Rolling in Dough

Roasted Apple Strudel

We have a tradition in our house of celebrating the New Year with a Money or Three King's Cake. Of all of the various crazy things people do to ensure good luck and prosperity in the New Year - wearing red or yellow underwear, burning their regrets, cleansing the house with burning sage or eating black-eyed peas (full disclosure: I have tried most of these), eating something sweet and delicious with a coin baked into it seems to make the most sense. This began in our house as a way to nudge my husband out of a financial slump. I told him that if he found the coin he would certainly have a good year. Of course he found it (do you think I'm silly?) and it re-energized his career. The money cake has evolved into something more than just hopes for prosperity. I now also make a cake based on someplace I'd like to travel to in the coming year, and bake a euro in it, rather than just a penny. This year by popular consent, we made an Apple Strudel, because everyone agrees that it would be lovely to go to Germany or Austria again.

Gourmet's Apple Strudel recipe boasts of being the real Viennese deal and it sounded delicious. Making strudel is time consuming but so worth it! I had always taken the easy route of using phyllo dough, but in the interest of improving my baking techniques, I decided to go for the Full Monty. The apples are peeled, sliced and roasted, tossed with chopped walnuts and golden raisins and rolled in a paper thin, butter basted dough that covered my entire countertop, hanging off three sides halfway to the floor. My kitchen was filled with the drool-inducing smells of cinnamon, apples and Calvados, as I danced around singing "Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel, doorbells and sleighbells and schintzel with noodles..."

When it finally came out of the oven, we all gathered around and chose what we hoped was THE piece that contained the cherished euro. The first bite transported me right back to Salzberg, where I was lucky enough to enjoy several warm world class strudels, sigh... The strudel was terrific - crispy dough surrounding soft, warm cinnamon apple filling, dusted with powdered sugar. Tiny bits of dough flaked off under the fork as I cut into it. Mmmmmmm. But no euro the first night. Early New Year's Day morning we each had another piece and this time Lovie found the coin.

It's funny, when Mike or I find it (actually I've never found it on New Year's Eve night), it portends good luck and prosperity. When Lovie finds it, I'm just as excited for her, but I tend to just write it off as a fun New Year's tradition. Maybe this is a defense mechanism. She's found it twice in the last three years - how much luck and prosperity does a six year old need?

Gourmet's Roasted Apple Strudel

for filling:
2 pounds Gala apples, peeled, cored ad cut into 3/4 inch pieces
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon          
 dash salt
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 tablespoon Calvados
1 oz. walnuts
1/4 cup fine bread crumbs

for dough:
1 cup bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg yolk
3 oz. lukewarm water
1/4 cup flour for dusting
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Toss apples with butter, 1/8 cup sugar, lemon zest, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and salt on a baking sheet with sides until well coated, then spread apples out. Roast, stirring occasionally until apples are very tender and any liquid has evaporated, about 1 1/4 hours. Transfer to a bowl and stir in raisins and Calvados and let cool. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Meanwhile, make the dough. Stir together the bread flour, sugar and salt in the bowl of a mixer. Make a well in the center and add 2 tablespoons butter, egg yolk and water. Mix at medium low speed with paddle attachment until dough becomes a soft, sticky ball and comes away from the sides of the bowl, 8 to 10 minutes. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and form into a ball. Lightly brush with some butter and let stand, covered with an inverted bowl, for 40 minutes.

Stretch the dough. Line a baking sheet with sides with parchment paper. Take off any rings, bracelets or watches. Cover a work table with a sheet and rub flour into it. Put the dough in the center and stretch it into a 12 inch round with your fingers. Using the backs of your hands and wrists, reach under the dough and begin gently stretching and thinning dough from center to edges, moving around the table as you work. Gradually stretch the dough into a 36 inch square, letting it rest for a few minutes when it resists. This will take about 20 minutes. Let the dough dry for 5 minutes.

Assemble the strudel. Combine walnuts, bread crumbs, 1/8 cup sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon in a food processor and process until nuts are finely chopped.

Very gently brush dough with butter and sprinkle evenly with walnut mixture. Mound apple filling in an 11x3 inch strip along the side of the dough that is closet to you, leaving a 4 inch border. Fold side borders over filling and holding the sheet taut, roll the strudel up, starting with the bottom flap.

With a long metal spatula, transfer the studel to the baking sheet. Brush with remaining butter and dust generously with powdered sugar. Cut 3 or 4 steam vents in the top.

Bake strudel until golden, 40-45 minutes. Cool 10 minutes on bakiing sheet, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

This is my entry into "Make Your Own King Cake", hosted by Zorra at 1x unruhren bitte. Please join her to see how bloggers around the world celebrate the Epiphany with their own King's Cakes.  

