Battenberg

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

To be totally honest, I'd never heard of Battenberg Cake before now. Obviously I've been missing something because when I took it in to my dojo, everyone seemed super excited. I think it was the fun checkered pattern; had them all impressed. I tried explaining it to them, that as long as you followed the set steps, it really wasn't that bad to make. They didn't believe me. But before this challenge, I probably wouldn't have believed me either.

The individual parts didn't seem so bad. Make cake. Cut it up. Glue it back together with jam. Cover with marzipan.

The Marzipan is what gave me pause. My experience with marzipan, both eating and making, is basically none. I didn't know what it was supposed to taste like (one would presume almonds) or what the texture was supposed to be. So obviously I decided to make it instead of search it out in a store.

The cake part of the Battenberg came together pretty easily (and the batter tasted pretty good too!) The biggest thing was jerry rigging the 8x8 pan into a Battenberg making pan. And even that wasn't too difficult thanks to the tips from Mandy.

Now, back to that whole marzipan thing. Yeah... I tried. I really did. My homemade attempt ended up being this crumbly pile of almond-y stuff. Tasty. But definitely not how it was supposed to end up. I assume it had something to do with the sugar/egg white syrup, but who really knows. I thought about trying it again. I even went back to the store to buy more ingredients. And as I was walking down the baking aisle I saw out of the corner of my eye this box. It said marzipan on it... I bet you can guess what ended up in my basket.

Overall I was pretty happy with how things turned out. I kinda wish I'd stuck it through and made the marzipan, but it's probably better for my sanity that I didn't.

Challah

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

I'd never made Challah before. Actually, I'd never even had Challah before this past Thanksgiving. Hard to believe given my great love of bread. But there you go.

I had to wait to make this as for the past month I've been in the process of moving. Things were packed, I lost my internet access for a bit, etc. etc. This is also the reason why last months' challenge, Nazook, just went up as well. Sorry y'all.

So I broke in my new kitchen with Challah; the first of many wonderful things to be made here, I'm sure. I was a little nervous as I am switching back to electric after years of having a gas oven. I think things turned out pretty well. 

I used the whole wheat Challah recipe that was provided by our host this month. The recipe was easy to follow; though it was missing where to add the salt. Which I then proceeded to completely forget about until I started kneading the dough. I added it in at that point, and the bread still came out nicely.

I attempted a 3-strand and a 4-strand braid. They both came out ok, though I'm still not positive I understand how the 4-strand braid was supposed to go.

Though time consuming, this is definitely something I will want to make again. And while I can just knock back a whole loaf of bread plain, I decided to make some french toast instead...

Nazook

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

Yes, I am super super late with this. I've been in the process of moving for over a month now (finally done!), and was a little distracted. Seeing as how I was already late with Daring Bakers for April, I chose to do just the Nazook. I do plan on, don't quote me on this though, to go back and try the nutmeg cake at some point.

The recipe came together quickly enough. And the hardest part for me was muscling my way through the refrigerated dough to get it rolled out. I split the work between two days; making the dough on Friday and finishing them up on Saturday. Though one day would be plenty to make these if you have a decent stretch of time.

I was kind of meh on these at first. I tried one fresh, and was underwhelmed. I tried one the next day and thought, well, maybe I can get used to these. By the third day they were growing on me. So if you don't like them right away, let them age a few days and try them again.

Chinese Three-Spice Almond Crescent Cookies

A friend of mine left for a six month teaching gig in China this week, and in order to send her off in style I wanted to bake something for her. After much googling of 'Chinese desserts' I finally settled on a recipe for Chinese Five-Spice Almond Cookies from Whole Foods.


                               


It's a fairly basic recipe, and I had all that I needed. All except for the Chinese Five-Spice. Apparently there was a run on Chinese Five-Spice. Whodathunkit? So when I got home from a fruitless trip to the grocery store I dug around in my pantry and come up with three of the five spices in Chinese Five-Spice. And thus was born, the Chinese Three-Spice cookie.


