Whole Grain Baking

Jay came over for burgers - I've been wanting to make these again but have been waiting until I could get figs at the market. Finally! I made these with turkey instead of beef this time, and they were really good. The cake.... well, I had issues. It didn't look the best but it turned out okay in the end.

• Born in Berkeley Burgers (Food Network Challenge, Build A Better Burger III)
• Roasted Baby Beets
• Grilled Bread Salad with Tomatoes & Spicy Greens (Fine Cooking #58, July 2003, p. 38)
• Chocolate Stout Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 422)

I've been so obsessed with bread lately, so I figured it was time to make up something from Whole Grain Baking again. Chocolate cake - easy, really good, but I thought the frosting was way too sweet.

• Devil's Food Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 370)
• Easy Chocolate Frosting (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 436)

These falafel patties are actually made with pinto beans and include jack cheese and cumin. They're easy to make and delicious. We loved the avocado spread, too - we served them up with leftover soup from last night. The patties would be great homemade veggie burgers, served on a whole wheat bun. Just before dinner I whipped up these shortbread, which are thin and crisp and contain ground rolled oats. They're really tasty - they remind us of an oat topping on a fruit crisp. I added a note to this entry on the cheese we had before dinner, because it's really nice.

• Arina Goat Cheese Gouda
• Southwestern Falafel with Avocado Spread (Cooking Light, August 2005)
• Scottish Shortbread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 332)

Still using up those lemons! This bread is good. Not sweet. As usually quick and easy to make. It uses a mixture of flours (white whole wheat, oat, all-purpose) and doesn't taste whole grain at all.

This is my second attempt at this bread. The first loaf was made using rapid-rise yeast, which apparently isn't the same as instant yeast. I couldn't find instant yeast anywhere, so I ended up having to order it from King Arthur Flour. This loaf is still a little flat on top, but it rose much higher than the last one. It's a good bread, easy to make and really tasty. It uses both whole wheat flour and AP flour.

• Honey-Oatmeal Sandwich Bread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 197)

Larry requested these cookies. They're tasty, but mine turned out kind of flat. Butter wasn't cold enough? I'm not sure, because I chilled the dough before baking. Maybe they just need a bit more flour. Anyway, they're still good. Another winner from Whole Grain Baking.

• Sugar and Spice Drops (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 325)

For small Christmas gifts this year (for neighbors, etc.) we decided to give out little homemade s'mores kits. I made marshmallows and graham crackers, and we wrapped them up with a bar of Valrhona chocolate.

I thought I was going to use the graham cracker recipe from Whole Grain Baking, but I had a copy of Peter Reinhart's new book, Whole Grain Breads, checked out from the library, and there's also a graham cracker recipe in there. So I made both.

Both doughs were extremely easy to make and work with. I made both last night and refrigerated the dough overnight before baking. The crackers from Whole Grain Breads had a nicer color due to the addition to molasses, but they are also more wheat-y and heavy because they use graham flour (coarse whole wheat flour). The only source of fat is from the added milk, and there's also honey in there for sweetener. The crackers from Whole Grain Baking use a mixture of all-purpose, whole wheat and barley flours. I'm a big fan of barley flour. Sweetness comes from granulated and brown sugars, and there's also butter - mixed in cold, like in pie crust.

The winner was Whole Grain Baking. We liked the addition of butter and they just tasted nicer. They turned out kind of rustic looking since I don't have a dough docker. My only complaint is that the color is a bit pale, but that's easily fixed.

• Graham Crackers (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 167)
• Graham Crackers (Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, p. 296)

Tonight was not my best cooking night. My timing was all off, but I partially blame Fine Cooking - their cooking times for a 4-pound pork roast were way off in this recipe. Everything was still really good, especially the fregola, which is a small rolled and toasted pasta from Sicily. The idea behind making a huge pork roast for just three of us is that it's enough to provide leftovers during the week. We didn't especially like the pudding cake. The flavor was really good, but the pudding part of it was weird.

