Desert Island Discs

 

Ter and I baked cookies yesterday. Before we started, she declared, “Baking music!” and popped a disc onto the kitchen stereo. Just as I asked what “baking music” was, the first notes of A Charlie Brown Christmas trickled from the speakers.

Well, duh.

Vince Guaraldi’s version of O Tannenbaum never fails to lift my spirits. In fact, every time I hear a track—any track—on the CBC album, I am transported to a tranquil world of joy and beauty that no other album can invoke. Ter often plays it while she’s cooking; I’ll hear it from my room and my whole being relaxes. We even play it in the car, cruising on the mellow notes of a recording we have both loved for-seeming-ever. I can’t explain why; it just is.

Which means it holds the top spot in my trio of “desert island discs”. You know, the perennial conversation-starter about what three albums you’d have if you were stranded on a pile of sand in the south Pacific. Yes, Virginia, a Christmas album is my top pick for indefinite isolation. I never get tired of it. My favourite track is the instrumental of Christmastime is Here, where the piano is played so casually, with such elegance, that it’s easy to picture my beloved Julian at the keyboard (sorry, Vince). And Hark! the Herald Angels almost always begins with Ter and I “loo loo loo-ing” along with the kids. As a twelve track album, it’s crammed with so many pleasant memories and good feelings that packing it past Tahiti is a no-brainer.

The trouble comes with choosing the second and third of my top three discs. Okay, Duran Duran for sure—but which album? Can I cheat and make my own lengthy “best of” playlist? Do home-made discs count, and if so, does a double-disc count as one or two? I might go with Notorious for its jazz-influenced riffs, but I actually prefer 21^st century DD to their earlier work. Even then, I can’t pick a single album because Astronaut, All You Need is Now and Paper Gods are all fabulous. (Red Carpet Massacre is only okay, though as an experiment it was brave attempt by the band to stay relevant.)

Assuming I can settle on a DD album in the second spot, my third choice is probably something by Ludovico Einaudi, whose instrumental work on piano ranges from delicate to epic depending on the track and whether or not an orchestra is involved. Every one of his albums inspires an award-winning story I have yet to write, so again, how do I choose one over the others?

I know, I know. It’s not likely to become an issue. I seriously doubt the island I get stranded on will be wired for sound, but whether it be cookies in the kitchen or sunning on the beach, A Charlie Brown Christmas is definitely music to bake by!

Food Porn VI

“Oh, Muffin!”

Wow. That was close. If not for my lovely assistant, these applesauce-spice muffins would have been a complete disaster.

For the latest in my GF treat basket, I decided to make this easy-peasy recipe and, as usual, prepped the ingredients before I started mixing. The cup measure won’t fit in the flour jar, so I did the math and determined that 10 x .25 scoops would give me the requisite 2.5 cups, but, boy, did that look like a lot of flour. In fact, I ran out of the GF mix and had to top up with plain brown rice. Must have been an optical illusion, i.e., if I’d used a bigger bowl, it would have looked right. So, in went the baking powder, soda, salt and spices.

On to the wet ingredients.

Butter and sugar beaten to “light and fluffy”, it was time to add the eggs. However, as the stand mixer in our kitchen is me standing with the hand mixer, I called on Ter for help. She knows the drill; she’s done this often enough: Eggs first, one at a time, then dry/milk/dry/milk/dry.

“Boy,” she said once the eggs were in, “that’s a lot of flour.”

“One cup at a time,” I suggested, dismissing her observation as I had dismissed my own.

She dispensed the first cup in three increments (the better to incorporate flour into batter without dusting up the kitchen), then poured in half the almond milk. The second cup of flour went in, also in three increments.

“Wait a sec,” I said. “Are you using the third cup measure?”

She checked. “Yup.”

We both eyed the remaining flour.

“That’s way more than half a cup,” she said.

I was doing rapid calc in my head and suddenly realized, “Crap! I measured out the flour in half cups, not quarters!”