 
 

Perfect Blueberry Muffins

from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook

                                   

Is anything nicer than a blueberry muffin? Torn apart with a melting pat of butter smeared across them, blueberry muffins are soft and homey, full of berries bursting with warm juice. Paired with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, there is no better breakfast to wake up to on a weekend morning.

Pulled from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, this is a lovely recipe for the quintessential blueberry muffin. Soft, with a cake-like texture, these muffins are what all muffins should aspire to. Sunny and flavorful with a hint of lemony brightness, these are sure to get your morning of to a great start.

As an aside: Muffins taste best the day they are made, but who needs to eat 12 muffins at one sitting? After breakfast, I freeze the leftover muffins in pairs in a Ziploc bag. The frozen muffins are great to toss into Lovie's lunch box. By the time lunch rolls around, they have thawed back into their original soft, fresh, doughy goodness and combined with a cheese stick and some fruit, they are the perfect mid day snack. She is always thrilled to find a sweet muffin surprise in her lunch.

Classic Blueberry Muffins

8 tablespoons (4 oz) butter
1 cup (7 oz) sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
Zest of one lemon
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups (8 1/2 oz) all purpose flour
1/2 cup (4 oz) milk
2 cups frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar and salt together. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the lemon zest. Add the baking powder, and then add the flour, alternating with the milk, beating well after each addition. Stir in the blueberries.

Spoon the batter into 12 paper lined muffin cups.

Bake muffins for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the muffins comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then removing them from the pan to cool completely.

Notes: The original recipe called for 1 teaspoon of vanilla,  2 1/2 cups of fresh or dried blueberries and 2 teaspoons of sugar to top the muffins. I added the lemon zest, reduced the blueberries to 2 cups and skipped the sugar topping.

You could bake these in muffin cups without the papers, but I have found that blueberry muffins made with fresh or frozen berries tend to fall apart if not constrained by the paper cups. Too much fruit and not enough cakey part to hold it together to count on a good result.  

Apple Pecan Babka

When I was given the great honor of hosting Bread Baking Day #5, I decided that Filled Breads were a interesting option. But when it came time to bake my own bread, I was at a loss. Nothing was really speaking to me. But as a wandered through my cookbook collection, I came across a Babka, or Grandmother's Roll, recipe. I had never had a Babka, but I like the way the name rolls off my tongue. It has an interesting figure eight shape, which is an unusual, but truly brilliant shape for a filled bread. It distributes the filling throughout the dough, as opposed to the more common rolled shape that tends to leave a single spiral of yummy filling, but the rest of the bread unfilled and uninspiring. I was sold. The recipe called for the Babka to be filled with both cinnamon and chocolate, but Mike doesn't like chocolate (go figure), so I decided to substitute chopped pecans, Granny Smith apples and brown sugar. This recipe also has a deliciously crunchy streusel topping, again an unusual, but inspired choice for a bread.

The resulting Babka is a revelation. A slightly sweet dough, peppered throughout with crunchy pecans, moist apples and little pockets of cinnamony sweetness. The streusel topping adds a nice finish, and is a nice change from the frosting so often seen on rolls and coffee cakes. This a perfect accompaniment to a morning cup of coffee or tea.

                                       

As a side bar, every New Year's Eve, I bake something and hide a coin in it - a money cake to start the New Year. There is a French tradition of a Three King's Cake, where a favor was hidden in a cake to be enjoyed at the New Year. It was said that whoever found the favor would have much prosperity in the coming year. I started baking the money cake a few years ago when Mike was in a career slump. I figured that if he found the coin, his prospects might improve. So when he found the coin in his piece (I decided that it couldn't hurt to set him up the first year), he thought that it must be destiny that his business was going to turn around. And it did - Amazing! Since that first year, I either close my eyes to put the coin in or have Lovie do it, so I have a fair, but not unfair shot at finding it myself. The Babka was our money cake this year, and Mike again got the piece with the coin in it. This is my entry in Bread Baking Day #5, Filled Breads. Be sure to read the roundup! Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Apple Pecan Babka

Dough

4 oz. warm milk

1 1/2 t. dry yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg, plus 1 yolk

2 1/4 cups AP flour

1/4 t. salt

5 T. butter, cut into pieces, room temperature

Filling

2 Granny Smith Apples, peeled, cored and chopped

1 cup chopped Pecans

1 cup Brown Sugar

Cinnamon

Streusel Topping

1/4 cup Butter

1/2 cup Flour

1/2 Brown Sugar

2 t. Cinnamon

Dissolve yeast  in warm milk, let stand until creamy. Mix eggs, sugar, and yeast mixture and whisk until combined. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine flour and salt. Add the egg mixture and beat with the paddle attachment until the flour is incorporated. Switch to the dough hook. Add the butter and knead 10 minutes until a smooth dough forms.

Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

Butter a 9x5 loaf pan, add parchment paper leaving several inches overhang on each side, butter the parchment paper.

Punch down the dough and let rest 5 minutes.

Roll dough into a 16" square. Brush the edges of the dough with egg wash. Spread apples, pecans and brown sugar over the dough leaving 1/2 " around the edges. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Roll the dough up, pinching the edges to seal as you go. Twist the rolled dough 5 or 6 times, then fold the log into a horseshoe shape. Cross the ends to form a figure eight and twist twice more. Fit the twisted dough into the prepared pan. Let rise 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

To make the streusel, combine the butter, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Using a pastry cutter, cut in the butter until the mixture is about the texture of coarse bread crumbs. Sprinkle on top of the loaf. Bake loaf 50 minutes, rotating the pan after 25 minutes. Turn the temperature down to 325, and bake 20-30 minutes longer, until golden brown and a knife inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean. Do not underbake! Cool on a wire rack. Slice and Enjoy! 

Spiced Peach Butter

August is my least favorite month. The first lovely blush of Summer is long since passed, the grass has lost it's softly fresh bright tint and has become a hardened, thirsty dark green and while my garden thrives in the hot sun, I can't summon the energy to keep it weed free. It is hot and dry and all of the motivation that arrives with Spring to replant and landscape has by Late Summer apparently gone on vacation. A few other things I can't find the motivation to begin: cleaning my office, going for a run, turning on the oven or cooking anything more complicated than a cold sandwich. Yes, Late Summer inertia has truly set in. Is it September yet? I'm ready for fall.

With only one week left until September, I finally managed to set down my glass of white wine (I'm ready to drink red wine again), peel my thighs from the lawn chair and spend some quality time with my kitchen this weekend. Ironically, motivation came from Mother Nature. My poor ignored garden, that was thriving on Thursday afternoon, got wiped out by a hailstorm on Thursday night. The pumpkin vines that were threatening to take over the yard with their huge elephant ear shaped leaves were a total loss. The cucumbers didn't fare much better. The sunflowers, once so tall with dazzling starburst centers, are now broken and defeated. I surveyed the damage, salvaging whatever I could. This led to a marathon session of baking, cooking and canning. And actually, after I got started, it was difficult to stop. I baked Ciabatta and Biscotti, brined and canned pickles, picked and dried pumpkin seeds, marinated bell peppers, and inspired by the huge baseball sized peaches now in season, cooked up some Spicy Peach Butter.

More elegantly refined and not as sweet as a jam or jelly, fruit butters show off a fruit's flavor with a pure, deep, concentrated taste of goodness. While Apple Butter is more traditional, Peach Butter is my favorite. It always tastes so fresh and indulgent. What's more, Fruit Butters are super easy to make. A little peeling, pitting and pureeing, followed by some time to let the flavors develop will let you enjoy the fruits of your labor all winter!

Spicy Peach Butter

3 lbs. Fresh Peaches

1 cup packed Brown Sugar

1 teaspoon Cinnamon

1 teaspoon Nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon Ginger

Peel, pit and slice Peaches. Puree until desired smoothness with a stick blender or in a food processor. Pour puree into a medium saucepan and add the brown sugar and spices. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a low simmer until puree is reduced by half, about 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Pour into jars and refrigerate. Makes about 2 cups of Peach Butter. Enjoy daily with muffins, toast, peanut butter sandwiches, warm bread with butter or tea.             

Hazelnut-Raspberry Tortlets

I love cake, but I wish people would either bake their own, or buy one from a nice bakery, rather than getting one of those store bought sheet cakes with whippy mystery frosting that appear at so many gatherings. It always seems to be served as sort of an afterthought, like they got a cake just because they thought they should have one, but didn't want to put too much effort into it. My mom is hosting a baby shower tomorrow, one of those occasions when the whippy sheet cake afterthought typically makes an appearance. Given my stance on sheet cake and since she is serving lunch, we opted instead for something small, like petit fours. Just a bite or two of something sweet and delicious to finish the lunch with. I volunteered to take on the project. 

