Alpha Bakers: Rugelach

Unlike some of my Alpha Baker friends, I get pretty excited when I see recipes containing raisins. I love raisins. I would happily order, eat, cook anything with raisins in it, sweet or savory. 

Of course now that I've declared my love of raisins, I will tell you that I ended up making 1/2 recipe of these Rugelach without raisins. I wanted to try something different but I could not decide whether to choose the Chocolate Raspberry or Cran-Raspberry so I made a mixture of both. Mine is Cran-Raspberry Chocolate. And as you will see from the step by step photos below, I did not use seedless raspberry jam - the one we have is seeded and I don't bother straining them.

Everyone I shared this with love them and I had fun trying to pronounce Rugelach, which to me sounds very similar to Arugula and at some point when someone asked what it is, I happily answered: "Arugula!"

I've made the rugelach from Rose's Christmas cookie book back in 2012 (you can read the post here). I don't remember any details about that experience, only that it was positive and yummy. As I re-read my post back then, written by Jenn circa 2012, it sounds like I was confused by the explanation to roll the dough into a circle. Well, I can proudly tell you guys that I am not confused about this anymore so I think we can safely say that 4 years of baking since then have paid off? :)

These arugula rugelach are easy to put together and very yummy. I love that I can make the dough ahead as I made it one day then it sat in the fridge for a couple days. The combo filling is really good too, I can taste a bit of everything, though I think the chocolate overpower the cranberries a bit even though I didn't use the full amount of chocolate pearls. I think next time if I use chocolate at all I will only put a couple of pearl in each rugelach.

Alpha Bakers: Hungarian Raisin Walnut Tartlets

I love this pie. They are fun to put together, even though they take a heck of a lot longer than I had anticipated. The recipe reads pretty easy. Make 3x the recipe of a standard pie shell. I want to make 1/2 recipe so that means 1.5x recipe. Easy to figure out since the recipe is in grams. The pie dough came together pretty quickly. Then I read through the filling part and start mis-en-place all the parts, including roasting the walnuts. It does add a bit of to do the roasting, but I think using pre-roasted nuts adds so much more flavor in the baked result. Now the kicker in the process is the rolling of the dough. Having to roll and cut at least a dozen 4 1/2 inches circle takes FOREVER! I was glad I only made 1/2 recipe. In the end I had enough filling for 14 tartlets so I made 14 circles and had some dough leftover so they went to the freezer for future use. Btw, I now have 3 different pie dough leftover so I see a small pie in my future hehe.

I used 100% Whole Wheat Pastry flour in the dough and used almond milk instead of regular milk in the filling. We don't drink regular milk anymore so I have been subbing with almond milk and so far I have had no issue.

I also reduced the sugar by 10% in this recipe. Not that this recipe used a ton of sugar but raisins are really sweet. Even with the reduction, they are too sweet for my taste, so I ate 1/2 of them at a time. It is really good though. And my friends who I shared them with loved them. No mention of too sweet.

Alpha Bakers: Irish Cream Scones

I am beginning to realize that the easier the recipe is, the more disorganized I become. Especially on recipes that are tagged Q&E. It's like it's screaming at me: "hey, I'm easy, you can whip me up in no time and still have the rest of the day left to do whatever."

In the case of this recipe, I skimmed through the recipe a few days before the weekend, was pleased to discover that I have all the ingredients on hand. No need to buy additional stuff from the store. I also decided to make the full recipe, since these are scones (bread-types) and can be frozen and I have friends who was complaining that I always make cakes and should make more bread/pastry type things so I proceeded with full recipe. And while prepping the ingredients I realize that I am 3 oz of cream short. And I don't have any lemons. Or honey. Rats.

In my defense I have long given up buying honey, just because I buy them, use 2 tablespoon, then the bottle of honey sits in the pantry, where it slowly and surely crystallize until 3, 6, 9 months later when I need it and it's hard as rock. In the rock-crystallized state it's usually still usable, provided we use it in warm beverage or baking. But it's not really something that we can pour over bread or toasted bread. And crystallized honey is not pretty. Considering it's freaking expensive to purchase, I decided that we will just support the fair trade agave bottle business that cost a 1/2 of what honey cost and does not crystallized. Having said that, I have a sad-looking bottle of maple syrup that fortunately have not crystallized but been in the pantry for a year now.

Alpha Bakers: Golden Orange Panettone with Chocolate Sauce

I love panettone. Before I knew how to bake, a long time ago when my oven was used for pots and pans storage, I used to get panettone at Whole Foods. They always have a huge tower of it around the holidays. I thought it was the best thing. It hails from Italy so it must be the best, si? (little that I know that years later I would learn that it is the best when it hails from Rose Levy Beranbaum). Back in 2011 Hanaa and I wanted to do a virtual bake a long and we made a recipe from allrecipes.com (Hanaa, do you remember? :). For comparison, I also made Rose's Panettone recipe from the Bread Bible. The allrecipes version was not good but Rose's was awesome.

The panettone recipe in the Baking Bible is different than the one in the Bread Bible. Both recipes uses golden raisins, but the Bread Bible version used chestnuts vs. this version using candied orange peel. The Baking Bible version uses golden syrup and has an extra step of making a biga 3 days beforehand and also has more steps in the dough preparation. It was too long ago for me to remember which one is better, but I can't imagine anything better than the Baking Bible's version. My husband said it best, "it is perfect." Funnily, he asked why I made the full recipe. I told him it is because I know it is going to be really good so I have to.

