Back in the Game, Pumpkin-Style

Oh, hello!

It seems my blog and I weren't on writing terms for a little while. Not that I have anything against you, Bilingual Butter... I just had a little phase for a while.

I don't know quite how to describe it. You know how children go from loving pistachio ice cream to, all of a sudden, wanting nothing besides coffee gelato? Or how one day, that United Colors of Benetton Barbie just stops being the holy grail of all dolls, and the soccer Barbie (equipped with a leg that can score goals!) is everything you've been looking for?

Well, I've been having a case of the switchies of my own. Baking--as much as I love it--was slightly relegated to second place these past months, replaced by tasting of desserts not fabricated by myself and indulging in copious amounts of pastries. I'm not sure my stomach could handle any more baked goods, and so I gave in to the eating-without-baking-or-blogging-phenomenon. That, and frequent travels, from weekend trips to a week-long getaway to South Africa, made eating 24/7 an easy thing to do.

Today, however, it's cold outside. The sun is bright but low, typical of a crisp Fall afternoon. I think we all know--well, at least crazy baking obsessive types know--what that means. Can you hear that cranberry sauce singing in the background? This is the time of year baking at home comes back in full force. I'll never say no to a black sesame eclair from Sadaharu Aoki...but right now, I just want pumpkin pie. I want cinnamon, cloves, ginger. I want a bath of maple syrup and pecans...and then, another bath of water and soap, because I don't want to attract strange bugs (or strange people for that matter).

Although my blog posts may be rarer than they were in the past, Bilingual Butter and I have reconciled again. And boy do I have a lot to tell you...

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

makes approximately 15 small pies

1 c. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 TS baking powder

1 TS ground cinnamon

1 TS pumpkin pie spice, or your own mix of ground ginger, cloves and (more) cinnamon

pinch salt

1/4 c. butter, softened

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/2 c. raw cane sugar (you could use only granulated sugar as well)

1 large egg

1 TS vanilla extract

3/4 c. unsweetened pumpkin purée

Preheat oven to 185°C/350°F and line a baking sheet with a baking mat or parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, spices and salt together.

In a large bowl, beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat until incorporated. Add vanilla extract and pumpkin, and mix until combined. Slowly incorporate dry ingredients.

Scoop batter onto baking sheets by large tablespoon-fulls. Bake for approximately 10 minutes, until cakes spring back when touched. Remove from heat and cool completely on wire racks.

Meanwhile, prepare cream cheese filling:

4 oz. (around 120g) cream cheese, softened

2 TB (around 30g) butter, softened

Mix until fluffy. Add confectioner's sugar, 1/4 cup by 1/4 cup, until you reach the desired texture and taste (you should end up adding around 1 c.). Stir in vanilla extract to taste.

Once the cakes have cooled completely, spread a large spoonful of the filling on one side of half of the cakes and sandwich them. If not serving immediately, wrap them in plastic and refrigerate--the flavors will meld even better!

Layers

When Fall gives way to Winter, leaves disappear...leaving naked branches behind. 

What happens to arms and legs is inversely proportional.  Winter announces the beginning of what I like to call Layer Season. Forget about wearing a t-shirt: now, it's all about long sleeves plus various sweaters, a coat and a scarf. Layer Season comes and goes along its own agenda, depending on the years. And that is exactly why L.S. and I aren't buddy-buddy.

Remember, Layer Season, when you came along in October? I was six years old and I can tell you I still haven't forgotten. Forget being dressed as Snow White for Halloween...I was Snow White-in-a-Turtleneck. 

Nowadays, Layer Season making its appearance a little early isn't such an issue for me--after all, I now get to choose how I dress, and prefer to leave the turtlenecks behind pretty often. However, it seems this particular time of year has left an indelible mark on the way I bake, not the way I dress.

Summertime is all about the fresh berry tarts. Fall? Apple crisps, pumpkin muffins. And then comes a time when you get caught up in the moment, enjoying all the Fall spices and flavors. There you go--you feel like layering.

