The Garden of Live Flowers

The summer gates are opening; I can feel it, smell it and almost taste it!  Walking to the train this morning it was hot, not the dry August heat that wilt flowers and people alike, but that muggy May warmth full of moisture.  There are no clouds, the sun is shining finally after weeks of rain and Memorial Day weekend is staring us in the face.  This is the weekend summer begins.

Professional gardening companies and homeowners alike were out in droves this morning trying to prepare the yard for family barbecues and festivities on deck for the weekend.  Hedge trimmers and lawn mowers buzzed away at 7:00 am in an effort to get a handle on the South American jungle growing in our yards.  The end of May is like this, damp and lush, a time when you can hide in your garden without any fear of people locating you in the overgrowth…there is just too darn much of it.  Grills have been firing up all around the neighborhood with the smell of burgers rolling into our backyard, mingling with the scent of lilacs.  If there is a better combination of scent I’m not sure what it could be.

All around me the flowers continue to bloom in pinks and purples, the soft colors a precursor to the vibrant summer season.  Summer is all about orange and yellow and red, but spring is reserved for pastels.  I’ve watched as the iris unfold their delicate petals in so many shades of violet, joining the dame’s rocket, lilac, azaleas and phlox in a brilliant and understated show.  It is these colors I crave to work with, though not in paint necessarily but pastry.

"Pinks" have been an inspirational trigger over the past few weeks as well as an ongoing understanding of my appreciation for the outdoors.  I’ve been working my plot of earth for the past four years, watching it go from a square of barren dirt to the aforementioned jungle of this past week.  I love to walk outside at 1:00am, when the town is quiet and all my neighbors are asleep, and take a stealthy peak at the blooms by moonlight.  There is a particular fresh scent at that time of night, not only from whatever happens to be in bloom, but an overwhelming clear “greenness” to it all.  Something in that magical smell combination calms me and returns me to the simple times of boyhood.

Walking near the river this morning I had yet another smell related memory.  There is of course the fresh fish smell coming off the Hudson River but there are certain grasses or weeds on the land near by with a strong sweet fragrance recalling un-mown hillsides near a waterslide I liked to go to as a kid with my dad.  I was instantly thrown back to fun times precariously heading down a slide, a strong whiff of chlorine pungently passing through my nostrils as I swiftly approached the pool below, waiting to be embraced by the sun warmed water.

Today is a day for that sort of activity…water slides and beaches.  I had a fantasy of playing hooky and taking the family to the beach, putting Siena in a cute little bathing suit and seeing what she might make of sand.  She would probably try and eat it like everything else these days.  It’s as if her mouth has become a third hand (when her other two hands aren’t in her mouth) tasting everything to confirm its solidity and realness.  I don’t know if it’s all the rain, but she too is growing at a rapid pace.  The doctor tells us we can start her on rice cereal and she turned over for the first time…a really big week for she and us.  I still haven’t managed to get her help out in the garden, but she does sit patiently in her Bumbo seat and overalls acting as if she might go find a shovel and start digging very soon.

As Siena continues to develop into a little live wire, Brian and I continue to develop into dads.  I was telling a friend of mine that I had never felt like an adult until Siena came along.  The strange thing about it is I don’t seem to mind.  I’m conscious of the fact I’ve been an adult for quite some time, and my list of commitments, responsibilities and a busy schedule attest to the fact, but I didn’t feel like an adult.  I’ve suffered from Peter Pan syndrome much of my life, and luckily for me it’s worked out okay and been an asset to my commercial career.  Siena has made it okay for me to grow up.

As I continue to reflect on the growth (particularly in my last posting) I had a small revelation:  Alice in Wonderland…and even more specific the second book, Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.  Growing up, Alice in Wonderland was one of my favorite books.  I loved the whimsy, the imagery, the craziness of it all and how the story richly brought characters to life in both a psychotic and scary way.  It’s like reading about a colorful mental hospital where everything is contradictory and nonsense makes the most sense of all…a perfect thing for an imaginative child.