Rustic Cognac-Apple Pie

This is a rendition of Rustic Armagnac-Apple Pie from Vegetarian Times (VT). I've never heard of Armagnac before. According to wiki, Armagnac is an aged brandy from the Armagnac region in Gascony, southwest France. I did not see Armagnac in the liquor store so I bought brandy instead. Brandy is already expensive as it is - $9 for a 100ml bottle. I don't really want to know how much an aged brandy cost :).

It is a tasty pie and I like that it's easy to put together.  When I was putting this together, I felt the amount of dried fruits used is a bit overwhelming. I only make 1/2 the recipe and the dried fruits filled over half a 2-cup pyrex container. Dried fruits has quite a bit of sugar in it so I thought it would be overly sweet. But it turned out not too sweet at all and I did not notice all the dried fruits while eating it.

One note on the crust though. While it is good, it does not even hold a candle to my favorite cream cheese pie crust from Rose Levy Beranbaum. Next time I made this pie I will use this pie crust.

Walnut Bread

This bread is my new love. I have been making it for several weeks now. Another winner from Jim Lahey's My Bread book. This is called Walnut Bread but it actually has raisins as well.

Rugelach

I love Rose's cookie book and I want to make everything from it. I know I will. In time.

Rose said in a recent Q&A that the rugelach is her favorite Christmas cookie to make and to eat. So I made it this past weekend.

I am on the fence about whether it's the best to eat. But it sure is fun to make. First, you make the dough by creaming room temperature cream cheese and butter in the mixer. Add in vanilla and egg, then add in bleached AP flour slowly.

The mixture is pretty soft and has to be refrigerated for at least 2 hours.

While the dough is resting, I made the filling. Pretty easy. Coarsely chopped walnuts is mixed with brown sugar, granulated sugar, golden raisin, and cinnamon.

After the 2 hour mark, I took out the dough to roll. This part was a bit confusing. I thought that the recipe would say to roll out the dough like how I would roll out croissant dough. I mean, after all, the rugelach is kinda shaped like a croissant. But the recipe actually said to split the dough into 4 pieces and roll each one into a circle. That doesn't make a lot of sense for me. So I just sort of roll each piece into a messy rectangle.

The only fruit preserves I have in the house is orange marmalade so I used that. I was a bit worried that it would affect the taste or make it bitter. But then again apricot preserves doesn't have a lot of taste. And I figured that its main purpose would be to wet the dough so the filling can stick to it. So orange marmalade it is. I didn't even try to water it down, just dip the brush into it and brush it onto the pastry.

I wish I had shaped these rugelach better. They are not very uniform, some are big and some are small. But I think they are cute.

They are pretty tasty. I would not say I'm a huge fan of them. They tasted more like bread to me and not a cross between pastry and cookie like Rose said.

Recipe: Rose's Christmas Cookies

Panettone: Allrecipes vs. RLB

The contenders:

Allrecipes' Panettone VS. Rose Levy Beranbaum's Panettone

Allrecipes:
Last month Hanaa asked me if I wanted to bake together. She suggested bread and mentioned panettone. I jumped to the idea right away. I have been wanting to bake panettone since last year but never got around to it.

We agreed on a recipe from allrecipes website. It has good reviews, the bread in the picture looks good, and it looked pretty easy.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

A couple of weekends ago, I woke up to a craving of sweet bread. Leafing through Rose Levy Beranbaum's Bread Bible, I saw a recipe that looks good: Cinnamon Raisin Bread.

As with most bread recipes that I found, it requires the dough to be refrigerated overnight. I don't have time for that, so I cheated and did everything in 1 day.

First, combining the dry ingredients and added honey to it.

FFWD: Beggar's Linguini

We don't eat a lot of pasta, so when I saw this on the schedule, I thought I'd skipped it. But then  after speaking to my HCB/FFWD blogger gal pal Monica, who said: "pasta, yeah, what's not to love?" - I changed my mind.

Well okay in her defense, that's not her exactly words/sentence, but it's along the same "yeah let's make it!" lines.

In any case, looking at the recipe, I have to admit it looks interesting (I've never made pasta with dried fruits and nuts before.)

And most importantly - easy to whip up!

So I made this for lunch one Sunday afternoon.

I used whole wheat pasta, which is healthier and a bit tastier than regular pasta. Cooking time is a couple minutes longer, so no biggie.

A couple of minutes before the pasta finished cooking, I melt some butter over medium low heat until it started turning brown. Then add in the sliced almonds, dried figs, and golden raisins (I forgot to get pistachio). Once the almonds and dried fruits started getting brown, I added the pasta, salt and pepper. Stir everything up. Once they started smelling fragrant, I called hubby down for lunch and served with some grated parmesan.

Tasting impressions:
Hm.. it's not bad but it's really nothing special. While I do taste the beurre noisette flavor in the pasta, I feel like I'm eating buttery pasta, which is not very pleasant. So in the end we make sure we ate each bite of pasta with some almonds and dried fruits, just so we have other flavors in there. I'm sad to report that this dish - while super easy to prepare - probably will not make another appearance in the kitchen.

A Baking Weekend - Part 2

I've borrowed The Bread Bible from the library, so I want to make something from it. Everything in the book looks so good! I can't decide on what to make (this is a recurring problem) so I made 2 breads. The first one is the Olive Bread.

The second one is the Raisin Pecan Bread.

Both breads are wonderful and are not hard to make. The only thing is that they have a lot of resting time in between the process, so you have to plan your day. I wish I could share a slice with you all.