June 29 was my last day of work at my old job. June 30 we moved three hours away from our old house. July 2 I started my new job.
That may explain my busyness of the last week, but I did have about a month before that where I didn’t blog anything. I was, however, baking.
Today is a catch-up post of everything I made in the last month. While I’ve made pancakes since moving, I haven’t done any actual baking aside from toasting up some pre-made breadsticks. (Homemade breadsticks would be a lot to ask for the day after moving.)
So, without further ado, my June baking.
Chewy chocolate chip cookies
It looks like KAF has since updated this recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook, but the recipe linked there is similar to the one in TBC. If I remember correctly, I made these just because we wanted something sweet, and I prefer chewy cookies to crisp ones. There is also a crisp chocolate chip cookie recipe in TBC.
These were lovely, and just chewy enough, and stayed perfectly chewy in a zip-top bag for the two days they lasted. I think I used dark brown instead of light brown sugar because it’s what I had, but it didn’t seem to hurt anything.
… is the name of the recipe, but we actually had this for supper along with some sawmill gravy. Perfection. I like the hands-on feel of the biscuit method, but I was careful not to overmix in order to keep the biscuits from getting too tough. The dough is formed into a large square, frozen for an hour, then cut in small square biscuits. (I actually broke a corner off the frozen dough and squeezed it back together, but I couldn’t tell which corner it was after baking.) These didn’t rise quite as high as I might have liked, and I thought I used a good, sharp cutter, so perhaps it was my baking powder. However, very tasty. And oh, I love sausage gravy.
Somewhere in my middle school years, an acquaintance made a version of these for my family. I’ve loved them ever since, but have never made them myself. As KAF says, they’re a cross between a granola bar and carrot cake. I had a bit of a difficult time just because I used too small of a bowl for mixing, and my, a lot of things go in there. But I love these. I used wheat germ instead of sunflower seeds.
Husband helped by melting the chocolate for these. We made them for our anniversary, and they are delicious, possibly my favorite chocolate cookie I’ve tried, tender and rich. However, I forgot to take photos while I was making them.
Husband’s family will happily eat anything I bake, but they have this silly thing where birthday cakes have to be chocolate, every time. So, for Husband’s birthday celebration with family, a few days after our anniversary, I made KAF’s devil’s food cake. I usually make Alton Brown’s, and I think I prefer KAF’s just slightly. (The link in the title is altered from my version in the book; it uses Dutch process cocoa and baking powder instead of natural cocoa and baking soda.)
I also made TBC’s chocolate buttercream frosting, which was delicious, but my chocolate didn’t quite melt all the way, so there were little flecks of chocolate in the frosting. Everyone agreed they liked it that way. I also realized afterward that I used an extra half stick of butter in the cake itself. It does not seem to have hurt anything.
There was lots and lots of beating and creaming of butter for this recipe. It resulted in batter that was beautifully mousse-like. Would definitely recommend.
Peanut butter cookies always have to live up to my dad’s. These were just about there. They were maybe slightly crispier than I would have chosen, but otherwise perfect.
I made these to take to a weekly local government meeting I used to cover in my old job, as a way of saying goodbye. The supervisors thanked me for my work, which made me a little teary.
Yes, it was a very sugary month. While I made the cake for Husband’s birthday celebration the weekend before, I also wanted to make something he could take to work with him the day of. The family who runs the business he worked at has always been great to us, so I wanted to do something nice for them, too.
These were extremely sweet, and I also made them a little large. It was supposed to make nine, and I ended up with six. I ate mine in two sittings. Husband loved them. I ended up having to substitute butter for some of the shortening in the filling because I ran out. Butter flavor improves everything.
So that was June. Food, celebrations, too much sugar, and a move.
My new kitchen is just about all unpacked and how I want it. It is not, however, solely my kitchen. We’ve moved in with my sister, who happens to have an apartment very convenient to the university Husband will start attending in August. I’m not sure how long the arrangement will last, but it’s been good so far. And now I have someone else to cook and bake for.
Any votes on what I should make for my first baking project in the new kitchen?
Adventures in Baking 