I’m not pavlova and I don’t have that cookbook but after she posted that luscious photo of her coconut cream pie, I came across this recipe on Serious Eats … you might want to look at it.
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Thank you!
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Savory cake with bacon, prunes, and cheese.
And I made a batch of almond paste recently because I’ve been craving Karen DeMasco’s almond cake and decided to bake it today. Definitely still my favorite almond paste cake. Normally it’s sandwiched with some apricot jam, but I had no open jar, so I decided to leave it plain.
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I did another milk bread loaf over the weekend. Rather than go for the four individual rolls like a shokupan, I just flattened out the dough after bulking, rolled it, flattened it again, and rolled it the other way (90 degrees to the first).
The bread baked up fine, but not nearly as tall and puffy as I might has otherwised liked. Next loaf, maybe I’ll try either not rolling it a second time (which means being more careful how I flatten it out after bulk) OR give the top a center score. The King Arthur recipe uses all bread flour. This makes a very sticky dough easier to work with, but might lead to a little TOO much gluten development and a slightly denser loaf.
Still goes great with peanutbutter or as a cinnamon toast, grilled cheese, and all other white sandwich bread applications. And it may be the one I like most just plain with butter once it’s cool.
While still oven-warm, it’s my sourdough…
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Yeast does last a long time in the fridge or freezer, in my experience. However, the yeast you purchase from the grocery store can be expired’, having sat on the shelf for who knows how long, and that seems to matter. Gotta check those labels! I always test my yeast before using.
Really strong gluten development is actually what makes a super fluffy, shreddable crumb in breads like shokupan and is one of the major differences between homemade and commercial. It’s also one of the key factors in getting a Vietnamese style baguette to have the right texture.
There was a baker on The Fresh Loaf by the name of txfarmer who made incredible loaves and croissants, and one of her major lessons was about intensive kneading to produce super light and fluffy loaves:
Her WW version is particularly nice:
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Oh!! Thank you for teh links! I was hoping to have something good to procrastinate with today. 
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Red Star from Costco, good date when I bought it. It’s a good thing it lasts in the freezer because I haven’t been baking using yeast very often.
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Still fooling around with Bon Appetit’s recipe for lemon-poppyseed scones.
Here I omitted the egg and the poppyseeds, and added the equivalent of 1 c. toasted, sweetened coconut flakes. The scones were topped with tart lemon glaze and more coconut flakes.
I was concerned they might come out too sweet, but they were just right with an extra-lemony glaze. The toasted coconut added a lot of texture, which we both liked quite a bit.
Will make again.
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Those look beautiful!
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Thank you! They’re really good. I’m liking this recipe quite a bit as a jumping off point.
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That cookbook is at my mother’s house so I haven’t got it! I actually wanted to make the one from the yellow Gourmet cookbook (which uses milk instead of coconut milk), but didn’t check and parbaked my crust. So I hunted around for another recipe and found the Redpath one. The custard was made on the stovetop and had coconut milk, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla. No coconut in the filling, only on top of the whipped cream. The Serious Eats one posted looks pretty close!
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Is is possible to get a link to the almond cake? Google brings me nowhere.
thank you!
I don’t bake too often these days. I made these mini Tsoureki on Greek Easter. I think my scale isn’t accurate anymore. I did balance it after each measure. There was too much flour in the dough. The same recipe had worked well in 2020 and 2021
I added a second egg to help the dough
come together. It rose well, but when I braided the buns and let them rise another hour or so, then put them in the muffin tins, and baked them, they came out too dense. They needed more time to rise after the braiding, and I think I will weigh each before placing them in a tin next time. I probably should have had half as much dough in each tin, to give them more space to expand.
The flavour was good, they were just heavy.
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It used to be on Serious Eats, but annoyingly they scrapped a lot of great recipes. I use the Wayback Machine normally, but found this site:
I grate the almond paste on the large holes of a box grater if I don’t feel like taking out the food processor. It’s quick and easy with frozen almond paste.
I like to cut the sugar down to 115 g, especially if filling with the jam, but it’s not absolutely necessary. And for the salt I like 3/4 tsp if it’s Diamond Crystal.
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I was flattered to read that I had something to so with your scone making… I decided to limit my cheesy baking to cookies and made Dorie’s smoky cheese cocktail cookies for a coffee hour. What a huge hit and now I am delegated with coffee hour next week!
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Congrats on the win! Now I have to go check out that cocktail cookie recipe. 
ETA: Found the recipe here…
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The recipe says to roll out, place in freezer, then stamp out crackers. Wouldn’t it be easier to roll, freeze then slice off cracker slices?
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You absolutely can do them slice-and-bake style. The recipe works the same way as her cheez-it-ish crackers from Around My French Table, where she gives that as a sidebar option and I’ve done it that way.
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