Isn’t that a funny name for a muffin? I thought so until I tasted these, and now I see why, without a doubt, you won’t want to make any other kind of recipe for a nutmeg muffin.

Using nutmeg in a muffin – as the main flavoring – is certainly edgy. Some people might even say risky. Yet I’ve learned to trust Marion Cunningham. What a consummate baker she is. As time has gone by, more and more, I’ve learned that she really knows her baked goods. She must be part chemist. But most home bakers would never think to add so much nutmeg – for this batch that makes about 14 regular muffins, or about 26 mini-muffins, you’ll use about 3+ tablespoons of freshly grated nutmeg. Specifically, Marion says to grate 1 1/2 whole nutmeg pods. That’s one PILE of nutmeg, I’ll tell you, now having done it. I didn’t measure how much it was – but I’d say it’s almost 1/4 cup’s worth. Do not, under any circumstances, use pre-ground jarred nutmeg for this.

Using a rasp grater – a microplane grater – made easy work of it. I used the long, thin one on top in the photo at left. It probably took me about 5 minutes to get it done. The microplane creates airy shreds – lighter than other things you might grate. If you were to use regular ground nutmeg, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as much. But then, it also wouldn’t taste anywhere near as good. There is something significant that happens when you use freshly grated nutmeg.

The batter was simple to throw together – you don’t even use a mixer – just a fork. First you combine all the dry ingredients. Then you combine the wet ingredients in another bowl and slowly add the wet into the dry and stir JUST until you don’t see any streaks of flour. It’s very important that you don’t over mix this batter – you’ll have tough muffins if you do. The batter is wet, and using a tablespoon of baking powder is certainly a lot, but these don’t rise over-much, considering. I filled each muffin cup to the top, so they all puffed up nicely.

There’s more batter than you need, really, for one batch – I could have made another 3-4 mini-muffins, even after adding little dib-dabs of additional batter to each cup in the above 24-mini-muffin pan, so I poured the last of it into a greased glass (custard) cup and baked that right alongside the others – just for 5 minutes longer. The recipe indicates they’re best eaten warm, so I’ll probably reheat them in the microwave for about 5-7 seconds.

What’s GOOD: Loved the texture (light) of these. Right out of the oven they were heavenly. I ate one with nothing on it at all. This recipe exists on several other blog sites and most of the bakers served them with jam and/or butter. I’ll probably put out butter when I serve these to my friends who are coming to play Scrabble. The recipe indicates they stale quickly, so freeze them as soon as they cool down and defrost only what you need. The nutmeg flavor is sensational. But then, I love nutmeg.
What’s NOT: There was nothing not to like about these. Definitely a keeper.

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I nearly forgot to post this one – my 2nd venture back into sourdough after a hiatus of about 20 years. Can’t you just about smell the hint of yeast bread? It was divine.

There are plenty of recipes out there on the ‘net for sourdough bread. And mine likely isn’t all that unusual.  But it’s the one I made most often – way back in the 1960s and 70s when I baked bread regularly. With a new sourdough starter at hand, I wasn’t about to venture into new territory, but wanted to make this first loaf with the trusted recipe.

Probably the most difficult thing about sourdough – once you have a starter going – is to remember  to take it out a day before you want to use it (to bake something), and refresh the batch with fresh flour and warm water and allow it to regenerate. I don’t know about you, but even though I have a calendar that I keep (on my iPhone and on my computer) I never know from one day to the next whether I’ll really be home on any set morning or afternoon – even if there’s nothing on my calendar. I may get an invitation to meet a girlfriend for lunch. My DH may ask me to meet him somewhere for lunch. I have regular things I do every week or two. I have meetings now and then. But anyway, you do need to make sure you’ll be home for most of the time required in this recipe. There’s time to go run an errand to the grocery store, but not time to go sit in a doctor’s office or to the car wash. The dough has to rise twice, and it’s a good thing to be hanging around watching it now and then. Especially the 2nd rising, as it takes less time. The amount of time you’re actually working with the dough is small, but in the rising processes it just needs to be watched (and maybe talked to nicely, maybe setting it in a warmer place).

So, here’s the method. This assumes you’ve already let the sourdough sit overnight (to GET the fresh starter you’ll need for the bread), and you begin with just ONE CUP of it. You can use more if you’d prefer, but it might make more batter than you’ll be able to deal with. You could make biscuits with the remainder, but that’s a story for another day.

YEAST: In a small glass measuring cup you want to get the yeast started. Now this part is something I’ve almost always done – ever since I learned how to bake bread. I mix the package of dry yeast in the warm/hot water with 1/4 tsp of ground ginger and 1/4 tsp of granulated sugar. Back in the 60’s I did a lot of reading about yeast and bread – everything I could get my hands on at the library (and there wasn’t a whole lot) and some book I read talked about adding ground ginger to the yeast mixture along with a tiny bit of sugar. What this does is allow the dissolving yeast something to feed on – the little molecules of yeast actually like to climb, as I recall reading, and if it’s got something there to climb on – like the ginger and sugar, it will climb. It’s a little thing, and you don’t have to do it if you’d rather not, but I’m of the opinion that it helps – it allows all the yeast to work. You want to use a glass, plastic or ceramic bowl (a Pyrex measuring cup is what I always used but now I use a plastic one). You do NOT want to use a metal bowl or measuring cup – yeast doesn’t particularly like metal at this stage.