I've had one bad experience with layering before, and it involved a pumpkin pecan pie mishap. This time around, though, I went a lighter route: pumpkin and apples baked into delicious streusel-topped muffins. I'll admit it, Layer Season can have its benefits. Don't be afraid of overload with this recipe: the resulting muffins are surprisingly light, and easy to enjoy at any time of the day (i.e. you can even munch on them at work without falling asleep afterward).

So, thank you, Layer Season, for the inspiration. Just one last thing: next time I dress up as Cinderella, can you please stay out of the way for a while? Thanks.

Apple-Pumpkin Muffins

makes approximately 14

loosely adapted from Bon Appétit, Oct. 2001

for apples:
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 TB butter
2 TB granulated sugar
1 TS cinnamon

for cake:
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. brown sugar
6 TB butter, room temperature
1/2 c. sour cream, light or regular
2 eggs
3/4 c. pumpkin puree
1 TS baking soda
2 TS pumpkin pie spice
1/2 TS cinnamon
1/2 TS salt

Preheat oven to 350°F / 180°C.

Prepare apples: melt butter over medium heat. Add apples and and cook until they begin to brown. Add sugar and cinnamon, stir, and cook another 2 minutes.

In a medium bowl, mix butter, brown sugar, flour and salt together with your hands until a coarse meal forms. Set 1/2 c. of mixture aside for topping.

Add the following ingredients to the remaining flour mixture: pumpkin, sour cream, baking soda, and spices, until just combined. Add eggs one at a time.

Divide batter between greased or lined muffins pans. Top with apples, and sprinkle flour mixture on top.

Bake approximately one hour, until topping is golden. Serve warm with ice cream.

The Taste Test: Fall Edition

One of my favorite parts of baking is getting to eat raw dough or batter.

 Ooh! Cookie dough

Oh, don't look at me like that. You know it's your favorite part too. Everyone's get their preferred tastes: I love anything from raw cookie dough to zucchini cake batter. My maman goes crazy for raw yeast, the one you get in cubes at the bakery here in France. I do, however, have a slight problem once Fall comes rolling around. I get the urge to bake with pumpkin (seemingly, as does everyone in the blogosphère, as the French call it) and look forward to having pumpkin muffins spiced with warm cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger. 

Thoughts of eating my weight in pumpkin cake batter pop up...and quickly disappear. I don't like cake batter with pumpkin. There. I said it. The taste doesn't really appeal to me, and a few spoonfuls is just enough before I remind myself that no, I don't really like this so yes, I should stop now.

I'm curious, though. Are there bakers out there (or just batter-eaters) who enjoy the taste of pumpkin puree before it gets baked into a lovely, orange loaf of everything autumn baking is supposed to be? Or is something wrong with me?

Not-so-appetizing (empty) bowl of pumpkin batter

Oh, and see that picture right there? That's a testament to the fact that I even eat batter when I don't really love it. My subconscious links the words "cake batter" to "hey, you're right, I am hungry!". 

Now, if only the words "chocolate" and "candy" could be linked to "oh thanks, I've had enough". That doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon, unfortunately.

Never too late for Pumpkin Desserts

I'm sure a lot of people forget all about pumpkin puree between December and the following October. Why deal with pumpkins and pumpkin pie spice when that's nearly all you've been baking with for the Fall months? I'll admit, it is easy to forget about things like that. You get all caught up in the moment when you start baking Christmas goodies, then Valentine's Day, and then...it's springtime and the warmth of spices doesn't have the same appeal anymore.

Well, I suggest that everyone include pumpkin into their desserts all year long. Seriously, everyone goes on and on about how they want to have a healthier lifestyle in the first months of the year (and then, once the Superbowl comes along, that seems to disappear). Pumpkin is extremely good for you, and can replace a large part of the butter or oil you usually use in muffins. Convinced yet?

