ABC: Pumpkin time!

A very season recipe for this months Avid Bakers Challenge: Cranberry-Pumpkin Rolls. Lovely combination for the fall.

I made several changes:
- I used half whole wheat instead of all white.
- I used ready mixed pumpkin spice, but I guess that's probably quite similar to the spices in the recipe.
- I omitted the crystallized ginger, because even while I have it in store (why?) I dislike the taste of it very much, so I used candied orange zest instead.
- As usual I used less salt: 1 tsp (instead of 1,5 tsp)

And they turned out as lovely fragrant buns for lunchboxes or breakfast. If I'd make them again I would make them into round rolls, I like that better.

Recipe: Cranberry-Pumpkin Rolls

Just one month to go... the year has flown by!
UPDATE: this was my last entry for the Avid Baker Challenge for the time being. Thanks for baking together and sharing!

Apple and cinnamon bread for the ABC challenge

This month a wonderful recipe for the Avid Baker's Challenge; Apple, cinnamon and bread, I don't think you can go wrong with that combination. The only things I changed were a little less salt (1 tsp instead of 1,25 tsp) and I used flour and not the ClearJel powder. And that was it.

 I made half of the dough into a long loaf and half into rolls. Both were equally delicious and flew out of their container in record time. A recipe to come back to for sure.

Recipe Apple-Cinnamon Twist bread

Back for an ABC-challenge...

After a few months MIA as far as the ABC-challenges are concerned, I'm back this month with Almond tartlets.

I love all things with almonds and these wonderful frangipane filled pies are utterly delicious. I was tempted to make one large one, as that's less fiddly and less moulds to clean afterwards. But they just look so cute and as I own enough tartlets forms, I decided to use them in spite of the extra work. For me to serve one tarlet each is a little to big. So when served I halve them.

RECIPE HERE

I was suprised that the crusts didn't need any blind baking, just some fork pricking to keep them down: that didn't really work that well as they puffed up quite a lot anyway. Next time I'd rather blind bake them for better results. I had enough dough for 6 tartlets, but filling for 7 or 8. So that's a bit of a shame to have that left over. I skipped the glaze, as there is enough sugar in the filling already and I didn't miss the glaze at all.
Delicious tartlets that were really worth the bake!

Swirls for ABC

This month there was a bread recipe to be baked for the Avid Baker's Challenge, a sweet bread with cinnamon. Well that sounded just great. We love that sort of bread.
I made some changes, first the White whole wheat flour isn't available here, so I substituted with half whole wheat and half white flour. I reduced the yeast to 2 tsp, left out the dry milk, and used potato flakes and not the potato flour. The rest of the recipe was the same and it all worked very easy. A nice bread to make and to eat.

RECIPE: 100% WHOLE WHEAT CINNAMON SWIRL BREAD

Tarts for the Avid Baker's Challenge

This month we're baking Mushroom Cheddar tarts for the Avid Baker's Challenge. They were very good. I made some changes, I used Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. I also made another filling with cherry tomatoes, olives and onion, because some of us don't like mushrooms or red pepper.

In the end I made 18 tarts.... and had quite a lot dough left. This because the filling was not enough to fill them all. Even though I had more mushrooms that I used in these tarts as well (that were meant to go on a pizza) ánd filled some of them with another filling as said. So that was not very handy. I also though the bottom wasn't as cooked as I liked it to be. I think I would rather bake the recipe as a large tart than all these little ones, just a bit too fussy for me, I just wasn't patient enough to make them all look cute and equal. But nice and delicious tarts.

Mushroom Cheddar Tarts: Recipe HERE

ABC in February

 This month -still baking from the King Arthur Flour site- the Avid Baker's Challenge is a Tuscan coffeecake. I will never understand why these kind of bread are called "Cakes". It's definitely not a cake in any way. It's a bread, a sweet one, cause it's really a bread in my opinion.

Dates and walnuts are really lovely as a filling, I could imagine lots of other divine combinations as well, but I liked this one. For me this recipe was bang on, didn't change anything as far as I can recall. Simple, delicious, fluffy and not too sweet: a winner!

Tuscan Coffeecake: RECIPE HERE

ABC continues to bake from King Arthur this year...

This year we continue baking from the recipe blog by King Arthur Flour and continue our Avid Baker's Challenge for another 12 months. Brownies are on the menu. 