FLOUR: Many yeast breads can be made with all-purpose flour, but over the years I learned that there’s a reason you use bread flour (which allows for the development of more gluten, which in turns gives the rise and a better texture). I use King Arthur’s if I can, but regular grocery-store bread flour will be fine. You’ll use less King Arthur bread flour than you will regular bread flour, fyi.

DOUGH: So, you’ve got one very gooey cup of sourdough starter in a large bowl. (In my recipe below I’ve also given you one word of advice – if you wear rings – take them off to knead sourdough.) Now you’ll start adding in the stuff. To it you add the yeast mixture, sugar, salt and flour. That’s it. You can do this first step in a stand mixer with the dough hook (I did, although I didn’t have  a stand mixer years ago and kneaded all my bread by hand). Using the dough hook makes the kneading SO much easier.

CONSISTENCY: If there’s one thing I have learned over the years about bread baking and particularly sourdough it’s to NOT add any more flour than you absolutely need to handle the dough. The more flour, the drier and more crumbly the bread will be. Having made bread in the new no-knead Sullivan Street Bakery method,  the European Peasant Bread (which is an extremely wet dough) you come to realize bread doesn’t need as much flour as you might think. That style allows for lots of bubbles and a very open crumb.

KNEADING: Here, with a sandwich bread you must add enough flour so you can knead it – in this kind of fine-crumb bread, you do need to knead it well to remove all the bubbles. With the no-knead, you want lots of bubbles to make a hole-y bread, while with sandwich bread, bubbles are your enemy. You almost can’t over-knead a yeast (sandwich) bread dough. But you can do it with the dough hook during both kneading steps. The 2nd time you’ll find the dough is much more malleable, supple and smooth. I prefer to knead it with the dough hook the 1st time and do it by hand the 2nd time. During the first mixing, it’s important to knead it well (which is why I use the stand mixer and dough hook) because you want to develop and push and pull the yeast and its interaction with the flour. If you don’t do that, the bread won’t rise correctly. The rising action just won’t happen the way you want it to. During the 2nd mixing, all you really are trying to do is punch/push out most of the bubbles.

DOUGH HOOK: Start the mixer on low until the batter has started to come together. In a regular sized Kitchen Aid stand mixer, this 2-loaf sized batter/dough will nearly fill the bowl – it doesn’t to begin with, but once the gluten begins developing the dough wants to climb the dough hook. You may need to stop it and pull it off. Don’t run the motor so fast that the mixer moves on the countertop. Kneading bread dough is the hardest thing a stand mixer can do, just about, so just go slow and increase the speed gradually. Let it run/knead for longer than you might think. It mixes up soon enough, but just let it go – probably for 4-6 minutes at least.

RISING WHERE?: In my present kitchen I don’t have an ideal place for dough or bread pans to rise, but I’ve finally found a location on top of my toaster oven, which puts a bowl or the pans within about 2-3 inches of our under-cabinet fluorescent lights. They don’t give off a lot of heat, but it’s better than sitting on our granite countertops, which are cold even in 90° weather. Lots of people create make-shift places to proof bread – like turning on your oven to its lowest temp for a few minutes, then turning it off and adding the bowl or pans. That works for awhile, but not for anything like 90 minutes. Some people put a pan of boiling water in the oven, and that will take about an hour to cool off, then you can repeat the process. You can create a cardboard box with a light bulb to heat up the space – just don’t over heat. Also know that in the winter, it’ll take longer for the dough to rise if the kitchen is cool. Some people just add more yeast (which works). If you add enough yeast bread dough will rise even if it’s in the refrigerator. That’s the genesis of refrigerator yeast rolls – you’ll find lots of recipes for those on the ‘net.

SHAPE: After the 1st rise, you punch down the dough, knead it for several minutes, until it does get that smooth texture. Cut the dough in half using a serrated knife and shape each half. You can do these in bread pans or on a flat sheet . . .

PANS: You might be able to put this dough on a flat baking sheet, but my experience with these kinds of wetter doughs is that as it rises it spreads out and not much up. So you’ll have a loaf that looks more like a ciabatta rather than a sandwich loaf. There’s a fine line between a wet dough that spreads and a more firm dough that will rise UP. You’ll need to test your own to see if it works. When in doubt, use bread pans or a ceramic bowl – an oval with sides. Or a Le Creuset  will work too. There are 2 sizes of bread pans – 8” and 9”. If you use 8” these loaves will be quite high. The 9” probably works better, but both will work. Don’t go out and buy 9” pans if you don’t have them.

THE FINGER TEST: Most experts tell you that to tell if the dough has risen enough you poke two fingers into the dough and if it doesn’t push back, it’s risen enough. The other test is the “double in bulk.” I try to eyeball the mound of dough and know when it’s about reached the double size. In most recipes this will take about 2 hours. During that time you don’t touch it or do a thing to it. If it’s warmer on one side than the other, rotate the bowl half way through.

PUNCHING DOWN: A few recipes (but not this one) tell you to punch down the dough while it’s still in the bowl – this is a method that uses 3 rising times. It merely means using your fist (without rings on any fingers) and punching the dough in as far as it will go then kind of gathering it up and turning it over and letting it rise again.

