Garden lemonade

I spent the last two weeks on the eastern coast of the Adriatic sea, taking it what I would call "excessively easy" in many Croatian cafés. In addition to the other delicious foods I encountered as I ate my way across the coast—among them Dalmation pršut, homemade sheep's cheese, local olive oils, fresh sea food, Korculan "amareto" cookies, fresh figs stuffed with salty ricotta and drizzled with crushed nuts and honey, homemade schnaps presented by our hosts at several apartments, and all things truffles—many of the cafés served homemade lemonade. 

This lemonade came in its purest form, often just freshly squeezed lemon juice, sometimes with sugar on the side, and sometimes with mint, basil, or elderflower.

Inspired by my tiny, back-porch garden as I've been recently, I've been searching for new uses of the herbs I'm growing. These lemonades scratched that particular itch, and, conveniently, I returned home to a basil plant that looked like it was going to ask me to feed it, Seymore, and a greedy mint plant with roots physically in other planters. So I had to do something.

Enter: Sparkling brown sugar lemonade with lavender


Ingredients

7.5 lemons, juiced
3/4 cup brown sugar
2+ cups sparkling water (to dilute syrup), cold
Lavender sprigs for garnish

1. On medium heat, bring lemon juice and brown sugar to a simmer. Whisk heartily.

2. Remove from heat and allow syrup to cool. Chill syrup. 

3. Once cold, pour syrup into 2-4 individual glasses (depending on desired sweetness).

4. Dilute with cold sparkling water.

5. Garnish each glass with fresh lavender.

Note: Because it's diluted with sparkling water, it's better to store this syrup and dilute when you pour a glass, rather than all at once. 


Adapted from Simply Recipes. Inspired also by Vesta's awesome lemonade.



Enter also: Basil mint lemonade

Ingredients

7.5 lemons, juiced
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/2 cup fresh mint, loose + longer sprigs for garnish
1/2 cup fresh basil, loose + longer sprigs for garnish
2+ cups water (to dilute syrup), cold

1. On medium heat, bring lemon juice and sugar to a simmer. Whisk heartily.

2. Reduce heat to low-medium and add loose mint and basil. Once herbs wilt, let simmer for 2-5 minutes. As the dissolved sugar caramelizes, the color will turn a very light yellow-brown.

3. Remove from heat. Strain out wilted herbs and discard.

4. Dilute with 2-4 cups of water. 

5. Chill until serving.

6. Garnish each glass with fresh mint and basil.

Each of these recipes suffices for an afternoon of lemonade-filled porch-sitting for 2-4 people, depending on how diluted you take it.

 

Banana bread

Cousin F's banana bread has been wowing unsuspecting Germans since 2013. That is to say, Cousins F and E moved to the Heimatland Germany and brought along their ridiculous banana bread recipe, which they then prepared and served to their friends residing in their quaint German city. Having never seen such fine Bananenbrot, the Germans came back over and over again for Kaffee und Kuchen, each time asking coyly for this particular Kuchen, until there was no more Bananenbrot to be had. At least that's how I imagine the dramatic retelling.

The point is that this banana bread is crazy good. It's got fabulous flavor. Even if you mess it up. Which I did.

The other point is that this post is timely because I am on my way to visit Cousins E and F this week.

Ingredients

Dry mix
1 1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter, soft
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Pecans, chocolate chips as wanted


1. Preheat oven to 350 F / 175 C. Butter and flour the bread pan.

2. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Sift. 

3. Beat softened butter until fluffy.

4. Add sugars.

5. Add eggs, one at a time.

6. Add mashed bananas.

7. Add lemon juice and vanilla.

8. Pour 1/3 of the mix into the pan, sprinkle with pecans or chocolate chips. Pour another 1/3. Repeat. Pour the remaining 1/3. Bake loaf for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Bake muffins for 20 minutes.

I'm realizing what I enjoy about baking is that I'm constantly making mistakes that I get immediate feedback about. Texture. Form. Color. Presentation. They are all so easy to mess up, research, and improve. Just a little. But every time. 

Never have I wanted to be better at chemistry than after making this recipe—by all accounts an excellent recipe that was not intended to be gluten-free. Between starting this post and actually publishing, I spent a few hours reading about baking soda and baking powder, xanthan gum, gluten-free flour blending, working with gluten-free flour, baking by weight, and cakes rising and falling. And everything, of course, came down to understanding the underlying chemical reactions. [Admittedly, "understanding" is a strong word for my now adequate, superficial knowledge.]

