This year my New Year's Resolution is (drumroll)....to tame the yeast beast!
Yeah, you know what I mean!
BREAD!
This means once a month I am going to try a new bread recipe. Like my pie challenge, I'm not a true nube to bread making. I make Challah, Bialy and on occasion, pizza. But mostly I make Challah. Typically I do it Thursday night and let it do its second rise in my second fridge. When I escape work Friday, I do not open my garage door and promptly slip into the suburban mom uniform (yoga pants and a cotton T while holding a Starbucks/red wine).
I put my pizza stone in the oven and start preheating.
And when its all in the oven....then I put on those yoga pants. They're just so comfy!
As awesome as my Challah is, I'm well aware that I am still just making beginner stuff. I wanted a challenge again. Making pies was like doing a half marathon. Bread making will be like a full marathon. Except with a stand mixer and wearing Danskos clogs.
To get ready for this crazy project, I attempted to plan ahead. When I was at my in-laws during winter break I dug through my mother in-laws cookbooks. She has four shelves of cookbooks. Two books deep. I found several books and then I started read. Then I started to freak. What is a biga anyways? A poolish? Ferment? Sponge? Starter?
Wednesday Thursday Friday! (WTF)
What did I get myself into? I decided to be kind with myself and start with something my level and move from there.
Recipe:
Eat Well Baguettes
I didn't have fancy baguette pans. So like any good Occupational Therapist, I made them out of whatever was nearby: aluminum foil. Not just for tin foil hats anymore folks! I shaped them and placed it on a piece of parchment paper for easy sliding on the pizza stone later.
They worked.
Sorta.
Here are my baguettes after its second rise before I slashed them.
I go to slide the production onto the pizza stone and the baguette in the back tumbles onto the lower rack of my oven. Eek! I rescue it, figuring it just has a more rustic look.
Here is how they looked after baking:
Funny thing is you can tell the one on the left looks a better than the other two, even though it took a tumble.
The problem with my homemade pan? I didn't
spray them or sprinkle them with flour or line them with parchment
paper. They stuck to the bread. I had to peel the foil off the bread like those annoying wrappers that encase laffy taffy candies.
I'm buying a real baguette pan
next time.
I ate some bread straight out of the oven with a wee bit of butter. They were great! Then I used it to make meatball subs for dinner. My oldest child loves meatball subs.
Now I can make a sub sandwich 500 times better than Subway.
Now Bake That!
My last pie for 2012: Key Lime. It's my husband's favorite. Plus it seemed right to start with a citrus cream pie and end with one.
I broke the "rules". Many baking experts say if you are making something for the first time, follow the recipe perfectly and then tweak from there. I looked at five different recipes online and just made it up. My hunches on the quantities worked out and it tasted amazing.
The whipped topping is a little free style. To get the canned whipped cream look, I put my home made whipped topping in my cookie press with a pastry tip. Anything that shoots out whipped cream by a trigger gets any child's attention. My oldest son (who is 9 and a budding foodie) begged me to let him help. Honestly, I got a little frustrated with him at first because he wanted the whipped cream to be a gigantic mound, but we negotiated the design and it turned out pretty.
Recipe below. Note we like our citrus pies a little on the tart side. If you like things really tart, I recommend only putting whipped cream on the edge and increase the zest to 2 tbsp. If you like your key lime pie a little sweet, I would increase the sugar in the crust to 1/2 cup and omit the zest. I use a glass 10" pie pan, so if your pan is smaller, you will need to adjust the amounts.
Thanks to everyone who helped and supported me with my New Year's resolution to make a pie a month. It's been a blast!
Betsy's Key Lime Pie
crust:
2 sleeves graham crackers
1/4 c sugar
1 stick butter, melted
filling:
2 egg yolks
2, 14 oz cans of sweetened condensed milk
1/4 c sour cream
1 tbsp key lime zest
1 c key lime juice (about 40-45 limes)
topping:
1 c whipping cream
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
Crust: Preheat the oven 375 degrees. Grease a 10" pie pan with PAM and wipe off excess spray. Break the crackers into chunks in a food processor. Pulse until crackers are crumbs. Add sugar and pulse a few times. While the processor is running, pour in the melted butter until it looks like wet sand. Press crust into pan and bake for 8 minutes. Allow to cool completely before filling.
Preheat the oven 375 degrees. Mix egg yolks, condensed milk, sour cream, lime juice and zest in a bowl with a whisk until completely blended. Pour into cooled crust and bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 1 hour and then put the pie in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours until chilled through.
Topping: Mix whipping cream, vanilla and sugar in a bowl. Beat on high with an electric mixer until peaks form. Either place in a pastry bag/cookie press with a fluted pastry tip or spread on the top of the pie.
Now Bake That!
It's that time of year. When my coworkers and I all make dozens of cookies, bring them to work and line up an assembly line of baked deliciousness. We pile cookies into tins and deliver them all over the office to people we want to acknowledge with carbs.
Thank you, you're amazingly awesome cookies.
Happy Holidays cookies.
Secret preemptive bribes for favors in the future cookies.
I made these peanut butter cup cookies a few years ago and everyone was hooked. I like to call them double peanut butter cookies because the peanut butter comes in two ways. The cookie and the candy.
I try to mix it up and ask each year, "What should I make?" They all give me that eye-squinty stare and then the command that they pose as a question: "You are making peanut butter cup cookies right?"
