Coffee Cake: "I feel like a huge idiot! All these years I’ve never tried coffee cake because I don’t like coffee. I didn’t know it didn’t have coffee in it."

Coffee cake cupcakes having a moment in the sun before a taste test with friends.

Often, I read the reviews and comments of the recipes I intend on trying out myself. Usually this is informative, but sometimes it's a little amusing. I don't think it's an uncommon assumption that coffee cake has coffee in it. Let's go along with the idea that it is referred to as coffee cake because it's great with a nice, hot cuppa.

 Blending the brown sugar and cinnamon topping with my favorite tool, the pastry blender.

If this cake were to be named for something that's in it, I'd go with butter. Sure, there's a generous amount of sugar, both brown and white, but who is ever shocked at the amount of sugar in a dessert? Certainly not me. This cake (now is the time you might want to look away if you've already had a slice) contains three sticks of butter. That's around 350g, for the metric folk out there. Before you start crying, I reduced my version down to 250g, or a bit over two sticks of butter. Not really out of fear of cardiac arrest, but rather out of necessity; I only had one brick in the fridge.

The cake batter is thick; be sure to have a rubber scraper on hand because even hard whacking against the counter won't settle your batter evenly in the pan.

If you can get past the outrageous amount of butter, you can begin to appreciate this cake for being remarkably delicious and Ree Drummond at Pioneer Woman for wrangling this out of her mother's recipe binder.

Coffee Cake
 Adapted from Ree at Pioneer Woman
Yields one 9"x13" sheet cake and nine cupcakes

Cake
1 tsp  salt
3  egg whites
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 C or 172g)  unsalted butter, soft
2 scant C (345g)  sugar
1 T  Kahlua or vanilla, optional*
3 C (298g)  all-purpose flour
4 tsp  baking powder
1 C  milk*
1/4 C  plain yogurt*

Topping
5 T (75g)  unsalted butter, cold*
3/4 C (75g)  all-purpose flour
1 1/2 C (302g)  brown sugar (not packed down)
2 T  cinnamon
1 C (130g)  pecans

*These are deviations from the original recipe. These are the original ingredients and amounts: No Kahlua or vanilla, 1 1/4 C whole milk, no yogurt, 1 1/2 sticks (172g) softened butter for the topping.

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (177C) and grease the cake pan and line the cupcake tins.
2. Combine the egg whites and salt and beat until stiff; set aside.
3. Sift together the flour and baking powder; set aside.
4. Cream together the butter and sugar and then mix in the Kahlua and yogurt.
5. Alternately mix in the flour-baking-powder and the milk; do not over mix.
6. Fold in the whites.
7. Combine all the topping ingredients and cut together with a pastry blender.
8. Fill the cake pan and cupcake tins about 2/3 to 3/4 full and sprinkle topping on.
9. Bake the cake 40-45 minutes and the cupcakes 20-25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
10. Cool to a temperature that won't burn your mouth (room temp is always a safe bet) and enjoy!

Coffee Cake Reflections

 The cake didn't bake up around the topping as much in the sheet pan compared with the cupcakes, but it was just as yummy.

I caught the cupcakes right at the point where the batter goes from goopy to solid, affording me the softest cake I've had in my life. The topping was crisp and a bit crunchy, a very nice contrast to the delicate sponge. This magic is a combination of the right recipe, not over mixing, and pulling the cupcakes from the oven at just the right moment.

The recipe made what I'd consider to be way too much topping for the portions I made. Perhaps if it was all done in a deeper pan or one with more surface area, the amount would have been just right. The topping recipe above is how I did it, so feel free to halve that (reduced butter) or the original recipe.

Something not so magical: My butter had been in the freezer up until I needed it. Sooo it wasn't exactly softened when I went to go cream it. I also, rather mysteriously, threw the sugar in with the other dry ingredients to be sifted. Awesome job, brain. Way to get those synapses firing at full speed at 10:30 in the morning. Despite my rough start, everything came together. The textures and flavors in this cake are pretty perfect. I think it has something to do with all that butter.