In spite of the richly written books, the Walt Disney Company has burned much of the colorful imagery into my brain.  The movie is a splicing together of both famous Alice books, and the colors used are so fresh and vibrant with a bent toward the pinks and greens of springtime in May.  Several things struck particular chords with me: the first being all the eating and drinking going on.  Every time Alice has to do something major she needs to change her size.  This size/state change is achieved through eating magic mushrooms and drinking strange liquids solemnly perched on a glass table.  Up and down she goes trying to get to be just the right size for the occasion…something I think many children aspire to…trying to grow up enough to fit in or hide away someplace tiny, secret and safe.

The second has to be the tarts. 

“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer day;

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts

And took them quite away!”

Well, we know I love a good tart now don’t we?  The queen’s tarts have to be the most romanticized pastries in children’s literature.  I wanted to know what kind of tarts they were as I thought it would be a fun thing to make in homage to the Queen, but of an ingredients list all I could discover was a passage from the cross examination of the Duchess’s cook (during the trial to find out the knave’s innocence or guilt…an answer we never get because Alice grows “two miles high “and upsets the court room.).  When asked what was in the tarts, the Duchess’s cook curtly replied, “Pepper, mostly”.  Well, I’m certainly into pepper in my desserts, but a pepper tart is hardly something that sounds appealing.  My guess is the tarts were more of a red summer berry sort and the Duchess’s cook has a fondness for all things pepper so she would never give the correct answer in the first place.  No one in Wonderland likes to give straight answers.

The third and somewhat more iconic part of my childhood affinity for Alice and her world has to be The Garden of Live Flowers, the title of the second chapter in Through the Looking Glass.  Because of the Disney film the small sequence of events of Alice finding a garden full of talking flowers took on iconic status.  In the book, Alice only spends a few pages with the flowers on her way to meeting the Red Queen and further explorations.  Most of the flowers are quite mean to Alice; only the Tiger Lily is friendly to her while the Rose looks down on her somewhat lifeless petals.  The daisies are gossips and the violets don’t have anything nice to say either.  Rereading the chapter I found it to be rather anti-climactic.

In the film version the flowers are still rather unkind, but Miss Rose comes off seeming much more kind and it is the Iris who has her nose up in the air referring to Alice as a weed to frighten all the other plants…because of course “we don’t want weeds in our beds”, reply the shy little violets.  The tiger lily and daisy also feature in the film along with bread and butterflies and rocking-horse flies.  The Iris is the one flower who maintained iconic status in my brain, maybe because of her beautiful appearance paired with a cruel nature…the ideal combination for any good female villain, plus I grew up loving those faintly grape smelling flowers.  Today I still love all flowers but am always admiring of the sensuous yet cold beauty of irises in the garden.  There is something so delicate and soft about them paired with long stems and spiked leaves…pretty but with an attitude.  I do like my divas, and the iris is the diva of my garden.

Whether or not the actual written material of Carroll’s story was long, Disney and in turn a generation of kids fell in love with talking flowers.  Apparently all flowers can talk if there is “anyone worth talking to or about” if their beds are hard.  The reason most flowers don’t speak is because their beds are too soft and they spend all their time sleeping, this according to Tiger Lily.  It’s the enchantment of talking flowers I find inspiring.  My Peter Pan self would love to believe the flowers in my garden can speak and think…they certainly have attitudes depending on weather and watering schedules, but that little boy in me, the one who liked to play with action figures out in the grass (or forest if you are the size of a G.I. Joe character or Alice after shrinking) still finds joy in the thought. 

I designed my garden to have sections and a private area enshrouded by bushes, flowering plants and a carpet of grass in the middle, a space to get lost in even though our yard is quite tiny.  I imagine my childhood self-playing there, or hopefully Siena playing with whatever toys she’s fond of, imagining the plants to be a forest and rocks becoming mountains.  A simple bench can make an excellent fortress stronghold and a birdbath is the perfect lake.  To say that I’m looking forward to playing with Siena, her toys and imaginary rules, is an understatement.  It seems like Peter Pan might get to have his childhood all over again.

