Daring Bakers in September: Cinnamon and Sticky Buns
September 30, 2007 at 1:56 pm | Posted in breakfast things, daring bakers, groups, sweet things, sweet yeast breads | 56 Comments
What smells better than bread, cinnamon and sugar baking in the oven? Not a whole lot, really. And that’s why I was so pumped to see that Daring Baker Marce, aka Pip in the City, chose cinnamon/sticky buns for the September DB challenge! She went with a recipe, which you can see here, from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. The recipe gives instructions for making a cinnamon-swirled dough that can be customized into either basic cinnamon buns with a white fondant glaze or sticky buns with a caramel/nut topping.
We could pick either variation (cinnamon or sticky), but why make one when you can make both? I thought they would be a great weekend breakfast, but I didn’t want to wake up at 4:00 AM on Saturday to start the long dough making and proofing process. The recipe says that unbaked, formed buns can be retarded for up to two days in the refrigerator, and since I’ve successfully employed this method with other types of bread dough, I thought I’d make this my plan of attack.
On Friday evening, I made the dough (using mostly AP flour combined with about 1/2 cup of bread flour) and gave it it’s first rise. The dough really a cinch to make, and once risen, was beautifully silky smooth and easy to roll up with cinnamon sugar and form into large buns. Half of my rolls were put, just as they were, into a baking dish for cinnamon buns. The other half were put into a separate dish slathered with a sugar, butter and pecan mixture that would bake up into a gooey sticky bun topping. (In other words, I prepared the recipe through Step 4 of the instructions.) Then they both when into the refrigerator for a good night’s rest.
On Saturday morning I pulled out the cinnamon buns to come to room temperature and proof for a couple hours before baking. On Sunday morning I did the same thing with the unbaked sticky buns. I admit that I did get up early both days to do this!
The baked and slightly cooled cinnamon buns got a healthy drizzle of powdered sugar and milk glaze, flavored with a vanilla. The warm sticky buns were turned out to reveal a buttery caramel topping. Both variations were great with a cup of coffee, but which were better? I’d say the sticky buns. The cinnamon rolls were a bit dry inside, but with the sticky buns, the topping oozed into the dough, eliminating any dryness problem there.
I don’t make this kind of thing often (my real buns don’t need this kind of breakfast every week), but when I do, I normally make a sort of hybrid variation of the two…I make a cinnamon swirl using brown sugar instead of granulated and add chopped nuts to it. The brown sugar makes the cinnamon buns bake up caramely and gooey on the inside. Then the baked buns are frosted with a heaping amount of glaze. I’d like to retry Reinhart’s dough recipe using that filling.
Thanks for a great challenge Marce, and if you want to see some more hot buns, be sure to visit the ever-expanding Daring Bakers’ Blogroll!
CH#1: Cherry-Lime Rickey Cupcakes
September 29, 2007 at 5:03 pm | Posted in cupcakes, events, sweet things | 8 Comments
I can’t really pretend to wax nostalgic about 1950s soda shops. Sure, I’ve been to couple of old-school diners and lunch counters in NYC, but they aren’t exactly the type of place where I picture my dad shared a malted with his best girl on a Saturday night as Bobby Darin sang out from the jukebox. I totally have a thing for soda fountain drinks though. Besides a good egg cream, there is another classic I adore– the cherry-lime rickey. Since Laurie from quirky cupcake has just kicked off a new event called ‘Cupcake Hero,’ and this month’s theme ingredient is lime, I thought I’d take a stab at recreating a cherry-lime rickey (non-carbonated, of course) in cupcake form.
I started with a basic vanilla cupcake, flavored with a bit of lime zest. Lots of other bloggers have had great success with Billy Reece’s Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcake recipe (he made it on the Martha Stewart Show awhile back), so i thought I would give it a try myself. It was easy to make, and the cupcakes baked up fluffy and nice–don’t overfill them though!
While the cupcakes were baking, I made a batch of lime curd and parked it in the fridge to chill. Then I whipped up some vanilla buttercream, portioned out what I needed for the cupcakes at hand, and refrigerated the rest for another time. To give the buttercream flavor, I added a bit of cherry jam, some chopped cherries and some chilled lime curd. I filled my cooled cupcakes with cherry jam and lime curd, topped them with cherry buttercream, and added a little garnish. A cherry-lime rickey cupcake…coolsville. I dig it.
