Dark Chocolate Brioche Pretzels

I'd planned on making homemade hot dog buns for my birthday party but unknowingly Joshua bought buns so then I had a bunch of brioche dough left on my hands. A very awesome awesome problem! My sister had given me a Smitten Kitchen cookbook for my birthday so I jumped right to making these cuties. Seriously cuties!

 my dough was already made, I love my Flour bakery cookbook version so I made that one, so I couldn't mix the chocolate in but rolling in it instead actually made them quite pretty.

Dark Chocolate Brioche Pretzels:

4 1/2 cups flour
3 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbs salt
1/2 cup cold water
5 eggs
1 cup + 6 tbs butter; room temp! cut into 10-2 pieces
1 cup dark chocolate; very finely chopped
raw coarse sugar for topping
3 tbs coconut oil; melted

1    in a mixer fit with a dough hook and combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt water and 5 eggs
2    beat on low for a few minutes, stop and start to make sure all the dry ingredients are incorporated
3    beat for another 3-5 mintues, it should form a very shaggy dry looking dough
4    then, mixer on low, add in the butter one slice at a time, make sure each disappears into the
      dough before you add the next
5    once all of the butter in incorporated run on low for about 10 mintues
6    then turn up the speed to about medium and beat for about 15 minutes
the dough will look shaggy for awhile but eventually it will start to become sticky, smooth, and shiny
7     then turn up the speed to medium-high for 1 minute, the dough should start to make a
      slapping sound on the bowl
8    put the dough in a oil coated bowl and cover with plastic wrap, let it proof in the fridge for
      6 hours or overnight, or at this point you can freeze it for up to a week
9    then pull the dough out and place it in a warm dry place for 3-4 hours to let the dough come
      to room tempurature and rise
if you have frozen it let it sit in the fridge overnight and then do step 9
10  preheat the oven to 350 and have dark chocolate chopped and layed out over a surface that you
      can roll the dough in, also place parchment paper on 2 baking sheets and lightly oil
11  divide the dough gently into 8 even pieces
12   roll each piece with your hands into about an 18" rope then roll it gently in the chocolate
13   hold the dough by the ends over the baking sheet and make a full twist near the ends,
      then fold them down over the bottom, forming a pretzel
14  repeat this with the remaining doughs
15  lightly drizzle coconut oil over top of each pretzel and shake some raw thick sugar over top of them
16  bake for 12-15 minutes
17  let cool for a few minutes and let the chocolate reharden

then eat one for breakfast slathered in nutella :)

O man I love playing with brioche dough! It is so pillowy and divine!

 

Pistachio Gelato- Dreaming of Italy

We're still dreaming of Italy and of pistachio gelato! So I made us our own batch of it to delve into while we flip through our photos. Not as good but a fantastic substitute!

Pistachio Paste:
8 oz shelled pistachios
1 cup sugar
2 tsp olive oil
3-4 drops almond extract
pinch of salt
9-10 tbs water

1   bring a small saucepan of water to a boil
2   place pistachios in to blanch them for 1-1 1/2 mintues
3   strain them and then start taking the skins off the pistachios
(took me about an hour, just jammed to some music, kind of theraputic)
4    place pistachios, sugar, olive oil, salt, and 1 tbs water into food processor
5    mix until desired consistency then add almond extract and pulse again
6    pour in 1 tbs at a time until it is a paste consistency

(You will only use about 1/2 the paste you make the rest can make another batch of gelato, spread on toast, I'm going to make a buttercream frosting with some)

Gelato Base:
from here

2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbs cornstarch

1    mix 1/4 cup milk with the cornstarch to make a slurry, set aside
2    in a saucepan bring milk and sugar almost to a boil
3    when it is about to boil whisk in the slurry
4    let it simmer for 3 minutes
5    remove from heat and pour into a bowl
6    cover with plastic wrap and place in fridge overnight




Pistachio Gelato:

Gelato Base
Scant 1 cup of Pistachio paste
few drops of lemon juice

1   mix together chilled gelato base, pistachio paste, and lemon juice
2   follow ice cream makers instructions
3   place in freezer to firm up for a few hours

eat it and pretend you're back in Italy :)

Christmas COOKIES!!!

