Kourambiethes Rose's Alpha Bakers

Kourambiethes (Greek Biscuits) 'The Baking Bible'

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Aristotle wore an icing sugar moustache. 

With a portly build and chubby hands, I was trying not to stare at the child sized more like a four year old than the eighteen month year old his parents professed him to be. That's how it began, my first after school job babysitting Aristotle in the back of the Greek delicatessen. 

It was pre Christmas rush, time for freshly baked Kourambiethes. Trays of snowy white crescents and clove dotted balls drifted past, aromas of spiced oranges and roses trailing in the air... then again, it could have been Aristotle's breath!

Today's bake from 'The Baking Bible' is Kourambiethes (Greek biscuits/cookies), a light shorbread usually made with the Greek brandy Metaxa in the recipe (orange juice if going alcohol free), with or without nuts these are always delicious and never more so than Rose's recipe that uses whipped clarified butter.  

The recipe starts with clarifying the butter. Lots of butter!!

Cubed butter is melted.

Foam can be skimmed off the top of melted butter as your going if desired, using a spoon or a small slotted spoon being careful not to remove too much of the butter.

Butter is strained through the muslin to remove all milk solids. 

Chilled clarified butter is unmoulded ready to be chopped, transferred to a mixing bowl with icing sugar.

My butter weight was short, perhaps due the ummm, zillion (or at least six) folds I made in the muslin. I had to melt more butter to strain to make up weight. I used food safe muslin, using food safe muslin rather than fabric from a fabric store ensures no chemicals unsafe for human consumption are used.

Oh, better toast the almonds... these are what Australian's call slivered almonds this may differ in other countries, but it's what I toasted and then chopped.

toasted chopped almonds

Ten minutes mixing and you have a white fluffy butter mixture, egg yolks, brandy, vanilla are added before the chopped toasted almonds are mixed in and finally the flour and baking powder.

After chilling the biscuit mixture is shaped into balls (I made the traditional crescent shapes too).

Often garnished with a whole clove, you see these cookies at Christmas time and Pascha (Greek Easter), though I have had them at Greek Weddings too. 

Keeping with tradition, I added a whole clove to the center of the round cookies. Despite the "tooth ache drops" smell when you open your cloves pack it won't taste like that once baked, what you get is a lovely touch of spice and a gentle spice aroma. 

Wish you could taste these, the texture is so light and airy! Don't forget to remove your clove :)

Would I bake again? Yes, love the light airy texture the clarified butter brings.

Would I change anything? Yes, I like stronger flavours so I would add either rose water, orange water and orange zest. Salt... I'd add salt, all a bit sweet. Spices; would be nice with nutmeg, cardamom or experiment with teas and coffee. Break with tradition and change the nuts, have a peanut Greek biscuit, pipe on chocolate or perhaps top warm pistachio biscuits with freeze dried cherry dust. 

How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a month I will post about what I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.

The Baking Bible available from Amazon and all discerning book retailers. 

You never know when you will need to make a fondant toe... a Cinderella stepsister toe cupcake. 

Molasses Crumb Cakelets Rose's Alpha Bakers

molasses crumb cakelets 'The Baking Bible'

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Golden Syrup is treacle, black molasses is a treacle and yes, "treacle" is a umm "treacle'. For today's Molasses cakes I'm using treacle... confused? Lol, sometimes it's like that baking from country to country. Lets look to Wikipedia for 'Treacle is any uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of sugar.' 

treacle and golden syrup are acidic and that acidity reacts with the bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) in the recipe resulting in your cakes rising. 

treacle comes in different grades from a bitter black molasses to the usually charcoal filtered mellower and sweeter tasting golden syrup.

Today's molasses cakelets are the same type of cake that in Australia your Nana baked using recipes left over from "harder times" where you may not have had eggs, butter and the like but always seemed to have a supply of treacle for cakes and puddings.  UK chefs still bake up a range of treacle baked treats, including treacle tart (golden syrup with loads of fresh lemon zest) to cocoa rich treacle cakes. Nut and date fruit loaves are still sold in supermarkets in Australia, egg and butter free they are vegan like today's cakes.

