Category:

Cream Puffs

3/19/2015

It's certainly been far too long since I posted anything here, for which I apologize. Although I am repentant I have to admit that my absence was legitimate. One of my students wanted to do an Eagle Scout project to benefit the Saint Bede Drama Department, so we've been working on a complete reboot of the storage systems on stage right. The results are amazing and it's made the construction of the set for the spring musical go much faster than usual. My scout and the rest of the crew have been working very hard, so I decided to reward them with some homemade cream puffs.
Today happens to be the feast of St. Joseph, patron saint of carpenters, and my extension, stage hands. One of the traditional treats for this day is cream puffs. They are surprisingly easy to make, or at least I have always found them so, although I have heard a few stories of pate a choux failure. Water and butter are heated together until boiling, then flour is added along with a smidgen of salt and sugar. You beat the mixture hard and fast for a minute or two, let it cool slightly, and then start beating in (room temp) eggs, one at a time. The resulting mixture is thick and glossy, and is piped through a pastry bag onto a pan, in mounds for cream puffs and thick lines for eclairs. 400 degrees for 10 minutes and then another 25 minutes at 350, and you've got pastry shells.
There are variations on the recipe and the method, and the version I used is from the 1962 edition of The Joy of Cooking, but Gale Gand's recipe is a good one, too (click HERE). I saw her make cream puffs on her show "Sweet Dreams" and it helped me understand the method even better. I'll be posting pictures of the finished product later. They're going to get a chocolate mouse filling and a drizzle of hazelnut chocolate glaze.

And to think it's still the Lenten season!

With powdered sugar as a topping.

Hoska/Vanocka/Stricka

12/14/2014

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Several times recently I've been asked about hoska, a rich braided bread from the region now known as the Czech Republic. I must confess that I haven't made it since we taped season three in the summer of 2001! So I figured I'd better get out book three of the Breaking Bread series and try it again.

In that cookbook, I referred to the bread as vanocka, and it's also called stricka, depending on the region of eastern Europe where it's made. Like most festive winter breads, it uses dried fruit and nuts (almonds) for flavor, and every grandmother has her favorite combination, whether it's raisins and slivered almonds or candied orange peel with whole blanched almonds or any number of variations. I used candied pineapple and sliced almonds for no other reason than that's what was in the pantry!

You'd best have a big portion of your day set aside for this recipe, because the dough rises much more slowly than the usual white bread recipe. The reason for this sluggish rise is the richness of the dough. Extra eggs, a relatively large amount of sugar and a whole stick of butter make for some heavy lifting for the yeast---but resist the temptation to add more. That long slow rise also contributes to more complex flavors and better texture.

My version turned out a little too dark IMHO, because we have a commercial convection oven and you can't turn the blower off completely, which makes any bread brown faster, but especially with an egg wash. I reduced the temperature 25 degrees and loosely covered the loaf in foil, but still got a rather darker crust than I wanted. Next time I may add more water to the egg wash, put it on later or perhaps omit the glaze all together.

My recipe for a fairly standard version of hoska is HERE. Sometimes this bread is made as a single braid, a two layer braid as shown above, or even a three-layer braid as in the photo below. If you have trouble rolling out the ropes of dough the same size, try using the slab braid method described HERE.

Here's what it looks like as a triple layer braid. Click on the image to go to the original website (in Czech, I think!).

I like to serve hoska warm with a lightly sweetened honey butter, but try it plain at first so you can appreciate the blend of lemony/citrusy/spicy flavors. I might add that if you don't finish off such a large loaf right away, it makes outstanding French toast and an utterly unique bread pudding as well. You may find you like it enough to make it all year long!

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Pumpkin Pudding Bread

10/11/2014

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Yes, I'm still alive and baking! Sorry for the three week hiatus---Homecoming Week does that to me. I had a couple of bread demos in there, too, so it's not like I've been slacking. Last night I made batter donuts with chocolate hazelnut frosting and sent them out to the members of the boosters' club working the pork chop tent at the football game, but there are no pictures. sadly. But today I went to the store to get some sour cream for a caramel apple coffeecake recipe I've been wanting to try, and what did I find at the end of the baking aisle but pumpkin spice instant pudding.

