Maple Cranberry Pecan Breakfast Cake

Are breakfast baked goods desserts? Well, they are in this blog! They're also my biggest food weakness. I probably get more satisfaction from a fluffy, chock-full-of-something-tasty muffin than almost any dessert. However, such indulgences are not practical - so, I usually settle on cereal or Greek yogurt. Unless it's a week when I do a lot of running...

...or there's a potluck brunch at work.

A year ago, we had work brunches fairly regularly. All team members contributed something, and we'd have "team meetings" while noshing on all manner of morning treats. An ideal meeting scenario, correct? I was so excited when my manager put a brunch back on the calendar in 2013. I jump at any opportunity to try another Flour recipe, so I thumbed through my baking Bible, hoping for inspiration. Inspiration came in the form of a maple cranberry pecan breakfast cake.

The recipe is in Joanne's cookbook, so I won't copy it here. This post's title lists its flagship ingredients, and Joanne's instructions, though verbose, are easy to follow. That said, I have two suggestions.

• Thaw, then chop, the cranberries. The frozen fruit rolled out from under my knife, which nearly sliced the fingers holding the fruit in place. Next time, I'll either thaw the fruit to room temperature before chopping, or I'll use fresh cranberries. The chopping is necessary to keep the fruit incorporated throughout the batter; the whole cranberries floated to the top of the loaf as it baked.
• Line the loaf pan in parchment paper. As the berries floated to the top, the caramelized pecans sank to the bottom. I was not prepared for how sticky they'd be, frustrating all efforts at removing the cake from the pan. I finally got the cake out in chunks, with the base of the loaf separated from the crown; fortunately, it wasn't too hard to reassemble, and it held fast once set. Still, none of that would have happened if I had lined the loaf pan in parchment paper for easy removal. Lesson frustratedly learned.

Here is the reassembled cake, ready to go in its glazed glory! (Yep, that's a drizzle made of powdered sugar and maple syrup. Whoa.)

Inconsistent distribution of contents aside, I was really pleased with this cake. First of all, it looks extremely festive. Secondly, it has a taste to match! It has a syrup-soaked flavor without a syrup-soaked texture; just the right amount of syrup, apparently, goes in the batter. Its texture varies from top to bottom; you start with something fluffy and buttery, and end with something dense and moist. The overall effect is like a buttermilk pancake, stuffed with tasty fruits and nuts, that has been exposed to varying degrees of maple syrup. Another way of saying that is that it's a Friendly Toast pancake, in actual-cake form. (Cantabrigians and New Hampshirites will understand the praise in that analogy.) The cranberries provided pleasant bursts of tart juice that cut through the sweetness, and the caramelized pecans enriched the batter with their dense chewiness and earthy flavor. Oh, and that maple glaze? It was literally icing on the cake!

The baked good went over well at our potluck brunch, alongside the chocolate chip pancakes, French toast casserole, miniature quiches, maple sausage meatballs, donuts, bagels, and fried chicken with waffles ( ! ) that rounded out the spread. But really, would you have expected a lesser reception for anything from Flour? I hope not.

Here's to the next brunch, whenever it may be!

A New Hampshire Easter

Happy belated Easter, friends! I thought I'd share a few treats from my holiday at home.

To start, the Easter Bunny was very generous - again! - this year. I've written before about how I absolutely love the Easter color palette, so resplendent with whites and pastels and soft metallics. This close-up of my Easter basket should convince you, too, to love these spring shades. The candy, of course, is wonderful, sourced from the Midwest's beloved Fannie May chocolatier. (Once my family establishes a food tradition, it's hard to unseat it, even if it's been over 18 years since we lived where FM was readily available. Thank you, Internets!)

Next up was the Easter breakfast. Ina Garten's enthusiastically citrusy lemon cake made a repeat appearance, and I think this was its best year yet! I was nervous to bake it at first, since my parents just installed a new oven; while my mom testified to the oven's capabilities, already producing such classics as a chicken pot pie and from-scratch brownies without a hitch in its week of existence, I was afraid my contribution would go awry. Fortunately, it didn't. Why do I love this cake so?

