Pastry chefs always seem to get stuck with more extra work than others in a typical restaurant kitchen. Someone in the dining room was served the wrong entree? Give them free desserts. Need something extra for a VIP banquet for 300 people tonight? Have the pastry department whip up several hundred petit fours. It takes superb organizational skills and excellent improvisational skills to be a pastry chef which is probably the main reason they are able to handle such things. Here is maybe the most common example: the chef approaches the pastry chef and says, “I have 3 cases of something that’s going bad - use them up.” That’s an easy one, just make some ice cream.

I always like to think that anything can be made into an ice cream, so whatever extra ingredients you have on hand can be used to whip something up. Since I’ve been making many marshmallows lately, especially for the FiFis last Tuesday, I’ve had lots of extra egg yolks lying around, plus some lemongrass, heavy cream, and even some toasted coconut from something I can’t remember. That sounded like a winning combination, one that I may have even tried before, so I made it using my basic recipe. It had a very smooth, warm tropical flavor and the lemongrass gives it that extra something that you can’t quite put your finger on. If you have an ice cream maker and want to try it, just use your favorite vanilla recipe and substitute plenty of fresh lemongrass and toasted unsweetened coconut for the vanilla. Strain it out and proceed as usual. I have a feeling I’ll be making lots of ice cream this summer.

We braved the heavy rains and buses with the girls today to make a trip to One Girl Cookies over on Dean Street. It’s a charming, inviting storefront and Dawn and Dave, the owners, were kind enough to email us and invite us over for a chat. Not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon. With a tour of the kitchen, some treats from their wonderful line of 2-bite cookies, and plenty of advice and encouragement, we left their cozy shop dreaming of the possibility of owning our own space one day. Although I am sure it complicates business operations (mainly costs and overhead), all we could see was how easier life would be if we had access to a kitchen whenever we needed to bake without having to watch the clock and haul supplies and food back and forth to our hourly rented commercial kitchen. But one step at a time…and we’ll have to pay our dues. They gently warned what I’ve been thinking a lot about these days: sustaining this momentum that we seem to be riding on recently. While there have been a flurry of activity lately, the challenge is to keep it going long term.

Lots to chew on, but one of the nicest things to have come out of starting this business is the myriad of people we have met. We used to go out a lot before we had kids and socialized with other foodies in the restaurant biz, getting comped meals at 3 star restaurants and the like, but when Mark started working days, that sort of thing stopped since chefs tend to socialize late at night after the restaurants close down. We haven’t felt a part of the food scene in a long time so it’s been really nice to get re-acquainted, but from a totally different perspective and even on a more local, Brooklyn level - lots of small artisan bakers, chocolatiers, and specialty food producers. Everyone has their own story and path to how they got there, and everyone has been so supportive of each other. Makes you want to keep on going.

You would have never guessed from Sunday or today’s weather that sandwiched in between those 2 days was a cold, bitter and rainy oddball of a day. Despite the bad weather, Mia was a trooper and trudged her way up the hill to school and back, a rather longish walk if you’re walking with a 4 year old. The sun, however, is back, dazzling and bright and it’s supposed to creep back up 20 degrees warmer than the previous day.

Things have calmed down a little bit this week, which is a nice relief, though there was still a flurry of packing and trips to the post office yesterday. I need to turn my focus back on work and I admit feeling a moment of panic yesterday when projects and orders seemed to pile up, but today I feel calmer (for no reason, really. Nothing has changed). There have been many moments lately when Mark and I have looked at each other and said “this is crazy!” and “what are we doing?”, but we need to take in the calmer moments as they come, despite how short they may last. Mark’s back in the kitchen today filling some special orders. I’m going to do some work and then take a walk in the afternoon. There’s supposedly a new second hand clothing shop in the neighborhood where a kid’s clothing store used to be. Maybe I’ll check it out.

Along with my usual kitchen production this week I had a special request. Mia’s friend Roan had his fourth birthday party over the weekend and I was asked to make the cake. It’s been a while since I have made a cake of this size, meant to serve up to 100 people. In restaurants I used to make cakes twice the size for all sorts of parties, but in a home kitchen it’s certainly a different story. The main issue is refrigerator space, which is always short in my house, and trying to fit in a half-sheet cake was quite a challenge. The actual cooking, filling and frosting is more manageable, even with two kids tugging at my legs begging for a taste of buttercream.

