So these cookies owe their inspiration to my lovely friend, Hannah. We were video chatting the other day and she talked about all the lovely things that she’s been making with her gluten free sourdough starter! It put me in the mood to make something but I had less than an hour before my next class so it had to be something quick. Hannah suggested banana bread, a quarantine classic, but I’m embarrassingly behind on my grocery shopping and didn’t have much around. I didn’t set out to make a gluten-free recipe but it was the easiest and quickest with the ingredients I had available. The recipe has five ingredients, most of which you’ll probably have in your pantry. I always have almond flour around because I make macarons frequently but it’s not a hard ingredient to find in most grocery stores.
Now for the tips and tricks with this recipe! This made about 17 bite size cookies and I had to hold myself back from eating most of them! The cookies aren’t very big and the batch size is small so feel free to scale up the recipe to fit your needs. However, I wouldn’t adjust the size of the cookies. Even with using melted butter, these cookies are VERY short/crumbly. This is due to the use of almond flour and makes a very easy crumbly cookie. If they were made any larger, they would probably collapse under their own weight when picked up. The cross-hatching is also super easy to do with a fork, no special equipment required! This recipe is from the King Arthur Flour website and on it, they have several variations for the flavor of the cookie including chocolate/pistachio and maple/pecan. I would start with the basic recipe and expand on that! Even if you wanted to try all the different flavor variations, it wouldn’t take more than an afternoon. So get busy and get baking!
Almond Flour Cookie Recipe
96 grams (1 cup) almond flour
43 grams (3 tablespoons) butter, at room temperature or softened
21 grams (3 tablespoons) powdered sugar
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet.
Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl until a cohesive dough forms.
Scoop out 1 inch balls of dough using a teaspoon cookie scoop and arrange on the sheet. Leave out an inch and a half of room between dough balls.
Use a fork to flatten each cookie, making a cross hatch design on top.
Bake 8-10 minutes or until they turn light brown on top (My oven took about 12 minutes)
Remove and let cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes then transfer them to a rack to completely cool before eating.
I love chocolate chip cookies but I had never attempted a vegan cookie recipe! I had a lovely socially distanced picnic with friends last week and I wanted to bring a baked good to share. In these times of socially distanced socialization, I’ve loved baking for other people to show my love rather than giving them the big hugs that I’d really like to give them! One of my friends is a vegan and as I have been trying to incorporate less animal products in my own life, I thought it was a great opportunity to try out this recipe from King Arthur Flour. Always a great resource, King Arthur Flour didn’t fail me with this wonderful recipe for chocolate chip cookies that taste absolutely delicious and don’t compromise on any part of a cookie!
These cookies are specifically salted right before they are baked and this is the most important part of the recipe. I do have a sweet tooth but with the use of oil in these cookies, they can be a little overpoweringly sweet if you omit the salt. You don’t had to use very fancy salt either, I just sprinkled on kosher salt and whacked them in the oven. I really prefer kosher salt for baking, whether or not it’s called for by the recipe. Although most table salt is iodized, providing an important micronutrient in your diet, it doesn’t pack the same flavor punch that I find when I use kosher salt. Also, I taste kosher salt as more salty if that’s possible so I end up using less overall. Just to be careful, make sure that you have iodized table salt out for regular usage but I recommend kosher salt for most cooking and baking needs.
Some of the reviews on this recipe complained of spreading but I didn’t find this was the case at all. I refrigerated my dough for several hours (roughly 18) and froze the dough for about twenty minutes after I had shaped it. Using a tablespoon to measure the dough out, it makes about 27 cookies but only 26 made it into my oven! You can also add in sourdough discard or make them gluten free! For the discard addition, you can add in 70 grams of discard and omit the additional water the recipe calls for. You may also be able cut the flour amount but I’m not sure I could give an exact amount. To make this gluten free, substitute all the flour for almond meal and be careful to mix until the dough is just coming together. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did and let me know how any of the variations go in the comments!
