Blue cheese and fig preserve biscuits

Update 2025:   When I made these a second time, I used a different blue cheese, Treasure Cave out of Wisconsin, which was milder and saltier.  It gave a cheesier taste in the final product, and I didn't need to add the sprinkle of kosher salt.  I also rolled them a bit thinner, possibly too thin, and got around 100 biscuits.  (I count around 70 in that photo of the first time.)

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I made these for a holiday party at work. Pretty straight forward recipe, although I made two small changes. I thought walnuts would be a good addition and so added them as a topping, but because the biscuits are so small, the nuts had to be chopped smaller than desirable. (Unless you put one large piece on, which might look better.) I also sprinkled some kosher salt onto the jam after baking to elevate the sweet/salty thing going on. I added nutmeg, but I'm not sure it was detectable.

My changes are shown in italics. Here's what I used:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
4 ounces blue cheese, crumbled  (I used Trader Joe's crumbled blue cheese.)
ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
fig preserves (about 3 tablespoons)
chopped walnuts (optional)
kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the flour, baking powder, butter, blue cheese, black pepper, and nutmeg in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the dough just comes together and starts to form a ball.  Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times to pull the dough together. Roll out to 1/8 inch thick with a floured rolling pin. Cut rounds out of the dough with a floured 1-inch cutter and transfer the rounds to an ungreased baking sheet.  Using the back of a round half-teaspoon measure or your knuckle, make an indention in the top of each dough round. Spoon about 1/4 teaspoon of fig preserves into each indention, using your finger to push the preserves as best as possible into the indentations.  Sprinkle walnuts on top of preserves, if using.  Bake the savories for 10 – 14 minutes (mine were perfect at 12), until the pastry is just turning light golden around the edges.  Sprinkle preserves with kosher salt.  Let cool on the baking sheet until firm enough to handle, then remove to a wire rack to cool.

These were very easy to make, but were a bit time consuming.  I hesitated in using the full 1/4 teaspoon of jam because I was afraid it would melt and run, but it didn't melt much at all.  (It also never got "bubbly" as the original recipe suggests.)  Furthermore, the cheese is a little bitter, so the sweetness is necessary.  Don't skim on the jam.  The added salt on top also helped cut the bitterness and was a good addition. 

Conclusion:  These were a hit, although I found them a bit dry (the kind that sucks the moisture out of your mouth) and I detected the cheese only as bitterness and not really as "cheese".  Perhaps a different brand or style would produce a different result. Apricot jam would also be a good choice.

Recipe:   Blue Cheese and Fig Savouries via The Runaway Spoon

December ABC challenge: stollen

I spent several years in Germany as a kid. While there, my mom picked up the practice of making stollen at Christmas, so I am very familiar with it and regularly make it myself. I have my own preferred, well-tweaked recipe, but gave this one a try.  I have a lot of questions about it.

The preparation seemed overly fussy, which has been a common issue with this recipe source. I'm not sure all the steps are necessary. I normally bloom my yeast but don't bother with a sponge. One or the other seems sufficient. But after that, I don't understand why there are all the resting sessions. I also question the benefits of using the "sweetener". Zesting citrus peel releases the oil, which is where the flavor is. The longer all that surface area is exposed, the more the essence will dissipate. Mixing the zest with a little sugar before adding it to the recipe will prevent clumps of it in the dough, but I think the zest should be used immediately in order to get maximum flavor. As for shaping the dough, they lost me completely.  The instructions weren't clear, but anyway I don't know why they like such a thin layer of bread on the bottom.  I don't think it looks good, and doesn't seem like a very stable slice.

Here's what I used:

180 g mixture of raisins, currants, and cranberries, measured after plumping soaked and dried
1/2 cup rum 
250 g all-purpose flour
135 g lukewarm milk
7 g instant yeast 
2 heaping tablespoons high-gluten flour
5.5 7 g salt
1 egg yolk
40 g (salted) butter, softened
15 g sweetener (orange and lemon zest sugar)
4 teaspoons sugar
zest of 1/3 of a lemon
zest of 1/3 of an orange
150 g almond paste combined with 1/2 a small egg or one egg yolk (recipe below)
melted butter for brushing
icing sugar for dusting

Almond paste

75 g blanched almonds flour
75 g fine sugar
zest of 1/3 of an unwaxed lemon
about 17 g/ml water

1 egg yolk

A few days before making the bread, soak the dried fruits in the rum until they have plumped. Drain and dry on paper towels before using. Also make the almond paste by mixing the first three ingredients to a smooth paste, adding enough water to make it smooth and firm. Keep tightly sealed and refrigerated.

