Irish Soda Bread with Dried Cherries & Raisins

I like to keep it seasonal around here, and with St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, this is the bread for me. If you follow along with the photos on Recipe Girl’s post, you’ll see that this bread couldn’t be easier to make.

Daintea Bread

Just look at this lovely loaf! Cookie Baker Lynn offers up this lightly sweet cake as an antidote to the quantity-over-quality mentality: just a slice (or maybe two) of this lemony bread will satisfy your afternoon hunger pangs. I can see this being the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea.

Salami Rolls

Salami rolls. The name alone makes me want to high-five everyone in my office. What a brilliant idea from Baking Delights!

Sweet Potato Mascarpone Bourbon Bread

This is one of those recipes wherein you consider the name and think, “Yes, I like every single one of those words.” I bet the sweet potato and mascarpone makes for an incredibly moist bread, and the bourbon gives it a nice kick. The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group recently engaged in a bake-off with our Operations and Information Technology group (yes, it gets pretty corporate around here), and I suspect if I had come across She Simmers’s post earlier, I woulda had the competition in the bag. But alas, Knopf Doubleday lost to OPSIT’s well-executed Little Baby Jesus Cake and Lemon Meltaways.

Monkey Bread with Cream Cheese Glaze

Now this is what I meant by those alluring cake-breads. Monkey bread barely falls into the category of bread, considering the biscuity dough is dipped in melted butter, rolled in brown sugar and cinnamon, and topped with cream cheese glaze. Nope, monkey bread definitely falls into the give-me-a-heart-attack dessert category. But I’m not complaining, and neither is Smitten Kitchen.

If this post has given you a hankering for breadmaking, but you’d like to start with the basics, sign up for our cooking newsletter—next week I’m going to e-mail out the recipe for James Beard’s authoritative oatmeal bread recipe.

Our very own Judith Jones has been extolling the virtues of bread baking on her blog, saying, “I have long believed that if you want children to be interested in cooking, start making yeast breads together. They feel something so magical as the dough changes from a sticky mess under their hands to a smooth and bouncy mass that holds together. . . . They also love the shaping and are always surprised at how when it comes out of the oven its shape has changed. It has a mind of its own.” It’s one of the most transformative, magical methods of cooking, letting the chemical interactions of yeast and water and flour percolating together until you have an entirely new invention. And so the Borzoi cooks just had to take it up for ourselves this past weekend, taking on James Beard’s classic recipe for Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread.

First step is to make some oatmeal–yes, cooked oatmeal. I poured boiling water over the oatmeal (cooks very quickly), then added two cups of the flour and the yeast, stirring together. (Claire worked as shutterbug, snapping away as I got out the oatmeal…)

Put the dough in a “warm, draft-free spot and allow to rise, uncovered, until doubled in bulk.” Even though Beard recommended it rise uncovered, Florence saw that the apartment wasn’t quite “draft-free” and so we draped a damp cloth over the bread to keep it warm. (Best place to put the bread is near or on top of a warm radiator–though not too long, or it will over-rise. So I let it hang out in a warmer room for about an hour, plenty of time to double the dough…)

Once the dough has doubled, we punched it down and added salt, salad oil (either olive oil or vegetable oil can work, so we used up the last bit of olive oil in a bottle), molasses, and enough remaining flour to make a stiff dough. If you haven’t made much bread before, you’re looking for the texture of a good stiff lump of playdough, easy to manipulate with your fingers but not dried out. As you can see, it’s the molasses that takes it to an oozy, mud-like texture and color…

Florence started to mix the dough with a spoon, but after a while we couldn’t resist diving in with our hands.

Yes, it ruined my brand-new manicure, but there’s really no better way to mix bread dough than with your hands…and we felt so tough doing it!

Once the dough has come to the texture we wanted, we turned it out onto a floured countertop and started kneading–this is a basic pushing and pulling of the dough, working remaining bits of flour in, moving the dough first away from you and towards you until it becomes nice and springy. (You’ll know you’ve needed enough when the dough springs back when you poke it–the dough will have become elastic, capturing all the gases generated by the yeast, and there’ll be plenty of gluten in the bread to give it a smooth, airy taste.) Beard says about 10 minutes kneading will be sufficient, but you cannot knead too much.

