Live Every Week Like It's Cake Week

Yeah, wow, it’s been forever, hasn’t it? My girlfriend visited in May, and work’s been insane, and honestly? I haven’t been baking a whole lot, and when I do, I sort of forget to post the new recipes. Bad blogger, no biscuit…oh, wait!

*Cue the groans*

Right then. I’m not actually usually a from scratch biscuit person because it tends to be ever so slightly messy in my already chaotic kitchen. I don’t eat biscuits much at all, actually, and I’m not sure why, since a fluffy biscuit drenched in honey is easily one of the best things in the world. But I digress.

This was a way to get rid of some buttermilk I bought for something or other, and actually I had to find another buttermilk recipe to help get more of it done. And as it happens, both recipes come from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. It’s not so surprising, when it comes down to it; I don’t remember when she’s ever posted anything that wasn’t incredibly awesome.

This recipe is almost exactly the way Deb has it at her site, but I used a shallot instead of scallions. Because I had a shallot, and no scallions.

Blue Cheese and Shallot Biscuits

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick or 3 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups crumbled blue cheese
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 450F and whisk/sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Blend in butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Stir in blue cheese and shallot, then add buttermilk and stir until just combined.

Drop dough in 12 equal mounds about 2 inches apart onto a buttered large baking sheet, or one lined with parchment paper. Bake in middle of oven until golden, 16 to 20 minutes.

I actually burned the soup these were meant to go with, but the biscuits were more than awesome on their own.

This recipe came about because of leftover ricotta in my fridge. I’d made ricotta-topped spaghetti for dinner on Sunday, which left me with most of a fifteen ounce tub of cheese left…and no plans for it.  Normally, what would happen is it would languish in the refrigerator until I remembered to pitch it. This time, I got some inspiration from Deb’s ricotta muffins. The original version are a walnut-fennel muffin, and at some point I might try them, but I didn’t have most of the ingredients. I did, however, have the ingredients for a gateau aux noix.

(Rule of Baking #1: Everything is always fancier in French. Gateau aux noix? Walnut cake.)

Cut half the sugar out, scooped them into muffin tins and stuffed them with ricotta cheese, and Saturday brunch is taken care of, basically. This recipe would be great with eggs and bacon for a weekend brunch, just impressive enough to…well. Impress. But not at all complicated.

Walnut-Ricotta Muffins

3 eggs

1/2 C granulated sugar

1/3 C walnut oil

1/3 C white wine

1 1/2 C flour

2 t baking powder

1/4 t sea salt

3/4 C (or more) walnuts, chopped

Ricotta cheese

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 12 cup muffin tin. Set aside.

Whisk together eggs and sugar until creamy and yellow. Add oil and wine, whisk to combine. Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in walnuts.

Fill the muffin cups a little less than half-way. Top with a teaspoon of ricotta cheese, and then the remainder of the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until slightly golden. Let cool a few minutes in the pan, and then remove to a rack.

Eat while still warm.

I’ve had three so far.

This is a weird thing to admit, especially for a 29 year old baker, but I…have never used yeast before. Seriously, I haven’t. I bake cookies and quickbreads and pies and cakes (obviously), but yeast breads? Not so much. I’m pretty sure it’s the instant gratification factor: I don’t have the patience for a good rise (though considering I now have a jar of yeast, I may attempt it more often).

This isn’t really a traditional yeast bread – it’s somewhere between yeast and quickbread, and takes instant yeast and baking powder. I’ve had the recipe since before Christmas, and have been wanting to make it since then, but as is often the case, my grocery store? Had no cinnamon chips. (Other things not findable in East Coast supermarkets: orange cinnamon rolls, German Chocolate cakemix and Heath Bar Crunch Bits. I’m confused too.) So it didn’t get made until this month, when my mother mailed me three pounds of cinnamon chips.

My mother is awesome.

This recipe comes from King Arthur Flour, producers of my go-to brownie recipe and purveyors of what is apparently really excellent flour that I’m too cheap to buy. Maybe someday, when I’m feeling flush. In the meantime, it’s Gold Medal, and I’ll continue trawling the KAF website for great recipes.

