Rosemary Shortbread
July 25, 2010
When your computer dies, make more dessert!
I did not intend to write about yet another dessert, but due to a motherboard failure, my computer is imprisoned at a local repair shop waiting for warranty parts to arrive. So are all the food photos I finally downloaded from my phone. Chilled Pasta Primavera and Saged Chicken Stuffed with Sautéed Kale, Bacon, Caramelized Onions, and Goat Cheese will have to wait.
Luckily, I recently inherited my husband’s old laptop. I also have an insatiable sweet tooth and will gladly suffer through a spontaneous batch of Rosemary Shortbread for the sake of this blog. No kicking. No screaming. It actually works out quite well – these cookies are light and a tad savory, are complimented by a glass of hearty red wine, and will be the perfect contribution to the barbecue we’re attending tomorrow.
I was introduced to Rosemary Shortbread by Ruby, Eugene’s bottle-cap artist extraordinaire. True to my tendencies, I tweaked the recipe to fit my taste. With this one, it was the simple addition of salt, which I think enhances the flavor of both the rosemary and the butter. Try it both ways if you’re inclined – figure out which suits your fancy.
If at all possible, harvest the rosemary just before making these cookies, and use only the soft tips of each branch. This time of year, that means 2-3 inch fronds on my plant, and it takes close to 20 to make 4 finely-chopped tablespoons. Don’t have your own rosemary bush? Perhaps a neighbor or a friend does. They’ll likely trade all the rosemary you want for a plate of these gems.
Ingredients:
1 cup chilled butter
2 ½ + ½ cup flour
¾ cup sugar (if on hand, I prefer fine baker’s sugar for shortbread)
½ tsp salt
3 – 4 Tbs. finely-chopped fresh rosemary
Sift sugar, salt and 2 ½ cups of the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the finely chopped rosemary. Cut the chilled butter into cubes and blend with a pastry blender or two forks. The point is to cut as much of the butter into your dry ingredients before using your hands, which will warm the dough. Then use your hands to gently work the butter in until the dough resembles coarse meal. Once mixed, it should clump in your fist but easily break apart.
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees and have an ungreased cookie sheet ready.
Dust your work surface with a few tablespoons of the remaining flour. Form ¼ or so of the dough into a firm ball and press into the work surface. Sprinkle flour on as needed, making sure you keep a layer of flour under your dough or you’ll be scraping up cookies with a spatula. Now you need to get the dough to about ¼” to 3/8” thick. This dough would much rather break into a hundred pieces, so I use the heel of one hand to flatten it while using the fingers of the other to keep if from breaking apart.
Once flattened, finish it off with a rolling pin. Flour a cookie cutter or the lip of a small glass, cut as many cookies as you can, and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Add the scraps left on your work surface to another batch of fresh dough and repeat the process. Makes approximately 3 dozen 2″ cookies.
Kitchen Tip: My husband and I can polish off an entire batch of these in a couple of days. If I’m not making them to share, I force myself to freeze a cookie sheet of unbaked cookies, pack them in a Ziplock once they’re frozen hard. When it’s time for fresh-baked cookies, I put them back on a cookie sheet, defrost at room temperature for a couple of hours, and bake as usual.
The cookies will take from 25 – 40 minutes to bake depending on how thick they are and how accurately your oven keeps its 300 degree temperature. They should be firm to the touch in the center and have a hint of golden brown on the edges. In my own oven, they take about 35 minutes. I had the brilliant idea of baking this batch in an unfamiliar oven. After only 30 minutes, they were well on they’re way to nut brown. Stefano and I were forced to test one or two (okay, three!) just to make sure they were barbecue worthy. Seems like they’re going to be fine, but I may have to test another one or two to be sure. ; )
As I mentioned earlier in the post, they go very well with red wine and make a nice finish to a hearty Italian meal. Friends of ours who generally don’t like dessert love these cookies. Enjoy, and, as always, I’d love to hear how they turn out.
P.S. The Great Crème Brulee Experiment
After last week’s Lavender Brulee, I was anxious to see how other herbed brulees would turn out. Made up a batch and divided into two parts, infusing one with rosemary and the other with lemon thyme. Divided each of those infusions into three parts to make six unique brulees:
Plain Rosemary
Sweetened Rosemary
Rosemary and Goat Cheese
Plain Thyme
Sweetened Thyme
Thyme and Goat Cheese
Then I forced Stefano, our house guests, and my dear mother to taste each one. As you can see from the picture,
our preferences were nearly unanimous. Sweetened Rosemary was the favorite with the Rosemary Goat a close second. Even though I left the thyme infusing for twice as long as the rosemary, no one could pinpoint what flavor it was, and no one really liked it. (Stefano spit it directly into the trash.) Dividing thickened eggs into 6 exact fraction-of-tablespoons portions is not so easy, and my proportions were not 100% accurate, making some taste a little eggier then others. Nonetheless, the Sweetened Rosemary Brulee was the hands-down favorite for dessert and the Rosemary Goat Cheese Brulee seemed like it would work well either as an appetizer or in place of a cheese course at the end of a meal, perhaps with apples or crisp pears… More experimentation is in order, and I hope to share the recipe with you soon.
