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Food Friday – March 2017 King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge: Butterflake Herb Loaf

17 Friday Mar 2017

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from Tracey G

This was a fun recipe this week – and the joy of it being the King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge recipe this month, is that it is one “style” I honestly don’t think I would have tried on my own volition! I would have written it off as too much work – and it’s not! It was actually fun work, lol. This is the Butterflake Herb Loaf recipe, and it’s wonderful! Not only was it easy, it’s so customizable as well!!

Harry declared that is the bread I should make whenever we have spaghetti/pasta night instead of any other kind of garlic bread – homemade or not! LOL! To please the palates around here, I chose a few of the butter seasonings listed and modified one out of necessity. I chose to just use the salt, basil and fresh garlic. I grated the garlic on my larger-holed Microplane Grater, instead of mincing it as the recipe directs and it worked wonderfully. The ingredient I “modified” was the cayenne pepper. Somehow, someway, I discovered I was out of the stuff! That never happens! So, being in a pinch, I decided to add a few drops of Frank’s RedHot hot sauce – it added such a wonderful flavor, I will do that again next time I make it on purpose!

In this recipe you make your dough, after it is all done rising the first time, you divide it, then you roll it out and cut into circles. I didn’t have a 3.5″- 4″ cutter, so I did as they suggested and used a canning jar lid ring, worked like a charm! I cut out all my circles, spread with the seasoned butter, folded in half and lined them up in the pan. And then you repeat for the second half of the dough in another pan. Rise again. I will note here that it was a slow riser for me, it took the full 90 minutes, and then some, to get where it was supposed to be – on both the first and second risings. Once it was ready to bake, after rising in the pan, into the oven it went. And wow, did it smell yummy while it was baking! Not to mention, the recipe walk-through really helped see it was pretty darn easy to do!

Of course, after they were baked, the first loaf didn’t last long – that’s why I’m glad this recipe made 2, one to eat right away and one to photograph THEN eat! Kris and I have already started discussing some variations we’d like to try with this super versatile recipe. The Butterflake Herb Loaf is a certain keeper!

 

 

from Kris B.

As Tracey said, this month’s King Arthur Bakealong Challenge was a fun recipe to make and even more fun to eat!  When you first read the procedure for making the Butterflake Herb Loaf, it may sound a bit burdensome, but once you get going with it, the recipe is super simple.

This is a great bread to accompany almost any meal.  I have to admit that the loaves at my house never made it to mealtime.  They became an afternoon snack and then a midnight snack.  I did make the filling exactly as the recipe called for except that I omitted the caraway seeds.  Here in Texas, we always have cayenne pepper.  🙂  It is not something that I would have thought to add to a recipe like this, but it gave the bread the tiniest little kick, which we hot sauce and jalapeño-loving Texans like!  I will say that I did not add enough of the filling to my bread rounds as I went because I had more than I think I should have after my pans of bread were done.  So, when the bread came out of the oven, I brushed the tops of the loaves with the remaining butter and herb filling.  All I can say is yum!

There is something about bread though…it is often times hard to photograph.  It falls into that “brown food” category that Tracey and I joke about all te time!  Bread tastes so good, but often doesn’t look equally as good in photos.  Yes, you can add a little pop of color to the photo by using a colorful placemat or serving piece, but you have to be careful that the eye is not so pulled to the color that it upstages your tasty brown bread.  Something to think about when photographing any kind of food…remember that no matter how pretty your dishes and linens may be, the food is the subject of your photo!

Butterflake Herb Loaf recipe

Recipe walk-through

King Arthur Bakealong Challenge

 

 

Food Friday – Luck O’ The Irish: Cake and Bread

10 Friday Mar 2017

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from Tracey G.

This week, as we’re approaching St. Patrick’s Day next Friday, we thought we’d do a couple recipes with a bit of Irish “flavor” either figuratively or literally, lol. I saw this Chocolate Stout Cake and knew, instantly, that I had to make it! And after reading the Chocolate Stout Cake Walk-Through, any from-scratch cake-making doubts I had were gone.

Maybe it’s that 13% Irish DNA match in me (that I never knew existed!), but I love Guinness, and I always have – it’s my favorite stout, and probably my favorite beer as well. (But, I must say it’s tied with Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, another favorite!) So, what could be better than making a chocolate cake where a main ingredient is stout? Nothing I say, I love stout and I love cake, let’s put them together! And as if one needs one, it’s a great reason to pick up some Guinness for the fridge…

The recipe was really easy to do, even though I had to do mine in parts, lol. I made the cake one day, and then frosted it the next. And it didn’t hurt a thing, it all turned out beautifully in the “end”.

