Alpha Bakers: Irish Cream Scones

I am beginning to realize that the easier the recipe is, the more disorganized I become. Especially on recipes that are tagged Q&E. It's like it's screaming at me: "hey, I'm easy, you can whip me up in no time and still have the rest of the day left to do whatever."

In the case of this recipe, I skimmed through the recipe a few days before the weekend, was pleased to discover that I have all the ingredients on hand. No need to buy additional stuff from the store. I also decided to make the full recipe, since these are scones (bread-types) and can be frozen and I have friends who was complaining that I always make cakes and should make more bread/pastry type things so I proceeded with full recipe. And while prepping the ingredients I realize that I am 3 oz of cream short. And I don't have any lemons. Or honey. Rats.

In my defense I have long given up buying honey, just because I buy them, use 2 tablespoon, then the bottle of honey sits in the pantry, where it slowly and surely crystallize until 3, 6, 9 months later when I need it and it's hard as rock. In the rock-crystallized state it's usually still usable, provided we use it in warm beverage or baking. But it's not really something that we can pour over bread or toasted bread. And crystallized honey is not pretty. Considering it's freaking expensive to purchase, I decided that we will just support the fair trade agave bottle business that cost a 1/2 of what honey cost and does not crystallized. Having said that, I have a sad-looking bottle of maple syrup that fortunately have not crystallized but been in the pantry for a year now.

Alpha Bakers: BlueRhu Pie

Rose is slowly converting me to be a lover of all pies now. Before we started this bake-a-long, the only pie I make is her apple pies from The Pie & Pastry Bible. Now I see all kinds of pies in my future repertoire, including this one.

This is a fantastic pie. I can't taste the rhubarb in it, only blueberries so it is a bit strange why we use rhubarb. I wonder why Rose add rhubarb in this pie. Is it maybe to cut the sweetness down? I can imagine if it's all 100% blueberries it will be too sweet and perhaps I'd have to cut the sugar if I don't use rhubarb. It doesn't really matter I think because it tasted really good. When I make it next time I will use rhubarb again if it's the season. I also love that I can use frozen blueberries, since I happen to have a stash of them in my freezer for some reason.

This is kinda a short post with a lot of photos and not a lot of words. But I don't have much to say about this pie. It's awesome. Enjoy the step by step photos :).

Alpha Bakers: Lemon Jammies

I made this on Valentine's Day, which feels like a long time ago and it really has. 10 weeks ago!

Yes I baked ahead and I made full recipe! But in this case it is okay because it's author-sanctioned bake-ahead. Earlier this year Rose asked me if I can help test 7 cookie recipes for high altitude adjustment. So I did. And this is one of the cookies I tested. The only high altitude adjustment for this recipe is add 10 grams of egg whites.

These cookies came together easily and quickly and I enjoyed rolling them out. I used a Linzer cookie cutter set that I got a long time ago from Home Goods. They are Easter themed and really cute. Instead of just reusing the cut-outs butterfly, baby duck, and baby chickens, I used a little dab of water to attach them to the corner of the cookie. It made for a cuter effect.

Alpha Bakers: Chocolate Pavarotti with Wicked Good Ganache

Cake design inspired by Hector Wong and Rose's latest out bakes post.

This is one of the recipes in the book that has no photos. I didn't know how to decorate the cake or what to aim for. I know I want to make 1/2 recipe of the cake *grin* and thought to decorate it by piping the ganache around the base. When I went to get my 6 inch round cake pan from storage, I saw this 6 inch heart shaped pan instead. I had completely forgotten I have this!!! I think I bought it somewhere along baking through Rose's Heavenly Cakes from a cake supply store in town. It's Wilton brand by the way and it's available on Amazon as well. When the cake cake out of the oven and the top was flat and the cake tall (1 5/8 inches), I remembered Rose's out bakes post last week and the Hector-inspired heart design, so I am proudly copying Hector's beautiful rendition.

