Chocolate Caramel Peanut Tart

At one point during our recipe testing days, I asked my group of baking buddies for suggestions on something to enter into a baking contest at work. One suggestion that received overwhelming recommendations was the Chocolate Peanut Butter mousse tart from the Pie And Pastry Bible. I modified the recipe a little bit, and I posted the changes I’d made here on the blog. It won in the contest’s “Pie” category, and I’ve made it numerous times since then, because it’s a definite favourite among a certain group of friends. I noticed that The Baking Bible includes a hazelnut version of this tart, which I’m very much looking forward to trying.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I came across a recipe for a chocolate caramel peanut tart, on Gesine Bullock-Prado’s blog, and I knew I had to try it, to see how it stacked up. I may have also taunted my friends about it. Since the Alpha bakers group is on a “catch up” week, and I have yet to skip any recipes, I thought I’d make it this weekend.

Chocolate caramel peanut tart
Chocolate caramel peanut tart

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Slow Cooker Cheesecake

As someone who always bakes cheesecake in a water bath, I feel like this is something that should have occurred to me a long time ago. Why not make cheesecake in the slow cooker? It’s the perfect environment for a baked custard, providing long, slow, and moist heat. I’ve mentioned before that I have a group of co-workers that eat a “pot luck” lunch together every Thursday, and I often provide dessert. We do slow cookers in the winter, and BBQ in the summer. When I saw this month’s Canadian Living Magazine, I knew that I had some new things to try on (one of) my favourite groups of test subjects.  I don’t see the recipe on the Canadian Living website yet, but I changed it substantially anyway, so I’m going to share what I did, here.

Jar o' cheesecake
Jar o’ cheesecake

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Swedish Apricot Walnut Bread

Rose’s Alpha Bakers did another bread this week, and it’s another bread that has a pre-ferment. This time, I actually made the biga according to the recipe, instead of using my own starter. This bread’s biga is made with pumpernickel flour, which a number of the bakers had a hard time finding. Fortunately for me, I was able to adjust the granularity on my flour mill, and produce something that (probably) closely resembles pumpernickel flour. Because it’s a stone mill, some of it was pretty fine, and some of it coarser. I don’t think that had any serious impact on the finished bread.

Coarsely ground rye - aka pumpernickel flour
Coarsely ground rye – aka pumpernickel flour

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Rye Sourdough

A few commenters expressed interest in my flour mill, on my panettone post, so I decided to write up my process for making my regular (every other) weekend rye sourdough. I get my whole rye berries and wheat berries from Oak Manor Farms. They claim to be “Canada’s original organic flour mill.” All I know is that I can get 10kg of hard wheat berries there, for a little over $20. It may not be as cheap as flour, but it’s fresh and local (which are both far more important to me than organic, personally). It also makes beautiful bread.

Lovely bread
My lovely sourdough rye

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Gingersnaps

Coooooookies
Coooooookies

To me, a gingersnap is dark in colour, molasses-y, gingery, and coated in sugar. One of my baking buddies posted a picture of this week’s assignment a few days early, and I was surprised to see something very… pale. Not that there’s anything wrong with pale – I’m married to a ‘ginger,’ after all – it was just unexpected. Apparently, in the UK, a gingersnap is made with melted butter & golden syrup, and caster sugar or golden baker’s sugar? No molasses, no brown sugar. Since I had no idea what either caster sugar or golden baker’s sugar were, I poked around both the regular baking aisle, plus the organic section (where I normally find another Rose favourite, muscovado sugar), and did a little Google search right there in the grocery store, and settled on this:

Golden cane sugar
Golden cane sugar

It looked a little coarse, compared to what was described on the Interwebs, but I figured I could always grind finer it in my food processor… which I did, but it didn’t really get all that fine, and, while I have nothing to compare it to, I think it turned out just “fine” anyway. 😉

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Golden Orange Panettone

There was a lot of angst in our baking group about this week’s recipe from The Baking Bible.  I’ve been baking bread at least every other week for the last couple of years, so bread honestly doesn’t scare me. In my adult life, I think I’ve only had a real disaster once with bread, when I left the yeast out. Did that a few times with my parents’ bread machine as a kid, too.  This one’s a special sort of bread – lots of butter, lots of egg yolks, and candied/dried fruit.  In my post this week, alongside the pictures for the panettone, you’ll see a few process pictures of my rye sourdough, which I was working on at the same time.

