Late last night, Sunshine had a “chocolate emergency”, so I made up a batch of the “chocolate in-betweens” (that she likes). She ate one while it was still hot and was satisfied. I covered the baking dish and put the rest in the fridge, with the idea of dealing with it in the morning when I got up. Bad idea…
I usually de-pan these treats while they are still warm and also clean up my baking dish while its warm. I’m now soaking, scraping and almost chiseling my baking dish as the chocolate concoction (sweetened condensed milk & cocoa powder) doesn’t want to release from the baking dish. So I guess that is today’s project.
Lesson learned!!
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Milk bread pull-apart buns from Mooncakes and Milk Bread. Just sprinkled with a bit of salt. These are for my mother—she loves soft and slightly sweet bread.
Galaktoboureko from an old issue of Delicious magazine. Vanilla semolina custard with filo and a lemon syrup. This is taking ages to cool down. Impatiently waiting for a taste.
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That is an extremely appetizing shade of golden brown on your phyllo.
I thought so too. Maybe because it was smooth on top. I usually scrunch around the edges and get light and dark spots. Definitely browned more evenly than the buns!
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Yesterday I made a wee Irish Soda bread in case the fairies 
stopped by after the parade for a cup of tea.
After they left we had Irish Coffee and
“potatoes” . The potatoes had Powers and Bushmills, the coffee had Jameson Black Barrel. Everyone was happy!
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I have an old friend who makes galaktoboureko on occasion, and it’s a lovely dessert (but a project, hence he only makes it on occasion). Yours looks great from this view.
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I made Cook’s Illustrated’s Cheese Bread a couple of days ago.
I’ve made it many times. It’s delicious and it’s one of my husband’s favorite things that I make.
I like that the recipe calls for using the large holes of the box grater for the Parmesan and cutting the cheddar into chunks instead of grating it.
The Parmesan comes out nice and toasty and the cheddar melts into gooey pockets.
I use two year aged Parmigiana Reggiano and Tillamook extra sharp cheddar…
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Oh that cheese bread sounds perfect!
Bruno Albouze has an interesting Basque cheesecake that is basically a hybrid of it and flan patissier. The cream is replaced with a pastry cream and mixed with cream cheese. So there’s starch here, but fully cooked out before being put into the cheesecake.
I always find Bruno’s recipes have a bit more sugar than I like, so I cut out the sugar in the cream cheese mixture and this was a great move. The sweetness is just right (honestly for myself I could go a bit lower still, but this is good). I also kept the temperature at 550° because I don’t have the same high powered oven YouTubers have. I think I’ll definitely be making this again, but I will likely leave out the lemon zest, which is nice, but I’d prefer a more neutral vanilla flavor. And I might add just a touch of lemon juice for a bit of tartness.
I also made a chocolate cheesecake with I forgot to add the ganache to last night before putting it in the fridge to cool so I could go to bed. So doing it today just wasn’t as nice.
I think next time I make a chocolate cheesecake I’ll stick to using heavy cream. I used yogurt in this and I would prefer less tartness.
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That really cut nice, even the filo topping.
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HELP Tangerine Poppyseed Cake
I was all ready to make this, have all the ingredients. Heated up the ½ cup of milk (Clover organic, February 13, tasted fine) and turned my back and it was boiling, separating. Oops. Threw that out, vowing to pay close attention. Same thing happened. Is the milk bad or is it me?
It’s fine. The milk is just for soaking the seeds so they plump up. It will sometimes split when the seeds go in there. If you say it tasted fine it should be ok.
Running scared, I asked google, decided my milk was too old. My daughter had a fresh carton in her fridge downstairs so I helped myself. Decided better safe than sorry …
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I go by smell to determine if dairy products are fresh. That being said, I have an acute sense of smell; dairy that smells off to me often doesn’t smell off to my husband.
I haven’t noticed milk splitting when it’s gone off. For me, milk splits when my refrigerator is too cold and the milk has frozen.
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I now remember I made this cake several years ago. Since it isn’t very sweet, I might like it more with a tangerine/powdered sugar glaze. Forgot to baking strip, I had a dome but it settled some. Photo of slice.
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Once when the milk was old, but not beyond expiration, smelled fine, tasted ok, BUT as soon as I heated it up it was obviously a bit rotten. I’m more discerning after that.
Buttermilk biscuits from Erin Jeanne McDowell’s Savory Baking. Not the quickest biscuit recipe to make, but the results are worth the investment of time and effort. She has you mix the dough in advance (I made it the night before), and then give it a few lamination folds before a final 30-minute rest before cutting. The cut biscuits continue to rest - chilled - while the oven preheats.
I meant to make a half batch, but forgot to reduce the salt while mixing the dough, so I doubled everything else and ended up with the full Monty. It’s a lot of dough. The recipe calls for 10 generous biscuits. I ended up making 12 plus 2 more from the scraps. I also decided to add cheese (one of the variations) a little late in the process, so rather than incorporating the grated cheese in with the dry, I added it during the lamination folds, using only about half the amount called for. This worked out fine.
The biscuits wept just a little bit, but wow - tremendous rise! Crispy and flaky, yet tender on the inside. Both DH and I thought this was my best biscuit result yet. Will make again using this recipe and method.
Erin’s recipe on Food52 is close to the one in the book. The book says to keep the butter the size of peas (not walnuts), includes a rest for the dough before making the lamination folds (if using), uses granulated salt (not kosher) but in the same volume, and calls for a slightly longer bake time of 25-30 minutes. FWIW in the book she also offers variations subbing yogurt or sour cream for the buttermilk.
There’s a useful EJM video on youtube of Erin making biscuits with her dad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4k9jnj_ns
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A six inch raspberry tart with six ounces of raspberries. Just the correct amount of berries for a small tart, some sugar and tapioca flour , takes about 25 minutes to bake starting with a frozen crust. The crust had some almond flour and confectionery sugar, so a tender but crisp crust. Half was held overnight and a slice made for a nice breakfast.
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Beautiful! Can’t wait to attempt this when our raspberries come in. If I might ask, are you using the same dough for the decorative top as you do for the crust, and were those also from frozen??
Yes, it’s the same dough, just scraps. I frequently bake the decorative “scraps” separately, but I put these on directly as I anticipated the tart would bake relatively quickly. I used 65 g pastry flour, 12 g. almond flour, eyeballed the sugar and salt. The frozen butter was just under 40g. “Some” sour cream because I was too lazy to break an egg open and use part of it. I have used leftover whites as well.
ETA…The stars were frozen when I put them on the tart.
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