expensive here in Thailand and I enjoy adding nuts to salads, pestos, and of course desserts. Recently, I perfected a pecan pie recipe that makes wonderful two-bite-sized tarts.

The recipe started out from one contributed by an unknown source on the Food Network’s site. As such, they warned that the recipe had not been tested. Certainly not, as I found out after an initial mishap. Let’s put it this way: adding beaten eggs directly into boiling sugar syrup makes for sweet scrambled eggs – not a proper pecan pie filling!

Instead, I rewrote the directions and, after testing two batches, made some adjustments to the ingredients to reduce the sweetness and richness of the filling while adding some depth of flavor thanks to the use of maple syrup.

Pecan Pie or Tarts
1 stick butter (4 oz or 115 g)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup¹
1/2 cup maple syrup²
2 eggs plus 3 egg whites, beaten well
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (or 1 cup plus whole pecans to layer the top of the pie)
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell, or 12 small tart pans lined with pastry dough³
Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). In a saucepan, melt the butter but don’t let it brown. Mix in the sugar, corn syrup, and maple syrup and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.
Temper the eggs by slowly pouring the sugar mixture into them while whisking continuously. Stir in the pecans then pour the mixture into the pie or tart shells. If you want to decorate the top(s) with whole pecans, you can do so.
Bake 1 hour or until firm when shaken. Let cool before serving. If you are making the tarts in a muffin tin, you should carefully remove them to a wire rack after ten minutes of cooling, so they do not stick.
¹ Note that the corn syrup you buy in the store (like Karo brand) is not high-fructose corn syrup.
² I think the Grade B maple syrup, which has a richer flavor, is nice to use. If you have only regular maple syrup, that is fine, too. You can also substitute corn syrup if you do not have maple syrup.
³ Instead of tart pans, you can also use a muffin tin.

Pecan pies and tarts freeze beautifully after they are cooked. They can be warmed up in the oven for about 15 minutes before serving and they’ll be just as nice as if they were freshly-baked.

Thai Desserts

Posted on 22 October 2011 by christao408

As we wait patiently for updates as to the flooding risk in Bangkok…

It has been a while since I’ve done an entry about food, so I thought I would share with you the plate full of Thai desserts that Tawn brought for me a few weeks ago when I was slaving away all afternoon on the computer.

The full plate – from left: rae rai, khanom tuay, khanom khii nuu (in the cup), and gluay bing. First off, the term “khanom” is an all-purpose word used for snacks or sweets.

Item 1:This is khanom khii nuu. I’m not sure you want me to translate the name as the literal meaning is pretty unappetizing. This dessert is almost like a sweet cous cous made of rice flour instead of wheat flour. The rice flour is mixed with jasmine water to make a paste, then it is pressed through a screen to make small granules. These are then wrapped in a cloth and weighted to press out any extra liquid, then steamed until cooked.

A simple syrup is made with more jasmine water, sugar, and (if desired) food coloring, which is then mixed into the cooked flour granules. Finally, the whole thing is placed in a container along with a jasmine candle, which is allowed to burn to impart additional aroma. It is served with a little bit of shredded mature coconut. The flavor and texture are delicate, almost a bit too delicate.

Item 2: Rae rai are basically rice flour noodles. They are made by mixing two types of rice flour (regular and glutinous) with coconut cream and jasmine water until it forms a dough. The dough is stirred over medium heat for about ten minutes until the flour is cooked. Food coloring is added and the dough is separated into small balls (about the size of ping pong balls) and then extruded through a device that looks a bit like a garlic press. The resulting noodles are steamed and then served with a combination of sugar and sesame seeds and a little bit of salted coconut cream. Also a delicate flavor but a bit more substantial than khanom khii nuu.

Item 3: Gluay bing, grilled bananas. A semi-ripe starchy type of banana is grilled at a low temperature and then flattened. It is then soaked in a mixture of coconut milk and palm sugar. I’m not a big banana fan, so this wasn’t a particular favorite of mine.

Item 4: Khanom tuay, literally a “cup snack”. The dough is made of rice flour, flavored and colored with pandanus leaf. These are steamed in small cup molds and, after being removed, are served with a palm sugar caramel with sesame seeds.

Inside view of the khanom tuay, which has a consistent texture throughout, something similar to mochi, the pounded sticky rice that is common in Japanese cuisine. This was my favorite, especially because of the texture. I like the chewy texture of mochi, caramel, taffy, etc.

So there you have it – Thai desserts to tide you over while we wait for news about the flooding. “The water is coming tonight,” said one of our guards as he inspected the wall of sandbags in front of our condo. Let’s hope when I wake up tomorrow, everything is still dry.

