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What Are You Baking?


monavano

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^Props to bakers behind the two most recent photographs (though I don't get why certain images, such as TH's appear too big for my monitor when clicked): tart and cupcakes look both artful and delicious.

I was happily surprised by the fresh cranberry beans at the market this weekend. Got a little piece of Cedarbrooks' ham steak and some new stock. Sage. Tomatoes in the freezer, though there's cream too. Ends of nutty bread drying on a rack. Zora mentioned a bean gratin some time recently and it's been haunting me.

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I was happily surprised by the fresh cranberry beans at the market this weekend. Got a little piece of Cedarbrooks' ham steak and some new stock. Sage. Tomatoes in the freezer, though there's cream too. Ends of nutty bread drying on a rack. Zora mentioned a bean gratin some time recently and it's been haunting me.

And I was happily surprised at the Arlington courthouse market last Saturday by sacks of shelled baby limas, at a very reasonable price, considering what a pain-in-the-butt they are to shuck. I simply stewed them with rendered bacon, chopped onion, thyme and bay leaf until they were tender, which made J very happy.

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Shortbread, using Alice Medrich's recipe from "Bittersweet." It's actually a melted butter shortbread recipe she uses for crusts and bases, but said it could be "rolled out as usual." I pressed it into 9" cake pans and cut into wedges after baking. Delicious, with a little bit of a browned butter flavor, but more delicate than other shortbreads I've made.

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carmelitas.jpg

Carmelitas (recipe).

These turned out great with a little tweaking. Mainly, the recipe calls for taking the carmel to dark amber, which is too far. It was bitter. I remade the caramel sauce and took it off the heat at light amber and that was the ticket.

You also don't need 2 1/2 sticks of butter for the upper and lower crust. I used 2 sticks and that was more than plenty.

I think these would make a great gift.

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Banana-cranberry-pecan muffins. They were supposed to have walnuts in them, but I'd already chopped up pecans when I realized I pulled the wrong nuts out of the pantry :blink: . Small, though, as far as these kinds of mistakes, go.

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Last night was yellow cupcakes, which are about to be iced with leftover milk chocolate buttercream (the Guittard milk/Callebaut 97% from October) and topped with crushed candy canes. This morning was pigs-in-extra-sharp-Cheddar-blankets. All for the office holiday party.

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Pizelle.

My pizelelle making was a disaster this year. I made batter for chocolate hazelnut pizelles and poured it onto my Villaware Quatro 3-pizelle maker (they're little ones,) when they all kept merging together and did not get crispy. Trying to cook further resulted in mildly burning them.

Sigh. I don't know if I'm giving up on pizelles all together, or if I need a better pizelle maker. Trying to separate the joined pizelles is just too much trouble. I like the bigger ones anyway.

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Have you tried making pizzelle without chocolate? I've often wondered how the iron could even handle a chocolate dough. Also, taking a guess here: "batter" and "pour" might be clues to the problem. My pizzelle recipe produces something more like a dough: it has to be scooped (too stiff to pour) and the cookies do not merge together. For reference, it calls for 6 eggs, 1 cup melted butter, 1 1/8 cup sugar, 1/8 cup anise seed, and 2 1/2 cups flour. (makes 4-5 dozen pizzelle, depending on the size of the eggs and the size of the iron, of course)

Off to make an angel food cake now (for the nephews). And a chocolate cake with caramel icing (for my brother). And maybe a tiramisu (for the rest of us). Oh, and a coconut cake for the in-laws tomorrow...

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^^

I've made regular, anise pizelles and they turned out better. I still had to separate and clean them up a bit, but they were pretty decent. I think I was just trying to cram in too much baking that day, and the pizelles were an afterthought.

I'll have to revisit this next year. B)

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Pennsylvania Dutch potato pie: scalloped potatoes in a double crust. J wanted to have it because it was his father's favorite dish, and he took the lead on making it, with my guidance. It's a savory pie, with a slice eaten in a bowl with cracked pepper and cream poured over. It takes forever to cook, unless you par cook the potatoes, which we didn't do.

