Banana-Date Tea Cake

Tartine Bakery's Banana-Date Tea Cake.

I underestimated how much I would enjoy eating cake for breakfast every morning. Inspired by the fall weather in L.A. (i.e., temperatures under 90 degrees), last weekend I made Tartine's Pumpkin Tea Cake. I thought it would be good; it was great. I had it every morning and even some evenings. When it was gone by Friday, I didn't know what to do with myself. Without the spicy, sweet, perfect tea cake, I was forced to search my office drawers for sustenance. And that's why I made myself the most hated by eating popcorn at 8:00 a.m. Twice. (In my defense, the second time was at the theater and I can't not get the caramel popcorn at the ArcLight, regardless of time, company or cost.)

Is cake for breakfast good for you? Yes. Yes it is. And anyway, I do yoga every morning at 6:30 a.m. I deserve this. Which is why I got up today and made Tartine's Banana-Date Tea Cake. It's full of bananas, cinnamon, dates and walnuts. It's got a banana and sugar crust, which became caramelized after spending over an hour in the oven. I got a little batter on my finger while mixing the dates in and did what every chef on the Food Network does: tasted it. 

Omg. Good. It's just so good. And you should have smelled it baking. 

So beautiful! Pre-bake. 

Bananas.

Dates! Or possibly small beetles. 

My mom only buys her spices from Penzeys, so naturally I do as well. The coffee beans have nothing to do with Banana Tea Cake, but I bought 'em and they add visual interest.

Banana bread!

Ingredients

1 cup + 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 medium bananas (very ripe)
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1 cup walnuts, lightly toasted and coarsely chopped
1 3/4 cup dates, pitted and coarsely chopped

Topping
1 medium banana
2 tbsp sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Lightly butter the bottom and sides of a 9-by-5 pan.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, cinnamon, baking powder, and baking soda and stir to mix. Set aside.

Peel the bananas and place in a second bowl. Mash with a fork until you have a chunky puree (or just pop in your standing mixer for a minute or two). Add the eggs, vanilla, and salt to the bananas and stir to mix well. Set aside.

In a third mixing bowl, beat the butter until light and creamy, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the sugar and beat until light in color and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Slowly add the banana mixture and beat until incorporated. Again scrape down the sides of the bowl, and then mix for another 30 seconds to make sure all the ingredients are incorporated.

Using the rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the banana mixture. Then fold in the nuts and dates. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again, making sure all the ingredients are fully incorporated.

Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan and smooth the surface with an offset spatula. To top the cake, peel the banana and cut in half lengthwise. The place each half cut side down and cut in half lengthwise, to yield 4 long slices. Lay the slices on the top of the batter. Sprinkle with the sugar.

Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, and then invert onto the rack, turn right side up, and let cool completely. Serve the cake at room temperature. It will keep, well wrapped, at room temperature for 2 days or in the refrigerator for about 1 week. 

Pumpkin Tea Cake

Pumpkin Tea Cake

Fall is here. Yesterday, it was still summer - the weather was in the mid-80s and sunny - but today, clouds are in the sky, the ground is slightly damp (rain!), and none of the street lights are working on Wilshire. Fall has officially arrived in L.A.

Fall means pumpkins! Pumpkin lattes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread - and Tartine's Pumpkin Tea Cake. I slept in until 6:00 this morning, and since the only other person awake at that hour was my cat, Izzy, I decided it was a good time to bake some bread. (Truth be told, I actually thought it was a good time to make a pumpkin pie, but then I thought about making a crust and got depressed and quickly changed course to a quick bread.)  

Good Izzy.

Tartine's Pumpkin Tea Cake is full of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. It goes perfectly with a latte and if you're lucky, a dollop of bourbon sauce. This recipe claims to yield 6 to 8 servings that last up to 4 days; in fact, this won't make it past tomorrow.

So many spices. So many.

Pre-bake.

Ingredients

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp + 2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 cup + 2 tsp pumpkin puree

1 cup vegetable oil

1 1/3 cups sugar

3/4 tsp salt

3 large eggs

2 tbsp sugar for topping

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly butter the bottom and sides of a 9-by-5 loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves into a mixing bowl and set aside.

