Lemon Poppyseed Scones

Lemon Poppyseed Scones
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

In my alternate life, I opened up my own tea room instead of becoming a librarian. A quirky place, where people would come for special events as well as for everyday, popping in for tea and a scone and leaving blissfully happy and relaxed.

I recently got the cookbook for Alice's Tea Cup and found the place that has always lived in my imagination. I wanted to make every recipe in the book, and started with these lemon poppyseed scones.

Sometimes, it is nice that people have similar dreams, to make sure they actually come true!

Daring Bakers June 2011 - Baklava and Homemade Phyllo

Overhead view of baklava
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

In true JennyBakes fashion, I waited until the day before I needed to post the challenge to try the recipe. I hemmed and hawed for a while, because I had enough hazelnuts, but also had some chocolate chips sitting around, so I ended up making what another Daring Baker's five year old has deemed "choklava," using a generous helping of chocolate chips in with the nut mixture.

I have made Danish pastry before, puff pastry (once, never again), croissants, and even strudel, but never had I attempted making phyllo dough before. I mean... the store makes it so easy, I can just buy a box and whip up practically anything! But I faced this challenge head on. I'm not afraid of tearing delicate dough. I don't mind spending two hours rolling out golf-ball-sized balls into paper thin dough sheets. No really, I don't. And really, that was time consuming but not terrible.


Several other Daring Bakers had said the recipe had too much syrup, and I wish I'd listened, because my end result was a bit too gooey and syrup for my tastes, and oh so sweet! I partly blame the chocolate, maybe it hampers moisture absorption a bit. It is still satisfying to pour the syrup over the pastries right out of the oven and listen to the sizzle and bubble. Twelve hours later, though, they were still wading in the goo. I still gave them to people. If there is a lesson over and over, it is to trust my instincts!

A few changes I made in the recipe, which you can see on Erica's blog once she posts, was to fiddle a bit with the spices - I added cardamom and used more orange than was called for, and the entire house smelled like the holidays! I think if I made phyllo again, I would use my old lowfat use nonstick cooking spray between the sheets trick, and make something savory with it.

Bakery Review - Cakehead Bakeshop - Spartanburg, SC

The Cakehead Bakeshop is a newer bakery in the Upstate, located inside the same building as the Little River Coffee Bar, right next to my favorite new bookshop, Hub City Bookshop. So you might as well plan to spend the morning or afternoon in these three places!

The baked goods at Cakehead Bakeshop are described on their website as "rustic," but don't let that word scare you. They sell old-fashioned cakes that you can order whole or buy by the slice, pies, cookies, scones, and biscuits; there was even a tomato pie on the counter the day I stopped in. But the cupcakes are far from rustic - each type is unique and topped with something fun, but more than that - they are delicious. So many places that make cupcakes focus on look and give you something dry, crumbly, or greasy, but these were perfect - moist, flavorful, and perfectly (but not too) sweet.

If you want their breakfast fare, which is sold out in the coffee shop, come early! I was there at 10 am and all the scones were gone for the day. This seems like a relatively small operation with great potential, and I hope they find success in Spartanburg!

Fresh Peach Soup

Fruit that is ripening too quickly or just on the brink can be turned into fruit soup! This is just four peaches whizzed together with a bit of fresh ginger, orange juice, lemon juice, and a splash of cream.

I'd rather just eat the fresh peaches, after all the work it takes to blanch and peel them! But fruit soup is a lovely dessert in hot weather for a light meal.

Georgia-Style Peach Cobbler

Last weekend we bought peaches from Strawberry Hill USA, an early clingstone variety called Junegold. I would like to go back later on in the season for freestone peaches which are much easier to deal with!

I knew I wanted to make peach cobbler but hadn't been 100% happy with the recipes I'd tried in the past. I started to see a funny trend of "Georgia style" cobblers, something I'd never heard of. It started with a Paula Deen recipe, but was a technique I saw repeated. I gave in and used the recipe at Vintage Victuals. The basic technique is melting butter in a pan, pouring the batter in, topping it with the fruit, and as it bakes the batter bakes up around the fruit. (This reminds me of clafouti, actually, but the ingredients are different).

