Author: Sophia Wells

I have been dreading this challenge for a while. Actually, since watching the episode and seeing all of these bakers struggling to make the darn things stay perched on top of the other. I don’t claim to be a very tidy person. I do try, very hard most days. It seems no matter what I do, I make messes. Whether its baking and I drip milk across the floor or when I’m eating a salad and I haven’t noticed that a drip of balsamic dressing has escaped my lips and is now running down my chin. I love when that happens. It’s so not embarrassing to have someone point out that you are dribbling like a 3 month old baby. 

Given, I do have a slight excuse for that. I actually don’t have any feeling in my bottom lip. When I was a freshman in college, I underwent jaw reconstructive surgery to repair the massive under bite that I had. One of the risks for this surgery was the potential for permanently killing nerves. That is exactly what happened. Of course, I didn’t realize that the nerves were dead in my lip until after all of the swelling had disappeared and I could feel the rest of my face. The doctor did say that the feeling in my lip could come back eventually. It’s been nine years now, I’m pretty sure this is to stay. 

I honestly don’t even notice it any more (except for those couple of high points during dinner). It gives me a humorous anecdote whenever answering one of those large group ice breaker questions “Tell us one fun fact about yourself.” 

This’ll take careful baking. Firstly, they must make choux pastry. They’ve got to get it to the right consistency. It’s got to be stiff enough to pipe. They must make crème patissiere. If it’s too runny, it’ll ooze out. If it’s too stiff they won’t get it out of the piping tube. (Ganache) is quite tricky to get that wonderful shine. This is, without a doubt, a difficult challenge. This is going to sort them out” Mary Berry (Season 2, Episode 7)

As intimidating as this challenge looked, the ingredients were pretty basic. The choux bun only needed butter, flour and eggs. However, the order in which they were heated and combined was definitely the key to success. Adding the eggs too early and while the pan is too hot would result in scrambled eggs. The butter and the flour needed to cook quite a bit before the eggs were gradually added. 

With everything going smoothly, and the consistency of the dough where I needed it to be, I decided to get a little fancy with my social media. I set up a makeshift studio. Comprised of a stack of books in front of my working counter, with my iPad perched on top ready with the hyper lapse video.  I thought it would be a cool shot of me piping out the dough on the parchment paper into nice neat circles. However, as you read in my intro, things did not go according to plan. 

Two seconds into the video, my piping bag burst. Out comes pouring all of the pastry, ruining any chances of a nice smooth disc. I tried plugging the seam up with my hand, but that didn’t work. Soon, I was just using the hole of the broken bag to plop the dough down. It’ll have to do. After dipping my fingers in cold water, I was able to smooth out the dough and arrange it in a more appealing looking mound. 

Praying that they choux buns would inflate in the oven, I popped them in. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the little fiasco with the piping bag did not hinder the baking process. Soon, I had an army of puffed up choux buns ready for filling. I pricked each bun with a toothpick (this is to allow the steam to escape somewhere while maintaining the shape), and moved on tocreating the crème patissiere. 

At this point, I’m well inept on how to make custard or crème whatever. Seriously, the British love their custards and crème. Heat up some vanilla and full fat milk, whip up the egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy, add in the corn flour and regular flour to the eggs, add the vanilla milk to the eggs whisking vigorously, pour back into the pan to bring to a boil, whisking heavily the entire time. Easy peasy. The only thing at this point was to have the patience (and the arm strength) to continue whisking until the crème is thick enough. I set this aside to cool in the fridge until I was ready to assemble. 

Chocolate ganache is the best thing ever. It is wonderfully thick and creamy. It’s so simple to just pour over cakes and it’ll harden to a nice smooth surface. Yummy! It’s really easy to make as well. Slowly bring heavy whipping cream to a gentle boil and add the chocolate in and mix until all of the chocolate has melted and has developed a shine. 

With all of the parts of the assembly done, it was time to construct the Religieuse. First, by using a long thin nozzle attachment, I filled the choux buns with the crème patissiere. This took a while because it was really hard to tell if enough crème was inside the bun. Second, each of the large and small buns were dipped halfway in the chocolate ganache. I first dipped the large buns, and after I dipped each of the small buns I placed them on top of the large buns. This way, as the ganache sets it’ll glue the two buns together. Hopefully. Finally, I had 8 Religieuse standing in a row like a little army. They looked very droopy and sad like they were about to start a mutiny. They did look a ton better once I piped their white collar around their necks. Now they looked as though they were ready and determined to recite their vows. 