This product is seasonal, I suspect, along with pumpkin lattes and apple cider donuts, but I'm sure I could enjoy this all year. I like it better in a trifle or parfait, but I have a recipe for a breakfast bread which uses butterscotch pudding, so I decided to try switching it out. I also added a little pumpkin pie spice--if you make it with butterscotch pudding, use cinnamon. If you make it with chocolate pudding, omit the cinnamon and add chopped almonds instead of pecans. Get the recipe HERE.

I'll be honest, I was hoping for a more pronounced pumpkin flavor, but the bread is wonderfully moist and has a slightly crisp crust if it's served about 20 minutes out of the oven. It's not overly sweet--a little honey butter wouldn't be out of place here--and you can make it with gluten-free flours if you want a Thanksgiving treat for your GF friends. I suspect I'll be experimenting with other pumpkin batter bread recipes before long, as well as that caramel apple coffeecake recipe. Hope you are enjoying the autumn weather in your part of the world.

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Strawberry Rolls for breakfast!

7/17/2014

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Regular readers of this bread blog know that when we have mashed potatoes for supper at St. Bede Abbey, chances are the leftovers will end up in a batch of dough. The kitchen crew has even taken to making the potatoes without extra flavorings (no garlic, no pepper, no chives) so that I can use them as easily for sweet breakfast rolls as for Sunday dinner. Last night I mixed up a batch of potato roll dough with the intention of making cinnamon rolls for breakfast, only to discover that we were completely out of cinnamon.

Fortunately, I'm a 21st century monk with WiFi and an iPad, so I looked up "breakfast rolls" on Pinterest and found a recipe for Strawberry Rolls using pie filling, which I just happened to have in the pantry. Not long ago I made rolls with pineapple filling and orange glaze and the brethren had no qualms about trying something new, so I decided to give it a try. (I also shaped three loaves of potato bread for later breakfasts.)

Pie filling is a bit runnier than cake and pastry filling, which is what I usually use for breakfast breads, so it was a bit of a challenge to get the dough rolled up. The results, as you can see, definitely made the effort worthwhile. I drizzled on the lemon cream cheese icing just before morning prayer and put them on the breakfast table. As predicted, my fellow monks made the rolls disappear in no time, so I was glad I kept a few in reserve for food photography later in the day when the light got better.

You can find the recipe I used for strawberry rolls with lemon cream cheese icing HERE, although I used my own dough recipe, the ever-versatile dough for Best Ever Crescent Rolls.

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Hodgson Mill GF Cake Mix

7/6/2014

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Hodgson Mill sent me some Gluten Free products to experiment with, and I've been enjoying testing all sorts of recipes that use cake mix as a base. As I generally do with product testing, I'm not interested in the recipe on the box---the company tested that recipe a thousand times until it was just right. I want to know what else you can use it for. Turns out this gluten-free cake mix is pretty versatile.

A site with recipes, crafts, coupons, and other homey stuff.

I started out with a simple cookie recipe I found online, which I made for my monthly Herb Guild meeting. I thought they needed a little more sweetness, so I frosted them with some maple flavored icing, and everyone RAVED about them. Not a soul had any idea they were gluten-free cookies until I mentioned it. I shared the recipe with one of our employees whose mother-in-law is also GF and she loved them so much she refused to share, not even with the her grand kids! The recipe I used is HERE, but I use the cake mix pictured above instead of Betty Crocker. I'm sure you could add any kind of chocolate chips, raisins, cranberries, etc. and get good results.

Gluten Free Caramel Pecan Upside-down Cake

Then I tried to imagine what I would really miss if I had to go gluten-free, and I realized that caramel pecan rolls would be very high on the list. As a diabetic I make them only occasionally, and try to make small portions, but if I couldn't have them I'd at least want a decent coffee cake substitute. So I made the cake according to the directions on the box except that I subbed sour cream for the buttermilk and added 2 tsp. of ground cinnamon. After I sprayed the 8" cake pan, I poured in some caramel sauce (see below) and sprinkled on 3/4 cup chopped pecans. Then I spread HALF of the cake batter on top of that---the box makes two 8" cakes, so the other half I used for another recipe (see below). The batter is rather thick, so you might thin it with 2 Tbs. of milk or half and half as I did. The cake then baked at 350 degrees F. for 22 minutes. Be sure to place place a cookie sheet on the shelf below the cake, to catch any drips of caramel that bubble over. When the cake tester tells you it's done, ignore the directions on the box that tell you to wait 10 minutes before removing the cake from the pan. Invert a serving plate on the top and flip it immediately; remove the pan and watch all that caramel goodness ooze down the sides of the cake. Not a single monk had any idea that this breakfast treat was gluten free, and everyone named it an unqualified success, except that I should have made two.

