Author: xPal EuroCuisineLady

In a part of the world best known for serious cakes like the Schwarzwalder kirschtorte and substantial desserts like the famous Dampfnudeln (sweet steamed dumplings), some people find the appearance on Munich menus of something called Bayerisch vanillecreme rather confusing… especially when they taste it for the first time and find themselves unexpectedly in contact with a dessert that's suave and rich yet also airy and meltingly light; something most closely resembling a vanilla pudding which has wandered into the mortal realms after a brief sojourn in Heaven. (Which is what the Bavarians think their part of the world can be mistaken for, anyway.) How in the world, some people might say, did a sweet this subtle and sophisticated turn up in the robust mainstream of Bavarian home cooking?

It turns out there's probably a French connection. In 1385, Duke Stephan II of Bavaria married his daughter Isabel to the king of France, Charles the Sixth. Due to her husband's ill health, Queen Isabel (referred to by the French as Isabeau de Bavière or Isobel the Bavarian) wound up having to shoulder much of the serious business of ruling France, and was constantly engaged in diplomatic travel and power-brokering across central Europe. One thing she seems to have brought back to Bayern with her when business took her home was the recipe for the rich egg-based custard-cream desserts then popular at Charles's Parisian court. From the Bavarian court the vanilla creme made its way out into local food culture, and has never faded in popularity from that day to this. And in French food culture, Isabeau's affiliation with the dessert is remembered in its French name, bavarois, "the Bavarian dish". (Please note: this recipe is nothing to do with bavaroise, which is a drink involving tea and alcohol, sometimes specifically absinthe.)

You should be clear before embarking on this recipe that it's no easy-mix pudding, but a high-end product worthy of a royal court, and is therefore going to require moderate effort and all your attention for the hour or so that it takes to put it together. But the results will really be worth it. The final vanilla cream can be enjoyed on its own, or can have chocolate or fruit added: can be enriched with liqueurs or schnapps, stacked in parfait glasses, and used in all kinds of creative ways.

One note in passing: there are a lot of recipes for "Bayerische Vanillacreme" out on the Web that for some reason add vanilla ice cream and cornstarch to the mix. This is most likely somebody's attempt to get around the number of eggs needed in the original recipe to lend it richness and thicken it. These recipes are in no way authentic, as cornstarch wouldn't have been readily available in Bavaria in the 1400's any more than ice cream would have.)

Ingredients:

• 8 leaves of gelatine or 2 envelopes of powdered gelatin
• 1 vanilla bean
• 6 egg yolks
• 1/2 liter / 1 US pint / 16 fluid ounces milk
• 1/2 liter / 1 US pint / 16 fluid ounces heavy cream
• 125 grams / 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Before you begin, make sure you've got enough gelatine for the job. You want to check that the amount you're using, of whichever kind of gelatin, is going to be sufficient to set about 1 pint / 500ml of liquid. If you're using large commercial-size sheets of gelatine, four should be enough. In any case, check the directions on your gelatine to make sure it will set half the total liquid in the recipe.

If you're using leaf gelatin, cut it up into slices and put it in a bowl with about a quarter-cup of water to soften. (If you're using powdered gelatin, you won't need to do anything about it until later.)

Split the vanilla bean and carefully scrape out all the seeds. (Put the scraped-out pod in a jar with some plain sugar to make vanilla sugar.) Add the vanilla seeds to the milk, blend them well, and simmer them together over low-to-medium heat for about ten minutes. Don't allow to scald or boil!

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until light and fluffy. When this has been done, very slowly add the hot milk-and-vanilla mixture to the eggs and sugar, beating steadily all the while. Then pour the mixture into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat very slowly over medium heat, beating constantly until they thicken. Take your time and do not allow this mixture to boil! If you do, you'll wind up with scrambled eggs, or a grainy pudding. Cook until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

When the cooked custard has thickened, if you're using leaf gelatine, remove it from the cold water, add to the custard mixture, and whisk together very well until dissolved. If you're using powdered gelatine, dissolve it in about 1/3 cup of warm-to-hot water and add to the custard mixture, whisking in well.

As soon as the gelatine is dissolved into the custard, remove it from the heat and pour into a bowl set over cracked ice in a larger bowl. Whisk more or less constantly until the custard starts to become cold. (Change / replace the cracked ice if you need to.) When it's cold, put the gelatine and custard mixture in the refrigerator and whisk again at five- to ten-minute intervals until it becomes very thick.

