MSPCA Bake Sale, Canine Crumpets





This is what 500 Canine Crumpets looks like!



Whew! 14 hours, 500 canine crumpets, 60 biscotti, and 40 slices of roasted garlic foccacia later, and I am finally done preparing for the MSPCA’s Halloween Bake Sale! This was a lot more time-consuming than I thought it would be, so if I decide to do this again I‘ll definitely try to bribe a few friends to help out. After an entire day of baking, I’m fried!

Two of the recipes I made have been featured in previous posts, but I will repost them, along with a new recipe, Canine Crumpets. This is not an original recipe (I found it online here), but I did tweak it a little, adding more parsley after a suggestion in Natural Dog Magazine. These doggie biscuits are very easy to make, although you might have to hunt for some of the ingredients, such as soy flour. Dogs love them - Tessie, my roommate’s dog, will jump almost four feet in the air for one of these things, and when I take them to the shelter for the dogs on the adoption floor, even the pickiest dogs perk right up for one of these!

Dogs are man’s best friend; bake a batch of these and you’ll be their best friend!

Canine Crumpets

½ pound chicken livers
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup corn oil
¼ c. chopped parsley
1 cup powdered milk
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup brewer’s yeast
1 cup soy flour
1 cup cornmeal
3 cups whole wheat flour

Preheat the oven to 350. Slice the chicken livers into smaller pieces and cook them over high heat in a frying pan. When they are fully cooked through, place them in a blender with the chicken stock, corn oil, and parsley. Blend until liquefied.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all remaining ingredients and mix well. Add the chicken liver puree and mix again, using your hands - the dough will be very stiff.

When dough is completely mixed, break off a tennis-ball section, wrapping the rest in plastic. Take the dough ball and roll it into a quarter-inch thick sheet. Using a small cookie cutter, cut into shapes and place on a baking sheet lined with foil. Bake them 16-20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool completely, then transfer to a plastic container. They will keep longer if stored in the refrigerator.

Pumpkin Pecan Biscotti

3 ½ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. salt
¼ cup melted butter
1 ¼ c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1 cup grated raw pumpkin
1 cup toasted and chopped pecans
1 t. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375. Combine the first three ingredients in a mixing bowl; set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat all remaining ingredients with a mixer until well-blended. Stir in the flour mixture until flour is fully incorporated and a moist dough is formed.

Lightly dust a countertop and your hands with flour. Divide the dough in half, shape each half into a log shape (about 11 x 1.5 inches). Place both logs on a cookie sheet lightly greased with butter and flatten them slightly. Bake for 25 minutes. When done, set aside to cool enough to handle.


Once logs are cool, transfer them to a cutting board and slice them crosswise into half-inch thick slides. Return the slices, cut side down, to the baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the baking sheets from the oven, turn the slices over, and bake for 10 more minutes or until they begin to turn golden-brown.

Let cool, serve dunked in hot coffee.


Roasted Garlic Focaccia

For dough starter:
2/3c. warm water
2.5t. active dry yeast
1c. flour

For dough:
2.5c. unbleached flour, plus extra for dusting
1 head roasted garlic
1/3c. water
1/3c. olive oil, plus extra to grease bowl and pan
1/3c. white wine
1t. salt

Olive oil, salt, and oregano for topping
Equipment: two large mixing bowls, cookie sheet lined w/ aluminum foil, water-filled cake pan

First, make the dough starter. In a mixing bowl, combine 2/3c. warm water and the yeast. Cover with a dish towel and let this sit for 10 minutes or until the water looks murky and bubbly around the edges.

Next, add 1c. of the flour to the bowl. Stir until all the flour is incorporated into the water and a sticky dough forms. Again, cover with a dish towel and let this sit for 30 minutes. During this time, the dough should puff up a little. Use this time to remove the individual cloves from a head of roasted garlic – if the individual cloves are soft like a paste, set them aside. If any are still a little firm, chop them up a bit and set aside. Also, coat the inside of the clean mixing bowl with a splash of olive oil and set aside.

