Book & Baking Blog Entry 29

Christmas is exciting.  So exciting that I still have 2 batches of unbaked cookies in my refrigerator.  Yep.  Chocolate with peanutbutter chip and oatmeal with butterscotch chip.  I like cookies with chips.  I don't care for cooked raisins.  Everyone has their thing.  That's mine.  I like raisins raw (so to speak) but never want to see one in a baked good.  Ever.  It can ruin an entire breakfast if my cinnamon roll has raisins.  I try not to let it, because, well, frankly diners seem pretty set on having raisins in the cinnamon buns.  Oh well.

So I got lucky this Christmas.  As a gift a friend gave me her best shot at a recipe for Danish Kringle.  So I expected this to be a bread-like concoction.  I had a friend come over and we got out my NEW Kitchen Aid pro (OH YEAH==600watts of baking power PLUS an icecream attachment) and tried to follow the recipe.  I'll be curious how her 1/2 turned out.

So, first analysis:  the dough was more like stretchy cookie dough than bread.  I used the paddle to make it, I'm sure that the bread hook wouldn't work.  The other surprise was that the dough needed to be refridgerated over-night.  OK, I can do that.  We split the dough, I kept half and my friend took the other half.  No harm, no foul. I can do this.

So, the next morning, imagine my surprise that the dough did not rise.  WHY does my dough never rise.  Seriously.  Never ever.  I use fresh yeast.  I think that my kitchen is too cold.  That's my hope.  Either that or I just am not the rising sort.

But as per usual, I trudge on not letting failure stop me now.  I knead the dough and divide it into 2 pieces and then roll it out.  Now you get to add the filling.  What's not great about sugar, butter, and cinnamon.  But I forgot I only had 1/2 the recipe.  Yep, you guessed it.  I made a full amount.  I did feel compelled to use it all.  Yes.  Too bad, because my oven was just cleaned.  So I put in my extra filling and rolled it up, cut and twisted per the recipe.  I left it to rise.

Did it rise?  No NO NO No no....  That stinks.  But again, undeterred I put it into the oven.  So, twice as much butter as called for in the filling.  And the filling isn't sealed into the pastry--merely "twisted."  My oven smokes more than a teen-aged boy.

The BEAUTY moment:  I don't know if it was the extra filling, but I do know that this is an incredible pasty.  Absolutely nothing like any pstry that I had in Denmark, but well worth the time and effort.

Changes that I might make:  I might add more flour and make it more bread-like.  I might heat my kitchen so that it's warmer or wait for a warmer day.

This may kill my determination to not over-indulge in 2011.  If it does I'll just be happy with my buttery, buttery pastry. 

PS:  Did I mention how unattractive the whole mess looked?  I need a photo next time.

Book & Baking Blog Entry 14

Again, you never know if I'm going to give something away, so read at your own risk.

So here I am, on the road. We're in Denmark now. Since we're at a private home there hasn't been as much pastry eating. More on that when we go to Copenhagen or return to Denmark (although my brother-in-law it turns out makes a fantastic cherry pie...who knew the Danes had it in them?!) I love vacation. It's great.

So I just finished listening to/reading Embrace the Grim Reaper (book 1) by Judy Clemens. It was pretty good. A little too much on the "hidden" backstory. Too many hints about too many things in our heroine Casey's past. I do like the Grim Reaper. It's a good character and mostly keeps the story lighter than it might be. The weird sex scene could have been, or more to the point, should have been avoided.

Why do all authors (or editors or publishers) believe that there should be an obligatory sex scene in a murder mystery. I know that there is a desire for cross-over from romance, but really, a good story doesn't need weird abortive sex where everyone feels guilty.
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HERE's my latest rant regarding all of the books that I've been reading lately: all these heroines have a dead child. I'm really tired of the false pathos of the dead child. I would like a warning label on these books because the authors never really get to it OR they spend too much time lingering on it.

By the way, I broke down and spent money on the latest Jane Haddam book. It grinds me to give money to a publisher that clearly holds me in contempt, but I will say that Haddam is, as always, worth it. I'll look forward to my review.

Good reading. Pop Tarts for breakfast!