Bread cousins!
Bread cousins!

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Black and Blueberry Pie

Last weekend, when I tallied up the sweets in the house, I made a decision about this week’s recipe from The Baking Bible bake-through. I eat lunch with some of my favourite people that I work, every Thursday. It started as a summer BBQ thing, many years ago, since we’re fortunate enough to have a patio and a grill available for employee use. In the summer months, we pay in a certain amount a month, and someone picks up food for the grill and gets reimbursed from the pool. A couple of years ago, we decided to try a potluck version in the winter – we rotate through main course slow cooker meals, and try to keep it relatively equitable. This week, my contribution was going to be dessert.

My most appealing shot of the pie
It looked best before baking…

Here’s a conversation from lunch, from memory:

Doug: It’s quite good. I really like the crust.

Matt: Yeah, it’s good.

Doug: You have to say WHY you like it.

Me: Yeah, if you don’t give me good feedback, you won’t get quoted on my blog.

Matt: I don’t want to be quoted on your blog. It’s good.

[Me, in my head: Too bad, Matt!]

Doug followed this up with gesturing to the pie with his fork, and saying something along the lines of: Normally, I mean, other than something like lemon meringue pie, the filling just all spills out, and the top collapses. This is actually full of fruit. It’s a nice consistency.

Geordie & Jeff agreed with him.  So, there you go.

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Chocolate Cuddle Cake

On Saturday morning, I looked at my counter, where you can find: a tin of holiday treats and a bag of chocolates from my friends, a tin of Chocolate Chip Cookies (from The Baking Bible), not one, but TWO gingerbread houses, leftover candy from decorating gingerbread houses, and two boxes of handmade truffles. In the freezer, there are still two pieces of frozen pecan pie, and the fridge had a couple of pieces of fruitcake and a couple of pieces of cheesecake.  So, what’s a girl to do, when she’s participating in a bake-through with friends from all over the world? Bake anyway, and plan on taking the bulk of it to work.  So, that’s what I did/will do tomorrow.

Completed Cuddle Cake
Completed Cuddle Cake

…I just want to know where this cake gets its name. Continue reading “Chocolate Cuddle Cake” →

Frozen Pecan Tart

I’ve previously mentioned my friend/coworker, Gilad, who won the charity auction, where I offered up one of the Baking Bible bake-along desserts each month. It may have occurred to you that, for the final auction to reach $600, there had to be at least one other coworker bidding against him.  That someone was Doug – who is known in some circles as the perpetual winner of the New Dundee Women’s Institute pie of the month auction, and I’m pretty sure he had planned on winning this one, too. This past weekend, we had Doug & his wife over for dinner (meatloaf in a cheddar cheese crust, inspired by the recipe in the Pastry Bible), and as a local authority on pies, he offered his feedback on the frozen pecan tart. 😉 Read on, to see what he had to say. Continue reading “Frozen Pecan Tart” →

Almond Coffee Crisps

On Saturday afternoon, when I pulled the first batch of this week’s Baking Bible recipe out of the oven, I thought, “That can’t be right.”  While the first batch cooled, so that I could shape the next batch, out of habit, I grabbed my phone to browse Facebook, while I waited. Oh, look! Somebody’s posted in the “Rose’s Alpha Bakers” FB group. I tap it, read the post, and think, “Huh, at least I’m not alone!”  The cookies, according to the recipe, are supposed to be light, crisp, and airy. Mine were… crisp, flat, and full of holes.

Finished cookies
Finished cookies

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