baking

Reading Challenge #8: A Book With Multiple Authors

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Title: Bouchon Bakery

Authors: Thomas Keller & Sebastien Rouxel with Susie Heller, Matthew McDonald, Michael Ruhlman, & Amy Vogler

How it fulfills the challenge: Have you seen the list of authors? That’s a lot for one cookbook, even as big as this one is…

Genre: Cookbook

Quick Description: For the serious home or small professional baker. A collection of extremely detailed recipes for both updated and classic French treats. Lots of bread recipes.

Highlights: Absolutely gorgeous pictures and very detailed recipes.

Low Points: While I don’t consider myself a professional cook or baker in any way, I do have quite a bit of experience in the kitchen and I don’t usually think of myself as someone who is easily intimidated by a recipe. I cook across ethnic cuisines and love a new challenge. That said, I found this book to be extremely intimidating. Every step that you execute has to be done perfectly–or else. And while I admire the precision, I don’t really want to buy so many new tools to work on one recipe. This cookbook doesn’t give a lot of room for improvisation or creativity, which is one of my favorite things to do. Even though I’ve always wanted to try my hands at croissants or puff pastry, I couldn’t bring myself to cook anything for this book. But if you want to understand what a real French Bakery looks like in action, the amount of skill required to produce quality products continually, this book will make you appreciate all their efforts.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 stars, rounded up from a 3.5. The beautiful pictures and interesting story behind the bakery almost make up for how scary the recipes are. Almost. Did you know you have to weigh your eggs, and that you also have to strain them or your life will be ruined? You do now.

Baking for Bookworms: Chocolate cake from Veronica Roth’s Divergent

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I’ll be doing a separate post soon about my thoughts on Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, but for now, let’s get cooking! Or baking. Whichever you prefer.

The first mention of chocolate cake happens during visiting day, which doesn’t occur in the movie, but basically it’s a time for the family members to officially say goodbye to each other and wish each other well in their new lives. For Tris, this is a startling moment because her mother reveals that she came from Dauntless and chose Abnegation as her faction:

“She walks away, and I am too stunned to follow her. At the end of the hallway she turns and says, ‘Have a piece of cake for me, all right? The chocolate. It’s delicious.’ She smiles a strange, twisted smile, and adds, ‘I love you, you know.’                        -from Chapter 15

The cake, in some odd way, becomes a symbol of the Dauntless, in the same way plain food stands in for Abnegation. I’m not sure exactly what the chocolate cake is supposed to express, but nevertheless as the series progresses it becomes more and more clear that this is Dauntless’s ‘thing,’ just like eating things out of cans is the what the Factionless do. (I actually think something spicy would be more symbolic. Dauntless are risk takers, but they’re not really all that indulgent. If anyone has thoughts on why their food is chocolate cake, I’d love to read them in the comments!)

But on to the cake!

This is my favorite chocolate cake recipe—it’s cakey and suitably chocolate-y, but you can have a piece of it and not feel totally sweeted out or that it’s just too rich. It’s somewhere in between light and dense and has a mid-size crumb. It’s awesome, in other words.

Recipe from Julie Richardson’s book Vintage Cakes

 

Ingredients

  • 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
  • ¼ cup cocoa powder
  • ¾ cup boiling water
  • ¾ cup full-fat sour cream
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • ¾ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup unsalted butter, at room temp
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • ¾ cup granulated sugar
  • ½ cup canola or other light flavored oil
  • 3 egg yolks at room temp (eggs are easier to separate cold—I like to separate and then leave them on the counter with the butter. You can save the whites for a Swiss meringue butter cream)
  • 3 eggs at room temperature
  • your choice of frosting—I like raspberry or fruit flavored butter cream with chocolate, but this cake would go well from everything from a chocolate ganache or nutella to any sort of frosting you can come up with

This recipe makes 3 cake rounds or one sheet cake. If you’re using rounds, grease and line the bottoms with parchment. If using a sheet cake, grease.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Put the unsweetened chocolate in a bowl with the cocoa powder. Pour the boiling water on top and let sit for one minute. Stir together until combined and smooth. Add sour cream and vanilla extract and set aside.

