Ipso Fatto

Baked Sunday Mornings: Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 19 May 2013 05:47:00 +0000

I've never had a cornmeal pancake before, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, Cornmeal Griddle Cakes. The recipe is simple enough: pour boiling water over cornmeal and stir until cooled to lukewarm; add brown sugar; alternately add in sifted dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda) and liquid ingredients (eggs and buttermilk); and stir in melted butter. I used a #20 scoop to drop the batter into a skillet and cook the griddle cakes in butter; they did not rise much and weren't fluffy at all, but they browned nicely.

As suggested in the cookbook, I did not serve these with maple syrup, but with butter, which was definitely the right choice (I think honey butter might be even better). Matt's description in the recipe headnote is spot on: "It's like a fresh, hot, buttery, flat, crunchy corn muffin." The wonderful browned surface of the griddle cake reminded me a lot of the grilled lemon pistachio cornmeal muffins from Baked Elements; my favorite part was the very crunchy edges.

If I was in the mood for pancakes, I would probably stick with the lacy panty cakes from Baked Elements; they are amazing and the best pancakes I've ever had. But these cornmeal griddle cakes were delicious and I truly enjoyed them. I never knew that a corn muffin -- even if it's really a pancake and not a muffin at all -- could taste this good!

Recipe: "Cornmeal Griddle Cakes" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito; recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Baked Sunday Mornings: Lacy Panty Cakes," February 17, 2013.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Lemon Pistachio Cornmeal Muffins," January 20, 2013.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Alfajores

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:39:00 +0000

I was thrilled about this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe for Alfajores. I love alfajores (who doesn't?), and my husband Tom -- who lived in Argentina as an exchange student -- was psyched about having a homemade alfajor.

Before making the cookie dough, I started the dulce de leche. The cookbook provides stovetop, microwave, and oven options. I decided to go with stovetop because we don't own a microwave, and because that's the method I've successfully used before for the Millionaire's Shortbread recipe in Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. (Tom is accustomed to seeing dulce the leche being made either by heating condensed milk in the can while submerged in water, or heating the milk over direct heat; he asked me why I wasn't adding marbles to make sure the mixture was stirred constantly.) After two and a half hours in a double boiler, my condensed milk had transformed into what was essentially caramel; it was thicker than store bought dulce de leche and also lighter in color.

While the dulce de leche was in the double boiler, I made the cookies. The method for mixing the dough is pretty standard: cream butter and sugar; add lemon zest followed by an egg and egg yolks; add rum and vanilla; and incorporate the dry sifted ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cornstach). You need to chill the dough for at least 90 minutes before rolling and cutting it. I found that the dough was still very sticky after chilling and I had to use a lot of flour to roll it out. I used a 2-inch round cutter and got 58 cookies.

After the cookies were cool, I tried one plain and didn't like it. The bright lemon flavor was terrific -- I only had Meyer lemons on hand, so I had used Meyer lemon zest in the batter. But the cookie was very dry, and I had a definite Marco Rubio moment after I took a bite; I desperately wanted a glass of water. I thought that filling the cookies with dulce de leche would solve this problem, but it didn't.

I was quite disappointed with the alfajores. I don't think it's possible to get the dark color and intense flavor that dulce de leche should have in a double boiler; next time I'll try direct heat. What I got was essentially a light caramel, and while it was perfect as the middle layer of Millionaire's Shortbread, it was not the right filling for an alfajor. And the dry, sandy texture of the cookie was not enjoyable. ¡Que lástima!

Recipe: "Alfajores" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Post: "Lifestyles of the Rich and Caramel-y: Millionaire's Shortbread," May 29, 2012.

Delayed Gratification Tastes So Good: Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:46:00 +0000

Last December when I was planning out the menu for our annual holiday party, one of the items that was on my list of possible desserts was Flo Braker's Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars. I own a couple of Braker's cookbooks and have a high opinion of her recipes; plus, the bars can be stored for a week, so they would have been a good choice for our holiday party because I have to make a lot of things in advance. The bars got dropped from the party menu, but I finally got around to making them last week.

The base layer is a shortbread made from butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, flour, and ground espresso beans (I used regular ground coffee). You press the dough into a pan, bake, and cut the shortbread into bars while it's still warm. After the cut bars are cool, you pour on a butterscotch glaze made from butter, brown sugar, espresso, corn syrup, and salt. The glaze set rather quickly, so I had to work quickly to spread it into a thin layer that covered all of the bars.

I am now kicking myself for waiting so long to make these bars, because they are delicious! The shortbread is rich and buttery with a beautiful coffee flavor that isn't harsh or overpowering in any way. The butterscotch glaze is deeply flavorful, sweet, and smooth; the combination of the shortbread and glaze is sublime.

My only complaint is that the glaze remained sticky even after I let it set, so I couldn't stack the bars for storage (I tried separating the bars with sheets of wax paper, but the glaze stuck to the paper). This minor detail means that these bars will probably never make an appearance at our holiday party, because there would be no convenient and efficient way to store a large quantity of them. But fortunately that's not an obstacle to savoring this scrumptious shortbread all year round, one delectable batch at a time!

Recipe: "Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars" from Flo Braker, available at foodandwine.com.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Hazelnut Spread (and Hazelnut-Nutella Sandwich Cookies)

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 05 May 2013 12:41:00 +0000

I. Love. Nutella. I love it so much that I have never been tempted to try to make my own -- after all, why should I when the store-bought version is already perfection? But I finally gave it a try, because this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, "Chocolate Hazelnut Spread," is a homemade version of Nutella.

I had some raw blanched hazelnuts, so I got to skip the step of peeling the nuts (but I still had to toast them). Once the hazelnuts are ready, the recipe only takes a few minutes of quality time with your food processor. First, you grind the hazelnuts until they liquefy. Then you add sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, salt, and hazelnut oil. The recipe says to use three tablespoons of hazelnut oil (remarkably, I happened to have hazelnut oil on hand), and add more if needed to thin out the consistency. I ended up adding another tablespoon of oil to get a creamy spread.

I tasted the homemade spread head-to-head against real Nutella and I was reminded of Jeffrey Steingarten's ketchup taste test described in The Man Who Ate Everything. Using Heinz as his touchstone, he tasted 35 ketchups (including homemade) and assigned them to one of four categories: Worse Than Heinz, Heinz, Better Than Heinz, and Not Really Ketchup. I was thinking that there were only going to be three options for my chocolate hazelnut spread: Worse Than Nutella, As Good As Nutella, and Better Than Nutella.

Texturewise, the homemade spread was slightly gritty because grinding the hazelnuts in the food processor did not eliminate all of the tiny pieces of nuts in the finished spread. I definitely give the texture advantage to real Nutella, which is velvety smooth and creamy, with a luscious mouthfeel. Tastewise, real Nutella is more chocolate-y and the homemade spread was more hazelnut-y, but the homemade version is delicious. While I would happily eat either, I have to give the edge to the store-bought version because of its smooth texture. (The fact that the homemade version requires refrigeration is also a bit of a bummer.)

