It’s been a while since I made this recipe, and I tried to make them extra beautiful this time because they were all, y’know, going to professional bakers…

I think a few qualified as “unique” but for the most part I really think they came out well!

I baked a batch and a half (from the recipe as translated before here: http://risingsunbakery.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/rsb-linzertorte/) and let them cool/wait over night.

I learned a lot growing up in a bakery. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in a bakery as an adult? It’s that it never hurts to allot extra time to put together things like this… Baked goods can be just as good if you keep them correctly and just put them together slowly!

Halfway through with the raspberry jam:

And finished!

Then I powdered sugared the top pieces before attaching them!

Although they were all cut from the same cookie cutters, varying temperatures of dough/oven etc… led to a few subtle differences in cookie sizes/shapes… So putting them together was a bit of a puzzle in a few cases!

Beautiful no? I have tons of cookie cutters, but the hearts were the only ones that matched up well enough to make this kind of window in the middle cookie with…

I’m hoping to use the next week to make more cookies/use more of my cookie cutters… The Santa/Sleigh/Reindeer ones are perhaps my favorite…

But I’m pretty pleased with how these turned out! Even if I went a little nuts with the depth of field when I was taking pictures. I liked the way the out of focus cookies looked!

I packed them up in plastic wrap/tissue paper. Because the plastic wrap did not seem festive enough.

This batch and a half barely made enough for me to package up 5 for everybody, so I only have a few mismatched/broken pieces to eat myself… Probably for the best!

Hope everybody is enjoying this time of cookie baking!

John and I both remembered to buy eggs at the store. So… I had to do something to use the eggs!

I think this was the first time I’d made quiche since my farm school days–when we ate what felt like an absurd amount of the stuff, all made in frozen pie shells. I think I got a little quiched out.

Last night this all changed. Apparently there is nothing more delicious than a fresh quiche in a homemade pie shell!

This recipe was particularly easy to size down. It told me that I needed 6 crusts. And all the numbers were easily divisible by 6!

You’ll need:

1 pie crust (I used the trusty pate brisee recipe that I always use…)

3 whole eggs and one yolk

1 cup of cream

1 cup of milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 teaspoon nutmeg

1/3 teaspoon pepper

I made my pie crust earlier in the day, and let it have plenty of time in both the freezer and the refrigerator.

Then I pre-baked it at 425 for like 10 minutes, just enough to start to brown it up.

I didn’t have any pie weights to pre-bake with, so I just poked a few holes in the crust, and then when it came out poked a few more to deflate it… I pulled it out when it was just lightly golden brown.

While it pre-baked I prepped the rest. Pretty simple: throw it all in a bowl and whisk it up!

I wanted to make this a quiche that both John and I would enjoy… So I went pretty simple with the filling: ham and swiss! I grated maybe a cup of swiss, and cut up two slices of ham. When the pre-baked crust came out of the oven I put the cheese in first, then the ham, covering up the bottom of the crust.

Then I poured in the filling.

I turned the oven down to 350, and baked the quiche for probably 40-45 minutes, until it set up (ie. the middle stayed firm and didn’t jiggle when you shook the pie dish).

I managed to wait a few minutes before digging in. It probably could have used a little longer, but can you really blame me?

I ate it alongside a salad with feta cheese.

And then I ate some more.

And then, with the leftover pie crust, I made pumpkin pie dumplings? Is that a good word for them?

In order to make the filling

(http://risingsunbakery.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/rsb-pumpkin-pie-and-fall/)

work in this context, I just baked it like a custard beforehand. I’m not the first person to have this idea, and just looked up some advice online… Once the custard had set up I spooned it into pie crust circles, folded and egg washed them, and baked them 10-12 minutes at 425 (until golden brown).

They were pretty darn cute.

I put the rest in my favorite dish. Which I don’t often get to use (or want to use, for fear of breaking. I’m not the only one who consistently breaks the dishes I love, right?)

I foresee LOTS more baking between now and Christmas… Are you ready?

I have this problem. It’s called cheese straws…

The other week at work we had extra croissant dough. One of the things we made with said extra croissant dough? Parmesan cheese twists.

I blame those parmesan cheese twists. They triggered a craving that could not be denied. So here I am. Spending this one rare day off (where I had no class AND no work) baking cheese straws.

