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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!
(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.
Happy Friday and welcome to the sixth and final candy recipe for this year, Bread Heads. In the last six days we've made caramels, butter creams, peanut brittle, chocolate dipped peanut butter fudge and now the final recipe, Chocolate Covered Marshmallows.
Now I suppose if you wanted to you could just dip commercial marshmallows. There is really nothing wrong with that but you would miss out on the creamy tenderness of homemade marshmallows and that would really be a shame, considering how easy they are to make.
The important thing in making marshmallows is having a good mixer or beaters. The hot sugar mixture is whipped with partially set unflavored gelatin, to give the candy its airy, for ten minutes. Most of the time I try to give you non-powered alternate instructions, for those who like to do things with their hands alone, this is not a recipe that you can do that with, sorry.
If you are looking for the previous recipes in this Mini-Series, you can find them at the links below.
Happy Thursday and welcome to day five of the Sunday Bread Candy Mini-Series!
The idea is to get folks the chops they need to be able to make some fabulous candy for the holiday season. Sure everyone thinks cookies and such, but it is the hand-made candy that always disappears first, assuming that is it quality candy.
Tonight we are going to make Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Centers. And as an added benefit (and at a request) we're going to walk through the process for tempering chocolate for dipping!
So bear with me Bread Heads, as this is likely to be a bit of long post. But when it is all said and done you'll be able to make a great candy and you'll have leaned some fudge skills as well as dipping skills.
If you are looking for the recipes from earlier in our candy-palooza this week you can find them all at the links below.
Happy Wednesday Bread Heads and others! Welcome to the Candy mini-series inside the Sunday Bread Mega-Series!
Tonight we'll be making a really easy candy that always blows people away, especially those from the South, Orange Pralines. This is a variant on the traditional pecan candy. Like the original, this is basically pecans and sugar, but the addition of heavy cream and the zest of an entire large orange makes them especially delicious.
The only problem with this candy is try as I might I just can't get it to look that fabulous. The patties are a little irregular and the candy is always a white that looks vaguely like cookie dough. But they taste so good that once people try them they completely ignore the looks and just scarf!
If you are looking for the pervious candies in this series you can find them at the links below, or if you want to see all the recipes from the nearly 2 year old Sunday Bread series, you can just click on the Sunday Bread tag.
Happy Tuesday Bread (or in this case Candy) Heads!
All knowledge is dangerous, some pieces more so than others. Tonight I'm going to share a very dangerous piece of knowledge, how to make caramels!
Like bread there is a lot of really crappy caramel out there in the world. Good caramels should be creamy, with a strong dark note of cooked sugar. It should not be too soft nor too sticky. The good news is that I have a perfect recipe for caramels that anyone with a candy thermometer can make.
I have been messing around with making caramels for the last 15 years. Over that time I have tried a lot of different recipes. Finally about five years ago I decided to synthesize one. What I was looking for was more flavor while maintaining the lack of stickiness and the al dente consistency. It turns out that it all comes down to the amount and the types of fat that you use to cook the sugar. This recipe has condensed milk, whole milk, whipping cream and butter in it. Lots of different styles and moisture levels in the dairy give this caramel the complexity I was looking for.
If you are looking for the first two recipes in this week long miniseries, you can find them at the links below:
Happy Monday and welcome to a highly irregular Sunday Bread!
This is the time of year to be thinking of making great sweet treats for all your friends and family. Since there is a time limit, I decided that instead of dribbling the recipes out every Sunday that I'd do one a night every night this week, that way by the weekend you'll have six recipes for just the very best candy!
Tonight we are going to make one of the all time easiest candies, peanut brittle. Even though it is not hard to do, there are a lot of pitfalls that trip people up when they first go to make this particular confection.
Everyone has had bad peanut brittle; there is too much brittle not enough peanuts and it is so thick it needs a set of "Jaws of Life" to bite off and then an impact drill to get it out of your back teeth. Not exactly fun for the whole family, eh?
The trick with peanut brittle (or any brittle) is to be right on top of the candy the whole time. This recipe needs to be made in a three quart or larger pan, but because of the amount of ingredients it is nearly impossible to use a thermometer and you can over cook it if you don't pay attention.
It is also important for success that you measure out everything in advance, when the sugar is cooking you don't have time and the same when it comes off the heat and is cooling. So get all the ingredients in bowls in advance and you'll be far along the path to great candy.
Finally, if it is important to spread the candy out to a nice single layer of thinness while it is still relatively hot. If you don't you'll have a big rock hard block of sugar entombed peanuts, and no one likes that.
But enough warnings and cautions! Let's make some candy!
So, let's get the housekeeping out of the way, then we'll dive in to candy making. The long over due and long awaited Sunday Bread Cookbook "A Liberal Sprinkle of Flour" is now available for sale!
It has sixty recipes in it from the Oxford Fruit Cake to Scones to French bread to Rye bread and more! It makes a great gift for anyone who wants to bake but could use some very specific directions.
You can order it from Amazon Create Space at this link (I get a couple of shekels more that way) or just go to Amazon.com and search either A Liberal Sprinkle of Flour or Bill Egnor, either way you'll find it there.
There is some formatting issues for Kindle versions of the book but they should be available late Monday afternoon. I hope you'll all enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed putting it together!
This is a repost of this recipe. Last year I posted it too late for most folks to make (since it needs time to age) but here is it in it's glory, the most perfect and perfectly edible fruit cake, the Oxford Fruit Cake.
Happy Sunday Bread Heads!
When people tell me that they don't like fruit cake, I completely understand. They have never had a real fruit cake, instead they have had some gloppy over processed thing with one of the greatest sins against nature, the commercially candied green maraschino cherry. Who could like such a thing?
