the Nom Lab.: 2016

Red Velvet Cut-Out Cookies: Once Upon a Christmas

"It's like the corporate world's full of ghosts. Maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts; these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.

[...]

They are always waiting; [...] They spend all their lives waiting for their lives to begin.”

― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Holiday Mickey & Minnie Mice Red Velvet Cut-Out Cookies

Heading out for holiday gatherings. Cold nights, the neighborhood hard and glittering under pinpricks of Christmas bulbs and moonlight, the shuush shuush of car tires on a snow-padded street. I press my forehead to the car window and see scattered adorned pine trees linked by roads or alone. The beauty of it, the loneliness, the thought of all those people living out their Christmas gatherings, each living room glow marking another dinner, another family.

All Christmas season I'd feel this disjuncture within myself, walking along an ever-blurring line between being jaded and wishful-thinking.

Le Grand Marché de Noël @ Place-des-Spectacles; Open Fire Pit

As family reunions approach, I have this terrifying reminder that my life will be once more up for judgment, summed up and assessed in the space and time of a Christmas dinner. What do I reply to an aunt asking what I have been up to? What have I been doing of my year? "Uh, nothing much, really". Nothing to be proud of, nothing to talk about. Aren't you glad that you graduated? Where are you at now? I'm not sure myself. I feel adrift. The glimmer of interest in their eyes will dim, a film of resigned disappointment clouding over. "Oh. Okay". The assessment is over, but I'm as harsh a judge as anyone else. What have I accomplished?

When we step through the door, we are greeted by the buzz of family chatter and fumes of a buffet feast being put together: warm, cozy, inviting. But I feel chillingly out of place, dislocated within my own family. The living room is bursting alive, every inch of space taken up with confetti-colored packages, vinyl black folding chairs and fresh chả giò cradled in napkins. I land in the middle of everything but a sense of belonging.

As a recent graduate I am newly defined by smooth, polished university papers which give no sense of direction to the ambitions crowding my skull. I was once a searching teenager, wondering where I wanted to go, what I wanted to be, why things happened the way they did. I spent more than 10 years building potential, planning, and now I am wondering still. Gradually, then suddenly, I am nonsensically disenchanted.

Us second-generation kids were treated like china dolls. We were well-cared for and coddled, and no baby flu or first chicken pox got away from the extended family council. It was a privileged and loving environment. Loving and claustrophobic. I was grateful and I always wanted to get away. I wanted to see and learn beyond the filtered knowledge and perspectives, safe and incomplete, given to me on a silver spoon. It itches my mind raw to find a meaning, an understanding, a grasp on the sense of the beauty and value of the world that we live in; and where I stand in it.

Yet, for a generation of parents whose marking point in life is a chaotic refugee exodus from their homeland, relocating thousands of miles away in a foreign country, the psychological legacy associated with travel is not a good one. It is incomprehensible to them that I could crave going away; how I do not see the logical appeal of fitting within the cogs of this societal infrastructure, so safely Canadian.

It will always be the slowest thing to sink into their head, how happy I envision it. Happy to be leaving.

[...]

I do want to end this on a happy note, however, so let me just say that it's the year's wrap-up that I find daunting. The Christmas spirit? I love it. Between December 1st and 24th, I float in a giddy feeling, with occasional fits of giggles, enjoying gift wrapping and cookie baking; making cranberry jelly, boiling and straining and pouring liquid garnet into sterilized glass jars.

Japanese Gift Wrapping. Thank you Paper Guru tutorials (:

I love music sheet patterns.

Kimono Japanese Wrapping

Even though I'm not a fan of crowd wiggling and feet tripping, there is an unmistakable energy that permeates shopping centers during the Holidays, and it's easy to get swept up in it. Come sunset, I love the sounds of jazzy Christmas and crackling logs that rise throughout our open-air, pop-up winter markets. Speaking of which, I found this amazing honey wine whiskey from Miel Nature, a Beauharnois meadery, at one of them. I've been shoving it in everyone's face these past 2 weeks to avoid polishing it off all by myself (but resistance was futile).

Place-des-Spectacles: Le Grand Marché de Noël

Place-des-Spectacles: Le Grand Marché de Noël; Choo-Choo Train for Kids

Marché des Artisans: Just the best whiskey ever. 'Nuff said.

Marché des Artisans: These mugs were way too adorable
to stroll by without a quick snap.

Keeping true to the holidays, our office had a cookie ~~exchange~~ party last week, and I snatched the opportunity to finally try out Lila Loa's The End-All for Chocolate Cookies (who wouldn't, with a name like that?) I switched a couple of ingredients around to 1) make these eggless; 2) make these Red Velvet.

