When Sourdough Surprises announced that this month’s challenge would be sourdough brownies, I knew immediately what I wanted to do.  I had been thinking lately about trying a Buckeye Brownie and conveniently I was now being told that I had to make brownies for the challenge!   I had already made plain sourdough brownies from the recommended recipe, and while they were good, I wanted to try something different.  I had been reading through Joy the Baker’s blog recently and was attracted to her Peanut Butter Ball Cookies, but I had been thinking I would like them better as a brownie than a cookie.  Hence, these Buckeye Brownies.

Buckeye Candies are a Midwestern treat and are basically peanut butter, butter and powdered sugar mixed together, rolled in a ball and dipped halfway in chocolate.   They are certainly delicious on their own.  However, they are also delicious when submerged in a brownie!  To make these brownies, I modified and whipped up a half recipe of a really delicious Vegan brownies using my white 100% hydration sourdough starter discard straight from the fridge.  When the brownies were fresh out of the oven, I gently pushed 16 previously made peanut butter balls from Joy’s cookie recipe into the surface of the brownie.  I let them cool to room temperature and then refrigerated the whole pan for about an hour.  When the brownies were thoroughly chilled, I spread a little circle of melted chocolate on top of each peanut butter ball.  I let it set up and then cut the brownies into squares.

For a chocolate and peanut butter fan, these brownies are heaven.   A cookie and candy all at once!  The sourdough flavor is actually pretty noticeable in the brownies and it complements the dessert nicely.  I suspect the sourdough flavor comes through better because I didn’t use butter or eggs, but that’s just a guess.  I also like these brownies because the way they look makes me smile!

Be sure to check out  other delicious brownies made by the Sourdough Surprises Group!

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The We Should Cocoa challenge, managed by Chocolate Log Blog and Chocolate Teapot, is a great excuse to make a chocolate treat once a month and be a bit creative about it.  May’s challenge is hosted by Shaheen of Allotment2Kitchen and the special ingredient is mango.  Shaheen admits that she is not a huge lover of chocolate.  I have the opposite problem, I am not a huge lover of mango!  However, my sweetie loves mango as well as chocolate so I had to give it a try!

I really enjoy making chocolate candies, so I decided on a simple buttercream filled chocolate heart candy.  I flavored the buttercream by using powdered freeze-dried mango in place of some of the confectioner’s sugar and it worked very well.  The flavor really matured by the next day and the mango flavor was a pleasant combination with the chocolate.

I also used a new (to me) technique for tempering chocolate in the food processor and I was very pleased with the results!  This was far easier than any other home tempering method I have tried.  I didn’t get it perfect, there are a few streaks of bloom, but overall the chocolate is firmer and shinier than I have been able to achieve before.  I will definitely be trying this method again.

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I don’t know about you, but I was a little disappointed recently when Starbucks changed their baked goods selection with the acquisition of La Boulange bakery.  Nothing against patisseries, but I really prefer a nice quick bread or cookie or loaf cake with my drink than a croissant.  One of my favorite baked goods that disappeared recently was the chocolate cinnamon bread.  It was a fine crumbed, dark chocolate pound cake type loaf with a hint of cinnamon in the cake and a lovely crunchy and sparkly cinnamon and spiced sugar crust.  Originally a holiday item, it was popular enough that my local Starbucks carried it regularly until the bakery switchover.

When I searched for a similar recipe online, I was delighted to come across the recipe on the Starbucks website.  The recipe makes two very large loaves and I very nearly halved it.  I’m glad I didn’t, because the loaf is fantastic.  It’s just as good as I remembered, perhaps even better because it was fresher.  I think I will slice it up and freeze individual slices so I can take them to Starbucks myself to enjoy with a drink the next time I go.  I didn’t change the recipe at all, but I’m going to include it here anyway just in case Starbucks decides that they have to remove it from their website as well as from the store.

Just one note – I wasn’t expecting the sugar topping to crackle the way it did, so don’t be surprised.  It slices just fine and any little bits that flake off are a cook’s treat!

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I finally finished my homework!  It’s only 3 or 4 years overdue.  This little hummingbird is pattern from the (soon to be extinct) QuiltUniversity.com class Upside-down Applique by Susan Brittingham.  I never got around to doing it when I was actually taking the class, but a recent round robin project involving flowers and hummingbirds was the right chance to finally make this block.  I was able to use a hand-painted sky background that I made years ago as well.  I did wonder whether hummingbirds came out that early, and then I saw one just the other day feeding on my honeysuckle plant early in the morning.  Good timing!

