Alpha Bakers -- Coconut Crisps

Catching up on Alpha Baking with some very simple, very delicious coconut butter cookies. Essentially a sable/sugar cookie with some flaked coconut thrown in, these would also make great sandwich cookies. 'Excellent!' said my taster, taking one bite, and then accused me of trying to buy my co-workers' love. Whatever it takes.

 

The dough can be refrigerated for a few days--I baked mine after 24 hours.

Alpha Bakers -- Ganache City

I like living with messy people. In fact, I like messy people in general.

That's not to say I'm in love with clothes strewn all over the floor, or dirty dishes under the bed, although those things don't bother me as much as they do some people. What I like is people who are unafraid of the odd impulses, weird tics, and dark holes that live inside them. People who embrace their bizarre habits without too much normalizing commentary and are able to allow their lives to have untucked corners.
Every time a kid starts a question with...'Is this weird...?' my heart breaks a little. Who cares? The only thing that's interesting about anyone is the weird things that they do. There's barely a point to life if all your interesting edges are rubbed off. Sometimes I find that theater people are better at just not caring about small social observances, but sometimes they just find other ones to conform to. We are all so afraid of each other sometimes. It's...weird.

Which is to say, I like to hang out with two and three year olds, who are unabashedly strange. And I have a few strange habits of my own, like obsessive baking. Lately my schedule has been a little thrown off, due to all sorts of business and the arrival of a new person in my life, a person who doesn't even care about sweets. How in the name of all that is holy did I get matched up with a person who can ignore freshly baked cupcakes? At least I know he likes me for me?

Luckily, everyone else in my life is still cupcake-mad, and so after plying my workplace with last week's Praline Tart (made, in my case, with almonds), I whipped up this week's Coconut Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache for one of my sacred weekly institutions, Nacho Friday. These cupcakes are based on one of Rose's coconut cakes, already a huge favorite in my circles, and the only changes I made were to make them gluten free (using Thomas Keller's Cup4Cup flour) for my friend who has celiac disease and, due to my general messiness and failure to retrieve the muffin pan I left at a friend's house three months ago, to minimize them. As I was having dinner with toddlers, mini-cupcakes seemed like a good way to go, although the decision was not without its own fraught moments, as you'll see.

The cupcakes, with a milk chocolate ganache, that Rose-typically was not just made with milk chocolate but with a mix of white and bittersweet, were delicious and a huge hit. Anais, one of the two and a half year olds in question, ate one excitedly and then asked for another. One cupcake for each of us, she was told, whereupon she dissolved into tears and said, 'But I like two cupcakes....'

Everyone has a fold in their smooth surface. Some of us re-use bathwater or teabags with our spouses. Some of us hang out with our exes even though it hurts. Some of us embrace the things that make us broken. Some of us chant weird lines from children's books and love Maurice Sendak and eat odd things at odd times or do whatever it is we need to stay alive. Some of us like two cupcakes.

After Anais went to bed, several of us had a few more cupcakes. Because we're grown-ass women who can do as we please. 

Southern (Brooklyn) Coconut Cake with Silk Meringue Buttercream

Close-up on coconut. On a no-joke coconut cake. I've been making coconut cakes for Jessica's birthday for many years--usually with seven minute frosting, but this time around it went even sweeter and richer, with a gooey, coconut milk buttercream. Rose's Silk Meringue Buttercream continues to terrify me a bit--creme anglaise AND Italian meringue AND butter? As a friend at the birthday party who cooks professionally said:

"Katya, no disrespect, but this frosting is just coconut and butter, right?"  Um...not entirely...

The icing was fluffy, the cake was fluffier...I've gotten pretty good at this. And, even more importantly in my mind, I was able to transport the perfectly frosted cake without a blemish through nearly an hour of bus and walking and street  fairs, etc...

The only modifications that I made to the recipe were in the realm of extract--I subbed almond extract for coconut in both the cake and the creme anglaise. Because there was also coconut in flake and milk form, the almond complemented it instead of standing alone, just kind of deepening the flavors. I also ran out of coconut milk and used a little cream to finish off the creme anglaise.