I wasn't quite sure what we would do with a large batch of homemade chocolate hazelnut spread, especially since the recipe said it would only keep for a couple of weeks. I thought about using it in Bill Yosses' recipe for Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Nutella, but then thought it would be a waste to mix into a dough where the taste of the spread might be lost. So I thought about using it as the filling for some sandwich cookies. I found a Food and Wine recipe for "Hazelnut-Nutella Sandwich Cookies" that was perfect.

I generally avoid roll and cut cookies because I find them to be a huge pain. But I would make roll and cut cookies all day long if there were as easy as these. I was a little worried when the dough looked dry, but after a quick chill (only 15 minutes!) I was able to effortlessly roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment, using no flour at all. Re-rolling the scraps was also a breeze.

I used a 2-inch diameter round cutter and got 64 cookies from the recipe. The recipe says to bake the cookies for 20 minutes, but I pulled my cookies after 13 minutes, when they were already golden brown. The cookies spread a little during baking (to a 2.5-inch diameter), but maintained their round shape. The cookies were all uniform and matched up perfectly to form beautiful sandwiches.

The sandwich cookies are the bomb. The cookies on their own are unbelievably delicious -- they taste like a sweet, toasted, crispy hazelnut. When sandwiched around the chocolate hazelnut spread, the cookies were over the top. These are some of the most delicious cookies I have ever made, and they taste as good plain as they do with the filling. I plan to make these amazing hazelnut sandwich cookies often -- although I will be skipping the step of making my own spread and filling them with store-bought Nutella from now on!

Recipes:

"Chocolate Hazelnut Spread" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
"Hazelnut-Nutella Sandwich Cookies" from Food and Wine.

Previous Posts:

"The Baked Bake Along Begins: Nutella Scones," November 21, 2010.
"This Cookie Is a Contender: Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Nutella," September 13, 2010.

A Culinary Craft Project: Peanut Butter and Chocolate Galletas

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:35:00 +0000

While I consider myself to be a skilled home baker, I also recognize my baking weaknesses and do my best to work around them. For instance, pie crust is my Achilles heel and I avoid making pies with pastry crusts if at all possible. I also shy away from roll and cut cookies, or attempting anything beyond the most rudimentary types of cake and cookie decorations.

But recently I saw a recipe that made me want to run to the kitchen to make roll and cut cookies with elaborate decorations. Namely, the website for Sweet Paul Magazine featured a recipe for Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cookies from Sandra of La Receta de la Felicidad, and the cookies were so incredibly gorgeous that I knew I had to make them myself. Sandra used cookie stencils to create beautiful designs in chocolate, a technique I had never seen before. I went to Designer Stencils, purchased a few stencils, and was ready to give the recipe a try.

As fancy as the finished product looks, the cookie itself is straightforward. You make the batter from butter, peanut butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, flour, and salt; roll out the dough between sheets of parchment; freeze the rolled dough; cut the cookies; and bake. I used a 3.5-inch round cutter, and I got 18 cookies from the recipe. The cookies stayed nice and round during baking, although some of them developed air bubbles; I pressed these cookies down while they were still warm to flatten them out.

While the tops of the baked cookies were relatively flat, they were not perfectly even. I tried stenciling designs on the top side of the cookies, but the minor undulations in the surface made this quite difficult. So I did what Sandra did, and I turned the cookies upside down so that I could stencil the flatter bottom side. This definitely worked much better, although my stenciling work was no where near as neat as hers. The stenciling was also extremely time consuming, because I needed to wash and dry the stencil between each and every cookie.

The final step after doing all of the stenciling work was to dip the edges of the cookies in melted chocolate, followed by a coating of chopped peanuts. Even though I need a lot more practice with stencils, I thought the cookies looked impressive.

The cookies had a nice peanut butter flavor (which of course went very well with the chocolate), but they were a little dry. Overall, they tasted fine but were nothing remarkable. I have definitely made better peanut butter cookies. But I have never made cookies that looked like this. I was happy with the way these turned out, especially for my first attempt at using stencils. It definitely won't be my last!

Recipe: "Peanut Butter and Chocolate Galletas" from Sandra of La Receta de la Felicidad. Recipe available at Sweet Paul Magazine.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Triple Rum Black Pepper Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 05:19:00 +0000

I was definitely not optimistic about this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the "Triple Rum Black Pepper Cake." I don't drink alcohol at all, and rum in particular is a flavor I despise. But I'm committed to baking my way through the Baked cookbooks and following each recipe faithfully, so I embraced the opportunity to make this cake even though it contains copious amounts of rum in the cake batter, the syrup used to soak the cake, and the glaze on top.

You make the cake batter by beating room temperature butter and dark brown sugar until light and fluffy, adding eggs and an egg yolk, and then alternately adding the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, freshly ground black pepper, salt) and liquid ingredients (buttermilk, dark rum, vanilla). You pour the batter into a buttered and floured Bundt pan and bake. The raw batter was quite fragrant and the cake smelled amazing while baking.

The cake rose quite a bit in the pan and released cleanly with no problem after cooling for 30 minutes. When the cake was fully cooled, I put the cake back in the (washed and dried) Bundt pan, poked holes in the bottom of the cake with a skewer, and brushed on rum syrup. You make the syrup by heating butter, sugar, and water; boiling the mixture for three minutes; and adding dark rum. While the mixture was boiling on the stove, it started to make the popping noise that is the characteristic sound of butter browning. Before adding the rum, the mixture was golden but cloudy; it was thin and looked like it had bits of butter suspended in it. I was worried until I added the rum, at which point the mixture became a homogeneous dark amber color with a thicker syrup-like consistency. The recipe produced seven fluid ounces of rum syrup and I used about half.

After I let the syrup soak into the cake overnight, I turned the cake out of the pan and topped it with a buttered rum drizzle made from powdered sugar, melted butter, and dark rum. The recipe instructs you to whisk the ingredients together until glossy and almost pourable. I found that the mixture was quite thin to start with and thickened as I continued to whisk it. The glaze set enough to keep its shape but never became completely firm.

I couldn't believe how much I liked this cake. The texture was wonderful: dense, moist, and soft. The unusual flavor is difficult for me to describe -- mild, warm, sweet and caramel-y, with a bit of an edge from the black pepper. It reminded me of another cake I've had before, but I couldn't quite place it -- maybe the Burnt Sugar Bundt Cake with Caramel Rum Frosting or the Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze? The rum flavor was surprisingly subtle and I didn't mind it at all (I used Flor de Caña seven-year old Grand Reserve rum).

This cake was simply delicious, but above all, it was unexpected -- it made me a fan of rum cake!

Recipe: "Triple Rum Black Pepper Cake" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"The Caramel Is the Icing on the Icing: Burnt Sugar Bundt Cake with Caramel Rum Frosting," August 14, 2012.
"The Booze Plays Top Banana: Rum Cake," February 29, 2012.
"A Delicious Sugar and Frosting Bomb: Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze," November 19, 2009.

Butter at Its Best: Brown Butter Cookies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:05:00 +0000

I am always happy to see a dessert recipe featured in the Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS column, and it was no exception when I saw the recipe from "Brown Butter Cookies" from Bittersweet Treats earlier this month. Not only that, but this recipe is incredibly quick and easy; you can make the dough in a few minutes and you don't even need a mixer.

