All in knots

Every once in a while we end up doing our Central Market shopping on Sunday morning.  Usually we shop Friday and Saturday nights (one CM, one HEB, depending on my work schedule), but we didn't want to go Saturday night last weekend for fear of not being back in time for the start of Doctor Who.  The girls like to watch too, and the 11pm replay is way too late for them.  Heck, most of the time it's way too late for me, too.  

Anyway, the great thing about shopping on Sunday morning is that everything is fully stocked, including the bakery!  Sure, I love baking my own bread.  But I worked Saturday and was still tired on Sunday (from what seemed like a very long week), so there was no way I was going to pass up the still-warm loaves of Durum Sourdough and Ciabatta.  We actually saw some of the bakers still at work, so Gillian and I stopped to watch for a minute.  Her comments?  "Mommy, he has a different kind of weigher than you do."  (He had a balance.)  "But he's making those rolls like you make!"  He was, in fact, making knotted rolls, though they were a bit simpler than these ones that I made last week.  He wasn't joining the ends together to make rounds.  It was neat that she recognized that we make the same sorts of things at home that they make at the bakery.  How many kids can say that?

I discovered these rolls as I was reading my new issue of Fine Cooking (Oct/Nov 2011).  They caught my eye both because they looked delicious and also because the recipe is from one of my favorite authors, Peter Reinhart.  They looked like they'd be pretty easy to make--it's a straight dough, no preferments necessary.  The nice thing is that you can mix up the dough, then either leave it at room temperature to rise if you're baking the same day, or stick it in the fridge to rise overnight.  You can keep it in there for a few days if you don't get back to it right away.  The full recipe of dough makes 18 rolls, so I decided to bake half the first day after refrigerating my dough, then do the other half a couple days later. 

I mostly followed the recipe, though I did decide to substitute some white whole wheat flour for part of the bread flour.  I used about one-third www flour.  I didn't really add any extra liquid, so the dough was probably a bit stiffer than it was supposed to be.  Next time I'll probably add a little extra milk.  The only other big change I made was to omit the egg wash on the rolls--most of the time I can't be bothered to fuss with it.  It probably won't surprise you that I'm one of those people who prefers matte finish over glossy on my pictures... =)

The verdict?  These were a big hit, especially with the girls.  Baking them in batches on different days worked really well, too.  That way we were able to get through them before they got stale.  I'm sure we'll be making this recipe again.  I doubt that the girls had any idea that there was whole wheat flour in them, either. =)

If you'd like to try the original recipe, you can find it in the Oct/Nov 2011 issue of Fine Cooking, or here on the Fine Cooking website.   My friend Kayte baked along with me on this one, so if you'd like to see the rolls finished the way they were supposed to be (with egg wash & seeds on top), check out her blog post.  I'm also submitting these rolls to Yeastspotting, where you can see lots of other yummy yeasted treats.  

Wordless Wednesday - Stone fruit lattice pie

(recipe here)

We flip for plums

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is courtesy of Becky of Project Domestication.  She picked a fun recipe--Flip Over Plum Cake.  The first thing you might think is that this is a recipe for an upside-down cake.  But it's much easier than that--the cake and fruit do the flipping all on their own.  You melt butter in a baking dish in the oven, then pull it out, pour in cake batter, top it with fruit, and stick the dish back in the oven.  After baking, the fruit and cake have magically traded places so that you have something more like a fruit cobbler.

I only had a pound of plums, so I made half the recipe.  I thought about using one of my 8" square baking pans, but then remembered my oval casserole dish, which seemed much more photogenic. =)  I pretty much followed the recipe as written, except that I left out the almond extract and used all vanilla. I baked my cake for 40 minutes.  That might have been just a bit too long, but not enough to be a problem.  

The verdict?  I really enjoyed this one!  I especially liked the crispy/chewy browned edges.  It was lovely with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and made a great breakfast.  Jamie and Brianna liked the cake too, but Gillian was not thrilled.  I definitely want to make this recipe again--and I'm already trying to figure out what other fruit would work well.  

If you'd like to try this one for yourself, you can find the recipe on Becky's blog.  And to see what other variations people came up with, check out this week's Links.  

Wordless Wednesday - Brioche Crumb Cake

No respect, I tell ya

Salt and pepper often don't get the respect that they deserve.  How many times have you run across a so-called "5-ingredient recipe" only to discover that it's really more than that, because they don't count salt and pepper and water as ingredients?  Water is actually the one that bugs me most.  Sure, I understand not counting the water that you use to cook pasta, for instance.  But it drives me crazy to read the ingredient list for a recipe, then get down in the directions and discover that you need to add a specific amount of water.  If you need a specific amount, list it as an ingredient!  I've run into the same thing with salt--the ingredients may list a type of salt, but not a specific amount.  Yes, I know you're supposed to read through the whole recipe before you start, but even with doing that, sometimes I get distracted partway through...

