Baking Diary

For years and years and years, the perfect pie crust eluded me. My attempts always ended in frustration, my dough alternately too wet in some patches and too dry in others, yielding a chalky, unappealing pie crust. But! I took a pie crust class at Sister Pie bakery in Detroit and the alchemy of the pie crust has been revealed to me. In the class, I learned how to properly use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dough, and how to properly hydrate the dough. I went home from class wielding a 13-inch stainless steel bowl and a slice of salted maple pie, and made my own dough (successfully!) the next day.

Now, rolling out the pie dough into an actual round is not exactly my forte. My dreams of a round, symmetrical galette were quickly dashed and I instead made two very lopsided rectangles, filled them with wild blueberries and rhubarb, and covered my roll-out sins with copious amounts of sparkling sugar. The crust was phenomenal and perfectly flaky.

I was struck by this recipe's pairing of brown butter and sage, so much so I decided to put it in a cake. I had sage leaves left over from that attempt, so I used them to make these cookies. Sablés are a type of shortbread that's especially tender thanks to the addition of egg yolks. The slice-and-bake cookie dough crumbled the minute I looked at it the wrong way; I gave up on trying to roll it into nice logs and instead just packed it into a silicone cookie dough keeper and called it a day. And the first cookie I sliced absolutely shattered to pieces from the impact of the knife, so I cut the remaining cookies thicker (the recipe yielded 24, not 36, cookies for me). But despite the mess, the finished product was delightful and tender as promised.

Claire Saffitz has a recipe for brown butter sage sablé cookies, and I wanted to put that flavor combo (brown buttter and sage) in a cake. I started with a recipe from Dorie Greenspan and tweaked it: I browned the melted butter first and infused it with sage; added plums tossed in five-spice powder to the top; added toasted nuts and a splash of dark rum. The final product was good! But a little dry — I overmixed. Next time I'm going to try alternating additions of dry and wet ingredients so the flour doesn't develop quite so much gluten. I also have decided something: I prefer upside down cakes to cakes with fruit baked on the top!

I've been absolutely craving lemon recently - all I want is its clean, tart, bright flavor. This cake delivered (as far as a cake goes; to get the real lemon flavor I crave I think I may need to make a tart of some sort). I halved the recipe and baked it in a pretty spiral half-Bundt pan for 30 mins. I think it's a very versatile recipe too, if you wanted to fold berries into the batter; add cardamom or other spices; or swirl lemon crumble into the middle.