The doughnuts tasted fine, but they weren't very substantial. It didn't feel like I was eating a doughnut, but rather a skinny muffin. So I gave up and overfilled the tins to make something more like a flat muffin. One of these days, I'll have to try one of the recipes that claims to actually be a doughnut batter.
Here's what I used:
2¼ - 2½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups whole wheat flour
1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1¼ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
3/4 teaspoon salt
2¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1/6 cup canola oil
1/6 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated
1 egg
Filling
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
In a large bowl, combine one cup all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, oats, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, salt, and yeast. In a saucepan, stir together water, pumpkin, oil, and applesauce; heat to 120F to 130F. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture; beat with an electric mixer on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Add eggs; beat on high 2 minutes. Using a wooden spoon, stir in as much remaining all-purpose flour to make a firm dough; turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead 6 to 8 minutes to make a smooth and elastic dough; shape into a ball. Place in a lightly greased bowl, turning to grease surface of dough. Cover with towel; let rise in warm place until double in size (about one hour).
For filling, in a small bowl combine brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice. Set aside.
Lightly grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Punch dough down, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface; roll into an 18 x 9-inch rectangle. Spread with 2 tablespoons butter to within 1/2 inch of edges; sprinkle with brown sugar mixture. Cover with towel; let rise in warm place until doubled in size (about 30 minutes).
Preheat oven to 350F. Bake loaf 50-60 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when lightly tapped. Cool bread in pan on wire rack 10 minutes, then remove from pan to cool completely.
I didn't have applesauce, so I tried shredding the apple and cooking it with the other ingredients, the idea being it would turn into mush in the process. It didn't exactly fail, but I'd try something different in the future.
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| Chocolate and pumpkin are always a good combination! |
Conclusion: Not especially pumpkiny, especially after spreading with butter and honey or cinnamon, but still tasty. The filling added just the right amount of sweetness so you didn't need anything more. Could have used a little more salt to counter the sweetness. My only real complaint is that the outside whirl is too dry. Perhaps it was overbaked? Didn't look it, and the sugar that spilled out wasn't burned.
Recipe: "Pumpkin Swirl Bread" via America’s Favorite Pumpkin Recipes by Centennial Kitchen
I'm looking for my mom's recipe for coffee cake that I grew up with. This was the first attempt.
1¼ cup flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup shortening salted butter1/4 1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
Combine flower, brown sugar, and salt. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly; set aside 1/4 cup crumb mixture. To remaining crumb mixture, add baking powder, soda, and spices; Mixed well. Add buttermilk or sour milk and egg; Mix well. Pour into a greased, 8 x 8-inch baking pan. Combine reserved crumbs with nuts; Sprinkle atop cake. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes. Serve warm.
I reduced the salt because I used salted butter. I also threw additional nuts on top, probably at least another 2 tablespoons. I didn't even notice that the recipe called for a round pan; I used a square one.
This was so close, but not quite. The cake was brown from the sugar, but my mom's cake was light. Did she use white sugar instead? I doubt it -- she rarely deviated from recipes. It seemed like hers was thicker, and I think there was more topping.
Conclusion: Pretty basic. A little sweet -- I'd like the topping to be sweeter than the cake; these were about equal. I would cut the cake sugar by half and increase the amount of topping. It could probably withstand some whole wheat flour, too.
Recipe: Spicy Buttermilk Coffee Cake via Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, ninth edition (1985)
The challenge this month is… well, personal challenge. My biggest personal baking challenge is simply my kitchen. It’s small, with limited storage and nearly no counter space, which prohibits attempting certain things that require a lot of space, like croissants or strudel. So while I’d like to attempt those challenges, they’re just not practical.
Outside of recipes that require a better kitchen, I can’t think of any technical challenge I’d like to attempt at the moment. I do, however, still have quests towards finding the recipe for certain basic items. One of those is the perfect blueberry muffin. It’s a bit like chasing the end of the rainbow: it’s a moving target. On one recipe I’ll make a note that there are too many blueberries, while another recipe with exactly the same quantity will seem just right. Perceived sweetness levels vary from bake to bake of the same recipe, textures of the same recipe change from day to day… It’s a unicorn.
Previous attempts at muffin perfection can be found here and here. Today’s recipe is from a cookbook I’ve had for a while but never used, although the recipes it contains are the down-home types I prefer. True confessions, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly because I was in a hurry and didn’t want to be bothered measuring carefully and getting every ingredient exactly right. Also, I wanted at least a small health benefit, so I was hoping to substitute some of the white flour for oat flour or bran. (Not whole wheat flour because it adds its own flavor.) But digging through my dry goods, nothing oaty was making itself immediately apparent. I did find an unlabeled jar of some pale grain with a coarse grind that tasted mild. I hoped it was oat something and forged ahead.