Cherry-Lime Rickey Cupcakes– makes 12 regular-size cupcakes
-Start with a batch of baked and cooled vanilla cupcakes flavored with lime zest. (I used Billy’s Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes. Not wanting 30 cupcakes, I did a half batch and mixed in the zest of one lime at the end.)
-Make and chill the lime curd (recipe below).
-Make the vanilla buttercream (recipe below). Flavor it with a spoonful of cherry jam, 1/4 cup of lime curd and a handful of chopped cherries (fresh or canned).
-To fill the cupcakes, use a small knife or round cookie cutter to cut a plug out of the center of each (going in from the top). Save the top bit of each plug. Put a small blob of cherry jam at the bottom of each cavity, then fill the rest up with lime curd. Cover with the top bit so the curd is not exposed.
-Top with buttercream and garnish with a cherry and a lime slice.
Lime Curd– makes about 1 2/3 cups
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup strained lime juice
zest of 1 lime
pinch of salt
4 T unsalted butter
-Bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a medium saucepot. In a heatproof bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, lime juice and zest and a pinch of salt. Set the bowl over the simmering water (making a double boiler).
–Whisk frequently until thickened. Becasue it’s over a double boiler, you can walk away for a minute or so if need be.
-Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter, a bit at a time, until it is fully incorporated.
-Pass through a fine sieve into a clean bowl or container. Press plastic wrap directly on surface and refrigerate until cold. Either use it up or transfer to an airtight container, keeping plastic wrap on the surface for storage. This way, it can keep in the fridge for about a week.
Vanilla Buttercream– makes about 2 cups
adapted from Cook’s Illustrated’s Baking Illustrated
2 large eggs
1/2 cup (3.5 oz) sugar
1 t vanilla extract
pinch of salt
8 oz unsalted butter, softened but still cool, cut into pieces
-Bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a medium saucepot. In the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla and a pinch of salt. Set the bowl over the simmering water (making a double boiler). Whisk gently but constantly until the mixture reaches 160°F. It should be thin and foamy.
-Transfer the bowl to the mixer and whip until light, airy and room temperature. This should take about five minutes. Reduce the speed and whip in the butter, piece by piece. If it looks curdled halfway through, it should come together as you add the remaining butter.
-Once all the butter is incorporated, beat on high speed for about a minute until light and fluffy. You can refrigerate, covered, for up to five days.
HHDD#15: Butterscotch Tart
September 27, 2007 at 7:54 pm | Posted in events, pies & tarts, sweet things | 24 Comments
I had been wondering what to do with the chocolate tart dough in my freezer, leftover from last month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge. Then along came Hay Hay It’s Donna Day hosted by Sarina the TriniGourmet! Sarina picked tarts for this month’s theme, so I it was the perfect time to use that stuff up.
In my excitement over the latest cookbooks with glossy pages and beautiful photos, I sometimes forget about the old classics that are also on my bookshelf. James Beard’s American Cookery may be paperback, and may just have a few black and white illustrations of old-school kitchen gadgets, but it is not to be neglected. It is one of the most useful books I have. Flipping through it while my husband was watching something uninteresting on TV the other night, I came across his recipe for butterscotch pie. Butterscotch is a real favorite of mine…my first choice for a sundae topping, without a doubt. I thought that if I took his custard filling and the dough I already had, I could make some pretty nice little tartlettes. Finished off with a little whipped cream, it made a great old-fashioned dessert.
Although you can use your favorite tart dough (chocolate or plain), or even a crumb crust, you can find the recipe for the dough I used at Veronica’s Test Kitchen. As is, it is quite a big batch (enough for three 9.5-inch tarts), but can easily be scaled back to make a half or a third of the quantity. Blind bake the chilled dough in the tart or tartlette pans, docked and weighted, until fully cooked. Let the crust cool completely before filling. If it will take you a couple of days to finish the tart/tartlettes, I have a tip to keep your crust from getting soggy under the custard filling. You can lightly “paint” the insides of a cooled chocolate crust with some melted chocolate and put it in the refrigerator for the chocolate to set. This acts as a barrier between the filling and crust. For a plain crust, you can get a similar result by lightly painting the insides with egg wash while still hot (just out of the oven, so the egg wash doesn’t remain raw). If you plan to finish the tart the day it is made, or if you are using a crumb crust, you can skip this step.
