I had a bout of insomnibaking last night and this morning. I went to bed at a reasonable time, but then woke up at about oh-dark-thirty, thinking about focaccia. Yep, strange thing to be dreaming about, but I have been ruminating on this recipe for a while, so maybe less of a surprise than one would think. It is actually the base for a pizza/focaccia recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, and then I started drawing with veggies and grains. Anyway, believe it or not, I got up, made the dough for this and went back to bed. Then, as I always get up at about 5 AM, before work I made the rest of it and baked it off just before work. It is actually really good, so even though it is “artwork” (it actually looks like a 4 years old’s drawing), you can eat it. I could see an Italian restaurant serving this as a starter with olive oil and sea salt. Nom nom nom.
Breads, Breakfast/Brunch, Sweet Snacks
Cinnamon Swirl New Year’s Pretzel
Cinnamon Swirl New Year’s Pretzel
(Grosse Zimt Neujahrs Brezel)
Happy New Year! Happy to have 2020 in the rear view mirror and I am hopeful that 2021 may be somewhat better. Here is this year’s Rendition of my annual Neujahrs Brezel (New Year’s Pretzel). A I have explained in the past years, in parts of Germany, it is traditional to bake these large, sweet (that’s not salt, that’s pearl sugar) pretzels. Like in some other places (France, Spain, etc), traditionally a coin or trinket is baked into the treat and whoever find it, has good luck for the coming year. In order not to have dental bills in the coming year (and seeing I am solo), I skipped the hidden coin, but I did “stuff” the inside with cinnamon-paste, so it’s actually a gigantic cinnamon roll masquerading as a pretzel. What’s not to love, right?
2020: THE YEAR OF BANANA BREAD. Unofficial … or was it Official? … Food of the Pandemic. Rivaled only perhaps by our sourdough starters. Who knew there would be so much banana bread in this year? I think that I might have ten new recipes this year alone. And I couldn’t help but make one more loaf just to shut this year down. May there be lots of other recipe in our futures and thanks for being there this year. Tomorrow will be just another new day and we can make and bake and share something new and different.
Today’s Christmas Project Experiment (in advance of Christmas morning, in case it turned out to be a complete disaster) was this Spiced Cinnamon Cardamom Swirl Wreath…. essentially a whole lot of little cinnamon buns arranged ad then baked together in a wreath. You can pull it apart, taking a little or big swirl as you please. It’s absolutely delicious and came out pretty much as I expected (there is always that moment when you put it into the oven and the baking puts it out of your control, and you wonder if it will stay as pretty as it un-baked, but it did end up quite nice). Yay for experiments gone right!