I still bake these for my Dad, spiced date fruit loaves made in the distinct round sealed end pipe pans. 

And you know who else knew all about treacle? The dormouse of course in Alice in Wonderland speaking of the three girls young girls living in the treacle well----

`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse

These cute molasses cakelets are quick to make and are perfect for an Alice in Wonderland themed afternoon tea, as part of a high tea or served warm smeared with butter and a strong cuppa on Sunday afternoon. They are quite sweet, so try serving with lemon tea to balance the flavour.   

A quick batter to prepare, a sugar, oil, flour mixture has some removed and set aside to become the crumb topping. Treacle was added to remaining mix with bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and boiling water.

Into a jug for easy pouring into prepared mini muffin tins.

Reserved "crumb" mixture tops the cake batter, baked for eight minutes.

Slightly springy (usual for this type of cake) at first bite, gives way to soft and fluffy interior.  

Happy Baking :) 

Would I bake again?  yes, can't have enough quick pantry recipes... bonus they are vegan. 

Would I change anything?  The sugar crumble, I wouldn't use it every time as it adds more sweetness than I prefer. I would freeze the topping mix to be added to oat fruit crumble topping and dip the tops of the small cakes into dark chocolate instead. Citrus zest and spices could also be added to the cake batter for a change or nut/choc chips/dried fruit would also work. 

How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a month I will post about what I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.

The Baking Bible  available from Amazon and all discerning book retailers. 

You might also be interested in gingerbread custard icecream. 

Prosciutto Ring

proscuitto ring; a coarse rustic bread just waiting to be ripped apart. 

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This is my first monthly post for 'The Bread Bible' by award winning cookbook author Rose Levy Beranbaum. 

Excited by the opportunity to learn more about bread baking, my Grandfather and Great Uncle were both Master Bakers that owned their own bakery in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. The bakery sold cakes, pies, pastries but were especially known for their bread. My Great Uncle taught/lectured at the culinary university in Melbourne, particularly on the subject of wheat production. 

I never met my Grandfather who died before I was born, some say that my love of baking is in my genes. I believe it's belng raised hearing about tales of the bakery from my Dad and Aunt that sparked my love of cooking. 

20 years ago I ate some salami ... yep, and in 2009 my step son made chocolate bacon for a school exams and I tried that, but since this is my first bread bake from 'The Baking Bible' I'm commited to the "meat" for this loaf. Lets start with the lard. 

Lard:  despite its reputation, lard has less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol than an equal amount of butter by weight. Unlike many margarines and vegetable shortenings, unhydrogenated lard contains no trans fat.  wikipedia

With the resurgance of traditional British recipes for the last decade (which I love!!) and favour with chefs world wide, the demand for good quality lard continues. The neutral flavour, high smoke point, lower saturated fat product is produced from swine fat. Often combined with butter to produce light and crispy pastry, lard is tradionally used in fruit studded Welsh and Lardy cakes to crispy roast potatoes.

Today's bread is a "lard bread" but is also brushed with bacon fat. Here I am making wet-rendered bacon fat, this is how you make lard too. Bacon fat is put in a saucepan (or slow cooker if you are making a lot) and boiled with water until the fat releases/melts. On cooling I skimmed the bacon fat off ready to be remelted to brush on the loaf. 

wet-rendered bacon fat

The prosuciutto loaf contains three meats, prosucitto, pepperoni and hot sopressata (a dry salami). Rose suggests baked ham or even turkey ham can be substituted if desired.

I used prosuciutto, salami and bacon... because I had bacon meat left over from producing the bacon fat. 

prosuciutto, probably should have been cut a little thicker than this

salami I used... couldn't anything close to hot sopressata without going to the city to get it

Flour, yeast, black pepper and barley malt syrup were combined before salt, warm water and lard are added. All done in the KitchenAid, but there is hand and food proceesor instructions in the book too. 

 lard brought to room temperature is spreadable and in fact is still used in parts of europe as alterative to butter.

Dough once meat has been added.