Although this isn't healthy per se, I had another chance to delight in my Pumpkin Cheesecake which you can find right here. I had way too much filling last time around, so I baked crust-less cheesecakes and froze them up. Tea with my friend Claire was the perfect opportunity to bring them back out; I quickly baked up some new crusts and put the cheesecakes together. Unfortunately, I sort of forgot that the wetness of the filling is what makes the crust nice and soft--putting them together at the last minute ensured that my crust was everything but soft. OK, maybe a knife was involved to eat these mini-cheesecakes, but it's nothing a few hours in the fridge couldn't have fixed.

And the cute heart shape? Perfect for a Valentine's Day dessert that doesn't involve an overload of chocolate. Unless, of course, you decide to indulge in chocolate as a side dish: my kind of healthy lifestyle.

By the way, you might notice something has changed around here: I added all my post labels on the side for easier access. Happy browsing!

An Unexpected Cake

You know the story: it's 10:30 PM, you should be studying or at least reading a good book, but you can't get your mind off it.

It? Well, in most cases, it refers to ice cream, cheese, or chocolate. In my case, it was more like baking. All I could think about was baking something, anything, with the leftover pumpkin puree that was in the fridge. I started counting off the available ingredients: applesauce (that was before I realized it had been sitting in the fridge a little too long, and was swiftly replaced by oil), eggs, flour, poppy seeds, almonds, cinnamon, butterscotch chips... After the success of the oatmeal scotchies, I couldn't leave the remaining chips alone for too long.

And somehow, between 10:30 and 11--or 2230 and 2300, to give it some importance--a cake came together. I don't really know how, given that I pretty much mixed a good five recipes together, but it sure was good: very moist, yet with a slight crunch from the poppy seeds and slivered almonds. Not to mention the cinnamon pairing with the pumpkin puree to give it some nice warmth. And the butterscotch chips? I'll just put it this way: perfect combination.

I could call it Lucie's Cake, or Pumpkin Delight, or some other cheesy name. But I think I'll stick with what describes the cake best: The Unexpected.

The Unexpected

This recipe yields two mini bundt cakes (like the ones found right here), enough for four people when serving it for tea or a nice snack.

1/4 c. oil
1 egg
1/2 TS vanilla
1/2 c. pumpkin puree
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. flour
1 TS baking soda
1 TS baking powder
1/4 TS salt
1 TS cinnamon
1 TB poppy seeds
1/4 c. butterscotch chips
a handful of slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 350°F / 180°C.

In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together.

In a large bowl, mix sugar and oil together. Add vanilla, pumpkin, and egg--one at a time--until combined.

Add flour mixture and blend until combined, adding remaining ingredients as you mix.

Pour batter into two mini bundt pans.

Bake approximately 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs attached. Let cool in pans 5 minutes and invert onto a wire rack. Cool for at least another 30 minutes before serving.

To store, place in a tightly sealed box for a few days maximum.

Thanksgiving in Paris: Pumpkin Cheesecake

Everyone knows what Thanksgiving in the United States is all about: food, food, food, and...more food. Then comes post-Thanksgiving: Christmas shopping, Christmas decorations, and pretty much getting hyped up about the upcoming holiday season. It seems like all of a sudden, bakers forget pumpkin even existed. After the end of November, it's all about gingerbread and the like.

Paris doesn't exactly follow the same pattern, for obvious reasons. Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here--strangely, some Americans actually wonder why--and nobody goes as holiday-crazy as they do back in the States. That's why celebrating Thanksgiving is always a little strange, especially when your boyfriend is French and doesn't really get the point of it, especially when it's only a week after your birthday and you've only just finished celebrating.

In any case, I wanted to do a little something for the 26th. The truth is, I got a little jealous from hearing and reading about everyone baking endlessly in preparation for Thanksgiving. Even if I wasn't really going to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I wanted to bake a dessert. I didn't even have much thinking to do: I had a never-been-used mini springform pan that seemed perfectly adapted to a perfectly sounding dessert: pumpkin cheesecake.