This cake turned out a whole lot better than I had hoped for, especially since I didn't have the correct flour. I was so excited to see a King Flour brand of cake flour that I completely didn't realize it said "unbleached". That's not the same as bleached. I only realized this yesterday morning when I did mis-en-place for this cake. Well, I am way too lazy to make a trip to the store to get the correct cake flour, so I adjusted the flour by using 90% of the KA unbleached cake flour and 10% non-gmo cornstarch (Rapunzel brand). For those expecting a math lesson (I'm looking at you Monica :)), half recipe is 78 grams total flour - 70 grams of KA flour and 8 grams of cornstarch. For the leavening, it only uses baking powder. I had to check the recipe twice on the baking powder amount - I thought I read wrong. This cake uses a lot of baking powder. It makes my math difficult. 1/2 recipe would be 1 1/2 tablespoon plus 1/8 tsp. 1 tablespoon is equal 3 teaspoon (according to google), so I used 1 1/2 teaspoon plus 1/4 teaspoon. Confused yet? We're not done. For the eggs, I have been buying Farmer's Hen House Organic Jumbo Eggs. Jumbo! It's not large or extra large anymore. Each egg is about 60 grams. I used the additional 10 grams for the liquid adjustment. Okay now we're done with the math lessons, hehe.

Alpha Bakers: Gingersnaps

This week we're back to small portions folks!

For these cookies, I made 1/3 recipe this time. How, you might wonder, would I adjust the 1 egg and 1 egg white by 1/3. I first calculated the 1/3 amount of egg and egg white needed in grams. Then I separated the egg yolk from the egg whites. Then I weighed them separately. The egg yolk weight 16 grams so it's normal size, so I split it into 1/3 (5 grams). I add the amount of egg whites needed for 1/3 of egg weighted. Are you still with me? And lastly I added then 1/3 additional egg whites.

It dawned on me recently (thanks Rose), that I should probably mention any high altitude adjustment that I make on recipes. I think all of the Alpha Bakers are at sea level so this is probably not very interesting. But perhaps it can be useful for others reading this blog if they happen to be at high altitude. Denver is at 5,000 feet above sea level so adjustments needs to be made for cooking and baking.

I usually adjust two things: leavening agents and liquid. Decreasing leaving agents is because at high altitude baked goods rise more quickly. The second adjustment is increasing liquids. I always thought that increasing liquids is because it's so dry here but that is not the only reason. At higher altitude, evaporation happens faster so add that to the dryness baked good taste less good. Some folks adjust the dry ingredients: increasing flour, reducing sugar, etc. I feel that increasing flour is counter-intuitive to adding liquids to prevent dryness so I never really bother with that. As for sugar, Rose's recipes is not too sweet so that's not needed, in my opinion.  It is not as complicated as it might have sounded. Trust me on this - I almost failed high school chemistry.

For this gingersnaps I adjusted the baking powder and baking soda by about 20%. I didn't measure very accurately since it's impossible to split 1 teaspoon baking soda into 1/3 and then reduce 20%. Let's just say I measure 1/3 of it and then take a bit off.

I waited until everything is being mixed in the mixer, the batter almost come together with the stated amount of eggs. There's still a few stray crumbs left and the batter feels a tad dry to the touch, so that's when I added 1 tablespoon of egg whites to it and mix it by hand. I avoid using the mixer at this step since it is harder to mix a dough that's already come together with additional liquid - at least that's how I think of it in my head haha.

1/3 recipe yield 10 cookies, all exactly 27 grams.

Alpha Bakers: Black and Blueberry Pie

For Christmas, my husband surprised me with several things from Anthropologie home/kitchen section. One of them was the rolling pin in the above photo. When I opened the nicely wrapped rolling pin on Christmas morning, I hold the handle on each hand and made the motion in the air as if I'm rolling a dough. He looked at me and said in a serious tone "I didn't intend for you to use it for baking. I thought you can use it for pictures." Well, he is right, the pin is made from ceramic so I suppose pressing on it is probably not a good idea, :).

I am not very excited about pie but I love Rose's cream cheese pie crust. I think it's the best pie crust. I have made other pie crust (Rose's flaky pie crust and also recipes from other authors). The cream cheese pie crust wins every time. So even though I am not a huge pie fan, I am looking forward to this because of the pie crust. Also, I get to use my new 4 inch ruffled pie pan and take photos of the new for-photography-only rolling pin.

