What are you Baking the Week of August 2, 2026?

[Mike Nolan]

No immediate plans here.

Spread the word

      

  

  

[BakerAunt]

For Sunday breakfast, I made Pumpkin Oat Wholegrain Belgium Waffles. I cut the brown sugar from ¼ cup to 2 Tbs. With maple syrup, the waffle itself does not need to be overly sweet. Annie, of course, was in heaven, as she loves waffles.

[kimbob]

My friend gave me a large zucchini from her garden along with several yellow squash. I made nine jumbo muffins and 2 regular loaves with the zucchini. Gave some away and froze some for future breakfasts.

[BakerAunt]

I have been looking for ways to use blackberry puree (what is left after I remove a lot of the seeds) other than in jam, as we can only eat and give away so much. While Scott would have been happy with a rerun of the Bittersweet Blackberry Brownies, I need a break from intense chocolate, so I googled and found a recipe, "Blackberry Swirl Coffee Cake" by Melissa at the blog "A Latte Food."

Blackberry Swirl Coffee Cake

I used a scant cup (probably 7 oz.) of blackberry puree, while she calls for 1 ½ cup fresh or frozen blackberries which she purees with ¼ cup of sugar. I instead heated my blackberry puree with the sugar and let it cook a bit, then stirred in 1 Tbs. of chia seed to thicken it, before letting it cool.

I replaced her AP flour with King Arthur's Golden wheat (white whole wheat). Instead of 1/4 cup granulated sugar and ½ cup brown sugar, I used ½ cup granulated sugar. As I would be using buttermilk rather than regular milk, I changed 2 tsp. baking powder to 1 tsp. baking powder and ¼ tsp. baking soda. I added 2 Tbs. Bob's Red Mill milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I replaced the 1/3 cup melted butter with 1/3 cup avocado oil. I used the equal amount, as I would be replacing the sour cream with nonfat Greek yogurt, so I thought a little more fat would be good. I replaced the milk with buttermilk. For the topping, I cut the recipe in half; like King Arthur, she is clearly a fan of the deep streusel topping. I replaced the cold butter with an equal amount of avocado oil. I baked it in a 9 x 9-inch ceramic dish, because the acidity of the blackberries would damage the coating on the USA pans. It only needed 30 minutes to bake. Once the coffee cake had cooled, I needed to run a knife around the sides to loosen it. We each had a slice for dessert, and we decided the recipe is a keeper.

[Joan Simpson]

BakerAunt that Blackberry coffee cake sounds so good!

I had log time friends from Florida traveling through that my husband use to work with in the 70's come by and spend the night with me Saturday and I baked them a pineapple upside down cake and brownies for them to take home Sunday morning. Today I baked another pineapple upside down cake for another friend that's having surgery Wednesday.

[kimbob]

Wow, Joan and BakerAunt! I made jumbo blueberry muffins today and gave some to my friend around the corner.

[Joan Simpson]

Love Blueberry muffins Kimbob!

[BakerAunt]

You can never go wrong with blueberry muffins!

[BakerAunt]

My baking on Thursday: I have been craving English muffins--specifically the Easy Buckwheat Oat English Muffins, a recipe at Nebraska Kitchen that I moved from its posters original post at the last rendition of the King Arthur Baking Circle, and that I have made several times in the past. It has always been a difficult dough to work with, but I thought it would be ideally suited to the Ankarsrum. I make a few changes to the recipe, such as substituting 1 ½ cup of buttermilk for part of the water and reducing the salt to 1 tsp. This time, I also added 2 Tbs. milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I also decided that instead of oat flour I would use an equal amount of old-fashioned oats. The recipe definitely mixes better in the Ankarsrum. I could never get the paddle on my previous mixer to do the work correctly and would resort to the dough hook. I even did the dough in the bread machine, but due to its stickiness that was a messy clean-up. I mixed the dough on the first speed, then on second speed for 5 minutes before adding 2 minutes, then 1 minute, then another 1 minute. I think that it is easier to get the dough completely hydrated with the Ankarsrum.

I left the batter-like dough in the mixing bowl to rise. Ankarsrum comes with a cover for the mixing bowl for just that purpose. After two hours, I turned out the dough onto my Silpat mat coated with plenty of semolina, which made the shaping much easier. I covered them with an old deli cover to rest for 20 minutes but started heating my cast iron pans, coated with a little Vegalene, at 15 minutes. I should not have pre-heated the pans for so long. I had to turn them off and let them cool slightly before I could proceed, although, since the muffins cool down the pan when they hit it, I should have allowed for that temperature drop. It is hard to maintain a consistent pan temperature on the stove top. It ranged from 270-330 F. I used a cast iron flat, round flat griddle pan for three at a time, and a Le Creuset "skinny" rectangular griddle pan for another three, then did the second batch. I used my instant read thermometer to make sure the centers were at 185-190 F. I am looking forward to having a couple, toasted, tomorrow with Land o' Lakes Sweet Cream spread (canola oil and butter) and some of the pear jam I made last year. I like that the recipe does not require muffin rings, and yes, they are not the greatest circles. Coating with the semolina makes them easier to move to the griddle pans.

[Joan Simpson]

Your English muffins sound so good BakerAunt!
I made a no bake peanut butter pie. I couldn't find a chocolate pie crust ready made so I bought Walmart brand of Oreo's and ground them added some butter and pressed them in pan and baked 10 minutes.We'll see how it tastes tomorrow.

[kimbob]

Baked blondies per my friend's request.

[BakerAunt]

Ooh, Joan--peanut butter pie with chocolate crust. Who needs Reese's peanut butter cups?

[Joan Simpson]

BakerAunt it was delicious!Cut well also , gave it a drizzle of chocolate syrup yummy!

[Author]

Posts