This bread recipe made it’s way to me from the NY Times a while ago and I just got around to making it yesterday. The reason it took me so long is that it prefers to be baked on a baking/pizza stone (you don’t have to, but I wanted to) and that just seemed like alot of effort… booorrriinnnggg! But that’s the only other white bread recipe I had hanging out in my links folder so I decided to give it a whirl anyway.

It should really be called the “No kneed chewy inside/crunchy outside bread” because that’s essentially what it is. The dough is SUPER loose when you stirr it together… more like an incredibly sticky blob which later grows to be an enormous blob. You don’t kneed it so you can’t really ever get it under control. It stays messy and sticky the whole time until it’s safely out of the oven, baked into a hard shell. Ok, so here’s essentially how easy it is. You mix together the four ingredients (wow, I know, FOUR whole ingredients!? How will you ever manage? Heehee..) and let them hang out in a warm place for two hours, then you take 1/4 or 1/2 (I just made two larger loaves instead of the four the recipe wanted me to make) and kind of roll it into a ball between your hands, let it rest another 40 minutes then pop it onto a preheated pizza stone for 30 minutes with a bucket of water sitting in the bottom of the oven. While I’m writing this, it sounds to me like this dough is going to a baking spa with an itinerary something like: 10:00- get stirred 10:15-12:15- rest in warm place 12:15- get rolled and patted down with flour 12:30-1:45- rest in warm place again 1:45-2:15- loll around on hot stone and GET BAKED! Baking spas sound like my kind of deal… bake and relax…

Recipe: Simple Crusty Bread

Recipe from NY Times

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Place pan on middle rack.

Jessie was going back to school today and she’s been wanting a pan of brownies so I decided to make some this morning to send with her. I wanted to do something that wasn’t the usual brownie because there’s something about them that I’m pretty ambivalent about until, that is, I found this vegan recipe on Bread & Honey. I was intrigued by this idea of heating flour and water in a pan until it turned into a paste. How is that not intriguing in a mad scientist sort of way? These turned out amazingly gooey and tasty right out of the oven. I think they’ve made me a convert to the brownie cause. Next it’ll be fudge. I really don’t like fudge which is sad because, like brownies, they are chocolaty and chewy and tasty.

The Best Vegan Brownies Ever
Recipe courtesy of Bread & Honey:
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 11 x 17″ or 9 x 13″ pan.
Boil water and 1/2 cup of the flour in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches the consistency of a gluey paste. Remove from heat and let cool.
Mix sugars, salt, vanilla, cocoa and oil. Then add the rest of the flour-water mixture and mix well. Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of flour and baking powder, mix well, and then stir in the chocolate chips and nuts (if you’re using them). The end mixture will be rather thick.
Spread the mixture into your baking pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. These are much better when completely cooled.

Starzipan visited me on Wednesday and we started some delicious cinnamon rolls that night and baked them the next morning. I’d done this recipe before but I didn’t have any cream cheese so I’d done a different frosting. The frosting that comes with the recipe is DEFINITELY worth using. I’m going to make some comments in (italicized parentheses)…

Cinnamon Rolls

Recipe courtesy of Inside a Black Apple:

Makes four reasonably sized rolls.

- First off, set a stick of butter out on the counter to soften…hopefully a few hours ahead of time.

- Then, gather your ingredients:
(for the dough)

1/2 cup warmed milk

1 egg
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 1/4 c flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 c white sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon yeast

(for slathering on the dough)
1/4 c brown sugar
2 tablespoons soft butter (I’d do 3.. maybe 4 because our rolls were a bit dry)
hearty amounts of cinnamon (adjust to your tastes)

(for the icing)
2 tablespoons soft butter
3-4 tablespoons cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
pinch salt

1/2 c confectioner’s sugar

Now, you just fling all of your dough ingredients into a bowl, mixing thoroughly. Pretty quickly, it should become smooth enough to knead with floured hands. This dough is so smooth…it’s just beautiful to work with. When you can pat it into a ball, put it back into the floured mixing bowl and let it rest for a little while (maybe 15 minutes). If you’re going to bake them immediately, pre-heat the oven to 400.

After it has rested, come back to your dough and roll it out into a rectangle on a floured surface. Take your allotted softened butter, and spread it across the surface with a spoon or spatula. Then sprinkle liberally with cinnamon and brown sugar. Roll up into a roll, and then slice. This is where you must decide whether or not to be insane. You can form this batch into two enormous rolls, or 4 smaller, more sane ones. I recommend the sane route. The huge ones are lovely and impressive to look at, but they have trouble cooking to the center thoroughly, and quite frankly, might send you into a coma.

