Category: Baking

When we visited Charlotte, at her mom’s house, in Washington, D.C., D. remembered his obsession fondness for English Muffins. It had been at least 3 years since he’d had any (and we didn’t buy them very often in California), so he indulged in them as often as possible when we were visiting. Since being back in Glasgow, however, we’ve cut way down on our bread obsession, trying to get rid of some of the pounds we’ve added since we’ve gotten here.

Today, though, after much contemplation, we made English Muffins.

We followed the recipe over at The Fresh Loaf, except that we ended up using Agave Nectar instead of honey, and 5.5 cups of flour instead of the 4 in the recipe. This was the first try – next time we’ll really skimp on the flour, and not worry that the “dough” is more like a batter than anything resembling a bread dough.

They’re absolutely fabulous! More chewy than the stuff you buy in the store (which we now think are pretty stale), these have body, and flavor, and are just … well, way better than those empty, white things you get everywhere else. Also? They’re really easy to make!

If you can make pancakes, you can make these. Actually, if you have trouble making pancakes, you can make these, because the cornmeal makes these so easy to flip it’s not even funny.

-D&T

It pretty much happens every holiday season that we forget which cookie we’re making, and if you’ve ever tried to make a gingerbread house or gingerbread folk out of a gingersnaps recipe, well, you’ll get a quick reminder. There’s not enough flour and more molasses in a snap recipe, and the dough will not hold a cookie cutter shape, for love nor money. It’s a bit funny, really, to expect to be whipping up one cookie, and to have whipped up another.

Oops.

That’s what we get for pulling a recipe from our heads.

Nothing for it but to eat them. And then make some different ones for another day.

These cookies are strangely light when baked, and dark when raw, but cool to a delicious, chewy texture, which is made chewier and nuttier by the addition of a quarter cup of ground flax seed — or you can use a single egg. Just take:

• 2 C All Purpose Flour
• 1 Tablespoon, heaping, ginger
• 1 Tablespoon, heaping, freshly ground cinnamon
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder plus 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• ~~~
• 1 C sugar, brown, lt. brown or raw – we used raw
• 1/4 C molasses (treacle, good people, is NOT molasses. No subs, here.)
• 3/4 C butter OR good quality margarine
• 1/4 C ground flaxseed OR 1 egg
• 1/3 C cinnamon sugar for rolling

You’ll need a small bowl, and a large one. – stir together your dry ingredients in the larger of the two, then cream together your sugar and oils in the smaller. Add your wet ingredients to the bowl with the dry, and stir until you get a sticky dough. We set ours aside for fifteen minutes, added an additional 2 Tbps. of flour (we find that we have to add more flour to recipes here in the UK — somehow, things are wetter. The air? The flour? Who knows.), and rolled the sticky dough out on a plastic-covered cutting board. We cut the dough into twenty-four little squares, rolled them in a rough mixture of raw sugar, refined sugar, and cinnamon, and baked them for ten minutes in a approximately 150°C/350°F oven. Look for cracked tops to indicate doneness.

And that’s all there is to it.

These are quick, chewy cookies that are very warming. Perhaps you don’t feel the need for warming desserts just now — nothing to go with a cup of tea, if you’re in the midst of a heatwave where you live. But did you know that eating hot foods — ginger, chilies, horseradish, wasabi — is good for you in hot weather? It makes you perspire with no effort, and encourages you to drink water. So — at about 3 a.m., when it’s cool enough to bake — whip up a batch of these cookies. You won’t regret it.

T.’s literary cousin Mary Lee gave us the most gorgeous fleur-de-lis cookie cutter — the “lis” reminds us of Mary LEE — and we fully intend to use it with our gingerbread folk recipe. Maybe for December Christmas instead of Christmas in July (a celebration which has had the dinner put off due to yet another wedding, but is on again for this weekend).

It’s Wednesday already! Hold on – the end of the week is coming soon.

So, when wee Alex had his birthday, he came to me. What did he say? “Can you make me a Guinness Cake? Please?” Once again, this cake met and exceeded expectations of wonderfulness – not too sweet, not too dry, and wonderfully overwhelming. Alex, of course, is in his 20’s, and refers to his hands as paws, and is certainly not wee. He’s even engaged to be married! (shh! he’s not telling too many people, as it’s an international thing, and nobody knows when they’ll be able to sort out the visas and all that)

This time I followed the full recipe (plus vanilla bean, cinnamon, and nutmeg) instead of Anne’s Version, and baked it in the 16-inch, square pan. I then cut it in 4, layering ganache in between, and coated the whole thing in ganache. It barely fit into the cake keeper.

In the office, there was a whole 5 minutes in which nobody talked, and all that could be heard was Jim, humming away happily. It was quite amazing.

It was 21°C / 70°F today, in Glasgow. With 69% humidity. It was horrifying. How will we ever adapt to California again?

They’re nothing to take pictures of, really, but they sure are filling, give you at least three or four meals of eating (important when everybody in the house is busily writing), and keep you on the straight and narrow as far as those carbs are concerned. What is this, you say? Something which tastes even better the next day, reheated? Yes. Loaves. Not loaves of bread, of course. No: “meat” loaves.