Oh, it was risky: I'll admit that I've never made a cheesecake before. I'm planning on it, sure, but I keep saving it for a moment when I have friends coming over. But then, when they do, I figure that I shouldn't try a cheesecake just right now... and it all starts over. A pumpkin cheesecake seemed a little different, and I told myself I couldn't be taking that much of a risk with a pint-sized version of the real thing.



Creamy, nicely spiced, it was everything a Thanksgiving dessert should be. Even if you only eat it on the day after.

Spiced Pumpkin Cheesecake
Serves 12
adapted from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

Note: I divided the recipe by 3 to fit into my mini-pan and ended up having way too much filling...I made crustless heart-shaped mini cheesecakes and froze them--recipes coming later!
Crust
8 whole graham crackers, broken into 1-inch pieces (or 3/4 c. graham cracker crumbs)
6 TB unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 TB sugar
1 TS pumpkin pie spice
1/2 TS ground cinnamon

Filling
1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
1 1/3 c. sugar
1 TS ground cinnamon
1 TS pumpkin pie spice
1/2 TS salt
1 1/2 lbs. cream cheese (I used the French "nature à tartiner"), cut into chunks and softened
(I pressed it between paper towels to remove excess moisture, since the French nature à tartiner has more moisture than cream cheese)
1 TB fresh lemon juice
1 TB vanilla extract
5 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup heavy cream
Crust:

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 325°F.

Process graham crackers in a food processor to fine, even crumbs, about 30 seconds. Sprinkle melted butter, sugar, and spices over crumbs and pulse to incorporate. Sprinkle the mixture into a 9-in. springform pan. Press the crumbs firmly into an even layer using the bottom of a measuring cup.

Bake the crust until fragrant and beginning to brown, 10 to 15 mins.

Let crust cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Once cool, wrap outside with 2 sheets of foil and set in a large roasting pan. Bring a kettle of water to a boil.

Filling:

Spread pumpkin puree on a triple layer of paper towels. Press additional layers of paper towels on top of puree until they are saturated.

Whisk the sugar, spices, and salt together in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer on medium-low speed until smooth, 1 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl as needed.

Beat in half of the sugar mixture until incorporated. Beat in the remaining sugar mixture. Beat in the dried pumpkin, lemon juice, and vanilla until incorporated. Beat in the eggs one at a time until combined.Beat in the heavy cream until incorporated.

Brush the inside of the springform pan with melted butter. Carefully pour filling into the pan. Set the roasting pan, with the cheesecake, on the oven rack and pour boiling water into the roasting pan until it reaches about halfway up the sides.

Bake cheesecake until a thermometer inserted in the center registers 150 degrees, about 1 1/2 hours (a lot less if you're scaling the recipe down, watch out!)

Let cheesecake cool in the roasting pan for 45 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool until barely warm, running a knife around the edge of the cake every hour or so. Wrap the pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until cold, about 3 hours.

To unmold the cheesecake, wrap a wet, hot towel around the cake pan and let sit for 1 minute. Remove the sides of the pan and carefully slide the cake onto a cake platter.

Let the cheesecake sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Almost a year ago now, I was in New York, and complaining about my kitchen right here. Remember? I couldn't even get my trusted pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins right.

I'm back in France now, and I'll let you imagine the big sigh of relief when I chomped away on a warm muffin coming right out of the oven a week ago. Good thing they were a success, because I had 30 of them waiting patiently for my guests coming over to celebrate my birthday with a Sunday brunch. I don't think it would be pushing it to say brunch is one of my favorite meals--I'm always intrigued to see who is more of a sweet brunch or salty brunch person. I used to be 100% sweet until I realized I always had a craving for something salty (pretty rare in my case) a few hours later. Now I'll just have both: you can't actually say no to breakfast food when it could potentially be in front of you in a few minutes.

In any case, I had planned a sweet and salty (I banned savory from my personal vocabulary) brunch for my birthday last weekend: pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins, mini pastries, yogurt with homemade jam, and potato-pancetta frittata with truffle butter and truffle salt. Add to that a simple salad with sesame tahini dressing and everything was set to go.

