Orange-Poppy Scones

It is always a good day when the new issue of Everyday Food arrives.  I thumb through it carefully, jotting notes and dog-earing pages, planning for the week ahead.  There are so many things in this issue that I want to try, but considering it's a Sunday and Sunday mornings call for something special, I chose to make the Orange-Poppy Scones.  (Yes, my obsession with scones continues).

These are delicious!  They are easy to make, bake up light and fluffy, and are full of orange-tasting goodness. 

 

One caveat, however: in the recipe in the magazine (above) you are instructed to "Form the dough into a 7-inch square" and "cut into 9 squares."  I would advise against this, if you can even manage, with your sharpest of knives, to cut the dough into such tiny pieces.  Doing this, and then cutting them into diagonals will yield a very small scone.  Instead, do what I did, make one slice across the middle horizontally, and then two vertical slices yielding 6 squares, and cut those into diagonals.  You'll have a perfectly sized scone, and a delicious one too.  

Just look at all of the delicious bits of orange zest spread evenly throughout the scone.

Happy Sunday!

Suppressing a Scream Vanilla Malt Pound Cake

It has not been a good week.  We live in a disaster area.  Yep, we've been designated as such.  The insurance company finally made it by yesterday and put us in the "massive damage" category.  It could be worse, I know that, I'm very thankful that our house is still standing.  But it's a shock to the system every morning when I open the blinds and look out at the mess that was once our yard.  Twice I've had to choke back a sob, but I'm getting used to it.

For the first four or five days after the tornado I was numb.  I'd lost my enthusiasm, energy, creativity; I was an empty vessel.  I'm coming back, slowly, and now find the hum of the stand mixer to be rather soothing.  So last night, craving something slightly sweet and simple, I made this pound cake.  It's good!  And do you know what else?  It tastes great toasted for breakfast (Yes, I had cake for breakfast.  Keep in mind that donuts are also cake.)  It also tastes great untoasted and spread with a thin layer of raspberry preserves (Sarabeth's Raspberry Key Lime is my favorite at the moment).  My guess is it would also provide a great base for a scoop of ice cream and the topping of your choice.  The malt flavor is not overt, in case you're wondering.  It just enhances the vanilla taste of this very moist, very satisfying, versatile cake.

Suppressing a Scream Vanilla Malt Pound Cake

1 stick butter, room temperature

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla

5 eggs, room temperature

1-1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup vanilla malt powder (see below)

1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour a loaf pan.  In a large mixer bowl, beat together butter and sugar on medium speed until very light and fluffy, about 7 minutes.  Scrape down sides, add vanilla, and beat a minute longer.  Turn mixer down to medium-low and add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Scrape down sides.  Turn mixture to low and gradually add flour, malt power, and salt.  Beat until thoroughly combined.

Turn mixture into prepared pan and bake in the middle of the oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean 55-65 minutes.  Remove pan to wire rack and cool (In the meantime go out to dinner, as I did).  Turn pan onto wire rack, slice and enjoy.

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Cranberry-Nut Rolls

I've been reading a lot of novels lately.  Modern novels, like the cozy genre of culinary mysteries that I so enjoy, seem to contain much more information about food than in times past, including baking methods, detailed instructions, and recipes.  Not only am I hungry for more reading when I finish a book these days, but I'm also hungry for food!  Some of my recent favorites can be found in the collage below, but I think the book that had the biggest culinary impact on me was Judith Ryan Hendricks' Bread Alone.  Reading the book, I could almost smell the bread baking.  Throughout my reading I hungered (if you'll pardon the pun) to make some bread of my own.

So last night, while making meatballs for dinner, cutting out cookies from the shortbread dough that had been in the fridge a bit too long, and testing recipes for peanut butter ice cream topping, I made these rolls.  They are wonderful!  

I'd expected them to be very dense and chewy like the cranberry nut rolls I've gotten from Whole Foods and Breadsmith in the past, but these were lighter.  They reminded me a bit of the Sally Lunn bun that I had at the Sally Lunn's Historic Eating House & Museum in Bath, England years ago, but they're not exactly that either as I find Sally Lunn tends to deflate a bit when speared with a knife.  These are just tasty, wonderful rolls that work equally well for dinner as they do for breakfast.  For the dinner rolls I sprinkled the tops with Fleur de Sel after brushing them with egg glaze.  For the breakfast rolls I sprinkled the tops with the raw sugar the recipe called for; both versions were equally good. 

When I make them again (and I will), I'll soak the cranberries in a bit of orange juice to plump them up and will add some orange zest to the dough.    

This morning I had a sugar-topped roll, slightly warmed in the oven, spread with clotted cream and Sarabeth's Raspberry Key Lime jam. Heaven!

