[BakerAunt]

Aaron--Deb Perelman has a recipe for "Olive Oil Shortbread with Rosemary and Chocolate Chunks" (p. 210), in her second cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Every Day. I have not tried baking it; I'm not sure about the rosemary, (1 tsp. fresh rosemary) and she also specifies mild olive oil, which is not an ingredient that I have in the house. She does say for a milder flavor, replace half of the olive oil with a neutral oil.

I could try it with 75% neutral oil and the rest olive oil, I suppose. However, I think the rosemary might be a no-go with my husband.

[BakerAunt]

Best wishes for a speedy and successful renovation, CWCdesign. I agree with moving out and doing it all at once. I hope the contractor can complete it in the allotted time. That view will be fabulous!

[BakerAunt]

Very interesting project, Mike. I wonder if this is like some of the wrapped imported rye breads that we sometimes see at the stores?

I bought Dorie Greenspan's book, Dorie's Cookies, shortly after it came out in 2016. We were in the midst of preparing to move, once we did, we started the house renovation bog down, and then I had a diagnosis of high cholesterol. Almost every recipe in the book relies heavily on butter, so the book has sat unused. However, I was paging through it late last year and found a recipe for "Chocolate Chip Not-Quite Mandelbrot" (104-107) that uses oil rather than butter. While the cup of mini-chocolate chips are little fat bombs, the recipe makes 72 cookies, so I decided to bake it on Friday night. I made just one change by substituting half white whole wheat flour.

The dough was much easier to work with than I had feared. I did use my hand mixer to combine the eggs and sugar, then the oil and vanilla, but I combined the flour mixture and chips with it by hand. They were easy to slice after ten minutes of cooling. I used my offset knife. These go back in the oven with a cut side down and are sprinkled with additional cinnamon sugar. I used the Penzey's cinnamon sugar blend which includes vanilla. The cookies are not the traditional Mandelbrot as they have no almonds and are cakey rather than hard and dry. I ate some crumbs left from cutting them before the first bake and liked the taste.. I look forward to having them with some tea or coffee tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

That jam sounds delicious, Chocomouse!

Our weather has been unseasonably warm. We got rain today, and it is snowing lightly outside late this evening.

[BakerAunt]

I made yogurt today. For dinner, I made more muddled mashed potatoes to go with the leftover pork tenderloin and microwaved fresh broccoli.

Chocomouse--I paid $3 a dozen for eggs at Aldi's today.

[BakerAunt]

I made dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Wednesday. I will bake them sometime next week.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday, I cooked the dinner I had planned to do for Valentine's Day: Maple Glazed Pork Tenderloin, muddled mashed potatoes, and microwaved frozen green beans that came from our garden. The tenderloin came out just right.

[BakerAunt]

I'll be interested to hear how that recipe turns out, Mike.

On Tuesday, I baked two loaves of my Pumpkin Rye Bread--a major adaptation of a Jane Brody recipe that makes it more wholegrain, a little less sweet, and replaces butter with oil and regular milk with buttermilk. I finally have room in the freezer for a second loaf. I have been doing single loaf recipes for the past few weeks.

[BakerAunt]

My husband declared that we should have stew tonight instead of the tenderloin, since I had spent the afternoon baking bread. I'll do the tenderloin tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

Well, last time, I baked the cake on the third rack up, so maybe that slowed down the sugar liquification until it combined?

Another factor could be that I mixed by hand instead of using a hand mixer to beat for the specified two minutes. Maybe that combined the ingredients more thoroughly?

[BakerAunt]

I made a simple chocolate glaze for my heart cake, using a recipe from Epicurious (before the paywall) that uses powdered sugar, cocoa, milk, and vanilla. I poured/spread it in the indented center, then sprinkled with Valentine's decorations of little pink and white hearts and pink and white sprinkles.

[BakerAunt]

For Valentine's Day, we will be having Maple-Glazed Pork Tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and green beans that I froze last fall from our garden.

[BakerAunt]

Cass just called me. He says hello to all of you at Nebraska Kitchen!

He saw this post and gave me his observations. I hope that I do justice to his explanation here.

1. The sugar in the recipe outweighs the flour by quite a lot. That means the sugar did not have the chance to combine with the other ingredients before liquifying. He suggests that I use equal weights, which means reversing the amounts of flour and sugar the recipe specifies. I will weigh the ingredients next time, and adjust so that the weights are equal, either by increasing flour or reducing sugar, or perhaps doing both.

2. He noted the large amount of baking soda in the recipe. He thought that the person who put the recipe together was probably trying to make up for the sugar-flour imbalance by employing that much baking soda. Cass suggests halving the amount.

3. He warned me about the lack of gluten in barley flour, which could contribute. I still think that I can get away with that partial substitution, as long as I make the first two adjustments and use King Arthur AP for the rest.

I'll be giving the recipe another try, using the first two adjustments, but I won't be doing it right away. I will post again on this thread when I do.

I have had some issues with the Kaiser Backform recipes in the past. I remember Cass adjusting a pumpkin cake recipe for me. I think part of the problem stems from converting a German recipe that was likely in grams to a recipe for Americans that is done by volume. I also think that there may be some differences in ingredients between European and American products that are not taken into account.

[BakerAunt]

I know that I measured correctly, and I looked back at the original recipe to confirm the amounts. The cake was below the edge of the pan, fairly full, but usually an oil cake does not rise as much, so I was not worried. I only baked this recipe once before, and that was a few years ago, so I do not know if the batter seemed different.

I think that the next time I make it, I will take out 1/3 cup of batter and bake it in a separate small pan.

[BakerAunt]

Sounds delicious, Chocomouse!

Dinner on Monday was roasted chicken thighs, roasted sweet potato chunks, and salad with lettuce from my husband's enclosed porch, grow-light garden, along with a bit of the spinach he grew. The cherry tomatoes were from the grocery store. I made salad dressing with the Penzey's Buttermilk dressing blend.

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