Vegan Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
241 grams (2 cups) All Purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
213 grams (1 1/4 cup) bittersweet chocolate chips
99 grams (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
106 grams (1/2 cup) packed brown sugar
106 grams (1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon) vegetable oil
71 grams (1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon) water
Sea salt or Kosher Salt to garnish
Whisk together the flour, baking powder and soda and salt. Add chocolate chips and whisk till they are coated with flour.
In a separate bowl, whisk the sugars with the oil and water until smooth. This can take a minute or two but be patient!
Add flour and stir until just combined with no visible flour spots.
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 12-24 hours.
To bake, preheat oven to 350F and line two baking sheets.
Remove dough from refrigerator and using a tablespoon to measure, drop on the lined sheet. Leave about 2 inches of room on each side and freeze for 10 minutes. (They can be frozen closer together but make sure they have the space when baking)
Sprinkle with salt (Do this!!! I forgot for the first batch!!) and bake for 12-14 minutes. If you like your cookies softer, bake for no more than 13 minutes. Bake a few minutes past 14 if you enjoy a crunchy cookie.
So I’m not sure how appropriate it is to call these scones but they sure are delicious! I ended up finding this recipe after discovering that my boyfriend had a container of buttermilk that was going to need to be used within the next two weeks. While I do love my Irish Soda Bread, I wanted to try and find something different that would use the buttermilk. They use the same elements as a traditional scone but they don’t have the same flakiness, I believe this is due to the zucchini. I made these over the past weekend and loved how much it tasted like pizza. I’ve only ever made one other savory scone and wasn’t quite sure how these would turn out. They were more of a hearty scone, probably due to the massive size of most of them and would make a good breakfast or lunch. They are slightly complicated so only attempt if you’ve had a little bit of experience with pastry or biscuits.
These are absolutely packed with flavor, from the zucchini to the sun dried tomatoes to the massive amount of grated Asiago!!! There are several technical pitfalls in this recipe and I was unable to avoid some of them but they still came out delicious! One issue is with the zucchini. While it makes a hearty addition to the scones and adds moisture, zucchinis add wayyyyy too much moisture most of the time. I squeezed out a great deal of moisture with a french press but I could have squeezed out even more. I found that the french press worked well but that I should have put the shredded zucchini inside the press in much smaller batches. You simply cannot get all the moisture out if you have too much in there. The other issue I had was underestimating how much dough this recipe makes. When I originally read about this recipe in the Skinnytaste blog, I thought it would make 12 mini scones. Oh boy, I was wrong on that! It makes 12 full size (generously portioned) scones and I really should have used a bigger mixing bowl. A food processor also really helps in this situation. I used to to both shred the zucchini and cut the butter into the dry ingredients. If you don’t have one, this can be done by hand so don’t get discourage but it will take a bit longer.
Savory Zucchini Scone Recipe
3/4 cup cold buttermilk (I use low-fat but I’m not sure how much it matters here)
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup All Purpose flour
1 cup Whole Wheat flour (You could use only All Purpose but I like the whole wheat)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup or 4 tablespoons butter, cold and cut into small pieces
1 cup shredded zucchini, squeezed of moisture
2 ounces Asiago cheese, shredded (Could substitute Pecorino Romano or Parmesan)
2.75 ounces sun dried tomatoes, minced (about 2/3 cup)
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped
Extra buttermilk to coat
Preheat oven to 375F. Spray baking sheet with non-stick or line a baking sheet.
Combine the buttermilk and egg in a bowl, stirring with a whisk.
Combine flours with baking powder and salt, stirring with a whisk.
In a separate bowl, combine zucchini, sun dried tomatoes, cheese, rosemary and set aside.
Cut in chilled butter into the dry ingredients, by hand or using a food processor until it looks like coarse meal.
Gently fold in the ingredients from step four. Make a well in the middle of the dough and add the buttermilk mixture.
Fold the mixture together until it starts to come together then turn out onto a floured surface. Knead lightly then form into a 10″ circle.
Cut into 12 wedges and brush lightly with buttermilk on the top of each wedge. Place on the lined sheet and bake 25-30 (up to 35) minutes.
