[baking] Chocolate Peanut Butter Stuffed Cookies

I swear these cookies aren't burned:

I made some peanut butter stuffed cookies. The cocoa powder is black cocoa, like the kind used for Oreo cookies.

They were fussy to make in that you have to make two different kinds of dough. Also, it was super hot out and the chocolate dough would kind of melt in my hands as I was working with it. But the results are worth both annoyances. 

Like a very grown up peanut butter cup. The black cocoa isn't very chocolatey. Next time, I would probably use a natural or dutch cocoa.

A lighter cocoa might make it taste more like an authentic peanut butter cup... and people would probably stop commenting on how burned they look.

The recipe is Chocolate Peanut Butter Stuffed Cookies by A Spicy Perspective.

I have much more peanut butter dough leftover than the chocolate so I might have to make inside-out versions.

[baking] Herbed Pull Apart Bread

King Arthur Baking (formerly King Arthur Flour) has a nice post on Pull-Apart Breads. I had a big container of garlic scape butter to use up and decided this bread would be perfect.









There was a decent amount of leftover dough even after jamming the loaf tin full. I just twisted it into a knot and baked it on the side. Totally a missed opportunity to shape it into something fun (like a Dollar sign)... I will next time.







It was so good. SO good. Soft and garlicky. I stored it in bag in the fridge- and it sliced/toasted well.

I feel like this amount of dough could make two smaller pull-apart loaves, which would be fun to bring to a dinner instead of rolls.

[baking] Strawberry rhubarb bars

Made some strawberry rhubarb bars this weekend:

The recipe is from Cooking Classy: Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Bars. I've done these bars with just rhubarb, wild black raspberries, peach/blackberry. It's always good.

I happened to have some store-bought strawberries and I picked a couple stalks of rhubarb in the yard.

Mixed with some sugar and instant clearjel (instead of cornstarch- good for acidic fillings that will be baked).

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Before baking:

After baking:

These bars are so good- a nice thick base, non-runny fruit, crispy crumb topping. I like that it's the same crumb topping for the base and the topping.

I want to make these again and again but with a few modifications to make them healthier.

1.5 sticks of butter for a 9" square pan? I want to reduce this to 1 stick. Still not "healthy" but... better.

Try with whole wheat flour- with some flax meal mixed in. 

Mix in seeds? Toasted sesame seeds? Flax seeds?

I feel like the next one I bake will be a cocoa crumb with a raspberry filling. I need to use up frozen berries picked last year; the farm just posted that picking will open back up in July!

[baking] Blueberry Swirl Pound Cake

In an effort to use up frozen berries picked last year, I make a blueberry swirl pound cake:

The recipe is this blackberry swirl pound cake from Everyday Food. I've done this in the past with wild black raspberries and it's so good. I made my usual blueberry compote that I mix into yogurt (frozen blueberries simmered down with maple syrup and cinnamon) and used that in three layers in this cake. It feels weird to make a cake in a loaf pan, rather than one of my bundt pans, but it's kind of a small recipe.

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I walked around the woods yesterday looking for more ramps, fiddleheads and maybe even morels. I found none and flicked five ticks off my jeans over the course of the outing. I'm going to just stick with the mowed yard and flowerbeds.

I have several knitting projects going now- a hat, socks and fingerless mitts. I'm pretty much only mask sewing on weekends. I'm dropping my sewing machine off to be serviced tomorrow. It's near a local garden nursery, so I made an appt to look around and do some shopping.

[baking] Cinnamon Buns

We're supposed to be eating all the carbs while we're quarantining, right? I made some cinnamon buns over the weekend:

I've learned not to roll them too tight, or else they end up cone shaped:

Which still happened a little bit:

The only downside to these is that the butter/sugar seems to melt a bit during the second rise (perhaps I should do the second rise under a lower proofing temperature) and this kind of caramelizes under the buns when they bake. It sounds nice but it's kind of crispy and difficult to pull apart the buns when they're done.

Buuuuuuut... we ate them anyway.

I mixed up some simple powdered sugar / half and half icing. 

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The weekend went by too fast. I'm still working on the Fantastitch shawl- I'm in the middle of the last section, then I'll just have the bind-off. 

Yesterday I went out and cleaned up a few flowerbeds. I ripped back much of my 'snow in summer' (Cerastium tomentosum) hoping for new growth this year. It's been looking a little sad and old the past few years. I'm glad I did it before all the rain today.

Mini daffodils are blooming:

Fragrant hyacinths are on their way:

Plenty of irises and daylilies are poking up.