It is with all this in mind I found myself drawn to soft, or loud, pink baked goods, one in the shape of flowers no less.  The first dessert I made was lemon whoopie pies with raspberry cream.  I was thumbing through an old Everyday Food magazine from May of 2010 in an effort to find some quick weeknight meals with seasonal ingredients.  I always dog-ear the corners of pages with recipes I would like to make or come back to for some reason.  With time being a precious commodity, it was nice to find a magazine I had thoroughly examined (last year when I still had lazy, magazine thumbing-through time).  I never manage to make all the recipes I mark, there aren’t enough hours in the day, so when I saw the whoopee pie recipe and my mouth watered as much as it had this time last year, I decided it was time to give it a try.

The photo in the magazine was soft, golden cake filled with a pastel cream studded with raspberries.  I don’t think raspberries are in season quite yet, but according to the magazine they are.  I know I can get raspberries any time of the year, but it’s those delicious summer berries with the right amount of sweet and tart I crave.  The berries I found to use for the recipe were quite good, but I’m looking forward to the farmer’s market pints, which will be popping up soon.  Since this recipe is from a year ago, I was able to find the link online: 

Raspberry-Lemon Whoopie Pies

I love a good whoopee pie.  Though these are only the third variety I have ever made, I can find no fault with these dessert sandwiches.  Both the pumpkin and red velvet varieties I’ve made in the past had fillings with a cream cheese base, and something I adore.  These lemon cakes with the lighter than air raspberry cream were so delicate and moist, not heavy whatsoever as with the cream cheese fillings and we managed to plow through the dozen or so the recipe makes in no time.  I would suggest making a double batch if you are going to be sharing with friends, or if you are feeling like pigging out.  No judgment.

The second and directly floral inspired dessert was for a flakey and buttery little number full of ginger, vanilla and brown butter.  I came across the recipe for Ginger-Pear Hand Pies in the Martha Stewart’s New Pies and Tarts book.  As I mentioned before I had been thinking of the Queen of Hearts and her tarts and this seemed a logical place to look for new tart recipes.  As I flipped through the beautifully photographed pages nothing was connecting with my mood.  All the berry tarts I wanted to make had ingredients not yet in season, particularly blueberry and cherry, so I wasn’t sure what to do until I ran across the little pear pies.  Pears certainly aren’t “in season” right now, but it’s the shape that spoke to me.

In the recipe and photo the dough is shaped into cups in a muffin tin, resulting in pies with several large, scalloped edges.  Adjusting the technique slightly and adding a few more pinches and folds, I was able to shape the crusts to appear as five petaled flowers…. perfectly fitting in with my mood.  I like that the crust recipe is a little different too, incorporating both shortening and vinegar into the dough, giving a touch of something special.  I couldn’t help but add a little flair to these desserts by using 5-inch fluted tart molds to cut out the dough and also small petit fours pans/tins to cut the flower centers out of the remaining dough scraps.  All of this I painted with a hint of bright pink luster dust when the pies were out of the oven and cooled.  The recipe is as follows:

Ginger-Pear Hand Pies  (From Martha Stewarts Pies and Tarts, 2011)

For the crust:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1-teaspoon salt

3/4-cup (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/4-cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into small pieces

1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar

1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

For the filling:

2 large eggs

2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4-teaspoon salt

2 ripe, firm pears, such as Bosc, peeled and chopped into 1/4-inch dice

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and scraped

2 tablespoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Make the crust:  In a food processor, pulse flour, sugar, and salt until combined.  Add butter and shortening, pulse just until mixture resembles coarse meal, 8 to 10 times.  Combine vinegar and 1/4-cup ice water, and drizzle evenly over mixture; pulse just until dough comes together.  If dough is still crumbly, add up to 1/4 cup more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time.