Remove from oven and let cool. Eat warm and enjoy!
This is one of my favorite discard recipes. It’s incredibly versatile and can feed a family really easily. During this past summer, I made this recipe at least once every two weeks and it was a hit every single time. This recipe is from King Arthur Flour which has a fantastic repository of sourdough discard recipes. With this recipe, you are able to merge the instincts of a chef and a baker because both creativity and precision are needed to make this recipe a success. For the flavor combinations, go with whatever you or your family like the most. At the start of summer, I paired chicken sausage with broccoli or whatever frozen vegetable was around and I’ve recently taken to pairing Italian chicken with mushrooms which is a delicious combination that I never really appreciated properly! The dough in this recipe can be paired with whatever is in your fridge; just come up with a central element or two and the dough can be tailored to compliment it.
The technical side of this recipe isn’t daunting but the little things can get you. I often pour spices into the dough without proper measurement because it’s more of gut feeling at this point. While fun, improvisation with the dry ingredients can get you into hot water with your balance of wet and dry. If adding more than 5 grams of extra dry ingredients, add a little more water, just enough to make the dough come together. My discard can also be a little sticky sometimes and that mean needing to add more or less liquid to your dough. Also, in terms of using a pizza pan, this most recent bake was the first time that I had used one and I adored it! If you end up making pizza regularly, a pizza pan is a wonderful addition but it’s also another very large pan that will need a home in your kitchen. A regular sheet (half or quarter depending on recipe size) will do just fine. However, I would recommend getting a pizza cutter; they are incredibly useful and I now use mine almost everyday. This recipe can also be halved easily to make a smaller pizza, the pictures on this post are from a halved recipe. If halved, you may need to add slightly more water when mixing. However you get to making your pizza, enjoy the process! Making pizza dough is easy enough to do with the whole family or with a loving partner so have fun and go make that dough!
Sourdough Discard Pizza Recipe
227 grams (1 cup) discard sourdough starter
113 grams (1/2 cup) warm water
298 grams (2 1/2 cups) All Purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast (use 3/4 teaspoon for active dry)
Assort spices or pizza dough flavoring (This is more of a gut addition, I add spices based on the flavorings I enjoy, my most common additions are onion powder, garlic powder, and oregano or Italian seasonings)
Combine all ingredients and knead for about seven minutes by hand or with a mixer. The dough should be smooth and not sticky.
Roll the dough into a ball and place into a greased container. Let rise 4 hours. For a quicker rise, double the amount of yeast)
Once risen, the dough can be divided to make two twelve inch pizzas or one large pizza. Either way, grease a pizza pan or sheet pan and stretch it to desired shape.
Let rest 15 minutes. If the dough has creeped back any, you can re-stretch it. From here, you can bake immediately or wait until the dough reaches your desired thickness. I usually allow an addition 20-30 minute rise to get a nice solid crust. Cover the dough during its rise to prevent a dry crust forming over the dough.
Preheat oven to 450F.
Add sauce and toppings to pizza but hold back the cheese. Bake un-cheesed pizza for 5-10 minutes (shorter for thinner pizzas).
Remove from oven and add cheese then bake a further 5-7 minutes.
Remove from oven and enjoy! It stays good in the refrigerator for up to five days!
So this started as a big mistake on my weeks produce box. Since coming back to Baltimore for a slightly strange school year, I decided to sign up for Hungry Harvest which is a service meant to rescue ugly or excess produce and was started at the University of Maryland! In my first order, I didn’t quite read the fine print while customizing my order and accidentally ordered 30+ pluots…Yikes! While I do love pluots and my boyfriend has grown fond of them, there is no way that the two of us could consume that many without starting to hate them. At the suggestion of Jason, I turned my pluots into a modified tarte tatin and it was delicious to eat! I will concede that this is not a “true” tarte tatin as it does not have a caramelized bottom but I think the maple syrup base adds more flavor than the overwhelmingly sugary taste of caramel. I would like to make some changes to the recipe at some point so if I have time to experiment, I’ll update the recipe.
