Cultured Butter Biscuits, for cold mornings and even colder nights

So far, this year is cold. My mother makes coffee for me before she goes to work or babysits my niece. This is the last week I'll be at my childhood home. And while it has been a year of change, it's been a year of stagnation. I couldn't grow in this house I grew up in. I spent dinners in the living room, my father with the TV too loud and my mother baby-talking one of her cats. It never felt like the days went by, but the sun would blink lazily in the summer and I spent the better part of autumn away from them. They asked too many questions and never the right ones and I am happy to move to my own place again within a week.

I guess it is part of being 25, picking up pieces of who you grew to be, knowing how threadbare I left things before moving away.

I changed in many ways and I am exactly the same in others. I still ask for pumpkin pie on my birthdays. I still wake up at 6 to see my mother off to work, where we talk about how little I care for my brother's life and how she never fully understood her older brother, Bill, herself. My parents gave me my great-grandmother's silver as a housewarming present and I thanked them by making breakfast when they both had the morning off this week. Inspired by a Bon Appetit recipe, we ate these biscuits with pumpkin butter my mother found in the fridge behind leftovers.

Cultured Butter Biscuits

This recipe is super easy and produces an amazingly flaky biscuit. I love Bon App's recipe and the video included really helps with the technique described below! 

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 cup AP flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 TB white sugar
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup cultured butter, cold and cut into chunks (I, of course, use Vermont Creamery)
• 1 cup buttermilk, cold
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1/4 cup clover honey
• Pinch of black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450*F and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together all dry ingredients until well-mixed
3. Next, add your cultured butter and, using your hands, rub the fats into the flour mixture 
4. Create a well with a wooden spoon and, while slowly stirring, add your buttermilk
5. Knead in bowl and then pat into a rectangle on a floured work surface
6. Roll out to about an inch in thickness, then cut into quartered squares
7. Stack these quarters, press down and roll out again into another inch-thick rectangle (this will help to create layers of butter that would otherwise be missed by simply rolling out the first time)
8. Cut into 12 biscuits
9. Place these biscuits on your prepared sheet and freeze for ten minutes
10. While biscuits are freezing, melt your unsalted butter and mix in your honey 
11. Remove biscuits from freezer, brush on butter mixture and top with a sprinkle of black pepper, and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown

Pear and Beer Cake!

Happy New Year!

2017 is my year. I keep repeating it to anyone that will listen. I told it to myself in the mirror, trying to pat my cowlick down. I told it to the smoke that danced from a blown-out candle. I told it to my boyfriend as we held hands at the spa in my hometown of Bedford. I told it to my mother when she was doing dishes and to Milo when he was snoring on my shoulder while I answered emails.

I am ready to embrace this year. I hope it decides to embrace me back.

My resolutions are in invisible ink. Lemon juice on parchment that fades. A starburst behind my eyelids. I'll remember them, but they are a tetragrammaton I can't utter just yet. I am working on myself, on my food and my words. I am working on forgiveness, too. It's not at all easy, but I'm 25 and growing.

A year ago I moved back to Pennsylvania. A year ago, I stopped worrying about money and a career and the eternal sunshine of a coast I never fully understood. I made this cake to remember that time, to look back on who I was and how I have grown. I made a French cake, one from Dorie Greenspan, and spiked it with Yuengling and roughly chopped pears, so dull and brown and juicy in their diffidence. 

Pear and Beer Marie-Hélène Cake

This cake is a throwback to one of my oldest recipes I ever baked in California. It's Dorie Greenspan's Marie-Hélène apple cake and it is, in its original format, delicious. As I said, I wanted to honor last year's move home by tying in flavors of Pennsylvania with Pittsburgh's most famous beer, Yuengling. This cake is super moist, super easy, and honestly, one of my favorites (but that goes with anything Dorie does). Of course, feel free to omit the beer and sub in apples. Further, I made this in a compact, taller cake pan. If using a standard 8 or 9 inch pan, your baking time will be reduced by about 15 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cup AP flour
• 1 TB cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 pears, peeled, cored, and roughly chopped
• 3 TB beer
• 2 TB dark brown sugar
• 2 TB orange juice
• 1 TB orange zest
• 1/2 TB pure vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup white sugar
• 8 TB butter, melted and cooled
• Confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare your pan with butter, flour, and parchment paper
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt
3. In a separate bowl, stir pears, beer, brown sugar, juice, zest, and vanilla together, making sure to coat the pears evenly with the liquids
4. Finally, in your stand mixer (or a third bowl!), whisk together eggs until foamy, then continue whisking while you slowly pour in your cup of white sugar
5. Create a well in the center of your dry mixture, then, with a rubber spatula, slowly stir in the egg mixture. It will be a bit thick and very dry
6. Now, add your butter and the pear mixture, including the liquids in the bowl
7. Stir again with your rubber spatula
8. Pour into your prepared cake pan and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Check at one hour for doneness
9. Allow to cool completely before removing from pan
10. Dust with confectioner's sugar before serving

