Homemade baklava!

I had leftover phyllo after having made the me-friendly Can't Get Knafeh of It chocolate bar, so after slicing an additional 70g off for the purposes of making a second bar if I so choose, I was left with 340g or about 75% of a full recipe's worth of phyllo for Fifteen Spatulas' homemade Baklava recipe. I'd made it in the past — substituting in a mix of pumpkin and sunflower seeds for the nuts — and was very pleased with the results. Kara, however, is not a fan of sweetened citrus, so she asked that that component be omitted in the future. Here are the ingredient amounts and substitutions I used for this reduced-sized batch (which was baked in two loaf pans, rather than one large pan):

Filling (of which 150g went unused, so everything here can be reduced to 70%)

• 500g raw, hulled, unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp fresh-ground cardamom (husks removed)
• ¼ tsp fresh-ground cloves
• ¼ tsp salt

Pastry component

• 340g phyllo dough
• 95g vegan butter, melted

Syrup

• ¾ cup water
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ cup honey
• 1 cinnamon stick

I think I'd like to try halving the amount of sugar in the sugar/honey syrup next time, since the dessert's a bit sweeter than I typically prefer, but I admit that the overall flavour profile has mellowed since we had our first slices last night after dinner. It seems less sweet today.

Mini loaves of bread!

Here's the recipe I used as a reference. I ended up subbing in 1/3 of the flour with whole wheat flour, as well as 15 g of vital wheat gluten. I also used melted margarine in place of the olive oil.

Refined-sugar free matcha cake!

A recent trip to the local "hippie" store saw me bringing home my first ever tin of matcha powder, which called to mind the green tea castella cakes which were ubiquitous in our old neighbourhood. I thought I'd try adapting the refined-sugar free cake recipe I developed several years ago. This version, then, uses:

• ⅔ c. coconut milk
• ½ t. apple cider vinegar
• 1 c. pitted dates (the Medjool ones were unavailable), soaked and drained
• ⅓ c. avocado oil
• 2 t. vanilla extract
• 1 c. packed all-purpose flour
• 1 T. matcha powder
• ¾ t. baking powder
• ½ t. baking soda
• ¼ t. salt

This cake was baked in a greased loaf pan for about 20 minutes at 325° F. The cake is very lightly sweet, tender and fluffy. It's a hit!

Snow day, so cookies!

Kara helped me bake up a batch of Mrs. Fields Chocolate Cream-Filled Hearts from the (very) out-of-print Mrs. Fields Cookie Book: 100 Recipes from the Kitchen of Mrs. Fields, or, at least, I think that's the book this recipe came from. Caty got it as part of a Scholastic order back when we were in elementary school, and I've long-since photocopied out the recipes I liked most. Strangely, I think this is the first time anyone in our family has made this recipe, but it's a keeper!

My only complaint has more to do with the butter substitute I use than the recipe itself. I've been using Earth Balance Soy Free in my baking so that I don't risk causing digestive troubles for myself, but it doesn't handle as well as butter does: it's much softer, which means that any attempts I've taken at making a sugar cookie (as in this case), results in very crumbly dough. I find I have to let it warm considerably before there's any structural cohesion while raw. When it's baked, it makes a good cookie, but getting it there is a task!

I also used a mini can of coconut milk for the heavy cream, and added a pinch of salt to the dough and the ganache.

These are good!

Much Better

This cross-section is from the second batch, following the two aforementioned letter-fold double turns and a full rise. These are the best homemade croissants I've made.

Kinda-Fail: Homemade, From-Scratch Croissants

It looks like my technique for attempting to make dairy-free croissants hadn't changed in over a decade. I'd make up a batch of puff pastry, roll it, and end up with under-baked dough in the resultant pastries. I've recently been following YouTuber Alex French Guy's croissant series, and realized early on that I wasn't going to bother with the more technically-intensive steps (like building a lamination device), but that I could reasonably aim for his recipe technique, which involves starting with a yeast bread and laminating that. I've had great success with the bread recipe from The Complete Guide to Cooking Techniques, and wanted to try using that dough as my jumping-off point. And so it was, with Kara home with a cold and all of us house-bound with blizzard conditions yesterday, I worked on a croissant dough.

Sadly, I suspect I didn't give the dough enough time to rest between rollings, and found that the croissants weren't "flaky", so much as pleasantly bread-like with odd cracker-like leaves. I gave the remaining half-batch of dough another two letter-fold turns this morning in the hopes that I'll have created a flakier pastry. We shall see. If this doesn't work as intended, I think I'll modify my technique so that I'm brushing or rubbing the fat between the layers, rather than trying to encase it. I'm thinking that the soy-free margarine I'm using, because it's softer than butter when refrigerated, just doesn't have the structure I need to keep it manageable, and that's affecting the texture.

Homemade mini-baguettes

Yesterday, using ChowTown's recipe for Vietnamese-style baguettes as a jumping-off point, I made my very first ever batch of (mini-)baguettes! My recipe follows:

• ½ cup warm water
• 1 T. sugar
• 1 T. Fleischmann's Traditional Yeast
• approx. 390g white bread flour (I needed a little less than ¼ cup more)
• 1 T. vital wheat gluten
• 1 ½ t. salt

Dissolve the sugar into the warm water, then add the yeast. Allow to foam. Meanwhile, thoroughly mix the bread flour, vital wheat gluten and salt. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and knead — adding flour as needed to reduce stickiness — until you have a smooth, moist (not wet, sticky or shaggy) dough ball. Leave to rise in an ungreased bowl in a warm, draft-free place for ~40 minutes.

"Punch down" the dough and turn out onto a lightly-floured countertop/work surface. Cut the dough into four, approximately equal-sized, parts. Pull each dough ball into a rough rectangle, then roll tightly into log shapes. Leave to rise, well-floured, for ~20 minutes under loosely-laid plastic wrap.

Preheat oven (preferably convection) with pizza stone to 400°C. When oven has come to temperature, gently lift each loaf and place on pizza stone. Slash vents in tops of loaves, then mist liberally with water before closing oven door. Bake until your house smells like fresh-baked bread, or when loaves are a mouth-watering golden brown.

If you've got the willpower for it, allow to cool, raised on a cooling rack.

I used mine to assemble pseudo Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, made with leftover French-style braised beef, chopped red bell pepper, chopped shallots, Daiya provolone slices and Follow Your Heart Chipotle Vegenaise (which is not only soy-free, but much akin to crack cocaine, I imagine).