Sift together your dry ingredients and whisk to combine.

Cream your butter and sugars together until light and fluffy (about 3-5 minutes on medium speed). Scrape down the sides of the bowl before drizzling in the oil on low speed. Turn speed up to medium high and beat until fluffy, three minutes.

Blend in the egg/egg yolks one at a time, adding the next one as soon as the first is fully incorporated.

On a low speed, add 1/3 of the flour mixture, and then alternate with the chocolate mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Stop mixing before the last of the flour is incorporated and finish by hand to ensure you don’t lose all the air.

Spread batter into your prepared pan(s). Smooth the tops and tap the pans on the counter to settle the batter. Bake in the middle of the oven until the cake bounces back when the center is touched (about 22-25 minutes for the rounds, about 30-45 minutes for the sheet cake—I haven’t prepared this cake in a sheet pan, but that’s my estimate).

Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes before flipping the rounds out or keep the sheet cake on the wire rack until cooled (I hate turning sheet cakes out. I like serving them out of the pan).

Spread with your desired topping (even just a sprinkle of cocoa or powdered sugar) and serve.

 

What food makes you feel Dauntless? Let me know in the comments.

 

 

Baking for Bookworms: Irish Soda Bread from Alice McDermott’s Someone

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Alice McDermott’s book follows the life of an Irish immigrant in all its stirring little moments and complexities. It’s a quiet book that is definitely worth a read. There is plenty of food mentioned in the novel, but I really liked this moment between Marie, the narrator, and her mother where her mother tries to impart a little bit of cultural wisdom onto her daughter who has hitherto been resisting with all her might:

 

“ ‘It is time,’ my mother said, ‘that you learn a few things.’

On the narrow, corrugated tin of the drain board beside the sink, there was the flour bin and a bottle of buttermilk, and a tin of caraway seeds. On the small table beneath the window, a bowl and a spoon and the measuring cup. There was as well a narrow card on which she had written in her careful hand the recipe for soda bread.

It was time, my mother said, that I learned a few things about cooking.”   53

 

Cooking and learning to cook has a staggering amount of cultural and social meanings and connotations in this short passage. On one hand we have the ‘simple’ process of transformation—raw ingredients into something else. There’s also the transmission of culture to generations, the tension between youth and growing up, and the relations between a mother and her child. This all adds up to some pretty complex bread.

 

Luckily, this recipe is anything but complicated. It’s probably the easiest bread I’ve ever made. There’s no finicky yeast to deal with, there’s no waiting interminably for the bread to rise… you can make this bread in under an hour if you have all your ingredients ready.

 

Soda Bread recipe slightly adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

 

Ingredients:

  • 1 ¾ cups buttermilk (or 5 tsp of white/ apple cider vinegar or lemon juice with the milk filled up the rest of the way to the 1 ¾ cup mark, stir, and let sit five minutes—I like apple cider vinegar’s flavor in baked goods. You can also use this trick on non-dairy milks)
  • 1 egg
  • 4 ¼ cup flour (plus more for kneading and dusting)
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 4 tablespoons butter, cold and cut in cubes
  • 1 cup raisins or other dried fruit (optional but very yummy)

 

Preheat oven to 425F. You can use a cast iron skillet, cake pan, or regular baking sheet for this bread—just grease it.

Mix the buttermilk (or sour milk) with the egg. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

Using a pastry blender or your hands, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the raisins and mix.

Make a well in the center of the dry mixture, and pour in the liquid, stirring with a wooden spoon or a spatula. When the mixture becomes too stiff, turn it out on a floured surface and knead just until it comes together (about 30 seconds). You can add more flour if needed. Form into a rough ball and place in baking pan.

With a sharp knife, score a large X in the dough, which will help it cook evenly. Bake for 45 minutes or until dark and cooked through (if you think your bread is getting too dark, you can turn down the heat to 415F and continue cooking).

Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack. This bread can be served warm or at room temperature and is great with all manner of things. It’ll dry out quickly so wrap any leftovers well or freeze them!

 

Is there a food you learned to cook with a family member? Let me know in the comments!

I remember making lots of cookies with my mom. Chocolate chip especially. I learned different baking recipes and techniques from virtually everyone in my family from my father’s waffles to my Nana’s challah.

Baking for Bookworms: Lavash Bread from Renee Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn

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Whenever I can, I like to pick dishes from the books that are filled with special significance, whether that means they’re mentioned at an important plot point, are helpful in understanding a character, or strengthen aspects of the setting. I try to find a dish that meets one of these criteria, but I think the lavash bread and quince chutney mentioned in the scene fulfill all three. The Middle Eastern bread and chutney reinforce the setting. We’re told that the dish has become one of Shahrzad’s favorites since entering the palace, giving us both a deeper understanding of her likes and dislikes as well as showing that she is gradually growing accustomed to her new home. And finally, the scene takes place at an important banquet, one where the former love of her life and her husband are in the same room and tensions are high:

“The air filled with the aroma of spices and the clamor of conversation. Shahrzad began with some lavash bread and quince chutney, which had quickly become of favorite of hers since she arrived at the palace. As she ate, she chanced another perusal of the room. Tariq was speaking with an older gentleman seated to his left. When he felt her eyes on him, Tariq turned his head, and Shahrzad was forced, yet again, to look away.”     252

So now that we’ve set the love triangle stage, let’s get baking!

Lavash is a flat, Middle Eastern bread made all over the region. It’s got very simple ingredients, and, for a bread, is pretty quick and easy. You can serve this bread with anything that suits your fancy including meat and vegetable dishes or just sauces for a snack. Similarly, you can also top it with anything that sounds tasty. Traditional garnishes include poppy and sesame seeds, but you can also use red onions, any herb you can think of, a little sea salt, minced garlic, or even cinnamon sugar for a sweet finish.

Lavash recipe adapted from Yellow Saffron’s video.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups bread flour (I used whole wheat), 200g
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/4 cup olive oil

Sift your flour over a medium-large bowl. Add salt, water, and olive oil. Knead briefly to combine all the ingredients into a soft, smooth dough (about 2 minutes).

Lightly oil the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise at room temperature for 30 minutes.

After thirty minutes, it’s time to fold the dough to develop the gluten. Pull a corner of the dough out from the main ball and fold it into the center. Repeat this eight times, working all the way around the dough. Then flip it over and tuck the edges in so it forms a nice smooth ball shape. There’s no need to be exact about this last step, as the dough shouldn’t be worked too much.

Cover the dough again and leave to rise for another 30 minutes.Repeat the process as before, pulling and tucking corners of the dough eight times. Cover again and leave to rise for the last 30 minutes.

When the 30 minutes are up, preheat the oven to 430F and preheat your baking tray as well.

Split the dough into three pieces. Take out one piece, and leave the rest covered so that they stay moist. With the first piece either stretch or roll it into a very thin rectangle, the thinner the better. Place on a piece of parchment paper and add any toppings you like (parchment paper is oven safe, but it isn’t mean to go much higher than a 420F oven. Make sure you watch the paper to be sure it doesn’t burn…). Slide onto the preheated tray.

Bake for 3-6 minutes, depending on the thickness of the dough. The edges will get browned and bubbles will develop.

Remove to a cooling rack (the bread will get crispier as it cools), and repeat the process with the two remaining pieces of bread.

Serve with a fun sauce or with a meal and enjoy!

 

 

Baking for Bookworms: Apple Cake from Sylvia Plath’s The Collected Poems

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I was a little surprised to find anything I could cook from in Plath’s poems. She’s not exactly a poet you associate with down home cooking. But luckily there was one food that immediately jumped out, and that was apple cake.

