What are you Baking the Week of March 17, 2024?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi BA. Yes, I think Sam honestly forgot the cookies. It is sad. Maybe I'll bake some more and send them to him. Still he couldn't share them with his friends in Boston. We have baked cookies for his cross country meets a few times.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--it reminded me of when we drove back to Texas from Indiana, only to realize several hours into the trip that the last half of my husband's chocolate birthday cake was sitting on the table at the Indiana house. Every birthday, my husband remembers the cake that we left behind, in part because I bake the same cake every year, although I have replaced the very rich ganache with a chocolate glaze. Maybe it's the ganache talking. At least, since we retired to Indiana, there is no more opportunity to leave a cake behind.

This evening, I'm baking Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from the dough I made last week.

[Joan Simpson]

I made peanut butter cookies today so that's dessert!

[skeptic7]

I did Hot Cross buns yesterday. This is a smallish recipe from Babe's Country Cookbook. It made 20 buns in a 9x12 pan. I'm still at my father's house and this is the most convenient size. The pan fits nicely in an X-large Ziploc style Freezer bag, and the dough rises nicely in the KitchenAid Mixer bowl. I used the dried orange slices from Trader Joe to give it some citrus flavor and some raisins that happened to be in the refrigerator. I missed my homemade lemon and orange peel but this is a vast improvement over not baking any Hot Cross buns. I bought dried lemon peel at the grocery store so the next version will at least have a bit of lemon flavor.
It seems odd not baking at least a half sheet pan size batch at a time.

[Mike Nolan]

I think I'll probably make one batch of hot cross buns to give away, but I don't think I'll try to make a keto-friendly version for us.

[BakerAunt]

When I was sorting through recipes a few weeks ago, I came upon a March 2000 recipe from Bon Appetit for Honey, Anise, and Almond Biscotti (pp. 1`38-140). I decided to bake it on Friday. I made just two changes: I used half white whole wheat flour and added 1 Tbs. milk powder. The dough is very sticky. The recipe calls for refrigeration for three hours after it is mixed. Due to time constraints, mine was refrigerated for seven before I baked it. The recipe makes the very flat dough, so these are the thin biscotti. The directions were a bit vague as to how long each of the three logs should be. Just stating 2-inch wide by 1-inch high is not helpful, since the dough flattens out. I ended up cutting the first baking time from 20 to 18 minutes. For the second bake, I baked the slices from the two rolls for 14 minutes and the slices from the single roll (three rolls would not fit on a single pan) for 12 minutes. While the recipe said it makes 48, I ended up with 76. They smell good, so I will try a couple tomorrow with tea. My husband is not a fan of anise, so I do not know if he will eat them.

[chocomouse]

Today I made focaccia to go with soup from the freezer for dinner tonight. We have about 12 inches of snow, since around 2 a.m., and are supposed to get another 6 inches, until about 8 p.m. tonight. This is more snow than we have had, total, all winter!

[RiversideLen]

I made cupcakes from a box mix and made a chocolate frosting and topped them with coconut.

[BakerAunt]

Report on the Honey, Anise, and Almond Biscotti: The biscotti are crunchy but not hard. The honey is the foremost flavor with the aniseed in the background. The lemon peel is not obvious. These biscotti go well with tea and would work well with coffee.

My husband ate some with his tea. He said that they are not his favorite, but they may grow on him. (He had claimed not to care for the spices in my Pfeffernusse, which include anise extract, but I realized a couple of Christmases ago, as they started disappearing rather quickly, that he had started to enjoy them. That might be the powdered sugar coating....)

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
The Biscotti sound great! I like the traditional anise flavoring. I had a friend who told me after she ate the biscotti that she didn't like anise. I was surprised as she could have refused to eat the cookies without giving offense. That was also not the first time I had made and she had eaten those cookies, if I had known of her tastes I would have given them to someone else.
I can see why your husband has not forgotten the lost cake. Did you have to call a neighbor to pick it up?

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--the cake story gets sadder. We did call someone with a key to tell the person he and his family could have it. He never picked it up. When we returned in May, there was a moldy mess sitting in the cake holder. I refused to look at it, although my husband found the mold fascinating. He buried the cake in the back yard. Our garden is now on top of the spot. He also cleaned the cake holder and plate.

[skeptic7]

I did a second batch of Hot Cross buns. Much like the previous one but with a little dried lemon peel to add more flavor. Turned out very well with a decided buttery flavor underlying the fruit and spices. I'm using orange juice and powder sugar to form the frosting for the cross.
Does anyone read the KAF emails? this time they are suggesting chocolate in layers of puff pastry for an Easter desert. More like a slab pie than anything else but they are describing it as a flat croissant. I thought it looked rather crude and ugly, and should at least have been cut into triangles instead of squares.

[Author]

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