The cake made its official debut at a housewarming hosted by my friends at Ming and Milo. It became a part of the wine tasting later in the evening, which featured wines from my home state! If you happen to be in Singapore and are scouring the island nation for the best pairings, they are your guys.

Sort of Make You Sick: Lemon Bars

 A bit too sweet and lacking a firm base. I should have pressed the crust into the pan a bit more.

I have fond memories of lemon bars from when I was a kid. I remember helping my mom make some out of a box for a piano recital (gasp on both accounts - we all have to start somewhere), a touch of powdered sugar on top.

 The crust just after cutting in the butter. This is not the method Ina suggested, though I like doing crusts this way.

Fourteen years and several instruments later, I am playing with the big kids and making stuff from scratch. I tested out Ina Garten's lemon bar recipe at the foodnetwork.com. I was a little short on butter, but that was alright. I sort of wish I had read the reviews beforehand, which would have prepared me a little better for some of the imperfections, but I don't know that it would have prevented them.

Lemon Bars
Adapted from Ina Garten at the foodnetwork.com 

Yields, um, far too much for me to eat on my own

1/4 C  sugar
1 C  flour
pinch of salt
6-7 T (100g)  unsalted butter, cold

3  eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 C  sugar
1  lemon's zest
1/2 C  lemon juice (about 2 1/2 lemons)
2cm diameter, 1cm height  ginger, grated (optional)
powdered sugar (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (177 C).
2. Toss the first three ingredients together and then cut in butter.
3. Press into the pan, chill for 5-10 minutes, and then bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
4. Remove from oven and cool.
5. Whisk all remaining ingredients together and pour over crust.
6. Bake 30-40 minutes until set (you may want to cover the top with foil to prevent over-browning a.k.a. burning before the goo is cooked nicely).
7. Cool, dust with powdered sugar if you like, and enjoy!

Lemon Bar Reflections

  Filling goo with too much sugar and not enough ginger.

I could definitely feel the sugar grains in the lemon sticky goo top; that might be resolved with some sugar and juice pre-cooking on the stove top. I would reduce the sugar by 1/2 C and maybe compensate with cornstarch to keep the same soft goo consistency; they're just a bit too sweet and sort of make you want to stop after a small piece, which is abnormal for me. I would triple the ginger because it's pretty wow when you get a bite of gingery spice with the lemon. A 2:1 ratio of crust to goo would be cool instead of the other way around, but that's just me.

 The crust post baking. Those funny holes are from bits of butter that were on the larger side. Heh.

The crust was a bit whack; it may have been due to my altered prep, but one batch had crumbly I-wanna-stay-with-the-pan crust and the other popped away just fine from the pan, but it also separated from the goo.

[UPDATE]

Like a good chef and a procrastinating blogger, I let this post simmer... for about a week and a half after I originally wrote it. Over the five-ish days it took to consume nearly all the lemon bars, they surprisingly got better. The grainy sugar texture faded and the flavors melded in a way that would suggest you should leave food laying around for days. Even problems like the crust separating from the goo settled with time. I would still reduce the sugar, but maybe only by 1/4 C, and I would definitely up the ginger. These only made me sort of sick because I was merrily eating them all.

The Resident Taste Tester is back. Thank goodness! I need some help eating all these things and I'm sure the charm of grainy built-in web cam photos is wearing off (look forward to the transition post on brioche!).

In other news, I'm conducting a taste test with my friend Z tomorrow; he's having his birthday in a couple weekends and I will be providing the baked goods de jour. Look forward to a new post on pavlova soon.

Since You've Been Gone: Semi-Fail Brownies

 Brownie tops, courtesy of that infernal fake non-stick hussy of a pan.

Dear Readers,

As most of you know, the Resident Taste Tester has been out of town (to correct my previous post, he is approximately 4100km away), and he has taken the camera (well, I put it in his hands so he could send neat pictures of far away places). But! I am not to be disheartened from posting.

Now, these grainy, even more poorly lit than usual, and completely lacking in composition photos are only being shared with you because I like you. I like you in the way that I would go shopping with M back home and be shy about a sort of fugly (is anything only sort of fugly?) swimsuit but come out of the fitting room to show her anyway. Yes, I like you oven-peeping folk that much.

