We had the weekend to ourselves (I would have preferred being in Seattle, but alas those vacation plans were utterly crushed by the weather) so I didn’t bake at all this weekend.

Luckily, I had some pictures from previous weeks on hand, so I still have something delicious (which is good, because I’ve been slacking recently).

I really like Marcy Goldman’s book, A Passion for Baking, and have been making lots of recipes from it recently. This recipe is for yeasted sweet rolls, which may be somewhat misleading, since sweet rolls make me think of gooey, sticky, cinnamon rolls, which is not what these are. These are simply an enriched yeast bread with extra sugar, and the fabulous added touch of vanilla.
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I’ve been baking a lot recently, but I haven’t been very good about photographing what I’ve been baking. This weekend, however, I took the camera into the kitchen, and had Michael help me get pictures.

For some reason, bread always felt intimidating to me. Sure, I could make quick breads and cookies, but I never experimented with yeast as a child, so although I knew the very basics of how things worked, bread was never anything I felt I could do well, since I wasn’t 100% sure about the process.

I decided this needed to change.

Here’s the thing about bread: it doesn’t have very many ingredients (excluding the egg wash, there are only four ingredients in this recipe: water, yeast, salt, and flour. Although the total time is long, most of the time is waiting for the starter and dough to rise.

So with so few ingredients, where does the flavor come from when you bake bread? It comes from the proofing or fermentation

Here is the Italian bread recipe I’ve been making. It begins with a starter (a Biga, though I think the Biga for this recipe may be closer to a Poolish. What’s the difference? The ratio of water to flour. A Poolish has more liquid than a Biga. Simple, ‘eh?)
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So, all the baking I did over the holidays? I pretty much took no pictures. At all.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that things were delicious.

As usual, I made a lot of cookies. Although I tried some new recipes, I also made some favorites from last year, including cranberry oatmeal cookies and lemon coins. Unfortunately for Michael, I never got around to making any sort of peanut butter cookie. Luckily, my friend Sarah gave us some, so the holidays were saved!

But I also tried to branch out a bit this year, by adding different kinds of breads to the mix.

As I mentioned last week, the cranberry walnut bread recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum turned out extremely well. We’re currently eating the loaf I froze.

I also tried my hand at challah, using the recipe frmo the King Arthur Flour Baking Book. That also turned out very well, and the french toast Michael made from the second loaf was delicious.

For something slightly sweeter, I made pumpkin walnut bread, with the recipe from the Cook’s Illustrated Holiday Baking 2007 magazine. Actually, one of the reasons I made challah was because Grandmom can’t eat nuts, and I really wanted walnuts in my pumpkin bread. I ended up making three loaves of this bread, and although I’ve run out of fresh pumpkin, I’m going to pick up canned pumpkin from the store so I can make more of this bread. It was wonderful to snack on, and for a lazy weekend breakfast. (Plus it has pumpkin! And Nuts! That makes it healthy! Yay!)

The fourth type of bread I made was an Italian bread, this recipe also from the King Arthur Flour Baking book. The first loaf turned out extremely well, although the egg wash made a crush that Grandmom has a harder time eating. I left the egg wash off the next flour, and although it tasted fine, the color was extremely pale. I made another loaf over the weekend using white wheat flour, and that was a disappointment–the loaf hardly rose–so no more substituting white wheat flour in breads without more planning ahead and a better knowledge of making that substitution.

All in all, it was a fabulous holiday, and there were plenty of delicious baked goods to be had around here.

I was looking for a new cookies recipe to try, and when I ran across this one, I remembered that I’d frozen some blueberries this summer, so that meant I had to make the recipe, right?

The recipe was straightforward, however, the cookies took longer than expected to bake, and although they are delicious, they’re sticky and fall apart when you pick them up. But they are really really good, so I’m going to play with the cookie size and baking times to see if I can get things to turn out better.

And definitely use the lemon oil–the lemon flavor makes these cookies.

Blueberry Hill Oatmeal Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp lemon oil
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup toasted coconut
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup semi-frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Blend butter and sugars. Add egg, vanilla, and lemon oil. Add baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Fold in oats, then coconut, then flour.

By hand, fold in blueberries.

