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Congratulations to Mike and his wife on their 45 years of marriage!
It's Saturday afternoon, and I am baking three loaves of my version of Grandma A's Ranch Hand Bread. The basic recipe is on this site--along with a one-loaf version that was worked out by Zen. My change is to use mostly buttermilk and to add some flax meal. I also use 3 Tbs. honey rather than 1/4 cup sugar.
This afternoon, I baked a new recipe: Almond Flour Shortcakes from KAF:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/almond-flour-shortcakes-recipe
The directions were altered after I copied the recipe, when a reviewer pointed out a math error. I ended up confused, so my biscuits were flatter than they should have been.
I'll report back later on taste and texture. I plan to use them for strawberry shortcakes.
Addendum: They are rather heavy and dense, maybe because I patted the dough too thin due to the confusion. My husband thought they were fine, but I'm not certain that I would bother making them again.
For breakfast on Wednesday morning, I baked "Ginger Scones," a recipe from La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles that was printed in Bon Appetit's R.S.V.P. column (January 2000), p. 30, in response to a reader's request. I had marked the recipe as one to try because I have some diced crystallized ginger. I followed the recipe except that I substituted in 3/4 cup of whole wheat pastry flour (total flour 2 1/4 cup), I used 1/4 tsp. Penzey's dried lemon peel (fresh lemons are a lot more expensive here), and I stirred the ginger into the mixture after I cut in the butter, instead of trying to incorporate it after adding the heavy cream. The recipe uses a food processor to cut in the butter, but I did it with my hand-held pastry cutter. The scones are light and buttery with the lightest of ginger flavor. They are excellent warm. I'll see how they are cold tomorrow morning, but this recipe goes into my scone treasure trove.
I think that packed amid my books, is the La Brea Bakery cookbook. I'll have to explore some of their other recipes.
Tuesday afternoon, I baked another new recipe, "Currant and Spice Oatmeal Cookies." The recipe, by Sally Siegel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, appeared in the "Too Busy to Cook?" feature in Bon Appetit (August 2002), pp 106-107. I substituted dried blueberries for the currants. I also substituted in 1/3 cup of white whole wheat flour. (Total flour is 1 2/3 cups.) The spice is cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, and vanilla. These are a flat chewy cookie, so no more than a dozen per baking sheet. The recipe made forty-five cookies when dropped with a Zeroll #40 scoop.
Addendum: After tasting them, I would cut back the cardamom to 1/4 tsp. or perhaps delete it. It overpowers the blueberries and the other spices.
On Saturday afternoon, I baked another recipe that issue of Comfort Cooking Recipes: "Walnut-Pear Sour Cream Coffee Cake. I used my last two pears from a previous farmers' market, which took a while to ripen. I did not have a problem with the flour in this recipe, although I substituted in 1/2 cup of whole wheat pastry flour for that much regular flour. It baked very well in a 9-inch springform pan. I'll report back on taste and texture by adding to this post.
We very much liked the warm coffee cake. I'll keep the recipe for when pears are available again. The pears I used were organic, because the people keep bees and so do not spray. They are not "pretty" pears, but I realized this evening that they remind me of the pears that grew on the tree behind my grandmother's house in Tennessee. These pears baked very well.