The original recipe makes a HUGE cake, very tall etc. But after reading all the way through and on to the “Tips From Our Bakers” that’s included at the tail end of the recipe, I discovered a smaller version. It gives you amounts to scale back the cake and that’s what I did – and it’s still a big beautiful cake!

With the scaled down version all the steps and whatnot, are the same – just in less quantities. The butter gets melted into the beer, and the cocoa powder gets added to that mixture. I did use regular cocoa powder as it was all I had on hand for the project, and it’s still lovely and tasty. While that mixture is coming to room temperature, you beat the eggs with the sour cream together. In another bowl you whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Once the stout/cocoa powder/butter combination has cooled, you mix that into the sour cream/egg mixture. Then, you add in the flour mixture.

When your batter is mixed, you divide it amongst your pans. I used two 8-inch round pans, as again, that’s all I had. I does call for 9-inch rounds though, so I had some extra batter left over that I made 6 cupcakes out of! Always fun when that happens, lol.

The frosting is a ganache – simply it’s hot, heavy cream poured over chopped chocolate and mixed until the chocolate is melted and smooth. I used  bittersweet chocolate chips for this, as again, that’s all I had on hand, and it worked wonderfully. I did have to microwave my mixture a couple of times at lower power to “warm” it up, as it was chilly in the house and even the hot cream didn’t stay hot long enough to melt all the chips.  Then, after you get it stirred smooth, you refrigerate it for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally and checking the thickness. You want it to cool/chill enough to be spreadable as a frosting. Once it reaches spreading consistency, you put about 2/3 cup on your first layer, smooth it out and top with your second layer (or second layer, then more ganache, then 3rd if you used 8-inch pans etc). After you’ve done that, with the rest of the ganache you frost the top and sides. The ganache was super easy to work with, very forgiving and easy to make look pretty! I’ve never used it in this capacity, usually I make my chocolate truffle centers out of it.

The cake is rich and moist, so for me, a small sliver went a LONG way for serving! I loved it, and I know Jeremy did too as he had TWO pieces – the regular kind of size piece of cake! This recipe will  most certainly have a spot in “the book”, it’s a great dessert/cake and for me something even better – a scratch cake that turned out as it was supposed to! I have a long track record for failed from-scratch cakes – thank you King Arthur Flour for helping me look like I know what I’m doing!

Chocolate Stout Cake

Chocolate Stout Cake Flourish Walk-Through

 

from Kris B.

I am still reeling from the crazy roller coaster of a week that we have had with our sick elderly black lab.  He is doing well thanks to lots of veterinarians and techs who cared for him during his five-day hospitalization.  I have to say that this week I would much rather be eating Tracey’s Choco;ate Stout Cake and drinking a Guinness or two than cooking something of my own, but that would be a little irresponsible, so I opted to try a very simple recipe for Irish Soda Bread…easy and for me, bread is the perfect comfort food.

Because the rising agent in this bread is baking soda, Irish Soda Bread requires no rise time.  The dry ingredients are mixed together in one bowl, the wet in another.  They are the combined, kneaded a little, and then the dough is shaped into a flat round and placed in a nine-inch cake pan to bake.

Traditional Irish Soda Bread consists of only a coarsely ground whole wheat flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk.  There are many “Americanized” recipes that use white flour and add sugar and raisins making it more cake-like than bread.  This particular recipe splits the difference between the two.  It does use currants, which gives the bread a hint of sweetness.  This recipe also calls for a bit of bread flour to be mixed with the whole wheat flour, an egg, and butter, ingredients that are not called for in an authentic Irish Soda Bread recipe.

This recipe for Irish Soda Bread is dense, but not too dense and sweet but not too sweet.  Served warm with a pat of butter, it made a hearty afternoon snack.  Reheated for 20 seconds or so in the microwave and then spread with a little butter and some apple butter or orange marmalade, it becomes a nice breakfast bread.

The only small issue that I had with making this Irish Soda Bread was with the baking time.  The recipe calls for the bread to bake for 45-55 minutes at 400 degrees.  Though my oven normally requires things to cook toward the maximum end of specified cook times, for some reason I set the timer for 45 minutes.  It was a good thing.  Even before the timer went off, the top of the bread was starting to get overdone.  I was baking on the middle rack.  Next time I make this recipe, and I will make it again, I will drop the rack and see if that fixes my problem.