If my computer finds its way home this week, then I’ll get busy on that Chilled Pasta Primavera recipe – perfect on such a hot summer’s day. If not… perhaps it’s time for a chewy loaf of Italian bread. Happy baking —
Ciao ciao ~
Lavender Crème Brulée
July 17, 2010
When Life Gives You Eggs… Make More Dessert!
In my first post, you heard that, as an adult, I did not waltz into the kitchen with a smile on my face. As a child, however, I loved being in the kitchen, if only to bake desserts. Shortening, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, soda salt! I could recite the recipe for chocolate chip cookies by the time I was four. It’s only fitting that I’m working my way into food blogging from the sweet side of life. We started with Limoncello, a digestivo (after-dinner drink), moved on to Tiramisu, and here you’ll find a quick recipe for Lavender Crème Brulée.
Lavender seems to be blooming everywhere in Oregon’s Willamette Valley right now. I love the sight and smell of it, and I cannot resist wrapping my fingers around a stalk of flowers as I pass, carrying the fragrance away with me. I also happen to have a refrigerator full of yummy eggs, thanks to Ian, the grade-schooler up the road who is learning about raising chickens and the business of selling eggs at a young age.
I’ve made and enjoyed plain crème brulée many times, and the idea of lavender-infused brulée intrigued me. Online, I found recipes that called for as little as one tablespoon of flowers infused for 3 minutes, up to ¼ cup of flowers infused for 1 hour. I wanted more than a hint of lavender essence; I didn’t want something that tasted like soap. I experimented with 3 tablespoons of flowers and sampled the infusion along the way to decide when to strain the flowers. I’m perfectly happy with these results, but I also encourage you to experiment with the recipe to find out what tickles your food fancy. Unlike Tiramisu, there are no specialty-store ingredients, and it’s one of the easiest desserts I’ve ever made.
As always, start with good ingredients: fresh, fresh eggs, and fresh lavender flowers. The recipes I’ve seen for lavender crème brulée call for dried flowers. I’m not sure why you’d get more flavor out of dry rather than fresh, so I met the idea in the middle and stripped a couple of lavender stalks, spread the florets on a tray, and left them on a shaded window sill for a couple of warm days.
Ingredients:
3 T lavender flowers + some for garnish
1 T softened butter
6 large egg yolks
4 T white sugar
1 ½ cups cream
3 T brown sugar
You’ll also need:
- 4 to 6 ramekins. (Oven-safe coffee cups will work in a pinch. They may not be as “presentable,” but they won’t change the taste of your crème.
- A whisk
- A baking dish or cookie sheet to hold water around your ramekins as they bake – which depends on how tall your ramekins are.
- Strainer and pot to warm cream
To make your brulée:
Warm the cream on the stove, but do not boil. Add the flowers (saving a few pinches for garnish) and let them infuse for ½ hour. Taste the cream – if you are satisfied with the hint of lavender you taste, strain the mix into a bowl. I found that I wanted more of a lavender taste, so let the flowers infuse for another ½ hour.
When your happy with your infusion, preheat your oven to 275 degrees and butter 4 – 6 ramekins. (I say four to six ramekins because I prefer crème brulée a little thicker, and therefore make fewer servings. Both work well.) Next whisk the egg yolks. As they start to thicken, slowly add the sugar, a bit at a time, and whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Whisk together the strained lavender cream and yolk mix. Divide into the ramekins.
Place the ramekins in your dish and pour warm water into the dish so it comes about ½ way up the sides of your ramekins. These ramekins are short, so I use a cooking sheet. The second sheet is to avoid spilling water while moving them in or out of the gas stove. Bake uncovered until just barely set, approximately 45 – 50 minutes. The exact time will depend on the size of your dishes. If the mixture jiggles when you slide the dish out from the oven, put it back in for 5 minutes. Keep an eye on it as it goes from soft to set quickly.
Set the tray to cool on the counter, and turn the oven off. While it’s cooling, place your brown sugar on a cookie sheet, place it in the spent oven, and allow it to dry out. This will take 10 – 20 minutes, depending on how warm your oven is when you get the sugar in there, how thin you’ve spread the sugar, and how well the oven retains heat.
Once the sugar is dry, scoop it into a closeable bag and roll over with a glass or rolling pin until it is crushed fine.
When your crème brulées cool, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours up to a day.
When you’re ready to serve, dust each brulée with brown sugar and place them under a hot broiler for one to three minutes.
Keep a close eye on the topping! You want it to carmelize but not burn. Remove the brulées as the sugar carmelizes, turning or repositioning as necessary. At this point, you can either serve immediately or refrigerate for up to 45 minutes before the carmelized topping starts turning gooey.
To serve, sprinkle the florets you saved for garnishing either on your serving dish or on each brulée (the latter will obviously increase the lavender flavor, as well as change the texture of a spoonful of crème — but it sure is pretty!).
I think tawny port is a lovely accompaniment, followed by a nice shot of espresso. Enjoy!
After making and loving this dessert, I think I’ll experiment with savory rosemary crème brulée next – perhaps with a hint of goat cheese? That, of course, means I’ll have a dozen egg whites just waiting for… could it be time for angel food cake?