Alpha Bakers - Irish Cream Scones

Cream scones are a miracle of simplicity. No butter to cut, no eggs, just a quick batter, a quick rest, and a quick bake. Naturally I managed to leave out the sugar and folded it in at the last second, but theoretically simple stuff.

 

The glaze is a mix of sugar, butter, corn syrup, and similar things, stirred into a fruit puree. Instead of making the raspberry puree in the recipe, I used a bit of a Thanskgiving leftover sitting in my fridge, a bag of chunky bits from Libby's cranberry ginger jelly experiment. It was not as smooth as the raspberry puree would have been but the flavor and texture were spot on.

 

Having recently started spending some time with a person who despises breakfast pastry, I've been slightly defiant every time I turn some out, but I made some yeasted waffles last week as well as these scones and can assure the team that I still like breakfast pastry as much as any reasonable person with a soul should. 

Alpha Bakers -- Lemon Cranberry Tart

The winds of winter. So long anticipated, so long delayed. George R. R. Martin may not be on schedule (since when does genius follow a schedule?), and neither may I, but winter has come nonetheless, and up in the frozen northland of Western MA, I made a tart.  

It was a very tart tart. It was a tart who prepared. I had no scale, and something was amiss with the proportions for the cookie tart crust, so it wasn't the prettiest tart of them all, but hell, people. It was a fancy lemon curd tart that had patterns on it. Can I not satisfy you folks?

My mother's strainer was broken, so I strained the lemon curd through a coffee filter, which led to some stiff whisking and some loss of curd, not to mention some interesting shapes and patterns.

The final tart, of which I only got a blurry shot, wasn't the tidiest, but it was interesting. Mom's verdict: "Tres tasty. Melts in your mouth. Very festive." Dad claimed I'd outdone myself. They don't get too many sweets... 

Alpha Bakers - Raisin Walnut Christmas Bread

Tucked in between the corners of this weekend, which included a joyful and tearful run-in with Tevye and Co. in the searing and sweet Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, teatime with kids and LEGOs, and a few hours of Sunday overtime, were a few little Christmas activities. Most notably, the baking of Rose's Cranberry Walnut Christmas Bread. This bread sounded so festive that I was imagining something of a quick bread with sharp pops of fresh cranberry and chunks of ginger, maybe even white chocolate. When I realized that I was looking at a simple yeast bread, I had to reboot and revise a bit, using all AP flour instead of the WW flour called for, and adding raisins instead of the dried cranberries I had not bought.

Everything else went smoothly, though. I appreciate the step of incorporating the fruit soaking liquid (to which I added a shot of Campari to acidify those sweet raisins) into the dough--bread dough is always my catchall for whatever bits of liquid (sour milk, ginger beer, beer, mushroom broth) are lying around waiting for a purpose, and this recipe has that tendency built in.

Rose recommends a 3-day preferment to enhance the flavor. I didn't have time for that, nor did I throw in a little sourdough, which would in retrospect have been a good idea, but I did give the dough a second rise in the refrigerator overnight, which helped some with development. The final loaf had a nice crust and crumb, and good spring. It wasn't my favorite bread ever (breads with lots of nuts in always taste a little peanut-buttery to me), but it made for a sturdy lunch with some good butter on.

Alpha Bakers -- Black & Blue (& Bloody) Pie

Why do I bake so much? The pursuit of attainable goals. I am in all things a procrastinator. Like Mr. Bennet, I'm "dilatory in undertaking business, [but] quick in its execution." I have trouble stirring myself to do things other people consider basic. I don't hang pictures on my walls. I rarely dust. Half of my furniture is broken. Once I begin a project, I am happy to have begun it, but it is terribly hard for me sometimes to begin even the simplest-seeming things. For this reason, I love structure. I love step-by-step guides and challenges and deadlines. And I love baking--quickly executed projects that use skills I enjoy, that produce tangible and pleasing results in a minimum of time. Low commitment, quick execution, ephemeral decision. It's not the only reason I love baking, but it does seem to be the one discipline I have where I am quick, decisive, and good at planning out my time. Baking gets me out of bed better than anything else--I will lounge if required to shower but happily hop up at 4am to preheat an oven--which has made bread baking a great structure to hang things like writing articles or papers, as the time constraints marry nicely. 

Add on the domestic goddess aura and a sexy if slightly nuts whiff of Little House self-sufficiency, and it becomes clear why this happens so much. Also, pie is delicious. 

This week's pie was the Black & Blueberry pie, a mixed berry with a cream cheese crust. Unlike some of the Alpha Bakers, I make a lot of pie, and I love it. I don't find pie crust daunting, and I like to make it with my hands. I don't mind runny fillings, (John Thorne says they're the way to go, and he's always right), and yet pie always carries with it a certain anxiety that doesn't come up in most other baking circumstances. 