• The recipe makes two loaves. So much dessert, indeed! This allows me to bring several breakfasts' worth of cake back to Boston, while leaving my family with the same.
• It uses the zest of eight lemons. A citrus lover's dream.
• It has two lemon-sugar glazes! The first is a warm sauce made of heated lemon juice and dissolved granulated sugar; it is poured over the cakes as soon as they are removed from their loaf pans. The sauce sinks into the porous loaves and infuses them with moist, tangy, citrusy joy. Then, once they have cooled, they are coated with the second glaze. This traditional decoration, of much confectioners' sugar mixed in significantly less lemon juice, covers the cakes' surfaces in solid white, almost like fondant. It has a bright, sweet, concentrated lemon flavor.

The overall effect is one of increasing lemon intensity. The base of the cake is light and fluffy, with a definite lemon presence from all that zest - but, it's still comparatively dainty, and perfect for tea. As you move up the cake, you encounter more of the sugared lemon juice; it makes the cake moister, chewier, and stronger. The very top of the cake is thoroughly soaked in the juice, and then crowned with the fondant-esque glaze for the most robust lemon experience yet. I always save the top bites for last, never tiring of their cheerful citrus zing. That flavor conquers anything else near your palate, even a cup of strongly-brewed Royal Blend!

Never one to be still when there is an excuse for extravagant baking, I did not begin and end my Easter exploits with Ina. It was time to work on the Easter dessert...with Joanne.

My family had fallen into a habit of ordering gourmet cakes from California bakeries as our holiday desserts, with Easter being the latest casualty (after Christmas succumbed to this ravishing buche de Noel). My desire to bake, plus a fortuitous outing to Flour's Fort Point location, changed that for 2012. I ate a carrot cake cupcake at that Flour, loved it, and excitedly found the recipe for the equivalent cake in Flour's cookbook. It took hardly any effort to persuade my parents to let Perfect Endings lie, and grant me a mission in its place.

What a mission it was! Carrot cakes are always time-intensive, but Joanne's recipe - like any good kitchen challenge! - let me try and see new things. Here are some observations.

• The recipe asks for token amounts of spices. I added significantly more of each spice per usual custom, and the cake absorbed them without any trouble. Heck. I could have quadrupled the cinnamon and everything would have still turned out alright! I like a cake that can soak up so much flavor.
• I used pre-chopped walnuts. Enough said.
• I left out the raisins (so gross!), and swapped in the equivalent volume of grated carrots. There's no such thing as too many carrots in a carrot cake.
• You bake the entire cake in one 8" round cake pan. This pan is filled to the brim when you put it in the oven, and looks as though it might spill over while baking its (oddly lengthy) 1 hour and 20 minutes. Fortunately, no spillover occurred - though the final product was also level with the pan's rim.
• The baked cake is probably the densest dessert I have ever made.
• You split the cooled cake into two layers. Baked-good surgery, anyone?! It turns out that all you need to perform this invasive procedure are a quality bread knife, a steady hand, and careful rotation of the cake in question.
• The frosting is a simple mix of cream cheese, butter, and confectioner's sugar. I believe the desired effect is barely-sweetened cream cheese; the ingredients' proportions definitely accomplish this, but I would have preferred a sweeter, more traditional frosting. If I want a cream cheese spread, I'll leave the butter and sugar to the side, and pick up a bagel instead of a cake. (It did taste much better with the cake than by itself, though.)
• The recipe suggests chilling the frosting for 2-3 hours before spreading it. I found that was entirely too much refrigeration; I had to let the frosting warm up for an hour or so post-chilling before it was comfortably usable.
• The split and frosted cake ends up looking pretty close to a "normal" two-layer cake. I was pleasantly surprised! (And anyway, two "full" layers of this cake would have been too much, so I'm glad it passed as is.)

Here's a slice of the cake, followed by what was left after Easter dinner.

Like I mentioned above, the cake's density may be its most noteworthy characteristic. So much is crammed in that one (split) layer that what's normally considered a small-ish slice is actually rather filling. The same could be said about its flavors - in a single tiny bite, you can taste the freshness of the carrots, the roastiness of the toasted walnuts, the warmth of the brown sugar, and the depth of the extravagant spices. Those flavors, in all their variety and richness, remind me of the seasons, which may be why carrot cake always seems like a timely dessert. (Of course, we exploit the carrot content for Easter/spring.) The texture stands out, too - it's extremely gooey and moist thanks to canola oil and buttermilk, but still cake-like. My only complaint, or area of potential improvement, is the frosting. I'm glad it'll be easy enough to just add more confectioner's sugar to the mix next time, and maybe a hint of vanilla extract, too. Here's to yet another sweet success courtesy of Flour!