The mention of apple cake is from her 1959 poem “Point Shirley”, which is actually one of my many favorites in the collection. It’s about a woman who lives a very hard life, and there’s a lot of sea and water imagery along with descriptions of thriftiness and stubbornness.

It’s in one of the middle stanzas that the  apple cake appears:

“Nobody wintering now behind/ The planked-up windows where she set/ Her wheat loaves/ And apple cakes to cool. What is it/ Survives, grieves/ So, over this battered, obstinate spit/ Of gravel? The waves’/ Spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,”

Point Shirley is the place where Plath’s grandparents lived and the poem appears to be about her own childhood memories of her grandmother. There’s also some thought that it might be more generally about her feelings on motherhood. The apple cake is just one detail plucked from many possible ones I’m sure, but it’s an interesting choice because apple desserts have particular connotations in America of home and comfort and nostalgia. It probably reminded her of her grandmother, just like challah and kugel remind me of mine.

Besides any symbolic significance of apples, they also just make fantastic desserts–they have great flavor and lend themselves well to most pairings.

This apple cake recipe is adapted from Karen DeMasco’s book The Craft of Baking.

caramelized-apple cake

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 stick butter, very soft
  • 2 tart apples (like granny smith)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs, separated
  • 1 cup flour
  • 3 tablespoons cornmeal
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 350F.

For this recipe you can use either a cast-iron skillet, or you can use an 8 or 9 inch cake pan, or a pie pan. I used a cake pan, so the instructions will reflect that, but it’s very easy to make in an oven safe skillet. Simply make your caramel in the skillet and lay everything on top before baking–couldn’t be simpler.

In a pot, combine 1/4 cup of the sugar with three tablespoons of water. Mix together so that all the sugar is wet and then cook over high heat until the sugar is a deep golden caramel color. This takes about 2 minutes. It’s very important to stand and watch the pot the whole time. Sugar will burn very quickly.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately add 2 tablespoons of the butter, whisking to incorporate (the butter being very soft helps a lot with getting it all mixed in before the caramel cools too much). Spread the caramel on the bottom of your desired pan.

Peel the two apples and then cut into very thin slices. Arrange on top of the caramel, starting from the outside and working your way in and being sure to overlap the fruit.

In a large bowl, beat the remaining 3/4 cups sugar, 6 tablespoons of butter, and the vanilla together until fluffy. This takes about 3-4 minutes with an electric mixer on medium speed. Add egg yolks, one at a time, on low speed until combined.

Combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, and cornmeal) and whisk together. Add the dry ingredients in alternating stages with the milk (flour, milk, flour, milk, flour), until everything is mixed.

In a very clean bowl (if you suspect there might be any greasiness whatsoever, you can take a little white vinegar on a paper towel and wipe your bowl and beaters) beat your egg whites until soft peaks form (about 4 minutes on medium speed). Gently fold the whites into the rest of the batter in three stages.

Spread the batter over the apples and bake for about 40-50 minutes until the cake is golden brown and springs back when touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes before running a knife around the edge and flipping onto a plate.

It’s best the day it’s served, but you can wrap it with plastic and it keeps at room temperature for about three days.

Are there any desserts that remind you of your grandparents? Let me know in the comments. And if there’s ever a book you’d like me to cook from, leave that in the comments as well!

 

 

 

 

Baking for Bookworms: Mini Brioche from Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright

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Brioche is one of my absolute favorite breads–it’s light and buttery and makes the best French toast in the world. But I’ve never made it before, so I was happy to look down my list and see that I could use it for a baking post.

There’s usually not much mention of food in nonfiction. And in a book about Oscar Wilde’s books, there was definitely not going to be much food mentioned at all. This particular book had only two references, and they were references based on what Oscar Wilde had scribbled (or dribbled–some jam) in the margins of his notes:

“In the middle of his reading notes he has drawn a doodle of a large and delicious looking brioche.”            155

This just goes to show that delicious food enters into even the most didactic reader and writer’s mind.

