… as opposed to “Irish Cream” scones, unfortunately. The recipe says that the better the cream you use, the better the flavour. The best I could do was cream from Kawartha Dairy, and that was only because we happened to stop at the Victoria Street Market on our way back from the local restaurant supply store, where we needed to pick up vacuum sealing bags. Otherwise, it would have been Sealtest: the stuff made by mixing milk from just about every dairy in Ontario. Maybe someday Eby Manor will start making cream, and I can see if there’s a flavour difference with fancy pants local small-batch cream.
Category: The Baking Bible
Chocolate Chip Cookies
This is the second time I’ve made chocolate chip cookies from this book. The first was shortly after the book came out, because I just had to try them. I’ve long been on a quest for my own perfect chocolate chip cookie, and I think I’ve found it, and although this one is close, it isn’t quite it, for me. 😉 This time, while baking alongside the Rose’s Alpha Bakers group, I decided to try the Melt-in-the-Mouth variation, which includes grated chocolate.
White Christmas Peppermint Cake
Just a quick post this week. I’m on vacation and not spending a while lot of time in front of the computer, but that’s where I post from, so… This post is both late and brief!
I’ve gotten so used to Rose’s method for butter cakes that I’m not sure I remember what the “normal” process is. For Rose’s method, you mix the dry ingredients with the (softened, not intentionally melted) butter and some of the liquid, beat for a minute and a half, then add the rest of the liquid and eggs in 3 steps, beating in between.
The batter comes out super fluffy, and in this case – absolutely delicious. 😉 I missed photographing the rest of the process, which involved a white chocolate custard being added to butter to make one of my favourite buttercreams. I think the only one I like better is Rose’s one with both white chocolate and cream cheese. Split the cake layers, add the frosting, sprinkle on some crushed candy canes, and we’re done.
I made this cake on Sunday afternoon, and when it was finished, I looked at it and said to myself, “Now what?” I wasn’t going to work the next day, so I couldn’t get rid of it there, and we still have something like 4 (partial) batches of fudge, some bourbon pecan truffles, and probably several other sweets I’m forgetting about, in the house. So, we had a piece each, and I put the rest in the fridge. I briefly considered broadcasting a “drop in for cake and tea” message to my friends, but decided that tidying the house was going to be too much like work. I think I’ll take it a new year’s eve party. I really like this cake, but there’s just too much other yummy stuff in the house for us to make a big dent in such a big cake on our own. If you’re reading this, and you’re in the area… feel free to drop in tomorrow afternoon for white chocolate peppermint cake. I don’t promise a tidy house, but there might be other treats laying around, too!
Cranberry Christmas Bread
More bread, and more stuff I wouldn’t have picked out on my own, but I’m glad to have baked. I haven’t actually tasted this one yet, but I’m thinking it will probably make a nice breakfast tomorrow. This week’s selection for the Baking Bible bake-through is cranberry walnut Christmas bread. Timely, eh?
The Renée Fleming Golden Chiffon
I have to admit that this week’s selection from the Baking Bible was another one of those that didn’t inspire me, and is something I probably wouldn’t have baked if I wasn’t participating in this bake-through. On Saturday, instead of working on this cake, I made bourbon pecan pie truffles, because they just sounded delicious. I mixed & rolled them on Saturday, then spent some time on Sunday dipping them. I made a good mess, and had fun doing it, but managed to completely avoid baking this cake, even though I had all the ingredients on hand. Monday rolled around, and I saw everyone else start posting about it, and they all made some reference to it being quick and easy. Ok, fine, I decided to try and make it in the evenings this week. So, yesterday, I made the cake, and I said to myself, “I’m going to cheat, just this one time, and buy lemon curd for the whipped cream.”
Sigh. It’s always worth it to make it from scratch. I bought a jar of “lemon curd” tonight on the way home from the gym, and it was just awful. I knew as soon as I opened it that the smell was all wrong. Then I tasted it, and it was nothing but sadness. It actually tasted a little bit like stale vegetable oil. Of course, Jay pointed out that it’s probably not entirely the company’s fault, because it’s actually best before November 2015… which means it’s probably been sitting on the shelf at the store for a good long time, if a canned product actually managed to reach its best before date. So, it’s going back to Sobeys.
Posh Pie
I found it amusing to learn that the name came before the concept for this week’s selection from The Baking Bible. As of Saturday morning, I had no real plans for this week’s recipe, so I figured I’d take my time making it, since we didn’t really have much in the way of plans this weekend. I made the cookie dough on Saturday morning, then left it in the fridge while Jay and I watched the Baden Santa Claus Parade from our front porch. Then we went out for a couple of hours to browse around the Christkindl Market in Kitchener. In the meantime, we both received a message letting us know that friends who moved to Toronto last year were going to be in town today and wanted to know if we could get together. Another couple offered to host, and I offered to bring the Posh Pie, not having looked at the recipe particularly closely. When we got home from our Christmas window shopping, I rolled out the cookies and put them in the oven before getting ready for my office Christmas party last night. This morning, I took a closer look at the recipe and realized I really should have made it yesterday, if I wanted to serve it tonight, but it seems to have worked out anyway!
