Baking from the pantry.

I always love finding that all the ingredients I need to bake something are already in the pantry. Today I started with Palmiers (gigantic versions commonly referred to as elephant ears). It is made from flour, salt, frozen butter, water, and cinnamon sugar. Could this be any more French? The recipe tends to go like this; mix all ingredients, chill, roll out, chill, repeat 2x times, add cinnamon sugar, chill, shape, chill, cut, bake. It usually takes around 5 hours, with minimal active time the key is to never overwork the dough or allow it to become too warm.Finally, the shaped dough, ready to be cut and baked!
Baked! The silpat pretty much saved me on this once since you need to turn them over half way through baking and parchment paper has proven fairly unreliable when it comes to release.
Plated with "Milk & Coffee Granita."
I just picked up "The Craft of Baking," and have sticky notes in about a third of it to try. One of the simplest (though deceivingly simple-more on that in a minute): spicy caramel popcorn.
This is my new favorite popcorn, available at Williams Sonoma.
After popping the popcorn, you make the caramel (butter, sugar, water in this case) until it reaches it's "amber phase" at which point you quickly remove from heat, add baking soda and cayenne, and coat the popcorn, and let cool. The process of adding the baking soda is pretty interesting to watch, the caramel foams up and obtains a very light red/orange color before settling back on the popcorn. My first attempt at this, I stepped away while the caramel was boiling, only a minute later, I look back and the kitchen is full of smoke. The caramel is black and bubbling. Luckily no smoke alarm went off, and needless to say on the second attempt I watched it much closer. A good reminder how tricky caramel can be if you aren't careful!

By the way, they ended up tasting incredible, good spice, though next time may up the cayenne a bit.