No reactions from Matt, as he doesn't eat coconut, but the responses from partygoers ages 3-35 were enthusiastic. In fact, the three year old invited me to come sleep over at her house, an invitation that I have to assume was issued more or less on the strength of her piece of cake, or excitement at having a large pink ribbon.

Happy birthday, Jessica.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Coconut Cheesecake

Here it is. At last. Cool, creamy, coconutty, with a crust of vanilla cake crumbs and coconut. I made three minis, two of which have sold at the bakery already.

The little taste I sneaked from the inside of the rings was very good. I didn't have a lot of luck with keeping the water bath entirely out of the tinfoil, but there's always a next time. Next up, Genoise Rose.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coconut Tea Cake

A very nice cake I'll probably never make again, just given the limited opportunities for coconut baking in my home. I took this one to work and it did very well--it was dry, but pleasingly so, as Dorie mentions. I was going to add sesame seeds and make the sesame version, which seemed very pleasingly old fashioned seed cake. However, I forgot until the cake was actually in the bundt pan, so they all were clustered on the bottom of the finished cake, making a kind of unusual concentration of sesame flavor.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart

Coconut cream pie re-mixed...with toasted coconut right in the custard, a thick tart shell, and unsweetened whipped cream...Eat your heart out, President Obama, this one went to Sandy. 

Last month, Dorie was looking after my chocolate fiends. This month, it's jam lovers and coconut cravers. This is the second coconut dessert this week, following hard on Miriam's birthday coconut cake with lemon curd and seven minute icing. That cake was the finish to an epic feast (and horseback riding adventure) that deserves its own post, though, so I'll just say that there has been more coconut in the house this week than for many many months. I love it, but Matt doesn't eat it, so perhaps it's just as well. We'll take a 'light' month and give away our TWD. But I still lick the spoons, because I can't resist custard or cream in any form.

Pretty Much the Only Cupcake Post Ever Featured on Second Dinner

Or, my cousin gets married!

That was really the important part. But, as we waited eagerly for that to happen, my mother, Matt, and I spent two full days on a dream team cupcake production line, and turned out, if I do say so myself, an extremely impressive dessert extravaganza.

Here is the story of Wedding Summer '09, Preakness edition: Wedding Cupcakes.

So much to tell. So many pictures and thoughts. Good thing I'm almost a librarian. That means I can select and order--or censor if you prefer (I don't). Or, I could just be lazy and free-associate. I choose that.

First, a small meditation on the wedding cupcake. Surprisingly, it's actually more difficult to produce 250 cupcakes than one 90-person wedding cake (at least if the wedding cake is allowed to be a little rustic). Of course, it's hard to compare the two, especially when they were created in two entirely different kitchens and the cupcakes had to be transported to the venue, which the cake did not. The other major factor involved here was the recipe variety. The wedding cake required several batter mixings, but used only one base recipe for cake and for frosting. When it came to cupcakes, I overcomplicated it bit.

In the end, the great cupcake caper included four varieties of cake and three varieties of frosting:
  
Coconut Cake with Seven Minute Frosting
         
Rose Levy Berenbaum's White Velvet Cake with Wineberry Buttercream
              
Barts' Chocolate Cake with Mocha Buttercream

Lemon Cake with Lemon Buttercream (Sugar Sweet Sunshine Recipe)

For both the mocha buttercream and the wineberry I improvised using this Martha Stewart recipe for Strawberry Meringue Buttercream, and was very satisfied with the results, although heat and time constraints worked against it.

The wineberry version was slightly easier to work with than the chocolate, and held a firmer peak, possibly because of the added pectin from the wineberry jam.







My mother, who did the largest share of the frosting (this, she says is how she 'gets [her] ya-yas), became expert with the oversized tip pictured above, using one large squeeze and topping it off with a smaller one for the frilly design at right.


We used the same method for the mocha cupcakes, and sprinkled them with shaved chocolate. Later on, Matt also improvised a swirl adaptation of the frill. 