For this recipe, I ended up making my own puff pastry which I think went rather well for my first attempt. There weren’t as many layers as I was hoping for but I think it was an impressive showing for my first attempt. Pluots also have a high volume of water and they may have soaked the pastry a little too much, retarding the rise of the layers of pastry. Either way, Jason and I have nearly polished off the whole tart in two days which I think is rather impressive! I also remembered after the fact that for a liquid filling, you normally cut a little steam hole in the top of the tart in order to let the moisture escape. Guess who forgot their steam hole? I can’t wait to make this again with a few improvements. I also really enjoyed the process of making puff pastry, with a cold countertop, it wasn’t nearly as daunting as it looks on television. I did have much more time to leisurely make the pastry which I think is key for keeping the butter chilled. The pastry can be made throughout the day between larger tasks and then rested overnight before use. Obviously, if you’re rushed for time, do NOT try to make your own pastry! As Ina Garten says, if you can’t make your own, store-bought is fine. Especially if you’re a novice baker, pastry can be tricky and finicky and you may have more failure than success but I encourage you to keep going, you will get there one of these days!
Pluot Tarte Tatin Recipe
For the Puff Pastry (Paul Hollywood’s Recipe)
Makes double what you need for the tarte tatin, roughly 600 grams
150 grams chilled Bread flour
150 grams chilled All Purpose flour
Pinch of salt (1/4 teaspoon)
2 large eggs
100 milligrams cold water
250 grams chilled unsalted European-style butter
Combine the flours, salt, eggs, and water in a large bowl and gently mix to an even dough. Transfer to a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes or until smooth (up to 10 minutes). The dough will feel tight. Shape into a bowl, wrap in plastic, and chill in the fridge overnight.
Flatten the butter into a rectangle, 15″x 7″ and return it to the fridge, overnight or for at least an hour to harden.
Roll out the dough to 24″x 8″ and place the butter on the dough so it covers the bottom two-thirds of the dough.
Fold the exposed dough on the top over the butter and then fold the bottom butter covered third over the top flap. Pinch the edges together to seal and put into a plastic bag to chill for 1 hour.
Take the dough out of the fridge and place on a slightly floured surface. Roll it out to a rectangle and fold the bottom and top quarters to meet in the center. Fold this dough in half and chill in a bag for another hour. (This is a book turn! It creates lamination very quickly so if you want more layers, make the next two turns book turns rather than single turns)
Take the dough out and roll it into a rectangle. Fold down the top third of the dough and then fold up the bottom third to make a square of dough. Wrap and chill for another hour. (This is a single turn)
Repeat step 6 and chill overnight. After overnight chill, the pastry can be used at will or frozen up to three months. If frozen, thaw in the fridge the night before.
For the Tarte Tatin (Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Plum Tarte Tatin recipe)
Serves about 8,
600 grams ripe pluots, de-pitted and halved
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided
120 milligrams maple syrup
30 milligrams water
320 grams puff pastry, rolled into a circle
Vanilla Ice Cream for serving
Preheat oven to 425F.
Warm a cast-iron skillet over medium heat.
Add pluots to the pan with the water and cook for 1 minute. Place them carefully for decorative purposes, a tarte tatin is turned upside down to serve so the base ends up on top.
From a height, sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon over the pan and evenly pour the maple syrup over the pluots. (The cinnamon is sprinkled from a height to prevent it being burned in the pan, which is v unpleasant, and it helps it to spread evenly on the pluots)
Place the pastry over the pluots and using a spoon or your hands, press the pastry to the edges and over the pluots. Trim excess pastry and use it to patch any holes. Use a paring knife to cut a small hole in the center to allow steam out.
Bake at the bottom of the oven for 20-25 minutes or until the pastry is golden and puffed up.
Using GOOD and LONG oven gloves, place a plate over the skillet and flip the tarte out of the pan. If properly baked, it shouldn’t stick at all.
Dish up with ice cream and sprinkle remaining cinnamon on top. Enjoy!
