CAKE by Camille Holvoet, 2008.

The recent opening of a gallery exhibition at Creativity Explored in the Mission District was a reminder of just how much San Franciscans love their food. The exhibit, entitled Tasty, highlighted the work of local artists who had explored the shape and color of eating in a variety of media. During the reception, both the small gallery up front and the large studio space in back were packed wall to wall with friends, donors and hungry viewers. It was the most crowded I’d ever seen their gallery. Attach the word "food" to any event here in Northern California, especially if your normal operations have nothing to do with anything edible, and you can expect to sell out.

In this month’s noise of food and more food, though, the art on the walls at Creativity Explored reminded me of two vital gifts, the same forces that pushed me into my own work and that inspire me still after all these years. One, the power of unleashed creativity and uncensored expression to reveal who we are as individuals. And two, the power of people coming together to support each other and help each other thrive.

Camille Holvoet, one of the studio artists at Creativity Explored, is known for her rich, lush oil pastels of cakes, pies and pastries.

If you haven’t visited the exhibit yet, please try to carve some time out of these waning weeks of summer to stop by and see the works. Be sure to linger at Steven Greeter’s Popsicles, Kevin Roach’s interpretation of meat in Pork Cut Chart, the vivid montage of green in Peter Cordova’s papier mache Vegetable Bowl, John Patrick McKenzie’s hand-lettered Tablecloth, Betty Benard’s Watermelon collage, and Camille Holvoet’s many cupcakes. They are truly stunning, and while I may be biased about the provocative images (yes, a few of those red dots marking sold paintings and sculptures are mine), I also believe Creatively Explored to be one of the most important nonprofits in the Bay Area. Their mission, to support the creative efforts of developmentally disabled adults, has been realized through an ambitious vision pushed forward with much hard work. In addition to offering a safe studio space and workshops for their artists, they promote their artists’ works at their Valencia Street gallery and in museum exhibits around the world. Like many mainstream, for-profit galleries, half of the money received from buyers goes directly to the artist.

I’d been lucky enough to help teach a workshop earlier this summer at their studio with Sharon Smith, one of many instructors who teach there and a friend who nurses her own personal mission to show the artists how to eat more healthfully. Wanting to offer easy, nutritious and delicious alternatives to the daily snack truck that arrives everyday at the studio, Sharon had asked me to assist her with transforming whole fruit into edible art.

FAVORITE FOODS, by Camille Holvoet, 2007.

It was new territory for Creativity Explored. A hands-on cooking class had never been on their list of objectives, but with some dedicated fundraising through Sharon’s contacts with the food industry and lots of paring knives, we were able to come up with four tables worth of colorful, edible art.

After the artists had a chance to sketch the fruit whole, we all worked together to prepare platters of rainbow-bright snack skewers. Melon-ballers helped us transform large, unwieldy, intimidating orbs into small, friendly finger-food. Oranges kept their peels, as color and convenience dictated the results as much as flavor, while five different hues of apples fueled debates on everyone’s preferences for sweet vs. tart. To my delight, I noticed that both green and red grapes managed to travel more directly to mouths than skewers. The patterns, shapes, textures and rhythms that emerged on each artist’s skewer informed a second wave of sketches. Along the way, we all shared stories about our favorite fruit.

The recipe for the day was a dessert dip made with three ingredients: yogurt, honey and orange juice mixed to taste (lots of tasting!) and poured into a colorful bowl. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

It’s a challenge for all of us to eat healthfully but especially so for adults of diverse development levels who may not have full kitchens, basic cooking skills, steady incomes or an attentive family. Thanks to Sharon, though, Creativity Explored has an instructor as dedicated to their artists’ physical health as their creative spirit.

CREATIVITY EXPLORED
Gallery Exhibition: Tasty
Curator: Judith La Rosa
August 14 through October 1, 2008
3245 16th Street (at Guerrero Street)
San Francisco CA 94103
(415) 863-2108
Map

CAKES by Camille Holvoet, 2008.

I have recently completed a consulting job with Poulet, deli/restaurant with a humble, kitchy interior. Started by Marilyn Rinzler and the infamous Bruce Aidells, Poulet has stood in the same spot since 1979! With the hopes of providing honest, healthful food, with a chicken slant, it is still owned by Ms. Rinzler and manages to makes heaps more food than the diminutive kitchen implies.

