quarantine baking
6 Apr 2020 12:37 pmActually it's just work-from-home baking, but that doesn't sound as catchy.
Simple wheat bread rolls: not dinner rolls, which include milk and require multiple rounds of kneading, just wheat bread scored into little squares because Wax sees no reason to roll it into pull-apart balls when you can just flatten it out and score it in a grid. She's not concerned with Instagram, so these are workmanlike tasty breadrolls. Could use some more recipe experimentation. Would appreciate some more aesthetic appeal. 8/10.
( Best Chocolate Cake ) This is an extremely moist and spongy chocolate cake. It's very chocolatey and quite sweet, but not inedibly so. 9/10. Will definitely continue using this as the standard chocolate cake recipe.
We ate all of that and couldn't decide between muffins and cookies yesterday so we made both. ( Lemon Tea Cookies ) are a perennial favorite in my family which my mother made often and have always been a hit at potlucks and parties, but I've never made them for Wax before. They were an instant hit here as well. 11/10, will make again as soon as possible.
We also decided to try a recipe I saved from the internet that looked good, Coffee Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream via Cookie Dough and Oven Mitt, but we didn't realize we were out of powdered sugar in time. We skipped the ganache out of laziness and mutual dislike of ganache, but then we had to find another frosting for these coffee cupcakes and we ended up making a stovetop mocha glaze. This was way too sweet and also we accidentally made about 40 times as much glaze as we needed. The cupcakes themselves were already quite sweet though, sweeter than we like, and the result is... well,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism, who is the opposite of picky, says "You can only eat one at a time". I'm gonna be not eating any more of them because after eating two at once in my eagerness to try them out I realized it felt like my mouth was being attacked with extreme prejudice. Possibly a bittersweet chocolate frosting would have worked better, or a bittersweet coffee frosting. 1/10, maybe not the recipe's fault.
Next on the agenda is actually flatbread for Passover. We haven't decided which kind to make yet - matzah or Finnish rieska or I've seen an Indian recipe floating around, but we will probably do that before any more desserts, since Passover is Wednesday.
But in terms of desserts, the next on the agenda is Chocolate Chip Date Cake, my favorite cake and also my dad's favorite cake, which my mom says she got from a Pillsbury recipe contest sometime decades ago; but again one I've never made for Wax, because I didn't want to bother cooking with dates. MIL had a big box of fresh (half-dried) dates at the cottage though, so we can use them up. (I've calculated that I'll reduce the water in the recipe by about 66 mL to compensate for the higher moisture content of the dates.) And after that, to make up for the bad coffee muffins, we've already saved the remaining juice and lemon peel from making cookies and will make ( Lemon Tea Muffins )
Once the flat bread is gone, my intention is to make my favorite bread that my mom makes; we call it rosemary bread, but it's James Beard's recipe for Pizza Caccia Nanza with my mother's tweaks. She skips the second rise, and uses sprigs of fresh rosemary inserted in the top of the loaf into tiny pricks made with the point of a sharp knife. No dried rosemary. Wax can't handle the smell of fresh garlic though, so I'll probably use some dried garlic in the topping instead.
Simple wheat bread rolls: not dinner rolls, which include milk and require multiple rounds of kneading, just wheat bread scored into little squares because Wax sees no reason to roll it into pull-apart balls when you can just flatten it out and score it in a grid. She's not concerned with Instagram, so these are workmanlike tasty breadrolls. Could use some more recipe experimentation. Would appreciate some more aesthetic appeal. 8/10.
( Best Chocolate Cake ) This is an extremely moist and spongy chocolate cake. It's very chocolatey and quite sweet, but not inedibly so. 9/10. Will definitely continue using this as the standard chocolate cake recipe.
We ate all of that and couldn't decide between muffins and cookies yesterday so we made both. ( Lemon Tea Cookies ) are a perennial favorite in my family which my mother made often and have always been a hit at potlucks and parties, but I've never made them for Wax before. They were an instant hit here as well. 11/10, will make again as soon as possible.
We also decided to try a recipe I saved from the internet that looked good, Coffee Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream via Cookie Dough and Oven Mitt, but we didn't realize we were out of powdered sugar in time. We skipped the ganache out of laziness and mutual dislike of ganache, but then we had to find another frosting for these coffee cupcakes and we ended up making a stovetop mocha glaze. This was way too sweet and also we accidentally made about 40 times as much glaze as we needed. The cupcakes themselves were already quite sweet though, sweeter than we like, and the result is... well,
waxjism, who is the opposite of picky, says "You can only eat one at a time". I'm gonna be not eating any more of them because after eating two at once in my eagerness to try them out I realized it felt like my mouth was being attacked with extreme prejudice. Possibly a bittersweet chocolate frosting would have worked better, or a bittersweet coffee frosting. 1/10, maybe not the recipe's fault.Next on the agenda is actually flatbread for Passover. We haven't decided which kind to make yet - matzah or Finnish rieska or I've seen an Indian recipe floating around, but we will probably do that before any more desserts, since Passover is Wednesday.
But in terms of desserts, the next on the agenda is Chocolate Chip Date Cake, my favorite cake and also my dad's favorite cake, which my mom says she got from a Pillsbury recipe contest sometime decades ago; but again one I've never made for Wax, because I didn't want to bother cooking with dates. MIL had a big box of fresh (half-dried) dates at the cottage though, so we can use them up. (I've calculated that I'll reduce the water in the recipe by about 66 mL to compensate for the higher moisture content of the dates.) And after that, to make up for the bad coffee muffins, we've already saved the remaining juice and lemon peel from making cookies and will make ( Lemon Tea Muffins )
Once the flat bread is gone, my intention is to make my favorite bread that my mom makes; we call it rosemary bread, but it's James Beard's recipe for Pizza Caccia Nanza with my mother's tweaks. She skips the second rise, and uses sprigs of fresh rosemary inserted in the top of the loaf into tiny pricks made with the point of a sharp knife. No dried rosemary. Wax can't handle the smell of fresh garlic though, so I'll probably use some dried garlic in the topping instead.
