For obvious reasons, all of the magic of Santa Claus never really caught on, and, although my incremental presents trickled in steadily during the week of Hannukah, I never got to experience a true Christmas morning: waking up to a living room’s worth of presents; drinking cocoa with my normal, gentile family; spreading joy and merriment while Jews like me were opening the newspaper to check the movie listings and pulling out the Chinese takeout menus. I never knew for sure, but it seemed that Christmas was about as good as it could get. And what I did know firsthand was that Hannukah Night 4: The socks edition left something to be desired.

But, while the Christmas morning festivities were largely out of reach, what I did have, in addition to all of those new socks, was royal icing. And chocolate peppermint thumbprints, gingerbread trees, and pecan sandies.  Now that I’m older, I realize that sugar and butter trump Christmas-y things like caroling and spending time with the extended family - both products more of nostalgia than intrinsic gratification. But even as a wee, kinky-haired child, I knew that Christmas wasn’t all bad if I got some cookies out of the deal.

My primary Christmas cookie complaint was that I was never actually part of the December-time army of cookie-makers. While my friends were gorging themselves on dough scraps and stealthy swipes at the frosting bowl, my family was divvying up the small tin of treats that the occasional neighbor had left on our doorstep. But still - what joy resided in that little tin! The four of us, disenchanted by so many misdirected “Merry Christmases,” would spin the dreidel a few times for posterity’s sake, and then descend upon our goyische gifts of cookies.

Although I haven’t given up my holiday-time obsession with cookies, I have come to realize that Christmas cookies need not be a Christians-only affair. In fact, I’ve adopted my own tradition of holiday baking.  Over the years I have outgrown the December envy of my Christian friends, and have even been known to gloat in the relative stress-lessness of my post-Thanksgiving routine, but I’ll jump at any opportunity to spend a chilly afternoon making dozens of cookies. From my outsider’s perspective, making and distributing homemade cookies is one of the modern Christmas institutions that I fully appreciate. I can’t say I’ll ever comprehend the allure of listening to Christmas music for hours on end, but once my oven is preheating, I’m sure to be in some kind of holiday spirit.

Being a dedicated Jewish Christmas cookie-baker even comes with a few perks, namely the freedom in choosing recipes that comes with having no real cookie traditions to uphold. While most cookie connoisseurs have a few varieties that define their Christmas experience, I am unattached. I’ll admit that I find it difficult to resist the classic Christmas cookie, with hints of spice or lemon perfuming the dough and crackly shards of royal icing topping it all off, but the world of cookies is too vast for me to stick to the basics.

Come December, I’ll often find myself absorbed in the annals of the vast online cookie-recipe repository, unthinkingly forming lists of to-makes that would make even the most church-going of housewives cringe. This year, my ingredient list didn’t stop at ginger, chocolate, and peppermint, but included tahini, Chinese 5-spice powder, rosewater, sambuca, cardamom, and crushed Earl Grey tea leaves. Now, if I didn’t truly love spending my time dreaming and baking up delicious holiday cookies, I probably wouldn’t make such a fuss about them. After all, I’m under no obligation to do the whole Christmas cookie thing in the first place. But no matter - I have yet to hear a complaint from my cookie recipients, and truth be told, I get this odd sense of spreading joy and merriment when I bake them that almost makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Almost.

I like to make Christmas cookies that aren’t so traditional. Since people are generally overloaded with decadent, sweet things during this time of year, I like to add some whole-wheat flour and include at least a few varieties that are a little lighter on the sugar and the butter than most. Biscotti, like the ones below, are always a great gift - they keep forever (you can bake them a week or two in advance), and they are perfect dunked in coffee, tea, cocoa, or any other winter libation. If you don’t like the licorice flavor of sambuca, substitute Frangelico, amaretto, brandy, or coffee.

Hazelnut, Fig, and Sambuca biscotti

2.5 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. chopped dried figs
~1/4 c. sambuca
1 c. toasted, skinned hazelnuts
3 eggs

In a small bowl, mix chopped figs with sambuca and allow to soak while you prepare the other ingredients.

