The World May Be Imploding ...

 ... but the bread still rises. My SiL (let's call her Phyllis) and I write each other weekly newsy emails and she told me about her plans for a dinner party she was going to be hosting for friends. Phyllis was making bone broth to use in preparing beef stew and listed the various dishes that friends were making. These included stuffed mushrooms, a salad with winter vegetables, cheesecake, and one friend would be bringing whatever bread she had baked that week. Phyllis said that this friend had started baking bread in January and kept baking as things got worse and worse. She told Phyllis that "The world may be imploding, but the bread still rises."

I was struck by this and felt compelled to start a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, especially because I hadn't baked any bread in quite a while. It was done baking later at night, so it was dark and the pictures aren't terrific, but it was one of the nicest looking loaves I've made.  

 

 

It looked just as good when I cut a few pieces the next morning, and tasted wonderful. 

 

 

Everybody has to find the coping mechanisms that work for them, whether they involve voodoo dolls, reading, knitting, appreciating nature, music, or baking bread. Just thinking about what my next loaf will be makes me feel better because even though the world may be imploding, the bread still rises. 

 

 

Maybe a Bit Too Much

John has been away for much of the week visiting his cousin in northern PA. I didn't have any desire to go along; it's cold (4° F last night), there's no heat in the upstairs bedrooms in the old farm house, and the family stories are a bit boring to me. All of this means that I've been here at home to mostly do what I want. I've been eating grilled cheese or yogurt for dinner, I cleaned a little bit, decorated a little bit, caught up on laundry, and knitted. I also felt like baking something and settled on chocolate zucchini bread. John isn't a big fan of chocolate, so I saw this as my chance to make something that I wanted. 

I browsed a bunch of recipes and finally settled on smitten kitchen's version. I should have paid more attention to the fact that it was called "double chocolate" but I went ahead and prepared it as written, except I used 1/3 cup fewer chocolate chips and didn't sprinkle any on top.

 

 

I baked the bread for 75 minutes and even then, it barely tested as done. But I took it out, cooled it in the pan and on a rack, and tried a piece once it was completely cool. Whoa, this stuff is seriously chocolatey, in fact, maybe a bit too much if that's possible. 

I know John won’t eat much, if any, because of all the chocolate. Some family members are coming for brunch on Sunday, so maybe I can give most of it away. If not, I briefly considered sharing it with the neighborhood wildlife, until I googled it and learned that “chocolate harms raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and foxes because the theobromine and caffeine it contains are toxic to them, similar to how they affect dogs. Ingestion can cause vomiting, diarrhea, increased heart rate, seizures, and potentially death.” I definitely don’t want to be responsible for that.

 

Maybe next time I’ll make a nice, healthy zucchini quiche. I’ve been trying to align my eating with an anti-inflammatory diet, and that definitely doesn’t include anything labeled “double chocolate.”

Sometimes Monday ...

... you start out reorganizing the freezer and somehow end up baking a cake. It was one of those “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” kind of days, but with a very happy ending.

We have three chest freezers, mostly because we freeze a lot of garden produce, and both John and Justin hunt. Every fall, I have to clean them out and reorganize things so I can actually find (and use) what’s inside. I finished one freezer and had just started on the second when I discovered a bag of cranberries I’d frozen, probably last Thanksgiving. I moved them to the fridge to thaw, and then thought about them every time I opened the door.

At first, I considered making cranberry-orange bread, but since I didn’t have any oranges, and wasn’t in the mood for a grocery run, I started thinking about Nantucket Cranberry Pie instead. I went to look for the recipe but couldn’t find it in my box. I was pretty sure it was by Laurie Colwin, so I pulled out Home Cooking and More Home Cooking.

Of course, that led to taking all the cookbooks off the shelf, dusting, vacuuming, and then spending a lovely afternoon reading through Laurie Colwin’s essays (which, honestly, was half the fun). Eventually, I did find the recipe in More Home Cooking.

And since it made such a satisfying bake, I thought I’d share it here as both “blog fodder” and a handy place to keep the recipe for next time.

Here’s Laurie’s recipe, in case you’d like to try it, too:

Nantucket Cranberry Pie

1. Chop enough cranberries to make 2 cups and enough walnuts to make 1/2 cup.

2. In the bottom of a 10-inch pie plate or springform pan, place chopped cranberries, chopped walnuts, and 1/2 cup of sugar.

