weekly baking

[bubblingbeebles]

among all the goals i set for myself this semester, i think the one i most completely succeeded at is learning to bake and cook with more of a connection between what i imagine in my head and what comes out at the end. my bread-making technique has gotten much better (thanks to zmccord for constant motivation); my confidence in what i make on the stove-top has improved (thanks to, well, whomever i've made dinner for/with); and, my intuition for flavour combinations has, somehow, become frighteningly powerful (thanks to everybody who shows up to freecsd tea). today i'm going to talk about that last one.

sixteen or so weeks ago i wanted to learn how to make scones, and i also wanted to try using lavender in something. since there is this event called csd tea wherein people get together and drink tea every monday in gates, i figured what better motivation than to make a bunch of scones and bring them in for everybody. but i didn't say what flavours i had put in them, and people guessed at them - so this became a game: every week i explored a new flavour combination (i had to do something new each time!) and presented it as mystery ingredients. here is the list of what i did - try drawing inspiration from it yourself!

the process usually started with peering into the spice cabinet, tasting whatever things i thought might be interesting together, and thinking either "yes", "no", or "hmm....", then asking the internet if anybody had done anything similar. so the recipes linked below were in some cases inspiration, and in some cases simply encouragement that i wasn't crazy (rarely did i follow one single recipe).

1. lavender-lemon scones. i remember thinking they were okay; it could have been my imperfect scone technique, or the mediocre lemon juice i used.
2. lavender-orange scones. this must have been the one i served with honey-butter, as linked; i think i liked it better than the previous week's, at least, but the combination was more tenuous.
3. this week is a mystery even to me: i know it was something with ginger, probably in loaf form; possibly orange (i know i did orange bread once), but that could have been different. i'm also not sure if there was another week in between this one and the next listed thing.
4. plum and cardamom bread. an unlikely combination, i thought at first, but it worked very well. i used under-ripe plums, so it had extra tartness.
5. blood orange, olive oil, and rosemary. a joint effort between me and twinofmunin; possibly the most fun i ever had baking (de-membraning orange wedges is hilarious if you have a friend to do it with). we also made this, which was no mystery.
6. orange sumac cookies. i thought i was pretty clever to be using sumac in a dessert, and it was super-hard to find encouragement to do so on the internet. this one was also a tenuous combination, i thought; it possibly wanted more sumac, or a better way to deliver it.
7. mango sumac bread. i reused the secret because nobody guessed it last time. this one came out a bit better, but i thought the combination was less interesting.
8. banana and coriander cake. this week i decided to try harder to make savoury ingredients work in dessert foods. choosing coriander, it felt like a bit of a cop-out to pair it with banana, but it did work very well.
9. chocolate, white pepper, and cardamom cookies. after the success of pairing chocolate with lavender, i again thought "if dolfin can make it work, so can i" - and it did! the dough itself was a bit dry, though.
10. pear and sichuan peppercorn tart. to use sichuan peppercorns in a dessert was probably my craziest idea yet. i was afraid of using too much, though, so the flavour came out weaker than i wanted it to. i really want to try this one, or something similar, again.
11. fresh basil and chevre scones. the internet had very little encouragement for these, and i nearly skipped baking this week besides, but this combination turned out to be one of my favourites (partially because of how good the scones were).
12. macarons! it was passover this week, so my challenge was to not use flour or baking soda. this is probably the most difficult recipe i've ever made; i did it the day before (pierre hermé says newly filled macarons need many hours in the fridge) and it kept me up until 1am because out of five batches, only the fourth and fifth ones came out right. i made them with a bit of cinnamon, and dark chocolate ganache filling, which nobody bothered to guess. i suppose i would make them again, but i would have to be very motivated.
13. americanised irish soda bread with caraway, raisins, and himalayan pink sea salt. there was one of those moments where when tasting what i had in the spice cabinet i tried the caraway, tried the salt, and immediately thought "whoa, yes!" the bread itself (not sweet at all) was a bit strange, but several people said they liked it, so.
14. butternut squash bread with coriander and sage. the two very savoury mysteries and the tiny amount of sugar made this hardly a dessert at all.
15. rhubarb, ginger, and anise bread. the ginger did not come out strongly enough, but it was still very good. i don't know why people see the need to pair rhubarb with strawberry - it is good enough on its own.

among the things i learned was how to make sweet cake-bread basically by heart - butter and sugar and egg, then flour, buttermilk, and mysteries. one of these days i'll actually memorise the proportions of everything.

um, so! i will probably continue doing this during the summer.