The flavor is perfectly chocolate-y, and combined with the red velvet emulsion it tastes lovely. DeLorann's red velvet emulsion is difficult to describe - it has this lingering whiff of Slushie Raspberry mixed with what David's Teas' blends with chocolate nibs smell like when brewed; but the magic happens when cocoa hits the bowl. It smells heavenly. I'm also really happy with how the egg substitution turned out - the texture was exactly as Lila Loa had described it. Finally, I like my cut-out cookies with a good crunch and thickness, so my baking time is longer than Lila Loa's, but feel free to make thinner cookies (you monster) and decrease the baking time if that is what you prefer.

The whole holiday Mickey & Minnie family

Red Velvet Cut-Out Cookies
Adapted from Lila Loa's The End-All for Chocolate Cookies

Servings: ~30 cookies (21 Mickey Mice & 9 Minnie Mice)

Ingredients:
1 cup / 215g butter, softened
2/3 cup / 60g powdered cocoa
1/2 cup / 100g reduced-fat cream cheese
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon red velvet emulsion extract (I used DeLorann's - Can be found on Amazon or at Michael's seasonally)
3 cups all-purpose flour

Rolling pin (Joseph Joseph's Adjustable Rolling Pin works like a charm for cut-out cookies)
Cookie cutters (I bought my Mickey & Minnie cookie cutters on Amazon)

Preparation:

1. In a medium bowl, combine the cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.
2. In another small bowl, whisk together the cream cheese and red velvet emulsion. Set aside.

DeLorann's Red Velvet Emulsion & Tablespoon with Cream Cheese

3. With the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the red velvet-cream cheese mixture and vanilla extract.

Sugar & buttah. Match in heaven.

Blending in that red velvet cream cheese.

4. Slowly add the cocoa powder blend, stirring it into the creamed mixture until well blended (if you do this on high speed you'll get cocoa everywhere - it's like a chocolate version of powdered icing sugar's messiness).
5. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. On medium-low speed, add the flour in 3 increments, scraping down the bowl between each addition. Stir in the next addition as soon as the previous one looks just incorporated.
6. If the dough seems too dry here, add 1 teaspoon of milk (necessity of doing so may vary depending on the altitude and humidity you're at).

Red Velvet Cut-Out Cookie Dough: What's great about this being eggless is that I can finally eat it raw without having Salmonella creeping up in the back of my mind. Oh, that and an allergic reaction. Nifty.

7. Cover tightly with a plastic wrap and chill the dough ~15 minutes before using it.
8. Line cookie pans with parchment paper, and preheat your oven to 375F.
9. Flour your work surface and rolling pin, and roll out your cookie dough to 1/4" inch thick.

Psst! I just discovered this Joseph Joseph adjustable rolling pin and it's the new love of my kitchen life. The rolling pin comes with four sets of measuring rings, which raise the dough to different levels of thickness and ensures that the surface is uniform all over (because my doughs always looked like a curved up damp piece of cardboard). It's beautiful, and magical, and I love it. End of parenthesis.

Cutting out Mickeys & Minnies.
I don't think that there are many circumstances under which this sentence would be acceptable.

10. Cut out desired cookies shapes and transfer them to the lined cookie pans (I used a pie/cake shovel to do that - if you're doing Mickeys or Minnies, be warned that the most delicate sections are the ears and the bow). Re-roll dough scraps with repeat.

Look at that beautiful, thick layer of cookie goodness.

Mickey scraps are still a Mickey.

11. Bake at 375F for 10-13 minutes.
12. Let them cool completely before decorating them with the icing of your choice.

Cookie icing. I don't have a good recipe which dries smooth and shiny, so I won't be sharing the recipe that I used here.

13. Nom. P.S.: These keep really well for a week, decorated and stored in a metal container. Keep in mind that they get crunchier with time as moisture continues to evaporate.

Down the memory lane of cake baking: Japanese Matcha Green Tea & Strawberry Shortcake

By Passionthy 4:49 PM Baking, Desserts

Japanese Matcha Green Tea & Strawberry Shortcake

About 10 years ago, I assembled my very first layer cake. I remember sneaking out of the house to transit from the suburbs to downtown, the precious confection plastered in cling film wrap and a large, flimsy styrofoam dish. The cookies 'n cream frosting had miraculously, inexplicably, managed to melt in the middle of a December blizzard. It looked as if an artist had tried to paint a dalmatian and accidentally brushed his sleeve over the artwork. I'd never had thought that Oreos could possibly be associated with sadness (they were even double-stuffed!), but the crushed cookies just looked like smears of black tears. The red velvet cake was dense and moist, but slathered with layers of icing that might have been as thick as the cake itself. I hadn't learned about crumb coating yet, so wandering crimson crumbs occasionally poked out of the icing like a Judas goat and a whole streak of blood red usually followed. And so the whole thing looked like a wounded animal.

