Guns!
Brandy! Pie! Thanksgiving this year totally exceeded my expectations
and got progressively more delicious and fun with each hour of the day.
No one got punched, I didn’t kill any birds, the food was some of the
best Thanksgiving fare I’ve ever had, and the desserts were off the
wall. Sandwiched between it all was some chill time in front of the
boob-tube and a bewitching soundtrack of lady crooners, amplified by
mine and Emily’s homebrew, spiked cider, and endless mugs of coffee
brandy.
After
a morning marathon of besotted cooking and an utterly indulgent brunch,
we soldiered on to prepare the main Thanksgiving feast. Or rather, Jen
and Dave soldiered on, while I diddled away with the desserts and cajoled
Jen’s sous chefs into shooting cat-food targets with me out back. Then, with
twenty entrees and two football games under our belts, we finally
collapsed around the dinner table to gobble up twelve hours of work and
toast to our hard-won, most excellent farming season.
I always worry that my desserts will be a letdown, and sometimes they
are (last year’s cranberry frangipane tart, for instance). But this year, mercifully, all three desserts totally ruled. Not everyone had the stomach for pie at the end of the night, but Dave, Daniel, and I somehow managed to slowly shovel down sampler plates of the sweet
potato buttermilk pie, apple cranberry pie, and these chocolate caramel
sea salt tartlets. With whipped cream, no less! It was a heroic
end to a delirious day from which I am still recovering. It hasn't
stopped me from scarfing down the leftovers though, and it shouldn’t stop you from
planning some holiday baking. Start with these! They were delicious
insanity, especially with a bit of ground coffee sprinkled on top, and
they would definitely be a welcome addition to any upcoming holiday
tables you might be setting.
Hope you enjoyed a beautiful Thanksgiving!
Chocolate Caramel Tartlets
Recipe adapted from Claudia Fleming's The Last Course
Fleming
uses a chocolate tart dough in her recipe. I substituted my favorite
sweet tart dough because chocolate tart doughs (that aren't made with
crushed cookies, that is) always seem a bit "blah" to me. Her original
also calls for mini muffin tins or two-inch tart pans to make 24 mini
tarts, but alas we don't have any. Were I to make this again--and I
will!--I'd do it with a full-size ten-inch pan anyway.
For Tart Dough
9 tablespoons very cold butter (I prefer salted)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 large egg
Caramel Filling
1/2 cup water
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup (you can use Lyle’s Golden Syrup if you’d rather!)
1/2 cup (one stick) salted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons creme fraiche
Chocolate Ganache
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
Large-grain sea salt, for garnish
Coarsely crushed coffee beans, for garnish (optional)
1. Make tart dough:
Cube butter into one-inch pieces and chill in freezer while you ready
everything else. In the bowl of a food processor, mix flour, sugar, and
salt. Sprinkle butter over top, and pulse about 10 to 15 times until
butter is between the size of peas and oatmeal. Use a fork to break up
egg in a small bowl, and pour a bit at a time through the feed tube,
pulsing once after each addition. When the egg is all in, pulse the
dough for ten seconds at a time until it comes together. Right before
you get to this point, the mixer will change sounds and essentially
start grumbling at you. Dump dough onto sheet of plastic wrap, lightly
push together, and chill for at least one hour, preferably longer.
2.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. For four-inch tartlets, divide dough into
six equal pieces. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough
hunks one by one to six-inch circles and fit them into tart pans,
pressing along the bottom and up to sides to ensure an even fit. Roll
your rolling pin across the top to cut the dough and make smooth edges.
Prick the bottoms all over with the tines of a fork and firm up in
freezer for 30 minutes. Butter the shiny side of six pieces of aluminum
foil, press into bottom and up sides of tart dough, then bake tartlets
for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake until golden, about ten minutes
more. Tart can also be made in a ten-inch tart pan.
3. Prepare filling: Place
water, sugar, and corn syrup in a large saucepan. Cook over medium-high
heat, swirling the pan occasionally, until you have a dark amber
caramel, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from heat and immediately and
carefully (!!!) whisk in the butter, cream, and creme fraiche. Continue
whisking until mixture is smooth. Divide the caramel among tart pans
while still warm, filling them almost to the top. Let cool until caramel
is set, about 45 minutes. You can also make the caramel up to five days
ahead of time and refrigerate it; just reheat it until pourable.
4. Make ganache: In
a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil over medium heat. Meanwhile,
place your chopped chocolate in a bowl. Pour the hot cream over the
chocolate and let sit for two minutes, then whisk vigorously until
smooth. Immediately pour chocolate over the tarts. Allow to set for
about two hours, then top with big grains of salt and coarsely ground
coffee when ready to serve. Our tarts kept covered at room temperature
for four days.
I
don’t know about you guys, but my Thanksgiving menu is definitely not
planned yet. In a way, this year feels like my first Thanksgiving away
from home since Kickasserole in DC is not happening, and I’m missing
Orphans Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh (my very favorite occasion to get
mercilessly drunk, punched in the face, and ass-kicked at ping-pong).