Butterscotch Pie- makes one 9-inch pie or tart or twelve 3.5-inch tartlettes
adapted from James Beard’s American Cookery
3-4 T butter
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
3 cups whole milk, light cream, or half milk and half evaporated milk
2 eggs
7 T all-purpose flour
1/4 t salt
1 t vanilla extract
splash of dark rum (optional–my modification)
fully baked crust or tartlette shells
-Melt the butter in a 2-quart saucepan. Add the brown sugar and stir until reaches 220°F (will bubble up and look slightly browner). Add 2 cups of the milk and whisk to combine.
-In a bowl, whisk the eggs, flour and salt to combine. Then whisk in the remaining cup of milk.
-When the sugar/milk mixture is hot but not boiling, slowly stir in the egg mixture (I tempered my eggs with some hot liquid first). Treat this like a pastry cream, whisking constantly over medium-low heat until it just bubbles. Turn down the heat (very low) and cook one or two minutes longer. Take off the heat and beat in vanilla and rum, if using.
-Strain through a fine sieve into a clean bowl, press plastic wrap directly on surface and cool to room temperature.
-Turn into baked, cooled crust. Smooth surface with on an offset. Press plastic wrap on surface and refrigerate until fully chilled, about three hours.
-Top with lightly sweetened whipped cream (or rum whipped cream!).
SHF#35: Fig and Raspberry Compote over Ice Cream
September 25, 2007 at 11:51 am | Posted in events, ice creams & frozen, other sweet, sweet things | 11 Comments
OMG…there are so many events I want to do this month, and of course I’ve saved them all until the last second! I’ve always been a procrastinator, so this is really just par for the course. But anyway, there will be lots of desserts for R and me (and a barrage of posts for you) this last week of September! So to kick things off, I’m starting with what’s due in just a couple of hours– Sugar High Friday! This month’s hostess is Ivonne, author of the addictively delicious Cream Puffs in Venice, and she’s chosen ‘The Beautiful Fig‘ as her theme.
For a long time I thought figs were really not so beautiful. Fig Newtons (to me anyway) are gross, and so fresh figs suffered from guilt by association. I never even had one until my mid-twenties. I was surprised to find that a fresh fig is sweet and soft, smells great, is pretty and pleasantly seedy–nothing like the icky pasty stuff inside a Newton! I am still not crazy about dried figs, unless they have been heavily booze-soaked. But alas, the fruit (it’s actually a flower, as I read on Cream Puff’s blog) was to suffer another setback when the most annoyingly twitty boy in my culinary school class described a fresh fig as being like a certain part of a woman! Ack–why, WHY did I have to hear that, especially from him?!? Some mental scarring still remains, but I no longer take things out on the innocent fig.
My inspiration for this recipe comes from Regan Daley’s recipe for oven-roasted figs with honey and orange in In the Sweet Kitchen, one of my bookshelf favorites. I tweaked the technique and ingredients a bit because the figs right now in Sydney are maybe not quite as beautiful as their fall counterparts up in the Northern Hemisphere. Chef Daley roasts the figs in the oven in a bath of orange juice, honey and spices. I gave this method a test drive last week, and it truly tasted fabulous, but it kind of drained the color out of my figs. I like to get a pretty picture you know, so I tried again, reducing my liquid to a loose syrup on the stove top before adding the figs to just briefly soften. Once off the heat, I then stirred in a handful of raspberries for some extra visual pop (not to mention they taste great with figs). I let the compote cool just slightly and then put it over vanilla ice cream. I think it would be great with yogurt, too. Scrummy and beautiful!
Fig and Raspberry Compote– makes three or four servings, depending on how much fruit you use
1 orange, zested and juiced
1 cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods, smashed
1/4 c honey
2 T sugar
pinch of salt
2 T unsalted butter
several figs, quartered (I used 5 figs, but you could throw in a couple more)
handful of raspberries (fresh or frozen)
-Combine the orange juice and zest, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, honey, sugar and salt in a small sauce pan. Simmer until cooked down and slightly syrupy. Whisk in the butter.
-Add the cut figs, tossing in the syrup. If your figs are ripe and soft, you can remove the pan from the stove top, and the residual heat from the syrup should warm them through. If your figs are on the firm side, continue to gently simmer in the syrup until they soften slightly, about five minutes.
-Once off the heat, discard the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods. Toss in the raspberries, coating with syrup.
-Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before spooning over ice cream.