Although the process was certainly not  at peak efficiency, it was a lot of fun, and it would have been impossible without the complete and selfless support of my parents, who donated their kitchen to the messy, buttery, overheated, outlet-blowing enterprise, and then helped withevery facet of it from groceries to delivery, of Matt, who separated eggs, frosted, put up with me, took me swimming, and took most if not all of these beautiful pictures, of Nicki, who researched and procured six unique cakestands, and of Ellen, Hayat, Drew, and all the others who dropped by and pitched in.

Next time, I would streamline a bit, possibly making more of the cupcakes from the same cake recipe and then just varying the icings. Even the icings could have been restricted to those that used one frosting mode, but the overwhelmingly positive response to the Seven Minute Frosting, which can't be piped,  suggests that it was worth the trouble. The coconut cake recipe (to which I added coconut, it actually contains none) was better than the White Velvet cake, which staled quickly, but the advantage of making both of them was that one uses all yolks and one all whites. However, since all the frostings except the lemon buttercream used egg whites as well, the problem could have been better solved by not making any cake that involved egg whites, as we wound up with a large leftover jar of yolks, and I had to make challah a few days later.

Oh. And there was a wedding. I wore red lipstick. There was a tropical storm. And a photo booth. I picked out the weirdest horah ever (sorry Michelle). It was simple and friendly and ever so slightly awkward. It was sweeter than sweet.

It was just like Becky and Michelle, who are many things but above all good good people, and happy in one another. I was so lucky to be there, and equally lucky to get to hang out with the brides all week, and have swimming and questionable Chinese food. Lucky to have my sister home for a moment. Lucky in family and friends and swimming in lakes and swimming in butter. It was a good week. 

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coconut Butter Thins

Dorie Greenspan, or her cookbook at least, has a split cookie personality. On the one hand are what she calls 'cookie jar cookies,' big American-style cookies with chunks of things in them, often sporting silly names like 'granola grabbers.' On the other hand, and in fact in another section, are what she refers to as 'side of the saucer cookies,' elegant, buttery, grown-up cookies. These are the ones I love. Some of them, however, don't really have names that attract me, and while I've had the salt and pepper shortbread bookmarked for years, I had never considered making the Coconut Butter Thins.

This is not a mistake that I will be repeating. These are some of the most elegant, subtly unusual, and irresistible cookies I've ever made. I would make these for fancy catering jobs. I would make these for intimate dinners. I would make them every day, except where would that leave us and my main home taster doesn't do coconut. But I repeat, these are really impressive little cookies.

The best part is that it's not only the end result that's fun. The method is also simple, elegant, and entertaining.You mix up a shortbread-like base, your butter, your sugar, your flour, etc.
Then you add in shredded coconut and nuts (Dorie recommends macadamia, I preferred pistachio for both looks and taste). I made two other substitutions--lemon and grapefruit zest replaced lime, and instead of a dash of coriander (an interesting spice recommendation that Dorie offers without comment), I added a dash of a curry powder blend, which gave the final project a warm savory overtone to balance the sweetness. Next time I may try coriander straight up, I didn't have any in the house this time.

Now the fun part: When the dough is done, you put it into a large plastic freezer bag and allow the bag to help you roll it out into a very thin rectangle.It was just so satisfactorily neat and precise. I'm not normally a fan of precision but this was like the perfect dance step, the neatest turn, the easiest cruise on a bike...I'm not getting this, but be assured, it gave more pleasure than you'd think rolling out a rectangle of dough could. When the dough has chilled, in my case overnight, you slip it out of the bag and cut it into squares. Dorie offers the most un-Dorie-like instruction that you use a ruler, which kind of nudges the recipe into the Martha camp, but I understand, it comes naturally from the pleasure of rolling it into the bag so neatly. After that, it's just bake and watch people's faces go quiet and thoughtful when they taste it, watch them cover the box up with a scarf during rehearsal because otherwise the smell is too distractingly delicious, watch a box of these vanish in a very few minutes. And plan the next attack. The coconut really does something I wouldn't have suspected to the texture, the pistachios added perfect color notes, and I bet there's a wide range of spices that would enhance. The recipe can be found here. It just begs to be, in Dorie's words, 'played around' with. And it just begs to be made. Make it. Now.