To skin the hazelnuts, first preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Spread nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet, and toast in the oven until fragrant, about 10-12 minutes. Check the nuts to make sure they don’t burn. As soon as you remove them from the oven, place them on a clean kitchen towel, and make a pouch with the towel. Rub the hazelnuts with the towel to loosen their skins. Reserve the skinned hazelnuts and allow to cool. Turn up the oven temperature to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and soda. Stir to combine. Add hazelnuts and distribute evenly through the flour mixture. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the eggs. Stir the dough almost until combined, then add the fig and sambuca mixture. Continue to mix with a fork or spoon until dough holds together. Add an extra tablespoon or two of liqueur if the dough is too crumbly to hold together.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and divide the biscotti dough in half. Form each half into a log about 12 inches long, and place the two logs on the parchment paper. Pat each log down slightly. Bake the logs until firm and beginning to turn golden, about 25-30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Allow cookies to cool for about 10-15 minutes before proceeding.

To form the biscotti, slice each log crosswise into ½-inch slices. Lay the slices flat on the baking sheet, forming a single layer. You may need to use an additional baking sheet to fit all of the biscotti. Place the sliced biscotti in the oven for their second baking, and bake until the biscotti are slightly golden and a bit crunchy, about 10 minutes per side (flip the biscotti after the first 10 minutes, then bake for another 10). Biscotti keep, in an airtight container, for several weeks.

However, while there’s nothing I’d rather be doing on a day off than cooking great food in a house full of people, I’m still trying my best to avoid any extra holiday stress. The kind of stress that comes from Grandpa hating Brussels sprouts, and What’s-her-name’s not eating anything with butter, and that hippie cousin’s insistence on strict veganism, etc., etc.

But then again, isn’t that what cooking for a crowd is all about? While I’ve gotten flustered by dueling dietary restrictions before, I’ve recently come to realize that there’s no use crying over spilt (soy) milk. When you sign up to cook for a crowd, you sign up to cook for all of their idiosyncrasies, intolerances, and allergies. It may be challenging - even stressful - but in the end it is truly worth it, no matter how much of a royal pain in the butt it is to roll out that Earth Balance “buttery” pie crust.

This year, I’ve given some extra thought to my menu planning, because my sister was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease. No bread stuffing, no dinner rolls, and no pie crust. Now, since I’m not one to go the traditional route in the kitchen, this would not ordinarily present much of a challenge. But if there is one day of the year on which I tend towards traditional, and one day of the year on which it seems extra important to cook food that everyone can enjoy and share, it’s Thanksgiving. So, back to that stress question. From the get-go, I haven’t been too flustered over the dinner rolls (who really needs them?) or the stuffing (as the saying goes, there’s more than one way to stuff a turkey), but it’s the gluten-free pumpkin pie that I want to talk about.

For ordinary dinner affairs, I have several desserts at the tip of my whisk that are completely, and naturally gluten-free: ice cream, panna cotta, flourless chocolate cake - need I say more? But there is something about having Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie that just seems downright wrong - kind of like making bacon-wrapped scallops for a Hannukah party. You can do it, but you’re going to feel dirty afterwards. I toyed with the idea of making a gluten-free pie crust for the big day, but since I’m cooking at someone else’s house, I didn’t know if I’d have the time, the ingredients, or the expertise to execute it deliciously enough for the Celiacs and non-Celiacs at the table. (Surely my sister wasn’t planning on eating the whole pie by herself, or was she?).

So that’s where the cookies come in. Gluten-free, fresh from the grocery store cookies that, mixed with a bit of butter, make a mighty fine pie crust. I don’t usually include packaged items on my holiday grocery list, but there are some pretty high-quality products on grocery store shelves these days. Especially when it comes to special diets. So, if you, like me, are hoping to please all of your guests without having to sacrifice your sanity this Thanksgiving, go ahead. Step away from the rolling pin, it’ll be OK.

Although the recipe below is specifically gluten-free, I think the principle of finding balance between making a delicious, homemade meal to please all of your guests and taking a few shortcuts applies universally. Be open to the possibility that a few (high-quality) store-bought items here and there will make your life easier, but don’t forget that a little creativity and careful recipe selection can go a long way. Now that special diets are such a fixture of the modern food scene, there are unbelievable resources in the form of books, magazines, and websites that can help make Thanksgiving delicious and stress-free for everyone - frenzied cooks included.

