Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Tuesday Table Topics #4: Top pastry

Here's a little something to chew on: Which pastry would be your top choice with your morning coffee?

Hmm. This one requires a little thought, but not a lot... I have a particular weakness for all things frangipane; now, the traditional form is made from almonds, which are fine. I happen to prefer hazelnuts, but you probably could have guessed that, eh? Don't know when I acquired that little fatty vice (probably college or thereabouts), but it is well and truly embedded in my preferences. Give me a little ground hazelnuts, butter, sugar and eggs and, if you must, throw a little pastry around it. The pastry can come in many shapes, but I will probably look for the one that has the most heavenly goo in it, and that's usually a pretzel. Pinwheels are fine, but there's all that pastry space out there, plain and unadulterated... Pretzels have nooks and crannies that will hopefully be full of frangipane!

The photo above came from a lovely food blog called the home baker. How impressive is that--homemade danish! I could wake up to that on occasion! I looked high and low all over ye olde internet and couldn't find a single decent image of my beloved frangipane pretzel--it made me think maybe the only place that makes those is our local deli, Merchants... and I should go down and take a picture for you, so that you can invision the deliciousness of which I speak... I can't even remember the last time I had one, which is pretty sad. Pastry and my morning coffee don't often meet up anymore... maybe it's time to do something about that.

(Yes, Kim, I really did mean it. I need some kind of nutritional reset button, now! Peach cobbler is gone, but apricot must surely follow?)

Additional tidbit... did you know the plumeria flower, of which I am particularly fond, has the proper name of frangipani? How clever is that? Well, not very. But quite handy for me when I need to remember: favorite flower? Frangipani. Favorite pastry? Frangipane. Helpful, no? Tuck that away in your memory banks, would you?!

Inhale. Aloha.

1 comment:

  1. smiling for so many reasons.

    you know, i have often thought of that first question. it is more a lament than a thought, really. it goes something like this, "why are all those parisian women so thin and elegant and yet they come from this place where the croissant was invented?". i literally envision them sitting in those busy, noisy parisian cafes...smoking, drinking their espresso's, and finishing off the finest litte flakey butter things God ever invented. so, to answer your question...mine would just be a plain croissant of the highest quality (none of those ginormous plasticky starbuck's atrocities...ooo, do i sound pretentious?).

    nice post. flower noted ;-)

    ReplyDelete

 
Blogger Template By Designer Blogs