Classic Buttermilk Waffles

Everyone should have a buttermilk waffle recipe. Yum. Buttermilk's acidity adds a fantastic punch to any of these quick mixes. You can find the recipe on page 14 of KAF Baker's Companion or here on their website.

You begin with the wet ingredients: eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, and vanilla.

You then mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. I omitted the suggested pecan meal since I didn't have any on hand, but I bet it would taste spectacular with it) in with the wet.

Here is the batter all combined and ready for the waffle iron. I was preheating the iron while I whipped up the batter.

Spray the iron and scoop up enough batter so it fills about 3/4 of the space. Since the batter spreads while it cooks, completely filling the iron with batter tends to make it overflow. Very messy.  I believe my waffles took around 5-7 minutes each.

Mmm, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.

Picture perfect stack with Vermont maple syrup.

Next up, Pumpkin Praline Waffles

-Erin

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Throughout my many, many years of baking I have made several chocolate chip cookie recipes. I'm always on the look out for the "best" chocolate chip cookie recipe. Many have claimed that title, but I have yet to find the "one." And KAF's "Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies" was a tasty cookie, worth the bake, but I still haven't found what I am looking for. Find this on page 296. Luckily, KAF Baker's Companion offers several chocolate chip cookie recipes.

The "goods," which, surprise to me, included corn syrup.

Beat the butter, sugar and syrup together until fluffy.

Add the egg, baking and soda powders, and vanilla. Continue to mix.

Add the flour. Not all at once or you'll have flour flying everywhere. Oy vey!

Then you mix in the chocolate chips plus the optional nuts. I highly recommend the inclusion of nuts. I used walnuts. They add a different texture and nutty taste that contrasts well with the sugary chocolate flavor. The batter will be pretty stiff.

One of my all-time favorite kitchen tools: the ice cream scoop. It ain't used for ice cream any more. The ease of portion control and no sticky spoons does wonders. You can scoop out cookies in rapid time. Put on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

I interupt this posting for a brief mention of kitchen tools. I put the cookies on two trays. One was a cheap version from Kmart, the other was a Calphalon jelly roll sheet. I was never convinced that the more expensive sheets would be worth it. A cookie sheet is just a cookie sheet right? Bogus! The cookies on the Calphalon slid right off the sheet, perfectly baked. The Kmart sheet had me fussing with the spatula and slightly burned the bottoms of the cookies. Right, now I'm a convert. Off to TJ Maxx for more Calphalon...

And the cookies cooling.

Easy recipe. Tasty results, but not a wow-in-your-mouth kind of taste. Still searching...

Until later when I whip up some waffles for breakfast. (I can't wait!!)

-Erin

Welsh Cakes

When I first started the "Breakfast" chapter, aka chapter one, I wasn't sure what a "welsh cake" would look like. I had no idea what these would turn out to be. Adventures in baking.  KAF describes these as "a cross between a pancake and a baking powder biscuit, but much richer and sweeter." The recipe is on page 8 of KAF Baker's Companion.

One begins by mixing together the dry ingredients.

Then cut in the two sticks of butter.

Add the eggs, milk and currants (definitely use currants for the taste is divine and raisins would be too large)

Mix it together until you get a soft dough...

Like so.

Then comes the step where I had some problems. You divide the dough in half, working with one portion, while the other is in the fridge. You're supposed to roll out the dough and cut it with biscuit cutters. My dough was so sticky you couldn't "roll" it out if you wanted to. I sort of smoothed it out on a board. I believe this is the result of me adding too much milk and making the dough too wet. I also didn't have a biscuit cutter. I used a glass (yes, yes, I know this is a bad idea) and it simply made a mess.

So needless to say my welsh cakes didn't turn out perfectly round. Here they are frying up in the skillet.

I also had a bit of difficulty determining when the cakes where cooked all the way through. A completed batch. They may not look like it, but you can hold this steady in your hand. They truly are like flat biscuits. Very tasty with sugar and cinnamon to counter the tartness of the currants.

Next posts will be "Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies" and "Pumpkin Pecan Waffles"

Until then

-Erin

Cheese Rolls

A few weeks ago I attended a dinner party where I needed to bring an item to share. Naturally my thoughts turned to the KAF Baker's Companion and attempted to find a recipe that would suit my needs. Didn't have potato flour, so scratch the soft white dinner rolls. Didn't have 24 hours, so scratch the crusty rolls. What did I have? A whole 8 oz of Cabot pepper jack cheese.

How perfect that I had everything on hand then for the "Cheese Rolls" on page 233 of KAF? I cut up my cheese into 16 cubes as the recipe will make 16 dinner rolls.

One then combines all the ingredients to make the dough and I "cheated" by using my mixer to knead the dough. It isn't really cheating and sometimes a mixer can really get the job done, particularly on sticky yeast breads, but I love the act of kneading bread by hand.

