Semla - Traditional Swedish Mardi Gras Pastry.

Traditions for the onset of Lent around the world vary widely. In my family, we always ate jambalaya or red beans and rice. But since the other half is a Swede, we often incorporate some Swedish traditions into our seasonal celebrations. A semla is traditionally eaten on Fat Tuesday, though these days semlor can be had just about any time of year. Traditionally, they are cardomom buns filled with marzipan and cream. We aren't the most traditional people so we did chocolate mousse and bananas, topped with whipped cream.

I followed the recipe from All Recipes for the bun, which turned out fine. But when it came time to fill them, I rebelled. I scooped out the bun's innards and set them aside, then sliced some bananas, topped it with chocolate mousse, sliced some more bananas and topped that with (gasp!) spray whipped cream. Put the lid on, sprinkle with confectioner's sugar, and voila - Swedish Semlor for Fat Tuesday!

Note my beloved Silpat in the background. I love that thing - won't leave home without it!

Christmas dessert: Tiramisu

Yes, tiramisu.

The blending of two cultures (Swedish and American) while living in a third (France) can make 'traditions' tricky, and one old standby for dealing with it is to create a completely novel tradition. So developed the Christmas Tiramisu in our house.

Tiramisu is not my favorite dessert (I like fruit desserts ) but I like it enough. It's also not particularly difficult to make and most importantly in this house, it is not a temperature sensitive dessert. (My oven has one temperature setting: on/off.) My beloved cakes and cookies do tend to be temperature sensitive, and I will be delighted to return to baking desserts on that far-distant day when we have an oven with a semi-functional thermostat.

But, tiramisu has enough 'reputation' to make it special enough for a Christmas dessert. So, that's what this Swedish-American-Greek family in France makes for Christmas. Or should I say, that's what the American component of this family makes.

• A few words of advice: if you are making tiramisu for the first time and you're serving it at a semi-important function, you should know it is difficult to serve in a 'pretty' way. So, if this is the case, I recommend some clear glass serving dishes (even martini glasses would be great) and individual portions. You could even get fancy and do the cocoa sifting over a pattern to make the dessert top fancy (a snowflake sillhouette or mortarboard or other appropriate 'symbol' of the event).

• This recipe requires egg whites whipped to stiff peaks, and if you don't whip them fully, the texture is off. I whipped them by hand (I miss my beloved and reliable highest rated handmixer - the awesome KitchenAid 9-Speed Pro but what can you do?) My arm was ON FIRE by the end but I had success.

• Tiramisu is made with raw eggs. Get the pasteurized kind, and get them as fresh as possible. Pasteurized eggs are as rare as hen's teeth and people who 'get' vegetarians in France, so we walk on the wild side, but you don't have to.

Tiramisu Recipe: Franco-American-Svenska Style

• 500 grams (one pound or 17.6 ounces if you want to be picky) mascarpone

• 6 pasteurized eggs, fresher is better

• 250 grams (1 1/4 cups) plus one tablespoon sugar

• 30 'boudoir' biscuits. This could also be ladyfingers or whatever's available.

• 2 shots of espresso (we use decaf instant coffee, made very strong)

• 2 fluid ounces liquor of your choice. I've used hazelnut with some success. Sambuca is traditional. Godiva chocolate liqueur would be sinful. I've also skipped it when we had naught on hand.

• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, more or less.

Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks with 1 1/4 cup sugar until pale and thick. Fold in mascarpone until fully incorporated. In a separate bowl, whip egg whites until frothy, add 1 tablespoon sugar and beat until they hold a stiff peak. Add a spoonful of the mascarpone mixture and fold in, then fold the egg whites into the mascarpone mixture gently until fully incorporated. Place a layer of the cookies on the bottom of your chosen container. Mix the alcohol and espresso. I use a small syringe (sans needle) to evenly soak the biscuits with alcohol and espresso. Alternate layers of soaked cookies and cream mixture, ending with the cream. Put into the refrigerator and let stand at least 4 hours to overnight. Just before serving, sift cocoa over the top. If you do the cocoa earlier, it will dampen and not look nice.

Enjoy!

Dessert Disaster or Why You Shouldn't Try a New Dessert on an Important Night

I've made a half dozen of the recipes in Regan Daly's spectacularly good dessert cookbook In The Sweet Kitchen. While I was confused, her description of the caramel pecan cookies ended up being spot on: people fought over them, sneaked them, and lied about them. Yes, they were that good.

