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.

Desserts from France: Crepes with peach jam

If you're wondering why the headline says peach jam but the picture features something reddish/black, I'd like to introduce you to the black peach. As of now, it appears to only grow in my neighbor's yard, a situation I shall quickly remedy by planting every single pit I can get my hands on. Come 3 or 4 years from now, I'll be the queen of black peaches. Or someone will.

Anyhow, I had this wonderful peach jam that didn't quite fit in the jars. As you know, any 'leftover' sweets MUST BE EATEN IMMEDIATELY or the world will stop turning and everything on the Earth's crust will be swept off the mantle, leaving a big hunk of rock. It's such a small price to pay to save all of humanity, so I went ahead and planned my use.

One of the wonderful things the French have give us is crepes. Now, I'm going to be honest - American desserts as a rule are far superior to other country's desserts, taken on a whole. That's because we got the best of all the ethnic stuff and aren't trapped by our traditions. But, crepes make a wonderful dessert from France and are dead simple.

Here's the 'recipe' if something so simple can be called a recipe:

1 cup flour
1 cup milk (maybe plus a bit)
2 eggs
2 TB butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar

(If you're not making dessert crepes, leave out the sugar and double the salt)

Mix it all together until is very pourable - about the consistency of kefir, if you are familiar with it. Pour a Tablespoon of oil into your frying pan then wipe it around with a paper towel. It should just have a sheen of oil, any more and your crepe will slide around the pan. Put it on a medium high heat, then add about 1/4 cup of batter, quickly rotating the pan to evenly coat the bottom with batter. If your crepe won't run, or comes out too thick, add a bit of milk until it works right.

Cook until the whole top has lost its gloss and you see bubble forming underneath. Turn it. I use a knife and my fingers, but you can use a good sharp spatula to turn it over. Let cook for about 10-15 seconds, then fold in half and half again and remove from the pan.

You need to be fast, crepes cook very quickly. The first one is usually a throwaway - it doesn't color correctly and you rarely get the batter right straight away. So if your first one is awful, that's how it's supposed to be.

The beautiful thing about crepes is that they don't soak up liquids, so they are great for something that clings, like a loose peach jam or similar.

Arrange your triangles to look nice, add whatever your topping is and you have a lovely, easy, not very filling dessert. And because a lot of people think it's hard to make crepes, you might impress someone.

Peaches like you've never seen before!

Please excuse the low quality of the photo. In real life, all these peaches (except the two halves of a regular 'yellow' peach I put in for reference) were the color of a black cherry.

I found them in my neighbor's yard (they don't live here and I have permission to harvest). I nearly ignored them because the fully ripe peaches were a grayish color with just a hint of rose underneath. I thought that our drought this year had caused some malfunction. But then I shook the tree and one peach hit the trunk on the way down, tearing the skin and revealing this amazing 'black peach' flesh underneath.

One tentative taste told me these really were ripe peaches, of a color I've never seen before.

As the tree is too tall (and I'm forbidden from climbing the ladder ever since the time I fell off it and whacked my head and caused much sleeplessness in the home due to needing observation for possible concussion) I had to shake the peaches down, which naturally caused a lot of bruising.

But what better way to use a windfall of these beautiful peaches than to make some peach jam? So, jam I did. Amazingly, these peaches must be absolutely packed with pectin and acid, because they practically jelled before I had a chance to cook them. The jam is the color of blackberry jam but smells and tastes like peach jam. It is truly luscious.

And I would have missed it if I had judged this book by it's cover. Just goes to show.

What do you do when you live in France and have fresh peach jam and a blog about dessert? That's right, you make crepes. That's coming up in the next post...stay tuned!

Olive Oil Desserts

I like to explore unique dessert ingredients. I once made a carrot cake (my guy's most favorite dessert) while in Greece. The carrot cake is ubiquitous in the US and not unheard of in England, but when the Greeks found out this cake had been made with carrots, they developed sudden stomach aches. They were confounded, offended, and shocked that I would put this vegetable into a dessert.

It sounds funny, I suppose, if you've always eaten sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and carrot cake, but these ingredients are exotic in some parts of the world. Never mind that the Greeks have 'spoon sweets' made of rose petals, tiny eggplants, and immature walnuts in the husk.

What I'm saying is that a dessert ingredient is only exotic if it's new to you. It's part of our cultural heritage, these vegetables used in desserts. And that's great.