Caramel Sauce Topping: 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar, 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, 3 TBS. light corn syrup, warmed in a sauce pan over low medium heat and stirred until smooth (do not boil). Pour into prepared pan and sprinkle with pecans before adding batter.

Gluten-free Almond Crumb Cake

However, since the box of mix makes two cakes, I decided to make a second coffeecake, this one with an almond filling and a classic crumb topping. I put half the filling in the bottom of the sprayed 8" cake pan, then spread dollops of Solo Almond Cake and Pastry Filling on top of that, about half the can. Then I spread the rest of the batter and sprinkled on the crumb topping (see below). It also baked at 350 degrees F. for 22 minutes and came out moist and delicious, and just a tiny bit grainy. However, that was barely noticeable because of the crumb topping. (All flavors of Solo's Cake and Pastry Fillings are gluten-free, by the way. If you want to use another product, many grocery stores, including our local Hyvee, now have a list of GF products at the service desk or near the gluten-free aisle.)

Look at that yummy almond filling---all GF!

Crumb Topping In a small bowl, mix together 1/2 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour, 3 Tbs. brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon. Using a fork, cut in 3 Tbs. cold butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle all of mixture on top of cake batter just before baking. If you don't have canned filling, double the dry ingredients of this recipe but increase the butter to a full stick and use half of the mixture as the middle layer and the other half as the topping.

Gluten-free baked donuts with hazelnut glaze

I've already written in a previous blog about GF baked doughnuts made with this cake mix. They need to be baked a little longer or they can be a bit too crumbly, and they do taste more like a cupcake than a traditional doughnut, but they don't have the dry, grainy texture many GF mixes tend to yield. These seem to be especially well-received by children, so if you're a mom on the lookout for GF treats, get yourself some doughnut pans and try different flavors of GF cake mixes. Another advantage---doughnuts use less frosting than most cakes/cupcakes, so less sugar intake for your tykes.

Wilton and Norpro both make these non-stick doughnut pans, for both regular size and mini-doughnuts. You can get them at any store that has kitchen ware, from Target and Walmart to Macy's. A few well-stocked grocery stores carry them, too.

I'll be testing more gluten-free products in the weeks and months ahead---stay tuned for my review of gluten-free pizza mixes. Please note: I receive free products from many companies, including the ones mentioned in this post, for the purpose of experimenta-tion and review. I do not receive any additional personal compensation and would refuse it if offered.

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Old Fashioned Cake Doughnuts

6/6/2014

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In honor of National Doughnut Day, I got up the morning at 4:30 a.m. (surprisingly easy when you go to bed at a decent hour) to make old-fashioned cake doughnuts for the brethren. I felt a certain moral obligation to perform this service because I had mentioned the holiday in a homily earlier in the week.

Fortunately, I have the perfect equipment: a commercial deep fryer and Popeil's Donut Maker. As you can see from the photo, this little mechanism is vintage kitchen ware from the 40's. They came in red, yellow, and green plastic, and they were still making them in the 70's. I've seen a number of them at garage sales and antique malls and there are lots of them on e-Bay. They were recently revived by Ronco (I believe Ron Popeil is the son of the original manufacturer) and you can get one on Amazon for $5.95 right now (click HERE).

I used the original recipe from the box, except that I used canola oil instead of shortening, both for the recipe and for frying. I got great results, but here are some precautions: 1) Do not "scoop" the flour when you measure it. You'll compact the flour and end up using too much. Use the "spoon and level" method. 2) When you depress the level to dispense the batter, hold the device just above the hot oil so that the doughnut doesn't get distorted and you don't splash hot oil all over. 3) The batter will be a little thick and will come out of the dispenser rather slowly. Resist the temptation to add more milk to the batter, or you will risk having doughnuts that look like mutated DNA. This is a matter of personal experience.

