Further Holiday Baking

Blogger is not letting me cut and paste today, so this post took forever. I hope you damn well appreciate it.




So. Airplane cookies. They are done, along with some snowmen, some trees, and some lighthouses. These are from last year:

This year, The Man excused me from having to frost them (thanks!), so they turned out like this:

Clearly not Air Superiority Blue. For the first time in his life (as far as he remembers), The Man decorated Christmas cookies. He helped with about half, and then I excused him to watch Liverpool-Arsenal and finished them up myself. No Fernando Torres, Fabregas got injured, and Adebayor got sent off, so fewer compelling players for me to watch.

Airplane cookies. That's that.

But wait! There's more! The cinnamon rolls are in the freezer. How do you make cinnamon rolls? Well you start by making a babka dough in the big mixer. Babka is a sweet yeast dough with butter, eggs, sugar, and sour cream. Because of all the extra fat, it turns out very smooth and silky. Add the flour until the dough cleans the side of the bowl.

Keep going.

I said, UNTIL THE DOUGH CLEANS THE SIDE OF THE BOWL. Do the sides of the bowl look clean to you? It's not like you're doing the work by hand so be patient.

Now it's ready. Please to knead.

You could do all the kneading in the mixer, but then you might as well use a bread machine and what's the point? I always do some of it in the mixer and then finish it up by hand. All of this, of course, is performed under the supervision of Mess Sergeant Yarn Bandit. His job is to beg for taste tests and to lick any flour or drips off the floor.

And where is Kirby during all of this? He used to watch from the sidelines, but now he's more aggressive. Here's a less intrusive version of his "help":

See how he leans in? I think he likes me. This, however, is a typical chef's eye view:

That would be him, wedged between me and the cabinet (in this case, but could be stove or the sink), often standing on my feet.

Anyway, if the babka looks like this:

then you have some more kneading to do. When you're done, the dough will feel satiny and heavy and smooth and have a little bounce to it.

So you put it in a bowl and set it somewhere to rise. On days when the temperature doesn't go above freezing, I do it in the oven (turn the oven on, let it get up to about 110 degrees, then turn it off). Let it go until it is about doubled.

Then punch it down. Literally.

If you have a lot of time, knead it about 10 times, reform it into a ball, and then let it rise again. At some point, though, you need to stop. Roll it out into a big ole rectangle (more or less). Brush with melted butter.

Sprinkle with a mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar (and nuts if you must, but you know how The Man feels about male baked goods).

Then roll it up.

See? Easy.

Then I slice the roll into pieces about an inch thick or so and put them in the pan. The recipe itself says "cram" them in and so I do.

And now they go in here, somehow, until the 24th, when they go into the fridge to defrost and rise one last time.

Yes, those are biscotti.

On Christmas morning, they go into the oven and when they're done in there, they get drizzled with icing.

I'd rather not have to do them in advance. I'm never completely sure that the turn in the freezer won't hurt the yeast somehow. However, since Babette does not live here, the only alternative to doing them in advance is getting up at 3 a.m. to make sure they're done for breakfast, and that ain't happening.

Holiday Baking Update

We all you know are curious about how Bunny's friend Mr. Kitchen Aid Mixer (thanks Daddy!) is doing this December. He is getting a fair combination of rest and exercise. Here is where we are so far.

