Rolling in Dough

E-Z Peanut Butter Cookies

from Bakewise by Shirley O. Corriher

Have you read Bakewise? This is my new favorite cookbook! Shirley Corriher's new bible of baking science explains all of the ins and outs of baking ingredients and how to use them to your advantage to vastly improve your own results. Gorgeous pictures and recipes that benefit from her years of experience fill the pages and best of all, it's written in Shirley's soft, Southern down home voice - I can hear the words coming out of her mouth when I'm reading the pages.

So I've been baking and reading like crazy and learning all kinds of things that I never knew - like that you can make amazing peanut butter cookies without adding any flour. Who knew? I have a dozen peanut butter cookies recipes and I don't love any of them. Some of them spread out too much in the oven, some get hard too quickly and the rest are just uninspiring. Well, that's all changed now. Shirley has brightened my cookie jar with my new favorite peanut butter cookie recipe. 

The weather has been chilly and just right for an afternoon of cookie making. Thumbing through the pages, I came across Shirley's recipe for E-Z Delicious Peanut Butter Cookies. While the oven preheated, I dutifully read through the paragraphs on flourless cookies so I could understand this brave new world, and got to mixing. The recipe only has 3 ingredients in it! Peanut butter, brown sugar and an egg. Unbelievable!  I was done with the whole project in less than an hour and could get down to the really important part - knocking back three or four cookies with a warm cup of tea. Ahhhhh.... perfect afternoon.     

E-Z Delicious Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup (258 grams) extra crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup (162 grams) light brown sugar
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray.

Stir together the peanut butter, brown sugar and egg.

Use a teaspoon to scoop dough into heaping mounds on the baking sheet at least 1 inch apart. Grease the bottom of a for with baking spray and press down on cookies to make a criss cross pattern.

Bake one sheet at a time until the edges start to color, 9 to 10 minutes. Do not overcook. Cool 2 minutes on the pan and remove to a cooling rack.

Note: Shirley's recipe called for 1/2 cup of English toffee baking chips to be stirred in after the egg, but I didn't have any, so I added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract instead.

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.