I made a happy mistake of leaving the butter melting in the oven too long, and it was all brown and nutty when I poured the batter in, but decided to keep it, and was a delicious contrast to the sun-ripened peaches!

Roasted Cauliflower Hand Pies

As a baker, I'm often feeling like I never spend enough time making food for actual meals, just tasty treats for breakfast and dessert! The fiftieth time I flipped through Martha Stewart's Pies & Tarts, I really honed in on this recipe for roasted cauliflower hand pies. For one thing, it was vegetarian, which is a must in our household. For another, it called for manchego, my favorite cheese, and sounded somewhat Spanish in flavor.


The crust has manchego in it, and it is also used inside the pies, which also have a hazelnut paste (roasted nuts, garlic, lemon, rosemary, olive oil), roasted cauliflower, and manchego. These are RICH but delicious, and so vibrant in flavor. They would be really nice offered with something more acidic, maybe as part of a tapas meal.

Bluebarb Pie

I knew I froze batches of rhubarb for a reason. I've had Martha Stewart's New Pies & Tarts: 150 Recipes for Old-Fashioned and Modern Favorites sitting around for a bit, but it was for a funny reason. Every time I picked it up and looked through it, every single thing sounded good, and I couldn't decide what to make. That is so rare for me in a cookbook! But the pictures are vibrant, including a great how-to section in the back (which I utilized for my lattice work you see above, and it almost belongs more on the coffee table than in the kitchen.

Almost. I didn't want to make the rhubarb crumb pie, because I wanted to make something bluebarb, not knowing what that flavor combination would be like. So when I lacked the 7 cups of blueberries, but had 3, I took it as a sign to pull the rhubarb out of the freezer. What you see above is basically the exact recipe for the blueberry pie with half rhubarb. After tasting it, I should have compensated for the tartness of the rhubarb by adding a bit more sugar, but the colors in the pie are so beautiful, and it just tastes like summer and spring, all in one pie.

Wonder Buns and BabyCakes

I've had the cookbook BabyCakes Covers the Classics on my kitchen table, begging to be experimented with, for over a month now. I did half-heartedly make a modified version of gingerbread pancakes, which were delicious, but it took a while to commit to buying all the required ingredients.

Because vegan and gluten-free baking is expensive, y'all! No joke. I planned to make two recipes that use the same basic dough, and I had to buy gluten-free baking flour, arrowroot, xantham gum, brown rice flour, and agave nectar. Some of these ingredients I will use anyway, but unless I do more gluten-free experimenting, I'm not sure where the rest will go. The other part of gluten-free baking that I'm torn on is that I feel a little witchy stirring ingredients together that are so foreign to me. (I never saw eye of newt, though).


Okay, okay, I'll do some more experimenting. This cookbook is vibrant and has some creative groupings that make you want to bake despite the ingredient limitations you might have. The other recipe I picked to try was Hamentaschen from the "From the Old Country" section. It told me to use the basic pastry dough recipe from page 32, but as that had cinnamon in it, my dough was a lot darker than what was shown in the picture. In the end, my cookies unfolded while baking, but I am very willing to blame that on my inexperience with working with gluten-free dough!

So, how did everything taste? I've done vegan experiments with pretty good success, but gluten-free baking is another animal entirely. I'd say that you should expect everything to be denser, more hearty because of the mixed sources for the flours, and to be somewhat temperamental. But if you are required to eat a gluten-free diet, this book and the other BabyCakes cookbook are probably a good place to start. They seem to have done a great job at covering the things you would really crave - including an entire chapter on donuts! Gluten-free donuts, is that even possible? Try it and see.

Cocoa Brownies

I was pretty sure I had already blogged these Cocoa Brownies from Smitten Kitchen, but apparently not. I don't know, maybe I was thinking I am always posting about my experiments with her recipes and felt silly doing another one. I'm not sure! Then I went on vacation, blah blah blah.