You will be surprised at how good a fresh, homemade doughnut can be, even when unadorned by sugar or frosting. You will also notice that the doughnuts are much more modestly sized than most commercial doughnuts today. That's a good thing--you eat a couple of these and you feel like you've had a well-deserved treat rather than enduring a sense of dietary failure and bloated guilt. I doubt I'll be making doughnuts every week, but as a special treat they are well worth the effort.

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Gluten Free Cake Donuts from a mix

6/5/2014

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June 6, 2014 is National Donut Day, a holiday instituted by the Salvation Army: you can find the history HERE, and some interesting facts HERE. I'm going to be getting up early on the 6th to make fresh fried cake donuts for the brethren, but I decided to do a little gluten free baking as well.

I've been experimenting with gluten free yellow cake mix recently, specifically the one from Hodgson Mill, so I wondered about GF cake donuts from a mix. Turns out there are several versions out there. The one I followed (using regular cake mix) is HERE, and I got good results by just subbing the GF mix in a comparable size. My GF tasters (three generations of ladies, starting with a picky four year old) found them to be deliciously moist and not at all grainy (like so many GF products). They especially liked the glaze I made with 2 cups of powdered sugar and five little servings of hazelnut flavored half and half--30 seconds in the microwave makes it liquid enough to use as a glaze.

We all agreed that they could have been baked longer than the recipe called for, as they were fully baked but fell apart easily. I also added a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg (a classic donut flavoring) to the dry ingredients before mixing in the wet.

Since many people who go GF are concerned about healthy eating in general, I decided to bake the donuts instead of frying them. Wilton makes these donut pans---I got mine at Ace Hardware---or you can use one of those donut making machines which can often be found at garage sales and Goodwill for cheap. We all agreed that they could have been baked longer than the recipe called for, as they were done in the middle but fell apart easily. I also added a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg (a classic donut flavoring) to the dry ingredients before mixing in the wet.

I find that the donut making machines will give you more even browning, but you have to get the amount of batter just right. Don't let this manufacturer' photo fool you---they probably made about 4 dozen donuts to get 6 perfect ones for the shot. The recipe in the link above calls for buttering the pans, but some of the donuts really resisted removal from the pans, so I wonder if pan release spray would have done better. In any case, here's another use for GF cake mix---other recipes will be posted eventually, but I figured I needed to get this out for donut day!

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Fabs Nutty Goodness Rolls

6/3/2014

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Haven't posted a recipe in awhile, so here's a classic from my TV series, recently re-published in The Breadhead Bible. Pecan rolls, sticky buns, Fabs' Nutty Goodness---doesn't matter what you call them, they are the ultimate in breakfast self-indulgence. Click HERE for the recipe.

In the comments below, Breadhead Julie asked about the two different amounts of nuts. 1/2 cup goes in the filling, 3/4 cup in the pan with the caramel. Lots of nutty goodness!

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An Elegant Soda Bread

3/2/2014

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Since it's the month of Saint Patrick's Day. I'm sharing my recipe for Elegant Soda Bread again. The added sugar and coriander make it a little different than the usual fare, and you can serve it pretty much at any meal. I like it best as an accompaniment to fish.

When I was in my first year of priestly studies at St. Meinrad School of Theology, I used to visit Louisville, KY, about 70 miles away. In my first trip there with my friend John, we found a guide of the top 60 restaurants in the city. We decided that we would attempt to eat our way through the guide over the next four years, (leaving out anyplace that required dressing up too much!) Of course, we never got past the first 20, because we found a few we really liked and stuck with them. One of these favorites was a classy but unpretentious place called Jack Fry’s on Bardstown Road. They served a coriander soda bread with every entrée, and I used to eat baskets of it. The addition of coriander gives the bread an undercurrent of citrus that is subtle and exquisite.

Elegant Soda Bread
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
¼ cup sugar
1½ tsp. ground coriander
2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Sift dry ingredients into a medium size bowl. Gradually add buttermilk, stirring until smooth. The dough will be quite soft---do not over mix. Divide dough in half, and using floured hands, form each half into a round, slightly flattened shape. Place in greased pie plates, and cut a cross in the top to keep it from splitting during baking. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes, or until bread sounds hollow when tapped both top and bottom. Remove from pans to cool on wire racks. While loaves are still hot, you may brush the tops with butter.