To quell the Greeks' disturbance over my 'crazy' carrot dessert, I thought I'd explore olive oil desserts. There are not many, but they do exist. One is an olive oil and lemon sorbet and the other is an Olive Oil Cake. Both of these recipes include an olive oil and fruit compote, which really is a great way to serve something unique and delicious. What is important when you're making a dessert with so few ingredients is that you use the absolute best pure olive oil and ripe fruit.

I served both of these desserts to non-Greek people for whom carrots are okay dessert ingredients and olive oil was exotic. The cake with citrus compote was a real hit - in part because people feel better about eating a dessert with healthy olive oil than they do about butter. The lemon-olive oil sorbet was not as great a hit, but would be an excellent finish to a light meal or especially at an olive oil tasting.

Don't be afraid to think outside the 'box' when it comes to dessert ingredients - the 'box', as you can see, is of our own making.

Lemon cake with blackberry sauce

This recipe is my interpretation of a lemon cake with blueberry sauce found on epicurious.

I chose it because it was a low-equipment cake recipe. I don't have a lot of equipment, having moved several times in the past few years. I have no mixer and I don't have cake strips, so a simple cake is all I can manage (and happily, all I need) for now. Still, lemon desserts are my absolute favorite, and I love cake though I'm not a big fan of frosting.

Most of the flavor in this cake comes from the icing glaze, which is understandable - I've never met a lemon cake that didn't have to be soaked in lemon syrup to be lemony. I have blackberries on hand because it's that time of year, and I do love to use what I've got. Plus, the mustiness of ripe blackberries is beautiful alongside the tart lemon.

It's a lovely casual cake - it doesn't get fancy, but not every cake needs to be fancy.

Lemon Blackberry Cornmeal Cake:

Glaze:

• 1 1/2 cups (packed) powdered sugar, sifted
• 2 tablespoons (or more) fresh lemon Juice

Cake:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cornmeal
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice, let stand a few minutes
  
• 2 large eggs
• 1 TB finely grated lemon peel
• 3/4 tsp vanilla (I used limoncello, because I had it on hand).
  
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted, cooled

Make the glaze. Add enough lemon juice to make it a thick paste. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Butter & flour the bottom of a 9 inch pan.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the eggs into the milk mixture. Add liquids and lemon zest to dry ingredients, fold in just until there are no dry lumps. Scrape batter into prepared pan, put in the oven. Bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out dry. Remove and spread the lemon glaze over it (up to about 1/2 inch from the edges - it will run) while it's still hot.

For the sauce: Smash 2 cups of blackberries (or most any berry) with 1/2 cup of sugar - bring to a boil then let it cool.

Serve. Eat. Be happy.

Windfall plum cobbler recipe

There's a decorative plum in the public square near our house which produces tiny, tedious, black plums. They're maximum 1 inch diameter. What's the best dessert to make with fresh plums? Plum cobbler, maybe. The plebian dessert eater in the house voiced his hearty appreciation, so it's not just me who thinks this is one of the best plum desserts ever.

In the fall, I spent many hours toting many pounds of black walnuts from a disused tree oddly located a mile away. Black walnuts are native to North America, so to find such a treasure trove here in backwoods France delighted me. This morning, I spent a good hour shelling 1 single cup of black walnuts. They make you prove your love, those rock hard shells which hold one of the most overlooked dessert ingredients and flavorful nuts available to man. If you've not eaten a black walnut, or only ever had it in ice cream (admittedly delicious), I can't recommend highly enough that you revisit that wonderful nut. And you don't have to spend a morning shelling them. They have machines for that. You can get them for around $1 per ounce, which is well explained if you know what sort of work goes into getting black walnuts from tree to table. Source below.

I've literally just eaten this cobbler, and all I can say is, WOW! The flavor pairing of black walnuts and plums was absolute genius (if I say so myself). Since black walnuts are so underused, this dessert will stump a lot of people. They'll say, 'it's wonderful, but what is the flavor?' So, without further ado:

Recipe for Fresh plum cobbler with black walnut topping. Naturally, you could use regular walnuts if you (gasp!) don't like (?) black walnuts. But you'd miss out on the very special flavor pairing. Black walnut sources: Black Walnuts, 8 oz.$7.90 Or Black Walnut Flavouring$2.25. Useful for making cakes or sauces.

