It's Christmas eve, so I'll be making a batch of chili today and oyster stew in the evening.
Monday I'll bake the ham, my son is going to make the potato casserole. (He made 3 batches of it for a dinner he organized for around 35 people two weeks ago.)
I'll make the DGBC.
I made a triple batch of pastry cream this evening, so that we can make our traditional Christmas trifle tomorrow. Hopefully that'll be enough to have some left over for snacking. (I made it late enough in the evening that just my son and I were around to scrape the leavings out of the pan.)
I baked 3 dozen Pfeffernusse cookies on Saturday.
I also made dough for Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars), which I will bake tomorrow.
I've used that method or variations on it. I take a big bowl, heat it with near-boiling water (an instant hot water tap is great for that), pour the water out, then invert it over a platter with the stick of butter on it.
For dinner on Wednesday, I roasted three bone-in chicken breasts. I roasted some cubes of honey nut squash separately (lower temperature). Those honey nuts came from our garden and have been awaiting use. We also had microwaved frozen peas and carrots. We have leftover chicken to use in at least two more meals.
Those croissants look great!
Last night I made a batch of dough for Martha Stewart's Noel Nut Balls. I have them portioned and frozen, to be baked probably on Friday. Today I made a batch of Alton Brown's chocolate chip cookies, The Puffy, again, portioned and in the freezer now, I will bake some of them on Friday and leave a few in the freezer for another occasion.
Also am making a batch of my sandwich/burger buns, they are waiting to go into the oven. I had both of my KitchenAid mixers going at the same time. I used the flex edge beater on the mini KA in which I made the cookie dough, that did a real good job, I didn't have to scrape down the sides of the bowl at all.
For yesterday's baking I needed 2 sticks of room temp butter but my butter was straight from the fridge. So I went on YouTube to look for tricks to soften it without melting it. I found several variations of this. You take a glass and pour very hot water in it and let it sit for a few minutes (to warm up the glass). Then you dump the water and stand the stick of butter up and then the empty but hot glass over it (don't let the butter touch the glass). Wait about 5 minutes and then you have softened but not melted butter. I tried it and it worked.
So you would think a 2 hour final proof would be fine under those conditions?
If I was answering a question on the food safety certification exam, I'd hesitate before saying yes, but I think as long as the fillings are cooked to at least 180 degrees they should be fine, and with most breads the internal temperature is more like 190-200.
The general rule of thumb is 2 hours in the danger zone (40-140) is the upper limit, 1 hour if at 90 degrees or hotter.
Would proofing in the refrigerator be possible?
I've been using sticks I made from Callebaut semi-sweet chocolate (54.5% cacao) but most of the bakeries use pre-made sticks, so I bought a box of 300 Callebaut croissant sticks (44% cacao).
The pre-made ones are a bit smaller, 3 inches long and 5.3 grams each vs 4 inches long and about 10 grams for the ones I made, so I used 2 per chocolatine.
I had enough of the home made chocolate sticks left to make 2 croissants, the other 7 were made with the pre-made sticks. I tried some of both, and found it hard to pick a favorite.
I've been thinking about Skeptic's dessert pizza with cranberry sauce and ricotta. I wondered if it could be used as a filling for sweet rolls or even a bread--rather like that lemon bread with the crisscross dough. I have 5 oz. of ricotta left over from when I made the lasagna, and I still have some cranberry cherry cardamom relish.
I haven't used ricotta very much. I usually use the leftover to make lemon cookies (Olive/Tomato recipe), but it might be nice to try something different, My husband is not a cranberry fan, but I I make a glaze for the bread or the sweet rolls, he would probably eat it.
Thoughts? Has anyone tried this with ricotta?
I'm working on another batch of croissant dough, I'll make some chocolatines and some croissants.
I've got my 3 turns done (1 simple fold, 2 letter folds for a total of 37 layers) and I rolled it out to the point where I need to divide it into two parts for final rollout to 2 or 3mm thick. I'll make some chocolatines in the morning, bake them in the afternoon, and do the croissants on Thursday or Friday.
Christmas dinner will be a spiral sliced ham, pineapple rings, cheesy scalloped potatoes, fresh green beans, peas (for those few who only eat DelMonte green beans out of a can!), broccoli salad, and either garlic knots, or onion-wild rice rolls or ??? Dessert will be a couple of cookie trays for after the sharing of gifts. We'll have both children and five grandchildren with spouses/significant others.
I have already made, and in the freezer ready to bake: Best Chewy Peanut Butter, Oatmeal Lemon Sugar, Molasses Ginger, Orange Cinnamon Chip, Cranberry Coconut cookies, and will be making Buckeye Bars and Chocolate Toffee this week. Christmas Eve (when we have our family gathering here for dinner and gifts) I'll make some kind of rolls, not sure exactly what yet.
I agree with you, chocomouse, I wish I had known about baked pancakes years ago. KABC has a recipe for sheet pan French Toast. Eventually I'm going to try it -- not with their custard mixture which is more work than I want to go to first thing in the morning. I'm going to use my mixture (2 eggs, 1 cup milk, lots of cinnamon & a smidgen nutmeg) and follow their instructions for the baking. I may need to adjust it somewhat, but it certainly has to be easier than standing at the stove babysitting 2 slices French Toast at a time in the skillet. Here's the KABC recipe:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sheet-pan-french-toast-recipe
Ah, such yummy baking from Aaron and Mike!
It has been a slow baking week for me, so I needed to do something about that today. On Friday, I baked Eggnog Barley cake in my Christmas wreath Nordic Ware Bundt pan. I replaced 1 ¼ cups of the AP flour with barley flour. I found a high quality "low-fat" (still 3.5 g saturated fat per half cup) eggnog (Organic Valley Reduced Fat Eggnog) when we were at Kroger earlier this week. The Kroger brand was lower in saturated fat, but it used high fructose corn syrup. The cake is excellent, as we each had a slice for dinner.
My husband's mouth is still somewhat sore, so I baked a double batch of my new recipe for Drop Sugar Cookies that use avocado oil rather than butter. I did two-thirds of the cookies by rolling them in combined red and green sugar and rolling the remaining one-third in red, green, and white sprinkles. It is nice to have a sugar cookie for Christmas again, especially for afternoon teatime.
They went over very well, as usual.
They smelled so good baking (the dough and butter) that I think I'll make a batch of regular croissants over the holidays while our son and granddaughter are here. And bagels, since my granddaughter LOVES bagels.