This is a great recipe if you want to add a little touch of Irish to your life!

Irish Soda Bread recipe

Mix It Up Friday – February

24 Friday Feb 2017

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Happy Birthday, Tracey!

from Tracey G

YAY – IT’S MIX WEEK!! I love mix week as much as I love Bakealong week, lol. I guess they both provide me with a couple things I love to do – play with a mix and make something from scratch, and by doing so with either, I’m usually trying something I’ve not had before or not made myself before. Either way, it’s fun stuff!

This week I chose the King Arthur Flour mix for Malted Milk Chocolate Cupcakes + Frosting Mix.

I chose it because yesterday was Harry’s birthday, and today is mine, so I thought cake/cupcakes would be appropriate for celebrating! This particular mix is only available at Target according to the King Arthur Flour website. And that’s exactly where I bought this one! I didn’t know at the time of purchase though, that that was the case. And I’m probably in the minority when to it comes to having a challenge regarding the availability of a Target store, lol – my closest one is about 2 hours away! So, hopefully you will have a much easier time getting a box or two!! Next time I may pick up a few because this box made only 6 cupcakes – which actually was a good amount, but there may be a time when I’ll need a few more than 6 and extra package or two might come in handy!!

This was a super easy mix to prepare, and it turned out well despite the fact I totally messed up the mixing directions! I didn’t realize the error of my ways until after I had dumped everything into the mixer bowl… I was just trucking along, gathering and adding as I would with any other cake mix, and I was about to flip on the mixer on when I noticed that, uh oh, I did it all wrong, lol. If I recall correctly the directions were to mix the butter and the cake mix first, then add in the egg, then add in the milk. Well, I just added everything in and turned it on because at that point I couldn’t take them all back out, lol. But I have to say, despite that accident the cupcakes came out just fine. The icing was easy enough to mix up too – just mix it in with the butter and little bit of milk it calls for, adjusting milk amounts accordingly to get the consistency you’d like. It’s just that simple, lol.

The cake was yummy and the frosting was equally yummy. I must say I absolutely loved the frosting, it had a really great malted milk ball taste. I am a huge fan of malted milk ball candy Whoppers, and this really fit the bill for that sort of flavor!! This is a definitely-will-make-again mix!!

Malted Milk Chocolate Cupcake + Frosting Mix

King Arthur Flour Website

 

from Kris B

King Cakes are a tradition of carnival season, the time lasting from Epiphany (January 6th)  through Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, which this year is next Wednesday, March 1.  The recipe for King Cakes has evolved over time as various countries and cultures have adopted the practice of celebrating Epiphany with a King Cake.

The King Cake tradition is thought to have been brought to New Orleans from France in 1870.   A King Cake is an oval-shaped bakery delicacy, crossed between a coffee cake and a French pastry… It’s decorated in royal colors of PURPLE which signifies “Justice,” GREEN for “Faith,” and GOLD for “Power.” These colors were chosen to resemble a jeweled crown honoring the Wise Men who visited the Christ Child on Epiphany. In the past such things as coins, beans, pecans, or peas were also hidden in each King Cake.  Today, a tiny plastic baby is the common prize. At a party, the King Cake is sliced and served. Each person looks to see if their piece contains the “baby.” If so, then that person is named “King” for a day and bound by custom to host the next party and provide the King Cake.

When my girls were little, they would always be the “lucky” one to find the prize in their slice of cake.  That meant that I was the “unlucky” mom who had to make the cake for the next year’s celebration.  There was a rule in our church that the same person would not be responsible for the cake two year’s in a row.  That meant the same kid could not “win” two consecutive years.  That did not take into account two kids and one mother!  I think I made King Cakes three or four years in a row!  Well…that’s not exactly true.  I’m certain that at least a couple of those years, I bought the cakes from a local bakery.  I wish the King Arthur Flour King Cake Kit had been there for me back then!

