What are You Baking the Week of December 17, 2017?

[BakerAunt]

I'm headed into the kitchen now to bake Pfeffernusse. (Imagine an umlaut over the u and the double "ss" should be the German character.) The recipe came from the Los Angeles Times, after I had tried two others that did not meet the idealized ones of my childhood that were sent to us from one of my father's relatives, but my mother could not recall who it was. King Arthur's non-melting sugar is the key to an excellent presentation. Getting good candied citron is hard, but fortunately I have some stashed (and it traveled well from Texas). Ah, Frohliche (umlaut over the o) Weihnachten!

Yes, the other grandparents were mostly children of German immigrants.

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• This topic was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a site that might help you type in German (or other languages): http://german.typeit.org/

The Microsoft international keyboard doesn't appear to have the German ß.

The Pfeffernüsse I remember from my grandmother's relatives (she was eastern Iowa German stock) was so hard you could chip a tooth on it!

[BakerAunt]

My recipe does not produce a hard cookie. It's initially of a softer texture, and they get crisper as they age. (I've kept them for over two months.) I don't think that I've posted the recipe here, so I will be sure to do so.

[Italiancook]

I made Cherry Yeast Coffee Cake from "Taste of Home" online. Tastes good, but next time, I'll divide the glaze in half. The full recipe of glaze made it too sweet for me.

[chocomouse]

My recent baking experiences have been a disaster!! The Pecan Pie Bars look terrible; the shortbread type crust is too hard and the filling too soft and they don't cut neatly. But they taste good. The lemon coffee cake with lemon streusel fell in the middle and is very crumbly - this never happened previously; but it tastes delicious. Even the no-bake Buckeye Bars are a failure - the peanut butter-graham cracker base is runny and not setting up even when chilled in the refrigerator. But they do taste like a Reese's! Normally, I'm just baking for my husband and me, so looks don't matter, as long as it tastes good. But I'm trying to make gifts and cookie trays! Oh well. So the two double batches of Chex Mix, also gifts, turned out great! How can you go wrong with Chex Mix??!!

[Mike Nolan]

I've had days when I couldn't boil water without screwing something up, so I sympathize with you, chocomouse.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse: It sounds like the baking stars just did not align for you today. At least the chex mix is ok. 🙂

The crust on the pecan bars may soften in a day or two. When I baked the ones that Jel posted here (Lahotfoot's recipe), I discovered that they were better the second day. I think that Cwcdesign also found that to be true.

[cwcdesign]

Yes, I did BA. sorry for all your troubles, chocomouse.

I had great intentions to make 2 coffee cakes to take to my old team when I go to help them on Christmas Eve morning. I was going to make the cranberry almond on the wreath mold and then another because one person is allergic to almonds. Today, I made a streusel coffee cake using the cake base from my cranberry almond but using vanilla instead of almond extract. I found a simple streusel on KAF - just sugar, salt, flour, cinnamon & melted butter. I sprayed the pan and put half the streusel in the bottom, then half the dough, the rest of the streusel then the rest of the dough. It came out beautifully and I decided that was enough to take ? Will mentioned that he never gets one - he always says he doesn’t want all that cbaked stuff in the house - so I’m going to make him the cranberry almond one as a Christmas Eve present

[chocomouse]

Baker Aunt, I used Lahotfoot's recipe! And I've used it before, and it worked fine. My husband has eaten most of the small edge pieces - and they were even chewier than the center pieces. I'll check to see if the crust has softened at all. Meanwhile, the Buckeye Bars are pretty good crumbled over ice cream.

A new disaster to report - I made candied orange peel, dumped it all into a strainer to drain, and now all the strips are hardened together and stuck to the strainer! I cannot pry them apart. Hard as a rock. I think I'll try setting the mess in a pan in a warm oven to melt/soften up and then I can get it apart to chop for cookies.

I think tomorrow I'll just clean house. Yuck.

[Italiancook]

My husband's favorite pie is Lemon Meringue. I baked one for him this morning to thank him for mowing the grass all season and the leaves in the fall. I didn't bake it from scratch, but I don't believe that saved me any time! I used a lemon pudding mix. I added half a cup of fresh lemon juice in place of that amount of water. That makes it taste homemade. Of course, the meringue is fresh. I read the ingredient list on the pudding mix while I was stirring. I told my husband this is the last lemon meringue pie I'd ever make. He thinks I make it from scratch, so I didn't tell him an ingredient list brought his pie to an end.

[BakerAunt]

On Tuesday, I baked the Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from the dough I made up last week. I also baked my version of Rye Crisps from a recipe that appeared in KAF's now defunct The Baking Sheet. I have posted my versions here at Nebraska Kitchen. The sourdough crackers are put of a food gift I'll be sending to my twin nieces and their parents. The rye crackers are to go with a Hickory Farms gift we received that includes a couple kinds of cheeses.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Late Wednesday afternoon, I made the dough for a full recipe of the No Fail Sugar Cookies from the Fancy Flours website. I'll bake the cookies tomorrow.

In the evening, I baked Easy Holiday Eggnog Muffins, from the KAF website.

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/easy-holiday-eggnog-muffins-recipe

I made some changes by using 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour, and a cup of Pillsbury unbleached flour. (The pastry flour was deliberate; the white whole wheat was a bit of an accident.) I reduced the sugar in the batter from 3/4 to 1/2 cup, as the topping includes an additional 1/2 cup of sugar. For the crumb topping, I used KAF flour. I used the Loran eggnog flavoring in addition to the 1 1/4 cups eggnog. I've concluded that eggnog by itself does not have a strong enough flavor in baked goods.

I'll add a note to this post tomorrow about how the sugar reduction worked.

Note: The sugar reduction works. The original recipe has 20 Tbs. (60 tsps.) of sugar, or 5 tsps. per muffin for 12 muffins. The reduction has 16 Tbs. or (48 tsps.), for 4 tsps. per muffin. While that is better, perhaps we should just call this recipe a cupcake.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[RiversideLen]

On Monday I baked a loaf of braided bread, 50% whole wheat. Wednesday I baked a batch of Acorn cookies from a recipe posted here. I also have dried fruit (KAF fruitcake blend and raisins) soaking in rum that I will use in Stollen.

[RiversideLen]

Today I baked the Stollen, from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I subbed honey for the sugar and subbed part of the butter with avocado oil.

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[BakerAunt]

Today I baked the No Fail Sugar cookies. I used a new cutter that cuts two large and two small trees. There are cut-outs, and supposedly the baked cookies can be assembled as three-dimensional trees. I made three sets of the four to test them out. Unfortunately, the cut-outs closed up when baked, even though these cookies do not spread very much. I'll finish up the rest of the cookie dough with regular cutters, and we will eat these. I'll investigate other cookie recipes for use with that cutter next year.

Here is what I used:

http://www.fancyflours.com/product/swedish-christmas-tree-cutter/Christmas-themed-cookie-cutters#reviews

There are no verbal reviews, but I note the one review gave it 1 our of 5, so maybe my experience is not an isolated one.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

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