I’ve been on a bit of a loaf kick for the past few days (er … weeks?). My little sister asked what she could bring to a potluck for somebody who has severe dairy allergies, and I immediately thought of one of these. Why? Well, because they’re tasty, they’re really easy to make, and they make great leftovers.

It’s a shame that “makes great leftovers” is one of the primary motivators for us right now, but that’s the way it is. Another couple of weeks and the pressure will be off of us. For now, though, not having to think about food is a blessing. Yes, we’ve fallen off of the “foodie” wagon and into the “academic” pit of despair. That doesn’t mean that we’re eating unhealthily, though: we have the Magic Loaf Generator to come to the rescue.

It’s really not so huge of a concept: grate up a whole bunch of things, mix them together with some protein source (ground “beef” in our case) and a binder (ground flaxseed is our preference – ‘though you can have too much of that fairly easily), slap it into a pan, put it into the oven (being sure not to get distracted for more than an hour), and you’re done. Pull it out, let it sit for awhile, and you have dinner, lunch for the next day, and perhaps another meal on top of that.

Give it a try. It’s amazing what a few ground nuts, some grated veg, and a protein source can become. On top of all that: you’re in control of the whole thing, so if you’re like we are and gained weight over the holidays, there’s hope!

Yes, the title is a play: 100000 = 32 (in binary). No, it wasn’t intentional, but … I did notice the number & how it was only a single bit. Computer Science coming to get you when you least care.

Today is a day to relax, having put in an inordinate amount of time working this past week. So, Oatmeal Almond Thumbprint Cookies were the cookie of choice. I adapted this recipe by 1) subtracting the shortening, 2) cutting the total fat down to 3/4 a cup, 3) substituting 1C ground almonds instead of the walnuts, 4) adding in some allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla extract, and 5) ditching the baking soda in favor of baking powder (who likes bitterness in their cookies?).

Oatmeal Almond Thumbprint Cookies:

• 3/4 cup butter (or margarine)
• 1.75 cups demerara sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp freshly-microplaned cinnamon
• 6 allspice berries
• 4 cloves
• 10 fennel seeds
• 1/8 of a nutmeg, microplaned
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 cups oats
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• Raspberry jam (as much as you need)

1. Cream butter and sugar
2. Add eggs & cream until completely combined
3. Mix flour, spices, water, extracts into creamed ingredients
4. Mix in oats & ground almonds
5. Shape into 1 Tbsp spheres
6. Depress a place in the center of each cookie for the jam (I used a 1 tsp measuring spoon, dipped into water)
7. Dollop in some raspberry jam
8. Bake at 400°F / 205°C for 10-12 minutes
9. Cool on wire rack

These are really more almond cookies than oatmeal cookies, but are quite tasty. Just make sure not to let them drip over the edge of your baking sheet, or you’ll be screaming.

As you’ll recall, D. got roped into to doing a birthday cake. For a 3-year-old (as of the birthday in question). It is to be an elaborate party, and T. has been smirking about the whole thing for some time. She is the person who felt her nephew last Christmas would be more amused by an empty box than a gift, however, so she may not be the best person with whom to discuss about children’s parties. You’ll also recall that D. baked the cake because the child in question is his Ph.D supervisor’s kid, and he’s fairly tolerable, if a bit excitable when company’s over. We have no doubt that he’ll be completely unimpressed with the cake and anything at his party that isn’t screaming, running, juggling, or on fire, but the child’s mother is deeply convinced that this cake will just make the whole soirée. Motherly delusions aside, we’re pretty sure it at least tastes good.

D. took a trip into the depths of Maryhill to pick up a cake pan. Cake A Wish at Barrack Cake Decorations had exactly what we needed. (We took a moment to snicker at the name of the shop, though.) A vast business which once was three separate shops, Barrack’s has acres of stands, molds, gels, boxes, food colorant, children’s theme-shaped cake pans, and the rolled fondant icing, pre-made. We’ll definitely be going back, despite the dodgy neighborhood, the people were helpful and knowledgeable and the cake pans are rentable.

D. needed to find a cake recipe that fed fifty — and instead of doing the math and rewriting a recipe we already had, T. cheated and found one for a wedding cake. We used a recipe from epicurious, and made two poundcakes, and combined them into a five-layer single cake. D. made the recipe his own, of course and substituted half a vanilla bean (scraped) for the vanilla, and added 1 Tbsp of baking powder. Question: How can a cake have no leavening?! Answer: If it’s a pound cake with twenty-four eggs in it. Of course, the baking powder did no good at all; pound cake is dense… that’s just how it is. This is the first one D’s attempted, but we’re proud of how it turned out, even though neither of us wants to eat it. (Not fond of pound cake, and the 2 lbs. of butter doesn’t make it something that would be helpful to the physique, anyway.)

