Lalala…

This past Christmas season, I did something that I haven’t done in ages…I baked cookies. Now I don’t mean the usual chocolate chip cookies that I sometimes churn out a hundred at a time, I mean honest to goodness Christmas cookies…with frosting and everything. I made a few dozen here and a few dozen there. I doubled and quadrupled recipes to keep up with my family’s demand. My mother-in-law ended up taking six and a half dozen to pass out at work. My daughter took some to her friends at school. My husband requested a gift basket with cookies and jam for his boss and then a dozen were taken to a friend of mine.

Usually, when I go into production mode on anything, I burn out quickly and never want to make another whatever-it-is again. This time, I just thought ahead to the next occasion for cookie baking and wondered if I could use a few more cookie cutters. The recipes I used for regular and chocolate sugar cookies were delicious and cooperative, which is probably the single biggest reason I’m still making cookies. In years past, I would always be on the search for another sugar cookie recipe because there was something I didn’t like about the last one I tried. Also, I hate any recipe that wants me to chill dough.

Georganne’s End-All for Chocolate Cookies Recipe at her lovely blog, LilaLoa, is fantastic. I think this is the third or fourth batch I’ve made in the past month. Not only do the cookies taste good (which is, you know, important in food), but there is ZERO refrigeration (minus that one batch I made and tossed in the fridge a few minutes before doing some Christmas shopping) and these suckers do NOT spread. No more telling the family that you MEANT to make amoeba cookies!

Did I mention skipping the fridge part? Yes? Just making sure.

It’s Wednesday, which means I have another late Tuesdays With Dorie post. Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook chose the French Chocolate Brownie recipe on page 92 and I was more than happy to jump in and whip up a batch. Now this recipe calls for rum soaked raisins in the batter and while I’m not a big fan of raisins in things, I still wanted to set something on fire.

Some of the members reported having problems getting the rum to catch fire, but I had no problems with it and actually had a flame going for long enough to get a camera and fail to capture the fire on “film.” I didn’t measure the initial amount of water used to boil the raisins, I just poured in enough to barely cover the bottom of my 2qt saucepan. After most of the liquid evaporated, I poured in a glug of rum and let it heat up while I rifled through the junk drawer for the long necked clicky lighter. After the initial whoosh of flame, there didn’t appear to be anything happening in the pot, so I turned off the hood light and gave the pot a shake. Yup. Fire! Although it turns out I can’t shake the pan and take a good picture of fire at the same time.

I only made a few adjustments to the recipe since it didn’t look as if it would mind some tinkering. I used around 3/4 of a cup of white whole wheat flour. Then closer to 8 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips melted with two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder. I would have used brown sugar for the white granulated, but I didn’t have that much on hand and didn’t want to go out to the store. As I folded in the raisins, I also threw in a few more ounces of semi-sweet chips. A foil liner for the pan was skipped and I just gave it a good spraying of canola oil. It took about 90 minutes to bake and I pulled it out at that stage where moist bits cling to a knife but the batter is no longer raw, which is exactly where I like my brownies for optimal fudge-like goodness.

The raisins didn’t really add anything to the flavor or texture of the brownie and I’m definitely going to stick with plain brownies. I didn’t hate the raisins, but I didn’t really like them either. The brownie itself was gooey, rich and tasty. My taster declared them good but voiced a preference for my usual brownies. I munched on a piece with tiny scoops of honey vanilla ice cream. Yummy. Recipe, as usual, after the jump.

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Ah, sticky buns. So tasty and yet so…sticky. I’m usually opposed to putting nuts into most baked goods, but I seem to have a thing for nutty goodness right now. It doesn’t hurt that I have a pile of shelled hazelnuts sitting on my kitchen counter. I’d previously tried to make the sticky buns in “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” and that didn’t go so well (I’m lucky to still have my teeth). I had a baggie of leftover cinnamon sugar to which I’d added chopped pecans and used that as the filling for Dorie’s buns as well. Not having any additional pecans laying around, I naturally decided to substitute chopped hazelnuts for the topping. Have I mentioned that I love hazelnuts?

Dorie’s buns called for half a recipe of brioche dough. I made the full recipe and used a fourth of it for the buns so that I didn’t have all those buns staring up at me. I halved the glaze recipe accordingly and just threw in handfuls of chopped hazelnuts without measuring.

I made mini buns using my little pyrex dish, which I think is 7”x11”, and baked for 30 minutes using the convection setting. Oh, were these tasty. I suppose when you shove that much butter into something, it has to be good. My co-workers had no problems disposing of the extra buns for me.

Recipe after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

I signed up to Tuesdays with Dorie at the urging of a very persistent Leigh over at Lemon Tartlet. The group is essentially baking their way through the Dorie Greenspan book, Baking: from My Home to Yours over the course of the year with a new recipe each week. Everyone posts their results, of course, on Tuesday.

This week’s recipe was a Fluted Polenta & Ricotta cake, so I thought I’d serve it as dessert for a small dinner party I had this past Saturday, which is why I didn’t finish the promised MP08 project. Dinner came out fantastically well, with a gorgeous beef tenderloin served with a shallot and mustard sauce as the main course. For sides, there were glazed carrots, green beans, sauteed spinach with pine nuts and golden raisins, along with fresh baked dinner rolls.

I substituted dried cranberries for the figs since they were already in the kitchen and used a springform pan as I somehow don’t own a tart pan. The cake tested done, but I think next time, I’ll bake until it’s more golden. Served with a slightly sweetened honey whipped cream, it was delicious and got compliments from my guests. But I was nervous as to how the cake would go over, so I whipped up an emergency back up dessert before I started dinner. I took the backup to work with me yesterday and my coworkers helpfully polished it off.

Polenta and Ricotta recipe after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first month as a Daring Baker and my introductory challenge? French bread ala Julia Child, hosted by Breadchick Mary and Sara. The recipe is available at Mary’s blog for those of you that would like to play. A dozen or so of us got together this past Sunday morning to chat and tackle our challenge. Each month has a different baking challenge and as a Daring Baker, we follow the recipe exactly and then post our results at the end of the month.

I assembled my ingredients and had to reproof my yeast. I bake with instant yeast and generally just mix the dry yeast into my ingredients when making my usual loaf bread, but flavor development demanded that the yeast proof.

The flour, water, yeast and salt were mixed together with the new spatula from my mother-in-law. I love that it has hearts on it.

The first rise.

After a few hours, the dough pretty much tripled in size and was ready for degassing.

Then back into the bowl for a longer, slower second rise. We went to grab a bite to eat and the dough was still rising when I checked on it later.

I’d never thought about having a pastry cloth for baking until reading through this recipe. Then I wondered why I didn’t have one. Wanting something sturdy and long lasting, I bought half a yard of canvas on sale at Hobby Lobby for $2. I stitched it up like a pillowcase, turned it inside out and added the zigzag stitching for pretty factor and to bind down the raw edges inside. A quick wash in hot water and ironing and it was just about ready to use. I rubbed a massive amount of flour into the cloth, ensuring that I had a surface to which dough would not stick. There’s a bit of decoration left to do, but the cloth is done and functional.

The dough is again degassed and divided into thirds for shaping.

I made batards with the plan to cut one into an epi just before baking.

After the final rise on the canvas, the dough is gently flipped onto a pizza peel and then slid onto a baking sheet. I hunted for unglazed quarry tiles to use instead, but had zero luck in finding any.

Voila!

It was a bit on the pale side, the crust was rock solid, the inside is a bit salty and I’m sure the epi could be classified as a dangerous weapon, but I’m still happy I took it on