I’m a little behind in blogging about the latest round in the Bread Bible bake-through, but it looks like I’m not the only one. 🙂 We all came to an agreement in the Facebook group that this would be a no-pressure baking & blogging project, and that people could join or not join for any given month, with no strings attached. I like it. We’re supposed to post on the first Wednesday of the month, and it is now the last one, so, I like to think I’m just embracing the no-pressure thing! The most recent recipe on the schedule was the prosciutto ring. This is another one of those recipes that I would never try making if it weren’t for a bake-through project like this, so I’m glad I signed up for this group.
Category: Baking
ElderBlueberry Pie
Have I mentioned I love making pie? I love making pie. If I make up a “big” batch of pie dough ahead of time, I can easily knock a couple of pies out in an hour, not counting baking/cooling/resting times. And there’s always something in season that you can turn into a pie. And of course, as a couple of friends keep insisting:
Kourambiethes
I have no idea how to pronounce “Kourambiethes.” I’m going with “almond shortbread-y cookie things,” instead. My husband recently started a new job at a start-up, so we won’t be taking any significant vacation time, this summer. Instead, to use up my vacation time, I’m taking Fridays off until the end of September. This past Friday was really rainy and Jay needed to get ahead on some work this weekend, so I amused myself in the kitchen. I actually caught up/got a bit ahead in my “alpha baking” for both The Baking Bible and The Bread Bible. Blog posts to come, but I made both the Prosciutto Ring (The Bread Bible) and the Elderberry/blueberry pie (The Baking Bible), as well as a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and these cookies. Oh, and a batch of regular bread. 🙂
Molasses Crumb Cakelets
Well, this post isn’t going to be very exciting. I made these first thing in the morning on Canada day, which was… *checks calendar* 2 weeks ago, on Wednesday. I must have been half asleep (or distracted?) when I made them, because I took a grand total of 2 pictures, neither of which were very interesting.
This is a pretty straightforward recipe. First, mix oil, sugar, and flour together. Reserve some of that for the “crumb” topping. Then add molasses, water, baking soda, and maybe some other stuff (I don’t remember).
Mix it up, and pour it into mini muffin pans. It’s supposed to go into a total of 48 mini muffin cavities, but I only had enough pans to get to 36. It seemed to work out OK, if a little over-full.
Next step is to sprinkle the reserved oil/sugar/flour mixture on top of the batter. Then, into the oven. See? Quick and easy!
I brought these, along with some burgers, to the Thursday BBQ at work. They went over surprisingly well. Everybody thought I had undersold them. After the lunch group had their fill (6 people, so I can’t blame them for not consuming the whole batch), I wandered around the dev department and handed them out to my teams, and they all disappeared. I was surprised because I honestly wasn’t really a big fan. I found them to be not terribly flavourful, and the crumb topping didn’t add the texture I was hoping for. They were pretty homogeneously soft. I’m wondering if the topping could be improved either by using butter instead of oil, or by sprinkling it on a cookie sheet and baking it separately, before sprinkling it on top of the cakelets. Or maybe I just underbaked the whole thing, and my topping would have crisped up if I baked the cakelets a little longer.
Fourth of July Cheesecake
Quick post. Typing this up from Germany, on my phone, between meetings. 🙂 I made the “Fourth of July” Cheesecake as my birthday cake. Since I wasn’t planning on serving it on the fourth, and since the fourth isn’t a special holiday in Canada, I didn’t make it red, white, and blue. Instead, I made it blue, white, and blue. I realized too late that I should have made it red & white, with strawberries on top, for Canada day, since that’s July 1st (the day after my birthday). Oh well! Next time!
Pecan Praline Ice Cream Sandwiches
Wow. Apparently, these are so simple that I managed to forget to take any process pictures.
Catching up…
It’s strawberry season! I can’t quite keep up with the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks in my patch, so I picked up some berries from Herrle’s Market on Friday night. I love that place, and they just opened for the season while I was in Nashville. This Saturday was the St Agatha strawberry festival as well, so it seemed like the time was ripe (!) for catching up with the strawberry shortcake. I’ve also been slacking on my responsibilities to charity, in delivery of baked goods to Gilad, so I gave him the choice – brioche (which I missed 2 weeks ago), strawberry shortcake (which I missed at Easter), chocolate cake (this weekend’s scheduled “Alpha Bakers” recipe), or… brioche made into cinnamon rolls (inspired by a conversation while travelling). He said it all sounded good, but cinnamon rolls sounded the best, so I knew that was going to go into the plans for the weekend too.  Then of course, since I’m trying to catch up, and not trying to fall further behind in my baking, I had to make the double damage oblivion this weekend, too. That’d probably be plenty for a normal weekend, but my parents happen to be in town at the moment, so all of this needed to be planned around spending time with them, too.
