Brecht’s Restaurant

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Chelsea

I have a Bittman success story to share with you, and I will. Soon. But first, in a continuation of last week’s celebratory post, I have a birthday restaurant review.

Yesterday, N. took me to Portland to celebrate my birthday. Because I’m so sophisticated and urban, of course what I wanted to do most was go to the zoo. Only after we’d seen every animal (and returned to a few exhibits on the way out to see if anyone had decided to come outside yet) did we embark on the more culinary aspects of our voyage. We spent close to an hour in Sur le Table, a store that makes me swell simultaneously with desire, longing, and anxiety. It is bright and beautiful and artistically merchandised, and I can’t help but want everything in it (do I need a handheld KitchenAid electric mixer in every color of the rainbow? Of course not. But do I want them, after seeing them lined up and shining prismatically on the shelf? Yes I do). I imagine the fantastic food projects I could embark on, the dinner parties I could have, the appetizers I could construct (the tiny tart tins only big enough to hold a tomato tart made from a single slice of tomato, the edible silver pearls for cupcakes, the souffle dishes… oh the souffle dishes…), and there’s where the anxiety sets in. Yesterday, I had a gift card to spend. I needed to be careful and thrifty and try to not to exceed the card’s value by too much, because beauty doesn’t come cheap. That meant excruciatingly rigorous examination of everything. in. the. store. I ended up with equipment that fills several notable gaps in my kitchen repertoire, and that was good. I was practical. But it still didn’t quell my girlish longing for cookie cutters in the shape of a crab, a cupcake, or a golden retriever, or a spring-loaded icing syringe, or a huge octagonal serving platter.

And yet we pressed on. On several trusted friends’ recommendations, we went to Montage for dinner. Located under a bridge on the east side of the river, it was hard to find (thanks, road construction), but clearly well loved, as at least a dozen people were waiting outside for the restaurant to open when we arrived at 5:55pm.

When we went inside and the hostess showed us to a table set with pristine white linens and folded, creased paper menus, my impression was of a Brechtian dreamscape. If Bertolt Brecht had designed a restaurant, it might be something like this. In French, “montage” means “assembly” (roughly, forgive my linguistic impreciseness, amis). Here, “assembly” took the form of a collage of high and low. From my seat at our table, when I looked to the left I could see long, long shelves against the far wall stocked with bottle after bottle of wine. As their extensive wine list proved, some were good vintages and all were pretty reasonably priced. When my eyes slid upward, however, I got a view of the wall-sized, quasi-cartoon Last Supper painted above a row of two-tops.

Looking to my right, on the deep windowsill near the entrance I could see a classical-style statue, complete with broken limbs and barely disguised indecency, standing next to the cast of an alligator’s skeletal jaws and a fully blown pufferfish, both suspended from the ceiling by fishing line.

This, then, was a conscious pastiche of high and low. The paper menus revealed not only the lengthy wine list, but a full range of Cajun and Southern American classics. N. ordered the jambalaya, but I couldn’t resist the call of the fryer. I ordered “Buttermilk fried chicken hindquarters,” which were advertized to arrive with garlic mashed potatoes, seasonal vegetables, AND a salad.

Before any of that, however, we got our beverages and shared a plate of hush puppies. My dry Riesling was crisp and tart and just barely fruity, and our server really topped off my glass because there wasn’t enough left in the bottle for two. I told him it was my birthday, so he could use that as an excuse and he chuckled. Wine managed, we plowed into the hush puppies. These were moist and chewy and had kernels of corn in the batter for that pop of sweetness and texture. They were accompanied by two aiolis: one garlic and one red pepper (I think. It was extremely mild and our server wasn’t sure). The garlic aioli was delicious: slightly vinegary and herby, much more complex than a regular mayonnaise. The fritters were not very crunchy on the outside, but their flavor more than made up for any textural shortcoming.

