What's Baking? April: Garlic

This month's What's Baking theme is garlic! Check out the round up, posted by Nicole at Seven Ate Nine.

I had trouble deciding what to make! I didn't want to make garlic bread or garlic rolls or anything with yeast, I just wasn't in the mood, and I wanted to do something different. I couldn't think of anything! Then it was Sunday, and I wanted to make a big dinner Sunday so we could have leftovers for a couple days after, and pork roasts were on sale. I got a couple 2lb pork roasts, and search for some garlicky inspiration. Success!

However, the garlic-rubbed pork I made is really more roasted than baked, so I worried it wasn't quite right... so I made garlicky baked onion rings, which, despite being our very favorite side, I don't think I've ever blogged that recipe!

Garlic-rubbed Pork Roast
recipe from Epicurious

5 cloves of garlic, pressed
2t dried rosemary (or 4t fresh rosemary), minced/crushed
1t salt
1/2t freshly ground pepper
a 2lb pork roast

Press the garlic and mix with the rosemary, salt and pepper. Rub all over a pork roast. Place fat-side down in a roasting pan and bake at 400F for 30 minutes, then remove from oven, flip over, and bake until the internal temp reaches 150F (30 more minutes for me and my 1.90lb pork roast). Remove from oven and let rest 10 minutes, then pour juices in the pan over the pork, slice and serve.

This is so incredibly easy, but so flavorful! It's not too garlicky, and the rosemary and garlic is a great combination.

Garlicky Baked Onion Rings

3 Vidalia onions, cut in thick rings

The flour mixture:
2c flour
1t salt
1t Penzey's Granulated Roasted Garlic
1t Penzey's Northwoods Seasoning (or other tasty seasoning, Old Bay would be yummy)

The wet mixture:
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten

The breading mixture:
2c panko breadcrumbs
2T olive oil
1/2t granulated roasted garlic
1/2t Northwoods seasoning

Cut the onions in thick rings (I do 3-4 slices across the onion) and separate into individual rings. Mix the ingredients of the flour mixture in a ziptop bag, and throw the onion slices in, toss around to coat them.

Have a bowl of the wet mixture, and another bowl of the breading mixture. Take an onion ring from the flour bag, coat it in the wet mixture, let the excess egg/milk drip off and then coat in the breading mixture. Place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, and repeat for all the onion slices. (This is incredibly tedious). Bake at 400F for 20-25 minutes.

Serve hot/warm, either just as onion rings, or with ketchup, BBQ sauce, honey mustard, etc to dip in.

This should serve 4. We eat 2 onions's worth of onion rings for just the 2 of us, so it's kind of hard to say! This is Clint's favoritest side dish.

And then.... I'd left the roasted garlic jar on the counter, kind of where the cinnamon sugar jar lives.... so this morning, while juggling making breakfast and entertaining a toddler, I went to put cinnamon sugar on my toast, only I made a serious error. :-/ It wasn't horrible, but definitely very weird on raisin bread! And garlic and coffee isn't the best combination ever.

What's Baking? February: Bread

This month's What's Baking? theme is bread! Heather of Hezzi D's Books and Cooks will have the round up, check out what everyone made!

I always try to choose a new, challenging recipe for What's Baking?. I like to learn new things! But this month, finding time to bake a loaf of bread was challenge enough. I decided on a recipe that I love and haven't made in a while, and one that I wanted to share with others. So hopefully I can inspire someone to challenge themselves with this recipe! (don't worry, it's pretty straightforward!) I also chose this recipe because my grandma loves it, so I made it to send to her (fortunately, it makes 2 loaves so one for her, one for me!).

Cardamom Braid
makes 2 loaves
recipe from the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook

4.5-5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup milk, warm
1T active dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1t ground cardamom
1t salt
6T softened butter

In your mixing bowl, combine the warm milk, yeast and 1 cup of flour. Whisk together and let the yeast wake up for about 20 minutes. Add the sugar, eggs, cardamom, salt and butter, Stir til mostly combined. Add in the remaining flour, 1 cup at a time, until the dough holds together but is still a little sticky. Knead for 10-15 minutes, then place in a loosely covered bowl and let rise for about 2 hours, til doubled.

After the dough has risen, punch it down and divide in half. Divide each half in thirds, and roll out the dough into long snakes. Braid 3 together: smoosh the ends of the snakes together and then braid them, smooshing the ends together when you finish. Repeat for the 2nd set of 3 to make 2 braided loaves. Cover the two loaves with a clean dish towel and let rise for 30-45 minutes. Set the oven to 350F and let the bread continue to rise as the oven heats. Brush with an egg or milk wash, sprinkle with sanding or pearl sugar (optional) and bake for 30 minutes.