Scoop 2 tbsp balls of dough on baking sheets, at least 3 inches apart (the cookies spread a lot).

Bake 14 minutes.

Cool on the cookie sheets for 10 minutes, then finish cooling on a wire rack.

As I said, they were very delicious, but extremely sticky, and completely fell apart. I’ll have to play with the recipe to see if I can get the next batch to hold together better.

From A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

I love this recipe. It’s from one of my favorite books, no longer in publication. Which is really too bad.

I usually substitute peanut butter chips, because Michael loves peanut butter.

She suggests refrigerating this dough before baking, but I can never wait that long, because once I make these cookies I want to eat them NOW!

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup flour
1/2 cup dutch process cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
8 tbsp butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Beat butter and sugars until creamy. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add egg and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture until just incorporated. Stir in nuts and chips.

Scoop 1 tsp balls onto prepared cookie sheets.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through.

Once you have pulled the cookies out of the oven, go pour yourself a glass of milk, because you are going to burn your mouth eating these cookies immediately.

For the cookies you don’t eat immediately, cool them on a rack.

From: Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies

Since I have this new stove to try out, I need to make lots of different thing. Just to test it out of course. Since Grandmom can eat oatmeal cookies, I decided to riff on one of the recipes I’ve used before.

I’m not sure how I feel about the spices. I might drop the cloves next time, since they’re a very strong flavor.

Oatmeal Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg
6 tbsp corn syrup
2 tbsp half & half
3 cups old fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups flour
2 cups coconut
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Cream butter and shortening. Add sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and spices, salt and baking soda and beat until well incorporated.

Add egg, corn syrup, and milk.

Add oats and flour, mixing well. Incorporate coconut and chocolate chips.

Spoon onto greased cookie sheets (or silicone sheets).

Bake 11 minutes.

Cool. Eat.

The first time I made this recipe I screwed it up. I didn’t allow the toasted coconut and pecans to cool before adding them to the batter. The chocolate chunks ended up melting into the batter so I had more of a chocolate cookie than a chocolate chunk cookie.

This time I made sure to allow the toasted items time to cool. But I think I actually liked the cookie a little better the other way.

On the other hand, my office mate loved them, as did Michael’s co-workers. So it could just be that I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate chips, and I’d always rather have chocolate, instead.

Chocolate Chunk Coconut Pecan Chews
2 1/2 cups sweetened coconut
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
3 tbsp melted butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour + 2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 oz bittersweet chocolate chunks (I measured out 3 ounces, and then just dumped in the rest)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Toast the coconut and the pecans for 9 to 12 minutes (recipe says 9 minutes, but mine needed 12), stirring frequently.

Set aside toasted coconut and pecans to cool.

In mixer bowl, stir together milk, sugar, butter, egg, salt, egg, and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and baking soda.

Add the flour mixture to the batter.

Remove 1 cup of the toasted coconut and pecan mixture.

Mix in coconut pecan mixture and chocolate. The recipe said to refrigerate the mixture for ten minutes, but the batter was not at all thin, so I moved right along.

Scoop 1 tbsp of dough onto parchment paper covered baking sheets. (You can substitute foil.)

Sprinkle remaining coconut and pecan mixture over the cookies.

Bake, one sheet at a time, 12 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack.

Recipe is from
The All-American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett, which is one of my favorite cookbooks.

I love cinnamon rolls. Of course, I love them with walnuts and cream cheese icing, which are Right Out for Grandmom, so we I made plain ones.

Which are still really good.

Cinnamon Rolls
Dough:
3 1/2 cups white wheat flour
2 tsp yeast
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp dry milk
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg plus water to make one cup liquid
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp softened butter
Filling:
1/4 cup softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon (3 tsp if you tbsp doesn’t fit in the jar)
Icing:
2 tbsp half and half
1 cup confectioners sugar

I wasn’t thrilled with the way the dough was made. If I make it again I believe I’d proof the yeast as part of the process. As it was the directions had you simply mix everything together to form a smooth soft dough. Next time I’d proof the yeast in part of the water, then add in the remainder of the ingredients together.

Place the dough in a large greased bowl, over, and then allow to rise for at least an hour. Mine rose for closer to two hours, since I had other things going on.

