Carmel Apples.

I promised you she would make them. 

We remember apple picking every fall. (Sharon is from Pensylvania, I'm a Michigander)

 The cider. The doughnuts. 

But most of all...the carmel apples. 

Sharon recently perfected her carmel sauce and she was so excited to use it to make carmel apples this fall. 

She let the carmel cook just a little longer to reduce the water content, and washed and dried organic apples. a skewer, appropriately placed and a dip in the slightly cooled carmel.

It really isn't fall until you've had one of these:

All wrapped up for your favorite ghoul:

and while your at it...why not stock up on some spider cupcakes.

or ghoulish merengue mummies...

or ghastly ghosts! 

mmmm...fall!

Fall is one of our favorite times of the year here at the bakery. Business has slowed, but not so quiet we're worried. It's more like, ahh...we can breathe. Create. Experiment. I read a lot about food and cooking and it's nice to be able to implement fun ideas when they come your way. This ciabatta is just that. When I read on writer Michael Ruhlman's excellent food blog about his Chipotle Corn Ciabatta, I couldn't wait to adapt this to our own ciabatta bread. I don't generally make the bread here at the bakery, Abbey and Sharon do the brunt of the bread baking during their early morning shifts. One bread I still get to do is the ciabatta on tuesdays. I have to make a plain version because we have such a following for it, but the last few weeks, I've been making a kalamata olive flavor also. Then I read Ruhlman's post. It sounded so good I had to try it out today. Oh, I made plain and k.olive loaves, too, by dividing my double batch of starter into thirds. I placed the very wet dough into bowls. Little slips of paper on the top of each cloth covered bowl reminded me of the timed intervals at which I had to 'turn' each batch. I was a veritable ciabatta factory, so fun! It came out beautiful and was a total hit. One thing I changed is, sadly, I had no corn...so I used cheddar cheese instead. Yeah.  

When I wasn't in bread-land I realized that it was time to make some scary treats. A little carrot cake jelly roll turned into creepy goblins and the ever popular 'Boo Brownies' made their first appearance of the season. Bite Me, indeed.

 

Coming soon...Sharon's carmel apples. You know you want one.

View from my house 10/9/10

The sun is setting long and slow on the volcanoes out my window at home. This was a spectacular fall day that reminds us how fantastic it is to live here. We are glad to have the weather lighten up as we celebrate the marriage of one of the three couples we had working for us this summer. We have always been a family affair here at Two Sisters, but never has it been more apparent than the fact that two of our former bakery lovelies had babies this year (go Corina and Melissa!) and we have gotten to witness the 'so perfect for each other' attraction of Brianna and Ryan and stood by as Chase and Hayley navigated the waters of new commitment. In that spirit, Beth and Shea share their wedding vows with us tomorrow at a beautiful spot on the beach. We wish them the best and can't wait to party like the rockstars we are. Til then, let's enjoy a parting shot from the my dinner table. I made berry pies for the rehearsal dinner and had one left over...which, as you can see, made my family really happy their mama is a baker. :) 

The bittersweet end of berry season

 As I pulled away from the bakery this evening, a couple of girls from my son Charles' class were in the garden gigging and laughing, then I saw them spy the red raspberries still clinging to life. They picked and ate and kept on laughing. This scene made me so happy. I love berry season, when mother nature puts out her finest gems for us. Here in Homer, the best patches are wild and discovery of one gives you license to forgo most common courtesies to protect your source. We have a tiny patch of raspberries that have seeded themselves around the bakery, there isn't enough to make stuff to sell, but there are plenty for Katy and Nonah to pick and eat and giggle over.

One of the local russian farmers brought us potatoes and carrots last week and his wife handed me this cup of highbush cranberries. They are tart and very seedy, I think they will make an amazing sauce for the delta grown pork chops my husband brought home. 

Blueberries have been over for a little bit now, but while they were happening we enjoyed them every way we could. And while they were a hit on these cheesecake squares, they were also very popular on granola, too! These lovelies were delivered to us by Tree Things in our last delivery of the season.

Earlier in the week I scored some well priced, big, beautiful raspberries. Set on top of cheesecake tarts and brushed with a little malbec glaze, they are the perfect parting shot.

                                            

ummm...I think there has been a mistake.

                                                      Who uses this stuff? I mean, seriously!

A sea of cupcakes

Wedding season is not quite over yet and still one of our most popular ways to interpret the classic celebration dessert is through cupcakes! These little gems are chocolate cake with a dark chocolate truffle filling and a vanilla buttercream on top and decorated, as requested, with a fresh raspberry...simply perfect.