I cut the original recipe in half to make 6 muffins and made a few alterations. Here’s what I used:
8 6½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons of a coarse dry good of choice (rolled oats, corn meal, bran,
etc.)
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
One large egg
3/8 cup whole milk
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly grease 6 muffin cups. Whisk together the flour, oatmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cardamom; set aside. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil, butter, vanilla, egg, and milk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until nearly combined, then allow to sit for a few moments to allow the liquid to be absorbed. Once thickened, fold a few more times to combine. Gently fold in the blueberries, being careful not to overmix. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the muffins are golden brown. The tops should be firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin should come out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes before turning the muffins out. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Well, these didn’t turn out anything like the photo in the book. When I initially mixed the dry and wet ingredients together, the batter seemed WAY too wet, but it quickly started to thicken; I realized the grain was absorbing the liquid. But fearful of ruining the muffin texture, I didn’t stir the thickened batter together as well as I should have. Once in the pan, there was separated liquid floating on top that hadn’t been blended in. The muffins didn’t rise much, and this liquid flowed over the edges. It’s not a totally abnormal result, but it wasn’t what I was going for. (Pro tip: break off all these edges while they’re still crisp and eat them immediately. By the next day, though still tasty, the high sugar content will make them sticky and chewy—almost candy-like.)
These did not come out of the pan nicely. I had to cut through the overflow and release that carefully from the pan, but even the greased cups didn’t release the muffins—they were too soft. I had to scoop them out with a spoon. Fortunately, they came out in one piece, although there was a fair amount of crumb left in the tin.
Despite everything, these had a nice texture, and I
especially liked the nubbliness from the added grain. I was curious about the
slight corny flavor when the obvious struck me—the mystery grain! It was a nice
flavor (in fact I have a recipe for blueberry corn muffins), but did distract
somewhat from the blueberry focus. They were sweeter than I would like, not as
noticeable while warm, but far more so the next day. (Funny how that works. It’s
the unicorn effect.) I would cut back by 2 tablespoons (for 6 muffins) to
start. It was just the right amount of vanilla; I didn’t notice the cardamom at all, although it might have added something
to the overall back flavor. I think the combination of using oil and butter is probably smart: butter gives flavor while oil gives a moist crumb.
One bit of confusion was the intended pan size. I’m aware of only 3 sizes of muffin tins: mini, regular, and jumbo, each twice the size of the last. This recipe called for “large muffin cups”, which to me would have indicated the jumbo size, but the recipe obviously didn’t make that much. The directions were to fill the tins only 2/3 full; mine were filled to the brim. I really dislike small, short muffins, which is how home recipes pretty much always turn out. So perhaps there is another, intermediate (i.e. “large”) muffin pan for professional use, something between the regular dozen and the 6-pack jumbo. If so, I’d like to get hold of one. Two-bite muffins are so anti-climactic.
Conclusion: I really need to make these again, properly, following the recipe* (aside from reducing the sugar) to evaluate them adequately. They seem like a good contender, although more on the soft side than I would like. I think I’d prefer using salted butter, as I think it would bump up the flavor a bit and enhance the sweetness of a reduced-sugar recipe.
Recipe: Blueberry Muffins via The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook by Cheryl and Griffith Day
*I think I messed up. If I recorded my measurements correctly, the recipe I made would have used only 1 cup of flour for 12 muffins, but the original calls for 2 cups. That would explain why my muffins were so flat and the batter so thin, and why they were so sweet. That's what I get for trying to bake first thing in the morning.
This month's challenge is coffee. That takes me back to a little place in Charlottesville, Virginia called Sunshine Bakery. They used to have this coffee-flavored cake that was so good! I've never had anything like it before or since, and 30+ years later, I still crave that cake. For one thing, outside of panaderias, I never see coffee-flavored cake. (And trying to look up recipes for one gets you a lot of plain breakfast cakes with streusel topping.) But it also had the most unique texture -- firmer than normal, with really large air holes for a cake, almost like an English muffin. It would probably be considered inferior by a trained pastry chef, but it was delightful. It also had a whipped coffee (perhaps mocha) frosting, not too sweet. Unfortunately, that bakery is long gone, and with it the elusive recipe. Alas.
For this recipe, I halved the original, which called for an 8" x 8" baking pan. I used a pan slightly smaller than an 8" x 4", so the cake was taller, but was done in the same time. Here's what I used:
1/3 cup milk, warmed
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/8 cup light-brown sugar
1/2 egg plus 1 yolk, beaten
3/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
3/4 teaspoon baking powder1/8 1/16 teaspoon salt
Topping
1 egg white
1/4 cup plus 1/2 teaspoon superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon sweetened, shredded coconut
Preheat oven to 325F; grease and line a 7.25" x 3.5" loaf pan. Dissolve coffee granules in milk; cool. In a bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in egg. Fold in flour and cinnamon alternately with coffee-flavored milk. Turn out batter into prepared pan.