I only made half the recipe. I think I made the dark brown bottom layer a bit too thin, that's why it all seems a bit dark. But the taste was very good, chewy, gooey and chocolatey. I'm not a very big fan of cream cheese though, I find it a bit too heavy and these where quite rich and a bit heavy. Very very sweet too, a lot of sugar went in these brownies.

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies (recipe)

Last time this year the Avid Baker's Challenge

I'm back with another edition of the Avid Baker's Challenge, the last one this year. It's still one of the recipes from the King Arthur Flour Site. Small breads this time: Hot buttered soft pretzels. Relatively easy to make. The dough is easy to work with, rolling the strands was a breeze. I didn't have any pretzel salt, and I don't like too much salt on the breads, so I also made some with sesame seeds. I pretty much followed the recipe to the letter, I just let them bake a few minutes longer and used less salt in the dough.

Hot Buttered Soft Pretzels (recipe)

And even though the pretzels were nice, they weren't special enough for me to make them again.  The bathing in the baking soda bath didn't give something extra, they were just like normal 'rolls', just a bit more chewy.

ABC and pumpkin rolls

This month the Avid Bakers Challenge involves a recipe that fits the season perfectly: Rolls with cinnamon and pumpkin. They filled up our house with a lovely fragrance.
I made my own butternut squash puree, as cans with pumpkin puree are not for sale here. White whole wheat flour is not on the market here either, so I used 400 g white wheat flour and 100 g whole wheat flour. As usual I decreased the amount of salt, I used 1 tsp. For the spices in the dough I used homemade pumpkin pie spice (1 3/4 tsp). For the filling I used sugar and cinnamon and 100 g chopped cranberries and about 6 candied and chopped kumquats for a little tangy bite.

I made the glaze and sprinkled some chopped pistachios on top, but for me the glaze was overly sweet. As these is already a lot of sugar in the filling. So next time I would skip the glaze ánd use less sugar in the dough. I think I would also make the rolls less high by dividing them into 12 rolls. After rising and baking these 9 rolls were reall HUGE. Flavourwise (apart from the over-sweetness) they were delicious. Love the orange colour of the rolls, they were fluffy and soft inside, just how we like them.

You can find the recipe for the "Cinnamon-swirl Pumpkin rolls" here..
Just one more recipe from King Arthur Flour to go next month.....

ABC and Apple Pie

This month we're baking my favorite pie for the Avid Baker's Challenge: Apple Pie.

I made some changes in the recipe to make it a non-dairy pie. I exchanged the cream cheese for some soy yogurt (75 g), which meant a little less water (25 g) as the yogurt is a little course wetter than the cheese. I reduced the amount of salt to 1/4 tsp, I don't like too much salt in my pie crust. For the rest I used the same amounts, but my thoughs were there could have been some more apple slices in it.
I let the dough rest overnight and it was very easy to handle and roll out. Love the flakyness and taste. It's not a pie to eat the next day though, it just loses its crunch.

Recipe "CRUSTY APPLE PIE"

A delicious pie. Next time I would probably make it less large with more apples in it.
Just two more challenges to go this year, can you believe how quick this year has passed! Looking forward to next month.

ABC bakes with zucchini

This time we're baking a cake with zucchini and chocolate too for the Avid Baker's Challenge. I love cakes with zucchini or carrots, that keep the cake moist and lovely. This cake was very wet and dense in the end. I did bake it about 15 minutes longer than the longest time in the recipe.

It looked good, with just a little rise. But when it cooled it went down again, so apparently it wasn't all baked dry enough. It was cooked though, not raw and you could slice it. Still a bit too moist for my liking. They would have done great as brownies I guess. But in our household, cakes with chocolate don't stay on the counter for long.

Recipe  Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread 

Already looking forward to the september recipe.... see you then.

ABC a lemon flavoured loaf

 A wonderful fragrant loaf of bread from the King Arthur site was on the to-do-list this month for the Avid Baker's Challenge. I made half the recipe, so ended up with 1 loaf. I divided all ingredients in two, but had to add about 70 g more flour for this one loaf, to make it workable.
I didn't have any lemon curd, but a some lemon marmelade left in the fridge, so that was the perfect substitute. I stirred the marmelade in with the rest of the filling ingredients, instead of placing it on top of the cream cheese mixture. It was a bit wet and I feared it would leak out of the bread during rising or baking. But it didn't and it baked very well. Though you can't see much filling inside, just a line of it, it tastes delicious of lemon.

