What Did You Bake the Week of December 4, 2016?

[BakerAunt]

I needed a second item for the after church social time and needed to bake something quickly Sunday morning. I googled mini-muffins on the KAF website, and two recipes came up. The first was not quick, but the second, "Salted Caramel Cookie Bites," had potential if I omitted the salted caramel and nuts. The recipe came together very quickly, and I have festive Christmas mini-muffin papers. I baked them for 8 minutes, then pulled them out and sprinkled them with a little red and green sugar, before returning them to the oven for about 3 1/2 minutes. (I'll probably cut the second baking time to 2 minutes next time as an experiment.) The recipe called for letting them sit in the pan for 15 minutes, but since I was not using the topping, I took them out at once. They taste fine without the caramel topping, which I think would have made them too sweet. One reviews said that the caramel made the paper stick to them, so I will probably never use it. Even as they are, they are almost a bit too sweet. Ironically, I did not need this last minute treat, as someone did not pay attention to the sign-up sheet and showed up with store-bought cookies. So we served the cake I baked yesterday and her cookies. My family happily enjoyed these Cookie Bites.
On Tuesday, I made a one layer, 9-inch round Applesauce Cake to use up 1 cup of my homemade applesauce left over from Thanksgiving. The recipe came from the KAF Baker's Catalogue. I used white whole wheat flour instead of regular whole wheat, and I omitted the raisins. I had some cream cheese frosting leftover from another cake, and I was able to get a thin coat over the top. I also baked a double batch of my adaptation of Moomie's (Ellen's) buns, but I made it as two dozen rolls to take to an end of the semester potluck luncheon on Wednesday. Friday morning I baked the Lemon-Barley Scones from the KAF Wholegrain Baking Book. When I did them this summer, the batter came out to wet, but I must have measured incorrectly then, because today it was just right for shaping them. I don't usually use glaze, but this one is worth doing for a lovely presentation and flavor.

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[RiversideLen]

I baked a Hazelnut cake. I used a vanilla cake mix from Arrowhead Mills. It's a great mix because it has little or no vanilla flavor on it's own so you can easily flavor it as you want. I got a bottle of hazelnut flavor from The Spice House recently and used a tsp in the batter. I also added a 1/4 cup of hazelnut flour I got from King Arthur but I'm not sure that added any real flavor to the cake. I topped it with a chocolate frosting that I added 1/4 tsp of the hazelnut flavor to. Very nice hazelnut taste altogether.

[Italiancook]

I didn't bake from scratch this week. My car died, and that sent me down a rabbit hole of activity. I baked cornbread using a Jiffy mix -- 2 actually, so the cornbread would be higher. I froze all the pieces. Some for the person who's shut-in that I take food to once a month. The rest for us. I don't like cornbread, so I've never baked it from scratch. I do, however, enjoy cornbread with white bean soup, and I have some of that in the freezer.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Italiancook.

[luvpyrpom]

Still working on my Christmas baking besides the usual bread needs. Made Antelope's Vienna bread with a little substitution - subbed half with white whole wheat flour, added a couple tablespoons of potato flour and vital wheat gluten. It came out really tough althought tasty. I think next time I will decrease the amount of the white whole wheat flour. I also made peanut butter cookies, maple bacon crack, white chocolate cranberry cookies for the upcoming holiday.

[Joan Simpson]

Baked a Lemon Chess Pie,Cherry Pie and chocolate cake all turned out good and I have really gotten the pie crusts down pat.The chocolate cake makes a small cake 8 inch layer so I double it for a whole cake very chocolaty tastes like devil food Recipe from Just a pinch called Lil Chocolate Cake by Cassie and we love it.The pie crusts I've been making is called Sylvia's perfect Pie Crust it's very good makes 3- but I've added an extra cup of flour and a little extra water to give me 4.Reason being when I'd check them baking it was really greasy bubbling around edges and this takes care of that and still very flaky.I seem to have a better browning crust if I bake them in tin foil pans which I reuse over and over.What pan gives you a flakier and brown crust ? I have glass ,stainless and ceramic pans but truly like the tin foil.Wondering if I buy a thin tin pan will it do well?Got lots of baking to do this week.Forgot to say on the chocolate cake it calls for a cup of hot water and I sub black coffee for that and it ups the flavor and you'd never know it.Happy Baking.

