Miscellaneous Baking

My personal favorite recipe. This recipe makes for impressive, crusty, corn meal-coated English muffins. Moist and full of holes, rough textured and hearty. A combination of unbleached white bread flour together with some white wholewheat (or regular whole wheat). A smack of butter and honey rounds out the simple flavor. Don't be spooked by the starter. It's child's play – you can make it an hour ahead or the night before and refrigerate it. Why bother settling for ordinary (insipid) store-bought, English Muffins when recipes like these are around? A large cast iron pan is great for baking. The rough hewn look of these are fetching.

Chunks of bread pulled together in a creamy batter of eggs, cream, vanilla, cinnamon and studded with chunks of white chocolate. This is great warm or even cold - and is ambrosial from simply ingredients.

What’s more inviting that spice and warmth in a cup? This is a seasonal perk that will make your espresso pot beam. If you have a steamer for the milk, that’s super. If not, simmer the milk and half and half to simmering, so that is shivers with foam. The pumpkin puree is canned. Best to use most of it in pie, muffins or pumpkin bread and ‘borrow’ ½ cup or so that you can keep refrigerated or in half ice-cubes (frozen) and use it as you need for this marvelous potion. For a less rich drink, use all milk.

This is fabulous challah, perfect for Friday Night, or Rosh Hashanah or anytime you want a great whole-wheat bread that is moist, and slightly sweet. I use stone-ground whole-wheat flour or white wholewheat flour (that I get from King Arthur Flour). White whole-wheat flour is sweeter but just as nutritious. If you want to up the whole-wheat flour, go ahead and make it all whole-wheat (no white flour).  Just make sure you let the dough rest more, to allow the bran and germ in the whole-wheat flour to absorb the moisture in the dough.

The combination of cranberries and apples makes this an extraordinary strudel. Not only does it taste delicious, look spectacular, but the pectin in the cranberries does amazing things with the filling. With its halo of confectioners’ sugar, over a crimson interior, this strudel evokes a Nutcracker Suite spirit - just in time for the holidays. Use the easy Use the Sour Cream Mock Pastry Dough here or filo dough. The Sour Cream dough is also ideal for hors d’oeuvres, potato knishes, quiche, pies or tarts. It freezes like a dream and you can made a few batches in a food processor in minutes. It is crisp, tender, buttery dough that is a bit like puff pastry but low tech. But it is the filling that really shines in this recipe and whether you use this dough, store-bought puff pastry, your own real strudel dough (or mine), or even filo - this is an amazing strudel. 

For years, my mother-in-law made a deep dish apple cake. She gave me the recipe and although I followed it to the letter, my cake, while good, never looked like hers. I finally overhauled it –and voila – I got the apple cake of my dreams. (Her original cake is in our Archives under Shirley's Apple Cake). This apple cake is bigger, a touch less sweet and fatty – but so, so good! It takes an impossibly large amount of apples –they should almost overflow the pan. It also takes ages to bake through – like, 90 minutes (but just bake it and let it brown nicely – keeping an eye on it) This is outrageous- packed with apples, old-fashioned, and easy.

 

Yes, they're just as good at home and you can tune in the game and cheer for who you like. Nothing beats a big, fat, soft, crusty pretzel and a dish of yellow mustard to dunk it in. Use coarse sea salt or coarse kosher salt (the white type vs. the clear type) or even large grain, fleur de sels. These are, like bagels, easily done in a bread machine. These can be baked or boiled or try some one way and some, the other. Offer in squares of wax paper for that street vendor/stadium feel.