Iron Chef!

Fot the past several years, our local family planning clinic has held an iron chef competition on the porch of The Saltry restaurant in Halibut Cove. As a past board president for KBFPC, I have always wanted to compete, but between wedding cakes and my husband's halibut fishing schedule I could never pull it off. This year, when the call came, I realized there was nothing holding me back. Lucky for me, the talented and hard working Irene was also up for just such a challenge!

We boarded the boat at noon on Sunday. 6 teams with all of our gear, we were told to bring everything we needed except the food. They provided a two burner propane stove and a very comprehensive condiment table/pantry which we did get to peruse for an hour or so before the competition began. What we did not yet know was the secret ingredient and the contents of our mystery box, which we would get 5 extra points for using all of. 

 
the view from our station

What we didn't know is you could bring table linens... in the station next to us, the Tutka Bay Lodge folks had placemats and chargers and their own plates. We brought lemons, so we put them in a line down the center of table and called it good

For the competition we were to compose a main course for 12 in one hour with the people we were about to feed looking on just inches away from our station...it was scary and nerve-wracking and very exciting. The pressure was on as our table was loaded with long time bakery customers and devoted fans...we really wanted to give them a delicious plate of food...but wait,  The secret ingredient? 

MAKO SHARK! (with some side stripe shrimp on the side :)

What to do?

 We trimmed the dark meat off the shark and wrapped the firm white filets in thinly sliced purple potato, searing them to brown the potato and then finishing in the oven while we sauteed the side striped shrimp in tomatoes, fennel, onions and garlic, all from the box. We reduced red wine with figs and fennel and shallots, added cream and herbs to make a buerre rouge sauce for the fish. For a starch we steamed couscous with the chard from the box and served it all with a little shredded beet and carrot salad on the side. The plates we borrowed from the Saltry were the perfect compliment. 

While we didn't win, our table was very pleased, all of them licking their plates clean and pleasantly suprised that the shark could taste so good. 

This guy, Harley won with his cooking partner, Beka from the Still Point Lodge. They made shark enchiladas in a mole sauce with a mango salsa and wild rice...I heard it really packed the flavor. 

All in all it was a spirited, but friendly competition and the folks at the Saltry took mighty fine care of us!

A special Thanks goes out to Maura Brenin and the board of the clinic for their hard work putting this all together.

Best of all, everyone had a good time, a lot of money was raised for a good cause and the ride home at the end of the night was  spectacular

A big shout-out to the other chefs in the house, Michael Hiller of Mermaid Cafe along with his lovely daughter Jess took 2nd and 3rd went to Mikal and Mike of the afore-mentioned Tutka Bay Lodge, in the losers bracket with us was the effervescent Teri Robl, who, along with writing a great food column for the Homer News, is a damn fine cook in her own right. She partnered with Amy from the local favorite, Cosmic Kitchen. Also, Nancy and Roland from the always yummy Sweetberries Cafe brought their best to the chefs table...Thanks again to everyone for competing, it was an honor to cook alongside y'all.

A Love Extravaganza!

 After 11 years and two children, 'sister'  Sharon and her partner Dale finally got hitched for reals. It's been a productive union involving negotiating early morning bakers hours and, oddly enough, the procurement of recycled paper products. We are glad they finally decided to tie the knot, because it was, truly, the party of the summer!

                                                       Salmon and kabobs on the grill 

Many Thanks go out to Ryan and Brianna, Natalia, Irene, and Red for helping to wrangle the food and to Maggie and Rachel for setting up the bar and serving the signature cocktail of lemon syrup, small batch vodka and soda water with a little mint...very refreshing for what turned out to be one of the most pleasant afternoons we've had in this very rainy summer! We closed the bakery on Sunday for the wedding, but were back at it the next morning...Yay for Abbey, Ben, Shea and the whole Monday crew for toughing it out with me through the busy day, no matter how tired or hungover we all were...good times!
Update 8/26/10: A few very important Thank You's i forgot to include above: Hayley and Chase for taking care of the coffee and to the wonderful Corina for spending the morning of the wedding with us at the bakery putting together beautiful trays for the appetizer table while my awesome daughters filled and frosted 300 cupcakes...Thank You also to all the friends and relatives who helped Sharon and Dale pull this off...we love you!

Summer is beautiful AND delicious...