Once the dough came together, we divided it into loafs for three buttered pans (another great thing about making bread at home: you make a lot of it right away, big cost savings–you can always freeze the dough if you don’t want to eat it right away!) Allow the loaves to rise again until doubled in bulk. (Again, give it about an hour–bread-making’s easy to do when you’ve got a stack of unfinished novels calling your name…)

Once they’d doubled, we popped them in the oven an baked for about 40-60 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow. (You can also use the famous toothpick test–if it comes out clean, your bread is done!) Let cool, then slice and serve…

Florence said she could taste the molasses right away, making the bread very hearty, filling, and dense…a great snack Monday morning, when we brought two loaves into the office for snacking! The only problem we encountered was that it went stale very quickly–perhaps this is a result of having no chemical preservatives, those you might find it in a commercial brand. If you want to keep your bread fresh longer, try freezing it and slicing it up as need be, or keeping it in the refrigerator wrapped in an air-tight bag…anything to prolong how many tastes you might get of your culinary invention!

When the new year starts, all of my favorite cooking bloggers share their favorite healthy recipes, vowing to ditch the cake and embrace the quinoa. But Valentine’s Day rolls around, and all those resolutions go out the window: bring on the chocolate! bring on the cream cheese frosting! These are slogans I can get behind.

As a companion to my recent foray into chocolate mousse, here are a few decadent posts from some of my favorite cooking blogs:

Velvet Kisses

Are you kidding me. This is inspired: you make the cake, crumble it up, mush it together with some cream cheese frosting, form “kisses”, and pour chocolate on top. Kudos to you, alpineberry.

Chocolate Puddle Cookies

Puddles…of chocolate… 101 Cookbooks, you slay me.

Double Ginger Snaps

It took me a while to come around to the modest ginger snap, but now I am a convert. The sugar says “I love you, Valentine!” while the molasses says, “We just got pummeled by a snowstorm; let’s stay in.” Perfect for this weekend!

Best of all, Big Girls Small Kitchen offers up a bevy of cookie recipes in this one post, in case you want to surprise your sweetie with a variety cookie tin.

Big Red Cherry Lollipops

These lollipops look so cheery! And just to prove that there will always be a kitchen tool out there that you don’t already have, She Simmers calls for “lollipop molds with grooves for the sticks.”

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Recipe Girl provides us with a useful history lesson: “According to food historians, Amish women would bake these and put them in farmers’ lunchboxes. When farmers would find these treats in their lunch, they would shout WHOOPIE!” Too cute!

Whatever you decide to bake for your valentine, may it (and your holiday weekend) be sweet.

(Click on the image to download a PDF of the recipe card)

The recipe begins, of course, with chocolate. And butter.

Robuchon has us melt the chocolate chunks and “seamlessly marry” them with softened butter.

Purchasing a hand mixer was the best decision I made in 2009. Here, Mary beats the egg yolks to a frothy pale yellow.

Here’s the chocolate mixture with both the egg yolks and whipped cream incorporated.

As you can see, it’s looking a little dry and chunky. While I wrung my hands, cooking veteran Jess Freeman-Slade recommended holding the bowl over a sauce pan of boiling water to soften up the mixture. A bit unorthodox, but it worked!

Now to whisk the eggs whites:

A friendly debate breaks out: is the egg whisk on the cover of The Complete Robuchon decked out in whipped cream or whipped egg whites?  Click on the thumbnail for a larger view and vote:

Folding the egg whites into the chocolate mixture yields a texture that many more of us recognize as mousse. Phew!

Jess commented, “Don’t you always think that there’s something more to folding? Like there’s some technically correct way to do it, but you always end up just waggling the spatula around?” Too true!

The mousse chilled in the refrigerator for an hour while we chilled in my living room. The first half of the Jets v. Colts game was on, and New York was winning! On this high, we served the mousse:

Ooh la la, the mousse looks divine in these stemmed glasses.

A toast to Knopf, Robuchon, and chocolate.

Your humble correspondent:

How…how did that happen? The mousse just…evaporated…

We had a blast making this mousse, even if the Jets eventually lost the game. If you’d like to replicate—or outdo!—our efforts, stay tuned for next month’s cooking newsletter from Knopf for the full recipe. Not subscribed? Sign up here.

For those of us who’ll have to watch from home, do your homework and read Judith Jones’s blog.

I love the holiday season, not least because it holds the promise of starting new traditions. So, when a close friend suggested co-hosting a dinner party to celebrate Hanukkah, I jumped at the chance. It seemed only fitting that our first annual Hanukkah dinner should be a feast that would make Joan Nathan, the authority on Jewish cooking, proud. So, armed with a copy of her Jewish Holiday Cookbook (and a 5 pound piece of meat), we set to work.

According to Joan Nathan, it takes at least 3 hours to cook a 5-pound brisket. With that in mind, we decided to cook the brisket first in order to avoid first sitting down to dinner at 10 pm.

