What's buggin' you?

I was having a rough day when I got to work on Friday.  I was trying to leave it at home, but as soon as someone asked me if I was okay, I realized that maybe that was easier said than done.  I was missing my mom, a lot.  Long-time readers of my blog may recall that my mom died three years ago, in March.  While the date on the calendar has some significance, what really sticks with me is the fact that it was on Good Friday.  And of course, that date changes from year to year.  Even though I knew it was coming, it still surprised me a bit how emotional I was feeling.  (It shouldn't have, when I think about how stressful this year has been so far.)

I always think about Mom on the night before Easter as I'm filling baskets for the girls.  She was the one who taught me to count everything that I put into the baskets, down to the last jelly bean.  Why, you ask?  Because siblings are competitive, and will immediately notice any differences in who got what.  In fact, one of the first things Gillian did Sunday morning was pull everything out of her basket and count it.  I don't think she actually compared it to what Brianna had (she was just proud of her counting skills), but you can bet B would have said something if she thought G had more of anything. =)

Just in case the candy wasn't enough sugar for the day, I wanted to make something yummy for dessert on Easter.  I've been searching for a good vanilla pound cake since I got my latest batch of vanilla beans.  I've made several recipes and always end up with the same thing--cakes with good flavor but a dry mouthfeel.  To find new recipes to try, I've been using a nifty new tool that I discovered thanks to Jessica of cookbookhabit.  It's called Eat Your Books, and basically provides you with a comprehensive index for the cookbooks already on your shelves.  It doesn't give you the recipes, just helps you figure out where to look.  When I searched for "vanilla pound cake" I got 23 results from my 98 cookbooks.  A few were obviously recipes that utilize pound cake as an ingredient, and some were for other flavor variations that included vanilla in the ingredient list.  But I got about a dozen recipes for what I was really looking for, a basic vanilla pound cake.  I've already tried a few of them that weren't quite what I was after, and this time decided to check out the recipe in Joanne Chang's Flour.  

What appealed to me about this particular recipe was that it uses melted butter folded in at the end, rather than the creaming method.  I've made a similar recipe in the past, the Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes from  Baking From My Home to Yours.  Both recipes use the same mixing method.  First, you whip together sugar and eggs.  Even though Chang's recipe says to mix the vanilla bean seeds with the melted butter, I took a page from Dorie's book and rubbed them into the sugar before I started mixing.  Once the egg mixture is really light, you gently fold in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) and then fold in a mixture of melted butter and some heavy cream.  

Part of why I wanted to make a dense cake like pound cake is that I thought it would be perfect in my new pan--I found this adorable bug pan when I was at Costco on Saturday.  It only holds a total of 3 cups, so I put the rest of the batter in one of my mini (2-cup) loaf pans.  The bugs baked for 20 minutes, while the loaf took 30.  (One thing to note--all of my pans were filled a bit too much, so next time I'll probably fill the bugs a bit less & put the extra batter in a 3-cup pan.)

The verdict?  This is an excellent pound cake recipe.  The finished cakes had a nice tight crumb and a great texture--not too dry.  I'm already thinking of different ways to change up the flavor of the batter and other pans to bake it in (I have a couple of mini bundts as well as my madeleine pans--which I think would be good since the cakes had humps on the backs).  The shapes were a big hit with the girls--they had fun debating which one to eat first.  They split the butterfly and the ladybug--both shapes that were symmetrical, so that there wouldn't be fights over who got the bigger piece. =) (another thing I learned from my mom)

I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Flour.  I've really enjoyed everything I've made from it so far.  If you want to try this particular recipe, you can find it here on Rose Levy Beranbaum's blog.  The vanilla bean variation is at the end of the recipe.  

Drop in for breakfast

I don't use maple syrup very much.  When I was growing up, my dad was the only one in the house who used real maple syrup on his pancakes, etc.  The rest of us used pancake syrup (not the same thing at all).  Dad got the real butter, too, rather than margarine.  It wasn't until I was much older that I realized what a good thing he had going. =)  To be honest, my kids eat Log Cabin and like it just fine, but I don't know how much of that is just because they haven't had the real thing.  I'm kind of afraid to find out.  

I definitely associate maple syrup with breakfast, but hadn't thought past drizzling it on top of things.  Sure, I've encountered recipes that used it, but nothing that really grabbed my attention.  Nothing, that is, until I got my copy of Joanne Chang's Flour cookbook.  The very first recipe in the book is for Oatmeal-Maple Scones.  Yum.  I don't like to eat oatmeal as hot cereal (can't stand the texture), but I love it in baked goods like scones.  And these scones are really easy to make, even when you aren't quite awake yet.

These are drop scones, meaning that you scoop them out onto the baking sheet, rather than patting out dough and cutting it into shapes.  So the dough is rather sticky.  The only sweetener is the maple syrup; it also provides moisture in the dough, along with cream and an egg.  For the dry ingredients, there's a mix of all-purpose flour and rolled oats, along with baking powder, baking soda and salt.  The recipe calls for nuts, but they aren't very popular in baked goods around here, so I left them out.  I've used raisins in these a couple times, but for the most recent batch, I went with cinnamon chips.

I was a bit surprised by the baking temperature of 350ºF, since most of the other recipes I've made call for baking scones at a higher temperature (usually 400ºF).  To go with the lower temp, the baking time is longer.  I didn't bake mine for quite as long as the recipe said, only 25 minutes instead of 40.  That was partly because I made mine smaller, but if I'd made them the size in the recipe, I still don't thing they would have taken that long.  

We had to have the glaze, of course.  To be honest, I usually kind of wing it on the glaze.  I put some powdered sugar in a bowl and whisked in a couple tablespoons of maple syrup along with just enough water to make thick glaze.  Rather than brushing it all over the scones, I drizzled it on top--I prefer how it looks that way.  

The verdict?  Well, I've made these scones three times already, so that should give you an idea of how much I love them!  I liked them just fine with raisins, and so did Gillian.   But Brianna was very happy that I finally made a batch without dried fruit.  (She liked to eat it straight up, but not in baked goods.)  These scones also went over well at work.  

If you'd like to try these for yourself, I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Flour.  But in the in meantime, you can find the recipe for these yummy scones online here.  Unfortunately, the article only gives the volume measurements, which frustrates me to no end.  One of the things I love so much about this book is that every recipe includes weights in grams in addition to the volume measurements.  So I'm listing the weights of ingredients for you here.

Oatmeal-Maple Scones

(adapted from Flour, by Joanne Chang)

210 grams all-purpose flour

125 grams rolled oats

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

80 grams cinnamon chips (or raisins)

113 grams (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces

80 grams cold heavy cream

160 grams Grade B maple syrup

1 cold egg

115 grams powdered sugar

2 tablespoons Grade B maple syrup

up to 1 tablespoon water

I used my #16 disher (which holds 2 ounces, or 1/4 cup) to scoop out my scones.  I got 12, rather than the yield of 8 in the recipe.  I baked them for 25 minutes at 350ºF.