• Roasted Pork Loin with Maple-Mustard Crust (Fine Cooking #90, December 2007, p. 38)
• Fregola with Wild Mushrooms, Sherry & Cream (Fine Cooking #90, December 2007, p. 42)
• Fennel Layered with Potatoes & Breadcrumbs (Tortiera di Finocchi e Patate) (Fine Cooking #90, December 2007, p. 49)
• Maple Brown Sugar Pudding Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 418)

I made this cake so we would have something yummy for the flight to Italy. It's really tasty. The top is very crumbly. It's great as a not-too-sweet dessert or as a coffee cake.

Another delicious recipe from Cooking Light - I no longer subscribe to the magazine, but I pick up the special issues every once in a while. It seems to cut down on the risk of ending up with some of the mediocre recipes that end up in the magazine. We also really liked the brussels sprouts. They ended up nutty with a nice texture, nothing like the Brussels sprouts of our childhood, which were probably frozen and then steamed and served plain.

I think this gingerbread is one of Larry's favorites from Whole Grain Baking. It's delicious, and really quick and easy to make. One notable ingredient is brown sugar corn syrup, which surprisingly is NOT carried by my local Whole Foods, but is carried by the Pak-n-Sav across the street. I almost subbed regular corn syrup instead but decided at the last minute to check Pak-n-Sav. There is a huge flavor difference between the two, and I'm glad I found it.

• Pork Chops with Ginger-Cherry Sauce (Cooking Light, May 2006)
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Dijon, Walnuts & Crisp Crumbs (Fine Cooking #89, December 2007, p. 57)
• Roasted Potato Planks with Rosemary and Lemon (Fine Cooking #49, March 2002, p. 82b)
• Gingerbread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 425)

Barb, Steve and Kent came over for one of our traditional pre-ZAP dinners. We're all volunteer leads for the January festival, so we get together a few times over the year to meet and brainstorm. This was easy to do on a weeknight because everything was done ahead of time. The only thing I did tonight was re-heat the stew, make the mashed potatoes and assemble the salad.

The stew is my usual bastardized version of this old Julia Child recipe. I grind up the veggies into a thick gravy, and only add mushrooms and pearl onions as vegetables. The pound cake was okay. I think I baked it too long. It wasn't my favorite thing from Whole Grain Baking, that's for sure.

• Goat Cheese, Pesto & Sun-Dried Tomato Terrine (Fine Cooking #61, Holiday Baking 2003, p. 98c)
• My Best Beef Stew (Food & Wine, January 1996, p.34)
• Butter Lettuce with Poppy Seed & Tarragon-Crème Fraîche Dressing (Fine Cooking #86, July 2007, p. 49)
• Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes with Chives (Fine Cooking #81, November 2006, p. 61)
• Chocolate Pound Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 387)
Wine: Valdez 2005 Simoncini Late Harvest Zinfandel. We are big fans of Valdez and picked up this bottle at a wine shop in the city. It was delicious. We also had wine that Kent and Barb and Steve brought... but I'm too lazy to note those here.

Jay came over for dinner, and we all really liked the meal tonight. I love a good roasted chicken. Larry and Jay both really loved the gratin, which isn't creamy but has lots of layers of very thinly sliced potatoes (I used my v-slicer). The pound cake is one of the better cakes from Whole Grain Baking.

• Rosemary Split Chicken (Restaurant Favorites at Home: A Best Recipe Classic, p. 170)
• Potato, Thyme & Olive Oil Gratin (Fine Cooking #74, November 2005, p. 50)
• Garlicky Braised Kale with Sun-Dried Tomatoes (Fine Cooking #42, January 2001, p. 49)
• Lemon Cornmeal Pound Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 386)

Our neighbors Chris and Assana came over for a casual Labor Day dinner. We used the grill for the appetizer and chicken, and did the rest inside. The grilled crostini was pretty good. We liked the five-spice chicken thighs better, although these were also good, as was the corn saute. I don't usually like tiramisu, but I loved this dessert.