Chinese Three-Spice Almond Crescent Cookie
slightly altered from the Whole Foods Chinese Five-Spice recipe
makes around 20 cookies

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup unsalted butter, in chunks
1/4 cup sugar
~1/8 tsp of cinnamon
~1/8 tsp ground ginger
~1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp almond extract

powdered sugar for dusting if desired


Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Put everything but the powdered sugar in a food processor and pulse until the dough gets crumbly. Then blend until it forms a soft dough.

Take a small pinch of dough, and roll it a bit to form a log. Shape the log of dough into a crescent. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until the cookies are fairly firm to the touch. Let cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. Once the cookies are completely cool, dust them with powdered sugar if you'd like. These aren't a super sweet cookie, so I think most people would appreciate the little extra bit of sweetness.

Dutch Crunch Bread

Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

I'd never heard of these rolls before, though they reminded me a little of the Marco Polo bagel that Wegmans sells. Ah Wegmans... Ok, I'm back. I'm in a near constant state of Wegmans withdrawal so you'll have to excuse me.

I made these pretty much as soon as I could, my biweekly day off falling just a few days after this month's recipe was posted. So I scrambled around and gathered the necessary ingredients together and got started.

You can find the recipe here.

I got to use my much under appreciated doughhook on my Kitchenaide, and things came together nicely. The topping confused me a little, seeming thick enough when I left it to set for the ten minutes, but then it dripped around a bit when it was time to slather it onto the rolls. I think things turned out pretty well. Though I got the more giraffe spotty look as opposed to the larger cracks running down. I didn't mind too much, they still tasted good.

I ended up going with a fairly basic (but quite tasty!) sandwich: turkey, cheddar, and apple.

And in other news... I now have rice flour sitting around. Any recipe suggestions?

Banana Oatmeal Bread

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles. 

Banana bread is one of my favorite things to eat. Now, I don't bake it all that often given that I also love bananas and will eat them up well before they'd be ready for banana bread. But for Daring Bakers, I resisted temptation. Ok, ok. Actually I just bought seven bananas at once, definitely more bananas than even I can eat in a week.

This recipe from Joy the Baker came together quickly, not taking much longer than a few minutes before it was in the oven. But, it used three bowls. One for the dry, one for the wet, and one for the egg whites. Growing up, my family was often in the just-throw-it-all-in-one-bowl-and-mix-it-up class of baker. And I have to say, everything seemed to turn out just fine. So I'm wondering if you really need that separate wet ingredient bowl, and next time I try this recipe I may skip it and see.

I would recommend going out of your way to have large bananas or to have an extra banana or two. There was a shortage of bananas at my grocery store when I went and I ended up with a rather petite bunch of organic bananas (so not worth the extra cost, by the way). I had issues with the outside crust getting slightly tough while there was still a slightly gooey center and I wonder if my small bananas had something to do with that. Not enough moisture throughout or something. Though that gooey center? Oh. My. Deliciousness.

White Chocolate Chip Almond Chocolate Biscotti

I don't know what it is about biscotti, but people always seem really impressed when I bring it somewhere. Maybe it's the Italian name, or the twice baked-ness. Whatever it is, biscotti is always greeted with an awed 'ooo' from the crowd.

I found my go-to chocolate biscotti recipe on all-recipes, believe it or not. I've made the Double Chocolate Biscotti numerous times, though in all previous cases I turned up my nose at white chocolate (I mean, it's not even real chocolate!) and subbed in some ridiculously dark bittersweet chocolate instead. This time though, I wanted a change. And with my new found love of almonds, that was the first change I made.

White Chocolate Chip Almond Chocolate Biscotti
makes about 18 pieces

1/2 cup butter - softened
2/3 c sugar
1/4 c cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 3/4 c flour
4 oz white chocolate chips
1/2 c slivered almonds

semi sweet chocolate for dipping (I melted a whole bag of chips, but
didn't need nearly that much, probably half a bag would do)
white chocolate for drizzle (I melted... less than a cup of chips)

First off, cream the butter and sugar. 