As the afternoon went on and the pumpkin muffins dwindled down, I couldn't help but look at the frittata and wish it were almond french toast or warm pancakes with maple syrup.

Once a sweet girl, always a sweet girl, I guess.

Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Muffins
makes approx. 30

3 c. all-purpose flour
2 TS baking soda
2 TS baking powder
2 TS pumpkin pie spice
1 TS cinnamon
1/2 TS salt
4 eggs
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 can pumpkin purée
1 c. applesauce
1 1/2 c. chocolate chunks or chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Line muffin tins with paper liners.

Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, mix eggs and sugar. Add pumpkin and applesauce, and stir well to combine. Add flour mixture until moistened.
Stir in chocolate.

Spoon batter into muffin tins (about 2/3 full) and bake 20-25 minutes, until tops spring back when touched. Cool in pans for 5 minutes, remove and let cool completely before serving.

These can keep several days if stored in the refrigerator.

Less Is More : Learning from an ancestor

"Less is more" is one of those quotes that everybody seems to know. It's often attributed to the architect Mies van der Rohe and associated with the Bauhaus movement. Well, guess what? He wasn't the first to popularize the saying.

In fact, it first appeared in Robert Browning's poem Andrea del Sarto in 1855--and it turns out Robert Browning (not as famous as his wife though, Elizabeth Barrett Browning) is my great-great-great-uncle, or something along those lines.

Anyway, I forgot to take a cue from my ancestor when I decided that a pumpkin pecan pie sounded good. Actually, it still sounds good if I say it again, but I should have thought about it twice. It's a common mistake--when you love two things, why not mix them up in a single dish? I guess that's how you can explain some people like to dip their fries in ice cream. From what I've heard--from those that enjoy it, obviously--it's a pretty tasty combination. In my mind, however, it just spells trouble. But pumpkin and pecans, you'll say, seem to complement each other quite logically. Plus, I love pumpkin pie, and I love pecan pie. So I should "love squared" pumpkin pecan pie.

It started out well--the recipe, again from allrecipes, had a ton of positive reviews--and all the ingredients were appetizing. I made my new favorite sweet dough and poured the pumpkin filling into my new American-sized pie dish. I then spooned the pecan filling on top, and baked everything until it was ready. My friends couldn't wait for it to cool, so my first bites were of a warm pumpkin-pecan pie, which just might explain why it seemed rather écoeurant to me.

Basically, I think I would rather have a small slice of pumpkin pie and a small slice of pecan pie than a large slice of this combination of both. (Actually, I would rather have a large slice of both.) It doesn't really add anything positive to mix them up.

Keeping it simple seems to be a pretty good idea in baking, even though when I see a recipe that piles ingredients one on top of another--like a seven-layer magic bar--the sugar-crazy child in me feels like jumping up and down. When it comes to pies, however, less really is more.

From now on, I'll stick to the pie basics. Then I can keep thinking "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

Robert and Elizabeth Browning, reconciled in their great-great-great-niece's kitchen.

Pumpkin Pecan Pie
adapted from allrecipes.com makes one 9-in. deep dish pie

Pâte Sablée

1 cup pumpkin purée
1/3 c. granulated sugar
1 egg
1 TS pumpkin pie spice
1/2 TS cinnamon

1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 TB butter, melted
1/2 TS vanilla extract
1 cup pecan halves

Make pie dough and press it into pan. Freeze for at least 30 minutes before baking.

Bake dough, covered with foil and with pie weights, for 20-25 minutes at 375°F.

Mix pumpkin, sugar, egg, pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon in a medium bowl and stir well. Spread on bottom of pie shell.

Combine maple syrup, eggs, sugar, butter, pecans and vanilla extract in a medium bowl. Spoon over the top of the pumpkin filling.

Bake at 350°F / 180°C for 50 minutes - 1 hour until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely (at least one hour) before serving.