• Grilled Goat Cheese Crostini with a Tangle of Marinated Roasted Peppers (Fine Cooking #87, September 2007, p. 42)
• Grilled Rosemary Chicken Thighs with Sweet & Sour Orange Dipping Sauce (Fine Cooking #87, September 2007, p. 31)
• Corn & Mushroom Sauté with Leeks & Pancetta (Fine Cooking #87, September 2007, p. 37)
• Summer Wheatberry Salad (Fine Cooking #28, September 1998, p. 39)
• Fresh Berry Tiramisu (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 406)

Wine:
- Rafanelli 2001 Zinfandel (Dry Creek Valley, California)
- Gamba 2004 Estate Zinfandel (Russian River Valley, California). The favorite of the night.
- Valdez 2004 Rockpile Road Zinfandel (Rockpile Road, California). Delicious, but also big and boozy.

Jay was here for dinner (Sunday night, of course). We all loved the chicken thighs - excellent flavor, easy to make, and very moist. We also liked this corn saute better than the last one. The mashed sweet potatoes were good, and the tomatoes came from the garden.

The chocolate stout cake was an experiment, since I made the Fine Cooking version a few months ago. I believe this one is the winner - Larry really loved it. This one was a little more difficult to put together, since it involved slicing a standard 9-inch cake round into two. It also made too much ganace, and frosting it was kind of messy. But it turned out great.

• Grilled Five-Spice Chicken Thighs with Soy-Vinegar Sauce & Cilantro (Fine Cooking #87, September 2007, p. 31)
• Corn Sauté with Ginger, Garilc & Fresh Cilantro (Fine Cooking #87, September 2007, p. 37)
• Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Marsala (Cooking Light, December 2000)
• Heirloom Tomato Salad with Fresh Mozzarella, Basil and Olive Oil
• Chocolate Stout Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 422)

Wine: Rafanelli 2001 Zinfandel (Dry Creek Valley, California). Delicious. Rafanelli has been kind of hit-and-miss over the past few years, but this is drinking really nicely.

This chicken is good and so fast, but the tomato salsa was a bit acidic. Lots of potential, but next time I'll add the sherry vinegar a little at a time. I whipped up the biscuits first, and was able to make the chicken while they were baking. They're really good, light and fluffy and flavorful.

• Grilled Chicken Breasts with Sun-Dried & Fresh Tomato Salsa (Fine Cooking #65, July 2004, p. 86C)
• Parmesan-Pine Nut Biscuits (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 77)
• Trader Joe's Pear & Gorgonzola Salad

Wine: Bartholomew Park 2002 Estate Zinfandel (Sonoma County, California). A marginal Zin.

Back to baking after a few weeks away from it. I thought this cake would be good for Larry to take with him to Reno this week - and he really loves it. He thinks this is the best thing yet out of Whole Grain Baking. I delivered a couple of slices to my neighbor and more slices to her boyfriend, who loved it also.

This is a simple cake - it smells warm and comforting. It's 100% whole grain and also contains apple juice for moistness. It's got crystallized ginger and chopped toasted pecans and powdered ginger, along with other spices. This is a definite make-again.

• Brown Sugar-Spice Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 377)

We had some leftover bananas that were overly ripe, so I figured this would be the perfect time to make banana bread. The bread is easy, as the title indicates. It's got 100% whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat), plus honey and dark brown sugar for sweeteners. I like the addition of cinnamon and nutmeg... but I think I've had better banana bread. It's good. Just nothing special.

• Easy Banana-Walnut Bread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 545)

More food for the trip to Yosemite - even though this is a cake, we can eat it on the trail or for breakfast. It's absolutely delicious. It's dense, like a pound cake. The sugary orange glaze is soaked into the hot cake after it's cooked, and it makes the cake kind of sparkly. The aroma is wonderful, too. I took this cake out 5 minutes early, and I think I could have taken it out even a few minutes earlier.

