A new cookie recipe for a solstice celebration in our new house on Solstice Place.
With the correct ingredients (finally) and baking errors aside, the two ingredient pastries emerged from the oven picture-perfect. Using two techniques, one rolled and the other folded, these light and airy confections with caramelized sugar shapes may be representative of books, hearts, or the traditional elephant ears found at local pâtisseries.
Bon Appétit!
As baking fiascos go, my first palmiers rank with 1970s baked rum balls and pumpkin pie sans sugar. What looks easy-peasy as YouTube pastry chefs deftly handle the puff pastry sheets, adroitly fold, evenly cut, and perfectly place each sugared confection which then blooms into a delicate crunch resembling a heart or elephant ears (depending on your perspective) my batch resembled fireplace kindling twigs. As they came out of the oven, I blamed the results on the gluten-free product but after a more careful review, the problems were operator-error. Since I bought pastry dough instead of puff pastry sheets, I had cinnamon sugared crusts reminiscent of the pie remnants at my Grandma K.’s. Not to be deterred, I am off to the store for the correct ingredient.
PS – The picture perfect palmiers are courtesy of food photographer Elise Bauer. My mistake definitely did not resemble these dessert treats.
While I am by no means a Francophile, (my time in Paris is limited to an arrival at Gare de l’Est, a quick Metro ride, and a departure from Gare du Nord) my recent book purchases tell a slightly different story. Just days ago at Rochester’s new used bookstore, Garden Party Books, I picked up Monet’s Garden: Though the Seasons at Giverny in hardcover with gorgeous photo illustrations and a paperback copy of The Paris Seamstress. The Paris Library is downloaded on my iPad ready for next month’s Knit Camp book club; and, last year at this time, The Directors – my library loving, book reading, wine-drinking group of retired friends – read The Bookseller, the first of the Hugo Marston mysteries, where the foul deed occurs on the banks of the Seine. For a 2018 January potluck, The Directors planned an entire luncheon menu with recipes from Monet’s Table: The Cooking Journals from Claude Monet.
With one very inattentive year of high school French, my language skills are limited, my wardrobe is far from haute couture and I have never taken a French cooking class but I enjoy the writing and the cooking inspiration offered by Clotilde Dusoulier. Her Chocolate & Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen has been a trusted source for culinary inspiration and yesterday she came through again as I made her easy, not too sweet gâteau au yaourt. The tartness of the yogurt paired with a tablespoon of light rum blend tastefully into a moist yellow cake which I garnished with freshly made blueberry sauce. Yumm!
Bibliography: Books mentioned in this post or on my shelves:
Photo credit: Adrien Olichon from Prexels
Knit+ Librarian 