Red Velvet Cake
I noticed when WordPress created the slug for this post that I’d had another red velvet cake post in the past. Apparently, I wasn’t enamored with the results of the red velvet recipe in Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. Hopefully this version goes down better. I realized while making it tonight that it’s in keeping with my theme for the past week. I was on a trip to Nashville for work, for the PTC Live Global trade show/conference. The conference and work part was fine, but after the work was over, I had a good time with some co-workers, exploring what Nashville had to offer.
We experienced lots of “Southern” food, including gator, Nashville hot chicken, and plenty of BBQ. The “Southern” food is what got me on this tangent. I always think of red velvet cake as a Southern thing. I’m not sure if that’s reality, or if that’s just the association stuck in my head from Steel Magnolias. Maybe both.
Ricotta Loaf
I said just yesterday that I love making pies. Today, I’m saying that I love making bread. Maybe I just need to acknowledge the fact that I love baking, period. That being said, there’s not a whole lot of interesting pictures you can take of the bread making process, in my opinion. Maybe I’m just not overly creative, but with bread, you’re generally dealing with something white, something a bit off-white, something slightly brown, and some more white or clear stuff. This week, it was ricotta loaf. Something white (ricotta), mixed into some white things (flour, sugar, salt), and something brown (yeast), and something slightly off-white (butter). We go a little crazy this week, and throw in a splash of colour with something yellow (egg)!
There was some chatter about the yeast quantity in the “Bread Bible Bakers” Facebook group. Faithy questioned the 1/2 TBSP quantity, so she weighed and measured her yeast, and came up with 1/2 tsp = 5 g. So, she used 1/2 tsp, but she was disappointed with the resulting fairly dense loaf. I’m sure I went by volume for yeast, because my scale’s just not that precise with small quantities, but the volume that I remember using was 1/2 tsp. Now I look at my picture, and I see that the 500 g flour + 25 g sugar + ??? yeast = 527g. So… did I accidentally use 1/3 of what the recipe called for, for yeast, by mixing up my TBSP and TSP? Or does my yeast weigh a lot less than the US brands Rose recommends? Me accidentally using too little would explain why it took so long to rise.
Ah well, moving on… Mix the flour mixture, then add the softened butter (which got a little too soft in the microwave), ricotta cheese, egg, and salt.
I used the dough blade in the food processor for the first time to knead this dough.
Rose cautions against letting it go too long, lest the butter & cheese get too warm, resulting in a sticky dough.
Into the container I always use for bread dough, then after it’s doubled in size, which took 4-5 hours, shape it, proof it, and bake it. Aside from how long it took to rise & proof, I don’t think the yeast confusion did any serious harm.
Brush with melted butter, or just be lazy and take a pat of butter and rub the hot bread with it. As I mentioned in my last post, I had intended to take this to share with my Aunt & Uncle for Sunday dinner, but we didn’t make it to their place due to illness. Instead, while my husband rested and recovered, I did some yard work and I managed to get my next warp onto my loom.
Now I wait for the battery to recharge on the bobbin winder that Jay jury-rigged for me out of an unused power drill. 😉
Verdict on this loaf? The flavour is good, and the texture is fantastic, warm. It made a great accompaniment to butternut squash soup on Sunday night. I’ve been eating a plain slice cold for breakfast the past few days, too. The crumb is a bit odd. Not fluffy stretchy like a bread with well-developed gluten, but it seems a bit more like a quick bread in texture.
French Orange Cream Tart
I haven’t turned on my computer since Saturday night. I think that might be a recent record, which I’m going to celebrate, despite it making me a day late with this post! Jay gave his notice to his (now previous) employer a couple of weeks ago, and his last day was Friday. He decided to take a week off, before he starts a new job at a very early stage start-up on the 8th. I decided to take a couple of days and join him, and we figured we’d go on a short road trip to visit my aunt & uncle and do a little exploring in their neck of the woods. I’m going to be out of town next week for PTC Live, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to spend a little quality time together. I made this French Orange Cream Tart on Saturday, along with a Ricotta loaf (post to come tomorrow), planning to take them to my family’s for Sunday dinner. Unfortunately, Sunday morning, Jay woke up with a fever and he still hasn’t fully recovered. So, instead, we spent some quality movie-watching time, I made meals (super rare, in our house), and the big event of today was me mowing the lawn. Woo!
eatsndrinks.ca 