Well, hello frozen treats on a stick.

Remember this experiment that didn’t really go over so well last year? But hey…we’re still not giving up! Kind of like our Coconut Five Spice Cookies that went through 2 iterations as a biscotti and a macaroon before settling on its current cookie form. We KNEW the chocolate curry ice cream tasted good, but the presentation in a cup was just a fail so we chucked the idea last summer and vowed – yes, VOWED shaking our fists in the air – that we would bring it back on a stick this summer. I don’t really know why, but it was really hard to find commercial grade molds. We didn’t need super heavy duty automated industrial, but we needed more than the home versions you stick in your freezer (if anyone has any other leads to popsicle molds, please pass along!), so that was a little bump in the road. But we did it! And we’re debuting them at the Brooklyn Flea Smorgasburg tomorrow.
 
Not only will we have the original (OG) Chocolate Curry flavor that has now been reworked as a fudge pop on a stick, but we will also have Thai Iced Tea Fudgesicle pops too. WHUT?! Yeah, ya heard!

 
I’m personally excited about this because we finally have a product in which to spread Mark’s ice cream flavors to the masses without actually making ice cream (too many logistics and expenses for ice cream right now) and we get to share the flavors that he’s been making for years, like Thai Iced Tea. Yes, there will be other flavor fudgesicles all summer so stay tuned. I know that it makes Mark happy too because I think he would still jump ship on cookies for ice cream if he could.

So help make Mark a happy, not sad panda tomorrow and give it a try if you’re at the Flea. Especially since it’s more production work on his weekly plate and he gets to wake up even earlier on Flea days to drive to Queens to get dry ice to make sure these pops stay frozen at the market. Oy! The things we (ok, just Mark) do to spread a little bit of frozen joy!

I think one of the most challenging things we’re facing as a not-so-new business is keeping things new and relevant. There’s one thing to be said about reaping the benefits from notching a few years of experience under your belt: systems start falling into place and production for the most part, runs fairly smoothly (geez, I talk as if we’re a big operation. It’s still just Mark in the kitchen though). The press and the public, however, are always on the lookout for the next new thing. Summers can also be a slower season for bakers when the weather warms up and people are turning to frozen treats and ice cream (I don’t blame them) so we decided to do a little experiment.

Maybe you’ll remember that the only thing that I feel wistful about regarding our decision not to open a store is the fact that Mark can’t make his ice cream. It’s his favorite kind of dessert to make and he was just about ready to ditch the baked goods if the ice cream took off. We can’t really handle ice cream production right now, so Mark made a version that doesn’t need machinery and isn’t whipped (it comes out much denser). He tested out 3 flavors and we both immediately liked the curry milk chocolate, so he brought them in little 4oz cups to the Flea last Saturday…except they didn’t really sell all that well. Granted, it was last minute, we didn’t publicize it except for a single tweet and a Facebook post (also, I am horrible at promoting our own stuff), and maybe the world wasn’t ready to try a curry milk chocolate combo, who knows. We also made the mistake, I think, of calling it frozen custard which it technically is, but it didn’t really help. Mark was kind of a sad panda that day. But hey, we’re strong! We’re resilient! And we can accept when an idea doesn’t work. It isn’t the first time we came up with something that failed.

BUT, we’re not giving up so fast this time because we really like them and our kids like them and if Claudine, who is the pickiest eater ever, thinks this is “MMMMM” and can’t stop talking about how the spices made a funny tingle in her throat, then maybe other people will like it too. So Mark’s bringing them back to the Flea this Saturday (this week we’re at Smorgasburg in Williamsburg) and here’s the one time you’ll read an obnoxiously shameless plug right here on the blog:

(Start Shameless Plug)
This Saturday at the Smorg! Curry Milk Chocolate Ice Cream in a Cup! Packed densely in small 4oz cups so you don’t need to worry about breaking that diet! Made with high quality chocolate and Mark’s own blend of curry spices! A mere $3.50 buys you a flavor explosion in your mouth! Limited supply, so get yours early!
(End Shameless Plug)

whew, ok, that wasn’t so bad. By the way, I heard that The Flea is celebrating National Ice Cream Month by bringing in extra ice cream vendors this Saturday who don’t normally sell at the Flea so there’s like a million more ice cream options than usual. Face plant.