Now, when you have your buns, you can either pop them into your preheated oven (using a greased pan) or, and this achieves slightly better results, put them in the refrigerator overnight and bake them the next morning (we decided to refrigerate over night and next time I would make sure to take them out of the fridge for at least 30 minutes before putting them in the oven to bake the next morning). Either way, you want to bake them for around 15 minutes (or slightly more if you made the huge ones).
Then, whip together the few frosting ingredients, and spread over the warm rolls when they emerge from the oven.

Dad and Mummy are headed up to Whistler for the weekend and I wanted to send them off on their 7 hour drive with something tasty to snack on. I’d found an amazing scone recipe over at The Black Apple a few weeks ago and that sounded just right. I didn’t glaze them because they’re still warm and they need to make their trip in a  ziplock baggie. Sweaty scones are definitely NOT attractive.

Glazed Orange Scones For Your Weekend Breakfasts

Recipe borrowed from Inside a Black Apple

(Makes about 8 medium sized scones)

Ingredients:
1 3/4 C flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 C white sugar
pinch salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2″ chunks
1/2 C orange juice
1/4 c sour cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon milk
Zest of 1 orange

1.   Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F/200 degrees C

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt into a large bowl. Add the butter using a pastry tool or your hands, until the mixture is crumbly and there are still pea-sized lumps of butter visible. Stir in the orange zest. Mix together 1/2 cup orange juice and sour cream in a measuring cup. Pour all at once into the dry ingredients, and stir gently just until blended. Do not over-do the blending.

3. With floured hands, pat scone dough into balls 2 to 3 inches across, depending on what size you want. Place onto a greased baking sheet, and flatten lightly.  Whisk together the egg and 1 tablespoon of milk. Brush the tops of the scones with the egg wash. Let them rest for about 10 minutes.

4. Bake for around 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are just golden brown. Transfer to rack to cool.

5. Once cool, you can leave them be or glaze them as I did. To make the glaze, I combined about 1/2 orange juice, the zest of 1 orange, and about 1/2 an orange cut into small chunks. I simmered the mixture lightly for about 10 minutes, and then took it off the heat and allowed to cool. Once cool, add confectioner’s sugar until it reaches a good glazing consistency, and stir til’ smooth.

6. Squirrel away any that remain in a tightly sealed container at room temperature.

I wanted to make breakfast this morning and I’d found bag of whole wheat flour lurking in the back of the kitchen cupboard that I wanted to use. I found this Whole Wheat Apple Muffin recipe on Smitten Kitchen that was calling my name and away I went! You can use the link to see Smitten’s recipe, below is my version (I needed to do some tweaking because I only had one tiny apple and I wanted to put some more things in them).

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

makes 15 muffins (weird number, huh?)

1 cup  whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar (I didn’t have any so I used raw cane sugar which is fairly coarse and works just fine)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 large egg

1/4 cup applesauce (unsweetened works the best)
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 medium/large apple, cored, and coarsely chopped

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Grease and flour an 18 cup muffin tin and set aside.

Stir together white sugar, 1/4 cup of the brown sugar, butter and egg. Plop the apple sauce in then gently stir in the buttermilk until just combined. Toss in the baking soda, powder, salt and cinnamon (I forgot to do it in the batter so I just sprinkled it on the tops of the muffins which worked really well) and stir until combined. Add both flours and then toss in the chopped apple, walnuts and raisins, stirring until it’s all folded together and one big lumpy bowl of goodness. Pour into muffin tins, filling them 2/3 of the way. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon if you didn’t add it into the batter then sprinkle the rest (and maybe a touch more) of the brown sugar on top of the muffins. Stick them in the oven for 10 minutes then turn the heat down to 400 for another 7 minutes or until they pass the toothpick test. Allow to cool in the pans for about 10 minutes then transfer onto a wrack. Enjoy!

My birthday fell on a Monday this year which meant that any sort of special food/things were pushed to Thursday. We had some friends over and I made a casserole, an artichoke dip and an amazing chocolate cake… busy busy busy! I’d promised myself that I’d make a cake and, while it wasn’t the one I was planning on originally, I did wind up making a really good Chocolate Stout Cake from Smitten Kitchen. I used really strong liquid coffee instead of instant and it worked really well. This cake keeps getting better the longer it sits around in the kitchen too! Oh man, I’m going to have to go have a piece now…

Chocolate Stout Cake

This recipe was originally intended to make a layer cake of 3 8-inch rounds. Upon many reviewers’ suggestions, I halved it and it fit perfectly in a bundt pan. The halved amount is below, and the icing replaced with a simple ganache.

