My New Favorite Buttermilk Biscuits

Can you believe this weather?  I'm glad these were baked last week, because it may be too hot to turn on the oven this week.  We've had highs in the 70s, and Thursday is supposed to be 83.  Beach, here I come!  And yet, Joe and I are such fans of these biscuits, we may turn on the oven just for them.  I've tried various biscuit recipes before, but these have everything I want.  You can take them the savory route with cheese or ham, or the sweet route with jam -- peach ginger here.  But they're so good, I like them best without any add-ons.

The best part is how light and fluffy they are.  I'm not sure whether to credit the recipe or the use of pastry flour -- I'm going to say it's the two combined.  The recipe calls for all-purpose flour, but I used pastry flour (rather, King Arthur's Perfect Pastry Blend, which falls somewhere between all-purpose and pastry flours) to make them extra tender.  They didn't come out like the perfect hockey puck shapes in the cookbook photo, but I realized hockey puck shapes were overrated when I bit into flaky, soft, buttery layers.

Ruby Cake with Hidden Chocolate and Raspberry Filling

I made this cake for a potluck at work, and at the end of our glutton-fest and my shift I placed the leftovers in my covered portable cake dome and left it on my desk.  I thought it would be safe there from the daytime shift, and my colleagues could eat the rest the next day.  When I returned that next day and looked at my desk, I was amused to find there was less cake than I remembered!  I put it back out on the communal table, and a few minutes later I saw a higher-up (who shall not be named) pass by and cut a piece, then shove it whole into his mouth.  Hmm ... maybe that explains the cake shrinkage.

The Ruby Cake is a buttery bundt with a dense and moist crumb, and a bit of tang from some sour cream.  It gets its name from a hidden filling of raspberry jam and chocolate.  I'm not sure whether it's the nature of this cake, or if I was too careful with keeping the filling away from the walls of the cake pan so it wouldn't burn, but the filling takes up very little of the cake.  Plus it rose up through the batter while baking.  I simply wanted more of the chocolate and raspberry.

Clockwise from top left: the cake batter; piping in circles of batter; digging a trough and adding jam to it; topping the jam with chopped chocolate.

I LOVE this beater attachment.  If you have a stand mixer, get one of these beaters that scrapes the bowl as it mixes.  No need to stop the mixer and scrape the bowl periodically.

Next, more circles of batter are piped on top, then smoothed. In the final step, a chopstick is inserted into the batter in swirling motions to distribute the chocolate and raspberry filling.

I have to say I think you can dispense with the piping bag and circles, and just scoop the batter in.  The extra steps -- scraping the batter into a bag, piping the batter, then washing the bag later -- seemed unnecessary.

Bundts also call to mind this baking pan I saw recently at the Museum of Science's exhibit on Pompeii.  This is what I would have used in Roman times!

For me this cake was good but not amazing, though that could change by doubling up on the chocolate and raspberry next time.  But that's just my opinion; you might also want to ask the person involved in the cake's disappearing act.

This post was shared with:
Tea Party Tuesday
Crazy Sweet Tuesday
Sweet Treats Thursday
Sweets for a Saturday
Themed Baker's Sunday

Sarabeth's Maple Muffins

Muffins often don't impress me, but the recipe for these Maple Muffins caught my eye right away.  Joe got me Sarabeth's Bakery: From My Home to Yours as one of my Christmas gifts a year ago, and I was drawn to the photo with the golden sides and crackly tops.  I also love maple syrup as a flavoring.  On first bite, I was surprised because I expected a more assertive maple flavor.  But it's more subtle, kind of lightly perfumed with maple, and the walnuts taste a little salty by comparison.  Winner.

An additional bonus was how easy the recipe was.  Especially compared with the Pains au Chocolat (chocolate croissants) and Pains aux Raisins I made from the book earlier this year!  A negative?  Pure maple syrup is an expensive ingredient, and the Grade B (it's superior to Grade A) this recipe calls for isn't always sold in supermarkets.  My tip is to buy it at Trader Joe's if there's a location near you, since it had the Grade B available and was more affordable.

Also worth mentioning is that I made these in a cupcake pan, and the leftover batter in mini brioche molds.  I don't own a muffin pan, and even I have a limit with how much I cram in my kitchen.  Sarabeth writes that she's not a fan of paper muffin liners, and I have to agree because the muffins got the most beautiful, golden brown sides without them.  If you also opt for a cupcake pan, cut the cooking time short by 5 minutes.

