Friday night, had girlfriends over for some Margaritas and Mexican food. Even made corn tortillas from scratch, but this entry is about baking so more on that on a another entry. I did bake a Chocolate Cherry Bundt Cake for dessert and also made Chocolate Dipped Cherries. People are always dipping strawberries but I think the cherries actually make a great fruit to dip and decorate with. It is also very delish! The cake was pretty good but I'm not as fond of the recipe, I think it needs a bit more chocolate so I'll tweak the recipe and post.
Saturday, I didn't really bake at all. It was my little bro's birthday and I had planned on baking his birthday cake but the day got the best of me and I didn't have enough time. We did celebrated it with a theme of BBQ and Bowling. I bought a Whole Food cake. I know what kind of baker am I? It was a good cake though!
Sunday, I made some Blueberry Almond Scone for my friend Samad because he really like almonds. The texture of the scone came out great but I think it needed a little bit more almonds and almond extract. I didn't add it to my baking that day but included that in the recipe below. This recipe is a modified recipe from the Grand Central Baking Book. I think the dry ratio from this book is really superb but I tweaked the wet ratio and used WW flour. I used to make scones everyday when I worked at Both Ways Cafe a few years back.
Blueberry Almond Scone
Dry Ingredients & Cold Butter
2.5 cups of Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 cups of Sugar
1 tablespoon of Baking Powder
1 teaspoon of Salt
1/2 cups of cold Unsalted Butter cut in dice size pieces
Wet Ingredients
1 cup of Buttermilk
1 Egg
1 teaspoon of Almond Extract
Other Ingredients
1.5 cups of Blueberries (I like to use frozen berries for scones because it doesn't burst and bleed during the forming stages.)
1 cups of Almonds (I used sliced but you can use chopped or slivered.)
Turbinado Sugar for sprinkling before baking
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees
-Measure and mix all the dry ingredients, then add cold butter and mix on low until a crumbly mixture. If you don't have stand mixer, you can use a pastry cutter or use your hands to blend the butter into the dry mixture until crumbly. Using a wooden spoon or your hands, add the blueberries and almonds, then toss until the crumbly ingredients are mixed with the fruit and nuts. I like to use hands to again, the berries aren't crushed. It will be a dampish dry mixture.
-Measure and mix the buttermilk, egg, and almond extract.
-Slowly start pouring a small amount of wet mixture into the dry mixture and just toss and mix with your hands until all the wet mixture is all into the dry mixture. I say toss because you are trying to balance the wet mixture into the dry mixture evenly.
-Pour the mixture into a lightly floured surface. Using a scraper or your hands, gather the mixture to form a mound about 2 inches think and oval in shape. Lightly press the sides toward the center until you have a somewhat firmed dough. Cut into triangles and put on a sheet pan lined with parchment.
-Brush the scones with a egg wash or some leftover buttermilk. Sprinkle some turbinado sugar and a little salt (the sweet salty combo is great).
-Bake for about 30 minutes until nicely golden brown.
Sunday, I also made the Zucchini Bread for my mom. She has been asking for some for a while now. This recipe is from the Tartine Bakery cookbook. This was the first time I used this recipe thus didn't change much. I only substituted olive oil instead of the vegetable oil they listed. I also doubled the recipe and didn't sprinkle with sugar.
1 3/4 + 2 tablespoons of All Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon of Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon of Baking Powder
1 teaspoon of Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of Salt
Wet Ingredients
2 Eggs
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons of Olive Oil
3/4 cup of Sugar
1/2 cup of Orange Marmalade
Other
2 1/2 cups of Zucchini grated
1 cup of Walnut chopped and lightly toasted
Sugar for topping
-Preheat oven to 350
-Measure and mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Now, a lot of recipes call for shifting the dry ingredients, especially for cakes, but I usually just dump it all in a bowl an use a wire wisk to mix it up and fluff it up. Works for me and much easier.
Add zucchini and walnuts to the wet mixture.
-Add the dry mixture into the wet mixture until combined. Don't over mix or bread will toughen.
-Put into a butter and floured pan or some sprayed pan.
-Bake for about 1 hour until clean tooth pick comes out.
Monday, I made some Peach Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies for my friend Heather who is moving to NYC. I kept promising her cookies but our timing was never right so tried a new recipe for her. I see a lot of dried fruit in oatmeal cookies but not combined with chocolate chips. I love a little fruit with all my desserts. I think it offset the heavy sugar and butter, even if dried fruit. I like the idea of peaches and cream, so I used dried peaches and white chocolate but also wanted the taste of dark chocolate. This recipe might seem a bit too much and I should had some restraint but I wanted to put some kind of nuts into so I used almond but now I think about, I think it might be even better with pecans.
Dry Ingredients
2 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat Flour (For "meaty" cookies, I use wheat flour than all purpose, I just thinks it adds a nice heartiness to the cookie.)
1 teaspoon of Baking Soda
1 teaspoon of Salt, more for topping after baking
1 teaspoon of Cinnamon
Wet Ingredients
1/2 cup of Butter (room temperature)
3/4 cups of Sugar
3/4 cups of Brown Sugar (packed)
2 Eggs (room temperature)
1 teaspoon of Vanilla
Other Ingredients
1 cup of dried Peaches chopped
1 cup of White Chocolate Chips
1 cup of Dark Chocolate Chips
1 cup of nuts (Almond or Pecans)
-Preheat oven to 350
-Measure and mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
-Measure and mix the butter and sugars until very light and fluff, preferably in a stand mixer or hand mixer. Add eggs and vanilla and blend/mix again.
-Add dry mixture into the wet mixture until well combined, again with stand or hand mixer.
-Add other ingredients, one at a time to the mixture and hand mix until combined.
-Spoon a little bigger than a golf size of the mixture onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Put into the freezer until cold, about 5 min.
-Bake 13 minutes and golden brown.
This is a long entry and it was a long weekend. Hope you enjoyed the entry as much as I did. A happy weekend in that I got to do so much of what I love to do. Now I've got to balance with some more running this week to off set all the eating I did!
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