King Cake

My love affair with king cake started about seven years ago. My husband and I had picked one up from a Giant Eagle bakery and we loved it! Sadly, that was also the last year we ever saw one there.

Every year around Mardi Gras, I kept my eyes opened for just the right cake. We've tried several, but none were that good or very memorable. Last year, I went a step further in my search. I contacted several Giant Eagle stores around town hoping to surprise my husband with the real deal. I was so excited when I found one store had the materials to make us one! We were so excited to have our beloved original cake get in our bellies. Only it wasn't our beloved cake. It was completely sub par: dry, bland, mediocre.

This year, I decided enough was enough. It was time to take matters into my own hands. Armed with a delicious sounding (and looking!) recipe from Bunkycooks, I set to work. I had the dough made and rising in about 30 minutes. While the dough rose, I assembled my filling, cleaned up the kitchen, and perused Pinterest, not necessarily in that order.

The dough took about an hour and a half to rise, and was a dream to roll out,  needing very little flour. The entire assembly process for two cakes only took about 15 minutes. After a 45 minute rise, they were ready for the oven. 25 minutes later, they were out of the oven and ready to get fancy. Yea Mardi Gras!

The results were sublime. King cake is a bit of a misnomer as this is definitely a sweet bread, but what a delicious sweet bread it is. The filling which includes brown sugar, raisins, and pecans is so good; the hint of nutmeg in the pastry was just perfect; and the incredibly simple powdered sugar/water icing brought it all together beautifully. I daresay, it was even better than the original king cake we had spent so many years looking for. My good friend Jo declared that making this should become a new tradition and I couldn't agree more.

Even though Mardi Gras is over for this year, do yourself a favor and don't put off making this until next year. Through it together, top it with some pretty pastel icing and call it "Easter Cake." People will thank you. Or throw some green sprinkles on there and it's "Shamrock Cake." Halloween? You know what to do.  

King Cake

Yield: 2 cakes

Ingredients:
Pastry:

• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast
• 2/3 cup warm water (110° F)
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
• 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Filling:

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
• 2/3 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup melted butter 

Frosting:

• 2 cup confectioners' sugar, divided
• 2- 2½ Tbsp. water, divided

Directions
For pastry:
Scald milk, remove from heat and stir in 1/4 cup of butter. Allow mixture to cool to room temperature. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in the warm water with 1 tablespoon of the white sugar. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.

When yeast mixture is bubbling, add the cooled milk mixture. Whisk in the eggs. Stir in the remaining white sugar and salt. Combine the flour and the nutmeg. Beat the flour/nutmeg mixture into the milk/egg mixture 1 cup at a time. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 to 10 minutes. Alternatively, if using a stand mixer, switch to the dough hook and mix at medium speed for 6-7 minutes, or until smooth and elastic.

Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1.5-2 hours. When risen, punch down and divide dough in half.

Preheat oven to 375°. Grease 2 cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

For filling:
Combine the brown sugar, ground cinnamon, chopped pecans, 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup raisins. Pour 1/2 cup melted butter over the cinnamon mixture and mix until crumbly.

To assemble:
Roll dough halves out into large rectangles (approximately 10x16 inches or so). Sprinkle the filling evenly over the dough and roll up each half tightly like a jelly roll, beginning at the wide side. Bring the ends of each roll together to form 2 oval shaped rings. Place each ring on a prepared cookie sheet. With scissors or a very sharp knife, make cuts 1/3 of the way through the rings at 1 inch intervals. Let rise in a warm spot until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes. Push the doll or large pecan, if using, into the bottom of the cake. Frost while warm with the confectioners' sugar blended with 1 to 2 tablespoons of water.
 
Note: My cakes took about 25 minutes to bake. I covered them with aluminum foil at about 15 minutes to avoid excessive browning, and rotated the pans top to bottom/left to right halfway through baking.


Note: When you are ready to ice the cakes, you will want to make the icing separate (1 c. powdered sugar and 1 Tbsp. water) for each cake, especially if you are going to sprinkle them with colored sugars. The icing hardens pretty quickly.

