Josh Kilmer-Purcell's Blog, page 132

Hazelnut Cake with Orange Marscapone & Pomegranate

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Not your usual holiday suspects...

How many times will you say it this holiday season? "I can't possibly eat one more sweet."

We feel the same way. It's impossible to go to a party without grazing on all manner of holiday cookies and desserts. In fact, they all begin to taste the same after awhile. Every single holiday treat seems to be made of some combination of  cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, butter & peppermint.

For a recent dinner party, we wanted to come up with a holiday dessert that used seasonal ingredients, but didn't taste stereotypically "holiday."  Recently one of our friendly "web-neighbors" sent us several pounds of freshly picked hazelnuts. (Thank you!) We were delighted, since they're one of our favorite nuts, and not always so easy to find outside of a tin of mixed nuts. We'd been trying to come up with new ways to use them when we decided that we'd make our own version of a hazelnut cake – of which there are as many varieties as their are cultures.

We also wanted to use one of our favorite fall fruits, the pomegranate. We can't buy enough of them while they're in season. Many people avoid them because they believe that it's difficult to remove the seeds. But we've found the simplest and most effective way. (And it doesn't include any underwater trickery or individual seed picking.) Here's our method.

And because we wanted to cut the sweetness factor, we decided against any sort of whipped cream topping or glaze. Instead, we used marscapone cheese, lightly sweetened and flavored with orange zest.

We hope you like it. We guarantee it's a refreshing, semi-sweet, seasonal alternative to holiday cookie binging.

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Hazelnut Cake with Orange Marscapone and Pomegranate Sauce.

For cake:

1 lb shelled hazelnuts

10 eggs, separated

1/2 cup sugar

3 T all purpose or cake flour

1 T hazelnut liqueur (optional.)

zest and juice of 1 orange

dash salt

For marscapone topping:

8 oz marscapone cheese

zest of 1 orange. (reserve orange for sauce.)

1/3 cup sugar (or to taste)

For pomegranate sauce:

2 pomegranates

Juice of 1 orange (use orange from marscapone topping.)

2/3 C sugar

Roast hazelnuts in 350 degree oven until they are lightly toasted but not burnt. Watch closely. The skins should almost flake off. Once toasted, place nuts in clean dishtowel and rub them together until most of the skins are removed. Grind hazelnuts in foodprocessor until finely chopped, but not paste. (Leave oven at 35o for baking the cake.)

Beat together egg yolks and sugar until creamy. Add flour, salt, liqueur, juice, zest and chopped nuts. mix until combined. In separate bowl, whip egg whites until stiff peaks are formed. Fold eggs whites gently into other mixture. Do not overmix. The air in the beaten whites are the only leavening agent in the cake.

Spoon batter into two 9 inch buttered and floured cake pans. (This will result in one extra cake, which freezes well for a later dessert.)

Bake at 350 for approx 25-30 minutes or until knife inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

While baking, make marscapone topping and sauce.

Beat together marscapone, zest and sugar until smooth. Add sugar to taste, but should not be too sweet.

For sauce, seed two pomegranates over bowl. Pour off juice into shallow pan. Reserve half of the seeds for garnish, and juice remaining seeds into the shallow pan by pressing through a wire strainer with the back of a wooden spoon. Add sugar, and juice of one orange (use orange from the marscapone zesting) to pan and heat until boiling. Reduce to simmer and reduce liquid by about half.

To serve, plate small sliver of cake, add dollop of marscapone topping, drizzle with pomegranate sauce, and garnish with pomegranate seeds.

How to remove the seeds (arils) from a pomegranate

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Watch our simple way to remove the seeds (arils) from a fresh pomegranate with no mess:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aural Decor

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One of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to decorate any space is by filling it with music.   Using our laptop computer and wireless speakers, we can set up a sound scape throughout the house with just the touch of the button.  Guests are often humorously called to breakfast with the "Call To The Cows" section of the William Tell Overture by Gioacchino Rossini (you've heard it in Bugs Bunny cartoons for years).  A hike might be preceded by the sounds of reveille to get people in the spirit, and a simple sound track can set the theme for a dinner party even if you don't have a single second to spend on decorations.

We carry this idea for music into the Mercantile, too.

Here are our selections from the Mercantile Holiday Playlist

A mix of the modern & traditional, just like Beekman 1802.

