What are you Baking the Week of December 27, 2020?

[Mike Nolan]

I'm thinking of making caramel apple empanadas, but first I have to make some caramel sauce. I'm thinking I'm going to try making it using sweetened condensed milk using a sous vide method.

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[BakerAunt]

On Monday, I revisited a recipe from a Pillsbury Classic booklet, Feelin’ Good (#51) for Smashing Herb Cheese Pretzels. These are a baked, bread pretzel. Long ago, I made them with half whole wheat. This time I also cut the salt by 25% , reduced the yeast form 2 ¼ to 2 tsp., and added 1 Tbs. flax meal and 2 Tbs. special dried milk. I used 2% pre-grated cheese, which is the only way I can get 2% cheese. I had forgotten how to shape them properly, so I ended up with pretzel buns. They taste ok, but next time, I will delete the special dried milk and use 1 cup of buttermilk in place of that much water, as they seemed slightly dry to me. I wish that I could find a block of 2 % cheese as well, since I think the additives in the pre-grated affect the outcome.

[skeptic7]

Merry Christmas. I was trying to be good and stay put this weekend, instead of chasing around after Christmas shopping. So I cleaned up my kitchen and scrubbed the countertops in preparation for my long delayed chocolate baton project. Early this summer I had asked your advice on making Pain Au Chocolat. Mike had given me a link to chocolate molds on Amazon for making my own chocolate batons, and BakerAunt had found the original KAF recipe for Pain au Chocolat.
I didn't do anything at that time, except buy some of the very big dark chocolate bars from Trader Joe's and a square wooden dowel and think about making my own molds out of aluminum foil. It was soon too hot to bake and so I just did nothing. However this weekend I decided that six months of procrastination was enough. I cut the dowel into 6 inch lengths, and cut a 6 inch strip of aluminum foil and then worked at bending the aluminum foil around the square wooden bars. I found I could fold and bend the foil into little U shape troughs as long as I left the wooden forms in place so they wouldn't crush. I put my foil form in a biscuit pan.
I broke up the chocolate and melted it a double boiler oh so very carefully. I found if I removed one wooden bar, I could fill the resulting space with chocolate carefully with a spoon. Then remove the next wooden bar and fill the next space until the whole aluminum foil form was full of chocolate and the mold didn't deform. I let it cool for a couple of hours and then pulled one out and it was a nice thin bar like a proper Pan baton only longer.
Since that worked I melted the rest of the chocolate and made 2 more aluminum foil molds and dripped chocolate into the forms.
I unmolded the chocolate bars this morning and had nice 6inch bars. I cut them into 3 inch pieces and found that they fit nicely into a 1/2 pint small mouth mason jar! Success!! Unhappily that was my only unused jar of that size and the rest of chocolate went into the one pint wide mouth jar which wasn't as pretty.
The next step will be to clean up the kitchen again and actually make the Pain au Chocolat. Why do big baking projects take so much time and thought, and then they get eaten so fast?

Since I had the double boiler out, I toasted some pecan halves and melted more chocolate for chocolate bark. I was carefully trying to drop the pecans right side up onto the melted chocolate for a beautiful appearance but many of them landed upside down. How do other people get the nuts right side up? I was being ever so careful with my chopsticks.

[BakerAunt]

Wow! That's quite a project, Skeptic. Have you tried a small pair of tongs for getting your pecans right side up in the chocolate? You could drop it right over the chocolate.

[Mike Nolan]

I'd just set them gently on the poured chocolate and push them in with a toothpick. Another possibility would be to put them in the mold and pour the chocolate on top of them. (Might make sense to put them in face down, making the bottom of the mold the top of the bar, which is often the case with molded chocolates.)

[skeptic7]

I'll keep all the advice in mind for the next time. Dropping chocolate by the spoonful and then topping with a half nut and pushing the nut half way in would be good idea. This time I spread the chocolate into a thin layer and the nuts might fall out if I break the chocolate in pieces.

[BakerAunt]

On Tuesday, I baked my oil-based version of my eggnog cake (also subbing in 1 cup barley flour). I put the batter into two Nordic Ware 4-well nutcracker pans, which is just the right amount. I used the last of the frozen organic low-fat eggnog frozen from last year, when I was amazed to find it in the grocery in the larger town northeast of us

[cwcdesign]

Today I made focaccia from the new book that Will gave me for Christmas - Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz - did anyone ever watch the YouTube videos for Gourmet Makes from Bon Appetit - that was Claire who did those videos. This book is gorgeous and has a savory section as well. She has a video on the focaccia which was very helpful.

I made a couple of minor mistakes - First spin in the KA mixer, I should have had the speed a little higher and mixed a little longer - she says you cannot overmix this dough, but it's easy to undermix. Not sure I got enough oil on the bottom of the pan - it pooled in the corners and the last 5 minutes you bake on the top shelf and I should have checked and stopped a couple of minutes early because I burned my garlic and a couple of air bubbles. But all in all, it looks really good. Can't wait til it's cooled.

[cwcdesign]

Skeptic - I'm impressed at the effort you've put into your batons - can't wait to hear how the pain au chocolate turn out.

[BakerAunt]

New Year’s Eve was spent baking in the kitchen. I baked the Spiced Pumpkin Rye Bread that Stanley Ginsberg has posted on his Rye Baker blog. I decided to let the bread machine do the mixing and kneading instead of struggling with the dough in the 7-quart stand mixer, and it made the process so much easier. The bread had a great rise. We will have some at dinner tomorrow, but I really baked it because we are having turkey for New Year’s Day, and it makes the best turkey sandwiches.

I also baked a cherry pie on New Year’s Eve. I used my oil crust in a deep-dish Emile Henry ceramic pie plate. I used the filling from Baking Illustrated cherry pie. I used a half recipe of the streusel recipe from Carole Walter’s pie baking book but used just 1 Tbs. of melted butter, replacing the rest with 1 ½ Tbs. grapeseed oil. I used her technique of a foil tent for the first 40 minutes. I baked the pie for 25 minutes at 400F, then reduced it to 375F for the next 25 minutes, taking the foil off after 15. I let it go an additional 5 minutes. It looks good, we shall see when we cut it for dessert on New Year’s Day.

[Mike Nolan]

Dessert Person is a book I've looked at online, what do you think of it so far?

I got the 2021 BBGA calendar this week, it has a pumpkin bread for October that is just beautiful. You can see it in this page advertising the calendar for sale:
BBGA 2021 calendar

[BakerAunt]

We sliced the bread tonight, and taste and texture are excellent. I even though that I tasted flavor notes that I missed before. I will definitely use the bread machine to mix and knead this recipe in the future, and perhaps some of Ginsberg's other recipes.

The cherry pie is delicious, and the streusel complements without taking away from the cherry filling. I plan to type up the recipe so that I have it for future pies. The jarred Morello cherries are probably seasonal, but if Aldi's still has them, I'll be buying another three jars to tuck away for a future pie.

[Mike Nolan]

I need to see if one of the stores near us still has Nebraska City cherries in the freezer, 3 small containers of them are about right for a pie.

[Joan Simpson]

The peach cobbler was good,cooking the peaches softened them and boosted the flavor.

[Italiancook]

I made a buttermilk yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I sliced it and 3/4 of the cake went into the freezer.

BakerAunt, I had planned to make your Eggnog Cake today. Using homemade eggnog. My husband forgot the whole milk and half n half, so no eggnog. Recently, you posted you had made your oil version of this cake. The recipe I printed uses butter. How much oil do you substitute for the butter?

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