Pat dough into 2 disks, and wrap each in plastic.  Refrigerate until firm, 1 hour or up to 1 day.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough 1/4 inch thick.  Cut twelve 5-inch rounds from dough.  Gently press rounds into cups of a 12-cup standard muffin tin, making pleats around edges and gently pressing to seal.  Refrigerate or freeze until firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Make the filling:  In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and granulated sugar until thick and pale yellow.  Whisk in lemon juice, then flour and salt.  Place diced pears in a medium bowl.

In a small saucepan, heat butter, vanilla bean and seeds, and grated ginger over medium-high until butter foams and browns, about 5 minutes.  Pour mixture through a fine sieve over pears; discard solids. Stir egg mixture into pear mixture until combined.

Divide batter among chilled shells.  Bake pies until crusts and filling are golden brown, about 30 minutes.  Let cool in tins on a wire rack, 30 to 40 minutes.  Unmold; let cool completely on rack.  Just before serving, dust with confectioners’ sugar.

I am so happy for the return of summer after such a long winter, strangely wet spring and a year already full of dangerous and crazy weather.  I am longing for the days where I can spread a towel on the hot white sand of the nearest beach, listen to the crash of the waves and snack on seafood and seasonally appropriate desserts…like cold vanilla bean ice cream on top of a fresh blueberry pie.  The time is close at hand and I welcome it with open arms.  The garden too will change shape with a landscape of blooming roses, lilies and butterfly bushes, all my favorites because every new bloom (and recipe) is my favorite.  It’s just who I am.  

Stomping Grounds

After learning of our visit to Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago, my mother referred to the trip as “returning to our old stomping grounds”.  This phrase stuck out in my mind because of its truth.  Brooklyn is our old stomping grounds.  Manhattan is our old stomping grounds too.  The even bigger truth is Brian and I have lived in Westchester for nearly four years now and I’ve lived in New York just shy of ten years!  Time passage is a crazy thing.  It gives perspective on even the most insane and seemingly perilous choices made in one’s earlier life.  For me, moving to New York was the best decision I ever made.

I can remember packing my two suitcases in the cold Missouri winter of 2002, knowing I had a place to stay with a friend of a friend in Washington Heights until I could get my bearings.  I didn’t have a job or any close friends in the beginning, but sometimes you need to get on a plane and make some changes.  Within a couple of weeks I found a job working for a printing company doing some basic design work.  I’d thought I would get a job waiting tables (as I had done for many years), but even restaurant jobs in NYC were scarce at the time and there were literally lines down the block full of hopeful waiters and waitresses vying for a chance to serve. 

Being rescued at just the right moment (because I only had enough money to survive for about six weeks) I went back to the world of Photoshop and Illustrator, never looking back, eventually finding my way into graduate school and returning to my college love of 3d animation.  Though I make commercials to this day, and generally have a good time doing it, I still crave being in a kitchen.  There is nothing so satisfying to me as a Saturday night alone with my Kitchen Aid and some jazz playing in the background.  Simple pleasures are still the best.

Working for the printing company introduced me to two very key people in my life:  Izabella and Brian.  Izabella worked at the company and was head of the graphics department.  Her sense of style, humor, creativity and positive attitude made us instant friends.  We worked about a block from Union Square and used to go to the farmer’s market on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, purchasing too many plants, fruits and vegetables to cart home.  There was a deli close by too where we would procure our morning bagels with tofu spread (yes I said tofu spread…you wouldn’t believe how good it was) and happily munch away and gossip while taking care of clients design and print needs.  It was a good and simple life and I had enough money to live on.

