Millionaire's Shortbread, Take One

Malcolm and I were hoping to make a fougasse this weekend, but the GBBO version called for bread flour and the King Arthur Baking version called for dry milk, both difficult to find. So that will have to wait for a future bake. Instead I decided Millionaire's Shortbread would be fun to try.

The shortbread portion was easy enough. We got that in the oven and baked then started on the caramel while that was cooling. The kids and I all took turns stirring, though some of my control/anxiety comes out on things like this and I was constantly itching to take back over the stirring since I really wasn't confident in the kids' ability to actually stir properly and avoid burning. I was so worried about it burning and about following the instructions exactly (which just talked about getting it to thicken and not so much about the color), that I forgot to use my brain and previous knowledge about what color caramel should be. And didn't really make that realization until it was already poured on top of the shortbread and in the fridge. But it at least seemed thick enough!

Final product. Shortbread probably could've used a slightly longer bake as well, just to brown a tad more. Caramel definitely needed more caramelizing. Texture is right and it tastes fine, but doesn't have a very strong caramel flavor at all.

So now we have a 9x13 pan of very rich cookies that are just okay. Ryan and everyone had looked at me like I was out of my mind when I suggested we just make an 8x8, but apparently they weren't realizing how rich these would be. 

I also think the shortbread layer could be thicker to better balance the quite thick caramel layer. I'm thinking next batch we use the same amount of shortbread in the 8x8 pan and then halve the caramel and chocolate amounts, which should give us a shortbread layer that's twice as thick with caramel and chocolate layers as they are here.

First Harvest and Bakewell Tart

The kids were supposed to be at Camp Quest this week, but that is, of course, cancelled this year. They did get camp shirts still though!

And we picked our first snap peas and carrot from our little raised bed. We may not get many more snap peas, because mildew has taken over the plants. I'm hoping that if we're able to plant earlier next year that will lead to more harvest before we have such issues. And I found a recipe for something that's supposed to be preventative (I tried it out, but didn't seem to be very effective at clearing up the issue after it's taken hold). I'm okay with not getting much this year as we got started late and I went in knowing it would primarily be experimental this year. We had one carrot that we were positive was ready, so pulled it out to find this:

Lots of leafy green, very little carrot! We had a good laugh about it, but it still tasted good. And we have several others growing that will hopefully get a bit longer than that!

This weekend's bake was the classic Bakewell Tart. The combination of flavors is mentioned/used so frequently on GBBO, that this became a must-try. We used a King Arthur Baking recipe again, but switched out the raspberry jam for cherry. We'd decided we wanted to try out frangipane and this particular combo of frangipane-cherry flavor. This bake also gave me the opportunity to try out the ceramic baking beans I bought with some of my birthday gift cards, so I was excited about that.

I threw in my pie chain weight (that was never sufficient on its own) as well, just for good measure. I think the ceramic would've been plenty though. And this is the first time I've tried a blind bake where the bottom of the pastry crust didn't bubble up! So already pleased with this purchase.

We used one of our new pastry bags to help spread the frangipane. I meant to start the spiral in the center and failed, much to my chagrin. But used a knife to smooth it all out after anyway, so guess it doesn't matter much in the end. Everyone took a turn trying out using the pastry bag.

Gareth and Mal enjoyed sprinkling the sliced almonds on top before it went in for the final bake.

Finished! The edge of the crust didn't turn out very neat. This time I tried leaving excess crust on while it blind baked, but wasn't really sure of the best way or time to trim the excess and have it look neat. I'll have to experiment with different approaches to see what works best for us.

Nice layers of jam and frangipane. 

It's tasty, but the almond extract is the predominant flavor by far. This looks like the typical proportions based on pictures on the internet, but I still wonder if we needed more jam and maybe less almond extract. I looked up a variety of frangipane recipes, and some use almond extract while others use vanilla (and rely on just the almond flour for the almond flavor), others use a combination of almond and vanilla extracts, while still others don't use any extracts at all. So lots of future experimentation that we can do with this recipe to determine what our preferences are.

All of us enjoyed it, except for Mal. He wasn't much of a fan day of, but tried it again today and decided he did like it after all. This was another one that was pretty easy, so we'll have to make it again. We also have custard tart on our "to-do" list, which is one I'd really like to get good at since I love custards, pudding, mousse and such things.

More Quarantine Baking

We really don't have anything else to do, so more baking it is! A couple weekends ago we opted for a repeat of the florentines, which were thoroughly enjoyed by all. This past weekend we returned to something new, but stuck with an easy cookie, making some "Magic in the Middles". Quite easy (though definitely follow the recommendation in the reviews to chill the peanut butter middles) and so tasty.

Mal helping mix together the peanut butter and powdered sugar. I took over after a bit since it took some work to get them to thoroughly combine. Then we divided the mixture into 26 and set them on a cookie sheet in the fridge while we made up the chocolate dough. Gareth learned the hard way when making these again that you shouldn't overwork the peanut mixture. If you spend too much time handling it, the peanut butter gets warm and soft. Then you have to leave it in the fridge longer than the dough takes to mix (if it's soft it is harder to wrap the dough around the peanut butter.)

Weighing out ingredients for the chocolate dough:

Everyone helping to roll, fill, and coat in sugar (and apparently we didn't quite get all our produce put away after picking up groceries and decided to just work around it).

I got the job of flattening the cookies with the bottom of a glass. 

Finished product!

They were declared "Amazing!" by Ryan. Rather than having Gareth make dinner today, we had him make another batch of these. Don't worry, we didn't eat just these for dinner (thought it's tempting!) - I made up dinner instead.