Spritz Butter Cookies
I rarely look far enough ahead in the Rose’s Alpha Bakers schedule to know what’s coming up the next week, but this week was different, because some of the group baked pumpkin pecan pie last week, and some of them baked these spritz butter cookies. When I saw that this was next, I knew Jay would be happy. Spritz cookies are one of his favourites. He was surprised that they’d be included in a cookbook like this one, because as he claims, he’s been making spritz cookies since he was 6 or 7. Quite possibly with this same cookie press set.
Pumpkin Pecan Pie? Or Spritz Butter Cookies?
The baking schedule got a bit turned around this weekend. Marie had intended to have the pumpkin pecan pie on the schedule at the right time for Thanksgiving dinner. She posted to our Facebook group recently to apologize – because for Americans, having the pie made in time to post about it on the Monday before Thanksgiving Thursday would mean that it would have to sit all week waiting for the big event. I have to admit, I’ve never really understood why Thanksgiving’s on a Thursday in the US, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, at the last minute (after I’d baked it), the schedule got updated to swap pumpkin pecan pie with spritz butter cookies. I did not make spritz butter cookies. Since I’m married to an American, we often do two Thanksgiving dinners. One for the real thing in October, and one for this silly American thing at the end of November. Since we don’t get Thursday off, we did it the weekend before, this time. Perfect timing for pumpkin pecan pie!
I don’t think I have much to say about this one, really. I didn’t take many pictures, either.
You roll out a pie crust, then add chopped pecans:
Add the sweet goo that is pecan pie filling (sugar, egg, butter, golden syrup…), and bake for round 1. Make the pumpkin filling. I got no pictures of this, but it’s basically cook pumpkin with sugar and spices, then whiz that in the food processor, then add eggs, cream, and milk. Really, the whole thing is about all things that are delicious. After the pecan pie layer has cooled a bit, add the pumpkin filling, and bake again, only this time with a pie shield to protect the crust.
Next stop: Thanksgiving dinner. We had apple pie, pumpkin pecan pie, cornbread, and rolls. Er.. and the stuff Jay made, too. Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, maple glazed carrots, green beans and salad. Actually, you know, despite not being much of a cook, I contributed to much of that, too – all but the turkey, gravy, salad, and converting the cornbread into stuffing. Jay prepped the veggies and cooked the potatoes, but I did the seasoning and mashing and whatnot. I’d call dinner a success. Nobody went away hungry, but plates were clean, and we had turkey soup for dinner the next day. We also now have a freezer full of poultry stock, since we tend to save up chicken carcasses until we do a turkey, then boil all the bones at once in the pressure cooker.
Despite both of us trying both types of pie, neither Matt nor I had trouble cleaning our dessert plates. Jay’s even had some pie in the last couple of days since then, so I must have done something right. He’s not generally a leftovers person. Inspired by my recent trip to (…Swabia? Bavaria? Technically, modernly,) Baden-Württemberg, I made a crème anglaise (aka vanilla sauce) to go with the apple pie. Feedback on that, so far: a little bit thicker and a little bit more vanilla, next time. Next time is tomorrow night, for my contribution to a potluck “soup strainer” Movember lunch at work on Wednesday. No auction this year, though, so I’ll have to find other ways to get the baking out of the house over the coming year!
Hazelnut Praline Cookies
Yeah, I know. An odd choice of featured image for a recipe that actually contains relatively little butter. I was flipping through The Baking Bible, looking for this recipe, and landed on the header page of the “Cookies and Candy” chapter. How can you not love a cookbook that has a full page image of a stack of sticks of butter like that? Mmm… butter.
Anyway, on to this week’s assignment. As Marie said in last week’s Baking Bible round up, these cookies would be super easy if it weren’t for the blanching and de-skinning of the hazelnuts! I made them the same day that I tackled the double batch of Rose’s Sugar Brioche. Skinning hazelnuts was certainly one way to pass the time while waiting for the various stages of the bread. I can definitely think of better ways to pass time, though.
Sugar Rose Brioche
I was so confident that this week’s Baking Bible selection was going to be amazing that I made 2. That meant a quadruple batch of brioche dough, which consists of a dozen eggs and a full pound of butter, not to mention the flour, sugar, and yeast. I started this on Saturday morning and wanted to take it to a party that night, so I took several shortcuts. I used the proof cycle on my oven for both the sponge stage and the rising stage, which made the yeast a little more active than it might normally be. I opened the fridge door at one point, and the dough had pushed the lid off its rising container and was doing a pretty good imitation of The Blob, trying to consume the neighbouring container of spinach. Fortunately, I caught it before too much veggie carnage could take place.
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