Challah

 

Holllahhhhh!

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Challahhhh!

No Seriously. We’re going Jewish for this post.

 

Here’s the deal. Everyone may think that Chanukah is the most important Jewish holiday. Well everyone is wrong. Please, it’s about a group of people who kept the light going for eight days instead of one. (actually the story is pretty kick butt. Look it up. OR speed things up and listen to this song)

Regardless. The high holidays, Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) and Yom Kippur (that day you fast and pray that God doesn’t have bad things in store for you for the next year) are significantly more important. Although while everyone else is fasting, my family hikes. And talks about food all day. And does not fast. I think it’s a fantastic tradition. At the end of the day? Challah.

So what is it? Just the most soft, squishy, ever so slightly sweet braided egg bread. Its almost the Jewish version of Portuguese sweet bread or French brioche. sometimes it has raisins in it. It’s extremely satisfying with just a bit of butter, but probably makes the best French toast you’ll ever had.

Fact.

Challah comes in a normal straight loaf, or a circular loaf which is eaten around the high holidays. Circle – new year - life – get it?

Does this differ from normal bread making? Kinda. The richness of the bread comes from eggs and oil. Really making this bread is no different from most, but there are a few more ingredients. I also suggest one slow rise in the fridge to get a more developed (read: delicious) flavor. That just means more foresight in your baking (or skipping this step). Watch out! This one also takes THREE rises (so have even more foresight!) Also, if you knead the S#*t out of the bread, it will rise like a beast. Pro tip. See pictures for proof

Challah

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen (who else?)

Makes two decent sized loaves

• 1 1/2 packages active dry yeast (1 1/2 tablespoons or 3/8 ounces or 11 grams
• 1 tablespoon (13 grams) plus 1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar
• 1/2 cup (118 ml) olive or vegetable oil, plus more for greasing the bowl
• 5 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon (14 grams) table salt
• 8 to 8 1/2 cups (1000 to 1063 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup raisins (about 70 grams) per challah, (optional)
• Poppy or sesame seeds for sprinkling. (optional)

1. In a large bowl (REALLY LARGE), dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon  sugar in 1 3/4 cups lukewarm water.

2. mix in oil , and beat in 4 eggs, one at a time, with remaining sugar and salt. Gradually add flour. Mix until dough begins to come together.

3. Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead knead knead until smooth and elasticy. Form a ball and put it in a greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, until almost doubled in size. Punch down dough, cover and let rise again in a warm place for another half-hour. (note: either of these rises can be in the fridge. Allow about 8 or so hours? I think I just left mine in the fridge overnight)

4. If using, knead the raisins into the challah,  before forming the loaves.

5. Here’s the challenging part – braiding. To make a 6-braid challah, take half the dough and split into 6 pieces. Roll each piece into a strand about 12 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. Place the 6 in a row, parallel to one another. Pinch the tops of the strands together. Move the outside right strand over 2 strands. Then take the second strand from the left and move it to the far right. Take the outside left strand and move it over 2. Move second strand from the right over to the far left. Start over with the outside right strand. Continue this until all strands are braided. (I had Kai read this to me while doing it. It made things A LOT easier)

For a straight loaf, tuck ends underneath. For a circular loaf, simply twist into a circle, pinching ends together.

5. Place on a cookie sheet for the final rise (about one hour). Beat remaining egg and brush it on loaves. At this point, you may freeze the loaves as is until later. It works, I tried it.

6. If baking, preheat oven to 375 degrees and brush loaves again. Sprinkle bread with seeds, if using. If freezing, remove from freezer 5 hours before baking.

7. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden. Don’t over bake! Challah is totally better on the doughy side than the…bleh dry side. Cool loaves on a rack.

Bake it. Be Jewish for a day. Make French toast afterwards.

-Leah

Margarita Birthday Cake

 

BIRTHDAY CAKE!

Again. Doesn’t it seem like I only write about birthday cakes? It’s because they’re fun to make, and exciting, and pretty. And delicious.

Ok! Recap. Last year for his birthday Kai requested “an interesting cake” and I gave him a vegan chocolate avocado cake (I know right! I’m still impressed with myself). So I had already geared up for a some weird request that he would have. When I did ask him what he wanted he told me a margarita cake. A margarita cake? half the fun of margaritas is the tequila, so what fun is it when all the alcohol is baked off? But what choice did I have? He wanted a margarita cake, I was going to give him a margarita cake!