After about half an hour of this, beat the heavy cream until stiff. After giving the cooked custard mixture one last beating, carefully fold in the whipped cream until it's completely and evenly combined.

How you proceed from here is up to you. The formal treatment for a Bayerische creme involves setting it in a mold (oiled first: almond oil is best for this). But you don't have to do that if it's too much trouble. You can simply pour the whole vanilla creme mixture into a large bowl and chill it until set (never serve it until at least three hours have passed). It can be spooned from this big bowl into dishes and served plain with just a sprinkle of cocoa: or you can garnish it with fresh fruit, pureed fruit, or jam thinned with a little fruit liqueur.

Alternately, you can pour the vanilla creme into small individual bowls to set, then garnish as above when serving.

You can also divide the vanilla creme recipe into two or three parts — leaving one plain, beating cocoa into another (three or four heaping tablespoons of plain cocoa will be enough to flavor one part of the creme) and half a cup or so of pureed fresh fruit into a third; then pour or spoon the contrasting mixtures into parfait glasses, layering with more fresh fruit, and top with a little more whipped cream.

In all cases, refrigerate for at least three hours before serving.

Serves four to six.

 

 

 

This classic simple sponge cake has been in the repertoire of Portuguese cooks for hundreds of years — specifically, since refined sugars first appeared on the scene in the wake of the great waves of New World exploration that began in the 1500's.

There are two main types of Pão-de-ló — the "easy one" (which this recipe represents) and the Pao de lo de Alfereizo, which isn't that much harder to make but has a far higher egg content.

The Alfereizo variation has attached to it one of those stories purporting to explain why the Pão-de-ló usually collapses a little in the middle (as you may be able to see our example did). The original recipe was supposed to have been sourced from the Convent of Kos some time in the 1600's. Apparently King Carlos was scheduled to visit them one day, and the convent's baker was preparing a sponge cake for the event. But the King turned up early, and the cake had to be served before it had time to bake all the way through — and when it came out of the oven, naturally it collapsed. However, the extraordinarily high egg content meant that even the failed cake was attractive — spongy on the outside but warm and creamy on the inside — and since then, "the wrong way" or "the hard way" has been the preferred way to make the more involved cake. 

The "easy way" version, though, is a lovely cake and doesn't stand in its eggier cousin's shadow at all. Our recipe is derived from that of a Portuguese cook who prepares the cake in various sizes by weighing the eggs and altering the amount of dry ingredients accordingly.

(By the way, both these cakes were chosen as Portugal's official contribution to the roll of honor of 54 European Union Birthday Cakes.)  

Our Portuguese associate, as stated above, assembles the ingredients this way:

Decide how many eggs you're going to use. Weigh them.

Then measure out the same weight of flour, and the same weight of sugar. For four eggs, use one teaspoon of baking powder: for six to eight eggs, use two: for ten to twelve, add three.

If you don't want to get involved with weighing things, use the following ingredients instead.

• 6 large eggs (room temperature)
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 cups granulated sugar (or you can mix it half and half with soft brown sugar if you like)
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour or cake flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
• Confectioners' sugar / icing sugar to dust the cake after baking

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 170 C.

Grease a 10 inch tube pan; set aside.(If you prefer, this cake can also be baked in a springform pan. However, you should line the bottom and sides of this with baking parchment. When lining the sides, make sure to allow the paper to project at least three inches above the top rim of the pan.)

Add the salt to the eggs and beat: then begin adding the sugar at medium speed. When it's all been added, increase the beating speed and continue beating until the mixture is light and lemon-colored — as fluffy as you can get it. Note: if your kitchen is cool, this will take longer. 

In a separate bowl, stir the flour and baking powder together. Then take the bowl off the miixer and, by hand,  start carefully folding in the flour mixture, a half-cupful or so at a time. Proceed very gently, as you want to keep the air in the batter after you've spent so much time getting it there by beating it in.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 40 minutes. The cake should spring back when pressed lightly.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Don't panic if it starts to fall in: almost every Pão-de-ló does this. When it's cool, remove from the pan and (if you used it) carefully peel off the parchment paper. Let cool completely on rack.

Dust with icing sugar before serving if desired, or glaze with an icing of confectioners' sugar and lemon juice or water. Or some bakers prefer to drizzle warmed fruit jelly or jam over the top. (Probably not a traditional approach in Portugal, but it tastes terrific.)

