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This week I'm going to share a recipe that I just finished perfecting, namely Gingerbread Scones. I found a recipe from an old B&B cook book for what they called Gingerbread scones, but when I made it, the result was horrible. I should have known better when the so-called gingerbread did not even have any ginger.
The scones turned out hard and dense and dry, everything you don't want your scones to be. As I was complaining bitterly, Mrs. Dog said "Well, hell, honey, you're a baker, why don't you just make your own recipe if you want them that badly?"
Sometimes we need the Shakaboku (that swift spiritual kick to the head) to get our asses in gear. But once you've received it, well you just have to roll up your sleeves and get baking!
So I started thinking about what I wanted in a gingerbread scone. It needed to be scone like, of course, so it was going to need to be the right kind of dense without being dry or too hard-tack like. And, of course, there had to be the elements of gingerbread, so that meant lots of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, plus molasses.
The problem was going to be that the molasses were really viscous, and an additional liquid. I tried just subbing the molasses for some of the sour cream, but that was unsatisfactory, with the same problem of getting little rocks that would not rise. So I decided that what I needed was just more flour to balance out the liquid of the molasses and leave all the other proportions the same for a cream scone.
So simple, once you really think it through, but the result is a lovely brown scone bursting with gingerbread flavor, just firm enough to put butter or proper double cream on!
So now that I have your mouths watering, let's make some Gingerbread Scones!
Well after a longer than expected hiatus, Sunday Bread is once more out there in the world! I had been feeling burnt-out about the whole blogging thing in general and decided that I'd take some time off until I felt like I really wanted to do it again, that time has come.
But enough of that! This week we are going to bake a new recipe, one that took longer than I thought to put together, Blueberry Scones.
Now, we've made scones before but they were always with dried fruit, never with fresh blueberries. At the start I knew that I did not want to use the very small wild blueberries, they are really expensive (as if blueberries are not) and not that easy to put your hands to any time you want a batch of scones, so there were out from the start.
Then there was the issue of making sure that the bread of the scone was the right texture to hold the berries, as well as provide a slightly sweet counterpoint to the tartness of fresh blueberries. The following recipe is the result of those requirements, and if I do say so myself, I think you're going to love them and love serving them to your friends and family.
This week we're going to make one of my all around favorite breads, Rosemary Garlic Bread. It is made with both white and whole wheat flour and has a wonderful texture to go with the evocative aroma of rosemary that you get any time you are near this bread.
This is great sandwich bead, but I particularly like it for cheese toast on a cool fall morning. Topped with a nice slice of sharp white cheddar and broiled for 2 minutes it turns into a hearty and satisfying breakfast that even the little ones will ask for!
So this week I was reading a book by an English author, Peter Hamilton, and several times in the book his characters had a heaping bowl of Sticky Toffee Pudding. After the third one I decided that I just could not resist anymore and dug out my recipe for this desert from Great Brittan.
Usually this pudding is cooked as one large cake and then served. I like to make the batter and then cook it in muffin tins, that way you have lovely little individual servings for a dinner party.
The star of this recipe is really the toffee sauce. It is super simple, just butter, dark brown sugar, heavy cream and a couple of tablespoons of bourbon to volatilize the mix and bring the fabulous sugar aromas to the nose.
It can be served with ice cream though I usually just go with some whipped cream instead.
Okay, so I got a new retail job and that means I've been exposed to everyone's viruses. As you might expect, I've come down with the Andromeda Strain or a close cousin. This means that I was craving carbs and did not have a lot of creative energy. So, I made Orange Cinnamon Rolls for myself. This all means that you folk get a repost of from a couple of years ago. Hopefully you will have forgotten about it and enjoy it just as much (or more) as the first time around.
This week we'll be baking Cinnamon Rolls! Now there are as many cinnamon roll recipes as there are stars in the sky. This one was developed for my Dad. One time when he was visiting my house he asked if I knew how to make good cinnamon rolls. That "good" is always a danger sign for a baker, as it is a totally subjective measure. Still after some thought and a batch or two I managed to settle on a recipe that Dad loved and I think you'll really enjoy as well.
This week was one of those weeks where I realize late on Saturday evening that I have not baked anything and I have a post due the next morning. It was cold as hell and snowy, so I didn't really want to run to the store.
So, I looked around in the kitchen to see what was on hand. There were eggs, some cake flour and butter. Hey! Pound cake! The problem is pound cake, even perfect pound cake is really pretty boring. So, I looked again and found that I had an orange, some walnuts and some dried cranberries. Now we were talking!
Which leads us to this week's recipe, Orange Pound Cake with Cranberries and Walnuts!
This is a super easy and fast recipe. Pound cake can be made by hand, with an electric hand mixer or with your stand mixer. Since it is so rich, it goes a long way by serving thin slices, and this ad hoc recipe is a real keeper as well.