Before diving into the recipe, a few notes: I made this pie crust with Ian’s cinnamon-flavored Cookie Buttons. You should use any type of crunchy, gluten-free ginger or spice cookie that you can find in your local grocery store, but be sure to taste it first. I’ve provided a simple recipe for the filling here, but this would work with any pumpkin pie filling recipe. Just note that since most of the cookies you’ll find are quite sweet, you might want to tone down the sugar a tad. And finally, this recipe is for a tart, instead of a classic pie. Since the structure of the gluten-free crust will be rather delicate, a regular pie dish might result in some less-than-lovely slices. The tart option seems to work quite well from an aesthetic perspective.

Gluten-free, stress-free pumpkin tart

Crust

6-8 oz. (about 1 package) crunchy, gluten-free cookies (gingersnaps, grahams, spice cookies, etc.)
2 tbs. butter, melted
1 egg white

Filling

1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin puree
3 oz. Neufchatel or cream cheese
1 egg
½ c. brown sugar
1 tbs. bourbon
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
¼ tsp. ground cloves
Pinch each nutmeg and allspice
Pinch sea salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare crust: place cookies in bowl of a food processor and process until you get fine crumbs. Pour in melted butter and egg white and process until combined. Press crust into a greased 9 or 10-inch tart pan with removable bottom. Crust will not come all the way up the sides; that’s OK. Bake the empty tart shell in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until it feels dry, but still soft to the touch. Turn down oven to 325F. Prepare the filling: Place all filling ingredients in the bowl of the food processor and process until very smooth. Pour filling into par-baked crust and bake tart in the oven for 35-45 minutes, until set and just starting to brown on top. Cool fully or refrigerate before serving with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Yes, now that I’m a grown-up (job: check, bills: check, inexplicable desire to go to bed before 11pm: check), I’m done with all of that kid stuff. My preferred pizza is blistered, irregularly-shaped, and topped sparingly with heirloom tomatoes and farm-fresh cheese, I’ve managed to swap out French fries for oven-roasted fingerlings, and chicken fingers haven’t seen the inside of my freezer since the year I dressed up as Scary Spice for Halloween.

But sometimes, eating grown-up food - like paying rent and going to bed before 11pm - just isn’t that cool. I find this to be particularly true when it comes to dessert. Now, I like soufflés and ganache just as much as the next hedonistic yuppie, but honestly, sometimes sweets are just best simple. Chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and ice cream sundaes with hot fudge all bring to mind one immortal word: gimme.

My approach to this kind of kid food is to put aside pretense and give in. Sometimes, I don’t want a stupid olive oil cake with poached quince compote. I want some freaking chocolate ice cream, and I want it now. But there is a middle ground, which comes in handy when I’m doing something “grown-up” like throwing a dinner party or having the neighbors over for dessert. Enter booze: perhaps the best thing to ever happen to grown-up desserts (if not to grown-ups, period).

Booze serves two purposes when it comes to cooking: it places food securely on the grown-up side of things, and it makes it really, really good. Take bourbon, for example. It complements chocolate, vanilla, and almost everything in between. Homemade vanilla ice cream with a good glug of bourbon stirred into the custard will be an absolute show-stopper at any dinner party, I assure you. And if homemade ice cream seems scary, why not just pour a shot of the stuff over a scoop of your favorite super-premium brand? If you are really feeling decadent, try a grown-up brownie sundae: homemade brownies made with a dash of bourbon or amaretto, and a hefty scoop of boozy, homemade ice cream on top.

For fruity desserts, grand marnier, calvados, and Poire Williams are quite lovely to enhance flavor. And don’t forget rum, whiskey, and brandy. Put booze in cakes, frostings, custards, puddings - seriously, you can’t go wrong.

If you’re feeling a little skittish about vamping up the comforting treats of your childhood, though, start with the recipe below. It’s a favorite of mine that turns a classic s’more into something truly sophisticated. Serve it to guests, serve it to your in-laws, or hell, just whip some up and eat it in bed before passing out at 10pm on a Wednesday. Nobody will stop you. You’re a grown-up, after all.

