Whip-It-Up-Quick Cornbread

 I am surprised to find myself here, on the second Tuesday, posting the appropriate recipe for February’s challenge from Baking with Dorie.  I have been a serial straggler with this challenge.  I just don’t seem to be able to catch up.  I still have to make cheese puffers, part of last month’s challenge.   I am so close to being caught up with the group baking all the recipes from Dorie Greenspan’s  Baking with Dorie.  Head over to Tuesdays with Dorie for the rules and upcoming scheduled recipes.  Two recipes a month, posted on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday.  

We rely on kids or neighbors to help us eat our way through some of these recipes. And our kids are all adults.  The other day I came to the realization that my kids aren’t really young adults anymore.  30 year olds are definitely adults.  Luckily not quite middle aged because what would that make me?  

As adults with busy lives, we don’t see them daily and I can’t count on them to take care of some extra carbs.   My husband and I are getting into father and the mother of the bride supreme shape so sometimes we have carbs to share.  Any way, I cut the recipe down.  Using my amazing “my mother was my math teacher and I can use metrics and fractions” math skills, I cut it way down.   Just kidding, I cut it in half and put a little in this small cast iron that we use for basting on the grill.   The rest is in a casserole pan.  

This was another delicious recipe.  However, I have a cornbread recipe that I use when we need some cornbread in our lives.  It uses less fat and has more AP.  I enjoy it more.  I know that my family has strong ideas on how corn bread should taste.   Once you find your favorite recipe, it is hard to sway people away.  

Steph‘s Bakewell Tart

 I am so close to being caught up with the group baking all the recipes from Dorie Greenspan’s  Baking with Dorie.  Head over to Tuesdays with Dorie for the rules and upcoming scheduled recipes.  Two recipes a month, posted on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday.  I believe that I have only managed to post on one of the actual Tuesdays and Thursdays.  February, here we come.  

Anyway, Steff’s Bakewell Tart was the perfect dessert for a slow winter Sunday.   It’s too icy and slippery to go anywhere so I had plenty of time to work on dinner and dessert.   This tart starts predictably with a tart shell.  My 9” tart pan has a higher than usual edge, so I wondered how this would play out.  I parbaked the shell and filled the base with some blackberry jam.   Then I made the frangipane.  I thought about piping it into the tart, but was able to carefully spread it about.  My tart sides were too tall so I took off some of the height from my tart.  I really don’t want to add more pans to my collection, but I think I need a 9” tart pan with short sides.  

After the bake, I decided to try to feather the icing.  I don’t think that I have ever feathered icing but I saw some beautiful Blakewell tarts out there.  I think that I needed my icing to be a little thicker.  And, some how it looks a little too “EKG strips” for me.   I think that I will make this desert again.  It was unusual, not what I typically think of when I hear tart.  We all enjoyed it. 

I need to fit some cheese puffers into the rotation and I’ll be up to date.

Grain and Seed Muffins

 

I continue to erratically bake along with the group in Tuesdays with Dorie, who are posting from Dorie’s newest book, Baking with Dorie.  January’s Tuesday choices were grain and seed muffins or Steff’s Bakewell tart.  These muffins were delicious.  They started with a combination of wheat and white flours, sweetened with brown sugar and maple syrup.  There was some bran, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and dried cranberries thrown in.  I added some coconut because I have some coconut to use up.  

I would love to have a bunch of these in the freezer, but I don’t need a bunch of them in the freezer so I gave some away.   I will make a batch of these for our next family get together.  

Mokonuts’ Rye-Cranberry Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I plan on baking along with the group in Tuesdays with Dorie, who are posting from Dorie’s newest book, Baking with Dorie.  I am struggling to stay on schedule, I am doing ok with baking, behind with the posts.  

I would like to got to Paris to eat these cookies at Mokonuts.  We all enjoyed them.  I don’t think that I have ever had poppy seeds in a cookie.  Combined with the rye and cranberry there were layers of flavor.  I used chunks of bittersweet chocolate and at this point I feel I should confess to not really liked large amounts of chocolate in my cookies.  I knew when I started that they would be too much for me but the gang enjoyed them.  

Catch up  with Miso Maple Loaf

This was October’s recipe.   This is the kind of loaf that you like to find in your kitchen.  It made a great toast.  I don’t think many people would be able to figure out what gave the loaf it’s flavor.  The white miso, buttermilk and maple syrup all came together wonderfully. 