I came home and dug out the cookbooks. The only recipe I could find for petit fours was in the Martha Stewart Baking Book. Accompanying the recipe was a picture of her petit fours - spectacular and brilliantly done, and her directions made it all seem so easy (this is, of course, the problem with Martha Stewart. She makes everything look so simple and easy to accomplish, but somehow that never turns out to be the case). I showed Mike the picture. He laughed and wished me well. Hmmm.... Back to the cookbooks.

I came upon a recipe for a hazelnut-raspberry torte in the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library Dessert book. This sounded delicious, looked like something I actually had a shot at duplicating, and would be easy to make into individual servings. I got to work. The cake has a ground hazelnut base, lightened with egg whites. I baked this in a jelly roll pan to create lots of surface area and when it was cooled, I cut out small rounds with a cookie cutter. Early this morning, the kitchen was quiet except for the soothing sound of a cat purring nearby while I sugared raspberries, melted chocolate for the glaze and assembled the tiny cakes. I left them on the counter so the glaze could harden while I took a shower. When I came back to the kitchen, to my horror, one of the other cats was standing in the middle of my tortlets. I lunged for her and she took off across the pan, leaving a trail of smashed cake, raspberries and chocolaty cat prints through the kitchen. I managed to catch the pan before it hit the floor, but the tortlets on it were a total loss - an unkempt pile of chocolate and cake carnage. Unbelievable. Well, I'll take what's left of them. They taste elegant and amazing - moist, light nutty cake topped with a dark chocolate glaze hiding a subtle raspberry flavor and fragrance, finished with a sugared fresh raspberry. Thankfully, there's not even a hint of the trauma their friends suffered, and more importantly, they aren't sporting even a bit of cat hair.

Hazelnut-Raspberry Tortlets

10 oz. Hazelnuts, toasted and skinned, cooled

13 oz. sugar

2 oz.  flour

6 eggs, separated, at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 oz. butter, melted and kept warm

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar   

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 10-15 jelly roll pan, and line the bottom with parchment paper. In a food processor, combine the hazelnuts, 5 oz of the sugar, flour and salt. Process to grind finely. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until blended. Set aside.

In a bowl, beat the eggg whites and cream of tartar on the high speed of a mixer until stiff peaks form. Set aside. Whisk one-third of the nut mixture into the yolks, then fold in one-third of the egg whites. Repeat in two batches. Do not overmix. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake about 20 minuutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack in the pan until completely cool.

Invert on a work surface and peel the parchment paper. Using a cookie cutter, cut out small rounds about 1 1/2 in diameter.

Sugared Raspberries

1 egg white

Superfine sugar

I made these by putting a raspberry on the eraser end of a pencil, and painting it with the egg yolk. I ground sugar in the coffee grinder to make it superfine, sprinkled it on the raspberries and let them dry on a wire rack.

Bittersweet Chocolate-Raspberry Glaze

4 oz. heavy cream

3 oz. seedless raspberry jam

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream and jam. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to low. Add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Remove from heat and let stand about 10 minutes, until glaze is thick but pourable. 

Assemble your torlets, pouring some glaze over each one and smoothing it out with a offset spatula so it drips down the sides. Finish each one with a sugared raspberry. Let the tortlets sit for about an hour to let the glaze harden. These can be stored in the fridge in hot weather, but the cool air may dull the glaze. If so, hit them with a blast from a blow dryer just before serving. Keep the cats out of the kitchen.    

Oh My Darlin' Cherry Dumplin'

February seems to be the official month of Cherries. Maybe it's because of George Washington and his legendary tree. Maybe their red color makes them a Valentine's Day favorite. Maybe people are just ready for summer fruit after a long winter of eating apples. But although we are at least 4 months away from true cherry season, I am always hungry for cherries in February. Plump, juicy, tart cherries are my favorite fruit. I love to bake with them, they elevate a simple dough or pastry to new heights. Plain flaky crusts show them off beautifully, allowing their flavor to burst through in every bite. You don't need to dress them up much either. Frozen cherries only need a bit of sugar to make them sing.

While perusing some of the entries in Valentine Postcards Around the World, I ran across a gorgeous heart shaped cherry tart. I began to think about making a cherry dessert of my own. I had a vision of cherry loveliness. It wasn't going to be a pie or a turnover. I was craving something doughy and warm, maybe with a cobbler topping on it, with the sort of crusty top you only get from sprinkling it with sugar. I began the cookbook recipe search. Hmmm... I came across a Cherry Dumpling recipe in the fabulous Tartine book. I had found my inspiration! I took a few liberties, halved the recipe, omitted a few things and added a couple more. An hour later, Lovie and I were enjoying a warm, gooey Cherry Dumpling just out of the oven. It was exactly what I needed in February. Thanks George!