Coffee-Frangelico S’mores

10-15 graham crackers, store-bought or homemade

20 marshmallows, store-bought or homemade

6 oz. good-quality semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces (45-70% cacao, depending on how sophisticated you’re feeling)

1 c. coffee, cooled

½ c. frangelico, amaretto, or other liqueur

Cooking spray

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease 4-6 ramekins with cooking spray (or use one medium casserole dish). Mix coffee and liqueur in a wide, shallow bowl. Break graham crackers into pieces that are roughly the size of your ramekins, and cut marshmallows crosswise into thin slabs. Dunk a few graham crackers into the coffee mixture, and layer them into the bottoms of the ramekins. Top with a few slices of marshmallow, and then with a few chunks of chocolate. Continue layering grahams, marshmallow, and chocolate until ramekins are filled the desired amount, making sure to end with a marshmallow layer. Place ramekins into the oven and bake for about 10 minutes, until everything is melty. Turn on broiler and broil the s’mores just until tops are golden brown and bubbly. Serve immediately, perhaps with a scoop of ice cream on top, or a dram of whisky alongside.

photo by David Creswell

There are lots of things I love about being a pastry chef: working with my hands, not working in an office, the nutty personalities that kitchens attract, making people (hopefully) happy. But lets face it, I’m not saving lives–not even close. My job affords me few opportunities to actually feel like I’m helping people or improving the world. So, when I was asked to be a judge for Fierce and Sweet, the first annual bake off to benefit New York Cares, a fantastic organization that mobilizes volunteers to meet community needs, I was was more than thrilled to accept.

This past Sunday, I made my way over to  Williamsburg, where 20 bakers–pros, hobbyists and business owners alike–set up shop in East River Bar’s side yard, hoping to impress us four judges with their sweets, their stories and their presentation. With the recent demise of Gourmet magazine and the seemingly endless popularity of non-chef-centric food magazines that aren’t even foodie-centric, along with the rise of in-your-face “food” television that’s more about loud voices and cartoon-ish faces than food (Top Chef and No Reservations blessedly aside), I admit to having some minor trepidations about what these contestants would bring to the table. But after tasting every single baked good (no small feat, I assure you), I was duly impressed and relieved that so many folks clearly still love to bake from scratch, put their creative food brains to good use and really think about what they make and how they make it. Score one for real every day food. Here are few highlights:

Alison Robicelli brought us Chicken and Waffle Cupcakes, a waffle-inspired cupcake topped with butter cream and a healthy nugget of fried chicken that had been dipped in maple syrup. My first thought was genius! Someone decided that bacon was not the only meat that could find it’s way to the dessert table. My second thought was, but wait, how long has that fried nugget been sitting out in the sun? Had the chicken been fried to order, an impossibility at this event, my excitement would not have wavered.  Still, after hearing Alison explain that she and her husband introduce a brand new cupcake every week or two at their shop, I was impressed–that’s a lot of cupcake ideas, and from the sound of it, a lot of good cupcake ideas. I left her table wishing I could have tried her pear and olive oil cake with blue cheese butter cream, port wine reduction and candied walnuts instead.

Blogger Raissa Nebie, stage name “Draculinaria,”  won our vote for The Most Surprising Ingredient with her use of pop rocks to top off her almond raspberry bars. It might have been nostalgia that won us over, but it was also her full commitment to her story. She was inspired by her obsession with True Blood (full disclosure: she is not the only one obsessed) and the pop rocks represented the feeling of euphoria that accompanies a bite.  She and the two women working her table coordinated their black and red outfits, complete with blood-stained neck bites.  She was clearly in it to win it–and she did. I would love to see her at every bake sale.

After trying 20 different sweet items, there was only one that had me wanting a second bite: Viviana Vitale’s alfajores, a cookie that she had eaten growing up spending summers in Argentina. Unable to find satisfactory alfajores back in the states, she and her grandmother set out to come up with their own and we were lucky enough to have them at Fierce and Sweet. I loved most the shortbread-like cookies that almost dissolved in my mouth; they were sandwiched with dulce de leche and covered in a bittersweet chocolate that made it almost the perfect bite. I wish more people would get together with their grandmothers to get results like this.