I need to make a list of all the things to divide this year. I'm going to try to manage my time better with so much teleworking and not having to drive into work and back. This should give me more free time in a day, right? But I feel like I'm knitting/crafting less and working more. And obviously cooking every single freaking night. But I should make time for an hour in the gardens every day after work, weather permitting. 

[baking] Homemade Cheese-its

A couple weeks ago, anticipating this quarantine, I bought my requisite toilet paper and groceries. I got a 3lb block of cheese, because... cheese. This is Vermont.

I made a quadruple batch of Spicy Cheese Cracker dough. The recipe is from King Arthur Flour- I can't find the recipe online; it's a recipe that I received when I took a cracker class at the baking school in Norwich, VT.

Anyway, it's a knock-off of Hot and Spicy Cheez-its and they are so good.



The ingredients are flour, butter, cheese, water. Then spices like chili powder, cayenne, paprika, pepper.



I baked some right away and put the rest of the dough patties in the freezer to bake later. I've already dipped into the dough reserve once to bake some more. They are so addictive.

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Social distancing / quarantine / staying home / teleworking is going okay. I feel like I'm putting more hours to do less work. There were some significant technical challenges more than a week ago but those seem to be resolved. It is nice to spend all day at home with the kitties.

[baking] Soft prezels

It's been a while since I posted. I was teaching last week and those days are so long. I didn't even have time (or motivation) to knit at all in the evenings. Friday afternoon, I was home with supplies to survive 14 days of isolation. I had to bake something and knit something.

Pretzels:

I have a mini-Zojirushi breadmaker that only makes 1 lb loaves. I never use it anymore since I just keep a bucket of no-knead dough in the fridge and tear off a piece when I need bread or pizza.

The recipe is Hot Buttered Soft Prezels from King Arhtur Flour. This recipe is pretty perfect: 

1. It makes 8 pretzels that fit on one half-sheet pan, so you don't end up making a ton. The salt on pretzels kind of weeps after a day or two and with only eight pretzels- they don't last two days.

2. I use my mini-Zo on the cookie setting to mix and rest the dough. I dump all the ingredients in and let it do what it needs to for 20 min: mix, rest, mix, then it turns off which is just another resting period until I get to it. Then all I have to do is cut, shape, soda-bath, rest, bake. The only hard part of the entire process is the soda bath, and that's just because I have to do the pretzels in two batches.

Maybe these pretzels won't be a weekly thing, but they could definitely be a monthly thing. My Zo would be happy to be used more.

[cooking] Peanut Butter cookies

Sunday's peanut butter cookies:

I'm keeping them closed in tupperware and they're so sooooooooft. The recipe is from King Arthur Flour. The original recipe calls for shortening but I just used butter instead.

One of the band members brought me flowers last night (which he does sometimes) (which I love):

I rummaged around the yarn stash and started picking out possible colors for the Fantashawl. I bought the pattern I guess I'm going to make it.

[cooking] Those chocolate chip cookies

I made the Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookies (recipe adapted by NY Times).

Yeah, they're good. They're REALLY good. I weighted my ingredients, used cake and bread flour, let the dough rest for 36 hours, weighted the dough balls. 

I was apprehensive- the chocolate disks are so big- and you have to use the entire 1lb bag? Which cost $20? And that's not even as much chocolate as the recipe calls for?! 

I usually bake smaller cookies- these were so big (~5 inches across). Only six fit on a half sheet pan.

But... they came out great. The taste is perfect. The salt is just right. I will say I tried one when it was still warm and it was greasy. The cookies are better cooled a bit, I think. But they still taste good two days later. 

These are expensive and fussy cookies but worth the trouble. These are very nice 'special occasion' cookies. Now to come up with a special occasion every month...

[baking] Rose Bundt

Testing out a bundt cake I want to enter in the fair:

Baked in the rose pan- it's a vanilla cake with dragonfruit icing. I used a freeze-dried dragonfruit power that makes things so nice and pink/purple. I actually put a couple tablespoons in the batter, which looked as pink as the frosting before baking. After baking:

Totally yellow. So disappointed. But the taste of the cake was great. The icing is perfect- powdered sugar, dragonfruit powder and milk, mixed up to be runny and then painted on with a pastry brush. The icing hardens a bit and gets a matte luster, which is nice. I just have to work on the superficial imperfections of cake- air bubbles in the creases of the pan that create pock marks after baking. I really don't want to bake this again before the fair, so maybe I'll spackle any holes in the next, final rose... cake.