In another mixing bowl, beat together the pumpkin puree, oil, sugar and salt on medium speed or by hand until well mixed. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition until incorporated before adding the next egg. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. On low speed, add the flour mixture and beat just until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then beat on medium speed for 5 to 10 seconds to make a smooth batter. The batter should have consistency of a thick puree.

Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan and smooth the surface with an offset spatula. Sprinkle evenly with the sugar. Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, and then invert onto the rack, turn right side up, and let cool completely. Serve the cake at room temperature. It will keep, well wrapped, at room temperature for 4 days or in the refrigerator for about 1 week. 

The Only Thing I Packed Were Some Bags

Found: the cutest parents in the world eating lunch.  

Well, it's moving day once again and I'm exhausted. It's been a few days since my last post (okay, Scott, okay, Don, it's been a few weeks), and a LOT has happened.

First and foremost: I got a job! I left my baking yogi days behind me and am back to being a gainfully employed lawyer with a 9:00-5:00 (actually, 8:00-7:00) job. I do employment litigation now, which is a big change from my entertainment and business litigation days. And frankly, putting on pants before noon is a big change from the last five months.

With a new job comes a new firm photo! Taking firm photos is literally the worst. The worst! I've taken enough ugly firm photos to be prepared this time around, however, and googled "how to take a good law firm photo" the second my new boss told me this was coming. I warned the photographer that I suffer from facial tourette's and make the most hideous faces whenever a camera is pointed at me. He thought I was hilarious until he started trying to take my picture. In the end we had 302 monstrosities and one decent smile. (A note for those who haven't witnessed me in front of a camera yet: At one point the photographer suggested I stop smiling because it looked like I was straining my face. So I tried that, and then he said he could "fix my tooth" that was showing. Why!)

Google said that dark suits are best for law firm photos.

My law firm is located right across from the LACMA, and my soon-to-be-ex-house is located in Culver City, so a move was in order. I got an amazing (small) studio on Dunsmuir right off of Wilshire. My law firm is also right off of Wilshire, and my yoga studio is also right off of Wilshire. My entire life takes place on a one-mile strip on Wilshire. Who could have planned this? Me. I planned this.

So like I was saying, it's moving day and I'm exhausted. So far I've gone to yoga and eaten two pieces of chocolate biscotti that my mom made. Truth be told, I'm writing this blog in a sports bra and yoga pants and I'm not wearing any shoes. My parents are working so hard, though! Here's the view from my writer's chair:

When I was little I wrote a card to my dad that said he was the best dad I ever had. He still is.

I've gotta wrap this post up because the parentals are onto me. My dad just said that he lost his sharpie and his screwdriver, and my mom immediately blamed it on me ("Jana's just throwing stuff in boxes!"). I immediately came to my own defense and said that the only thing I packed were some bags! And that's the truth.

Seattle: The Preview

We vowed never to take a picture together without a fish. Luckily Scott had this in his garage.

People are always shocked to discover I have five brothers and sisters. Two brothers and three sisters, to be exact. Four older and one younger. Much, much older. The oldest, Scott, is "exactly 20 years older than Lauren" according to my mom, which makes him...48. 48! How did this happen? We're like the Brady Bunch with his, hers, and ours, only "ours" was an awesome accident (me) and my almost-as-awesome, planned little sister, Lauren.

My brothers and sisters are amazing. My parents got lucky with all of their kids, and I got lucky to have them as siblings. I remember my sister Raelin used to visit us when I was just old enough to walk and talk, and I would cry every time she left. Raelin was the kind of sister who snuck Lauren and me into the public library with french fries tucked into our backpacks so we could read and snack for hours in the book stacks.

My sister Lara was one of the few people Lauren and I could get to play games with us. We used to go to her house for the weekend and play cards and board games for hours.

Jeff is my youngest older brother. He used to give Lauren and me rewards for good grades, which was about the only way we made any money since formal "chores" weren't a thing in our household. (Before you call us spoiled, recall that we grew up on a farm. A FARM. We collected eggs every day and mucked actual shit on the weekends.) Jeff was also the one who told me I should grow up to be a lawyer, which resulted in me going to law school 15 years later and telling Lauren to go to law school, too. (Jeff, we can discuss your poor life decisions later.)

