Insomnia and Pumpkin Cake

For the last several weeks, my nights have been an indiscriminate haze of asleep and awake. 

If you haven't followed along on twitter, roughly three weeks ago I developed, completely out of the blue, a large blind spot in the central vision of my right eye. This, while a disturbing and frightening experience (especially considering I kind of need my eyes to do my job) actually turned out to be completely cured by the medication I was put on.

The problem now, is, of course, the medication.

This particular medication is well known, a wonder drug. It's prescribed, and seems to alleviate, any number of maladies, including my particular one. It is also notorious for it's side effects. Things like: panic attacks; constantly feeling on edge and anxious; violent mood swings; heart palpitations; cold sweats; being constantly hungry; retaining water, and, my favorite, an inability to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time.

Which brings me to this very early morning. 

I've actually been up for several hours already, after coming awake following a horrible nightmare involving croissants. 

It wasn't even a particularly scary dream - no fanged croissants chasing me down long, dark flights of stairs. No clawed, hairy croissants leaping out of bushes. As a nightmare, it was pretty lame. 

In fact it centered on my inability to bake, and anxiety around integral things to the process of making something like a croissant, things like timing and butter.

As I said...lame.

So here I am, hours before I need to be awake, but wide awake all the same.

The Tartine Bakery Book was the cause of said nightmare. I got it in the mail last night, and, rather stupidly in hindsight, decided to read through it before hitting the sack. Although, who could blame me? The recipes are absolutely delicious sounding, the pictures beautiful. For someone who is by nature not a baker, I am absolutely fascinated with books on baking in hopes that all those fantastic techniques and recipes will somehow change me fundamentally and one day i'll be able to just crank out a laminated dough like it's no thing.

I decided to come to terms with my baking nightmare. No, not by making croissants - I'm not COMPLETELY insane, not yet. But, to bake from this book. I have several hours to kill anyway.

I decided to make Tartine's pumpkin tea cake, and if the batter has any indication, its going to be pretty damn good.

Pumpkin Tea Cake

adapted from Tartine Bakery Book

• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/5 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 9 oz pumpkin puree (about 1 cup plus 2 tbsp)
• 1/2 cup whole milk greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp sugar for topping
• large handful raw pepitas for topping (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Lightly butter a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a mixing bowl and set aside.
4. Whisk together the pumpkin puree, oil, sugar and salt until well mixed.
5. Add one egg at a time, mixing well to incorporate it completely before adding the next.
6. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with your whisk.
7. Add the flour mixture and whisk together, GENTLY, just until combined, then continue to mix just until the batter becomes smooth. It should have the consistency of a thick puree. 
8. Transfer the batter to the loaf pan and sprinkle on the sugar and pepitas. 
9. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about an hour. 
10. Let the pan cool about 20 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack, turn right side up, and let it cool the rest of the way. Serve at room temperature. 

Deep Dark Gingerbread

(Faithfully re-posted from the other blog project. Expect more original postings on here very soon - I've pretty much learned what I needed to know about Wordpress. Viva la Blogger!)

I know I'm out of season on this one,  but this past week I had the most insatiable craving for gingerbread.  Maybe its because the weather is indistinguishable from mid winter in downtown San Francisco right now.
Sadly its apparently summer everywhere else, which means it's damn near impossible to find this thing that I'm craving.
What does one do in this situation, other than sit around and cry hungrily and probably eat a lot of other baked goods to try and fill the void?
Sometimes, you just have to take matters into your own hands.
I am not great at baking. I recently made a batch of chocolate chip cookies so bad that my husband recommended we just toss them rather than subject ourselves to the horror of eating them. (Thx ego boost,  honey!)
Like always I try to attempt recipes using stuff I randomly have in my house - in this case, blackstrap molasses, avocado honey, and leftover ginger syrup from an attempt to make ginger beer not too long ago. And tea masala, because it goes well in everything.
But I have to say that this attempt at gingerbread turned out well. Its not as sweet as what you'd find at a cafe. Its dark,  and sticky, and spicy, and almost bitter in the same way that good chocolate is. It would be heavenly with vanilla ice cream (or the tail end of a carton of heavy cream that I whipped up).
This would be even better if you have crystalized ginger on hand (like 1/4 of a cup, roughly chopped.)
Deep Dark Gingerbread
adapted from the gingerbread recipe in "Canning for a New Generation" by Liana Krissoff

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons english mustard powder (the kind that comes in a yellow box)
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon tea masala (sorry, I put it in everything!)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 large egg, room temp
• 3/4 cup blackstrap molasses
• 1/4 cup good dark honey
• 1/4 cup ginger beer, or ginger syrup if you have any, or preserved ginger in its syrup, or crystallized ginger chopped.
• 3/4 cup hot water

1. preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. line a square baking pan with tinfoil, or generously butter a loaf pan.
3. sift the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, spices) into a medium bowl.
4. with an electric mixer or stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
5. add the egg and molasses and honey, and beat for 5 to 8 minutes until the color lightens.
6. beat in the ginger stuff, whatever you're using.
7. Add the flour mixture a third at a time, beating in throughly, and alternate with a third of the hot water.
8. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
9. Let it cool for 15 minutes or so..

- this is a good time to whip up some cream, or pick up ice cream at the store.
(AKA something where you aren't so distracted by the smell that you can't wait until it's cooled. This is a lot better when it's totally cooled or just barely warm - I think it's even better the next day.)
Other stuff that goes amazingly with gingerbread:
- pears or quinces poached in spice and vanilla syrup
- plums in caramel sauce
- anything creamy - ginger ice cream, a bourbon-spiked creme anglais, a ginger or cinnamon flavored whipped cream.
- lemon or grapefruit curd
What? Just because I'm not the worlds best baker, doesn't mean I don't have the palate. Oh for a pastry chef at my command.
(maybe I can press my husband into service)

Brown Sugar Banana Muffins

There are a million and one versions of banana bread out there. This one is decently moist, low in fat, pleasantly spiced and not too sweet. There’s a nice hit of spice and crunch from the sugar chips, plus a hit of chocolate that not overwhelming as it often is in banana bread. I made these into muffins but you could just as easily make a tea bread - layer the chips in the middle and sprinkle on top.

Sugar chips:

one slab of brown sugar 

good cocoa powder

1 tsp cinnamon

Stick the sugar in a baggie and hit repeatedly with the blunt object of your choice to break into chips. Add cinnamon and cocoa powder to cover.

Batter:

2 c. flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp tea masala (cardamom/black pepper/ginger/cinnamon/clove)

1 cup packed brown sugar (the regular kind, not slab)

3  bananas, pureed to baby food consistancy.

2 eggs

dribble of vanilla extract

1/4 cup veg. oil

1/4 cup plain yogurt

Mix ingredients Muffin Method style. (Dry ingredients mixed in a bowl, wet ingredients mixed in a bowl. uh, sugar is a wet ingredient by the way. Also, beat your eggs before you add them to the wet.Wet into dry and fold together. Be gentle - you want to keep air in it.) 

Once you’ve got a batter, grease your muffin pans and add a spoonful to each. Layer in some sugar chips, then another spoonful of batter to cover. Sprinkle a few chips on top.

Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of one. It will be a hell of a lot quicker if you’re making mini muffins, and longer if you decided to make tea bread. Regular muffins take maybe 12 minutes in my oven.