I Found the Words to Every Thought

I haven't posted anything in a while.

I have pictures from at least three baking projects on my computer or camera, but they haven't done much besides sit there.  I am finding that I would rather not post just a recipe or a picture of an outfit.  I want to have a story to tell, or a thought to offer.

I still don't have a story to go with these pictures and this recipe.

The quote in the title of this post is from an Emily Dickinson poem - I've been revisiting my lit textbooks the last couple days.  When I woke up before five o'clock yesterday morning for no reason, I had some devotion time, and then I read Dante, as one does at five in the morning. Then there was sort of a chain reaction, and now I'm posting about Emily Dickinson.

Anyway, the poem, especially the first stanza here, captures how I often feel when writing, and sometimes how I feel when speaking.

I found the words to every thought

I ever had -- But one

And that -- defies me --
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun

I don't know that I have the words for every thought, but it sure seems like I have the phrase for everything except what I actually want to say in a given moment. I have a whole host of ideas for blog posts right now, but I felt compelled to keep everything in chronological order, so the chocolate-walnut biscotti had to come first.  But I don't have words for the thought.

There's something delightfully ironic in how perfectly Emily Dickinson phrases the elusive quality of words and writing. It's hard to believe she ever had a thought she didn't eventually phrase in a uniquely compelling way. (Just for the record, though, the second stanza adds the layer of communicating with people of different background and context, and that's another thing entirely.)

I could try to make some brilliant segue here about Emily Dickinson and biscotti, but, well, I think that's another thought I have not the words to, so I'll just give you the recipe and some pretty pictures.

Brownie Biscotti
(via allrecipes.com, altered)

1 T butter (altered from 1/3 cup in recipe)
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs (altered from 2 in recipe)
1 t vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 t baking powder
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
(the recipe also called for chocolate chips, which I'm sure would have been delicious, but I didn't have any)

Preheat oven to 375

1. Cream the butter, sugar and eggs. Add the vanilla to the mixture.
2. The recipe says, as most do, to combine all the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet.  Sometimes I do that. This time I just added each individually and mixed it all up.
3. Add walnuts (and chocolate chips, if you have them!).
4. Time to make the fun logs for the first round of baking.

 

I'm trying to take slightly different pictures, since I'm sure the same picture with slightly different textures and colors is not that interesting.  Maybe I should change this feature to Biweekly Breakfast Baked Good to avoid getting too repetitive.

5. Bake the logs at 375 for 25-30 minutes.

6. Let the logs cool for about 10 minutes, then cut diagonally into slices.

7. Bake the slices for at least 20 minutes, or 10 minutes on each side if you like.

8. Now you have a brand new kind of delicious biscotti!

rugelach like woah

I took seventy pictures of this week's baking project.

Alright, fine, that's an exaggeration.  I only took sixty-eight.

Because of this, I think I'll just give you the recipe and let the pictures do the rest of the talking, except to say that I've been taking a break from biscotti and eating these for breakfast this week.  And honestly?  They kind of taste more like pop tarts than the pop tarts did.

Raspberry and Apricot Rugelach (pronounced "Roo-guh-luh," I have been told)
(via allrecipes.com and The Great Cookie Book)

Cookie:
1 package cream cheese (8 oz) (I used the 1/3 less fat kind)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 t salt
1 t vanilla
2 cups flour

Filling:
1/4 cup brown sugar
9 T sugar
1 1/2 t cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
1/2 cup raspberry and/or apricot preserves (The recipe says to blend them in a food processor, which I did not do, and it was fine.)

1 egg and 1 T milk beaten for an egg wash

Bake at 350

1. Cream the butter and cream cheese together, then add the sugar, salt, and vanilla.
2. Add the flour slowly.
3. Roll the dough into a ball, then cut it into fourths and chill for a couple hours. (The dough should chill, I mean. You can chill, too, if you want.)

4. Mix the brown sugar, 6 T sugar, 1/2 t cinnamon, walnuts, and raisins for the filling. (We'll use the rest of the cinnamon and sugar later.)

5. Roll each fourth of the dough into a circle (recipe says 9 inches in diameter...I say until the dough seems the right thickness).

6. Spread the preserves on the circle, then sprinkle it with 1/2 cup of the filling. Press the filling into the dough so it sticks.

7. The really fun part: Cut the circle into 12 equal pieces.  

I'd like to take this time to say that the cookbook gave me very specific directions on this: First cut the circle into fourths, and then cut each fourth into thirds.  Four times three is twelve.

8. Roll each slice starting from the outside edge.  Here is a step-by-step visual guide:

(You may note these are a different color than the picture above - I did two circles of dough with raspberry preserves, and two with apricot. This is the apricot.)