Baking: Chocolate Raspberry Bundt Cake Soaked in Raspberry Syrup

Posted on 18 September 2011 by christao408

Chocolate Raspberry
Bundt Cake

Soaked in Raspberry Sauce

Recipe Source:‎

Week of Menus

Time: About 2 hours
Taste: 4/5
Fancy Factor: 4/5

One of my favorite cooking-related websites is Week of Menus. Written by Joanne Choi, a mother of young children who tries to provide, as she puts it, good cooking for people with too much on their plate. I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling. Recently, she’s done a series of recipes about bundt cakes and the chocolate raspberry bundt soaked in raspberry syrup caught my eye.

Something nice about bundt cakes is that they have a high degree of fancy with a relative minimum of work. The pans themselves are very grandly designed, some with arches and vaults worthy of a cathedral, others with giant ridges, and still others with rose patterns. With such a beautiful cake, there’s no need to frost or ice them, although a nice glaze moistens the cake and makes the architecture even more beautiful.

The ingredients are pretty simple (you can go to Joanne’s website for the exact recipe): All-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, unsalted butter, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, sour cream, a chocolate bar broken into pieces, and raspberries.

First you combine the flour with the salt, baking powder, and baking soda. The recipe does not call for sifting the flour, but the organic Australian flour I buy here in Thailand is a little coarse, so sifting helps combine the ingredients while also lightening the flour. Next step, cream the butter in a mixer until it is light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar.

After the sugar and butter are combined, add the eggs one at a time, beating for about thirty seconds between each addition. Of course, you need scrape down the sides of the bowl every so often along the way (or buy a BeaterBlade, which combines the paddle attachment with silicon edging that scrapes down the bowl as it mixes) so that the ingredients are well-combined.

Then start adding the flour mixture and the sour cream (to which I had to add a little bit of yogurt as I didn’t have quite enough sour cream) in alternating parts.

The final step is to fold in the broken chocolate pieces and about half the raspberries. Now, the recipe calls for fresh raspberries but I found that frozen works just fine. Manually incorporate the chocolate and berries instead of using the mixer, so that you are sure they are evenly distributed.

Put the batter into a bundt cake mold and bake. I didn’t have a bundt cake mold but had been thinking about buying one. This recipe gave me the incentive to make the purchase. While comparing models, I decided to buy my first silicone baking mold. It is less expensive and supposedly easier to use (no need to butter and flour the mold – it just peels right off) than metal baking pans.

Overall, I was impressed by the ease of use, but for some reason the batter shifted in the pan, causing one side of the cake to be larger than the other. Maybe I need to place the pan on a tray before putting it in the oven?

While the cake baked, I made the glaze. This is a combination of the remaining berries, some sugar, and a little bit of orange juice. The berries are pureed and strained so you get a rich raspberry juice. The juice is then combined with the sugar and orange juice and cooked for a few minutes until the sugar dissolves. You can easily imagine how other fruits could be used instead of raspberries to produce tasty alternatives to the raspberry cake.

After the cake was done and had cooled a bit (although not completely), you begin brushing on the glaze. Notice how lopsided the cake is! I also think it is a little overcooked. When I checked the cake initially, the toothpick was coming out dirty, so I gave it a few more minutes. By the time the inside was done, the outside was a little too brown. Perhaps I need to lover the oven temperature a little?

I added the glaze in two layers, allowing about ten minutes for the first layer to absorb. There was a point where the cake seemed adequately glazed and I had used only about two-thirds of the raspberry glaze. In hindsight, I would go ahead and apply a third layer as there is not much risk of the cake being too moist.

The final product, served with some white chocolate and raspberry ice cream from New Zealand Ice Cream. You can se this slice came from the thin side of the cake! Overall, the flavor was nice, although I think the cake was slightly overcooked and just a little dry. I would like to play around with this recipe again, maybe adding more berries to the batter or else maybe a little more sour cream. In any case, thanks to Joanne for this nice recipe!

Pinkberry

Posted on 11 June 2011 by christao408

(Entries are bouncing around a bit chronologically but I’m still in LA on vacation.)

One treat I’ve indulged in several times while in LA is Pinkberry, the premium frozen yogurt chain started here in 2005 by Shelly Hwang and Young Lee. Reviving the craze of the 1980s, when there was a frozen yogurt store in every corner strip mall, Hwang and Lee have expanded from their first store in Los Angeles to more than 100 locations across the US and even internationally.

Tawn, Anita, Samantha, Lily, and Lalima enjoy their Pinkberry in Culver City.

I’m not about to claim that this is some incredible food that you must rush out and try, but it is pretty good. I like that the quality seems high, they use only fresh fruits (not frozen or canned) as toppings, and if you choose carefully, a Pinkberry frozen yogurt can be a pretty healthful dessert or snack. One morning when I was at the Southwest Airlines terminal at LAX perusing my breakfast options, I realized that a Pinkberry yogurt with fresh berries and some low fat granola on top would be the best option among the breakfast pizzas, Croissanwhiches, and breakfast burritos on offer.

