essay – Rogue Woman Bakes

Afternoon Tea: A Brief History

April 13, 2021Leave a comment

As Americans we believe tea to be a British institution back as far as we could possibly remember. As ingrained in the fabric of the United Kingdom as apple pie is to the southern United States. I was surprised to find out that Afternoon Tea is a relatively new custom. Thanks to the East India Company tea finds its way to England in the 17th century. It was popularized by King Charles the II and his wife Catherine de Braganza. Tea was such an expensive ingredient when it first made its way to England that the lady of the house often kept it and her tea making equipment under lock and key.

It wasn’t until 1840 that the idea of gathering for afternoon tea became a custom. Anna the 7th duchess of Bedford decided she didn’t enjoy that empty feeling you get when you’re hungry. The dinner meal was served kind of late, roughly around 8 pm and she got that empty feeling around four pm. So she requested a tray of tea, bread and butter and small cakes to be brought to her drawing room.

She soon began inviting her friends over to join her for tea. It became a fashionable affair. The upper class women would wear nice gowns and white gloves and join their friends for tea. They would go for walks in the garden afterwards to chat.

The traditional foods served with high tea were small sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam. Also served were small cakes and pastries. Afternoon tea now in the regular persons home tends to consist of tea and a handful of biscuits to dip into the tea. You can still have tea like the ladies of old at one of the many hotels that host a high tea. You can indulge in all the tiny cakes and tea out of gorgeous china. A proper good time.

P is for Peanut Butter Toast

March 31, 2021Leave a comment

Every morning before school when I would make myself breakfast it was normally some sort of fluffy bread product put in the toaster then smothered in what a normal person would consider to much butter and jam. Enough carbs, sugar and fat to keep you going till lunch time. The one thing that always hit the spot was something slightly different. A good slice of crusty whole wheat bread toasted and covered in creamy peanut butter.

Now I can’t quite explain what makes this breakfast treat something that still fills me up with joy to this day. It might be the way the knife runs across the toasted surface and you see that confetti of bread crumb dust that flies all over your counter. It might be the way peanut butter always melts perfectly on the warm bread and you never have to fight it like you do when your butter is ice cold. Something about toast and cold butter makes them mortal enemies, but not English muffins though. For some reason the surface of an English muffin is perfect because all its craggly bits and holes catch that ice cold butter and hold onto it for dear life. Then you are blessed with butter pockets.

We aren’t here to talk about butter pockets though. I think for me the thing that makes peanut butter toast so amazing and a thing that should always be a part of your breakfast rotation is probably the velvet texture of warm peanut butter and soft toast that coats the inside of your mouth and warms your spirit. It’s like eating a warm peanut butter cookie straight from the oven, but in a way that doesn’t have people judging your diet.

I rediscovered this gift a few weeks ago when I decided as a fully fledged grown up I could buy fancy peanut butter and a nice loaf of bread. It washed over me like a warm wave. That hit of sweet and slightly savory that ticks all the boxes and makes you feel like you’ve done something nice for yourself. Sometimes all it takes is two ingredients coming together to give you nostalgia and a hit of protein to get you through the day.

Sometimes things just fail…

March 28, 2021Leave a comment

Baking is a science for a reason. These are the kind of wise words I can give myself a half hour later as I’ve given myself time to think on it. This is not something I can tell myself as I am recklessly throwing butter and powdered sugar into a mixture with my espresso ganache that had gloriously failed. Why did it fail? I’m not certain. Maybe because I used milk instead of cream. Maybe the milk wasn’t hot enough. Maybe not enough butter…not enough chocolate. I have no idea but it failed.

I was not going to realize my beautiful vision for a lush chocolate cake with espresso chocolate ganache and hazelnuts. It was going to be amazing. I had been dreaming of it for an hour. Why didn’t I just start again you ask? Because I was sad. I was sad that it failed. I don’t like failure. So I tossed the broken mess of a frosting and made my husband eat naked chocolate cake with me. He loved the cake. He loved it just as it was. Sometimes things are ok just as they are. Maybe it was meant to be a naked cake. Sometimes things just fail but what I saw as a failure my husband saw as a success. I needed that moment of positivity when I very nearly cried over split buttercream.

Baking is a science. You need to understand the basics before you can try and save something that’s broken. Start again if you can or try and find the success moment in the middle of what might feel like a failure. My cake was good. Moist…delicious. That was enough today.

What is Jackfruit? How do I use it?

December 15, 2020Leave a comment

What is it?

Jackfruit is a species of tree in the fig and mulberry family. It grows in the tropical region of Asia. It is used most commonly in South and Southeast Asian cuisine.

My Jackfruit Journey…

As a new vegetarian I am constantly on the lookout for new substitutes for the meat I gave up. I have fallen in love with the gardein brand of vegetarian meat substitutes. That’s not what this post is about though. Maybe another day. Today we focus on the learning experience I had when I tried to make Jackfruit cheesesteaks for my husband today. He was excited. I was excited. It was going to be great. Boy did I have something to learn.