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Weekend Penny:

[foraging] Wild Blackberries

This past Sunday I was out in the yard looking at some flowers and saw lots of perfectly ripe blackberries hanging over the flowerbed:

I was immediately suspicious, because last year I was hardly able to gather more than one cup's worth. Birds and animals would always get them before me. But I ran inside to get a container and picked them all. Then I walked out along a fourth class road that leads to my great-uncle's hunting cabin, along which I saw many unripe bushes earlier in the summer.

More ripe blackberries!

I picked about three quarts in total- and it was all freeeeeeee.

I washed and froze most. I saved some out to make blackberry and peach bars:

These bars are my favorite way of using local, seasonal fruit. I made rhubarb bars in the spring, wild black raspberry bars in mid-summer and now wild blackberry bars in late summer. They are so easy to bring together and are sooooooo good with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

[cooking] Lemon Lavender Cookies

I finally made some lemon lavender cookies with my homegrown/dried lavender:

This is the recipe that I follow. I made these cookies for the first time last year and fell in love of the flavor. They're especially good with new lavender. The plan is to enter them into the fair this year.

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Still knitting on the socks but I've turned the second heel and it's smooth sailing from here on out. I'm tempted to pile up all the yarn I want to wind and keep it in front of me, as incentive to hurry up. I would like to knit the mariposa shawl in time to enter it into the fair.

Speaking of which, I need to mail in the registration form by Sept. 1.

I joined Steotch 7 on Facebook. As if I need another project but... I'll give it a go. First pattern drops August 17. I think you can still sign up if you're into cross-stitching. Search FB for Steotchalong.

Things are still blooming like crazy around the house. Some of the daylilies are starting to be on their way out, though, and it's making me sad. The nights are getting cooler and I feel fall creeping closer...

[cooking] Black Raspberry Bars

I went walking around on Friday afternoon, looking for more chanterelles. I found only one but I did see many wild black raspberries beginning to ripen along an old 4th class road on the property. I convinced Dollar to come help me pick in the 400 degree weather on Saturday. Ugh, the weather this weekend was brutal. But we managed to get about a pint and a half's worth:

Which was more than enough for some oat-y black raspberry bars. Before baking:

After:

I did want to do a thin tart with a pretty lattice top but the thought of bringing together pastry dough and rolling it out and cutting it and weaving a lattice... I felt hot and tired just contemplating all that work. This bar recipe is easy- mix some stuff together with melted butter, press most of it into the bottom of a pan, add a layer of sugary fruit, sprinkle the rest of the crumb mixture on top. Easy to do even when it's 500 degrees outside.

We had this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. And the 600 degree weather didn't seem so bad.

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We watched all of Good Omens- so funny and good. We've started Killing Eve and that's been excellent, as well. I think we'll check out The Boys once we're done with this series.

[cooking] Matcha Swirl Bread

Vacation last week was just what I needed. I did a lot of gardening and sewing and knitting. Some cooking. I made a trip to Hmart with my mom and picked up a canister of culinary matcha powder. At home, I looked up some baking recipes and decided on a swirled loaf of bread:

It didn't rise as much as I would like liked but it's still tasty. I was unsure what to eat it with- normally I have matcha in the form of KitKats or ice cream. I toasted a slice and tried it with butter, jam and peanut butter. In the end, I broke down and bought a jar of nutella. With nutella is the way to eat this.

Still on the lookout for more matcha recipes...

[cooking] Easter Baking

My contributions to Easter dinner...

Rolls:

I used this recipe but didn't add any of the pumpkin pie spice. I had defrosted the last of my pumpkin puree and wanted to use it up in these dinner rolls. I'm trying to make room in my freezer.

And I brought dessert- a carrot cake:

I followed this recipe but also added a little ground ginger and cloves, as well as finely chopped crystallized ginger.

I didn't do the cream cheese frosting because I ran out of time. So now I have a package of cream cheese in the fridge- what to do, what to do...

[cooking] Maple Walnut Swirl Bread

This month's bakealong challenge in the Cooking from Scratch Ravelry group is specialty yeasted bread. I chose to make this Vermont Maple Swirl Bread from King Arthur Flour:

I used ground walnuts instead of almond or pecan meal. It's kind of like making a rich cinnamon bun log or king cake but baking it in a bundt pan. The only downside is that I placed the log seam side down into the bundt pan, so when I turned it out:

The seam is very apparent. Doh- next time I'll remember to put it in seam side UP.

It's a great bread- I think slices will toast nicely. I opted not to do the maple glaze but I definitely would if I were to make this again for a party. It feels like it's needs a frosting, like cinnamon buns.

It's so pretty baked in a decorative bundt shape and would be impressive to cut into- guests will oooo and aaahh when they see the swirl.