Ter blanched. “What?”

I gave her the half-cup measure. “One of these and we’re done. I wondered why it looked like too much flour!”

“Well, yeah,” Ter agreed, all but rolling her eyes, “because it is!”

I wore that one, emerging from near-catastrophe with gratitude for my trusty kitchen elf attachment. She helped with the cleanup, too, but ahead of putting the flour back in the jar, she glanced a little nervously at me and asked, “Did you put cinnamon in the flour?”

Oh, $***. So the muffins are only half-spiced and our flour supply has cinnamon, salt and baking powder already added. No breaded chicken until further notice.

I’m renaming this recipe “Right Brain Muffins” because that’s obviously where I was when I baked ’em.

Food Porn 4 - Drop Cookies

anyone for white chocolate/cranberry?

We had white chocolate left over from Christmas and I needed new tea treats, so Ter suggested substituting gluten-free flour for AP in our favourite cookie recipe. Recalling lessons from our first GF attempt, we mixed up the batter, dropped it by tiny teaspoons eight to a sheet pan, baked them for 12 minutes exactly and OMG did they turn out well!!!

Thin, crispy, buttery, sweet—YUM! I like crispy cookies and these guys donʼt flag for a second. They freeze well, dunk well, heck, they act just like regular cookies unless you like them chewy … but we put enough white chocolate in ours that when it melted it got kind of chewy, so win-win!

I fear in the long run this diet will prove that you can be gluten-free and still put on weight.

Food Porn 3 – Caramel Apple Upside Down Cake

Experimental GF baking continues. The chocolate chip cookies baked into a single 9 by 13 cookie that had to be carved into squares for eating; they were crisp and delicious, however, so I will try them again, with adjustments to try and keep them from glomming onto each other in the oven. They tasted good frozen as well, because sometimes I just won’t wait.

I’ve always been averse to pastry—too fussy, too finicky, blah blah blah, though my wee sister can’t see my problem with it. Easy for her to say. She’s a master, as she proved with my Christmas mincemeat dilemma last year. Whining aside, I’ve discovered a local source for GF baking, so butter tarts are back on the menu. So is pizza, thanks to thin and crispy crusts being available at the grocery store. Ter and I load ’em up with toppings and pig out on Friday nights.

A work buddy who is also gluten-free (most of the time) uses regular recipes and simply substitutes GF flour for all purpose. She also defies the experts by matching amounts one for one, rather than reducing the flour by one eighth. I was originally scandalized by such wanton disregard, since surely the amounts are doctored for a reason, but she merely shrugged and said, hey, it works. Not with muffins, though; she still can’t figure out why they turned out like hockey pucks, to which I reply, don’t they always?

Last week, cake became an issue. Bored with tarts and cookies, I pored over my special needs baking book in search of a simple recipe and didn’t find what I wanted. Then I remembered the upside-down cake recipe I snipped from a supermarket flyer a couple of years ago. It calls for rhubarb, but I’ve also made it with peaches or pineapple, and it’s fabulous. I’d been eyeballing a couple of apples that were approaching their best before date, and thought they’d make a dandy bottom—or top, as the cake may be.

Bracing myself for the baking gods’ wrath, I took my reckless friend’s advice and substituted measure for measure GF flour for AP. With my able kitchen elf’s assistance, I made the caramel apple upside down cake pictured above and it turned out great! Light and tender with good crumb texture and those sweet, sticky apples on top … yum!

There is a downside to it, though. The first bite is generally the best of any food item. Not so with gluten-free. Lovely as my cake turned out, the first bite was purely weird. Rice flour has a distinctive flavour and if you’re not expecting it, the surprise is not a pleasant one. So persevere and go for the second bite. I promise you, it gets better. I ate two pieces before my sugar tolerance shut me down, else I’d have porked the whole thing in one sitting.

Fortunately, it also freezes well.