I thought it was going to be pretty hard to find a recipe like that. Fortunately, people in this country have an odd obsession with cinco de mayo. I don’t get it…we don’t celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. In fact, I’m sure most of us laugh at the sheer thought of Canadian Thanksgiving. Cinco de mayo is SO not American that even my spell check is giving me the angry little squiggly for cinco (mayo must be used as a short for mayonnaise quite frequently because it doesn’t appear to have a problem with that. I mean, I use mayo in my every day typing, don’t you?)

Regardless, cake recipe was found, and off I went.

The original recipe that I found basically said that it was from a Martha Stewart lemon cupcakes, which she turned into  lime cupcakes and added tequila into. Sounded fair to me. I took her recipe, doubled it for a cake recipe, added more lime, more tequila, and as always didn’t measure properly.

The frosting was a lime-tequila swiss buttercream – my first swiss buttercream experience.

People. Normally I would be gushing, I mean it’s cake. It’s cake that I made. But it didn’t blow me away. Don’t get me wrong, I still ate plenty of it, and it still was quite good, I just realized I totally make better chocolate cakes (thanks for the chocolate cake gene mom!). The cake was lime-y and the frosting was good. I missed the tequila though. I would probably stick to a plain margarita next time though. …oh now I want a real margarita.

No worries. Plenty of tequila was served with the cake in honor of my darling roommate and (MIA….EHEM) blogging buddy.

 

Margarita Cake

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2  tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 limes, zested and juiced
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature 
• tequila for brushing on warm cakes

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease two 9 inch round cake pans.

2. whisk flour baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.

3. cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time until mixed thoroughly. Add lime juice and zest and mix.

3. slowly alternate mixing in the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.  Mix just until incorporated.

4. Split batter between two prepared baking pans. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden and toothpick comes out clean. Brush (lots) of tequila on warm cake.

 

Tequila-Lime Swiss Buttercream

• 1 cup sugar
• 4 large egg whites
• 26 tablespoons butter (3 sticks plus 2 tablespoons)
• Juice of 2-3 limes
• a bit under 1/4 cup tequila

Whisk egg whites and sugar together in a BIG bowl over a pot of simmering water until you cannot feel the sugar granules.  Remove from water and whip mixture until it doubles in size and turns white. Add lime juice and tequila and mix. Add butter one stick at a time and whip (forever) until it comes together. This takes like 15 minutes. It’s a pain. It’s weird. Your frosting goes through phases.

Note: I totally made the tequila and lime juice amounts up. Why? Because I made it up the first time and I baked this cake over a month ago and have no idea what I did. It seemed to work in the end so…give it a shot! Or make a different frosting. A cream cheese frosting is always wonderful. Or a glaze. Mmm yeah A glaze would be awesome.

Would I do this frosting again? It was kinda a lot of butter, and whipping. I loved that it was sturdy and I could make a prettier than usual cake (for me), but I don’t think buttercreams are my favorite. That being said it was still good!

 

I’ll be back with more delicious items. Never fear.

-Leah

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

 

So I have a line up of baked items waiting to be posted on. I've been busy baking. Like a lot. Generally I just gradually make my way through posting them, but occasionally I get excited about one recipe in particular.

This one's cutting the line. It's worth it. I'm excited. You should be excited. Let's all be excited.

A week or so ago I wanted to find out what it would be like to make my own pumpkin puree. I went and bought a pumpkin, scrape it out, baked it, scooped out the meat (...why is it called meat? Does anyone else get gross images??), tried to blenderize it, realized I need a food processor, tried  to smash it with a spoon,realized I need at least a potato masher. Finally the result of the hour + long process was maybe 4 cups of slightly lumpy pumpkin.

If you couldn't tell, I realized making your own pumpkin purée is not worth the effort.

Regardless I was left with a lot of pumpkin on my hands so I've been searching around for some good pumpkin recipe. I made pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie oatmeal, and then I found this recipe.

With a gentle nudge from my darling roommate Kai, I was convinced to set out on my first journey into the world of cinnamon rolls.Pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

Oh. My. God.

