Daring Bakers: Christmas Stollen

On the Daring Baker's website there was a lot of discussion about what the December recipe would be this year. It is always something for the Christmas season and a lot of people seem to fear the possibility that someone would pick fruitcake. It turns out there are a lot of fruitcake haters out there. Well this year they did - sort of. They pick stollen. Stollen is a traditional German fruitcake - but it is more of a bread than a cake since it is made with yeast. Traditionally stollen is shaped more like a loaf (supposed to represent the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes) but we were to make ours in the wreath form you see above.

Well I am not a fruitcake hater. When I grew up my grandmother would make fruitcake every Christmas. I think it was pretty much a traditional southern fruitcake and I still enjoy it when I can get it. I have never made one myself though so I was excited at the thought of making the Stollen this month. The Stollen can be pretty easy to make if you use all store-bought ingredients but I decided to make a few of them.

I have not got out the candy thermometer in a while but I needed it twice for this recipe. The first thing I made was the candied citrus peels. These taste a lot better than anything you would buy and I used this recipe to make them.

The second thing I made was some marzipan. Marzipan is a traditional filling for a stollen and it was something I wanted to experiment with so I decided to make some. My father doesn't like the almonds that are in a traditional marzipan so I decided to experiment and use pecans in place of the almonds. I have never heard of anyone making pecan marzipan but I figured it was worth a try. I used this recipe - http://candy.about.com/od/nougatmarzipancandy/r/Basicmarzipan.htm as a starting point. Instead of grounding the pecans I just processed them in the food processor. I think that left them a little course and it ended up not being quite as much of a paste as a normal marzipan but it worked great in the stollen.

The only other modification I made to the recipe was that I used raisins, blueberries, cherries, and cranberries instead of just raisins and I also used a mix of cherries and pineapple in place of the glace cherries. I also substituted some course chopped pecans for the almonds.

The resulting stollen was fantastic. It looked beautiful in the wreath shape. It is a nice deep brown color and with all the powdered sugar on top it looked and tasted fantastic. I really liked the pecan marzipan - I like almonds but I think the pecans were really good in this. It is a heavy bread but nowhere near as heavy as a traditional fruitcake.

I thought it tasted pretty good but a week or so after I made it I made the discovery that elevates this above a traditional fruitcake for me. Like any fruitcake this is supposed to store well. Like a normal bread it does start to get a little dry after a while. Well many people had posted that it was normal to eat it toasted and normal to put butter on it. Well toasted with butter was incredible - like a good cinnamon raisin toast - only better. I was going to be saving some for Christmas to share with the family but I have finished off half the loaf (the other half went to a pot luck) myself. I still enough of the citrus peels and marzipan for another so I think I will try making a smaller loaf - maybe in the traditional shape so I can bring it to Christmas dinner at my mom's.

Thanks to Penny at Sweet Sadie's Baking for this months challenge. It was good to get everyone to try out a fruitcake - some found they liked it (an some found out they really didn't). Also thanks to Audax at Audax Artifex - He provided a lot of hints and I used recipes he provided for the citrus and marzipan. If you have not checked out his blog - do it - he takes all of the daring kitchen challenges to a whole new level. I think he has made at least 4 completely different stollen for this challenge.

Here is a pdf with the recipe used for the challenge.

Snow Cream

This is a little bit of a departure from most of the posts I do but it it something I have been wanting to do for a long time. The name of the blog is A Cooking Dad and most of the posts focus on the cooking - this one focuses on being a dad (but still a little cooking thrown in).

One good food memory I have from my childhood is snow cream. This is probably

a foreign concept to most of you - I have never heard of anyone else making it. I found three main variations on the Internet. One version is made with eggs, milk, sugar, and snow. The second is sweetened condensed milk and snow. In the third you actually make a custard and mix it with the snow. I don't really know how my grandmother made it. I think she may have actually made a custard and mixed it with the snow. I'll have to try to figure out what the official family recipe is, but for now, I just made the version with the sweetened condensed milk.

Before I describe how it tastes let me say this recipe is more about fun than tasting good. This is not going to taste like Hagen Daz if that is what you are expecting. It is not as creamy as ice cream but the texture is not bad. The taste is pretty much the taste of sweetened condensed milk. In the future I think I will try some of the other version as I think they may taste better - but the project was a success. My son had a ton of fun gathering the snow to make ice cream and it tasted great to him.

Snow Cream

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1/2 can (7 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Snow - I used about 6-8 cups of fresh, light and fluffy snow

Directions

1. Mix the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla.
2. Gather the fresh snow. Pour the condensed milk mixture over the snow and stir until well combined.

Note: Watch out for the yellow snow!

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Crostata

This month for Daring Bakers the challenge was to make a crostata. A crostata is basically just the Italian version of pie. It can be made in a tart pan or made free-form. The filling was up to us but the host showed versions filled with jam and with pastry cream. Well for me either of those sound fantastic - especially the pastry cream version. Problem was the timing meant this would be a perfect dessert to make for my wife's birthday and she has pretty much the opposite taste of me when it comes to dessert.