3. Mix 2 large eggs, 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) melted and cooled butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon almond extract. Stir till smooth.

 

4. Pour over cranberry-walnut mixture and bake for 40 minutes at 350 F.

 

I didn't have any walnuts so I added an extra 1/2 cup of cranberries. I used 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1/4 teaspoon almond extract, just because I like vanilla better than almond. I don't know why it's called "Nantucket Cranberry Pie" when it clearly makes a cake, but it's delicious no matter what you call it. The cake does have a lot of butter and sugar, but I think I will decrease the sugar sprinkled on the cranberries to 1/3 cup or slightly less the next time I make it. After cleaning out freezers I felt like I deserved something good. 

 

I hope your week is off to a good start and includes some kind of treat! 

Help in the Kitchen

I bought myself a bread machine. 

It's a relatively inexpensive one from Amazon; not the cheapest one, but also not the $400 Zojirushi that King Arthur Baking is always trying to convince me that I need. 

 

 

It's a "Kitchenarm" brand with the delightful catchphrase of "Your extra arm in kitchen". I wish that extra arm would also scrub the kitchen floor, but I digress.

It supposedly has 29 different settings, but I'll probably use it mainly to make dough that I shape and bake myself. I like that it tells me what it's doing (kneading here) and it did a really good job of that considering that this recipe has almost five cups of flour in it.

It also did a good job of providing a warm atmosphere for the dough to rise in. This is the result of rising for just about an hour.

All I had to do was remove the dough, roll it out, spread it with cinnamon sugar, roll it back up, and put it in the pan for a second rise. That took a lot longer than the initial rise because my kitchen is cold, but eventually it was ready to bake (and then eat)!

I'm happy with the bread machine so far and may even try some of the recipes that came with it. Dark rye, zucchini bread, and pizza dough all sound like interesting possibilities. I might even make bread more often now that I have help in the kitchen.

I hope you have some help in the kitchen and some good things to eat this week!

The Weekly Loaf

Earlier this week I posted about the pullman pan I had redicovered in my kitchen cupboard, and wondered how cinnamon swirl bread would work. This is how:

Paul Hollywood might have some less than flattering things to say about this loaf, but I don't think he's stopping by. I rolled the dough tightly and got a good swirl, but there are still a few gaps between the cinnamon-sugar and the dough. But you know what might help fill those gaps nicely? Raisins! I didn't have any when I baked this bread, but I'll make sure there are some in the pantry before I bake next week. 

 

 

In the meantime I'm starting my morning wonderfully with a couple of pieces of toasted cinnamon swirl bread and a steaming mug of chai. Life is pretty good when you've baked bread!

Look What I Found!

And look what I made with it!

I usually go to the grocery store once a week, but it's a chore I really dislike. With several freezers full of vegetables and venison, I honestly don't need much besides bread, milk, eggs, and a few other miscellaneous items. I had put off shopping for several days when it was raining, but when I had finally decided to go, all I really needed on my list was bread. I decided that I would much rather bake bread than shop for it, so I looked through all of my kitchen cupboards for something that I hoped was still there and that I hadn't gotten rid of in some ill-advised cleaning out.

And look what I found - my pullman pan! It's a lidded loaf pan that minimizes crust and makes it possible to bake nice square sandwich bread or pain de mie (if you're fancy but I'm not). I had lusted after this pan for several years and finally broke down and bought it probably 15 years ago or so. I baked with it quite a bit, but after the kids moved out, I barely used it at all. But I was glad to find it and bake a stellar loaf of sandwich bread. That was much more satisfying than going to the grocery store. 

 

 

 Justin and John's brother were here over the weekend to do "men things" with John so I used  up quite a bit of the loaf to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. It also makes great toast.  I think it would make delicious french toast and I'd like to make cinnamon raisin swirl bread with the it so I won't have that gap between the filling and the bread that you sometimes get in swirl breads. 

My pan came from King Arthur Flour and I originally purchased the 13" one. They also make a 9" one that might be better suited to our two-person household. I'm going to think about it for a while, but that 9" pan might be my Christmas/New Year/just because present to myself. 

Dangerous Content Ahead!

Never fear, there isn't anything really dangerous in this post. It could be dangerous if you're concerned about healthy eating, your consumption of cake, or maybe your cholesterol level. But if you've got a bag of cranberries in your refrigerator or freezer, I have a delicious way for you to use them. 