Braided Lemon Bread

King Arthur Flour RECIPE

ABC and summerfruit

A few days late due to hectic activity at the end of the schoolyear and a severe cold/fever, which has drained me from sleep and a clear head. Slowly I'm getting back to my old self, but I'm not there yet. Anyway I managed to bake the ABChallenge of this month. Another recipe from the King Arthur Flour website: Blueberry hand pies. I made in two sessions, leaving the dough in the fridge overnight. As my head was still numb, I didn't read the recipe very carefully. I just put all pastry ingredients in a foodprocessor, blitzing it around until breadcrumb consistency, then stirred the yogurt in... now I read that the butter pieces should've stayed pea-size. Well mine never did, still the dough turned out quite flaky. I used soy yogurt instead of the sour cream, that worked very well.

 For the filling I used frozen blueberries and not knowing what this 'instant cleargel' was, I just used some cornstarch to thicken the filling. When assemblying the pies, I forgot most of the time to eggwash the pastry sides before the top was placed/glued on top. I was sure all filling would drip out. But it never did.
I used cane sugar to sprinkle the top, as I'm not a fan of this white grain sugar between my teeth when eating it. I took the first small cutter I saw in the drawer and it happened to be a little circle. Did the trick, they remind me of the purple-blue berries inside.

RECIPE BLUEBERRY HAND PIES

Lovely pies, I'm glad they turned out so nice, a great treat. I bet they will be great with any other fruit filling as well.

ABC bake some English muffins

This month in the Avid Baker's Challenge we have English muffins on the menu, in our year of baking recipes from the King Arthur Flour site. I never made English muffins before, but I loved these. They reminded me of our Dutch "Beschuitbollen", though these are baked with a tin on top and a lot dryer when shop bought. These are used to make our dutch "beschuiten" by cutting them in two disks and bake them for a second time in the oven.

It takes some time to make these, I baked them in a large frying pan that fitted 4 at the time. Their interior is immensly fluffy, soft and moist. Very nice. I didn't change anything really about the recipe, it was all bang on. Cut the first ones to check if they were cooked inside, but they all were good when I took the time on medium heat. We liked them a lot.

(You can find the RECIPE HERE)

ABC say: "Cheese"

What an amazing delicious recipe we were to bake this month for the Avid Baker's Challenge.  Delicious breads with cheese. I guess you could use any cheese, but I bought some Gruyère cheese for this one, as I know it's just delicious in baked goods. The recipe  made 4 small loaves. I made two small ones and devided half of the dough into 4 (large) rolls.
The other thing I changed is the salt, there was 1 tsp for the starter ánd 1 tsp for the dough, that is way too much for us. Also bearing in mind the salty cheese. So I left one teaspoon out (the one in the dough). I also used less cheese, I bought two packages of 100 g each, so I didn't make it to the 285 g stated in the recipe. The smell ánd the taste were fantastic. A big hit! A recipe to make again.

Gruyere-stuffed crusty loaves

ABC in no-knead-mode

It was a hype a few years ago, baking dough in a hot pot or pan without kneading it, though there is some folding involved. It was nice to bake like that once, but it's not something I have done often after the first time. I baked in a cast-iron pan then and used that this time too. The dough is easy peasy, the flavours are great together.

I used the recipe as I found it on the King Arthur Flour site, later I found out that there was a more extended version of the recipe on the KAF-blog. The one thing I had a problem with: baking a bread with fruits and chocolate chips in it and as always some sticking out and burning (as always) was 'tackled' by poking the fruit (and chocolate?) that  was on the surface back inside. Mmm.. have some doubt about that. Because of this problem I personally wouldn't bake a loaf with such delicate filling in such a fierce/hot way. The bread was good, but I rather bake a country style loaf like this, to get a chewy crust than a sweet fruity loaf. But that's probably a personal thing.

It was a very tasty bread all the same, love the flavours of cherry, chocolate and nuts together.

No-Knead Chocolate-Cherry Pecan Bread

(RECIPE here)

ABC is baking pie/cake

This month we bake a cake and we'll call it pie. Don't know why it's called pie, but this Boston Cream Pie is a cake with a layer of pastry cream in the middle and is topped off with a chocolate glaze.
I must admit I wasn't looking forward baking this, it didn't really shouted "bake me, I'm good!" to me.

I decided to make a dairy free version of this cake so all in my family could enjoy it. Milk changed (as usual) into oatmilk and I made the pastry cream and the chocolate glaze with coconut milk. That was really delicious!