• Fruit cake. I only wanted one, and only a little one at that, but my recipe is for several big ones. What to do? Many years ago, before her sexist public school education sucked it out of her, Bunny was a math semi-genius. She usually needs The Man to do arithmetic for her, and Mr. Laptop balances her checkbook, but Bunny can still do food-related math and geometry. Some things are just too important to forget. So fruit cake is basically nuts and dates and candied fruit with enough batter to bind it together. EUREKA! Bunny filled her mini-loaf pan with enough nuts and dates and candied fruit to fill it firmly with a little crown on top. Then she divided her batter recipe by four (seven eggs divided by four equals two eggs, but who's counting?). Then she dumped the nuts and dates and candied fruit into the batter and mixed it up until everything was nicely coated. Then she scraped the nuts and dates and candied fruit back into the mini-loaf pan and pressed it down firmly. Then she poured enough of the remaining batter over the nuts and dates and candied fruit to fill the gaps without overflowing. Then she baked it and WOW a little bitty fruit cake! Then she cooled it. Then she soaked some cheesecloth in Myer's rum. Then she wrapped the fruit cake in the rum-soaked cheesecloth. Then she put the whole thing in a Ziploc bag and pressed the air out and put it all in the freezer, where it will stay. On December 23, we will thaw it out and on December 24, we will serve it. Perfect.
• Biscotti. We did these yesterday: almonds and amaretto and candied ginger. The house still smells like them.
• Airplane cookies are on today's to-do list. Today I mix and chill the batter and tomorrow I roll it out, bake it, and decorate it. Tomorrow is the big day (and the biggest mess), so that is the only thing on the agenda for tomorrow.
• Today I am making a spice cake for Christmas Eve dessert. An old-fashioned spice cake with penuche icing (look it up. If you are reading this, then you have Google.) Again, a big one is too much for our little house. Well, not really. I could probably eat a whole one if I tried, but that wouldn't be good for me and it would stop being fun after the second piece. So I cut the recipe in half and I'm baking it in a square pan (it's in the oven as we speak) and the plan is to cut it in half and stack the layers so we end up with a rectangular loaf-shaped cake. Anyway, today I make the cake and freeze it. On Christmas Eve, I'll defrost it and frost it (har har).

There are few left on the to-do list for later in the week, not least of which is a Buche de Noel, because I didn't make one last year. But that all comes later.

The Only Brownie Recipe You'll Ever Need

I've tried many, and I keep coming back to the one I grew up with. It could be one of those Proustian things but, as far as I'm concerned, here is what a brownie is supposed to be:

Melt 4 oz. each of best-quality unsweetened chocolate and butter. Let cool slightly. Beat together 2 cups sugar and 4 eggs. Add in butter, chocolate, and a splash of vanilla, and then blend in one cup of flour. Pour into a greased 9x13 baking dish and let it go for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool before you cut them or the top crust will crumble into nothingness.

If you must, doctor them up with nuts, chips, coconut, frosting, etc. The Man likes all his baked goods female and I almost always humor him and leave the nuts out.

That is all.

A Craving is Satisfied

I have been wanting to have toasted cinnamon raisin bread for breakfast for several weeks now. It's a good thing for when you're sick because it makes you feel cared for. Cinnamon raisin bread is heartier and less of a dessert than cinnamon rolls. But (and people who grew up with real food will know what I'm talking about) nothing you can get at the bakery, much less at the supermarket, comes anywhere near the stuff you can make for yourself at home. But when you're sick, who is up to baking bread? (No--we don't do bread machines here. Just--no, and that's that.)

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted goddamned cinnamon raisin bread and no 35-day old virus was going to stop me. This is how you do it:

1. Soak some raisins in warm water.
2. While the raisins are soaking, proof the yeast and warm some milk, butter, sugar, and salt.
3. Put the liquid and the yeast in your big Kitchen Aid mixer with about 1/2 cup of wheat germ and 2 cups of flour and blend.
4. Keep adding flour. When you've got about 4 cups of flour in, turn the mixer up to medium and beat the dough until it forms kind of stringy strands between the beater and the side of the bowl. You are developing the gluten, which is the structure that holds the bread up when it rises. Drain the raisins and dump them in at this point, blending a little longer.
5. Scrape down the beater and the sides of the bowl and switch to the dough hook. Keep adding flour about a half cup at a time until you've put in 6-7 cups total, depending on how wet your raisins were and the humidity that day.
6. Knead, either in the mixer or by hand, until the dough is smooth and bounces back when you poke it a little.
7. Put the dough in a greased bowl, cover with a clean serviette, and set to rise until about double, probably 60-90 minutes depending on how warm it is that day.
8. Punch the dough down, knead lightly for a few seconds, then cut in half. Form the halves into balls and let it rest under a towel for 5-10 minutes.
9. Meanwhile, get out your loaf pans and grease them. Lightly flour your rolling surface. Blend a half-cup of sugar and a tablespoon of cinnamon and set it aside.
10. Roll out one ball of dough into an approximate rectangle about 8x15 or so. It doesn't have to be perfect. Sprinkle with half of the sugar/cinnamon. Roll it up from the short end like a jelly roll. Do it fairly tightly. Pinch the ends shut and fold them under so the dough is approximately the size of your loaf pan. Repeat with the other ball.
11. Again with the towel and rising, about 60 minutes this time, or until it crowns nicely over the top of the pans, but not too high.
12. Heat the oven to 375 and bake about 45 minutes, shielding the tops with foil during the last 15 minutes or so if you want.