I'm not sure when my obsession with realizing something I couldn't eat came about, but it might have something to do with the celebratory symbol and emotion that surrounds my childhood memories of cake. Eating cake was never a mundane thing: it was the sort that demanded a chorus of "Happy Birthday!", party laughter or the tulle bustle of bridal bouquets being thrown. The way people gasp in hushed delight as a cake with lit candles is brought in procession from the kitchen, the dim lights wavering in a faint dance of shadow puppets across the ceiling. Children furtively grasping their parent's sleeve in restrained expectancy, an eager giggle nibbling at their lips, some with ready cheeks rounded with air.

Japanese Matcha Green Tea & Strawberry Shortcake - Sliced

In elementary school, the birthday kid had an almost-referential social standing for a day. A box of Tim Hortons' Timbits was usually brought into class, sometimes a dusting of powdered sugar trailing on the handle, a delicious promise for thrilled 9 years-old. Occasionally, however, there would be someone who raised the bar. Timbits already caused their fair share of afternoon lack of focus and knocked-over pencil cases, but if there was cake? Oh man, if there was cake! It was as if the whole class has just found out that the McDonald's cashier accidentally gave all of them a second Happy Meal toy. Even the teacher seemed bubblier. Sometimes we'd even be let out early for recess. They were usually single-layered cakes, covered in a cream icing modest only in appearance, and a splash of rainbow sprinkles that apparently taste like sugar land-mines. Once the first wedge is sliced, however, the rich, black velvet crumb unveils, dripping with gooey molten chocolate and studded with an avalanche of chocolate chips: exactly the way a kid's birthday cake should be. I hovered close by as the slices, fat and sticky with ganache and half glacé cherries, were handed out, acting as an ineffectual, but not yet counterproductive, intermediary between the honored cake cutter and the recipient. My teacher kept my Epipen in her desk's drawers, and I could see her glimpsing at me from the corner of her eyes, making sure that I wouldn't steal a lick of frosting off the side of my index out of temptation.

I'd never be able to taste those butter cakes, but my mom made sure that I still had my own birthday centerpiece. And so every year, she confected a tiered cake made of fruit, coconut milk and agar-agar. I loved Vietnamese jellies, but when I started to be socially aware enough to invite friends over, I worried about how that cake would be received. The first few years, my parents addressed that concern by buying an extra cream cake and making that jelly cake just for me. It turns out that my worries had been for nothing: it was cake. My friends didn't mind. It looked pretty, jewels of colorful fruit chunks showing through the translucent agar-agar layers, and passed the initial moments of intrigue, the first bites usually won them over.

A slice of Japanese Matcha Green Tea & Strawberry Shortcake :)

Over the years, my baking skills have fortunately improved... Fortunate for me and for my parents, who supported my scrambling in the kitchen and honed my blind "seasoning" abilities through their unwilling roles as my tasting guinea pigs.

This is a cake that I had been meaning to try for a long time now. Génoise has always scared me ~~a bit~~ a lot, as it is with any recipe that requires tampering an egg mixture. However, the work is well-rewarded. The cake is soft and moist when well-soaked with syrup, and the addition of matcha gives it a gorgeous green hue and the most delicately sweet, vegetal aroma. As I used the concept of a Japanese Strawberry Shortcake as my inspiration, this is a lighter cake than most buttercream layer cakes, and the strawberries allow for a refreshing burst of fruity flavor amidst a forkful of crème chantilly.

The dual red & green colors also makes this cake fit for the holidays, don't you think? Incidentally, the Japanese Strawberry Shortcake is also the most loved treat in Japan for Christmas.