If you omit the coriander, reduce the sugar to 2 tsp., and add a 15 oz. package of raisins, you’d have my mother’s favorite Irish soda bread recipe. She got it from Mrs. Jones, the mother of a priest who taught my mom in high school in Denver. Mom used to make this for the bake sale at St. Francis Hospital, which was always held the week before St. Patrick’s Day. She’d tie a green ribbon through the cross, to make it more attractive for the sale table. But she needn’t have bothered---the people working behind the counter often bought it right out of her hand!

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Paying It Forward

2/15/2014

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The photos above should give an idea about how I spent Friday night. There were about five cups of left over mashed potatoes in the fridge, so I mixed a batch of Best Ever Crescent Roll Dough, which is just about the most versatile dough in my baking repertoire. It makes wonderful dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, sandwich bread, and (if you omit a cup of flour and mix it a little slack) donuts. This morning the brethren had caramel pecan cinnamon rolls and donuts with hazelnut frosting.

(A little culinary hint. Keep a few of those flavored half and half creamers in the pantry, but not for coffee. Both the French vanilla and the hazelnut flavors make exquisite frosting. Add to powdered sugar with a pinch of salt and whisk until smooth, then heat in the microwave until the frosting just barely starts to bubble. Cooking it briefly will get rid of the raw-cornstarch-and-sugar flavor, plus make it easy to drizzle. AND if you use the hazelnut flavor and add Dutch process cocoa to the frosting, you get Nutella flavored frosting but at a fraction of what a jar of the real stuff costs.)

But even after breakfast and setting aside sandwich bread for lunch and dinner rolls for supper, I still have four dozen cinnamon rolls and two loaves of bread left. I could of course, double wrap everything and freeze them for future use, and I do that often enough. But one of my Facebook buddies posted a Pay It Forward challenge a few weeks ago and I signed up, so I think I'm going to deliver a random loaf of kindness or two.

Here's the idea: You post this as your Facebook status

I'm participating in this Pay-It-Forward initiative: The first five people who comment on this status with "I'm in", will receive a surprise from me at some point in this calendar year - anything from a book, a ticket, something home grown or made, a postcard, absolutely any surprise! There will be no warning and it will happen when the mood comes over me and I find something that I believe would suit you and make you happy. These five people must make the same offer in their FB status and distribute their own joy. Simply copy this text onto your profile, (don't share) so we can form a web of connection and kindness.

The first five people who sign up (I manged to get seven!) are the ones for whom you do random acts of kindness. BUT of course I couldn't leave well enough along and also posted this:

HOWEVER---we won't make the world a better place if all we do is help our FB friends. SOOOO, if you're in with ME, you have to agree that when you do something nice for a FB friend, you have to do something for a stranger as well. For example, you could leave money at a restaurant to pay for the meal of the next person who came in from the cold. Read Matthew 25:31-46 for ideas! Who's with me?

My first random act of kindness was to send a "valentine" to a food media friend of mine. I got the butter knife at a flea market for $2, and then used metal stamps and a hammer to make the inscription. I got the idea from Pinterest. I'm definitely going to be making more of these!

But because I made the commitment, today I have to do a kindness for a stranger, or more accurately, several strangers, since I have plenty to share. I've been trying to encourage this sort of behavior lately. Last Sunday I was preaching at a parish in Morris Illinois, and in the narthex I put out about 80 photo greeting cards I had made and asked people to send a note of encouragement to someone they know who is hurting. The reaction was overwhelming: people were genuinely grateful to have an immediate, practical way to express Christian love and concern. It's the sort of thing we all want to do but somehow other things get in the way.

So when you read this blog, if you are at all inspired, get off the computer and do a random act of kindness now. Bake a batch of cookies and take it to the nurses in the local ER or the staff at the Veteran's Home, or drop it off at the police station. Call someone you know who has lost a loved one in the past year and just spent Valentine's Day alone, and invite them to lunch. Send a card with $10 for pizza to a college freshman, take a pan of lasagna to that single mom down the block, shovel the walk for the neighbor who yells at your kids. And start a batch of dough---we can change the world, one loaf at a time.

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Cream Puffs

Hoska/Vanocka/Stricka

Pumpkin Pudding Bread

Strawberry Rolls for breakfast!

Hodgson Mill GF Cake Mix

Old Fashioned Cake Doughnuts

Gluten Free Cake Donuts from a mix

Fabs Nutty Goodness Rolls

An Elegant Soda Bread

Paying It Forward

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