I have a couple of recipes for Cranberry Cake/Pie in my recipe box. I've made them a couple of times, but I seemed to be the only one who ate it, and eating a whole cake (even if it is in a pie pan) by yourself is dangerous. So I haven't made either one for probably five years or more. But the other day I was perusing the King Arthur baking website and came across their recipe for Nantucket Cranberry Cake. Dinner was already in the crockpot (Venison Taco Soup if you want to make some good soup), but I was feeling the need for some type of slightly sweet dessert. So once I dug the bag of cranberries out of my freezer, I made this cake to satisfy my craving. 

 

And it's seriously good. I limited myself to one piece after dinner, but since I was writing this post, it seemed necessary for me to put a piece on a plate so I could take a photo. And once I had a piece of cake on a plate, I was pretty much committed to eating it. See how much I care about you guys and putting together posts with photos? I'm willing to eat a piece of cake for breakfast just so I can provide you with a better blog post. :-)

There is just something about the tart cranberries, buttery moist cake, and sugary topping that I find hard to resist. I might need to buy some coarse sugar and I'm wondering if the addition of orange zest or orange oil might be good. I didn't use walnuts because I'm not a big fan plus the fact that I didn't have any. I do like pecans so I might try them in place of the walnuts. So I've pretty much talked myself into making this cake again, maybe with some modifications. If you want to try an easy, delicious cake, maybe you want to try it, too!

Old Dog/New Tricks

This old dog learned a couple of new tricks this weekend. I wanted to make the fresh ginger cake I wrote about on Friday but wasn't looking forward to peeling and slicing the knobby hunk of ginger I needed. A few minutes on the internet gave me a couple of the tricks I needed. The first thing I found out is that ginger can be peeled with a spoon. It was simple and there was no danger of cutting my fingers. The next thing I learned is that ginger can be blitzed in the food processor. I froze the peeled pieces for a few hours, put them in my food processor for a few seconds, and voilà, chopped fresh ginger to bake this:

It was delicious. This is not my grandmother's gingerbread, but a strong ginger cake. It was great with whipped cream

and I think it would be equally tasty with some vanilla ice cream. 

I hope your week is off to a good start and that you have cake or something just as yummy to carry you through the

rest of this fraught week. 

Dinner and Dessert

Sometimes I'm at a loss about what to make for dinner, but I found this recipe and it's a keeper. I made it for John and I and we liked it enough that I made it the next week to take to Justin's. Now that I'm writing about it, I might just make it again this weekend.

I could eat lots of things with a garlic cream sauce.

I used a pound of pasta, half a pound of bacon, half and half in place of heavy cream, and an extra tablespoon or two of ranch seasoning, and it still all fit into a 9 x 13 pan. 

Since this dinner was a good one, a delicious but not too sweet dessert made it even better. I had almost a full five-pound bag of self-rising flour in the cupboard and King Arthur was kind enough to provide a peanut butter cookie recipe when I decided I needed to use it up. This recipe only uses one cup of flour but I will certainly make it again in the future.

It's quick and easy to mix and make and I got 18 cookies when I baked them. This is probably still more cookies than two people need, but we managed to eat them in short order. 

I'm a selfish baker; the big cookie is for me!

Whatever you're having for dinner and dessert this weekend, I hope it's tasty!

Who Knew?

 Over the weekend I made a new recipe from a new cookbook I got recently. 

I almost always make some kind of bread when I make soup, and decided that English Muffin Bread would be a good choice. When I looked at the recipe, the first line said "Weigh your flour". I know recipes always advise this but I've stubbornly stuck to dipping a measuring cup in my flour container, leveling it off with a knife, and dumping it into my mixing bowl. But I bought a digital scale back when I knit my Hitch on the Move to weigh my remaining yarn and I keep the scale on top of my microwave. This is right next to my flour container and mixer, so I decided it was time to finally try weighing my flour. 

I was a little bit surprised that the 360g the recipe called for was equivalent to only about two and two-thirds cups of flour the way I usually measure it. I didn't weigh any other ingredients but I was very pleasantly surprised at how smooth the batter turned out with minimal mixing.

And the bread turned out beautifully. I think I'll keep weighing my flour, especially because the scale, flour, and mixing bowl are all within a couple of steps of each other. 

