Crossing the finish line with Croissants

This was a hard one!  I've baked a wedding cake before and I thought this was harder.  I guess harder in that it took more physical strength (my arms are sore today) and croissants are just plain high maintenance. I had a heck of a time getting the dough to roll to that magic 24 to 26 inches. The ruler quickly became my friend and enemy.  Friend when I reached 24 inches and enemy when it would show me I had to pull out some more muscle to makde the dough stretch some more.  It was a stubborn dough. I also had a issue of the butter seeping out of them when the were rising in the oven.  Obviously I made my oven too hot.  But then the butter also seeped out when I baked a second batch and let them rise on the counter.

So was as it worth it?  I didn't try one because I'm participating in a Whole30 challenge so all that flour is out for me.  My son loved them.  My daughter was non-committal and my husband commented that they were quite a bit smaller than the ones at our favorite French bakery.  But I'm glad I did make them and more glad to be finished.  Ever since I saw Martha Stewart make croissant dough on her show years ago, I have wanted to at least say "yeah, I've made croissants."  No biggie.  (but actually we all know it was!)

If I didn't speak Spanish...

...I would swear that Boca Negra meant disaster or big fat mess.  When I flipped this out of the pan, a disaster was lurking behind the parchment paper.  I should have taken the advice of others on the P&Q page and baked this for longer than 30 minutes.  It came together beautifully.  Even the butter incorporated very smoothly, so I had such high hopes for this.  The top of the cake look just as described in the book after 30 minutes, but it just wasn't long enough to hold it's shape.  The taste of the "cake" wasn't bad.  I served it in cups like pudding, but because it was not baked long enough it was so rich that more than a couple bites was enough. I'll be curious if anyone was able to get this work with a 30 minute bake time.

TWD-Foccacia Falter

Did anyone else open up this recipe on Monday afternoon and then read about the 24-36 hour rise or was it just me who planned this out so poorly?  I have made foccacia before and don't remember such a long rise, so I didn't think to read through this recipe earlier.  So I took the bread recipe and cut it in half (6-1/2 cups of flour seemed like it would make enough foccacia for all of Italy).  After the second rise, I split the dough in half and put it in oiled Ziploc bags as instructed.  Five hours later I took the first bag out to bake and the other bag is still in the fridge for tomorrow's dinner with soup.  I am hoping the long results with the slow rise are worth it, because I was not too impressed with the first batch.  It was fine, but was lacking something that I am hoping will be there tomorrow.

TWD - Cheating on my old pie crust with French Apple Tart

I've been merrily making the same pie crust for years.  My mom would tell me tales of new recipes and methods she had tried, but I would have no part of it.  I loved my tried and true crust.  But then this one came along and it may be time to ditch my old pie crust recipe.  This one is similar with both butter and shortening, but somehow it's butterier and flakier.  So this recipe is a keeper not just for the wonderful crust, but also the filling.  I loved the filling and was glad I had a little left over.  The book suggested it could be saved and eaten as an ice cream topping.  As if.  I couldn't wait that long and ate it with a spoon while I waited for the tart to bake.  And I love the French bakery look of this tart too.

 

 

TWD-Pizza with Onion Confit

 

 

I had such big plans for this post.  First I made this pizza with my mom, (we drove to Ohio for Christmas), so that made it a special post. And I got Photoshop for Christmas, so I had done some neato (but elementary) "photoshopping" of the pictures.  And then I was going to throw in a gratuitous snow picture because the day we made this at my mom's house in Ohio it snowed over 6 inches (which is a BIG deal when you live in Texas and your kids never get to see snow).  But alas my plans were dashed.  It seems Blogger is not working properly, so my pictures were taking forever to load and then the installation of Photoshop is making my dinasaur computer run slow, so this is it folks, one picture of the pizza with onion confit.  It was delicious and I would make it again.  For the kids we just did regular toppings, but the confit is a winner and makes for a nice change from the usual pizza toppings.  Plus my mom got a whole bag of onions for 49 cents, so you could go crazy making onion confit at that price.

TWD-Finnish Pulla

This will be short and sweet as I am in the midst of baking Christmas cookies.  I was anxious to try this recipe because it looked so pretty in the picture and I have never made braided bread before.  I made this in a hurry and found it fairly simple.  I would have liked to have had more time to do a tighter and more precise braid, but overall I really liked it.  I liked the sweet flavor of the bread and I thought that the book gave a good recipe tip not to over bake it because I could see this becoming dry quickly.  I did not spring for the cardamon as the night before I made this my car was towed costing me $218 to retrieve it.  So cardamon was part of the budget cuts so as not to fall off a Christmas fiscal cliff.

Happy Holidays to all and here's to baking in 2013!

TWD-Gingerbread Baby Cakes

On Saturday I am hosting our neighborhood ladies' Christmas brunch.  So it is crunch time to get the house clean and the decorations out and the food ready and the silver polished.  I almost didn't make this because I thought I should be doing brunch preparations and we had a repairman in the kitchen fixing our disposal.  But I looked at the recipe and had all the ingredients including some fresh ginger my husband had bought to make some ancient-Chinese-secret cold remedy. So I made them on a whim and boy am I glad I did.  My husband and I have been married for over 21 years and I have baked consistently for those 21 years.  So when my husband said "Wow, this is the best thing you have ever made," you know you have a winner.  I thought the fresh ginger would give it an unpleasant bite, but I was wrong.  It had a nice grownup taste, but even my daughter enjoyed it. Since "this is the best thing I ever made" I can see this becoming a holiday tradition.