Seriously? Who comes up with these things! It's just as it sounds. Pumpkin pie and cinnamon roll love child.

Delicious delicious love child.

totally worth the effort.

 

Does this not look like a monster??

It comes down to being a yeast bread made with pumpkin, rolled out and smeared with a brown sugar, butter, pumpkin pie spice mixture, rolled up and baked until the kitchen smells like heaven (or pumpkin pie). Oh and topped with glaze. Obviously.

Halfway through baking these I had a realization. I don't know what I'm going to do when my friends get into their mid-thirties and their metabolisms start slowing down. I'm going to be blamed for making people fat.

I'll have to make some new twenty-something friends.

Until then. It's November, it's almost Thanksgiving. It's time for pumpkin. Find someone you want to impress and do it.

UH-Mazing

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls 

Adapted from The Way the Cookie Crumbles (adorable name right? Great blog)

Dough:
4-4 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
⅓ cup  sugar
1½ teaspoons salt
2 eggs
1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin
4 tablespoons vegetable oil

Filling:
¾ cup packed  light brown sugar
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice (Do people really buy pumpkin pie spice? I used a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg...I also don't measure)
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon melted butter

Glaze:
1 cup (4 ounces) confectioners sugar, sifted to remove lumps
1 ounce cream cheese, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 tablespoons milk

Notes: As stated, I just make up the spice amount until I like it. Use mostly cinnamon. I believe in you, you can do it. Don't over do it though.

I ended up making more filling (filling is awesome) by about another 1/2 tbs butter and another 1/4 cup sugar.

I have no idea what one ounce of cream cheese looks like so I just took a big spoonful. I also think 1 cup of sugar is wayyy too much, so I slowly added more until it tasted right.

Here we go, directions time.

Mix flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl (use a stand mixer if you have one). In a separate bowl, mix the eggs with pumpkin and oil. Gradually add the wet ingredients to the try ones and continue mixing until a dough forms. On a floured surface, kneed the dough until elastic and soft (maybe 10 minutes?) adding flour as necessary. The dough should be slightly sticky, but not sticking to the counter. Let dough rise in a oiled bowl in  a warm dry place until doubled (1.5-2 hours...ish?)

Mix filling ingredients in a bowl.

When dough has doubled, punch down and turn out into a lightly floured surface. Roll dough out (using your wine bottle rolling pin!! ...or a real one) to a 16 by 12 inch rectangle. Spread filling out over dough.

Roll dough starting from the long side into a log pinching dough with fingertips as you go. You should have roughly a 16 inch log when you are finished.

Cut log into 2-3inch pieces and place in a greased baking pan.

Cover and let rise until doubled, about another 1 - 1.5 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake rolls for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown.

While rolls are cooling, mix glaze ingredients until smooth. Pour over rolls and serve!

Several more notes: my rolls failed at rising so I ended up preheating the oven with them in it. It seemed to work.

I don't remember what my other note was....just have fun?

Oh fun story. I was trying to use up my pumpkin with this recipe. Turns out I didn't have enough of it left to make this recipe, so I ended up cracking a can of pumpkin. Sigh. Expect more pumpkin recipes.

-Leah

Homemade Nutella

 

Nutella.

I don’t think I know a single person who doesn’t melt a little bit after hearing that word.

Creamy, chocolatey delicious.

Do you remember when Nutella was rare in this country? People would horde it after travelling to Europe because it was such a pain to get your hands on. Not any more though. You can find Nutella on most grocery shelves. That doesn’t change how good it is.

What’s better than Nutella? Homemade Nutella. How about homemade Nutella on fresh bread?

I came across the idea of making my own Nutella after visiting Fastachi, a nut and chocolate store that has some of the freshest most delicious nuts. After seeing the beautiful pile of freshly roasted hazelnuts, I started to wonder if it were possible to match that ever sought after taste of Nutella. Sure enough, not only is it possible, it’s extremely simple with only THREE ingredients. The end result is a fresh delicious spread that brings Nutella to an extreme. Dark and chocolately combined with the intense flavor of roasted hazelnuts. You can’t get more pure than this.

This Nutella would make the perfect fun and creative gift (the holidays are slowly approaching!) Just put it in a cute jar with a bow and ta-da! Instant wow-factor! It also would make a great I’m sorry don’t hate me gift, I want to impress you with my culinary genius gift, you did something super nice for me gift, or for just a good…I need chocolate therapy moment.