After letting the cakes cool overnight, D. did the slicing and dicing, so that he had 5 layers. In between the layers he added a mixture of strawberry jam, custard, double-cream, and crème fraîche. Then came the poured fondant icing (prepped last week) — which was meant to be blue, but against the yellow of the cake, looked oddly green — and then it was time for the rolled fondant icing.

Pre-made fondant is easy to use — and coloring it was lots of fun, because we just dropped on a bit of food coloring, kneaded it, and then decided whether we liked the color and/or the marbling effect. Next time we use it, we’ll experiment with leaving more marbling in — and we’ll buy a paste dye for it, which won’t affect the moisture levels. D. dusted a cutting board with confectioner’s sugar and rolled out the blue, and it went on smoothly. A few drops of coloring more gave us a darker blue for waves, and for the “surf” rolling up onto our marzipan sandbar/island. Then we added a few toys for the birthday boy … and that was that: one seriously huge cake. The angles of the picture don’t quite do it justice, but it’s really quite large. It’s off to the party tomorrow, at The Tall Ship, and then it’s avast ye hearties, or mateys or something. We hope they enjoy themselves, and that it doesn’t rain too hard. But, again: if it’s not on fire, or running or screaming, we doubt any of the kids will notice a little rain.

Christmas Eve has been a day of cooking, all day long. To start with, I’m brining a turkey for our friends’ family (our friends are lifelong vegetarians, and I like a challenge). That will be baked in the morning, of course. The rest of the day, though, was consumed by baking bread, baking a kabocha-squash and then turning it into two pies (see Bryanna’s Vegan Pumpkin Pie for the basic recipe), and making a gluten roast in the slow-cooker (see Ellen’s Kitchen for that recipe). Truly: it’s been a long day, but at least there’ll be some goodies for the morning!

The pie, on tasting it, turned out a little too spiced and a little too sweet. Since we two are the only ones who really like pumpkin pie around here, nobody but us will complain. Next time, though, we’ll back off on the spices and cut out the molasses entirely. We used coconut milk instead of the soy milk, which is an awesome substitution. It’s very subtle in the finished pie, but is definitely worth it. We used a kabocha squash, halved, baked cut side up.

It’s certainly a real treat, having access to a large kitchen. At one point, we had both ovens going, baking 6 pans of rolls and two loaves of bread. There was a little space left over, even at all that, so we could have baked the pumpkin at the same time. A truly huge kitchen, indeed!

If you’ve been following the fondant follies you’ll know that I’m pretty determined to get this fondant thing to work. This last batch was quite different from the first attempt: it didn’t solidify into a solid rock, but merely to about the consistency of modeling clay. I think that this is what’s supposed to happen, but I don’t really suppose it matters much: I got the stuff to dissolve with a minimum of headache, and without any lumps! That’s good enough for Round III!

The pour also went well, and at a low enough temperature not to melt the buttercream icing used for the crumb coat. There is a bit of sagging, where you can see ripples in the icing, along the sides. I think that this is because it really wasn’t quite stiff enough. I probably used too much simple syrup to dilute, is my guess. I’ll be extra careful next time.

Danielle asked, Why bother? Why go to all this trouble, when she can get something much the same which is microwaveable? Well … because sometimes making a whole dessert from scratch, from start to finish, is worth the bother. Sure, this is a bit much work for an everyday type of thing, but just to prove to ourselves that we CAN, we wanted to try. After all, the guys on Ace of Cakes can do it! For that level of mastery with fondant, mere mortals have to start somewhere. While we don’t have delusions of being Duff, we challenged ourselves to make something we’d never made, and had fun along the way.

From what I’ve read, there are 3 types of fondant: boiled fondant (a.k.a. European Fondant), which is what we’ve been making these last few times; “quick” fondant, which is just powdered sugar, heated up with a wee bit of water; and then there’s Gum Paste or Sugarpaste. I don’t know what’s in off-the-shelf products, because I haven’t found any, but the recipes out there for the rollable fondants / sugarpastes contain gelatin (which is, you know, boiled animal skin and bones, which is fine, unless you’re a vegetarian). That’s also why we’ve avoided the marshmallow fondants: marshmallows also contain gelatin. True, we might be able to substitute agar-agar, or xantham gum, or some such thing … but that’s a lot of “maybe” and “if” experimentation, so that’s for another attempt for another day.

In this case, we’ve made a boiled fondant, poured over a lemon cake which has been drenched in lemon simple-syrup. Because we were visiting friends with a three-year-old son, T. made some fish out of marzipan, painted them with food coloring (and saffron extract – beet juice would have worked better for the red, but we were, sadly, out. Don’t know any natural dyes for a vibrant green — Suggestions, anyone?). These were stuck to the sides using a bit of leftover fondant, and just pressed onto the top. Our little friend was tickled, his mother immediately tried to book us for his birthday party (Noooooo!) and all the adults loved the cake, and felt that the almond flavor went well with the lemon. A big win! Just how big? Well, let’s say that when it was time for us to go home, and there was still 1/4 of the cake left, they immediately went looking for a plate – there was no chance we were taking it home with us.

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