The cake itself is one of my absolute favorites. I suppose that if I ever open a bakery of some kind that this would have to be my signature. The best part is the filling, a dulce de leche cream, with a dulce de leche swirl for good measure. I first made it for Mia’s third birthday and have made it on many occasions since then. It works well with any combination of cake and frosting, and in this case a rich yellow butter cake with a bittersweet chocolate buttercream made up the layers. All the kids and grownups loved it, and even self-proclaimed cake critics (who isn’t?) claimed it was the best they have had. Such positive feedback makes me want to make more birthday cakes, maybe just a bit smaller next time. Also, be sure to notice Mia lurking in the picture above to “help” blow out the candles, and then take a candle to lick off the frosting.

Just finished a piece of birthday cake that Mark baked today for Mala, our babysitter. White cake with caramel swirl filling and white chocolate buttercream. I feel a bit overdosed on sugar these days, but I do like me some cake. Mia, who usually licks off the frosting only and doesn’t touch the cake part, ate every little crumb, while Claudine refused her piece altogether (whose child is this??). People have been asking me if I’ve gained any weight since we started the business. Mark and I are fairly thin people with naturally high metabolism, so weight gain hasn’t ever been an issue, but after I tell people that I live with a pastry chef, the natural question that always follows is “and you’re not fat?”. The thing is, we don’t really eat a lot of sugar. And when you’re around it all the time, you crave it less. So weight gain, no, but the next visit to the dentist is something different all together. I am dreading it. Since we have to test taste each batch of sweets, we’ve resorted to brushing our teeth multiple times a day and have even gone so far as just tasting the sweets and spitting them out. Yeah, I know, sounds crazy.

Our kids don’t eat much sugar either. I feel like the sugar nazi most of the time because they never drink juice unless they’re at a party (Claudine has yet to have a sip, actually), and cookies and treats are given only a few times per week, if that. You’d think that having all these cookies around would make them crazy, but I think they’re used to it by now ’cause we’ll have whole baking sheets of cookies and brownies out and they pretty much ignore it. It’s like part of the landscape now and blends in with everything else.

I was hoping the cake would give me a sugar rush but I am very tired. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me still for a deadline tomorrow, but I think I’m finally crashing from all those days of little sleep. Had a good day today. Art directed a photoshoot for a project (love watching professional photographers work - I mean, I like taking photos, but I’ve got nothing on them), and then came home and packed some cookies for the post office. Our gift boxes are selling and we’ve got a lot of work ahead for the weekend so I’m trying to get my freelance work done now. But of course I am still here…

I actually made a real dessert at home last night. This, surprisingly, doesn’t happen very often and crème brûlée at home is an even rarer occurrence. I have made thousands (no exaggeration) of them during my years as a Pastry Chef, but only one or two times in my own kitchen. I may be making them more often, however, because my marshmallows need egg whites which leave me with lots of yolks. What better way to use them than crème brûlée? Vanilla beans are most often used as the main flavoring in traditional crème brûlée, but anything can be used. I chose cardamom last night because, well, I love cardamom and thought it would add a nice flavor.

Cardamom Crème Brûlée
(makes four servings)

3 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons whole green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar

Heat the cream and cardamom in a saucepan until almost boiling. Remove from heat. In a separate bowl whisk the yolks and sugar together. Gradually whisk in the hot cream mixture - this is called tempering. Strain after all the cream has been added and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare the water bath: Put the individual crème brûlée dishes into a pan large and deep enough to hold them. Fill the dishes with the warm crème brûlée mixture. Now, fill the pan carefully with water until it reaches almost all the way up the sides of the dishes. Carefully put the pan in the oven, cover with a clean baking sheet, and bake until just fully cooked. Over baking will cause the crème brûlée to separate. Baking should take about 20 minutes, but give a dish a gentle tap to check - if it doesn’t look liquid in the center it is done. Remove from the oven and chill for several hours before serving.

To caramelize the top, sprinkle sugar evenly over the top of the chilled custards. If you have a blowtorch, use it. If not, use a broiler. Either way, hold the crème brûlées several inches from the heat source until the sugar starts to caramelize and turn golden. Turn off the heat, let the sugar harden briefly and serve.

It is not often that I actually make a dessert at home, which some may find hard to believe, but as a pastry chef I always chose to leave my work at work. Now, seeing how I spend most of my time at home, I do get the urge once in a while. I couldn’t resist making this sorbet the other night. We had a few delicious mangoes that were quickly getting soft so I decided to puree them, mix them with sugar and yogurt, and run it through my ice cream maker. It tastes pretty much like a mango lassi, so much so that I was wishing that I had some Kewra essence, the traditional flavoring for the drink. It was great even without it, as the mangoes were as nice as I have seen for a while - not quite as good as Hawaiian mangoes, but good enough to make me want to fly there to get some.

Mango Yogurt Sorbet

2 cups pureed mango, from 2 large mangoes
2 cups whole milk yogurt
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk everything together until smooth. Process in your ice cream maker. Freeze for several hours before serving.