That's it! This bread is delicious, it has a nice light texture and is just sweet enough. It's my favorite for toast in the morning!

What's Baking? Gingerbread Round-up!

I was the host for this month's What's Baking? Challenge! I chose gingerbread, for a somewhat selfish reason: our little gingerbread man celebrated his birthday in December and I wanted some gingerbread inspiration for his gingerbread birthday party! I got so many delicious submissions to inspire me that I'll probably be baking gingerbread until his 2nd birthday.

Jaida from Sweet Beginnings made gingerbread muffins with lemon glaze. I love this way to add gingerbread to my favorite meal of the day, breakfast!

Liz from Books N Cooks made these pretty soft gingerbread cookies. They look like something from a bakery!

Jenni from Dough See Dough made these decadent apple cinnamon gingerbread rolls. They're overnight cinnamon rolls, the best kind! The next wintry weekend we have, I'm making these to enjoy for breakfast.

Joanna from Kosher Kitchen made iced gingerbread snowflake cookies for her cookie swap, and shares a clever idea for measuring sticky ingredients like molasses. Thanks for the tip!

Nicole from Cookies on Friday made gingerbread sandwich cookies. The filling includes marshmallow fluff, 'nuff said. I can't wait to try these for my next cookie occasion.

Nicole from Seven Ate Nine made classic cut-out gingerbread cookies. Nothing beats the original gingerbread cookie!

Alison from Sparks from the Kitchen made classic cut-out gingerbread cookies, then invited everyone to decorate their own cookie as a party activity! I borrowed this idea for our gingerbread birthday party :)

Jessie from The Dinner Pages made gingerbread blossom cookies. I've made these too, and I can tell you, they are delicious! Also, hers are much prettier than mine. She also mentions pistachio blossom cookies and I'm really intrigued by those! Once we get out of gingerbread season, of course.

Eva of Eva Bakes made gingerbread cookie dough fudge. Oh my! I've never successfully made fudge (not that I've tried more than once, though) and I was recently thinking about trying again. Now I'm definitely going to try some fudge using this recipe.

Nichole from The Cookaholic Wife made classic gingerbread snowflakes. She decorated them so prettily, with icing and sparkly sanding sugar. This is a great addition to a cookie plate!

Ashley of Cheese Curd in Paradise made a gingerbread cake with bourbon frosting. The other day I took a poll on facebook, about what frosting to use with gingerbread birthday cake, and several people suggested bourbon frosting! I never thought of that combination, so I definitely need to try this recipe!

And I made these gingerbread blondies that I love. They're so decadent, and a fun twist on the classic gingerbread flavors if you want something different for a cookie swap (which is why I made these).

Thanks to all the bakers who participated! You all really helped me decide what to make for our gingerbread birthday party!

Gingerbread, part 1: Gingerbread Kiss Cookies

This month I'm hosting What's Baking, and from among my 3 choices, my fellow bloggers choose gingerbread to be our theme! (which is what I hoped they'd choose). Our little gingerbread man had a birthday this month, and his gingerbread party will be in a few weeks, so I'm hoping I'll find some good gingerbready treats to make for the party.

I really wanted to bake gingerbread springerle, recipe from the most recent King Arthur Flour catalogue, but I need to borrow my mom's springerle pin and she's misplaced it. I haven't given up hope, but I've come up with other options for my own post.

The first one is gingerbread kiss cookies- inspired by the classic peanut butter kiss cookie, only gingerbread instead of peanut butter. These were quite good. We all know the method (I admit, I didn't know you were supposed to add the chocolate after baking until 2007, and could never understand why my chocolate kisses always got weird and crumbly), we all know the look. I will say, however, that because we're so used to the peanut butter version, it's sometimes a surprise to take a bite and not have peanut butter flavor. I also really liked how they weren't super sweet. One could roll these in sugar before baking and it still wouldn't be overly sweet. And it's always nice to have something that's not sugar overload at the cookie swap.

Little gingerbread man tried these as his very first cookie, and REALLY liked it. He finally got the "more" sign after trying it, so eager was he to have another bite.

I can't speak to how long they'll last in tupperware, I think after 3 days we'd eaten them all. I need to make more.

Also, the original recipe calls for hugs, not kisses. I had kisses, but I think hugs would be better- I prefer white chocolate with gingerbread over milk chocolate.