2nd RISING: My experience is that the 2nd rise takes less time – usually about 45 minutes to an hour. I also have learned over the years that you want the dough to have risen ALMOST to the point you’d like it to look once it’s fully baked. In other words, the bread isn’t going to rise much at all, if any, once  you put it in the oven. I like the bread to have a nice mound above the bread-pan-edge, so I allow it to proof (rise) until it reaches that point. Be careful with the pans – don’t bang them or you could deflate the dough. I made a slash on the top of both loaves when I made mine, but you probably don’t have to. I cut into it only about 1/2 inch. Don’t slash very far down the side of the loaf or it might almost spill out sideways. That you don’t want. Just slash it on the top, 2 cuts about 3 inches or so long. They make special utensils for this, but any good sharp knife will work fine.

BAKING: Be sure to preheat the oven so it’s nice and hot. If you want to, turn the loaves around once during the baking. But don’t bang the oven door. When you remove the loaves, tap on the top with your fingernail or knuckle – you’ll hear a hollow sound – you’ll know they’re done. Some bread is so tender and soft you can’t possibly place the loaves on the top of the bread pan edges to cool, but sourdough makes a hearty crust and you can with this one. When in doubt, remove the bread from the pans immediately and let them cool on a wire rack. If you leave the bread in the pans, they’ll begin to steam from all the trapped heat – it will make the crust soft – not what you want here.

SLICING: Don’t slice the bread too soon. This is an oft-made mistake – if you cut the bread before it’s cooled you’ll tear the tender bread. If that suits your meal to have irregular torn parts, then do go ahead, but if you want nice sandwich slices, wait for the bread to cool. I’ve become, over the years, very adept at slicing even slices of bread. How? I don’t know for sure – I watch the far side of the knife carefully as I begin the slicing with a serrated knife. Don’t push the knife down too far with each back and forward stroke. A gentle pressure works better – that way you can re-angle the knife if needed to make an even slice.

AH, BUTTER AND EAT!: Well, all that effort and all these instructions – now spread with some  unsalted butter (or salted if you’d prefer) and enjoy it. If you put much other than butter on it you’ll not even taste the sourdough.

STORING & FREEZING: My experience is that bread keeps best in the freezer. Because we’re just a family of 2, we don’t eat much bread at any meal, let alone much in a single day – some days we have none. So I do two different methods:  (1) I slice the bread, stack maybe 2 or at the most 3 pieces and wrap well in foil, then I put that in a Ziploc freezer bag, suck out the air with a straw (you know how to do that, right? – seal the Ziploc closure with only a tiny opening at one end in which you slip a straw. Holding the closure almost closed, just barely holding the straw between both hands, suck on the straw to draw out any air in the bag and quickly slide out the straw as you continue to hold it shut and seal it up). Then that Ziploc goes into the freezer. (2) I do sometimes use my vacuum sealer to prep a chunk of bread ( 2-3 inches long, unsliced) and when it begins the vacuum seal part, I only let it go until the interior bread just begins to shrink in and I stop the vacuum seal. Does that make sense? If you continue to pull air out it will press all the texture out of the inner, tender bread. So that’s why you continue only until it begins to indent the middle of the bread. Then that vacuum-sealed piece goes into the freezer. It usually takes less than half an hour to defrost either type. When I defrost the thick chunk of bread (unsliced) I usually lay the chunk down flat and slice horizontally to get an even slice. It’s much harder to slice bread that doesn’t have an end crust as it gives the chunk integrity to hold itself up.

Whew, that was one very long post. Hope this helps someone . . .

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Oh my goodness, is this ever fantastic. The problems with this are: (1) finding good, tender and rich brioche bread; and (2) keeping your fingers out of the finished pastry. They are just so delicious. The base is a thick slice of brioche bread (the one above is about 1/2 inch thick, maybe just slightly thicker), spread with a ground almond and butter mixture (an almond cream, it’s called), spread with a little bit of apricot jam, some almonds sprinkled on top and baked briefly, then generously sprinkled with powdered sugar.

The other morning we were at one of my book group meetings, at our friend Peggy’s establishment, (Peggy & Gary own it along with their son) Mead’s Green Door Café in old-town Orange. Every other month we meet at their little café and enjoy a latte or cappucino and some lovely treat Peggy has baked while we discuss our current book selection. Peggy and her husband used to own a restaurant in Orange, but sold it a few years ago and bought a derelict building and spent over a year renovating it to the Café it is now. Cute as a bug, Old-world style, country-ish, eclectic, offbeat, catering a lot to the young Chapman University crowd nearby. They serve vegetarian and vegan food only, with usually at least one GF item too. They specialize in breakfast and lunch. Peggy does 90% of the baking. Peggy’s #1 seller (of her pastries) is her sweet potato scone, which is delish also, I can attest!