9. After you've done this with all four dough balls, place the rugelach on a baking sheet with the points tucked under and chill for 30 more minutes.

While you're just chilling, here's a whole lot of pictures of how pretty they look all rolled up and set in rows:

10. And finally, mix up the remaining cinnamon and sugar (1 t cinnamon, 3 T sugar).  Brush the cookies with the egg wash and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
11. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Some post-sprinkling pictures - or as my filenames say, sparkly rugelach:

The finished product

sugar in the morning

I don't remember a lot about junior high. Snapshots, for the most part. When I try to drudge up memories from that time period, I get an image of orange and black poms.  The sound of a bunch of 13-year-olds shouting, "Llama, llama, llama! We stand out!"  The feeling of absolute terror that accompanies forgetting the words to the national anthem at a basketball game. Counting the number of times my history teacher ended his sentences with the word, "Right?"  Watching The Matrix too many times to count while eating cheese-filled hot dogs and cosmic brownies washed down with an alarming amount of Mountain Dew.

Maybe I remember some things about junior high.

Junior high was also the time that I was in show choir.  Like Glee. Except without being absolutely ridiculous.

As I was making this week's biscotti, I kept thinking about this song that was part of our show when I was in seventh grade. 

Wouldn't you like to see the cast of Glee perform that one?

I actually...really like the song now. Plus I still remember a significant chunk of the choreography.  Flashback video blog?

Yeah, maybe not. 

Cinnamon-Sugar Biscotti
(modified from allrecipes.com)
2 cups flour
1 1/2 t cinnamon
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2/3 cup sugar
6 T butter
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
Cinnamon chips (Hershey's makes them. They are fantastic. Do not buy unless you have a use for them, or else you will eat them all plain.)

1 t cinnamon
3 T sugar

Preheat oven to 325.

1.  Mix the flour, cinnamon, and salt.
2. Cream the sugar and butter together, then beat in the eggs and vanilla
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and stir in the cinnamon chips.

So you know how I said biscotti doesn't usually have fat (oil, butter, etc.)?  Well. This one does.  And because of the butter,  when I mixed up the ingredients, it came out a lot more like cookie dough than biscotti dough, which tends to be drier and crumblier.

I think the next time I make this recipe (or stumble across another type of biscotti that uses butter), I will add an extra egg and use less butter.  The end result tastes great, but it has a strange biscookie texture.

Yay portmanteaus.

4. Shape the dough into two logs and bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes (I've found it's best to err on the higher side with biscotti).

6. Let the logs cool, and cut diagonally into strips about 1/2 inch thick.  See my first biweekly biscotti post for a visual example.

7. Mix together the 3 T sugar and 1 t cinnamon, then sprinkle it on one of the cut sides of the biscotti slices.

8. Bake at 325 for at least 20 minutes.

9. Cool and dip in coffee! (Or hot chocolate)

There you have it. Now you, too, can have sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, AND sugar at suppertime.

Though I'm not sure I would suggest it.

scholarly desserts

The summer that I studied abroad at Oxford, I was ridiculously frugal. The exchange rate was awful, and I was terrified of accruing a giant credit card debt. So I ate the food they served us - which was FANTASTIC, so no regrets there - and I didn't even buy an Oxford sweatshirt. There are some regrets with that. I mean, I lost the opportunity to look all intellectual with the name OXFORD UNIVERSITY splashed across my chest. I kid. Mostly.

There was one thing that I spent money on regularly.  A few steps outside the entrance to St. John's College, where the program was being held, there was this little Greek food kiosk.  I don't remember what it was called, but it was bright blue and always seemed a little out of place on the sidewalk beside the serious, historical stone wall of the college.

Now I'm suspecting it was actually the TARDIS.

My geekery aside, this stand had little pieces of baklava for fifty pence each, which was cheaper than anything else you could buy. Honest.  They were absolutely delicious, and they became the perfect snack for my evening walks by the river.

Someone remind me why I'm not in Oxford anymore?

Anyway, I was thinking of those particular baklava when I embarked on a baking adventure I have been wanting to try for years - which is making my own baklava, of course.

All I have ever heard about making baklava is how really really hard it is. But I soldiered on.

Baklava Filling
(via the box of filo dough)
1 1/2 pounds of walnuts, chopped (almonds or pistachios or another type of nut will also work)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
Zest of one lemon

Pastry
A box of frozen filo or phyllo dough.

Syrup
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 cup honey
1 lemon peel

Preheat oven to 350

I will admit right now - I had to look up what exactly the "zest" of a lemon was.  Despite baking being the most prominent topic on my blog thus far, I am not an experienced baker. (If you, reader, also do not know, it's the yellow part of the peel grated into little pieces. But not the white part of the peel, because that can be bitter.) (Another paranthetical: If you're trying to actually follow the recipe, I added step numbers to my ramblings so you can follow along.)