So anyway, I made brownies a couple days ago. I adapted this brownie recipe from allrecipes.com. I wanted to spice them up a bit and tried to create a brownie-molasses-cookie hybrid. I thought the mini muffin pan might do well. Not learning my lesson from last time (that this non-stick claim was a crock of poop), I pried the brownies from it and then promptly threw it away. This left me with a pile of brownie rubble rather than neat little two-bite dreams. And then I compulsively ate them to hide my baking shame and to ease a little watching-movies-by-myself loneliness.

Brownies
Adapted from allrecipes.com

Yields 18 two-bite brownies (made with itsy bitsy muffin tins)

 1 T  unsalted butter, melted
1/2 C  sugar
1  egg
1 T  molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 T  cocoa
1/4 C  flour
1/8 tsp  salt
1/8 tsp  double-acting baking powder
1/4 tsp  cinnamon
1/4 tsp  ginger

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (177C).
2. Grease and flour whatever pan you're going to bake in.
3. Whisk together the butter, sugar, egg, molasses, and vanilla.
4. Add the cocoa, flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger and beat until homogeneous.
5. Fill pan (2/3 full for muffin tins) and bake 15-20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out dry with just a few crumbs clinging to it.
6. Cool 1-2 minutes in the pan before slicing/removing.
7. Enjoy!

 Brownie Reflections

Non-stick. Mhmm.

I think if I did this again, I would double the molasses, ginger, and cinnamon and cut the sugar in half. I would also just plop the runny batter on a greased and floured tray to make cookies. The brilliant thing about these brownies were the tops that had runneth over the tins. They came away with an easy twist (leaving the rest of the brownie to be scraped out, ugh), slightly crispy on the outside, brownie soft on the inside.

I am glad to have that lie-of-a-non-stick-pan out of my life. No matter how carefully you greased and floured the thing beforehand, it would coax unsuspecting baked goodies to become one with its matte metal surface. As with all useless and frustrating things in life, you eventually tire of them and they end up in the trash (I'm all for reduce, reuse, recycle, but man that thing was evil).

Look forward to a few more fugly bikini style photo sharing posts.

Croissants: A Two Day Affair

My first attempt at making croissants. Not too shabby.

I have read in numerous blogs and recipe websites that croissants are the bane of any amateur baker's existence. A recipe that takes two days, several rounds of touching, rolling, and resting, and could possibly end in disaster for any number of missteps would have anyone shaking in their apron. Naturally I decided to throw myself in the deep end.

Sure, I've made a couple of yeast breads before, but never anything as unanimously daunting as croissants. Knowing I wasn't alone in my fear, I went to the blogs to consult my colleagues in the oven. I settled on the recipe at Not So Humble Pie and advice from Gabi on Mamaliga.com.

It wasn't as heart-breaking a process as I thought it would be. The only minor oops was nearly forgetting to feed the yeast. Woooow. I used to make cinnamon rolls at my university every Saturday morning for nearly a year; how could I forget something as basic as giving the yeast sugar to feed on? Well, I didn't really forget to, I just added it later than the recipe said to. I had mixed the dough and thrown it in the fridge when I realized I hadn't added any sugar. "Odd recipe," I thought. I mused over how there could be anything to fuel the yeast for a moment and then reread the recipe. I simply glazed over the word sugar and went about making a yeast dough without it. Silly. I took the dough out, sprinkled sugar on it, and spun it in the mixer for another minute before sending it back to the fridge for a good sleep.

The croissants actually came out nicely! I halved the recipe because I know the Resident Taste Tester and I do not need eleven full size croissants lurking in the kitchen.

When I took half the dough and made four croissants, I thought they seemed rather large even before they had gone through the last rising phase. They were absolutely  massive by the time they came out of the oven. Unfortunately, the insides were a bit too moist (cooked, no doubt, but heavy with butter) while the outsides were beautiful. I decided to make eight croissants with the remaining dough and these proportions came out so wonderfully crisp and flaky on the outside while soft, fluffy, and buttery on the inside that several were consumed within minutes of hitting the rack to cool.