Source: Bunkycooks

Quick and Easy Cinnamon Rolls

These are not the kind of cinnamon rolls that you labor over, waiting in eager anticipation while they rise, only to find that the temperature of the milk was too hot and killed the yeast. Not even close.

These are easy. No dough making required. Perfect for those mornings that your kiddos ask for cute heart-shaped cinnamon rolls. Guess who was the super mom this morning? This girl. A little pre-made store-bought pizza dough, butter, cinnamon, and sugar, plus about the 10 minutes I spent in assembly was all that was needed. Did I mention they are an IKEA cinnamon roll knock-off? You heard me.

The cute heart shape was courtesy of Gourmet Mom on the Go. The perfect breakfast for someone you love.

Quick and Easy Cinnamon Rolls

Yield: 6 Rolls

Ingredients:

• 1 package Trader Joe's plain pizza dough*
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375° degrees. Combine cinnamon and sugar. On a lightly-floured surface, roll pizza dough into a 9-inch square. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, leaving 1/2 inch border of plain dough around edges.

Roll dough to form a tight log, pinching to seal the seam shut. With the seam side down, cut evenly into six pieces with a serrated knife. Place in buttered pan, and brush tops with any remaining butter.

Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool for a few minutes before icing.

*Note from The Kitchn: You can substitute 2 packages of Pillsbury's French Loaf dough for the Trader Joe's pizza dough. The Pillsbury dough also made tasty rolls, but did they not rise as much in the oven.

Icing **
1 tablespoon whipped cream cheese
1 tablespoon buttermilk
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

Whisk cream cheese and buttermilk in large bowl until thick and smooth. Sift in confectioners' sugar; whisk until smooth glaze forms, about 30 seconds.

Drizzle glaze over buns with a spoon. Or, if you want to get fancy, fill a plastic Ziploc bag with the glaze, cut off the tip of one corner, and drizzle in a professional-looking zigzag. Serve warm.

 **I have not tried this icing, as a quick mix of a little milk, powdered sugar, and a dash of vanilla is the quickest and easiest icing, and my preferred recipe when in a hurry. I included the original icing recipe because I wanted you to have the full Ikea-knock-off experience, if your looking for that sort of thing.

Source: The Kitchn. Heart shape design from Gourmet Mom on the Go.

Blood Orange Sugared Scones

I have a new love of scones (probably the result of an occupational hazard - thank you very much Sassafras Bakery), but had yet to make them myself at home. Enter Jessica's rave reviews of these blood orange scones and I knew I could put it off no longer.

The secret to making any sort of scone or biscuit is this: Use cold butter and don't overwork the dough. Pretty simple, right? And topping it with an orange-peel-infused sugar doesn't hurt, either.

Did I mention the glaze? Blood orange juice + powdered sugar = tasty and perfect for Valentine's Day. ♥

If you don't want to have a bunch of yummy, tender, baked scones sitting on your counter, you're in luck! These can easily be shaped and individually frozen after the dough has been made, allowing you to have something on hand if company drops by, or you find yourself needing a little something sweet. They don't seem to rise quite as high as the unfrozen variety, but I could taste any difference.

Don't have blood oranges? Regular oranges are a perfect substitute. The only thing missing is that lovely pink in the glaze.

Blood Orange Sugared Scones

Yield: 16 scones

Ingredients:

• 3 1/4 cups flour
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar + 2 tablespoons
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cups cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 blood oranges, zested
• melted butter

Preheat oven to 425° degrees. In a small bowl, combine 1/3 cup sugar with about 1/2 of the grated orange zest. Rub together with your fingers until combined and fragrant.

In large bowl combine flour, orange sugar, salt, baking soda and powder. Using your fingers, a fork or a pastry blender, cut in butter until it forms coarse crumbs (the butter chunks should be a pea-sized, or a little smaller). Stir in buttermilk and vanilla, and add half of the remaining orange zest. Add the juice from 1/2 of one blood orange. Stir with a spoon until a dough forms, using your hands to bring it together. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently. (I kneaded mine in the bowl.)

