On Thursday, I baked a recipe from the King Arthur site that I baked last year and found this year while I was paging through the cookies in my binder trying to find one with lower saturated fat. I wrote excellent on it last year: Zucchini Chocolate Chip Pecan Bars. To find it on the KAF site, you need to go to a blog, so here is the link. It appears a little further down, past the zucchini brownies and the zucchini chocolate chip cookies:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2015/07/07/zucchini-recipes?page=3&hierarchicalMenu%5Bcategory_lvl0%5D%5B0%5D=Cookies%20%26%20Bars&query=zucchini%20chocolate%20chip%20pecan%20bars
I used a bit more than 6 oz. zucchini (actually a summer squash that has a very long neck without seeds, then a bulbous bottom, so I used what I needed from the neck). I used the white whole wheat flour, but I added 2 Tbs. flax meal and ¼ cup BRM milk powder. I used 90g of large Ghirardelli chocolate chips (maybe about ½ cup or so—saturated fat is given for gram weights, so I weigh them). The ingredients come together very easily in the food processor. With my changes the whole batch has 28g saturated fat, which when cut into serving sizes is not that bad, and my younger stepson will happily help eat them!
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This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by
BakerAunt.
In the video, the Level 2 home baker said her grandmother brushed the dough with milk before adding the filling (to rolled out dough). Anyone know why she might have done this?
I actually have a Cooks' Illustrated special issue that is titled Baking for Two. I need to pull it out and check over the recipes.
I looked at the link to the recipe you posted, Mike. I noted that it has 49g saturated fat from the 7 Tbs. of butter alone. Even one, without frosting (I think regular cream cheese is 5g saturated fat per oz.), a single roll would put me over my limit of no more than 11g per day. I only allow myself such an indulgence, perhaps a small slice of cheesecake on the rare occasion we go out to dinner.
I don't make sweet rolls or desserts very often, too many carbs in them. I did find a recipe for just 4 cinnamon rolls that I've made on those occasions where you just have to have a cinnamon roll!
There are quite a few small-batch recipes out there, after studying them for a while, I went with this one:
Cinnamon Rolls for 2 (4 rolls)
I thought it was fascinating that the professional cut her dough into strips before rolling them up. I may have to try that some time, if I can keep the dough block nicely rectangular so it has clean edges. I assume it would work with non-laminated dough as well. She made a compound butter so there wasn't a lot of leakage along the cuts, that's worth trying as well. She also baked them in separate individual pans, which helps maintain a uniform shape, which is a nice professional touch. (It's hard to read or watch something on baking and not get at least one idea from it.)
I have made cinnamon rolls with laminated dough, they were fantastic. I made them with laminated dough made using soft red winter wheat that I ground myself, so it was whole-meal. That dough made interesting croissants, too.
I did carrot bread yesterday. Unfortunately I use the fine ( ginger ) grater on half the carrots before I realized what I was doing and reduced the carrots almost to a pulp. I also used maple syrup instead of honey for the sweetener. The carrot bread is moister and denser than it would otherwise be if I hadn't use the wrong grater. It still works well for breakfast with cream cheese. If I put sweetened Greek yogurt on top I wonder if I could tell myself its a cake? The texture is more like a pudding cake than a bread.
This was cooked in a slow cooker for about 3 hours. Its now getting cool here and I'll soon be able to bake in an oven again.
I have frozen whole tomatoes in the past. It's easy and it's easy to use when you want them. While still frozen, take a paring knife and cut out the core (careful for your fingers), run under a little cold water and the skin comes off. If you have the freezer space and don't have time to preserve them some other way, it's good. Turning them into sauce first is my preferred way as it does take up a LOT less space.
One reason whole tomatoes take up so much space is that they're round, so if you freeze them you wind with a lot of air gaps. The other is that the juice is mostly water.
I did around 40 pounds of tomatoes last weekend: 
I think they would have come close to filling up my 24 quart pot.
I wound up with about 15 quarts of juice and pulp, plus I filled 2 one-gallon bags with the seeds and skin that the Roma sauce maker separated out. (I'll use those to make beef stock over the winter.) The 15 quarts reduced down to about 8-9 quarts of tomato sauce.
The year that I put in several black cherry tomato plants I wound up picking HUNDREDS of cherry-sized tomatoes. I would throw them in boiling water for a few seconds, then bag them for the freezer. I used them to make stock.
I'm running out of freezer space for containers of tomato sauce, but will probably have two more good harvest cycles, depending on when the first frost hits. I might blanch and freeze a few whole tomatoes, though I'm not sure where they'd go in the freezers.