Seriously, everyone knows that I'm a huge Dorie Greenspan fan (made her blueberry crumb cake again this weekend, so delicious), but I seriously think Deb from Smitten Kitchen could easily influence all of us as much. Her blog just makes you want to cook and bake and eat!

My local grocery store, which I prefer first because it is closest to my home but second because everyone who works there is friendly and efficient, seems to only be stocking Special Dark cocoa powder these days. I really must speak to them about this, because while it would be nice as an option, it is not "normal" cocoa powder! I had a little deja vu while making this recipe, since the last time I made a cocoa brownie recipe was when I was experimenting with black cocoa powder. That time, I was using Alton Brown's cocoa brownie recipe. Both are great, but they are really different. Alton's is cakey, and depends on a long beating of eggs at the beginning of the recipe. Deb's only uses two eggs, and very little flour, and I'm not sure they even fully set up until I'd put them in the fridge for a few hours. We just kept them there, because they were so delicious cold, besides being fudgy chewy deliciousness.

Stay tuned for more posts - I'm trying out some recipes from some new cookbooks in the next few days, and have pâte brisée chilling in the fridge....

Rhubarb Streusel Muffins

I'm a copycat! There are some blogs that I could spend the rest of my life imitating. I had rhubarb in my freezer from a month ago when it was fresh locally but I had no time to bake, and it has been constantly in the back of my mind. So when Deb from Smitten Kitchen posted this recipe for rhubarb streusel muffins, I knew I was set.

Sometimes I think Smitten Kitchen is the new Dorie (who was the new Julia).

East Coast Coffee Cake (vegan)

This morning, I had no eggs in the fridge. It was too early and I was too lazy to go anywhere to buy eggs, so I decided that today was a good day to try another vegan recipe! I had tofu in the fridge too, so started out my vegan recipe searching by looking for a muffin or scone with tofu in it. Somewhere along the way I found a post on Vegansaurus for East Coast Coffee Cake, which they found in one of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's many classy vegan cookbooks. I swear that Isa has written half the vegan recipes out there worth trying. I read the comments carefully and made a few changes, which I present to you here. But please do visit the original recipe and check out Ms. Moskowitz's book Vegan Brunch for even more amazing ideas.

East Coast Coffee Cake

Ingredients:
For the topping:
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
3 tbsp canola oil

For the cake:
3/4 cup soy milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar (I used distilled white because otherwise I had rice or balsamic, meh)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/4 flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Instructions
Preheat over to 375F. Grease a pan equal to or smaller than an 8" square. I used a 5x8 one because I wanted it a little thicker. Mix the milk and vinegar together and set aside to curdle for five minutes.

Make the topping:
Mix together flour, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour in 2 tbsp of the oil and toss with a fork, add additional tbsp until mixture is evenly moistened.

Make the cake:
In a large bowl, mix milk mixture, sugar, canola oil and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt, and mix until smooth.

Pour batter into pan. Evenly sprinkle the topping over the batter.

Bake 25 minutes before checking it for the first time. Mine was perfect at 25. You might consider lowering the temperature to 350, which is what would usually be called for in a baked good.

I could taste that this was oil instead of butter, but it has a beautiful crumb and makes a delicious breakfast treat!

Chocolate Dreams (and would we really call this cake?)

The dark chocolate drops I got from Black Mountain Chocolate were never going to last very long. I couldn't get them off of my mind. I wanted to make a dessert that would really feature the flavor of the chocolate!

I was remembering this episode of America's Test Kitchen that tried making the most chocolatey cupcake ever. A lot of what they discovered stuck with me - butter and other dairy can mask chocolate's flavor, etc. In the end, I didn't want to use a recipe this complicated with different kinds of chocolate, when what I wanted to do was pay homage to the actual chocolate I had brought home.