Divide in half and pat into 7 inch round circles. Alternately, use a large scoop and place on baking sheet. Combine the remaining sugar and orange zest. Brush each scone with melted butter and sprinkle with orange sugar. Cut into 6 or 8 wedges, or use a biscuit cutter to make rounds.
Bake for 12-14 minutes (wedges) or 9-11 minutes (rounds/scoops). Top with blood orange glaze while still warm.

Note: If you can’t find blood oranges, any type of orange can be used for these scones!

To freeze: Shape and cut dough. Top with melted butter and sprinkle on orange sugar. Place in freezer on baking sheet. When completely frozen, the scones can be placed together in a freezer bag or container. Bake on stoneware to prevent bottoms from overbrowning, and increase bake time to 18-21 minutes.

Blood Orange Glaze

• Juice of one blood orange
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

Stir ingredients together until a smooth glaze forms. Depending on how juicy your orange is, you made need more juice or more sugar. If glaze seems too thin, add in sugar 1 tablespoon at a time. If it seems too thick, add more juice 1/2 teaspoon at a time. Pour over warm scones.

Source: Ever so slightly adapted from How Sweet Eats

Cream Biscuits

On Thanksgiving Day, I made some delicious garlic yeast rolls in my beloved King Arthur Flour 10x10 glazed stoneware pan. I left the rolls sitting in the pan on the front burner of my stove, and somehow inadvertently knocked the burner onto low at some point that morning. I heard a crack, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. After the second crack, I realized the burner was on, and the heat from the burner had cracked my pan almost perfectly in half. The pan had been a Christmas gift from my sister two years ago, and it was my favorite piece of bakeware. I was pretty sad to have to throw it away.

I immediately set out to try and replace it, but the pan had been discontinued earlier this year. My sister and husband both searched to find me a replacement for Christmas. My husband tracked down the only pan our search engines could find available and bought it, surprising me Christmas morning. To our dismay, there was a slight flaw in the stoneware: A small bubble that had a tiny crack on the bottom of the pan.

We messaged the seller. "Do you have another? Please?!" Negative. We searched online again. Nothing. I called pottery retailers and we asked friends if they thought baking in it would cause it to crack. Online resources said it may, the pottery retailer said it probably would, but friends and Nate's gut said to try it anyway... but to try it with something that wouldn't make a complete mess in the oven if it decided to crack/shatter while baking. My answer: biscuits. And easy ones, at that. There was no way I was going to spend a lot of time making something that could end up in the trash. If they turned out tasty, bonus. My concern was the pan, truth be told.

To my surprise and delight, the pan didn't crack!! (At least not yet. I'm cautiously optimistic.) And even better, the biscuits that I spent all of 10 minutes throwing together were delicious! A slight crustiness on the outside, moist and tender inside. Everything that I love in a good biscuit. It was a double win!

These biscuits pair perfectly with jam - no butter needed. My personal favorite, cherry cognac, is made by Sweet Things Gourmet, a Columbus, OH-based business. The owners are as kind as their jam is delicious. Even if you are not in the Columbus area, their jams are available for purchase online, or you can just drool over all the amazing flavor combinations on their menu.

To recap: Pan = good. Biscuits = good. Jam = good. Life = good.

*Opinions about Sweet Thing Gourmet jams are my own. They know I love them, but were not aware that I would share my love for them on my blog.

Cream Biscuits

Yield: 8 biscuits

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream (divided)

Place a layer of parchment paper across the bottom and up 2 sides of an 8"x8" (or 10"x10") pan. Preheat oven to 425°F degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix together dry ingredients and stir with a whisk to combine. Stir in all but a 1/4 cup of cream.

Dump onto floured work surface and add remaining cream to the dry bits left in the bowl, scrape out and add to dough already on counter. Knead briefly (30 seconds) until dough comes together. Shape dough into a long rectangle and cut in half length-wise and then cut each piece into 4 pieces horizontally. Place biscuits in pan, then place in the oven on the middle rack for 16-20 minutes until golden.

