I'm Having a Cookbook Crisis: Superchewy Crunchy Coconut Cookies and the Cannibal Walnut and Honey Tart with Chestnut Crust
Because I bake so often, I own a lot of cookbooks. There are some cookbooks and authors that I hold in higher regard than others. Of course Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafio are in this category, since I'm baking though all four Baked cookbooks in their entirety (Baked Sunday Mornings would be a real slog if I didn't enjoy the recipes!). Some of the other bakers at the top of my most trusted list are Rose Levy Beranbaum, Dorie Greenspan, Alice Medrich, Tish Boyle, and Nick Malgieri. Not to say that I don't love other cookbooks or recipes from other authors -- but these are the bakers whose cookbooks I find myself coming back to again and again and again.
I recently bought Alice Medrich's cookbook Flavor Flours -- which highlights the use of alternative flours -- precisely because she wrote it. As it happens, it also won a James Beard Award in 2015 for Best Baking and Dessert Book. So I had extra high expectations for this book. But I've tried three recipes from the book and am incredibly frustrated with it so far.
I thought this cookbook would be a great resource for Passover recipes. The first one I tried was the "Coconut Key Lime Tart," which is essentially a key lime pie filling in a tart crust made with coconut flour and shredded coconut. Even though I had thoroughly buttered my tart tin, I was unable to release the tart from the bottom of the pan. I couldn't even scrape slices off from the bottom individually. Adding insult to injury, the entire crust around the sides detached from the bottom and fell off when I removed the outer tart ring. I couldn't salvage the tart -- although I can say that the lime filling (your basic key lime filling of yolks, sweetened condensed milk, lime zest, and lime juice) was delicious.
So I was already feeling discouraged when I tackled my second recipe from the cookbook, "Crunchy Coconut Cookies." The recipe was straightforward. You mix together coconut flour, unsweetened shredded coconut, baking powder, salt, soft butter, sugar, vanilla, egg white, and water, and form the mixture into a log. You chill it for at least two hours before slicing and baking.
I tried cutting the cookies after two hours and my log of dough was falling apart, so I stuck it back in the fridge and waited until the next evening. Same result. As I sliced through the dough, pieces would crumble off, and I had to press the bits of dough together into disc shapes. In the end, I ended up with nice-looking round cookies, but I was irritated by the hassle of having to form each cookie by hand (not to mention the time wasted waiting for the dough to chill even though it never became sliceable). These cookies were absolutely delicious -- but they were 100% chewy. While the recipe headnote says that the cookies are crisp and chewy, I was baffled that my cookies were not crunchy in the slightest.
Finally, I tried Medrich's recipe for "Walnut and Honey Tart with Chestnut Crust." It's a double-crusted tart filled with honey caramel and walnuts. The crust is a mixture of chestnut flour, white rice flour, sugar, salt, butter, and cream cheese. I divided the dough into two unequal portions (60/40) and patted the larger portion into a buttered tart pan and chilled it for a few hours. I rolled out the smaller portion into a circle between two sheets of parchment and also put it in the fridge.
To make the caramel filling, I cooked sugar, honey, corn syrup, lemon juice, and salt to 305 degrees; added butter and cream and brought the temperature back up to 246 degrees; and stirred in vanilla and walnuts. I poured the hot filling into the chilled crust and then attached the top crust. The tart looked beautiful and I brushed it with egg wash before putting it in the oven. The recipe instructs you to pull out the tart 15 minutes into the baking time to cut a large cross into the top crust. I did that, and also covered the tart with foil because it looked like the top was becoming quite dark. At the end of the specified baking time, I pulled the tart out of the oven, pulled back the foil, and couldn't quite comprehend what I was looking at.
The caramel filling was bubbling out of the crust and over the edges of the tart pan onto the foil-lined baking sheet I had placed underneath. And the caramel was bubbling all over the top of the tart, which was difficult for me to process -- because this is supposed to be a double-crusted tart. There is a lovely photo in the cookbook showing a layer of caramel evenly sandwiched between two crusts. But there was no top crust left on my tart; the caramel ate it. That's why in the photo above you can see straight through to the walnuts in the filling.
