Inspired Gathering with Chef Amanda Glover

Classically-trained-chef-turned-pastry-chef Amanda Glover, author of the new cookbook Sweetie Bake Your Day: Sweet and Savory Baked Goods Anyone Can Make, offers up two bonus recipes for fall exclusively for readers of Connecticut Food and Farm Magazine. The recipes feature ingredients familiar to the season - chestnuts, thyme, and olive oil - in unusual combinations with flavorful accents.

Collecting food or raw materials is one way to gather; celebrations are another. Both are rituals of harvest for Connecticut’s farm families, homeowners, and apartment-dwellers alike, and they also serve as the two main sources of inspiration for Amanda Glover: chef, author, and owner of Sweetie, a mobile, Airstream bakery often spotted in the Litchfield Hills. Between the pages of her new book you’ll find entries sweet and savory enough to tempt anyone to gather up ingredients as well as loved ones.

Easy Does It

Adapting her favorites for baking at home, Amanda made sure that each recipe can be made without specialized equipment; each one mainly requires a bowl and a spoon. Her reasoning is simple and speaks to her purpose: “I want people to fall in love with baking, not get frustrated with complicated processes.” The only hard and fast requirement, according to Amanda, who honed her skills as a pastry chef at the famed pâtisserie Belgique in Kent, is a good attitude. “You can’t bake when you’re mad,” she jokes. “I’ve tried it, and it never comes out right.”

First Things First

The best ingredients make the best food – this is Amanda’s mantra. “Fresh eggs from Pond’s Poultry in Morris beat commercial eggs, hands down. Fresh peaches from March Farm in Bethlehem in that peach pie will taste infinitely better than frozen, factory-processed peaches.”

Amanda loves to assemble uncommon ingredients; they help build her lexicon of taste. “I once ordered birch syrup from Iceland to see if I could alter a recipe that usually calls for maple syrup. I’ve picked up rose hips and pulverized them to make rose hip scones. When traveling, my family has become accustomed to me randomly pulling over at an international market and returning with a bag of interesting ingredients. Or, sometimes I plan the whole trip around an unusual shop I’ve always wanted to visit.”

Close to home, Amanda amasses needed items in all sorts of ways: a social media post looking for large quantities of rhubarb turned her on to Stonedrift Farm in Goshen; a coworker raving about the best maple syrup she’s ever tasted (with whom I wholeheartedly agree) put Crow Hill Sugarhouse in Thomaston on Amanda’s radar. A regular customer from Morris opened up her backyard orchard to Amanda to pick a bounty of fresh pears last year. Following her creative inspirations expands the database built into her palate. She regularly calls upon this embodied knowledge when creating new recipes, believing that “a good chef can mentally taste flavors as a composer might hear the music he’s writing.”

Amanda’s advice to the at-home cooks of Connecticut looking to gather up food finds? “We have a small State, so take routes off the highway. Keep your eyes open for little farms when driving here and there, and don’t be afraid to stop in (if they’re open to the public, of course) to see what’s going on. Frequent farmers’ markets, get to know the vendors, and talk to them! We are all one big family and they might just be able to turn you on to the farm that has the sweetest cherries or the tastiest goat cheese.”

Moment of Truth

“Like my grandmother said, ‘the first one’s always a doozy!’” Amanda quips while she cuts and lifts a beautiful, gluten-free chocolate chestnut brownie out of a pan and lowers it onto a brightly-colored plate before drizzling it with gooey homemade caramel. “Are you an inside brownie, or an edge person?” she thoughtfully asks before serving up my preferred style sprinkled with Icelandic birch-smoked salt from a company called Saltverk.

Chestnut Brownies with Creamy Maple Caramel

MAKES 12 SERVINGS

Brownie Ingredients

• 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter

• 1 ½ c. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

• 1 Tbsp. instant espresso powder

• ½ c. chestnut flour

• 2 Tbsp. arrowroot

• 3 large eggs

• ¾ c. cane sugar

• ½ tsp. sea salt

• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

• 5 oz. peeled chestnuts, roughly chopped

Caramel Ingredients

• 1 stick (½ c.) unsalted butter

• 1 c. brown sugar

• ½ c. heavy cream

• ¼ tsp. sea salt

Brownies

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8”x8” baking pan with parchment paper. Melt the butter in a small saucepan on low heat then add the chocolate and let them melt together, stirring frequently until the chocolate is completely melted. Remove from heat. Next, sift the chestnut flour and arrowroot powder together into a small bowl. Set aside.

