Tag Archives: breakfast

Cherry Danish

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Have you ever craved the smell of something? I know this might sound extremely weird, but sometimes I just want to smell a certain thing. usually its the smell of a sweet yeast dough cooking. Something about the smell makes me feel loved and comforted. everyone knows this smell. It’s what draws people to the cinnabun and pretzel stands at malls. It’s what makes waking up on Sunday mornings as a kid memorable. It’s one of the few things I remember my mom making when I was a kid.

The past week I’ve struggled with work and life and all of these adult things that now fill my life. I went and saw a movie only to cry for a solid 2 hours (note to all – The Descendants is not what I expected out of a film with Mr. Clooney existing in Hawaii). I knew only one thing could shake the mood I was in, baking.

I felt better as soon as I started to smell the yeast blooming in the milk. Any remaining tension disappeared while kneading the dough. How could the problems of my life really be so bad if I still have everything I need to bake?

I didn’t really know where I was going when I made the dough. Maybe a cake? Maybe sweet rolls? Maybe something different. As the dough proofed I investigated the pantry and made the best discovery: sour cherry jam! from there I just went with what ever came to mind, and I have to say…. the end product surprised and impressed me.

It might have been a restless 5:30 this morning when my cherry creation went into the oven, but it was worth it. There’s no better smell coming out of a kitchen in the morning than one of these, and the sunrise wasn’t too shabby either.  I guess my problems can’t be that bad…

Recipe all my own

Pastry Dough:

1 Cup milk

1 Package instant yeast

1/2 Cup sugar

3 Cups flour

1/2 cup almond meal

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 stick butter, melted

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

Cherry Filling

1 8.5oz container of sour cherry jam

1 cup frozen cherries

1/4 cup flour

juice of 1 lemon

Topping

1 egg

1 tablespoon cream

1/2 cup blanched slivered almonds

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon honey, or as needed

Directions

  • Warm milk to about 100 degrees, add a pinch of a sugar and the package of yeast. Let bloom
  • In a large bowl mix flour, almond meal, sugar and salt
  • Once the yeast is activated add the milk mixture  and the melted butter to the dry ingredients. mix to combine
  • transfer the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth
  • place the dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until it has doubled in size, about 1 hour
  • while the dough is rising make the filling. Place the jam and frozen cherries in a bowl and microwave until the jam is loose. add the lemon juice and the flour mix and set aside.
  • get out your largest kitchen towel and cover generously with flour.
  • place the risen dough on the towel and begin rolling until the dough is about the size of the cloth.
  • spread the filling out over the entire surface of the dough
  • gently roll the dough up into a log
  • to shape the dough make the log into a U-shape and the twist
  • place the dough on a lined sheet pan cover with plastic wrap and let rise for at least an hour, preferably over night. It will double to triple in size
  • When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400° and mix the egg and cream together. Brush the egg mixture over the entire dough.
  • sprinkle the almonds over the pastry and place small cubes of the butter throughout the topping.
  • last, drizzle about a tablespoon of honey over the almonds
  • place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes rotating half way through, if the dough looks dry, drizzle more honey over the danish
  • let cool before slicing

 

 

 

 

Check out other awesome pastries over at Yeastspotting!

Povitica

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I have been a horrible blogger this month. Not only have I not had time to post anything, I have barely had time to bake. I have been amazingly busy a work the past several weeks, USC football has taken over my Saturdays and I recently became a fan of an exercise class (bizarre and totally out of character). I have been obsessed with the Bar Method; It’s Pilates, yoga and ballet all mixed into an hour leaving my limbs feeling like jello. I really like it but it’s having adverse effects on my baking… My arms were so sore as I was kneading a dough this past week!

Since I felt so bad about not making anything for a while I decided to try something I’ve seen all over the food universe, Povitica. It has every element of baking I love all combined into a beautiful swirled package. Yeast, check. Eastern European, check. Some crazy technique I’ve never tried before, check. What is there not to love? I even forgot the part about chocolate! This really might be one of the better things I’ve ever made. It’s similar to a babka, but the dough is flakier. My oh so poetic father called it a giant rugelach. Regardless of what you compare it… It’s delicious! And I promise it is worth following each step of the directions very carefully.

