Swiss Confectionery

Swiss Confectionery

Founded in 1921 by emigre Henri Moecklin, Swiss Confectionery is now run by his great-grandson Larry. The shop's Alpine-crowned logo promises "The Peak of Perfection" and Swiss has built its reputation by living up to that promise at the most crucial of times. The staff estimate that of the 200 weddings that take place on an average weekend in New Orleans, they supply the cakes for 60. There's even a custom-built adjoining room where Swiss holds regular cake tastings for brides-to-be.

They also do a brisk business in traditional doberge cakes, beautifully iced birthday cakes, and prim little petit fours (bottom, left). Swiss can make any flavor you'd like, but around here, what most people want for their birthday cake is "wedding cake"--which in New Orleans means almond cake with almond buttercream. The bakery's air was so saturated with almond extract I could smell it in my hair for the rest of the day; it was like the heavenly flip side of enduring a smoky bar.

There's also an appealing quirkiness about the place--nothing forced or hipsterish, just a humor that seems to stem from being relaxed and confident. When I commented on the huge fish tank in the main room, the woman behind the counter joked that some people see it and assume they're a sushi restaurant. Asked if he was the baker, a guy in full kitchen whites grinned: "I'm the candlestick maker."

A sense of playfulness is also evident in Swiss' immaculate creations. The pastry "pattie shells" (below, right) are same kind you'll see elsewhere used to hold oysters or savory vol-au-vents; at Swiss they're filled with jelly and iced in Mardi Gras colors. If you look closely among the photos of elaborate wedding cakes in the shop's brochure, you'll spot this groom's cake: a perfect chocolate buttercream replica of a rumpled four-poster bed.

Swiss Confectionery

747 St. Charles Ave

New Orleans, LA

504/522-7788

King Cake

King Cake Cupcake
Swiss Confectionery, $2

Although the Mardi Gras parades won't start until the day after I leave New Orleans, I timed my trip just right for indulging in one of Carnival's quieter traditions: eating king cake.

King cake season starts on Epiphany, the holiday celebrated on the twelfth night following Christmas when tradition has it that the Three Kings (or wise men) arrived in Bethlehem with their gifts for the infant Jesus. Between Epiphany and Mardi Gras, Catholics in many countries gather for king cake parties. The rich, sweet cakes are an efficient and festive way of using up luxurious ingredients such as sugar, butter, and eggs before the beginning of Lent.

Depending on where you find it, king cake can mean very different things. One old-fashioned version is made from a yeasted brioche dough with candied or dried fruit. Another, the "Galette des Rois," is a golden disc of butter-rich puff pastry filled with almond-flavored frangipane; those pictured above, in four party-appropriate sizes, were on display at La Boulangerie on Magazine Street.

In New Orleans alone there is considerable variation in king cakes, but the version most common today is akin to a cinnamon roll. The cake is usually formed into a ring, heavily drizzled with icing, and encrusted with sugar dyed in the Carnival colors: purple (for justice), green (faith), and gold (power). Many bakeries offer king cakes customized with your choice of fruit or cream fillings. The king cake boxes above, from the Croissant d'Or on Ursulines Street, list seven standard choices as well as a space for write-ins.

One key feature of the king cake is actually inedible: hidden somewhere inside is a small token. In the past, it might have been a dried bean, a coin, or a porcelain figurine. Today in New Orleans, the treasure is most likely to be a small plastic baby. The tradition probably derives from a the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, when the hidden bean was used to select a man who would reign as Saturn incarnate before being sacrificed to ensure fertile crops in the following year. These days the guest who finds the baby in his or her slice of king cake has it relatively easy, being expected merely to host the next king cake party.

Although king cake is not difficult to make at home, New Orleanians have long been accustomed to buying them. Many of the region's bakeries also send cakes around the country and overseas. Owned and operated by the same family for three generations, Haydel's Bakery has built up a strong following. According to the company brochure, their king cake operation is the world's largest, and during the Mardi Gras season Haydel's ships "tens of thousands" of oven-fresh cakes. Each package is a party waiting to happen, with beads, doubloons and a bag of chicory coffee included with the cake.

I couldn't justify buying an entire king cake, but thankfully I had plenty of chances to sample. During the season, many coffee shops offer a free slice with a drink purchase, and some tourist shops that have nothing to do with food sell slices on the sly. It's also possible to get personal-sized king cakes (top photo), king cakes made from doughnuts or ice cream, or tiny king cake charms fashioned from silver or gold.