I loved the heart-felt effort that clearly went into every bite, every display (among them a white, wooden sheep that held “coconut wool” cupcakes), and the ideas that people were willing to try out (dehydrated sweet potato cream, anyone?). While not every dish was as successful as others, I’m convinced that every entrant was. Hearing their stories, both personal and bake-sale-related, put me in very good company–the entrants and I share a love for feeding people, a most basic joy and one, on that day anyway, lent support to New York Cares.

So, the other day, when  a chef-friend and I decided to go to dinner after listening to legends Daniel Boulud, Pierre Gagnaire, and Grant Achetz talk about the restaurant industry at the Star Chefs Congress, we opted for a kind of food that neither of us gets to eat that often: Persian, and settled on the blandly decorated Ravagh Persian Grill. One look at the menu and we knew we wouldn’t be disappointed–not only was the large folder of options jam-packed, it was jam packed with all kinds of things I’d never heard of, a sure precursor to an invigorating meal. The sambuseh, fried dumplings, were crisp and hot with a rich, earthy filling of mashed chickpea, but it was the spicy/sour herbed chutney that came with them that I couldn’t get enough of. Ditto for the torshi, a small side dish of mixed, chopped pickles that I could have easily eaten all on its own. Neither my food-genius friend nor I could figure out the delicious, predominant spice that made it so distinctive. Add in the lamb kebobs, kashk badamjoon, and barberry and saffron rice that we ordered and we could barely fathom dessert.  We’ll at least look at the menu, we told our waiter. Surely there’d be something on it I’d never tried.

Which only made our disappointment that much greater. Our waiter handed us a small, postcard-sized, full-color, glossy booklet filled with industrially produced fancy “French” desserts: chocolate mousse encased with a striped sponge cake, hollowed out citrus halves filled with sorbet, all things that were manufactured in a factory somewhere, with lots of stabilizers and little love, which were then packaged up and sent who knows how far. This was it?

You don’t have any Persian desserts? we asked incredulously, trying not-so-hard to disguise our disappointment. It just didn’t make sense.

Well…, our waiter offered. We do have a few Persian desserts but we don’t put them on the menu because usually it’s only Persian people who want them.

Turns out they had three desserts and we decided on the one that sounded the “weirdest”: faloodeh, which our waiter described as rose water ice cream with rice noodles, fresh limes, and cherries.  How do you not order that? The ice cream was actually closer to finely shaved ice flavored with so much rose water that eaten alone, it was like a mouth full of frozen perfume. But we’d neglected its condiments: fresh lime wedges and soupy sour cherries. Once we tempered the rose water ice with the sour fresh juices from both the limes and the cherries it was another experience entirely: refreshing, complex, acidic, addictive. And as promised, thin, opaque rice noodles had been folded into the rose water ice, giving the dessert a pleasant, slightly chewy bite. But then, I’m a sucker for the texture of all rice products.  We finished it, and must have been so visibly happy to have “discovered” this gastronomic find, that our waiter then told us about another item that wasn’t on the menu either but that had us both drooling. And before we knew it, he set down yet another bowl of food in front of us, a gift. This time we were back to savory: a sheet of rice (the rice that gets stuck to the bottom of the pot during cooking, turning it sticky, crisp, and chewy all at the same time) smothered with a tangy lamb stew. It ended up being our favorite dish of the night (after the faloodeh). Turns out that sometimes it does pay to ask about dessert.

Lemon pound cakes make my husband happy and since they are easy to make (and because I love the way his eyes light up upon smelling one when he walks in the door) I make them more than any other treat or, puddings, as he calls desserts. I didn’t have lemons around once and instead used some limes and the result was just as delicious. So, here’s my favorite lemon (or lime) pound cake recipe, one I slightly adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cake Bible. The method may seem a bit counter intuitive at first (there’s no creaming of the butter and sugar at the beginning) but the result is a tender, delicious lemon pound cake.

