Best Ever Brownies - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 21st Installment.  The recipe is Best Ever Brownies.

After the comments in the blog about gooey brownies taking a long time to bake, I braced myself, but as it turned out, my brownies went pretty well.  Maybe all the warnings made me pay more attention to following the recipe exactly.   After listening to a radio interview about how one can't multitask while cooking (or one will suffer the consequences), I decided that maybe this project is helping me to pay attention more directly while I bake.  Or maybe it's just making me realize that I don't always pay attention while I bake :-)

I also increased my popularity in my household by making brownies for "no particular reason" (usually it's for an event, and the brownies are whisked out of the house without a trace).  The brownies tasted great! 

This did seem like a lot of trouble for brownies, with the whisking of sugar and eggs, adding half of it to chocolate and then whipping the rest (getting out the Kitchen Aid mixer for brownies?!).  It seemed more like the method one would use for a cake. 

Eggs and sugar whipped for three minutes

Folding the whipped eggs into the chocolate

I also used my favorite chocolate/butter melting technique in the microwave.  I find it more foolproof than the stove.  You put the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl, and microwave it for a minute or two on 50% power, till the chocolate is getting soft.    At that point, you can add the butter,  and continue on 50% power for another minute or so, keeping an eye on it.  Stir it before adding the butter, and then stir again after the butter has a chance to melt. I'm much less likely to burn the chocolate when I use this method.

I did bake them longer than the recipe said - exactly how long, I can't tell you...I put them in for the amount of time in the recipe, decided they needed a little longer, and then promptly forgot to set the timer.  Luckily, a few minutes later, I remembered them,  ran to the oven and pulled them out right away.  Phew. 

Does anyone know the bio for the author of this recipe?  The name is Rick Katz, but there is no biography in the back of my "Baking with Julia" book.

Buttermilk Crumb Muffins - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 20th Installment.  The recipe is Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

So many things I could say...

• "Crumb" is right!
• All that shortening, and they still wouldn't come out of the pan!

When I saw the description "flat topped muffin", I was a bit leery - often that means a wet batter than makes a muffin that won't release from the pan.  I really DID grease the pan, and followed the recipe to the letter (made a half recipe, but otherwise, did exactly what it said).  For the half recipe, I used one regular-sized 6 muffin pan, and another 6 muffin pan with small wells.

I started off optimistically - a recipe by Marion Cunningham, written and edited by Julia and Dorie - how could it go wrong?  I added some additional nutmeg (any baker who hasn't tried using fresh nutmeg should definitely give it a try - it is wonderfully fragrant).

The first sign of trouble was the fact that each muffin  was flat, except for a dent in the center, when they came out of the oven.

The process of attempting to remove them from the pans turned ugly - not a single one came out without the bottom sticking to the pan, and needing to be pulled out separately, as in this photo:

Good thing I wasn't making these for company!

They were very tasty and well-liked by the crowd, but unless I get a sense of where this went wrong, I may not make this one again. I will be interested to read other people's experiences with this recipe.

Halloween Diversion - Chocolate Linzer Cookies

Just a quick detour away from Baking with Julia....

I got a Halloween linzer cookie cutter as a gift, so I looked for recipes, thinking that there might be something other than the usual hazelnut cookie with raspberry jam (not that there's anything wrong with the standard Linzer cookie! :-)

The King Arthur Flour site has a Chocolate Linzer Cookie recipe, so I made that, along with some orange-tinted icing to fill them.  Very easy, and yummy - the icing is pretty basic, without a lot of its own flavor, but the cookies themselves are quite flavorful, and as they say, the effect is something like an Oreo (only better!)

Bagels - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - Nineteenth Installment.  The recipe is Bagels.

These turned out really well - the family suggested I make these again very soon. I had made this recipe when the original series was on TV, so this was my second try at it. It's surprisingly easy. We enjoyed them with cream cheese and smoked salmon. Yum.

Before boiling

I held the raised dough in the fridge overnight, and that worked fine. I love the transformation in the boiling water.

After boiling

I also used my pizza stone and the ice cubes on the bottom of the oven.  I might bake them a little longer next time - they browned a lot on the top, but less on the bottom.  The bagel surfaces weren't as smooth as I would have liked, so I think I could use more care with the shaping to really get that surface tension right, so they're less lumpy.


I actually planned ahead and allowed enough time to do this without going nuts or staying up until all hours! I can be unrealistic when it comes to time estimation, so I'm happy if one side effect of having baking deadlines is that I learn better time management as a side effect of all the baking :-)  Now if only I could master the layout of the blog post with the photos.....

Cranberry Walnut Pumpkin Loaf - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - Eighteenth Installment.  The recipe is Cranberry Walnut Pumpkin Loaf.

They looked very pretty, even though this photo is a bit "brown on brown".  Still honing my food photography skills....

This bread is delicious, and great for the changing seasons here in Massachusetts. I had written "great" next to this recipe in the book, but I don't remember when I made them previously.  I think I may have bought the mini loaf pans in order to make this recipe. I do remember being skeptical of a yeast bread with pumpkin, but really like the result, just like last time.

One thing this Baking with Julia project is reinforcing for me is that baking projects are more fun when I really pay attention.  After last time's inattentiveness, leading to over-browned bread, I was determined not to get distracted and miss something.  

This was fairly easy, and I liked the flexibility of the built-in time in the fridge.  I'm so glad people commented in the P&Q warning about it needing overnight rising, because I hadn't read the recipe ahead of time. 

Raised and ready to go into the oven

Whole Wheat Loaves - TWD: Baking with Julia

Whole Wheat Loaves - TWD: Baking with Julia 

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - Seventeenth Installment.  The recipe is Whole Wheat Loaves.

Ah, the saga of the whole wheat bread.  I had made this recipe before, and it was as easy as I remembered. I did a lot of baking with whole wheat recipes from The New Laurel's Kitchen cookbook, so this kind of recipe is very familiar to me.  I think the combination of malt syrup and honey makes it taste really good. I used my Kitchen Aid stand mixer, and it even managed to smoothly knead in the water I threw in late in the kneading because I forgot to add at the beginning.

 Apparently pride cometh before a fall, because in my over-confident state, I didn't read the baking instructions carefully, and didn't turn the oven down when I put the loaves in!  I set the timer for slightly less than the minimum time, and when I got to the oven, this is what the loaves looked like (eeeeeeeek!)  At least the bottoms of the loaves weren't blackened, and you can see from the sliced loaf above, the inside was just fine.

 I was a bit sloppy on shaping - I had run out of counter space due to three simultaneous cooking projects (gee, maybe that's why I mis-read the oven instructions :-), so I shaped the loaf in my hands in mid-air and stuck it in the pan.  It may not win a prize for its beauty, but the bread was very yummy. 

Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - Sixteenth Installment.  The recipe is Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake.

  This cake is great!  We had local nectarines, which made it even better.

 I had several phases during the multi-step odyssey:

1. Set up the fruit and brown sugar layer.  I was a bit apprehensive about putting the springform pan on the burner, but it went fine.  Feeling very concerned about the layer sticking to the pan, and wondered if I should use parchment in the pan, but just pressed on, following the recipe.

2. Cake batter layer - very puffy batter and barely fit in the pan.  The streusel was easy to make and very tasty (I liked the ginger and cinnamon combination). 

3. At this point in the process, I realized that when I separated the eggs, I put all six yolks into the batter, instead of only four!  Oh, nooooo....

All's well that ends well - the cake came out of the pan just fine, and everyone enjoyed it with some whipped cream.  I think it was probably slight more moist with the extra egg yolks, and maybe a little heavy - it definitely sank as it cooled.