The Bread Bible - Irish Soda Bread

My only experience of Irish Soda Bread was many years ago during my mother's 'ye olde English baking' phase (inspired by Jane Grigson's English Cookery as I remember). During this time my brothers and I enjoyed homemade muffins, crumpets, suet pudding, lardy cake and other olde gems, including the Irish soda bread. I remember the soda bread being pretty stodgy and possibly a bit dry (sorry Mum). 

This recipe for Irish Soda Bread from the Bread Bible bears little resemblance to the bread I remember. Rose has added sultanas and a small amount of sugar that make this bread more like a large dense scone. I love a dense carbohydrate, and if it's threaded with sultans and slathered with some butter, even more so. This was very easy to make and nice to eat. 

I didn't soak the sultanas in whisky since I didn't have any, plus I quite like my 'dead flies' a bit chewy rather than soft. I also undercooked it a smidgen and forgot to slash the top of the loaf before I put it in the oven but I was pretty happy with the result anyway.

I still have a few breads to make to catch up with the Bread Bible Bakers' schedule. Next up is the Basic Hearth Bread.

Alpha Baker belated catch-up - Luscious Apple Pie

Apple pie is still my favourite type of fruit pie, even after testing all the Baking Bible new and wonderful varieties of pie filling. The Luscious Apple Pie was part of the Baking Bible bake-through but I missed out on making it. I eventually baked it before we finished the bake-through but I ran out of time to blog about it. Here it is now anyway in pictures. 

It was a long time ago that I made it now but this is what I can remember:

• I combined some of the steps for preparing the apple and the caramel sauce because it seemed overly complex and if you've read a few of my posts you may have noticed that my patience for folderols is minimal and I do love a short cut. 

• I seem to remember having not once but twice drunk the apple juice that was meant to be part of the sauce before I got around to baking it, so my pie was juice free.

• I used my favourite mechanised apple peeler and corer/cutter - this makes preparing the apples fun rather than tiresome. In fact I gave my father the same apple peeler for Christmas after he admired mine. It's not like he needed an apple peeler but some things are irresistible. My nephew saw it and now he wants one but I think the blades are a bit sharp for a five year old.

• The apple was a bit on the firm side so next time I might pre-cook it or slice it a bit thinner, although it may have been that I didn't adjust the sauce enough for the lack of juice.

• I got to use my lovely new urban landscape plate, a present from my brother and sister-in-law (thanks J & M :) ).

• And predictably... my colleagues LOVED it!

The Last Post - Kouign Amann

The Things I've Learnt From Being An Alpha Baker:

Things I've Learnt Number One:

ALWAYS double the recipe if something looks good. And maybe triple the recipe if it's Kouign Amann which are my number one favourite out of The Baking Bible. Even better the second time around. This is a genius recipe.

And proof of the pudding that I may have learnt something during the Alpha Baker experience is that I found these a doddle! A breeze! Lucky they turned out well because if they'd failed I would have had to say all I got out of two years of baking was a bad case of hubris.

Things I've Learnt Number Two:

You ALWAYS NEED that new kitchen tool. Another cake tin, an angel food cake hair comb cutter, a rotary apple peeler: you name it, you need it. And Alpha Bakers are always ready with advice on new stuff.

Things I've Learnt Number Three:

Similar to Number Two you can never have too many different types of sugar, flour, liquor or butter in stock at any one time. And if you live in the tropics than you may need to invest in a much bigger fridge/freezer to keep them all in. I thought about doing a calculation of all the butter I've bought over the two years but I'm not sure I want to know. It's true, ignorance is bliss in some things.

Things I've Learnt Number Four:

Your colleagues will be disappointed and angry if you suddenly stop bringing them baked goods on a weekly basis. Especially after the Kouign Amann. Boy, did they like them.

Things I've Learnt Number Five:

Don't be fooled by descriptions of a cake with molasses in it as delicious. It's not.

And I still have 7/8ths of a bottle of molasses languishing in my fridge. I think I might return it to Rose. She seems to like it.

