The Kitchen of Oz - A Food Blog » ginger

Pumpkin Whoopie Pie with Elderberry Flavored Cream

Ozhan — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:28:35 +0000

There are some funny coincidences in life which are difficult to explain with a meaningful reason. For instance; it looks like whenever I am not in the mood for grocery shopping and I decide to make something with what I have in the fridge, this ”something” should be something with pumpkin. From now on I accept this as a ground rule for winter time cooking. So the rule worked like a Swiss clock and as in the previous year I found myself in front of vividly colored pumpkin slices again.

I had a cookie or a cake to bake in my mind but I had to use the pumpkin also. There was enough flour, eggs, some chocolate and butter for a rich cake or a toothsome cookie but what should I do with the pumpkin afterwards? Accepting the fact that I have no magical powers to turn the pumpkin into a brand new car, it should fit in somewhere in this baking process. Here are the keywords: cake, cookie, and pumpkin. After some time spent to look around food magazines and cookbooks suddenly the answer rushed into my mind. Whoopie! Yes, I was happy to find a way to utilize everything but this was not my reaction, it was the answer’s itself: whoopie pie.

Whoopie pie is neither a cake nor a cookie but lies somewhere in between, we may call it a soft cookie. Moreover, I found a recipe of pumpkin whoopie pie and it is from the favorite bakery of Brooklyn dwellers, ”Baked”. As one of my friends living there praised their desserts some years ago before they became that famous so I had a positive expectation about their recipe too.

You may wonder why whoopie pie is called whoopie pie as I do. In order to satisfy our curiosity, the story of whoopee pies originated in Pennsylvania as an amish tradition. In early days around 1920s, Amish women used to bake these soft cookie sandwiches with a creamy frosting in the middle and put them in their husbands’ lunch boxes who worked in agricultural labour. Imagine a farmer making his lunch break after hours of heavy work and finding one of these sweet sandwiches as a dessert in his lunch box. Any guesses on how he yells at this instance? Whoopie! This is where the name of whoopie pie comes from according to food historians.

As for the recipe I adapted from Matt Lewis, co-owner of Baked bakery turned out to be a real treat however I tried a different frosting rather than the one with cream cheese and butter he gave. The one I prepared has no cream cheese in it but it has a different flavor thanks to elderberry syrup I used. You may also use alternate fillings like vanilla flavored buttercream or simply your favorite jam or some melted chocolate whipped with heavy cream. If that first bite from your whoopie pies makes you say ”whoopie!” out loud then you’re done.

Ingredients (for 16 pieces)

For Whoopie Pie Shells

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon ground cloves
2 cups firmly packed dark-brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cups pumpkin puree, chilled
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For Elderberry Flavored Filling

2 egg whites
100g (3.5 oz) sugar
200g (7 oz) butter at room temperature
2 1/2 tablespoons elderberry syrup

Instructions

1.	Preheat oven to 175C (350F).
2.	In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon,and ginger; set aside.
3.	In another large bowl, whisk together brown sugar and oil until well combined. Add pumpkin puree, eggs and vanilla and whisk until well combined.
4.	Sprinkle flour mixture over pumpkin mixture and whisk until fully incorporated.
5.	Using a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism, drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto parchment paper placed on baking sheets, about 2.5 cm (1 inch) apart. Transfer to oven and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cookie comes out clean, about 15 minutes. Let cool completely on pan.
6.	Make the filling: Whisk egg whites by hand in a large metal or glass bowl until they are white and foamy then add sugar. Place the bowl in a saucepan with hot water inside and whip vigorously until all of the sugar is dissolved and take it out of the hot water. Keep on whisking until the bowl cools down. Add elderberry syrup and one tablespoon of butter each time while whisking until you end up with a thick creamy texture.
7.	Pipe equal amount of filling on the flat side of half of the cookies. Sandwich with remaining cookie shells, pressing down slightly so that the filling spreads to the edge of the cookies.
8.	Refrigerate cookies for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Ginger & Green Apple Macaron for the New Year

Ozhan — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:08:28 +0000

Yes, it’s time again; a brand new year is about to come and your eyes are looking for a special recipe on this blog at that time of the year. I know that very well and believe me I did my best to catch up. However last week was a complete mess thanks to well known astrologer Susan Miller who visited Istanbul recently. What she said was quite off-putting.

Something very big, a sort of phenomenal event would take place in Turkey on last Tuesday and this would affect lives of all people nationwide. This event might be a natural disaster, a serious bomb attack or a major scandal. My goodness, choose lesser of the three evils. She also warned us that Mercury was coming back (explanation for astrology virgins: this is something bad, very bad) and we should be very careful while taking decisions, better not to take any decisions even.