Okay, done ranting. =)  Now on to a baked good that does give salt and pepper a starring role, even in the recipe title.  For this week's Tuesdays with Dorie, Tia of Buttercream Barbie picked the Salt and Pepper Cocoa Shortbreads for us to make.  The nice thing about these cookies is that the dough is easy to mix up.  I do recommend that you assemble all your ingredients ahead of time (mise en place) so you don't forget any... like the egg yolk.  I realized as I was putting my logs of cookie dough in the fridge to chill that I had totally forgotten the egg yolk.  (That's a bit ironic, since I started making the dough because I was looking for a way to use up egg yolks.)  However, I've made plenty of shortbread recipes that don't have any egg in them, so I decided to just go with it. 

After chilling the dough for a few hours, I cut it into thick slices with my serrated knife.  I baked the cookies for about 15 minutes, I think.  It's hard to say for sure, since I continued with my forgetfulness and didn't set a timer at first.  Fortunately, I've baked enough cookies to be able to go by how they looked and smelled to figure out when they were done.  

The verdict?  These turned out to be quite good, despite the forgotten egg yolk.  Like a lot of shortbread, I found that these were actually better the second day than the first.  I probably should have used a little more pepper, since I couldn't really taste it.  The fleur de sel definitely came through, though.  I really enjoy the little bursts of saltiness with the chocolate.  Everyone else seemed to enjoy these as well.

If you'd like to give this recipe a try for yourself, head over to Tia's blog.  And to see what everyone else thought of the shortbread, check out this week's Links.

Have your cake and ice cream, too

Well, it's back to work for me tomorrow.  On Friday, I stopped by work briefly, and several people asked me what I'd been doing with my time off.  The answer?  Absolutely nothing. =)  Or at least, pretty darn closed to that.  I did get to spend a couple days with Gillian (while Brianna was at school), which was nice.  At her request, we did a little shopping on Thursday.  Ah, to be 4-going-on-5 again--the days when all it takes to make you happy is some new socks and leggings and a 99¢ plastic pencil box.  Maybe it was the youthful company, but I did a little shopping for myself, and walked out of Office Depot with over a dozen colorful Sharpies.  I try to stay out of there, since I lack willpower when it comes to office supplies... =)

I also did lots of baking over the past week.  The most involved creation for the week was also one that would easily win the heart of any 4-year-old, not to mention most big kids.  I've mentioned before that I'm a DBCB.  The reason I went into work on my vacation is that Friday was the birthday of one of my employees, and another has a birthday tomorrow.  Fortunately, they're both old enough not too complain too much about having to share.  But just in case, I found a good solution--I made everyone a cake of his or her own.  My employee A has been nagging me incessantly about making peanut butter ice cream for her ever since I brought some to work for another event.  She even suggested that I make ice cream cake.  Normally that would be too hard too pull off, but since I was off, I could bring the dessert in at lunch time so it wouldn't have time to melt.  So I made a bunch of mini ice cream cakes!

The first thing to decide on was the cake.  I knew I wanted chocolate, and a cake that would be good cold.  One of the first recipes to come to mind was one from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours.  If you're familiar with the book, you'll remember the fabulous cake on the cover.  In the headnote for the recipe, Dorie says, "Freshly made or at room temperature, they [the layers] are moist and a little fluffy; chilled, they're still moist, but denser and firmer, very much like a super-fudgy brownie."  That sounded like just what I wanted.  Since I wanted thin layers, I used my quarter-sheet pans in place of the 8" rounds called for in the recipe.  (The bake time was 20 minutes, and I lined the pans with parchment to make it easy to remove the layers once cooled.)  For the ice cream layer, I used one of the same pans, and right after churning the ice cream, I spread it in the parchment lined pan and froze it until it was very firm.  

For the assembly, I used a 2 1/2" biscuit cutter (from this set) to cut out rounds.  I got 14 from each layer.  I stacked the layers--cake, then ice cream, then cake--and stuck the cakes into the freezer overnight to make sure they were completely frozen before I covered them in chocolate.  I debated what to use for a coating, but decided to go with the Chocolate Bombe Shell from my copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.  (The peanut butter ice cream was also from that book.)  I put the cakes on a rack placed over a sheet pan lined with non-stick foil and spooned the chocolate mixture over them.  I did three at a time, keeping the rest in the freezer until I was ready for them.  Also, if you work fast, you can put sprinkles on top before the shell completely hardens so they stick well.  The nice thing about the chocolate shell mixture is that you can stick the sheet pan in the freezer for a few minutes and the chocolate will harden so that you can easily peel it off the foil.  Then you can just break it up and remelt it.  

The verdict?  Well, this is now the newest "best thing that you have -ever- made!" according to my co-workers.  It was a big hit here at home, too.  I'm already thinking of different flavors that I can put together, especially since Gillian wasn't a huge fan of the peanut butter ice cream.  I have lots of cake scraps left, too, so they may end up in some sort of trifle, unless I manage to just eat them all.    

If you'd like to try these little cakes for yourself, here's where you can find recipes for the components I used.  Or you can just have fun experimenting for yourself.  Enjoy!

Dorie's Devil's Food Cake

Jeni's The Buckeye State ice cream (I left out the chocolate bits & used Golden Syrup instead of honey)

Chocolate Bombe Shell (I doubled the amounts listed in this post)

Wordless Wednesday - Signs of fall

(Recipe here; used 2/3 cup choc chips in place of other mix-ins)