Calling on Mary by Aimee Mann

Winter Wonderland by Aretha Franklin

Jingle Bells by Barbara Streisand

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autry

Mambo (Malibu Mix) by Billy May

Happy Holidays (Beef Wellington Remix) by Bing Crosby

Carol of the Bells by The Bird and the Bee

The Nutcracker Suite by The Brian Setzer Orchestra

Name Your LinkChristmas is Coming Soon by Blitzen Trapper

2000 Miles by Coldplay

A Marshmallow World by Dean Martin

The Man With the Bag by Diana Krall

Sleigh Ride by Ella Fitzgerald

Frosty The Snowman by Fiona Apple

We Wish You the Merriest by Frank Sinatra & Bing Crosby

The Happy Elf by Harry Connick Jr.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Judy Garland

I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Stuhr Remix) by Kay Starr

Baby It's Cold Outside by Leon Redbone & Zooey Deschanel

Let it Snow by Magnet

All I Want for Christmas (MJ Cole Remix) by Nat King Cole Trio

Peace by Norah Jones

I Like a Sleighride (Jingle Bells) by Peggy Lee

Little Drummer Boy by Pink Martini

Toy Packaging by Sara Groves

Joy to the World by Sufjan Stevens

All I Want for Christmas is You  by Teddy Geiger

I'll Be Home for Christmas by Tony Bennett

River by Travis

Skating by Vince Guaraldi

All That I Want by The Weepies

Tell us your favorite holiday song in the comment section below.

Mary Prepares for Christmas

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Mary Beekman is a four-year-old ghost who resides in The Beekman Mansion, and considers Brent and Josh her "imaginary friends." Follow Mary Beekman's Diary each week to learn what it's like to be a young child in early 19th century America.

It does not seem to matter if it is gray and snowy in the mornings or bright and full of sun.  Mother is up and about and singing or humming. She likes to sing "Joy to the World" and "The First Noel" best of all.  Without all the gardening and preserving to do, Mother has time to bake.  She loves to bake the cakes and cookeys of Christmas. Sometimes I join in and sing with her.  I like to sing.  Even Josh and Brent know the words to those songs.  I am the only one that hears them.  Josh is very loud and Brent hums when he forgets the proper words.

Father was laughing at the table this morning when he was teasing Mother.  He was reminding her of a piece in the Baltimore weekly magazine from December 20, 1800.

He pulled it from his pocket and read

"Get married, a wife is cheaper than a housekeeper, her industry will assist you many ways, and your children will soon share and lighten your labor."*

Mother makes a "tish, tish" sound and asks Father "if just anyone will do?"   My older sister whispered to me that Father does this every year.

Then he reads:

Sinterklaas, good holy man!

Put your best robe on,

ride with it to Amsterdam,

from Amsterdam to Spain,

little apples of orange,

little apples from the trees

Sinterklaas shall come!

*Boydston, Jeanne.  Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic.

+Virginia Almanac  Joesph Royle in 1765

Mary Makes Ornaments

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Mary Beekman is a four-year-old ghost who resides in The Beekman Mansion, and considers Brent and Josh her "imaginary friends." Follow Mary Beekman's Diary each week to learn what it's like to be a young child in early 19th century America

The snow is falling outside and it is very windy. The wind swishes down the hallways and whispers under the doors. Josh and Brent came into the house to watch mother and the older girls knit stockings.  I was still doing my lessons.  I could smell the cold and wind on their clothes.  No one else seemed to notice.  We have had the fires in the fireplaces going for many days now and if the wind is swirling, smoke blows back inside.  But Josh and Brent brought the clean scent of the outdoors inside.  They are such good friends.

Brent liked the long stocking Mother was working on.  He spoke of hanging it up on the mantle to be filled with gifts on Christmas Eve.  I would rather wear it and keep warm!  I never knew of hanging up a STOCKING. But Josh told me he always hung up a stocking.  Brent told me about decorations for the Christmas tree made from wax. The bees left wax behind in their honeycombs and gingerbread bakers would fill the moulds for gingerbread with the melted wax. Before the wax grew hard, a ribbon would be attached and it could be painted and hung on the tree.  I hope Father has one in his store and will bring it home for us to put on our tree.  Our tree sits on top of a table.  I think it is much smaller than the ones Josh and Brent had.