1. Grease a loaf pan (approx. 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 3). Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In the bowl of and standing mixer, combine the flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking soda, and mix with the whisk attachment for 30 seconds to blend.
3. With a fork, mix together the eggs, milk, lemon zest and vanilla.
4. Add the softened butter to the dry ingredients and whisk on low speed for about 30 seconds. Add half the egg mixture to the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just incorporated, then increase speed to med-high and mix for one minute. Scrape down the sides.
5. Add the remaining egg mixture in two batches, mixing for 20 seconds each time and scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition.
6. Scrape batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted to the middle of the cake, about 55 minutes. I also recommend rotating the cake halfway through the bake time to ensure even baking.
7. Let cool for about 20 minutes.
8. Mix the lemon juice and 3 Tbsp of sugar.
9. Carefully unmold pound cake onto a plate. With a fork, poke holes into the top of the cake.
10. Brush (or spoon) the lemon syrup onto the cake. Don’t worry if it drips down the sides-that’s okay.
11. Transfer cake to a clean plate and cool completely.

My love affair with all things skyr grew, and I continued to have it every morning for breakfast. But skyr wasn’t the only object of my desire, I fell for all the dairy in Iceland, from butter to milk to cheese to ice cream–all of it tasted richer, better, than at home. Learning that hormones are prohibited and that pesticides are not used (the harsh climate makes them unnecessary) only encouraged my pro-dairy diet. Take into account the vast supply of clean, glacial water and unpolluted air (the country is virtually run on clean, geo-thermal energy) and how could I not ask for extra butter with my bread or order the local jöklais ice cream in Skaftafel?  I’m absolutely certain that the reason the cafe latte I had at Kaffitar in Rejkyavik blew me away so completely was the milk. And with 700 dairy farms, Iceland dairy products are almost always local.

I’m sure it was the butter that made the pastries so undeniably superior–that along with the influence the Danes have had on their bakery business.  The vinarbraud (or what the Danes call wienerbrød, which really means Vienna bread) was some of the lightest and flakiest I’ve had outside of Denmark, and was never tough or soggy or overly sweet (no syrup-y glazes), as is too often the case with mainstream pastry here in the U.S. It seemed that quality pastry, sweet and savory alike, could be found even at the gas stations, and that most larger towns had seriously good, proper bakeries. Sandholt in Reykjavik was one of my favorites.

Driving through the weird and cool landscapes surrounding Lake Mývatn, an area of active volcanism, I discovered hverabraud, a dark rye, incredibly moist and slightly sticky bread lightly sweetened with molasses. It’s baked for 24 hours underground by geothermal heat–I even spotted a few above ground doors leading to the underground “ovens.” Topped with plenty of Icelandic butter, hverabraud was my favorite afternoon snack, and one I’ll never be able to replicate here in New York.

So what didn’t I like about Icelandic sweets? Kleinur, for one. These cardamom-scented doughnuts just didn’t do it for me. I found them un-crispy to the point of seeming stale, overly dense and just plain uninspired–and they were everywhere. And I’ve never been able to develop a taste for black licorice, which as in most of Scandinavia, flooded Iceland’s gas stations, grocery stores and candy shops. Too many times I’d fill a bag from bulk candy bins and bite into what I thought was a malt ball, a chocolate covered nut, a nougat, only to be disappointed by the assertive flavor of black licorice, or worse, its harsher, crazier cousin, salt licorice.  Still, only two dislikes out of an entire country of sweets isn’t too bad.

I’d heard about skyr before coming to Iceland, but the only skyr I’d tried was Siggi’s, a variety made in upstate New York that I bought at Whole Foods. And Siggi’s skyr, a decidedly unsweet, thicker-than-Greek-yogurt, low fat yogurt-like dairy product is good, but I did not quite understand the full range of skyr until having it every day–sometimes twice a day–here in Iceland. One variety of skyr (prounced skeer) is the thick Siggi’s variety, which often showed up in my desserts (most recently and simply, blended with tiny Icelandic blueberries and drizzled with heavy cream, but also in a more modern approach: whipped and smeared on a plate and topped with rhubarb compote, rhubarb granita and lightly stewed slices of rhubarb). It was this modern dessert that got me thinking about ways to use skyr in my desserts back home. It is a perfect starting point and counter point for someone like me who likes her desserts on the less sugary side and pairs beautifully with almost any fruit. Its thickness only makes it easier to incorporate into into mousses.  But it is the other kind of skyr, the looser, slightly less sour kind that has really won me over, the one that’s been elevating my morning muesli to something I look forward to while falling asleep. Well, one of the things, but more on that later. This almost pudding-like skyr is similar to yogurt but without the sourness, and is impossibly creamy while remaining low fat, as skyr is made with skim milk. It, too, appears as a simple, classic dessert, usually with berries and a simple shortbread biscuit.