A family friend, Ms. Rinzler asked me one day last Spring if I could look at some of their baked good recipes and help her out with advice and suggestions. I began baking 2-3 days a week alongside Lucila Hernandez, Poulet's long term kitchen manager, to test the recipes they had on hand, and re-work them to provide a more viable repertoire of baked goods for their clientele and kitchen staff.

"What is this consulting thing you speak of?"

I get this question a lot. The exact sort of consulting I do depends on what I've been hired to do. It depends on how much time the employer wants me there. Being the overachieving, A-type of employee that I am, I tend to give a little something extra. Throw in some extra information they might not even know to ask for.

At Poulet I tested all the recipes, tasted them with the staff and fixed what needed fixing. I trained and taught Lucila better baking skills and techniques. I created Excel spread sheets for keeping track of what we made, sold and tossed. Seasonal fruit was bought and recipes created around what was at it's seasonal best. "Cake mixes" were made well in advance, so getting a baked good in and out of the much used oven took less time. While spending time re-working recipes I got a feel for who did what when. I learned that if I did not get there before 7 am, the lunchtime dessert could not arrive until after lunch had begun.

At Poulet the most important item is the chicken. And with one oven working overtime, my sweet things stood in a very long line for hot box space!

Commercial cooking and baking is all about streamlining. It's about efficiency. As cooks we are constantly finding way to have our food be sent out of our respective workplaces in the fastest way possible. "What can be done in advance without hurting the end product," could be our tag-line.

Amid the costing-out, training, rewriting recipes, testing and re-testing, writing a newsletter, photographing, spreading the word and tasting, I was able to create some favorites. Because most of my training has been in restaurants, I've spent little time making pretty frosted cakes, pre-packaged puddings and tart slices. So, as many of you know, I had a lot of fun at Poulet creating these sorts of items.

Although right at the beginning I began working on the caramel cake. And because so many of you have requested the recipe, here it is. Of course if you took my if you took my caramel class, you own the recipe and watched it being made!

CARAMEL CAKE with Caramelized Butter Frosting

10 Tablespoons UNSALTED BUTTER, ROOM TEMP
1 1/4 Cups SUGAR
1/2 teaspoon KOSHER SALT
1/3 Cup CARAMEL SYRUP*
2 each EGGS, ROOM TEMP
splash VANILLA EXTRACT
2 Cups AP FLOUR
1/2 teaspoon BAKING POWDER
1C MILK, ROOM TEMP

*Caramel syrup recipe follows

Preheat oven to 350F
Butter one tall 9" cake pan.

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth.
2. Add sugar and salt & cream until light and fluffy.
3. Slowly pour room temperature caramel syrup into bowl.
4. Scrape down bowl and increase speed. Add eggs/vanilla extract a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down bowl again, beat mixture until light and uniform.
5. Sift flour and baking powder.
6. Turn mixer to lowest speed, and add one third of the dries.
7. When incorporated, add half of the milk, a little at a time.
8. Add another third of the dries, then the other half of the milk and finish with the dries. {This is called the dry, wet, dry, wet, drry method in cake making. It is often employed when there is a high proportion of liquid in the batter.}
9. Take off mixer and by hand, use a spatula to do a few last folds. making sure batter is uniform.

Place cake pan on cookie sheet or 1/2 sheet pan. Set first timer for 30 minutes, rotate pan and set timer for another 15-20 minutes. Your own oven will set the pace. Bake until sides pull away from the pan and skewer inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool cake completely before icing it. Cake will keep for three days unrefrigerated.

CARAMEL SYRUP

2 Cups SUGAR
1/2 Cup WATER

1 Cup water for "stopping"

1. In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand.
2. Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush.
3. Turn on heat to highest flame.
4. Cook until smoking slightly: dark amber.
5. When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and prepared to step back.
6. Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. {Obviously wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it.}

For safety reasons, have ready a bowl of ice water to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin.

CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING

12 tablespoons UNSALTED BUTTER
1 Pound CONFECTIONER'S SUGAR, SIFTED
4-6 Tablespoons HEAVY CREAM
2 teaspoons VANILLA EXTRACT
2-4 Tablespoons CARAMEL SYRUP
Kosher or sea salt to taste

1. Cook butter until brown.
2. Pour through a fine meshed sieve into a heatproof bowl, set aside to cool.
3. Pour cooled brown butter into mixer bowl.
4. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, add confectioner's sugar a little at a time. When mixture looks too chunky to take any more, add a bit of cream and or caramel syrup. Repeat until mixture looks smooth and all confectioner's sugar has been incorporated. Add salt to taste.

Caramelized butter frosting will keep in fridge for up to a month.
To smooth out from cold, microwave a bit, then mix with paddle attachment until smooth and light.

The Caramel Cake is also wonderful on it's own. I've also been known to drizzle it with ganache, or serve it with whipped cream. You will be surprised how delicate the crumb is! The caramel not only adds flavor, it contributes to the cake's moist tenderness.

Enjoy!

About a month ago I came home to this intriguing note:

"OK Eggbeater, your food blog kept me interested for hours. But the recipe that the world REALLY needs is for your gingerbread...so when can I look forward to that? sd"

I laughed out loud. SD is Stephen Durfee, pastry chef from my time at The French Laundry. A wild and wacky fellow with energetic ideas and a personality riding just this side of mayhem. Suffice to say we were at times near opposite ends of the wall containing our illustrious department. I learned to take chances working for Stephen. He taught me to verbally "grade" my work so that we could both track my improvement. And he pushed the envelope of "shoulds," supporting and nurturing in me my own "what ifs" and "why nots." We created desserts with bacon, dressed fruit and nuts with virgin oils and worked dark to dark sometimes months in a row without a day off.

The day Stephen learned he had been nominated for the James Beard award for best pastry chef he called to thank me. I was puzzled. "For what?" I inquired. "For supporting me. I didn't win this nomination on my own," he explained generously.

Stephen was the last pastry chef I worked for. It was his nest I was pushed out of, propelled just down the road to Bouchon. Stephen was who I leaned against when I couldn't figure out how to make something work. He gently and almost inperceptibly transitioned out of being my boss and singular mentor to becoming a fan of my desserts, asking me for my recipes. Here in lies one of the differences between a chef who can share and a chef who needs to maintain her/his egotistical, maniacal power over their cooks. For are we not comprised of where we came from, the gifts others give us and that which we pass on? We keep what we have by giving it away.

My professional cooking started out as foreplay; sensual descriptive romantic words tempted, lured and seduced me into hot searing kitchens. Laurie Colwin held me rapt at attention, first with her novels, later with real life stories of cooking and entertaining in her first Greenwich Village apartment, a space so tiny it had neither dining room nor kitchen! Down to earth and hysterically funny, Colwin spoiled me with extremely well-written prose about an ecclectic and eccentric mix of edible subjects. In the foreward of her first book she reminds us we are never alone whilst cooking. In citing which authors kept her company at her own stoves, I was cordially introduced to Jane Grigson's Fruit Book, which remains, to this day, my favorite book, my go-to location for inspiring, elegant fruit ideas and beautiful anecdotes.

Edward Behr let me in on his secret: be not afraid of obsessively and passionately uncovering every detail about one ingredient. Research apples, cream or eggs to their very point of origin and then live in the library to learn more. Ronni Lundy wrapped me in her warm Southern arms, shared stories from old-timey hollers, presented family recipes and photographs, beguiling my modern mind with comforting foods. Biscuits so simple I learned early on that a recipe is nothing without learned hands. Hands timid and reverant enough to honor simple is not simplistic.

Yes, baking is about paying close attention. But it's also about taking chances. Making the pie dough you fear. Sharing tiny tasty whimsical cookies. Becoming crazy with happiness and delight at the sight of a souffle rising.

In a repetoire of hundreds of recipes I've made, tweaked, learned, and taught, I am very very proud of a small handful. Ones I brought from belly crawl to walk. Recipes which crept into dreams quietly whispering, or came wafting through dusty old library stacks, never settling, souls in limbo, teasingly, like the one you can never catch during hide & seek. Taste memories.

