Holiday Baking 2011

A quick rehash of this season's holiday cooking: because I've been a negligent blogger.

My last Thanksgiving treat - leftover cranberry sauce bread. I view such recipes as a reason to make extra cranberry sauce, not get rid of it!

I also made the standards: cinnamon rolls, pecan pie...

apple pie...
and pumpkin pie, not pictured this time around.

My main Christmas baking this December was gingerbread men. Lots of gingerbread men:

But for the holiday dinner, I made up a three layer cake from this recipe - a caramelized apple spice cake with brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream:

The finished dessert (and yes, that is a pie in the background as well)!

Gingerbread Waffles

In December, my friend Cherie hosted a Chaos Cooking event. The idea is that everyone comes bearing ingredients, and cooks. It's kind of a demented potluck.

Since Cherie owns a waffle iron, I decided to make peanut butter waffles, with grape jelly and bananas to top:


I was inspired, and asked for a waffle iron as a holiday gift:

For my first homemade waffles, I decided to keep the holiday going and make this recipe for gingerbread waffles.

Waffles are very similar to a quickbread recipe - wet ingredients (butter or other fat, eggs, milk or other liquid, andin this case, some molasses) added to dry ingredients (flour, leavening, spices):

Ready to go:

The leftovers, ready to make like Eggo and go in the freezer for weekday breakfast!

Cracked Wheat Bread

Back to some bread, especially since I haven't posted in a while!

Bulgar. The base for this cracked wheat bread published by the NY Times:
Do not be fooled - this recipe is...more complicated that the much more famous "minimalist" loaf!

It involved a sponge, a dough, lots of rising...

More rising...

And when all was said and done, I probably need to make it again to get my loaves a bit lighter. But the flavor of this one is amazing, and worth another baking!

Maple Oatmeal Bread

Oatmeal, I've said before, is my favorite kind of sandwich bread:
This recipe from King Arthur adds a little Northeast flavor to one of my favorites.

Here's the dough, ready to rise - note, I did not add the "maple flavor" suggested in the recipe - just 100% maple syrup:

And risen. Magical:

Ready for the oven:

Lemon, Coconut and Ginger Energy Bars

The recipe and full details of these lemon, coconut and ginger energy bars are over at Taste As You Go:
Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It may be a little cheesy, but hearts and valentine's day do go together, so I made up this recipe to celebrate:
Tempted as I was to use a blueberry jam filling, I stuck with the raspberry jam so that I wouldn't be presenting friends with black hearts.

These cookies are not very interesting until they get shaped, but here is the butter, sugar, peanut butter and eggs, all creamed together:

The dough, rolled into balls and flattened:

And with preliminary heart indentations:

And the finished cookies, after baking, filling and baking again.

(Almost Vegan) Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I altered the recipe for these delicious and (almost) healthy cookies from another running food blogger, Vegan by Valerie:
Although I'm not vegan (or even vegetarian) I love Valerie's site because she always considers nutrition and how she is going to be fueling her body for her running.

The recipe works like one for a quickbread. First, the dry (note - instead of using pumpkin pie spice, I used a combination of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg):

and then the wet ingredients (note - here I used pumpkin puree I had made from a fresh pumpkin rather than canned, and I used an egg rather than egg replacer after speaking to a vegan friend. Incidentally, my vegan friend told me the egg would probably taste better than any replacement I could try):

Mix it all together, add your chocolate chips and bake!
Full Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour (or regular whole wheat flour)

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

spices: about 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. ginger, 1/4 tsp. nutmeg and 1/4 t. cloves

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. pumpkin puree

1/4 c. maple syrup

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 T. canola oil or coconut oil

1 egg (large)

about 3/4 c. chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Combine all dry ingredients

3. Combine all wet ingredients and whisk until smooth

4. Slowly add in the dry ingredients to the wet, stirring until fully mixed in.

5. Stir in the chocolate chips.

6. Form sticky balls from the dough (tablespoon size at least, I like mine larger) and place on buttered or oiled cookie sheets

7. Bake for 12-13 minutes, or until cookies are cooked through.

"Very Best" Oatmeal Bread

I keep returning to this recipe for oatmeal bread. You start, basically, by making oatmeal:

While the oatmeal cools, you can gather the rest of the ingredients. The dough always mixes up easily, even when I add some whole wheat flour:

A smoothly kneaded ball, ready to rise:

And ready to bake! Predictably, I didn't manage to get a good sandwich shot of this bread for you...next time.

The Minimalist Bread: White Flour

I did not knead this smooth looking lump of dough at all - this is the result of another iteration of the minimalist bread recipe. This time, I used all white flour:

It baked up lofty and crusty, a truly beautiful loaf:

Also, delicious!

What? No Kneading?

It doesn't look like much, and honestly, it is no work at all. I've taken this recipe for "minimalist" bread with no kneading, and added some whole wheat flour (experiment to see what proportion you like):

The worst of it is flipping your dough into a couche, and then into a pan!

And yes, beautiful bread. Gently lifted out of my cast iron pot, here with tongs.

Raisin Challah

I enjoy holidays associated with food, and well, when a holiday is associated with a bread, I am certain to make some:
Last week was Rosh Hashanah, and a common item on the table is a raisin challah, made in a round loaf.


I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour, with a little honey and a lot of delicious golden raisins. Here is the dough, freshly mixed and a bit shaggy:

I kneaded the dough a bit although the recipe did not call for it. My dough seemed to need it:

After a rise and a bit of deflation, I started kneading in the raisins:

And eventually managed to col the dough into a spiral in my pan:

And here it is, risen, just before heading into the oven:

Brownies: A New Recipe to Try

How bad can a recipe be if it includes three sticks of butter?

And mixes up nicely in one bowl?

The New York Times has never let me down with new and delicious brownie recipes before, and didn't with this rich treat.

Blueberry Buttermilk Bundt Cake

I've gone back to this recipe again and again. It makes a beautiful cake, even when my bundt pan doesn't quite cooperate and I end up missing a chunk:

The recipe itself is simple. Creamed butter and sugar, eggs, flour and leavening alternated with buttermilk. Frozen berries are used as they have less tendency to sink to the bottom of a cake pan. The berries I used were harvested locally and stayed in my freezer for a late spring treat:

The finished cake, before it was turned out: