Aromatic lemonade

It's hot out there. I know it is. Here in Boston our third story apartment is sweltering. When the temperature gets this high I love making unusual icy cool things to drink. The following is based on a wonderful recipe for lemonade that I found online. I've made some suggestions for playing around with it. As long as you maintain the basic water to lemon juice to simple syrup and salt ratio you can have fun with it and use your imagination.

not my photo

2 cups lemon juice

1 qt. water

1 cup simple syrup*

1 tsp salt

Create the simple syrup with one cup sugar and one cup water. Combine in a pot and bring to a boil. Allow it to bubble for thirty seconds. Turn off and cool, if you like, with an ice cube.

Combine ingredients and add flavours from the following list.

One orange, quartered

15 whole peppercorns

2 sprigs of rosemary (about 4" long)

3/4 tsp lavender

1 pt. strawberries

30 mint leaves

1 vanilla bean (split lengthwise)

As with many infusions, the flavours improve if you can let them get to know each other overnight. But I know at my house we find that very hard.

Grapefruit and Dark Chocolate truffles

Here is a recipe I will be using in next week's chocolate class. I've been cooking up all sorts of flavour infusions to make luscious truffles. The addition of the flavour is just like making tea - warm and steep. I have Jerry Traunfield of The Herbfarm to thank for introducing me to the method.

1 1/4 cup heavy cream

1 pound dark chocolate (60 to 70%)

1 grapefruit

1/2 cup good quality cocoa

Heat cream in a saucepan on stove. Meanwhile peel the grapefruit with a vegetable peeler. You want the zest or skin only no bitter white pith. When the cream begins to boils add the peel and submerge it. Take the cream off the heat, cover, and allow to steep for 3o minutes. Strain the cream pressing the peels against the strainer to extract any extra flavour. Measure the cream to be sure you still have 1 1/4 cup. Add extra cream if needed. Rewarm the cream on the stove. Place 1 pound of chocolate chips (I like Ghiradelli 60% chips) or chopped chocolate bars in a large bowl. When cream boils, pour it over chocolate and allow it to sit for 30 seconds. Stir mixture with a spatula to combine. The next bit I tried out and it worked very well. We will need to cool off our ganache quickly in class in order to form our truffles and this is what I came up with. Pour the ganache into a large ziploc bag. Press out the air. Be sure the bag is completely sealed and lay the mixture on it's side on a metal tray. Even out the chocolate by pressing lightly with your hand. Place in freezer for 2o minutes. Remove ganache - it should be solid but you will still be able to mark it with your fingernail. Use a knife and cut the plastic bag open and fold it back. Using a knife you can now cut your ganache into 36 pieces to portion it - 6 rows and 6 columns will do it. Warm the knife by running it under hot water, but be sure to dry it completely before using it to cut. You can usually make 2 cuts before your knife needs to be warmed again. Allow the ganache squares to warm about 20 minutes then roll them between your palms to form balls. Fill a large bowl with cocoa and drop 5 - 10 truffles in at a time. Roll them around to coat.

Wapples

Yes, we had wapples this weekend; and you should too. Extra rosemary lurking in the fridge and packages of cooked cinnamoned apples from this falls foray to the orchard led us to try and make a waffle, apple, maple syrupy breakfast concoction. They weren't hard and the rewards were yummy. The waffles were homemade, not out of virtuousness; but rather because we were out of the prepackeaged "just add water" type of mix. The recipe hails from an Amish cookbook I was gifted years ago. My one recommendation would be the addition of some sort of dairy topping on the waffles. I felt the sugary, acidy, apples could benefit from a 1/4 cup of yogurt or sweetened creme fraiche added to them.

Waffles

2 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking pwder

5 Tbs. butter (melted)

1/4 tsp. salt

3 eggs (separated)

2 cups milk

Combine the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, and salt - in a bowl. Beat together the egg yolks and milk and slowly add onto the dry ingredients whisking as you do it. Next add on your melted butter. In a stand mixer with the whip attachment beat the egg whites until stiff. Gently fold into the batter. Cook the waffles in a standard waffle iron greased with some sort of cooking spray.