The tomatoes have been fairly small this year, partly because of the varieties I chose. If I get enough larger ones (the Amish Paste ones are great, up to 10 ounces each), I might make a few bags of concassed tomatoes (skinned and seeded.)
For dinner on Monday, I made sauce using my already cooked garden tomatoes, ground turkey, onion, garlic, celery, red bell pepper; parsley, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a bit of Penzey’s concentrated beef base, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and 1 tsp. Penzey’s Tuscan Sunset. I mixed it with a box of Barilla pasta—the kind that touts itself as high protein because it uses some bean and whole grain flour in addition to the semolina (it was on sale), and we grated Parmesan over it.
On Monday morning, I baked a new recipe, Almond and Apricot Biscotti, which the Mayo Clinic has as part of the DASH diet:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/recipes/almond-and-apricot-biscotti/rcp-20049600
I made two ingredient changes in that I used white whole wheat flour rather than regular whole wheat, and I added 3 Tbs. BRM milk powder.
I also created some of my own directions. After mixing the dry ingredients, I whisked together the wet ingredients before adding them. I used my “dough whisk,” which I find perfect for oil-based biscotti recipes. After I had mixed in the apricots and almonds, I shaped it by putting scoops of it onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, then using slightly damp hands (not floured hands) to shape it into a log, which I sprinkled with KAF’s sparkling sugar, after first spritzing it. After the first bake, I let rest the stated ten minutes, but I then spritzed it and waited another five minutes before slicing straight rather than diagonally. These were slightly fragile, so I might wait a bit longer next time, but they still sliced well. I stand them up for the second bake, which I did for the lesser time of 15 minutes, as my husband does not like them too hard.
I got 20 biscotti, and the end pieces are small. I tasted the crumbs and a warm end piece, and the flavor is good. We’ll see how they are when they cool. These will be good for calcium and potassium. Sometimes the Mayo Clinic recipes try too hard to be healthy and do not give what a lot of us crave: texture and taste in addition to the health benefits. If I like these, I could see perhaps substituting other fruits and nuts into the basic recipe.
Joan probably needed less flour because she uses the scoop method to measure flour. KAF recipes are written for the "spoon it into a cup" method.
I distrust King Arthur on metric weights. I had baked their spelt bread and it was wonderful. I could not figure out why some people had a problem with it. Then I used their gram "equivalencies," as I wanted to avoid dirtying measuring cups, and I had the same problem as the other posters. The next time I baked it, I used cups but I weighed the flours, and the KAF metric weights (I didn't check the ounces) were significantly different. Whatever conversion they are using doesn't work. I recently baked another bread, and I tested it with metric and with the cups measurements on flour, and I noted the discrepancy as well.
It makes sense that KAF would focus on measurements by cups on their site for home bakers, because that is what their target audience uses, but they need to be more accurate if they want to give metric measurements.
Joan, I don't know if you'll see this, since you're going to visit your sister, but . . .
. . . . thanks so much for your response. I haven't experimented with buttermilk yet to see if I can handle it (I do just fine with butter & sour cream). I'll try this bread, using nonfat dry milk. If I run into a dryness problem, I'll opt for the Lactaid milk, which is what I have on hand. I'm not big on tenting anything in the oven, so I'm glad you gave your good experience with not tenting. Hope you have a safe trip.
Grains of paradise is an interesting spice. Some people who are allergic to pepper (capsaicins, not sweet peppers) use it in place of pepper in food.
On Saturday, I made a double batch of The Neely's (Food Network) Broccoli Soup. For the freezer. I really like this soup. It only has 1/2 cup cream (I use half 'n half) in a single batch. Because i'm now allergic to cow's milk, I used only 1/2 cup in the double batch. I should be okay.
I also took a meal to sick people this week. Because time was short, I made it easy on myself. Using 1 quart beef broth & 2 quarts chicken broth, I made Rice in Broth. Because the recipe book called for 2 cups of rice, I ended up with cooked rice and had to add broth to the quart containers. Good news was I ended up with 2 quarts for the freezer.
I also took them Cuban Bread and deli ham and cheeses for sandwiches. I gave them cannoli for dessert.
Nothing going on in my kitchen for a while! I had eye surgery (cataract) two weeks ago and then had a reaction to one of the post-op meds. Finally, tonight I can see enough to use the computer, although It's still very painful. And I'm going out of town, I hope, on Thursday, So all my cooking and baking plans have been put on the back burner -- with the burners turned off!
