Whats warming your oven this last and shortest full month of winter?
This is kind of a repost from my entry in the January thread as at the time I posted it, there wasnāt a February thread yet. So thanks to @nannybakes suggestion, Iām posting it here as well.
Iām staying with friends who love sweets, but only have a toaster ovenā¦which limits me as to what I can bake for them. They also have a very small kitchen with other equipment limited as well and are rather health-conscious.
So I made them two small snack cakes (I made 2 rather than try to halve the recipe I found online) free of butter or oil. The only ingredients are Japanese hotcake mix (sort of a sweeter version of Bisquick), eggs, Greek yogurt, coconut sugar and peach jam.
It was extremely easy to make and the level of sweetness was just right.
The recipe is from a Japanese website, so here is a translated version:
200g/7oz Japanese hotcake mix (basically a sweeter version of Bisquick. I think you could substitute Krusteaz or another store-bought hotcake/pancake mix)
125g/4.2oz Greek yogurt
2 large eggs
30g/1.05 oz coconut sugar (brown sugar would work well as a substitute.)
80g/2.70oz peach jam (I think any jam would work) plus a bit more as a glaze if you like.)
Mix liquid ingredients and sugar by hand until blended. Then mix with dry ingredients until the mixture is no longer powdery (be careful not to over mix).
Pour batter into a lined 8x8in/20x20cm OR 9x9in/23x23cm square baking pan and bake for 35 min in a preheated 175ā\350Ā°F oven. If glazing, you can do so after baking or during the last 5 minutes.
Cool and slice to serve.
AFAIK, this is the first recipe Iāve shared on here (my apologies if I have done so before but have forgotten).
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Made my favorite tuna cheese buns, which I love because theyāre crusty and chewy rolls rather than the more typical soft, fluffy buns I make and see with this type of filling. I love the soft and fluffy type, but thereās something very satisfying about the chew of these. The original are just onion, cheese, and tuna, and the first time I made them I was surprised by how tasty that filling was without something like mayo. Since then Iāve happened to have sauerkraut other times Iāve made these, so Iāve modified it to taste like kimchi because I love tuna and kimchi fried rice as well as kimchi and cheese. This time I was feeling lazier and just mixed tuna, scallions, and cheese with sriracha. Another delicious variation.
I also decided I needed to use my malted milk powder because while it wasnāt very old, I was worried it would turn into an unusable block. I found a recipe Iād never seen on Serious Eats for chewy malted cookies (Stella has a chocolate chip cookie with malt powder, but these are much more about the malt) and got to making it. This was a rookie move because when I went to get the milk powder it had indeed turned into an extremely solid brick. I ended up using some of the toasted milk powder Iād made recently. Along with the malt syrup I used, these were much darker than the original. They are delicious! Toasted milk powder tastes more like brown butter than actual brown butter in baked goods, so although these werenāt made with brown butter, they taste like it. They are pretty sweet, as one would expect of soft and chewy cookies. I made sure to use 2% salt as this type of cookie really needs to be well-salted.
Btw these cookies contain no eggs!
Oh, and I skipped the chocolate as I find more times than not it gets in the way of my enjoyment of flavors like butterscotch, brown butter, vanilla, and malt.
And I made Chef Stepsā slider buns. These call for amylase, which I donāt have and donāt plan to acquire. I substituted 2% diastatic malt powder since that contains amylase. I knew immediately that Iād be kneading this dough in the food processor because itās the type of dough practically made for it.
These buns are incredible with a super thin crust and fluffy texture. However I do think most of that is just the extensive gluten development and the baking method (tightly covered for most of the baking time). It would be interesting to bake them without any special ingredients added to test that.
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Those look amazing, but I had some confusion as Iāve only now realized that Snackable Bakes and Snacking Bakes are two different books that exist.
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Yes! Snackable Bakes came out first.
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Apple blackberry galette, a lovely combination which Iāve noticed is more prevalent in the UK than the US. Our luncheon guests found it very enjoyable.
Also made a Raspberry Pistachio flour cake which Iāve made in many permutations, fresh fig and hazelnut is also delicious as is blackberry almond flourā¦a cake for all seasons!
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Vanilla custard with roasted strawberries from Ottolenghi Simple. I signed up for one of those produce delivery things, not realizing it was weekly, and I keep forgetting to cancel. I am drowning under 5 heads of broccoli and all the vegetables.
This week, I got a really sad pound of strawberries. They were so pale. I only buy local strawberries in season, so had no desire to eat these. I roasted them with some sugar for 10 minutes longer than the recipe said. I donāt love cooked strawberries, but the syrup is delicious and I will finish these atop yogurt. Sadly I have no rhubarb here, and if I did I probably would have skipped the strawberries altogether.
For the custard, 600ml of heavy cream and 4 egg yolks sounded awfully rich. I had about 100 ml of whipping cream, and made the rest up with whole milk. I added a bit of extra cornstarch and ended up with a very softly set custard. I baked at 325F.