In short, all you need to do is brown butter and let it cool; mix the butter with dark brown sugar, salt, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla (the recipe says vanilla paste; I used the scraped seeds from one vanilla bean instead); and then stir in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder). That's it; you can use the dough immediately. I used a #24 scoop and got 16 cookies. The cookies baked up perfectly round, with a beautiful cracked top.

This cookie is everything it was promised to be: crunchy on the outside, and super chewy and sweet on the inside. Many tasters thought it was a molasses cookie because of the texture and all of the dark brown sugar. There was also a distinct nuttiness from the browned butter -- Tom said the taste reminded him of a graham cracker. I thought these were just fantastic, and the fact that they are so easy to bake makes them seem all that much sweeter!

Recipe: "Brown Butter Cookies" from Bittersweet Treats, recipe printed in the April 6, 2013 Los Angeles Times.

Previous Posts:

"Baked Sunday Mornings: Buttermilk Pie/Brown Butter Snickerdoodles," November 4, 2012.
"What's With All the Hype?: Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts," February 2, 2011.
"Fruit Fest, Phase III: Brown Butter Almond Torte," June 30, 2009.

Pure Almond Joy: Almond Cake with Kirsch

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:55:00 +0000

Even though I was very satisfied with the flourless almond cake I recently made during Passover, I was intrigued by one of the lukewarm recipe reviews that indicated a preference for a different recipe on epicurious.com, "Almond Cake with Kirsch." I can never get enough almond cake, so I decided to try this recipe as well.

The list of ingredients and the recipe directions are both short. Beat butter and sugar until creamy, then add almond paste, eggs, kirsch, almond extract, salt, flour, and baking powder. Pour into a pan and bake. I did have some difficulty incorporating the hard bits of almond paste (even though I used my 1.3 horsepower Kitchenaid stand mixer); in the future, I would grate the almond paste instead of just breaking it up into chunks.

When I checked the cake after 35 minutes of baking, the top was so dark that I thought it might be burned and I immediately pulled it out of the oven -- even though the cake seemed a bit soft when I pressed it in the center and I wasn't sure if it was cooked through. Thankfully, it was, and the interior was very dense, damp, and even slightly malleable. Eating this cake evoked the sensation of eating marzipan with regard to both flavor and texture. In other words, it was freakin' delicious.

I have to say that I did like this cake slightly better than the flourless almond cake I recently made. Although I appreciated the bright flavor from the orange and lemon rind in the flourless cake, I adore almonds and this cake delivers amazing pure almond flavor. The ultra-moist texture is also unusual and wonderfully decadent. I would happily eat either cake, but this one is really truly special.

Recipe: "Almond Cake with Kirsch" from epicurious.com.

Previous Post: "Passover Cake that Passes: Almond Cake," April 11, 2013.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Black and White Cookies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:57:00 +0000

Four years ago, I made a lot of black and white cookies for a party with a "Jewish New York" theme and I haven't revisited the cookie since. At least not until the black and white cookie recipe from Baked Explorations showed up this week on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule.

This recipe is pretty straightforward. You cream butter and sugar, mix in eggs and an egg yolk, alternately add dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt) and buttermilk, and then stir in vanilla and lemon zest. You scoop out the cookies (I used a #24 scoop and got 30 cookies per batch) and bake. Once the cookies are cool, you spread on black and white frosting. The white frosting contains powdered sugar, milk, cream, and vanilla; the black frosting is the white version plus some cocoa powder and water.

I thought that the plain, unfrosted cookies were quite delicious. These cookies are basically small cakes, and they were soft, moist, and had a lovely lemon flavor that reminded me a bit of a madeleine. The cookie itself was definitely tastier than the base cookie from the black and white recipe I made four years ago; that recipe has a vanilla cookie with lemon frosting, so the cookie on its own doesn't have the same bright lemon taste. Honestly, I would happily eat these cookies plain.

That said, the frosting adds a lot and I loved both the vanilla and chocolate halves. I had to thin out the chocolate frosting with a lot of water to get it to the proper consistency where it would dry smooth and glossy. The vanilla frosting appeared to harden as it dried, but the following morning when I packed the cookies between sheets of wax paper to take them to work, I discovered that it was not actually completely set. As a result, the white frosting got a little dented during transport, but the damage was fairly minor and cookies still looked okay. The chocolate frosting was firm and held up perfectly. In the future, I would thin out the vanilla frosting a little to make sure it fully sets, because not being able to stack cookies for storage is a huge pain.

I cannot say enough good things about these cookies. Their wonderfully soft and moist texture, combined with the lemon, vanilla, and chocolate flavors, makes for an absolutely delightful treat. And besides being delicious and beautiful, they're easy to make. You really couldn't ask for more!

Recipe: "Black and White Cookies" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Black and White Cookies: Ready for the Party!," February 6, 2009.
"Can Anyone Help Out an Asian Girl from Nebraska?," January 26, 2009.

A Soft Spot for Pastry: Raspberry Linzer Bars

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:48:00 +0000

A couple of months ago when Tom and I were in New York City, we made a wonderful find while wandering on 1st Avenue: the Dual Specialty Store. We went in the shop on a whim and came away with a sizable haul of spices and ethnic foods, all at very reasonable prices. I was particularly excited to get some blanched hazelnuts, given how much I detest the messy and time-consuming chore of removing hazelnut skins.

With blanched hazelnuts in hand, I turned a recipe that's been on my to-bake list for a while: John Barricelli's "Raspberry Linzer Bars" from The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook. These bars have a base and top crust of hazelnut pastry, sandwiched around a layer raspberry preserves.

You need to make the Linzer pastry a few hours in advance so that it can be sufficiently chilled before making the bars. You cream ground hazelnuts, room temperature butter, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy, add in eggs and vanilla, and then incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg) until absorbed. You divide the dough into two parts and chill them until firm. (Oddly enough, the recipe headnote mentions that at SoNo Baking Company, they save the sliced tops from chocolate cakes and incorporate them into the Linzer dough to add flavor and color. Who knew?)

Even though I chilled my dough for longer than the two hours specified in the recipe, it was still very sticky and difficult to handle. You are supposed to roll out one of the portions of dough between two pieces of parchment and then fit it into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch by 13-inch pan. But I had so much difficulty trying to transfer the dough that I simply rolled it out directly on a piece of parchment that I had cut and folded to fit, and I transferred the dough and paper together into the pan.

I spread raspberry preserves into the bottom crust and then set about rolling and cutting lattice strips to lay across the top. Again, the stickiness of the dough presented some difficulty. I ended up rolling the dough between two sheets of parchment and putting the rolled dough in the freezer for a few minutes before cutting it with a pastry wheel and arranging the strips on top of the jam. Finally, I brushed the pastry with beaten egg white and sprinkled on some coarse sugar before baking.

I was surprised at how much the dough expanded during baking. I had laid out the top strips of pastry with quite a bit of open space between them, but the dough spread to leave relatively little exposed jam. Also, I had crudely pinched together the ends of the lattice strips with the crust on the side of the bars, but the top and sides grew together into a pristine seamless whole.

The smooth flavor of the hazelnuts with the raspberry was quite delicious, but I was not happy with the texture of these bars. While the top crust was perfect, the bottom crust was soft. Not undercooked, but still soggy enough to make handling them a bit difficult. I tried putting the bars in the fridge to see if chilling would firm up the bottom, but it only helped a little. I think the bottom layer of a bar like this should be sturdy and firm, like pie crust. Despite the fact that these bars had great flavor, the soft crust and the hassle of struggling with the sticky Linzer dough are enough to dissuade me from ever making these again.

Recipe: "Raspberry Linzer Bars" from The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook, by John Barricelli.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Sunrise Key Lime Tarts and Brewer's Blondies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:09:00 +0000

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe is Sunrise Key Lime Tarts, individual key lime tartlets with a pretzel crust. I made these delicious tarts (pictured below) back in October and you can read my post about them here. I didn't have time to make the tarts again -- but since it is Baked Sunday Mornings, I'll write about another recipe from the Baked boys that I happened to make last week: the Brewer's Blondies from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

I'm generally not a big fan of blondies, but I thought this recipe looked interesting because it includes malt powder and malt balls. It's also one of the quicker and easier recipes from the Baked books. All you have to do is beat softened butter and dark brown sugar; add eggs and vanilla; incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, malted milk powder); and stir in chopped malt balls, chocolate chips, and walnuts. You spread the batter into a pan and bake. While the recipe says that these taste great warm, I let mine cool fully before cutting them.

The blondies had a nice golden color and were chock full of chocolate and nuts. They also had a nice moist, chewy texture. They tasted fine. But I found them disappointing; they didn't have much malt flavor. I had even purposely chopped my malt balls by hand instead of putting them in the food processor so that I could keep the pieces larger and hopefully get more crunch and malt ball flavor, but you couldn't even tell the bars had malt balls in them.

The recipe headnote says that at the bakery, Matt and Renato use brewer's malt (malted barley) from a local brewery to make the brewer's blondies, and that there is a vast difference between brewer's malt and malted milk powder. It does make me wonder what a real brewer's blondie tastes like, but the homemade version didn't do much for me.

Recipes:

"Sunrise Key Lime Tarts" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
"Brewer's Blondies" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here.

Previous Post: "Salty-Tart-Creamy-Crunchy-Sweet: Sunrise Key Lime Tarts," October 23, 2012.

Passover Cake that Passes: Almond Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:57:00 +0000

Even though I'm not Jewish and I don't observe Passover, I usually bring unleavened baked goods to the office during the holiday. This year, I decided to try a recipe for a Spanish Almond Cake that I found on epicurious.com.

The recipe is not difficult. You beat egg yolks and sugar until smooth and pale, add in lemon zest, orange zest, almond extract, and ground almonds, and then fold in egg whites that have been beaten to stiff peaks. I don't have the 11-inch springform pan specified in the recipe, but the headnote advises that the recipe works fine as a thicker cake, so I used a regular 9-inch pan instead. I lined the pan with parchment, buttered it, and dusted it with almond meal to keep the cake flour-free.

When the cake was cool, I tried to turn it out, but it was stuck. After a bit of a struggle and many efforts to loosen the cake around the edges, I was able to get it out in one piece; I think there would have less of a sticking issue if I had coated the buttered pan with flour instead of almond meal. As the recipe suggested, I dusted the cake with (cornstarch-free) powdered sugar before serving.

The cake was moist, with a very bright citrus-almond flavor. It had a tight crumb and the texture was indistinguishable from regular cake; the ground almonds were so fine that they didn't produce any crunch. (I think this was because I used Bob's Red Mill almond meal instead of grinding the almonds myself, as I can never get the almonds as fine as store-bought almond meal.)

I thought the cake was delicious, and tasters gave it enthusiastic reviews as well. But I knew it was truly a success when I found out that it was passing as a non-Passover cake. One of my colleagues who was observing Passover had a piece and then felt terrible about it afterwards. Apparently she had a momentary lapse and forgot it was Passover when she ate the cake. Of course, the funny part is that she only felt badly because she thought it was a regular cake. It had never crossed her mind -- and she was truly surprised when I told her -- that it was a Passover cake. I think that makes this recipe an unqualified success.

Recipe: "Almond Cake (Tarta de Santiago)" from Food of Spain by Claudia Roden, recipe available here on epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

"Who Knew Clouds Are So Chewy?: Almond Cloud Cookies," April 19, 2012.
"A Cloud of Coffee Cream on a Slice of Heaven: Sybil's Pecan Torte with Coffee Cream," April 17, 2012.
"A Culinary Misdemeanor?: Flourless Fudge Cookies," April 14, 2012.
"This Cake Is All Wet: Clementine Cake," April 22, 2011.
"Reveling in No Leavening: Flourless Chocolate Cake with Coffee Liqueur," April 19, 2011.
"Bake One for the Gipper this Passover," March 30, 2010.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Aunt Sassy Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:03:00 +0000

I made this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the Aunt Sassy Cake, back in January. I loved the sweet pistachio cake with decadent honey-vanilla buttercream. After I blogged about the cake, my cousin Cindy sent me an email telling me she thought the cake looked delicious. I knew the cake would be coming up on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule, but I couldn't believe it when I saw the date -- today is Cindy's birthday. So I said I would happily make the cake again for her birthday, and I asked her to take a few pictures so that I could use them in this post.

You can read my previous post about this cake here. Happy Birthday, Cindy! I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoyed the cake!

Recipe: "Aunt Sassy Cake" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Post: "Sweet Pistachio Perfection: Aunt Sassy Cake," January 29, 2013.

A Slice That's So Nice: Chocolate-Caramel Slice

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 03:58:00 +0000

I came across a Bon Appétit recipe for Chocolate-Caramel Slice when I needed a dessert for an office party and I put the phrase "chocolate caramel" into the epicurious.com recipe search engine. I only recently became familiar with Australia/New Zealand concept of dessert slices, after making a wonderful ginger slice recipe featured on David Lebovitz's blog. How could I resist the idea of a slice with caramel, chocolate ganache, and a sprinkling of salt?

I did not have the 11-inch by 7-inch pan specified in the recipe, so I decided to make a double batch in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, even though I knew that my all of my layers would be about 30 percent thicker as a result.

You make the crust in the food processor from flour, brown sugar, cornstarch, salt, chilled butter, ice water, and an egg yolk. The resulting dough was so stiff that it was difficult for me to press it evenly into the bottom of a pan; I eventually resorted to getting out my rolling pin for an assist. Since I always line my pans with parchment, I rolled out the crust on top of a piece of parchment I had already folded to fit inside the pan, and then just dropped the parchment with the dough still on it into the pan. I docked the crust, baked it until golden, and cooled it completely.

