Alpha Bakers: Blueberry Crumb Party Coffee Cake

Happy 4th of July everyone!

I have been a slacker-o of an Alpha Baker. I have no valid excuse, except that we have no AC and that makes me don't want to bake. It's currently 79 degrees in the house and I am hanging out in the kitchen typing this post. Yes we are surviving with a warm indoor weather. It is dry in CO so 79 degrees here is not the same as in more humid places like MN where Marie is or NY where Rose is or Singapore where Faithy is. Even so, I am not feeling like baking in this temperature.

But when I saw this cake in the post, I know I have to bake it. Marie said it well in her post that we all could agree that no one does sour cream cake as good as Rose. And it is blueberry season and they have been cheap and good ($3 for a 6 oz container of organic blueberries). So thanks to Marie for scheduling it in the summer!

I took a quick glance of all the ingredients before I went shopping for this cake. I know it will use sour cream and blueberries. I have the rest. When I got home, I saw that this cake feeds A WHOLE BUNCH of people - and it used 3 egggs, so naturally I am making 1/3. A quick google search of the volume of 13x9 pan indicates that I can use a 7 inch pan for a 1/3 volume.

Alpha Bakers: Hungarian Raisin Walnut Tartlets

I love this pie. They are fun to put together, even though they take a heck of a lot longer than I had anticipated. The recipe reads pretty easy. Make 3x the recipe of a standard pie shell. I want to make 1/2 recipe so that means 1.5x recipe. Easy to figure out since the recipe is in grams. The pie dough came together pretty quickly. Then I read through the filling part and start mis-en-place all the parts, including roasting the walnuts. It does add a bit of to do the roasting, but I think using pre-roasted nuts adds so much more flavor in the baked result. Now the kicker in the process is the rolling of the dough. Having to roll and cut at least a dozen 4 1/2 inches circle takes FOREVER! I was glad I only made 1/2 recipe. In the end I had enough filling for 14 tartlets so I made 14 circles and had some dough leftover so they went to the freezer for future use. Btw, I now have 3 different pie dough leftover so I see a small pie in my future hehe.

I used 100% Whole Wheat Pastry flour in the dough and used almond milk instead of regular milk in the filling. We don't drink regular milk anymore so I have been subbing with almond milk and so far I have had no issue.

I also reduced the sugar by 10% in this recipe. Not that this recipe used a ton of sugar but raisins are really sweet. Even with the reduction, they are too sweet for my taste, so I ate 1/2 of them at a time. It is really good though. And my friends who I shared them with loved them. No mention of too sweet.

Alpha Bakers: Dutch Pecan Sandies

I am not a big fan of cookies, especially the roll cookies. They are just high maintenance, in my opinion. There's so much to do, you roll it out, cut it, move it to the baking pan, then if the dough gets too soft, it needs to be refrigerated before it can be roll out again. To me, the cookies have to be really good for me to go through all the steps. So when I saw this on the schedule, I was not very excited about this. Until, I opened the Baking Bible to the recipe page and saw:

Beurre Noisette.

There. I'm sold. I'm making this. Half recipe.

It turns out these cookies are high maintenance. It is so soft and tend to want to roll to be too thin. However, I do love working with the dough as it is quite malleable and easy to combine. I have made sugar cookies several times and in comparison these cookies are easier to work with (though I can say I do not like having to freeze them, that takes more time). The cookie dough is so good and the smell of pecan, muscovado sugar, and beurre noisette together created a very intoxicating smell. And yes I never would have guessed I would use the word intoxicating in a sentence, much less in a baking post. And btw, I did use the wrong sugar, supposed to use brown sugar but I ended up grabbing muscovado.

As for the taste, they are really really good! I did not regret making them and would probably make them again, though it will be for cookie-loving friends as the folks I tried to share them with gave the cookies an odd stare. Perhaps it's because they are not pretty like the cookies you see in bakeries or even places like Panera. But these are so good - I exclaimed. Somehow most of them were not convinced. Oh well, more for me. I still have a few in an airtight container and even hubby, who is vegan, has eaten a few.

