Still Life, With Cats

Today was cold outside, and I had originally planned to be driving kittens places, except that that changed so instead I stayed home and did laundry and pet kittens and knit, and also I baked, because hello, have you met me.

I made another batch of the Alfajores because I’m apparently not rolling out my dough thin enough or else the number the recipe claims is a giant lie (there is no way it makes 42 filled cookies (two cookies per sandwich) – that would be 84 cookies from one batch and I definitely did *not* get that many cookies!). I’m not going to bore you with pictures of that though, because they’re not very exciting to look at yet – just pale brown discs that are now resting in the freezer until it’s time to assemble.

However, I also made panettone, because my sister and I decided to extend our little Great British Baking Show bake-along to include the two holiday episodes they released to Netflix (which technically were from 2020, but eh, who cares, it’s more baking!).

I’ve never been a huge fan of panettone because 1) it tends to be kind of dry, and 2) it usually includes a lot of dried fruit, which I don’t like (raisins and all their wrinkly little counterparts are Not Food). But it looked intriguing, and when compared to the other two possibilities (a mincemeat pudding – which is chock *full* of the Not Food things) or an illusion cake (neither of us was in the mood to deal with an entire full-sized cake), panettone was the natural choice. Plus, by making it myself I could replace the fruit with something far more tasty, like, say, chocolate.

Technically we were supposed to make 12 individual panettone, but I pondered trying to turn a muffin tin into a set of panettone molds, and gave up and made one big one instead.

Panettone is basically just an enriched bread dough, but you mix stuff in (dried fruit or nuts or chocolate) after the first rise. Otherwise it’s really not that much different than any other bread dough out there.

I used a large metal bowl because I wasn’t entirely sure what else would work, and it was clearly too big, so when it was finished baking, it….does not look like a panettone.

But it tastes fine. I might have added a little more chocolate than it called for because I wanted to use up the remains of the bag of semisweet chips in the cupboard, so you definitely get chocolate in every bite, which helps because oh hey, what do you know, apparently a main characteristic of panettone, even if you bake it yourself, is that it is dry.

But now I have made panettone (and will be gifting large chunks of it to other people) so I can check that one off the list and never bother again.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Onward to Episode 8: Free From week, which meant that each challenge was free from a different ingredient. The Signature was dairy-free ice cream sandwiches, the Technical was vegan sausage rolls, and the Showstopper was gluten-free cakes. Neither my sister or I was in the mood to tackle a huge cake, and the sausage rolls didn’t sound appealing, so…ice cream sandwiches, it was!

My sister made up her own version because she’s talented like that but I decided to go with Guiseppe’s Ginger Orange Ice Cream Sandwiches, because the ice cream is made with tofu and sounded intriguing.

The cookies were pretty straightforward – just a slightly spiced cookie made with margarine instead of butter. The ice cream required orange juice and zest, soy milk, and silken tofu all blended together. This time I planned ahead and stuck the bucket for the ice cream maker in the freezer the day before, and shockingly the ice cream actually churned for a change, instead of just remaining a sad, cold liquid consistency like previous attempts. Hooray!

There were supposed to be candied orange peels on the top for decoration, plus melted white chocolate drizzled for a pattern, but after I assembled them I got busy doing other stuff and almost forgot about them, so ran out of time to do any sort of drizzling, plus orange peels take WAY longer to candy then the recipe says they will, so after a tentative nibble, those went directly into the trash. But at the end of the three hour time limit I had 8 completed ice cream sandwiches, even if the ice cream was a little soft during assembly so it blorped out everywhere.

Dairy-free ice cream will never be as creamy or taste as rich as real ice cream, but for what it was, these turned out pretty tasty. I wasn’t sure if the tofu would affect the taste or texture, but honestly, if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never guess. The ice cream has a pleasing orange taste, and the cookies are lightly spiced with ginger and have the consistency you’d expect from an ice cream sandwich, so overall, this was a win.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Time for Episode Six of the Great British Baking Show, which was all about pastry. The challenges were: a dozen savory chouxnuts (choux pastry fried like a donut), baklava, or a terrine pie. By this point my sister and I were feeling a little overwhelmed by all the sweets, so we opted for the savory option, the terrine. However, because of my schedule I didn’t actually get a chance to make it until after the Episode Seven pooptastic cookies.

A terrine pie, by the way, is made in layers and wrapped in a crust, so that when it’s baked, it should hold its shape, and when sliced, you should be able to see the layers. Let’s see how that went!

We both toyed with the idea of using a hot water crust pastry dough, except from previous experience, that stuff *stinks* plus it’s kind of slimy to work with and neither of us really wanted to repeat that ‘fun’. So instead my sister delved into her cookbook collection and found a recipe for a pastry-covered meat pie that used a regular butter crust, so we both adapted that for our pies. Otherwise, I pretty much just gathered up a bunch of ingredients with a vague plan in mind, and decided to see how it would go, without any sort of recipe to follow.

Because we were using a butter pastry, that meant most of the filling actually needed to be mostly cooked ahead of time. I made a little meatloaf, mashed some potatoes, and cooked up some sweet potatoes with a bit of garlic and thyme, grabbed the peas out of the freezer, and then assembled my pie in a bread pan lined with parchment paper. Technically we were supposed to make our pie decorative, but we all know how well that turns out for me, so as a nod to that, I did try to do a pattern in the top when slicing openings for the steam to escape. An hour or so in the oven later, and ta da!

Look, a free-standing terrine pie with no leaks and no breakage! Woo!

And were there layers?

Yes! Yes there were!

Overall it turned out pretty tasty. Was it worth all the effort such that I will be making this on a regular basis? Eh, probably not, but Richard and I were quite happy to consume it for lunch for the next couple days so I call that a win.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Episode 5 of the Great British Baking Show was German week (and you would have thought the German contestant Jurgen would have dominated this one, except that he pointed out that he usually doesn’t make this sort of thing, so ah well). The challenge recipes were: two dozen German biscuits (cookies), a Prinzregententorte (which is a layered chocolate torte), and a double-tiered yeasted cake. We were very torn because we actually wanted to make all three of them, except that that was a lot of time and also a lot of cake and cookies for households that only have two people. So instead we compromised and decided to make 1 dozen cookies, and a single tier of yeasted cake.

Off to Google we went, and I chose Kardamon Plaetzchen (Cardamom cookies) dipped in chocolate (since they had to be decorated) and a Bee Sting Cake, which consists of a yeasted dough, sandwiched with a layer of pastry cream and topped with a layer of honeyed almonds.

The cookies turned out quite yummy. You can definitely taste the cardamom, which has a lovely flavor, and while I was worried the chocolate would overpower, it was a good combination.

The bee sting cake was interesting – I’m not sure I’ve done a yeasted cake before, but aside from the rising time, it wasn’t much different than any other cake recipe out there. It’s baked in a springform pan, to allow the dough to rise, since it would otherwise overflow a regular cake pan. The honeyed almonds are spread (carefully) over the top of the cake after it’s risen, before it goes into the oven, which then gives the cake a shiny (although slightly, uh…rustic look) once baked.

It felt like a lot of pastry cream, but in a way, you need the cream to cut the overwhelming sweetness of that topping.

I got both of them done within the time frame required (we just used the cake time requirement because we knew the cookies could be done during the rising time of the cake batter) and they were fun to make. Not sure I’d do the cake again – it was tasty but a little sweet for me, but the cookies could definitely make a reappearance in the future.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.