Place the eggs, sugar, espresso powder, and salt into a stand mixer, and using the paddle attachment, beat for about five minutes; the mixture should be light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla extract and add the warm, melted chocolate mixture. Add the chestnut/arrowroot mixture and continue to mix on low until just combined. Using a rubber spatula, scrape around the bottom and sides of the bowl, making sure your batter is well combined. Stir in chopped chestnut pieces.

Scrape batter into prepared pan and spread it evenly. Bake brownies for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted onto the center comes out with moist crumbs. Let cool completely and drizzle with cooled maple caramel.

Caramel

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the heavy cream and brown sugar and stir until combined. Boil the cream mixture until it’s thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and starts to pull from the bottom of the pan when stirred – about five minutes. Remove the pan from the stove and whisk in the maple syrup and salt. Stir until well combined. Cool the caramel to room temperature before drizzling over brownies. Refrigerate any leftover caramel; it’ll last for as long as two weeks.

We spend Sunday morning in a Litchfield farmhouse chatting and sampling the decadent brownies as well as the following recipe: thinskinned, juicy lemons; thyme with purple flowers hand-picked from Amanda’s garden; and a green-gold glass bottle imported from nearby Nutmeg Olive Oil Company in New Milford all come together. This savory treat is just a touch sweet. Looking around for something with which to strain the thyme-infused, warmed oil, Amanda finds that a paper towel works handsomely. “See?”” she asks with a shrug and a smile, pointing out with her rhetorical question that baking need not involve fuss or bother.

Made-From-Scratch Vanilla Extract

Feeling inspired to embrace Amanda’s culinary doctrine? Make your own vanilla extract! It’s incredibly simple.

1. Purchase real vanilla beans - the best ones are imported from Madagascar or Tahiti and are widely available online and in specialty shops.

2. Place several bean pods in a glass jar.

3. Pour spirits over them - Amanda Glover recommends Litchfield Distillery Batcher’s Bourbon for pairing with strong flavors such as chocolate, coffee, or pecans; rum as a compatible base in most recipes; or unflavored vodka when you don’t want to compete with lighter aromas.

4. Seal jar with lid and place in a cool, dark place.

5. Wait six weeks and your homemade vanilla extract is ready for use!

6. If you embody New England thrift, go ahead and reuse the beans - which cost around $25 per lb. - up to three times! When they’re finally spent, steep them into custard.

Meyer Lemon & Olive Oil Cake with Fresh Thyme

MAKES 10-12 SERVINGS

Crème Fraîche Ingredients

• 3 c. heavy cream

• 1 c. buttermilk

Cake Batter Ingredients

• ¾ c. olive oil

• 1 large bunch of fresh thyme, roughly chopped

• 2 large eggs

• 1 Meyer lemon, zested

• ¼ c. lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

• 1 c. crème fraîche

• 1 ¾ c. cane sugar

• 2 c. all-purpose flour

• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder

• ¼ tsp. sea salt

Cake

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 9” Bundt pan. Place the thyme oil, eggs, lemon zest, vanilla extract, lemon juice, crème fraîche, and sugar in a large bowl. Whisk until combined. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk into the batter until smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50-55 minutes until the edges look lightly browned and a skewer comes out clean. Cool the cake for five minutes and invert onto a rack to finish cooling. Slice and serve with a dollop of plain crème fraîche.

Do ahead: Homemade Crème Fraîche

Mix the heavy cream and buttermilk in a mason jar and cover the top with cheesecloth. Allow to sit at room temperature for two to three days without disturbing it. Once it is the thickness of sour cream, replace the lid on the jar and store in the fridge for as long as one week. Store-bought crème fraîche can also be used.

Thyme-Infused Olive Oil

In a small sauce pan, heat the olive oil and chopped thyme just until the oil bubbles. Cool for as long as eight hours. The longer it sits, the more fragrant the oil. Strain through a fine mesh strainer or a paper towel.

Amanda’s book, Sweetie Bake Your Day: Sweet and Savory Baked Goods Anyone Can Make, is full of equally luxurious yet simple-to-make treats. Regarding clichés of the season, the author wisely states, “I like pumpkin spice as much as the next person, but there are other things.”

by Elinor Slomba | Lisa Nichols photographs