While we waited for our dinner to arrive, another aspect of the Brechtian theater of the place became clear. Behind the white, linen-clothed bar, the kitchen was partially visible, and every time a plate came out the expediter bellowed the name of the server responsible for it. After an initial surprise, no one in the restaurant seemed put off by this practice, and it started to blend into the clatter of dishes, happy conversation, and David Bowie’s vocals soaring effortlessly up into the background.

Dinner arrived on white dishes, but it didn’t smell highbrow. It smelled homey and warm and wonderful. N.’s jambalaya was well spiced and nicely flavored. It was just spicy enough to merit a gulp of beer and a crumble of cornbread in between bites, and he has added this to the list of dishes he’d like me to try at home. My plate came with its promised hindquarters still connected, dredged and crispy and beautifully caramel-brown. A little heap of mixed sauteed vegetables nestled in the space between leg and thigh, and a mound of mashed potatoes rounded out the plate.

I started with the mash. I think they were red potatoes because some shreds of dark mauve-y skin added an appealing squish between my teeth. The meat of the potatoes was velvety smooth and creamy and just brushed with garlic flavor. N. was permitted one taste and then somehow the whole mound disappeared into my stomach.

I moved on to the chicken. I have to admit, I am pretty picky about my fried chicken. It must be crispy, it must be just greasy enough to slick my fingers and moisten my lips, and I prefer dark meat (though that’s the case with any poultry, fried or not). This chicken scored a two out of three. The breading was crisp and the meat was moist and flavorful. This breading, however, was fairy thin. It did not have the nodules of thick crunchy fattiness I didn’t know I wanted, and as a consequence the grease factor was minimal. It was delicious (oh was it delicious!), but it wasn’t my fantasy fried chicken.

The play of culture and carnivale continued as we finished our meal. Our server asked if we wanted our leftovers wrapped up, and when we acquiesced he disappeared with our plates and returned with a stylized cat and squirrel made of aluminum foil, holding our remaining dinners in their tin bellies. As they faced off against one another at the table, our server walked over holding a plate leaping with orange and blue flames: dessert on fire for my birthday. Unless N. ordered this while I was in the ladies’ room (I suspect not), this was our server’s doing alone. I’d mentioned it was my day at the outset of the meal, but I hadn’t been expecting anything from it. Instead, what I got was essentially ice cream pie set alight.

How do I begin to dissect this gorgeousness in words? Writing about food is funny because so often language fails to capture taste. I’ll go in the order my spoon went. First, there was the ice cream. This was either vanilla or very mild coffee, because we were getting hints of coffee flavor the whole way through. I suspect, however, that it was vanilla ice cream, and that the spirit used to flame the dessert was Sambuca, and that’s where the coffee flavor came from. Or else the ice cream was also drizzled with Kahlua. Beside the slice of ice cream, there was an airy pile of whipped cream, also drizzled with chocolate/coffee sensations, and the whole dessert was topped with crushed chocolate Oreo wafers, and built upon a slab of compressed bittersweet chocolate crust. Frozen but on fire, soft and creamy with crunchy accents, sweet but with an espresso bitterness, this captured the juxtaposition of the whole place on a single white plate. N. is not often one for rich desserts, but this one he ate as continuously and determinedly as I did. He laid his spoon down only two bites before I did, leaving the last swirls of melting ice cream and heavy liqueur traces to me alone. It was, after all, my birthday.

We left satiated and impressed. This was neither the fanciest nor the most amazing food I’ve ever had, but it was damn tasty, and the ambiance, as strange a collage as it may have first seemed, only added to the experience. If this had been in a rundown, casually decorated diner, it would have seemed cheap and cheesy. If it had been the same food in a “fine dining” restaurant with elegantly uniformed servers and long aprons, it would have seemed uncomfortably out of place. But this Brechtian dance between high and low, with its conscious acceptance – nay, its intentional embrace – of both, made it a near-perfect show. There are a lot of restaurants in Portland we want to try out, but we will almost certainly return to Montage.*

* or perhaps to its adjoining lounge which, in keeping with the play between cultured and vulgar, is delightfully titled la Merde.