These crackers are so GOOD! I had not made a ton of crackers before this summer but discovered that it was a great way to use up my discard and began making them all the time! Earlier in the summer, I would make these and they would last a week or two, but with my brother home, my parents are lucky if they can get a taste before they disappear into the black hole of my brother’s appetite! My parents and I use them for our cheeseboard but my brother prefers to eat them as snacks throughout the day. It’s a versatile cracker that you can do a lot or a little with and it’ll turn out really tasty each time!
That being said, this recipe is adapted from the King Arthur Flour website but I’ve made some pretty significant changes. One is to the type of flour used; while the original recipe used whole wheat flour, I’ve started to substitute with einkorn flour and I love the additional flavor! The einkorn flour was purchased for another recipe but I think I used it all on these crackers because I couldn’t get enough of the slightly cheesy taste these crackers had. I also have started to substitute olive oil for the butter that was used in the original recipe. Often times, you can substitute one type of fat (such as butter) for another (olive oil) in recipes and it won’t change the final product very much. Other times, if you substitute a fat, you could ruin a whole recipe so do so judiciously. I switched to using olive oil because it cut down on the amount of time that the dough needed to rest before being rolled and cut. I would also highly recommend that if you end up making these crackers frequently, get a pizza cutter. It makes a world of difference when you’re trying to cut the dough into cracker size. My crackers are often not the neatest in the world because I cut them quickly but they’re still delicious!
A note on the flavor combinations. You can do a LOT with these crackers! My brother’s favorite flavor combination is dill with lemon vinaigrette and sea salt but there’s many other combinations to be had. Another favorite is rosemary and orange or thyme and lemon. I try to use fresh herbs but the dried often pack more punch so if using fresh, double or triple the amount of herbs. I’ve also experimented with adding in a little cheese powder but I found that is was both unnecessary with the einkorn flour and often caused the crackers to burn a little faster than usual. Be creative and have fun, these crackers provide a great base for you to experiment with!
Sourdough Discard Crackers Recipe
113 grams Einkorn or Whole Wheat flour (1 cup)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
248 grams sourdough discard (1 cup)
1/2 tablespoon dried herbs of choice (up to 2 tablespoons for fresh herbs)
57 grams olive oil (1/4 cup) (Can use butter)
Additional olive oil and kosher salt to finish
Mix together all ingredients to make a smooth, non-sticky, cohesive dough. May have streaks if using olive oil, that’s okay!
Divide in half, put onto parchment-lined baking sheets and let rest at room temp up to an hour.
Preheat oven to 350F.
Flour a rolling pin, the dough, and the parchment that it’s resting on. Roll out to 1/16 of an inch. Paint lightly with olive oil and sprinkle salt onto the dough. Cut into 1 inch squares with a pizza cutter or a knife.
Prick each cracker with the tines of a fork before putting it in the oven.
Bake for 25 minutes. Halfway through, reverse the placement of the pans in the oven so that the top goes on the bottom and the crackers that were closest to the oven door are now closer to the inner wall of the oven.
Remove once baked and let cool on a wire rack. Once cool, eat and enjoy or store in an airtight container. For full flavor, they last no longer than a week out in the open but if you’re okay with a lil less flavor, they’re good for up to two weeks.
This is one of the more personal recipes that I could possibly share. This recipe, as the title says, comes from my grandmother. For years, I heard my mother longingly speak of her mother’s date nut bread, which would be made as Christmas presents for loved ones. During our extended sheltering at home during the pandemic, my mom and I found a big family recipe book as we cleaned out the garage, which just so happened to contain a recipe for my grandmother’s famous date nut bread. I feel really lucky that we were able to find the recipe book in the first place and reading through it helped to connect me to my mother’s side of the family. My grandmother passed away shortly after my birth and I’ve always wished that we could have had just a little bit more time. While making this recipe, I felt just a little bit closer to my grandma.