The dough is rested briefly before rolling into a sausage shape and formed into a ring and brushed with cooled melted bacon fat.

Bake in a hot oven, before reducing heat and transferring directly to baking stone for further baking, the kitchen aroma reminded me of the local pizzeria. Once removed from the oven the loaf is then brushed with bacon fat again and left to cool.

Taste, well it's surely "meaty"... the bread itself is fabulous, serve this rustic loaf as part of antipasto platter, accompany with a green salad and you have a picnic brunch, lunch for the family or a light dinner with a bottle of red to wash it all down. 

Would I bake again? Yes, I can imagine using up leftover Christmas ham etc in this bread for a boxing day brunch perhaps.

Would I change anything? Oh, I'd love to give a vegetarian version a try. Charred grilled veg, little pesto... maybe some pinenuts too. Sundried tomatoes, feta and kalamata olives would be good too... add a handful of fresh herbs. 

How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a month I will post about what bread I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Bread Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.

 The Bread Bible  available from Amazon and where all good books are sold.

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The Red Velvet Rose (cake) Rose's Alpha Bakers

red velvet rose cake with raspberry sauce, served with ice-cream

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What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

Romeo and Juliet  William Shakespeare 

I didn't have the rose bundt pan needed for today's Red Velvet Rose cake from 'The Baking Bible' bake, but I baked in anyway in the heritage bundt pan. 

There is a few different options for this cake colour/flavour wise, at Christmas I used beetroot juice to colour and the extra cocoa option.  Colour wise the resulting cake was a non descript "brownish hue". Today I went with less cocoa and red food colour.

Ok, I can see the appeal of red velvet for valentines, weddings or even Halloween but really "I don't get it"...it's not on my list of favorite cake varieties. 

Today's bake started with mixing egg whites, red food colouring and vanilla to combined.

yep nice and red

Butter, oil and sugar were beaten to fluffy. I liked this in the recipe, the taste of butter combined with moistness oil adds to cakes. A flour mixture including a small amount of cocoa was mixed in, then the red whites were added.

tiny amount of cocoa powder

resulting red batter once all the ingredients were combined

Whilst the cake was baking I was defrosting frozen raspberries to gather to juice to make a reduction.

The reduced juice was added to raspberry pulp, sweetened and sieved to make a brushing sauce.

This sauce has a threefold action of moistening, adding a lot of fresh flavour plus adding more colour. The sauce seeps into the cake after a short rest period. 

Cake after it has been entirely brushed with sauce. 

I served the cake with ice-cream wedges spinkled with freeze dried raspberries and grated chocolate. I made an extra thick raspberry sauce using the leftover sauce as a base. 

The cake has a great light texture, I loved the raspberry sauce. The red colour I found a little "frightening.

Yes, there has been a lack of other blog posts... oh my goodness if there is a winter bug in the air apparently I'm going to catch it!! Thanks Jacinta for the homemade soup, medicine, gift and the rest :) I'm sure that will make me feel better.      

Happy Baking :)                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Would I make again? No, unless family/friend requested which is possible, it's not my kind of cake but I have a family member who loves it. 

Would I change anything? Hmmm, don't know really red velvet by it's very nature of intense colour is difficult to flavour.

How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a week I will post about what I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.

The Baking Bible  available from Amazon and all good book stores. 

 

You might also be interested in a cocktail, cupcake style with a Japanese Slipper Cupcake 

Classic Brioche Rose's Alpha Bakers

Petite Brioche Nanterre Loaves  : Classic Brioche 'The Baking Bible' 

Ban the Brioche Bun!!! Late last week our major talk back radio station called for a ban of hipster brioche bun hamburgers and brioche pulled meat buns. I don't think those people calling saying "enough is enough" with brioche buns have to worry, like the macarons before them the brioche bun craze has reached saturation point now McDonalds sells "build your own brioche burgers". 

Really I've yet to come across a brioche burger bun that comes close to home made brioche! With today being the Queens Birthday public holiday in Australia it's apt that I'm baking the queen of breads the classic brioche from 'The Baking Bible'.  This buttery beauty is a stunner, for me the aroma evoked the memory of bakeries as a child... oh and as Dad worked for Sara Lee when I was a kid, it kind of reminds me of a fresh soft version of Sara Lee's pecan danish. 