Cranberry-Nut Rolls

From Bon Appetit, November 2009

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

3 1/2 cups (or more) bread flour

1 tablespoon (packed) golden brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons quick-rising dry yeast (from one 1/4-ounce envelope)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups whole milk

2 tablespoons vegetable oil plus additional for coating bowl

1 large egg

1 cup sweetened dried cranberries

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

1 large egg, beaten to blend (for glaze)

Raw sugar*

Stir nuts in dry skillet over medium heat until toasted, about 5 minutes. Cool.

Mix 3 1/2 cups bread flour and next 3 ingredients in bowl of heavy-duty stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Warm milk in small saucepan over low heat until instant-read thermometer inserted into milk registers 95 degrees F. Add oil; remove from heat. Add milk mixture and 1 egg to flour mixture. Mix on low speed until wet coarse ball forms, about 1 minute. Add nuts and cranberries. Replace paddle attachment on mixer with dough hook. Mix dough on low speed until smooth, elastic, and slightly tacky, adding more flour by tablespoonfuls as needed, about 4 minutes. Transfer dough to floured surface; knead 2 minutes.

Lightly oil large bowl. Shape dough into ball; place in prepared bowl, turning to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap; let dough rise at room temperature until almost doubled in volume, 1 3/4 to 2 hours.

Line large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Transfer dough to unfloured surface; divide into 12 equal pieces. Using cupped hand, roll and rotate 1 dough piece firmly on work surface until dough piece pops up into cupped hand as smooth round ball, about 6 rotations. (This will make dough ball as smooth as possible; if necessary, wipe work surface with damp paper towel to help create traction.) Repeat with remaining dough pieces.

Transfer rolls to prepared baking sheet, spacing apart. Spray rolls with nonstick spray. Cover loosely with plastic wrap; let rise at room temperature until 1 1/2 times original size, about 1 1/2 hours. Brush rolls with egg glaze; sprinkle with raw sugar. Let rise 15 minutes longer.

Meanwhile, position rack in center of oven and preheat to 425 degrees F.

Place rolls in oven; reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees F and bake 7 minutes. Rotate baking sheet; bake rolls until golden and slightly firm to touch, about 8 minutes longer. Cool completely on rack. DO AHEAD: Wrap in foil, then enclose in resealable plastic bag and freeze up to 2 weeks. Thaw rolls at room temperature. If desired, rewarm rolls wrapped in foil in 350 degrees F oven about 10 minutes.

* Also called turbinado or demerara sugar; available at most supermarkets.

 Search Amazon.com for sarabeth's preserves

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Hot Cheese Puffs

After yesterday's lengthy bout with phyllo, today I thought I'd try an easy appetizer recipe in preparation for the rather large spread we put out for Super Bowl.  I first tasted these at the November 2006 christening of my cousin's son and liked them a great deal, vowing certainly to make them and put some in the freezer so I'd be prepared for drop-in guests.  Well, much time has passed since then, but I did make them today and they were as good as I'd remembered.

The recipe comes from a favorite cookbook of mine called St. Louis Days, St. Louis Nights.  The recipe indicates that it makes 40, but I found 30 was far more accurate unless you skimp on the topping and then they just wouldn't be as good.

Hot Cheese Puffs

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

3/4 teaspoon minced onion

1/4 cup Hellman's mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dried, chopped chives

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/8 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/3- 1/2 small loaf Pepperidge Farm thin sandwich bread

In a bowl, combine all ingredients, except bread.  Mix well.

  Cut bread into 1-1/2-inch round circles.

Spread each round with cheese mixture.  Arrange rounds on cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until slightly browned.  Serve hot.

These I put into the freezer until frozen and then popped them off of the plate and put them into a Ziploc bag.  According to the recipe, they can be taken directly from the freezer to the oven and baked for 20 minutes prior to serving.

Do not throw the remnants of your bread away.  Put it into the freezer in a Ziploc bag.  When a recipe calls for bread crumbs, toss this into the food processor and you'll have fresh bread crumbs in a flash and won't have wasted a thing.

"Willie's Orange Bread," a Vintage Cookbook Discovery

This past October my Aunt, my cousin, my mother and I all gathered at my parents house for a little gathering that I dubbed "Old Family Recipe Night."  More aptly, I suppose, it should have been "Family Old Recipe Night," but with the aging family members, myself among them, I suppose it was apt either way.  It was a night when we each brought a dish to share for dinner, along with recipes, or cookbooks that had belonged to my grandmother (who passed away at the age of 83 in May of 1984).  

I thought I was the sole recipient of her cookbook, a blue canvas three-ring binder that must have, at one time, belonged to some contractor who once paid her a visit as it had some sort of file number written boldly across the front in Magic Marker (remember those?).  It was full of recipes written by her own hand, some that I had written in a rather forced, childish scrawl when I was about 10 (something I remember doing to this day), and many, many recipes cut from magazines, newspapers, and the back of boxes taped  to notebook paper now crumbling and yellowed with age.  As an adult,  I now realize that she had me copying these recipes as a way to keep me busy when she was babysitting -- clever woman!  My  Aunt contributed two more of grandma's books, from her later years, with some recipes typed, many handwritten, and lots more pastings.