I found an apartment with a guy named Danny on 215^th St. (Inwood…the tip, tip, tip top of Manhattan).  The commute down from the nosebleed section of the island seemed brutal, but the first year I was in New York I was never happier than when I was people watching on the subway, discovering J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter  books and ordering General Chicken from the local Chinese food joint to eat while watching Emeril Live on the Food Network.  Riding the subway opened my eyes to how many types of people there are in the world; different personalities, behaviors, dress codes, hair colors, attitudes and I ate it all up like a fried egg roll.  If you ever enjoyed people watching in the food court of a mall, try riding around on the subway for any amount of time and you’ll never want to go back.  The world is on the subway.

Other than the mega trek down to my job, I spent the rest of my time in Inwood Hill Park.  The northwest corner of Manhattan Island is covered by a huge park and wooded hills vast enough to go hiking and get lost.  Next to Central Park, it’s the largest park area on the island.  I would spend hours walking through the woods, taking pictures or drawing and attempting to be alone with nature.  Something I still do to this day.  You can’t live in the city without a continual need to get back to nature.  Weekend getaways were invented for a reason.

Brian “came onto the scene” as a client during the year and a half I worked for the printing company.  He would call to place poster orders for Axis Theatre’s latest productions and we slowly became friendlier and friendlier over the phone until one day I broke down and asked him to get coffee…to this day it’s the only blind date I ever had.  I guess I picked the right time to go for it.  Hilariously, Brian was also from Missouri (outside Kansas City) and had moved to New York for the same basic reason I had, looking for a chance to be creative in the most fantastic city imaginable.  Birds of a feather…

Over the course of our time together Brian and I moved down from Inwood (where he coincidentally was also living, yet another sign) to the Upper West Side into a cute, little (and I mean little) one-bedroom apartment not far from Riverside Park.  I could finally get to places much more quickly and I was enrolled at NYU by this time, getting my master’s degree and learning to navigate the world as a freelance animator.  The apartment didn’t have any kitchen cabinets when we moved in, and I remember making one of many Ikea trips to purchase cabinets we then installed ourselves.  The stove was one of those really tiny one’s with enough room to bake one thing at a time and only enough space for two pans on the stovetop.

I was a novice cook at this point and didn’t really think too much about it.  I was too busy with school and work to think about cooking except for the occasional experimental meal.  That kitchen didn’t have drawers either, if you can believe it, and I’m still not quite sure how the landlord got away with it…but we were younger and didn’t have much in the way of kitchen paraphernalia so it wasn’t an issue.  I recall making a particularly good red wine based pasta sauce with meatballs, and also a delicious tres-leches cake not too long after returning from a trip to Costa Rica.  Outside of that, my cooking and baking desires didn’t manifest until we moved to Brooklyn.

Living in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn was the first time I felt “at home” in my New York life.  Brian and I had a garden apartment below an apartment rented by some of our friends (coincidentally the one’s we visited last week, Joe, Marie and their sons).  The place was practically brand new and we were allowed not only to paint the apartment whatever colors we wanted, but also to landscape.  The patch of yard out back wasn’t very big, but I made the most of it. 

The first summer we were there was all about weed removal.  The previous tenants thought it nice to let the weeds grow as tall as they might for that sort of tropical jungle look.  I, of course, wanted something more resembling an English country garden.  I cleared out everything except for two lilac bushes I found hiding in the back.  It was a sign!  I grew up with lilacs in our front yard and to this day I still anxiously await their bloom and fragrance to fill the air.  In this part of the woods it won’t be long now.  Anyway, I put down a bunch of grass seed and made flowerbeds, first going to the nearby hardware store on Smith Street, which happened to sell quite a large variety of herbs and flowers.  I filled that small Brooklyn yard with as many varieties of plants as my mood swings would allow, and although the space was small, it spoke of a home and being settled, something I was really craving.