Agatha helping in the holiday spirit

the odd colored one is the cookie cutter my mom sent with me :)

my new trick

our decked out cookies!!

hubs married cookie

hubs argyle and mustache/pants angel

This year we wanted to give cookies to our neighbors and bring some into work so we had a lot to make!
We ended up with thin mints, gingerbread, buckeyes, kiss cookies, white powder balls, and sugar cookies

My madre always makes tons of cookies and the kids usually help. But making all the dough and icing myself this year I have to tip my hat off to her. It is a lot of work! And a whole lot more cleaning! Plus she always had dinner done- I told hubs to eat cheese and crackers :)

But we finally finished them all on Sunday. I took some to work on Monday for a white elephant gift exchange and then we'll go home and pass them around to the neighbors. I feel like meeting people in an apartment building can be really hard, but truly a blessing if you manage to do it. Who doesn't love neighbor friends! So Christmas cookies seem like the perfect way to help us in this endeavor!

The sugar cookies are the same ones my mom makes every year. We have tons of shapes and colors, I made my own cookie cutters, since they are all hers. But it was fun to see what my shapes looked like once they baked.

We had a blast decorating them, except hubs kept breaking off snowman's heads! But like my dad says- then you get to eat it! We made mustaches, hubs made tuxedo's and plaid on angels (I don't get it either but he kept giggling while doing it)
Plus my madre always made stocking shaped cookies with our names written on them in icing. So we both demanded we have a name cookie so we wrote on the ornaments- hubs was adorable and made a married cookie :) We even made some with our work names/logos on them to bring in.

Now hopefully we can get them all out to people before Joshua eats the rest of the thin mint ones!
Plus now we have breakfast all week - sugar cookies, hehe, my mom always said it was okay so I'm going with it!

cookie trays all ready to be delivered!

Padre in Seattle-Baking

Just put my dad on the link to get to the airport. I'm a lot sadder than I thought I'd be. Joshua and I were so glad he could visit and we all had a really great time.

We left him at home when I went to work on Friday but then I got home and my dad and I got to work on making challah bread for our Sunday breakfast. My dad likes to cook and I mostly have always remembered him as the one in charge of making the bread. It made our house smell so good. I had never made it with him before and we had a really good time.
He looked up videos on how to braid the bread and I made the dough.

He was also excited to meet Agatha!

Since our apartment was cold my dad had a great tip of turning the oven on low and then off and placing the covered dough inside the oven- the trick worked!
While we waited for the dough to rise we took a trip over Gasworks Park. (He has been to Seattle before for business and has seen the city from Alki Beach but we wanted to show him our favorite view)



Wearing what my sister named my babushka

Sunday BBQ Lunch.3

Dessert time!
from BBQ lunch .1 & .2I have wanted to make orange buttercream frosting ever since I watched Because I said So
They talk about it 3 times and I've hung onto it for 3 years and finally went for it.
The orange and chocolate flavor together make me think of fall so it felt perfect!

It turned out so good Joshua kept putting his fingers in the bowl and stealing it. I doubled the frosting recipe but then didn't want to waste the extras so I whipped up some vanilla cupcakes to put the frosting on and sent them to work with the hubs.
This is seriously a to die for frosting! And the chocolate cake was super moist!

This was the night after I made it, he was unhappy about having to wait 2 days to eat it

After this I was told to go on a baking sabbatical, which I will only do if I can still make muffins for breakfast. Hubs agreed :)

Saturday BBQ Lunch.1

That's right I said it BBQ. I had Joshua go to Whole Foods and buy us a 5lb. Boston Butt! The largest chunk of meat I have ever cooked in my life. Which I also helped cook and touched it- which should be a surprise to those who know I have a bit of an aversion to meat.
Whole foods has the best hunks of meat! Our butt had pretty much no fat on it and cooked beautifully!

We had some friends over from Epic Life Church on Saturday and Joshua and I wanted to make it super yummy and special.

We got up at 5am and Josh rubbed the butt :) with a spice mixture I made and we put the butt in the oven. Then we ran to the farmer's market for some roasted peppers and cheese. Since our friend Andrew commented on one of our mac & cheese posts that he wanted me to stop posting about food I told him he could just come over and actually have some, therefore we felt the mac & cheese needed to be on the menu.

Mushroom Tomato Soup & Dad's Homeade Bread

I've been wanting to make my Dad's bread recipe since I brought Agatha home. I get to use the dough hook tool and I'm always looking for fun new ways to play with her. But I also really love making soups- you get to chop up tons of vegetables which I find truly comforting and therapeutic.

Hubs was working late one night and I thought I'd surprise him with bread(his weakness) and soup loaded with mushrooms. (He was super excited!)


