Miscellaneous Baking

This wonderful recipe is in the upcoming The Baker's Four Seasons Cookbook. It is similar to a Quebecoise Pouding Au Chomeur of a brown sugar/flour batter gets spooned into a pan, doused with boiling water and the magic of the oven helps transform it into a golden brown cake atop a luscious sticky syrup bottom. This is perfect on its own, or with ice cream, or custard. Little prep, few ingredients (all pantry ready), and little expertise made pudding cakes such as these were once a popular, simple dessert.

A rich, cream cheese scone dough makes mini cheese Danish that is delicate, flaky but fuss free. You can add raisins and a touch of cinnamon to these but the pastry and sweet cheese Danish filling is all you really need.

This is rustic bread, nicely shot through with nippy Cheddar cheese streaks and a few sweet raisins. The combination of cheese in this traditional hearth bread keeps its old-fashioned tone but nicely freshened with cheese addition.

 

This is a great company dish for brunch. You can prepare it the night before and reheat. But either way, it is great big buttery slabs of fresh toast, stuffed to the gills with a cheesecake filling and covered in a mellow, apple topping. Outstanding.

From A Passion for Baking, heesecake, chocolate, and a special technique make these a one-of-a-kind sensation. These frozen mini bites of New York–style cheesecake enrobed in a thick truffle-like coating are alone worth the price of the book. Bet you can’t eat just one.

This special recipe makes a unique, extra creamy cheesecake with a unique chewy, buttery-sweet graham crust. Then it all gets the cold shoulder in the freezer.  This totally awesome recipe is now in The New Best of BetterBaking.com, Marcy Goldman, 2009, Whitecap Books.

These amazing rolls strike all the right notes. Made of a quick and light yeasted dough, each little roll hides a center of a chunk of cheese. The whole thing is dunked in a garlic-butter bath before being put in a small pan to rise. Once baked, the rolls are crusty outside, and rife with herbs and garlic, and inside, the little chunk of cheese melts and oozes. A side of warm marinara for dipping is the final touch.

This is a white chocolate ‘bark’ -  delicious, quick and pretty as a picture, which makes it a perfect holiday gift. If you had dried strawberries, those would substitute nicely for the dried cranberries. You can also do this recipe with dark or milk chocolate. If your chocolate starts to discolor, (that is called bloom), dust the confection with cocoa.

These are too good – embarrassingly good and ridiculously easy. It’s hamantashen, it’s pastry, it’s Danish, it’s novel and yet homey and a new tradition you have to adopt. Imagine tender pastry bottoms, a baked cheesecake filling and cherry cheesecake topping in one little package. It's refreshing and different but still manages to say Happy Purim!

 

This is not Cheskie’s recipe. This is mine. It is inspired by Cheskie’s Bakery in Montreal, who makes this incredible specialty to rave reviews like this one, by Jane and Michael Stern of Road Food. The bubka comes in chocolate (and I assume cinnamon but there was none the day I went down) and is a heavyweight loaf (sold by the pound) of micro thin layers of bubka dough, yielding a dense, chewy, old-fashioned bubka. This is not a puffy, bready bubka, this is more pastry-like. Check out: http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Writeup.aspx?ReviewID=3637&RefID=3751

This is made in a huge loaf pan and then cut in two and sold in halves. If you count the layers of a Cheskie’s bubka, there are some 24 thin layers, all coiled up! If you want a Chocolate Bubka, omit the cinnamon and replace it with double the cocoa.