What are You Baking the Week of October 22, 2017?

[BakerAunt]

This Sunday afternoon, I'm trying a new recipe, "Ginger Biscotti with Pistachios," a recipe from Fifty Seven Fifty Seven, in New York, that appeared in the R.S.V.P. column of Bon Appetit (June 1997), p. 26. Instead of roasting 3 oz. of almonds and using the food processor to chop them with the dry ingredients (if I am going to pull out the food processor, it had better be worth cleaning it), I used 3 oz. of almond flour. I also did not do an egg glaze. The ginger taste is not overpowering, so even my husband, who complains about ginger, finds them delectable. I will bake this recipe again.

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

[BevM]

I baked KAF's Pumpkin Cake Bars with cream cheese frosting. It was good, but I find the texture a little odd. My girls loved it but I wonder about the texture. Does pumpkin change the "crumb"?.

[BakerAunt]

Bev--My guess would be that the oil in this cake is what gives it the texture you are describing. I'll add the link here, so that others can weigh in on it.

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/pumpkin-cake-bars-with-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe

[BevM]

BakerAunt, thanks for a quick response. I apologize for not including more details about my substitutions (you are so good about doing that). I used margarine instead of oil and I'm sure the texture would have been quite different . Maybe I'll try it with oil next time (and compare) since the girls liked it so much.

[Joan Simpson]

BevM I've made this before and made it in 2-8" cake pans -didn't add raisins,nuts or chips and we loved it.It was very moist and kept well for several days.I iced it with my own cream cheese icing recipe,was a very good cake.

[BevM]

Joan thanks for your comments. I will also be using my own cream cheese frosting recipe. Around here cakes don't usually last that long!! My family has a sweet tooth!!

[BakerAunt]

Bev--maybe 1 cup of margarine and 1 cup of oil are not equivalent?

[Italiancook]

A couple of weeks ago, I searched the internet to find out how to substitute olive oil for butter. In the charts I found, they are not equal equivalents. Below is a link to the chart I decided to use as my reference.

http://www.amazingoliveoil.com/

In the fourth paragraph from top, there's a link for the conversion chart. It's light in color and not quickly visible.

I'm uncertain, but I think that the amounts that work for olive oil would also work for other types of liquid oil.

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

[BevM]

Italian cook, I checked out the link you provided. Sure enough they are not equal!! 3/4 cup olive oil equals 1cup butter. So in my recipe I used 1cup margarine and the instructions called for 1cup of oil. Seems like I should have used a little more margarine, however, I think it had plenty and I wouldn't increase it. I will tinker with it a little next time I make it.
BakerAunt, thanks for all your input and experience.

[Mike Nolan]

Keep in mind real butter is anywhere from 15% to 25% water, with most brands around 20%.

I haven't cooked with margarine in over a decade, so I don't remember if it is supposed to be a 1-1 replacement for butter. We do use one of the high-omega tub margarine brands as our table spread, mostly because I don't like the taste of unsalted butter on bread, and I don't like using salted butter when cooking.

[cwcdesign]

We are gearing up for our annual bake sale, so yesterday I made a gluten-free vegan (only mine wasn’t because all I had was regular milk) pull apart apple bread.
I had some issues with the recipe, but it was surprisingly good. My friend who had to go gluten-free later in life liked the texture - she said it wasn’t gritty - I used the KAF blend. My sister said most GF people she knows prefer it.
The first thing I changed was the author said to proof rapid rise yeast. I didn’t; I mixed the instant in with the dry ingredients. Then I missed the note at the bottom that said not to stuff all the dough in the pan which I had already done, so the cooking time took about 15 minutes longer and I think that may have dried it out a little bit. I have to see how it holds up today - for a Bake Sale you don’t want things that don’t keep. I also think this was a bit fiddly for a sale but I might try it again.
The next recipe to try is my sister’s GF chocolate chip cookies, which she said are lacey and crisp

[Mike Nolan]

Last year I made a batch of my mother's oatmeal crisps chocolate chip cookie recipe using a GF flour, they were excellent and it was not easy telling them from the batch of regular flour ones I made. And they appeared to have this recipe's tendency to taste better a day or two later, which is unusual in a GF product.

I've never tried to make a vegan version of it, though, and it does call for eggs.

[BakerAunt]

For dinner tonight, I'm making the KAF Ultra-Thin Crust Pizza. We will use cooked ground turkey as one of the toppings this time, and I'll add some dried fennel to mine to invoke a sausage flavor.

[Joan Simpson]

Baked the little chocolate cake last night and frosted with buttercream icing,only one layer so it won't last long.My sister is coming to stay a few days with me and am looking forward to that.

[BakerAunt]

Thursday afternoon, I again baked Bernard Clayton's recipe for French Apple Pie. I used 2 Tbs. less sugar this time, as the tart Beauty apples I was using were mostly small, and the two, sweeter Cortland apples were rather large. I made my buttermilk pie crust, with a tablespoon of sugar added. I used pastry flour and whole wheat pastry flour, and the crust was nicely flakey.

I also baked a variation on Antilope's Vienna Bread. I like experimenting with that basic recipe. I was able to bake it in one of my hearth pans, which I found today, after weeks of trying to recall where they had been packed. The loaf filled the pan nicely.

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

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