It seems as though Christmas is very far away.  Josh told us about a calendar his mother provided for their family.  It had all the days of December and each day had a tiny door that opened and revealed a piece of scripture until Christmas.  I wish I had something to count the days away until Christmas and all the good things that come with it. Visiting family, special treats from the kitchen and a surprise for each one of us under our tree.  I like the story about the baby born under a star.  It is a happy time of year even though the light of the day is not long and  the cold inside and out makes us wish for spring.  Brent asked me "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"*  He said he would draw squares for each day in December until December 25 and we could cross off each day.  I would like that.  I do not remember how many days are left but I know it is drawing near.

*Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Black Christmas

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Walking down Fifth Avenue to admire the windows has always been a holiday pilgrimage, so is there any doubt that this being the first Christmas for the Beekman 1802 Mercantile that we felt a little pressured to bring this "downstate" spectacle to Sharon Springs?

Because this is the first year of the Sharon Springs Victorian Holiday Celebration, we wanted to think of some twist on the idea of a Victorian Christmas.  So the first thing we had to do was rid ourselves of the notion of abundant colors and gilding.  Because we did not have time to build window shadow boxes, we also knew that this year's display could not be three-dimensional….or could it?

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Using line drawings and etchings from a book of Victorian holiday clip art, we enlarged the images and had them printed on self-adhesive acetate.  We then isolated and cut out portions of the picture that we wanted to appear "closer" to the viewer.  The main image was placed on the window surface and the cut-outs on the glass storm window, thus allowing dimension.  (The interior windows were draped with white plastic table cloths purchased from the dollar store, pulled tightly and stapled to the window frame so that when interior lights are on, the effect is similar to a light box)

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To add another layer of dimension, we then printed out line drawings of snowy window frames, wreathes and bows using the local print shop.  We mounted these print jobs on black foam board using spray adhesive and then cut them out.  The foam board is sturdy enough that we could tack the frames onto the exterior of the windows.

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As customers walk down the porch of the Mercantile the effect is of peaking into someone else's private world—and that always makes for the best holiday windows.

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The entire project cost us approximate $600.  Most of the labor came in the form of wielding an exact-o knife to cut out the various shapes and pieces.

We carried this idea of a Black (and White) Christmas throughout the Mercantile, using black and silver to create an unexpected but beautiful holiday feel.

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Black satin ribbon is wrapped around squares of straw to be used as display surfaces for products throughout the shop.

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We carried the theme into our 2010 signature ornament, the Black Ice Icicle. (Click here to purchase.)  To display the ornaments, we stripped all of the needles from a blue spruce, primed and painted the trunk and limbs using a matte platinum spray paint. (We've used this idea of a "naked" Christmas tree before.  To see how, click here)

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To bring out the silvery tones in the tree and in the ornaments, we "planted" the tree into a shiny tin container using cement mix.  We then surrounded the base with pine cones dusted with silver glitter.

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We then picked up the silver tone in displays throughout the rest of the store.  It may be a bit dark and brooding, but it's also deeply romantic.

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The store is open daily from 10-6 throughout the holiday, and you are always welcome.  4:00pm-6:00pm is the best time for window viewing.

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To get a glimpse of how we decorate Beekman Farm, take a look at our Christmas in the Country.  Click here

Celebrate right along with us.  Watch The Fabulous Beekman Boys's Fabulous Holiday Special.  For more information, click here

And the winner is…

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This was one of the hardest Beekman 1802 contests that we've EVER had to judge.  Every single one of the recipes for the Heirloom Recipe Contest sound delicious and the stories were exactly what we were hoping to read on Thanksgiving Day to remind us of the importance of the holiday.

Because we were overwhelmed by the choices,  we had to devise a system in order to come up with a winner.  First we decided to make a list of all the recipes we could make for Thanksgiving Dinner.  That still left us with well over 50 to choose from.  The next strategy was to choose recipes that used ingredients that we had on-hand.  This brought the number down to 14.  Of those 14, we chose 5 whose story we most enjoyed.

And the winner is:

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No. 47–, Erin's Swedish Rye Bread

(we have to admit that our love of left-over turkey sandwiches may have influenced our decision)

To see this recipe and all of the amazing recipes and stories submitted in this year's Heirloom Recipe Contest, click here

Sugar Plums

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We've had visions of sugar plums dance in our head before, especially after seeing The Nutcracker performed at Lincoln Center.

