I let these rest since baking them this morning, then tasted again after dinner. I mostly get chocolate and I guess a little rye with these; the cranberries can’t compete with the chocolate at all. After you swallow, you get to enjoy stray poppyseeds lurking around between your teeth.
Also the baking temperature is crazy high, which meant my first tray burned on the bottoms pretty severely.
I dunno, these didn’t steal my heart.
I’ve eaten, though not made, anadama bread, and I like it. Because of the molasses, it bears a resemblance to traditional New England brown bread, but the mix of grains makes it different. (When I first encountered it decades ago, it was under a different and rather uncool name, but same thing.
The NYT released their 2024 Christmas cookies (gift link) and the selection is overall so disappointing! Not a one I’m planning to try, and in general the picks are super-uninspiring to me. I’d eat the cheesecake/ginger one if offered, and I guess if Claire Saffitz walked up to me with a tin of her super-tedious buche de noel cookies I’d probably take one, but otherwise… ugh.
I’m so jaded.
ETA: there’s an instagram baker who bakes ALL the cookies every year in the first 24 hrs after they are published. here’s her post showing the cookies in the 2024 nyt list, already made.
Wow, she’s ambitious. The ginger cheesecake ones and buche de Noel look good
They un-had me at turmeric
Tedious…to make?
yeah. you have to roll up this teeny tiny roll! the video i shared shows a professional baker struggling to do it.
The non-whipped is this Smitten Kitchen one:
The whipped one is one that I have been making my whole life. I fondly thought of it as a family recipe but realised that it’s most likely from the back of the cornstarch box! We got the recipe from my aunt’s family.
those are the two that appealed to me as well…
I would try thr rum-buttered almond ones very happily. Thanks for that link. I’m now following her.
The cooling rack has 3 cross supports which give better stabilization.
The Vollrath cookie sheet is #68085, this is a very heavy weight cookie sheet, it needs no double panning as some cookies suggest.
The biscotti can be placed flat, as the rack allows a better transfer of heat, or if the space is needed, stood on edge. Obviously, the biscotti will have a shorter cooking time with this method.
I made Cook’s Illustrated chocolate caramel layer cake (half recipe as usual) and I didn’t care for it at all. First because I decided to try the chocolate cake layers they used despite my dislike of oil-based cakes. I thought how I can put up with it in chocolate cakes, but then I thought about it and even the ones made with oil actually have butter in them as well. I can always taste oil in baked goods and unless it’s olive oil, which I like, or the baked good in question is a chiffon or other sponge, I really dislike it. Every chocolate cake I make that I love is butter-based and never lacking for moisture, and the flavor is just better. I also thought this cake had a coarser crumb than I like.
The caramel filling would make an excellent ice cream addition when you want a chewier caramel variegate rather than a swirl. Recently someone was wondering about getting that sort of caramel in an ice cream and since I usually go for a saucier type, I hadn’t considered it, but this filling ends up perfectly spreadable and not runny with a nice chew, so I remembered that topic and will keep this is mind.
However as a cake filling I didn’t care for it as despite not being too sweet on its own, it seems to lose its pleasant bitterness once sandwiched between cake layers and just tastes sweet.
The frosting is delicious, but the half recipe made quite a bit. I’m planning on making dobos torte, and although this is a different type of frosting, I’ll add it to the one for that so I can use it.
You might enjoy this. It includes the only quince joke ever written. It’s a terrible joke… but it’s the only one in existence 
Jam tarts with almond flour, AP, and jams of choice. Plum, apricot, sour cherry and Clementine. Easy to eat two of these, I’m still tweaking the recipe .
Please let us know when it’s tweaked to perfection.
Depends on how long my patience lasts 
This is so interesting to me because I actually prefer an oil based chocolate cake, and wondered if this preference was out of the ordinary. And I mean really strongly prefer it. I am an oddball, which i’m ok with.
We were away for Thanksgiving (dinner at a restaurant every night - hallelujah!), and got home to a lot of errands. But today is my birthday, and I wanted there to be cake, so I found an easy and delicious sounding recipe. Will let you know what I think. It is the versatile coconut cake from Simple Cake, with a coconut glaze from the same book. It came together very quickly and smells amazing.