Since Roydon and I are determined not to eat all of every single challenge I bake, these Religieuse were being sent off to the school I work at. Not before we were able to try just one. After tasting them, we really wished we could have kept all of these heavenly pastries. But alas, our waistlines told us “no”. 

Religieuse

From bbc.com

Preparation time: 1-2 hours

Cooking time: 10-30 minutes

Serves: Makes 8

Ingredients

60g butter, cut into cubes

75g plain flour

2 eggs, lightly beaten

For the Crème Patissiere filling:

500ml/18fl oz. full fat milk

1 vanilla pod, seeds only

6 medium egg yolks

75g caster sugar

20g corn flour

25g plain flour

For the Chocolate Ganache Icing:

150ml/5fl oz. double cream

200g plain chocolate (around 36% cocoa solids) broken into pieces

For the collar:

150ml/5fl oz. double cream

Method

I spent the past week in Indiana with my amazing family. My sister Catherine was having a baby shower in Ohio and there I was able to catch up with a good amount of the rest of the family. Some of you may not know, but I come from a family of 11. Most of them live in either Indiana or Ohio, the rest are spread out in Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri.

Since moving to Texas, I have missed my family desperately. They have always been my source of comfort and support. It has been really hard being so far away from them. Spending this week with them feels like I never left.  I was really excited to do this week’s challenge with my mom.  I was even more excited that this week’s recipe was a bread recipe, aka NO EGG WHITES!

The ones that get it right will have that beautifully brown top, a brown bottom. It’ll be white around the edges. The texture is soft. It’s got a good crumb structure on there. It’s braked all the way through. Let’s see who’s going to use their nous and make some perfectly formed English Muffins.”

~Paul Hollywood (Season 2, Episode 2)

I was really excited to bake these English Muffins, mostly because of how they are baked. They are not baked in an oven like normal breads but on a stove top griddle. This is called a dry-fry. The recipe itself calls for strong bread flour. Since I was at my parent’s house without a car, I was wondering if I could get away with using all-purpose instead of bread flour. I mean, it’s in the name isn’t it? However, a fun tidbit I learned is that bread flour has quite a bit more gluten than all-purpose. And with this recipe, where the kneading takes about 10 minutes, developing gluten is extremely important. So, I decided not to risk it.

I went to the Kroger just down the street in search of bread flour. I found that only one brand had it on the shelf, and it was twice the price of normal flour. I picked up a bag of the King Arthur’s Bread Flour, which I always hear bakers praising this brand of flour, and was eager to give it a try.

After dinner, I got to work putting together the sparse ingredients. I didn’t have my weight sensitive kitchen scale. Instead, I borrowed my dad’s mail scale, which was helpful except for measurements less than 10 grams. There was a little bit of guess work. After combining the ingredients, I gently dumped out the dough to start the long process of hand kneading the dough. After watching the episode with Mom, I knew exactly how the dough was eventually supposed to look. It was hard work. The enriched dough was extremely wet and hard to work with, but I continued kneading determined to get the dough right. 10 minutes came and went…20 minutes…and still the dough was not where it needed to be. Mom tried her hand at kneading the dough. Quite a few minutes later, we decided that it’s as good as its going to get. I then placed the dough in an oiled bowl and covered it to rise for an hour.

After an hour, we checked on the dough. It was supposed to have double in size. It had not. It barely rose at all. A little disheartened, we decided to give it a little longer. It was a little chilly in the kitchen so we preheated the oven for 170 degrees Fahrenheit to create “proofing drawer”. We stuck the dough inside and allowed it to be for another hour. At this point it was 11:30 at night and Mom had gone to bed.

The hour showed a slight rise, but now I figured it was time to get the rest of the bake done since there was still another half an hour rise to go. I gently tipped the dough out on a floured surface and rolled it out to the desire thickness. I then used the rim of a mug to cut out the round shapes. I placed each shape on a prepared pan that had been coated with a combination of flour and semolina, or I used cornmeal. I then covered the pans again and left alone to rise for half an hour.

