Category Archives: baking

Pain de Mie

baking, tools 3 Comments

Do we all remember my Pain de Mie fail? Cute, right? Well this is what happens when you actually have a pain de mie pan:

Square bready goodness.

Following this recipe from King Arthur Flour (I know, you’re shocked), I let the bread rise to within about 1/2 inch of the top of the pan, then slid the lid on:

And it came out great! The Kiddo loves it (that’s huge) for cinnamon toast in the morning, and Sunbutter sandwiches for “wunch.”

I cut the loaf in two and froze half; the other half goes in our breadbox or the bread bag, where I slice as needed. Honestly, I’m not totally sold on a whole bread storage system. What do you do with homemade bread? Slice it all then freeze? Freeze a solid half loaf? Nom it all so fast there isn’t any to freeze? Or…?

Whey biscuits

baking, breakfast, kids 5 Comments

After all that yogurt straining, I ended up with quite a bit of whey. Time to make biscuits!

I used:

  • 2 cups King Arthur AP flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp baking powder
  • 1/4 cup powdered milk (for extra protein and creaminess)
  • 1/2 tsp instant yeast
  • 2 Tbsp shortening
  • 2 Tbsp cold butter
  • 1 cup whey

I do these in the food processor — they’re ridiculously fast that way. Toss in the flour, salt, baking powder, powdered milk and yeast and pulse a couple times. Cut in the shortening and butter and pulse about 8 times. Pour in the whey and let it sit a minute to soak in, then pulse till mostly blended — maybe 5-8 times?

Now pat out the dough on a floured surface and cut with a floured cutter. My cast iron was otherwise occupied, so I baked these on parchment paper on a cookie sheet:

Bake at 400 degrees F for about ten minutes. See them poofing up?

Get ’em while they’re hot!

The finished product:

The Kiddo loves these with Sunbutter on them for lunch; I love ’em with butter and honey. Fluffy tasty goodness!

Toddler yogurt/yogurt cheese: in the thick of it

baking, breakfast, kids 5 Comments

As discussed, The Kiddo loves him some yogurt. The problem is that it’s so creamy and fabulous the he sometimes has issues keeping it on the spoon all by himself; all by yourself is very important when you’re two.

Enter the cheesecloth! By straining out some of the whey from the yogurt you make it thicker, therefore easier for a little one to manage with a spoon.

I lined my gravy pitcher with cheesecloth, then spooned the yogurt onto the cheesecloth, which is over the strainer. I folded the cheesecloth over the yogurt to keep it covered, and put it in the fridge overnight.

If you want to hurry the process along (hungry toddler?), you can add a little weight to the equation:

For this setup I lined a mesh strainer with cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. I spooned in the yogurt and folded the cheesecloth over it, then put a clean soup mug on top of that. In the soup mug went an unopened can (of Arthur O’s, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have any specific magical yogurt powers). The weight of the can compresses the yogurt and speeds up the whole straining/thickening process.

The longer you let the yogurt sit in either set-up, the more whey will drain out, and the thicker the yogurt will be. Regardless, you’ll end up with this:

Yummy thick yogurt on the left, whey on the right.  If you let this strain a long time (24 hours or so) you end up with yogurt cheese! You can use this for all kinds of things as a replacement for mayo or sour cream in nearly any recipe.

Whey is chock-full of protein and minerals, so it doesn’t need to go to waste. I use it instead of water for making bread, pancakes, etc., and gently stir it back into a bowl of yogurt if I want to thin it out a bit for me. Heck, you can even make whey biscuits! Whey keeps in the fridge for six months, so there’s no rush; it also freezes just fine. I freeze it by the 1/4 cup in a muffin pan, then pop the whey-sicles into a freezer bag after they’re set up for easy measuring in the future.

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

baking, dessert 11 Comments

I may have actually squealed in delight when I saw how cute these turned out. Just maybe.

I found the recipe over at Annie’s Eats and knew I had to give it a shot. The love my sister and I have for cherry limeades at Sonic is somewhat legendary. She actually lived in LA (that’s Los Angeles — not Lower Alabama) for a few years (far! Too far!) and when she would come back to visit we would always go to Sonic and drink our weight in cherry limeades. And Sonic happy hour during the summer? Half price cherry limeade? Nearly. Every. Day. Point being, this recipe was a no-brainer choice for my baby sister’s birthday this year.

I stuck pretty closely to Annie’s recipe:

Cupcakes:

  • 3 cups cake flour (I actually used cake flour, which I never do)
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 cup butter, at room temperature (I am a rebel and use salted all the time)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp. limeade concentrate
  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 cup milk (I used whole milk because it’s all we keep in the house)

To make cupcakes:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line or grease cupcake pans
  2. In a large bowl whisk together the cake flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attached, cream the butter until fluffy and smooth
  4. Add the sugar and beat on medium-high speed until creamed
  5. Add in the limeade concentrate and mix to incorporate
  6. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions
  7. Add in the flour mixture gradually, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.  Mix ingredients just long enough that everything is incorporated — don’t want to overmix it

Fill your prepared cupcakes pans and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool cupcakes in the pans for 5-10 minutes, then completely on a wire rack

Now the syrup!

Lime syrup:

  • 3/4 cup limeade concentrate
  • 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

After the cupcakes are completely cooled, whisk together the limeade concentrate and confectioners sugar in a small bowl to make the lime syrup.  Poke several holes in the top of each cupcake with toothpicks and gently spoon the syrup over the cupcakes, a tiny bit at a time, allowing it to soak in. I didn’t end up using all the syrup, but feel free to do so! Annie tells me it’s up to your tastes.

Next…

Icing:

  • 3 3/4 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 4 Tbsp maraschino cherry juice

To make the icing, combine the confectioners sugar, butter and maraschino cherry juice in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Mix on low speed until sugar is mixed in, then increase to medium speed and beat until smooth.  You can add more maraschino cherry juice as needed to thin out the icing enough to be workable, but I found that 4 Tbsp was just fine. Optional: add red food coloring if desired; I didn’t because the pink of the cherry juice alone was fabulous.

Garnish:

  • fresh lime slices
  • maraschino cherries

Ice your cooled cupcakes, and garnish with lime slices and maraschino cherries, if your little heart desires. I absolutely did desire — this put them over the top from great cupcakes to OMG THOSE ARE FABULOUS cupcakes. I love them!

Pain de Mie fail

baking 2 Comments

Time for another episode of COOKING FAIL.

I read somewhere (of course I can’t find it now, so you’ll all think I made this up; I swear I didn’t) that one could DIY a pain de mie pan by covering a loaf pan with a cookie sheet and then something heavy, like bricks. Since I was struggling to find a pain de mie pan in stock anywhere (I have since found one), I decided it was worth a shot.

So I made up my usual KAF whole wheat bread, and got to the point where it was proofed in the pan, within about 3/4 of an inch of the top of the pan. I then covered the top of the pan with parchment paper, then a cookie sheet on top of that, then two foil-wrapped bricks on top of that. Quite a contraption, no?

And quite a heavy contraption. You would think this would do the trick.

You would think, but you’d be wrong.

It somehow crept out of the top of the pan… but only one side of the pan:

Behold: Fail Bread:

It’s sort of like bread with a spoiler. But a dumb, unnecessary spoiler like a giant wing on the back of a ’79 Rabbit. Good times.

That said, the texture of the bread is actually pretty great, so I’m very excited about the possibilities with a real pain de mie pan.  More on that later, I’m sure.