Scott is my oldest older brother. When he was younger, Scott used to work on commercial fishing boats for months at a time and would come home to visit with pictures and videos of vast ships and massive piles of fish, and his deck uniform: a yellow, waterproof suit and rubber boots. Naturally I got into this uniform and posed for pictures as quickly as I could when I was about 8 years old and cute like that. For the past several years, Scott, Lauren and I have vacationed together in La Paz, Mexico. We eat, laugh, and fish for an entire week, gain 100 pounds each and go home with ice chests full of fish on the plane like it's normal.

Lauren and Scott took the same vow.

All of my brothers and sisters came to visit me when I was going through treatment for cancer. Raelin and Lauren missed maybe two chemo infusions between the two of them. Scott spent an entire weekend with me watching House of Cards and eating Mexican food.

It came time to pay it forward this past weekend. About a month ago, Scott had a heart attack. He was smart enough to realize what was happening, and got himself to an emergency room where they promptly got him to cardiac specialists, who in turn performed an emergency quadruple bypass. My family loves each other like crazy. I can't tell you how happy we are that Scott's okay.

And he's more than okay! He said cacao to heart attacks, I said cacao to cancer, and Scott, Lauren and I did what we do best: ate, laughed, and - well, since we couldn't fish, we just ate some more. More on that later!

A little preview of the next post. A cocktail from Bon Appetit's Top 10 restaurants list!

English Muffins with Ghee

Jana's Karen's Model Bakery English Muffins, Take 2

My parents met Stefan for the first time when they came down the day before my bilateral mastectomy. We went to Jon & Vinny's, had some wine and pizza, and went home for a little socializing. My mom's a great conversationalist - strike that. I was on the phone with my mom when I wrote that, and she demanded accuracy and accountability in my blogging. She wanted me to say that she's actually horrible at talking to people because she has nothing to say when she's not interested in the topic and everything to say when she is interested. It's true that I've spent many, many 30 minute drives on my way to work being lectured on picking-buying-jamming-canning-preserving-fermenting-dehydrating. It's also true that I don't really need to say anything while this is happening. But that doesn't make her horrible at conversation, that just makes her my very smart and very intense mom. (Mom, I love you and think you're amazing all the time no matter what.) 

Anyway. As soon as we were back to my house my mom told Stefan about her homemade chocolate cupcakes that beat all other chocolate cupcakes ever, her homemade granola that actually does beat all other granola ever, her beautiful homemade bags, and her "blue ribbon jam." My mom does make some damn good jam. The only thing is, her jam has never been judged. She makes a ton of jam, she teaches a ton of classes on jam, but she has never entered her jam in a competition. I naturally yelled her name ("Mom. Mom!") and asked what she was even saying, and she responded that her jam was good enough to be blue ribbon jam and she knew that if she ever did enter it, it would win. 

I love my mom.

My first batch of English muffins with my mom's blue ribbon jam.

My mom's blue ribbon jam brings me to Karen's Model Bakery English muffins, since the only thing you should eat on English muffins is my mom's jam. Karen's English muffins are incredible and were the subject of our first lesson together. The recipe will follow, but first, a few pointers:

1. You should try to be as delicate as possible when placing the muffin dough into the ghee, but if you get scared of hot, spluttering butter and accidentally toss the ball in, that's okay, too. The people eating your muffins know nothing!

I was brave with the left muffin. I was scared with the right muffin. 

2. It's hard to turn the muffins over in the ghee to cook the second side without deflating the dough or worse, ending up with a crooked muffin. I like to use my flat metal spatula to begin the flip of the muffin, and a silicon spatula to help guide it gently over. Crooked muffins should be given to people who love you the most and will judge you the least. 

A crooked muffin. 

3. The second time I made these muffins, the silicon lid popped off as the dough fermented in the fridge. I wasn't in the fridge when this happened and so didn't see the problem until the 12 hours had passed. It was fine. Just scrape any hardened dough off the top and proceed as normal. I had three fewer muffins than usual and one baby muffin that I ate alone in the dark in the middle of the night.

INGREDIENTS

The Biga

75 grams bread flour
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
60 grams water

The Dough

3/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
315 grams water (if using whole wheat, increase to 362 grams)
510 grams all purpose flour (or if making whole wheat, 300 grams whole wheat plus 135 all purpose flour plus 75 grams all purpose flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
cornmeal

The Ghee

3/4 cup good quality unsalted butter

DIRECTIONS

The Biga

At least 1 day before cooking muffins, combine flour, water, and yeast in small container with lid. The dough will be sticky. Refrigerate between 12-24 hours. Biga will rise slightly.