Apple Dandowdy

 

I was excited to make this because my daughter was coming for a visit.  She has a good eye for making baked goods look appealing.  

A pandowdy is an easy dessert and a good way to use up any scraps of pie dough that you might have rolling around the freezer.  For this recipe you peeled and cored apples, seasoned them with sugar and lemon juice, dumped them in the bowl and arranged the pie scraps on the top.

I added cinnamon and my daughter cut up pie dough with cookie cutters.   We served it with some vanilla ice cream.   I had a very juicy lemon and I felt there was a little too much zip in the pandowdy.

English Muffins

 

Well, I've done it again.  I bought a cookbook with the intention of baking my way through it.  I'll be baking the recipes from Baking with Dorie.      Two recipes a month will be posted on Tuesdays with Dorie   And you can choose the order you make them.   Posting should be on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month.  Unfortunately, life is a little complicated right now, we can only strive for strict attention to schedules.  I am going to be late posting this.  

I baked and cooked along with around my French table and learned a lot and made some recipes that I wouldn’t have tried.   It’s fun to be part of a community that is trying the same recipes.  It remains one of my favorite cookbooks, partially because I made so many of the recipes.  When I moved, we didn’t have access to a real kitchen for several months and I fell far behind.  I am excited that Dorie has a new book at a time when I can join in the baking fun.   I am looking forward to this challenge.  However, things have changed in my house since my last posts.  Harper and Murphy are old dogs now.  Still completely willing to try any foods, especially those that are bad for them.  The kids are all adults and off on their own.  We are lucky that some of them come by periodically and are willing to try anything that I bake.  Conveniently, I have some neighbors across the way with younger metabolisms who have already agreed to help me eat any extras.

The recipes for November are English Muffins or Apple Pandowdy.   I chose the English muffins.  I want to make the apple dessert for Thanksgiving.  I love English muffins.   And I know that they freeze well so I didn’t have to worry about making any adjustments to the recipe.  

It was an easy recipe for anyone who has experience with yeast.    It came together quickly and rose nicely.   I shaped 12 equal balls and after they rose, I really enjoyed squishing them in the pan.  I mean really, go ahead, squish them, gently of course.  My only question was if my pan was supposed to reach 350 degrees F or it that only applied to an electric griddle.   I enjoy cooking in my cast iron pan, I got it pretty hot and cooked the muffins until I no longer saw a wet middle line on their sides.

We are looking forward to Sunday English muffins and have frozen some for later.   This was a good recipe, get some yeast practice under our belts.  I am hoping that some of the more fiddly recipes come around when my daughter is visiting.  She has far more baking finesse and patience than I do.  It’s a journey. 

COUPÉTADE - French Fridays with Dorie

I actually read ahead for this week's French Fridays with Dorie and knew that I needed to make challah.  OK, I am sure that I could have bought challah, but I love making challah.  I love the way that it makes my kitchen smell, and how it feels when you braid it.   And youtube is filled with wonderful examples of bread braiding.

I had never made challah before I baked along with the group of bakers making the breads in The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  As with any bread that you have grown up on, there was some discussion on which challah was the favorite challah.  A couple of the bakers preferred a recipe a book called in the  Second Helpings Please, put out by the Mt. Sinai Chapter of Montreal of the Jewish Women's International of Canada in 1968.  GrongarBlog recently posted a most beautiful post on this challah recipe.  The pictures alone will make you run to make a loaf.

Early into the process, my camera died.  The battery will not accept a charge.  It will take a little investigating to see how serious a situation this is but I had my cell phone.

The challah was sliced and dipped into a combination of eggs, milk and sugar and cooked in some butter in a griddle.   French Toast.

The french toast soaked in eggy custard of eggs, sugar, vanilla, milk.  We were supposed to add some dried fruit.  Adding dried fruit would guarantee that I would be the only one eating this.  So, I added some strawberries and bananas and a touch of cinnamon and put it into a water bath to bake.

We served this with a little whipped cream and everyone loved it.  I think it would have been too sweet for us to eat for breakfast.

Murphy was quite excited by all the egg cracking that went into this recipe.  Eggs for challah, eggs to brush the challah, eggs to make the french toast, eggs to make the custard.  A definite egg fest, perhaps I shared with the hopeful puppy.