Gingerbread Kiss Cookies
recipe from McCormick Spices

3/4 cups butter (1.5 sticks), room temperature
3/4 cups brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 egg
1t vanilla extract
3 cups flour
2t ginger
1t cinnamon
1/4t nutmeg
1t baking soda
1/4t salt
60 (approx) Hershey's Kisses

Cream the butter and brown sugar, beat til light. Beat in molasses, egg and vanilla, and beat til fluffy (2-3 minutes). Whisk together the flour, spices, baking soda and salt, and fold into the butter mixture. Roll 1T balls and place on a cookie sheet (roll in some sugar first, if desired).

Bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies have just barely started to brown. Meanwhile, unwrap the kisses. Remove cookies from oven and immediately press a kiss into the center of each cookie. Cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

What's Baking?: Summer Produce

What's baking in my kitchen? Muffins that I baked in August and immediately froze (instead of making and freezing meals before baby arrived, I made baked goods. It was too confusing to decide on meals to make!

In the 6 months since I became a mother, I have actually baked a bit. I've made several batches of lactation cookies, many batches of the best brownies ever (which I'll share here, I promise), sugar cut-out cookies (a multi-night endeavor), chocolate chip cookies, and even gingerbread blondies (twice!), another recipe I need to share. But that's it. Forget baking on a schedule! I went to a pot-luck last week and I had to go to Big Y to buy two pounds of edamame salad. ME! I bought something for a pot-luck. It's so out of character.

But I've been sorry to miss out on the What's Baking? themes. Twice I did bake something within the theme, but I just didn't manage to blog about it before the deadline. So now that dear FC is 6 months old and eating his own food (steamed, not baked), it's a bit easier to share the baby duties with my husband.

The June theme is summer produce, chosen by Yudith at Blissfully Delicious. Normally I'd bake with freshly picked strawberries- not this year! I fortunately froze several pounds of freshly picked strawberries last year, so I had some all ready in the freezer.

And serendipitously, Joy the Baker has partnered with King Arthur Flour and together they've introduced a baking bootcamp on instagram. Everyone makes the same recipe and posts photos on instagram with #bakingbootcamp and will be entered to win a year's supply of King Arthur flour! (that's like 120lbs, right?) The baking bootcamp recipe is triple berry braided bread. Which includes strawberries.

Hooray, 2 birds, one stone! Perfect for this new mom.

I haven't baked anything with yeast since.... October, maybe? Whereas I used to bake bread nearly every week. This was pretty exciting. As yeast breads go, this recipe is rather straightforward, but the assembly is interesting. Mine was not perfect, but it was delicious and I plan to try again. Also, another participant instagrammed her 2nd attempt, which was a parmesan rosemary version- I definitely need to try that version!

Triple Berry Cinnamon Swirl Bread
by Joy the Baker

For the bread:
2.25t active dry yeast
1T sugar
3/4 warm milk (around 100-105oC)
1 egg yolk
2T unsalted butter, melted
2.25 cups King Arthur Flour AP flour
1/2t salt

Whisk together the milk, sugar and yeast, and set aside for 5-10 minutes, til it gets frothy. Stir in the egg yolk and melted butter, then place the flour and salt in the bowl of your mixer and add the yeast mixture. Stir/knead. [Joy suggests kneading by hand for 10 minutes, but I had a crying baby so I just let the mixer take care of it] Place in a greased bowl, covered, and let rise for 1-1.5hrs, til it's doubled in size.

Meanwhile, make the filling.

For the filling:
1/4 cup (half stick) of butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
3T cinnamon
2cups of berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries would be nice)

NOTE: don't use frozen strawberries, use fresh. They are very wet and your bread will be in a puddle and very difficult to shape. Or, if you must use frozen strawberries, have a full roll of paper towel on hand. I blame the frozen strawberries for my less-than-perfect bread!

To make the filling, mix together the butter, sugar and cinnamon. Set aside. Prep the berries (wash, hull, whatever they need), set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375F.

To assemble the bread: this is the tricky part!

Knead the dough on a floured board a couple times. Roll out to a 12x18in rectangle,

then spread the butter/cinnamon/sugar filling in an even layer over the top, leaving an inch-thick bare spot along one long edge. Sprinkle/evenly place the berries over the filling.

 Then start to roll up the dough, ending at the filling-less edge.

 Now you have a snake of dough. Cut this snake in half, leaving one end with a couple inches uncut so the two halves are still connected at that end.

 Flip the halves so the cut sides are up. This is where wet, defrosted strawberries cause a problem: my dough would not stick together and kept flopping open.