The caramel layer is a mixture of condensed milk, brown sugar, butter, golden syrup, and vanilla cooked to 225 degrees. After pouring the caramel over the crust and letting it set at room temperature for about 15 minutes, you spread on some chocolate ganache (chocolate and heavy cream), sprinkle on some coarse salt, and chill the pan to allow the bars to firm up. I put the pan in the refrigerator overnight.

I was able to cut the bars easily and cleanly the following morning. It was only after I saw the cut slices that I realized how similar the base + caramel + chocolate combination was to the Millionaire's Shortbread from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking -- although the shortbread had a crumbly crust prone to breaking off when I cut the bars, while the crust of the chocolate-caramel slices stayed intact.

The crust layer was sturdy but tender, and it had a strong brown sugar flavor. The caramel layer held its shape, but it was quite soft and had just a little bit of chew. The thin chocolate layer was mostly overshadowed by the caramel, but the overall flavor of the bars was wonderful and addictive. The major difference between these slices and the millionaire's shortbread is that the shortbread had a very crunchy base layer, so that eating it evoked the sensation of eating a Twix bar. But I loved both recipes and I would have to taste them side by side to be able to pick a favorite.

Recipe: "Chocolate-Caramel Slice" from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

"From the Land Down Under: Ginger Crunch," January 22, 2013
"Lifestyles of the Rich and Caramel-y: Millionaire's Shortbread," May 29, 2012.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Cheddar Corn Soufflé

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 05:07:00 +0000

I'm not sure if I've ever come across a dish that can be served as a dessert, appetizer, side, and main course. But that's exactly how Matt and Renato describe this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the Cheddar Corn Soufflé. I decided to offer it as a dinner side; I thought it would be a nice accompaniment to to Nueske's ham that Tom was serving as the main course.

This recipe is not difficult, but it does require dirtying quite a few pans and bowls. To make the soufflé base, you make a roux of butter and flour, whisk in warm milk and cook until thickened, add in spices (salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne), and incorporate egg yolks. Then you fold in egg whites that have been beaten with cream of tartar to stiff peaks, shredded cheddar cheese, and corn. You pour the batter into a 1.5-quart soufflé dish that has been buttered and coated with shredded Parmesan cheese (we didn't have any, so I used Pecorino Romano).

The recipe says that you should preheat the oven to 400 degrees and turn it down to 375 degrees before baking the soufflé for 30-35 minutes. I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, but I got a little distracted when all of our dinner guests arrived as I was finishing up the batter. I forgot to turn the oven down to 375 and I baked the soufflé at 400 by mistake. As a result, when I checked the soufflé at 30 minutes, the top was very dark brown.

The soufflé rose quite a bit above the rim of the dish; before baking the batter was right beneath the wide band at the rim. I had to quickly snap the photo above after I took the soufflé out of the oven because within a few minutes, it had deflated significantly (although it remained above the rim of the dish).

I have made a lot of sweet soufflés, but this was my first savory version. I was surprised at how light and airy it was, while still being very flavorful from the cheese (I used our favorite cheddar, English Seaside) and corn. My only complaint is that the soufflé was a touch salty, although that often happens when you make a dish containing a lot of cheese. The sides and bottom of the soufflé had a very dark and firm crust that came out cleanly from the dish and reminded me of the outside of a popover; I'm not sure if this prominent crust was the result of baking the soufflé at the wrong temperature, but I thought it was tasty and it made the soufflé easy to scoop and serve.

I would definitely make this dish again, although the à la minute aspect of it makes the timing a bit tricky (as opposed to a sweet soufflé, because I usually have a bit more leeway to decide when I want to serve dessert, and am unlikely to have anything else competing for oven space after dinner is served). I didn't calculate the timing correctly and the soufflé finished baking just a few minutes after I had served the first course, so it had to sit around for a while. Nonetheless, it was very good even by the time we got around to eating it. That said, I think it's odd that Matt and Renato suggested serving this as a dessert; even though I love having a cheese course after dinner, there is nothing about this very savory dish that reads like dessert to me.

Recipe: "Cheddar Corn Soufflé" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Peanut Butter Fondue

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 05:08:00 +0000

When I saw this week's recipe for Baked Sunday Mornings -- Chocolate Peanut Butter Fondue -- I could think of only one thing. The TV series Glee. Specifically, Brittany's internet show "Fondue for Two," where she dishes gossip and shares fondue with guests and her cat Lord Tubbington. The show has the memorable opening lyrics: "Fondue for two! Fondue for two! That's some hot dish! Fondue for two!"

As it turns out, I used the recipe to have "Fondue for six!" We don't own a fondue pot, but our friends Jim and Colleen do, and they were kind enough to host us for dinner and fondue. While the cookbook says that Matt and Renato's favorite fondue dipper is a Baked brownie, I wanted to go with something a bit lighter, so I made angel food cake, caramel popcorn balls, and vanilla marshmallows.

In contrast to the amount of time it took to make the cake, popcorn balls, and marshmallows (the first two of which are pictured above), the fondue was incredibly quick and easy. You simply melt milk chocolate and mix in smooth peanut butter and heavy cream. I had to add a little extra cream in order to achieve a nice smooth consistency.

There's not much to say about this recipe. The fondue tastes like exactly what you would expect: peanut butter and chocolate. The only problem we encountered was that the angel food cake was not sturdy enough for dipping without breaking into pieces. Nonetheless, it was delicious with the fondue, as were the marshmallows and popcorn balls.

I didn't take any pictures of the fondue itself, because I didn't think that a pot of brown fondue would look that interesting. Instead, above are pictures of a marshmallow and popcorn ball after dipping. Tom pointed out that the dipped popcorn ball looks like an evil face with a toupee (can you make out the large angry eyes and the tiny lopsided mouth?).

Although I'm not big on fondue (counting this experience, I've had fondue exactly twice in my life; both times were at Jim and Colleen's house), I would recommend this recipe and I would make it again. Who can resist the classic combination of peanut butter and chocolate? And depending on your choice of dippers, the prep time can be cut down to practically zero (for instance, you could use pretzel rods and whole strawberries). Fondue is just fun. Even if I might get nightmares about that evil popcorn ball.

Recipe: "Chocolate Peanut Butter Fondue" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Baking Miracles Come In Different Flavors: Magic Custard Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 03:58:00 +0000

I'm one of the holdouts who has avoided joining Pinterest. But apparently this is causing me to miss out on some important stuff, like the fact that the Internets have been abuzz with excitement about a cake recipe that originated from a Spanish blogger. This recipe creates a batter that magically separates out into distinct layers during baking, to create both custard and cake. I stumbled onto the recipe after Seattle Pastry Girl wrote about it, and I knew that I had to try it. I used an adaption of the original recipe from White on Rice Couple.

Making this cake is not difficult, but the effort will generate a sinkful of dirty pans and mixing bowls. You beat egg yolks with powdered sugar until light, mix in cooled melted butter and water, incorporate flour followed by lukewarm milk and vanilla, and then fold in egg whites that have been beaten to stiff peaks (I added a little cream of tartar to the egg whites to stabilize them). The resulting batter is very runny, with some egg white foam floating on top. You pour the batter into a pan and bake (no bain-marie needed!).

