KimmyKokonut

Just a heads-up, I’m scheduled to teach a few cooking classes at New Seasons this winter. Come join in the fun! You can register by phone or in person at the Happy Valley Store. Me in action The line up is: Wednesday, January 20, 6:30-8pm SPROUTING AND GREEN SMOOTHIES With the New Year come new […]

Fig Tart Taking a break from mushrooms, let’s look at this luscious tart I made recently. It was really easy to make and very tasty. For the crust, I veganized a recipe off epicurious and it was amazing. It’s a cornmeal crust with rosemary and I made it in my food processor. Instead of butter […]

My wild mushroom week is overlapping into this week and I don’t mind. I made an earthy, delicious soup with my cauliflower mushrooms that I had to share. Their cooked texture makes me think of rice noodles. I think they would be fun with a stroganoff sauce over them or a Thai sauce. A simple […]

Our last day! After seven days of constant, all-day bread baking marathon, my freezer is stocked for the rest of the summer and I feel like I have gotten my clogs wet with techniques. I’m so happy we were able to negotiate an independent study. I’ve always wanted to learn more about bread and doing […]

Good ole’ swirly bread. Apparently my desire to learn the breads of my childhood does NOT impress my classically trained chef-instructor who has a passion for the natural fermentation process. I am excited about cultivating yeast and making artisan bread, but a well-rounded bread intensive would not be complete without some marble rye and cinnamon […]

Quite the variety! Today we learned the ins and outs of sticky buns. Basically they are pretty easy but sticky and full of sugar. Lots of sugar. We used a yeasted dough which definitely put it ahead of Cinnabon refined processed crap. We made a schmear, which is basically melted butter, brown sugar and honey. […]

The spread. Since it was a Monday and there was no “day before” to do pre-ferments, today’s breads were active dry yeast days. Not so much artisan but tasty nonetheless. We had flatbreads on our bread wishlist (along with 39 other breads), so our Chef took liberties with our desire to do Naan and made […]

This is brioche. The photo is someone else’s because I didn’t get a photo of the finished product. People love brioche and rave about it up and down. I don’t know how I had gone through life not having an opinion on it. Brioche is basically 95% butter. We tried to form it one afternoon […]

Today was the last day of the week. We perfected our brioche technique and made chasson with the remaining puff pastry dough. Chasson is basically a sweet turnover. We used round fluted cutters and then rolled them into oblong shapes, filled it with apricots and blueberries, egg-washed the edges of one side and folded over […]

Golden Raisin-walnut bread, whole wheat croissant, 5 grain levain, brioche loaf, puff with goat cheese and heirloom tomatoes. Today was amazingly productive. I think I now have some insight into the world of a baker. And I enjoy it, so it must be a good sign. Lots of multi-tasking. Yesterday, we made our pre-ferments for […]