This little number, which blew me away, is so easy to make. Disclaimer here – I didn’t make the one you see above – Peggy did. But it’s so very easy, I was fairly certain you wouldn’t mind me showing you hers. If I made this now, I’d be gobbling it down. The recipe came from Sunset Magazine (earlier last year). First you must start with good brioche. Maybe one of our local bakeries (like Panera or Corner Bakery) will have it – I’ll have to look. You slice it thick (the recipe said 1-inch; I think Peggy sliced hers closer to 1/2 inch. Anyway, thick brioche. Then you spread the top with a little apricot jam, then a mixture of butter, granulated sugar, salt, egg, and half-and-half that’s been whizzed  up in the food processor. Then the top is sprinkled with almonds and sugar. Baked for 20 minutes or so, sprinkled with powdered sugar. Done. Very easy. Very special.

What’s GOOD: certainly the taste is first and foremost! These things are just delish. Worth making. You can make the almond cream ahead and it will keep for several days. The almond cream makes more than what you’ll use to make 8 – so perhaps cut down on the quantity first time.

What’s NOT: really nothing.

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Pretty much, I’ve had a love affair with sourdough my whole life. But for the last 20 years or so I didn’t have a sourdough starter going. I first bought one back in the 1960s, and I baked bread regularly and often made pancakes and waffles, and had a great recipe for a dinner roll too. But then I got out of the habit and finally I’d let the starter go too long between feedings and the batter had expired, so to speak. I kept it in one of those cute little crockery spring lock containers and it just sat in the back of the refrigerator. But with it and other living organisms, eventually it ran out of fuel or food and if you don’t keep it going by feeding it flour and water every so often and allowing it to bloom, brighten, develop its yeasty presences, it will die of old age. This was years ago, of course, but when I’d opened the crock and sniffed the contents I knew it was a goner.

Then a couple of weeks ago you’ll remember I wrote up a post about my DH’s father Charles’ buttermilk pancakes. That got me to thinking, longingly, about my favorite sourdough and its wonderful tasty benefits. I enjoyed Dave’s dad’s buttermilk pancakes, but not nearly as much as I love the flavor and even the spongy texture of sourdough. So, when I saw a package of sourdough starter I jumped at it and bought one. As I’m writing this, the starter is still in its infancy of development. At its first mixing, once it sits for 4 hours, you mix more bread flour and water into it for 7 straight days and you need to keep it at about 90°F day and night, feeding it once a day. Then, and only then, will the sour part of it have progressed so it’s taste-able. Each evening I scoop out a cup of the bubbly fermenting batter and throw it out, and add in another mixture of flour and warm water. I stir it all around until they are no lumps and cover again with plastic wrap and let it get a nice warm glow for another 24 hours. Finding a place in my kitchen with a consistent 90° temperature was a little difficult – the warming drawer doesn’t go that low. The oven obviously doesn’t. I finally settled on putting it on top of my toaster oven, just 3-4 inches below the fluorescent under-cupboard lights in my little butler’s pantry. We’ve just had to leave those lights on day and night for the last several days. That drives my DH crazy – he’s a stickler about turning off lights – and I do forget now and then to turn off a light somewhere in the house. We both do.

Once I’ve finished the 7-day feeding schedule I’ll be able to store a few cups of starter in the refrigerator and hopefully it will keep for a week without getting into trouble. I suppose I could set up an alarm on my iPhone to remind me once a week to feed the starter, couldn’t I? Like maybe every Saturday morning, perhaps.

You can buy a sourdough starter package mix as I did. You can also make your own – there’s a good tutorial over at King Arthur Flour, if you’re interested: sourdough starter. At the cookware store I purchased the package you see at right. Buying the package makes it quite simple. As I recall, it was about $5.00. The sourdough starter I bought years ago was from Alaska and I certainly had many conjured thoughts over the years about the old “sourdoughs,” they called them, the solitary gold miners with their trusty pack horses, and the stories about how they would mix up the batter the night before and store it inside their sleeping bags next to their bodies, or on the horse, next to the horse’s hide, where it would keep warm. Because warmth is key here. This new starter I bought claims to be a San Francisco style. Now I don’t exactly know what that means – but San Franciscans do believe their sourdoughs are better than anybody else’s. The bread certainly is – there’s just nothing quite like the real thing – that musty, fusty sour smell from freshly baked sourdough bread that is ubiquitous on restaurant tables in SFO. We can buy sourdough bread here in Southern California, as you can in most places here in the U.S., but it ISN’T like the loaves from there.

Because I was anxious to try some sourdough pancakes, instead of throwing out the 1-cup of batter the other day (day 3 of its 7-day growing period), I used that one cup to make a small batch of sourdough pancakes. Perhaps they weren’t quite as powerfully sour as they’ll be after I continue getting the dough more sour as the days go by, but they were awfully darned good.

This batter I’m brewing is all made with bread flour – because the starter package is aimed at baking bread, not making anything else. So, I mixed in a little bit of all-purpose flour (because the batter was just slightly too thin, if you can believe that) and the other ingredients before pouring little dollops into a hot nonstick pan. I didn’t even grease the pan. It didn’t need it because I’d added just a little jot of canola oil to the batter. You don’t even need to butter the pancakes, either. Thin little sourdough pancakes somehow don’t need butter – but syrup yes. But they’re even good plain because they’re very moist.