Little did I know they’d turn out so beautiful. Or that I’d have to photograph them so much to show everybody how beautiful they were!

Their recipe is here: http://risingsunbakery.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/rsb-cheese-straws/

But this time, instead of using a cookie press, I rolled the dough out really thin (think less than a quarter inch. as thin as you can make them really) and cut out stars and hearts with my two smallest cookie cutters.

They were beautiful as dough. But in the oven (at 375 degrees) they puffed up magically. That’s the thing about really thin pastry dough. It can create beautiful height!

I’ve eaten way too many. But hopefully some will be left for John to eat tomorrow…

Make some if you get the chance. They are ridiculously easy and RIDICULOUSLY addictive. Yes. They merit two ridiculously’s.

It’s definitely fall. Leaves are turning. The heat is on in my house. I even saw Teddy’s breath the other day on a walk. The tree across the street turned red very early, and I’ve been sad to see them fall, but the branches that are now appearing are actually kind of beautiful as well. Here’s hoping I can maintain that perspective for as long as possible…

In the spirit of the season, and in the midst of a desperate craving for comfort food, I decided to make pumpkin pie!

The main obstacle I faced with this recipe was the fact that the bakery version calls for “2 cans” of pumpkin. At first this seems easy enough. But the rest of the recipe calls for 12 cups of milk and 9 cups of evaporated milk.

Clearly these were not 2 standard sized cans of pumpkin.

By the way for some reason I keep spelling pumpkin with a ‘g’ at the end, like pumpking. So forgive me if I do that here… I’ll try to spell check.

Anyway. The only way I could shrink this recipe was to work with proportions, and improvise using other recipes as examples of the correct ratio of pumpkin to egg/milk. The resulting pie was DELICIOUS! I think this is definitely a recipe to stick with…

You’ll need:

2 cups of pumpkin

1 small can of evaporated milk (I think it was 6 fl oz? it came out to about 3/4 cup)

3/4 cup regular milk (so the total amount of liquid was 1.5 cups)

3 eggs (1/2 cup. my eggs were medium sized. adjust depending on the size of your eggs?)

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg, cloves, and salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/6 cup molasses

1/4 cup brown sugar

a little less than half a cup of white sugar (technically .42 cups)

I’d give you more detailed instructions here, but, to be quite honest, pumpkin pie is dead easy to make. You just throw everything in a bowl and mix it up. Generally I start with the pumpkin and eggs, and beat them with a whisk until incorporated. Then add the milk and do the same thing. Next add the molasses, and finally mix in all the dry ingredients.

It’ll be beautiful and orange.

And it will smell like Thanksgiving and home and fall.

It might even make your boyfriend start to act goofy. In this case: begin to arrange a photoshoot of your cat.

I mean, what else is there to do while a pumpkin pie is baking?

Personally. I ate dinner.

I wasn’t kidding about the comfort food craving. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and some squash.

Meanwhile, this continued:

I like that one because the black blob to the left is Teddy’s butt. He wasn’t thrilled about sharing his bed with the cat, but they made it work.

The pie baked at 475 for the first 15 minutes, then I lowered it to 400 (or thereabouts. my oven is bizarre) for about another half an hour, until the center of the custard set. If you jiggle your pie dish, the inside of the pie should stay firm. That’s when it’s done!

I may have also had some extra filling, and some extra dough. And made tiny pies by throwing circles of dough in a muffin tin and giving them a little filling. They were ready much faster, obviously, and were a delicious pie appetizer to the main event pie.

Amazing.

While the pie cooled, the photo shoot also came to an end. The cat got tired. Mostly because it had devolved into this:

Yes. That is an ipod cord. I’m not sure why that’s what he used. Perhaps because we have umpteen billion of them and it was handy.

And then there was pie.

Really, does one need anything else in life? Hope you have some pumpkin pie in your future as well!

I made this cake (or, loaf, as John called it) a few weeks ago. And when I realized I STILL hadn’t posted it, I figured that I should. It’s really very simple.

Poppy Seed Cake:

2/3 c poppy seeds

3/4 c milk

2/3 c butter

1/2 c sugar

2 c flour

2 1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1/4 c milk

1 t vanilla

4 egg whites

Start by soaking the poppy seeds in the milk.