When I made these for Tyler and myself I halved the recipe. We still had enough for four waffles!!!

If you are serious about having all the acoutrements, I would suggest cooking your apples ahead of time as doing all of this work in the morning before eating is a little trying. The apples should be peeled and sliced cooked with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg; and the resulting juices can be thickened with cornstarch.

I did mention rosemary earlier in the post and we did incorporate it. We put 1/2 cup of maple syrup in a small saucepan on the stove and brought it to a simmer on medium heat. To this we added a 3 inch spring of rosemary, then we turned off the heat, covered our syrup and let the rosemary infuse while we prepared our waffle batter.

Here is a recipe for cooking the apples, if you don't have one already:

3 lbs. firm apples

1/2 - 1 cup sugar (by taste)

1 tbs. cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp. cornstarch

Peel and slice the apples. In a large bowl toss the fruit with the sugar and spices. You can taste the apples at this point and adjust your seasoning accordingly. Some other spices to try are clove, ginger, and allspice; but I find the best rule with apples is to keep it simple. Let the true taste of the fruit come forward. In a large pot cook the apples over medium heat stirring frequently until they release their juices then stirring occassionally. Once the apples are soft - twenty minutes or so - you can take them off the heat and strain away and save the juices. The ratio is about 1 tsp. of cornstarch per 1 cup liquid. So adjust the cornstarch quantity accordingly. In a small saucepan, heat the apple liquid on medium. In a separate bowl combine the cornstarch with cold water and mix well. Add this cold liquid immediately to the apple juice and continue to stir until the starch has cooked out. You will notice the mixture becoming clear. Et voila!!!

Wapples!

Filling for Double Chocolate Tart

Just to make things more confusing I am posting this filling separate from the dough recipe. And to boot, my tasters didn't like the short dough I made and previously posted. "It tasted like cardboard," they complained. And I have to agree. So here is the filling and I am researching some sweet chocolate doughs to go along with it. If you have one, that's what I recommend using. And save the short dough for some sort of pie. The recipe is from Tamasin Day-Lewis' Art of the Tart by way of Simon Hopkinson. The resulting filling is much like a dark chocolate mousse. YUM!

2 eggs
3 yolks
1 1/2 oz. sugar
3 oz. unsalted butter
7 oz. of bittersweet chocolate (this should be really dark and really good. I used 65%, but I think 70 or 75% would be better).

Melt butter in a small saucepan on the stove. Begin to melt chocolate over a double boiler on the stove. When it is almost ready add the melted butter to the double boiler. Whip the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer with a whisk until light and fluffy (at least five minutes). When the butter and chocolate mixture is fully melted it is okay to take it off the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Reducing its temperature will prevent it from knocking too much air from the eggs when it is mixed in. With the mixer on low pour on the chocolate in a steady stream. Take the bowl off the mixer and give a few good folds by hand with a spatula. Pour this mix into the tart shell and bake it for five minutes at 325 F. Cool and serve.

Chocolate Short Dough

I have a goal of posting one recipe per month. It's not a lot, but I rarely visit this site. So here goes working towards a goal. I am teaching pastry courses right now and I thought I'd upload some of the recipes we are working with in class. The following is a double chocolate tart I am tinkering with at the moment. It is a combination of a few recipes from Tamasin Day-Lewis' Art of the Tart. Yesterday I prepared the chocolate short dough and today I will roll it out and make the filling. Here is the short dough recipe.

4 oz. or 1 cup All purpose flour

2 tsp. good dark cocoa powder

1 heaping tsp icing sugar

2 oz or 4 Tbs. cold butter cut into small cubes

1 egg yolk

1 to 2 Tbs. cold water

Sift the dry ingredients together into the bowl of a food processor. Add the cubes of butter and pulse the machine briefly until the butter becomes incorporated and broken into smaller than pea sized chunks. Add the egg yolk and 1 Tbs. cold water (add ice cubes to the water if necessary). Run the processor briefly. If needed add another Tbs. of water. The dough will darken although it may not seem to come together. Simply open the food processor and press the dough with your hands. If it comes together, it is ready. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour. I will post the finishing steps and some photos later!