Death by Easter Bunny

I haven't posted any recipes recently. That would be because I haven't made anything lately. Easter wiped me out.

When I was little, Easter was a big cooking holiday in my family. My mother and grandmother would make pierogi and yeast breads from scratch. The last time they did this, I was in high school. Grandma was the supervisor, Mom was the detail work, and I was the manual labor. We made all the food in my grandmother's kitchen instead of my mother's, even though Mom's kitchen was three times the size and right around the corner.

Once I went off to college, Mom was too busy and Grandma was too frail. We've spent the last 15 years patronizing either the Polish deli Mom found a couple of towns over or pierogi.com. Both are good, but just not homemade. Most importantly, they weren't our recipes - the potato pierogi were okay, but the cheese pierogi were just never right.

I've been agitating for a return to the tradition pretty much ever since. Mom and I had plans to make everything last year, but I ended up in the hospital (viral pneumonia + 7 months pregnant = no fun at all) so no go. Finally, this year, we did it.

The pierogi got a little out of hand and we ended up with just over 15 dozen. But oh, are they good. I wound up making the yeast breads almost entirely myself (as Mom forgot to tell me ahead of time that she and Dad had dinner plans Saturday night). The cinnamon and poppy seeds rolls were both gooey and uncooked in the middle, but the Easter bunnies came out perfectly. And I didn't overknead as much as my mother always does. (Even she'll admit that she's a rampant overkneader.)

But the most important thing was, my grandmother approved of our end result.

Tea Cake

This recipe is brought to you by the good folks at Bigelow.

5 "Constant Comment" teabags
1/2 cup milk
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 2/3 cup flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350˚. Scald the milk in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and add teabags, making sure they're submerged. Set aside to cool. Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs. Squeeze and remove the teabags and add milk to butter mixture. Combine flour and baking powder, gradually add to wet ingredients, and mix until blended. Pour into a greased, 9" round pan and bake for 35 minutes until the center springs back.

Verdict: weird but tasty. It also turned out to be a lot more like quickbread than like cake.

Tiramisu

I'm not a big fan of coffee. I like the taste but I can't stand the aftertaste, so I'm only willing to drink peaberry. And I really don't like coffee-flavored things.

The Committee, on the other hand, is a coffee fiend. So when my mother served us a Nilla wafer-pudding-Cool Whip abomination that she was trying to pass off as tiramisu, I promised to try my hand at the real thing.

(Tangent: My mother is a good cook. She appreciates fine dining far more than I did as a kid or my father does even now - I remember being very disappointed when the macaroni & cheese she said was for dinner turned out to be tagliatelle alla puttanesca. But not only does she cook less now, but her food snobbery seems to be waning. As mine is increasing pratically by the minute, this puts us at odds. I won't go into my reaction to the "tiramisu;" suffice it to say it was not particularly becoming.)


Ladyfingers:

3 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt

Separate the eggs. Beat yolks, sugar, and vanilla for about 4 minutes until pale and thick; it's important to beat long enough. Add flour and beat until combined. Add salt to the egg whites and beat until stiff. Fold whites into yolk mixture. Using a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch plain tip, pipe 4-inch lengths onto greased and floured cookie sheets. Bake at 325˚ for 15-18 minutes, until light and golden all over. Makes about 24.

(I have a pasty bag but couldn't find non-decorating tips so I had to improvise. The cookies came out flat and spongy, which worked for the tiramisu but not really like ladyfingers you'd buy at the store.)


Tiramisu:

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup white sugar
2/3 cup milk
1.25 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
16 ounces mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup espresso, room temperature
ladyfingers
unsweetened cocoa powder

Beat together yolks and sugar in a saucepan; add milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture boils. Let boil gently for 1 minute, then remove from heat and chill for 1 hour. Beat with mascarpone until smooth. Whip cream and vanilla.

Line bottom of dish (original recipe calls for 7x11; I used 8x8) with half the ladyfingers; sprinkle with half the coffee. Spread half the mascarpone mixture over it, then half the whipped cream. Repeat the layers and finish with sifted cocoa powder. Cover and refrigerate at least 24 hours.

(The original recipe also calls for a couple of tablespoons of rum mixed with the coffee, which I didn't use. I might try a splash a Kahlúa next time, though. And there will be a next time. This was really good.)

Angel Food Cake

I've never been wild about angel food cake. But it's one of the "Basic Master Recipes" in The Fannie Farmer Baking Book that my father-in-law gave me for Christmas, so I decided to give it a try. It's fantastic - so much better than any store-bought angel food cake I've ever had. It turned out a little bit denser and sweeter than I expected, but I'm okay with that.

1 cup cake flour
1.5 cups sugar
13 egg whites
1.5 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

Adjust oven rack so it's in the bottom third of the oven. Preheat to 375˚. Sift the flour and 3/4 cup sugar together three times. (I kept ending up with sugar crystals that were too big to go through my sifter.) Beat the eggs whites for a minute, until they're foamy. Add the cream of tartar, vanilla, and salt. Slowly work back up to medium speed, then very gradually add the other 3/4 cup sugar. Stop and scrape down the bowl when all the sugar has been added, then beat on medium until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Fold in the dry mixture. Pour into ungreased 10-inch tube pan and bake for 30-45 minutes. Cake is done when a tester comes out clean and the cake springs back when touched. Cool inverted until the pan is no longer warm.

The book recommended "White Mountain Frosting" to go with the cake. I wouldn't have thought to frost angel food cake and I have no experience with boiled frosting, but I tried it. Really, really didn't like it. It's entirely possible that I boiled the sugar syrup too long or beat the whole thing too much (or both), but the result was oddly marshmallowy. I ended up scraping as much of it off the cake as I could.

Strawberry Pie

The 7-month strawberry season is one of the absolute best things about living in Florida. This afternoon, I bought my berries from an old guy with no teeth selling out of his van by the side of the road.

This was also my first attempt at homemade piecrust. I think it turned out quite well. The crust was a tad underdone (my oven and I don't have the greatest relationship and I get skittish when baking delicate things). It was also thin in spots, probably because I was using a 9-inch recipe in a 9.5-inch pie pan. But the end result was entirely respectable.

For the crust:
1.5 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
3-5 tbs cold water

Mix the flour and salt together, then cut in the shortening with a pastry blender. Add the water a tablespoon at a time until the dough holds together when pressed. Shape into a 1-inch thick disk. Roll out on a floured surface until 1/8-inch thick and about 2 inches wider in diameter than the mouth of the pie pan. Press into pie pan, trim and crimp the overhanging edges, prick all over with a fork, line with foil and fill with dry rice. (All my baking books talk about "pie weights" but I've not yet been able to prove the existence of any such thing.) Bake at 425 degrees for 4 minutes, remove the foil (and weighty material), and bake for another 8-12 minutes until dry and light brown. I think I baked mine for the full 10 minutes and it was still underdone, but I already mentioned my ongoing feud with the oven.

For the filling:
2 pints strawberries
3 tbs cornstarch
1 cup sugar
2 tbs lemon juice

Clean, hull, and halve the strawberries. Mash half of them and mix with the cornstarch, sugar, and lemon juice in a saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thickened and translucent. (I took the "low heat" recommendation a little too seriously and my berries did absolutely nothing for about 20 minutes. Once I turned the heat up a bit it came along fine.) Let it cool a bit, then stir in the rest of the strawberries and pour into the baked crust.

For the topping:
1 cup whipping cream
2 tbs powdered sugar

Whip the cream and sugar together and spread over the pie. Refrigerate the finished pie when not serving.

Yay, pie!