Set your eggs out to warm up… Enjoy the fact that they might look like this as the heat of your un-airconditioned apartment gets to them:

Go ahead and cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. At some point in this process, add the vanilla. While it’s creaming (or before I guess, if you want to use the same mixer) beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks:

I may have made that part up, because it made sense. The recipe card didn’t really give any directions.

Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt).

Add the wet and dry ingredients alternately to the butter/sugar until everything comes together.

And… Finally… fold in the egg whites. Wish I had more pictures to punctuate this with! But folding basically means gently lift the batter up and over the egg whites until they’re mixed in, but don’t stir like usual. You want the egg whites to add volume to the batter, and if you just mix them in all the air will flop right out.

Add your batter to a well-greased pan.

And bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes, until a knife comes out clean and the top starts to become golden and almost crisp?

If you happen to make this recipe, I really would like some input. John greatly enjoyed it, and ate almost the whole thing. We both agreed that maybe it didn’t need so many poppyseeds? It was, interesting.

Hopefully the blog will improve as the holidays near, and the weather gets cold… There’s nothing quite like heating your house by continually keeping the oven in use!

So I made Four Herb Bread. I even made an extra trip to the grocery store to get the missing herbs…  And it’s good! Way better than any of the other bread I’ve tried to make. Granted, I can be pretty hard on myself, since I grew up in a bakery and am currently working in a bakery… But I would call this bread a success!

The recipe didn’t have many production instructions on it, so I took what I’ve learned in life and at work and also combined it with the directions for a similar recipe in one of my bread books. So here you go!

I started by creating a “poolish” of sorts (yes, funny word.)–this is what work does and what the book suggested… In this case the poolish was simply 1/2 teaspoon of yeast, 1/2 cup of water, and 3/4 c flour (thank goodness this correction was just pointed out to me! 3/4 c yeast would have been ugly…). I started by adding the yeast to some warm water and letting it bubble up:

Then add the flour, and beat until it starts to get, er, gluteny?

And that’s it! Let the poolish sit for a few hours, until it grows and gets bubbly.

I gave mine about 3.5 hours, and it was pretty warm in the kitchen, which probably helped it along a little faster than expected. It looked like this:

While it was sitting I roasted onions. Did I mention this bread has onions in it? Theoretically the recipe called for about 6 oz of roasted onions. But I used what I had, which was about half of a large onion, chopped up very fine, and covered in olive oil. The oven temperature during this process ranged from 450-300. Stupid oven. They still came out fine.

After I had roasted my onions and let my poolish sit, I got ready to move onto the next step! Which for me meant going to the grocery store to make sure I had these herbs: oregano, dillweed, thyme, and marjoram. As well as celery salt. I needed that too. So make sure you have those!

When you’re ready, take out the poolish, and start by adding another 1/2 teaspoon of yeast, and the rest of the water, about 1 2/3 cup. Mix together.

Then add 1/4 cup molasses, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil and continue to mix.Now, I’m missing photos from this process, but it’s the easiest part, hopefully. Add 1 c bread flour and a tablespoon each of salt and celery salt. Well. Actually, I’m not sure I used that much. That’s what it looks like the recipe calls for (a little less than an ounce of each), but I’m ashamed to say I’m not sure how much I used.

Mix well, and then continue to add the rest of the flour, about 3 cups each of white and wheat bread flour. I’d add the wheat first, so that you can continue to add the white as you knead the dough. Things don’t ever seem to look as right if I knead using whole wheat flour. Once the bread starts to turn into, well, bread, go ahead and work the herbs and the onions into the dough. I used about a teaspoon of oregano and dillweed, and about 1/2 a teaspoon of marjoram and thyme.

Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, probably 10-15 minutes. It’ll look like this:

At this point I had to go to class. So I did. And when I came back, 2 something hours later, I was greeted by this!

Good lord it had grown. I punched it down to this:

before going for a quick run, and 30 minutes later returned to this:

I think you call this “active” dough.

Brilliant home baker that I am, I have no loaf pans. And had a ton of bread dough.