If you want to see the actual recipe, I cannot recommend the Flour cookbook enough.

I hope you enjoyed a similarly delicious and fulfilling Easter! Are there any particular treats you'd rave about?

So Many *More* Cookies

I tried two new cookie recipes this past month! One was a marriage of the most popular mass-produced cookie and the most popular homemade cookie, and the other was my second creation from the Flour cookbook.

My friend Leah, whose yearly Superbowl party has become a social institution, had sent me a recipe for Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies. She hinted strongly that I should make these for the 2011 Superbowl, and I gladly obliged in the spirit of contributing to the outsize excess of sporting-event foods. "Excessive" is the perfect adjective for these behemoth cookies.

The recipe couldn't be simpler: make dough for chocolate chip cookies, mold dough around Oreos (or, if you're feeling extra-indulgent [as I was], Double Stufs), and bake. The cookie dough took some effort to incorporate, as it is designed to be stiff enough to maintain coverage of each Oreo within. The recipe said to use two cookie scoop's worth of dough per Oreo, but I eyeballed the amount in the absence of a cookie scoop. I may have been overly careful in covering the Oreos, as I could only cover 20 of them instead of the recipe's estimated 24. I baked the cookies for the upper time limit given, and they still looked underdone when I removed them from the oven; fortunately, 5 minutes of cooling on the baking sheet helped them settle into a solid-enough, yet still soft and chewy, state. I'd call that an ideal cookie texture!

So, was the excess worth it? The dough was wonderfully chewy, and the textural transition from it to the gooey chocolate chips was seamless. The cookie portion of the Double Stuf had softened somewhat, and had that falling-apart chewiness of Oreo chunks in ice cream. The Double Stuf cream was warm and gooey like the chocolate chips, and some of it had oozed around the chocolate cookies to mix with the dough and chips. Each bite presented new delights, since you could be met with Oreo cookie, nuggets of chocolate, a rush of warm cream, or all the above. The cookies can stand on their own, for sure, but the few bites that I dipped in milk were over the top - in a good way, of course. I would have to rule in favor of bringing on the excess...and my fellow partiers must have agreed, since there were no remainders to take home.

After experiencing the above cookies' chocolate and cream overload, I decided that my next baking project would involve neither - so, enter Flour's ginger molasses cookies. Two parts of the recipe gave me pause. Joanne's description says that she wanted the flavors of non-spice ingredients to be evident, so she uses less cinnamon and ginger than one usually might. Yours truly the Cinnamon-Tripler was apprehensive. Then, one is told to roll quarter-cup balls of dough for baking! (No wonder the recipe's yield was only 16 cookies; I ended up doubling it for my potluck purposes.) I was worried about how the large balls would fare on my cookie sheet.

Well, I (predictably) tripled the cinnamon - my logic being that if my usual tripling results in three times the normal amount of spice, tripling an intentionally lesser amount should break even with that norm. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. The dough came together very easily, and was fluid enough that the recommended four hours of refrigeration really was necessary. I then scooped out quarter-cup dollops of cooled, hardened dough and rolled them in granulated sugar. I initially placed 12 cookies on a sheet, but most finished edges ended up touching - so, I only baked 8 per sheet after the first round. The doubled recipe yielded 32 large cookies as expected. It is difficult to judge scale from the picture below, so imagine the cookies being a tad larger than a spread palm.

Unsurprisingly, Joanne did it again! These cookies were the best spice cookies I have ever had, beating Dancing Deer's beloved molasses clove delights for the title. They were slightly crunchy near the edge, and pleasantly chewy on the inside. The ginger and cinnamon flavors were happily assertive, but I could still taste the smooth warmth of the butter and the dark syrupy richness of the brown sugar and molasses. The sugar dusting provided the tiniest, but still significant, counterpoint to the nearly-savory nature of this spice cookie, and gave each cookie a very pretty glitter overall. The cracks in the dough also added to the cookies' appearance. I can't wait to make these again, maybe around the holidays.