September

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Chelsea

When I think of September, I think of two things: birthdays and school. As a September birthday, I was always a little sad about the start of school, and not for the reasons you might think. First of all, I was always one of the youngest in the class (I just made the district’s cut-off for the year I was in… everyone born only a week or two after me had to wait another year before starting kindergarten), and secondly, my birthday happened so soon after school started each year that the teacher usually hadn’t established how birthday treats would be handled yet. Thus, we didn’t often celebrate my birthday in the classroom. When I got to college, school on the quarter system meant my birthday happened during summer vacation. This is fantastic in theory, but in practice it meant my friends were scattered across the country in their home towns, not collected around campus to gather.

So September is birthday month, and I make no apologies about allowing the celebrations to stretch out across at least a week in one direction or the other. Or sometimes both! In this phase of my life, I find myself surrounded by a lot of other September birthdays (think about it: nine months ago it was December, a chilly but also festive time…), and I never hesitate to celebrate by helping them celebrate. As mine approaches this year, however, I must admit to having barely begun to think about the food that will go with it.

And on that note, I must also admit my school analogy: this week, I didn’t do my homework. I had a Bittman recipe all picked out, I bought the ingredients for it, and then between indolence and a wave of unexpected (but, at least for me, not entirely unwelcome) heat, I never got around to making it. Fortunately, however, I can give you some make-up work: a photo essay! This past weekend I went to the first birthday bash of September, a joint affair for my friends B. and Ch., and a spread that put my hostess heart to shame. Following are just some of the delights available to sample.

Raw vegetable medley cups. The delicious spicy hummus and masala spread provided to dip them in not pictured.

Homemade jumbo sized “oreo” cookies, with all the cruch and creaminess of the Nabisco favorite. I am pleased but also slightly concerned that I acquired the recipe from my hostess…

Lemon raspberry cupcakes. Alas, somehow I neglected to sample one of these beautiful summery treats, but they looked amazing.

Look how lovely these chocolate-dipped pretzel rods are! Bakery case beautiful, but I’m almost positive Ch. dipped them herself.

Here’s what really delighted me (besides these chickpeas, which were flavorful and crunchy and addictive): next to each item, Ch. made these lovely little cards not only naming the treat, but providing its dietary specifics. Dishes were marked as “vegan,” “dairy,” or “gluten-free” so guests could determine for themselves what was safe for them to eat. How kind and thoughtful, in today’s world with growing restrictions.

Thanks, Ch. and B. It was a delightful party, and I was p-leased to celebrate you both. I’m glad you were born! Thanks for ushering in the birthday season with such tasty taste.

Happy birthday!

Indulgence

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Chelsea

This week my shopping list was a bit wonky. I was buying food for a party, and the idea that we might have to, you know, eat this week went to the wayside. I never once looked at my Bittman options. I bought nothing to make one of his meals.

So I beg you to indulge me, as I present something a little different. Indulge me my favorite indulgence: cheesecake.

For this recipe, I’d love to get some feedback. I’ve never made a cheesecake before, let alone one impregnated with Nutella. I don’t usually like “stuff” added to my cheesecake, but inspired by the frosting on Tartelette’s Nutella cupcakes crafted for World Nutella Day, I thought this one might just be okay. If you make this, please let me know if you change anything and how those changes work out.

Nutella Cheesecake

(some measurements are approximate)

Crust:

1 cup toasted, coarsely chopped hazelnuts

8-10 chocolate graham crackers, broken in big pieces

6 TB melted butter

1/8 tsp salt

1/3-1/2 cup sugar, or to taste

In a food processor, pulverize the hazelnuts until very fine – almost a meal. Add graham crackers, salt, and sugar and grind until everything is homogenous and very fine. With food processor running, dribble in melted butter and pulse until crumbs are moistened and clumping together. Dump out into the baking vessel of your choice (I don’t have a springform pan, so I used a 9X13” glass baking dish. I don’t know how these amounts would correspond to a springform pan). Using your fingers or the curved bottom of a measuring cup, tamp down the crumbs into a crust of uniform thickness over the bottom and partway up the sides of the vessel you have chosen.