With that in mind, I tried to recreate the classic brioche shape on a smaller scale using a muffin tin (and without the use of the specialty baking pan). I thought that the tin would help make this recipe more friendly for those that don’t have an immense stock of bakeware. I also just love miniature foods.

This is a time consuming recipe since the dough has to rest over night, but it’s well worth the effort and they look charming, even when they’re a little lopsided like mine.

This recipe is slight adapted from Martha Stewart’s video. This recipe makes 8 mini brioche, but you can feel free to double the recipe. The recipe is written for a stand mixer, but if you don’t have one, you can always knead by hand, which I quite enjoy anyway.

Mini Brioche

  • 2 1/2 tablespoons lukewarm milk (plus one tablespoon for the wash)
  • 1 packet yeast (1/4 oz)–Martha uses fresh, but I used instant–anything will work
  • 3 eggs (plus one egg yolk for the wash, if you double the recipe, you still only need one told, just add more milk)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 10 oz flour (about 2 cups unsifted)
  • 1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
  • 2 tablespoons sugar

Put the yeast on top of the milk and let it proof for about five minutes (if your yeast is not frothy after 5-7 minutes, it’s probably too old and you should get new yeast before you go to all the trouble and find your bread won’t rise).

In a bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl) briefly whisk together eggs, salt, and flour. Using the dough hook attachment, begin kneading these together for about 1-2 minutes (or mix by hand).

Add the yeast and knead on low speed for 5 minutes. Bring the speed up to medium and continue kneading for 5-10 more minutes or until the dough stops being so sticky and begins to pull away from the side of the bowl. The dough is pretty soft, so if at the end of the 10 minutes it’s still a little sticky, go ahead with the next step, and the final kneading should take care of it.

Mix together the softened butter and the sugar and incorporate into the dough a little at a time. Then continue kneading for another 5-10 minutes. It should be smooth and shiny.

Place in a greased bowl and let rise, covered with plastic wrap, for two hours or until it doubles in size.

Take your dough and lifting it out of the bowl, let it drop back into the bowl several times to deflate it (this is probably my favorite part). Cover it with plastic wrap again and put in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours or overnight.

In the morning, or whenever you come back to it, butter 8 sections of a muffin tin. Remove your dough from the bowl and divide it into 8 equal pieces. From each piece, remove a quarter . Roll the remaining dough into a ball. Pinch the ball so that it makes a large size crater or well in the middle (if you use a large crater, your middles won’t be as lopsided as mine). Roll the small chunk into a ball and place in the middle of the well. Repeat with all the dough and place in the buttered muffin tin.

Make and egg wash by mixing one egg yolk with one tablespoon of milk. Brush the egg wash over the mini brioches and store the leftover wash in the fridge to use again later.

Let the dough rise again, covered with plastic wrap, for 60-90 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425F. Bake brioche for 5 minutes, then turn down the heat to 375F for an additional 5-10 minutes or until the tops are a deep golden brown and the internal temp is 205F (if you don’t have a thermometer, bake them closer to the 10 minute mark. You can touch the brioche right where the top ball meets the rest of the bread, and if it’s doughy there it needs a little longer. You can also stick a skewer in, and if it’s at all doughy, give them a few more minutes).

Let them cool in the pan for five minutes before removing them to a cooling rack. If they need some encouragement to come out, just run a butter knife around the edge.

Brioche is delicious on its own, but it’s even better with jam!

What’s your favorite bread and have you ever attempted to make it before? Let me know in the comments!

 

Baking for Bookworms: Bark Sail Bread from Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News

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It was a little difficult to choose something to make from this book, not because there wasn’t a lot of food mentioned (there was and a lot of it was intriguing), but because many of the ingredients are harder to come by in my land-locked state (as in, tons of seafood). Since Paul and I are trying to stay away from too much fish due to over-fishing issues and things (not to mention mercury issues…), I tried to find something that I could make without too much difficulty. Luckily, one of the characters in the book is quite the baker, and so I thought I’d try my hand at a traditional Newfoundland bread called bark sail bread. Despite the strange name, there is nothing tree-like about this bread. Instead, the name just signifies that the bread has molasses and raisins in it.

