Ahh, baking!
I very rarely feel more at home than I do in the kitchen baking or cooking. As I'm a guy, it must be the public school homosexual recruiters getting to me.
The following two recipes, I'm afraid for the more international crowd, are my mother's as she taught them to me, and therefore all measurements are Imperial, not Metric.
Molasses Crinkles
You will need:
1.5 cups shortening
2 cups brown sugar (I use a half-and-half mixture of dark and light brown)
2 eggs
1/2 cup molasses
4.5 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons ginger.
Mix the shortening, sugar, eggs and molasses thoroughly. Stir the dry ingredients in. Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls. At this point you'll want to roll them around in a bowl of sugar (usually plain white granulated, though we tried demerara recently, if you're not feeling cheap, and it was equally as delicious). Put them on greased baking sheets, and bake them 10-12 minutes at 375 F; they will, true to their name, have crinkled, and should be nice and soft but should not fall apart when you take them out with a spatula.
Americanized Julekaga
This is a harder recipe, but I assure you it will be very, very rewarding, certainly enough to impress the hell out of a high-school crush (although she still didn't go out with me). It was passed down to my mother by my great-aunt, who lived in Norway in her 20s. This is an Americanized version of a popular Norwegian Christmas bread (so Craisins instead of lingonberries). I have no idea why the family has always spelled it Julekaga, which is the Swedish spelling, rather than the Norwegian Julekake, but we do.
You will need:
16 oz evaporated milk
2 packages of yeast (that's equal to 4.5 teaspoons)
1 pound of golden raisins (my great-aunt uses citron here, which however my mother doesn't like so she substituted golden raisins)
1 pound raisins
1 pound Craisins
3 cups of sugar
2 tablespoons of cardamom
1/2 pound of butter
3 eggs
1 tablespoon salt
and flour.
First things first. You will want to make a sponge for the little yeasties to start doing their things, first of all, so combine the evaporated milk (for non-native English speakers- that's the liquid that comes in a can, it's not a powder) with enough warm water to make one quart and about half a cup of flour, and throw the yeast in there. Take a fork and swirl it around until the yeast is thoroughly dissolved. Now, in your trusty mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar, and then add the eggs. Add the sponge. Then add the salt, the cardamom and the fruit.
Now we have the hardest part: the flour. There is no exact measurement for the flour, because the point is that you're trying to get a certain texture, and depending on the factors in your kitchen that might be anywhere from four to seven cups of flour. It should be nice and stiff- it shouldn't be a liquid anymore, it should be good nice dough. I can't really pin this down to an exact science. Then knead it (my mixer has a kneading hook), and set it aside to rise until doubled in bulk. Punch it down, put it in greased bread pans, let it rise again. This recipe is theoretically supposed to make two loaves, but it usually seems to make three. Put the bread in the oven at 325 F for (the card says 2 hours, but you'll want to check on it every once in a while- julekaga is an art, not a science). Take it out, enjoy! It makes great toast or just plain eating.
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Topic: The Bay12 Baking and Cooking Thread (Read 3012 times)