So the answer to the question I asked in the title is possibly lots of bakers, but now I know, too. You can teach an old dog new tricks!

What I Watched This Weekend

I like to watch something on TV while I knit in the evenings. It doesn't have to be new or exciting, in fact, when it comes to knitting-appropriate shows, it's better if I don't have to pay close attention. I had read that the first two seasons of The Great British Bake Off (the originals that aired in Britain but not on Netflix in the US) were available on the Roku channel, so I decided to give them a try.

A younger and slightly less pretentious Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry are the hosts. (This season aired in 2010 so we were all younger then.) Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins are the presenters and I really enjoyed them. 

I've only watched several episodes in the first season (Cakes and Biscuits) but it was interesting to see what they did differently and what they still do. The first thing that surprised me was that they move the baking tent to different locations around the UK! Cakes were made in the Cotswolds, biscuits in Scotland, and bread in Sandwich. Stephen Noonan does a voiceover, but that only lasted for the first season. Mel and Sue do several interesting history pieces, such as the ties between religion and cake, the rise of women as bakers, the connection between railway travel and biscuits, and the history of shortbread. "Food historian" must have been a career choice for many in the UK a decade ago as they seem to consult a different food historian or food history expert at least two or three times in each episode. They've kept the same introduction and much of the same music so that was familiar. The hosts and the contestants seem more relaxed which I thought was refreshing. I've always wondered about the illustrations on TGBBO and was happy to find this bit about Tom Hovey. The illustrations in the first season are black and white and fairly rudimentary compared to later seasons. In the later seasons, the illustrations can oftentimes look better than the real baked creations!

Yes, there are interruptions by commercials, but I didn't mind them too much. For me, it was interesting to see how this show originated and has grown. I haven't felt the need to bake anything (yet) but there may be some scones in my oven if I watch more episodes.

I hope you had a lovely weekend and your week is off to a good start, possibly with some baked goodies of your choice!

What Did You Do to This Zucchini Cake?

That was John's reaction when he tasted the zucchini cake I made. I had two slightly large zucchini sitting in the refrigerator that needed to be used before I pick eight or ten more this week. I didn't want to go to the store for the extra ingredients I needed for a zucchini quiche, so I decided to make a zucchini cake. 

I was hungry for chocolate, so I found this recipe and decided to give it a try. While I was mixing the cake, I remembered some Mexican fudge that Ryan had raved about. I quickly looked at a few Mexican chocolate cake recipes and because I like to live on the wild side (not really, I just wanted to try something different), I added 1 teaspoon of chili pepper, and 1/2 a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. When I tasted the batter, it seemed like it was missing some cinnamon, so I added a teaspoon of that, too. 

My verdict: it's pretty good. It tastes a little bit different, "warmer" in some way, but it really doesn't taste hot or spicy to me. John is not a fan of anything spicy (not even the idea) so he just thinks it's a waste of zucchini and chocolate. 

I had a piece after I baked it and decided that some ice cream would really make it perfect. 

It did. Part of experimentation is a careful assessment of results, and even though I liked this, I don't think I'll make it again. I was the only one who liked the cake, which means that I've frozen most of it, and will take some to Ryan for his opinion. I like zucchini cake, especially when it's chocolate, but even I can't (and definitely shouldn't!) eat a whole cake by myself. We'll return to more "traditional", i.e, not spicy zucchini dishes later this week. (I won't even put pepper jack cheese in the quiche.) 

By the way, if you have a good zucchini recipe, I'd love to hear your suggestions!

Daily Bread

It's been grey and cold this week, with sleet, snow, and rain. Weather like that always makes me feel like baking, and I've been thinking about bread since I made turkey soup for my BiL. I took it over to him after he had arthroscopic knee surgery last week, and when you have soup, you need bread to go with it. I didn't want to make something complicated, and since I have a case of Michelob that somebody gave us (but nobody here drinks it), I decided to make beer bread. 

I've made regular beer bread for quite a few years. It's perfect when you want a quick bread to serve with dinner, but don't have time for a yeast-risen loaf. It's especially good to use up beer that nobody likes to drink. My kids used to think they were getting away with something when I "let" them have beer bread.

As good and easy as beer bread is, the variations are also great. I made a loaf of cheddar beer bread to serve with some beef barley soup I made for us. If you happen to have swiss cheese on hand, swiss beer bread is also favorite of mine.  