Notice that this is called the King Cake Kit.  The fact that it is a kit seems to mean that it requires a little more from us than does a mix.  The King Cake is constructed in three parts – the dough, the filling, and the glaze and sugar.  The dough requires only the addition of yeast, a stick of butter and water.  Because this is a yeast dough, it does have two rise periods.  The first is 30 minutes and occurs before the filling is added.  Where I was caught a little off guard with this kit was with the filling.  The filling for King Cakes is one of those things that is diverse and flexible, everything from cinnamon sugra to fruit and nuts.  The King Arthur King Cake Kit uses an almond paste filling.  The can of almond paste is included in the kit, but the instructions call for it to be mixed with butter, almond extract, sugar (none of which are included), and 2 cups of soft white fresh bread crumbs.  This ingredient brought me to a screeching halt late one night when I thought I would get a little ahead of the game – bake late at night and photograph early in the morning.  We don’t eat white bread unless it is homemade and there was none of that in the house at this point.  Fortunately, I had read through the complete instructions before starting so put off the baking until morning after a trip to the grocery store.  (I wasn’t going to bake bread just for some bread crumb!  Call me lazy.)  Once I got the bread and made the bread crumbs, the King Cake went together easily.

The dough is rolled into a rectangle, the filling layered on top and then it is rolled like you would do when making cinnamon rolls.  The rolled “log” is placed on a baking sheet and then formed into a circle by pinching the ends together.  A circle is the traditional shape for a King Cake.  The cake then rises again before it bakes.

Once baked, the instructions call for the cake to cool for an hour before adding the glaze, which is provided as a dry mix that requires the addition of 2 TBS of either milk, half and half, or heavy cream.  After the cake is glazed and while the glaze is still sticky, the traditional purple, green, and gold sugars (included in the kit) are sprinkled on top of the glaze in alternating stripes around the entire cake.

NOTE: The King Cake should be placed on the intended serving plate before the glaze and sugar are added.   This encouraged me to be neat when I was adding the glaze and sprinkling the sugar.  Just know that you may not end up with a drip-free, crumb-free, or stray sugar granule-free serving plate! 🙂

This kit, and most commercial bakeries making King Cakes, do not include the traditional plastic baby or trinket in their cakes.  There are legal issues in that these small figures pose a choking hazard and also can be hard on the teeth when stumbled upon unexpectedly.  I know that the last time one of my girls got the piece of cake with “the baby,” it was a green Skittle, a safe for swallowing and for your teeth alternative.  To this day, we laugh about the King Cake with the alien baby Jesus…perhaps a little sacrilegious, but a fun memory nonetheless.

Sadly, because the King Cake Kit is seasonal, it is no longer available on the King Arthur Flour website.  Sorry!  If, however, you feel the need to make a King Cake between now and the start of Lent next Wednesday, here is a link to a scratch King Cake recipe from the King Arthur Flour website.

 

January King Arthur Bakealong Challenge – Pizza Party Buns

21 Saturday Jan 2017

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It’s time for our post on this month’s King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge recipe, Pizza Party Buns.

At our house, pizza is usually reserved for those nights when no one feels like cooking.  If I happen to have dough in the fridge, (We are fans of Jeff Hertzenberg and Zoe Francois’ recipe in Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes A Day.) We will have homemade pizza with whatever toppings I can scrounge – vegetables from peppers to asparagus to butternut squash and/or meats of various kinds.  Sometimes I have sauce on hand and sometimes a don’t.  But I always cheese.  And when there is no dough already made, we have pizza delivered.  All this to say that pizza is most often a lazy day meal.

I was excited to try this month’s Bakealong Challenge recipe because I am good with anything that has pizza in it’s name!  I have to say this at the outset here…There are recipes that look impressive and look like they took a lot of time to prepare and didn’t, and then there are recipes like this one that are actually time consuming, though relatively easy, but take a good amount of time and most people won’t realize what went into its preparation.  That is meant only as an observation, not a value statement.  From start to finish, because my rise times were slow, the making of the Party Pizza Buns took a little over four hours.  Would I make them again?  You bet!  They are well worth the time to make.

The dough is a relatively simple dough, though it does call for bread flour rather than all-purpose.  The liquids used are milk and a little olive oil.  And then of course salt and yeast are necessary.  Once made, the recipe says that the dough should rise until it doubles in size, 60-90 minutes.  Mine took almost two hours and I had it in my oven on the bread proofing setting.

After the first rise, the dough is rolled into a 12×18 rectangle.  This dough was quite cooperative when I was rolling it.  My go-to pizza dough recipe is much more “elastic” and is sometimes difficult to roll.  Once you have the rectangle of dough, it is spread with a layer of pizza sauce, (I used prepared.  I know.  Lazy!)  followed by cheese and then the filling.  The recipe suggests pepperoni; I used finely diced Canadian bacon, green bell pepper, and onion.  Any of your favorite pizza topics will work.  Just be careful to not overstuff!  After all of the “toppings” are added, you roll from the wide end of the dough just as you would cinnamon rolls.  The Party Pizza Buns are then sliced and laid flat on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for a second rise.  I cut mine into twelve slices, each of which makes a meal sized portion.  My rise time took the full ninety minutes.