Source: The Kitchn

Homemade Ciabatta Bread

On Thanksgiving Eve, my sister-in-law called and asked if I could bring rolls to dinner the next day. Not wanting to head to the store, I sorted through some previously bookmarked recipes and settled on three different yeast breads... that way we would have variety and a back-up in case one or more didn't turn out well. (I was working with yeast, after all, and while I've had success with it in the past, each time I approach it with a tiny bit of fear, and a smidgen of trepidation.)

Of the three that I made, these were the most work, but in some ways, the most rewarding. It starts out with a biga, or pre-ferment that is made the night before and used to create that beautiful texture found in ciabatta bread. Making the biga is easy as it is essentially combining yeast, flour, and water and allowing it become a big, soupy mess overnight.

The next morning, the biga is combined with more yeast and water, then flour and salt, allowed to rest, then kneaded in a stand mixture for 15-18 minutes. Here's where you have to really keep an eye on things, as my stand mixer tried to walk off my counter at about the 8 minute mark. Trust me, it's totally worth the extra attention.

After a rise, dough shaping, and another rise, and it's ready to bake. I elected to make the rolls instead of loaves, which were adorable, but the next time, I'm going to make the loaves. There was a lot of crunchy exterior to the soft, airy, chewy interior, and it made it harder for the kiddos to eat.

I wish I had taken a picture of the inside (it was beautiful), but you can check out a pretty amazing step-by-step here. They came out just as pictured. I love it when that happens.

A lot of work? Kinda. Worth it? Absolutely.

Homemade Ciabatta 

Yield: 2 loaves, or 16 rolls

Ingredients:

Biga

• 4 ounce (1/2 cup) water
• 1/2 teaspoon active-dry yeast
• 5 ounce (1 cup) all-purpose flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the flour and stir to form a thick, gloppy paste. Give it a good fifty or so brisk stirs to build up the gluten. Cover and let sit at room temperature eight hours or overnight.
By the next day, the biga will look soupy with many big bubbles dotting the surface.

Ciabatta

• 17 ounces (2 cups + 2 tablespoons) water
• 1 teaspoon active-dry yeast
• Biga
• 20 ounces (4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

Dissolve the yeast in the water in the bowl of a standing mixer. Scrape the biga into the water and break it up with your spatula or squeeze it between your hands. You don't need to completely dissolve the biga; just loosen it up and break it into stringy blobs.

Add all of the flour and the salt. Stir to form a thick, very wet dough. Let this rest for 10-20 minutes to give the flour time to absorb the water.

Fit your standing mixer with a dough hook and knead at medium speed for 15-18 minutes (Level 5 or 6 on a KitchnAid). Keep a close eye on your mixer as it has a tendency to "walk" on the counter at this speed.
The dough will start off sticking to the bottom and sides of the bowl. Around the 7-minute mark, it will start to pull away from the sides of the bowl, collect around the dough hook, and regularly slap the sides of the bowl. If it doesn't, nudge your mixer speed up a notch. Also, if the dough starts climbing the dough hook, stop the mixer and scrape it down again. By the end of kneading, the dough will look smooth and creamy with a glossy shine. It will puddle back into the bowl once you turn off the mixer, and this is fine.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rise at 70° - 75° for 2-3 hours, until tripled in bulk.

Dust your work surface heavily with flour. Set two sheets of parchment near your work surface. Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the flour, taking care not to deflate it too much. Dust the top of the dough with more flour. Using a pastry scraper or pizza wheel, cut the dough in two pieces for loaves or into 16 pieces for rolls.

Brush your hands with flour. Working gently but swiftly, scoop the the loaves (or the rolls) one at a time from the work surface to the parchment. Press your fingertips about halfway into the dough to dimple the surface and slightly flatten the loaves (or rolls). Let the loaves (or rolls) rise, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes. When ready to bake, they should look pillowy with many big bubbles just beneath the surface.

Preheat the oven to 475°F while the loaves are rising. If you have a baking stone, put it in the oven now.
When ready to bake, slide the loaves, still on the parchment, onto a pizza peel or baking sheet. Transfer them to the oven to cook, either on the baking stone or directly on the baking sheet if you don't have a stone. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. Slip the parchment out from under the loaves and cool completely before eating.

Source: The Kitchn