Every once in a while we’ll see kumquats at the grocery store and toss them in our shopping cart. It’s usually Mia who will spot them first and it’s no wonder…they are small and cute. But the problem with buying kumquats is that we’ll usually never go through a whole pint before they start to shrink and shrivel. One or 2 kumquats at a time is pretty much enough to satisfy and they’ll often be left forgotten in the fridge after awhile. The other day I decided to make candied kumquats. They’re sort of like sweet condiments and you can toss them in salads or on top of desserts as a garnish. Or you can do what Jenna does…and pop a one in your mouth every time you walk pass the refrigerator.

Candied Kumquats (makes about 1 cup)

1 pint kumquats
2 cups sugar
1-1/3 cups water

Slice each kumquat into 3 or 4 slices, and remove the seeds. Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan. Add the sliced kumquats and turn the heat to low. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes, or until the kumquats are translucent. Remove from the heat, transfer to a heatproof storage container, and cool in the syrup.

I think Mark first made these pink peppercorn shortbread cookies 2 years ago. We instantly liked them. We liked the subtle peppery aftertaste (entirely different from black pepper, btw), and we liked the pink flecks on the cookie which is why we offered them during our first Valentine’s Day collection. It just goes to show you how long it takes sometimes for us to push cookies out into the world as their own package. They’ve gone through a few different incarnations, including a linzer cookie which we had available for a limited time, but we’ve finally settled on this final version of the cookie with a red currant chocolate filling from this year’s Valentine’s Day box. (As a related note, you may or may not remember that our Coconut 5 Spice White Chocolate Cookies also emerged from a few incarnations, first as a biscotti, then as a macaroon, and finally to the drop cookie).

They’re finally for sale on their own here or in our Etsy shop. Also, can I say how excited I am about our new website, which hopefully go live in the Spring?

And…new camera FTW!

We aren’t one of those Nutella worshippers who make sure that a jar of the stuff is around the house at all times in case of a chocolate or dessert craving emergency, yet this is what Mark brought home from the grocery store Thanksgiving eve to make bread pudding with. Can’t even remember the last time we bought a jar of Nutella – must have been before the girls’ time which make it at least 7 years ago if not more. But yes, it was good and there was barely any leftover dessert. The pumpkin pie – one of the 90 that Mark baked Wednesday for the restaurant – didn’t fare too well with its journey from Central Park to Brooklyn to Long Island, but that is all gone too. My dad picked the last of the persimmons that were still hanging on like little miniature pumpkins off the leafless tree and we ate that too.

Mia likes having a lot of family around for the holidays. The immediate family isn’t enough. Good thing my grandmother, a few of my aunts, uncles and cousins came by for dinner. These are some of the same cousins who I grew up getting together with for big family holidays, but unlike me, the girls only have 1 baby cousin (so far) who lives far away in California. After they had left, Claudine and Mia treated my parents, Mark and I to a half hour dance recital which involved them taking turns and dancing different styles including disco and the robot.

On black Friday we went bowling (ok, we went to Ikea in the morning too. PS, I am having an after Thanksgiving sale on posters and calendars in my etsy shop). My dad had read my bowling blog entry and had a hankering to go. It had been about 15 years since he had bowled. He reminded me that the bowling pin I remember being in the house was high up on the shelf in the family room. Right before we left, he spent 15 minutes digging around in the garage for his old bowling ball, but it wasn’t found. Didn’t matter. He bowled a spare the first 4 times he was up. He didn’t bowl his 175 average, but it wasn’t too bad for being out of practice for 15 years. Mia was still really into the whole bowling thing, giving out high fives every time someone took a turn, but Claudine was just content eating 2 plates of fries this time, just like I did at that age. But the air hockey! Oh, she found something at the bowling alley that she really liked, so much so that she hogged that table up and didn’t even let me play. The girls even had a crowd of 7-9 year old boys cheering them on, which I thought was sweet.

Oh, but the bread pudding…you didn’t think we weren’t going to give a recipe to you, did you?

Nutella Bread Pudding with Dates (serves about 8, less if you’re a bread pudding hog like me)

2 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
1 cup dried dates
2 cups heavy cream
3 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
5 cups of challah or brioche, crusts removed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup nutella

Bring the water and cinnamon sticks to a boil in a small saucepan. Add the dates and simmer for one minute, then remove from the heat. Set aside and let the dates cool in the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl mix the cream, eggs and sugar together. Add the bread and gently stir until well moistened. Set it aside to soak for a few minutes. Now, remove the dates from the liquid. Peel the skins off the dates and remove the pits. Cut each in half, then mix into the bread mixture. Layer one third of the bread into a buttered 8-cup casserole dish. Spoon one half of the nutella over the bread. Layer another third of the bread over that, followed by the remaining nutella, and finally the remaining bread. Bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes to one hour, depending on the shape of your baking dish. Serve while still warm with fresh whipped cream.

