Baked And Churned

Category: cookies

  • Christmas Bakes

    Christmas Bakes

    My Christmas Bakes for 2021. I mostly made cookies. Five kinds to be exact. A mix of “regular” cookies..

    Cookie Platter
    Cookie Platter

    Along with some decorated sugar cookies…

    Decorated Sugar Cookies
    Decorated Sugar Cookies
    Christmas Tree Cookie
    Christmas Tree Cookie

    Making the Sweet Christmas Bakes

    Royal icing is something I’ve never been particularly good at, or comfortable with, so I’ve been practicing. I’d love to take a live class, but the world being what it is, I decided to do an online workshop. I purchased ‘Cookie 101’ from Arlo’s Cookies. Watching the videos really helped me understand icing consistency and decorating techniques better than I had. Now instead of being limited by technical problems, I’m mostly limited by my terrible artistic abilities. I am pretty proud of the trees and stockings I made though.

    All the recipes I used for the non-sugar cookies came from Once Upon a Chef. I made Snickerdoodles (my wife’s favorite), Peanut Butter Blossoms (my favorite), Nutty Jam Thumbprints, and Coconut-Lime Mexican Wedding Cookies. They were all delicious. My only regret is that I followed the suggestion to use the handle of a wooden spoon to make the impression in the thumbprint cookies instead of an actual thumbprint. This led to a small hole that only took about a 1/4 teaspoon to fill, and I feel like more jam would have made the cookies better.

    The Main Course – Beef Wellington

    All my Christmas bakes couldn’t be cookies.. so I made a Beef Wellingting. Technically a bake, right? Of course, I cheated and used store-bought puff pastry because with all the other cooking and baking going on aint nobody got time to make puff pastry on Christmas morning. I followed Alton Brown’s recipe. It came out delicious but definitely won’t win any awards. I think there were 2 (maybe 3) problems. First, the tenderloin we got was probably too big. This led to the pastry being too thin and getting a bit soggy with all the juices. I also think I chopped the mushrooms too small and didn’t get enough moisture out, also leading to sogginess. As you can see in the picture of the sliced wellington, the bottom pastry fell away and was a soggy mess. The top and sides stayed decently crusty though. It’s definitely something I’d love to try again on another special occasion. I also repeated my Potato, Onion, and Gruyere galette as a side dish.. and totally forgot to get a single photo of it this time arround.

    Beef Wellington
    Beef Wellington
    Beef Wellington Slice
    Beef Wellington Slice
  • Speculoos Hamentaschen

    Speculoos Hamentaschen

    Speculoos Hamentaschen for Purim!

    I hadn’t baked for almost a month because I came down with covid19. The good news is, I recovered, and I’m fine now. Feeling better happened to correspond to the time of Purim, so this was a perfect bake to get back into things.

    Hamentaschen
    Hamentaschen

    Now in my mind, there is pretty much one best type of hamentaschen, and all the rest pale in comparison. Poppyseed, or mohn in Yiddish. These are what I make most years. This year I didn’t have a chance to go to the store and get the filling (see covid19+ above). So I got creative this year, I had a jar of Trader Joe’s speculoos in the cupboard, and I wondered if I could use that. Well, sure enough, I found a recipe over at myjewishlearning.com.

    Speculoos Hamantaschen

    Traditional hamentaschen with a non traditional speculoos filling.

    • ½ cup unsalted butter
    • ¾ cup granulated sugar
    • 1 egg
    • 1 Tbsp milk
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
    • ¼ tsp baking powder
    • ¼ tsp salt

    Hamentaschen

    1. Beat the butter and sugar together until smooth in stand mixer with paddle attachement.

      Add egg, milk and vanilla until mixed thoroughly.

    2. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl.

      Add dry mixture to wet mixture until incorporated.

    3. Chill dough for 2 hours

    4. Dust work surface with powdered sugar. Roll out dough to 1/4" thick (or your preference but I find thinner hard to work with).

      Cut out ~3inch circles, you can use a circular cutter, or I just used a tin can with both sides removed.

    5. Dab about a teaspoon if speculoos into the center of each circle.

    6. Eggwash the rest of the circle around the filling, this helps it stick together.

    7. Fold into triangles.

    8. Preheat oven to 400F while chilling the assembled hamentaschen in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

    9. Bake for 8 minutes or until they start to get golden brown.

    Decorating

    1. This is of course optional, but I finished with some melted chocalte drizzled on top, and pearl sugar sprinkled onto that.

    Hamentaschen
    Hamentaschen

    They came out great! A bit on the cakey side.. I tried making thinner ones and had a lot of trouble getting them to stay together. Next batch I’ll do 1/4″ again, but add a couple of minutes to the baking time to get them to crisp up a bit more.

  • Florentines for GBBO Week 1

    Florentines for GBBO Week 1

    Florentines for the Great British Bake Off week one bake-along challenge. In case you missed my earlier post, I’m participating in a Facebook group that is baking along with this season of GBBO. Every week the moderator chooses one of the three rounds as our challenge. I felt like this was a bit of a slow start, but ok, it’s good to warm up before getting into crazier bakes.