So I attempted to bake it in two shapes, and divided it in half. I shaped the first half in the same way that we shape so many of our breads at work, in a torpedo shaped (italian?) loaf.

step 1: flatten it out

Step 2: fold it in thirds, like a letter.

3: And roll it up.

Unfortunately I had no basket to put it in to proof, so I put it in a bowl. And in an hour and a half, when I was ready to bake, it looked like this…

Oh well…

The other half of the dough I shaped into 3 tiny loaves that I baked in the tiny loaf pans I have! They were much cuter.

That’s what they looked like pre-proofing. Post proofing they were starting to explode. Like I said, my kitchen was ridiculously hot…

As previously mentioned, I let them proof (rise for a 3rd time) for about an hour and a half before baking them, with a bowl of water to create steam, at 450 for about 15 minutes, and 400 for another 20 or so minutes.

Ta-da! Bread!

Bread that smelled REALLY good. And tasted, well, like the bakery. I ate my lunch, a BLT, on it today. So good.

And I ate multiple pieces of bread and butter with it last night.

Such a familiar taste and smell. It was kind of incredible. Success!

I’m back!

With these:

I’ve been meaning to make almond crescents for at least a year now… But the last time I tried they failed miserably!

This time I didn’t do any of the oz to cups measurements via online calculators–I weighed them first before seeing how many cups, etc… they really were. And this time, they worked!

I don’t have pictures of the whole process, perhaps another time I will. But here’s the recipe:

Almond Crescents:

2 sticks (1/2 pound) butter

1/2 c sugar

7.5 oz ground almonds (I used sliced almonds, and ground them in the food processor)

2 c flour

1/2 t salt

1/2 t vanilla

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the vanilla and salt.

Slowly mix in the ground almonds.

Add the flour and mix until combined.

Form into crescents and bake at 350! Finish off with powdered sugar.

Note: My crescents weren’t as beautiful as I’d like, but I was doing this in a hurry and just formed them in my hands. I’d try to use the counter and roll them into firmer logs before forming the crescents!

These pecan bars came at quite the price too… I slowly have been collecting the ingredients for them for weeks, finally started to make them last night, and was almost done when I realized I was lacking pecans. So John and I drove to the store at 11:00 at night to get them…. Why I was desperate to make pecan bars at 10:30 at night is beyond me. Not worth asking…

For the crust you’ll need:

2.75 sticks butter

3/4 c sugar

1 large egg (or 2 small. i halved the original recipe which called for 3 eggs)

1 t vanilla

3 3/4 c flour (technically, 3.875 c)

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking powder

This crust should come together like a cookie–cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg, then the dry ingredients. Although I usually add the vanilla, salt, and baking powder mid-way through creaming the sugar/butter…

Press the crust into a pan–and bake at 350 until firm and golden.

I may have run out of all purpose flour and resorted to about a cup of whole wheat. Only seems to have been a good thing!

For the filling:

2 sticks butter

1.125 c brown sugar

1/4 c sugar

1/2 c honey

1/4 c cream

10 oz pecans

Melt the butter, sugar, and honey. Bring to a boil and let boil for a couple minutes (I had no directions on the recipe card, so I faked this from looking at various other recipes).

Remove from the heat and add the cream and pecans, then pour over the hot crust and return to the oven.

This was the interesting part. I had no idea how long to bake it for… So I baked it as I would a pecan pie. Until the filling was set. It felt like it was taking a little bit too long–so the center was still a little bit jiggly when I removed it. But it seems fine! It was in the oven for 30-40 minutes altogether.

Let cool well, you could even place it in the refrigerator to firm it up, before cutting into bars.

Enjoy! I may have eaten some for breakfast. So what if there’s over a pound of butter in this recipe, pecans are semi-healthy aren’t they?

Well–I must apologize in advance for not having step-by-step photos of this–but I think this is about the best I can do!

This cake was originally intended for an Easter dinner–but the cake was already partially assembled by the time that dinner had to be postponed!

So. We ate some of it. And it was probably the most incredible cake I’ve made EVER. no joke. I felt guilty for feeding people a sub-par (if incredibly cute and lamb-shaped) pound cake the week before, because this was so amazing.

Step-by-step will follow the next time I make it. promise. It was hard enough getting this photographed and posted! come on summer…

White Cake:

1 stick (1/4 lb) butter.