Breakfast Flammekueche

I can't seem to do much today except sit in bed and stretch. This is my first holiday season where I had things to do. As you probably saw on my instagram, there were holiday parties at my boyfriend's parents' house, Christmas at my sister's, and a spa day on the 26th. I'm sure everyone's is like this, so I'll keep this intro short and sweet.

I'm in a post-holiday ennui, wanting to do the bare minimum. My parents are in their North Carolina house and so I have nothing to do but make dinner and care for Milo and their cats. I decided to play around with a Alsatian dish called the flammekueche, or tarte flambee, and made it into a breakfast pizza; something that can sustain and warm and fill you up the way only the holidays can.

Breakfast Flammekueche

Ingredients:

• Dough for one pizza, whichever recipe you prefer
• 4 strips of bacon
• 1 medium-sized onion, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup creme fraiche (Vermont Creamery's is my go-to)
• 4 eggs
• Salt and pepper 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425*F and place rack on second-to-top position
2. While oven is preheating, place bacon in a skillet on medium-high heat and fry bacon until it is just beginning to crisp up (it will continue to fry in the oven as a topping)
3. Do not drain bacon fat, but instead place bacon on a paper-towel lined plate to drain and replace bacon with your onion
4. Cook on medium heat until just tender
5. Remove onions from skillet and put on plate with bacon
6. Roughly chop your bacon to small "lardons"
7. Now, quarter your dough into four sections and roll each out to a small disc on a floured work surface
8. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes or until discs are firm, yet pliable and not browned
9. Remove from oven and cool slightly before continuing
10. Now, assemble your flammekueche by spreading about 2 TB of creme fraiche per disc
11. Sprinkle on your onions and bacon, creating just a small divet in the center of your toppings to hold your egg in
12. Now, carefully crack your egg in the center of your discs and put back in oven to bake for about 6-8 minutes (6 minutes will give you a runnier egg)
13. Remove, serve immediately. These are not meant to be stored.

Tahini Buckeye Truffles

My sister and I are creating new traditions, facsimiles of who we were once. People used to think we were twins--same haircut, height, and mannerisms. We grew apart, became different people. Still are, but we found a way to communicate that is at once reminiscent and on another hand completely foreign to us both.

Two days ago, I was at her house and we baked dozens of cookies. The kind my father liked, the kind my mother liked. Last week, my parents went over to her house and my mother and sister made candies. I was not able to make it, prior commitments I sometimes force on myself to keep an arms length with my family. My mother brought me back cherry cordials and lemon-flavored hard candies. I snacked on one while she told me about her day and how beautiful my niece, Lana, was. 

It's one tradition that has lasted, making candies by hand as presents. I was in charge of buckeyes this year, the cyclopean truffle that is just peanut butter and chocolate. I morphed it to my tastes, to who I am these days. Added some tahini and a little flaked sea salt. I'll bring them to her house on Sunday. And I'll smile, knowing the centrifugal force of holidays, how it all comes full circle and then falls into place. 