What else do I fall asleep thinking about? Vöffler, for one. These waffles seem to be everywhere, for breakfast and for an afternoon snack with coffee. And they’re not like any waffle I’ve seen before. In fact, they are more like slightly thick crepes that have the tell-tale, golden brown hatch marks of waffles. They are soft, with only the slightest bit of crunch on the edges, and are served the way crepes and waffles are served in the rest of Scandinavia: with fresh whipped cream and jam. I like the the tender, egg-y vöffler with my afternoon coffee, without the cream and just a tiny bit of strawberry jam, but that’s just me.

Iceland has got me wondering why we don’t have better whole grain bread back in New York. Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of the fresh, whole grain bread from the Union Square farmers market, and even a lot of the store-bought types ( I’m weirdly partial to Ezekial, despite its biblical background). But Iceland has got me thinking that maybe I’ve been settling. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to the somewhat dry, vaguely cardboardy-but-definitely-good-for-me bread, and maybe never realized how delicious whole grain bread could and should be. Every morning my breakfast-included hotels put out a spread that includes the aforementioned skyr, sometimes waffles, and always the best whole grain bread I’ve ever had. It’s not always exactly the same, but it has not disappointed yet: crunchy/flaky crust with a very tender, but sturdy crumb, always with flax seeds, usually with sunflower seeds, sometimes with millet or other grains. The point is, it isn’t dry. It’s soft and dense–but not too dense. And it has enough salt to bring out the flavor of all the seeds. But it’s that crust that really sets it apart. The crusts of whole grain bread back home are more like tough edges posing as crust. Crust should be crisp and flaky and actually leave crumbs behind when you bite into it, like when you eat a baguette. In the next 5 days it is my mission to find a recipe for Icelandic-style whole grain bread.

Another thing Icelanders have figured out that New Yorkers are only just beginning to appreciate? Currants, black and red. These tiny berries have been showing up everywhere: in my berry compote, on top of skyr, made into marmalade. Not only are they packed with anti-oxidents, they are deliciously tart and unlike any other berry. Sure, I’d known about currants before coming to Iceland, and even used them to make sorbet but sometimes it takes travelling to be reminded of just how much you love a simple, less common thing like currants. For now, I’m happy to mix red currant jam into my skyr, onto my vöffler and onto my generously buttered whole grain bread while looking forward to 5 more days of of eating.

And here it is: August already.

While I look forward to the cool breezes of autumn (along with back-to-school nostalgia left over from childhood–does that ever truly fade?) it’s hard not to lament the loss of  summer fruits: berries, peaches, cherries, apricots, plums. The summer has all other seasons beat with its sheer variety and number of offerings, giving pastry chefs the biggest palette of all to work with, in color, flavor, and texture. Summer fruits lend themselves to every kind of dessert: cakes, ice creams and sorbets, rice puddings, shortcakes, meringues, custards, many of which are too involved or time consuming to make at home–at least in my seriously lacking New York City kitchen. That is, except one: the crumble.

Crumbles, fruit baked with a simple crumb on top, are one of my favorite desserts not only because they are so easy to make (in fact, I don’t think it gets any easier; I’d almost feel guilty putting them on my dessert menus, except that they are such perennial crowd-pleasers), and because they work with almost any fruit.  Here’s a recipe using blueberries, but you could just as easily use your favorite mix of berries, or even throw  a few stone fruits into the mix.

Crumble

one 9″x9″ pan

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Toss the blueberries with the granulated sugar and lemon juice. Pour into a 9″x 9″ baking dish.
3. In a bowl, mix together the flour, light brown sugar, salt and melted butter for the crumble top. Using your fingers, mix the crumble topping until everything is evenly incorporated.
4. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the blueberries.
5. Bake until the blueberries begin to bubble and the crumb top turns a deep brown, about 40-50 minutes.
6. Cool at least 30 minutes before serving. Cooling allows the juices thicken slightly.
7. Serve with ice cream.