Upside-down applique is a great technique to use with sheers and whenever you want a quick machine applique but don’t want the weight of a fusible changing the hand of the fabric.  It’s a pretty easy technique.  Trace the design on stabilizer, make a note of what order to put the pieces down and pin the stabilizer to the back of the fabric.  Place a piece of fabric large enough to cover the element you’re appliqueing on the top of the fabric, turn the whole thing over, and stitch on the lines from the back through the stabilizer, the background and the piece you’re stitching down.  Turn it over and trim the appliqued fabric as close as you can to the stitching line.  Then go over the edges with a small zig-zag stitch.  Repeat until all the elements of your applique are sewn down.   Other than changing out the thread colors a lot, this is a really quick technique.  I finished this little bird in just over an hour.

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I immediately knew which recipe I wanted to make, Salted Chocolate and Honey Caramels from the blog BakeNoir, which has been on my list for some time.  I have had a troubled history with chocolate caramels.  I have successfully made Honey Caramels and Apple Cider Caramels, but the chocolate ones have eluded me.  The main problem has been that the chocolate has started to burn before my thermometer reached the firm ball stage and the caramels either end up ruined or too soft.  I always figured it was a matter of finding a recipe that worked for me (and my electric stove-top).  I have finally found a chocolate caramel recipe that works!  It also looks pretty and I like the salty hit on top of the very sweet caramel.  While I was slightly disappointed that I couldn’t really taste the honey in this candy, they were still good and I was also pleased that it doesn’t contain corn syrup.  This recipe will probably make it onto my Christmas baking list for next year.

Just a note on “fixing” the texture of your caramels if they turn out too hard or too soft.  If your caramels come out too soft, you can re-melt them in a saucepan and cook them again to just a couple degrees higher than you did the first time (and I mean 1 or 2 degrees literally) to firm them up.  If they come out too hard, you can re-melt them in a saucepan with a splash of cream, 1/4 cup or a little less, and bring them back up to firm ball temperature and that should soften them.  That’s it!  Patience, a good candy thermometer and a good recipe and caramels are pretty easy!

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I absolutely loved this sourdough pasta challenge!  Thank you Sourdough Surprises and Happy Anniversary!  I would never have thought to try sourdough in homemade pasta.  My grandmother used to make the best beef and vegetable soup and on rare occasions she would make some homemade noodles for it instead of using barley.  They were so delicious and I can remember her hand rolling and cutting the pasta, it seemed like magic at the time.  The way these noodles came out reminded me so much of hers and made me very happy.

The dough was easy to put together, just a combination of a couple of eggs, some flour and my white 100% hydration starter.  A quick blitz in the mixer with the dough hook was all it took to combine the dough into a ball.  I let the dough rest, covered, at room temperature for 7 hours.  I would have let it sit longer, but it had already doubled and was threatening to overflow the bowl.  I guess this means my starter is pretty happy!

Before resting

After resting for 7 hours

The dough was easy to roll out even though it was a bit sticky.  I needed to be careful to keep moving it and tossing flour underneath as I rolled.  I was able to get it really thin, and it did tear a little in a few places.  Fortunately, a few tears don’t matter to the end result.  Because the dough was sticky, I decided to use my pizza cutter to cut it lengthwise into noodles rather than folding it up and slicing through with a knife.  I also had to be careful to not stack them as they stuck together.  In retrospect, I think I probably should have trimmed the dough into a rectangle and then cut the pasta horizontally.  Next time!

A quick bath in some well-salted boiling water and I had pasta!  The sourdough flavor was barely detectable in the plain noodle but was pleasant, kind of like having wine in a sauce.  I think the flavor would have been better had I been able to let the dough rest overnight.  After tossing the cooked pasta with butter, garlic, parsley and Parmesan, the sourdough flavor was undetectable but the pasta was still delicious.  The texture was addictive, very slightly chewy but tender at the same time.

I loved this recipe so much that I made it twice more.  The second time I tried it with my whole wheat starter for a healthier noodle.  This time I dried the pasta so that I could use it later.  The dried whole wheat pasta had a stronger sour note and, like store-bought dried pasta, took a lot longer to cook.  It also didn’t cook as evenly with the thicker areas staying more uncooked than I would have liked.  I paired it with sauteed sausage, roasted tomatoes, garlic and spinach.  While the dish was tasty, I think I’ll be sticking with the pasta made from the white flour starter most of the time.

My third time I made a variation on the plain pasta by adding the zest of one lemon and lots and lots of freshly ground black pepper.  I tossed these noodles with butter and parsley again and the subtle lemon and pepper flavor of the noodles was a nice addition.  This was probably my favorite of the three pastas I made.  I’m looking forward to experimenting more with pureed spinach or some herbs added to the dough.  I think that making pasta is going to become my favorite way to use the discard starter!

Be sure to check out what other Sourdough Surprises members have done!

