A bit of baking for Christmas dinner:
Crostata Della Nonna from Dolci! Lemon and vanilla pastry cream in a sweet crust. Forgot the tart pan so taking a photo now, before attempting to get it out of the cake pan. Icing sugar will be deployed to cover any cracks.
Plain cookies for tea with the leftover pastry. My mother doesn’t have any sprinkles so very plain.
Dinner rolls from ATK Everyday Bread. Used olive oil instead of shortening and did an overnight rise in the fridge.
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Gorgeous!
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Although we kept our meal simple, we were all too uncomfortably full for dessert, so I didn’t sample the mixed berry trifle from Cook’s Illustrated until this morning. Wonderfully delicious! I used some Oloroso sherry instead of cream sherry because it’s what I had, and it didn’t hurt it any. I had made a half batch of the cake for this previously because I had egg whites and I’m always a little wary of sponge cakes made with all or mostly whites due to them often tasting eggy. However the cake is truly delicious and one I’ll go back to if ever I have egg whites that need using. Having said that, the half batch of cake made enough to make this trifle, so either cut in half or make a full recipe with the idea of using half the cake for something else (like ice cream cake).
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What a gorgeous trifle!!
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Thank you!
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A longtime favorite Christmas morning muffin - pineapple upside down with maraschino cherries. The recipe was featured in “Bond” magazine in the late '70’s/ early '80’s.
Pineapple Upside-Down Muffins
1/ 4 C. packed brown sugar
2 T. butter or margarine, melted
1 8 oz can crushed pineapple (juice packed), drained ; also works with fresh pineapple crushed (not too far…) in food processor.
18 maraschino cherries, halved
1 3/ 4 C. all-purpose flour
1/3 C. granulated sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/ 4 tsp. salt
1 beaten egg
3/ 4 C. milk
1/ 4 C. vegetable oil
Grease twelve 2 ½ inch muffin cups, set aside. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and butter. Divide sugar mixture evenly among muffin cups ( 1 scant tsp per cup). Divide pineapple and cherries among the cups. (note: photo showed 3 cherry halves per muffin. Photo showed curved side of cherry halves down/cut side up, which works well. Cherries sink thru pineapple to show nicely when muffins are tipped out.)
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. In another bowl, combine egg, milk and vegetable oil. Add egg mixture all at once to dry ingredients. Stir until just moistened (batter should be lumpy). Spoon about 1/4 C. batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each three-fourths full.
Bake in a 400 degree oven for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Then remove by inverting them onto the wire rack. Serve warm.
Makes 12 muffins.
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We are celebrating Christmas today. Daughter and family will be here in about an hour from up north. The real up north about a 5 hour drive straight up from suburbs of Toronto.
First is the cookie tray of various cookies i posted and second Buche de Noel.
Merry Christmas
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Just beautiful Stef_bakes ! Your family will be so pleased with all your wonderful bakes!
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Did you make that perfect looking cake?
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I tried
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Thank you
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Gorgeous.
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THIS IS GORGEOUS!!!
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Here is a slice of the Buche. Swiss buttercream on the inside. Chocolate ganache on the outside. The interesting method is that instead of rolling the cake when it comes out of the oven, you cover the sheet pan with a damp cloth and get your fillings done.
Recipe from French Pastry Made Simple by Molly Wilks.
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Thank you
that buche looks perfect to me!
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I am baking this “rich and tender yellow cake” again, which I like to spread out over up to 24 hours, because it feels less overwhelming/more enjoyable for me.
My question is, does sifting cake flour ( for lumps, mixing, aeration? ) hours ahead make a difference?
ETA the King Arthur link seems to be saying
“If you store your flour in its bag and/or it has been sitting in your pantry for over a month, it might be compressed and dense.” and “If you’re measuring by volume, one cup of densely packed flour will yield much more than aerated flour, which can skew the balance of dry and wet ingredients in your dough or batter.”
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I’ve given up measuring flour by volume for KA recipes. Their “cup” weight is way, way off from my standard scoop and level method, so I just weigh. Sifting does help with cake rise – somewhere I saw photos – a tester made 2 box cake mixes with the only difference being they sifted one before mixing in liquids.
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KA’s instructions for volume measurement of flour for their recipes is to lightly spoon aerated flour and level. Their cups weigh 120g, whereas CI/ATK, which advises scooping and leveling for their recipes, gives a 140g cup weight. This is one reason I will always weigh flour, especially if a recipe specifies weight.
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@MidwesternerTT and @CaitlinM If the recipe uses cups, which weight do you use?