Pie is more than a set of instructions. It's a skill. A physical skill. Because of this slightly mystical truth, pie gets a lot of reverence and a lot of fear. It's not hard, it's just not easy to get right. Pie can turn and bite you in the ass. Every pie is different. I realize that to the true baking personality (or the true librarian) this unpredictability can be painful, even destabilizing. Luckily, I'm more the kind of baker (and librarian) who is caught up in the story and careless of some details, so pie is my kind of game. Also, pie is so, so delicious. I would rather have pie than cake any day, but that's another story (never mind).

It's a story about fruit. We can talk about it when it is not winter any more.

Black & Blueberry pie. A fairly straightforward double-crust pie, made with Rose's cream cheese enriched pie dough. I like this pie dough, but it hasn't become my one and only. An all butter crust still has my heart. The cream cheese crust is very friendly, though, and holds a very nice shape without getting too tough. I can't bring myself to put it in and out of a bag and the freezer as Rose instructs (sorry Rose, I know your detailed instructions really do get unexpectedly perfect results, I just can't be perfect about pie. Talk to me when we're back to wedding cakes), but my hands-in technique yielded some quite acceptable pie crust action. Substitution alert: I misread the amounts I would need so the final product had subbed in mascarpone for 1/3 of the cream cheese (richer, but not devastatingly so), and I used leftover coquito (condensed milk, evaporated milk, coconut milk, and rum) for the three tablespoons of heavy cream. Alcohol is good in pie crust--some people swear by vodka.

I also mis-read the filling amounts a bit so the final mix was 12oz frozen blackberries and the rest frozen blueberries, with a handfull of cranberries and strawberries thrown in, making this a Black & Blue & Bloody pie (Black & Blue & Bloody new band name I call it). I didn't change the ratio of other filling ingredients because I judged it close enough, and so it was. I added the berries to the cornstarch (all right, it was tapioca), sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest straight from the freezer, then let the pie rest filled for roughly the recommended hour and had no problems. There were plenty of juices but it wasn't runny at all. I would have possibly opted for a runnier pie and a slightly less thick tapioca twinge, but that's a personal preference. It did run enough to resemble a very satisfactory crime scene.  

We had it for brunch, along with a very excellent quiche. My friend 'BeeBo,' below, is a big fan of blueberries.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: White Velvet Cake with Caramel Cranberry Chocolate Ganache

Photo by Matt Korahais.

This week's cake was on the quick and easy list, and quick and easy it was. I had made the White Velvet Cake (egg whites only, very tender) a few times from the Cake Bible back when I was testing cakes for Stacey and Avi's wedding, and as I remembered, it was simple and snappy. The frosting was supposed to be milk chocolate ganache, but I only had a giant bar of dark chocolate and didn't want to be wasteful. Still, to keep it from being too bitter, I added some cranberry almond caramel left over from my attempt at Maury Rubin's Caramel, Cranberry and Almond Tart.

It's getting eaten, but slowly. Not the most exciting cake but solidly good, a basic, a birthday cake...or, as Jill said, 'A good cake to mash into ice cream.' It's a reminder of how far I've come since the days when I could bake mean bread but had no clue how to turn out a perfect white cake.

Eight Days and One Month: A Squash Miracle



Photo by Matt Korahais.

Some years, we make gingerbread. Some years, we give gifts. We did those thing this year too, but mostly, we celebrated with squash. A large warty squash brought both light and sweetness into our home this holiday season, doing double duty as a Chanukkiah (that's a Chanukkah-specific menorah, you'll understand when you're older) and as the base for Christmas pumpkin bread. I have a friend (hi Stacey) who says that stockpiling large winter squashes makes her feel safe. In addition to the root cellar element, I agree with her that they are comforting in their very presence, beyond their food potential. The firm knobby heft of the best squashes gives me a feeling of warmth, of substance, and that same solid awe that I feel when touching a stone pillar. Also, they're beautiful, and taste good.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

Each night of the Festival of Lights, Matt drilled a new hole into our kurbis friend, and when it was over, I cut off the waxy part and roasted the squash, pureed it, and froze it until Christmas eve.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

 On that night, it met its fate and became pumpkin bread, complete with cranberries, buckwheat flour, and olive oil. Thank you, little squash, for commemorating the return of the light and the birth (give or take) of one of the world's great freedom fighters.


Photo by Matt Korahais.

Pumpkin Bread with Cranberries Adapted from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion
Ingredients:
1 cup (5 1/2 ounces) vegetable oil (I used olive)
2 2/3 cups (18 1/2 ounces) sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups (or one 15-ounce can) pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
2/3 cup (5 1/4 ounces) water
3 1/3 cups (13 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour (I subbed in about 1/2 cup of buckwheat flour for AP)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg (I used considerably more)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (4 ounces) chopped walnuts or pecans
Approx. 1 cup frozen cranberries

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream together the oil and the sugar. Beat in the eggs, pumpkin and water. Add dry ingredients, stir into egg mixture just until blended. Stir in vanilla, then the nuts and cranberries.
3. Pour the batter into two lightly greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pans. Bake the bread for 1 hour or until a cake tester inserted in the center of one loaf comes out clean.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Blizzard Cranberry Crown

Photo by Matt Korahais.

