Bake with Jill

Yeast!

If you are on the King Arthur Flour mailing list, you may have already seen this article about yeast. Yeast and I get along pretty well, but I learned a few things and got some good tips about how the different types of yeast behave and how to tweak rising time, so take a look!

Commenting Woes

I use WordPress, and off and on, have trouble commenting on some Blogger blogs. This is one of those times, and I wasn’t able to comment on some of the lovely loaves that were posted for the Tuesdays With Dorie/Baking with Julia group. I hope it resolves itself; if not, I will be reading your blogs but will not be able to comment. I’m really happy with WordPress, so no, I’m not going to switch teams. If anyone has a solution, please let me know; I did some searching and didn’t come up with anything that worked for me.

The Tuesdays with Dorie group baked its way through Baking: From My Home to Yours, and now we’re on to a new book, Baking with Julia. Welcome new bakers! Tuesdays with Dorie was so fun that I knew I wanted to keep going and join the new group. I got the book for Christmas, and it was great to crack it open and start baking. And so I present to you, a White Loaf.

Yep, white loaf bread; a nice, basic recipe to kick off the new group. Although the recipe is for White Loaves, I cut it in half and made White Loaf. There are only two of us, and one loaf of bread at a time is plenty.

Notes

• I cut the recipe in half and made one loaf.
• I always use instant yeast, so I used a little bit less yeast than called for in the recipe (no scientific calculation – I just eyeball it and use less than called for).
• My loaf was done after baking for 30 minutes.

The day I baked this, we had it with soup for dinner. Spread with a little butter (er, Smart Balance), it was a tender and tasty accompaniment to a steaming bowl of soup. It was very well-received by my husband, who was more excited than I expected him to be about white bread (hmmm…maybe I overdo it with the grainy, wheaty breads!). I was all excited to make toast with this, but somehow I didn’t get around to it. I did see a piece of toast that my husband made and it looked lovely.

You can find this recipe on page 81 of Baking with Julia. This week, Laurie and Jules are hosting, and Jules has the recipe on her blog.

One more note: I kicked the Facebook habit and deactivated my account. I was friends with a few other bakers and wanted to mention that just in case you noticed that I disappeared from your friend list or your page likes. Facebook just wasn’t enhancing my life. Will Twitter do it for me? I don’t know, but I’m giving it a try. You can find me @BakeWithJill. I’m just getting started, but hope to find my tweeting groove and find some good people to follow. Suggestions welcome!

Back in mid-December, I mentioned that my husband and I took a month-long trip to Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands in November. It would have been fun to blog along the way during the trip, but we didn’t want to advertise that our house was empty for a month, plus internet access was really expensive. In hindsight, I should have written posts along the way and then posted them when we got home. Next time I guess! For now, I thought I’d try to sum it up with some photos, starting with Antarctica.

Did you see the movie March of the Penguins? I loved watching them slide on their stomachs in the movie, and was really excited to see it in person. This is an Adelie penguin at Brown Bluff. The day we visited Brown Bluff was the only super-cold day of the trip. Before we got off the ship, we were advised to “put on everything that you own,” so I knew it was going to be bad! It was our first day in Antarctica, and I think everyone got pretty worried about the weather.

After Brown Bluff, we really lucked out with the weather. Most days were around the freezing mark, sunny, and no wind. We had a great day in Neko Harbour, which I think is one of the prettiest places we visited. It felt great to take my parka off!

Speaking of gorgeous weather, it was nice enough to go kayaking in Paradise Bay. We had to navigate through some ice, but there was no wind and the water was smooth. This was our first time in a double kayak, and after unsuccessfully trying to coordinate our paddling, I discovered the solution: let my husband do all the paddling and the steering! Heck, next time I’m not even going to bother taking a paddle; it just got in my way.

We had some rough seas between South Georgia and Antarctica. A prescription motion sickness patch got me through that…barely. Our ship’s chief engineer didn’t fare so well – he broke his hip and had to be flown to Chile on a medevac flight. The flight departed from King George Island, which is home to Chilean and Russian research stations. This Russian Orthodox church was built in Siberia, then taken apart and shipped to King George Island to be reconstructed. It’s tiny, but I don’t think they get large crowds for church in Antarctica!

A Gentoo penguin hopped up to check out a camera in Dorian Bay.

In Port Lockroy, there’s a small museum at a former British base. One of the items was a cookbook…with a recipe for Casserole of Penguin Breasts! That’s one recipe I will not be blogging.

Penguins, like this Chinstrap penguin in Dorian Bay, are no longer on the menu.

Along with all the penguins, there was a lot of ice. A ship sailing these waters needs to be able to break through some ice.

We got up close to some gorgeous scenery, including this cave-like iceberg.