At any time of year, a tour of the float workshops at Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World includes a cup of coffee and a slice of Gambino's king cake (above). Gambino's is another one of the big players, shipping up to 4,000 cakes a day during the season. When I asked our guide if that meant that Kern's considered Gambino's to be the best, she cautioned me not to see it as an endorsement, but then added, "We go through a lot of king cake, and we do have a lot of choices about where to get it..."

For more on king cake sources, here's an article from New Orleans Magazine.

Beignets

Beignets
Café Du Monde, $2.10/3

One of my fondest memories of a childhood trip to New Orleans involves eating beignets from Café Du Monde--but not at Café Du Monde. My parents and I picked up a couple of orders of the deep-fried square doughnuts on our way to the airport. Our flight home was delayed on the runway, and we were stuck in our seats for several hours while our plane went nowhere. How to pass the time? Break out the grease-stained paper bags! As a rule fried foods don't travel very well, but those beignets were one of the best picnics I've ever enjoyed--although, of course, they never made it off the ground.

Beignet derives from an old Celtic word meaning "to raise", and the pastries are made from a yeasted dough that turns to a golden pillow when dropped in hot oil. Beignets probably arrived in Louisiana by way of France, possibly introduced by Acadians expelled from Canada in the mid-18th century or by Ursuline nuns who arrived in New Orleans in 1727. While French versions were generally filled with fruit, the American beignet is pure dough, served in a thick drift of snowy confectioner's sugar and usually paired with milky, chicory-tinged café au lait.

Café Du Monde opened in the open-air French Market in 1862, rival beignet stand Morning Call in 1870. When Morning Call moved to the suburbs a century later, Café Du Monde became a quintessential experience for French Quarter tourists. Franchises began to appear in the 1980s and they now include more than 50 locations in Japan alone.

The original French Market location is open 24 days a year, every day but Christmas--and, as their website notes, "...on the day an occasional Hurricane passes too close to New Orleans." Café Du Monde closed during Hurricane Katrina and reopened two months later, having undergone renovations rather than repairs.

Café Du Monde
French Market
800 Decatur Street
New Orleans, LA
504/525-4544

A newer player on the beignet scene, Café Beignet has two French Quarter locations. One is attached to the "Musical Legends Park" and boasts everything you'd expect from a Bourbon Street address--live music, late hours, and strong cocktails--plus fresh beignets ($2.95/3). On more sedate Royal Street there's a tiny full-service cafe; at a lacy cast-iron table on the patio it shares with the neighboring police station, you can enjoy an order of light, airy beignets and share your pound of excess powdered sugar with some very jazzed birds.

Café Beignet

334-B Royal St

New Orleans, Louisiana

504/524-5530

Ramos Gin Fizz

Ramos Gin Fizz

Muriel's, $8

New Orleans was the birthplace of the cocktail and over the years many concoctions have been heralded as the city's favorite. In 2008 the debate was silenced when the "Save the Sazerac" campaign succeeded in having the rye-and-bitters mixture invented in 1795 by Frenchman Antoine Amedee Peychaud named as New Orleans' "official" cocktail.

Well, hmph, I say: that just leaves more Ramos Gin Fizzes for me. My own new "official" cocktail is another New Orleans classic; a venerable and time-consuming froth that tastes delightfully like someone spilled gin on an uncooked meringue. Here's how the Museum of the American Cocktail tells its story:

"Around 1880 bartender Henry C. Ramos developed the drink in the Imperial Cabinet Saloon at Gravier and Carondelet Streets. He took it with him when he purchased The Stag saloon further down Gravier Street. 'It's like drinking a flower,' one poet eulogized. Properly prepared, each drink was shaken for five minutes, or, 'until your hand freezes to the shaker.' Ramos employed 'shaker boys,' (as many as 35, it is said during Mardi Gras season of 1915) who did nothing but shake fizzes."

The story provides a fascinating glimpse into the economy and society of a heavy-drinking culture. Bars were lucrative and strongly competitive; it's hard to judge how much of mythology of mixology was fact and how much was hype. Was the 5-minute shake for real? Or an exaggeration calculated to add glamor or justify prices? Cocktails were a kind of magic--particularly when the recipe for a popular drink like the Ramos was considered by most to be a guarded secret. It's interesting to imagine the reverberations when one of the bartenders who had previously worked with Ramos defected to the St. Charles Hotel...and had the Ramos Gin Fizz recipe printed on the back of his new business cards:

How to Prepare This Famous Gin Fizz:

2 Teaspoonsfull of Sugar

4 Drops of Orange Flower Water

1 Teaspoonfull Lime Juice

1 1/2 ounce of Good Gin

Crushed Ice

Small dash of Sparkling Water

White of 1 Egg

1 1/2 ounce of Sweet Milk

Shake well for half minute

Serve in thin glass.

