Black and White Bagel

This food is perfect for any meal: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, or dessert.

Take a bagel. Put two pieces of dark chocolate on it and toast.
Spread the melty chocolate around that half, and spread cream cheese on the other half.Eat.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

You KNOW you want to bite into this bread right now! I had to slice it while it was still warm; I couldn't take it any longer. Although I just read in my Cooks Illustrated cookbook that technically bread is not finished baking until it's cooled. Hmm. Sometimes a loaf's gotta take one for the team I guess.

The texture of the bread part is dense but not too heavy, and overall the loaf is breadlike rather than cinnamon-roll like; it's actually not very sweet. It would make a mean French toast and in fact if there's any left in a few days it just might! The cinnamon I use, Penzey's Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cinnamon, is particularly strong and spicy, like Big Red gum. Ceylon cinnamon would be very good in this recipe since it is more mellow, and of course the regular cinnamon from the grocery store has the most traditional flavor that everyone loves.

There are a few reasons why I decided to make this bread. First, I wanted to make a treat for our good friends the Decker/Dawson family (and all the cookies and pies in the house are just not good enough, it's gotta be FOR them). Second, I promised myself that I'd try my hand at more yeast doughs since I have the big jar of yeast. And lastly, because I was flipping through one of my favorite huge baking cookbooks and this was on the page I landed on.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread
recipe from Baking Illustrated; also found online here.

Makes 1 loaf.

If you like, the dough can be made one day, refrigerated overnight, then shaped, proofed, and baked the next day. This recipe also doubles easily.

Ingredients
Enriched Bread Dough:
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick), cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 package dry active yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees)
1/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
3 1/4 - 3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Filling:
1/4 cup sugar
5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Milk for brushing

Glaze:
1 large egg
2 teaspoons milk

Instructions
1. For the dough: Heat milk and butter in small saucepan over medium heat until butter melts. Cool to lukewarm (about 110 degrees).

2. Meanwhile, sprinkle yeast over warm water in bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle. Beat in sugar and eggs and mix at low speed to blend. Add salt, lukewarm milk mixture, 2 cups of flour; mix at medium speed until thoroughly blended, about 1 minute. Switch to dough hook attachment. Add 1 1/4 cups flour, and knead at medium-low speed, adding additional flour sparingly if dough sticks to sides of bowl, until dough is smooth and comes away from sides of bowl, about 10 minutes.

3. Turn dough onto work surface. Squeeze dough with a clean dry hand. If dough is sticky, knead in up to 1/2 additional cup flour to form a smooth, soft, elastic dough. Transfer dough to a very lightly oiled large plastic container or bowl. Cover top of container with plastic wrap and let rise until double in size, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. (Ideal rising temperature is 75 degrees.) After rise, punch down center of dough once (can be refrigerated, covered, up to 18 hours). Making sure not to fold or misshape dough, turn it onto unfloured work surface; let dough rest, to relax, about 10 minutes.

4. Grease sides and bottom of a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Mix sugar and cinnamon in small bowl.

5. Press dough neatly into an evenly shaped 6-by-8-inch rectangle. With short side of dough facing you, roll dough with rolling pin into evenly shaped 8-by-18-inch rectangle (flour counter lightly if dough sticks). After rolling out dough, brush liberally with milk. Sprinkle filling evenly over dough, leaving 1/2-inch border on far end. Roll up dough, pinching gently with fingertips. To keep loaf from stretching beyond 9 inches, use hands to occasionally push ends in as dough is rolled. Use fingertips to pinch the dough ends together very tightly to form a secure seam. With seam side facing up, push in center of ends. Firmly pinch outside dough edges together to seal.

6. Place loaf, seam side down, into prepared pan; press lightly to flatten. Cover top of pan loosely with plastic wrap and set aside to proof. Let rise until dough is 1 inch above top of pan, about 1 1/2 hours, or about 1 hour longer if dough has been refrigerated. As dough nears top of pan, adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 350 degrees.

7. Meanwhile, in small bowl, whisk together egg and milk. Gently brush loaf top with egg mixture; bake until loaf is golden brown and instant-read thermometer pushed through top side into center of loaf registers 185 to 190 degrees, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove bread from pan and cool on its side on wire rack until room temperature, at least 45 minutes. (Can be double-wrapped in plastic wrap and stored at room temperature for four days or frozen up to three months.)

For mixing by hand: Beginning with step 2, sprinkle yeast over water in large bowl. Follow instructions in step 2, using hand mixer or wooden spoon, thoroughly blending ingredients with 2 cups flour. Using wooden spoon, mix in 1 1/4 cups flour. Knead by hand until dough is smooth and elastic, 12 to15 minutes, adding additional flour if necessary. Transfer dough to lightly oiled container and follow rising instructions.

