100 Minute Babka and Danish Braid

I put the 100 minute challah dough to new use: babka and danish braid.

Toronto Blueberry Buns (Shritzlach)

Imagine, if you will, a soft, fluffy, and tender sweet roll encasing thick, lightly sweetened blueberry filling. Sort of like a jelly doughnut, but not deep-fried, and much fresher tasting.

That bit of heavenly yumminess, my dear readers, is a blueberry bun.

Daring Bakers: Dairy-Free Milanos

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

Nicole kindly offered the choice to do either or both recipes. My favorite store-bought cookie of all time is the milano, so, if I had to pick one, it was no contest. I could have also made the marshmallow cookies, but I am not a marshmallow fan, plus I have tried making vegetarian marshmallows before, and I just did not want to undertake that again. 

Oven-Fried Cauliflower

My husband and I loved fried cauliflower, but I really hate deep frying. I was very successful in getting breaded cauliflower nice and crispy in the oven.

Cherry-Banana French Toast Fritters

Here is a little something different to make with leftover challah besides french toast. The basic recipe (for cherry pancakes, or Kirschpfannkuchen) comes from a German cookbook, Mein Kochbuch, by Elizabeth Schuler (as translated by Joy Gary). I added in chopped bananas and substitued cornmeal for the flour in the recipe.

Vishniak Uppdate

It is nearly two weeks since I first started brewing homemade vishniak. Just to recap, one container has a mixture of pitted cherries, sugar, and vodka. The other container, the Lanie S. recipe, has unpitted cherries and sugar. Lanie S. instructed me to let the mixture ferment for two weeks before adding the vodka. (Note: I added about 1 2/3 cups vodka)

The mixture of cherries and sugar is certainly fermenting. The sugar dissolved and the cherries gave up liquid. As you can see from the above picture, there is about an inch of cherry colored liquid beneath the floating cherries. The liquid is slightly bubbling, like a barely carbonated beverage. There is an overpowering alcoholic aroma coming from the mixture.

Better Blueberry Muffins

My niece made these blueberry muffins with me. Aren’t they lovely?

The recipe was from Kathleen’s Bake Shop Cookbook. The recipe says it yields a dozen muffins, but we had enough batter for a dozen plus enough to make a 5×7 mini cake.

Dueling Babkas: Litvish and Galitzianer

Lithuanian Babka

Disclaimer: The title of this post is kind of a joke. As far as I know, there is no Litvish/Galitzianer babka dichotomy. I only gave this post its title because Maggie Glezer calls her babka Lithuanian Babka and I used an alternate filling for half of the dough to make a different kind of babka. The recipe for that alternate filling came from my grandmother (Z”L), and that side of my family is Galitzianer. But, my grandmother had used the filling in what she and her friends just called coffeecake, not Galitzianer Babka.

It all started with me wanting to make a yeast bread with cardamom, chocolate, and coffee flavors. The obvious approach was babka with cardamom in the dough and a chocolate-coffee filling.

Maggie Glezer has an interesting recipe for Lithuanian Babka in A Blessing of Bread that always appealed to me. The recipe comes from her husband’s grandmother. What is interesting about this babka is that it is formed into an elaborate round twist instead of the usual loaf shape.

Glezer’s recipe makes two babka loaves (total flour 26.5 ounces, or 13.25 ounce flour per loaf). I more or less followed Glezer’s filling recipe for one babka and experimented with my (Galitzianer) grandmother’s yeast coffee cake filling for the other.

Lithuanian Filling

Babka With the Meringue Filling

Zuni Cafe’s Zucchini Pickles

These pickles have been on my to do list forever. They come from an amazing cookbook: The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, by Judy Rogers.

I have the book sitting 2 feet from me right now, but the recipe is online. The LA Times included the recipe in a great article on pickles a while back. (Uh, like a whole year ago . . . .)

And Luisa made them. When she was feeling depressed. 

Well, if she can do it, so can I.

100 Minute Challah in 3 Hours

I saw this neat recipe for 100 minute challah on yeastspotting, contributed by Simply Enjoy Food (update: can still find recipe here).

The idea is simple. You just mix together dough ingredients, a la no knead bread, and then develop the dough through a stretch and fold method. Also, you speed up the fermentation through sticking the dough in a 200 degree oven. After just 14 minutes, stretch and fold, another 14 minutes stretch and fold, and then another 9 minutes before shaping. The preheat your oven to 350 degrees and shape your challah. Bake it off after a mere 5 minutes rise.