Things I've Learnt Number Six:

Life is much richer from having been part of the Alpha Bakers and from the generous, funny and downright lovely people that make up the ABs. A special mention to our tireless leader, Marie, who baked each week without fail AND wrote two posts each week AND kept us all in line - which is no mean feat for the lively (and often contrary) bunch of bakers that make up the Alpha Bakers. Thanks to Marie, Rose Levy Beranbaum and all the rest for an entertaining and fulfilling two years.

But the molasses is still in the mail.

Alpha Baker catch-up no. 2 - Raisin cinnamon awirl* bread

This is another catch-up post which I'm squeezing in before the Alpha Bakers hang up their alphas and become ordinary bakers again. I made this Raisin Cinnamon Swirl Bread quite a long time ago and I don't remember much about it except that it was a very straightforward process.

I also remember that the bread was delicious and that my loaf came out looking quite handsome with a nice rounded top. As you can see in the top photo, there's a gaping hole between the top of the bread and the first swirly bit, which means I did something wrong. Possibly not a tight enough roll. And now I come to think about it I remember that I found the instructions for rolling the dough up a bit mystifying.

The swirl is pretty to look at (even a half-hearted one like mine) but my favourite type of raisin bread is one with the spices mixed through it. I think this dough would shine more as buns, rather than a loaf. Then you could add icing...

*somehow I mis-typed swirl as 'awirl' but I quite liked it, so I left it.

My last catch-up will be the Luscious Apple Pie which I missed making with the Alpha Bakers last year, I think. Stay tuned.

White chocolate cupcakes with raspberry cream cheese icing

The more astute of you will have noticed* that raspberry cream cheese icing is not part of this week's Alpha Baker recipe for White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Mousseline. This week's baking adventure is a tale of shortcuts, go-arounds and straight out laziness. I had a lot of trouble finding the energy to make these, this week. Although I was spurred on by the thought of white chocolate and raspberry - one of my favourite flavour combinations. In the end I decided I could do the little cakes or the mousseline but not both. And since the mousseline is not a lot of use without cake to put it on, cake it was. [Actually, who I am kidding, I just didn't want to bother with all that sugar syrup palaver.]

My favourite icing is cream cheese icing which is incredibly quick and easy to make. I wondered (to google) whether I could make it in raspberry flavour and, lo and behold, other people had thought of it before me. With that stumbling block removed, I suddenly had the energy to whip up the little cakes. 

In theory, with a simplified icing, these little cakes should have been quick and easy. I botched a few things which made it a little less than Q & E but they did turn out to be delicious. As long as they were eaten quickly, before the icing melted.

*That'll sort the sheep from the goats.

The cakes were simple to mix up in the standmixer, with Rose's usual method of mixing most of the wet ingredients first and adding to the dry. After 2 years cooking with Rose, I now usually measure the weight of the eggs rather than just going with the  number specified. I often find that my eggs are bigger than the recipe's estimation.  I forgot to do that this time with the egg whites and I think my mixture might have been a bit more liquid than it should have been. 

I was too miserly to buy more than one block of white chocolate so I added a little bit of dark chocolate I had in the fridge. This made the cakes a funny tan colour but they still tasted white chocolatey.

The cakes came out all right (I don't seem to have any photographic evidence of this) although they took a long time to bake. This is possibly due to the thicker cardboard cases I used. I didn't even consider that when I bought them*. Ho hum. 

*I was looking at their racey red stripes.

I made the raspberry sauce early in the week. I started off on the right track but after 10 minutes I found that I just couldn't be mucking around with raspberries and sieves, and separate cooking of syrup, and blending of raspberries etc. So I put all the ingredients in the pan and simmered it for a while, then sieved it all. Probably not the perfect product that Rose's would be, but raspberry puree all the same. And it left me with a modicum of sanity.

Which I then completely lost on the cream cheese icing that was meant to be easy. I ran out of icing sugar (late last night) so had to make some in the processor. Still, I didn't do a very good job and the icing tasted a bit sugary to me, so I added some more raspberry puree, and then it seemed too liquid, so I added some more badly made icing sugar, then some more cream cheese and...you get the picture. In the end it tasted nice but was still a bit runny. It just held together enough for me to pipe it, after a night in the fridge. 

