Rose's Alpha Bakers: Hamantaschen

This week's bake with the Rose's Alpha Bakers is Hamantaschen, small cookies eaten during the Jewish holiday Purim (learn more about Purim). Hamantaschen are traditionally made with a poppyseed filling, however I like to save my poppyseed-eating for cakes and muffins so I improvised and did more of a rugelach-type filling. In all seriousness, I like poppyseeds - but not that much - so I thought a cookie filled with poppyseed paste would be too overpowering.

My poor little Hamantaschen - which were supposed to bake up in a cute little triangle shape - were a complete fail. They all opened during baking so I ended up with more of an open-faced mini mince pie cookie. I followed the directions exactly in terms of the chilling of the dough, the rolling of the dough (thickness and size of the cookie), and I don't think I overfilled them, so I'm at a loss of what went wrong. Maybe I should have used a folded over corner instead of pinching them closed.

I also wish I had mixed up the apricot lekvar with the nuts, raisins and cinnamon-sugar so it all melted together better, but...oh well. Even if they don't look the way they should, they were tasty.

you can see the flaky pâte sucrée crust...

...but they are all flat flat flat...boo hoo!

mise en place for the cookie crust

I prefer to make my pie crusts by hand rather than in the food processor as instructed in the recipe (seems easier to get a real feel for the dough, you don't over-work the crust, and you don't have to wash the food processor bowl and blade afterward). It's easy to do by hand - just go fast and keep your hands well covered in flour (so their heat doesn't melt the butter). This cookie dough was actually a pâte sucrée crust, which has sugar and an egg yolk, so it's a sweeter and more sturdy dough than regular pie crust.

In these first four photos I'm incorporating the butter into the flour-sugar mixture. In the next four, I've added the cream and egg yolk and am forming the dough. The dough is then divided and given a rest in the fridge before rolling it out.

incorporating the butter

finishing the dough

filling for the cookies

Rose raves about muscovado sugar - and uses it in many recipes - so I bought a 2-pack of huge(!) tubs of light muscovado sugar from Amazon.com. It was a bit expensive - for sugar - but much, much cheaper than buying the small packs available at the grocery store.

smells delicious!

cutting out my cookie rounds

I wish I knew what went wrong. Maybe I left the openings too large? Maybe I should have sealed the edges with water instead of an egg wash? Too much filling? All of the above?

They are a bit more open than the pictures in the cookbook, but I pinched those edges pretty good! Oh well. I'll just pretend I did it on purpose...mini open-faced mince pies ;)

cookies assembled, given an eggwash, and chilled

a close-up

every single one opened back up...

mini open-faced mince pies

still delicious!

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: Gingersnaps

I skipped last week's Alpha Bakers recipe, Golden Orange Panettone with Chocolate Sauce, because I'm not a fan of Panettone (no candied fruit for me, please!)...however, everyone's loaves look so beautiful and delicious that I may try it another time with orange zest and raisins. Or, I may just go all in and make my own candied orange peel, as did several of the Alpha Bakers.

Moving on to this week of the bake-through adventure with the Rose's Alpha Bakers were the quick and easy Gingersnaps, from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Baking Bible. These cookies were delicious and my British husband declared them very authentic!

lovely crackled gingersnaps

a close-up view

As promised by Rose, the cookies were chewy, not hard and crunchy as some gingersnaps are, and the cookies baked-up with a gorgeous crackly top. Add a cuppa or glass of cold milk and they were the perfect snack.

The only thing missing from the recipe (IMO) was actual, fresh ginger, so I added some! I absolutely love ginger so would have been happy with more, but having never made the recipe before I didn't want to push it. I added about 1 teaspoon. Bakers tip: use a spoon to peel ginger...saves you from worrying about cutting yourself with the knife and you don't lose any of the ginger flesh.

Overall, it was a very simple recipe. Mix up the dry ingredients, melt the Lyle's Golden Syrup and butter, add that to the dry ingredients and stir, then add the eggs and...you're done! Shape into balls and bake. Bonus? The house smelled amazing while they were baking!

Here are my photos:

mise en place...very easy!

peeling my fresh ginger

and grating it...watch your fingers!

I added the fresh ginger into the dry ingredients

the golden syrup and butter are melted together

everything all lined up and ready to mix

adding the golden syrup-butter mixture to the dry ingredients

mix until it looks like sand

add the eggs, mix again, and voila the dough is done!

roll into balls...

...and bake

the smell was amazing!!

enjoy with a nice cup of hot tea

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: Almond Coffee Crisps, part II

After my epic canelé post from yesterday, here is a short and sweet post about a second take on some delicious cookies.

Last week, in week four of my Rose's Alpha Bakers group, was the delicious, light and crunchy Almond Coffee Crisps from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Baking Bible.

I enjoyed them so much that I decided to make the recipe again to give to my family on Christmas. However, this time I used some cocoa powder instead of espresso powder since some family members dislike coffee. Ta da...here are my Almond Chocolate Crisps. They are very similar to the Coffee Crisps...except chocolatey, as you'd expect :)  I highly recommend this (and the original) recipe. It's very quick to make and the cookies are delicious!

