Valentine Petit Fours

The Art.
    When I was in elementary school, everyone loved Valentine's Day. Each student brought little  valentines for their classmates, and we all consumed an obnoxious amount of chocolate. However, as I've grown into adulthood (or an approximation thereof) many of my peers view Valentine's Day with embitterment and disdain. They focus so much on the romantic aspects that I think they forget that it's still a day to show your friends that you love them. I am proud to say that I have always taken the elementary school approach to Valentine's Day, distributing homemade valentines to show my friends that I care. This year I've taken it up a notch, and my gifts will include snacks as well as gaudy paper hearts. One of the treats will be these petit fours, decorated like little conversation heart candies. I hope that by giving valentines to all my friends, they will know that I love and appreciate them--because that's what Valentine's Day is all about!

The Science.
    In keeping with the Valentine theme, these petit fours are flavored with raspberry jam. Coincidentally, raspberries are reported to be good for your heart. A recent study tracked 94 thousand healthy women over the course of 18 years, and investigated how dietary habits affected risk for heart attack. They found that women who regularly consumed berries high in anthocyanin--the pigment that gives berries their color--had fewer heart attacks [1]. Cell culture experiments have also shown that anthocyanins have antioxidant effects and inhibit generation of nitric oxide, providing insight as to how berries may prevent cardiac events [2,3]. So, if you're wondering what to get your Valentine this year, making these petit fours will show you care about his/her cardiac health and want to spend a long, healthy life together. (Nevermind all the butter and sugar. It's irrelevant.)

The Recipe.

Raspberry Petit Fours: (Makes 45-50)
1 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons salted butter
3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup seedless raspberry jam



    Preheat oven to 350^oF. Coat a 9x13 pan with cooking spray and line with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat butter in large bowl on medium-high until fluffy, then gradually beat in sugar. Beat eggs in, one at a time. Stir vanilla into buttermilk. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk to butter/sugar/egg mixture while beating on low speed.  Beat an additional 30 seconds. Pour batter into mold/pan and spread evenly. Lift and drop on the counter a couple times to eliminate bubbles in the batter. Bake on center rack for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes, remove the parchment paper, then place on wire rack until completely cool.
   Using a small heart cookie cutter, cut petit fours out of the cake. In a microwave safe bowl, gently heat the jam until it is runny. Brush jam over cooled cakes and allow to dry. Meanwhile, make the poured fondant.

White Chocolate Poured Fondant:
4oz Ghirardelli white bar chocolate
6 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

    Heat chocolate in a large microwave-safe bowl in 30-second bursts, stirring inbetween, until melted. Stir in powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time, adding small amounts of water at intervals. Stir in corn syrup. Icing will be very thick. Divide into bowls and tint the icing pastel shades with gel icing colors.

Decorating:
    Balance a cake on a fork and hold it over the bowl of fondant. Spoon fondant over the cake, allowing the excess to drip off. Allow to dry completely on a wire rack, with parchment paper underneath to catch drips. Write conversation heart messages with red royal icing and a #2 tip. Petit fours can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer for up to one month.

1. Cassidy, A. et al. "High Anthocyanin Intake Is Associated With a Reduced Risk of Myocardial Infarction in Young and Middle-Aged Women." Circulation. 2013; 127: 188-196 
2. Min, S. et al. "Anti-inflammatory effects of black rice, cyanidin-3-O-beta-D-glycoside, and its metabolites, cyanidin and protocatechuic acid. Int Immunopharmacol." Int Immunopharmacol. 2010, 10(8) pp 959-66.
3. Pergola, C. et al. "Inhibition of nitric oxide biosynthesis by anthocyanin fraction of blackberry extract." Nitric Oxide 2006, 15(1): pp 30–39

Iced Snowflake Sugar Cookies

The Art.
    There's a reason why sugar cookies are everyone's favorite. They are easy to make, made from ingredients that are always on hand, and the simple flavor appeals to all palettes. In addition, sugar cookies allow endless decorating possibilities, with different cookie cutters, icings, and embellishments. We recently had a beautiful snowfall that inspired me to make these cookies using a snowflake cookie cutter, white royal icing, and edible pearls. Cookie decorating is a time when everyone can get creative and try out different designs. Your cookies will be as unique as real snowflakes when you're done!