They still seemed pretty flat when I was ready to put them on the cast iron pan, but I was exhausted and ready for bed. I preheated the pan at a low temperature. The low temperature ensures that the inside of the dough gets cooked at the same time as the outside does. Undercooked dough is a sin to all bakers! Each side took about 8 minutes to bake, and after a bit of trial and error I found the perfect temperature.

I was excited how they were turning out, all though I wish they were thicker. Despite their thinness, they did puff up quite a bit from their original state as they baked.

When I served them up the next day for breakfast, they were discovered to be a bit salty, which I took to meant that I added too much salt and the salt stunted the growth of the yeast, hence no rise.

School was cancelled because of a slight snow storm which meant the entire family was home with me. I decided to give the recipe another try. This time I converted the smaller grams into teaspoons to get a better feel for how the recipe should be. The other change I made was to have the mixer do the kneading. The dough came out smooth, more like how it should have looked. After an hour to rise, the dough was looking beautiful. Together, my Mom and I worked on cutting out the shapes again. After another half an hour, I tried the dry-fry again. These were now a lot puffier than my first batch. I was so happy with them; they ended up looking like the ones you buy from the store. How crazy is that!

This was such a fun challenge to do. I highly recommend giving it a try. All of the ingredients use pantry staples and the bake is so satisfying to watch them rise as they are gently fried.

Next Challenge: Floating Islands

English Muffins

Recipe courtesy of The Great British Baking Show via PBSfood

Ingredients

300g/10 ½ oz. strong white bread flour, plus extra for flouring

6g fast-action yeast

6g salt

15g/ ½ oz. caster sugar

15g/ ½ oz. softened butter, cut into small pieces

1 medium free-range egg (about 22g/ ¾ oz.), lightly beaten

170ml/6fl oz. milk (should make a soft dough – you can add up to about 30ml/1fl oz. extra if needed)

Oil, for greasing

15g/ ½ oz. semolina or polenta, plus extra for dusting

Directions

Equipment and preparation: you will need a 9 cm or 3 ½ inch straight-sided cutter

My husband and I had a very relaxing, chill Valentine’s Day together. We both arrived home from our respective jobs, promptly ordered some Chinese take-out, and settled in to watch a romantic movie. It was my turn to choose a movie, and so I scanned Amazon Prime for a good romantic movie. I came upon The Time Traveler’s Wife. Now, I saw this movie maybe once before and remembered enjoying it at the time. I had also read the book when I was a freshman in College. I felt that this would be a perfect movie to watch together!

I must have remembered wrong. Throughout most of the movie, Roydon would give me a look and I would respond with “Don’t worry, it gets better” truly believing that it would get better. As we continued the movie, we watched as the time traveler acts like a creeper, pedophile to the little girl that would become his future wife. We continued watching as the wife encountered multiple miscarriages and the eventual and unavoidable death of her husband. The phrase “Don’t worry, it gets better” became a mantra in my head as the movie came closer and closer to the end. It didn’t get better. I think my movie choosing privileges have been revoked for the time being.

Besides the horrible, unromantic movie, it was an amazing Valentine’s Day! For dessert, I served this week’s challenge which was Mary Berry’s Angel Food Cake. As soon as I woke up, I started putting together the cake. A little apprehensive because, again, this recipe involved egg whites as the rising agent. And as you have already witnessed, I have the worse time with egg whites. You know what they say: “Practice makes perfect” or “Practice makes no difference”.

This is my perfect Angel Food Cake. Nice and tall. Absolutely even over the top. Beautifully light, evenly baked. They should know how to do it, but there are one or two points that they can go really wrong on.” ~Mary Berry (Season 2, Episode 1)

The first task was assembling all of the ingredients. I was happy to see that there were no odd special items. Basically, the only thing that could possibly go wrong is to over mix the egg whites which would deflate them. Or, I guess, I could also over beat the egg whites until they formed “stiff” peaks resulting in a very hard, rock-like cake. Of course, I could also under beat the eggs resulting in not enough air in the whites to fluff up the cake. OK, a lot can go wrong. It is me after all.

I was taking no chances. I read and re-read the instructions several times. I watched the episode where the challenge was featured repeatedly. AND, as a bonus, I watch Mary Berry herself bake this cake by watching Masterclass! With all this prep, I was hoping to eliminate the errors of my ways.