By this time I had opted out of freelancing for a more permanent gig at Transistor Studios, following on the heels of my friend Andrea to take a job as their 3d lead.  Andrea and I met while I was freelancing for a company called Brand New School and we have been good friends ever since.  Both she and her husband Nathan worked at Transistor (before they were even dating), but who knew down the road we would all become neighbors in Ossining and have kids together?  Having that sort of “settled” feeling brought about by a full-time position, my creativity began to wander in a different direction.  When you are required to be creative for others on a daily basis, I think it can be challenging to feel fulfilled as an artist when most of the decisions are out of your hands.  It was around this time I began to think seriously about baking and the creative release I got from making things in the kitchen.

For Christmas that first year in Brooklyn, Brian gave me my beloved Kitchen Aid.  This too seemed an omen and not long after I began to bake with more fervor. I discovered Martha Stewart Living around this time on a weekend getaway to our friend Randy’s house in Quogue.  A little late to the party I must admit, but sitting in the screened in porch looking out at the blue waters of the bay, the September 2005 issue on interior design changed my life.  The cover story on painting rooms and furniture in shades of grey somehow struck a very deep cord.  Martha’s show and magazine had me wanting to decorate every room and cook everything coming out of her kitchen.  This is when the baked goods really started to appear.  I wasn’t baking every week, like I do now, but when I was seemingly most stressed out in the rest of my life I could turn to butter and sugar and Martha for reparative therapy. 

The longer I felt unfulfilled at work, the more I wanted to bake.  It was in 2007 that I decided to go to the French Culinary Institute and take their “Essentials of Pastry” course.  It was every Saturday for 20 weeks, quite a time commitment, but I have never learned so much or enjoyed myself more than those whirlwind Saturday mornings with my friends Susan and Pamela, laughing at our mistakes and eating so many goodies.  Who knew we could turn out so many desserts in such a short amount of time?  It was with this course that I decided I needed to take pictures of the desserts.  I never had the skill set or knowledge to make such beautiful things before and here we were each weekend turning out two or three recipes for cakes, tarts, croissants, soufflé and on and on, carting them all home on a hot subway car in the middle of summer.  It was blissful madness and I needed to record every step!

As the class was wrapping up, Brian and I bought our house in Westchester and the rest, as they say, is history.  I continue to bake and garden with fervor and feel incomplete if I’m unable to pull a fresh, yummy dessert from the oven on a Saturday night.  My peaceful country walks now take the form of strolls in nearby Dale Cemetery, the closest, large green-space to our home (it’s old, beautiful and quiet). 

I find that I’m on a quest to get back to my roots, or distill from my youth what I felt the strongest connections to.  Hilariously, I hated to garden, or pull weeds as it were (chores, in my book, were evil), and going up the road to pick berries in the summer seemed such hard work…ahh youth.  The only thing I ever cooked before my stint at McDonalds (in high school) was in junior high home economics.  I recall a rather spectacular “fruit pizza” and some strongly vanilla flavored chocolate chip cookies; cookies so drenched in the vanilla's alcohol content that my friend Dana accused me of trying to get us drunk.  Well…maybe.

I guess I’m not exactly sure why I enjoy the things I do in the historical sense, but I know that communing with the garden is good therapy and that baking and offering food is the best way I know to communicate love and appreciation.  Since this past weekend was Mother’s Day and I was (as usual) not in Missouri, I baked a couple of favorites I know mom would enjoy, things that are as always inspired by our shared past and the things I love today.  The first was a simple and elegant cheesecake I found in The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts  cookbook from The French Culinary Institute.  I don’t make cheesecake that often because I’m generally drawn to “cakier” desserts, but just like last year I decided to make the cheesecake because my mother loves them so much.

