Williams Sonoma Cinnamon-Walnut Coffee Cake

Cinnamon-Walnut Coffee Cake

This weekend, I got to see my friend Helen three days in a row! Friday night for the movie Five Year Engagement - it was funny and cute! Saturday night for the awesome Dodger's Game versus the Washington Nationals. The Dodgers came from behind in the 9th and then Matt Kemp's homer in the 10th inning won the game. Hella screams and shouts! Our seats were awesomeness - check these out! And on Sunday Helen hosted a brunch at her house!

I borrowed the book, Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Breakfast and Brunch from the library and made this lovely coffee cake. The cake has a layer of cinnamon-walnut-sugar (hence the name of the cake!)

You know I'm totally into the Bundt cake, but sometimes you need a Tube pan (which is NOT a Bundt) to make cakes with a topping.

This cake is made with cake flour, sour cream and oil. The crumb is pretty soft. Don't you just love Helen's oil cloth tablecloth? She's ready for summer entertaining.

Helen made some delicious potatoes. I had, um, perhaps three servings. Small servings...over and over.

Marie made a great fruit and yogurt parfait. Lots of fresh fruit! Yummmmmmy! Kathryn made fluffy dill eggs and Christine brought mimosas!

Williams Sonoma Cinnamon-Walnut Coffee Cake
For the filling and topping:
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon

For the cake:
2 3/4 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup canola or corn oil (I used Wesson's vegetable oil)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Oil a 9 1/2- or 10-inch tube pan with sides at least 3 3/4 inches high. Prep the pan by spraying it with Pam with Flour or oil the bottom of the pan.

Filling and topping: In a bowl, stir together the walnuts, granulated sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.

Cake: In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In an electric mixer with paddle, combine the eggs and granulated sugar. Beat on medium speed until the mixture is light in color and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Slowly (very slowly) add the oil and vanilla and beat on low speed. Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just incorporated. Mix in the sour cream just until no white streaks remain.

Pour about two-thirds of the batter into the prepared pan and smooth top. Set aside 1/4 cup of the walnut-cinnamon mixture to use as a topping. Sprinkle the remaining mixture evenly over the batter. Insert a small knife about halfway into the batter and gently move it through the walnut-cinnamon filling to create a swirled effect. Pour the remaining batter evenly over the filling and smooth the top with the spatula. The batter will not cover the filling completely. Sprinkle evenly with the reserved topping.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 55 minutes. (My cake took about 63 minutes to bake). Transfer to a wire rack and let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Run a thin knife around the sides and center tube of the pan to loosen the cake sides. Invert to remove and reinvert so it cools on a wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar (optional).

I didn't make the caramel sauce, nor top it with powdered sugar. Here is the caramel glaze recipe on the Williams Sonoma site.

Recipe:
Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Breakfast and Brunch, by Georgeanne Brennan, Elinor Klivans, Jordan Mackay and Charles Pierce
Find it on Amazon here or in your library via WorldCat

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Sinjin, Linnéa, and Katie in the Park

Absolute Adorableness

A couple weeks ago I spent the day in the park with the cutest kids in the world! Librarian friends Gwendolyn (with hubby Nate) and Shannon brought their kids to the Culver West Park. We all used to work at the same place, and it was too long since we last saw each other...see little Sinjin and Katie hanging out over a year ago!

Katie on the see saw with her mommy, Shannon.

Katie enjoys gardening, her dog, and is not particularly excited about putting on clothes every single day.

Cutie Linnéa getting a lift from her daddy, Nate.

"I'm flying" says Linnéa

Gwendolyn getting her kids ready for the slide.

Sinjin is an energetic boy. Sinjin climbed the rock wall. When he got to the top...

...his daddy was on the other side! Look at the blue sky...it was a lovely day in Los Angeles!

I brought some brownies and these kids could be my spokespeople! So cute!

Such a fun day in the park! For more photos of these cuties, see my Flickr set.

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Chocolate Mochi Brownie Squares

Chocolate Mochi Brownie Squares

Recently, I transferred to a new position at work. Still working for the same library system, but a new position at our headquarters. I'm tardy in posting photos of my going away party at my former library - they hosted a lovely dessert buffet...it was so sweet. Those are coming soon!

At my new workplace, one of my co-workers is on a gluten-free diet (darn you Celiac). I keep bringing in desserts she can't eat so I wanted to make something gluten-free. I love, love, love all things mochi (my family's history with mochi is well documented in my New Year's Mochi Making posts) so this recipe on my friend's blog JustJenn Recipes was a perfect fit.