These photos are just the tip of the iceberg (ha ha), but hopefully give you an idea of some of the beautiful scenery in the Antarctic peninsula. We saw seven(!) kinds of penguins on the trip – I’ll cover the other four in my South Georgia and Falkland Islands posts.

Last night I had some friends over to watch a movie, chat, and eat. While I was planning what to make and making my grocery list, I saw this recipe for Salted Chocolate Pretzel Toffee, and immediately put it on the menu. I’m a sucker for sweet and salty, and if the salty component involves pretzels, all the better. It’s so easy to make, and dangerously tasty.

I didn’t want to serve just one dessert, so I also made Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies. I saw these cookies in Real Simple Magazine and was intrigued by a variation that called for mixing in 1 cup of broken pretzel pieces and 1 cup of chopped chocolate-covered toffee bar after mixing the other ingredients (the variation was in the magazine, but is not included in the recipe that I linked to). I made the recipe that way the first time and it was delicious. This time, since I already had a pretzel dessert on the menu, I added mini chocolate chips, which was also delicious. How the heck these end up looking and tasting like cookies amazes me, but they’re good, so I’m not going to question it.

And there was cotton candy!

Last summer, my friends found out that I had a cotton candy maker, so I knew the next time I had them over, I better serve cotton candy. My husband is the expert cotton candy spinner, so we let him do the work! I don’t make cotton candy very often, but it’s a fun activity once in a while.

It sounds like this was an all-dessert gathering, but it wasn’t. Actually, the star of the show was Pioneer Woman’s Olive Cheese Bread. Oh my gosh, this was an olivey, cheesy, buttery delight. The full recipe makes a ton, so its good for a gathering, plus there’s a tip for freezing it at the end of the recipe. I sent my friends home with some extra bread and topping so they could assemble and bake their own at home.

I’m a little sad that I gave away all the leftovers of the Olive Cheese Bread, but not too sad, because I have leftover Baked Chicken Meatballs. When I was thinking about what to make, I somehow got fixated on meatballs. I’m not sure if I’ve ever made meatballs of any kind before; if I did, it was a long time ago. So where the meatball idea came from, I don’t know, but I took a look on Smitten Kitchen and decided on these. I made them appetizer size (about 1 tablespoon each) and got 30 meatballs. They tasted great!

I didn’t get photos of the savory food, but if you click over to the recipes, you’ll see photos that are a whole lot nicer than what I would have taken. I also made Baked Potato Skins with Creamy Spinach and Turkey Bacon, which I’ve written about before, and Pioneer Woman’s Sangria, which I’ve also written about. We would have had a good time even without all of the food, but I enjoyed making it and they enjoyed eating it, so I think girls’ night was a success!

There have been a few changes around here lately. A while ago, I changed my header from Jill’s Blog to Bake with Jill. And now, my blog has moved, in a virtual sense, to bakewithjill.com.

What does this mean to you?

Well, not that much. If everything works like I think it will, subscribers will still see my new posts in your Google Reader (or reader of choice) or in your inbox. If you have a bookmark to my blog, it will redirect you to my new URL. And any links to my posts will still work.

Before the switch, when I left comments on another WordPress blog, my name appeared as Jill, and I think I’ll still be Jill now (at least I hope I’m still Jill!). When I left comments using OpenId (which I use for most Blogger blogs), my name appeared as jillbert. Now it looks like my name has changed to bakewithjill.com. That one surprised me, and I wish I could just be Jill in OpenId, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Why the change?

First of all, my dear husband registered the bakewithjill domain for me forever-ago, and for no good reason, it’s taken me a while to do something with it. And, back when I started my blog I didn’t understand that my user name was going to be part of my blog URL, nor did I catch on that everyone had fun blog names. Sometimes it takes me a while to get with the program.

Welcome to bakewithjill.com; I’m now with the program, at least sort of!

For me, eating this pie is like eating a slice of nostalgia. Even without the memories, it’s a chocolate-on-chocolate frozen delight. The recipe, titled Kraft Chocolate Thriller is from my grandma’s recipe collection, and is at least 30 years old, maybe much older than that. It may look like an ice cream pie, but one bite of the smooth, chocolate, cream-cheesy filling and you’ll forget about ice cream.

You know what else is awesome about this pie, besides the taste? It’s frozen, so it’s a great make-ahead dessert. Some days,  a “best served on the day it’s made” dessert just doesn’t fit into the schedule.

Recipe notes

• The original recipe calls for raw eggs, but since most of us stay away from raw eggs due to food safety concerns, I used pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs. It was my first time using pasteurized eggs, and a few minutes after putting the whites in my mixer to whip, they looked very…unwhipped. I had an oh crap moment and wondered if this was going to work. I turned the mixer off and did a quick Google search, found this information, and turned the mixer back on. With a little bit of cream of tartar and a whole lot more whipping time, the whites turned out great. Whew. This is definitely a job for a stand mixer.
• The crust uses Nabisco Famous Wafers, which are thin, crisp, chocolate cookies. If you can’t find them, use another thin, crisp, chocolate cookie. The Famous Wafers are really tasty, though, so take a look at your grocery store.