I made 1/4 recipe of this pie. This time I remembered to measure in volume my 9 inch pie pan vs. the 4 inch pie pan. By volume the 4 inch pie pan is 1/4 the 9 inch. So all set to divide everything by 4.

Alpha Bakers: Chocolate Cuddle Cake

I am a little ashamed of posting this cake after seeing how tall other's cakes are and comparing it to how tall the cake in the book is. My cake only measured 1 1/2 inches tall. Sniff. The loss of height is because of my own fault. If you keep reading you'll find out why...

I was really looking forward to this cake. Plus it coincides with my birthday. I planned to bake the day before my birthday, though I didn't sleep well and didn't feel like baking. I started anyway. I should know better. Since I was not in the right mood, of course I messed up. It was bad. I had to make the caramel three times to get it right. My fault because I forgot to order a new instant thermometer so had to make do with the dying thermometer - don't really trust a dying thermometer, it seems to be working okay around 200 degrees but can't go past 250 degrees. So I am doing this by eye-balling, which is a bad sign. My first caramel, I was afraid of the caramel (still remember the caramel burn I got from a couple of years ago) so I didn't wait until the caramel was dark enough. And then I forgot to separate the cream to add to the cocoa powder. So I mix the cocoa powder into the caramel directly while it was still warm.

Alpha Bakers: Frozen Pecan Tart

I am not a tart fan. I think they are really pretty and I like making pretty things because I get to take picture of it (note what motivates me to bake!) but I don't enjoy eating it because they are usually way too sweet. So my motivation to bake this tart are for our bake-a-long (I get to cross one more recipe off the list) and because it looks pretty in the book. I ventured out wanting to make this as perfect as can be. .... and just from that sentence you should already guess that something bad will happen.

My first step on making this was to take a photo of the India Tree Muscovado sugar. In the past, whenever Rose required muscovado sugar I substituted with dark brown sugar. This time, I was buying something from amazon last month and needed 1 more thing to get past the $35 bill that would get me free shipping, so I thought I treat myself and splurged the $9.68 for 1 lb of sugar. Anyway, my husband was next to me washing dishes when he noticed that his wife was taking a photo of a bag of sugar. He looked at me quizzically - wondering what on earth I was doing. So I started explaining to him that this is a special sugar that Rose likes and it comes from Mauritius. He made a comment that it is the farthest place you can get your sugar and we are polluting a lot to get a measly 1 lb over here and then $7 in the price is probably the price of transport which makes it the cheapest sugar in quality. I told him that this is the first time I use this sugar and it was because of curiosity (I didn't tell him it was also partly because of the $35 shipping since that purchase was to buy one of his Christmas presents). I do not intend to use this sugar every time. I also mentioned that our favorite apple is the Fuji apple which comes from New Zealand and that is equally far. So we started then our conversation turned into how sad it is that our food comes from far away and how much we pollute by doing so. And there must be a way to get good eating apples locally but we have not been able to find them. Even in the summer in farmer's market most of the fruits are from California. Funny how conversation started from taking a single photo!

This is a pretty easy recipe. It is not quick and easy because there are multiple steps including some waiting time for the dough to be refrigerated or frozen. But it really should be quick and easy because you can split the steps over a couple of days.

Alpha Bakers: English Dried Fruit Cake

I thought I wouldn't have much to say about this cake. It is one of the recipes in the book I am not excited about. When I saw the title of the recipe, I remembered the Fruitcake Wreath I baked and didn't like from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. But to my surprise (eating my second slice while typing this post), I really like this fruitcake. The crumb has a good texture - even with the mistake I did of forgetting to drain the dried fruits. I like all the fillings in it, the pecans add a nice crunch to the texture and variation to the softness that the dried fruits give. And unlike my experience with the Fruitcake Wreath, this cake has enough rum!!!

I like how simple this recipe is. I did not have much time coordination on Saturday, when I bake this. We decided to try out a new restaurant in the nearby mall, never considering the fact that it is December, less than 3 weeks before Christmas. The mall is a quick 7 mile drive from home and it took us 45 minutes to get there and find parking. By the time we got home it was 2:30 in the afternoon and we were tired from just going to eat. So it is a good thing this cake requires very little preparation time. If it had been a 5 page recipe, there would be lots of cussing in the kitchen.