Since these brownies are made with rice flour (I only use Koda Farms Mochiko rice flour), they have a distinctive "mochi" chew. They aren't too sweet and are a nice morning or afternoon treat.

I cut all my work treats "petite" size...I usually cut a 8 x8 pan into 16 or 25 pieces.

This is a great gluten-free recipe...and enjoyed by all! It's super easy to make...no electric mixer needed. I hope you make a pan full of yum soon!

P.S. Thanks for all the comments about my last post mourning the loss of Picnik. Picnik certainly had many fans!!! I used PicMonkey to add the text to the first photo. It is easy to use and the fonts are stylin' - I jumped for joy seeing Lobster Two! They say collages are coming soon! Some Picnik folks went to PicMonkey and you can see it. It is web based, but you need to pull your photos in from your computer, and can edit one photo at a time.  I hope they are able to add direct integration with Flickr at some point and make the whole process online, but it a great start!

Recipe:
Find the recipe on my friend's justJENN Recipes blog for Chocolate Mochi Brownies

My changes and notes:
- 1 cup mochiko (Koda Farms brand) was 4 7/8 ounces by weight
- I used 1/2 cup Nestle semi-sweet morsels for the melting
- I mixed 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips into the batter then put the pan into the oven. After 15 minutes of baking, I sprinkled the remaining 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips on top. I think this helped prevent the chips from falling to the bottom of the pan.
- I used an 8 x 8 pan and baked it for 52 minutes.

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Santa Alina, Vale da Grama, Brazil

Today we have a new coffee on the shelves.

We have never bought coffee from this part of Brazil, so it was with a lot of curiosity I was driving into Santa Alina late at night some weeks ago together with the owner Tuca and her general manager Rodrigo. It was pitch black, but I could already feel the difference in topography as the car rolled over one hill higher then the other.

In Brazil this is often referred to as a mountain farm. The altitude varies from ca 800 to 1200 mosl. So it is not very much higher situated than in other regions as for example the Cerrado. The mountain term is more referring to the how deep and steep the valleys go.

This topography combined with the fact that Santa Alina is situated more to the south also gives another microclimate and this ultimately gives another taste in the cup.

At any farm the harvest method is essential and you have to choose what is best for your location. At Santa Alina most picking is done by hand due to the steepness of the hills. They are looking into having machines helping out in the flatter parts to a greater extent, but even the flatter parts are not flat, which makes it quite a challenge.

Anther difference from the Cerrado is that the vegetation is more dense. There are more pockets of small forests squeezed in between the farms and the fields at Vale da Grama which is the common name for this region (Vale da Grama would be Grass Valley in english). So the general impression of this region is hilly, lushy green with a lot of tall trees and bushes.

The wildlife leaves little else to ask for, we saw hawks and lots of spiders. Jaguars have also been seen at the farm (but not by me).

The coffee we have bought is a pulped natural where the aroma and taste is very much in line with how the landscape looks. It has a distinct fruity aroma with notes of dried abricots and a lot of body and sweetness.

Santa Alina has been in the same family for over a hundred years and very recently Lucia Maria da Silva Dias (nicknamed "Tuca") took over the farm from her father. During the last 2 years Santa Alina has undergone a huge transformation which is actually clearly visible by just strolling around the farm. What is striking is how the houses where the employees and their families live, have been transformed into modern homes. Many fences and barriers have been taken down which gives a very open and friendly impression. Santa Alina is now not just a coffee farm with some people and attached houses, it ressembles more a small prosperous village next to a coffee farm.

There are 120 people employed all year round who lives on the farm and during harvest comes another 180 workers.

Many of the inhabitants have also worked on the farm for generations, so there is a big sense of community which in turn seams to give a lot of valuable experience to build on when it comes to growing coffee.

Lucia Maria has also some rather young but very experienced managers and friends to help her run this everchanging farm. I spent a lot of time talking to Rodrigo Fernandes, but there were many others sharing their knowledge very generously- Nilton, Vanderlay and Julio just to mention a few.

Apart from the transformation of houses and a very extensive Human Resources programe, there is a long list of improvements taking place. The whole wet mill has been upgraded and they are working on many levels to get the coffee from the trees at the right time and thereby increasing the quality of the coffee.

I should also mention that "Tuca " asked me to make a small presentation of our company and how coffee is brewed in Denmark to her collegues. Just as interested as I am in how the beans are handled at the farm - equally interested I found the people at Santa Alina being interested in Denmark and how we drink coffee here.

We are very happy to introduce Santa Alina to you.