 Now, cross the halves over each other in a helix- again, this can be tricky and the dough may threaten to fall apart and all the berries will spill out. Just shove them back in at random.

 Then roll the helix into a circle and place into either a greased iron skillet or a greased springform pan. Brush with an egg wash made of one beaten egg, and sprinkle with powdered sugar (which I neglected to do).

Pop in the oven for 40-45 minutes and go clean up the defrosted strawberry puddle.

Ta-da!

 I love springform pans.

 Voila!

The bread isn't very sweet, so it takes well to the cinnamon sugar filling. I ended up sprinkling powdered sugar over slices as I ate them. The dough is a good bread dough, the filling is classic cinnamon sugar, and it's a nice way to use up berries if you need something to do with them. This recipe would work well for a variety of fillings (like the IGer with her parm-rosemary version). It was fun to attempt a fancier bread shape than I've ever done before, and while it didn't work great and was a little stressful (don't use frozen strawberries!!), I want to make another and try again. Also, it didn't take all that long to make!

If you have kids, I don't recommend making this when your husband's at work. Wait til Saturday when you have someone else in the house!

What's Baking? November: Cranberries

Long time, no blog!

Here's why:

These pictures are from the day before yesterday. My official due date is a week from today, but my OB thinks I probably won't last that long. So we'll see! I'd love to have Thanksgiving and *then* go into labor, but it's not like I have a lot of say in the matter!

So I'm very pleased to have been able to bake something for this month's bake-along, especially since the theme was cranberries, and I love cranberries! 

 

This month is hosted by Joanna of the Kosher Kitchen so go check out the other cranberry recipes!

I wanted to make something to enjoy for Thanksgiving. I usually make an apple cranberry and ginger pie, but I wanted to try something new. I thought a quick bread would be appropriate, and I narrowed it down to a few choices and let my husband make the final decision. I think he made an excellent choice!

 

Cranberry Cornbread

recipe adapted from With a Grateful Prayer and a Thankful Heart

Makes 1 loaf

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup orange juice

zest from 1/2 an orange

2 eggs

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2t salt

1 and 1/4 cup AP flour

3/4 cup cornmeal

4t baking powder

1 cup cranberries

 

Whisk together the wet ingredients (buttermilk, juice, zest, eggs, oil), sugars and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal and baking powder. Gently fold in the wet ingredients until just combined, and then fold in the cranberries.

Bake at 375F for 40-50 minutes in a loaf pan, let cool at least 10 minutes before removing from pan, and completely before slicing.

It's incredibly easy, it took me longer to wash the 2 bowls and 1 spatula I'd used than it did to mix the batter. I love recipes like that, especially around the holidays! We're big fans of cornbread, and this has a really nice, quick bread-like texture that isn't overly dry or crumbly, and it's just sweet enough to balance out the tart cranberries. I omitted the orange zest because I needed to save my single orange for the turkey brine, and I think it would have been better with the zest, so I've included it in the recipe above.

After I made the bread and tried the first slice, I had to continue on this cranberry kick... so I started some cranberry sauce. It smells so amazing that it's really hard not to eat the entire batch right now!

12oz cranberries
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup water
2T orange juice
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4t cloves
1 apple, peeled and diced

Mix everything in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil over medium heat and boil 15 minutes. Let cool and enjoy!

What's Baking? July: Bake Your Favorite Cocktail

This month's theme was chosen by Angela of The Tiny Tyrant's Kitchen, and she suggested baking something inspired by a favorite cocktail. This is perfect for me! It's obvious I haven't been cooking much, and the reason will be clear soon, but to go along with that, I haven't been drinking much, either. Having an excuse to revive a favorite cocktail by baking it is absolutely perfect timing!

Of course, I have many favorite cocktails. I work at a winery, so obviously I love wine, and I would love a glass of wine right now (but alas). I have a small number of favorite cocktails, simply because I prefer wine. But my favorites list include Dark n' Stormies, St Germaine cocktails (champagne and St Germaine, the simple version) and Vermontucky Lemonade. But what to bake? Fortunately, M posted a recipe on facebook for absinthe cookies- essentially those delicious Italian anise biscuit-cookies with anise glaze, only using an absinthe glaze. Ooh! I could work with that!

Surprisingly, I'm not a huge absinthe fan. I love licorice, but I like it sweetened, and the only time I've ever had absinthe, the cocktail was definitely NOT sweetened whatsoever. I also don't think absinthe is the right alcohol for me to have right now, even in a miniscule amount.