When you are ready to make the bread, bring the almond paste to room temperature, then mix with the egg yolk.  The paste should be smooth and supple. 

In a bowl, combine half the AP flour, all the yeast, the egg yolk, and lukewarm milk. Mix well with a dough whisk, cover, and let stand for 30 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients (except for the dried fruit) and knead for 5 to 7 minutes with a standing mixer or about 10 to 14 minutes by hand. The dough should be smooth, supple and satiny, slightly sticky, and with good gluten development.  Add the prepared fruits and work them through the dough until evenly distributed. (If the fruit mixture is a bit wet, sprinkle on some flour before adding it to the dough.)  Form the dough into a ball, place in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rest for 20 minutes in a warm, draft-free environment.

Shape the dough into a loaf (similar to Italian bread), cover, and let it rest again for 20 minutes in a warm, draft-free environment. Flatten the loaf with a rolling pin into an oval shape, leaving the edges a little thicker. Make a flattened log out of the almond paste, almost the length of the bread, and place it in the middle. Fold the dough in half over the paste, leaving the top half to fall just short of evenly meeting the bottom half.  Place on a lightly greased baking sheet, cover, and allow to rise.  This should take at least 40 minutes to 1 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.  Make sure the bread is fully risen before it goes into the oven. When you think it has risen enough, gently poke the dough. If the dent remains and you feel no resistance at all, the bread is ready to bake.   If the indentation disappears, the dough needs more time.  (For a light, fluffy loaf, let the dough rise as long as possible.)  Bake the stollen for 35 minutes until golden brown, covering lightly with foil if it's browning too quickly. While still warm but not hot, rub the loaf with butter, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.  If desired, rub on a second coat of butter, then sprinkle a second time with powdered sugar.  Allow loaf to cool completely before slicing.

While I've enjoyed the change up in recipes from American standards with this recipe source, I'm happy to see its backside.  It's been a frustrating journey.  On this challenge, I had a hard time getting this dough to come together as it should.  For example, why are they using AP flour if they want good gluten development?  I had no choice but to finally add some high gluten flour after kneading the dough in a mixer for about 20 minutes with no success.  I also think the author misrepresented the amount of fruit. There was far too much in the dough---it was essentially raisin bread---and I wasn't the only one in our challenge group who got this result. I measured 180 grams of fruit, and then soaked them, but I think you're supposed to soak the fruit, and THEN measure out 180 grams. The additional wet fruit made incorporating it very difficult: the dough tore, the fruit fell out, and I had to sprinkle flour over all the wet spots to try to get things to hold together. I also did not get a huge rise (to give "light and fluffy" bread). It's obvious from the photos on their web page that they had less fruit in their bread. I've adjusted the directions accordingly.

Conclusion:  In the end, the bread was good.  It wasn't light and fluffy, but that's fine with me; I don't think stollen should be.  I couldn't taste the citrus over all the fruit, and I would have liked to have had some spices in there.  I also think there was a little too much almond paste to bread, but I'd reduce that only a small amount.  (Perhaps with less fruit the balance would be okay.)  My own recipe has a lot more butter in it, and that creates a crust with an almost deep-fried crunchiness to it, which I missed on this one.  Nonetheless, it got rave reviews from the family.

Recipes:  Our Perfect Stollen and almond paste via Weekend Bakery.

Strawberry Basil Bundt cake

Update 8/28/22:  I made this again, properly this time (from a box with an expiration date of 2017, but oh well); curious how it turned out looking pretty much the same.  (Perhaps slightly less neon.)  I made only half the mix and baked it in a 5" x 2" round pan for about 38 minutes.  Also, based on my earlier notes, I used half the oil (2 tablespoons).

It baked quickly around the edges, then rose quite a lot in the middle.  Perhaps I should have used a lower temperature -- the cake was a little dry and quite brown around the edges.   In addition, with the correct mix in the cake, maybe the full amount of oil would have worked better as well.  I'm not sure which factor caused the dryness -- perhaps both.  Also, it could use a little more salt.  All in all it was a little bland, and I'm not sure about the basil this time.  I sensed I was eating something more savory, like cornbread, but then I'd get the overly sweet glaze.  Sort of a weird mix.  (One of the things I don't like about Bundt cakes and similar is that there's so much frosting on the outside and nothing on the inside -- it's too uneven.)