I did not pre-bake the crust, and because it ended up a little crumbly I suspect one of two things could be improved: either it needed more butter to hold it together, or it needed to be pre-baked. If you do one of these things and have desirable results, please let me know so I can amend the recipe!

Set crust aside while you whip up the filling.

Filling:

all ingredients should be at room temperature

3 bricks full-fat cream cheese

1 cup Nutella

4 eggs

1-2 tsp vanilla extract

½ – 1 cup sugar, or to taste

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl with an electric mixer), beat up the cream cheese until very fluffy and well combined. This may take a few minutes – don’t skimp on this part because it will ultimately result in less uniform filling. Scraping down the sides several times during the process is helpful to catch any unblended cream cheese hiding out on the edges of the bowl.

When cream cheese is very light and all has the same consistency, scrape down the sides and add the Nutella. Beat again, and again be sure it gets fully incorporated so there are no pockets of plain, unblended cream cheese.

Add vanilla and sugar to taste, and blend again until very well incorporated. Because the Nutella is already sweet and the crust is sweet, start with ½ cup of sugar and give the filling a taste before adding more. It may be sweet enough for you with only ½ cup. If not, add more, blend again, and taste again until you are satisfied with the sweetness.

With the mixer running, add the eggs one at a time and wait until each is fully incorporated before adding the next. Again, be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl to be sure the filling is of homogeneous texture. By the time the last egg is incorporated, the mixture should be pourable and slightly soupy.

Pour into the room temperature crust. If you pre-baked the crust, let it cool (or pop it into the refrigerator for a few minutes) before adding the filling so you don’t start cooking the filling before putting it in the oven. This would result in an unevenly baked product, which is not what we want.

With all the filling on top of the crust, spread it out a little with a spatula to be sure it forms an even layer. You may want to lift and tap the whole baking vessel on the counter a few times to help the filling evenly distribute, settle, and release air bubbles (this is good to do with cake batter as well).

Stow your precious vessel in an oven preheated to 350F for about 45 minutes, or until the center is just barely set (you should be able to touch it very lightly and come away with a clean finger, but it should still look the tiniest bit wobbly when you gently shake the pan). Don’t be afraid to take it out at this point – I left mine in the oven with the heat off and the door open for an extra ten minutes because I was afraid it wasn’t done, but this resulted in big cracks around the edges of the filling, which means I overcooked it. Still, though, photographic evidence doesn’t lie:

Let the cheesecake cool completely on a rack on your counter-top (away from the heat of the cooling oven), then cover it, put it in the refrigerator, and chill for a few hours to help it set up. Remove, slice, and serve, and don’t expect the leftovers to last very long. It’s very rich, it’s very chocolaty, and it’s very, very good.

Kale and coconut

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Chelsea

Kale is a recent love for me, at least relatively speaking. I had seen the curly leaves used as edging – a kind of metaphorical hedge between dishes in fancy hotel breakfast buffets or salad bars; a hefty big brother to curls of parsley left quasi-artistically on the side of a plate – but I had never eaten it. Sometimes it didn’t even look edible, but more like a plastic plant trapped somewhere in the realm of land kelp.

Last year I began experimenting with kale, mostly thanks to bloggers like Shauna at Gluten-Free Girl and Elana at Elana’s Pantry. N. and I have chomped our way through kale in lasagna, pesto, braised with soy sauce and mushrooms, and of course coated in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and paprika and roasted into chips. Its robust, almost waxen toughness seemed to require aggressive cooking techniques. I never believed the recipes I read suggesting raw consumption could be tasty. And yet Bittman advocated for this as well!

