For ToScho

One of my friends Tobi came for dinner on monday. I know a lot of Tobis, so we refer to them either by location (Tobi New York, for instance — though he has moved to London in the meantime) and Tobi Sch., whom I also refer to as Stabi Tobi, because I met him at the state library here in Berlin six years ago. We met because we were the only people in the library using Apple computers and thus we immediatly bonded over our mutual cuteness, geekiness and snobbiness!

So, he came for dinner and brought beer and icecream, upon request. I had the jar pictured above on the countertop, and was excitedly explaining that this was dessert. Somehow he totally failed to be impressed, and I was really not getting why: who wouldn’t get excited about SALTED!BUTTER!CARAMEL!! A sauce, that routinely makes me want to bathe in it it’s so good.

As I got ready to serve dessert, the salted butter caramel sauce poured over vanilla icecream* Tobi asked me why I was using salad sauce to eat with icecream… Mystery solved, sauce tried. blissful coma ensued!**

Over dinner, I helped him put together a dinner for this weekend using the sauce as one of the features, and promised I’d post the recipe for him to check. So Tobi, here you go:

Salted Butter Caramel

prep time: 5 min

adapted from Trish Deseine Ma petite Robe Noire et autre Recettes

100 g granulated sugar
2 tbsp water
70 g salted butter***
2 tbsp mascarpone

Put the sugar and water in a heavy saucepan over low to medium heat. Do not stir and wait for the sugar to melt. You can swirl the content in the saucepan until everything is an even light golden color.

Take the saucepan off the heat and add the butter. Make sure to drop it along the sides of the saucepan and not into the middle, or the mixture will spatter, bubble and BURN! Slowly incorporate the butter with a wooden spoon and keep turning until all is melted. Add the mascarpone in the same way.

You can eat it rightaway, or let the leftovers cool down. It will harden in the fridge, but you can heat it up in a waterbath or the microwave to bring it back to pouring consistency.

*confession: I didn’t have salted butter, so I added about a quarter of a teaspoon of table salt, along with the butter. This made the caramel curdle. BUT. I have an awesome remedy for that: Let the caramel cool a bit to prevent it from burning you and quickly whizz it in the blender until it has reached a smooth consistency. This trick also works for custards (crème anglaise) and other sauces using dairy which have the tendency to curdle.

** We also crumbled some cookies on top of the sauce for extra textural tastey deliciousness, becaue that’s the way our cookie crumbles!

***I hate german icecream. I don’t know what they do to it, but nearly every brand (save for Landliebe) is all slimy and airy and gooey. All in a bad way. I think they must whip their icecream under the guise of conching. But thanks to Tobi for bringing icecream anway!

A Guilty Pleasure

The last time I was in New York, I was pregnant with our first child. It was one of the most wondefful and harrowing experiences. We were there, because my husband was shooting additional material for his film, which meant, that we were effectively mixing business with pleasure, or in my case, business with pregnancy. I was permanently exhausted, elated, hungry, nauseated and also mad at the american public space for being host to numerous anti-french ads (this was the time when ‘french fries’ were to be renamed ‘freedom fries’ and everyone was pouring french wine down the gutter).

Anyway our host during that trip was and is one of the most wonderful cooks known to me (that is excepting my family) and had hosted me a number of times in his place in Brooklyn. I had stayed with him during a summerlong internship I did at the very beginning of my studies, nearly 10 years ago, during which he introduced me to asian cooking (mainly thai, my peanut sauce and I are forever indebted!) and to Ben & Jerry’s icecream.

During this visit with my husband, I was going crazy (and I mean a pint-a-day-crazy) for their chubby hubby flavor, and more specifically, with the sweet/salty combination. I was immediatly introduced to chocolate covered pretzels and remember tasting them somehwere in SoHo, as we were looking for the Prada store. It took us a while to find it BTW, I blame my blindsight to hormones, and those pretzels. In the end I was equally smitten with the pretzels as I was with store; but the pretzels were kind of easier to budget for!