It was quite a moving experience for all of us, and we learned a lot about grandma that night despite the fact that, unlike me, she wrote no commentary on any of her recipes.  Still, paging through her old books we had to laugh as we found not one vegetable recipe, and few meat or chicken recipes.  Largely what we found were desserts, coffeecakes, cakes, pies (Strawberry Glazed Pie must have been a favorite as it was found any number of times in a variety of her cookbooks), breads, and cookies.  Yes, grandma was the carb queen!  How funny that something like a cookbook can be so very revealing.

One recipe that I was delighted to find was for an orange quick bread from the 70's .  It was a morning bread that I always remember liking and it had been given to my mother by her friend Willie (for Willisdean) Schebelen about five years before she passed away.  I got such a taste for it about a year ago that I asked my mother if she could please search her files for it as I didn't have it in mine and intensive "googling" revealed nothing even close to what I'd remembered.  My mother, not a fan of quick breads, told me that she had thrown her recipe away long ago, so I figured it was lost forever.  But paging through grandma's cookbooks there it was.  Simply called "Orange Bread" and not the "Willie's Orange Bread" that I had dubbed it so many years ago, it had been attributed to both my mother (Jackie) and aunt (Carol), but it was Willie's all the same.

I could hardly wait to get home and bake it.  What a rush of memories came flooding back with that first bite!  Suddenly it was the seventies all over again.  I could hear the high school band playing, the cheerleaders cheering on the team, the sound of my friends splashing as they jumped into the lake, and taste the greasy goodness of the burgers from the local Drive-in.

I don't suppose the baking or tasting of this loaf will evoke any such memories for you, but I think it's something you may enjoy anyway, and while you're eating it, think back to your high school days with fondness.

Willie's Orange Bread

1 cup orange juice (I used freshly squeezed)

1 cup raisins

1/2 cup nuts (I used pecans)

1 beaten egg

2 tsp. vanilla

1/4 tsp. salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons butter

1 tsp. grated orange rind (I used 1 T.)

Cream butter and sugar; add beaten egg.  Whisk together dry ingredients, mixing well. Combine wet and dry mixtures. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until tests done.

CINNABON Bakery Mix Product Review

I love to wander through Sam's during the holiday season. I love the piles of bright red poinsettias, the potted Norfolk Pines sprinkled with pixie dust, the aisles of festive wrap, ribbon, boxes, and cards, the reindeer, the scary over-sized decorations, and the aisle of prepackaged baskets full of artfully displayed name-brand over-priced goodies. Ahhhh, the holidays. It was during one of my jaunts that a particular product gave me pause. I'd rounded a corner and there it was, a mountainous stack of boxes of Cinnabon baking mix. I could almost smell the heady aroma of hot cinnamon and glaze. I hesitated grabbed at it and put it in the cart, shoving fruit and vegetables out of the way to make room for this star. I could hardly wait to get my treasure home. 

The box, a 2-pack, says it makes either 16 scones, 36 muffins, 2 coffee cakes, or 2 bread loaves. I decided to make scones because I just love that wedge shape and it called for a full cup of cream, so they just had to be authentic. Having only recently priced (Yikes!) and purchased cream, I thought these had better be good.



The process is simple thanks to four packages of ingredients for each pack.   

I gathered my utensils and followed the instructions. 



 I dumped the packet of backing mix into a large bowl, shook in some raisins, and added the egg and cream. I stirred the ingredients together until just mixed.

The top was sprinkled with the packet of cinnamon swirl mix.



Seven stirs incorporated the cinnamon quite well.

I formed an 8" round (with floured hands, this was not mentioned on the box but should have been).

  

 The round was cut into 8 wedges (again flour is needed here, on the knife)

     

The scored round is then topped with the streusel mix.

 

Into the oven for 35 minutes, it came out looking like this. I can't begin to describe how fabulous the house smelled while the baking was going on. It smelled so good I wanted to swoon; I think Heaven must smell like this.

I slid it from the baking sheet onto a rack to cool. Once slightly cooled, the final step is to drizzle with glaze. Is this beautiful, or what? Aren't you dying for a bite?

 

Obviously I was. My husband, who was eating his lunch of a hot dog, was poised over my scone, fork in hand waiting to try it.

DELICIOUS! This is a great product, two thumbs way up.

One caveat. This does not have the denseness of an English scone. (My husband's observation, he the maker of classic English scones.) This is true, this version (and those you find at St. Louis Bread Co/Panera) all have a texture that more closely resembles a coffee cake. But I say...who cares? It's wonderful. And I have another set of ingredients left!

RECOMMENDED!