As baking a génoise is quite a challenge, here are some additional resources that you might like to read on the infamous sponge cake:

Japanese Matcha Green Tea & Strawberry Shortcake - Overview Shot

Japanese Matcha Green Tea & Strawberry Shortcake

Portions: 1 x 9-inch, 2-layered cake

Ingredients:

Matcha génoise:

Adapted from Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter (37 g), preferably clarified to beurre noisette

4 large eggs (200 g), at room temperature

1/2 cup (100 g) white granulated sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons matcha powder

1/2 cup cake flour, sifted and leveled off

1/2 cup minus 1 Tablespoon cornstarch, sifted and leveled off

Strawberry syrup:

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup white granulated sugar (105 g)

1/2 cup strawberry purée (you'll need about 165g fresh strawberries)

Matcha Crème Chantilly/Sweetened Whipped Cream (You'll have some leftovers):

2 teaspoons matcha powder

3 teaspoons warm water

2 cups (500 ml) 35% heavy cream

1/2 cup (65 g) icing sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin

2 Tablespoons + 2 teaspoons cold water

Fresh strawberries to garnish and decorate (I recommend 2 x 454g boxes to have ample margin for errors and rotten/bruised fruit)

Prepping the ingredients! From top to bottom, left to right, starting from the top left corner: 1) Unfiltered beurre noisette;
2) Glucose (pictured but not listed as it caused my génoise to fall flat the first time :P); 3) Matcha-Flour-Cornstarch mixture;
4) Eggs at room temperature; 5) Sugar

Preparation:

Matcha génoise:

1. Make the beurre noisette: In a small saucepan, melt the butter on very low heat (I had my stove on the lowest minimal heat level). Do not stir or mix the chunk of butter as it is melting: you want the butterfat and the milk solids to separate. Once the butter has fully melted, keep an eye on it. You have beurre noisette when small brown spots start to appear on the bottom of the pan - that's your milk solids toasting to a nice hazelnut color. You can swirl the saucepan occasionally if the butterfat foam at the surface obstructs your vision. Once beurre noisette is obtained, immediately filter it through a metal sieve and set aside. Keep it warm.

Beurre Noisette, filtered - The liquid should be a clear, hazelnut color

2. In a large bowl, sift together the cake flour, cornstarch and matcha powder (the cake flour and cornstarch should be at their second sifting). Gently combine to make sure that the matcha powder is well spread out.

3. Prepare a bain-marie, filling a large pot with water brought to boiling point. The bowl of your stand-mixer should be able to sit on that pot without its bottom coming in contact with the boiling water. Once the water bath has reached boiling point, reduce the heat to medium.

4. Foaming method: In the bowl of your stand-mixer, use a whisk to combine the eggs and the sugar. Set the bowl over your bain-marie and warm this sugar-egg mixture until it is lukewarm to the touch (ideally, it should reach 40 degrees C). Beat the preparation constantly and vigorously with the whisk to prevent curdling. I can't stress this part of the step enough - whisk it like you've never whisked before, and watch the temperature. Or you'll end up with a mixture resembling sugary scrambled eggs.

Once you've reached the desired temperature, lock in the whisk attachment to your stand-mixer. Beat your sugar-egg mixture on high-speed for at least 5-7 minutes, or until it has tripled to quadrupled in volume (If you're using a hand-mixer, you'll have to beat it for at least 10 minutes). Keep going even though it looks white and fluffy enough after 2 or 3 minutes. Trust me. The batter should end up thick yet airy, a pale buttery color and be able to drop from the whisk in soft ribbons that hold their shape for 1-2 minutes.

Foaming the sugar-eggs mixture: Ribbon stage not pictured, but you can see the beginning of swirls holding their shape

5. While the sugar-eggs go through their foaming process, butter, lightly flour and line a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment paper. Preheat your oven to 350F/175C.

6. Remove about 1/3 of the sugar-eggs mixture and whisk it through the warm beurre noisette. No need to be gentle.

7. In the remaining foam of sugar-eggs, sift in (again, yes), the matcha flour divided into 3 parts. Use your largest silicone spatula to fold each part into your eggs. Make sure that no loose flour pocket remains, as they will show up like a sore clump in your cake, but be careful to work lightly and gently. With a silicone spatula, reach into the bottom of the bowl, slide the spatula flat around the edges and fold in rotating motions so that you don't deflate the air bubbles. Don't overmix - this is a crucial step so that the génoise doesn't turn out flat and rubbery.

8. When you are done with the matcha flour, fold in the butter mixture until just incorporated. This time, be gentle. Your final batter should still feel bubbly and airy. If it has the consistency of lava (or of a standard butter/chocolate cake), it has been overmixed and will likely not rise well.

Matcha génoise batter in the pan: notice the bubbles :)
pouring this in the pan should almost feel like manipulating mousse

9. Pour the batter into the prepared pan - if the mixture has been beaten well and the air bubbles conserved, the pan should be a little more than half-full. Give the pan a good bang to get rid of any large air bubbles before popping it in the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the top browns and the edges start pulling away from the pan. Don't open your oven door before the minimum baking time of 20 minutes or the cake structure will collapse.