Since I haven’t been able to find them since –either in Canada or in Germany– I have thought for some time that I should find a way to do them myself. So today, about 3 1/2 years later, I did it. In anxious expectation I tasted the first one, and lo, those pretzels, they rocked. Go make them, they are done as quickly as they are eaten!

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

prep time: 5 min cooling time about 1 h

100 g dark chocolate*
about 75 g pretzels (or salt sticks)
pat of butter

saucepan, silicon mat or parchment paper

Melt the chocolate with a pat of butter over low heat (You can do it in a double boiler or in the microwave, today, I was particularly lazy and just melted it straight in the saucepan). Drop the pretzels in there, and toss to coat them**. With whatever instrument you have (I used a knife and fork) pull them out and lay them on your silicon mat to harden. Store in a cool, dry place. If you can resist eating them all at once, I imagine they would taste fabulous crushed and sprinkled over ice cream…

* I used an organic dark chocolate, but suspect that milk chocolate would have tasted more fun
** At first, I gently dredged each pretzel through the melted chocolate and pulled it out, but then the lazy hit me again, and i just dumped the rest of the pack in there!

If Your Are Still Reading…

So. The best thing - in my opinion - about this lovely cake from my last post, was the frosting. One taste of it, and all I could think of, was making marshmallows. Real, honest-to-god selfmade chamallow as they are called in France. And being the only girl in our family of five, it was instantly decided that these mallows, they HAD to be pink.
Luckily for me, others before me had ventured into marshmallow teritory, so all I had to do was check my favorite sources for all things american as well as decide on wether I was going to make marshmallows with, or without egg whites.

In the end, I chose to make them with egg white. Somehow they seemed slightly less indulgent with egg, as if the egg whites made them nearly as virtuous as the famed egg-white omelets favoured by so many south-californians! On a culinary level, making something purely out of sugar, corn syrup which is essentially just more sugar and gelatine somehow wasn’t gastronomically acceptable! So, between this and that recipe, I muddled my way through, and chose to add raspberry purée as a pinkifying agent.

pretty, no?

The recipe is fairly straightforward. Despite all warnings, I whipped up the mass with my handmixer (if anybody wants to donate a kitchenaid to a just cause, I promise tasty rewards!) and it turned out just fine. Now, get to your mixers, the marshmallows turned out to be really really tasty, and fun to make. They would also make a great project to do with kids on a rainy afternoon, although the fact that the mass has to dry overnight might make for a disappointed toddler - don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Pink Raspberry Marshmallows

prep time: 15min, cooling time: 12 h

16 sheets of gelatine
3 egg whites
2 1/2 Tbsp glucose or corn syrup
1 1/4 cup of sugar
100 ml of water
4 Tbsp of raspeberry purée, sieved
corn or potato starch

saucepan, 20 cm square cake tin, cutting board

Place the gelatine in a bowl of cold water to soften it up. Line the cake tin with oiled parchment paper - I oiled both sides of the paper to make sure it would really stick to the tin. Crack the egg whites into a big mixing bowl, the mass will triple in volume. In a saucepan combine the water, syrup and sugar. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 8 minutes, or until the mixture is dissolved.

While the syrup is cooking, whip the egg whites to soft peaks. Drain the gelatine sheets and squeeze out as much water as possible. Add them to the hot sugar syrup, and pour the whole thing gently over your whites while still whipping the eggs. This is the point at which you might realize that yes, you only have two hands, and that a helper might be of use. Once the whole syrup is combined into the egg whites, add the raspberry purée and keep mixing until the (pink!) mass reaches room temperature

Pour the mass into the prepped cake tin, and wonder for a brief moment if you just inadvertently made latex. Let it cool over night.

The next day (before even having breakfast if you are anything like me!), sieve a little starch onto a cutting board, and some more onto a plate. Invert the marshmallow onto the cutting board and dust it with some more starch. With a sharp knife or a pizza cutter.

I recommend letting the cut up marshmallows dry up some more before you package them, as they tend to hold a lot of moisture and will stick together despite the corn starch if you package them too soon. Or you just eat them straight up!