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I will miss you Picnik

Dude, I'm so sad. Picnik is closing tomorrow, April 19th.

For those who didn't use this great editing program, Picnik was awesome. It had free services, or a really inexpensive Pro account that easily allowed you to edit photos, make collages, add text and do fun stuff. It worked seamlessly with Flickr and was so easy to use. So freaking easy.

If you were a user of Picnik, what are you going to do? (Besides cry like me?! :)  The Aviary program that's in Flickr now SUCKS. You don't get to choose any fonts? What?! I haven't used Google+ because, well, it's Google+ and I'm mad at them for killing Picnik. I hear you can make the edits like in Picnik, but not the collages...and it isn't tied to Flickr (since that's a Yahoo product) so you can't save them back to Flickr.

At least PicMonkey has a font collection and they say "Collages are coming soon"... I'll be trying them out as soon as I'm over my mourning period for Picnik. Let me know if you found something similar to Picnik.

By the way, I have Photoshop Elements and Lightbox, but I found Picnik so easy to use and the web-based aspect was so handy when working in a coffeeshop. Perhaps I'll head to these programs... Sigh.

Oh Picnik...I'll miss you so! Thanks for many good years! :)

- mary the food librarian

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National Library Week Giveaway Winners!

Winners

Thanks for entering my giveaways for National Library Week! I loved hearing how much you use your library! Whoo hoo!

I used Random.org and picked the winners.

Flour Bakery Cookbook - #86 Karen

Biscuit Cutters - #20 Barbara (she's a librarian too! how cool!)

Baked Explorations Cookbook - #113 Lisa

I'll be contacting you to arrange shipping of your prize! Happy Baking everyone! - mary

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Lemon Loaf Cake - Tuesdays with Dorie (BwJ)

Lemon Loaf Cake

Tuesdays with Dorie - Baking with Julia edition

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie group tackled a lovely Lemon Loaf Cake. I just love all things lemon. Made with cake flour, this loaf has a nice, delicate crumb.

Some bakers made a glaze to top the cake...that sounds like a good idea. Be sure to check out the other Tuesdays with Dorie members!

And my lovely platter? It's made by Gary Holt pottery in Berkeley, California. You know when you walk into a place and can see everything fit perfectly in your house? That's Gary's studio to me. He's holding a summer sale soon...if you are in Northern California, please visit his lovely studio. Nothing gets more local than buying it from an artist in his studio!

Recipe:
The Tuesdays with Dorie group encourages you to support cookbook authors like Dorie Greenspan and purchase the book. You won't be disappointed! You can also check WorldCat to see if your local library has the book.


Lemon Loaf Cake
Recipe on this week's host's blog: Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life

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Tyler Florence "My Big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies"

Tyler Florence's

My Big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm typing this up on Sunday night. It was a really beautiful day in Los Angeles. I hope you had really nice weather too!

Um, I have about 2 minutes to get this done...because it's a crazy good TV night! So, what's on your DVR? I'm watching:
The Killing on AMC  - So good. They better tell me who killed Rosie Larsen this season.
Mad Men - Don. Draper. Joan. Peggy. Awesome.
Good Wife - Still love Julianna from ER days. And Chris Noth...sweet.
The Closer - The last season of this show. I've seen every. single. episode. It's light and easy to watch re-runs. I've written lots of blog posts while watching! :)
White Collar - On hiatus now, but it's a great show. Matt Bomer? Oh my goodness, I can watch the show on mute.
Modern Family - I think this is on everyone's DVR.
60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, and Frontline - Getting my news fill.


Back to the cookies... I chopped a block of dark chocolate for these cookies. They were a soft chocolate chip cookies - I prefer that to a crunchy cookie.


Yummy!

Tyler Florence
My Big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe on the Food Network

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Ethiopia 2012

So I recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia.

The trip started out like many other coffee trips with heaps of cupping. I was very glad to be able to meet up with Carl Cervona from Technoserve in Addis Ababa and try out some samples from the coffee area surrounding the city of Jimma in the west of Ethiopia.

Based on the cupping results and through conversation with Carl the planning of the trip towards west began and the route through this high altitude area was set. I was to travel out to Jimma and from here up north to the town of Bedele and visit around 10 cooperatives throughout the area.

I arrived in Jimma in the afternoon so there was time to go visit some cooperatives located quite near Jimma.

There are a lot of interesting things happening around Jimma.

And I was introduced to some of these things at the cooperative of Doyo.