1. Once I figured out the whole zesting business, I mixed all of the filling ingredients into bowl and didn't get a great picture of it, so we'll move on.

The next step is arranging the phyllo (or filo) dough.  The words "phyllo dough" are met with groans and winces from those who have worked with it before. I learned that this is for a very good reason.

Working with phyllo dough is like taking the pages of a Bible or a dictionary and making them larger and more delicate, then trying to move them one by one from one spot to another without tearing any of them, and then laying them flat on top of each other.  See the photo above for an idea of what you have to work with.

2. With baklava, you first line the bottom of a 9x13 pan with 20 sheets of phyllo. You cannot count them out and plop them in.  You must spray the top of each individual sheet with cooking spray. It's tedious, and a little stressful.  But the end result is worth it, trust me.

3. After the first twenty layers, spread half of the filling across the top.  Then add 5 more sheets of phyllo dough, and on top of that, the rest of the filling.  Fifteen sheets of phyllo top it off.

The filling before the final layer of phyllo:

4. Today in What-Natalie-Forgot-While-Baking:  the pan of baklava should be scored into squares and then triangles before going in the oven.  I remembered about seven minutes in, and only managed to cut it into squares, because it was already getting a little crispy.

5. The actual baking specs: 45 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees.

6. Near the end of that, mix up the syrup (ingredients listed at the top), bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Drain (because as much as the lemon peel adds, we don't actually want it in the baklava).

 

8. Once both pastry and syrup have cooled a bit, pour the syrup over the pastry. 

9. After it's all cooled off, cut into pieces where you scored it earlier.  Cut thoroughly.  With a very sharp knife.  The problem with all the layers is that if you miss cutting just one of them, it's a huge mess.  A huge, delicious mess that you will end up eating.

I have to say, with my apologies to the Greek food kiosk in Oxford, this baklava totally blew theirs out of the water. I had to take it into work just so I didn't eat a plate a day for dinner!

Biweekly Biscotti Kick-off

Last fall, I baked probably ten kinds of cookies in two months. At the time, I was in training at work, so I could just bring the cookies to class and hand them out - I made friends, and I didn't eat 4000 calories worth of cookies every day.  Win/win. 

But when I continued to make them after training, I had a problem.  I began to eat cookies for breakfast. Daily. It was not a responsible nutritional decision..

I wasn't willing to give it up completely, though, because it allowed me to continue with my newfound baking habit without excessive extraneous cookie consumption (check out that alliteration!).  Instead, I began to look for alternatives, including the homemade pop-tarts from last week. Pop-tarts, I thought, are supposed to be breakfast food - surely that's an improvement over eating cookies every morning!

They may indeed have been. But the pop-tarts took hours to make. Not the best option for a regular project, especially if I ever wanted to bake anything else.

My other morning vice is coffee. And what goes best with coffee??

I refer you to the coffee experts.

Lorelai: I ask you. What is a danish without coffee?
Rory: The eternal question springs up again.
Lorelai: There's no point in even eating a danish without coffee. Sad danish. Lonely danish.  Step danish!

Oh, wait. I didn't make danishes. Sorry, Gilmores!

What I did make was biscotti.  I have actually made four kinds of biscotti in the last month and a half, and I don't see it stopping any time soon.  So obviously, I'm going to make it into a series for my poor, direction-less blog.

Today's kick-off post features a classic variation - almond biscotti.

Almond Biscotti

(via about.com)

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups flour

3 eggs

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 cups almonds (it says whole - I used sliced, because it's what I had.)

2 tsp vanilla extract

My addition: 1 tsp almond extract

Preheat oven to 350.

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.  Including the almonds.  I forgot those until later. But it still worked.

2. Add beaten mixture of eggs, vanilla, and (in my case) almond extract.  It will be very dry.  I had to use my hands to get it all mixed.  This is partially because biscotti traditionally uses NO FAT. 

Which is why everyone should eat it for breakfast. 

3. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into two "logs." Flatten them a bit on a baking sheet, like so:

4. Bake the logs at 350 for about 25 minutes.  When they're done, let them cool for a while. (Leave the oven on.)

 Don't they look so pretty?

5. Slice the log into diagonal strips and put them flat side down on the baking sheet. This step confused me a lot the first time I made biscotti, so I took a picture of it.  

The strips in the picture are probably too thick.  I have found that they must cool completely in order to make thinner strips that don't break in half, though, and it was late, so in the interest of time, I didn't let them cool completely.

This plan ended up backfiring, because thicker strips just meant longer baking time.

