Bagels

Our Tuesdays with Dorie pick this week is...BAGELS!  What a fun baking project. I love bagels and have made them a few times but not in the past couple of years so this was the perfect recipe to get back in the swing of bagel making.

I split the dough in half and made five cinnamon raisin bagels, by just kneading in some raisins and a cinnamon sugar swirl before shaping.  I cut the second half of the dough into eight smaller pieces and those bagels ended up being just the right size for homemade pizza Bagel Bites.

The cinnamon raisin were a special request by picky husband...

They turned out absolutely delicious!  Picky husband and kids all loved these. The kids even helped shape a few of the plain batch and had a ton of fun making bagels with mommy.  I would use this recipe again for sure. I did boil a little less than directed, just kind of watched them until they began to float and then flipped then, I also subbed out the shortening and used butter in the dough. Lastly I lowered the baking time and temperature, they were perfectly chewy/crunchy/soft inside after about 17-20 minutes at 375.  Yum, yum! Perfect bagels, if you ask me :)

Hungarian Strawberry Shortbread

Our Tuesdays with Dorie  treat of the week is Hungarian Shortbread. I had never heard of Hungarian Shortbread before but love shortbread so was excited to give this recipe a try.  

Cookies with jam in them are my favorite kind, and I love making jam, but was unable to find the rhubarb called for. The recipes says that you can also use your favorite flavor or preserves so I went with some homemade strawberry jam.

Hungarian Shortbread uses a technique I'd heard of but never tried myself, grating / shredding frozen dough! I used my salad shooter with the shredding cone, which made this recipe super easy. I couldn't wait to see what it looked like after it baked...

Here it is just out of the oven. I had to add an extra 5 minutes on the baking time because the middle seemed undone at 40, but when it checked it 5 minutes later it looked just right!  These are absolutely delicious and I would make them again for sure! They seem like the perfect bar cookie to take along for a picnic.

And now I have a couple of photos of our last TWD recipe assignment, a lovely Lemon Loaf Cake...

I baked along with everyone two weeks ago but just didn't have the time to post on time so thought I'd save my pictures and put them up with the Hungarian Shortbread.

I love lemon loaf and this one was pretty yummy! The kids enjoyed this one as well.  And now one last photo to share, an inside shot of my Mushroom Pizza Rustica that we made a month ago. When I blogged about the recipe I didn't have any photos of a slice of it showing the filling. I took this photo of the leftovers the next day and it had been sitting in my "Cooking Photos" folder of pictures for the last month, so I thought I'd share that one this week too.  Thanks for visiting -- happy baking, everyone :)

 

Mushroom Pizza Rustica

This week for Tuesdays with Dorie we made a Pizza Rustica! I wasn't quite sure what a Pizza Rustica was, I thought it was more like a filled two crusted pizza but this to me was more like a savory ricotta pie and it was pretty yummy! 

Since I don't eat meat I swapped out the prosciutto for some mushrooms sauteed in butter and brandy.  They were delicious. I even got a double mushroom! How fun! 

Above are the mushrooms just starting to cook...and below they are being added to the ricotta and cheese mixture.

For the ricotta I used a mixture of two brands, Biazzo was wetter than the Frigo but they tasted pretty much the same (I am a ricotta fan and did a little ricotta taste test :) )

The lattice top was a little tricky. I usually forget to use my ruffled pastry cutter so it was nice to have a reason to pull it out.

Below is my Pizza Rustica before going into the oven.  It baked up nicely although I did add an extra 5 minutes or so on to the cooking time.  Picky husband does not like ricotta cheese so he passed on this one (I also made a lasagna that night since I knew this would be a tough sell) and my kids all tried it but didn't like it.  Thank goodness I had my mom over for dinner when this was served because she really enjoyed it and could appreciate something like this.  I liked it as well and am really glad I added the mushrooms since they added a nice depth of flavor. I packed up half of the pie for my mom to take home and I will probably have some as leftovers for lunch this week.

Irish Soda Bread

Today's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Irish Soda Bread!

Here is my loaf before baking. I've made Irish Soda Bread quite a few times before but I think this was the simplest recipe!