Now it’s time to make the dough. Add 2.5c. flour, prepared roasted garlic, 1/3c. water, olive oil, white wine, and salt to the mixing bowl containing the dough starter. Combine all until fully incorporated and dough is formed. Turn the dough out onto a clean countertop dusted with flour, and knead the dough for 8-10 minutes, dusting the countertop with more flour if the dough starts to stick.

Once the kneading is complete, put the ball of dough into the mixing bowl coated with olive oil. Cover with a dish towel and set aside to rise for approximately one hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. In the meantime, line the cookie sheet with aluminum foil and grease the foil with a splash of olive oil.

Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto the greased cookie sheet. Stretch the dough so that it covers the cookie sheet. Once the dough has stretched, use your fingertips to create “dimples” in the dough – the surface should not be even. Be careful not to poke holes in the dough – small craters will do the trick. Once you’ve dimpled the dough, cover it with the dish towel and let it rise for an additional 45 minutes. Use this time to preheat the oven to 425, placing a water-filled cake pan on the bottom rack of the oven (this creates steam inside the oven).

Once the dimpled dough has risen, remove the dish towel and brush your dough with a thin coat of olive oil, and sprinkle it with a few pinches each of salt and oregano. Now it is time to bake – place the cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven, above the water pan. Lower the oven temperature to 400, close the oven, and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Remove the focaccia from the oven. Once it is cool enough to handle safely, slice it up and serve. 

Coffee and Cookies

I love coffee. No, I need coffee. I have an intervention-worthy dependence on the stuff. If, for some reason, I die under suspicious circumstances and an autopsy is performed, the medical examiner will find espresso in my veins. But unlike a drug addict floating inches above rock bottom, I actually enjoy my addiction. I’m not going to bother with the, “I can quit anytime I want,” schpiel, because I neither can, nor want, to give up my coffee. I’m not in it for the caffeine; I drink decaf late in the day simply because I love the flavor. The first sip of a perfectly brewed cup of Italian roast does for me what a blanket and a pacifier do for a screaming baby.

That being said, I’ve never really strayed from my small group of favorite brands and roasts. Like my past insistence on drinking only Italian wine, my coffee philosophy has been, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” French or Italian roast, Starbucks or Equal Exchange Fair Trade, sometimes sweetened, sometimes not, sometimes adding cream, sometimes drinking it black, but always grinding my own beans and making it stronger than most humans would find necessary or even palatable; the first thing I do in the morning is start my pot of coffee. I grind my beans and add water to the machine the night before, turn it on in the morning and let it brew while I shower, and then I enjoy a cup or two while I make myself presentable to the corporate world.

I recently discovered via Yelp that Boston’s North End is home to a shop called Polcari's Coffee that sells over a dozen varieties of coffee, roasts its own beans, and is conveniently located next to Mercato del Mare, my fish market (which, by the way, now sells incredible sushi). Walking into the store, I felt like a kid in a candy store - large glass jars and barrels filled with coffee beans lined the back wall of the shop, and the service counter was complete with a gilt old-fashioned scale that looked like it was plucked from the market where Vito Corleone worked in the early scenes of Godfather II. Polcari's also sell teas, spices, grains, legumes, and flours, including the chestnut flour I needed to bake a batch of Chestnut and Raisin cookies (featured in November’s issue of La Cucina Italiana and written below). I chose the Espresso Blend and the House Blend, and then asked for a recommendation, explaining that I favor dark roasts. The store clerk suggested Vienna Roast, and he packaged all of my beans in small bags - quarter pounds of each. I wanted to go home and try them right away, but I decided that brewing espressos and testing them after dark would probably not make for the best night’s sleep, I decided to wait until today to test my new coffees. Polcari’s gets an A+ on customer service - I didn’t feel like they were selling me coffee, I felt like they were giving me presents.

