Tag Archives: baking

Basbousa Cake

Posted on by
7

Semolina flour gives this cake an exotic taste. Soaking the cake in orange-honey syrup satisfies the sweet tooth and thinly sliced almonds pleases the eye. We served slices with sparkling water mixed with the remaining orange-honey syrup.

This sumptuous cake was a fitting dessert for a Middle East dinner we prepared in our home in the Alaska bush.

Middle Eastern Basbousa

Ingredients

For the Syrup:
2 cups plus 3 tbsp white sugar
1½ cups water
2 tbsp orange juice (or lemon juice)
1 tsp honey

For the Cake:
2 cups semolina
1 cup white sugar
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp baking soda
2 medium eggs
Slivered almonds

Directions

Preparing the syrup: 

  1. In a medium saucepan, mix the sugar and water. Add the orange juice and bring the mixture to a gentle boil. Add the honey and reduce the heat.
  2. Keep heating for 8-10 minutes until the mixture thickens and has a syrup-like consistency. Set aside to cool.

Preparing the cake: 

  1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease and flour a 9-inch springform pan.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix thoroughly.
  3. In a separate medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Slowly add the dry ingredient mixture into the butter and egg mixture. Stir the milk and mix thoroughly until you get an even batter.
  4. Pour into a baking dish. Sprinkle the slivered almonds on top of the mixture.
  5. Using a butter knife, section the batter into small squares or diamonds.
  6. Bake for 25 minutes.
  7. Remove from the oven and drizzle the syrup on top of the cake. Let cool for 20 minutes and serve.

Recipe adapted from amideastfeast.com.

Click here for the rest of the Middle East feast.

Dutched Hot Cocoa

Posted on by
7

Rich, creamy and with a wicked cocoa flavor you can almost sink your teeth into, Dutched cocoa and homemade marshmallows make the perfect after dinner or home movie hot beverage.

Homemade Hot Cocoa with Homemade Marshmallows

Every great food has “secret ingredients.” Here, they are Dutch process high fat cocoa and homemade marshmallows. Also known as “Dutched” cocoa, this cocoa is made from the richest grade of cocoa available and is processed for an especially smooth flavor. As for the marshmallows… As sticky and messy as these are to make from scratch, having experienced how flavorful and wonderfully gooey a melted marshmallow can be, it’s going to be hard to go back to store-bought.

Ingredients (2 cups)

  • 2 cups milk or soy milk
  • 1 tbs Dutch Process High Fat Cocoa (available from Penzeys Spices)
  • 1 1/2 tbs sugar
  • dash of cinnamon
  • dash of vanilla
  • a couple of homemade marshmallows cut into chunks

Directions: Heat milk, cocoa, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in a heavy pot (to prevent scorching) over medium low heat. A whisk works well for mixing in the cocoa. Do not boil. When steam develops and liquid is hot to the touch, pour into mugs and top with marshmallows.

Deep Dish Garlic Margherita Pizza

Posted on by
6

Uptown Chicago on the Chukchi Sea: Pan-fried garlic chips and lots of parmesan create a tasty topping for this Margherita-stye deep dish pizza. 

Barbra’s formative food experiences were considerably more worldly than mine. For her, deep dish pizzas were part of growing up. But I still vividly remember my first encounter with deep dish pizza. It occurred during my senior year of high school when one of my track teammates qualified for nationals in the javelin. The meet was in Chicago. When he got back, he raved about a strange and wondrous food called “Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.” The way he told it, a single lare slice of this thick, crusty, meat-and-cheese-stuffed pie would constitute a meal for a regular person.

After that, I kept my eyes open, hoping to find such a pizza on a local menu or in our supermarket’s frozen food section. But back then, in my small town in western Pennsylvania, there were no Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizzas. (I felt like an epicurean adding a little extra cheese and a sprinkle of Italian Seasoning on my frozen Red Barrons.) Many years later, when I finally did get the opportunity to try a deep dish pizza, it was at a well-known pizza chain where, not surprisingly, the experience was entirely anticlimactic.

I’m happy to say that I have finally experienced the gustatory joy of digging into an authentic, perfectly baked, zesty, cheesy satisfying deep dish pizza. Barbra kept the ingredients fairly simple, starting with a Margherita-style filling featuring diced tomatoes, slices of mozzarella, olive oil and a blend of Italian herbs. She topped this with shredded parmesan and pan-fried garlic slices. In our view, pizzas ultimately stand or fall on their crusts. This one was perfect.