Chocolate Thriller

Crust
1 1/2 cups crushed Nabisco Famous Wafers, or other chocolate wafers
1/3 cup melted butter (salted or unsalted)

Filling
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar, divided (1/4 cup and 1/2 cup)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 pasteurized in the shell eggs, at room temperature, separated
6 ounces chocolate chips, melted and cooled
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup heavy cream

To make crust: Preheat oven to 325° F.  Mix cookie crumbs and melted butter and press onto the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Bake 10 minutes; remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

To make filling: In a large bowl, using a stand mixer or hand mixer, blend cream cheese with 1/4 cup sugar and vanilla. Blend in the egg yolks, then the melted and cooled chocolate and mix until thoroughly combined. Whip the egg whites, adding 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar after a couple of minutes and then gradually adding 1/2 cup sugar after a few more minutes; continue to whip until whites form soft peaks (see notes about whipping pasteurized egg whites). Fold the egg whites into the cream cheese mixture. Whip the cream and fold it into the filling mixture (reserve a little bit of whipped cream if you want to use it to decorate the pie). Scoop filling into cooled crust and smooth the top. Cover the pan with plastic or foil and freeze overnight.

To serve: To soften a little before serving, put pie in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, or let it sit at room temperature for a short period.

Timing Tips: I whipped the cream in my stand mixer first and then transferred it to another bowl so I could wash the mixer bowl and use to to whip the egg whites. While the egg whites were whipping, I melted the chocolate and used a hand mixer to combine the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, egg yolks, and chocolate.

I didn’t get too far with Christmas baking this year, but I did try a couple of new cookie recipes, thanks to Michele, who suggested that we pick some cookies to bake together (in a virtual sense, since we live many miles apart).

I love rum raisin anything, so the recipe for Rum Raisin Shortbread jumped out at me as I was paging through my copy of Martha Stewart’s Cookies. I must admit that it bugs me that the recipe has raisins in the title but calls for currants, but I can see that Rum Currant Shortbread doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. And the tiny currants were perfect in these petite cookies.

Along with rum-soaked currants, these cookies have coconut and orange zest (which I wish there would have been more of – the rum overpowered the orange). They’re moister than the usual shortbread and have a nice chew from the coconut. I liked them and thought the dried fruit and rum made them seem holiday-ish, yet they’d be good year-round. Mine didn’t hold their shape when baked; Michele mentioned that she added more flour, and I think she was on to something. I also goofed and used sweetened coconut instead of unsweetened, but I didn’t think they seemed overly sweet.

Twisted into a pretzel shape and sprinkled with big pieces of sugar, the Chocolate Pretzel Cookies have a cute factor of 10!

Although they have cocoa and espresso powder, they didn’t pack much of a chocolate punch. I think they’d be better dipped in white or dark chocolate, but that would take away from the “pretzel with salt” cuteness.

Thank you Michele for prodding me to try some new recipes (and for letting me select them)! Be sure to check out how her cookies turned  out.

It’s the end of an era: the last Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, selected by Dorie herself. Peanut butter cookie dough, rolled in chopped nuts, and filled with chocolate chips (as I did) or jam. I made mine tablespoon size rather than teaspoon, but there were no complaints that they were too big.

I wish I could remember where I heard about TWD. I remember being in my hotel room during my week at Pastry Boot Camp, debating whether I should join the group. Then I saw that the group was going to be closing to new members, so in November 2008, I went for it. I baked Rugelach and I wrote a post about it. I haven’t baked every week, and haven’t come close to baking every recipe in the book, but I’ve stuck with it for over two years. I’ve baked a lot, I’ve learned a lot, I’ve had fun, and I’ve made some friends along the way.

My top five list? That’s too hard. But I’ll tell you this: if my copy of Baking: From My Home to Yours was on fire and I only had time to tear out one recipe, it would be Chocolate Oatmeal Almost Candy Bars. If you haven’t made these, make them!

When one book closes, another book opens. A new group is forming to bake through another Dorie Greenspan book: Baking with Julia. Keep your eye on the Tuesdays with Dorie site for more information on joining the new group. I hope a lot of you TWD bakers are joining the new group, and I look forward to meeting new bakers!

Please take a moment to read Dorie’s lovely post about TWD. She’s got the cookie recipe posted too!

I branched out from my go-to nut recipes this Christmas and made these Butter Toffee Nuts with Sea Salt that I saw in O Magazine. Crunchy, sweet, and salty with a touch of nutmeg.  Great for giving as gifts or for serving to guests, but make some extras for nibbling!

Recipe notes

• I used pecans, walnuts,