Make the filling. I didn’t follow the directions at all here. Instead, I beat the butter, sugar, and cinnamon with the paddle attachment of my mixer, until I had a soft uniform spread.

Once the dough has risen, roll it out into a rectangle.

Spread the filling over the rolled out dough, leaving a strip of dough on the far end uncovered.

Roll the dough to make a log.

Move the dough to a cutting board (I destroyed a rolling mat once when I forgot to do this) and then slice the dough with a serrated knife.

Place the rolls in a greased pan. I used a stoneware pan here and made the full batch, however, I usually grease two 8″ round cake pans, and place one in the freezer for later.

Since I wanted to rolls for breakfast, I then covered the rolls in plastic wrap and then foil, and placed them in the refrigerator overnight.

Place the rolls in a warm oven that is off to allow them to rise for about an hour, or longer, as needed.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Cool for about ten minutes, than cover with icing.

Eat!

Recipe is modified from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion

We’ve got apples, but I just didn’t feel up to making a pie or a crumble or anything like that, so I looked up a recipe for apple cookies. I had to make several adjustments, some for Grandmom’s diet and some for what ingredients I had available, but all in all, they turned out pretty well.
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Weather has been nice and cool, so I decided that not only did I need to use up the last of the summer zucchini, I wanted bread as well.
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Got some apples from the farmer’s market, but just didn’t feel up to making a pie. Or more accurately, didn’t feel up to making a pie crust. I have got to start freezing pie dough for situations such as these.

So I browsed some recipes and found an apple crumble recipe that looked pretty good.

Apple Crumble
Filling:
3 pounds apples*
1/4 cup apple cider
2 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp rum
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg **
1/4 ginger
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp flour

Topping:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats ***
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 stick cold butter

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a large casserole dish or a square cake pan.

Peel, core, and slice apples. **** While peeling and coring the apples, I place the slices in a large bowl of cold water with lemon juice.

In a large bowl, thoroughly mix together the apples and the other filling ingredients. Mix until the apples are well coated, then pour into the baking pan.

Stir together the dry ingredients for the topping. Cut in the butter (you don’t want to use a food processor here, since it would affect the oats).

Sprinkle the topping over the filling.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 F. Let stand until it has cooled slightly.

If only we hadn’t run out of vanilla ice cream.

* Look for pie apples, such as Granny Smith, McIntosh, Courtland, Northern Spy, etc
** Fresh. Seriously, invest in a spice grater and always use fresh nutmeg.
*** Rolled oats, though you can use instant oats in a pinch, it’s worth having rolled oats on hand for baking
**** Get an apple peeler and corer.

Since my last foray went so badly, this time I went to my recipe file to find a zucchini bread recipe I’d used before.

Of course things couldn’t go smoothly: I discovered that aside from the 1/2 cup in the flour bin, I was out of white flour. I have whole wheat flour, I have bread flour, I have pastry flour, and I have white wheat flour. But no back-up white flour. So I used white wheat and hoped for the best.
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The Farmer’s Market had zucchini this week, so I decided to make zucchini bread. I tried the recipe in the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book.

What was interesting was that the loaf with nuts turned out much paler than the loaf without nuts. Considering that the recipe called for nuts (and raisins which I left out) I found this surprising.

The bread, however, is not at all sweet. And is drier than I’d expect. So I think I’ll see if I can find my old zucchini bread recipe and leave this whole wheat recipe behind.

The zucchini were so cute!

Less cute now.

One of the eggs had a double yolk.

Here’s the loaf with nuts, looking rather pale.

Here you see the two loaves side by side.

I won’t bother give you the recipe, because I don’t at all recommend it.

Saturday I wanted chocolate cookies for myself–preferably with nuts–so I needed to make something else Grandmom could eat. (She complains that she eats too many sweets if I make cookies for her, but complains that she makes sweets she can’t eat if I don’t. So I err on the side of making cookies.)

Earlier this year I bought the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book, primarily to try and get more whole grains into Michael’s diet. I’ve tried a couple recipes, and they’re pretty good (though I prefer the unbleached flour sweet rolls), but grandmom really liked the Chewy Oatmeal cookies, so that’s what I made for her.

These cookies are very chewy and almost spice cookies as much as they are oatmeal cookies.
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