1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream*
6 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips
6 tablespoons heavy cream
3/4 teaspoon instant coffee granules

Cake prep:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter or spray a bundt pan well; make sure you get in all of the nooks and crannies. (Some people even go so far as to brush the inside of their bundt pans with melted butter–you cannot be too careful!). Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Transfer cake to rack; cool completely in the pan, then turn cake out onto rack for drizzling ganache.**

Ganache:
For the ganache, melt the chocolate, heavy cream, and coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Drizzle over the top of cooled cake.

101 Cookbook’s mushroom casserole is so very tasty! I like to substitute wild rice for half of the brown rice the recipe wants. Here’s the recipe taken from 101 cookbooks, make sure you visit her site to see what other tasty things she has:

Mushroom Casserole Recipe

Use any cooked grain you like. Feel free to use low-fat cottage cheese or sour cream if you prefer.

1/2 pound (8 ounces) brown mushrooms, cleaned and chopped
1 large onion, well chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 cups cooked brown rice, room temperature
2 large eggs
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
a bit of fresh tarragon, chopped

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Rub a medium-large baking dish with a bit of olive oil or butter and set aside. The pan I use is slightly smaller than a classic 9×13 baking dish - just grab for something in this ballpark.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat saute the mushrooms in a glug of olive oil sprinkled with a couple pinches of salt. Stir every minute or so until the mushrooms have released their liquid and have browned a bit. Add the onions and cook for another 4 or 5 minutes or until they are translucent. Stir in the garlic, cook for another minute and remove from heat. Add the rice to the skillet and stir until combined.

In a medium bowl whisk together the eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, and salt.

Combine the rice mixture and cottage cheese mixture in a large bowl, stir until well combined and then turn out into your prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with 2/3 of the Parmesan cheese, cover with foil and place in oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20 or 30 minutes more or hot throughout and golden along the edges. Sprinkle with the chopped tarragon, and the remaining Parmesan and enjoy.

Serves about 6.

I also used 101 cookbooks’ baked artichoke dip recipe. I feel like there was something missing from it… something earthy to balance all of that artichoke, but it did wind up being pretty darn good, fresh from the oven. I think next time I’ll use the Quattro Formaggio cheese blend from Trader Joes instead of Parmesan, press the artichokes to get some of that extra moisture out and use a little less yogurt. This recipe was also taken directly from 101 cookbooks:

Baked Artichoke Dip Recipe

Sometimes silken tofu can be hard to find. No worries, I’ve had success using medium firm regular tofu as well - just stay clear of the firm and extra-firm varieties. For some added nutritional punch and color quickly saute a couple handfuls of spinach in a bit of olive oil - toss it in the food processor with the artichokes, tofu, and garlic.

2 (14-ounce) cans water-packed artichokes, well drained
4 ounces organic silken tofu
3 large cloves garlic
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
2/3 cup plain (or Greek) yogurt
1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt, or more to taste
pinch of cayenne pepper

more Parmesan to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. In a blender or food processor puree the artichokes, tofu, and garlic. In a separate medium bowl whisk together the parmesan cheese, yogurt, salt, and cayenne. Stir in the artichoke puree and pour mixture into a medium-sized baking dish (or multiple smaller dishes). Sprinkle the top with more Parmesan. Bake uncovered until heated through and the cheese on the top starts to brown, about 45 minutes.

Makes 2-3 cups of artichoke dip.

The first baking post. A while ago the Hanzipan team got together for a weekend of mad cookery. We just so happened to make some Lemon Poppy Seed Butterfly Cupcakes from the book Cupcakes! They took zest from four lemons but it was ohhh so worth it!

Starzipan modeling the tasty tasty cupcakes. They were gone well before noon the next day.

And then Star had the idea to make some mozzarella cheese. She’d gotten a kit a while ago and hadn’t used it yet. Can you think of a better time to make cheese than that one? No, I didn’t think so. Anywho, I know these pictures look familiar but I really wanted to document the occasion properly on this wee blog!

Blog is live! Blog is go!

XD

P.S. These are White Christmas Cupcakes from the book Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans. I gave them to my relatives, tucked inside mugs. Get it? Cakes in cups? Cupcakes?

The cakes are a light, fluff pure white cake(though mine got a bit browned on top) with a white chocolate cream cheese frosting and shavings of white chocolate on top. And of course a dusting of powdered sugar.