A Romanian Pastry

I work with the coolest people. One of them is a Romanian mother of two, with whom I joke that we'll open a pastry shop together when academia doesn't work out. She makes an array of delicious desserts on a semi-regular basis (though I'm not sure where she finds the time), including a many-layered dobosh torte, walnut bars, and these. Matt has always been partial to anything resembling a linzer torte, so I asked for the recipe. We're planning to have a baking session sometime where I can learn all her secrets. She's also on my committee, which is awesome.

Dough

• 2 2/3 c. flour
• 2 sticks butter
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• zest and juice of one lemon
• 4 yolks

Filling

• 2 1/2 cups frozen raspberries
• 1 1/2 cups sugar

1. Combine the flour and sugar and zest in a both. Cut in the butter until the mixture is like coarse sand. Stir in the yolks and lemon juice until the dough just holds together. It should be dry, but should hold together when pressed.
2. Divide dough into 2/3 and 1/3 and form into discs. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for at least an hour.
3. For the filling, bring the raspberries and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thick and jam-like. Remove from heat.
4. Preheat the oven to 350F
5. When the dough is chilled, take out the 2/3 piece and roll it out to fit a 13"x9" pan. You may have to let it warm up a little before it is rollable. Butter the bottom of the pan and place the dough in it.
6. Spread the raspberry filling over the dough, and stick it back in the fridge.
7. Take out the remaining 1/3 of the dough. Roll it to about 10"x5" and cut into 1/2-inch wide strips. Take the pan back out of the fridge and layer the dough strips in a lattice pattern. You don't have to weave them. The angle and frequency of the lattice strips will depend on how you rolled and cut the top dough.
8. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until the top is slightly browned and the jam is bubbly. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

Making the lattice top

Pumpkin Cookies

Summer arrived in Colorado about a month and a half ago. I was home in Minnesota last weekend, and the trees were budding. This place is crazy. Matt and I have been doing wedding preparation type things. And Ultimate season is starting, which means I get to wear my garish homemade pink tractor skirt (and yes, this fabric is available at JoAnn's)! And that I can bake for frisbee friends.

Today's special is pumpkin cookies (more like pumpkin muffin tops, really).

Soft Pumpkin Cookies

from AllRecipes

Cookies

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting

• 1 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 tablespoon cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-2 tablespoons milk

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with partchment paper or silpat. (Or not, if you're ill-equipped).
2. Mix together oil, egg, sugar, vanilla, and pumpkin until well-blended
3. Add flour, leavening, spices, and salt in a pile on top and mix them together a bit before stirring into the wet ingredients.
4. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto cookies sheets (supposedly makes 36, my batch made 22 because I got overexcited about large cookies). Bake for 15 minutes or until tops are slightly browned. Cool completely.
5. In the meantime, make the icing. Combine all ingredients but the milk, and add enough milk to make it drizzly. When cookies are totally cool, drizzle the icing over them.

Berry Cake

One of Matt's most endearing qualities is his tendency to get fixated on things. We've been talking about doing cake tastings for our weddings, with a particular mind to our favorite Whole Food's cake, Berry Chantilly Cream. Then our friend Erin texts us a picture of a white berry cake that she made. And we're fixated. We originally thought we'd make a king cake for Carnivale/Mardi Gras. Then we remembered that king cakes aren't really that tasty. So the berry cream fixation came back up.

We've been working our way through tasty recipes in our new Cook's Illustrated Cookbook (amazing!) And it turns out there is a strawberry cream cake recipe! Score.


In other news, I bought some excellent knobs from Anthropologie on discount. I frequently wander the store looking at the bizarre collection of knobs, knick-knacks, and dishware. So a sale rack was hard to resist. I thought I'd make a rack to hang my numerous necklaces on so that I could use the top of my dresses for something other than a pile of necklaces. And I finally got around to it. I got a foot of baseboard for a buck at Home Depot and sanded it to make it look weathered. You know, cause that's in.


