Momofuku Milk Bar
Page 16
1. Bloom the gelatin.
2. Gently warm the cream cheese and milk in a small saucepan over low heat. When the mixture is very warm to the touch and just beginning to steam, remove it from heat, whisk in the bloomed gelatin, and watch it dissolve fully. Then whisk in the heavy cream, glucose, and salt.
3. Pour the contents of the pan into a deep round container (a plastic pint container works best) and leave it out on the counter while you gather your other elements to plate the dessert.
You’d think because I’m from the kind-of South, I’d have kind of grown up with brittle, peanut brittle at the very least. But no. My only exposure to it was at the occasional vacation spot, where it was often featured … with a side of fudge. But with texture being high on my list of must-haves for any creation that comes out of our kitchen, it was only a matter of time before I became obsessed with nut—and seed—brittles.
I have a serious ongoing affair with Heath bars and Skor bars for their English-style toffee bits and bites. The brittle became the closest, most reasonable thing to make and achieve a similar sweetness and crunch, without sticking butter into everything we make.
I rarely eat a big hunk of brittle. Instead, I love breaking it into much smaller pieces and then folding it into something tasty that needs more crunch or mixing it into a dough or batter for a heightened sense of surprise! texture. When baked into cookies or brownies, nut brittle melts into the butter of the recipe and takes on a butter toffee–style flavor and chomp (I swoon).
If I have time, I like to grind brittle down into a praline (it will liquefy with its own fats and a splash of oil) and eat it with a spoon or spread it on a cookie or on a piece of toast with a dusting of salt. It’s the perfect sweet, nutty, salty snack that still holds splinters of flaky texture.
I’m not alone in this in the Momoverse. You can find nut brittles on the savory side of the Momofuku kitchen too. Oftentimes the savory cooks use glucose and Isomalt, a sugar substitute made from sugar beets, in place of some of the granulated sugar when making a caramel. These two sugars are less sweet than regular old granulated, making for a more savory brittle. Glucose and Isomalt also have properties that result in a less-brittle brittle—in other words, an easier-to-break brittle. The brittles in the savory kitchen also have salt and butter added to the caramel mix. These less sweet, less hard, rich nut brittles serve as a garnish in cold salads at Noodle Bar or as an unexpected textural element in the famous shaved foie gras at Ko. They balance the savory and acidic elements of their dishes and add crunch and just a hint of not-too-sweet sweetness.
peanut brittle
MAKES ABOUT 250 G (1¾ CUPS)
All of our nut brittles are extraordinarily simple. We use skinned (blanched) nuts, unroasted and unsalted. They take one part nuts to two parts sugar and about ten minutes of time. Nut brittles are one of few things we measure by volume, so no gram weights are needed here.
There will always be a small amount of caramel and nut left in the bottom of your pan after making the brittle. No worries! We’ve never met a person who can make this brittle without leaving a trace of it behind. Here’s a hint: the best way to clean hardened caramel out of a pan is by putting water in it and boiling it. The hot water will dissolve the caramel and the pan will be a snap to clean.
1 cup sugar
½ cup peanuts
Elsewhere in this book: Peanut brittle is used in Peanut Butter Crunch.
1. Line a quarter sheet pan with a Silpat (parchment will not work here).
2. Make a dry caramel: Heat the sugar in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. As soon as the sugar starts to melt, use a heatproof spatula to move it constantly around the pan—you want it all to melt and caramelize evenly. Cook and stir, cook and stir, until the caramel is a deep, dark amber, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Once the caramel has reached the target color, remove the pan from the heat and, with the heatproof spatula, stir in the nuts. Make sure the nuts are coated in caramel, then dump the contents of the pan out onto the prepared sheet pan. Spread out as thin and evenly as possible. The caramel will set into a hard-to-move-around brittle mass in less than a minute, so work quickly. Let the brittle cool completely.
4. In a zip-top bag break the brittle up into pieces as small as possible with a meat pounder or a heavy rolling pin—we grind our brittle down in the food processor to the size of short-grain rice (you don’t want anyone to chip a tooth on it!). Eat or cook with it at will. Store your brittle in an airtight container, and try to use it up within a month.
hazelnut brittle
MAKES ABOUT 250 G (1¾ CUPS)
Follow the recipe for peanut brittle, substituting hazelnuts for the peanuts.
cashew brittle
MAKES ABOUT 375 G (2¼ CUPS)
Follow the recipe for peanut brittle, substituting ¾ cup cashews for the peanuts and increasing the sugar to 1½ cups.
pumpkin seed brittle
MAKES ABOUT 250 G (1¾ CUPS)
This, obviously, is made from a seed, not a nut, but it works just the same. We use pepitas, or hulled pumpkin seeds. We’ve tried making them from raw shelled seeds scooped straight from a pumpkin, but to no avail.