Deep Dish Garlic Margherita Pizza

Ingredients

Crust

  • 4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 tbsp yellow cornmeal
  • 2 3/4 tsp yeast
  • 1 3/4 tsp salt
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 tbsp butter, melted
  • 1 1/4 cup water

Filling and Toppings

  • 3/4 lb. mozzarella cheese, sliced
  • 28 ounces (two 14 ounce cans) of diced tomatoes, drained thoroughly
  • 3 tsp dried Italian seasonings
  • 1 tsp dried garlic powder
  • 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • garlic chips (see recipe below)

Directions for Crust

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Place the crust ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer.
  3. Turn on dough setting.
  4. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl.
  5. Oil a pizza pan or two 9-inch pie pans by pouring a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in pan and tilting it to cover bottom(s).
  6. Stretch the dough to make a large circle. Do this with your hands or with a rolling pin on a lightly oiled surface.
  7. Lay the dough in the pan and stretch the dough up the sides of the pan. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes.
  8. Bake crust for 10 minutes until set and very lightly browned

Directions for Filling and Toppings

  1. Combine tomatoes with herbs, garlic, salt and pepper.
  2. Cover the bottom of baked crust with mozzarella slices.
  3. Add tomato mixture.
  4. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on the top.
  5. Top with garlic chips (See below).
  6. Bake pizza for about 25 minutes. If edges begin to brown too much, cover edges with foil during baking. When finished, pizza filling should be bubbly and top should be golden brown.
  7. Allow pizza to cool for about 10 – 15 minutes before serving.

Garlic Chips

  1. Slice 6 large cloves of garlic into thin slivers.
  2. Heat olive oil over medium-low heat in a medium frying pan. Add garlic slivers and sauté until just browned and edges are crisp.
  3. Remove chips from heat and drain on paper towel.

Burebrot or Swiss Farmer’s Bread

Posted on by
13

Just waiting to be slathered with fresh butter and a favorite jam, you can almost hear the crust crunching on a slice of this rustic Swiss Farmer’s Bread.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of visiting my favorite auntie in Switzerland and talking with her in broken English and Swiss over my favorite breakfast: cafe mit schlag with a schniteli: milk coffee and farmer’s bread slathered with freshly made creamery butter and jam.

As I began baking different kinds of bread last year, I wanted to see if I could create Burebrot in my own kitchen. It turned out that every recipe I could find included rye flour. So, I had to wait until this fall, after we did our annual summer shopping.

After the bread finished baking, Jacked whipped up a small pot of tasty broccoli soup. I cut two generous pieces of Burebrot and topped them with butter. The bread was just the way I remembered it: hearty and wonderfully crusty. This is the perfect bread to pair with a slice of savory swiss cheese. We have a few pounds of rye flour for the year, so this bread will be making several encores.

The following recipe is a result of adaptions of several recipes to match the ingredients that are in my pantry. I processed the dough in my Zojirushi bread machine so it would rise properly in my Arctic home.

Burebrot

Ingredients

  • 8 oz buttermilk
  • 7 oz water
  • 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 1/2 cups rye flour
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 2 1/2 tsp dry yeast

Directions

  1. Place the above ingredients in the bread machine pan according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
  2. Turn on dough cycle.
  3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  4. Shape the dough into an oval on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.
  5. Cut a lattice pattern into dough with a sharp knife.
  6. Bake for 40 – 45 minutes. Bread will be crusty when finished.

Cinnamony Sugary Buttery Cookies

Posted on by
11

These cinnamon vanilla snaps are addicting! They key is in the ingredients…

A secret behind the best pies, cookies and breads is that they start with excellent ingredients. Organic butter from grass-fed cows and Bob’s Red Mill all-purpouse flour give these cinnamon sugar cookies a head start, and Penzeys double-strength vanilla extract put them at 11 on a 1 – 10 scale! The “double-strength” description is spot on; you truly only need half the required quantity of vanilla recipes call for and the flavor is divine. High-quality Saigon cinnamon added the final touch. These cookies come out of the oven ready to melt in your mouth!