The passage from the book is forthcoming. I recently made a trip out to my parents and in a genius move guaranteed to win me several coveted prizes, I left my charger cord, which means I don’t have access to any of the book passages I’ve collected. But it should be up by tomorrow–the cord is coming!

The food in the book tells the story of assimilation into a new place. At first all the food seems strange and foreign, but soon the book’s characters eat the foods they once considered strange without comment and with enjoyment. Food becomes one of the many signs Proulx employs to relate how the protagonist, Quoyle, begins to fit into his new home.

Bark sail bread takes quite a bit of time to make because the molasses makes the rising process slower, but it’s worth the wait, and it’s perfect for a day you’re sticking around at home and don’t have too much to do (though there’s plenty of time to get things done while the dough rises).

This recipe is slightly adapted from Rock Recipes. It will make two loaves of bread in loaf pans or one giant thing of awesome breadness if you’re like me and you can’t for the life of you figure out where your loaf pans have run off to. You can bake this in an 8×8 pan, but see the adapted baking instructions.

Bark Sail Bread

  • 1/2 cup warm, but not hot water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 packet yeast
  • 4-5 cups flour (divided, might be more or less depending on the consistency of your bread)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup molasses plus one tablespoon
  • 1/2 cup warm milk
  • 6 tablespoons melted butter
  • 1 beaten egg
  • 1/2 cup raisins (feel free to add more–up to 1 cup)

 

Mix the sugar with the warm water and pour yeast packet on top. Let sit for ten minutes until nice and frothy. If your yeast doesn’t froth, it might be too old, and you’ll want to get new yeast before adding the mixture to the rest of the ingredients.

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a standing mixer add: 2 cups flour, salt, molasses, warm milk, melted butter, and the beaten egg. When the yeast is ready, add it in, and slowly beat the ingredients (with a spoon, or if in the mixer, with the paddle attachment) together for 3-5 minutes, until its smooth and lump-free.

Slowly, 1/2 cup at a time, add in your flour and start kneading in the bowl (with the dough hook now) until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and is no longer sticky. This can take anywhere from 2-3 cups of flour. Add in your raisins and knead until fully incorporated. Continue to knead on a lightly floured surface for an additional 10 minutes (or 7-10 minutes in the stand mixer).

Place dough in a bowl, lightly cover, and let rise for one hour.

Punch down dough and knead for 3-5 more minutes. Divide into four balls. Grease your pan/s of choice. If using loaf pans, put two of the balls in each pan. If using an 8×8 pan, put all four balls in. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let rise in a warm place for 2-3 hours or until the dough is about 2 inches over the side of the pan.

When the loaves have risen, bake them at 350 (340 for 8×8) for 35-45 minutes (or 45-60 minutes) until cooked through and golden. You can brush the tops with melted butter if you like. Let cool completely before cutting and serving.

 

Do you have any family recipes with strange names? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any books you’d like to see on Baking for Bookworms, put those in the comments too. And if you decide to make this bread, let me know how you get on.

 

 

 

Baking for Bookworms: Cinnamon Cake from Kate Forsyth’s Bitter Greens

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So this post is late, obviously. I haven’t been keeping up with my baking for bookworms posts very well, even though they’re one of my favorite features. But I’m working on getting everything back on track. If you have a book you want me to cook or bake from, be sure to leave it in the comments.

The food in the book is used to contrast situations with love and warmth and a feeling of home as well as harsh realities all the characters confront. Forsyth builds worlds with her dishes, uses them to denote status and place. Her food descriptions tend to be really evocative; she doesn’t just drop food in, she makes it stick to the character’s ribs.