I stumbled across a post on David Lebovitz's blog about his Chocolate Idiot Cake, that John Scharffenberger used to like because of the way he featured his chocolate. That idea sold me on it, but I knew I didn't have enough chocolate to make the full recipe. I have this cute little 6-inch springform pan, and basically made 3/5 of the recipe. If you're doing the math, that was roughly 6 oz of the chocolate drops, 4 tbsp butter, 3 eggs, and 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar. It worked out okay. I still ended up baking it the entire hour and fifteen minutes before it was really set in the middle, but in a water bath it would have been difficult to burn.


I'm still mulling over two questions about this particular baking experience. #1 - Would I call this a cake? Well, nope. It has absolutely no flour and no crumb. It has the texture of cheesecake but is lighter in your mouth. It is buttery. Maybe more like French silk pie filling. Or a whipped ganache, except firm. Ha, well, I'm beginning to see why Mr. Lebovitz called it cake. What other name would work?

#2 - Did this satisfy my requirement of showcasing the chocolate?
I'm not sure about this one. It was absolutely delicious, to be sure, but melting the chocolate down and adding more fat and sweetness does take some of the original bite and roundness and mouthfeel away. What I would like to do is line up a bunch of different chocolates and make 5 versions of the same dessert, using singular chocolate in each, and then compare. Next time.

Contemplating Waffles

I still have not fully Conquered the Waffle. You know, found that one recipe that puts any other waffle to shame. The one that is crispy and tender and flavorful and stands up to fruit and whipped cream and syrup and anything else you might pour on top of it.

I went searching online this morning. One of my favorite internet searches to do when looking for a good recipe is just to add the word "best" to anything. So I found a post on SeriousEats.com called The Greatest Waffle Recipe Ever but I had been hoping for something with buttermilk. As I read the comments, several people said that the key was folding in whipped egg whites, and several mentioned a recipe from Cook's Illustrated. That is the recipe I made, although Cook's Illustrated's site tends to lock down until you have a paid account. So I will help you out and link you to what looks like half of the recipe in a comment in the blog.

A few of my comments, and why I think I am not quite to the best waffle yet. I did like the slight crunch of the cornmeal, but this added a savory element that reminded me of the Creamed Mushrooms on Cornmeal Waffles recipe I made over on my somewhat neglected cooking blog. I loved that recipe, in fact seeing it makes me want to make it again, but I'm just not sure I want that getting in my head when I'm eating a sweet waffle. Another comment said you have to add vanilla, so I did at the end of the waffle making, and honestly I'm torn. Vanilla automatically makes it sweet and aromatic, but it may throw off the balance a little.

I think I may have thrown everything off from an authentic tasting anyway by storing them in a 200F oven while I baked them all. That always is a downfall of waffles, the fact that only one can be made at a time.

So tell me your waffle tricks and favorite recipes!

Mexican Chocolate Ganache Tart

Happy Cinco de Mayo! My favorite story that came from the Cocoa Roastery Tour was the connection to Mexico in how the founder of Black Mountain Chocolate got started. I held this in my head for a week or so, knowing today was coming up, intending to combine all the traditional flavors of Mexican chocolate into a dessert.

After recent forays into gluten-free baking, I had some almond meal on my hands. I came across a recipe for a tart crust using it solely, no other flours, and adapted it for the dessert. I didn't find it to be as successful as I would have liked, but I will include it until I play around more. Maybe just a pâte brisée would have been better, but I wanted the crunch and flavor of the almonds without having them interfering with the texture of the chocolate.

So here is the recipe I made. It may need further tweaking.



Mexican Chocolate Ganache Tart
Makes one 8-9" tart

Crust:
2 cups almond meal/flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 pinch of salt
1 egg white
1/4 cup butter, melted

Mix ingredients with a fork and break up any large chunks of almond. Press into a tart pan with removable sides. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool completely.

Mexican Chocolate Ganache:
10 oz. Black Mountain Chocolate Dark Chocolate Drops*
1 1/4 cups regular whipping cream
1-2 cinnamon sticks
1-2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Heat cream in small saucepan over medium heat until steaming and a little bubbly, but do not allow to boil. Mix in spices and let the cinnamon stick steep for about 5 minutes.