Back to School: Celebration Cupcakes
September 17, 2007 at 10:07 am | Posted in around sydney, classes, cupcakes, sweet things | 25 Comments
I took another course at Planet Cake in Balmain this weekend. This time, the theme was “celebration cupcakes.” Obviously, these are for celebrating something very girly! They were a lot of fun to make…a little time-consuming, but really not very hard.
I love cake…
September 2, 2007 at 5:56 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, layer cakes, sweet things | 7 Comments
…so much that I decorated it with hearts!
Daring Bakers in August: Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart
August 29, 2007 at 4:56 pm | Posted in daring bakers, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things | 49 Comments
I was just a lil’ bit excited to see that for this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge, our co-hosts Veronica and Patricia chose a milk chocolate and caramel tart from Eric Kayser’s book Sweet and Savory Tarts. Not only do I love chocolate and caramel (who doesn’t, really?), I love making tarts, especially when they have a few different components like this one. And, although we were warned from the get-go that the directions were sparse and we’d have to read between the lines, at least there would be no fiddling around with agar-agar like last time.
The first part of the recipe to tackle was the pastry dough. The recipe described it as a “chocolate shortbread pastry,” flavored with cocoa powder, ground hazelnuts and cinnamon. Some bakers who tried out the recipe early in the month found the cinnamon to be overwhelming, and it was later deemed optional by the Veronica and Patricia. I followed these bakers’ advice and opted out of the cinnamon in my batch. I chose to make my dough in the KitchenAid (with the paddle attachment), rather than in the food processor. It just seemed less messy, and came together easily in the mixer.
After my dough had an overnight rest in the fridge, I found it to be quite malleable and very easy to work with. The dough really didn’t resemble shortbread though, and neither the finished product, but it did bake up nice and crisp. I decided to go the mini route and used my 3.5″ fluted tartlette pans to form the shells. I docked them well and blind baked them with beans, thanks to the advice of those bakers who had made the recipe early on. Even though they were small, my shells did take several minutes longer to bake than the recipe stated. And I had to be more careful than I would have liked removing the parchment and beans from the baked shells, because the dough wanted badly to stick to the parchment. With a little patience though, everything was fine. I made eight little tartlettes and put the extra unbaked dough in the freezer for another time.
The next step was to make the caramel layer hidden in the middle of the tart. I must admit here that I only made a half-batch of caramel, since I didn’t make the big 10″ tart. R and I can’t finish a whole tart ourselves, but I promise I was true to the ingredients, techniques and proportions. Our co-hosts did give us a choice when it came to the caramel: while the recipe called for using the dry technique, we could switch that to a wet caramel if we were more confident with the wet method. I have actually made an unusual amount of caramel sauce in my time, and am comfortable with both ways, so I went ahead with the dry version before adding butter and cream. I took it to the edge of dark-but-not-burned, so it would be a bit more flavorful and wouldn’t cause a toothache in combination with the milk chocolate. (To make a dry caramel, I add the sugar in stages, starting with just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. When that melts and begins to color, I add a little more.) To the cooled caramel base, eggs and flour were added so it would set up into a soft but firm candy-like layer in the oven, rather than remain an oozy sauce.
Once again, the caramel in my little tarts had to spend about five minutes longer in the oven than the recipe stated to set up. I baked them until the caramel looked well set around the edges and was no longer jiggly in the center. After cooling down on the counter for about 30 minutes, I popped them in the fridge to thoroughly set for a few hours and charged on with the caramel decorations.
I was hoping to do sugar curls or something fun, but I made this recipe during a patch of rainy days here in Sydney. Humidity and sugarwork are archenemies, so my experiments were just a sticky mess. I resorted to the basic caramel fragments suggested in the recipe, but even they stuck together in little clumps after I broke them up. I liked them though…they looked like sparkly jewels.
For the last step before decoration (and eating!), I made the “chocolate mousse” layer. It was just melted milk chocolate folded together with whipped cream. I just had to be sure to let the chocolate cool to about body temperature before combining, so it wouldn’t melt the cream. I used Green & Black’s organic milk chocolate. They claim to use more cocoa solids than other brands, making it a “darker” milk chocolate. I had never tried it, but as a dark chocolate freak, I was interested in finding something a little less sweet. As luck would have it, it was also on sale!
