What’s a mud turtle pie, aside from this week’s recipe from Rose’s Alpha Bakers? It’s a pecan pie, with chocolate on top. Think a turtle candy, but the caramel’s a little less chewy. I went with the milk chocolate ganache, rather than the dark option. And I made the ganache long before making any of the rest of the pie. I also made 2 pies, since, as someone pointed out recently, it’s really not that much more work than one pie. I had some pie dough in the freezer, so I just doubled the other parts of the recipe, so that I could leave one at home for Jay while I’m away visiting family this week, and take one into work, sort of in part as a thank you for my co-worker bringing in a rhubarb custard pie on Friday.
Category: Baking
Honey Cake
Happy Rosh Hashanah! Apologies that I’m a little late on that wish. 🙂 I thought that this week’s scheduled recipe from the “Rose’s Alpha Bakers” project would be a good one to give to Gilad for this month’s baked treat from last year’s Movember charity auction. I sent him a quick note, and asked how he would feel about honey cake. The answer was “Sounds good. Just in time for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) ;)” Perfect, I figure. After a little help from Evil Cake Lady, I figured out that the only thing I didn’t have on hand was oranges for juicing, so I picked those up on the way home after the gym on Thursday night, then baked this on Friday morning. This is a super quick and easy recipe, and it smelled amazing.
Pepparkakors
This week, the Baking Bible bake-through project is working on something that sounds (to me) Dutch, but tastes like a gingersnap. It’s definitely not pepernoten. It’s definitely not speculaas. It’s definitely not gingerbread. Â Quite gingery, with the other spices fading a bit into the background as supporting actors.
Luscious Apple Pie & Basic Hearth Bread
What was it I was supposed to be blogging about again? Was it one of the two pecan pies I made yesterday (one of which is for a friend’s son’s birthday, and the other because Jay wanted it)?
The grape pie I made on Sunday?
No, wait, it was the apple pie that I made on Saturday, and the “basic hearth bread” that I started on Friday and finished on Saturday.
Flaky Cream Cheese Scones
I loaded up this page to write up the post, then went to my google photos account to download my pictures, because my computer is refusing to recognize that I’ve plugged in my phone tonight. Then Google photos asked me if I wanted it to show me memories from this week in past years, and I clicked on it, and that was a mistake, because now I’m looking at pictures of Grandpa, who passed away two years ago last Thursday.
Um. Scones. I made them. They were, in fact, quick and easy. I skipped the dried fruit (cranberries or blueberries) because I was feeling lazy and didn’t have any on hand. There were 8 of them. Sometime between Friday’s lunch and Monday morning’s breakfast, they all disappeared. I can’t fathom where they might have gone. Jay managed to get one of them before they all disappeared. He said they were biscuit-like. I guess that’s good?
Buttered scones for tea. Or maybe just buttered scones for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. I guess mid-afternoon snack could otherwise be known as “tea”. Yup, I’m a lumberjack, and I’m ok.
Woody’s Black and White Brownies
Busy weekend! I actually made these brownies twice – once on Friday morning, minus the toppings (and without the cream cheese — oops!) and once on Sunday afternoon (today). As I write, the second batch is on its last round of cooling in the fridge. Hopefully I’ll write this up quickly enough that I can go grab a piece before it’s time for bed. On Thursday, I made a vague plan to make these brownies on Friday, for my monthly baking delivery to my friend Gilad. Trouble was, I was meeting my husband for lunch, near where Gilad now works, and I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed. I was primarily missing chocolate. You know, the important part of a brownie. Anyway, long story short, after I got home from a grocery run, and looked more closely at the recipe, I knew there was no way I’d get all the components made in one morning. I was lucky to have just the brownies cool enough to put in a container by lunch! I figured it wouldn’t make any difference to my friend, though, and he’d be happy with the brownies on their own. So, this post is a combination of pictures from the first batch, which I made on Friday, and the second batch, which was made today.
What did I do in between? Super mini 16 year high school reunion, after attending a concert at the Jackson-Triggs winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Perfect Peach Galette
No, I’m not boasting. That’s the name of the recipe. Your second question is probably, “What’s a galette?” The answer, according to our friends on Saturday night, is, “I don’t care. Is it dessert? Did Kristina make it? I’ll have some.” We decided it had been too long since we’d had people over for a fire, so planned one for this past Saturday. Our friends Megan & Doug brought their family, so we thought we’d start with a BBQ with them, since we figured the kids wouldn’t last all that late for the campfire.  BBQ: ribs, corn, potato salad (from my garden!)… what could be better than peach pie for dessert? Nice timing on the schedule, Marie! Peaches are perfectly in season here, too.