Croissants

Originally from the CIA, adapted by Not So Humble Pie, and loosely interpreted by me*

Yields 16 croissants

358g (1.5 C)  whole milk, room temperature

14g (1/2oz or 4 1/2 tsp)  yeast

453g (4 C)  bread flour

56g (heaping 1/2 C)  sugar

10g (1 1/2 tsp)  salt (not in the original recipe, but I think it improves it)

40mL (2 T)  molasses (substituted for malt syrup)

71g (heaping 1/2 C) butter, cold but pliable

Roll in:

226g (2/3 C) butter, cold but pliable

Egg wash:

1 egg + 3 T whole milk, beaten

Flour, for rolling out dough

* Volume measurements in parentheses are approximate

1.  Mix the yeast and room temperature milk; set aside for 10 minutes.

2.  Pound the cold butter in a plastic bag (or between sheets of wax paper, etc.) with a rolling pin until pliable (you'll end up with a sheet of butter about a quarter inch thick). If butter becomes too warm, place in freezer until cold again.

3.  Mix flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl (sift it if you like, but it's not necessary).

4.  Add molasses to the flour mix and cut in the cold but pliable butter coarsely by giving it a quick spin on low with the electric mixer.

5.  Pour the yeast-milk mix over everything and mix on low until the dough becomes unwieldy and begins to reach for the sky (it took about 30 seconds for my dough to start creeping up the beaters).

6.  Replace beaters with dough hooks and continue to mix on low for 3 minutes, then turn up to high and mix for 2 minutes.

7.  Line a baking sheet (that fits in your fridge comfortably) and spread out dough evenly.

8.  Cover with plastic wrap and press out all air bubbles (to prevent strange crusting) before placing it in the fridge for 5+ hours (over night is perfectly acceptable).

9.  Place the cold butter for the roll in between sheets of wax paper or in a plastic bag and beat with the rolling pin until it is a pliable sheet about 9"x13" (slightly larger or smaller is fine). Return it to the fridge to keep cold until you're dough has finished it's 5+ hours in the fridge (you can do this just before you roll out your dough in the next step, but make sure it's cold).

10.  Remove dough from the fridge (it will be less sticky and a bit more puffy than it was 5+ hours ago) and roll out with a pin to about 13"x18" on a well-floured surface (always have flour handy when rolling out the dough to prevent sticking).

11. Now begins the three-part folds and short rests section. Place your cold but pliable roll in butter on your dough and fold the sides of the dough over to cover the butter.

This is sort of what a four-fold looks like. Not perfect, but it will do.

This is a three-fold, and the Resident Taste Tester in the background.

11a.  Roll the dough out to about 13"x18" and fold the ends to the middle and fold again like you are closing a book (see four-fold above). Cover and seal with plastic wrap and return to fridge for 30 minutes.

11b.  Roll out dough again to about 13"x18" and do a three-fold like a business letter or men's wallet (see three-fold above). Cover and seal with plastic wrap and return to fridge for another 30 minutes.

11c.  Roll out dough yet again to about 13"x18", repeat the three-fold, and place in the fridge for the final time for two hours.

12.  Now you can begin to make pretty little crescent shapes. Roll out dough to about 9"x20" and cut into four equal size rectangles. Set three in the fridge (wrapped in plastic of course).

If Bob Ross was baking these, he would call them happy little triangles.

You can see all the layers we folded and rolled in. Happy little triangles indeed.

12a.  Roll out one rectangle to a square (a bit larger than 9"x9") and cut in half to make two rectangles. Cut diagonally across both rectangles to make four triangles.

12b.  Cut a 1" slit at the base of each triangle (the shorter side of the right angle) and roll tightly towards the far tip, stretching the dough as you roll.

12c.  Place rolled dough on a baking sheet (I always line with silicone baking mats), turn in corners slightly to make a crescent shape, and brush with an egg wash. Repeat 12a-c for the rest of the dough, placing 8 or so croissants on each baking sheet and allow to rest for 1 hour at room temperature (until nearly doubled in size).