Serves 4:
Topping:
1/2 cup black walnut pieces
2 ounces (1/2 stick) butter, cold
1/2 cup sugar, minus one tablespoon
1/4 cup all purpose flour
pinch salt

Filling:
2 cups plums, pitted and halved/quartered (they cook down well, so it's not a big deal) This will be around a pound, but it's pretty forgiving.
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon flour

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 F

In a mini food processor, pulse nuts and sugar together until there are no remaining big pieces of nuts. (Smell it - that's the beautiful black walnut fragrance!). Add the flour, cut the cold butter into 1/2 inch pieces and put in with the rest. Pulse until the butter is mostly broken up, but don't over mix. Set aside.

In a bowl, put all filling ingredients and mix well. Spoon into 4 ramekins or one small gratin pan or similar. This amount won't be enough for even an 8x8 dish. Place the topping on each - don't pat it down, it will take care of that. *Important* Use a baking sheet under the ramekins or pan. The boiling over properties of juicy plums are incredible. Bake until the filling is bubbling well and the topping is golden brown, around 20-30 minutes.

Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream. I prefer the second, because I don't love things that are too sweet.

Poached apricots

The vast majority of fruits are better, or at least as good, fresh as they are cooked. But there are exceptions - quince aren't even edible without cooking (they won't kill you but it's like chewing wood) and sour cherries are a chore to eat out of hand but make excellent pies and especially, sweetened dried cherries. Other fruits are perfectly fine when fresh but become sublime when cooked. That's how I feel about apricots.

Fresh apricots are...okay. Their flavor is very muted even at the peak of ripeness. It's my opinion that the best thing you can do with a fresh apricot is cook it. Today I'm making poached apricots to serve with a lemon-ginger scone of my own creation, though one could certainly use the poached apricots in dozens of desserts. I was inspired by the cornmeal apricot cake in Regan Daley's phenomenal dessert cookbook In The Sweet Kitchen. What makes this dessert cookbook stand out is not the recipes or pictures, though they are wonderful. The first half of the book is a baker's resource, with pan conversions, flavor pairings, and ingredient explanations, along with kitchen tool explanations and recommendations. I've worn my copy out reading and re-reading the ingredient and flavor pairing sections, deciding what to do with my windfall apricots, plums, or hazelnuts.

After poaching, I'll reduce the syrup and store them for a few days. When the time comes, I will serve them with lemon-ginger scones. And people will swoon over my apricot dessert. For real.

Ginger-maple poached apricots recipe

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh apricots
1/2 cup maple syrup (don't use grade A - it has the lightest flavor)
1/2 cup sugar
About 1 ounce fresh ginger root
Lemon
Water

Instructions:
Wash and half the apricots into a bowl. Discard pits.
Peel and slice the ginger into 1/8-1/6 inch thick slices. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the outer zest from the lemon. Keep the rest of the lemon to make lemonade or something.
Put maple syrup, sugar, ginger, and lemon peel into a small saucepan. Add 1 cup of water, stir to dissolve sugar. Add apricots to pan, then add enough water to just cover the apricots.
Turn on heat very low - the idea is to keep the liquid just under a simmer.
Cook for 30 -45 minutes, until the apricots are still intact but soft. Remove apricots to a jar.
Boil remaining liquid with ginger and lemon peel until it's reduced to 1 cup plus a bit. It should be a pleasantly thick syrup.
Strain the syrup through a strainer and pour over the apricots, then keep them in the fridge until use (up to 3-4 days).

Coming soon: my lemon ginger scones - good with these apricots as a shortcake style apricot dessert, or on their own with lemon curd or butter.

Greek Yogurt for a better world

Ok, so 'for a better world' is a slight exaggeration. Still, I deeply believe that Greek Yogurt is probably the single best thing that rocky peninsula on the Med has given us. And when one considers that a Greek island - Crete - is the basis for the Mediterranean diet, that's sayin' somethin'.

We'll get around to making Greek yogurt in a minute, but first: a little history. Back when I moved to Greece, the US had not yet embraced Greek yogurt, aside from specialty stores.

In Greece, there are several kinds of yogurt available, but the one we call 'Greek' yogurt is the traditional one - σταγγιστο. Strangisto means strained, which should give you a hint at how making Greek yogurt is done. When I mentioned my newfound love to my Mom, she told me that the States had now embraced ΦΑΓΕ, or Fage. ΦΑΓΕ (pronounced FAH geh, means 'to eat' but is an acronym for the family's company name) is a Greek brand, but while they probably make the best φετα (feta cheese), their yogurt is definitely not the best Hellas has to offer. If you're ever in Greece I cannot recommend strongly enough that you eat gobs of ΝΟΥ ΝΟΥ (pronounced noo-noo) yogurt - full fat (which is 10%). Its creamy goodness makes you believe in every impossible thing you've ever heard of.