To skin the peaches, place them in a pot of just-boiled water for 1 minute. Then run them under cold water. The skins rub/peel off pretty easily. Then you’ve got a pile of slippery peaches to deal with.
I tried cutting in half, then removing the pits, but they just ended up a mess, so instead I sliced around the pit, then pulled off a few slices at a time.
That seemed to work out well.
Mix the sliced peaches with sugar & lemon juice, then let that sit for 1/2 hour or up to 1.5 hours. That’s called “macerating” and it causes the fruit to release some of its juices. In the meantime, I kneaded my bread (lurking in the corner in the next picture) and got the pie crust rolled out.
Take the juice recovered from the peaches, and boil it for a while, reducing it by about 1/3. I actually had more than a cup of liquid, because I (sort of) doubled the recipe. Well, I doubled the filling, but apparently didn’t roll the dough out thin enough, or didn’t have quite enough dough, since I’d put together a bunch of scraps & half of a double-crust pie recipe, out of the freezer.
The reduced peach syrup was nice & thick and slightly caramelized, just like the recipe said it should be.  Once I mixed it with the peaches, and added the almond extract and cornstarch, I realized I had way to much filling to do a single layer of any sort on my pie crust. So, I put the leftover in a bowl and had a snack. 😉
The galette kind of exploded a bit in the oven, but fortunately, I had laid parchment down over the pizza pan, and it didn’t make a mess. I was even able to gently slide a pizza peel under the galette and lift it up off the parchment for serving. I forgot to get a picture of that, so you’ll just have to believe me. I sliced it with a pizza wheel, too. It seemed appropriate, given the serving vessel!
Jay really liked this one, because it’s more crust than fruit. 🙂 I think I prefer pie in a pie plate, because it just looks better, but I can’t say I minded this, either. I might get better at rolling the pie crust and folding it prettily, if I did it more than once. But, next week’s a new scheduled recipe, so onward we go!
Next weekend, we’re heading to Niagara (home of the peaches I used here) to introduce our friends to one of my favourite singer/songwriters, David Myles, who also happens to have sat across a concert band from me for 6 years in school – he played trumpet, and I played flute. We were in a lot of classes together and ran in the same band geek circles, too. I’m hoping to get a chance to say “hi,” again, despite this being a fairly large venue. The last couple of times we’ve seen him have been much smaller concerts, and I got an enthusiastic hug as soon as he recognized me when he was selling CDs and signing autographs. 🙂
One of my favourite songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY-E_aQQWFU
Er.. All that to say, I might be late with my baking/posting next weekend. Or maybe I’ll do it on Friday and be early. We’ll see.
Beer Bread
Sometimes, I just can’t get myself excited to blog about something I’ve baked. I think that’s likely going to be the struggle with The Bread Bible bake along. Bread’s generally pretty easy, in my opinion, and none of the steps are all that exciting. It’s typically a long, slow process, with not a lot of visual interest. The one interesting thing I have to say about this bread: Rose says she makes it all the time, but because her husband doesn’t like beer, she makes it with water instead! She called it “beer-less beer bread.”
Rose
If you’ve followed my blog at all, you might know that I was one of the original members of the bake-along of Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, and I’m actively working my way through The Baking Bible and The Bread Bible, with two semi-overlapping groups of baker-bloggers from around the world. All of these baking books were written by Rose Levy Beranbaum, whose first cookbook, The Cake Bible, is currently in its 52nd printing! A couple of weeks ago, Rose posted on her blog that she was going to be in Toronto this week, to watch her granddaughter, Haley, compete in the Parapan Am games. Haley is doing great at the games, so far. She’s already won bronze and silver medals! Rose was kind enough to take time out of her family trip to meet with fans and sign books at Golda’s Kitchen, in Mississauga, on Sunday afternoon.  Since I live about an hour away, I convinced Jay we needed to make the trip.
Whole Wheat Walnut Loaf
As I mentioned in my prosciutto ring post, bread can be made using a variety of techniques. This week’s “Alpha Baking” project was a whole wheat loaf based on the sponge technique. This is where the liquid is mixed with some of the flour and some of the yeast, then the remaining flour, yeast, salt, and any extras are sprinkled over top. Â I made this up on Friday, to take as part of my contribution to meals at our friends’ cottage this past weekend. Since it was a holiday weekend, I’m a bit behind on writing this up. Oh well!
eatsndrinks.ca 