This recipe is apparently great for toasting; I wouldn’t know, since I just cut thick slices and ate the hell out of it. I also didn’t quite get the cinnamon chips mixed in properly, and it’s probably even better if they’re evenly distributed instead of…crowding the edge.

I’ll just consider it my own little twist on the recipe.

Easy Cinnamon Chip Bread

3 C AP flour

1/2 C sugar

2 t instant yeast

1 t salt

1 t cinnamon

1 C warm milk

1/4 C unsalted butter, melted

1 egg

1 t baking powder

1 C cinnamon chips

Cinnamon-sugar, for topping

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, butter, and egg. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, beating till smooth. Let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hour, covered, then stir in the baking powder and cinnamon chips.

Spoon the batter into a greased 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan. Sprinkle the top with the cinnamon-sugar.

Bake the bread in a preheated 350°F oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until it tests done. Remove the bread from the oven, let it rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer it from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Seriously good, perfect for breakfast or dessert. Or breakfast, dessert, and a mid-afternoon snack.

This was originally supposed to be Chocolate Spice Bread from Nick Maligieri’s The Modern Baker, but I was, um. Out of sour cream. And then I accidentally added twice as much cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. And had to add an extra egg. And substituted goat cheese for the sour cream.

In other words, this is not Nick’s chocolate spice bread, but it is one of the most decadent chocolate desserts I’ve made, and that includes the afternoon I spent getting drunk on chocolate bourbon cake.

Chocolate Spice Cake Loaf

1 1/2 C AP flour
1/3 C dutch process cocoa powder
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
1 t ground ginger
3 eggs
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
5 T melted butter
4 oz goat cheese, softened
1 t almond extract

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, spices and salt. Set aside.

Whisk eggs with sugar. Add melted butter, goat cheese, and almond extract and beat until smooth. Add dry ingredients and beat until combined.

Spread in a greased loaf pan and bake in a 350F oven for 40-50 minutes or until a clean knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for five minutes, then remove and cool completely before serving.

I figured that yet another recipe full of substitutions and minor errors was the right way to end the year. It is, after all, the way I bake 90% of my recipes.

I’m never quite sure how to classify the muffin. Technically speaking, it resides in the the quick bread category, along with biscuits and scones and banana and zucchini bread, but I’ve adapted cake recipes to make muffins and I imagine I could reverse that in some cases. There are definitely more cake-like muffins out there. This isn’t one of them.

I first came across Elise’s Blackberry Muffin recipe back in 2005, and wanted to try it then, but when I blogged about it on my now inactive blog, my mother promptly sent me her sweet muffin recipe from Betty Crocker and informed me that they made the best fruit muffins ever, and I never got around to Elise’s. Then I was hunting around for something to bake today, came across them again, and finally, four years later, I’ve made them.

They might be the best raspberry muffins ever. Don’t tell my mother.

The secret is the sour cream, which makes for a fluffy, slightly dense, moist muffin. It’s also only got 2/3 cup of sugar, so it’s not overly sweet either; it’s perfect, and I’m currently devouring them as an accompaniment to my tomato and spinach soup for dinner tonight. I chose raspberries, my favorite fruit for muffins, but blueberries or the original blackberries work fine too.

Raspberry Sour Cream Muffins
2 C all purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t salt
2 large eggs
1 C sour cream
2 t Half-and-Half
2/3 C sugar
8 T warm melted butter (1 stick)
1 t vanilla
1 C frozen raspberries

Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a standard 12 muffin pan or line with paper muffin cups.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, milk, sugar, butter and vanilla.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix together with a few light strokes, just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Add the berries. DO NOT OVERMIX. The batter shouldn’t be smooth.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, 17-20 minutes (or longer). Let cool for 2 to 3 minutes before removing from the pan. If not serving hot, let cool on a rack.

It actually makes 18 instead of 12, which amazed me, because even when a recipe says it makes 18, I only ever get 12.