My sister and her family are in town now staying with Tawn and me at a beach house

. We went to Pinkberry last night. While they have frozen yogurt places in Kansas City, they are nothing like Pinkberry. There it is self-serve yogurt with flavors that underwhelm with their artificiality. Here it is pure, tangy goodness with lots of fresh toppings.

Even though it was a chilly evening by the beach, we bundled up for some Pinkberry!

Caramel Rice Flan

Posted on 4 May 2011 by christao408

One recipe that caught my eye a week or so ago while browsing the New York Times’s website was Caramel Rice Flan. This egg-enhanced rice pudding is made with risotto rice, giving it a nicer “toothy” feel when you eat it. The best part is the homemade caramel which lines the bottom of the souffle dish, subsequently becoming the sauce for the flan when it is flipped upside down and unmolded onto a serving dish. I decided to try the recipe for dinner last Friday at Ko and Per’s place, where Tawn and his girlfriends gathered to watch the royal wedding.

The recipe takes about an hour of active time to prepare and then around two hours to bake. After that, it needs at least six hours in the refrigerator so it really is a “make today for tomorrow” sort of dessert. Ingredients include arborio rice (one of the types you use for risotto), milk, cinnamon sticks, ground cardamom, lemon zest, cardamom pods, cream, eggs, egg yolks, salt, and sugar.

The recipe said it serves 8-10 but looking at it, it appeared to be a big recipe so I cut it in half.

The recipe is moderately complex, requiring several saucepans, a few bowls, and a strainer. Helpful to have everything prepared in advance and maybe even an extra pair of hands along the way. The first step is to simmer the rice in boiling water for about 15 minutes to start cooking it.

You then drain the rice, then add it to a medium saucepan with most of the milk, the cinnamon, and ground cardamom, bringing it to a boil and then lowering the temperature and simmering it for 30 minutes, cooking until the rice is very tender.

Any unabsorbed milk is poured off and then the rice is put in the bowl and lemon jest is stirred in.

You then make the custard, cooking the rest of the milk, the cream, and the cardamom pods. While that is coming to a simmer, in a separate bowl you whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, and part of the sugar.

When the milk comes to a simmer, you temper the eggs by adding the milk and cream mixture to it a little at a time, whisking constantly. This keeps the eggs from scrambling.

You then strain the mixture back into the pan, discarding the cardamom and any bits of egg that scrambled. Next, stir in the rice.

This was the point where I felt like too many things were going on at one time and the recipe would be easier if a second set of hands was helping. That way elements of the dish could come together simultaneously.

The next step was to make the caramel, heating the remaining sugar and a little water in a saucepan until it boils and starts to caramelize. I think I had the heat too high because it burned a bit, leaving the caramel with a slightly bitter taste. Must remember to be gentle when making caramel, something I have little experience doing.

The caramel is poured into the buttered souffle dish and quickly swirled around the sides before it starts to cool. This was easier said than done! Then, pour the rice and custard mixture on top.

The souffle dish is placed in the middle of a baking pan and boiling water is filled about halfway up the side of the pan. This water bath helps the custard cook more evenly, instead of the outsides cooking too fast and the inside still being uncooked. Cover the pan with foil, making some small slits in the corners of the foil for steam to escape.

Pop it into a 300-degree oven for about 2 hours, checking after 90 minutes. Try to use a better bending technique than I did as I was just begging for a strained back.

Since I had a half recipe I failed to anticipate that the cooking time would be less. When I checked at about 1 hour, 40 minutes the flan was a bit more solid than desired.

Remove and allow to cool. At this point when I shook the dish it didn’t jiggle very much. The idea would be just a little jiggling in the center when it comes out of the oven, as it will continue to cook for several more minutes. Once cool, cover the flan with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.

The real moment of truth was how well it would unmold. You set the souffle dish in a larger pot with hot water in it for about 20 minutes, letting the caramel melt again and then loosening the edges of the flan. Invert it onto a serving dish. Expecting a potential disaster (after all, the recipe warns of this possibility), I decided to film it for posterity.

And the result is….

Quite pleasant to look at, actually. Not quite as beautiful as the picture illustrating the Times’ article, but they probably had a better set-up for photography.

The texture was like a pretty thick rice pudding, a little eggy but not overly so. The caramel was burned, there was no getting around the bitter flavor. I attribute it to making a half-recipe, which is so little that in even my smallest saucepan, overheating was a risk. Next time, maybe I’ll add a dollop of butter at the end to tame it a bit.

All in all, though, it was a nice dessert. I’m going to try it again soon at the full recipe and see how it turns out.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Tag Archives: dessert