But despite having heard of them pretty much our entire lives, nary a one had ever crossed our lips.

What is a sugar plum, after all?

The term "sugar plum" originated in the late 17th century and refers to any small, round-shaped candy.  The word "plum" was also used to refer to any dried fruit.

Over the years,  sugar plums came to be made by combining a variety of dried fruits including figs, dates, apricots…even plums…with a blend of aromatic spices.

The Beekman 1802 Generous Sugar Plums are rolled in coconut and then finished off with a dash of brandy.  So maybe you'll have some visions of your own.

Our sugar plums are made by hand in our own back yard at the Black Cat Bakery in Sharon Springs, NY.  Try them for yourself.  Click here

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Campfire Cookies

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Brent wants to build a fire pit down by the  lower pond where the boys can entertain by fire-light.  He's been too busy this autumn to get it done.

S'mores have become a slight obsession for me in the past couple years.  I've gone through batches of homemade graham crackers (see how here), almost burnt out the motor on my Kitchen Aid while making marshmallow, and even concocted an ice cream sandwich version on a hot summer day.

No longer content to just wait for yearly outdoor excursions for my s'mores fix, I played around in the kitchen to come up with the ultimate s'mores cookie – no campfire required.  This means that Brent is off the hook for at least a little while.

This recipe makes about 48 cookies.

Ingredients

3/4 lb unsalted butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar

3/4 cup sugar

1 t vanilla

3 eggs

3 cups flour

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

2 cups bittersweet (60%) chocolate chips

1 bag miniature marshmallows

Approx 48 graham cracker squares (make your own or use a store-bought brand)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

With a mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars until fluffy.

With the mixer on low, add the vanilla, followed by the eggs one at a time.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

With the mixer on low, add the dry ingredients to the wet until combined, then fold in the chocolate chips.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Place graham cracker squares onto the parchment, leaving at least an inch between crackers.  Place a dollop of cookie dough, about and inch and a half in diameter, onto each graham cracker.

Bake for 12 minutes, until cookies are still soft, and then remove from the oven. Press about 6-8 mini marshmallows onto the top each cookie.

Place the cookies back into the oven for an additional 4 – 6 minutes.  Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack. The marshmallows will be slightly browned. To melt them further, use a kitchen torch to toast them to desired color.

Mary Prepares for the Cold

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Mary Beekman is a four-year-old ghost who resides in The Beekman Mansion, and considers Brent and Josh her "imaginary friends." Follow Mary Beekman's Diary each week to learn what it's like to be a young child in early 19th century America

The wind has turned and it is much colder than it was earlier in the day. Mother is very relieved she had given direction to bank the cellar.  The cool air is coming in though the window sills, under doors and blowing on our feet.  She claims that when your feet are chilled, the whole rest of you is cold also.

We all helped to gather large piles of cornstalks and leaves…as many as we could.  Sometimes we even used sawdust.  The boys and men who help on the farm stack these against the foundation on the outside of the house.  They place the most on the windiest, most northern side.  Then they place planks on the top to keep the leaves from blowing away. Banking the house keeps the food in our cellar from freezing during the winter and keeps our first floor rooms warmer.  The cranberries are kept in a firkin of water in the cellar.  If they should freeze, it does them no harm. Father likes cranberry tarts.  I know we will have one on Thanksgiving. When the temperature turns cold, the flies disappear.  Mother likes that.

I help Mother and the older girls to stuff the cracks around the windows  and door with strips of old batting.  I use a dull knife to poke the cloth down into the gap tightly.  I am not tall enough to go all the way around the window.  The bottom sill is my chore.  There are some mornings that if there is a fine, dry snow that falls during the night, it seeks its way inside my window sill.  That is the kind of snow that sparkles in the morning sun and looks like gems spread over the yard.

We sometimes have to fill long narrow bags made of cloth with sand to place at the bottom of a door.  Mother rolls a thick piece of paper into a cone and we pour the sand very slowly into the sack.  Josh said his hand was too wiggly to do it without spilling.  I did it for him.  Brent told us he could pour without using the paper cone.  I wonder if I shall have to sweep up after him?