Alpha Bakers: Coconut Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache

"I don't like cupcakes."

That is what my friend told me when I mentioned it was the last thing I baked.

"They are basically cakes, just in cupcake form," is what I told her. I know this because I used to make all kinds of cakes into cupcakes form when I was baking through Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

"Yeah, but I don't like them. They are individually sized, with frosting on top and stuff," is the response I get.

Well no matter. I didn't make these for her. My other friends whom I shared them with thought they were yummy.

On a side note, I don't know what's wrong with things being individually sized with frosting. Isn't it the same with having a 9 inch cake sliced? Each cake slice is individually sized with frosting? The only difference with cupcakes is you have to buy the wrapper - which means spending some money on said wrapper. And if you want to be really precise, as Rose is, and as I try to be, you have to spend some time to weigh each cupcake individually so they are all even (which is my least favorite part of making cupcakes by the way). But it's not a big complain since I find cupcakes very cute so their cuteness way surpass my feeling against weighing each one individually.

End rant.

Alpha Bakers: Hazelnut Praline Cookies

Hazelnut is my least favorite nuts, compared to walnuts, almonds, pecans, or cashews. So  when I saw this on the rotation schedule, my reaction should have been: "I'm gonna skip that." But I feel like baking this weekend and I really need to make up for lost time of being absent all summer, so here I am participating (do I get brownie points for this? :)).

This is a really interesting recipe. It's really easy to put together and the bonus is you learn a cool trick from Rose on how to easily peel hazelnuts. When I saw in the recipe that the first step is to peel the hazelnuts, I thought it's only because you don't want the bits of skin in the cookie dough. But then I realized that by peeling the hazelnuts, it allows you to roast them at a good temperature without burning them. I've made roasted mixed nuts before and the hazelnuts burn faster - I have thrown away a batch because I roast them at the same 350 degree temperature as walnuts and they burn and made my kitchen smell horrible. Now I know what to do - peel the skin!

I am also glad I made this recipe as these cookies are sooo good! They don't taste very strong like hazelnuts and more like yummy butter crunchy sweet stuff. I already ate a bunch and I'm gonna have to give the rest away to my friend so I don't eat all of them today.

Alpha Bakers: Sugar Rose Brioche

As I am trying to fit baking back into my weekend life, it occurred to me that I might be out of practice. Rose's recipes, as much as I love them and I love the author herself (she is a sweetheart), does require multiple steps. Knowing that Sugar Rose Brioche, from the name itself, is brioche, which does require extra steps and probably a course of 2 days, I read the recipe ahead of time to make sure that I would not miss anything.

I was so busy concentrating on the steps and the days (i.e. I have to start on Saturday for Sunday baking) that I completely and totally missed one of the first sentences on page 476 that clearly stated to double the recipe.

Rats!

So again folks, I made 1/2 recipe, albeit unintentionally this time. It seems that 1/2 recipe is maybe my fate? I am okay with that :).

It was Sunday morning when I realized I had made 1/2 recipe, right before I start the Sugar Rose Brioche instructions on page 476. Oh well, damage is done. I went back to the storage room where I kept all my cake pans and took the 8 1/2 inch round spring form that I have.

It was quite fortunate that I have a smaller spring form pan, otherwise there might be more cussing in this blog post.

Alpha Bakers: Banana Split Chiffon Cake

I seem to be on a losing strike lately. When I saw this recipe I thought ah, banana, chiffon, bundt cake = yum. I love bananas and have ripe bananas and this cake seems easy and I have all the ingredients on hand.

Since I made 1/2 a recipe, I used 1 ripe banana and substituted canola oil instead of walnut oil. The rest of the ingredients I stayed with the recipe.

As expected, the cake came together quick and easy, so much so that I wondered why this didn't make it to the Q&E list? Perhaps because it requires separating the egg yolks and whites, whipping the whites to stiff peaks, and folding the batter together? All in all it took me 55 minutes to put this together (I timed it). The batter was beautiful, it almost filled my 1/2 bundt pan and then it baked for an hour. The cake rose an inch over the top of the pan, as Rose said it should.