This week I have a little celebrate (new wage slave job, but it is a hell of a lot better than zero income!) so I thought I'd share with you a really excellent brunch cake.
This particular recipe is not really a cake, it is made from brioche dough, so it is not as blindingly sweet, but it is topped with a honey almond toffee and filled with pastry cream, so it is not like it is really diet friendly either.
It is called different things in different countries, but I like the translated German, which names this fabulous desert "Bee Sting Cake".
Many of my brioche recipes use a large batch of brioche dough, in part this is because I feel like most the time you are making a brioche you are doing a feast food for a lot of folks, but there are times when you want a lot less dough hanging around. So this recipe makes just enough dough and just enough pastry cream for a single cake.
There are a lot of steps in this recipe, but there is also a lot of waiting time, for dough to rise, to chill, for pastry cream to chill, etcetera. If you want to serve this for a Sunday brunch you really should make everything the day before and assemble it right before you serve it. That way you'll have plenty of time.
Please don't let the time this recipe takes dissuade you from making it! It is so good that anyone you serve it to will be singing your praises as a master baker for years to come!
Rye is an acquired taste. Mrs. Dog hates it with a burning flame that is really something to see. I blame this on the fact that she had never had a slice of it until she had been living with me for more than 4 years. That late in life, it is really hard to come to the joy that is rye.
But even if you start your kids off early, it is still not a good idea to throw them in the deep end of a pool with a rye like the New York Style Rye I make, which is packed with onion flavors, caraways seeds and other complex and strong tastes. You'll just wind up with a pouting child and maybe a life long aversion to rye bread.
Which brings us to this weeks bread Raising Rye. This bread not only has a nice little treat in the form of white and dark raisins, but it allows the baker to control the strength of the rye taste by varying how long the sponge ferments. It can be as short as 2 hours or as long as 36.
The short fermentation gives only a light touch of rye flavor, while the long one will bring the yeasty, fermented flavor of rye right to front. For anyone who wants to introduce rye this control means that you can gentle the intended change management target along with a series of increasingly flavorful pieces of toast on Sunday mornings.
The fact that it is a mixed grain bread with some lovely raisins not only makes this bread a great accompaniment to any meal, it makes it a fairly healthy one, when enjoyed in moderation.
So, let's get baking! Time and yeast wait for no man!
I love pepperoni; it is a great snack on its own but really needs some bread with it. The usual place to find it is on a pizza, but that is not the only way that it can be eaten with bread.
Which brings us to this week's recipe, Pepperoni Basil Bread! This bread combines a nicely rich bread with a whole pound of pepperoni and sets the whole thing off with just a hint enough basil to stand up to the bite of the sausage.
It is also baked in a cake pan which gives it a distinct shape to go with its distinct set of flavors.
This week we are going to make a Black Pepper Olive Bread. I've been playing with this recipe for several years. It starts with a very rich bread that includes eggs and butter. Added to that is a good portion of freshly cracked black pepper, then an assortment of olives are rolled into the bread.
The final loaf is the prefect combination of saltiness from the olives, offset by the pepper and the lovely bread. It is makes a accompaniment to soft cheeses or the bed for a honey-cured ham sandwich.
Best of all it is supper easy to make!
Before we get started lets talk about olives a little bit. Depending on where you live your local mega-mart might have an olive bar in their deli section. This is a good place to get a wide variety of olives, but for this recipe we have to be a little picky.
For reasons of appearance you will want to have both black and green olives. What kind does not really matter, but it is the size that is important. Do not buy the huge olives, even with the medium sized olives we are going to have to cut most of them in half lengthwise so there is no point in buying the giant ones, it will make more work and make the bread come out less appealing.
Also you need to be sure that you buy pitted olives. Trying to cut through a pit with a bread knife is a losing proposition, but unexpectedly biting down on one is even worse. Be sure that you have olives with the pits removed.
If you don't have an olive bar at your local store, no worries. Most stores will have, at the very least, canned pitted black and green olives. These can be used quite nicely. But before you buy those, check out what passes for their gourmet food aisle. You are likely to find jars of mixed olives like Kalamata, Prune and Green olives. In fact that is exactly what I used for this recipe. An 5 oz jar will be plenty for this recipe and it should not cost more than $5.
Now that we have the details about olives out of the way, let's bake!
This week we're going to be making a herb and pepper bread.
It is sometimes difficult to get all the flavors one would like into a bread, but the technique of putting it in butter and then spreading the butter over the dough, and rolling the dough up is a great way to assure that you have your flavors all through the bread.
This bread features garlic, sage, onion, thyme, black pepper and Tabasco sauce. These powerhouse flavors need a solid base so the bread itself is made with butter, eggs and milk. When the whole thing comes together you wind up with loaf that goes great with stews and soups and makes a killer slice of toast as well!