I have had it in mind to make the Sweet Polenta Crostini since I bought the book. The picture makes you lust after it - it's a beautiful dessert. Now, finally after 8 years I thought I'd tackle it.

Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't get past the tortilla chip flavor of the polenta crostini. I didn't even bother to assemble the rest of the ingredients, it was that bad. And this is a dessert that I might have tried to serve to guests, because of its elegant presentation. I'm so glad it was an experiment for just us.

And I'm glad it wasn't the first recipe I tried from In The Sweet Kitchen, because I might have missed the opportunity to discover the other wonderful, fantastic desserts featured in that book.

Crustless apple crumb pie - of a sort.

This is our third fall in this house. One of the great benefits of living here is that we have a tiny property absolutely packed full of fruit trees and bushes. We've got a plum, two cherries, a peach, elderberry, red raspberry, several varieties of grapes, a hazelnut, and an apple tree. Most of the other fruit producing plants have been an easy gift - they make food, we eat it.

But the apple tree has been a particular pain. It has a terrible infestation of codling moths - which, if you're not in the know, are the most common apple pest and the source of the infamous worm in the apple.

I am dedicated to not using chemicals on our food. For one thing, I believe it's healthier. Second, we can't afford to buy all our produce organic, so growing it offsets our budget by a lot. Third, I have an elderly and beloved dog who walks around on our property and I would not live with myself if the thing which killed her was the chemicals sprayed on and around our trees. So - for the past 3 years I have been systematically cutting the apples off the tree as soon as there is evidence of a worm and immersing them in water for 3 days. We have a massive compost pile. But all this ridiculous work has now paid off in the form of several dozen apples. Their texture and taste seemed similar to a Granny Smith, so we knew it was 'the pie' for them.

Not coincidentally, apple harvest time is also walnut harvest time. You'll note that I didn't mention any walnut trees on our property. But here in rural France, walnuts line the roads and I have collected at least 50 pounds of walnuts that now need to be used. Walnuts + apples=yummy.

I don't have a rolling pin (it got left behind in Greece) so I needed something without pastry. Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible had exactly the recipe I needed. Mrs. Beranbaum introduced me to the technique of reducing the juices of apples after macerating them in order to condense the flavors and use less flour in the filling, resulting in a much more apple-y flavor. I use this technique exclusively in similar desserts. I am seriously telling you that this book has traveled the world with me and is one of 4 cookbooks I won't live without. The flaky pastry alone is worth the price. (I once served this pastry to a French woman in Greece who told me it was THE BEST pastry she had ever eaten, which I take as a very high compliment coming from a French person.

Anyhow, the real key here is the crumb crust - the rest is just apples, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and technique. The crumb crust would work beautifully on any 'crumble' you wanted to make. I wasn't sure on the vanilla, but I thought 'what the heck, we can try it' and I'm really glad we did.

Crumb Crust for one apple (or other fruit) crumble or pie:

2 TB plus 2 tsp. packed brown sugar
1 TB sugar
1/2 cup walnut halves
1/16 tsp salt (I just throw in two pinches)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (dip and sweep) AP flour
1/4 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
3/4 tsp vanilla

Put all the dry ingredients in a mini-food processor and whir until well blended and nuts are mostly gone. Add the butter (don't use it too soft - the crust won't be a crumb) and whir again until it's well incorporated. Sprinkle vanilla over the mixture and use a fork to mix it.

If the butter is the right temperature, I find this crumbs very nicely - with a good mix of large and small bits. If the butter is too soft, it becomes more of a dough - still tasty but not as pretty.

The man of this house doesn't really like apples - they are too 'plebian' for him, but even he has admitted that this is one of his favorite desserts. He eats it with no coercing, which is unusual for him. So, it's delicious and I love it!

Fresh Fig dessert

Figs are difficult. If you live in an area where they grow, you are a fortunate soul. If you don't, the chances of you getting your hands on good figs is slim.

But if you do - what do you do with them? Besides just eating them, of course. Ripe figs are honey-sweet, with a beautiful crunch from the seeds. They don't keep well, either (which is why it's difficult to get them in your hands if you don't live where they grow.)

This way of serving fresh figs for dessert is from the Mayo Clinic. It's about as healthy as dessert gets. I, of course, have tweaked it a bit. Cut your figs in a cross pattern from the stem nearly to the bottom, leaving enough of the bottom to hold the fig together. Mash about a tablespoon of mascarpone cheese into the fig, then top with a walnut half (though I would say for eating purposes it's better if you top it with a few nice chunks of walnut).