Tahini Buckeye Truffles

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup tahini (or 1 1/2 cup tahini, as a substitute of the TB)
• 3/4 cup peanut butter (or 1 1/2 cup PB, as a substitute of the tahini)
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 4 1/2 - 5 cups confectioner's sugar
• 8 oz milk chocolate, chopped
• 6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 TB sesame seed
• 1 teaspoon flaked sea salt

Directions:

1. First, prepare two pans with cooling racks for your truffles to rest on
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together your tahini, peanut butter, butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until well blended
3. One cup at a time, slowly pour in your confectioner's sugar with the mixer on its lowest setting. Add just enough sugar so that a crumbly dough forms
4. Roll out onto a work surface that is dusted with confectioner's sugar and knead a couple times to form a disc
5. Wrap disc in plastic wrap and allow to rest in the fridge for 15 minutes
6. When 10 minutes have elapsed, melt your chocolate either in a microwave or a double broiler (see author's note below)
7. Take disc out of the fridge and unwrap back on your sugar-dusted work surface
8. Pinch off about a 1/2 TB of the tahini mixture and roll in your hands to form a ball
9. Roll in your chocolate with a fork and allow to harden on the cooling rack
10. Sprinkle with a little sesame seed and salt
11. Repeat with remaining filling
12. Can be stored in a container for up to a week

Note: I gave two methods for melting chocolate here because I know people have their preferences (and their qualms). If using a double broiler, you're golden, but it may take a bit of time for the chocolate to melt, which is fine as the longer the dough stays in the fridge the better anyway. For the microwave option, only add 2/3 of the chocolate you are melting in the bowl and heat at 30-second increments, stirring between rounds. When that chocolate is melted, add your remaining 1/3 and stir vigorously to melt fully. This is a ghetto tempering trick I learned from Ina Garten.

Cioccolata calda: Or, Italian-style Hot Chocolate

In Italy, I drank a lot of tea. Too embarrassed to order the proper coffee and how many packets of sugar I used; I got mine from vending machines on campus anyway. I would nurse it while craning my neck to look at a fresco, taking notes, doodling in the margins when my teacher would switch to Italian. I did not know Italian. I never thought to learn before moving there.

Italy is a blur now, I remember it in fragments. In some ways, I can't remember much of anything except the cafeteria, the silent nuns who nodded their heads. The liturgical smell of the monastery that was a mix between parchment and antiseptic solution. I remember the art in vague metaphors of form and color. I think I cried seeing the David, but it could have been an eyelash. My contacts were old that day too, I do remember that.

October was a blur. I took trips to Belgium, Ireland, Spain, and Tunisia. I didn't bother to answer my phone when my mother called to wish me a happy birthday. I ended an email to a professor with "Besos". I was not myself, but I was a lot of things. I ate with my hands, standing up, quickly with my head down. I smoked a joint on a statue with two friends and fell asleep in the cab home. I didn't get the hang of it all, but I thought I did.

By November of that year, I started to figure out how to order coffee, the rules and rituals of calling Rome my home. We had a fake Thanksgiving and then Christmas rolled in lazily. Marketplaces and stands selling witches and baubles. I bought nothing but a ticket to the carousel and the icy air turned my cheeks red and dry during finals week.

It's six years ago today since I left for a flight to JFK. The morning before my bus left, I ordered a hot chocolate. Something to keep my hands busy and warm, as impatient as they were back then. The drink was thick, nearly a pudding, its silken warmth coating my throat. It was spiked with an alcohol I never quite tasted again but it hung on my tongue like a whispered prayer.

And this is my approximation, with Reddi-wip and chocolate sprinkles and smooth peanut butter. Made on the stovetop in a saucepan I found at a Texas flea market. It all comes full circle, it just took a few years and a few thousand miles to get there.

Italian-style Hot Chocolate!

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• ½ cup white sugar
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• ½ cup almond milk
• 2 TB cornstarch
• 2 TB whole milk or water
• 6 oz milk chocolate, best quality you can afford, chopped
• 2 TB smooth peanut butter
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• ½ TB almond liqueur
• Whipped cream, marshmallows, and sprinkles, if desire

Directions:

1. In a saucepan, whisk together cocoa, sugar, cream, and milk
2. Heat on medium until sugar is dissolved, but making sure to stir frequently so the cocoa doesn’t clump
3. While the saucepan is heating, in a small bowl, mix together cornstarch and milk to create a slurry
4. Next, heat your cream mixture until bubbles form around the rim, then immediately take off heat and stir in your slurry, chocolate, peanut butter
5. Continue to stir with a wooden spoon or spatula until everything is well-mixed
6. Finally, stir in extract and liqueur
7. Now, if you feel your chocolate was a bit clumpy, you didn’t stir enough, or your slurry did not fully incorporate into your mixture, I recommend running your entire mixture through a sieve to make it extra silken
8. Serve immediately, top as desired. This recipe doesn’t not store wel