I still have half the box left, so I have one more try to get it right.

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Let me say up front that this is a boxed cake.  I saw it in World Market and thought it sounded interesting, and it didn't have any weird ingredients.  (Well there's basil, but I digress...)

I was making it on a weekday evening to take to a work party the next day.  When I opened the box, there were 3 unmarked, foil-looking plastic bags.  I searched them all over looking for some identification --- there was supposed to be a batter mix, a swirl mix, and a glaze mix --- but I couldn't find anything.  I figured the largest bag must be the batter mix and the middle-sized bag, the swirl mix.  The instructions were to mix up the cake batter and reserve 1 cup.  To that reserved cup you were to add the swirl mix.  The swirl mix, from what I could tell, was just strawberry-flavored powdered sugar.  Didn't seem TOO odd --- the cake mix wasn't terribly sweet, so a swirl of a more potent flavor seemed reasonable, but was a little disappointing.

I made the cake per the directions, swirling the two batters together, and it baked up fine.  I left it to cool overnight, with the intention of glazing it during lunch the next day. 

So the next day, I start to prepare the glaze.  I pick up the packet and there I see, in fine type, "Swirl mix".  Well now, isn't that interesting.  No wonder the mix I'd used had looked like powdered sugar.  It WAS!  But a little (okay a lot) of extra sugar in the cake wouldn't hurt anything.  But how would the swirl mix be as glaze?  I was about to find out.

I opened up the packet and it was a dark pink powder, sort of like dry Jello.  It tasted mildly sweet, like strawberry, and a bit tangy.  I added about a cup of powdered sugar and a tablespoon or two of water until it was a glazing consistency, and forged ahead.

Conclusion:  In the end, it all worked out fine.  The cake was quite sweet, and the glaze came out tasting a bit like candy and had these strawberry "bits" in it.  A little went a long way --- it somewhat overwhelmed the rather delicate cake flavors --- but everyone thought it was great.  It's a decent cake mix, and those two flavors do actually compliment each other nicely.  But now I feel compelled to bake it again to see what it's like when done right!  Only this time, I would cut the oil (1/2 cup) in half, as it was a bit rich.  In the end, a fun experiment.

Recipe:  Strawberry and Basil Bundt Cake Mix by Sof'ella

November ABC challenge: pumpkin buns

This is the Avid Baker's Challenge second foray into pumpkin buns.  The first, a King Arthur recipe, were excellent and set the bar high.

I've had trouble with this source's recipes, particularly with getting the right texture, and this one was no exception.  I'll give them a pass on this one, though, because I substituted half of the flour for whole wheat.  And since I didn't have bread flour handy, I used AP flour and threw in some high gluten flour.  I also cut the recipe in half.

Here's what I used.  Deviations from half the recipe are shown in italics and strikeout.  Yield 6 buns:

500 120g bread whole wheat flour 
130g all-purpose flour
2 heaping tablespoons high gluten flour
5g instant yeast
4 5g salt
100g pumpkin puree 
1/2 egg (medium)
25 g honey
1/2 tsp pumpkin spice (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves)
35g+ lukewarm water
25g unsalted butter, softened
water and raw cane granulated sugar to coat the buns (or coat with egg wash)
6 pecan pieces to be used as stalks on your pumpkins after baking

Ingredients should be at warm room temperature, including the pumpkin puree.  Add all the ingredients except the water and butter into a large bowl and blend together.  Add 3/4 of the water and see how the dough comes together, adding more water as necessary.  (I added at least twice the amount called for.)  Knead for 10 minutes, then add the softened butter in 3 stages and knead for another 5 minutes until dough is slightly sticky and silky smooth.  (When you touch it with your finger it should stick to the dough for just a second, like it would to a post-it note.)

Shape the dough into a ball, put it in a greased bowl, cover and leave to rest for 60 minutes in a warm place (24°C / 75°F).  Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and shape them into balls. Cover with floured clingfilm and leave to rest for 15 minutes.  With a knife or dough cutter, make eight cuts from the edge towards the center, about 1.5" long, dividing the bun into eight segments. Make a hole in the center with your index finger, all the way down to the bottom, so it will not disappear during proofing and baking.  Place the buns on a greased baking tray; brush each bun with water and sprinkle with the cane sugar.  Cover and leave to proof for at least 90 minutes in a warm place.  Bake at 355°F for 15 minutes until orange-golden. (If you think the buns have the right color, you can reduce the temperature to 300°F after 8 to 10 minutes, so they will not get too dark.)  Cool slightly before adding the pecan segments.  Serve with the salted maple butter.