After making Greek yogurt, there is no better way to eat it than the traditional ways: with spoon fruits or honey. Spoon fruits will be covered at later times, including the upcoming candied green walnuts and other lovely tasty preserves.

With all of that said: Recipe for making Greek yogurt at home.

'Proper', or traditional Greek yogurt is 10% fat, a feat achieved partly by adding cream to the milk and partly by straining off the non solid portions. I've tried it with the cream, but didn't find it made enough difference to worry about. I just use whole milk.

Make yogurt. Line a colander with a sterilized cheesecloth. Add yogurt. Wait until the yogurt is reduced by about 1/2. Throw away the whey, chill the yogurt. Eat.

That's the simple version. The more complex version is this:

Sterilize all equipment by boiling in water for a few minutes. Heat the milk to 185F or thereabouts, hold for 30 minutes. (this step encourages the milk proteins to align themselves correctly). Cool the milk to 110F. Add your starter (which can be a new, unflavored live active culture yogurt or a freeze dried yogurt culture). Insulate the mixture to hold it as close to 110 as possible. I usually keep it in a hot water bath, but you could also hold it in an oven with the pilot light lit or put it in a cooler with jars of boiling water. Whatever keeps it warm without getting it too hot and killing the culture.

Wait some hours. If the above part seems tedious or difficult, you could use a yogurt making machine.

Don't fuss with the yogurt. If you mix it around, the proteins won't bind and the texture will be wrong (though the taste will be just as good.) After some hours, use a spoon to see if it's ready. It's ready when it has a firm consistency which doesn't stick to the spoon. If it's slimy, it's nearly ready - check it every half hour.

When the yogurt is set or nearly set, do the cheesecloth/colander thing above. Chill. Eat. Enjoy.

While some might think of baklava as the eponymous Greek dessert, for me a Greek dessert is one of two things: fresh fruit or yogurt. Baklava is fine, it's okay, it's even good. But it's not an everyday treat. You could do worse than finishing each day with a plate of homemade Greek yogurt and honey. Much worse.

Stay tuned: I'll be candying green walnuts and if this crazy, ovenlike heat ever breaks, I'm going to make lemon hazelnut, lemon walnut, and lemon-black walnut biscotti. I will also be using my remaining raspberries in a profligate manner: to make real raspberry gelatin dessert.

Raspberry mousse of a sort

Raspberry mousse makes a great summer dessert, because it's cool, and because early summer, at least, is peak raspberry season. It's the perfect make ahead dessert, and if you decoratively administer it into lovely dishes, just stick in a cigarette shaped tuile cookie and you're finished. Way better than Jell-o! It's a little fancy, but not a bit fussy. This mousse is not actually a mousse - it's got no eggs and has gelatin, but the texture is similar.

So: Raspberry Mousse for 5-6 people in large portions, or 6-8 in smaller portions.

4 cups raspberries (fresh or frozen)
3/4 cup sugar (or less if your berries are very sweet)
4 leaves gelatin (or one 1/4 oz package of powdered gelatin like Knox)
Juice of 1/2 lemon or a few tablespoons white wine (omit if using powdered gelatin)
400ml whipping cream (more or less. Use a pint if you aren't fussy or 14 fluid oz if you are).

1. Soak gelatin in cold water until soft. If using powdered gelatin, soak in 3 TB cold water.
   
2. Blend the raspberries and sugar with optional lemon juice or wine. Use a stick blender for easy, fast results.
   
3. Cook raspberry mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly, just until it boils. Remove from heat immediately.
   
4. Squeeze water out of gelatin and add gelatin to the still very hot raspberry mixture. If using powdered gelatin, simply add it to the raspberry mix. Stir really well to ensure the gelatin melts and distributes well.
5. Let the gelatin-rasberry mixture cool to room temperature.
6. Whip the cream until very firm.
   
7. Add 1/4 of the whipped cream to the cooled raspberries. Whisk gently until thoroughly incorporated.
8. Add the raspberry mixture to the remaining whipped cream. Fold in until thoroughly incorporated - making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl with a rubber scraper.
9. If the whipping cream was very cold, the mixture might be firm enough to pipe - with a large star tip into nice dishes for individual portions. Otherwise, chill for a few minutes until it reaches a piping consistency - but don't let it set entirely before piping. If you don't need to be a fancy-pants, you could just scrape it all into a nice bowl and let it set, serving individuals with a spoon.