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Lizzy has unwrapped the flour sifter that she asked for (mrs. Anderson, highly rated on Amazon & purchased at Hollin Hall Variety Store), & we will be having poundcake w/ dinner tonight (an uninspired combo of roast turkey breast, au gratin potatoes, steamed broccoli,lentils, & a green salad). Merry Christmas, everyone! We're headed down to my Mom's house in NC for a few days, w/ our puppies, hope everyone is having a peaceful holiday break...

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Brioche à tête and parisienne now out of the oven; dough for pain au chocolate resting in the fridge.

My birthday is Monday. Perhaps to be sending some delicious baked goods to me here at 7000 feet where I don't think I could get such things to bake correctly even if I paid them? Please and thank you.

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Chocolate macarons, method sucre cuit. Argh. Excellent flavor, not so great appearance, and an annoying way to find out my scale is shot. If anyone else is willing to play along, I'll give it a serious go, make more batches, and start a thread on them. Otherwise, I'll feed my ugly ones to hungry, non-judgmental friends and family. :).

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Pennsylvania Dutch potato pie: scalloped potatoes in a double crust. J wanted to have it because it was his father's favorite dish, and he took the lead on making it, with my guidance. It's a savory pie, with a slice eaten in a bowl with cracked pepper and cream poured over. It takes forever to cook, unless you par cook the potatoes, which we didn't do.

One of my favorites as a child as well, although corn pie ranked much higher (which is also now a favorite of my daughters.)

Tomorrow I will be trying the Williams-Sonoma pistachio cake recipe. I am trying to approximate the cake we had at Graffiato, which was for me the best thing I ate there at a recent lunch.

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Meyer Lemon Pound Cake. The recipe is slightly modified from this month's Cooking Light which called for grapefruit juice and zest, but I had meyers on hand to put to good use.

Claudia Roden's olive oil cake which requires whole [blood] oranges would be great w Meyer lemons, too.

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I adore blood oranges, but of late, I seem to keep missing them in season. When can they be found?

They were at the Clarendon Whole Foods yesterday, but very, very bitter. My co-workers were laughing at me because I winced with each bite.
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They were at the Clarendon Whole Foods yesterday, but very, very bitter. My co-workers were laughing at me because I winced with each bite.

Probably Moro oranges; the ones from California were almost inedible when Frieda (among others) started to grow them, but in recent years, the quality of US-grown Moros has improved. You know this entire discussion is destined for a different thread where I might have given my two cents already: go for the Tarocco blood oranges and caveat emptor when it comes to the supply at Trader Joe's where they tend to be the last of the season with one rotten, squishy one (at least) in every bag--though not always. Sigh. The most unbelievable ones I ever found stateside where at the Tenleytown Safeway around five years ago. Still wrapped in those crinkly, red paper wrappers from Sicily.

***********

And, yes, I bet Cara Cara oranges would be a great candidate for the olive oil cake, too. Not sure if instructions were in the original recipe, but you make a simple syrup w some of the oranges, poke holes in the top of the warm cake and pour it in. The pink streaks in the cake would be lovely.

PS. I had to edit this and double-space after the brackets of the quote to appease the gods.

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Alsatian apple tart from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours. The color is a little off i this picture - the crust wasn't quite so dark in person and the apples were a bit more golden. Love this recipe. Ridiculously easy and definite crowd pleaser.

post-31-0-77617000-1326042474_thumb.jpg

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The recipe calls for fresh apricots. What are you using--fresh from the southern hemisphere? Canned? Dried?

Fresh from Chile. Credit Costco Derangement Syndrome :ph34r: . After I brought them home a week ago, I realized that there was no way we would consume them all before they went bad. I finally got around to doing something with them today, but it only used half of them.

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I have that as well, although it tends to manifest itself in the form of asparagus.

Me too! My favorite almost-year-round-favorite is blueberries, and Campari tomatoes are a staple outside of local field tomatoes.

I'm glad to know that I'm not alone! :lol:

The tart came out very well, by the way. After one piece, my husband thought it would be even better a la mode, so last night it was served with Trickling Springs vanilla ice cream.

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