Baked And Churned

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  • 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.

  • Friendsgiving Babkas

    Friendsgiving Babkas

    This past weekend my wife and I attended a potluck friendsgiving brunch. Of course I decided to bake something, and babka seemed like the obvious choice. I originally intended to just make Breads Bakery’s Chocolate Babka recipe. When I said I was bringing babka someone from the group requested cinnamon, citing Seinfeld’s “Cinnamon takes a backseat to no babka!” rule.

    The Plastic Bags Really Make Them Look Professional

    So what I ended up doing was making the dough from the breads’ recipe, which is enough dough for two. I used the filling recipe (chocolate and nutella) and used that for one babka. For the second one, I used the filling recipe from Tori Avey’s Cinnamon Babka recipe.

    Cinnamon Crumb

    I decided to add a streusel to the top, but had a small problem.. I had used up all my brown sugar making the babkas. So I ended up winging it. I used white sugar instea of brown, added a bit of sugar in the raw for color, decided that wasn’t enough, and added a bunch of unsweetened cocoa powder for more color. It worked quite well, I just was a little heavy handed with it.

    Chocolate Crumb

    I also screwed up forming the babkas. Since I was doing two different fillings I needed to split the dough before filling and rolling.. This shouldn’t have been a problem, but I got myself confused and ended up cutting the dough too many times so I basically had to braid the dough to shape the loaves. It all worked out though, and I got a ton of complements at the brunch.

  • Simple Crusty Bread with Extras

    Simple Crusty Bread with Extras

    Simple Crusty Bread – I was going away for a few days and my wife wanted me to bake her a bread before I left. I didn’t have time to do an overnight bread so I decided to try a this recipe I’d seen on the NY Times site.

    Top Down Shot simple crusty bread
    I didn’t score deep enough so I got a weird half box

    I made a few slight changes to the recipe linked above. I made it ~35% whole wheat. Ie., instead of 6 1/2 all purpose I did 4 1/4 + 2 1/4 whole wheat. I also mixed in a bunch of random stuff I had on hand – oats, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds. I used that same mix to coat the loaf, after the final rise and after giving it an egg wash. I like egg washes in general, but I especially like it when I’m trying to get stuff to stick to a loaf.

    Crumb Shot simple crusty bread
    Love The Crust

    As you can see from the photos, it came out great! My wife was happy to have some fresh, fairly healthy, bread to eat while I was away.

    Enjoy this bonus kitty photo bomb.

    Kitty Investigates simple crusty bread
    Sniff…?

  • Oatmeal Crusted Overnight Wheat

    Oatmeal Crusted Overnight Wheat

    I made a standard FWSY overnight wheat bread last week, and I decided to crust it in some rolled oats to fancy it up a bit. It ended up being one of the visually nicest loaves I’ve ever baked.

    Top Down View

    I used parchment paper to transfer it into the dutch oven, and the parchment is what ended up giving it a bit of a quilted look around the edges that I quite like.

    Side View

    I won’t bother giving a recipe. It’s basically the same as the overnight white I’ve posted, but with 40% wheat instead of all white flour. Overall the loaf looked great, tasted great, and had a nice crumb. I was quite proud!

    Crumb Shot
  • Father's Day Bakes

    Father's Day Bakes

    I did a couple of father’s day bakes. My dad is no longer with us, but my father in law had a request – a coconut cake. I also baked a bread because I never go to the inlaws without a bread, they always love it.

    First up, the cake.. I wanted to make something a little ‘extra’ than just your generic coconut cake. I’d been experimenting with pandan recently, mostly in cocktails, but it pairs well with coconut, so I figured what the heck?

    The Cake

    I followed a standard coconut cake with cream cheese frosting recipe that I wont bother to detail. The pandan was incorporated by using pandan simple syrup I made (simply infuse pandan leaves in simple syrup for 12 hours or so). Once I had the two layers of cake baked I sprinkled a generous amount of the simple syrup on top of them. This method is often recommended to keep cake moist anyway, and was the perfect way to also add the pandan.

    Looks good to me

    Once I had the cake together and frosted I covered generously with shredded coconut and ‘coconut chips’ which I found at Trader Joe’s. They added a nice a crunch. For the decoration on top I used a stencil I had and sprinkled cocoa powder on it. I had bought a ‘happy fathers day’ stencil but it turned out to be much smaller than I realized, so I used the one I already had instead.

    A Slice
    A Slice

    The bread..

    The bread I made was just a standard overnight white from Flour Water Salt Yeast, but it came out looking particularly nice, and everyone loved it.

    The Loaf
    Sliced

    The bread went super fast, I should have brought two, and the cake was also a hit. All in all it made for a great father’s day with family.