Dalia Jurgensen is the author of SPICED: A Pastry Chef’s True Stories of Trials By Fire, After-Hours Exploits, and What Really Goes On in the Kitchen. Her blog, www.myspicedlife.com, has recipes, stories and reviews.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/sweets/2009/08/04/crumbling-summer/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/sweets/2009/07/21/china-cola/ http://thefastertimes.com/sweets/2009/07/21/china-cola/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:44:21 +0000 Dalia Jurgensen http://thefastertimes.com/sweets/?p=99 I stopped drinking soda a long time ago. I don’t remember if it was the rumors that Coke can eat through a nail and rot your stomach lining, or because I was going through a youthful and brief healthy/vegetarian phase, or because I was rebelling against the omnipresent and join-the-crowd ad campaigns–I didn’t want to “Catch the Wave” or befriend Max Headroom’s annoying, synthesized, wanna-be-MTV voice. Or maybe it was just the beginning of my disinterest in overly sweet things, a maturing of my taste buds, maybe. Back then, soda mostly meant Coke or Pepsi, with 7up and Sprite as runners up, and little else. I was convinced that the taste of the Big Two colas was little more than a factory flavor invented to keep the public addicted to its sugary evils. Whatever flavor Pepsi and Coke purported to have was glazed over by sugar, or, to be more precise, ever since 1984, corn syrup. I was sure I’d never have, or want, a soda again.

And then, a few years ago, I did some consulting work for a small Brooklyn restaurant that had, like me, decided to rebel against the soda behemoths. But they recognized that their customers might still want to order a soda from time to time, and so they sought out some alternatives. By this time, plenty of natural sodas had flooded the market and while these mostly fruity drinks had turned their backs on the evil corn syrup, most were, to me, still too sweet. But the chef and the owner of this little spot both promised that China Cola, their alternative to Coke, would change my mind forever and make me, once again, a member of the soda drinking public. The chef popped one open, poured it over ice and handed it to me with a satisfied grin. I was still skeptical.

It looked like Coke. It fizzed like Coke, tiny fireworks of carbonation jumping off it’s surface. It had a vague spiciness, a taste and feel far cleaner than I anticipated. It was the most refreshing and delicious drink I’d ever had. Ok, maybe not ever, but it was damn good. It tasted like what Coke should taste like, maybe what Coke would taste like if it wasn’t cloaked in a syrup-py secret recipe sweetness, or if it was made from all natural ingredients, like China Cola is. In addition to pure carbonated water and raw cane sugar, China Cola contains the following: Szechuan peony root, cassia bark, Malaysian vanilla, oils of lemon, lime and orange, nutmeg, cloves, licorice, cardamom. To my American mind, the only obviously Chinese ingredient is the Szechuan peony root, and the rest of the list might be included in any old spice cake recipe. How Chinese is China Cola? After a little internet searching, I discovered that China Cola actually is from China, where it is sold as Future Cola, and actually competes with Pepsi and Coke in rural areas. According to Reeds, which now owns, manufactures and distributes China Cola in the U.S., the drink’s herbal ingredient list was actually formulated by a master Chinese herbalist who intended to address imbalances commonly found in the general population, and this formula was then added to a drink flavorist’s early cola recipe.  Just to be sure I wasn’t simply falling face first for a marketing ploy, I asked a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist and practitioner of Chinese Medicine for her take, and sure enough, she comfirmed that nearly every ingredient on the list is commonly used in Chinese medicine and together, the overall mix is a tonic that aids in digestion and benefits the liver. And it’s caffeine-free, so it won’t keep you up at night. So it’s true–this soda is actually good for you, at least a little bit. At least that’s what I tell myself.

I’m still not a big soda drinker, partly, no doubt, because China Cola has proven sometimes difficult to track down. No sooner do I get excited to find it at the new natural food market in my neighborhood than it inexplicably disappears from its shelves. Occasionally its relative Cherry China Cola pops up, but I’m partial to the original–I don’t like fruit in my cola. So when I find it I buy it, and hide a few bottles in the back of my refrigerator where my husband, a China Cola convert, will not find it. I’ll never be a full-on soda person but there are times when nothing but a China Cola will do: with a slice of pizza, after working up a sweat playing tennis, when I get the rare craving for an ice cream float, and China Cola always comes through.