Olive and Herb Focaccia

Every time we see the bottle of coarse sea salt in the cabinet we think of making this great, easy focaccia from The Weekend Baker. It takes a bit of time, but most of that is just letting the dough rise and having yourself a cocktail in the meantime.

3 1/3 c flour
1 tbsp minced fresh thyme
2 1/4 tsp (1 packet) instant yeast
2 tsp table salt
1 tsp sugar
1 1/4 c warm water (115-125 degrees will activate the yeast, but we didn't actually measure the temp)
1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for brushing the dough

For the topping:
20 pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp chopped thyme
1 tsp coarse salt (note: this coupled with the olives make the bread pretty salty, so feel free to cut back on this and just sprinkle a bit on top)

Whisk together the flour, thyme, yeast, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Drizzle the water and olive oil over the dry mix. If you have a stand mixer, fit it with a dough hook and mix until all the flour is incorporated and the dough is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the bowl (about 8 minutes); if you don't, mix with a wooden spoon until a rough, shaggy dough forms and then knead for about 10 minutes.


Shape the dough into a ball. Lightly oil the bowl and put the dough back in it, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

Put dough on a lightly greased cookie sheet and press down gently to deflate. Shape the dough into an oval about 3/4 inch thick (about 10 inches long and 7 inches wide). Lightly brush with olive oil and loosely cover the surface with plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm spot for another 20 minutes, until it has puffed and almost doubled.

Heat oven to 425 and remove the plastic from the dough. Lightly coat fingers with flour and press down into dough (but not through) until you touch the bottom, until you have about 2 dozen dimples. Scatter the olives all over the surface, pressing them into the dimples. Really make sure they're in the little holes, or they'll fall off when the bread is baked. Drizzle with 1 1/2 tbsp of olive oil and sprinkle with thyme and coarse salt.


Bake until top of focaccia is browned, 20-25 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and transfer bread to a rack. Drizzle remaining olive oil. Serve warm.

Ring Ring Ring: Banana Cake!

This banana cake is a birthday favorite, and we'll go as far as to say that it's the best banana cake we know of. In fact, after a different recipe yielded dense, banana bread-like layers, Bake's roommate was compelled to try this one to make up some baking karma (with Bake as an attentive sous-chef).

Check out his commentary (under the pseudonym Aunt Betty) and the recipe (from The Weekend Baker) below, plus a -- er, different -- take on the experience here.

I have to say, my friends and family just simply LOVE bananas! In fact, you could even say that they go BANANAS for them!! Now, I’ve always been somewhat of a banana purist myself. The thought of defiling a beautiful banana with any unnecessary additions seems like a sin against deliciousness. A banana split? I’ll take mine minus the split, thank you very much. So, as you can imagine, I was somewhat skeptical when one of my dearest girlfriends Martha told me I had to try banana cake. If it had been anyone other than her, I would have thanked them kindly, and then gone home and permanently removed them from my Christmas card list for ever suggesting such a culinary abortion. But this was Martha, and she has always had exquisite taste (she was the one, after all, that turned me onto Mary Higgins Clark) – so I thought I might as well give it a shot.

My first attempt at banana cake was a disaster, and I should have expected as much. It was doomed from the start, as I mistakenly decided to employ the use of Satan’s instrument – the internet. Now Pastor Mike has repeatedly reassured me that the internet is not only for the homosexuals and Presbyterians, so I have made it one of my New Years resolutions to start using it more (along with losing a couple pounds in my mid section and trying to stop giggling at church). I searched online for a recipe that looked appetizing, and found a seemingly good one on the Food Network website. The recipe was one of Paula Deen's, and though I firmly believe that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all – I have to say that this recipe was just the worst! I don’t know why I was surprised. That woman’s love of mayonnaise errs on the side of inappropriate. The cake was hard and chewy, and simply not bananany enough. After one bite, I threw the whole cake in the trash can. You should have seen the looks on my children’s faces. They really shouldn’t have been surprised though - I demand perfection from them as I do myself. Why, I would have done the same thing if they brought home a report card that was any less than straight A+’s – right in the trashcan it would go.

I immediately rang Martha, and in the nicest tone possible suggested that she was going straight to hell for wasting my time with such a terrible suggestion. Yearning to redeem herself, she said she would drop off the recipe she used post haste. One for forgiveness, I decided to give both Martha, and banana cake a second chance. The next morning, she dropped off a cookbook called “The Weekend Baker,” by Abigail Johnson Dodge. Although I found the pictures in the book to be garish and a bit flashy for my liking, Johnson Dodge’s anecdotes about her husband and children warmed me up. I found the book marked recipe and for banana cake, and banana cake – take two – was under way!!

The recipe was – well – a PIECE OF CAKE to follow!! And a lot of fun too! One fun suggestion Johnson Dodge recommends is using sour cream in her vanilla frosting instead of cream cheese to give it a tangy zing. And tangy it was! Well played Abigail! One little addition I would like to recommend is to thinly slicing a banana after frosting the cake, and use the slices to decorate the top. I put rings of banana in concentric circles on top, and it was just simply adorable. It’s the little things like this that make my husband love me.

In the end, I was glad I was strong-armed into making a banana cake. It was a huge hit – fluffy and moist and packed full of flavor. Martha sure may be on to something, and I look forward to defiling more healthy snacks by covering them with sugar and butter. Chocolate covered strawberries, here I come!!

Banana layer cake
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda

16 tbsp butter, at room temperature

1 3/4 c sugar

3 medium, very ripe bananas, peeled

2 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

1/2 c buttermilk

3/4 c chopped, toasted walnuts (we didn't use these, but they're optional)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour two round cake pans. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.