I doubled the recipe, and here's all the dough in step #3 after being punched down:Here's step #5:These are the loaves just before going in the oven. I have one silicon loaf pan and one non-stick one. I prefer.... neither. But as you'll see, the non-stick made a perfect loaf (for the first time in it's life! It usually burns things), and the silicon one doesn't hold it's own shape very well so the bread swells and billows out, which isn't preferable in this recipe because we're trying to keep the cinnamon-sugar filling rolled up and the edges pinched and sealed together. I was a proud baker when I pulled this out of the oven! I've never made anything that looked like that before:Here are the loaves cooling on their sides. They started out with the exact same weight of dough, and you can see how the silicon pan allowed the dough to spread out.

Easy Sticky Buns

This recipe is from Ina Garten's newest cookbook Back to Basics, and is also on her website (lucky for me, I didn't have to re-type the recipe :o)

This picture speaks for it's self: YUM! And it was extremely easy.
I am not afraid of butter at ALL but I felt that these had an exhorbanent amount of butter. Next time I make this recipe I will use about half of the butter called for in the first step (in the muffin tins). I was impatient and in trying to soften my butter in the microwave, I accidentally (surprise, surprise) melted it completely. Maybe this contributed to the over butteryness bordering on greasyness?? Probably yes, but still it was a heck of a lot of butter.
I halved the recipe, and don't have a 6-cup muffin tin. I only have an (eeeeehhhhhhhh) nonstick 12 cup one. You should never bake a muffin tin with empty cups, so pour water into them by pulling out the oven rack, placing the pan on it, and then pouring in the water with a liquid measuring cup. You'll be very unhappy if you accidentally slosh water into the wrong cups so use care!
(By the way, are you thinking that I halved the recipe but maybe didn't half the amount of butter I used? I checked and re-checked. I did half the butter.)

If you also half this recipe, remember that the tin needs to be flipped 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven, so DON'T forget to remove the water! Roll up a kitchen washcloth and dip it in to soak up the water. The pan will be hot so the residual drops of water dry up immediately.

Sticky goodness!

Easy Sticky Buns
12 tablespoons (1 & 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed

1/2 cup pecans, chopped in very large pieces

1 package (17.3 ounces/ 2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted

FOR THE FILLING:

2 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup raisins (I didn't add the raisins today)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place a 12-cup standard muffin tin on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the 12 tablespoons butter and 1/3 cup brown sugar. Place 1 rounded tablespoon of the mixture in each of the 12 muffin cups. Distribute the pecans evenly among the 12 muffin cups on top of the butter and sugar mixture.

Lightly flour a wooden board or stone surface. Unfold one sheet of puff pastry with the folds going left to right. Brush the whole sheet with half of the melted butter. Leaving a 1-inch border on the puff pastry, sprinkle each sheet with 1/3 cup of the brown sugar, 1½ teaspoons of the cinnamon, and ½ cup of the raisins.

Starting with the end nearest you, roll the pastry up snugly like a jelly roll around the filling, finishing the roll with the seam side down. Trim the ends of the roll about ½ inch and discard. Slice the roll in 6 equal pieces, each about 1½ inches wide. Place each piece, spiral side up, in 6 of the muffin cups.

Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry to make 12 sticky buns.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the sticky buns are golden to dark brown on top and firm to the touch.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes only, invert the buns onto the parchment paper (ease the filling and pecans out onto the buns with a spoon) and cool completely.

Buttermilk Biscuits

There are still more Fakesgiving recipes to come, but I had to throw this in!

Buttermilk biscuits are the most important component of Erol's favorite breakfast.

I make biscuits (or pancakes when I have my way) almost every weekend, and I have tried tons of different recipes. Of course Martha makes the best! Biscuits made from Bisquick or self-rising flour are the easiest, but these are easy too, and worth the few extra steps. I like them because the inside is fluffy and the outside is crispy, and they don't have a doughy flavor like Bisquick biscuits.Buttermilk Biscuits
Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

(Makes about 14 biscuits; recipe easily halved)
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 T. plus 1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1 t. sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
1 3/4 cup buttermilk, plus more for brushing

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Using a pastry blender (or a fork or your fingers), cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with a few larger clumps remaining.

Pour in the buttermilk; using a rubber spatula, fold buttermilk into the dough until it just comes together. The dough will be slightly sticky; do not overmix.

Transfer to lightly floured work surface; use floured fingers to pat dough to 1-inch thickness. Use a 2 1/2-inch round biscuit cutter or cookie cutter to cut biscuits as close together as possible to minimize scraps. Gather scraps together once, pat together and flatten, and cut out.

Transfer biscuits to a baking sheet and brush with buttermilk. Bake until lightly browned, 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven; cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temp.

Cheddar biscuits: Add 3 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese just before the buttermilk.

You can't really tell in this pic, but you should see pieces of butter in the dough before baking.