“74. Trim and chop kale; salt and squeeze and knead until wilted and reduced in volume, about 5 minutes. Rinse, dry and toss with olive oil, lemon juice, chopped dried apples and toasted pine nuts.”

With my yen for freshness and greenery escalating, I decided it was worth a try. The cast of characters consisted of:

1 large bunch Italian or lacinato kale

1 tsp. salt, plus more to taste, if desired

2 TB olive oil, or to coat

Juice of half a lemon

½ chopped dried apples

¼ cup toasted pine nuts

Doubtful, I tore the beautiful emerald lobed leaves from the tough central stalks, then roughly chopped the huge pile of leafy scraps into smaller pieces. I sprinkled salt over my heap of salad and began to knead. To my utter amazement, in under a minute the leaves had started to change in texture and consistency. They became more like spinach, then more like cooked greens, and I decided to knead only for two or three minutes, fearing from the drastic reduction in volume already that I would end up with less than two servings. When I stopped kneading, I flopped the wilted clumps into a salad spinner to rinse, de-salt, and spin dry.

I tossed the kale with olive oil and lemon juice in a large salad bowl, then added the pine nuts and apples. A quick taste led me to add a miniscule sprinkle of salt, and then it was ready to serve!

We enjoyed the salad with chicken apple sausages – I wanted to capture the special flavor of the apples and highlight their sweetness against the tart lemon and bitter kale. It was a very successful salad, and would be particularly good at the height of summer when you cannot bear to encounter the heat cooking requires. Just pre-toast the pine nuts on a cooler occasion and this salad flies together.

The contrast of flavors is lovely. It manages to hit all four of the major taste bud groups: the kale is bitter, the hint of salt gives it nice salinity, the apples are sweet, and the lemon is tartly sour. Similarly, it satisfies a variety of textures: the kale is tender but still has some body for your tongue to play with, while the apples are chewy and the pine nuts provide a satisfying crunch.

Using kale as a salad base provides so many possibilities. I already know I’d like to try toasting the apple rings to try and achieve a more chip-like texture and add extra crispness: apple croutons, if you will. A more savory salad might entail replacing the apples with a good grating of sharp cheddar or Parmesan cheese. Hard boiled eggs, walnuts, and maybe a scattering of bacon would make a more substantial salad. The options are endless.

But the title of this post isn’t about endless kale. It also mentions coconut, so I’d better move along.

With half a bag of sweetened, flaked coconut in my pantry and a small bevy of beauties descending on my house for a ladies’ TV night, I decided to over-achieve this week and make another Bittman selection to share with my friends.

“100. Spiced Macaroons: Mix 3 cups shredded unsweetened coconut, 1 cup sugar, ½ teaspoon ground cardamom and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Stir in 3 lightly beaten egg whites and a teaspoon almond extract. Drop in small spoonfuls on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until golden on the edges.”

I must admit from the outset that my process was a considerable adaptation, spurred by a shortage or downright lack of both ingredients and time to obtain more. I used the following:

2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

¼ tsp garam masala

Pinch of salt

2 lightly beaten egg whites

1 tsp amaretto liqueur

From there, I followed Bittman’s directions exactly. At the point the house began to smell like a vacation, I pulled the cookies from the oven and, unable to resist, stuffed one that collapsed from its fragile form into my mouth. Oh heaven. It was incredible. The coconut was still chewy, and I’m pretty good with words, but the mixture of spice and salt did something I can’t describe. Cooks are always saying salt enhances the other flavors of the dish, and that’s what happened here. The coconut and egg whites suggested lightness and airy tropical sweetness, while the garam masala was incense and thick dark spice, but just the barest touch: a perfumed, candle-lit temple down the road from an endless white sand beach. Fanciful, you say? What can I tell you… coconut is one of my favorite flavors, and when it is elevated to such heights a certain mystical religiosity is perfectly appropriate.