Follow the recipe for peanut brittle, substituting pumpkin seeds for the peanuts. When adding the seeds to the hot caramel, take care, they will “pop” a bit!
peanut butter cookies
MAKES 15 TO 20 COOKIES
This cookie dough is much softer than that of all the other cookie recipes in this book. Fear not: although there is a different ratio of butter to peanut butter to glucose, because peanut butter behaves differently than regular butter in baking recipes, this will yield the same crunchy-on-the-outside, fudgy-in-the-center Milk Bar cookie, I promise.
Make sure your brittle is ground down to the size of short-grain rice or the consistency and texture of your cookie will be off.
170 g butter, at room temperature
[12 tablespoons (1½ sticks)]
300 g sugar
[1½ cups]
100 g glucose
[¼ cup]
260 g Skippy peanut butter
[1 cup]
2 eggs
0.5 g vanilla extract
[⅛ teaspoon]
225 g flour
[1⅓ cups]
2 g baking powder
[½ teaspoon]
1 g baking soda
[⅛ teaspoon]
9 g kosher salt
[2¼ teaspoons]
½ recipe Peanut Brittle
In a pinch, substitute 35 g (2 tablespoons) corn syrup for the glucose.
1. Combine the butter, sugar, and glucose in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Paddle in the peanut butter, then add the eggs and vanilla and beat for 30 seconds on medium-high speed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then beat on medium-high speed for 3 minutes. During this time the sugar granules will dissolve and the creamed mixture will double in size. (The lower proportion of butter and the presence of peanut butter—which is a great emulsifier—means you don’t need to do the standard 10-minute creaming for this cookie.)
2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. (Do not walk away from the machine during this step, or you will risk overmixing the dough.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
3. Still on low speed, mix in the peanut brittle until incorporated, no more than 30 seconds.
4. Using a 2¾-ounce ice cream scoop (or a ⅓-cup measure), portion out the dough onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat. Wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or for up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature—they will not bake properly.
5. Heat the oven to 375°F.
6. Arrange the chilled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on parc
hment- or Silpat-lined sheet pans. Bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. After 18 minutes, they should be tan with auburn specks throughout. Give them an extra minute or so if that’s not the case.
7. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pans before transferring to a plate or an airtight container for storage. At room temp, cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for 1 month.
candy bar pie
MAKES 1 (10-INCH) PIE; SERVES 8
During many a week, candy bars make up 50 percent (or more) of my diet. As a teen, I already showed a predilection for staying hip to the culinary scene at the grocery store, trolling the aisles to check out interesting frozen items, new cereals, perhaps a vamped-up cookie section, and, of course, the impulse-buy area—one of my favorites—with its multitude of candy bars trying to break into the market.
Which is why I was hooked on Take 5 candy bars long before I ever thought about making a pie inspired by them. I was blown away by my first bite of one, in the passenger seat of the family van in the Giant parking lot of NoVa. My sister had one cluster, and the other was all mine. It is the epitome of perfectly layered chocolate, peanuts, caramel, peanut butter, and pretzels. Hershey’s describes it as “a unique taste experience combining five favorite ingredients in one candy bar. The result is a delicious salty sweet snack unlike anything else.” Amazing.
For my birthday a couple of years ago, Dave bought me two cases, that’s 480 clusters, of Take 5 candy bars and dared me to eat them all in a month. With a little help from my friends, I did it in twenty-eight days. On my birthday, that first day, I ate seven—and then puked the next morning (bad idea).
Marian Mar made a big push to get this pie on the opening menu of Milk Bar, because, as she once put it, we are candy bars, and candy bars are us. So we need a candy bar pie on the menu. It’s a little bit of a bitch to make, which was my main argument for wanting to leave it off the menu. But working in this industry is a labor of love, after all, and Marian was right all along. This pie is one of our top sellers even today. We lovingly refer to it at Milk Bar as the T-5 pie.
1 recipe Salty Caramel (recipe follows), melted
1 recipe Chocolate Crust, refrigerated
8 mini pretzels
1 recipe Peanut Butter Nougat (recipe follows)
45 g 55% chocolate
[1½ ounces]
45 g white chocolate
[1½ ounces]
20 g grapeseed oil
[2 tablespoons]
In this recipe, we make a chocolate glaze for the top of the pie using dark chocolate, white chocolate, and oil. I like to refer to it as “cleverly avoiding tempering chocolate,” which is a fussy, somewhat temperamental way of structuring chocolate so that it sets with a shiny, crisp coat. But stirring oil into melted chocolate allows us to glaze the top of the pie with a brush and set it in the refrigerator. The chocolate still has a nice, thin crispness while maintaining a certain malleability, ensuring a clean cut down through the many layers of the pie.
Toasting pretzels deepens their flavor significantly.
Note that the nougat must be made within 5 or 10 minutes of when you want to press it into the pie.
1. Pour the salty caramel into the crust. Return it to the fridge to set for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
2. Heat the oven to 300°F.
3. Spread the pretzels out on a sheet pan and toast for 20 minutes, or until they have slightly darkened in color and the kitchen smells pretzely. Set aside to cool.