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I drink almond milk nearly every day, but I never really thought about how it was made or considered that I could make my own.  I really have to thank Trader Joe’s for my learning to make nut milk (and nut butters).  My Trader Joe’s recently relocated and their re-stocking has not been up to par since.  The first time they had no almond butter, so I made my own and will never go back to buying it.  The following visit yielded no unsweetened refrigerated almond milk.  That lack happened to coincide with an article in the paper on how to make nut milk.  I decided to give it a try and was thrilled with the result.  While I will still buy almond milk in the refrigerator case, mostly because it keeps longer, I have learned to make very tasty fresh nut milk as a special treat or for when Trader Joe’s lets me down.   The nut milk I liked the most in my experiments was the hazelnut milk.  Hazelnut milk is difficult to find and often expensive, so it really pays off to make your own.  And what happens if you add chocolate and sweetener to it?  Drinkable Nutella!

The nut milk process is very simple, soak 1/2 cup of fresh or toasted nuts of choice in water in the refrigerator for 12 – 24 hours.  For the hazelnut milk, I found that the flavor was much better if I toasted the nuts before soaking them.  However, if raw food is important to you, don’t toast them before soaking.  Drain the soaked nuts and place them in a blender.  Add 3 cups of fresh water and blend with the nuts until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes on the highest speed.  Drain the liquid through a strainer lined with muslin or fine cheesecloth, making sure the squeeze the nut pulp to get all the liquid out.  Put the milk back into a clean blender and blend with 1/8 tsp. of salt (very important) and any other desired flavors or sweeteners.  For the chocolate hazelnut milk, I like to add cocoa powder, agave nectar and some hazelnut or vanilla extract.  The flavor is absolutely delicious!

As an added bonus, the pulp left over from making nut milk is pretty close to nut meal in texture and can be used in muffins or thrown into oatmeal.

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I’ve been addicted to making these cute little dish towels lately.  The pattern is by Gail Abeloe of Back Porch Quilts and is super simple.  In the process, I’ve learned a few important things about dish towels in the last few weeks:

1. Plain white dish towels are hard to find
2. Dish towels are never square, especially after washing.
3. Two towels in the same package may not be the same size and neither may match the size listed on the package

Despite these challenges, I’ve had a lot of fun whipping these up.  I made the first two sets as gifts and then decided that I needed a few for myself.    This is a great way to use those novelty fat quarters that I love to collect and is also a good way to use fabrics that you just love to look at but can’t bear to cut up for quilts.

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We are in love with peanut butter and chocolate around here and these scones hit all the right notes.  Decadent peanut butter flavor, a hit of chocolate, oat-y goodness, not too sweet and endorsed for breakfast!  The texture is perfect; tender, slightly crumbly and flaky yet slightly moist.  If you like oatmeal cookies and peanut butter cookies, you’ll like these scones.  I first made this recipe a few weeks ago and loved it so much that it’s made it’s way into our regular scone rotation.

The recipe comes from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.  Judging by their list of 10 favorite ingredients, we could be related!  I did adapt the scone recipe slightly to our tastes and because I ran out of eggs (gasp!) I used flax seed meal instead.  I can’t even tell it’s in there and it worked beautifully so I’ll probably make it that way from now on since a little extra bump in nutrition never hurt anybody.  The recipe makes 8 extra-large scones, but could easily be cut into smaller shapes for smaller appetites.

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The 9th or 10th sock (I’ve fallen a bit behind and lost track) in Green Planet Yarn’s “Socks for All” sock club was this easy Terpander sock pattern by Melisa Morgan-Oakes.  The pattern can be found in the book Sock Knitting Master Class by Ann Budd. I used a beautiful red sock yarn called Tart from Madeleine Tosh.  The color is a beautifully saturated red that reminds me of cranberries.  It will be perfect for wearing during the winter holidays next year.  Despite how much I liked the color, this yarn was not really appropriate for these socks as I couldn’t get a small enough gauge.  I had to go down to a size 0 needle and still needed to remove 4 stitches in order to get the socks close to fitting me.  Still, they’re pretty socks!

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Blog-checking lines:  Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

I have to admit, I almost didn’t participate in this month’s challenge.  We’re pretty happy vegetable eaters around here and don’t need to hide them in baked goods to get them down.  I was kind of stumped as to what to make.  However, I happened to catch an episode of a cooking show on which the hostess was making chocolate mousse with pureed avocado as the base.   We eat a lot of chocolate and the idea of taking a decadent chocolate treat and enhancing it with a healthier fat and some extra vitamins was pretty appealing.

I decided to take the avocado base idea and translate it into one of our favorite desserts – chocolate truffles!  I took my usual truffle recipe and substituted a puree of avocado, vanilla extract and almond milk for the weight of the whole cream that I normally use.  The puree was a beautiful green!  The next step was to fold in melted dark chocolate and let it set up.  A spoonful of the decadent mixture convinced me that the truffles were going to be a success! I could have eaten the whole bowl just like a pudding.

