Kouign Aamann The Jewel Of Pastries

The crown jewel of any home or professional baker is the Kouign-Amann ,a lush and fairly complicated to make butter cake. It takes time and patience yet it has its rewards. It can even be a healing experience for some

Regular contributor Yewande Komolafe wrote about this magnificent cake in yesterday's New YorkTimes Food section.Making the Kouign-amman , the Breton words for butter cake is like a climber scaling Mt. Everest. Hard work to do , but there's a feeling of triumph when it's completed. For Ms. Komolafe creating this  cake was also a healing process as well. She had first tried the cake in Montreal  at a bakery that specializes in making them, weeks after her daughter had a serious and frightening Covid infection.  within twelve hours of testing positive her litle girl had a fever so high that she developed febrile seizures. She lost consciousness and had to be rushed to the hospital. Ten hours later the child awoke wanting life to go back to normal. For her mother normal wouldn't return for a while Ms. Komolafe experienced a kind fo pervasive grief that folloowed her everywhere, even on their trip. The kitchen was her only refuge,.As she put it grief occupied all her senses but it neither aided or meddle in her cooking. She found an escape in the Kouign-amann. The patisserie's owner and chef Nicholas Henry let her make one in his kirchen. It helped her as making them six times since then has helped to dispel the grief that followed her.

Her recipe is not the bakery's original. The recipe 's steps are simple yet straightforward. There are three reipes , one for the dough, another for the butter itself (!) and  the third is for the aromatic syrup that soaks it. It is a yeast based dough. It also has the optional toasted sesame oil in it too of you want a nuttier flavor.  The butter part is for lamination and it's a combination of one and three quarter cups get good butter like Kerry Gold) sugar and Morton's salt. The syrup is a mix of granulated sugar, orange zest cinnamom, ground  ginger and cinnamon along with cardomon pods and whole cloves, These last two have to be crushed so they can give more flavor.The dough is a standard one mixed together in a mixer with a dough hook. The most complicated steps belong to the butter.Its' ingredients have to be combined in a stand up mixer using a paddle attachment It then has to be spread into a round and chilled while the dough rises. After the syrup is cooked then itpoured and swirled in the bottom of a greased skillet which will be used to bake the Kouign -amann. Assembly is  basically wrapping the dough around the butter to form a sort of envelope. In a nutshell, it's more folding and then pouring the syrup over it, spreading it with your fingers.It's first baked at forty five minutes in a 350 degree Farenheir oven and then flipped over. There's a second bake, with the cake being done when th e butter bubbling at the edges for an extra twenty to twenty five minutes. More syrup is added at this time. It's cut into wedges and served warm. 

The Kouign -amann is the star of any professional or home kitchen. Try this recipe if you want to create a delicious and lush pastry. It may be difficult to create but well worth it.

A Quick Ice Cream Fix

Home made ice cream is always a treat but a chore to make.It's getting the salt, making a large batch and then waiting for hours for the finished product. However there's  a gadget that will remedy it.  The Zoku  Ice Cream Maker is a neat - yes, neat and fun addition to any ice cream lover's kitchen.

Zoku not only makes this ice cream makers, it manufactures other fun household items from their Hoboken,, New Jersey offices and factory. The company basically started with a simple idea - how to make popsicles freeze faster. The answer was the Quick Pop Maker which gives a perfectly formed, perfectly frozen pop.(they've since expanded it to make stenciled pops and a pop kit where you can make multi flavored popsicles).The company has won several design awards and have even been included in the Henry Ford Museum as well as in  the Chicago Athenaeum Museum For Architecture and Design. Their dino-Pop Molds are cute enough with Lucy the Cavegirl along with a mini T  Rex
an other dinosaurs. Zoku also makes deep sea ,polar and outer space themed molds,perfect for parents who want their little ones to have healthy treats. They have truly cool slushie makers that can even give you a great iced coffee. I bought the ice cream maker that can also makes Italian ice as well.I  bought it off Amazon  but they can also be found at Sur La Table, Williams & Sonoma along with the Zoku website itself.

Is the Zoku easy to make? Yes, if you;re making ice cream. The actual bowl, (there's two, an exterior  sleeve that's plastic and you could put the ice cream in it after it's been made) and an interior bowl. This is where it happens.It's composed of a plastic exterior and a metallic inner one. filled with a refrigerant liquid.

Place the inner bowl in the fridge overnight  for twelve or more hours. I made a non dairy sherbet  with almond milk, pureed strawberries and agave syrup. I had started out with the idea of ice cream but the almond milk was too thin. It did make for a nice fruity dessert that fluffed up nicely when shaved. I then tried that summer classic.Italian lemon ice. This was a bit more involved to make.  The recipe had to be amended to  suit the bowl's size. Three lemons were peeled (yes, peeled, which resulted in bloody fingers surprisingly ) cut up and then pulverized in my mini processor. A simple syrup had to be made with white sugar and water. Then the lemon mash has to be strained to get rid of the pits and pulp .It's added, cooked for a few minutes in a soupy kind of mix and then poured into the bowl. It has to be cooled in the fridge for two hours before it's poured in the inner bowl. I didn't stir it with he accompanying paddle spoon. I let it freeze overnight  to look like

It wasn't white. It wasn't fluffy. It was too tart. In other words  better luck next time.


The Zoku Ice Cream Bowl screams to be tried out again. Next time.I am going to try the traditional vanilla ice cream one. Should be easy. and a true treat to make.