What are You Baking the Week of October 8, 2017?

[Joan Simpson]

Thank you KIDPIZZA I'll give them a call.I had just bought the flour this week.

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

[BakerAunt]

On Thursday, I baked a Pumpkin Pecan Coffee Cake, using as my base recipe the "Glazed Pumpkin-Pecan Cakes" recipe in Better Homes and Gardens 100 Pumpkin Recipes, p. 12. I had made it before as 12 Bundlettes, but this time I used a 10 cup star Bundt pan. I did not sprinkle the pecans in the bottom of the Bundt pan, because I feared they would scratch it. instead, I put 1/2 cup diced pecans into the batter. The cake baked well. I will glaze it tomorrow--but not with the orange glaze the recipe uses. I think a maple glaze would be nicer.

Joan--I'm glad my pie crust rolling technique was helpful. I usually put parchment paper on the bottom--simply because it is wider than waxed paper--and saran on the top. I hope the pie will taste ok.

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

[aaronatthedoublef]

Kid, thanks for the tip on frozen flour.

I made a chocolate cake. I made two six inch layers and a seven inch one. The two sixes were for book club and the seven was for home. My two oldest kept trying to sneak pieces of the layer cake.

I also probably could have slice the layers to make four but, I'm just starting back to making cakes again and I've never done that before.

Has anyone ever made a sheet cake and then punched out pieces with biscuit cutters to make personal layer cakes? I think it would be neat if I could give people each their own, little, cake but I also don't want to go out and by a bunch of very small cake pans.

[BakerAunt]

For slicing layers, I use a cake cutter with a fine wire that is adjustable for different heights. Mine is a German one I bought through KAF, but I recall the Mike Nolan uses a Wilton one, which you could probably get with a coupon at Michael's, if there is a Michael's near you. (It's not a store I visited frequently, but I do miss having one close to where I live.)

I also have used a cake knife and followed Susan Purdy's technique in The Perfect Cake.

[Mike Nolan]

Yes, I use the Wilton 'small' cake cutter, the 'big' one just seems too big and clumsy for me.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm baking an apple pie with the Haralson apples I got at the Farmer's Market last Sunday, then I'm going to start processing the 25 pounds of Winesap apples I picked at Martin's orchard yesterday.

I filled this one fuller than most, 1300 grams of pie filling, normally I use 1000 grams for a 9" standard pie pan.

[BevM]

I also use the one from Wilton. However, the crumb on one of the last Italian Lemon Creme cakes I baked was a little firm and that made it a challenge to start the cut. It works really well and I would recommend it. Also, not expensive.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Maybe I'll invest in a cake cutter. When I worked in the bakery it was frowned upon. My pastry chefs said they would make fun of me if I ever used one. But then they were cutting several cakes a day whereas I would do a couple a week and now far less than that.

I still like the idea of mini biscuit sized layer cakes so I'll try that at some point too.

Thanks

[Mike Nolan]

You might want to look for a set of petit fours cutters, they're deeper than biscuit cutters. We found several at a candy and cake making supply place in the Pittsburgh area. K&B Cake & Candy Supply Co in North Versailles. This place had Wilton pans I had never seen before, dozens of them.

BTW, if you ever get to Nashville, there's a cake decorating supply shop near Opryland. Sweet Wise. They have more sizes of high quality cake pans than I've seen anywhere else. If I ever get to Philadelphia again I'd love to visit Fantes Kitchen Shop in the Italian Market district, I think I was in it briefly about seven years ago, but spent more time in the nearby spice and tea shops. The fantes.com website has a huge number of items.

[chocomouse]

I made a cheesecake with a layer of fresh raspberries and chocolate drizzle between the two layers of cheesecake. It was delicious, although next time I will use more raspberries. Best of all -- the top did not crack!! Today I baked two loaves of spelt sandwich bread and a tea loaf pan of lemon zuchinni bread. I forgot to put the lemon streusel on the top, but that's OK, it's in the freezer for next time. Tomorrow I'm planning to make the Deli Rye rolls with seeds and will report back here with the results of the seeding trials.

[BakerAunt]

I'm baking French Apple Pie from Bernard Clayton's The Complete book of Pastry: Sweet and Savory (pp. 88-89). Fortunately, I have this one copied into one of my recipe books, since somehow my husband managed to bury the boxes with most of my cookbooks. (I have some that I kept separate, but unfortunately, that was not the pie baking books.) It is an apple pie with a streusel topping. I'm using Beauty apples, the ones I bought a half-bushel of a few weeks ago, that made a tart pie. I will put a large Cortland apple (bought some at farmers' market today) to add some additional sweetness to the filling. For the crust, I'm using my buttermilk crust recipe, but I added 1 Tbs. of sugar. I also am using some Hudson Mill bleached flour, since Kid Pizza's remarks made me realize I should use it up as it has been setting out.

My husband has begged off of our going to the covered bridge festival. After all the moving, he is tired of travel for now. We will do a day trip for some hiking in Indiana Dunes, so I'll see if there is any place along the way to score the ideal baking apples. I envy Mike Nolan his Winesaps!

[aaronatthedoublef]

I looked at the petit four cutters and the depth is good but I want something deeper. I have some pretty deep biscuit cutters so I think I will try those first. My big concern (aside from depth) is too many crumbs but if I chill the layers before I give them a crumb coat that should help.

Any good suggestions for a beginner apple pie? My daughter desperately wants me to make an apple pie.

[BakerAunt]

The apple pie in Baking Illustrated is pretty good. KAF has a recipe as well, but it does call for boiled cider.

[Mike Nolan]

I like both the all-butter pie crust and apple pie filling we learned in pastry school. I'm not sure if they're in Michel Suas's book, I don't think SFBI has them on their website.

Kenji Lopez-Alt has an all-butter version of his untraditional pie dough recipe on his website. For the pie I made yesterday I used his method of making a paste with the butter and 2/3 of the flour plus the sugar and salt in the food processor, then adding the rest of the flour, pulsing it a couple of times to loosen things, and stirring the water in by hand. It takes noticeably less water than a traditional pie crust recipe, in fact I used only about half of the water in the SFBI recipe for the pie I made yesterday.

[BakerAunt]

We only let the pie cool for a little more than an hour before we cut into it. Because of the Beauty Apples, it is not overly juicy, the slices hold their shape, and the filling did not run all over the pan when slices were removed. We really liked the combination of mostly Beauty apples and a large and a small Cortland. I also used an entire cup of sugar rather than 3/4 cup, and of course the streusel had 1/4 cup brown sugar. I liked the addition of a tablespoon of sugar to the buttermilk pie crust.

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