Thanks to this prophecy I had one of my worst Tuesdays ever, expecting vicious things to come out from everyday life scenes like construction workers on the street corner to drill natural gas pipeline by mistake and cause a huge blast and so on. Of course I could not take the decision for what kind of New Year recipe to work on under these circumstances, could I? Thanks lord, nothing serious happened on that day and I went back to my kitchen after a hard day of work.

Making Almond Flour for the Macaron

As a new year’s tradition I stick to spicy recipes but the things I tried were not better than my dear deer cookies of last year so I decided to go for some change (or should I say challenge?) and developed a new macaron flavor combination to celebrate the new year. I knew that it was not an easy task but when I read my own words from last New Year’s post saying “We all can do anything, no matter how fancy or how difficult it is. It’s all about trying and retrying just like all other things in our lives.” I gave it a go.

It was a bit more difficult than I thought and you would pity on me if you had known how many undercooked or overcooked, under folded or over folded macaron shells I ate to test the recipe. It took me preparing several batches of batter again and again with different amount of ingredients, consuming a great number of eggs a chicken can lay in two weeks’ time and lots of almonds.

When it comes to macarons everyone has his/her own way of doing things. Some achieved success by folding dry ingredients very slowly, some prefer folding rapidly as they would beat the shit out of it at first then slowing down, some recommend lower oven temperatures some others apply high temperature at first then lower it at the halfway of baking, some recommend a convection oven, some using a conventional one. Even, I read about using two different ovens set at different temperatures for each half of the baking time and then I stopped reading any more. Imagine, the question of “how long you should wait for macarons to get dried before baking?” has many answers ranging from “What the hell, I don’t have enough patience to wait even for a minute after piping them!” to “You have to to wait for a day to harden their shells”. As you see it is so easy to go insane.

In short, this would be your own experience with your kitchen tools and oven which would significantly affect the end product. Particularly you need to know the characteristics of your oven very well, if you do not know yet, this will be the chance to deepen your relationship. Good to keep in mind that it takes some trials to realize what works and what does not for the given conditions you are in; even the humidity of your kitchen might change the fate of your little macarons according to some opinion.

Accepting the fact that they are not a simple cake to bake, gather all your courage and be determined to accomplish what you aim: sweet and crispy outer shells without any cracks on the surface and a moist interior to leave a deep almond flavor on your taste buds.

After all your efforts if they do not come out perfect, please don’t get down. Anything with that much almond will taste nice regardless of its shape. Try to look from the bright side; you may not have the picture perfect macarons but will definitely have delicious almond cookies beside your tea. It’s just a matter of finding the courage to challenge yourselves and that’s what all we need to have for the coming year.

I wish you a New Year full of courage and determination to take a step further and realize all the things you wish for no matter how difficult they are.

Ingredients (makes around 24 macarons depending on size)
For macaron shells

120 g (3,8 oz) blanched or slivered almonds
200 g (7 oz) confectioner’s sugar
90 g (3,1 oz) egg whites (aged 1 day at room temperature)
30 g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
A pinch of salt
Cinnamon to sprinkle on top

For filling

160 g (5,6 oz) mascarpone cheese
2 ½ tablespoons green apple syrup
50 ml (1,7 fl. oz) heavy cream