Matcha génoise batter in the pan

10. As soon as the cake is taken out of the oven, you want to unmold it while it is still hot (within 5 minutes) so that it doesn't fall on itself as it cools down. I like to let it rest just a smidge (about 30 seconds-1 minute) before working with it to make sure that it pops out in one piece. Run a small knife around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake and, pressing against it, invert the pan on a lightly greased cooling rack. Sandwich the cake between a second cooling rack, and reinvert it a second time on the latter so that it sits on its bottom. Cool completely before slicing. You should be able to get two layers from it.

P.S.: I did this whole cake sandwiching/inverting process with a flat dish and only 1 cooling rack, using the dish for the first unmolding.

Matcha génoise: popped out of the pan and
double-inverted to a cooling rack

Strawberry syrup:

1. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and the strawberry purée. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring frequently, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally, for an additional 3-5 minutes. Don't worry if the mixture still looks a bit liquid as it will thicken as it cools down. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Set aside.

2. Once the génoise has completely cooled down, use a long serrated knife to slice it horizontally into 2 equal layers. If the top crust is domed, remove that part too.

3. Using a silicone brush, apply the strawberry syrup evenly and liberally on the génoise's cut surfaces. A génoise is really dry if served alone, and only takes on a life of its own through the syrup that soaks it, so don't be shy with the brushing. You can smear the syrup on with the back of a spoon, but brushing really does work better.

Strawberry syrup soaking the matcha génoise:
apply amply and liberally :D

Strawberry garnish and decoration:

I recommend cutting and preparing your strawberries before working on the whipped cream frosting. I use the empty 9-inch cake pan as template to calculate how many strawberries I need and how I would place them.

Estimating the strawberries' placement

Matcha Crème Chantilly:

(Optional): Place the bowl of your stand-mixer in your fridge/freezer before whipping the cream for better results.

1. Bloom the gelatin: In a small saucepan, pour the cold water and sprinkle the gelatin evenly over it. Let stand until the mixture gels.

2. Heat the gelatin mixture over low heat, stirring frequently until the gelatin completely dissolves. Remove from heat and let cool (do not let it set again - if it does, you'll have to warm it slightly to "melt" it into a liquid nectar consistency).

3. Prepare the matcha paste: In a small bowl, combine the matcha powder with 2 teaspoons of cold water. Mix into a homogeneous paste using a spoon or a bamboo tea whisk if you have one. Add an additional teaspoon of cold water to loosen the paste a bit.

4. In the cold bowl of your stand-mixer (if it is hot, run it under cold water for 1-2 minutes), place the powdered icing sugar, whipped cream and matcha paste. Hook the whisk attachment to your mixer and beat the whipped cream mixture on high speed until it starts to thicken.

5. Decrease the speed to low. Scoop out 2 tablespoons of cold, thickened whipped cream and mix it to the gelatin mixture. Stir quickly to combine and immediately drizzle it into the whipping cream, pouring it slowly around the bowl.

6. Whip at high speed again until stiff peaks form and hold their shape. Avoid overbeating or the cream will become lumpy.

Composing the cake:

1. Put a dab of matcha whipped cream on your cake plate/doilie/board and place the bottom génoise layer on it, syrup-soaked side up. Then, if you have one, transfer that plate on a rotating turntable.

2. Using an icing spatula, evenly spread some matcha crème chantilly on the génoise layer, starting by the perimeter of the cake and working your way towards the center (I trace my perimeter by dropping a few blobs of whipped cream along the borders, but you can just pipe it if you have more patience than I do). Add your sliced strawberries and top with another layer of matcha cream.

Spreading the matcha whipped cream on the first layer :)

3. Place the top génoise layer over this, cut side down, and press on it gently to make it level. Repeat the same frosting steps as for the first layer: start by the borders and frost towards the center. Once the top layer has been frosted to the desired thickness, add an extra scoop of matcha whipped cream on the center and, still using the icing spatula, push it towards the edges and then down the sides of the cake. Frost the sides completely. If the cake is on a turntable, rotate it slowly while holding your spatula or a dough scraper at a 30-45 degree angle against the sides to smooth them out. I don't have a turntable, so I just manually rotate the cake by holding the edge of the cake board.

4. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes-1 hour to allow the matcha frosting to firm up. If you refrigerate it for more than 2 hours, allow the cake to come back to room temperature for 20-30 minutes before serving: génoise tends to dry up in the fridge.

Enjoy :) !