The cookies were quite tender, and some declined to hold together at all. This made them easier to eat, in a way, because they were already breaking themselves for us – all but insisting upon their own sacrifice – but the next time I attempt them I want them to hold together better. I may cook them a little longer, or perhaps beat the egg whites more vigorously. You wouldn’t want stiff, or even soft, peaks, but perhaps an approach to peaks would help the coconut cling together. Nevertheless, three girls in the space of an hour decimated a plate of macaroons, leaving behind only three stragglers who were so lonely that I found them a happier home the following afternoon as a reward to myself for accomplishing some much-needed reading. I must say, the lift from an analysis of 14^th century poetic aesthetics into all-but-mystical flavor vacation is about the best an afternoon snack can do.

Shame

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Chelsea

Twice a year (approximately), a truly embarrasing-to-admit-you-are-obsessed-with-what-with-being-an-intelligent-and-well-educated-woman reality television show starts a new season. And I MUST watch it. And I don’t watch it alone (most of the time). Several female friends are also implicated in this shamefulness, and because the show involves large quantities of too-skinny women, we like to pair our guilty viewing sessions with dessert.

As a new season of this show recently started, I thought this would be a great opportunity to breach the dessert section of my Bittman project. With Pink Lady apples on sale during my weekly pilgrimage and foggy (but accurate!) memory of a bag of cranberries, frozen in November, jammed in the back of my freezer, everything came together.

“99. Apple-Cranberry Crumble: Peel and slice 4 large tart apples. Toss with a cup of cranberries, the juice and zest of a lemon and ¼ cup brandy, apple cider or water and put into a buttered baking dish. Pulse ½ cup cold butter, ½ cup oats, ½ cup walnuts or pecans, ½ cup flour, ¾ cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon and ½ teaspoon ginger in a food processor until crumbly – not fine. Top the fruit with this and bake until bubbly, about 45 minutes.”

Because I did almost exactly this, and because the quantities are listed here, I’m not going to type out an ingredient list – it would be very repetitive. But I will tell you the changes I made, due to ingredient lack and personal preference, and which worked out well.

I didn’t have brandy, so I used spiced rum instead. Because the apples were mouth-wateringly tart and the cranberries relentlessly so, I decided to divide the sugar and put about ¼ cup in with the filling, leaving only ½ cup in the topping. This still rendered a very sweet topping, especially on the leftovers ice cold from the fridge. I think I pulsed the topping too much, because what resulted was almost like graham cracker crumbs. I exacerbated the cookie-like texture because, using a pie pan clearly too small for all this goodness, I patted the topping on fairly firmly to keep everything together. I think a 9×9 square baking dish would be the right size for this dessert.

I preheated the oven to 350F for this, because it’s a fairly standard temperature for desserts and Bittman doesn’t specify.

Perhaps because the topping was packed on so tightly, or because the Pink Lady apples I used were less juicy than Granny Smiths, which is my usual pie apple, 45 minutes later there wasn’t much bubbling. The topping had, however, turned golden and crispy, and the smell of apples and cinnamon mixed with a tantalizing tartness had permeated the house. I’ve discovered in the past year that all those Food Network chefs who tell you doneness can be determined by smell do have a point. It smelled ready, I decided it was done, and my nose and I were right.

When I served this, spooning tender apple slices stained with juice from the popped cranberries and blanketed with a crunchy, cookie-like layer of awesome, one serving proved not enough. In fact, between me, the two ladies I was sharing with, and N. when he sneaked through to pick up dessert near the end of the show, we devoured about ¾ of this simple, homey treat in one evening. And we didn’t even have ice cream on the side.