My gingerbread is one of these such recipes. In both Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin's two books of compiled Gourmet Magazine essays, Ms. Colwin dedicates a chapter each to gingerbread. A sweet considered old world, the gingerbread, she sadly notes, has gone out of fashion.

"...gingerbread made from scratch takes very little time and gives back tenfold what you put into it. Baking gingerbread perfumes a house as nothing else. It is good eaten warm or cool, iced or plain. It improves with age, should you be lucky or restrained enough to keep any around." Laurie Colwin, Home Cooking.

Every word of her two odes to gingerbread is true. Make the following recipe if you don't believe me. Shuna's Famous Gingerbread can be made in any baking vessel, metal or ceramic. It sits proudly on the fence between sweet and savoury. In one mood I eat it toasted with runny cheese, another with chocolate ice cream. It can be haughty beside creme fraiche, will bed a poached pear or get in the ring confidently with a perfectly ripe August Stilton. A strong restaurant plated dessert component, this gingerbread keeps and strengthens in character over the course of a week. And you don't need a Kitchen-Aid!

I will reiterate that recipes are guides. Over many years of making gingerbread from various sources I took all my favorite traits and their corresponding results, combining them into one recipe. Please don't let the amount of ingredients scare you. Although it's a tall order, many substitutions can be made, and in the end it can just be an excuse to make too much. Friends and co-workers of mine rarely complain that, yet again, I have made more than what my own small household can decently consume.

SHUNA'S FAMOUS GINGERBREAD

18 ounces All Purpose Flour
6 ounces Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher Salt
1 Tablespoon Baking Soda
3 Tablespoons + Ground Ginger
1/2 teaspoon Ground Cloves
1 1/2 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1 Tablespoon Ground Cardamon
1 teaspoon + Freshly Ground Black Pepper
1 teaspoon *optional: Ground Coriander*

8 ounces Unsalted Butter
3 1/2 ounces Blackstrap Molasses
6 ounces Simple Syrup **recipe in instructions** you may substitute Lyle's golden syrup or light corn syrup

3 each Large Egg Yolks
2 each Large Eggs
8 ounces buttermilk you may substitute sour cream or use a mixture of them both to create the eight ounces

Suggestions: Use the freshest, organic if possible, ground spices. Rainbow Grocery is a fantastic source for buying small amounts in bulk. Keep spices away from light and heat in your kitchen and try to use them up within 6 months of purchase date.

**To make simple syrup place equal parts sugar and cold water in saucepan and bring to a boil until mixture is clear. For a thicker syrup boil for at least 10 minutes or increase the amount of sugar. For this recipe 1/2 cup sugar to 1/2 cup water will be sufficient.**

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Butter desired baking vessels. {Sometimes I coat with raw or white sugar inside as you would flour for a cake.}
3. Sift all dry ingredients except salt and pepper into a large bowl
4. Whisk in salt and pepper until mixture is uniform and create a "well" in center
5. In a medium non-reactive saucepan bring butter, molasses and simple syrup to a boil slowly {this mixture is feisty and will boil over if the heat is on too high or your saucepan is crowding it}
6. In another bowl whisk together egg yolks, eggs and dairy
7. When mixture on stove comes to a boil, shut off heat and let rest for a moment
8. Pour this hot mixture all at once into the center of your bowl of dry ingredients
9. Using a whisk, mix dry ingredients into liquid, from center out, carefully
10. When batter begins to seize, pour in second bowl of wet ingredients
11. Whisk batter until smooth and uniform. Batter is loose
12. Pour batter a little over halfway into buttered baking tins
13. I set my first timer for about 15 minutes, {unless you are making muffin-size or smaller}, so that I can turn the pan around for a more even bake
14. Gingerbread is done when sides pull away from the pan, middle bounces back to the touch and/or a cake-tester inserted in the center comes out clean
{From this recipe I made one cake pan, one loaf, and it took about 35 minutes}
15. Cool at least until warm before slicing.

And now for the fantastic final detail/hint. You may turn this recipe into a "mix"! Assemble one recipe of just the dry ingredients. Weigh mixture and jot it down. You can keep mix in the cupboard for a rainy day and bake any fraction of it which suits you. This gingerbread is spicy and warming. A perfect, not-too-sweet confection for the coldest month of the year. Happy 2006!