I added 1 cup of raisins. I love caraway seeds in my Irish Soda Bread but the kids and picky husband do not so I left them off of this loaf.

Sorry for the super short post this week but we are having company, and I of course waited until the last minute to make my bread! This bread was absolutely delicious warm with some butter, even picky husband said it was "really good" and that's a big compliment from him :) One of the best Irish Soda Breads I've had!

Apricot Rugelach

Time for Tuesdays with Dorie! Our treat of the week is Rugelach! I love Rugelach and blogged about them previously when we made them with Tuesdays with Dorie a couple of years ago. Fruit and nut cookies are my favorites so I was excited to have an excuse to make these, usually I only do them for the holidays.

I was actually a little late making these Rugelach since the past weekend was fully devoted to my sweetheart who turned 6 on March 4th! Oh how time does fly! His current obsession is Sonic the Hedgehog, so I spent a good amount of time making the above cake. He absolutely loved it and we had a super fun birthday weekend.

I had never made my own lekvar before and had always used jam for my Rugelach. The apricot lekvar was very easy to make and was absolutely delicious.

For my Rugelach nuts I chose macadamias to go with the apricot and I think that was a great choice, the buttery macadamias paired perfectly with the lekvar.

Above are the nuts almost ready to be processed.

Here we have the dough ready to be rolled up. I skipped adding the dried fruit into these this time, I really wanted the lekvar to stand out since I was so impressed with it. Here they are before baking...

And here they are after. I baked them for about 17 minutes and they were perfectly done. You have to keep an eye on these in the oven, I think that they would have burned bottoms had I left them in too much longer. These were absolutely delicious, my four year old absolutely loved them and I'm sure my other two will loved them as an after school snack as well. Thank you to this week’s hosts – Jessica of My Baking Heart and Margaret of The Urban Hiker you will be able to find the recipe for these at their sites. :)

Chocolate Truffle Tartlets

Twinkle, twinkle, little star tart :) Welcome to our 2nd Tuesdays with Dorie baking through the book Baking with Julia. Our featured recipe this week is Chocolate Truffle Tartlets by David Ogonowski.

I was excited to give these a try because I got to use my new star tartlet pans, aren't they cute?

I also used two of my mini heart tartlet pans. I have way too many tart pans! Tarts are just so fun to bake and can be sweet or savory. I think I like the savory tarts a touch better, if they are sweet I prefer them as fruit tarts. Even though Chocolate Truffle Tartlets wouldn't be my first tart choice on a dessert menu, these were pretty yummy and fun to make.

Above is the chocolate tart dough all ready to be rolled out...

Lots of chocolate in this recipe, bittersweet, milk, and white -- oh my! Chocolate overload! After baking them, they almost looked like little Chocolate Brownie Tartlets...

I gussied these up with whipped cream, sprinkles, and a maraschino cherry for the kids. They loved them, success! Picky husband didn't finish his tartlet. He is not a huge chocolate fan. Chocolate desserts are hit or miss for me. This one was pretty good. If you are a chocolate fan I bet you went head over heels for these cute little tartlets. Happy Baking, everyone!

Thank you to our hostesses this week: Steph at A Whisk And A Spoon, Spike at spike.does.stuff, Jaime at Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats, and Jessica at cookbookhabit -- please visit their sites for the recipe if you would like to give these Chocolate Truffle Tartlets a try!

Corniest Corn Muffins

I am finally posting about Dorie's Corniest Corn Muffins! These seem to be one of the most popular recipes in the book Baking From My Home To Yours and with good reason, they are delicious! You can find this recipe here at Serious Eats with a nice little commentary from Dorie, or you can find it here at Jilla's blog -- she was the hostess for this recipe when they were baked with Tuesdays with Dorie in March 2011. I don't remember why I missed these back then, I'm guessing it was because my oldest son's 5th birthday was early last March and we were busy celebrating all week long :)

I love all kinds of corn muffins so was excited to finally give these a try, I'd been wanting to bake them forever!