I made a double batch and baked the cake in a 9-inch by 13-inch parchment-lined pan. The cake rose and cracked during baking, but settled upon cooling. I chilled the cake to make sure the custard was fully set (the cake was still quite jiggly when warm), and then I pulled the cake out of the pan and cut it. It cut easily and cleanly, and the bottom layer of custard held its shape without any problem. I sprinkled on some powdered sugar before serving to cover any imperfections in the top surface.

I thought this cake was great. The bottom custard layer was completely smooth and silky and it tasted very milky. The top cake layer was a soft and springy sponge. Overall, the custard cake was not very sweet and the flavor reminded me of the soft dough inside a cream puff. Tasters were very enthusiastic. Tom loved the cake but thought that it should be served with berries and/or whipped cream.

I was a little disappointed that the cake layer turned out so short (if you search the Internets for pictures of this cake, the ratio of custard to cake varies wildly from baker to baker). I had been in a rush when I made the cake and I didn't let my eggs come up to room temperature before beating the egg whites. I wanted to try making the cake again with room temperature eggs and I thought that I might as well try the chocolate variation of the recipe.

For the chocolate magic custard cake, I warmed the eggs in tap water before separating them and beating the egg whites. The recipe is basically the same as the original version, except that it includes cocoa powder, calls for more milk and powdered sugar, and uses brewed coffee (I used espresso) instead of water. I again made a double batch and baked it in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan.

I definitely ended up with more batter when I made the chocolate version; it almost came up to the top of the pan. Everything was taller in the chocolate magic custard cake: the cake layer, the custard layer, and the overall height. Both the vanilla and chocolate cakes had a visible ombré effect in the custard layer, with color getting darker towards the bottom, and this was more pronounced in the chocolate version than in the original. I was surprised how prominent the coffee was in the chocolate cake given the relatively small amount of espresso I added. Overall, the chocolate cake was deeply chocolatey, with an intense bittersweet flavor. I thought it was terrific.

In both versions of the cake, the light sponge cake is mostly overshadowed by the luscious custard layer. But I don't really see anything wrong with that. I don't know if I can pick a favorite between the two; they are both magically delicious!

Recipes: "Magic Custard Cake" and "Chocolate Magic Custard Cake" from White on Rice Couple (adapted from "Tarta Magica" by Mabel Mendez).

Baked Sunday Mornings: Lemon Shaker Pie

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:54:00 +0000

I was ready to thrown in the towel on pies from Baked. Every pie I've made from a Baked recipe (Sawdust Pie, Peaches and Dream Pie, Buttermilk Pie, Blackberry Pie) had the exact same problem -- an undercooked bottom crust. And mind you, other bakers in Baked Sunday Mornings didn't have the same problem; this particular idiosyncratic and systematic failure seemed to be mine alone. But after my most recent disastrous pie, I received some really good suggestions about how to address the soggy crust problem. So I figured that this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the Lemon Shaker Pie, was my chance for redemption.

I had never heard of Lemon Shaker Pie, but I recently made an upside-down cake using whole lemons that was quite delicious, so I was excited about using whole lemons in this pie. You have to start this pie a few days in advance, in order to have enough time to make the sugared lemons. Basically, you freeze lemons, slice them very thin (I used my very sharp Global knife instead of a mandoline), and macerate them in sugar for two days. Most of the sugar dissolves into a clear syrup, although there were still some undissolved grains in the mixture.

To make the pie filling, the recipe instructs you to separate the lemons from the lemon sugar, and to spread the lemons out over the bottom crust. (The crust for this pie is the exact same "Classic Pie Dough" recipe that I've used for all of the Baked pies. While it's always given me a soggy bottom crust, the dough is very easy to handle and it rolls out effortlessly.) Then you're supposed to pour over a mixture of the lemon sugar, eggs, flour, cornstarch, salt, and melted butter.

I diverged from the recipe a bit. First, over two days of macerating and occasional stirring, not only did most of the sugar dissolve into a syrup, but the lemons had taken a beating; some of the peels had become separated from the flesh. So I decided not to take the laborious step of removing the lemons from the sugar/syrup. Second, I had perused some other Shaker lemon pie recipes online, and I noticed that several of the commenters to this Saveur recipe referenced the idea of running the macerated lemons through a blender or food processor to reduce the bitterness of the pie filling and avoid a stringy texture. That sounded like a great idea, so I used an immersion blender to smooth out the macerated lemon mixture. Third, given that I'm paranoid about having a soggy bottom crust, I put the macerated lemon mixture in a fine-mesh sieve to drain out some of the sugar syrup before mixing it with the eggs and other ingredients, so that the finished filling would be less liquid-y.

I poured the filling into the bottom crust, added the top crust, and chilled the pie for a few hours before baking (the recipe says to chill for one hour, but something came up and I wasn't able to get to it right away). I cut a few vents, brushed the top crust with egg wash, and sprinkled on some coarse sugar. This recipe has you start baking the pie at a very hot temperature (425 degrees) for 20 minutes, and then lower the temperature to 350 degrees for the remainder of the baking time; I know that this technique is supposed to help ensure that the bottom crust is thoroughly cooked.

But I wasn't taking any chances on a soggy crust. I also used a Pyrex pie pan (instead of my usuual metal pie pans), and I preheated the oven for about an hour with my FibraMent baking stone in it. The FibraMent lives on the bottom rack of the oven all of the time, but I wanted to make sure that the stone was thoroughly hot, and then I placed the pie pan on top of the stone for the duration of baking. I was a bit concerned about the Pyrex pan suffering from thermal shock if I transferred it directly from the refrigerator onto a hot stone, so I did place the pie pan on a thin baking sheet before I placed it into the stone. But I figured that I had this soggy crust problem conquered.

So after all of my efforts, what did I get? I got a beautiful pie, with a nicely browned top crust, and a completely uncooked bottom crust. Sigh. I am apparently completely incapable of getting these pies to come out correctly.

That said, after I cooled the pie and chilled it, I was still eager to cut into it to see how the filling came out. The filling was firm and held its shape. It's difficult to describe -- it was not custardy, because it had lots of texture from the blended lemon peel. It was quite delicious. I was surprised that it was not bitter at all, but sweetly lemony and mild, with some tartness from the lemon peel. And the top pie crust that was cooked through was also very good, especially with the nice crunchy layer of coarse sugar.

Because the filling was cohesive, it was easy enough to simply slice off the bottom crust from a piece of a pie and enjoy the remainder. Given my horrible track record with pies, I am happy to see that this is the only pie recipe in Baked Elements -- but this is one pie that I might actually make again. The unusual and delightful filling is worth the soggy crust heartache. And hopefully one of these days I will actually get the crust right!

Recipe: "Lemon Shaker Pie" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"If Life Hands You Lemons, Make Cake: Lemon Upside-Down Cake," February 5, 2013.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Sawdust Pie," August 12, 2012.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Peaches and Dream Pie," July 17, 2011.
"Just Half a Slice, Please... The Top Half!: Buttermilk Pie," July 12, 2011.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Blackberry Pie," July 3, 2011.

