Cranberry-Lemon-White Chocolate Scones

I did get photos of Audrey this week...but they're not that great. I started just as dusk started to fall, so I didn't have nearly enough light to get decent photos. I'm going to try again later this week, but for now, here's a recipe for scones I worked out this week. :)

Cranberry-Lemon-White Chocolate Scones

Makes 18-24 large scones.

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour

6 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

10 tbsp slightly softened butter (in the case of using salted butter, use a scant tsp of salt)

1 tsp lemon zest (you'll need a medium sized lemon to get that much)

1 1/2 cups milk (I used 1%, but I've found almost any variation of fat content works fine)

1 1/2 cups dried cranberries

1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Sift (or whisk) the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the lemon zest and whisk it in. Cut the butter into 1/4" cubes and cut them into the flour mixture. When the mixtures resembles something like breadcrumbs (you want tiny pieces of butter) fold in the cranberries and white chocolate chips. Add about 75% of the milk and fold in with a large spatula. Add the remaining milk as needed.

Place dough on a floured surface and gently pat into a large rectangle (about 3/4" thick).

To make 18 scones, cut the rectangle into three strips, then cut each of those strips into three squares, then cut each square across the middle and you'll have 18 triangular scones.

To make 24 slightly smaller scones, cut the rectangle into four strips, then cut each strip into three squares, then cut each square across the middle and you'll have 24 triangular scones.

Line two baking sheets with parchment and place the scones about 1/2" apart (the scones rise up, not out, so you don't have to worry too much about spreading).

Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes. Remove scones from oven after they have browned slightly and resist when pushed with your finger.

If you try this recipe, I'd love to know what you think! Enjoy! :)

(c) The Moebius Sock 2010

Christmas Cookies

One of the Christmas things I wanted to do this year was to make Christmas cookies. I got a few great books from the library and found lots of yummy-looking recipes, but when I turned to the decorating section in this Martha Stewart book (I'm not normally a Martha person, but this book is worth a look) I knew I'd found what I wanted to do.

Royal icing on top of sugar cookies.

I decided to go to my tried and true Betty Crocker sugar cookie recipe and then did a little research on royal icing. Royal icing is traditionally made with powdered sugar, water, and egg whites, but for edible icing it's suggested you use meringue powder instead of the egg whites. I didn't have any meringue powder on hand so I tried searching for an appropriate substitute. I ended up using the recipe found here that calls for Ener-G egg replacer (oddly enough, I had some of that exact brand on hand, yay!). It seemed to work out pretty well, but since I've never made royal icing before I'm not sure how close it came to traditional icing. One note if you use the recipe, you'll need a lot more powdered sugar (I think I added maybe 1 1/2 cups more)

You can find a lot of great information about decorating cookies this way at the link I provided for the icing recipes. I had so much fun doing this, and I love the way the cookies look. Much better than I've ever been able to get buttercream frosting to look! I'm planning on packaging four to six of these in some cello candy bags I have and giving them as small Christmas gifts.

Peach Pie

I was recently accosted with the reality that the peaches I had procured from the grocery were, shall we say, less-than-stellar. I had hopes that they might ripen up, but after cutting open a few peaches to find that one side was over-ripe and mealy and the other was hard as rock I gave up hope and started thinking of solutions.


After doing a quick search through my cookbooks for appropriate recipes, I decided this might be the perfect time to try a recipe that has always tempted me.

Peach Pie.

It had always seemed a shame to me to use fresh peaches for baking. After all, a good peach shouldn't need any help from sugar, spices, or the accompaniment of a buttery crust. But these peaches were a completely different story.

So I began. I made my pie crust (note to self...I need a pastry cutter. Cutting 2+ sticks of butter into 3 cups of flour is not a job for the faint of heart...or the dinner fork). I cut my peaches (which alternated between the messy mealy peaches, and the "I think I need a better knife because this blade just isn't cutting it" peaches).

Please enjoy that pun by the way, I know I did.

After all that, I finally got to the fun part.

The lattice top.

The American Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (which contains the recipe I used) recommended working with chilled dough to roll out the lattice strips and then freezing the cut strips for approx. 30mins (I did more like 10...yes, I'm impatient, but it worked just fine).

Then, after carefully weaving the strips, the dough is left to thaw out on the pie and then trimmed and crimped after it's softened.