Instructions

1.	First make sure that your egg whites are aged enough (24 to 48 hours) so that some of their water content evaporates (this will help your macarons to have harder shells). Aging process is to keep them in the room temperature without covering on top. Do not worry about the hygiene issue, there won’t be any bacteria left after cooking them. If you are not convinced at all, just microwave your egg whites for 10 seconds at medium heat (I also tried this method once and it worked well)
2.	Using a food processor, finely grind your almonds and confectioner’s sugar together at highest speed. Sift it at least twice and discard any parts and pieces of almonds. You’ll end up with smooth flour like almond-sugar combination. Add ground ginger and nutmeg, mix well.
3.	With a stand mixer with whisk attachment beat the aged egg whites with a pinch of salt at medium speed and when they start to get foamy add caster sugar gradually and increase speed to high and whisk until you end up with a firm, glossy meringue forming stiff peaks (should take two minutes).
4.	Sprinkle half of the dry ingredients over the meringue and fold in with a silicon spatula with circular motions around the bowl. After some of the dry mixture is incorporated, add the rest and keep on folding gently. This part is the most important part, believe me. You should not over work the batter, and stop folding when everything is roughly combined. Final batter should be smooth and thick, not runny. Drop a ribbon of batter from a spoon onto the remaining batter and watch, it should take 15 seconds to disappear the ribbon. Even one or two more folds may ruin the whole thing and if you did so,you do not need to spend time on cooking them since you will end up with flat almond cookies cracked on the surface (I know it very well since I did it twice).
5.	Dab a very small amount of batter on each corner of the baking sheet and place a properly cut baking paper (batter on the corners will glue your paper on the baking sheet so that it won’t slip). If you do not trust your piping skills you may try to draw circles on another baking sheet with around 4cm diameter and around 3 cm distance between circles and keep it underneath the baking paper you will use to take advantage of it as a guide.
6.	Using a piping bag with a 8-10 mm nozzle, pipe 4cm rounds of batter roughly. There might be a soft peaks on each macaron but they will disappear soon if not you may tap the baking sheet on kitchen counter and they will be gone. Let macaron shells dry for an hour at room temperature. If they are not dried enough, you will end up with some wrinkles on the surface and your macarons won’t be able to develop their feet underneath.
7.	Preheat your oven to 140°C (280°F).(I use a convection oven –with a fan-, if you are using a conventional oven –no fan- you may need to increase the temperature to 150°C (300°F).This is the feeling I got from all the things I read about making macarons but let me emphasize it once more, this depends on your oven characteristics and you need to try a few times to decide on the correct temperature setting).
8.	After your macarons are dried out, place the baking sheet on middle rack. In my case 15 minutes of total baking time was perfectly all right but you need to watch closely to decide on your timing. After 6 minutes shells should have lifted and around 8 minutes they should form their feet. Right after, their outer skin would start to colour slightly and get harden. They should not get browned if so, either your oven temperature is too high or you kept them in the oven longer than necessary.
9.	Remove the baking sheet from the oven and leave macarons to cool down thoroughly. If you try to lift them before, lower parts might stick on the sheet and break into pieces. If they won’t come out easily after completely cooled, sprinkle a few drops of water under baking sheet this should solve the problem.
10.	Whisk heavy cream well. Add mascarpone cheese and green apple syrup and keep on whisking till you end up with a smooth whipped cream texture (should not be runny).
11.	Match each macaron with a similar sized one (this is quite strange but each and every macaron finds its mate no matter how uneven you piped them, no one would be left alone in macaron world I guess)
12.	Pipe some filling on one of the paired macarons and cover with the other one like a sandwich. Dust upper shells with cinnamaon.
13.	Keep them in the refrigerator at least one day so that flavors will deepen. Serve at room temperature and consume in 2-3 days.

Blackberry-Ginger Sorbet

Ozhan — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:12:25 +0000

If the word “blackberry” instantly reminds you of a hundred emails you cannot avoid, you are not the only one. It looks like this incredibly healthy fruit has its name snatched by a mobile device so badly that when you Google the word “blackberry” you end up with an information flood on various models of that device but nothing about blackberry as a fruit (I checked the first ten pages of search results and still there’s nothing about it –hard to believe-). Thus I decided to help this little shiny gem regain its esteem as one of the well known members of berry family with a recipe that will knock your socks off.

Even though most of us come across to widely available one called Evergreen, there are many types of blackberries like Himalaya, Silvan, Marion and Black Diamond. U.S. is the top grower but different types can be cultivated in Latin America and across Europe.

It is quite strong in terms of antioxidant content which is something we get used to read in one out of three articles related with health issues (sellers in the farmers market mentioned in my previous post named blackberry as “black doctor” on their price labels. That’s one of the most comprehensible and strong statement to convey benefits of a product I guess. Looks like farmers are quite knowledgeable in marketing too). I have also read that American Indian women ate them to prevent miscarriages in early days which is another interesting piece of information for me.

Blackberry as a bramble, fruits every other year so if you happen to find good ones eat them up like there is no tomorrow. How you are going to differentiate a good blackberry is quite easy, its color should be even and dark with a glossy look without any dents or bruises. There is only one thing to pay attention and personally I do not have any difficulty in that; to consume them right away since the taste is at its best for the first day. After three days you need to tell them goodbye even you kept refrigerated. But don’t get frustrated now I’ll tell you the way to make it last quite longer by making one of the most refreshing sorbets out of it.

This sorbet is the reminiscence of the last blackberries I found in this season. Well, I should admit that I want to avoid the upcoming autumn by making sorbets but soon I’ll adapt –I hope-. Combining the sweet-sorrow taste of blackberries with a vigorous and refreshing touch of ginger ended up with a superb association. If you are not really into it you may omit ginger for sure but as for me both blackberry and ginger found their soul mates in this recipe.

Ingredients (Makes approx. 1liter)

420 g (0,93 pound) fresh blackberries, washed and drained
120 g (4,2 oz.) sugar
230 ml. water
Juice of 1 lime
Finely grated fresh ginger in 5-6 hazelnut sized pieces
2½ teaspoons kirsch

Instructions

1.	Combine blackberries with sugar, water, and lime juice in the bowl of a food processor and run the machine until you end up with a purée.
2.	Add one piece of grated fresh ginger and the food processor for a few seconds then taste. Keep on adding and mixing each piece one by one and taste after each addition since you reach a well balanced mix in according to your taste. Be careful with the ginger since it has a strong flavor and we do not want to surpass the taste of blackberries in the first place. Ginger should not be the dominant flavor in the final combination. That’s the reason I recommend to make ginger addition gradually.
3.	Filter the final combination through a strainer to remove the seeds and other pieces.
4.	Chill the mixture in your refrigerator and then freeze it by using your ice cream maker by following the instructions provided in the user manual. Transfer sorbet to an airtight container and place in your deep freezer to serve later.

