What a dreary day it has been. It started with drizzle,
which changed to snow about 9:30. The first snowfall is always cool, of course.
It even stuck for a while on the garden and the trunk of the fifth oak. The
snow stopped and melted. Fog came in under a uniformly gray sky. It feels much
like winter. At 5:15, it is pitch dark.
The pullets have FINALLY started to lay. Such cute little
pullet eggs! I thought the event was much later than last year, but in the middle
of the week, a picture of a pullet egg popped up as a Facebook memory from a
year ago. Apparently I thought it would never happen last year either.
The first pullet egg next to a hen egg. |
Not only are the pullet eggs cute as a bug’s ear, they are
also more intensely colored. I don’t know why the color fades over time. The
Black Star eggs are a beautiful chestnut brown.
Three pullet eggs and three hen eggs |
I’ve been battling the winter blues as the weather has
gotten cold and damp and the days shorten. I needed a project. There are no
tadpoles available this time of year, so I thought I’d try my hand raising wild
yeast. I saw it on America’s Test Kitchen
and downloaded the instructions. Last Saturday, I mixed all-purpose flour,
whole wheat flour, and water, covered it with plastic wrap and let it sit. The
next morning (16 hours), it looked like this.
Wild sourdough starter at 16 hours |
Monday morning, it was getting even more bubbly.
At 36 hours |
By Monday night, it seemed like it was time to feed it. The
black spots on top were a little concerning. I stirred it up, removed 2 ounces
to a clean bowl, added 2 ounces of water, and 2.5 ounces of the flour/whole
wheat flour mix.
At 48 hours, blubbly and with suspicious blackish patches on top |
Every day, I repeat the feeding steps. It looks like this
right after the feeding.
Starter right after feeding |
And it looks like this the next day.
Starter after 24 hours |
Right now it smells exactly like an old, wet dog. I am not
certain that this experiment will be successful, but the folks at ATK said that it smells “funky” at first
but after two weeks will begin to smell more like normal yeasty bread dough. The idea is that the desirable yeasts and bacteria out compete the stinky ones. We’ll
see.
In a more successful experiment, I tried one of Julia Child’s recipes from The French Chef. It was called Reine de Saba (Queen of Sheba) and was subtitled “chocolate, rum, and almond cake.” I found an 8” cake pan, which I buttered and floured. I also put parchment paper on the bottom even though the recipe didn’t say to. Nobody knew about parchment paper in 1968. I wanted to be sure the cake would come out of the pan.
In a more successful experiment, I tried one of Julia Child’s recipes from The French Chef. It was called Reine de Saba (Queen of Sheba) and was subtitled “chocolate, rum, and almond cake.” I found an 8” cake pan, which I buttered and floured. I also put parchment paper on the bottom even though the recipe didn’t say to. Nobody knew about parchment paper in 1968. I wanted to be sure the cake would come out of the pan.
Then I had a problem. One part of the cake involved creaming
butter and sugar. Another part was beating egg whites. I have but one hand
mixer. One stick of butter would be lost in the bowl of my stand mixer. If you have
experience with egg white beating, you know that the bowl and beaters must not
have any trace of fat or the eggs will not develop the proper structure. To use
the hand mixer for both would require a thorough cleaning of the beaters in
between. I hate washing beaters, especially with the pressure of removing every
molecule of butter. Julia said you could
cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon. I didn’t believe it, but I knew
she did her research. I tried it. I soon had balls of sugar-coated butter. I
changed tactics, mashing the butter into the sugar with the back of the spoon.
That went better. Quite suddenly, as if by magic, it all came together and was
easy to stir vigorously. Julia was right!
From there, it was simple to add the melted chocolate, rum, ground
almonds, almond extract, egg yolks, and all-purpose flour (It was supposed to
be cake flour, but I keep four kinds of flour in stock at all times, and I have
to draw the line somewhere. )
The recipe called for adding cream of tartar to the egg
whites to stabilize them. To my amazement, I had cream of tartar on hand. I can’t
imagine why, but it was a pleasant surprise. I got the egg whites to shiny
white peaks and folded them into the rest of the cake. Into the oven.
After letting the cake cool for two hours, I made the glaçage
au chocolat (chocolate-butter icing). Really it was more of a ganache, but
nobody knew about ganache in 1968. I melted 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
with 1.5 tablespoons dark rum. I beat in 6 tablespoons of softened butter one at a time
until it was perfectly smooth. Best. Icing. Ever. The cake was good, too! It
reminded me of Europe.
Reine de Saba |
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