After the second rise, the buns bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees.

We ate them straight out of the oven (Well, after they were photographed.) and they were delicious!  I have some in the fridge.  I’ll report back on how they are when reheated.

I prefer a thick crust pizza  so I loved these; however, if you prefer thin crust pizza, these are “bready”; hence there name, “buns.”  Lol!  Think of them more like a savory cinnamon roll rather than like a thin crust pizza.

I am also going to try using this dough to make other kinds of roll-up type meals.  I think ham and cheese or spinach and cheese would be just as good as the pizza filling.

I hope you’ll bake some Pizza Party Buns along with us and the January 2017 King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge!

from Tracey G

It’s my favorite time – – King Arthur Flour’s Bakealong Challenge time! Ok, I also love Mix Time too, but I really love Bakealong time! As in the household of my partner in crime, pizza is one of those save-mama-some-work dinners here – usually we get take out since my pizza stone cracked in half and I haven’t bothered to replace it. Due to where we live though, we don’t have the opportunity for delivery, lol, so it always still involves some effort – we (read: Jeremy) have to go out and pick it up. But that’s ok, it’s still a time saver! And one heck of a yummy one at that. Depending on where we order from, my favorite toppings can vary, but the boys favorites are: pepperoni and green olives. This can be a favorite of mine as well, but I equally enjoy a meat-free version of green peppers and onion, however, they do not! So, since this batch of Pizza Party Buns would be for everyone in the household, majority ruled, and I opted for the toppings suggested in the recipe, pepperoni and cheese, but added in sliced green olives.

As I read through the recipe for this month’s Bakealong Challenge, I knew what ingredients I had to pick up, the filling items, to be exact. While I always have pepperoni on hand and cheese, I didn’t have any pizza sauce – and I noticed I was low on the other two, so I grabbed some pepperoni and mozzarella cheese too while I was at it. I was ready to roll for whenever I got the chance to make them. Or so I thought. Once I was ready to get started on these, I started gathering my ingredients. Sauce, yep… cheese, check… pepperoni, yes… olive oil, check… salt, right here… yeast, got it… bread flour… Um bread flour… Hello bread flour???? Uh oh. Bread flour is MIA. I was sure I had bread flour – looked through every cabinet…none to be found. Even enlisted Jeremy’s help in the search as he’s my tall person who can check the higher areas of the cabinets easily, lol. But nope, there wasn’t any anywhere. So, when you’re thrown a curve, it’s on to Plan B – all-purpose flour it had to be. The difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour is protein content, bread flour is typically higher in protein content so it aids in the gluten development, which produces and chewier and more elastic crumb. But most of the time it’s ok to swap. And it was this time, as far as I’m concerned, lol. I had no choice! And it was ok! Nothing bad happened!

I too had a bit of trouble in the rising of the dough area – it was incredibly slow! But since it’s cold here in Northern Michigan, it didn’t completely surprise me, just an inconvenience. I don’t have a proofing-setting on my oven, but I do have trick I learned along the way from somewhere – I turn my oven on to 400 for 1-2 minutes, then turn it off and pop my dough in for its rising time. Usually works quite well!

But other than that, the rising, everything came together quite easily – what Kris mentioned about the dough being easy to work with and roll out, is spot-on. I had no issues with mine either. I patted it out into a rectangle with my hands slightly oiled with olive oil, and then rolled it the rest of the way to the desired size of 12×18″. Spooned on the sauce, sprinkled the cheese and toppings then rolled it up. I cut mine into 1-inch pieces, and somehow managed to get 17, I don’t know how I didn’t get 18 pieces, but I must have cut a couple a little larger than the others, lol.

After the 2nd rise, it was time to bake! Yay! And they baked-off beautifully, I think. I didn’t get to eat them straight out of the oven, but I did get to taste-test after they’d cooled to room temperature and they were super yummy – I was so pleased! Harry announced he loved them – and that right there made me extremely happy, 😉 I haven’t tried reheating them yet, but I can say that they are still yummy the next day straight out of the refrigerator! Cold Party Pizza Buns for breakfast! And lunch, and a snack…. Yes, they will definitely be made again, not only are they tasty, but they are very versatile as well – your imagination can run wild with one!

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