For something a little sweet, I started with this recipe for cinnamon raisin beer bread and tweaked it a little bit, increasing the cinnamon to I Tbsp, increasing the raisins to 1 cup, and soaking them in beer for a while before adding them to the batter. Plump and juicy raisins are so much better than dry, shriveled ones.

I did have to try a small slice of both of these, just in case they didn't turn out. They both tasted just fine so I won't have to worry about serving sub-par bread to my family. The cheese was evenly distributed, but Paul Hollywood would probably have something to say about the distribution of the raisins. (Good thing he's not invited.)

I haven't tried any of these variations yet, but they all sound good to me, so I'm sure I'll be making them soon.

Guinness Bread Recipe

Apple, Cheddar, and Rosemary Beer Bread

Spicy Italian Sausage and Mozzarella Beer Bread

I hope your week is a delicious one!

Can I Get You Some Wine With Those Brownies?

Last weekend I decided to try the Cabernet Sauvignon Wine Flour I had previously mentioned. Some information that came with the wine flour mentioned supplementing a brownie recipe with this, so that's what I did. 

Here's the brownie recipe I used, but I'm pretty sure you could use any recipe or even a box mix:

1/2 c unsalted butter
1 c sugar
1/3 unsweetened cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

2 lg eggs
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 c flour

I added 2 Tbsp of wine flour, mixed it all up, and baked it in a greased 8" pan for 22 min.

I didn't tell anyone in the family what I was doing because I wanted to see if they made any comments about the brownies tasting different. My family has never been shy about offering critiques if they think a new recipe tastes the least bit strange or even just not what they are used to. But I licked the spatula and thought the batter was delicious. 

This is what the brownies looked like when I took them out of the oven:

This is what the brownies looked like 20 minutes later: (and this was before dinner)

Justin finished the rest of them before he went to bed, so I think wine flour brownies were a success. He mentioned that they tasted especially good, but he thought that might be because I hadn't baked brownies for a while. Ha!

Finger Lakes Wine Flour says:

"Our Wine Flours are made from wine grapes grown in the Finger Lakes of New York. They are superfood powders that are meant to supplement your baking and cooking. Each pound is packed with fiber, protein, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. We harvest the wine pomace after the wineries press the grapes for their juice. The skins are turned into fine powders that are various shades of gold and purple. Our Wine Flours are meant to supplement your recipes with flavor, color, and nutrition. Please use our Wine Flour with other flours when baking as it is a supplement, not a substitute."

Besides Cabernet Sauvignon, they make lots of other "flavors", like Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, and Riesling. I think I might order a sampler next time and try Gewurztraminer in Apple Cake and Riesling in Snickerdoodles. This weekend I will be adding some of the Cabernet Sauvignon wine flour to meatballs and/or pasta sauce.

You could probably accomplish the same tastes by drinking a glass of wine with whatever you're eating, but this was a fun experiment (especially because nobody mentioned anything about a "weird taste".)

Cookie Report

Last week I showed you this picture of Apple Butter Snickerdoodles from Ryan's food-truck friend and mentioned that we were going to try them sometime. 

And we did last Friday. I mixed up a batch of dough and took it over to Ryan's to bake. He is cooking with gas for the first time, and while he's used the stove a lot, he hadn't tried the oven yet.

We both thought they were good, but different from regular snickerdoodles, in both taste and consistency. My regular snickerdoodles spread a little bit in the oven but these did not, at all. I used butter like the recipe called for and thought maybe I would see what they were like with margarine. These tasted like a soft ginger cookie, which was not bad, but there isn't any ginger in them. 

I brought a few cookies home from Ryan's and luckily for me, Justin ate them all. So on Sunday I mixed up another batch, using margarine this time. 

And they turned out exactly the same - chewy and tasting like a soft ginger cookie. I didn't put the extra cinnamon and sugar on top, so that might change the taste a bit. Justin says these cookies taste good if you eat them sitting in a tree stand hunting for deer, and you don't want to get extra sugar or cinnamon on your bow.

My thoughts on these cookies are that they are good, but possibly mis-named. They don't taste much like snickerdoodles to me, but the apple butter does give them an interesting flavor. They might be a little better with cinnamon and sugar on top (or at least more like snickerdoodles), but they are quite tasty whether you enjoy them with tea or sitting in a tree.