What are you Baking the week of January 5, 2020?

[Mike Nolan]

Baking anything interesting?

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[BakerAunt]

On Sunday afternoon, I baked my adaptation of “Fresh Apple Cake,” from Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking with Whole Grains (Sarah E Myers and Mary Beth Lind), p. 213, using four of the Jonathan apples that we picked last November. It will be a delicious dessert for Twelfth Night--and beyond.

[Mike Nolan]

Over on the BBGA forum, a member recently posted a recipe for apple bread using the lees left over from making/fermenting apple cider. (That's the thick residue at the bottom of the fermenting vessel. It has a lot of dead yeast cells, so you have to add some live yeast.)

I'm looking around for a source for some apple cider lees to try the recipe, the poster said it makes great toast.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, what's the best way to use the BBGA forums? They're a little overwhelming.

I made pancakes yesterday but instead of the usual powdered buttermilk I used actual buttermilk. I needed much more liquid than normal. Not sure why and I have not begun investigating yet. I usually use 2.5 cups of milk with a cup of whole wheat pastry flour, a cup of white pastry flour, and a half cup of flax meal.

I used most of the quart of buttermilk.

I browned some butter too. Plan is to use it for brown butter shortbread. It's the first time I've ever made brown butter and I probably could have browned it a little more but I'd rather it be less brown than burned. I'll take it a little farther next time I think.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, I use this link:
https://groups.io/g/BBGAorg/topics

It looks like they loaded several years worth of history from the Yahoo Groups version, so you can search for older threads.

I disabled the email notices.

[Mike Nolan]

Cultured buttermilk always seem a bit thicker than milk to me, though according to the USDA database it has around the same percentage of water as milk, but maybe you had some really thick buttermilk.

I don't know if there's anything in buttermilk that would react with the other ingredients to make it thicker.

[skeptic7]

I did a cranberry- apple pie using fresh cranberries this morning. I was basically using the following recipe with my oil pie crust. I am bringing it to a party tonight so I don't know how it will turn out.

https://houseofnasheats.com/cranberry-apple-pie/

The pie was great! Its slightly tart and has an interesting pink color. I was afraid it would be too sweet but it wasn't. All but one piece was eaten and I gave that one away. The cranberries didn't have to be cut up. I gave up using fresh cranberries in bread because cutting up the cranberries by hand was such a pain.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by skeptic7.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by skeptic7.

[Joan Simpson]

Aaron the recipe I use for pancakes uses 1.5 cups milk but if making buttermilk ones says to use 2 cups buttermilk and substitute 1 teaspoon baking soda for the 1 tablespoon of baking powder.This is from an old cookbook of mine.I always make the buttermilk ones.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--That does seem like a lot of buttermilk for the dry ingredients that you list. What was the fat content of the buttermilk? I buy buttermilk that is 1 1/2% fat (or sometimes 2%), but I've seen higher percentages, as well as some recipes that call for "full-fat" buttermilk, which ought to be an oxymoron.

To go with beef stew for Tuesday dinner, I baked cornbread in my scone pan again, using the cornmeal we bought at Spring Mill.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Joan and BA for the buttermilk information. BA - it was 1%. Joan - when the recipe calls for decreasing baking powder and upping baking soda is it calling for double acting baking powder? I don't have any recipes that distinguish between double action baking powder and baking powder and even a lot of baking powders on the shelves here make it hard to distinguish.

I used my brown butter to make shortbread. I used my standard recipe - 8 oz. butter, 2 cups flour, half cup corn starch, and vanilla to taste (I use 1 tsp.) Could not get much simpler. The dough was more crumbly than normal but I pushed it together, rolled it out, and cut out cookies with a round biscuit cutter. Mt family went nuts over them. They definitely tasted better after cooling for some time. As I said, I think the butter could brown some more.

This is the thing that confuses me about all the cooking competitions - most of what I bake does not taste good or at least it's best for several hours to several days after baking. People make pastry cream all the time and while I've only made it a couple of times it needed to chill in the refrigerator for at least a few hours before it had a full flavor and it was even better the next day. So how do people create this great tasting stuff right off the stove or only having chilled briefly, even in a blast chiller?

[Mike Nolan]

I remember a cooking show where they were making bread from scratch in two hours. Sorry, folks, but that's just too darned fast to develop much flavor.

I prefer to chill pastry cream before using it, because I think it handles better that way for piping, but my wife often uses it while its still a little warm. And if you're going to mix it with whipped cream (or low-cal Cool Whip), it really needs to be cool or you lose volume as you mix it.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--Cass told me that when substituting buttermilk for regular milk to replace 1 tsp. of the baking powder with 1/4 tsp. baking soda because baking soda has 4x the rising action of baking powder. That is also what Shirley Corriher says in her books. If I'm replacing regular milk with buttermilk in a recipe that already has baking soda, then I don't change the baking powder or add more baking soda.

I made browned butter frosting once for an apple cake--oh, that was so, so delicious. I'd make that recipe again, if I could assemble enough people to help eat it that I only ate one reasonable slice.

I agree that some items are best with a day or two of rest. I assume that the cooking an baking shows are indulging in fiction. The producer of one show admitted that in order to heighten tension, they set up the kitchen so that the contestants will run into each other. It's rather like the home renovation shows and open concept: the producers like open concept because they believe certain men will only watch the show if walls get smashed.

[Mike Nolan]

Shows like Chopped do their best to increase the drama and tension, like providing only one ice cream machine. Also, there are sometimes only small amounts of some items in the pantry, and there have been shows where an item was available for one round of the competition but not in a subsequent round. (I remember a dessert round where there were no eggs, for example.)

But people bump into each other all the time in real kitchens, too.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday afternoon, I made the KAF recipe for Maple Granola with my usual changes of deleting the vanilla (why cover up the flavor of maple syrup?!), cutting the coconut flakes in half, using just ¼ tsp. salt, and adding ½ cup pumpkin seeds. For the fruit, I stir in 2 cups raisins. My husband eats the granola almost as fast as the cheese crackers. I like it as a topping on my Greek yogurt, and occasionally as a breakfast cereal.

[skeptic7]

I did a Vegan pumpkin cranberry bread, using 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed mixed with three tablespoons of water for an egg substitute. I also used maple syrup for the sweetening since Vegans have an objection to honey.

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