4. Fetch the pie from the fridge and cover the face of the hardened caramel with the nougat. Use the palms of your hands to press down and smooth the nougat into an even layer. Return the pie to the fridge and let the nougat firm up for 1 hour.
5. Make a chocolate glaze by combining the chocolates and the oil in a microwave-safe bowl and gently melting them on medium in 30-second increments, stirring between blasts. Once the chocolate is melted, whisk the mixture until smooth and shiny. Use the glaze the same day, or store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 weeks.
6. Finish that pie: Remove it from the refrigerator and, using a pastry brush, paint a thin layer of the chocolate glaze over the nougat, covering it completely. (If the glaze has firmed up, gently warm it so it is easy to paint on the pie.) Arrange the pretzels evenly around the edges of the pie. Use the pastry brush to paint the remaining chocolate glaze in a thin layer over the pretzels, sealing their freshness and flavor.
7. Put the pie in the fridge for at least 15 minutes to set the chocolate. Wrapped in plastic, the pie will keep fresh in the fridge for 3 weeks or in the freezer for up to 2 months; defrost before serving.
8. Cut the pie into 8 slices, using the pretzels as your guide: each slice should have a whole pretzel on it.
salty caramel
MAKES ABOUT 320 G (1½ CUPS)
105 g heavy cream
[½ cup]
25 g butter
[2 tablespoons]
4 g vanilla extract
[1 teaspoon]
4 g kosher salt
[1 teaspoon]
130 g sugar
[¼ cup]
100 g glucose
[¼ cup]
1 gelatin sheet
105 g heavy cream
[½ cup]
Powdered gelatin can be substituted for the sheet gelatin: use ½ teaspoon. In a pinch, substitute 35 g (2 tablespoons) corn syrup for the glucose.
Instead of a whisk, use a hand blender to mix the caramel base.
1. Put 105 g (½ cup) heavy cream, butter, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. Make a caramel: Heat the sugar and glucose in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. As soon as the sugar starts to melt, use a heatproof spatula to move it constantly around the pan—you want it all to melt and caramelize evenly. Cook and stir, cook and stir, until the caramel is a deep, dark amber, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, bloom the gelatin.
4. Once the caramel has reached the target color, remove the saucepan from the heat. Very slowly and very carefully pour the remaining 105 g (½ cup) heavy cream into the caramel. The caramel will bubble up and steam; stand away until the steam dissipates. Whisk the mixture together. If it is at all lumpy, or there are any clumps of hardened caramel floating around the cream, put the saucepan back over medium heat and heat the mixture, whisking constantly, until all of the caramel has dissolved and the mixture is smooth; remove the pan from the heat.
5. Whisk the bloomed gelatin into the caramel. Once all of the gelatin has dissolved, pour the caramel through a fine-mesh sieve into the bowl with the butter. Let the mixture sit, undisturbed, for 2 minutes, then begin whisking. Whisk slowly at first to prevent the hot cream from splashing up and burning you, then continue whisking until the mixture is completely homogenous.
6. Use immediately, or store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks. When ready to use, simply melt it in the microwave in 30-second increments, stirring between blasts until it is completely liquid.
peanut butter nougat
MAKES ABOUT 250 G (1 CUP), OR ENOUGH FOR 1 CANDY BAR PIE OR PB & J PIE
This recipe involves heating two separate amounts of sugar, each one to a different temperature. Why do we do it that way? Because that’s the correct way to make a nougat. If there were a way around it, I’m pretty sure we would have found it by now and dear diaried you about it in the technique portion of this lovely book. We use peanut butter nougat in several of our pies, the most popular being the candy bar pie.
25 g sugar
[2 tablespoons]
20 g water
[1½ tablespoons]
40 g sugar
[3 tablespoons]
20 g water
[1½ tablespoons]
1 egg white
65 g Skippy peanut butter
[¼ cup]
½ recipe Peanut Brittle
2 g kosher salt
[½ teasp
oon]
If you feel a snack attack coming on and peanuts are not your jam, substitute hazelnut paste for peanut butter and hazelnut brittle for the peanut brittle.
1. Put the first measures of sugar and water in a tiny saucepan and gently slush the sugar around in the water until it feels like wet sand. Do the same thing with the second measures of sugar and water in another tiny saucepan.
2. Place both saucepans on the stove and begin heating them up: turn the heat up to medium under the first sugar measurement and keep the heat low under the second measurement. Heat the first sugar up to 115°C (239°F), keeping track of the temperature with an instant-read or candy thermometer.
3. While the sugar is heating up, put the egg white in the bowl of a stand mixer and, with the whisk attachment, begin whipping it to medium-soft peaks. If the white reaches medium-soft peaks before the first sugar hits 115°C (239°F), slow your mixer way down and let the sugar catch up. Or, if you notice that the sugar is almost to 115°C (239°F) and the white is still a bit off, turn the heat way down under the sugar and turn the speed way up on the mixer. Ideally, the white will reach medium-soft peaks at exactly the same time as the first sugar measurement hits its mark. If you can achieve this on your first try, then we have a job waiting for you in our kitchen.