Baking With Anna Olson
It’s been a little while since I baked something from the cookbook. Something new, anyway. I am always looking for a little cookie or something to nibble on in the evenings, so I decided to make these blueberry oat cookies. I always tend to cut sliced cookies thicker than the recommended ¼-inch, I think because otherwise I feel like they are too thin and don’t really count as a snack. To be honest, I was not a fan of these cookies.
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This recipe was fun and simple to make. Pulse all the ingredients except the raspberry jam together, press half of it in the pan and layer the raspberry jam and the rest of the crumble mixture on top. It smelled nice and fruity while baking. Although I was very careful to gently press the crumble top layer, it ended up a bit too compact for my liking.
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It is clear to me now that I really am not good at making meringue desserts. I have tried twice now to make Pavlovas, and they always crack. Very finicky desserts, these. I don’t know what I am doing wrong but I can never get them right. I followed tricks on the internet to try to prevent it from cracking, the main one being to let them cool down in the oven after baking by shutting off the temperature and cracking the door open.
Read MoreI had never before done crème fraîche and although I was nervous to make it as I am with all fermented foods, it was pretty straight forward to make. Mine cultured for 36 hours as it is pretty humid here, and the cream thickened quite a lot. Since I was making this to accompany a dessert, I naturally assumed that this cream would be a bit sweet, forgetting of course that it is fermented with buttermilk so it does taste a bit sour.
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Flour is once more abundant in my home. Well, not abundant but many pounds more than I had a few weeks ago. As such I have ramped up my baking once more and I was excited to try these raspberry, lemon and white chocolate rugelach. I had never heard of these Jewish delicacies, but I am very glad to have discovered them. These were truly one of the best cookies I have ever made. I say cookie, but truly they are more in between a cookie and a pastry. A cootry? A paskie? That sounds better.
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As the weeks of quarantine are prolonged, my supply of flour is decreasing at an alarming rate. I have only a few more recipes’ worth of flour as there is a nation-wide shortage and I have been unable to get my hands on some, so I have to choose my last few bakes carefully. Of course I was looking for a little cookie or hand-held dessert to eat with tea in the evenings. And so came these chocolate-dipped madeleine cookies.
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For the last dessert that I would make before gradually going back to work, I made these creamy lemon squares by popular, or should I say repeated but polite, requests. My boyfriend simply loves anything lemon so I wanted to make this for him before I left. However, my sister makes amazing lemon squares and he often talks about them and compares other (non-lemon) desserts to it, so the bar was set high! Due to this I almost expected to be defeated and not do The Lemon Square justice. Fortunately, as usual with Anna Olson’s recipes I need not worry.
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I had been craving cupcakes since the beginning of the quarantine and had yet to bake some. Normally I would go for moist comforting chocolate cupcakes, but yesterday I decided to try something new and made these spiced coconut cupcakes. The spice blend for this recipe seemed interesting and I was quite curious about the black pepper. I don’t think I’ve ever used black pepper in a dessert recipe before! Turns out that it works very well indeed.
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The next quarantine baked goods that I decided to try was these cute lime and coconut medallions. These cookies are essentially shortbread, as they are tender and a little crumbly. When I formed the logs the mixture seemed quite dry and I was doubtful that it would bake properly and hold its shape, but I needn’t worry. Once in the oven the butter melted and held everything together.
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Since these langues de chat cookies are based on the same batter as the Tuile Cookies, I made these in the same day and this was quite time efficient. I simply prepared the batter, used half to make the tuile cookies and the other to make these adorable langues de chat, this way I got more variety of cookies with the same amount of work.
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Valerie 