 

 

 

This is not an apple pie as such (the techniques are a lot different though the flavorings are similar). This is a home version of apfelwähe (prounounced APfel-VAY-heh), which is a subset of the larger set of wähen or tarts in general.

("Wähe" is the Swiss name, which is regional: in Germany and Austria, these sometimes go by other names.) Wähen come in both sweet and savory forms — filled with all kinds of seasonal fruit, as well as with quiche-style fillings — and bakeries in Switzerland routinely have both kinds ready to go, by the slice, like pizza. (See a typical image here.) A favorite lunch with people in a hurry would be a slice of a cheese- or meat- or vegetable-based wähe and a slice of a fruit one — plum, apricot, apple, whatever's in season — with a glass of wine or a soft drink like Rivella.

 

So, on to the tart proper. (You can see the various stages of the making of the tart in this Flickr photoset.)

For the basic sweet pastry (Süsser Mürbeteig) —

• 6 oz (175g) plain flour (about 1 1/2 US cups)
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3 oz (75g) butter, well chilled (about 3/4 cup)
• 3 oz (75g) caster sugar (that's fine granulated sugar for US folk: a scant 1/2 cup)
• 1 tsp grated lemon rind
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten

Sift the flour and sugar together into a large mixing bowl. Coat the butter with flour from the bowl to make it easier to handle, and grate it directly onto the flour, using the coarse blade of a cheese grater. As you grate the butter, mix the flakes together with the flour occasionally, using your fingertips, before grating more.

Add the sugar and lemon rind. Using two round-bladed knives, cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles cornmeal.

Mix the egg lightly with a fork and pour over the flour mixture. Using the fork, mix the egg into the flour mixture until well distributed. Then, using your hand, pull the dough gently together into a ball. Knead lightly and briefly on a floured board until the dough forms a cohesive mass. Pat into a flat round and wrap tightly in Saran wrap / plastic wrap / clingflim. Refrigerate for at least an hour before using.

If you're doing this with a food processor: Dump in the flour and salt first: pulse to aerate / sift. Add the sugar and lemon rind: pulse again. Add the butter, in pats / lumps of about a teaspoon each: pulse once or twice to get them covered with flour, then process briefly to the cornmeal texture. Add the egg. Pulse sparingly until the whole business forms a ball. Empty the container out onto a floured surface, knead briefly, pat the dough flat and wrap as above.

You should be warned that even after chilling, this dough is extremely soft and delicate, and can be a pain to handle. You may find yourself forced to knead some extra flour into it to make it robust enough to get it into the tart pan or onto the baking sheet. If you have to do this, work fast, work gently, and don't whack the dough around too much. You don't want to take the risk of developing the gluten and winding up with a tough crust.

Work with the dough right out of the refrigerator if possible: this may make matters slightly easier for you. If you have the kind of tart pan/tin the recipe properly calls for — 10-12 inches wide, with a one-inch high, fluted rim and a removable bottom — roll the dough out just thin enough to be about an inch and a half wider than the pan, and either fold it in two for the move into the pan, or drape it over the rolling pin and move it that way. Carefully tuck the dough down so that it is flat both against the pan's bottom and the fluted sides. Press it gently against the fluting: then trim it off flat by rolling the rolling pin over the top edge. Save the trimmings for some smaller piece of pastry work (you might have enough left over to line a cupcake's worth of cupcake pan). Prick the bottom of the crust-to-be with a fork.

If you don't have a tart tin, use a small baking sheet with a rim– the dimensions should be about 12" by 9". Line this with the pastry and prick the bottom.

Whichever pan/tin you're using, set it aside (preferably in the refrigerator) while you make the filling.

For the filling proper —

• Approximately two pounds of a tart baking apple (Bramley is best: Granny Smith is okay. Try to avoid "eating" apples like the Delicious crowd. Rome is good if you can get it, but always prefer green to red.)
• 3 oz / 75g ground almonds
• Grated rind of 1 lemon, or 1 tsp dried lemon zest
• 3 tsp fine granulated sugar / caster sugar (UK)
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 oz butter, cut into flakes (or use a butter curler to produce this much butter in short curls)

For the custard —

• 8 fl oz whipping cream
• 1 tsp cornstarch / cornflour (UK)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 4 tbs fine granulated sugar / caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190C / 375F (about ten degrees lower if you have a fan oven).