Almond Chocolate Crisps - all bagged up and ready for gifting

Almond Coffee Crisps on the left; Almond Chocolate Crisps in the right

I only took a few photos from yesterday's Almond Chocolate Crisps, but you can see the step-by-step photos of the original Almond Coffee Crisps here.

I used some cocoa powder instead of espresso powder

the cocoa is so fine that it blended too well into the flour, so I didn't get any
of the pretty speckles that I had with the coffee version

which to eat first, coffee crisp or chocolate crisp...dilemma, dilemma!

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: Almond Coffee Crisps

The latest in my whirlwind baking adventure with my fellow Rose's Alpha Bakers is Almond Coffee Crisps from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Baking Bible. The cookies are buttery and flaky; and because they are made without eggs, they are very delicate and melt in your mouth.

crispy with a hint of coffee flavor

Rose described these light and crumbly cookies as "crisp, fragile, ethereal" and they really are. I'd advise making these when you're going to serve and eat them all because they are very delicate (I broke two just lifting them from the baking sheet...you might think I did this on purpose so I could eat them, but that was just a lucky coincidence!). They were also very fast and easy to make, another plus.

These cookies would go wonderfully with coffee or tea...a tea party, perhaps? I'd love to have a little tea party and serve finger sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam, cookies, tiny pastries, and, of course, tea! These delicious cookies would fit in very well on my tea party sideboard!

mise en place for the cookies - so simple!

I was a little skeptical that the tiny bit of ingredients above would make 36 cookies...but, of course, they did (note to self: never doubt Rose!). The cookies spread quite a bit when baking, so what starts off as little cookies rounds when raw bakes up to nice 3" cookies when baked.

I decided to skip the final step of dusting each cookie with more espresso power. I wasn't sure if that would be coffee-overkill, or just make a mess. Either way, I'm glad I skipped it. There is still a hint of coffee flavor, but it's not overpowering. Overall? Yum! 

I processed the toasted almonds with a few tbsp of the flour mixture until finely ground
and then added the rest of the flour mixture and processed again

the result is similar to almond flour

the sugar and butter are creamed until smooth

then the flour is mixed in...

...and pulsed until the dough comes together

the finished dough is kneaded a few times to make sure all of the butter
is completely mixed in. The dough is extremely easy to make and work with.

tiny little balls of dough are measured out - 10g each...so small!

all of my balls of cookie dough

a dozen balls of dough placed on the cookie sheet...

...and then pressed into flat rounds

they spread quite a bit when baked, into thin, crisp cookies

and done! A delicious plate of almond coffee crisps

time to make a pot of coffee and enjoy a cookie

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: The Ischler

It's week three with Rose's Alpha Bakers and up this week is The Ischler. The Ischler is a light, flaky, almond cookie, traditionally made with a layer of both apricot lekvar and a thick chocolate ganache as the filling. I was in a time crunch this weekend (end of the semester paper time!) so I opted to just make the chocolate ganache filling. Next time I will make the apricot lekvar because the recipe looked delicious!

I think I'll call my cookie The Modified Ischler.

Yummalicious! A light nutty flavor, a very tender cookie, and chocolate. A win-win.

Rolled cookies are generally not my favorite to make...rolling...waiting...rolling...waiting. I'm too impatient! However, these cookies were pretty easy to make and I had them done in about 4 hours on Sunday morning.

The cookie itself tastes very similar to my all-time favorite Christmas cookies. If you like either making or just looking at pictures of gorgeous decorated cookies, I highly recommend the book Cookie Craft: From Baking to Luster Dust, Designs and Techniques for Creative Cookie Occasions.

powdered sugar and almonds are processed until fine

so far, so good, until...

opps...made a mistake and added the egg and vanilla before the butter...
It was early Sunday morning, I guess I was still half asleep!
Instead of trying to mix it, I just tossed in the butter and hoped for the best.
It came out fine in the end :)

flour is added and the dough is pulsed until it is crumbly and comes away from the bowl

I added a bit more flour here (about 2 T). The recipe says that the dough will be sticky, but mine was super sticky because I had a hard time measuring out 1/2 of an egg. Even with my scale, I couldn't get 22 grams perfectly, so I ended up using a bit more egg than was called for. This resulted in my dough being very wet, so I added a bit more flour to get it to form a ball in the above step.

the dough is divided into 4 parts, pressed between plastic wrap and then refrigerated...
I actually just rolled mine nearly all the way to save time later

after 2 hours of chilling, it gets a final roll and then it's ready to cut

a quick bake and they're done! They smell fantastic.

the cooled cookies and ingredients for my chocolate ganache

the chocolate pieces are melted and the hot cream is stirred in...
voila, smooth and silky ganache

so cute! I love the chocolate peeping out...

delicious! Light and flaky with a bit of chocolate.

Bye for now...