According to the Museum of the American Cocktail, the Ramos also had friends in high--and distant--places:

"By the time the Ramos Gin Fizz was the favorite drink of 'Kingfish' Huey Long, governor--and later U.S. Senator for Louisiana, the drink had made the move to the Roosevelt Hotel. In 1935, Long transported the Roosevelt bartender, Sam Guarino along with him to New York City to ensure the drink was authentic. Huey insisted on personal quality control measures. 'I'm merely sampling this to make sure you gentlemen are getting the real thing.' After sampling five of them, Huey proclaimed, 'And this is, gentlemen, my gift to New York.' He dragged Guarino with him to Washington so, likewise, he could have an uninterrupted flow of New Orleans fizzes. In historian Shelby Foote's words, 'The whole Congress cheered him for that.'"

Muriel's

801 Chartres Street
New Orleans, LA
504/568-1885

Café au Lait Crème Brûlée

Mini Café au Lait Crème Brûlée

La Madeleine, $1.99

A stop at La Madeleine cafe and bakery is a great way to ease into a New Orleans visit: you get a few sights and a light snack under your belt before the bingeing begins in earnest. Take in all the architecture as the St. Charles streetcar trundles down the Garden District's grand boulevard, then hop off just when it makes a sharp right onto Carrollton. To one side people jog, cycle and walk their dogs on the top of the steep, grassy levee that blocks the Mississippi River from view. To the other, you'll see La Madeleine, tucked into the crook of the road.

Although the bakery is part of a chain, the cheerful din and full tables are proof that it has been thoroughly adopted by the neighborhood. Founder Patrick Leon Esquerré grew up in the French countryside and wanted his cafes to provide the fresh, healthy, hearty food and communal experience he enjoyed at home. You can get omelettes, salads, soups and baked goods to eat there or take away.

Combining a popular dessert with a ubiquitous beverage, the café au lait crème brûlée is an inventive mashup of New Orleanian flavors. The buttery pastry cup is filled with an eggy custard tinged with coffee, the top caramelized and crowned with a flake of dark chocolate. If your New Orleans agenda calls for eating 4-5 meals a day, you'll appreciate that La Madeleine offers many of its desserts in "mini" sizes.

La Madeleine

601 S Carrollton Ave
New Orleans LA
504/861-8662

KA-POW! Bar

KA-POW! Bar

Sahagún, $6

Coffee and cacao have so much in common--they're both the pungent, oily seeds of exotic plants, both luxuries that have become part of our everyday lives. The quality of either finished product is the result of a long chain of variables such as varietal, roast, and terroir. And of course they're great tastes that taste great together: we melt chocolate into coffee drinks and smother coffee beans in chocolate.

Now Portland confectioner Elizabeth Montes has taken the coffee-chocolate parallel one delicious step further with KA-POW!, a bar that's not merely flavored with coffee, but actually made from it. The only ingredients are cocoa butter, coffee, and sugar. The cocoa butter binds the whole thing together, giving KA-POW! the "physicality of chocolate" and amplifying the heady scent and robust flavor of the coffee. Sugar is added to the mix at just the right moment, seeding the creamy matrix with contrastingly crunchy crystals.

Each bar features a single-origin coffee from Portland area small-batch roasters such as Water Avenue Coffee, Extracto, Ristretto, and Stumptown. A KA-POW! bar made from Extracto's Sumatra Permati has all the tangy gaminess of a strong shot--but in a more portable format.

Speaking of portable, check out other travel-appropriate treats at WanderFood Wednesday.

Sweet Masterpiece

Bleu Cheese Truffle

Sweet Masterpiece, $2.50

Like the miso paste in matsukaze cake, aged blue cheese is a robustly umami foodstuff--rich, satisfying, and almost meaty. Although it is capable of adding a savory baseline to sweet treats, it is much more apt to drown out any softer flavors that try to share its stage.

Portland chocolatier Crystal Pyatt achieves a rare balance with her bleu cheese truffle, producing a tiny treat that bursts with complementary flavors. She blends three types of cheese into a silky, butter-soft dark chocolate ganache, covers each ball in a thin shell of dark chocolate, and tops it off with a few flakes of toasted nuts.

The bleu cheese truffle's only weakness is a short shelf life, thanks to the inherently moldy cheese. For the time being, it is only available at Sweet Masterpiece in Portland's Pearl District. This choco-centric cafe and winebar also features desserts, drinking chocolate, wine tastings, and live jazz.