Clearly, my assessment on this pick is that it was fantastic. Easy ingredients, easy to make, and so difficult to mess up that it can be served to company the first time you attempt it. Pleasantly, the apples maintained a bit of texture even after almost an hour in the oven. The rum was soaked up and cooked off, leaving only the barest tingling spice that went well with both the apples and the cranberries. Even with the addition of brown sugar in the filling and the richness of the crumble, the cranberries and lemon kept the whole dish feeling very bright. It made me think that with more cranberries, smaller pieces of apples, and no topping, this could be a delightful take on cranberry sauce.

As these things so often go, and as good as our first decimating exploration was, this dish’s debut was not its best showing. Rather, two days later when I needed a pick-me-up and saw the aluminum foil covered pie plate balancing unsteadily atop several stacked Tupperwares, I discovered its chilly waiting period had brought it to perfection. The apples were incredibly flavorful, the cranberries were still tart but had mellowed into something resembling sweetness, and the crumble on top was like a cinnamon-scented crust on the best New York cheesecake you’ve ever had. So delicious. And really, as good as the apple and cranberry pairing was, I see no reason this topping couldn’t be patted over other types of fruit. Pears and raisins, if you added a little nutmeg to the topping, would be stellar. Plums, peaches, maybe even cherries, could happily burble away under such a glorious blanket. And though next time I might pulse the topping less and sprinkle over the fruit rather than pressing, this is a dessert I will not forget to make again. Maybe every time a new shameful viewing season begins.

Candyland

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Chelsea

My two favorite board games when I was a kidlet were Chutes & Ladders, and Candyland. I liked the first, but found it slightly stressful, since it seemed I inevitably ended up sliding down the longest possible slide and having to restart the game from the beginning. Looking back, I wonder whether the primary design of this game was to keep children occupied with it for as long as possible, to give exhausted parents a chance to rest. Having no siblings at that point in my life, if this was the goal of the game it backfired in my family.

But Candyland? Candyland I loved. And I loved it not so much for the gameplay itself, but for the fantastical characters and decorated board, and for the outrageously wonderful idea that a whole kingdom could be made out of and based around candy. It was like “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” but better. Because it was candy. My favorite figure in the game was Queen Frostine. She had blueish silver hair that came down to her waist, and a sparkling rock candy scepter. I still remember the first sentence or two provided about her in the game description: “Peacefully adrift on an ice cream float in an ice cream sea…” Pretty, powerful, royal, and living in ice cream. It was everything I thought I had ever wanted.

When Candyland was at last boxed up for good and covered in an inch or two of dust in our attic, I retained a love for both miniatures and candy. Thus, truffles were like little boulders, or tree stumps, and gingerbread houses were the most romantic, creative way of celebrating the desserts of the holiday season.

Now, as an adult but also a student, my holiday budget is somewhat limited. But I know, since I share my life and most of my friendships with other graduate students, that food – especially a special, out of the ordinary sort of food – makes a good gift. So, with the holiday season approaching and the term ending, early in December I celebrated my extraordinarily timely submission of my first dissertation chapter by hiding books, pencils, and papers from myself and instead filling my kitchen with bags and boxes of chocolate. I submerged myself back into Candyland. Not as Queen Frostine this time, but as a new character: the Empress of Truffletown, perhaps. I wrote some time ago about my first experience with truffle production, and this time I wanted to explore some new flavors – add my own sweet twists to the basic recipe.

The basic procedure is to coat squares of ganache in melted chocolate. It seems to me after some experimentation that the right ratio in a ganache is 6-8 tablespoons of liquid for each 8 oz. of melted chocolate. At least 6 of these liquid tablespoons should be heavy cream. But the really exciting part lies in the possibilities for the other 2 tablespoons…

I made three varieties: Amaretto White Chocolate Truffles, Gingerbread Truffles, and Peppermint Truffle, and popped them into some pretty, festive boxes I found. Then, just for fun, I also whipped up some Almond Butter cups. My willing taste testers declared the Amaretto and the Almond Butter cups the best selections.

