[skeptic7]

Merry Christmas. I was trying to be good and stay put this weekend, instead of chasing around after Christmas shopping. So I cleaned up my kitchen and scrubbed the countertops in preparation for my long delayed chocolate baton project. Early this summer I had asked your advice on making Pain Au Chocolat. Mike had given me a link to chocolate molds on Amazon for making my own chocolate batons, and BakerAunt had found the original KAF recipe for Pain au Chocolat.
I didn't do anything at that time, except buy some of the very big dark chocolate bars from Trader Joe's and a square wooden dowel and think about making my own molds out of aluminum foil. It was soon too hot to bake and so I just did nothing. However this weekend I decided that six months of procrastination was enough. I cut the dowel into 6 inch lengths, and cut a 6 inch strip of aluminum foil and then worked at bending the aluminum foil around the square wooden bars. I found I could fold and bend the foil into little U shape troughs as long as I left the wooden forms in place so they wouldn't crush. I put my foil form in a biscuit pan.
I broke up the chocolate and melted it a double boiler oh so very carefully. I found if I removed one wooden bar, I could fill the resulting space with chocolate carefully with a spoon. Then remove the next wooden bar and fill the next space until the whole aluminum foil form was full of chocolate and the mold didn't deform. I let it cool for a couple of hours and then pulled one out and it was a nice thin bar like a proper Pan baton only longer.
Since that worked I melted the rest of the chocolate and made 2 more aluminum foil molds and dripped chocolate into the forms.
I unmolded the chocolate bars this morning and had nice 6inch bars. I cut them into 3 inch pieces and found that they fit nicely into a 1/2 pint small mouth mason jar! Success!! Unhappily that was my only unused jar of that size and the rest of chocolate went into the one pint wide mouth jar which wasn't as pretty.
The next step will be to clean up the kitchen again and actually make the Pain au Chocolat. Why do big baking projects take so much time and thought, and then they get eaten so fast?

Since I had the double boiler out, I toasted some pecan halves and melted more chocolate for chocolate bark. I was carefully trying to drop the pecans right side up onto the melted chocolate for a beautiful appearance but many of them landed upside down. How do other people get the nuts right side up? I was being ever so careful with my chopsticks.

[skeptic7]

I thought you were talking about a Christmas Tree cookie or bread when I read the Title. I like the pictures of cinnamon rolls in Xmas tree shape, or better yet a sweet bread baked in the Christmas Tree pans. I keep thinking of getting one but its such a single use item. Perhaps if I run into one in the thrift store.
I like the idea of trees being put out for wild life refuge in the winter and then mulch in the spring. Live Xmas trees seem like a good idea but few people have enough space to plant them. I had a little Norfolk pine that I raised from a seedling to nearly 4 feet tall not including pot, but my mother finally had to give it away when I was in college. It was getting too big to easily bring inside.

[skeptic7]

Kimbob;
Congratulations on getting all your snow cleared out! Do you have a lot of sidewalk to shovel? How much was it at the end.

Actually I wrote to congratulate you on your stollen. I haven't done that for awhile but I remember loving to bake and eat it around Xmas. I gave up on making it Stollen shaped and ended up braiding it. A friend of my mother's pointed out that with all the fruits and nuts its a heavy dough and braiding it would let it rise without having to push all the dough out of the way,

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
I hope you find your ruler. With me things only reappear after I search and search and buy a replacement.

I baked full fat chocolate almond biscotti, with a little -- one tablespoon -- of molasses to give it a brown sugar flavor. The flavor is okay but not as rich as the previous batch which had Espresso powder. I will package and freeze these soon. I find if I put the biscotti in the freezer and take out one cookie at a time, a batch can last for three or four days. If I leave them on the kitchen counter where I can find them whenever I get bored, they normally last less then two days. Could someone send me some will power for Xmas? I don't have much.

[skeptic7]

I feel like Cathy. I don't do a lot of Xmas baking but I just made a batch of chocolate almond biscotti for myself. The last batch was eaten too quickly. I might do some Gingerbread to give away. For years I've been admiring Christmas Cookie recipes instead of baking them, and will make perhaps just one cookie recipe out of a sense of adventure. This year I have the Springerle rolling pin as a gift so I will try to use it -- probably with the KABC Springerle shortbread recipe as I don't have Baker's Ammonia.
I might make time to do some bread, it doesn't feels as decadent as cookies.

[skeptic7]

I did Spinach pizza yesterday.

[skeptic7]

The snow has mainly melted off the sidewalks and streets. I had to brush it off my car. I think it was less than 2 inches here.
Kimbob are you still getting snow?

[skeptic7]

Happy Birthday to Mike's wife. Your pie looks wonderful.

[skeptic7]

I keep powdered milk on hand for clam chowder, and emergencies. Like today I ran out of liquid milk and had to use it on hot chocolate. When I use it in bread, I always reconstitute it first and scald it. I am doing mainly all whole wheat bread and scalding milk makes a difference in the rise. Its interesting to see it as an ingredient in cookies.
KAF cookbooks said that the extra protein in milk and milk powder makes the bread rise higher.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
Do you find that using oil instead of butter makes bread softer? My current bread is growing on me as I finish it up being softer than I expected and I used oil instead of butter in it. Its the oatmeal-maple bread which I thought was a pain to make, but i am enjoying the flavor more than I thought I would.

[skeptic7]

I did chocolate almond biscotti yesterday. They are very tasty and I added KAF espresso powder for more flavor . I had better get the survivors into the freezer fairly fast.

Did anyone read KABC Blog on mini pies made in muffin tins? They look so very cute.

[skeptic7]

I am suppose to get wintry mix on Wednesday. It normally doesn't stay around long but I plan to stay inside until it melts.

Kimbob thats a lot of snow. I hope you stay warm and your power remains ups.

[skeptic7]

Aaron;
I hope none of your family comes down sick and you don't go stir crazy in the next couple of weeks.

I love Pecans but am only using them now for very special items since they are more expensive than walnuts or almonds.

[skeptic7]

I made the KABC Oatmeal-maple bread yesterday. I had changed the recipe by using all whole wheat flour, and using oil instead of butter. I found this a difficult bread. Its made by cooking the oatmeal into a porridge and then adding enough flour to make it a bread dough. I found that the recipe didn't ask for enough liquid and I was adding water by the tablespoon at the end. I don't know precisely how much water I added but it was probably 1/2 cup. The bread is very dense and slices up in very thin slices. It is slightly sweet but not overwhelmingly so. I ate some slices for breakfast with lots of butter. It didn't rise very much maybe about double before it was put in the oven and I didn't notice any oven spring.
I don't know if I will make this again. The taste is fine, and the texture bearable, but it was very troublesome mixing the flour into the dough, and it wasn't until the dough was at least partially kneaded that I could be sure if it needed more water. I read the recipe in "Laurel's kitchen bread book' on whole wheat/oatmeal bread to really get an idea on how to handle this dough.

[skeptic7]

There could have been syrup on the jar rim -- I was scrupulous about washing and soaking and boiling everything, but not so much about about wiping the rim of the jar. I don't know how dry my clean jars were, I just pulled them out of the boiling water, poured the water out, let sit for a minute and drained again, and then put the hot syrup in before the jars could cool down. I'm not worried about the syrup getting diluted -- it would have concentrated slightly when heated up. I am glad that the last jar finally sealed, I was starting to think about making maple popcorn for the neighborhood instead of going through the whole boiling and heating and resealing again.

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