What are you Baking the Week of December 15, 2024?

[Mike Nolan]

Any Christmas baking at your house? I'll be doing some chocolate croissants later in the week for a party on Friday.

Spread the word

      

  

  

[BakerAunt]

I've been racing to get the Christmas decorations up, since we came back with just two weeks until Christmas. The halls have now been decked, and I will be turning my attention to cookie baking this week.

On our way home from Florida, I convinced my husband to stop at Ellis Brothers for pecans. He was skeptical, since most of the places along the highway are tourist traps, but Ellis Brothers is a family business that alternates between selling pecans and peaches--and lots of other goodies as well. I bought three pounds of pecan pieces for baking, so that should have me set for a while. I also bought a 3 lb. bag of pecan meal, which I haven't been able to find since King Arthur stopped carrying it. I like it in biscotti and plan to try it in a crumb crust. The cashier told me that some people like to use it as a coating on pork chops, so that is on my list to try.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made more molasses cookies. I made a double batch to give-away.

It's also a ciabatta week. I usually would cut and bake the whole batch then freeze what I didn't need and thaw. Last batch I tried leaving the dough in the fridge and baking as needed. I did cut and freeze some dough then thaw and shape as needed. That works but not as well and I still need to work out the timing for thawing/shaping/rising. Pulling off and shaping some cold dough really is the best option.

I kept my challah dough in the refrigerator for a month and it still had some rise in it. I did not try eating it because I didn't want to risk making myself sick.

I also have been letting them rise at room temp under a quarter sheet of parchment. This morning I let it rise at room temp inside a tented baking bag. They came out higher so maybe the parchment has been weighing them down?

I made New Haven style pizza but for some reason the dough was really elastic. I took it out of the freezer and let it thaw in the refrigerator then for the last few hours I let it sit on the counter. I will try thawing and rising for longer. This may make it a little more relaxed.

Anyone ever converted from compressed yeast to instant? I have a recipe that calls for .8 oz of compressed yeast. The calculator I found on the web (https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/yeast-converter) says this is 7.5 g.

[BakerAunt]

We went and got our Christmas tree on Wednesday at a Christmas tree farm about 30 minutes from us. They did not have many left, but we found a lovely white fir. That inspired me to bake a double recipe of my soft sugar cookies that use avocado oil instead of butter. I decorated a little over half with red and green sugar, and the rest with some red, green, and white sprinkles. I hope to bake more Christmas cookies tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

On Thursday, I finally had time to use the spaghetti squash that I had roasted last week to bake my adaptation of Ken Haedrich's Spaghetti Squash and Parmesan Cheese Quiche for lunch today and for the next five days. I have adapted it to replace butter with olive oil, heavy cream with low-fat evaporated milk, and an oil crust. For my crust recipe, I replaced the whole wheat pastry flour with fine cornmeal (by weight). I used 1/3 cup of canola with enough olive oil for half a cup, because I did not know how the cornmeal would work with the oil. I like the flavor. Back when I was making butter crusts, I used a cornmeal butter crust recipe, so it was great to know that I can adapt my oil recipe to make a cornmeal crust.

[BakerAunt]

I looked in the bread holder on Thursday afternoon and realized that there was just one thin slice left, so I baked my version of King Arthur's Pompanoosuc Porridge Bread. I use a long, thinner loaf pan for it, which makes for nicely sized slices.

[Mike Nolan]

I made the detrempte for croissant dough last night, and will be doing at least two turns of lamination tonight, maybe all three, then shaping and baking chocolatines in the morning for a party in the afternoon.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Friday from dough I made earlier in the week. My husband is happy as he has been without his beloved crackers for several days.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up with 24 chocolatines, I used a somewhat different process for preparing and enrobing the butter block, at first I was afraid it was going to be a total mess, but as I did additional turns (4 in all) it got better looking with each turn. I will probably try the previous method again when I make another batch of croissant dough over the weekend (requested by my son), it's a bit more work up front but that probably pays off during lamination. There were a few left over after the party, I bagged them and put them in the freezer. That should keep them from getting stale between now and Sunday.

[chocomouse]

I mixed the dough for Lemon Coconut White Chocolate Chip cookies. I'll scoop and either bake or freeze them tomorrow.

[Italiancook]

I baked a recipe BakerAunt had posted about: Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. Thanks for telling us about this recipe, BA. I'll make them again. Because I had leftovers from a neighbor's fudge gift, I used 1/4 cup milk chocolate chips, 1/4 cup semi-sweet chips & 1/4 cup bittersweet chips. I also used the recipe amount of peanut butter chips. I don't stock old fashioned oats, so I used the quick-cooking (not instant) oats. Perhaps that's the reason, I found that I had to use my fingers to form some of the dough balls that collapsed a little after scooping. I used an Endurance 18/8 scoop and it made 36 cookies. They're a little bigger than I prefer, but I didn't complain when I ate two while watching an historical movie tonight. My husband? He complained. He wants oatmeal raisin cookies.

[Joan Simpson]

Today I made a Lemon Supreme pound cake for a friend and orange cake with a drizzle icing.Tonight I made a ginger snap cookie never made it before and I loved it, very spicy.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--I'm glad that you liked the peanut butter oatmeal cookie recipe.

Wow, Joan! You had a busy day of baking, too!

What I really want is a taste of what Mike is baking.

On Saturday, I baked a double batch of King Arthur's Spiced Rye Ginger Cookies. My only changes are to add 1 Tbs. milk powder per recipe and to halve the salt. I used a #40 scoop, which gave me 47 cookies. I rolled them in equal parts of white, red, and green sparkling sugar. (King Arthur used to sell the sparkling sugar in colors other than white but stopped doing so.) A dozen of these will be a gift to our neighbors. These cookies are delectably spicy.

After baking the cookies, I experimented with making Eggnog scones by adapting a King Arthur recipe so that I used canola oil rather than butter. I was able to find a low-fat eggnog at the grocery when we did our shopping run, but I had to buy lactose-free to get it and to avoid eggnog with high-fructose corn syrup. I splurged and used 90 g of cinnamon chips and added ½ cup of chopped pecans. I will try a couple for breakfast tomorrow.

Next Day Update: I had two of the scones for breakfast. They are firmer than butter scones but still delicious. I used half whole wheat pastry flour and half King Arthur AP. I might try replacing the AP with white pastry flour next time.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making ladyfingers tonight, because I can't find any soft ones in town. (They're usually in the freezer section.) I can find hard ones, but they don't taste the same, even if you soak in something to soften them.

We'll use them in a trifle for Christmas.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up with about 80 ladyfingers. The piping on the first tray shown below was not perfect, but I got better later on. Fortunately, the batter is pretty forgiving.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Author]

Posts