Granola bars vs. Lemon buns

Yes, I will eat you granola bar. But I am not going to enjoy it.

Ok, I will enjoy it. But not as much as I would have if I wasn't limited to what was available in my cupboard, baked in the spirit of "use it up." Based roughly on Sprouted Kitchen's recipe, minus the dates, plus raisin paste, wheat germ and hemp seeds.

But you! I am going to love eating you, you delicious sticky lemon roll.

Made using the Kitchn recipe, but in a bread machine using the dough cycle. I reduced the yeast to 1 1/2 tsps, and probably should have reduced the flour to 3.5 cups. I had to hand knead it at the end of the cycle, as not all the flour had worked in to the dough. I let it rise an extra time for good measure.

Baltic un-Birthday Bread

One of my favorite treats to make for a party is a Baltic Birthday Bread, from this super duper Canadian-flour bread machine book. It looks very impressive, and I consider myself somewhat Baltic in origin, as my father's family comes from the former Konigsberg. While that particular region of the Baltic has, and had, little cultural similarity to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, I still am drawn to Baltic culture. I am not sure how authentically Baltic this is, but I did find another recipe for it citing Estonian origins.

I simply couldn't get a picture of it whole. It is that good.

While I technically made this to clean out the cupboards (it uses sliced almonds, candied fruit, and saffron), the only reason those ingredients were in the cupboard were my aborted attempts to make it over the last few months. The texture and flavor is reminiscent of hot cross buns, soft and doughy with hints of fruit.

Cleaning out our cupboards

We are getting kitchen renos done in 2 weeks. This is excellent motivation to clean out the cupboards.

Personally, I am going to use this opportunity to find the perfect granola bar recipe. I made a batch of Pioneer Woman bars a month or two ago, and found they didn't stick together well. Our biggest need - to - empty cupboard is the baking one, which is full of granola bar worthy ingredients.

I managed to use over 7 cups of miscellaneous cupboardry while attempting to make some yesterday.  I roughly followed this recipe, but added in peanut butter (because I love it) and a banana (because I had it). They are ok. But not perfect.

Pumpkin scones

Made these pumpkin scones today. I had a can of pumpkin open after attempting to make the pumpkin nut muffins they used to make at the Cocoa Bean, and wanted to try a different pumpkin recipe. I didn't double-glaze these as the recipe suggests. Just one glaze is enough. I grew up on plain scones with raisins in them. One glaze already feels like I'm cheating.

I am trying to figure out whether I should grow pie pumpkins this year; I grew regular pumpkins with some success in one particular bed and would like to switch them out for something more practical. So I am experimenting with baked goods just to see how practical I can make pie pumpkins.
I have eaten more of these than is healthy for one day.

Macarons at last

At Christmastime my husband appealed to me to stop making macarons. Or rather, to stop trying to make macarons. I was not successful, batch after batch, and he was tired of seeing both the kitchen and my nerves in a perpetual state of disarray. I started Googling "macaron fail" to make myself feel better.

But finally, I have succeeded.

Vanilla-mango macarons. Success.

There are a hundred different ways you can mess up macarons. In December, I suspect my main mess up was trying to "cheat" by using egg whites from a carton. For a real baker this mistake might have been obvious. I am not really a real baker. Of course, the problem isn't just the macarons. I always have problems making meringue, the first step in macaron-ing. I'm using an old hand beater, rather than a fancy stand mixer. It takes at least 10 minutes longer for the whites to form "stiff peaks" than any recipe I've ever used calls for. Some say ageing the egg whites is critical. They also need to be room temperature, which in Canada this time of year can still be rather cold - so I put them on the counter for hours. 

But the meringue isn't the only finicky part. Watch what kind of colouring you add to the batter, as some claim that liquid food dyes change its consistency. I've seen a video stating that you need to blend the dry ingredients in very vigorously, so as to remove the bubbles. A magazine article notes that the batter should flow "like lava" (like I have seen lava to compare!). And if you make it through all those steps without error, you can't forget to leave the macarons out for at least 30 minutes before baking, so that they form a skin and the signature "feet" appear on the bottom of the cookie.

So now I've annotated my recipe with all of the above reminders. For the filling, I used mango jam that I canned in July using Pomona's Universal Pectin (an amazing product that isn't sugar activated). They were tasty cookies, if very sweet. I might have had too many to celebrate.