Corniest Corn Muffins

Dorie Greenspan -- Baking From My Home To Yours, my tiny changes in italic

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
6 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (optional) (I left this out, I love nutmeg but the family, not so much)
1 cup buttermilk (I used 1 cup skim milk and 4 tbsp dried buttermilk powder)
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 tablespoons corn oil
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk (I just used two whole eggs)
1 cup corn kernels (add up to 1/3 cup more if you’d like), fresh, frozen or canned (in which case they should be drained and patted dry) (I used a whole 14 ounce can of sweet corn kernels, after measuring out 1 and 1/3 cup, there was only about 1/3 cup left, so I just added it all in)

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400°F. I dropped this down to 375 for some reason my muffins always get too brown for my liking at 400. Butter or spray the 12 muffin molds in a regular-size muffin tin, or fit the molds with paper muffin cups.

Working in a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. In a large glass measuring cup with a spout or in another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, melted butter, oil, egg and yolk. I just mixed this all in one bowl. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy and that’s just the way it should be.

Stir in the corn kernels. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin molds. I had enough to fill one Bakers Secret mini loaf pan and one Betty Crocker silicone heart muffin pan...

Slide the pan into the oven and bake 15 to 18 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.

Pull the pan from the oven and carefully lift each muffin out of its mold and onto a rack to cool.

Serving: The muffins are great warm or at room temperature and particularly great split, toasted and slathered with butter or jam or both (if they’re not in breadbasket at dinner, that is). My favorite was to have a corn muffin is warm with butter and honey, yum! Definitely one of life's simple pleasures...

Storing: Like all muffins, these are best eaten the day they are made. If you want to keep them, it’s best to wrap them airtight and pop them into the freezer, where they’ll keep for about a month; re-warm in a 300°F oven, if you’d like, or split them and toast them—do that and they’ll be that much more delicious with butter.

~~~

These were absolutely delicious! Picky husband and I both loved them with butter for breakfast! I thought the kids were going to be excited about these, especially since they like cornbread a lot and anything baked in a heart shaped muffin pan is a quick sell, but they weren't as impressed as us adults were. I added jam to theirs and they still weren't keen on them? Maybe since I don't usually add corn kernels to our cornbread recipe they were a little apprehensive with the kernels? They all love corn though so I'm not really sure why these weren't a hit with them. Oh-well, you never can tell with kids. I think these definitely appeal to the sweeter, yankee cornbread fan in me and would make them again for sure :) Wishing everyone a happy Valentine's Day!

Basic White Loaves

I am so excited to be posting our very first Tuesdays with Dorie recipe from our newest baking adventure guidebook, Baking with Julia! Being a part Tuesdays with Dorie during Baking From My Home To Yours was such a fun journey and I just loved it.

This week we tackled Craig Kominiak's recipe for White Loaves, from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. I had never heard of Craig Kominiak and apparently he got his start as a chef by cooking for the Navy, after five years of cooking three meals a day for 200 sailors, he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America and has since become a famous baker at Ecce Panis artisan bakery.

The recipe makes two loaves, one loaf I kept traditional -- the above photo is it before rising.

And the second half of the dough I decided to have a little fun with and make a cinnamon sugar swirl, which according to the TWD website, a lot of people were incorporating into their loaves.

But I didn't just make another loaf, nah, I decided to have a go at a heart shaped swirl bread. I love making shaped breads, so fun to get creative with the dough and hope that your "art" comes out of the oven as you'd imagined while preparing it.

Why a heart? Is it because Valentine's Day is right around the corner? Nope! It is because today is our 9th wedding anniversary :) Yep, nine years with picky husband, and we've had so much fun. He loves bread and I am happy to make it often, add a cinnamon sugar swirl and he is one happy camper.

Drizzle on some icing (powdered sugar and skim milk) and you will have a breakfast treat sure to become a new favorite.

Both breads were a hit with the whole family, the plain loaf was great for sandwiches and toast, and the cinnamon swirl bread didn't even need butter.


I twisted the swirl so it made a few different swirl shapes as you sliced through the loaf. Some parts even looked like a cinnamon roll...

This bread was a hit with the whole family. Below is a photo of my youngest taste tester completely enjoying his slice after a messy morning art session (confirmed the marker on his hands). I am happy to say that this first Tuesdays with Dorie -- Baking with Julia recipe was a huge success and I can't wait to try our next selection, Chocolate Truffle Tartlets, they sound delicious!