This cake is one of the last things that Margherita, soon to be known as the Italian form of Rapunzel, Petrosinella, eats in the warmth and safety of her family for one of her birthdays:

“Margherita was carrying a small, warm, precious, cake in her hands. It smelt fragrantly of cinnamon and sugar. She lifted it to her nose, then quickly licked the edge of the cake. The taste was an explosion of sweetness and richness in her mouth.”                       72

It’s mentioned a couple times, and anything that has cinnamon is enough to make my mouth water, so I knew I had to make it.

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Cinnamon cake recipe slightly adapted from An Italian in the Kitchen.

  • 5 tablespoons brown sugar, divided
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup butter, softened, plus 1 tablespoon melted
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar or lemon juice) added to 1 cup of milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325F.

Mix 3 tablespoons of sugar with the cinnamon (save the rest of the sugar) and set aside.

Sift (or whisk) flour with the other dry ingredients.

Beat the softened butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat until well combined.

Add the liquid and flour in stages, starting and ending with the milk, beating well between each addition. Add the vanilla and beat for 30-60 seconds.

Add one third of the batter to a greased springform pan. You can use a regular cake pan, but it’s better if it’s deep.

After spreading out the batter, sprinkle a thin layer (a little less than half the mixture) of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Then add another third of the batter, another layer of the cinnamon sugar and finally the rest of the batter.

Bake for about one hour or until a skewer comes out clean.

Let cool and place on a cake plate. Brush with butter and dust with the rest of the cinnamon mixture mixed with the remaining two tablespoons of sugar.

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Serve generous slices and enjoy!

Do you have a favorite cake that reminds you of a special birthday or occasion? Or is any occasion the right one for a good cake? Let me know your thoughts on cake in the comments.

 

 

Baking for Bookworms: English Muffins from Tasha Alexander’s And Only to Deceive

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Tasha Alexander’s book doesn’t include very many mentions of food. It’s mostly a part of the general scenery, but it does play one important role, which is to highlight the tension between toeing the line of society’s rules and flaunting them. Some of the food is the height of what English society expects while other dishes help Emily subvert those expectations (for instance, she takes port with the gentlemen in a time when that was simply not done).

[Please excuse the lack of a quote for the time being. I lent my Mom this book and forgot to note the quotation down as I normally do. I will edit the post soon!]

I’m not going to lie to you, making bread from scratch is time consuming and an exercise in patience and humility. It’s also delicious and completely worth the effort.

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English Muffin recipe adapted from Girl Versus Dough

  • 4 1/2 cups bread flour (I used whole wheat flour, which results in a denser, chewier, and sweeter bread)
  • 2 tbs sugar
  • 2 1/4 tsp or one packet of instant yeast
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 3/4 cups milk (I used 1%)
  • 3 tbs butter
  • semolina or farina (to sprinkle on your griddle/pan)

If you have a standing mixer, I would definitely recommend using it for this recipe, if you don’t, then no worries, you can also make this by hand.

In a large bowl (or the bowl of your mixer), put all your dry ingredients as well as the egg but don’t mix.

Heat the milk and butter in a sauce pan over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture is pretty warm bordering on hot. If you have a thermometer (preferably instant read) you want it to register 110-115 F.

Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix just until dough forms. If you have a standing mixer, use your dough hook and knead for 5 minutes. If you don’t, knead by hand for about ten minutes on a lightly floured surface. In either case, you want to look for a dough that’s smooth and elastic and far less sticky.

Lightly oil a bowl and stick the dough in, turning over to coat. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and set somewhere warm to rise for one hour (the microwave works well or on top of your oven).

When dough has roughly doubled in size, it’s ready to bake. Punch down the dough and divide into 16 pieces. Turn your griddle to low heat or if you’re using a regular pan on the stove (or two), turn your stove to low heat.

Sprinkle your surface generously with the semolina or farina. Flatten your balls of dough into rounds and then cook on low heat 7-15 minutes on both sides until browned and cooked. They will puff up a bit. You can put a pan or something (with parchment paper in between) to keep this from happening or you can just flatten them out with your spatula when you turn them over, which is what I did.