To make topping, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually whisk in 1/4 cup of sugar; spread over batter. In a bowl, mix remaining 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, cinnamon, and coconut; sprinkle over the meringue. Bake 50 to 55 minutes, or until a fine skewer inserted into the center comes out clean and meringue is crisp. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then carefully remove and cool on a wire rack.
This rose really weirdly -- only on one side. My oven is about 25 degrees hotter from back to front, but it's hard to believe it made that much of a difference across a 4-inch pan! Perhaps it had something to do with how the meringue attached to the pan. (Was one side greased more than the other?) It also rose a LOT, rising well above the top of the pan, but sunk back down a bit as it cooled. And yet there was no noticeable difference in the crumb from one side to the other. Odd.
This cake was
actually was more like a "coffee cake" than a dessert -- mild in
flavor and sweetness. The coffee flavor wasn't detectable, surprisingly -- it tasted more of cinnamon and molasses, even though it contained neither. The coffee probably added a complexity to the overall flavor. I'd want to at least double the coffee quantity. The meringue was a nice touch, but the
coconut topping was unnecessary -- probably more for appearance than
anything else. To make this more rich, it could be nicely decadent with a dark chocolate ganache drizzle.
Conclusion: The cake was very light and fluffy while warm, but firmed up and became more dense and moist the next day. (The recipe directs this to be eaten the same day it's made, probably due to the meringue, but I liked it better the second day and the meringue was fine.) I'd be inclined to leave off the coconut topping mixture entirely and perhaps serve this with a whipped coffee frosting instead of the meringue, particularly in the fall because of its warm spice flavors.
Recipe: "Meringue-Topped Cake" from A Gourmet's Guide to Coffee & Tea by Leslie Mackley
I made Chef John's Bohemian Orange Chicken the other night, but it turned out way too salty for my tastes. To help cut the salt, I made the recommended bread dumplings to accompany it. His recipe makes two loaves; I reduced that by half to make just one. I also cut the salt way back, just for this particular preparation, since the meal didn't need any additional salt. (Although I think even under ordinary circumstances I probably wouldn't use all the salt called for in the recipe unless the main dish was particularly bland. You can always add salt to your plate.)
Here's what I used:
1/2 cup warm
milk
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
1½ teaspoon white sugar
13/8 7/8 cup quick-mixing flour (such as Wondra®) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup corn meal1/2 3/16 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 large egg, beaten
Proof the yeast in the warm milk with the sugar. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, corn meal, and salt. Add the yeast mixture and egg to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until it starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl and forms a dough, adding more flour if needed. Knead on a lightly floured surface until dough is smooth and slightly elastic, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, flipping the dough to coat the top in oil. Cover and let rise in a warm spot until doubled in size, about 2 hours. Transfer back to your work surface; press out the excess air and form dough into a relatively uniform ball, then roll into a log about 2 to 2½ inches wide. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let proof for 20 to 25 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a steady simmer. Carefully pick up the risen dough and transfer to the simmering water; bring back to a simmer. Cover tightly and let simmer for 10 minutes. Uncover, flip, and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes. Transfer to a plate and poke all over with a toothpick or wooden skewer, which releases the steam from the center. Use a piece of string or thread to cut into 3/4- to 1-inch dumplings. Transfer to a serving plate.
Chef John's Note: You can substitute half all-purpose flour and half semolina flour for Wondra® if you can't find it.
These dumplings were indeed very absorbent and yet stayed firm, rather than getting soggy. I wonder whether it's the egg that makes them like that, or the boiling? Chef John's note says you can use semolina, although I think in the video he calls out corn meal; probably either would work. I didn't really notice the corn meal when they were fresh, but after moistening day-old dumplings with water and heating gently in the microwave, they reminded me of spoon bread. One unpleasantness: the loaf was a bit soggy in the area of the expansion crack. (The cracks are considered undesirable -- now I see why -- but I don't see how to avoid them unless the dough was completely risen before being placed in the hot water.) After finishing the chicken, I used the leftover dumplings semi-successfully as a hotdog bun. It was okay.
Conclusion: Well, it's nothing to write home about. It's basically a plain, white bread, even plainer than ordinary bread because of being boiled. It does the job of providing a neutral base for the main dish, though it's way more filling than noodles or rice.
Recipe: Czech Bread Dumplings (KnedlÃky) via Food Wishes at allrecipes