Note: This is a repost from last year but I got caught short with the whole holiday thing and didn't have time for a new recipe for ya'll. However if you missed this last year or did not try, it, now is your chance. Roll this thing out at your New Years Eve party and you'll be the Big Kahuna of your neighborhood!
Happy Sunday Bread Heads!
We are in the trough of the Holiday season, the time between Solstice and New Years. Even though the "eating" holidays are pretty much over there is a still one last chance to rock the world of your friends and neighbors with a New Years Eve dish. One of the best show stoppers you can make is the Croquembouche.
(This sounds SO wonderful. It's probably too late to have in time for December 25, but if you start right now, you will have it in time for the Feast of the Epiphany (Jan. 6). Or New Year's Day, whichever you prefer. - promoted by Youffraita)
Happy Sunday Bread Heads!
I have a bit of a problem, since I have promised two things for this week, Gingerbread Men and Christmas pudding. Since the pudding recipe is a little more rare than the Gingerbread Men, I am going to go with that one, sorry for those looking of the cookies, I promise that next year I'll do them early and thoroughly.
Now, let's talk Christmas pudding. This is a really traditional English dish. It is a cake made of bread crumbs, and studded with dried or candied fruit that is cooked in a mold surrounded by boiling water over several hours.
The real deal Plumb Pudding is made with suet, which is the beef version of lard. You can make this recipe with suet, which is really good and tasty no matter how much you squirmed reading about it, but it is not always easy to find, so I am going with butter instead.
The recipe I am giving you today is my own take on Christmas pudding. I come from a family that inexplicably does not like rum nor brandy which are the traditional flavors for the cake and the hard sauce that go with it. So I have changed things around to us Amaretto and Grand Marnier.
This gives a wonderful almond and orange flavors to the dish that contrast nicely with the fruit which is raisins (white and regular), candied cherries and the special twist ingredient of candied pineapple.
This recipe, like all traditional feast foods takes some advanced preparation, it is going to take a couple of days to candy the fruit (unless you want to commit the heresy of using the candied fruit from the store, in which case you may be cursed onto the seventh generation. Just sayin') and you will need to make a loaf of bread for the bread crumbs, and there is a need for part of the recipe to sit overnight in the Amaretto.
So, all told if you want to have a pudding for Solstice or for Christmas Eve or Day you have to get started today!
Before we start, I have to warn you, this is an unlovely if tasty dish. It is not going to have the pristine look of a cake that is iced or even the smooth texture of bread, it is going to look more like what it is, a bread pudding. But if you can get around that it is delightfully tasty!
But enough cautions and warnings, let's make a Almond Christmas Pudding with Grand Marnier Butter!
"It's the Hap-Hap-Happiest Time of the Year" - Okay, enough of that. For the bakers and candy makers it is the busiest time of the year, what with all the special things that folks make only at this time of year.
But even if you are not a designated baker it is often the time of year when people feel like they want to make some cookies, and I have just the recipe for you!
This week we'll be making Lemon Cutout Cookies. While mint is really the de rigor flavor of the season, I think that there is nothing better than a bright citrus flavored cookie as the perfect complement.
This particular recipe is based on a standard refrigerator cookie recipe but adds brown sugar for an extra richness of flavor. This means that the cookies are a lot browner than the normal white of a 'fridge cookies, but I think they have a rustic look that offsets that concern.
Let's talk about that icing for a minute. The classic icing for this time of year is Royal Icing. Personally I'd rather eat cardboard than anything topped with this icing. Sure it looks great but sacrifices flavor for appearance.
Frankly it does not have to be that way. The icing we'll be using it one of Mrs. Dog's invention. It gives you a lovely shiny and hard crust without giving up anything in the flavor department.
Okay so this is a re-post, it has been a really busy week for me and I thought that this is a recipe that people might have missed given that it was orignally posted a year and a half ago. The pretzels are super easy and extra delioush and just the thing to serve to your family when settling down to watch a movie this holiday season. Enjoy!
Happy Sunday Bread Heads!
If you have been making even a few of the breads in this series, then you have the chops to make great soft pretzels at home. One of the things that you hear from other on-line recipes is that you need special pretzel salt to really make a true soft pretzel. This is hogwash! A nice Kosher salt will still give you the salty counterpoint to the slightly sweet dough of the pretzel and you don't have to search for it.
This recipe was originally from Alton Brown of the Food Network. I like the recipe he offered, especially the technique for giving the crust a nice shine and browning just right. However it was not quite what I was looking for. After a couple of years of trying this and that change, I decided that the pretzels needed a little darker flavor note.
Being of Irish descent, I of course turned to one of the most famous of the Emerald Isle's export Guinness Stout. The beer gives a very slightly bitter overtone and makes the pretzels a wonderful dark brown when they are done.