If you want to be really technical, you can use an instant read thermometer to see if they’re cooked, which should register 200F. I didn’t do this, I just sort of felt for doneness. If yours are still a bit doughy, you can always cut them in half and stick them in your toaster or toaster oven or you can put them in the oven at 350F for 5-10 minutes.

Let the muffins cool completely before cutting open and eating.

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English muffins remind me simultaneously of my Mom (who loves them) and of that wonderful scene in The Importance of Being Earnest where Jack and Algie fight over them. I love mine with butter and jam. What’s your favorite way to eat an English muffin?

Baking for Bookworms: Tea Cookies from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

allison burris, , , , , , , Leave a comment

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Sorry this post is late–we had company staying with us and there wasn’t time to sit down and write out a post!

As a child, your worldview is largely based on sensory input. Reality is what you taste, hear, smell, touch, and see. Looking back on these experiences, we can interpret these sensations and try to make them fit in a larger worldview. As she writes her extremely descriptive memoir, Maya Angelou largely leaves out her older interpretations of things that happen to her to focus on the experience of being a child. Part of that experience is, of course, related to food, which has the power to draw out many of our deepest memories.

I chose the tea cookies specifically because they’re consumed in an interaction that would later have an influence on Angelou’s career as a reader and a writer. She’s brought into a neighbor’s, Mrs. Flowers’, home and encouraged to read after a traumatizing incident of rape sends her back from her mother’s home in St Louis to her grandmother in the country.

Sometimes it is kindness that most leaves an impression on us later, and the sweetness in this moment is as much due to the sugar in the cookies as it is to the actions of those who find us at our most vulnerable and make us feel human again.

“She carried a platter covered with a tea towel. Although she warned that she hadn’t tried her hand at baking sweets for some time, I was certain that like everything else about her the cookies would be perfect.

They were flat round wafers, slightly browned on the edges and butter-yellow in the center. With the cold lemonade they were sufficient for childhood’s lifelong diet. Remembering my manners, I took nice little ladylike bites off the edges. She said she had made them expressly for me and that she had a few in the kitchen that I could take home to my brother. So I jammed one whole cake in my mouth and the rough crumbs scratched the insides of my jaws, and if I hadn’t had to swallow, it would have been a dream come true.”                                                           99

One of the interesting things about this passage is the way that perfection is attributed to the cookies. Perfection in childhood seems attainable, if only certain things were different about ourselves and certain things remain unknown about others. But in reality, even happy memories are bookmarked by moments of pain and imperfection, roughness with sweetness. It is Angelou’s ability to deftly juxtapose and bring together such seeming opposites that makes her book truly remarkable.

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Tea cookies (also called tea cakes) are a round, simple sugar cookie that can be served with tea or lemonade. You can also spread things on top of the cookies, like jam or lemon curd, make icing or frosting, or sandwich them together.

Adapted from Southern Living‘s recipe.

  • 1 cup softened butter
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 3 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (optional) –if you’re not partial to lemon, you could also use 1/4 nutmeg for more flavor

Beat butter for several minutes until creamy. Add sugar and beat until fluffy, 2-3 more minutes. Add eggs one at a time, until blended. Add in vanilla, salt, and lemon zest.

In 1/2 cup- 1 cup increments, add flour and baking soda until well mixed.

Divide dough in half and chill one hour, until firm. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can roll the dough into balls and press them down so you don’t have to roll the cookies.

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Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll dough on a well floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness for a thinner cookie, or 1/3-1/2 an inch for a thicker, chewier cookie. Try not to handle the dough too much as you do this as this will result in tougher cookies.

Cut out cookies with a round cutter and place on parchment paper or a silpat. Bake for 8-11 minutes or until slightly brown at the edges. Cool on a cooling rack.

You can then repeat the process with the remaining dough or save it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer.

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Is there a memory you credit with inspiring your love of reading? I’ve always loved books, but after second grade my family moved. My teacher gave me a copy of The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum, which she was going to finish reading next year. I sat at our cabin and read this book in one sitting on the porch and I remember looking out and thinking that I was meant to read books.