*Note-the recipe doesn't explain that the first three ingredients: yeast (it says instant, I used active), warm water and sugar) should be put into a bowl and set aside before adding it to the rest of the dough mixture. I'm not sure why the text assumed one would know to do this step, but anyone who has done any yeast baking will realize the ingredients right off the bat. Yeast loves warm water and sugar. Tasty, tasty.

Put the dough in a greased bowl and covered (cover with plastic wrap, a cloth or cheese cloth will not do) in a warm place for 20 mins. Wow, extremely fast rise.

The dough having doubled in size. Divide the dough into 16 pieces. Insert a cube of pepper jack and pinch the ends together.

Put the roll pinched side down. And let the rolls rise one more time for another 20 mins. Again, fast second rise!

Coat the tops with egg whites, italian seasonings, parmesan cheese and bread crumbs (I used panko). Cook in the oven for 15-18 mins.

I couldn't help myself. I had to nibble on one before I got to my camera.

This has to be the quickest yeast roll recipe I have ever seen. Super fast and the results were delicious. My roommate walked in and smelled the freshness of homebaked rolls and exclaimed that "something smelled good!" The moment she took a bite into one, her entire face lit up. Ah, this is why I bake. I'll be teaching her how to make these this weekend. I highly recommend adding this recipe to your quick and simple meals.

Thanksgiving III-Pecan Pie

And finally to wrap up my Thanksgiving baking, here is the KAF pecan pie (pg 447 or here)

To begin the pecan pie you will need to "blind bake" the piecrust for about 10 minutes. It helps set the crust so it doesn't puff up much in the middle. Now you can use pie weights as I did (although stupidly forgot to line it first with foil making for a very messy clean-up), but rice will do or another pie pan resting on top.

While the crust is baking, begin whipping up the ingredients: corn syrups, sugar, butter, chopped and toasted pecans.

Then pour the mixture into the piecrust. Take a number of pecan halves (or in my case pecan bits since I ran out of halves) and decoratively position them around the top of the pie.

Pop the pie in the oven for 45 minutes...

And voila! Pecan pie. The top will harden into almost a hard candy consistency. The center may puff up some, but will settle during cooling.

A very simple pie to make with excellent results. I have never had problems with the KAF pecan pie recipe. Totally consistent

Until I post my endeavors into cheese bread,

-Erin

Thanksgiving Part II-Classic Pumpkin Pie

To continue where I left off, the piecrusts were transformed into pumpkin and pecan pies. The "Classic Pumpkin Pie" is on page 442 or here. Although I noticed that the online recipe varies slightly from the KAF Baker's Companion. This is a truly simple pie to make.

Wet ingredients first.

Mix in all the spices and flour (the amounts of these are what vary from the book to the online recipe)

And voila! Pumpkin pie filling.

Have a prepared pan all ready for the filling. I always seem cut myself short on rolling out the dough. It shrinks a bit in the oven too, so definitely work your way to the edges of the pan.

Ready to go in the oven. Bake it until it becomes firm, but still soft.

The finished pie. Cooling down.

Easy as pie! (Ha, ha)

Thanksgiving Pies: Part I Piecrust

A slight detour in the KAF Baker's Companion to compensate for Thanksgiving! That means pies! I'll walk you through step-by-step the KAF recipes for pumpkin pie and pecan pie. But first we must begin with the piecrust.

I started with the "Basic Piecrust" found on page 408 of the KAF Baker's Companion. I'm always surprised how many people think that making a crust from scratch is difficult. It's not folks. And let me tell you, homemade piecrusts taste wonders better than anything store bought. The basic piecrust recipe makes two 9-inch piecrusts, which worked out perfectly as I needed to make two pies. Great thing about piecrusts is that you can whip up the crust and put it in your refrigerator until you want to make the pie. I made my crusts two days in advance. Saved me loads of time.

The basic piecrust recipe is a simple combination of flour, some salt for flavor, water as a binder, and the fat which prevents the flour from making gluten, i.e., a flaky piecrust. For the basic piecrust, KAF recommends a combination of butter, lard or shortening. I, however, only had butter on hand. I would recommend using a combination for the best mix of flavor and texture. Ah, next time.

 

Mounds of butter.

You then cut the butter into the flour. You can either use two knives in a slashing motion, trying to get the butter into the size of tiny flakes, or you can use a much simpler tool: the pastery blender. Do about half the fat, cut it in, and then add the rest.

A pastery blender makes cutting in a breeze.

Once the salt, fat, and flour have been sufficently mixed in, you add, slowly, the water.  The dough is not meant to be wet, just moist enough to hold itself together. This is key.

Notice how the dough is starting to hold its own shapes.

At this point you take the dough out on to the counter and divide the dough in half. Make two flat disks and then refrigerate. If you are using the dough immediately, let it remain in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to make shaping easier. Otherwise, keep it in the fridge until it is time to make the pie.

The formed piecrust.

Next I'll take the piecrust and make two pies.

-Erin