This was tasty, but I love custard. I prefer it without the strawberries, so if you could see this now, it has a big hole in the middle where I ate the berries and custard they touched. Iāll eat the rest plain another day.
Right, before this turns into a novel I have broccoli soup to make.
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I think I should have baked these on separate baking sheets. I now have Siamese Bread Twins.
Oopsā¦
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Chocolate Chip Snickerdoodle Cake
This incredibly quick and simple snickerdoodle cake gets its namesake flavor from cinnamon sugar, which lines the pan and tops the batter, as well as sour cream, which adds a touch of welcome tang. Bake it today!
Chocolate Chip Snickerdoodle Cake for a team meeting tomorrow! Reminds me a bit of a way easier version of this recipe https://smittenkitchen.com/2006/11/chocolate-chip-sour-cream-cake/ ? Will taste test tomorrow at meeting.
I added extra chocolate chips on top to use up the bagā¦
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Ok had a sliver tonightā¦ very easy to eat: pretty much the definition of a snacking cakeā¦
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I own them both and still get confused.
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SuperbOwl snickerdoodles!
https://www.sprinklebakes.com/2015/11/owl-butter-cookies-for-etsy-blog.html
(Iāll just use my own snickerdoodle recipe)
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Deborah Madisonās oat and brown sugar coffee cake. Madison describes this as old-fashioned cake, and I was drawn to it for that reason. It features rolled oats soaked with boiling water and added to a spiced brown sugar cake batter. The topping is a pecan streusel.
She calls for a 9x12 pan, and I was going to use my 8x12, but happened to grab by 9x13 and went with it. I would probably go with the smaller pan if I were to make this again.
I guessed on the weight of the ingredients and the finished cake was nicely balanced with the streusel providing just enough sweetness. I love coffee cakes, but they can often be too sweet given they get a pretty sweet topping. I prefer to keep the actual cake a bit more restrained.
This cake is moist and homey, and kind of keeps you coming back for more. Though the oats definitely feel a bit squidgy, so that might not be to everyoneās liking.
Every time I look through Deborah Madisonās books I want to bake everything, as my palate has always aligned really well with hers and her baked goods to me are very well-balanced in terms of sweetness.
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Big hit at work! Can recommendā¦
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Wow super cute, and looks yummy! 
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A complete flop of an entremet as I interpreted the amount of already hydrated gelatin that was called for to mean gelatin mass, but Iām fairly certain it should have been that much gelatin, then hydrated. So mirror glaze didnāt work. I wanted to try this specific one because it called for both gelatin and neutral glaze, and as a result seemed a little less gelatinous than typical mirror glaze, which can get grossly gooey for me sometimes 
.
I also just donāt like very bitter chocolate mousse. I didnāt have the chocolate called for here which was 66%, so I used mostly 57% plus a few pieces I needed to use up of 74% and a tiny chunk of 81%. I really do just prefer straight 57% as I do for most things.
The sacher sponge for this is delicious. Due to remembering that the last time I made it I found it was one of those rare things where a more bitter chocolate would have been better, I used 74% and that was just right.
I think my pectin isnāt as potent as whatās used here because the last time I used it I had to increase the amount, and this strawberry confiture isnāt set enough. Pectin NH always works as expected, but this called for regular pectin, and all I have is Sure Jell rather than something from Modernist Pantry which suspect would work better.
I had leftover mousse, so I put it in a vanilla roll, since I like sweet vanilla to offset bitter chocolate.
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Dorie Greenspanās carrot cake.
I made a half recipe in an 8ā square pan. My modifications included using 25% white whole wheat, soaking the raisins, and adding 1 t. of rum (because Gateau).
We like it unfrosted, and as such, itās one of my favorite snacking cakes ā sweet, toothsome, and chock full of nutritional ingredients.
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I planned to make one recipe, but ended up making what looked like another recipe 
ā- still, it turned out delicious, thank heavens, because it was mainly for my friendās little kid 
Plan was for the chocolate chip bars from BCOTQ Snacking Bakes. Then I thought Iāll combine that recipe with the molasses bars from the same book. In all that, my butter exploded while melting (stupid rookie move) and threw me off, because I was on a clock and had exactly an hour before I had to leave for dinner with whatever baked good for dessert.
So, I used the first recipe, added an egg, messed up the baking soda and baking powder proportions, realized I had messed them up and adjusted, couldnāt find molasses or brown sugar so added some maple syrup, and aaaarrrrgggggh into the oven. It baked up a lot faster than either recipeās timing, but luckily I always set the timer for 3/4 of the way through to check, and it was probably only a few mins overdone at that point. Put it outside to speed cool in the 40 degree air for 15 mins, then cut up and boxed for travel.
Well, it was delicious. It tasted like a snickerdoodle cake without cinnamon, which was the best possible flavor outcome! The kiddo loved it, and all was well.
(Iāve got some of the cake left with me as I couldnāt fit all of it in the box.)
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Hail from the Sisterhood of Exploding Butter.
Iām glad it worked out.
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