The recipe itself seems pretty straightforward. Sift and combine the flour and some of the sugar together and set aside. In a separate bowl, I combined the egg whites, lemon zest, lemon juice, cream of tartar, and salt. These were whisked on high for a few minutes in my KitchenAid mixer until soft peaks formed. Then, one tablespoon at a time, I added the rest of the sugar. This time, the egg whites needed to have firm but not stiff peaks.

Now was the tricky part, gently folding in the flour mixture. A little bit at a time, I sifted the flour over the egg whites and gently folded it in using a technique that my sister, Monica, told me about. Once all of the flour was incorporated, I was ready to put it in the pan and place it in the oven.

For those of you that don’t know, I honestly had no idea until just now, but Angel Food Cake has a special pan. It resembles a bunt cake pan but without the designs on the sides and it has legs that extend out of the top. The reason for the legs is because once out of the oven, the cake is cooled upside down on top of the legs. This is a special cake pan, meant exclusively for Angel Food Cake. Why would I go out and buy the pan that I will, more than likely, use just this one time. It didn’t make any economic sense to me.

Mary Berry had a solution for me! Following her instructions, I constructed my pan using a spring form pan and an aluminum can. I filled the can with rice, cut a star-like hole in the middle of a sheet of parchment paper, and pulled it over the can in the spring form pan. It didn’t look pretty but Mary Berry said it’ll work the same and so, by gosh, I believed her!

I gently pour the cake batter in to the self-made pan. Using a spatula, I spread the batter throughout the pan evenly. Now, into the oven it went for 50 minutes. While I waited, I mixed up a carton of heavy whipping cream with the vanilla extract. After whisking the cream to a fluffy consistency, I gave the whipped cream a taste. It tasted like whipped milk. Why don’t the Brits like their whipped cream sweet?! I added some sugar, whisked it a bit more, and tasted it again. Delicious!

Now, I know that Mary Berry had a lemon and passion fruit curd with her angel food cake. Believe me I have every intention of attempting the curd myself. However, after a busy week of substitute teaching, having absolutely no luck finding the passion fruit, and having some of that homemade raspberry jam from the Princess Cake still in the fridge, I decided to opt out of making the curd and use the jam instead.

Once the cake was baked, I had the task of flipping it upside down to cool. However, with no legs on the pan to place it on, I had to trust that the tin can would hold the cake. That came to another problem…the tine can was full of rice. So, how does one flip a can of rice upside down without spilling out the entire contents on the counter? I honestly couldn’t say, but somehow I was able to flip the cake upside down while keeping most of the rice in the can. There I left it, balanced on the can for an hour.

I must’ve been having a lucky day, because tragedy did not strike during that time. I gently pried the cake out of the pan and decorated the cake with my whipped cream and raspberry jam. I also decided to use up the rest of our strawberries and decorate the top of the cake with them. It looked beautiful!

That evening we cut into the cake and enjoy a nice fluffy treat. Everything was delicious. Although, the critic in me would have liked a bit more rise to have occurred in the cake itself. My saving grace is that the cake still turned out fluffy and not like a dry piece of cardboard like previous egg white cakes.

Now it’s your turn! Give the cake a try! It wasn’t overall a difficult one to bake, especially if you have now problems dealing with egg whites. I would love to see what you come up with!

Next Challenge: English Muffins

Angel Food Cake with Lemon Curd

From BBC Food

Preparation time: 1-2 hours

Cooking time: 30 mins to 1 hour

Serves: 12-15, and makes two 350g/12oz jars of lemon curd

Ingredients
Continue reading “The Angel Food Cake Challenge” →

It’s that time of month again! The Great Sister Bake Off is here again! The friendly competition between my sister, Adrienne, and myself. We had to work off of the same recipe with no outside help. Voting will be up to you lovely readers and followers. One of my favorite part about The Great British Baking Show is that despite being in a competition, the bakers are always very supportive of each other. We will be keeping up with the spirit of the British competitiveness and remain supportive of the each other. On your mark, get set, BAAAAKE!!

What the bakers have got to do is make a simple batter and then inside the tin put a layer of the sponge in there, and then they pop it under the grill. We’ve asked them to do light-dark, light-dark all the way through. What we’re testing them on is a bit of concentration skills. ‘Cause don’t forget, there’s 20 layers. Well, then that’s an hour of watching a grill…We’re looking for something that screams consistency.” Paul Hollywood Season 1, Episode 9

Sophie: Naturally, this recipe had to be an egg based one instead of a nice yeast bread. We all know how wonderful I am with whipping up egg whites and not killing the fluff. Nevertheless, I gave it my all. I watched this episode about a dozen times in preparation for baking this cake. I was also determine to finally get my hands on the elusive Golden Syrup! After an extensive search, I finally found it at a store called World Market. World Market had all things (or at least most things) British, Italian, Indian, etc. I could have spent quite a few hours perusing the various goods on the shelves. However, there was a challenge to finish!