[BevM]

I baked a recipe I found on the KAF website: Blueberry Buckle Coffeecake. It has become one of our favorites which is great because it uses 2 cups of blueberries. My freezer is full (almost) from the crop of berries this summer. Several times I have added 1/2 cup sour cream to the batter which I like since it seems to make the finished cake a little more moist. The streusel topping makes it perfect and my granddaughter always takes half of it home.

I took a picture of it to post, but it is too big and I haven't learned to resize photos on my phone yet.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't know what the upper limit is on images, I'll have to see if I can find out what it is and whether it can be changed.

I've never made, and as far as I can recall I've never had, a chess pie. What recipe do you use?

I mangled pie crusts for years, but my week of pastry school is still paying dividends. I've used 3 or 4 different recipes since then, they've all been pretty successful.

Kenji Lopez-Alt's article on the Science of Pie Dough is worth reading, I've used his method more than once, I just tend to prefer the recipe/method I learned at SFBI--with one trick from Kenji's method, I hold back about 1/3 cup of pastry flour to add in after the butter is cut in.

I think the SFBI recipe is just a little flakier and more buttery.

[BevM]

Pie crust has never been my favorite to make. It is always "hit and miss" as it never seems to be as flaky as it should be. I guess I need a lot more practice and to do some more reading on technique.

[Mike Nolan]

You may be overworking your pie dough, I think that was my biggest problem.

Something they had us do in pastry school a couple of times was cut the butter into the flour using a sharp kitchen knife on a marble surface. I wouldn't recommend doing this a lot, because it is very time-consuming, and it's not good for your knives, either, but it taught me what to look for with other methods of cutting in the fat.

We made both 'mealy' and 'flaky' pie crust dough this way, the main difference being how small the pieces of butter get.

The Kenji Lopez-Alt method works well and may be as close to foolproof as any pie dough method can be.

Something I've come up with on my own is I went out and got a 6" diameter round cookie cutter. I line it with plastic wrap and use it to pre-shape the pie dough into a disc before letting it rest. The main advantage this has is that you're close to half-done rolling out the dough already, and that's where I was really over-working my dough. (Recently I've been using a 5" diameter cookie cutter for the top crust and a 60/40 ratio between the weight of the bottom crust and the weight of the top crust.)

[Joan Simpson]

Good idea on the cookie ring I usually do mine about the size of a saucer then wrap till needed or freeze it.

[Mike Nolan]

I started a technical thread on image size issues.

[cwcdesign]

So this was a slightly less busy baking week for me. I made Ina's brownie pudding on Monday, but didn't think to check it early so it was a little dry. I've written myself a reminder because when I've made it in the past it was perfect. I also made 2 batches of Toffee Brownie Crackle for 2 co-workers who had done me favors.

Then I tried to make shortbread and whatever could go wrong did. Mrs Cindy and I have had a long conversation on all of that. 90% was mistakes I made, like forgetting to reduce the oven temp. I've decided that I will use the cookies - great taste, too dry - to make a shortbread crust for a tart. So I made another batch of brownie Crackle to the party since it was all I had time for

[RiversideLen]

Today I started soaking some KA fruitcake dried fruit in rum to used in stollen. I'll be making the recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Speaking of which, I'm getting that book as a gift for someone, there is an updated 15th anniversary edition.

[BakerAunt]

Riverside Len: How did the stollen turn out?

[RiversideLen]

Baker Aunt, I'm not sure, I won't be cutting into it until Christmas eve. I shaped it into a wreath so it came out skinnier than usual. I once saw Martha Stewart shape a stollen into a wreath, her's looked good, mine looks like a big doughnut.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.

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