6. Put the sliced biscotti back into the oven (at 350 or 325) for at least 25 minutes.  It's always taken me longer.  It's also a good idea to take them out halfway through the baking time and flip them to the other side.

Let them cool again and dip them in freshly brewed coffee!

I don't think the Gilmore girls would mind switching out their danishes for one of these every now and then, do you?

Pop-Tarts. Crazy good.

Did you know that there's a wiki dedicated entirely to Pop Tarts? The internet is ridiculous.

Here are some of the things I learned from the Pop Tart wiki:

• There are more than 85 different flavors of Pop Tart. I had no idea that high-fructose corn syrup could be manipulated in so many ways.
• The newest flavor is Frosted Rainbow Cookie Sandwich. It was released on Tuesday.
• There are a number of perplexing discontinued flavors, many of which I assume were discontinued because no one knew what they were supposed to taste like. They include: Hello Kitty Meowberry, Disney Princess Jewelberry, Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Wild Magic Burst, and Pirates of the Caribbean Treasure Map. 
• Pop Tarts have some of the most disturbing commercials. They reel you in with cute minimalist animation and giggly voice actors, and then BAM you're suddenly smiling about cannibalism. Evidence:

Clearly, there is something wrong with the commercial Pop Tart industry.

So I decided to make my own pop-tarts. Non-cannibalistic ones. With a hyphen, because that makes more sense.

I found my recipes at Brown-Eyed Baker and From Scratch, two blogs that I have just discovered and will likely be perusing often for future baking endeavors.

Pastry Crust

For the crust, I used Brown Eyed Baker's recipe:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks, or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk (I used almond milk, because it was what I had in my fridge.)


Directions, quoted directly from her blog:
"Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Using your fingers or a pastry blender, work in the butter until it is the size of peas and the mixture holds together when you squeeze it. Whisk together the egg and milk and add to the dough. Mix together with a fork until everything is evenly moistened. Knead briefly on a floured surface, if necessary, until the dough comes together."

I don't have a pastry blender.  I used my fingers.

This is the dough after I mixed it with my bare hands.

I think it worked out alright.

After the dough was made, I split it in half.  I refrigerated it overnight, but it's not necessary to do so (so says the recipe).  This morning I took out the dough and let it thaw for about fifteen minutes.  Then came the fun part.

My first lesson learned during this baking experience:  If there are specific measurements for cutting a crust, they're probably there for a reason. I was supposed to roll out the dough to a 9 1/2 by 12 1/2 inch rectangle, cut the edges straight, then cut the dough into nine 3 by 4 rectangles.

Well, I guessed for the first part. And then I decided I wanted mini pop-tarts, because they're cuter and fewer calories than big pop-tarts, so I cut it into 12 (unequal) rectangles, as you can see.

My 12 uneven rectangles.

No big deal, right? 

I'll get back to you on that.

First, let's take a break from the crust for the filling.  I used the cinnamon filling from Brown-Eyed Baker and the pumpkin filling from From Scratch. (The former also has a recipe for fruit filling.)

Cinnamon Filling

½ cup light brown sugar
1½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 teaspoons all-purpose flour

Pumpkin Filling

3/4 cup canned pumpkin

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

 1/8 teaspoon cloves

 1/8 teaspoon all spice

Both are just mixed together and then spooned onto a pastry sqaure (about a tablespoon per square, maybe a little less with the smaller sqaures).  I actually only made half the recipe for the cinnamon filling, and had leftover of both.  

Cinnamon and pumpkin fillings

Then I ran into my roadblock. The next step is rolling and cutting the second half of the dough. For the top layer.  Which should match the bottom layer.

Which I did not measure.

I ended up taking measurements from one point of my rolling pin to another to guess the right lengths.

Then I matched the tops to the wrong bottoms.

Fortunately, dough is pretty pliable.  I made it work, and got all of the filling covered.  Okay, most of the filling.  I used a fork to create grooves on the edges of the pop-tarts and poked holes in the tops.  Then they went back into the fridge for another half hour.

Into the fridge!

While they were in the fridge, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and made the cream cheese glaze from From Scratch.

Cream Cheese Glaze

1/3 cup softened cream cheese

2-3 tablespoons cream or milk (again, I used almond milk out of necessity)

3-4 tablespoons powdered sugar

I whipped all of that together and set it aside.

The recipe says to bake them for 25-30 minutes, but I think I had a little too much filling, so it took closer to 35 or 40.

Then I set them on my makeshift cooling rack (actually the rack from my microwave set up over the sink) and drizzled them with the cream cheese glaze.  My drizzling skills leave something to be desired, but the end result is the same - deliciousness!

By the time it was all finished, it was almost noon.  So I had a pop-tart and coffee for lunch!

This is what happens when I put my camera on the table and set a 2 second delay.