    Florentines for the Great British Bake Off week one bake-along challenge.
    Florentines

    I went straight traditional, following Mary Berry’s recipe. The only change was, I didn’t have any candied peel, or oranges to peel and candy, so I just used more craisins in place of the peel.

    They came out… fine. I have to say, they aren’t really my style of cookie. They were tasty, I mean, there’s plenty of sugar and chocolate enough that how bad could they be? To be honest, they probably aren’t something I’d make again unless requested.

    Florentines for the Great British Bake Off week one bake-along challenge.
    Florentines
  • GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF! (also hobnobs)

    GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF! (also hobnobs)

    Great British Bake Off is back!!

    I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the last 6 months have really sucked. They’ve sucked for the whole world. They’ve especially sucked for the United States, and on a personal level, they have been pretty crappy personally and professionally. Baking is basically the thing that’s kept me sane. To say I was excited when BBC teased the return of bake off a few weeks ago, would be an understatement. So finally, it’s back!!

    To celebrate the first episode, I thought nothing would be better than hobnobs and a cup of tea while watching. Of course, no store-bought hobnobs would do, I had to bake my own.

    Hobnobs for Great British Bake Off premier.
    Hobnobs and a cuppa for the Great British Bake Off premiere

    They are delicious and pretty easy to make. Considering how hard it is to find them in the States I’d say it’s actually easier just to make them. The only tricky part is finding the correct oats. It took a good 4 or 5 tries until I was happy. Invariably you will find British recipes that say something like ‘use Tesco oats’ or, ‘use your morning oats’ or something else that probably works perfectly well for a Brit but leaves me thinking ‘WHAT IS IT?!?!’. I forget how I finally hit on what worked for me, but it’s Bob’s Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal. Is it perfect? I don’t think so honestly, but of the things I’ve got available to me, it’s given the best results.

    Recipe based off of Izy’s at Top With Cinnamon.

    Homemade Hobnobs

    Homemade hobnob biscuits (cookies).

    • 125 g Unsalted Butter
    • 80 g Light Brown Sugar
    • 2 tbsp Golden Syrup / Corn syrup
    • 80 g Oats ((My best results have been with Bob's Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal))
    • 4 tbsp Wheat Germ ((or just use more oats))
    • 100 g Whole Wheat Flour
    • 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
    • 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
    • 1/2 tsp Salt

    Coating (optional)

    • 100 g Dark Chocolate
    • 1 tsp Butter

    Biscuits

    1. Preaheat oven to 350F, line 2 baking sheets with parchment.

    2. Using the paddle on a stand mixer cream together butter and sugar until smooth and then add the golden syrup.

    3. Mix in the oats, then the flour, then the baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

    4. Each cookie should be about 2 teaspoons of dough to make them about the size of an actual hobnob, but I've found making larger ones works just fine as well. Whatever size you chose, press the balls of dough down so they are flatish. Leave room because they will expand when baking.

    5. Bake for 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown. Let them cool on the sheet for a while because they are still pretty liquidy when removed from the oven. They harden as they cool, don't worry. Once cool enough transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

    Coating – Optional (but why wouldn't you?)

    1. Melt your chocolate and butter on the stove top, ideally in a double boiler. If you don't have one, use a glass bowl floating in a pot of water.

    2. Use a pallete knife or something similar to spread a thin even coat of chocolate on one side of each biscuit.

    3. For bonus points you can try to pipe the iconic crosshacth pattern on them as well, but honestly I never bother.

    I’m also excited to say I’ve joined Little House Big Alaska’s Great British Baking Show Bake-Along on Facebook. Each week I (and many others) will be re-creating either the signature, technical, or showstopper from the previous week’s episode of Great British Bake Off. Of course, I’ll be posting all the bakes here.

  • Birthday Chocolate Chip Cookie Crust Cheesecake

    Birthday Chocolate Chip Cookie Crust Cheesecake

    December 24th is my Brother In Law’s birthday. There’s a long standing family tradition of him getting a giant chocolate chip cookie cake for his birthday. This year he requested something different, a cheesecake, but he still wanted chocolate chop cookie incorporated somehow if possible.

    This lead me to some googling which turned up lots of chocolate chip cheesecake recipes, but I didn’t feel like just tossing some chocolate chips, or some pieces of cookies, in to a cheesecake was really what I was looking for. Then I came upon this recipe for a cheesecake with a cookie crust. This seemed like exactly what I wanted, with the exception of being chocolate cheesecake. Knowing the palates of the folks I was cooking for I thought that would be too much.

    To solve the cheesecake problem I consulted one of my go to blogs, Sally’s Baking Addiction, and saw she has a no bake cheesecake recipe, so I used that.

    The Money Shot!

    So I made the crust, let it cool down in the fridge completely, made the filling, put it in the crust, covered it.. and we all went out for dinner and drinks while I hoped the cake would set. When we got back we gave the birthday boy presents and it was cake time. I popped the springform mold open and hoped I’d have a solid cake. I did! Some chocolate drop and homemade marshmallows completed the decoration and cake was served. Everyone loved it. Personally I think I prefer baked cheesecake to no bake, but I’m not sure how I could pull that off with the cookie crust. I guess I have a whole year to try and research it.