Cinnamon Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract (or 1/2 tsp Penzeys double-strength)

For topping –

  • 1 1/2 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, mix together sugars at medium speed.
  3. Add butter and mix until incorporated.
  4. Add egg and vanilla and mix until light and fluffy.
  5. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix on low speed just until incorporated. Do not overmix.
  6. Mix topping ingredients in a small bowl.
  7. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in cinnamon mixture.
  8. Place onto ungreased cookie sheets, about 2 inches apart.
  9. Bake for 18 minutes.
  10. Cool immediately on wire racks

Yields 2 dozen cookies.

Recipe adapted from At Home in Alaska.

Bagels 3 Ways: Blue Poppy Seed, Roasted Sesame Seed and Onion

Posted on by
6

Just the way we like them – chewy on the outside and soft on the inside, these bagels are topped with Penzey’s minced onion, blue poppy seeds, and roasted sesame seeds.

I let the Zojirushi bread machine do the first steps of mixing, rising, and kneading the bagel dough while I tended to other things today. After about one and a half hours, it was my turn to finish the bagels by shaping them, boiling them and baking them. When the finished bagels came out of the oven, we knew the dinner menu would feature these beauties smeared with cream cheese and topped with Jack’s smoked salmon.


Bread Machine Bagels

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup water
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
  • 3 quarts boiling water
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • toppings of your choice

Directions

  1. Place first 5 ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough setting.
  2. When cycle is complete, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and let rest.
  3. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Add 3 tbsp of white sugar.
  4. While water is coming to a boil, cut dough into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Flatten balls into discs about 1/2 inch thick. Poke a hole in each disc and twirl the disk around your finger to enlarge the hole. Place bagels back on the lightly floured surface to rest until the water boils.
  5. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
  7. When water is boiling, place bagels in water. Boil for 1 minute, then flip to boil for an additional minute. (I fit 4 bagels at a time in my pot.)
  8. After bagels have boiled, remove them from the water with a slotted spoon or strainer spoon made for frying. Place bagels on a clean, dry towel.
  9. Arrange bagels on baking sheet. Brush tops of bagels with beaten egg. Sprinkle with topping of your choice, or leave plain.
  10. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, until well browned.

La Boulangerie Arctic

Posted on by
7

Soft, bakery-style French bread, the chewy crust sprinkled with an especially tasty grey sea salt.

After tinkering with a few recipes, I now have my go-to recipe for French bread. The recipe produces two lovely baguettes or one larger loaf. Either way, it’s hard to stop with just one slice of this bread, and it looks as appetizing as it tastes. After having difficulty getting bread to rise in our Arctic home, I now rely on my Zojirushi bread machine to prepare the dough for this recipe. The loaves are then finished off in the oven. From start to finished bread, it takes about two and a half hours. A warm slice slathered with butter is the perfect accompaniment for Jack’s delicious clam chowder.

Homemade French Bread

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup water
  • 2 tsp granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp active dry yeast
  • 2 tbsp olive oil

Glaze with

  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp water
  • 2 tsp grey sea salt (or other artisan rock salt)

Directions

  1. Place first six ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer and select dough setting. Add 1 – 2 tsp of water during cycle if dough does not form into a ball.
  2. After dough cycle completes, turn dough onto a lightly floured surface.
  3. Divide in half.
  4. Roll each half into a rectangle, approximately 10 inches by 8 inches.
  5. Roll up each rectangle, jelly-roll style, along the long side to produce long loaves.
  6. Pinch seams to seal.
  7. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  8. Place loaves, seam side down, on pan.
  9. Cover and let loaves rise in a warm place until doubled, about 20 minutes.
  10. Whisk egg and water. Brush loaves with egg mixture. Make 4 shallow slashes across loaves. Sprinkle loaves with sea salt.
  11. Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 – 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
  12. Cool on wire rack.

Chocolate Drizzled Orange Marmalade Cookies

Posted on by
1

Our trip back to Point Hope, Alaska, went like clockwork – Swiss clockwork at that. The taxi driver arrived at our storage unit (where we’d spent the night in our camper) ten minutes early and was driving a van which easily held our eight coolers loaded with this summer’s catch. Traveling with eight coolers always fills me with a bit of trepidation; you can imagine the “what if” scenarios that run through our heads for this trip. So we plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Up in Point Hope, our big freezer is now stocked for the year while we wait for about a thousand pounds of dry goods we carefully packed and mailed to arrive via the U.S. Postal service.