Sprinkle the bottom of the pastry-lined pan/tin with the ground almonds. Combine the cinnamon, sugar and lemon zest in a small bowl.

Peel, core and quarter the apples. Slice them very thin (you may want to use a mandoline-type vegetable slicer for this), toss them together with the cinnamon-sugar-zest mixture, and then arrange them in concentric circles on top of the ground almonds. Flake the butter on top.

Mix the cornstarch well with about three tablespoonsful of the cream: then add this to the rest of the custard ingredients and mix well. Put the pastry in the oven and bake for fifteen minutes. When this time has elapsed, stir up the custard ingredients well one more time, then pour enough custard into the pastry to fill it to the top. Close the oven and bake for another 30 minutes. (If the pastry was showing too much browning at the 15-minute stage, you might want to decrease the heat just a little.) At the end of the 30 minutes, wiggle the pan a little to make sure that the custard's set. If it is, remove and allow to cool on a rack. If it isn't, give it another five or ten minutes, but no more. The custard usually puffs up while baking: when it collapses after you remove it from the oven, don't worry — it's supposed to do that.

The apfelwähe can be served hot, warm, or cold. Add whatever sides you prefer with an apple dessert — pouring cream, more custard, a sharp cheese….

 

 

Among pasta dishes, fettuccine all'Alfredo is possibly unique in the folklore it has gathered around itself. A century along in its development, it's hard to know for sure whether its success was more due to spontaneous reactions from the people who first ate it, or inspired marketing by its inventor.

The legend (as seen on the web page of the restaurant owned by the inventor's descendants) goes like this: Once upon a time (all right, 1914), Alfredo di Lelio worked in his parents' little restaurant. He married a lovely girl who eventually became pregnant with their first child: and when she did, she lost her appetite completely. Alfredo was worried about his wife, and tried for a long time to come up with something that would tempt her palate.

Finally Alfredo made up a batch of a light semolina pasta — lighter than a plain flour pasta — and dressed it with nothing but butter and a little Parmigiana-Reggiano cheese. (Here the story as presented on the website takes an inadvertently humorous turn: "When the dish was ready… he brought it to his wife, saying: "If you don't want it, I will eat it!!!" Well, why waste?) Anyway, Mrs. Alfredo (no amount of searching has so far turned up her name — which just seems wrong, somehow: without her, where would Alfredo's descendants be now?) loved the dish, and gobbled it up.

Alfredo began offering his new pasta dish in the restaurant, where it became a huge hit. And eventually he went on to open his own restaurant, where famous people from all over the world came to eat his wonderful pasta. The movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford came too, on their honeymoon, and were so impressed by Alfredo's pasta that they gave him a golden fork and spoon engraved with the words, "The King of Fettucine." And Alfredo became famous all over the world, and lived (we must assume) happily ever after. Certainly his grandson (Alfredo the Third) still presides over the restaurant his father started, and wields the Golden Fork and Spoon with his own hands, and licenses his name all over the place, in distant locales like São Paulo, Mexico City, New York, and Disney World.

It's a lovely story. As usual with fairy tales, though, the truth gets somewhat buried under the archetypes. A former correspondent for the New York Times visited Alfredo II's restaurant in the 1950's and reports some unsettling things: that the recipe wasn't original with Alfredo, that it was all over the place under the names fettuccine alla Romana or fettucine alla burro, and that the only thing Alfredo had done differently was to triple the butter. Later it turned out that there were now two sets of the Golden Fork and Spoon, each claiming to be the original. One set can be found at Alfredo's old place at 104 via della Scrofa (sold on when he retired, still operating (though to rather mixed reviews) and actively marketing itself). The other is at his new place at 30 Piazza Augusto Imperatore (which Alfredo opened at the instigation of businessmen who thought he should market the dish more widely, in conjunction with Italy's Holy Year in 1950). Other food writers suggest that hardly anyone in Italy (except restaurateurs with their eye on the tourist trade) would recognize the dish by the name fettuccine Alfredo or pasta Alfredo. Ordinary Italians generally don't even recognize this simple treatment as a "dish", but more the kind of thing that a tired mom would plunk down in front of the kids at the end of the day.