1 c sugar

3 c flour

2 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

1 c milk

1 t vanilla

4 egg whites (beaten until stiff, but not dry)

Cream the butter and sugar–then add the flour/bp/salt mixture alternating with the milk/vanilla mixture.

The original mixture called for 3/4 c milk, but this turned out way too dry and I had to up it to about a cup…

Mix in 1/4 of the egg white mixture, then carefully fold in the rest.

I divided the batter into 2, well-greased, 9 inch cake rounds–and baked at 350 for about 20 minutes (honestly, I’m not sure how long it was. not as long as I expected)

The cakes popped out of the pans pretty easily, and I let them cool before layering them with a generous amount of lemon curd in between.

The Lemon Curd Recipe:

4 egg yolks (the other half of the eggs from the cake if you’d like)

4.5 oz sugar (about 1/2 cup)

.375 c lemon juice (2 large or 3 small lemons worth)

4 Tablespoons butter (1/2 stick)

a pinch of salt

.625 oz lemon zest (about 2 lemons)

Whisk together everything but the butter, then start to cook over low heat. I used a make-shift double boiler because my stove gets really hot REALLY fast…

As the mixture begins to warm, add the butter one piece at a time, whisking until incorporated. Once the butter is all mixed in continue to whisk for a few minutes (3-5 probably) until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. ie, if you stick a spoon into the pot the curd leaves a thin layer behind on the spoon, and doesn’t all slide off.

Don’t feel like it has to be really super thick. It’ll thicken up as it cools.

Once finished, set aside to cool and then refrigerate.

I finished off the cake with an american style buttercream–ie butter, powdered sugar, and milk. with a little bit of lemon juice to make it fit in with the rest of the cake.

Honestly, I just faked this. I didn’t have the time or energy (it was past 11 pm at this point) to measure it out according to the bakery recipe. But I used 1 stick of butter, probably a tablespoon or so of milk, a couple cups of powdered sugar, and the juice from half a lemon. Then I added milk and powdered sugar as I saw fit until I got the right texture.

It was (is) truly incredible as far as cake goes. I plan on making it again for whatever occasion next arises!

I’m trying to get back into this project, and actually have been asked if there’s any of the old bakery recipes that I’d like to bake at work. So if you have any more input or ideas please let me know! A few of my next goals include: almond crescents, walnut ginger bread, and delving into the world of cakes… I’m also still working on that egyptian orange cake (which I just can’t make quite right), as well as finding the morning glory muffin recipe!

For now I’ll try to leave you with at least some kind of recipe: lemon bars. I am forever trying to perfect a recipe for lemon bars… I’m very particular about how sweet/bitter they are! At some point I’ll just have to transition to lemon curd and tarts, because that’s more reliable…

Here’s what I did last time. They were great, just not quite, well, lemony enough! Almost not bitter enough? But still great, good texture, and I ate the whole pan within a couple days (with a little help from John)…

Crust:

2 c flour

1/2 c powdered sugar

1 t salt

2 sticks butter.

Cream the butter and sugar.

add the flour and salt and mix until dense crumbs–at this point it’ll pack pretty easily, but won’t form into the kind of cookie dough you’re used to.

Press the crumbles into a greased pan

and bake at 350 until a light golden brown–10-15 minutes

Filling:

zest and juice of 3 lemons

4 eggs

2 c sugar

NOTE: I am trying to find the right ratio of lemon juice to sugar. 3 lemons gave me 2/3 of a cup of sugar. as I said, the texture was great, but I prefer my lemon bars slightly more bitter, hence, I’ll probably change the ratio a little bit next time…

mix together the zest and lemon juice

add the eggs and sugar and beat well. for some reason 3 of my 4 eggs had double yolks–i really only cracked 4 eggs…

Pour the filling over the crust (after it’s finished baking, but it can still be hot) and bake for 15-20 minutes, until the filling is firm (ie if you jiggle the pan no part of the filling comes loose and shakes around).

it starts like this:

and turns into this!

Allow the lemon bars to cool before cutting them into pieces, and sift with powdered sugar if you like!

Devour while still warm, if you’d like… but beware that they’ll be rather tender for a while!