Strawberry Cream Cake
from Cook's Illustrated

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cups cake flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 5 large eggs (2 whole and 3 separated), room temp
• 6 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 2 Tbsp water
• 2 tsp vanilla
• pinch cream of tartar

1. Grease a 9-inch cake pan or springform pan, line with a parchment paper cut to fit the bottom and grease the parchment. Reserve 3 Tbsp sugar. Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining sugar in a medium bowl. Whisk in 2 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks, butter, water, and vanilla until smooth.
2. Whisk egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy on medium-low. Increase speed to medium-high and whip whites until soft and billowy. Add the reserved 3 Tbsp sugar and whip until soft peaks form (about 1-2 minutes). Stir one third of the whites into the batter, and gently fold in the rest.
   
3. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 30-40 minutes. Let cake cool 10 minutes, then invert and let cool completely out of pan, about 2 hours.

• 2 pounds strawberries (or other berries)
  
• 4-6 Tbsp sugar (depends on sweetness of berries)
  
• 2 Tbsp kirsch
• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2 cups heavy cream, chilled.

1. For the filling, halve 24 of the strawberries for garnish and mix the remainder in a bowl with 4-6 Tbsp sugar. Let sit one hour. Strain juices and reserve. Pulse the berries briefly in blender or food processor. Simmer reserved juices and kirsch over medium-high until reduced to 3 Tbsps (3-5 minutes). Pour reduced syrup over berries, add salt and toss.
2. For the whipped cream frosting, whip cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Ad heavy cream slowly while mixing and ship on medium-high until stiff peaks form.
   
3. To assemble, cut the cake horizontally into three layers.
4. Place one layer on a plate, place a ring of 20 strawberry halves around the outside (tops out) and fill with half of the filling. Frost is 1/3 of the whipped cream. Repeat with the second layer. After placing the third layer, frost the remaining cream on top and garnish with remaining berry halves.
   

By the way, the frosting is the best ever.

More chocolate please

I've been doing a lot of crafting in the last few months. I never really got into knitting (too ADD?), but when a friend recently showed me how to wire wrap my own earrings, I went a little nuts. And once I had an absurd amount of dangly earrings, I needed a better place to store them than on the bathroom counter. Here's my solution. Fine black plastic mesh in a picture frame. I feel so clever. Now I have to stop making earrings. I am also planning to make a wedding quilt in lieu of a guestbook. Not that I've ever made anything using a sewing machine unless I was supervised by a pro seamstress. We'll see how that goes in a few months.


I'm always looking for a cookie/brownie that maximizes chocolate per bite while not getting dry or otherwise unpleasant. I've had this recipe on my "to bake" list for a couple of months now. Not sure how I only just made them. Yes, they do take the equivalent of two normal-sized bags (24 oz.) of chocolate chips per batch. I didn't try the recipe that calls for 42 oz. Patience, grasshopper.


Chocolate Chubbie's
adapted from Sarabeth's Bakery

• 1 stick (8 Tbsp) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips (or 9 oz. bittersweet + 3 oz. unsweetened)
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 12 oz. (2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts (or with half pecans)

1. Position racks in center and top third of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper
2. Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Put the butter in a metal bowl and melt over the water. Add 12 oz. of chocolate and stir until melted and smooth. Remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes to cool.
3. Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt in a little bowl.
   
4. Whip the eggs with your fancy mixer or whisk until foamy. Add sugar and vanilla and whip for 3 more minutes until very thick and pale yellow. Beat in the lukewarm chocolate mixture. Gradually stir in the flour mixture by hand. Stir in the remaining chocolate chips and nuts. Dough will be softer than most cookie dough.
   
5. Scoop batter by 2 Tbsp-fulls onto pans, placing them 1-1/2 inches apart. Bake, switching positions halfway through, for 17-20 minutes, until the edges are set. Don't overbake them (though the batch I overbaked was delicious once you gummed them a bit. . .). Cool completely before storing.
   

Oops. The cookie that broke obviously needs to be culled from the pack.