I gathered all of my ingredients and got started on the base of the cake. I first had to whip up the egg yokes until they were pale, thick, and creamy. After that was done, I needed to put it aside and start beating the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. This process required the use of my mixer. So, I scooped the egg yolks out of the mixing bowl into another bowl, cleaned the mixing bowl, and then proceeded to whip the sugar and butter together. Later, adding lemon zest and vanilla. After everything was well combined, I added the egg yolks back into the mixture and beat well. Lastly the flour and corn flour were added.

Again, having to use the mixer to whip up the egg whites, I had to move the batter mixture into another bowl. I washed the mixing bowl and then continued adding the egg whites and whipping them to a frenzy. I thought at this point that I could keep an eye on the egg whites while also cleaning up the kitchen a bit. However, once I checked on the egg whites I noticed that they were pretty thick. Now the recipe wanted soft peaks, what I had were extremely thick peaks. But, hey, they weren’t under beaten at least.

I had to combine the 1/3 of the egg whites in with the batter. This helped loosening it up a bit and make it a tad moist. Then I gently folded in the rest of the egg whites. The egg whites were so thick that it took a bit of work to get them combined. I was now finally ready to grill the batter.

I turn the grill on high and allowed it to preheat. I then prepared my 8 inch spring form pan. Can I just say how amazing spring form pans are? I mean, honestly! I oiled and lined the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. I was now ready to begin the grilling.

Scooping out 1/3 of a cup of batter, I poured it on the base of the pan, and using the back of a spoon spread the batter around evenly until it coated the bottom evenly. I then placed it in the oven 4 inches below the grill and baked for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, I took it out of the oven and poured another 1/3 cup of batter on top of the baked layer, gently spread it around the pan, and returned it to the oven. This time for 3 minutes. This would give the layer a slight darker appearance. This is where we get the effect of the different layers once the cake is cut into.

This is how I spent most of my morning. Bake and forth from the oven, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes 3 minutes. Needless to say, I couldn’t really leave the kitchen and the grill was making the entire apartment very hot. Of course, the weather outside was beautiful and 80 degrees. I opened all of the windows and the porch door. Now I received a wonderful cool breeze that made this whole process a million times more comfortable.

After reaching the required 20 layers, I allowed the cake to cool in the pan for a bit before turning it out on a wire rack. After melting the marmalade and straining it to get rid of the chunks, I brushed the glaze over the entire cake. This helps to seal the cake so that no crumbs affect the chocolate layer that I add later.

The chocolate glaze was very easy to make. I melted butter, brandy, golden syrup, and vanilla in a sauce pan and brought it to a boil. After letting it cool a bit, I added the chopped chocolate and mixed it in until it has completely melted. I allowed it to cool a little more so that the glaze became thick. I then poured the glaze over the cake until it coated all of the surfaces. Seeing all of that glorious chocolate glaze dripping was a sight to behold!

The last step was the white glaze that was whipped up using powdered sugar, vanilla, and brandy. I scooped it into a piping bag and piped a checkerboard design over the entire surface.

All that was left was to cut into the cake and marvel at all of the different layers and to taste the final product.

I absolutely loved the combination of the marmalade and the chocolate glaze together, with a subtle hint of the brandy. The cake itself was slightly dryer than I expected but had a refreshing lemon flavor. For how much work was involved in baking this cake, I’m not entire sure it was worth the effort. However, now I know I can bake a cake via grill.

Adrienne: I’m baaaaaaaack!

So the first time I participated in the baking challenge I was privileged enough to be in Indiana at my childhood home and able to take advantage of my mother’s kitchen tools. My mom has a large and wonderful Kitchen Aid mixer that makes baking a breeze to do. Especially when the recipes involve so much whipping of egg whites and egg yolks. So for this baking challenge, I was back to baking at my apartment in Wichita, doomed with having to use my measly handheld mixer, which meant that whipping the eggs and egg yolks took FOREVER.

The other tool I was desperately missing from my indiana home was my Dad’s mail scale which is what I used at home to weigh out the ingredients since these dang recipes are all in metric system terms. So back in Kansas to translate the recipe from grams into tablespoons through the power of Google. And I think it worked out pretty well!

Another thing I did to prep for this challenge was that I learned from one of Sophie’s past blog post about how she had a hard time finding “golden syrup” and used corn syrup instead, which apparently didn’t work the best as i substitute. So I specially ordered a bottle of legit golden syrup from Amazon in preparation for this challenge.

There were a couple of adaptations I made to this recipe.

1. Right before I was about to bake, I realized I had forgotten to pick up some corn flour. So instead of ruining my lazy sunday by needing to look somewhat presentable to run to the store, I made the adaptation of making a small batch of cake flour and using that instead. I confess that I did read in the comments of the recipe that someone had used cake flour instead of corn flour and thought that that had turned out better.
   To make the cake flour, all I had to do was place two tablespoons of cornstarch in a measuring cup and then topped the rest of it off with all-purpose floor and then sifted it twice together to combine and voila, you have a cap of cake flour.
   I use this often when baking instead of buying cake flour from the store.
2. The other slight tweak I made was just a minor one and that is that I used apricot AND peach marmalade for the barrier between the chocolate and the cake, not just apricot.
3. Also, instead of using vanilla bean paste I used plain old vanilla extract.

So once I made the sponge batter and prepped my springform pan I began the work of baking this bizarre cake recipe, which consisted of pouring a thin layer of batter and baking it for 2 minutes in the high broiler, and then pouring another thin layer and baking it for 3 minutes for a deeper colored layer, and then alternating back and forth for 20 layers from there (or until you run out of batter). In my case I ran out of batter by layer 11… I kept a log to keep track of which layer I was on and if it was a dark or light layers so I could do the right baking time.

Overall, it was a fun bake just because it was so different but it took forever. I am almost glad I ran out of batter by layer 11 because standing at the oven for over an hour was getting really old really fast.Once the cake was done, it came out of the springform pan beautifully.

I strained the warmed up marmalade to make it a nice smooth consistency and brushed it on the cake once it was properly cooled and then went to create my chocolate glaze.

The chocolate glaze and vanilla drizzle both called for rum, so it was a good thing that I had some left over golden bacardi from Christmas to use for this occasion!

I was more careful about the temperature of this chocolate before I drizzled it on the cake then I had been for the tiramisu and waited until it cooled to the right temperature so it would stay on the cake and it worked wonderfully. I then once again proved that I have very limited artistic ability and drizzled the vanilla icing into awkward splotches on the top of the cake. Not the worst looking thing, but I have no doubt that Sophie’s design will turn out better than mine.

When all was said and done, I cut into the cake and saw the beautiful little layers and the creamy chocolate on top. The cake tasted good and the sponge reminded me of layers of pancakes but had a nice fresh lemon taste to it that blended surprisingly well with the icing. It was not overly sweet but sweet enough. Reminded me of something that might be a good breakfast cake or something as an alternative to coffee cake or donuts for a brunch.

I don’t think I would make this cake again personally since it was so time consuming, but overall I was pleased with the recipe and would definitely say this bake was a success!

Until next time, Bon Appetit! #VoteforAdrienne

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, concludes season 1 of the Great British Baking Show. Season 2 starts with Mary Berry’s Angel Food Cake with Lemon Curd. Also, your voices have been heard! I will from now on be including all of the recipes I use on each blog post. Try your hand at the different challenges! I would love to see how it turns out! Until next time!

Next Challenge: Angel Food Cake with Lemon Curd

This recipe marks the 7th challenge I’ve attempted since starting this blog. I’ve been getting a lot of questions as to why I’m putting myself through these challenges. The simple answer is: I needed it. Since getting married this past summer, we’ve felt the pain of losing our first child from a miscarriage and moved several states away from family and friends. It has been a few emotional months. I’ve felt pure joy and happiness to utter despair and grief. While I have enjoyed this new adventure, I still felt that I needed to create something that would ultimately connect me with others.