At any rate, no culinary legend survives contact with the cooking world for long. The recipe unquestionably became famous: and as soon as that happened, people started messing around with it. It is now hard to find any place serving fettuccine all'Alfredo that does it according to Alfredo I's original recipe — excepting, of course, his own restaurants. Cream and sometimes even egg yolks have snuck into the recipe somewhere along the line, not to mention peculiar additives like cream cheese, cottage cheese, and other ingredients meant to thicken the sauce less expensively than with that fancy cheese and all that butter. In particular, there are now many people who would not recognize the dish or acknowledge it as fettuccine all'Alfredo if the cream wasn't there. (Ask the manager at Alfredo's of Rome in New York: "You can tell them five times there's no cream. They won't believe you.")

So we're offering two versions of the recipe: the original (as revealed by the chef of his New York restaurant) and the simplest version containing cream. Our thought, though, is that the original recipe is probably the best — and if you make it with good enough pasta, cheese and butter, even the Golden Fork and Spoon probably wouldn't make a difference one way or another.

Click on "read more" for the recipes.

The original recipe:

• 1 lb. of fresh, thin fettuccine
• 6 oz. unsalted butter
• 6 oz. Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (aged 24 months), grated

Bring the butter to room temperature. Blend it with the grated cheese in a bowl (or in the small bowl of a food processor if you prefer) until the cheese almost vanishes into the butter: usually this takes two or three minutes. The effect should be that of a smooth, thick cream. Cook the fettuccine noodles in lots of salted boiling water for three minutes. Strain the pasta, leaving it just a little wet, and toss the noodles with the sauce. Serve in pasta bowls. Add some more grated Parmigiano if you like.

The version of the recipe that contains cream:

MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v7.01
 
     Title: Fettuccine With Butter & Cream - Fettuccine All'alfredo
Categories: Italian, Pasta, Main dish
  Servings:  6
 
           Basic egg pasta dough *
    1/4 c  Butter
      1 c  Whipping cream
           Salt
           White pepper
    1/4 c  Fresh grated Parmesan cheese
           Additional Parmesan cheese
 
  Prepare noodles using Basic Egg Pasta Dough (made with 2-1/4 cup
  all-purpose flour)
  Melt butter in a large skillet.  When butter foams, add cream.  Simmer
  over medium heat about 2 minutes until slightly thickened.  Season with
  salt and white pepper.  Fill a very large saucepan two-thirds full with
  salted water.  Bring water to a boil.  Add noodles.  Bring water back to a
  boil and cook noodles uncovered until tender, but firm to bite.  Drain
  noodles and place in skillet with cream.  Add 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.
  Toss noodles and sauce over medium heat until sauce coats noodles, 20 to
  30 seconds.  Serve immediately with additional Parmesan cheese.  Makes 4
  to 6 servings.
 
MMMMM

 

MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
 
      Title: Basic Egg Pasta Dough
 Categories: Pasta
      Yield: 8 Servings
 
  4 1/2 c  All-purpose flour
      6    Eggs
 
  Recipe by: Northern Italian Cooking Put flour on a pastry board and
  make a well in the center. Break the eggs into well; beat with a
  fork. Draw some flour from inner rim of well over eggs, beating
  constantly. Keep adding flour a little at a time until you have a
  soft dough. Put dough aside. With a pastry scraper, remove bits and
  pieces of dough attached to board. Lightly flour board and your
  hands. Knead dough 10 to 12 minutes, adding flour a little at a time
  until dough is smooth and pliable. Insert a finger into center of
  dough.  If it comes out almost dry, dough is ready for pasta machine.
  If dough is sticky, knead it a little longer adding more flour. Cut
  an egg-size piece from dough.  Wrap remaining dough in a cloth towel
  to prevent it from drying. Set rollers of pasta machine at their
  widest setting.  Flatten small piece of dough, dust with flour and
  fold in half. Run it through pasta machine. Repeat this step 5 to 8
  times until dough is smooth and not sticky. Change notch of pasta
  machine to the next setting and run dough through once without
  folding. Keep changing setting and working pasta sheet through
  machine until pasta reaches desired thickness. A good thickness for
  general use is about 1/16 inch. Sprinkle dough with flour between
  rollings if it is sticky.
 
MMMMM

 (By the way, "fettuccine" is sometimes spelled "fettucine" or "fettucina", and the name of the dish is sometimes written  "fettucine Alfredo" or "fettucine Alfredo". Or sometimes even "fetuccine Alfredo", or "fetucini", or "fettucini".)