• Orange Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 379)

I made these cookies in anticipation of our trip to Yosemite this weekend - I figured they'd be good trail food on the hike up to Half Dome. They really just taste like yummy ginger snaps. I love them, so does Larry. I like that they have candied ginger in them, but it's ground up with a bit of the flour so it's dispersed throughout the dough. These cookies are 100% whole grain, using rye and spelt flours. I cooked them on the shorter side, so they're chewy rather than crisp.

• Molasses-Rye Snaps (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 326)

I really wasn't sure about this cake. Cornmeal in a cake is appealing to me, but neither Larry or I are that crazy about cranberries, and I really don't like cooked raisins. But I decided to make it anyway, after I found frozen cranberries at Whole Foods.

The cake is easy to make. I used finely ground cornmeal along with a bit of unbleached all-purpose flour, so it's not 100% whole grain. The flavor is kind of like that of cornbread crossed with a pineapple upside-down cake (which I'm also not crazy about), but the tartness of the cranberries contrasts with the sugary top so it's not an overly sweet cake. The cornmeal cake is very much like a cornbread and isn't sweet at all. I served the cake warm as suggested, and Larry said he would like it even better with some vanilla ice cream. We both decided we really liked it, although it took some time for it to grow on us.

• Cranberry-Cornmeal Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 378)

I'm not so crazy about oatmeal cookies, especially if they have raisins like these do. These are made with 100% traditional whole wheat flour, plus some rolled oats. I chose one of the variations in the recipe and ground up a third of a cup of the oats in the food processor (to make puffier cookies).

Larry and Jay really liked these. I had a few bites of one, and I even liked them. Larry wants me to make them again for sure - he loves oatmeal cookies.

• Chewy Oatmeal Cookies (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 314)

This bread couldn't have been simpler to make. Mix up the dry and wet ingredients separately, then mix them all together and add the walnuts. I didn't have any maple flavoring, an optional ingredient. The recipe says it makes a big difference, but I guess we'll never know.

I think I probably left this bread in a few minutes too long. It's yummy with a bit of cream cheese on top, though.

• Maple Walnut Bread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 54)

I made this cake to take to our neighbor Chris's house for a dinner party tonight. I made the cake in two stages - yesterday I made the chocolate genoise layers (almost 100% whole grain - just a tiny bit of AP flour and mostly whole wheat pastry flour), then today I made the syrup and stabilized whipped cream and assembled the cake. It has a layer of cherry pie filling in the middle of the layers of chocolate, and the genoise is soaked in a Kirsch sugar syrup. It wasn't really hard to make. The whipped cream is stabilized using plain gelatin, which kind of grossed me out, but it tasted fine. It seemed a little weepy to me, actually - although the rosettes piped out easily.

I don't think any of us were crazy about the cake. It was good, nothing particularly wrong with it... it just wasn't a "wow" dessert.

• Black Forest Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 398)

Tonight I made Cream Cheese and Molasses bread, which has rolled oats , barley flour and whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat, my new favorite flour). The bread is a quick bread. I'm not great at making quick breads, but this one turned out pretty good. It's very moist and reminds me of gingerbread. It's got chopped pecans and crystalized ginger inside. I think next time I'll leave out the pecans.

It smelled SO good while it was baking. The hard part was waiting for it to cool so we could slice it. Larry and I both really like it. I'd like to try it with some honey on top. Or cream cheese.

• Cream Cheese & Molasses Bread (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 55)

Tonight I made Tropical Quinoa Custard for dessert. It's from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, and the description says that if you're a tapioca fan, this custard is for you. I'm definitely a tapioca fan, but I like it unadorned, so I was unsure about the rum, lime, mango and ginger in this custard. I used just a small amount of ginger.

