Hint of Fall - What's Shaking and Baking

Can you feel it? Just a couple degrees lower temperatures and the humidity is below 100%. The goldenrod is starting to be obvious in the woods around the farm. The flowers of late summer are starting to seed and the bees are bringing in what's left of the nectar from the herbs in our gardens. Fall is my absolute favorite season!

In the garden we've started the winter vegetables and with the recent rains they're progressing nicely. We were a little overly optimistic about the arbor for our cuccumbers and squash, but we'll see how it goes. We recently added some grape vines to our cross fence near the bees and hopeful in a couple years we'll see some results. Our current grape arbor provides plenty of shade but not so many grapes as we expected. We're not professional gardeners and almost everything is an experiment.

Planning Ahead for a Harvest

So many fun things happen in fall. North Florida is blessed with the beautiful St. Johns River and so many opportunities to get outdoors with parks and trails; and all the weekend markets! Oh, and the bugs are at a minimum by October.

Here at Grandma Gail's Dough House we are gearing up to add some seasonal items to our offerings weekly. Stay tuned, but think cinnamon, ginger and pumpkin and maybe even some banana. We're still practicing on the old recipes and working through some new ones.

Grandpa Mel and I will celebrate our 40th Anniversary in October, so we'll be taking a quick trip to celebrate. We'll send out a notice to our regular customers as we get closer and hope it will not inconvenience anyone unduly. We'll also be doing some website maintenance during that time so stay tuned for details.

October 25th we'll be at the Seamark Ranch Family Fall Festival. This is out of the norm for Grandma Gail's Dough House but we LOVE Seamark Ranch and are looking forward to a fabulous day of meeting new friends and getting back together with those we know. Come out for this event from 11:00-4:00 on the 25th. I understand there will be food trucks, many local vendors and lots of fun things to do. It's a beautiful ranch and just touring the grounds is such a blessing. They are an amazing mission right here in Clay County and if you're not familiar with them, the link above takes you to their site. Look around their site for an overview.

Since we're moving into fall and customers are beginning to lean heavily toward the Confections side of things, we're sharing a few things you should know about our processes, and a recipe for one of our unusual offerings for which we have frequent orders.

For most of our confections that require butter (and most do) we start with browned, unsalted butter. Browning butter takes a lot of patience and a watchful eye. There's a fine line between browned and burned. We like to use a finer butter, so burning it is a huge 'ouch' because it must be tossed. Below is a video of that process, and then a recipe for Classic French Madeleines. You can just begin to see the brownish-orange hint through the foam.

Browning Butter for Delicious Confections

Classic French Madeleines requires a bit of time. The dough must be prepared in advance and refrigerated for a time to absorb all the flavors. Classic Madeleines usually includes lemon zest, but here at GGDH we use orange instead of lemon zest. It gives them a distinct flavor we love, and apparently our customers agree. Here's the process.

Classic French Madeleines

Ingredients:

4 ounces unsalted, browned butter

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 to 2 teaspoons finely grated citrus zest (we use orange)

1 cup organic all purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 room temperature eggs

3/4 cup organic cane sugar

confectioners sugar to sift over finished cakes

These are the only confections we bake that we do not use sourdough starter. We found it does not make a finished product we like and why would we mess with a classic?

Process:

• Brown the butter and whisk in the zest and vanilla extract to the butter and cool to room temperature.

• In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt

• In the bowl of a stand mixer, use the whisk attachment to blend the eggs and sugar, adding the sugar a little at a time until mixed well. Then turn the speed to medium until the mixture is pale and a bit fluffy.

• Slowly fold in the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. We use a spatula. Be careful to get all the flour mixed into the wet ingredients. We find it best to do this is a couple or three additions of the flour so none hides in air pockets in the dough.

• Next fold in the cooled butter mixture. It MUST be cooled or it will cook the eggs.

• Cover the completed dough and refrigerate for at least six hours and preferably overnight.

• Prepare the special Madeleine pan with butter and a sparse sifting of flour.

• Use a cookie scoop to spoon batter into the center of each shell.

• Bake for 12 - 13 minutes (they'll be golden brown on the edges).

• Cool in the pan on a rack for a few minutes, then gently loosen each shell from the pan. We put them on parchment and then dust them with confectioners' sugar.

The benefit of baking these magnificent little cakes is we get to eat them warm with a cup of hot tea or coffee. The smell is amazing and they taste like a fine vacation!

Classic French Madeleines

We use Browned Butter process for our Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies as well. You just can't beat the added nutty flavor!

Next time we'll be taking a deeper dive into some conservation things we're doing here, as well as our choice of ingredients that offer our customers the healthiest possible treats. Of course we'll also share a story or two.

Please let us know if there is a topic you'd like to hear more about. We'd also like to poll interest in a small-scale workshop we'd do at the farm. We've done it a couple times for friends and it's been quite fun. Let us hear your thoughts.

Until next time, we deliver. Order by Sunday, delivered to your home or workplace on Tuesday.