There is a trick to cheesecake I discovered.  I’ve used the method of the water bath before, the process of placing your batter-filled pan inside a larger pan filled with warm water while it bakes.  This helps to keep the cheesecake from drying out and cracking…a very helpful tip no doubt, but I still have had problems with cheesecake baking up beautifully only to have the top sink down into a crater much like a deflated soufflé.  This rarely affects the taste, but the presentation is a bit lackluster.  Reading through the tips portion of the cheesecake recipe I found a recommendation about not over-beating the batter.  I thought this only applied to desserts containing flour to keep gluten from overdeveloping and making a tough crust or crumb.  Apparently you can whip too much air into the cheesecake batter, causing an excess rise while baking and leaving you with the aforementioned sad crater once the cake has cooled.  This time I tried mixing only until the ingredients were combined and I came out with the most perfectly constructed cheesecake to ever grace the racks of my oven.  Mystery solved!  Here is the recipe:

Cheesecake

Ingredients

For the batter:

Butter for pan

335 grams (11 3/4 ounces) cream cheese at room temperature

60 milliliters (2 ounces) sugar

35 grams (1 1/4 ounces) sour cream

2 large eggs, at room temperature

60 grams (2 ounces) heavy cream

Zest of 1/2 orange

Zest of 1/2 lemon

1/2-teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the finish:

70 grams (2 1/2 ounces) sour cream

4 grams (1 tablespoon) confectioners’ sugar

14 grams (2 tablespoons) cake or cookie crumbs, finely chopped toasted nuts, or chocolate curls

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  Butter the interior of the pan.  Set aside.

Combine the cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Beat on low to just blend.  Raise the speed to medium and beat for about 4 minutes, or until smooth and creamy.  This is important; otherwise the baked cake will have undesirable lumps of cream cheese.

Add the sour cream and continue to beat, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula from time to time to ensure that the sour cream is completely incorporated and that the batter remains very smooth.

Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs one at a time, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  The batter should be completely emulsified but not overmixed.  If it is overmixed, particularly at higher speeds, too much air will be incorporated into the batter and cake will rise as it bakes and fall as it cools.

Add the cream along with the orange and lemon zests and vanilla, beating to just combine.

Using a bowl scraper, scrape the batter into the prepared pan.  Place the cake pan in a larger pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven.  Add enough warm water to come halfway up the sides of the filled cake pan.  Bake for about 1 hour, or until set in the center.

Place the cake pan on a wire rack to cool completely before unmolding.  It can also be helpful to place the cooled cake in the refrigerator for about 1 hour to chill slightly before unmolding.

To finish the cake, combine the sour cream and confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl, whisking to blend well.  Unmold the cake by warming the bottom of the pan, either on the stovetop, with a handheld kitchen torch, or by placing it in warm water.  At this point, the cake may be stored, well wrapped and refrigerated, for up to 1 week.

Place a cardboard cake circle on the top of the cake to completely cover it.  Invert the cake onto the cardboard and gently tap to unmold.  Using an offset spatula, lightly coat the top of the cake with the sweetened sour cream, smoothing it to an even layer.  Coat the sides of the cake with crumbs, nuts, or chocolate curls.

Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate for no longer than 2 days.

This cheesecake is subtly flavored with citrus and topped with a frosting of sorts made from confectioners’ sugar and sour cream…amazing…I just wanted to keep eating the frosting by itself, to hell with the cake!!!  But I did manage to get a little on the top for decoration along with wide strips of lemon zest for that added bling.  There is no crust to this cake, but the recipe calls for using nuts or ground up cookies as decoration along the outer ring.  I had a few unfilled, but previously baked tart shells in the freezer, which I allowed to thaw and crushed up in the food processor.  It’s the simplicity of this dessert that is so deceptive.  This cheesecake is quiet, delicate, subtle and velvety delicious.

My other inspiration came from a shopping trip to Dean and Deluca for gooseberries.  I read in the Martha Stewart Pies and Tarts cookbook about small gooseberry tarts that sounded fun…this also made me think of my mom because we would pick and freeze gooseberries in the summer to make pies.  Well, gooseberries aren’t quite in season yet, but rhubarb is!  I almost forgot our old friend rhubarb.  May and rhubarb are synonymous and when I saw those deep ruby stalks on the produce shelf I knew I had to had them.  And, if you are going to make a rhubarb tart, might as well get a new pan to go along with it, right?  I ran over to Sur la Table where I had been eyeing a 14x5 inch rectangular pan for some time and snatched it up for this occasion.

