TWD: Challah

Challah perfection.  Honestly a great recipe.  We gave a pipping hot loaf as a host gift for a holiday party at a neighbor's house.  The other loaf was devoured on Christmas Day morning and later in the day alongside the Pumpernickel with smoked salmon.

TWD: Pumpernickel Loaves

So many ingredients! Very good just cooled, sliced, toasted and slathered with butter.  I froze one of the loaves and served on Christmas Day with a smoked salmon and a lemon caper cream cheese.  Delish!

TWD: Double Chocolate Cookies

Dark chocolate brownie cookies is what these should be called.  My husband loved these, not too sweet.  My brother's niece (my niece-in-law?) Shannon ate about 10 of these on Christmas day; very much a hit.

TWD: X - Cookies

Broad Brook Bakers have been absent for a while. We've been doing some of the recipes but I've had a difficult last quarter of 2013 in terms of work/life balance.  Enjoy the next few back to back blog entries (they may seem more like twitter posts!)...we've made up some ground and hope to take the rest of the break to fully catch up. 

We did these together back in October.  The kids were not crazy about the ingredients for the filling so we used poppyseed. 

The kids loved making these but thought they were rather plain. I felt the same although they were tasty with a cup of Earl Gray tea.

TWD: Blueberry Muffins

This is the second time I've made blueberry muffins this summer. The first was with fresh New Jersey berries. We gobbled these up faster than I could make them. The second time was a few weeks ago for this Tuesdays with Dorie entry. With this batch I used frozen berries.  The taste is the same but it is hard to prevent most of the berries from sinking to the bottom.












Regardless of frozen or fresh they are hard to keep around. They are delicate, buttery and filled with berry goodness.

What's not to like?

TWD: Johnny Cake Cobbler

After eating the Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas for dinner we had this for dessert.  I had planned to make ramekin-sized portions but having received an invitation for sitting by a neighbor's fire pit I decided to make a large one and share. 



I used peaches that we picked last year and froze, blueberries that we did the same and fresh raspberries and blackberries. 



I loved the crunchiness of the corn meal in the top crust.  The best was when it was still warm but whipped cream makes everything still good if there is any left over.

TWD: Eastern Mediterranean Pizzas

We had high hopes of keeping up with our baking while on our August vacation by the beach.  I took pictures of the recipes on my smart phone before we left. I did lots of cooking with the kids and with my husband.  On one of our first days my son picked Swedish meatballs of all things for dinner.  We were going through the frozen food aisle at the one of two grocery stores on the island. Nathan happens upon the Stouffer's section and is captivated by the Swedish meatballs. We ended up making a homemade version that we assume now will be in our monthly dinner rotation.  We simply did not get the call to bake again until we returned.



I let the sponge go for about 4 hours and when I opened up the plastic wrap there was that wonderful yeasty beer-like smell.



For the first time in quite a while my husband assisted.  He's our family pizza maker so it was apropos.



I used tomatoes from our garden.  Our crop this year has been scant but the fruit that we have are a wonderful quality.



I put the pine nuts on ours and for the kids I left out.



We added a generous drizzling of olive oil and some feta cheese after we plated.




We all enjoyed.  I would reduce the amount of whole wheat flour next time we make this.  I liked the bit of bite that the whole wheat gave but I would have preferred a more tender dough. We loved the combination of the lamb with the tomatoes, garlic and shallots.  We will likely make on a rewind but make some tweaks here and there.