New Year Cookie

Ozhan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:13:12 +0000

In the previous post I promised you to share my New Year cookie recipe and just to keep my promise I am writing down this post under difficult conditions. Weather is cold outside in Istanbul and I realized that I forgot my key at home during the morning rush. Now I am sitting at a small cafe’ in the neighborhood where they cannot even make a cup of tea properly. A strange young couple is sitting next to me and continuously making a nonsense conversation ranging from their awful jobs to adverse effects of tooth whitening products, preventing me from concentrating on my post. Anyhow, promise is promise, so I will do my best.

When I started to look for a cookie recipe more than a week before then, I wanted it to be homely but fancy enough to remind the New Year, to have a crispy texture but not too brittle, to leave some flavor on the tongue but not too spicy, and so on. It was a trial and error process to find the right combination of ingredients for a tasty recipe. After too many batches and numerous pieces of cookies, some without enough ginger, some with too much cinnamon, some overcooked, some not enough cooked, I suddenly realized that I was asking way too much from a cookie just because it was for the New Year.

I guess most of us have a tendency to attach a lot importance to New Year related stuff. Like my high expectations from these little cookies, we all look out this brand new year to bring all the goodness we long for. Probably within the group of people who read this post, seventy percent want to leave their jobs for a better opportunity in the coming year or at least to get promoted in the same place, forty percent hope to find their significant other to share their lives, thirty percent expect to find the courage to put an end to their going nowhere relationships, sixty percent aimed to lose ten pounds they gained within the stressful 2009 that made them eat more than usual (shame on 2009!), and the list goes on and on…

Putting the perfect New Year’s cookie aside, I have also a new year’s resolution about this blog. I really want it to share with more and more people in 2010 to touch their life at some point, to make them feel good with my stories and to convince them to try something new in the cozy atmosphere of their kitchens. We all can do anything, no matter how fancy or how difficult it is. It’s all about trying and retrying just like all other things in our lives.

Hoping that all of us get what we are looking for in 2010, below I wrote down the recipe of my new year cookies for those looking for one. If you start with the same amount of ingredients you will end up with too many cookies to share with your beloved ones so that the sweet taste of cookies lingers in their mouths throughout the year.

A happy new year from the Kitchen of Oz!

Ingredients (makes around 80-120 pieces depending on the cookie cutter size and cookie thickness)
For cookie dough

1 cup (227 g / 8 oz) butter
3/4 cup (160 g/ 5,6 oz)sugar
2 large eggs (at room temperature)
2 +3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup corn starch
4 teaspoons ground ginger
1+1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt

For royal icing (optional, if you do not want to decorate the cookie you may skip this part)

1+ 3/8 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 egg white
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Food coloring according to your preference

Instructions
For cookie

1.	With a stand mixer with paddle attachment beat butter and sugar until the mixture is creamy. Add two eggs and mix well.
2.	In another bowl combine flour, corn starch, ground ginger, cinnamon and salt.
3.	Gradually add combined dry ingredients into the creamy mixture you prepared and keep on mixing till you end up with a dough (if you do not have a stand mixer, knead by your hands but make sure that all the ingredients are well blended to form a dough).
4.	Wrap dough tightly with a plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight.
5.	Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).
6.	Divide dough into two, and keep half in refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll the remaining half into a circle with 3 mm. (1/8 inch) thickness (the thinner the dough, the crispier the cookies).
7.	Cut with a cookie cutter you like (if cookie cutter sticks to dough, dip cutters in flour)
8.	Take the cutout cookies to an ungreased baking sheet and bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until they gain a golden color. Remove, and cool cookies on a rack.
9.	Repeat the same for the other half (another hint: if dough warms up quickly while you are cutting out and shapes are not that good, you might try to divide dough into four pieces at the beginning and work on a quarter each time while you keep the rest in refrigerator)

For royal icing (optional, if you do not want to decorate the cookie you may skip this part)

1.	Beat the egg white with lemon juice with an electric mixer.
2.	Add confectioner’s sugar and keep on mixing at low speed till the texture is smooth. Consistency should be neither too stiff nor too runny. Test it on a piece of cookie and if it is too runny gradually add a little confectioner’s sugar. Instead if it is too stiff gradually add water and mix well.
3.	According to number of colors you will use for decoration, distribute the icing into different bowls. Add food coloring to each one until you obtain the color you like and mix well.
4.	Decorate your cookies with colored icings you prepared and keep in mind that it will take several hours for the icing to completely dry.