My tweaks: Stir a few drops of lemon juice and a pinch of salt into the mascarpone. Sprinkle with praline powder (crunch, crunch) before topping with your walnut.

A delicious variant of this would be ginger (which is a perfect flavor pairing for figs). In addition to or instead of the walnut, top your fig and cheese with lovely, perfect candied ginger. If you love ginger (like I do), you could chop some of the bits and mix that into the mascarpone. Yum! I candy my own ginger here in France, but if you have access to The Ginger People ginger bits, go with that. Nobody does candied ginger better - it's soft, hot, chewy, sweet - in other words, perfect!

This is a great make ahead dessert. It's easy, it's tasty and refreshing. It's also a bit unique, if you aren't a big 'fig eater'.

Perfect fresh peach cobbler

After the fiasco(s) with the clafoutis desserts, I knew exactly what I wasn't making for dessert with the remainder of the peaches coming off our tree.

I considered a peach pie, but then I hearkened back to a raspberry cobbler I used to make with a sugar cookie topping. It's a great topping for fruits with a hint of bitterness, like apricots or peaches (or red raspberries). I got the recipe back then from the fabulous The New Best Recipe. But that book is in storage in Greece right now so I had to make my own recipe. And it turned out nicely, if I say so myself.

If you're wondering why some of my peaches are dark purple, it's because an unusual peach variety grows next door. From the outside it's awful, but when you cut into it, it's the color of a black cherry. The more peachy colored fruits you see are from the peaches on our backyard tree. This is going to be a massive hit for dessert tonight, and one I'll certainly do again. Maybe soon.

Fresh Peach Cobbler with sugar cookie topping

For filling:

1-1.5 pounds peaches
1/2 cup sugar
1 TB flour

For topping:

1 1/4 C All purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 TB milk


First, bring a pot of water to a boil and gently put the peaches in. Wait 30 seconds and remove to a bowl. Peel and slice the peaches into a bowl. Add 1/2 cup sugar and gently toss to coat. Let sit for at least 30 minutes while you make the topping.

For the topping, in a bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour, soda, salt). Put all the other topping ingredients into the bowl of a mini food processor and blend until well blended. Alternately, cream the butter, add the sugar and mix until fluffy, then add the yolk, vanilla and milk and mix well.

Add the flour to the butter mixture (or vice-versa, it's not like they have to be perfect for this purpose) and mix until well incorporated. I used a wooden spoon and it was fine.

Turn on the oven to 350 F. While oven is preheating, remove the peach slices to a colander over a pot, draining all the juice they've given off into the pot. When they're mostly drained, remove the colander from the pot. Heat the pot of juice over high heat. Let it boil until the liquid becomes thick and is reduced. This step reduces the chance of there being too much juice and reduces the need for too much flour in the filling.

When the syrup has reduced, remove from the heat. Add the sliced peaches back in and sprinkle with the tablespoon of flour, then stir gently to mix.

Place filling in an 8x8 ceramic dish, using a rubber spatula to get all that juicy goodness out of the pan. Now, drop the cookie dough by tablespoonful over the top until it is evenly distributed. No need to smash it down or smooth it - it' will be perfect.

Place it in the oven until the juices are bubbling clear and the top is golden brown.

Because peaches vary quite a lot in sweetness, I recommend serving this with either unsweetened or sweetened whipped cream. I found it just a bit too sweet without any cream, but with the unsweetened cream, it was absolutely perfect as a sweet and well balanced dessert. Top the cream with nutmeg.

Lessons in Clafoutis

I have been bested by a French dessert. I have not written of my trials and tribulations clafoutis, but I have spent the summer trying various recipes and fruits and techniques, and after today I've decided that it's not me, it's clafoutis.

Clafoutis looks like a custard fruit dessert. It's generally a flour-milk-egg concoction, traditionally with cherries but certainly one can substitute other fruits. Which I have done in many variations. I've tried it with cherries, berries, plums and now peaches. And I don't like it one bit.

This is not the first time I've not liked a dessert, but each time is like a little death to me. The problem with clafoutis is that there's no contrast, and no surprise. It doesn't make the fruit better, it doesn't 'set it off', it just holds the fruit. The best way I can describe it is a soggy pancake - but it's not soggy. It's heavy. A fruit dessert shouldn't be heavy.

So, if you're thinking of making a dessert to impress, or something exotic for dessert, I highly recommend you not make clafoutis. It's very plain. Edible, but as we know - the rule of dessert is that it needs to be worth the calories. And after at least a dozen attempts, I can definitively say that clafoutis is not worth the calories. Sorry to dissapoint.