Technoserve has been helping out for the last couple of years setting up loans for the cooperatives so that they can invest in better equipment and hereby get better quality, which hopefully will result in higher prices for the coffee.

Among these things are the demucilators the cooperatives use to remove the pulp. By using these machines you can separate fully ripe and under- and over–ripe and remove pulp and the layer of sugar from the beans without using the normal amount of water that a normal washing technic would use.

After pulp and sugar is removed from the coffee bean the coffee is washed during night ant then laid out on the raised drying beds in the morning. The water from the washing phase is cleaned and collected in lagoons using ”Magic grass”(I know.. lovely name right). This grass is said to remove up to 80% of the toxic material from the wastewater. The rest is collected and when the moisture is gone you can use the rest as fertiliser for the farmers.

It is crucial to clean the water properly as the small villages surrounding the cooperatives are depending on the water from the small rivers that run from the mountains for drinking, washing and cleaning.

Arriving this late in the harvest period means there is not a lot to see coffee wise. But this means that the people running all these processes who normally are very busy, has time to meet and talk. I had the privilege to meet some of the people who produce some of the best coffees from Ethiopia and it was great to sit down and talk about what they do and what it is we are doing back in Denmark. Great conversations.

All the cooperatives I visited had already packed all their drying tables away or were in the process of doing so. This is because termites will ruin the wood that the tables are made of if they are left outside. This wood is very expensive for the producers, so they store it safe in piles often at the receiving station.

I also got to see some of the farms and plantations. The plants are planted directly out in the surrounding forests. The biodiversity is extraordinary and the coffee plants grow wild into the sky. I have not before seen coffee plants this high and I seems there would be a lot of more producing capacity if they started to prune and stomp some of the plants. Also this would make harvesting the cherry’s much easier. As they said they use the natural pruning technique where you let the plant grow until it falls over from its own weight.

This is Kebge Wubeshet a farmer from the Hawa Yember Cooperative whom I was very glad to meet. In the two years he has been in a cooperative working with Technoserve the prices has risen so much that he has been able to build a new house of wood for his family.

Before that all their coffee was processed as natural coffee dried on the dirt and sold to private buyers who drove up to the farm and bought the coffee as grade 4 or 5 for cheaps. Now most of the coffee is sold as grade 2 coffees for very good prices to buyers throughout the world seeking extraordinary coffees. Kebge is happier to produce high quality coffee and can now see that it is in fact possible to make a living of producing coffee of great quality and not just produce it out of need.

A really cool thing about Ethiopia is that they consume around 40% of the coffee they produce themselves. They drink it throughout the entire day and quite often it’s 2-3 cups at a time. Throughout Ethiopia you see small coffeehouses where coffee is brewed in the old traditional way by boiling it in a pot. Because most of Ethiopia is very high altitude this process does not ruin the flavour of the coffee and a lot of the places the coffee brewed this simple way really tastes good.

The trip ended up with me test roasting and cupping back in Jimma to make the last selecting round. I now knew what to bring home to sample with the guys back in Copenhagen.

If you have plans to travel out west in Ethiopia do remember to visit some of the many honey farms as well. You will taste honey unlike anything you have tasted before.

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National Library Week 2012 - Flour Cookbook Giveaway

It's National Library Week 2012! I'm putting the Librarian in the Food Librarian blog this week!

I'm having a few giveaways this week. Today, I'm giving away a really pretty book - The Flour Bakery Cookbook. (See my other giveaways for Baked Cookbook and Biscuit Cutters - all end Monday, April 16th!)

Win a copy of Flour Bakery Cookbook

This cookbook is wonderful. I'm made a number of recipes. The yellow cake is so awesome. The Lemon Ginger scones? OMG. So good. And don't forget the Apple Snacking Cake, Chocolate cookies and Brownies! The text is very detailed and easy to understand. If you don't win the giveaway, you should definitely add this to your bookshelf!! See if your library by looking it up in WorldCat (a world-wide catalog of libraries - way cool).


I've visited Joanne Chang's Boston bakery last year and it was delicious! You can make many of these yummy delights at home with the cookbook!

Yellow Cake from the Flour Bakery cookbook

To enter today's giveaway, simply leave a comment below (one entry per person) and I'll pick the winner from a hat (aka Random). Deadline: Monday, April 16, 2012 at midnight PDT. If your comment isn't linked to a blog where I can find you, please leave your email. Shipping to U.S. addresses only. Cake not included, but recipe is inside so you should totally make this cake! Disclosure: I'm paying for the book and shipping.

Good luck and have fun at your library! More info about National Library Week is at ALA!
   - mary the food librarian

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