Boston Cream Pie (recipe here)

I was puzzled when I poured the warm milk and melted butter mixture in the light and airy egg/sugar foam. It instantly lost most of its air. Should I have waited for it to cool further? didn't see that in the recipe. So the cake was a bit heavy because of that, but with all this vanilla in it, it still tasted good. The coconut milk-pastry cream was very good, though I think I'll delute it a little more next time, cause as it cooled it became very stiff, that'll take some experimenting in the future.
We like this pie, especially our youngest, who already asked me to bake it again.

A new year of the Avid Bakers Challenge

I'll be baking another year with the Avid Bakers Challenge and this time the choice of recipes don't come from a book, but from the King Arthur flour site. Ah, we envy the possibility to visit King Arthur or even to order online, but here in Europe we haven't got such a store and the shipping costs would  be way too much these days. Years back I ordered some things from KA, a very costly procedure indeed. Baking stuff have come more available these days, though still not like the goodies from King Arthur. Fortunately we can make use of their abbundance of recipes that are available on their site and no need to buy yet another bakingbook. So that's a good thing.

And another good thing is the recipe this first time:

  Panettone Muffins

Recipe

These were lovely light, tasty, cakelike and moist muffins. We loved them. I did have some drops "Fiori di Sicilia"left from my order years back (stored as a treasure in the fridge)  and used that, love the stuff! I omitted the cake enhancer, as I didn't have that. The fruits were soaked in fruitjuice.

I divided the batter in 12, eventhough the cups seemed to be filled quite high. The recipe says to fill the cups "quite full", but I didn't know how full that was. I was afraid they might spill, but they behaved like angels and were perfect. So they didn't rise much, but still were very airy inside. The top stayed a little pale, but I resisted the temptation to leave them in longer and that way they were lovely and moist inside. A great recipe!

Last Abigial Dodge recipe for the ABC

Can you believe how fast this year went by?! When I joined the Avid Bakers Challenge in January the end seemed far of, but this month will be the last time we bake as a group from "The weekend Baker" by Abigail Dodge. I joined because I had the book on the shelve for some time, but had hardly baked from it. For some reason it just didn't appeal to me. And I'm glad I've start baking from it, baking things I normally wouldn't pick myself and getting used to the book at the same time. There are lovely recipes in the book and I sure will keep baking from it now!

This month ("Cookie season") there are Ginger Crackles to be baked. I already baked them last month, because I needed part of them for my pumpkin tart base. I used golden syrup instead of the light molasses, and baked them  longer than in the recipe, but didn't have to change anything else. The dough was easy to make, the cookies easy to shape and came out just right. I got 48 cookies out of the dough (instead of 3 dozen) and they really are delicious. Crispy outside and ever so slightly chewy when you come to the core of the cookie.

Our boy was horrified when he saw me taking even more cookies out of the jar to make the base for the pumpkin tart (which he couldn't eat because of the cream cheese), he just loved these cookies very much and kept asking if I could make them again. So a winner!

Wishing you all a great cookie season and maybe we'll meet again at ABC in 2013, when we'll bake recipes from King Arthur Flour!

Autumnal ABC

This month there is a pumpkin pie on the Avid Bakers Challenge menu. Really appropriate for this season, except here. I must admit I've never made or have eaten a pumpkin pie before. There is no Dutch tradition in celebrating Halloween or Thanksgiving here as it is overseas. So this was my first pumpkin pie, or "Velvety pumpkin tart" as the recipe is called.

For the base there are gingersnap crumbs needed. Hmm I can't remember having seen those in the shops here, so what to use? I decided to make the Ginger crackles (that's due for next month anyway) and use those for the base. I needed more than the 142 g of crumbs to coat bottom and sides, I guess I used about 200 g to be able to make the tart base. Even though I did use more crumbs, the butter was more than enough (too much to be honest). But this may well be influenced by the type of cookies used.

The filling didn't contain as much pumpkin as I expected, but as said I know little of pumpkin pies. I had to bake the pie for about 50 minutes, so that is way longer than the recipe (30-35 min). After baking the filling sank a little, which is probably normal with the pumpkin puree and cream cheese.
I found it to be way too sweet and too rich. It has to be served chilled, and that is better, because you taste a little less when food is cold. All the spices are lovely in the filling and the cookie base, those really give a warm autumn feeling to it all.
For me the sugar can be reduced drastically, less butter in the base, and maybe a little more pumpkin and a little less cream cheese (or half cream cheese/half creme fraîche light) or made with quark with is widely available here, that has a bit more tang to it, to cut through the sweetness.

It was nice to to bake my first Pumpin tart/pie for the ABC!