Chill for at least 4 hours, up to a full day (and it would probably be fine for 2-3, if it lasts so long.) Eat. Enjoy.

Next up: We're making Greek Yogurt and I'll attempt to candy green walnuts. Not because I have a love of candied green walnuts, but because other people have done it, so it must have some merit (I hope!). I shall give you the thumbs up or down when the project is finished. Until next time!

Raspberry Jam in 3 ways

Starting last week, my raspberry canes are producing about 4 cups of raspberries every day. They seem to be slowing, but not by much. While I enjoy a handful of raspberries, even I cannot eat 4 cups every day. The same can not be said for the black cherries I ate last month, but there is no better way to use a really ripe black cherry than to eat it whole and fresh. I'm not ashamed.

Anyhow, I filled the tiny freezer we have with raspberries for later use, but when that was full I still have pints and pints of red raspberries needing to be used, and fast. Since we used about a pint of raspberry jam every week last year, it won't hurt to have some on hand, and I had sugar - so off we went.

The results are fantastic. The first batch, pictured above, had 4 cups of raspberries and 4 cups of sugar. Recipe found randomly online. Cooked until it jelled on a cool plate. The result, to my taste, is too sweet (though arguments can be made that such a state doesn't exist). In addition, it set well, but was a bit 'sticky'. Still, how bad can it be? We'll eat it.

Second batch was mostly like the first, except I used 6 cups of berries and 4 cups of sugar. I was tweaking the recipe, figuring if it didn't set, I'd strain the seeds and we'd have a fabulous raspberry dessert sauce. Again, I cooked until it jelled on a chilled plate. This batch turned out more to my liking. Not quite as sweet, set beautifully. The weird thing was that both of those batches, despite the significant difference in raspberry amounts, made exactly 3 jars of jam (they're about the size of a pint jar). What's up with that?

The third batch was something of a disappointment. I used to love strawberry season for many reasons, but very close to the top of the list was freezer jam. Certo makes a liquid pectin, which, when combined with lemon juice, berries, and sugar makes a wonderful, beautiful, fantastic no-cook jam. I never had a bunch of raspberries to use this with, but if I had I would have. Unfortunately, Certo products are not available in France, and I've never seen a remotely similar product until now. Daddy has introduced a product called 'Ma Nouvelle Confiture' which supposedly makes a no-cook jam. So I bought it and used 200 grams of raspberries, mixed with their sugar/powder product. It's fine, it's good, I won't spit it out. But it's not what it would have been if Certo had been involved. The biggest complaint I have is that it's really, really sour. The sourness almost overtakes every other aspect of the jam. Still, we'll eat it - probably with some Greek yogurt, because the natural creamy sweetness of Greek yogurt makes almost everything better.

That's it for now. Coming soon: Raspberry mousse (without the raw eggs, so not technically a mousse, but the intent is there) and my adventure with making Greek yogurt. I've done it before, so it won't be a disaster. Until then, may all your desserts be worth the calories.

Dessert World Introduction

Hello! Welcome to Dessert World, the result of a girl with a passion for life's sweeter things and a desire to discover the best desserts from around the world. If your heart breaks when someone eats a Twinkie or if you cringe when confronted with a cake slathered with tasteless, waxy icing, you might be in the right place.

I'm not an elitist - my favorite desserts range from fresh, ripe watermelon to the fanciest chocolate mousse. It's not about image, it's about taste. So, if you want to follow my journey of discovering or revisiting the world's best desserts, follow along.

A little about me: I'm Cynthia. I was raised by semi-hippies. I don't believe in margarine. I have to watch my blood sugar, (and my weight), so if I'm going to eat dessert, it had better be worth the calories. I've lived in a number of states and 3 countries. I have a dog and a companion who says he doesn't like sweets but always asks 'what's for dessert?' I don't have a favorite food but my most memorable dessert ever was a chocolate apricot torte at the Marriott Marquis in New York 1992. Yum! We were so broke and the cake cost so much that we split the cost 3 ways, and I've never had a dessert I loved quite so much - but a few came close.

I'm completely against fad diets, mostly against pre-packaged foods, and very much for eating foods that grow nearby. I used to run fast food restaurants until life threw me a curveball and dumped me on a Greek Island, where I ate things like bergamot (thumbs down, but try it once) and immature almonds in the pod (like a raw green bean), and picked olives with the locals. Now I'm in the South of France. The pastry is not what I was hoping for. Join me as I root out the world's best sweets and show you how to make them.