“Waiting” is not something I enjoy. “Doing” is much more fun. After finding a half of a jar of marmalade in the refrigerator, I decided conducting a cookie experiment would be much more fun than sitting around waiting for groceries to arrive. The results? Orange-flavored cookies. The chocolate added a layer of flavor that complimented the orange tang.

Orange Marmalade Cookies (makes 3 dozen)

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (can substitute with 2 eggs)
  • 12 tbsp orange marmalade
  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 3 tsp baking powder

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar.
  3. Add applesauce and marmalade and mix thoroughly.
  4. In a separate bowl, sift together flour and baking powder.
  5. Mix in flour mixture to butter mixture until just blended.
  6. Drop dough by tablespoons onto parchment-covered cookie sheets. Leave at least one inch between cookies.
  7. Bake until cookies spread slightly and are lightly browned (about 10 minutes).
  8. Cool cookies completely on wire rack.
  9. Drizzle with melted chocolate, if desired. (I used semi-sweet chocolate chips.)

Strawberry-Port Gallette with Sliced Almonds

Posted on by
6

Delicious first baking experience in the galley of our boat, Bandon. Strawberries marinated in brown sugar and port wine stuffed into a simple crust filled our little home with delicious smells and satisfied my need to bake.

Our boat is equipped with a gimbaled stove, which pivots and swings to remain level in spite of waves and wind in the harbor. The stove houses a tiny oven, which is perfect for baking for two. I love to bake and have had an itch to make something with the  beautiful strawberries I kept seeing at the store. We hadn’t had strawberries since last summer! After thirty minutes of baking, the first experiment emerged from the oven a success. The only thing that would have improved this dessert was a couple of scoops of  vanilla ice cream. Next time…

Strawberry Port Gallette

Ingredients

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 3 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 cups sliced strawberries
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp port wine

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, stir together strawberries, brown sugar, and port. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, granulated sugar, and salt.
  3. Cut in butter to flour mixture. I mixed this by hand, literally, until the butter was well incorporated.
  4. Add a bit of water to form flour mixture into a dough ball (I used about 2 tbsp).
  5. Roll out dough to an 8″ circle. I didn’t have a rolling pin, so I pressed out the dough into 8″ circle onto a well-buttered cookie sheet.
  6. Place berries in a mound on the circle, leaving a 1-2″ border. I reserved some of the sugar-port juice to sauté the sliced almonds.
  7. Fold the 1-2″ border over fruit, leaving the strawberries exposed in the center.
  8. Bake at 375 degrees F until golden, about 30 minutes.
  9. While gallette is baking, sauté almonds in reserved sugar-port juice.
  10. When baking is complete, remove gallette from oven and sprinkle with sautéed almonds.

Scones and Lemon Curd – The Last Egg

Posted on by
6

How to use  up the last of the pear butter, lemon curd, orange marmalade and the lone remaining egg in the fridge? Whip up a batch of scones, set out the spreads, and watch it all disappear!

These scones were amazingly quick and easy and had just the right texture and flavor. When I set out a large glass baking dish filled with them in the school office, they were gone almost before I turned around.

To shape them, I used a circular cookie cutter and then cut those circles in half. For larger scones, you could roll the dough into a circle and cut it into eight wedges.

Scones

Ingredients

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 5 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • a little less than 1 cup milk
  • cinnamon/sugar mixture to dust the tops (optional)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cover baking sheets with parchment paper.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. I used a stand mixer.
  3. Mix in butter.
  4. Put egg in a large measuring cup. Fill measuring cup to 1 cup line with milk. Mix well.
  5. Pour some of the egg mixture slowly into flour while mixing on low until mixture forms a dough ball. Set aside extra egg mixture.
  6. Turn the dough out onto lightly floured surface and knead briefly.
  7. Roll dough out to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut into the shape of your choice.
  8. Place scones on parchment-covered baking sheets. Brush with remaining egg mixture. Dust with cinnamon/sugar if desired.
  9. Bake 15 minutes in preheated oven, or until golden brown.