I could hardly wait for the custard to cool. It smelled so good. It's absolutely delicious. I love the mix of flavors - none of them are overwhelming. Perfect.

• Tropical Quinoa Custard (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 117)

This pound cake is kind of odd. It's got plenty of butter in it, but it also has cream cheese. The final result is more like an apple quick bread instead of a pound cake. It's very dense and moist, and has quite a bit of crunch from the cornmeal. The cake has a rich dark brown color from the apple butter.

I haven't had any complaints about this cookbook until now - the recipe calls for "whole grain cornmeal". What grind? I used medium, but I think fine would have worked better - a little less crunch. Overall, everyone seemed to like this cake, but it definitely wasn't our favorite out of the cookbook. I'm pretty sure I won't make it again.

• Apple Harvest Pound Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 388)

I made scones for breakfast this morning, and they couldn't have been easier. The dough was a little wet so I was generous with the flour during the quick kneading. These scones aren't 100% whole grain - they use barley flour plus some AP flour. I made some lemon curd to go with them, and they were delicious. Larry thought they should be sweeter. Probably, since I forgot to add the powdered sugar-lemon glaze on top.

• Lemon Barley Scones (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 88)
• Lemon Curd (Fine Cooking #26, May 1998, p. 54)

My whole grain baking marathon continues. Tonight it was 100% whole grain muffins - and no butter! These could actually be classified as healthy. There are chunks of crystallized ginger in the muffins. They're really tasty and are very light and airy and couldn't have been easier to make. Larry really liked these muffins.

• Gingered Oatmeal Muffins (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 40)

I'm particular about my chocolate chip cookies. I prefer them with a moderate amount of chips. I like them with walnuts. And I like them to be thick and chewy, not thin. These cookies are tasty, but they turned out thin and they have too many chocolate chips in them. My last batch turned out best - it's the one I did as a single sheet in the oven, rather than two sheets at a time.

• Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 304)

My fourth recipe from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking is a very simple cake with a whole bunch of honey in it. I almost used agave nectar because that's pretty much all I use in place of honey these days, but at the last minute decided to go with sage honey.

This is a good cake, but I think I'd like it to be in a loaf pan, more like a pound cake. Larry didn't especially like all the almonds.

• Honey Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 421)

Our neighbors Chris and Assana and Assana's boyfriend (and honorary neighbor), Dan, came over for Easter brunch - we really hadn't planned on anything, but I can't remember the last time I didn't make Easter brunch, and this is a fun, low-key group.

I made the same easy frittata that I made for Valentine's Day because it's good and cooks in just a few minutes. I made the scones this morning but had everything prepped the day before so they only took about a half hour. And I made the cake the day before. Larry took care of the fruit and the bacon so it was a really relaxing morning.

I'm so impressed with the Whole Grains Baking cookbook. Everything so far has been delicious. The scones were a huge hit. The dough was very, very sticky and I had to add some flour in order to work with it. The cake was pretty easy, but the frosting was kind of a pain - but really tasty. The cake was a bit dense but still tender. I'm not good at decorating cakes but the icing piped out really nicely.

• Frittata with Cheese, Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Basil (Bon Appétit, January 2003)
• Cinnamon-Filled Scones (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 90)
• Mixed Berries and Bananas
• Bacon
• Lemon-Raspberry Cake with Lemon Buttercream Frosting (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, pp. 375 & 430)

I picked up a cookbook at the library, King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. It's been nominated for a James Beard award, always a good sign when it comes to cookbooks.

This is a typical (and yummy) blueberry coffee cake. It's got a bit of all-purpose flour, but otherwise it's mostly oats, whole wheat pastry flour and white whole wheat flour. It's not something that should be eaten in place of more healthy foods, but instead a healthier version of an occasional treat. It was really delicious, and I can't wait to make more recipes from this cookbook.

• Blueberry Buckle Coffee Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 68)