Salted maple butter
50g salted butter 
17g maple syrup

Add the maple syrup to softened butter and beat or stir into a smooth consistency. Rechill until firm but not hard, or shape into a log and wrap tightly.

Conclusion: Well, I've had better, but I'm not sure the recipe was entirely at fault.  These were rather dense, so I guess I didn't let them rise long enough.  I think using half whole wheat flour would normally work fine, but the flour I used wasn't the freshest and the buns had a slightly bitter taste.  But I think they could have used a stronger pumpkin flavor, and more spice.  (But again, the spices weren't very fresh either.  I used more to compensate, but like flour, spices get bitter with age and lose their sweetness.)  I had questioned brushing them with water, especially before rising, and as expected they had a weird dryness on top from the "pastiness", like I'd spread them with a flour/water paste.  Not sure why they didn't recommend milk.

Recipe:  Pumpkin Buns with Salted Maple Butter via Weekend Bakery

Spooky chocolate coffin muffins

I couldn't resist a coffin pan, even though I knew it would have an extremely limited use.  Coffins!

It's called a brownie pan, but you could use any recipe that produced a somewhat sturdy bake.  (They were a little troublesome getting out of the pan, so you wouldn't want anything really light and delicate.  Be sure to grease it well.)  I used this recipe for chocolate zucchini muffins, then piped in skeletons of cream cheese frosting.  A healthy and spooky breakfast!

October ABC challenge: classic Dutch apple pie

Generally I like to mess with recipes, make them my own.  And I certainly have ideas about what I like in apple pie.  But since this is a challenge recipe, I felt I should make it fairly closely to the original; I didn't want my changes to affect the authenticity of the recipe.  I had to make substitutions for what I didn't have, and then some other changes to accommodate my personal tastes (such as adding salt and reducing the sugar.) The salt came in the form of salted butter.  I suspect the crust of the original recipe would be very sweet like a cookie, which I didn't want, so I cut the sugar there.

Here's what I used:

Crust:
300g 150g (1¼ cup) self raising all-purpose flour
150g (1¼ cup) whole wheat flour
1 7/8 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
200g (14 tablespoons) cold, salted butter, cut into pieces
150g 67g (1/3 cup) soft light brown muscovado granulated sugar
1 tablespoon dark molasses
1 tablespoon ice water (as needed)
¾ egg (35g)
¼ beaten egg for brushing

Filling:
1 kg (2 pounds) tart apples (2/3 Pippin, 1/3 Braeburn)
fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons cinnamon
50g (¼ cup) sugar

Process all the dough ingredients except for the egg in a food processor until you have a mixture resembling bread crumbs. Add the 3/4 egg and process again briefly into a smooth dough. Divide the dough into two unequal pieces, about 2/5 and 3/5. Shape the larger piece into a thick disc and the smaller into a rectangle. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for an hour.

I like to leave the peel on apples. Core apples and cut each into 4 equal wedges, then cut each wedge into 5 thick slices; sprinkle with lemon juice to prevent oxidation. Add the cinnamon and sugar and stir to coat. Cover and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Grease an 8-inch round springform baking tin. Roll out the disc of dough to an 11-inch circle. Working quickly, before the dough becomes too soft, fit it into the bottom and up the sides of the tin; cut off excess. Press out any air pockets and repair tears or holes with the scraps. (Alternatively, you can simply press pieces of the dough into the tin and skip rolling it out.) Add the prepared apples. Make sure to distribute the apple slices evenly to fill the pie so it is firmly packed. (The apples will shrink during baking). With the remaining rectangle of dough, roll out and cut strips to make a lattice on top of the apples, pinching it to the bottom crust to secure. Brush the top lightly with the 1/4 beaten egg, adding a bit of water to the egg to make it easier to brush. Bake the pie for 60 to 70 minutes, until browned and the apples are soft. Leave to cool. Run a knife around the inside of the crust before releasing the pan.