Put the chocolate drops into a small mixing bowl. Pour the hot cream (through a strainer!) over them and let sit for 5 minutes, giving them time to melt gently. Stir together until smooth and pour into cooled crust. Ganache will set up in a few hours at room temperature or in 45 minutes or so in the fridge.

Slice into small wedges and serve with whipped cream if desired. (This is rich so small is a good idea).

*You can chop up other types of dark chocolate, but are you sure you want to? ;)

Black Mountain Chocolate and Cocoa Roastery - Swannanoa, NC

Last weekend, Nathaniel and I had the opportunity to tour the Cocoa Roastery at Black Mountain Chocolate. It was a special treat to meet one of the handful of artisanal chocolate makers in the entire country and to hear about his creative journey, as well as having a tour of how the chocolate is actually made. With a little pleading of some of the other tour members, we even got to taste a tiny batch of cocoa beans that had been grinding in a smaller machine that he learned cocoa roasting on (surprisingly delicious despite being incredibly bitter). I left giddy. Maybe it was the aroma of chocolate in the air. Maybe it was getting to witness chocolate at its source. I left with ideas whirling through my head of what I wanted to try.


Have you ever tasted fresh chocolate? I mean really fresh, from bean to bar? At the end of the tour we tasted the most recent batch (labeled 70% cacao) and bought some to bring home too. To me, fresh chocolate from Black Mountain Chocolate is slightly fruity with this roundness to it. The bars have a great shine and snap to them, just as they should.

If you are close to North Carolina, you should sign up for a Cocoa Roastery. These smaller tours are a new thing, but it looks like they'll be doing them every Saturday through the end of the year. You can also follow them in Facebook and Twitter.

Stay tuned for experiments with the chocolate that I brought home with me. I'm not going to lie - it is tempting to just eat it plain rather than risk muting the flavor in some kind of baked good. But I had some ideas....

Welcome Spring!

I know this is the second recipe in a row I have linked to from Two Peas and Their Pod, but when I saw this recipe I knew I'd make it the very first time I had my hand on local strawberries. Saturday, we went hiking a bit around the waterfalls of North Carolina around Brevard, and drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville. People were selling boiled peanuts and strawberries everywhere, so we were happy to buy some of each!

This cake is simple, lovely, and flavorful. It is amazing what an hour in the oven does for strawberries. I used almond extract instead of vanilla, and I read in the comments on the blog the recipe comes from that adding orange or lemon zest was also tasty. Also, we ate this for breakfast. We have no shame. :)

Easter Candy Cookies

I follow a bunch of blogs, and Two Peas and Their Pod posted a chocolate pudding cookie the other day with mini robin eggs in them. It linked back to their vanilla pudding cookie recipe. I went searching for mini robins eggs and when I couldn't find any, bought a bag each of Reeses milk chocolate peanut butter eggs and Hershey milk chocolate eggs with candy shells. I decided to make the vanilla pudding cookies with the Hershey. The first few sheets had just the eggs but I was worried they weren't chocolatey enough, and added chocolate chips.

My student workers loved these cookies! They are soft and sweet and the big candy coated hunks of chocolate certainly didn't hurt! I have (not-so-secret) plans to make the chocolate version with the peanut butter eggs inside.

Speaking of pudding. Has everyone been watching Top Chef Masters? This last episode had Celina Tio and her chocolate "puddin'" and everyone kept saying "puddin'" without the "g" and it was making me crazy. Is there a technical difference between "puddin'" and "pudding?" Is "pudding" somehow trademarked? I wanted to strangle her. She should have been sent home just for using that word alone. Phew, okay, I feel better now.

Pudding isn't always bad. It is amazing in these cookies. Make them, add something interesting, and eat!

Pumpkin Gingerbread Pancakes

I started out intending to make one of the vegan, gluten-free recipes from BabyCakes Covers the Classics, but it was a lazy, rainy, weekend morning and I didn't have all the ingredients for any of the recipes. Vegan baking is challenge enough; gluten-free baking is crazy as far as what you need in your pantry. I had xantham gum a while back when I was experimenting with vegetarian marshmallows, but it had gone bad and got thrown out. I've never owned rice flour or arrowroot powder. I had sent N- to the store for gluten free flour mix and ended up with Bob's Red Mill GF Biscuit Mix, so I needed to do some experimenting.