Miraculously, despite the major caramel overflow, I was able to get the tart out of the pan in one piece. And it did slice cleanly into neat slices that kept their shape nicely at room temperature. I got some very nice feedback on this tart. Personally, I loved the chewy caramel filling but didn't care for the crust. I really like chestnuts, but I think I would have liked it better with wheat flour.
Even though two out of the three recipes turned out okay, I'm didn't enjoy the experience of making them and I am resentful that the cookbook let me down. I'm a Type A person and baker and I don't like surprises. I expect my baked goods to come out exactly as described or pictured and when that doesn't happen I get upset. If this cookbook was written by anyone else, I would shelve it permanently. But I feel like I have to give this book and Alice Medrich another chance -- although I think it might be a while before I get up the nerve to go back to it. It's possible I made some really poor recipe selections or temporarily lost my baking mojo. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Recipes: "Crunchy Coconut Cookies" and "Walnut and Honey Tart with Chestnut Crust" from Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich.
I recently bought Alice Medrich's cookbook Flavor Flours -- which highlights the use of alternative flours -- precisely because she wrote it. As it happens, it also won a James Beard Award in 2015 for Best Baking and Dessert Book. So I had extra high expectations for this book. But I've tried three recipes from the book and am incredibly frustrated with it so far.
I thought this cookbook would be a great resource for Passover recipes. The first one I tried was the "Coconut Key Lime Tart," which is essentially a key lime pie filling in a tart crust made with coconut flour and shredded coconut. Even though I had thoroughly buttered my tart tin, I was unable to release the tart from the bottom of the pan. I couldn't even scrape slices off from the bottom individually. Adding insult to injury, the entire crust around the sides detached from the bottom and fell off when I removed the outer tart ring. I couldn't salvage the tart -- although I can say that the lime filling (your basic key lime filling of yolks, sweetened condensed milk, lime zest, and lime juice) was delicious.
So I was already feeling discouraged when I tackled my second recipe from the cookbook, "Crunchy Coconut Cookies." The recipe was straightforward. You mix together coconut flour, unsweetened shredded coconut, baking powder, salt, soft butter, sugar, vanilla, egg white, and water, and form the mixture into a log. You chill it for at least two hours before slicing and baking.
I tried cutting the cookies after two hours and my log of dough was falling apart, so I stuck it back in the fridge and waited until the next evening. Same result. As I sliced through the dough, pieces would crumble off, and I had to press the bits of dough together into disc shapes. In the end, I ended up with nice-looking round cookies, but I was irritated by the hassle of having to form each cookie by hand (not to mention the time wasted waiting for the dough to chill even though it never became sliceable). These cookies were absolutely delicious -- but they were 100% chewy. While the recipe headnote says that the cookies are crisp and chewy, I was baffled that my cookies were not crunchy in the slightest.
To make the caramel filling, I cooked sugar, honey, corn syrup, lemon juice, and salt to 305 degrees; added butter and cream and brought the temperature back up to 246 degrees; and stirred in vanilla and walnuts. I poured the hot filling into the chilled crust and then attached the top crust. The tart looked beautiful and I brushed it with egg wash before putting it in the oven. The recipe instructs you to pull out the tart 15 minutes into the baking time to cut a large cross into the top crust. I did that, and also covered the tart with foil because it looked like the top was becoming quite dark. At the end of the specified baking time, I pulled the tart out of the oven, pulled back the foil, and couldn't quite comprehend what I was looking at.
Miraculously, despite the major caramel overflow, I was able to get the tart out of the pan in one piece. And it did slice cleanly into neat slices that kept their shape nicely at room temperature. I got some very nice feedback on this tart. Personally, I loved the chewy caramel filling but didn't care for the crust. I really like chestnuts, but I think I would have liked it better with wheat flour.
Even though two out of the three recipes turned out okay, I'm didn't enjoy the experience of making them and I am resentful that the cookbook let me down. I'm a Type A person and baker and I don't like surprises. I expect my baked goods to come out exactly as described or pictured and when that doesn't happen I get upset. If this cookbook was written by anyone else, I would shelve it permanently. But I feel like I have to give this book and Alice Medrich another chance -- although I think it might be a while before I get up the nerve to go back to it. It's possible I made some really poor recipe selections or temporarily lost my baking mojo. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Recipes: "Crunchy Coconut Cookies" and "Walnut and Honey Tart with Chestnut Crust" from Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich.
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