Live Every Week Like It's Cake Week

It lives.

I haven’t been doing a whole lot of baking lately, actually. In July, I went to Ecuador on vacation and in August I moved from New Jersey to Queens with my new roommate. I’ve baked since I got here, but it’s been stuff I’ve posted before – chocolate spice loaf – made the right way this time, cinnamon chip bread, blue cheese scallion biscuits, toffee blondies – so there hasn’t been a reason to post. And also, I’ve just gotten out of the habit. It happens.

But there is one thing I baked that isn’t on this blog, which is a shame, because it’s a classic, classic recipe from my childhood: snickerdoodles. A lot of people have some kind of variation on this cookie, but as my mother says in her completely unbiased way, a lot of them are pretty bad. This one is not – it’s basically the perfect cinnamon-sugar cookie.

They make about six dozen, which is why we just finished them after having them for a full month – I have excellent tupperware – so this is a great cookie to share. If the guys I work with weren’t on perpetual diets, I would have taken a few dozen to them. Alas.

Snickerdoodles

1 C butter
1 ½ C sugar, more for rolling
2 eggs, beaten
2 ¾ C flour
2 t cream of tartar
1 t baking soda
½ t salt

Cinnamon

Cream butter, sugar and eggs. Set aside. Meanwhile, sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Mix with cream mixture until thoroughly combined, and cool in the refrigerator overnight.

When ready to bake, mix sugar and cinnamon to taste in a bowl. Roll dough into balls the size of walnuts, and then dredge in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place on greased cookie sheets, leaving plenty of room – if the kitchen is warm, the dough will spread out more. Place in a moderate oven – 375° and bake for 9-10 minutes, shifting the cookies from the bottom to the top shelves approximately halfway through.

Let cool completely on wax paper, and then store in an airtight container.

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 is based vaguely on a Paula Deen recipe, except I doubled the spices, changed molasses for maple syrup, and switched the vegetable shortening for butter (Yes, I too was shocked at the existence of a Deen recipe without a pound of butter.) They turned out well, heated the apartment on this extremely cold December day, and made my kitchen smell like Christmas, so I consider it a success.

Ginger Spice Cookies

3/4 C butter, softened

1 C brown sugar

1/4 C maple syrup

1 egg

2 C AP flour

2 t baking soda

2 t cinnamon

2 t ground ginger

1 t cloves

1/2 t salt

Granulated white sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven and either grease cookie sheets or line with parchment or a Silpat. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar. Add maple syrup and egg and mix until smooth. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices and salt. Add to wet ingredients and mix.

Form dough into 1″ balls and roll in white sugar. Flatten gently with the heel of your hand and bake for 12 minutes, rotating once.

They’re quite spicy and the maple flavor I was expecting was nonexistent. If you want a milder, sweeter cookie, halve the spices – it probably would have a more maple-spice flavor then.

Welcome to my brand new, shiny baking blog. It’s still under construction – I want a header eventually – but for now, all the baking posts I’ve been adding to my main blog at zonkered.net can be here. Over this weekend I’ll probably post my two most recent cakes, but for now: the Single Girl’s Thanksgiving Menu (for 2009, at any rate). No cake, but there is pie, and even the savory items are baked.

Okay, or roasted, if you insist.

The only thing I’ve done so far is apple pie, loosely based on Deb at Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, but also planned for the day are stuffed mushrooms and roasted acorn squash, loosely based (yes, again) on a couple of the Pioneer Woman’s recipes.

Deb’s apple pie is from America’s Test Kitchen; thus, my pie is from America’s Test Kitchen + my mother + me, when I changed stuff around. I haven’t tried it yet. It may very well be a horrible disaster.

I doubt it, but you never know.

Apple Pie

3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced

4 Gala apples, peeled cored and sliced

3/4 C sugar

2 T flour

1 T Penzey’s Apple Pie Spice

1 T lemon juice

2 prepared pie crusts

Preheat oven to 425F and fit one pie crust to your pie plate. Let the edges hang over for now, and attack the apples. This is going to take a while.

Fill a bowl with water and add the 1 T of lemon juice – this will keep your apple slices from turning brown, and since you’re using seven of them, this is a concern. Peel, core and slice, and then drain the apples when you’re done.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar, flour, and pie spice. Toss the apples until they’re coated. Get in their with your hands; using a spoon is just going to make you lose apple slices, and you won’t get them coated. You’re going to get goop all over your hands anyway.

Pile the apples in the crust – they should mound up pretty high – and then cover them up with the second pie crust. Trim the edges and seal. Use a fork if you’re fancy, use your fingers if, like me, you’re lucky that the pie crust didn’t completely fall to pieces. Cut holes in the top to vent, unless again, you’re like me and managed to rip three holes in the middle while stretching it over the pie.

Sometimes being something of a disaster is a good thing.

Slide the pie into the oven; bake for 10 minutes at 425F, and then lower to 350F for an additional 40-50 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for at least four hours before eating. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or anything else that sounds fantabulous.

The mushrooms and squash might show up later. I make no promises.