It's Not Easy Being Green: Pistachio Shortbread

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 03:58:00 +0000

In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, I decided to make a recipe that I have consciously avoided in the past: King Arthur Flour's green Pistachio Shortbread. The reason I have passed on the recipe previously is that it calls for a box of Jell-O pistachio pudding mix. Generally, I'm don't make recipes that require prepared ingredients. But I can't deny that I was a huge fan of Jell-O pudding as a kid, especially the pistachio flavor; I loved the minty green color and the small bits of crunchy pistachios.

The shortbread recipe has received rave reviews on the King Arthur Flour website and I didn't have any other green recipe ideas immediately at hand, so I thought I might as well give it a try.

You can make the shortbread dough in a few minutes. You simply mix together butter, pistachio pudding mix, sugar, and salt, and then beat in flour until the mixture comes together. The recipe lists pistachio flavor as an optional ingredient and I didn't have any, so I used a half teaspoon of almond extract instead. (The flavor of almonds is quite similar to pistachios, and in fact, as I read the Jell-O pudding box closely, I noticed that almonds are the third listed ingredient.)

The recipe is written to be made in two 8-inch or 9-inch diameter round pans. I calculated that a single 13-inch by 9-inch rectangular was roughly equivalent, so that's what I used. I pressed the dough into the pan, docked it, and then pressed in chopped toasted salted pistachios. The recipe instructs you to bake the shortbread for 35-40 minutes, or until deep golden brown around the edges. My edges took a long time to brown and I ended up baking the shortbread for 50 minutes.

After I took the pan out of the oven, I immediately pulled out the shortbread (I had lined the pan with parchment, so this was easy) and transferred it to a cutting board. The shortbread was quite soft, and it flexed easily without cracking or breaking. I cut it into 3-inch by 1-inch strips and put them on a wire rack to cool. The color of the baked cookies was green, but considerably more subdued than the bright pastel green color of the raw dough. Also, since the tops of the cookies were completely covered with chopped pistachios, it was difficult to see the green color at all.

The cooled cookies were quite crisp, and nice and buttery. It's probably been about 30 years since I actually tasted Jell-O pistachio pudding, but from what I recall, these cookies taste almost exactly like the pudding -- except with a nice salty crunch from the pistachios on top. The flavor was quite sweet and slightly artificial -- but like I said, they tasted just like the (artificially flavored) pudding. In the future, I would probably use raw pistachios instead of toasted ones, because the pistachios on top got quite dark during baking. But I loved the salty-sweet flavor of the cookie due to the salted nuts.

I'm not sure if this recipe merits a five-star rating, but it's easy and tasty and I would make it again. If you like Jell-O pistachio pudding, you'll love these.

Recipe: "Pistachio Shortbread" from King Arthur Flour.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Malted Milk Sandwich Cookies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 05:32:00 +0000

I had every intention of making the Malted Milk Sandwich Cookies from Baked Explorations for this week's Baked Sunday Mornings bakealong, but I have a list of excuses for not being able to get to the recipe... being out of the country for two weeks; a delayed return home because of the Snowquester; a bad cold. But I did make these cookies two years ago (at the same time I made the Salt-n-Pepper Sandwich Cookies; the two cookies are pictured together, below), so I will simply direct folks back to my previous post to read about the cookies.

Recipe: "Malted Milk Sandwich Cookies" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Baking the Baked Cover Recipe: Malted Milk Sandwich Cookies," March 8, 2011.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Salt-n-Pepper Sandwich Cookies," March 13, 2011.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Honey Banana Poppy Seed Bread

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 05:05:00 +0000

It's always nice to get a bit of a breather on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule, and this week's recipe -- Honey Banana Poppy Seed Bread -- definitely qualifies. All you need is two bowls and about 5 minutes to mix this quickbread batter. It's as simple as combining all of the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, salt), folding in the wet ingredients (mashed bananas, vegetable oil, milk, honey, eggs), and stirring in poppy seeds.

I baked my bread in a Williams-Sonoma loaf pan that is slightly larger than what the recipe prescribes (the pan is 10 inches long), so my pan was not very full and the bread was done baking in 55 minutes, a bit less time than what the recipe specifies. The bread developed a beautiful dark brown crust with an attractive crack down the center.

This bread was good, but I didn't like it quite as much as the banana bread from Flour bakery. While the loaf was moist, it was not as tender as the Flour recipe. I also felt that it was lacking in flavor overall (I couldn't really detect the honey) and not sufficiently banana-y. I did appreciate the poppy seed texture, although I made another loaf with half a cup of chopped toasted pecans instead of poppy seeds and I can't decide which version was better.

I wrapped the cooled loaves in wax paper and stored them in Ziploc bags, and I thought that the bread tasted better on day two and day three -- the banana flavor seemed to become more pronounced with time. While this bread didn't bowl me over, I'm glad that I've been introduced to the combination of banana and poppy seed, which is unusual and tasty!

Recipe: "Honey Banana Poppy Seed Bread" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Post: "Irene's Aftermath: Flour's Famous Banana Bread," September 13, 2011.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Budino

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 05:05:00 +0000

I grew up on Jell-O pudding. I enjoyed it in every form: cook and serve, instant, pre-packaged pudding cups, frozen pudding pops, and even the unnatural green pistachio variety with chopped nuts. It was only as an adult that I learned how easy it is to make your own pudding without a powdered mix. This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, "Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Budino," is a throwback to childhood -- layers of vanilla bean and milk chocolate pudding topped off with whipped cream.

You make the base pudding mixture by cooking sugar, cornstarch, salt, and whole milk until the mixture comes to a boil; using some of the hot liquid to temper a mixture of eggs, egg yolks, and cream; and adding the egg mixture back into the milk mixture and cooking until thickened. You divide the pudding in half, adding one part to some melted milk chocolate and the other part to a mixture of bourbon and vanilla bean seeds. You finish both puddings with a little butter. I put the vanilla pudding through a sieve to remove any bits of vanilla pod (while retaining all of the fine vanilla seeds, as you can see in the photo below).

I wanted smaller serving sizes, so used five-ounce plastic cups to assemble my budinos and I was able to get twelve servings from the recipe. I spooned in some vanilla pudding, chilled the cups briefly, spooned on chocolate pudding, pressed plastic wrap against the top to prevent a skin from forming, chilled the cups overnight, and then garnished the pudding with some lightly sweetened whipped cream before serving.

I loved this pudding. It was creamy, sweet, and lusciously smooth, and it delivered pure, clean, vanilla and milk chocolate flavors. The whipped cream was a delightful accompaniment. This dessert is simple and straightforward, but it delivers all the delight of my childhood pudding memories -- and then some!

Recipe: "Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Budino" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Baked Sunday Mornings: Malted Milk Chocolate Pots de Crème," January 6, 2013.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Aunt Sabra King's Pudding Bars," June 17, 2012.
"DamGood Indeed: Banana Pudding with Vanilla Wafer Crumble," February 23, 2012.