Try it on ice cream. It’s killer.

DO it. It’s definitely worth the experiment.

Homemade Nutella

Makes roughly a cup

Ingredients

1 cup roasted hazelnuts (or roast them yourself for a few minutes!)

1/2 cup good quality cocoa powdered (I used a dutch-processed French cocoa from Fastachi)

Roughly 1 – 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

a pinch of salt

Directions

Put all of the hazelnuts into a food processer and blend until liquid (about 5 minutes, it’s awesome!).  Slowly add the cocoa powder, sugar, and salt. Blend until combined. Adjust sugar amount to liking. Enjoy!

So simple!

If you put it in the fridge it will become a bit harder like Nutella and not as liquid.

Coincidence my jar says magic? I think not!

Birthday Cake

Well well well. Looks like we’ve found ourselves back at a pretty awesome period of time. Myy birthday time.

Yes. I do like my birthday. Yes, I do act like a little kid and start yelling out that it’s going to be my birthday a month in advance (my roommates can vouch). Yes. I do bake my own birthday cake.

Who says someone else has to bake the cake?? In case you hadn’t noticed, I kinda like to bake. Get over it!!

This cake was special for several reasons. Let me list them off

• It’s my birthday, meaning it achieves automatic special status
• It had TWELVE, read it, a whole dozen eggs
• NO flour. None! what? Crazy!! I know!
• No butter either!

No really, this was a cake, and it wasn’t a diet cake. Do diet cakes even exist? Believe me, there was enough chocolate in this sucker that made up for the lack of butter. What is the point of a diet cake anyways? I am so confused now.

Nope, all twelve egg yolks are mixed with sugar and TONS of delicious melted chocolate. All TWELEVE (it’s crazy really) egg whites are beaten until they begin to take over your house like Strega Nona’s magic pasta pot did when Anthony forgot the magic words to stop it. Great book, check it out.

Some how, these things combine together to make the lightest chocolate you’ve ever eaten. So light, that the original recipe titled it “lighter than air chocolate cake”. I find that hard to believe. Air is pretty light. This comes pretty darn close.

The frosting? Alcoholic whipped cream. No, not like that stuff that started popping up in liquor stores. REAL whipped cream, with real(?) alcohol.

Of course it was fantastic, especially shared among wonderful friends who took time to come celebrate!

On another note – no flour means Passover friendly! I know you’re all excited now!

Let’s get this party started.

Warning- this cake was kinda a pain in the butt. GREASE WELL and you may have a prettier cake than mine.

Cake Ingredients:
12 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped
6 tablespoons water
12 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder

NOTE! I ended up using 3 cups heavy cream because I didn’t have enough to make good layers. Either be stingy with your frosting or get more cream!

Frosting:
2 cups heavy cream
6 tablespoons confectioners sugar, sifted
4 tablespoons Grand Marnier*

To make the cake preheat the oven to 350, and GREASEEEEE, line, and grease again 4 cake pans (I used two and changed them out)

Melt chocolate with water on the stove over low heat, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Turn off and let cool to luke warm.

Beat egg yolk 2/3 cup sugar, and salt in a large bowl with a beater until thick and pale (8 minutes with hand mixer). Fold in chocolate.

Beat egg whites in a very large bowl with a clean beater until whites hold soft peaks. Slowly mix in remaining 2/3 cup sugar and beat until stiff peaks (really, beat well). Fold in thirds the whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold gently but thoroughly .

Spread batter in four baking pans and bake until puffed and dry to the touch (anywhere from 15-20 minutes). Cakes will sink a bit in the middle (so sad!).

remove cakes from pans CAREFULLY, and freeze layers for roughly an hour.

To make frosting: Beat cream with sugar and Grand Marnier until whipped cream holds stiff peaks.

Alternate layers of frosting and cake until stacked pretty! (unlike mine). Refrigerate for at least an hour to ensure defrosted cake layers.

I have to apologize. Not only did my cake turn out ugggly (grease your pans!!!), I took really bad pictures of it.

What can I say, a drink in hand and a good conversation can be quite distracting.

Happy baking (and birthday to me )

Leah