Can you guess what a girl like me does in a post-Christmas blizzard? If you guessed 'bakes herself silly,' you'd be on the right track. The last few days have been a lot of wind, a lot of snow, and a lot of time in the kitchen (and on the couch). Among the things baked was the Cranberry Crown Cheesecake, above. I get a lot of pleasure out of making ladyfingers, and the ones above were no exception, but I am not sure I'm on board with using them to line a cheesecake--it feels like the bottom ones always get awfully soggy.

Here's where I confess: this isn't Rose's Cranberry Crown cheesecake at all, it just looks like it. Blizzard ingredient imperatives forced me to make several substitutions, so while the ladyfingers are as advertised, and the cranberry crown is intact, the cheesecake itself, meant to be composed of cream cheese and sour cream, is actually made of ricotta and buttermilk. Although this made for a wetter mixture (probably a factor in the sogginess of the bottom), the result tasted good. Some of the bottom ladyfingers did float up, giving it an odd 'pond filled with floating logs' appearance, but we're just calling that a creative take on the buche de Noel. I only made a six-inch cake (1/3 of the recipe) but there's plenty left, as Matt and I are over sweets and craving savory. Anyone want some?

The Recipe in My Head

Photo by Matt Korahais.

There's an essay in Mouth Wide Open where John Thorne talks about seeing a recipe printed on the back of a pasta box as "a dish wildly signalling me from the other side, begging to be let out," rather than "instructions for making a dish." I feel like somehow that's the way I approached this week's Tuesdays with Dorie cake, which was supposed to be an apple coconut cake but somehow wound up a cranberry chestnut cake. It was less of my usual substitution and more of the process described above for one reason--I went shopping twice with this cake in mind, and both times stubbornly refused to buy apples. And I really like apples and wish I had some in the house right now. But something didn't want this cake to be made as specified.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

 It may be because it has similarities to my favorite yogurt cake, which I frequently make with cranberries. The (local!)chestnuts were leftover from a late batch of stuffing. The cake was good, though probably drier than Dorie was going for.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cran-Apple Crisp

This week was a quickie--the big innovation in the crisp topping was the addition of coconut, but because not everyone in my house can eat coconut I made it without--a pretty standard crisp topping, but without the coconut, I probably should have used more oats. But it was crisp. It was delicious.

Tuesdays with Dorie: All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake

TWD is running amok this month--any recipe can be made for any Tuesday. Admittedly, I made the majority of this month's recipes in October...but since I haven't yet made the official one for this week (hold your breath for cranberry-apple crisp), I still relish the freedom. And the part where Dorie posted on my Caramel Chestnut post. That makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Also warm and fuzzy, and far less complex than three layer chestnut confections was the All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake, featuring almost every flavor associated with the Thanksgiving-Christmas season. Cranberries? Check. Pumpkin? Check. (Around here it was sweet potato, but no harm done) Apple? Check. Nuts? Check. (I used almonds). Spices? Check.  Kind of gimmicky? You'd think so, but it really works. This is just a simple, really, really good cake. The kind you eat with every meal of the day until it's gone. The kind your (my) mother likes. No, really. I'd suggest making it. The recipe is here.

Tuesdays with Dorie: French Yogurt Cake

The full name of this entry should have been French Yogurt Cake with marmalade glaze, but as I did no such thing, I wouldn't want to deceive you.

I've posted before about this year's addiction to Clothilde's Yogurt Cake. I've made it in Brooklyn and on Cape Cod and would probably have made it in Uganda if I'd stayed there much longer. It's the first thing I made with my swap shop birthday mixer. It's all purpose breakfast and lunch and after-school and dinner and late night cake. Dorie's cake is a variation on the same theme. If I didn't read too many food blogs, how would I know that the French tend to make yogurt cake from the base measurement unit of the yogurt container itself? I would have had to read this recipe, which shares the exact same mystical information. I can never be truly French, it says, my yogurt containers are just not the right size. Luckily, Americans and sympathetic French citizens have saved the day by modifying the recipe, and I love all the permutations of it that I have yet to come up against.

Dorie's version includes a bunch of almond flour in place of some of the flour, which is a very good idea. I used brown sugar and threw a bunch of cranberries on top, which of course in a bundt pan is the bottom, and got a nice little ring. Should have doubled it for a truly handsome cake, as this one was a little small, but no one at rehearsal seemed to mind.
And the glaze? No glaze.