Once the avocado/chocolate mixture firmed up, I rolled it into balls and chilled it for a few hours.  For an extra hit of chocolate, I dipped the balls into melted chocolate and then rolled them in chocolate sprinkles and set them aside to firm up for several hours.  The finished truffles were a hit!  The avocado taste was barely detectable, and probably only because I knew it was there. The texture was perfect, just the same as my usual truffles, and delivered a very satisfying, rich chocolate experience. Yum!

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This month’s Sourdough Surprises Challenge was to make a cake with our starter.  I very nearly didn’t get this challenge done in time!  My first attempt to modify a baba au limoncello cake resulted in utter failure.  For my second attempt, I decided to play it safe and use one of the inspiration recipes provided for Pumpkin-Maple Sourdough Cake from Pinch My Salt.  I’m so glad I tried it as it was such an easy and flavorful quick cake, just what I needed after my problematic first cake!  I also love that this recipe uses whole wheat.  It’s completely unnoticeable, so it’s a good way to sneak some whole wheat into your diet.

We love pumpkin any time of year and maple is another year-round flavor favorite, so this cake was just our sort of dessert/breakfast/snack!  By coincidence, I was watching America’s Test Kitchen make pumpkin bread the day I made this cake.  They claim that pumpkin out of a can tastes tinny and raw in the finished product and that cooking it first with the spices added will remove some of the extra moisture, improves the pumpkin flavor and blooms the spices.   It sounded worth trying, so I did!   Since I haven’t made this before, I don’t know if it really made a difference, but I have to say that the finished cake had a fantastic pumpkin flavor.  The cake was pretty sweet and I discovered later that condensed pumpkin puree will taste sweeter, so I would reduce the maple syrup a bit next time.  I also threw in some maple flavor bits that I had on hand for extra maple goodness, so those also added some extra sweetness too.  All in all, a hit!

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Blog Checking Lines:  Sara from All Our Fingers in the Pie was our February 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to use our creativity in making our own Crisp Flatbreads and Crackers!

In the time since I’ve joined the Daring Bakers, I’ve acquired a few go-to recipes that I make over and over again and I can tell that the Raincoat Crisps from this month’s challenge is going to be one of those recipes!  I absolutely love a certain brand of crispy cranberry and hazelnut crackers that I splurge on at a local gourmet market.  The Raincoat Crisp recipe we were given as part of this challenge is very much like those beloved crackers!  These crackers have lots of healthy items in them and are a great snack at any time of day.  The original recipe called for raisins, pecans, pumpkin seeds and rosemary.  I chose to use dried cranberries, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds and to omit the rosemary to mimic my favorite flavor of those gourmet market crackers.  Success!

The recipe is super simple: make a low-sugar buttermilk quick bread loaded with dried fruit, seeds and nuts.  Bake in a loaf pan like a normal quick bread.  Cool the loaf completely (preferably freeze first for a short time), slice the loaf very thinly and re-bake those slices like biscotti until they are golden and crispy.  Then try not to eat them all the same day!  They keep pretty well and can be frozen, making them the ideal cracker to serve to company.

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While flatbreads are not traditionally leavened, they are a still a good way to use up discard starter.  Dal Puri, flatbread filled with spiced split peas, is actually leavened with a little baking powder.  The sourdough flavor doesn’t really come through except on the edges of the bread where there isn’t any spiced filled, but these were the lightest flatbreads I’ve ever made and I wonder if the slight leavening power of the sourdough starter contributed to that.  I’ll have to make them without the starter next time to compare.  The breads were delicious both hot off the grill as well as chilled the next day for lunch.  This is a plus in a bread recipe for a small household and I’ll be making these again.

The first step in making the dal puri is to make and cool the filling.  Yellow split peas are gently cooked until they are soft but still hold their shape.  They are drained and cooled and then pulsed in the food processor with coriander, cumin, chili, turmeric and garam masala.

The dough is made very quickly in the mixer with a dough hook and is formed from flour, baking powder, a touch of sugar, water, oil and the discard sourdough starter.  I chose to use 3oz of starter and subtracted 1.5oz from each of the amounts of water and flour called for in the original recipe.

After a light kneading, the dough rests for 30 minutes or up to 3 hours.  The rested dough is divided into 6 pieces.  Each piece of dough is rolled flat into a circle.

The dough circle is brushed with oil and filled with a portion of the split pea mixture.

Each filled ball of dough is then rolled out again into a circle, being careful not to let the filling escape (I wasn’t entirely successful with that part).

The circles of dough are brushed again with oil and cooked quickly on a griddle and folded in half (I did quarters) before serving.

Eat warm, served with curry or roll up and eat cold as a snack.  Delicious!

Be sure to check out all the other wonderful sourdough flatbreads that were made by this group!

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