So I took this recipe and modified it to use St Germaine. And I love. My husband says he's pretty "meh" about St Germaine, but I did notice all but one of the 8 cookies we had left after taking some to my parents were gone by the time I got home from work yesterday. "Meh" indeed. I need to bake another batch asap!

St Germaine Cookies
inspired by Absinthe Cookies from A Fine Kettle of Fish

Cookie dough
1/2 cup (one stick) unsalted, softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1T St Germaine (or vanilla, or anise, or another tasty alcohol)
3T milk
1/4t vinegar
2 and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1T baking powder
pinch of salt

Glaze (note: I didn't have quite enough glaze for each cookie- this is fine if you can't wait long enough to sample before the cookies cool enough to glaze)
1-1.5cup powdered sugar
1T butter
1.5T St Germaine (or other tasty alcohol, or 1t vanilla, anise, almond, etc)
1T milk (possibly up to 2T)

To make the dough:
Preheat oven to 350F.
Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each. Whisk the flour and baking powder together in a separate bowl, and the St Germaine, vinegar and milk together in yet another separate bowl (and let that sit for a few minutes). Alternate adding the flour and milk mixtures, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Beat til just barely combined. Drop tablespoonfuls of dough on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, and bake in the 350F oven for 12-14 minutes (original recipe said 10-12), til the edges are just barely starting to brown. Let cool.

To make the glaze:
Melt the butter and whisk in the St Germaine and 1T. Whisk in the powdered sugar (start with 1 cup) and add either more sugar or more milk to get the desired consistency- somewhat thick, like honey consistency. Thinner is fine, but it'll run off the cookies more. Drizzle the glaze over the cookies, however much or little you like (I did not have quite enough glaze for the entire batch) Let the glaze harden overnight or for a few hours, either uncovered or very loosely covered.

(I found these got a little sticky in tupperware on a humid July day, and the glaze never really hardened. This leads to sticky fingers, but that's the only bad thing)

YUM. The cookies have a very slight St Germaine taste to them (I wish I could have tried the dough)
but after frosting it's a serious St Germaine flavor. If you want to avoid alcohol, include the St Germaine in the cookies (it's a small amount anyway, and much would bake off) and use lemon juice or vanilla to flavor the glaze.

They're also quick and easy. I can't comment on how long they'll keep, since we ate them all in less than 3 days. ;)

What's Baking? April: Mini/Bite Sized Treats

This month's What's Baking theme was chosen by Amanda of Our Italian Kitchen, and she chose mini/bite sized treats. Great idea! At first I was going to copy the yummy brownies stuffed with rolos and baked in a mini muffin tin that my boss made for our work party a couple weekends ago, but then one of my friends posted this delicious recipe on facebook.

I made mini blueberry cobblers. These have the basic baking ingredients you already have on hand (just change up the fruit to suit your taste/contents of your fridge or farmer's market) and were super quick. In the time it took for my oven to heat up to 350F, I had already mixed everything and assembled all the ingredients in the muffin tins.

Since I found this recipe on facebook, I have no idea where it came from- it included no citation. So if you can tell me its origin, I'll edit to include that! It's a great idea, someone needs credit for this.

Mini Blueberry Cobblers
recipe from...??

Makes 12 mini cobblers

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1t baking powder
pinch of salt
3oz (3/8 cup) milk
12t butter
12 dashes of cinnamon or cinnamon sugar
2/3 cup blueberries, or other fruit (peaches, raspberries, strawberries, etc. If using apples I'd consider sauteing them a bit first)

Turn the oven on to preheat to 350F.

Place 1t butter in each well of a 12-muffin tin (the recipe said 1t, I used as small a slice of butter as I could consistently cut). Pop this in the oven for a few minutes, until the butter has melted (you don't need to wait for the oven to come to temperature).

In a medium bowl, beat together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and milk. Place 2T (one cookie scoop-full) in each muffin tin well, on top of the butter. Drop a few berries (I like 8-10 of the big fat blueberries) on top of the batter.

Add a dash of cinnamon/cinnamon sugar.

Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes (the original said 12 minutes, this was way too little). Let cool for a few minutes in the pan, then remove.

Note: I did not spray the pan, and they were easy enough to get out. They didn't slide out, but only one fell apart. I might add more berries next time.

I can't comment on how long these will keep, because we ate them all in one day :-/ YUM. The batter is nice and sweet, so the berries don't need any extra sweetening- I used cinnamon sugar this time but next time I may just add cinnamon straight to the batter. I predict that I will make these many, many times over the next few months, especially as berry picking season starts.