I was at Flour's Central Square bakery the other day, where I saw small - as in, not from 1/4 C dough! - versions of these cookies. I think I'll follow their lead when I repeat this recipe, as the large size isn't necessary. Hopefully a slight adjustment of the baking time is all I'll need to make that successful. Thanks again, Joanne, for a real potluck pleaser!

Then, I ended my February cookie marathon with a known restaurant delight. I have discussed Finale's Cookies and Cream dessert here before, but I just had to order it again the other night. Finale has switched up the cookies since I last wrote! The preponderance of snickerdoodles is gone, and has been replaced with a similar number of fluffy, sugar-encrusted sugar cookies. Also, the original nut and raisin cookies have been ousted in favor of two stupendous milk chocolate walnut cookies. Both changes improve the overall dessert. My one complaint? You now get two miniature whoopie pies instead of one glorious full-sized treat. This ends up being less whoopie overall, though there is an advantage to being able to eat one in the restaurant and take the other home. I suppose that if I were really intent on enjoying as much whoopie pie as possible, I could buy a full-sized one from Finale's bakery counter...

Happy cookie-ing!

Julie and Tony's Pumpkin Bakestravaganza

How's that for an event name?

Tony and I had been discussing the possibility of a pumpkin-themed bake-a-thon for some time, and it finally happened last weekend! We may have baked enough items to blanket the entirety of Medford with a cinnamon-and-squash aroma, but even if that didn't happen we surely baked enough items to take care of a week's (and then some) breakfasts and desserts. So, what glorious bounty was produced?

We started with some cutely-named "cinnapastries", which are exactly what their name suggests - pastries flavored with cinnamon. (They use more butter and brown sugar than cinnamon, but those ingredients do not present such superior naming options.) The dough can be made from scratch, but premade pie crust is easier.

• 2 pre-made pie crusts (1 package)
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, separated into 1 stick (softened) and two 2T portions (melted)
• lots of brown sugar
• lots of cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Soften the stick of butter, and mix brown sugar in it until the result is uniform. Divide the mixture evenly among the 12 cups of a muffin pan.
3. Roll out the pie crusts, and let them reach room temperature. Spread each crust with the melted 2T butter. Sprinkle - or cover, if you're spice-obsessed like me - the melted butter with cinnamon, and then brown sugar.
4. Roll the crusts back up. Slice each roll/tube into 6 pieces. Place each piece into a cup of the pre-sugarbuttered muffin pan.
5. Bake the cinnapastries for 12-15 minutes. Let them cool for a while after in the pan, until the sugarbutter has hardened. Don't worry about any overflowing sugarbutter - there's still plenty in each cup to moisten and flavor the pastries.

These little treats, suggestive of miniature cinnamon buns, were quite buttery and sweet. The pie crust may look hard, but it was soft and chewy upon biting and essentially melted in my mouth. Each cinnapastry was 3 or 4 bites, but those bites packed the creamy pastry goodness and cinnamon warmth equivalent to a full-sized bun. I'll keep these in mind as bite-sized breakfast treats or cocktail-party desserts - and really, I can't think of a dessert that's easier to make. I also want to try a puff-pastry version.

Next up was the first recipe I made from the Flour cookbook! Flour's pumpkin muffins were an event-appropriate way to welcome the new book. I won't copy the recipe here, but its intricacies deserve some commentary. First of all, the recipe requests 3 T molasses. Neither Tony nor I had molasses, so we substituted the equivalent measure of maple syrup and threw in some brown sugar. Secondly, the recipe uses orange juice in place of traditional muffin moisturizers like oil or milk. Then, I tripled the cinnamon and added an extra dash of cloves.

The end result was truly unique. The orange juice really brightened the fresh pumpkin flavor and gave a pleasing hint of citrus zing to the squashy cake. The citrus was also great in tandem with the heavy spicing - cloved oranges, anyone? The muffins were beyond moist, but in a light and fresh way rather than the heavy way associated with oil. The syrup/sugar molasses substituion had no adverse effect on the muffins' consistency, but it did not add enough flavor. These muffins would benefit from molasses' robust, earthy heartiness - if only to take them away from the metaphorical farmers' market and closer to a cozy autumn hearth. Even with their fruit-and-vegetable quality, these muffins are still delicious - and the recipe makes a lot of them. The batter yielded 18 total muffins, 50% more than expected. I'm so glad I received an insight into the creative baking conducted at Flour, as well as a week's worth of breakfast delights. I've eaten these muffins for 7 days in a row, and I'm still not sick of them!