I looked up a bunch of soup recipe's and then decided I didn't want to go to the store so I just got home and started raiding the fridge- luckily I had broth

Mushroom Tomato Soup:

1 onion; chopped
3 celery stalks; chopped
2 cloves garlic; minced
4 diced and peeled roma tomatoes
box crimini mushrooms; sliced
basil leaves; chopped
1 1/2 cup vegetable broth
1/4 cup red wine
1 tbs. butter
1 tbs. olive oil
crushed red pepper
salt & pepper

1   In large saucepan heat butter, oil, onions & celery- saute a few minutes
2   Add garlic and mushrooms- saute 5 minutes
3   Add tomatoes, spices & basil- simmer 15 minutes
4   Add broth and wine- simmer 20-25 minutes


Dad's Homeade Bread:

6-6 1/2 cups flour
1/4 oz. active dry yeast
1 ts. salt
2 tsp. sugar
2 1/4 cu warm water
butter
preheat 450 degrees F
makes 9-10 loaves

1   In large bowl use dough hook and combine 3 cups flour, yeast, salt, and sugar
2   Gradually add water
3   Mix thoroughly, and mix in rest of flour making a stiff dough
4   Knead on floured surface
5   Place back in bowl and let rise until doubled size (1-1 1/2 hours)
6   Spray baking sheet
7   Punch dough down and let rise 10 minutes
8   Take dough in handfuls and roll into rectangles, then roll it up tightly and press at each turn.
9   Place seam down on baking sheet and brush loaves with water and let rise 30 minutes
10 Bake15-20 minutes and brush with water 1 or 2. Check frequently

Mocha Buttercream on White Cake, Raspberry Sauce on Chocolate Espresso Cake

I loved making the cakes for Josh's mom's brithday/visit. 

I intended to only make one cake. The brownie-like one was going to be a middle layer but I decided that their consistencies were too different and so I made 2. Nothing wrong with 2 cakes- except that Josh, his mom, and I ate almost all of them. I made bacon date scones for breakfast during her visit but we mostly ate cake for breakfast, and any other time we were home and tried to rationalize eating it.

The white cake with the espresso-almond frosting was heavenly. Josh and his mom decided it was their favorite cake. The white cake layers were so pure and moist and light and it mixed perfectly with the almond upfront taste of the frosting that faded to the espresso flavor as you ate it. Almond extract is my favorite to put in frosting. I always still use some vanilla but a ½ tsp. of almond extract and I promise people will love your butter cream frosting- it is just something a little different- but they notice!

Ok so for the white cake layers- it makes 2 8x8 layers to stack or 1 9x13:

2 3/4 cups sifted flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

4 egg whites

1 1/2 cups white sugar

3/4 cup butter

1 1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

preheat oven to 350 degrees F

1   Sift flour, baking soda, and salt until it is all fine powder, no clumps.

2   In yet another bowl beat the butter until creamed and then add 1 cup sugar and beat until mixed and well

     mashed

3   Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture along with some milk a little at a time, beat together each time

     you add more

4   Mix in extracts and then beat until smooth
5   In another bowl beat egg whites until foamy and add 1/2 cup sugar gradually until it forms soft peaks

6   With a spatula mix in the egg white mixture throughly   

7   Pour mixture into a floured cake pan of your choosing. I did 2 8x8 cakes and they took about 25 minutes

     each. Make sure to let them cool before frosting them.

And of course it couldn't have been done without Agatha!

For the espresso almond frosting, the amount I made created enough frosting to fill and frost the cake:

adapted from this recipe

11/2 cups of butter, at room temp. ( I always forget to take my butter out of the fridge so you can zap it in the microwave for a few seconds or I sit it on top of my preheating oven and rotate it to all sides until it is an okay consistency to use)

3 3/4 cups of powdered sugar

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 tsp. almond extract

2 1/2 tsp. expresso powder

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1   Mix espresso powder in with vanilla and almond extract until dissolved- this stops the powder

     from being gritty in the icing

2   Whip butter in mixer on mid-high until very creamy

3   Turn mixer to low- or you'll get sugar everywhere, and mix in powder sugar no more than 1/2 cup at a

     time. Mix in throughly before adding more. Then do the same with the cocoa powder.

4   Once it is all added increase speed and whip until fluffy and add the extract mixture. Mix until it is

     throughly mixed it.

I garnished the cake with cocoa nibs and some cocoa powder on top. You don't have to add the cocoa

powder but I didn't want the frosting to be white. So that's were the cocoa came in, it also brought on the espresso flavor sooner. The espresso flavor was a light aftertaste though, not overwhelming and would still probably go over well with non-coffee drinkers!