When Ez of Creature Comforts asked us waaaay back this summer if we’d contribute to her online holiday magazine, we said sure. We got back from Seattle, baked some cookies and took some pictures. What we didn’t know was that Ez had this super brilliant idea and was hard at work coming up with the most incredible online magazine! You all need to click on this link RIGHT NOW and feast your eyes on this work of beauty. It rivals any commercial magazine holiday issue out there and it blows me away every time I look at it because Ez is only 1 person. Chock full of holiday ideas, articles, crafts, interviews, a comprehensive gift guide and more more more (the pages are endless), I know I’ll be going back and referring to it all holiday season long.

See those cute ginger guys right there? The recipe for our GingerSPice Shortbread Men are inside. They are time consuming to decorate and Mark grumbles every time he has to pipe a smile. I say, “they’re so festive, let’s sell them!”, and he’s all like “oh hell naw!”, while throwing me a dirty look. So you make them (pg 125).

In more holiday news, we finally changed the banner of our website to this. I’m in love with this image (and not because I took it, well maybe a little), but it’s just so full of yummy gooeyness. We’re going to bring all of that to the Brooklyn Flea’s Gifted Market for 9 straight days starting December 15th at that marvelous 1 Hanson building. We’ve never done a market for these many consecutive days. I’m not really sure how we’re going to pull it off. If you don’t see us at our table, look down. We might be passed out on the floor from exhaustion of holiday and work stuff (because no matter how much I try and finagle my schedule, I am always slammed with design work this time of year). We may not see the kids very much that month. We may curse Christmas 30 times a day and want to die. But we’ll be there.

Here’s another look at the gooey marshmallows. I didn’t know which photo I preferred so you get a bonus angle.

Summer fruits are finally in full season now and that opens up so many dessert options.  But still, what to make?  I love pie, but don’t actually enjoy making it all the time.  And I also love a fruit crisp with a nice streusel topping, but I prefer that in the fall.  Shortcakes can be good, but too often the biscuit is too clunky and heavy.  What about a cobbler?  You know, that often neglected dessert that bring to mind the unrecognizable mush in one corner of a TV dinner?  I’ll be honest, I have never made one before precisely for that reason.  But when you think about what it is – a fruit mixture topped with biscuit dough – it actually combines the best elements of those previously mentioned desserts.  So for a BBQ at a friend’s house recently I used some super-fresh nectarines and blueberries and my favorite shortcake biscuit recipe to make my first cobbler.  It will not be my last.

Nectarine and Blueberry Cobbler (serves 8-10)

1-3/4 cup flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup half & half
5 nectarines, pitted and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup blueberries
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons flour

Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and butter together in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment on low speed until the butter is mostly incorporated into the flour.  Pour in the half & half and mix just until a dough forms.  Roll the dough on a well-floured surface to about 1/2-inch thickness.  Cut into 2-inch shapes (I did squares, but anything will do, or even just tear the pieces by hand into random shapes) and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Mix the remaining ingredients together in a large bowl, then pour into a baking dish just big enough to comfortably hold all the fruit.  I used a 10-inch round, 1-inch deep ceramic dish, but anything else will do.  Arrange the cut biscuit dough on the top of the fruit, leaving a few small spots uncovered.  Put the dish on a baking sheet (it will most likely bubble over) and bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, or until the biscuits are golden and the fruit is bubbling.  Let cool a bit before serving.

Hard to believe, but I bought my first sour cherries ever from the farmer’s market last week.  There are two main reasons I haven’t bought them before.  First, their season is very short so the chances of finding them are slim.  And second, they are very fragile and do not keep for more than a few days so you need to have time to use them if you don’t want to waste your money (and they can be expensive).  I bought these cherries without any clear plan on what to make, but decided on a pie when I got home.  I soon realized I didn’t have nearly enough for a full size pie, so I made a few mini-pies in a couple of individual tart pans.  The sour cherries had a wonderful flavor (they are the traditional pie-making cherry after all, but most recipes usually use canned cherries) and I don’t think I’ll be so hesitant to buy them again.