Our last treats were Pilgrim Pies - or, to those who don't give seasonal desserts seasonal names, pumpkin whoopie pies. Here is the recipe; remember to add my token tripling of cinnamon.

• 2 eggs
• 2 C light brown sugar
• 1 C vegetable oil
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 15oz can pumpkin
• 3 C flour
• 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 t nutmeg, 1/4 allspice - This is my equivalent of the recipe's 1 t of "pumpkin pie spice."
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 t salt
• (frosting) 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• (frosting) 1 stick butter, softened
• (frosting) 2 t vanilla
• (frosting) 4-5 C confectioners' sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat the eggs, brown sugar, oil, and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl until smooth. Stir in the pumpkin.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture 1/2 C at a time, blending each time until smooth.
5. Drop a heaping tablespoon of batter onto an ungreased cookie sheet, using a moist finger or the back of a spoon to slightly flatten each mound. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Meanwhile, make the frosting. Beat together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract in a bowl until light and fluffy. Mix in the confectioners' sugar 1/2 C at a time, until the desired consistency is reached. 4 cups of sugar resulted in a surprisingly stiff, but still spreadable, frosting.
7. To assemble the pies, turn half of the cookies bottom side up and spread a generous amount of cream cheese frosting on each one. Top them with the remaining cookies (turned right side up).

The recipe's expected yield is 10-14 complete pies. We decided to make 14 individual cookies, or 7 pies, and pour the remaining batter into two 8"x8" baking dishes to make a giant-sized pie. Fortunately, there was enough batter and frosting to make thick, fully-filled pies of both sizes. The large pie was left in the oven for three additional minutes, which was enough to cook it to completion.
The resultant Pilgrim Pies had moist, fluffy, pumpkin-y cake. The cake was much softer than the frosting, which was stiff and sugary with a faint cream cheese flavor. I would have expected the frosting to be grainier with so little cream cheese and butter to absorb the sugar, but its texture was surprisingly smooth. I preferred to eat my pies slightly chilled, so that the frosting was dense, cool, and refreshing - but, Tony's preferred 15-second microwave treatment resulted in equally-tasty warm pies dripping with gooey filling.

Here are the traditional pies:

And, here is the Macrowhoopie along with all other Bakestravaganza delights. My coworkers polished this monster off rather quickly:

What a tempting spread of autumnal desserts! Now, please excuse me as I help myself to another muffin...

Julie and Joanne?

Flour obsessive that I am, it is somewhat surprising that I waited a few weeks post-release to purchase the new Flour cookbook. Maybe I wanted to wait until I was in a Christmas-shopping mood, since I knew I would be getting one as a gift in addition to my own copy? Regardless, the Moment of Purchase happened this past Veterans' Day. My company had the day off, so I was able to leisurely enjoy Flour's Central Square bakery around 10 in the morning. I was putting the new cookbooks in my bag when a fellow breakfaster struck up a conversation.

FB: Hey, have you baked anything out of that cookbook yet?
Me: ...No, I just bought it. But I can't wait to try!
FB: Maybe you could try baking all the recipes in a row, like that "Julie and Julia" movie. Only I guess this cook is Joanne. You could start a blog!
Me: I actually already have a dessert blog...
FB: Oh, that's perfect. What's your name? You could rename your blog to "Whatever I Am and Joanne."
Me: Julie.
FB: Even more perfect. Julie and Joanne!

I don't know which part of this exchange amused me more - the implication that I would have already made something out of a cookbook in my possession for 10 seconds, or my unknown name being represented as whatever I am (human? dancer?). Still, I have to thank this slightly-off-kilter patron for my newest tagging idea.

I won't repurpose this blog to be solely about Flour, even though I've likely discussed said entity more than any other bakery/desserterie/manufacturer. Instead, I will tag posts about my adventures with this cookbook as "Julie and Joanne" posts. Here's to baking under Joanne Chang's expert guidance - and the resulting book/movie deal, of course! :-P