A biga.

The Ghee

Option 1 (Karen's method):
Melt butter over medium heat until it begins to bubble and get frothy, about 30-45 seconds. Remove from heat, allow to cool 5 minutes. Carefully skim foam off top of butter and discard. Place butter in refrigerator until use. 

Option 2 (My method):
Heat unsalted butter in heavy-duty saucepan over very low heat until melted. Let simmer gently until the foam rises to the top of the melted butter. Once butter stops spluttering, and no more foam is rising to the surface, remove from heat and skim off the foam with a spoon. Line a mesh strainer with a few layers of cheesecloth and set strainer over heatproof container. Carefully pour warm butter through the cheesecloth-lined strainer into the container, leaving behind any solids from the bottom of the pan.

Option 3 (My other method): 
Buy prepared ghee for $8 at your local Indian market. 

The Dough 

Transfer biga, water, 3/4 teaspoon yeast and oil to bowl of Kitchen Aid mixer. Mix on low for 1-2 minutes to break up biga. 

Add 435 grams all purpose flour (or 300 grams white whole wheat plus 135 grams all purpose flour) in batches to prevent flour from flying out. Mix 1-2 minutes to make a soft and sticky dough that cleans the sides of the bowl. Clean off paddle, cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes.

Add remaining 75 grams all purpose flour along with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Knead in mixer on setting 4 for about 8 minutes if using all purpose flour, or 16 minutes if using whole wheat flour, until dough is smooth and elastic. Remove paddle attachment and clean off any dough sticking to it.

Lightly sprinkle clean, flat surface with flour, and turn out dough onto it. Gently flatten dough into rectangle, then stretch and pull corners into the middle to form a ball. Turn over and create tension in the ball to close the seams. 

Transfer dough to large (4 quart) airtight container. Let proof for 2 hours until dough doubles in volume and air bubbles are visible, or refrigerate for 8-12 hours. If refrigerating dough, let stand at room temperature 1-2 hours before proceeding to next step. (For best results, use the refrigeration option. Just do it.) 

Lightly flour work surface and turn out dough onto it. Gently shape dough into rectangle and cut into thirds using pastry scraper. Then cut each third into 77 gram pieces, using scale to get precise weight. As you do this step, keep dough covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying. 

There is no such thing as weighing 77 grams perfectly each time.
Just place extra bits of dough onto your first effort, like so.

Gently shape each 77 gram piece of dough into a ball by stretching the outer edge into the middle, bit by bit until all edges have been stretched and tucked. Turn ball over and create tension. Roll each ball in cornmeal and place onto baking sheet seam side down. Lightly spray plastic wrap with cooking spray and place loosely over balls. Let rise 1-2 hours depending on temperature in room, until balls have doubled in size and slowly spring back when pressed lightly with pointer finger. 
 

This is a pre-rise ball. 

Weigh these suckers and end up with homogenous beauty. 

Preheat oven to 400. Heat large cast iron pan over medium heat and add enough ghee to fill pan about 1/8 inch. Carefully use thin metal spatula and fingers to transfer 2-4 balls into the ghee (cooking in batches), cooking 3 minutes per side. Take care to ensure even browning. Some cornmeal will come off the balls as they cook; if cornmeal begins to burn or get smokey, throw out old ghee and cook remaining balls in fresh ghee. 

After both sides have been cooked in ghee, immediately transfer to baking sheet and bake in oven for 3 minutes. Remove and transfer muffins to wire rack to cool. Do not cut into or disturb muffins for at least 20 minutes. 

These muffins were cooked for 4 minutes per side. 4 minutes is too many. Do 3.

No-Knead Bread, Again

No one could have predicted that Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread would be featured on my blog mere days after the original post. Except maybe Karen could have predicted it, because she had a lot of input on my first effort. I mentioned this to Stefan as we perused the menu at dinner on Saturday, and he asked me whether she had tasted the bread. 

No. No, she hadn't tasted the bread, but she had seen the bread, and that was enough. 