The extra step of freezing the stripes made it so easy to create the lattice crust! In the cookbook they have a photo of a "bad lattice job" and it was quite disturbing, so I was determined to get it right.

My crimp job around the edges wasn't really satisfactory, but I didn't worry about it too much.

A few notes I wanted to make for myself (and which you'll find helpful if you ever use this recipe) follow below:

1. After cutting the peaches, I'd let them "drain" a little bit before adding the sugar etc. When I made this pie, I added those ingredients to the cut peaches and let them sit while I rolled out the pie dough but realized I was left with a lot of peach juice in the bowl, which brings me to:

2. The amount of cornstarch (the recipe calls for potato starch, but I substituted) was not enough to compensate for the juice. I added about 2.5 Tbsp. I'd go close to the maximum suggested for the potato starch (around 5 Tbsp) even for peaches that don't seem to have any juice in them at all.

3. Sugar. Again my peaches were not exactly sweet, but I still went for the minimum amount of sugar suggested. Still, a little too sweet in my opinion.

4. Crust. It was quite thick (which didn't bother me at all, but might be worth considering) and I still had leftovers amounting to about 1/3 Cup.

Overall, this was delicious. Perfect use for those peaches that lacked certain peach-like qualities.

Just looking at the photos again makes my mouth water. I might have to go back to the store and buy some more of those peaches. ;)

Rugelach Cookies

I felt like baking today, so I flipped through my cookbook and decided on Rugelach cookies*.

It was a very fun and easy recipe. Basically I just made a simple dough (no eggs in it, which I appreciated, because I don't like eggs) briefly chilled it and then rolled it out into two rounds and covered it in filling. In this case the filling was apricot jam, walnuts, raisins and cinnamon sugar. A variation was also included for chocolate-raspberry Rugelach (I may have try that one someday!).

I was surprised at how fast these were to make, I'll be keeping them in mind for last minute baking.

I liked the way they turned out too, but because I was almost out of jam the filling was a bit skimpy.

Next baking blog will probably be cake (though I make no promises). I've been having wild fantasies of a four-layer birthday cake and I'm considering either a white cake with lemon filling or a devil's food & cherry cake. I think my birthday will be a good excuse to indulge. ;)

*Recipe can be found in this cookbook (amazon link).

Spinach and Feta Quiche

This was the first time I've made quiche and I loved it, it was so easy and fun to make. I was also really excited because my pie crust turned out just the way I wanted.

Basically this recipe was just eggs, half and half, spinach, feta cheese and a few herbs. Just mix everything together, pour into a partially baked crust and bake for about an hour. Then let it cool for another hour.

It was a really yummy dish, great for an appetizer (though I had lots of leftovers since it's so rich!) I'll definitely remember this one in the future.

Recipe can be found in the America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. (Breakfast and Brunch section I believe).

Lemon-Blueberry Muffins

Many people make muffins just by improvising, and after making them a few times myself I realized how easy it is to do that. This recipe for Lemon-Blueberry Muffins is what came from a few of my improv experiments with muffins.

A few notes, if you feel so inclined, use butter instead of oil and add more sugar, this will make your muffins sweeter and more cake-like. Also, for some reason, whenever I omit the lemon zest I end up with a drier muffin which is a little odd, but something to consider.

At any rate, the recipe follows below:

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

http://the-moebius-sock.blogspot.com/

Makes: 24 regular size muffins

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

2. Grease muffins tins

3. Sift together into a medium sized bowl:

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose flour (use more a-p flour and less wheat for a more tender muffin)

1/2 cup sugar

2 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

zest of one lemon

4. In a large bowl beat together:

2/3 cup vegetable oil

1 1/4 cup milk

2 large eggs

5. Gently fold the "dry ingredients" (from step 3) into the "wet ingredients" (from step 4), adding additional milk if needed.

6. Fold in 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

7. Scoop batter into 24 muffins cups

8. Bake for 20-25 muffins (rotating muffin tins halfway through baking) or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Mmm, pie.

As promised, a few photos of the pies...rather bad photos, since excepting a lone shot of the Pumpkin pie I didn't get a chance to photograph them until Friday evening...

Though this isn't my first time making pie, I'm still learning...a lot.

I didn't cook the gooey pecan goodness (filling) long enough while it was on the stovetop, so the pie ended up being a little soupy. I actually had a little double boiler trouble which sort of contributed to the problem...speaking of which, I still need to try to unstick those pans...

