Alpha Bakers: Cranberry Christmas Bread

This bread rocks.

That is how hubby and I feel when we took our first bites. We couldn't even wait for the 2 hour cooling period as instructed by the recipe. We waited an hour, then he got hungry and I grew impatient. Together, we ate 1/3 of the bread.

With bread, I make full recipes. If it's vegan, which this is, I know it will be eaten in no time. I made a few modifications though. I omitted the oil and I used less cranberries. Hubby prefers raisins than cranberries - he finds cranberries sour so I used 80 grams. I was planning on using sugar since I don't want to buy barley malt syrup only to use a bit of it and then accidentally forgot to add sugar. Oh well, can't really tell from the way it turned out whether sugar would have made a difference.

This bread is easy to put together. I was a bit apprehensive about it because usually breads that has nuts, ground nuts, and some berries filling turned out too dense to my liking. But I was surprised to see how fluffy and big it is. And I love the use of hot water to plump up the cranberries and using the cranberry-soaked water (even though the water looked disturbing in its pink form).

Alpha Bakers: The Renee Fleming Golden Chiffon Cake

I need to work out.

Not because I am eating dessert every week now (that part is obvious). But because it took me what feels like forever to fold the super stiff (very stiff clumps) of egg whites for this cake. My upper arm/biceps was not very happy after that exercise.

I made this cake last year right after the book is released and the Alpha Bakers started. It was one of those ambitious weekend, which was Thanksgiving weekend, where I made this cake and the Kouign Amann for the Alpha Bakers' submission - or also known as "what the heck was I thinking making 2 recipes not from the Quick and Easy Week" weekend. Between this cake and the Kouign Amann, I felt like I lived in the kitchen for 2 days! Yeah I know I'm cheating since we were supposed to bake together but I.just.can't.help.myself - this cake looked so good in the book and it wants me to bake it.

In the end, all efforts was worth it. The Kouign Amann got rave reviews, with 2 friends saying they want to place an order in the future. Another friend emailed me a week after the party to say "Jenn, the cake was delicious. Next time, make two!" And this cake was a big hit too, even though it looked kinda funny with the cooling rack making those circle impressions on top of the cake.

Since I baked this last year and had only partially written this post at that time (slacker me), I already forgot what happened so forgive this very short post.

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.