Yes, summer is here, and yes, we are getting our butts kicked, thank you very much! For those of you who know what the term 'in the weeds' means, we have been in the weeds for about 2 weeks now. Constant, dawn til dusk, 'oh my god, there's no way I'm gonna get this done' sort of weeds. people say, why don't you get more help? I say, you have a spare baker/ prep cook in your pocket? It's tough because the season lasts only 3 months, tops. Training and getting used to someone takes that long and then what...you know? We are used to just bucking up and that is just what we are doing right now. See how we can be slammed and still make beautiful things! 

these fresh blackberry parfaits are a great portable way to enjoy the fruits of the season.

This chocolate wedding cake was one my favorite wedding cakes ever...so pretty!

and Matt, former bakery dude and presently 3 legged mule drummer got hitched this weekend to the lovely Jessica...such a sweet cake for a sweet couple! They got married at the beach near the bakery and as we were leaving to deliver yet another of our weddings, they stopped in their white limo (do they even have those in Homer? I never knew!) and got a wedding photo with the Two Sisters Bakery sign. sigh...isn't love grand?

Stonefruits and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Our first delivery of Tree Things means the fruits of summer have arrived! The peaches, nectarines and cherries are ripe and ready, so we are putting them to use in the very best of ways. Irene is pratcising a little culinary therapy (we are so glad to have her here with us right now) and made some beautiful tarts:
These jewels flew out the door just like everything is these days. The summer is shaping up to a busy one with people visiting from all over. So far we've had a cruise ship full of Dutch tourists, a bike touring group from the lower 48 (or 'outside' as we like to call it) and a whole bunch of Kitesurfers from everywhere! This weekend brings the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference with keynote speaker, Michael Cunningham and a whole host of other great presenters ( here is the complete list).

Now that we are having a literary moment, I'd like to share an intriguing new novel

by Aimee Bender:

I heard the interview with her on NPR this past sunday while baking away in the wee hours. It is a story of a little girl who discovers after eating a bite of birthday cake baked by her intensely dissatisifed mother, that she can taste the emotions of the people preparing the food she eats. The novel follows her into adulthood and her discoveries along the way as she deals with her 'gift'. After reading the excerpt, I ordered it right away. The magical realism reminds me of 'Like Water for Chocolate' and the modern setting makes for an interesting platform on which to take our discussions about what we eat and where it comes from and how it affects us.

Spring Planting

Its truly spring now...no denying it. Memeorial Day is just around the corner and so is the planting deadline for those of us here in the northern climes. This has always been the weekend that you could be sure the danger of frost has passed. Every once in while we have an amazing spring and are lulled into that false sense of security that inevitably has us running out with the remay in the middle of the night due to a late spring chill. The local greenhouses are brimming over with bedding plants and even though it's a bit early to plant in the ground, its time to buy, because the reality of a small town is there is only so much to go around, if you want the best selection, this means shopping early. Which also means nursing along a bunch of plants until they are hardened off and ready to go in the ground. This isn't so hard at the bakery with it's sea-level elevation, trees are starting to leaf out in the yard and things are well on their way. It's a different story up at Sharon's house, however...1500 ft elevation, I believe there is still some snow on the ground even now! What's with all this planting nonsense you ask? Well, while we know we will never be a Blue Hill at Stone Barns, we do like to grow as many things as we can to use in the kitchen. Herbs planted in the window boxes by the baking tables serve as savory additions to soups and salads. The flowers in the yard are used like crazy to decorate cupcakes, catering trays and even whole wedding cakes. We also have a couple of vigorous rhubarb plants that provide homegrown goodness for rustic tarts all summer long. The local flora is also just about ready to give over it's goodness. Nettles are almost ready to harvest for pesto and the fiddleheads are just popping through, in a week they will be ao ready. On this note, I'd like to tell you about our new favorite food blogger, Hank Shaw takes the role of hunter gatherer to extreme and chronicles it all at his blog: Hunter Angler Gardener Cook . I have a feeling he would be right at home up here!
Lavender and Calendula...both so healing, and delicious!

...except when it doesn't.

We spent alot of time this past winter plotting the upcoming summer. Especially at the end when the blizzards were raging and business unpredictable. The roster of workers started to come together nicely. We have a great group of people who all get along, alot of challenging catering events and the whole crazyness of summer to look forward to. And while every summer has it's curveballs, we were still basking in the hopefulness of spring.
But now, the title of my last post seems oddly out of place, a little more than a week later and life is not springing eternal as we had hoped, in fact just the opposite. Our baker and Bakery BFF, Irene, arrived last thursday from Portland and visited us friday to work out the summer schedule and give hugs all around. A few hours later she called breathless and shaky to say she was flying back to Portland that night to be with her husband, Jake. (who stayed behind to finish school) He was in an accident and they were performing emergency brain surgery. By Saturday afternoon, His family was told he would not recover and just like that, he was gone. We all are stunned and, for Irene, completely confused and devastated. Jake had been in our lives just a few short years, but he won us all over immediately with his love for Irene and a sincere interest in all that she cared about. My kids took to him right away, which says alot, just ask anyone around here who's tried to strike up a casual conversation with Charles, hard to get that boy to talk. But Jake could. He was a teacher and good at it, he was a musician and mighty good at that, too. We all danced in the wind and rain at their wedding last summer and thought to ourselves: These two are perfect for each other!
Well, the universe apparently had other plans.
I know this post doesn't seem to have that much to do with baking or food, but if you look at it closely it does. All the preparation and watchfulness in the world does not insulate us from the occasional reminder that we have no real control over the outcome, all we can do, is our best along the way.