Chew on This!: Butter Mochi

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:18:00 +0000

I've always thought it's interesting how much Asians love chewy foods. Chewy texture is a treasured characteristic in many foods considered to be delicacies, such as shark fin, abalone, and bird's nest. But it's also the reason that someone in Taiwan thought it was a good idea to put tapioca balls into drinks and invented bubble tea. One of my favorite Asian chewy foods is mochi, a confection made from sweet rice flour. My grandmother made her own traditional mochi pastries with a sweet red bean filling, but I love mochi in any form -- frozen (wrapped around ice cream), hot (in sweet red bean dessert soup), or deep fried (in sesame balls)... I cannot get enough of the stuff.

I had never made my own mochi, however. I remember watching my grandmother make it when I was little and the process looked a bit painful -- she would make the mochi mixture, steam it in the rice cooker, and then pull it out and shape it around balls of red bean filling with her bare hands while it was still steaming hot. I found a much easier way to make mochi earlier this month when I was looking for a recipe for the lunar new year and I came across a recipe for "Baked Chinese New Year Cake" on chow.com.

Apparently this dessert is quite popular in Hawaii and is known as "Butter Mochi" there. It's quite easy to make. You lightly beat eggs, dump in the rest of the ingredients (sweet rice flour, whole milk, sugar, melted butter, coconut extract, and salt), and whisk until smooth. (I didn't have coconut extract, so I used a small amount of LorAnn coconut flavoring instead.) Then you pour the batter into a pan and bake, sprinkling on toasted coconut halfway through the baking time.

I let the mochi cool and also chilled the pan before cutting. The mochi were incredibly dense and springy, but they cut cleanly and easily. I thought they were amazing. The texture was so wonderfully chewy -- probably more so than any other mochi I've ever had in any other form -- and the coconut on top was flavorful and had a nice crunchy texture. I was afraid that mochi might be an acquired taste, but these received enthusiastic reviews from mochi aficionados as well from many tasters who had never eaten (or even heard of) mochi before. The flavor is a bit difficult to describe -- sweet, light, slightly coconut.

I made these bars twice, once with toasted coconut and once with untoasted coconut (the picture above is from the batch with the toasted coconut, which got darker than I would have liked during baking). It turns out there's no need to go to the time or trouble of toasting the coconut separately first, because it toasts sufficiently during baking.

The mochi are delicious, to be sure, but I think it is the superchewy texture that makes them so satisfying, not to mention fun. To me, eating one of these mochi is pure joy.

Recipe: "Baked Chinese New Year Cake" from chow.com.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Lacy Panty Cakes

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 05:05:00 +0000

I have been intrigued by the recipe for "Lacy Panty Cakes" ever since I got a copy of Baked Elements -- the whimsical name captured my imagination. Apparently the name captivated Renato Poliafito as well, because the recipe became "imprinted, ever so delicately, phantomlike, on his subconscious" after he found the original version in a 1950s cookbook. Matt and Renato say the recipe is supposed to produce a pancake-like treat that texturally resembles the lace in lace panties, but the idea was still difficult for me to conceptualize.

The recipe appears in the "Booze" chapter of the book because the Baked boys adapted the recipe by adding whiskey to the batter and a whiskey sauce accompaniment. The sauce is quite easy -- you cook brown sugar and butter on the stove until the sugar is dissolved, add whiskey and cook, and add cream and cook some more. The sauce bubbled furiously after I added the whiskey, which I thought was a good thing -- I am not a fan of booze in general, and I was hoping that all of the alcohol would be cooked off. It was. The resulting sauce was an intense smokey and complex caramel that didn't taste alcoholic at all.

The batter for the lacy panty cakes is a snap to make. You sift together flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, stir in graham cracker crumbs, and incorporate beaten eggs, sour cream, and whiskey. You drop the batter (I used a #20 scoop) into a hot pan with melted butter and cook on both sides. It took me a bit of experimenting to find the right cooking time and temperature to get nice looking pancakes. I found that cooking them slower at a lower heat was the way to go. While this definitely took a bit more time, I kept the finished pancakes warm in the oven as I went along, the they held up beautifully until I was able to cook the entire batch.

I can see where the "lacy panty" name comes from, because the surface of the pancakes browned in a weblike pattern that resembled lace. I served the pancakes dusted with powdered sugar and drizzled with the whiskey sauce, along with some bananas and blueberries.

The lacy panty cakes were moist and tender and they are probably the most delicious pancakes I've ever had. The graham cracker crumbs added a terrific depth of flavor, although not much in the way of texture; I made my crumbs in the food processor, so they were extremely fine. The lacy browned parts of the pancakes -- as well as the edges -- were wonderfully crisp and almost caramelized. The whiskey sauce is the bomb, and I could not get enough of it with the pancakes (I also took Matt and Renato's suggestion to eat some of the leftover sauce with ice cream, and that was incredibly delicious as well). I couldn't taste any whiskey in the pancakes, which was a plus in my book.

I hardly ever make pancakes or order them in a restaurant, because I've always thought of them as pretty boring -- like a waffle, but without the nice crisp crust. I never knew that pancakes could be this good. Lacy Panty Cakes are truly a revelation!

Recipe: "Lacy Panty Cakes" from Baked Elements: Our Top 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Got Pears to Spare?: Pear Spice Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:31:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I decided to make the Pear Spice Cake from Euro Pane Bakery in Pasadena, after the recipe made the Los Angeles' Times list of top ten recipes from 2012. I had to scratch a previous planned attempt, but I finally got my act together and assembled the seven ripe Anjou pears required for the cake.

While peeling, coring, and dicing seven pears requires a bit of time, once you have the pears ready, you can mix the batter in about two minutes. You simply beat together eggs and sugar, add in oil, incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon), and fold in the pears and chopped walnuts. The resulting mixture was mostly pears and walnuts held together with only a little bit of batter; when I poured it into a parchment-lined pan, a significant portion of the pears were not submerged in batter.

During baking, the batter rose quite a bit to cover all of the fruit, and a firm and thick crust formed on top. I had to use a serrated knife to cut the cake so that I could gently saw through the top crust without crumbling it. All of the fruit ended up on the bottom half of the cake; I don't see how I could have avoided this, given that the batter didn't cover all of the pears to begin with (and this was quite different from the slice of cake in the photo accompanying the recipe, which has pears evenly distributed throughout, including at the very top of the cake).

This cake was very moist, especially because of all of the fruit. I particularly liked the hearty texture and flavor of the top crust. As I was eating the cake, I kept thinking that the flavor was very familiar, and I finally put my finger on it -- to me, this tasted almost exactly like zucchini bread, except with pears. I like zucchini bread and I liked this cake, but I have to say it did not meet my high expectations, given its inclusion on last year's top ten list. In fact, I actually prefer one of the recipes that didn't make the list and was only a "runner-up" -- House of Bread's Berry Bars -- but this pear cake is a homey, tasty snack.

Recipe: "Euro Pane's Pear Spice Cake," printed in the October 27, 2012 Los Angeles Times.

Previous Posts:

"A Recipe That's a Real Bonus: House of Bread's Berry Bars," January 12, 2013.
"You Get Out Exactly What You Put In: Pear and Dried Cherry Frangipane Cake," January 18, 2013.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Whiskey Pear Tart," September 23, 2012.