Pumpkin Cookies

The name is pretty simple: pumpkin cookies. I could turn that into moist pumpkin spice cookies, or iced autumn pumpkin cookies, or even iced moist autumn pumpkin spice cake-cookies, if I really wanted to. I'd rather not: the pumpkin cookies I made for last Sunday dinner will remain as simple as can be.

Honestly, there's not much of a crazy story to go along with these. Nothing about intense nostalgia or throwbacks to when I was young enough to look at toy catalogs with awe--on second thought, I still do that. Did you know they now make about twenty different kinds of "play kitchens"? With stovetops that make actual sizzling sounds when you place a "pan" on them? I'm not sure they would have gotten first place in front of all my Barbies and My Little Poneys, but still, I was impressed.

Anyway, when I found the recipe for Pumpkin Cookies on Allrecipes, the 1,200-odd reviews were all pretty laudatory. I was looking for something simple, somewhat light, that packed all the flavor fall has to offer--and according to the reviewers, this was it.

Pumpkin cookies are, in a few words, exactly what they promise to be. The simplicity of their name echoes the simplicity of the cookie itself: it takes no more than 20 minutes to make, it has a simple cake-like texture, and the flavor can be summarized in one word: fall. One bite and all the tastes of the season come together, giving you exactly what you expect from a pumpkin cookie.

Easy does it, right?

Pumpkin Cookies
adapted from allrecipes makes about 20 cookies

1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 TS baking powder
1/2 TS baking soda
1 TS cinnamon
1/2 TS pumpkin pie spice
pinch salt
1/4 c. butter, softened
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. pumpkin puree
1 egg
1/2 TS vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F / 180°C.

Combine dry ingredients and set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add pumpkin, egg, vanilla and beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients.

Drop onto a cookie sheet by tablespoonfulls (you can try making bigger ones, they'll be softer and just as good).

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, and cool before glazing.

To make glaze: Combine confectioner's sugar, 1 TS cinnamon, a few drops of vanilla extract and enough milk to acheive spreading consistency. (The cinnamon gives the glaze not only a great taste but also a light sparkle)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

...Finally!

After much consideration, I decided that my failed muffins came from a combination of me not knowing my "new" oven well enough, and the fact that my baking soda was a little old--to be honest, I used the one that was already here when I moved in, which isn't the smartest thing to do.

Once I realize this, I didn't have much of a choice, and set out to prove to everyone (well, myself, anyway) that my pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins could be as good here as they are in Paris.

And they were!

To be honest, I wasn't quite concentrated when I started to bake. I was probably thinking about dinner plans or something like that (we had guests over for the week), and I only decided to taste the batter once I had scooped it all into my muffin pan. That's when I realized they tasted strangely salty. I brushed it off, thinking I just didn't remember the taste of the batter and that this was absolutely normal. I set them in the oven, and three minutes later it hit me. I had forgotten to add sugar. Not looking for an "interesting" sweet & savory mix, I promptly removed the muffins from the oven, put everything back into a bowl, and added sugar. I noticed the chocolate chips were starting to melt, so I added another half cup or so. 

Now I wouldn't really recommend making this same mistake, but it turns out the combination of non-melted and half-melted chocolate chips was a success, at least from what I was told. The batter had a hint of chocolate, and the full chocolate chips added a little something.

OK, so they weren't like my muffins in Paris, but that's what baking is all about, right? Out with the old (or at least set it aside, unwillingly), in with the accidentally new!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins - successful Paris version

makes approx. 30 muffins

adapted from a Nestle recipe

3 c. flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp salt

4 eggs

2 c. sugar

1 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree

1 c. applesauce or oil

1 1/2 c. chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C.

Beat eggs and sugar together; add pumpkin and applesauce (or oil) and combine.

Stir in dry ingredients until combined, without overmixing.

Finally, add chocolate chips.

Fill each muffin cup 2/3 to 3/4, and bake for 20-25 minutes.