Sweet Masterpiece

922 NW Davis St

Portland, OR

503/221-0055 ‎

Nuvrei Pastries

Monkey Bread,

Nuvrei Pastries, $2.50

From a subterranean kitchen in Portland's Pearl District, Nurvei Pastries produces a variety of traditional and contemporary French treats. Nurvei mostly sells wholesale to area restaurants and coffee shops, but the bakery itself keeps a small case stocked with fresh treats for passersby. Although a perky pink sandwich board on the street that welcomes you in, the experience itself is a tiny bit intimidating; the bustling bakery is tucked away inside and downstairs, and you'll be waited on by a baker in full kitchen whites who, though gracious, certainly has more urgent things to tend to (I won't even answer the phone if I have a sheet of cookies in the oven--much less 100 hand-folded croissants!). Happily, work is underway on a ground floor cafe, and you'll still be able to watch the bakers toil through basement windows set into the sidewalk outside.

Since I was there on a windy day I opted against one of Nurvei's handsome croissants, imagining it shattering at the first gust and dusting me with golden, buttery shrapnel. Monkey bread was a perfect choice for a wandering snack: a loose jumble of diced apple and cubes of butter-rich croissant dough, spiced with a generous amount of cinnamon.

Nuvrei

404 NW 10th Avenue

Portland, OR

503/546-3032‎
Check out Wanderfood Wednesday for more on-the-go foods...

Matsukaze

Miso Matsukaze Cake

Matsukaze is a Japanese expression that describes the rustling sound made by wind blowing through pine trees. It is also a tea ceremony term, referring to the whisper of water in an iron kettle reaching the correct temperature for tea.

Matsukaze is also the name of this simple steamed cake. The secret ingredient is miso, a salty, pungent paste of fermented soybeans that is more usually used for soups, sauces, and marinades. Like meat, truffles, and seaweed, miso is intensely umami, the term used by the Japanese for that "fifth flavor," a savory quality that imparts a feeling of satisfaction.

Although matsukaze is relatively light, containing no butter, egg yolks, or oil, the addition of miso gives it a strangely meaty richness. Thanks to the steaming process, matsukaze's texture is also something you can really get your teeth into; think sweet-salty foam rubber.

Miso Matsukaze Cake

from Masako Yamoko's First Book of Japanese Cooking

2 Tbs low to medium sodium miso

1 c sugar

2 egg whites

1 1/4 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

-prepare a small cake pan by lining it with parchment or coating with butter and flour.

-preheat oven to 400F.

-mash the miso into the sugar, then add a scant cup of water and whisk until there are no lumps.

-beat eggs into stiff peaks. fold into the miso.

-sift flour and baking powder together. sift again into the egg/miso mix. blend well.

-pour batter into the prepared pan. cover with foil and pierce with several holes.

-place the cake pan inside a larger pan with an inch or so of hot water.

-bake around 50 minutes, or until it passes the toothpick test.

-for a brown top, remove the foil for the final 15 minutes, or grill the cake, top down, in an oiled skillet.

-serve hot or at room temperature.

Jonboy Caramels

Caramels

Jonboy, $9/box

One year confectioner Jonathan "Jonboy" Sue whipped up a batch of caramels to give away over the holidays. The response from recipients was so encouraging that Sue transitioned from "gifting amateur" to professional, launching Jonboy Caramels with business partner Jason Alm. Their products are now available at some farmers markets and several Seattle-area stores, including Whole Foods.

Jonboy caramels are handmade using a short list of natural ingredients. Their cream comes from the Skagit Valley and the Absinthe with Black Salt flavor--a nod to Scandinavian salted licorice--uses liquor from Woodinville's Pacific Distillery. The Fleur de Sel flavor features a restrained sprinkle of sea salt, while the Molasses-Ginger has a comforting warmth.

Suikanshuku

Suikanshuku

Minamoto Kitchoan

Persimmon season in Japan is much like zucchini season in parts of the US. In a good year, growers will have such a surplus that it becomes almost a curse, and they resort to ingenious means to deal with it. At one of the schools where I taught in Tokyo, we often found that a silent, anonymous persimmon fairy had left sacks full of ripe fruit in the waiting room while our classroom doors were closed for lessons.

There is a moment during which a fresh persimmon is sweet and juicy; before it they taste like sour dish soap and after, like insipid mush. There is, however, a laborious and specialized process that extends and magnifies that delicious moment, resulting in dried persimmons known as hoshigaki that are so succulently sweet they seem almost to have been glaceed. The ripe but firm fruit is peeled and suspended by its stem from a rack in open air. Over the course of several weeks, the fruit is massaged every few days to tenderize the pulp and prevent it from becoming tough and leathery. As the hoshigaki cures, the fruit's natural sugars migrate to the surface and crystallize, forming a delicate second skin.