Eight mini tarts equals four days of dessert for R and me, so I made scaled back amounts of the mousse as well…just enough to fill two each day. After piling on the mousse and letting the tarts chill for a bit, it was time to decorate and try. Boy, were they good…almost like a candy bar, but not too sweet. I tried to get fairly equal layers of caramel and chocolate, and was really surprised by how nicely the tarts cut. All in all, I’d say this one’s a keeper, and it wasn’t even too complicated– thanks Veronica and Patricia! I am interested in trying it with dark chocolate though…
You can find the recipe here or here. If you’re nosey like I am, check out the Daring Bakers’ Blogroll to see how everyone else attacked this month’s challenge!
browniebabe #3: Milk Chocolate Brownies with Wattleseed
August 16, 2007 at 4:22 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, events, sweet things | 6 Comments
Woo-hoo! It’s browniebabe time again over at Once Upon a Tart. Myriam continues to taunt us all with her super-cute apron! I’ve already declared my love for all things plain and simple when it comes to brownies, so I really tried hard to think of an uncomplicated brownie that was a little different.
The last time R went to the States was back in February. I gave him a shopping list to stuff to bring back…Crystal hot sauce, Diamond Kosher salt, Jif, Quaker oats, Cascade dishwasher tabs (how this guy made it through customs, I do not know). When he called from the airport while waiting for his flight back to Sydney, I tacked one more last-minute item to the list: a Gourmet magazine from the airport bookshop.
A recipe on the last page of that issue has stuck out in my mind since– milk chocolate brownies. I’m definitely a dark chocolate fan (and the higher the percentage, the better), but this sounded interesting. I went out and got myself a couple bars of Lindt Excellence, which in the same issue, Gourmet named as their preferred milk chocolate for general cooking purposes.
I bought some wattleseed awhile back, but still hadn’t used it. This is something that I’ve had in restaurant desserts here, and was excited to find at my spice shop. Wattleseed is from the Acacia plant, native to Australia, and is often described as tasting like a combination of chocolate, coffee and hazelnut. All good things for a brownie I think, so I eye-balled in a couple teaspoons to the recipe. I don’t think wattleseed is readily available outside Australia, but a little instant espresso powder will do the trick if you are looking to make the flavor a bit deeper (I always put it in my dark chocolate brownies anyway).
These brownies were surprisingly good, and I’d definitely make them again. They had a perfect texture–crackly tops and chewy, but not raw, centers. They were thankfully not as sweet as I’d imagined they would be. They had a nice caramely flavor from the chocolate with a hint of coffee from the wattleseed. The seeds and the extra milk chocolate that gets stirred in as chips at the end give the brownies a little crunch.
If you want the basic milk chocolate brownie recipe, you can find it in the February 2007 issue of Gourmet magazine, or here on Epicuious.
Red Velvet Cake (a.k.a. Red Silk)
August 14, 2007 at 5:38 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, layer cakes, sweet things | 15 Comments
*I Photoshopped that candle flame in– how fake does that look??
Every year around the start of August, I ask R to think about what kind of cake he’d like me to make for his birthday. I’ve done Boston Cream a couple of times, Black Forest, and once even a chocolate cream pie. This year he asked for a “red silk cake.” Hmmm…I wasn’t sure what that was, but I thought I should know, so I said no problem. I would figure it out.
I couldn’t figure it out. So the next day I broke down and asked for clarification. What he described was just a red velvet cake. Can’t blame the guy for confusing his fabrics, but now I can’t stop calling it “red silk,” and as it sounds sort of exotic, it must be said in a sultry whisper.
I’ve never actually had red silk…umm, velvet…cake myself. One time, years back, I saw Martha Stewart and a guest make it on her old show. I saw them put two bottles of McCormick red food coloring into the batter! Horrifying– I mean, remember when they thought red M&Ms would kill you?
I remembered seeing that the Daring Bakers had risen to the red velvet challenge back in March. That was before my time in the group, but I looked back over many of the posts to see their individual experiences and to know what to expect. Most thought a cream cheese frosting was traditional and that the chocolate flavor of the cake was very subtle.
There were a lot of different recipes out there, but I wound up going with one in a book I have at home. I’ve had the Chocolate Bar cookbook for sometime, without ever having baked from it. Now was as good a time as any to try it out. The book was written by Matt Lewis and Alison Nelson, and I chose this recipe because Mr. Lewis is now a co-owner of Baked in Red Hook, a favorite sweet spot when I lived in Brooklyn. The cake and frosting recipes below are for an 8-inch three layer cake, but I halved the recipes below to make a six-inch two layer one instead. Also, I only have gel food coloring, so I just used a little squirt (in case you wonder why it’s not super duper red) and added a spoonful of extra boiling water to make up for the missing liquid.