In a large bowl, beat the butter until smooth, then add the sugar and beat until combined. Add the bananas - no need to chop - and vanilla and beat until blended and only small bits of banana remain. Add the eggs two at a time, beating after each addition. Here is where the difference between blended and just blended seems important, probably to keep the cake from getting gluten-y: Add half the above flour mixture and mix until just blended. Add buttermilk and mix until blended, then add the rest of the flour mixture and mix until just blended. Stir in those walnuts now, if you're so inclined.

Pour into pans evenly and bake about 30 min, until the tops are light brown. Let them cool in the pans on racks, then out of the pans on racks. Make your frosting (below)

Brush away loose crumbs from the layers and place one on a serving plate. Cover with about one cup of frosting, then place the other layer on top of it, flat/bottom side up. Make sure the sides are lined up and press down gently on the top. This makes it look much much better than that rounded mound of cake we all learned to frost as kids. If you do the presentation well here, it makes you think that you just might be able to start a job with Duff of Ace of Cakes.

Tangy vanilla frosting
16 tbsp butter, at room temperature

3 c confectioners sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 c sour cream

Beat the butter until smooth and creamy, then add the sugar, vanilla, and salt and beat until very smooth and creamy. Add the sour cream and gently stir with a spatula until blended.

We used the vanilla frosting, but this fudgy frosting is especially fantastic, so we'll include this alternative too.

Fudgy frosting
6 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1 1/3 c sugar

1 c evaporated milk

6 tbsp butter, cut into 2 pieces

1 tbsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or microwave. Meanwhile, combine everything else in a blender. When the chocolate is melted, remove it from heat, stir, and scrape into the blender Blend until the mixture is very thick (not pourable), about 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and let cool, then frost the cake as above.

Kick-Off Sunday

Flash floods, tropical humidity, and air-conditioning -- that's right, Fall has begun. We'd taken the summer off from baking and drinking -- well, just baking -- and so we decided to start off with a few very seasonal selections. But like the weather, we ended up with a little more Summer than Fall. In fact, we didn't even bake.

Instead we went with a Stovetop Apple Cranberry Crumble, from The Weekend Baker by Abigail Johnson Dodge, everyone's favorite Connecticut homemaker. You'll see more from this book in future posts, since it's the one with which we first started off teaching ourselves how to bake. Here's what Abby Dodge promises in the book:

Nice, eh?

Well, we took a few liberties with ours, outlined below.

Filling:
3 tbs butter
5 apples (aprox. 2 lbs), peeled, cored, and thinly sliced - We used Golden Delicious, but any medium-tart apple will work
3/4 c cranberries (Abby calls for frozen or fresh. We couldn't find any of either in our outer borough, so we improvised with the Craisins in our cupboard)
1/2 c light brown sugar
3 tbsp flour
1tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (we grated our own from whole nuts)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Melt butter in 10- to 11-inch skillet. In a bowl, combine apples, cranberries, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then add to butter. Add vanilla and salt to the skillet mixture and toss until well blended. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring until the sugar is melted and the apples begin to carmelize (about 5 min). Cover and reduce heat to low, simmering for aprox. 12 min, until the apples are tender.

Meanwhile, make the topping:

3 tbs butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 c crunchy granola
3 tbsp maple syrup

Again, melt the butter in a separate skillet over medium heat. Then stir in cinnamon and add granola. Cook, stirring constantly, until granola is hot and evenly coated. You may taste here and see if it needs more cinnamon. Drizzle maple syrup over granola and stir until well blended, about 2 min. Keep warm until the filling is ready.

Uncover the filling pan and check the apples for tenderness. If they've released more than a cup of juice, turn up the heat and boil some of it off. Remove from heat and scatter topping on the filling.

Not that different from the book, really.

Can be served hot, warm, or room temperature. We ate it with vanilla bean ice cream, and we're looking forward to tossing some vanilla soy milk on top tomorrow morning for breakfast. The craisins made this a bit sweeter than it would be otherwise, though not too sweet, and rather sticky, but they turned out to be a surprisingly good alternative to real cranberries.

What are those drinks behind the plates? Funny you should ask...

We had been thinking of a hot drink like a toddy but settled on two that were cold but definitely fit with the Crumble. Bull's Milk and its Variation, both from the fantastic online Cocktail Database (try their Mixilator). Don't worry, Bull's Milk has nothing to do with Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Both of these recipes are pretty simple, but you get some unusual brandy drinks out of them. Usually we use E&J VS brandy for most drinks. It tastes fine on its own and definitely when mixed (though nothing can fix a Stinger). But this time we tried ABK6 VS cognac.

Bull's Milk
2oz brandy
2oz milk
1/4 tsp sugar (superfine -- aka "bar sugar" -- is best, but if you only have regular sugar then dissolve it in some warm water first)

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled glass. Grate some fresh nutmeg on top. We garnished with a cinnamon stick.


How'd it taste? Well... basically like brandy and milk together. There is such little sugar and the nutmeg comes in so late that it's not all that complex or even sweet. We thought it was okay, but then we tried the variation.

Bull's Milk Variation
1oz light rum
1 1/2 oz brandy
1/2 tsp sugar
6oz milk

Shake with ice and strain into a tall glass. Grate nutmeg and cinnamon on top.


There we go. An alcoholic milkshake that can hold its own again the Brandy Alexander. The added milk and sugar help this drink along, and the rum cuts down on the cognac so that it's not so overwhelming. We could even imagine heating it up and trying it a few weeks from now when the weather catches up and Fall finally comes.