This most important part of making this is the rolling of the dough. The recipe does not make a large quantity of dough, but it rolls out to be incredibly large! This is all due to rolling the dough out on a kitchen towel. I had my doubts about this… I was about to start flouring my counter to use as a work surface at first, but then I kept reading the directions. You want to roll the dough out so thin that you can see the pattern of the towel underneath. When you think the dough can’t get thinner, roll it out more. I’ve never rolled a yeast dough out that thin, so I wanted to try it. I got my towel out, floured it, placed the ball of dough down and went to work.

This was AMAZING. The dough was paper-thin by the time I finished. The recipe wasn’t anything out of the normal, so I knew it wasn’t the ingredients that let the dough get so thin. It’s the towel underneath! It seems like the towel helps the dough stay in place as it gets thinner. It really is remarkable to watch what is happening as you roll each time. I made a batch of croissant dough the next day using a towel as a work surface and it worked brilliantly there too.This bread went very quickly. I made a second loaf (that is what the pictures are of) on Saturday as it was pouring rain outside. It turned out well, but the rain affected the dough a bit and it was not as flakey as the first.Also I think the proofing time between the shaping and baking is very important. If your dough is to dense, it will not cook through all the way and be doughy in the center (like my pictured second loaf).

Povitica (recipe from passionateaboutbaking)

Ingredients

To activate the Yeast:
½ tsp sugar
¼ tsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp warm water
1½ tsp dry yeast
Dough:
½ Cup  2% milk
¾ Cup sugar
¾ tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 vanilla bean,scraped
1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 cups all-purpose flour
Topping:
1 egg white, beaten with fork
1½ tsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp melted butter
Filling Ingredients:
1¾ cups (10 oz) walnuts, ground
¼ cup 2% milk
¼ Cup unsalted butter
1 egg yolk beaten with fork
½ vanilla bean, scraped
½ Cup sugar
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
Directions
  • In a small bowl, stir sugar, flour, and the yeast into warm water
  • Allow to stand for 5 minutes.
To Make the Dough:
    • In a medium saucepan, heat the milk up to just below boiling (about 180°F/82°C), stirring constantly so that a film does not form on the top of the milk. You want it hot enough to scald you, but not boiling. Place the half vanilla bean in the milk.  Allow to cool slightly, until it is about 110°F/43°C.
    • one it is cool enough to handle take the vanilla bean out and scrap the seeds on the inside out with a small sharp knife.
    • In a large bowl, mix the scalded milk,vanilla, sugar, and the salt until combined.
    • Add the beaten eggs, yeast mixture, melted butter, and 2 cups of flour.
    • Blend thoroughly and slowly add extra flour, mixing well until the dough starts to clean the bowl
    • Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead, gradually adding flour a little at a time, until smooth and does not stick.
    • Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover loosely with a layer of plastic wrap and let rise an hour and a half in a warm place, until doubled in size. I usually put mine in the oven so there is no draft.
To Make the Filling
    • In a large bowl mix together the ground walnuts, sugar and cocoa. {I whizzed the walnuts, cocoa, and sugar in the food processor}
  • Heat the milk and butter to boiling, add the vanilla bean, and scrape into the hot liquids like for the dough.
  • Pour the liquid over the nut/sugar mixture.
  • Add the egg yolk and mix thoroughly.
  • Allow to stand at room temperature until ready to be spread on the dough.
  • If the mixture thickens, add a small amount of warm milk {This is important}
To Roll and Assemble the Dough:
  • Spread a clean sheet or cloth over your entire table so that it is covered.
  • Sprinkle with a couple of tablespoons to a handful of flour
  • Place the dough on the sheet and roll the dough out with a rolling-pin, starting in the middle and working your way out, until it measures roughly 10-12 inches in diameter
  • Spoon 1 to 1.5 teaspoons of melted butter on top.
  • Using the tops of your hands, stretch dough out from the center until the dough is thin and uniformly opaque. You can also use your rolling pin, if you prefer.
  • As you work, continually pick up the dough from the table, not only to help in stretching it out, but also to make sure that it isn’t sticking.
  • When you think it the dough is thin enough, try to get it a little thinner. It should be so thin that you can see the color and perhaps the pattern of the sheet underneath. I mean seriously… in relation to my large rolling pin you can see how huge this rolls out to be! and it’s only 2 cups of flour!!
  • Spoon filling evenly over dough until covered.
  • Lift the edge of the cloth and gently roll the dough like a jelly roll
  • Once the dough is rolled up into a rope, gently lift it up and place it into a greased loaf pan in the shape of a “U”, with the ends meeting in the middle. You want to coil the dough around itself, as this will give the dough its characteristic look when sliced
  • Brush the top of the loaf with the beaten egg white and sprinkle with granulated sugar. 
  • Cover pans lightly will plastic wrap and allow to rest for about 15 minutes.
  • Heat oven to moderate 400°F.
  • Remove plastic wrap from dough and place into the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes.
  • Turn down the oven temperature to slow 325°C and bake for an additional 45 minutes, or until done. {Check the bread at 30 minutes to ensure that the bread is not getting too brown. You may cover the loaves with a sheet of aluminum foil if you need to.}
  • Remove bread from oven and brush with melted butter.
  • Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack for 20-30 minutes, still in the bread pan. Remember, the bread is heavy about 2.5 and it needs to be able to hold its own weight, which is difficult when still warm and fresh out of the oven. Allowing it to cool in the pan helps the loaf to hold its shape.
  • It is recommended that the best way to cut Povitica loaves into slices is by turning the loaf upside down and slicing with a serrated knife.