Although in the book, the authors recommend a vanilla buttercream (at Baked they use a cinnamon buttercream and decorate with red hots), I decided to go the cream cheese frosting route instead. I found this to be a tricky cake to ice– even with a crumb coat, there were little flecks of red all over the place. Oh well…one of the charms of homemade, I guess. R thought it looked and tasted great, and since it was his birthday, that’s all that matters to me.
Red Velvet Cake – makes three 8-inch rounds
adapted from Matt Lewis and Alison Nelson’s Chocolate Bar
4 T cocoa powder
1 oz red food coloring
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 t salt
1 cup buttermilk
6 T (3 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 t vanilla extract
1 T plus 1 1/2 t vegetable shortening, room temperature
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
2 T boiling water
1 T white vinegar
1 t baking soda
-Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Grease and flour three 8-inch round cake pans lined with parchment circles.
-In a small bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder, food coloring and 2 T boiling water. Set mixture aside to cool.
-In the bowl of standing mixer, cream together butter and shortening on high speed until light. Add sugar and continue beating until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs and egg yolk, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each.
-Mix buttermilk and vanilla into cooled cocoa mixture.
-Sift together flour and salt. With the mixer on low, alternatley add flour and cocoa mixtures, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Mix until just incorporated.
-In a cup, dissolve the baking soda in the vinegar (it will be fizzy). Add immediately to batter and mix until just combined.
-Divide the batter between the prepared cake pans. Bake until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, about 30 minutes.
-Cool cakes on a rack in their pans for 10 minutes. Then turn out and let them finish cooling completely on the rack. When cool, frost with cream cheese frosting, below.
Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting – makes enough for a three-tier 8-inch cake
1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 t vanilla bean paste (can substitute 1 t extract)
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted
-In the bowl of an electric mixer, slowly paddle the cream cheese, butter and vanilla bean paste. Add the powdered sugar and mix until just smooth, scraping sides of bowl as necessary. If too soft to spread, add more powdered sugar until it reaches desired consistency.
Graham Crackers
August 8, 2007 at 6:17 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, sweet things | 13 Comments
Yes, I am aware that it looks like I’ve taken a photo of a pile of damp sand, but a few crumbs are all that I have left to share of my experience with homemade graham crackers. I have plans for those leftover crumbs, though…you wait and see.
Waaay back when, I promised that if anyone was interested, I would give the recipe for homemade graham crackers that I used in making my Namaimo bars. I did get a request, and I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get this out.
This recipe is from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, which calls them “the best graham crackers.” And I can attest to them being very tasty, since I did a quality control check before I whizzed the batch to bits. I imagine they’d be very good with a little peanut butter (one of my favorite snacks).
Graham Crackers – makes 32 crackers (3.5″ x 2.5″)
adapted from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion
1/2 c (2 oz) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c (7 7/8 oz) whole wheat flour
3/4 c (3 oz) powdered sugar
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon (optional)
1 stick (4 oz) unsalted butter
2 T (1 1/2 oz) honey
2 T (1 oz) cold milk
– Preheat the oven to 325°F/165°C. Have ready two baking sheets, with parchment to match.
– Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Using a pastry blender or your fingertips, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until crumbly.
– In a separate bowl, stir the honey into the milk to dissolve. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry, tossing with a fork until it comes together. If it seems to require more liquid to come together (mine did), add a little extra milk.
-Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface and fold it over gently 10-12 times until smooth (I found a metal bench scraper to be quite helpful here). Divide the dough in half, and form each half roughly into a rectangular shape. Work with one half at a time, keeping the other half covered.
-On the counter, lightly flour one of your parchment sheets and a rolling pin. Roll one piece of dough on the parchment, adding a little more flour as necessary, into a rectangle about 10″ X 14″ (almost the size of your parchment). The dough should be about 1/16″ thick. Trim the edges to make a clean rectangle and dock evenly with a fork.
-Using a pizza or pastry wheel, cut the dough into 16 rectangles. Lift the parchment onto your baking sheet. There is no need to separate the cookies– they will bake together, but will break apart easily along the pre-cut lines when slightly cooled.
-Repeat the last two steps for your other half of dough.
-Bake for 15 minutes, or until medium gold all over (mine took a little longer). Let the crackers cool on the pan until just barely warm. Carefully snap crackers apart and cool them completely on a rack, before wrapping them tightly for storage.
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