To me, piping is just an invitation to slather icing or cake mixture up your right arm, this being the common result for me of any attempt at piping. However this time I secured the icing bag with one of those Ikea bag clip things which kept it more under control. I wasn't unhappy with my efforts, given the heat of the room and the runniness of the icing. Most of the attraction of these little cakes was in the beautiful pink icing so it was good to be able to replicate this is in some small way.

I'm planning to take these to Misia's 3rd birthday on the weekend. Misia is a cocker spaniel and will not be eating the cakes (if I have anything to say about it). And to solve the heat (it's VERY hot and humid here at the moment) and the already runny icing problems, I'm planning to serve them frozen. We Alpha Bakers are very resourceful and resilient.

Next (and the penultimate) week for the Alpha Baker's bake-through of The Baking Bible is Luxury Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee.

Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Meringue Pie

I was wondering what the chiffon referred to in Rose's Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Meringue Pie but realised (as I was eating a piece) it's the mousse filling. Always such fancy names. 

To be honest, if I had seen this recipe without the benefit of a bake-through group, I doubt I would have considered making it. To my mind, a meringue pie crust is an odd concept, and filling it with mousse straight out eccentricity.

However, I would have been completely wrong. This is a really surprising (for me and those of my ilk) flavour and design winner. The meringue swirls at the rim of the pie (see The Baking Bible for a photo of a properly executed version) are a clever and pretty way to show off the pink mousse filling. The pomegranate flavoured filling is a really lovely, fresh flavour that goes well with the sweet meringue. Rose always uses lemon so effectively and the little teaspoon of lemon juice to the filling makes all the difference. 

Of course, that's the theory and then there's my execution. It was pretty disastrous despite the picture of apparent success below*. 

*Apologies for the photos which make it look like I live in a cave. I don't. I think it's time to invest in some lighting doodad.

This is my attempt to follow Roses's instructions (on her blog) about the best way to grease the pie dish to allow the meringue crust to release. It's not the picture of evenly sieved cornflour that I envisioned (you can't but admire the scratchings where I tried to redistribute the thick piles of cornflour). Even so, it might have worked if other things hadn't gone wrong...

A vision of loveliness... Even the blobby piping around the rim wasn't too bad (yes, that's right, I piped). I forgot about the heat and its effect on the meringue, so the definition from the star shape is not great.

The real issue I had with the meringue crust was in the baking. It may have been a bit marshmallowy when I took it out of the oven, when it should have been dry right the way through. This wouldn't have been a big problem if I hadn't had to leave it in the fridge an extra day before filling it with the mousse. Unfortunately after a day and a half in the fridge it kept leaking fluid into the bottom of the pie dish. I could see the tide rising through the glass pie dish. But having started I thought I'd keep going and make the mousse. What else could go wrong...?

The mousse, like the meringue, was a pretty straightforward concoction of flavouring (pomegranate juice), structure and volume (more meringuey egg whites beaten with sugar) and airiness (whipped cream). Not difficult. However. I ran out of sugar and had to use a mix of demerera and icing sugar. The juice and gelatin was cold but not set at all when I was ready to mix it with the whipped cream and the meringue. Hmmm. What to do? No time or energy to wait. I decided to mix the juice into the whipped cream. Hmmm, juicy blobs. I'll just have to whisk it with the hand mixer. Creamy juice, no air. Hmmm. I'll just fold the meringue and creamy juice together. Creamy juicy blobs. More whisking. Creamy, meringuey juice. Great. Perfect. I poured it into the dodgy meringue crust and carefully placed it into the fridge. It would have been merciful if I'd tripped and dropped it on the floor but the gods of clumsiness were not feeling kind.