I typically use a mix of regular and whole wheat flour. I didn't have much regular flour this time, so I used mainly whole wheat, and this is what I ended up with:

Yum. Good toasted, or not, with butter or cream cheese. Raisins are not good for dogs, so pick the raisins out before you give any to your beagles.

Baking Q & A

Question: Why does the last batch of oatmeal cookies that Dirtbunny made suck so bad?


Answer: Because she forgot to put most of the sugar in.


I was aiming for a wholesome and semi-nutritious comfort food to go with the bronchitis, but was defeated by the narcotic cough syrup.

Post-election special dinner

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When Bunny Gets Ambitious

So we here have a four-day weekend that happens to include The Man's birthday. In anticipation of this big event, we went to the Fresh Fields and spent about $952 on groceries, and Bunny brought home a few things she ordinarily does not bother with, to wit:

Fresh Baby Artichokes. Canned artichokes are wonderful. They are a staple here Chez Nous. However, fresh artichokes are a rare pleasure and the Fresh Fields was offering a package of 12 for $3.99. So they came home.

Prepare baby artichokes pretty much the same way as grown-up artichokes, minus a little extra work. Step 1: Artichokes start to oxidize (go brown and ugly) quickly unless the process is counteracted by an acid, traditionally a bowl of ice water with the juice of a lemon. So first, get yourself a bowl of water and put the juice of a lemon in it.

Now let's get down to business. Are you ready? There he is. On your cutting board and you have your good big knife and a good little knife or vegetable peeler, and your bowl of weak acid solution. Here we go:

Step 2.

Whack off the grody end of the stem and about the top third. The "experts" all tell you to take of the stem. I like the stem, so I leave it on.

Step 3: Pick that baby up and look at the cut end. You'll see that the outer leaves are green and the inner leaves are more yellow. Stick your thumb in there are start ripping off the green leaves en masse, but leave the yellow ones behind:

Or you can do it the "expert" slowpoke deliberate way and peel off the green leaves one at a time until they're gone. The point, though, is that preparing artichokes doesn't have to be a big honking deal and my way is faster. You'll end up with something like this:

You'll have some tiny leaves near the stem, the kind of woody green outer layer of the stem itself, and the very bottom ends of the outer leaves where they attach to the heart. Your goal is to separate the woody, stringy, yucky part from the tender edible part.

Step 4:

Using either your paring knife or your vegetable peeler, just peel off the outer layer of the stem, starting from the cut end and working towards the leaves.

Go all the way around once, and you end up with this:

Plunk it in the lemon water. You are done.

Ta Da!

I don't have lemon water today. I have a half-empty pitcher of lime water, so I'm using that.

If you are preparing baby artichokes, you are done. If you are preparing grown-up artichokes (which I'm not, so I don't have pictures), you have to remove the "choke." In the very center of the leaves at the very heart of the thing is a layer of slightly prickly teeny tiny purplish leaves that surround a fuzzy crown of fibrous stuff that is as delicious to eat as dog hair or corn silk. Stick your thumb into the center of it all to separate the leaves, reach in there with a teaspoon, and scoop out the purple stuff and the hairy stuff and throw it away or compost it. This is easier to do if you cut the artichokes in halves or quarters the long way first, but that doesn't work if you need to leave the damn thing whole. Anyway, scoop out the choke and dunk the remaining good part into you lemon water.

Ta Da!

You are done.

Now you need to cook the damn things. Here is my way to do the babies.

Heat up a decent sized glom of olive oil and the juice of a lemon.

When the oil sizzles around the lemon juice, put in the babies.

Stir them around thoroughly for a good minute or two to ensure that they are nicely coated with the oil and the anti-brown making lemon juice because you don't want them getting brown and nasty. When the pan is nice and hot and everything is well coated, pour in about a quarter-cup or so of water. Heat until the water boils, stir a few times, then cover and turn the heat down to low or medium-low.

Let them steam for about 5 -8 minutes, checking them every so often for two reasons: 1. Is the water still making steam? If not, your pan is too cold. Turn the heat up. OR, you burned off all your water and you need to add more if the babies aren't done yet. 2. Are they done yet? Poke them through the center with a good knife to see how tender they are.