New to baking? There is a lot of steps in this recipe yet it's an easy recipe, most of steps you are "waiting" for the yeast to do it's thing. 

You start by making the "sponge" (a yeast starter), I made mine in a mixer. 

A flour mixture is then sprinkled over the sponge. 

Two hours later you'll have bubbles rising through the blanket of flour in parts.  

You'll need butter for buttery enriched bread, and here is what the rest of the world is perplexed about an American "stick of butter".  It's one hundred and thirteen grams for the rest of us... thanks Rose. 

Eggs and well softened butter are added and beaten in.

The resulting dough goes off for a rest in the fridge now, here I'm gently deflating before another hour in the fridge. Brioche, like other enriched breads has a refrigerator period to solidify the butter and make the dough easier to handle. 

The dough is envelope folded, rolled, folded and I forgot to take pictures of this bit. 

But I remembered to photograph when I wrapped my dough for it's overnight developing time.

Just unwrapped the dough here after a night in the refrigerator. It needs to be deflated a little before working with it. 

'The Baking Bible' uses a large loaf tin, I went with small individual tins.  I like the petite size, perfect for sharing and it does make really cute sandwiches for afternoon tea and the like. 

Smooth balls: whatever shape you are using, your dough needs to nice and smooth. Any fault in your dough now will show in the end product. 

Since I'm making Brioche Nanterre, there is eight balls in each lightly buttered tin to create the classic shape.  The tins are then covered with oiled plastic wrap and off to rise once again before baking.

I had enough dough to make four petite loaves. I used pearl sugar on two and left two plain.  There was a small amount of dough left so I made a few bite sized parisienne (Brioche à tête) with the classic fluted sides and "tête" (head) on top. 

Would I bake again?  Absolutely!! This recipe is incredibly versatile and can be used for sweet and savoury applications and yes, even for a batch of hipster hamburger buns. 

Would I change anything? Nup. 

How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a week I will post about what I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.

The Baking Bible

Happy Baking :)  

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French Orange Cream Tart Rose's Alpha Bakers

                                french orange cream tart 

Dad is running wild: always look forward to the 10pm phone call from the nursing home saying "your Dad is using his walker as a weapon". Dad's kept me busy this week with a trip to hospital plus two falls at the nursing home (he is fine... though I suspect his leaving a trail of staff and residents in his wake), soooo, I'm behind with my usual blog posts but I have finished my bake for Rose's Alpha Bakers. :) 

I'm sure many of you are familiar with (or have eaten 402 slices) of the classic French Tarte Au Citron (Lemon Tart)... today's tart is a lovely alternative to lemon tart using oranges. 

Started by making a template as per instructed by Rose to use as my pastry cutting guide. Hmm, The Simpson's ruler probably belies the sophistication of the tart... but I needed "inch" measurements. 

Thought I should make it food safe, so wrapped in foil. 

Pastry time started with processing the cold butter cubes with raw sugar until the sugar disappeared. 

Flour, cream and egg are added and you have a crumbly mix ready to be turned out and pressed together.

Pastry making always has a touch of alchemy to it, the crumbs from the food processor become "pate sucree pastry" with a few simple presses. 

Ready to roll, between two pieces of lightly floured plastic wrap.

Here comes the bit I have never done before, the pastry with the bottom layer of plastic wrap is draped over the back of a cake tin. 

Then your loose bottomed tart tin is fitted on top and the whole thing is flipped. 

I was wondering why I was doing this instead of chucking the pastry in the tin like I usually do (ok, not chucking, don't chuck... gently placing in the tin) but I "got it", the reason for doing it that is. What you end up with is a perfectly shaped pastry case, with flat bottom and neat corners.

Case is blind baked as per normal. 

The filling is a breeze to make and if you do get little air bubbles on top of your unbaked poured mix, use your gas torch to lightly go over the surface, it will pop all bubbles before it goes in the oven.   Ha, my filling is almost neon orange thanks to local free range eggs that had the brightest yolks I have ever seen!