Finally, the recipe also calls for some whole wheat flour.  I like King Arthur's White Whole Wheat Flour because it's got all the nutrition of whole wheat, but its taste and consistency are closer to plain white flour.  The difference is that it's made from the white wheat berry instead of the red wheat berry, which is used for the more common whole wheat flour in stores.

This post was shared with:
Tea Party Tuesday
Sweet Treats Thursday
Sweet Tooth Friday
Sweets for a Saturday

Pains aux Raisins

I was torn over whether to make these or the pains au chocolat.  Did I want a luscious pastry cream with raisins, or intense bittersweet chocolate?  Turns out I didn't have to choose because each recipe required a half-batch of the same kind of dough!

I brought these along with the pain au chocolat to my last book club meeting, and it wasn't a surprise that everybody chose the chocolate variety.  But Isabelle, our organizer who comes from southern France, took the untouched pains aux raisins with her and said she ate them before she got to the highway.  "The  pains au chocolat were delicious,'' she said, ''but the pains aux raisins were out of this world!"  She added that they were very authentic, and that she doesn't dole out undeserved flattery.  Which is appreciated!  The consensus was the same at home.  Joe found a few I had squirreled away in the freezer to bring to my mother and sister in New York: "Hey, there are more pains aux raisins in here!!"  I forbade him from touching them.  Trust me, he more than ate his share!

Clockwise from top-left: The pastry cream is easy to make and dotted with plenty of vanilla seeds; the dough is then rolled up and sliced (don't forget to add your raisins, or you'll have to unroll like I did); the pains are proofed on a sheet pan; they tend to fall on their sides after rising, so I lay them flat.

The many layers bake up golden and flaky, and the pains are brushed with an apricot glaze.  The pastry cream becomes not so much a filling as an element of moisture and flavor.

Pains au Chocolat

Pains au Chocolat are my kind of treat: flaky, buttery dough concealing a piece of chocolate in the center.  They went over extremely well at my book club, especially with our leader, Isabelle, who hails from the Languedoc region of France.  She said they and the Pains aux Raisins (next post) were very authentic, and that the chocolate was perfect and not too sweet -- I used Valrhona Le Noir 61%.  Having no authenticity gauge myself and this being my first croissant, I was pleased to get such a ringing endorsement.  Plus, chocolate and buttery bread... what's not to like?

The recipe instructions may be long, but don't fret.  The dough-making was the laborious part, and all that's left is to roll it out and roll up the chocolate in it.  The proofing method is kind of bizarre, but was easy enough.  Updated note: I'm glad everyone likes the green cups, but they're espresso cups, not teacups -- just to give you an idea of how small the cups and pains actually are.

If your dough refuses to roll out and springs right back into place, let it rest in the refrigerator for 10 minutes or so.  I hate doing that because I want to be done with a task pronto, but it won't behave otherwise.  In the end, my rectangle was still an inch short because of the springy dough, but what the hey.  The pains still looked good to me!

I got Sarabeth's Bakery as a Christmas gift, and these and the Pains aux Raisins are the first recipes I have tried from it.  I'm looking forward to trying more!

Croissant Dough

Look at all the thin layers on this baby.  This croissant dough will be used in my next two posts.  I thought this was going to be a real project, and I psyched myself up for it.  It wasn't so difficult after making puff pastry, which is very similar.  If you can just set aside a block of time -- there are resting periods (both for the dough and yourself) -- it's very doable.  The timing was an intimidation factor.  The recipe from Sarabeth's Bakery says the dough must be frozen for a minimum of 24 hours and thawed for at least 8 hours, but cannot be frozen for more than 4 days.  So you'll have to choose two days: one in which you have time to make the dough, and another to bake it that comes at least 36 hours later but not more than 4 days.

Croissant dough is made much like puff pastry dough.  I was surprised not to see weight measurements for a bread recipe from a bakery book, but it worked out fine with volume measurements.  Clockwise from top left: The yeasted dough is made and then slashed with an X to represent four sections later; butter and flour are beat together and them formed into a square; the dough with the X is rolled out into four sections, and the butter is placed on the raised square in the middle; the dough flaps are wrapped all around the butter and flipped over.

Clockwise from top left: The second "book" turn of dough is folded slightly to the right, and then the left is brought over; then the entire piece of dough is folded in half; the third and final turn of dough is done (both the first and third turns are simply folded into thirds like a letter); and the dough is sliced in half before being wrapped in the freezer.

There are lots of steps, but don't be intimidated.  I wish I could include the illustrations that came with the book as a guide, but you can refer to some of mine.