When they seem appropriately tender (use your own judgment. Pull one out and taste it if you don't trust yourself), take the lid off and turn the heat back up to boil off any remaining water. When the water is gone, the babies will saute a little in the dregs of the oil. I like to let them brown just a wee bit because they look prettier. When they look about right, pour them out into a bowl and dress with salt, pepper, olive oil (if you want) and acid of your choice (lemon or wine vinegar).

From here, you can marinate them for a salad, or slice them for a pasta sauce, or whatever. The whole shebang, from taking them out of the fridge until dumping them out of the pan, takes about 20 minutes. I'm not doing this on a work night, but when they're on sale and it's the weekend and I happen to feel like it, well, there you go.

Breakfast

It may look disgusting, but it's not.


One ripe or even a little overripe banana. A handful of whatever other fruit happens to be around. A dribble of flaxseed oil. A scoop of protein powder. six ounces or so of unsweetened soy milk. Blend.

This one used blueberries, so it turned out sort of grey. However, delicious and good for me.

I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend. I've cleaned and steamed a lot of vegetables and I made a french potato salad so I can toss together a Salade Nicoise later in the week. I made a big bowl of macaroni salad. I did my famous sweet and sour pork for dinner yesterday and I have a lot of left-over brown rice for making sushi. I've never done sushi before, so we'll see how it goes.

The best thing I made this weekend were these:

Blueberry Macadamia muffins. Muffins are no big deal. The recipe calls for a blend of white flour and whole wheat pastry flour, butter, and tons of sugar. I use plain old whole wheat flour, no white flour, no butter, and however much brown sugar happened to be left in the box. Plus blueberries, some chopped macadamias, and a handful of unsweetened coconut shreds.

Take the same recipe, substitute mashed banana for the oil and some of the buttermilk, substitute chopped pineapple for the blueberries, and reduce the sugar even more and you have Bunny's Special Armpit Muffins. So named because I made them for an event at work and I was feeling most unappreciated at the time. I was cranky, so I gave them a gross name. I kept it to myself, of course, but every time I saw someone with one, I thought:

Ha! You're eating an armpit muffin!

They sounded unwholesome and adulterated, but they weren't. They were clean and delicious. I was just being petty in secret, and I got over it. I kept the recipe and the name.

Sweet Tooth

Bunny wants a big slice of chocolate cake with extra frosting and a cold glass of milk. We don't have that here. We don't have anything good here. Bunny will have to settle for this:



mmmmmm. Homemade latte, extra strong espresso brewed in the stovetop mokka pot (fully caffeinated this afternoon) and just a little hot foamy skim milk, and some cinnamon.

Yeast adventures

I don't bake a lot of bread or yeast doughs, because I don't eat a lot of bread qua bread. But I almost always have some homemade whole wheat in the freezer, and because I'm only using up my five-pound bag of rye flour in quarter-cup increments, and because I had a hankerin' for something chewy and full of caraway seeds, I pulled out the ole trusty pumpernickel recipe. I gave it three risings. The first for about 2 hours, the second for another 2 hours, and the third for about 90 minutes. By that time, it was getting close to bedtime, so despite the dough looking maybe 10% larger despite more than 5 hours of rising in a warm place, I baked it.

It is bread. And it is chewy and laced with caraway seeds. But it's also dense as, dense as, my similes have abandoned me. It's a hard dense loaf, tasty but heavy. I made grilled cheese sandwiches with it for lunch. Thin slices of pumpernickel and Gruyere cheese on the George Foreman grill. It wasn't bad, but I think this loaf is better suited to eating with soup. I must have killed the yeast at some point.

Just so you know

This is how we do chocolate chip cookies around here.

Step 1: make dough.


Step 2: spoon out one cookie sheet's worth of dough. Bake.


Step 3: divide remaining dough into two portions. Put each portion into ziploc bag. Freeze.

Mmmmmmmm. Looks gloppy!

Just so you know, and not for any reason or anything, but these are the official chocolate chip cookie of people who don't really care whether or not the Redskins win today and thus will not be grossly disappointed if they lose because everyone knows the real show is Brett Fav-ruh next week.




Hey Bunny! When're you coming back to the sofa? Game's started!