I decided to compromise. I would attempt to make a chocolate and pastry cream version. I

made half of the pastry cream recipe in the challange and poured it in the bottom and poured some chocolate ganache on the top. I made the crust, ganache, and

pastry cream all with a little bit of orange zest added since I think orange goes well with chocolate. I wasn't really sure how it would work baking the ganache but it turned out incredibly. The chocolate was just the right consistency and the pastry cream helped offset the strong chocolate flavor just enough. My wife and I both loved it.

This months challenge was hosted by Simona at briciole. Simona has an Italian cooking blog ( she is an Italian woman living in California) that looks fantastic. An interesting thing that I have not seen before - her blog posts all include an MP3 of her pronouncing all the Italian words in the blog. Cool idea for people trying to learn Italian or just if you want

to sound better ordering Italian food.

If you want to try your own crostata here is the challange we used with the recipe for the crust and the pastry cream -Daring Bakers' Crostata Challange.

Daring Bakers: Apple Doughnuts

I have been looking forward to this one. In fact I was thinking if I was to ever take a turn creating a Daring Baker challenge it would be doughnuts. Unfortunately I had scheduled myself to do this towards the end of October and my son and myself ended up getting sick so I missed the deadline for this recipe. I thought about it and decided - who cares about the deadline - I've wanted to make them so I went ahead and made them a week late.

The challenge was doughnuts - any kind you can imagine. You could make cake or yeast doughnuts - they could be plain, decorated, filled... I can't really say there is a doughnut that I don't like but I have always liked a good fried cake. I used to buy one every week at the end of doing my summer paper route - they were still warm when I got it. I did decide to dress it up a little. It is currently apple season here in the US so I thought I would see what I could do by adding some apples. They were really good - little pieces of apple in every bite. They weren't too sweet or too greasy. Being a cake doughnut they are a little heavier than a yeast doughnut but I thought these turned out pretty nice and fluffy for a cake doughnut. My dough was very wet but the recipe said it would be. It was hard to pick them up to fry - I think the key is a lot of flour when rolling out the dough. My only question about the recipe - how do you flip a doughnut hole??? They do not want to turn over.

Thanks to Lori at Butter Me Up for this challenge. I envy her getting to make three different types of doughnuts for the challenge.

Apple Doughnuts

Source: Adapted from Nancy Silverton's Buttermilk Cake Doughnuts

Makes about 15 doughnuts and doughnut holes

Ingredients

• 2 Apples, peeled, cored, and chopped coarsely
• 1/4 cup Apple Cider + more for glaze
• All Purpose Flour 3 ¼ cup / 780 ml / 455 gm / 16 oz + extra for dusting surface
• White Granulated Sugar ¾ cup / 180 ml / 170 gm / 6 oz
• Baking Soda ½ teaspoon / 2.5 ml / 3 gm / .1 oz
• Baking Powder 1 teaspoon / 5 ml / 6 gm / .2 oz
• Kosher (Flaked) Salt 1 teaspoon / 5 ml / 6 gm / .2 oz (If using table salt, only use ½ teaspoon)
• Nutmeg, grated 1.5 teaspoon / 7.5 ml / 9 gm / .3 oz
• Active Dry Yeast 1 1/8 teaspoon / 5.6 ml / 3.5 gm / .125 oz
• Buttermilk ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoon / 210 ml / 225 gm / 7 ¾ oz
• Egg, Large 1
• Egg Yolk, Large 2
• Pure Vanilla Extract 1 Tablespoon / 15 ml
• Powdered (Icing) Sugar 1 cup / 120 ml / 65 gm / 2.3 oz (Used for decorating and is optional)
• Sugar and Cinnamon for topping

Directions

1. In a small sauce pan heat the chopped apples and cider until apples are starting to get soft ( about 10 minutes). Allow to cool.
2. Heat the oil to 375°F/190°C.
3. Over a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg; make a large well in the center. Place the yeast in the well; pour the cooked apples over it. Allow it to soften (if using packed fresh yeast), about 1 minute.
4. Pour the buttermilk, whole egg, egg yolks, and vanilla extract into the well. Using one hand, gradually draw in the dry ingredients. The mixture should be fairly smooth before you draw in more flour. Mix until it is completely incorporated. The dough will be very sticky. Wash and dry your hands and dust them with flour.
5. Sift an even layer of flour onto a work surface. Don’t be afraid to use a lot of flour. You don’t want the doughnuts sticking to your counter. Scrape dough out of bowl onto the surface; sift another layer of flour over dough. Working quickly, pat dough into an even 1/2-inch (12.5 mm) thickness. Dip cutter in flour and, cutting as closely together as possible, cut out the doughnuts and holes. Place holes and doughnuts on a floured surface. Working quickly, gather scraps of dough together, pat into 1/2-inch (12.5 mm) thickness, and cut out remaining doughnuts and holes.
6. Drop three to four doughnuts at a time into the hot oil. Once they turn golden brown, turn them and cook the other side. Cooking times may vary, but with my oil at 375 °F/190°C, I found they only took about 20 to 30 seconds per side.
7. Once cooked, place on a baking sheet covered with paper towels to drain.
8. If desired place doughnuts in a cinnamon sugar mixture and toss to coat.
9. You can make a glaze with 1 cup of powdered sugar and a few tablespoons of milk, water, or apple cider. The glaze should be fairly thick but line drawn in it with a spoon will smooth out in a few seconds. You can spread the glaze on with a knife or simply dip half of the doughnut in the glaze.