What’s GOOD: Well, I loved it – loved that spongy chew to every bite. As pancakes go,I love thin ones, so these ticked all my sourdough hot buttons. And it was even sour, which I liked and I’ll like it even better once the dough is finished it’s 7 days of fermenting.
What’s NOT: if you don’t want to hassle with a sourdough starter, the feeding, mixing and nurturing you have to do with it, you may not like it. But the flavor of those finished goods. Oh, yes! Worth it, I hope.

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Oh, just gaze at those. Merely looking at the photo makes my mouth water. These scones (or rich biscuits) are just the cat’s meow. The bestest. The most tender scones I’ve ever made, for sure. And they are just a pairing from heaven with some hot soup. Like cream of tomato? I made them to serve with one of my favorite recipes – Italian Sausage and Tomato Soup. 

The recipe came from a recent cooking class with Phillis Carey. And as she explained at the class, it’s very unusual to see eggs IN scones. Used as a glaze on top, yes, but rarely do you see any recipe with eggs in the dough. These scones (biscuits) are going onto my favorites list, if that’s any indication how good they were (are).

These are incredibly easy to make. You combine the dry ingredients and lightly fluff them with a fork so the salt and baking soda don’t clump in one spot. Then you add the cold-cold butter that’s been cut into little cubes. I use a pastry fork, and then sometimes I dig in with my fingers, since that’s fairly easy to do. The trick to this is leaving some of the butter in tiny little shreds. But in this case, the eggs provide additional leavening to the batter too. This one has fresh herbs in it, but you can vary which ones you use – don’t like rosemary? – just use dill or thyme. The cheese also adds a nice taste to them.

The dough makes a big chunk, so you cut it in half and shape each half into a circle, an inch thick. Don’t use any more hand-power than necessary – the less the better. I used a sharp knife to cut the scones into 6 wedges, then I carefully scrunched them back into the circle – barely touching. If you like all the edges to be more crisp, separate the wedges. If you want just 6 biscuits, halve the recipe below. When they’re shaped up and ready, use a pastry brush or silicone brush with some additional heavy cream to glaze the top, then sprinkle more herbs and cheese on top.

The end result is a very, very tender scone – almost like a light cake in texture. For years I’ve been making scones from a recipe I acquired back in the 1980s, and it’s been my go-to recipe – it’s also on my favorites list – Buttermilk Scones – and they’re just very different from these. The others are more like a biscuit, a southern biscuit, I suppose.

These are scrumptious with soup. I served them the other night, as I mentioned above, with another of Phillis’ recipes, the Italian Sausage, Tomato and Orzo Soup. We had 6 of us for dinner, and I had 4 scones left over – a few people took 2nds on both soup and scones. I wrapped each scone in plastic wrap and edged them into a freezer ziploc bag and they’ll be perfect for a later soup dinner.

What’s GOOD: oh gosh. Everything about them is good – texture, taste, tenderness, even the savory aspect  (the cheese and herbs). They’re very light in texture, which I like a lot. You’ll not be sorry if you try them.
What’s NOT: nothing, other than they’re fairly high in calorie. If you serve them with soup, perhaps the meal balances out, right?

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You know how adding buttermilk in any baked good makes it super tender? This recipe does it in spades, as they say, to make the softest, most tender scone I may have ever tasted. And then you add in the gingerbread flavors. Delicious is all I can say.

Understand . . . this is not gingerbread. It’s nothing whatsoever like cake gingerbread. It’s the gingerbread (spice) flavors that give it the delish flavor but in a soft, tender flaky scone.

My favorite scone that I’ve been making for decades, Buttermilk Scones, is similar, but the proportions in the ingredients are different than these. How, exactly, the chemistry works in baking continues to baffle me. Sometimes I go to Harold McGee’s book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Usually I find the answer there to most of my cooking questions about why and how. And I sometimes refer to that baking chemistry book, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman, with all of the proportions students learn in culinary school. I don’t remember them, period. When I have a question, though, I often dig out that book too, to see if it has any answers. Scones aren’t covered in that book, however. Only biscuits, and these just aren’t “biscuits.”

Nevertheless, buttermilk is a tenderizer in bread and pastries. Of and by itself I don’t think it has much super-tenderizing powers, but combined with flour and fat, it must develop the tenderness. I’ve never found that using the dried buttermilk powder works as well. I’ve never tried a side by side trial, but something happens, not good I mean, when they dry buttermilk.

Technically, what we buy at our grocery stores ISN’T buttermilk. It’s a cultured buttermilk. Real buttermilk is a by-product of real cream when the butterfat liquids run off in the process of making butter. I haven’t a clue how to find real honest-to-goodness buttermilk. I believe I’ve looked at Whole Foods, thinking surely they’d have it, but they didn’t when I visited the store some months ago. If you’re a farmer or near dairy farmers, perhaps you can buy it directly. I’d love to try it in baking. I remember trying buttermilk when I was a child, on my grandfather’s farm. He didn’t have dairy cattle, but his brother did, on adjoining land. I didn’t love drinking it, as my grandfather did, but it was definitely more tasty. More tangy for sure, but that’s about all I recall.

But, for purposes of providing tenderness to baked goods, store-bought buttermilk suffices. Our normal buttermilk starts with skim milk, actually, then they culture it somehow and it ends up being a low-fat product and has the consistency of real buttermilk. The little tiny globules in store-bought buttermilk is produced – it’s not natural to the product. It is what it is, and we’re mostly stuck with it. If you want to know whether your buttermilk is or isn’t real, look for the word cultured. That’s the manufactured (fake) stuff. If it says pure buttermilk, give it a try. Taste it too.