Amaretto White Chocolate Truffles:

To make this flavor, I melted 6 TB of heavy cream with 8 oz. white chocolate over a double boiler. When the mixture was almost completely melted, I carefully stirred in 2 TB amaretto. When it was completely smooth, I added a few tablespoons each finely chopped dried apricots, and finely minced, toasted almonds. I stirred the whole thing together quickly, poured it into a plastic wrap lined loaf pan, and stowed it in the fridge to harden.

The following day, I pried the block of creamy white goodness, studded with precious gems of flavor, out onto a board, cut it in squares, and dunked each in melted semi-sweet chocolate. After letting these harden on parchment paper, I added a white chocolate drizzle to the top for a little flair. They were incredible. The white chocolate was delicately flavored by the amaretto, which is one of my favorite liqueur varieties. Nutty and rich and sweet, and here punctuated by the soft crunch of almonds and the slight chew of apricot chunks. This variety is definitely one for the recipe books. I will absolutely be making it again and again.

Gingerbread Truffles:

I followed the same basic procedure for these as for the Amaretto version, though I used dark chocolate as my base for the ganache. Lacking a ginger flavored liqueur, I melted the chocolate with only 6 TB heavy cream, and stirred in about a ¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger. Again, I refrigerated, again, I removed, sliced, and dipped. Then, while the outer layer of chocolate was still glossy and wet, I sprinkled a good teaspoon or two of powdered gingersnap cookie crumbs atop each truffle. Spicy and warm in the back of the throat, with a pleasing crispy crunch from the cookie powder. I did find, with these, that the ganache was a bit crumbly after it hardened, perhaps because it was made with less liquid. I would up the amount of heavy cream in the mixture to 7 or a full 8 tablespoons to try and combat this issue.

Peppermint Truffles:

For these, I combined 8 oz. of milk chocolate with 6 tablespoons of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of peppermint schnapps we had kicking around in the back of our liquor cabinet. This time, instead of pouring into a loaf pan, I just left the ganache in the glass bowl I was using as the top portion of my homemade double boiler. While I waited for it to cool and solidify into that glorious fudgy paste ganache becomes, I broke up and crunched several candy canes into bits. The bottom of the peppermint schnapps bottle proved an excellent tool for this project. A rolling pin would probably also work well for this. As I scooped out each tablespoon of ganache, I rolled it into a ball with my hands and then rolled it through the candy cane flakes, creating a pinkish minty snowball to add to the collection. I wasn’t as thrilled with the flavor of these; the schnapps came through more as the harsh grate of alcohol rather than the spicy-cool flavor of peppermint, but my taste testers didn’t complain. They were Christmas-y in appearance, which no doubt leant to their appeal. If I do this flavor again, I might use only one tablespoon of schnapps, rather than 2.

Almond Butter Cups:

I was much less exact with these, working mostly for flavor rather than creating a recipe. Again, I melted 8 oz. of chocolate – semi-sweet this time. Then, I mixed a few tablespoons of powdered sugar into a cup or so of almond butter. Trader Joe’s makes a really good crunchy variety with roasted flax seeds, so that is what I was using. When the sugar and the butter were well combined, I scooped it into my chocolate and let them melt together into smooth, thick ribbons. Then I poured a tablespoonful or so directly into candy papers. I found that setting each paper into the depressions in a mini muffin tin made them stand up straight and not collapse when the hot chocolate mixture was added. I refrigerated my muffin-tin-full to let them set up. Imagine taking a bite of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Now imagine it tastes of almonds instead of peanuts. Now imagine that nutty flavor is mixed evenly through the chocolate, rather than sitting in the center, and that it is interspersed by the crispy, deep, roasty-ness of golden flax seeds.

Presenting boxes of these collected divinities to my officemates, a few close friends, our neighbors, and finally our families, I felt like a benevolent ruler. Sure, it’s only my little kitchen where I rule with a chocolate-daubed fist, but my offerings were wide and sweet. Move over, Candyland. This is Truffletown.