All bakers know that sinking feeling where you've 'finished' but you know things are not as they should be. That was my experience, and it was confirmed when I cut the pie this morning to find a nice mousse layer on top of a marshmallow layer, under which ran a stream of pinky, gelatiny liquid. I know a few of our projects have looked like an accident scene but this one looked like a science experiment. The taste (of the first two layers), despite everything, was lovely and light and fresh. I didn't take it to work and I don't have any chickens or squirrels so this one might have to go to the big fridge in the sky.

If I was to compose this type of dessert myself, instead of a meringue crust, I might try two or three meringue discs pasted together with the mousse. It would avoid all the issues with the pie crust, although I'm sure 'me and my ilk' could find some other issues...

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Mousseline.

Chocolate sweetheart madeleines/blobs

These Chocolate Sweetheart Madeleines were easy to make in the sense that whizzing the mixture upon the stand mixer took very little time or effort. The devil, as they might say if they were bakers, is in the moulding. And decorating. 

I only had one single madeleine mould. Why just one, you ask? I think I wanted one years ago but they were expensive. And only available singly. And in non-non-stick (is that stick, then?). So, that being the case, I decided to make a couple of madeleines shapes and the rest in my mince pie tray. This worked quite well except that madeleines without the characteristic shell shape are really just cake blobs. Delicious but meaningless.

My other challenge with these was the chocolate glaze. Once again I'm reminded that effort equals results in decorating. It may have been the re-purposed leftover chocolate sauce from the swiss roll we made the other week. It may have been my slap-happy application of the glaze with the pastry brush. Or all of the above. The result was that I wasn't very happy with the way my madeleines looked at the end. And particularly when I saw a picture of Evil Cake Lady's beautiful looking biscuits. Not that I'm envious. Hmmph.

There was no piping of mixture and it seemed to sort itself out in the oven.

Rose specified the moulds should be half filled which was very handy and even though I just eye-balled it, they worked out well.

I'm not sure these were like traditional madeleines which I think are made with almond meal? (must google that) They did taste a lot like Rose's sour cream cake mixture which makes sense since it had sour cream in it. They were very moist, particularly with the glaze.

Not pretty, but pretty delicious. I ate a shameful number of these, one after another.

Next week (only four weeks to go I think) the Alpha Bakers are making something with pomegranate (must check).

Alpha Baker catch-up - Frangelico Pecan Butter Balls

The Alpha Bakers' bake through of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Baking Bible is coming to an end in a few short weeks. One of the things this has prompted me to do is to try and catch up on the weeks that I missed. I have several posts which have been sitting in my drafts for some time. The problem with that is that I can't really remember the baking process. I can generally remember what they tasted like though which says it all really.

My first catch-up post is on the Bourbon Pecan Butter Balls. I actually made this in the week they were scheduled but I just couldn't get the post written. You may have guessed from the title that I used Frangelico instead of bourbon. I didn't have any bourbon and I thought Frangelico might be interesting. I added a dash of brandy to give it a sharper alcoholic taste. That's right, I just splashed alcohol around on the principle that if a little bit is good, more is better. 

I'd like to try them with Bourbon because it's a flavour I'm not that familiar with. Maybe I'll give them a go this Christmas, because they're very like the rum balls that are traditional Christmas fare here (with a coating of chocolate sprinkles). 

Things that I do remember about these: (1) I had some leftover chocolate biscuit dough in the freezer (this is the actual definition of a miracle in my house); (2) I had some nuts in the fridge which were a bit old so I toasted them to freshen them up (note to self, do not attempt to cut corners or pretend to be a good housekeeper. Always buy fresh nuts); (3) I only cried a little bit when I had to pulverise my freshly made biscuits; (4) the mixture would have tasted better with better nuts; (5) my colleagues loved them.

My next catch-up should be on raisin-cinnamon swirl bread. Or something like that.

Monkey No Dunkey Bread

This week a pictorial post due to lack of time. In short delicious, time consuming, very sweet and absolutely more-ish. I didn't add the caramel sauce and I can't imagine how you would need it. Next time I would leave out the chocolate. It didn't need it either and the process of filling the individual balls gave me the heebee jeebees. The only question is whether I'm willing to share this at work?