Okay. Okay.
These cookies are great for cookie exchanges since they're so cute!
Betsy's Double Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
1 1/4c flour
3/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. kosher salt
1/2 c butter, softened
1/2 c peanut butter, creamy
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c granulated sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
peanut butter cups (around 48), unwrapped
Preheat the oven 375 degrees. Spray a mini muffin pan very well with cooking spray or use mini baking cups. Beat butter for 30 seconds. Add peanut butter and sugars. Beat until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat well. Add dry ingredients. Roll a small amount of dough into a ball and place in the cups, squishing in the dough just a little. The cup should be around half full. Bake for 5 minutes. Take out, press unwrapped peanut butter cups and bake for 7-8 more minutes. Cool completely before removing from the pan. Store at room temperature or the refrigerator.
Now Bake That!
Sometimes you want chocolate chip cookies but don't have the time to bake them. (Ya know, one pan, 10-12 minutes at a time). To solve my issue I scoured recipes books. I received a copy of Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa cookbook, foolproof for the holidays from my in-laws. I flipped through the pages and the answer was...blondies!
Here is the recipe: Chocolate Chunk Blondies
I used chocolate chips instead of chunks but they turned out just like the picture. Instead of flouring the pan, I sprayed it with butter pam and used a piece of parchment paper. I cooled them completely so I had no problems pulling these suckers out of the pan. I took them to my boys' chess tournament and a teenager ate one for breakfast. He couldn't wait! It wasn't just him. I brought home an empty pan. The kids loved them.
Now Bake That!
I had it all planned out. I was going to make from scratch, pumpkin pie (from an actual pumpkin, no can) during Thanksgiving weekend. I walked into my mother in law's house for the weekend and there were two pies on her stove cooling (chocolate pecan and pear cranberry). Shoot! These pies weren't even for Thanksgiving dinner. They were for Friday. Someone else was making the pies for Thursday. The last thing we needed was more pie. I didn't bake a thing that weekend.
So I changed my plan for November. Instead of making pumpkin pie, I was going to make chess pie. First off, I did some research and no one really knows why they call this chess pie. What I can tell you is it is a southern style, custard pie. It has corn meal in it which is unique.
Why chess pie? I saw it in a cookbook and never heard of it before. Plus it has the word chess it in. I live in a fanatical chess area of the United States. The chess hall of fame is in this city. All kids play chess here it seems. You look at the trophy case in their elementary
school and its filled with chess trophies. Seriously. To give an analogy, I feel like I live in the Green Bay Packers Lambeau Field of chess. Thus it is no surprise that both my kids play
chess. I take them to a club nearly every Friday. I'm even learning how to play. My first grader beats me, but you have to start somewhere. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to try out the recipe and at some point make it for a tournament.
Why two? A name like chess pie...it just seemed natural to not just make one pie, but two! One dark (chocolate) and one light (lemon) colored to represent those black and white chess pieces.
On to how:
I used my typical Barefoot Contessa's Perfect Pie Crust.
Bill Clinton's Lemon Chess Pie was the first pie I made today. It took a lot of lemons to get 3 tbsp of zest, but otherwise the recipe was easy. I don't know if the recipe is really Bill Clinton's, but it looked yummy, so I gave it a go. It's important to bake it until it was golden brown on top and not go with the baking time on the recipe.
The Chocolate Chess Pie recipe was also easy to follow. I had one snafu though. I poured the filling in and then realized, I forgot to put the milk in it! To try to fix it, I poured out half the filling, mixed in the milk and poured it back in the shell.
I was worried. Custard pies are my enemy. I have had several runny pies. Both recipes called for 35-45 minutes. I baked both longer, but unfortunately, I still had issues. It was runny. It might have been my milk issue, but I wasn't sure.
Even though the chocolate pie was runny, it was delicious. It was like homemade dark chocolate pudding with a crunchy brownie-like top. An hour in the refrigerator helped tremendously. It still was a little runny, but a huge improvement.
The lemon chess pie turned out great and tasted like a giant lemon bar. It was good with either whipped cream or just plain.
Now Bake That! and that!
I have this giant book by James Peterson with the simple title: BAKING. I have done one recipe from it (sadly I can't remember which one) and wasn't happy with it. It deserved a second chance. It was a spontaneous baking choice, so I looked for a recipe that could accommodate whatever I had at home. What could be simpler than pound cake?
You can get his book at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
It turned out wonderfully and it was easy.
Now bake that!
I love that vignette from the movie When Harry Met Sally, when they talk in funny voices about pecan pie. Which makes me think...how are you supposed to say pecan? Is it pee-can? or pah-cawn?
Most pecan pie recipes have corn syrup in it. I'm not opposed to corn syrup. I make marshmallows from scratch. Yet, some traditional pecan pies seem too sweet. (and this is coming from the person who loves things sweet.)
Therefore, I was very excited to find this no corn syrup version from the All Recipes website, titled Pecan Pie V. It just uses regular granulated sugar and brown sugar. I read the comments and one person said that the pie top wasn't pretty. So the only change I made to the recipe was decorate the top with pecan halves.
The only problems I had this month is that there was not quite enough filling, the crust shrunk a little and I forgot to take the pie shield off, so the crust was a little pale looking.
Aesthetic comments aside, the pie tasted AMAZING. My parents were in town when I made this pie and were thrilled to give it a try. They loved it!
Now Bake That!!
