ABC - English Muffins

I can't tell you how long I've been wanting to make English Muffins. So it should be no surprise that they "accidentally" landed on the recipe list for the Avid Baker's Challenge :o)

You don't have to be British to enjoy these! :o)

As you might know, we're baking King Arthur Flour recipes this year for ABC. It's always nice when a KAF recipe is accompanied by their blog post for extra tips and (step-by-step) pictures. Needless to say, these English Muffins were incredibly tasty and fairly easy to make. I doubt I'll be buying the store bought ones again.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

Eight-Grain and Seed Pan Loaf

I love visiting my library and going home with a stack of baking books. Most of the time, I browse and read through them, the way "other people" read through novels. Sometimes a recipe catches my attention and I have to bake it ASAP. One of those recipes is the Eight-Grain and Seed Pan Loaf from the book Bread Making by Lauren Chattman. I made it twice already and the second time I took (more) pictures and wrote down my changes so I could post it on my blog.

Chock full of grains and seeds. Yum!

Some of you may be familiar with a monthly online baking event called Bread Baking Day (#BBD) started by Zorra. This month's BBD (#58) is hosted by Cindy. This month's theme could not have been more perfect: Breads with Seeds and Flakes. I was happy to oblige :o)

ABC - Cheese-stuffed Crusty Loaves

Happy April Fool's Day!! This month's ABC recipe is no joke: Cheese-stuff Crusty Loaves. As you might know, the ABC bakers are baking recipes from the King Arthur Flour website.

Two cheese-stuff crusty loaves

Although mine looked like beehives filled with liquid cheese (haha), they sure tasted ridiculously good. I filled my loaves with a mixture of Colby Jack and Mozzarella cheese, dried minced onion, garlic powder, dried basil, and some special green olives from Morocco marinated in a spicy Harissa sauce.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - No-Knead Chocolate Cherry Pecan Bread

Chocolate Cherry Berry No-Knead Bread

This month's recipe for the ABC bakers was the ever-so-popular No-Knead bread. The King Arthur Flour recipe we made was a Chocolate Cherry Pecan bread. I made some changes by using mini chocolate chips and instead of just dried cherries, I used a mix of dried cherries and other berries (cranberries, blueberries and strawberries). Since I can't eat pecans, I simply omitted them. I briefly considered substituting almonds and although I love almonds, I'm not too crazy about them in bread because they get a bit soggy.

There may have been a bit of confusion around this KAF recipe. The recipe on their site differed slightly from the recipe on their blog. They have a pretty good explanation as to why that is. I decided to go with the recipe in the blog because I liked the step-by-step pictures :o)

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Boston Cream Pie

Orange-flavored Boston Cream Pie

This month's ABC project is Boston Cream Pie. Guess what? It's not really a pie. It's a cake. As a matter of fact, it's Massachusetts' official state dessert and it has its own Wikipedia page. When I saw the Boston Cream Pie recipe on the King Arthur Flour website, I knew I had to make it. The cake looked so soft and fluffy, the pastry cream so silky smooth, and the chocolate glaze so luscious. Then when I baked it, and ran into issues, it started to look like it was going to be the cake from hell (that just looked pretty to lure you in). I'm exaggerating a bit, of course, but I did run into issues, so my problem solving brain already started thinking of a Plan B and came up with a Boston Cream "Trifle" if things went really wrong :o)

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.