I felt like I was pretty close to what the Gingerbread Pancakes recipe was going after, although I didn't have xantham gum, applesauce, or agave nectar. I read online that for simple baked goods like pancakes, the xantham gum wasn't really needed, but then realized it was in the biscuit mix. So, check! Applesauce was more of a mystery. I knew people often substituted applesauce for fat in recipes, but didn't want to add more fat, as the recipe already called for a 1/2 cup of melted coconut oil. After a little hunting around online, I found a site that said you could use pumpkin and applesauce interchangeably. I had pumpkin, so check! I didn't have agave nectar, but knew that you could sub agave nectar for granulated sugar at about a 2/3 ratio. There was already molasses in the recipe, so I used sugar less than was quite right, knowing we'd be putting maple syrup on top!

The pancakes I ended up making were absolutely delicious, once I had thinned the batter down enough that I was making pancakes instead of dough balls on the griddle. The bean flour in the biscuit mix added a nice hearty flavor to the fall flavors, and the pumpkin paired incredibly with the gingerbread flavors. With 1 tbsp ground ginger and 2 tbsp vanilla, these are high in flavor, just missing all the disagreeable ingredients that some people can't enjoy.

Pumpkin Gingerbread Pancakes
based loosely on BabyCakes' recipe for Gingerbread Pancakes

2 cups Bob's Red Mill GF Biscuit Mix
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2/3 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup melted refined coconut oil, plus more for the pan
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup dark molasses
1 1/3 cup rice milk (started with 2/3 cup and kept adding)
2 tbsp vanilla extract

Whisk together dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients (and pumpkin) and stir until batter is smooth. On a griddle over medium heat, grease with coconut oil. Working in batches, pour 1/4 cup batter into the pan for each pancake. Cook for 2 minutes, then flip and cook on the other side for 2 minutes more. Transfer to a plate and repeat with the remaining batter.

The Cook

I came across this poem and loved it, this is just the first half. The National Book Foundation has been doing features during National Poetry Month of the poets who have won the award in the past. Lisel Mueller won in 1981.

The Cook
After Vermeer

I
No wonder she thinks there's more
where everything came from

a girl as round as the jug
that never runs dry

her arms thick cream, her yellow bodice
filled with anticipation

the bread before her risen
in the same light in which she stands

(Lisel Mueller, from The Need to Hold Still)

Dairy Free Strawberry Soup

I've had David Leibovitz's "Vegan" Strawberry Ice Cream recipe bookmarked since last summer. I liked all the experimenting he had done, and was interested to try his non-dairy, pretty much non-fat strawberry ice cream recipe. At that point, strawberry season was long past in the south, and it seemed to deserve fresh berries.

Lately strawberries from Florida have started to show up in abundance in the stores. Local fruit is still a month away or so, but I couldn't wait. I bought the rice milk, decided to add 2 tbsp of the Kirsch to try to keep it from freezing too solid, and made it in one night. I did use the honey, so I won't call it vegan, since most vegans I know don't eat honey. So let's just be happy with calling it dairy-free!

It was delicious right out of the ice cream freezer, but was still ridiculously hard out of the freezer. This is just going to be a problem with homemade ice cream of all varieties until I start figuring out how to add additives (which I'd rather not). This recipe is probably more likely to get hard because there is no fat in it.

But then something miraculous happened. I had left it out to thaw, and ten minutes later it was still hard as a rock, so I kind of forgot about it. A few hours later, half of it was still a soft solid, but the rest was a beautiful soupy texture. Why throw it out? Strawberries, rice milk, sugar, honey, and kirsch make for pretty amazing strawberry soup. Plus it is getting warm but isn't quite ice cream weather. A chilled soup is just about perfect for the start of our strawberry season.