What are you Baking the week of December 10th?

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not doing any baking today, but here's a thread for those who are.

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[BevM]

After the snow yesterday (in Mobile, Alabama almost an inch), today was a good day to have the oven on. I baked an old-fashioned Peach Cobbler. It's from a recipe I have had since the 70's. It was good and my daughter enjoyed it also.

[Mike Nolan]

If you haven't posted your peach cobbler recipe (the only one I found in the archives was from S_Wirth), please consider posting it.

I haven't had a good peach cobbler in a long time!

[BakerAunt]

It was also a good day to bake in northern Indiana, as we had between 8-10 inches of snow yesterday. The temperature did get above freezing, but it is on the way back down.

Sunday afternoon, I again baked a brownie variation called Brickle Bars (Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book, p. 219). I reduced the amount of almond brickle and mini-chocolate chips that I sprinkled on top and instead used some green candy sprinkles with red ball sprinkles. These somewhat melted into the top, but there is still a festive red and green.

In addition, I baked a new recipe, Cherry Cardamom Loaves, which came with a Nordic Ware Christmas pan that makes eight mini-loaves (6 cup capacity). I'll add an addendum to this post once we have tasted them. It was rather nice that all the mixing is by hand, and it uses melted butter.

Note: the loaves are definitely better the day after they are baked when the flavors have had a chance to blend. However, I can take these or leave them, so I doubt that I'll bake them again.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by BakerAunt.

[Italiancook]

For breakfast, I backed "Butterkuchen" from AllRecipes. BakerAunt, this recipe calls for using a 9 x 13 baking dish, but since you did the arithmetic, I used 2 - 8" square dishes. Worked out perfectly. I do have a question for all the yeast bakers:

The yeast coffee cakes I baked last week and these 2 today had dimples in the final products. Areas where the cake had fallen in slightly. All circular areas, like dimples. The cakes tasted fine and looked great. Any ideas on why they dimpled?

[cwcdesign]

Today I made a Boston Cream Pie. Turns out KAF has revised the recipe since I last made one in August. And, I don’t know the changes between the new and the old recipe since I didn’t copy it. The recipe was pretty straight forward but I still made it in 8” pans so I have two nice tall layers. They did create a pastry cream with proportions just for this recipe instead of using half a recipe of their pastry cream (no heavy or whipping cream for the Boston Cream pie). It used 2 ½ cups milk and 3 egg yolks, 1 whole egg instead of 3 cups milk and 4 egg yolks. It set up much better, but because my layers were smaller, the layer of cream was thicker which is fine by me. I used the ganache from the big batch brownies for the top.

I had put it on my cake stand and it’s so tall that I took the racks out of my cold oven and set it inside for the night. I also wrote a big sign not to turn the oven on?

I also tried BakerAunt’s eggnog cake. Since I forgot to set my timer I may have over baked it - it was a little dry. Sadly, we couldn’t detect too much eggnog flavor - maybe it will be better tomorrow

[Mike Nolan]

I hope your cold oven is cold enough, pastry cream should be kept cold, so I've always assumed Boston Cream Pie should be, too. Stores always keep pre-made ones in the refrigerated case.

A few years ago I was on a Boston Cream Pie quest, I made it at least a half dozen times, with various cakes, types of pastry cream and toppings. Never did find the perfect combination, they were all pretty good, though. I like the cake to have a hint of almond in it, enough so you can tell there's something there but not really get hit with ALMOND! The one that had a mixture of my mother-in-law's pastry cream and a classic creme patisserie was the best filling. These days I tend to use the pastry cream recipe in the KAF Baker's Companion, but sometimes with an extra egg yolk. The pastry cream we made at pastry school was so thick it was almost hard to pipe, but boy it was good.

I did get confirmation that the original topping on a Boston Cream Pie was a chocolate fondant (made with confectioners fondant), so it gets fairly firm, rather than a softer ganache, but nearly every modern recipe uses a ganache, and I'm OK with that.

One of the things we talked about a little in chocolate school was how to adjust the firmness and texture of a ganache. (To make it firmer, you add more cocoa butter.) I'd still like to take the 3rd course in the chocolate sequence at the Chocolate Academy some year, it deals with designing your own ganaches.

[cwcdesign]

When I talked to KAF last summer, we talked about leaving the cake layers out until it was made. Somehow, in my inimitable fashion, I translated that to leaving the cake out until it was serve. I tried to do do many things yesterday and didn’t read the rest of the directions - it’s in the fridge now - thanks Mike - I hope it’s enough

KAF says the original was sponge cake layered with cream and iced with vanilla and chocolate fondant

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by cwcdesign.

[Mike Nolan]

Greg Patent's article from Gastronomica is probably the definitive article on the history of Boston Cream Pie

[Rascals1]

Hi, they got the bleeding stopped after two days. she hasn't regained much strength or energy yet All because of new blood thinners.. I do sit her up at her request and let her read your posts.

[skeptic7]

Yesterday I baked my fourth Lemon Meringue Pie with buttermilk Pie crust and it was a success! I reread all your directions and advice. I refrigerated the pie crust, took it out and remixed it and then refrigerated it again. The pie crust dough had clumps that were too moist and crumbs that were too dry. I rolled it out again to somewhat larger than the pie pan. The pie pan had holes in it. I draped the pie crust over the outside of the pie pan, and then placed the pie pan in a 14 inch deep pizza pan with the pie pan on the bottom and the crust on top. I then refrigerated the whole thing again. I refrigerated this for several hours -- I had other things to do. THen I heated the oven to 415 degrees and after the oven was hot, took the pie crust out of the refrigerater and pricked it with a fork. I baked for 10 minutes until lightly brown, then I put the other solid pie pan over the crust and turned it over. I took out the original pie pan, and now I had a half baked pie crust inside a pie pan. I baked the pie pan for 4-5 minutes using the pizza pan to make it more manageable and prevent any butter from dripping out, until it was golden brown at the edges and slightly brown in the middle.
I then use KAF 200th Anniversary cookbook for the Lemon Meringue. I used 2 lemons for the zest and about 1/4 cup lemon juice.
The pie crust is perfect, but the lemon filling is a little soft.

[Mike Nolan]

Is there egg in the filling? If so, then it probably needed more egg yolk.

[BakerAunt]

Monday morning, I baked an 8x4 loaf of Donna German's Austrian Malt bread that Mike Nolan has posted here. I followed one of his variations by substituting in 1 cup of semolina flour. I also grated the 1.1 ounce of Asiago cheese left over from two other bread recipes and added it. I did substitute 3/4 cup buttermilk for that much water, and I used 1 1/2 Tbs. honey in place of the sugar. I reduced the yeast to 2 1/4 tsp. and the salt to 1 1/4 tsp. The loaf needed to bake 40 minutes to get to 200F. It looks and smells lovely, so I look forward to cutting into it tomorrow.

Thanks for the suggestion, Mike!

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by BakerAunt.

[cwcdesign]

Hi Rascals! Glad you’re feeling up to reading. Thanks for keeping us up to date, Jan.

[S_Wirth]

We've been thinking of you and hoping you're feeling a little better...we are so glad to get an update from Jan. Glad you enjoy reading our posts. We'll continue to pray for your recovery. God bless you and your family, Rascals.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by S_Wirth.

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