Ive made the 'coffee’coffee cake on page 14. My notes say a nice moist cake with intense coffee flavour. Made it twiice.
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I have the Eccles cake booked marked. Want to wait when we have more family over.
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I’ve got my eye on that one so glad to hear it was good.
I really liked the plum roll cake though I’m pretty sure I used a sheet pan rather than 2 9x13 pans.
I didn’t love the raspberry and rose cream cheese buns but I can’t remember why. Recipe looks nice when I look at it again. I definitely would have omitted all the rose components.
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Just a heads up for those who prefer American-style volume measurements for baking, when the Food52 BCOTM group on Facebook did OTB, I see that a couple of members noticed that some volume conversions were clearly off/erroneous. So even if you don’t plan on baking by the metric weights, you might want to double check online to see that the volumes line up okay.
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RASPBERRY (BLUEBERRY) CHEESECAKE STREUSEL SQUARES, p. 94
I made a half recipe of these in an 8-inch square pan with blueberries in place of raspberries, along with a few other little tweaks detailed below, and it’s a good thing: it would be easy to eat way too many if I made the full recipe, because they are FANTASTIC!
My first deviation (other than using blueberries) was to brown the butter, because why would you not? I also reduced the sugar by 25% in both the streusel and cheesecake filling (which is perfect to my taste, but I don’t care for things super sweet) and increased the berries by 25%. After I made the streusel mixture and separated a third for the topping (but before I added the rolled oats to the topping portion) I decided that using only two-thirds for the base might render it a little thin, so I used it all on the bottom and made another third amount (or so) for the topping. I don’t know whether I’d have found the base too thin as written, but I don’t regret increasing it at all; it’s crisp, shortbread-y goodness. I don’t have blueberry jam, so I used Ginger People ginger spread because it was open in my fridge. I don’t think the jam choice is a big deal given it’s a pretty small amount and the flavor doesn’t come through much in the scheme of things.
If you’re a fan of cheesecake and berries, you should make these! And regardless of whether you pay attention to my other tweaks, I’d encourage you to brown the butter. I’m sure these would be plenty nice with raspberries, but I happen to find blueberries really shine in this application. I think blackberries would also be wonderful, as would sour cherries, for those of you who are lucky enough to live in sour cherry territory.
The recipe is online here.
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This looks and sounds fantastic. On my list!
That’s a good reminder that I can 1/2 most of the recipes and use an 8X8. I am trying to make smaller bakes, so I had hesitated on baking some of these…
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I anticipate only making half recipes from this book, unless some social event comes up where a larger batch would be appropriate. I’m a work-from-homer, so no office to take goodies to.
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When my copy arrived (several months ago) I flicked through it and missed that Ed Kimber had provided a recipe for eccles cake as a tray bake. Only known and enjoyed them as individual “cakes” so it will be interesting to find out what different taste/textural sensations his method produces.
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I was looking at that recipe again last night. I’m still tempted to give it a go.
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I made the ‘Coffee’ Coffee Cake (p 14) for our school’s volunteer appreciation breakfast this morning. I had intended to substitute cardamom for the cinnamon, but ended up making it as written, as I was too tired to prepare the cardamom. I will try that next time, and there will be a next time. This was delicious—moist and flavourful. I don’t even like the crumbs on crumb cakes, but this was fine, maybe because of the browned butter. The whole tray went, except for the sneaky pieces I kept at home.
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RASPBERRY CHEESECAKE STREUSEL SQUARES
I also halved the recipe. I’m taking most of it to a pot luck lunch, and figured people wouldn’t want more than a bite each. But I held back 3 full sized bars for us, and after eating them I’m sorry that I halved! So good! I used raspberries, but the closest I could do on jam was strawberry. Agree it probably doesn’t make a difference. Was able to make it work with using 1/3 of the flour/sugar on bottom, but definitely get what Caitlin means, and might make extra next time. These are delicious. LLD’s usual birthday dessert is a raspberry sour cream tart. Both he and Lulu said “it’s like the tart, only … streusely.” Which was high praise.
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What recipe do you use for the raspberry sour cream tart?
It’s one i found on epicurious ages ago, at least 18 years and probably longer. I’ve adjusted it a bit at this point.
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LAMINATED (CHERRY AND PEACH) BUCKWHEAT SCONES, p. 240
I lit on this recipe because I knew I had some buckwheat flour languishing in the fridge, and it’s stone fruit season. Initially, I thought I’d buy some raspberry jam and use apricots for the fresh fruit (in place of the called-for nectarines), but when I ended up with a bunch of sweet cherries thanks to a good price, I swerved and went with a smooth peach jam and quartered cherries.
As it happens, I only had half the weight of buckwheat flour called for, so I made up the rest of that portion of the dough with ww pastry flour, figuring it’d contribute some of the nuttiness of buckwheat. I used the food processor to cut the butter in, just four or five quick pulses, and probably ended up with more larger pieces than he intended, but that was just fine with the rolling and folding. I had to add a couple of tablespoons of milk to get the dough to come together (an extra spoonful of sour cream would’ve also worked), and even then it was a bit messy through the first letter fold. Downtime in the fridge brought it together. Since it took a bit of work (and time) to roll it out and fold in the fruit, I stuck the pan in the freezer for 10 minutes before baking to firm up the butter. I made 8 rather than the 6 the recipe specifies, and they are still pretty substantial. Six would make for huge scones.
I had one when they were still barely warm from the oven, and it was tender, flaky and delicious. Rewarmed briefly today, it was softer, not so flaky, but still tender with great flavor. The nuttiness of the buckwheat, the buttery pastry, and the fruit are great together. These are rich (to be expected, with butter, eggs, and sour cream), so the crumb isn’t super light, but neither is it dense, if that makes sense.
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FLORENTINE GRAPE FOCACCIA(minus gra
pes) last recipe in book. This turned out nice and chewy. The dough is very elastic to work with but you just scrape it into the 9x13 and spread it with your wetted fingers. Will make again.
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These look gorgeous and I’m interested in baking more with buckwheat flour. How similar is the basic recipe to this (non-laminated) one?
Hmm, not all that much. The OTB recipe calls for 230g AP flour, 180g buckwheat flour, 1T baking powder, 50g superfine sugar (granulated would be fine), 1/2 tsp fine salt, 140g butter (1 1/4 sticks), 1/2 cup sour cream, 2 eggs, and 2 tsp vanilla for the dough, plus 1/2 cup raspberry jam and 3 diced nectarines (whatever that means), though I used peach jam and fresh sweet cherries. Let me know if you’d like the instructions