Now, back to these scones. They’re mixed together much like any other scone mixture, so I won’t belabor that process. The batter does contain eggs – that’s not always in scones – they tenderize baked things also. The only thing Phillis Carey said about this recipe is that it’s imperative you not add any more flour than necessary – more flour = dry and less tender. You’ll develop a rhythm once you make these yourselves. Just know the batter is very wet and you want to keep it that way as much as possible. Your hands will get kind of raggedy from the sticky dough, but that’s okay!

You don’t have to make the marmalade butter, but it’s so easy to do, and would add an especially nice touch if you’re making these for guests, particularly. Just mix butter, marmalade and a pinch of salt if you use unsalted butter. Let it sit for awhile so the flavors meld a bit. Otherwise, serve with butter and whatever jam you have on hand.

What’s GOOD: if you’re a lover of fall, gingerbread or pumpkin pie spices, you’ll love these scones. They’re super tender from the buttermilk and from very little handling. You’ll really enjoy these. I just about guarantee it. If you have left overs, wrap them in foil and freeze for another day.
What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.

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So, is it a bread or a cake? It has the tenderness of a cake, but it’s baked in a bread pan and it’s sliced like a quick bread, but truly, it could be either.

Being a fan of ginger anyway, when I saw this recipe at Marie Raynor’s recipe blog, The English Kitchen, I knew I’d need to make it. Only trouble was, the recipe called for “stem ginger in syrup.” Hmmm. I knew what it was (fresh ginger in a thick sugar syrup), but was fairly certain I’ve never seen it here in the U.S. I did find it online at amazon.com – Stem Ginger in Syrup, but since it’s a heavy jarred product, I didn’t want to pay the hefty shipping. Stem ginger is just ginger that’s been sliced or cubed and cooked in a thick syrup until it’s tender.

What to do? Well, make your own, silly! It couldn’t be that hard, right? It wasn’t. So, I’m including 2 recipes below – one for the cake/bread and one for the ginger in syrup. If you happen to live in a part of the world where you can buy stem ginger in syrup, go for it. Otherwise, buy a big bunch of fresh ginger and make it yourself a day or so ahead.

So first, the ginger: buy very fresh ginger – or go to a market where you think you’ll get younger ginger (some Asian markets actually sell a very young white ginger) peel it, cut into small chunks, combine it with a simple syrup and cook for awhile (about 45 minutes I’d say). Taste the ginger to make sure it’s soft enough. When I did, after about 30 minutes, it definitely was not softened enough, so I cooked it more than an hour, I think. And the syrup reduced down quite a bit too. After cooling in the pan, I poured it into a glass jar and let it rest in the refrigerator.

Since I made the ginger a few weeks ago it was just sitting in the refrigerator, and in that time the ginger began to crystallize, so I had little sugar crystals all over the ginger pieces. It didn’t make any difference since it was going to be baked anyway. I minced up the ginger into very fine little pieces and cut up the prunes too (not quite so small – each prune about 5 pieces)

The recipe also calls for muscovado sugar. I did find some of that, but the day I was going to bake this cake, I took it out and discovered that the sugar was as hard as a rock. The suggestion on the box was to place it in a bowl and cover it overnight with a very damp towel, and by morning it would be soft. I didn’t have time to do that, so I just substituted dark brown sugar. The recipe also calls for a common British ingredient – golden syrup. There, in Britain, you’d buy Lyle’s brand, and I’ve purchased it here at some specialty stores. If you don’t have it, use dark corn syrup instead.

The bread/cake is quite simple to mix up – like most batters. The prunes and ginger (with some of the syrup clinging to the pieces) were added in at the last and gently stirred to combine. The recipe suggested using parchment in the pan, but I have one of those wonderful new ridged pans that just doesn’t seem to need that kind of coaching. The top of the bread (right out of the oven) is brushed with the ginger syrup and sprinkled with turbinado/raw sugar. The bread came out of the pan perfectly – after I’d let it rest for about an hour. I did try to slice it within a couple of hours, and decided that was a bad idea – the cake was just too tender at that point. Once it sat overnight wrapped in plastic wrap, it sliced beautifully and I served it to my DH’s men’s bible study guys.

What’s GOOD: gee, the interesting taste – the little tiny nibs of crystallized ginger are barely noticeable (you can see one sticking up in the cut slice above) but the ginger flavor is just right. The prunes add lovely color and rich flavor. Altogether delicious. And yes, I’d make it again. The recipe makes just one medium sized height loaf and you’ll find that it’ll disappear fast. Because the cake is so tender, you’ll need to cut larger slices than in a quick bread kind. And make it the day before you need it as it needs the overnight resting time. Marie says this isn’t the prettiest of cakes, but I wasn’t put off by its appearance at all. The center sunk a bit, so when I brushed on the syrup on top some of it pooled in the crease – so it made the very center a little wet with syrup. The recipe is a keeper.
What’s NOT: nothing other than the nuisance of having to make your own stem ginger in syrup. I have enough to make another loaf, though, which will be nice.