Off to Yeastspotting it goes!

Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake Loaf

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I’ve stopped following recipes lately. I think I like testing myself to see if my baking intuition is as good as I think it is. Sometimes… well sometimes things just aren’t blogged about. Other times… I get a huge ego boost when people ask “where did you get the recipe?” and I get to say, “oh its nothing special,  I just threw some things together, poured it in the pan and crossed my fingers”.

Of course what those people don’t know is that there have been flops – even when I follow recipes. I have a tendency of forgetting baking powder or salt, one time I even forgot oil. Because of this, I appreciate when things turn out the way I want them to (or even better than I hoped for on occasion).

My secret is I read. A lot. I read recipes, I read other blogs, I read almost every page in all the monthly food magazines to pick up tips and secrets. Once you realize the purpose of all the ingredients, it becomes much easier to throw things together successfully. For example beating the butter and sugar together first before adding the other ingredients helps make a tender and fluffy cake. The eggs are the glue that holds everything together, and flour… well… it pretty much is the mass of the cake. If you want more information on what role ingredients play in baking I recommend this link.

This loaf cake was something I made up as I went along. My family has had a bundt cake that was a box of yellow cake mix with a chocolaty-cinnamon swirl through the center which was my inspiration. I thought a vanilla cake with this swirl and a cinnamon crumb topping would be a hit at the house and just went with it. I pulled some non-traditional ingredients into the mix for fun as well like fresh ricotta and black cocoa. I used the ricotta for two purposes, as a butter substitute and also for moistness instead of sour cream or water or only milk. The black cocoa was out of necessity… I bought a few months ago and have been scared to use it. It was expensive and I haven’t found any great black cocoa recipe. But I didn’t have any normal cocoa powder and it worked in this application. Also, I separated the egg whites from the yolks and whipped them and folded them into the batter as the last step to add more lift to the cake.

Lastly…. my secret to an evenly cooked pound cake was used. Start with a cold oven, put the cake in and then turn to the correct temperature. My gut tells me that this helps the cake cook evenly the same way starting with cold water boils potatoes or eggs evenly. I’m not 100% sure on the reason, but it works beautifully. I recommend it for any dense cake.

