What are you Baking the Week of March 16, 2025?

[Mike Nolan]

Any Irish Soda Bread fans?

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[rottiedogs]

I have 2 loaves of soda bread in the oven right now. One loaf goes way too fast!

[BakerAunt]

I made Pumpkin Wholegrain Waffles for breakfast this morning as a pre-birthday treat for my husband. Our dog, Annie, is also a major fan of waffles of any kind, as am I. We had rain most of yesterday evening, which was a relief, as we had dust storms--probably bringing dust from Texas, Oklahoma, and the Midwest into our area most of yesterday afternoon. Today is cold, and the high of 36 F happened early this morning.

I baked Maple Cookies (no butter), a recipe that I developed today. I used a ceramic cookie stamp with shamrocks on it in honor of St. Patrick's Day tomorrow.

Now that we are done with dinner, I will be baking my husband's favorite chocolate cake for tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

Here is a picture of the birthday cake I baked for Scott. Instead of the ganache, I used a chocolate glaze of powdered sugar, evaporated milk, and vanilla. I think that evaporated milk is key to getting the best result. The glass cake stand belonged to Scott's mother, and he told me that she always put their birthday cakes on it. We used the matching glass plates as well.

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[navlys]

Ba, cake looks yummy!

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, nice cake. Is it a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting? I have a similar recipe for ganache frosting but it calls for granulated sugar. If you follow the recipe (I stopped) it can be kind of gritty. I bet your powdered sugar would fix that.

I made my first test batch of hand pies. I made a KA recipe with blueberries and a sour cream pie dough. Sour cream is the liquid. I only had six but the recipe said I should have eight. The blueberry filling is nice and basically a quick preserve. I can probably sub in strawberries too. I will also try to figure out how to make some pies like chess pies and pumpkin pies into hand pies. The pies have nice layering. I'll work on the yield. I also need to work on scaling - can I mix pie dough in a stand mixer?

Next are macarons. The brewery wants to use macarons as a GF alternative. But they also want to package three different cookies together. I've checked with some nutritionist friends and we cannot package GF and non-GF together and call it GF.

I'm thinking a chocolate chip cookie, a shortbread cookie, and a chocolate chip cookie to start.

I've started using my couche for my ciabatta. I'm still not getting a high enough rise. I may start doing a stretch and fold to increase integrity a little.

[Mike Nolan]

To me, frostings made with powdered sugar have a different taste and mouth feel, some of which may come from the cornstarch in it. It is possible to get powdered sugar that doesn't have cornstarch in it through baking supply companies, but you probably have to use it quickly and it may be a lot more expensive than ordinary powdered sugar or only be available in large bags.

Baker's sugar is more finely ground than ordinary table sugar. And I've been known to pulverize sugar in the food processor.

If the ganache is cooked a bit (longer), the sugar might fully dissolve from the heat.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the compliments on the cake. It's the King Arthur favorite fudge birthday cake (think that is the title). The original uses a ganache of melted chocolate chips and half and half (or heavy cream). As my husband and I have to watch saturated fat, especially as there is no one else around to help us eat the cake, I replaced it with the chocolate glaze.

[aaronatthedoublef]

My favorite cake comes from Rosie's baking book. It's a sour cream chocolate cake with a chocolate frosting that uses evaporated milk, unsweetened and semi sweet chocolate, and sugar. You melt the chocolate and throw all the ingredients in the blender until mixed. I started add the sugar to the evaporated milk first and heating both then mixing before adding to the melted chocolate. This seemed to fix the grit problem.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hold on now BA- you can't find anyone to take some spare chocolate cake off you hands?

[RiversideLen]

BA, I can almost taste the cake!

I've made ganache using milk or coffee in place of cream. Might need to reduce the amount of liquid just a little, it won't be as creamy but if you want to reduce the fat, it's an option.

[BakerAunt]

Sigh. The problem, Len is the saturated fat in the chocolate chips! It's substantial.

Aaron--Most of our neighbors are still in Florida or else just have vacation homes which are largely unoccupied from late fall until around the end of April.

On Tuesday, I baked Sourdough Oatmeal Whole Wheat Bread. I had adapted this recipe nearly five years ago from a Sunset bread book, to include whole wheat flour but am still tinkering with it. Based on my previous experience, I increased the yeast from 2 to 2 ½ tsp. I used just 3 cups of whole wheat flour and two cups of bread flour. Due to the additional whole grains, it had made three rather short 8 x 4-inch loaves, so this time, I baked it as two 9 x 5 loaves, which makes much better sandwich bread. I increased the baking time from 35 to 43 minutes. The loaves look good on the outside. I will know more when we slice a loaf for lunch tomorrow.

Update: It's a slightly chewy, soft bread. We like it.

[Mike Nolan]

I am making banana nut mini-muffins today.

I've updated the recipe (see favorites tab or https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/banana-nut-bread/ ) to note that in my silicone mini-muffin pan it takes about 24 minutes. I also put the entire batch back in the cooling oven so that the outsides get a bit more crisp, which we like.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Wednesday from dough I made last week. As my husband finished the previous batch yesterday, I needed to get these done today.

[cwcdesign]

Aaron re: GF - the macarons are, of course, gluten-free, but if you are making them for celiacs and others with allergy type issues, you would have to make them in a gluten free kitchen. Even if you clean your mixer, etc. there is no guarantee that all wheat is gone. We are very careful at the store making sandwiches and such for people with gluten allergies -separate knives, cutting boards, change of gloves, etc. our resort bake shop only brings in GF products on special request - they can't create in the bake shop as they produce so much with regular flour.

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