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Remember, I mentioned the other day how I was blown away by the flavor of buffalo mozzarella? Well, I had another 8-ounce tub with a soon to expire date on it. I hadn’t decided what to do with it . . . ah, this is heaven on a slice of bread.

We went shopping the other day and I bought a big loaf (a boule) of country bread (see it in the photo down below). I left it out on the kitchen counter that day and planned to saw off a slice each for us to eat with dinner, and I had the idea that maybe I could use that buffalo mozzarella (Trader Joe’s little tub, 8 ounces at right). I did get the idea from a recipe on the Food Network and after reading comments and suggestions from several people, I incorporated those into the tomato mixture and a new recipe was born.

It started with thinking about bruschetta – an antipasto that dates back to the 15th century and usually incorporates tomatoes, herbs, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper on small pieces of bread or toast. And I would suppose any Italian would say that this version above is a bruschetta too – just a different one. And if Italians do cook with mozzarella, it’s most likely the fresh stuff, not that processed tasteless mozzarella we buy in vacuum sealed balls that require grating. And I think in Italy, all the fresh mozzarella is made with buffalo milk.

First I made the tomato mixture – and I did it in the food processor. With the machine running I dropped in a couple cloves of fresh garlic, then added the fresh tomatoes all at once and only pulsed it until the tomatoes were chopped. You don’t want mush. I drained them – actually I scooped them out to a bowl and I added some olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh basil AND a little bit of balsamic vinegar. I left it to sit on the kitchen counter while I prepared everything else.  With most of the juice discarded,I was left with just tomatoes and all the seasonings.

Next, I sliced up the 8-ounce ball of buffalo mozzarella. I used my tomato knife to do that (serrated) and it was relatively easy to do. The 8-ounce ball made enough to cover 3 long slices of the country loaf of bread, FYI. The bread was sliced, then I toasted them (one side only) in the oven at 425°F for just a few minutes. The cheese was laid on top and I turned the oven on to broil and watched the toasts very carefully so they wouldn’t burn. Didn’t take long at all!

Once out of the oven I just drizzled the tomato mixture on top and we ate them immediately. Well, within about a minute. They cool off quickly and they’re best eaten when the cheese is hot. Some of the juices soaked down into the bread, but not much (if you drizzle much juice on top the bread will be totally soggy).

What’s GOOD: what can I tell you, other than that buffalo mozzarella has such wonderful flavor. It’s just different. It has flavor depth. Something. And the fresh tomatoes were wonderful; fresh basil on it adds a perfect brightness. Then the little bit of balsamic? Oh, delicious. Do use good bread, okay?
What’s NOT: not one thing. It was sensational.

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Why don’t I bake bread more often? This recipe was so darned easy and the bread was so darned GOOD. You just have to plan ahead, that’s all. It takes no time at all to mix up the batter and it lives in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake. Allow about 2 hours on the day you decide to bake it.

Remember when the no-knead sensation hit a few years ago? It was a revelation to me. And I baked No Knead Bread using the Sullivan Street Bakery method. I even bought a cute little enameled pot just to make it in a small 2-person shape and size. And then I just got out of the habit. In the interim I bought the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg. He made the process so easy and gives all manner of variations on the theme. His method is slightly different than the Sullivan Street method, but they’re similar. Hertzberg gives you options, though, for whole wheat, rye, and other flour types.

Hertzberg’s method involves mixing up the dough (a batter, because it’s really wet and sticky) and refrigerating it. He says it will last for 2 weeks in the refrigerator. I made a half of a recipe (half of the one shown below) and it made 2 loaves. I mixed it in my Kitchen Aid, just because it was easy. You want to cover it, but not seal it airtight as the batter needs a little bit of air. Several days later, the day I made the Spicy Moroccan Lamb Soup with Lentils and Chickpeas, I pulled out the bowl and set to work.

You sprinkle the top of the batter with a little flour. This helps. And surprisingly, once you coax the batter out of the bowl, it’s easy to work with. I took off my rings (DO do that!) and go in there with the dough and a bit of flour. I cut the batch in half (remember, I made half) and gently tried to sculpt the round boule by pulling the dough down the sides with my thumbs and pulling the dough together underneath and pinching it. Not hard to do, and it takes but a minute or so to do it. What you DON’T do is knead it – at all. Next you place the round balls on top of a pizza peel (or something that has no raised edge). You do this to let the bread rest a bit (the next step) and you want it to be on a bunch of cornmeal so that when you open the oven door awhile later the dough will hopefully slide right off. Mine didn’t, exactly. It stuck some, so that’s why I say use ample cornmeal.

So you let the boules rest on the cornmeal and on the pizza peel for about 40 minutes. After 20 minutes you preheat the oven (450°) with 2 things in it: (1) a low edged baking pan (a broiler pan? a sheet pan is what I used) on the lowest shelf; and (2) a pizza stone on the middle shelf (where you’ll slide the bread onto). You’ll not notice much difference in the size of the dough during this resting period. I was concerned, but didn’t do anything different. Just before baking you slash the top of the dough with a serrated knife – this helps it to expand properly when it begins to rise during baking. Don’t cut too far towards the side – you want the rising to happen on the top, not the sides. I slit it a bit too far the first time. Now I know better.

