English Muffins- experiment 1, not so great

I do so love an English muffin.  A lot of people talk about the nooks and crannies and how it's the butter inside those nooks and crannies that makes an English muffin stand out amongst a crowd of biscuits.  For me, it's not just nooks and crannies- it's everything that an English muffin becomes. 

A stage for eggs benedict, a platform for my version of bagels and lox, and a simple way to enjoy butter and jam without eating it with just a spoon.

When I decided to try English muffin recipes, I went with the All Recipes version found here.  I of course changed the recipe a little:  I substituted 4 cups of the 6 cups of flour for whole wheat flour and salted butter for shortening.   Maybe if I had followed the recipe to the letter of the law, it would have come out better.  But let's digress a little on what I didn't like.

This recipe came out more dense than I would have liked; a partial by-product, I'm sure, of using whole wheat flour.  It tends to give you a denser texture than regular flour.  However, the proportion of liquid to dry seemed off to begin with and I had to add a little water and a little flour to get the dough texture just right.  In addition, the dough was really kind of tough.  I think I probably overworked the dough in an attempt to get it to flatten and combine the way it should have.  But ultimately, even if I had worked the dough less or used a different kind of flour, I'm fairly certain, even from the reviews, that I would only have gotten me "kind of" close to where I wanted to be with these English muffins. 

Next week, I'll be trying this recipe.  It's a completely different method, but the reviews have been fantastic thus far.  Plus, who better to trust on the scientific end of baking than Alton Brown?

Christmas baking

No, I haven't quit baking.  I know I've been MIA on the blog, but Christmas baking and gifting took over my life.

To make a long story short, here's what I baked for Christmas: 
1. Espresso Macarons (2 iterations and the second was the best)
2. Blueberry Cherry White Chocolate Spicy Oatmeal Cookies (say that 3 times fast)
3.  Bailey's Truffles
4. Oreo Truffles
5.  Peppermint Bark Black Bottom Blondies (failed- should have put the peppermint on at the end, not while baking)
6.  Double Chocolate Chip Cookies in Peppermint Bark
7.  Ornament Shortbread (only gave two as gifts, the rest broke in travel)
8.  Chocolate Dipped pretzels with heath bars, nuts, or non-pareils

The macarons were my favorite the 2nd time I made them.  They were easy, quick and unique.  The first round I was still messing with proportions, so apologies to the Riley family who got the 1st version.

The oatmeal cookies were easy and painless.

Both truffles were easy, they were just never ever ending.  I thought I'd be rolling truffles until I keeled over.

The blondies were an epic failure.  I stupidly baked the crushed peppermint in the white chocolate blondie batter and it cause the blondies to implode and get stuck in the pan.  I had to throw them all away, which made me quite sad.

The double chocolate chip cookies taught me how to do an all butter cookie that doesn't get too thin and crispy when it bakes.  But more on that later.

The shortbread was too fragile for transit.  I should have known when the cat killed half of the cooling cookies by knocking them off the table to move to a different kids gift, but I persevered until we got to Cincinnati.  The were replaced with the chocolate dipped pretzels which were much easier to make and decorate.

I made 100 of each cookie, so as you can imagine, writing a blog post about each would have cut my sleeping time each night to 0 hours.  That said, I learned a lot this Christmas.

1.  Ghirardelli chocolate is far and above the BEST chocolate for baking.  The flavor and consistency is just wonderful.

2.  I've advertised a half butter half shortening cookie in the past to help prevent a thin, crunchy cookie and give you a nice chunky, chewy cookie with slight crisping on the edges.  It's been a personal struggle to continue using shortening in my baking as I try to change my diet to include only unprocessed, whole foods, but it was hard to try and find a solution that gave me the texture I wanted and the natural food state as well.

This Christmas, I tried baking with lard.  It sounds disgusting, but it is all natural.  Lard gave me the consistency I sought, but it just lacked a depth of flavor  that butter and butter flavor shortening give you.  When I was making the double chocolate chip cookies, I was in a hurry.  My blondies had just failed.  I needed another cookie, and fast.

I found a recipe I liked that was all butter- and I didn't have the time or the energy to try figuring the right substitutions.  So I made it as prescribed, but when the dough was completed, it was quite simply too warm to bake.  It was gooey.  So I rolled the dough into 4 logs, wrapped them in wax paper and refrigerated them overnight.  I sliced them into cookies the next morning and when I baked them, I was shocked to see my cookies not overly thin and spread. 

I've yet to try this on all my drop cookies, but I think I'm onto a secret many others have already found- the all butter cookie needs to be cold before baked.

Truly, it's not a secret, it's just food science.  Butter has a lower melting temperature than margarine, shortening, lard, and other fats you might use in baking.  When a cookie is all butter, it melts faster, spreads thinner and produces a thin, flat, crispy cookie.  Cookies with the chewy texture, lumps, and rise often are not all butter.   Can't wait to try my new theory on my other cookies!

Not all butter cookie

All butter cookie