I had my peppers and onions cooked and was about to add my Jackfruit when I opened the can and realized this was not like any Jackfruit I had ever had before. Wasn’t it supposed to be green? This was a beautiful orange color and smelled sweet. I had never had Jackfruit smell sweet before. I even tried to cook with it anyway thinking maybe I was mistaken. Truthfully I knew I wasn’t mistaken but I really wanted cheesesteaks so I tried. It was a failure.

So here is what we learned. When Jackfruit is young and unripe it is called green jackfruit. This is the jackfruit I had seen before. I just had never bought it canned so I didn’t know it was called this when it was young. The jackfruit I bought was ripe and its beautiful orange color.

When jackfruit is young you can use it as a meat substitute like you would use shredded pork, chicken or duck. I have used it in BBQ pork sandwiches. You can use it in tacos and anywhere else you would use a shredded meat.

The ripe Jackfruit can be used in desserts. You can use it anyplace you would use a hearty canned fruit. You can use it in layered Jello desserts. You can use it in baked goods. You can also use it to top a custard dish. There is a dish called Panasa Mulika that is fried Jackfruit fritters.

If you are looking for a new fruit to add to your diet whether it be for your Meat Free Monday or to put it in a pie I’d recommend Jackfruit. It’s hearty and delicious. It is also fairly easy to come by in your local grocery store in the can. I found it in my local Asian market. Let me know what you use Jackfruit for.

Cooking with my kid

March 30, 2020Leave a comment

We are all home cooks now. This is the nature of our reality. So what a better time then now to teach our children the things you wish your parents had taught you. For me it’s baking. I never baked anything as a child. It wasn’t really a thing my mom did unless it was from a box. So as I’ve turned the corner into thirty and I am discovering a love of food I didn’t realize I had before I want to show my son what he can make with his bare hands.

So this week we are going to try a few things. First and foremost I believe we might do something together that I have yet to try. We are going to try and make soda bread. Its a non yeasted bread. It’s leavened with baking soda and baking powder which means it doesn’t need to proof. So awesome right? Perfect for small kids with no patience.

The next thing we are going to do is bake and decorate delicious super hero cupcakes. We are going to do hulk cupcakes so they will have a surprise filling inside. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. I want to make memories with my son that he can take with him for a long time.

It’s important for me to make the most of this rare time I have with my son. This means trying desperately to let go of my control in the kitchen and teach my son things he can take with him into adulthood. Let me know in the comments what kind of things you’ve taught your kids to cook. We need to create a new generation of home cooks especially in our little men.

Flippin Flatbread Man…

February 29, 2020Leave a comment

There’s so much flour on my floor…

I need an apron…

Literally my internal monologue every time I bake. Anyway…

So I decided this week to try something new. I wanted flatbread. I wanted it bad guys. I’d seen someone on Bon Appetit do it so I thought I could too. Nothing I’ve baked so far has failed so this will be fine. This was definitely not how that went.

The first recipe I tried was from King Arthur Flour. It was for a skillet flatbread. The biggest thing I learned from this process is i’m not quite certain what an 1/8th of an inch looks like. My flatbread were very thick even though I thought I squished the ever living heck out of them. I also either had too hot of a pan or I tried to cook them for too long because the oil I was frying them in burned the outside. You know flatbread is supposed to have nice brown spots on the outside to let you know its done cooking. The spots these had were not that. The spots these had were the sad kind that makes your house smell like burnt toast. Then when you broke into them the smell of raw dough hits your nose. Quite frankly the whole thing was a damn disaster.

So the next day I tried something different. I tried Indian Roti. It was a similar dough except the oil was replaced with butter. It called for pretty much ALL the butter. The needed to be thin and soft and delicious. They also needed to be rolled out nearly paper thin so it would puff when you fried them. I was pretty sure I was right on track to do it properly. They rolled out nicely. I had to use quite a lot of flour to get them to roll out and not stick. This looking back was not great. I put my butter in my medium heat pan and it melted nicely. Then I put the roti in and pretty instantly all my butter browned.

Now don’t get me wrong brown butter is great when it’s what you want, but this had crossed over into burnt. I don’t know if the roti had too much flour on it going in the butter but they were very dark and oily. Through all the burnt butter and weird puffing that proved I didn’t roll them thin enough like I thought they did get closer then the other bunch. The browned without charring and one out of the five I made seemed to cook all the way through. It was still brown and not attractive but I was close.

Truly I don’t know what I could’ve done differently with that second batch. Different butter? Lower temp on my pan? Possibly a thinner roll? I will definitely try the second recipe again because I got closer to a finished product.

I definitely want to be able to cook fresh flatbread with my curry. Fresh baked is always better then store bought so we’ll see what happens next time.

Here’s the links to the recipes I tried:

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/skillet-flatbreads-recipe

https://thefoodcharlatan.com/roti-buttery-indian-flatbread/

What is it?

My Jackfruit Journey…

Ingredients

Directions