Carefully move the dough onto the pizza stone then pour a cup of hot tap water into the pan below the bread. Because the pan and oven are HOT, it makes a huge billow of steam. Shut the oven quickly so the steam stays in the oven. That’s what helps it get the wonderful chewy and crunchy crust. Since home ovens don’t have steam injection, this is a marvelous substitute! It works like a charm.

The bread is baked for about 35 minutes and it’s done. Remove the pizza stone – or at least remove the bread and place on a cooling rack. They’re hot, so be careful. Allow to cool at least 30-40 minutes before slicing.

What’s GOOD: everything about the no-knead method. Texture of the bread was really good – not exactly hole-y, or as much as I’d have liked. Maybe my yeast was old – it had been in the refrigerator for about a year. I’ll buy new the next time. But the bread was wonderful and I liked the whole wheat and rye additions – neither predominated. Definitely I’d make this again.
What’s NOT: it’s pretty straight forward, really, though it does take planning ahead. At least a day.

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Going on a cooking or baking frenzy is fun, sometimes challenging and tiring. I love trying new recipes (and if you didn’t feel the same, you probably would not be reading my blog), so when I needed to bring goodies for a women’s meeting, I went through the hundreds of to-try recipes I have in my “internet” cookbook arsenal. This is one, and coming up in the next week will be 2 others.

What I wanted were some varied baked things – not just cookies, or bars. Three other women were on my committee and they brought fruit, cold drinks and peanut butter & jelly treats (on bagels). Sometimes the hostess serves coffeecake, since the meeting is in the morning, but I’ve noticed that rarely do people take any of it. I thought finger food would be the best. First up is this easy zucchini bread, a sweet bread that used about 2 zucchini.

The recipe is simple enough, one devised by Peabody, over at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. Way back in 2008. But who’s counting any of the recipes we set aside to make . . . some day?

You may recall that a few years ago I went through my ancient files – recipes dating from about 1962 to 1995. Within each of those folders were ones I’d made and ones to try (mixing them in the same folder was a bad idea), just divided into categories like salad, beef, veggies, etc. Once I retired in 1995 I started entering all of my favorite recipes into MasterCook and then throwing away the clippings. That took nearly a year, pulling some from those clippings, and many others from cookbooks with flags on the pages. But there were still hundreds – gee, maybe a thousand or more – clippings in the pocket folders. A few years ago I started systematically going through those folders again, tossing some and re-sorting them into sub-categories and returning them to the Pentaflex hangars. As time has gone on, I rarely even refer to those recipes anymore – maybe only every 3 months or so. That tells me I should get rid of them, Period. But gosh, is that ever hard! Don’t know if I can do it. To do so, I’ll have to go through them yet again. Sigh . . . so many recipes, never enough time. I seem to veer toward new recipes, either ones I find on the internet or in the hundreds of cookbooks I own. I could cook for 10 years with nothing but 4-5 of my newer cookbooks. Well, I will think about all that another day . . .

Back to this chocolate zucchini bread. Divine. Oh, I think that’s a no-no word in foodie culture. Bloggers use way too many superlative adverbs – yummy, luscious, delicious, fantastic, greatest, and we’re supposed to nearly forget about using an exclamation point. Oh dear. I’m guilty. Garrett McCord (from Vanilla Garlic) wrote up a post recently about not using the following words: nice, good, bad, great, unctuous (which he says has a totally different meaning than food writers [me included] may use it for) and better than sex. I don’t think I’ve ever used that last phrase, but undoubtedly I’ve used all of the others. But McCord cautions bloggers to clarify – if it’s nice, explain exactly what makes it nice. Or if it’s good, exactly how or why it’s good. I think I do that ever since I added the little blurbs at the bottom of my posts – the what’s good and what’s not. I’ve had a few of my friends tell me that they bypass all the paragraphs I write and simply go to the what’s good and what’s not to decide if they’re going read the recipe and/or print/save it. Or not.

What’s different about this bread is the addition of mascarpone cheese in the mixture. It also is a buttermilk based batter – I always like using buttermilk since it makes cakes and breads so very tender. This one included. My only difficulty was getting the very center cooked through. I used a different sized pan, so I expected the timing to be different than the stated recipe, but after researching all over the ‘net I’ve concluded that moist short (non-yeast) breads like banana bread and I’ll include this bread in the same category since it’s moist from the zucchini, should be baked to an internal temp of about 200°. Some recipes say 190° or even as high as 210° – and I baked mine to 190°, but only after the bread cooled and I cut into the very center, did I discovered that it wasn’t quite cooked, right down the center, inside that crack in the ridge and down about 1/2 inch or so.

The age-old test of whether a cake/bread is done, using the toothpick test, still seems to be a good one, though, if you don’t have an instant read thermometer.

What’s GOOD: loved this stuff. It has the heft of a bread, but it’s very tender (thin slices are not possible with this). It’s not a cake, though – maybe it’s something in between. The chocolate flavor is just right. And if you shred the zucchini finely (mine were a bit on the more-medium sized) you’ll not even see it. It freezes well. A real winner of a recipe, thanks to Peabody.
What’s NOT: nothing, whatsoever. Very worth making.

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