 

Once again, as always, I am frustrated by the recipes from this blog because they don't come together as described.  Using all the ingredients, I had a powder instead of a dough.  I had to add a tablespoon of water to get it to come together.  I even measured by weight, not by volume, so that was not the issue.  In addition, I had no trouble at all getting the apples into the pan, and in fact even added an additional apple at the last minute to fill it up.  Perhaps Dutch springform pans aren't as deep.  (Mine was 3".)  Otherwise, this was a pretty straightforward recipe.

Conclusion:  Not sold on this.  The crust was rather soft, with a sandy texture, very much like a graham cracker crust, which I don't care for.  It didn't give a nice contrast to the soft apples.  Also, because this pie is so deep, the proportions of filling to crust are very uneven.  You have to utterly destroy your slice in order to get crust and filling in every bite, otherwise you end up eating a lot of apple and then have a shortbread cookie to finish.  Surprisingly, I didn't think it had enough salt, even with all the salt in the butter.  As it was, this pie came across more like just baked apples.  The whole thing seemed a little bland, but it wasn't bad.

Recipe:  Classic Dutch Apple Pie via Weekend Bakery.

September ABC challenge: speculaas-spiced honey bread

We just moved into a new office building and everyone was going to be unpacking and getting organized first thing Monday morning.  I thought I'd ease the way a little and bring in some fortification.  This spiced bread recipe seemed like the perfect thing, but in muffin form for easy handling.  I had an idea in mind as to how this was going to turn out, and I was excited, but it didn't quite work that way.  Partially, that was because I baked in muffin tins instead of a pan, which caused them to bake faster.  But otherwise, it was the recipe.  True, I didn't follow it exactly, but I don't think my changes should have had any impact on the results.

Here's what I used:

125 g (1¼ cups) fine whole grain, stone ground, dark rye flour
125 g (1¼ cups) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch 1/4 teaspoon salt
65 g (4½ tablespoons) melted butter
110 g (1/3 cup) honey
110 g (1/2 cup) sugar
2 teaspoons speculaas spices (recipe below) or gingerbread /pumpkin pie spices
1 egg
200 g (7 ounces) buttermilk mix of Greek yogurt/milk

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease or line an 8×8 inch baking tin. (I used muffin tins.) In a bowl, combine the sugar, honey, speculaas spices and melted butter and give it a quick whisk. Beat in the egg. Combine the flours with the baking soda and salt. Sift in the flour in about three stages, alternating with the buttermilk. Whisk until you have a smooth batter. Pour the batter into the tin and make sure it is evenly distributed. Bake for 25 minutes, then turn down your oven down to 350° and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove the gingerbread from the oven and let it cool in the tin for about 30 minutes. Wrapping it in foil while still warm helps it stay moist.

Speculaas spice mix (two quantities given -- all measurements are in teaspoons)
cinnamon                                  3 ¼       1 5/8
ground cloves                            1             1/2
grated nutmeg                            3/4        3/8
ground white pepper                   1/2         1/4
ground aniseed                          1             1/2
ginger powder                             1/2        1/4
cardamom powder                       1/4        1/8
totals                                        7 ¼       3 5/8
 
I'm not sure why they have you start at a higher temperature.  Baking soda, unlike baking powder, doesn't need heat to react.  And I baked the second tray at 350, since that's where the oven was, and they turned out the same.

I used my fluted muffin tins for this, thinking the cakelettes would be cute and perfect for work.  But the batter rose so much in the oven that the first batch, though I filled them only 3/4 full, came out completely round.  I put only about a heaping tablespoon in each cup in the second tray, and at least they came up only to the top of the cup, but still the tops are so rounded that I can't set them out with the decorative side up.  They look ridiculous.

As with every recipe I've made from this site, my batter was WAY too thick.  I added about 1/3 cup of water to it, just to loosen it up a bit, and it was still too thick.  I had to pat it down with a wet finger or I might have ended up with peaks and valleys from where the batter held its shape.  Consequently, with all the mixing, and perhaps also due to the high percentage of baking soda, I ended up with large holes.  My home economics teacher would not have been pleased.

Not a nice texture. 

Conclusion:  Very disappointing.  Very bland, and you can taste the baking soda.  Not at all what I had expected.  They rose tremendously while baking, so I think the soda could probably be cut in half.  (I wonder if there's an error in the recipe and it was supposed to be baking powder.)  And they definitely need more spice.  Just seems like the proportions are all wrong on this recipe.

Original recipe:  Dutch speculaas gingerbread cake with rye, buttermilk & honey via Weekend Bakery