This recipe is definitely a little interesting to make but is not hard at all! One of the first parts of this recipe calls for boiling water mixed with baking soda and dates. While I couldn’t find any real reasoning for this in the rest of the recipe, after a little bit of internet sleuthing, I surmised that the water is meant to help the baking soda dissolve and not get stuck on the dates. I also think that this recipe may be meant for two small loaf pans rather than the medium sized loaf pan that I used. In the recipe notes, it said that it made two loaves, but I found it barely filled my tin. I almost made it in my individual scone pan from King Arthur which may have helped it to bake quicker and more evenly. Due to the size of the pan I baked it in, I had to add an extra 20 minutes to the baking time during which the edges started to get a little crispy. I really enjoyed this recipe and it made me smile to see my mother very enthusiastically devouring the date bread! I hope you enjoy baking but be warned, it takes longer to bake than it does to assemble the ingredients!
Grandma’s Date Nut Bread Recipe
1 cup dates, chopped and de-pitted
1 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon shortening/butter (original recipe called for shortening but I used butter this time)
1 cup nut meat (I chopped pecans but any sweeter raw nut would work, candied nuts may be too sweet to eat in the bread)
1 1/2 cup All Purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 325F.
Combine the dates, boiling water, and baking soda and let stand while doing step 3
Cream together sugar, eggs, and shortening/butter. Ensure it is thoroughly mixed and almost fluffy.
Combine dates and sugar mix. To the combined mix, add the nut meat, flour, and vanilla extract.
Pour into loaf pan and bake 1 hour, 20 minutes if using a large loaf pan or 1 hour for smaller loaves. Check for doneness by sticking a knife in the middle of the loaf, if it comes out clean then it’s ready to come out of the oven.
Let loaf cool and enjoy warm or at room temperature with a bit of butter slathered on top or just plain if you like!
In my quest to find more things to do with my sourdough discard, I’ve turned to Instagram. I follow Jenna Fischer (better known as Pam from the Office) who is a fellow sourdough enthusiast and she featured a baker called Artisan Bryan a few weeks ago. I started looking around Bryan’s blog and found a recipe for Johnnycakes. I had never heard of them and decided to give them a try! I will say, my first attempt was a total flop. The dough was raw and pretty much inedible…I ended up turning it into a LOVELY bread pudding which I have happily consumed for the past few days. Not to be discouraged, I decided to re-do the recipe and have dubbed the ensuing product Mickicakes because I’m not sure how related my final product is to the original johnnycakes.
Through my trial and error, I changed quite a few elements of the recipe in order to suit my palate. Although not as close to the original as hoped, these are still a delicious but very caloric treat with a coffee. Bryan mentioned in the instagram comments, in response to a question, that without the coconut milk, the cakes don’t taste the same and I have to agree. Both of the times I made these, I really like the subtle addition of flavor from the unsweetened coconut milk. I also found that the pricks from the fork serve a purpose other than decorative. Like Irish soda bread, these cakes are incredibly dense and need the pokes from the tines of a fork to allow for heat distribution for a proper bake. I also ended up doubling the baking time as I found that in the original recipe, the 15-20 minute bake time left my johnnycakes extremely raw inside and very pale. I hope that you enjoy my new recipe, it’s inspired by my love for hot cross buns and contains some of the same ingredients such as candied lemon or orange peel and raisins! This recipe made about 12 130 gram balls of dough with an extra munchkin sized ball of dough that was under 100 grams.
Sourdough Discard Mickicake Recipe
500 grams All Purpose Flour
250 grams sourdough discard
200 grams unsweetened coconut milk
150 grams unsalted butter at room temperature
50 grams raisins
50 grams candied lemon peel
Dash of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (I used 1/4 of a teaspoon and it was fine but I felt that it could have used some more salt so use whichever amount you prefer)
Combine all ingredients and knead until smooth and there are no chunks of butter. Add additional flour if needed to prevent a sticky dough.
Let rise at room temperature for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 375F.
Divide and shape dough into 130 gram balls. Place the dough balls on a lined oven sheet and flatten with your palm.
Prick all the way through multiple times with a fork.
Lightly brush with extra coconut milk.
Bake for 40-45 minutes to start or until golden brown. Ensure that they are golden brown before removing because the raw dough does not taste good at all.
Micki's Bakery 