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 - Gingersnaps

Once upon a time, in a far-off kingdom. No wait, it was a democracy. Or a collective farm. Or a free anarchist experiment in non-authoritarian communism. Once. A strange glow of sunlight streamed in and illuminated...the gingersnap.

I have a real thing for ginger cookies. I once spent the better part of several months testing different versions of large squashy ginger molasses cookies and hard gingerbread recipes to find the best one (verdict--Tartine recipe for cut-out cookies and gingerbread houses, still haven't found the dream squishy sugar-crusted molasses style cookie, and I've already made the ones in TBB). With these gingersnaps, I was on familiar ground, or so I thought. I did everything I was supposed to. I chilled, I weighed out the dough balls (who DOES that?), and I baked with precision. I also forgot to add ginger.

       
Needless to say, this made the first round of cookies out of the oven a little dull, with a pronounced taste of leavening and not much else. For the second round, I sprinkled each cookie with ginger, and for the third, I dumped a large pile of ginger right on to the chilled dough and squished it in. Much improved. I think I'll quite like these when I make them properly. Or with a little extra ginger. With ginger, more is almost always more.

Been baking quite a lot lately, between the 'blizzard' and the wall. Sometimes I bake ahead in TBB, take a picture, and hope I'll remember. I also made these Pecan Potato Chip Cupcakes, from Bay Ridge star bakers the Robicellis. RECOMMENDED. 

Cakes and Cakes and Cakes

On looking back, that last post seems very ambitious. Did I do all of those fun sounding things? Well, not yet. The bike is still blocking the side door, the African dance remains a myth. I did go to yoga, though, once, and I made three cakes. Although the photo above was the only survivor of the process (Matt deemed the others 'unacceptable,' and I have to trust his word), there were in fact three cakes, and all three were Heavenly cakes, it seems only right to have a little discussion of them, photo or no.

Two weeks ago, I made the Apple Upside Down Cake, one of the first recipes in the book but one that I hadn't gotten around to yet. Caramelized apples under a yolky, buttery cake layer, sprinkled with nuts...that one was good. I tried to give it away as a housewarming present for my cousin, who just moved back to town, but only half of it made it over (next time, Sophie). Luckily, my Aunt Nicki was down the following weekend, and as a fellow devotee of Dorie Greenspan, she instigated the making of a Swedish Visiting Cake, so all was well.

Last week, I made the much-awaited Ginger Cheesecake, a fairly classic cheesecake made with a ginger crust (in my case, crushed oatmeal cookies), and juice squeezed from grated ginger. I didn't have quite enough ginger to get the amount of juice recommended, but it was still clearly present in the final product. My crust was oily, probably because my cookies were less austere than your average gingersnap, but the cake itself was excellent, and was devoured whole by hungry librarians at a training I helped conduct on Saturday. 

This week's cake, pictured above, was a riff on the Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cake, which I last made for Liana's birthday the year before last. I didn't have white chocolate, which is called for in the cake, so I made Rose's White Velvet cake layers instead, and filled it with a pear buttercream and pear butter, then covered it with the Sticky Chocolate Frosting. The result, although it looked like Boston Cream Pie, tasted more like sheet cake. The pear frosting didn't really make itself heard, and without it the cake was, as Liana and Matt both admitted, somewhat boring.  My co-workers disagreed, and finished it happily, proclaiming Liana and Matt spoiled, to which they both readily and happily admitted. I thought it might improve with chocolate ice cream, but then just went for the ice cream and ignored the cake.

It's been a chaotic few weeks, at least under the surface of placid librarianship.There's a new year coming, and I'm not ready, but maybe I'll get there. Right now, I'm trying to remember what's best in life, and to hold on to it with a fierce grip.

Somewhat on that last note, I've had one more Rose Levy Beranbaum-related milestone. I finally got too annoyed at the broken binding and sticky pages of Rose's Heavenly Cakes, and bought myself a brand new copy. Time to make that one sticky too.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Gingered Carrot Cookies

Not too exciting to look at, but they tasted good. I myself like the little threads of orange. But carrot cake is better. Dizzy with the prospect of a captive audience, I made nearly all of this month's TWD recipes in the past week to send to Matt's rehearsals. Nothing came back, at any rate. But now rehearsals have ended so I really should stop making full batches.