Recipe

cake

1 stick butter, softened

4 oz ricotta

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs, separated

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

3 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup ricotta

1/2 cup milk

Chocolate cinnamon swirl

1/4 cup cocoa

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Crumble topping

2/3 cup flour

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 stick butter, melted

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

  • grease a 9″x5″ loaf pan with butter or line with parchment paper
  • mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a small bowl and set aside.
  • Beat the first amount of Ricotta and butter together
  • Add sugar and beat until fluffy. You want it to look like a whipped frosting consistency.
  • add the egg yolks and vanilla (i used vanilla paste because I had it in the pantry and I really like the bean specks it creates in the batter)
  • add half of the dry ingredients to the batter
  • add the second amount of ricotta and milk to the mixture
  • add the last amount of the flour and set aside
  • with clean beaters, whisk the egg whites in a small bowl until you have soft peaks. I like to wipe the bowl down with half a lemon as the acid helps make sure that the eggs with whip up. 
  • gently fold the egg whites into the batter. set aside.
  • in a small bowl mix the cocoa and cinnamon together
  • in a different small bowl make the crumb topping by mixing all ingredients together. If ti does not look chunky enough add a tablespoon more flour. 
  • assemble cake by pouring half of the batter into the prepared pan, followed by sprinkling the cocoa mixture over the layer and following with the rest of the batter. Next sprinkle the crumb topping over the loaf.
  • Place in a cold oven, close the door and turn the oven up to 350°F.
  • Let bake for about an hour 10 minutes, or until the loaf is set and a tooth pick inserted comes out clean.

Banana Bread

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There’s nothing I appreciate more than getting distracting text from my brother while at work:

“we have 14 bananas… what are u suppose to do with 14 bananas?”

Me: “Cereal, granola, ice cream, smoothies, bread, sandwiches. It’s pretty limitless”.

Brother: “Don’t try to make urself sound worldly, cereal and granola are practically the same thing. btw your banana bread has sucked lately. Can you go back to making the one that was good?”

He really has a way with words, doesn’t he? My brother will be the first to admit he is a bit of a banana bread snob. Growing up we both became accustom to one from our favorite breakfast spot in Hawaii. It really is a flavor that is ingrained in both of our memories. The banana flavor comes through just enough, the interior is pale with specks and fluffy, but crust is dense and moist and a deep almost chocolate color. It’s pretty close to perfect, and I have worked to try to recreate it more times than I can count (sometimes I come pretty close too!).

But, I can admit that lately my banana bread has been sub-par. I have attempted to make it healthier (as requested by said brother). I’ve tried everything from replacing all the fat with applesauce, using egg whites only, splenda (ew), and a slew of different ratios of bran, whole wheat, white whole wheat and all-purpose flours. I have tried to make this only in my dreams delicious, perfect textured, healthy banana bread for so long that I forgot the “good” recipe I had used that was liked.

I was determined to prove to I still had banana bread making skills and knew I had to commit to fat, sugar and all the other things that make baked goods so tasty. I turned to my new go-to everything I’ve tried out of this book is awesome standby, Tartine. I had remembered seeing a banana date “tea cake” in the book and thinking to myself that the ingredients were almost identical to a standard banana bread. But a little voice in my head said if it is good enough for Tartine, something must be special about it.

So I made the “tea cake” – without the dates – and it was good. It was really good. It was moist, flavorful and gone in a day. The brother approved, and felt accomplished since I left him with the task of taking it out of the oven when the timer went off. By the time I got back from my failed jogging attempt 1/4 of the loaf was gone.

This is going to be my new go to BB recipe, next time I’m adding the dates. And next time, I’m going to read/ follow the directions. I basically scanned the text for the oven temperature and added wet to dry like all other BB and threw it in the oven. Only then did I take a closer look and see that it used a more cake-like method of creaming the butter and sugar first and adding the rest in steps. Opps. I’d love to say I made a mistake, but mistakes don’t taste this good.

Recipe

Banana-Date Tea Cake (Tartine)

1 cup + 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 medium bananas, very ripe, mashed

2 large eggs

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

½ teaspoon salt

6 Tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, very soft

¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar

Optional mix-ins:

1 cup walnuts, lightly toasted and coarsely chopped

1¾ cups (about 8 oz.) dates, pitted and coarsely chopped

Topping

1 medium banana

2 Tablespoons sugar

Directions (my way)

  • Preheat the oven to 325º F.  Lightly butter the bottom and sides of a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.
  • Mix flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, corn starch, cinnamon and sugar in a large bowl
  • Add butter, eggs, and vanilla extract and mix until almost all the dry ingredients are incorporated.
  • Add mashed bananas and mix until everything is homogenous.
  • Pour batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula to level it.
  • Slice the banana for the topping very thinly on a bias and place on top the batter in an appealing pattern. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar.
  • Bake at 325º F for about an hour, or until the bread starts to pull away from the pan on the sides or a tooth pick test comes out clean.
  • Eat warm.