If I have things my way, I like a solid 75-25 ratio of compliments-to-constructive feedback (some people might call this a compliments-to-criticism ratio, but not me). Karen and my mom tend to reverse that ratio when it comes to their respective topics of expertise, but that doesn't matter because they're also always right. 

Here's what I learned: 

1. My blog is awesome and hilarious. 

YEAH. Give me love and praise, my babies. 

2. To avoid flat-bread syndrome, one should place the dough in a bowl with steep sides for the second rise. 

My bread was flat, I admit it. But I was just following directions! Jim really put me in a tight spot on this one. 

So I let my sequel bread rise in the Kitchen Aid mixer bowl this time around. After two hours of rising the dough was big and tall and round and promised to make a fat ball of bread. Yas. 

Then I dumped the dough into the Staub and watched it deflate as it hit the bottom. No. No.  

They're the same. 

3. Remember my discovery that Jim was trying to trick us all with the wet-dough-on-towel mess? The towel should be well-floured. 

It's just, remember this picture? That bottom towel used to be green. Would the laws of physics and science really have allowed any more flour to get on that towel? 

Karen says yes. And she was 98% right! She was also 2% wrong, because a walnut-sized piece of dough glued itself to the well-floured towel, resulting in the deflating of the bread and two cowlicks.

There and there.

4. The bread should have a much darker, golden-brown color. Did I remember to take the lid off the Staub half-way through the bake?

This one cut me to the core. Of course I took the lid off! That was the easiest part of the entire recipe. But she was right. My bread was anemic and under-baked and so much better when I increased the temperature to 500 after removing the lid. 

Browner. Better.

Bubbles after 18 hours of fermenting.

Dough post-18 hours of fermenting, pre-2 hours of rising.

Kombucha

Raspberry kombucha. 

Lots of things are nice to look at as they're being made. Dough, pasta, ice cream, all nice to look at. Even raw oysters can look good after being staged, cropped, filtered and tagged.

Not kombucha. It's the ugly stepsister right up until it's put into a glass with a metal straw and flowering mint. There are 83 reasons making kombucha the wretched little beverage it is, three of which are worth talking about: the SCOBY, the fermentation, and the explosions and shrapnel. 

The SCOBY

A SCOBY is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (s-c-o-b-y) that looks like a big disc made of algae. Gelatinous algae. A SCOBY can also be referred to as a "mushroom," and little-to-nothing good has ever been synonymous with "mushroom."

A SCOBY. It's a little brown and stringy. You let this live in some tea and then you drink it. Humans!

Fermenting Stage 1

Just like pickles and soy sauce, kombucha gets its unique flavor from the fermentation process. There are two stages of kombucha fermentation. In the first stage, the SCOBY sits in a gallon of sweet tea for 7-10 days, during which time the SCOBY moves around the jar on its own before settling at the top and making a SCOBY baby (a scaby). As the tea ferments, the mixture gets less sweet and more sour.

A note on "scaby": I made this up, it's not a real thing.

A note on "buch": My mom called to tell me that my sister discovered "people in the know" refer to kombucha as "the buch." This also is not a real thing. 

Fermenting Stage 2

Once the tea mixture has the right balance of sweet and sour, you take out the SCOBY and scaby and put a bunch of fruit or herbs or both in and wait another couple days for the flavor to be just so. This sounds nice, but it isn't, because the color gets leached out of the fruit which, like the SCOBY, mysteriously moves around the jar by itself.

Happily after the fruit is done fermenting, it gets strained out of the kombucha and is discarded.

Kombucha after fermenting for two days with a box full of crushed raspberries. Color: nice. Bleached raspberry bodies: not so nice.

Sick.

Explosions and Shrapnel

The final reason kombucha is both unfriendly and unattractive is that sometimes it explodes after you bottle it, spraying half a gallon of sugary fruit tea and shards of glass shrapnel all over the kitchen and the cat, whose food bowl you placed directly next to the brewing kombucha.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't have to happen and usually doesn't happen. But it will happen if you let the kombucha ferment in a sealed bottle for too long, since a single bottle can only hold so much carbon dioxide (and this is why kombucha is carbonated! Science.).  

One of these bottles exploded. That was hilarious. Except it was actually horrible and my kitchen ceiling will never look the same.