BakerAunt

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  • in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 3, 2025? #46964
    BakerAunt
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      I baked Blueberry Oat Muffins on Wednesday morning to use up the rest of the blueberries we picked two weeks ago.

      in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 3, 2025? #46962
      BakerAunt
      Participant

        Note on Wednesday: the peach jam is a bit runny. Next time, I will increase the cooking time on the jam maker by 2 minutes if I have particularly juicy peaches. The only drawback to the Ball jam maker is that increasing the default cooking time must be done in advance; it is not possible to add time at the end.

        in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 3, 2025? #46955
        BakerAunt
        Participant

          What a beautiful loaf, Mike!

          in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 3, 2025? #46954
          BakerAunt
          Participant

            We did our big shopping run to a nearby small city on Tuesday, where we also had other errands to run. After lunch, we did our usual local shopping trip. In the afternoon, I made peach jam, using Michigan peaches that I bought at the farmers market last Saturday. I ended up with four half-pints and one 4 oz. jar, as well as some in a jar in the refrigerator. I am not certain how well it set, as the jam in the refrigerated jar is runny. I will see what the canned jars look like tomorrow. I was glad that we had leftover chicken for dinner tonight along with microwaved broccoli and more sweet corn, the latter a gift from our neighbors to the north who have a farm. They said that raccoons got their first planting, but this second one escaped the marauders.

            in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 3, 2025? #46946
            BakerAunt
            Participant

              I noticed at breakfast on Monday that we were almost out of granola, so I baked a batch later in the morning.

              in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 3, 2025? #46945
              BakerAunt
              Participant

                For dinner on Monday, I roasted six chicken thighs. Scott skinned them for me, then I rubbed the tops with a bit of low-fat mayonnaise, then dipped them in ¾ cup of toasted panko mixed with 1 tsp. Smokey Paprika and ½ tsp. onion powder. We had the roasted chicken with the last two ears of sweet corn and some microwaved frozen peas.

                in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46942
                BakerAunt
                Participant

                  On Saturday, I baked Banana Oat Muffins for breakfast to use up four small overripe bananas. I baked them as six large muffins and froze two. In the afternoon, I made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers, which I will bake next week. I did not realize until this morning that Scott was going to run out of crackers after today, or I would have made the dough earlier in the week.

                  in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46941
                  BakerAunt
                  Participant

                    I had good intentions, but I decided to take the day off on Saturday from jam making. For dinner we had more of the Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with our first sweet corn of the season from the farmers market. It was wonderful.

                    in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46940
                    BakerAunt
                    Participant

                      Hi, Navlys--Yes, I do a water bath for the jam. That is ten minutes at boiling, then turn off the heat, remove the lid and allow to rest for 5 minutes before removing from the water bath onto a towel on the counter to rest. I check the seals the next day.

                      Joan--I am beginning to think that poker is secondary to food at your poker games, which suggests that you all have your priorities straight!

                      in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46939
                      BakerAunt
                      Participant

                        Replacing butter with oil is tricky, Joan. In cakes or breads, I use 1/3 cup oil per 1/3 cup butter, but that does not work as well in cookies. For the Soft Ginger and Molasses Cookies I just baked, I used 1/2 cup avocado oil plus 2 Tbs. water in place of the 1 cup of butter. That would probably be my starting point.

                        Your coconut pie and cornmeal cake look delicious!

                        in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46933
                        BakerAunt
                        Participant

                          I always look forward to seeing what you bake for the poker game, Joan. Those cookies look so good. I followed your recipe link, and now I am wondering if I can engineer an oil-based version. I will put it on my list of future experiments.

                          in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46932
                          BakerAunt
                          Participant

                            Scott and I went back out to the meadow area in our woodlands and picked blackberries for two hours on Friday morning. Due to the drought we had last month, the blackberries are not as abundant as they were last year, but we still picked four quarts. I hope to go out once more on Sunday. After lunch, I began deseeding blackberries, starting with the ones from our last outing and ones I picked on our terrace. Once I had two four-cup containers, I did another 12 oz. and froze those for later use in my blackberry brownie recipe. Then I made a batch of jam before dinner, which yielded three half-pint and one 4 oz. jar. After dinner, I made the second batch, which yielded four half-pint jars. I heard all the jars seal, which is a glorious sound.

                            In between my jam making sessions, I made Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with Peach-Dijon Glaze for dinner. I used a golden arrow, which is the yellow zucchini squash, and I grated the whole one in, as it was getting old. Scott really liked the flavor, and it is a milder one than the green zucchini. We had the meat loaf with the rest of the green bean salad and a maple-oat roll. I am tired but looking forward to more jam making tomorrow.

                            in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46927
                            BakerAunt
                            Participant

                              Your dinner looks great, as always Joan.

                              Len's pizza also looks good. Interesting that you shaped it by hand. I find these days that I am less and less likely to reach for a rolling pin when shaping dough for pizza, sweet rolls, or bread. I primarily save the rolling pin for crackers and pie crust.

                              I made another jar of refrigerator dill pickles on Thursday. This jar uses pickling cucumbers and dill, both from our garden. We will let them rest in the refrigerator for two days before we start eating them.

                              For dinner tonight, we had more of the green bean salad, and we finished the chicken salad, which we had as open-faced sandwiches on the Maple Oat buns that I baked today.

                              in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46926
                              BakerAunt
                              Participant

                                A thunderstorm with a cool front arrived on Wednesday evening. That allowed me to head back to the kitchen to bake on Thursday, which is good, as we were out of cookies. I baked "Soft Ginger and Molasses Cookies" (no butter), which is a recipe that I adapted from one with a cup of butter on the King Arthur site. I use ½ cup avocado oil plus 2 Tbs. water in its place. I replace the AP flour with white whole wheat flour and add 4 Tbs. milk powder. The recipe uses equal parts ginger syrup and molasses. (I hope King Arthur does not stop selling the ginger syrup, although with my luck, they will.) The recipe made 31 cookies, so that may get us through the week.

                                I also baked a new recipe, "Maple Walnut and Oat Rolls, from The Baking Sheet XXIV, no. 1 (Winter 2013), p. 7. [Note: If you have the back issues of The Baking Sheet, it incorrectly says XXX for the Volume,] I have taken to paging through my notebooks of The Baking Sheet and pulling out recipes to try. I make a list so that I can find them again. As always, I made some changes to the recipe. I increased the whole wheat flour by ¼ cup and decreased the King Arthur AP by ¼ cup so that it is exactly half whole wheat. I added 2 Tbs. special dry milk and 2 Tbs. flax meal and reduced the salt from 1 ½ tsp. to 1 tsp. I replaced 1 cup of the water with buttermilk and omitted the maple extract. I added 2 Tbs. avocado oil because I think some oil keeps bread softer for longer. The dough, which I mixed and kneaded in the bread machine, was a little dry, so I added 1 Tbs. of water. Next time I will increase the ¼ cup of water to 1/3 cup, as the dough was a tad dry when I was shaping it. I made it as twelve rounded rolls. The rolls are delicious, although they do not have a noticeable maple taste.

                                in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of July 27, 2025? #46917
                                BakerAunt
                                Participant
                                Viewing 15 posts - 196 through 210 (of 8,184 total)