Minamoto Kitchoan's Suikashuku is a premium seasonal confection that features a hoshigaki stuffed with white bean paste and coated in red bean paste. The persimmon stem protrudes from the bean paste skin, and the whole thing is dusted with granular starch that evokes the dried fruit's natural bloom. It's a delectable trompe l'oeil--the mellow sweetness of the bean paste tempering the intensity of the fruit and coaxing from it a pleasant tartness.

Slow Food USA has more on hoshigaki, including information on a growing number of US producers.

Almond Schnecken

Almond Schnecken

Cafe Besalu, $2.75

Standing at Cafe Besalu's counter or sitting at certain tables, you can watch the bakers at work in the open kitchen and marvel at their ability to turn slabs of pale, flabby dough into golden, flaky baked goods.

Besalu's schnecken is a testament to that transformative power. This traditional pastry takes its name from the German word for "snail," but its originators were probably eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. Neither filled nor topped, the almond-scented schnecken nevertheless offers a tantalizing variety of textures: a crisp and airy skin, a tender center of buttery, barely-baked dough, and a pebbled bottom of not-quite-caramelized large-grain sugar.

Cafe Besalu

5909 24th Ave NW

Seattle, WA

206 / 789-1463

Mochi Ice Cream

Mochi Ice Cream

Mikawaya, $4.50/6

When I tell people about my interest in Japanese sweets, I usually get one of two responses: either polite silence, or "Have you tried those mochi ice cream balls?"

If I had a dollar for every time I've rolled my eyes at that question, I'd be able to hire my own personal mochi maker. Yes, I've tried mochi ice cream. Is it delicious? Sure. Is it interesting? Until recently, I didn't think so.

If this criticism seems absurd, let me explain that I normally find mochi as fascinating as it is delicious. Essentially an amorphous mass of so-called "sweet" glutinous rice beaten into a paste, mochi is a bland and blank thing of almost unlimited potential. Mochi can be: dried, steamed, roasted or fried; made sweet or savory; filled, coated, or dipped; formed into a hundred different shapes; eaten as a snack or offered on an altar.

Mochi is a major feature of Japanese New Year's celebrations and many families or communities gather annually for mochi making parties. Last year I attended two such mochitsuki. At Seattle's Nichirenshu, the congregation has been making mochi as a fundraiser for decades; using noisy electric grinders to transform the steamed rice helps them to keep up with orders. On Bainbridge Island, the community mochitsuki is a younger tradition with a more old-fashioned approach; volunteers take turns beating the rice with a heavy wooden mallet while onlookers enjoy the "fruits" of their labor, filled with red bean paste or dipped in sweetened soy sauce.

This year I was unable to make it to any of Seattle's mochitsuki, but I was in the mood for some mochi with which to ring in the New Year. And there they were, in the freezer at Trader Joe's: Mikawaya mochi ice cream balls. They turned out to be better than I remembered and more interesting that I expected.

Los Angeles-based Mikawaya was established in 1908 and named after Mikawa, a town in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi that was home to one of the founders. Ryuzaburo Hashimoto bought the company two years later, and his descendants have been in charge ever since. The company face a major challenge in 1942, with the signing of Executive Order 9066. Along with thousands of West Coast Japanese-Americans, the Hashimotos were "relocated" to a rural internment camp and their business was shuttered. Although Mikawaya remained closed throughout the war, the Hashimotos were able to reopen by Christmas, 1945, one door down from their previous location.

Compared with many Japanese-owned businesses, Miyakawa was relatively undented by the wartime hiatus. The Hashimoto family, however, had one unforgettable reminder of their expereince: daughter Frances, born at the internment camp in Poston, Arizona.

Today, Frances is Mikawaya's President and CEO, as well as guardian of the secret family mochi recipe. Under her leadership, Mikawaya has developed a strikingly diverse line-up. In addition to hand-formed Japanese-style wagashi sweets that Ryuzaburo would recognize, Mikawaya produces cakes, pastries, and gelato in a modern Los Angeles factory.

Introduced in 1994, mochi ice cream is now Mikawaya's best known product. A ball of ice cream encased in soft rice dough, mochi ice cream is an elegantly simple hybrid of Japanese and Europe traditions. Seven flavors are now on the market; Mikawaya asked fans to vote via Facebook for flavor number eight and the winner was pumpkin. When the new treat appears later this year it will epitomize the melding of Japanese, European, and indigenous American tastes.