Photo: Pumpkin Pie and a UFO (well, it's the pecan pie, but would you know if I didn't tell you?)

The pumpkin pie however was perfection, the American Test kitchen books are right on!

Regarding the crust however, I overmixed it so it puffed and got a little deformed in the oven, it was still yummy though!

Evidence: pre baking (isn't it pretty!)

Evidence: Post baking (bleh)

And there it is, my Thanksgiving contributions!

I'm hoping to try a different kind of pie for Christmas, perhaps a cream pie or even just a simple apple pie.

Tres Leches Cake

"Three-milk" cake.

I tasted a piece of this cake one time at a Christmas party, and loved it. However, I was unable to procure the recipe (family secret) and was given simply the name of the cake, "Tres Leches" or "three-milk" cake. After failing to find a recipe I completely forgot about the cake, but now, a few years later, while paging through my new cookbook I saw a photo that looked very similar to the cake I'd tasted and upon examining the recipe and comparing it to what I remembered of the cake, I realized that this must be it.

And indeed it was.

Basically this a yellow cake with a bit of cinnamon added, and extra eggs to give the finished cake more substance. Before baking of course, the batter is thinner than a typical yellow cake because of those extra eggs.

Once the cake has cooled for about 10minutes, about 50 holes are poked into it with a skewer, and a mixture of evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and heavy cream (hence "three-milk" cake) is poured onto the cake.

The cake then chills in the fridge for a few hours till cold, and is frosted with homemade whipped cream. Mmmm.

Very simple and easy, however this cake is really, really rich, so don't bake it unless you have a lot of people to help you eat it!

By the way, I've been trying to place what this cake reminds me of and I finally decided: a snickerdoodle dipped in cold milk.

New Cookbook!

The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book (Amazon link)


My latest cookbook purchase. This is a fantastic book, as you will see from some of the photos I took of the pages, it has a very clean layout and excellent photography. But that, that is only the beginning.
I have the first cookbook (I've mentioned it several times), which has chapters on soup, meat, all the the cooking stuff, as well as chapters on quick breads, cakes, the baking stuff.
But this cookbook is specifically dedicated to baking, so being more of a baking person, when I saw it, I had to have it. :)


The book basically compiles all the Test Kitchen Baking recipes into one handy ringbound cookbook. I only have two Test Kitchen books so the overlap was less than 50%, because of that I considered this a very worthwhile purchase. If you have the entire collection of Test Kitchen books, you won't need this one as it is more of a compilation of traditional recipes from previous cookbooks. The book includes very detailed recipes, helpful hints, a section on baking equipment and soooo much more. If you're new to baking, or haven't delved into the more "tricky" stuff (that's me!) this is a PERFECT book. Even if you're experienced I think you'd find this very, very helpful.


Among the chapters, there is one on rustic breads (the Ciabatta recipe instantly caught my eye) with not just the recipes, but helpful tips for working with yeast, shaping rustic breads etc.





There is a chapter on shortcut baking and one on light baking (REAL light baking, no Splenda here!).


The chapter on pastries has a recipes for Danish pastry, Profiteroles, Eclairs and lots more (many of the recipes in my queue are coming from this section!). There is even a recipe for Puff Pastry and a detailed photo-laden explanation of proper puff pastry techniques.




I was also excited to see a chapter on something that has always interested me: making your own wedding cake! I don't think I'd ever attempt this, but having the option, especially with the planning outlined and photos explaining cake construction is pretty cool.





I haven't even begun to describe the extensiveness of this book, I'm having a hard time deciding what to make first! I also don't really want to bake anything unless I have a large group that will help me to eat it, because while there may be chapter on light baking, the recipes I really want to try definitely don't skimp on fatty dairy products.

Mmm, there are also recipes for pumpkin cheesecake, Boston cream cupcakes, cheescake squares, blackout cake, and mock Oreo cookies...sigh


Well, to wrap it up, definitely go to your bookstore and page though a copy, this is one of those "heirloom" books, the recipes are timeless, and all the tips are invaluable.


Oh, almost forgot to mention; the best thing about the Test kitchen? They actually test the recipes! They usually try several different recipes and modify, modify, modify, going where no cookbook has gone before until they have a recipe that creates things that truly taste good and look good. I haven't found any duds in Test Kitchen books yet, and I don't expect to.