Here we are, it's a new year. I'd intended to post some over the holidays as I had two weeks off. But I ended up spending that time in the kitchen. I baked off about 20 kg. of flour. I thoroughly enjoyed my vacation.
Main Dishes
I made a quintuple batch cattleman's pie (shepherds pie with ground beef) and froze 3/5th of it. Still have 2/5ths in the freezer. It's an amazing dish in that EVERYONE (including Duncan who is nine and doesn't like ANYTHING) likes it.
Breads
I made loaves and loaves of
cinnamon raisin bread. It turned out quite well. I took many loaves around to friends and neighbors.
Using that dough I also made a batch of chocolate sweet rolls. They were all eaten, but I wasn't overly pleased with them.
I made Pain au Chocolate following this recipe:
http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=117 they turned out quite well. I want to make them again, or make croissants, and see if I can't do a better job of proofing them and thus get an even better product.
I only made one batch of sourdough and I've decided that my attempts at making sourdough with out any additional yeast is an effort I don't wish to pursue any further. I've since made a couple batches of sourdough including some yeast and I'm much more pleased with the end product.
Brioche au Chocolate, much like the above mentioned effort using raisin bread dough, with somewhat better results. Honestly, I did not make as stiff a dough as all the brioche recipes indicated. I was afraid of burning out my mixer, and I did get it hot enough to smell HOT. I've begun searching for a heavier duty stand mixer.
PIES!
A first attempt at pre-cooking the apple pie filling resulted in nine pints of a most lovely apple butter. I overcooked the bottom of the pot and the apples were still raw at the top so stir, add seasonings and process like apple sauce, then cook further adding sugar and more seasonings as desired. I did loose one pint in water bath processing. :-(
I've been trying to reduce the amount of liquid produced by the apples. That was what lead me to try pre-cooking the filling and resulted in apple butter. I found much better success by tossing the peeled & sliced apples with sugar and letting them drain in a colander, I captured the juice and reduced it, adding it back to the apples when they were put in the pie. This was an improvement, much less boil-over and loss of goodness (and mess to clean up)
My third attempt had the most success, as before I tossed them with the sugar and reduced the liquid that drained off, then I added a cup of raisins. I still had a little boil over, but no puddling in the dish as the pie was eaten; and this with out using any flour or starch as I had used previously. I'm looking forward to trying again. I think my favorite pie has changed from pumpkin custard to apple.
Of course it didn't go so smoothly as all that. I started out working with some "chocolate flavored candy." Don't. Just Don't. Yes, it's easier, you can heat it higher than chocolate, so it flows more easily and still have it set solid at room temperature, and you don't ever need to temper it, but it simply doesn't taste right, nor have the right mouth feel. It can be used to make ganache, but I won't do that again either.
Ganache enrobed with improperly tempered (untempered) chocolate may not ever set enough to be able to pick up. I've had some success, forcing tempering or something close, by using a hair dryer to reheat the chocolate. This also encourages "Blooming" of the chocolate, which is rather unsightly, but they still taste good, even if they don't look so good, and the texture is a bit off. They looked bad enough I didn't take any pictures. Sorry.