Joan suggests cooking the brisket in a 325 degree oven. Sadly, oven space was at a premium (there was Challah and desert to cook, after all). We improvised and used the stovetop instead.

Into the pot went a marinade of chili sauce, white vinegar and brown sugar. We also added beef stock for extra flavor. Then, we let it simmer. For hours. When the brisket was finally done, it was so tender that it fell apart before getting onto the serving dish. Well worth the wait.

Next, we made potato latkes by onions and potatoes together. Joan suggests using russet potatoes which, because they’re so starchy, work really well. By alternately grating the onions and potatoes, as she suggested, the mixture didn’t blacken in the open air. Putting a silver utensil in the potatoes would have prevent oxidation, too.

Once the potatoes and onions were grated, we added 3 medium eggs, some flour and salt and pepper to taste. Then, we were ready to fry. You can use any type of oil for the frying, although we found that peanut worked best. It held the heat well, allowing the latkes to really crisp up.

The cooked latkes should be drained on a paper towel before serving to get rid of the excess oil. The latkes freeze really well, should you have left overs. We didn’t.

A testament to Joan’s recipe and our hard work?

I’d like to believe so.

Perhaps, it had something to do with the fact that, despite our best intentions to the contrary, we sat down to dinner at 10. But, what a delicious dinner it was!

And, with that, a new holiday tradition is born.

Here’s the thing. My dad doesn’t cook a whole hell of a lot these days. But there was a decade a long while back, between my mother’s death and his remarriage, when, yeah, he cooked his Polish doopa off–to keep me and my brother alive and growing on schedule. And a few of his recipes remain the never-fail kind, especially this one: Bob’s (”preferably Polish”) Kielbasa & Kraut. Family and friends still request it for parties. And when I got married last year, my husband made a special request for it to be served at our wedding celebration. The tastiest and most life-giving example of love we could think to give back to Dad. “Bwah, it’s easy!” says Dad. Yeah, when comfort is key, easy is good. Easy is definitely good.
1 ring of smoked kielbasa (”Preferably Polish.”)
1 ring of fresh kielbasa (”Preferably Polish.”)
1-2 cans sour kraut
2 onions
1 can cream of celery or mushroom soup
pieces of fried bacon (”If you want to build up your cholesterol.”)
Strain sour kraut and rinse. Pre-cook fresh kielbasa. Halve onions then quarter those halves. Simmer onions in juice from fresh kielbasa until soft. Add kraut and start to mix with onions. Add cream of celery or mushroom soup and stir. Cut kielbasa to about 1-inch lengths and add to sour kraut. Heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put on low heat and serve.

Our 5 runner-ups, who also contributed wonderful and heartwarming recipes and memories are:

Judy Dorton
Christy Hawkes
Colleen Turner
Rebecca S. Cox
Candi

For their comments and more visit our Sweepstakes Page. Continue to look for more holiday recipes on Suzan’s blog and find great ideas for quality and economical recipes to keep you warm during these cold months in Cherries in Winter! And don’t forget to visit Suzan on both Facebook and Twitter!

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Snowballs

These cookies are similar to the Mexican Wedding Cookie, but Recipe Girl sneaks some chocolate peanut butter into the centers. In other words, these cookies contain the best surprise ever.

Sparkling Ginger Chip Cookies

It’s not just the sprinkles that make the holiday cookie—you can also rely on two of the most reliable holiday flavors: peppermint and ginger. Heidi at 101 Cookbooks opts for the potent chocolate and ginger combo.

Perfect Peppermint Fudge

Lynn of Cookie baker lynn opts for peppermint in this fudge recipe. I’m keeping my eye on you, fudge. You nearly came between me and fitting into my holiday dress in the Fudge Debacle of ‘08. This year, I am only going to have one fudge square per day.

Aunt Debbie’s Butter-butter cookies

And, yes, it is possible to make a holiday cookie recipe that doesn’t include chocolate. But butter is a must! Alicia at bread & honey reveals her aunt’s recipe for the “UBER CHRISTMAS COOKIE—the platonic cookie, in other words—THE PERFECT COOKIE.” Calling on Plato’s myth of the caves to describe these cookies? My inner English major is salivating!

While we’re on the subject of butter cookies, I might have to pass along a family recipe, too. However, the family isn’t mine, it’s Suzan Colón’s. In her memoir, Cherries in Winter, Suzan writes about how family recipes provide the comfort she—and really, all of us—need to get by in hard times. And Suzan’s recipe for overcoming adversity? Butter cookies. Check out the recipe and read on as the Doubleday gals take it on!

May all your cookies be perfectly baked this holiday season. Warm wishes from the cookie monsters at Knopf Doubleday.