I returned to the French Culinary Techniques book for the pate brisee recipe I had been studying when I made the grapefruit tart a couple of weeks ago, again trying to get back to basics with my pastry skills.  This dough calls for using cake flour and yields a well structured but delicate crust for your tart shell.  The recipe is as follows:

Pate Brisee

Ingredients:

250 grams (8 1/4 ounces) cake flour

1/2-teaspoon salt

1/2-teaspoon sugar

125 grams (4 1/2 ounces) very cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

65 milliliters (1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon) very cold water, or 1 large egg mixed with 1-teaspoon very cold water, plus additional ice water, if needed.

Sift the flour, salt, and sugar directly into the bowl of an electric mixer.  Cut the butter into 1/2-inch cubes and add it to the flour mixture.  Turn the machine on low and mix the ingredients just until the butter pieces are approximately 1/8 inch (pea-sized).  Gradually add the cold liquid to the dough, mixing until it is soft and shaggy.  Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and work it by hand until it is homogeneous.

Gather the dough together, form it into a disk, wrap the disk in plastic, and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes or up to 24 hours before rolling it into the shape required.

The filling I obtained from Martha Stewart.  She has a recipe for small, Raspberry Rhubarb Galettes:  freeform tarts for those both scared of pans or for those seeking a beautiful rustic looking dessert, or both.  As I said, I wanted to try out my new tart pan, so I used half the pate brisee dough for it and the other half I made into four 6-inch tarts.  The recipe for the galettes is as follows, but if you want to make the tarts more decorative using fluted tart pans the crusts can be “blind baked” for 15 minutes at 350 degrees before adding the filling and following the rest of the recipe’s instructions.

Raspberry Rhubarb Galettes

Ingredients

1 recipe of Pate Brisee

All-purpose flour for dusting

1 1/2 pounds trimmed rhubarb, cut into 1/4-inch pieces (about 5 cups)

8 ounces (about 1 1/2 cups) fresh raspberries

1/4-cup cornstarch

2 cups granulated sugar

Coarse sanding sugar, for sprinkling

Divide dough evenly into 8 pieces.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out each piece to a 7-inch round, 1/8 inch thick.  Transfer rounds to 2 large parchment-lined rimmed baking sheets, arranging several inches apart.  (If rounds become too soft to handle, refrigerate until firm, about 20 minutes.)

In a large bowl, toss to combine rhubarb, raspberries, cornstarch, and granulated sugar.

Cover each round of dough with a heaping 1/2-cup rhubarb mixture, leaving a 1-inch border.  Fold edges over rhubarb filling, leaving an opening in center; gently brush water between folds, and press gently so that folds adhere.  Refrigerate or freeze until firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brush edges of dough with water, and sprinkle with sanding sugar.  Bake until crusts are golden brown, about 30 minutes.  Reduce heat to 375 degrees, and bake until juices bubble and start to run out from center of each galette, 15 minutes more.  Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool completely before serving.

We often had rhubarb pie as a kid.  Again, I don’t remember it being my favorite because of the subtle, tart (or incredibly sour if not enough sugar is used) flavor of the stalks, but I still associate it as being one that my mom loves and one I remember her baking from my childhood after trips to Jack and Jerry’s farm (a story shared in April 2010.) 

The fact that I’ve lived in New York long enough to have grounds to stomp is astounding.  It means I’ve been here for a good long while.  I could swear it was only yesterday that I left the countryside in Missouri, gooseberries, rhubarb and all, to begin a whole new chapter of my life.  These sorts of trips down memory lane are sometimes scary, melancholy and potentially treacherous, but when I think about the people, places and things I love I find inspiration.  I hope in another ten years to have a decade’s more happy thoughts of family and friends and lots more fond memories related to sharing baked goods. It’s just who I am.