13.  Preheat oven to 375 F (191 C), do one more egg wash, and bake for 16-20 minutes until nicely brown.

14. Remove to rack and cool (five minutes is generally enough time to cool them so you don't burn your tongue, but use your best judgement).

14. Enjoy!

Croissant Reflections

Croissants basking in the Singapore sun.

I found that the amount of butter originally to roll in was waaay too much for me; the croissants bled butter in the oven partway through and swam in it until they finished baking. Not a terrible thing, just sort of horrifying. The amount of roll in butter I list is reduced by one third.

The original recipe also didn't have any salt in it; I used about half salted and half unsalted butter when I made them and I think they could use a teaspoon or two of salt (while using unsalted butter) to punch things up a bit.

You really have to get the portions and timing right to get perfectly crisp, flaky, brown croissants on the outside and fluffy, soft, layers upon layers of yum on the inside. Experiment a bit and granted yours don't burn, you'll have delectable, rich croissants and an air of buttery bread throughout your home for a couple of days.

Lovely flaky layers glistening in the early afternoon light. Perhaps all the butter will deepen that tan.

Adventures of a Slightly Forgetful Baker: Lemon Souffle

See the pointy nose and wide, gaping mouth in that souffle? It's MOCKING me. Side note: This seeing-faces-in-souffles thing is the same sort of thing as when we see a bunny-shaped cloud. See pareidolia.

I know I said I'd be getting on with croissants, but I just haven't had the time yet. I promise they will manifest themselves in my kitchen by this weekend (I am currently editing this during the first lamination rest).

I wanted a quick sweet treat with ingredients I already had on hand and I thought back to eggy, sugary dessert recipes. The internet graced me with a lemon souffle recipe, which I sort of cut in half and rushed to assemble before the Resident Taste Tester got home. Now, I'm typically a methodical and excellent baker, but occasionally I'll just forget an ingredient. Not exactly what you want to hear from an aspiring pastry chef. Heh.

Here's what happened:

Loose Interpretation of Lemon Souffle with Lemon Curd

Yields two 9cm ramekins of souffle


1/2  egg (1/2 T yolk, 1 T white)
1/2  a lemon's zest
2 T  powdered sugar
1 tsp  cake flour
1 T butter
1 1/2  egg whites (3 T)
2 T  powdered sugar
1 1/2 egg yolks (1 1/2 T)
1/2  a lemon's juice

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (about 175 C).
2. Whisk 1/2 egg in a saucepan and add lemon zest (oops - forgot the juice), sugar, and flour (and skip forward to adding the butter a step early) and stir over medium heat until thickened.
3. Completely remove from heat and forget about whisking an additional minute because it's already a thick mess that you put the butter in prematurely.
4. Divide between two ramekins.
5. In a medium bowl, whip egg whites until they form soft peaks.
6. Add 1/2 T sugar and whip until stiff peaks form.
7. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining sugar, yolks, (zest forgone because I couldn't be bothered with another half a lemon) and lemon juice until smooth.
8. Fold in a spoonful of egg white (as sort of a prep step for adding all that fluffiness) and then fold in remaining egg whites gently until homogenous.
9. Pile into ramekins.
10. Bake 15 minutes until golden.
11. Cool 5 minutes and serve.

Lemon Souffle Reflections

It's was still laughing... UNTIL I ATE IT'S FACE!

To the best of my recollection, I've never had a souffle in my life. I'm not sure if souffles generally form a skin while baking, but the skin isn't a texture I particularly like. It's slightly rubbery and I could do without it. Suggestions?

The lemon curd in the bottom was... not lemony and that was entirely my fault. The Resident Taste Tester said the whole thing was good and not too lemony, but I think he was just being gentle since he knew I forgot some lemon juice as amateur bakers sometimes do.

The souffle (under the strange skin) was actually nice. Light and airy with a softly sweet lemon flavor. Not too shabby for my first souffle, minus the lemon curd.

Also, my love of ramekins has increased for their divided egg holding capacity. I mean, they are really perfect for all the little things you have to measure out ahead of time.

All in all, the lemon souffle was not a complete fail. I should know better than to rush through a recipe just to get something on the table. Lesson (hopefully) learned.