Chocolate and Peanut Butter Bars

I am on a serious condensed milk kick! I can not get enough of baking with this stuff so naturally I picked up a few more containers of it on my last supermarket run and baked something with it again. I turned to BHG's Biggest Book of Cookies and found alongside the previous recipe, this recipe for Chocolate and Peanut Butter Bars. The head note of this recipe sites this as healthful what with the oats and a bit of whole wheat flour, but who are they kidding? This recipe is rich and delicious and I'mt not ashamed! This is another really easy recipe to make- an oat mixture is made, some of it is set aside, but an egg is added to the rest of it to form the crust. I did make one mistake here and that is that I neglected to refrigerate the topping while I worked on the rest of the cookie. Due to the INSANE heat here in Jerusalem, it kind of melted altogether by the time it got into the oven instead of being a nice bar with a crumble topping. Oh well. I left these in the office on base and then left base to run some errands. When I got back these were demolished. Literally, to the last crumb. Success!

Bretzel Rolls

In addition to making the picnic wraps last weekend, I decided to get back to my bread roots and make some rolls. I must have had A Passion for Baking laying around somewhere because the idea to make Bretzel Rolls popped up and I decided to roll with it. Wow, pun seriously not intended there. That started a real craving for pretzels and mustard (missing baseball season, anyone?!) so I got moving pretty quick! Anyway, Bretzel rolls are rolls that are supposed to be pretzel like yet tend more to the bread side. I checked out Rose's recipe but hers requires lye which I don't have so I went with Marcy's baking soda bath. What I felt really made this recipe was the topping of salt and garlic powder- yum! And it went deliciously well with mustard. I must say that the baking soda bath wasn't intense enough and these didn't have that coveted pretzel flavor. Truth be told, though, I've come to terms with the fact that no matter how good the recipe, pretzels without lye will not taste like authentic pretzels. That said, it's still fun to shape and boil bread and the resulting breads are delicious, if not the real deal.

Picnic Wraps

Yesterday, while contemplating what kind of bread to bake for Shabbat and flipping through the Baker's Companion, inspiration hit. Why not make wraps for lunch? I had a can of tuna waiting to be used and it seemed like the perfect afternoon meal. Quite a while back, when I was still in Bar Ilan, I made some flour tortillas and remembered being quite impressed with how they turned out. Making these Picnic Wraps, then, from the Crackers and Flatbreads chapter, was a go. With just four basic ingredients, these wraps were really simple and easy to make. You start with some flour and oil, add some salt and water and knead to make a smooth dough. There is a bit of resting involved but you can use that time to do other things. My biggest issue is figuring out how to get them to stay in a circle while rolling. As you can see from the picture above, I got something resembling a circle, but not quite a circle. And there's more where that came from. Fortunately, the both looked and acted like the real thing so really not complaining. Looking forward to breaking my fast on these tomorrow night.

Super Easy Chocolate Bars

One measly post in June? I know. I will do better, starting with these Super Easy Chocolate Bars that I made for my soldiers two weeks ago. The recipe comes from Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Cookies and they didn't disappoint. This recipe was made in celebration of my finding mehadrin sweetened condensed milk in the supermarket. Woohoo! Words can not express my excitement at finding it and although expensive, it is worth every shekel. No longer will I have to skip over key lime pie recipes or any other drool inducing recipe that calls for this item. A new chapter of baking is opened, starting with these. True to their name, these bars begin with a shortbread like bottom, topped with a milk and chocolate mixture and topped with some reserved shortbread mixture. Yum.

Sour Cream Sandwich Bread

Wow am I exhausted! Another course down, 23 more soldiers behind me. As usual, feeling sad but fulfilled. In another news, I'm celebrating my 25th birthday and I must say it's been an amazing year, so I hope the one ahead is just as good. It's been a while since I posted and even longer since I posted a bread recipe, so I'm happy to be making up for lost time. A couple of weekends back, I found myself with some extra sour cream hanging around my fridge and so I did a quick search for a sour cream bread. Apparently Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Sandwich Bread is pretty popular so I decided to give it a try. What's unique about this bread is its kneading technique. You knead the dough for about ten seconds and then give it a rest for about ten minutes. This is repeated about three times. It's amazing the transformation the dough undergoes with so little kneading . The dough turned out beautifully satiny and smooth and was a pleasure to work with. How did it turn out? Well, the sour cream did give it a noticeable tang, sort of like having bread smeared with cream cheese but inside the bread already. I didn't have a chance to toast it, but I hear it makes wonderful toast. After seeing some controversy about posting his original recipes, I decided to just link the recipe to Dan Lepard's site. Do give it a try, though.