I love baking. This love of baking did not come on its own, however. It has been born from my family. My Mom who always so lovingly baked desserts for Birthdays, holidays, and just because she felt like it. My sister Monica, who started a blog of her own when she was first married, and always highlighted her joys of motherhood and family life through her cooking and baking. (You can check out Monica’s blog here.) Catherine, who like me has also discovered a joy for baking through our wonderful Mom. And Adrienne, who specifically enjoys baking desserts, especially cheesecake.  Baking was always a sign of a happy home. Baking reminds me of my childhood home, it reminds me of my family, and it connects me with them. I bake now in my own home, where love and laughter abound, and where someday I can also pass down my love for baking to my own children. Who can deny that a warm oven and wonderful aroma equals happiness and love?

Kouign Amman, pronounced as “queen a-mahn”, was probably my favorite technical challenge to date to bake. It was a slow paced recipe but a lot of fun as well. I thought so at least. It definitely made for quite a change after last week’s Princess Cake Challenge.

What you’re looking for is the texture of a puff pastry but a bit more wide open, a bit more structured, and that comes from the yeast. They need to do a minimum of three turns before they add sugar to it. If they put the sugar in during the turns, what happens is, it just dissolves. It doesn’t go anywhere, but also they’ve got to think of when to put these in the oven. It’s got to be risen and rested before it goes in. Otherwise, it’d just be too tight and will not open up like a flower.” Paul Hollywood (Season 1, Episode 7)

Kouign Amman has literally 7 ingredients. What a difference from last week’s 26 ingredient recipe! Luckily, they were all staples from my pantry, except for the block of butter. You would think that finding a block of butter would have been hard, but alas, I already knew exactly where to find one. Shopping from this recipe took a total of 10 minutes.

After mixing in the dry ingredients, making sure the yeast was far away from the salt, I poured the warm water in the mixer and mixed it all together with the dough hook attachment. Once the dough had formed into a nice smooth ball, I placed it in an oiled bowl and waited for it to double in size.

While I waited for the dough to rise, I got to work on the block of butter. I sandwhiched the butter between two sheets of parchment paper and beat the living daylights out of it until it was a bit flatter. I then, proceeded to roll it out to an even 5 ½ inch square. I then wrapped the butter square in plastic and left it in the fridge until I was ready for it.

After the dough ball had risen to twice its size, I rolled it out on a floured surface until it was an 8 inch square. Taking the chilled butter out of the fridge, I place the butter on the square of dough. The corners of the butter had to be pointing to the sides of the square. Using my rolling pin, I rolled the entire thing out until it was 18×16 inch rectangle. I fold the bottom third of the dough up to the center, and then folded the top third of the dough up and over the bottom fold. I then wrapped the dough around the butter. It was then wrapped up and placed in the fridge for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I repeated the same rolling and folding process twice more ensuring that the dough was chilled in the fridge for 30 minutes each time. This is required so that the butter get spread throughout several layers of the dough. Once placed in the oven, the butter melts creating the delicious flaky layers that are often seen in crescent rolls. This recipe, however, asks that upon the last laminated layer sugar is added instead of butter. Another one last round of rolling and folding, the dough is rolled out to a rectangle and more sugar is spread over the top.

The dough was then cut into 12 even squares (mine turned out more rectangle because I didn’t measure). One by one, the dough squares are gather and placed in a greased cupcake tin, folding up the dough at the corners and connecting them. They resembled four leave clovers. This part was pretty interesting because I could clearly see the different layers that the lamination created. I sprinkled more sugar over the top of each of the dough clovers in the cupcake tin, and allowed them to rise for 30 minutes.

They were now ready to bake in the oven! This was definitely my favorite part! I have gotten into the habit of sitting in front of my oven as I watch the challenges bake. These looked so magnificent! I could see them slowly bubble up and down looking as if they were breathing. The smell that wafted through the kitchen was so buttery and mouthwatering. I couldn’t wait to see thee finish product, and to taste their buttery goodness.

The timer went off, and I pulled out the Kouign Amman. They were gorgeous. The sugar on top had caramelized creating a beautiful golden brown color and the aroma was stronger than ever. I would have dived in to eat one right then and there but they were piping hot.

Once they were cooled down enough, I sampled one and swooned. They were everything that they promised to be. Light and buttery with a subtle hint of sweetness. They were heaven on earth. Although I was tempted to keep them to ourselves. I had Roydon bring the remaining pastries to work. I do believe they are requesting more to be made. I honestly don’t blame them at all. They were so simple to make that I will definitely be making more of these in the future!

Next Challenge: Povitica