A note on making individual pies:  Roll the pie dough as thin as you can or else the filling to crust ratio will be off and it would be too much like eating the crust by itself.  To roll the dough extra-thin, make sure it is cold and try rolling it between two sheets of parchment paper to prevent it from sticking to your rolling pin.

As for the kids, Mia found a way to eat all the cherries first so there was a hollowed out pie shell before eating most of the crust.  And maybe Claudine didn’t like the cherries as much as everyone else because everything else was gone from the plate except for the cherries, which looked like all the juice had been sucked out of them.

Fresh Sour Cherry Pie (makes 4 individual 4-inch pies)

Crust:
2-2/3 cups flour
14 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cold water

Filling:
2 cups fresh sour cherries, pitted
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch

For the crust, mix the butter into the flour and salt with your fingers until mostly incorporated.  (You can use a food processor for this step if you like.)  Mix in enough cold water to make a dough.  Roll the dough as thin as you can (see note above), cut into 8 circles about 2 inches larger than your small tart pans.  If you need more dough you can just re-roll some of the scrap pieces.  Chill the dough until ready to use.

Meanwhile, make the filling.  Toss the pitted cherries with the sugar and let it sit for about 20 minutes.  Drain and reserve the juice.  Put the juice in a small saucepan along with the cornstarch and bring to a boil.  When it has thickened, remove it from the heat and stir in the reserved cherries.

To assemble the mini-pies, press one circle of dough into a 4-inch tart pan.  Fill almost to the top with some pie filling.  Place another circle of dough on the top, pinching at the edges so it is completely sealed.  Trim any excess dough and crimp decoratively as desired.  Cut a short slit in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.  Repeat with the remaining pies, then bake on a parchment-lined cookie sheet in a  preheated 375-degree oven for about 40 minutes, or until the crust is cooked on the bottom and the filling begins to bubble out of the top.  Allow to cool slightly before eating.

apricot, pineapple buttermilk, grapefruit ginger, lemon olive oil, blueberry yogurt, sorrel, mango basil.

These are all sorbets that Mark made recently. We tried 4 of them (really, really curious about the sorrel!) and yup, they were all good, especially the lemon olive oil and pineapple buttermilk. The acidic sharpness of the pineapple and tart lemon made a really interesting counterpoint and was tempered by the smoothness of the olive oil and buttermilk.

When we talk about a store, what we get excited about is the ice cream and sorbets. There’s a reason why it was our first business idea, but we always got stumped on the fact that it was such a seasonal product. What do you do in the winter? But we wouldn’t have that problem anymore with the cookies. While the business may be running like a machine now (a human Mark machine), he still gets plenty of joy from making ice creams and sorbets.

I’m very happy that we didn’t miss the pick-your-own strawberry season this year and I’m equally as happy that I actually had time to make something with them.  The kids were sold on the idea of a strawberry pie while we were still picking the berries, but I realized that I had never made one. I ended up improvising this recipe right down to the pie pan – my glass pie pan broke months ago so I was forced to use a springform pan.  The fresh, whole, uncooked strawberries are bound together inside a graham cracker crust with a mixture of sugar, gelatin and strawberry puree.  The strawberries looked a little rough after I filled the pie so I covered them with a layer of stabilized whipped cream.  If you try this recipe, only use the best berries you can find because the flavor depends entirely on that.

Strawberry and Whipped Cream Pie (makes one 10-inch pie)

Crust:

1-1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

6 Tablespoons melted butter

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  Mix everything together by hand, and press firmly into a 10-inch springform pan.  The crust should also go up the sides of the pan about three inches.  Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes, until it has firmed up a bit.  Let it cool while you prepare the filling.

Filling:

5 cups strawberries, washed and stems removed.

1/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon gelatin powder, soaked in 1/4 cup cold water

Roughly chop one cup of the strawberries and place in a small saucepan with the sugar.  Cook until reduced to a puree.  Remove from the heat, then stir in the soaked gelatin.  Mix with the remaining strawberries, then immediately pour into the cooled crust.  Spread the out so the top is level, then prepare the whipped cream topping.

Topping:

1-1/2 cups heavy cream

1 Tablespoon powdered sugar

1 teaspoon gelatin powder

2 tablespoons milk

Whip the cream and sugar to stiff peaks.  Soak the gelatin in the milk for two minutes, then heat gently until dissolved.  Gradually fold the whipped cream into the gelatin, then spread on top of the strawberries.  Chill for several hours before removing from the pan and slicing.