Sour Cream Coffee Cake

This week I’ve baked a sour cream coffee cake.  Coffee cake does not actually have any coffee in it, but rather it is a cake that is often served and eaten with coffee.  This recipe comes from a different book from the Culinary Institute of America: The Culinary Institute of America Cookbook: A Collection of Our Favorite Recipes for the Home Chef.  This book, as you can see from the title, is unlike their other books in that it is targeted at the home kitchen.  It produces much smaller quantities and uses volume measurements for just about everything rather than weights.

Here is the mise en place for the coffee cake.  I’ve got too much butter out here, all you really need is 3/4ths of a cup.

This is the measured ingredients for the streusel filling.  Were I to make this cake again, I would make a second batch of this streusel, omitting the chocolate chips to use as a topping.  Also, if you like nuts, then some chopped nuts would go nicely in this streusel.

The streusel should get mixed and then set aside until later.

Then the dry ingredients also get mixed and set aside.

The wet ingredients, except the sugar and butter, go into a third bowl.

Then they get mixed and set aside.

The butter and sugar go into the stand mixer.

This was my issue with this recipe.  This is the fourth bowl I’ve had to use to make one coffee cake.  You could probably go without the bowl for the streusel and mix it in the bowl for the dry ingredients, but that still leaves you with three dirty bowls.

The butter and sugar get creamed together with the paddle attachment.  Then the dry and wet ingredients get mixed in, alternating them, a third at a time.

Then half the batter goes into the pan.  I’m using an angel food cake pan here, but a Bundt cake pan, a loaf pan, or any cake pan would do.

With half the batter in the pan, top it with the streusel mixture.  Then you can swirl it into the batter slightly with a wooden skewer, so that you don’t end up with just a flat layer of streusel in the final cake.

The streusel then gets topped with the other half of the cake batter. 

If you made streusel for topping the cake, you would put it on top the cake now.  Or depending on the cake pan, you may want to put it into the pan prior to adding any batter.

The coffee cake is done when it is golden brown on top and a skewer comes out clean.

After cooling for a while in the pan, it should be removed and moved to a wire rack to complete cooling.

And of course, here is a close up of the coffee cake, ready to be served.

Kitchen Sink Cookies

This post I decided to make some Kitchen Sink Cookies.  It is my own recipe based loosely on the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Tollhouse.  It was inspired by the flavor of the month cookie for June from Cougar Mountain Baking Company: Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal. 

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter

1/2 Cup Peanut Butter

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar

3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar

2 Eggs

1 Teaspoon vanilla

1/2 Teaspoon Fresh Nutmeg

1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

1 Teaspoon Salt

1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1 3/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour

2 Cup Oats

1 Cup Chocolate Chips

 

Here’s the mise en place for the cookies.  Well, without the eggs since I forgot to include them for the picture.

Here I’ve grated the nutmeg using a Microplane grater.

Measuring out the peanut butter.

The butter and peanut butter get mixed together and then creamed with the sugar.

Here’s the creamed sugar, peanut butter, and butter.

Then the remaining wet ingredients and spices get mixed in.

Here’s the recipe slowly taking shape as I decide how much of each ingredient I’m going to use.

Then the dry ingredients, except the chocolate chips, get mixed in.

Then the chocolate chips get folded into the cookie dough, so that they don’t break up.

The dough gets rolled into flattened balls and put on a cookie sheet.  I always use a silpat on top of an airbake cookie sheet when baking cookies.

They bake for about 14 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

The recipe makes about 2-3 dozen cookies, depending on how large you make each cookie.

Sticky Buns

I grew up on sticky buns. My mother would make them for breakfast for special occasions. We would often have them on Christmas morning and other times throughout the year.

Sticky buns are essentially the same thing as cinnamon rolls, but rather than coating them with icing, they have a caramel topping.

This recipe is again out of the The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. The bread dough here is actually quite similar to the dough from the King Cake, only with less lemon and no nutmeg.

Here’s the mise en place. I’ve chosen to go with good quality butter (Plugra) here since it’ll be used not only in the dough, but the caramel topping. Since the caramel’s flavor comes pretty heavily from the butter, the best butter is going to give it the best taste.

Starting the dough by creaming the butter and sugar together.

The creamed butter-sugar mixture. A good base for enriched dough and cookies.

Just a single pristine egg, whisked up before going into the dough.

In goes the flour, buttermilk, whisked egg, and other ingredients.

Then, just bringing the dough together with the beater attachment.

Afterwards, kneading the dough with the dough hook. Ready to be shaped.

Shape the dough into a boule and into an oiled bowl to rise.

While the dough rises, time to make the caramel. More butter and sugar is creamed together along with some vanilla.

The caramel mixture. It doesn’t look much like caramel, because it hasn’t been cooked. It will be cooked and turn to caramel when the sticky buns cook.

Some cinnamon sugar for the filling of the sticky buns.

The dough has risen and is ready to be rolled out.

One way to tell if the dough is ready is to press your finger into the dough and if indentation stays, then it’s probably ready. If the dough rebounds then it definitely needs more time to rise.

The dough gets rolled out into a rough rectangle.

Some melted butter is brushed on then the cinnamon sugar is sprinkled onto the dough.

A close look at the cinnamon-sugar.

The dough gets carefully rolled up along the long edge. The dough stretches a little bit when you do this as you can see since I ran out of space on my board.

The caramel mixture goes into the bottom of the baking dish.

Another close up of the caramel mixture.

The rolls get cut out. You can use a really sharp bread knife, or use some thread and wrap it around the roll and pull and it will make a nice clean cut for you.

A close up of a cut roll.

The rolls get placed into the baking dish. They then set to rise until they double or push into each other, mostly filling the dish.

A close up of the rolls in the dish.

Here’s the sticky buns mid-way through the baking cycle. You can see how they’ve risen and are touching each other and nearly filing the baking dish.

Once they are out of the oven, they cool for a little while before being flipped out. The bottom side of the baking dish where the caramel mixture was becomes the top of the finished sticky bun.

One of the good things about them, is there is something for everyone here. For those that like a little crust on their sticky bun, the outer edges and corners are for them. The interior sticky buns are softer and were always my favorite growing up.