Life springs eternal

The snow is gone...at the lower elevations, anyway and nothing says spring like the sprouts of a Rhubarb in our own yard, these will be pie soon...just you watch. We are busy beyond our capacity...hence my lack of recent posts. I think we are starting to see the summer, and as our staff creates itself, we can begin to compose the roster and get our schedules figured out. Like the rhubarb emerging, we have people making their way to us, it's an organic process, with alot of faith in the universe thrown in! It's looking like a fun crew and a busy summer with the famers market, weddings scheduled almost every weekend (not to mention Sharon and Dale's on the 15th of August, it's going to be the party of the summer, I assure you!) and the never ending cookbook project to keep us occupied. If anyone wants to test recipes for us, check in over at the recipe blog and we'll send some stuff your way! Spring is also big for birthdays around here with Sharon at the end of March, Kate at the beginning of April, then Mel in mid-month and me towards the end. One of the highlights of my day (besides all the fantastic people who came to celebrate at our bonfire!) was Hayley and her burning poi balls, which she used to put on an amazing show once the sun finally went down.

Springtime in Alaska and it's forty below!

Johnny Horton said it best I guess, or at least that's how it's felt here lately. Like winter will never loosen her icy grip. It's one of the things that make working in a nice warm congenial place like the bakery so appealing. The sun streams in, we don't know how cold it is outside (until we have to go get wood for the fire, right Mel? Ryan, your tough, you can handle it!) The Bakes has been bustling away with visitors old and new (so great to see YOU, Caitlin!) and it's all we can do to keep up most days. We are ready to bring on more staff and with the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival coming up, it means summer is just around the corner. So. Not. Ready!

A quick update on Meatless Mondays...they are a huge success, each busier than the last. I recieved a nice comment from the folks over there and they are glad to have us on board...We will continue to inspire throughout the summer, I'm looking forward to much feedback, so far it's been all good!

our first meatless monday a big success!

The Mediterranean Focaccia was a hit:

We opened the morning meatless and with little fanfare...monday mornings in early spring are usually a little quiet as everyone jumps back into the week, so it is the perfect time to introduce something new. We put a sign up on the deli case and announced it on the menu board, and that was about it. The case was stocked with an attractive array of meat-free treats and looked very inviting, it would have been difficult for anyone to not find something that appealed to them. I admit i was a little concerned about how people would react, given that some of our regular clientele can be very idiosyncratic and resistant to change. They come in day after day, ordering basically the same thing each time they visit, for some these habits have been in place for many years. These relationships are very important to us, so we do not enter into big changes lightly, if we didn't really believe with all our hearts we are doing something good for everyone, we surely wouldn't do it. So it was with that spirit we presented the facts and to my glee, we received very few negative responses... my favorite came from an old friend who comes in often with his family; "Carri, first you close in Sundays, and now no meat on mondays...what are you trying to do to me?" It was a good natured ribbing and I'm guessing he'll be back next week.
Making the shift to no meat was fairly painless, we don't have an extremely meat-centric menu but there are a few customer favorites that that we make everyday, replacing those was our biggest challenge. Biscuits and gravy are a breakfast staple so Mel made a savory mushroom herb gravy instead. It was rich with sauteed mushrooms and looked meaty and delicious. The ever popular ham and cheddar savories were replaced by a variety of vegggie and cheese danishes, some with spinach and mozzarella, some with tomatoes and brie. The hot seller of the day was the mediterranean focaccia, which stood in for our standard made with roasted vegetables and smoked turkey. We made it by lightly roasting thin slices of eggplant, red peppers and tomatoes and layering them with pesto, fresh spinach and melted mozzarella cheese. Up next week: Egg Salad baguette sandwiches made with local eggs (thanks Peg and Samantha!) and roasted red and sweet potatoes with melted cheddar cheese with homemade salsa on the side. We'll see you here!