The Science.
    In the time since I've made the Lemon Polka Dot Sugar Cookies, I decided to alter my recipe a bit. While the original cookies are very delicious, I wanted cookies that were a little less "short" for this project. This meant I would have to substitute another fat for some of the butter. I chose vegetable oil, because it has less saturated fats, and gives a lighter mouthfeel than butter [1]. The original recipe calls for 3/4 cup butter, so I altered it to include 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup vegetable oil. Usually I am a stickler for obeying the rules for volume adjustments when changing the fat contents in a recipe. However, when 7/8 cup vegetable oil should be substituted for 1 cup butter, it made the calculation for 1/4 cup a little tricky [2]. I figured that 1/4 cup vegetable oil was close enough to 7/32 cup for my purposes. I must admit I felt pretty racy for disregarding calculations here, and the cookies were still delicious. In the end, baking is both an art and a science, and it's important to remember that it should be fun. Getting too caught up in the numbers can take away from the enjoyment of making something pretty and delicious.

The Recipe.

Sugar cookies: (Makes 24)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
   

    In a small bowl, combine flour and salt. Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl on medium-high until pale and fluffy. Beat in oil, egg, and vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined. Cover and chill dough at least one hour.

    Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Roll out dough with rolling pin until 1/4" thick. Cut out as many cookies as possible from dough with cookie cutters. Gather scraps and re-roll, cutting out more cookies. Transfer cookies to 2 ungreased baking sheets, 1 inch apart. Bake cookies until edges are golden, 12-15 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Royal Icing:
1 large egg white
3 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk

    In a medium bowl, beat egg white until frothy. Gradually beat in sugar until icing is the consistency of toothpaste. Beat in milk. Store extra icing in the refrigerator, covering the surface with waxed paper.

Decorating:
    Place a #3 tip in a piping bag and fill with icing. Draw lines of icing on your snowflake cookies in whatever pattern you wish. Carefully place edible pearls on wet icing with craft tweezers. Allow cookies to dry, uncovered, for several hours. Store cookies in an air-tight container, separating layers with waxed paper.

1. American Baking Essentials Course 201. "Butter, Shortening, and Oils: The Fats We Bake With." The Prepared Pantry, 2005.
2.  All Recipes, "Common Ingredient Substitutions." Available here.

Orange Gingerbread Bundt Cake

The Art.
    After I made the syrup for the Traditional Greek Baklava the other day, I had some delicious honey-soaked orange peels left over. They have such a wonderful aromatic flavor that I didn't want to waste them, so I chopped them up and put them in a gingerbread cake. If you haven't made baklava recently, you can make your own candied orange peel by following this recipe. (I actually just watch this video for fun sometimes, Jacques is great). To top the cake off, I made a tart orange glaze and garnished it with orange peel curls. I have decided these curls are my new favorite garnish. I had no idea it would be so easy to make something so elegant!

The Science.
    We all know that unripe oranges are very tart, and ripe oranges taste sweet. This is because the fruit stores sugars in its flesh as it matures, to provide nutrients for the baby orange trees that will grow out of its seeds. One indicator that an orange is mature is the color of its peel, which changes from green, to yellow, to dark orange. With this color change, there are also chemical changes in the composition of the essential oils within the peel. The most abundant oil in both lemon and orange peels is limonene, and this compound's levels increase as the fruit ripens [1]. This is most likely because limonene, along with other flavonoid compounds produced in citrus peels, have antimicrobial properties which will protect the fruit from infection, allowing it to provide a healthy environment for the orange seeds to grow [1, 2]. Luckily for us, flavonoid compounds also have wonderful flavor, and we can gain energy from the sweet orange flesh just as the seeds do. Today, we will use the juice of the orange flesh for our glaze and bake the flavor provided by the orange peel into our rich cake.

The Recipe.

Gingerbread Bundt:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons grated ginger root
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
3/4 cup molasses
3/4 cup buttermilk
4 teaspoons candied orange peel, chopped

    Preheat oven to 350^oF and adjust rack to middle position. Coat bundt pan with baking spray. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices in medium bowl. In large bowl, whisk together sugar, ginger root, oil, eggs, molasses, and buttermilk. Add dry ingredients, and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Fold in orange peel. Pour patter into pan and bake for 40 minutes, or until tester inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then invert on wire rack for 10 minutes to cool slightly.

Orange Glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons ginger ale
1 teaspoon orange zest
juice from one orange
3 1/4-inch orange slices

    Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Transfer warm cake to cake stand and spoon glaze over the top. Gently remove the peel from the orange slices and twist them around a skewer or spoon handle to make orange curls. Garnish top of cake with orange curls.