Changes

Hi there,

I wanted to let you all know that I'm not renewing my breadsandthreads.com domain, but this blog will still be accessible at breadsandthreads.blogspot.com. And I now have yet another blog. Matt and I are getting married this summer, and we started a blog about our wedding plans, which we hope to continue after we're married to keep everyone up to date on our lives. It's at Haggerling. I will still post recipes to this blog.

We had an amusing experience at Whole Foods yesterday. Boulder is funny. We were getting a sample of bread, and the lady behind us said "Does this have yeast in it?" Matt and I both looked at her like she was crazy. The woman giving samples checked the ingredients: wheat flour, salt, sourdough starter. . . No yeast. Matt felt the need to clarify that sourdough starter has yeast, and that is indeed why the bread is not a brick. The woman who asked felt the need to inform us that people have been using sourdough starters for centuries and seemed satisfied that there was no yeast in the bread. Really?

Fun with Dad in Denver

Sometimes people in Colorado are surprised that I am dedicated to moving home to Minnesota after finishing this dumb degree. Sure, Colorado is amazing, and I very very blessed to have the opportunity to live here for a few years. But Minnesota is home. Or more accurately, Minnesota is family. Almost my entire extended family lives in the Twin Cities area. And most importantly, my parents and siblings are there. Probably for good. We're a bunch of homebodies.

I am very lucky in that my family members come to visit Colorado pretty often. Conferences, ski time, and mountain time are all prime chances for visits. For example, my dad was in Denver this weekend for a conference, and my mom is here next weekend.


Dad and I went out in Denver for the afternoon yesterday. We visited the Denver Art Museum, which is in an awesome, castle-like building. They had a pretty cool Asian exhibit, and a Western American section, which I've never seen before. I also had my first Tattered Cover experience (awesome local bookstore). Went out at to the Corner Office and got a bowl of fried, salted peppers for an appetizer. And holy crap, my phone camera has a flash. . . This picture was after we had eaten about 1/3 of them. They were so addicting.


Dad ordered the signature chicken and waffles, and we both had a difficult time processing the maple syrup + chicken combo, but it was delicious. Even more delicious was my fresh tagliatelle with bolognese. So good in fact, that I scarfed it down before taking a picture. While walking about earlier, we saw a Johnny Rocket's, and decided after dinner that we needed a milkshake. Milkshakes!

And the best part of being a milkshake is that when you get a milkshake, you get TWO MILKSHAKES.

Halloween the fun way

Halloween was way more awesome when we were little. You got to dress up in order to walk around outside and get candy. These days, it seems like people dress up in order to go into cramped indoor places with loud music full in order to get beer and hang out with drunk people. Total lose. Matt and I spent yesterday in our jammies making deliciously seasonal soup and playing computer games and reading Winnie-the-Pooh (ok, that was just me). Hard to think of a better way to spend a day/evening.



The deal with this recipe is you get to make your own strudel dough i.e. phyllo dough. Phyllo has always been one of those mysterious ingredients that seemed impossible to make on your own. Not so. Haha

Apple Strudel

For the filling:

• 1 Tbsp cinnamon
• 6 Tbsp toasted bread crumbs
• Rind of 1 lemon
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 8 cups finely chopped apples (~6 apples)

1. Combine ingredients.

For the dough:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/4 tsp vinegar
  
• 2 tsp melted butter

1. Combine ingredients and knead for 10 minutes until the dough is silky, adjusting water/flour content as needed.
   
2. Brush the surface of the dough with melted butter and roll as thin as possible.
   
3. Stretch the dough being careful not to tear it. If it tears easily, it probably needs more kneading. The dough should stretch an unbelievable amount, to about a square yard.
4. Cut the edges off of the dough, as they will be think and bulgy.

For assembly:

• 6 Tbsp melted butter

1. brush the dough with melted butter and place filling is a log on one end. Carefully roll the strudel, making sure that the ends are covered with dough. It's ok if the dough rips, as you'll have a lot of layers. Brush the rolled strudel with more melted butter and bake for 20 minutes at 400F, then at 10 350F for 10 minutes.