Tag: King Arthur Baking

Lemon and Blueberry

What finer spring flavor combination is there than citrus and berry. So when a departmental get-together arouse, I decided to try the King Arthur Double Lemon Thumbprint cookies. They recommended either lemon curd or raspberry jam for the filling. with an optional lemon glaze drizzled over. My first thought was to make it a blueberry glaze for contrasting flavor/color, using powdered blueberries. But then I thought, what about a blueberry curd?  So I tried this recipe.

The first step was to boil the blueberries with lemon juice and zest to release the juice. 

The you strain it to remove the skin bits etc. You can see the strainer and bowl in the upper right of the right hand picture. I had a moment of temptation to buy blueberry juice, but the resulting “juice” was a thicker concentrate and I don’t think store bought juice would work, although it would have produced smoother results. Perhaps if one reduced it down by boiling. Once you have the juice, you cook it with the sugar, eggs, and a bit of salt, then pour the hot liquid over the butter. Nice taste but not as thick as I would like for this purpose, so I’d either try a different recipe or tweak this one should I make them again.

I made lemon curd to go on the other half the cookies and did contrasting glazes on both. You might be able to see below the difference in thickness between the blueberry curd chilled over night and the slightly still warm lemon curd. The lemon glaze ended up absorbed by the blueberry curd, but the blueberry glaze remained as pictured below. But both were quite tasty.

A little St Paddy’s Day baking

I thought about actually going Irish and baking a rye soda bread that I love, but was really in the mood for pistachios. So I made some homemade pistachio marzipan and used it to decorate a cardamon-rose cake (since the measure-for-measure GF flour is supposed to sub for AP flour without any adaptations, I figured the reverse was true, so this time I didn’t make it GF). I took it to my monthly card game. The cake was a delight, although the game didn’t go my team’s way this time month. Ah well, still fun to visit with friends. 

If you’re curious about the Marzipan, I basically adapted this recipe from an almond one, using pasteurized egg whites for safe eating without baking. 

Ingredients

  • ca. 450g raw unsalted pistachio nuts (unshelled)
  • 100g sugar (superfine would have been better, but I went regular golden sugar — like white sugar only less processed/vegan)
  • 350g confectioner’s sugar
  • 65 g pasteurized egg whites 
  • 1/8-1/4 teaspoon rosewater

Instructions

  • Add the pistachios and golden sugar to a food processor and pulse until they’re powdery. Add the confectioner’s sugar and pulse to mix, scraping the sides as needed.
  • Add the egg whites and rosewater and pulse until it comes together into a thick paste.
  • Ready to use immediately, or wrap well and store in the fridge until ready to use – up to 10 days.

Cookie Season: Also not a cookie..

One last sweet for the season: Peppermint Crunch Marshmallows. They make great gifts with hot cocoa mix. They don’t toast well (I tried), but are beautiful in cocoa or by themselves. I’ve also added a little cocoa powder to the marshmallow or substitutes Red Hots and cinnamon oil for the peppermint to do a cinnamon crunch variety. 

A New Bake: Yuletide Bread

A nice, seasonal quick bread, recipe from KAB. The spice blend (cardamom, coriander, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon) lends nice flavor to the bread. It’s loaded with a mix of almonds, cranberries, golden raisins, and candied lemon and orange. I plan to go for a panettone next week, but in the meantime this was a good bake. It did take longer in the oven than predicted. I tented foiled over the top, but the bottom was a touch browner than I would have liked (despite a sheet underneath). If I make it again, I may try the alternative 9″x5″ pan to see if I can get it baked without overcooking the bottom.

Cookie Season: Apple Cider Caramels

Well, not actually cookies. I do love to make these apple cider caramels from King Arthur Baking. You can buy the “boiled cider” – a thicker and more flavorful reduction of apple cider or you can just reduce down the cider yourself.  Sometimes I sprinkle pecan pieces on top when still warm. I do recommend a digital candy thermometer – it will even beep as you approach target temperature!

Cookie Season: Ginger Molasses Amber Ale

 This is one of my favorite ginger cookies. The recipe is from the King Arthur Baking site. You take the amber ale and reduce it from 12 oz. to 1.5 oz. It becomes almost syrupy and truly bitter, but then provides a marvelous under flavor. Golden raisins are added and you don’t really taste them per se (people with whom I’ve shared the recipe with have asked me if I skipped them) but I think add a lot to the chewy texture. I had been using a different recipe for years (with some balsamic and black pepper among other things – this one too has black pepper) but haven’t baked it since discovering this recipe.

The problem with sourdough…

My sourdough starter (it doesn’t have a name, though friends have asked) was about two years old when the pandemic started. It’s quite perky. I don’t bake enough to want to feed it daily, so I keep it in the fridge and feed it once a week. That works grand.

The question (and for some, the problem) with a sourdough starter is what to do with the discard -when you remove some of the starter before adding fresh flour and water to keep the ratio of food to yeast in balance. Just to toss it would be a waste. I’ve ended up with a nice collection of recipes aimed at using the discard.

For bread itself, I do love the King Arthur Do Nothing Sourdough. Some folk find it a too wet do. I add about 65-75g. of seeds and grains for flavor and texture (I like the KAB Harvest Grains), but it does also make it a more manageable dough.

While I don’t bake with mixes, the last one I regularly used with the Jiffy cornbread mix. Then I discovered this sourdough cornbread recipe on The Gingered Whisk. My mother called it the best cornbread she’s ever eaten.

The Sourdough Crackers (also KAB) are very popular in my office. I really enjoy Penzey’s Mural of Flavor as the herbs in them.

I also like KAB’s Old Fashioned Maine Waffles, that includes part whole wheat flour – perfect for a weekend brunch.

Finally, I want to highlight the Sourdough Flatbread from Raspberries and Kohlrabi. Although the title says no yeast, what they mean is no commercial yeast. I’ve used it with both Mediterranean dishes and curries.

But all the recipes at the first link above have been good. Even though the sourdough craze of the pandemic has passed, it’s never too late to start your own. Or get a baby starter from a friend.

A little Labor Day baking

School starts this week and I thought I’d whip up some cookies to welcome my advisees and colleagues back. I’m going to make three of my favorites: Chocolate Chip Oatmeal with Ras el-hanout (NYTimes Cooking; paywall warning), Ginger Molasses Amber Ale (King Arthur Baking), and Salted Rosemary Shortbread.

Ras el-hanout was a real revelation for me because it is usually associated with savory cooking, but lends such a wonderful warmth and depth of flavor to the Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies. Like chili powder blends, every one is a different. Literally, the name means “top of the shop,” i.e. a blend of the best spices a merchant has to offer. I like the blend from Stock+Spice in NH.

In the ginger cookies, no alcohol remains: you reduce the 12oz of ale down to 1.5 oz. by boiling. The reduced ale adds a little bitter under-taste that pairs perfectly with the molasses and ginger. People often can’t believe that the ginger cookies contain (golden) raisins, but it adds to the flavor and chew.

And the rosemary shortbread doesn’t have a specific recipe. I use the basic shortbread recipe from the King Arthur Cookies Cookbook (an old edition), but any basic shortbread recipe you like would do. I finely mince the rosemary and mix it with the sugar and butter and then put Maldon’s sea salt flakes (crushed between my fingers) on the bottom before baking. The idea came from some Lark cookies that my mother bought.

Pictures of all three (from past bakes) can be seen on my baking site.