1. Bourgou, S. et al. "Changes of peel essential oil composition of four Tunisian citrus during maturation." Scientific World Journal 2012, Volume 2012, Article ID 528593, 10 pages.

2. Shahwar, D. et al. "Identification of flavonoids with trypsin inhibitory activity extracted from orange peel and green tea leaves." J Sci. Food Agric. 2012, doi: 10.1002/jsfa.5910.

Traditional Greek Baklava

 The Art.
    For thousands of years, Greeks and Turks have argued about the best way to make baklava. They also argue about other things, like religion and occupation of Cyprus, but those conflicts are superfluous compared to the Baklava Dispute. I can't really blame them, baklava is a delicious and intrinsic part of Eastern European culture. Coming from a Greek family, I have grown up making baklava in the Greek style, with chopped walnuts and honey syrup flavored with orange peel. My Yiayia taught us to stick a clove in the center of each piece of baklava before it's baked, to keep the top layers of phyllo from curling and flaking away, in addition to adding presentation. (Remember to remove the decorative clove before eating the baklava, or you'll have a very bad time.)

The Science.

Chemical Structure of Eugenol

    Cloves have many practical uses besides adding flavor to foods. One of the main components in clove oil is a compound called eugenol. Eugenol has been shown to have anesthetic effects, and is used in dentistry to numb the skin before needle sticks, much like benzocaine [1]. In addition, eugenol acts as an antibacterial agent by interacting with the bacterial cell wall and killing bacterial cells [2]. Because of this antimicrobial activity, clove oil is used in topical ointments to promote wound healing. Clove oil also exhibits antioxidant activity, scavenging free radicals and acting as an iron chelator [3]. These qualities make it a desirable food preservative, and a natural alternative to chemical preservatives.

The Recipe.

Syrup:
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups honey
1 cinnamon stick
Peel from 1/4 of an orange

    When taking the peel from the orange, be sure to only take the top, orange-colored part of the peel, and exclude the white pith. The peel contains the essential oils, but the pith will give your syrup a bitter flavor.

    Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan and heat gently while assembling and baking the baklava. Do not allow to boil. Remove orange peel and cinnamon stick. Coat the candied orange peel with granulated sugar and store in the refrigerator to use in cakes or as a garnish.

Pastry:
3 cups chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground clove
1 package (1lb.) phyllo dough, thawed
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
40-50 whole cloves

    Preheat oven to 375°F and adjust rack to middle position. Lightly dampen a dish towel with water. Open the phyllo package, and cut 1 inch off of the short end of the dough, to turn the 9"x14" dough into 9"x13", which will fit nicely in your pan. Keep the dough covered with waxed paper, then place the damp dish towel on top while you're working, to prevent it from drying out. This will keep the phyllo edges from dehydrating and breaking while you work with it. In a medium bowl, combine nuts and spices. 

    Place 2 sheets of phyllo flat in the bottom of an ungreased 9"x13", and lightly and evenly brush with butter, all the way to the edges. Repeat 4 times. Sprinkle 1/3 of the nut mixture evenly over the top. Repeat layering the dough and nuts twice more. Layer 12 sheets of phyllo on top, buttering every alternate sheet as before.

    The key to a beautiful, crisp baklava is to cover all of the dough evenly with butter to prevent cracking, but not too generously or it will become greasy.  Also, make sure the nut mixture is spread completely smooth, all the way to the edges.

    With a sharp knife, carefully cut the baklava into diamonds, approximately 2 inches square. Only cut about 2/3 of the way down, so the pastry will hold together while it bakes. Insert a clove in the center of each piece, leaving 1/8 inch between the top of the dough and the clove bud, so there is room for the pastry to rise. Bake for 40 minutes, or until light golden.

    While the baklava is still hot, gently pour the syrup evenly over the top. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cut into pieces. To serve, place each piece in a paper mini cupcake liner and serve with coffee or tea. Store baklava in the refrigerator up to 1 week, or freeze in airtight container 2 months.

1. Alqareer, A. et al. "The effect of clove and benzocaine versus placebo as topical anesthetics." Journal of Dentistry 2006, 34(10) pp 747–750.

2. Devi, K. et al. "Eugenol (an essential oil of clove) acts as an antibacterial agent against Salonmella typhi by disrupting the cellular membrane." J. Ethnopharmacol. 2010, 130(1) pp 107-115.

3. Jirovetz, L. et al. "Chemical composition and antioxidant properties of clove leaf essential oil." J. Agric. Food Chem. 2006, 54(17) pp 6303-6307.