Ishir Bhan

Technically, this is Double chocolate focaccia, courtesy of King Arthur Baking. I stumbled across this recipe while looking at new additions on the website. The reviews were glowingly positive, so I decided to take a leap. After all, I love chocolate and a good focaccia, so the combination seemed to be worth trying. I dumped all the ingredients into the bowl of my Ankarsrum fitted with the dough hook and let it run…for quite some time. Eventually, I convinced myself that the batter spinning around the mixer was starting to establish some semblance of cohesion (the dough here is extremely high hydration (close to 100%), and I was doubtful it would be successful. Nonetheless, I followed the instructions and let it rest at room temperature for an hour prior to pouring it into a 8" square silicone pan, appropriately prepped with olive oil. Given time constraints, I refrigerated the dough in the pan overnight, left it out for a few hours, then cooked as directed.

To my surprise, the focaccia baked up nicely into the familiar soft sponge that is…focaccia, which brings me to the main issue. This is cocoa-flavored olive oil bread with chocolate chips. Maybe that contrast is appealing to some, but it felt like a mismatch to me. It wasn’t bad at all, but it left me feeling I’d rather have a brownie if I wanted something sweet, or just regular focaccia if I didn’t. This ended up feeling like a middle ground met neither need as well as something else.

Used black soybeans to make a silken tofu dessert with ginger/brown sugar sauce. Turned out great. Getting an earthier and nuttier flavor profile from black vs. white soybeans, but it still works.

Buying my daughter a chocolate dipping kit has been one of the smartest things I have done recently.

I wasn’t sure how much value I’d get from the Cloudroam waterproof boot/shoe hybrids, but they are fantastic. The waterproofing works well and is useful with surprising frequency.

Pancakes are great when done well, but are surprisingly difficult to get just right. My latest approach has consistently produced top-notch fluffy results:

Preheat a griddle or pan to 350 °F (175 °C).

In a large bowl, whisk together:

• 75 g AP flour
• 150 g cake flour
• 40 g sugar
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• 0.5 tsp Diamond Kosher salt (or 0.25 tsp table salt)

Combine:

• 350 g buttermilk
• 1 egg yolk

Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and gently mix until no dry flour remains, but the batter is still somewhat lumpy. Let this rest for at least 5 minutes.

While the batter is resting, whip 2 egg whites to stiff peaks. I use a handheld mixer for this. When adequately whipped, the egg whites will start to loop somewhat glossy.

Pour the egg whites to the batter and gently fold them into the mixture until there are no streaks of unincorporated egg whites. Spoon or ladle batter onto pan or griddle and cook for about 2.5 minutes per side, flipping only once. If desired, spread some softened or melted butter onto the pancakes after flipping.

I like coffee. I like cake. But coffee cake? Not so much.

Here’s the problem: there’s no coffee in coffee cake. I get it: it’s supposed to be eaten with coffee - but you can eat lots of things with coffee. In fact, every breakfast I have is accompanied by coffee; since I’m not usually a dessert-for-breakfast kind of person, this usually doesn’t include cake. Cake is usually an evening affair for me, which precludes all but decaf if I don’t want to lay awake in bed for hours. Chocolate cake pairs great with coffee, but I don’t see what makes “coffee cake” a particularly unique accompaniment to a cup of Joe.

I don’t judge others if they enjoy coffee cake on its own merits. As a child, I gobbled down Drake’s, but most recipes end up dense and heavy, laden with butter and sour cream.

After my wife requested coffee cake, I stumbled across King Arthur’s Espresso Glazed Coffee Cake, which includes coffee in the cake, crumbs, and a glaze - yes, there’s even a glaze on top of the crumbs. I was skeptical this would be overly sweet with an overpowering coffee flavor, but it works - really well. The cake is not particularly sweet, so the topping provides both a textural contrast and a burst of sweetness. The glaze seals in the crumbs that usually seem so eager to jump ship. The coffee flavor adds a depth that’s lacking from traditional coffee cake. Somehow, the whole package manages to feel light and fluffy like, well, cake. When served to family members aged 11-81, known for their disparate tastes, all plates were left clean, with many going for seconds. The King advises you to “store leftover coffee cake, well wrapped, at room temperature for several days.” This is unnecessary advice: a 2x4 piece was all that was left of my 8" square after only a few hours.

Christopher Kimball of Milk Street on his banana bread recipe:

We make it in our house “for the kids” at least once per month and then my wife and I end up eating most of it.

This happens with nearly everything I make or buy “for the kids.”

On a recent trip to Vietnam, I enjoyed sampling Vietnamese coffee at breakfast. We traveled through several cities, each with unique characteristics. Ho Chi Minh city was a bustling city packed with tourist traps alongside hidden gems. Pho Quoc was an quiet getaway with a lively night market and the best bread I have ever seen at a hotel breakfast. Da Nang was eminently walkable and had top notch restaurants for surprisingly little cost. Despite the diveristy, one thing remained consistent: the nutty, slightly sweet flavor of Vietnamese coffee. It was so different from the flavors I usually associated with coffee. Was it an added spice or secret ingredient? Google searches indicated it was something about the inclusion of robusto beans and the unique characteristics of Vietnamese growing conditions, but I wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and the strength of the beverage limited my ability to sample it before I started vibrating from the excess caffeine

Upon returning to the US, I tried to reproduce the taste I had experienced in Vietnam. I went to Nguyen Coffee Supply and ordered a phin (the requisite contraption for making Vietnamese coffee), a variety of Vietnamese coffee beans, and even a matching mug. I tinkered with the grind and water temperature, but the resulting brew lacked that unique character. On a whim, I ordered a can of Trung Nguyen coffee. Most coffee snobs would scoff any purchasing pre-ground coffee, but I needed to understand what I was missing (full disclosure: I actually didn’t realize it was pre-ground before it arrived).

The instructions on the can ask for a total of 65 g of water for 20 g of coffee, which struck me as a small serving given that some of the water would be soaked up by the grounds: of course I doubled it. The resulting sludge nearly filled my phin and refused to yield a drinkable concoction until I gently stirred the mix (well beyond the recommended brewing duration). Despite the suboptimal conditions, I knew: this was it. This was the secret. Whatever was in this mix had the key factor that was missing from my previous attempts.

I grabbed the can and scanned the text for answers. “Coffee arabiica”? That’s just the typical type of coffee bean used worldwide. “Coffee robusto?” I’d tried this before in Vietnamese coffee blends as well as standard espresso blends, and while different, it clearly wasn’t the key. “Artificial coffee flavors?” Who knows what that means, but that in combination with the “chocolate flavors” must be key. In fact, these “chocolate flavors” seem to be exactly what I was tasting. At least this gives me a direction for reproducing those unique flavors.

Milk bread is the ultimate form of light, fluffy white bread. I make an enriched version based on the King Arthur recipe, and includes a hefty dose of sugar, butter, and eggs. For the complete look, be sure to brush with a beaten egg before baking, and with melted butter after it comes out of the oven (this one was freshly buttered, so it looks a little wetter than it usually turns out.

I’ve recently started playing around with dough enhancers, and on first attempt, I think it helped keep the bread moist and soft even more than the yudane (tangzhong) alone.