Once that is all light and fluffy, mix in the cocoa powder and baking powder. 

After that, beat in the eggs one at a time.

Now add in the flour and mix until combined.

The last step in the dough making, mix in the white chocolate chips and almond slivers.

Chill the dough for at least ten minutes, you can let the oven preheat to 375 during this time. The dough will be fairly sticky at this point, so chilling it will help out a lot when you get to the next step.

Once the dough is nice and chilled we will shape the dough into 2 roughly nine inch logs. Space them out evenly on a cookie sheet, and flatten them a bit. They'll expand some but not crazy amounts.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the biscotti cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack where you should let them cool completely, about an hour.

Set the oven to preheat to 325 degrees. While this is going on you'll want to cut the biscotti. Cut slices 3/4 to an inch thick on a diagonal. The farther away from a straight up and down slice, the longer the pieces of biscotti will be. For biscotti beginners I would recommend starting with shorter slices, as it can be a bit crumbly at this stage.

Bake for 9 minutes, flip the biscotti and bake for another 7 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack. 

Melt the semisweet chocolate, I use a double boiler but use whatever method you prefer. Dip one edge of the biscotti in chocolate and let chill in the fridge until the chocolate is hardened.

Melt the white chocolate, again, however you are most comfortable. Drizzle over the biscotti with a spoon. I found white chocolate to be a bit more temperamental than the semisweet so be careful not to overheat. I'd recommend that once about 2/3 is melted, take the chocolate off the heat and stir until the rest is melted in.

Lemon Thyme Potato

A while back I bookmarked this recipe from The Kitchn and I finally got to it a few days ago. I tend to focus in on baked goods so the savory recipes get pushed to the side in favor of chocolate this or peppermint that. Understandable, but so not fair to all the delicious non sweets out there.

I'm not sure how many of you went camping when you were young (or not so young), but this is like a grown up version of a foil pack. Way back when we used to dump all sorts of raw veggies, salt, pepper, and some oil into foil, ball it up and shove it under the coals of a campfire. This took me back.

Lemon Thyme Potato

altered for 1 potato

1 potato - I used russet

1/2 lemon

Garlic

Thyme

Oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

The first thing you'll want to do is slice the potato. You want to make about 1/4 inch slices, and you do not want to slice all the way through. The potato slices should all end up attached to each other at the bottom.

Drizzle oil over the potato, getting some in between the slices. I actually forgot this step, don't tell! The potato turned out fine, I just let it cook for a bit longer than called for.

If you're using fresh herbs, prep those. Slice the garlic thin, and remove the thyme from the stalk. I used dried, not as good, but it works in a pinch. 

Also prep the lemon, slice it as thinly as you can. I got about 6 slices from a half lemon, plus two little end pieces that I didn't use in the potato.

Insert the garlic, thyme, and lemon slices in between the potato slices. The lemon has a tendency to pop out, just push it back in. When you wrap the potato in foil that will help keep things together.

Put the foil wrapped potato in the oven for about 45 minutes, mine took more like an hour. But again, that's probably because I forgot the oil. You can test the potato at 45 minutes with a fork, and if it isn't tender enough just shove it back in the oven for a bit longer.

Scones (aka Biscuits)

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens! 

So after the utter failure that was my bread starter from last month's Daring Bakers challenge, I was super excited to see something familiar as the challenge this month. Also exciting was the fact that I didn't have to go out and buy any special ingredients.

On one of my many mornings off this month (yay federal holidays!), I decided spur-of-the-moment that it was the perfect time for making these. Luckily I always store my butter in the freezer, otherwise this wouldn't have worked out so well. The dough came together easily, and yes, I did actually triple sift my dry ingredients. I'm sure it made a difference but I want to try these again with no sifting or just a single sift to see how they compare.

It's a good thing I don't often indulge in more than yogurt for breakfast because after making these I decided there's nothing better than a lazy morning with hot biscuits scones slathered in spun honey.

You can find the recipe here.