Before getting on the train and heading back to my ’hood, I randomly walked into a small produce market on Parmenter Street after seeing some small pumpkins in the window. I needed a pumpkin to make my biscotti, but being two weeks away from Halloween, the only pumpkins I’ve seen are larger than basketballs and weigh more than I do - hardly a wise purchase when my recipe requires only 1 cup of pumpkin! I picked out my pumpkin and thanked the man in the store for having the only non-Barry Bonds-sized pumpkins in Boston, and then I got distracted - “Ooh! You guys have Italian eggplant?!?” He smiled. I quickly surveyed the rest of the tiny shop - “Oh nice, oil-cured olives!” “Fresh borlotti beans? Wow!” “Ohhh, look at all the peppers!” “Sweet, fresh ravioli!” The way my eyes widened at the sight of his gorgeous produce must have led him to believe I hadn’t eaten for a month, and finally, I said, “Wait a minute, what store is this?” after realizing that I’d walked in without even looking at their sign. “Alba Produce,” he replied. Well, Alba Produce, you’ve got a fan in me. Those shiny amethyst-colored eggplants are going to make a great caponata one of these days.

This morning, I busted out my Moka pot and tried each one of my coffee blends. For those who aren’t coffee fiends like yours truly, a Moka pot is a special kind of coffee pot used for brewing espresso on the stovetop. It produces great results without having to spend $1500 on one of those machines that does everything to your coffee except drink it.

The Vienna roast was very rich and deep flavored, and very straightforward - I couldn’t pick out a “hint” of anything except pure caffienated bliss. Their Espresso roast is my new go-to coffee - rich and deep, with the subtle flavor of bitter dark chocolate, and an earthy flavor that reminded me of the smell of the ground after it rains. The House Blend was very similar to the Espresso roast (makes sense, since the Espresso roast beans make up a portion of the blend), but without the complexity. Earlier I stated that Polcari’s gets an A+ for customer service, but that Espresso roast is so fabulous that they could have called me dumb and ugly, given me the finger, and insulted my cooking and my mother, and I’d still go back to buy the Espresso roast.

Below are two recipes for cookies that pair extremely well with hot coffee, and because I can’t write about coffee without including an “I like my coffee like I like my men“ joke, I‘ve included recipes for my two favorite coffee drinks - tall, hot, and Irish or Italian!

Irish Coffee

1 large cup hot coffee
1 shot espresso
1 oz. Irish whiskey
¼ cup whipped cream (best if you use heavy cream and whip it yourself with a whisk or an immersion blender

Combine the coffee, espresso, and whiskey in your favorite tall coffee mug. Top with whipped cream and serve very hot.


Caffe Corretto

“Corretto” means corrected in Italian - literally, the translation is “corrected coffee.” Your brew is corrected with a shot of liquor, most likely grappa, sambuca, or amaretto. I prefer sambuca.

Follow the above recipe for Irish coffee, substituting sambuc

a for the whiskey and omitting the whipped cream.



Pumpkin Pecan Biscotti

3 ½ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. salt
¼ cup melted butter
1 ¼ c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1 cup grated raw pumpkin
1 cup toasted and chopped pecans
1 t. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375. Combine the first three ingredients in a mixing bowl; set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat all remaining ingredients with a mixer until well-blended. Stir in the flour mixture until flour is fully incorporated and a moist dough is formed.

Lightly dust a countertop and your hands with flour. Divide the dough in half, shape each half into a log shape (about 11 x 1.5 inches). Place both logs on a cookie sheet lightly greased with butter and flatten them slightly. Bake for 25 minutes. When done, set aside to cool enough to handle.

Once logs are cool, transfer them to a cutting board and slice them crosswise into half-inch thick slides. Return the slices, cut side down, to the baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the baking sheets from the oven, turn the slices over, and bake for 10 more minutes or until they begin to turn golden-brown.

Let cool, serve dunked in hot coffee.
　

　
Chestnut and Raisin Cookies with Pignoli

9 T. butter, softened
¾ c. sugar
Pinch salt
1 egg
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2/3 c. chestnut flour
½ c. pignoli
¼ c. raisins

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, mix butter, sugar, and salt, then mix in egg. Next, add the all-porpose flour, chestnut flour, pignoli, and raisins. Mix with your hands until blended.

Lightly flour your hands, then roll the dough into balls about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Place them about an inch apart on a greased baking sheet, and press each into a 2 ½ inch round.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, then rotate pan and bake 8-10 more minutes, or until the edges of the cookies turn golden. Then, transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool, and serve dunked in hot coffee.