Don't do that

I used Thomas Keller's cup-for-cup gluten-free flour mix (which, side note, I accidentally ordered in bulk and which now sits in my non-industrial kitchen in an industrial kitchen package). Though I've come to love this mix for its flavor and its gluten-mimicking properties, I've also noticed that it's not appropriate for certain, flatter items (shortbreads, crepes, etc.) in unadapted recipes because it—and I can't believe I'm saying this about gf flour—rises too much. Here, it is the appropriate flour, but the recipe isn't perfectly adapted for it. I didn't adapt at all. Don't do that. Instead, reduce the baking soda and baking powder to 3/4 teaspoon each.

Because gluten-free batters have to have the consistency of thick pancake batter to rise well, they often look too wet or too dry (as here). Assuming these wouldn't rise, I overfilled the muffin tins to 3/4 and watched them go nuts. Don't do that. Fill to 1/2.

I have been collecting ripe bananas for weeks in my freezer. When I pulled the bananas out for this recipe, I let them defrost about 80%. Because of that, two things were off: 1) the moisture in this recipe was both too high and inconsistent across muffins, causing them to rise like an ingenue popover and fall like a jaded souffle. 2) The individual muffins were too tender when cool and would—somewhat deliciously—not hold their own form. Don't do that. Instead, fully defrost the bananas. Drain the bananas. Mash the bananas. Then add to the batter. 

Adapted from Cousin F's recipe.

Coconut macaroons

Three pieces of my universe came together to create these macaroons. 

First, I have this idea that when I was young we baked macaroons. I can't think of why that would be, because it doesn't precisely fit into my cultural cuisine heritage, but for as long as I can remember, I've made them on my own. And my thinking is that that had to have started somewhere. 

Second, and similarly, for as long as I can remember, I've been on an earl grey kick. Earl grey tea. Earl grey truffles. Earl grey macarons (not yet macaroons, mind you). 

Finally, I have this notion about coconut macaroons that they must be made with almond paste (almost marzipan), and not just condensed milk, as many recipes call for. Recently, I was spending way too much time at the grocery store—which, candidly, I always find fascinating—and I noticed that Odense Almond Paste was suddenly labeled gluten-free. [For context, it contains some number of ppm of wheat starch and, as such, had been out of my reach for a long time.]

Thus the origin of these coconutty items.  

Ingredients

1/2 cup egg whites, room temperature
1+ teaspoon pure vanilla bean paste
1-7 oz box of almond paste, grated
2 cups confectioner's sugar
1-14 oz package sweetened flaked coconut

Milk chocolate
Earl grey tea

White chocolate
Lime, zested

1. Preheat oven to 325 F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. 

2. Using a mixer, beat egg whites together with extracts into soft peaks.

3. Grate the almond paste. In a separate bowl (or, ideally, in a food processor), beat grated almond paste, sugar, and coconut until crummy. 

4. Fold egg whites into almond mixture.

5. Pressing the dough firmly together, shape and drop hefty tablespoons of dough onto the parchment paper.

6. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until lightly bottoms around the bottom edges. Broil for top color as desired.

7. Cool entirely before embellishing as desired.


Some flavor/decorating ideas (the first two of which I ended up doing)

Mix finely ground earl grey tea into melted chocolate. Dip half of each macaroon into the mixture. 

Melt white chocolate. Stripe melted chocolate on macaroons. Sprinkle with lime zest for a tropical complement to the coconut.

Mix cocoa into batter before baking.

Press an almond into the top of the macaroon before baking. Once cool, stripe with milk or dark chocolate.

Press a craisin into the top of the macaroon before baking. Once cool, stripe with white chocolate.

Dip the base of each macaroon in chocolate.

Don't do that

Not thinking, I used foil instead of parchment paper. Foil is less than ideal for an especially sticky base. Don't do that. Instead, use parchment paper.

I painstakingly grated the almond paste by hand. Only to have it clump together as soon as I manually and then with a stand mixer with the coconut and sugar! Don't do that. Instead, crumb the dry mixture using a food processor to keep the ingredients evenly distributed.

Envisioning massive, bakery-size indulgences, I use a 1/4 cup measure cup to portion my macaroons, ending up with 16 macaroons! Don't do that. If you use a either a heaping tablespoon or an 1/8 cup, you'll yield 30+ macaroons that are significantly less likely to intimidate all the other macaroons around them.



These are great. They are moist and sweet and big and beautiful. And again, on an earl grey kick here, so these really do work for me.

For next time, I'm considering using unsweetened coconut so I can actually eat more than one. Perhaps a great coconut macaroon experiment will be in order.

Adapted from www.odense.com.

Back porch garden

After several rounds of failed herbs and flowers over the course of the year, our miniature back porch garden is now blooming with sage, spearmint, basil, and lavender. 

The basil has already been put to use on a number of fresh caprese plates, but the fragrant sage is itching to complement a sheet pan of roasted chicken and vegetables.

My visions for the flowering lavender are less clear, but I'm thinking about a lavender honey, a lavender lemonade, and a lavender citrus shortbread. Sweet and savory ideas welcome.