Whole Wheat Walnut and Raisin Sandwich Rolls

Our Avid Baker's Challenge ("ABC") group is back in full swing. For our January challenge, the chosen theme is "BREAD". This can be a quick bread or a yeast bread and you can use any recipe you like! I opted to make a yeast bread.

Whole Wheat Walnut and Golden Raisin Sandwich Rolls

TBB - Luxury Oatmeal Cookies

This week, Rose's Alpha Bakers are baking oatmeal cookies. Not just any oatmeal cookies. Luxury Oatmeal Cookies. What could be luxurious about a plain ol' oatmeal cookie, you ask? These are made with homemade granola.

To be honest, I already have a favorite oatmeal cookie recipe that I've tweaked to "perfection" and have been using for many years. Rose's recipe has several steps, including making your own granola which is one of the ingredients in this cookie recipe. Since the oatmeal cookie is hubby's favorite cookie, I wanted to give it a try.

After I tasted the granola, I knew my efforts weren't in vain. Even if the cookie is a dud, I'd still be extremely happy (luckily the cookie wasn't).

Chock full of raisins, toasty almonds, and butterscotch chips! And oats of course :)

TBB - Swedish Apricot Walnut Bread

I was excited about baking a yeast recipe this week. The Swedish Apricot Walnut Bread needed a few tweaks to suit my taste and allergies, but turned out great in the end!

I loved the soft, light and airy crumb of this bread. The sweetness from the dried fruit was just the right amount!

TBB - Golden Orange Panettone sans Chocolate Sauce

I was really looking forward to this week's challenge for Rose's Alpha Bakers. The Golden Orange Panettone, our first "bread" recipe of the bake-along. I baked my first Panettone a few years ago with Jenn, blogger behind Knitty Baker and also one of Rose's Alpha Bakers. We baked it together (virtually). It turned out really good. You can find my blog post and recipe here.

A couple weeks ago, Marie, our fearless group leader, referred to me as Miss I-Never-Met-a-Recipe-I-Couldn't-Change Hanaa. And so this week too, I didn't want to disappoint:

• I "Hanaa-tized" the Panettone by applying a Moroccan twist. I added orange blossom water and 1 tsp crushed anise seeds. There's a sweet Moroccan roll called Krachel which has this flavor profile, and I really like it.
• Since my dried fruit was very plump already, I skipped the soaking step, and used 1 Tbsp of orange blossom water to replace the "drained liquid" from the raisins.
• Instead of candied orange peel, I used the zest of 2 oranges and 75 grams of dried cranberries. I also increased the amount of golden raising to 50 grams.
• I also ended up baking the Panettone in a tube pan which reduced the baking time and the risk of the bread sinking after baking. I just could not afford any chances to have this bread fail after working on it for 5 days.
• Some shortcuts were taken where necessary and applicable :o)

Both hubby and I were very pleased with the end result:

Panettone with golden raisins, dried cranberries, orange zest and anise seeds.

ABC - Scones

A few ABC-ers had asked if we could bake Scones for our June challenge. After browsing through several recipes for scones on the King Arthur Flour website, I settled on a "basic" scone recipe that allowed for choosing your own add-ins. I had it all figured out: coarsely chopped almonds, dried cranberries, and lots of orange zest. Then one day I was grating fresh ginger to cook with and I thought, "what would pair well with ginger in a scone?" Before too long, my mind wondered off to a land of plump raisins, the aroma of freshly grated orange zest, and beautiful specks of finely shredded carrots. Boom! That's how my Gingered Carrot Cake Scones were born :o)

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Tuscan Coffeecake

Two mini Tuscan Coffeecakes

What's a Tuscan Coffeecake, you ask? This fruit and nut studded coffeecake/bread really stood out when I was looking for a King Arthur Flour recipe for our ABC February challenge. Although I don't have European-style flour (and assumed that most of you wouldn't), the recipe says that you can use all purpose flour as well, so it was a GO :) I also find the KAF blog posts very helpful. You can find a lot of step-by-step picture there.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Panettone Muffins

Happy New Year everyone!

Panettone Muffins

I hope everyone is ready for another year of ABC. This year is different in that we're not baking from a book, but rather from the King Arthur Flour website. The first recipe this year is the Panettone Muffins. I've only had Panettone once when my friend Jenn (Knitty Baker) and I decided to do a virtual bake-together. I liked it a lot so when I saw this muffin variety on the KAF website, I knew it had to be on the ABC recipe list.

If you'd like to bake along with ABC, please email me at HanaasKitchen [at] live [dot] com.

Old-fashioned Raisin Bread

When I saw this bread on Phyl's blog, I knew I had to make it. The loaves looked so wonderful and the crumb so perfect. When I read that the recipe was a preview from Nick Malgieri's new book "Bread" (to be published in the fall 2012), I had one more reason to try it.

Baking bread is fun, but it's even more fun when you can do it with someone else and turn it into a mini (virtual) baking project. Fellow ABC-er and baking buddy, Janis of The Kitchen Is My Shrink, had mentioned that she'd like to get back into bread baking. The timing of the Old-fashioned Raisin Bread couldn't have been better. We both took the challenge and baked the bread in our respective kitchens. Do check out Janis' post. She did an awesome experiment where she made the recipe as-is and then again with natural enhancers such as Vital Wheat Gluten. Check out her side-by-side comparison here.

I love the three colors from the raisin, golden raisins and craisins in this bread!

Panettone

A few weeks ago, my friend Jenn of Knitty Baker, and I decided to do a little baking project together. We came up with the idea to make Panettone, an Italian yeast bread, that's studded with dried fruit and is lightly sweetened. Neither one of us had made Panettone before, so we were pretty excited about it. Jenn chose a recipe from AllRecipes.com. It had high ratings and the recipe had weight measurements. Perfect!

Panettone baked in a Bundt cake! Que bella :o)

Cinnamon Raisin Loaf

My friend and fellow blogger, Jenn of Knitty Baker, recently posted her Cinnamon Raisin Loaf from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I loved it the minute I saw it and knew I had to make it. Coincidentally, I was browsing another one of my favorite blogs, Uit de keuken van Arden/Levine, and happened to come across that same bread. It was a (clear) sign and so I decided to make it.

I haven't baked bread that uses a starter or sponge in many years. Let's say, we didn't see eye-to-eye back then and so I never bothered again. Until now. I figured with my "reduced" yeast phobia, I surely can handle a "little sponge" :o)