It’s shaping up to be a good holiday though, and I’ve been promised a
morning of hunting (!), coffee with brandy, venison, homemade eggnog,
and a spread that lasts all day long before we collapse in front of a
few football games. Not the stuff of my own traditions, but I’m so
grateful and excited to be included in someone else’s celebration.
Pictured: labneh tart; brown butter date tart; red potato, dijon, kale tart; caramelized garlic and goat cheeses tart
And
of course, there will be pie. Lots of pie. There aren’t any pumpkin pie
fanatics in this house, which means that a list of excellent, fun pies
is in the works: triple creme brie tart with red wine fig compote, goat
cheese cranberry cheesecake, ooey gooey chocolate caramel tart, sweet
potato buttermilk pie, and maybe a chocolate-drizzled salty caramel nut
tart. Dave is threatening to teach me how to make chocolate cheesecake,
and of course maple syrup abounds, so we might rustle up a maple creme
pie of sorts too.
Pictured: chocolate ganache meringue tart; maple buttermilk pie; goat cheese and salted caramel cheesecake; salty honey pie
If
you, like me, are an artful procrastinator and have yet to nail down your menu, have a look
around the ol’ archives to see if there’s anything that fits your table.
There’s cheesy, savory, chocolatey, salty sweet, super sweet, and an effort to hit everything in between. If pie isn’t your thing, check out
the salted caramel pumpkin roll with brandied whipped cream, the walnut and cream cheese cookie sandwiches, or, if you’re out west, these pumpkin bourbon ice cream sandwiches. There’s a supremely delicious applesauce Bundt cake with
caramel glaze and some simple jammy date and fig cookies that could fit
the bill. And wherever you’re celebrating this year, I wish you a
magical Thanksgiving and the most bountiful, scrumptious of spreads!
You
guys, this is important: it is fried cake. To be specific, it is carrot cake that has been cut into bars, rolled in sugar, and skillet-fried until caramelized. I ain’t looking back. Especially not since the whole she-bang is
topped with milk jam, which is basically just a sort of gross name for
the most delicious combination of homemade sweetened condensed milk plus a
spoonful of sour cream. This cake was amazing, but it’s the method
that’s the take-home. Why have I not fried cake before?!
The
cake-caramelizing technique comes to us courtesy of Oxheart from last
month’s issue of Bon Appetit, and was brought to life by Tim Mazurek
over on Lottie + Doof. It was, in fact, his tweeted suggestion of
pan-frying carrot cake in particular that brings us here today. I find
it totally okay to reaffirm his kitchen genius by telling you that I
first tried this with gingerbread and it just wasn’t as good as the
carrot, though I may yet try again. Old-fashioned white cake is one of my favorites of all time, and I'm sure that it would be out of this world rolled and fried and maybe topped with some chocolate bourbon sauce: endless delicious possibilities!
Can
we also just take some personal time to love this song? It is so good, and I hope that you enjoy it too. The perfect cake-eating soundtrack, right? Right.
Caramelized Carrot Cake with Milk Jam Sour Cream
Inspired by Bon Appetit and Lottie + Doof
Carrot Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
2 heaping teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 heaping teaspoon ground ginger
2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups canola oil
4 large eggs (I used duck eggs! It worked.)
3 cups grated, peeled carrots
Granulated sugar for frying
1.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottom of a 13”x9”x2” pan, line it
with waxed paper or parchment, and butter and flour that in turn.
2.
Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in medium
bowl. Whisk sugar and oil in large bowl until well blended. Whisk in
eggs one at a time. Add flour mixture and stir until blended. Stir in
carrots. Pour batter into cake pan and smooth the top. Bake for 30 to
minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
3.
Let cool in pans for five minutes or so, then transfer cakes to a
cooling rack. Let cool completely, then wrap in two layers of plastic
wrap and pop it into the freezer for at least two. Wrap in a third layer
of plastic if planning to keep cake in freezer for more than a week or
two.
4.
When ready to fry, take cake out of freezer, remove plastic, and use a
serrated knife trim cake so that it has clean edges. Cut cake in half
lengthwise, then cut each half into bars that are about 1.25 inches
wide.
5.
Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat for a few minutes (I
found that my pan had to be pretty hot to achieve the caramelizing that I
was looking for). Meanwhile, spread some sugar onto a plate, and roll
the four long sides of each bar in the sugar. Working in batches,
caramelize the cake in skillet, turning with tongs about every 30
seconds to one minute to brown evenly. Serve warm, with milk jam sour
cream, salted caramel, whipped cream, or any sort of decadent topping of
your choosing.
Milk Jam Sour Cream
Adapted from Oxheart, via Bon Appetit
2 cups whole milk
1 cup granulated sugar
About 1 tablespoon sour cream per serving
1.
Mix milk and sugar into a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, and bring to a
boil over medium heat; stir until sugar is dissolved. Turn heat to low
and simmer for about an hour (the recipe suggests 40 minutes, but mine
took slightly longer than one hour), until mixture is thickened and reduced to about one cup.
Remove from heat, and cool to thicken.
2.
When ready to serve, mix one tablespoon of sour cream with about one
tablespoon of milk jam, or to whatever your desired sweetness. Top cake! Extra
milk jam can be used to sweeten tea, or as a totally decadent topping to
waffles, cobbler, or some such thing.
