I've joined a second baking "club," the
Avid Baker's Challenge. The ABCers bake a monthly selection from Flo Braker's
Baking for All Occasions. The March cake is an Old World Braided Coffee Cake, page 166.
I was a little nervous about the braided finish and there isn't a picture in the book so I printed out some of the pictures on this
artisan bread site to aid me as I went along. I work much better with a picture or two than by just reading - especially with something like this that seems complicated - so I wanted a little photo guidance. To my relief, the braiding actually turned out to be pretty easy (although my first strip was really tiny so I had to cut the last strips off and tuck them under the first two baby-strips).
Overall, this was a pretty easy cake/bread to make (it's called a coffee cake but the texture is more like a bread, in my opinion) and a small piece was very filling...I can't wait to have another slice tomorrow morning with coffee. The dough itself sort of reminded me of a Portuguese sweet bread - which I love - but the filling was a bit too "wet" for my taste and did not really meld or get incorporated into the dough like most coffee cakes I've had. I think that's why it seemed more like a bread with a nutty-cinnamon filling.
So, even though it wasn't quite what I expected in the end, I really liked working with the dough - it was so well behaved and easy to roll out. I think if I try this one again I would skip adding the egg whites to the nut mixture, use a little less cream, and then maybe roll it up like a roulade, slice it and bake it like cinnamon buns and then top it off with some cream cheese icing. I think adding some lemon zest to the dough and lemon juice to the filling would also be delicious.
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| mise en place for the dough |
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| sticky sticky sticky dough |
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| ready to knead |
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| five minutes (of kneading) is a long time, but it came out nice and smooth |
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| I used pecans instead of walnuts |
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| finely ground |
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| I also added some freshly ground nutmeg |
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| mise en place for the filling |
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| time for a wine break...la dee da... |
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| nuts and cream mixture, waiting for the whipped egg whites |
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first rise done and ready to roll out
(didn't exactly double in size, but my fingertip indentation remained in the dough) |
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| it was so easy to manage this dough (unlike my poor Kouign Amann) |
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| something went wrong with cutting my first little strip but the rest was easy |
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| all done...cool! |
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| baked to a golden brown |
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| it smells so delicious |
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| yum |
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| time to sample a slice |
Bye for now...