After baking and chilling it's time to fire up the torch it's time to brûlée. A local cafe uses the term "burnished" when they are talking about their lemon tart "burnished lemon tart" and that's really what the finish is like on this tart. Only a few teaspoons of icing sugar is used/brûléed to become a whisper thin burnished sugar finish.

A small amount of icing sugar is applied and torched, after a brief chilling a second small amount is sifted over torched. I thought at first it the sugar wasn't going to caramelise, but it's just a matter of holding the torch a little closer and a little longer in one spot than you think.   

I choose not the neatest tart slice today, but rather a shot of where the icing sugar was a little thick... you can see on slicing the sugar lifting. You don't want the pretty, delicate appearance of the tart spoilt ... although I did crave the "burnt sugar" crust that the word brûlée evokes. 

The accidental misfire photograph of the tart shows the light shining through the pastry. Dang, this is the thinnest prettiest pastry case I have ever made!!! 

Would I bake again? Yes, I'm going to bake for Christmas this year I do love "Christmas/oranges". I'll skip the torching and go for snow sugar and red currants to decorate. 

Would I make any changes? perhaps check the bitterness or not of the zest before I used it. The recipe has a little lemon zest and I forgot how bitter my backyard lemons are! A little bit of bitter aftertaste in an otherwise perfect tart. 

How it works... now I've joined the fabulous existing alpha bakers, once a week I will post about what I have baked from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'. This won't include the recipe due to copyright and publisher restrictions however, I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.

The Baking Bible

Happy Baking :)

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Dattelkonfekt The Baking Bible

                                           dattlelkonfekt 

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Dattelkonfekt: a German date and almond meringue confectionary (cookie) 

Super excited that I will be joining the fabulous existing Rose's Alpha Bakers to bake the recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'.

Rose Levy Beranbaum is the queen of cakes and an award-winning American baker, cookbook author and blogger. It's going to be fun :)

.

How it works; Once a week I will post about what I have baked, this won't include the recipe due to copyright however I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods. 

This won't affect the usual blog stories and there will be plenty of cupcakes, chocolate and sugar still to come.

Today is my first entry 'Dattelkonfekt'... ummm, can't pronounce that at all...and I'm sugar rushing from too many morning dattlelkonfekt but here goes ....

I needed dates and the supermarket had fresh, Californian fancy eating and a few brands of dried "cooking" dates. I went with Trident a Turkish grown date that is fairly "dry" as I thought this wouldn't add too much moisture to the meringue. 

I started with processing almonds, dates and then it was time to make the meringue. 

Rose's books are meticulously detailed to assist perfect baking, for example egg whites could be measured by "3 egg whites" or in imperial or metric weights. I went with metric.

Interesting meringue method as it isn't taken to stiff peaks, after the dates and almonds were mixed into the meringue I filled a disposable pastry bag a third full and snipped the bottom ready to begin piping. I didn't use an icing/pastry tip as the mixture felt thick enough to pipe without one.

There was the option to pipe the meringues onto oblaten a thin edible wheat based wafer that you may have come across before on the base of your Christmas Dutch and German cookies. I could only find multi coloured ones and I thought the cookies would look odd with bright pink and green, so I went with option two of baking on non stick paper lined trays. 

They don't take long to bake and cool, what you end up with is a meringue "cookie" that has a crisp meringue exterior with a moist slight chewy interior... plus the crunch of nuts. 

My step son Daniel and I thought they would be on the cloying side of sweet, with sugar and dates but they are not. When Dan ate his second one he was nodding in the universal "yep, these are good" way. I thought they were nice, perhaps a still a little sweet for me. 

Would I bake again: Yes

Would I make any changes: Yes, I'd add ground cardamom to pair with coffee after Indian food, Turkish food etc. Maybe for Christmas track down those oblaten bases and add orange zest along with ground coriander seeds. 

That's it post one for Rose's Alpha Bakers done.  Haven't been to Rose's site? Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum.  

Happy Baking :) 

Feel like making sugar springs?